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 what it is now, and sports teams got…
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The Table I Sat At
Published June 1, 2026
50 Posts for 50 Years of USNA — Post [18] 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 17 · 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 | 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 upperclassman could…
Leave a CommentThe White Chit on the Door
Published May 11, 2026
On hospital corners, room inspections, and the note that stopped my heart — then filled it. Before I was anything else at the US Naval Academy, I was a steward of a small rectangle of space, my room. The room inspection chit taught me things I never would have thought to wonder about. How to make a bed with hospital corners. How to stow your gear left to right, dark to white. Nothing adrift. Nothing…
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Published April 20, 2026
One Woman’s Lived History from the Second Wave I’m interrupting the distant past for a glimpse of the more immediate past, the 50th Anniversary of Service Women at the Academies, and specifically the USNA Women’s celebration in Annapolis. More than 800 women and men, spanning five decades, gathered to mark this milestone. What unfolded over four days was the result of more than a year of effort, a true labor of commitment and care. There…
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