My last days at Linton Hall: School is out!

The best thing about being in the eighth grade was knowing with complete certainty that it would be my last year at Linton Hall Military School.

That didn't really sink in at first, since I had a long academic year ahead of me, and was wrapped up in the novelty and demands of being an officer, but, sometime around May, I started counting down the days remaining. Then, a few days before graduation, I started counting the hours until my time at Linton Hall would be over.

One thing I remember about the last few days at Linton Hall is that the NCOs (non-commissioned officers, in other words, sargeants) from the seventh grade were left in charge, probably to give them some preparation for being officers the following year, but possibly because after we had received (or not received) our medals on Military Day, many of us didn't care too much about our responsibilities as officers.

We had more free time, and one afternoon the entire eighth grade got to go swimming. I can still recall us changing in a room in the poolhouse, a bunch of 13 to 15 year old boys as sexually developed as we were going to get before leaving Linton Hall Military School, having Sister Doris Nolte, O.S.B. (then known as Sister Mary David OSB) there in the room seeing us naked (watching is a more precise word) as we faced the wall while undressing, trying to avoid her seeing our private parts.

When we went to the pool she sat in the lifeguard's chair, fully dressed in her nun's habit. I wondered -- and feared -- what would happen if someone were about to drown. Would she be willing and able to jump in the pool in her habit and rescue the hapless boy? Just how important was safety? Why wasn't Bill or Linton Hall's Commandant there in her place?

Coming back to the dorms from the pool, I noticed that my bed had been remade, not as well as I had made it that morning, and my mattress had been replaced by one in better shape. The nun who was my dorm prefect said that it was being done so the graduating cadets would sleep better on the last couple of nights, and we would have better memories of Linton Hall Military School after we left.  She knew what was going on -- just like one of the cadets had observed that on the Fridays when we went home, the school lunch was better, so that if our parents asked us what we had eaten for lunch, we would describe that day's lunch, and not the typical meal we ate on other days at Linton Hall.

Another activity for the graduates was a "High Mass" at the Linton Hall convent. There was some really good musical accompaniment to the Mass; good singing by some nuns whom I had never seen before because they did not teach at Linton Hall Military School, and an especially memorable trumpet solo by a nun playing Bach's "Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring." I had not heard much classical music before, and did not learn the name of the composition until many years later, when I heard it again and recognized it, but I still remember watching the trumpet playing nun's face, her cheeks puffing out and turning red, as she played.

One evening, possibly our last evening at Linton Hall Military School, we graduates had dinner at tables that had been set up in the lounge next to the Principal's office. Some of the seventh graders served as waiters. If any of them are reading this, thank you. Over forty years later, I realize how uncomfortable it must have been to serve the graduates excellent food, when the "waiters" had eaten just another ordinary meal. Since we weren't allowed to have money, we couldn't even leave them a tip!

That was the only meal I ate from a china plate (instead of a metal tray) at Linton Hall Military School, and if I'm not mistaken, we each had a steak, same as those steaks whose smell we had noticed coming out of the nun's dining room so many times.

We had also done a dry run of the graduation ceremony, and the Linton Hall Commandant had said that if anyone was not graduating (because he had failed eighth grade) he would still be called to the stage and would receive a diploma holder just like anyone else, but there would be a blank sheet of paper instead of a Linton Hall Military School diploma inside, so that he would not be embarrassed in front of anyone. That was one of the few occasions I can recall of the Linton Hall school administrators not being concerned about embarrassing someone.

We wore white gloves with our dress uniforms at graduation, and paper is more slippery when handled with cotton gloves than with bare hands. One cadet, sitting near me, opened his diploma folder and found a piece of white paper inside, then struggled with his gloved fingers for several seconds that, to him, must have felt like an eternity, as he tried to lift it to see whether or not his diploma was underneath. I wanted to tell him that the white paper was just a protective sheet on top of the diploma, but of course we weren't allowed to speak. After a few seconds he was able to lift the paper to uncover his diploma. He happened to be the cadet with the second-highest grade point average, but Linton Hall Military School was such an unpredictable place that anything was possible.   Both he and the cadet with the highest grade point average had already arbitrarily been deprived of the honor of speaking at graduation, as I've related in my previous blog post, "How awards were given (or denied) at Linton Hall Military School."

When I left after graduating, I did not look back, literally or figuratively. I made no attempt to keep in touch either with those in my graduating class, or with others. Staying in touch would have meant reliving old memories, which I wanted to set aside. And how could I write to friends who were still there and tell them of how different, and wonderful, life after Linton Hall was?

Occasionally, I had nightmares about still being at Linton Hall, and when I woke up, I would feel my bed in the dark, notice that it was my bed at home and not the one at Linton Hall Military School, and go back to sleep. Such dreams became less frequent as the years went on, and less intense, since in later years I would dream that as an adult I was spending a weekend there (to relive the experience? -- dreams don't make much sense) but as an adult I dreamt that my car was parked behind the building, near the Commandant's Jeep, and I could leave anytime I wanted.

During waking hours I did not think about Linton Hall, but my focus was on all the opportunities that my newly restored freedom provided, from deciding what clothes to wear every day, to walking to school or the store, to what my first school dance would be like.

In 1972, I got an invitation from the school to an alumni reunion in observance of the 50th anniversary of the founding of Linton Hall Military School. I had no interest in going, and didn't.

Then in 1978, I happened to see an ad for Linton Hall in the Washington Post and sent away for a brochure, just to see whether the school had changed.

In 1980 I visited on Military Day. Other than the school having dropped the word "military" from its name, it seemed to be the same. Having grown up during the sixties and seventies, the thought had passed through my mind of picketing the school and handing out fliers on Military Day (I was in my early twenties at the time) but I didn't; I just observed for a couple of hours and did not speak to the nuns or Commandant.

It wasn't until around twenty years later that one day, when I happened to be driving on Route 66 in Virginia near Gainesville, I decided, on the spur of the moment, to make a detour to see Linton Hall Military School. The four or five mile trip to Linton Hall, which had previously been a deserted country road, was now packed with houses and townhouses. I wondered whether the school was still there at all. Then I saw it and drove up to the building. It was summer, and there didn't seem to be anyone around. I was about to get out of the car and knock on the front door to ask for permission to walk around the place, when a flood of memories came back, and I decided not to, but just drove around the building and left.

A few years later, as the internet grew, I found Charles Carreon's description of a typical day there, and later found Augustus Cho's book "Great Light Will Shine III: Linton Hall Military School" and ordered it. (1) Although he had written it decades after having been there, his recollections were crystal clear, as if he had written about everything the next day. I also saw the school's website, and found out that the school was now much different, and much better, than it had been in the past.

But there wasn't much else out there describing the conditions that I, and thousands of others, had experienced at Linton Hall Military School, things that had been actively hidden from parents through the school's long-standing practice of censoring all outgoing mail.

In March 2010, I decided to write about those things. A blog just happened to be the easiest way to share my memories on the web. I said what I felt needed to be said, and thought that would be it.

It wasn't until three months later that I wrote my second post, in which I discussed my experiences from an adult point of view. And I thought that would be my last word, which it was for the following six months.

Six months later, I started blogging in earnest, and have since written around 30 posts about Linton Hall Military School. Two of them I have not put on the web, but shared them just with other alumni on Facebook, since they were about specific individuals.

During the two years since I began writing this blog, I've heard from many other alumni, who attended Linton Hall Military School from the 1940s through the present day. I thank each and every one of you who has shared your thoughts and memories. Some of you view your experience there in a positive way, and although we disagree, I thank you for allowing me to consider your point of view.

There were cadet officers there who overstepped their authority. I forgive you for what you've done to me. At the same time, having been an officer myself, I realize that there were times when I called those under my command "a mess," "stupid," and similar words, trying to make them feel bad about themselves. I ask for your forgiveness, and hope that you did not believe what I said about you.

I believe that forgiveness is appropriate only for those who are truly sorry for their actions. I extend my forgiveness to those among the adults in charge who repent and apologize. Even those who did not mete out excessive punishment, tacitly allowed it through their silence. For example, when children who are seven or eight years old were humiliated and intentionally subjected to ridicule by being forced to wear their urine-soaked pajama bottoms around their neck all day, there was no was that nuns who taught or supervised the playground could not be aware of this. In a school where children wear uniforms, this can be spotted from a hundred feet away.

