Alums remember Eastern Military Academy as Oheka Castle auction nears

Every couple of months, the recurring dream slips into Guillermo Mahé's subconscious: He is back at Oheka Castle, trying to persuade the new owners to bring back Eastern Military Academy, the school that operated on the Huntington grounds from 1948 to 1979.

"An unrealistic fantasy," Mahé said, chuckling. 

The castle will go up for auction on Tuesday as the conclusion to a lengthy bankruptcy proceeding. A suite of potential buyers are eligible to acquire the property, its development rights and hospitality operations. The next owner will also have the option to build a four-story, 95-unit condominium complex on the estate's grounds.

Mahé, who graduated in 1964, and other alums know relaunching the military academy is nothing more than a dream. But as the historic castle changes ownership, they hope its legacy, and the generations of those who grew up there, will not be forgotten. 

"We hope the new owners will respect the history of it being Eastern Military Academy," said Dennis Calogera, a cadet who graduated in 1973. Calogera, 71, now lives in Monroe, New Jersey, and works as a national account manager for Home Depot. "And allow us to meet there on occasion."

'Like going to Disneyland'

Eastern Military Academy was founded in 1944 in Stamford, Connecticut, by Carleton Witham and Roland R. Robinson, a former math teacher at Peekskill Military Academy. Four years later, it moved to the 80-room stone castle in Cold Spring Hills built by the investment banker Otto H. Kahn.

The castle is among many of Long Island's vast estates that have been converted into school campuses. After Kahn's death in 1934, the property took on several iterations, including as a retreat for New York City Department of Sanitation employees. During World War II, it became a school for radio operators training with the U.S. Maritime Service.

A group of parents of Eastern Military Academy students and alumni purchased the property in August 1948, shortly before the first semester, Newsday reported.

Roger Hall, a cadet from 1952 to 1955, recalled being "impressed" as he approached the school for the first time. He was entering fourth grade.

"It’s like going to Disneyland," said Hall, 83, who now lives in Stoughton, Massachusetts. "Seeing a castle as a young kid, it’s very exciting."

The structure was full of tunnels, subcellars and hidden passageways for cadets to explore. 

"You'd walk down there, whistling in the tunnels," Hall said.

Life at the academy was regimented. Cadets woke around 6 a.m. to the piercing sound of a bugle and were expected to stand in formation before breakfast, lunch and dinner.

Hall, now a composer and music preservationist, recalled picking up cigarette butts and other trash items early in the morning. Some of the teachers were members of the military and wore their official uniforms.

"It helped me focus on my studies," Calogera said. "I was not very disciplined. Every night, you'd have a two-hour study hall, from 7 to 9. You'd be locked in this big room, and it had monitors walking around. You basically had to study." 

'The same spirit'

The opening class of cadets at Oheka featured 150 students, from first to 12th grade, including many from South America, Newsday reported at the time. Tuition, laundry, uniforms, and room and board cost $1,650 annually. 

In 1949, Eastern became the first secondary school in the nation to offer a preflight air training course, according to Newsday archives. The course, presented by the Civil Air Patrol, included instruction in aerodynamics, physics, motor and radar study.

The school struggled to integrate, as did many others around that time. In July 1964, the school offered to allow an 11-year-old Black boy to enroll, after initially rejecting him because of his race, Newsday reported. At the time, there was not a single Black student among the academy's 350 cadets.

The boy's father, prominent author Louis Lomax, had threatened legal action against the school.

"The other students are not ready for this," Witham, then the superintendent, told Newsday. "If the boy and his parents really want him to attend, we'll accept him." Lomax's mother refused Witham's offer, Newsday reported at the time.

By the time the school closed in 1979, its population was more than 50% Black, Newsday reported that year, citing academy executive director Kenneth Murphy. He had accused the Town of Huntington of "pure racism" in trying to close the school through a slew of building violations it had leveled against the academy.

In 1968, Alice Witham Robinson assumed the chief administrator role following the deaths of her husband, Roland Robinson, and her brother, Carleton Witham, which occurred a month apart. She was believed to be the only woman leading a military school in the country at the time, Newsday reported on Sept. 30, 1968.

"My husband, brother and I had the same ideas when we founded this academy," she said then. "I want to go on in the same spirit."

'A special place'

Hall landed at Eastern Military Academy at the recommendation of his uncle, who could sense he was slipping into a dark place after his parents' divorce.

"I was pretty depressed," Hall said. "It was a special place for me because of my emotional state at the time, and it saved me from being worse off."

For Mahé, Eastern was a stabilizing presence after he had spent years shuffling between schools in Queens and following the shocking reappearance of his father. He had been told his father died after he and his mother moved to the United States from Colombia. 

Mahé quickly formed strong relationships with his fellow cadets.

"I had moved around a lot when I was little, and I didn't have long-term friends," he said. "This was different. The bonding was just profound."

Not long after Calogera had enrolled at Eastern, tragedy struck: His father died suddenly of a heart attack. He recalled spending hours looking down at the football field from the castle's parapet, mourning the loss.

Calogera leaned on some of his fellow cadets to work through his grief.

"I had a good support system there," he said. "They looked after me."

'If I was a billionaire'

Those bonds remain strong decades after the academy's closure. Alums share old stories and life updates in a Facebook group, and they occasionally meet for reunions. A display case featuring artifacts from the school remains on the property, Calogera said.

"We hope it will remain, or at least be returned to us," he said. 

Mahé got a job teaching at the school a few years after he graduated, and he stayed on campus until 1978, one year before the school closed. 

It was shut down just 15 days before the start of the 1978 school year, Newsday reported, after Huntington Town officials declared it "unsafe and unfit for human habitation." Officials had found "dozens" of fire violations, including 30 inadequate fire doors and several windows without glass. The only hydrant on campus was unmarked.

It reopened, but by December, the school had filed for voluntary bankruptcy in U.S. District Court in Brooklyn. An attorney for the academy told Newsday in September 1979 that it would take "a considerable amount of money" for the school to reopen. "To my knowledge, that capital is not present," the attorney said.

Developer Gary Melius purchased the property in 1984 for $1.5 million, effectively ending hopes of a second act for the military academy. Over the years, and with Melius' investment, Oheka Castle morphed into a luxurious wedding venue. It also served as the filming location for Taylor Swift's 2014 "Blank Space" music video.

Mahé, an academic, writer, political consultant and analyst based in Colombia, knows his dream of bringing the school back is far-fetched. But he can't help but let his mind wander. 

"If I was a billionaire," he said, "I'd do it."