Main Characters: Marshall Treppendahl, Charles Whetstone and me (age 16-17) Approximate date range: Fall of 1968-Jun 1970
Nearly everyone who attends the US Naval Academy spends years hoping and striving to be accepted. There is a Naval Academy Prep School (NAPS) where about 300 students (former enlisted men) graduate annually hoping to attend Annapolis. About 100 make it. Quite a few of my classmates had fathers and grandfathers who were or had been naval officers – most graduates of the Academy.
In the spring of 1968, the white public school in Wilkinson County, MS was given a mandate by the Feds to fully integrate with the black public school – students, teachers, coaches, etc. on a per rata racial basis. Blacks comprised about 75% of the population of the County. This was untenable in the eyes of most members of the white community and so they abandoned the public school and set up a private academy in the local white churches in Woodville. My parents, who had hopes of me getting an academic scholarship, opted to send Rob and me to Silliman Institute, a private school in Clinton, LA. The faculty there included one Dr. Mounier who was billed as an excellent science teacher, something Woodville lacked at the time. So, I went to Silliman and enrolled in both physics and chemistry my junior year. (It was in late October of that year that Rob was killed on the tractor.)
Silliman served me well. I did not particularly like Dr. Mounier, but he was a good teacher and deserves some credit for my rather high scores on the college entrance exams. Another positive experience there was the football team. Silliman did not have a football team when I enrolled there, nor did it have plans to start one. Afterall, there were no more than 30 boys total in grades 10-12. And yet, when we looked around at who was there, we realized among us was the starting quarterback from St. Francisville, the star flanker from Centerville, and other starters from surrounding towns. A total of sixteen guys agreed to come together and create a team. We convinced the principle, Mr. Ashcroft, to become our coach and somehow the funds were found to buy football equipment. We were only able to schedule four games that year – I think one team we played twice. There was an incredible symmetry on that little team, and we not only won all four games; no opponent scored on us. At the end of our four-game season, Coach Ashcroft came up with trophies for everyone on the team. Mine was “Best Defensive Lineman”. (I suspect that my receiving an award as a junior for the best defensive lineman on a team that was “undefeated and unscored on” may have tipped the scales in my favor over the ten or so candidates who applied for my congressman’s competitive nomination.) Now to be honest, I was not a very good athlete. However, I had spent two summers picking up many thousands of haybales and tossing them up on truck beds. It was not difficult for me to grab a guy who was holding a football and throw him on the ground.
As you can imagine, with Rob’s tragic death, things were unsettled in our family during this period. I will reflect on this in the final story of this series.
For my senior year, I returned to Woodville and attended the new private all white academy there. We did have some excellent teachers and as noted I did well on the ACT and SAT exams. As directed, I filled out a dozen or so college applications, including a whacky outlier at Dad’s request for the United States Naval Academy. However, the expectation had long been that I would attend Mississippi State University. When State offered me a nearly full academic scholarship, that settled it; I was going to be a Bulldog.
I was quite excited about going to State. Both of my sisters had gone there – one for her master’s degree after graduating from Rice – and they knew all the cool people there. I went to visit four or five times as a senior and would stay in the SAE fraternity house when there. I had gone to some great parties and had dates with several beautiful college girls. Dad even agreed to help me buy a decent car. And being a relatively large fish in a tiny pond, I had excelled in a number of ways. I had done well in academics, Terry Tharp and I shared the title as “Most Handsome”, and to Dad’s chagrin, I was even voted as “best dressed”. No doubt, as such a cool dude, I was going to have the time of my life at Mississippi State.
Well, one day, in early June, after finishing baling hay, I drove the tractor up to the house and there standing in the driveway was Dad and his Podnah, Mr. Charles Whetstone, looking at me with big grins on their faces. A bit weird. When I got off the tractor, Mr. Charles said, “Young man, come inside and have a drink, we have some good news for you. “(As I think about it now, I realize that Mr. Charles had a closer connection with our Congressman, Charlie Griffin, than Dad did. So that is why he was there taking ownership of the situation.) We sat down at the kitchen table where Dad broke out a bottle of Old Charter and fixed his 17-year-old son a strong toddy. “David I am so proud of you. You have been accepted at the United States Naval Academy.” Then they let me know that I needed to report for duty in three weeks and the only thing left was to pass the physical exam.
