infectious diseases Exposure to "white men's diseases", especially tuberculosis, was a major health problem on the reservation as well as the East. During the years of operation, hundreds of children died at Carlisle. Most died from infectious diseases common in the early 20th century that killed many children. More than 180 students were buried in the Carlisle Indian School Cemetery. The bodies of most who died were sent to their families. Children who died of tuberculosis were buried at the school, as people were worried about contagion. Carlisle's later years Beginning in the early 1900s, the Carlisle Indian Industrial School began to diminish in relevance. With growth of more localized private and government reservation schools in the West, children no longer needed to travel to a distant Eastern school in Pennsylvania. Successive superintendents at Carlisle Indian School after Pratt: Captain William A. Mercer (1904-1908), Moses Friedman (1908-1914), Oscar Lipps (1914-1917) and John Francis, Jr. (1917–1918), were besieged by faculty debate and pressures from the Indian Commission and the U.S. Army. Around 1913, rumors circulated at Carlisle that there was a movement to close the school. In 1914, a Congressional investigation focused on management at the School and the out-sized role played by athletics. Pop Warner, Superintendent Moses Friedman and Bandmaster C.M. Stauffer were dismissed. After the hearings, attendance dwindled and morale declined. The reason for Carlisle's existence had passed. When the United States entered World War I on April 6, 1917, there was an additional reduction of enrollment. Many Carlisle I.I.S. alumni and students served in the U.S. military during World War I. On the morning of September 1, 1918, a transfer ceremony took place. The American flag was lowered for the last time at the Carlisle Indian School and presented to Major A.C. Backmeyer, who raised it again over the new U.S. Army Base Hospital Number 31, a pioneering new type of rehabilitation hospital to treat soldiers wounded in World War I. Remaining pupils were sent home or to other off-reservation boarding schools in the United States. In the spring of 1951, the U.S. Army War College, founded 1901, senior educational institution of the U.S. Army, relocated to the old Carlisle Barracks. In 1961, the complex was later designated a National Historic Landmark (NHL). Contemporary institutions U.S. Army Heritage and Education Center The U.S. Army Heritage and Education Center (USAHEC), in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, is the U.S. Army's primary historical