Sunday, March 15, 1998  HE COMMANDS, NOT DEMANDS, RESPECT VMI'S MIKE BISSELL NOT RELUCTANT TO LISTEN AND CHANGE By MATT CHITTUM ROANOKE TIMES The decorated veteran, who has led his share of missions, is credited with the school's historic one - the assimilation of women. If there was a computer designed to figure out how to fit women in smoothly at Virginia Military Institute, Mike Bissell would be its high-speed microprocessor. He's a traffic cop at a 58-way intersection. He's an air-traffic controller who missed his calling. Most of the assumptions you might make about the director of VMI's plan to assimilate women probably would be wrong. True, the 59-year-old VMI graduate was dead set against them coming. But he's known for being one of the few VMI administrators who hasn't merely accepted women at VMI, but touts their virtues as cadets. He's a 26-year Army man who attained the rank of colonel - and the most decorated living VMI alumnus - but he's no grizzled, head-cracking order-giver. He's known as a quiet consensus-builder, who smiles easily, worries a lot about what others think of him and doesn't even demand that his kids call him "sir." Superintendent Josiah Bunting III calls Bissell, who also serves as commandant for the Virginia Women's Institute for Leadership and VMI's director of protocol, "a workaholic whose labor borders on the manic." Bissell has flirted with death in Vietnam, raised seven children, given up a hefty paycheck in the defense industry for a chance to work at his alma mater, and survived a massive heart attack. And as the man charged with integrating women at VMI, Bissell has held, more than any single person, the future success of the school in his hands. "He gets credit for the success of the assimilation process thus far," said Laura Brodie, a VMI English professor, the wife of a VMI grad and the author of a book in progress on women's arrival at VMI. But as the first coed version of VMI's "ratline" training period nears culmination - with just a few minor mishaps - Bissell is reluctant to call the maiden voyage a success. It will take three years to say so for sure, he said. But life seems to have taught Bissell to be hesitant, that things don't always get finished, and if they do, it may not be to your liking. "The first time I'd seen [VMI] was when Mom and Dad dropped me off here," Bissell said. "I didn't know ratline from a buffet line." In his senior yearbook, one of his roommates described the 18-year-old Bissell as "a pair of ears with a Boston accent." The words are next to a picture of the solemn-looking cadet from Marshfield, Mass., with his aural appendages jutting out like a pair of rudders. Bissell was a member of what turned out to be a rather distinguished class of 1961, boasting three VMI commandants, four men who died in Vietnam, and Jonathan Daniels, a quiet seminary student who was killed in Alabama while working to register blacks to vote. Though his roommate refers to Bissell's "two-day hangovers," Bissell insists he was a "serene, studious, conservative cadet." He was a swimmer, baseball player and trumpeter in the band. He enlisted in the Army infantry after graduation, married his date for his junior year Ring Figure dance, the former Jan Emery of Bissell's hometown, and honeymooned on the way to helicopter flight school in Texas. Soon after, the newlyweds found themselves separated by the Pacific Ocean, with her in the United States and him at the helm of a helicopter gunship buzzing across the Southeast tip of Asia. "You'd fly all day until your seat was sore," Bissell said of his Vietnam days. And then "sleep under the helicopter on alert." Bissell served two one-year tours in Vietnam, exactly a year apart. He said he has no deep scars from the experience, but there is one question that would nag him - if he let it. It grows from a mission during his second tour, when the radio crackled with news of a soldier who had stepped on a land mine and was bleeding to death. Bissell took his crew out to save the man. The Viet Cong soldiers were spraying the area with machine gun fire, but Bissell and his crew went in anyway, he recalled. Each time they attempted to land, their helicopter was raked with bullets. It took three attempts to retrieve the wounded American, Bissell said. By then, the helicopter was full of holes. The control panel was destroyed. Still, they limped the helicopter a mile and a half to safety. It was only after the soldier was safe that Bissell learned that on the first attempt to land, his crew chief had been shot. He had fallen out of the helicopter and was lost. "I never really talked about it," he said, "because you saved one life and threw another away." He received the Purple Heart for wounds received during the mission. He was nominated for the Medal of Honor, but received the Distinguished Service Cross instead. He never met the man who was saved, and has never heard from him. He hasn't decided if the mission was worth its price. "I never will," he said. He pondered it for a moment. "I think I would do it again."   