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A Grain of Salt Posts

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…

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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,…

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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…

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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…

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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…

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Boston

Published August 10, 2026

50 Stories for 50 Years | Post 27 When I was a midshipman at the Naval Academy, I came to know our floor janitor. Everyone called him Boston. That was all I knew of him, that one name. Casual greetings turned into real conversations over time. We were responsible for our own rooms, waxed floors, and properly stowed items. Boston kept the hallways and restrooms shipshape. He could have been invisible, the way janitorial and…

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