I found that I enjoyed learning in that structured environment. I quickly had my grades improve to where I was on the Headmasters List (not quite the Honor Roll, but certainly well above public school).
If you followed the rules and did the right thing you got extra privileges. I found that every action I took had consequences, both bad and good. I learned that I had it in myself to excel. I was not used to be ordered about but found that it helped. I didn't want the structure and I certainly wasn't a great student.
Although I had been away to camps for extended time, this would be a big difference. I had failed the 6th grade in public school and my parents decided to send me to Fork Union. I love that the Fork Union mission, as a Christian all male military school, has never changed. Fork Union Military Academy has been, and continues to be, a difference maker in the lives of thousands of young men who enter it's gate. Thirty years after I graduated, my son entered FUMA and his experiences and success were identical to mine a generation earlier.
The lessons I learned at FUMA have served me well in college, my Army career, my corporate career, my retirement and my Faith. By my senior year, I was successful in every aspect of the FUMA lifestyle, academics, athletics and leadership. I hated FUMA for about the first three or four weeks I was there and then something clicked in my brain that changed my life, due in most part to the tremendous Fork Union facility and coaches who cared about every cadet and encouraged them to always do their best and to appreciate this once in a life time opportunity to grow into responsible young men of Christian principle. Bad grades, bad conduct and no direction. I entered Fork Union Military Academy in the fall of 1963 as a freshman who did most things wrong.
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