This was not a group of starry-eyed children. It was in the summer of 1920 when Emmett Ellis, their leader, was 29. While they were overseas, our Founders’ school had become a four-year college. The war ended, and after serving in the occupational force, they headed home by steamship. Near the end of 1918, after 18 months of battle, the armistice came. Today, we could call them Corpsmen and Emergency Medical Technicians. Together, they joined what was then called an Ambulance Company. Almost uniformly, they were as well qualified academically as students at the private and land grant colleges but simply lacked the financial resources necessary for enrollment at those schools. These two-year, post-high school programs qualified them to teach and administer public schools. In an era when fewer than half of the nation’s young people advance beyond the eighth grade and fewer graduated from high school, these children of farmers, craftsmen, and shopkeepers in the sparsely populated rural counties of western Missouri were pursuing educational degrees. As volunteers, our Founding Fathers would leave their Midwestern school and follow him into the War to End All Wars. (Black Jack) Pershing, a native son of their state of Missouri, was selected by President Woodrow Wilson to command the American Expeditionary Force. In bravely heading to fight in World War I, our Founders embarked on a journey that would take them off of domestic soil and back to the old country in a battle unlike any from their generation could have imagined. Sigma Tau Gamma’s Founders’ grandparents were veterans of the Civil War.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |