University of Virginia Library

Mr. Jefferson's UNIVERSITY

A HISTORY

1. ONE

The
University's First Century

Thomas Jefferson's version of a great university founded
on educational principles never before applied on this
continent became a reality when the University of Virginia
opened its doors in 1825. He had struggled toward this end
for almost half a century and had surmounted tremendous
personal, political, and financial obstacles.

With his many-sided genius, Jefferson had not only created
an institution that was unique but had also provided it with a
classical group of buildings that has evoked the admiration of
the world. The Rotunda, modeled after the Roman Pantheon,
stands majestically at the head of the rectangular Lawn, a
lovely stretch of green bordered by towering trees. GrecoRoman
pavilions and colonnades, with variances inspired by
the great Italian architect Palladio, furnish an enchanting ensemble.
If Jefferson were to return to earth, he would find
his stunning "academical village" almost exactly as it was in
his day.

Massachusetts-born historian Herbert Baxter Adams has
termed the founding of this center of learning "the noblest
work of Jefferson's life." Jefferson himself chose it as one of
only three achievements that he wanted cited on his tomb, the
others being his authorship of the Declaration of Independence
and of the Virginia statute for religious freedom.

The University of Virginia quickly became the most admired
institution of higher education in the southern states,
and so remained throughout the nineteenth century. Innovations

included a faculty composed mainly of professors
brought over from Europe, complete rejection of any organized
religion or theological dogma, a curriculum divided into
separate schools and offering courses in mathematics, sciences,
and modern languages, and a novel elective system.
The first degree was conferred in 1828. A successful student
who was not seeking a degree received a certificate of graduation
in the school or schools whose requirements he had completed.
No honorary degrees have ever been conferred.

The staggering problems that the founder confronted in
establishing the institution were compounded, soon after it
opened, by the riotous behavior of the students. These scions
of the southern aristocracy behaved like hooligans and almost
tore the place down, a fact that grieved and disappointed Jefferson
profoundly and actually reduced him to tears.

The situation that Jefferson encountered as he strove to
bring the university into existence was graphically described
by C. Waller Barrett in his Founder's Day address at the university
in 1973. Barrett pointed to the founder's "personal
woes, his desperate financial problems, physical disabilities
and heartbreaking family circumstances," and added that the
"Father of the University of Virginia," as he referred to himself
in the epitaph he composed, "had to purchase the land, to
plan the grounds and buildings, to supervise the construction,
to direct the engagement of professors, to devise the curriculum,
and finally to act as chief executive officer and also as
secretary, taking notes, writing the minutes, and compiling voluminous
reports for the authorities in Richmond." In the
words of an early historian of the University: "The thousand
and one matters that college presidents and boards of trustees
usually leave to professional architects and skilled labor, were
thought out and carefully specified" by the master of Monticello.

The university had its beginnings in the Albemarle Academy,
a classical school that had existed on paper since just
after the turn of the nineteenth century but never got into
actual operation. In 1814 Jefferson was chosen a trustee, and
he suggested that the school be expanded into an institution
of higher learning to be called Central College. The General
Assembly gave its approval. A Board of Visitors for Central
College was named; it included not only Jefferson but President

James Monroe and former President James Madison.
Also on the board were Joseph Carrington Cabell and John
Hartwell Cocke, two of the remarkable men of that era without
whose aid the University of Virginia might never have
come into being. Cabell had entered the General Assembly at
the instigation of Jefferson and proved indefatigable in his
support of the latter's educational program. Like Jefferson, he
suffered at times from poor health, but he refused to lessen
his efforts. Cocke was the owner of Bremo, his family's ancestral
estate on the James River. His work in supervising the
building of the Rotunda, Lawn, and Ranges during Jefferson's
lifetime and after his death was vitally important. Cocke was
one of the most independent-minded men of his generation,
a staunch and outspoken foe of slavery and of dueling as well
as a pioneer advocate of abolishing alcoholic beverages. Pilgrims
along the James in the county of Fluvanna have long
noted his "temperance fountain" at Bremo near the river
bank.

Central College was carefully planned by Jefferson, its curriculum
outlined, its buildings designed. The cornerstone of
the first structure, Pavilion VII on the Lawn, today's Colonnade
Club, was laid in 1817, with Jefferson, Madison, and
Monroe in attendance.

Next came a bitter fight in the General Assembly by Cabell
and other spokesmen for Jefferson to establish a state university,
a move that was opposed by William and Mary alumni.
The college at Williamsburg had retrogressed markedly since
the pre-Revolutionary era and was described as "a decaying
institution." The bill to establish the university was finally
passed in 1818, but without specific designation of a site. A
board of twenty-four commissioners was to decide this question.
Lexington, Staunton, and Charlottesville contended for
the honor.

Jefferson and Madison were among the commissioners, and
Jefferson, who was chosen chairman, was anxious to have the
university located at Charlottesville. The group met in August
at Rockfish Gap in the Blue Ridge, with instructions not only
to choose a site but to plan the buildings and recommend the
courses to be taught, the number and kind of professorships,
and the administrative structure.

Since Central College buildings were already being constructed

at Charlottesville, its claims carried particular weight.
Elaborate plans for the college had been drawn by Jefferson,
and, as noted, the cornerstone for the first building had been
laid. Washington College at Lexington made a determined effort
to win the contest, but its advocates could not quite
counter the arguments on behalf of Central College, especially
that it was obviously nearer the population center of the
commonwealth.

The commissioners accordingly voted in favor of Charlottesville,
and their findings were conveyed to the state legislature.
Elements of that body continued to battle for another
location or to fight the whole idea of establishing a university.
But the University of Virginia's partisans finally won out, and
the institution was officially chartered Jan. 25, 1819. Jefferson's
great dream was on the way to realization.

A Literary Fund had been created by the General Assembly
in 1810, and more than a million dollars had accumulated.
The income was set aside for educational purposes, with
$45,000 designated annually for the schooling of poor children
and $15,000 for the establishment and support of a state
university. This $15,000 was now available. Such a sum was, of
course, far greater in purchasing power at that time, although
completely inadequate for the founding of a university. In addition,
over $40,000 had been raised toward the establishment
of Central College, which was prepared to dedicate this sum
to the new institution.

Plans for Central College were modified and expanded to
take account of the needs of a comprehensive university. Jefferson
was named rector, and he set about outlining the various
departments and courses and designing the additional
buildings. For the last-named task he obtained the advice of
two eminent architects, Benjamin H. Latrobe and Dr. William
Thornton, but in most respects the entire enterprise was virtually
a one-man operation. Here was exemplified once more
the versatility of Thomas Jefferson, who was able almost
singlehandedly to bring into being this institution embodying
novel and far-reaching educational and architectural concepts.

He spent countless hours on the grounds of the fledgling
university, and when he was not there in person he often
watched construction of the buildings from Monticello through

1. William Wertenbaker, fellow student of Edgar Allan Poe and
university librarian for over half a century.

a spyglass. Special attention was given to the raising of the
serpentine walls, which he had doubtless seen in English gardens
and which Charles Fenton Mercer had on his estate near
Middleburg.

A loan of $180,000 from the Literary Fund made possible
the erection of the pavilions, hotels, and student rooms along
the Lawn and Ranges. Completion of the Rotunda was financed
by a $50,000 appropriation of the General Assembly,
which also forgave the abovementioned loan. The Rotunda
was only partially finished in 1824, when the Revolutionary
hero the marquis de Lafayette was entertained there at an
elaborate dinner. It was completed not long thereafter.

The ensemble that then greeted the eye was termed by
Boston-born George Ticknor, a Harvard professor renowned
as a scholar and author on both sides of the Atlantic, as "a
mass of buildings more beautiful than anything architectural
in New England, and more appropriate to a university than
are to be found, perhaps in the world." Stanford White, the
noted New York architect who restored the Rotunda after the
fire of 1895, called the university's original structures the
"most perfect and exquisite group of collegiate buildings in
the world." And Dr. Ernst Beutler, director of the Goethe Museum
in Frankfurt, Germany, wrote, following a visit to this
country around the middle of the twentieth century: "Of the
university towns, those that fascinated me the most were the
ones which combine an atmosphere of learning with a natural
setting: Princeton, Ithaca, Madison, Bloomington, Ann Arbor,
and most beautiful of all, Charlottesville."

The university finally opened its doors in March 1825 after
various delays. The entering class numbered only about 40
students, a figure that would rise to 116 by the end of the
year—far fewer than had been expected. Efforts to obtain several
distinguished Americans for the faculty had failed, and
Francis Walker Gilmer, a young native of Albemarle whom
Jefferson termed "the best-educated subject we have raised
since the Revolution," had been sent to England and Scotland
to round up a teaching staff. He managed to engage five talented
young men and to get them across the ocean in time for
classes to begin.

They were George Long, who would occupy the chair of
ancient languages, and Thomas H. Key, mathematics, both

from Cambridge University; Robley Dunglison, with a wide
reputation as a writer on medical subjects, who would instruct
in medicine; Charles Bonnycastle, son of a noted mathematician,
to occupy the chair of natural philosophy; and George
Blaettermann, a German living in England, modern languages.
John P. Emmet, a native of Ireland and nephew of the
famous Irish patriot Robert Emmet, was brought from
Charleston, S.C., to give courses in natural philosophy.

Dr. Robley Dunglison was "the first full-time professor of
medicine in an American university," and a novel feature of
his contract, unheard of at the time in America, was the restriction
of his practice outside the university to consultation,
Dr. Wilhelm Moll, director of the university's health sciences
laboratory, wrote in the Virginia Medical Monthly. Another innovation
under Dunglison was his decision to issue medical
diplomas in English rather than Latin so that they "may be
intelligible to everyone."

Seven of the eight chairs had been filled when the university
opened in 1825, only that of law being vacant. It was felt that
law and moral philosophy, or ethics, ought to be taught by
Americans. The brilliant and versatile William Wirt, then attorney
general of the United States and chief prosecutor of
Aaron Burr at his trial for treason in 1807, was offered the
professorship of law, along with the presidency of the university.
Jefferson had not contemplated electing anyone president
of the institution, since he preferred a chairman of the faculty,
but in order to get Wirt it was felt necessary to offer him the
two positions. He declined, and the university continued to
operate for the rest of the century with a rotating chairman of
the faculty. During that period it was the only college or university
of stature in the United States that functioned under
this system.

When Wirt was found to be unavailable, John T. Lomax, a
well-known Fredericksburg attorney, was chosen professor of
law. The chair of moral philosophy was tendered to George
Tucker, member of Congress and distinguished author in the
field of both fiction and finance. Tucker, decidedly the eldest,
was named the first chairman.

It has frequently been stated that Jefferson was unwilling to
allow the law students even to study the doctrines of the hated
Federalists and that no textbooks setting forth those doctrines

were allowed. Such was, indeed, Jefferson's desire, but at the
instigation of Madison the plan was modified for the better.
The Federalist Papers were accordingly included. Also there
was no restriction on the use of additional books.

Jefferson invited all the students in the university to dine
with him in small groups on his mountaintop. One who entered
about a year after the institution opened, and remained
only about ten months, was Edgar Allan Poe, who is presumed
to have sat at Jefferson's table. Poe's record as a student was by
no means as lurid as is commonly supposed. Although he incurred
heavy gambling debts, in part because his foster father,
John Allan, refused to furnish him with enough funds to meet
his minimum expenses, the amount of his drinking, then and
later, is authoritatively stated to have been exaggerated. He
made an excellent scholastic record at the university and was
not in trouble at any time with the authorities, in contrast to
the riotous behavior of many others enrolled there.

Jefferson had worked out a plan for student self-government
for he believed that young men from the best families
could be counted on to govern themselves and remain reasonably
well-behaved. He was promptly disillusioned. It was
an age when youth was in rebellion against authority, in both
North and South. Riots on college campuses were frequent,
and the institution at Charlottesville was no exception.

Many of the young men there apparently had been accustomed
at home to carrying firearms and to drinking and gambling.
Given almost complete freedom at the university, they
soon became disorderly. Several times during that first summer
there were "vicious irregularities," as Jefferson phrased it,
and then in the early autumn almost unbelievable rowdyism
erupted.

"Down with the European professors!" was the cry of a
crowd of masked students gathered on the Lawn after dark.
Professors Emmet and Tucker went to investigate the uproar.
Emmet seized hold of a counterpane in which one student had
wrapped himself, whereupon another student threw a brick
at him. Tucker was attacked with a cane, and vulgar abuse was
hurled at the two professors amid loud and derisive howls. As
if this were not enough, sixty-five students signed a resolution
next day sharply assailing Emmet and Tucker for daring to lay

hands on the bedraped student! Not surprisingly, the faculty
announced that if effective policing were not put into effect at
once, they would all resign.

On Jefferson's recommendation, the Board of Visitors accordingly
adopted extremely strict regulations, and the students
most seriously involved in the riot were expelled. The
visitors ordered every student to retire to his room at 9 o'clock
each night and to rise with the dawn and eat breakfast by candlelight.
All had to wear an officially prescribed dull gray uniform.
Gambling, smoking, and drinking were forbidden, and
students were required to deposit all their funds with the
proctor, who could dole out small sums according to his
whims.

These draconian rules were deeply resented, but things remained
relatively quiet until 1831, when another riot occurred.
Then in 1836 still worse disorder broke out. Many
windows in the pavilions were smashed with stones and sticks,
there was much firing of muskets under the arcades, and the
uneasy professors armed themselves and fled with their families
to the upper floors. Two years later, in another outburst,
the pavilion of Prof. William Barton Rogers was attacked,
many windows were broken, and the door was battered down.
The following year Prof. Gessner Harrison, chairman of the
faculty, was assaulted by two students and horsewhipped while
at least one hundred other students looked on and did nothing
to stop the outrage.

But the climactic atrocity occurred in 1840. Two students
were firing shots and making an uproar on the Lawn, and
John A. G. Davis, chairman of the faculty and professor of
law, came out of his residence in Pavilion X to investigate. One
of the youths was masked; Davis approached him and tried to
remove the mask in order to identify him. The youth, Joseph
E. Semmes of Georgia, drew a pistol and shot Davis, wounding
him fatally. Semmes was apprehended, and while awaiting
trial was released on $25,000 bail. He disappeared and is said
to have committed suicide.

The murder of the faculty's admired chairman sent shock
waves throughout the state and beyond. It had the effect of
bringing the university students at least temporarily to their
senses, and while there were other disorders, the number of

such episodes tended to diminish with the years. Moreover,
the Honor System was introduced in 1842, and its success was
in part due to the new and more serious mood.

Henry St. George Tucker, a distinguished judge, was appointed
professor of law to succeed the slain Davis. Judge
Tucker soon became aware of the rankling resentment engendered
by the uniform and early rising regulations, which were
still in effect. He took a leading role in obtaining revocation of
the obnoxious rules. He also noted the atmosphere of suspicion
surrounding examinations, during which faculty members
watched the young men closely to prevent cheating.
Tucker accordingly recommended that each student be required
to sign a statement that he had received no assistance.
This was done, and the declaration was expanded later to include
a pledge that no assistance had been given to anyone
else. Members of the faculty continued to keep watch in the
examination room, but this surveillance was lifted gradually.
After the Civil War the Honor System as it is known today
came into being, with the students in full control and without
faculty supervision or participation.

At both ends of the two Ranges, and in the middle of each,
was a structure called a "hotel," larger than the adjacent rooms
for students. In these buildings, which are used today for
other purposes, the students had their meals. During the first
half-dozen years after the university opened, the food is said
to have been satisfactory, but then came fervent complaints
that the menus were lacking in variety and the cooking execrable.
The boys vented their ire by throwing rolls at each
other in the dining room and engaging in other forms of disorder.
The hotelkeepers, for their part, stated that their
charge for the meals, fixed by the university, was so low that
they could not afford any better fare. In 1849 the General
Assembly decreed that meals for students should be free of
charge and paid for by the state, but this legislation was repealed
seven years later.

Until 1857, when a small infirmary was built, there were no
facilities for caring for ill students, and the ailing undergraduate
had to "tough it out" in his room, with only an occasional
visit from a physician and such care as a black servant could
give. A typhoid epidemic broke out in 1829, and a score of
students came down with the malady and several died. The

2. Gen. John Hartwell Cocke, one of Jefferson's coadjutors in
launching the university. From an 1850 daguerreotype.

university closed for over two months. Another typhoid outbreak
in the 1850s took twenty lives, and still another in 1875
took five more.

The excessive amount of drinking and accompanying rowdyism
in this and other colleges in that era of wide-open taverns
was disturbing. Several faculty members at the university
joined with John H. Cocke of Bremo, who favored universal
prohibition, in founding a temperance society and launching
a temperance movement. Episcopalians were foremost in this
antebellum attempt to reduce the consumption of alcohol.
John A. G. Davis was one of the leaders, as was John B. Minor,
who succeeded Judge Tucker as professor of law at the session
of 1845-46. William Wertenbaker, the university's librarian
for more than half a century, was an ardent participant in the
movement. So was William Holmes McGuffey, nationally
known for his McGuffey readers, who joined the faculty in
1845 and remained until his death in 1873. William Barton
Rogers, later the principal founder and first president of the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, was another strong
supporter.

The foes of inebriety succeeded during the middle fifties in
constructing Temperance Hall at what is now "the Corner," as
a symbol of their determination. Meetings of the temperance
forces, both faculty and students, were held there.

The Jefferson Society, the only such organization in the institution
tracing its origins back to 1825, was devoted to oratorical
pursuits. Yet its elections in the antebellum era were
accompanied by "such turbulence as to degrade the reputation
of the University," the faculty declared. The man chosen
student orator for the 1858 finals received four challenges to
duels the night of the balloting and two more the next day.

The Washington Literary Society was established ten years
after the Jefferson Society. However, the university authorities
forbade both organizations to hold celebrations on the birthdays
of Washington and Jefferson, respectively, apparently for
fear that political controversy would thereby be aroused.

Although the university had been founded on the principle
of complete separation of church and state, it was not intended
that all religion be discouraged. On the contrary, Jefferson
set aside a room in the Rotunda for religious services,

and in 1832 the students initiated a movement, with approval
of the faculty and visitors, to raise funds for the employment
of a chaplain. Within two years the effort was successful, and
the chaplaincy was made permanent. The occupant of the
post was elected annually by the faculty, with the Episcopalians,
Presbyterians, Methodists, and Baptists furnishing the
chaplain in rotation. While it was deemed improper for him
to have an official connection with the institution (his salary
was paid with private funds), the abovementioned room in the
Rotunda was used by him as a chapel. In 1855 a parsonage
was erected below the south end of the Lawn.

No clergyman was employed on the university faculty in the
early years, for Thomas Jefferson was firmly opposed to any
such direct denominational relationship. It was not until the
Reverend William Holmes McGuffey, a Presbyterian, joined
the teaching staff in 1845 as professor of moral philosophy
that this principle was breached. The presence on the faculty
of "Old Guff," as he was called by the students, tended to
counteract the impression that the university was an "infidel
institution."

A religious milestone was reached in 1858 when the Young
Men's Christian Association was founded. The Reverend Dabney
Carr Harrison, the beloved university chaplain who would
die soon afterward in the Civil War, is credited with the major
share of responsibility for the success of this endeavor. The
University of Virginia YMCA appears to be the oldest college
"Y" in the world. This is disputed by the University of Michigan,
which founded a students' Christian Association a few
months before the organization at Charlottesville was established.
But the Michigan association declined to become a
branch of the YMCA, so it would seem that Virginia's claim is
valid.

The first degree offered at the university was that of Doctor
of Medicine, granted as early as 1828. In 1831 the Master of
Arts was made available. It required completion of the schools
of mathematics, natural philosophy, moral philosophy, ancient
languages, and chemistry. Two modern languages were added
to this list in 1833. It was a rigidly prescribed curriculum and
in total conflict with Jefferson's elective system. In 1840 the
Bachelor of Laws degree was offered, and in 1848 the Bachelor

of Arts. However, the B.A. was not a prerequisite to the
M.A., which was widely regarded as among the nation's top
academic awards until the end of the nineteenth century.

An examination in English grammar and spelling had to be
passed before graduation could take place in any of the
schools. However, no courses in English composition or English
literature were provided until shortly before the Civil
War, in accordance with the prevailing practice in many preparatory
schools and colleges. There was great concentration
on Latin and Greek literature, as well as on the literatures of
France, Germany, Spain, and Italy. But the works of such English
writers as Chaucer, Shakespeare, and Milton seem to
have been completely ignored in the classes at the university,
along with those of all American writers. The works of some
of them were available in the library. Many of the students
were deeply devoted to the poetry of Lord Byron, while the
poems of Thomas Campbell and Thomas Moore also had
loyal partisans. Although Sir Walter Scott enjoyed great popularity
at the period, he appears not to have had a comparable
group of admirers at the university.

Recognizing the dearth of instruction in English composition,
a group of students launched a magazine in 1838 called
The Collegian. It lasted for only four years, but in 1849 the
University Magazine performed a similar function. It would
continue to appear down the years to the present, under a
variety of names.

A professor, in the beginning, received a free residence in
one of the Lawn pavilions and a salary of $1,500, plus a $25
fee for each of his students. Some classes were large, and those
teachers enjoyed substantial incomes from fees, while others
with smaller classes were not so well situated. This caused unhappiness,
and in 1850 the fee system was finally abandoned
in favor of a flat annual salary of $3,000 for all.

There were other problems with the professors, in addition
to those involving compensation. For example, the Germanborn
Blaettermann was arbitrary, temperamental, and apparently
endowed with a Prussian personality. He engaged in
heated altercations with his students, and his lectures were interrupted
by loud noises emanating from various parts of the
classroom. On one occasion, Blaettermann knocked a student's
hat off, and the latter punched the professor repeatedly.

Blaettermann's relations with his wife were equally hectic and
unconventional, for he was given to cowhiding her both in
private and in public. Blaettermann was finally dismissed by
unanimous vote of the Visitors.

His place was filled by Charles Kraitsir, a Hungarian, who,
like Blaettermann, was a wizard with modern languages. But
Kraitsir's lectures were unpopular, his fees fell off in consequence,
and he was unhappy; at the same time, his colleagues
on the faculty were disappointed with his performance as a
teacher. On top of all else, his wife, a powerful woman, was in
the habit of beating him and turning him out of the house in
the middle of the night. Kraitsir was dropped from the faculty.
He complained: "The Board of Visitors . . . was hard to
please. They kicked Dr. Blaettermann out because he had
whipped his wife, and they have kicked me out because I have
been whipped by my wife. What did they really want?"

A more fortunate acquisition for the teaching staff was that
of the brilliant Basil L. Gildersleeve, who joined the faculty as
professor of Greek in 1856 and became one of the great scholars
in that language. He was also widely recognized as the author
of Latin grammars and readers. The swarthy, heavily
bearded Gildersleeve served in the Confederate army, was severely
wounded, and limped for the rest of his life. Although
he returned to the university after the war, he joined the faculty
of the newly formed John Hopkins University in 1876,
where he made an international reputation.

Gildersleeve had succeeded Gessner Harrison as professor
of Greek at the university. Harrison, who joined the teaching
staff at age twenty-one as professor of both Latin and Greek,
taught only Latin after the coming of Gildersleeve. He, too,
was a noted classical scholar and was chosen chairman of the
faculty five times. Upon his retirement, the faculty in a formal
resolution said that he had "done more than any other man
for the cause of education and sound learning in his native
state." Harrison was extremely devout, and he and his brother,
as students, declined Thomas Jefferson's invitation to Sunday
dinner at Monticello on the ground that it would be a desecration
of the Sabbath.

A picturesque addition to the university faculty was Maximilian
Rudolph Schele de Vere, who succeeded Kraitsir as
professor of modern languages and remained for more than

fifty years. He was born in a castle in Sweden and moved to
south Germany, where his father commanded a fortress near
the Polish border. "Old Schele" was in the diplomatic service
before coming to America. His knowledge of half a dozen languages
was astonishing and his capacity as an instructor exceptional.
As he strolled the Lawn with his silk hat in winter
and his expensive straw in summer, he set the fashion for students
and faculty alike.

Thomas Jonathan (Stonewall) Jackson, with a spectacular
record in the Mexican war, was an applicant for the chair of
mathematics at the university in the mid-nineteenth century.
The chair had become vacant with the retirement of Prof. Edward
H. Courtenay, who had served as faculty chairman and
was a much admired teacher. Albert Taylor Bledsoe, whose
record as a mathematician was much more impressive than
Jackson's, received the appointment. Bledsoe was said to have
found the answer to a mathematical problem of Archimedes
that nobody else had been able to solve. After seven years on
the university faculty he entered the Confederate service and
was appointed assistant secretary of war. Following the surrender
at Appomattox he devoted his undoubtedly great talents
to fighting again the cause of the South in a weary round
of books and magazine articles in which he took the ultrareactionary
position on every issue.

One of the most distinguished of all the faculty members at
the university was James Lawrence Cabell, who joined the staff
in 1837 as professor of anatomy and surgery, to remain until
his death in 1889. A nephew of Joseph C. Cabell, who rendered
such indispensable aid to Jefferson as a member of the
General Assembly, he revealed a great capacity for original
inquiry. Cabell was ahead of Charles Darwin in publishing a
work that recognized the theory of evolution, for his Testimony
to the Unity of Mankind appeared several months before Darwin's
Origin of Species. He also anticipated by many years Hugo
de Vries's theory of mutations. Far-reaching as were these discoveries,
Cabell is honored even more for his pioneering work
in the field of public health. He was the organizer and first
president of the National Board of Health and also president
of the American Public Health Association.

The Davis family has had an almost continuous connection
with the university since 1830. In that year John A. G. Davis

3. Edgar Allan Poe's room as it looks today, with furniture of the period.

was named professor of law. His son, John Staige Davis, was
extremely precocious and became a University of Virginia
Master of Arts at fifteen and a Doctor of Medicine at sixteen.
In 1847 young Davis joined the medical staff as a demonstrator
of anatomy under Dr. Cabell and remained there as a
beloved faculty member until his death in 1885. He was succeeded
on the medical faculty a few years later by his son,
another much admired John Staige Davis. The next of that
name, grandson of the original bearer, was graduated from
the medical school in the 1920s and became a prominent private
practitioner in New York. His son, John Staige Davis IV,
is now an able member of the medical faculty.

Another important teacher in the medical school before,
during, and after the Civil War was Socrates Maupin, whose
chair was chemistry and pharmacy. Highly respected, Maupin
served as chairman of the faculty from 1854 until the end of
the Civil War. He had great administrative ability, and the faculty
credited him with doing more than anyone else to keep
the university functioning during the war and immediately
thereafter. He was fatally injured in Lynchburg in 1871, when
a horse ran away and threw him out of the carriage in which
he was riding.

One of the extraordinary members of the university's teaching
staff was George Frederick Holmes, a British citizen
throughout his life, and an encyclopedic scholar. Holmes
joined the faculty in 1857, after serving as professor at Richmond
College and the College of William and Mary and as the
first president of the University of Mississippi, all before he
was thirty years old. Resigning from the last-named post, he
lived for nine years in southwest Virginia, farming and contributing
learned articles to leading periodicals. He was called
to occupy a new chair of history and literature at the University
of Virginia. For the first time, thanks to Holmes, students
at the University of Virginia were drilled in composition and
introduced to the beauties of English literature. "Daddy"
Holmes, as he was known in his latter years, remained on the
faculty until the 1890s, recognized as a prodigy of knowledge
in many fields.

In the early days of the university's history, about two-thirds
of the students were dropped at the end of their first year for

failure to meet scholastic requirements or for flagrant violation
of the regulations. Approximately as many were usually
eliminated after the first session in the years immediately following
the Civil War.

The boys rightly resented the early-rising rules, which remained
in effect for nearly two decades, but disregard of these
requirements was less frequent than might be imagined. And
it is hardly surprising that the students' rooms along the Lawn
and Ranges were often in a disordered state, that the simple
furniture was knocked about, or that tobacco juice stained the
walls at times.

A black slave, hired by the hotelkeeper responsible for each
group of rooms, entered the apartment at about 6 A.M. daily,
bearing a pitcher of water, often at near-freezing temperatures.
He started the fire in the grate and cleaned the shoes.
After the student had dressed in great haste and hurried to
breakfast by candlelight in the nearby hotel, the slave made
up the beds, swept the floor, and carried out the ashes. In
winter he brought wood for the fireplace and in summer ice.
Candles were the only form of illumination in the rooms and
elsewhere until about 1838, when oil lamps came into vogue.

The dress of the students in those far off days was astonishing
by modern standards. Frock or swallowtail coats were the
prevailing mode, while "the more daring wore their calico
study gowns to lecture as well as to meals," said Frederick W.
Page, writing concerning the sartorial situation as of 1843.

Diversions were bucolic and uninspiring by today's criteria.
Classes lasted from 7:30 A.M. to 4:30 P.M., which left little time
for much else, especially since early rising and in-the-roomby-9
P.M. requirements continued until the mid-1840s. An
athletic instructor, with primitive facilities, taught boxing,
fencing, and quarter-staff, or single stick. Instruction was
given in two low structures with flat roofs adjoining the basement
of the Rotunda on the east and west. Intercollegiate
sports were, of course, unknown.

In the 1850s a Pole named J. E. D'Alfonce operated a gymnasium
for the students in which he put them through various
exercises on parallel bars, ladders, and ropes. Authority for
construction of a new gymnasium, at the modest cost of
$1,500, was granted in 1857 by the Board of Visitors. The

edifice thus erected was termed by the student magazine "a
mere apology for a gymnasium."

Walks in the country on Sunday, the only free day, provided
one form of relaxation for the young men. Playing of musical
instruments was indulged in, but this was forbidden during
class hours and on Sunday. By special dispensation, the boys
were allowed to go to Charlottesville on the Sabbath, where
they could even attend parties. Neither horses nor dogs could
be kept by the students, nor were cockfights allowed, but the
last-named form of divertissement was sometimes engaged in
surreptitiously. Pitching quoits and the game of marbles had
numerous adherents, but quoits too was forbidden on Sunday.
Skating in winter on the pond near the site of the present
university chapel was enjoyed when the ice was sufficiently
thick.

It should be emphasized that bacchanalian revels were not
the regular order of the day or night and that these occurred
mainly on special occasions and at fairly wide intervals. In the
1850s those who were found to be transgressing heinously
were given the alternative of signing the pledge with the Temperance
Society or being expelled. Many chose the former option.

In the decade before the Civil War students were often
caught up in such religious activities as the Bible classes taught
by Professor McGuffey, and they also did missionary work in
the Ragged Mountains.

During the same period eleven Greek letter fraternities established
themselves at the university. Delta Kappa Epsilon,
founded in 1852, was the first; it had originated at Yale some
years before. The others were Phi Kappa Psi, Phi Kappa
Sigma, Beta Theta Pi, Chi Phi, Sigma Alpha Epsilon, Phi
Gamma Delta, Delta Psi, Theta Delta Chi, Delta Kappa, and
Kappa Alpha. The fraternities existed primarily for social
purposes and promotion of close ties between the members.
Various others established chapters in later years.

Dancing classes were provided by private instructors almost
throughout the university's antebellum existence, but no student
could take lessons more than three times a week lest they
interfere with his studies. Cotillions were held in the hall of
the Jefferson Society and also at the Eagle Tavern in town. As
relations with the professors improved, they gave balls for the

students. Furthermore, each professor, as a gesture of good
will, provided an annual supper for the members of his
classes.

During the years when the obnoxious uniform and earlyrising
rules held sway, the boys couldn't even have "a little
chicken supper" in their rooms without permission from the
chairman of the faculty. But with the elimination of these restrictions,
it became possible for the students to have meals in
their quarters, provided there was no liquor.

An amusing extracurricular feature was the annual ceremony
on the Lawn held by what was named the "Ugly Club."
It involved selection of the "ugliest man" in the student body,
as well as the "prettiest man" and the "vainest man." The "ugliest
man" had to accept his prize of a $15 pair of boots with
an appropriately humorous speech.

"Laughing-Gas Day" was another yearly event on the Lawn.
The professor of chemistry provided the gas and administered
it to a previously selected victim. The latter thereupon
went into a series of extraordinary antics, laughing hysterically
and otherwise making a spectacle of himself. In fact, one
student was so overcome that he engaged in what was termed
improper behavior, and Laughing-Gas Day was discontinued.

The "dyke" and the "calathump" were forms of student diversion
during these years which continued into the era immediately
following the war. The dyke was a concerted effort
on the part of students to embarrass any fellow collegian who
was found to be en route to a rendezvous with his fair one. On
such occasions, all the noisemaking apparatus that could be
assembled, such as drums, horns, whistles, and coal scuttles
belabored with pokers, was brought into action. The shouting
and screeching crowd surrounded the young man and accompanied
him as far as his ladylove's door. If it was at night, the
participants in the dyke carried improvised torches. Often the
youth was required to make a few brief remarks to the assembled
multitude before he was permitted to enter the home
of his inamorata. At times the mob lay in wait until he
emerged, whereupon it greeted him again with raucous din
and ear-splitting cacophony.

A calathump was another form of frolic in the midnineteenth
century and after. It began innocently enough
with the formation of a college band known as the Calathumpians,

who serenaded the professors on the Lawn. But a disorderly
element got control, and there was not only a great
deal of noise but in 1845 the Calathumpians launched a prolonged
disturbance during which they smashed blinds and
windows on the professors' pavilions and even damaged the
Rotunda. This particular riot was so violent that the university
authorities called out the militia, which calmed the situation,
at least temporarily.

The university's prestige was so impaired throughout Virginia
and beyond by these disorders, and the earlier murder
of Professor Davis, that a group of prominent alumni issued
a statement designed to put the situation at the institution in
perspective. They pointed to the training of innumerable
young men by the university, men who had taken positions of
leadership, and emphasized that it was not a place for educating
just the sons of the rich since many students were having
to work their way through. The alumni also protested the
small size of the annual state appropriation to the institution,
still only $15,000, and the low scale of professors' salaries.
They noted that one of their group, while a student at Harvard,
had witnessed an assault by his fellow collegians on a
regiment of militia. Evidently such behavior was by no means
limited to students at the University of Virginia.

By the session of 1846-47 things were more serene along
the Lawn and Ranges, and relations between the faculty and
the undergraduates were harmonious. Then in 1848-49 not
a single student was dismissed or suspended, and the conduct
of the young men was regarded as exceptionally good. Enrollment
was increasing rapidly and behavior of the undergraduates
seemed to improve in proportion. A few pranksters
climbed to the dome of the Rotunda in 1859 and remained
there for an hour, but no serious damage was done.

A notable event of this period was the jailing in 1852 of
John S. Mosby, a second-year student at the university, afterward
the famous Confederate partisan. Mosby shot a fellow
student in an altercation and was given a year in jail and a
$500 fine. He served some eight months, but there was doubt
that he had provoked the fight, and the wound he inflicted
was a slight one. Gov. Joseph Johnson accordingly pardoned

4. Gessner Harrison, chairman of the faculty, who was horsewhipped
by students in 1839.

him and the General Assembly rescinded the fine. Mosby did
not return to the university but took up the practice of law.

The university's highest enrollment of the antebellum era,
and for many years thereafter, was 645, a figure reached during
the session of 1856-57. Practically all of these students
were from Virginia or other southern states. For various reasons
enrollment had more than quadrupled in ten years. Improved
behavior of the students gave the institution a better
reputation. The prosperity of the South during these years
enabled more parents to send their sons to college, and growing
animosity between the sections caused them to choose a
school below Mason and Dixon's line. Also, Charlottesville was
now accessible by rail. The extraordinary increase in enrollment
took place despite the fact that the university was one of
the country's most expensive centers of higher learning, even
more so than Harvard, Yale, or Princeton. The overall annual
cost of sending a student to Charlottesville in 1845 was estimated
at $332.

The increased matriculation at the university greatly overburdened
classrooms and other facilities. A committee accordingly
was appointed in 1850 to make recommendations. The
celebrated architect Robert Mills was retained, and he designed
an annex on the north side of the Rotunda, to include
lecture rooms, a large area for storage of apparatus, and a
public hall seating twelve hundred persons. It was conceded
by the architect that this structure would be out of harmony
with Jefferson's symmetrical design, but it was felt to be the
best solution for pressing problems. At the rear of the Rotunda
in 1850 was a portico, approached from the two sides
by long flights of stone steps. The steep bank below was covered
with Scotch broom. The portico was pulled down to
make way for the annex. Building operations were virtually
complete by 1853. Paul Balze's copy of Raphael's School of Athens
was purchased by alumni to adorn the wall behind the platform
in the public hall.

Erection of Dawson's Row just before the Civil War was
made possible by a bequest from Martin Dawson, a citizen of
Albemarle County, who left his farm to the university. Sale of
the property brought over $19,000, and this was used to construct
six modest boxlike structures for use as student dormitories.
They were known as Houses A, B, C, D, E, and F. Many

years later the university found the money to add two columns
to the face of each, thus improving the row's appearance, and
to terrace the land in front and place a sidewalk there. Dawson's
Row was gradually torn down in the twentieth century to
make way for more essential facilities, including Clark Hall,
home for a time of the Law School. But it served a necessary
purpose over a long period.

Hostility between the North and the South was mounting in
the late 1850s, and the university faculty and students were
caught up in the rising tension. On the eve of the election of
1860, both the Washington and Jefferson societies voted overwhelmingly
that the southern states should secede if Lincoln
were elected. The students preferred Bell and Everett, the
Union Party candidates, in that election. A majority of the faculty
opposed secession at that time.

South Carolina withdrew from the Union in December, and
the students immediately formed two companies, the Sons of
Liberty and the Southern Guard, commanded by William
Tabb and Edward S. Hutter, respectively. They wore picturesque
uniforms and drilled on the Lawn and Carr's Hill. In
February a Confederate flag was put together and somehow
gotten to the roof of the Rotunda in the middle of the night
and lashed to the lightning rod. It caused a sensation next
morning as it floated in the breeze. This was said to have been
the first Confederate flag flown publicly in Virginia.

Events were moving with great rapidity, and many students
were leaving to offer their services to the Confederacy. On
Founder's Day, Apr. 13, a military parade was held on the
Lawn. While it was in progress, the fall of Fort Sumter was
announced. Four days later Virginia seceded, and the two student
companies joined two others from Charlottesville and
proceeded under orders to Harpers Ferry. The federal arsenal
there was the objective, but the Federals burned it before
their arrival. The students accordingly returned to their
classes. At Finals, 138 were graduated. Fifty graduates and
others then organized a company and left at once for Clifton
Forge to serve under Col. Henry A. Wise. Their service in the
mountains of what is now West Virginia was strenuous and
uncomfortable, and they were under fire at times, but they
suffered few casualties and were mustered out on their return

in January 1862. It was felt that too much good officer material
was being wasted by being concentrated in the ranks of
this unit, and it was therefore decided that the young men
would disband and join military organizations from their
home communities.

No other units represented the university in the Confederate
forces thereafter, but some twenty-five hundred alumni
served in all branches, about 27 percent of the total body of
alumni. Approximately five hundred lost their lives. One faculty
member, Lewis Minor Coleman, professor of Latin, was
mortally wounded at the Battle of Fredericksburg. Charles S.
Venable served on the staff of Gen. Robert E. Lee and joined
the faculty immediately after the war. As noted, Prof. Albert
Taylor Bledsoe was assistant secretary of war, and Prof. Basil
L. Gildersleeve served on Gen. John B. Gordon's staff. Prof.
John W. Mallet, an internationally famous chemist, devised the
method whereby the Confederacy's shrinking niter supply for
manufacturing explosives was replenished. It was done by collecting
urine daily in scores of communities and shipping it
to boiling vats, where the urea was extracted. This last was
sent posthaste to Augusta, Ga., where it was turned into gunpowder.

During the war the university managed to remain open, but
the only students were youths too young to serve or veterans
who had been severely wounded. Typical of the latter were
George L. Christian of Richmond, later a much respected
judge, who lost one entire foot and the heel of another at the
Bloody Angle, and W. C. Holmes of Mississippi, who was
badly crippled in his right arm. Holmes helped Christian to
walk and Christian helped Holmes to take notes in class. They
slept together on the floor of their almost bare room on one
of the blankets they had salvaged from the army, covering
themselves with the other.

Extreme austerity was also the rule with the members of the
faculty who were not in the field. They numbered no more
than eight at any one time, while the students totaled between
forty-six and sixty-six during the four years. All suffered together
the shortages of food and fuel. With the rapid decline
in the value of Confederate currency, the professors in
1864-65 were receiving an annual wage equivalent to $31.95

5. John A. G. Davis, chairman of the faculty, who was fatally
shot by a student in 1840.

in gold. On top of all else, the university authorities made the
dormitories and the Rotunda available as temporary hospitals
for hundreds of Confederate wounded.

Arrival at the university of Sheridan's cavalry in March 1865
aroused fears that the buildings would be burned, a fate suffered
by the Virginia Military Institute the year before. Prof.
John B. Minor, with a white handkerchief tied to a walking
cane, headed a group of faculty members who stood near the
site of the present chapel to meet the Union troops. There was
intense relief when Gen. George A. Custer, commanding the
advance guard, courteously ordered that the property be
given every protection. No serious damage was done.

The surrender at Appomattox came the following month,
and the university authorities viewed prospects for the session
of 1865-66 with much concern. Scarcely any funds were
available and the physical plant was in dismal condition. But
enrollment in the fall was a surprising 258, and since the professors
were able once more to collect fees from their students,
they soon were in better fiscal shape than they had anticipated.
The following year enrollment leaped to 490.

But with the South impoverished, its economic system a
shambles and the slaves freed, it faced the formidable task of
rebuilding. Young men found the problem of earning a living
quite different from that which had confronted them before
the war. There was a greater demand for practical training in
such areas as the sciences and engineering. To meet this need,
civil engineering was added to the university curriculum in
1866, chemistry in 1867, and agriculture two years later.
Courses in geology were made available in 1879.

The high enrollment was short-lived, for it fell steadily until
1883, when it was only 298. The drop may be attributed, in
part, to the fact that many of the veterans who had returned
to college from the war had completed their education. Also,
there was a serious nationwide depression beginning in 1873.
Then, too, Dean William M. Thornton charged many years
later in his history of the Engineering School that "the sloth of
the executive officials" of the university was mainly responsible
for the skidding enrollment. "So indolent were they," he
wrote, "that they had not even circulated the printed catalogues
put into their hands, or made effectual use of the advertising
pages of the newspapers." After a change of administration

the enrollment rose sharply. Also, the depression had
ended.

During the latter third of the nineteenth century no distinction
was made between first-year men and upperclassmen. In
the early 1900s just-matriculated students would be admonished
to wear hats and not frequent the Corner, but all were
on a plane of complete equality during the postbellum years.
They were also, for the most part, equal in poverty. The Phi
Kappa Psi fraternity, for example, tried in the late 1870s and
early 1880s to have a soirée, but the brothers could never find
a time during the three-year period "when everybody had a
dollar."

There were notable orators at Finals during the era that
followed the war. Ralph Waldo Emerson was the speaker in
1876, Grover Cleveland in 1888, Henry W. Grady in 1889,
Henry Watterson in 1891, and Chauncey M. Depew in 1894.

Erection of the Brooks Museum in 1876 brought to the
Grounds a structure that has been controversial ever since.
The usual outraged observation has been that, as an example
of Victorian design, it is totally out of keeping architecturally
with Jefferson's classical concepts. But the Brooks Museum
won a prize for architectural excellence when it was built, and
modern architects have referred to it as an "expression appropriate
to its time and place," an example of the Second Empire
style then coming into vogue.

Among the new additions to the faculty immediately after
the close of hostilities was Col. William E. Peters, of Confederate
fame. When ordered to take part in the burning of
Chambersburg, Pa., in retaliation for burnings perpetrated by
the Union army in Virginia, he refused, on the ground that
he had not enlisted "to fight women and children." "You may
take my sword," he told his commanding officer—but he was
not disciplined. As professor of Latin, "Old Pete" concentrated
on grammar and syntax and was concerned scarcely at
all with the literary quality of the great Latin writers.

Prof. Thomas R. Price, another Confederate veteran, was
first given the chair of Greek, but he took over the teaching of
English when it was decided that instruction in the mother
tongue was being sadly neglected. Loved for his affectionate
and outgoing personality, Price was one of the nation's pioneers
in elucidating the beauties of the language. His reputation

was such that he was called to a prestigious chair at Columbia
University.

After serving with distinction on Robert E. Lee's staff, Lt.
Col. Charles S. Venable joined the faculty in 1865 as professor
of mathematics and continued in that post until his retirement
in 1896. He had graduated from Hampden-Sydney College at
age fifteen, served as an instructor at the college, and had
studied in Germany. At the university after the war he was
chairman of the faculty in 1870-73 and 1886-88. Highly respected
by all, "Old Ven" is regarded as chiefly responsible for
persuading the General Assembly to increase the university's
annual appropriation from $15,000 to $40,000. He also had
much to do with the establishment of new schools in astronomy,
biology and agriculture, applied chemistry, engineering,
and natural history and geology. His daughter Natalie married
Prof. Raleigh C. Minor.

Credit for the high position occupied by the University of
Virginia Law School today is due Raleigh Minor's father, John
B. Minor, more than any other man. He became the only professor
of law in 1845 at age thirty-two and continued there as
a teacher and writer on the law for half a century. Minor
raised the requirements for entrance and graduation soon
after joining the faculty. With a handful of other professors,
he continued to teach underage youths and wounded veterans
during the Civil War, and at the end of hostilities joined with
Prof. Socrates Maupin in borrowing, on their personal credit,
enough money to keep the struggling institution operating.
Minor was an authoritative writer on legal subjects, and his
Institutes of Common and Statute Law (1875-95) has long been
recognized as a standard work. "Old John B." was greatly venerated
by his students, and Minor Hall, the home of the Law
School erected in 1911, was named in his honor.

Prof. Noah K. Davis was another notable postbellum addition
to the faculty. He succeeded McGuffey in the chair of
moral philosophy and was a conspicuous and impressive figure
as he strolled the Lawn in his long, black frock coat and
high silk hat, his full beard flowing, his body bent forward, his
brow furrowed in deep thought.

Prof. Francis H. Smith, who had been appointed in 1853 to
succeed the eminent William Barton Rogers in the chair of

natural philosophy, occupied that chair until the early years
of the twentieth century. "Frank" Smith was noted for the
eloquence, lucidity, and polish of his lectures and for the consideration
that he showed his students. Not for him the occasionally
sarcastic remarks of professorial colleagues in their
comments to floundering undergraduates. Voted several
times the most popular member of the faculty, Professor
Smith remained active as a teacher until 1908; he then lived
on for twenty more years on the Lawn until age ninety-eight,
the last lingering survivor of the ancien régime.

Although the war wiped out nearly all of Virginia's private
academies, others were established after Appomattox, and
they furnished the university with many of the foremost students
of that era. This was especially significant for the Honor
System, since these institutions introduced the youths to the
system as schoolboys. Hence when they came to Charlottesville
they were admirably trained to carry on the tradition.
The Episcopal High School at Alexandria had survived
through the war, while other important private schools, such
as McGuire's in Richmond, McCabe's in Petersburg, and
Woodberry Forest near Orange, were established after the
conflict. Graduates of these schools and of similar ones in Virginia
and other southern states furnished much of the student
leadership in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
The university had only a few hundred matriculates in
those days, and the alumni of the private academies were influential
in setting the prevailing tone. It was not until the session
of 1899-1900 that the university enrollment of 645 in
1856-57 was surpassed, and then only barely.

During the first two decades after the Civil War, the B.A.
degree was not highly regarded, but the M.A. retained its
prestige. Requirements for the B.A. were so rigid that many
became discouraged, while the extremely difficult M.A. also
frightened away large numbers. In the seventies, the "length
of examinations" was fourteen hours, Dr. David M. R. Culbreth
wrote in his book of reminiscences concerning his student
days. For these and other reasons, three-fifths of the students
did not return after their first year. Numerous changes
were made in the requirements for the B.A. in the hope that

it would be more attractive to students but without noticeable
effect. The Ph.D. was offered for the first time in 1880, with
specialization in two related fields required, and in 1885 the
first Ph.D. was awarded to Samuel M. Barton, in mathematics
and related subjects.

There were modifications in degree requirements during
the nineties. The old M.A., with perhaps the toughest work
schedule in the United States, was made less difficult in 1892.
It would now be necessary to take only four M.A. courses in
order to get the degree, whereas previously half a dozen, the
highest in each discipline, had been called for. Four years later
requirements for the Ph.D. were modified, and three years'
residence, a major and two minor subjects, plus a dissertation
were stipulated. Ph.D.'s were being awarded in greater numbers,
with eight conferred at the 1901 finals.

Grievously inadequate knowledge of the English language
on the part of undergraduates led the Board of Visitors in
1882 to establish a separate School of English Language and
Literature, with directives for thorough courses in the subject.
Prof. James M. Garnett was named to this chair, and the versatile
Professor Holmes was switched to teaching historical science.
Instruction in English received further emphasis when
another chair in this discipline was added in 1893, with Prof.
Charles W. Kent appointed to fill it. He edited texts of several
important American and English writers and was the first literary
editor of the Library of Southern Literature. "Chucky"
Kent, as he was affectionately known, married Eleanor Smith,
the daughter of Prof. Francis H. Smith.

The Schools of English, Romanic Languages, and Teutonic
Languages were reorganized in 1896 as the School of Modern
Languages. Prof. James A. Harrison headed the School of
Teutonic Languages, which offered courses in Anglo-Saxon,
Middle English, the history and philology of English, and the
language and literature of Germany. An able and creative student
of the writings of Edgar Allan Poe, Harrison edited a
seventeen-volume edition of Poe's works, published in 1902,
and known as both the Virginia Edition and the Monticello
Edition. It is to this day the best and most complete edition of
Poe.

William M. Thornton's appointment in 1875 to the engineering
faculty as adjunct professor of applied mathematics

6. Medal belonging to Gen. John H. Cocke, who led in building
Temperance Hall at the university in the 1850s.

was a significant event. Thornton was teaching Greek at Davidson
College when he was prevailed upon to come to Charlottesville—another
example of the versatility of that generation
of scholars. He was instrumental in adding mechanical
engineering to the curriculum in 1891, under William H.
Echols; electrical engineering in 1897, under Lewis H. Holladay;
and chemical engineering in 1908, under Robert M.
Bird. Civil engineering had been taught at the university as
early as 1836. A brilliant man, Thornton served as chairman
of the faculty from 1888 to 1896, succeeding Charles S. Venable,
and was appointed the first dean of engineering in 1904,
at which time Richard H. Whitehead was named dean of
medicine and James M. Page dean of the college.

Two brothers, William C. and Walter D. Dabney, served
briefly on the medical and law faculties, respectively, in the
late eighties and nineties. William joined the medical faculty
in 1886, and Dr. Byrd S. Leavell, of the School of Medicine,
writes that "his intelligence, character, personality, energy, enthusiasm
and dedication marked him as a remarkable individual
of many talents." Dabney was the organizer and first
president of the State Medical Examining Board. He wrote
some fifty "highly important contributions to medical journals,"
according to Philip A. Bruce, and translated twice that
many articles from the German and French. He would travel
great distances to attend a patient even when certain that he
would receive no fee. Dabney died of typhoid fever at age
forty-five. His brother, Walter, was a leading member of the
Virginia House of Delegates, being chairman of two of its
most important committees. He served as solicitor to the State
Department under President Grover Cleveland before joining
the university's law faculty. Walter Dabney also died at the
height of his career.

Another addition to the faculty in the late nineteenth century
was Richard Heath Dabney, appointed adjunct professor
of history in 1889. Like several other members of the university
teaching staff who took the M.A. at the university, Dabney
had then studied in Germany, where he won his Ph.D. at Heidelberg,
multa cum laude. He remained on the University of
Virginia faculty for forty-nine years. In addition to teaching
all of the history for thirty-four years, he also provided the

only courses in economics for nine of those years and served
as dean of the graduate school for eighteen years. Such a load
seems incredible today, but the university was so povertystricken
that various professors had to carry these heavy burdens
of work. This was a major factor in explaining their failure
to be more productive as scholars.

The university's poverty also caused Dr. Paul B. Barringer,
chairman of the faculty from 1896 to 1903, to urge the abolition
of the School of Engineering and its transfer to Blacksburg
where, he said, "excellent work [is] being done." The
suggestion was not adopted, but it generated considerable antagonism
toward the man who made it.

Barringer was a member of a prominent North Carolina
family whose father was a Confederate general and his grandfather
a general in the War of 1812. He was recommended
for a position on the university medical faculty by the famous
Dr. James L. Cabell, who asked that Barringer succeed him.
The young Tar Heel had established a course in premedical
training at Davidson College from which such well-equipped
men came to the university's Medical School that Cabell regarded
him as an excellent selection. He joined the faculty in
1888 and was chiefly responsible for construction of the University
Hospital in the face of opposition from those who objected
to a "pesthouse" on the Grounds. Work was begun,
nevertheless, but the foundation stood for more than a year
full of water and was derisively termed "Barringer's frog
pond." The first unit was finally finished in 1901 and the hospital
was able to accommodate twenty-five patients the following
year. Long afterward, when the hospital was much larger,
a new wing was named for Dr. Barringer.

Known as "Oom Paul," after Paul Kruger, president of the
Transvaal in the Boer War, Dr. Barringer resigned from the
faculty in 1907 to accept the presidency of Virginia Polytechnic
Institute. He remained in Blacksburg for six years but
gave up the presidency there when harassed from various directions
by politicians and subjected to petty criticism by
alumni. (See "The Rise and Fall of `Oom Paul,' " by Jenkins M.
Robertson, Virginia Tech Magazine, April-May 1979.) A favorite
at university alumni gatherings, where his jovial spirit and
ability as a raconteur made him a center of attention, Dr. Barringer

spent his remaining years in retirement, the last fifteen
on Oakhurst Circle, Charlottesville.

With the defeat of the South in the Civil War and destruction
of its mode of life, careers in public office seemed less attractive
than previously. Hence the emphasis on oratory at the
university declined after the war, especially for members of
the Washington and Jefferson societies. But the main reason
why the societies languished, according to the university annual,
was "the craze for athletics."

A rudimentary game of baseball had been played informally
on the Grounds in the seventies, but it was not until
1889 that the baseball field was fenced in and admission
charged. An early variety of football also had been introduced
in the seventies, and Virginia's first intercollegiate game was
played in 1888. Six years later football had become the most
popular sport at the institution, although baseball had its ardent
following. In view of the 280-pound behemoths who
grace our gridirons today, it is interesting to reflect that the
heaviest man in the university in 1888 weighed 184 pounds,
according to Corks and Curls for that year. Running, jumping,
and wrestling had been introduced, as well as boat races on
the Rivanna River. Tennis was played as early as 1881. A General
Athletic Association was organized in 1892 to take charge
of all athletics. Land was purchased and a five-acre athletic
field was constructed behind the site of subsequently erected
Madison Hall. Then came the building of Fayerweather Gymnasium
in 1893 at a cost of $30,000, largest and most complete
gymnasium in the South.

The Virginia University Magazine was the sole postbellum
publication of the students until they brought out their first
annual in 1888 and gave it the unique name Corks and Curls—
widely misinterpreted as signifying "wine and women." In that
era, to "cork" in class was to flunk, while to "curl" was to make
a high grade. The name Corks and Curls is said to have been
suggested either by Ernest M. Stires, a student who later became
Episcopal bishop of Long Island, or by J. H. C. Bagby,
the annual's first editor, later a distinguished member of the
Hampden-Sydney College faculty. College Topics, the school
newspaper, was founded in 1890.

Since the end of the Civil War the university colors had been
silver gray and cardinal red, symbolizing the Confederate uniform
dyed in blood. With the intensification of the "athletic
craze," the view was expressed by student leaders that these
colors were inappropriate for athletic events and that the gray
was lacking in durability, especially on the football field. A
mass meeting of students was accordingly held in 1888 to consider
the adoption of a new set of colors. There was great difference
of opinion, and nobody seemed to have a clear idea
concerning the proper substitute. Suddenly an undergraduate
spied an orange and blue scarf around the neck of Allen
Potts, one of the university's star athletes, who had gotten it
on a boating expedition at Oxford University the previous
summer. The student pulled the scarf from Potts's neck and,
waving it to the assembled group called out, "How will this
do?" Orange and blue were promptly adopted as the university
colors and have so remained.

Next came the composition of the "The Good Old Song."
Edward H. Craighill, Jr., of Lynchburg is usually credited with
having composed it, but he wrote in the University of Virginia
Magazine for October 1922 that "no one man should be credited
with the authorship" of the first stanza. He said it appeared
in 1893 as the by-product of a bibulous welcome to a
victorious football team and was the joint production of several
students. A "wah-hoo-wah" yell, said to have been "borrowed
from Dartmouth College," was already in vogue at the
university, and this was incorporated into the song. The second
and third stanzas were written later—almost certainly by
Craighill.

Relations between students and faculty in these years were
deferential, a far cry from the brick-throwing, cowhiding, and
shooting that characterized the institution's early days. True,
the boys had surreptitious nicknames for some of the professors,
such as "Dismal Jimmy" in the case of one such mentor—
"Gummy" was the sobriquet of another some forty years
later—but on the whole relations were altogether cordial.

The first of the ribbon societies came into being in 1878
when Eli Banana was organized. The society took its name
from the Japanese Order of Eli Banana, to which only citizens
of the highest rank were admitted. Eleven years later T.I.L.K.A.

made its appearance, the name reportedly an acronym for
five mystical words, probably Hindu. These two societies,
purely social in nature, held soirées and sponsored dances.

Eli Banana was ordered disbanded in the nineties when its
soirées got completely out of hand. The organization was denounced
by the faculty as "a disgrace to the University," and
mention was made of "outrageous annoyance of ladies and
sick persons by drunken orgies prolonged far into the morning
of each recurring Easter Sunday, followed by annual disturbance
of the congregations of the Charlottesville churches
in the midst of Easter services." The Elis were allowed to begin
functioning again in 1897, on promises of better behavior.
Meanwhile the Tilkas had been capturing most of the student
offices. Then the Elis staged a comback and regained much of
their lost prestige. The two societies managed in several subsequent
years to elect their members to nearly all of the prestigious
student positions.

The coming of Uncle Tom's Cabin to Charlottesville's theater
on Main Street near the turn of the century was a decidedly
provocative event. This dramatization of Harriet Beecher
Stowe's novel, with its highly critical picture of the antebellum
South, led some of the university students to concoct a plan of
retaliation. A group of them attended the opening performance
and contented themselves with booing. But they "cased"
the play and discovered that when Eliza crossed the ice, she
was pursued by live bloodhounds. This gave them their opening.
The next night several of them came to the show with
pieces of meat to which strong strings were tied. When the
hounds bayed onto the stage, the boys, who were on the first
row, threw the meat in front of them. The dogs forgot all
about Eliza and made for the beef. Once they had gotten their
teeth into it they refused to let go, and the students yanked
them over the footlights. It was an easy matter to convey them
thence out into the street, where they were released and allowed
to chew to their hearts' content. They thereupon disappeared
and could not be found. It just about broke up the
show. The management protested to the university authorities,
but the latter were so amused at the ingenuity of the boys,
and so annoyed that such a play had been brought into the
South, that little if any punishment seems to have been meted
out.

7. John B. Minor as a young man soon after joining the law
faculty.

The Rotunda fire of 1895 was a catastrophe of the first magnitude.
It not only gutted the Rotunda itself and completely
destroyed the Annex, but it threatened to spread to adjacent
structures on the Lawn.

The fire was discovered burning fiercely in the Annex on
Sunday morning, Oct. 27, and the alarm was broadcast by
"Uncle Henry" Martin, the university bellringer. He sounded
the tocsin more loudly and frantically than he had ever
sounded it before, and faculty and students came running. At
their head was Prof. William H. Echols, who had supervision
of buildings and grounds. "Reddy" Echols, a magnificently
masculine, broad-shouldered, red-haired man of about six
feet four, was utterly fearless. At considerable risk he tried,
without result, to check the flames raging through the Annex.
He then put together a hundred pounds of dynamite and attempted
to blast away the link between the Annex and the
Rotunda, to keep the fire from spreading. The effort failed,
and the only remaining hope lay in throwing dynamite from
the roof of the Rotunda onto the connecting link. Echols
mounted to the dome, carrying the explosives in a sack, and
hurled it down upon the connecting structure. The terrific
detonation was heard fifteen miles away, but it did not check
the leaping flames. The Rotunda was engulfed in a roaring
inferno. Much of its contents, including the Galt statue of Jefferson,
was removed by the faculty and students, but then the
roof fell in, and the building was left an empty shell. A fortunate
shift in the direction of the wind may have saved some of
the Lawn pavilions and dormitories from destruction.

The ruins were still smoldering when the faculty met that
afternoon and resolved, despite the disaster, to carry on the
work of the university. They praised the students unstintingly
for their courageous rescue of books and portraits, the Galt
statue, and other valuables. Classes would be held next day, as
usual, although many would be moved to new locations, since
the Rotunda's classrooms had been destroyed. Efforts were
got underway to raise funds for the restoration and for
needed new structures. Stanford White of New York was retained
as the architect.

White's plan called for closing the lower end of the Lawn
with three buildings—Cabell Hall, facing the Rotunda; a
physics building on the east, and a mechanical building across

from it on the west. White also designed the president's house
on Carr's Hill and the Commons, or Refectory.

The pediment over the entrance to Cabell Hall presented a
problem. George Julian Zolnay, the Hungarian sculptor who
was executing it, needed some nude female models. No local
talent could be found until, as Anna Barringer relates it in her
delightful reminiscences in the Magazine of Albemarle County
History: "An official telephone call was made to `Aunt Mat,' the
Negro proprietress of the most respectable bordello in town
(occupants and clientele white). . . . Where and when they
posed is shrouded in mystery. . . . The Pediment was finished
in classic style."

In rebuilding the Rotunda, the architect decided not to restore
the great area under the dome exactly as it was before
the fire. Stanford White spoke of "the unquestionable fact
that it was only practical necessity [to obtain space for laboratories
and lecture halls] which forced Jefferson . . . to cut the
Rotunda into two stories, and that he would have planned the
interior as a simple, single and noble room had he been able
to do so." White persuaded the Board of Visitors that the
"single, domed room" was not only the "most practical but the
proper treatment of the interior." However, there appears to
be no documentary evidence that Jefferson ever wanted to
build the Rotunda with only one floor between the basement
and the dome. The faculty and alumni wanted to restore the
structure just as it had been before the fire, but White convinced
the Visitors that his plan was better and more authentic.
Three-quarters of a century later, when a more exacting
adaptive restoration of the Rotunda was carried out, the interior
was reconstructed as Jefferson built it originally.

The rebuilding also called for wings on the north front corresponding
to those on the south front and linked to them by
colonnades on both the western and eastern sides.

The Rotunda clock had been destroyed in the fire, and the
new one was given a bullet-resistant face, since its predecessor
had often been shot at by celebrating students.

The university's Gothic chapel was built in 1890, with the
entire cost of $30,000 raised by private subscription. Episcopalians
were more numerous in the student body at this period
than members of any other denomination, and this situation
continued for many years, but the chapel services were

nondenominational. For a time, the university chaplain held
morning prayers daily in the chapel and prayer meetings
there on Friday and Sunday afternoons. In 1896 the chaplaincy
was discontinued, and guest clergymen were invited to
conduct services on Sunday.

The beginning of work in 1901 on twenty-one-acre Lambeth
Field, named for Dr. William A. Lambeth, often called
"the father of athletics at the University of Virginia," greatly
accelerated the development of football, baseball, and track.
And four years later Mrs. William E. Dodge of New York donated
funds for the construction of Madison Hall, thus providing
a suitable home for the YMCA.

The question whether proper management of the university's
affairs required the election of a president was much debated
in the nineties. Every other leading institution of higher learning
in the country was operating under this form of governance,
and more and more friends of the university were
coming to feel that it should follow suit and abandon the
chairman-of-the-faculty system. As early as 1845 the Society
of Alumni had advocated such a step, and similar sentiment
was rising half a century later. Most of the university faculty
were against the idea, but the Board of Visitors and the
alumni were backing the move, and College Topics endorsed it.

All this culminated in 1902 in the offer of the presidency of
the university to Woodrow Wilson, then a professor at Princeton,
but he declined. Two years later it was tendered to fortythree-year-old
Edwin Anderson Alderman, and he accepted.
Alderman was president of Tulane at the time and had held
the same office previously at the University of North Carolina.
A native of that state and a Ph.B. of the university at Chapel
Hill, Alderman had been a zealous and dedicated promoter of
the public schools throughout the South. While at Tulane he
wrote that he had stood for "the public schools as no other
university president had ever done in this region" and added
that "my reputation, whatever it is, comes out of this effort."
The New York Tribune aptly commented that his election as
president of the University of Virginia linked the university
"with the democratization of education."

Within a few years Alderman had won over the faculty, impressed

8. Basil L. Gildersleeve, famous classics professor.

the alumni, obtained larger appropriations from the
General Assembly, increased the endowment, reorganized the
college, and laid the foundation for future development of
the professional schools. He was not without mannerisms, as
Dumas Malone, his biographer, has pointed out, but he was
endowed with personal charm and superlative gifts as an orator.
After accomplishing all this, he was found in 1912 to have
contracted tuberculosis, and from that time until his death in
1931 he was gravely handicapped.

The university entered a new era under Alderman. With
steadily increasing enrollment—it was 662 the year Alderman
took over—the number of students passed the 1,000 mark for
the first time in 1915-16, and of that number a growing percentage
came from the public schools. Ninety-one graduates
of Virginia's public high schools, one-third of all their male
graduates for the previous session, entered the university in
the fall of 1916. In the following year the number entering
from public schools exceeded that from private schools for
the first time. As had been the case from the beginning, the
vast majority of matriculates came from Virginia and other
southern states. This would begin changing in a few years,
with the Northeast contributing a greatly increased percentage,
and the proportion from the South falling drastically, as
the colleges and universities in that region expanded and improved.

A Department of Education was established by President
Alderman to further the cause of the public schools, and Peabody
Hall was built to serve as its headquarters. Also, as a part
of this process a summer school was instituted. On a different
level the Department of Graduate Studies was established.

The University of Virginia was elected to the Association of
American Universities soon after Alderman took over, the
first southern institution to achieve that distinction. In 1907
the university was awarded a chapter of Phi Beta Kappa. The
Raven Society had been organized three years before in the
absence of such a chapter. In 1913-14 the university's library
totaled 80,000 volumes and was claimed to be the largest in
the South, although the Rotunda, where it was housed, was
ill-suited to the demands of a modern library. In the same year
the Law Department began publishing the Virginia Law Review,
the first periodical of its kind to appear below Mason and

Dixon's Line. It ranked from the first with the top law journals
in the country.

As noted above, state appropriations to the university went
up under Alderman. He was able to announce in 1906 that
the General Assembly had raised the annual allotment to the
institution from $50,000 to $75,000, the first increase since
1880. By 1915 the figure had risen to about $100,000. During
Alderman's first decade, entrance requirements were tightened
in all departments, and the law course was extended
from two to three years. The university faculty numbered approximately
forty in 1904 and had doubled in size a decade
later.

Enrolled students were falling by the wayside in astonishing
numbers. In the first ten years of the Alderman regime, only
1,145 of the 2,241 first-year men returned for the second
year. While this can be attributed, in part, to lack of scholastic
accomplishment, another factor was what President Henry
Louis Smith of Washington and Lee University called "the icebound
frigidity of the University of Virginia." It was the custom
for students to speak to students or others whom they
knew, but to no one else. Thus first-year men who came to the
institution with few acquaintances felt snubbed and unhappy.
Many did not return. Since at various other colleges and universities
it was the practice to greet all passersby, the lack of
similar civility at the university caused it to be termed snobbish.
Its defenders contended, in a controversy extending
over many years, that it was not snobbishness but simply a
long-established custom not to speak to persons with whom
one was not personally acquainted.

The year 1911 witnessed the demise of the Hot Feet, a student
organization whose annual public coronation of its
"king" was a piquant ceremonial. The coronation at the southern
end of East Range was preceded by a procession around
the Grounds, with the king at the head followed by the queen,
court poet, wizards, chancellor, archbishop, pages, musicians,
cupbearers, guards, jesters, and chamberlains. Ambassadors
from the Kingdoms of Dawson's Row and West Range, the
principality of Monroe Hill, and the independent republic
of Carr's Hill were present. After the formal induction of
the king into office, the public was invited to partake of
royal viands in the somewhat unkingly precincts of Randall

Hall. All this came to an abrupt end when the Hot Feet behaved
in such cantankerous fashion as to draw down upon
themselves the wrath of the administration. One of their more
raucous nighttime performances consisted of removing the
stuffed animals, snakes, and other varmints from the Cabell
Hall basement, where they were stored, and stationing them
behind the professors' classroom desks and in front of their
residences on the Lawn. This assemblage, which included a
kangaroo, a tiger, an ostrich, a moose, boa constrictor, threetoed
emu, and other animals, fowls, and reptiles, greeted the
dumbfounded citizenry on Easter Sunday morning. On top of
this, some well-lubricated Hot Feet bulled their way into a student's
room, roughed him up, and carried off a beer stein. He
complained to President Alderman. Four of the miscreants
were expelled, four more were suspended for a year, and the
university administration proclaimed: "The Hot Feet Society
has been, on the whole, very detrimental to the University's
welfare, and it is, therefore, unanimously resolved that the
existence of the Hot Feet Society, and of all other organizations
which promote disorder in the University, shall be forbidden."

The Hot Feet had been disbanded for only a short time
when the IMP Society made its appearance. It had many of
the same members, but its carryings-on were more discreet,
and while it too crowned a king, the coronation was less of a
public spectacle. The IMPs are still in business at the university.

The Corner, rendezvous of students from time immemorial,
was undergoing an upgrading at this time. As an article
appearing in the Alumni News in 1913 had it, "The Corner, in
all the majesty of its unsightliness, is doomed." Temperance
Hall, erected before the Civil War as a symbol of the antebellum
drive for greater abstemiousness, was being pulled down.
Fraternity initiations had been held on its second floor after
the war, in the days before there were any fraternity houses.
Woodrow Wilson had been initiated there into Phi Kappa Psi.

In his book The Natural Bent Dr. Paul Barringer makes the
rather startling statement that the Temperance Union—formerly
the Temperance Society—with headquarters in the
building, "was one of the most popular institutions at the University"
in the latter part of the nineteenth century. "A young

fellow who found himself drinking too much," writes Dr. Barringer,
"sent in his name, and in the presence of his fellow
reprobates, took the pledge for the rest of the session."

Drab Temperance Hall was being replaced in 1913 by a
more pleasing brick structure containing a post office, stores,
and rooms for various agencies. The hope was expressed in
the Alumni News that the other side of the street, which was
not under university control, would be improved by the owners
of the property there. The entire area was greatly upgraded
by the erection of the Senff Memorial Gateway at the
lower end of the "Long Walk," the gift of Mrs. Charles H.
Senff of New York in memory of her husband and as a tribute
to the Honor System. The "South Gate" at the other end of
Hospital Drive was also given by Mrs. Senff. Another improvement
on the Grounds at about this time was the planting of
formal gardens within the serpentine walls linking East Lawn
and East Range, where thickets of brambles had taken over.
And the area between West Lawn and West Range, in large
part a dumping ground for miscellaneous refuse, with dilapidated
small buildings and piles of loose bricks, was cleaned
up, leveled, and graded.

The term "campus," subsequently exorcised in favor of "the
Grounds," was used rather widely during the early 1900s.
Later it would be taboo.

At the turn of the century discussions by members of the
medical faculty with the students of what was termed "the social
evil" would have been unthinkable, but by 1913 annual
explorations of the subject were inaugurated. "The Cyprian
evil," the term used by Bruce in his history, could now be
brought halfway into the open. "The fight against venereal
disease [now] is regarded in the same light as the organized
fight against tuberculosis," College Topics observed.

The death of "Uncle Henry" Martin, the university's black
bellringer, was a sad event of the year 1915. The student
newspaper expressed the view that "he was known personally
to more alumni than any living man" and "is said to have
known by name . . . every student who resided here during
his long service as bell-ringer." Uncle Henry had been janitor
and bellringer from 1868 to 1909 and had been employed
around the University since 1847. He said he was born at
Monticello in 1826, the year Jefferson died, and that his parents

were slaves there; his mother was "married to Mr. Jefferson's
body servant." Always nattily dressed, wearing a cravat
and stiff collar and a clean white apron, Uncle Henry was extremely
faithful and reliable in ringing the Rotunda bell. He
rang it until the fire of 1895, and thereafter tolled the chapel
bell with equal dedication.

Prof. C. Alphonso Smith interviewed Uncle Henry for Corks
and Curls when the latter retired in his nineties (he lived to be
about ninety-nine). The delightful result is published in the
annual for 1914.

Uncle Henry had some recollections of the Civil War.
"Durin' the war," said he, "I nursed hundreds right there in
that Rotunda, and when I go in it now, I ain't studyin' 'bout
the books I see. No sir, I'm thinkin' on the soldiers that I seen
layin' on the floor. It didn't make no difference how much
they was sufferin', they didn't make no noise. No sir, they lay
right still, a-lookin' straight up at the ceilin'."

After Uncle Henry's retirement in 1909 his regular pay was
continued for the rest of his life. His death brought genuine
sorrow to the university community and to alumni everywhere.

A less dignified figure was "Uncle Peter" Briggs, born a
slave in 1828, and somewhat clownish in his behavior. Uncle
Peter died in 1912 after serving for many years as janitor and
gardener around the university. As Topics put it, "Two generations
of students remember the slight, under-sized figure with
its bowed legs, the cheerful laugh and Rebel yell, and buzzard
dance. . . . When the students heard that he was to be given a

9. Dr. John Staige Davis of the medical faculty, the first of that name.

pauper's burial, they raised the money necessary to bear all
the expenses of interment."

English Prof. Alphonso Smith, who interviewed Uncle
Henry Martin, was one of the ablest lecturers in the university's
history. This fact undoubtedly explains, at least in part,
the invitation that he received to lecture at the University of
Berlin in 1910-11, where his courses were well received. He
had been dean of the Graduate School at the University of
North Carolina before coming to Charlottesville and was the
author of several important works in the field of American
literature. After seven years on the University of Virginia faculty,
where his English classes were among the most popular
in the institution, Dr. Smith accepted a call in 1917 to the
United States Naval Academy. Many who attended the academy
and the university still recall his enthralling and witty lectures.

The question whether to admit women to the university under
any conditions was raised in 1892 by the application of Miss
Caroline Preston Davis of University, Va., for permission to
take the examinations required during the ensuing session of
candidates for the B.A. degree in the School of Mathematics.
Miss Davis, apparently self-taught, was granted permission,
but it was on condition that she stand the tests elsewhere than
with the male students; if she passed, she would receive a certificate
of proficiency, not a degree. Her performance was excellent,
and she was awarded the certificate.

Miss Addis M. Meade of Boyce, Va., also applied in 1892 for
permission to register for the course in mathematics, but she
was only seventeen, and the faculty stated that "the law precludes
the registration of women under eighteen." No "law"
was cited. Miss Meade was allowed to register after her eighteenth
birthday. Her name is listed with those completing the
"M.A. course for mathematics in the Graduate School," 1894.

All this precipitated a debate as to whether the foregoing
was the proper method of handling applications from women
desirous of matriculating in the university. Both the faculty
and the Board of Visitors ended by voting in 1894 against
admitting women under any conditions, even those prescribed
for Miss Davis two years before. The faculty vote was

twelve to four and the visitors were all but unanimous, only
one member dissenting.

Reasons given by the faculty majority for their stand, as
paraphrased by Bruce, included the contention that admission
of women to the university "would only serve to draw
them away from those excellencies which made that sex such
a power in the home." Furthermore, "under the arcades they
would be certain to grow boisterous, familiar and bold in manners,
and perhaps even rudely aggressive, under the influence
of an ambitious rivalry with the male collegians." And to quote
the report verbatim: "According to medical authority, the
strain on young women in severe competitive work (in the
higher schools of learning) does often physically unsex them,
and they afterwards fail in the demands of motherhood." The
faculty added: "Let us not be bullied into a false position by
the clamor of a noisy minority of the public, thereby breaking
irrevocably with and condemning the University's past. . . . It
would require supervision inconsistent with the Honor System
and the system of discipline."

The controversy was renewed in 1910 with the introduction
into the General Assembly of legislation looking to the establishment
of a coordinate college for women near the university.
The bill was defeated, but the following year it was
endorsed by forty-two of the forty-seven members of the
university faculty. Similar legislation was introduced at each
biennial session of the General Assembly until 1918, with
President Alderman and Armistead C. Gordon, rector, supporting
it as the only means of avoiding coeducation throughout
the institution. Alderman expressed his support of a
coordinate college, arguing that it "would assure economy of
force, unity of effort and a better understanding between the
men leaders and the women leaders in social effort." Mrs.
Mary Cooke Branch Munford appeared at many hearings
down the years as the principal woman advocate of admitting
women to the university to the maximum degree possible.
Murray M. McGuire was the spokesman for opposing alumni.
The Board of Visitors endorsed the plan for a coordinate college,
and in 1916 the Senate passed it; it lost in the House by
only two votes. The Reverend James Cannon, Jr., the prohibitionist
crusader who at that time was a dominant political

force in Virginia and was principal of the Blackstone Female
Institute at Blackstone, Va., was credited with a large share in
the defeat of the measure. Cannon circularized every member
of the General Assembly against the bill, and spoke against it.
Finally the General Assembly decided to admit women to the
university's graduate and professional schools at the session of
1920-21, and to the College of William and Mary on the same
basis as men. The foregoing action would have been taken
somewhat sooner, had it not been for complications caused by
entry of the United States into World War I.

Male University of Virginia alumni have always occupied
prominent and influential positions in public life. For the period
1842-61 the institution produced thirteen U.S. senators
from various states, as well as two Speakers of the House of
Representatives and sixty-two other members of that body. At
the congressional session of 1903-4, chosen at random, the
university had six members of the Senate as against seven for
Yale, three for Harvard, and nine for Princeton, although Virginia's
enrollment was only 600 compared to 2,700 for Yale,
5,100 for Harvard, and 1,350 for Princeton. Virginia had
twenty-one members of the House in 1906 as against nineteen
for Yale and eleven for Harvard. Four years later the proportions
were approximately the same.

With the rapid rise in the popularity of athletics at the university
in the 1890s, several famous athletes emerged. Archibald
R. Hoxton, weighing only 137 pounds, was a bright star in
both football and baseball, Murray M. McGuire in baseball,
and Addison Greenway in football.

In contrast to these men, who were bona fide amateurs, the
1890s and early 1900s were marked, according to Bruce, by
the arrival at the university of "professional athletes in disguise"
who had "registered from every section of the country."
This was highly disturbing to President Alderman when he
took office in 1904, and he appointed an investigative committee,
headed by Professor Echols. It recommended a series
of stringent regulations that put a stop to the professionalism,
and a code governing athletics was adopted by the faculty in
1906. Control of athletics was vested in a faculty committee on
which Professors Lambeth and Lefevre were the dominating
factors for many years.

10. Dr. Walter Reed, conqueror of yellow fever.

Professional football and baseball coaches were employed in
the nineties, but at the end of the decade it was decided to
adopt an alumni coaching system. This lasted for only two
years, after which professionals were again employed. In
1906-7 the alumni system was brought back, and under it the
Virginia teams were remarkably successful. One reason was
that intercollegiate athletics was in its infancy, and high pressure,
grossly commercialized athletic systems had not been developed.
Virginia has never gone in wholeheartedly for the
latter type of competition, with the result that, in recent decades,
university teams have been far less successful.

James A. Rector, the university's scintillating dash man in
the early 1900s, had done the hundred yards in 9.1 and 9.2
seconds—although neither time was officially recognized—
and was the fastest runner in the United States at short distances,
with an official clocking of 9.3. He was expected to win
the 100 meters at the 1908 Olympics in London. The night
before the race, the coach of the South African team asked
Rector to show H. Walker, South Africa's entry in the 100 meters,
how to make a "crouching start"—standard at the time in
America but unknown in South Africa. It was a strange request
from the coach of a rival athlete, but Rector, with consummate
sportsmanship, gave Walker careful instructions.
Next day Walker beat him by six inches for the Olympic gold
medal.

In football, Robert K. Gooch, afterward a longtime distinguished
member of the faculty, was one of the most brilliant
quarterbacks in the university's history, while halfback Eugene
N. (Buck) Mayer is the only University of Virginia player to be
chosen to Walter Camp's all-American team. In baseball Eppa
Rixey went straight from Virginia to the Philadelphia Phillies
and then to the Cincinnati Reds. Recognized as one of the top
left-handed pitchers in the history of the National League, he
was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame.

The university community was shaken to its foundations in
1909 when Archer Christian, a greatly admired student, was
fatally injured in a football game at Georgetown University.
His body was brought from Washington to his Richmond
home, and services in St. Paul's Episcopal Church were attended
by delegations from the Virginia and Georgetown student
bodies. There was much agitation for abolition of football,

but it all ended with mere changes in the rules to make
the game somewhat safer.

A memorable athletic event of the era took place in 1915,
when Virginia defeated Yale 10-0 in football, the first time
that a southern team had accomplished this feat. The same
University of Virginia eleven held Harvard to three field goals
with All-American Eddie Mahan in the Harvard backfield.
Norborne Berkeley, the 150-pound Virginia quarterback,
called these two masterful games. Eugene N. (Buck) Mayer
was a backfield star. The Boston press was high in praise of
the Virginia players who helped the Harvard men up from
the sod after tackling them.

Completion of the stadium on Lambeth Field in 1913 provided
a facility seating 8,000 persons, and baseball, football,
and track were thus accommodated for several decades. The
stadium cost $35,000.

The coming of Henry H. (Pop) Lannigan to the university's
athletic staff in 1905 was a milestone. As coach and trainer in
a number of sports for several decades Pop Lannigan was to
make a lasting contribution to athletics at Virginia. As College
Topics expressed it in 1911: "With the exception of Dr. Lambeth,
Lannigan has done more for athletics at the University
of Virginia than any man ever connected with the department.
It was he who introduced basketball, not before practiced
here. He put track work on a different footing. He is the
life and spirit in every branch of athletics."

Alumni activities in the late nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries were limited in character. Without a class system, it
was difficult to bring the "old grads" together for any purpose,
and most reunions were desultory and sparsely attended affairs.
The Alumni Board of Trustees of the University of Virginia
Endowment Fund was organized for the purpose of receiving,
holding, investing, and disbursing the income from
gifts made by alumni and friends.

Dean James M. Page, general secretary of the Alumni Association,
sent invitations to alumni of the classes of 1905,
1895, 1890, and on back to 1840, to hold reunions at the 1910
finals. Some two hundred fifty attended, and it was the most
successful such gathering up to that time.

Then came the election of Lewis D. Crenshaw as alumni

secretary on a full-time basis, and things began to happen.
Crenshaw, a man of superb ingenuity, complete dedication,
and driving energy, organized the alumni office more thoroughly
than it had ever been organized before. The Alumni
News was founded. Crenshaw's class of 1908 held its fifth reunion
in 1913, and novel plans of the most varied sort were
devised to create interest. The Big Tent, a place of rendezvous
and good fellowship for Virginia men of all ages, made its
appearance between Minor Hall and Dawson's Row. Nearly
four hundred alumni attended the reunion, and it was pronounced
a complete success. Conduct of those in attendance
was said to have been exemplary. The following year nearly
four hundred alumni were again on hand.

But despite repeated appeals from Lewis Crenshaw for at
least a minimum of cooperation from alumni in carrying on
the routine business of the association, it was not forthcoming.
They were derelict in paying their dues and unwilling to answer
correspondence. In order to prepare food and other entertainment
for the various reunions, Crenshaw had to have
some sort of idea of the number to be expected, but fewer
than 15 percent of those who came let him know in advance,
despite countless requests that they do so. His office was operating
on the barest shoestring, and his own modest salary
was sometimes far in arrears.

In the absence of a class system, a Class Officers' Association
was formed, with Crenshaw as president, in order to promote
"class organization and class reunions in every possible way."
All this was largely in vain, given the lackadaisical attitude of
the average alumnus.

With the entry of the United States into World War I, all
alumni and other university activities were curtailed or drastically
altered. Crenshaw was rejected for military duty because
of physical disability and could have had a well-paying
government job, but he announced that he would open a bureau
in Paris for University of Virginia men in the service.
Funds were raised for the enterprise, and he sailed for
France.

Again his imagination and ingenuity were manifest as he
fitted out the bureau in a manner to bring Virginia men on
leave from the trenches a maximum of comfort in a homelike
atmosphere. Pictures of the Lawn and Ranges adorned the

walls, and files of College Topics and Corks and Curls were available.
University servicemen were able to get in touch with one
another through the bureau and to meet there for later relaxation
along the boulevards.

Crenshaw even translated "The Good Old Song" into
French. The opening line of this unique rendition was "La
belle chanson de `wah-hoo-wah.' "

Back at the University, the Alumni News noted that "the
alumni office has done its share of war work . . . by raising two
U.Va. Ambulance Sections for the U.S. Army, and by cooperating
with Dr. [William H.] Goodwin in the organization of the
U.Va. Base Hospital." Crenshaw had been the sparkplug in the
foregoing activities. Base Hospital 41, with Dr. Goodwin commanding,
reached Paris in July 1918 and went into operation
at nearby St. Denis. It made a splendid record.

A member of the university faculty was dismissed for making
a militantly pacifist speech at Sweet Briar College in November
1917. He was Leon R. Whipple, adjunct professor of
journalism, who was widely denounced in the press and assailed
without a dissenting voice by the faculty. President Alderman
recommended that his appointment be rescinded.
(French prof. Richard H. Wilson was absent from the city
when the faculty voted, and on his return he publicly defended
Whipple's right to hold and express unpopular views,
even though he himself disagreed with those views.) The
Board of Visitors, holding Whipple's pacifist utterances to be
"a gross abuse of freedom of speech," agreed unanimously
with Alderman, and the professor's appointment was terminated.
As a rule, Dumas Malone writes in his biography of
Alderman, the spiritual climate at the university "was one of
generous tolerance," but Whipple was deemed to have exceeded
all proper bounds. The American Association of University
Professors went on record officially during the war as
advocating dismissal of any professor guilty of such conduct
as Whipple's.

Enrollment at the university fell from 1,064 for the session
of 1916-17 to 761 and then to 536, despite the exhortation
from Gen. Leonard Wood, speaking for the Wilson administration,
that all college students stay in college until called. A
Reserve Officers' Training Corps (ROTC) was organized as
soon as we entered the war, and it was replaced later by the

Students Army Training Corps (SATC). Physically fit students
eighteen years of age were automatically enrolled. The curriculum
was modified to include courses needed in wartime.
During the dreadful influenza epidemic in the fall of 1918 all
students wore white masks, in the hope of avoiding the deadly
pestilence. Many fell ill and some died, including able Prof.
William Harry Heck, who was lecturing on how to avoid the
flu. A truck drivers' school was organized and constructed at
the university on directions from the War Department and at
the university's expense.

With the arrival of the armistice, Nov. 11, 1918, there was
fervent rejoicing on both sides of the Atlantic. Robert P. Hamilton,
Jr., a university student who was serving in one of the
institution's ambulance units and was later a Rhodes Scholar,
was in Paris on that memorable day. He wrote his mother at
once, expressing his deep emotional involvement: "Paris on
November the eleventh, 1918, was the stage of such scenes as
occur once in the history of the world. They had no rehearsal
and they can have no repetition. Ten years out of the ordinary
life would have been a modest price of admission. For my part
I had rather die tomorrow with the precious memories of yesterday
thrilling my soul than live to seventy with that golden
date erased from my mind."

The most unforgettable scene of all, he said, was that night,
when Madame Chénal sang the "Marseillaise" from the balcony
of the Opera to a crowd that packed the huge square and
all adjacent streets. "Suddenly, dramatically," he wrote, "in the
very center of the balcony there stood forth the heroic figure
of France personified—a superb woman draped in the colors
of the nation's flag and crowned with the revolutionary cockade.
. . . Tears flowed unabashed and unashamed. . . . The
magnificent woman flung out her beautiful arms in a splendid
gesture, and not one but thirty thousand voices took up the
refrain, Aux armes, citoyens! Formez vos battaillons! . . . It was irresistible—that
great, spontaneous, unforeseen roar and
surge of song."

On New Year's Eve Lewis Crenshaw was on the job with arrangements
for a "fumoir" (smoker) for Virginia men in a
Paris café. He announced it for 8 P.M., to continue "jusqu'au
moment où les vaches rentrent chez elles" ('til the cows come
home). On the menu was "de l'egg nogg véritable."

11. Ruins of the Rotunda after the fire of 1895.

The year 1919 marked the centennial of the university's
chartering. Hundreds of university servicemen were still overseas
that spring, and Crenshaw arranged a Founder's Day observance
for Apr. 12 and 13 in Paris. The program included
ceremonies on the site of the residence Thomas Jefferson occupied
as minister to France, a banquet that evening, and a
frolicsome boat trip on the Seine to St. Germain on Jefferson's
birthday. Nearly three hundred university alumni attended
the various events, "the largest reunion of the former students
of an American university ever held in Europe." A tablet
marking the site of Jefferson's dwelling, corner Rue de Berri
and the Champs-Elysées, was put in place later.

The American Expeditionary Force was being rapidly demobilized.
By the fall of 1919 large numbers of former students
were returning to the Lawn and Ranges to complete
their education. Some twenty-seven hundred University of
Virginia alumni and students had served in the armed forces,
and eighty had given their lives. Among the latter was James
Rogers McConnell, in his student days king of the Hot Feet
and editor of Corks and Curls. He enlisted in France's Lafayette
Escadrille before our entry into the war and was shot down by
the Germans over the battle lines in France. "Jim" McConnell
would have had it no other way. His mother, broken in health,
urged him to obtain his release from the French army, but he
replied, "If I knew I was to be killed within a minute, and I
was absolutely free to leave untouched, I would not do so."
Among his effects a letter written in anticipation of his fate,
was found. "Good luck to the rest of you," it read, "Vive la
France! My death is of no importance." His statue, by Gutzon
Borglum is one of the most notable monuments on the
Grounds. On it are the words "Soaring like an Eagle into New
Heavens of Valor and Devotion."

The University of Virginia's first hundred years was at an
end. The institution had survived its early throes when student
riots threatened to close the place down, and then had
passed successfully through two major wars. It was stronger
than ever as its second century dawned.

2. TWO

The Alderman Years

DEMOBILIZED SERVICEMEN, many of whom had not had time
to shed their uniforms, were flooding back to the arcades
in the autumn of 1919. No fewer than fourteen hundred students
had registered by the end of September, much the largest
enrollment in University of Virginia history to that time.

There were glad handshakes at the Corner as men greeted
one another and prepared to resume their academic pursuits;
and there was sorrow for those who would never return. The
faculty had not yet been expanded to take care of the increased
enrollment, and many of the same professors the students
had known before the war were on hand to greet them.
Deans James M. Page of the College, William M. Lile of the
Law School, Theodore Hough of the Medical School, William
M. Thornton of the Engineering School, and Richard Heath
Dabney of the Graduate School welcomed the older matriculates
and the first-year men.

At the Corner, Johnny LaRowe was operating his pool
room; he would later become famous as the admired coach of
Virginia's championship boxing teams. Also among those
present were several other personalities familiar to at least a
generation of Virginia men—R. M. Balthis and T. Jameson,
operators of Anderson Brothers' Bookstore; "Captain"
Schneider, the one-armed news vendor; Charlie Hopkins, the
black baggageman; and Charlie and Willie Brown, the dapper
black barbers with their handsome collection of shaving mugs
bearing the names, in gilt lettering, of such patrons as President

Alderman and Professors Albert Lefevre and Armistead
Dobie.

Things were almost back to normal with classes getting under
way, football practice starting up, fraternities rushing
prospective "goats," the Washington and Jefferson societies
beginning to function, and other peacetime activities being resumed.
Special courses instituted for the war had been abandoned,
and the prewar curriculum was once more in effect.

President Alderman had been at the university throughout
the conflict, after seventeen months at Saranac Lake, N.Y.,
battling tuberculosis. He had been permitted by his physicians
to resume his duties, but was warned that he would have to be
careful for the rest of his life and work at only half the normal
tempo. His morale had been greatly lifted on his return to the
university in the fall of 1914 when some nine hundred students,
practically the entire student body, met him at the station
with a tumultuous welcome and escorted him, in the glow
of torchlights, to his home on Carr's Hill.

Varsity football had been discontinued the previous year because
of the war but was resumed in the fall of 1919. Basketball,
baseball, and track had functioned in the winter and
spring of the 1918-19 session, following the termination of
the world conflict in November 1918. The athletic record in
1919-20 was a ragged one, although the basketball team under
the coaching of the returned Pop Lannigan made an excellent
showing.

In football Virginia began the season with only two lettermen
and won only two games. One of the losses was to the
sensational and previously obscure team from little Centre
College of Danville, Ky. The morning before the game, a man
named McMillan showed up at LaRowe's pool room, said he
was the Centre quarterback, and offered to bet even money to
all comers that he would personally score more points than
the entire Virginia team. Loyal Virginia rooters hastened to
cover his bets. The man was "Bo" McMillan—who turned out
later to be an all-American—and he led the "Praying Colonels"
of Centre College to a 49 to 7 walloping of the Orange
and Blue. McMillan scored several touchdowns and returned
to Danville with a large wad of currency.

Observance of the university's centennial, originally planned
for 1919, was postponed until 1921 "because of disturbed

world conditions following the Great War." John Stewart
Bryan, rector of the university, and Frederic W. Scott, a member
of the board, were "joint and alternate chairmen" of the
Centennial Endowment Fund drive for $3,000,000, launched
in the fall of 1920. Prof. Armistead M. Dobie was given a year's
leave of absence from the law school to serve as executive director.
John L. Newcomb, then a professor in the School of
Engineering, was chosen general chairman of the centennial
celebration, which was set for May 31-June 3, 1921.

Publication of Philip Alexander Bruce's monumental fivevolume
history of the university's first hundred years was a
feature of the observance, as was the appearance of a book of
poems, The Enchanted Years, contributed by American and
British poets in honor of the occasion. There was also a motion
picture.

No effort had been made since the 1916 Finals to attract the
alumni back to alma mater. This policy was continued in 1920
in order that all energies might be devoted to achieving a record-breaking
turnout for the centennial observance the following
year. Lewis Crenshaw, back from Paris, said his alumni
office would "start work in earnest . . . to see that every human
critter that can walk or hop or crawl or fly or swim, or even
float down the Rivanna on his back, gets within calling distance
of the old Rotunda." He was searching for the "oldest
living specimen of the genus alumnus Virginiensis, who we will
have seated on the throne of extinct beer kegs [prohibition
being in full force], and crowned with a chaplet of fragrant
mint leaves."

The celebration brought many alumni back to the Grounds,
as well as internationally known speakers from both sides of
the Atlantic—French Ambassador Jules Jusserand, President
Abbott Lawrence Lowell of Harvard, Prof. Henry van Dyke
of Princeton, and British Ambassador Sir Auckland Geddes.
There were greetings from President Woodrow Wilson and
from leading European universities. The Distinguished Service
Cross of Serbia was presented to Dr. Alderman.

Dedication of the McIntire Theater, incorrectly called the
McIntire Amphitheater—an amphitheater is circular or oval
in shape—was an important event. The theater was made possible
by a $120,000 gift from Paul Goodloe McIntire, one
of the university's greatest benefactors, who had donated

$155,000 for the School of Fine Arts in 1919 and whose
contribution of an additional $200,000 to establish a Department
of Commerce and Finance was announced during the
centennial.

The Shadow of the Builder, a centennial pageant by Frances
O. J. Gaither, was a significant event. Corks and Curls was especially
complimentary to "the dancing girls from Mississippi"
and "the torchlight procession of the Athenian youths after
the footrace." It also found "admirable" the acting of "Dr.
W. M. Forrest as Jefferson, Dr. R. H. Dabney as Socrates, Dr.
J. J. Luck as an American citizen, and Prof. Francis H. Abbot
as an Italian stonecutter." An augmented symphony orchestra
rendered musical interludes composed by John Powell, internationally
known pianist and university alumnus, and there
was a choral number composed by George Harris of Richmond.

A tablet to the eighty University of Virginia men who lost
their lives in World War I, the gift of the classes of 1918, 1919,
1920 and the Seven Society, was unveiled on the south front
of the Rotunda. The dedicatory address was delivered by
Capt. A. D. Barksdale, a much-decorated alumnus. On the
tablet were these lines by Laurence Binyon:

The centennial celebration ended with a pyrotechnic display
on the Lawn showing the head of the founder, and in
letters of fire the words "Jefferson Still Lives."

A somewhat somber note had been injected when Dr. Alderman
announced that only $1,300,000 of the $3,000,000
sought for the Centennial Endowment Fund had been raised
or pledged. Actually the amount was found later to be only
$1,200,000; furthermore, a considerable part of this sum
would never be collected. Unfavorable business conditions
were a major factor in this outcome.

Failure of many former students to honor their commitments
was the most distressing aspect of the drive's lack of
success. C. Venable Minor, attorney for the Alumni Board of
Trustees, reported in 1928 that approximately fifteen hundred

12. Professors joined students at the turn of the century in
protesting an "outrage" by Charlottesville police.

students enrolled in the university in 1920-21 subscribed a
total of $142,000. This money was to go toward the building
of the new gymnasium, as a memorial to the men from the
university who had died in the war, and was to be paid by Jan.
1, 1926. Only $57,000 had been collected by that date, and
654 of the delinquent subscribers refused to answer any correspondence
on the subject. At the end of the drive, total collections
from all sources were only $1,037,851.54. Yet, as Robert
B. Tunstall, treasurer of the Alumni Board of Trustees of
the Endowment Fund, reported in 1931, the fund "rendered
possible the erection of the gymnasium, of the orthopedic and
obstetrical wing of the hospital, and the completion of the new
medical group of buildings; and the income from it has been,
and is being, of help to the University in a variety of important
ways."

A contribution of $1,000 to the fund was promised by "the
Knights of the Ku Klux Klan" in a letter published in 1921 in
College Topics. Payment was pledged by Jan. 1, 1926. Nothing
further was heard, and no effort seems to have been made to
collect the money.

The Klan was undergoing a revival at the time in various
parts of the country. It was much less vigorous in Virginia than
in most areas, but for the next few years there would be occasional
parades in Charlottesville, at least one speech by a
Klansman at the courthouse, and a couple of meetings in
downtown churches. A University of Virginia Klan was
formed by a few students, but they soon withdrew from the
organization in a letter to Imperial Wizard William J. Simmons
in Atlanta, citing "misconduct, misrepresentation, broken
promises, financial ambitions contrary to the principles of the
order."

A branch of an organization called the Anglo-Saxon Clubs
of America was then formed at the university, under the leadership
of John Powell, the pianist, with Dr. Paul B. Barringer
as president. Its purposes were described as "to preserve the
purity of the white race and to maintain the qualities and purposes
of the Anglo-Saxon race." With Powell spearheading the
effort, it successfully sponsored legislation at the 1924 session
of the General Assembly forbidding any intermarriage between
whites and those with a single drop of Negro blood.
Nothing further was heard of the organization.

Although the Ku Klux Klan managed to participate in a few
church gatherings in Charlottesville, it had no role in such
services at the university. The usual weekly worship in the
chapel was abandoned in 1920, and one well-attended service
each term was substituted. Prominent speakers were obtained,
and the chapel was often crowded to capacity. Most of the university's
religious life revolved around the student YMCA,
which worked with the various churches of the community in
promoting student attendance. Prof. John C. Metcalf's Sunday
Bible Class was also a major religious event.

In the previous chapter we noted the controversy over admission
of women to the university. It began in the 1890s and
ended, temporarily, in their admission, over the strong objections
of professors, students, and alumni, to the graduate and
professional schools at the session of 1920-21.

Arrival of the first group of females, numbering seventeen,
in September 1920 was greeted with a distinct lack of enthusiasm
by the male contingent. In fact, their entry into classes
was signalized at times by loud stamping of feet—so much so,
that in at least one instance the professor felt it necessary to
lecture the group concerning their lack of courtesy. Various
student organizations commented that they didn't like having
the ladies either but that stamping was unmannerly, that the
coeds were "here to stay," and the men should make the best
of it. Most professors were decidedly unhappy over the entry
of the women, but only one went as far as French Prof. Richard
H. Wilson. He ordered a coed out of his class.

By 1922 Dean of Women Adelaide Douglas Simpson reported
that "the furore attending the admission of women to
the university has had two years in which to die away, and . . .
it no longer causes a sensation for a woman to appear in a
classroom or laboratory."

Shortly after the admission of the ladies in 1920-21, they
organized an association known as the Women's Self-Government
Association. Among their chief desires was a women's
dormitory or women's building that would make possible
some sort of social life. They were living in widely separated
places throughout the community. A series of informal teas
was held each Friday afternoon in Peabody Hall.

By the opening of the 1924-25 session, sixty-one coeds
were enrolled, distributed as follows: law, two; medicine,

seven; graduate, fourteen; education, thirty-six; college, two.
Three years later the first sorority, Chi Omega, established a
chapter at the university, and Kappa Delta followed in 1932.

A suite of three rooms on West Range was made available in
1929 for coed rest and recreation, with President and Mrs.
Alderman as hosts for the opening. The rooms, formerly used
by art and architecture students, had been completely redecorated.
The largest room was equipped with a piano and orthophonic
victrola, comfortable chairs, and an open fireplace.
The second room had kitchen equipment, and the third was
a rest room. A maid was in attendance part of each day to
serve tea.

Mrs. Mary Jeffcoat Hamblin, who had been named dean of
women to succeed Dean Simpson, resigned in 1934, and in
the following year Miss Roberta Hollingsworth was appointed
to the position. Miss Hollingsworth would serve until 1967,
nearly a third of a century, almost until the entry of women
on the same basis as men. She was an A.B. of Goucher College
and a Ph.D. of the University of Virginia. After four years as
instructor in Spanish at Agnes Scott College, she joined the
university's Spanish faculty. A woman of considerable good
looks, charm, and executive ability, she was active in various
aspects of university affairs. In 1953 she married Prof. Allan
T. Gwathmey of the chemistry faculty. Her last years were
shadowed by her husband's premature death and her own serious
illnesses.

In the early 1930s the vast majority of students were still
unalterably opposed to coeducation under any circumstances.
College Topics, edited by Murat Williams, said in 1934: "If Virginia
draws more coeds, and the lure and lilt of the Lawn gives
way to the love-making atmosphere of the mid-Western campus,
we advocate a second Rotunda fire and the deletion of
the last phrase, `founder [sic] of the University of Virginia,'
from Jefferson's epitaph."

And Prof. Herman Patrick Johnson, a bachelor, opined,
"Women are lovely creatures, but they should not be educated."

President Alderman assumed that the commonwealth would
eventually establish a college for women, but he opposed creation
of an entirely separate institution. His original preference
had been for a coordinate college similar to those at

Harvard, Columbia, Oxford, and Cambridge, at or near the
university. Subsequently he came to the view that one of Virginia's
normal schools should be converted for the purpose.

A hearing on establishment of a coordinate college was held
at the Capitol in Richmond in late 1929 before a state commission
headed by Judge Don P. Halsey of Lynchburg. Representatives
of various organizations, with Mrs. Mary Cooke
Branch Munford as spokeswoman, said that the college
should be at Charlottesville, and if this was refused, "the General
Assembly will make the university coeducational."

Dr. Alderman and five of the seven members of the Board
of Visitors present preferred placing the college away from
Charlottesville, with Alderman specifically favoring either the
Fredericksburg or Harrisonburg State Teachers' College. The
Halsey Commission, in its report, recommended that the institution
be located at or near Roanoke, Lynchburg, Harrisonburg,
or Fredericksburg. Legislation was passed by the General
Assembly in 1930 stipulating that any college coordinate
with the university be located at least thirty miles from Charlottesville.
Nothing further was done about the matter for a
good many years.

Another controversy engulfed the university over a long period.
It involved the effort to move the Medical School to Richmond
on the ground that Charlottesville was so small that the
school lacked adequate clinical facilities. This contention was
advanced by two members of the university's faculty as early
as the mid-1830s, before any medical institution had been established
in Richmond and was revived on various occasions
after the Medical College of Virginia (MCV) began operations
there.

As chairman of a Virginia Education Commission in 1912,
Dr. Alderman advocated a merger of the two schools in Richmond,
in accordance with the findings of the commission. He
was to change his mind later as to the desirability of this move,
but at that time he doubted whether an adequate medical
school could be developed in a small town.

Dean Theodore Hough conceded when the controversy
over the proposed merger was at its height that from about
1905 to 1915 "we could not honestly say that we were sure
that ultimate success could be attained" by the university's

Medical School. It was his view that "if adequate funds were
offered to place the school on its proper basis, either at the
University or in Richmond, it was our duty to seize the opportunity,
provided University ideals and control were assured."

Gov. Westmoreland Davis recommended in his message to
the 1920 General Assembly creation of a Commission on Medical
Education charged with the duty of studying the desirability
of establishing a single state-supported medical school,
with suggestions as to how this might be achieved. After the
report of the commission, the UVA and MCV Boards of Visitors
would meet and try to agree upon a plan of consolidation.
Delegate Wilbur C. Hall of Loudoun was named commission
chairman with Dean Hough as secretary.

It seemed probable as the hearings got under way that there
was general agreement among commission members that the
two medical schools should be consolidated, since there was
the strong feeling that two state-supported medical schools
were too many. There remained the problems of where the
consolidated institution would be located and how it would be
financed.

Advocates of placing the projected school at Charlottesville
argued that adequate clinical material could be provided
there. They pointed to the fact that highly successful medical
schools had been developed in small towns by the state universities
of Michigan, Iowa, and Wisconsin.

However, following the commission hearings, that body
voted five to four that there should be a merger of the two
institutions at Richmond. A bill carrying out this recommendation
was introduced in the General Assembly at the 1922
session. It provided that the University of Virginia should "establish
the Medical Department of the university, including
the School of Pharmacy and Dentistry, at the city of Richmond,
upon the unconditional transfer to them of the property
of the Medical College of Virginia, subject only to its
existing liabilities." But those liabilities were great; the college
at Richmond was, in fact, on the verge of bankruptcy. No provision
was made in the legislation for additional financing or
facilities, and this whole vital aspect of the matter was left
vaguely to the future. A group of Richmond bankers and
businessmen did agree to pay off a $207,000 indebtedness of
MCV if the merger should be effected.

13. "Uncle Henry" Martin, the university's bellringer for decades.

The university's partisans determined to fight the bill. President
Alderman testified at length, as did Dean Hough, and
both risked serious illness with their strenuous exertions. With
tongue in cheek Prof. John L. Newcomb told the committee:
"Yes, we agree that the Medical School ought to be in Richmond
where there are fine clinical facilities; and we also want
the Engineering School at Pittsburgh, where there are more
factories, and the Modern Language Department in Switzerland,
the linguistic capital of the world."

Garland M. McNutt, '10, headed the university's lobby
against the bill and was credited with doing extremely effective
work. State Sen. N. B. Early, '94, of Greene County led
the opposition on the floor of the Senate. The bill was soundly
defeated there by a vote of 24 to 16. That ended efforts to
move the university's medical school to Richmond. (There was
brief discussion in the late 1940s of a "partial merger" of the
two schools, but the subject was soon dropped.)

Alderman came home in triumph from the 1922 hearing.
As in 1914, the students went to the railroad station to greet
him; with them was a band and an ancient tallyho. They
pulled the vehicle, bearing him and Dean Hough, to the Corner
and called upon them to speak. In a letter to a friend
Alderman wrote: "The boys had gotten a cow, covered it with
white sheeting, and in large letters had written: `The victory
is ours—and this ain't no bull.' I caught sight of myself in
a store window as the tallyho went by and, believe me, I was a
helluva-looking hero."

Since the Medical School was now free from the threat of
being moved to Richmond, Dean Hough and his associates
could address themselves to the effective development of its
needs. Some of these were met by a gift of $50,000 from Paul
Goodloe McIntire toward the erection of a new $118,000
building for obstetrics, orthopedics, and pediatrics and additional
private rooms. It opened in 1924. Also, recent consolidation
of the public health work of the university, the city of
Charlottesville, and the county of Albemarle "places on our
very doorsteps one of the strongest health units in the South,"
said Hough. He saw it as an exceptional opportunity to train
men for public health service, especially in the rural areas.

The faculty of the School of Medicine made a significant
decision in 1926 when they agreed to accept income "ceilings."

Fees over and above the ceiling formed the basis for a departmental
fund in each clinical department. Later the money
thus collected was distributed through the university bursar's
office, after certain amounts had been deducted for departmental
purposes.

The Ennion G. Williams Preventorium was constructed in
1927 with $40,000 contributed by the Virginia State Teachers'
Association. Paul G. McIntire made a $75,000 gift in 1932 for
the study of psychiatry. This sum, plus a grant from the federal
Works Progress Administration, made possible the addition
in 1936 of two floors atop the preventorium. Completion
of the new Medical Building at a cost of $1,400,000,
was a significant event of 1929. This was made possible
by an $800,000 grant from the General Education Board, a
$250,000 appropriation from the Virginia legislature, and a
number of smaller gifts from alumni and friends totaling
$350,000. A nurses' home was constructed in 1931, thanks to
a bequest from Dr. Randolph McKim, and it was appropriately
named McKim Hall. The $200,000 Barringer Wing of
the hospital, named for Dr. Paul Barringer, was opened in
1936, to provide special accommodations and service to private
patients. An interns' building in the rear of McKim Hall
was completed in 1941, and in that same year the West Wing
of the hospital was added thanks to a $325,000 appropriation
from the General Assembly. This wing provided improved facilities
for ward patients.

The School of Nursing received an important impetus in
1926 when $50,000 was made available by the Graduate
Nurses' Association for the establishment of the Sadie Heath
Cabiness School of Nursing; it became a subdivision of the
School of Education in 1928. At that time there were just two
faculty members and three students. Adequate library, laboratory,
and other facilities were lacking, as were well-prepared
nurse instructors and graduate nurse supervisors, but it was a
beginning.

Two years in high school had been required in 1920 as a
prerequisite to nursing, with college work on degrees preferred.
Before that time the requirement consisted of a practical
nursing class weekly and night classes at varying times.
One hundred nurses had been recruited for Base Hospital 41
in World War I, and distinguished service was rendered. The

School of Nursing's new modern classroom building, completed
in 1972, was named for Josephine McLeod, who made
an exceptional record as superintendent from 1924 to 1937.

It was difficult in the early years of the century to persuade
women to go into nursing. The profession was looked down
on, and one mother told her daughter who planned to begin
training as a nurse, "I'd rather see you dead and buried." This
was a fairly common attitude.

Effective supplementary service was provided the nurses at
the hospital by the Women's Auxiliary, Circle of King's Daughters.
It was composed of wives of professors in all departments.
"Outsiders and divorcees, as well as the newer doctors'
wives, were taboo" and could not be members, according to
Sarah S. Matthews, author of a highly readable history of the
hospital's first fifty years. The taboo was lifted subsequently.

Dr. Stephen H. Watts, nationally known head of the Department
of Surgery, was the most prominent member of the
medical faculty in these years. Known as "Burly" to the students,
when he wasn't listening, Dr. Watts achieved celebrity
by reconstructing the nose of a man whose proboscis had been
shot away while turkey hunting in the early 1900s. One of the
man's friends apparently "mistook his nose for a turkey," and
it was shot almost entirely off. A substitute nose was fashioned
from the patient's little finger, and was covered with a flap of
skin from another part of his anatomy. The result was said to
be of such quality that the man's physiognomy seemed virtually
normal.

Watts had been trained at Johns Hopkins under the famous
Dr. William S. Halsted. The surgical department at the University
of Virginia, as it is known today, dates from 1907, when
Watts was appointed its head. He introduced the residence
system for surgeons, the first in the South, and excelled both
as a teacher and a clinician. Many were dismayed when he
announced in 1928 that he was retiring, after twenty-one
years as head of the department. He was then at the height of
his powers and lived until 1953, aged seventy-five. He left
$500,000 to the Medical School.

Dr. William H. Goodwin worked with Dr. Watts, and for a
quarter of a century he and Watts were, in effect, the Department
of Surgery and Gynecology. Goodwin organized Base

14. Dr. Paul B. Barringer, chairman of the faculty, 1896-1903.

Hospital 41 in World War I and was chief surgeon with the
rank of colonel. He became a full professor in 1926 and retired
ten years later. It was said that teaching was not his forte
and he disliked administration, but he was a dedicated surgeon
and popular with both faculty and students.

Dr. Edwin P. Lehman succeeded Watts as chief surgeon in
1928 and served until he retired in 1953. An honor graduate
of Harvard Medical School and a leader in cancer control and
research, he was elected president of the American Cancer
Society in 1947. He was also president of the Southern Surgical
Association. Lehman was an especially skillful teacher.

Dr. John Staige Davis, who taught the practice of medicine
for more than thirty years, was the second of that name to
serve on the medical faculty. He was noted for the charm of
his lectures. Jokes, anecdotes, and witticisms made them
memorable, and as Dr. Harry J. Warthen, Jr., expressed it in
1935 in presenting the university a portrait of Davis, the gift
of the class of 1925, "His classical references and apt quotations
enlivened the most prosaic subject, and what was still
more important, they enabled us to remember it." Davis's personality
and character left a lasting impress on many of his
students. A small, wiry, high-strung man who moved quickly
and seemed always to be in a hurry, he was a pioneer in neurology
and psychiatry. That department was accordingly
named for him, as were the wards for patients suffering from
those disabilities. His end was a sad one, for he lay paralyzed
from a stroke for nearly six years. He died in 1933.

Dean Theodore Hough's death occurred in 1924, partly,
perhaps, as a result of his unremitting exertions in the Medical
School fight. An able administrator with a somewhat forbidding
personality, he was succeeded as dean by Dr. James C.
Flippin, a member of the faculty since 1902, who served as
dean until 1939. Under his firm leadership the Medical School
made further progress and acquired new buildings costing
over $2,000,000. Flippin was an excellent teacher and was famous
for his sense of humor and contagious chuckle.

Another notable member of the faculty was Dr. Halstead S.
Hedges, a specialist in diseases of the eye, ear, nose, and
throat, who served from 1905 to 1938. Hedges lived to be
nearly 102 and was a well-known archer and angler.

No account of medical affairs in the 1920s would be complete
without reference to Dr. John A. Hornsby, superintendent
of the hospital from 1923 to 1931. A former U.S. Army
medical man and obvious martinet, he "inspired fear and
loved it, gleefully bullying the timid," Sarah S. Matthews
writes. "I haven't time to say good morning," Hornsby barked
in his parade ground voice. Unaccustomed to dealing with
blacks, he discharged the entire kitchen and dining room
force and installed white mountaineers. It soon developed
that they couldn't cook anything but the simplest dishes, and
those in a style unappetizing to lowlanders. Furthermore, they
got drunk on pay day and engaged in a free-for-all in the
kitchen. The bellicose Dr. Hornsby waded into the melee, disarmed
the ringleader and fired the entire lot. The black help
were reinstated.

On a trip to Washington, D.C., Hornsby was knocked down
by an automobile and promptly taken to Walter Reed Hospital.
When he asked how they happened to take him to Walter
Reed instead of some other hospital, the reply was, "We knew
you were an army man; you were giving orders before you hit
the ground." Despite, or perhaps because of, his modus operandi,
the hospital made considerable progress during his regime.
It was a period of "tremendous growth and change,"
with much hiring and firing. The hospital was placed on the
accredited list of the American College of Surgeons. Hornsby
retired in 1931 but "refused with scorn the customary farewell
honors," says Sarah Matthews.

A notable personality around the hospital for more than
half a century was Stewart R. Fuller, a black major domo
known with admiration and affection to generations of teachers,
patients, and students. Endowed with polished manners,
innate dignity, and fabulous ability to remember names, Fuller
was hardly less than an institution. "There are two perfect
gentlemen in the university," Dr. Paul Barringer remarked,
"Dr. Alderman in the president's office and Stewart Fuller in
the hospital." Fuller was honored in 1953 by the Medical
Alumni Association on his completion of half a century of service.
He was made an honorary member of the association,
given the "class designation" of the medical class of 1903, and
a loving cup and watch and chain. He remained in his position

for several more years until failing health forced his retirement.

University enrollment was beginning to tilt in the late 1920s
toward the Northeast and away from the Southeast and
South. In former days New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania
had been represented only to a minor extent in the student
body, but that picture was changing. The number of
Jewish students, especially from New York, was growing.
Aware that there was a minimum of anti-Semitism at Virginia,
Jews were applying in greater numbers, until for the session
of 1926-27 they constituted about 8.5 percent of the student
body, as compared with 5 percent three or four years before.
They were usually among the ablest scholars in the institution.

Entrance requirements at the university in the 1920s were
extremely low and had been the subject of debate for years.
However, former Dean B. F. D. Runk, long a distinguished
member of the faculty, stated in 1969 that the curriculum in
the 1920s "was as tough as, if not tougher, than it is today.
Required courses were rigid. . . . Requirements for remaining
in the university were very liberal, but it was difficult to get
that degree." Of course "Dee" Runk deplored the ease with
which students were admitted during those years.

College Topics said editorially in 1927 that the institution had
"practically no entrance requirements" and "everyone who
can write an English sentence of three words is admitted."
This was an obvious exaggeration, but the time had come to
do something about the situation. At the session of 1927-28
requirements were substantially tightened, and about two
hundred students who had been allowed to stay in school despite
dismal academic performance were dropped. The university
had been plagued for many years by the presence of
mediocre undergraduates, with too little ambition and too
much money. Frequently they were flunk-outs from Ivy
League colleges or they had been rejected by one or more of
those institutions. The university was strapped for funds and
needed their tuition fees; but things had gotten out of hand.

In the Law School, too, requirements were being raised.
Law had been a two-year course before 1909; at that time it
was expanded to three years. However, there was no requirement
for prelaw college work, and one year of such work was

added in 1920-21. In 1922-23 another year of prelaw was
stipulated. Dean Lile called attention to the fact that he and
his colleagues were carrying an excessive burden. He stated
that "six hours a week is the normal schedule in other law
schools of our class. . . . Our schedule calls for nine hours a
week (six periods of 1-½ hours. . . . This was the schedule in
1881-82 when I was a student)." Dean Lile and Professors
Charles A. Graves, Raleigh C. Minor, Armistead M. Dobie,
and George B. Eager constituted the faculty, and in addition
to the lectures each of them corrected from 500 to 700 examination
papers during the session. Graves had passed the
age of retirement, Minor's health was failing rapidly, and Lile
was within three years of retiring.

Other complaints as to the inadequacy of staff were being
made throughout the university. For example, biology Prof.
Ivey F. Lewis said, apropos of his department, that he did not
believe "there exists anywhere in this university or in any
other institution of coordinate rank . . . so grave and pressing
a condition of understaffed instruction." He and Prof. William
A. Kepner were carrying the entire load, with only $1,500 for
"a subsidiary instructional budget." He requested the extraordinarily
modest sum of $500 for research. Such was the
shoestring on which the university was being operated in
those days.

The Department of Engineering also was suffering from an
insufficient number of teachers, but, like the Law School, it
was broadening and raising its requirements. Effective in
1919-20, all candidates for engineering degrees were required
to take courses in English literature, economics, and
business administration. This approach was developed further
in 1926-27, when in order to provide a broader culture
for the students, other liberal arts courses were incorporated
into the curriculum. And to answer the demand for research,
a fifth year was provided, "at the end of which the successful
student will receive the titled degree in civil, mechanical, electrical,
chemical and mining engineering."

In the Department of Graduate Studies, requirements were
raised in 1921-22 for the M.A. and M.S. degrees; a thesis was
required for the first time as a prerequisite for those diplomas.
Graduate work had received little emphasis or encouragement
from President Alderman until the early 1920s. Dumas

Malone observed in his biography of Alderman: "He never
valued minute research as some of his colleagues thought he
should have; and even if he had, obviously he was convinced
that the time to emphasize it in the South and in this institution
had not yet come. It is not surprising, therefore, that the
enrollment in the Department of Graduate Studies in this decade
[Alderman's first as president] hovered in the thirties. He
placed far greater emphasis on the professional departments."

As Graduate Dean Richard Heath Dabney put it in a letter
to Alderman during the 1920-21 session, the department
"can never become a flourishing one until we have a larger
teaching force." He expressed the hope that the endowment
fund sought in connection with the centennial would make
this possible. And during the next session Dabney wrote Alderman
concerning the office of the graduate department,
which he described as a "wretched hole with a rotten floor,
with a ceiling and walls that are constantly dropping scales of
plaster upon the table and floor, and with unworthy, dilapidated
furniture." These accommodations had been occupied
by the department for some years. Dabney resigned as dean
in 1923 "to devote more time to teaching and writing." He had
served in the position since 1905.

In addition to the foregoing obstacles affecting the development
of an adequate graduate school, there was what Prof.
L. G. Hoxton, long head of the Physics Department, termed
"a certain attitude of indifference amounting to hostility toward
research, particularly on the part of older and influential
members of the faculty." Hoxton joined the faculty in
1906, and he said said that "it did not take long" to sense the
foregoing attitude. "Remarks were made such as `Thomas Jefferson
founded the University of Virginia for the imparting
of knowledge, not its discovery'(!!)," Hoxton wrote in 1948, on
his retirement. "Scorn was expressed for `these Hopkins specialists.'
`Our business is to teach these boys and not to rush
into print,' and so on. . . . An alumnus, a physicist, once said
to me: `About 1872 a crust of self-satisfaction began to form.'
. . . This picture, on the whole, is correct."

Prof. John C. Metcalf, a greatly admired teacher of English,
was named dean of the Department of Graduate Studies succeeding
Dabney, and in Malone's words, the "hitherto neglected"
department was assigned the entire pavilion on the

15. Eppa Rixey, star university pitcher who went to the major
leagues and was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1963.

Lawn formerly occupied by the late Prof. Raleigh C. Minor
and family. This immediately made possible a more effective
operation. Also, in the next few years it was financially feasible
for the university to employ additional teaching staff.

Writing to a member of the university faculty, Prof. Edgar
F. Shannon of Washington and Lee, father of the future president
of the University of Virginia, stated that the latter institution
was the "natural place" for development of a first-rate
graduate school for the South and that he hoped to see such
a school there. The low state of graduate studies at Charlottesville
as of 1925 was seen in a poll of hundreds of professors in
American colleges and universities, ranking the nation's
graduate schools in twenty fields of study. The University of
Virginia was not even mentioned. Yet in 1925 the university
awarded more than twice as many Ph.D.s as any other southern
institution, as follows: Virginia, nine; North Carolina,
four; Texas, Tulane, Rice, and South Carolina, two each.

A significant pioneering effort was initiated two years later
by the Richmond alumni chapter, with Dr. Carrington Williams
and Andrew D. Christian as the leaders. The chapter
pledged to provide $20,000, payable $4,000 a year for five
years, for the establishment of a research fellowship in history.
The following year Raphael Semmes of Trinity College was
named to the position, but he lasted through only one session.
Dumas Malone, who had joined the faculty several years before,
was then chosen the research fellow. He made a distinguished
record, as did Thomas P. Abernethy, who succeeded
him.

The primary impetus to research during these years was
provided by establishment of the Institute for Research in the
Social Sciences, with Wilson Gee as director. The institute was
to give particular attention to problems of the state of Virginia.
A gift from the Laura Spelman Rockefeller Foundation
provided $27,500 annually for research over a five-year period.
Banking and currency, labor, industrialization, criminal
justice, local finances, and taxes were among the subjects to be
addressed. By the end of 1929 Wilson Gee was able to announce
that ten of the eighteen studies projected by the institute
had been completed, with three more approaching completion.

President Alderman was now enthusiastically behind the
development of more and better graduate work. He wrote
that the Graduate School, "carrying forward work on the
highest level, is the supreme contribution of the university to
society." He also declared that "in the great fields of mathematics,
history, astronomy, political science, economics and sociology
eight research professorships or associates exist, the
incumbents of which devote practically their entire time to research
and publication." Comprehensive examinations for all
M.A. candidates were introduced in 1926-27. Dean Metcalf
asserted in 1928 that, "taken as a whole, the University of Virginia
is ahead of all other Southern universities in research"
and that "this has been confirmed by an expert who has investigated
graduate study and research in Southern institutions."
The important role of the Institute for Research in the Social
Sciences was stressed by Prof. Stringfellow Barr, who had been
aided by the institute in writing his life of Mazzini. "It would
be difficult to exaggerate the value of the institute in developing
historical research at the university," he wrote, "and it
would be difficult to exaggerate the sympathetic intelligence
with which its director and council have met requests for aid
from members of the history faculty." On the institute's tenth
anniversary in 1936, it was announced that the various faculties
in the social sciences had published forty-four volumes, of
which twenty-six were prepared under institute auspices. Furthermore,
the General Assembly, for the first time in its history,
appropriated "a significant lump sum specifically for research
at the university," an appropriation that was increased
two years later.

There were many complaints from faculty members during
the 1920s that their salary scale was too low. A 25 percent increase
across the board had been put into effect for the session
of 1919-20, but inflation following World War I more than
wiped this out, and the teaching staff was extremely unhappy.
Eighty-four of them signed resolutions in 1928 requesting a
minimum increase of 40 percent, since this would "restore the
actual value of the salaries paid to the economic level of the
salaries paid in the year 1913." One of their grievances was
that the university had embarked on a costly building program
while failing to give due attention to the professorial pay

scale. Furthermore, at the time of the centennial President
Alderman had led them to believe, no doubt in entire good
faith, that the centennial endowment fund would make
higher salaries possible. The fund failed by a wide margin to
reach its goal, and salaries were among the casualties.

Suddenly it was made known that Philip Francis du Pont, a
recently deceased alumnus, member of the wealthy du Pont
family of Wilmington, Del., and author of several volumes
of verse, had bequeathed to the university a trust fund of
$6,000,000—half of it for fellowships and scholarships and
the rest unrestricted. The bequest was made despite the fact
that du Pont was dismissed from the university in 1900 for
"persistent neglect of duty," apparently for inattention to his
classwork. His handsome gift not only raised the institution's
endowment to $10,000,000, a figure exceeded by only two or
three state universities, but it made possible substantial salary
increases for the administrative and teaching staffs, effective
with the session of 1930-31. Full professors in the college and
graduate departments were getting $4,500 and now would be
raised to $6,000; associate professors might receive as much
as $4,250, and assistant professors $3,400. Still larger raises
were provided in some of the professional departments, and
deans and assistant deans shared in the good fortune. But
with the Great Depression underway and getting steadily
worse, the euphoria was short lived.

In the student body the customs and traditions of earlier days
were being maintained in the 1920s, and coats and ties were
worn at all times, but alarm was expressed in the collegiate
organs of opinion lest the enrollment get out of hand; if it
went beyond two thousand, they said, the old university would
be no more. (By the end of the decade the figure was approaching
twenty-five hundred.) Among the long-established
customs was the tipping of hats by students to professors and
by professors to students, with the latter showing complete
deference on all occasions. There was never any thought of
making "demands" on the administration or the faculty; a polite
request was the maximum that anybody considered. If you
passed a group of students you knew, there was no hat tipping,
of course, but you usually said "Good morning, gentlemen"
or just "Gentlemen." In an article in the Outlook George

16. Robert K. (Bobby) Gooch, brilliant university quarterback.

Marvin wrote: "At the University of Virginia the word `gentleman'
means something very definite. In some localities in
these hurrying times it has lost its definition."

On the other hand, there was the very real danger that gentlemanliness
at Virginia was degenerating into supercilious indifference.
A well-nigh pathological fear of "sticking one's
neck out" seemed to cause near-paralysis when an effort was
made to get the students to act affirmatively for the good of
the university or even to answer questions in class. Anyone
who replied to a question addressed by the professor to the
class as a whole was widely regarded as a show-off. In the early
1920s it was also taboo to wear a preparatory or high school
athletic letter on Lambeth Field; the proper thing was to turn
the sweater wrong-side-out, lest one's "neck" protrude unduly.
During one whole session it was considered bad form to wear
anything but a white shirt and solid black tie; if anybody had
had the gall to appear in a striped cravat, he would have been
blackballed from one end of the Grounds to the other. Also, it
was always called the "Grounds," never the "campus." "Campus"
was considered too "collegiate," as was excessive cheering
at games. In the same vein it was "first-year men," never
"freshmen"; and the first-year men did not wear beanies in
the manner of those at the despised "rah-rah" institutions;
their instructions were to wear hats and not hang around the
Corner. College Topics protested that "every worthwhile thing
that has been accomplished has simply been the work of some
individual sticking out his neck," but the prevailing attitude
was to the contrary.

Director of Athletics James G. Driver, an alumnus who had
attended or been affiliated with several other institutions, remarked
in 1930: "There is less effort on the part of clubs and
fraternities and other organizations to do some constructive
work for the university than I have found at any other college
or university with which I have ever been connected."

University of Virginia students in the 1920s also were overwhelmingly
lacking in anything remotely resembling a social
conscience. Concern for the poor or the disadvantaged was
almost unknown among them, and the race problem for them
was virtually nonexistent. It was much the same at other institutions
in that era. "College life was just a continuation of prep

school," an alumnus of another university observed in later
years.

Weekends on the Grounds were quiet and uneventful.
Classes met six days a week, and hardly anybody had an automobile;
hence the temptation to take off for Hollins or
Sweet Briar, Washington or New York was at a minimum.
Nearly everybody stayed at the university; it was an opportunity
to see more of one's fellow students, to do a little sociable
drinking, or even to catch up on neglected class assignments.
There were tennis courts behind Madison Hall, but Madison
Hall outraged the young men by issuing a ukase that nobody
could use them on Sunday. Impromptu games of baseball or
touch football could be arranged on Lambeth Field, or basketball
in the gymnasium. Since the enrollment was smaller
and the student body more homogeneous than it later became,
close relations existed between students in the college
and those in the professional or graduate schools, and this
situation was enhanced on weekends. Students also intermingled
with the faculty at such times and were entertained by
the professors and their families.

Greater understanding between faculty and students likewise
was promoted by what was called "College Hour" or
"University Hour." This was a monthly rite in Cabell Hall from
1908 to 1922, was then abandoned because of little student
interest, but was revived three years later. It had previously
involved only speakers from the college, but on being reinstituted
embraced the entire university. Students, alumni, and
even outsiders were invited to be on the program.

Fraternities did their rushing in the early fall as the decade
opened, but in 1924 the Interfraternity Council proposed that
pledging of "goats" be delayed until February, a proposal
heartily endorsed by President Alderman and Dean Page.
Early rushing was one of the main causes for the poor scholastic
showing of many first-year men, about one-third of
whom were being dropped annually at the end of their freshman
year. Thirteen of the thirty fraternities endorsed the plan
for postponed rushing and put it into effect, but the plan was
abandoned soon thereafter. Fraternity pledging and the problems
surrounding it would be a subject of controversy over a
long period.

Only about half of the students belonged to the relatively
expensive fraternities, and the university was never a "rich
man's school," reports to the contrary notwithstanding. The
charge that a poor boy had "no chance of getting an education"
at Charlottesville, made during the medical school fight,
was answered by Dr. Alderman with the statement that 47 percent
of the student body were working their way through, in
whole or in part. Seventy percent of the medical class "are
partially self-supporting," he declared.

The leap in enrollment after World War I caused serious
crowding around the Grounds. Living quarters were hard to
find, and students were having to reside as far away as High
Street downtown and at Fry's Spring. Classrooms and laboratories
were badly overloaded. Yet construction of the first new
dormitories in over a century was viewed with alarm because
of a rule that first-year men would have to live in them. Compulsory
living in the dorms, it was argued, might well mean
undermining university traditions of individual liberty and
lead to the class system—another of those greatly feared characteristics
of "rah-rah" institutions. On the other hand, the
class system was endorsed on more than one occasion by university
publications. However, Dean Page expressed his opposition,
a factor weighty in the scales. He said that the faculty
had never favored it, and added: "The university was organized
as an institution for men and not for boys, and it is for
this reason that we have never had anything like hazing at the
university. The fear has been expressed by some that if we
introduced freshmen, sophomores, and other classes, the college
would lose something of its ancient dignity on account of
class rushes, etc."

The first dormitories, situated west of Monroe Hill overlooking
the old golf links, were completed and occupied in
1929, and the twelve units were named for that number of
professors who served during the nineteenth century—George
Tucker, George Long, Gessner Harrison, William B. Rogers,
William H. McGuffey, Basil L. Gildersleeve, George F. Holmes,
Charles S. Venable, William E. Peters, John W. Mallet, Noah
K. Davis, and Francis H. Smith.

While the first-year men were being required to live in the
dormitories, the older ones were finding rooms with the fraternities
or in rooming houses. Among the latter, Miss Betty

Cocke's and Miss Betty Booker's, on University Avenue between
Madison Lane and Chancellor Street, were the most
popular. They housed students for generations; Miss Cocke
and Miss Booker were viewed with affection by their roomers
and were personalities in their own right. Miss Virginia Mason
and Mrs. Robert P. Hamilton, who had highly-regarded rooming
houses on Madison Lane and Chancellor Street, respectively,
also were ladies of charm. The top-ranking place for
meals in this era was Mrs. E. M. Page's, on University Avenue
just west of the Corner. For a quick snack many patronized
Johnson's on Main Street at the crest of the hill beyond the
C&O bridge, where a motion picture house was built later.
This eatery was established in 1895, and a special service was
the delivery of letters to the night trains. Amorous swains
trudged down to Johnson's in the late hours so that their missives
would reach their inamoratas next day. The establishment
boasted in 1930 that it had handled "over six million
letters in the past 34 years."

Many of the boys who wrote these letters invited their fair
ones to the university for Easter Week, observed annually during
the week following Easter Sunday. Easter Week was the
social highlight of the year over a long period. For nearly all
of the nineteenth century, however, Finals was the time for
merriment and wassail, for terpsichorean diversions in the
Rotunda and Chinese lanterns on the Lawn. But just before
the turn of the century Easter Week, or "Easters," as it came
to be called, began taking the spotlight. Fayerweather Gymnasium
was the scene of the Easter dances, with a dance each
night from Monday through Saturday; they were moved to
the new Memorial Gym in the mid-1920s. "Openings" in the
fall and "Midwinters" were less strenuous and prolonged. The
participating young people at all of these events were dressed
in their best, the girls in evening dresses, perfumed and powdered,
the boys in white tie and tails. These formal dances
were in glaring contrast to the carryings-on at Easters in the
1970s, when many students and their dates wallowed about in
mudholes, swilling grain alcohol drinks from large fruit juice
cans.

A "name" orchestra, usually Meyer Davis, furnished the
music in the 1920s for the Easter dances, which continued until
3 A.M. on weeknights, occasionally to 5 A.M. These dances

were variously sponsored by the Elis, Tilkas, PK Society, German
Club, Beta Theta Pi fraternity, Corks and Curls, and the
IMPs. All dances were "pledged," that is, no student could attend
who had had a drink of alcohol since noon of that day,
and were chaperoned by faculty wives. Students who took part
in these nocturnal revels found difficulty in getting to their
classes, and class-cutting was frequent.

No fraternity house dances were permitted, and girls did
not so much as enter those houses except on very special occasions,
and then with adequate chaperonage. Several fraternities
had carefully controlled house parties. A petition in
1929 from seventeen fraternities for permission to have
dances after those in the gymnasium had ended was denied
by the university's Administrative Council. There were loud
lamentations that this was "about the last thing in prep school
rules." College Topics issued a comprehensive blast not only
against the ban on late fraternity dances but also against "compulsory
attendance at classes, drinking and parking rules." It
went on to say that "requests made upon gentlemen are far
more effective" than regulations of this kind.

Fayerweather Gymnasium had been taken over by the art
and architecture students and was the scene of the annual
Beaux Arts Ball in the late 1920s and for some years thereafter.
Sponsored by Alpha Rho Chi, the architecture fraternity,
each ball had a theme, and the hall was tastefully decorated,
with costumes of the dancers to match. For example,
the Beaux Arts Ball of 1930 had as its theme the lost city of
Atlantis; the former gym was transformed into a temple in the
sunken city, with the orchestra at one end of the balcony and
a huge green idol at the other.

Important contrasts in the mores of that day and this may
be mentioned. One of them is seen in the poll taken in 1916
of 230 Princeton University seniors, forty-three of whom said
they had never kissed a girl; forty said they thought it would
be wrong to do so. Things were changing a bit a few years
later, as evidenced by an editorial observation in 1922 by the
Virginia Reel, the university's humorous monthly: "Holding
hands has given way to the experiment of the so unsavory
named `petting party.' " Such parties gravitated to what were
known as the "petting pits," two former ice pits behind Pop
Lannigan's house that had been converted into "rustic bowers

17. The 1915 football team that defeated Yale and made athletic history. Front row, left to right: George
Wayne Anderson, Claude Moore, Eugene N. Mayer, Captain Harris W. Coleman, Edward C. Anderson,
Harold A. Sparr, and James C. Ward. Second row: William A. Stuart, Richard E. Tippett, John C.
Calhoun, Richard N. Stillwell, John D. Brown, and Norborne Berkeley. Third row: James L. White,
Thomas G. Coleman, and Allen G. Thurman. Back row: John K. Gunby, assistant manager; Walter A.
Williams, Jr., manager; Dr. Harry H. Varner, coach; and Henry H. (Pop) Lannigan, trainer.

connected by a subterranean walk." Dr. W. A. Lambeth, who
was responsible for the university grounds, explained that the
pits had not been rehabilitated for the purpose of providing a
secluded spot for "spooning"; their roofs had caved in and
they had become dangerous, he said; there was a hole in one
of them into which a cow had fallen. However, it was stated
that "gallant young men and their frail charges sought the old
ice pits for the place of their heart-throbbing romances." This
petter's paradise fell into disuse with the coming of the automobile.

For many years the University of Virginia has had a reputation
for excessive drinking, a reputation that informed
persons believe to be undeserved. At most institutions bacchanalian
carouses are held behind closed doors, and the public
is unaware of them, but at Virginia drinking is more open.
For example, since the late nineteenth century the Eli Banana
ribbon society has paraded from time to time on Saturday
nights with drums beating and the members proclaiming to
all the sundry in the words of their alcoholic anthem, "We are
drunk boys, yes every one." While it could hardly be maintained
that these youths are all cold sober, neither are they all
drunk. Yet the amount of noise they make in public contributes
to the legend that Jefferson's university is soaked in rum.

The coming of state and national prohibition had little effect
on the drinking habits of students at this university or at
most others. Nineteen saloons had been operating night and
day on Charlottesville's Main Street, according to Charlie
Brown, the respected university barber, and when these were
closed, Dean Page rejoiced. But ere long the moonshiners and
bootleggers were in action, and almost the only difference was
that an inferior brand of whiskey was being sold. It came from
the fastnesses of the not distant Blue Ridge foothills, with
Shifflett's Hollow reputedly the principal source; emissaries
would canvass the fraternity houses, calling from the front
door to those within, "Yawl want any cawn likker today?"
Their project was raw and loaded with fusel oil, it might contain
dead bugs or other similar ingredients, and its potency
was such that, when swallowed, it seemed likely to remove the
top of one's cranium. But this "white lightning" was somehow
consumed without lethal effects; the hangovers were awesome
but the sufferers survived.

The manufacture of home brew was not widely pursued in
the years immediately following the enactment of prohibition,
but the technique was soon acquired and perfected. By the
mid-1920s the boys were brewing and bottling beer in substantial
quantities. The 1928 diary of Harrison (Tiz) Williams,
Jr., a popular senior engineering student who lived on the
lawn and was tragically killed in a motorcycle accident almost
immediately following his graduation, affords abundant evidence
of this. As for the price of moonshine at that time, Williams
records that he bought five gallons of raw corn whiskey
for $30. Rye was $8 a gallon.

Another important statement in the diary is that a representative
of something calling itself the Intercollegiate Prohibition
Association asked Dean Page to allow three of its stooges
to register as students and spy on the boys in order to get
evidence of dry law violations. It was said to have been one of
the rare occasions when the dean allowed himself to indulge
in unrestrained profanity.

Despite wild charges of drunken orgies at the university,
consumption of alcohol there seems to have been no greater
than at the average institution of higher learning. Stern regulations,
spelled out in the university catalogue, provided for
dismissal of any student convicted of public drunkenness, and
there were expulsions. The Charlottesville police said they
would enforce the prohibition law strictly against the students,
and President Alderman, a believer in prohibition, said he
thought such enforcement was proper. The student body
passed resolutions condemning drunkenness in public.

There were stringent rules also against violation of the dry
laws by the faculty, and this led to the suspension for a year of
Prof. Albert Lefevre. He was driving to Richmond with
friends when the car was involved in a slight accident. A flask
partially filled with liquor was discovered by a local sheriff in
Lefevre's possession, and he was convicted of violating the Volstead
Law. Although Lefevre said he was returning the flask
as a favor from a friend to a friend by whom it had been inadvertently
left behind and that he did not know it contained
liquor, he offered to resign from the faculty. The Board of
Visitors would not permit him to do so but suspended him
from all teaching for a year.

One of the perennial outbursts against the university's supposed

iniquities came in 1926 at a meeting of the Law Enforcement
and Observance League. A federal dry officer,
addressing the organization's Richmond convention, said that
the university's fraternity houses were distributing pints of liquor
and that "when a new member is first taken in . . . he is
handed a cigarette and a cocktail, and given to understand
that he is not a good sport unless he smokes and drinks." The
Interfraternity Council replied: "Instead of encouraging
drinking on the part of first-year men, the fraternities have
consistently opposed it. Many have rules prohibiting liquor in
their houses under any circumstances. All exercise careful supervision
over their first-year men in the matter of drinking.
Many require that all new men pledge themselves not to drink
during their first year at the university. The others seriously
censure drinking by the new men and require a `liquor pledge'
from any man who shows a tendency to drink to excess."

The Alumni News, edited by McLane Tilton, a prominent
Charlottesville businessman, entered the controversy with this
statement: "We do not hesitate to declare that there is less
drinking at the University of Virginia than at any other institution
of like size in the country. . . . [Recently] there visited
here the distinguished dean of one of America's oldest and
greatest universities. He was here for four days. He made it
his business to get about the community, alone and with others,
both day and night. In conversation just before his departure
he volunteered the tribute that ours was the quietest,
most orderly and studious and dignified institution he had
ever visited."

Yet in the autumn of 1928 there was another salvo of criticism
against the university, this time from the Reverend R. V.
Lancaster of Fredericksburg, a Presbyterian clergyman. He
attended the Virginia-North Carolina football game, and in a
letter to a Fredericksburg newspaper estimated that three out
of four students and their dates were intoxicated. This manifest
absurdity was seized upon by the Reverend David Hepburn,
superintendent of the Virginia Anti-Saloon League,
who pronounced drinking at the University of Virginia "a
statewide scandal." The Alumni News denied the truth of the
charge and added the pungent thought that Dr. Alderman "is
as unable to control his flock as to sporadic cases as the Rev.
Hepburn or any other preacher is to control his congregational

18. James Rogers McConnell in the uniform of the French air
force.

drinking." Alderman sent a long and detailed reply to
Hepburn, saying that "in every case . . . in which proof of public
drunkenness is clear, the student has been immediately dismissed."
He added that drinking at the university was "on a
par with similar institutions throughout the country."

Intrigued by these repeated charges of excessive drinking
at the university, the Flat Hat, published by the students at
William and Mary, sent a reporter to Charlottesville to appraise
the situation. He reported the following findings in that
paper, as summarized by the Virginia Spectator, temporary successor
to the University of Virginia Magazine: "He had not seen
a single drop of liquor, a single student who showed the slightest
sign of having been partaking of liquor, or a single exhibition
of conduct indicative of the probability or actuality of liquor
in the near future."

Use or possession of intoxicating liquor by students in any
of the dormitories or other university buildings, or otherwise
within the precincts of the university, was forbidden, under
heavy penalties, in a regulation adopted by the president and
Administrative Council of the university in 1929.

Yet charges of open violations of the prohibition law at the
Virginia-Washington and Lee football game in 1930 were
made against the university by the Reverend H. C. Marsh, a
Methodist pastor of Waynesboro. Persons who attended the
VMI-VPI game at Roanoke shortly before said there was just
as much drinking there as at the Charlottesville contest, but
nobody made any public outcry. Eleven persons were arrested
at the Virginia game, but none was a student. The press of the
state came vigorously to the defense of the university, and the
Lynchburg Advance's comment was typical: "Any football fan
who attends the gridiron contests knows that there is no more
drinking on Lambeth Field than on any other athletic field in
Virginia."

A staunch defender of conditions at the university was
James Anderson Hawes, for a quarter of a century national
secretary of the Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity, in which capacity
he visited institutions in many parts of the country. As
early as 1914 Hawes issued a strong defense of the state of
things at Virginia, based on his personal observations, and he
reiterated these views in his autobiographical work Twenty
Years among the Twenty Year Olds, published in 1929. "The idea

that there is more drinking at Virginia than at other colleges
is, to my own knowledge, absolutely unfounded," he wrote.
"Everything is done in the open, and the students have never
been trained along lines of fear and hypocrisy, so general elsewhere.
. . . I can state absolutely that there is less sex and other
immorality at Virginia than at any other college of its size in
the country."

The foregoing conjecture as to the amount of sexual activity
among students at the university is probably more or less correct.
While no one can make an accurate comparison between
institutions of higher learning in such an area, it seems unlikely
that many University of Virginia men patronized the
Charlottesville red light district. In the late nineteenth and
early twentieth centuries "Aunt Mat" Thomas, to whom
reference was made in the preceding chapter, was the bestknown
operator of a bawdy house in the town. Her
establishment was one of several "near the C&O station," according
to Tim Wheeler, writing in the Cavalier Daily in 1972.
Marguiretta Crescioli, variously described as a Creole, part Indian
or black, opened what is said to have been a high-class
establishment on Fifth Street in 1922, just after houses of
prostitution had been outlawed by the Virginia legislature.
"Aunt Mat" also continued to operate until late in the 1920s,
if not longer.

One day she called on Dr. Barringer, chairman of the faculty,
and told him that she understood a certain university student
would be unable to return the following session for lack
of funds. She wished to provide the money, on condition that
the student not be told whence it came. Dr. Barringer asked
"Aunt Mat" why she was so interested in the young man, and
she explained that she and her parents had been slaves of the
student's father and mother, and they had been so extremely
kind and considerate to her and the other members of her
family that she wished to show her appreciation. Dr. Barringer
agreed to the arrangement, and she pulled out a huge roll of
bills and paid the university fees for the following session. The
young man returned and got his degree, never knowing that
his benefactor was "Aunt Mat."

Marguiretta's fancy establishment was finally closed by the
police in 1946 or 1949—there are conflicting accounts—and
came spectacularly to public notice in 1972, when the building

was torn down and substantial sums of money were found
mysteriously buried on the premises. Marguiretta, like Aunt
Mat, was "charitable to those in need, including any number
of starving children," according to a rather incredible newspaper
account.

If Virginia students in the 1920s were largely uninterested
in the downtown brothels, they exhibited the same attitude, as
already noted, toward much else in the community and on the
Grounds. For example, College Topics suspended operations
temporarily in 1926, since only a small minority of matriculates
were subscribing. Until Topics could be got back into operation,
the General Athletic Association published a special
bulletin informing the students of upcoming athletic events.

The University of Virginia Magazine, normally the most sedate
of publications, ran into heavy weather when its October
1926 number was denounced by both President Alderman
and College Topics, chiefly for its story "Mulatto Flair." Reviewing
the issue, Prof. Stringfellow Barr remarked sardonically:
"The suggestion that local flappers have Negro blood, while
not very interesting, was one of the few suggestions not yet
advanced about them." The editor of the magazine was discharged
from that post by his own staff and left the university.
Soon thereafter the magazine was superseded for six years by
the Virginia Spectator. Then a charge of "vulgar obscenity
which bursts violently into the recent issue" was made against
the humor magazine, the Virginia Reel, by College Topics. A new
publication called the Cavalier replaced the Reel, announcing
that it would give its readers "a minimum of filth" and avoid
"the course of moronic collegiatism." But the Cavalier got into
hot water when it published a "Scott's Issue" in October 1931
simultaneously with the dedication of the Scott Stadium, presented
to the university by Frederic W. Scott. On the cover
were two rolls of prominently displayed "Scot Issue" toilet paper.
The Cavalier was permanently suppressed by order of the
university's Administrative Council. Such occasional flagrant
violations of the canons of good taste apparently occur at virtually
all colleges and universities.

An anonymous sheet called the Yellow Journal made its appearance
once annually during most of the years from 1920
through 1934. It had burst upon the scene for the first time

in 1912, under the auspices of Sigma Delta Chi journalistic
fraternity and was published for several successive years
thereafter. Publication was resumed in 1920, with no sponsorship
by Sigma Delta Chi and no indication concerning the authorship
of the various items, most of which contained sly digs
at prominent members of the university community.

The anonymous character of the publication brought a
statement from fifty-one students in 1923 denouncing the
Journal as "inconsistent with the ideals and traditions of the
University of Virginia." College Topics carried the statement
with an editorial captioned " `Vale' Yellow Journal," and over
the students' attack it placed the words "Hic Jacet." The
anonymous executive committee of the Journal's board retorted
that it had no intention of discontinuing and signed off
"Hic Jacet Hell."

By 1928 the university administration and faculty had become
greatly annoyed by the Yellow Journal's shafts aimed at
tender portions of professors' and students' anatomies. The
faculty senate adopted a resolution viewing "with profound
disapprobation anonymous publications," and "earnestly requesting
the students responsible" to abandon the enterprise.
The Journal's unidentified editors replied that they would continue
publication, but would make no further references to
the faculty. Professors Albert Lefevre, William H. Faulkner,
and Robert H. Webb retorted that what they objected to was
the paper's anonymous character. And Lefevre was so agitated
that he delivered a long speech in Cabell Hall excoriating the
Yellow Journal as "unworthy of the student body and gravely
injurious to the spirit of this place and its good name." However,
on a show of hands, about three-fourths of the students
present favored the Journal's continuance. A compromise was
reached to the effect that the sheet would be sponsored by the
OWL journalistic fraternity, the members of which were
known. For the next three years this sponsorship was noted
on the masthead, with the following variation in 1929 and
1930: "Sponsored by the OWLS (the damned fools)." The
Journal seems to have appeared for the last time in 1934, at
which time the OWLS were not mentioned. The university's
Administrative Council issued an order in that year forbidding
"the publication or sale of any anonymous paper, and

[we] desire to record our unanimous condemnation of the recent
number of the Yellow Journal as scurrilous and indecent in
the extreme."

On a quite different level the Virginia Quarterly Review made
its debut in 1925, to great acclaim. This highly intellectual
journal was ably edited by James Southall Wilson, who abandoned
his cherished plan to write a biography of Poe in order
to accept President Alderman's urgent invitation that he
launch the quarterly. From the first, the magazine was a succès
d'estime—by no means a financial bonanza since it has always
had to be subsidized, but able to publish leading writers from
both sides of the Atlantic. Part of the money needed to get the
VQR off the ground came from funds allotted to the Alumni
Bulletin, which was discontinued after being published since
1894.

Perhaps the only sour note greeting the first number of the
quarterly issued from the sanctum of the Baltimore Evening
Sun, which said: "The VQR is quite as correct as a white tie
with a dress suit or a mint julep without a maraschino cherry.
What matters it, therefore, if it fails to shake the dear old
commonwealth from that delightful Bourbon trait of neither
forgetting anything nor learning anything?" The Norfolk
Virginian-Pilot replied that the Evening Sun was belittling the
magazine because it was not like the University of North Carolina's
Journal of Social Forces, and added: "The university at
Chapel Hill has broken out with a vigorous journal of social
research. . . . Its editors were galluses and overalls. The university
at Charlottesville has given birth to . . . a magazine . . .
with its chief emphasis on literary and political criticism or
belles lettres as distinguished from better homes and babies.
Its editors wear spectacles and white collars. To compare the
two journals is like comparing the American Federation of Labor
and the American Academy of Arts and Letters." Two
years later the elegant Boston Transcript, organ of the New England
Brahmins, called the Virginia Quarterly and the Yale Review
"the only two worthwhile quarterlies in this country." On
its fifth anniversary the VQR was solidly established, with subscribers
in every state in the Union and a score of foreign
lands. "It has probably created more good will for the university
among intelligent people everywhere than any other
agency that has been created by the university during the last

19. Edwin Anderson Alderman, president of the university,
1904-31.

quarter of a century," said the Alumni News. Contributors included
Thomas Mann, André Gide, Walter de la Mare, Gerald
W. Johnson, Howard Mumford Jones, and many others of like
distinction. Offices of the magazine were moved from the
basement of the Graduate House on West Lawn to One West
Range, previously occupied by the physiology laboratory,
where it remains today. James Southall Wilson retired as editor
in 1930, after a highly successful six years, and was succeeded
by Stringfellow Barr, who held the post for three
years, and then turned it over to Lambert Davis. The publication's
quality was maintained under these editors.

