[Congressional Record Volume 165, Number 151 (Thursday, September 19, 2019)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E1182-E1183]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




 THE MODERN ASSOCIATION OF GRADUATES TAKES SHAPE: AOG HISTORY PART III 
                         (1946-1995) SECTION B

                                 ______
                                 

                           HON. JOHN SHIMKUS

                              of illinois

                    in the house of representatives

                      Thursday, September 19, 2019

  Mr. SHIMKUS. Madam Speaker, I rise to include in the Record section B 
of the third installment of an article by Keith J. Hamel honoring the 
150th Anniversary of the West Point Association of Graduates:


                             WPAF Dissolved

       AOG celebrated its centennial in 1969, although there is no 
     mention of the Association recognizing its 100th year of 
     existence in any AOG publication that year (it wasn't even 
     brought up at the annual meeting!). In the first year of the 
     Association's second century, two events occurred that 
     significantly changed the direction of AOG: First, Paul 
     Thompson '29 was elected President; second, Major General 
     William Knowlton '43JAN took over as Superintendent from 
     Major General Samuel Koster '42. Thompson and Knowlton, as it 
     turned out, were made for each other, as each was interested 
     in reorganizing and reforming the work of AOG. Weeks before 
     his departure, Koster had announced plans to raise $10 
     million through WPAF in order to endow cadet activities, 
     calling the plan the ``$10 Million Cadet Activities 
     Endowment.'' Ambitious (since, from its inception in 1961, 
     the West Point Fund had raised just $1.02 million), Koster's 
     plan reportedly resulted in a 369-percent increase in 
     contributions over FY1969, but Knowlton suspended it in the 
     spring of 1970 fearing ``that there may be some duplication 
     of our fund-raising efforts'' and announcing that ``a study 
     is being made to sort out our alumni-related fund-raising 
     efforts.'' A year later, in the 1971 Annual Report of the 
     Superintendent, Knowlton declared, ``Pending at present is a 
     reorganization and consolidation of the West Point Alumni 
     Foundation and the Association of Graduates.'' To hasten this 
     shakeup, Knowlton had earlier introduced plans to remove the 
     active duty officer from the Office of Assistant to the 
     Superintendent (Gifts Program) who had been working for AOG, 
     and thus limiting the Association's ability to solicit funds 
     for USMA, and to establish the Alumni Affairs and Gifts 
     Program Division, a precursor to today's Directorate of 
     Academy Advancement.
       While Knowlton forced the merger between AOG and WPAF, it 
     was up to Thompson to seal the deal. As noted in Lamb's 
     report, the leadership at WPAF feared that funds raised would 
     be directed to AOG ``and that USMA at most would get 
     crumbs.'' At a fall 1970 meeting, Thompson convinced George 
     Olmsted and Cortlandt Schuyler, both Class of 1922 and key 
     WPAF Board members, that this would not be the case. Just a 
     few years earlier, Schuyler had served as AOG President, and 
     his views were valued by Board members of both organizations. 
     Schuyler agreed to work with Thompson on the details of the 
     reorganization, and the following fall they presented these 
     details to the WPAF Board of Managers, who ultimately 
     ``decided that it would be in USMA's best interests to 
     transfer its fundraising and publishing responsibilities and 
     all its assets to AOG.'' On February 8, 1972, AOG and WPAF 
     signed two memorandums of agreement (one for fundraising and 
     one for publishing) to that effect. To that point in time, 
     WPAF had raised $1.8 million for the Academy. It continued 
     its existence as a backup to AOG from

[[Page E1183]]

     1972 to 1987, receiving more than $1,450,000 in gifts and 
     bequests, all of which were transferred to AOG before the 
     Foundation finally voted itself out of business on March 21, 
     1988.


