REFLECTIONS: Introduction page

The Kentucky Military Institute enjoyed a long and prestigious history in the field of education in Kentucky. It drew students from all over the country, especially from the Ohio valley and the South. Located first in Franklin County southeast of Frankfort, it became not only an educational institution but also a social element in the life of Kentucky's capital city. Older family papers and records reflect this fact. The Institute, founded in 1845, was chartered on 20 January, 1847. The school was to be operated as a quasi military corps of the Commonwealth, and the Governor was authorized to issue the commission of "Colonel" to the Superintendent. The school was to be open to any commissioned officer of the state militia, and to such other students as could qualify themselves "after a full examination upon all branches of the arts and sciences, and literature taught at the Institute, and upon satisfactory evidence that said graduates have been engaged in literary pursuits for three years thereafter or have remained at the Institute, as residents for one year." Upon meeting these qualifications cadets were graduated with appropriate degree, or "the degree of graduate of the Kentucky Military Institute."

Two years later the General Assembly of Kentucky amended the charter of the Kentucky Military Institute to include the Franklin Institute in its organization. The name of the institution was changed to the Kentucky Collegiate and Military Institute. The Institute operated many years as a collegiate institution with state chartered literary societies and chapters of national Greek letter fraternities, including Alpha Tau Omega, Chi Phi, Delta Kappa Epsilon, Phi Delta Theta, and Sigma Alpha Epsilon. The creation of the school followed the pattern being set in the rest of the South by operating military institutes, ostensibly to serve as an officer training adjunct to the state militia systems. Training in these state military institutes was to become a noteworthy mark in the South, and the military annals of both the region and the Nation were filled with the names of officers and other respected individuals who had graduated from their classrooms. The Kentucky Military Institute, or "KMI as it was affectionately known graduated hundreds of students who not only went into military service, but also filled the literary and scientific mandate of the original charter.

In his selected biographical sketches of graduates and former cadets of "KMI". James Darwin Stephens has created a veritable panoply of some of the school's best known graduates and heroes. He documents in good measure the fact that the Institute met the challenges set for it by the Kentucky General Assembly in 1847. The Kentucky Military Institute went through a series of moves and academic metamorphoses before it finally ceased operation as a military school at the end of the spring term of 1971. Stephens has been selective of the subjects which he shows as representative of much of the Institute's long operational history.

The several personal sketches represented in this collection cover a wide chronological range, and an interesting assortment of personal experiences. Among these are several soldiers, enlisted men and officers, who gave a good account of themselves from the Civil War through the Vietnam campaigns. Included are those men who were awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor and others whose decorations filled their chests with medals, ribbons, and supplementary chtsters of all descriptions.

Associated with the names of KMI graduates and former cadets were such historic moments as Bull Run, Chickamauga, Missionary Ridge, Stone's River Wilderness, Gettysburg, San Juan Hill, Wounded Knee, World Wars I and II. The cross compartments of Korea, and the battles in Vietnam. Several of these men fell in battle while others were seriously wounded or disabled.

In all of their dramatic exploits and noble careers many of these men of KMI brought personal credit to themselves and to history. Some with varied eccentricities and noteworthy differences forged honorable military careers, distinguished by acts of great personal bravery, while others persevered in other walks of life. Several became known as judges, representatives, senators, editors, state and county officials, stage, and screen actors. Numerous such lives and experiences are recalled by Stephens in this book. He illuminates a rather personal history of the Kentucky Military Institute with various sketches and colorful characteristic profiles. His work gives a good example of this phrase of Kentucky educational history, which endured more than a century of successful operation. In the careers of its graduates and former cadets. Stephens shows in some detail how they lived up to the ideals and expressed in KMI 's original charter of 1847.

