Duty bound: It’s been tough, but she knows she belongs

Published 6:00 am Thursday, February 28, 2008

It was a South Carolina sunset and a few soft words from a tough guy that made it right.

Angie Ellenwood was struggling through the most grueling days of her life — Hell Week as a freshman at The Citadel in Charleston, S.C.

Men had screamed in her face until she cried. She had run miles under the hot August sun and did push-ups until her arms burned. She was exhausted and 3,000 miles away from her family and friends.

The glares and hissing told her she wasn’t welcome by everyone at this place.

It was a brilliant sunset and a tough guy who called her a “knob” — the nickname for all shaved-head freshman — that reassured her that The Citadel was where she belonged.

“We were doing rifle drill, when an upperclassman ordered us to stop and look at the sunset,” she recalled. “He said, ‘See knobs, that’s beautiful. You have to stop and appreciate the little things.’”

“I thought that if this school can teach one of the toughest guys I’ve met to stop and look at the little things in life, I was at the right place.”

Ellenwood, a 19-year-old Jackson High School graduate, is the first woman from Washington to attend the 160-year-old private military college, which until 1996 was off-limits to women.

The first woman cadet graduated just three years ago and the school continues to be male-dominated, with 16 men to every woman.

Ellenwood, a former all-WesCo goalkeeper, earned a full soccer scholarship to the college and now is one of the 109 women cadets.

“This school picked me. I didn’t pick this school,” she said. “At first I didn’t want to go. I didn’t think I was the type of person to go to a military school.”

But after the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, she reconsidered a future in the military.

“I really thought it was my chance to make a difference,” she said last week from her Snohomish home during winter break.

Just four months into her first year, Ellenwood has set her sights on joining the Air Force to be trained as a meteorologist.

“I want to fly into the middle of hurricanes,” the 5-foot-7-inch teen said.

She is majoring in physics and would be the first woman at The Citadel to graduate with a physics degree.

Ellenwood grappled with where to go to school. She had offers from Stanford University, San Diego State University and Idaho State University.

She toured The Citadel in the spring to get a taste of what the next four years would hold for her.

“On my first visit I remember these girls got hazed while I was there. Someone had duct-taped four girls together and dragged them out to the quad — the middle of where we live. It was just a joke. They were laughing,” she said.

She talked to some of the women, who told her that not all the hazing would be a joke.

“They said there was still a lot of harassment against females, but I figured if some of the girls I talked to there can make it, so can I. It’s not going to be such a big deal that it’s going to drive me out of school,” she said.

Ellenwood was hounded about her decision to attend the school even before she set foot on campus.

“Part of the reason I chose this school was because people thought I couldn’t do it,” she said. “People laughed when I told them about it … I wanted to show them I could do it.”

That criticism kept her going during the painful first weeks at school, when she was learning to juggle her schedule as a student athlete and the rigors of military training.

“I would lay in bed at night and think about how far I was from home. I wondered what I got myself into,” she said. “I hated it but I knew I had to do it.

“I knew it would be good for me, graduating with a Citadel ring as a woman. Not a lot of women have done that. I was given this opportunity, and if I didn’t take advntage of it, that wouldn’t be the smartest thing I’ve done in my life.”

Her parents admit they were skeptical when their daughter first received a letter from The Citadel.

“When we got the letter, I threw it in the corner. I was thinking, ‘no way in hell is she going there,’ ” said Don Ellenwood, who served five years in the U.S. Navy.

The Ellenwoods knew their eldest daughter — one of five children — was tough, but they wondered if she could endure a military program, let alone a school where women are not always welcome.

“Of course you worry about sending your daughter to that environment. But Angie has always had a mind of her own,” her dad said. “She really seems to love it now.”

Each day Ellenwood must continue to prove she belongs at The Citadel.

“There are people who don’t want you there. There are men who have an old-school mentality,” she said. “Their fathers and grandfathers went there when there weren’t women. They want the same experience, and having females there makes it different. I think they resent that.”

The harassment ranges from glares and hissing to telling women they don’t belong at the school.

“I have a friend who was called a whore and a slut and told to leave,” said Ellenwood, who slips into military speak, peppered with acronyms and profanity.

The women have been instructed to report any sexual harassment but they choose to complain only to each other.

“You become really close with the females there. You have the common bond of being hated,” she said. “But we don’t complain. If we do, people will say we’re a bunch of whiners.”

And there are men there who think women are only there to prove a point.

“I’m not there to make any sort of statement. I’m just there to get the experience that it’s going to offer me — to become a stronger person, manage my time better and to get what’s important in life because that’s what it teaches you.”

Ellenwood says her first semester at The Citadel has changed her. She’s become more efficient, a little impatient with laziness and cares less about what people think of her.

“It’s been tougher than I ever imagined, but I wouldn’t go to any other school,” she said. “It’s something I really want to do and I’m not going to let anything stop me from accomplishing it.”

Diana Hefley is a reporter for the Herald in Everett.