26 Stake Academy

Ten years before Andrew arrived in Arizona the Church Board of Education instructed the stake to establish in the Gila Valley a branch of the Brigham Young Academy in Provo.³⁰⁷ The stake established a school in Central in 1890 with an attendance after six weeks of forty-five students. They met in a small brick house that served as both church and school. The next year the school moved to an adobe building in Thatcher, and the school name was changed to St. Joseph Stake Academy. In 1894 they enlarged the building. A diphtheria epidemic forced the school to close in 1896, and financial problems delayed its reopening.

As the new stake president, Andrew automatically became head of the stake board of education and all educational affairs.³⁰⁸ The First Presidency instructed Andrew, as one of his first tasks, to arrange for reopening the academy, this time as a high school. In March 1898 Andrew hired Emil Maeser, the thirty-four-year-old-son of Karl G. Maeser, the head of the Church Board of Education, to become the principal of the revitalized school. Maeser was to receive $900 a year plus $60 for moving expenses. He stayed four years (1898 to 1902), during which time the academy built a sixty-foot addition.³⁰⁹

The school reopened in the fall of 1898 with only sixty-six students, but more kept coming, and by the end of the school year there were 135, handled by six teachers. It was the only high school in Gila Valley, the only LDS high school in Arizona, and for a time the largest high school in the territory.³¹⁰ Andrew preached vigorously on the need to support the school, and he persuaded the people to pay off the debt for the new building addition so it could be dedicated debt-free in March 1899. At that time the school’s name changed again to the Latter Day Saints Academy.³¹¹

The old academy building.

Very soon school growth required more space, so the stake constructed a new building of cement blocks that simulated stone masonry. The general authorities appropriated $12,000 and the local members raised $16,000, nickels and dimes at a time. This new building was dedicated in 1909. Because so many children in the Gila Valley had received an inadequate elementary education, the academy at first had a large Preparatory Department, where students could make up deficiencies.³¹²

The new academy building, dedicated in 1909, allowed further growth.

In reopening the school Andrew requested that Church leaders provide funds for support of the struggling school. The First Presidency notified him in 1899 that there would be no appropriation. Indeed, they said, there was discussion about closing the other Church academies at Logan and Salt Lake City. They said of the Brigham Young Academy in Provo, “many teachers are arranging to work on a missionary basis,” that is, without pay.³¹³ The following year, however, Church leaders did provide $3,000 in support for the academy.³¹⁴ Andrew asked the bishops both to recruit students and to solicit contributions. The stake assessed each ward $1 per capita as a means of support. In 1902 the wards were asked to send 3 percent of the ward membership to the academy or contribute the cash equivalent of tuition for 3 percent.³¹⁵ Andrew and Emil made a six-week tour to the Maricopa and St. Johns Stakes to promote enrollment at the school because these other Arizona stakes had no academy.³¹⁶

With legislative authorization the academy organized a National Guard company of fifty-five boys for whom the territorial and federal governments provided uniforms and equipage, band instruments, and $30 a month for military instruction.³¹⁷

Emil Maeser established the school on a firm footing. In 1899, Church leaders called upon the academy to establish a missionary-training curriculum, in which men who were ready and willing to go on a mission were called by the stake to take training courses on topics such as the scriptures, James E. Talmage’s Articles of Faith, Mormon history, public speaking, and various languages. It was proposed that forty to seventy-five missionaries a year might come to the academy from the Arizona and Mexico stakes.³¹⁸ The experiment proved successful and it continued.³¹⁹ The First Presidency indicated that these men, identified by the stake president, should be faithful and not be sent to be reformed.³²⁰ While the course was tuition-free, participants had to be able to cover their own living expenses.³²¹ Andrew, as chairman of the board, concerned himself with recruiting faculty and students and raising funds.

Andrew involved himself in the academy in a highly personal manner. In December 1900 he received instructions from the Church Board of Education concerning a Brother Dalley, whose “courses have not been satisfactory as far as his spiritual stand [and] influence is concerned, on which account his continuation in that institution was not considered desirable any longer.”³²² The letter further says that if Dalley were a Gentile, his “spiritual stand” would not be critical, but since he was born in the Church he should be considered differently and be replaced as soon as feasible.³²³

Andrew planted cottonwood trees on the school’s grounds,³²⁴ he hauled thirty-eight thousand bricks, he painted the classrooms for $2.50 per day, he presented certificates of graduation, he frequently spoke in the devotional assemblies, and he presided over all the school functions as president of the board of the school for twenty-six years. One of his last tasks was to oversee the academy’s shift to junior college status in 1923.