<p>If you want to know what motivated Margaret "Peg" Klein to ascend to an unheard-of position for women in the U.S. Naval Academy, look no further than her hometown.The academy's new commandant of midshipmen grew up on Commercial Street in Weymouth with her two sisters, and the sounds of A-4 Skyhawks taking off from the former naval air station nearby still echo in her head. </p>
<p>"It had everything to do with why I'm in the Navy, watching airplanes flying overhead from South Weymouth," said Klein, 49. ... , That was how I got the flying bug." </p>
<p>It was a bug so powerful it stayed alive even through the tragic death of her father, a Navy captain and professor of aviation business at Bridgewater State College. John DeLuca was killed in a plane crash in Taunton while flying to take a test for his commercial pilot's license in 1984. He died about a year after his wife, Carole, Klein's mother.</p>
<p>"I try to live my life so that I'd be happy to tell my parents what I do every day," Klein said.</p>
<p>She was 27 at the time of her father's death and had already made history as a graduate in the second Naval Academy class to accept women. Klein had only 80 or so female counterparts at the academy.</p>
<p>"There were not a lot of women who flew airplanes or a lot of women out at sea," she said. "There wasn't a lot scripted out for us."</p>
<p>To get through the Academy, she had written her own script, toughing her way through the academy's crack-of-dawn calisthenics, attack drills and other physical and mental training.</p>
<p>"They try to do things that will prepare us for what life at sea will be like," she said.</p>
<p>Klein proved more than prepared. She graduated in 1981, was designated a naval flight officer in 1983, married another aviator, had two children and, by 2001, was providing reconnaissance naval backup for post-9/11 operations in Afghanistan.</p>
<p>Klein had not been back to the Naval Academy since her graduation when she was offered the position of commandant in charge of discipline and training, a job similar to that of a dean of students.</p>
<p>She flew off a ship in the Arabian Sea to start her first day of work last month.</p>
<p>"I traveled literally halfway across the world to get here," she said. "Who wouldn't want to go back to their alma mater in a leadership position? I was ecstatic."</p>
<p>The DeLuca girl from Weymouth who grew up with pictures of the first female Navy pilots taped to her wall was now the first woman to ever take the No. 2 Naval Academy post.</p>
<p>Her husband, Frank, a retired Navy commander and a former college teacher in Oklahoma, will join her in Annapolis. Klein's high-school-age daughter and her handicapped sister will also live with them.</p>
<p>As commandant of midshipmen, she will supervise 4,300 students at the academy. While women made up only 6 percent of the first class that allowed them, 22 percent of the class that started last year are women, Klein said.</p>
<p>"Capt. Klein is superbly qualified to lead the Brigade of Midshipmen," said the Naval Academy superintendent, Vice Adm. Rodney P. Rempt, who selected her for the job. </p>
<p>Klein's appointment has been closely watched because of the academy's historical problems with sexual harassment and assault against women. A Pentagon task force had recommended that the academy promote women to address the problems. Klein said she is up to the challenge.</p>
<p>"If there's additional scrutiny, hopefully I live up to it," she said. "But it's not something I focus on every day."</p>
<p>Capt. Margaret "Peg" Klein</p>
<p>Age: 49</p>
<p>Children: son, Brendon, daughter, Caroline.</p>
<p>Born: Idlewell section of Weymouth, moved to Commercial Street as a child.</p>
<p>Education; Sacred Heart School, Notre Dame Academy, U.S. Naval Academy. Master's in educational leadership from the University of Southern Maine.</p>
<p>Military: Service on the USS Kitty Hawk during Afghanistan and Iraq wars. Chief of staff to the commander of Carrier Strike Group Eight, based in Norfolk, Va. Three operational tours, including commanding a flying squadron known as "the Ironmen."</p>
<p>Government: Member of the Presidential Contingency Plans Directorate of White House Military Office, Brookings Legislative Fellow, military adviser to Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine.</p>