West Point Mourns a Font Of Energy, Laid to Rest by War
WEST POINT, N.Y., Sept. 26 — They remember Emily Perez in her many bursts of motion: the diminutive young woman calling out orders to the freshman cadets on the castled military campus of West Point.
They see her sprinting the third leg for Army’s 400-meter relay team. Or in the school’s gospel choir, filling her lungs and opening her mouth to sing.
Emily J.T. Perez, a determined 23-year-old from Prince George’s County, rose to the top of her high school class and then became the first minority female command sergeant in the history of the U.S. Military Academy.
Now she has another distinction. The second lieutenant was buried Tuesday at the academy, the first female graduate of West Point to die in Iraq. Perez, a platoon leader, was killed while patrolling southern Iraq near Najaf on Sept. 12 when a roadside bomb exploded under her Humvee.
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