The Expanding 1960s
1960-1961
The first school year of the decade opened with an enrollment of 560 cadets, including ten day students. The enrollment had reached capacity in June and a number of applicants were turned away. Students came from thirty-one states and thirteen foreign countries. Iowa, Missouri, and Kansas led the way in sending the most students. Forty-two cadets were from other countries with Venezuela sending the largest contingent.
Col. Wikoff began his first year as superintendent. He handed over his duties as treasurer to Lt. Col. Leon Ungles and retained hi post as secretary in addition to being superintendent.
The school year started off with the announcement that the Battle of Lexington, which took place in September of 1861, would be reenacted on the 18th of May 1961, as part of the national commemoration of the Civil War centennial. Col. Wikoff was chairman of the planning and execution committee for the event, which was sponsored by Wentworth, the Missouri Civil War Centennial Commission, Missouri State Park Board, and the Lexington Chamber of Commerce. The preparation for this event dominated much of the school year at Wentworth.
The maintenance department completed a major overhaul of some campus facilities with the reopening of the quartermaster store and fountain. The changes essentially moved the sales facilities of both the store and fountain to the south wall of the room, making a larger sales area for both and opening up the storage areas once a part of the rifle range. The stores were given a larger lobby with a display window. These changes, with the addition of air-conditioning, remained until the 1990s when the snack bar and fountain would be moved to another building.
The world events of 1960 saw the U-2 incident and an election take place. WMA students in Capt. Arthur Symonds’ political science classes surveyed the students and faculty. Both groups voted in favor of Richard Nixon over John Kennedy. The student total was 364 to 179 and the faculty division was 23 to 19.
The Wentworth band went to the Mardi Gras Parade in New Orleans in February and the trip became a regular feature during the winter months in the 1960s and the late 1990s.
The Wentworth Show and the Military Ball came and went and planning went on during the spring for the reenactment which turned out to be Missouri’s key event in the national commemoration of the Civil War. National attention began to focus of Lexington through the publicity events generated by Col. Wikoff’s committee.
The big event occurred on May 18th. Some 25,000 persons gathered in Lexington to see and participate in the reenactment. Fifty-nine newspaper, television, and radio reporters covered the event. Some of the footage was used on NBC’s “Today Show” with Dave Garroway, following the battle. A private film company shot over 70,000 feet of film and would use it in a documentary. When it was all over, the cadets and other participants pitched in and policed up all the spent paper cartridges.
There were 176 graduates that year. Sixty-eight came from the junior college and 108 from the high school. That year, Lt. Gen. Lewis B. Hershey, director of the Selective Service System for the previous twenty years, was the graduation speaker. His organization received a great deal of pressure in the next ten years. Dale R. Buis, ’42, was the first American to die in Vietnam in 1960 and Bill Adams of that year’s class was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor ten years later.
1961 – 1962
Capacity enrollment was again the status of Wentworth that fall and the administration announced that they would build an extension on the Sellers-Wikoff Scholastic Building. This 30 x 45 foot extension had a new geology lab on the lower level, an extension of the library shelf-space on the main floor and a suite of five offices and rooms for the use of the guidance department. It was expected to cost $70,000 and be ready for occupancy the following school year.
Word was received that Del Podrebarac, a member of the 1961 graduating class from the junior college, had saved a young girl’s life by mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. He was working as a lifeguard at a pool in Des Moines, Iowa. A major athletic department award would be named for Podrebarac in future years.
The WMA Dad’s Club responded to changing times and competition for money by inaugurating plans to form an advisory board of some twenty-five or thirty members composed of prominent businessmen not currently associated with Wentworth. They recognized that even with a capacity enrollment of 560 cadets the school would not be able to finance new improvements from tuition income alone.
The development office proposed by the group would be staffed with a qualified director and would begin to look to raising money for the needed fieldhouse and possible replacement of some of the older barracks with new buildings. These ideas all anticipated conditions that would make the operation of any school more difficult in the future.
The year proved to be very quiet and one of normal operations in all departments. One hundred fifty-four cadets, fifty-seven in the junior college and ninety-seven graduated at the end of the school year.
