VMI Cadet. March 8, 2002

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Library Preston Archives
Preston Library
Lexington VA 24450
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Jonathan Daniels ^61
Remembering a VMI Legend
Although Jonathan
Daniels’ courageous acts
took place more than 30
years ago, it has been a fairly
recent tradition at VMI to
celebrate Danie ls on or
about his birthday every year
in recognition of his valor.
T h e
date for the
Da n i e l s
ceremony is
fas t ap­proaching
and the
Corps o f
Cadets will
once again
be re­minded
of
what hap-p
e n e d
down in
Alabama in
the late summer o f 1965.
After spending his
entire childhood in New
Hampshire, Jonathan Daniels
came to the segregated south
to matriculate with the class
of 1965 at VMI and endured
the Ratline like most classes
before his. However, Daniels
found the treatment harsh
and unjust and did not take
part in the Ratline experience
as an upperclassman. In­stead,
he and his roommates
soon become known as “rat
daddies” among the rats in
barracks. As an English ma­jor
at VMI, he became in­volved
with tKljc Cnbet and
rose to the position o f editor
his first class year. Daniels
was also named valedictorian
of his class.
After graduating from
VMI, Daniels was accepted
to Harvard University in
Cambridge, Massachusetts.
He went on to earn a
master’s degree in English,
but as a strongly religious
person, Daniels soon lost in­terest
in his studies and in­stead
attended seminary
school. In 1965 he heeded
the call of Martin Luther
King, Jr. to come down to
the Deep South to help with
the struggle for desegrega­tion.
Daniels’ journey would
take him to the small town of
Selma, Alabama, and his vio­lent
death.
While in Selma,
By Magnus Nordenman
Cabct Managing Editor
Daniels got involved in stu­dent
protests and the pick­eting
of local companies that
refused to do business with
African-Americans. Daniels
left accounts of his work in
Selma in his diaries that re­main
to this day.
Reverend Daniels with Ruby Salesi
“After a week-long,
rain-soaked vigil, we still
stood face-to-face with the
Selma police. I stood, for a
change, in the front rank,
ankle-deep in an enormous
puddle.. .1 found myself only
inche s from a young
policeman...We matched
baleful glances and then both
looked away...One of my
friends asked [the young po­liceman]
for his name. His
name was Charlie. When we
sang for him, he blushed and
then smiled in a truly sacra­mental
mixture of embarrass­ment
and pleasure and shy­ness.
Soon the young police­man
looked relaxed, we all
lit cigarettes (in a couple of
instances, from a common
match), and small groups o f
kids and policemen clustered
to joke or talk cautiously
about the situation. It was
thus a shock later to look
across the rank at the cler­gymen
and their opposites,
who glared across a still un­broken
‘wall’ in what ap­peared
to be silent hatred,”
Daniels wrote of one of his
encounters with the authori­ties
in Selma.
Daniels and a few
other civil-rights activists
were arrested on August 14,
1965 for picketing three lo­cal
businesses. They were
released six days later and
found their way to a local
drug store. The group o f
newly freed activists went
into the store to buy sodas.
However, the owner of the
store, Tom Coleman, ap­proached
the group waving
a shotgun. After making
threats he leveled the shot­gun
at Ruby Sales, a young
A f r i c a n -
American girl
in the group.
D a n i e l s
pushed Sales
out of the way
and caught the
full blast of the
shotgun in his
chest. Daniels
died immedi­ately.
Coleman
then called the
S p o l ic e and
stated, “I just
shot a preacher. You need to
get on down here.” Although
Coleman confessed to the
murder to the Selma police,
he was prosecuted for man­slaughter
and was found in­nocent
by the jury. As
Coleman left the courtroom,
the jury stayed beshind to
shake his hand. King person­ally
commented on the deeds
of Daniels shortly after his
death.
“One of the most he­roic
Christian deeds of which
I have heard in my entire
ministry was performed by
Jonathan Daniels,” Rev. King
said upon hearing o f his
death. “Certainly there are
no incidents more beautiful
in the annals of church his­tory,
and though we are
grieved at this time, our grief
should give way to a sense
of Christian honor and nobil­ity.”
The Anglican Church
considers Daniel to be one of
only 15 modern-day martyrs.
In 1997, the VMI
Board-of-Visitors enacted
the Jonathan Daniels Hu­manitarian
Award. The first
Continued on page 5
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Cadet Captains
Announced for ‘03
By Glenn Walton
Cnbet Asst. News Editor
The Commandant’s of­fice
finally posted the list for
next year’s Corps leaders on
Thursday. This list outlined
the rising first class cadets
chosen to hold the presti­gious
rank of cadet captain.
