Reed's first weeks at West Point, known infamously in Point lore as the "Beast Barracks" experience, were physically and psychologically punishing, long days of upperclassmen taunting and screaming -- an intentionally shocking transition from the civilian world to the military, where the ability to win at war is prized over all. "It was a whole system designed if not to break you down, at least to radically and dramatically change your whole view of the world," Reed says.

Reed sought no sympathy in the first letter he wrote home, to his mother, that July. He was, typically, demanding of himself:

Dear Mom,

On a tour of his alma mater, along the wall at Trophy Point overlooking the Hudson River, Reed talks with Col. Joe Manous, a West Point professor. The senator himself taught social studies and economics at the academy in the late 1970s. Journal photo / Mary Murphy

I'm working hard and doing fair but not as good as I want to. I hope to improve a little every day. … On Wednesday night, we had Sounds and Lights, a pageant depicting the history of West Point. It had everything from a musket corps to a helicopter landing. … I hope everybody at home is well. Say hello to them for me.

Love,

Jack.

The tour continues into the room of senior Jennawe M. Mantie, from Exeter, Rhode Island, whom Reed nominated to West Point. Stuffed animals decorate her desk, where she studies the skills of war. Reed reminisces about his own days as a platoon leader, company commander and battalion staff officer in the 82nd Airborne Division. "It was fun -- the most fun you'll have," he tells Mantie and Moses, "although I had a benign environment. There's a little more stress on you ladies and gentlemen."

Unlike Reed, these soon-to-be-officers have a good chance of seeing combat as the Iraq War continues into its sixth year with no end in sight.

"Well, congratulations," Reed says. "You're making us all proud serving your country so well here and carrying on a great tradition. Thank you. Thank you very much. Now relax –– take the rest of the day off!"

REED LEAVES the Eisenhower barracks for Washington Hall, a Gothic-style building with towering windows. He enters the mess hall, a cavernous space decorated with flags of the 50 states and a nearly 2,500-square-foot mural depicting weapons of war, that can accommodate all of West Point's approximately 4,400 cadets at one sitting at tables of 10 set on white linen. Containers of strawberry and chocolate Nesquik powder share space with condiments –– signs, along with the Starbucks store included in a new library now nearing completion, that the senator came of age in a different era.

"When I was here as a plebe," Reed says, "you had to eat at attention, which means you had to sit on the front four or five inches of your chair with your back perfectly straight, looking straight ahead. You had to take small, small bites, so you really didn't get a lot of food. You literally ate the whole meal at attention –– and if you did something wrong and some upperclassman was annoyed, he'd say, ‘sit up Reed!' And you'd sit there until he told you you could eat again."

Pleasanter memories await Reed as he crosses a windswept bridge to Thayer Hall, one of West Point's principal classroom buildings. Reed took classes here when he was a student. He taught here in the late 1970s as an associate professor of social studies.

The senator enters Robinson Auditorium, named for the late Roscoe Robinson Jr., the first African-American to reach four-star general. Cadet Reed spent many Saturday nights here, indulging a passion that continues still: Hollywood movies. Cadets paid 35 cents for a ticket, stood for the "Star Spangled Banner," and when the big screen descended, sat to watch the feature. "Then we'd leave and go get something to eat," Reed recalls. "Big night here at West Point!"

The senator heads back outside and down a road to Trophy Point, on high ground above the Hudson. The river flows through a perilous S curve here and the strategic advantage it gave the Continental Army over the British fleet during the Revolutionary War prompted Gen. George Washington to build a fort here. Trophy Point offers the academy's most spectacular panorama, and generations of cadets have posed here after graduations and weddings. Reed and his wife did, too, after marrying in 2005.

The group is back in the van when Reed's BlackBerry rings. It's Julia.

"Hi honey, how are you?" Reed says.

Julia is at their townhouse near Washington, D.C.

"How's Emily?" Reed says. "So what are you guys doing today?"

His wife and daughter have bought flowers at a garden shop. Julia says that Emily napped in the car, a good thing.

"Good, good, excellent," Reed says. The couple chat some more about the day and Julia puts Emily on the line. She is starting to say her first words.

"Hi, Emily, hi!" her father says. "Emily, I bought you a special shirt! I bought you a West Point sweatshirt!"

THE SUN IS heading down as General Hagenbeck welcomes Reed and guests into the superintendent's residence, built in 1820, 18 years after the academy was established, and expanded over the years to 16,000 square feet and 11 bedrooms.

