Thomas Thorne was born in Savannah, GA, on July 17, 1918. He acquired his love of the military through his father, who was a major in the Georgia National Guard. He entered The Citadel in 1935, and a year after graduating, received a commission in November 1940 as a second lieutenant in the 76th Coast Artillery, a black unit with white officers. While on active duty he served for a time as the anti-aircraft officer for 16th Corps during the Battle of the Bulge when his commanding officer was relieved. For his service in WWII, he received the Distinguished Service Medal and the Meritorious Service Medal. Thorne recalls his decision to attend The Citadel and his thirty-five years in the Army Reserve. He discusses some memorable events of his service in WWII, including chance meetings with General Patton and with two armed SS men alone in the woods. After retiring from the Army Reserve in 1974, Thorne remained active in the Charleston, SC, community, serving as president of the Greater Charleston Chamber of Commerce and vice chairman of the Charleston Development Board.
Arlington Sanford was born on December 21, 1923, in Danbury, Connecticut. He joined the Navy shortly after graduating from high school. After boot camp in Newport, Rhode Island, he went to diesel school in South Richmond, Virginia, and graduated as a Fireman First Class. He was then assigned to landing ship tank (LST-307) in Boston, Massachusetts. He shipped out of New York on St. Patrick's Day in 1943 and took part in the Sicilian Occupation, the Salerno Landings, and the Normandy Invasion. Sanford describes his close relationship with Jack Junior Faughn, Boatswain's Mate Second Class from Peoria, Illinois: We were closer than brothers. We were inseparable; everywhere we went together, all through the war and did the same thing. LST-307 was struck hard by German guns during the Normandy invasion off Sword Beach. Upon impact Sanford sped to the main deck where he found Faughn's badly injured body. I kind of held him and took care of him for a while, until the corpsman came, Sanford recalled. That's the last I ever saw him.
Brandon K. Brezeale, Citadel Class of 2007, was born in Charleston, South Carolina in 1985 and grew up in Moncks Corner. In this interview, Brezeale, who attended the Citadel with a full scholarship as a baseball player, discusses his experiences as a young man, questioning and exploring his sexual orientation in the context of the ambiguous homophobic-homoerotic culture of a military college. In his junior year, outside of school, he met two other gay men associated with the Citadel that supported him and introduced him to a larger gay-friendly community. He came out to his family during his senior year but waited after graduation to come out to his Citadel friends. He states his old classmates accept him and his boyfriend, but he is skeptical about The Citadel's readiness to openly embrace the gay cadets. He is grateful for the large Citadel alumni community and the doors it opened for him after graduating with an engineering degree. At the time of the interview, Brezeale was living in Washington, D.C. with his partner and working in an engineering firm while preparing to get married in the coming spring.
