KELLY SULLIVAN
Barnesville, Ga.

Sullivan's toughest trials at VMI had nothing to do with the ratline.

Her mother died in a car crash in June 1998, while Sullivan was in summer school at VMI. The following summer, her 34-year-old hammer-throw coach on the track team, John O'Connor, died from an irregular heartbeat.

"I'm so glad I've had VMI to support me," Sullivan, 22, said.

Her female classmates are "the strongest group of women I've ever met," she said. Within a short while after learning her mother had died, a dozen of them were in her room consoling her.

In turn, she has defended herself and them when she felt they needed it. "I'm a loudmouth," she said.

Where most other women downplay the idea of a sisterhood within the corps, Sullivan says VMI has heightened her pride in gender.

After graduation, she's off to flight school, either through the military or a civilian school like Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Florida.

She hopes to find a career as a pilot on a commercial airliner, another field dominated by men.

But she says life at VMI has taught her, if nothing else, "to look at the road ahead, know my obstacles and how to overcome them."