United States Air Force Academy
Colorado
The Air Force turned to a Hollywood director to design its cadet uniform, and cadets still wear it on the parade field.
When the Air Force needed a distinctive uniform for its new cadets, it went to Hollywood. Cecil B. DeMille, the film director, designed the cadet parade uniform. It is still in use. That was one of several things settled at the very beginning, because in the summer of nineteen fifty-five there was no academy yet, only a first class. Three hundred and six young men were sworn in at a temporary site at Lowry Air Force Base in Denver and housed in renovated World War Two barracks. There were no upperclassmen to train them, so the Air Force appointed junior officers as stand-in upper-class cadets, many of them graduates of West Point, Annapolis, VMI and The Citadel. The dedication ceremony went out live on national television that first day, with Walter Cronkite covering it. The first class wrote the Cadet Honor Code and picked the falcon as the mascot.
This is the first of 3 parts. The rest runs about 3 minutes and is read to you as you drive past. Hear the whole piece.
Film director Cecil B. DeMille designed the cadet parade uniform still in use.
Written from Wikipedia, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Nearby, on the same roads
- Western Museum of Mining & Industry 2.4 mi A replica 1890s ore mill here still runs, one of only five working stamp mills left in the country.
- Modern Woodmen Sanatorium 3.7 mi Tuberculosis patients here slept one to a tent, in octagonal cottages modeled on Ute tepees and left open at the top.
- Taylor Memorial Chapel 7.3 mi A woman built an entire pueblo-style church in the pine forest and worshipped in it alone for thirteen years.
- University of Colorado Colorado Springs 7.7 mi The university's administration building started life as a tuberculosis sanatorium that sold for one dollar.
- Palmer Lake, Colorado 8.5 mi The town of Palmer Lake spent years without a lake, its namesake bed sitting completely dry.
- Old North End Historic District (Colorado Springs, Colorado) 9.9 mi A college president bought this land as an investment, named it New Massachusetts, and was fired when it lost money.