Twenty-five-year-old Katie Biddle sat on a bench waiting for her survival swimming class to begin. One thought crossed her mind: I might drown.
In full uniform, including boots and a weighted vest, and with dummy rifle in hand, she jumped backward into a wave pool, in the dark.
The scenario was simple, but intense: A helicopter has gone down, and you have to grab gear while surviving obstacles in the water.
“It was absolutely insane,” Biddle said over the phone July 3, in the middle of moving to her new home in Missouri. “That was make or break. … They put you through scenarios, and it’s not if you can physically do something, if it’s if you can mentally do something.”
When Biddle passed that class, she knew she would graduate from the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York.
She received her diploma on May 26.
While at West Point, she studied geospatial information science. She also was a DJ for the local student radio station and helped run the football games there. “I am a big Army football fan,” she said.
She also served as a Brigade Deputy Morale, Welfare and Recreation (MWR) officer. She was commissioned as second lieutenant in the U.S. Army within the engineers branch. She’s been assigned to Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri, to take the engineer’s basic officer leadership course and receive her first assignment.
Biddle is a certified cartographer. “I wanted to study about the world, and also space at the same time,” she said.
She’s now a geospatial engineer. “I wanted do that specifically because I have a love of aviation and a love of engineering at the same time,” she said.
“A lot of my love for maps and cartography comes from being in Brown County, being able to study all of the nature that’s all around. You learn more about that and do more study with environmental science through knowing where stuff is,” she said.
According to her family’s research, she is the first person in Brown County to graduate from a service academy.
On June 20, the Brown County Commissioners presented Katie with a proclamation to celebrate that feat.
Katie Biddle was adopted by Diana and Brent Biddle when she was 21, but she had been considered the fourth Biddle daughter since she was 18. That’s around the time Katie met Sarah Biddle while attending Maranatha Baptist University in Wisconsin.
The two power-lifted together while in college. Sarah is a national champion power lifter, and Katie was on the power lifting team at West Point.
Katie, who had been emancipated from her birth parents while she was in high school, came home with Sarah for Thanksgiving break their freshman year.
“Automatically, immediately, she was just part of the family. She helped out down at the (McDonald’s Shopworth grocery) store when she was home, when she was around,” Diana Biddle said. “It was kind of like ‘daughter from another mother.’ She was just there.”
The family decided to make Katie a Biddle when she was 19. “There really was hardly any decision making to it. There was some technical things, but we got three girls, and now we have four,” Diana said. “It was just a very natural fit.”
Katie and Sarah had decided they wanted to enlist with the U.S. Army before their second year of college began. The two were in the Reserve Officer Training Corps in Wisconsin.
Sarah was able to enlist, but Katie was not. Her emancipation as a teen meant she had no legal next of kin in case tragedy struck.
Growing up Detroit, Michigan, Katie worked full-time to support herself as a teenager after her biological parents lost custody of her, she said. She managed to go to high school and graduate from Bethany Christian School in 2011.
And that survival swimming class? It was especially hard for Katie, who knew only how to float before learning she had been accepted to West Point. When Diana came to pick her up from college in Wisconsin, the two went to a local YMCA so she could teach the then-20-year-old to swim.
Katie worked as a Black Hawk helicopter fueler with the U.S. Army after attending the U.S. Army Airborne School.
Entrance tests are required when a person enlists with the Army. Not long after taking her test, Katie received an email from West Point, asking if she would be interested in applying.
She ignored it, thinking it was junk mail.
“It turns out I had the highest testing marks for the state for that cycle,” she said.
“I really didn’t know what West Point was at the time. I had just stopped working for United Airlines so I could go and do my time for basic training. I wasn’t really looking to do more school. I was on my path to go be an enlisted soldier.”
Then, another email asked her to please contact West Point, so she did. It wasn’t long before Katie and her dad, Brent, were visiting the school.
“She’s rocket-science smart. That’s not just some parent saying that,” he said.
“We did do the application process, but West Point came looking for her, and they asked her to come. … It does not happen often.”
Brent said his daughter was “really resilient” during her time at West Point. She caught mononucleosis, received a concussion, broke ribs and was bitten by a brown recluse spider.
“I never quit on her. I believed in her, and I still do. That’s what she needed. She needed an adult that didn’t try to extract something from her, that believed in her,” Brent said.
Katie said she hopes to stay in the Army as an engineer working with the Corps of Engineers before eventually transitioning to Army Space Force.
Soon after her name was called on the graduation stage, and the class was dismissed with white hats flying into the air, Brent found his daughter in Michie Stadium. While she was hugging her loved ones, Brent leaned in to whisper into her ear.
“I said, ‘Don’t worry about Willy Wonka; you have the golden ticket,’” he said. “She survived the toughest college in the world.”
At that moment, it hit Katie that she had actually graduated. “It was surreal up to that point,” she said.
“It was just kind like realizing a dream. I really, really encourage anybody to try and do it, even if it’s another service academy. It was worth all of the work. It was amazing.”
When Katie’s class first entered, it contained about 1,200 students. That number dropped to around 970 by graduation time. Most of the students who dropped out were men. Gender is evident at West Point because all courses are co-ed, Katie said.
“If you’re trying to do an obstacle course and you have one section where you need a small person, you have to learn how to use your smallest person. That may be a guy or a girl,” she said.
“I would have to go and ask a guy classmate for help sometimes. They would sometimes come and ask me for help, too. That was kind of interesting to grow as a group together outside of what you normally think as, ‘Well, this is a guy’s job.’”
Katie said she is grateful for everyone who supported her, from those who sent gift boxes or letters, to late-night phone calls answered by her parents.
“Most people in Brown County don’t know that I’ve not been there my whole life, because I’ve been there for a big part of it,” she said.
“It’s been pretty awesome to be a part of a big, loving community, having everybody taking me in. I didn’t have that.”
