Trump’s first command performance
When he was13, misbehaving student Donald Trump was sent by his parents to the New York Military Academy.
The school, 100 kilometres from the Trumps’ New York City home, was meant to whip the rebellious youth into shape. And, in many ways, it did. Trump thrived at the school, becoming a star athlete who was given positions of authority.
But in his final year, the 17-year-old Trump was reassigned from command responsibilities. He says it was a promotion. His contemporaries at NYMA describe it in different terms.
The episode presages future controversies involving the current U.S. presidential hopeful and former reality TV star. Like a cat, he always seems to land on his feet.
From the moment 17-year-old Donald Trump was named a captain for his senior year at New York Military Academy, he ordered the officers under his command to keep strict discipline. Shoes had to be shined. Beds had to be made. Underclassmen had to spring to attention.
Then, a month into Trump’s tenure in the fall of 1963, came an abrupt change.
The tall, confident senior with a shock of blond hair was removed from that coveted post atop A Company and transferred to a new job on the school staff — another prestigious assignment, but one with no command responsibilities. He moved out of the barracks and into the administration building, swapping jobs with a fellow high-ranking senior who took command of Trump’s old group. Explanations vary as to what actually happened. In Trump’s telling, he was elevated as a reward for stellar performance. “I had total control over the cadets,” he said in a recent interview. “That’s why I got a promotion — because I did so good.”
Former cadets recall the change differently. They say school administrators transferred Trump after a freshman named Lee Ains complained of being hazed by a sergeant under Trump’s command. School officials, those cadets say, were concerned that Trump’s style of delegating leadership responsibilities while spending a lot of time in his room, away from his team, allowed problems to fester.
“They felt he wasn’t paying attention to his other officers as closely as he should have,” said Ains, who lives in Connecticut and works in the aerospace industry.
Bill Specht, the cadet who switched places with Trump, recalled an administrator telling him about the hazing incident and saying that “the school has decided that they are going to make a switch.”
The commandant who ordered the transfer, Col. Joseph Angello, has since died. School officials declined to comment.
Trump often points to his five years at the academy in Cornwall-on-Hudson, about 100 kilometres from his hometown of New York City, as a formative period in his life that helps qualify him to be commander-inchief.
Although he received educational and medical deferments from the Vietnam War draft, he has said that the school provided him “more training militarily than a lot of the guys that go into the military.”
“I did very well under the military system,” Trump said in an interview. “I became one of the top guys at the whole school.”
Interviews with cadets who knew him well and a close mentor reveal a more complex picture of Trump’s experience at the school. As a maturing teenager, he began to exhibit some of the traits the world would come to know through his fame as a real-estate mogul, reality TV star and White House contender. Even at an academy renowned for imposing strict standards on its cadets, Trump often managed to play by his own rules. He often left campus on weekends and drew the envy of fellow students for his habit of bringing attractive women to the school. He also stirred resentment from some in his orbit.
A half-century later, discussing that time triggers discomfort and some bitterness among Trump’s former classmates.
Ains, for instance, spoke of the episode reluctantly, after months of not returning phone calls, and only through a cracked door when a reporter appeared at his Connecticut home.
Trump, 69, vigorously rejected the accounts of his former classmates’ recollections, lashing out at the Washington Post over the course of three phone interviews for “doing a lousy story.” He attacked his former fellow cadets, calling Ains’s account “fiction” and accusing him of speaking only “to get himself a little bit of publicity.” Regarding Specht, the cadet who replaced him in A Company, Trump said the transfer “was a promotion for me, and it was a demotion for him.”
After an initial interview, Trump called the Post twice to argue his point.
“I was promoted. The word is ‘promoted’ — Mark it down,” Trump said.
“(School officials) felt he wasn’t paying attention to his other officers as closely as he should have.” LEE AINS FRESHMAN WHO WAS HAZED UNDER TRUMP’S COMMAND
Trump’s military school education began in 1959. He was a 13-year-old with a history of trouble at school, and his father, Fred Trump, a prominent New York real-estate developer, sent him to the academy to be straightened out.
“As an adolescent, I was mostly interested in creating mischief,” Donald Trump wrote in The Art of the Deal. “I liked to stir things up, and I liked to test people.”