At that time, Maj. William H. Mullenioux was appointed as an assistant commandant on his retirement from active duty in the Army. Mullenioux had been an enlisted ROTC instructor here during the late 1940s.
This school year would be the last quiet one for many years for both Wentworth and the country as a whole. There will be foreign policy crises on the horizon as well as the increasing strength of the civil rights movement at home.
1962 – 1963
This year began with the announcement of a major change in leadership. Lt. Col. Frank Brown stepped down as commandant of cadets after twenty-eight years. He became “general advisor and counselor,” as a means of easing himself into retirement. Lt. Col. Harvey Fisher, ’37, became the new commandant after having retired from the U.S. Air Force and joined the staff as assistant commandant the previous summer.
Lt. Col. Frank Brown still remains the longest-serving commandant in the history of the school. He came to Wentworth in 1921 as an instructor in history and foreign languages after having served with the 301st Engineers during the Allied Expeditionary Force’s occupation of sections of Russia after the Bolshevik Revolution.
Brown became the assistant commandant in 1925 and served there a few years before leaving WMA to serve as commandant at Florida Military Institute and selling insurance in Kansas City. He became commandant at Wentworth in 1934 and served until 1962. According to a biographical sketch in the September 11, 1957, issue of The Trumpeter, the secret to his success was to enforce the rules to the letter in a manner that was seen to be “fair and square.”
The enrollment was again at capacity and had been fully booked since June and a long waiting list was filled with those seeking an opening. This was an ideal situation to be in for an educational institution. The corps was organized as a “battle group” with seven subordinate companies, all commanded by Cadet Lt. Col. John Groendyke of Enid, OK, who would, years later. serve as President of the Board of Trustees.
The new wing of the Scholastic Building was opened at the start of school. The only shortage was backordered shelving for the new section of the library stacks. The school year progressed normally with the usual routine activities until just before Christmas when Dean Dallas Buck died of the effects of a stroke that he had suffered in early November. He had been on he faculty since 1929, teaching English and French, and had become assistant dean in 1941 and in 1946 became dean, directing all instruction in the high school and junior college. Maj. Bob Hepler took over as acting dean.
During the Christmas break four WMA cadets played a major role in calming and evacuating the passengers of a Frontier Airlines aircraft that had landed short of the runway and flipped over. Two cadets from Kemper also contributed to the safe evacuation and forty passengers sustained no serious injuries. The cadets were Ernie Peterson, Jim Thompson, Doyle Leeding, and Richard Kamps.
On April 11, Maj. John J. Pirhalla, public relations officer and English instructor at the academy died of a heart attack at the age of 54. The older generation of faculty and staff were beginning to pass from the scene.
Before school ended that year, the superintendent announced that a new dean had been hired: Cordell Thomas, superintendent of schools in Richmond, MO, who had been in the Richmond school system for the previous thirty-five years.
There was to be more change for the next school year. Lt. Col. Fisher, the commandant, resigned because of his wife’s ill-health and Maj. William Mullenioux, who had been assistant commandant, was appointed to succeed him.
One hundred forty-six graduated on the second of June, fifty-seven from the junior college and eighty-nine from the high school. 1962-63 had been a year that promised change in the future. The personnel changes had already started.
1963-1964
The academy again had reached its capacity in June. There were now waiting lists for the first and second semesters and the following year had many reservations made for it. The corps structure now became a brigade, returning to a form of organization again used by the Army. This marked an end of a experiment with the “Pentomic Army Division.” The first brigade commander was John Groendyke, returning for a second year of the top command position.
Wentworth opened its first office of Development and Alumni Relations to begin to track the whereabouts of alumni and to coordinate ideas and recommendations of The Advisory Council and the Dad’s Club. This was the first step and marked a new era for the school and its fund-raising endeavors.
Capt. Weldon W. Perry was appointed as an assistant commandant. He had recently retired from the Army and had previously served as an assistant PMS and military instructor in the early 1950s.
The impact of the Vietnam War came home to many on the campus in September with the news that Maj. Donald Logan had been killed in Vietnam. He had left the campus after serving as an assistant PMS from 1960 through 1963. There will be more such news in the future.