His own little army Bissell remained in the Army, commanding troops all over the world. And he and his wife began raising their own little army of seven children, including a set of twin boys. Three of the four boys have gone to VMI. One of the youngest, Brandon, is a senior. His twin, Collin, is a cadet at Virginia Tech. Life at the Bissell home, however, is hardly military. "We've never called him 'sir' or anything like that," Brandon Bissell said. During family gatherings, though, a few people always wind up bivouacked on old VMI barracks cots in the basement. Brandon Bissell said his father is more of the advice-giving than order-giving type. "Always carry a pen and paper so you can write things down," he said his father always reminds him. In turn, the Bissell children support their father in his endeavors. Brandon Bissell admires his father's decision to give up his job with Boeing and Sikhorsky to return to VMI as commandant of cadets in 1990. Bissell was helping oversee the production of the Commanche helicopter. It was a $33 billion government contract, and Bissell had 2,000 workers below him. But when the chance came to return to a $71,000-a-year post at VMI, he leapt at it. "It was a hell of a cut in pay," he lamented.   `Loves cadets' Brandon Bissell said the family has always worried their father worked too hard. "That phone is surgically attached to his face," he said. The commandant's job at VMI is not low stress, either. And it doesn't make you popular. "If a commandant's popular, that means he's one of the boys and not doing his job," Bissell said. But Brandon Bissell theorized that being one of the boys is part of the reason his father returned to VMI. It was a way to cling to his youth. "He just loves cadets," he said. The loveless commandant's job, however, proved too much. Just before Easter in 1995, Brandon Bissell remembers his mother taking their father to the hospital. "Dad staggered out," he said, and minutes later was being airlifted to Roanoke. His heart had stopped. After triple-bypass surgery, Bissell's doctors went to then-VMI Superintendent John Williams Knapp, and told him Bissell should not be commandant again. Brandon Bissell believes it was a combination of his dad's fatty diet and the worry over what the corps thought of him that caused the heart attack. "There's something to that," Bissell agreed. Bissell was appointed special assistant to the superintendent. Under that title, he's been the head of buildings and grounds, supervised the renovation of the school's library and done a dozen other things. But in June 1996 came the opportunity that would allow Bissell to leave his greatest mark on VMI. That was when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled VMI's all-male policy to be unconstitutional.   `The irreducibles' Almost immediately after the Supreme Court ruling - and months before VMI's Board of Visitors would vote on whether to go coed or private - a committee of VMI administrators started planning how to bring women into the fold. Bissell said there was lots of talk to define what Bunting called "the irreducibles" - elements of life at VMI that could not be lost or changed at any expense. Everything was done on a "what if" basis, Bissell said, because no one knew for sure that women would be coming to VMI. In fact, in September 1996, the board was only a vote short of refusing to admit women and going private. Then, Bunting basically turned over the reins of assimilation to Bissell. His patience in learning and attention to detail made him the right man for the job, Bunting said. Brodie, the author of the book on the assimilation plan, said Bissell's main duty, and best skill, was bringing together groups of people to generate ideas, and then deciding which ones to pursue. Bissell said he was cautious. Every idea was examined by lawyers - the "sniff check," Bissell called it. The lawyers even objected to the term "coeducation" because it implied an environment designed for men and women, Brodie said. It was Bissell who came up with the term assimilation, to reflect that women would be brought into a male environment. Bissell headed eight committees that studied every aspect, from facilities to dealing with the media. He traveled to 14 coed military colleges. On one trip, a female cadet suggested a cadet exchange program to put some people with experience in military coeducation in the VMI barracks. They also could serve as mentors to the first women at VMI. Bissell recognized it as a bit of genius, and went to work making it happen. The hard part, however, would be convincing the cadets to accept outsiders who hadn't endured the "ratline" as upperclassmen in barracks. Brodie said Bissell's credibility with the cadets made that easier. As soon as they learned Bissell was in charge, she said, "that was when they began to feel confident." Bissell organized a big pep rally to kick off the process of orienting cadets to the coed version of VMI. Senior Class President Kevin Trujillo, who served on some of his committees, said bringing everyone together like that was brilliant. "We wanted to send a message that this was the most important thing going on," Bissell said. He thinks the message was received. There have been bumps, some unexpected, such as a female rat striking an upperclassman, and some more predictable, such as the recent tryst between a pair of rats in a barracks room. About the only thing Bissell will brag on is that the plan his committees developed covered just about everything - from the design of women's showers to the addition of feminine products at the campus bookstore. The things they did overlook have been minor. Trujillo figures if anyone can make the assimilation a long-term success, it's Bissell. "He's visionary," Trujillo said. "Sometimes we're a little reticent to change here. But he has ideas that aren't orthodox, and that's what I love about him." Bissell said he loves his work. "I'd go crazy if I retired right now," he said. "I'd like to hang on for three or four years, if they'll let me."