After a walk through the historic first floor, the group settles in the front parlor known as the Lee Room, near a desk that once belonged to Robert E. Lee, 1829 West Point graduate and Confederate army general. Hagenbeck was dressed in full uniform for his Washington lunch, but today he wears a sports jacket without a tie. He offers his guests a drink. Reed has a beer, the general a glass of Merlot. A fire in the old fireplace takes the chill off and casts the room in gold, creating a mood more Ivy League than Army.

The two classmates knew each other as students "only in passing," Reed says, but became better acquainted after graduation through reunions and West Point's loyal alumni network. In the 1980s, Hagenbeck learned of Reed's election as a Rhode Island state senator in his first try for office. The La Salle Academy teen who wanted to serve his country had a broader vision of public service by then.

Reed chats with Joseph Monda, owner of the building that houses Buono's Bakery on Hartford Avenue, in Cranston. Reed grew up on Pontiac Avenue in that city. Journal photo / Mary Murphy

"You were one of the first to get into politics," says Hagenbeck, whom Reed calls by his nickname, Buster.

"I was about 34 when I ran," Reed says. "A lot of other people had tried to run for Congress, which I thought probably was a bridge too far. And so I started lower and worked up and learned a lot in the process."

Hagenbeck and Reed became close in the late 1990s, when Jack was serving his first term as U.S. senator and Buster had been assigned to the nation's capital. "Really, 1997 began what's become a pretty robust relationship," the superintendent says. "I became a general officer stationed in Washington in a variety of jobs at the Pentagon: the joint staff, strategy plans and policy. He'd been around the block and knew the inner workings, obviously, and I called on him on more than one occasion."

Says Reed: "If I had questions, I'd call Buster, and if he had questions, he'd call me. It got more and more that we had many things in common, not the least West Point."

Hagenbeck was not destined to remain a desk officer. He commanded coalition ground forces during the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan in the months following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, and won praise for his leadership.

"I took the initial soldiers, the conventional troops, into Afghanistan in 2001," Hagenbeck says.

Reed and three other senators were visiting the region at that time, and the general, stationed at an old Soviet airbase in Uzbekistan, wanted to see his classmate.

"I was in Karshi-Khanabad," Hagenbeck says.

"K-2."

"You were up with –– was it Warner?"

Sen. John W. Warner serves with Reed on the Armed Services Committee, together with Senators John McCain and Joseph I. Lieberman.

"No," says Reed, "McCain and Lieberman. That's when I met my wife!"

"You didn't know it at the time!"

Julia Hart, an Iowa native who is 16 years younger than Reed, was traveling with the senator in her job as a coordinator in the Interparliamentary Services office of the Senate, which arranges overseas trips, among other duties. The encounter was all business. More than a year would pass before they began dating.

Jack Reed and Julia Hart at West Point on April 16, 2005, their wedding day. Photo courtesy of the Reed family

"We were going to link up with Buster down in Kabul," Reed says. "He was the only guy I knew on the ground to talk to kind of face-to-face."

"Afghanistan remains primitive but it was truly, truly primitive at that time when we were over initially," Hagenbeck says. "I like to tease our other classmate, Tommy Metz, who was one of the first three-stars into Baghdad, and say, ‘You know, Tommy, they didn't criticize me after the country fell that there was no running water, no communications, no heat, no electricity in Afghanistan.' Because they didn't exist before."

"We actually had gone into Tashkent -- Uzbekistan, the capital -- and we thought we might link up," Reed says. "Our aircraft got in and yours just couldn't work."

"Then you came back with Hillary in 2003," the general says. He means Senator Clinton, now a presidential candidate. She sits on Armed Services, but is junior to Reed.

The war talk continues, then the conversation turns to a larger dimension of their West Point heritage.

"Because of his experience here and his involvement -- a bipartisan view, if you will -- of how America impacts and plays out on the world stage, Jack is recognized by everyone in uniform," Hagenbeck says. "People show up when he comes to town. He understands the acronyms, the terminology. We can talk in a common language about the way we see things. And so we're pretty candid with each other."

Says Reed: "Maybe it's because they assume I'm serious about what we're doing. I don't know how you can make informed judgments in my world without relying upon the common sense and the good advice of the uniformed officers."

REED EMERGES from his closed-door budget discussion with fellow senators on this day not so long ago. He has a few free minutes, a rarity.

Police with machine-guns man outdoor posts on this side of the U.S. Capitol and more police stand watch inside, but no one seems uncomfortable with their presence. Reed walks past the Senate chamber, where he is assigned Desk 69, two rows back from the rostrum. Reed's predecessor, the retired Sen. Claiborne Pell, and the late Senator Pastore, who appointed Reed to West Point in 1967, once sat at Desk 69.

