Wentworth Today

The purpose of this chapter is to create a snapshot or series of snapshots of life at Wentworth as it evolves each year. By in large, things change very little over the years in this tradition-oriented school. We will start with the academic year 2000 as our baseline year.

The academic year really starts in August. Summer school is over in the last week of July and many of the twelve-month staff try to squeeze in a week or two of vacation with their families before the school year begins.

The first weekend of August has been devoted to Alumni Work-weekend. For the past several years, a number of alumni gather to do a wide variety of jobs that need to be accomplished on campus. These alumni and a small number of staff grab paint brushes or bring carpenter tools and take care of some of those jobs that always need to be done. The participants enjoy two or three days of fellowship and hard work. Some come every year and make their donation of sweat equity, which is really sweaty when in Lexington in August. Christie Butler, ’71, of the Alumni/Development staff manages the project and is point-of-contact for all involved.

The middle week of August usually sees the arrival of those who are participating in the high school football and soccer camps. These students work hard in two-a-day drills with the coaching staffs to build some endurance for the heat and to participate in the mandatory number of practices dictated by the Missouri High School Athletic Association rules before their first games.

The cadre and band arrive the fourth week as well as the faculty. This is a busy time for the commandant’s staff as they help the cadet battalion commander organize and train the student leadership. They all eagerly await the reading of Order Number One, assigning cadets to the positions in which they will work as the school year starts.

Faculty members report in uniform that Monday to in-process the cadre and to participate in the opening of school meetings conducted by the superintendent. Currently, about half of the faculty wears the military uniform and the rest wear the prescribed civilian dress.

The faculty will participate in about three days of in-service training conducted by the academic provost and the high school principal. New procedures, changes in the cadet rules and regulations, and personnel matters are the typical topics. New faculty are given an orientation in to the unique features of a military academy. Typically, three to five new teaching faculty are brought in each year. There is a nice mix of long-serving members and those with a shorter tenure. There are more than a half dozen that have taught at the academy over fifteen years.

During the days before classes start, faculty and cadre process new cadets and old boys returning and train them for their new roles. The faculty gets to prepare itself for the new school year and receive their Faculty Duty Officer assignments. They perform night duty in the barracks about once every ten days for a two-hour period of supervised study for cadets. Senior staff members and senior faculty also get to perform “rover” duty for a week once a semester as part of a “Total Quality Management” concept.

The school year kicks off with the Sounding of the Cannon Ceremony, usually the last Monday in August. Faculty and staff are introduced and guests give appropriate remarks to keynote the new year and then they are off and running with classes for the first semester.

The local non-traditional college students join cadets in college classes and once in a while, a local high school cadet will attend Wentworth and be a part of the corps of cadets. Community college students do not have to be members of the corps, but the high school students must be. Members of the junior college basketball team are most commonly not members of the corps, but a few corps members do play basketball on the team.

September becomes a busy month with everything getting started. The first football and soccer games take place. The first parades are held each Sunday, starting in September at the traditional 2:00 p.m. and cadets are entertained at the superintendent’s home at Wentworth House. These get-acquainted barbecues are conducted company by company and provide a welcome social gathering for cadets and their assigned faculty and the superintendent and his wife.

The Fall Parents’ Weekend is scheduled when a high school football home game is on the calendar in the latter part of September. Parents gather to meet with teachers and to participate in a number of activities to show them what their cadets are doing on campus. The event is held at this time each year after there has been a term of approximately three weeks of classes so that there can be some meaningful interchange between parents and faculty about the progress that is being made in grades and other areas of the cadet’s life.

The various activities clubs get started during September. The Civil War Living History Club begins its weekly drills and monthly activity related to the Civil War. This club allows the members who are in good academic and disciplinary standing to train to become members of a circa 1855-65 military engineer unit. This might have been a part of a mythological military academy in Lexington, Mo. Students, sixteen and older, learn to safely handle black powder firearms and participate in reenactments under the auspices of the Missouri Civil War Reenactor’s Association, whose headquarters is on the WMA campus.