But no, in its official website the Benedictine sisters of Bristow, Virginia still deny this aspect of the past and claim that Linton Hall Military School "soon gained an international reputation for instilling leadership, integrity and character in its students." (2) Come on, the statute of limitations has long passed, why not do the right thing and admit what you did wrong?

I've since heard from recent alumni, and every indication is that today's Linton Hall School is a pretty good place, nothing like it was at the time I attended. I don't know what brought about these changes. Was it a desire to correct the past, or was it only a reaction to parental pressure and declining enrollment? When I look at my old yearbooks, I see that, without considering those graduating, only slightly more than half the students returned from one year to the next. Sounds like a big sign of dissatisfaction to me. Why did they simply drop the word "military" and start referring to themselves as "Linton Hall School" so many years before discontinuing the military program? Why did it take so long for the school to change and realize its potential?

Although I may have said many critical things about Linton Hall Military School, I've done my best to present a fair, balanced viewpoint and have written several times about the good academics and unique opportunities for camping and hiking that were provided by the school's extensive landholdings (over 1,700 acres when I was there.) With those resources, this could have been a wonderful school.

To my fellow cadets, we had a tough time there, and many of you had it far, far worse than I did. I wish you all the very best, and hope you had many good things happen to you in the years after you left.

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Read more in my two books: Linton Hall Military School Memories: One Cadet's Memoir" and "Linton Hall Military School Memories Volume 2."

The first volume is available only from amazon.com (or for shipments to Mexico, amazon.com.mx) The second volume (either English or Spanish version is available on Amazon as well as barnesandnoble.com and walmart.com in the US. In Mexico, it's available from either amazon.com.mx or lulu.com. Prices to Mexico may be shown in Mexican pesos.

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Footnotes:
1. "Great Light Will Shine III: Linton Hall Military School" by Augustus Cho, available at lulu.com
2. Brochure quoted in the June 8, 2012 entry at http://lhmscadet.wordpress.com
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Copyright 2013 by "Linton Hall Cadet."
Please respect copyright by linking to this post instead of copying and pasting.
This blog is not affiliated with Linton Hall Military School and all opinions are those of the author.
Comments are always welcome; please do not use your name or names of others.

Finding Linton Hall Alumni

Occasionally, some Linton Hall alumni have contacted me in their attempts to locate other Linton Hall alumni. The task is not easy because we live in a big country, with many people sharing the same name. Also, although most of us came from the DC metro area (those from Mexico were a notable exception) so many years have passed that many have moved out of the area. Here's what I've tried, and the results I've experienced.

Facebook.com
Although Facebook use is more prevalent among younger people, I have found classmates from the sixties and even a couple of alumni from the forties on Facebook. Since there are photos, you can quickly eliminate many name matches because they are not the age or race of the person you're looking for.

Google.com
Not too useful; I have read about a couple of Linton Hall alumni but was not able to get contact information.

Classmates.com
Good concept but didn't work in practice. The site lists about 300 Linton Hall Military School alumni (as well as more recent alumni of the post-military Linton Hall School.) The way it works, in order to be able to email someone, either the sender or the receiver must be a currently paid-up member. I signed up for a trial membership, which costs only a few bucks, and contacted all LHMS alumni, writing individual emails so as to avoid being blocked for sending spam. Only 3 or 4 opened my message. I suspect either the emails they provided are no longer current, or they have added Classmates to their spam list. (As a member I got a LOT of email from Classmates!)

Intelius.com and USsearch.com
These are people-finder databases. They appear to get most of their data from credit bureau reports (it's legal to sell and rent identifying information including name, address, phone and date of birth, but not Social Security numbers or information about credit accounts.) They also seem to get data from real estate purchases and phone directories.

You can do an initial search for free to see whether they have information for a certain name, then buy the contact information if you choose. I believe both companies offer an unlimited search pass, good for a 24-hour period, for about 20 bucks. I forget which of the two companies I used. By limiting searches to DC, MD, and VA, I found people whose current or previous address was in those states. Many results included the person's current age, helpful in narrowing down results. (Keep in mind that in many cases kids were 1, 2, sometimes even 3 years older than the "typical age" for that grade. In eighth grade, most of us were 13, but there were a couple of 14 and 15 year olds.

Results usually include several addresses (former and current, but without specifying which is the current one) so you'll probably have to mail off a form letter to several addresses. Phone numbers are only listed occasionally.

Spokeo.com
Offers a trial membership for 30 or 90 days (don't remember.) You can do quite a few searches in that period but it's not unlimited. Similar to the above databases.*** Update March 2025: truepeoplesearch.com is very useful and lets you search for free. ***

Mexicans and those from other countries
I know of no database to find them. (USSearch, Intelius and Spokeo only cover the U.S.) Mexicans, as well as those from other Spanish speaking countries, usually use a double last name (father's followed by mother's) and it would be very helpful to have both when searching for someone. Unfortunately, the Linton Hall Military School yearbook listed most under just their father's last name.

Other ways to search?
Please share them.

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Read more in my two books: Linton Hall Military School Memories: One Cadet's Memoir" and "Linton Hall Military School Memories Volume 2."

The first volume is available only from amazon.com (or for shipments to Mexico, amazon.com.mx) The second volume (either English or Spanish version is available on Amazon as well as barnesandnoble.com and walmart.com in the US. In Mexico, it's available from either amazon.com.mx or lulu.com. Prices to Mexico may be shown in Mexican pesos.
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Copyright 2012 by "Linton Hall Cadet."
Please respect copyright by linking to this post instead of copying and pasting.
This blog is not affiliated with Linton Hall Military School and all opinions are those of the author.
Comments are always welcome; please do not use your name or names of others.

Fun in the Snow!

During "rest" in the evening, as well as after school, we would get a candy bar or, sometimes, a popsicle. Sometimes we had a choice and we would line up at the canteen; other times we all got the same thing.

In those days, candy bars, as well as full-size cereal boxes (not the single-serve cereal boxes they gave us at breakfast) often had offers whereby you could collect wrappers, or sometimes just part of the wrapper, and send them in for little toy items. The candy bars we got at Linton Hall Military School often had such offers, and I remember that after we got our candy (they were called "lunches" possibly as a way for the administration to conceal the fact that we were getting billed for candy on our sundries account) there was a nun, whose name I don't remember, who would collect those wrappers so that she could order free items. I wasn't too happy with the concept; since our parents were paying for the candy, the wrappers -- and the valuable prizes we could get for them -- should have been ours, not hers. I also wondered what a grown woman was doing with the numerous little toys she was getting.

Turns out that my suspicions had been unfounded. One day, when we returned to our dorm, we saw that on each of our beds there was a red plastic object, about three feet long. Here's what it looked like:

Called a Sno-Fling, or Snofling, it's a snowball maker/thrower that works by pushing the wide end onto snow, and flicking it to throw a snowball. And we actually got to use it (just once, I believe) at a snow battle at Linton Hall Military School. We were told to take it home on the following weekend, and I did get a little enjoyment out of it at home. Years later it landed in our attic (I remember seeing it there when I was a teen) and probably eventually got either thrown away or donated. I believe that there is a photo in one of the Linton Hall yearbooks where you can see a couple of them if you look closely in one of the photos.

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Read more in my two books: Linton Hall Military School Memories: One Cadet's Memoir" and "Linton Hall Military School Memories Volume 2."

The first volume is available only from amazon.com (or for shipments to Mexico, amazon.com.mx) The second volume (either English or Spanish version is available on Amazon as well as barnesandnoble.com and walmart.com in the US. In Mexico, it's available from either amazon.com.mx or lulu.com. Prices to Mexico may be shown in Mexican pesos.

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Copyright 2012 by "Linton Hall Cadet."
Please respect copyright by linking to this post instead of copying and pasting.
This blog is not affiliated with Linton Hall Military School and all opinions are those of the author.
Comments are always welcome; please do not use your name or names of others.

We used to shoot real guns at Linton Hall

When I was thirteen years old, I and other boys my age used to shoot live ammunition inside the Linton Hall Miltary School building every other Friday.

Because of the tragic school shootings that have occurred in recent years, it may be hard to believe that the Officers' Rifle Club once existed, but it did.

The rifles that we carried during drill and parades were realistic but non-working replicas. You couldn't actually shoot anything out of them, but they were made of wood and steel and had a working bolt. Those rifles came in different sizes, so that the smaller kids could have smaller rifles. But the rifles we shot in the rifle range were real weapons.

