The Blue Guidon The Newsletter of Andover and the Military
Summer 2023
Against the Stream By Chris Rokous ’80 and Jim Donnelly ’82
Joshua L. Miner III—legendary Phillips Academy physics instructor, housemaster, coach, and dean of admissions—graduated from Phillips Exeter in 1939 and Princeton in 1947. During WWII he served as a battery commander and captain in Gen. George Patton’s 696th Armored Field Army, earning the Purple Heart, the Bronze Star, five combat stars, and the Croix de Guerre. Miner joined the PA faculty as a physics teacher in 1952. In 1964 he interrupted his Andover career to bring the concepts of the Outward Bound program to the United States from Scotland, ultimately founding Outward Bound USA. He returned to Andover as dean of admissions in 1972, becoming the Academy’s first contact with thousands of prospective students until his retirement in 1985. He passed away on January 29, 2002. In his own words, Josh Miner’s record at Phillips Exeter “was not distinguished.” No one at the Academy seemed a whit concerned with his innate curiosity. He didn’t see himself as one of the preps adept at playing the boarding school game; he escaped, never actually earning a diploma, in no small thanks to the history department. At Princeton University, Josh found himself similarly “out of synch with the educational establishment.” He flunked out twice. Well, truth be told, he didn’t give them a chance to flunk him a second time. Instead, Josh enlisted in the United States Army. Just six months after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, having finished basic training, Private Miner found himself standing in line at Fort Dix wondering if he had the IQ to qualify for Officer Candidate School. Panic stricken, he called a girl he’d dated who worked in the dean’s office at Princeton: “Get my folder out and see what my IQ is and call me right back.” Thankfully, he had the brains. Josh entered OCS. Soon thereafter, he received a letter from his “Uncle Jack,” a Yale-educated industrialist, in which the old family friend wrote, “I hope you are having a nice war…I enlisted in the Navy in the last one and while I seemed to get along all right without a commission, there is a big difference between the chief petty officer I ended up as and an ensign. Don’t ask me why, but there just seems to be, and the only sergeants that I ever saw that were the equals of captains
Joshua Miner at Officer Candidate School in Fort Sill, Oklahoma, circa 1943
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