BELOIT — It’s not often that members of Beloit Memorial High School’s JROTC have the chance to meet one of the first women to graduate from West Point.

Tuesday, they did, and they were thrilled to have the opportunity to speak with United States Army Col. Heidi Brown.

“It was good to see a woman doing something,” said senior Jalicia Vance. “She should be really inspirational to a lot of girls out there.”

Brown, the deputy commander of an air-defense artillery center in Fort Bliss, Texas, spent the day in Beloit on Abraham Lincoln’s birthday. She met with students and community leaders to talk about her life as a female pioneer in the Army.

Among those greeting her warmly was the all-female fourth-grade class at Robinson Elementary School.

“She was greeted with a cheer and a standing ovation before she even spoke a word,” said Beloit financial adviser Prudy Harker, who owns LifeCircle and was instrumental in bringing Brown to Beloit.

Brown told members of the JROTC that being a member of the second class in which women were allowed to enroll at West Point did indeed pose certain challenges. She was one of 104 females among some 1,000 cadets in the military academy’s 1981 graduating class. She related an experience when, as a freshman, she ran into a sophomore female cadet. Hoping for some bonding or camaraderie, Brown instead was ordered to tuck in her shirt.

“I was crushed,” she said. “I also realized that was going to be a very hard year.”

In addition, the staff did not treat female cadets with kid gloves.

“The staff and faculty were equally unimpressed with Congress’ decision (to admit women to West Point),” she said.

Some JROTC students asked Brown whether she experienced sexual harassment at West Point. She told them it’s been an issue at times in her career.

However, “I have zero patience for that,” she told them.

During her West Point exit interview, a superior officer told her she was an excellent role model for female cadets. Brown corrected him.

“I said, ‘Sir, I think I’m a good role model for all cadets,’” she said.

Young women were not the only ones moved by Brown’s story.

“It’s an honor when someone (like this) comes,” Devon Hinkle, a senior at Beloit and commander of the BMHS battalion of JROTC, said as he waited nervously to meet Brown at the entrance to the high school Tuesday morning. “I really want to know what it was like to overcome, being in a male-dominated branch of the military.”

In more than 26 years in the military, the 46-year-old Brown has blazed trails in more than academics. She was the first woman to command an air defense battalion and an air defense artillery brigade. She led her brigade, the 31st Air Defense Artillery Brigade, which has 1,800 soldiers, into Iraq in March 2003.

“I’m still the only woman to have led an air defense brigade,” she said.

Brown said the best — and worst — aspects of her career occurred during that time. She was proud to command a brigade, but as she took charge, her father died. She lost soldiers during her initial mission in Iraq, but others, taken prisoner, survived and returned safely.

Having recently served in Iraq, Lt. Col. Lavell Johnson of Chicago, who serves in a training support battalion with the Army, acknowledged the difficulties of serving in Iraq.

“I also recently returned from Iraq, and I know some of the trials and tribulations Col. Brown has been through,” he said.

Many people at the Eclipse Center luncheon held for Brown asked her and Johnson about the heat in Iraq.

“I never knew my shins could sweat!” Brown said, laughing.

Johnson said the temperature could rise as high as 140 degrees.

When asked at the luncheon to whom or what she credits her character and strength, Brown cited her parents and faith.

Brown’s father was raised in an orphanage, and was a veteran of World War II and the Korean War. Her mother worked as a Red Cross volunteer in China and Germany. The two raised their family in El Paso, Texas.

“The values I live by are attributable to both my parents,” Brown said.

Four of Brown’s five siblings also are in the military.

Harker said Brown’s message is important.

“She represents everything we believe in, and everything we work for,” Harker said. “(She’s) my friend for life.”

While Brown impressed Beloiters, Harker said the feeling was reciprocal.

“She was really impressed with Beloit and how it’s progressed,” Harker said. “She was just overwhelmed with the hospitality.”

Brown, who plans on writing a book entitled “From Bliss to Baghdad” once she retires, hopes her message makes the lives of military men and women real to those who read and hear it.

“I feel like it makes the American soldier a person to y’all, not just a uniform,” she said.

Most importantly, she hopes that young people listening to her stories understand that if they have goals and pursue them, they can succeed.

“Don’t ever let anybody tell you you can’t do something,” she said.

Lt. Col. John Gangloff, who heads the high school’s JROTC program, said his class related to Brown.

“Especially the thought that she persevered, when she wanted to give up,” Gangloff said.

Leading by example, Brown hopes to become commandant at a military academy, though a woman has never held the position.

“I can tell you, I’ve had folks trying to tell me ‘no’ for the last 26 years,” she said. “It doesn’t matter — male, female, whatever — you don’t need to think outside the box, unless you put yourself in one.”