Just as it wasn't unusual for fathers to take their sons fishing, it wasn't unusual for fathers to take their sons along hunting once they had reached their early teens, or sometimes a couple of years before. Were kids more responsible then than they are now? I don't know.

Being in the rifle club was a special privilege extended to eight graders who were officers. It's possible that some non-officer eighth graders were allowed to join the rifle club, or at least got a chance to do some shooting at least a couple of times during the year I was in eighth grade, but I don't remember.

We had to pay five dollars to join (which was quite a bit of money back then, when the minimum wage was just under a dollar an hour.) The club was officially a chapter of the NRA, but I always thought of it as the Linton Hall Military School Rifle Club. We had to bring in the money in cash (or check) and couldn't just have the fee billed to our school account. I know I brought cash, my own money, because I wasn't going to risk being told by my parents that no, I couldn't join. Not that I cared that much about being in the club, it was more than I didn't want to be the only officer not allowed to join by his parents. Although my father (like many other men) did go hunting and owned a rifle, my parents never bought me a toy gun (something that most boys owned at the time, just like toy cars.) I don't know how anti-gun they were, but I didn't want to make a big deal out of it. I don't even remember whether or not we needed a signed permission slip. If we did, it's possible that I claimed that the "Officers' Rifle Club" was something like the drill team in which cadets marched with rifles, but didn't actually do any shooting.

The rifle range was under the Linton Hall Military School building, either under the classroom wing or under the main part of the building just next to the classroom building. It wasn't in a finished basement, but in a crawl space that had been dug out, by hand, with shovels, by other cadets years before. I am grateful to them for doing that hard and dirty work. It is likely that the rifle range still exists at Linton Hall School and that it remains much as it was back then, since it would have been a big job to dismantle the metal backstop, and I doubt there was any need to use that crawl space for other purposes.

We would shoot at heavy paper targets, the size of a sheet of paper. The targets were taped to a backstop made of welded steel that looked something like a large Venetian blind, about 8 feet high and 15 feet wide, with the "slats" about 3 inches wide and 1/4 inch thick steel. The bullets would go through the paper target, hit the steel backdrop and be deflected down at a 45 degree angle, then hit another metal slat, and go into some sandbags that were piled behind the backstop. This was necessary because a .22 caliber rifle bullet is extremely powerful; if nothing stops it, it can travel more than a mile or, if it's shot at solid wood, it can penetrate a couple of inches, depending on the hardness of the wood. The Commandant taught us this, as well as very important safety precautions. We would shoot at the targets from roughly twenty feet away and, of course, it was necessary for someone to periodically go to the backstop, take down the paper targets, and tape up new ones, thus being in what was the line of fire. Before targets were put up or taken down, everyone had to put down his rifle, and leave it unloaded with the bolt open, to prevent any possibility of an accidental firing. A rifle is much more lethal than a handgun, not only because of the power of its bullet, but because of its accuracy.

For safety, the rifles were kept in a gun safe in the Commandant's office. (For those who attended Linton Hall after it was no longer a military school, this would be the last office on your left in the main building before you reach the gym.) Several of us would carry the rifles between his office and the rifle range (one person could carry a couple of them, but not all because of their weight, although more than once someone tried (and maybe succeeded) in carrying most or all of them, just to show off his strength. The Commandant himself would carry the ammunition (separately from the guns, for safety,) but I seem to remember that one time early in the year, when the Commandant was delayed by a phone call, he might have entrusted the Battalion Commander, the highest ranking cadet, to carry them to the rifle range, with strict instructions not to take them out of the box until the Commandant arrived.

We would normally get to do target shooting every other Friday, on the Fridays when we did not get to go home for the weekend. After target shooting, we got to go back to our dorms and impress the other cadets with our paper targets. Even if you weren't a good shot (I know I wasn't) they were still impressed that you got to shoot a real gun. We also got to keep the spent shell casings, which were about an inch long and bright, shiny brass. Bright shiny metal objects are appealing to kids, especially boys in a military school, where shining shoes, leather belts, and brass insignia is an obsession. What could you do with shell casings? Everyone had a metal folding chair next to his bed, and the seat had holes in it that made up a star pattern, and the shells would just fit into the holes, so a couple of us officers put them there to decorate our chairs.

I've been wondering a long time whether I should write about the rifle range. You'll soon see why.

One day, the Commandant told us we could no longer take away the spent shells, but that they had to be turned in and counted, to make sure that the number of spent shells each one turned in was the same as the number of live shells he had been given, so as to make sure that no one was holding back live ammunition. He counted the number of holes in each person's paper target too, but that method wasn't very reliable, since someone who was a really good shot could sometimes end up shooting two bullets through the same hole, or a particularly bad shooter could miss his paper target entirely, as by mistakenly closing the wrong eye when shooting, which had been known to happen. (I won't mention who did this.)

Why this sudden precaution? Rumor had it -- and I'm just repeating what I heard, without any knowledge of its accuracy -- that one of the officers had threatened to shoot another officer. This would have been an extremely serious threat, since a .22 bullet can kill. I wondered why, in addition to the precautions, the one making the threat had not been either permanently banned from the range, or expelled. But every time after that, when it was my turn to put up or take down the paper targets, I kept my eye on the guns to make sure they remained down and with the bolt open.

But there's more.

When we carried the rifles to the range, we would walk as a group, but not marching in formation, probably because it's not practical to march while you're carrying a bunch of rifles.

One time, when we were walking down the stairs to the rifle range, I overheard snippets of a conversation between two officers who were walking behind me. "We could take over the school with these rifles," one said. A second or two later, I heard another snippet, "We could put blankets over the windows." I didn't want to turn around and see who had said this, because I didn't want to let on that I had heard them. There was no way to see them out of the corner of my eye, I didn't recognize their voice, and although I could see their clothing with my peripheral vision, that was of no use, since we all wore the same uniform. So I never found out who had said this. I wondered what good it would do to to put blankets over the windows during an armed takeover, since obviously a blanket wasn't going to stop a bullet that could go through a couple of inches of plywood. Later, I figured out that it would have been a way to stop sharpshooters outside from seeing inside the building.

I dismissed this as probably being just idle talk, which is what it turned out to be; thank God, nothing like that happened. To be on the safe side, I should have reported what I heard, but I did not.

Having said that, I was in a difficult situation. A 13-year-old in my shoes would want to ask his parents for advice on what to do, but there was no way I could write home and ask, without the letter being read by the Principal, since all outgoing mail was censored.

I feared, and did not trust, both the Commandant and the Principal, and was afraid that if I talked to either one of them, there was a high risk that they would not safeguard my identity. If those who had discussed a possible armed takeover had been serious about it, I would have been in serious danger, especially while sleeping.

I also didn't know whether the Commandant or Principal would believe me, or would think that I was making something up, either to get attention, or to get taken out of Linton Hall Military School.

It would have been near-impossible to report this anonymously in an environment with so little privacy and so much regimentation. Perhaps I could have written an anonymous note in the dorm without being seen, but I don't know how I could have slipped it under the Commandant or Principal's office door without being observed. I would have had to go there in the middle of the night, risking that someone would see me leaving the dorm, or going down the stairs, or in the hallway. I didn't know this back then, but when I read Louie LeMoine's obituary I learned that he not only did landscaping, but also was night watchman. I had always assumed that the ground floor would be deserted at night.

It's always best to report something like this, even if it might turn out to be idle talk, just because of the grave risk that the threat might be serious. I wish I had reported it, but I did not.

I shudder to think what could have happened. This was the 1960s, and there were a lot of protests and sit-ins, many of them about the war in Vietnam and the lack of civil rights for blacks. College students had taken over university buildings, mostly using nonviolent means. Yet even in nonviolent protests, protesters had been killed, as at Kent State in May, 1970. What would have happened during an armed school takeover? I don't even want to think about it.

Thank God this was all idle talk.

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Read more in my two books: Linton Hall Military School Memories: One Cadet's Memoir" and "Linton Hall Military School Memories Volume 2."

The first volume is available only from amazon.com (or for shipments to Mexico, amazon.com.mx) The second volume (either English or Spanish version is available on Amazon as well as barnesandnoble.com and walmart.com in the US. In Mexico, it's available from either amazon.com.mx or lulu.com. Prices to Mexico may be shown in Mexican pesos.

