PARIS- It is highly unlikely that anyone in their lifetime will ever cross paths with a graduate of the United States Military Academy at West Point. To be accepted and successfully complete the rigorous academic, physical, and leadership courses of study and training at the Academy is rarified air for more than 95% of the U.S. population. So, for a small rural town to have a resident who is a graduate, is rare, and to have two is extremely rare.
In the small town of Paris, Arkansas, there is one family that has proudly included a West Point graduate and now works in and serves the Western Arkansas community. That in itself is rare, but now, there are two West Point graduates that honor the Paris and surrounding areas.
Jackson O’Neal, son of West Point graduate Jeffrey O’Neal and his mother, Michelle O’Neal, has successfully completed the course of study and training at West Point and has graduated from perhaps the most prestigious institution of higher learning in the nation. O’Neal, who has followed in his father’s footsteps, joins his sister Rachel who will enter the University of Arkansas’s Army ROTC program and will later serve in the military, and his brother, Beau, who most recently graduated from paratrooper school and is a combat medic based in Alaska.
Jackson is on leave following his graduation at West Point, and is currently on a vacation trip in the western part of the U.S. But before he left on this much-deserved vacation, I had the opportunity to visit with him and record his comments for this story. I came away from our interview impressed with both his accomplishments and his humility for someone who has earned this monumental achievement. He is now an officer in the United States Army, and from my perspective, we can all be very proud that our military has young, bright leaders of integrity that will be protecting our nation over the next several years. He is…a very impressive person.
So, Jackson agreed to meet me at a local restaurant last week and we visited on the recent events of his life. On the date of our visit, Jackson had graduated approximately two weeks prior.
Jackson is now commissioned as a second lieutenant in the Army and will now move on to the next step of basic officer training at Fort Sill, Oklahoma. Six months after that, O’Neal will go to El Paso, Texas to Fort Bliss. O’Neal plans to serve as an artillery officer in his Army career.
Jackson explained to me in our visit the process of choosing a specialty area for service upon graduation at West Point. O’Neal said, “So, the application process kind of goes like the first three years at the Academy you build your profile on a website and include like telling things about yourself, take tests, and put in your preferences like every year. And then, beginning of your senior year there is like a big “branch night”…before that you do some interviews too, that are like face-to-face or on a website where they ask you questions, and then they will select you and on branch night you get to open up a package…everyone does it at the same time, and it’s one of the most exciting things to do.”
Jackson began his path to West Point as a student at Subiaco Academy. O’Neal graduated in 2019 after making the decision to attend West Point around his sophomore year of high school in 2016. “It (attending West Point) didn’t really feel like an option before that because I was pretty overweight at the time. I ended up losing about 100 pounds and I got fit.” So, to lose this much weight, Jackson was showing everyone around him that he was serious in his desire to attend West Point.
As the son of a West Point graduate, I asked Jackson how much influence his father had in his decision to apply for admission at West Point. He answered by saying, “Maybe a little bit; but I expected to go.” He continued to say that even at the time when he was overweight, “Yeah, like toward my sophomore year, I started like actually starting to be getting pretty fit (making the decision to go to West Point). When he reached his decision to apply for West Point, he told his dad, “Yeah, he probably just asked me about colleges I was considering, and I said something like, “I definitely want to go into the military” and I’ll probably apply to the University of Arkansas and West Point. And then, I ended up getting like a four-year ROTC scholarship at the U of A… and I only ended up applying to West Point and the U of A. We went up there (U of A) and talked to the ROTC guy up there, and I didn’t really follow through with a lot of the scholarships up there at the U of A because I was pretty confident that I was going to be admitted at West Point. And then I got this letter, like a letter of affirmation from West Point that basically means you are good (being admitted to West Point). Congressmen told me like yeah, you’re like the best candidate that we have and that you are probably going to get in there.”
And a great candidate he turned out to be. Jackson left Subiaco Academy with a cumulative grade point average greater than a perfect 4.00 average due to him taking Advanced Placement courses that were awarded weight grades (A= 5 grade points, B= 3 grade points, etc., versus a traditional “A” being awarded 4 grade points and a “B” awarded 3 grade points). I took as many AP (advanced placement) classes as I could.”
Life as a cadet at West Point, in the words of Jackson, “is a lot different” than any other college experience. Jackson continued to say, “It is just pretty much rigorous academics and is stressful.” When I asked him if he had ever been in trouble at the Academy, he openly shared, “I had some minor trouble, but never had to go to a board or anything. I just kept a low profile.”
Trying to put myself in his shoes and visualize for a moment what the first day of school had to have been like for Jackson on the day he reported to West Point, I asked him to share this with me and he said, “It’s not hard, more administrative than anything. I mean, you’re getting yelled at all the time, but you just keep being a level-headed person and keep walking. They don’t expect you to know anything, so they are telling you what to do and you just do it. If you get it wrong, they know you are going to get it wrong, and they let you know.” But for preparing for this first day, it was more physical, according to Jackson. “I ran through Paris, worked out, stuff like that so that I was ready for that aspect.”
