Kemper Military School and College, founded in 1844 by Professor Frederick T Kemper, stood here as one of America’s premier military schools. Known as the “Oldest Military School west of the Mississippi” and regarded as the “West Point of the West,” it educated cadets from every state in the Union and from nearly every country in the world. Its graduates entered all professions and were represented in every war the United States fought from the Civil War to Operation Enduring Freedom, and its “Gold Star” Alumni Roll of Honor for those who fell in wartime was one of the largest for a school of its size. Founded as a male boarding school, it instilled order and discipline through peer leadership and a system of voluntary compliance called the Standard of Honor, while the orderly daily routine of the Corps of Cadets was administered by the students themselves. Will Rogers attended as a young man, and at its peak from about 1920 through 1970 the school enrolled nearly 500 cadets annually. Professor Kemper’s creed, “The object is to develop in harmony the physical, mental, and moral abilities, not to create mere scholars but to make men,” was so widely copied that it came to be used by most institutions of higher learning and even some of the Armed Forces of the United States.