50 Stories for 50 Years — Post 34 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 CommentsTag: monday meanderings
Underway
Published August 31, 2026
50 Stories for 50 Years — Post 33 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…
Leave a CommentThe Quarter-Pounder Incident
Published July 6, 2026
50 Stories for 50 Years | Post 26 An 18-year-old man requires roughly 600-1,000 more calories per day than an 18-year-old woman of the same activity level. The Naval Academy had not yet done this math in the mid-1970s. USNA served the Brigade, some 4,400 midshipmen, family style, averaging 3,500 to 4,200 calories a day. It was built for men who sustained heavy academic, military, and physical loads. The nutrition science of the era wasn’t…
Leave a CommentThe Table I Sat At
Published June 1, 2026
50 Posts for 50 Years of USNA — Post 22 My roommate and I were not leaders. At least not officially. In my senior year at the Naval Academy, we were ranked dead last in our peer group for leadership positions. She was second to last. I was last. We had both endured our share of come-arounds as plebes, and neither of us was particularly motivated to inflict on others what we had resented receiving.…
4 CommentsShe Served
Published May 23, 2026
50 Posts for 50 Years · Post 21 · Memorial Day 2026 On our induction day in the summer of 1977, the speaker on the podium delivered the standard warning to the assembled plebes: “Look to your left.“ Look to your right. One of you will not be here at your commissioning. For the roughly 90 women who entered that day, scattered among a class of 1,000, the math proved almost exactly right. About a third…
Leave a CommentLOUDER
Published May 18, 2026
50 Stories for 50 Years | Post 20 On come-arounds, collapsing mid-song, and what happens when development and punishment share a room. Tucked inside the little book every plebe carried everywhere, Reef Points, our pocket-sized bible of professional knowledge, were the things we were expected to know cold. Ship terminology. Naval history. The chain of command. Customs and courtesies. Rates. You were tested on all of it. Formally, in class. Informally, in the passageway, where any…
Leave a Comment