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144 Charles Pelot Summerall was a remarkable man. Born in the sandy flatlands of central Florida on the banks of the Suwannee River, he rose to high command in the Great War of 1914–18 and concluded his active service in 1931 as army chief of staff. However, unlike many of his colleagues, Summerall chose not to retire to less demanding responsibilities and more tranquil pursuits. Rather, at age sixty-five he undertook charge of saving a small military college in Charleston, South Carolina, from the Great Depression and establishing it as a viable educational institution. In accepting the presidency of The Citadel, Summerall assumed also the duty of leading the transformation of the young men of the Corps of Cadets into citizen-soldiers. To accomplish these tasks, he called upon lessons learned from extensive experience in shaping and leading young men through crises even more daunting than those facing The Citadel. As Citadel president, he tackled the problems and challenges with the same vigor and resoluteness that had distinguished his past military triumphs and accomplished results that to many were just as impressive. At the same time, however, Summerall’s fusion of the man with the mission led also to consequences that illustrated the more disturbing aspects of his nature and the lessthan -glorious episodes in his military career. Summerall grew up in the midst of the destitution, poverty, and violence that racked the South in the years following the Civil War. In the flatlands of north Florida, his father, Bryant, failed to succeed as a wheelwright and general-store merchant but was nevertheless hardworking and respected and secured an apGeneral Charles P. Summerall The Training, Command, and Education of the Citizen-Soldier W. Gary Nichols summerall and the citizen-soldier / 145 pointment as justice of the peace in Astatula, a small town in the pinelands of central Florida. However, threats against his life by members of the Ku Klux Klan forced Bryant Summerall to leave town and settle in a neighboring county with his family—his wife, Margaret, as well as young Charles and his older siblings , William and Meta Margaret. Bryant found work in the citrus groves, and Margaret began teaching in the surrounding schools. To help out, Charles and William worked barefoot in the fields, since the family could not afford to buy them shoes, planting potatoes and chopping cotton in the spring and summer and harvesting them in the late summer and early fall. Margaret made clothes for the entire family and wove palmetto fronds into hats to protect them from the sun. Since they could not afford kerosene lanterns or matches, she made tallow candles and covered the fireplace coals at night so that they could be used again the next morning. Somehow she found the time and energy to tutor her children at home between school semesters and even taught them to sing; young Charles often led the congregational singing at the nearby Baptist church. From a visiting friend, Margaret Summerall learned about the Holy Communion Church Institute, a school established in Charleston, South Carolina, by Reverend A. Toomer Porter, an Episcopal priest, for the education of boys and girls from white southern families impoverished by the war. Early in 1880, she wrote Porter and asked him to accept William, which he did. Two years later, Charles, outfitted in a new suit and a new pair of shoes, joined his brother, arriving in Charleston from Jacksonville, courtesy of a free pass on the Clyde Line.1 For young Charles Summerall, who was fifteen years old when he entered it, the Holy Communion Church Institute was a very special place. There, as he exclaimed in his memoir, “a whole new world opened to me. Whatever I have done in life is due to this beginning.” He stood well in his class; sang in the Holy Communion Church choir; and served as a dormitory monitor, in which capacity he had responsibility “for order and compliance with the rules.”2 He enjoyed the sights and sounds of Charleston, where a military atmosphere endured and where a number of military organizations held shooting contests, tournaments, and dances and turned out in uniform to parade and celebrate national and local holidays. Around The Citadel on Marion Square, cadets were a familiar sight and, along with the uniformed youngsters of the Institute, led boys throughout the city “to think a deal more of dressing up their bodies in . . . gaudy uniforms than in drilling their minds.”3 It was an...

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