MEET THE COMMODORE
CDRE Shelby Dawson Tallchief is the Founder and Commodore of the Bataan Military Academy. He serves as the Commanding Officer of the local United States Naval Sea Cadet Corps Bataan Battalion RMR-15-2, holding the official rank of Lieutenant in the USNSCC. His father was an Army Air Corps B-24 pilot in the Philippines flying forty-four bombing missions over Japan during World War II. It is estimated that only some twenty percent of the Pacific B-24 pilots survived the War.
Born in Oklahoma in 1946, he attended public schools and holds degrees or licensure from several universities including Central Oklahoma University, Texas Christian University, Claremont Graduate School, Claremont School of Theology and the University of New Mexico. Professionally, prior to becoming the Commodore of the Academy, he served as an assistant minister, a prison correctional counselor, school teacher, school counselor, school administrator, and hearing officer administrative law judge. His military-related experience includes service as an USNSCC Training Officer, the Executive Officer for several training commands, USNSCC Regional Training Officer, the Commanding Officer for the USNSCC Fitzgerald Squadron, and presently the Commanding Officer for the Bataan Battalion.
Having studied charter law in the early 1990s, he began his dream of creating the Academy by visiting the Delaware Military Institute, the nation’s first military charter high school located in Wilmington, Delaware. The creation and development of the Academy was a project that required hundreds of hours of writing, engagement with the state authorizer and support of the greater Albuquerque community. For several years, while holding a fulltime position, the Commodore began working on the Academy project each day at 3:30 AM and after his regular job, continuing to work on the Academy until late each evening. On weekends he worked 12-16 hours a day on the Bataan project.
The Academy was officially sanctioned in November 2006. Following the official accreditation by the State of New Mexico Public Education Department, as the school’s administrator, he began ‘physically’ creating the high school by writing and monitoring a federal grant and the state budget, hiring an assistant principal and business manager, overseeing an extensive advertising project, interviewing prospective students and their families, interviewing and hiring teachers and staff members, locating and remodeling a building, ordering furniture, books and supplies, monitoring the purchase of science laboratory equipment, computers and other technology, stocking a military supply with uniforms, and developing sports and military style activities.
During the years 2004-06, the Commodore negotiated a lease for a portion of the Army, Navy and Marine Corps Reserve Center, that it is hoped, will eventually serve as a permanent location for the Academy. These plans continue with the New Mexico Army National Guard. He worked with counsel developing the Bataan Military Academy Foundation, Inc., an organization designed to help financially support the on-going future work of the Academy.
The Commodore reminds us that unlike most military academies with costly tuitions, and because the Academy was created as a public school, Bataan Academy is tuition free. This characteristic is a reflection of the Commodore’s determination to reach out to all high school age, hard working young men and women in our greater Albuquerque community. Dedicated to providing a world-class education for Cadets, the Commodore continues his dream repeating that the Bataan Academy is truly “the right thing, at the right time and for the right reasons.” For him and all of us at Bataan, it is a "dream come true"
HONOR, COURAGE, COMMITMENT
