Student with Basin roots heads to West Point

MOSES LAKE — The U.S. Military Academy West Point has a reputation as a tough school to get into and an even tougher one to get through. But one young woman with ties to the Columbia Basin is headed there next year.

“It was a long process,” said Élodie Bennett of Anchorage, Alaska. “I definitely had to push myself, but it was very much worth it.”

Élodie, a senior at South Anchorage High School, is the daughter of David Bennett, a 1982 graduate of Moses Lake High School, and the granddaughter of Tom Bennett, a longtime instructor at Big Bend Community College who still lives in Moses Lake. She’ll follow in her dad’s footsteps next year as she enters West Point.

“My dad told me about West Point when I was younger,” Élodie said. “He told me that it was a hard school, but it was a really good school because it pushed you to be the best version of yourself, physically, mentally and emotionally.”

Élodie didn’t grow up in the Columbia Basin herself, David said, but she has deep roots here. Tom Bennett came to the area in 1964 to work at the Hanford nuclear facility, according to an interview he did with the Hanford Oral History Project in 2017. In the 1970s, he was a teacher at schools from Coulee City to Connell, Quincy to Washtucna, he said.

“He was famous for traveling all around the Columbia Basin, teaching math,” David said. “And computer science, when it was a new thing.”

Tom also ran for the state House of Representatives a couple of times, David said, and got his PhD from Washington State University late in life.

“He’d spent two years prior to that trying to get his PhD at WSU, but he had some guy (on the faculty) who didn’t like him,” David said. “So he abandoned that and came and taught at Big Bend. And then the jerk died, and (Tom) was invited to go back, and he got his PhD in the mid-’90s in fluid thermodynamics.”

David Bennett went into the army immediately out of high school, he said, and attended West Point from 1984 to 1988. He focused on foreign languages and got married on assignment in Kyrgyzstan. He retired from the Army after 36 years and now teaches Russian at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Anchorage. David and his wife have three children, he said, of whom Elodie is the eldest.

“When she was about 14 years old, she came to me one day and she said, ‘Daddy, I heard you talk about West Point. What is West Point?’” David said. “I’m like, ‘Well, honey, it’s a really hard school; it’s super tough to get in and it’s even harder to get through it.’ … She was all crestfallen for about one minute, and then she was like, ‘I can do that.’”

From that point on, David said, Élodie was focused, he said. She got straight A’s through high school and became the commander of her school’s Junior ROTC corps.

Even so, getting into West Point was no picnic, Élodie said.

“It was a long process and a difficult one,” she said. “The statistics say that only two out of 10 applicants are accepted, and they leave out that most people don’t even finish their application.”

Besides rigorous academic standards, a student must be nominated by at least one of their elected lawmakers, either in the U.S. House of Representatives or U.S. Senate, or from the vice president of the United States. Élodie went a little farther, she said.

“I went to interviews to get nominations from (Sen.) Dan Sullivan, (Sen.) Lisa Murkowski and from (Rep.) Nick Begich,” she said. “I studied and took the time to prepare for them, and I got a nomination from all three.”

An advantage to attending West Point is that there’s no financial cost to the student for an education that would run about $450,000 on the private market, David said. Instead, every graduate serves at least five years in the Army.

Once she finishes at West Point, Élodie said, she plans to go into the army and continue her education there, she said.

“I’m hoping to go into the medical field,” she said. “It’s still a bit of a general target, but maybe dentistry.”

Élodie credits her roots for much of her success.

“My dad is a really good mentor,” she said. “He helped me prepare for all of this. He’s been by my side through it all … I’m very grateful to my Grandpa Tom, because he was a very good dad to my dad (and that) helped me to get to where I am now.”

Élodie Bennett, left, with her dad David Bennett, a 1982 graduate of Moses Lake High School.

A close-up view of Élodie Bennett’s appointment certificate for the U.S. Military Academy West Point.