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Copyright 2012 by "Linton Hall Cadet."
Please respect copyright by linking to this post instead of copying and pasting.
This blog is not affiliated with Linton Hall Military School and all opinions are those of the author.
Comments are always welcome; please do not use your name or names of others.

Special Sunday Treat at Linton Hall Military School

There was a special treat for us on Sundays. Something besides the donut we got at breakfast. Something besides the smug irony of noticing that when there was a second serving line, the bread was kept inside a clean garbage can, lined with a black plastic bag, so we were -- literally -- eating out of trash cans.

But there was another special treat, one reserved just for officers. Over the nine months of the school year, we spent about two Sundays a month a Linton Hall Military School, for a total of about eighteen Sundays. And there just happened to be eighteen officers, too, three for each of the five companies, plus three battalion staff.

I hadn't really noticed what the special treat was, since I was too busy dealing with the cadets under my command, and worshiping during Mass, in spite of distractions such as Sister Theresa's shouted exhortations to sing louder, and the "ouches" from kids she would hit in the hand with a paddle whenever they didn't sing loud enough for her.

But one day, just as I was about to enter the gym, another cadet informed me that I would get to accompany the Principal, Sister Mary David, during Mass. I had never noticed other officers doing this before. I'm not sure whether you did this if you happened to be "Officer of the Day" on that Sunday, or whether there was a schedule so that every officer got this "privilege."

So anyway, I had to walk in with her, not sure if beside her or with her actually holding my arm as she would with an usher escorting her down the aisle at a wedding. Now kids are notoriously unable to hold back their emotions and keep a "poker face," and my feelings about having to do this must have been pretty obvious. I must have looked as if I had been forced to chew a sour lemon, or a bar of soap, and I'm sure she noticed.

After I accompanied to her seat I was about to return to my company, but no, she told me that I was expected to sit next to her during the entire Mass. More unhappy facial expressions on my part, I'm sure. She made a cutting remark about some small imperfection in my uniform, taking advantage of the fact that I couldn't talk back to her -- not if I knew what was good for me. She probably thought, in her haughtiness, that accompanying her at Mass was some type of honor or privilege, but I certainly didn't feel that way. Even back then I realized that she was a great Math teacher, and an effective manager/administrator, but on the other hand she was responsible for all the suffering that went on at Linton Hall Military School, everything I've written about, and moreover took active steps to censor outgoing mail to keep the truth from getting out, so I had no respect for her.

I am sure that if there had been nineteen Sundays spent at Linton Hall Military School that academic year, I would have been the last person she would have chosen to reward with this special treat a second time.

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Read more in my two books: Linton Hall Military School Memories: One Cadet's Memoir" and "Linton Hall Military School Memories Volume 2."

The first volume is available only from amazon.com (or for shipments to Mexico, amazon.com.mx) The second volume (either English or Spanish version is available on Amazon as well as barnesandnoble.com and walmart.com in the US. In Mexico, it's available from either amazon.com.mx or lulu.com. Prices to Mexico may be shown in Mexican pesos.

-------
Copyright 2012 by "Linton Hall Cadet."
Please respect copyright by linking to this post instead of copying and pasting.
This blog is not affiliated with Linton Hall Military School and all opinions are those of the author.
Comments are always welcome; please do not use your name or names of others.

Why do some alumni see nothing negative about Linton Hall Military School?

The best answer I've come up with is, "I don't know." The second best answer, the result of much thinking, is the subject of this post. I've tried hard to understand this, but cannot come up with a satisfactory answer.

Over the past two years, I've been in contact with other Linton Hall Military School alumni on Facebook, and occasionally there will be someone who sees his experience there as totally positive. Some of these cadets attended at the same time I did.

I find this surprising, since virtually everything I write about is something that I saw with my own eyes at Linton Hall. Not just that, but given that there was little or no privacy at Linton Hall Military School, almost everything that happened was witnessed by anywhere from thirty cadets (in a classroom) to 200 or more cadets (the entire battalion.) We can disagree about whether the discipline and punishments were positive or negative, appropriate or excessive, but it is a fact that they happened.

Moreover, I am not one of the cadets who was punished a lot. Other than being made to stand at attention, the only physical punishment I remember was being paddled once. That's once during the couple of years I was there. But I saw much worse done to others, often in front of the entire battalion, and I would be lacking in empathy if that did not bother me. At one point I was so disgusted at seeing someone treated that way by the Commandant of Linton Hall Military School, that I seriously considered giving up my hard-earned rank as an officer and handing in my bars, right then and there. The fact that I was an officer, and was even awarded a medal, also shows that I followed the rules and did what was expected of me. It wasn't because I held the Linton Hall school administration in high regard, even back then, but only because I did not want to experience the punishments that I saw meted out to others.

I've written a lot about Linton Hall Military School, and just as I've written about the negative aspects, I've also written about the positive ones. I've been criticized for writing about the negatives, but I have yet to be told that anything I've said about my experience, either what happened to me or what I saw happen to others, was inaccurate. The reason I chose "Linton Hall Cadet" (instead of something like "John Doe") as a pen name, is that we all lived by the same rules, and had the same things happen to us, or at least observed the same things happening to others. So, what I write isn't just about me; it's about all of us.

I haven't seen any persuasive arguments that the rigid rules and strong punishments were positive; not arguments that would persuade me, anyway.

I've discussed our divergent views with some of these alumni on Facebook; a couple have unfriended me. I understand that it's not pleasant to rehash unpleasant memories, but I don't understand getting to the point of denying them entirely. I've given credit where credit is due, and said many positive things about Linton Hall Military School, but a true picture must include all the negatives as well.

I also believe that it's important to note that I, as well as others who have written about their experience at Linton Hall, are doing so as adults many years after the fact, and from an adult perspective.

As a child, there are many things I disliked having to do, but was made to do, either by my parents, or at Linton Hall: school attendance, doing my homework, brushing my teeth, eating my vegetables, going to bed at a reasonable time, and so on. But as an adult, I recognize the benefits of those activities and am grateful that I was made to do them.

But those are not the things that I've complained about, or that others have complained about. I've written about serious things that I believe any reasonable adult would consider wrong. Even as a child I knew the difference between appropriate and petty rules, and between appropriate and excessive punishment. Again, I was only paddled once and can recall no other physical punishment being inflicted upon me other than having to stand at attention for a reasonable period of time. But for many of those who attended Linton Hall Military School their experience was far worse than mine.

From what I've been able to gather, Linton Hall has changed dramatically and for the better since I was there during the late 1960s. I've seen photos from the 1980s, Linton Hall's last decade as a military school, and it looked quite different, with doors on the bathroom stalls, more pleasant looking dorms, and even a school dance with girls (from another school) in attendance. And I know that today's Linton Hall School is a coed non-military day school, with a principal who is not a nun. I haven't communicated with any current students or recent alumni, but I've seen photos in which the students seem genuinely happy to be there. These are photos taken by the students themselves, not photos from the school brochure, which one would expect to show the school's best side, as brochures are apt to do.

Recently, I heard from a former cadet who was there for a few years during the 1960s. He said he finds it "frustrating" when someone says "anything negative" about the school. A couple of others have expressed similar sentiments, but this particular alumnus is now a member of the Linton Hall School Board. What I heard from him is definitely not what I wanted to hear from someone currently involved with the school. I wish he would have said that Linton Hall School had addressed its previous shortcomings, and is now a much better place than it was when he was there. But if he sees nothing wrong with the way the school was then, where does that leave us? Does he really believe that Linton Hall School should take LHMS as its model and go back to everything I've described in my first blog posting two years ago? Does he believe that they should implement the long list of punishments written about by the other blogger in http://lhmscadet.wordpress.com ?

Progress requires an honest look at the past. Teachers correct homework so students can learn from their mistakes. Linton Hall School should also look at its past, recognize what the adults in charge did wrong, and take the necessary steps to make sure the same actions aren't repeated. An apology to the 5,000 or so cadets who attended over the years would be the right thing to do, not that it would change the past, but it would be a good step. But it should be freely given, not in response to a request by me or anyone else.

Much of what went on at Linton Hall Military School has remained hidden for far too long. It is only in recent years, with the spread of the Internet, that I and others have been able to speak publicly about this.

