Fox High School 2025 graduate Lois Pippin said she remembers hearing the good news that she was accepted into West Point when she received a phone call earlier this year from U.S. Rep. Jason Smith, R-8th District. However, she doesn’t remember much else from the conversation.
Pippin had applied to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, and Smith had penned a required nomination letter for her to the academy.
She said she was preparing lunches for the week when her mother, Kelly, told her the phone was ringing and the caller ID showed “Washington, D.C.”
“I was like this can either be really good or bad news,” said Pippin, 18, of Imperial.
Pippin said Smith first started talking about the high school’s recent snow days, and she felt he was being too “chipper” to be calling with bad news.
“I was like, ‘I don’t care about the snow days, just let me know.’ He then finally told me I got the appointment,” Pippin said. “I think I blacked out for the rest of the call. I kept saying thank you. There are like five minutes that I don’t even know what he said.”
Pippin is one of two Jefferson County students who were accepted to West Point after being nominated by Smith, whose district covers the eastern half of Jefferson County and southeast Missouri, according to a written statement from his office.
“Lois worked incredibly hard to earn her appointment to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point,” Smith said in the statement. “She is a very talented athlete and an exceptional student. In addition to graduating from high school with excellent grades, she also earned an associate degree from Jefferson College.
“I’m proud of all Lois has accomplished, and I wish her the best as she takes this exciting next step in her pursuit of a military career.”
Pippin said she plans to pursue an aerospace engineering degree and train to be a pilot at West Point. She was scheduled to leave for West Point, N.Y., on June 29.
She said a reception day was scheduled for Monday, and then she will have six weeks of basic training before school begins.
Her mother said both she and her husband, Michael Pippin, are proud of Lois.
“She is a rock star and so dedicated and excited,” Kelly said. “I can’t wait to see what she does in the future.”
Finding her path
Lois said she has wanted to be a pilot since middle school, but she did not think about applying to a military academy until taking a tour of the Missouri University of Science and Technology in Rolla as a junior.
She said while touring the school, she learned about the ROTC (Reserve Officers’ Training Corps) and that led her to learn more about applying to a military academy.
“I didn’t like the enlisted route,” she said. “When I heard about ROTC and that you can go to school to be an officer, I was more into it. It seemed like a perfect fit to do everything that I wanted.”
Kelly said she was surprised Lois decided to apply to a military academy.
She said the family does have some military background with Lois’s grandfather, Michael Pippin, serving in the Air Force and her uncles, Gerald Pippin and Paul Wallis also were members of the military. Gerald Pippin served in the Army, and Wallis served in the Navy.
“There are military people in our lineage, but not actively as she was growing up,” Kelly said. “This did come out of the blue in a lot of ways.”
While it was surprising that their daughter decided to attend a military academy, her parents are proud of her.
“She is a great woman of God,” Michael said. “We are incredibly proud and love her so much.”
Getting to West Point
Lois said she started preparing to apply to military academies at the end of her junior year of high school.
“I felt very far behind,” she said. “I talked to some other people, and they knew they wanted to go to an academy their whole life. They had already been building their resumes.”
Lois said she felt she confident she could meet the requirements, though.
She graduated from high school with a weighted 4.7 grade-point average and scored a 31 on the ACT college-entrance exam.
Lois also had a good list of extracurricular activities to put on her resume. She was a member of the basketball team, Fellowship of Christian Athletes, National Honors Society, Key Club and Link Crew, a student mentor program, at Fox High.
What she needed to scramble to complete were essays, a nomination from an elected official and recommendation letters from a math, science and English teacher and a counselor.
Lois said everyone she asked to help her was supportive.
“She has every quality to be an effective leader,” said Lindsay Steighorst, a Jefferson College associate professor of mathematics who taught Lois in her pre-calculus, calculus and calculus II classes and wrote a recommendation letter.
“She has demonstrated incredibly high intellect. She is one of the best examples of grit and grace. Whatever she does, she puts her complete focus and hard work into it.”
Lois said she also had to prepare for the physical test, the Candidate Fitness Assessment (CFA), to enter a military academy.
Women applying to West Point need to run a mile in six minutes or less, throw a basketball from their knees at least 68 feet, complete at least 50 pushups in two minutes, perform at least seven pullups in two minutes and complete a shuttle run in 8.6 seconds, according to the academy’s website, westpoint.edu.
Lois said she trained for about a year with the Patriot Training Foundation, a nonprofit group in Kirkwood that prepares people to serve in the military or law enforcement.
“That helped me a lot,” Lois said. “I would do mock run-throughs of the CFA. I also would drag my mom out to the track to time me.”
The Patriot Training Foundation also helped Lois decide to pursue her dream of being a pilot and attend West Point instead of the Air Force Academy. She said she talked to cadets at the foundation and found the Army atmosphere suited her better than the Air Force.
“The best way I can describe it is that the Air Force is more individualistic and West Point is more teamwork-oriented,” she said. “That was a big draw for me. I also like helicopters and want to fly one, and the Army has a lot of those.”
Colby Bailey, a Festus High School 2025 graduate, also was appointed to West Point following Smith’s nomination.
Smith also nominated Michaley Krizman, a Poplar Bluff High School graduate, for an appointment to the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis.