50 Stories for 50 Years | Post 24 In my earlier posts, I’ve written about some of the coaches and instructors I had at USNA. Let me round that out with a few more of the professors I remember, the civilian ones, the military ones, the ones who noticed there were women in the room and treated us with respect. I’ve blocked out every calculus and electrical instructor I ever had. Mercy, probably. More about…
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The Barn
Published July 13, 2026
Not every company had women in those early years. That made rooming complicated in ways nobody had planned for. Civilian colleges let you vet a roommate before you move in. We got assigned three to a room, and if the conflict turned irreconcilable, the fix wasn’t a room change. It was a company change. That’s how much weight a roommate carried. They weren’t just the people you lived with. They were the ones you formed…
1 CommentThe Quarter-Pounder Incident
Published July 6, 2026
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…
Leave a CommentJust keep swimming
Published June 29, 2026
50 Stories for 50 Years | Post 21 Swimming existed at the Naval Academy long before women did. That mattered. When I arrived in the summer of 1977, I already knew the water. Age-group swimming since I was eleven. Two-a-day practices in high school. The rhythm of yards and turns, and the particular silence of being underwater while the world above stayed loud. Of all the spaces at the Naval Academy, the pools were the…
Leave a CommentRunning Past It
Published June 22, 2026
50 Stories for 50 Years of Women at USNA — Post 20 I grew up at the Naval Academy. Not as a midshipman. As a kid. My father was in the Navy, and on Sunday afternoons, the obstacle course at Hospital Point was a playground. The rope wall. The big wooden structures. My friends and I would swing, hang, and run through them for the pure fun of it. I should have known better than…
Leave a CommentWedgie War
Published June 8, 2026
50 Stories for 50 Years of Women at USNA — Post 19 There is a particular feeling that comes before impending chaos in Bancroft Hall. Not a sound, exactly. More like a change in frequency. A rumble, then something electric in the air. If Bancroft were a forest, you would see it in the animals first – the way they stop, ears up, and begin fleeing before the fire is seen. Before the smoke. Like…
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