A Grain of Salt

Well, Bless Me

Published September 28, 2026

50 Stories for 50 Years — Post 33 It’s football season, and Navy football holds many memories for me. One of them involves a president. In the early 1950s, my father, Frank Andrews, was the commissioning commanding officer of the USS Barracuda (SSK-1), a small experimental anti-submarine warfare submarine. His engineering officer was a young Jimmy Carter. They shared a wardroom. In 1976, the bicentennial year, I campaigned for Carter while still in high school. I…

1 Comment

A No-Drop Life

Published September 21, 2026

50 Stories for 50 Years — Post 32 “It’s a class ride, not a race. We won’t drop you or leave you behind.” A classmate said that to me five years ago, before my first reunion bike ride. I wasn’t a cyclist. My 40th reunion was approaching, and Tony had organized a class ride. I asked my personal trainer, a young woman I had once coached who had become an athletic trainer herself, whether biking might…

1 Comment

The Women One Year Ahead

Published September 14, 2026

50 Stories for 50 Years — Post 31 Recently, at my 45th reunion, we were standing in line to get into the football stadium talking with my classmates when one of my male classmates asked me a question: “Did any of the women ahead of you help you out?” A simple question. It didn’t have a fast answer. For the first women at USNA, every step meant figuring out how to be a new first,…

Dogged Determination – Celebrating a 45th reunion

Published September 7, 2026

50 Stories for 50 Years — Post 30 My roommate and I didn’t become close to our male companymates at the Academy. That sounds strange to say. We lived together, trained together, survived Plebe Summer together. But the pressure of being among the first women midshipmen didn’t leave much room for the kind of friendship that deepens slowly. You were managing too much to be fully present to each other. The guys themselves were finding…

2 Comments

Underway

Published August 31, 2026

50 Stories for 50 Years — Post 29 After plebe summer, after a full academic year of being told exactly where to be and exactly what to do, and after climbing Herndon, the Navy hands you a ship and says, “Run it.” Not entirely. Not alone. But it felt close enough. A tension is worth naming before this story starts. Throughout the academic year, we trained alongside our male classmates: same classes, same formations, same…

Herndon

Published August 17, 2026

50 Stories for 50 Years | Post 28 I was chopping down the middle of the hallway. Chopping is the naval term for running, square corners, eyes forward. All plebes chopped whenever we were out of our rooms. It was one more thing that marked us as plebes, and there was only one way plebe year ended. Climb Herndon. Herndon is a 21-foot granite obelisk on the grounds of the Naval Academy. Like every monument…

A Grain of Salt Posts