Wood River High School’s graduation is scheduled for 4 p.m. on Friday, June 6. To honor the occasion, the Wood River Weekly spoke to three graduating seniors about their time in high school and their plans beyond. Congratulations, class of 2025!
For Annapolis-bound Ella Shaughnessy, Service Runs In The Family
By Mark Dee
On May 21, Air Force Veteran Mike Vigueria took the stage at Wood River High School’s Scholarship Night to award what was, in its way, the largest prize of the night. Vigueria said that the strength of United States’ military is its people—it’s the world’s best because they’re the world’s best—and that it finds them all over, in big cities, and in small towns, and in places like the Wood River Valley. Then, he called one such person to the podium.
Hailey senior Ella Shaughnessy stood up and took from his hand a folder with at least the next nine years of her life inside: her appointment to the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland. It signed her up for four years in school and five afterward as a commissioned officer—or much more, depending on where she chooses to serve. Of roughly 16,000 applicants, Shaughnessy is one of 1,200 midshipmen joining the class of 2029, succeeding in a selection process that, in addition to the typical academic rigors, required a recommendation from a sitting congressman.
“You have been recognized for the grit you’ve shown already in your 18 years of life,” Vigueria said. “They say the sky’s the limit. Your limit is out there in space, and beyond.”
For Ella Shaughnessy, this path started like it does for so many high school students: on a college tour.
Mike Shaughnessy flew for 23 years—first with the Air Force, then the Navy, then the Idaho National Guard, where he retired as a lieutenant colonel. He didn’t necessarily want that for his daughter, or think she wanted that for herself. Before Ella’s junior year, she probably didn’t. Ella Shaughnessy wanted to go to college to race mountain bikes; she’s been on the dominant Wood River Mountain Bike Team since eighth grade and says she doesn’t know where she’d be without it. But her parents set out to show her all her options, Mike said, so they started looking. They stopped at huge, flagship universities and small liberal arts colleges. They looked at engineering schools with tight scientific curriculums. And, almost as an afterthought, they drove down to Colorado Springs.
“I think that visit to the Air Force Academy really changed the trajectory of my high school career and what I wanted to do afterwards,” Ella says now. She remembers clocking faces around the candidate briefing—what other schools might call an information session. Kids either looked thrilled or horrified. Watching the cadets march across the quad, she felt a charge.
“I pretty much immediately fell in love with the idea of purpose and mission that you feel when you are there,” she said. “You could tell some [kids] were there because their parents wanted them to be there. And while my dad suggested we visit, I was excited because the academy ethos felt right to me.”
If the feeling didn’t surprise Ella, it caught Mike off guard. Ella told him that what she saw “seemed impressive, and powerful” to her. Then, she said: “I want to serve my country.”
Ella spent a week at the Naval Academy the following summer. It was an abbreviated version of the “plebe summer” of training she’ll see in a few months. She got a flavor of the Navy, Mike described it, and came back dead set to go.
Idaho congressmen recommended Ella for the Army, Navy and Air Force academies. In October, she was one of the first students in the country to receive an appointment to West Point, making her the first girl in Wood River’s history to get such an offer. It’s changing, Mike said, but the academies are still largely male; Ella will be one in a class that’s about one third women to two thirds men—something that registers with her.
“I hope that this shows other young girls in the valley that this is an option for them, too, and that women in the military are equally as valuable as their male counterparts,” she said.
Shaughnessy thought quietly and seriously about her options, as is her way. For a child of the Idaho mountains, the Navy is a chance at something completely different. And, the midshipmen she met on campus were the type of role models she was looking for.
Of course, she had one close to home.
“Throughout my life, my dad has been my hero,” she said. “While he did not push me into a military career, his character has inspired me to pursue a similar path. I’m so excited for the opportunity for him to commission me, and I hope that I can make him proud.”
She shouldn’t worry—he already is. Proud that she strived for something and grasped it. Proud that she sees the value in the life that he’s lived.
“You feel like maybe, you know, you did the right things,” he said. “That you set the right example. You shared what you thought was right, and they picked that up and took it and brought it on board. It makes you feel good.”
Soon, Mike and Tricia Shaughnessy will drop Ella off in Annapolis. Like all parents, he’ll watch the matriculation ceremony, head home, and then get one phone call for the next six weeks as “plebe summer”—basic training—begins in earnest. He remembers that from his own time in the service. Five in the morning until 11 at night. Running everywhere. “Square meals,” where you aren’t allowed to look at your food—you just put the plate to your mouth and eat. When Ella comes back home, leave will be measured in days, not months; during summers, she’ll be a junior officer in the U.S. Navy, stationed where the Navy sees fit. And then she’ll return to Annapolis to study. She thinks she wants to major in Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering, but that could change. She really wants to be a naval aviator, like her dad.
But before all that, Mike will be able to take her aside. He’ll be the one to administer Ella’s Oath of Enlistment, a privilege afforded to military parents. He’ll tell her the words to repeat—“I, Ella Shaughnessy, do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic…”—knowing that when she agrees, he’ll have released his daughter into a much vaster world than the one in which he raised her.
“We’re proud of her,” Mike said. “But we also know it’s a hard road. Parents don’t always want their kids to take the hardest road. But sometimes Ella’s like that: She wants to take the hardest road.”
