New Georgia Encyclopedia: Navy Supply Corps School

NGE >> Government and Politics >> Military >> Base Installations >> Navy Supply Corps School

Navy Supply Corps School

Navy Supply Corps School

Known as the "Cradle of the Supply Corps," the Navy Supply Corps School (NSCS) has been in Athens since 1954. Before that time, supply corps officers received their training in various formal schools or on the job. Twenty-five officer-students constituted the first class of the Navy Supply Corps School of Application in 1921, located at the Navy Department in Washington, D.C. After just three years the school was closed, and for the next ten years supply officers learned their profession at sea from senior supply officers and correspondence courses.

A more formal arrangement was achieved when the Naval Finance and Supply School was opened at the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard in September 1934, for instruction of regular navy supply corps officers. Training of

Navy Supply Corps Museum

reserve officers was not available until 1940, when the Supply Corps Naval Reserve Officers School was established in Washington, D.C. After ten months the two schools were merged, creating the Navy Supply Corps School, located at the Harvard University Graduate School of Business in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

During World War II (1941-45) 13,000 officers graduated from Navy Supply Corps School, Harvard. In 1944 the Naval Supply Operational Training Center was established at the Naval Supply Depot in Bayonne, New Jersey. It was redesignated the Navy Supply Corps School in 1946, but within a few years it outgrew its facilities. Through the efforts of two Georgia politicians, U.S. senator Richard B. Russell Jr. and U.S. congressman Carl Vinson, the school was moved to Athens in 1954.

The NSCS occupies a fifty-eight-acre campus rich in educational heritage. The site had been used as a school since the 1860s, first for the University of Georgia's University High School, then as a Confederate military school, and at the end of the Civil War (1861-65), a Federal garrison. In 1866 the site housed a school for disabled young Confederate veterans, which existed with state support for two years.

The University of Georgia College of Agriculture and Mechanical Arts used the campus until 1891, when it was purchased to establish the State Normal School,

State Normal School, 1912-1913

a teacher's college. At this time the historic buildings still on the site today were constructed. The NSCS administration offices are housed in Winnie Davis Hall, built with funds raised by the United Daughters of the Confederacy and named after Confederate president Jefferson Davis's daughter. In 1932 the University of Georgia's Department of Education assumed teachers' training for the state. The normal school was taken over by the university and became known as Coordinate College but was used only as dormitories for freshmen and sophomore women.

From 1942 to 1944 the facilities were leased to the U.S. Army, and a special training program was conducted on the site. After World War II

Navy Supply Corps School

university women again occupied the facilities until the U.S. Navy purchased the buildings and grounds in 1953. Every ship in the navy carries at least one supply officer, and since 1954 all active-duty supply corps officers have been trained in Athens. The NSCS contributes around $70 million annually to the local economy.