Other campus cadet activities are the Honor Guard Drill team, the Senior ROTC Ranger Challenge team, the cadet JROTC rifle team and sometimes others when the interest is present among cadets. These could include a model building club, dramatics, chess/board games clubs, etc.

Wentworth has a very active Senior ROTC program where college cadets, usually on scholarship, train to become officers in the U.S. Army. WMA has a two-year commissioning program of long-standing where the student candidate can receive a commission in the U.S. Army Reserve or National Guard and an associate’s degree. There has been a new program established in cooperation with Central Missouri State University (CMSU) called the 2+2 Program. They attend two years of intensive ROTC military training and general education classes and receive their commissions when they graduate from CMSU after a total of four years leading to a bachelor’s degree.

The third program is where cadets are appointed to the academy from the Missouri National Guard and complete an associate’s degree and ROTC training in two years and return to units in the Guard as commissioned officers. These receive scholarships to allow them to complete a bachelor’s degree.

The fourth ROTC program is that of the Falcon Foundation which sends qualified students to gain sufficient academic test scores to receive an appointment to the U.S. Air Force Academy (USAFA) in one year. During that year they receive military training as cadets and selected math and science courses to build their Scholastic Aptitude Test scores. Thus far, the Falcon cadets have had a 100% success rate in gaining appointments to the USAFA and most have been successful there.

New cadets complete their Recruit at Training (RAT) orientation in the first semester of school. Some complete it earlier than others and become fully integrated members of the corps. Everyone who enters a military organization pays his/her dues by learning the discipline necessary to survive in a military environment. Those who have prior service or who are particularly well-adapted to this discipline can receive advance placement and greater responsibilities within the corps of cadets and the ROTC programs. The junior and senior ROTC programs and the corps of cadets are closely integrated and cadets, males and females alike, are allowed and encouraged to advance as far and as fast as they can as long as they keep making satisfactory academic progress.

The highlight of October is the preparations for and carrying out of the Homecoming Weekend. Each year former cadets and students return to campus for these events and reunions with classmates. The success of the Two Thousand in Two Thousand gathering has led to plans to hold an expanded reunion every five years. The support of the alumni is essential to keep the school operating.

There are reunion gatherings to attend; homecoming parades around the town to march in; and a football game to attend, complete with a queen and princesses and company displays, and a cadet homecoming dance.

One of the important parts of the reunion is where alumni and friends gather to pay tribute to those who have died in the past year and to those who had served in the armed forces and who paid the supreme price. This is held at the helicopter memorial, if possible, and allows one and all to think about those who have preceded us.

November is the last full month of the first semester. Students and faculty, alike, look forward to the holidays as a break from the routine.

The academy pays tribute to its veterans by holding an observance on the Eleventh of November at 1100. The corps is gathered together at the Doughboy statue if the weather permits, to hear from a speaker and to listen to the twenty-one round salute and “Taps” being played. The master of ceremonies also recognizes by name those who serve the academy and who are veterans.

At the end of the month comes the Thanksgiving holiday. Various methods have been tried to observe this holiday since the mid-1980s, until which the academy held classes up to noon on the Thursday of Thanksgiving and on the Friday following. Since that time Wentworth has followed most institutions in allowing students off at least Thursday and Friday.

December becomes a blur as the first semester comes to an end for junior college classes and the Christmas furlough comes for all. The band frequently performs at the Mineral Water Bowl in Excelsior Springs, which sometimes proves to be a chilly experience with frozen valves on trumpets. Military Ball planning begins and there are ACT and SAT tests given on the first two weekends.

The last four or five days before the beginning of the furlough are devoted to finals for junior college courses. There is usually a Christmas dinner for the cadets and faculty and a concert by the band and vocal groups for the student body and any townspeople who wish to attend. The break then occupies the next two full weeks and allows those who come from overseas sufficient time for travel.