While we were at Linton Hall, outgoing (and occasionally incoming) mail was censored. This is a practice that rarely exists in boarding schools, and is more typical of prisons, POW camps, mental institutions and so son. At Linton Hall, outgoing mail had to be left unsealed so that it could be read. If something too negative was said in the letter, it would be thrown away and not be mailed. Sister Mary David O.S.B., the principal at the time, once told a classroom full of cadets (I was present in that classroom) about one such letter.

With roughly 210 cadets in the school, if each one wrote just one letter home a week, that was 210 letters in a week, or 30 per day, that needed to be read and censored. Let's say it took two minutes per letter, that's an hour a day that the principal dedicated to this activity, in addition to her duties as principal and teacher. Why did she need to do this? Surely not to prevent us from saying that it was a wonderful school, causing it to be flooded with eager applicants!

But I digress. Back to my original question. I thought that maybe those who could see nothing wrong about Linton Hall Military School were:

* Those who never got in trouble. No, there is someone who got punished a lot, in the harshest ways known to Linton Hall, and now he says he deserved it. On the other hand, both I and the other blogger both rose to officer rank.

* Those who went there for many years and don't have other schools to which they can compare Linton Hall. That's not it either, two cadets who were there for just one year, one for seventh grade, the other for eighth, see the school positively. On the other hand, I was there just a couple of years, and the schools before and after LHMS were far better.

* Those who came from difficult family conditions at home. Not that either, some have confided in me through private message or email that they had parents who, shall we say, were less than ideal, and yet they hated it there. Others had a pretty good home life, and have positive things to say about Linton Hall.

* For this last possibility, I'm playing amateur psychologist. There is something called the "Stockholm Syndrome" named after hostages held for five days by bank robbers in Sweden in 1973, who became emotionally attached to their captors and even defended them after being released. Paradoxically, sometimes a bond forms between the victims and those who mistreat them. This appears to have been the case for Patty Hearst as well as Jaycee Lee Dugard.
(See, for example, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockholm_syndrome )

Yet none of these explanations is good enough. The past can't be denied. Yet why some are unable to see anything negative about it, is something I still don't understand.

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Read more in my two books: Linton Hall Military School Memories: One Cadet's Memoir" and "Linton Hall Military School Memories Volume 2."

The first volume is available only from amazon.com (or for shipments to Mexico, amazon.com.mx) The second volume (either English or Spanish version is available on Amazon as well as barnesandnoble.com and walmart.com in the US. In Mexico, it's available from either amazon.com.mx or lulu.com. Prices to Mexico may be shown in Mexican pesos.

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Copyright 2012 by "Linton Hall Cadet."
Please respect copyright by linking to this post instead of copying and pasting.
This blog is not affiliated with Linton Hall Military School and all opinions are those of the author.
Comments are always welcome; please do not use your name or names of others.

The 1940s at Linton Hall Military School

In my previous post, I wrote about John Phillips of The Mamas and the Papas, who attended Linton Hall from 1942 to 1946. As interesting as it is to know that a celebrity attended the school, I find even more interesting what he has to say about Linton Hall Military School in his autobiography. This is the earliest published account of LHMS by an alumnus that I am aware of.

He doesn't say too much about Linton Hall; it is mentioned mostly only on three pages,
pages 41 -43 of his autobiography, but what little he says makes it sound as bad as the Linton Hall I attended a quarter century after he did. The book also has a couple of photos of John and other cadets in their dress uniform, which looks just like our uniform did. I guess not much changed over so many years.

John entered Linton Hall in the Fall of 1942, shortly after his seventh birthday, and stayed there for four years, through Spring of 1946, just before turning eleven. Sent there because his father had alcohol problems and his mother was at work from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. (including commuting) he was entrusted to the nuns at Linton Hall.

"I hated the place," he says, even though he earned good grades, made many friends, and played sports.

The current building had not yet been built, and the cadets slept in bunk beds. Shortly after he arrived, his bunkmate told him that when the nuns take cadets to the office to beat them, "they do it to you naked." John misunderstood, thinking it was the nuns who were naked. As funny as that is, it is still awful that a defenseless seven year old would be beaten by adults.

Nuns watched the boys shower back then, too. "Nuns watched us take showers to screen us for [homosexuals.] Of course, that just flushed them out to the gym, the bedrooms, and the woods," he says. If I understand this correctly, it is extremely disturbing that there would have been sexual activity between cadets, especially in an environment with such an age disparity and with officers with so much power. I must say that I never heard any rumors of such activities while I was at Linton Hall Military School.

The brightest aspect of his time there was his mother's weekly visits on Sunday afternoons, when she would take the train from D.C. and then a bus provided by the school. She always brought a picnic lunch, and John "lived for those picnics" and the few hours when he could "forget the inspections and the beatings."

A couple of years after John Phillips left Linton Hall Military School, and was attending a Junior High parochial school, a nun asked him why his parents didn't come to parent-teacher conferences, and John replied that it was because they worked very hard. "No, John, it's because they don't really love you," answered the nun. He slapped her across the cheek.

Had John stayed at Linton Hall, he would have graduated around 1949. I am in contact with three alumni who attended Linton Hall Military School during the 1940s, and I will ask them to comment on conditions there.


Source: Phillips, John Papa John - An Autobiography Doubleday & Co. 1986 (hardcover) pages 41-43. Also published in paperback by Dell in 1987

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Read more in my two books: Linton Hall Military School Memories: One Cadet's Memoir" and "Linton Hall Military School Memories Volume 2."

The first volume is available only from amazon.com (or for shipments to Mexico, amazon.com.mx) The second volume (either English or Spanish version is available on Amazon as well as barnesandnoble.com and walmart.com in the US. In Mexico, it's available from either amazon.com.mx or lulu.com. Prices to Mexico may be shown in Mexican pesos.
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Copyright 2012 by "Linton Hall Cadet."
Please respect copyright by linking to this post instead of copying and pasting.
This blog is not affiliated with Linton Hall Military School and all opinions are those of the author. Comments are always welcome; please do not use your name or names of others.

How awards were given (or denied to those who deserved them) at Linton Hall Military School

At Linton Hall Military School, medals and other awards were sometimes given or denied arbitrarily. This is an account of three cadets and the awards they did, and did not, deserve.

A few days before graduation, Sister Mary David O.S.B., the school principal, went into the eighth grade classroom and announced that this was the time of the year when she would normally announce the names of the three eighth graders with the highest grade point average. The highest ranked, the Valedictorian, would be awarded a gold-colored medal and speak at graduation; the second, called the Salutatorian, would also speak at graduation and be awarded a silver colored medal. The third would be awarded a bronze colored medal.

That year, she said, since no one in the graduating class had earned a grade point average of at least 90%, there would be no academic awards given.

At least one cadet asked her to at least tell the class the names of these cadets, and she actually did so. She announced the names of the first two. The first one had a grade average of slightly above 88%, the second slightly below 88%, and the third, she said, was so far below the first two that she would not even give his name. Although the names of the cadets are known to me, I will refer to them as "First" and "Second."

She also implied that it was because of laziness, or stupidity, or both, that no one had achieved an average above 90%. Although some cadets may have been at times lazy, or not bright in some subjects (and I would not deny that I had been lazy at times or found some subjects difficult) I think it was extremely presumptuous of her to blame the low grades entirely on the students. When the average is low for the entire class, I would be more inclined to see the cause as being either teachers who were particularly tough that particular year (especially when grading assignments such as essays, for which there is no objective standard) or some teachers being less than effective in teaching material.

In any case, the award was for being first, second and third. Just as the runners in a race are ranked against each other and not against those in preceding years, it makes no more sense to deny an award to those scoring less than 90% than it would make sense to have half a dozen valedictorians if in a particular year there were six graduating seniors with average grades above 90%, or wherever the cutoff may be.

Sister Mary David went on to say that since the two with the highest grade average were not worthy of speaking at graduation, that she would pick someone else to give the speech.

Now wait a second. We couldn't have been lazy or stupid, because we realized that it made no sense to deny "First" and "Second" the honor of speaking, and instead appoint "Cadet X" who, at best, had a grade point average far below that of the first two, or, at worst, was at the botton of the class.

