Engineer Memoirs
Q:
And did you spend your whole childhood more or less--
A:
That's right. Since he was retired, we were in one place. Well, we had lived for a year
at a time in two other apartment houses, but we lived at 1835 Phelps Place from the
time I was 4 until I went away to West Point when I was 16.
West Point, 19411944
Q:
You went away kind of early to West Point.
A:
The war was going on in Europe. My father, and I am sure most people like him, were
convinced that we were going to get into the war. The plan had been for me to go to
Princeton University for a year because I was a year ahead in school. This had come
about because in primary school I had skipped half a grade. I can't remember exactly
how this came about, but I was doing well, and I think they just moved me forward
because of it.
Then I went to Saint Albans. I went in February, which was unusual because in that
school normally you did not begin in the middle of the year. The public school had two
semesters and people could enter in either September or February.
When I got to Saint Albans there was the issue of whether to move me back half a
grade or up half a grade. That spring of 1938 was somewhat confused by this situation.
In the end they decided to move me up, so that I was a year ahead of the normal age.
When it came time for me to graduate, my father thought, which I think was right, that
I needed to mature more before I went to West Point.
However, in order to see whether I would do well, he decided to have me take the West
Point entrance exam as a candidate for a presidential appointment. I took it, but I did
not take the physical exam. I had one bad eye. This is an example of the way my father
did everything. He had worked on this problem of getting me into West Point in spite
of my bad eye, and he did a brilliant job on that. He had decided that I should not take
the exam and run the risk that it would be on my record that I had bad eyes. I took the
mental exam. There was a misprint in one of the algebra problems and the result was
that it couldn't be solved. I came home and I told him that I had not gotten one of the
problems right. He said, "Well, in that case, you better not take the eye exam,
because--"
Then he learned that there had been a misprint, so that the problem was thrown out and
I was number six on the presidential appointment list. [Brigadier] General [Thomas D.]
Stamps, then Colonel Stamps, was the professor of military art and engineering at West
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