Final Sunday’s column started a solution to John Moore Jr.’s questions on Peacock Navy Academy or PMA, a now-defunct non-public faculty with a prolonged and idiosyncratic historical past. His father, then-Capt. John Moore Sr., taught Spanish and was one of many navy instructors on the faculty, based in 1894 in what’s now the Woodlawn space. All the time a boys faculty, it adopted a post-Spanish American Battle development and went navy in 1900, which meant coaching that for some went above and past marching.
Initially a proprietary faculty, owned and operated by founder Wesley Peacock Sr. and household, the small faculty (capped at an eventual 200 college students) stayed proudly … totally different, lengthy after the elder Peacock stepped again in 1926 in favor of his sons, Wesley Jr. and Don, and a shift to nonprofit standing in 1933.
Reader Moore, a younger baby when his father labored there within the early to mid-Nineteen Fifties, remembered elite items of particularly completed college students — the Monkey Drill Staff, an acrobatic equestrian group impressed by related Army cavalry groups, recognized for using from a standing place; and the close-order, fast-cadence Zouaves, derived from an Elks Membership custom by the use of the French and different armies, who wowed audiences by scrambling over a 12-foot wall in below a minute. Each, in addition to rank-and-file PMA cadets, have been dependable and widespread members in Fiesta San Antonio parades and different occasions.
In addition to faculty historical past — early many years have been lined right here final week — Moore requested for background on the Peacock household.
For a number of years in the course of the Thirties, the academy’s print ads featured profile pictures of three Peacocks — founder and “president emeritus” Wesley Sr., superintendent (principal) Wesley Jr. and commandant (head of the navy program) Don, captioned “The Peacock Triumvirate,” recalling the Roman political establishment of three males carefully linked in energy. (A fourth Peacock, not a person and never pictured, additionally was an integral member of employees.) What follows on every of those figures derives from newspaper tales, public information, “Parade Relaxation” volumes 1 and a pair of and correspondence with the books’ creator, Don’s daughter Donna Peacock, who answered some questions after session along with her sisters however requested to not be immediately quoted.
As lined right here final week, Wesley Sr. (1865-1941), a graduate of the College of Georgia, had some earlier instructing expertise in Texas (Jasper and Uvalde) earlier than shifting in 1893 together with his first spouse, Seline, and toddler Wesley Jr. to San Antonio, the place at 29, he based the Peacock Faculty for Boys. At first, the varsity taught all ages and topics. Wesley managed to accumulate land and begin constructing within the streetcar-served West Finish (now Woodlawn) neighborhood; the varsity’s handle of document could be 1800 Cincinnati Ave.
Seline, a Texan from Jackson County, died Nov. 28, 1898. Her obituary the subsequent day within the San Antonio Gentle says she died at house and left “two little kids” — little Wesley and one other who should not have survived.
About 5 years later, “Professor Peacock,” as Wesley Sr. was recognized, remarried; with the previous Edith Wing, he had three extra kids — Donaldson “Don” Wing, Dorothy Wing and Margaret Edith. All however Margaret, who married a profession Army officer, went into administration on the faculty, typically recognized as “family-operated.”
Edith Wing Peacock, an energetic clubwoman, additionally was an completed horsewoman and instrumental in growing the varsity’s equestrian program.With a secure of 40-50 horses, “each boy has a possibility to experience,” because the advertisements mentioned.
Wesley Sr. was a dedicated Methodist who held some necessary lay workplaces within the denomination; he additionally was an avid outdoorsman who co-founded the Texas Recreation and Fish Protecting Affiliation, a sportsman’s group.
Wesley Jr. (1896-1991) attended the household’s faculty, adopted by Southwestern College, World Battle I service as an artillery officer and coursework, and the College of Texas at Austin and Trinity College to complete up his diploma, serving to out as a drill teacher at PMA when he may. Along with his brother, Don, he took over administration of the varsity when their father semi-retired; throughout World Battle II, Wesley Jr. function Army liaison officer on the particular employees of the Texas State Guard and obtained honors for his achievements in navy schooling from the Army, the state of Texas and the town of San Antonio. He served for 47 years as superintendent of PMA.
Half-brother Don (1906-2001) additionally went to PMA, then Oglethorpe College in Atlanta. The visionary of the elite PMA drill groups had plenty of navy expertise of his personal to attract on. In line with his Categorical-News obituary, Nov. 24, 2002, “throughout World Battle II, he served on the employees of the adjutant normal of Texas (and) was promoted to colonel in 1948. He served as chief of employees of the State Guard from 1948 till he retired in 1963. He was awarded the Texas Medal of Advantage and the Texas Nationwide Guard’s Minute Man Award for Meritorious Service (and) was inducted into the Nationwide Guard of Honor in 1981.”
