...We lined up outside Eisenhower Hall with more than a thousand of America's finest young people, their parents, grandparents and siblings. No one in the crowd had much to say; a combination of tension and exhaustion kept conversations short. It must have been someone's idea of a military joke when, after we snaked through the long line outside the building, the Army finally allowed us inside by welcoming its 18-year-old future leaders through a bank of side doors marked "No Entrance."

We sat enveloped in the cool darkness of one of the largest auditoriums on the East Coast, listening to a Lt. Colonel issue a few quick instructions on the events of the day. West Point then turned over the podium over to an unlikely villainess, a friendly-faced third-year-Cadet named Riley. It was left to her to unleash a thunderbolt from the blue:

"You have 90 seconds to say goodbye.