The Summer Naval School Culver Summer Schools and Camps saw its beginnings with the launching of The Summer Naval School- at the suggestion of Culver Military Academy commandant of cadets at the time, Maj. Leigh Gignilliat – in 1902. The program grew from 20 boys its first year, to 206 by 1906. These boys were from 25 states and China, Ecuador, and Mexico, a foreshadowing of the international success of the program as it evolved. The Naval School’s first catalog noted a desire “to afford boys of the middle west the opportunity heretofore enjoyed in the seaboard states alone, of acquiring a practical knowledge of seamanship and elementary naval science.” By 1907, the program was “recognized and equipped” by the U.S. Navy Department. The Summer Naval program’s “ships of the line” have included many an iconic vessel, but perhaps none so treasured as the largest inland ship on Indiana waters, the R.H. Ledbetter (originally the O.W. Fowler, first built in 1940). The three-masted schooner became part of a Culver tradition recognized across the Midwest when the annual Moonlight Serenade – during which the Naval Band plays as the boat makes its way along the shoreline of Lake Maxinkuckee – was inaugurated in 1943. In 1947, notes New York architect Jens F. Larson was commissioned to design a Naval Building for use in the program. Its construction was significant in being the first major campus building not built from the Culver family’s own financial resources.
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