By Bill Degraf
At the Class Meeting for the 65th Reunion I wanted to show how well the class has done over the years.
Here is a list of some of the accomplishments of the Class of 1950:
Rhodes Scholar - 1
West Point Professors - 3
Superintendent, USAFA - 1
Distinguished Graduate - 8 (most of any class and counting)
Astronaut - 1
Congressman - 1
Olympians - 1
President - 1
General Officers - 60
Part of the Class who participated in the wars:
WWII - 166 (24.9%)
Korea - 369 (55.4%)
Viet Nam - 301 (45.2%)
We have heard of the "Class the Stars Fell On - 1915" so I thought I would see how we compared with them. We need to recognize that each of the two classes fought in more than one war, but for `15 there were 23 years between wars, while for '50 there were only 5 years between WWII and Korea and 12 between Korea and Viet Nam, measuring from the end of one to the beginning of the next.
So here are some data to show the two classes:
'50 vs '15
Generals
5 Star - 0 vs. 2
4 Star - 7 vs. 2
3 Star - 7 vs. 11
2 Star - 22 vs. 24
1 Star - 24 vs. 23
DSC - 11 vs. 10
SS - 98 vs. 12
KIA - 48 vs. 2 (WW1)
President - 1 vs. 1
C/S - 3 vs. 2
All in all I think that the Class of '50 did right well.