Absentee

Century ago Colonel Claude Crozet, curly-haired, black-whiskered soldier of Napoleon, State Engineer of Virginia, became first president of the Board of Visitors of Virginia Military Institute. On November 11, 1839, 32 cadets were admitted to the new school. The contractor had not finished building the barracks, and snow had fallen before he was through. Food was scarce. The cadets decided to go home. If they had, V. M. I. would not have celebrated its centennial last week.

In V. M. I.'s 100 years there have been some great doings. In 1859 a band of 100 cadets trooped to Charles Town to witness the hanging of an indiscreet fanatic named John Brown. In 1861 a 37-year-old instructor quit his ten-year job at V. M. I., went off to become Stonewall Jackson, the Great Hope of the South. The school graduated 823 men who became officers in the Confederate Army, ranking from major general to second lieutenant. The entire cadet corps rushed to New Market to help check the Union advance through Shenandoah Valley. Union troops later burned their school buildings to a blackened shell.

Re-established in 1864, V. M. I. became the finest military school in the U. S. outside of West Point. Its cadets were still chiefly Southerners, although non-Virginians were admitted at a higher tuition. As freshman hazing victims, they got the habit of calling each other Brother Rat.* Last week the Brother Rats overran Lexington, Va., saw two football games, had a whopping good time at the centennial.

Had Colonel Crozet been there he would have seen not 32, but some 700 cadets. He would have seen a parade ground of 14 acres, 17 stone school buildings on a lush-green campus, 19 dormitories and residences, modern engineering laboratories, the whole plant valued at $2,500,000. He would have seen the grey-coated cadets marching in review before General George Catlett Marshall, first V. M. I. alumnus to be chosen Chief of Staff of the U. S. Army. He would have heard a Northern President exhorting the students to "live up to your great heritage."

But Colonel Crozet was absent. Graduates had hoped to have his remains enshrined on the campus by centennial time, had sought a permit of exhumation from Shockoe Cemetery in Richmond. Few days before, Elizabeth Wright Weddell, sister of Ambassador to Argentina Alexander Weddell, turned up records of the Colonel's burial (in 1864) in another cemetery. Regretfully, V. M. I. celebrated without its founder, hoped soon to bring him home.

* Publicized by Brother Rats John Monks Jr. and Fred Finklehoff in Broadway and cinema successes. Other Brother Rats: Rear Admiral Richard Evelyn Byrd, Mayor Maury Maverick of San Antonio, Texas, Cinema Hero Jack Holt.

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