Shortly after, several eighth graders discussed this incident. The three cadets involved, "First," "Second," and "Cadet X," were all present. "Cadet X" told the first two that he would decline to speak at graduation, since he did not deserve the honor. I will not keep you in suspense; he did not do the right thing, and did speak at graduation. I do not want to be too harsh on him, since he was only 13 or 14 years old at the time, but he clearly knew that he was taking something he did not deserve, but failed to do the right thing. I have far harsher things to say about Sister Mary David, an adult in her forties, who chose to have the graduating class and their parents addressed by someone who, by accepting this opportunity, was someone who took something which he did not deserve, and was far from a positive role model.

I think that Sister Mary David made a big mistake by revealing the names of the two cadets who had placed highest. Not only did she say this to the entire eighth grade class, but the rumor mill being what it was in such a small school, it did not take long for most of the seventh graders, the faculty, and most of the other cadets to know what had happened.

But there's more to the story. Although I have not identified the three cadets by name, their names are known to me, as are their birthplaces. "Cadet X" had an Anglo-Saxon last name, and was presumably born in the U.S.. Both "First" and "Second" had last names that were definitely not Anglo-Saxon, they had both been born in Latin America, and their native language was Spanish. Although I cannot know what went on in the principal's mind, or what her motivation was, those are the facts about the three cadets' names and birthplaces. You can draw your own conclusions.

It would also be safe to assume that "First" and "Second" wrote home about this incident. Since outgoing mail was censored, and Sister Mary David said she knew Spanish, anyone want to bet that those letters went out?

Sometime after this incident, "First" took some cardboard and pencils and made his own medal, a medal with the number one, and the words "Gypped Out" underneath. He showed it to other cadets, and I would not be surprised if Sister Mary David had found out, but I can't recall him being punished for it.

At graduation, after all the other medals had been given, "First" and "Second" did receive their medals, but they were announced as "academic awards" or some other low-key phrase. But "Cadet X" gave the speech that the other two cadets rightfully should have given.

As usual, comments are welcome, but please do not mention the names of these cadets.

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Read more in my two books: Linton Hall Military School Memories: One Cadet's Memoir" and "Linton Hall Military School Memories Volume 2."

The first volume is available only from amazon.com (or for shipments to Mexico, amazon.com.mx) The second volume (either English or Spanish version is available on Amazon as well as barnesandnoble.com and walmart.com in the US. In Mexico, it's available from either amazon.com.mx or lulu.com. Prices to Mexico may be shown in Mexican pesos.

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Copyright 2012 by "Linton Hall Cadet."
Please respect copyright by linking to this post instead of copying and pasting.
This blog is not affiliated with Linton Hall Military School and all opinions are those of the author.

"Linton Hall ....... School" (The word "military" doesn't appear anywhere!)

I recently wrote how Linton Hall Military School, although it remained a military school until 1989, had stopped calling itself "military" at least ten years before. In that post, I mentioned how by 1978, the school's advertising completely omitted the word "military" both from the name and description of the school.

In the above ad a from The Washington Post, August 12, 1979, the word see if you can firnd the word "military" anywhere. You can't. Nor do the boys' clothing, un-military posture, or their smiles betray the fact that "Linton Hall ........ School" was still a military school.

What happened when someone replied to the ad and requested more information, this is the letter they received:

Does the word "military" appear anywhere here? No, not at all.

See my previous post to find out where the word "military" actually appears, somewhere inside the 1978-79 "Linton Hall ......... School" brochure.

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Copyright 2011 by Linton Hall Cadet.

Please respect copyright by linking to this post instead of copying and pasting.

This blog is not affiliated with Linton Hall Military School and all opinions are those of the author. Comments are always welcome; please do not use your name or names of others.

Why would a "military school" even exist?

We all tend to accept what is familiar as being "normal" without taking time to question it from an outside perspective.

This is the case with fashion; what is fashionable at one time may be considered bizarre a few short years later. Or certain foods may be considered normal in one country and bizarre or disgusting in another.

As alumni who spent years in military school, we are not shocked or surprised that military schools existed. For us, this was our everyday experience. But think about it for a moment, isn't it strange to have a school in which boys dress up as soldiers, not just on Halloween, but every waking hour of the day, not just during recess but also in the classroom and at Mass? And that they have military ranks such as Sargeant and Captain and spend countless hours parading around while carrying fake rifles; except for the "officers" who carry real sabres (albeit with dull edges) and (empty) handgun holsters while out hiking?

Can you imagine if they had schools where kids dressed up and pretended to be something else? What if there was a Linton Hall Native American School in which kids wore feather headdresses and face and body paint all the time, even in the classroom and at Mass? Or a Linton Hall Hippie School at which they forced boys to grow their hair long, wear tie-dye shirts and march around the blacktop carrying signs that said "End the Vietnam War" and "Legalize Marijuana?"

Wouldn't you think of the school administrators who came up with such a concept, and the parents who bought into it, as being just a little weird?

I would argue that this wouldn't be any stranger, any more insane than "military school."

The Linton Hall school brochures that I have seen talk about "turning boys into men." We're talking about boys in Kindergarten through eighth grade. That's ages six through thirteen, though there were 14 and 15 year old eighth graders while I was there. And although at the time I attended the youngest boys were in second grade, I have read of there being at least one kindergarden boy at Linton Hall Military School during its history.

What the heck is wrong in letting boys be boys?

A military regimen is stifling enough for older kids, but how can you justify having little kids in second and third grade who still believe in Santa Claus and still get confused about which side is right and which side is left being forced to march and turn "right face" or "left face?"

A fellow alumnus in his blog http://lhmscadet.wordpress.com says that "Seventh grade was not a good year to be new at school. Everyone else in the class were in positions as sergeants and the new seventh graders started out as privates. " As someone who entered Linton Hall as an older boy, I agree with this. But at least I had attended other schools, and had the experience of knowing what good, non-military schools were like. I also knew that at worst I would get to leave upon graduation, which was a tolerable amount of time away.

I think that for anyone who entered as a younger child it was far worse, because he never saw that there was an alternative, never had a chance to live in a school environment where every minute of his life was not micromanaged by obsessive-compulsive "officers" and staff who paid major importance to meaningless, inconsequential details of everything to how the uniform was worn to how the bed was made.

Is that the kind of "men" we were expected to become? Blindly obedient idiots who need to be constantly reminded about what to do and when to do it? Automatons with no initiative, no individuality and no creativity? Unmotivated bodies needing the threat of severe punishment to be coerced into doing everyday tasks such as brushing their teeth?

Sadly, I believe the answer is yes.

Nowadays violent punishment has fallen out of fashion, and the same results of passive conformity are achieved by drugging (not "medicating") children into stupor. The statistics on the percentage of children being given psychotropic drugs is truly frightening.

I consider myself lucky to have been at Linton Hall Military School only a couple of years, and at an age when, even though I could not fight the situation, I was able to see it for what it was.

And I am happy that Linton Hall has stopped being military, is no longer a boarding school, and is co-ed. It seems to be a far better place than it once was, and I hope the students attending it today have a much more positive experience than I did.

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Copyright 2011 by Linton Hall Cadet.
Please respect copyright by linking to this post instead of copying and pasting.
This blog is not affiliated with Linton Hall Military School and all opinions are those of the author. Comments are always welcome; please do not use your name or names of others.

History of Linton Hall

It's uncanny how I and the other alumnus who blogs about Linton Hall think alike. In his post, "True History of L.H.M.S." posted on October 13, 2011, which is less than a week ago http://lhmscadet.wordpress.com/2011/10/13/true-history-of-l-h-m-s/
he provides an article about Linton Hall Military School's early history. The article is based on the book The Fruit of His Works, by Sister Helen Johnson, published in 1954.

It's a strange coincidence that I have recently read that book and was about to write about it. Guess he beat me to it!

Although written by a Benedictine nun with her own point of view who speaks of "alumni ... cherishing many happy memories" (page ix) the book contains many items of historical interest about Linton Hall and the nearby town of Bristow which, even back in the 1960s when I attended, was so small that we cadets said its slogan was "Blink and you'll miss it."

The book relates how the village of Bristow was destroyed by General Banks' army in August 1862, and that by 1953 the Bristow rail station on the Southern Rail Road line was no longer in use as a full station, but only as a flagstop for daily mail pickup and delivery.

Although by the 1960s the milk we drank came in cartons, Sister Helen recounts how in 1948 the school bought 35 Guernsey cows to provide milk and butter for the students and sisters, and that from 1894 to 1930 Linton Hall had an ice house. (For modern readers, this is a structure in which ice which has been cut from the surface of ponds in winter is stored, with straw as insulation, for many months, often lasting well into summer, and is how ice was kept in the days prior to refrigeration.)

