Nov 9-West Point

West Point is just like any other small college (4,000 students), except the students are all in incredibly good shape and they wear uniforms of one kind or another. You can’t just wander the campus so we took the tour through Cadet’s Chapel, past all the sports fields, mess hall (meals together-everybody lines up and then they march in), cannon displays, statues, and beautiful views of the Hudson River. They also have a rather unsettling military museum. George Washington was convinced that controlling the Hudson was critical to winning the Revolutionary War, so he had a fort built at West Point, which is between Boston and New York. He even had them stretch a huge chain across the river to foul up any British ships that were trying to sneak by. Washington was afraid the British would be able to divide the colonists from Boston and New York. It was turned into a military (army) academy by Thomas Jefferson. Just about any famous military figure you’ve heard of went to West Point—Patton, MacArthur, Bradley, Eisenhower, Robert E. Lee…of the 95 major battles of the civil war, 90 of them were commanded by West Point graduates—on BOTH sides of the fight. Of the remaining 5 battles, one commander or the other was from here. The cadet that caught my interest though was James Abbott McNeill Whistler. Not sure what battle he fought in? Well, he excelled at drawing at West Point, but was kicked out when he flunked chemistry. He went on to make a rather nice portrait of his mother…got it yet? Whistler’s Mother!