Latest news with #NYMA
Washington Post
10-06-2025
- Politics
- Washington Post
Trump got shipped off to military school. Now we all pay the price.
Young Donald Trump was anything but happy to be sent to military school. His father, Fred, had had it up to here with his son's disobedience. Trump was 13 and being shipped to New York Military Academy, a boarding school about an hour north of the city, near the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. From the moment Trump arrived in 1959, a stocky teen suddenly stripped of the conveniences of wealth, he was looking for a lifeline, scrambling for something he could master. Trump was never going to be a stellar student. He played on sports teams and did well, but he found his true home by mastering military rituals and discipline. He had no interest in going to actual war — he managed to win four deferments and a medical waiver to avoid service during the Vietnam conflict — but he was drawn to the school's strict rules and instant accountability. He liked setting the pace for other cadets, he liked putting on white gloves and full-dress uniform, and he loved the pageantry — especially the parades. And so, six decades later, on Saturday, we will all get a hefty dose of Trump's boyhood fantasy of military showmanship. This combined 79th birthday party and wild ego trip — a wayward president's version of an aging dad buying the red sports car — could cost taxpayers up to $45 million and threatens to rip the District's streets to smithereens. Just as Trump did in high school, when he was put in charge of a special NYMA drill team to march in New York City's Columbus Day parade, now, as leader of the vaguely free world, he will star as drillmaster in chief. There will be tanks! Men in lockstep! Helicopters! The Army's Golden Knights parachuting down to the Ellipse to present an American flag to El Presidente himself! It's a grand old American tradition to put a fair amount of energy into living out high school fantasies, but this is ridiculous. It is also thoroughly in character for Trump. As a child, Trump, by his own account, was something of a terror. He has boasted that he once gave a teacher in elementary school a black eye. He defied his father's directive to stay in Queens, instead sneaking onto the subway with a friend to buy switchblades in Manhattan. But his father had the last word: Off to NYMA with you. By all accounts, Trump's start at military school was rough. There was no family cook, no private bathroom, no mother to excuse his misbehavior. Instead, he lived in boot-camp-style barracks, marched on the 300-acre campus's sprawling parade grounds and learned to obey the adults — or else. Trump was just one more plebe, one more subject to the drill sergeant, Theodore Dobias — known as 'Doby.' Dobias smacked students with his open hand if they committed an infraction. He ordered misbehaving cadets to fight each other. He rode Trump hard, pushing the rich kid from Queens to make his bed, shine his shoes, clean the sink. Trump studied Dobias's tactics and adopted many as his own, his classmates said. Trump loved wielding authority — one student called him 'Mr. Meticulous' — and when Trump became a junior supply sergeant in Company E, he relished ordering punishments for younger cadets. When one student broke formation, Trump allegedly delivered whacks on the rear with a broomstick. When another boy left his bed unmade, the young disciplinarian tore the sheets off the bed, threw them on the floor and fought the boy, trying to push him out a second-story window, the former schoolmate, Ted Levine, told The Post years later. That Columbus Day parade in 1963 was in many ways a culmination of Trump's military career. He was in charge, front and center, back on his home turf. But when the NYMA boys got to Fifth Avenue — passing exactly the spot where the developer's son would one day build his own Trump Tower — they saw a group of Catholic schoolgirls were lined up to lead the parade. Trump had been told his contingent was going to be in front. 'Leave this to me,' Trump told Dobias. He went and found someone in charge, had a little talk and came back victorious. He led the parade. It made him feel large. Many years later, Trump would boast that although he didn't serve in the military, he believed he had received more military training in high school than actual service members did. 'I felt that I was in the military in the true sense because I dealt with those people,' he told biographer Michael D'Antonio. High school fantasies die hard. Most of us keep them to ourselves. On Saturday, all 340 million of us get to live Trump's. Somebody, please, buy the old man a pair of white gloves for this birthday. It'd make him so happy, maybe he'd leave us alone for a bit.
Mint
05-06-2025
- Business
- Mint
Trump's old high school is in trouble (again). Can a Chinese businessman fix it?
