Conscripted into JrROTC

Natrona County High School's JrROTC program is the oldest one in the United States, being over 100 years old.

 

Male high school students in 1946.  Quite a few of these boys are wearing their JrROTC uniforms, which was one of the standard Army uniforms of the 1940s.

I've blogged on this before, but based on the fact that the school was a land grant high school, something that most people don't even realize existed, it featured, in recognition of that status, compulsory male military education all the way from the day it first opened, up until some date in the 1970s.  The changes in society brought about by the Vietnam War ultimately caused the School Board to eliminate JrROTC as a required course at that time, which was made easier by the fact that Casper's second high school, Kelly Walsh, did not have JrROTC at all.  Nor did the county's third high school, Midwest.  So it was not only becoming unpopular as a compulsory course, but it was also inequitable to require some students to take it, while others did not, merely based upon where a person lived.

Up until the 1970s, it doesn't seem to have been unpopular, although it doesn't seem to have been terribly respected post World War Two either.  Prior to 1945, however, it was a different world, and I've been told that parents appreciated the required course as the Army provided the male uniform for it, giving parents a much needed set of school clothes in an era when resources were tight.  Anyhow, by the mid 1970s, that requirement was gone, and the program wasn't all that popular when I graduated from NCHS in 1981 (I didn't take JrROTC either).

Well, in a scheduling oddity, for at least one NCHS freshman, conscription into JrROTC is back.

I happen to know the young man, an nice rural kid who, like most rural kids, is older than his years.  His father was a Marine, he's already a fair cowboy, and it probably is no sweat to him.  But, because classes must be filled, and there's only so many slots available for any one thing, and because if the class you wanted wasn't available, they'll slot you into one that is, he's been assigned to JrROTC.  Perhaps more than one kid has been, I only know of the one.

A surprising local return, in a minor way, to practices of the past.