Thisraii^s he^^^^ by onl^ the
for rank. Through a process
of peer evaluations and in­terviews
by faculty members,
22 o f these cadets were ulti­mately
chosen. These cadets
are to be entrusted during the
upcoming year with running
the military operations of the
- I f
J iu ® »•
^ i
VMPs Regimental Staff passes in review.
top 2 percent of cadets in the
Corps, and bestows the top
responsibility for military
leadership at VMI.
Several weeks ago a list
was compiled of the top 60
candidates for this rank out
of all the members of the
Class of 2003 who applied
Corps, from the day-to-day
to the larger and more sig­nificant
events, such as the
Governor’s Inauguration Pa­rade
that cadets participated
in last January. That parade
was coordinated, planned
Continued on page 5
Maj. Stanton Smith:
A Study in Chemistry
By Dan Cragg
Cnbct Layout Editor
This semester there ginia where he earned his
Ph.D., In organic chemistry.
After graduating from U VA,
he became a post-doctoral
researcher for a small com-have
been unprecedented re­ports
of liberal arts majors
happily making the trip past
the cannon ball to a science
elective. This strange occur- pany where he worked on a
rence is largely due to one project for the US Army.
man. Major Stanton Smith of
the Chemistry Department,
the instructor of the popular
chemistry of warfare class.
This is where his interest in
chemical warfare d ev e l­oped.
Although he could not
comment on the specifics o f
Smith originally comes from the project, he did say that a
Fayetteville, Georgia but has large portion of it dealt with
spent much time away from
his home state. He attended
the University of Central
Florida where he received a
a nerve agent. According to
Smith, “the project was to
make compounds that would
act as a scavenger of nerve
Maj. Gen. Richard L, Irbyr VMl^ tenth
Siiperiutendentx passed a way on March. 6 in
l^exington: tie was VMI Class of 1939 .and
sdrVed as Superintendent. frotn 1 9 7 1 -1 9H/ .
B.S. in chemistry and went agents.”
on to the University of Vir- . Smith came directly to
VMI upon concluding his
work as a post-doctoral re­searcher
in August of 1999.
The majority of classes he
teaches are the required
Chemical Science courses
for non-science majors, but
he does sometimes get a
chance to teach upper level
courses like organic chemis­try
for chemistry and biology
majors, or what he is teach­ing
this semester, Special
Topics in Chemistry: The
Chemistry of Warfare. He
says the idea came from his
rat chemical science classes;
“the cadets wanted a class on
death and destruction.”
Smith has surely delivered.
The beginning of the class
dealt largely with explosives
and even included a demon­stration
o f thermite, but his
Continued on page 5
Army
Department
Threatens
Seconds ^
Scholarsh^s
By Caliet Staff Writer
On 28 February all con­tracted
army cadets in their
third year of military science
, received an email entitled
“Death Knell” by their MSIII
branch chief, Maj. Timothy
Lethers. This email ad­dressed
what Lethers felt
was a sub par performance
by the MSIII class as a
whole. Lethers pointed out
that their performance could
jeopardize the scholjarships
of those cadets possessing
them.
Although the letter did
not address specific cadets,
it did mention that the per­formance
o f the Guaranteed
Reserve/Guard Force cadets
(cadets who have scholar­ships
that require a National
Guard/Reserve commitment
after college) was especially
sub-par. Major Lethers at­tributed
this to the fact that
these cadets were not com­peting
for a branch of their
choice in the active army, and
therefore it was felt they could
coast the rest of the year.
This email seems to
have been sparked in part by
the performance of several
MSIII cadets in the recent
army land navigation exer­cise.
The course was de­signed
to test expert infan­trymen.
Many cadets com­plained
that this course was
beyond their current experi­ence
and skill level. The
army cadre found many ca­dets
quitting the course after
several failed attempts, and
even found a group of who
had stripped the insides of
their rifles to avoid having to
clean them later (this prac­tice
would have been met
with severe disciplinary ac­tion
if the cadets were active
duty soldiers.) Also, the
army department cited an
farming drop in PT scores
within program. VMI went
from being second in the na­tion
in PT scores to a some­where
in the two hundreds.
Currently Lethers has
reorganized the entii-e MSIII
chain o f command and Says
that cadets should expect
more disciplinary actions.
The cadets had a Friday
morning meeting with Col.
William Faistenhammer, who
verbally counseled the ca­dets,
and stipulated that
there must be a change in at­titudes
by the MSIIIs.
Currently contracted
cadets who have been un­able
to obtain a passing
score were given an ultima­tum:
pass the APFT or lose
your contract/scholarship.
Also, the standards of morn­ing
PT has significantly in­creased
recently.