For the second time in a decade, it is up to a Chinese entrepreneur to make President Trump's high school great again. Like some of the 20th-century American institutions whose decline Trump laments, the 136-year-old New York Military Academy is in bad shape. Roof tiles are broken on century-old buildings and, on one recent visit, a reporter spotted a family of vultures nestled atop a chimney. The academy sits on a forested campus in Cornwall, N.Y., a Hudson Valley town about 90 minutes' drive north of New York City that is popular for weekend getaways. It is one of the biggest properties in the town of around 13,000. NYMA, which has no government affiliation, is located 6 miles north of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. The academy's cadets gave off a whiff of the school's glory days at Trump's inaugural parade Jan. 20, marching in their gray uniforms as the president clapped and smiled. But with enrollment of only around 50, it could muster up only about two dozen students for the procession. Now Allen Lu, who built a chain of private schools in China, has stepped in with plans to fix up the school. At a February town-council meeting in Cornwall, a person who identified himself as Linsen Zhang said that the school had a change of ownership and that the new owner was a 'visionary on education." He said the new leadership would eventually increase the student population to 1,500. Lu is the second Chinese magnate to attempt a turnaround at the school where Trump spent five years and graduated in 1964—and Lu will have to do it in the face of the worst U.S.-China tensions this century. Vincent Tianquan Mo, whose company in China operates a Zillow-like real-estate site, rescued the academy from bankruptcy a decade ago. A nonprofit controlled by Mo bought the land and buildings at the campus for $15.8 million, and Mo said in 2016 he was committed to making NYMA a 'super school again." But eight years after Mo's purchase, NYMA had racked up $7.8 million in liabilities, according to the latest tax filing by the operating entity of the school. The pandemic took a toll on enrollment and finances, previous years' filings show. The school's ownership structure is particularly complicated and opaque, involving money flows from China to the U.S. at a time when it can be challenging for a Chinese entrepreneur to take money out of his nation and where American regulations on tax and education invite their own complexities. Some in Cornwall have wondered about the future of the crumbling institution at the edge of downtown and whether its tax-exempt status is good for the town. 'I didn't like the idea that this large property is not contributing to the pie," said Ezra Zohar, who grew up in town and has told local council meetings that Cornwall should reap benefits from NYMA's tax breaks. Neither the school nor Mo or Lu, the tycoons who have run it and who are both on the board of trustees, responded to questions. NYMA said it is 'in the midst of a critical transformation" to revitalize its campus, enrich the curriculum and build a vibrant future under the direction of the restructured board of trustees. The 136-year-old New York Military Academy had more than 500 students in the 1960s compared with about 50 for the New York Military Academy at the edge of campus. The school has a storied history, having educated luminaries such as Broadway composer Stephen Sondheim and director Francis Ford Coppola, and in the 1960s it had more than 500 students. In 'The Art of the Deal," Trump said he wasn't thrilled when his father decided to send him to military school at age 13, but 'I learned a lot about discipline, and about channeling my aggression into achievement." Trump also referred to the school on Memorial Day weekend, delivering the commencement speech to West Point's 2025 graduates. 'This is a beautiful place,' the president began. He added, 'I have been here many times, going to high school not so far away. A good place. Also a military academy. Not quite of this distinction. But it was a lot of fun for me." Later in an email statement, White House communications director Steven Cheung said, 'President Trump is proud of his time at the New York Military Academy. He learned important virtues that helped him become one of the greatest businessmen in the world and ultimately president of the United States twice." One of the first press notices of the future president came in December 1963, when the front page of the Cornwall Local showed a photo of a U.S. Army major general visiting a group of academy cadets including 'Cadet Captain Donald J. Trump," shown in full dress uniform with thick white cross belts and white gloves. But the school suffered along with the declining popularity of military-style education. It filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in 2015 and was on the verge of closing permanently when Mo stepped in. The Chinese magnate was at the top of his career. Not long before his land purchase, he had made it to Forbes's billionaires list for the first and only time, with his net worth pegged at $1.9 billion in 2014. His New York Stock Exchange-listed company ran one of China's largest real-estate listing and search websites. Real-estate brokers say buying schools abroad is a popular way for wealthy Chinese to invest outside the country because it doesn't require the Chinese government review that commercial real-estate investments abroad would normally receive. Vincent Tianquan Mo, pictured in 2014, rescued the New York Military Academy from bankruptcy a decade ago. Mo said he intended to revive the school and brought in a new superintendent. In a roundtable discussion in China held in January 2024, Mo joked about the timing of his deal, a year before Trump was first elected. 'We bought the New York Military Academy. That's where Trump went to school for five years," he said. 