When President Kennedy was assassinated in November, the Corps paraded in tribute with black-draped flags, fired a 21-gun salute, and played “Taps” as a final tribute to the commander-in-chief.
From this point on to the end of the school year, things were completely normal with the traditional activities of an educational institution. One hundred ninety-nine graduated, sixty-seven from the junior college and eighty-nine from the high school.
1964-1965
The school opened this year with 589 cadets attending. The big news awaiting students was the announcement that construction was underway on a new fieldhouse, which was to be built on the drill field and the parade ground would be moved to the north. Construction was set to be completed within a year. The structure was to be built at a cost of about $1,000,000 and would cover 65,000 square feet. It was built for seating 2000 and would have an Olympic-sized pool adjacent to it. This was a much-needed facility to improve the academy’s athletic and sports programs.
One of the high school juniors entering in the fall of 1964 was Robert T. (Tom) Day, who was the great, great, great grandson of Stephen G. Wentworth, the founder of the school. He graduated from the high school in 1966 and from the junior college in 1967.
The Alumni Association recognized Col. Wikoff’s fifty ears of service to the academy with a gift. He had come to WMA in 1915 as a coach and served since that time.
The WMA band received an invitation to march in the January 20th inaugural parade in Washington, D.C., for President Lyndon Johnson. That was preceded by an invitation to march in the January 11th inaugural parade for Gov. Warren Hearnes in Jefferson City. Later, in February, the band participated in three parades in New Orleans during Mardi Gras. This was a very busy year for the band under the direction of Capt. Jim Bell.
Lt. Col. Frank Brown announced at the end of the year that he was retiring completely after forty-two years of service to the academy, first as a teacher, commandant, and finally for the last three years, as senior counselor and advisor to cadets. He lived in retirement in Lexington in a house on north 17th Street knowing that he was one of the most respected staff members in the school’s history.
1965-1966
This academic year opened with 620 cadets enrolled and a long waiting list. The newly-constructed fieldhouse was almost completed and was slated to be used for the first time for the Military Ball in January. The event attracted 2500 and showed off the potential for the new building.
The Wentworth Show was held for the sixteenth year in Kansas City and most of the usual routine events were held at the school. There were 204 graduates, ninety-two from the junior college and one hundred twelve from the high school.
With commencement came the retirement of Anna P. Gibbons, who had been at Wentworth for forty-eight years. She taught business and commerce courses and spent thirty-three years on the road in summers recruiting new students. At the time of her retirement there were in the school a number of sons of boys that she had recruited. Her mother , Mrs. U. G. Phetzing, had preceded her in being the only woman faculty member at the academy while teaching Spanish and German. Mrs. Gibbons remained in Lexington in retirement, taking a close interest in the happenings at the academy.
1966- 1967
The school year opened again with capacity enrollment of 630 students. This was a near-high enrollment with about seventy of that number being day students from a fifteen-mile radius of Lexington.
Capt. Merle Gibson succeeded John Readecker as athletic director who had served eighteen years. The new fieldhouse was dedicated at the Dad’s Day observance in late October. About three thousand persons listened to former mayor of Kansas City, Roe Bartle, deliver the dedicatory address. Around twelve hundred persons were fed in the building the previous evening. It was the first of many banquets in the fieldhouse. Wentworth had a good reason to be proud of the new facility which would be used by many groups in Western Missouri for a wide variety of athletic and public functions.
That year, the fifty-seventh Wentworth-Kemper football game, which dated from 1901, was played. This traditional rivalry game was played for many years on Thanksgiving Day until the late 1950s. It was known for quite some time as the “Little Army-Navy” Game or as the “Turkey Day Classic.” It was always a highlight of the fall because it did not have to compete with professional or large college games on television until the late 1950s. There were no games in 1902,1906, 1909-19 (inclusive), and 1943.
There were a number of the games that were played on neutral territory in Sedalia to preclude fights breaking out among supporters of the arch-rivals. The game is still played at the turn of the new century by high school teams of both academies.
The November 25, 1966 issue of The Trumpeter had a detailed article on the origins of the band and its development at the academy. It was founded in 1895 with fifteen members. Later it had almost about seventy-five members in its largest times. The longest serving bandmaster was Maj. Fred Day who led the band for twenty-eight years.