College students usually come back and begin their new courses at the start of the second week in January whereas the secondary students are back in their classes by the second or third of January. They are preparing for their final exams, which begin the following week.

About twenty to forty new students come to the academy on that weekend following the high school finals. They present a challenge to train, motivate, and incorporate into the corps of cadets. They have frequently been integrated into one platoon or even into a company to get them started. We have found that a separate unit is one of the most effective ways of meeting the new boys’ needs and fitting them into the rest of the corps.

January and February are the quietest months of the school year. The weather in Lexington is frequently cold and snowy and schoolwork becomes an even bigger priority. The routine is broken by the weekly dress parades on Sunday and the timeout on one Sunday to watch the Super Bowl game on a large television in the mess hall, complete with hot dogs and popcorn.

The February landscape is broken by the weekend set aside for Career Day when alumni volunteers come to campus to talk to students about their careers and successes since leaving the academy. This becomes an important tool in the guidance of our secondary students who frequently do not have much idea of what they want to do with their lives after school. Sometimes ideas and opportunities come to WMA students as a result of this weekend.

All through the winter months basketball games and wrestling matches provide many of the weekly opportunities for recreation. District basketball and wrestling tournaments lead into March and the long-awaited spring. The band frequently makes a trip to New Orleans to participate in the Marti Gras at the end of Lent. This may be a high point in the band’s year and students are highly motivated to earn the right to go on the trip.

Spring Furlough usually begins about the second weekend of March and continues for roughly the next ten days. Students scatter to the winds to recreate after the long winter. The faculty members are just as happy to have the break. When they reassemble they all know that the last part of the school year will go by in a flash.

Track and field events are the main focus for spring sports. Golf and tennis matches also take students away from campus and the pace of course work increases for college students, and, of course, there is always a spring field training exercise for ROTC students and when possible, a staff ride to a battlefield in the vicinity.

The Military Ball, with its attendant parent’s visitation and company queens contest is the highlight of April. It becomes a very memorable event for both students and their dates alike.

May begins the winding down of the school year, but it is one of the busiest months with the activities banquet, awards ceremonies, and the Alumni Department Pizza Party to introduce graduating cadets to the world of being alumni. The last week of school is, of course, devoted to finals and, at last, the week ends with the awards and commissioning ceremonies on Friday and baccalaureate and commencement on Saturday.

The final parade and flag ceremonies are the two most memorable events for the departing graduates. Many tears have been shed over the years by those who are happy to get on with the rest of their lives, but are sad to leave the confines of the school and all those to whom they have grown close during their years at Wentworth.

Summer at Wentworth is a much quieter time than the school year. Hot weather makes things slow down and summer school is held for those needing remedial high school work, and the junior college summer terms follow one after another for those non-traditional students who attend. Prospective ROTC mini-campers come to campus to visit before going to basic camp at Fort Knox and the college freshmen of last year go off to advanced camp along with most of the ROTC cadre.

It is a time to work in a Civil War Living History Camp for two or three weeks if there is sufficient interest among reenactors. It is also a time to review what needs to be modified or reworked for the next year’s school year. The cadet rules and regulations and the personnel policy manuals are worked over and new staff are hired as necessary and vacations are taken.

Wentworth always has to embark on a program of summer renovations and maintenance tasks by its physical plant contractor and other hired contractors. Soon the jobs are complete, or well on their way to completion, August rolls around again, and the next year starts it all over again.

The Wentworth school year is cyclic in nature and very predictable. It feeds on tradition and values that remain in place year after year, generation after generation. That is its great strength and what makes Wentworth values resemble so very closely those of the nation. The success those graduates of the school have had in all aspects of their lives was molded here in this close-knit community in a small town overlooking the Missouri River. It will continue to do this as long as people are willing to invest each year what Col. Wikoff said was the “cost of a medium-sized Chevrolet sedan” in the education of the next generation.

THE END