28 June 1976 – “The first 157 female cadets begin training, as members of the Class of ‘80. Joan Olsen was the first female cadet to be sworn in – she did not graduate. By mere days, the Air Force Academy was the first of the Department of Defense service academies to admit women.” The Class graduated on May 28, 1980.
One of those women, Janet C. Wolfenbarger, became the first Air Force 4-Star. ”
She remembers when her father, an Air Force pilot, came home from work one day and told her then-President Gerald R. Ford signed a law allowing women to enter the military academies for the first time in history. She applied and was accepted to the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, Colorado, in the spring of 1976.”(1)