The opposite long-serving household administrator was Dorothy Wing Peacock (1910-1991), whose job variously was described over the the years as “secretary,” “bookkeeper” and at last “finance officer.” Faculty catalogs from the early Sixties use the final of those titles. A short bio says she attended Westmoorland School (a Methodist faculty previously generally known as San Antonio Feminine School, mentioned right here Oct. 10, 2013) and the College of Texas. As a school pupil, she coached basketball at Ursuline Academy. After years as the varsity’s finance skilled, she additionally earned a level in library science from Our Girl of the Lake College and typically served as the varsity librarian. Throughout World Battle II, she was a rating officer within the native unit of the Purple Cross Ladies’s Motor Corps, for which she supervised civil protection workouts; later she was energetic within the native Zonta Worldwide membership for government girls. She died a month earlier than Wesley Jr.; neither I nor Donna Peacock may discover an obituary for her.
The second-generation Peacocks had lengthy lives, possibly as a result of they knew when to cease working. For them, that meant greater than placing in retirement papers. From 1966 to 1978, together with years of home strife over the Vietnam Battle, 73 navy faculties “closed or transitioned to a nonmilitary format,” mentioned John A. Coulter, creator of “Cadets on Campus: Historical past of Navy Faculties in the US,” citing adjustments in tradition, together with a development towards co-education.
Wesley Peacock Jr. introduced the varsity’s intent to shut in a letter to oldsters despatched in March 1973.
The final commencement ceremonies have been on Could 26, 1973, additionally the varsity’s final day. The letter and subsequent newspaper interviews burdened the “superior age … and circumstances of well being” of the superintendent, his brother and sister, and the information tales additionally talked about the “lack of male heirs.” Wesley Jr. and his spouse had no surviving kids, in accordance with his Categorical-News obituary; Don was the daddy of three daughters (a son, Donaldson Jr., died at delivery in 1938); and Dorothy by no means married.
Because it was already a nonprofit, why didn’t the Peacock siblings rent their replacements earlier than retiring? Members of the family supply that enrollment already was declining, and that Wesley Jr., Don and Dorothy wouldn’t have been snug with another person in cost, though they seemed into some choices for holding PMA open.
The college’s band performed at commencement, together with a closing “Auld Lang Syne” and a haunting final faucets. The campus was conveyed to the native Salvation Army, which nonetheless refers back to the former campus as its Peacock Middle.
Regardless of its seemingly abrupt finish, the “sport little faculty” — as described by Mamie Eisenhower, spouse of its 1915 soccer coach — had a packed historical past, together with a number of different Peacock relations who labored there within the early many years and a few satellite tv for pc campuses, together with one in Dallas and a Peacock Naval Academy in Corpus Christi.
Reader Moore additionally talked about “a number of alumni changing into outstanding.”
“Hundreds of younger males from the US, Mexico, Central and South America and even Europe graduated in the course of the practically 75 years the academy was in existence,” says Don’s Categorical-News obituary, Nov. 24, 2001. “Alumni embrace Father Virgil Elizondo, former rector of San Fernando Cathedral; the late film director King Vidor, the Galveston native whose credit embrace ‘Stella Dallas’ and ‘The Fountainhead’; Paul Calvo, ex-governor of Guam; character actor Richard Bradford; and the late Albert Alkek, the Houston oilman and philanthropist who donated $30 million to the College of Texas M.D. Anderson Most cancers Middle in 1993.”
The Peacock Navy Academy Alumni Affiliation, a nonprofit group, was based in 1983 to protect the varsity’s historical past and to hold its traditions ahead. The group holds reunions, maintains a mini-museum (lined right here Sept. 24, 2006) within the Peacock Home on the outdated campus and awards Peacock Memorial Scholarships, for which it accepts tax-deductible contributions within the identify of deceased people for its scholarship Honor Roll. Members additionally current an annual Peacock Medal to the rising junior cadets who will turn into commanders of the JROTC Corps of Cadets at Marine Navy Academy in Harlingen, San Antonio Academy, San Marcos Academy and Texas Navy Institute.
Present CEO of the affiliation is Arturo Wolf, PMA ’73. He was the final graduate to cross the stage on the faculty’s final commencement ceremony. “When he shook arms with Col. Wesley Peacock Jr., neither actually needed to let go,” mentioned Mike Vlieger ’62. “It was a really lengthy and heat handshake.”
To contact the PMA Alumni Affiliation for excursions or different requests, write to awolf@pmaalumni.org.
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