The band became famous over the years for its snap drills. For many years it was under the direction of Lt. Col. Frank Brown, the long-serving commandant. Then in 1955, the newly arrived band director, Capt. James Bell, inaugurated a new routine, which forms the basis of the snap drill still being performed at the turn of the new century.
There is a delightful picture from 1916-17 which shows the band posed on the steps of what is now Groendyke Hall with sixteen members including three faculty officers, then-Captain Day, the director, then-Captain L..B. Wikoff and Capt. G.A. Rasely, the football coach. Col. Wikoff was known as not the best musician, but the loudest, who “…went so far as to try and read the fly specks on the sheet music.” The band still remains the premier public relations vehicle for Wentworth. They have been our ambassadors in countless parades including Mardi Gras, presidential inaugural and gubernatorial inaugural parades and all the many others they participate in each year.
At the end of the academic year, there were 219 graduates, 119 from the junior college and 100 from the high school.
1967-1968
Students returning to the campus saw an immediately obvious change. The old sidewalk, shrubbery and trees in the area of the Administration Building had been removed and a new, open, plaza with steps leading to the building had been installed. The concrete in front of the building was now red, trimmed in white.
The enrollment total was 637 with seventy-one day students. This was the record high in the history of the school. Commander Ed Ellis returned to WMA after a long teaching and coaching career in Kansas City area schools. He remained in the school into the 1980s, teaching American government and coaching.
The Trumpeter marked its seventy-fifth year. The publication’s inception came from a meeting with Col. Sandford Sellers in 1892 by a group of students. They decided to create a publication known as the WMA Trumpeter. It started as a ten by seven inch magazine with twenty-two pages of reading material. Since that time it has undergone many changes and by 1924 it had evolved into its current incarnation, a school newspaper published by students, usually in a journalism class with an editor and faculty advisor, both appointed by the administration.
Throughout its history to 1967 and for much of its history after that time, it has been a newspaper of record for the academy and has been the major source of information incorporated into this history.
Just before Christmas, the administration announced that the academy would renovate the “Old Gymnasium” into a student union building. The cost was estimated at approximately $250,000 and they planned to begin construction immediately.
The west wing would have a new barbershop installed and a day-student lounge with a modern kitchenette. It became a site for a multitude of different events from dances to banquets, to meetings, and conferences. It remained a study lounge throughout all subsequent years and became a campus focal point with the installation of the Hall of Honor in the 1980s.
The east wing became a two-floor section with three levels. The basement of the old gym and swimming pool became a lounge and snack bar and classrooms were eventually created over the now-covered pool. The upstairs had an “Student Officer’s Club,” game rooms, a ham radio room and other meeting rooms. Eventually the Military Department would find a home in the building when displaced from its quarters by the fire, and in the 1990s, the Union became Groendyke Hall, and incorporated the offices and some classrooms of the junior college.
1968 saw the junior college opened to the daughters of campus employees. These would be the first female students ever allowed in the school and many would graduate before the opening of the community college aspect of the continuing education division in the 1970s. The full college cadet program would be opened to females in 1993.
At commencement, 200 graduated, ninety-three from the junior college and 107 from the high school.
1968-1969
The academic year opened with 631 students from thirty-nine states and seventeen foreign countries. A new commandant, Weldon W. Perry, took over the management of student affairs. Lt. Col. Perry had been on the staff as assistant commandant for five years and had served as an ROTC instructor here during his twenty-year career in the Army.
The newly renovated Student Union opened that fall with the job virtually complete. Furniture still had to arrive, but students began to use it as soon as school opened. They were very enthusiastic in their reception of the new use for an old building. The student-faculty committee that drew up the rules for the use of the building made them so that the largest number of cadets could use the building responsibly.
The Mooney Memorial to the late Lt. Robert H. Mooney was dedicated in front of the Chapel in October. The monument was a smaller scale replica of the one the Chinese people had placed near the site of his death near Changyun, China.
