Greenbrier Military School
Final Alumni Reunion- Dinner-Dance
October 18, 2025
Alan B. Mollohan, ‘62
Good evening, fellow cadets, families, and friends.
It’s wonderful—and a little bittersweet—to be here tonight, as we gather for what will be the final reunion of the Greenbrier Military School Alumni Association. Each of us carries memories that reach back across the years—some nearly seven decades now—yet tonight it feels as if no time has passed at all.
There were as many reasons for attending Greenbrier as there were cadets who ever marched across the parade ground. For some, it was the promise of solid academics. For others, athletics or the discipline of military life. Many parents were drawn by the school’s faith-based tradition, its Presbyterian heritage, and its motto of Truth, Honor, and Duty. For all of us, it became a place that built character—where we learned not only the meaning of those words-Truth, Honor, Duty- but also the meaning of respect: that one can respect the position or the office even when you may not like the person—and that respect itself must be mutual.
Remember those first days- a bit of excitement, a little foreboding, and, yes, homesickness on both sides of the family car. But Greenbrier had a system well-tuned to turn that bunch of uncertain boys into confident cadets—part of a squad, a platoon, a company, a battalion.
My first day, my first drill, I was handed a small rock and told, “When the command ‘Left face!’ is given, turn toward the hand with the rock. When the command ‘Right face!’ is given, turn in the direction of the hand without the rock.” That rock routine was the first of many humbling experiences that began shaping a civilian seventh grader into a reasonably acceptable cadet.
Once you had your uniform, your roommate (my roommate for three of my six years was Nelson Gilmer), your class schedule, and you had learned which direction your shirts were supposed to face on the closet bar—and that you had to make your own bed, and it had to be made just so—then you began to feel that you belonged to the Corps.
Greenbrier was never an island apart from the community that surrounded it. The town and the school were closely bound together. Boarding cadets interacted constantly with the community—attending church, dating town girls, being invited into local homes for Sunday dinners. The Town Boys were an important part of our Corps—often among the best students and leaders. Names like my friends: Jim Watts, John Strader, Bill Satterfield and John Arbuckle come to mind. They were frequent members of the Owls’ Club. Company “E” was composed of the seventh and eighth graders, ‘The Peanuts’, and it often had upper-class town boys serving as its officers. The contributions that the Town Boys made to the school were significant, and the friendships that were forged lasted a lifetime.
We all agree that a great school requires great teachers—and Greenbrier had great teachers. But you might not think so, if you only heard the nicknames we gave them. Remember these? Dead Weight, Chrome Dome, Big Red, Boogie, Mickey Mouse, Raisin Face, and Big Al.
There’s irony here. While we were handing out those names, they were busy handing out life lessons. Our faculty was exceptional: a mix of scholars and seasoned military veterans who had seen the world and returned home to teach us about it.
There was Captain Norton—the Georgia gentleman and World War II veteran—who, once he lit a cigarette, never removed it from his mouth. We’d sit in geometry class and quietly bet how long the ash would grow before it fell on his shirt. Capt. Norton was the “E” Company advisor, my surrogate father—and never a finer man walked this earth.
And then he married Kay Songer—whose father graduated from GMS in the 1920s and whose family operated the PX and the C&P. Kay brought cookies and kindness to the lives of all her “E” Company darlings, and life just got better. As an aside, more than one cadet made a trip to the PX, just to see and talk to those beautiful Songer sisters working behind the counter--remember.
Then there were Capt. Mohn and Capt. Taylor—tough veterans who could make a block-and-tackle demonstration unforgettable, especially if you happened to be the volunteer; Col. Benjamin, soft-spoken and such a gentleman—an excellent English teacher and year book advisor; Col. Turley, the tough football coach and Bible teacher combined; Maj. Al Morgan, a very successful basketball coach and great biology teacher, who gave cadets a ’licks or demerits’ choice for classroom transgressions; Col. Richardson, who, if normal teaching methods failed, might approach a cadet from behind with a gentle fist bump to the head. I personally never learned much Latin from that technique—or from any other, to be honest.
And Col. John Moore, headmaster and keeper of the merits-and-demerits list—the man to whose office you never wanted to be summoned. I remember Col. John for many things, but one of his favorite admonitions sticks in my mind, and I’m pretty sure in the minds of most of you. After a warning to stop some egregious conduct- like the Quad Cadets setting fire to their 50-gallon trash cans - Col. John would end with the memorable words, each spoken separately, with a little southern drawl, and with great weight:
“If you don’t like my apples, don’t shake my tree.”