Linton Hall's namesake and benefactor was John Tyler Linton, who died in 1822 at age 26, two months before his only child, Sarah Elliott Linton, was born. (The title "Colonel" that is often used with his name is a Southern title of courtesy, like "Colonel" Sanders of Kentucky Fried Chicken, and is not a military rank. John Linton was a lawyer, with a degree from Dickinson College.)

In 1844, Sarah Linton joined the Order of the Visitation of Holy Mary in Georgetown, Washington D.C. and took on the name of Sister Mary Baptista, V.S.M.. She passed away on October 26, 1901, bequeathing land to be used for two schools, one for poor boys, and another for poor girls.

The planned school for boys, to be called St. Joseph's Industrial School, never came into being, but a school for girls, St. Edith's Academy, opened in 1894 with 16 boarders and several day students. Its last graduating class, in 1922, consisted of two girls, and the school was converted to an all-boys military boarding school named Linton Hall Military School. The cadets were divided into two companies. LHMS's first Commandant was Barron Fredericks, and Sister Mary Ignatia Goforth was principal from 1923 through 1931. Sometime during her tenure, however, the school was left without a Commandant, and the school's military program was dropped.

In 1931 Sister Agnes became the new principal, and she revived the military program, organized a brass band (presumably without the percussion element of the Drum & Bugle Corps which existed when I attended during the 1960s) and hired Linton Hall's second Commandant, Lt. Lawrence Scott Carson. At the time the school had an enrollment of around 80 boys.

Sister Agnes passed away in 1932, just a year after becoming principal, and was succeeded by Sister Claudia. In 1938 a new Commandant, Major Marlin S. Reichley, was appointed. (He would stay on as LHMS' Commandant for almost 30 years.)

According to the book, it was not until April 18, 1951, that the current building was blessed by Bishop Ireton. (I am assuming the building was blessed when completed.) There is a photo of the building in the book, which I am not posting since the book may still be protected by copyright. It is just the building we all remember, with the exception that the gym wing has not yet been built.

I find the April 1951 date a bit confusing, since I have a photo from a very old Linton Hall brochure from the late 1940s (which I will eventually be posting, since it is not protected by copyright) which shows the Linton Hall building not only without the gym wing but also without the second and third floors (the dorms) and which is captioned "Ireton Hall" -- presumably named after Bishop Ireton. It is not clear whether this is an actual photo or an architectural rendering, however.

The book also contains a roster of sisters at the Bristow convent from 1953, which contains some familiar names. In addition to Sister Mary David Nolte, there are also two nuns with the last name DuCharme listed, possibly related to Linton Hall's fourth and final Commandant, Max DuCharme.

Much of the book covers the history of the Benedictines in Virginia and Pennsylvania, and does not directly relate to Linton Hall.

Although the book was interesting from a historical point of view, it does little to describe the cadets' daily routine, food, uniforms, disciplinary methods and other aspects which I would have found much more interesting, especially if they had been written from the cadets' point of view.

Thus, I would love to hear more from older alumni who were there prior to me.

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Read more in my book, "Linton Hall Military School Memories," over 200 pages, 7x10 inches, only $5.69 (or less) at amazon.com

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Copyright 2011 by Linton Hall Cadet.
Please respect copyright by linking to this post instead of copying and pasting.
This blog is not affiliated with Linton Hall Military School and all opinions are those of the author. Comments are always welcome; please do not use your name or names of others.

Life Before Linton Hall

Before I got sent to Linton Hall, I had attended both a private school and public school (both day schools.) I had also been to summer camp for a couple of summers (probably ages 8, 9, 10.) This wasn't Camp Linton, but another summer camp.

Just like others whose stay at LH was relatively short (2 or 3 years) I can compare Linton Hall to other schools. My memories of those schools, as well as those of high school, are generally positive. There were small imperfections, some things that could have been better, but even so I felt that the principal and teachers had our best intentions at heart. It is because I saw what other schools were like, and because Linton Hall had the potential to be as good as the other schools, that I found my overall experience at Linton Hall to be negative.

This is how Linton Hall Military School during the 1960s compared to other schools:

Academics:
Upon entering Linton Hall I found it just as challenging as my previous schools, and academic standards were such that I needed to do as much or more work to do well. The quality of the teachers was similar. Linton Hall had some really good ones. I have to give credit where it is due and Sister Mary David was a really good Math and Science teacher and Sister Gertrude taught English and History well. They knew their material and had high expectations. There are probably others but I don't remember their names. After graduating from Linton Hall I had a normal transition into ninth grade, meaning that I was well prepared.

Of course, part of the credit belongs to me for doing the work and for taking advantage of second study hour, in spite of the fact that when I was in the eighth grade the prefect of my dorm did her utmost to discourage officers from going to second study hour, since the dorm became a wild zoo in the officers' absence. I am proud of being able to resist her pressure and making my academics a priority.

Food:
At private school it was really good, almost like home made. At public elementary school and high school it was similar to Linton Hall's, the standard school lunch. In elementary school (just like at LH) everyone from grades K to 6th got the same amount, which meant that the older kids didn't get quite enough and the younger ones got too much and had to be coaxed into eating everything. The big difference, of course, was that at day school I ate only five meals a week in the school cafeteria, and at Linton Hall it was every meal.

I did eat every meal at summer camp, but the summer camp was run by the same private school I attended during the school year, and the food was goog and there was always more than enough.

Homesickness:
Summer camp lasted probably four weeks, and we were allowed visits from parents for a few hours on Sundays (maybe 1 out of 3 or 1 out of 4 kids had their parents visit on any Sunday.) I was probably 8 the first year I went there, knew a few (maybe 1 out of 5) kids when I arrived and the school principal ran the camp so I wasn't a total stranger. The kids were probably ages 7 to 12, but I don't remember any one of them crying from homesickness. I'm sure they missed their parents just as much as the boys at Linton Hall, but camp was a good, fun place. At LH quite a few of the kids cried from homesickness especially at the beginning of the year.

Mail Censorship:
We could not make or receive phone calls at camp, but we did send and receive letters from home. We wrote the letters and gave them, sealed, to be mailed out. Occasionally one of the adults would tell us, "when you write home tell your parents that Miss Smith says hello" but we would have been utterly shocked if any adult had asked us to leave letters unsealed or if any inbound letters had been opened.

At Linton Hall, we were told to leave letters to be mailed unsealed, purportedly so that if Sister Mary David needed to send a note home, she could insert it in the envelope without paying extra postage. In fact, the true reason was so that letters could be read and, if something negative was being sent about the school, the letter would not be mailed out. Sister Mary David actually admitted this to a classroom full of cadets, when she said that a certain cadet wrote that we went on very long hikes. One of his legs was maybe two inches shorter than the other and one of his boots was specially modified with a very thick sole. He had said that the hikes were a certain number of miles (I don't remember the exact number but he had overestimated.) So she readily admitted that she had thrown the letter away instead of mailing it.

I did hint at some things in my letters without being too critical, and those letters did get through. I don't know whether any of my letters were unmailed. I do have a letter in which I wrote my grades in percentages, and a letter grade was written next to each one. The letters were in pencil (my letter was written in pen) and in a handwriting that was neither mine or that of my parents.

You might be wondering about the Mexicans, who wrote their letters in Spanish. Sister Mary David said that she spoke Spanish. I don't know how well she spoke it or whether she was just bluffing. In addition to the Spanish speakers we did have one cadet from South Korea and another from Iran. I would have loved to read Mary David's mind when she came upon a letter with foreign characters followed by "Mary David" followed by more foreign writing. Was she going crazy wondering whether something positive or negative was being said about her?

Running away
Running away from camp never even crossed our mind. Are you kidding? It was a lot of fun.
At Linton Hall, many of us (myself included) spent a lot of time fantasizing about the perfect escape. A few tried it, placing themselves at great danger, preferring to take chances instead of putting up with Linton Hall.

Personal care
At private school we wore uniforms, and at camp we had to make our beds and brush our teeth.
But there was none of the pickiness about doing things in a defined, precise way as at Linton Hall.

