Sandy Beaver*
Class of 1953
- Chairman & President Riverside Military Academy
I achieved through good health, good friends, and good luck, but it also took energy, integrity, and American initiative to make it all work.
Born in 1883, Sandy Beaver sold newspapers as a youngster in a small Georgia town. He worked his way through the University of Georgia by waiting on tables in the dining hall and clerking in a jewelry store. He was a star football player and was a charter member of the National Football Hall of Fame, but he refused offers to become a professional athlete.
Beaver was the university's first Rhodes scholar, but he gave up the scholarship to teach modern languages at a preparatory school. He served in the U.S. Army during World War I, advancing to the rank of major. When he returned home, he bought Georgia's Riverside Military Academy, which he headed from 1913 until his death in 1969.
A legendary figure, Beaver was made a brigadier general in the Georgia militia by the state's governor. Beaver went on to found the Association of Military Colleges and Schools of the United States.