Lt. Col. Anne McClain, Class of 2002, spent 6 1/2 months aboard the International Space Station from December 2018 to June 2019. She is the first female West Point graduate to become an astronaut. (Photo Courtesy of NASA) (Photo Credit: U.S. ) VIEW ORIGINAL
At 5:31 p.m. on Dec. 3, 2018, the engines on the Russian Soyuz MS-11 spacecraft roared to life on a launch pad in Kazakhstan. As bright orange flames erupted from the engines, the spacecraft lifted off the ground and began its journey to the International Space Station.
Dressed in a white and blue spacesuit, astronaut Lt. Col. Anne McClain sat in the windowless capsule along with a Russian cosmonaut and a Canadian astronaut. It was her first launch, and she says at first it felt like she was in the simulator where she’d spent countless hours preparing for this moment. Then the spacecraft started to rumble as the engines ignited and it hit her that, “Oh gosh, this is different. This is the real day.”
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Eight minutes after ignition, the third and final stage of the engine came off the vehicle and threw the three passengers forward. McClain’s stomach flipped and she felt like she was upside down. Just minutes after sitting on a launch pad in Asia, she and her crewmates were already in orbit more than 200 miles above the Earth. This, she realized, is what weightlessness felt like.
Then the shrouds covering the capsule’s windows came off and a view she’d been looking forward to since she was 3 years old came into view.
“I look out and for the first time I see a sunrise over the Earth, just 8 1/2 minutes after sitting on the launch pad, and what an amazing kind of transition in your mind of where you are, ” McClain said.
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McClain is a Class of 2002 graduate of the U.S. Military Academy, where the history department is fond of saying, “Much of the history we teach was made by people we taught.” After learning about famous members of the Long Gray Line at the academy, McClain was now making history of her own.
A West Point graduate first flew to space in 1965, when Frank Borman launched aboard Gemini 7. He was followed by graduates who flew on Apollo missions, walked on the moon and launched to the International Space Station aboard space shuttles, but until that December day in 2018, no female graduate of the academy had ever left Earth behind and traveled to space.
Women were first admitted to West Point in 1976 and in May 1980, 62 graduated, forever changing the academy. In the 39 years since, 5, 140 women have added their names to the Register of Graduates and joined the Long Gray Line that stretches back to 1802.
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McClain is the lone astronaut among the group, but the women of West Point have made their mark both in the and on the country as a whole. They have led the Corps of Cadets as the first captain, and also served as the commandant and dean at the academy.
They have led Soldiers as generals and started multi-million-dollar corporations. They have proved their toughness by earning Ranger and Sapper tabs—and in some cases both. Four of them—Jaimie Leonard, Laura Walker, Emily Perez and Sara Cullen—have given their lives in service of the United States.
1 / 2 Show Caption + Hide Caption – Lt. Gen. Nadja Y. West, the 44th Surgeon General of the United States and commanding general, U.S. Medical Command renders honors during a Twilight Tattoo performance, on Summerall Field, Joint Base Myer Henderson-Hall, Va., May 9, 2019. West hosted the performance which featured Soldiers assigned to the 3d U.S. Infantry Regiment (The Old Guard) and The U.S. Band "Pershing's Own". Twilight Tattoo is an hour-long pageant, which showcases the history of the U.S. . (U.S. photos by Sgt. Nicholas T. Holmes) (Photo Credit: Sgt. Nicholas Holmes) VIEW ORIGINAL
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2 / 2 Show Caption + Hide Caption – Center, now Lt. Gen. Nadja West, Surgeon General and Commanding General, U.S. Medical Command, is shown during Operation Desert Storm treating a wounded Iraqi soldier. (Photo Credit: Amy Parr) VIEW ORIGINAL
Out of the more than 5, 000 women who have graduated from West Point, one has been able to break through to become a senior leader in the . Retired Lt. Gen. Nadja West, who graduated from West Point in 1982, spent the final years of her career as the 44th U.S. Surgeon General and the commander of U.S. Medical Command.
West, the first black woman to become a three-star general in the , is the highest-ranking female to have graduated from West Point.
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In 1939, her father boarded a train and traveled to Fort Huachuca, Arizona, in part because it was a free train ride with his friend. The was still segregated at the time and the base in Arizona was where the Buffalo Soldiers were based and the “colored troops” had to go to get trained. During his time in Arizona, West said her dad saw the white Soldiers training them go from thinking of the black Soldiers as others to embracing them as fellow Soldiers. The change gave him hope, and he served for 33 years and encouraged his children to do the same.
West’s sisters would serve in the Women’s Corps, Women’s Auxiliary Air Force and the Navy as women were slowly integrated into the Armed Forces. Her brother, James Grammer, set a path she eventually followed and graduated from West Point in 1976, the last graduating class to attend a male only academy. Two years after his graduation, West arrived at West Point as the minority of the minority as a black female cadet.
As a member of the third class to include women, West said she was able to look at the women in the classes of 1980 and 1981 and pull encouragement from the fact that they had survived. The women in the upper classes also worked to toughen up the naïve 17-year-old girl, who was getting yelled at for the first time in her life, being called cruel names she says she didn’t even understand at the time, and was liable to cry at the drop of a hat.
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“The guys would come and yell and then I'd start crying, ” West said. “One of (the Class of 1980 women) said, ‘You've got to stop that because you’re making us all look bad.’ They were trying to say you’ve got to be tough because everyone's watching you and then your actions reflect on all of us.”
A third generation of her family recently began serving in the military as her son, Logan West, followed in her footsteps and graduated from West Point in the Class of 2019. Four decades after his mom entered the academy, he attended a place that had drastically changed. Women now make up nearly a quarter of the Corps and they are allowed to enter any branch they choose. The change was brought home to West when she asked him what it was like being at the academy with women and he couldn’t even grasp what it would be like without them. It was all he knew.
“They’re cadets. They’re not black cadets, or white cadets or female cadets, they’re cadets, ” West said. “We still identify. We still count. Unfortunately, that’s human. That’s the American society. We have to put a person in a box and categorize them. But, it’s great just to see that it’s no big deal.”
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The list of female West Point graduates leading at the ’s senior levels might be short, but in recent years women have taken on major leadership roles at West Point itself by serving as both Commandant of Cadets and Dean of the Academic Board.
1 / 3 Show Caption + Hide Caption – Maj. Gen. Diana Holland, Class of 1990, served as the Commandant of Cadets at the U.S. Military Academy from December 2015 to September 2017. She was the first woman to hold a senior leader position at West Point. (Photo Credit: John Pellino) VIEW ORIGINAL
2 / 3 Show Caption + Hide Caption – Then Brig. Gen. Diana Holland, and Command Sgt. Maj. Dawn Rippelmeyer take part in a boxing class the first year that the course became mandatory for female cadets. (Photo Credit: U.S. ) VIEW ORIGINAL
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3 / 3 Show Caption + Hide Caption – Then Brig. Gen. Diana Holland, USACE South Atlantic Division commander, overlooks the newest expansion of the Panama Canal during senior leader engagements in Panama. (Photo by Capt. Josh Gonzalez) (Photo Credit: U.S. ) VIEW ORIGINAL
Future Commandant Maj. Gen. Diana Holland graduated from West Point in 1990, a decade after the first class with women, but her infatuation with the academy had started years before. Her father and grandfather had both served in the Marines and—at the age of 6—Holland decided she too would one day serve in the military. From a young age her father had told her she could be anything
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