All boys. All boarding. Grades 9-12.
Taliaferro Oates ’00
Lieutenant, United States Navy (honorably discharged)
I graduated from WFS in 2000. After graduating from Ole Miss, I went to Navy OCS as an aviation maintenance duty officer. I was commissioned January 2006 and served until March 2010. I was honorably discharged as a lieutenant (O-3). I spent the majority of my tour as a maintenance officer for an F/A-18E Super Hornet Squadron (VFA-27 "Royal Maces") based in Atsugi, Japan, where we won back-to-back Battle E awards for the best fighter squadron in the Pacific fleet. After my three-year tour in Japan, I went to Germany to work for the air force and army at Patch Barracks in Stuttgart, Germany, where I was a joint operations watch officer. The above picture was taken in the VFA-27 Ready Room in Atsugi, Japan — the day before I left the squadron. I was a lieutenant (junior grade) at the time.
I have the following distinctions and awards:
- Joint Operations Achievement Medal
- Navy and Marine Corp Achievement Medal
- Global War on Terrorism Medal
- Overseas Service Medal
- Expert Pistol Medal
- National Defense Medal
- Battle E Ribbon
This picture comes from the D-Day museum in Caen, France, on the 65th anniversary of the Normandy Invasion (June 6, 2009). On a whim, I drove eight hours to Normandy from my army base in Stuttgart, Germany. I found that President Obama was in town and there were no hotel vacancies anywhere. I ended up sleeping in my trunk for two days, and it was one of the neatest experiences I have ever had because . . . I had the pleasure of spending some time with these British Allies and listening to their invasion stories from a lifetime before. The most touching thing was to see them joke with one another on the very soil that they had stormed exactly sixty-five years earlier. With a shrug of the shoulders, they imparted no entitlement for any of their bravery, but they did mention missing the "mates," they had left behind — the "true heroes," according to them. The gentleman around my left arm had a piece of shrapnel enter his throat and exit his eye-socket on D-Day. When it happened, he said to himself, "What was that?" and just kept running up the sandy beach for cover. If you look closely, his right lens of his glasses has been obscured as a result of his wound. He recounted the story with the same levity a poker player might use to recount a winning hand, as if he did hit the jackpot. Still alive and kickin’!
— Taliaferro Oates
Woodberry Forest School is an exceptional private school community for high school boys in grades nine through twelve. It is one of the top boarding schools in the United States and one of the only all-boys, all-boarding schools in the country.
Explore & Resources
Woodberry Forest admits students of any race, color, sexual orientation, disability, religious belief, and national or ethnic origin to all of the rights, privileges, programs, and activities generally accorded or made available to students at the school. It does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, sexual orientation, disability, religious belief, or national or ethnic origin in the administration of its educational policies, admissions policies, scholarship and loan programs, and athletic or other school-administered programs. The school is authorized under federal law to enroll nonimmigrant students.