New York Military Academy was founded in 1889 by Civil War veteran Charles Jefferson Wright. The school boasted of its record whipping rebellious youths into shape. Theodore Dobias, a Second World War veteran and Army colonel who was a training officer at the school, said in an interview that he recalled the young cadet needing time to acclimate to the rigours of academy life.
“At the beginning, he didn’t like the idea of being told what to do, like, ‘Make your bed, shine your shoes, brush your teeth, clean the sink, do your homework’ — all that stuff,” said Dobias, who became a mentor to Trump.
Before Trump’s ascent to the rank of captain during the summer preceding his senior year, Trump was promoted steadily but unremarkably his first four years. During that time, he rose to the rank of supply sergeant while some fellow juniors were already lieutenants. He was quieter and humbler than he is now, some classmates said, and did not brag about his family’s wealth.
But even within the confines of a military school, there were hints of the brash and boastful persona now known as “the Donald.” Playing baseball, he stood out as a great first baseman, Dobias said.
“Even then, he wanted to be number one,” Dobias said. “He wanted to be noticed. He wanted to be recognized. And he liked compliments.”
Thanks to his athletic prowess, Dobias said, Trump was a “big shot” on campus. “And you get that by working hard, and he did work hard,” Dobias said.
Fellow cadets recalled discussing how Trump carried himself as if he were destined for success, even if they were never sure if it was because of his charisma, his rank, his family’s wealth or some other reason.
“There was some air about him,” recalled Michael Pitkow, “as if he knew he was just there passing time until he went on to something greater.
During his short stint as head of A Company, Trump had a hands-off approach to his position, according to five former cadets interviewed by the Post. He would usually head straight from dinner to his room, leaving his officers to inspect the cadets.
In his absence, he would order his officers to keep younger cadets in line, and the atmosphere within A Company quickly became tense. Hazing was an integral part of school culture, and without the firm hand of A Company’s commander, underclassmen felt at risk, cadets said.
“He was a delegator,” said Ains, the former cadet who said he was hazed. “I think he knew a lot of things (going on in the barracks), but I don’t know how far he dug into it.”
Ains took the rare step of complaining to school administrators about the alleged hazing, in which he said a sergeant threw him against a wall. The sergeant was demoted, Ains remembers, and Trump was moved from A Company to the school staff.
Specht, Trump’s replacement, immediately cracked down on hazing in A Company, Ains said. “He would come around to the different rooms at any time and make sure that the students were studying and that they weren’t being interfered with by any older cadets,” Ains said.
Specht said he remembers well the moment the school commandant gave him the news.
“Colonel Angello called me down and said, ‘You’re going to go to A Company, and Donald is taking your position on the staff as a captain,’ ” Specht recalled. Specht said Angello referred to a “hazing incident” in A Company as he explained that “the school has decided that they are going to make a switch.”
The sudden swap was a disappointment for Specht, who had been at or near the top of his class since arriving at NYMA.
“I obviously wasn’t happy about the switch, because it was more work for me,” he said.
Specht, who served in the Navy after graduating from NYMA and is a Trump supporter, said he didn’t want to get into a public spat with the billionaire candidate. His wife, however, took the phone from her husband during an interview to challenge Trump’s account.
“It’s a fact,” Christine Specht said. “I’m Bill’s wife, and he was not demoted.”
Trump told the Post that he never saw any hazing at the school.
“I did a good job, and that’s why I got elevated,” he said. “You don’t get elevated if you partake in hazing.”
Trump, who in 2012 offered $5 million for the release of President Barack Obama’s college transcript and other documents, said he would not give the Post permission to review his records from the military academy.
“I’m not letting you look at anything,” he said.
Whatever the reason for Trump’s transfer, it ultimately served as a de facto promotion. It was Trump, not Specht, who chaperoned visiting dignitaries around the academy during their senior year. And it was Trump, not Specht, who, just a few days after the transfer, was put in charge of a special drill team for New York City’s Columbus Day parade.
White, the school’s top cadet, recalled being told by the commandant to let Trump lead the school during the event.
“He was singled out as early as October for special treatment,” said White. “They were keeping Trump busy and out of mischief.”
On Oct. 12, a white-gloved Trump led not only NYMA but the entire parade down Fifth Avenue to St. Patrick’s Cathedral, where he was met by Cardinal Francis Spellman.
“I was always good at that school,” he said. “Take a look at the pictures. I’m standing at the head of the whole place.”