More detail on this person: Lt. Gen. Sidney B.
Berry, a decorated combat veteran who ushered
women into West Point as superintendent of the
United States Military Academy in the 1970s and
confronted a grievous cheating scandal there, died
on July 1 in Kennett Square, Pa. He was 87.
The cause was congestive heart failure, a
complication of Parkinson's disease, his son,
Bryan, said.
General Berry was a military luminary from the day
a fellow cadet christened him "our leader, owner
of the place," in his academy yearbook. He was the
first in his graduating class to achieve the rank
of general.
Serving in the Army in the Korean War, he was
wounded, awarded two Silver Stars for valor and
promoted twice in the field, to captain and major.
In the Vietnam War, he was again wounded and
won two more Silver Stars. He was one of two
military assistants to Robert S. McNamara, the
defense secretary in the Kennedy and Johnson
administrations.
In 1970, Life magazine ran a 10-page profile of
General Berry titled "Case Study of an Army Star."
The article said that many predicted he would rise
to Army chief of staff, the service's highest
position.
"Sid Berry expresses the ideal of the American
soldier," Lt. Gen. William DePuy, assistant vice
chief of staff, told Life. "He is what the
profession would like to believe itself to be."
General Berry, who became the 50th
superintendent of West Point in 1974, was not
pleased when Congress authorized the admission
of women as cadets the next year. His major
objection was that because women could not serve
in combat _ a policy abolished early this year _ a
West Point education would have no purpose for
them.
General Berry, who had daughters of his own, also
worried that women would lack the physical
strength to be in the cadet corps, and that they
might be a distraction to men on the campus.
But after thinking about resigning if he failed to
prevent the admission of women, General Berry
said, he decided to do "what a good soldier does."
He began developing a curriculum to accommodate
the women who would begin arriving in July 1976.
The academy adopted lighter training rifles for
them and let women take courses in self-defense
rather than boxing and wrestling. Hazing of
plebes, as new cadets are called, was curbed
somewhat. The traditional gray uniforms were
adapted to women's figures. And General Berry
came to believe women could do the job.
"Upon re-examination, I have concluded that West
Point will be strengthened by the admission of
women," he said in an interview with The New York
Times in 1976.
Women represented 10 percent of the original
class. Today the academy limits enrollment of
women to 16 percent of cadets, roughly matching
the percentage of women on active duty in the
Army.
General Berry also had to contend with a vast
cheating scandal in 1976 involving an electrical
engineering take-home test. More than 220 cadets
were implicated and 152 expelled, then the sole
penalty for violating the academy's code of honor.
The episode led General Berry to commission a
thorough reappraisal of the code, which not only
prohibits lying, cheating and stealing but also
orders cadets not to tolerate those who do. Though
he made clear that his personal predilection was
for tough justice, he strove to make the system
reflect the thinking of a new, more collaborative
generation of cadets who were less willing to
inform on one another.
A fact-finding panel found that the code was
overly rigid _ that it demanded, in effect,
"unattainable human behavior." A first remedial
step was to suspend the cadet-run board that ruled
on violations, usually harshly, and replace it
temporarily with a board that included officers.
Another step was to give the superintendent the
right to impose lesser penalties than expulsion.
Factors like intent and personal circumstances are
now taken into account in determining violations
and punishment.
The secretary of the Army, Martin R. Hoffman,
allowed most of the dismissed cadets to return
after a year.
Sidney Bryan Berry was born on Feb. 10, 1926, in
Hattiesburg, Miss. When he was 7, his mother died
of sepsis during pregnancy. He was an Eagle
Scout.
He faced a difficult choice when he received, on
the same day, a draft notice and notification of
his appointment to the military academy. He was
inclined to enter the military because friends of
his were already serving, he told Life. But his
father, a country lawyer, persuaded him that there
would be more wars and urged him to go to West
Point.
He graduated in 1948, earned a master's degree in
international relations from Columbia University
and did postgraduate work at the American
University of Beirut. As a general in Vietnam, he
personally flew a helicopter to rescue enlisted
men trapped by North Vietnamese troops. He was
48 and a major general when he became the West
Point superintendent.
His final Army assignment was commanding the
62,000 soldiers of V Corps in Europe. Its two
infantry and armored divisions and armored cavalry
regiment defended the Fulda Gap in Germany, the
Soviet Union's shortest route to the Rhine River.
After retiring from active service, General Berry
was Mississippi's public safety commissioner. In
that post, he admitted women to the state's
highway patrol.
In addition to his son, he is survived by his
wife, the former Anne Florine Hayes; his
daughters, Nan Berry Davenport and Lynn Berry
Bonner; 12 grandchildren; and three
great-grandchildren.
Sharing the West Point campus with women took
some adjustment, General Berry told U.S. News &
World Report in 1977. He recalled his momentary
embarrassment when a female plebe asked him to
dance at a school function. He said he paused for
only a second before accepting.
"Knowing I would go down in history as the first
superintendent to dance with a plebe," he said, "I
told the young lady that I would be delighted."
ADC of 101st in LS 719
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