The university's literary prestige also was enhanced, albeit
in later decades, by the spectacular success of two students,
Julien Green and Erskine Caldwell, who became internationally
recognized writers. Green, born in France of American
parents, attended the university for nearly three years, beginning
in 1919. An introvert and homosexual, he was not well
known on the Grounds and left without graduating. In 1971
he was elected to the French Academy, the only non-Frenchman
ever to achieve this rare honor. In at least two of his
books, Moira and Terre lointaine, he has dealt with his life at the
university. Caldwell was desperately poor at times during his
years at Charlottesville (1922, 1925-26). He swept the floor
at LaRowe's pool room and cleaned up the place working his
way through, and held other odd jobs. Helen Lannigan, Pop
Lannigan's daughter, was his first wife. In later years Caldwell's
books sold in the millions of copies, and the play Tobacco
Road, based on one of his novels, had a tremendous run on
Broadway.

Establishment of the Institute of Public Affairs in 1927 further
enhanced the university's standing. Dean Charles G. Maphis,
the director, was credited with suggesting the ambitious
enterprise, and various alumni and friends provided the necessary
start-up funds. Among those most active in supporting
and contributing to the institute was C. Bascom Slemp, a university
alumnus and Republican leader from southwest Virginia
who had been private secretary to President Calvin
Coolidge. Yet the institute was completely nonpartisan politically;
Gov. Harry F. Byrd, the state's foremost Democrat, was
chairman of the advisory committee, and Norman Thomas,

the perennial Socialist candidate for the presidency, was a
leading speaker for a number of years. The institute differed
from others in the United States, notably the Williamstown
Institute of Politics, in that it emphasized domestic rather than
foreign affairs. Held for two weeks in the summer, it included
round table discussions as well as numerous formal addresses
both during the day and in the evening. Such subjects as
unionization of southern industry, public versus private ownership
of public utilities, and prohibition versus repeal were
freely and frankly debated by prominent speakers. The 1928
session was especially exciting since the Herbert Hoover-Alfred
E. Smith presidential campaign was in full swing. This provoked
lively, if not heated, discussions, particularly concerning
the religious issue. The Reverend A. C. Dieffenbach, Boston
Unitarian and editor of the Christian Observer, stirred up a
storm by pronouncing "Al" Smith unfit for the presidency because
of his membership in the Roman Catholic Church. And
the 1931 institute was widely credited with having been the
jumping-off place for the presidential candidacy of Franklin
D. Roosevelt; he spoke there on states' rights, and his address
was heralded as the opening gun in his successful quest for
the Democratic nomination in 1932.

The Institute of Public Affairs was the most conspicuous
feature of the summer program at the university, but the
Summer School, which had been in operation on a limited
scale since the early 1900s, also was developing steadily. When
the University of Virginia established the school in 1919 as an
integral part of the university year, with courses in the College
of Arts and Sciences of equal credit value with those offered
during the rest of the session, it was the first university in the
South to do so. In former years the Summer School had been
maintained for the benefit of public school administrators and
for teachers desirous of meeting certification requirements, as
well as for students who had failed one or more courses during
the regular session and wished to make them up. But by
1920 Dean Maphis, head of the Summer School, announced
that "college courses in practically every subject taught in the
college in the regular session will be offered young men and
women to shorten the time required to secure academic degrees."
In 1923 the total enrollment for both summer terms,

with duplications eliminated, was 2,523, of whom one-fourth
were men, an overall enrollment considerably larger than that
for the regular session.

A series of rather elaborate Rural Life Conferences was
held annually at the university as part of the Summer School,
beginning in the early 1900s. These were terminated in the
early 1920s.

Charles G. Maphis, then professor of secondary education,
was appointed in 1915-16 as the university's first director of
extension services. Those services had been formally introduced
in 1912, when several professors agreed to lecture anywhere
in Virginia if requested to do so. The first extension
course for college credit was given in 1919, but, like so many
other department and division heads at the university during
these years, Maphis was operating on a wholly inadequate
budget. He pointed in 1922-23 to the fact that the University
of North Carolina Extension Division's budget was nearly five
times his and that it had a full-time director and a much larger
staff. He had only one full-time employee but managed an
enrollment of between 600 and 700 as compared with 200 in
North Carolina. Courses in a dozen subjects were being given
at ten locations in Virginia, and the same degree credits were
awarded as were available to full-time students. Special bulletins
and handbooks containing information on pertinent subjects
suitable for public discussion were distributed through
the Virginia High School Literary and Athletic League to any
school, club, or other organization requesting them.

George B. Zehmer, professor of education, was appointed
in 1925 as the first full-time director of the Extension Division.
He stated later that the "great majority" of the faculty "were
either indifferent or openly hostile to the idea of university
extension" and that they "called a meeting to express through
deliberate and joint action their objection not only to specific
forms of extension education but to the concept of University
Extension education." By contrast, President Alderman termed
the extension concept "the most daring and beautiful and
moving movement of advance in the whole history of the university,"
and the Extension Division became well established.
In subsequent years the faculty reversed its position, and Zehmer
wrote: "I question whether any extension director in any

other university can report as good a record of faculty cooperation."

The School of Education, established by President Alderman
soon after he took office, was operated on the sound
theory that administrators and teachers in the public schools
need to be professionally trained. The theory was unassailable,
but for many years its working out left much to be desired.
Excessive emphasis on methodology and too little on
subjects to be taught caused the School of Education to be
regarded during its early decades with decided skepticism by
most of the faculty members in other disciplines. Some of this
prejudice was unfair; in fact, some professors at the university
apparently believed that it was a mistake ever to have established
a School of Education at the institution. Worthwhile
contributions were made by such faculty members as William
R. Smithey, Richard A. Meade, George O. Ferguson, George
B. Zehmer, and Francis G. Lankford, Jr. Yet some of the subjects
assigned for theses and dissertations were hardly less
than ludicrous. This situation might well have been changed
for the better if Prof. Bruce R. Payne had not left in 1911 to
accept the presidency of Peabody Teachers' College in Nashville,
Tenn., and William Harry Heck, the school's first professor
of education, had not died in the great influenza epidemic
of 1918-19. Dean John L. Manahan announced in 1922 that
the school's library in Peabody Hall had been named for Professor
Heck, whose well-selected private library of two thousand
volumes had been given to the school by his widow, Anna
Tuttle Heck. Mrs. Heck, the university's assistant librarian before
her husband's death, was chosen the institution's registrar,
succeeding the courtly Howard Winston, who retired
after serving in the post for fifteen years.

Appropriations to the university by the General Assembly
were still extremely low, as Dr. Alderman was wont to point
out at periodic intervals. Hence he took particular pleasure in
announcing the receipt of substantial sums from private
sources. On Founder's Day 1930, for example, he called attention
to gifts and bequests totaling more than one million dollars,
among them $350,000 from William A. Clark, Jr., for a
new law building, $300,000 from Frederic W. Scott for a new
athletic stadium, and a $140,000 bequest from Alderman's old

friend John B. Cobb, which was used for an addition to the
chemistry laboratory. The university's greatest need was for an
adequate library, but as yet no one had come forward with the
necessary funds. In 1924 Alderman had heavily stressed the
lack of support from the state legislature; in addition to other
statistical shockers he declared that "the University of Virginia
is receiving from the state a smaller portion of its maintenance
than any other state university in the world." The various
schools—they were not called departments until after World
War II—were having to get along somehow on these meager
allotments from the coffers of the commonwealth.

One of the university's intangible assets that could not be
computed in dollars but was nonetheless of incalculable value
was the influence and personality of Dean James M. Page, who
had been the last chairman of the faculty before Alderman's
coming. He seemed to have an uncanny ability to understand
young men, to discipline them, and at the same time retain
their affection. Students summoned to his sanctum on the
Lawn were greeted with "a half chuckle and half growl," as
one of them aptly expressed it, but the growl was distinctly
pianissimo, and any young man called on the carpet knew that
the dean would deal with him fairly. Given the small enrollment
in the College by comparison with later years, Dean Page
was personally acquainted with practically every undergraduate
and was well-informed as to whether any one of them was
behaving himself and doing a reasonable amount of studying
or was "wasting his substance in riotous living." Compulsive
drinkers and gamblers were likely to be haled before him,
given a friendly but stern lecture, and told that he would like
their pledged word to cease their misdeeds until further notice.
The oral pledge was forthcoming and was observed. If a
miscreant later felt an uncontrollable urge to drink or gamble,
he might ask the dean to release him for a weekend, and the
dean might or might not grant the request. Thanks to Dean
Page's wisdom, kindness, and understanding this informal system
worked remarkably well. Few, if any, deans in American
education have rivaled James Morris Page in his ability to
maintain a moderate degree of discipline and at the same time
seldom provoke even so much as a murmur of criticism from
those whom he called to account. James Anderson Hawes said
that during his travels to many colleges and universities he

20. Carl Zeisberg, whose cartoons appeared in Corks and
Curls over a twenty-year period, comments on the dire prospect
that a limited number of women will be admitted to the university
in 1920.

had known only two truly great deans of men, Page of Virginia
and Gauss of Princeton.

Dean Page possessed a unique asset in his secretary, Miss
Mary Proffitt, who was a virtually ideal occupant of her position.
She, too, knew personally nearly all the students in the
College and was familiar with their records, scholastic and
otherwise. The dean was relieved of certain disciplinary problems
by Miss Proffitt who, acting unilaterally and with his
approval, called in any student she knew to be guilty of neglecting
his studies or consuming excessive amounts of alcohol
and demanded an explanation. Like "Jim" Page, Mary Proffitt
was regarded with a combination of affection and awe, and
her reprimands carried genuine weight. She once told a
young man that he was wasting his time at the university and
to go home; he went the next day. On the other hand, Miss
Proffitt would take the side of any student up for suspension
if she thought he could be persuaded to mend his ways. "She
probably kept more students from being thrown out, and got
more suspensions changed to reprimands than anyone else in
the university," said B. F. D. Runk, who later occupied the
deanship with great distinction. "They worshipped her for it."
In the semifacetious words of an alumnus, "Miss Proffitt ran a
darned good university." She continued as secretary to Ivey F.
Lewis when he succeeded to the position of dean after the
death of Dean Page—an overall total for Miss Proffitt in that
position of some forty years. It was revealed after her death
that she had been elected to the exclusive and secret Seven
Society.

Dean Page, as well as everybody else connected with the university,
was anxious to obtain a new library, but it was nowhere
in sight in the 1920s. However, the appointment of Harry Clemons
in 1927 as librarian was a long step forward. A Princeton
graduate, he had served as that university's reference
librarian for four years and then as librarian at the University
of Nanking, China, from 1914 to 1927—a position from
which he was driven by Chinese bandits. At the University of
Virginia, Clemons succeeded John S. Patton, who had been in
charge of the library since 1904, and made the best of a bad
situation. A significant acquisition in 1922 had been the eightthousand-volume
collection of W. Gordon McCabe, the
schoolmaster, poet, and essayist, given to the university in his

memory by his son, W. Gordon McCabe, Jr. It contained many
personally inscribed works of Browning, Arnold, Tennyson,
and other nineteenth century English writers who were
friends of the elder McCabe.

In his report for 1928 Harry Clemons stated that there were
151,333 volumes in the university library, but that only 88,881
could be accommodated in the Rotunda, with most of the remainder
housed in a variety of unsuitable places around the
Grounds. He went on to say that the University of North Carolina
last year "added six times as many books as we did, and
already surpasses us by 30,000." A more dedicated advocate
of a new library than Harry Clemons could not have been
found, and he spent his waking hours working toward that
end.

Another baffling problem involved the decades-long struggle
of students in Prof. Thomas Fitzhugh's Latin classes to understand
what he called "the sacred tripudium." Fitzhugh felt that
he had discovered a rhythmic element in the Latin language,
but his oft-reiterated "tum te tum te tum," in class and out,
failed to elucidate the matter for the frustrated and bewildered
young men under his tutelage. His book on the subject
The Sacred Tripudium and the Evolution of Latin Rhythmic Art left
everybody as much in the dark as ever. What, then, was the
astonishment of Colgate Darden, when president of the university,
to learn, in calling on the retired Professor Fitzhugh
with Prof. Arthur Kyle Davis, Jr., that the discoverer of the
sacred tripudium had found that it was nonsense. "Oh it was
all a bunch of rubbish, nothing to it; I found that out years
ago," he told his startled callers. Darden had introduced the
subject by saying "Uncle Tom, we have often thought of the
sacred tripudium." Leaving the house, Darden remarked to
Davis, "A. K., he's a talented person, but he found out years
later what everybody in the class knew at the time. . . . It didn't
make any sense to any of us, but we had to fall in line with it
or we didn't get any degree."

The decade of the 1920s marked the centennial of various
university events, and in 1925 the Jefferson Society observed
the hundredth anniversary of its founding. Sen. Oscar W. Underwood
of Alabama, who had been president of the society
in his student days, was the speaker of the occasion in Cabell
Hall. A banquet was held that evening in the Dolly Madison

Inn. The "Jeff" claims to be "the oldest functioning collegiate
literary society in the nation."

The Honor System had not yet celebrated its centennial. It
was functioning well, but as long ago as 1914 Prof. William H.
Echols had said concerning the system during the preceding
twenty years, "Eternal vigilance has been absolutely necessary
for its preservation." Librarian John S. Patton reported that in
1920-21 a total of 52,000 volumes had been checked out of
the library and that only about 2 volumes had been lost—in
glaring contrast to the huge number of books that would be
disappearing from the library some fifty years later. Yet failure
of students to pay their subscriptions to publications or their
pledges to various causes was noted indignantly in 1928 by the
student newspaper; it said these bad debts totaled from 20 to
50 percent, in many instances, as against 10 to 12 percent in
other colleges and universities. "All the university publications
and more especially Madison Hall are the heaviest suffers
from this frivolous and patently dishonorable attitude," said
College Topics.

Professors William A. Lambeth and Albert Lefevre, who had
dominated the athletic scene at Virginia since just after the
turn of the century, resigned in 1921 from the General Athletic
Association's executive committee. Differences between
that committee and the students and alumni concerning athletic
policy and the university's lack of success in football
caused the two professors to take this action. Lambeth and
Lefevre had always stressed clean athletics, and their unremitting
efforts to maintain this policy were appreciated by
everyone connected with the university, but it was felt that a
more effective type of organization would bring better results
in the "win" column. The other faculty members of the
G.A.A.'s executive committee also resigned, and what was
called the 3-3-3 Athletic Council was created in its stead.
This body was composed of three faculty members, three students,
and three alumni. General control of all intercollegiate
sport at Virginia, insofar as scheduling, selection of coaches,
and eligibility and related problems were concerned, was
placed in the hands of the 3-3-3. The G.A.A. board retained
virtually the same authority it had before with respect to financial
management, appointment of team managers, supervision

21. Dean James M. Page, last chairman of the faculty and the
first dean of the university, 1904-34, a legend in his time.

of schedules, and award of varsity letters. A major aim
of the new system was to encourage every student to take part
in some form of athletics.

David Ellis Brown, an alumnus, was chosen graduate manager
of athletics, and G. J. Campbell of Harvard was appointed
head football coach, succeeding Rice Warren. Warren,
an alumnus, had been chosen head coach in 1920, following a
decision to have only professional mentors for football.
Coaching by unpaid alumni had been highly successful for a
few years, but then the results had been disappointing. Warren
also achieved dismaying results and resigned. Campbell
was accordingly employed, and the football season of 1922
was termed "highly successful," with four wins, four defeats,
and one tie. In the previous disastrous year the Virginia
eleven had scored a grand total of three points in its last four
games. In 1923 Earl (Greasy) Neale was hired as head coach
of both football and baseball, with the understanding that he
would be on the Grounds the year 'round. Neale had made an
excellent record in both sports, as a participant and as coach.

On another sector of the athletic front Pop Lannigan's
ability to turn inexperienced runners into track stars was strikingly
evident when the university's mile relay team won that
event at the Penn Relays in 1924, against the fastest teams in
America, and won the South Atlantic mile relay four years in
a row. The runners who achieved these feats, several of whom
had never donned a track shoe until they came to the university,
were Benjamin M. Baker, Jr., and Eldridge H. Campbell,
both future Rhodes Scholars; E. Lee Douglas, Frank Talbott,
Jr., Charles Castleman, M. T. Bohannon, and Jed H. Irvine.
The last four listed won at the Penn Relays in 1924.

Intercollegiate boxing had its inception at Virginia in 1922.
Beginning on a small scale, it soon became extremely popular
and took the center of the stage as teams wearing the orange
and blue became extraordinarily successful and nationally famous.
As with track, success was due in large measure to the
coach—Johnny LaRowe. After serving in the U.S. Marine
Corps, LaRowe opened his billiard parlor at the university in
1904. When boxing was inaugurated, he coached the Virginia
team for several years without pay. His conception of sportsmanship
was unusually high, and he often said that he was

"more interested in making men than boxers." Matches were
first held in Cabell Hall, and the 1923 team had an undefeated
season, while in 1924 only one match was lost. Similar results
were achieved in succeeding years, and boxing was made a
major sport in 1927-28. With completion of Memorial Gymnasium
the matches were moved there, and its 5,000 seats
were often packed for the bouts. Adolph Leftwich, the conspicuous
star of the mid-1920s, won every bout over a fouryear
period except his first and was captain in 1924 and 1925.
Leftwich won a place on the U.S. Olympic boxing team at the
1924 games, held in Paris, but was defeated by Black, a Canadian.

By 1927-28 the overall athletic situation at the university
appeared much improved. In football, baseball, basketball,
boxing, and track a total of "47 opponents were conquered
while only 23 defeats were sustained." Inside the state the university
won 27 contests and lost only 2. Henry H. Cumming,
twice captain of track, was undefeated during the year in the
100 and 220. Harrison F. Flippin, national pentathlon champion
in 1927, lost only one hurdle race and was chosen team
captain, succeeding Cumming. He set world records in the 50and
60-yard hurdles, although the first of the two marks was
not recognized since official timers were not present. Flippin,
a great all-around athlete, who later became as eminent in
medicine as he was in athletics did not make the 1928 Olympic
team but Cumming did; he sailed for Amsterdam with Marcus
W. Dinwiddie, a university student and member of the U.S.
rifle team. Neither placed at Amsterdam.

The University Band made its appearance in the mid-1920s
and was a factor in arousing enthusiasm at pregame rallies
and at the games. Attitudes of the students toward the teams
ranged from high enthusiasm to bland indifference, depending
to some extent on whether that particular team was having
a successful season. Even when successful, the baseball nine
began drawing only a few hundred students to its games, and
little enthusiasm was shown. Interest in tennis took an upturn
with the completion in 1930 of the Lady Astor Courts near
the gymnasium with funds contributed by Nancy, Lady Astor,
Virginia-born member of the British Parliament, on condition
that an additional sum was raised. Tennis had been recognized

as a minor sport a decade previously and golf received that
recognition in 1929. Lacrosse and swimming had their beginnings
shortly before.

Sportsmanship between contesting institutions in the 1920s
was generally of a high order. College Topics often congratulated
visiting teams when they defeated Virginia and sharply
criticized university students when they occasionally went beyond
proper limits in razzing opposing players. In 1924 the
Virginia football team eked out a 13 to 9 victory in the last
quarter over Hampden-Sydney; Captain Sam Maphis of the
Virginia eleven walked across the field and gave the football
to Captain Blankinship of the Tigers, saying "You deserve it."
The gesture brought unstinted praise from the Tiger, Hampden-Sydney's
student newspaper. At the basketball game with
the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill the following
year lights were turned out at the half, and the entire Carolina
cheering section joined in singing "The Good Old Song." Topics
thanked the Carolinians in its next issue and congratulated
them on their team's victory over Virginia. It should be noted
that rooters at basketball games in that era were careful to
maintain complete silence while a player from either team was
shooting from the foul line, in glaring contrast to the manufactured
racket that often erupts today under such circumstances
in an effort to disconcert any player from the opposing
team who is trying to put the ball into the basket.

"The Good Old Song" is generally considered to have been
the university's official alma mater song since about 1900, but
it has never been formally adopted as such. In fact, student
contests were held in 1923 for the best "alma mater song" and
the best "fight song." John Albert Morrow won the alma mater
contest with "Virginia, Hail All Hail" while Lawrence Lee and
Fulton Lewis, Jr., were judged to have produced the best fight
tune with "The Cavalier Song." Neither production made
much impact; "Virginia, Hail All Hail" was forgotten almost
at once and "The Cavalier Song" was heard thereafter at only
rare intervals, despite periodic protests that the students
should learn it and sing it at games, and the band should play
it. "The Good Old Song," to the sedate rhythms of "Old Lang
Syne," is far from being a fight song, but nothing else has
caught the fancy of the average student of alumnus. "The

Cavalier Song" did have one immediate result: It caused Virginia
teams to be called the Cavaliers. Before 1923 that term
was not in use, but by 1924 it was an oft-heard expression and
has so remained.

Whereas the university's athletic fortunes had appeared
definitely improved in 1927-28, they skidded within two years
to what was described by the Alumni News as probably an alltime
low. There had been three losing football seasons in
succession, the usually invincible boxing team was fifth in the
conference, and showings in most other sports were equally
dismal. The student body exhibited vast indifference, and on
two afternoons in early November only twenty-seven men
were out for football; three tackles had been injured and only
one remained. Greasy Neale resigned as football coach to become
assistant manager of the St. Louis Cardinals baseball
club, and Earl Abell, former Colgate all-American, was chosen
to succeed him. Ellis Brown resigned as graduate manager to
enter the coal business. The scope of athletics had been
greatly broadened during Brown's seven-year incumbency,
with nineteen teams in intercollegiate competition during the
session of 1928-29, about twice the number when he took
over. Brown also was credited with having been an important
factor in the development of boxing at Virginia. But in view
of the general decline in the performance of Virginia's teams,
there was little consolation for students and alumni in the Carnegie
Foundation's 1929 report that the University of Virginia
was one of the small minority, among 130 institutions studied,
that were given a clean bill of health, athletically speaking.

The collapsing situation at Virginia, insofar as winning
games was concerned, led to another reorganization of the
athletic department. The position of director of athletics was
created, replacing that of graduate manager, and James G.
Driver, a three-letter man at Virginia and before that captain
of football, baseball, basketball, and track at William and Mary,
was named to fill it. He was given the rank of full professor
and was provided with a capable assistant, Thomas M. Carruthers,
and an office staff. Driver had coached four major
sports at William and Mary and then had joined the athletic
staff at the University of South Carolina, whence he was lured
to Charlottesville.

In his first report to President Alderman in 1930, "Jim"
Driver said he had "found a total lack of organization in the
business affairs of the General Athletic Association and a lack
of coordination in the coaching department." He added that
he had remedied the G.A.A.'s abovementioned shortcomings
and that the coaching staff was now "entirely harmonious."
Great disappointment at the "lack of aggressiveness in our
athletes, particularly football," was expressed by Driver, who
said "they haven't the . . . will to win and the . . . will to give
and take punishment." Most University of Virginia athletes
"are not as tough and rugged as the boy who comes from a
family of comparatively little means, and who has manual labor
to do from childhood," he went on. Many Virginia men
spend too much time at dances and parties when not in training,
he added, and during the summer they go to a "resort
and have a good time, whereas most of the athletes from other
colleges work on the highways, in the steel mills or at some
other sort of hard labor." The university "needs more of the
better class of Virginia high school athletes," Driver declared.
In speeches to alumni throughout the state and beyond he
stressed the thought that "a well-rounded system of athletics,
and not a world-beating team in any one sport, is what we
want to develop." The new stadium was not being built with a
view to placing undue emphasis on football, he said, but
rather to provide larger gate receipts with which to equip
more teams in various sports and greater recreational facilities
for the whole student body. In his financial report for
1929-30 Assistant Athletic Director Carruthers pointed out
that all sports at Virginia except football were being operated
at a loss, including the popular boxing. Profits from football
which for that year totaled only $49,000 were used to pay part
of the cost of all other sports. But football obviously was yielding
only meager returns after a succession of poor seasons,
and the merry-go-round of changing coaches continued. Earl
Abell resigned late in 1930 and Fred Dawson, for four years
head football coach at the University of Nebraska, was chosen
to succeed him.

A bright spot in the gloom was the play of William T.
Thomas in the Virginia backfield in 1929, 1930, and 1931. Bill
Thomas had captained all four sports at McGuire's School in
Richmond and was a three-letter man at the university. In

22. Prof. Albert (Little Doc) Lefevre.

football he averaged over five yards per carry and had a punting
average of forty-five yards. He was all-southern in football
in 1930, received a certificate of "exceptional merit" from the
All-America Board of Football, and was all-state in basketball
in 1932. Thomas turned down a professional football contract
to enter the Law School.

An important university landmark was lost when Pop Lannigan,
trainer and coach in many sports for a quarter of a
century, died at the end of 1930 after a lingering illness. Born
in Wales, he emigrated to the United States in his early teens.
A member of the athletic staff at Cornell University, Lannigan
came to Virginia in 1905 and was a central figure in university
sports thereafter. Noted as an athlete, he had an uncanny
ability to coach and train others, especially track men and to a
lesser degree basketball players. During his first year at Virginia
he organized the first basketball team in the South, and
for some time the university quint was dominant in the region.

Lannigan was an admired and beloved figure on the university
scene. He could be gruff, but he was a person of sensitivity.
His humorous stories when traveling with his teams were famous,
and his laugh contagious. Since he was modest concerning
his early athletic prowess, it was difficult to tell just what
feats he had accomplished. It was said that he had excelled in
track and field events, held the world record in the shotput
for some years, "trained the great Fitzsimmons for the ring,"
and defeated the Swedish fencing champion. Whether all this
was true remained something of a mystery. But Pop was certainly
a topflight trainer and coach. Admiring Virginia students
gave him an automobile in the 1920s. When he resigned
in 1929 because of failing health, there were tributes from
many directions. The 3-3-3 Athletic Council, which retired
him on a "substantial pension," passed resolutions that said:
"The affection in which Pop Lannigan is held by his old boys
gives irrefutable evidence of those qualities of fairness, sportsmanship,
patience and ability which have ever characterized
his dealings with the students." Lynchburg alumni presented
him with a gold watch and chain, and the 1930 Corks and Curls
was dedicated to him. His passing at age sixty-five caused
widespread sorrow.

Archie Hahn, head trainer and assistant track coach at
Princeton, was chosen track coach at Virginia and trainer for

varsity and freshman football. A former member of the U.S.
Olympic Team, he was holder of two Olympic dash records.

Lewis Crenshaw returned to the university from Paris following
World War I after closing his University of Virginia European
Bureau, but he found it impossible to continue as alumni
secretary. He had struggled before the war to get the alumni
association on a firm financial basis but had received only
minimum cooperation from alumni. With his salary in arrears
much of the time and the whole operation barely solvent,
Crenshaw felt that he could not resume his prewar duties unless
guarantees of adequate financial support were forthcoming.
None could be had, so he went back to Paris and opened
an office with the words "International Contacts" on his letterhead.
In 1920 William Matthews, '17, took over the job of assistant
alumni secretary and editor of the Alumni News on a
temporary basis. In response to a demand for more and better
news concerning the university, Dr. Alderman authorized establishment
of the University News Bureau, with Matthews in
charge. Two years later McLane Tilton, '97, was named parttime
alumni secretary, and William H. Wranek, '19, was made
full-time head of the news bureau. Wranek was soon able to
increase markedly the amount of material published in the
press relative to the university. By 1925 he was getting many
more inches of news into the leading Virginia newspapers
than appeared concerning any other institution of higher
learning in the state, news predominantly unrelated to sports.

The tendency of alumni to sigh for "the good old days" and
to resent any changes, even when those changes are obviously
for the better, was noted by the Alumni News. An alumnus
complained of macadamized roads being built throughout the
university. When asked why he objected to them, he replied
that they were not here in his day. "O visions of blessed Albemarle
mud!" exclaimed the News. "When shown the new law
building another alumnus at once lost himself in a fog of
memory and spoke tremulously of the austerities of the two
rooms under the Rotunda that once housed our School of
Law; and he never did enter the new building, but hurried
away to look at the old. . . . It seems characteristic of every
man who attends a university to want that university to remain
exactly as it was when he graduated."

Beginning in 1924, purusant to legislation passed by the
General Assembly, at least three of the ten members of the
university's Board of Visitors were to be chosen from a list of
nominations submitted by the alumni association.

No alumnus was more illustrious in his profession than Dr.
Hugh H. Young, '94, the Baltimore surgeon. A bust of him by
Clare Sheridan was presented to the university's Medical
School in 1926 by Robert Worth Bingham, '91, onetime ambassador
to the Court of St. James's. After the unveiling ceremony
a handsome lady rushed up to Dr. Young and said, "Dr.
Young, I want you to know that I drove a hundred miles just
to see your bust unveiled." "Madam," replied the gallant surgeon,
"I'd travel twice as far to see yours."

Considerable momentum for adoption of a class system at
the university was generated in 1926 and 1927 when College
Topics endorsed the idea, and an alumni conference voiced approval.
The question was debated at College Hour, with one
student taking each side. President Alderman advocated the
step, as did "the older men in college, the leaders," according
to the Alumni News. But that publication disgustedly declared
that "the first-year men . . . have remained unanimously and
enthusiastically inert and silent. . . . The reason is the dread
fear of `sticking your neck out.' " That was the end of the effort.

The Virginia Spectator remarked that "the term individualism
has been buried in a welter of sentimentalism only to appear
in the garb of indolence. Rather than profit by this comparative
freedom as expressed in a vaunted spirit of individualism
and, acting on personal initiative, develop independent characteristics,
the university student has complacently lain down
on the job."

Establishment of an Alumni Fund was approved by the
Board of Managers of the alumni association in 1928. Similar
funds had been created in many universities. Gordon M.
Buck, president of the association, pointed out that "friends
and alumni would be enabled to contribute to a fund controlled
by the alumni, rather than contribute to the commonwealth
through donations to the university." He added the
hope that "contributions to the fund would supplant the various
appeals made from time to time on the alumni," who
would not be solicited further during the year.

23. Adolph Leftwich, who lost only one bout at Virginia in four years
and went to the 1924 Olympics.

McLane Tilton rendered his part-time service as alumni secretary
while giving attention to his private business interests,
but he devoted much conscientious effort and thought to his
alumni post. During his eight-year stint he was instrumental
in bringing about increased efficiency, wider service, improved
finances, and new offices at the Corner. Near the end of his
incumbency there were about fifteen hundred members of
the association out of twelve thousand alumni, which he said
was a better percentage than in any other southern university.
Despite his ability, Tilton's aggressive manner antagonized
some of those with whom he was associated, and a few of his
editorials in the News raised hackles in the Alumni Board of
Managers. In particular there was one editorial in 1930 suggesting
a "compromise" with respect to the controversy over
location of the proposed coordinate college for women. At a
special meeting of the board this pronouncement was unanimously
disapproved as "grossly inaccurate." Tilton's name was
summarily removed as editor of the News, an editorial committee
was substituted, and responsibility for all material in
the publication was vested in that body. Taken aback, Tilton
remained temporarily as treasurer of the association and was
nominated for reelection to the Board of Managers but he
declined. This terminated his official connection with the
alumni association. His service to that organization had been
unselfish and productive, although he did overstep proper
bounds with a unilateral suggestion as to the coordinate college
at a tense moment in the controversy concerning its location.
One or two other editorials also irritated the board.
His contributions to the development of the association were
praised in letters from Dr. Alderman, Howard Turner, president
of the Varsity Club, and others.

J. Malcolm Luck, '16, operator of an automobile business in
Roanoke, was chosen alumni secretary in 1930. "Mac" Luck,
an all-southern guard on the undefeated basketball team of
1915 and member of Delta Kappa Epsilon social fraternity
and the Raven Society, took over at once. There were no more
editorials in the Alumni News until the 1940s.

Benefactions of Paul Goodloe McIntire were a notable feature
of the 1920s. Reference has been made to his gifts for
strengthening various departments of the Medical School, for

the creation of a School of Fine Arts, including music, and a
School of Commerce, and construction of the McIntire Theater.
In addition he gave $100,000 for cancer research and
$47,500 for Pantops Farm, to be used for the study of psychiatry
and nervous diseases. He also financed a series of concerts
in Cabell Hall by internationally famous artists beginning
in 1919. On top of all else, he donated a collection of rare
books to the Alderman Library and nearly 500 art objects to
the University of Virginia Art Museum in the Bayly Building.
McIntire's benefactions to the university totaled overall in the
vicinity of $750,000. All this was in addition to the handsome
statues that he gave to the city of Charlottesville, together
with four parks and the McIntire Public Library, as well as
$174,000 provided the county of Albemarle to bolster its
schools. Other quiet largesse was never publicized.

McIntire was a strange type of self-made millionaire. Shy,
withdrawn, and without a sense of humor, giving the impression
of being unhappy most of the time, he seemed ill at
ease and had little to say in any group. Yet his generosity was
extraordinary, and his alma mater, as well as his city and
county, are much the better for his philanthropy. He attended
the university for only one session, 1878-79, since he "had to
make a living." In this he succeeded admirably, for he accumulated
a fortune in Wall Street. McIntire moved back to his
native Charlottesville from New York after World War I. He
remained there for a couple of decades and then returned to
Gotham. By that time he had given away almost his entire estate,
for he told Prof. Tipton R. Snavely in 1942 that he had
been struggling to keep his expenses within his life annuity of
$6,000. He died ten years later.

Deaths of several eminent professors during the 1920s brought
grief to the university community. Raleigh C. Minor died in
1923 at his home on the Lawn following a lingering illness.
He had served thirty years on the law faculty and had endeared
himself to more than a generation of students. A calm
and placid personality in contrast to the ebullient and voluble
Armistead Dobie, Professor Minor was a profound scholar.
His Conflict of Laws was termed "a lasting contribution to legal
scholarship," while his A Republic of Nations antedated Woodrow
Wilson's proposal of a League of Nations. In his student

days Raleigh Minor had been president of the Jefferson Society
and a founder of T.I.L.K.A., and as a young professor he
was active in establishing the Raven Society. His death was
called "an irreparable loss" by the New York alumni.

Another serious loss was sustained in 1924 with the death
of Prof. Thomas L. Watson, head of the geology department
and state geologist. Only fifty-three years old when he died,
Watson was the author of Mineral Resources of Virginia, which
the Richmond News Leader termed "historic." The paper
added that "no man since [Matthew Fontaine] Maury has
done as much to open the eyes of Virginians to the riches of
their hills and fields." Engineering Dean William M. Thornton
wrote that Watson "left more than 150 important published
books and papers as testimonials to his gift for investigation
and research," and added: "A lucid and enthusiastic teacher,
he stamped upon his students the fine impress of a gracious
nature, a loyal soul and a scientific spirit."

Four years later Prof. Albert Lefevre, aged fifty-five, succumbed
to a cerebral hemorrhage. "Little Doc" Lefevre's
classes in philosophy were favorites of the students, and his
famous annual lecture on the death of Socrates was frequently
attended by outsiders. On the faculty for nearly a quarter of
a century and head of the School of Philosophy, the diminutive
professor was a collaborator with Dr. William A. Lambeth
in founding the Southern Conference and promoting high
standards of athletic eligibility. He was the author of several
books and associate editor of the Philosophical Review. President
Alderman termed him "among the great humanists and
teachers of youth."

Charles A. Graves died in 1928, aged seventy-eight. He was
one of the quartet of law professors who were the backbone
of the law school for a generation, the others being William
M. Lile, Raleigh Minor, and Armistead Dobie. A student at
Washington College under the presidency of Robert E. Lee,
Graves had won the Robinson medal in 1868 for the highest
attainments in Latin, Greek, and mathematics, and in 1869 he
won it again for similar attainments in history, English literature,
moral philosophy, and modern languages. Following
graduation he served as assistant professor of English and
modern languages, and while teaching began the study of law,
in which he graduated in 1873 with great distinction. After

serving on the Washington and Lee law faculty until 1899,
Graves joined the University of Virginia teaching staff. At that
institution he won a secure place in the hearts of the students;
his high-pitched voice together with his too small derby hat
and other mannerisms were lovingly burlesqued in the annual
Phi Delta Phi shows. University of Virginia and Washington
and Lee alumni joined in tendering "Charlie" Graves a dinner
in New York the year before his retirement at the end of the
1926-27 session.

Another student at Washington College under Robert E.
Lee was Milton W. Humphreys, professor of Greek at Virginia
for twenty-five years, who died in 1928. Having served as a
Confederate artilleryman, Humphreys continued the study of
ballistics and was recognized as a leading authority. His versatility
is further attested by the fact that he refused university
professorships in English, modern languages, and physics,
gave courses in Hebrew, botany, and mathematics, and twice
declined the presidency of a state university. Humphreys retired
from the university faculty in 1912 but continued to live
in the community until his death.

Dr. Harry T. Marshall of the medical faculty died of pneumonia
in 1929 at the American Hospital in Paris, following an
operation. He was described by Medical Dean Harvey E. Jordan
as "the greatly beloved and widely honored professor of
pathology and bacteriology." A man of compassion and high
sensitivity, he was also notably absentminded. After a score of
years on the faculty, Dr. Marshall's health began to fail, and he
went to Europe in hope of recovery. He was buried in Brussels.
During his active years he served as president of the Association
of Pathologists and Bacteriologists and as a member
of the State Board of Health.

Another loss to the university was the departure in 1930 of
the Reverend Noble C. Powell, for ten years rector of St. Paul's
Episcopal Church, to accept a call from Emmanuel Church,
Baltimore. "Parson" Powell, as he was known to the undergraduates,
had entered into the life of the student body in
many ways and was greatly admired and highly popular. College
Topics commented that "he has set a standard for future
college rectors that will be either a severe handicap or a powerful
inspiration to his successors. . . . It will be hard to think
of the university without him."

Formal tribute to the memory of Woodrow Wilson was paid
on Founder's Day 1929 when a bronze tablet, the gift of the
classes of 1925 and 1928, was unveiled on the south front of
the Rotunda. C. Venable Minor, '25, made the presentation
and Dr. Alderman responded. The room at 31 West Range,
occupied by Wilson as a student, was restored and equipped
with late nineteenth-century furniture, thanks to the generosity
of Cary N. Weisiger and Bernard M. Baruch. The refurbished
room was officially opened on the day the memorial
tablet was unveiled; Mrs. Wilson visited it and expressed herself
as pleased.

Another addition to the Grounds in these years was an ancient
fourteen-foot limestone pinnacle that had adorned the
chapel at Merton College, Oxford University, and was a gift to
the University of Virginia. Four such pinnacles had been
erected on the chapel in 1451, and when they were declared
unsafe in recent times, it was decided to distribute them. The
university's arrived in 1927 and was placed in the garden of
Pavilion VI between East Lawn and East Range.

The Raven Society completed an important project in 1928
that had been on its agenda for nearly a decade and a half,
namely, marking the grave of Elizabeth Arnold Poe in St.
John's churchyard, Richmond. The plan to place a stone at the
unmarked resting place of Edgar Allan Poe's beautiful and
talented mother was suggested in 1912 by Henry A. Cowardin,
Jr., a member of the society, and was enthusiastically
approved by the membership. Entertainment consisting of
music, readings, and speeches was given in Cabell Hall the
following month to raise funds for the project, and in the succeeding
year Miss Betty Booker gave a concert in Madison
Hall for the same purpose. Finally in 1928 the actual marking
took place in Richmond, with James Southall Wilson as the
speaker. The precise location of the grave had to be guessed
at, for Elizabeth Poe had been buried near the wall in one
corner of the churchyard since actresses were looked down on
in the early nineteenth century. Samuel P. Cowardin, Jr., a
Raven, deserves much credit for bringing about the ultimate
success of the effort.

Poe's room at 13 West Range was completely refurnished by
the Ravens in 1930, thanks to "gracious and invaluable feminine
assistance." Then in 1941 a more elaborate restoration

24. William Minor Lile in 1911, dean of the Law School,
1904-32.

was carried out under the direction of Edmund S. Campbell,
head of the School of Architecture, who did considerable research
to make the project authentic. Alterations recreated
the room as it was in Poe's day. For example, the relatively
modern door was replaced by an original door from 49 West
Range, while iron latches for the shutters were taken from No.
51. Brick for the hearth came from the anatomical building,
an original Jeffersonian structure destroyed to make way for
Alderman Library. Twin closets, one on each side of the fireplace,
were put back, while panes of original glass were collected
here and there and placed in the window. Poe had spent
$24 for second-hand furniture when he moved into the room
in 1826, and Campbell went to great pains to obtain furniture
appropriate to the period that would, according to his calculations,
have sold in that year for about $24.

Edwin A. Alderman had come to the university as president
under several handicaps, but these were surmounted. Chief
among them was the opposition of most faculty members to
abandoning the old chairman of the faculty system and serving
under a president. The fact that Alderman was not a
graduate of the university or a Virginian also was regarded by
some as a liability. But it took him only a few years to win over
faculty, students, and alumni. At the end of his sixth year in
office, 1910, the teaching staff unanimously presented him
with a loving cup which bore this inscription: "To Edwin A.
Alderman in grateful recognition of his devoted and efficient
services to the University of Virginia, in the increase of its resources,
in the expansion of its work, in the enhancement of
its usefulness without sacrifice of its standards and traditions,
and also of his just and sympathetic attitude toward his colleagues."
Dumas Malone regarded the presentation of this cup
as "in some sense the most signal triumph of his [Alderman's]
life."

As time went on, faculty support for the president's policies
was no longer unanimous, although the attitude was predominantly
favorable. For example, there were those who deplored
his desire to increase the university's enrollment and
his democratization of the institution by appealing for a larger
contingent from the public schools. History Prof. Thomas
Cary Johnson spoke with high admiration of Alderman's personal

charm and excellent training for a university presidency,
but added that he "was the man who first started the deterioration
of the university; that is, turning it into a great democratic
institution. . . . His first serious [mis]step was restricting
the dormitories to first year students." Dean B. F. D. Runk also
had "great respect for Alderman. . . . He was a gentleman and
friendly with all the students . . . but I didn't like some of his
ideas of trying to increase the university's size."

It was generally agreed that he was a man of great suavity
and impressive presence in any company, but there was also
criticism of his mannerisms and his undue awareness of his
prestigious position. As he strolled over the Grounds with dignity
he bowed ceremoniously to ladies as he passed, but frequently
did not remove his hat. As Malone puts it, "At times
he wore his honors with swagger," but "his humor was disarming."
Well-liked by most professors, students, and alumni, he
represented the university before foundations and the public
with golden words and complete aplomb. His oratory was
widely admired; indeed he was one of the most flawless public
speakers of his era, and recognized, too, as the most prominent
spokesman for the South. Some leading undergraduates
were not among his admirers; Prof. Robert K. Gooch said
concerning Alderman's early years at the university, when he
himself was an undergraduate, "the kind of students that I
respected were not very keen on President Alderman." Nicknamed
"Tony" by the University of North Carolina students
soon after he became president there because of his fondness
for dressing well, the sobriquet followed him to Virginia. The
word tony was in common usage in the late nineteenth and
early twentieth centuries as signifying "high toned" or "genteel."
As time passed, Alderman became increasingly fastidious
as to his clothes, and his collection of thirty canes was
almost awe-inspiring.

President Alderman was not a scholar in the ordinary sense
of the term. His only earned degree was the Ph.B. that he
received at Chapel Hill in 1882, and he made no effort to
obtain a graduate diploma. From the University of North Carolina
he went to the public schools, where his three-year statewide
crusade in their behalf, with Charles McIver, was of well
nigh legendary renown. Much later, of course, he was the recipient
of honorary degrees from about a dozen institutions,

including Harvard, Yale, Columbia, and Johns Hopkins. But
he was not a profound student in any one discipline; rather
he was a widely read, cultivated academician with a deep understanding
of the meaning of education and exceptional capacity
for elucidating his educational ideas.

But if Alderman was hardly a profound scholar, he was endowed
with great literary skill, as is evidenced in his classic
memorial address on the career of Woodrow Wilson, who had
died Feb. 3, 1924, delivered to a joint session of the U.S. Congress
on Dec. 15 of that year. Wilson had told Adm. Cary T.
Grayson that he regarded Alderman as the most eloquent
man he had known, and Mrs. Wilson suggested that the University
of Virginia president be invited to make the memorial
deliverance. At first he declined, as he was loaded with work
at the time, but the date was postponed in the hope that he
would accept, and he finally did so. Several months of reading
and meditation went into the preparation of the address, and
it is difficult to see how it could have been improved upon.
Those who heard it were enthusiastic, but it is perhaps even
more striking when read, and the rolling rhythms of the
speaker's elegant prose can be thoughtfully savored. It would
be difficult to find a single cliché in its thirty-eight printed
pages, its tone is statesmanlike, and there is an inspirational
quality from beginning to end. Wilson's faults are conceded;
yet the man's greatness comes through with abundant clarity.
As an example of Alderman's balanced judgments consider
the following as a summing up of the rights and wrongs in the
tragic fight over the League of Nations: "I may be permitted
the reflection that something less of malice in the hearts of his
enemies, and something more of compromise in his own
heart, and something more of political genius and firm purpose
in the hearts of those who held the faith, and there might
have been another world!"

Alderman's platform technique was not the old-fashioned,
stem-winding, table-pounding type for which the South had
long been famous. "I deliberately refrained from a display of
forensic oratory," he said later of his address on Wilson. "I
wanted to show the North and West that a southerner could
talk straight and clear without making a windmill of his arms
or a megaphone of his voice." It was nothing new for him to
rely upon freshness of diction and smoothness of delivery

rather than histrionic effects. But in earlier years he had had
to refrain entirely from public speaking, since the tuberculosis
from which he suffered had settled in his larynx as well as his
lungs. The cure was finally sufficiently complete for him to use
his voice to great effect on public occasions.

Alderman was overwhelmed with congratulations on his address
in commemoration of Wilson. Hundreds of letters
poured in from all over the country, and the full text was published
in numerous newspapers. Charles W. Eliot, the retired
president of Harvard, said he was moved to tears several times
as he read it, and Bernard M. Baruch, chairman of the War
Industries Board under Wilson, wrote, "You lifted once more
the torch that he lighted." Alderman was promptly elected to
the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He also was mentioned
in various quarters as a well-qualified candidate for the
Democratic nomination for president of the United States. He
was not at all interested and commented in writing to a friend:
"Well, I am a cool-headed man getting well along in years, and
free from all insensate ambitions. I once told Walter Page, and
he howled like Gargantua when I said it, that I would rather
catch a ten-pound land-locked salmon than to be the whole of
Taft's administration." His one ambition, he declared to Sen.
Claude Swanson, was to "see the University of Virginia retain
its place as the foremost institution in the southern states," and
he added: "Its preeminence is seriously threatened, and will
be destroyed in a period of five years unless something is
done."

Soon thereafter he declined the chancellorship of the University
of Georgia. The University of Virginia Alumni Association's
Board of Managers expressed its thanks in the following
terms: "The 21 years during which you have directed the
policies and energized the activities of our alma mater have
been years of stirring achievement. Her gain in endowments,
in student attendance, in academic authority, in scientific
equipment, in teaching power, in public usefulness and in
popular esteem have been magnificent and in large measure
your personal work. They have won for you the sympathy, the
support, the admiration, the confidence and the loyalty of our
alumni."

Engineering Dean John L. Newcomb was formally appointed
assistant to the president in 1926, before Alderman

left on one of his numerous summer trips to Europe, some of
which were paid for by wealthy friends. Newcomb's administrative
ability had been demonstrated in his chairmanship of
the centennial observance in 1921, and he had shown marked
capacity for dealing with the General Assembly in helping to
defeat the attempted removal of the Medical School to Richmond.
As a matter of actual practice, Newcomb had been Alderman's
assistant since the centennial, and this was now being
made official. For all his merits, Alderman was not primarily
an administrator; rather he was a planner, a dreamer, and an
impressive personality who lent prestige to the university.

When Herbert Hoover was pitted against Alfred E. Smith
for the presidency in the bitterly fought campaign of 1928,
Alderman openly backed Smith, despite his own belief in national
prohibition and Smith's well-known opposition to it.
Alderman denounced the religious prejudice that was rampant
because of Smith's Roman Catholicism, and spoke of the
New York governor's "amazing and inspiring career . . . an
executive of rare gifts. . . . I do not care to what church he
belongs." Smith, of course, was badly defeated and even lost
Virginia, until then a rock-ribbed Democratic stronghold.
One of Jefferson's statues on the Grounds was promptly
draped in black by unknown parties, and on it was a card with
the following: "To the memory of Jeffersonian Democracy
and Religious Freedom in Virginia—Died November 6, 1928."

In his 1929 Founder's Day address Alderman deplored
what he called the students' "chiefest defect . . . a too intense
individualism." This fault had been noted by others, and the
president elaborated by saying that the attitude "tends to overemphasize
one's rights and to minimize one's duties; and danger
lies that way, and the great philosophy needs to be looked
into, lest it become a vice instead of a virtue."

Alderman was completing twenty-five years as president of
the university, and the progress achieved under his leadership
was remarkable. The Alumni News published the following in
its December 1928 issue:

         

	1904	1929
Officers of Instruction	48	290
University Departments	5	9
Academic Schools	15	28
Students, Regular Session	500	2,200

25. Lady Astor, donor of university tennis courts, greets Captain
Bill Luke of the university football team at a game with the
University of South Carolina in 1928. South Carolina Captain
Cooper holds the ball.

             

Students, Summer Quarter	0	2,700
Students, Extension Service	0	1,528
Students, Nurses' Training School	0	125
Total Annual Income	$160,000	$1,741,352
Productive Endowment	$350,000	$10,000,000
Annual State Appropriation	$50,000	$400,000
Value Bldgs. and Equipment	$1,500,000	$9,000,000

"Dr. Alderman's administration is as much an honor to himself
as it is a glory and a power to the state," the Richmond
News Leader, edited by Douglas S. Freeman, commented. "It is
given to few men to achieve in a quarter of a century such
amazing and solid advances." And the New York Times said:
"The University of Virginia . . . during these 25 years has
come to be more than a `secluded nursery for the production
of scholars and gentlemen.' It still performs that function, but
it has come to be an institution to which all the people of the
state may look for instruction and guidance. Democracy in
these years has had no voice more eloquent and appealing
than [Alderman's]. . . . He has done more than enlarge and
improve Jefferson's institution; he has often spoken for
America in shining and stately sentences that will be permanently
preserved in American literature."

Another accolade came from the university's alumni during
a luncheon at Finals, when they presented the president with
a silver platter "in commemoration of the completion of 25
years of unselfish, abundant and inspired service enriched by
rare eloquence, wise leadership and high vision of a future of
dignity, beauty, power and renown for our alma mater." The
Edwin Anderson Alderman Alumni Fund was established under
a permanent board of fifteen, as a testimonial to "the distinguished
services of the first president of the university." A
year later a bust of Alderman by the Russian sculptor Sergei
Konenkov, the gift of Charles Steele, '78, was presented to the
university and placed in the Rotunda.

Surprisingly little seems to have been said in most published
accounts of the grave health problems under which Alderman
labored after 1912. His bout with tuberculosis made it necessary
for him, throughout the remainder of his life, to spend
only the latter half of the morning in his office, with rest in
the early afternoon. He seldom went out in the evening, except

for faculty or committee meetings. And there were several
other illnesses while he was at the university, in addition
to tuberculosis and its side effects. He was operated on for an
abdominal hernia in 1919 and developed a gastric ulcer two
years later, necessitating rigid diet. In the mid-1920s he broke
his arm and suffered with a carbuncle. The following year he
began having eye trouble and bad headaches. Alderman was
fortunate in having so able an assistant as John L. Newcomb,
who could keep the administrative machine operating while
he was ill or recuperating or on vacation. His vacations were
often prolonged. When he wasn't spending the summer in
Europe he was likely to be fishing in Canada. Often he was
invited by affluent friends to elaborate fishing camps, in one
of which he pursued the elusive salmon and the other trout
and bass. Alderman was never happier than when casting his
lure into a lake or stream.

While his health had always been more or less precarious,
the public was shocked to read in the press on the morning of
Apr. 30, 1931, that he had suffered a fatal apoplectic stroke
the previous night on board a Baltimore and Ohio railroad
train, en route to the inauguration of Harry Woodburn Chase
as president of the University of Illinois. Removed from the
train at Connellsville, Pa., he died soon afterward in the hospital
there, two weeks short of his seventieth birthday. He was
buried in the university cemetery after services in the university
chapel. Clergymen taking part were the Reverend Dwight
M. Chalmers, pastor of the Charlottesville Presbyterian Church,
of which Alderman was a member; the Reverend William Kyle
Smith, secretary of Madison Hall; the Reverend Beverley D.
Tucker, Jr., of St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Richmond, who
had been a much-beloved rector of St. Paul's Church at the
university; the Reverend Noble C. Powell of Emmanuel Episcopal
Church, Baltimore, and the Reverend Walter L. Lingle,
president of Davidson College. Eight students served as pallbearers.

Tributes to Alderman poured in from throughout the
country. Scores of newspapers were high in praise of his
achievements, and hundreds of letters and telegrams were
received. Among those sending messages were President
Herbert Hoover, John D. Rockefeller, Jr., and Mrs. Woodrow

Wilson. President Wilson had contemplated naming Alderman
ambassador to the Court of St. James's, according to one
published report, and many believed the appointment would
have been made but for his health. A resolution of the Alumni
Board of Managers termed Alderman "an orator without rival;
a statesman without artifice; a philosopher without fanaticism;
a scholar without pedantry; an administrator without
pride; an instructor without bias; a wit without vinegar; a
Christian without cant; a friend without hesitancy."

John L. Newcomb, dean of the Engineering School since
1925 and assistant to the president since 1926, was named acting
president of the university, pending choice of a permanent
successor.

Dumas Malone summed up the meaning of Alderman's life
and career in his excellent biography: "Everywhere it was remarked
that he had been the most conscpicuous spokesman of
the South in his day and the noblest interpreter of the section
to itself and the outside world. . . . The ideas which he implemented
and the faith which he kindled . . . will survive long
after the echoes of his voice have died away. . . . This wearer
of the mantle of Jefferson will continue to be regarded as one
of the torchbearers of his time."

3. THREE

John Lloyd Newcomb
Takes Over

THE TASK OF finding a successor to Edwin Alderman as
president of the university was undertaken by the Board
of Visitors. A committee of the board, headed by the rector,
Frederic W. Scott, determined to search the country for the
best-qualified man. All kinds of public celebrities were being
talked of as potential choices. Judge T. Munford Boyd of the
Charlottesville Juvenile and Domestic Relations Court wrote
in College Topics that pretty much everybody whose name was
seen in headlines, "with the possible exception of Bishop
[James] Cannon and Mussolini," was being mentioned as a
possibility. The steady worsening of the Great Depression
seemed to call for an early decision.

There were two schools of thought as to the type of individual
who should be selected. On the one hand there were
those who wanted a "big name," someone from politics, business,
or the professions who would automatically cause the
institution to be known and would be useful in raising additional
endowment. On the other there were those who
preferred a man from academic life who understood the management
of a university and its special problems. Acting President
Newcomb was thoroughly capable of carrying on routine
operations until the choice could be made; in fact he had been
virtually running the university for a decade while President
Alderman, working only part-time, served as "front man,"
making the speeches and appearing before the foundations.

The Board of Visitors began by approaching several prominent
personalities from the nonacademic world. Harry F.
Byrd, who had just served out his term as governor of Virginia
and made a national reputation in the process, was the first to
be approached; he declined on the ground that he was "not
qualified by training or temperament." Byrd had refused
shortly before to be considered for the presidency of Washington
and Lee. Newton D. Baker, secretary of war in Woodrow
Wilson's cabinet, was the next celebrity to be approached.
He too declined. Baker was interviewed again after the Democratic
National Convention of 1932, in which he had been an
unsuccessful candidate for the presidential nomination against
Franklin D. Roosevelt, and once more the answer was negative.
The committee then journeyed to New York and called
on John W. Davis, eminent Wall Street lawyer and Democratic
nominee for the presidency in 1924. Like Baker, Davis was
gracious in his refusal, but he felt that he was "first and last a
lawyer" and that he ought not to stray into "other paths." In
late 1932 the visitors went back to Davis, hoping that he would
change his mind, but to no avail. (The foregoing facts appear
in an article by Brent Tarter, published in the Virginia Magazine
of History and Biography for October 1979.)

Some nineteen months had passed since Alderman's death,
and the presidency had not been filled. Distinct annoyance
was being expressed by many faculty members as well as students.
The latter evidenced their admiration for Acting President
Newcomb in the spring by 1933 by voting him the first
Raven Award ever given by the Raven Society to a faculty
member. The citation read: "His extraordinary handling of
the university's problems, so that it has suffered in this crisis
[the depression] far less in proportion to other established institutions,
have [sic] shown his preeminence and leadership
beyond question."

Finally, at a board meeting in June 1933, Rector Scott
moved Newcomb's election, but the board voted the motion
down. It desired additional names from the world of academe.
Several more months went by, and faculty, students,
and alumni began openly expressing support of Newcomb. In
August sixteen professors, led by William H. Echols, urged his
election. The following month the entire faculty voted 110 to
3 for Newcomb, since he "has clearly demonstrated under circumstances

26. Philip F. duPont, who left $6,000,000 to the university.

as difficult as any officer is likely to encounter, his
extraordinary capacity as a university executive." Two days
later the Student Senate adopted a resolution urging Newcomb's
appointment, and heads of eighteen student organizations
signed it. The resolution recommended the acting
president as a man who would not "wish to foist on Virginia
any experimental schemes or ultramodern theories of education."

This last was one of the undoubted secrets of Newcomb's
strength with the university's faculty, students, and alumni. He
was a man who could be counted on not to "rock the boat";
his views were well known. Most members of the faculty in
that era were conservative, in contrast to many professors in
later years, and they preferred a man who would move ahead
in the old grooves to one who might go "wenching after
strange gods." There was no telling what somebody brought
in from outside might do. Most students and alumni agreed
with the faculty on this. In addition, Newcomb had demonstrated
marked ability in managing the university's affairs, especially
under the stress of the mounting depression, and that
too counted heavily in his favor. With so many university
groups calling for his election and several alumni chapters following
suit, the Board of Visitors capitulated. A minority were
still reluctant to choose him, but they were won over, and on
Oct. 6, 1933, John Lloyd Newcomb was elected unanimously
to the presidency of the University of Virginia. He was fiftyone
years old and had been born in Gloucester County, Va. A
B.A. of William and Mary (1900), he took his Civil Engineering
degree at the university in 1905. Four years later he joined
the university's engineering faculty and the following session
(1910) was made a full professor. After a decade and a half he
was chosen dean of engineering, and the following year assistant
to the president, a position that he held along with the
deanship. He was married in 1924 to Mrs. Grace Shields Russell,
a native of Richmond who had grown up there in what
had been the girlhood home of Poe's first "Helen." The Newcombs
had no children.

John L. Newcomb was as different from Edwin A. Alderman
as anybody could be. Whereas Alderman was a spectacular
personality, sometimes pompous and too conscious of his
exalted state, Newcomb was an able administrator but modest

and shy. Alderman was a superlative public speaker, aware of
his wizardry with words; Newcomb was obviously embarrassed
in making public appearances. He had a mild form of
palsy, which added to his embarrassment. Alderman was nationally
known; Newcomb was almost unheard of, except in
certain educational circles.

It would not be fair to say, however, that Newcomb was a
wholly unimaginative educational executive, concerned solely
with day to day operations. He was interested in the philosophical
side of education; almost as soon as he joined the
university faculty in the early years of the century he published
an article urging a broader training for engineering
students, extending to disciplines outside the customary
professional regimen, somewhat similar to the expanded curriculum
adopted much later in the better engineering schools.

The catastrophic drop in state revenues that followed the
worldwide business panic of 1929-32 had caused the General
Assembly to decree a 10 percent across-the-board cut in appropriations
to the university for 1932-33, before Newcomb
took office as the full-fledged president of the institution. He
had hardly gotten his seat warm in that position when another
10 percent slash was decreed. All members of the administrative
and teaching staffs were accordingly hit with this 20
percent reduction in pay, and some of the allowances for fellowships
and assistantships were cut much more heavily. Austerity
was the rule throughout the university. Newcomb's great
administrative ability, his intimate knowledge of the university's
financial structure and the ramifications thereof, made it
possible for the institution to weather the storm with less disruption
than most. Throughout the period no faculty member
failed to receive his pay check.

Student discipline was a perennial problem at Virginia, as at
nearly all centers of the higher learning, but Acting Dean Ivey
F. Lewis reported to the Staunton alumni in late 1932 that the
young men were "working harder and behaving better than
at any time in the seventeen years I have been connected with
the university." Failures for the first term in that year were
only about 20 percent. Hard times may have caused the students
to take greater advantage of their opportunities. In former
years, said the dean, the professors used to tell new

students that there was one rule and one request. The rule
was "Be a gentleman" and the request was "Don't shoot out
the lights." He said he was seeking larger responsibilities for
student government, specifically for the Student Senate, and
a greater degree of cooperation between it and university officials.
The Student Senate had been chosen by the Student
Assembly, composed of representatives of fifty student organizations.

The Senate called a meeting of the Assembly in 1932 when
College Topics suspended publication for lack of funds. The
Assembly recommended that the Board of Visitors establish a
compulsory student activity fee of $4.25 for each student, of
which $1.50 would go to Topics and $2.75 to Corks and Curls.
Furthermore, 500 additional subscriptions were obtained for
the newspaper, sufficient to keep it alive. In 1934 the board
approved a $1.50 student fee for Topics but nothing for Corks
and Curls.

The enlarged role of the student Senate was spoken of at
Finals by Acting President Newcomb. The Senate would become
"increasingly representative of all student groups," he
declared, and he added: "I would that there were time for me
to speak of the formation of student committees on the Lawn,
the Ranges and in some of the new dormitories, who have
voluntarily undertaken to bring home to all students . . . a
deeper sense of individual responsibility for the maintenance
of proper student conduct."

The administration had been caught up in a real furor over
the new dormitories, opened for the supposed benefit of firstyear
men. They were luxurious by comparison with the other
accommodations for students, but the fact did not impress the
average undergraduate, and the uproar was tremendous.
Even before they were built west of Monroe Hill, many older
students had objected to them in the belief that they would
tend to undermine university traditions. After the dormitories
were got into operation, they were "as far removed from the
life of Virginia as if they had been built on Boston Common,"
as one critic put it. "They are laughed at by some," he said,
"sneered at by others, and affectionately termed `hell's halfacre'
by those who live within hearing distance."

The Reverend Beverley D. Tucker, Jr., of Richmond, one of
the university's first Rhodes Scholars, who served as rector of

St. Paul's church at the university from 1911 to 1920, attempted
to calm the troubled waters. "The root of the problem
is not the dormitories," he said in a letter to the college
newspaper. "It is the expansion of the university from a small
student body of 500 to 600 into a student body of 2,500. Some
provision for housing was no longer a debatable question but
a necessity. The dormitories no doubt present immediate
questions of adjustment which it will probably take several
years to solve. I can remember when Dawson's Row was the
promised land of social prestige and rooms on the Lawn and
Ranges were rated rather low in the scale. I understand that
today there is a long waiting list for Lawn rooms and that
Dawson's Row is hunting for lodgers."

These observations were without appreciable effect. T. K.
Tindale, a student writing in the University of Virginia Magazine
in 1932, declared that the dormitories were "hotbeds of
sophomoric iniquity, and bedlam where no man can study"
and that "wild tales of clandestine escapades fill the ears of the
townspeople."

Finally in 1935 it was decreed that one suite in each of the
twelve halls would be set aside for two older students who
would serve as counselors. After their installation, Dean Lewis
explained that "only the necessary minimum of supervision is
given." The new arrangement was greeted with violent opposition
from one element of students and with support from
another. The former group saw in it the threat that "house
mothers" would be employed in the future and that all phases
of university life would be strictly supervised. Also it was seen
as a plot of the fraternities to install their members as counselors,
and through them to recruit choice "goats." Those
undergraduates favoring the new arrangement viewed it as
tending to remove a stain from the university's good name
and as beneficial to the first-year men.

This controversy is typical of many that took place over the
years at the university. Decade after decade students were protesting
additional regulations as contrary to the traditions of
individual liberty on which, they said, the institution had been
founded. Virginia men, they contended, were supposed to be
free "to go to hell in their own way," if such was their fancy.
For example, Ben Dulany, one of the ablest students of that
era, an extremely literate writer whose column "The Bedlamite"

in College Topics was original and refreshing, expressed this
view. Writing in the Alumni News in 1935, he declared that we
now have "proctors" in the dormitories, and he added: "Firstyear
men . . . will instinctively feel that these older students
are there to regulate their personal doings. `Well, I'll try to get
away with it' will more and more replace `I can't do it because
I'm a student at Virginia.' " (For a gracefully written, insightful,
and amusing analysis of what makes the University of
Virginia tick, see Dulany's "Enter by This Gateway" in the University
of Virginia Magazine, Feb. 1932.)

In an effort to meet criticism, the administration devised
and put into effect a "modified form of self-government" for
the twelve halls. Under this plan each hall had a self-government
committee of five, consisting of two counselors and three
elected first-year men. These committees were given responsibility
for administering regulations adopted by the counselors
and approved by members of the halls. "It is the desire of
the administration to have the first-year students living in the
dormitories assume the responsibilities of self-government as
rapidly as they show the development of a capacity to provide
effective control of disturbing elements in dormitory life," said
Dean Lewis.

Rooms in the dorms were solely for males, of course, and
the few coeds in the university were without such facilities.
Supposedly all women matriculates were enrolled in the
graduate or professional schools, but four girl graduates of
Lane High School in Charlottesville and one from St. Anne's
near the university were quietly admitted to the College in
September 1932. The university administration apparently
decided that since the parents of the young ladies were taxpayers,
it would be the part of wisdom to let their daughters
in without any fuss. The first to apply was Eloise Virginia
Bishop; she informed two of her friends in the Lane High
graduating class, Virginia Snyder and Irene Rose Mann, of
her acceptance, and they too applied and were enrolled. All
were topflight students. The fourth alumna from Lane was
Carolyn Maddox, and the St. Anne's applicant was Mary Scott
Parker of the university. The presence of this quintet in the
College was obvious to the male students who had classes with
them, but it was not generally realized that they had been admitted
straight from high school. Miss Bishop was instructed

27. Harrison F. Flippin, world record holder in high hurdles
and national pentathlon champion in 1927.

to transfer to the School of Education for her senior year if
she wished to take part in the 1936 graduation exercises, and
she did so. Misses Snyder and Mann got their diplomas by
waiting to graduate in that year's summer school; Miss Mann
went on to take an M.A. and Ph.D. Misses Parker and Maddox
were not candidates for degrees. A few wives and daughters
of faculty members also were admitted to the College during
these years, under a special dispensation.

Mrs. Mary Cooke Branch Munford (Mrs. Beverley B. Munford),
who led the fight for many years to obtain the admission
of women to the university on the same basis as men, was memorialized
in 1941 with a handsome marble tablet in Alderman
Library. She had died in 1938 after serving for twelve
years on the university's Board of Visitors. Jackson Davis of
the General Education Board made the presentation at the
unveiling and praised Mrs. Munford for her work in educational
and humanitarian fields. The tablet, which hangs on the
wall of the library's reference reading room, was accepted by
R. Gray Williams, rector of the university. It says: "She carried
the devotion of a great mind and flaming spirit into unselfish
service to public education throughout Virginia. . . . Her
memorial is in numberless young lives set free."

The issue of Negro enrollment also arose during these
years. Alice Jackson, daughter of a black Richmond druggist,
applied in 1935 for admission to the graduate school, but the
Board of Visitors instructed Dean Metcalf to reject her application
on the ground that "education of white and colored
persons in the same schools is contrary to long-established and
fixed policy of the commonwealth of Virginia," and "for other
good and sufficient reasons." The National Association for the
Advancement of Colored People evidently decided that the
time was not ripe for filing suit. Legal action would not be
instituted by the NAACP until some years later and in connection
with another application.

Disillusionment over conditions in the world as the aftermath
of the 1914-18 war gave rise to a wave of pacifism in
this country and Europe. The Oxford oath, under which
young Englishmen pledged themselves "never to fight for
king and country," was one extreme manifestation. The question
whether to establish a Reserve Officers Training Corps at
the University of Virginia arose in 1935 as part of this wideranging

discussion. Federal funds totaling $35,000 were available
for the purpose, but the Board of Visitors decided not to
establish the ROTC unit at that time.

As war clouds loomed on the horizon, an organization
called the Anti-War Committee of the University of Virginia,
which included representatives of the Jefferson Society, Madison
Hall, and the National Students' League, issued an appeal
to all students to join in an antiwar rally on Apr. 12 in Cabell
Hall. College Topics had published an editorial the month before
headed "Pro Patria Mori Is Bunk." President Newcomb
said classes would be suspended from 11:30 to 12:30 o'clock
to permit the students to attend the meeting. President Franklin
D. Roosevelt had said that the United States must avoid
war at all costs, and various publications, including the Richmond
Times-Dispatch, endorsed the rally. Murat Williams, outgoing
editor of College Topics who would be a Rhodes Scholar,
presided, and the principal speaker was J. B. Matthews, secretary
of the Fellowship of Reconciliation. Brief antiwar talks
were made by Dean Ivey Lewis and Professors Robert K.
Gooch and Scott Buchanan. The hall was packed with about
one thousand students, and "chaotic demonstrations" followed
the declaration by Francis Franklin, representing the
National Students' League, that tens of thousands of students
would "take the Oxford oath never to support the government
of the United States in any war it may undertake." No
such action was suggested at the meeting, which ended without
the adoption of any formal resolutions.

The National Students' League at the university—which
was counterbalanced by the student chapter of the conservative
American Liberty League—was headed by F. Palmer Weber,
a native of Smithfield, who had triumphed over poverty
and tuberculosis to become perhaps the most brilliant student
in the institution. Regarded by his fellows as "the university's
resident Communist," Weber described himself as a Christian
Socialist. He was not a Communist, of course, but was the
spokesman for left-wing radicalism on the Grounds and was
active in antiwar rallies. In later years he became extremely
successful in New York as an investment counselor and was
generous in his financial support of the university.

Clarence Hathaway, editor of the Communist Daily Worker,
spoke in Cabell Hall on May 21 to the accompaniment of boos,

applause, and fights in the audience. Hathaway, representing
the National Students' League, discussed the Communist program,
and such pandemonium reigned during most of his address
that he decided to adjourn the meeting and resume in
Jeff Hall, where he finished his discourse and remained for
three hours answering questions. Stern admonitions from the
university's Administrative Council termed the disorder "illmannered
and contrary to the habits and practice of the students
at this university." "More drastic action" was promised if
it occurred again.

Another antiwar rally was held on Nov. 8 at the request of
the Jefferson Society and sixteen student organizations, including
the Student Senate. Classes were again suspended for
an hour, but only 450 attended. Francis P. Miller, chairman of
the World Christian Student Federation, who would be a candidate
for governor of Virginia in 1949, was the chief speaker.
He called on the United States to develop a "positive foreign
policy" since it now has "no foreign policy at all," and lead in
forming an international police force to keep the peace. Engineering
Dean W. S. Rodman also spoke, as did student leaders,
one of whom asked, "Are we men enough to stay out of
war?" All speeches were fairly mild. It was the last of the major
antiwar rallies.

While the Jefferson Society had been prominent in arranging
these affairs, the society at this time was only a pale reflection
of its earlier self. A former president stated that "a membership
of 200 is now but two score, an overflowing treasury
is now an income-expense account." Another member said
during the previous year that he was one of only eight members
who were still attending meetings. The organization
seemed almost ready to follow the example of the Washington
Society, which had become extinct in the 1920s, but the "Jeff"
would revive markedly in subsequent years. The "Wash" came
back to life in 1939, although on an entirely different basis,
with four prominent professors and sixteen student leaders as
members. A spokesman stated that it would not compete in
any way with the Jeff and "does not have any of the aims and
purposes of the Jefferson Society." Its own aims and purposes
were "to encourage intellectual curiosity, gentlemanliness,
congeniality and the idealization of the Virginia gentleman,"
and to stress patriotism.

The Student Union, which had begun operations before
World War I and then faded out, was revived in 1933 and
opened for business on the redecorated lower floor of Madison
Hall. Offices for College Topics, Corks and Curls, the university
magazine, and the self-help bureau were there along with
rooms for games, meetings, and reading. Three years later it
was explained that the Student Union had "four separate and
distinct divisions of activity": operating the Dulany Library for
the nonprofitable exchange of second-hand books, a memorial
to Thomas Carter Dulany, who died at the university in
the 1920s while a student; assisting visitors to see the university
through the cooperation of the information and guide division;
arranging such activities as ping-pong and badminton
tournaments; and providing entertainment for "the Sweet
Briar contingent" and similar visitors, as well as for participants
in the Virginia Literary and Athletic League.

A flurry of excitement was aroused in January 1934 by the
appearance of a weekly student newspaper, the University
Forum. While its primary object was explained as "not to damn
Topics," it published two anonymous blasts from members of
that paper's staff, one of which termed Topics "deplorable."
The other said, it "is so poor, so dull, so childish and at times
illiterate, that I can see but one excuse for its continued existence—there
must be some record of events at the University
of Virginia. . . . The last five editors of College Topics, with one
exception, have been members of the same fraternity."

The University Forum said it would "bring to light the true
state of affairs, whether the truth be pleasing or otherwise,"
and would present both sides of local controversy, "provoke a
little thought, and perhaps above all maintain a healthy sense
of humor among the students." It managed to present arguments
for and against abolishing intercollegiate athletics, with
Allan T. Gwathmey taking the affirmative and Hunsdon Cary,
Jr., the negative. The last issue of the session appeared Apr. 6,
and while the Forum expressed the intention of resuming publication
in the fall, it did not do so. Hence it had an overall life
of only about two and a half months.

Drinking at the university was an almost continuous subject of
discussion, and a student poll, with fewer than half of the students
voting, showed that 713 drank and 207 did not, 452 had

gotten drunk and 436 had not, 547 favored modification of
the dry law, 265 preferred outright repeal, 90 urged strict enforcement,
and 18 liked the existing situation.

A prominent emissary from Shifflett's Hollow, perhaps the
premier center of manufacture supplying moonshine to
thirsty Virginia men, fell into the hands of the police. Described
as "well known among Virginia students who often
buy his farm produce," he was arrested in 1931 on University
Circle "when engaged in making business calls." Bootleggers
and moonshiners continued their regular traffic around the
Grounds for a time after prohibition's repeal at the end of
1933. The depression was at its worst, and the dubious elixir
known as "white mule" was cheaper than the wares vended in
the state's newly established A.B.C. stores. By 1935 Ben Dulany
was writing that "mason jars have gone to the limbo of
spinning wheels and bustles," but the proclaimed demise of
this receptacle was premature, since mason jars would be used
around the Grounds for alcoholic potations of one sort of another
over a period of several decades.

Beer was widely consumed in the local beer parlors after
repeal. When the long drought ended and authentic Budweiser,
Schlitz, and Pabst came on the market, the boys were
quick to make the best of the opportunity. Hard liquor also
was drunk in the fraternity houses and dormitories, mainly on
weekends and in the form of highballs. The point was made
in a Topics editorial that Virginia men "drink in the open, serving
from our own bars, without any of the hypocritical sneakings
to `catch a short one' in the back room or lavatory . . . as
students in other institutions are accustomed to do." The paper
expressed the conviction that there is no more drinking,
overall, at Virginia than at other schools and that "all respect
that man who conducts himself as if he were in his own home."

Drunkenness at football games in the middle 1930s was
"negligible," in the opinion of Capt. Norton Pritchett, director
of athletics, who said in 1937 that in the previous three years
"drinking has not been one of our problems." Several officials
at other Virginia institutions agreed that there had been great
improvement in this regard and attributed it to the repeal of
prohibition. A University of Virginia student was expelled in
1939 for getting drunk and lying across the railroad tracks.
Friends pulled him to safety, but he was removed from the

28. Novelist Julien Green, an alumnus
who became the only non-Frenchman
ever elected to the French
Academy.

university's rolls for "violating the laws of the commonwealth,"
in accord with the rule published in the catalogue.