Podnuhs – Charles Whetstone and Marshall Treppendahl
I had a really hard time processing what they were telling me. I don’t remember asking many if any questions. I knew nothing about the Naval Academy – didn’t even know where it was. All I knew about the Navy was that Uncle Orla had served in it as an enlisted man. Mr. Charles said, “Son, I have asked around and if you graduate from Annapolis, you will be the first man to do so in the history of Wilkinson County. We know you can do it.”
I certainly didn’t know I could do it. I didn’t want to do it. This was not what I had in mind at all. From the time I was a little boy, I never wanted to be in the military. I remember thinking that if the draft people ever came to get me, I would climb up in the big fir tree and hide. I knew I was not wired for the military. I was not a detailed orderly person. I was always getting in trouble for leaving gates open or forgetting to feed the steer or the dogs. I was incapable of doing things the way they were supposed to be done. Mama said about me: “There is a right way and a wrong and then there is David’s way.”
I wanted to say “Dad, I know this is a great opportunity, but it’s not for me.” Or something like that. But I just couldn’t bring myself to say it. Remember, Dad loved the military and he had excelled at it. And I think he regretted that he had not made it a career. Dad had been an Army captain by age 21 without ever going to college. Here was a chance for one of his sons – now his only son – to become an officer by being educated at one of the premier miliary academies in the world. Rob was the one who would have soared at Annapolis. He was wired just like Dad with his pitch perfect presence of mind and always knowing what needed to be done and how to do it. But Rob was no more. In a way, for me to say no would be to dishonor both Rob and Dad. So, I said, “Ok, I’ll do it” having no idea at all what “it” entailed. Had I known what was awaiting me over the next 3 months, I definitely would have said NO and continued on to Mississippi State. Ignorance did not turn out to be bliss.
Time was so short that I had to go to Annapolis to take the physical there. Mama and her mother, Nora, drove up there with me and we worked in a trip to New York before returning home. I should not have passed the physical because my right eye had been injured by a spitball when I was at a summer camp. But my left eye was 20-20 and they said I was good to go. I was now fully accepted into the United States Naval Academy. Ugggh!
Induction Day was on June 29th or about two weeks after we returned from our trip. I flew to Washington, DC the day before and got a bus to Annapolis. There were several other guys on the bus who were going there like me – to become part of the Class of ’74. That afternoon at the campus (called “The Yard”) everyone was all nice and friendly. Other than the new recruits, the main people we saw were the “Firsties on Detail”. They were the Class of ’71 and they looked like gods in their summer white uniforms. They were all buff and walked with such an air of confidence. It is all a bit blurry to me, but it seems that I must have stayed in a bunk in the field house that night and had breakfast there before the official start of the US Naval Academy known as “Induction Day”. Seemed like a reasonable term to me. But most of my fellow “plebes”, another seemingly innocuous term, told me to get a good night sleep – because the next day was going to be a long and unpleasant one. What an understatement.
For many hours, we were herded from station to station while being shouted at and treated rudely by the heretofore nice Grecian Gods. Heartless barbers whacked off our hair, sadistic medics punctured us with pneumatic vaccination guns, and dumpy old women filled our laundry bags with more and heavier stuff as we trapsed from place to place. We were eventually sent to our assigned rooms in Bancroft Hall where we put on our white plebe uniforms. We were then taken to Tecumseh Court where, while most of us were in shock, all swore to defend the Constitution.
I did not have a clear idea of what to expect at the Naval Academy – but this experience was not at all what I had in mind. I kept wanting to say to anyone who would listen, “Hey, do you realize who I am? I am David Treppendahl. I am special and cool.” But I realized that is how most of my new classmates felt. Plebe summer was designed to fully extirpate that notion from our minds. We were now lowly plebes and would be so for a full year.
What had I gotten myself in to?
29th Company Class of 1974 –
Over the next 4 years, we would get to know each other better than most brothers. But by the end of that first full day, I wanted one thing and one thing only: to go home. I had to find a way to explain to Dad that this was not for me -I had to find a way out. Surely that day would come soon, right? It never did.