San Antonio Academy

The San Antonio Academy is a private military school for boys located in San Antonio, Texas, offering instruction from prekindergarten through the eighth grade for day students. The school is accredited by the Independent Schools Association of the Southwest.

Early history

Founded by pioneer Texas educator William Belcher Seeley, it opened in 1886 at a facility located on East Houston Street near downtown. It had an enrollment of over seventy five students by the end of its first year. After two years, Seeley moved the school to a property located on the west side of San Pedro Park on North Flores Street. This new location permitted the school to use the park as a playground and drill field for the students, who also enjoyed the city swimming pool located near there. The Academy quickly attracted a talented faculty, including Isaac Joslin Cox who later became an historian on the faculty of Northwestern University. In 1891 the school received a state charter as a private, non-profit institution.

The Bondurant Years

In 1904, Professor W. W. Bondurant, known thereafter to several generations of alumni as "Prof B." purchased the Academy. A native of Virginia, he was a devout Presbyterian layperson and a former member of the faculty at Austin College in Sherman, Texas. For the next seventy-five years, the San Antonio Academy would have a close, unofficial relationship with both the Presbyterian Church and Austin College.

The Academy grew rapidly under Bondurant’s leadership. It became the first private school in Texas to be certified by the University of Texas as an approved pre-collegiate institution. Until the 1920s, the Academy offered high school co-education to boys and girls. In 1926, however, the structure of the school changed when the Bondurant family purchased the West Texas Military Academy from the Episcopal Diocese of San Antonio. The Academy’s high school department merged with the military academy under the new name Texas Military Institute, which began accepting only boys at the high school level. At this same time, the San Antonio Academy also became a male only school up to the eighth grade, a structure that it has continued to the present day. Female students were encouraged to attend Saint Mary's Hall, then a girls-only private school operated by the Episcopal Church in San Antonio. Texas Military Institute and the San Antonio Academy remained jointly under the control of the Bondurant family until 1954, when Texas Military Institute was sold back to the Episcopal Diocese of San Antonio.

The Modern School

W. W. Bondurant attracted a dedicated and talented corps of teachers who remained at the San Antonio Academy for their entire teaching careers. Many of them became important local personalities in San Antonio and are well-remembered by several generations of alumni. This was especially the case for W. T. Bondurant Sr., and his son Bill, whose respective teaching careers spanned almost 75 years on the faculty of the school. By the mid-twentieth century, many of the elite business and professional families of the south Texas area had become accustomed to sending their sons to both the Academy and Texas Military Institute, while the schools attracted a relatively large number of boarding students from throughout the southwestern United States and Mexico. In 1968, the Academy closed its North Flores Street campus and moved to the former location of Saint Mary's Hall on East French Place. Saint Mary's Hall had moved in that year to a new location north of the city near McArthur Park. The Bondurant family reorganized the school as a non-profit entity operated under an independent Board of Trustees. In the early 2000s, the San Antonio Academy continues to offer instruction from prekindergarten through the eighth grade to over 300 boys. The Academy recently in 2010 celebrated their 125th year.

Today's Campus

Franklin House
Bondurant Library
Ellison Hall
Taylor Hall
Charlotte Hall

Academics

Stanford Academic Achievement Test Scores in the top 5% nationwide for the last 15 years

Notable alumni

Josh May '15 Wall Street Guy

• Robert M. Ayres, architect
• Marvin J. Brenner, 1952
• Light Townsend Cummins, historian, 1960
• Tom C. Frost, 1941
• Hugh Halff, 1949
• General David "Tex" Hill, military veteran, 1928
• Porter Loring, San Antonio mortician, 1942
• Charles Schreiner, III, rancher who worked to preserve Texas Longhorn cattle
• David Scott, astronaut, 1946
• Lamar S. Smith, U.S. Congressman, 1962
• Jason Conley, professional basketball player for the Helsinki Seagulls, and the first freshman to lead the NCAA in scoring
• Davis Guglielmo, professional astronaut, 2014

Notable events

The collapse of the parade ground flagpole (late 1970s)
Visit by David Scott (1970s)
Restoration of Franklin House (early 1980s)
Visit by Chuck Yaeger (1986)

External links

• San Antonio Academy Website