History

History of TMI Episcopal: Timeline of Events

WTMA
  • Opened as West Texas Military Academy at Government Hill campus
    October 3, 1893
  • Move to new Alamo Heights campus; “Old Main” completed as first tilt-up, cast-concrete building in the South at Government Hill campus
    September 13, 1911
  • Registrants in the Students Army Training Corps report to West Texas Military Academy to train for a commission in the U.S. Army
    October 15, 1918
Texas Military Institute
  • Merges with upper school of San Antonio Academy; school is renamed Texas Military Institute
    June 13, 1926
  • Ceremonial organization of TMI’s chapter of the National Honor Society, one of the first at a private school
    February 14, 1930
  • TMI is sold by the Episcopal Diocese of West Texas to Dr. W.W. Bondurant, head of both TMI and San Antonio Academy
    June 27, 1936
  • Gen. Douglas MacArthur, class of 1897, visits TMI during a 1951 speaking tour
    June 15, 1951
  • Ownership of TMI transferred back to the Episcopal Diocese of West Texas
    July 1, 1952
  • Board votes to postpone decision to “demilitarize” TMI after protest from cadets, alumni and other supporters
    May 3, 1961
  • TMI cadets recognized by President Kennedy as his motorcade passes along Broadway during a visit to San Antonio
    November 22, 1963
  • First female students admitted as full-time students
    August 28, 1972
  • Military program becomes optional; first male civilian students attend TMI
    August 26, 1974
  • Opening of the current Alkek Campus in northwest San Antonio
    March 30, 1989
  • Centennial celebration
    October 1-2, 1993
TMI Episcopal
  • In 2004, TMI adopted the DBA name "TMI – The Episcopal School of Texas" to identify the school's historical roots and connection with the Episcopal Church.
    2004
  • New Abbott and Bailey residence halls dedicated
    September 8, 2005
  • Ewing Halsell residence hall groundbreaking
    September 20, 2006
  • All Saints Chapel, the school’s first purpose-built worship space, completed and consecrated
    September 7, 2008
  • Corps earns Honor Unit with Distinction designation for 20th consecutive year
    April 10, 2013
  • School's common name adopted as: TMI Episcopal
    November 28, 2017
  • Walker Innovation Center open for use – a dedicated space where our commitment to educating servant leaders comes to life.
    October 15, 2020
  • Corps earns Honor Unit with Distinction designation for 29th consecutive year
    April 14, 2022

Founder: Bishop Johnston

by The Rev. Dr. Walter L. “Chip” Prehn, TMI Chaplain 1996-2001 and Interim Assistant Headmaster 2000-2001
The Right Reverend James Steptoe Johnston, D.D., was born on a family farm near Church Hill, Jefferson County, Mississippi (a few miles north of Natchez) on June 9, 1843. Johnston’s father was a wealthy planter and a lawyer whose peers considered him a worthy Southern intellectual. The son was sent to Oakland College in Lorman, Mississippi (Oakland became Chamberlain-Hunt Academy in 1879), where he was a student in the preparatory department. But the fun-loving Johnston found Oakland too strict. He left his own country in 1859 for the University of Virginia, where he matriculated and joined his brother Charles. Many Oakland boys went to Charlottesville to gain their higher education.

Mississippi seceded from the Union on January 9, 1861. No later than June of the same year Johnston had made his way to Harper’s Ferry to volunteer for service in the Confederates States Army. We know that Johnston was in the 11th Mississippi Regiment when Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia faced the Federals at Antietam Creek September 17, 1862. Johnston fought in eleven other engagements before he was taken prisoner toward the end of the war. In addition to Sharpsburg, he fought at Yorktown, Seven Pines, Seven Days, Gaines Mill, Malvern Hill, Second Manassas, and South Mountain. Surviving bloody Sharpsburg as an infantryman charging through the infamous Corn Field (the 11th Mississippi participated in Hood’s Counter-attack), Johnston joined J.E.B Stuart’s Cavalry Corps in the autumn of 1862. He was promoted to Second Lieutenant then wounded in 1863. While on leave in Mississippi to recover from his wound, Johnston was taken prisoner by Union troops and shipped to an island prison in Lake Erie called “Johnson’s Island.” As fate would have it, the rebel prisoner was incarcerated at a place named for an eighteenth century ancestor.
The best use of wealth
is to coin it into character.