                        Seeds of ``WPAOG'' Sown

       Stepping back a bit, one more significant event occurred 
     closely after AOG's centennial, but it's unclear whether it 
     had a direct impact on Thompson and Knowlton's vision to 
     reorganize the Association. In 1972, AOG received a $1.5 
     bequest gift from the estate of Leah and Clement Trott, Class 
     of 1899. According to Lamb's report, ``The Trott gift gave 
     the AOG the financial flexibility and capability to expand 
     program and activity support of the Academy, as the Cullum 
     gift had provided graduates their administrative center and 
     `alumni house' at West Point.'' Lamb would certainly know: 
     Even though AOG was losing its active duty officer in the 
     Superintendent's office, who did a tremendous amount of work 
     for the Association, the Trott gift allowed AOG to now hire 
     and pay a full-time Executive Vice President, and the person 
     the Association hired was Robert Lamb. He retired from his 
     position as Alumni Secretary on the Superintendent's staff on 
     August 31, 1972 and the next day reported to AOG in his new 
     role, which he labels in his report as ``managing director.'' 
     The Trott gift also allowed AOG to hire Stephen O. Fuqua '33 
     as Director of Development, Michael Krisman '39 as Director 
     of Publications, and a handful more staff personnel for its 
     offices on the lower floors of Cullum Hall.
       The early 1970s were an exciting time for the Association. 
     Its membership among graduates was hovering around 97 
     percent, it completed a record annual appeal in 1970 
     ($61,996), and in 1972 AOG's Endowment Fund exceeded the $3 
     million mark, providing more than $100,000 in interest and 
     dividend income to annually fund the Association's operating 
     expenses (in recognition of its surplus, AOG presented a gift 
     of $25,000 to the Academy). ``By the summer of 1973, the 
     basic elements of the reorganization of the Academy's alumni 
     affairs were in place,'' noted Lamb in his report. Despite 
     these positives, there were still challenges for the 
     reorganized AOG, none bigger than trying to convince more and 
     more graduates to support the Academy with a donation. Most 
     of these graduates had served in an Army for which almost all 
     recreational activities and facilities were paid by 
     appropriated dollars, and they did not comprehend why the 
     Academy needed private funding. Lieutenant General Sidney 
     Berry '48, the 50th Superintendent, addressed this matter in 
     his March 1976 ASSEMBLY letter, stating: ``Public funds 
     support the necessaries of cadet life, education and 
     training. Privately contributed funds augment programs and 
     activities supported by public funds, provide extracurricular 
     opportunities for cadets, and in general improve the quality 
     of education and training at West Point. In short, they 
     provide the margin of excellence we desire and expect for the 
     Military Academy and the Corps of Cadets,'' coining a phrase 
     that is essential to AOG's mission today.
       More changes familiar to today's AOG came in the 1980s. As 
     the new decade began, AOG had just inaugurated its new travel 
     program with a cruise from Texas and added new trips (three-
     to-five annually) in the coming years, and it had launched 
     the West Point Preparatory Scholarship Program, which 
     provided funds to deserving candidates who needed additional 
     instruction at a military junior college to ensure success at 
     West Point. In 1981, AOG President George Dixon Jr. '40 
     convened a long-range planning conference in Boiling Springs, 
     Pennsylvania, one of the outcomes of which was the 
     establishment of a West Point Societies Program. Dozens of 
     West Point Societies had been in existence by this time, most 
     assisting the Academy with its Admissions efforts, but they 
     had been relatively autonomous. The new program, which was 
     finally implemented in the fall of 1986 with Morris Herbert 
     '50 as its first Director (aided by James ``Skip'' Wensyel 
     '52 as Deputy Director of Information), sought to align the 
     75 or so active societies and encouraged them to assist AOG 
     in achieving its objectives toward the Academy, rather than 
     their own individual objectives. On May 1, 1987, AOG held the 
     first West Point Societies Presidents Conference, a 
     forerunner of today's Leaders Conference, during which Denis 
     Mullane '52, Chairman of AOG's Societies Committee, discussed 
     four key topics with the 53 society representatives present: 
     admissions support, information dissemination, community 
     relations, and strengthening support between AOG and 
     societies. Around this time, AOG also established a new 
     development program to assist West Point classes in their 
     efforts to support the Academy, latter known as Class Giving, 
     complete with support from AOG Financial Services to 
     administrate the funds, ensuring that interest on said funds 
     was properly reinvested (Williams Harrison Jr. '52 became 
     AOG's first Director of Financial Services and Treasurer). 
     Finally, in 1992, AOG introduced the Distinguished Graduate 
     Award (DGA), its second major annual award (the first being 
     the Thayer Award). James Van Fleet, Class of 1915; Matthew 
     Ridgeway, Class of APR1917; Andrew Goodpaster '39, and 
     Thoralf Sundt Jr. '52 were the first recipients of the DGA.


                       Conclusion--AOG'S New Home

       By the end of the 1980s, AOG was taking in more than $5 
     million annually in donations, establishing a financial 
     position that finally allowed it to realize a decades-long 
     desire to eliminate membership dues, which it did starting 
     with the Class of 1994. What's more, in 1990, Thomas Russell 
     '59, a Planned Giving Officer, took a phone call from the son 
     of graduate who was inquiring about how much money it would 
     take to have a building at West Point named for his father, 
     James K. Herbert, '30. Russell explained that the names for 
     public buildings at the Academy were made by the Secretary of 
     the Army and not named for donors, but that AOG would be 
     willing to name its long-desired alumni center after his 
     father. Thus, upon his death in 1990, Herbert bequeathed $3 
     million to AOG, which became the lead gift in a campaign to 
     build what became known as the Herbert Alumni Center. Ground 
     was broken for AOG's new home on April 8, 1993, and its 
     cornerstone was dedicated on October 12, 1993 during 
     Homecoming ceremonies. When the AOG staff moved into Herbert 
     Alumni Center on March 1, 1995, the Association had just 
     completed two banner years: its Development staff raised 
     $11.04 million from 14,454 gifts in 1994, with graduate 
     participation increasing to 24 percent, an all-time high; 
     and, a year earlier, it stood up its Office of Alumni Support 
     (derived from the West Point Societies Program and complete 
     with Society, Classes, and Communication divisions). But this 
     was just the start of some amazing successes for AOG. Now 
     that it was working out of Herbert Alumni Center, it was 
     about to realize a goal it had established for itself at the 
     1990 Board of Trustees strategic planning conference, a goal 
     to raise $100 million for USMA in 10 years, a goal that 
     became known as the Bicentennial Campaign for West Point, and 
     it's the opening subject in the next and final installment of 
     AOG's 150-year history.

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