The academy observed Career Day on the Friday before Dad’s Day. This became an opportunity for the cadets to learn about employment opportunities by listening to the dads talk in hour-long sessions in panel discussions about their careers. They were divided up according to their interests. This same format was used in the future when Career Day was moved to February and opened to all alumni who wished to come to the campus and discuss with cadets how they employed their lives.
Wentworth invested surplus funds in cooperation with the Lexington Chamber of Commerce and built the Holiday Inn at the south end of Lexington. The administration considered that this would be a good investment for both the school and the town because accommodations were always difficult to find at the times of major school events and this inn would help relieve this problem.
Another annual event took place on the middle Saturday of May, usually Armed Forces Day, when the corps departed on its annual bivouac. That year the corps departed at t:00 p.m. and marched down Franklin to 16th Street. They continued north to and through the battlefield to the woods between the battlefield and the river. From that point they proceeded cross-country to the country club area where they camped for the night.
After supper formation, the students set up camp in company areas according to all that they had been taught throughout the entire year of military training. Chapel services were held in the field that Saturday night and afterwards the Corps bedded down, posting guards and sending out patrols to practice night tactics.
About 5:00 a.m. the reveille sounded and the cadets broke camp and policed up the area, returning to campus by road march for breakfast at 7:30 a.m. When the weather cooperated, these events turned out to be a highlight of the whole spring season.
That year, there were 230 graduates, 118 from the junior college and 112 high school cadets. This has stood, so far, as the all-time record.
1969-1970
The last school year of the decade began with 549 cadets enrolled. This was also Wentworth’s 90th year. The Holiday Inn opened and its facilities became available to Academy visitors for the various week-end gatherings such as Homecoming and Commencement.
Capt. Tom Butler was hired as an assistant commandant and would stay on the staff in a number of capacities into the 1990s. Homecoming brought memories of grand days in football. The football team of 1918 was honored when two of its members, John R. McDonald and Claude E. Collins joined their old coach, Col. Lester Wikoff in remembering that theirs was the only undefeated, untied football team in Wentworth history. Of the original eighteen members, only about half were living and only half of the survivors could be located. Two made it back to reminisce with their old coach. The team played all games that year under quarantine. Only visitors could watch the game. This was the period when cadets walked guard duty twenty-four hours a day to keep people away from the campus during the great influenza epidemic.
Lt. Gen. Thomas Moorman, superintendent of the U.S. Air Force Academy came to Wentworth along with the president of the Falcon Foundation to present the first five Falcon preparatory scholarships to students at WMA. General Moorman brought a number of his staff to see for themselves how worthy cadets could be prepared to meet admission standards for the USAF Academy.
Wentworth and the Air Force Academy developed an excellent relationship over the years and preparatory cadets have been placed at the academy in growing numbers, some times a few each year, some times as many as a dozen, up through the current time.
Dorth Coombs, “23. made the largest donation ever received at the academy up to that time to be used to underwrite the budget of the library. The library was then named jointly for Col. Sellers and Mr. Coombs as the Sellers-Coombs Library.
The Wentworth Show made its 20th anniversary show at the Municipal Auditorium in Kansas City. The shows usually drew capacity crowds (about 10,000) and the cadets loved the reception their acts received. It was a major logistics effort to mount such a show and transport all the students. Usually the school conducted other business such as alumni meetings and development activities to maximize the opportunity presented by such a large crowd.
A new incentive to attract ROTC contract cadets was offered for the first time. Airborne training for three weeks at Ft. Benning was offered to volunteers who were enrolled in the commissioning program and under a contract. They also had to pay their own travel and subsistence, but that didn’t stop those who wanted to go. It has proven to be one of the most popular ROTC benefits and attractions down through the years.
The academic year ended with 174 graduates, eighty-seven from the junior college and an equal number from the high school. An alumnus, Lt. Gov. William S. Morris,”42, was the commencement speaker. He served as Lt. Governor of Missouri for four years. Dr. H.U. Campbell, academy chaplain, retired after ten years service and Col. Robert C. Ingalls, U.S. Army, professor of military science at Wentworth for over four years, retired after thirty years service in the Army. He had presided over the commissioning of more ROTC cadets than any other PMS during his tour.