Thomas D. Clark
Professor-emeritus of History
University of Kentucky

I was in Kentucky over the weekend and was able to read part of Sunday's Lexington Herald Leader. The paper presented an obituary of Thomas D. Clark, Professor Emeritus of History, University of Kentucky. Dr. Clark wrote the Foreward for Jim Stephen's pictorial history of K.M.I. Attending the ribbon cutting ceremony in June at KCD, a UK archives curator, speaking to our alumni group, talked fondly of Dr. Clark and how pleased he was that K.M.I. legacies were starting to emerge. Dr. Clark passed away about one month shy of his 102th birthday.

Leon

Thomas Dionysius Clark

CLARK, Thomas Dionysius, 101, Kentucky's Historian Laureate and a renowned scholar and teacher at the University of Kentucky from 1931 to 1968, died on Tues. June 28, 2005, in Lexington.

CLARK, Thomas Dionysius, 101, Kentucky's Historian Laureate and a renowned scholar and teacher at the University of Kentucky from 1931 to 1968, died on Tues. June 28, 2005, in Lexington. Born on July 14, 1903, in Louisville, Mississippi, Clark was the son of John Collingsworth Clark and Sallie Bennett Clark. He earned a bachelor's degree in 1928 from the University of Mississippi, a master's in 1929 from the University of Kentucky, and a Ph.D. in 1932 from Duke University. At UK, he headed the Department of History from 1942 to 1965. He also served as a faculty member of the Board of Trustees. Over 37 years he taught more than 20,000 students and trained and mentored several generations of doctoral candidates in history, a number of whom were to attain professional distinction of their own. Then, from 1968 to 1973 he was Distinguished Professor of History at Indiana University where he wrote Indiana University: Midwestern Pioneer, a 4-volume history of that institution. He was a visiting professor at many universities, among them Duke, North Carolina, Louisville, Chicago, Wisconsin, Harvard, Washington, and Stanford. His overseas assignments included stays at both Salzburg and Vienna in Austria, at Oxford University, and in India, Greece, and Yugoslavia. From the early 1930's, Clark wrote or edited more than 30 books on the American South, the Westward Movement, and Kentucky. His Exploring Kentucky, written with Lee Kirkpatrick, was for many years a textbook in the public schools. Among his other works were The Emerging South, A History of Kentucky, The Kentucky (a volume in the Rivers of America series), Pills, Petticoats, and Plows (a study of southern country stores), and The People 's House which described the several successive Kentucky gubernatorial mansions and their occupants. It was written in collaboration with Margaret A. Lane and published when Clark was 99 years old. But Clark was perhaps proudest of a multivolume work of which he was the organizing force and general editor and one little known to the general public, a comprehensive bibliography of travel accounts recorded by visitors to the southern colonies and states. Clark received many honors, including the presidencies of both the Southern Historical Association and the Organization of American Historians. He later served the O.A.H. as its executive secretary. He was a member of Phi Beta Kappa, of Omicron Delta Kappa, and of the Phi Alpha Theta honorary society in history. Throughout his career, Clark tirelessly nurtured and promoted the UK Library's manuscript collections, the University Press of Kentucky, the Kentucky State Archives, and the Kentucky Historical Society. Having been named by the legislature as the commonwealth's historian laureate, he unhesitatingly used that platform to campaign for a state-archives building and later for a Kentucky History Center. His prolonged efforts finally led to the construction of both facilities in Frankfort, and the History Center will be named in his honor. Clark was the keynote speaker at countless public events and occasions. His remarks inspirational but also laced with humor, typically cited the great progress attained by Kentucky since the beginning of the 20th century-then stressed the unfulfilled goals to which he believed the Bluegrass State should aspire. Besides his academic career, Clark was both a conservationist and a commercial tree farmer, subjects addressed in his book The Greening of the South. Thomas D. Clark is survived by his wife Loretta Gilliam Clark. His marriage of 62 years to Elizabeth Turner Clark ended with her death in 1995. Other survivors are a son, Thomas Bennett Clark, Lexington, a daughter, Elizabeth Clark Stone, Bowling Green, KY, a brother, Ernest Clark, Dallas, TX, two sisters: Wilma Sanders and Ethel Atkinson, both of Louisville, Mississippi, three grandchildren and five great-grandchildren.