Alumni and Friends of VMI:
Cyber Corps Numbers: 576
Col. Bissell To Retire: Much contained in
this week's update deals with yesterday's graduation, events at
VWIL and the VMI football program. All well and good. However,
there is one event that came to my attention that I cannot let
pass without comment from yours truly, the Cyber Corps Commander.
I recently learned that Col Mike Bissell will be retiring from
VMI at the beginning of the next semester. As you know Col
Bissell headed up VMI's assimilation efforts and now heads up the
VMI Protocol Office. His performance as head of assimilation was
nothing short of outstanding. With VMI in the media spotlight he
helped guide the Institute through shark infested waters. The
manner in which VMI handled the assimilation helped bring credit
and notoriety to the Institute. In comparing VMI's success in
assimilation to that other other all-male colleges, I believe
that no one did it better.
Col Bissell's other accomplishments are too numerous to recap
here. As a highly decorated officer in the U.S. Army and later
the Commandant of the Corps of Cadets, he served his country and
his alma mater in an exemplary manner. On several occasions he
visited the VMI alumni chapter here in the Pittsburgh area and
provided his insights at alumni social gatherings and recruiting
functions. It was through these visits that I came to know him.
At the end of the day I am honored to be a fellow alumnus of Mike
Bissell, but more importantly I am blessed to have him as a
friend. Godspeed Mike in whatever future endeavors you undertake.
Congratulations Class of 1999!: By the way, if
anyone can obtain a transcript of Liddy's speech, please forward
it and I'll include it in the next update.
A historic VMI graduation / First women earn
degrees from once all-male school
Sunday, May 16, 1999
BY REX BOWMAN
Times-Dispatch Staff Writer
LEXINGTON -- For the first time, two women graduated yesterday
from Virginia Military Institute, overcoming VMI's harsh system
and critics who predicted the introduction of women would leave
the once all-male school in ruins.
Just past noon, cadets Chih-Yuan Ho and Melissa K. Graham strode
onto the stage at VMI's Cameron Hall to take their diplomas and
their place in history as the 160-year-old school's first female
graduates.
A mighty cheer went up from the crowd. A dozen female cadets
bounded out of their chairs to bellow their support.
"I came here not because I wanted to be the first female
cadet," Ho said after the ceremony. "It just
happened."
The soft-spoken Graham, nonetheless, said she is proud to be,
with Ho, the first women to graduate from VMI.
"There are all kinds of emotions I'm feeling right
now," Graham said. "I'm sad, because I'm going to miss
my roommates; I'm proud, excited."
Ho and Graham graduated alongside 217 male cadets after convicted
Watergate burglar and radio talk-show host G. Gordon Liddy gave a
short commencement speech.
Liddy, while arguing that women should not have combat roles in
the military, declared that the issue of women at VMI is closed.
Throughout the auditorium, VMI alumni and administrators agreed:
Since 1839, the school has sent thousands of young men to the
nation's boardrooms and battlefields; now it should send women
into the work force as well.
"I'm proud to be here today," said Steve Fogleman, a
1971 VMI alumnus who led the fight to keep women out.
"Everybody who walked across that stage was as entitled to a
VMI education as I was, and I hope they get as much out of it as
I got. They've earned it."
After half a decade of court battles, the U.S. Supreme Court in
1996 declared VMI's all-male policy unconstitutional. The school
admitted its first female cadets in 1997.
Ho, from Taiwan, and Graham, from Burleson, Texas, were able to
graduate this year because they transferred to VMI from other
schools and had amassed class credits.
Like all graduates, though, they had to endure VMI's notorious
"rat line," a system of verbal, physical and mental
abuse aimed at freshmen.
While Ho said the rat line wasn't as tough as she thought it
would be, Graham said it almost caused her to quit, as many who
enter VMI do.
"Probably a month after we started was the hardest
time," Graham said. "I thought about leaving, actually.
You work hard and you keep going and going and it feels like
nothing's going to change."