Looking back, we can all smile. Col. John had a way with words.
The faculty members were all different, but they shared one thing: each was an excellent role model for boys in their formative years, and each, in his own way, was instrumental in molding those boys into men.
Greenbrier offered a strong, diverse academic program—serving students from seventh grade through post-graduate—but what truly distinguished it was what we learned outside the classroom.
Religious teaching, and the values it instilled, were omnipresent. Chapel preceded classes each school day. Scripture was often cited as the basis for the presentation -Recall the scripture from 1 Corinthians 13:11:
“When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.”
And we often heard from Rudyard Kipling’s poem “If—”, with its timeless counsel:
If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run—
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!
Sundays meant church twice—first, in the morning, at the church of your choice, and again in the evening, when the entire Corps marched to the Old Stone Presbyterian Church. We can all probably agree that the Sunday night service had its charms— remember the pretty GCW and town girls sitting, in the balcony.
Those chapel talks and sermons, those biblical and literary words of wisdom, helped shape our values and make us the men that we became.
We shared daily routines that became lifelong memories and bonding events—reveille at dawn, formations, inspections, good meals prepared by good cooks, chapel, classes, drill, parades, merits and demerits, walking the beat, taps, and attending that Final Ball. We remember dating those pretty town and Greenbrier College girls, then sprinting back across Lewisburg to beat check-in at the Brier. Those experiences—away from home, during our formative years—created bonds stronger than most people ever know.
When Greenbrier men meet—even across generations—we already understand each other. We’ve walked the same halls, stood the same inspections, and learned the same lessons about responsibility, accountability, friendship and respect. There’s an unspoken caring among us that runs deep and is sincere.
Now, as our Alumni Association reaches its close, we thank our President, Mike Ruth, and the Board of Directors for the hard work involved in performing this final duty. We may not agree with every decision made, but we don’t have to. What matters is that they have handled this responsibility with grace, care and competence, and -- that we are grateful.
So—what is our legacy to be?
When I think of the Greenbrier legacy, I see two parts. The first is the personal legacy each of us carried away at graduation—the legacy summed up by the standards inscribed on our graduation rings: “Truth, Honor, Duty”.
TRUTH implies integrity— dealing with facts, being honest with ourselves and others,
HONOR involves living by a code— the commitment that you will not lie, cheat, or steal, nor tolerate those who do.
DUTY requires responsibility—doing what must be done, when it must be done.
Those principles have been guiding lights throughout life, contributing to our inner strength.
Second - the GMS legacy, which has been kept alive by our Alumni Association through the efforts of those who have served as its leaders from the Association’s inception in 1983, until now, as we close the books. We owe a debt of gratitude to those individuals. None have worked harder than Herb and JoAnn Pearis. Thank You - to all.
The Osteopathic School has been a welcoming and gracious host for all GMS Alumni Association events from the beginning. A special thank you to Dr. James Nemitz, President of the WVSOM, and his team, and to all the past WVSOM administrations. During this, our final reunion, our ceremonial activities have been graced by Jim and his lovely wife, Nancy. We all note and appreciate their personal attention.
This GMSAA/WVSOM relationship has been mutually beneficial. The GMS Alumni Association contributed to the construction of the WVSOM Alumni Conference Center, while the WVSOM hosts and is the custodian of the GMS Museum, located therein. The Osteopathic School will play a significant role in preserving the GMS legacy. Through arrangements worked out by our President and his team, the Osteopathic School will share legacy responsibilities with the Greenbrier Valley Community Foundation, which is custodian of the GMS Scholarship fund, a responsibility that the GVCF will continue to manage into perpetuity. We alumni trust in these arrangements and commitments, by which the GMS legacy is secured.
As for the future—well, life is mortal. Yet, here again, the Greenbrier experience has prepared us, through its faith-based education, to take comfort in God’s simple but powerful promise, as set forth in John 3:16:
“For God so loved the world that he gave is only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have ever lasting life.”
That is our guiding light into the future. So, as we share this evening—the laughter, the memories, the dance—let us also look forward to that greater reunion, where the Corps will once again form ranks, and no one will be missing.
Thank you, gentlemen and ladies—and may God bless the Greenbrier Family, Forever.
