Education: Example in Natchez

At Jefferson Military College near Natchez, Miss., the money was still rolling in. It came, largely in five-and ten-dollar bills, from people all over the U.S. who wrote to applaud the 147-year-old prep school for turning down Oilman George W. Armstrong’s proposed endowment with a crackpot list of “white supremacy” strings attached (TIME, Nov. 7). Last week, with $9,314 in the till from well-wishers, Jefferson had enlisted a special fundraiser. He was Vice Admiral Aaron Stanton (“Tip”) Merrill, a Pacific task force commander in World War II and onetime chief of Navy public relations.

Merrill, a Mississippian who moved back home to Natchez on his retirement in 1947, announced that if he could raise enough money to keep the school from foundering and increase its enrollment, he would be glad to take the job of skipper. Moreover, he knew just what he wanted the Jefferson of the future to be like: a school where students would lay the basis of interservice understanding by taking combined courses in “naval, military, air and diplomatic sciences.” Said Tip Merrill, once an outspoken foe of service unification (TIME, April 22, 1946): “Jefferson Military College could set the example for the nation to follow.”