Looking back: Director of the Veterans Bureau visits the Sherman Tech school in Chillicothe

The Washington D.C. train whistled into Chillicothe on a sunny Saturday afternoon, May 20, 1922, with Col. Charles R. Forbes, the first director of the Veterans Bureau aboard. Things were not going well at Sherman Tech, the veterans vocational training school that had opened just six months earlier.

A friendly group of school officials waited on the train platform to welcome Forbes, but the press was there too.  The moment the director stepped down from the train, before he could shake one hand, reporters bombarded him with questions.

More: Looking back: The story behind Sherman Tech

“Sir, what can you tell us about the telegram the vocational school received from your department on Wednesday?” asked one reporter. Forbes was unaware the telegram had been made public and his facial expression registered surprise.

Sherman Tech, officially named Veterans Bureau Vocational School No. 1, was the first of four large national vocational schools planned by the Veterans Bureau to rehabilitate World War I veterans struggling with physical and mental issues. The school had its grand opening on Dec. 1, 1921, amid much excitement and optimism, especially because it came on the heels of a crushing announcement by the War Department that it would be evacuating Camp Sherman, the WWI training camp.

“I have no comment,” Forbes said, but the reporters persisted. “I am here on a checkup visit,” he assured them. “A general checkup of the school.” Few likely believed him.

Three days before Forbes’ visit, workers were busy constructing facilities at the school in anticipation of an eventual enrollment of 1,000 students when school officials were blindsided by a telegram from the Veterans Bureau.

“Make 600 students maximum for present. Stop all expansion work other than that necessary to take care of that number.”

When the telegram came across the wire, more than 200 workers were busy hammering and sawing. After the order was received, 120 of the workers were forced to drop their tools until school officials could figure out what was going on.

At the train station, despite the reporters’ best efforts, Forbes would only say that the order limiting the expansion of the school was not motivated by complaints registered by students about how the school was being run.

Once again, few of the reporters likely believed him, especially after members of a special investigating committee who had accompanied Forbes on the trip stepped off the train and joined their boss. Forbes would depart for Washington later that day, but his team would stick around for a couple of weeks and make an exhaustive inspection of the conditions at Sherman Tech.

In many ways, Forbes was responsible for much of the discontent at the school. In his enthusiasm to create a “National University” for veterans, the school had opened its doors before it was ready. As a result, many of the wounded veterans, who had come to Chillicothe from all over the country, were sorely disappointed after they arrived. That disappointment turned to anger, and they complained to the American Legion, the newly created veteran’s organization.

“The classrooms were unready and the shops unequipped,” the veterans’ organization concluded after one of its representatives spent a week at the school. “The students had nothing to do. Gambling, drinking, and various forms of law-breaking prevailed among men the Government was trying to redeem vocationally.”

Forbes was apparently in Chillicothe to get a firsthand look of his own and determine what was going on at the school.

Surprisingly, though, Forbes never stepped foot on school grounds that day. Although his team was escorted to the school and immediately began digging around, their boss had other plans.

Forbes and his assistant, Col. Robert I. Rees, boarded an airplane and were soon seen flying back and forth high over the school grounds. After a couple of low swoops over the unfinished construction projects, however, the aircraft sputtered to the north end of the old army training camp, away from the school, and circled overhead again and again. Something was up.

There was some speculation, despite the troubles the school was having, that Forbes was interested in making the school permanent and larger. The telegraph order limiting the school to 600 students and stopping new construction, according to this theory, was because Forbes didn’t want to spend more money on temporary improvements in case his plan for enlarging the school went through.

There was another less likely theory that the reason Forbes had surveyed the land at the extreme north end of the camp was because the Veterans Bureau was going to locate a Veterans hospital there. But this was all speculation.

Forbes didn’t stay around long and had little to say before catching a train back to Washington, but he did drop some hints.

First, he shared that he was very impressed with the school’s efforts in rehabilitating wounded veterans. He was especially complimentary of the work being done at the school hospital. “Not a single complaint regarding it has been received,” Forbes said.

The tight-lipped Veterans director then hinted that something “now unthought of might crop out in the future.” He refused to reveal what he meant. And with that, he was gone.

On Monday, the Gazette included a front-page article about Forbes' visit.

“Does the visit of Col. Charles R. Forbes, Veterans Bureau Chief, to Vocational School No. 1, Camp Sherman on Saturday last, portend a more substantial future for the school?” the paper asked.

One thing was certain, Forbes left behind the feeling that bigger things were in store for Camp Sherman.

Read part two in my next column and learn how the land Forbes surveyed from the sky became the VA hospital and changed Chillicothe forever.

This article originally appeared on Chillicothe Gazette: Director of the Veterans Bureau visits the Sherman Tech school in Chillicothe