Echo Company, Kemper Military School operates an archive and research facility at its Wisconsin headquarters where volumes of manuals, yearbooks, raw data and every form of photograph, book and record can be found relating to Kemper Military School. It is here that volunteer researchers conduct thorough and detailed investigations of the school’s past in preparation for stories and articles to be used in the newsletter ECHO which is a quarterly publication for members of Echo Company.

Reams of paper, notes, and files of all types and sizes are stacked in various systems of organization. Some are waiting to be loaded onto digital format while other documents have notes attached to them from the staff with questions about dispositions. All-in-all, it is a journey into the past and a historian’s dream come true.

“Imagine the interest generated from several documents which recently surfaced with regard to Boonville High School in Boonville, Mo.,” said Chris Menninger, a contributing historian and student at the University of Wisconsin at Stevens Point.

During a recent investigation into the life of famous aviator Wiley Post, several documents were uncovered dating to around 1911. Post was a friend of ex-Kemper student Will Rogers who procured him a job. “It was a feather in the school’s cap to be able to say they had a pilot who would fly prospective students from St. Louis and Kansas City to Boonville and it gave Post employment during a time when he needed a job,” said John Downs of Echo Company headquarters. On an around-the-world trip with aviator Wiley Post, Rogers died when their small airplane crashed near Barrow, Alaska Territory in 1935.

For the rest of the story, read the Wednesday, May 21 print edition of the BDN.