Graham said she sought advice from her upper-class mentor, known
as a "dyke," and he encouraged her to tough it out.
"He told me he knew I couldn't quit something I
started," she said. "And I don't think I could have
left. But I seriously, seriously thought about it. That would
have been a mistake."
Micah Wei, a Richmond senior who also graduated yesterday, said
there was some unease among his classmates because they entered
VMI in 1995 as an all-male class, yet left as a coeducational
group. Ultimately, he said, each male cadet made his private
peace with the situation, partly because of the integrity and
ability of Ho and Graham.
"The two female cadets who walked with us were two of the
most exemplary female cadets we have," Wei said.
"They're the standouts of the group."
About 50 female cadets remain at VMI, and recruiters expect
another 40 to arrive next year.
Cadet Kelly Sullivan hailed Ho and Graham as role models for any
high school girl thinking of attending VMI.
"Any woman that wants to accept the challenge of VMI should
take it, but know that it is very difficult," she said.
"We have two strong women here today who led the way for us.
It's emotional for us to let them go."
VMI Superintendent Josiah Bunting said the school has reaped
benefits from the publicity surrounding its fight against
admitting women and its subsequent effort to assimilate them.
Donations from alumni are pouring in, he said, and the number of
applicants to the school is at an all-time high.
So far 1,143 applicants, including 83 women, are seeking
admission next year, an increase of 8.3 percent from last year.
Bunting, who once argued that admitting women would soften VMI,
yesterday said the opposite. In its effort to not let coeducation
alter the school, VMI has grown more arduous, he said.
"VMI has become even more self-consciously demanding. If
anything, it's gotten tougher than it was before," Bunting
said.
Ho, a psychology major who said she enrolled to follow in the
steps of a Taiwanese general who graduated from VMI, plans to
serve in the Navy and attend dental school.
Graham, also a psychology major, is to be commissioned in the
Army and serve in a field artillery unit.
After the graduation ceremony, Liddy, who served in the
artillery, reiterated his beliefthat women have no place in
combat and said Graham should rethink her plans: "There's
such a thing as counter-battery fire, and she's liable to have
her guts splattered all over her."
Graham, exhibiting some of the toughness that carried her through
VMI, suggested that Liddy, with his background, had no business
offering her advice. "Knowing what he has done in the past,
I'm not surprised by what he said," Graham said.
MARCHING TOWARDS GRADUATION
Mission accomplished
By KIRAN KRISHNAMURTHY
The Free Lance-Star
STAUNTON—The dorm was swarming with media when Amalie
Charbonnet arrived at the Virginia Women’s Institute for
Leadership on a sunny August morning nearly four years ago.
Charbonnet and her new teen-age classmates maneuvered through the
throng as they and their parents hauled suitcases, boxes and
plastic crates to upper-floor rooms.
Momentarily blinded by flash bulbs, the young women put on their
best faces as the cameras recorded them unpacking bags, choosing
beds and tacking up posters of hardbodied men.
Interest in the VWIL (pronounced “vee-will”) program at
Mary Baldwin College in Staunton was high; at the same time, a
court battle raged over whether such a curriculum could permit
Virginia Military Institute in nearby Lexington to continue
denying women admission.
Starting college is tough enough. The widespread attention to
VWIL cadets that August day only made the transition more
unnerving.
“There was all kinds of hugging and crying and goodbyes. And
it was all in front of these cameras,” Charbonnet, one of
three King George County students to enroll in VWIL’s
inaugural class, said recently.
A week from today, the 21-year-old and other members of the
program’s first class will graduate, leaving behind what was
briefly a focal point in a national debate over the future of
publicly funded, single-sex schools.
Of the 42 young women who started VWIL in the fall of 1995, about
half stuck with it. Today, about 125 students are enrolled in the
program, which Mary Baldwin officials say they plan to continue
even though VMI is now open to women.
