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On Saturday, Katherine King Miller became the seventh generation in her family to graduate from the United States Military Academy. The family's link to West Point stretches back seven generations to 1836.

Counting all her family relations, Kate is the 37th member of her family to graduate from West Point. Kate, a math major, remembers first thinking about coming to West Point when she was a young girl and saw a television show about women graduating from West Point. She said there was no pressure from her family to continue the tradition of selfless service. "I certainly had a lot of exposure (to West Point) because of my family," she explained. "But I think I really made up my mind on my own."

Her father, Jeremy King Miller, USMA 1973, was an armor officer in Germany before resigning his commission after five years of service and working first in the electronics and then the medical fields. Jerry, as he is known, remembers taking Kate to his great-grandfather's 100th class reunion in April 1989, when his daughter was in seventh grade.

"We had a cadet show us his room. He (and his roommate) were trying to get ready for a parade. I felt so bad for them," she remembered. "We were in their room while they were scrambling around trying to put on their belts and everything.

"That was the first time I really was exposed to what it would be like to be here," she said. She said her parents always told her, "Do what you want to do, and we will support it."

"Honestly, I didn't know what I wanted to do with my life," she explained. "Coming here was a good opportunity to get a great education, have a job when I get out, do something fun for awhile and not have to worry about what I'm going to do with my life. Who knows, maybe I'll enjoy the Army and want to do that forever."

Admission was no forgone conclusion. No grandfather clauses here. Kate, who calls Boulder, Colo., home, applied to hometown Colorado University as a fallback.

Kate's paternal grandmother, Peggy Miller, was among the roughly 60 relations who ventured to West Point for Kate's graduation. She said her late husband, Frank, a retired major general who passed away in December 1993, was very proud that Kate "was making a very serious effort to come here. It just meant everything to him -- to know that the tradition might be perpetuated."

Once admitted, Kate began to feel the weight of all the stories her West Point alumni relatives had told her over the years.

"There is one constant here, and that is that everybody comes here thinking this will be one of the hardest things they have ever done in their lives. But at the same time it is the most rewarding," she said.

"I think I even had it worse than other people, because I had 20 million stories people told me," Kate explained, "so I set myself up thinking this is going to be the worst experience of my life."

Glee club and the chapel choir were extracurricular activities Kate pursued her first two and three years, respectively. They helped her through her first two years as a cadet.

"They were the main activities that I was involved in . . . (They) reminded me of home," she said. Her membership in the Officers Christian Fellowship bridged her entire four years at West Point.

Her third summer at West Point was her first chance to hone her leadership skills. "I was a Beast squad leader," she said, which was probably one of the best experiences I had here. I loved my squad and thoroughly enjoyed getting a chance to try my own leadership skills and found out I really enjoy doing it."

In her senior year, she admits to having some great jobs in the corps. In the fall semester, she was a platoon leader, which she rates as her second best experience here. "I got a chance to actually do what I'll be doing in the Army: lead people."

In the spring she was the battalion operations officer. "It's a staff job. It's good to see what they are like. "I really hope to be a platoon leader," she added.

The future command-hopeful has 188 years of military experience in the six previous direct-line generations. The family arrived in force last week during alumni activities.

Peggy was here for her husband's 60th class reunion. "It was a wonderful thing for me to be back with his classmates and have Kate at my side in uniform. They all received her with such joy. They were proud that the Class of 1938 had such representation."

Frank, the fifth generation of the family, graduated 102 years after great-great-great-great-grandfather Israel Carle Woodruff did in 1836.

The generational procession followed a maternal line as the daughter of a graduate married a graduate, all the way from the first generation (Woodruff) until Kate's paternal grandfather, Frank Dickson Miller, USMA 1938.

Woodruff was the first generation, a field artillery officer and topographical engineer, who died at his post in Staten Island in 1878 as a colonel.

Woodruff's daughter Virginia Southard Woodruff married Union Army officer William Rice King, who graduated June 11, 1863, barely three weeks before the Battle of Gettysburg. The Engineer, according to Jerry, "while in Chattanooga, Tenn., planned and built the inclined cable road to the top of Lookout Mountain."

After the war, while district engineer of the Missouri Valley he pursued the James Gang after they stole a federal payroll. Lt. Col. King captured most of the gang, but Jesse and Frank got away. King's daughter Caroline Woodruff King married Robert McGregor, a cavalry officer who proposed to his future wife on horseback in front of her house. The 1889 graduate is Peggy's maternal grandfather.

McGregor was the city engineer as a captain at Manila Bay in the Philippines when he died of a burst appendix in 1902. McGregor's daughter, Margaret Murray McGregor, married Fay Brink Prickett, who was commissioned in the cavalry in 1916.

Prickett fought in WWI, but only after chasing Poncho Villa in Mexico with the 10th Cavalry. After Mexico he transferred to field artillery and went to France. During WWII he commanded the 75th Infantry Division during the Battle of the Bulge. After the war he served as the president of the War Crimes Tribunal at Dachau. He retired as a major general after 37 years of service.

Peggy's husband Frank, the 1938 graduate, was commissioned in the infantry. He served as a battalion commander in the Pacific in WWII and was a member of Gen. Douglas MacArthur's staff. While in Vietnam in 1967 he served as Gen. William Westmoreland's chief of staff.

Kate's maternal grandfather, Roland Dean Tausch, a 1951 graduate who branched armor, was noted as one of 35 provincial American military advisors in South Vietnam in 1962. He served in the southernmost tip of South Vietnam, helping an 800-person Chinese/Vietnamese fishing village defend itself. The village was surrounded by Viet Cong on three sides and the Gulf of Siam on the other, according to Tausch.

The retired colonel said, "Kate has a lot of talent. She is certainly a credit to her family, and we are very proud of her."

As for Kate's plans for the future, this much she knows. She will begin the Signal Corps Officer Basic Course at Fort Gordon, Ga., July 15. Upon graduation Nov. 20, she transfers to Fort Bragg, N.C., after Thanksgiving leave.

As for the eighth generation, Peggy said, that's up to Kate.

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