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3 unusual facts about Virginia Military Institute


Brother Rat

Brother Rat is a 1938 film about cadets at Virginia Military Institute in Lexington, Virginia, directed by William Keighley and starring Priscilla Lane and Wayne Morris.

Dan Lyle

A 1992 graduate of Virginia Military Institute, he took up rugby union aged 23 in an attempt to keep fit.

John Quincy Marr

John Quincy Marr graduated second in the class of 1846 from the Virginia Military Institute (VMI).


Bob Thalman

He served as the head football coach at Hampden–Sydney College from 1956 to 1959 and at the Virginia Military Institute from 1971 to 1984, winning Southern Conference championships in 1974 and 1977, compiling a career college football record of 80–103–4.

Donald E. Hillman

He graduated from Broadway High School, and attended the University of Washington for a short time before transferring to Virginia Military Academy.

Earl Abell

Abell was the 13th head football coach for the Virginia Military Institute Keydets located in Lexington, Virginia and he held that position for the 1917 season.

Forrest Pogue

Forrest Pogue was for many years the Executive Director of the George C. Marshall Foundation as well as Director of the Marshall Library located on the campus of Virginia Military Institute in Lexington, Virginia.

Fort Magruder

Soldiers and impressed slaves constructed the line to the east of Williamsburg as recommended by Captain Alfred L. Rives, an 1848 civil engineering graduate of Virginia Military Institute (VMI) who was acting chief of the Engineer Bureau at Confederate headquarters in Richmond.

George Mercer Brooke, Jr.

(October 21, 1914 – June 16, 2006) was Professor Emeritus of History at the Virginia Military Institute (VMI).

Harry Easterly

He was a graduate of St. Christopher's School in Richmond, Virginia, and Virginia Military Institute in Lexington, Virginia where he was the president of the Class of 1944.

Jefferson County, West Virginia

Among those attending the Brown execution was a contingent of 1500 cadets from Virginia Military Institute sent by the Governor of Virginia Henry A. Wise under the supervision of Major William Gilham and Major Thomas J. Jackson.

Johnson N. Camden, Jr.

Born in Parkersburg, West Virginia, Camden Jr. attended Episcopal High School in Alexandria, Virginia, Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts, Virginia Military Institute in Lexington, Virginia, Columbia Law School in New York City, and the law school at University of Virginia in Charlottesville.

Lambert's Point

The Norfolk and Petersburg Railroad (N&P) was built under the oversight of William Mahone, young civil engineer from Southampton County, Virginia who had been educated in the first graduating class of Virginia Military Institute (VMI).

Rhetorical velocity

In 2010, West Point Professor Michael Edwards and Virginia Military Institute Professor D. Alexis Hart interviewed Lieutenant General William B. Caldwell, the current Commander of the NATO Training Mission in Afghanistan, and asked him about rhetorical velocity and the matter of military documents stamped For Official Use Only.

Sigma Nu

Sigma Nu (ΣΝ) is an undergraduate college fraternity that was founded by James Frank Hopkins, Greenfield Quarles and James McIlvaine Riley at the Virginia Military Institute in Lexington, Virginia shortly after Hopkins witnessed what he considered a hazing ritual by upperclassmen at the Virginia Military Institute.

William A. B. Branch

He attended Lovejoy’s Academy in Raleigh, N.C., Bingham Military Academy near Mebane, N.C., the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and Virginia Military Institute at Lexington.


see also

Alumni Field

Alumni Memorial Field, the football field at the Virginia Military Institute

George Bryant

George W. Bryant, head football coach for the Virginia Military Institute Keydets, 1895–1896

Henry Ruffner

The pamphlet grew out of a debate that Ruffner had before Lexington's Franklin Society over slavery with Lexington Law School Professor John White Brockenbrough and Virginia Military Institute Professor Francis Henney Smith.

John Sergeant Wise

He fought in the Confederate Army during the Civil War and was Virginia Military Institute New Market Cadet at the Battle of New Market.

VMI Keydets baseball

In the Fall of 1866, just two years after the Virginia Military Institute had been burned down by David Hunter and the Union Army, a group of cadets got together and created the Institute's first organized baseball team.