Carolina Military-Naval Academy

I just found this newspaper clipping. Have you ever heard of the CMNA or Carolina Military-Naval Academy, the Fleet or Fleetwood School or Camp Highland Lake?

Carolina Military-Naval Academy
Hendersonville, NC..
America’s Most Beautiful Environed Prep School

Altitude 2300 feet, in the “Sapphire Country” of the Western North Carolina mountains, on the Asheville-Hendersonville plateau. Elegant quarters, choice food, campus and farm of 320 acres, lake boating, fishing, golf, athletics. Classical, Engineering and Commercial Courses.

Military equipment furnished by War Department. Individual instruction by experienced teachers. Limited to 100 pupils, ages 12 to 20.

Carolina Military-Naval Academy sounded familiar. I googled it and found my own post that I wrote about Fassifern School for Girls.

During the period that Fassifern operated in Hendersonville there were two private schools here for boys, Blue Ridge School for Boys and Carolina Military Naval Academy, known as C.M.N.A. also known as Fleet School.

The students of Blue Ridge School and C.M.N.A. would come to town on the same Monday afternoons in an attempt to flirt and get a word in with the Fassifern girls.

On the Banks of the Oklawaha
Frank L. FitzSimons

Fassifern School for Girls >

Local historian Frank L. FitzSimons talks about the school in his first volume of On the Banks of the Oklawaha. He tells how the Highland Lake Club built a big, rambling, rustic club house that was too big and ahead of its time. When it closed, it reopened as Fleetwood School for Boys. The Flat Rock Together website says this was in 1915.

This school operated during the fall, winter, and spring months. During the summer months, the building was leased and operated as a summer hotel known as Highland Lake Inn.

On the Banks of the Oklawaha
Frank L. FitzSimons

The property was bought by Col. John Charles Woodward. He had opened Georgia Military Academy, a military boarding school for boys in 1900. The school still exists. It is a private Day School in Metro Atlanta called the Woodward Academy (after Colonel Woodward) and teaches from Pre-K to grade 12.

He opened Carolina Military and Naval Academy (C.M.N.A.) military school in Hendersonville where the Fleetwood School for Boys had been. The Flat Rock Together website dates C.M.N.A. school from 1919 till 1924.

The Carolina Military and Naval Academy (under the auspices of the Georgia Military Academy). Just before World War I, Highland Lake Inn and the surrounding property, including the cottages and the lake, was purchased by Colonel J.C. Woodward, who established a school for boys (also known as Camp Highland Lake) that offered a choice of either military or naval training.

Flatrock Together : History of Highland Lake Inn

I don’t know if people still called the school Fleet or Fleetwood then, but the few things I found about the school now seem to merge the two schools.

Just before the First World War, Highland Lake Inn and the surrounding property, including the cottages and the lake, was purchased by Colonel Woodward who operated the Georgia Military Academy in that state. Colonel Woodward established a new school for boys at Highland Lake and named it The Carolina Military and Naval Academy. It was a preparatory school where boys from the deep South could get their education in our health giving mountains. The boys had their choice of either military or naval training. The school was always referred to by the local people as “C.M.N.A” There were some exciting football games in Hendersonville, as there was keen rivalry between C.M.N.A., Blue Ridge School for Boys and the Hendersonville High School. These games were finally discontinued because they generally ended in riots and free for all fights between the supporters of the three schools. Ah! but those were exciting football games in our town while they lasted!

On the Banks of the Oklawaha
Frank L. FitzSimons

Henderson Heritage quotes an article written by Jennie Jones Giles in the Hendersonville Times-News about the Blue Ridge School for Boys. She says that FitzSimons was a football coach at Blue Ridge School for Boys in the early 1920s. No wonder he was so enthusiastic about the football games!
hendersonheritage.com/blue-ridge-school-for-boys

The Carolina Military Naval Academy was discontinued at the end of the 1923-24 term. Captain C.D. Woodward, son of Colonel Woodward and a graduate of Virginia Military Academy, had served in the Marine Corps in World War I. He had acted as headmaster of C.M.N.A. until it closed.

On the Banks of the Oklawaha
Frank L. FitzSimons

Louise Bailey in Hendersonville and Henderson County: A Pictorial History describes the building as “designed in the style of an English country house, with stucco and half-timber gables and a wide veranda. The seventy bedrooms were equipped with telephones and with electricity that extended into the large closets.”

The Highland Lake Club lasted two summers; then it went out of business. The clubhouse served, in turn, the Fleet School for Boys, the Carolina Military Naval Academy, Highland Lake Camp for Boys, and, finally, Highland Lake Inn.

Highland Lake Club
Hendersonville and Henderson County
A Pictorial History
By Jody Barber and Louise Bailey

Camp Highland Lake was under the direction of Colonel J.C. Woodward until the time of his death in 1939. His son, Major C.D. Woodward, then continued as owner and director of Camp Highland Lake until 1947.

Flatrock Together : History of Highland Lake Inn

After it was schools and a camp, it was the Highland Lake Inn.

During the latter ownership, the building burned one night in a spectacular fire that could be seen for twenty miles.

Highland Lake Club
Hendersonville and Henderson County
A Pictorial History
By Jody Barber and Louise Bailey

If you are trying to locate some historic building around Hendersonville, if it wasn’t washed away in the Great Flood of 1916, it probably burned in a spectacular fire.