The color guard procession composed of women veterans from various local American Legion posts advances during the Women Veterans Recognition Day ceremony at the Van Zandt VA Medical Center Wednesday. Mirror photo by William Kibler

When Andrea Hollen of Altoona entered the U.S. Military Academy at West Point in 1976, she harbored a talent unknown to her that helped carry her through a traditionally difficult experience that was made harder by her being a woman in the first-ever West Point class that included women.

“It turns out I could shoot,” though she’d grown up in a house without guns, Hollen said Wednesday at a Women Veterans Recognition Day Ceremony at Van Zandt VA Medical Center. “I’m a freakishly good shot with a pistol.”

Initially, Hollen, top woman in her class and first ever to receive a West Point diploma, was “thrown off balance by the hostility and harassment that went beyond the hazing most plebes (first-year cadets) experience,” she said. But her latent talent, subsequent recruitment to the varsity shooting team and competitive success on that team “changed my life” — making the experience more bearable, she said.

Hollen had sought a place at West Point as an “intensely serious, fervently patriotic and hopelessly naive young woman” who’d been inspired by the nation’s bicentennial celebration in 1976, she said.

She discovered after she got to the academy, however, that she would have “to work impossibly hard and gut it out” to prove to the many skeptical males that she deserved to be there, she said.

Thanks to her shooting and “the awesome sisterhood with my women classmates,” it worked out, she said.

During that time at the academy, the goal was always to get to “the real Army,” she said.

When she did, taking command of a company in the Third Infantry Division in Europe, it turned out to be a revelation — and a contrast to what had gone before.

She said she discovered that her soldiers didn’t care about her being a woman, but just wanted to know: “Did I know my stuff?” “Could I hang?” “Was I physically fit and tough?”

Most especially, they wanted to find out: “Did I lead with wisdom?” she said.

“I was so relieved,” she said.

Her soldiers turned out to be “brave, brilliant and unfailingly hilarious,” she said. “And rumor has it that I took damn good care of them, and I’m plenty proud of that.”

She found that the military stereotypes are inadequate to explain what’s needed.

A “big strong guy (might) fall apart under pressure,” even as a “shy, diminutive woman can excel — demonstrating the most astonishing (poise) and grit under the same pressure” — such as troubleshooting a circuit in the middle of the night with two hours’ sleep, she said.

The military needs both types — and many others, including the quirky ones — especially given the multitudinous threats from around the world and the changes happening in the way fighting is done, along with rapid development and deployment of artificial intelligence, she said.

What’s needed is top talent from every corner of the nation, she said.

Together, they can form the kind of “cohesive units that will succeed collectively at the complex tasks these challenges present,” she said.

She feels lucky to have grown up in Altoona, with the parents she had, the rigorous education she received in the Altoona Area School District and the music she played on the French horn, which taught her discipline, teamwork and humility, she said.

Unlike many of her fellow women cadets, Hollen’s parents were not overbearing in their attitude about her commitment to West Point.

Other cadets’ parents would warn them not to drop out, she said. Hers worried that she wasn’t where she belonged and would gladly have driven the six hours to bring her back to Altoona.

That meant that “I had to go through it by my own lights, on my own terms,” she said. “It made me a more confident officer in the Army — where I knew I definitely belonged.”

That sense of belonging must be the key to overcoming the current recruiting difficulties experienced by the U.S. military, according to Hollen.

“Let (potential recruits) see it’s not just another job opportunity, but a transcendent calling,” she said. “It’s a belonging that will last a lifetime.”

Mirror Staff Writer William Kibler is at 814-949-7038.