'People said, 'You guys predicted it well.'" One nonprofit with Mo as head of the board has operated the academy, while an additional nonprofit, called the Research Center on Natural Conservation, owns the land and buildings at the academy. The latter nonprofit, which is controlled by Mo and his family, also owns the 100,000-square-foot Arden House on 450 acres in Harriman, N.Y., where New York's blue-blooded Harriman family long had its countryside estate. During the Mo years, the two nonprofits borrowed heavily from Mo's for-profit entities, according to an analysis of both nonprofits' tax filings. The nonprofit operating the school had negative net assets of $5.8 million as of June 2023, the most recent information available, meaning it had more liabilities than assets. The Research Center on Natural Conservation had negative net assets of $21 million at the end of 2023, according to a tax filing. Accounting specialists not involved with the school described the transactions as unusual. Most U.S. nonprofits avoid letting debt outweigh assets and rely on funding from donors. The Research Center on Natural Conservation has said in its Internal Revenue Service filings that it will research preservation of the environment, including issues like global warming, and promote environmental issues, though it is unclear how those goals are satisfied by owning historic properties. The IRS filing specifically says the center won't operate a school; and indeed, NYMA is a separate legal entity. 'Nonprofits, because of the public subsidies they receive, owe it to the public to be very transparent about what they're doing and why," said Thad Calabrese, a professor at New York University who specializes in nonprofit financial management, adding that tax breaks are a form of government support. The school drew a different kind of attention in Congress from then-Rep. Michael Waltz (R., Fla.), who expressed concern in a 2023 letter to then-Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin about activities at a Chinese-controlled school so close to U.S. defense installations. Waltz served briefly earlier this year as Trump's national security adviser. Under Mo, locals said the dilapidation of the school and its property continued, and enrollment fell even further during the pandemic. On visits this year, rusted army cannons marking the school entrance sat on deflated tires and a brick pedestal appeared to once display a statue. Grass sprouted through cracked tennis court pavement near the Troop D Stables where all cadets once learned horsemanship. Rusted flagpoles stood unused in front of the ashen walls of the 1970s-era Dickinson Hall. And the yellow paint was faded on the 275-foot long Jones Barracks built as a main campus structure after a 1910 fire. Dilapidated tennis courts at the New York Military academy says it is revitalizing its campus, enriching the curriculum and building a vibrant future under its new board. Lu, the new investor who is also known as Lu Yuzong, holds a Ph.D. in finance from China's Fudan University and founded Shanghai-based Guanghua Education Group. Unlike Mo, the 56-year-old Lu is a veteran school operator, owning more than a dozen private schools in China. In China, the overwhelming majority of students attend public schools, where the curriculum is approved by the Ministry of Education and directs the brightest students toward preparing for college entrance exams heavy on rote memorization. Lu's private schools instead say they aim to foster critical thinking that will help students excel at foreign universities, particularly those in the U.K. and the U.S. Lu's company said in February this year that its students had received 20 offer letters from the University of Oxford and 37 from the University of Cambridge in the past academic year. Lu has given almost no media interviews, even in China, but in 2017 he told a magazine featuring successful Fudan University alumni that he wanted to reform Chinese education and provide students and parents with alternatives to public schools. Lu is now chairman of the board of trustees at the New York Military Academy, according to its website. Two of his associates from Guanghua also hold seats on the five-member board, and Mo retains his trustee seat. The status of the transfer of power couldn't be determined, and county real-estate records don't show any transfer of the land and buildings at the academy from the nonprofit controlled by Mo and his family. Ahead of graduation in June, fresh indications of attention to the school grounds included new slats to repair a toppled section of fence. Posters advertised an athletic competition and drone training, carrying the tagline 'Inspire Leaders for Tomorrow." Zhang, Lu's associate, said at the February meeting: 'We are here to make the commitment to fixing everything." Write to Rebecca Feng at and James T. Areddy at
Hindustan Times
24-05-2025
- Politics
- Hindustan Times
Where did Donald Trump go to high school? Was is West Point? Here's all we know
President Donald Trump spoke at the commencement at West Point on Saturday, congratulating cadets on their accomplishments and taking credit for the United States' military might and boasting about the 'mandate' he says he earned in the 2024 election. However, several social media users were left wondering: 'Did Trump go to West Point for high school?' No, Trump did not attend West Point for high school. He attended the New York Military Academy (NYMA) in Cornwall, New York, for his high school education from 1959 to 1964. Trump was sent to NYMA at age 13 by his father, Fred Trump, who believed the structured environment would curb his rebellious behavior, per The Washington Post. The president described himself as 'mostly interested in creating mischief' before NYMA, per his book The Art of the Deal. Read More: Belgium's princess Elisabeth's future at Harvard University uncertain after Donald Trump's fresh crackdown As a senior in 1963, he was named a captain but was transferred from leading A Company to a staff role after a hazing incident, a move he claims was a promotion but others recall as disciplinary. He led the school's drill team in the 1963 Columbus Day parade. Trump graduated in May 1964, then enrolled at Fordham University before transferring to the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, earning a BS in Economics in 1968. Read More: Donald Trump to order massive overhaul of National Security Council: Report On Saturday, speaking to graduates, he said: 'In a few moments, you'll become graduates of the most elite and storied military academy in human history. And you will become officers of the greatest and most powerful army the world has ever known. And I know, because I rebuilt that army, and I rebuilt the military. And we rebuilt it like nobody has ever rebuilt it before in my first term.' 'We're getting rid of distractions and we're focusing our military on its core mission: crushing America's adversaries, killing America's enemies and defending our great American flag like it has never been defended before,' Trump added.
