By Jane Anderson, WPAOG staff

A 1912 graduate’s ring becomes part of the Legacy Gold that will unite the Class of 2027 with generations of the Long Gray Line.

For the 26th year, WPAOG’s Class Ring Memorial Program will honor the donors and owners of West Point class rings, connecting them to the Long Gray Line as 67 donated rings are melted into gold to be used in the class rings for the Class of 2027. One of those 67 rings was once worn proudly by LTC Lee Otis Wright, Class of 1912, who served the nation before losing his life in an airplane crash in 1925.

Wright was born in Koleen, IN, and entered the U.S. Military Academy on March 2, 1908. Upon graduation, he was seventh in his class of 96 cadets. After serving three years in the Coast Artillery Corps, he was detailed to the Ordnance Department on July 14, 1915.

During WWI, Wright served as an Ordnance officer on the design and manufacture of small arms and ammunition. He was sent abroad in 1918 with four civilian experts in the manufacturing of small-arms ammunition to obtain data on processes of manufacture in use by the Allied governments, in order to assist American manufacturers in meeting the increased demands made upon them. Then-MAJ Wright brought back a wealth of data on incendiary, explosive, and armor-piercing ammunition, as well as other valuable information that helped speed up production in this country. Early in 1919, he made a second trip abroad. A memorial article about Wright in the Association of Graduates’ 1929 Annual Report said, “Probably no other single individual is more to be accredited than MAJ Wright for the rapid progress made in improving small arms and small arms ammunition since the war.”

After the war, then-MAJ Wright served as chief of several aircraft armament and small-arms divisions until September 1924, when he was detailed as a student officer at the Air Service Flying School at Brooks Field, TX. His memorial article stated that Wright believed “an Ordnance officer could be a better designer, a better manufacturer, more of an expert, if he knew first-hand the problems of the ‘using’ services. He agreed that an Ordnance officer could better serve the Air Service if he could regard problems in the light in which Air Service officers saw them.”

While enrolled as a student flyer, Wright was killed in an airplane accident on February 10, 1925, at Brooks Field. He was posthumously promoted to lieutenant colonel.

The article added that, due to Wright’s death, “The Army is deprived of an officer of the highest type in whom was exemplified to a high degree the motto, ‘Duty, Honor, Country.’ A host of friends has lost a comrade, a true, loyal friend, in whom a trust was never misplaced, by whom a confidence was never violated, and from whom a sympathetic support was never lacking.”

Read LTC Lee O. Wright, 1912, memorial page.

Learn more about WPAOG’s Class Ring Memorial Program and how LTC (R) Ron Turner ’58  came up with the idea in 1999.

Live Stream: The link for the live stream will be shared on social media at a later date.