ANGELA "NICKI" MYERS
Virginia Beach

Myers was not only one of the first women to enter the ratline; the transfer student from Old Dominion University was the first to complete it.

Of the 23 women remaining at VMI on March 17, 1998, she was the first to scramble up an impossibly steep and muddy hill to "break out" of the ratline.

"She's a Myers," her father, John Myers, said proudly at the time. Breaking barriers "is a Myers family business." In 1942, he was one of the first blacks to join the Marine Corps.

Myers, 23, is a civilian working with the military. Since graduating in May 2000, she's been an Air Force special investigator at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio. She investigates felonies committed within the military.

Her experience at VMI is "doing me pretty good. When people hear that I'm from VMI, it's just this feeling that comes across. It's this understanding."