Pledging of dances in the gym had been ended—that is, students
who danced were no longer on their honor to have
drunk no alcohol since noon of that day. The pledge had been
in effect for most of the 1920s, although it had been abandoned
temporarily in the early years of the decade, probably
because an intoxicated student who apparently didn't fully realize
what he was doing, danced a few steps and was expelled
by the Honor Committee. This impressed some as an excessive
penalty, under the circumstances, and soon thereafter the
dances were "unpledged." But the floor committee charged
with keeping order found the task beyond its capabilities, and
the previous system was instituted once more. In 1933 it was
decided to take off the pledge and put control into the hands
of the dance societies. It apparently worked reasonably well in
that year, and there was no more pledging.

The holding of dances in the fraternity houses was becoming
more and more popular, and the university administration
announced a set of rules governing all such affairs sponsored
by student organizations in the university community: Permission
to hold any such dance must be obtained from the dean's
office; "applicants . . . must communicate with Mrs. R. H. Dabney,
chairman of the committee on chaperones, who will provide
the necessary chaperones; . . . a floor committee shall be
appointed and the names listed in the dean's office," and the
university "will hold the floor committee responsible for good
behavior at all times."

The "excessive individualism" noted and criticized by Dr. Alderman
and others continued into the 1930s under the heading
"don't give a damnness." Combined with the often
deplored aversion to "sticking out one's neck," the prevailing
atmosphere around the Grounds was still hostile to any sort
of group action designed to improve conditions. There was a
flurry of hope that the old ways were being abandoned when
Professors Robert K. Gooch and Stringfellow Barr reported
that they had actually managed to get members of their classes
to engage in open discussion, but this triumphant accomplishment
was short-lived. A few years later teachers were bemoaning
once more their inability to get students to speak out in

class. There were mass departures of students on weekends,
from Friday to Monday, or even longer. "The week-end is
more of a Virginia tradition than stomping the neck-sticker,"
said an editorial in the University of Virginia Magazine. "It is the
only local activity participated in by more than fifty of the student
body."

True, hope was expressed during the session of 1931-32
that something in the nature of a renaissance had occurred. A
growing number of students were said to be awakening to the
fact that "don't give a damnness" was highly detrimental to
the institution and that countervailing action should be taken.
There was to be a reorganization of the Student Assembly,
created two years before, so that it might "serve the university
and become a powerful and concrete representative of student
thought." This campaign for greater interest in literary,
scholastic, and athletic activities achieved only a limited degree
of success. An odd note was sounded by Prof. Albert G. A.
Balz in a talk to the Jefferson Society. Jeremiads to the effect
that the university is going to pot "lack perspective," he declared,
since such lamentations had been sounded for twentyfive
years, and the renaissance had taken place a quarter of a
century ago.

As part of the individualist tradition, support for the athletic
teams was spasmodic and uncertain, with the average student
apparently taking the view that anything more aggressive
would be contrary to the Virginia way of doing things. College
Topics declared editorially that the atmosphere around the fraternities
was "detrimental to interest in activities," and it
added: "We are told that each week-end various `brothers' try
to persuade football men to go off pledge because football is
no longer worth the work it requires," and "fraternity men bet
against the team in open defiance to the feelings of any players
who happen to be present." The players themselves refused,
as in former years, to wear their "V" sweaters around
the Grounds lest this be considered ostentatious.

The University of Virginia, Princeton, and Williams are
"generally recognized as the `country club' colleges of America,"
College Topics declared editorially. "And well may it be said,"
the paper went on, "for the students of these three take more
pains in dress, and the etiquette of play than the students of
any other colleges in the country. But does this detract from

the specifications of a gentleman? It definitely does not." The
editor went on to declare that "there is the other side of college
life to consider—studies," and in this category the University
of Virginia "stands neither highest nor lowest." The
average Virginia student "is not a bookworm," but this does
not "detract from the specifications of a gentleman." Topics
concluded that Virginia men "lead the students of American
colleges in the maintenance of a balance in college life."

There appears to be no evidence that the collegiate fads of
the 1930s and 1940s—goldfish gulping and stuffing students
into telephone booths to the maximum degree possible—had
any followers at the university.

A typical Easter Week in the years just before this country
entered World War II was that of 1941. It opened on Thursday
evening with a dance in Memorial Gymnasium from 10
P.M. to 3 A.M. On Friday afternoon there was a golf match and
baseball game with VPI; the annual Sigma Phi Epsilon "Purple
Passion Party" followed at the S.P.E. house on Madison
Lane from 4 to 6 P.M.; the Delta Tau Delta mint julep party at
the D.T.D. house from 5 to 7 P.M.; the Phi Delta Phi Libel
Show in Cabell Hall at 8 P.M.; and the dance in the gymnasium
from 10 P.M. to 3 A.M. Saturday was inaugurated with a "baseball
game" at 5 A.M. (yes, 5 A.M.) in Mad Bowl "between students
and their dates"; there followed another baseball game
at 3:30 P.M. on Lambeth Field with the University of Michigan;
the Sigma Nu party at the Sigma Nu house from 4 to 6
P.M., and the Tommy Dorsey Concert in Cabell Hall from 5 to
6 P.M. The formal Easter Week festivities closed with a dance
in the gym from 8 to 12 o'clock. The Spectator observed helpfully
that "a Mason jar is a receptacle which makes its appearance
every Easter Week filled with mint, sugar, ice and bourbon.
Easy to hold (literally, not internally) when wrapped in a
towel." The S.P.E. Purple Passion Party was not as lurid as it
sounded, for the name was taken from the punch of grain
alcohol and fruit juice, dubbed "Purple Passion Punch,"
served at the affair. The entire party took place on the first
floor of the house. This S.P.E. bash was a regular feature of
Easter Week for a number of years, both before and after the
war.

A national magazine declared in 1937 that the University of
Virginia is not a place for serious work but rather a place

29. John S. LaRowe, Virginia's boxing coach, 1922-40.

where a young man can spend a few years getting "the finest
training for convivial intercourse to be found anywhere in the
world." Paul B. Barringer, Jr., a prominent alumnus and New
York attorney, denounced this "absolute libel" in an address to
the alumni-graduate luncheon at Finals. "Every man who has
graduated from the university knows that it is a libel," he declared,
"but I regret that it expresses a reputation which is
widespread in the outside world, which our rivals do not discourage
and which . . . some members of our alumni appear
in glory in." Barringer went on to comment on the individualism
of the average Virginia man, and stated that "Virginia
men simply do not take to organization." He added that time
after time he had seen the officers of "a rich and numerous
alumni association, such as New York, have to go down in their
pockets to pay the postage bills and deficits on entertainments
given by the association." Terming this "nothing short of a disgrace,"
he went on to say that "it is a wonder that men can be
found to perform the sort of drudgery which maintaining
these organizations entails."

Efforts were often made to explain the custom at Virginia
of not speaking to persons with whom one had not become
acquainted. Prof. Stringfellow Barr's analysis, published in the
university Handbook for several years, beginning in 1932-33,
seemed to be the most widely accepted. Entitled "Comments
on a Social System," it pointed out that many men did not
return after their first year because "nobody spoke to them,"
and went on to provide a defense and explanation. Barr's
statement is too long to be quoted in full, but he says that "the
reason so few Americans ever mature or find themselves is
that they are too busy, back-slapping, hand-shaking, `contacting,'
making acquaintances," and he adds: "John Butler Yeats
once remarked that Americans had a genius for acquaintance
and no capacity for friendship." And he goes on:

There can be no question that the tradition of not speaking
at Virginia alienated many of those not spoken to. A letter in
the student newspaper in 1931, typical of numerous such
expressions, said that the newcomer to the university "feels an
iron wall of reserve about him." Five years later John C. Wyllie
wrote in the Alumni News that students were no longer tipping
their hats to every professor, "whether or not an acquaintance."
The custom had been universally observed by both professors
and students in the 1920s and early 1930s.

Eight fraternities had been virtually controlling elections
and editorships for forty years or more, W. Brown Morton,
Jr., declared in an article entitled "Virginia Tammany" in the
University of Virginia Magazine for December 1934. Fraternity
men constituted only about half of the student body, but the
disproportionate influence wielded by them had been noted
as long ago as 1895 by the editor of Corks and Curls. Nominations
of candidates for officers of the college are "clandestine,
so mystery-controlled that not one in ten students can possibly
tell who has selected the three names," Morton wrote. "Lambda
Pi and Skull & Keys name the slates, but where did these
societies acquire this great privilege?" The president of the
college was (and is) automatically chairman of the Honor
Committee, and in the past ten years all ten presidents had
been fraternity men, he pointed out. Nine of the ten editors
in chief of College Topics were fraternity men, although more
nonfraternity men were on the dean's list. Members of fraternities
had completely dominated the G.A.A. elections.

In part, at least, as a result of the Morton article the students
voted early in 1935 to change the method of nominating candidates
for college offices. The new system was drawn up by
the Honor Committee sitting in emergency session with several

Topics editors. Nominations were to be made by the Student
Assembly, composed of representatives of the active
social and medical fraternities, the twelve halls or dormitories,
plus Dawson's Row and Randall Hall, while any group of
twenty students not otherwise represented could elect a
spokesman. A referendum was held to ratify the foregoing,
but the presence on the ballot of two proposals, one that the
plan would be effective at once and the other next session,
caused confusion. Another election was held and the decision
was for immediate change. The result was that the slate of
nominees in the spring of 1935 was much more representative
of the student body as a whole. The old method of handpicking
the slates was discarded for good.

Issuance of bad checks by students was a problem for many
years. In most instances such issuance was due to carelessness
in the keeping of bank balances or in the writing of checks on
the wrong bank. But since the early 1920s stern warnings had
emanated from the Honor Committee to the effect that any
man who deliberately cashed a check, knowing that there was
no money on deposit to cover it, was guilty of violating the
honor code. A student Bad Check Committee was created,
and in 1923-24 it succeeded in reducing the average number
of checks that "bounced" from forty or fifty per week to eight.
The Faculty Committee on Admissions announced in 1927
that no student with outstanding worthless checks would be
allowed to reenter the university the following session without
a satisfactory explanation. The Bad Check Committee reminded
the students again in 1936 that drawing a check when
the drawer knew he hadn't sufficient funds to cover it was an
honor violation. The committee stated the following year that
"several students have recently been dismissed from the university
for such breaches of the honor code." Downtown Charlottesville
merchants were more willing to cooperate with the
committee by turning in bad checks than the Corner merchants.
The latter were so completely dependent on student
patronage that they were reluctant to do so.

Some of the burden was lifted from the Bad Check Committee
by creation of a Board of Arbitration, composed of
three students and two alternates who had been at the university
for at least three years. This agency was not under the
Honor Committee and sat in judgment on disputes between

students and Charlottesville merchants involving unpaid
debts. The board was empowered to decide such matters, with
enforcement in the hands of the university administration.
Excellent results were obtained. Some undergraduates contracted
extremely large bills with merchants and left school.
The Board of Arbitration was useful in bringing about settlements.
It was not a debt-collection agency but an agency for
arbitrating disagreements and arriving at solutions reasonably
satisfactory to all concerned.

A Judicial Committee of students to take jurisdiction over
all routine cases of student discipline was established in 1941
by the Student Senate. Such cases had previously been
handled by the dean of the university. Explaining the function
of the newly created agency, the Alumni News declared that "it
has been established in an effort to control student discipline
in the same traditional spirit of freedom and self-government
which has been shown by the Honor Committee in its regulation
of the ethical conduct of University of Virginia students
for a hundred years." Dean Ivey Lewis, who had been handling
all cases involving disciplinary action, "will in the future
limit his control to special cases or to cases involving student
groups," said the News.

Disorder in fraternity houses during the Summer Quarter
led Dean George B. Zehmer to close the fraternities to students
during the 1940 summer session and relegate the students
to the Lawn and Ranges. In order to do this, the girls
had to be transferred from those rooms to the dormitories.
The disorder that had occurred in the fraternities accordingly
shifted to the Lawn and Ranges, where the chief offenders
were students who had failed most of their work during the
regular session and failed most of it again in the summer.
"They were nuisances in the classes they attended as well as in
other respects during the summer," said Zehmer, who suggested
more rigid requirements for admission to the Summer
Quarter. In 1941-42 he arranged for an older student to
serve as "a sort of night watchman" on the Lawn and Ranges
from 4 P.M. to 4 A.M., with "satisfactory results" during the
latter part of the summer session.

Announcements of dismissals under the Honor System
were made in various ways over the years. In earlier days the
entire student body was called into session, the name was

made known, and the case discussed. This procedure was
abandoned as too burdensome. Later, identities of those expelled
were communicated to the students at University Hour,
held once each term. This practice also was discarded but was
revived in 1931, when the names were again announced at
University Hour. Within a few years, however, the publicizing
of individuals was stopped, and the publicity was limited to
making known the types of offenses involved. In 1939-40, for
example, the facts were published in College Topics at the end
of the session, as follows: violating athletic eligibility pledge,
one; cheating on quizzes, four; cheating on pledged papers,
four; signing roll after nonattendance, one; total for the session,
ten.

First-year men were being admonished at periodic intervals
to wear their hats in accordance with long established custom,
although there was no specific penalty for failure to do so.
Lapses on the part of freshmen who went around bareheaded
were noted from time to time in the collegiate press, and they
were told that this custom and the rule against their hanging
about the Corner added up to an extremely mild form of discrimination,
especially when compared to the hazing at many
colleges and universities. All students were supposed to wear
coats and ties, and while this was rather universally observed
until recent years, there were occasions, notably in the 1950s
and 1960s, when the first-year men had to be warned that they
were undermining the sacred traditions.

Footstamping in class was a phenomenon of the late 1920s
and 1930s. It seemed to mean different things at different
times—applause, a polite form of booing, or an expression of
strong disapproval. Prof. George W. Spicer related that one of
his students made himself a dreadful nuisance in class by repeatedly
asking "irrelevant and even inane questions." He was
effectively silenced by his fellow students, who stamped so
loudly that it "sounded like the cavalry galloping down McCormick
Road."

Undergraduates who had an average grade of 87 were
termed Distinguished Students and given the privilege of cutting
half of their classes. Topics stated that these students felt
that they were "being `eager'—deadliest of sins at Virginia"—
if they did not take all of their cuts. The result was that "for at

30. Zeisberg views the changing scene at the university.

least half of the class periods, class membership was made up
of those barely passing their work, the instructors were letting
down in the quality of their lectures, and the students who
could contribute most . . . were conspicuous by their absence."

A poll of several student leaders and faculty members by
the Spectator returned a unanimous vote of opposition to unrestricted
coeducation. One student expressed himself with
great fervor: "Coeds—the very word makes me quiver!" Pleasanton
L. Conquest III, whose column in Topics entitled "The
Reflection Pool" was one of the most delightfully written productions
of the era at the university, with notably clever verse,
unbosomed himself as follows: "Why, oh why can't we get rid
of the women in this college? Women are fine in their place,
but their place is definitely elsewhere. . . . Take 'em out coach,
beautiful or not (mostly not). A pox on the coed room and its
beleaguered group of enraged lionesses." This was such
strong stuff that the Topics editorial board announced that it
was disassociating itself from the "recent diatribe against
coeds," since "we believe that girls have a definite place here."
About a year later Conquest relented; he said his criticisms of
coeds had been "ungentlemanly" and were to be "taken in
fun." It would not happen again, he added.

New rules for fraternity rushing, requiring the attainment
of certain grades, were announced by President Newcomb in
1934. The two-week rushing period in the fall would be continued,
but actual initiation would be postponed until January
and "will be made conditioned upon the successful completion
of at least nine term hours of work during the fall term." Newcomb
added that under the old system "a few matriculates—I
hesitate to call them students—somehow seemed to be of the
opinion that they had reached the climax of their college careers
when they had been initiated into a fraternity, and that
nothing further was to be expected of them."

The Glee Club's fiftieth anniversary in 1936 was celebrated
in Cabell Hall with a program of university melodies, southern
songs, and other compositions, under the leadership of
Prof. Harry Rogers Pratt. This program was broadcast over a
Virginia radio network, and the following week the club made
a joint appearance in New York with the Barnard College Glee
Club. A concert was given by the Virginia vocalists the next
night at the Plaza Hotel, sponsored by the Virginians of New

York in cooperation with the Southern Society. Other appearances
in various cities followed. Some sixty singers, trained by
Professor Pratt, participated.

The university's Student Band, under Prof. Robert E. Lutz,
also was winning praise. Founded in 1934, it had gotten off to
a somewhat shaky start, but was now playing at athletic contests
with greater success.

"Punch and Julep," designed as a Virginia version of Princeton's
"Triangle Club" and Harvard's "Hasty Pudding," was organized
in 1939, with Harry Pratt again as adviser. It was revamped
the following year and provided well-received musical
comedies.

Omicron Delta Kappa, the national honorary leadership
fraternity, had a chapter at the university from 1925 to 1929,
but then, for some unexplained reason, it went out of existence.
Ten years later the Student Senate appointed a committee
to consider its revival. O.D.K. was reconstituted a short
time thereafter, and twenty-seven students were elected to
membership. It has been functioning on the Grounds ever
since.

The "Spectator Award," to be given annually to the university's
foremost scholar-athlete, was announced by the Virginia
Spectator. A permanent trophy was provided on which each
year the winner's name would be engraved. The G.A.A. banquet
every spring was to be the scene of the award, with the
recipient chosen by a committee composed of administration,
faculty, and students.

The Virginia Literary and Athletic League met each year at
the university throughout the 1930s with hundreds of high
school students from all over the state in attendance. Literary
and dramatic contests, public speaking and debating, a track
meet, tennis matches, and other contests were on the agenda,
as well as trips to McCormick Observatory and Monticello, a
tea dance, and so on. Charles H. Kauffmann, executive secretary,
who also was director of the university's Personnel and
Placement Bureau, was in charge. Every effort was made to
impress the visiting youths with the thought that the University
of Virginia was the place where they should enroll for
their collegiate training. The university students were besought
by the authorities to be on their good behavior during
the program. The Interfraternity Council sent a letter to all

fraternities reminding them of their responsibilities. In 1940
the program was in its twenty-seventh year.

Enrollment in the university dropped to 2,435 at the bottom
of the depression, but by 1937-38 it had risen to 2,741
and was still going up. Episcopalians were the largest religious
denomination during the 1930s, as had been the case since
the institution's founding. A poll in 1936 showed 730 members
of that denomination, 330 Presbyterians, 325 Methodists,
252 Baptists, 216 Jews, 135 Roman Catholics, and the rest
scattered.

President Roosevelt's New Deal evidently had its impact on
the university, for in 1939 the Spectator carried an article by
Harris H. Williams, the paper's assistant editor, entitled " `One
Third of a Nation'; the Back Door to Mr. Jefferson's University."
It included photographs of Negro slums in Charlottesville
and a black woman collecting food from garbage cans.
The article said, among other things: "It will take much
money and a long time to right these conditions; particularly
it requires a progressive civic outlook, which as yet seems to
have little voice in the City Council or even the civic leadership."

Graduate Dean John C. Metcalf reiterated in 1932 what he
had said in 1928, namely, that the university was leading all
other southern institutions in "scholarly investigation." By
1933 he had modified this statement to read "No other Southern
institution is accomplishing more in the way of scholarly
research." Subjects in which he said particularly good advanced
work was being done were chemistry, biology, physics,
astronomy, philosophy and psychology, social sciences, economics,
romance languages, history, English, education, and
medicine. Despite the depression, all twenty students awarded
Ph.D.s in 1930 "have good positions," said the dean, the majority
in "some of the best universities." Every applicant for
the M.A. and M.S. degrees had been required since 1921-22
to present a thesis; it usually took two years in the 1930s to get
this diploma.

In his annual report for the year 1932-33, Prof. Albert
G. A. Balz stated that "the University of Virginia, alone in the
South, is in a position to command respect as a source for men
trained in professorships in philosophy." He referred to a recent

31. Henry H. (Pop) Lannigan, coach and trainer of many
Virginia teams, 1905-29. From a portrait by William Steene.

questionnaire which disclosed that "only one [southern]
institution remotely approaches our facilities [library resources
for teaching and research], and with respect to that
institution (Texas) there is some ambiguity in the report."

Some months later Balz contributed an article to the University
of Virginia Magazine in which he argued that the university
was not "slipping scholastically," as some were claiming, and
cited the undoubted advances made in the preceding decade.
Algernon Bysshe replied in the subsequent issue of the magazine
that this argument was largely meaningless, since other
institutions also had made much progress during the same period.

However, Balz was very nearly correct with respect to the
high rank he assigned to his own philosophy department, for
its graduate facilities were rated ahead of all others in the
South, except those at Texas, by the Committee on Graduate
Instruction of the American Council on Education in a report
announced in 1934.

Professor Metcalf's high rating of Virginia's graduate instruction
had been somewhat oversanguine, since graduate
study in only four disciplines at Virginia, including philosophy,
was deemed "adequate," whereas there were ten such departments
at Texas, including one that was "starred"; eight at
North Carolina, one of them starred, and seven at Duke. The
other three "adequate" graduate departments at Virginia
were astronomy, the only one thus ranked in the South; economics,
with Texas the only other southern institution listed;
physics, with only Rice Institute as a competitor; and chemistry,
with other "adequate" departments at North Carolina,
Rice, and Duke.

There was perhaps consolation in the fact, pointed out by
Professor Metcalf, that "from 30 to 50 percent of the `jurors'
either did not vote or sent in their votes too late to be recorded."
He also termed the report "often inaccurate."

The Institute for Research in the Social Sciences continued
to provide valuable assistance to professors engaged upon
scholarly projects. "Practically every professor in economics,
government, history, sociology and rural social economics has
either recently completed a book or is actively engaged in preparing
one on some topic of significant and vital interest," the
Alumni News reported in 1935. "Many now have several titles

to their credit." Assistance given by the institute took a variety
of forms; usually it paid the salary of a substitute teacher while
the regular member of the staff went on leave for the summer
or a full year, in order to work on his project. Another form
of assistance was payment for aid in research, for necessary
supplies, or for stenographic help. Many different subjects
were covered in the scholarly inquiries. One list mentioned
taxation in Virginia, Swedish agriculture, behavior of infants,
income in the South, Franco-British diplomacy in the Near
East, American business cycles, French constitutional history,
and the economics of cotton.

Wilson Gee, the person behind all this, was a somewhat
complex man. The organization he founded and headed
made a vitally important contribution to graduate work by the
students and advanced research by the faculty and thereby
enhanced the standing of the university in the educational
world. Gee supervised the research of his students carefully
and encouraged them to do good work, according to apparently
reliable authority; yet it was widely reported that he
graded so liberally on examinations that nobody failed. One
able but unimpressed former student declares that "his lectures
were dull and he passed everybody." Yet other competent
members of his classes voted him one of their favorite
professors and complimented him on his willingness to work
with them on their problems. A faculty associate, on the other
hand, said Gee was "quite egotistical" and difficult to work
with. Gee persuaded President Alderman to let him leave the
Department of Economics and establish his own separate Department
of Rural Economics and Sociology, in which, it was
said, he exercised "absolute control over those who worked
under him." There is no question that he was avid for publicity.
His department was allowed to go out of existence when
he retired in 1959, but the institute continued to function, and
was named for him—a deserved tribute.

There was a loud explosion of indignation in the early
1930s from individual students and from College Topics over
the physical education course that was mandatory for firstand
second-year men. One student called it "an ideal unworthy
of a junior college," reminiscent of "Yankee mass-production
methods." Another protested that during the autumn he
was "forced to play namby-pamby games out in the open

where anyone can see him, and in general everything possible
is done to make him feel like a perfect idiot." Topics chimed in
with an editorial blast against "gym classes conducted as animal
trainers perfect their dogs in sideshows . . . an absurdity
and a disgrace that a man to obtain a degree from Thomas
Jefferson's university should have to become proficient in
rope-climbing and tap dancing." The paper circulated a petition
among the students calling for "abolition of compulsory
Physical Education classes as required for an academic degree.
. . . Their existence is foreign to the principle of personal
liberty inherent in the university." Over one thousand
students signed. But Dean Page's faculty committee ruled that
the Physical Education curriculum would stand, except that
tap dancing would become an elective. "Sublime Indifference"
was the caption over the irate comment by Topics. On the other
hand, John D. Martin, Jr., chairman of the Student Senate,
declared that he felt the "Phys Ed" requirements had been
"greatly liberalized or, better, humanized," and that the faculty
committee "listened most attentively to student arguments."
He did not elaborate.

Professor Metcalf took occasion in 1934, on the tenth anniversary
of his incumbency as dean of the Graduate School, to
point out that "from an enrollment of fewer than 100 graduate
students 10 years ago the number has grown to 280 in the
. . . regular session, while the Summer Quarter shows almost
as many." Hence the office "now has charge each year of about
500 graduate students, most of whom are candidates for Master's
degrees." Dean Metcalf went on to stress the importance
of the library, saying: "The growth and the admirable administration
of the University Library have greatly strengthened
graduate study and research. Ten years ago the libraries of
the university, general and departmental, had 125,000 books;
today they have 230,000. . . . Because of very limited space in
the general library, rooms in various other buildings have
been utilized for library purposes. The greatest need of the
university is an adequate general library building." Only about
half of the 230,000 volumes could be housed in the Rotunda.
Dean Metcalf resigned as head of the Graduate School at the
close of the 1936-37 session and was succeeded by James
Southall Wilson, his colleague in the English Department.

Both men were nationally known teachers, scholars, and lecturers.

One of the important events of this period took place in
1935 when the National Academy of Sciences held its annual
meeting at the university, the first time the academy had ever
met in the South. Nobel Prize Winners Robert A. Millikan and
Harold C. Urey were on the program. Eleven of the fifty papers
presented during the three-day session dealt with the
work of University of Virginia faculty members and research
associates. These papers were deemed to be of high quality,
and they brought prestige to the university for its work in the
natural sciences.

The superior training given in the Medical School during
these years was stressed decades later by the eminent Dr. William
B. Bean, son of Dr. Robert B. Bean of the medical faculty.
Dr. William Bean had been graduated from the school in 1935
and had gone on to become nationally known, not only as a
teacher of medicine but as an exceptionally talented writer on
medical subjects. "When I went away from here to intern at
Johns Hopkins," said he, "I was certainly as well-trained in
general medicine, in internal medicine, as colleagues who
were met there from Johns Hopkins and from Harvard and
from many of the other medical schools. Part of this I am sure
was related to the excellence of the faculty and part because
the school was still of manageably small size. There was more
individual attention, I believe, than there was in the earlier
days. Maybe I should say in other schools."

New requirements for the B.A. and B.S. degrees were announced,
effective for the session of 1936-37. The new curriculum,
in the words of Dean George O. Ferguson, was designed
to bring "a more comprehensive and permanent
mastery of subjects as wholes." It was complained that under
the existing system the choice of subjects resulted in a sort of
pot pourri, often "from the `crippiest' courses available," without
definite aim or focus, whereas the new curriculum stipulated
that two years before graduation the student must select
a field in a major subject. In that field he would have to take
at least five and not more than seven courses approved by his
official adviser. A minimum of three courses in the major subject
was required, and two in related subjects. Electives made

up the remainder. Comprehensive examinations in the field
of concentration, part written and part oral, were to be introduced
for the first time. A writer in the University of Virginia
Magazine was enthusiastic over the innovations and said that
they would "undoubtedly raise the standard of the college degrees"
and "result in a healthier and more abundant scholarship
among students."

Further improvement was achieved when academic degrees
with honors were introduced at the session of 1937-38. President
Newcomb explained that the "more favored students,
during the latter half of their four-year course, shall be enabled
to pursue their studies in their chosen field of concentration
on a firmer basis and a higher plane than the less
gifted." He added that these honor students would be afforded
"unlimited opportunity, under proper guidance, to
master thoroughly their specially chosen subjects," and they
would be "at liberty . . . to claim exemption from course requirements."
Final comprehensive examinations for a degree
with honors "will demand a rigid compliance with particularly
exacting standards of scholarship." Newcomb stated that half
a dozen of the university's schools had offered to plan honor
programs for the coming session.

Standards should be raised all along the line in both high
school and college, Prof. Richard Heath Dabney declared in a
letter to College Topics. He urged adoption of Jefferson's idea
that only the ablest students should be given a college education.
"Jefferson was right," he said. "The unfit should be
weeded out, for their own good as well as that of the
public. . . . The best brains in the state should have the best
training available, but mediocre and stupid persons should be
positively discouraged from entering college and positively
prevented from getting degrees." Dabney appealed to Gov.
James H. Price to "lead Virginia in the footsteps of that supremely
great man, Thomas Jefferson." Economics Prof. E. A.
Kincaid then wrote a letter expressing the view that the new
curriculum and honors system would make it easier to provide
"educated leadership." He urged that means be found to
bring to the university "men of intellectual promise who are
too poor to avail themselves of what we have to offer. . . .
Leadership must be sought out and developed." College Topics

32. John Lloyd Newcomb, president of the university, 1933-46.

published an open letter to Governor Price suggesting that he
adopt the program of the two professors and make the university
"a retreat for the intellectual aristocracy," as envisioned
by Jefferson. There was widespread support in the Virginia
press for the proposal; newspapers in Richmond, Petersburg,
Danville, Bristol, and Roanoke endorsed it. There was, however,
no audible response from Governor Price and no action.

The Law School was having its problems. Greatly admired
Dean William Minor Lile had retired in 1932, and Armistead
Dobie had been named to succeed him. The faculty had not
been built up sufficiently to compensate for the loss of such
revered figures as Lile, Minor, and Graves, and there were
other shortcomings. The salary scale in the Law School was
low. Except for Professors Garrard Glenn and Armistead M.
Dobie, "the position of professor of law is financially less desirable
than a similar position in the College," Prof. F. D. G.
Ribble declared. "A professor of law gets and can get but
$4,500 a year from the university," said he, whereas a professor
of education—along with many other College faculty
members—could frequently supplement his $4,500 salary by
teaching in the Summer Quarter. Ribble expressed the hope
that all full professors in the Law School would have their
compensation raised to a minimum of $5,000, effective at
once. The inferiority of the library also was emphasized. With
390 students, the Law School had only 30,000 books on its
shelves, whereas the schools at Duke and Chapel Hill with less
than half as many matriculates had much larger libraries.
Three years of prelaw were made a prerequisite for entry to
the University of Virginia school, and a resolution was passed
denying any student the right to enter who was ineligible to
return to any other law school previously attended. This latter
stipulation was "directed at the problem of the `bustee,' usually
from Harvard," Ribble wrote. More than two-thirds of the entering
law class during this period came from outside Virginia.

Of vital concern to the law faculty was President Roosevelt's
"court-packing plan," under which he sought to appoint additional
justices to the Supreme Court in order to outvote the
conservative majority on that tribunal. The law faculty was
unanimous in opposition, since the plan was felt to "undermine
the judicial process." By contrast, the political science
faculty was in favor of the scheme. Prof. James Hart argued

for it in a series of addresses, and his colleagues Professors
Robert K. Gooch, Rowland Egger, Raymond Uhl, and George
W. Spicer backed it. Bob Gooch debated the issue with Dean
Ribble in Cabell Hall.

President Newcomb seemed unconvinced for several years
that the Law School was suffering seriously from lack of financial
support. When he realized the true state of affairs he
moved to strengthen the faculty and raise salaries, while the
alumni of the school acted to bolster the sadly inadequate library.
By 1935-36 F. D. G. Ribble, Leslie Buckler, Charles P.
Nash, and Hardy C. Dillard had joined Armistead Dobie,
George B. Eager, and Garrard Glenn on the law faculty. By
1941-42 John Ritchie, William H. White, Jr., Oscar W. Underwood,
Jr., William J. Barron, and E. O. Belsheim had been
added. The pay of full professors of law was raised to $5,000
in 1940-41, and in 1943-44 further raises were made effective
for all departments in the university. Full professors in the
academic school were paid as much as $8,000 in some instances,
and the usual compensation for professors of that
rank once again reached $6,000, the predepression level of a
decade before. In the Medical School $6,000 had been the top
figure paid by the state in 1941-42, but various professors
were allowed to retain part of the funds they earned in private
practice; and the Medical School was included, of course, in
the university-wide increases of 1943-44.

Work of the university's Extension Division, directed by
George B. Zehmer, was expanding to every section of Virginia
during the 1930s and 1940s. Extension class work, discussion
courses, cooperation with the secondary schools, sponsorship
of extracurricular programs, extension publications, extension
library service, and home study courses were included.
The division functioned in both rural and urban areas. Extension
courses were the equivalent of courses in residence and
were offered away from the university for the benefit of those
who could not attend the institution at Charlottesville. Emphasis
was placed on courses in the humanities, the social sciences,
and certain professional subjects. Since it was impossible
for full-time members of the university faculty to journey
to many of the points where classes were held, teachers from
thirteen colleges and universities made themselves available.
Bulletins, pamphlets, leaflets, magazine articles, and newspaper

releases were used in promoting the program. Those
attending the classes were mostly mature adults, with average
age in the middle thirties. In time, said Zehmer, "the program
attracted not only national but international attention, and
over a 17-year period brought many visitors from other states
and countries to observe the program in action." Members of
the staff were invited to visit other areas of the globe in order
"to advise and help in introducing somewhat similar programs
abroad." Zehmer was elected president of the National University
Extension Association for 1942-43, and was one of the
founders and first president of the Adult Education Association
of Virginia.

Interest at the university in the study of biology had been
greatly stimulated by the trial in Tennessee of John T. Scopes
for teaching the doctrine of evolution in a high school; applicants
to take the course at Virginia were being turned away in
the 1930s for lack of space. Prof. William A. Kepner of the
department had testified for Scopes. Graduate studies in botany
and zoology were strengthened by the opening of a biological
station at Mountain Lake, Giles County, for summer
instruction. Prof. Bruce D. Reynolds was in charge of the
Mountain Lake Biological Station, with Prof. Ivey Lewis as associate
director. This was the first such station established in
the southern mountains. Construction of a laboratory, dining
hall, and dormitories was made possible by a grant from the
General Education Board, and these facilities were subsequently
enlarged. An abundance of plant and animal specimens
on the surrounding mountains, which rise to elevations
of four thousand feet or more, afforded material comparable
to that found in the Canadian zone and similar to much that
was characteristic of the South. Instructors from institutions
throughout Virginia and beyond were on the staff, with thirty
to forty graduate students in attendance. Professor Lewis,
who succeeded Reynolds as director of the station, was accorded
a ceremonial tribute in 1940 upon his completion of
twenty-five years on the university faculty. Friends and former
students gathered on the Rotunda portico, where Lewis C.
Williams, '98, spoke and presented him with a silver service
and two books of letters from former pupils and other admirers.

It was an era of expansion for the Engineering School, although
the course in mining engineering had been dropped
after the session of 1931-32 on the recommendation of Acting
Dean W. S. Rodman. He could find "no demand" for such
instruction. Rodman had succeeded Dean William M. Thornton,
following the latter's retirement in 1925. Construction of
Thornton Hall, named for the dean, was begun in 1933 and
completed two years later. It would be greatly enlarged in future
years and represented a vast improvement over the inadequate
quarters previously occupied. The humanities program
which Deans Thornton and Newcomb had sought over
a long period was made a reality in 1936, thus broadening
greatly the engineering curriculum.

Failing health caused the resignation of James M. Page as
dean of the university in 1934. He was succeeded by Ivey F.
Lewis, who had been serving as acting dean. George O. Ferguson
of the School of Education was appointed dean of the
college.

Various faculty members recorded extraordinary achievements
during these years.

Dr. Carl C. Speidel of the Medical School won the $1,000
prize of the American Association for the Advancement of
Science in 1932 for being first, in the words of the New York
Times, to learn "all the secrets of nerve growth by studying
nerves inside animal organisms, thus settling a controversy
lasting for 70 years." The paper went on to say that "by the
use of entirely novel methods, Dr. Speidel has proved once
and for all that the nerves do not grow as a result of cells
forming a chain, but that each nerve grows out of a single cell
in a central nervous system." Thus Speidel established "the
`outgrowth theory' as opposed to the `chain theory.' "

An even more significant discovery, in the opinion of some
authorities, who regarded it as perhaps the most important
single contribution to medical science made down to that time
by the university's Medical School, was that of Dr. duPont
Guerry III, '36, then a young intern at the University Hospital,
later the internationally known ophthalmologist. Dr.
Guerry found that Vitamin K was of extreme importance in
safeguarding the health of newborn infants, primarily as a
means of preventing bleeding. Every newborn baby today is

automatically given Vitamin K. Dr. William W. Waddell, '18, of
the university's pediatrics staff, shared in the accolade.

Dr. Charles Bruce Morton II was entering upon a highly
impressive career in surgery that would last until his retirement
in 1970. He had won a fellowship at the Mayo Clinic,
where he worked in Dr. Frank Mann's Institute of Experimental
Medicine. The research Morton did there on the etiology
of the peptic ulcer won for him the John Horsley Memorial
Prize and the Sigma Xi Award, and forty years later the research
was termed "still a classic."

Dr. Samuel A. Mitchell, professor of astronomy and best
known as an authority on eclipses of the sun, nine of which he
had observed, and for his study of parallaxes, was chosen
president of the American Association of University Professors.
He also was named a foreign associate of the Royal Astronomical
Society of Great Britain and was elected to the National
Academy of Sciences, the American Philosophical
Society, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Regarded
by some as the foremost scientist of the South, Mitchell
was one of only three scientists from the region south of
Washington and east of the Mississippi who had been chosen
a member of the three abovementioned American organizations
of scholars.

Prof. Garrard Glenn of the Law School was elected to the
Council of the American Law Institute. Only thirty-three jurists,
attorneys, and teachers of law made up the council,
which included Supreme Court Justices Benjamin Cardozo
and Owen J. Roberts. Glenn had joined the university law faculty
in 1929 after practicing in New York and teaching at the
Columbia University Law School. He had won national fame
as the successful defender of James Branch Cabell from
charges of obscenity in the novel Jurgen.

The university's noted professor of mathematics Gordon T.
Whyburn was winning the first of his long series of awards
and other distinctions. Whyburn won the Chauvenet Prize of
the Mathematical Association of America for the best expository
article on mathematics published during the previous
three years by a member of the association. The award, the
fifth ever given to a mathematician, was for his article "On
the Structure of Continua," which dealt with the subject of
topology.

33. John Calvin Metcalf, professor of English and dean of the
Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, 1924-37.

Economics Prof. Tipton R. Snavely was chosen president of
the Southern Economics Association and of Beta Gamma
Sigma, national fraternity in economics and commerce. In the
1940s he would serve as chairman of a committee to examine
the United States Mint, of the Virginia State Milk Commission,
and of a legislative commission to study a sales and use
tax for Virginia. As head of the James Wilson Department of
Economics, Snavely reported to the president of the university
for that department and the McIntire School of Commerce,
headed by Prof. M. A. J. Barlow, since the two faculties
worked as a unit. The School of Commerce was a division of
the College of Arts and Sciences from 1920 to 1952, but in the
latter year was established as an autonomous and coordinate
school, similar to law or medicine.

Harvey E. Jordan, professor of histology and embryology at
the university since 1911, was named dean of the Medical
School in 1939, succeeding the late Dr. James C. Flippin. Dean
Jordan was not an M.D., but a B.A. and M.A. of Lehigh University
and a Ph.D. of Princeton. He rendered highly satisfactory
service, nevertheless, as dean of the school. Hardly a
charismatic figure, he knew the Medical School's problems
and needs and achieved important results.

A contrasting individual was aggressive and voluble Armistead
M. Dobie, who resigned as dean of the Law School in
1939 to accept appointment as judge of the U.S. District Court
for Western Virginia; he was named soon thereafter to the
U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, Fourth Circuit. From his student
days Dobie was a fast-talking, quick-thinking extrovert
and exhibitionist. Once in Prof. Noah K. Davis's class he answered
a question brilliantly but in a manner that Davis considered
smart-alecky. The irritated professor walked to the
blackboard, drew a curving line, and remarked, "I suppose,
Mr. Dobie, that you can make a clever comment about that?"
Dobie replied at once, "Sir, I should say that that is Noah's
arc."

"Ten thousand words a minute are just his daily feed," was
the phrase frequently used by Dobie to describe his own loquacity.
His speaking style was like the firing of a machine
gun. Words poured forth in a torrent, and his colorful phrases
were quoted. Referring to participants in three sports, he
termed them "mittmen, mattmen, and mermen." Haranguing

the student body the night before the annual football game
with Georgetown, he would shout the following each year: "I
want you Virginia men to make the welkin ring for the Orange
and Blue tomorrow afternoon during that gridiron classic
with Georgetown, and in such stentorian tones as to make
a broadside from the Atlantic Squadron sound like the dying
groan of a consumptive gnat!" Dobie's lectures were never
dull.

He was well-equipped for the federal bench, since he was
nationally known as an authority on federal procedure and
the author of a textbook and casebook on the subject. He had
also written similar volumes on bailments and carriers and was
coauthor of Criminal Justice in Virginia. As a federal judge, Dobie
was no shrinking violet. Joseph Bryan III, writing in the
Saturday Evening Post, stated that the jurist "had established a
professional reputation as a judge who does not underestimate
his own ability," and Bryan added this piquant note: "At
the annual banquet of the Fourth Judicial Circuit, the speaker
of the evening said: `I recently tried a case in which Dobie had
passed on a motion. When I read the opinion I found that he
had cited two authorities—St. Paul's Epistle to the Ephesians
and Dobie on Federal Procedure. They seemed to conflict, so
he repudiated St. Paul and adhered to Dobie!"

This flamboyant character was succeeded as dean of the
Law School by F. D. G. Ribble, a highly respected, scholarly
professor who exhibited none of the garrulity and cockiness
of his predecessor. Ribble was an able administrator, and the
Law School made important advances under his deanship.

A course in journalism, the first at the university since 1917,
was instituted in 1937 by William H. Wranek, Jr., head of the
University News Bureau. Wranek stated that various guest lecturers
from the field of journalism would speak to the class.
Instruction in journalism had been urged repeatedly by College
Topics.

A significant addition to the academic faculty occurred the
following year when John W. Wheeler-Bennett, a widely
known British historian and biographer, was named lecturer
in international law and relations. Wheeler-Bennett was already
the author of a dozen books, including a biography of
General von Hindenburg, and he had just completed an incisive
study of the Brest-Litovsk treaty between Germany and

Russia. A resident of Albemarle County for several years, with
intermittent trips to Europe, Wheeler-Bennett would soon
marry Miss Ruth Risher, a charming resident of the university
community and for some years the registrar and secretary of
the Summer Quarter. He would continue as a popular and
admired lecturer at the university for several decades. Author
of the official biography of King George VI, he was knighted
and became Sir John Wheeler-Bennett.

The Virginia Quarterly Review celebrated its tenth anniversary
in 1935 with accolades from various directions. The Baltimore
Evening Sun, which had greeted the publication's debut a decade
before with down-the-nose observations, reversed its position
and pronounced the magazine "a minor miracle." The
New York Times declared that "it has won a high and honorable
position among American periodicals." Lawrence Lee, assistant
professor of romance languages, was named editor in
1939, succeeding Lambert Davis, who left to accept a position
with a New York publishing house. Lee said he could hold the
post for only one year, and Archibald Bolling Shepperson, associate
professor of English, succeeded him in 1940.

Another anniversary was observed in 1938 when the Virginia
Law Review passed its twenty-fifth milestone. Clarence O.
Ammonette, '14, the first editor, contributed an article to the
anniversary issue in which he explained the circumstances of
the Review's founding and listed the members of the first editorial
staff. Prof. Leslie H. Buckler of the law faculty wrote
congratulating the publication on its high standards.

There was a third anniversary in 1940, when College Topics
took note of its founding half a century before. Judge A. C.
Carson of Riverton, Va. one of five students who got out the
initial issue in 1890, was present for the anniversary dinner at
the Farmington Country Club. All living former editors and
business managers were invited and many accepted. Dr. M.
Estes Cocke, assistant president of Hollins College, a former
editor, was the principal speaker. Suggestions that the name
of the publication be changed had been made for several
years. The University of Virginia Magazine called College Topics
"a monstrous misnomer," and added: "No longer do a few college
students gather once or twice a week to publish merely a
bulletin of the topics of the College. Now a staff of approximately

60 covers the University, all six departments, and cooperates
to publish almost every day, news of the university."
Topics commented, "The sooner the change is effected, the
better." The change did not take place until 1948, when the
paper became the Cavalier Daily.

The University of Virginia Magazine, in the early 1920s an
ultrasedate and intellectual journal, had metamorphosed by
the 1930s into a much better-looking and livelier publication.
Formerly printed on "butcher paper" with no drawings or
other illustrations and hardly any advertising, the magazine
was transformed a decade later into a slick-paper publication
with prose, poetry, fiction, nonfiction, drawings, a colorful
cover, and some color advertising. An editor in chief during
this period was Ben Belitt, later a poet of national if not international
stature, winner of the National Institute of Arts and
Letters Award and various other important accolades and
professor of English at Bennington College for decades.

A column in the magazine of more or less humor, entitled
"Wahooria," was notable for what appears to have been the
first published use of a term derived from "Wahoo," to denote
Virginia students or events relating to them. Evidently stemming
from "Wah-hoo-Wah" in "The Good Old Song," Virginia
men would soon be using "Wahoo" along with "Cavalier" in
speaking of themselves or their athletic teams. By 1940 "Wahoos"
was in general use around the Grounds. Some decades
later it would occasionally be abbreviated to " 'Hoos" in student
publications. The University of Virginia Magazine became
the Virginia Spectator early in the session of 1935-36, with
largely unchanged content and makeup. Both were sponsored
by the Jefferson Society.

Although nearly all of the 1930s were depression years, some
important construction was going on at the university. On the
other hand, existing buildings were often in need of paint,
repairs, or general tidying up. But this condition was not all
bad, in the opinion of Stark Young, who wrote in the muchdiscussed
manifesto of the southern agrarians I'll Take My
Stand: "I shall never forget the encouragement with which I
saw for the first time that some of the dormitory doors at the
University of Virginia needed paint, so sick was I at the bangup
varnishing, rebuilding, plumbing, endowing, in some of

the large Northern institutions. If they learn little at these Virginia
halls, it is doubtless as much as they would learn at the
others, and they at least escape the poison of the success idea
that every building is almost sure to show, the belief that mechanical
surface and the outer powers of money are the prime
things in living."

New buildings, nevertheless, are essential at times, as even
Stark Young would doubtless have conceded. One of these was
Clark Hall, new home of the Law School. Minor Hall had been
outgrown, and William Andrews Clark, Jr., gave $350,000 for
the new structure, a memorial to his late wife. House D and
House E on Dawson's Row had to be pulled down to make way
for Clark Hall, which was dedicated in 1932. Murals by Allyn
Cox adorned Memorial Hall in the center of the building.

Excavation was begun the following year for the Thomas H.
Bayly Art Museum behind Fayerweather Hall. A $100,000 bequest
from Mrs. Louis May McLane Tiffany of Baltimore plus
a federal grant of $38,000 made the project possible. The museum
would be a valuable adjunct to the School of the Fine
Arts. A Peale portrait of George Washington was included in
Mrs. Tiffany's bequest along with other art treasures. Paul G.
McIntire also contributed a number of valuable objets d'art.
The home of Dr. William A. Lambeth had to be demolished
to make way for the museum.

Construction of Thornton Hall, new home of the School of
Engineering, was begun in 1933, as noted in the previous
chapter. This was made possible by a grant of $379,000 from
the Public Works Administration (PWA), the federal agency
that provided funds for many worthwhile structures during
these years. Situated just across Highway 29 from Clark Hall,
Thornton Hall consisted of three buildings surrounding a
central court and facing McCormick Road. It would be greatly
enlarged in later years. Like various other university buildings,
Thornton Hall was designed by the university's Commission
of Architects—Walter D. Blair of New York, R. E. Lee
Taylor of Baltimore, John K. Peebles of Norfolk, and Prof.
Edmund S. Campbell, head of the university's School of Art
and Architecture.

A new $200,000 wing of the hospital was made feasible in
1934 by a PWA grant of that amount. It was exclusively for
private patients and added 40 beds, bringing the overall total

34. F. Stringfellow Barr, history professor.

to about 250 beds. The wing, named for Dr. Paul B. Barringer,
was opened in 1936.

The John Staige Davis Neuro-Psychiatric addition to the
hospital, named for Dr. Davis, who taught courses in mental
diseases there for many years, was opened in 1939. The addition
cost $150,000, of which $82,000 was contributed by
Paul G. McIntire and the remainder by PWA.

Two years later the five-story West Wing was added to the
hospital, thanks to a $325,000 appropriation from the state. It
included 171 additional ward beds as well as new administrative
offices and quarters for several departments. The three
above-mentioned additions to the hospital were referred to
briefly in the previous chapter.

In 1938 Fayerweather Hall underwent its third remodeling
within a period of fifteen years. No longer used as a gymnasium
after 1923, it was taken over by the School of Art and
Architecture. This provided the school with quarters claimed
to be superior to those of any similar school in the South. In
the 1920s it had occupied cramped rooms on West Range,
after which it moved to the main floor of Fayerweather Hall,
the basement of which was occupied by a pathology laboratory.
When new quarters were provided for the laboratory, the
School of Art and Architecture expanded into that area. Situated
next door to the Bayly Museum, the school enjoyed excellent
facilities for instruction.

An epoch-making event occurred in 1938 when running
hot water suddenly became available in the students' rooms on
East Range. It was the first time in more than a hundred years
that students living in the quarters provided by Mr. Jefferson
had been furnished with this amenity. The boon had not yet
been vouchsafed to students on West Range or the Lawn, a
fact that brought rumblings of discontent from those ill-used
undergraduates. There had been no advance announcement
of the coming of hot water to East Range, when suddenly it
gushed from the spigots, to the accompaniment of loud cheers
from the astonished beneficiaries.

Important as were these construction projects in the 1930s,
the most important of all was that of the new university library,
greatly desired by Dr. Alderman and earnestly sought

over a period of a decade and a half before the necessary
funds finally were obtained.

The unsuitability of the Rotunda for use as a modern library
has been referred to. It had long since been outgrown,
and the lack of an adequate repository for the institution's collections
was recognized as a grave handicap to its standing in
the educational world. In the early 1920s a faculty library
committee, headed by Dr. John C. Metcalf, was appointed,
and ways and means of acquiring the sorely needed facility
were explored.

The coming of Harry Clemons as librarian in 1927 provided
marked impetus for the effort to acquire the desired
building. The need was great, as shown by statistics compiled
the following year by the librarian at Princeton University.
The University of Virginia stood anywhere from thirty-second
to thirty-seventh among thirty-eight university libraries in this
country with respect to number of volumes on shelves, expenditures
for books, and appropriations for salaries.

Clemons declined an offer from Wesleyan University in
1928 to remain at the University of Virginia despite its library's
dismal ranking. He did so on assurances from President
Alderman that the latter would make every effort to obtain
a new library and adequate funds for endowment,
equipment, and books.

Dr. Alderman was much upset in 1930 or 1931 when Herbert
Keller of the University of Chicago told him that he had
just shipped several hundred thousand Virginia manuscripts
to that institution's library. "He laughed in my face," Alderman
told Clemons. "We must do something about this." It was high
time. J. G. deRoulhac Hamilton had been touring Virginia,
gathering up manuscripts by the bale for the University of
North Carolina, and representatives of Duke University were
doing the same thing. As a result of all this the Virginia Room
was opened in the east wing of the Rotunda, and an effort was
made to bring together there the university's rarest and most
important books on Virginia history, together with such
manuscripts as the university possessed. A more significant
step was the bringing in of Lester Cappon to teach history and
serve as the institution's first archivist. He would be invaluable.

R. E. Lee Taylor, '01, the Baltimore architect, was asked in

1935 to provide plans for a college and research library, with
principal emphasis on adequate facilities for research, a number
of small studios for researchers, ready availability to the
files and stack rooms, and several rooms for "general browsing."
Stacks for five hundred thousand volumes would be
made available initially, with arrangements for easy expansion
to accommodate 2 million. A large memorial entrance hall was
contemplated. By the time these plans were prepared, the university
had 232,000 volumes scattered among eighteen different
buildings.

A carefully mapped campaign for funds lasting more than
a year was launched by President Newcomb, Librarian Clemons,
and Dr. Metcalf's faculty committee. A PWA grant of
around $450,000 was sought, and Senators Carter Glass and
Harry F. Byrd assisted actively. Finally on Sept. 12, 1936, a
telegram came from Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes
officially confirming a PWA grant of $427,909, thus making
possible the erection of a $950,000 library. The remaining cost
would be covered by a bond issue.

Joy around the Grounds was spontaneous and uninhibited.
President Newcomb held an impromptu celebration with the
library staff under the colonnade east of the Rotunda, at
which dignified, urbane Professor Metcalf made history by
breaking into a clog dance. The extraordinary event was embalmed
for posterity in Clemons's annual report on the library,
as follows: "The clog dance executed that morning by Dean
Metcalf has not only become a tradition of the Rotunda, but it
is also symbolical; for he had, as chairman of the library committee,
been present at and presided over every meeting of
the committee during these 14 years of patient planning."

Construction got under way, and the new building, embodying
many up-to-date features in library construction, was
named for Dr. Alderman by unanimous agreement. Dedication
took place on June 13, 1938, with Dumas Malone, then
director of the Harvard University Press, as the speaker.

The architect R. E. Lee Taylor, an alumnus and native of
Norfolk, was also the architect for Clark, Thornton, Monroe,
and Peabody halls and the Lambeth Field and Scott stadiums.
In each case he collaborated with the university's architectural
commission, but he was recognized as the principal architect

35. Miss Mary Proffitt, extraordinarily influential secretary to
Deans James M. Page and Ivey F. Lewis. In the words of an
alumnus, "She ran a darned good university." From a portrait by
Clyde Carter.

for each of the abovementioned structures. Taylor also had a
leading role in designing various additions to the hospital. He
and Prof. Edmund S. Campbell handled the design for the
Bayly Museum of Art.

The only other architect who had a comparable role at the
university was John K. Peebles, '90, of Norfolk, who died in
1934. He was credited with having been principal architect for
Fayerweather Gymnasium, Minor Hall, the Monroe Hill dormitories,
McKim Hall, and the addition to the Cobb Chemical
Laboratory. Like Lee Taylor, Peebles collaborated with the
other members of the architectural commission in designing
the various structures.

John Powell, '01, the noted pianist, gave a concert in 1938
in Carnegie Hall, New York, celebrating his musical debut of
25 years before, and donated the proceeds to Alderman Library.
The money was used for the purchase of letters between
Thomas Jefferson and Joseph C. Cabell, some of which
dealt with the university's founding. Powell's example led
other alumni to purchase Jeffersonian correspondence for the
library, with the result that ninety-seven original letters were
acquired. He repeated the Carnegie Hall program at Cabell
Hall a month later and gave the proceeds to aid in establishing
a fund for bringing other musical attractions to the university.

Completion of Alderman Library resulted in highly significant
acquisitions, particularly that of the McGregor Collection.
Tracy W. McGregor of Detroit had assembled this treasure
trove of books, pamphlets, and manuscripts having to do
with U.S. history, and he provided in his will that the trustees
of the McGregor Fund were to decide which college or university
should get it. Their decision to present it to the University
of Virginia brought to that institution a library now
appraised at over $10,000,000. It is considered the most valuable
assemblage of material on the history of the southeastern
United States, and it also includes an extremely significant collection
on the history of early New England as well as another
in the field of English literature.

Almost simultaneously with the bequest of the McGregor
Library the university received the professional collection of
the late Algernon Coleman, '01, distinguished professor of
French at the University of Chicago and internationally recognized

scholar in the field of French literature. It consisted
of more than one thousand volumes on the language and literature
of France.

One of the few portraits from life of the poet Shelley was
donated to the library by Nellie P. Dunn of Richmond, widow
of Dr. John Dunn, in memory of her husband. The work of
William E. West, an American artist who knew Shelley and
Byron, the portrait was brought to the United States by West
and bequeathed to his niece. It was purchased by Dr. Dunn in
1904.

Still another acquisition in the late 1930s was the antebellum
library of Muscoe Garnett of Elmwood, Essex County, Va., the
gift of Mrs. J. Clayton Mitchell of North Wales, Pa. It was
transferred to the university intact and placed in a special
room built to simulate a Virginia gentleman's library of the
pre-Civil War era. There is a fireplace with shelves extending
to the ceiling on both sides and to the ceiling on the opposite
wall. Count Carlo Sforza, the Italian statesman who was exiled
by Mussolini and gave a series of lectures at the university, was
"visibly and deeply moved" at seeing the Garnett Room,
Harry Clemons reported. "I feel more at home in this room
than I have in any place since I left Italy," said the count. "My
family had a library like this in our home. . . . The books had
been much read. . . . We must not forget this. It gives comfort
and courage." Later he brought his son to the university for a
visit, and made a special point of showing him the library of
the Garnett family.

Harry Clemons's dedication to Alderman Library's advancement
was such that he frequently worked there into the early
morning hours, as late as 2 A.M. True, he did not arrive at his
office until around 10 A.M., but his zeal was such that he usually
returned at night. On one such night he was leaving the
building by the rear door when, in closing it, he slammed it
shut on his trouser cuff. Try as he might, he could not disengage
his pants from the viselike grip, and the only key he had
was to the front entrance. In this crisis, he adopted what
seemed the only available solution. He wriggled out of his
trousers, went around to the front door minus his pantaloons,
let himself in, and retrieved his breeches.

Following removal of the books from the Rotunda, portions

of the building's exterior were given something of a face-lifting.
The crumbling concrete steps were replaced and the marble
balustrades repaired. The work was paid for with a PWA
grant of about $61,000, supplemented by a state appropriation
of $75,000. All repairs were completed in time for the
opening of the 1939-40 session.

The rehabilitated Rotunda was formally opened with a
dance on the stormy night of Jan. 26, 1940. No such event
had occurred there since the Gay Nineties, and the affair was
a highlight of the university's social season. A nationally
known band played for the dancing, and the ball was broadcast
over station WRVA from 10:35 to 11 P.M. Despite the fact
that the heaviest snowfall in decades blanketed the state that
night, the affair was pronounced a roaring success.

The only unfortunate aspect of the university's acquisition
of an adequate library lay in the fact that a building designed
and constructed by Thomas Jefferson had to be demolished
to make way for the new structure. This was the Anatomical
Theater, a square brick building opposite the north end of
West Range, with a cupola and railing on the roof. Burned in
1886, it was restored the following year, but the cupola and
railing were omitted "for reasons of economy." A portico, designed
by Prof. Fiske Kimball, was added in 1920. Condemned
in 1924, the building was vacated by the departments
housed there but was subsequently reconditioned and assigned
to the School of Rural Social Economics. Upon its
demolition in 1939, after completion of the library, most of its
bricks were carefully preserved for use in repairing the serpentine
walls and other original Jeffersonian structures. A
widespread misconception is that the anatomical hall was the
"stiff hall" where, in modern times, the medical school's
pickled cadavers were kept. The "stiff hall," or anatomical
laboratory, was behind Peabody Hall, on the site of today's
Newcomb Hall. A letter to the newspaper in 1924 complained
of an "offensive stench from the anatomical laboratory which
daily infests the Peabody Hall lecture room," and the writer
added: "Only last week I saw a large flock of great dark birds
circling over the university. . . . No doubt every preventive
measure possible is being taken . . . but this does not help matters
for those who of necessity spend a large part of their time
in Peabody Hall." The "stiff hall," demolished in the 1950s to

make way for Newcomb Hall, was carefully avoided by small
boys and others who gave its gruesome contents a wide berth.
It was used at times in fraternity initiations. A fraternity
"goat" in about the year 1918 was instructed to visit the "stiff
hall" at midnight, pull one of the corpses out of its vat, and
recite "The Raven." He survived.

The aroma from the anatomical laboratory was not the only
cause of complaints from professors with quarters in Peabody
Hall. In the mid-1920s the romance languages faculty was
housed in the basement, and their ululations were both loud
and heart-rending. For example, Prof. Francis H. Abbot, an
unusually interesting lecturer, reported: "Three hours a week
I teach in P.H.B. 2 [Peabody Hall basement], not a classroom
at all, but a cellar, of which the ceiling is supported by pillars
that shut off the students' view of the blackboard (one blackboard).
. . . Part of this room has been enclosed to make somebody
an office (a beaverboard office), and this professor has
the privilege of passing in and out during my class. You enter
this room through a dark limbo, stacked with old desks and
chairs and lumber piled in confusion. . . . I can neither leave
a book, nor hang a map nor send a student to the board in
this room. Why they learn what they do is a mystery." Other
professors of French and Spanish expressed themselves similarly.
In 1928, however, the Romance Pavilion on the Lawn
opened, with ten lecture rooms and an office, and in 1929
handsome murals executed by noted French artists were
added. French Ambassador Claudel was present for the dedication
in 1929. Simple exercises were held, and Dr. Alderman
and Paul G. McIntire were given the French Legion of Honor,
the latter because he had donated a hospital for the tuberculous
in France.

The condition of Peabody Hall came in for further caustic
criticism in the late 1930s from Dean John L. Manahan of the
School of Education. Referring to the upper floors, he complained
that "most of those rooms have never been painted
since the building was constructed," and they were "sadly in
need of reconditioning." "This building is entitled to at least
one coat of good fresh paint," said the dean. Two years later
he thanked President Newcomb for greatly improving the
general appearance "of many of the classrooms, offices and
auditoriums."

With the increase in the university's enrollment and the proliferation
of various sports, Lambeth Field had been completely
outgrown by 1930. Varsity and first-year teams in track, baseball,
lacrosse, and football were trying to work out on the field
in the spring of that year, and the situation became not only
chaotic but dangerous. Javelin and discus throwers imperiled
the other athletes, and spring football practice had to be discontinued,
along with all forms of interfraternity athletics. Individual
students who wished to get some outdoor exercise
were without facilities. Negotiations were begun for obtaining
a vacant lot somewhere in Charlottesville. Plans had been
completed for Scott Stadium, to be built "in a little valley at
the foot of Mt. Jefferson," but it would not be ready until October
1931.

By the spring of that year the pressure on Lambeth Field
had been greatly relieved through the acquisition of two large
practice fields between Ivy Road and the C&O Railroad
tracks. They would have excellent turf by September, thus
providing adequate facilities for various sports. Twenty-two
new tennis courts were in use, thanks to the generosity of
Lady Astor. Even so, there were not enough to supply the demand.

The university's record in athletics was spotty; in boxing it
was outstanding, and in track and various other sports good,
but in football it had been wretched since the late 1920s.
School spirit was sadly lacking, and many students appeared
indifferent as to whether the teams won or lost. The coming
of Fred Dawson as football coach in 1931 introduced a new
and dynamic personality, and under Dawson's prodding student
indifference became considerably less marked. As explained
by the 1932 Corks and Curls: "The lead was taken by
Coach Dawson and the Varsity Club. . . . The latter body decided
that the most efficient way to cure the trouble was to
begin work on the first-year men before they too fell into the
lackadaisical attitudes then prevalent. . . . The initial response
was most encouraging. . . . Further talks and appeals were
made at mass meetings. The result was quite successful. At the
VPI game, for the first time in years, Virginia had a creditable
cheering section. The team put up a fight that no one
dreamed it could."

36. Zeisberg contemplates the agony and ecstasy of exams.

A year later Corks and Curls was again deploring the lack of
desire in the average student to take part in athletics, an attitude
that extended to dramatics, literary endeavors, and publications.
Less than 10 percent of the more than twenty-five
hundred students came out for any athletic team. Dawson's
campaign had helped, but much remained to be done.

Various sports were doing well, but not football. The swimming
team had had four successive winning seasons, and in
1932 Virginia teams won nearly two-thirds of their games in
nine different fields of sport. The boxers banged their way to
the Southern Conference championship for the third time in
six years, and the baseball team had its best winning percentage
in forty years.

But Fred Dawson was frustrated by his inability to produce
football victories, and he asked in 1934 to be relieved of the
remaining year of his contract. He had tried for three years to
get results on the gridiron, but to little effect. "I am convinced,"
he said, "that at Virginia where there are no athletic
scholarships or other equivalents that bring in football players,
the football coach is under a great handicap; so great, in
fact, that I am content to step aside and see what someone else
can do with the situation." Dawson had been popular with
both faculty and students, but he could not surmount the obstacles
that confronted him.

Gus Tebell, who had come to the university in 1930 as assistant
coach of football, basketball, and baseball and soon had
become coach of basketball and baseball, was named to succeed
Dawson. His football contract was for only one year, and
he remained in charge of the other two sports.

So much dissatisfaction was being expressed with the athletic
situation, especially the failure to record notable football
victories over the years, that President Newcomb appointed a
committee of faculty and alumni to study the problem and
make recommendations. William H. White, Jr., of the law faculty
was named chairman. After a careful examination of the
pertinent factors, the committee came up with the following
proposals:

(1) Abolish the present Athletic Council and the faculty position
of director of athletics and eliminate the G.A.A. from
all participation in athletic affairs. (2) Create a School of Athletics
and Physical Education, with three division—intercollegiate,

physical education, and intramural sports. (3) Head of
the school to have the rank of dean, with three assistants responsible
for the three divisions, the dean to report to the
president of the university. (4) An Advisory Council of Nine
(3-3-3 system) to act in a purely advisory capacity. (5) All fulltime
coaches, instructors, and assistants to be members of the
faculty. (6) The university will conform to the rules of any intercollegiate
conference to which it belongs, but there should
be a faculty committee to pass on eligibility of all members of
the university's intercollegiate teams and represent faculty
opinion in arranging schedules and athletic policies. If the
university should cease to be a member of any athletic conference,
this committee would make rules and regulations for
participation in intercollegiate contests. Every effort should be
made to encourage the growth of intramural sports. The
greatest need of the Athletic Department is for "an adequate
field house," with Memorial Gymnasium set aside for the Division
of Physical Education and intramurals.

The foregoing recommendations were adopted almost in
toto in late 1934 by the Board of Visitors, who directed that
the plan be put into effect at the opening of the session of
1935-36. The board stipulated, however, that the head of the
proposed department should have the title of director, rather
than dean, and that persons employed solely as coaches would
not be members of the faculty.

The president and visitors opposed offering athletic scholarships
in any form, directly or indirectly. Under the Southern
Conference's rules, every player had to sign a statement that
he or she had not been paid to play. It was felt that if Virginia
athletes participated in any such scholarship scheme, they
could not sign the required statement without violating the
university's honor code. Scholarships would still be offered to
athletes and nonathletes on the basis of financial need, scholarly
performance, and qualities of leadership.

The students lost no time in expressing a contrary view. In
a poll a few weeks later, they voted more than 6 to 1 for athletic
scholarships and rejected plans for leaving the Southern
Conference by slightly less than 2 to 1. About 60 percent of
the entire student body participated. A faculty poll in which
about half of the professors took part showed some two-thirds
favoring either "an easier schedule with strictly amateur

teams" or "absolute abandonment of intercollegiate football."
Only a small minority voted for athletic scholarships, while
a somewhat larger number advocated retaining the existing
system.

Evidencing the sharp disagreement among the various
groups, the Alumni Advisory Council promptly advocated
athletic scholarships and resignation from the conference, but
the Board of Visitors on the following day declared that "no
compromise will be made with professionalism. . . . Games will
not be won at the cost of the ideals of this university." The
visitors asserted their firm opposition to "any plan of athletic
scholarships."

At this juncture, with university opinion almost hopelessly
divided, Capt. Norton Pritchett of Davidson College was employed
as the new director of athletics, effective in September
1935. Pritchett was a man of fine personality and great integrity.
"He found conditions almost at their worst," said Corks
and Curls; "everyone, including alumni, laughed when the
thought of Virginia's winning a [football] game came up.
Everyone was discouraged but Captain Pritchett."

One of the early major developments was a proposal by the
Richmond alumni of a plan for athletic scholarships patterned
on the Rhodes Scholarships. Devised by three prominent
Richmonders—the Reverend Beverley D. Tucker, Jr., Dr. Carrington
Williams, and Stuart G. Christian—it was promptly
endorsed by a number of other alumni chapters. The three
highly respected men who had worked out the scheme said
they were "resolved that some of the scholarships shall go to
non-athletes, just as some of the Rhodes Scholarships are
awarded to non-athletes." This latter feature of the scholarship
plan did not materialize; few, if any, nonathletes were recipients
of scholarships. It was evidently too utopian a concept
for the average alumnus to grasp.

But before any such awards could be made to athletes, Virginia
had to get out of the Southern Conference, lest the
Honor System be badly weakened if not virtually destroyed.
Scholarship recipients at institutions belonging to the conference
had to sign a statement that they had never "been paid
for athletic skill or knowledge," and hundreds of scholarship
recipients at membership institutions were signing these declarations—this
despite the fact that they were obviously being

paid for their athletic skill. The Richmond Times-Dispatch
asked campus newspapers at six Virginia conference institutions
whether the existing system was undermining honor systems,
and five replied that it was.

Captain Pritchett was instructed by the Board of Visitors to
submit the university's resignation at the Southern Conference's
annual meeting in December 1936. He did so and read
a statement quoting Forrest Fletcher of Washington and Lee,
president of the conference, wherein Fletcher said that "practically
all member institutions have violated the spirit of our
regulations."

Bernard P. Chamberlain, president of the University of Virginia
Alumni Association, explained that the university had
withdrawn "in the interest of open honesty in athletic policy,
and in fairness to the students." As a result of the withdrawal,
the Southern Conference boxing tournament, held regularly
at Charlottesville, was transferred to the University of Maryland.
It was announced that Virginia would take part in no
more conference tournaments but would continue to meet individual
teams in competition. James G. Driver, director of
athletics since 1929, resigned to enter business.

With Virginia athletes no longer required to sign statements
that they were not being rewarded for athletic ability, the university
was free to make its own rules. The Richmond plan,
based on the principles governing Rhodes Scholarships, was
announced as having been adopted by various alumni chapters.
The Reverend Beverley Tucker explained that these are
"not merely athletic scholarships," since they also "demand
scholastic ability and above all, the sort of character and personality
that will make the award a coveted distinction." Lee
McLaughlin, the first winner of an athletic scholarship from
the Richmond chapter, did indeed meet these requirements,
but it was not possible to maintain such lofty standards indefinitely.

Having gotten the university squared away insofar as athletic
scholarships were concerned, Captain Pritchett proceeded
to employ Frank J. Murray, for fifteen years head football
coach at Marquette University, to take charge of football
at Virginia. Murray, a professor of political science at Marquette,
had compiled an extraordinary record on the gridiron,
with ninety-three wins, twenty-nine losses and six ties—

and this against some of the strongest teams in the nation. He
came to the university in February 1939, in time for spring
practice. Art Guepe soon joined him as assistant coach.

Athletic morale at Charlottesville was improving but still
was at a low ebb. It remained to be seen whether salutary results
would flow from Virginia's resignation from the Southern
Conference, after fifteen years in that body, and whether
Frank Murray, with the aid of scholarships, could turn things
around. Thomas Lomax Hunter, a Richmond Times-Dispatch
columnist, injected a humorous note by observing concerning
next steps at the university: "What we want, what we need, is
a hairy-chested fellow whose name ends in inski who can grind
opposing tacklers under foot and leave a wide swath of cripples
in his wake."

A fifty-piece band had been organized and put into uniform
a year or two previously, under the direction of Prof.
Robert E. Lutz and was a factor in providing improved morale
at athletic contests. Lutz appealed to the students to learn
"The Cavalier Song" and "Hike Virginia!" and explained that
"there is no adequate leadership or effort in getting the songs
across." Two years later College Topics urged that "The Cavalier
Song" be played and sung at games, since it was an air with
"more pep and vigor" than "The Good Old Song." The latter
should be reserved for "more serious occasions," said Topics,
which added that it was "inappropriate" after a touchdown,
for example. The paper remarked on the numerous efforts
that had been made to popularize "The Cavalier Song," but
"unfortunately too many students have not familiarized themselves
with either the words or the tune."

An attempt to persuade winners of the "V" to wear their
sweaters around the Grounds was launched by the "V" Club.
That organization issued a statement: "Virginia is the only institution
in the country . . . where a monogram winner cannot
go from his home or fraternity house to his boarding house
or gymnasium with his sweater on without a feeling of abashment
or being out of place. . . . Has not Virginia been a little
too different along athletic lines?" The exhoratation had little
effect.

By the time Frank Murray reached his second football season
in the fall of 1938, things were definitely looking up. The
1937 season had been a losing one, but by early October 1938

37. The Corner in the early thirties.

near hysteria gripped the student body, and the rally in Cabell
Hall before the Washington and Lee game was unlike anything
seen there in a long time. It was preceded by a torchlight
parade from the Corner, after which Armistead Dobie spouted
in typical fashion from the platform. The atmosphere was described
by College Topics in what seems to have been excessively
purple prose: "In a burst of noise, song, cheers and poetry far
in excess of anything seen at the university in many years, an
overflow crowd of 1,500 mad, jubilant students, dates, faculty
members and townspeople crowded Cabell Hall to the rafters."
After the rally, "with savage shrieks the frenzied mob
ran up the Lawn to the steps of the Rotunda," thence to the
Corner, and into town, where traffic on Main Street was held
up for over an hour, "as the merrymakers danced and howled
their way." Next day the team defeated W&L 13 to 0 for Virginia's
first significant victory in several seasons.

Other similar rallies were held that fall, with enthusiasm at
the highest pitch, and the team carried off the state championship,
winning four, losing four, and tying one. Murray said
the rallies were a major factor in achieving this drastic reversal
of form.

Murray's coaching and recruiting continued to-bring excellent
results, and by 1940 his Virginia team was winning national
fame. In that year it journeyed to the Yale Bowl and
defeated Old Eli 19 to 14. A bright star of that game was an
eighteen-year-old from Bluefield, Va., named William M.
Dudley, weighing only 165 to 170 pounds but able to "do it
all." He could run, pass, kick, block, and tackle, and soon was
recognized as the most magnificent football player ever to
wear a Virginia uniform. By the 1941 season Bill Dudley was
captain of the Virginia team—at nineteen the youngest captain
of a major college eleven in the country—and despite his
small size the sensation of the football world. Virginia won all
its games that year except one, a 21-19 loss to Yale. Dudley
was chosen to every important all-American team—Associated
Press, United Press, International News Service, and
Grantland Rice's selection for Collier's Magazine. Rice wrote of
him later: "There may have been a few better, smarter football
players than Bill Dudley, but for the moment we can't recall
their names. This even includes Jim Thorpe, Red Grange,

Bronco Nagurski, Dutch Clarke and Ernie Nevers. . . . Dudley
comes close to being the best all-around back we've ever seen
. . . a fine ball carrier, a magnificent kicker, a first-class pass
receiver and the best defensive back, especially against passes,
that anyone knows." Dudley won so many awards that it is impossible
to list them all.

At the close of the 1941-42 session he enlisted in the Army
Air Corps and was commissioned a lieutenant. After World
War II he turned professional and joined the Pittsburgh Steelers,
where he led the National Football League in yards
gained and in returning punts and intercepting passes. With
the Steelers he played about fifty minutes of every game, on
defense as well as offense. He was named the outstanding
player in the league and presented with the Carr Award. He
then signed a three-year contract with the Detroit Lions at the
highest figure paid up to that time in professional football.
Dudley was elected in 1956 to the College Football Hall of
Fame and in 1966 to the Professional Football Hall of Fame.
Twenty-five years after his graduation from Virginia, Sports
Illustrated chose him along with other athletes for its "Silver
Anniversary All-American Award," by virtue of "extraordinary
achievement in life." He had been elected to the General
Assembly from Lynchburg and was a successful businessman
there. Despite his almost unprecedented athletic accomplishments
and honors, Bill Dudley's head never became enlarged.
He was the same modest fellow who had come to Virginia out
of Bluefield High School many years before. After the war
he returned to the university several times to help with the
coaching.

When the university band was returning from the Yale
game in Dudley's final year at Virginia, the bus on which it was
traveling caught fire about sixteen miles north of Charlottesville.
Eighty percent of the band's instruments and all of its
uniforms were a total loss. None of the passengers was injured.
Despite this catastrophe the organization, without uniforms
and with borrowed instruments, put on a superlative
performance at the University of Richmond game the following
Saturday. The leader of the band, which served both for
athletic contests and concerts, was James E. Berdahl.