State officials invented VWIL as a potential remedy to admitting
women to VMI. Such a parallel program, they argued, would give
women equal access to a single-gender, military-style environment
such as the one revered at VMI for more than 150 years.
Just months out of high school, Charbonnet and her classmates
were viewed hopefully by the VMI faithful, if only because a
successful female corps could help preserve their own all-male
tradition.
Some called the young women pioneers. Charbonnet laughs at that
now.
“I didn’t know what I wanted to do or where I wanted to
go,” she said. “My dad just gave me an application and
said, ‘Here, fill this out.’”
Her father, a Navy man, had taught Charbonnet, Kim Primerano and
Jenn Atkins as director of King George High School’s Navy
Junior ROTC program. Primerano and Atkins also enrolled in VWIL
and will graduate in a week.
Even with her exposure to the military, Charbonnet felt uneasy
about joining the experimental program: “I didn’t know
what to expect.”
That first year was tough for VWIL cadets. There were 6 a.m.
wake-up calls and four-mile jogs in near-freezing temperatures.
And they were treated, in some ways, like second-class citizens
during their trips to VMI for class.
The female cadets weren’t allowed to visit VMI’s upper
campus during their trips there for ROTC training. Instead, the
young women were bused to a building across the street and down a
hill from the main campus, prohibiting much of a view of the
school that they might possibly help keep all-male.
Charbonnet thought about quitting. She called home constantly and
returned to King George at every chance.
“I wanted to get out,” she said.
Now, she figures her distress was more about being a college
freshman than about being a VWIL cadet. At the time, though, it
wasn’t as clear.
She was not alone. Many of VWIL’s cadets were going through
much the same. And there were the two other cadets from King
George High there, Primerano and Atkins.
“We all kind of had a hard time, I guess,” Primerano
said. “But I don’t start something and quit.
That’s not me.”
Charbonnet decided leaving wasn’t for her, either.
The next few years proved better.
In June 1996, the Supreme Court ruled 7–1 that VMI must
admit women or forfeit state funding, ending a seven-year fight
between the school and the U.S. Department of Justice. VMI and
VWIL were similar, a majority of the court conceded, but not the
same.
Suddenly, the media’s attention shifted.
Would VMI open its Spartan barracks to women?
Or would it try to keep them out by going private?
How about these VWIL cadets?
Did they want to abandon this experiment and go to VMI?
VMI enrolled its first coeducational class in the fall of 1997.
The three young women from King George say trading their rooms
for VMI’s barracks never crossed their minds. VWIL afforded
them a part-time military experience. If they wanted the real
thing, they might have looked to West Point or Annapolis.
The debate then moved to other matters, such as whether
VMI’s new female cadets should have shaved heads and more
private rooms than their male classmates.
Meanwhile, members of VWIL’s inaugural class relished the
opportunity to build their program themselves and create their
own traditions—outside the spotlight.
Their new hierarchy mimicked VMI’s own, where freshmen are
called “rats” and are told by upperclassmen how to
walk, eat and study.
At VWIL, freshmen were dubbed “NULLs”—as in
“null and void”—and were given orders such as
being able to walk only on curved steps at the hilly campus.
Upperclassmen, meanwhile, established their own privileges,
including being able to take shortcuts across the grass.
“It was great being the first ones,” Primerano said.
Upperclassmen also established penalties for breaking the rules.
Sanctions ranged from marching around the school’s track on
Saturdays to being confined to a dorm for the weekend.
Cadets also held themselves to a strict honor code, even when
they could get away with breaking some of the rules. Just last
October, Primerano turned herself in for oversleeping and missing
a 17-mile run. Her punishment: Counseling.
All three King George cadets also became leaders among their VWIL
peers. Atkins and Charbonnet were platoon commanders, while
Primerano was second-in-charge of the entire corps.
And there were opportunities the female cadets say they probably
wouldn’t have found elsewhere.
Charbonnet spent part of a summer aboard an aircraft carrier off
the coast of Spain and also went along on anti-drug operations in
the Caribbean.
