Early Life
Ruckman was born at Deers, Illinois, a flag-station just southeast of the University of Illinois. Biographies, however, usually list his place of birth as Sidney, Illinois (Champaign County). His parents, Thomas and Mary O'Brien Ruckman, were farmers. His uncles, John W. and Wilson Ruckman served the Union Army with distinction in the American Civil War (Company A, Illinois 35th Infantry).
After three semesters at the University of Illinois, Ruckman was appointed from the 14th Congressional District of Illinois for acceptance to the United States Military Academy. His nomination was made by Republican Congressman Joseph Cannon. Ruckman graduated from West Point (1883), the U.S. Artillery School (1892), the U.S. Army War College (1915), and the U.S. Naval War College (1916). He married May Hamilton, the daughter of Civil War hero Colonel John Hamilton, and was nominated Brigadier General by Woodrow Wilson in 1916 and Major General in 1917. At the time, Major General was the highest rank in the Army. Ruckman was the only individual to command three of the six designated interior military Departments in the United States (Northeast, Southeast and Southern).
Read more about this topic: John Wilson Ruckman
Famous quotes containing the words early and/or life:
“We have been told over and over about the importance of bonding to our children. Rarely do we hear about the skill of letting go, or, as one parent said, “that we raise our children to leave us.” Early childhood, as our kids gain skills and eagerly want some distance from us, is a time to build a kind of adult-child balance which permits both of us room.”
—Joan Sheingold Ditzion (20th century)
“There is no calm philosophy of life here, such as you might put at the end of the Almanac, to hang over the farmer’s hearth,—how men shall live in these winter, in these summer days. No philosophy, properly speaking, of love, or friendship, or religion, or politics, or education, or nature, or spirit; perhaps a nearer approach to a philosophy of kingship, and of the place of the literary man, than of anything else.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)