Reed continues down a hallway outside the Democratic cloakroom, where party members can discuss matters privately. Busts of vice presidents, who by the Constitution are also Senate president, line the walls between marble columns. Chandelier light reflects off the polished floor tiles, which date to the mid-19th century. It's impossible to be in the Capitol, whose first wing was completed in 1800, and not feel its history. Reed thinks often of Jefferson and Adams and the other men who more than two centuries ago designed a government that has endured into the Internet age.

"They had a deep understanding of human nature –– but also the kind of predictability and scientific logic of a watch," Reed says.

"Every day I think about it: the extraordinary genius of the Founding Fathers, of the system they created, the adaptability of that system. The fact that it had very powerful institutional forces –– but not immutable, you could change them, the notion of the Constitution that could change by amendment. It was extraordinary."

Reed thinks often, too, of the constitutional provisions that gave only Congress the power to declare war, and which made an elected official, the president –– not an admiral or a general –– the commander-in-chief. He especially admires Washington, the general who left the Army to become the nation's first president, for not seizing absolute power after leading America to victory against great odds in the Revolutionary War.

Reed jokes with state Rep. Ed Pacheco, right, and from left, Burrillville police Lt. Kevin S. SanAntonio and Police Chief Bernard Gannon at the Pascoag Water Authority. Journal photo / Mary Murphy

"George Washington could have been king if he wanted to," Reed says. "He was the preeminent figure of his age in the United States, the preeminent military leader. We were just extraordinarily fortunate that we had a man with wisdom and the temperament not to seize that but to actually quietly go back and leave his troops. In fact, his last headquarters was up near West Point. That was where he formally left the Army."

IN HIS FINAL year at West Point, Cadet Reed began to ponder his future. The Army had stopped sending graduates to Vietnam and Reed decided he wanted more academic study, after which he would continue his military training. He applied to be a Rhodes Scholar but was rejected. Denied that opportunity, he applied to Harvard's Kennedy School of Government to pursue a master's degree in public policy, a two-year program. He was accepted, and in September 1971, he enrolled. With its anti-war protests, tweedy intellectualism and liberal traditions, Cambridge was no West Point.

"It was a culture shock," Reed says, "but, you know, I kind of adapted pretty quickly."

The deeper adjustment was in how Reed perceived himself. His two years in Cambridge would provide another lesson he would bring to the larger stage.

"I discovered that I wasn't the smartest guy in the room. And the other thing that I learned, which I think is useful, too, is that there are intellectual skills that are important but there are also temperamental skills: patience, listening to people, preparation, hard work, the ability to get along with people and to develop working relationships."

Reed received his master's degree, then resumed military training, eventually becoming a battalion staff officer in the 82nd Airborne Division. In 1977, he returned to West Point to teach economics, history and public policy. He was a professor now, not a leader of troops. Intellectually, he was growing.

A year or so passed, and again, he began to look ahead. It was 1978. He'd been an Army officer for almost eight years. He was almost 30 years old, unmarried and without children.

He liked the Army, but the notion of serving the public in another way began to appeal. Maybe he'd become a civil servant. Maybe he'd run for some office. He had no specific goal, no concrete plan, but he knew if he left the Army he'd need a good job.

He applied to Harvard Law School and was accepted.

REED RETURNS to the Hart Building for meetings with lobbyists from the health care, broadcast and defense industries. When they end, at 2:45 p.m., he leaves his conference room for his inner office.

Reed's private space offers views of Washington's Capitol Hill residential district, an upscale neighborhood with home prices that were too high for the senator and his wife when they were ready to buy. Inside, military memorabilia and photographs predominate. Reed has the photo of his mother that his father carried with him through World War II, still in the plastic frame Joseph built, and photos of his wife and daughter. He has a chunk of marble from one of Saddam Hussein's palaces that Rhode Island National Guard troops serving in Baghdad gave him, and toys and books for Emily when she visits. A quote from Irish poet W.B. Yeats lies under the glass on his desk: Being Irish, he had an abiding sense of tragedy which sustained him during temporary periods of joy.

Reed talks on the phone with Floyd Norris, The New York Times' chief financial columnist, who is writing a story about the subprime mortgage crisis. Reed's work as a member of the Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee and as chairman of the Securities Subcommittee have established him as a national voice on economic issues. The senator talks about the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, a law passed in the wake of the Enron scandal. Reed supported the bill from his seat on the Banking Committee.

"After Enron, with Sarbanes-Oxley, we tried legislatively to make it clear that there was to be some transparency with regard to off-balance entities," Reed tells Norris. "We thought that was already corrected and the rules were clear and we would not be discovering new things every day."

Reed has asked several agencies, including the Securities and Exchange Commission, for answers to where the system failed and how it can be corrected. It may not be headline-grabbing, but in the financial world, it is an issue of vital concern.

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