Military officers taught classes at West Point along with a few civilians. According to Jackson, “Every core class, and after you pick a major, you are assigned more of those (major related academic courses) along with an engineering tract that everyone has to take.” Jackson’s engineering major was in cyber engineering. He continued by saying, “It is a big load of classes. Like in most universities you take like 120 hours of credits, and at West Point you finish with like 140-150 hours of credit. There are also military classes every year; military science, tactics, and there is like an officers’ class.”
About 7 or 8% of students nationwide who apply are accepted into West Point according to Jackson. When compared to Ivy League schools’ admissions, the West Point admission considers much more than academic performance in high school. Physical fitness, leadership, congressional recommendations, etc., are all additional factors to the applicants’ admission profile to West Point compared to other schools around the country of similar academic standing. And of course, there is the commitment to military service after school that sets West Point and other military branch academies apart from Ivy League and other schools. Jackson added, ” A lot of the people (West Point cadets) could have gone to Harvard or Yale and did get in but chose West Point. I think those schools (Ivy League Schools) are looking for like extremely high academic achievements, whereas West Point is still looking for extremely high academic performance but more well-rounded like leadership and physically, as well.”
Military service is a commitment that each cadet makes at West Point. Jackson added, “You can’t graduate and not go in, unless you have some kind of medical condition that doesn’t allow you to serve and they only find out like your last year at West Point. You’re not fully committed into it until your first day of your junior year. There is a ceremony at that time where you take an oath, and after that, if you choose to leave, you have to pay back the cost of your education that means a lot of debt, or you have to serve as enlisted. Before that point, you can leave on you own with no charges.”
Not everyone who enrolls at West Point finishes. In Jackson’s class, the said that “The graduation rate is pretty high. In my class, we started with like 1200 and we graduated around 940 something. So, we lost around 250, but I don’t think that is like standard. Congress demands a certain number each year, but I think we had a large attrition rate due to COVID. There was also a cheating scandal in calculus that happened during COVID.”
As an upperclassman at West Point, Jackson described his approach with the younger cadets of that being more of a “mentorship” role as opposed to really yelling at them as much as he was his plebe year. “I took more of like a mentorship approach; I created like this mentorship program for my entire company too. It was not mandatory, but you could sign up and just talk and share some knowledge on West Point. But, like if they (plebes) did not do stuff they were supposed to do, for example at the lunch table, yeah, I would let them know about it.”
Jackson describes West Point as “a super stressful environment” with the degree of mental toughness required being such that is unfathomable to most of us. “There is just so much going on and you are trying to manage it all.”
After Jackson returns from his vacation and begins his military career, he is not certain at the point as to how long he would like to serve. When I asked him about his career plans, he shared, “I’m not sure right now. I am just taking it at is goes and see if I like it. I think I will because I know it will be a lot different than West Point.” And that point of consideration is one that is partly steeped in the fact that the COVID epidemic hit the West Point campus during his time at the Academy, forcing he and others to remain on campus for more than a year without ever leaving. So, the normally stressful environment of the Academy was amplified by the fact that cadets were not allowed to leave during the entire nationwide quarantine. From my perspective, that means in my mind that there was never an escape from the stresses of campus life; not even a chance to “go into town” for a few hours. When I think about what this must have been like, my enormous respect for Jackson and the other graduates in his class is even greater. So, when he says that he anticipates his military life to be much different than West Point, I, as an outsider, can certainly understand why he feels that way.
Jackson grew up in a military family, so he had already had experience with life in the military and living on a military base. That will help him as he begins his career and faces the decision of extending his career beyond the required service time that he is obligated to. He shared that “officer retention” appears to be a challenge today and that he thinks most of his friends will leave after their five-year commitment ends.
As our conversation began to wrap up, I shared with Jackson I piece I wrote in a Memorial Day story this year where I cited a national survey that found that most young adults value their technology access more, or do not love their country enough to serve. I asked him for his thoughts on this, just having completed a big investment into West Point and to the service of his nation. Jackson responded by saying, “I think there is a whole political thing out there that is going on and has our country divided. Also, I take into account that most of them have not been to a lot of other countries out there and have seen what that is like. So, they don’t realize how great America is; like we have our problems, but we are still the best country in the world. So, if they felt that a little more, they might be more patriotic.”
As a writer, I am proud to say that I have now had the privilege of sitting down with two very special graduates of the United States Military Academy at West Point. And for all of bad press that we see and read in the media, there is great satisfaction in knowing that there are very special men and women who are, as we speak, making great sacrifices and investments into future military careers for the defense of our great nation. And Jackson O’Neal and his graduating classmates are the latest group of brave men and women who will serves us all.
It was a pleasure to talk with Jackson, and his mom and dad, Michelle and Jeffrey O’Neal, can be very proud of him. He is a great credit to himself and his family, and on behalf of all of us, we thank him for choosing to serve our country. We wish Jackson the best of success in his career, and God’s protection to keep him safe.
