Peak Years
Over the course of its 30-year history, the Michigan Military Academy had 2,558 enrollments and 458 graduates. The graduating class of 1893 played a prominent role in the World Columbian Exposition in Chicago, and many of the classes won National Drill Competitions.
On June 19, 1879, William Tecumseh Sherman, General in Chief of the U.S. Army, delivered a variant of his famous "War Is Hell" speech to the graduating class. A total of 10,000 people arrived to listen to Sherman's speech, and the press reported that it was the largest number of people ever to gather within the township's boundaries (at that time the village of Orchard Lake was part of West Bloomfield Township). He said: "There is many a boy here today who looks upon war as all glory, but, boys, it is all hell." (1)
Future City of Detroit Mayor, Cadet John C. Lodge, recorded his memories of the Sherman speech, "At one of our graduation exercises the speaker was General William T. Sherman. He was not eloquent, and he didn't have a very pleasant voice; it was somewhat shrill."
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Famous quotes containing the words peak and/or years:
“In all things I would have the island of a man inviolate. Let us sit apart as the gods, talking from peak to peak all round Olympus. No degree of affection need invade this religion.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“In time, after a dozen years of centering their lives around the games boys play with one another, the boys’ bodies change and that changes everything else. But the memories are not erased of that safest time in the lives of men, when their prime concern was playing games with guys who just wanted to be their friendly competitors. Life never again gets so simple.”
—Frank Pittman (20th century)