[2] Hammond was born Bella Gardiner on December 21, 1932, in the village of Kanakanak, Territory of Alaska, as the fourth of her family's seven children.
[1][2] Hammond's maternal Yup'ik grandparents both died in the 1918 flu pandemic, which devastated Native Alaskan communities, and her mother had been raised in an orphanage in Kanakanak.
[2] When she was around 12-years old, a school teacher in Aleknagik, who suffered from a heart condition, asked her parents if Bella could spend the winter at her home to look after her children.
She returned to the Naknek River and Bristol Bay every summer to continue her fishing operations for years after Jay Hammond became involved in state politics.
[1][4] Bella Hammond continued to return to fishing operations at Bristol Bay and the Naknek River each summer throughout her husband's tenure.
[1][4] Once they left the governor's mansion in 1982, Bella and Jay Hammond retired to their log cabin homestead on the northern shores of Lake Clark.
[7] In August 2008, then-Governor Sarah Palin honored Bella Hammond, as well as former first ladies Neva Egan, Ermalee Hickel, Susan Knowles and Nancy Murkowski, at an official ceremony and luncheon to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Alaskan statehood.
[9] Bella Hammond and former Alaska First Lady Ermalee Hickel partnered to re-establish "Backbone Alaska", a political group which had originally been established in 1999 by former governors Jay Hammond and Wally Hickel to oppose perceived oil company concessions by then-Governor Tony Knowles' administration during the merger of BP and ARCO.
[9] Bella Hammond's and Ermalee Hickel's newly resurrected Backbone Alaska also sought to counter the influence of the oil industry in Alaskan politics.
[9] The first ladies' support for the Bipartisan Working Group was also backed by other prominent Alaskan political figures, including Vic Fischer.