In his report to the president for the session, Randall

Thompson, head of the music department, referred to the
loss of the instruments and uniforms and said that "every
branch of equipment for music owned by the university or by
the division was in a grievous state of disrepair, neglect, dilapidation
and sometimes total unusability at the beginning of
this year." He requested larger appropriations and a full-time
band director. Fortunately, two grants from the Carnegie Corporation
"enabled us to realize many of the hopes expressed
a year ago," Thompson reported for 1942-43. Great improvement
in equipment resulted.

Virginia maintained the boxing supremacy it had acquired
in the 1920s. Lawrence Perry, sports columnist for the New
York Sun, wrote in 1934 that the university "probably has the
best set of amateur boxers in the world," and "they really are
amateurs, all students in good standing." From 1932 to 1936
the Cavalier ringmen were undefeated, winning twenty-four
bouts in succession and six Southern Conference titles. Bobby
Goldstein won the intercollegiate and Southern Conference
lightweight titles, the latter championship three times in a row.
Other Southern Conference titleholders included Harold
Stuart, Gordon and Robert Rainey, Archie Hahn, Jr., and
Maynard Womer. Ray Schmidt won the 175-pound intercollegiate
title in 1937. Mortimer Caplin, later a member of the
law faculty and U.S. Commissioner of Internal Revenue, was
also a star member of the team.

Good seats for important matches in Memorial Gymnasium
were gone by 6 P.M. on the night of the bouts, and every available
inch of space was filled. Black ties were usually worn at
ringside. Spectators were forbidden to cheer during the
fights, but when a round ended or Virginia scored a victory,
pandemonium reigned. Despite frequent warnings from officials
and from College Topics, booing and hissing sometimes
erupted over a referee's decisions deemed unfair or otherwise
objectionable. Some of this was attributable to what was
termed a "jerkwater element" from downtown, but students
were partly responsible.

Periodic suggestions were made that intercollegiate boxing
should be abolished at Virginia, since frequent blows to the
head might cause permanent brain injury. These criticisms became
louder and more insistent when a VMI cadet, William J.

Eastham, died in 1937 from a broken neck sustained in a bout
with Maryland. But for the time being the sport was continued.
On the other hand, intramural boxing was done away
with in 1941, since supervision was deemed inadequate.

Coach Johnny LaRowe had a serious illness in 1936 and was
confined thereafter to a wheel chair, but he reported daily for
practice. In 1940 he died. There were many tributes to his
high character and fine sportsmanship, especially from the
young men who had boxed on his teams. The unanimity of
their admiration and affection was indeed remarkable.

One of Johnny's closest friends was "Spike" Webb, boxing
coach at the U.S. Naval Academy, whose teams Virginia defeated
four times in succession; no other boxers had beaten
Navy in twenty-one years. On one occasion Webb and LaRowe
were in the same hotel, and Webb slipped LaRowe a loaded
cigar, which exploded. Next morning Johnny stole into Spike's
room and switched his shaving lotion and throat gargle. Webb
took a mouthful of the lotion and thought his mouth was on
fire. He hopped around the room in acute discomfort, while
his friend, watching from the door, doubled up with mirth.

Fenton Gentry, one of LaRowe's boxing stars, a Southern
Conference champion and Rhodes Scholar, said of his former
coach: "He had a magic way of encouraging his boys to keep
on fighting, although defeat stared them plumb in the
eyes. . . . He was a one hundred per cent, 24-karat real man."
Gentry was sure the other Virginia boys who had fought for
LaRowe felt the same way. Scores of them returned in 1947,
on the twenty-fifth anniversary of boxing at Virginia, when a
bust of LaRowe by Francis Wadsworth was unveiled in the
gym—scene of Johnny's greatest triumphs.

"Al" York, one of LaRowe's finest boxers, succeeded him as
coach. As time went on, however, there was a mounting feeling
that intercollegiate boxing was too dangerous. One college
after another dropped the sport until there was hardly anybody
left for Virginia to fight. Dr. Hugh Trout led the effort
in the Board of Visitors for its abolition, at first without success.
He stated in 1949 that parents of nine university boxers
had written him urging that the sport be abolished. Five past
presidents of the Medical Society of Virginia expressed the
same view. But the Board of Visitors voted to continue the

sport, with Trout the only dissenter. Colgate Darden, president
of the university, recommended two years later that it be
dropped, but the visitors disagreed. Finally in 1955 the Athletic
Council decided that intercollegiate boxing should be
eliminated, and the visitors concurred. They directed that
boxing be purely intramural thereafter, a decision exactly the
reverse of that reached in 1941.

In basketball Virginia's record over the years down to World
War II was exceptionally good. The team had only one losing
season during Pop Lannigan's twenty-five-year tenure ending
in 1929, and Gus Tebell's quints also were successful. From
1939 to 1941 they won forty-six of sixty games, and the 1941
team won eighteen of twenty-two, one of the best records in
the university's history. The cocaptains were Bill Harman and
Billy McCann, with Dick Wiltshire also a star.

The track team was making a superlative record. By 1941 it
had won twelve state championships in thirteen years under
Coach Archie Hahn. As in the 1920s, the relay team was winning
at the Penn Relays. It won the 480-yard shuttle hurdle
relay in 1938 against the best teams in America and repeated
the win the following year. In 1938 the team consisted of Duncan
Hawley, Armistead Peyton, Lang Dayton, and Frank L.
Fuller III, and it bested Harvard's 1936 Penn Relay record by
four-tenths of a second. The victorious Virginia hurdlers in
1939 were Harvey Poe (later a Rhodes Scholar), Harry Stokes,
Peyton, and Fuller. In 1940 at Chapel Hill, N.C., Captain
Fuller set a new world record in the 70-yard high hurdles with
a time of 8.4 seconds.

C. Alphonso Smith, Jr., a superb tennis player, matriculated
at Virginia in the late 1920s. By 1930 he was captain of the
tennis team, and again in 1931. Under his leadership Virginia
netmen did well against tough competition. "Smithy" had won
the National Boys Singles and Doubles Championships in
1924, and three years later the National Junior Doubles
Championship. In 1974, exactly half a century after winning
the national boys' titles, Smith and his partner Frank M.
Goeltz made a grand slam of all national doubles championships
for men sixty-five and over, winning on grass, clay, hard
surface, and indoor. As a result of all this, Smith is listed in
the Guiness Book of World Records. In 1975 the U.S. Tennis

38. President Franklin D. Roosevelt spoke at the 1940 commencement exercises in Memorial Gymnasium.
He made history by denouncing Mussolini for plunging his dagger into the back of his neighbor, France.

Association presented him with a plaque inscribed "First man
in the history of American athletics to win national titles 50
years apart." Alphonso Smith served as the nonplaying captain
of the U.S. Davis Cup Team in 1963.

Records of a different kind were made in 1938 by J. Smith
Ferebee, '27, whose demoniac energy as a golf player was well
nigh incredible. To begin with, to settle a bet he played 144
holes in one day without benefit of golf carts. Then, on another
bet, he proceeded to play 600 holes in four days, walking
over each course and covering at least 72 holes each day
in two different cities. To win this bet, Ferebee traveled 3,000
miles by plane from Los Angeles to Phoenix to Kansas City to
St. Louis to Milwaukee to Chicago to Philadelphia to New
York. He played the 600 holes in 2,860 strokes, averaging an
hour and 15 minutes per 18 holes, and playing the 601st hole
at midnight on the New York World's Fair Grounds. If this
alumnus isn't in the Guiness Book of World Records, he ought
to be. Ripley featured him in his "Believe It or Not" syndicated
strip.

Intramural sports had their inception at Virginia during the
session of 1933-34. Seven years previously an attempt had
been made to launch an intramural program, but no funds
could be found. However, by the fall of 1933 it became possible
to inaugurate intramurals by charging a fee to each
participating team. The teams represented the various fraternities,
and the sports were touch football, volleyball, horseshoe
pitching, basketball, boxing, swimming, handball, baseball,
track and field, and tennis. There were 452 contests during
the 1933-34 session, with sixteen hundred students taking
part. The nonfraternity men had only a basketball league. A
few years later it became possible to include them when the
Division of Intramural Sports was organized under the capable
direction of Robert N. Hoskins. By the late 1930s the
program was operating effectively for both fraternity and
nonfraternity men, and the games brought the two groups
together, thus creating better relations.

Director of Athletics Pritchett reiterated in 1939 that the
university's greatest material need was a field house. Pointing
to the inadequacy of the Memorial Gymnasium, in view of the
growing enrollment, he said: "The matter boils down to one

of two possibilities—either a field house or a `nut house.' " In
the following year Pritchett wrote that the university seeks to
realize its athletic objectives

Alumni affairs in the 1930s were looking up, despite the
depression. Almost every member of the first three graduating
classes in the decade affiliated with the Alumni Association,
in contrast to what had occurred in some earlier years.
Hundreds of alumni returned for the 1933 reunion at Finals,
and the usual barbecue was held in the little green valley below
the cemetery, near the second green on the university golf
course and known at times as the Dell. The Big Tent was
brought back in 1934, after an absence of a couple of decades,
and erected just west of Peabody and Monroe halls. The inauguration
of President Newcomb was the principal event of
that year's Finals. Extremely simple ceremonies ushered in the
new president. Rector Frederic W. Scott welcomed Newcomb
to his responsibilities, and Gov. George C. Peery addressed
the graduates.

The Edwin Anderson Alderman Alumni Fund, created in
connection with the twenty-fifth anniversary of Alderman's
coming to the university but subsequently neglected, was
brought forcefully to the alumni's attention at the 1935 Finals.
A campaign for contributions to the fund was launched in order
that needed services and causes at the university might be
underwritten. The intensive effort got under way in the fall,
and after nearly six months of work about $32,000 were
raised from over 2,000 alumni, for an average of $15 each.
This result "surpasses last year's record of the alumni fund of

any Southern college or university, some of which have been
carrying on this for years," said the Alumni News. "It is better
than the majority of the university alumni funds throughout
the country. . . . Contributions have been received from 14
percent of the living alumni." Cary N. Weisiger, Jr., '05, chairman
of the Alumni Council, was given the major share of the
credit for the drive's success. He devoted "months of his personal
time," as well as his money, to bring about this result.

Acquisition of a permanent home for the Alumni Association
to replace the rented quarters at the Corner was the big
event of 1936. The former home of Zeta Beta Tau and Phi
Sigma Kappa fraternities, on Emmet Street (U.S. Highway 29)
across from Memorial Gymnasium, was purchased for the association
by the university. It was hoped that alumni would
furnish sufficient money to put the building in proper condition,
and the opinion was expressed that part of the just-raised
Alderman Fund could be used for this purpose. The alumni
reunion at the 1936 Finals was held in the Big Tent on the
front lawn, since the building itself was not ready. But the Big
Tent continued to be a frequent feature of alumni reunions
after the association moved into its new quarters. In 1939 a
loan was made to the association from the centennial fund of
1921 toward the cost of financing Alumni Hall.

The first of several annual trips through the South to meet
with old grads in various cities was taken in 1937, pursuant to
arrangements made by the Alumni Association. Dean Ivey F.
Lewis, Director of Athletics Norton Pritchett, Alumni Association
President Bernard P. Chamberlain, and Alumni Secretary
J. Malcolm Luck made the three thousand-mile journey. It extended
as far south as Miami and as far west as Memphis, with
a half dozen other stops. Dean Lewis pointed out at the gatherings
that over six hundred automobiles were owned by university
students, and that four young men had been killed in
accidents during the session. Captain Pritchett explained Virginia's
withdrawal from the Southern Conference and said
that it had been widely misinterpreted. "Virginia is not going
in for `big league' football and never will, so long as I can prevent
it," he declared. "Our new rules are precisely those that
have prevailed at Davidson College. . . . Dartmouth, Amherst
and Williams . . . have exactly the regulations we have."

Partly as a result of these trips through the South, the

39. William M. (Bill) Dudley, all-American, 1941, and all-pro,
greatest football player in the university's history, despite his
relatively small size.

Alumni Association had become "a vigorous, forward-looking
organization," C. Harrison Mann, '31, wrote in the Alumni
News. Mann, chairman of the university's scholarship committee
for the Washington, D.C., chapter, and later a prominent
member of the General Assembly, discussed the upsurge in
alumni interest in an article covering more than five pages of
the News. "During the past several years," he wrote, "more
spontaneous interest has been manifested by Virginia's alumni
than ever before in the history of the university. The combustion
has been energized by a curious mixture of loyalty, love
and determination that a great university shall maintain its
greatness, teach its principles of integrity of the individual in
a world where individualism is fast becoming a heresy."

Activities of the medical alumni became better organized
and more effective when the Medical Alumni Association was
established at the university in 1940, with leading medical
graduates in attendance. Such an association had been formed
in 1914, with Dr. Hugh Young as the first president, and a
meeting was held at Finals in 1916. But the organization became
inactive and was not revived for nearly a quarter of a
century. In 1938 Dr. Beverly C. Smith, '19, of New York, wrote
Dr. David L. Lyman, 1900, of Wallingford, Conn., asking him
to come to Gotham for a conference on the subject of forming
a Medical Alumni Association. He accepted, and it was agreed
when they met that an effort would be made to assemble a
group of medical alumni at the university on April 20-21,
1940. Lyman and Smith wrote medical graduates in various
parts of the country inviting them to the meeting, and a score
accepted. The gathering was successful, and another was held
a year later. Dr. Smith was elected chairman at that time, and
the association grew into a powerful organization that has
raised substantial funds and influenced the growth and importance
of the Medical School in many ways.

The association was almost purely social for a good many
years, and there was opposition to suggestions that it serve as
an agency for raising funds for the Medical School. But in the
early 1960s it was decided to change this policy, and William
A. Booth was placed in charge of the fund raising, with notable
success. At that time the Medical Alumni Advisory Committee
was initiated under the direction of Beverly C. Smith
and Jed Irvine. Mrs. Eunice Davis, who had served as executive

director of the association, continued to edit the Medical
Alumni News Letter until her retirement in 1974, and Booth
became the organization's full-time director. The Medical
School Foundation was established in 1972, adding greatly to
the association's potency as a raiser of funds. The usefulness
of the alumni to the Medical School has been vastly increased
through the operations of the association. And the association
is one of the reasons why the University of Virginia Medical
School continues to rank as one of the foremost such schools
in the South.

The alumni of the Law School have been similarly supportive
of that school and have strengthened it in various ways.
The University of Virginia Law School Association was organized
in 1921 under the leadership of Prof. Raleigh C. Minor
and Dean William M. Lile "to advance the cause of legal education,
promote the interests and increase the usefulness of
the . . . Law School and to promote mutual acquaintance and
good fellowship among all members of the association." With
the death of Professor Minor, the prime mover in establishing
the association, it became inactive until 1934, when Dean Armistead
M. Dobie called a meeting at which new officers were
elected. Pressing needs of the school were brought forcefully
to the attention of President Newcomb, President Darden,
and others in authority over the years. Important results were
achieved, especially in increasing the number of professors
and raising their salary scales, greatly strengthening the law
library, and fostering the establishment of the Law School
Foundation. Annual drives for gifts to the foundation have
produced substantial results.

The law library expanded spectacularly as a result of the
devoted work of the alumni, combined with the dedication of
Frances Farmer, who became law librarian in 1942 and was
secretary-treasurer of the Law School Association for sixteen
years. The library had only 30,000 volumes in 1942, but a decade
later the total had reached 100,000, a milestone marked
by an enthusiastic celebration. In that ten-year period the state
of Virginia provided $150,000, while the alumni raised
$165,000 in cash and books. By the early 1970s the library
had 300,000 volumes and was the largest in the South.
Frances Farmer received the distinguished service award of
the Law School Foundation in 1957, and the following year

was elected president of the American Association of Law Libraries.
Among the prominent alumni who took leading roles
in developing the library were Paul B. Barringer, Jr., '13, and
W. Catesby Jones, '92, of New York, and Thomas B. Gay, '06,
of Richmond. Executive directors of the foundation have
been William H. White, Jr., 1952-62; Knox Turnbull, 1962-64,
and Marion K. Kellogg, 1964-73.

An annual Law Alumni Day was introduced in 1958 and
has become a great source of support for the Law School,
bringing alumni back to see the school in action. A Law
Alumni Directory is another feature of the association's program;
it has been helpful in promoting fund raising for the
foundation.

The association is headed by an elected nine-member council,
plus officers and former association presidents, with a
large number of committees which provide information and
assistance for programs of the school, such as scholarships,
library, curriculum, and so on.

A statement by Dean F. D. G. Ribble in 1952 put the work
of the association in perspective: "The law alumni continue to
be of vital help. . . . This is notable in the placement of graduates,
and in advice and recommendations on the admission of
new students. The law alumni have also been active in other
phases of the Law School work, notably in advice on the area
of curriculum and in advice and support in connection with
the law library. The Law School Council is composed of a fine
group of successful and effective lawyers, devoted to the
school and willing to help in every way possible."

On another sector of the alumni front, the twentieth anniversary
of William H. Wranek, Jr., as managing editor of the
Alumni News was noted in the Sept.-Oct. 1941 number of that
publication. Wranek succeeded Frank R. Reade, '23, in the
summer of 1922, when McLane Tilton was editor and business
manager. Tilton retired in 1930, and the Alumni Board
of Managers did not elect another editor, but Wranek discharged
the editor's duties. More recently he was given the
post of business manager, which he combined with his other
responsibilities.

A two-week Institute on Local Government was held at the
university in the summer of 1936. It had the object of

strengthening the university's offerings in political science and
preparing the way for establishment at the following session
of a Bureau of Public Administration, operating on a different
basis from the bureau founded some years before. The summer
institute brought nationally known figures to the Grounds,
as well as persons distinguished in the field of local government.

A Bureau of Public Administration had been set up at the
university in 1931 as a cooperative venture for research, with
Rowland Egger as director. A grant from the Rockefeller
Foundation in 1936 made possible the establishment of the
bureau as an independent coordinate university agency, with
Egger as director, Raymond Uhl as assistant director, and Vincent
Shea as statistician and economist. Its functions would be
threefold: (1) to serve as a clearing house for the planning and
advisory agencies, institutions of higher learning, and individual
researchers in public administration in Virginia; (2) to
develop its own research program, and (3) to provide assistance
in the instruction of students at the university in public
administration. It would not be a policy-forming or policy-influencing
agency.

Rowland Egger was appointed by Gov. James H. Price in
1939 as director of the state's reorganized Division of the Budget,
and Raymond Uhl was named acting director of the bureau.
It was the first of numerous extracurricular assignments
of Professor Egger, not only in this country but in other parts
of the world.

The bureau staff undertook research projects in Petersburg,
Staunton, Roanoke, Williamsburg, and Albemarle County,
while other similar projects were planned for the future. Pilot
studies on the centralized executive were made in the abovementioned
political subdivisions.

The Virginia Council on Public Administration was created
in 1938 with Governor Price as chairman and numerous state
and university officials as members. Its secretariat was the Bureau
of Public Administration. During its first two and a half
years the bureau published seven studies and investigated
more than a dozen additional problems in the institutions of
higher learning.

A plan for the development of a research program in business,
industry, and banking, under which the U.S. Bureau of

Foreign and Domestic Commerce would cooperate with social
science research organizations and schools of business in the
colleges and universities of the nation, was launched in 1939
at the university. Dr. Nathaniel H. Engle of the bureau said he
was holding the first conference at the University of Virginia
because Wilson Gee had been first to suggest the plan. A part
of the scheme was for the university to cooperate with Virginia
bankers in stimulating business throughout the state by developing
small, local industries that would make use of surplus
agricultural and natural products. A conference of bankers in
Richmond endorsed the program.

Such plans as those of the bureaus mentioned above
brought important personalities to the university. Other celebrities
came when a different type of gathering took place in
1931. About two dozen leading southern authors were invited
to the Grounds by James Southall Wilson after the idea had
been suggested by Ellen Glasgow, the Richmond novelist.
"The Relation of the Southern Author to His Public" was the
general theme, but there was no formal program. Several
New York critics attended. Miss Glasgow presided at the informal
discussions on Friday, and DuBose Heyward on Saturday.
Participants included James Boyd, William Faulkner, Allen
Tate, Josephine Pinckney, Ulrich B. Phillips, Cale Young Rice,
Archibald Henderson, Paul Green, Sherwood Anderson, and
James Branch Cabell. A tea at the Colonnade Club, a reception
at Farmington, a visit to Monticello, and tea at Castle Hill
with Amelie Rives Troubetzkoy as hostess were on the agenda.
The authors agreed that book pages outside of New York
were inferior and in need of attention. Emily Clark, former
editor of The Reviewer, wrote of the gathering in the New York
Herald Tribune's book section and said the meeting accomplished
what several years of correspondence and conscientious
reading of one another's books might never have
achieved. She stated that various authors who were known to
dislike each other's writings became the best of friends. Josephine
Pinckney also wrote of the conference for the Saturday
Review of Literature.

Other important personalities were brought to the university
by the Institute of Public Affairs, which took place each
summer until interrupted by World War II. The institute became
increasingly successful, with audiences of five thousand

40. Prof. William H. (Reddy) Echols, hero of the 1895 Rotunda
fire and longtime Grand Banana of the Elis.

packing the McIntire Theater for the evening addresses. The
first attendance of that magnitude turned out in 1935 to hear
Gen. Hugh S. (Ironpants) Johnson, czar of the National Recovery
Administration (NRA), and Cong. James W. Wadsworth
of New York. The following summer the institute was
even more successful. Among those on the program were Secretary
of the Interior Harold L. Ickes; Winthrop W. Aldrich;
William L. Chenery, editor of Collier's Magazine; Earl Browder,
Communist nominee for president; Norman Thomas, Socialist
nominee for president; Walter Hampden, the actor;
Charles W. Gay, president of the New York Stock Exchange;
and Edward L. Bernays, noted public relations counsel.

Prof. Charles G. Maphis, who had presided ably over the
institute from the beginning and had been active in other university
affairs, died suddenly, and Prof. Robert K. Gooch took
charge of the 1938 institute. He was assisted by Prof. Hardy
C. Dillard '27. The following year Dillard was in complete
charge and remained so until the institute was interrupted by
the outbreak of World War II.

Hardy Dillard's leadership of the institute brought high
praise. But Gordon M. Buck, former president of the University
of Virginia Alumni Association, wrote the Alumni News
protesting Dillard's action in inviting Earl Browder, general
secretary of the Communist party, U.S.A., and Ambassador
Oumansky of Russia to be on the program. Buck contended
that Dillard "goes beyond freedom of speech when . . . he offers
at the University of Virginia a rostrum from which [Browder
and Oumansky] may spread subversive doctrines." He
added that "search will be made in vain . . . for any instance in
which Jefferson offered the university as a forum, or furnished
any other facility for promulgating the principles of
the Federalist Party, and that party sought merely an elastic
construction, not the complete destruction, of our constitution."
Dillard replied that "Mr. Buck has not only completely
misunderstood the function of the institute, but more specifically
he has misunderstood the reasons for the inclusion of
Mr. Browder and Mr. Oumansky. . . . The general topic for
the meetings was `New Problems of Government: National
and International.' Some 70 speakers participated in the two
weeks' sessions. . . . Having selected topics which are important
and timely, effort is directed at getting the best available

speakers. . . . where controversial topics are selected both
sides should be fairly heard." A spokesman for Nazi Germany
also was on the program by invitation. Dillard pointed out that
"the positions of both Russia and Germany were under heavy
fire by a great number of other speakers. . . . It is certain that
the institute, by pursuing its basic policy and inviting a hearing
by both sides, did much to stimulate interest and thought." He
added that "this has been the consistent policy of the institute
[as] is amply demonstrated by its past programs."

Also in the area of public affairs was the "Little Congress,"
organized by the students in 1937, with Bolling Lambeth as
chairman of the organizing committee. A unicameral student
legislature for the discussion of national issues, it was modeled
on the Oxford Union and the George Washington University
Union. The previously referred-to debate between Professors
Robert K. Gooch and F. D. G. Ribble on President Roosevelt's
"court-packing plan" was held under the auspices of the congress
and launched its activities auspiciously. More than one
thousand students filled Cabell Hall.

The little Congress was established on the basis of a threeparty
system. Conservatives, liberals, and middle-of-the-roaders
held conventions early in the school year and drafted their
platforms on such public questions as farm tenancy, lynching,
un-American activities, and the "court-packing plan." Public
debates were an important part of the program, and these
were followed by legislative sessions. "The object of the Little
Congress is to provide a training ground for all those who are
interested in how a legislative body works," G. C. Halsted III,
chairman of the executive council, wrote. At its first legislative
session in 1939 the Congress passed a bill favoring a military
alliance between the United States and the other democracies.
The organization functioned through the 1939-40 session,
but, as with so many other activities, World War II put an end
to its program.

A number of leading figures in the life of the university, men
who represented the institution's finest ideals and who had
served it for long periods, died during the decade that ended
in 1941: Dr. John Staige Davis, William H. Echols, Dean William
M. Thornton, Dean William Minor Lile, Dean James M.
Page, John J. Luck, Dr. John H. Neff, Dean James C. Flippin,

Dr. Paul B. Barringer, and John S. Patton. It is to be doubted
if any decade in the university's history has seen the loss of so
many of the institution's memorable personalities.

Librarian John S. Patton, who died in 1932, had retired in
the middle 1920s after serving for nearly a quarter of a century,
during which he assumed the tremendous task of reorganizing
the library after the Rotunda fire of 1895. He had
previously been editor of the Roanoke Times and editor and
part owner of the Charlottesville Progress.

The death of Dr. John Staige Davis in 1933, after an illness
of nearly six years, following a paralytic stroke, was noted in
the previous chapter. His witty and informative lectures were
long remembered by his students. A grandson of John A. G.
Davis, the chairman of the faculty who was fatally wounded by
a rioting student in 1840, he had been on the teaching staff at
the medical school since 1894.

William H. Echols, professor of mathematics, hero of the
Rotunda fire in 1895, and longtime Grand Banana of the Elis,
was next to go. He died of a heart attack in 1934 at his home
on East Lawn after forty-four years on the faculty. "Reddy"
Echols, so called because of his red hair, was a gripping lecturer
and was venerated by the students. His annual address
to the first-year men on the honor system was a classic. "Thousands
of alumni are feeling a sense of personal loss," said the
Alumni News concerning his passing. "Many came from a distance
to attend the funeral." And the Richmond News Leader commented: "Sometimes a man emerges that incarnates the
spirit of the whole body of which he is a member. Such a man
was `Reddy' Echols, for though he would have been the last to
claim or realize it, yet in him was a burning and shining light
which was the vital spirit of the university." The class of 1935
presented his portrait as its class gift.

William M. Thornton, chairman of the faculty for eight
years and dean of engineering for twenty, died in 1935. His
was a personality that impressed itself upon the institution
whose faculty he had joined in 1875. A blood clot made necessary
the amputation of his right leg in 1930. James Southall
Wilson wrote of "Billy" Thornton: "Dean Thornton's distinction
was threefold: as teacher and administrator in the Department
of Engineering, and chairman of the faculty . . . and
leader in the general affairs of the university, and as a gentleman

and scholar unafraid, a speaker of force, a virile writer
and rich personality." Prof. B. F. D. Runk stated that "Thornton
was a genius; he could teach any subject, and they said
that if they gave him six months, he could teach medicine . . .
a wonderful person, a great scholar and a great friend of the
students.

A few months later came the death of Dean William Minor
Lile of the law school. He had joined the faculty in 1893, as
John B. Minor was rounding out his half century of distinguished
service. "Billy" Lile, as he was affectionately known to
the students, was one of a great triumvirate. Raleigh Minor
and "Charlie" Graves also had joined the law faculty in the
1890s, and with Lile were the mainstays of that teaching staff
for decades. The position of dean was created in 1904, and
Lile was appointed to the post. He occupied it with distinction
until his retirement in 1932. In that position he led in reorganizing
and strengthening the curriculum, thus maintaining
the great prestige of the school. Armistead Dobie, who succeeded
him as dean, wrote after his death: "No student who
ever sat under him can forget his flashing wit, his keen power
of legal analysis, his ability to arouse and sustain legal curiosity,
and his almost uncanny power of clear, incisive statement
in crisp and picturesque language."

Dean James M. Page died in 1936, and his death brought
genuine grief to thousands. He had retired in 1934 because
of ill health. Reference was made in the preceding chapter to
"Jim" Page's genius for handling wayward students in a manner
that was effective, while at the same time retaining their
affection. As President Newcomb expressed it, "He possessed
those rare qualities of heart and mind which enabled him to
administer discipline to students in such a manner as to cause
them to love him." Ben Dulany spoke for the students when
he wrote: "Long before he left the colonnades he was a legend.
That rarest of men he was who was true to his youth by
staying young despite years. Somewhere he preserved the faculty
of remembering what the eternal student is like, how he
thinks and why he does what he does. We join in mourning.
For while there are and will be many deans, Dr. Page will ever
be The Dean." Nils Hammerstrand, a Scandinavian member
of the faculty, wrote: "Of all the men I have known in different
parts of the world none was equal to Dean Page." Four years

before Dean Page's death, while he was still active, the Class of
1932 presented his portrait to the university.

John Jennings (Pot) Luck, chairman of the mathematics faculty
for several years and a member of that faculty since 1916,
died of a heart attack in 1938. Jovial and approachable, weighing
in the vicinity of three hundred pounds, Professor Luck
was an effective teacher who showed exceptional concern for
his students. As an undergraduate he had won high scholastic
honors and been elected to the Hot Feet and the IMPs, as well
as to the presidency of the Academic School and the Jefferson
Society. Corks and Curls was dedicated to him in 1931.

The community and state were shocked in November 1938
at the disappearance of Dr. John H. Neff, an admired and
respected member of the medical faculty. His body was found
floating in Payne's Pond fourteen miles east of Charlottesville,
with his automobile parked at the pond's edge. A verdict of
suicide was rendered by the coroner, but no conceivable motive
or explanation was ever uncovered. "Johnny" Neff had
been an extremely popular student at the university, president
of the graduating class of 1910, captain of the football team,
and member of the leading social organizations. During his
years on the medical faculty he had achieved a wide reputation
as a urologist. Dr. Neff left a wife and three children. His
brother, Douglas W. Neff, had been captain of the baseball
team and student leader in his day, and later entered the ministry
of the Episcopal Church. He drowned himself in 1932.

Another shock to the Medical School came in 1939 when
Dean James C. Flippin, aged sixty-one, was stricken at his
home on West Lawn and died the next day without regaining
consciousness. Born in Lunenburg County, he had been
graduated in medicine in 1901. He joined the faculty the following
year. On the death of Dean Theodore Hough in 1934
he was named to the deanship. The school expanded physically
in significant ways during his incumbency, and its standards
and reputation were maintained. Dean Flippin was
highly regarded by his faculty colleagues as well as by the students
and was esteemed for his human qualities no less than
for his capacity as an administrator.

Dr. Paul B. Barringer, whose many contributions to the life
of the university have been previously discussed, died at his
home in 1941, after an illness of more than a year. He severed

41. Armistead M. Dobie, dean of the Law School, addressing
students in Cabell Hall.

his connection with the university in 1907 to become president
of VPI, but he resigned that position after six years for reasons
outlined in an earlier chapter. Dr. Barringer spent his
remaining years at or near the university. In 1938 he was
elected the second honorary president of the University of
Virginia Alumni Association, Armistead C. Gordon having
been the first. In that year Dr. Barringer delivered the centennial
address before the association.

Mrs. John L. Newcomb, wife of the university's president,
also died in 1941, after an illness of several months. Then Japan
attacked Pearl Harbor, and President Newcomb's burdens
were greatly intensified, as wartime problems were added to
those occasioned by the death of his wife. She had been a
mainstay on the social side of his administration, serving as a
gracious hostess at many functions. Mrs. Newcomb also was
active in community welfare organizations. Her passing left
her devoted husband greatly bereft and frightfully lonely in
the big president's residence on Carr's Hill. He asked the
Board of Visitors for permission to move to the Colonnade
Club or an apartment, but the board refused.

Another well-known figure whose death caused genuine
sorrow during these years was "Charlie" Brown, the affable,
handsome, carefully groomed black barber, with his shop at
the Corner. He had trimmed the hair and shaved the beards
of generations of professors and students. Charlie and his
father before him had been "tonsorial assistants to students
and alumni since 1865," as they stated in their advertisement
published in the Alumni News over a long period.

The retirement or resignation of several faculty members occurred
during these years.

Prof. Charles W. Paul resigned in 1936 on account of ill
health, after nearly thirty years of teaching the students the
art of debating and speaking. He joined the teaching staff in
1908 and was for many years a member of the law faculty. He
also taught students in the college, and was active in developing
student debaters in the literary societies.

Stringfellow Barr, '17, resigned in 1937 from the history
faculty, and Scott Buchanan from the philosophy faculty, to
join President Robert M. Hutchins's University of Chicago.

"Winkie" Barr, a former Rhodes Scholar who had been a
member of the university teaching staff since 1924, was one of
the most brilliant lecturers in the institution. He soon left Chicago
to become president of St. John's College, Annapolis,
Md. The curriculum there would be based on one hundred of
the "best books of ancient and modern thought." Barr took
Buchanan to Annapolis as dean.

When Prof. Arthur Fickenscher retired in 1941, he was accorded
the almost unheard-of accolade of a front-page editorial
in College Topics. He had served for two decades as the first
professor of music in the McIntire School of Fine Arts. A
graduate of the Royal Conservatory in Munich, Germany, he
was the composer of numerous musical works and the inventor
of an instrument called a Polytone. Many of his songs were
performed in this and other countries, said Topics, which
added that he was a pioneer in tonal effects whose stature
might become much greater in time.

The university scene underwent a change in 1935 when the
jangling orange and blue street cars that had functioned since
just after the turn of the century were replaced by red and
gray buses. The cars, which ran up Main Street and along University
Avenue and Rugby Road to the C&O Railroad and
back again, were operated by four motormen who had been
performing this rite for from twenty-three to thirty-two years
each. They were Bay S. Maupin, otherwise known as "Pegasus
on Wheels," C. M. Childress, and F. F. and W. B. Birckhead.
Three of them expressed dismay at the prospect of shifting
from the helm of a trolley car to the wheel of a bus, but all
accepted the invitation of the Virginia Public Service Company
to pilot the new conveyances. Students, faculty, and
other members of the community were pleased that this familiar
quartet would continue to perform their transportational
functions. The fare on the buses, as on the street cars,
was 5 cents.

The familiar orange and blue cars disappeared, but another
landmark remained. This was "Tim," the "Professor of Bumology,"
who had been hanging around the university premises
in one capacity or another for some three decades. Born in
Belfast, Ireland, of pauper parents who came to the United

States in 1872 when he was three years old, Tim went to sea at
age eighteen and then joined the U.S. Navy. He arrived at the
university about 1907 and for a time was landscape gardener
for Dr. and Mrs. John Staige Davis. He married, and he and
his wife had four children. When his wife died Tim decided to
"retire and become Professor of Bumology." With his gray
beard and his panhandled second-hand clothes, he hung
around the Corner for many years. He seemed to subsist entirely
on the coins he could wheedle out of students or others;
they also treated him to an occasional beer.

Tim was "on the lam" from the police at frequent intervals
on charges of vagrancy. Since the annexation of 1939 left the
university Grounds outside the jurisdiction of Charlottesville's
minions of the law, Tim would leap over the wall on University
Avenue to university property when he saw one of the cops
approaching, and thumb his nose from that safe haven. Occasionally
the police would creep up on him when he was sunning
himself on the Corner steps and haul him off to durance
vile. Once he was seen walking down the street "with the seat
of his pants missing," and Captain Mac, the resident lawman,
sought to take him into custody; but Captain Mac had a bad
leg and Tim outran him.

Tim died in 1943 of pneumonia. The students took up a
collection and contributed a spray that covered the casket inscribed
"From the U. Va. Student Body." They also contributed
toward the cost of his tombstone. He was buried in Oakwood
Cemetery. Apparently Tim's real name was Frederick
Morris.

Much more important than Tim as a university institution
was Beta, the black and white mongrel dog who served as mascot
for the teams and was regarded as nothing less than a
member of the student body. Called Beta because the Beta
Theta Pi fraternity bought his license at least once, the philosophical
canine attended many university functions, barged in
on the professors' lectures and sat down, to applause, and otherwise
made himself at home. So many stories were told of
him that it was often impossible to know which ones to believe.
But he was hailed at the university as the nation's "No. 1 college
dog," was mentioned on a nationwide radio program, and
photographed for Look magazine. Beta's "list of social activities

included university dances, fraternity parties and Cavalier
brawls," said College Topics. And Gil Faatz, whose excellent column
was a feature of that paper, wrote: "They used to paint
football scores all over him in the good old days when there
were some scores that we didn't want hidden. . . . Also, the
Virginia Players used to advertise by hanging signs on him—
and he loved it."

But in the spring of 1939 Beta was hit by an automobile and
his back was broken. He had to be chloroformed. The funeral
procession from the Beta House to the University Cemetery
was a long one, with an estimated one thousand students in
line. Riley Scott, a visiting journalist and poet, composed
verses in Beta's memory that were read over radio station
WCHV at the start of the funeral procession, and Dean Ivey
Lewis delivered the tribute at the grave, situated just outside
the cemetery wall and near the main entrance. "There are
many one-man dogs," Dean Lewis said, "and many one-family
dogs, but Beta was a whole university's dog." A handsome
stone marker was placed at the grave during the 1940 Finals.
On it was an etching of the deceased, with the following inscription:
"In Memory of `Beta,' Beloved Friend and Mascot
of the Students at the University of Virginia. Died April 6,
1939."

A notable visitor to the university at this period was John J.
Moran, '02, who, forty years earlier, had voluntarily contracted
yellow fever in Cuba as part of the successful effort of
Dr. Walter Reed, another alumnus, to eradicate the dread disease.
Yellow fever had taken tens of thousands of lives and was
one of the world's most terrible scourges. Moran was told that
he would be paid $500 for risking his life in the experiment,
but he agreed to let the infected mosquitoes bite him only on
condition that he receive no money. On his visit to the university
in 1940 he was guest of honor at a dinner given by the
medical staff. In 1901, following his recovery from the yellow
fever he had deliberately contracted in Cuba, he entered the
university's Medical School, from which Dr. Reed had been
graduated in 1869. However, Moran lost heavily in the stock
market and had to withdraw. On his visit in 1940 he promised
to bequeath to the Alderman Library the gold medal struck
off by Congress commemorating the "conquest of yellow fever,"

engraved with his name and a record of his heroism.
Moran's widow sent the medal to the library following his
death in 1951.

Hitler's invasion of Poland on Sept. 1, 1939, was the ominous
signal that a general European war was virtually inevitable and
that the United States was likely to be drawn in. There had
been no large student antiwar rallies at the university since the
middle 1930s, but certain organizations on the Grounds continued
to agitate against our involvement. Chief among these
was the American Student Union (ASU), a combination of the
National Students' League and the Student League for Democracy.
College Topics attacked the ASU two months after war
broke out in Europe as a group of "chronic malcontents." It
mentioned that one of the organization's members, in a letter
to the paper, "openly laughed at some of the treasured traditions
of the university." The paper said ASU "represents
hardly more than 1 percent of the student body." In a letter to
Topics a student wrote that "ASU is not a Communist organization,"
but "it is obvious . . . that the Communists and their
`fellow-travelers' form a very vocal part of the Union."

David Carliner, chosen editor of the Virginia Spectator for the
1940-41 session, was arrested in the summer of 1940 for distributing
pacifist literature in Charlottesville without a permit
and fined $5. He gave a false name when arrested and failed
to appear in Police Court at the proper time, and for this "contempt"
was fined $20 and given ten days in jail. On an appeal
to the Corporation Court, the contempt charge was dismissed
and the $5 fine was remitted, but the conviction was allowed
to stand.

The university's Administrative Council ruled that Carliner's
encounter with the police and his giving a false name
made him ineligible to return to the Law School for his third
and final year. He passed the bar examination, nevertheless,
opened a law office in Washington, became successful, represented
such liberal organizations as the American Civil Liberties
Union, and was a guest lecturer on several occasions in the
1970s at the University of Virginia Law School, from which he
had been dismissed years before.

Registration under Selective Service was carried forward at
the university in the autumn of 1940, with Charles H. Kauffmann

42. The Corner in 1946.

in the role of supervisor. Each student was directed to
carry his registration certificate at all times. College Topics said
editorially: "Our station is at the university, by order of the
commander-in-chief of the Army and Navy. We must stay
here and do the very best job we can. . . . The congress of the
United States has decided that university students can best
serve the national interest by remaining at their posts in lecture
room and laboratory. . . . We are given a chance to become
better trained to lead our country in times of peace, or,
if need be, in times of war."

A Naval Officers' Reserve Training Corps was organized,
and the 107 students who were accepted were issued uniforms
and equipment. Classes were held on Mondays,
Wednesdays, and Fridays.

The "Minute Men of 1940," a student organization, sought
to stimulate discussion of the nation's needs and to bolster
support of the Selective Service Act. Organized before the session
opened, the Minute Men kept in touch with similar organizations
they helped to form in other colleges and universities.

Thirty-one members of the university faculty volunteered
to speak and lead discussions in all parts of Virginia on the
topic "Democracy: What does it mean, what has it meant, and
what obligations does it impose?"

The Department of Engineering set up a Committee on Defense
Cooperation under the chairmanship of Associate Prof.
Thomas H. Evans. As a result, the department was giving instruction
from Tidewater to beyond the Blue Ridge in aerodynamics,
materials testing and inspection, production supervision,
engineering drawing, principles of radio, time and
motion studies, testing of chemicals, and engineering in
chemical manufacture. Nearly four hundred men and women
were enrolled, and the cost was underwritten by Congress.
Business and industrial leaders throughout the state were advised
that the instruction was available.

This entire program was separate from the regular extension
courses given by the department under the direction of
Prof. Arthur F. MacConochie. Many men with important positions
in industries essential to national defense were attending
the classes. MacConochie also was coordinating methods
of producing high-explosive shells. The trade magazine Steel

collected a series of his articles into a small volume and published
it for the information of American shell manufacturers.

President Newcomb counseled the students on Founder's
Day in the spring of 1941: "In spite of the clear statement
made by President Roosevelt as commander-in-chief of the
armed forces, it seems difficult for youth to realize the fact
that they are rendering the most useful service to the health
and safety of the nation, and at the same time making the best
preparation for their peacetime occupation, by going steadily
forward with their education until they may be needed for
another kind of service." Many young men were leaving the
colleges and universities to volunteer for the army, navy, and
marines, despite the exhortations of those in authority. In another
category, forty-one students who received degrees at the
university Finals in June were sworn in as reserve officers
within less than an hour after graduation. Ground was being
broken for construction of the naval ROTC building on the
edge of Monroe Hill between Minor Hall and Dawson's Row.
Enrollment in the naval ROTC was expected to double at the
upcoming session. Extracurricular aviation training was well
under way, and the university's research laboratories in physics
and chemistry were busily engaged in special investigations
of importance to the armed forces.

And then, like a thunderclap, came Pearl Harbor. Near hysteria
swept the Grounds. President Newcomb appealed once
more to the students to remain in school and await the call of
the government, but there was no holding large numbers of
them. Like many other Americans, they were infuriated by
the Japanese attack and determined to enlist. Peacetime activities
and attitudes were at an end, and the nation braced itself
for the grim task ahead.

4. FOUR

The University
and World War II

The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor caused an instant
revolution in the climate of opinion on the campuses of
America. A few faculty members and students at the university
were already involved on the side of the Allies, but the
great majority there and throughout the United States had
been strongly determined not to be drawn in. They had been
sympathetic to Great Britain and France, while remaining
resolutely opposed to "fighting Europe's battles." But when
the Japanese left our Pacific fleet a ravaged ruin with their
sneak attack, a "staggering" change, as College Topics put it,
occurred at once. "College students—long criticised for their
peacetime isolationist leanings—have immediately united and
are ready for the personal sacrifices war will demand," said the
paper.

The first university alumnus to die was 2d Lt. Harry H.
Gaver, U.S. Marines, who was killed in the Pearl Harbor
bombing and strafing. He had been graduated with a B.S. degree
in 1939, after serving as captain of the tennis team and
head cheerleader. More than three hundred other Virginia
men would give their lives in the conflict.

Maximum participation by all university students and personnel
in the war bond drives was urged by President Newcomb,
who was the first to buy a bond.

All but three departments had been operating on a twelvemonth
basis during 1941. The Law School offered an extra
term of classes in he summer of that year, and about a dozen

students expected to complete work for their degrees in
March. The Medical and Engineering schools were drawing
up plans for continuous operations. Arrangements for accelerated
study were again in effect for the summer of 1942. It
was announced in May that students in all departments would
be completing degree programs in June, September, December,
and March.

Carefully protected research in various laboratories had
been carried on since late 1941. From Christmas Eve of that
year through New Year's these operations were guarded
around the clock by armed members of the Virginia Protective
Force, later changed to men in less conspicuous civilian attire.
Such researches and experiments would continue, on an expanded
scale, throughout the conflict.

The Naval ROTC, established two sessions previously,
seemed to be the nearest approach to the ROTC and SATC of
World War I. The university was cooperating with the navy in
a long-range program of student training designed to turn
out men who would be ready to take positions as junior officers
on ships and planes as they came from the shipyard ways
and the factory assembly lines.

Bombing raids by the Germans on or near the East Coast
were felt by the authorities in Washington to be a possibility.
Airplane spotters were accordingly stationed on Lewis Mountain,
just west of the university, with each spotter doing a
three-hour stint. If a strange plane was sighted, pursuit planes
would be sent up by the Army Air Force. By Feb. 11, a total
of forty-four students had volunteered, but thirty-five more
were needed. Special difficulty was experienced in getting volunteers
for the hours from midnight to 6 A.M.

The university, in collaboration with the city of Charlottesville
and the county of Albemarle, was preparing for possible
service as a hospital evacuation center for Washington, Baltimore,
or Norfolk. Faculty and students were sharing quietly
in civilian defense preparations.

College Topics warned that it was important to obey all directives
of the civil defense wardens. "Turn out all lights when
you leave your rooms at any time," it counseled. "Familiarize
yourself with the instructions that will be given you in regard
to procedure in blacking out and taking general protective
measures." Charles H. Kauffmann headed the University Civil

Defense Organization. Under him were air raid wardens, auxiliary
fire wardens, and special police wardens.

Programs of physical training were announced by Capt.
Norton Pritchett. The Department of Physical Education prepared
a series of " `V' Tests" by which students could judge
their physical fitness. Included were sit-ups, pull-ups, floor
dips, the quarter-mile run, the one hundred-yard swim, wall
scaling, and so on. A more intensive program called for body
building, handball, boxing, squash, fencing, acrobatics, and
basketball. Large numbers of undergraduates enrolled.

All students between seventeen and twenty-six years of age
were called to meet in Cabell Hall in April 1942, at which time
they were told by President Newcomb how they could complete
their officer training in the army, navy, or marine corps
while finishing their college courses. Every able-bodied student
in the university would be in some branch of the armed
services within six months, it was stated.

Shortly after classes began the following fall, President
Newcomb announced that there would be compulsory physical
training for all students in the college and the School of
Education, with plans to be worked out later for the other
departments.

A volunteer unit, usually known as the Dawn Patrol but
sometimes called the Dusk Patrol, had 400 men enrolled.
"The boys really worked at it," said the Alumni News, "even
unto drilling at 7 o'clock in the morning." Close-order drill,
manual of arms, the marine marching manual, military and
naval discipline, and traditions and customs of the armed
forces were included.

Enrollment in the Engineering, Science, and Management
Program, begun two years previously by Engineering Prof.
Thomas H. Evans, was increasing rapidly. The number taking
the courses in twelve centers throughout the state had reached
approximately two thousand by early 1943.

A School of Military Government was established at the university
in 1942, with Prof. Hardy C. Dillard, a West Point
graduate, granted a leave of absence from the Law School to
join the staff with the rank of major. The school was under the
supervision of Maj. Gen. Allen W. Gullion, with Brig. Gen.
C. W. Wickersham as commandant. Purpose of the school was
to train high ranking army officers for future assignments in

43. Virginia's eastern intercollegiate championship boxing team of 1948, with six individual champions.
Left to right: Allen Hollingsworth, 125-pound champ; Grover Masterson, 130-pound champ; the
Marigliotta brothers—Jimmy, Basil, and Joe, 135, 145, and 155-pound champions, respectively; Bolling
Izard, 165; Ralph Shoaf, 175-pound champion; and Lapsley Hamblin, heavyweight; with Coach Al York.
Portrait in background is of the late coach Johnny LaRowe in his wheelchair.

military government and liaison work. An enrollment of
about sixty was expected at the outset. By early 1944 six
classes, totaling 750 men, had been graduated. The school
"has attracted attention throughout the world," said the
Alumni News, "and its `alumni' are administering governmental
affairs in hundreds of communities in numerous nations
now conquered." Seven foreign countries had sent officers to
the school. Brig. Gen. E. R. Warner McCabe, 1900, became
commandant in 1944.

Objectives for which the war was being fought were strikingly
portrayed by Randall Thompson, head of the Division
of Music, in his composition A Testament of Freedom, first rendered
on Jefferson's 200th birthday in 1943. Thompson was
asked to compose a symphony or a tone poem celebrating Jefferson
and his ideas. He accepted and happened to run into
Prof. Bernard Mayo, who was in the process of reading proof
on his book Jefferson Himself. These proofs were just what
Thompson needed. He went to the University Chapel and
worked steadily, soon turning out all four movements. The
premiere was given in Cabell Hall on Apr. 13 and received a
standing ovation. A Testament of Freedom has since been performed
all over the United States and in many countries.
While on the university faculty Thompson also received the
Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge Award for distinguished services
to chamber music. Soon thereafter he accepted a call to
Princeton.

The university had operated a hospital unit overseas in
World War I, but it seemed at first that this would not be possible
in World War II. Dean Harvey Jordan declined an invitation
in 1940 from the U.S. surgeon general to organize such
a unit. He and others felt that since the university's medical
faculty was one of the smallest in the country, its members
could not be spared without devastating effects upon the
school. But those who made this decision reckoned without
Dr. Staige D. Blackford, professor of internal medicine. He
was determined to organize a hospital unit, and he finally convinced
Dean Jordan that it could be done without irreparable
damage to the Medical School. So an evacuation unit was organized,
with emphasis on surgical cases, in contrast to the
general hospital operated by the university in 1917-18. Dr.
Blackford became chief of medicine and had overall supervision.

Dr. E. Cato Drash, associate professor of surgery, was
chief of surgery and recruited the surgical personnel. Recruitment
of nurses was under Miss Ruth Beery, who had been an
instructor and assistant superintendent of nursing in the university's
School of Nursing. She remained chief of nurses for
the unit throughout the war.

The 8th Evacuation Hospital sailed in November 1942 to
back up the North African invasion and landed at Casablanca.
After service in North Africa, it moved to Italy in September
1943, suffering a disaster en route when the ship carrying all
its equipment was sunk. The unit somehow scrounged more
equipment. For the rest of the war the 8th Evac was in Italy. It
moved northward with the American forces, living and operating
in tents, much of the time in cold, snow, sleet, rain, and
mud. Despite these handicaps and ordeals, it cared for over
48,000 cases in the hospital and another 45,000 in the outpatient
departments. High commendation came from Lt.
Gen. Mark W. Clark and other army brass, and the unit was
awarded the Fifth Army Plaque and Clasp and the Meritorious
Service Unit Plaque. The complete story is told in The
8th Evac, a highly readable and authoritative account by Dr.
Byrd S. Leavell, professor of internal medicine at the university,
who was with the unit throughout and was its chief of
medicine from April to September 1945. Dr. Leavell's delightfully
graphic diary is a highlight of the volume.

Students at the university did not forget those who were
serving in the 8th Evac. They bought 20,000 cigarettes in the
spring of 1943 and sent them to the unit. And the university's
Medical School and hospital, with their reduced staffs, made
the best of difficult circumstances. Dr. C. S. Lentz, administrator
of the hospital, wrote concerning his problems for the session
of 1943-44: "I have been administrator of a university
hospital constantly since January 1, 1922, and I can truthfully
say that even in the darkest days of the depression I have not
had to face the problems, many of them insoluble, nor have I
had nearly the amount of work and worry that I have had in
the past year."

An increased burden also fell on the School of Physics. Prof.
L. G. Hoxton reported that the school was able to handle the
added load because of the "efforts, competence and scientific
standing of Drs. Beams and Snoddy." He added that "in addition

to being in responsible charge of one of the war contracts,
Dr. Snoddy has been co-director with Dr. Beams of the
largest and most important contract we have. Without him
that contract would have had to be abandoned."

Dean F. D. G. Ribble of the Law School was called to the
Department of State in Washington. Prof. William H. White,
Jr., served as acting dean in his absence. Blind Prof. T. Munford
Boyd traveled alone by train each week to Washington
for three days' service on the War Production Board's legal
staff and taught the other three days in the Law School.

The Extension Division was providing special war-related
courses in cooperation with the University of Wisconsin. Most
of the home study courses offered by a selected list of colleges
and universities were included. Studies in some twenty-one
fields were scheduled for persons in various parts of the state
who wished to concentrate on subjects having a direct bearing
on the military duties to which they might be assigned or
which they might wish to follow after the war. Courses in English,
economics, history, psychology, and sociology were
among those offered.

On another facet of the home front, the steel rails that had
carried the now defunct street cars to and from the university
and out to Fry's Spring were dug up and turned over to the
country's war machine for use as scrap for the manufacture of
weapons. Before the war many steel rails and other varieties
of scrap metal had been bought in the United States by the
Japanese.

The Naval ROTC moved from Thornton Hall to Maury
Hall, the newest building on the Grounds, where courses were
offered in such subjects as naval training and navigation, seamanship,
electricity, ordnance and gunnery, engineering,
naval history, administration, regulations and leadership,
communications, aviation, military and international law, and
infantry drill. The Raven Society and Omicron Delta Kappa
offered an award to the company amassing most points in
drill, communications, and rifle and pistol matches. The instructional
staff was composed of naval officers, with Capt.
E. M. Williams commanding. Members of the university faculty
provided courses in science and the liberal arts.

In January 1943 the U.S. Naval Flight Preparatory School

44. Fleet Adm. William M. (Bull) Halsey, 1900, one of the
heroes of the Pacific in World War II.

was added to the other units functioning at the university.
"The dorms now become barracks," said the Alumni News,

The naval program at the university underwent various
modifications during the war. It became the V-12 program in
early 1943, replacing the preflight school and incorporating
the NROTC training program. At least 10 percent of the
trainees assigned to V-12 had seen active service.

But the navy was not the only branch of the armed services
represented at the university. The U.S. Army Pre-Meteorology
School was established there in February 1943, attended
by 200 cadets of the Army Air Force. As with the naval units,
academic instruction was provided by the university faculty,
with Prof. Gordon T. Whyburn as executive head. Many officers
handled administrative routine and military indoctrination.
Mathematics, physics, geography, history, political science,
and English were taught. Purpose of the school was to
provide basic instruction for the study of meteorology. The
students were housed in the old Albemarle Hotel on Main
Street, and in the mornings they marched to the university
singing. They were mainly good students, but the end of the
war prevented them from actually pursuing the study of meteorology.

All these various military and naval units located at the university
during the war kept the institution alive and functioning
when so many of the regularly enrolled students had left
college to enlist. Much of the cost of instruction, as well as of
food and housing, was paid by the federal government. President
Newcomb and the faculty remained firmly in control as
teachers and researchers, and as referees over army-navy rivalries.

Athletics at Virginia from 1942 to 1945 were necessarily on an
abnormal basis. The fact that a number of star athletes from
other institutions were enrolled in the naval units at the university,
and were eligible to play for Virginia, made it possible
to carry on a fairly comprehensive program. The navy emphasized
competitive athletics as a part of its intensive training,
whereas the army made no provision for such activity. Eight
intercollegiate sports, including football, functioned at the
university to a greater or lesser degree from 1942 to 1945.
Long trips were out of the question, and nearby service teams
often were played. Among these were Woodrow Wilson Hospital,
Fort Belvoir, North Carolina Pre-Flight, and Cherry
Point Marines. Intramurals were continued during the war
but on a reduced scale.

The 480-yard shuttle hurdle race at the Penn Relays was
won in 1943 with comparative ease by the Virginia team—
Captain Thomas H. Todd, Bud Capers, Bill Mohler, and Bart
Todd. Captain Todd added other important laurels at that
and other meets. He retained his indoor I.C. 4-A hurdle
crown—then went on to carry off the outdoor 120-yard high
hurdle I.C. 4-A title and thus became the first Virginia track
man to win both indoor and outdoor I.C. 4-A championships.
He also won the Southern Conference 70-yard high hurdle
crown and the 120-yard high hurdle outdoor race at the Millrose
Games in New York.

The Honor System was subjected to special strains during the
war years owning to the large number of matriculates from
other parts of the country who had come to the university as
members of military or naval units. Many were unfamiliar
with the workings of the honor code.

The centennial of the Honor System's founding had been
observed May 16, 1942. A rather elaborate program had been
planned, but the outbreak of the war caused it to be drastically
revised. Virginius Dabney, '21, a member of the Honor Committee
in 1919-20, was the speaker at ceremonies in Cabell
Hall. All former members of the committee were invited, and
a good many came. A dinner was held at the Monticello Hotel.

Two years later an uproar arose over whether "false musters"
in the Naval Training Unit and the NROTC Battalion

were violations of the Honor System. The Honor Committee
had ruled during the previous session that false musters did
not constitute violations, but in June 1944 an open letter to
College Topics signed by thirty-nine prominent students requested
a reversal of this ruling. "A lie, with whatever it may
be concerned, is a violation of the code," said the letter. This
communication got prompt results, for the Honor Committee
of 1944 took the position that the committee of the previous
year had erred and that false musters could not be exempted.
Topics published an extra carrying the committee's pronouncement,
"creating fully as much excitement as the Allied invasion
of France, which was announced the same morning,"
Henry Wilson, the paper's editor, wrote. A mass meeting of
students in Cabell Hall was called for the following day by
President Newcomb at the request of the Honor Committee.
Many naval trainees in attendance asked that they be allowed
to hold a referendum on whether they should accept the
Honor System in its entirety, including the ruling against false
musters, or be excluded completely from it. The vote was
taken, and it was overwhelmingly in favor of remaining under
the system. A significant result was the decision by student
leaders to provide a more thorough orientation thereafter for
incoming first-year men with respect to the honor code. More
than three hundred entered in July and were divided into
small groups for the purpose. No further crises in the operation
of the code arose during the war, although the number
of violations increased, albeit not in connection with false musters.
In 1944 Topics began announcing expulsions under the
Honor System on the front page, giving the offense but not
the name of the offender. Between Feb. 1 and Sept. 1, 1944,
there were thirteen such announcements, with cheating on
tests or examinations the offense in twelve and stealing in the
other. Four of these dismissals took place within three weeks
in the late summer of 1944, and Topics editorialized on "the
almost unprecedented record." It attributed the situation
largely "to the influx of many transfer students."

Another aspect of the problem was addressed by Topics the
following year, when it expressed the view that there were not
enough counselors in the dormitories. Before the use of the
dorms as naval barracks, the student counselor system "was
far from satisfactory, even with twice the number of counselors

recommended," said the paper. "The counselors simply
did not have time to do justice to the job." "For instilling the
Virginia Honor System in students from the beginning, there
can be no substitute for personal associations," Topics declared,
and it went on to say that the system, from its inception, "has
depended for its continuous existence upon orientation programs
and the imparting of its spirit to new men by their associations
with older students."

The Alumni News reported in 1944 that in the preceding
fourteen years the great majority of students expelled under
the Honor System were from the Northeast. During that period
three students from "the former Confederate states"
south of Virginia were shipped, as compared with seventy-one
from New York and New Jersey. The ten Southern states had
2,914 registrations during the period in question, whereas
New York and New Jersey had 6,393. "We want more boys
from the South, and a higher proportion of good ones from
the North," said the Alumni News. "We don't draw from the
Southern states as we used to." C. Alphonso Smith, Jr., a former
chairman of the Honor Committee, wrote a letter to the
Richmond Times-Dispatch in 1936 in which he said he had studied
all Honor Committee cases for the preceding sixteen
years, and that in the preceding ten years twenty-six Virginians
had been expelled under the Honor System as against
sixty from New York and New Jersey.

The rigors of wartime did not adversely affect the sartorial
elegance of the dancing Cavaliers, for at Openings in the fall
of 1942 white ties and tails were still being worn. However, by
January the gasoline shortage caused forty-five girls to walk to
Madison Hall for a University Center dance. They met their
dates there. Mrs. A. E. Walker, the longtime hostess at such
affairs, expressed herself as pleased and said she anticipated
revival of the Gay Nineties custom of carrying dancing slippers
in slipper bags, to be put on upon arrival. Midwinters
were held as usual in the gym, but proceeds went to navy relief,
and a less expensive orchestra than was normally employed
played for the dancing.

The university coeds confounded the male contingent by
giving what was termed "one of the most successful dances
that Madison Hall has ever witnessed." It was primarily for the

naval preflight students, but many other undergraduates attended,
along with a group of Charlottesville girls. A fourthyear
man was quoted as saying, "This has perhaps been the
best Madison Hall dance that I have yet seen."

Not all coeds were appeased, however, by the favorable reception
given their gala affair. In a letter to Topics one of them
wrote denouncing the university's "snobs" in the following
harsh terms: "For years and years I have heard of the glorious
tradition of a `gentleman' at the University of Virginia. This is
no gentleman I have found here. This is a narrow-minded,
backward and utterly detestable egoist! This is assuredly a
snob—in its worst and most warped form."

A lounge and soda fountain called the Dry Dock was
opened in the Madison Hall basement in 1943 and was pronounced
a howling success. It was said to be the first thing
remotely describable as a student union that the university
had ever had. The installation was leased from the University
Center by W. B. Gibson, manager of the University Bookstore,
who also managed the Dry Dock. Cold drinks and sandwiches
were available, and there were a nickelodeon and pinball machines.
Topics commented enthusiastically that it could be a
gathering place for all students, and added: "The new lounge
makes another step in the many projects which the University
Center has sponsored this year. We speak of the excellent
dances, the organization of the Cavalier Ladies, and a great
part in the orientation of the first-year men, among others."

Mrs. A. E. Walker was observing the twenty-fifth anniversary
of her service as hostess at Madison Hall, in which capacity
she had made a lasting contribution to the well-being of
the students. "It was a brand new idea to have a woman at
Madison Hall," said the Alumni News. She "started right in as
though not scared at all with her tea dances. . . . She has
poured tea for generations of students . . . and makes them
like it. But Mrs. Walker does vastly more than pour tea. It is a
bit of a mystery what she does, but she has been doing it to
Virginia students for twenty-five years. . . . She's the Queen of
Madison Hall. Parson Powell started calling her the queen."

Two student hangouts that had almost become landmarks
at or near the Corner disappeared during the war years. The
Cavalier was torn down to make way for expansion of Jameson's
Bookstore, to include a soda fountain, sporting goods,
and other commodities. Johnson's emporium on the crest of

45. Dumas Malone, author of the definitive life of Thomas
Jefferson.

the rise beyond the C&O bridge went out of existence. The
Cavalier had been a beer-hoister's haven, but Jameson's was
unable to provide lager. "No beer at the Corner!" was the anguished
cry. Johnson's had not been a beer tavern but a place
for midnight snacks, "a malt and soda with your girl," said the
Alumni News. In years past "the boys dropped in at Johnson's
after seeing the Flora Dora Girls at Levy's Opera House. Perhaps
they took their best calic [date] there for a hot chocolate
after a chilly ride in a fashionable rig from Irving's Livery
Stable. They continued to resort to Johnson's with the coming
of Rudolph Valentino, prohibition and two cars in every garage."

Grief over these two closings was partly assuaged by news
that the Virginian was to open at the Corner, after a period
during which it had ceased to function. The Virginian, a student
watering place, had been a companion establishment to
the Cavalier, and its reemergence was hailed with fervent hosannahs.
Advertised as "Ye Olde Wahoo Heaven," it was under
the management of the Gianakos brothers. Nick Gianakos, a
star on the university's football team a short time before, had
made a stunning catch of a pass from Bill Dudley in the 1941
Yale game—lost to the Elis, 21-19.

Sports columns in College Topics from the pens of its two
sports editors were appearing in the fall of 1942. One who
wrote under the heading "Sideline Slants" was a young man
named Frank L. Hereford, Jr., and the other, whose column
was called "How about It?," was Henry Howell. The former
would be president of the university thirty-two years later, and
the latter would run unsuccessfully three times for governor
of Virginia.

Automobiles for first-year men were banned in 1942 in the
college, engineering, and education departments, with exceptions
for physical disability. Governor Darden suggested that
autos be prohibited to all students. Three months later College
Topics, edited by Gordon L. Crenshaw, recommended that all
autos be banned to students for the duration. The Board of
Visitors put this regulation into effect in July 1943, with a few
exceptions for hardship cases.

Two prominent alumni, Louis Johnson, '12, and Edward R.
Stettinius, '24, had leading roles just before and during World
War II.

Johnson, former national commander of the American Legion,
was appointed in 1937 as assistant secretary of war. He
worked intensively on getting U.S. industry to a state of maximum
readiness should the country be plunged into armed
conflict. As director of the War Department's Industrial Mobilization
Plan, he earmarked 10,000 civilian plants for war
production and said that "all are eager to cooperate." Johnson
resigned when Henry L. Stimson succeeded Harry W. Woodring
as secretary of war. He was then named chairman of an
advisory commission to assist our war effort in India.

Edward R. Stettinius, '24, chairman of the board of the
United States Steel Corporation, was appointed in 1939 head
of the new War Resources Board. John Lee Pratt, '05, was
named a member of the board. By 1941 Stettinius had been
elevated to the directorship of the Division of Priorities in the
Office of Production Management. Later in the same year he
was named to succeed Harry Hopkins as head of the important
lend-lease program, under which this country supplied
its allies with huge quantities of weapons and matériel. Walter
Lippmann, the famous columnist, wrote concerning his service
in that post: "Mr. Stettinius has done as much and perhaps
more than any man in Washington to show how to set up
an agency and how to conduct it without bureaucratic feuds
and without obscurity and confusion." By 1943 Stettinius was
under secretary of state, and when Cordell Hull resigned in
late 1944 as secretary of state, Stettinius was appointed to succeed
him. In that capacity he accompanied ailing President
Roosevelt to the Yalta Conference where Roosevelt met with
Joseph Stalin and Winston Churchill. Stettinius also headed
the American delegation to the conference at San Francisco in
1945 at which the United Nations was got into operation.
When President Harry S. Truman took office, he appointed
James F. Byrnes to head the State Department and named
Stettinius permanent American representative to the United
Nations General Assembly.

When news that Japan had surrendered hit the Grounds in
August 1945, there was wild jubilation. "The Corner was
jammed with everybody yelling and waving and waiting to see
what everybody else was going to do," Bill Lyle wrote in College
Topics. "There was a near-riot in the Virginian which required

one of the local gendarmes to dispel. Cars piled high with 18
or 20 students and girls and bristling with the dear old Confederate
flags, roared up and down the main drag all evening.
Blasting horns, banging fireworks, barking dogs, ear-splitting
yells. . . . Vinegar Hill and the `downtown' section of Charlottesville
defied accurate description."

But despite the exultation, bulletins continued to come in
from Europe and the Pacific concerning the missing and the
dead. These appeared for months in the Alumni News, which
during the war had carried thousands of items concerning the
men in the service, their experiences, heroism, and decorations.
It also published many photographs of alumni on the
far-flung battle lines of the world.

By the fall of 1945, 1,000 naval students had been trained
at the university, 213 army men in the specialized training
program, 2,820 in the School of Military Government, and
200 in the army's Pre-Meteorology School. At the same time it
was announced that the university's navy unit would get a
$110,000 armory for its continued use in peacetime. Work
had already begun on the structure, which would be located
eighty feet south of Maury Hall. The following year plans
were announced for a naval ordnance research laboratory
near the McCormick Observatory, with physics Professors
Beams and Snoddy to be in charge of the experimental work.
The laboratory was built at a cost of approximately $125,000,
and the navy furnished it with $250,000 worth of equipment,
as well as ample funds for operation.

Part of the research on the atomic bomb that devastated
Hiroshima and Nagasaki was done at the university. Jesse
Beams's ultracentrifuge, operated on the same principle as the
cream separator, played a significant role in separating the
uranium known as U-235 from U-238 and U-234. Dr. Beams
had been a member of the original five-man committee appointed
to study uranium fission under the National Research
Council. After the university's physicists concluded their wartime
work on uranium in the Rouss Laboratory, they turned
their attention to the development of guided missiles and
were equally successful. Distinguished service certificates were
awarded by the navy for this latter activity to Prof. L. G. Hoxton,
head of the School of Physics, Professors Beams and

46. Ivey F. Lewis, dean of the university and the college,
1934-53.

Snoddy, and two able younger scientists, Frank L. Hereford,
Jr., and Dexter Whitehead.

The alumni had two Medal of Honor winners. Gen. Alexander
Archer Vandegrift, '08, commander of the U.S. Marines
on Guadalcanal in one of the most desperate engagements of
the war in the Pacific, was decorated by President Roosevelt in
1943 for his leadership in that heroic and successful action.
General Vandegrift had already been awarded the Navy
Cross. He was the first full general to command the marine
corps and was decorated by Lord Halifax with the Most Honorable
Order of the Bath.

The other Medal of Honor winner was navy Lt. Arthur
Murray Preston, '38, a law graduate of the university who was
practicing in Washington, D.C., when the war broke out. He
joined the navy and on being commissioned was sent to the
Pacific. In September 1944 Preston volunteered to command
two PT boats into the mined harbor of Wasile Bay, Morotai
Island, to a point less than two hundred yards from a wellguarded
Japanese dock and supply area. He was attempting
to rescue a pilot who had been shot down and had parachuted
into the bay. Preston and his men were under fire for two and
a half hours, and he was given the medal for "conspicuous
gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life." He also was
awarded the Navy Cross and promoted to lieutenant commander.

The Medal of Freedom was awarded to two alumni for conspicuous
service during the war. Charles Wertenbaker, '25, author
and journalist, chief of the Paris Bureau of Time magazine,
was given the medal in Paris in late 1947 for "especially
meritorious actions" while a correspondent in Europe,
1944-45. Marc Peter, Jr., '23, received the same accolade at
the Pentagon for his work in London from 1942 to 1944,
where he created novel and highly effective methods of bombing
urban areas that "contributed materially to the success of
the air war against Germany and Japan."

With the end of hostilities in the late summer of 1945, the
university faced a series of problems. It had to do a fast turnaround
to take account of the new situation. A greatly accelerated
program of studies for the session of 1945-46 had to
be arranged in order that normal, unaccelerated programs

could be put into effect in September 1946. Three semesters
were crowded into the next 12 months. Housing for returning
veterans or veterans entering for the first time had to be provided,
and first-year men living in fraternity houses were
moved to the dormitories.

Although the war was over, 160 V-5 trainees were enrolled
in the university on November 1, 1945. These naval aviation
cadets matriculated in college courses for three terms, after
which they were transferred to bases for continued preflight
training. At the university they occupied quarters in the
dorms vacated by graduating V-12 and NROTC men. For
years after the war the university continued to enroll units of
the NROTC, and these were joined later by Army and Air
Force ROTC. Photographs of the various units appeared in
Corks and Curls over a ten-year period.

Demobilization of the men in the armed forces proceeded
steadily during the winter and spring, and by September 1946
the veterans were pouring back into the colleges and universities.
Enrollment at the University of Virginia was 40 percent
ahead of the largest previous figure, that of 1939-40. A total
of 4,204 had been registered by early fall.

Absent from the registration procedure for the first time
since 1919 was Miss Virginia Moran. She had been associated
with the university since 1899, having first become affiliated
with the institution as an employee in the bursar's office. Upon
the retirement of Howard Winston as registrar in 1919, Miss
Moran became assistant to his successor, Mrs. Anna Tuttle
Heck. When Mrs. Heck died in 1922, Miss Moran was appointed
registrar and remained in that position until her retirement
in 1946.

Two-thirds of the students registering at the university in
the fall of that year were returned veterans. These relatively
mature men were regarded by the faculty as a superior group,
more serious about their studies, and willing to work six days
a week. Again, Episcopalians were more numerous than members
of any other religious denomination, followed by Methodists,
Presbyterians, Baptists, Roman Catholics, and Jews, in
that order.

Housing for many of the men who were flooding in was
unavailable at the university or in Charlottesville. About five
hundred of these veterans could be accommodated in the

Woodrow Wilson Army Hospital near Staunton, whence they
commuted to the university by bus, thirty-five miles each way.
Lectures also were given at Woodrow Wilson by some faculty
members.

At Woodrow Wilson the students were able to use the excellent
facilities of the former Officers' Club. The bar was available
for snacks, and the sports areas were used with the help
of equipment supplied by the university. All university students
left Woodrow Wilson by the end of 1946, since accommodations
of one sort or another had been found at or near
the university.

Construction was beginning on a "veterans' village" at
Copeley Hill, adjoining the university grounds just north of
the intersection of Routes 250 and 29. A total of 320 married
couples and 500 single students were to be cared for in apartment
units and trailers.

The Student Senate had ceased operations in the spring of
1942 because of war conditions. Three years later the Student
Council arose in its stead and elections were held. Again in the
fall of that year, 1945, there were Student Council elections.
The council's function was to investigate matters pertaining to
the well-being of the undergraduates and to discuss with the
administration means by which grievances might be adjusted.

The first football rally in the fall of 1945 was announced by
College Topics with great fanfare. "Football rally processions of
past years used to start from the Cavalier (now deceased), and
end up on the Lawn," said the paper. "Tim (now deceased)
used to lead them with his torch and his four-legged pal Beta
(now deceased). We haven't got the Cavalier, Tim or Beta, but
we can promise a roaring good time. Bring your dates."

The rally was a "flop," according to Topics, and so was the
cheering at the game with the Coast Guard, won by Virginia,
39-0. "Feeble, disinterested yells," at this and other gridiron
contests were blasted by the journal, which declared that "any
little down-country high school could show more spirit at one
football game than we at the U. Va. have displayed all season."

Festivities on Homecoming weekend November 9-10 were
convincing evidence that things were indeed getting back to
normal. There were two dances, a football game, and a dozen
fraternity parties. Such jollity was not appreciated by undergraduates

scornfully termed meatballs by their more cantankerous
fellows. A meatball was defined in the Spectator as "a
socially maladjusted individual usually found in the library
general reading room on Saturday night; one who considers
a weekend `a good time to catch up.' "

Discussion continued over whether one should speak to students
one didn't know. Fontaine C. Armistead, '42, one of the
ablest students, had made a speech on tradition some years
before in which he defended the custom of speaking only to
acquaintances. It was reprinted a number of times and was
generally well received, but one phrase drew criticism. "Instead
of grinning and gushing indiscriminately," said Armistead,
"the Virginia student speaks only to people he knows,
and thus enjoys a more sincere relationship than if he spoke
to all." The words "grinning and gushing" were regarded by
some as inappropriate, although widespread agreement was
expressed with Armistead's general thesis.

Lucy Lou Floyd of Waynesboro, a graduate student in the
School of Education and associate editor of both College Topics
and the Spectator, was one of those who felt that the overall
attitude of reserve was desirable. On the other hand, Prof. T.
Braxton Woody conducted a forum under the auspices of the
University Christian Association at which the consensus was
that students should not consider it "sticking your neck out" to
speak to those with whom one was not personally acquainted.
There was criticism of the long-established custom of not
greeting strangers.

Lucy Floyd was one of the few women during this era to win
a place on the editorial staff of a university publication. In
1948 Mildred Callis served on the staff of Corks and Curls,
while Margaret Potts achieved a similar place on the Spectator.

College Topics came in for an overhaul in the spring of 1946.
Ed Myers and Chris Cramer, editors in chief, announced that
they had "cleaned house" because of the "low caliber" of the
paper. It had recently been "little more than a political football,"
they said, and "men have gained important posts
through their friends and fraternity affiliations rather than
through skill and service." The editors declared that "a new
Topics is emerging; it has already enlisted the help of the Student
Council and the administration, but it is sadly lacking in
personnel."