Primerano endured a Marine Corps boot camp, but came out smiling.
She also voluntarily cropped her hair to a one-inch spike because
it kept getting in the way during training.
Atkins, like many of the cadets, kayaked, scaled a rock face and
rappelled for the first time during VWIL’s freshman
wilderness orientation.
“You really learn a lot about yourself, about what risks
you’re willing to take,” she said.
Charbonnet and Primerano also roadtripped to Charleston, S.C.,
for a Citadel football game and to New Orleans for Mardi Gras.
Strands of purple, green and red French Quarter beads hang from a
doorway in the dorm apartment they share.
Much of their four years together is chronicled in photos. On a
nearby wall are collages made of dozens of snapshots, including a
boot-camp picture of Primerano with her spiked brown hair.
“You look good,” Charbonnet said, teasing her roommate
as they sat together on the back of a couch recently.
“Yeah, I do,” Primerano shot back.
For a second, they were silent. Then the two exploded in laughter
and fell backward over the edge of the sofa.
Soon, these cadets will go their separate ways.
Charbonnet, who majored in math, is joining the Navy for four
years. She’ll head for Rhode Island, then to San Diego,
where she’ll join the USS Hewitt, a destroyer whose missions
take it to Japan, Australia and other Pacific ports. She’ll
be commissioned as a Navy ensign—the equivalent of a second
lieutenant—and probably will go on to graduate school.
Primerano will be closer to home, for a while. The biology major
is joining the Marine Corps as a second lieutenant, with a tour
of duty that starts at the Quantico Marine Corps Base.
Atkins will head for Army training in Fort Lewis, Wash. The
business major will be commissioned as a second lieutenant in the
reserves while she earns a master’s degree in finance at
either Virginia Commonwealth University or Mary Washington
College.
But before that, the cadets will be back in front of the cameras.
The media will return. Classmates will click snapshots. And proud
parents, video cameras in their hands, will eagerly seek to
capture a last salute to VWIL’s first.
© 1999 The Free Lance–Star, Fredericksburg, Va.
[CAPTION FOR ATTACHED PIC: Photo by Suzanne Carr / The Free
Lance-Star
Amalie Charbonnet (left) and Kim Primerano (center), both from
King George, were among the first students to join the Virginia
Woman’s Institute for Leadership at Mary Baldwin College
four years ago. ]
McCombs: Crazy like a fox? /
New VMI football coach believes he can succeed
Friday, May 7, 1999
BY JEFF WHITE
Times-Dispatch Staff Writer
LEXINGTON
The question followed him everywhere. Virginia Military
Institute's new football coach heard it during his morning stops
for coffee in town, and he heard it during his trips around the
state.
Cal McCombs carries himself confidently, dresses neatly and
speaks clearly and logically with a distinct South Carolina
accent. He doesn't look like or act like a man who's lost his
mind. Yet more than one person has asked him: "Why in the
world would you do this?"
McCombs smiled.
"People said I was crazy," he said. "Beat
everything I'd ever seen."
VMI, the second-smallest school playing Division I-AA football,
has become known as a coaching graveyard. The Keydets haven't had
a winning record since 1981 when they finished 6-3-1 under Bob
Thalman. Thalman's final three teams at VMI went 8-24, and his
successors
-- Eddie Williamson (1985-88), Jim Shuck (1989-93), Bill Stewart
(1994-96) and Ted Cain (1997-98) -- were a combined 33-118-2.
"It's been regarded as a very tough job," said Air
Force coach Fisher DeBerry. "It's been regarded as, 'Why
would you want to go there?' "
After 15 years as an Air Force assistant, during which the
Falcons went 120-64-1 and appeared in 10 bowl games, McCombs took
a leap of faith and accepted VMI's job offer. This is a guy who,
though only 5-9, high-jumped 6-7 at The Citadel. At VMI, McCombs
has an even higher bar to clear.
