Western Military Academy

In 1879, Edward Wyman, an 1835 Amherst College graduate, opened a boarding school for boys in what was then Upper Alton, Illinois.

Jackson was an 1884 Princeton graduate and had just completed two years of teaching mathematics and Latin at Blair Academy in New Jersey.

Upon Wyman's death in 1888, ownership of the school passed to Col. Willis Brown and Albert M. Jackson was made the principal.

In February 1903, a fire destroyed the school administration building and the primary barracks, closing the academy for the rest of the term.

Early in the century, Western was designated an Honor Military School by the United States War Department.

A 1933 grad, Paul Tibbets, piloted the bomber Enola Gay on August 6, 1945, to drop the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan.

By the 1940s, the war in Europe and the improving economic situation in the United States would find Western again at capacity enrollment.

Several members of that department would have a record of distinguished service in the World War II, Korea and Vietnam.

"Having found by long experience that amusements, indulged in to a reasonable extent, are helpful rather than otherwise, to both the deportment and progress of the cadets, the authorities of the Academy arrange each year a series of receptions, musical and literary entertainments and excursions, so distributed as to relieve somewhat the monotony of school life, and so conducted as to accustom the cadets to the usages of good society."

Bandleader Tommy Dorsey and crooner Frank Sinatra performed at Western as did comic Joe E. Brown.

Amelia Earhart and Medal of Honor recipient General Jonathan Mayhew Wainwright IV were among the other guests who spoke at WMA.

During Western Military Academy's 92 years, athletics were an important part of the cadets environment.

Other sports offered at times during the school's existence included interscholastic bowling, fencing and an equestrian team.

By the late 1960s, rising costs and inflation meant the academy would face economic hardships as it moved into the 1970s.

The anti-military sentiment caused by the Vietnam War was a major factor in Western's declining enrollment, and had a drastic impact in just a few years.

In June 1971 the Western Military Academy held its 92nd and final commencement ceremony, and afterwards the school was closed.