Paxton High School - Reflector Yearbook (Paxton, IL)

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Paxton High School Reflector 20 LIEUTENANT LEO WARNER, U. S. ARMY entire four years' work was completed; and he was given his diploma and the commission of Second Lieutenant, Aug. 30, 1917. After spending his furlough of 30 days at his home, near Paxton, in visiting relatives and friends, he was assigned to duty at Syracuse, New ork, as acting Captain. Later he was transferred to Charlotte, N. C. The last word received by his father, Mr. Wm. Warner, Chairman of the Ford County Exemption Board, was to the efTect that he was still at Charlotte, but daily expecting to receive orders to embark for France. Lieutenant Warner made a pleasant call at the high school and tile superintendent’s office early in September before leaving for duty at Syracuse. He was enthusiastic about the training—intellectual and physical—at West Point, and no less so with reference to his graduating at a time when his country could make immediate use of the military training which it had givem him. Leo graduated from high school a year under the ordinary minimum

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Paxton High School Reflector 19 in passing the physical examination, he entered West Point in the fall of 1914. Prior to this time, no candidate for admission to West Point had been per- mitted to enter upon presenting a certificate of graduation from an accredited high school. A new ruling resulted in his admission, and also that of Leo Warner, upon his Paxton High School credits. As a result of the declaration of war in April, it was decided to grad- uate the 1918 class with three years of regular West Point training and some intensive supplementary training during the summer of 1917. He therefore received his diploma and the commission of Second Lieutenant August doth of that year. He was then given a thirty-day furlough before being assigned to special duty. This furlough period was very happily utilized by Mr. Cole in the consummation of a little romance that had enlivened the later months of h!s military training at West Point. The nature of this romance will be understood when it is known that the day following his graduation, he was married to Miss Teance Espy, of Atlanta, Georgia, at the Hotel Astoria in New York. The remainder of his furlough period very naturally became the occasion of a honeymoon trip to the home of his wife in the sunny southland. On October 1st, accompanied by Mrs. Cole, he reported for duty at ihe lT. S. Army Post at L.aredo, Texas, for official duty in the G th Infantry, 3rd Battalion. Upon assuming this duty he was advanced to the rank of First Lieutenant. Lieutenant Leo. V. Warner, '13; West Point, '17. Attention has been elsewhere called to the special distinction won b the class of 1913 in military matters. In addition to the distinction there noted, this class, and the school as well, may be very justly proud of the fact that this class and the Paxton High School furnished two of the five Illinois students who received their diplomas and commissions from West Point with the class graduating in August. 1917. To have furnished at one time 40% of Illinois’ quota at a West Point Commencement is certainly an unusual dis- tinction for a class, school, or community. It is also worthy of note that Lieutenant Leo Warner is the only student from Ford County who has been able to stand the rigid mental and physical tests necessary for graduation from our government military school. After graduating from high school, Leo spent a term of nine months in supplementary study at a special West Point preparatory school at Wash- ington. D. C. He devoted himself there especially to mechanical drawing and trigonometry in anticipation of having to take the. until 1914, uniformly required educational test for entrance; but the new order accepting credits from high schools of high standing, as in the case of his classmate, made it possible for him to be admitted upon the certified credits furnished from the Paxton High School. As a result of vacation work, and the emergency arising from the declaration of war, his class was graduated with 3V6 years work, though the

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Paxton High School Reflector 21 asP of 18 years. He therefore graduated at West Point when he had just turned 21. Lieut. Eugene Frederick, ’13. Eugene Frederick sought and gained admission to the first Reserve Officers’ Training Camp at Fort Sheridan in May, 1917. In response to a call for volunteers for service in the Regular Army, before the close of the train- ing camp, Mr. Frederick enlisted; and. as a result of his excellent record thus far at Fort Sheridan, he was given the commission of Second Lieutenant some time before the other commissions were awarded to the men who were in training for the Reserve Officers’ Corps. At the close of the Fort Sheridan Training camp, he was assigned to the Cist Infantry of the Regular Army, then stationed at Gettysburg, Pa., but now at Charlotte. North Carolina. Reports from him indicate that he likes arrnv life, and that like the great majority of the other soldier boys from P. H. S.. he is somewhat impatiently waiting for the hour to come when he may help to strike the staggering blow that shall spell the doom of Kaiserdom. After Mr. Frederick graduated from the Paxton High School and until his enlistment in the Reserve Officers’ Corps, he was a student in the I ni er ity of Illinois. He received his degree in June, 191 , at the age of 21 years. Mack Wylie, '13. After graduating from the Paxton High School in 1913, Mack Wylie en- tered DePauw University at Greencastle. Ind., where he pursued a classical course of study for three years in preparation for a course in Law which he had chosen as his life profession. In the fall of 1916. he entered the Law School of Northwestern University at Evanston. As with unnumbered thousands of other young Americans of ability, scholarship, and professional or business opportunity and ambition, the call, To Arms! ’ in the Nation.-, hour of need, for a time at least, supplanted his professional ambition and at- tainment. The Marine Corps appealed to his newly formed ambition for service, and lie strenuously sought admission to an Officers’ Reserve Camp for Marines. Failing in this, he courageously resolved to begin at the bottom by existing as a private. This he did early in July. 1917. He was soon sent to Paris Island ofT the coast of South Carolina where he remained in training about three months. He was then sent to Ouanto. Va.. and later to Philadel- phia. where with his shipmate comrades he was hurried on board a transport, headed as they thought for “somewhere” on the coast of France. Much to their disgust, we are told, they were landed at Galveston. Texas, about the first of December. Disappointing as this may have been to these heroic Marines, and however unsatisfactory a landing place Galveston may be, we arc sure that it is to be preferred to a landing at the bottom of the sea—the possibility or probability of which at that particular time may have been