Don Holb is a freshman at the U.S. Naval Academy, still going through the difficult adjustment period known as "plebe summer." Sander Owen is a Class A student. One day in July 1979, when Holb was still accustomed to the academy's intense memory training, Irving ordered him to recite the lunch menu. From this story

[×]Close photojournalist Lucien Perkins reunites Naval Academy graduates Sander Owen and Don Holb, 30 years after his photos captured the school’s new gender dynamics

VIDEO: A Navy man meets his adversary again, revisiting Samuel Eliot Morrison's landmark history, according to a contemporary report from The Washington Post A Woodstock moment - 40 years later, he was at the beach on the weekend

"Tater tots, ham, luncheon meats" gushed Swiss cheese, sliced ??tomatoes, lettuce, mayonnaise, submarine rolls , almond biscuits, lemon iced tea, milk...uh...ma'am.

"Did I hear Salami, Mr. Holb?" she demanded:

She didn't. She should have. Holb and his fellow civilians tugged their jaws like nervous turtles, a punishing gesture known as the "buck up." Now he's bracing for a storm of words.

"I don't remember the words she used, but I remember her tone," recalled Lucian Perkins, an intern who was on hand to film Preby's summer ceremony. He took a photo,

Until 1976, the college had been the exclusive domain of boys. At that time, 81 girls were admitted, accounting for about 6% of the freshman class; in 1979, the number of senior freshman classes in the college was 134 For the first time in its history, girls were included. The image of a woman scolding a man was so rare that it made the front page of the Washington Post.

However, Holb didn't fully grasp the significance. "We knew it was Being in a women's class for the first time is a historic thing, but when you get yelled at, it doesn't matter if it's him or her."

A day or two later, Owen opened the dormitory door and extended his hand. I went to get her daily posts, and sure enough, the photo appeared on the first page. "Oh, [expletive]," she recalled. A few minutes later, one of her male classmates burst into the room. He slammed the newspaper down. "He looked at me and said, 'We're not impressed,'" Irving recalled. . "But you know what? My parents are proud. As long as I make my parents proud, I don't care what anyone else thinks.

Irving went to college not to make a point, but to get a low cost of education and career. She said she was once a "California girl," a bubbly cheerleader from the Bay Area city of Livermore, but she was also determined to be the first member of her family to graduate from college. One in 10 female classmates would drop out (as would a quarter of her male classmates), but over the next few weeks she would persevere, and Owen would receive hundreds of messages. Letters from people who took the photos have been widely circulated through the AP. Some offered congratulations and support and even expressed gratitude. (Navy investigators persisted.)

"I've never feared for my life," she said. But some of them quoted the Bible and said women shouldn't be in positions of power, and I'm a Christian, so I would have wanted to argue with them on that, of course. , none of them signed.

Holb also squirmed in the spotlight. He had been trying to mix with other civilians, and few people on campus knew that his father, Mr. Staser Holb, was a student. Adm. Irving certainly didn't.

"I didn't want any special attention or help, so I didn't tell her," Holb said. He took some of the teasing, mostly from the upperclassmen. It was his poor support posture (not deep enough), but the scene ended quickly for him

Irving agreed when she started working for the Pentagon's chief information officer the following year. But one day her boss found an excuse for her to go to Vice Admiral Holb's office.

"You could see people around her start snickering as they did so. Know who I am. "I was thinking, 'Oh my God, I'm dead,'" she said. But he came out from behind the desk, held my hand and smiled. He said, "If my son forgets something, he deserves to be scolded."

As a public affairs officer, Owen served in the Navy for eight years and in the reserves for three years; He rejoined the reserves in 1999 and was mobilized for nearly two years after September 11, 2001. Now a captain, she plans to retire next summer.

She was single until last year, when she married Steve Young ("At 50, I'm getting younger!" she said,

Holb served as Most of his 22 years as a naval officer were spent on nuclear submarines (where, coincidentally, women were still prohibited from serving).

He retired as an enforcer in 2005 and now, 48, works for a private defense contractor in Virginia, where he lives with his wife, Jayme, an attorney. His three children are all grown up.

As for Perkins, he was hired by The Post a few months after filming "Encounter" and worked for the paper for 27 years; he won several major awards, including two A Pulitzer Prize and a World Press Photo of the Year Award. Holb, 56, now freelances as a writer from his home in Washington, where photos of Irving and Holb hang in the hallway.

Amanda Benson is the magazine's assistant editor. "It's... a historic thing," Holb said (Irving in Annapolis in May 2009), "but when you get screamed at, it doesn't matter if it's him or her." (Lucian Perkins) Now in the service of grief: Irving (right) teaches Holb (left) a lesson on why Plebe should never forget the menu.

(Lucian Perkins