"Wentworth Military Academy and College is a private four-year college preparatory high school and military junior college. It is located in Lexington, Missouri, part of the Greater Kansas City Metropolitan Area. Wentworth is the oldest military academy west of the Mississippi River, and the campus is on the National Register of Historic Places. It is one of five military junior colleges in the United States.
Lexington's Civil War Battle of the Hemp Bales was still a recent memory when Stephen G. Wentworth founded Wentworth Military Academy in 1880. By the 1870s, the town had already attained the reputation as the “Athens of the West” for its many academic institutions. Lexington was home to three notable schools for girls. Lexington Baptist Female College was started in 1850 in the old county courthouse that had been abandoned upon the construction of the new Lafayette County Courthouse, built in 1847 and still in use today. In 1869 the Baptist Female College moved its operation to the former home of Pony Express Founder William B. Waddell at the corner of 13th and South Streets. Elizabeth Aull Seminary was opened in the fall of 1860 and operated in a large building on Highland Avenue. Central Female College, later Central College for Women, began in 1868 and, in 1871, took over the old Masonic College on the grounds of the Battlefield. However, Lexington’s educators, business leaders and ministers had made numerous attempts to establish a school for boys and young men. Public schools were not yet widespread and there was a glaring need for a boys' school, but none had been successful. The most visible failed effort was the Masonic College of Missouri, which moved to Lexington in 1847 and operated until 1859.
On May 12, 1879, Wentworth’s twenty-seven-year-old son William died. As a memorial, Wentworth focused his attention on finally making a school for boys a reality in Lexington. In the spring of 1880, Mr. Wentworth announced that a new school named Wentworth Male Academy would begin operation in the fall. Mr. Wentworth had a long record of public service to Lexington. A local editorial writer proclaimed that Wentworth was “One of our oldest, most generous and most worthy citizens” and ”no nobler name can this community furnish [the new school].” On May 24, 1880, Mr. Wentworth bought the “New Presbyterian Church” at the southwest corner of 18th and Main Streets, directed that it be fitted up for the next term, and gave the school solid financial backing. Although his financial involvement was limited to the Academy’s early years of operation, his foresight led to the establishment of the first board of trustees and his generosity provided a firm foundation for the school.
Wentworth also announced that 22-year-old Benjamin Lewis Hobson, the son of the local Presbyterian minister who had run a fledgling private boys’ school in town the previous year, would be given charge of W.M.A. Young Hobson had graduated from Centre College in Danville, Kentucky with a degree of Bachelor of Arts in 1877, and had spent the next two years as teacher and then principal of Spencer Institute in Taylorsville, Kentucky. In the summer of 1879, he had returned to his hometown of Lexington and started Hobson’s Select School for Boys.
Benjamin Hobson knew that he could not operate the new school alone, and he turned to Sandford Sellers, a 26-year-old friend and former classmate at Centre College in Kentucky. Sellers eagerly accepted Hobson’s invitation to join him as co-principal at Wentworth Male Academy. When Hobson left to pursue a career in the ministry at the end of the 1880-81 school year, Sellers took full charge of the academy.
Sandford Sellers became the force who forged Wentworth’s national reputation, and his hand would guide the school for the next 58 years. In the early days, he handled all the institution’s administrative affairs, academic planning, and student recruitment on his own, canvassing surrounding areas on horseback. In 1882, Wentworth became a military school, and Sellers hired Captain David W. Fleet, a graduate of Virginia Military Institute, as the first Commandant. Fleet brought VMI terms such as "rats", "rears", and "Old Boys" to the school, all still familiar to cadets today. The school officially changed its name to Wentworth Military Academy in 1890.
Sellers' skills as educator, administrator, businessman, and promoter saw the institution through its first half-century of growth, and his vision is still evident today. He led the school through economic panics of the 1890s, when he struggled to keep enrollment above 100, and through the boom times of World War I, when enrollment more than doubled to over 500 cadets. He also oversaw the addition of the junior college in 1923.
By the mid-1920s, Sandford Sellers, handed over much of the day-to-day operations of the school to his sons, Sandford Sellers, Jr., superintendent from 1923 to 1933, and James M. Sellers, Commandant and Assistant Superintendent. But Sandford Sellers stayed very involved until his death in 1938 after a fall in the school gymnasium.
When the Great Depression of the 1930s hit the country, Wentworth, like many institutions across the country, struggled to survive. In 1933, Colonel James M. Sellers assumed the superintendency of the school and was soon joined at the helm by Colonel Lester B. Wikoff, Treasurer and Business Manager. Together, Sellers’ natural leadership and Wikoff’s business acumen would lead the school to new heights. Colonel Sellers and Colonel Wikoff guided the school through the lean years of the 1930s and into the prosperity of the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s. During their term of leadership, Wentworth added a number of buildings to the campus, including the Sellers-Wikoff Scholastic Building, the Memorial Chapel, Sandford Sellers Hall, and the Wikoff Field House. In addition, a unique military aviator training program complete with its own airport was launched to train pilots. A highlight of the Sellers-Wikoff era was President Harry S. Truman's speech to the cadet corps at Wentworth's 75th Anniversary celebration in 1954. In 1960, Sellers retired as Superintendent but remained as President of the school, and Wikoff served as Superintendent from 1960 to 1971. During that time, Wentworth had unparalleled enrollment, averaging over 600 students a year.
In 1973, a third generation of the Sellers family assumed leadership of the Academy when Colonel James M. Sellers, Jr., a 1945 Wentworth graduate, was named as Superintendent. In the early 1970s, the school was again faced with crisis. Anti-military backlash from the country’s continued involvement in the Vietnam War, combined with double digit inflation, caused enrollment to plummet. Many military schools across the country simply closed their doors. Wentworth was dealt an additional blow when, in 1975, a fire destroyed two buildings and severely damaged others, causing the loss of over 32,000 square feet (3,000 m2) of space.
Despite these setbacks, Colonel J. M. Sellers, Jr., was able to stabilize enrollment by 1978 and lead the Academy through another period of growth. In 1980, Wentworth celebrated its centennial year, with Vice-President Walter Mondale addressing the corps of cadets at commencement. In the early 1980s, enrollment continued to rise, peaking at over 400 cadets in 1984. In 1990, Colonel Sellers, Sr., who taught Latin until he was 95 years old, died, and Colonel Sellers, Jr., resigned as superintendent, ending a remarkable 110 years of the Sellers family’s continuous involvement in the operation of the Academy.
In the 1990s, Wentworth struggled with enrollment. As part of a new approach, female cadets were admitted for the first time in 1993, and today they make up about twenty-five percent of the corps. In 2002, Major General John H. Little, Wentworth Class of 1961, returned to campus as Superintendent. Under his stewardship, Tillotson barracks, was constructed using donation money. The Wentworth Foundation put the school on stronger financial footing." - Wikipedia