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  • Read more about Bishop Johnston

    Following the Civil War, Johnston married Mary Mercer Green, who hailed from one of the old River Counties families. The Johnstons had several children, including the Reverend Mercer Green Johnston (1868-1954), a TMI alumnus and an eminent and controversial Social Gospel priest in his day. J.S. Johnston planted his own land and practiced law until 1871, when he was ordained a priest of the Episcopal Church. His first cure was St. James Church in nearby Port Gibson, thence he served parishes in Kentucky and Alabama before the House of Bishops appointed him the second Bishop of the Missionary Jurisdiction of Western Texas. He moved to San Antonio and served the Diocese of West Texas until his retirement in 1914. 

    When Johnston began his episcopate, his diocese was 110,000 square miles. It extended from Brownsville to Luling to Brady and all the way to El Paso. It was definitely a frontier jurisdiction of large ranches, sometimes wild citizens, and different kinds of threats were ever-present. Life was difficult and dangerous along the Rio Grande. Indeed, Robert Elliott, the first Bishop of West Texas (and a fellow son of the South), worked himself into exhaustion and an early death. Episcopal visitations were tortuous journeys over hot, rocky, desert, and semi-mountainous terrain, usually undertaken in the early days of Johnston’s episcopate in a buckboard wagon accompanied by Texas Rangers and other armed guards. Banditos, outlaws, and Comanche had little positive regard for even ordained Americans who traveled through their wild haunts. 

    Johnston was an effective bishop. While the Episcopal Church in western and southwestern Texas grew steadily during his tenure, the bishop was also passionate about education. He was concerned to know how boys can become men. Bishop Elliott founded St. Mary’s Hall, a girls’ school, in 1879. Johnston wanted a boys’ school that would offer young and sometimes wild West Texans a premier academic course alongside serious Christian commitment and the development of character. The West Texas Military Academy was founded in 1893 at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, San Antonio, a stone’s throw from Fort Sam Houston. The Reverend Alan Lucian Burleson served as the first Rector and Headmaster of WTMA from 1893 and 1900. 

    Burleson was prepared at the Shattuck School in Minnesota, earned the B.A. degree from historic Racine College in Wisconsin, and was formed for the priesthood at Nashotah House. Burleson was a staunch advocate of high-quality Christian education and knew first-hand that the military discipline is a shortcut to the outcomes Bishop Johnston and most parents desire for their sons and daughters. The school thrived and is still thriving as a full-blooded Church school featuring premier academics, an emphasis on character formation, and a nationally distinguished Corp of Cadets. The Founder would be proud of what his vision has wrought. 

    Bishop Johnston was a progressive Christian for his day. His sincere solicitude for women and for African Americans moved him to found St. Philip’s Female College in 1898 (now St. Philip’s College). He was likewise deeply ecumenical in his outlook. Taking the words of Jesus in St. John 17 quite seriously, Bishop Johnston lamented the divisions in the Church at home and abroad. He wanted Christians to concentrate on the things that draw them closer together instead of the things that push them apart. Thus, he initiated meetings with his fellow Christians in San Antonio and South Texas and advocated for dialogue between the denominations and traditions on the national and international levels. He even wrote the Pope to ask for the latter’s leadership in the matter of Christian reunion. The Founder’s profound sense of hospitality and inclusion is alive and well at TMI today. 

    Bishop Johnston retired from active ministry in 1914 and removed to Kerrville in the Texas Hill Country. TMI-Episcopal is just one of many Johnston legacies, but we know from extant sources that the School was his pride and joy. Outstanding young men were coming out of WTMA, even before the Bishop retired. He died in San Antonio on November 4, 1924, and was buried in San Antonio. He served as priest and bishop for fifty-three years. A larger-than-life personality had entered into his well-deserved rest. He was a winsome and attractive man of God who endured much suffering, who through war, peace, and his pastoral duties had seen human nature close-up in its glory and in its shame, and who had worked with great zeal to advance the Kingdom of God among all sorts and conditions of men through the building of solid institutions that make a difference in the world to this day.
MISSION: TMI provides an exceptional education with values based on the teachings of Jesus Christ that challenge motivated students to develop their full potential in service and leadership.

NOTICE OF NONDISCRIMINATORY POLICY AS TO STUDENTS
TMI Episcopal admits students of any race, color, national and ethnic origin, sex, religion, and physical ability to all the rights, privileges, programs, and activities generally accorded or made available to students at the school. The school does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, national and ethnic origin, sex, religion, and physical ability in administration of its educational policies, admissions policies, scholarship and financial aid programs, and athletic and other school-administered programs.
TMI Episcopal
20955 W. Tejas Trail
San Antonio TX 78257
phone (210) 698-7171
fax (210) 698-0715