Ohio Military Institute, 1935

Having recently written about my mother’s high school experiences, I decided I should do the same about my father. I don’t have a copy of his high school yearbook. I just discovered that the school (which was a military institute) did have yearbooks while he was a student, but I haven’t yet found a copy. What I do have is several pages from his mother’s scrapbook showing pictures and handwritten notes about her son.

As I have written before, my paternal grandmother lost her first husband and then her second within less than 10 years. She had few job skills and little way to provide for herself and her son. She had moved from the family farm into Felicity, Ohio and that is where my father started school and went through elementary and junior high school. At the same time, she was frequently away from home doing nursing jobs and her mother, Elizabeth Boothby, took care of my father. Thus, the two of them showed up in Felicity Ohio in the 1930 federal census while my grandmother was in Cincinnati living in a tuberculosis sanatorium as a nurse when the census was taken. My grandmother was apparently exhibiting increasing mental problems during this time period, of what variety I am not sure. She was overly attached to my father, that I do know.

At any rate, when my father got to be high school age, several people (including a physician my grandmother worked for and my father’s aunt) recommended strongly that my father be sent to a local boarding school rather than attending high school in Felicity and living at home with his mother and/or grandmother. So it was arranged that he would attend the Ohio Military Institute in Cincinnati. In September 1931, 3 months shy of 14 years old, he started high school at Ohio Military Institute.

The scrapbook record shows that my father joined the fraternity, Alpha Chi Sigma, played basketball for several years,

and was a good student who progressed through the ranks. I haven’t yet found out anything about the fraternity he joined, besides the name. There is a college fraternity of that name which is a chemistry and chemical engineering society but I don’t know that this is the same one. Based on Wikipedia, there do seem to be two different ones, but the high school fraternity isn’t any further described.

Newsclippings included in Carrie’s scrapbook show that my father won scholarship honors (not sure what that means exactly) and was promoted to

cadet captain. His graduating year he was selected best all-round cadet officer, and his company was the best-drilled. My grandmother was clearly very proud of him.

And now I understand where his stated activities and interests on his college application came from (“military drills and sports” as well as swimming, basketball and reading). I always thought the military drills sounded somewhat at odds with the college he applied to – Antioch College.  The interests in sports, especially swimming, and in reading were shared by my parents and likely some of the first things that drew them together.