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West Point, April 2012

Locations from childhood at West Point.
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Our unit is behind me and Mark Nelson's on my right (out of view). Mary and I played baseball cards between the two stairways of this building.
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Our unit is behind me and Mark Nelson's on my right (out of view). Mary and I played baseball cards between the two stairways of this building.

2012WestPoint281

  • The Thayer was the fancy hotel on the academy grounds, just inside the Highland Falls gate.
  • The Thayer Hotel, seen across Buffalo Soldier Field
  • The Lobby of the Thayer
  • Sacred Heart School, where I was in 2nd, 3rd, and 4th grades.
  • Untitled photo
  • "Playground". They used to sell candy at a table at the entrance on the right. One time, I took all the pennies I could assemble and tried to buy 43 fireballs. The (slightly older) child working the table wailed to the nun "Sister, he want to buy 43 fireballs!" I think I was about 8.
  • Untitled photo
  • Sacred Heart School & Parish, Highland Falls, NY
  • Our "quint". We lived in the end unit on the right, Qtrs 164 (now 160E) on Washington Rd.
  • Close-up of our unit (front).
  • Another view showing the front and side of our unit. On the right side yard, there was a big oak tree and the area around it must have been regraded because the bottom of the tree was set down inside a cylindrical hole faced with masonry. All the kids (boys, at least) had toy guns that we used to play "tag war". If you were "shot", you were out unless you got tagged by someone still alive. One time I got down in the hole with a partner who crouched out of site. I stood up with my M15 mowing down my opponents with my partner continuously tagging me to keep me alive. I think it may have been around this time that we switched to acorn fights (fueled by the massive amount of acorns in the woods across the creek).
  • I learned to ride a two wheeler in the area in front of these garages. Gandpa Strick (Matilde Guiteras' husband) refinished an old bike, painting it in Army colors with a USMA emblem on the front post. <br />
<br />
During the winter, the edges of  the road were  marked in the snow with "snow sticks"---perfectly straight, 1" diameter painted yellow at the top. We kids, of course, would yank them out and use them for all kinds of more important tasks--- walking sticks when crossing the creek, as starter components when damming the creek (I guess we were all engineers in training), as vaulting poles, and probably as fighting sticks (though I don't recall any impalings).
  • Mark Nelson lived in the unit on the near left. Amy Lear in the far left unit.
  • "The Creek". Our unit is visible through the trees on the left.
  • Our unit is behind me and Mark Nelson's on my right (out of view). Mary and I played baseball cards between the two stairways of this building.
  • Thayer Hall, home of the Math Dept. where Dad taught. I'm standing on the level of the parade ground. The bulk of the building is below me (since West Point  is mostly on a bluff above the Hudson, the land drops off steeply to the river). The roof of the building (behind the "battlements") is a parking lot with an entrance ramp to my left.
  • Another view of the main entrance to Thayer Hall.
  • Looking across the baseball field toward the academic buildings. The Yankees would play an exhibition each year against the cadets. The (Protestant) chapel is visible in the distance.
  • The Catholic Chapel.
  • The niche above-left of the door housed a statue of Christ the Redeemer given in memory of Aunt Hortie. It was damaged mysteriously and is being replaced/repaired.
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Copyright Stephen G. Strickland

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