The War Hero Who Said No to Hollywood and Built a School

When Alvin York stepped off the boat in May 1919, he was one of the best-known American heroes of World War I. He could have cashed in for the rest of his life. Instead, a Tennessee farmer with about nine months of schooling went home and spent his fame building a high school.

The Uniform Was Not for Sale

York got a hero's welcome in New York and a standing ovation from the House of Representatives. The offers came at once: vaudeville tours, paid appearances, newspaper articles and product endorsements.

He turned them down. "This uniform ain't for sale," he said, according to the American Legion's magazine.

Hollywood wanted his story too. York refused to let anyone film it for more than 20 years, and only agreed in 1940 to the picture that became Sergeant York, with Gary Cooper in the title role, in 1941.

A Farm, and a Mortgage

The Nashville Rotary Club, with other Tennessee clubs, raised money by public subscription for a 400-acre farm for him. The American Legion calls it the one gift he accepted.

It was not quite the gift it seemed. Donations fell short, and York was left with an unfinished house and a mortgage to carry.

A School for the Mountain Kids

York had what he called a third-grade education: nine months of total schooling over three years. He wanted the children of Fentress County, up in the mountains near the Kentucky border, to have the chance he never had.

So he went on speaking tours across the country, using his name to raise money for a school. The Tennessee General Assembly put money in, and the county pledged money too.

On May 8, 1926, York broke ground just north of Jamestown, the county seat, in front of a crowd of about 2,000 people.

Legal fights and money trouble slowed everything down, but the school got built.

The York Agricultural Institute opened its doors in the fall of 1929. Building it, York told American Legion members, was "heaps harder than the little shootin' in the Argonne."

The State Stepped In

The Great Depression squeezed the school hard, and Fentress County officials refused to support it. To pay the teachers, York twice mortgaged his own home, according to the Tennessee Encyclopedia, and when the county would not provide school buses, he bought them himself.

In 1937 the State of Tennessee took over running the school so it could survive, and York was named president emeritus.

He kept showing up anyway. The American Legion reports he presented the diplomas at every graduation until a stroke in 1954.

Still Open a Century Later

The Alvin C. York Institute still stands in Jamestown and still teaches Fentress County's high-schoolers, grades 9 through 12. The Tennessee Encyclopedia describes it as the only state-owned and state-operated high school in Tennessee.

When NPR visited in 2015, the school had close to 600 students, new students learned York's story every year, and students on the rifle team wore T-shirts that read "Sergeant York's Own."

A century after he broke ground, the school still carries his name.