The Spectator was named by the Student Council in 1948
"the official magazine of the student body." This publication
had combined the year before with another journal, Crust, under
the name of Spectator and Crust, sponsored by the Jefferson
Society. Crust was dropped from the title a few months later.

The ban against operation of automobiles by other than
first-year students had been removed in 1945, and first-year
men were allowed to have cars the following session. As a result,
the weekend exodus was resumed. The Spectator observed
that during Founder's Day ceremonies in April "ninetenths
of the students either perform a little sleep-catching or
embark on the traditional week-end."

Nor did the greater maturity of the postwar generation of
students alter their aversion to literature, in the view of two
members of the university's teaching staff. English Professors
Joseph L. Vaughan and E. C. McClintock contributed an article
to the News Letter of the College English Association in
which they wrote: "Real progress can be made in the teaching
of required literature courses at the undergraduate level only
if the fact is squarely faced that a large majority of students do
not like literature."

The recently adopted alphabetical grading system was objectionable,
in the unanimous view of the Student Council. It
requested a return to numerical grading on the ground that
the alphabetical system "is non-illuminating and too indeterminate."

Appointment of James H. Newman, dean of men at the
University of Alabama, to the newly created office of dean of
men at the University of Virginia was announced. He took
office in February 1946 and assumed general supervision over
student activities, thus "relieving Dean Ivey Lewis, dean of the
university, of many of the details of student life which he had
been administering." Lewis was named dean of the college.
George O. Ferguson, who had been in charge of admissions
for many years, was appointed dean of admissions and registrar.
In the lastnamed post he succeeded Miss Virginia Moran,
who had retired after 24 years.

Edward R. Stettinius, a member of the university's Board of
Visitors, was elected rector of the university in 1946, succeeding

47. Rowland Egger, dean of the
faculty, 1962-63.

[ILLUSTRATION]

48. Prof. Weldon Cooper, director of the Institute of Government
and editor of the University of Virginia News Letter.

R. Gray Williams, who had died shortly before. Stettinius
had been extremely prominent and popular during his student
days at the university, but he had been a decidedly mediocre
student and had not graduated. When he became
chairman of the United States Steel and then head of LendLease
and secretary of state, he was given honorary degrees
by the following universities and colleges: Oxford, California,
Columbia, Colgate, American, New York, Rutgers, Lafayette,
Union, and Elmira.

As rector, silver-haired, deep-voiced "Ed" Stettinius was extremely
active in the affairs of the university. He knew that he
had a health problem and that he should not subject himself
to undue strain. Yet during and after the war he did not spare
himself. In fact his zeal for the university was such that, as
rector, he injected himself into matters that were really beyond
his proper sphere. By the spring of 1949 he had exerted
himself to such an extent that he had a heart attack and had
to resign. That fall he died, aged forty-nine. He was one of
the most illustrious of all the university's alumni and the author
of two books having to do with his public service—LendLease,
Weapon for Victory (1944) and Roosevelt and the Russians,
edited by Walter Johnson, which appeared almost simultaneously
with his death.

The high quality of the student body immediately after the
war, with a heavy injection of veterans, was remarked upon in
later years by Prof. B. F. D. Runk. "Back in those days," he
said, faculty and students "went to school for long periods and
didn't think anything of it. The GI's flooded us and we had
full classes; we would teach from Monday morning through
Saturday afternoon. The students were desirous of getting
back into academic work, many working toward graduate
school. I have often remarked that we did better teaching than
we do today with our reduced teaching loads, with our leisurely
Monday through Friday schedule."

Growth of the Alderman Library collections, following the
library's dedication in 1938, had been extraordinary. In the
first ten years the number of books "made available for use"
rose from 303,502 to 484,826. This was better than the normal
growth of book collections, but it paled beside the astronomical
leap forward of the manuscript collection—from
about five hundred thousand to over three million documents

in the decade. Among the more important manuscript acquisitions
were the Cocke and Bruce family papers, manuscripts
of the "Edgehill" Randolphs, the Carter Glass papers, and the
Fred O. Seibel collection of newspaper cartoons. A significant
addition to the book collection was an assemblage of material
on Charles Darwin exceeding anything in the world except
Darwin's own collection in England. Presented by an anonymous
donor, it is rich in source materials on the history of
science and includes virtually all of the first editions and variant
issues of Darwin's works. There are also important letters,
essays, and photographs, as well as first and other editions of
writings on the subject of evolution by such Darwin contemporaries
as Herbert Spencer, Thomas Huxley, and Sir Joseph
Hooker.

In view of the University of Virginia's high rank in the field
of science, it was fitting that the Darwin collection should
come to Alderman Library. In volume 6 of American Men of
Science, eleven university faculty members were "starred," a
greater number than any other southern university could
show, one more than Yale had and one fewer than Harvard.
The eleven starred Virginia professors were Jesse W. Beams,
Arthur F. Benton, Francis P. Dunnington, Harvey E. Jordan,
William A. Kepner, Ivey F. Lewis, Edward J. McShane, Samuel
A. Mitchell, Carl E. Speidel, Lyndon F. Small, and Gordon T.
Whyburn. It should be noted, however, that when Virginia
was ranked on the basis of the number of faculty members
elected to the National Academy of Sciences, it made a much
less impressive showing. The university had only four members,
highest in the South except Texas, but was in a five-way
tie with Michigan, Minnesota, Iowa, and Indiana for seventeenth
place nationally. Harvard had fifty-one members of the
academy, California thirty-four, and Yale eighteen.

The Law School inaugurated a course of graduate study in
1945-46 leading to the degrees of S.J.D. and LL.M. It involved
the acceptance of each graduate student by one member
of the faculty, who worked closely with him. The student
was required to take certain seminar courses. For the doctor's
degree a dissertation was necessary, and two years would normally
be needed to complete it. For the master's degree a thesis
equivalent in quality and quantity to a Law Review article
was prescribed. There were two graduate students in 1945-46.

Dean Ribble stated that the high standing of the university's
Law School—and it was generally conceded to be among the
top dozen in this country—was due "more than any single factor"
to its Law Review. The great majority of students in the
school were from outside Virginia, giving it a cosmopolitan
outlook and contributing to its excellent national ranking. In
1946-47 there were 410 non-Virginian students to 237 from
Virginia, and at the two succeeding sessions the figures were
496 to 264 and 346 to 194. Returning veterans accounted for
the large enrollment in the years immediately after the war,
but when they were graduated, the total fell. Then the Korean
War broke out, and there was a still sharper drop. The figures
for 1951-52 were 226 non-Virginians and 147 Virginians.

Enrollment in the postwar years was falling in several directions,
and the number taking Latin and Greek was low. In
1947-48 only fifty-five were taking Latin and thirteen Greek.
For the two succeeding sessions the figures were thirty-eight
and eighteen and forty-three and twenty-one.

The name of the School of Germanic Languages was
changed to the School of Germanic Languages and Russian in
order to call attention to the fact that courses in Russian were
being offered by Prof. Matthew Volm. This instruction had
been available since 1943, but the fact had not been made sufficiently
clear in the university catalogue, and enrollment, in
consequence, had not been up to expectations. It climbed
when the availability of the courses was emphasized.

An Institute of Foreign Service and International Affairs
was established in 1945, with two new degrees offered to matriculates.
The idea for such an institute was suggested in 1943
by Branch Spalding, '24, who had become editor of the Alumni
News the previous year. Spalding proposed that "an outstanding
school of international studies" be established at the university
and that the first step be the raising of $35,000 to provide
the nucleus of its book collection, which would be a
memorial to alumni lost in the war. The money was raised and
the idea caught on. It was given added impetus by the support
of Secretary of State Stettinius, who expressed the belief that
there was great need for a school devoted to training diplomats
and foreign service personnel. The newly established institute
opened July 2, 1945. Liberal arts education, with emphasis
on foreign languages, was the basis for the specialized

study to be concentrated in the third and fourth years of the
course leading to the B.A. in international affairs, while for
the M.A. particular attention was given to more advanced
courses. These were in the areas of Latin-American affairs,
international and maritime law, the British Empire, international
organization and economics, diplomatic practice, and
related matters.

A few months after the institute opened, Jesse H. Jones, a
wealthy Texan who was a great admirer of Woodrow Wilson,
agreed to give $20,000 a year over a period of fifteen years
for faculty salaries and lecture fees toward establishment of a
Woodrow Wilson School of International Affairs. Jones said
that Wilson "sacrificed his life for world peace," and he wanted
to make this $300,000 contribution in his honor. Wilson had
been a law student at the university from 1879 to 1881. President
Newcomb said that the school would be an integral part
of the Institute of Foreign Service and International Affairs.
Prof. Hardy C. Dillard was appointed head of the Wilson
school, but he was wanted by the War Department to assist in
the reorganization of the Army War College, and Prof. Robert
K. Gooch was named acting head. During the war Gooch had
been a special adviser to President Roosevelt on problems of
Western Europe, working through the Office of Strategic Services.

Librarian Harry Clemons said in 1949 that the international
studies library begun during the war was "a very live collection
indeed," and he quoted Professor Fernbach of the Woodrow
Wilson School as saying that "every class in foreign affairs constantly
uses these materials, and they have been vital to the
development of graduate studies in the Woodrow Wilson
School." A plaque explaining that the volumes are a memorial
to missing and dead alumni of World War II was placed in the
Browsing Room of Alderman Library.

The Bureau of Public Administration "has regained a position
in the mainstream of the administrative life of the state
not appreciably inferior to that which it enjoyed in the prewar
years, 1936-42," Prof. Rowland Egger, its director,
reported. The program of research and service in county government
became well established in 1945, Egger said, and the
bureau had reentered the municipal field, which had been its
principal concern in earlier years. It had recently assumed primary

responsibility for the research work of the Richmond
Charter Commission and was engaged in a survey of the revenue
system of Norfolk. A program in county government was
being carried on in collaboration with the League of Virginia
Counties, and close relations were being maintained once
more with the League of Virginia Municipalities. The bureau,
furthermore, was serving as the secretariat of the Virginia
chapter of the American Society for Public Administration
and the Virginia Social Science Association.

The Bureau of Population and Economic Research, headed
by Prof. Lorin A. Thompson, was established at the university
in 1944 as a combination of the Bureau of Industrial Research
and the Population Study of the Virginia State Planning
Board, both of which had been inaugurated four years before.
Files and information of the agency, as well as its staff, were
available to all interested parties and agencies in Virginia. The
bureau dealt with the industrial development of the state and
addressed the problems of manufacturing, marketing and distribution,
employment, agriculture, mining, family income,
and related matters. "From time to time the bureau will make
special area studies which will appraise the prospects for future
economic development," Thompson said.

More than one thousand contestants, a record, took part in
the annual Virginia High School League state championship
contests at the university in the spring of 1947, Extension Director
George B. Zehmer reported. The league, formerly
known as the Virginia High School Literary and Athletic
League, had achieved an unprecedented high school membership,
with 350 of the 391 Virginia schools enrolled in
1946-47, far more than in any previous year. The contests
were in dramatics, public speaking, publications, tennis, track,
and field. Regional clinics for coaches and sponsors in these
areas of activity, as well as in football and basketball, were attended
by over four hundred and fifty persons. Richard R.
Fletcher, executive secretary of the league for the preceding
two years, "has now the confidence and enthusiastic cooperation
of the high school officials," Zehmer reported. "Through
the Virginia High School League, the university has the most
numerous, effective and lasting contacts with the high school
officials and pupils," he went on. "No other activity brings as
many high school officials and pupils to the university every
year." Professor Zehmer was given a leave of absence in

49. Dr. Vincent W. Archer of the medical faculty.

1946-47 to aid in organizing the University Center in Richmond,
of which the university was a member, after which he
resumed directorship of the Extension Division.

A highly constructive activity of the division was publication
of the New Dominion Series by Jess and Jean Ogden. Begun
in 1941, the leaflet appeared eighteen times a year, and the
Ogdens told there of efforts in local communities to improve
the level of living. In Lexington, for example, a health survey
of school children uncovered "an alarming number of children
with defects," and led to remedial action. Other numbers
in the series described the maintenance in Charlottesville of a
nursery to care for children of working mothers, a processing
plant for tomatoes in Buckingham that added to farmers' cash
income, and so on. Sociology classes and theological seminaries
were using the series, and it was the basis for community
studies in several states. A fieldworker in the U.S. Office of
Education wrote: "We hope that you will be able to keep on
preparing and distributing these leaflets indefinitely. I don't
know any material that compares with this in value for helping
people see the possibilities in community organization."

The Summer Quarter was placed on a new schedule of a
single eight-week term in 1947, instead of two six-week terms,
as in previous years. Prof. Lewis M. Hammond, '28, acting
dean of the summer session, explained that the new arrangement
would permit attendance of many teachers and school
administrators with early and late summer workshop and conference
commitments. The normal schedule would consist of
two classes daily six days a week.

Hospital Administrator C. S. Lentz, who had had such severe
wartime problems, declared that he was having others.
In his annual report for 1945-46, he said concerning the hospital's
executive committee (no names mentioned): "After a
desultory period which has lasted during the war and during
which time they have in general had little time for committee
business, certain members have now determined that they are
full-blown hospital administrators, and are attempting to
prove this in a very obnoxious way. . . . Several members go
off half crocket [sic] without ever investigating the matter under
their consideration. . . . Something must be done . . . to
take care of their attempted high-handed methods." Whether
anything was "done" did not appear in subsequent reports.

Dr. Lentz also complained that he not had a raise in salary
during his fifteen years with the hospital, and that he was the
only employee connected with the Medical School whose compensation
had not been increased during that time.

The School of Nursing was given complete accreditation in
1948. It had been included since 1941 in the list of nationally
accredited schools, but the war had prevented it from fulfilling
certain requirements. In 1949 it was placed among the top
25 percent in the country by the National Commission for the
Improvement of Nursing Service, the criterion being its basic
programs in nursing. In 1951 the B.S. degree was instituted,
and three years later all programs were consolidated in a Department
of Nursing.

Prof. John H. Yoe, internationally known chemist, was in the
Pacific during the spring and summer of 1946 as head of a
committee of U.S. and foreign scientists to observe the atom
bomb tests near the island of Bikini. He had worked from
1940 to 1945 as a section member and investigator for the
National Defense Research Committee, after which he was
made an official investigator for the Chemical Warfare Service.
In 1943 Dr. Yoe received the Charles Herty Award "for
outstanding work in the field of chemistry in the South." He
was the author of numerous books and several score scientific
papers and was in demand as a lecturer all over the United
States.

Another member of the university faculty was honored
when Prof. Edward J. McShane was given one of the highest
accolades that can come to a mathematician—an invitation to
deliver the twenty-fifth in the series of Colloqium Lectures
before the American Mathematical Society's annual convention.
This was in recognition of his work on the calculus of
variations which he had developed since joining the university
faculty in 1935.

Remarkable demand from various parts of the country was
being expressed for the lectures of Prof. David McCord
Wright. A typical year for Wright was 1947-48, when he
taught for six weeks in the summer at the University of California
at Berkeley and the other six weeks at the same university
in Los Angeles. In December he gave a seminar before
members of the Yale economics and law faculties and a seminar

at Harvard the same weekend. Later in the month he
spoke at the annual meeting of the American Economics Association.
A series of lectures in March at the University of
Buffalo was followed somewhat later by service as visiting professor
at Harvard for the summer.

"He was brilliant, also eccentric, and he had a low boiling
point and high temper," said Prof. Tipton R. Snavely, head of
the university's Economics Department. "He didn't hesitate to
go over my head to speak his complaints to the dean or the
president or anybody else. He was in President Newcomb's office
one day . . . on a committee, and they were having a meeting.
He suddenly disagreed and grew angry, walked out and
slammed the door of the president's office. In 10 minutes or
so he came back and apologized to the group. That was typical
of David Wright."

Dr. Fletcher D. Woodward, '19, head of otolaryngology in
the Medical School during these years, had a distinguished
career in that speciality as physician, lecturer, teacher, and administrator.
He introduced new techniques and took part in
many state and national medical programs. Among the positions
he held were president of the American Laryngological,
Rhinological and Otological Society, chairman of the sections
in these specialties for both the Southern Medical Association
and the American Medical Association, and member of the
American Board of Otolaryngology. On a different level, Dr.
Woodward was nationally known for his efforts in the area of
automobile safety, where he was a pioneer. His obituary in the
Richmond News Leader in 1969 said that "a number of ideas
he advanced years ago are now standard features of the modern
automobile, such as safety belts and shoulder harnesses, a
collapsible steering column, padded dashboards, elimination
of projecting knobs and antiglare windshields." He was
awarded the Medical Tribune's automobile safety award in 1962
for "life-saving achievement in the service of health."

Prof. Joseph L. Vaughan of the Engineering School's English
faculty was getting numerous offers from other institutions,
Dean W. S. Rodman stated in recommending him for
promotion to full professor. "Other institutions have recognized
his abilities and are continually trying to induce him to
sever his connections here," said the dean. He remained at the
university and was promoted to full professor. Vaughan was

50. Henry H. Cumming, Olympic track star and university
faculty member who died of polio in Italy during World War II.

lent by the university to the nearby Institute of Textile Technology,
which he served as president from 1951 to 1953.

A coveted fellowship in physics was awarded Frank L. Hereford,
Jr., who had received his B.A. at the university in 1943.
This was the National Research Predoctoral Fellowship,
awarded by the National Research Council. Hereford had
done war work following graduation and was given the Certificate
of Merit by the Office of Scientific Research and Development.
He returned to the university for the session of
1946-47 to resume his studies, looking toward the Ph.D. degree.

The University of Virginia Alumni Fund, launched some
years before World War II, broke all records in 1945, with
$85,690 collected, more than double the total for the preceding
year. Branch Spalding, who had succeeded Eugene E.
Wager as director of the fund, resigned in the fall of 1945 as
fund director and editor of the Alumni News to join the English
faculty at Episcopal High School. Another record for collections
was set in 1947, when over $105,000 came in from the
alumni.

In that same year some twelve hundred old grads came back
to a whopping Victory Reunion, June 20-22. Nearly all classes
since 1882 were represented, the Big Tent was jammed to
more than capacity, and the beer flowed freely. A huge crowd
attended the barbecue at the pits below the old university golf
course. The Alumni Ball took place that evening in the gymnasium,
while stags continued to celebrate in the Big Tent. On
Sunday a memorial service to the alumni who died in the war
was held in the University Chapel. The Seven Society unveiled
a memorial near the gymnasium to the nine members of the
society who gave their lives. That afternoon in Cabell Hall
tributes were paid to President Newcomb, who was retiring.
Additional details concerning these tributes and Newcomb's
retirement appear at the end of this chapter.

The Alumni Association took over all concessions on the
Grounds, effective July 1, 1946, pursuant to action of the
Board of Visitors. Stands operated in Monroe Hall, Clark
Hall, Thornton Hall, Madison Hall, and the dormitories came
under the association's jurisdiction, while concessions at all
athletic contests likewise were assigned to that organization.

Proceeds went to various university causes in need of funds,
such as scholarships, honor loans, the Virginia Law Review, the
Engineering School's library, and so on. Much disappointment
was expressed at the Dry Dock, established in the Madison
Hall basement in 1943, since the profits from its operations
were said to be needed to finance student recreation.

Several important faculty deaths occurred during and just
after the war.

Prof. George B. Eager, '10, member of the law faculty for
more than three decades, died in 1942 at age fifty-four after
a period of failing health. He conducted his classes until a
week before his death. Professor Eager was the author of numerous
papers in the law reviews. In his college days at the
university he was on the track and tennis teams and was several
times singles champion of Kentucky. He had a part in
establishing boxing as a major sport at Virginia.

Francis P. Dunnington, '72, professor of analytical and industrial
chemistry, died in 1944 after being in retirement for
about a quarter of a century. Recognized as one of the foremost
analytical chemists of his time, he was awarded the
Charles Herty Medal in 1935. It was given him not only for
his service to chemistry in the South but "especially for his
splendid record as a teacher of chemists who have attained
renown." Trained under the famous John W. Mallet until Mallet
retired in 1908, Professor Dunnington was thoughtful in
his concern for his students. One of them, Dr. Charles L.
Reese, '84, for many years chemical director for E. I. DuPont
de Nemours, related that when Dunnington noted in class
that he was ailing, the professor took him to his home, where
he and Mrs. Dunnington nursed him back to health. Professor
Dunnington was an elder in the Presbyterian church and a
dedicated temperance advocate. This last was the subject of a
few sly jokes, since "Old Dunny" had a conspicuously red
nose, probably induced by his practice of identifying chemicals
by sniffing the vials.

Dr. William A. Lambeth, who took his M.D. from the university
in 1892 and his Ph.D. in 1901, died in 1944. Born in
North Carolina, he attended the Harvard School of Physical
Training after graduating from the University of Virginia
Medical School. He then graduated from Harvard and returned

to the university, where he took his Ph.D. Loaded with
these academic honors, Dr. Lambeth joined the university's
medical faculty and became head of the Department of Physical
Education and superintendent of buildings and grounds.
He is remembered especially for his leadership in the field of
intercollegiate athletics and his insistence on high standards
of eligibility and conduct. Termed "the father of athletics at
the University of Virginia," he was associated for many years
in this work with Prof. Albert Lefevre. Lambeth also was
known for his longtime interest in Italian history and civilization.
He was twice decorated by the Italian government for
promoting understanding between Italy and the United
States, and he furnished the Italian room in the Romance Pavilion
on East Lawn.

The death of President Franklin D. Roosevelt in April 1945
was noted by College Topics with a rare "extra." FDR was the
only president most of the students could remember clearly,
as he had been in the White House for a dozen years. His
death occurred on the eve of a university dance weekend, and
the Friday and Saturday night dances were canceled. Topics
expressed the hope that "as dates roll into Charlottesville from
all corners of the country, they will understand."

A wartime casualty involving a faculty member occurred
when Col. Henry H. Cumming, Jr., died in Italy from polio.
He was assistant professor of political science at the university
before entering the war. In his student days he had been captain
of the track team and an Olympic sprinter at the 1928
games. At the time of his fatal seizure in 1945 he was assistant
chief of staff G-2 at Peninsula Base Headquarters in Italy.

The university community was shocked on the last day of
1946 by the sudden death of Prof. Walter S. Rodman, dean of
the School of Engineering since 1933. He made a report on
faculty salaries and promotions in 1929 which Prof. William
H. Echols termed "one of the finest pieces of work I have ever
seen, and one of the greatest contributions to the progress of
the university since the time of Thomas Jefferson." It paved
the way for substantial salary increases at the session of
1930-31. Dean Rodman was secretary of the university's
chapter of Phi Beta Kappa for nearly a quarter of a century.
During his years as dean of engineering the school experienced
unprecedented growth both in enrollment and equipment.

He served for more than thirty years as critic of manuscripts
on electrical engineering for the New York publisher
McGraw-Hill.

Richard Heath Dabney, '81, who had retired in 1938 after
forty-nine years on the faculty, died in 1947, aged eight-six.
He had been dean of the university's first Graduate School for
almost a quarter of a century and a one-man history department
for a longer period. Thomas J. Wertenbaker, '10, who
took his Ph.D. under Dabney and then joined the Princeton
faculty, where he was serving when elected president of the
American Historical Association, wrote: "With the passing of
Richard Heath Dabney the last link was broken with the faculty
of the nineties. The students of half a century ago, while
they mourned the loss of others of the inspiring group at
whose feet they sat—Frank Smith, Jack Mallet, Charles Kent,
Milton Humphreys, etc.—consoled themselves with the thought,
Mr. Dabney still lives, to greet us when we visit the university. . . .
How often have we heard the remark, `It was Heath Dabney
who gave me my lifelong interest in history.' Mr. Dabney not
only opened new intellectual vistas to his students, he had a
profound influence in shaping their characters."

Dr. Samuel A. Mitchell, internationally recognized astronomer,
retired in 1945 as professor of astronomy and director
of the McCormick Observatory after thirty-four years in those
posts. As professor emeritus he continued his research. In
1949 he was awarded the Watson Gold Medal of the National
Academy of Sciences, awarded only ten times since its establishment
in 1887, and only four times to an American. Dr.
Mitchell's longtime associate, Dr. Harold L. Alden, succeeded
him as head of the department and director of the observatory.

Prof. William A. Kepner, '08, one of the most interesting
lecturers on the faculty, retired in 1946 as professor of biology.
Physically he was of small stature, but his mental capacity was
wide-ranging. It was at the request of Clarence Darrow, the
famous defense counsel for John T. Scopes at his trial for violating
the Tennessee antievolution law, that Dr. Kepner testified
in Scopes's behalf. Following his retirement, Kepner was
honored at a reception given by his former students and colleagues.
Students from distant points were there, and several

spoke. A volume edited by his faculty associate Prof. Bruce D.
Reynolds, '20, was presented. It contained research papers by
some of the outstanding research biologists who had studied
under Kepner. He was the author of Animals Looking into the
Future (1925) and of more than sixty research papers and
other articles in leading scientific and educational journals.

Another longtime university figure retired in 1947 when
Elmer I. Carruthers relinquished the post of bursar, which he
had held since 1912. He had succeeded I. K. Moran in the
position, after serving as a bank teller for several years. Carruthers
had organized the university's first course in accounting
in 1918 when the U.S. Army required such training for
some of its soldiers. He received the Algernon Sydney Sullivan
Award and was elected by the Students to Omicron Delta
Kappa. Ill health forced his retirement, and he died in 1951.

Vincent Shea, '35, was appointed bursar and would be a
leading influence in university affairs from that time forward.
A specialist in public administration and finance, he got his
M.S. at the university and then took graduate courses in public
administration at the University of Chicago and Stanford.
On his return to Charlottesville he became research assistant
to the Virginia Commission on County Government under
Prof. George W. Spicer, its chairman. Subsequently he joined
the Bureau of Public Administration and became its acting
director during the absence of Rowland Egger. Shea also
served for two years as field director of studies in reorganization
of state financial agencies and as financial consultant to
the Richmond Charter Commission. He was elected president
of the National Association of Business Officers.

John L. Newcomb announced in 1946 that he would resign as
president of the university on his sixty-fifth birthday, December
18. Thomas B. Gay, '06, was named chairman of a Board
of Visitors committee to seek a successor. High tributes were
paid to Newcomb at the 1947 Finals. Rector Stettinius spoke
and presented him with a silver box on behalf of the visitors.
Robert B. Tunstall, '02, pointed out that under Newcomb, despite
depression and war, "in plant, in appropriations and in
equipment the strength and power of the university have approximately
doubled." He added that the new library is "the
greatest single step toward realizing the aspirations of a century."

51. F. D. G. Ribble, dean of the Law School, 1939-63.

The faculty was virtually twice as large as when he took
office and twice as many Ph.D.'s had been graduated as in the
entire previous history of the institution. Two years later President
Newcomb's bust by Charles Rudy was placed in the entrance
hall of Alderman Library alongside that of Alderman.
The ceremonies were simple, in accordance with Newcomb's
wish. Dean F. D. G. Ribble of the Law School presented the
bust and President Colgate Darden accepted it.

After his retirement there were expressions of high praise
from various faculty members for the manner in which he
discharged his duties in extremely difficult times. But Stringfellow
Barr entered a strong dissent: "Newk was a nice guy,
but he hadn't the slightest idea what it was all about. I was
devoted to him, but I thought it was a kind of awful choice."
On the other hand, Prof. Robert K. Gooch said that "on the
whole, I think he was the best president we ever had." Randall
Thompson declared: "I never worked under a president who
was more benign, more understanding, fairer, more patient,
more considerate of my rights. . . . He has been a kind of
yardstick for me at other places where I have taught." Professor
Thompson's opinion is shared by many of those who
served on the faculty during Newcomb's presidency.

5. FIVE

Colgate Darden
and the Students

Colgate W. Darden, Jr., chancellor of the College of William
and Mary, former governor of Virginia, onetime
member of the U.S. Congress and of the Virginia House of
Delegates, was elected president of the University of Virginia
in the spring of 1947. From the outset he had been the oddson
favorite for the position. Prominent alumni backed him,
and the Alumni Association's board of managers urged his
election unanimously. But the faculty and students were far
from enthusiastic. Many professors viewed him askance because
as a politician he had not come up the academic escalator,
while the students feared that he planned to abolish fraternities
and otherwise put the screws on the undergraduates.
Yet both groups swallowed hard and their spokesmen promptly
expressed themselves favorably, even enthusiastically concerning
the new president. A faculty assembly, representing all departments,
adopted resolutions without a single dissent voicing
"complete confidence in Mr. Darden and pledging him
full support and cooperation." This was an effort to counteract
some of the extreme positions being taken, such as threatened
resignations. College Topics hailed the new president without
reservations.

As governor, Darden had manifested a great concern for
the improvement of education in the state at all levels. He was
anxious to increase the percentage of public school pupils matriculating
at Charlottesville. What alarmed many of the undergraduates
at Virginia was his recommendation as governor

to the William and Mary Board of Visitors that students there
be forbidden to live in fraternity or sorority houses, a recommendation
that was adopted. His reasoning was that fraternities
and sororities were "undemocratic" and placed a financial
burden on parents. University of Virginia students somehow
got the idea that Darden, a member of Phi Gamma Delta,
planned not only to seek a similar regulation affecting them
but also that he wanted to abolish fraternities entirely. Repeated
denials that he wished to liquidate the university's
Greek letter organizations failed to convince them. He did say
that he thought stricter discipline was essential to the fraternities'
proper functioning, but he added that the discipline
should be in the hands of the students.

As a result of all the discussion aroused by Governor Darden's
position on the issue, the university's Board of Visitors
in 1942 had appointed a ten-man committee, headed by Judge
A. D. Barksdale, '15, to examine the fraternity situation at the
institution and make recommendations. This group, which included
representatives of the faculty and alumni, as well as
fraternity and nonfraternity men, reported unanimously in
early 1943 against forbidding the students to live in the
houses. After a careful investigation, the committee concluded
that such a prohibition would entail heavy financial
problems for both the fraternities and the university. The
thirty-three fraternities had 610 rooms where students could
stay, at less cost than in the dorms and much less than in the
boarding houses, its report declared. Additional rooming facilities
would have to be found elsewhere or built, if students
were forbidden to live in the quarters of the Greek letter organizations.
The committee said, further, that grades of the
fraternity men were slightly higher, overall, than those of the
nonfraternity men (a temporary phenomenon). It stated, too,
that living in the houses was beneficial "in the formation of
character, discipline and studious habits," although there had
been "too frequent instances of conduct . . . that did not reflect
credit on the fraternities." The committee strongly urged
that the state provide funds for "a modern, well-equipped student
union or student center where facilities will be available
to all students for social gatherings and entertainment." This
would take care of the complaint that nonfraternity men had
no such facilities.

With the election of Colgate Darden as president of the university
four years later, discussion around the Grounds of his
views concerning fraternities was intensified. He had told the
General Assembly while governor that he did "not object to
the fraternities themselves" but to "conditions at the university
to which fraternity houses have made more than a modest
contribution." He added that "fraternity house life at the university
is entirely too free and easy" and that "if the students
are unwilling to institute reasonable rules and regulations, especially
for supervision over mixed parties, then the university
administration must do so." By the time he took over as
president in 1947, the students had published page after page
in Corks and Curls showing carousals in the fraternity houses,
with girls and boys waving whiskey bottles, girls sitting in boys'
laps, some in a semicomatose state, and a student or two lying
prone on the floor. The fact that similar photos graced the
annuals at various other institutions of higher learning did
not lessen President Darden's conviction that the time had
come to institute stricter rules at Virginia.

Many students appeared at his inauguration on Oct. 1,
1947, wearing black neckties, signalizing their concern over
what they took to be his plans. The principal speaker was Sir
Alfred Zimmern, emeritus professor of international relations
at Oxford, where Darden had studied for a year under a Carnegie
fellowship in the early 1920s. Gov. William M. Tuck also
spoke. Representatives of many universities and learned societies
in this country and overseas were present, along with
thousands of visitors.

In his inaugural address the University of Virginia's new
president offered the suggestion that "we should give careful
consideration to the establishment of colleges giving two years
of sound work to both men and women," adding that "this has
been done with great success by the College of William and
Mary in both Norfolk and Richmond, and the experiment has
enabled many to secure the training they desire at a cost
within their means." President Darden also urged "a carefully
prepared program of adult education," on the theory that "the
day will come when adult education will eclipse in effectiveness
anything ever done with children."

A ban against first-year men and women joining fraternities
or sororities had been instituted by the Board of Visitors before

the inauguration, effective at the session of 1947-48. It
had been announced the previous spring that such a prohibition
was part of President Darden's plan for the university.

The visitors also decreed that the incoming group of firstyear
men be organized into a class, of which they were to remain
members during their four years in the college. Each
succeeding new class was to be similarly organized. This edict
of the board was either withdrawn or ignored. Little more was
heard of it.

The Richmond Times-Dispatch had published an editorial approving
the rule against first-year men joining fraternities, on
the ground that the rule "should automatically eliminate the
young wastrels from outside the state who now manage to
spend a year or two at Virginia, for they probably will not wish
to come at all." It also called these plutocratic undergraduates
"the Buick and bankroll set." The foregoing references caused
near tantrums among the Cavaliers, and the editor of the
Times-Dispatch—the author of the present volume—was denounced
for a decade or more in student publications as a
"constant critic," "perennial critic," and "active critic" of the
institution.

Although a graduate of the university who had grown up
there, and the son, grandson, great-grandson, and greatgreat-grandson
of graduates, he was excoriated as knowing
little or nothing about its history and traditions and was depicted
as on the lookout for opportunities to publicize it adversely.
The sole basis for this prolonged brouhaha was the
"wastrel" editorial, plus condemnation by the paper of some
of the more outrageously undisciplined performances of the
students—at the university, in Philadelphia hotels, and elsewhere.

George O. Ferguson, dean of admissions and registrar, issued
a statement following the appearance of the above
quoted Times-Dispatch editorial, intended to show that in 1947
there were no "wastrels" in the university. He conceded that
there were plenty of them in the 1920s, but contended that
when a couple of hundred were dropped in 1928 and new
requirements adopted, the problem was solved. It wasn't, although
the postwar group of students was perhaps the best in
modern times at the university. Consulted in the 1970s concerning
Ferguson's statement, Colgate Darden expressed admiration

52. Jesse W. Beams, internationally famous physicist.

for the dean but said there was a problem in 1947
with a group of well-heeled loafers who should not have been
in the institution, a fact confirmed later by Edgar Shannon.
Darden was successful in eliminating many of them by instituting
stricter requirements. But the ban on first-year men
joining fraternities was abandoned after a trial of several
years, and a rule against rushing during the first semester was
substituted. The fraternity members were unhappy about that
too.

Darden criticized fraternities in his report to the Board of
Visitors for 1948-49, saying that "the university has suffered
too often in the past from the activities of a group of fraternities
and societies dedicated primarily and sometimes exclusively
to the outward and visible signs of social distinction." He
added that these organizations "have failed signally as organizations
to share the legitimate interests of a university community,
nor have they furnished the leadership which might
be expected of them."

Fraternities at Virginia "have been subject to less control by
the administration than at any other university in the nation,"
College Topics declared in 1947. The paper trotted out all over
again the argument that the new rules covering the houses
ran counter to Jeffersonian principles. "To withdraw recognition
of the rights and respect accorded the university students'
ability to act as gentlemen is to deny that the University of
Virginia, throughout its unique history, has been a successful
institution," said Topics. "We who have grown to love the university
for what it was cannot take it lying down." No mention
here of the fact that in 1825-26 Thomas Jefferson counted on
the young men to "act as gentlemen" but that those scions of
the Virginia aristocracy behaved like hoodlums, and the "uniform
and early rising laws" were enacted as a result (see chapter
1). Those laws, of course, were far more stringent than
anything even conceived of by Colgate Darden or any other
modern president of the university.

Or consider the provisions of the "Laws of the University of
Virginia" enacted in 1897. Under those regulations, as Staige
D. Blackford, Jr., later a Rhodes Scholar, pointed out in 1951,
"students could be meted out minor punishments for such iniquitous
actions as `non-attendance on classes, inattention to
the exercises prescribed, misbehavior or inattention in classes.' "

Furthermore, "it was a major offense for a student to show
`perseverance in habits of expense [and] . . . all meetings of
students in the public rooms of the university are prohibited,
unless the written consent of the chairman of the faculty is
first obtained.' " Blackford observed that in view of these and
other restrictions, "one might believe that the university could
have been more famous in tradition as the citadel of administrative
despotism, rather than as the shrine of student liberty."
He went on to say that "the students here in the great traditional
past enjoyed about as much liberty as a modern kindergarten
child." Yet most of the undergraduates in the midtwentieth
century continued over the years to proclaim that
the university in the past had been a uniquely free institution.
When any sort of mild restrictions were placed on them covering
the use of automobiles, chaperones in fraternity houses,
public drinking, or what-not, they bellowed that the sacred
Jeffersonian traditions were being undermined and Virginia
was being turned into "just another prep school."

The Interfraternity Council (IFC) offered a set of rules governing
women in the fraternities, but they were rejected by
the visitors, who proposed the following: No women in the
houses on Monday through Friday before 3 P.M. or after 8
P.M.; none on Saturday or Sunday before 11 A.M. or after 8
P.M., except that on Saturday night women were to be permitted
until 1 A.M. if chaperones approved by the dean of students
were present. Women were to be entertained in living
and recreation rooms only, and officers of each fraternity were
to be held responsible for enforcement. Alumni almost everywhere
were overwhelmingly favorable to these new rules.

The IFC asked for and got a hearing before the visitors. It
requested certain minor modifications, namely extension of
the curfew for an hour after the university dances and exclusion
of mothers, wives, sisters, and domestic servants from the
restrictive provisions affecting the visits of women to the
fraternity houses. These requests were granted.

Pursuant to President Darden's plan to impose greater and
greater responsibility on the students for maintaining discipline
in the university, he and Dean Newman arranged for the
Student Council to assume complete jurisdiction over all such
matters. This was the result of months of conferences between
the administration and the council. Darden stated that council

decisions would be overruled only in case of a miscarriage of
justice or upon the discovery of new facts that justified a reversal.

Conduct of students at football games had left something to
be desired and was placed in 1948 under a student committee
of thirty which, in turn, was responsible to the Student Council.
The committee members were readily identifiable by arm
bands. A similar committee had functioned the previous year,
but it reported to the administration rather than to the Student
Council. An undergraduate judged by the committee to
be guilty of public drunkenness at one of the games was put
under "strict probation" until the end of the semester. This
meant that he was prohibited from participating in any extracurricular
activities or functions sponsored by the university
and from taking part in athletic contests or attending dances
or concerts.

Several students were disciplined by the Student Council in
the spring of 1949 for misconduct. One was suspended for
the rest of the semester, seven were put on strict probation
until June 1950, and others were given lesser penalties.

On another front, the Interfraternity Council fined a fraternity
and closed its house to all social activities for sixty days.
These penalties were imposed for violations of rules laid down
by the Board of Visitors governing chaperonage of parties in
the house. The IFC acted under authority delegated to it by
the Student Council. President Darden said that the council
was operating "under the broadest grant of power given to
students by any educational institution in the United States."
He expressed gratification over the action of the IFC in the
above mentioned case.

The roughest penalty imposed by the Student Council during
this period was its recommendation for expulsion of an
undergraduate who violated the strict probation under which
he had been put by the council earlier in the year, by going to
several parties. He was expelled. Corks and Curls said shortly
thereafter that President Darden had never reversed the
council in any of its decisions, though at times he had disagreed.

Easter Week 1950 was "notable for its decorum and general
good behavior," Chester Goolrick wrote as editor of the Alumni
News. This was especially true, he said, of the quadrangle parties,

"though they were attended by literally thousands of
people." These affairs took place in the quadrangle on Rugby
Road surrounded on three sides by the Kappa Sigma, Delta
Tau Delta, and Chi Phi fraternity houses. A major reason for
the good behavior, he said, was "an open letter signed by 12
presidents of student organizations . . . calling on each student
to be `conscious of his own behavior at all times.' " The signers
went on to say that "it is time to revive the respected ideal of
the Virginia Gentleman . . . proud of his university and of his
responsibility to it." The year before at the quadrangle party
"an estimated 2,000 students and dates passed in and out," in
the words of the Virginia Spectator. An annual feature of these
parties was the fracas known as the Kappa Sig's Halitosis
Brawl.

Only 20 percent of the students were members of the
twenty-four fraternities still on the Grounds during the session
of 1948-49, according to the Alumni News. A number of
the Greek letter organizations had faded out since the early
1940s. Enrollment in the university broke all records in
1948-49, with more than five thousand students, of whom
over three thousand were financing their education by means
of the G.I. Bill.

Behavior of university men in Philadelphia following football
games with the University of Pennsylvania in 1947 and
1948 received highly unfavorable nationwide publicity. While
the conduct of some was bad enough, certain accounts contained
serious exaggerations. The events in the Pennsylvania
city followed by a few weeks some misbehavior by university
students at the Hotel Roanoke in Roanoke after the VPI
game.

Sensational newspaper accounts of the happenings in Philadelphia
misled the Student Council at the university into issuing
a somewhat more vehement statement that the facts
warranted. It spoke of "wanton destruction . . . in the hotels
and in the city of Philadelphia generally after Saturday's game
[lost by Virginia, 19 to 7]," and went on to detail damage to
three hotels. "Action will be taken in this matter," the council
declared. However, the Philadelphia Inquirer interviewed several
hotel men a few days later and said that while there were
undoubted incidents, the overall behavior was not so bad as
had been painted. Yet it was reprehensible; President Darden

spoke of the "very severe damage," and he added: "The only
thing that stood in the way of decisive action was the lack of
reliable facts." Neither the Pennsylvania authorities nor the
Student Council could identify any of the guilty parties, so
nobody was punished.

When Virginia defeated Penn two years later, 26 to 14,
there was further disorder in Philadelphia hotels, but once
again the episodes seem to have been painted in too lurid
colors. The president of the Hotel Association of Philadelphia
issued a statement saying that "we never saw anything like
what happened here," and he added that no more reservations
would be accepted from University of Virginia students.
They had come to the game "steamed up on whiskey and waving
Confederate flags," he added. The manager of the Adelphi
Hotel where the principal celebration took place said the
brawl was broken up at midnight by police, and that "chairs,
glasses, everything you can think of were thrown out of the
windows." But the University of Pennsylvania student newspaper
quoted the manager of the Benjamin Franklin Hotel a
few days later as terming the hotel association's pronouncement
"unfortunate" and "ridiculous." He said he would be
glad to accept University of Virginia students at his hotel at
any time.

President Darden and three members of the Student Council
went to Philadelphia for a conference. When it was concluded,
they issued a statement that "property damage to hotels
was not as great as we have been led to believe" (figured
overall at $1,150), but that "we were shocked by some of the
conduct that had taken place . . . in public rooms." They emphasized
that every effort would be made "to see that hotels
were paid for any damage traceable to university students."
Unfortunately, "no names of those guilty of these misdeeds
were secured," most of the misbehavior having occurred in
public rooms. Total damage to all hotels was put at less than
$800 in the final reckoning some months later. In the fall of
1950 Virginia played Penn again, but there were no complaints
of student misconduct.

Virginia undergraduates were wont to treat their fraternity
houses at times approximately as roughly as they did the
Philadelphia hostelries, especially during weekend parties.
Time and again Greek letter organizations would collect

53. J. Malcolm Luck, director of alumni activities, 1930-55.

$20,000 to $30,000 from alumni members for doing the place
over, only to see it virtually wrecked by the next series of parties.

Prof. T. Braxton Woody, the first chairman of the university's
Housing Committee, said concerning the fraternities:
"One of our major problems was to inspect these horrible
places. . . . Just beyond belief, nobody can imagine human
beings ever lived in such places. We would tell them `this must
be cleaned, this must be done,' and we would come back a little
later, nothing done at all. . . . Or a boy would work like a dog,
get the place cleaned up, maybe he would get an alumnus interested.
They would spend thousands of dollars sanding the
floors, cleaning it up, renovating. Then a year or two later
. . . all that money gone down the drain."

Student Adviser B. F. D. Runk, who would become dean of
the university in 1959, was critical of the fraternities during
the 1950s since, in his view, "they were not doing their job." A
fraternity man himself who believed in the Greek letter societies,
he felt that "they were not fulfilling the function they had
here"—were not giving proper leadership to the university,
although "all of the student leaders were fraternity men."
They had let their houses run down, "were just beating the
houses all to pieces." However, he praised the Student Council
for the record it made during these years.

As governor, Colgate Darden had projected plans for a Student
Activities Building at the university, with the idea of making
conditions for students more comfortable and economical
and providing social facilities for all, especially nonfraternity
men. He estimated that about $3,000,000 would be needed
for construction of an adequate student center with dining
hall, lounges, reading rooms, offices for student publications
and other organizations, and so on. This would give the university
"equipment that virtually every great university in the
nation except Virginia already has," said the Alumni News. But
while that publication was strongly in favor of the plan, most
fraternity men after the war were grimly opposed. This represented
a complete reversal from a few years before, when
nearly everybody—faculty, students, and alumni—seemed to
want a Student Activities Building. One exception on the faculty
was history Prof. Thomas Cary Johnson, who addressed

the Richmond alumni on "Darden's First Year," and accused
the president of "ruining the university." When Darden heard
about it, he called in Johnson to learn more about his speech.
The latter repeated that he was ruining the university by
"making it a catch-all for everybody who wants to go to college
in the state." "That's what it's supposed to be," the president
replied. "Neither of us convinced the other," Johnson said
later in describing the incident. Cary Johnson, who spoke of
himself as "a reactionary," was one of the wittiest lecturers in
the university.

Many fraternity men apparently feared that the Student
Union would undermine their prestige and their domination
of university affairs. However, it was in fact necessary not only
for the nonfraternity men, who were without adequate recreational
and dining opportunities, but for everybody.

The University Center, revolving about Madison Hall and
established around 1940, had been christened the Student
Union in 1948, looking toward the ultimate construction of an
adequate Student Union building. The union was active in offering
various types of cultural and recreational activities, with
the indefatigable Mrs. A. E. Walker presiding over all. However,
Madison Hall, with its limited size and facilities, could
not possibly provide everything that was required by the
steadily growing student body.

In 1952 the General Assembly appropriated $400,000 as a
sort of down payment on the much-debated Student Union.
A total of $2,750,000 finally was made available by the legislature.
Fraternity men had been lobbying against it, writing
Gov. William M. Tuck and members of the General Assembly
that it would be a waste of money. Some contended that the
sum would be much better spent for higher faculty salaries or
for a field house. A three-man committee of the Student
Council recommended against the project, "since present
plans do not provide facilities that would be attractive to students."
The building was jeeringly referred to on many occasions
as "the ping pong palace." The Virginia Spectator published
an editorial evidencing a discovery of horrendous
bugaboos under the bed: "We stand on the threshold of `State
U-ism,' that haven of the dungaree doll, the second-rate professor,
the pigmy-brained student, and the monolithic `campus,'

" said this organ of student opinion. "The title of `Virginia
gentleman' will no longer command respect, but will
become a rather ludicrous misnomer." Another writer in the
Spectator remarked sarcastically: "Thriftily priced at only three
million dollars, the structure [the Student Union] will be unobtrusive,
and probably not much larger than the combined
new dormitories and the Alderman Library." To all of these
fatuities President Darden replied, "I am not going to change
my position." His influence with the General Assembly far outweighed
that of the opposition.

The Student Union was built, of course, and named for former
President Newcomb. This led to the derisive student appellation
of "Mamma Newk," applied to the Union by students
who were using it regularly but had fought it bitterly. The
most important and necessary structure on the Grounds since
the erection of Alderman Library, Newcomb Hall had to be
enlarged in subsequent years, so essential was it to the wellbeing
of all the students, fraternity and nonfraternity alike.
The same type of undergraduate who had fought its erection
in previous years now denounced the president for delay in
carrying out its enlargement. Much credit for its almost immediate
acceptance and success has been accorded Donald M.
McKay, formerly director of housing, who was placed in
charge.

There were other causes of friction with Darden during the
mid-1950s, in addition to Newcomb Hall. Rules as to student
housing set off renewed lamentations that Jeffersonian liberties
were being undermined.

And there was the "sex scandal" on East Lawn in the spring
of 1954, involving a dozen students and a girl. The event occurred
Apr. 4, but did not become known to the public until
May 19, when the Cavalier Daily unveiled most of the facts.
The student newspaper, edited by Frank M. Slayton, expressed
approval of the dismissal of some students and the
suspension of others. This set off a great uproar, and many
undergraduates wrote to the paper expressing strong disapproval
of its stand and of the penalties meted out. There was
especially bitter criticism of the Board of Visitors and of Richard
R. Fletcher, director of student affairs, who had recommended
the penalties. Three of the men were suspended because

54. Tipton R. Snavely, professor of economics.

they failed to put a halt to actions of the others. These
suspensions were shortened.

All this, combined with the new housing regulations, the
building of Newcomb Hall, the perennial fear that fraternities
would be abolished, and other grievances, real or imagined,
caused the Student Council to call a mass meeting in Cabell
Hall. The council claimed, among other things, that its powers
had been "usurped" by "Dick" Fletcher in the "sex scandal"
matter, and requested that Fletcher's office be eliminated. The
Board of Visitors refused to grant the request.

In all this hullaballoo it is probable that the students did
have a genuine grievance or two against the university administration.
Some of those who led in mobilizing sentiment
against President Darden and his associates were young men
of intelligence and integrity. For example, Stuart Valentine,
president of the college, said he had attended numerous conferences
with Darden, but "when asked direct questions, the
president has dodged them completely. . . . Many times he has
been asked whether the administration is going to do away
with fraternities. His indefinite answer has always been that as
long as fraternities keep up their standards, he has no complaints.
The question is, whose standards—his or what the students
consider good standards." It would seem that if the
president had been a bit more categorical in his denials, he
could have saved himself a good many headaches. Stuart Harris,
a former member of the Student Council, said the council
had been bypassed and overruled on various occasions. Also
that a fraternity had been warned against playing softball on
Sunday "miles from the university." Just what was involved in
these episodes was not made plain. It may be that the boys
were not given a "fair shake."

Colgate Darden would have been the first to admit that he
was not infallible, and he could well have made some serious
mistakes in his relations with the students. If he had not done
so over a period of a dozen years in office, it would have been
little short of miraculous.

There were occasional cross-burnings near the president's
house on Carr's Hill, evidencing student wrath over this or
that administration policy. President Darden put a notice in
the paper saying that it didn't matter to him how many crosses
were burned, but please to stop leaning them against the fine

old oak trees since it was harmful to the trees and they were
valuable. There were no more cross-burnings.

When the Board of Visitors met in the early fall of 1954 and
heard the complaints of a student committee, it voted unanimously
to support President Darden and rejected totally the
contention that he was trying to turn the university into another
"state-U" or to drive out the fraternities. It commended
Beta Theta Pi for employing a mature and experienced hostess
who would be present at all parties to which young women
were invited and recommended that the other fraternities follow
suit.

Out of the ferment and controversy generated by the foregoing
events there came agreement on a far-reaching change
in the system of student government. President Darden and
the Student Council put together a plan for a nine-member
student Judiciary Committee which would try all cases of student
misconduct referred to it by the council and impose penalties.
Honor code violations would remain under the Honor
Committee. Cases to be handled by the Judiciary Committee
would be those dealt with during the preceding five years by
the Student Council. At the same time, the latter organization's
powers were broadened, and it would act as an advisory
body to the president of the university. The office of director
of student affairs would be retained and its occupant would
forward to the Student Council any cases that he felt should
involve disciplinary action. The Judiciary Committee had no
jurisdiction over the coeds since they had their own form of
government, the Women Students' Association. President
Darden expressed himself as greatly encouraged by these developments,
and the Cavalier Daily was ecstatic, saying: "Here
we have an unbelievable amount of freedom, and that freedom
has been broadened by the establishment of this new student
government." The plan was ratified overwhelmingly by
the students in a referendum. Five years later Dean Raymond
C. Bice wrote: "The student government, with its separate judiciary
function, has evolved from cooperative efforts between
students and administrators to make the University of Virginia
students envied by their counterparts in colleges
throughout the world."

A committee of seven administrators and professors, with
Prof. George W. Spicer as chairman, was named in 1954 to

study the fraternity situation and make recommendations. Its
report, made known the following spring, contained significant
proposals. Preparation and publication of a general
policy for fraternities was one of them. Another was appointment
by President Darden of a nine-man committee, which
would include three IFC representatives, this committee to be
responsible for the organization and regulation of fraternity
affairs. Also, each chapter would be required to secure the
services of a hostess approved by the university, "who shall be
present at all social events." However, fraternities on the official
list would be permitted to "entertain a limited number of
women guests in their fraternity houses during specified periods
without the presence of a hostess or chaperone." Appointment
of food service and housing service advisory committees
was urged, as well as strengthening of the system of
resident fraternity advisors, especially with respect to finances.
Hazing in connection with initiations should be prohibited,
and no initiation activities should take place outside
the house. Scholarship performance of each chapter should
be closely watched, and suggestions for improvement made by
the 3-3-3 committee, when this seemed indicated. An immediate
study of rushing policies was urged. These recommendations
were approved by President Darden.

Fraternity rushing rules were overhauled for the umpteenth
time, pursuant to the report. Major objectives were to
reduce the amount of time and money expended in rushing
prospective "goats." Road trips with goats to nearby women's
colleges were banned. The time for rushing, about the same
as before, was limited to the period between Thanksgiving
and the Christmas holidays, the first two weeks of the second
semester, and the third week of that semester (formal rush
week).

The Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity was caught paddling
initiates in broad daylight in the field in front of the Deke
house. This was in violation of the rules, so penalties were
imposed. But since various other fraternities had been doing
the same thing without being detected, some of the penalties
were removed. The Dekes, it was pointed out, were at least
not trying to conceal what they were doing.

The "Cross Fraternity Scholarship Award" was established
by Mrs. Virginia Cross of Philadelphia, mother of Richard S.

Cross, '22. An engraved trophy or plaque would go to the
fraternity with the highest scholastic average for the previous
season.

As noted in an earlier chapter, students were predicting in the
1920s that if the university's enrollment went beyond two
thousand, the Honor System would be endangered if not destroyed.
These premonitions were unduly alarmist, for the
system held up well for decades after many more than two
thousand students were enrolled. By the 1950s, however,
there were signs that the honor spirit was being subjected to
unwonted strains. A substantial percentage of the students in
that era had had no previous experience with the workings of
an Honor System such as had functioned at Virginia for more
than a century.

In the middle 1950s a "long line of thefts in the dressing
room" at the gymnasium was mentioned in the Cavalier Daily.
Some said it was the work of outsiders, but the paper spoke of
"a general feeling that the real culprits were closer to home."
Charges that students were misrepresenting their ages at the
ABC stores to get liquor also were disturbing. And something
called "synthetic sickness" was causing concern. Students were
excusing themselves for class absences under circumstances
deemed suspicious—"one of the few shams in an otherwise
sincere university," as the Cavalier Daily expressed it. On top of
all this, the student Bad Check Committee was "facing a definite
crisis from a mounting number of unredeemable bad
checks passed by university students." It appeared that "almost
$250 worth of these `back-handed larcenies' " had accumulated.
The Bad Check Committee announced that a student
failing to rectify a "rubber" check within two weeks of
notification by that agency must appear before the Honor
Committee.

On the favorable side, the number of dismissals under the
Honor System had dropped sharply, as compared with the
years immediately following World War II, when enrollment
had zoomed to more than five thousand.

In addition, excellent results were being reported from the
Ivey F. Lewis Honor Loan System, under which students who
could get funds nowhere else could borrow small sums, usually
under $25, and sign a pledge to repay the money "as soon

as I reasonably can." During the session of 1952-53, for example,
a total of $8,735 was loaned and $9,260 was repaid
from previous years. Of the amount made available to students
the preceding year, $700 was unpaid, but it was expected
that all, or nearly all, of this sum would be forthcoming.
Some time previously, a man borrowed $100, and when
two years went by without repayment, the loss was about to be
written off when a check for $150 arrived from him. No interest
was charged on these loans, but he felt that he should include
it anyway. It was evidence of the fact that the honor
spirit remained alive and well among the vast majority of students
at the University of Virginia.

Differences between the older and younger generations as to
what constituted obscenity were apparent with publication of
the "Paunch" issue of the Spectator, intended as a parody on
the British magazine Punch. Many students were infuriated
when President Darden appointed a faculty committee to report
on the issue, and the Cavalier Daily said that statements
made by him concerning the matter "made us wonder at the
soundness of mind of the president." It apologized later for
this remarkable assertion, but continued to maintain, along
with several leading student organizations, that there was
nothing objectionable in the magazine. The consensus among
students, with few exceptions, seemed to be that the "Paunch"
issue was one of the best ever. Yet the faculty committee,
headed by Dean of Women Roberta H. Gwathmey, found
unanimously that the issue was a "discredit" to the university,
and the entire Board of Visitors expressed the same view.
President Darden referred to the issue's "coarseness and vulgarity
which are utterly out of keeping with the innate good
taste which has distinguished the University of Virginia." The
Board of Visitors voted to ban the Spectator permanently because
of what was deemed its unsavory record over the past
few years. A new publication, Harlequin, promptly appeared
as its successor but was panned by the Cavalier Daily, which
accused it of purloining most if its material from old issues of
the Spectator. It soon faded out and was heard of no more.

Problems surrounding student automobiles were frequently
of concern to the administration. First-year men had been forbidden
since before the war to have cars, but the ban had been

55. Col. Staige Davis Blackford, M.D., professor of internal
medicine and organizer of the university's 8th Evacuation Unit
in World War II. From a portrait by Irene Higgins.

enforced only halfheartedly. Strict enforcement was decreed
by President Newcomb in the fall of 1946, pursuant to action
by the Board of Visitors, but the edict was withdrawn soon
afterward, following a student protest. It appeared that the
ban worked a hardship on many of the newly enrolled war
veterans who couldn't get living quarters near the Grounds.
The visitors revived the ban against cars for first-year men,
effective with the session of 1950-51. Transfer students and
those entering professional or graduate departments were exempt
from the prohibition, as were the physically handicapped.

Things were fairly quiet on the motor vehicle front until the
fall of 1958, when parking and traffic problems and the proliferation
of student cars to a total of over three thousand out
of four thousand six hundred enrolled caused new regulations
to be announced. The effect of these rules was that only
fourth-year men could have cars, beginning with the 1960-61
session, and no student on probation could have one. The Student
Council voted to fight the regulations and to support the
petition of first-year men for driving privileges. A few weeks
later a riot broke out, with about fifteen hundred students
participating. After the youths had surged around the Grounds
and along Main Street, some sixty police dispersed them with
tear gas. Three were arrested. Professor "Dee" Runk, in
charge of enforcing the car rules, was hanged in effigy. Shortly
thereafter about one thousand students filled Cabell Hall,
protesting the regulations as to cars and other rules deemed
objectionable. President Darden announced that "it is not my
purpose to consider grievances formulated by a segment of
the student body fresh from hanging Mr. Runk in effigy." The
students apologized, but they were determined to obtain
concessions from the administration. The young men got a
hearing before the Board of Visitors, and the rules were substantially
modified, following conferences between the students
and President Darden. Hereafter the use of a car would
be tied to grades made by the student. First-year men could
operate automobiles at Midwinters and Easters if they made
the required grade, but at no other time. Undergraduates who
were on probation or had had a warning of any kind could
not operate a motor vehicle.

The turmoil over the car regulations caused a certain

amount of tension between professors and students. In order
to lessen this feeling and promote understanding, the Student
Council initiated a series of bimonthly coffee hours, when faculty
and students would hold five simultaneous sessions in the
dormitories between 7 and 9 P.M. on designated evenings. The
first of these were largely attended and were pronounced
highly successful.

The drinking problem remained to the fore in the postwar
years. Whether there was more drinking at Virginia than elsewhere
has always been debatable, but it was more public there
in the period following the war. "Exhibition drinking," that is,
consuming grain alcohol drinks from mason jars or highballs
from glasses on University Avenue, at concerts in Cabell Hall,
or on the Lawn, made its appearance. The phrase "exhibition
drinking" had not been heard before 1946. In that year the
Interfraternity Council and the Student Council forbade such
drinking for a coming "big weekend," and "filled mason jars"
were banned both at dances in Memorial Gymnasium and at
concerts. The Student Council said the rules would be enforced.

The students seemed to go out of their way to give the university
a reputation for excessive tippling. Corks and Curls, in
particular, with its photographs of riotous parties in fraternity
houses and exaggerated descriptions of drinking bouts helped
to create this image. The myth was put forward that wassail
was even more widespread and unrestrained at the university
under prohibition and in the years that followed than in the
1950s. An article on "The Playboy Era" in the University of
Virginia Magazine in 1966 speaks of the prohibition years as
"these wild prohibition days," "this wild era" and "wild
soirées." The fact is that whereas there was wholesale violation
of the dry laws, the carryings-on were by no means as uninhibited
and wild as those of later decades at the university. For
one thing, with liquor illegal, drinking could not be nearly so
open as it subsequently became, and for another, during
much of the prohibition era girls could not even enter the
front door of a fraternity house, much less behave in the manner
depicted in innumerable photographs placed before the
public in the 1940s and later by the university annual.

Realizing in 1948 that the university was getting a bad

name, Joseph C. Carter, Jr., president of the Interfraternity
Council and later of the Student Union, wrote a guest editorial
for College Topics in which he said: "It seems that excessive
publicity is given, generally, to the drinking at the university.
We, as students, are in part responsible for such reputation as
we have. But definite allusions, such as `Purple Passion affairs,'
should be cut to the minimum, in order to counteract the public
conviction that this is an institution of alcoholism. We know
that it is not true, and it behooves us not to bray forth continually
of our capacities for consumption." Topics followed with
an editorial suggesting that "students here quit bragging
about Virginia's rather dubious distinction for drink." The
Student Council announced a crackdown on exhibition drinking
in connection with the dance concert at Openings in the
fall of 1951 and said that "the necessary disciplinary action
will be taken if this request is not carried out." A year later the
council said it would not tolerate any excessive drinking "at
football games, girls' schools and public assemblies." College
Topics issued a blast against those who were bringing the university
into disrepute with their swinish conduct. "Why can't
students of normal mentality see reckless drinking as something
that does immeasurable harm to the university?" asked
the Cavalier Daily. "Why do men who are not insane seek to
convince the public that they belong in Staunton [at the Western
State Hospital]? How can a person with some astuteness
behave as a complete ass?" Yet arguments against exhibition
drinking were met with the contention that President Darden
and others who urged that it stop were asking the students to
be hypocritical and drink, but not to drink in public. And
when the Richmond newspapers, especially the Times-Dispatch,
chronicled outrageous doings at the university or commented
adversely upon them, the papers were denounced in the Cavalier
Daily as "that bright yellow journalistic combination" and
the editor of the Times-Dispatch as an exemplar of "yellow dog
journalism."

Most of the university carousing went on during big party
weekends when girls came for the dances and other festivities
from all points of the compass. These weekends were given
enormous prominence in the Cavalier Daily, which published
the name of every girl and her date, covering many columns,

56. Buzzy Wilkinson, all-American basketball player, 1955.

and heralded the oncoming events with such across-the-page
headlines as "Weekend to Feature Bacchus, Bands, Babes"
and "Buddy, Bottles, Babes, Boogie Form Phalanx of Festivity."
The vast majority of students seemed to look forward to
these weekends with great eagerness, despite the gargantuan
hangovers that often resulted. But two prominent student
leaders, Curt Bazemore and Alfred McCormack, Jr., said that
they found these affairs to be nothing less than frightful
bores. Bazemore wrote: "After four years of them we feel as
if we were sitting in on the worst movie ever made for the
fourth straight time. How people can honestly say they have a
good time amid such screaming, shouting scenes of madness
. . . is beyond us." McCormack wrote, under the heading "University
Party—Phooey," that "one phase of university life we
can do without are big parties and big weekends such as those
given on Openings, Midwinters and Easters."

No account of the extracurricular diversions of university
students would be complete without mention of Carroll's Tea
Room, a small, one-story, two-room frame building at the corner
of Barracks Road and Route 29. It was owned, beginning
in 1941, by Carroll Walton, but he sold out later. The place
retained the name Carroll's in the 1940s and 1950s, however,
but during much of that time a current joke had it that there
was "no Carroll, no tea, and no room." Oceans of beer flowed
through Carroll's, but tea was not even kept in stock. It
claimed to sell more beer than any other emporium in Virginia,
and reportedly served as many as five thousand customers
in a day. An advertisement in 1954 said: "Did you
know we served one million people last year? Ten at a time—
all were satisfied." The congestion was fierce, for the two
rooms were only twenty by thirty feet, and hundreds of students
patronized the place every night. Some imbibed too
freely, of course, but with the undergraduates' usual penchant
for exaggerating the extent of inebriation in former days, a
student writer in 1973 said that "wild pandemonium and
drunken vigils took place nightly in Carroll's." It was indeed a
place where friends met for a seidel or two of lager in an atmosphere
of jollity and good fellowship, and some of them
got drunk. Carroll's moved in 1957 a mile and a half to the
north on Route 29, corner of Rio Road and was never the
same again.

Housing for students in the years immediately following
World War II was a serious problem, since enrollment skyrocketed
with the return of men from the service. The problem
was complicated by the fact that many of the veterans
were newly married, and a considerable number had small
children. The university accordingly bought 120 acres in 1945
from the Massie property, lying along the west side of Route
29 across from Lambeth Field and just north of the C&O Railroad
tracks. This was Copeley Hill. A hundred expansible
trailers were installed in 1946, and these were followed by
eighteen one-story frame buildings containing seventy-six
apartments. Then fifty-six more apartments, some with two
stories, were added, plus thirty faculty apartments and fourteen
two-story barracks buildings for single students. There
was also an area for privately owned house-trailers. A census
in 1950 showed 1,366 persons living on Copeley Hill, including
260 children and 450 single students. "Because the stork
is a frequent visitor, no count of the children can be accurate
for more than a few hours," said the Alumni News. A mayor
and council of eleven were elected twice yearly, and represented
the group when the university administration was considering
matters affecting the area. Wives, babies, and dogs
were important members of the community, and a general
feeling of cordiality and good relations prevailed. Residents
pitched in to build a playground, and a woman's club provided
bridge games and other recreation for the ladies.

All was serene until acrimony arose between the group that
had babies and the one that had dogs. As President Darden
relates it in his Conversations With Guy Friddell, "The parents
wanted their children to play out in the yard and the street,
and they did not want the dogs running loose . . . and knocking
their children over. The dog-people wanted the parents to
build fences around their property to keep the dogs out. . . .
One night in a discussion of the dogs-children issue, a councilman
jumped right over on another councilman and pulled
his shirt off. . . . I made up my mind that something had to be
done." Richard Poff, the future longtime member of Congress
from Roanoke and then a justice of the Virginia Supreme
Court, was a law student at the time and mayor of Copeley
Hill. Darden sent for him, and said: "I'm tired of listening to
mothers hollering at me about children and the dogs. . . . Take

it over and I'll back you up, but I want some peace and quiet."
That did it. "I never had another peep out of Copeley Hill.
Poff organized it perfectly."

The hill continued for some time to be used for student and
faculty housing. In 1960, for example, it had 250 family units
with a population of around eight hundred. All this construction,
which was never intended to be anything but temporary,
was pulled down subsequently to make way for more substantial
buildings.

In another area of the Grounds, the denizens of East and
West Lawn were unhappy in 1948 over the lack of adequate
bathing and shaving facilities. The East Lawn dwellers had
only one shower room with two showers and two wash basins
for about fifty men. "The razor-nicked faces of East Lawn
residents are being raised in an appeal for additional mirrors
and bowls," said the Cavalier Daily. The West Lawners, who
had been similarly dissatisfied, were rejoicing over installation
of a more adequate hot water system. "No more standing in
line to use the one hot water faucet," they said. Despite the
relatively primitive facilities on the Lawn and Ranges, these
quarters have for several decades been the most coveted
rooms in the university. In 1949 it was announced that
whereas for a good many years only Virginians had been
deemed eligible to inhabit these precincts, they would now be
thrown open to student leaders, irrespective of geographical
origin. In the summer of 1956 all student quarters on the
Lawn were rehabilitated under the supervision of Prof. Frederick
Nichols, the fireplaces and doorways restored to their
original 1825 condition, and the rooms equipped with appropriate
furniture to replace the battered and nondescript items
that had graced those chambers. Concern was expressed,
however, over "the exclusion of the single rooms . . . one of
the most popular aspects of Lawn life." The demand for
rooms on the Lawn and Ranges has long exceeded the supply.

New vitality came to the Lawn after World War II with the
reactivation of the West Lawn Chowder and Marching Society,
an ancient association of congenial spirits inhabiting the west
side of the Lawn. The society had been founded more than
half a century before but had become extinct "due to lack of
interest and chowder." In 1953 the organization changed its
name to the Lawn Chowder and Marching Society, thus making

eligible any dweller on either side of the lovely stretch of
green extending from the Rotunda to Cabell Hall, provided
he was "a great guy and a good friend." Officers were elected,
and the head marcher and chowder consumer rejoiced in the
sobriquet of "The Purple Shadow." All and sundry were assured
that the organization was "under no circumstances a
scholarship or a drinking club, but an honorary society." Another
manifesto spoke somewhat confusingly of an "Operation
Barrel," but lest this be misconstrued it was explained that
what the society is seeking is to "determine how much fun a
`barrel of monkeys' really is." Photographs of the group in
Corks and Curls show the members dressed in all varieties of
nondescript and outlandish costumes.

When not garbed for such special high jinks, Virginia men,
at least those belonging to fraternities, tended to dress very
much alike in the postwar 1940s and 1950s. In the words of
the Spectator, the typical fraternity man "wears what amounts
to a uniform, and unless he conforms to it, is ostracized by his
friends and cast into outer darkness. . . . First, he wears an
unpressed and sagging tweed coat . . . worn with the bottom
button buttoned . . . a black string tie which, by virtue of much
age and wear, has stretched to about twice its original length."
Slacks accompanied the tweed jacket, and white buckskin
shoes were often worn, sometimes with white socks. The Cavalier
Daily had a special lament: the tradition that first-year
men were supposed to wear hats went out, "but fast," after
World War II.

Normal routine at the university and all other educational institutions
was disrupted in 1950 by the outbreak of the Korean
War. Young men in college or about to matriculate were
once more uncertain as to what the future held. Enrollment at
the university in the fall of that year was 4,168, a drop of 548
compared with the total for twelve months before. This was
due, in part, to the calling up of reserves for the Korean conflict
and also to a decline in the number of students enrolled
under the GI Bill, since many of them had completed their
collegiate schooling. President Darden urged all matriculates
at the university to remain there until called. He stated that
"the best way for students to serve their country is to maintain
the highest possible level of scholarship until they are directed

to serve in other ways," and he added: "It was found during
World War II that one of the most serious weaknesses of the
military organization was the scarcity of college-trained personnel."
Defense Secretary George C. Marshall stressed the
importance of students' enrolling in reserve units and remaining
in college to complete their education and their military
training "as a patriotic duty." He described the ROTC as "a
fundamental element in all Department of Defense planning."

Unification of the armed forces at the university became a
reality when the Department of Defense authorized the establishment
there of an Air Force Reserve Officers' Training
Corps. Reserve officer units of the army and navy were already
on the Grounds. In addition, students were training in
the summers at Quantico in the platoon leaders' class for marine
corps officers.

The Navy Officer Training Corps had been functioning at
the university since 1941, and the army transportation corps
since World War II, while the Army Signal Corps established
a unit at the university in 1951. Students in these various units
who completed the required courses for the baccalaureate degree
qualified for commissions as second lieutenants or ensigns.
Twenty-five to fifty students would go to Richmond
every week for preinduction physical examinations and would
then return to Charlottesville. Many Virginia men served in
Korea; twenty-nine lost their lives.

By 1954 peacetime routine had returned, and the Cavalier
Daily was protesting "ungentlemanly conduct" by altogether
too many students. "We have more people wearing repp ties
than we have gentlemen," said the editor. "Those men who
`boo' and `hiss' in class, at movies and athletic events behave as
anything but gentlemen. . . . We have on occasion witnessed
the flagrant disregard of respect in class when members have
felt it necessary to `boo' the instructor." Accompanying this
comment was a letter from James N. Pendleton, "an off-andon
resident of Charlottesville, with a wide acquaintance
among the faculty and students," who wrote: "A number of
university students have succeeded in making the term `Virginia
gentleman' a complete and utter travesty . . . ill-bred
adolescents who, unable to hold their liquor, make asses of
themselves at so many of the sporting events . . . [and] in the

local movie houses." Not only so, but by 1958 the Cavalier Daily
said standards of dress were deteriorating shockingly: "As
each spring day moves by, the dress of a large number of students
becomes more appalling and outrageous. . . . T-shirts,
soiled sport shirts, dirty khakis and sockless feet can all be seen
at some time during a walk through the Grounds. . . . Warm
weather does not excuse such poor taste."

In the area of college politics, the University Party, controlled
by the fraternities, had long been dominant. The rival
Cavalier Party had been successful only once since the war, in
1951. Lambda Pi and Skull & Keys, two societies in the college,
were both affiliated with the University Party, which had become
so powerful that it was decided to end this arrangement
and place each society at the head of a party. For decades before
World War II such an arrangement had been in force,
with Lambda Pi heading one group and Skull & Keys the
other. During the war the navy's V-12 was so important and
influential that the two organizations felt it necessary to combine
in order to form an opposition bloc. In 1953 they decided
to separate again, and in the spring of that year the two parties
that they sponsored nominated slates. Each fraternity was
given votes in choosing the nominees, as were the residence
houses and the old dorms. Students not coming under any of
these headings were granted at-large representation in the
voting. The system seemed an improvement, and somewhat
more interest in the elections was created. The Engineering
School, with Theta Tau and Trigon as rival organizations, was
operating under a similar plan.

But even with the new and better-balanced arrangement,
there was too much indifference in the college among the rank
and file. A small segment of the student body was involved
in many forms of extracurricular activity but, as William L.
Tazewell, editor of the Cavalier Daily, expressed it, the rest of
the students "attend classes occasionally, the flicks frequently,
and have a `great time' on weekends." Two years later dismay
was still being voiced over the indifference of the average student
to university politics and all other types of politics, national
and international, as well as to "cultural and educational
events, famines, hurricanes—everything with the possible exception
of the World Series." As Staige D. Blackford, Jr.,
phrased it a few years before, "A man who might bring up the

question of world affairs at a `bull-session' is usually about as
welcome as a descendant of Thaddeus Stevens at a Daughters
of the Confederacy convention." Yet the political parties at the
university during this era at least had platforms, involving
such questions as the Honor System, dormitory living, proctors,
class cutting, parking, establishment of a student bookstore,
and so on. These platforms were given lavish publicity
in the student newspaper. Back in the 1920s there were no
platforms; two slates of candidates were nominated, but nobody
on either of them had a word to say concerning issues, if
any.

And while the great majority of undergraduates in the
1940s and 1950s also were oblivious to significant events on
the Grounds and uninterested in political or cultural movements
for the advancement of the university, the opposite was
true of the small group of student leaders. The extent and
diversity of their involvement in university affairs was highly
impressive. They served on a great variety of extracurricular
organizations and committees, such as the Student Council,
Judiciary Committee, Stadium Committee, Bad Check Committee,
Honor Committee, Student Union, Interfraternity
Council, as dorm counselors, editors of publications or officers
of the Jefferson Society, on debating teams, in the Glee Club
or dramatics, and on athletic teams, both intercollegiate and
intramural. The extraordinary extent of their involvement
made one wonder occasionally when they found time for their
studies. Yet these leaders were often excellent students.

The dorm counselors were hailed as "unsung heroes . . .
better-than-average students who take time from their own
activities to lend a helping hand to first-year men." They were
willing to be interrupted while studying and even to be awakened
in the middle of the night by distraught students, the
student newspaper said.

As a special inducement to newly arrived matriculates to
"hit the books" instead of the road to Sweet Briar or Hollins,
a chapter of Phi Eta Sigma for high-ranking freshmen scholars
was installed after World War II. An average grade of at
least 90 was required for membership. In 1951, 29 first-year
men out of 603 were initiated, the following year 35 of 523,
and the year after that 52 of 564.

