F Troop and Other Citadel Stories

I Wear the Ring

109 I Wear the Ring “Iwear the ring.” Poignant words. The opening line of Pat Conroy’s classic novel about the Citadel, The Lords of Discipline. Read and loved by all Citadel graduates. Conroy, Citadel class of 1967. Conroy and his novel. Both once banned from campus, now embraced. That great line is followed by this one, equally meaningful: “I wear the ring and I return often to the city of Charleston, South Carolina, to study the history of my becoming a man.” Before Conroy another writer, Calder Willingham, penned another novel about the Citadel. Titled End as a Man, it too was banned from the Citadel campus. So far as is known, neither the book nor its author have ever been embraced by the school. You see, Willingham does not wear the ring. He attended the Citadel but dropped out during his freshman year. He didn’t make it. Conroy, though, at least in part, dedicated his book to Willingham. In Conroy’s dedication are found these words: “And to the boys who did not make it.” Most, but not all, Citadel graduates return to the city of Charleston, and to the Citadel quite often, at least as often as they can. They are drawn there by their common bonds of the city, their four years at the school, their lifelong friendships, and their lifetimes of wearing the ring. Ask any Citadel graduate to name his most treasured personal possessions, and his Citadel ring will be at or near the top of his list. When women were first admitted to the Citadel,a few overzealous,indignant alumni threatened to return their rings to the school, but they were just posturing. They didn’t mean it. None committed the act. They got over it. They still proudly wear the ring. 110 F Troop and Other Citadel Stories Some of the boys, now old men, who made it through that first year, but for one reason or another never graduated, who don’t wear the ring, also migrate to Charleston and the Citadel regularly. They even attend class reunions. They are welcomed and affirmed every bit as much as those who wear the ring. Their common bonds are not just the terror of that first year, nor just the achievement of surviving it, but the close, unbreakable friendships forged while they were there, and the shared camaraderie of the years. Not so the ones who quit. Few of them are ever heard from again. Rather than disdaining them, to the contrary, those who wear the ring honor them with fond remembrance, as Conroy did in dedicating , in part, The Lords of Discipline to them. One of those who didn’t make it was Dan Gilbert, a gentle, too-sensitive boy from the South Carolina upcountry. I remember sitting with him, along with several classmates, in the knob canteen adjacent to Mark Clark Hall between classes on a warm late September morning, listening to him lament. We had been at the Citadel less than a month. Dan had large, brown, sad eyes, made sadder by the agony of endurance. He was a fine, handsome boy at his wit’s end. In a voice filled with pain, he said,“I can’t take it anymore. This place is killing me. If I stay here, I’ll go crazy.” We believed him. He appeared on the verge of a mental breakdown. It wasn’t the demanding physical regimen of the Citadel that did him in. That he could handle. It was the unending verbal abuse, the constant shouting, the haranguing obscenities, the foul cursings that were a part of everyday Citadel life, that unhinged him. He left that day, never to be seen or heard from again. I wear the ring, but I remember Dan Gilbert. Another was Art Cardenale, a strong, wiry boy from Texas, with a surprisingly strong southern accent. I can still picture him pumping out pushups and hear him counting them out in his deep south voice: “one suh, two suh, three suh . . .” He couldn’t adjust to the military. Bobby Hankins, who wears the ring, thought Art was Citadel material. He tried to talk him out of leaving. Art told Bobby he couldn’t get the knack of spit shining shoes or polishing brass. “My shoes and brass look like shit and I’m catching hell for it,”Art said. Bobby told Art he’d help him.Art agreed. [18.117.152.251] Project MUSE (2024-04-24 23...