When the first class of the Air Force Academy arrived at Lowry Air Force in Denver, they were welcomed with an air show featuring bombers and fighter jets. 

“Most of us were overwhelmed,” recalled retired Col. Max Miller, the president of the Class of 1959.

They were allowed to watch the show, but some were too nervous to look up after an intense few hours learning to march on their first day, recalled retired Gen. Bradley Hosmer. 

Young officers from West Point and Annapolis were charged with training the 306 cadets who showed up on July 11, 1955, to Lowry, Miller said.

The base with its World War II barracks would be home for the next three years because the campus in Colorado Springs had not been built yet. 

After putting on khaki uniforms and getting their hair cut, it was a sprint to be ready for a CBS broadcast hosted by Walter Cronkite. 

“One of the air training officers told us how well we did and how good we looked, and that we were better than West Point and Annapolis,” Miller recalled, noting he didn’t believe them.  

“That was the last compliment that any of us received for at least two months,” he said.

Military training was a bit of a shock for Miller, who had applied to the brand-new academy to please his dad, a veteran of the Army Air Corps. He had already secured a scholarship to Tulane University, and expected to get rejected for the new institution. 

He wasn’t expecting an acceptance telegram. 

“I was so honored that I said I’m gonna go out there and do the best I can,” said Miller, who drove out from his home in North Carolina. Miller went on to earn his doctoral degree in electrical engineering and work on military satellite programs, including some satellites that are still flying. 

Grueling training

During summer military training, cadets were required to wear khaki trousers and shirts with neckties, Hosmer recalled. A brave classmate asked the commandant if they could take off their neckties when the heat reached over 90 degrees, and the commandant responded when they sweated through their collars and neckties, then they could take off the ties. 

But when, a few weekends later, cadets’ sweat showed through their collars, the commandant changed his mind and the neckties stayed on, Hosmer said. 

In another, perhaps more severe decision, a cadet and minor celebrity, Greg Boyington Jr., the son of Greg “Pappy” Boyington, a Medal of Honor recipient for his exploits as a Marine fighter pilot in the Pacific, had to cut out his tattoo because it didn’t conform to regulations, Miller recalled. Boyington went on to receive the Distinguished Flying Cross for his heroism as an F-4 pilot during Vietnam.

In addition to grueling military training, the academy was also academically demanding, with cadets taking 22 credit hours each semester, Miller said. 

Currently, the average college student takes about 15 hours. The academy’s course load is still higher and, on average, upperclassmen take 17-20 credit hours per semester. 

The academy’s first valedictorian, Hosmer studied all the scientific fields available, physics, thermodynamics, aerodynamics, chemistry, among other fields, during his four years.

Cadets also received a full year of airplane navigation training, which included flight time and so Hosmer estimates they received five years of school in four, he said. 

“Gen. (Robert) McDermott revolutionized military academy academics and made it possible for cadets who were able to and wanted to move into advanced work very quickly,” he said. “It allowed one to work across many different disciplines at the same time. There was no requirement to work for a major, and so I did not.”

He graduated with a bachelor’s degree in basic sciences and went on to be the academy’s first Rhodes scholar and the first graduate to serve as superintendent.

The first class also led younger cadets through summer field training, and at the end of the exercises in August 1958, they boarded buses and drove down to the North Gate of the Academy, where they marched a few miles uphill carrying 60-pound packs to their new campus.

“We didn’t mind Lowry, but this was just unbelievable. … It was just awe-inspiring,” Miller recalled. 

At the end of those first four years, only about two-thirds of the class graduated and of four lieutenants, who resigned their commission to attend, only one made it to the end, Miller said.

It’s a tough road,” he said, but he noted it will leave you with friends for life.

A regular at academy events, in his signature cowboy hat, Miller’s been a champion of the academy for decades and he’s spoken to every cadet class since 2004. 

“My theme is how lucky you are to be here. … It’s an opportunity of a lifetime. So make the most of it. Make every day count,” he said.   

Modernist campus

When cadets arrived in 1958, the whole campus wasn’t finished, but key buildings were in place, including Mitchell Hall, where meals are served, Vandenberg Hall, a dormitory, and Fairchild Hall, where classes took place.  

Construction continued until the early 1960s, when the campus was largely complete, and it looks much the same now as it did then, said Brian Laslie, the Air Force Academy historian.  

“It’s a modernist take on a military academy,” said Matt Mayberry, director of the Colorado Springs Pioneers Museum.  

Where West Point and the Naval Academy feel like Ivy League institutions, the academy didn’t try to replicate that in the West. 

It’s a “severe architecture,” Mayberry said, relying heavily on concrete.

The boundaries of the whole installation were also selected so that the terrain’s natural geography would help buffer the academy from the encroachment, Hosmer said. For example, the northern boundary is along a steep ridgeline, a natural barrier to the training in Jack’s Valley, home to summer basic training, where cadets run the obstacle and assault courses.

The North Gate is now home to a visitor center that bears Hosmer and his wife Zita’s names, and it was an addition he welcomed when it opened in May to help build understanding about the academy. 

The base became more closed off after the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and it needed this new center outside the gates, he said.

“We lost that contact with the public and losing that contact is not a good thing for the academy or for the public,” he said.

Hosmer said he hoped that the new center might offer an important window into academy life and inspire the next generation of service members.  

He also spoke for about 57,000 academy graduates, a right he claimed by precedence as the first graduate.  

“We believe this academy is a national asset. It’s important to the country and we believe that because we know that we graduate officers who understand profoundly the profession of arms,” he said.