Four months into the job, the 53-year-old redhead hasn't lost his
smile or his optimism. He hasn't lost any games either, of
course, so perhaps reality hasn't set in.
"At VMI, everybody will tell you can't win because of this
and this and this," McCombs said. "I guess I'm just
crazy enough to say I don't believe all that stuff."
DeBerry said: "I know it's a tough job. Cal knows it's a
tough job. But if anyone in America can do it, it's Cal McCombs.
They don't know what a gem they got."
. . .
Mike Bozeman knows. When Superintendent Josiah Bunting III and
Athletic Director Donny White dismissed Cain a week before VMI's
final game last season, Bozeman, the school's highly successful
track coach, immediately thought about McCombs.
It wasn't the first time.
"He came to mind when they hired Jim Shuck," said
Bozeman, a classmate of McCombs at The Citadel. "I've always
felt like he would be the right guy here . . . He would have been
able to come in here at any time and done a pretty good job. But
the way it's worked out, the timing is perfect for both him and
VMI."
Many in the VMI family have held that only a VMI graduate -- a
person who has survived the Rat Line's rigors -- can truly
understand the often-controversial school. Cadets past and
present have embraced McCombs anyway, despite his ties to The
Citadel, VMI's biggest rival.
"Cal McCombs is like a breath of fresh air," said
White, a VMI alumnus.
Raised in Belton, S.C., a mill town near Clemson, McCombs grew up
planning to work in the textile business, as his father did for
45 years.
"I wanted to be the manager of one of those plants down
there," McCombs recalled. "But the more I got involved
in athletics, the more I thought coaching wouldn't be bad."
A two-sport star in high school, McCombs accepted a small
academic scholarship to attend The Citadel, where he eventually
earned a full football grant-in-aid. He has a master's degree in
physical education from the University of South Carolina.
His résumé suggests he's perfectly suited to coach at a
military school:
• Seventeen years at The Citadel: four as a student-athlete
(track and football), 13 as a football assistant under head
coaches Red Parker, Bobby Ross, Art Baker and Tom Moore,
respectively.
• Two years as a lieutenant in the U.S. Army.
• Fifteen years at the Air Force Academy, the last nine as
defensive coordinator. The Falcons ranked No. 11 nationally in
total defense last season. They ranked third nationally in
scoring defense in 1997.
To succeed as a military-school coach, DeBerry said, "I
think you need to be understanding of the military, which Cal has
a great respect for. The school is run on a master schedule, and
you have to run your program within that."
McCombs' staff shares his values. His assistants include four
military-school graduates: his son, Will McCombs, and Joe
Lombardi from Air Force; Jack Baker from VMI, and Mike Priefer
from Navy. Three other assistants have coached at military
schools.
"I believe in this type of education," McCombs said.
Of the three coaches who immediately preceded McCombs, none
graduated from a military school.
"I think there were problems along the way with all those
staffs as far as understanding the [VMI] system, which, when
times got hard, made them reluctant to support it," Bozeman
said.
Tight end Tom Boyer, a rising senior from Douglas Freeman High,
said the players have adjusted easily to McCombs.
"He understands we have the military [obligations],"
Boyer said, "and he's giving us time to have that
done."
McCombs said: "To me, the school comes first. The football
program is not bigger than the school."
. . .
At Air Force, DeBerry wins with players shunned by most Division
I-A programs. The Falcons are smaller than most opponents but
compensate with an option offense and attacking defense that
emphasizes speed and quickness.
McCombs, not surprisingly, has installed DeBerry's system at VMI,
which has struggled to compete in the rugged Southern Conference
with players who often had no other Division I-AA scholarship
offers.
But X's and O's alone won't resuscitate the Keydets. Attrition
has been an ongoing and devastating problem at VMI, and
recruiting efforts haven't paid great dividends. White expects
that to change.
"With Cal McCombs' experience and Cal McCombs'
personality," White said, "I believe he'll be able to
recruit and retain good players, because he'll be someone people
want to play for."
