Widener Magazine

Arthur Ryan III in a miniature PMC uniform, with his father, 1944

When Arthur Ryan III was a young boy, he often played where Pennsylvania Military College kept the horses for the polo team in the mid-1940s.  “I used to spend a lot of time around the stables,” said Ryan, a retired U.S. Army major who lives in Oxford, Pa.

He was there because his father, Captain Arthur Ryan Jr., a ’38 alumnus who had played polo as a cadet, was a staff officer at PMC and later worked for the college as admissions recruiter.  He took his son on recruiting trips as far west as Ohio and as far north as Maine.  They put a lot of miles on their car.  “He had a new Packard every year,” Ryan said.

Ryan later attended Pennsylvania Military Prep School (PMPS) until 1956 when it closed.  His father left the college in the mid-fifties, and died in 1975.

Ryan recently donated a scrap book that had been his father’s to the Widener University Archives that includes photographs and memorabilia from PMC from 1933 to 1956, as well as many newspaper clippings about the college.  You can view the scrapbook online in the Digital Archives.

Ryan went on to graduate from Haverford High School, and after a year at Penn State – where he competed against the PMC Pershing Rifles team – he attended West Point, graduating in 1963.  From there, his career in the military included two tours in Vietnam, service as advisor to the Colombian army, and assignment as assistant professor in the Department of Engineering at United State Military Academy.  He retired from the Army in 1984.

Ryan is interested in conducting an oral history of the prep school and asks former students and alumni interested in talking with him to contact him via e-mail at AJRYANIII@aol.com. 

Also note that yearbooks from the prep school from 1923 to 1956 can be found online in the Digital Archives.