By Rick Steelhammer, Charleston Gazette-Mail
LEWISBURG — Near a flagpole fronting their former school, 105 alumni of the Greenbrier Military School — all in their 70s or older — lined up and stood at attention as bugler Myron Pierson, wearing his 1971 cadet uniform, played Retreat and the colors were lowered through the blue October sky.
It was the last retreat formation for the Greenbrier Military School Alumni Association, which held its final reunion Oct. 17-19 on the grounds of the school’s former campus, now the West Virginia School of Osteopathic Medicine.
GMS shuttered its doors in June 1972 after operating for 160 years as either a military academy or a church-affiliated boarding school. Its closure was caused by a sharp decline in enrollment brought on mainly by turmoil surrounding America’s involvement in the Vietnam War.
A decline in the number of surviving alumni has also led to the dissolution of the Greenbrier Military Academy Alumni Association, scheduled to become final early next year, after it became apparent that income from alumni dues was no longer keeping up with expenses.