McCombs signed a five-year contract that includes a $90,000
annual salary. Of VMI's four previous coaches, only Shuck lasted
five years. White promises that the school will be more patient
with McCombs.
McCombs, for his part, says he wants to be at VMI when he
retires.
"When you're winning and you're having fun like I did at the
Air Force Academy, time gets away from you," he said.
"I go from 38 to 53 overnight. When we get things going here
and have a good time with the players, shoot, I'll go from 53 to
70 overnight."
McCombs easily could have celebrated his 70th birthday in
Colorado. But he and his wife, Lynn, accepted White's invitation
to visit VMI over Thanksgiving weekend. What McCombs saw piqued
his interest.
"Here's a very prestigious school, here's a class school,
here's a school that hasn't won [in football] in 18 years and
that has been successful in other sports," McCombs said.
"Why can't we get it done in football?"
The Keydets open Sept. 4 against the Richmond Spiders at
University of Richmond Stadium. Also on the schedule are William
and Mary and Southern Conference powers Georgia Southern and
Appalachian State.
"I know it's a tremendous challenge," McCombs said.
"I had the best assistant-coaching job in America -- and I
believe that with all my soul -- and I left there to come to VMI,
which hasn't won in 18 years. There's no way I would have taken
this job if I didn't think we could win."
------------------------------------------------------------------------
McCombs file
• Who: Cal McCombs, hired in December as Virginia Military
Institute’s football coach. Native of Belton, S.C. Born Aug.
4, 1945.
• Family: Wife, Lynn; daughter, Layne; son, Will.
• College: Bachelor’s degree in physical education from
The Citadel; master’s in physical education from South
Carolina. Starred in football and track at The Citadel.
• Coaching: Graduate assistant at South Carolina, 1969-70;
assistant at The Citadel, 1971-83; assistant at Air Force,
1984-98.
• Quotable: “If the job can be done [at VMI], Cal
McCombs can do it. They got the right man for the job.” --
Air Force coach Fisher DeBerry.
Friday, May 7, 1999
LEXINGTON -- At VMI, Cal McCombs will try to do what no football
coach has done since Bob Thalman: lead the Keydets to a winning
season. He'll try to emulate Thalman as a person, too.
"I've got so much respect for that man," McCombs said.
McCombs has known Thalman for nearly 30 years. McCombs, in fact,
accepted a job on Thalman's first staff in January 1971. Two days
later, however, The Citadel offered McCombs an assistant's job.
He and his wife are South Carolina natives, and he's an alumnus
of The Citadel. His heart was in Charleston.
"So I called Coach Thalman and told him the situation,"
McCombs recalled, "and he said, 'Cal, I can understand if
The Citadel is where you want to be. I'll harbor no hard
feelings.' "
Thalman, who is retired and lives in Chesterfield County,
downplayed his decision to free McCombs from his commitment.
"A guy who wants to go serve his alma mater ought to do
it," he said.
In 14 seasons under Thalman, VMI went 54-94-3 and won two
Southern Conference titles. The Keydets went 6-3-1 in 1981 and
followed that with a 5-6 mark. They haven't won more than four
games in a season since.
Thalman believes McCombs can revive VMI's program.
"The thing I like most about him is his attitude,"
Thalman said. "They used to call me Mr. Positive, and he's a
lot like that."
During McCombs' 15 seasons as an Air Force assistant, the Falcons
appeared in 10 bowl games.
"They believed they could win," Thalman said.
"There's magic in believing."
McCombs spent 13 seasons at The Citadel before moving to Air
Force. It took him 28 years, but he's finally a Lexington
resident.
"Looking back, if I'd come to VMI [in '71], I'd have won a
Southern Conference championship," McCombs said.
"Because we never won one at The Citadel."
-- Jeff White
That's it for this week.
RB Lane '75
Last Updated: October 11, 2009
Site Created by: Richard L. Neff II, '90 - Network Technologies Group