57. Captain Norton Pritchett, director of athletics, 1935-51.

The university administration was in favor of adopting the
class system, Josh Darden, president of the Student Council,
informed that body in 1958. He said such a system, a subject
of discussion for many years, was regarded as promoting "togetherness"
and as enabling first-year men to adjust more
readily to college life. Also, it was seen as stimulating alumni
activity. He himself favored the class system, as did the Cavalier
Daily. But the Student Council ended by defeating the plan, 8
to 5. A few weeks later the editor of the paper overheard two
first-year men discussing the question. "What do you think of
the class system?" one asked. "Not much," was the reply. "Hell,
nobody goes to class around here anyway."

University of Virginia debating teams were making a good
record in the postwar years. In the various tournaments they
won more than 60 percent of their contests. Among those in
which they took part were the Atlantic Coast Conference debates
at Chapel Hill, the New York University tournament, the
Temple University novice tournament, and others. In 1956
the record was superlative. The university team was undefeated
in its presentation of the National College Topic for
that year, "Resolved, that the U.S. should discontinue direct
economic aid to foreign countries." Five Virginia students also
won the National Contest in Public Discussion of the Speech
Association of America, without leaving Charlottesville. It was
done with a tape recording and was a twenty-five minute exploration
of how best to carry out the U.S. Supreme Court's
decision for racial integration in the public schools. Top debaters
were elected to the national honorary debate society,
Delta Sigma Rho. Much credit for the good showing of the
university's debaters during these years was given to Dr. J. Jeffery
Auer, coauthor of a textbook in the field, and Robert C.
Jeffrey, director of debate.

Students in the McIntire undergraduate School of Commerce
tied in 1958 with those from two other institutions for
the highest score in the United States in a nationwide contest
participated in by 6,000 students from some fifty colleges and
universities. These tests were devised to evaluate qualifications
for business careers, especially those having some relationship
to accounting. University of Virginia entrants in these
contests had rated above the national average for some years.

Art and architecture students revived the Beaux Arts Ball
in 1952 after it had been abandoned for nearly a quarter of a
century. The annual event had been allowed to lapse during
the depression. More than four hundred costumed dancers
whirled about in the revived version of the ball, which took
place in the Art Museum.

Attendance at the regular dances in the Memorial Gymnasium
at Openings, Midwinters, and Easters was falling sharply
in the 1950s. Warnings were issued that the quality of the music
at these affairs would deteriorate unless there was improved
patronage. Fraternity parties were more and more to
the fore on big weekends. The Elis and Tilkas were combining
during this period to sponsor a dance each year away from
the university Grounds. In 1958, for example, it was held at
the Villa Riviera, on Route 250 east of Charlottesville.

While these two organizations had their critics, especially
during the 1960s, they also had their defenders. The critics
charged that Eli Banana and Tilka were concerned only with
sponsoring dances and having a good time and were not interested
in any sort of activity designed to improve the university
or the community. Defenders conceded that the two ribbon
societies were not endowed with a social conscience and
indeed were not panting to save mankind, but argued that
they had a useful role to play. Dean B. F. D. Runk, for example,
said he regarded the ribbon and ring societies as "part
of the hierarchy"; they were "looked upon with dignity and
respect . . . and on the whole did a great deal of good for the
university . . . a part of the tradition."

An organization which did not fall into the abovementioned
category but which undoubtedly did much constructive work
for the university was the ultrasecret Seven Society. Its insignia,
consisting of a large 7, plus alpha, omega, and what appears
to be the symbol of infinity, is seen all over the Grounds,
often in the most unexpected places. Founded just after the
turn of the century, it moves in such secrecy as to baffle those
who would penetrate its mystery. Funds for many important
causes have been contributed by the society, whose members
become known only after their deaths. A typical episode—at
commencement exercises in the late 1940s—was described in
the University of Virginia Magazine: "The speaker was concluding

his address when suddenly a small explosion was heard
just above the proscenium arch, and a piece of paper fell to
the floor . . . a check made out to the Bursar for $17,777.77.
Directions attached stipulated that the money was to be used
as a loan fund in honor of Dr. John L. Newcomb, the retiring
president of the university." New electronic chimes were provided
by the Sevens for the University Chapel in 1957, at a
cost of $9,777.77. The Sevens also donated the handsome silver
mace carried at the head of all academic processions.
When "Jim" McConnell of the Lafayette Escadrille was shot
down over the battlelines in France during World War I, "a
mysterious floral Seven appeared before his tomb—three
thousand miles from Charlottesville," wrote Henry Noble Taylor,
one of the most brilliant young journalists of his time, who
would himself be killed some years later in a crossfire in the
Congo. And in 1920, when the $423 traveling fund of the
Virginia baseball team was stolen from the team's manager in
a Washington hotel, the manager found $423 in an envelope
under his pillow, on his return to the university. With the
money was a small card bearing the "7" insignia.

The name College Topics had been considered for some years
to be provincial and inappropriate for a university publication,
and in the spring of 1948 a student poll was held to test
sentiment concerning a change. Of those taking part, 62 percent
favored a new name, and the preferred designation was
the Cavalier Daily. It was adopted in May of that year. By 1950
circulation of the paper had risen to 5,000.

Two publications of the Law School were receiving wide acclaim,
in addition to the Virginia Law Review, which had enjoyed
a national reputation from its inception. One was the
Virginia Law Weekly, adjudged year after year the best newspaper
published by students at any American law school. The
other was the Reading Guide. In a resolution passed by the
Alumni Library Committee of the Law School, this publication
was praised highly, and the committee added: "Outstanding
lawyers and judges from various parts of the country volunteered
the information that this book review had really
become their reading guide."

A widely repeated canard concerning the graduation of
Franklin D. Roosevelt, Jr., from the Law School in 1940 and
Prof. Armistead M. Dobie's appointment to a federal judgeship

58. Tom Scott, the university's first
two-sport all-American—in football,
1952, and lacrosse, 1953.

was finally laid to rest in 1954. Fulton Lewis, Jr., a university
alumnus who conducted a nationally broadcast radical
right-wing radio program, stated over the air that young Roosevelt's
grades were so low that his father had to agree to make
Professor Dobie a federal judge and deliver the address at Finals
in order for young Roosevelt to graduate. Officials of the
Law School wrote Lewis immediately that "Roosevelt's grades
are available at the registrar's office and are far better than
Lewis assumed." It also was pointed out that Dobie had been
named to the federal bench approximately one year before
the younger Roosevelt graduated. About the only accurate
statement had been that President Roosevelt did make the
Commencement address in 1940—at which time he took occasion
to denounce Mussolini of Italy for plunging his dagger
into the back of his neighbor, France. Fulton Lewis made a
complete retraction and apology, as requested by the Law
School. He said he had heard the story from many directions
and had received letters on the subject from prominent lawyers.

Robert F. Kennedy, who would later serve as Attorney General
in the cabinet of his brother, President John F. Kennedy,
was a 1951 law graduate. He was president of the Student
Legal Forum and brought to the university as speakers many
prominent Washington figures, including Thurmond Arnold,
Arthur Krock, William O. Douglas, Ralph Bunche, James M.
Landis, and Joseph McCarthy. He was complimented on the
quality of his programs.

Edward M. (Ted) Kennedy, brother of "Bobby" and "Jack"
also was a Law School graduate (1959). Some alumni and others
objected strongly to his admission, since he had been suspended
at Harvard for cheating. The rationale for allowing
him to enter seems to have been that since he had been readmitted
to Harvard, had successfully completed the course
there, and had been certified by Harvard's dean as a student
and graduate "in good standing," there was no valid basis for
refusing him admission to Virginia. Like his brother, he was
president of the Legal Forum there. He won the moot court
competition, although his professors said he was only an average
student.

The academic deans decided a few years later, in the early
1960s, that there would be no further admission of students

who had been disciplined in other colleges for lying, cheating,
or stealing.

The Virginia Business Review, said to be the first publication
of its kind issued by an undergraduate School of Business,
appeared at the university in 1958, sponsored by the McIntire
School. The Review was issued in the spring and fall and was
widely distributed to businessmen, corporations, and educators
in the eastern United States. Each number was underwritten
by one or two Virginia industries or businesses.

The university had "the only Speech and Drama graduate
program in the Atlantic Coast states between Florida and New
York," according to Professor Jeffery Auer, chairman of the
Department of Speech and Drama. The Virginia Players, in
addition to their regular series of five public dramatic productions,
scheduled an annual Shakespearean play. High school
students from throughout central Virginia were invited to a
special performance; in each of several years during the 1950s
about seven hundred of these students saw such plays as Othello
and Romeo and Juliet. Other shows of a different type were
presented during this period by the Punch and Julep Club,
founded in 1953 and giving one performance annually.

The Glee Club was providing musical entertainment at the
university and for alumni chapters in various cities. It offered
"serious choral literature" as well as lighter numbers. Frequent
concerts with nearby women's colleges provided opportunities
for music with both male and female voices.

The university marching and concert band had come in for
much adverse criticism over the years, but now an organization
had been put together that evoked high praise. "Around
this school," said the Cavalier Daily, "there has always been a
lot of criticism of almost everything. Dissatisfaction with the
status quo has almost become a standard characteristic of the
standard `Virginia gentleman.' . . . It is now time to commend
and congratulate the university band for a surprising recovery
and a fine showing at last Saturday's athletic endeavor." President
Darden had set up a faculty committee in the spring of
1959, and a $12,000 appropriation had been obtained for uniforms,
instruments, and facilities. Director Sidney P. Hodkinson
of the music faculty was in charge, and much favorable
comment was heard. But a few years later there were renewed
laments and criticisms, and the football cocaptains were meeting

with the band to try to solve the shortcomings. Membership
in the band had shrunk to twenty-five.

A Rifle and Pistol Club was formed to promote target shooting
and hold rifle and pistol competitions. The club also sent
teams to compete in National Rifle Association matches.

Opening of the radio station WUVA, owned and operated
by students, was a feature of the year 1947, and it soon became
well established. From a modest beginning it gradually
expanded its programming and coverage. The "Cavalier
Magazine of the Air" was used as a nucleus at first, Martin
Hiden was the manager, and music was the principal offering,
plus student forums, group discussions, and newscasts from
United Press. Athletic events that were not being broadcast by
anyone else were covered. WUVA claimed to have "the widest
coverage of any station of its type." Revenue was obtained
from advertising. By 1952 it was on the air daily from "Yawn
Patrol" at 7 A.M. to 1 A.M. Four years later it began to devote
itself mainly to popular music. In 1962 it affiliated with the
Columbia Broadcasting System, broadcasting CBS programs
and five newscasts daily.

Another radio station, WTJU, began broadcasting on the
Grounds in 1956. It was organized as an extension of the
Speech and Drama Department under the direction of
George P. Wilson and has always been a nonprofit and noncommercial
FM station, owned by the university's rector and
visitors and supported by student fees and contributions. Only
classical music was played at first, but the station later broadcast
a much greater variety of music. Both WTJU and WUVA
serve as training grounds for careers in radio.

Religious life at the university during the years following
World War II was well organized and included a diversified
series of programs under the leadership of the Reverend Oscar
B. Woolridge, Jr., secretary of the YMCA. On the agenda
were regular services at the chapel, student and faculty meetings
for discussion of contemporary religious problems, interfaith
conferences, and the annual University Preaching Series,
during which classes were suspended. (The shade of Thomas
Jefferson must have shuddered at this class suspension!) The
annual Richards Foundation Lectures on Religion were given
by a noted scholar or churchman. Other such lectures were

presented each Sunday evening in Madison Hall by members
of the faculty.

Programs and services were sponsored by the Interfaith
Council, composed of two representatives of each denomination
or faith, to promote greater understanding and cooperation
among Protestants, Catholics, and Jews. Voluntary services,
conducted by students, and with a faculty member or Charlottesville
pastor as speaker, were being held on Sunday and
Wednesday afternoons in the chapel. The Sunday services included
musical programs by visiting choirs from colleges and
prep schools around the state. Closer relations between faculty
and students were promoted by a series of student meetings
in the homes of professors. Such subjects as "Christianity
and Communism" and "What Constitutes the Educated Man?"
were discussed.

Student groups sponsored by local churches were cooperating
with the "Y." They included the Canterbury Club, Episcopal;
Wesley Foundation, Methodist; Westminster Club, Presbyterian;
Baptist Students Union; Unitarian Student Club;
Newman Club for Catholics; and Hillel Foundation for Jews.

Students guided underprivileged Charlottesville youths in
an athletic and recreational program, under the auspices of
the Belmont Boys Club and sponsorship of the "Y."

The YMCA also sponsored frequent recreational programs
for students at Madison Hall, including dances and buffet suppers.
These were said to be especially popular during university
dance weekends.

When the "Y" celebrated its centennial in 1958, there was a
yearlong program of lectures and other events. Eminent religious
leaders from Oxford, Harvard, and elsewhere participated.
Daniel L. Gibbs, Jr., director of the "Y," arranged the
program, in cooperation with a faculty committee headed by
Prof. Hardy C. Dillard. Woodrow Wilson had been the
speaker in 1905 when Madison Hall was dedicated.

The Newman Club, headquarters of the Roman Catholic
students, acquired a new home on Jefferson Park Avenue in
1958. A large building was purchased and converted. The
Baptist Student Union obtained a new home the following
year, also on Jefferson Park Avenue, replacing the organization's
headquarters adjoining the University Baptist Church.
Weekly Saturday night suppers were scheduled, and study

hall, recreation, and counseling for students also were on the
program.

A University of Virginia athlete who had an international impact
after World War II was Harold M. Burrows, Jr., of Charlottesville.
He was tennis captain for three years and winner
of the Virginia state men's singles in each of those years.
Known as "Prince Hal" for his attractive personality and fine
court manners, he also was a star in intramural athletics. Following
graduation he began playing the national and international
tennis circuit. Burrows defeated thirty-three members
of Davis Cup teams from various countries in matches all over
the world, including Drobny of Czechoslovakia, at that time
the number one player in Europe. In his best year he ranked
eleventh in the United States. As a doubles player, teamed
with Straight Clark, he won many matches against internationally
ranked players, notably Lew Hoad and Ken Rosewall,
whom Burrows and Clark prevented from winning the
"grand slam." Hoad and Rosewall had taken the Australian,
French, and Wimbledon titles, but they lost to Burrows and
Clark in the national grass-court doubles finals at Brookline,
Mass. The American team ranked number three in the United
States.

Tennis was one of the most successful of all sports at Virginia,
thanks to such stars as Hal Burrows and Alphonso
Smith, and to Carl ("Red") Rohmann, who coached the Cavalier
teams for twenty-eight years. The team usually won the
great majority of its matches, but the university did not provide
tennis scholarships and was at a serious disadvantage in
competing with institutions that offered them. Red Rohmann
said that "the best team we ever had was when Shelton Horsley
was captain in 1950."

Boxing was resumed full blast in 1946, and the Cavaliers
won five of six dual matches, losing to Wisconsin, the national
champions, 4-½ to 3-½. Virginia was runner-up to Army in
the Eastern Intercollegiates. A gratifying accolade came to the
Cavaliers in 1947. They were barely defeated by Syracuse at
the university, but "the ovations given Syracuse before and
after the bouts were . . . the finest reception ever given a visiting
team," R. D. Simmons, head coach of Syracuse, wrote.
"The sportsmanship shown by everyone was of the finest order."

59. Mrs. A. E. Walker, hostess at the
Student Union for 35 years and
friend and counselor to countless students.

The following year Virginia won the Eastern Intercollegiates
for the first time, six individual championships going to
the orange and blue. The six winners were the three Miragliotta
brothers, Jimmy, Basil, and Joe; Grover Masterson,
Ralph Shoaf, and Allen Hollingsworth.

Lacrosse, wrestling, and soccer were recognized as major
sports during these years.

An editorial on athletics entitled "Failure to Educate" appeared
in the Alumni News for November 1948 and caused
much discussion. The author was Marvin B. Perry, Jr., '40,
managing editor of the paper, later a dean at Virginia and
president of Goucher College. He said, in part:

Praise from alumni in letters to the Alumni News was almost
unanimous, although many who disagreed evidently didn't
trouble to write. A notable dissenter who did so was Harrison
Mann, '31. He wrote that "considering the editorial in a vacuum,
possibly it is theoretically correct, but I submit that the
alumni who did something about the problem facing the university
in the thirties were not dealing with a theory but with
a fact." Mann went on to say that "an `interest' in the football
team increased alumni interest generally and brought more
alumni back to the university, and in time created a better understanding
of its problems. . . . The common recognition
among the alumni who supported the `scholarship' program
that football was not an end in itself conspired to turn the
energies of these same men into other fields of alumni endeavor.
. . . It was largely this self-same group of alumni who
were responsible for the annual alumni-giving drive which has
done so much for every phase of the university's life."

Football at Virginia after the war was in a stronger than normal
position, thanks to a stellar group of athletes from all over

the country brought in by the naval units and to Coaches Murray
and Guepe. Murray left in 1945 but the team continued
winning under Guepe.

The most sensational victory of all occurred in 1947 when
Harvard was trounced 47-0 at Scott Stadium, the worst defeat
sustained by the crimson since 1884. It was the first trip any
Harvard football team had made into the South, and this was
supposedly the best eleven they had fielded in fifteen years.
The famous columnist Red Smith wrote in his New York Herald
Tribune sports column that Harvard's defeat was "the most
terrific triumph for the cornpone aristocracy since the first
Bull Run." He added that "last year they beat Princeton
[20-6] . . . the first time they'd ever scored against the Tigers,
too." The Harvard game was notable also for the fact that
Chester Pierce, a black, was in the Harvard lineup. No Virginia
team had ever played against a black before, and it had
hardly ever happened in the South. Careful preparations
were made at the university for this precedent-shattering
event, and it was stressed to the students that the entire country
would be watching. All went smoothly; Pierce was applauded
as he left the lineup. "I have never seen a better-conducted
crowd at a football game," President Darden said.
Harvard coach Dick Harlow declared that Virginia "played as
clean football as any team I have seen in a long time." Members
of that eleven, which lost only to North Carolina and Tulane
during the season, included Grover Jones, John Papit,
George Grimes, Bruce Bailey, George Neff, Joe Kirkland, Billy
Pennell, Lockwood Frizzell, Joe McCary, Bob Weir, John
Thomas, and Ray Brown. Several of these would star in the
future, and fullback Papit would be chosen a first-team allAmerican
by NEA in 1949. He was the first college back to
gain over one thousand yards in each of three seasons. Papit
joined the Washington Redskins in 1950 and two years later
was traded to the Green Bay Packers.

Art Guepe had seven winning seasons at Virginia before
leaving in 1953 to become head coach at Vanderbilt. On his
teams were two other all-Americans in addition to Papit. One
was Joe Palumbo, captain and guard on the 1951 team, chosen
by Associated Press and NEA to the first eleven, and Tom
Scott, defensive end, a first-string Associated Press selection in
1952. Scott went to the Philadelphia Eagles and finished his

career with the New York Giants as an all-pro linebacker. As a
lacrosse player at Virginia, Scott was also given honorable
mention for all-American.

The University Senate ruled in 1951 that although many of
Virginia's rivals were playing first-year men on their varsity
teams, the university could not do so. This ruling was reaffirmed
the following year.

The University of Virginia had made it clear by 1949 that it
had no intention of abiding by the so-called sanity code of the
National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA). This code
had been devised, it was said, in order to avoid excessive commercialism.
It provided that athletes could receive pay only if
they performed work in jobs around the institution. The university
refused to create phony jobs in order to meet this provision,
and declared frankly that it was giving athletic scholarships.
The Student Aid Foundation had just been organized
for the purpose, with Robert V. Hatcher, '23, as president. In
refusing to abide by the sanity code the university was risking
expulsion from the NCAA. However, that body not only decided
against penalizing Virginia; it dropped the sanity code.

The university received a shattering blow in 1951 when
Capt. Norton Pritchett, age fifty-seven, director of athletics
since 1935, died of a heart attack. He had done much to improve
the athletic situation at Virginia, both intercollegiate
and intramural. Admired by all, Captain Pritchett had been a
strong and consistent influence for clean competition and
aboveboard standards. Chauncey Durden, sports editor of the
Richmond Times-Dispatch, termed him "gentleman and sportsman,"
and said that whereas Pritchett had great hopes for the
sanity code when it was introduced, "his brilliant speech [at
the 1949 meeting of the NCAA] sealed the doom" of the code.
When Captain Pritchett died, Durden wrote: "Poised, handsome
and intellectual, `Cap' was an imposing figure when he
faced an audience. His voice was of finest timbre and his diction
was perfect. His sincerity was overwhelming. There was
a man." President Darden said, "His youthful enthusiasm, his
unimpeachable integrity, and his deep love for everything
connected with the university, won for him the admiration
and affection of all with whom he worked." His portrait was
presented to the Athletic Department in 1955.

60. Fredson T. Bowers, professor of
English and dean of the faculty of
Arts and Sciences.

[ILLUSTRATION]

61. Ralph W. Cherry, dean of the
School of Education, 1956-68.

Another setback was sustained when Robert (Pic) Fuller,
head coach of lacrosse, assistant football coach, and sometime
wrestling coach, left in 1953 to enter private business. He "virtually
fathered lacrosse as a major sport and coached the Cavaliers
to three winning seasons and a share of the national
championship in 1952" with Rensselaer Polytechnic, said the
Cavalier Daily. First-team all-Americans at Virginia from 1948
to 1954 were Bobby Proutt, Billy Hooper (twice), Gordon
Jones, Tom Compton, and Jimmy Grieves. Pic Fuller was so
highly regarded that the Raven Society gave him a farewell
dinner at which he was presented with a silver cocktail shaker
and tray.

A monumental hullaballoo erupted in 1951 when the
Gooch Report on athletics was issued. Prof. Robert K. Gooch,
a Rhodes Scholar and onetime star athlete, was chairman of a
faculty committee appointed to make recommendations concerning
the university's athletic policy. The other members
were Professors Arthur Kyle Davis, Jr., also a Rhodes Scholar,
and Jesse Beams, the internationally famous physicist.

The committee recommended that all athletic scholarships
be eliminated and that the faculty be given back control of
athletics. It expressed a preference for abandonment of intercollegiate
football at Virginia, rather than continue prevailing
policies. The report declared that the university had surrendered
"to `big time' athletics," and referred to "various reprehensible
aspects of the present situation . . . abuses resulting
from athletic scholarships, athletic activities of student aid
foundations and the like . . . institutional payment for the academic
coaching of athletes, pressure—especially on younger
instructors—for grades or continuance in the course . . . the
withdrawal of athletes at the end of the season, and so on."
The committee's definition of "reprehensible" apparently differed
from that of the Cavalier Daily, which said that "nowhere
does the report intimate that there is any malpractice involved
in the administration of Virginia's athletic program." The faculty
of the College of Arts and Sciences endorsed the Gooch
Report's recommendations overwhelmingly, but the faculties
of the other schools rejected the report "after trying to revise
it," the Cavalier Daily said.

Many alumni were furious. The Alumni News referred to
their "outraged shrieks," and the Board of Managers of the

alumni association declared unanimously in formal resolutions
that the report "was conceived, formulated and presented
in an unreasonable, unfair and misleading manner." It
"smelled of high treason," in the view of many, the News declared.
Irate alumni were asking two questions: "What has the
faculty to say about the source of any student's means as long
as he passes his work, and . . . who in heaven's name chose
such a miserable time to bring forth anything that could be
construed as criticism of the university's athletic program?"
Virginia was having a series of highly successful football seasons.
There had been recent scandals at other institutions, and
the Gooch Report's criticisms and conclusions were seen as implying
that there might be similar irregularities at Charlottesville.
Professors Gooch, Davis, and Beams, whose motives
were above reproach, were abused and attacked by some
alumni and their integrity was impugned.

President Darden pointed out that no university or state
funds were being used for the athletic scholarships and that
of eighty-one students who earned football letters from 1945
to 1948, no fewer than fifty-two received academic degrees,
or 64.2 percent, as against 67.3 percent for the college as a
whole. And while the athletic scholarships being given were
larger than any offered for academic achievement, they covered
only room, board, tuition, and books, the News pointed
out. It also mentioned that athletic aid would be withdrawn if
the grantee failed to advance toward a degree and that revenue
from successful football teams helped pay for other intercollegiate
sports and for intramurals. "To give up football,
which means so much to student, teacher and alumnus alike,
is unthinkable," said the News.

Another furor arose when President Darden announced in
November 1951 that although Virginia had won eight games
that fall and lost only one, the team would not be permitted to
accept a "bowl bid," if one were received. There were howls
from many alumni over this, but Charles R. Fenwick, a former
football star at Virginia and supporter of athletic scholarships,
said that Darden was right. Bowls are "totally unnecessary and
make no contribution to the soundness of the game," said Fenwick.
He also urged elimination of spring practice.

The Cavalier Daily pointed out early in 1952 that the recommendations
of the much-denounced Gooch Report were

similar to those of the American Council on Education. It
added that "there are some athletes here that dress and act
more like gorillas than gentlemen." The paper drew solace
from the fact that "requirements established for the rewarding
of scholarships next year show that steps are being taken
to remedy this situation." This was apparently the only tangible
result that flowed from the Gooch Report.

Virginia's seven winning football seasons under Coach Art
Guepe were suddenly terminated when Guepe accepted an
offer to be head coach at Vanderbilt. The university entered
immediately into a staggering series of almost unbroken defeats.

The Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) had just been formed,
and there was hot debate as to whether the university should
join. President Darden and Rector Barron F. Black opposed
the move, while Athletic Director Gus Tebell backed it
strongly. A poll of students returned a majority in favor of
joining. When the Board of Visitors met, Darden and Black
expressed opposition, as did a considerable percentage of
alumni. Opponents argued that some of the members of the
ACC had few if any standards of eligibility and that Virginia
would end up in the cellar. But the board voted 6 to 4 to accept
the invitation to join, thus terminating seventeen years
during which the university was not a member of any conference.
Doubts as to the wisdom of the move were soon heightened
by a series of disastrous football seasons, and Corks and
Curls said, "We find ourselves against a number of colleges
believing in `big time' athletics in every respect. Perhaps we
are over our heads."

Further grief came to the student body with the passing of
Seal, the much beloved canine mascot of Virginia teams. Seal
was a cross-eyed black mongrel mutt who attended all games
and many other university functions and distinguished himself
particularly in 1949 at the Virginia-Penn football game in
Philadelphia. Seal was about ten years old when he succumbed
in late 1953 to a combination of ailments. He was buried with
ceremonies and tributes accorded few citizens of the university
community. The "V" Club was in charge of arrangements
and the Athletic Department paid for the casket and gravediggers.
Some two thousand persons turned out for the procession
from the University Hospital, where Seal died, to the

grave just outside the University Cemetery. The cortege was
led by the University Band playing the Dead March; a giantsized
portrait of the deceased was carried by admirers, an elegant
hearse bore the remains, and it was followed by a black
Cadillac containing "student dignitaries." The flag in front of
the Rotunda was at half-mast as the procession passed. Pallbearers
at the cemetery were leading student athletes. Seven
handsome wreaths from that number of organizations, including
Eli, Tilka, and Z, decorated the grave. Dr. Charles J.
Frankel, varsity team doctor, delivered the funeral oration.

Seal had made himself more or less immortal by showing
his contempt for the opposition in no uncertain terms during
the half at the Pennsylvania football game in 1949. As described
by Jack Hunter, editor of the Cavalier Daily: "Slowly he
walked from midfield to the Quaker side. Indifferently he inspected
their cheerleading appurtenances. Eighty thousand
people watched with bated breath. Coolly, insolently Seal
lifted a leg—the rest is history." One of the Pennsylvania
cheerleader's megaphones had been copiously irrigated, to
raucous applause from the Cavalier contingent in the stands.
Seal was known from time to time thereafter as Caninus Megaphonus
Pennsylvanus.

Dr. Frankel's brief funeral oration was built around this piquant
episode. "I can see Seal now," he declared, "leading the
celestial parade with golden hydrants and gilded megaphones
at his disposal. . . . I know of no other individual at the university,
or animal, who could attract as many mourners to his
funeral. Of course, none of us has ever had the same opportunity
with a megaphone." Taps was sounded and the program
ended with "The Good Old Song." Seal's grave was next
to Beta's near the cemetery entrance; it was later marked with
a headstone similar to Beta's, bearing Seal's likeness, and with
lines that spoke of him as "Mascot and Friend of the Students
of the University."

There was never another dog around the Grounds with an
appeal comparable to that of Seal or his charismatic predecessor,
Beta. A nondescript hound named Nasty, or Nasty N.
Dog, seemed a possible successor. But Nasty was hit by a beer
truck and killed after only two years as the "official barker and
mascot." He never really caught on.

This was a dismal era for Virginia football, but there were

some bright spots. Mel Roach was a fine quarterback as well as
a good basketball player and a particular star in baseball. As a
second baseman he had offers from several big league teams,
and he signed with the Milwaukee Braves. Gus Tebell called
Roach "the finest all-around athlete I've seen in my 23 years
here." Joe Hicks, a hard-hitting Virginia outfielder, signed
with the Chicago White Sox and played for ten years in the
major leagues.

Other outstanding football stars were fullback Jim Bakhtiar,
chosen by Look magazine in 1957 on its first-string all-American
team, after he had led the ACC in rushing, and tackle
Henry Jordan. Jordan would later be a mainstay of the championship
Green Bay Packers and one of the top professional
football players in the country. At the university he was also
heavyweight wrestling champion of the ACC, winning thirtyseven
dual and tournament matches during his college career
and losing only one dual and three tournament matches. He
was runner-up for the NCAA heavyweight championship.

In basketball Buzzy Wilkinson was all-American in 1955. He
set university records in points scored, best scoring average,
most field goals, and most free throws scored. He also holds
the university record for best single season average, with 32.1
points, tops in the U.S., and 30.1 the preceding year. No University
of Virginia player before or since has approached these
figures. Yet in 1954 Virginia finished seventh in the ACC and
in 1955 sixth. Wilkinson's jersey was retired; Bill Dudley was
the only other university athlete who had received this honor.
It would be accorded Barry Parkhill, the all-American basketball
player, in later years.

The year 1954 was marked by a special event: Mary Slaughter,
daughter of Edward R. (Butch) Slaughter, the admired
coach of several sports at Virginia over the years, was awarded
a varsity letter in tennis, the first woman in the history of the
institution to be so honored. She won the Women's Eastern
Intercollegiate title.

And in 1957 Mebane (Meb) Turner, captain and star of the
university's wrestling team, went on to win the 174-pound
Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) championship. He was invited
to travel with the national AAU team on a summer tour of
Japan. Turner was later president of the University of Baltimore.

62. Colgate Darden, president of the university, 1947-59, and
his wife, Constance.

Pop Lannigan, whose Virginia basketball teams won 290
games and lost only 90, was elected posthumously to the College
Basketball Hall of Fame.

Archie Hahn, who succeeded Lannigan as track coach, died
in 1955 after a year of ill health. Hahn had produced some
stellar track and field men and Virginia recordholders. He
came to Virginia from Princeton and was track coach for
twenty-two years. As a student at the University of Michigan
he performed the astonishing feat of winning the 60, the 100,
and the 200 meters at the Olympic Games at St. Louis in 1904.

There was a flurry of discussion at this time as to the advisability
of returning to cardinal red and silver gray as the university's
colors. Orange and blue had been adopted in the late
nineteenth century, in part because red and gray dyes were
said to be unsatisfactory. But now this situation had changed
for the better, it was argued, and a few students and alumni
were sentimentally drawn to the symbolism of the earlier
colors, representing the Confederate uniform stained with
blood. Nothing came of it.

Football went from disaster to disaster. Ned McDonald, who
had succeeded Art Guepe as coach, resigned, and Ben S. Martin
of the U.S. Naval Academy's coaching staff took his place.
Martin gave up after two years. As an example of what he had
to contend with, Virginia lost the opening game in 1959 to
William and Mary 37-0, and the next nine games, nearly all
of them by equally lopsided scores. Joseph W. Dunn, Jr., an
alumnus, wrote that the William and Mary game was "the
most miserable exhibition of half-hearted, I-don't-give-a-damn
attitude ever put on by a college as large as the university."
Martin was succeeded by Richard Voris, line coach at the U.S.
Military Academy. He left after two years. Virginia football
had hit an all-time low. Only one game out of ten had been
won in 1958, and all ten were lost in 1959 and again in 1960.
In other words, the Cavaliers lost twenty-eight straight—close
to a national record.

There was far better performance in the somewhat exotic
game of polo. Launched in 1953 by a small group of interested
students, polo at Virginia soon was ranked with the best
in the nation. Part of Brook Hill Farm, owned by Prof. E. J.
Oglesby of the Engineering School, was rented by the polo
enthusiasts, and funds were raised from various sources.

Among the contributors were playboy Porfiro Rubirosa and
Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo, each of whom gave $500.
Don Hannah, a fourth-year student and the leader in getting
polo started at Virginia, was the first captain of the team and
a nationally ranked player. Other outstanding captains were
Malarkey Wall and Dick Riemenschneider, the last-named
rated in 1957 the number one player in the United States.
Virginia's rivalry with Yale was a particular feature, and the
Cavaliers defeated the Elis twice in succession during these
years. They also downed Cornell, another national power in
polo. Virginia came close to winning the national championship
in 1957. The Cavaliers defeated Cornell but lost to Yale
10-9 in the finals. Some two thousand spectators often turned
out during Easters at Brook Hill Farm to see the matches.

The University of Virginia and Washington and Lee lacrosse
teams combined in the summer of 1959 for a tour of
Australia. The Virginia team had toured England five years
previously, winning eight games and losing one. Eugene F.
(Gene) Corrigan, athletic director at Washington and Lee, arranged
the Australian tour before coming to Virginia as lacrosse
and soccer coach. The young men from both institutions
were lavishly entertained "down under," and much good
will was displayed. There were toasts at banquets and an exchange
of gifts. The Virginia and W&L players seemed to be
on friendly terms throughout, despite hot rivalry at home.
Student newspapers at the two universities were careful to
make only sportsmanlike references to one another's athletic
teams, but they not infrequently took digs at each other in
areas having to do with academics or social behavior. For example,
when the internationally famous British historian Arnold
Toynbee delivered a series of lectures at W&L, the Cavalier
Daily asked sneeringly why on earth Toynbee had
accepted this invitation from "the academy across the mountains,"
given its "comparative educational insignificance." And
Ring Tum Phi at the Lexington institution was not averse to
making pointed remarks concerning the supposed alcoholic
consumption of the average Wahoo.

Intramurals at Virginia took a great leap forward in 1957
when Butch Slaughter was placed in charge. Under his able
and imaginative leadership this branch of sport came to occupy
an increasingly important role in the university's affairs.

The long-anticipated campaign for a field house at the university
was launched in 1959 under the auspices of the alumni
association. At a dinner in Newcomb Hall $500,000 was announced
as the immediate goal, with Lawrence Lewis, Jr.,
president of the association, and W. Wright Harrison, president
of the People's National Bank of Charlottesville, as cochairmen
of the drive. Memorial Gymnasium had been outgrown
years before, and an adequate intercollegiate athletic
center was, by common consent, the greatest single athletic
need of the university. The site had been chosen on Copeley
Hill, directly across Emmet Street from Lambeth Field.

6. SIX

Significant
Progress under Darden

FAR FROM BEING a handicap, Colgate Darden's service was
governor was a great asset to him in his university presidency.
Some felt that a politician without experience in academe
would not have the know-how and background to be a
successful educational executive, but matters turned out decidedly
otherwise. As governor, Darden had been able to obtain
long-deferred aid for the university through larger state
appropriations and also to learn much concerning the institution's
needs and goals. In addition, he had solidified his
friendships in the legislature, so that when he took over the
presidency of the university, he was successful in obtaining
funds to cover essential improvements.

In fact, the finesse that he exhibited in dealing with the lawmakers
left experienced observers shaking their heads in admiration.
Carter Lowance, confidential brain truster to half a
dozen governors, was awe-struck. He said concerning Darden's
modus operandi: "When he became president of the
University of Virginia, he became the only head of a state institution
in my memory who was able to submerge dollar figures
of his budget in such philosophical rhetoric as to emerge
with near unanimous legislative approval without his ever having
mentioned the sum total of his requests."

President Darden was anxious to increase the number of high
school graduates attending the university, and many of his
plans and programs were directed toward that end. The statistics

were discouraging. Of 352 accredited high schools in
the commonwealth, only 54 sent students to the university
during the session of 1950-51. Richmond's two high schools
for whites, Thomas Jefferson and John Marshall, sent only 38
graduates to Virginia during the three years ended in 1950
out of 750 to 800 who went to college from those schools. The
great majority were attending VPI, VMI, and William and
Mary.

An orientation period was instituted at the opening of the
1948-49 session for the benefit of the first-year men. It lasted
for four days, and the new students were given a number of
tests preliminary to their enrollment, were told about the university
and its student activities, and became acquainted with
one another. Dean James H. Newman organized the affair; it
was felt to have been a success and worthy of continuance.

Separation of the College into Upper and Lower Divisions
was announced during the same session. As explained by
Dean Ivey Lewis, "The plan involves closer supervision of the
younger and less experienced students, more encouragement
to good academic performance, and increasing freedom for
those students who demonstrate their ability to do good work
at the college level." He added that "normally a student will be
enrolled in the lower Division for his first two sessions and
earn advancement to the Upper Division by successful completion
of the program of studies advised by the Lower Division."
As soon as the new dormitories could be completed they
would be used by the new students, and would be units of the
Lower Division.

The university now was operating on a two-semester basis
for the nine-month session instead of the previous three
terms. The summer session was accordingly revised, and instead
of two terms of thirty class days each, it became a single
eight-week session of forty-eight class days. For the session of
1948-49, summer enrollment was 1,862 as compared with
1,598 for the year before. This substantial increase contrasted
with the decline in enrollment being experienced in nearly all
the large summer schools in the United States.

Faculty salaries were being raised during these years. There
was marked improvement in the late 1940s, and then a substantial
increase was announced in 1955, to be financed, in

63. Roberta Hollingsworth Gwathmey, dean of women,
1934-67.

part, by higher student tuition. The Medical School did not
share in this latest advance since salary adjustments had been
made there the year before.

Enrollment in the university, which had been falling for several
sessions, was taking an upward turn in 1954 and was just
under three thousand six hundred when classes closed for the
Christmas recess. It had gone beyond five thousand immediately
after World War II. Distinctly better work was being
done by entering students. Credit for this improved showing
was being given, in part, to the president's plan for supervision
of the first-year men in the new residence houses.

Since 1952 out-of-state students applying for admission had
been required, with a few exceptions, to take college board
examinations, and this requirement was extended in 1957 to
Virginia applicants. The University of Virginia thus became
the first state university in the country to rule that all persons
seeking admission must take the college boards.

In order to bring persons of distinction or promise to the
university for scholarly research, the Alumni Board of Trustees
of the Endowment Fund established the Thomas Jefferson
Fellowships. The sum of $15,000 was made available for the
session of 1953-54, and the plan was to make a similar
amount available each year. Grants would average about
$3,000 annually, but might go as high as $5,000 for research
in literature, the arts, or the sciences in materials available at
the university.

A number of important shifts in administrative positions
took place in the mid-1950s.

Vincent Shea, bursar and administrative assistant to the
president as well as secretary to the Board of Visitors, was elevated
to the new post of comptroller, created by the board.
Shea became a key figure in the university's affairs, with great
behind-the-scenes influence over many aspects of the institution's
life. In fact it would probably be fair to say that for a few
decades nobody in the institution except the president was as
quietly potent as he. Admirably trained, with a fine business
mind, his influence was decidedly salutary.

Francis L. Berkeley, Jr., university archivist and library curator,
was persuaded by President Darden in 1953 to take over
the secretaryship of the Board of Visitors, succeeding Vincent

Shea. A recognized authority in the archival field, Berkeley
had been with the library for a decade and a half, interrupted
by war service, and had performed valiantly, touring the state
for years rounding up manuscripts for the Alderman archives.
He demurred when approached by Darden, for he realized
that the profferred post was a demanding one, and he
wanted to remain where he was. He had returned the previous
year from ten months in England and Scotland under a
Fulbright grant, during which he had uncovered valuable material
having to do with Virginia's colonial past. It was his desire
to do some writing in that field. However, in response to
the president's urging, he consented to accept the secretaryship
of the Board of Visitors. It was the beginning of some
two decades of service rendered by Frank Berkeley to the university
in areas largely divorced from his archival specialty.
First he was secretary to the visitors, and when Edgar Shannon
was elected president, succeeding Colgate Darden, Shannon
prevailed on Berkeley to become his executive assistant,
and Weldon Cooper was chosen secretary of the board and
administrative assistant to the president.

George O. Ferguson, Jr., retired in 1951 as dean of college
admissions after a quarter of a century in that position. He
served as acting dean of the college following the retirement
of Ivey F. Lewis in 1953 and then was appointed dean—the
second time that he had held the position. In addition, Dean
Ferguson had been registrar since 1946, and for thirty-five
years had taught educational psychology. He was for many
years faculty representative on the Athletic Council and
helped to organize the Southern Conference when its membership
ranged from Virginia to Louisiana.

With Ferguson's relinquishment of control over admissions,
a new arrangement was made, with a five-member faculty
committee and a director of admissions. Richard R. Fletcher
was named to the latter post, but a year later was appointed
director of student affairs, in which position he became a
storm center, as noted in the previous chapter. He resigned in
1954 to become general secretary of the Sigma Nu Greek letter
fraternity. Fletcher was tendered a farewell dinner by sixty
residence hall counselors who presented him with an engraved
silver tray in appreciation of his "19 years of unselfish

service to the University of Virginia." When "Dick" Fletcher
joined the university staff he was director of first-year athletics
and head coach of football, basketball, and baseball.

As successor to Fletcher, Raymond C. Bice, assistant professor
of psychology and a superlative lecturer, was appointed
director of admissions for the college. In order to facilitate his
work and provide prompt information concerning the admissions
picture, "Ray" Bice performed the amazing feat of inventing
a computer from parts taken from pinball machines
confiscated by the Danville police. A decade would pass before
digital computers would be placed on the market, which
meant that he had to put together miscellaneous parts from
pinball machines with little to go on except his own ingenuity.
Yet the thing worked, and Bice was able to furnish information
almost instantly concerning the various categories of applicants
and their status. He decided in 1958 not to "make
admissions a career" and was named assistant dean of the College,
later associate dean. At the same time he was an Association
dean, with responsibility for some four hundred students.
Just what an "association" was is explained later in this
chapter.

B. F. D. Runk, associate professor of biology, was named
Student Adviser in 1955, in which capacity he took over the
principal duties exercised by Dick Fletcher. The latter's responsibility
for working with student residence house and hall
counselors was assigned to Donald M. McKay, director of
housing. Runk was instructed to work with the fraternities in
putting into effect new regulations governing them. The following
year he was named registrar of the university, and in
1959 was appointed dean of the university, with powers not
exercised by any dean since the retirement of Ivey Lewis. He
said he would continue to teach some of his courses; his ability
as a teacher and lecturer was exceptional. In his new post he
had supervision over student government, exercised by President
Darden for the preceding decade. "Dee" Runk had an
excellent relationship with the students; he was the recipient
of the first IMP Award, given by the IMP Society "to a faculty
member who had been outstanding in promoting student-faculty
relations and perpetuating the traditions of the university."
Subsequently he received the National Service Award of
Omicron Delta Kappa, presented in the United States only

once every three years. Edward W. Lautenschlager, '56, an instructor
in the Department of Biology, was named registrar,
succeeding Runk.

Weldon Cooper became director of the Bureau of Public
Administration, succeeding Rowland Egger, who was in such
demand, both in this country and overseas, that he was on
leave a large part of the time. For the 1956-57 session, when
Cooper was made head of the bureau, Egger was chairman of
both the university's Woodrow Wilson Department of Foreign
Affairs and the Department of Political Science. During the
previous year he had been on leave as Near East representative
of the Ford Foundation, with headquarters in Beirut,
Lebanon. Weldon Cooper had been associate director of the
bureau for some years, and, beginning in 1950, served for
fourteen months as executive assistant to Governor John S.
Battle. Upon the retirement of Professor Wilson Gee in 1959,
Cooper would take over the editorship of the University of Virginia
News Letter, of which more anon.

William L. Duren, Jr., chairman of the Department of
Mathematics at Tulane University, became dean of the College
of Arts and Sciences in 1955, succeeding George O. Ferguson,
Jr. Dean Duren was a nationally known mathematician who
had succeeded the university's Professor McShane as president
of the Mathematical Society of America. Duren was given
a leave of absence to finish a college textbook in math; he had
been named chairman of a committee of the mathematical society
to produce this book. During his absence Prof. Robert K.
Gooch served as dean.

Joseph L. Vaughan, '26, professor of English in the School
of Engineering and a superlative teacher, was appointed provost,
a newly created position, by President Darden. In that
capacity he would serve as an administrative assistant to the
president and would act for the president whenever the latter
might be absent from the university. He would also study
longtime requirements of the educational program of the university,
building and space needs, and assist on budgetary matters
affecting operation and maintenance. Professor Vaughan
was relieved of many of these duties a few years later and
given supervision over the Clinch Valley and University
(George Mason) Colleges with the title of chancellor. But his
first love, his real forte, was teaching. He returned to that, and

the office of provost was discontinued for the remainder of
the Darden administration.

Lewis M. Hammond, professor of philosophy, was appointed
dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences,
succeeding James Southall Wilson, who retired in 1951. He
was a University of Virginia Ph.D. who had been assistant to
the president of St. John's College, 1942-45, and assistant
dean of the university's summer session for several years. He
had also been president of the Society for Philosophy and Psychology
and of the Episcopal Guild of Scholars and a member
of the editorial board of the Anglican Theological Review. After
serving as graduate dean from 1951 to 1960, he would hold
the chairmanship of the Department of Philosophy for six
years.

Dean Hammond reported in 1954 that the Graduate School
consisted of approximately 315 students working toward the
M.A., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees. A notable event of the session
then ending was the opening of the redecorated and comfortably
furnished room at 59 West Range, designated as the
Graduate Students' Center. It contained writing materials,
books, magazines, and facilities for making coffee and tea.
Most important, the center provided a convenient meeting
place for graduate students where they could become acquainted
and exchange ideas. By 1959 the number of these
students had risen to about four hundred, with around one
hundred degrees awarded annually. At that time, there was an
"overwhelming demand for Ph.D.'s in response to increased
enrollments and greater need for college teachers," the dean
reported.

There were nine schools in the university—College of Arts
and Sciences, much the largest, with 160 faculty members and
1,600 students in 1959; Law, Medicine, Engineering, Education,
Graduate Studies, Architecture, Graduate Business Administration,
and Commerce.

The College of Arts and Sciences was divided into four "associations,"
under a system devised by Dean Duren, and another
was added in anticipation of future growth. Each association
was given its own dean and two resident advisers. The
system was designed to provide closer relationships among the
students and between them and the faculty. Each association
included two of the residence houses, and upperclassmen who

64. Allan T. Gwathmey, professor of chemistry.

did not reside in the houses were arbitrarily assigned to one
of the associations. Thus each association had about onefourth
of the college population. The purpose was to create
in each association the atmosphere of a small liberal arts college.
The philosophy was said to be one of an advisory service
rather than paternalism. Writing in the Alumni News, Prof.
Irby B. Cauthen, Jr., declared that "the system has provided a
closer supervision over the academic and extracurricular affairs
of the college students, and has inculcated a growing
awareness in students of the importance of proceeding satisfactorily
to the college degree." He went on to say that "a student
must maintain an average close to a `C' to be permitted
to remain in the college after his first year."

Faculty pay was rising, but sabbatical leaves for faculty
members, whereby professors would be able after, say, seven
years, to take a full year off with half pay or half a year with
full pay, had never been possible at Virginia. Colgate Darden
said in his inaugural address that this was one of the university's
principal needs, but he was unable to put such a system
into effect. Not until the sesquicentennial in 1969 would it be
possible to institute a series of faculty leaves roughly equivalent
to the sabbatical system.

Stringfellow Barr returned to the faculty in 1951, for two sessions
as visiting professor of political science. He gave a course
on the origin and development of American political institutions
and was anxious to establish at the university something
along the lines of his Great Books seminar at St. John's College,
where he had been president. After "Winkie" Barr's departure,
Associate Dean Marcus B. Mallett built on the foundations
Barr had laid and developed what was known as
Lower Division Seminar 1-2, which was nondepartmental and
was designed to enrich the curriculum. From this course and
the one that preceded it, various undergraduate honors programs
were developed, growing out of the pioneering done
by Prof. Robert K. Gooch back in the 1930s.

In a penetrating examination of the university as an educational
institution, published in 1956, Robert B. Eggleston, editor
of the Cavalier Daily, praised the honors program. Under
it, he said, "one may spend the third and fourth years pursuing

a course of study independently of the normal system."
The student "conducts research under faculty guidance, attends
classes as he wishes, and holds discussions with his advisor."
He receives no grades, but has "a chance to discuss
ideas," and he "must pass a much more rigid comprehensive
examination than the other students." Eggleston believed the
honors program "affords the best means of education open to
an undergraduate at the university."

He was pessimistic with respect to certain aspects of the
overall situation. "It is so easy to go through four years here
without ever being required to put forth one iota of thought,"
he declared. "Our student body has a mental capacity higher
than its anti-intellectual attitude would indicate."

Several efforts at course evaluation were made from 1954
to 1958 by student committees, with faculty cooperation. Results
from the first two were unsatisfactory, mainly because too
few students were willing to fill out the questionnaires. Some
professors were apprehensive at first, thinking that the
evaluation was a malicious plot on the part of dissatisfied students.
It was explained, however, that the purpose was to be
helpful to both professors and undergraduates. Another attempt
was made in 1955, and the response was more representative.
The results were published at great length in the
Cavalier Daily. However, that publication concluded that the
operation was "of little benefit, except to air student complaints
of certain professors." In 1958 another evaluation, on
a different basis, was attempted. This time Dean Duren and
the Student Council sent questionnaires to selected students
in each department. Questions had to do with the importance
of lectures and textbooks, the value of outside reading, and
the usefulness of discussion. Results were reviewed by the Student
Council, the Cavalier Daily, and the dean's office.

Members of the liberal arts faculty were holding seminars
during the middle fifties "to enhance the value of the baccalaureate
degrees by providing intensive work in the liberal arts
tradition." In 1957-58 for example, eleven faculty members
were conducting seminars for three hours each week, with
from seven to fourteen students in each section. There was no
field of concentration or area of honors work or grade program.
Professors taking part received no extra compensation.

A sore point with the students in another part of the curriculum
was the requirement that first- and second-year men
take physical education classes. After they had entered fervent
and long-continued protests over a period of years, it was announced
that those entering in the fall of 1955 would have to
take only one year of "phys ed." And there would be no more
classes at what the boys termed "the insane hour of 8 A.M." As
far back as the early 1930s there had been lamentations over
the required physical education course. The Cavalier Daily
joined in 1952 in attacking it, and John Heatherly, writing in
the paper, called the course "an absolute farce and a mockery."
The Jefferson Society recommended its complete elimination.
All this failed to produce the desired result, but reduction of
the course to one year and abolition of the 8 o'clock "outrage"
were gratefully received.

Needy but able students were being assisted financially by
duPont scholarships. Made available in the middle 1950s,
twenty-five regional scholarships were awarded annually, with
one going to the winner in each of the 10 congressional districts
and 15 to top-ranking Virginians without regard to geography.
The amount of the stipend ranged from $2,000 to
$3,400 for the four years.

The largesse from Philip du Pont that made the foregoing
possible had been forthcoming back in the 1920s, but other
smaller donations had come to the university in more recent
years. John Lee Pratt, '05, contributed $125,000 in 1949 for
research of "trace elements" by the Department of Chemistry
under Prof. John H. Yoe. Dr. Yoe had been doing studies in
the field for two decades and had published a two-volume
treatise on the subject entitled Photometric Chemical Analysis.
Mr. Pratt provided $500,000 anonymously for the Department
of Physics in 1952, the money to be expended under
Prof. Jesse Beams. Part of the money was to be used the following
session for fellowships in graduate and postdoctoral
work, while other funds would supplement faculty salaries,
provide special equipment, and bring promising students to
Virginia. "Some of the fellowships will be as attractive as any
offered in the United States," said Beams, who termed the gift
"magnificent." Pratt also gave $500,000 anonymously to the
Department of Chemistry and another $500,000 to the Department
of Biology. In 1958-59 the National Science Foundation

65. Thomas P. Abernethy, professor of history.

renewed the $250,000 grant it had made available the
year before to enable selected high and preparatory school
teachers of science and mathematics to study for a full session
of special advanced courses at the university. The importance
of scientific study and research was stressed still more after
Soviet Russia created a worldwide sensation by putting up its
first sputnik in 1957.

Establishment of a Graduate School of Business Administration
at the university was suggested in the summer of 1946 by
Prof. Tipton R. Snavely. Pointing out that there was no separate
graduate business school in the South, he said in a written
report that the University of Virginia was the logical place for
one. The following October, Rector Edward R. Stettinius
urged in his convocation address that the university establish
a school of this type. In January 1947 Professor Snavely devoted
seven pages of his annual report on the Department of
Economics and the McIntire School of Commerce to a detailed
proposal for implementing the plan.

President Darden was skeptical at first because of the cost,
but he soon became enthusiastic and extremely active in pushing
the proposal. A committee, headed by Homer L. Ferguson,
president of the Newport News Shipbuilding and Dry
Dock Company, was appointed, with the objective of raising
an adequate endowment and persuading the General Assembly
to appropriate funds. This committee was succeeded,
upon the formation of the school, by a Sponsoring Committee
headed by Henry E. McWane, '16, president of the Lynchburg
Foundry Company and member of the Board of Visitors. It
evolved into the University of Virginia Graduate School Sponsors,
Inc., with McWane still as chairman and J. Harvie Wilkinson
Jr., '27, prominent Richmond banker, vice-chairman.
Both McWane and Wilkinson were deeply involved and extremely
effective in promoting the project. President Darden
spoke in its behalf in all parts of the state.

One of the major arguments for the school was that its location
at a southern university would tend to encourage
graduates to remain in the South, and, more specifically, in
Virginia. Hundreds were going to Harvard, the University of
Pennsylvania's Wharton School, and elsewhere and making
their careers in the North or West, all of which tended to drain

the South of many of its most promising business and industrial
leaders. As Wilkinson put it, "No region can remain vigorous
and suffer continued drain of its mental topsoil and its
centers of ferment and creativity."

Business organizations throughout Virginia were favorably
impressed by the plan, and a drive for funds was launched. It
went slowly at first, but after several years a total of $1,250,000
was raised, and the state legislature matched the amount. The
General Assembly also made an annual appropriation of
$50,000.

In the spring of 1954 it was announced that Charles C. Abbott,
a magna cum laude Ph.D. of Harvard and Converse Professor
of Banking and Finance in the Harvard Graduate
School of Business Administration, would be the first dean of
the Virginia school.

"Charlie" Abbott, who had written widely on business and
financial problems and was frequently voted the favorite professor
of the Harvard students, was almost ideally fitted for
the position at Charlottesville. As a student at Harvard he had
edited the Lampoon and composed the class poem. Endowed
with a keen wit, he described himself as "a carpetbagger," but
his birth in Kansas and his schooling in the North were no
hindrance to his success in Virginia. An admiring writer for
the Alumni News said he was "the only dean at the university
who keeps ready access to Beechnut chewing tobacco."

Dean Abbott arrived Sept. 1, 1954. Discussing it later, he
said, "I think Mr. Darden wanted the school to open September
15, but I said I wanted a year to open, and we opened in
1955 with 38 students." After considerable conversation with
Darden and "asking questions which Darden didn't understand,
he [Darden] said `Well, why don't you do what you
damn well please; everybody does here, anyway.' That's all the
instruction I ever had."

The school opened in Monroe Hall, with two faculty members
besides Abbott planning the curriculum and preparing
for the session of 1954-55. One was John D. Forbes, professor
of business history, who "arrived in an elderly yellow Rolls
Royce from Wabash College, Indiana," where he had taught
since 1946. Forbes had done graduate work in economic history
at Harvard, got his Ph.D. there, and held other degrees
from the University of California and Stanford. The other

member of the planning and teaching staff was Forrest J.
Hyde, a 1915 law graduate of the University of Virginia who
had served on its law faculty for several years and then entered
practice in New York City, where he was associated with
important business and financial interests. The rest of the faculty
included Almand R. Coleman, Lee R. Johnston, Everard
W. Meade, Maurice Davier, and Forrest E. Keller, with A. W.
Zelomek as visiting lecturer. It was a two-year course, leading
to the degree of Master of Business Administration (M.B.A.).
Harvard's case system was used. Ability to communicate by the
spoken and the written word was stressed, since it was felt that
businessmen are deficient in these areas.

A "loyal friend of the university" created a Student Loan
Fund, enabling talented students without means to attend the
school. This anonymous "friend" who came forward frequently
over the years to aid various university causes was almost
certainly Colgate Darden. His identity was seldom made
public, but time and again his generosity (or that of his wife,
who also remained behind the scenes) helped to pull the university
over a financial hump or to provide funds that could
be used in imaginative ways to further the progress of the institution.
In recognition of his wholehearted support as president
of the university and as a continuing benefactor, the
school was named for Mr. Darden in 1973. In the present instance
this "loyal friend" offered a substantial sum to the sponsors
of the graduate school on condition that they match it.
They did, and $100,000 or more became available for the Student
Loan Fund. Incidentally, Colgate Darden never accepted
any salary from the university.

Describing the curriculum of the graduate school in broad
terms, Dean Abbott said:

The prototypical student in the school has had two or more
years of managerial or other significant work experience.
While today admission standards are much tighter, attrition
still ranges between 10 and 15 percent. About 40 percent of
the students are married when they enter the school and 60
percent by the time they graduate. Virginia-born students enrolled
have averaged around 43 percent of the total enrollment,
those from the rest of the South 16 percent and from
elsewhere 41 percent, according to The First Twenty Years: The
Darden School at Virginia, edited by C. Stewart Sheppard.

A program leading to the degree of Doctor of Business Administration
(D.B.A.) was instituted in 1965. The program is
intended to train students for professional careers in teaching
and research in business management. The degree may theoretically
be earned in three years, but the demands of dissertation
research are likely to extend the time to four years or
more.

The faculty has expanded steadily from the early days,
when there were nine members until now faculty and lecturers
number about forty. As described by Corks and Curls: "Both
the business and the academic worlds are well represented.
Professional competence in engineering, history, psychology,
law, economics, speech and public service are included in the
group, as well as skills in the characteristically [sic] business
fields of accounting, finance, marketing and production." The
most significant single factor in the school's effectiveness "may
be its small enrollment [about three hundred] and low facultystudent
ratio," Professor Forbes has written. Eventual enrollment
was projected at 480, to be achieved without sacrificing
the intimacy of faculty-student relationships that characterized
the school's early years.

A new headquarters building was felt to be essential, and
the General Assembly was urged to appropriate the necessary
funds. It made $3,200,000 available for a building to be
erected on the Duke property northwest of University Hall.

President Edgar Shannon, like President Darden, favored the
project, as did Dean Abbott and virtually the entire faculty of
the school. Ground was broken in 1973, with completion
scheduled for 1975.

An important feature of the Darden School is the Tayloe
Murphy Institute, which began functioning in 1967 as a research
affiliate. Named for the late W. Tayloe Murphy, an ardent
supporter of the school, much-admired member of the
General Assembly, and longtime friend of Colgate Darden, it
received a million-dollar endowment from an "anonymous
donor" whose identity was not difficult to guess. The gift was
conditioned on $600,000 additional being raised; it was. The
Institute now includes the former Bureau of Population and
Economic Research, which was consolidated with it in 1972.
Prof. Charles O. Meiburg of the Darden School faculty was
made executive director. Dr. Lorin A. Thompson, for many
years head of the Bureau of Population and Economic Research,
had left in 1966 to become chancellor and then first
president of George Mason College. The Tayloe Murphy Institute
monitors the business progress and climate of Virginia
and the nation and issues statements and statistics from time
to time putting the business situation in perspective.

Another important activity of the Darden School is carried
on by the Center for the Study of Applied Ethics. This grew
out of the action of Mrs. Signe Olsson in establishing a chair
in 1966 in memory of her husband, Elis Olsson. She had the
following objectives, according to the Board of Visitors: "The
donor has in mind the enormous importance of integrity in
human affairs, and seeks through this gift to stimulate general
public interest in and understanding of the ethical implications
that necessarily adhere to the exercise of authority in
both public and private life." Prof. Frederick E. Nolting, Jr.,
was named to the Olsson chair. Major conferences on ethics in
business were held in 1973 and 1974, and several publications
were issued.

When Charles C. Abbott retired as dean in 1972, he was
succeeded by C. Stewart Sheppard, who had joined the faculty
in 1961, after serving as dean of the Graduate School of Business
and Public Administration at Cornell University. Dean
Sheppard is a native of Wales, an M.B.A. of New York University,

66. Llewellyn G. Hoxton, professor of physics.

and a Ph.D. of Columbia University. Soon after his arrival
in Charlottesville he established the Institute of Chartered Financial
Analysts, a professional organization located in the
university's William Faulkner House. It tests and certifies financial
analysts throughout the United States and Canada,
and since it enjoys worldwide recognition and acceptance,
membership is eagerly sought.

The Darden Graduate School of Business Administration
has a high reputation throughout the United States. Certainly
one of the premier graduate schools of business in the South,
it is competitive with the best of its type in this country. A
survey by Columbia University in 1974 placed it among the
top eleven such schools in the United States. It has been disappointing,
however, in that fewer of its graduates remain in
the state and region than had been hoped for by the school's
founders. For example, about 150 companies sent representatives
in 1974 to recruit that year's 133 M.B.A. recipients. Of
these, 48 percent accepted positions in the Northeast (half of
them in New York City), 26 percent in the South (only 12 percent
in Virginia), 11 percent in the Middle West, with the remaining
15 percent going to the Far West or to foreign countries.
There is evidence also that Virginia employers, for some
unknown reason, are less zealous in seeking these graduates
than employers from other areas.

"The Darden School is a net exporter of M.B.A. talent from
Virginia to the rest of the world," Prof. John L. Snook, Jr., has
written. "Of nearly 400 M.B.A.'s whose domicile was Virginia
during their student days, more than 200 have moved to other
states, while fewer than 100 `foreigners' have been attracted
to Virginia. . . . We may have to develop strategies to make
Virginia business and industry more attractive to future
M.B.A. classes."

The Darden School has over two million dollars in endowment,
plus $500,000 in liquid assets. Sydney F. Small of Roanoke
left it $500,000 in 1973 for a series of fellowships.
Sustaining annual income from the sponsors totals over three
hundred thousand dollars. Endowed chairs in honor of Dean
Abbott and Professor Snavely were established in 1972, and
resources for other faculty chairs were being solicited. As generous
as the Sponsors' financial support had been over the

years, continuing assistance would be needed if the excellence
and diversity of the school's programs were to grow.

Steadily improving its performance and turning out extremely
well-trained graduates year after year, the Darden
School soon came to be recognized as among the foremost
graduate schools of business administration in this country.

On another level of instruction in business and economics, an
important development took place in 1952-53, when the
McIntire School of Commerce was given status as a separate
school, with its own faculty and dean. The James Wilson
School of Economics remained as a department of the College
of Arts and Sciences. Professor Snavely had been chairman of
both departments since 1923.

After Professors Rutledge Vining and Lorin A. Thompson
served briefly as successive deans of the independent McIntire
School, Frank S. Kaulback, Jr., associate professor of accounting,
was named so the position. As head of the school, he directed
a two-year course of study leading to the B.S. degree in
economics, and in 1972 a master's degree in accounting was
added. Dean Kaulback was a consultant to bankers' associations
and other corporations and was active in national organizations
operating in the business education field. He interviewed
each degree candidate personally, advising him or her
as to academic, vocational, or placement problems.

The Department of Economics offers the M.A. and Ph.D.
degrees. Economics had been taught at the university since
the institution opened in 1825, so that it was one of the first
universities in this country to give instruction in that discipline.
The James Wilson Department was found by the
American Economics Association to rank "eleventh among 42
leading American universities in the number of doctoral dissertations
which were in progress . . . 1941-50." And in 1956
a magazine article "listed Virginia as among the `Big 15' in
respect to graduate work and research in economics." The
philosophy of the university's economics faculty might be described
as middle of the road. It is decidedly less liberal than
the faculties of most American universities.

The economics faculty was strengthened in the mid-1950s
by the addition of an able young professor named James R.

Schlesinger. He remained for seven years and later served in
Washington as chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission,
director of the Central Intelligence Agency, secretary of defense,
and secretary of energy.

The Thomas Jefferson Center for Studies in Political
Economy was organized at the university in 1957, with Prof.
James M. Buchanan, chairman of the Department of Economics,
as director. The impetus for the establishment of this interdepartmental
agency came largely from the economics faculty.
Its aim was to bring together economists, philosophers,
political scientists, historians, and scholars in related fields.
Prof. G. Warren Nutter, who was heading a special study of
the Soviet economy, on which he was a recognized authority,
was associate director of the center, and Prof. Leland B.
Yeager, also of the economics faculty, was executive secretary.
Financial support for the operation was provided by foundations.
It was announced that the center would bring to the
university each year a distinguished visiting scholar, would
sponsor individual lectures or seminar discussions by invited
guests, grant fellowships to graduate students and postdoctoral
candidates, and act as a clearing house through which
independent research projects by permanent members of the
university faculty were administered.

President Darden had been in office only a few months when
the long-forgotten controversy between the Medical School
and the Medical College of Virginia in Richmond surfaced
once more. Financial deficits of the two institutions disturbed
Gov. William M. Tuck, who suggested, in the interest of efficiency
and economy, that a "partial merger" might be desirable.
The question was referred to Dr. Alan Gregg of the
Rockefeller Institute, who left no doubt as to his position by
recommending strongly against this. Dr. Gregg found medical
education to be "ideally situated" in such an environment as
that provided by the university, and he added that "the long
future of medical education in the State of Virginia lies in the
development of the Medical School at Charlottesville."

This ended any discussion of a partial merger between the
two institutions, but it did not resolve President Darden's concern
over what he termed the university hospital's "huge operating

67. Gordon T. Whyburn, professor of mathematics.

deficit." Darden pointed to the hospital's $900,000
shortfall for 1952, of which $300,000 was a loan from the state
the previous year and $600,000 the current year's deficit. He
termed this the most critical problem facing the university and
appealed, with only a limited degree of success, to the city of
Charlottesville and the surrounding counties to help in meeting
this heavy cost, caused, in large measure, by the health
needs of their indigent citizens. Dr. Richard J. Ackart became
director of the hospital in 1951, succeeding Dr. Carlisle S.
Lentz, who was given the post of consultant after twenty years
as superintendent and additional years as medical director.

The Medical School also obtained the services of a new dean
of medicine at about this time—Dr. Vernon W. Lippard, who
came to the university in 1949 from Louisiana State, where he
was medical dean. A highly regarded Yale graduate, he remained
at Charlottesville four years and then accepted the
deanship of the Yale Medical School. Dr. Lippard was succeeded
at Virginia by Dr. Thomas H. Hunter, a cum laude
M.D. of Harvard, who had taken part of his medical education
at Cambridge University, England. At the time of his appointment
as Virginia's dean of medicine he was associate dean of
the Washington University Medical School, St. Louis. Dr.
Hunter was widely known for his studies of bacterial infection
of the heart, usually associated with rheumatic heart disease.

Dr. William H. Muller, Jr., one of the nation's leading heart
surgeons, was named head of surgery in 1954. A native of
South Carolina and graduate of the Duke Medical School, he
was acting chairman of the division of general surgery at the
University of California Medical Center, Los Angeles, at the
time of his appointment as successor to Dr. Edwin P. Lehman,
who retired after a successful career. Various members of the
university's medical faculty were involved in many constructive
activities beyond the boundaries of the institution, but Dr.
Muller surpassed then all. For example, during the 1957-58
session, taken at random, he delivered ten addresses, from
Chicago to Galveston, took part in seven discussions of papers
in several different areas of the country, and had thirteen publications
with four more "to be published." Dr. Muller also had
five research projects in process or completed, while serving
on eighteen committees and on the American Board of Thoracic
Surgery.

A cobalt unit for cancer therapy superior to anything of the
kind in Virginia at the time was obtained in 1956, thanks to a
campaign for funds led by Mrs. Henry B. Mulholland, with
the assistance of the dean's office. This was a cobalt-60 teletherapy
unit, and as more money was raised than expected,
"a 1,000-curie source" was obtained, Dr. Vincent W. Archer,
chairman of radiology, stated.

Dr. Henry B. Mulholland arrived at age sixty-five in 1958
and hence was retired as assistant dean of the Medical School,
while continuing to teach. "Hank" Mulholland, widely liked
and admired, had been extremely active in a number of different
directions—as a member of the House of Delegates of
the American Medical Association and various committees of
the AMA, as well as of the American Diabetes Association, not
to mention several committees of the Medical Society of Virginia
and the State Department of Health. He was the major
influence in launching the Virginia Council on Health and
Medical Care, which won national recognition for its placement
of hundreds of doctors and dentists in rural areas sorely
in need of their services. For these conspicuous achievements
an endowed chair was named for him in the Medical School,
the first chair in the university to be named for an incumbent
professor.

Dr. Mulholland was succeeded as assistant dean by Dr. Byrd
S. Leavell, an able and dedicated member of the medical faculty
since 1939 and professor of internal medicine since 1945.
Dr. Leavell was known for his clinical research and his writings
on functions of the liver, on leukemia, pernicious anemia,
sickle cell anemia, and other blood disorders. He was chief of
the division of hematology from 1946 to 1971, chairman of
the department of internal medicine from 1966 to 1968, and
author of over fifty scientific papers and several books and
monographs. Dr. Leavell was coauthor with Dr. Oscar Thorup,
'46, of a textbook, Fundamentals of Clinical Hematology,
which has gone through several printings.

Dr. Charles J. Frankel, associate professor of orthopedic
surgery, in charge of the athletic teams, took a law degree in
1957. He had been teaching law in the Medical School for
three years and medicine in the Law School for two years, and
planned to continue both types of instruction. Dr. Frankel
wrote many articles on the treatment of athletic injuries.

The Medical Center's School of Nursing was established in
1956, and replaced the old Department of Nursing. This reorganization
set the school apart as a degree-granting body,
coordinate with the Schools of Medicine, Engineering, and
Law, and was the culmination of studies and proposals made
over the preceding decade. Under the new arrangement the
nursing students became more active participants in the affairs
of the university community. For example, they placed
themselves under the university's Honor System and incorporated
their yearbook into Corks and Curls. Dr. Margaret G.
Tyson was appointed dean, with responsibility to the director
of the Medical Center. A leader at this time in nursing affairs
at the university was Roy C. Beazley, who had served over a
period of thirty-six years as nursing superintendent, acting
department cochairman, director of nursing service, and faculty
member. She became the university's first woman professor
emeritus. The basic professional degree program was established
in 1950. Under its terms the applicant spent two
years at an approved institution, then gained practical training
at the university and completed the course for a Bachelor
of Science degree in nursing, and obtained a license as a registered
nurse. Another year of study was required for the
M.A. degree in nursing. For a time the school also continued
to offer a three-year program leading to a nursing diploma.

There were serious suggestions that the entire medical complex,
including the hospital, be moved to the North Grounds
and rebuilt from the ground up. The group of buildings located
near the Corner since the turn of the century had been
enlarged from time to time, but it had been impossible to plan
the expansion properly, under such circumstances. The argument
was made that economy and efficiency would be enhanced
if a well-planned and well-integrated facility could be
constructed de novo. However, so huge a construction project
would have entailed expenditures beyond the university's capacity,
and President Darden was strongly opposed. It was decided
to keep the medical complex where it had always been.

The Law School would not move to the North Grounds for
some two decades, but already, in 1950, it was tending to drift
away from the other schools at the university. Its students
were concentrating on their legal studies and on the Law

School's extracurricular activities. The contrast was noted by
Dean F. D. G. Ribble during the session of 1948-49: "I can
remember, from my own student days, a substantial number
of law students who looked on the study of law as very definitely
a part-time pursuit. The life of the fraternity house, of
the athletic field, or the social organizations and university
politics received a very great share of their interest and time.
Such is not now the case." He said that there had developed
"a more complete concentration on the law," with extracurricular
activities consisting of work connected with the Virginia
Law Review, the Reading Guide, the Virginia Law Weekly, the Legal
Forum, the Student Legal Research Group, the Law Student
Council, and the Law Clubs. The dean expressed the
view that these activities "develop in the law student a capacity
for leadership, a capacity for meeting problems, for seeing
their implications and for reaching solutions."

The Law School during the 1950s was a mixture of Virginians
and other southerners plus a remarkably high percentage
of Ivy League graduates. Dean Ribble said that "not counting
the home state, this Law School probably has the highest percentage
of Southern students of any school in the nation." As
for the Ivy League, Harvard, Yale, and Princeton graduates
made up, on the average, more than one-third of the total
enrollment.

Former World Court Justice John Bassett Moore, class of
1880, presented 5,000 volumes on international law to the
Law School Library in 1946. He had previously given the library
2,500 volumes in the same field. Moore was professor of
international law and diplomacy at Columbia University from
1891 to 1924. He died in 1947, and two years later his bust
was placed in Mural Hall at the Law School, the gift of his
daughter, Mrs. de Raisnes Storey.

William Jett Lauck, one of the nation's leading labor economists,
gave 5,000 volumes to the law library in 1948. Lauck
had served with the Immigration Commission, the War Labor
Board for World War I, the National Recovery Administration
(NRA), and the railway arbitration commissions.

The 100,000th volume was presented to the library in 1953
at special ceremonies, with U.S. Supreme Court Justice Stanley
Reed, '08, making the presentation. The library had become
the largest law library in the South.

Miss Eleanor Gibson's work as associate director of placement
for the Law School was praised "in the highest terms" by
Dean Ribble. William H. White, Jr., was director of placement,
but the greater part of the work was done by Miss Gibson. "It
would be hard to overestimate the importance of an effective
placement office on the morale of the Law School and our
relationships with the alumni," said the dean. The placement
office helps graduates seeking assistance and alumni seeking
jobs or change of jobs.

Dean Ribble spoke of the significance of the Judge Advocate
General's School's locating at the university. It is "a national
service of importance to this university," said he. "Our
school gains prestige through being the location of the legal
center of the Army of the United States." He quoted General
Dahlquist, commanding general of the army within the U.S.,
as saying that the J.A.G. School "gained prestige and stature
by its association with a law school of the first rank."

Edward Watts Saunders, '17, was named dean of engineering
in 1947 as successor to the late Dean Rodman. Saunders,
president of his graduating class in engineering at the university
and member of the State Board of Engineering Examiners
since 1929, led in revising the undergraduate curriculum,
developing the Master of Engineering degree, and
expanding the research and service activities of the department.
The M.E. degree required four graduate courses and
residence for at least one session. There were a comprehensive
examination and a thesis based on original research. Half
of the required research time could be completed in industrial
or governmental centers.

The department had offered extension courses since 1929
in the state's industrial areas. These courses, initiated by Prof.
Arthur F. MacConochie, provided strong support for the first
new graduate degrees. Enrollment had grown to the point
where in 1948 about seven hundred persons had matriculated
in thirty-six classes.

Organization of an alumni association of the Engineering
Department was an important event of these years.

Also, the university joined with the Virginia Highway Department
to establish the Virginia Council of Highway Investigation
and Research. Under its auspices the first International

68. James Southall Wilson, professor of English and dean of the
Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, 1937-1951.

Skid Prevention Conference was held at the university
in 1958. European countries were devoting much more attention
than the United States to problems of skidding by motor
vehicles. Papers were delivered at the five-day conference by
speakers from Great Britain, West Germany, Holland, and
Spain.

Students at the university were able to take advantage of the
research opportunities afforded by the Oak Ridge Institute of
Nuclear Physics at Oak Ridge, Tenn., operated under a contract
with the Atomic Energy Commission. Virginia was one
of fourteen southern universities affiliated with the institute,
and physics Professors Jesse Beams and Leland Snoddy were
members of its council.

Saunders resigned as dean in 1950 because of ill health, and
Charles Henderson was named to the deanship. He too had
been president of his engineering class when he graduated at
the university in 1920. By the end of Henderson's five years as
dean, graduate programs had been instituted in chemical,
civil, electrical, and mechanical engineering, and degrees were
offered for the first time in aeronautical engineering and engineering
physics. The School of Engineering (in 1952 the
terms "department" and "school" were interchanged throughout
the university) had grown to such an extent that it had a
larger enrollment than either law or medicine. At about this
time Christopher G. Memminger made a bequest of $300,000
for chemical engineering.