Punishment
Much of what was a punishable offense at Linton Hall (running indoors, yelling, etc.) were considered minor breaches of etiquette at school and camp. We were told not to do it, stopped doing it, and that was it.
For more serious offenses we might have been made to stand in the corner for 15 minutes during recess, or for even greater infractions, sent to the principal's office, who would give us a stern lecture and threaten to tell our parents if we did it again.
In all my years at elementary school I remember children being spanked on the bottom a couple of times with a bare hand, and there was one time wehn someone had his mouth washed out with soap (this was a last resort after multiple offenses.)
I will not re-state here all the physical punishments that were used at Linton Hall. An exhaustive list was written by another blogger, lhmscadet.wordpress.com.

Bedwetting
Children sometimes have "accidents," especially the younger ones. When children peed or pooped their pants, which happened a few times in kindergarden, an adult would take them to a bathroom that was just like a bathroom at home, with bathtub and shower, and let them wash themselves. They then would be provided with something "on loan" to wear while whatever they had soilded would be put in the washer. If the accident happened early in their day, they would go home wearing their own clean clothes. If it happened later, one of the teachers would tell the parent what had happened (in a very understanding way) or would send a note home with the kid, if the kid went home on the school bus. The most important thing is that if any of the kids tried to make fun of the child who had an accident (as little kids are prone to do) the teacher would have told him/her in a stern voice not to do it, and explained the golden rule.

There was a girl who peed herself quite often on the bus on the way to school, but not on the way home, which makes me think that the problem had to do with her being made to consume too much liquid at breakfast. Understandably, no one wanted to sit next to her, and occasionally one child would make fun of her, but most of us were mature enough to pretend nothing had happened.

Contrast that to how bedwetters at Linton hall were publicly shamed and embarrassed by being forced to wear the wet pajama bottoms around their neck all day, in a way that other cadets were pretty much encouraged to tease them, all in full view and with the full knowledge of every single adult (teachers, dorm and playground prefects, Commandant, Bill, and principal Sister Mary David.)

Girls (and the lack thereof)
Both of the elementary schools I attended before Linton Hall, as well as summer camp, were co-ed. Of course the younger years are a time when boys have their own games and activities (toy cars, toy guns -- which were considered okay at that time, building forts and treehouses and so on) which are quite different than those of girls (playing with dolls, playing house, etc.) This was especially so back then. So we weren't interacting with girls constantly, although there were games such as tag which we both found enjoyable.

I think for many of us the lack of girls made us shy and awkward around them. It did for me. Only those who were in an all boys school can feel the pain I felt when I would get a letter from a friend on the "outside" who told me about playing spin the bottle or some other kissing game, and there I was, not having ever even called a girl on the phone under the guise of asking a question about homework.

Showers
We didn't shower at day school, but we did at camp. We showered one at a time, and never did any adult male or female even come in, much less stand there watching the whole time.
I do understand the need to supervise group showers; I have read of instances in juvenile detention facilities where (forgive me for being so blunt but I have to say this) rape by someone of the same sex, sometimes with a broomstick or bottle, happens in both all-boy and all-girl facilities. So I accept that the slim possibility of something so awful justified some supervision. But I think there were other, better ways of doing it.

First of all, the architect could have designed individual shower stalls. I understand that the building was built in the early part of the 20th century, when attitudes about privacy, nudity and sex were different.

We could have showered in swim trunks, and only pulled them down a bit, while turning our back to the nun, while washing our private parts.

We could have had the Commandant and Bill supervise showers. These were men who could be trusted. I know it would have meant extra work for them, and that they would not have been eager to go back to Linton Hall in the evening to supervise showers. Perhaps we could have showered immediately after school to make it more convenient for the Commandantand Bill.

If nothing else, the nuns didn't really need to be standing there looking for the whole time. They could just stood in the changing area, and occasionally have taken a look out of the corner of their eye. But they did not, and the fact that they never missed the opportunity to supervise the showers, while having a hands-off attitude about anything else that went on in the dorm, makes me wonder about their true motivations. Some may have been uncomfortable doing this, but if that had been the case I would have expected them, at a minimum, to avert their eyes and not stare directly.

I should add to what I said about juvenile detention facilities. Whatever can happen in the shower can happen at night in the dorm. One former cadet has written on my Facebook wall about being beaten up at night while he slept. Beyond the blue night lights, there was no effort to supervise and protect us while we slept at night.

Race
I am white, and Linton Hall was the first place I met kids who were black. As a child my world revolved around school and neighborhood, and there was only one black child (in another grade) in my school before I went to LH. Not surprisingly, there were no black teachers, either. The janitor was black, which says much about opportunities and hiring decisions during that era.

As an aside, I use the terms "black" and "white" instead of "Caucasian" and "African American" simply because those were the descriptive terms used at that time.

I didn't treat black differently as a groupthan I did whites. Some I liked, some I didn't, but it was about who they were as individuals and not about race. A good thing about the boys at Linton Hall is that in general (there are always exceptions) most acted the same way. I had freinds but not really a best friend, but of those that did have a best friend, sometimes friendships were between two of different races.

On the other hand, there were racial taunts used as fighting words, not the "n-word" but others, both against whites and against blacks, and there were slurs about Mexicans as well, but interestingly they seemed to be used more against a specific individuals than against the group. It would not be unusual for one cadet to call another a racial slur as a way to provoke a fight, while still remaining friends with others of both races, and doing this in front of others. Unfortunately, there was little that the adults did to teach us otherwise. Someone doing this would get a verbal reprimand such as "it's not nice to say that" but I cannont recall a single instance of someone getting the same punishment of having to chew a bar of soap, as would happen when someone got caught saying offensive, but far LESS hurtful four-letter words.

I cannot generalize about adults, but I remember when a nun, not Sister Mary David but someone else who taught classes, reminiscing about having been principal of another school. She said something along the lines of "I was principal of the white school, and we had the black school right across the street." (This is a paraphrase, I don't recall the exact words.) We were shocked by this, and she answered something along the lines of, "well that's how things were done by then." I was and still am shocked that a purportedly religious order would have followed along with an offensive, immoral practice instead of having the moral fortitude to decide to integrate its own schools. I am not mentioning her name because I do not believe that the decision was hers alone to make, that there was a board of directors, or head of the Benedictine order, or perhaps the bishop or archbishop with jurisdiction over Richmond.

What Linton Hall could have been
The saddest thing is that Linton Hall didn't have to be that way. It had the potential to be much more. The building, the rural location the quality of the teachers, the resources were all there. As an administrator, Sister Mary David ran the school well, it was only in terms ofhow we were treated that the school fell far short. The school charged enough for room and board that we could have been fed more, and better.

Let's just look at the lack of fresh fruit as an example. One time (a year or two after I left Linton Hall) I bought one banana at the supermarket for six cents. I still remember this because it was all I bought and such a small, unusual purchase sticks in my mind. At the same time a small candy bar cost a nickel, a large one ten cents. These are all retail prices, not wholesale. Instead of the daily candy bars, we could have been given a banana instead. Distributing bananas is no more labor intensive than distributing candy bars, nor are bananas messy to eat. Apples cost a little more (depending on how large the apple is) but even so, we could have had half an apple. Cutting a hundred apples in half shouldn't involve more labor than putting two hundred dollops of apple sauce on two hundred trays. Plus, the school is in Virginia, where a lot of apples are grown. I doubt that two hundred apple halves, or even two hundred whole, large, crisp, freshly pciked apples would have cost more than two hundred candy bars.

Traffic was much lighter in the Washington area than it is today. LHMS had a school bus that was used to take us to parades, take the teams to away games, and so on. Gas, or diesel fuel, was affordable back then. Museums in DC were and still are, free. Could we not have been taken, maybe one or two grades at a time, for a field trip to DC? Wouldn't that have been a better activity than being cooped up in the gym on a rainy day, or watching a movie in the gym in the evening? As an aside, I should mention that we were charged for movies and that the money was deducted from our sundries account. They could have made a similar deduction for gas and wear and tear on the bus just like they did for movies.

Could they have been more careful with our parents' money? Not everyone is born with a silver spoon in their mouth, you know. Did we really need a pair of "white ducks pants" altered by a tailor of course, to wear just for a couple of hours on one day a year (Military Day)?

Why else would they need to censor mail other than to hide everything that went on? If a child at camp makes up stuff and writes home about it, whoever is in charge of the camp will get a call from the parents and there will be an opportunity for those in charge to discuss the matter and set the record straight. The need for censorship existed only to hide the truth.
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