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By SHARON KILPATRICK
Rappahannock New* Staff Writer
Jennifer McNear is midway through her first year as a West Point cadet.
It has not been an easy year, but she does not regret her decision to go there.
Her grandfather was a career Army officer, and her father went to West Point and spent ten years in the Army Corps of Engineers.
But Jenny didn’t plan to go into the Army or go to West Point until her junior year in high school at Mercersburg Academy ip Pennsylvania when she started looking into colleges. “I was really impressed by the standards and facilities there,” she said.
Jenny spent the summer betwfen her junior and senior years on a coast to coast bicycle trip. She was in a group of 62, and she was one of the youngest jn the group. “They were mostly college kids,” she said. She got a really strong feeling for the scope of the country she is planning to serve during that trip.
During her senior year she applied to West Point. She had just found out that Seventh District Congressman D. French Slaughter Jr. planned to nominate her for appointment when a head injury during a skiing accident landed her in the University of Virginia hospital in a coma.
She was in the hospital for several weeks, followed by months of physical therapy. She was able to return to high school and complete only her English course, but she graduated. After talking with her parents and academic advisers, she withdrew her application to \Gfest Point. ,
The summer after high school JeMiy went to Australia as part of a field hockey team with the Sports for Understanding exchange program and applied to attend James Madison University in Harrisonburg. She was accepted. ,
At JMU Jenny did well academically, played on the varsity field hockey teaiq, and applied for and received a ROTO scholarship, but she also reapplied to West Point. *
She had to seek medical waivers. The type of head injury she had could have disqualified her for five years, she said, but her doctors wrote to West Point saying she was able to do the work both mentally and physically. “Just because I’m sun posed to have problems doesn’t mean I do,” she said.
In fact, as far as Jenny is concerned the only residue of the skiing mishap isl that she cannot remember the accident it? self. Her mother says also her handwriting is more cramped than it was' before the' accident.
Last spring Jenny learned she had been accepted at West Point.
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