Quilt of valor

The article about the quilt of valor in today’s paper (“A simple comfort,” Feb. 20) made me recall how perhaps the maker and presenter of the quilt, retired Air Force LTC Emily Tate, is probably at least as deserving of a similar honor after her 22 years of military service.

She graduated from the Air Force Academy at a time when the school had just recently accepted women as cadets. Women were a small minority, about 15% of the student body — deeply resented and often humiliated by many male cadets as well as some of the military officers teaching at the academy.

My experience relates to West Point as “an old grad” before women entered, but the stories I’ve heard and read about the tribulations women cadets faced at the academies for the first 20 years are definitely upsetting.

From my recent decades associated with West Point Admissions it’s clear we’ve come a long way toward full integration, and I salute those pathfinder women, like Emily Tate, who braved and graduated from the federal military academies in the early years that women were allowed to be cadets.

Bob Gregson

Spokane