Jeana’s poem for Jennie

Jennie Kiesling (right) and the 1976 Yale Crew Team
Jennie Kiesling (right) and the 1976 Yale Crew Team

Jeana (Eugenia Howard Hunt) wrote this poem in 1978 to her granddaughter and namesake Eugenia Kiesling, who is currently a professor of military history at West Point.

 

To Jennie

Holding the Banner

When they trailed

The dry dust

Making bread to

Feed the Spirit

Knowing the shadows

Are filled with light

Braced when faced

By defeat’s scarring

Face but radiant

Each dawn for

A fresh renewal

Never bitter over

That galling flavor

Of the trailing

Insignia

Believing the battle

More worthy than

The defeat

Saluting the endeavor

Morning & Evening

Are God’s gift

From the Glare of the Day

Sept. 1978 E. Hunt

 

Photo: ESPN article on 1976 Yale Crew Team

Eugenia Kiesling is a professor of military history at the United States Military Academy at West Point. Professor Kiesling earned her BA at Yale University, her MA at Oxford University, and her PhD at Stanford University. She wrote a curriculum while assigned to NATO forces in Kabul for the National Military Academy of Afghanistan in 2007. Professor Kiesling has many publications, including Arming against Hitler: France and The Limits of Military Planning (University Press of Kansas, 1996); and “The Oldest ‘New’ Military Historians: Herodotus, William George Forrest, and the Historiography of War,” in Herodotos and His World: Essays in Honour of W. G. Forrest (Oxford University Press, 2003).  (Source: Article on Onnassis USA )

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