Charles Henderson reached the mandatory retirement age
for deans in 1955 and resumed full-time teaching for six more
years. He was succeeded by Lawrence R. Quarles, '35, who led
the school for the next eighteen years until his retirement in
1973. A Charlottesville native and University of Virginia
Ph.D., he had worked for several years with Westinghouse,
specializing in electronics; he also had spent two years with the
Oak Ridge Institute.

Dean Quarles developed a three-pronged nuclear energy
program of teaching, research, and aid to industry and other
agencies. He named a Nuclear Energy Advisory Committee to
work with industrial, agricultural, and other concerned organizations
and interests. A new degree—Master of Nuclear Engineering—was
introduced, and the School of Engineering
collaborated with the Department of Physics in offering the

degree of Doctor of Science in Engineering Physics. A Doctor
of Science in Chemical Engineering, the school's first doctoral
degree, was initiated. Advanced extension courses in nuclear
engineering were offered throughout the state.

Construction of a million-watt swimming-pool-type nuclear
reactor was one of the university's significant building projects
of the time. The reactor was used by many departments and
schools of the university. Chiefly because he supervised its
construction and served as the U.S. State Department's consultant
to the Philippine Government on nuclear reaction, a
chair in the School of Engineering and Applied Science (the
new name of the department, reflecting the changed emphasis)
was established in honor of Lawrence Quarles. This was
one of only three such chairs that have been named for incumbent
professors in the university.

Quarles's efforts to revise undergraduate curricula led to
the first major changes since the end of World War I. They
involved increased time for mathematics, science, humanities,
and social sciences, and an expanded faculty.

The School of Medicine was using nuclear energy in two
important ways, treatment by means of nuclear energy products,
or radiation, and analysis by the use of these same tools.

The Department of Education underwent a transformation
for the better during the Darden years. President Darden was
determined to strengthen the operation, and on the retirement
of Dean Manahan he brought in Lindley J. Stiles as
dean. Previous emphasis on methodology was sharply reduced,
and attention was focused to a much greater degree
on subject matter—that is, every teacher was required to study
the subject to be taught, rather than methods of teaching.
Dean Stiles said in 1955 that entrance requirements had been
raised to provide that "a B average or better" was required for
entrance, as well as "adequate scores on Scholastic Aptitude
Tests or achievement tests, and personal qualifications, including
promise as a prospective teacher." It was possible to major
in physical education, and thirteen football players were enrolled
in the School of Education at that time, according to a
letter in the student newspaper.

For the first time the school was offering graduate courses
leading to the Master of Education and Doctor of Education

degrees. The M.A. and Ph.D. in education would still be offered
under the supervision of the Department of Graduate
Studies. Dean Stiles regarded the training of graduate students
as the principal function of the school.

The School of Education was now functioning as a separate
professional department, "enjoying a status similar to that accorded
the Departments of Engineering, Law and Medicine,"
the dean reported. "Students in the Department of Education
are privileged to participate in the general student affairs of
the university through elected representatives on the Student
Council, the Honor Committee and the Women's Student Association."
The School of Health and Physical Education and
the intramural program were placed under the department.

The McGuffey Reading Clinic, headed by Prof. Ullin W.
Leavell, was established by him in 1946 and developed in the
succeeding years into an important agency for the improvement
of reading ability for persons of almost all ages. Leavell
was a pioneer in this field. In the late 1950s he directed an
annual reading clinic with hundreds of participants from all
over Virginia and beyond.

The phone in Leavell's office rang one afternoon, and he
answered. It was a call from Ohio, and the operator said, "Is
Mr. McGuffey there?" "No," said Leavell, "he is not here." "Do
you know where he is?" said the operator. "Well," said he, "I
think he is in one of two places." "When will Mr. McGuffey be
in?" asked the somewhat impatient operator. "Mr. McGuffey
died in 1873," was the answer. "God rest his bones!" said the
operator, "Who's in charge now?"

During the five years of Dean Stiles's incumbency total enrollment
in the Department of Education tripled, while
graduate enrollment, including part-time extension courses,
increased tenfold. The number of degrees awarded jumped
astronomically. Establishment of the Division of Education Research
was a feature of these years. It would serve the research
and evaluation needs of educational agencies throughout the
commonwealth. Prof. Francis G. Lankford, Jr., relinquished
his post as director of the Division of Teacher Placements to
serve as director of the new division. Dean Stiles did much to
modernize and improve the Department of Education. In
1953 he accepted the deanship of education at the University
of Wisconsin. Stiles was somewhat tactless at times, and he antagonized

some of the administrators and professors in other
departments, but his record was a constructive one.

Dr. Ralph W. Cherry was the next dean of education. He
came from the University of Texas and took over the deanship
in 1956, remaining in the post until 1968, after which he
taught for six more years. He directed the summer session
from 1956 to 1974. It was the opinion of influential members
of the Arts and Sciences faculty that Dean Cherry raised the
stature of the School of Education markedly within the university.

He aided the school's faculty in establishing annual conferences
in subject matter areas, such as English, social studies,
science, and mathematics. Still more significant was the fact
that during his regime the school received accreditation by the
National Council for Accreditation and Teacher Education,
while the Division of Field Services was established under his
leadership. The latter served as a formal channel for association
with the state schools and educational agencies. The size
of the faculty was more than doubled, and the number of matriculates
rose to a record high of 300 full-time and 500 parttime
graduate students. Those who commented on Dean
Cherry's personal characteristics stressed his integrity, personal
warmth, and human understanding.

Prof. Orland E. White relinquished the directorship of the
School of Biology's Blandy Experiment Farm in Clarke
County in 1955, after holding the position since 1927. White
was curator of plant breeding at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden
when he took over as professor of agricultural biology and
director of the farm, with a view to making the latter a center
for research in genetics. It was, as he put it, "a neglected piece
of land with some dilapidated buildings, no modern improvements
of any kind, a 20-year-old apple orchard of about 65
acres and more kinds of weeds that I had ever seen in my life."
When he stepped down twenty-eight years later he turned
over "a scientific institution with a laboratory and dormitory
setup worth $100,000 or more, a good working library, muchimproved
farm buildings, a two-compartment greenhouse,
and 130 acres of experimental plots, lawns, and arboretum
landscaped and scientifically arranged with over five thousand
species of woody plants, farm land in good condition, a herd
of around 150 head of high grade Hereford cattle, a drove of

hogs, up-to-date farm machinery, and a worldwide reputation
and contacts." More than one hundred technical papers had
been published by the staff and the students, more than forty
graduate students had obtained high degrees, mainly Ph.D.'s,
through their investigations and experiments at the farm.
Foreign students had come from Germany, China, India, Ireland,
and Canada. Orland White was succeeded on July 1,
1955, by W. Ralph Singleton, Miller Professor of Biology.
White died in 1972.

The other institution affiliated with the Miller School of Biology
and Agriculture is the Mountain Lake Biological Station
in Giles County—described in some detail in chapter 3. During
the twenty-five years the station had been in operation
more than twenty-five courses in biology had been offered.
Approximately seventy-five biologists from colleges and universities
in this and other countries attended. Prof. Bruce D.
Reynolds was in charge and had occupied that position during
much of the time since the station was established.

Another university activity situated at considerable distance
from Charlottesville was the Seward Forest in Brunswick
County, an affiliate of the School of Forestry. It consisted of
3,600 acres bequeathed to the university in 1932 by Dr. W. M.
Seward, '86, of Triplett. Active development of the area was
begun in 1935 under the direction of Prof. Alfred Akerman.
The Seward Forest was operated as a teaching facility for various
methods of reproducing, caring for, and harvesting timber,
and as a center for research. By the mid-1950s it had from
ten to sixteen full-time employees, including several university
students who gained practical experience in this way. Lectures
in the school were occasionally supplemented by fieldwork in
Brunswick County, but since the forest is 140 miles from
Charlottesville, frequent field trips were impossible. Courses
were on an undergraduate level.

The Division of Art and Architecture of the McIntire
School of Fine Arts was expanding its curriculum in the late
1940s and preparing to require a five-year course as a prerequisite
to the B.S. degree in architecture. The School of Architecture
had been fully accredited since 1944, when the national
accrediting board was established, but the board
stipulated that the school would have to offer a five-year
course in order to retain its accreditation. Prof. Edmund S.

69. Henry Jordan, star university tackle and heavyweight wrestling
champion of the Atlantic Coast Conference, 1957, shown
in the uniform of the Green Bay Packers.

Campbell, head of the division, stated in 1948 that provision
was being made for every degree applicant to spend a year in
the college and then four years taking the professional course.
The division also was adding courses in painting, drawing,
and design. In each of the two preceding years there had been
over four hundred applicants to the division for only thirtytwo
places.

The university community was shocked in 1950 when Professor
Campbell died suddenly in Washington while attending
a meeting of the American Institute of Architects. He was
sixty-five, and had come to Charlottesville in 1937 as head of
the Division of Art and Architecture. Campbell had served as
consulting architect for various projects around the Grounds
and was recognized as a leading critic of design. He was also
one of the nation's foremost watercolor artists, with examples
of his work in many national exhibitions. Professor Campbell
had been a member of the Virginia State Fine Arts Commission
and of the State Examining Board of Architects.

He was succeeded by Thomas K. Fitz Patrick, who came to
the university from Iowa State College. Fitz Patrick was appointed
to head the university's School of Architecture, which
was separated from the College of Arts and Sciences and established
as a separate professional school under the name of
McIntire School of Architecture. Its origins went back to
1919, when Prof. Fiske Kimball became chairman of the newly
established McIntire School of Fine Arts.

Classes in architectural history, as well as art history, were
held in the Bayly Museum, an innovation introduced by William
B. O'Neal, professor in the School of Architecture and
museum curator. New degrees in architectural history and city
and regional planning were offered in 1958-59. Enrollment
in the school at that time was slightly in excess of one
hundred.

Charles W. Smith, who had served temporarily as acting
head of the University of Virginia Press, was named chairman
of the Division of Art in the College of Arts and Sciences. A
famous Virginia-born artist and university alumnus, with exhibits
in this country and Europe, he would be awarded a Certificate
of Honor by Yale University "in recognition of his
achievement as an artist and his distinguished contribution to
the culture of his time." Smith had worked in oils, wood engraving,

typography, lithography, and block printing, and he
had experimented successfully in the design of wallpaper and
textiles. His "block painting" process was revolutionary. William
B. O'Neal, chairman of the university's Division of Architectural
History, placed him "in a rank seldom achieved by an
American artist." He retired as department chairman in 1963.

The Department of Music had made steady progress since
the 1940s, when Randall Thompson began moving it forward.
Further advance was achieved under Stephen Tuttle, and in
more recent years much credit is accorded Ernest C. Mead,
Jr., for the department's accomplishments. Mead returned
from a year at Harvard and eventually became head of the
department. The department had direction of the Glee Club,
band, orchestra and brass ensemble, and the teaching staff devoted
much time to each of these operations.

Ernest Mead had been a pupil of John Powell, for many
years a devoted alumnus. Powell received what seems to have
been a unique tribute when Gov. John S. Battle proclaimed
Nov. 5, 1951, to be "John Powell Day."

Powell and Mead were enthusiastic supporters of the Virginia
Music Festival, which came to an end in 1950, after functioning
for four years and bringing musicians and music lovers
to the university from all over the state. Scott Stadium was
the scene of some of the major events, but the weather was so
uncertain that Col. Francis P. Miller, festival association president,
announced reluctantly that the affair could not be continued.
Miller added that the festival did not have an adequately
broad base of support.

The Institute of Public Affairs was revived in 1950 after
having been suspended for eight years on account of World
War II. George B. Zehmer, director of the Extension Division
and dean of the summer session, was its director. Part of its
nineteenth session, in 1952, was broadcast around the world
in eleven languages. The Institute's two-week program overlapped
the latter part of the eight-week summer session of the
university.

George Zehmer, who had headed the Extension Division
since 1925, retired from that position in 1958 but continued
to teach in the School of Education. He had relinquished the
deanship of the summer session in 1951, after nearly a decade
and a half in the post, and was succeeded by Dean Lindley

Stiles. The Extension Division was expanding so rapidly that
Zehmer wished to give it his undivided attention. Enrollment
in 1925-26 had been only 370, distributed among twenty-six
communities, whereas in 1955-56 there were nearly seven
thousand persons enrolled from eight-six communities.

Upon his retirement as dean of the division, Zehmer was
succeeded by Chemistry Prof. James W. Cole, Jr., whose new
title was dean of the School of General Studies. Cole, a Ph.D.
of the university, organized and directed the Academic Year
Institute for Teachers of Science and Mathematics and planned
to continue this work, financed by the National Science Foundation.
He was chemical consultant to the U.S. Air Force and
the Air Research Development Council. Zehmer died in 1961,
and in that year the name of the school was changed to School
of Continuing Education. A building on an eighteen-acre tract
adjoining the university Grounds, formerly used by the Red
Cross, was purchased. The structure was renamed Zehmer
Hall.

The Bureau of Population and Economic Research was engaged
in a five-pronged program of activity. Lorin A. Thompson,
the director, reported in 1952 that it was functioning in
the following areas:

The growing body of research being compiled by the bureau
was "finding its way into the instructional materials of the staff
members of the schools of economics, business administration
and sociology," Thompson reported.

The Bureau of Public Administration was observing its
twentieth anniversary, and Rowland Egger, the director, reported

70. C. Waller Barrett, donor to the university of the greatest
collection of American literature in existence.

that "especially since the war, the bureau has remained
essentially a service agency providing consultant and technical
advisory services, with research, training and education, and
clearing house activities in a distinctly subsidiary role." The
bureau was preparing a textbook on Virginia government, to
be published by Crowell.

The question of whether one of the former state teachers' colleges
should be made coordinate with the university had been
to the fore during the gubernatorial administration of Colgate
Darden. He recommended the appointment of a commission
to study the advisability of designating Mary Washington at
Fredericksburg as the university's women's college. The commission
was appointed, and it approved the plan. Mary Washington
became coordinate with the university in 1944. It had
been founded in 1908 as the Fredericksburg State Normal
and Industrial School, later became Fredericksburg State
Teachers' College, and in 1935 Mary Washington, in honor of
George Washington's mother. In 1944 it was no longer an institution
for training teachers, since for the session of 1943-44
fewer than one percent of the students registered for teacher
training.

Affiliation of Mary Washington with the university was
deemed by those who shuddered at the thought of coeducation
at Charlottesville to be a legal and proper solution of the
coed problem. Daughters of Virginia taxpayers were now provided
with adequate educational facilities at a state-supported
institution—so the argument ran. Faculty and students at
Mary Washington were enthusiastic over their new affiliation.
President Newcomb, under the law, was designated chancellor
of Mary Washington, and its chief administrative officers, with
Morgan L. Combs, president of Mary Washington, as chief
local administrative officer. The two institutions were placed
under the university's Board of Visitors, which was enlarged
by four members. Committees from the two faculties were
named to work out details of the relationship. Dr. George O.
Ferguson, dean of the College at the university, was chairman
of the university's committee, and Dr. Edward Alvey, Jr., dean
of the College at Mary Washington, headed that institution's
committee.

The necessary arrangements and planning were completed.
Within a few years it was possible to work out cooperative relationships
between the two institutions whereby courses in
nursing, elementary and graduate education, and medical
technology could be offered, with both the university and the
college participating.

All went smoothly until the session of 1953-54 when serious
problems arose at Mary Washington. The trouble began
when the eighty student waitresses in the dining hall were directed
to wear caps and uniforms. This was bitterly resented,
on the ground that the directive "demeaned the position of
waitress to a servile role," as Dean Alvey expresses it in his
history of Mary Washington. Hostility had been mounting
among the students toward the administration, and the directive
as to uniforms brought matters to a head. Dean of Women
Isabelle Gonon resigned and there was considerable turmoil.
President Combs was given an opportunity to be heard at a
special meeting of the Board of Visitors in December 1953,
and the board met again the following month. The outcome
of all this was that there was a "rearrangement" of President
Combs's responsibilities, and "supreme administrative authority"
for Mary Washington was vested in Colgate Darden,
chancellor of the institution. Combs retained the title of president
but was relieved of all jurisdiction over "faculty relations,
student relations, curriculum, internal budget and control."
His authority extended only to "construction and development,
solicitation of funds and related matters." Combs wrote
the board that the arrangement "has my full approval and the
implementation of it will have my full cooperation." Darden
announced that Dean Alvey and Edgar Woodward, bursar,
would divide administrative duties at the college and would be
responsible to him. Alvey was placed in charge of faculty relations
and curriculum, with Woodward handling the business
side.

Morgan Combs became increasingly dissatisfied with this arrangement
and more and more suspicious. In December 1954
he charged that five members of the college faculty and staff
were engaged in a conspiracy against him and that when he
signed the letter almost a year before agreeing to cooperate
with the new arrangement, he did so "under duress." At about

this time a document termed "scurrilous" by the Board of Visitors
and entitled "The Whole Story at Mary Washington College"
was widely distributed. No one knew who wrote it, but
Combs was aware that it was being circulated. The visitors expressed
"resentment of the completely false charges" and announced
that "continued retention of Dr. Combs in any active
capacity at Mary Washington would be against the best interests
of the college." It removed him from office, effective April
9, 1955.

Morgan Combs was obviously not well; he was found to be
suffering from leukemia. He entered a hospital in July and
died in October, aged sixty-four. It was a sad end for a career
that had been useful to Virginia education. President Darden
expressed deep distress, saying that he had known for some
time that Combs was gravely ill. The latter's career as president
of Mary Washington had spanned twenty-six years, and
during that time the institution has grown from a small teachers'
college to a well-regarded liberal arts college for women.
Enrollment had trebled, and whereas only four faculty members
had the Ph.D. when Combs became president in 1929,
nearly half of the almost one hundred teachers had the doctorate
when he died. The handsome and greatly enlarged
campus was much admired, the physical facilities had been
expanded substantially, and the standards raised. When the
new science hall was completed in 1959, it was named for
Morgan Combs.

After a careful search, the Board of Visitors elected Dr.
Grellet C. Simpson, dean and professor of English at Randolph-Macon
College, Ashland, as chancellor of Mary Washington.
A native of Norfolk, he was a B.A. of Randolph-Macon
and an M.A. and Ph.D. of the University of Virginia. The
college made excellent progress under his leadership, and he
remained in office until his retirement in 1974. During President
Simpson's eighteen-year administration, admission standards
and degree requirements were raised, teaching loads
were reduced and faculty salaries improved, and the physical
plant was upgraded. The granting to the college in 1971 of a
chapter of Phi Beta Kappa was convincing evidence of the
progress that had been made.

Doubts concerning the value to Mary Washington of its affiliation
with the university began to arise as the years passed.

These were accentuated in 1965 when Dr. John Dale Russell
issued his report as chairman of the Higher Education Study
Commission surveying the colleges and universities of the
commonwealth. The report said that "Mary Washington College
enjoys few advantages from its relationship with the University
of Virginia, and there are some disadvantages"; and it
went on:

However, the report went on to say that "Mary Washington
will not achieve its potential as a distinguished institution until
it has its own Board of Visitors and can enjoy equal status with
the other state-controlled institutions of higher education in
Virginia."

The advisability of terminating the relationship between
Mary Washington and the university became obvious in 1970,
when women were admitted to the university on the same basis
as men. A coordinate college for women at Fredericksburg
no longer had any reason for existence. Hence legislation was
passed at the 1972 session of the General Assembly bringing
the affiliation to an end. At the same time, admission of men
to Mary Washington was authorized.

Foundations for two-year colleges in southwest Virginia and
northern Virginia, affiliated with the university, had been laid
by the Extension Division.

In the mountainous southwest numerous extension centers
had been opened. There was no college or university in that
extreme southwestern tip of the state. President Darden,
Dean Zehmer, and Dean Stiles made a special trip to the extension

center at Clinch Valley, Wise County, where enrollment
was close to three hundred, with both daytime and
nighttime classes going full tilt. They were greatly impressed.
Soon thereafter leaders from that section of Virginia urged
that a two-year community college be established at Clinch
Valley by the university, and the university administration decided
to open such a college on an experimental basis for the
session of 1954-55. It was an immediate success, despite numerous
handicaps. President and Mrs. Darden bought about
one hundred acres of land, two lakes, and other property for
the campus. The first building was named for George Zehmer.
A major influence in the development of the institution
was exerted by a remarkable man, Joseph C. Smiddy, son of
a coal miner who rose to become chancellor of the college
and guitar-playing leader of the Reedy Creek Boys bluegrass
quartet.

The Clinch Valley curriculum was divided into two parts,
the terminal program and the transfer program. The former
consisted of largely vocational and technical courses, while the
latter was modeled on the first two years of work in the College
of Arts and Sciences at the University. Those who successfully
completed the transfer course could shift to a fouryear
institution of higher learning.

So much eagerness was demonstrated by the students and
so much cooperation by the surrounding area, that the General
Assembly appropriated $110,000 for operations at its
1956 session and $500,000 for an academic building. It was
clear that Clinch Valley College was there to stay.

By the 1958-59 session the framework of the new academic
building had been erected, and the Seven Society announced
that it would provide a bust of Thomas Jefferson. Six houses
and a four-unit apartment house for faculty members had
been completed, and plans were being drawn for a gymnasium-auditorium.
Prof. Archer Jones, who had received his
doctorate at the university in June 1958 took over as the first
dean of Clinch Valley.

Somewhat similar things were happening in northern Virginia,
where the population was far more dense, and a large
percentage of the citizenry were connected with the federal
government in Washington. A great need for extension
courses was evident. An extension center was established

71. James Bakhtiar, all-American fullback, 1957.

there in 1948, and in 1956 the university's Board of Visitors
authorized the setting up of a two-year coeducational branch
college, which opened the following year in temporary quarters
at Bailey's Crossroads, under the directorship of J. N. G.
Finley, postwar dean of counseling at the university. It was
called University College. In 1959 the City of Fairfax purchased
150 acres for a permanent branch campus, and donated
it to the university. The institution was named for
George Mason, the revolutionary statesman, and given the
status of a community college.

Extension Division classes were being conducted by hundreds
of study groups in practically every city and town in the state,
with particular concentration in northern Virginia and the
Hampton Roads area. In the latter region such highly technical
subjects as the aerodynamics of supersonic flight, naval architecture,
and advanced electronics were being taught. Some
regular members of the university faculty were giving these
courses, as with those elsewhere, but teachers from virtually
all the colleges and universities in Virginia were participating
in the far-flung activities of the Extension Division.

Accolades to President Darden and members of the university
faculty came from many directions during these years. Darden
was given highly important responsibilities of national if
not international significance. In 1954 he spoke at Santiago,
Chile, at the Congress of Latin American Universities, representing
the Association of American Universities. The following
year he was named a delegate to the United Nations. He
spent about two months at the U.N. and returned to the university
on several weekends when university business was
pressing. In 1957 he left on a fifty-two-day world tour as a
member of President Eisenhower's special committee on foreign
aid. Some twenty-two thousand miles were covered and
a score of countries in Europe and Asia were visited. When
the group returned to Washington, they were in session at the
old War and State Department Building across the street from
the White House, and one member said, "Come on, let's walk
over and give the President our report." "Oh no," said John L.
Lewis, czar of the United Mine Workers who was a member of
the committee. "We've got to go up in style. You phone and
get a White House car." So a chauffeured Cadillac was summoned

and the delegation drove to the main entrance, a distance
of one block. All of which seemed highly absurd to Colgate
Darden. . . . Two years thereafter he served as chairman
of a commission to examine southern education. It issued a
notable report, Within Our Reach, in which the point was made
that the South must be judged on the same basis as the rest of
the United States, with no more alibis for the region based on
lower living standards or other differentials.

Teachers at the university also were honored in many
ways—by European, Asian, and South American institutions
or governments, as well as by some of the most prestigious
universities and agencies in the United States.

Tributes to Prof. Joseph M. Carrière of the Department of
Romance Languages were paid repeatedly by the French government.
He was made an officer of the Academy, a knight of
the Legion of Honor, was twice awarded the Prize of the
French Language, elected a member of the Centre Catholique
Intellectuel Français, and awarded an honorary degree by Canada's
Laval University. Professor Carrière was chosen president
of the American Association of Teachers of French and
the American Association of Teachers and was elected twice to
the presidency of the American Folklore Society.

Prof. Rowland Egger's awards and distinctions were so numerous
as to be almost bewildering. A partial list would include
financial and administrative adviser to the Bolivian government
and administrative adviser to the prime minister of
Pakistan, vice-president of the United Nations Administrative
Tribunal, representative of the Ford Foundation in Lebanon,
administrative consultant to the U.S. Departments of State,
Treasury, Commerce, and Agriculture, and U.S. government
representative at several meetings of the Pan American Congress.
Dr. Egger was decorated by the governments of Bolivia,
Belgium, and Lebanon. He was the first American to receive
the British Royal Institute of Public Administration's Haldane
Prize.

Prof. Oron J. Hale of the History Department was on a twoyear
leave of absence in 1950-52, serving as U.S. deputy land
commissioner and then commissioner of Bavaria. Appointed
by John J. McCloy, German high commissioner, as deputy to
George N. Shuster, he succeeded Shuster when the latter returned
to the presidency of Hunter College, New York. "Pat"

Hale was a recognized authority on modern Germany, the author
of highly praised books and articles on that country's
twentieth century history and politics.

Prof. Allan T. Gwathmey, '36, of the Chemistry Department
received the Southern Chemist Award for 1952, a gold medal
given at the southeastern regional meeting of the American
Chemical Society. It was for his notable work with metal crystals,
his leadership in establishing the Virginia Institute for
Scientific Research in Richmond, which he served as president
and board chairman, and "for distinguished service to the
profession of chemistry in the Southern states." "Pete" Gwathmey
also won the Jefferson Research Prize of the Virginia
Academy of Science, of which he was elected president. The
research award of the Oak Ridge Institute of Nuclear Studies
likewise went to him, and he lectured to several professional
groups in Europe on his work with crystals.

Recognition as one of the foremost bibliographers in this
country and Europe came to Prof. Fredson T. Bowers of the
English Department. He received a Fulbright grant to work
on the bibliographical aspects of various Restoration plays and
was in demand as a speaker in England, where he addressed
the Student Book Collectors' Club in Oxford and the Bibliographical
Societies in Oxford and London. His invitation to
address the London Society was a most exceptional honor. Six
years later, in 1958, Professor Bowers served as Sanders Lecturer
in Bibliography at Trinity College, Cambridge, the first
American to be invited to occupy this, the oldest bibliographical
lectureship in England. The following year he was at Oxford
for two months as James R. Lytell reader in bibliography.
He also lectured at various leading American universities.
Mrs. Bowers is Nancy Hale, the nationally known short story
writer, novelist, and biographer, winner of numerous important
literary awards.

The Butler Medal was awarded by Columbia University in
1952 to Prof. Albert G. A. Balz, '09, longtime chairman of the
Philosophy Department. The medal goes annually to the Columbia
graduate who has shown the most competence in the
fields of philosophy or educational theory. Balz, a Columbia
Ph.D., published Cartesian Studies in 1951 and Descartes and the
Modern Mind in 1952.

72. William S. Weedon, University
Professor of Philosophy.

[ILLUSTRATION]

73. Joseph C. Smiddy, chancellor of
Clinch Valley College.

Mathematics Professors Gordon T. Whyburn and Edward
J. McShane were winning so many honors that it was difficult
to keep up with them. Whyburn was elected president of the
American Mathematical Society and McShane was chosen almost
simultaneously as president of the Mathematical Association
of America. Several years later McShane was named to
the presidency of the society. Whyburn was also vice-president
and chairman of the American Association for the Advancement
of Science and served as managing editor of the Journal
of the American Mathematical Society. Both men represented
the United States at the International Mathematics Conference
at Amsterdam in 1954. McShane also was a delegate to
the International Mathematical Union at The Hague.

Dr. G. Slaughter Fitz-Hugh, chairman of the Department of
Otolaryngology in the Medical School, was elected president
of the American Laryngological Association and the Virginia
Society of Ophthalmology and Otolaryngology, as well as
chairman of the Section of Otolaryngology of the Southern
Medical Association. He received the Certificate of Merit of
the American Academy of Ophthalmology and Otolaryngology
and the Robley Dunglison Award of the university's Medical
School.

Law Prof. Hardy C. Dillard, '27, was addressing prestigious
groups in this country and abroad. A partial list of his appointments
and engagements during the middle 1950s would
include: member of the executive committee, American Society
of International Law and of the editorial board of the
American Journal of International Law; civilian consultant to the
Army War College and lecturer there and at the Armed
Forces Staff College; delegate to important conferences at
Stanford University and Arden House, New York; lecturer at
The Hague on "Some Aspects of War and Diplomacy," the
lectures published in the Recueil des Cours of the Académie de
Droit International.

Another member of the law faculty, Prof. Charles S. Gregory,
was the recipient of honors that were international in
scope. At the invitation of the Australian universities' law
schools he spoke before seven of them in all parts of the country,
under the auspices of the Carnegie Foundation. He also
gave a series of public lectures in Australia on torts and labor

relations. In addition, Gregory was appointed by Attorney
General Herbert Brownell, Jr., to a committee for the study of
the antitrust laws.

Prof. Jesse W. Beams was winning awards of great prestige
for his invention of the ultracentrifuge. This device was not
only significant in the development of the atom bomb, but it
also contributed to the solution of biological and medical
problems involving viruses, hormones, and enzymes. Solutions
were brought nearer by virtue of the fact that it was possible
with Dr. Beams's extraordinary device to spin tiny
spheres at one million revolutions per second. The American
Physical Society, of which he was elected president a few years
later, awarded him the John Scott Medal and a check for
$1,000. The Lewis Prize of the American Philosophical Society
went to Dr. Beams for his address to the society on the
ultracentrifuge. He was also the recipient of the University of
Virginia's first annual Thomas Jefferson Award. This award
was made possible by a gift from Robert E. McConnell of The
Plains, who provided for a grant of $500 each year to the
member of the faculty who has contributed "by personal influence,
teaching and scholarship toward inspiring those high
ideals for the advancement of which Mr. Jefferson founded
the university."

Edward C. Stevenson, '31, professor of physics, was one of
forty or more leading civilian scientists and industrialists who
were serving on the Army Scientific Advisory Panel, established
to advise the secretary of the army and army chief of
staff on the development of a more effective and economical
fighting force. Professor Stevenson was on the Harvard faculty
for eight years before World War II and later was transferred
to Los Alamos, N.M., where he helped to develop the
firing mechanism for the atomic bomb.

The Fisher Award, highest award of the American Chemical
Society in the field of analytical chemistry, with a check for
$1,000, went to Prof. John H. Yoe in 1957. Dr. Yoe also was
chosen chairman of the society's Division of Analytical Chemistry.
In addition he was named as one of eleven U.S. delegates
selected by the National Academy of Sciences and the National
Research Council to represent the Academy Research
Council at the Fifteenth International Congress of Pure and

Applied Chemistry at Lisbon. Yoe also attended a meeting of
the International Commission on Analytical Reactions in the
same Portuguese city.

Prof. Frank A. Geldard of the Department of Psychology
was on leave for the session of 1956-57, serving as scientific
liaison officer for the U.S. Office of Naval Research, with headquarters
in London. He had served during the previous year
as president of the Division of Experimental Psychology of the
American Psychological Association and was elected to the
Committee on Awards of that association and to the council of
the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

A remarkable series of honors came to Dr. Vincent W.
Archer, '23, chairman of the Department of Radiology in the
Medical School for well over a quarter of a century. He was
chosen in 1958 to head the American College of Radiology,
with over five thousand members. Three years later he was
awarded the College Gold Medal, the organization's highest
honor. Dr. Archer had been a member of the American Medical
Association's House of Delegates for many years. He also
was credited with a greater degree of responsibility than any
other individual for the Virginia General Assembly's $5,900,000
appropriation in 1955 for the multistory addition to the
university's Medical Center. Dr. Archer had received the first
award of the Southern Medical Association in 1949 and in the
same year the American Roentgen Ray Association's silver
medal.

Lecture engagements in all parts of India were filled in
1958-59 by Prof. Edward Younger of the History Department
under a Fulbright lectureship at the University of Allahabad,
where he taught U.S. history and government. He
would return for another lecture engagement in India three
summers later and in 1960-61 would be on leave to the U.S.
Naval War College as Ernest J. King Professor of Maritime
and Diplomatic History.

Prof. Frank L. Hereford, Jr., accepted an invitation to
spend a year as Fulbright scholar at Birmingham University,
England, doing research with their multibillion-volt ion accelerator.
He was cowinner, with S. Berko, of the J. Shelton
Horsley Research Award of the Virginia Academy of Science.

Dean Thomas K. Fitz Patrick of the School of Architecture
was elected president of the National Architectural Accrediting
Board, of which he had been secretary for some years. He
was past president of the Association of Collegiate Schools of
Architecture and in 1957 was elected to the College of Fellows
of the American Institute of Architects.

Studies of the Soviet Union's economic growth by Prof. G.
Warren Nutter of the Economics Department had attracted
"worldwide attention," according to Prof. James M. Buchanan,
chairman of the department. Nutter had been engaged in this
inquiry for four years, and the results had been "widely acclaimed."

The foregoing list of distinctions, citations, lectureships,
and other accolades accorded University of Virginia professors
during these years is by no means complete. It is, however,
representative of the wide range of important recognition
received by the institution's administrators and teachers.

Gregory Swanson, a black graduate of the Howard University
Law School who had been practicing law for two years, applied
for permission to take graduate courses in the University
of Virginia Law School for the session 1950-51. Attorney
General J. Lindsay Almond informed the university's Board
of Visitors that "refusal to admit Swanson cannot be successfully
defended in court." The board, nevertheless, rejected
Swanson's application on the ground that acceptance would
be a violation of Virginia law. Swanson appealed, and the U.S.
Circuit Court of Appeals ordered him admitted, an outcome
said on good authority to have been in full accord with President
Darden's wishes. He entered the Law School in the fall of
1950. The black was well received, according to various opinions,
but he remained in school only a few months and
dropped out in July 1951. In Darden's view he did so because
he was not sufficiently well prepared for graduate work. Swanson
said that the university students did not care about racial
equality or the welfare of the country, according to Bryan
Kay's "History of Desegregation at the University of Virginia:
1950-1969."

Actually, Swanson had not been the first Negro enrolled at
the institution. The decision of the court in the Swanson case

validated the entry of other black graduate students, and Walter
N. Ridley, with baccalaureate and master's degrees from
Howard University, applied in January 1950 in order to complete
his doctorate in the philosophy of education. Three
years later the degree was awarded by the School of Education,
and Ridley became the first black to earn a doctorate at
a major white southern university.

In 1958 a tense situation arose in the Charlottesville public
schools, two of which had been closed under the state's "massive
resistance" policy, and student leaders at the university
cautioned matriculates arriving in September to "refrain from
any actions that may tend to aggravate the problem." They
seem to have heeded this advice.

The coed question was a lively one during this period, and the
prevailing view among the male students continued to be that
such ladies as were already there had to be tolerated, but no
more were wanted.

True, Elinor Mickey was nominated in 1949 by the Student
Party for a place on the Student Council, an unprecedented
thing. She was from the Department of Education and active
with the Virginia Players. Miss Mickey agreed to run, but the
Cavalier Daily demurred. It pointed out that the women students
had their own governing association and that the Student
Council "is concerned with the activities of male students."
The council "would be embarrassed, we submit, by the
presence of a coed member," said the editor. Miss Mickey withdrew
from the race.

At the same time, the newspaper expressed sincere regret
that Lucy Stockwell was resigning from the University News
Service. "Her news releases, which are carried by the CD almost
every day of publication without a by-line are a boon to
harried city editors and . . . a boon to the paper and its readers,"
said the publication.

In another area the coeds had installed a branch of the
Lychnos Society at the university. It recognized women students
who were foremost in scholarship and leadership. Lychnos
was not unlike the Raven Society.

"There are women everywhere—in my classes, all over the
Grounds and generally in the hair of myself and of most of

74. Vincent Shea, vice-president for business and finance.

the friends I have made since I arrived here," Brockett Muir,
Jr., a first-year man, wrote in a letter to the student newspaper.
"Do not think I am a woman hater. I love them—in their
place. But a woman's place is not in a gentleman's university. . . .
I want to send my sons here, but not if the place has become
infested with women."

Cavalier withers were being wrung by the spectacle of Virginia
coeds returning in shorts from playing tennis. "All of
the women's colleges in Virginia require a young lady to wear
a raincoat at the very least when she is wearing shorts," the
editor of the Cavalier Daily admonished. "And here at the university,
where all the men attire themselves as befits a gentleman,
even that little bit is not being done." The paper suggested
that coeds should always "wear stockings and heels to
classes, which (we are naturally and excusably a bit shaky on
our facts at this point) seems to be the female equivalent of
coats and ties."

Yet by the close margin of 1,237 to 1,064, coeds were given
the right to vote in student elections. The decision had previously
been made that they were ineligible for seats on the Student
Council since they had their own governmental apparatus.

Tantrums erupted in the sanctum of the Cavalier Daily when
an announcement was made asking "all students, male and
female, interested in cheerleading . . . to attend the practice
today." "After years of futile struggle," wailed the editor, "we
have finally become at least tolerant of the female race in the
classroom. . . . But must we face the unpleasant prospect of
hearing their titters and giggles in front of us at every football
game?"

A strong dissent from the bleating of these misogynists was
sounded in verse by Jack Cole, who boldly proclaimed:

This amusing dissent seemed all the more noteworthy in
view of the vast preponderance of student sentiment in the
opposite direction.

In another area of student opinion it was even more obvious
than before that Jews were accepted without prejudice by the
great majority at Virginia. William L. Shapero was elected
president of both the Law School and the Class of 1951, and
was a member of Tilka, IMP, and the Thirteen Society. A few
years later Tom Hofheimer was vice-president of the Student
Council, treasurer of Skull & Keys, and a member of the Ravens,
Omicron Delta Kappa, and the Thirteen Society. About
a decade after that, Tony Markel was an Eli, Z, and Thirteen,
as well as vice-president of the College and a member of the
IFC governing board. Other examples might be mentioned.

It was during these years that C. Waller Barrett, '20, was donating
his monumental collection of books, manuscripts, and
letters by American authors to Alderman Library. Authoritatively
described as the most valuable assemblage of materials
on American literature in existence, it includes some forty
thousand books and three hundred thousand manuscripts
valued at tens of millions of dollars. Having built a fortune in
shipping, Mr. Barrett retired early and devoted his ability and
energy to putting together this amazing collection, representing
well over one thousand novelists, essayists, short story
writers, historians, poets, and dramatists extending from the
American Revolution to the present. Numerous rare manuscripts
and letters, as well as first editions, many inscribed by
the authors, have been brought together. Nearly five hundred
of the writers were considered by Mr. Barrett to be of such
importance that he collected them in depth, that is, everything

in printed form, as well as manuscripts and letters by or related
to them.

The breadth of the collection may be partially glimpsed
from the fact that seven New England writers are so fully represented
that "no research on these authors can safely be undertaken
without consulting the material in the Barrett library,"
Herbert Cahoon, curator of manuscripts in New York
City's Pierpont Morgan Library, has stated. The seven are
Hawthorne, Longfellow, Holmes, Thoreau, Emerson, Whittier,
and James Russell Lowell.

The finest collection in existence of works by Edgar Allan
Poe was an early presentation by Waller Barrett. It was given
in honor of James Southall Wilson, whose letter to Barrett in
the early 1940s turned his attention as a collector to Alderman
Library. Included were Poe's rare first published work (1827)
as well as El Aaraaf, Tamerlane and Minor Poems (1829), both,
unfortunately, stolen from the library in 1974 and never recovered.

Other southern writers, such as William Gilmore Simms,
Paul Hamilton Hayne, Henry Timrod, Sidney Lanier, Joel
Chandler Harris, and O. Henry are covered in depth. Important
modern authors, such as Willa Cather, Steinbeck, Hemingway,
Dreiser, Mencken, and Vachel Lindsay are well represented.

The Barrett Library, consulted by scholars from all over the
world, is handsomely housed in a paneled room adjoining that
of the McGregor Library, also in an appropriate room of its
own.

When the Barrett collection was formally dedicated, many
who attended the ceremonies adjourned to the Farmington
Country Club. Two university students were discussing the
gift, and one was overheard by Barrett to remark: "This university
needs a football team, and what do we get—a goddam
liberry!" Nobody laughed any more heartily at this abysmal
gaffe than Waller Barrett.

The Alderman Library archival resources had been sharply
upgraded by the intensive work of Francis L. Berkeley, Jr., in
the years immediately after World War II. He had been appointed
university archivist succeeding able Lester J. Cappon,
who resigned to accept a position with the Institute of Early
American History and Culture in Williamsburg. Berkeley was

"an ideal successor" to Cappon, in the opinion of Librarian
Harry Clemons, and he spent the next five or six years "prowling
through Virginia," as he put it, in search of manuscripts.
It was high time that a dedicated effort of this sort was made
to counteract, as far as possible, the massive roundup of Virginia
materials carried away in the 1920s and 1930s by J. G.
de Roulhac Hamilton and others, who carted them off to
North Carolina and elsewhere. In a few years Alderman Library
had so many manuscripts that it had difficulty making
room for them, and it was obvious that the building would
have to be enlarged. For his part in achieving this result and
for his other services to scholarship, Frank Berkeley received
high praise. Walter Muir Whitehill, an international authority
in the field, wrote more than a decade later in his book Independent
Historical Societies: "Few men are as widely beloved as
he for their unobtrusive and disinterested service to learning.
Berkeley continues not only to guide the manuscript division
[of Alderman] but to play a vital role in the affairs of the Virginia
Historical Society, of the project for microfilming Virginia
materials overseas, and of most scholarly enterprises that
concern Virginia history."

Harry Clemons retired as librarian in 1950 after a highly
productive career during which he made an immeasurable
contribution to the library in many directions, "while," as one
of his associates expressed it, "subtly arranging matters so that
somebody else got the credit." When Clemons became librarian
in 1927 the book collection totaled 151,333 volumes
and when he retired twenty-three years later the figure was
1,592,333. But the bare figures tell little of the "development
of the personality, spirit and service of a great institution," as
the Alumni News put it. Mr. Clemons's retirement was in large
degree nominal, since he embarked at once on a threepronged
program which included a history of the library, an
appraisal of its books and other collections, and preparation
of a list of materials it needed.

Harry Clemons's successor was Jack Dalton, '35, who had
been on the library staff since 1936 as reference and associate
librarian. He was in the office for six years, at the end of which
time he resigned to accept appointment as director of the international
relations office of the American Library Association.
An innovation of his incumbency was to open the library

stacks to undergraduates. Dalton enjoyed "high esteem in the
ranks of his colleagues throughout the world," John Cook
Wyllie, '29, who succeeded him as librarian, wrote following
his departure.

John Wyllie had been curator of rare books and of the
McGregor Library when chosen librarian at Alderman. Described
as one of the two ablest professional bibliophiles in the
United States, he had a remarkably diversified career. After a
year in the early 1930s spent touring Europe and visiting libraries,
binderies, and booksellers, he was named curator of
the Virginia manuscript collection. When Alderman Library
opened he was appointed director of the rare books and
manuscripts division. Before the United States entered World
War II, Wyllie joined the American Field Service and drove
ambulances for the British in the Middle East. Then he served
as an officer in the U.S. Air Force, had hair-raising experiences
in the China-Burma-India theater, and was decorated
by the American, British, and Chinese governments. After his
return to the university he received the Raven and Algernon
Sydney Sullivan Awards. Wyllie reorganized the University of
Virginia Press in 1948 and took a leading role in establishing
the Albemarle County Historical Society and the University of
Virginia Bibliographical Society. His indefatigability is seen in
the fact that he sometimes worked all night at the library and
was found asleep in his chair in the morning.

Wyllie appointed Francis Berkeley and Louise Savage associate
librarians in 1958, and Berkeley resigned as secretary to
the Board of Visitors. He was succeeded in the latter post by
Weldon Cooper, professor of political science and director of
the Bureau of Public Administration, which changed its name
in 1964 to the Institute of Government. "Frank" Berkeley continued
as curator of the library's millions of historical and literary
manuscripts. As chief of acquisitions, Miss Savage, who
had been with the library since 1930, continued to schedule
the flow of some 40,000 or more books added to the collections
each year.

The family of the late John Stewart Bryan gave the library
valuable letters covering the period 1770-1887. The Randolph,
Tucker, and Bland families, among others, were represented,
and the collection included 150 letters from John
Randolph of Roanoke, 200 from St. George Tucker of Williamsburg,

75. Dr. Henry B. Mulholland of the medical faculty.

and numerous others from Theoderick Bland,
Judge Henry St. George Tucker, Nathaniel Beverley Tucker,
William Wirt, and Francis Walker Gilmer.

Valuable collections on optics were acquired through the
good offices of two alumni, James P. C. Southall, of the Columbia
University faculty, and Lincoln M. Polan, of the Zenith Optical
Company. Southall was instrumental in securing the collection
on optics of Adolph and Henry C. Lomb of New York
State, and upon his retirement he presented his own fine collection
on physics, a considerable part of which dealt with optics.
Polan paid a portion of the cost of cataloguing the Lomb
collection and solicited contributions from other optical companies
toward a fund to expand the university's optics collection.

The Virginia Quarterly Review celebrated its twenty-fifth anniversary
in 1950 amid tributes from various directions, and
with a contributors' list over the years that sounded like an
international who's-who of literary luminaries. Every short
story published in the magazine the following year was selected
for republication or honorable mention in one of the
best-stories-of-the-year collections. The autumn issue had
three nonfiction articles chosen among the country's "ten best"
by a Council of Librarians. The VQR had three more articles
among the "ten best" in its 1953 winter issue. Five years later
the magazine received a remarkable tribute in the Times of
London. Oliver Edwards stated in the newspaper's "Talking of
Books" column that the Virginia Quarterly "provides as stimulating
a harvest of reading as one can find anywhere." Charlotte
Kohler was editor during this period and would remain
so for nearly three decades, making a distinguished record.
She succeeded Prof. Archibald B. Shepperson in 1946; he had
returned from the service and resumed the editorship for one
year. Miss Kohler had been acting editor during the war. A
$125,000 bequest from Emily Clark Balch provided $1,500 a
year for literary prizes to be awarded annually by the quarterly.
Part of her legacy also went toward increases in salaries
of English faculty members, and part made possible the appointment
of writers in residence.

The first such writer was Nobel Prize winner William Faulkner.
He came with Mrs. Faulkner during the second term of

the 1956-57 session, visited with English classes, and answered
questions concerning his books and writing in general.
He also consulted with faculty and students and gave several
public readings. Faulkner accepted an invitation to return as
writer in residence for the second term the following session.
He had been a frequent visitor to the university, since his
daughter Jill was married to Paul D. Summers, Jr., a student
in the Law School.

Katherine Anne Porter, author of novels and short stories,
was the next writer in residence. She came in the fall of 1958
for one semester.

Dumas Malone, on a sabbatical from Columbia University,
came back to Charlottesville for the session of 1958-59 as visiting
professor of history. He conducted a seminar on the Jeffersonian
period and worked on his monumental biography
of Thomas Jefferson. Malone retired at that time from Columbia
and remained at the University of Virginia as Thomas
Jefferson Memorial Foundation Professor of History, a chair
established especially for him. He subsequently became professor
emeritus and biographer in residence, with grants from
various national foundations to aid him in his work.

Serving with Malone at the university was Merrill Peterson,
also an internationally recognized authority on the master of
Monticello. Peterson, who succeeded Malone as Thomas Jefferson
Memorial Foundation Professor, was the author of Jefferson's
Image in the American Mind, awarded the Bancroft Prize,
Thomas Jefferson and the New Nation, and other highly regarded
works. He and Malone were two of the three leading authorities
in the world on the career of the university's founder.

The University of Virginia Press—at that time, as it is now, a
printing establishment but not a publishing house—was winning
acclaim for the quality of its product. It moved in 1950
from the Corner into its new building between Scott Stadium
and Thornton Hall. Managed from 1935 to 1950 by John S.
Peters, an alumnus, the press had its origins as far back as
1829, when it was founded to publish the Virginia Literary Museum.
Operations were fragmentary and primitive for many
years. In 1912 President Alderman approved the purchase of
a multigraph, which was set up in the southwest wing of the
Rotunda in what was then the bursar's office. The press

printed examinations and tests, hospital forms, circulars, and
letterheads under the direction of Virginia E. Moran, an assistant
in the bursar's office, until she left in 1919 to become assistant
registrar. It functioned under the general supervision
of the bursar until Peters came. Much better equipment was
obtained at that time and the press turned out a series of
books in collaboration with the McGregor Library and another
for the Bibliographical Society, after the society's founding
in the late forties. The first volume issued under the sole
imprint of the University Press was a new edition of Charles
Smith's The University of Virginia—Thirty-Two Woodcuts. Soon
thereafter a new edition of Memoirs of a Monticello Slave, the
recollections of Isaac Jefferson, was produced. Peters had left
to accept a position at the University of Georgia, and Charles
E. Moran, Jr., '36, recently proprietor of the Shamrock Press
in Charlottesville, succeeded him. Under his direction the
press continued to win awards for the quality of its work. In
1957, for example, two of its half-dozen books were chosen
among the twenty-five best for the year in design and format,
in competition with seventeen other publishers and printers.
At that time the plant was printing the Cavalier Daily, university
catalogues, and the University News Letter, as well as news
letters for the Departments of Law and Medicine, hospital
forms, and miscellaneous materials. President Darden had
said early in his administration that establishment of "an endowed
University Press" was one of his major objectives, but
he was never able to bring this about. It remained for his successor
in office, Edgar Shannon, to find the money and set in
operation the University Press of Virginia. Important steps toward
this objective were taken during the incumbency of
Charles E. Moran, Jr.

Unprecedented expansion and improvement in the university's
physical plant was carried out under President Darden.
By the opening of the session of 1950-51 the following major
undertakings had been completed or were under way:

Residence houses for men on the old golf links, ten units to
accommodate 1,244 students, $3,000,000. They were named
for Professors Charles Bonnycastle and John Patten Emmet,
from the original faculty, and Professors Richard Heath Dabney,
William H. Echols, Charles Hancock, Charles W. Kent,

76. B. F. D. Runk, dean of the university, 1959-68.

Albert Lefevre, John Calvin Metcalf, James M. Page, and Milton
W. Humphreys, from more recent times.

Annex behind Cabell Hall, five stories and basement, Ushaped,
accommodating all departments of the College of
Arts and Sciences except the natural sciences, business administration,
music, and art, $1,800,000.

Student Union Building (Newcomb Hall), three stories behind
Peabody Hall, a center for all student activities, $1,800,000.

Chemical engineering wing for Thornton Hall, $250,000.

Hospital wing to provide more space for care and feeding
of patients, $370,000.

Cancer research wing of Medical School, three stories with
upper floor devoted to neurosurgery, $250,000.

Women's dormitory near Alumni Hall, corner of Routes
250 and 29, $465,000.

Heat and power lines and plant, $1,000,000.

In addition, President Darden took a special interest in the
beautification of the Grounds. He appointed a Restoration
Committee, headed by Prof. Allan T. Gwathmey, and initiated
a ten-year program. Many trees on the Lawn were in bad condition,
and these were replaced. With the cooperation of the
Garden Club of Virginia a plan to restore Thomas Jefferson's
gardens between the Lawn and Ranges was launched. Mrs.
Herbert McK. Smith of Staunton, a leader in the Garden Club
and member of the university's Board of Visitors, was a key
figure here. Proceeds from Garden Week over a number of
years were devoted to the project, and the Maverick Plan, engraved
by Peter Maverick for Jefferson in the 1820s, was followed.
Restoration of the West Gardens was completed during
Darden's term, but the East Gardens were not finished until
he had retired from the presidency. Throughout his incumbency
he spent much time touring the Grounds with Sylvester
O'Grince, buildings and grounds director. From one hundred
to two hundred trees, on the Lawn and elsewhere, were replaced.
A shade-tree replacement nursery was opened on
Copeley Hill, and a program of planting flowering trees to
supplement shade trees was got under way. Darden sent to the
Norfolk Botanical Gardens for azaleas, some of which were
planted between Cabell Hall and its annex. An azalea and camellia
nursery was opened in the picnic area across from the

new dormitories. A small garden was planted at the Engineering
School.

As part of Darden's plan for reducing the cost of attending
the university, a cafeteria accommodating 600 students was
opened on Emmet Street between the new residence houses
and the university's academic buildings. "Good chow at a reasonable
price," in the words of one student, was offered. The
price was $190 per semester for all meals. Accommodations in
the new dormitories were $135 for the session, and it was calculated
that a student who took his meals at the cafeteria and
lived in these dormitories would save something like $200 on
the session.

A landmark was liquidated when the gymnasium's reflecting
pool was filled in. Completed in 1923, the pool had been
used for skating in winter and by youthful and overoptimistic
fishermen in summer. But it filled gradually with mud, became
an eyesore and was dubbed "the little Okefenokee." The
area it had occupied became an intramural playing field.

A new organ for the University Chapel was dedicated in
memory of Robert Osborne Price, '88, the gift of his widow.
Mrs. Price came from California for the occasion. Bishop
Henry St. George Tucker, '95, retired presiding bishop of the
Episcopal Church, conducted the ceremonies, and Prof. Vernon
McCasland, chairman of the Department of Religion,
made the presentation on behalf of the donor.

Pavilions II, III, and VI on the Lawn were being restored in
the mid-1950s, under the direction of Prof. Frederick D. Nichols,
to make them as nearly as possible exactly as they were
in Jefferson's day. All were to be occupied by professors. With
the completion of the Cabell Hall annex the Department of
Romance Languages moved there, and Pavilion VI, the Romance
Pavilion, became available as a residence. Each of the
ten pavilions had been enlarged at one time or another. These
additions were not being given the strict restoration treatment
that was accorded the original structures, but modern conveniences
were installed in some of them.

A new $1,500,000 home for the Department of Physics on
McCormick Road across from Thornton Hall was ready for
the session of 1954-55. Together with the latter structure, it
formed the nucleus of what was envisaged as the university's
center for pure and applied science. The U.S. Army was using

the university as its principal center for giving atomic scientists
advanced training in nuclear physics.

Excavation was begun for a new dormitory costing approximately
three hundred thousand dollars and located on the
hillside back of Clark Hall, home of the Law School. The
building was to be leased for five years to the Judge Advocate
General's School for the use of officers staffing it or studying
in it. The school's military men were attending classes in Clark
Hall, where they had their own study hall and access to the
Law School's excellent library. About one thousand two
hundred officers were passing through the school each year.

Two famous rooming houses were in the news. Fire destroyed
the third floor of Miss Betty Booker's fashionable
rooming house, corner of University Avenue and Madison
Lane, and damaged the first and second floors. Mrs. E. M.
Page closed her boarding and rooming house, a landmark in
the community for nearly sixty years. Mrs. Page sold the big
brick building, and it was torn down to make way for a parking
lot. Generations of students had lived there or taken their
meals at her table. It was long the most socially acceptable dining
facility on the Grounds.

When Newcomb Hall was opened in 1958, many wondered
how there could have been so much student opposition. Kendrick
Dure, president of the Student Union, remarked that he
had heard numerous students say "I don't know how we've
gotten along without it."

The new facility contained two cafeterias serving one thousand
eight hundred students three times a day; lounges, meeting
rooms, music rooms, and a large, handsome lounge that
could be converted into a ball room, an auditorium, a motion
picture theater, or a banquet hall for from five hundred to six
hundred persons. The structure was six stories in all, including
space for meat and food storage in the basement, air conditioning
and heating operations, several dark rooms, and
eight bowling alleys. There were billiard and pool tables, table
tennis, game rooms for chess, checkers, and bridge. In addition,
the offices of the Honor Committee, Judiciary Committee,
and other student organizations and publications were in
the building. Grass, shrubs, and trees were planted on the surrounding
area.

Thornton Hall, built originally for not more than three
hundred students, was being enlarged once more, at a cost of
$761,000. This addition was to accommodate aeronautical
and mechanical engineering students. Total enrollment had
risen to 887 by 1959 with the largest group in electrical engineering,
aeronautical and mechanical tying for second place,
civil engineering next, and chemical last.

In order to attract instructors and assistant professors who
would aid in caring for increased enrollment throughout the
university, twelve small family housing units were being built
on the Piedmont, or Maury, estate on Route 29 south of Charlottesville
near the Albemarle County line. Six or eight more
such houses were planned.

The new University Hospital, costing $6,700,000, was completed
in 1960, after several years of construction. It provided
beds for 419 patients, giving the hospital an overall total of
620 beds, all fireproofed and air conditioned. Of the total cost,
the commonwealth appropriated nearly $5,900,000, with the
rest coming from Hill-Burton and other federal funds.

Guiding and supervising the growth of the university's
physical plant since 1931 was Frank E. Hartman, '11, who directed
the planning and construction of a score or more of
buildings over nearly three decades and the enlargement or
renovation of many others, all at a total cost in excess of
fifteen million dollars. Hartman succeeded Charles H. Chandler,
'15, as director of buildings and grounds, a title changed
by President Darden to "director of new construction." "As
long as he had supervision of the university grounds, he gave
constant care to their improvement and beautification," said
the Alumni News. Frank Hartman died in 1959.

An ambitious program to raise $7,800,000 for university development
was launched in 1947, with Fleet Adm. William F.
Halsey, 1900, as chairman. Admiral Halsey, one of the heroes
of the war in the Pacific, stated that part of the money would
be used to acquire a new Alumni Hall to honor the alumni
who served in the armed forces in World War II. The drive
was launched in the spring of 1947 and continued for three
years. At the end of that time only $1,431,000 had been
raised. Various explanations were offered. Among them were

unexpected postwar conditions that kept taxes high, the fact
that various other institutions were carrying on similar fundraising
efforts, and the argument that the financial needs of a
state institution should be met by the state. Only 18 percent of
the alumni contributed, and not a single gift was obtained
from any endowed foundation. In view of this disappointing
outcome, a permanent fund-raising group called "Mr. Jefferson's
Sponsors" was set up with Knox Turnbull, '41, a prominent
Charlottesville insurance man, as president.

Despite the failure of the postwar drive for funds, money
was secured to complete the remodeling and expansion of
Alumni Hall as a memorial to alumni who died in the war. A
loan for completion of the work was made from the University
of Virginia Endowment Fund. It was expected that $80,000
could be raised in the annual alumni fund drive to pay off the
debt on the building. Nearly one thousand alumni were on
hand for the opening at the 1950 finals.

Other vitally important financial assistance had been made
available from the university's Endowment Fund when it provided
half the cost of acquiring Copeley Hill for the erection
of housing for veterans returning from the war. The fund also
made possible the acquisition of the property at the southwest
corner of highways 250 and 29 on which a dormitory for
women was erected. Another service was the purchase for
Alderman Library of the notable book collection of Edward L.
Stone of Roanoke, illustrating the history of the printing art.

A gratifying development in the area of alumni affairs was
the selection of the Alumni News in 1949 as the best alumni
publication in the United States and Canada with circulation
between 4,000 and 6,999. Marvin B. Perry, Jr., was the editor.

A brick wall enclosing the yard on the side of Alumni Hall
was contributed in 1955 by Mr. and Mrs. Colgate Darden in
tribute to J. Malcolm Luck for his twenty-five years as director
of alumni affairs. It bears a tablet expressing "grateful appreciation
of the years of faithful service which Mac Luck has
given the Alumni Association . . . . and as a token of devotion
and respect for him." Edwin B. Meade, '20, president of the
Alumni Association, announced that $6,150 had been raised
from 927 alumni as a gift to Luck, and a check in that amount
was presented to him. Three years later, at age sixty-five, Luck
retired and was the guest of honor at a largely attended dinner.

77. Mary Slaughter, first woman to win a varsity "V," 1954,
and women's eastern intercollegiate tennis champion that same
year.

President Darden was the speaker, and the retiring
alumni secretary was presented with a Cadillac automobile,
$5,000 in cash, a handsome silver tray, a portrait, and other
gifts. Responding, Luck thanked Darden for his unfailing cooperation
and his willingness to speak at countless alumni
meetings. He added that President Alderman also had been
quite cooperative, but that while President Newcomb's attitude
was friendly, his position, in effect, was "let the alumni
run the Alumni Association and leave the running of the university
to me."

Gilbert J. Sullivan, '48, assistant to Luck for a decade, was
chosen to succeed him. A native of Fredericksburg, "Gilly"
Sullivan received his B.S. in commerce at age nineteen, was a
varsity quarterback in football, and member of O.D.K., Tilka,
Z, the Raven Society, and Sigma Alpha Epsilon social fraternity.
He had been named to the assistantship when Jere Hanson,
the incumbent, was drowned. During his ten years in the
post, Sullivan served as secretary to the Student Aid Foundation,
member of the Colonnade Club's board of directors, and
commanding officer of Company K, 116th Infantry, Virginia
National Guard, the Monticello Guard.

Clay E. Delauney, '35, became director of the Alumni Fund
in 1957, succeeding George B. Eager III, who resigned to accept
a position with Colonial Williamsburg. Delauney had
been on the staff of the National Association of Manufacturers
for the preceding nine years.

Lewis D. Crenshaw, first full-time secretary of the Alumni
Association, died in 1947 in New York City. A boulder in his
memory was placed behind Alumni Hall in 1965 by the Class
of 1914. The tablet says it was "in gratitude for his services in
peace and war to his fellow alumni."

Many leading members of the faculty died during President
Darden's incumbency.

French Prof. Richard H. Wilson passed on in 1948. There
was probably never a faculty member like him, at the University
of Virginia or anywhere else. As his colleague Prof. T.
Braxton Woody expressed it: "He lived in a house down on
Park Street. He would receive no one, no one was allowed
inside his house. He cut himself off completely from the life
of the university. He would come to his classes . . . leave to go

home. He never went to a faculty meeting, he never was on a
committee, he never did anything. He didn't have a secretary,
he didn't have a typewriter, he didn't even write letters. It's
just unbelievable that a man could be head of a department
(Romance Languages), and do absolutely nothing as chairman."
And that isn't all. "He had an elaborate contempt for
what is now called scholarship, and he did not want any of his
men to do any research. . . . No professor in the department
ever published anything. . . . He was immensely popular, very,
very eccentric. . . . His classes were enormous."

Professor Woody's account of oral examinations for the doctorate,
held by Professor Wilson in the Salle Lafayette of the
Romance Pavilion is equally memorable. The room had no
light, no heat, and no air conditioning. "We would hold these
things at night," said Woody. " `Dickie' Wilson was a great
showman; all the professors and candidates had to have on
evening clothes. You would come in a tuxedo by candelight,
and you would have a silver pitcher and glass of water, and
that was all. I will never forget one night that it was so blistering
hot up there that we all nearly died. That was the night
that Fillmore Norfleet and Roberta Hollingsworth Gwathmey
got their Ph.D.'s."

A remarkable number of nationally eminent teachers of Romance
languages were trained under Wilson. For years he
taught all the French, Italian, and Spanish in the university,
but was best known as a teacher of French. He wrote novels
under several pseudonyms, two of which were successful, as
well as numerous short stories.

Another loss was the death in 1949 of Prof. Garrard Glenn
of the Law Faculty. Called preeminently "a lawyer's lawyer," he
was much admired by his students and by the legal profession.
He wrote highly acclaimed books on creditors' rights, fraudulent
conveyances, liquidation, and mortgages. Prof. Armistead
M. Dobie said of him that "as a teacher, Glenn had a few
equals in the annals of American legal education. . . . A profound
master of every subject he taught, he spoke as one having
authority, yet the soundness of his scholarship was
matched by his genuine humility and his enduring kindliness."

Almost simultaneously with the death of Garrard Glenn
came that of Walter A. Montgomery, professor of Latin and a
pupil at Johns Hopkins of the great Basil Gildersleeve. He had

been on the faculty since 1929. Prof. John C. Metcalf wrote
that he was "a man of wide and varied culture, versed in foreign
languages and literatures, as well as in the classics. . . He
knew his Shakespeare as well as his Plautus and Terence." Metcalf
referred also to Montgomery's "ready wit, his infallible
sense of humor, his clever repartee, his tolerance, and his
genuine interest in life and letters."

A few months later the university community was shocked
by the death of Dr. Staige D. Blackford, professor of the practice
of medicine. Only fifty years of age, Dr. Blackford was at
the height of his career when coronary thrombosis struck. He
had reorganized the hospital's Outpatient Department and
served as chairman of the Committee on Postgraduate Medical
Education, both of which responsibilities he had discharged
with unusual ability. In addition he was the first chairman
of the hospital's clinical staff and first editor of the
Medical Alumni Bulletin. Dr. Blackford had been a popular and
admired leader since his days at Episcopal High School. At
Virginia he had been captain of the football team and president
of the class of 1925. The Raven Award was his in 1942.
He enlisted as an ambulance driver in World War I, although
under age for military service, and organized the 8th Evacuation
Hospital in World War II, was decorated in both wars,
and ended his career in the second with the rank of colonel.
There was universal sorrow at the untimely death of this exceptionally
talented and dedicated student of medicine and
teacher of youth.

Only a week after Dr. Blackford's death the Medical School
suffered another serious loss with the death of Dr. Robert V.
Funsten, professor of orthopedic surgery, who succumbed to
a heart attack at age fifty-six. He had been on the faculty since
1932 and had served as president of the Virginia Orthopedic
Surgeons. Dr. Funsten wrote many scientific reports and developed
numerous devices used extensively in the cure of orthopedic
patients. His textbook on orthopedic nursing was regarded
by many as the best in the field.

Another death in the summer of 1949 was that of Professor
W. Harrison Faulkner, head of the Department of Germanic
Languages and a member of the faculty since 1902, the year
he got his Ph.D. at the university. He had retired four years

previously, recognized as one of the superior teachers in the
institution.

John Calvin Metcalf, one of the admired and beloved patriarchs
of the university community, died in the same year,
1949. Dean of the Graduate School and professor of English,
chairman of the faculty Library Committee, and longtime adviser
to the Virginia Quarterly Review, Metcalf touched the life
of the institution at many points. He had retired in 1940 and
been honored with a volume of essays to which nineteen members
of the faculty contributed. Raven and Algernon Sydney
Sullivan Awards came to him. Metcalf's lectures, notably those
on Shakespeare, were arresting and his manner ingratiating.
The author of a number of books, including histories of English
and American literature, he was an authority in both
fields. In 1950 a memorial fund was established in his honor,
to be used for the purchase of books for Alderman Library.

William Patton Graham, member of the faculty for a third
of a century as professor of Romance languages, died on the
last day of 1949. Professor Graham had studied at the University
of Grenoble and was an authority on Maupassant, whose
short stories he edited. He had retired in 1945 on reaching
age seventy.

One of the most promising and popular of the younger faculty
members was taken in 1950 when Peters Rushton died at
age thirty-four. In his short life he had won a secure place in
the esteem and affection of his colleagues on the faculty and
the students in his English classes. A graduate of Princeton
and Harvard, he studied for a year at Cambridge University.
President Darden appointed "Pete" Rushton assistant dean of
the college and of students, and Rushton was instrumental in
founding the McGregor Room Seminars in contemporary
prose and poetry, a series of lectures by distinguished critics
and writers. It developed after his death that he had paid all
expenses for carrying the lectures through their first year.
The Peters Rushton Seminars were established in his memory
as a sequel to the McGregor Room Seminars.

Dr. Dudley C. Smith, '16, nationally known authority in dermatology
and syphilology, died suddenly in 1950 when on a
professional visit to Washington. He was chairman of the
School of Medicine's Department of Dermatology and Syphilology,

which he founded in 1924. At the time of his death he
was chairman of the American Medical Association's section
having to do with these specialties. For the previous seventeen
years "D. C." Smith had been a consultant to the U.S. Public
Health Service.

Another loss to the School of Medicine occurred with the
death, at age fifty-three, of Dr. George McLean Lawson, professor
of preventive medicine and public health. He served as
secretary of the medical faculty and chairman of the Medical
Planning Committee that prepared for the extensive building
program of the 1950s.

Dr. Lawrence T. Royster, '97, founder of the university's Department
of Pediatrics, died at about this time. He served on
the State Board of Health and was the author of various works
on pediatrics.

A particularly distressing loss was that of fifty-two-year-old
physics Professor Leland B. Snoddy, '29—another notable
teacher taken at a comparatively early age. As the Alumni News
expressed it, his death "not only depleted the ranks of outstanding
scientists, but brought to countless associates, students
and others an acute sense of personal loss, the loss of a
great teacher and friend." Professor Snoddy had done significant
work on experiments during World War II with the atom
bomb and on atomic and guided missiles for the Navy Bureau
of Ordnance.

And as if this catalogue of calamities were not sufficient,
young English Prof. Dan S. Norton died at age forty-three.
He had made a secure place for himself on the faculty and in
the community. As Prof. Archibald Shepperson put it, the loss
was "as serious as the university faculty and students could
well sustain. . . Few, if any, have contributed as much to the
advancement and enrichment of the best purposes of the university
as he did during the 10 short years he spent here." Dan
Norton had been first chairman of an organization founded
in 1947 called the Friends of the University. The idea was suggested
by Martin Hiden, a student, but Norton took hold and
made it a reality. The organization's purpose was to bring to
the university superior programs in the arts, literature, music,
and drama. Within a few months 600 members had been enrolled
from students, faculty, and community, and a score of

78. Edgar and Eleanor Shannon at the time of his election to the
presidency of the university in 1959.

programs were presented at the ensuing session. The Friends
became a fixture. Dan Norton's death and that of Peters Rushton
removed two of the ablest members of the English faculty
when they were on the threshold of what promised to be brilliant
careers.

One of the veteran members of the faculty was lost when
Gardner L. Carter, professor of chemistry since 1918, died.
He retired in 1952 for reasons of health and died a year later.
Of diminutive stature, he enlivened his lectures with stories
that were regarded as somewhat pungent. Professor Carter
was the author of several laboratory texts in chemistry.

Robert H. Webb, '06, professor of Greek for more than
forty years, died. Described by President Darden as "one of
the great humanists of the academic world," he had retired
only a short time before and was busying himself with a translation
of a play by Aristophanes. Enrollment in his classes was
small, since fewer and fewer students were taking Greek, but
Professor Webb was highly regarded as a teacher of the language
and literature of ancient Hellas. He was also instrumental
in organizing the music festivals of the Charlottesville Evening
Concert Group. Following his death, a fund was collected
with which to buy books for Alderman Library bearing a special
bookplate in his memory.

Prof. Armistead C. Gordon, Jr., died suddenly in his middle
fifties. A veteran of both world wars, he had served on the
English faculty for three decades and was described by President
Darden as a "keen and mordant teacher of American
literature." Gordon had taken his B.A. at the College of William
and Mary and his M.A. and Ph.D. at the University of
Virginia. He was the author of Virginian Writers of Fugitive Verse
and contributed well-written book reviews to leading media
and many articles to the Dictionary of American Biography.

A memorial plaque was unveiled in 1954 to Charles H.
Kauffmann, longtime director of placement and military affairs
at the university, who had died a few months before. The
plaque described him as "devoted leader, wise counselor and
patriotic soldier." On the eve of World War II, the Cavalier
Daily paid high tribute to Kauffmann, saying that the university
had become "a happier place for thousands of students"
because of the work done by him and his staff.

The death of John Lloyd Newcomb in 1954 cast a pall over
the community. As president of the university succeeding Edwin
A. Alderman, he made a highly creditable record in the
face of handicaps caused by depression and war. Without brilliant
intellectual talents or spectacular personal qualities, and
not widely known when he took over the presidency, he carried
the university forward by dint of great administrative
ability, intimate knowledge of the institution's affairs, and
complete dedication. Acquisition of Alderman Library was the
most important single achievement of his administration. Additional
improvements in the physical plant were mentioned
in chapter 3 and 4, along with the inauguration of the honors
program and other scholarly advances. Enrollment jumped
from about two thousand five hundred to over four thousand
and the faculty was doubled, while the number of Ph.D.'s
granted was vastly increased. Research was emphasized and
the professional schools strengthened. The final years of Newcomb's
incumbency were shadowed by the death of his wife.
As one of his longtime colleagues expressed it, "Until the cares
of the world pressed too heavily upon him, his merry wit and
lively humor made him a favorite among his circle of friends."
Following his retirement from the presidency, his executive
talents were put to excellent use by President Darden, who
persuaded him to supervise the university's massive building
program from an office on the Lawn. It was a particular satisfaction
to Newcomb to preside over the erection of the sixstory
addition behind Cabell Hall, a concept he had originated.
As dean of engineering and simultaneously the man
who kept the university running under Alderman, as the
president who carried the institution forward in difficult
times, and then as the able coadjutor of President Darden,
John Lloyd Newcomb left the University of Virginia deeply in
his debt.

Dr. Stephen H. Watts, one of the foremost surgeons in the
university's history, was memorialized in exercises at the end
of 1954. Dr. Watts had died the preceding year and left
$500,000 to the Medical School, from which he had retired
long before. Dean Thomas H. Hunter said at the ceremonies
that the legacy had made it possible to establish a chair of surgery
in Dr. Watts's name, with Dr. William H. Muller, Jr., as

the first incumbent. A portrait of Dr. Watts was presented to
the Medical School. President Darden said Watts had begun
making gifts to the school before World War I, "including a
priceless collection of rare books on the history of medicine."

Prof. George T. Starnes, a recognized authority in the field
of labor economics, died in 1955 after serving on the faculty
for thirty years. He "made outstanding contributions to his
chosen field of labor economics through his teaching and writing,
as well as by his extensive work in the mediation and
settlement of labor disputes," Professor Snavely wrote after his
death. Both labor and management sought eagerly for Starnes's
assistance in settling such disputes, Snavely declared, so great
was their confidence in his "fairness and justice."

The death of economics Professor Duncan Clark Hyde
from a heart attack brought special grief to his students, with
whom he had a close rapport. Born in Canada and a Harvard
Ph.D. who had taught for six years in Japan, Professor Hyde
joined the university faculty in 1929. His dress and mannerisms,
as a result of his sojourn in the Far East, were such that
one of the students inquired of the department head, "Where
did you all find Dr. Hyde?" But this feeling was short-lived,
and he demonstrated such genuine concern for those in his
classes that when he died, graduate students majoring under
him asked the privilege of serving as his pallbearers. A scholarship
was established as a memorial. Hyde had served as
president of the Southern Economic Association.

Prof. Bruce D. Reynolds, '20, chairman of the Department
of Biology, was another heart attack victim. He died at age
sixty-three after thirty-three years on the faculty. A Johns
Hopkins University Ph.D., he was the first director of the
Mountain Lake Biological Station. A Biology Department
spokesman was quoted as saying that Professor Reynolds was
proud of having had more students complete requirements
for advanced degrees than any other member of the department
faculty. Graduate students and friends announced plans
for a living memorial.

Another loss in the late 1950s occurred with the death of
political science Prof. James Hart, '19, a member of the teaching
staff since 1936. He had been president of the Southern
Political Science Association and held important elective offices
and chairmanships in the American Political Science Association.

Professor Hart was an authority on the American
presidency and administrative law.

Prof. Llewellyn G. Hoxton retired as head of the Department
of Physics in 1948, aged seventy, after serving in that capacity
since 1916. A Johns Hopkins Ph.D., he succeeded Francis H.
Smith as the university's only professor of physics for a decade,
at the end of which time he got assistance from Professors
Carroll H. Sparrow and Frederick L. Brown. Professor Hoxton
was a stimulating teacher with a sense of humor. On one
occasion he put an examination on the board and announced
that he would be in his office if anyone wished to ask him anything.
"Are any of those questions optional?" a student inquired,
as he gazed anxiously at the blackboard. "Hell yes,
they're all optional," the professor replied, "Take them or
leave them." Under him the department was built into one of
the university's strongest, as it was he who brought in Jesse
Beams and Leland Snoddy. Professor Hoxton's zeal was such
that for years after his retirement, when he was well into his
eighties, he continued to go daily to the physics laboratory,
working on research projects in which he was interested. He
died in 1966, aged eighty-eight.

Prof. John L. Manahan, first dean of the School of Education,
a post he had held for twenty-nine years, retired from
that office in 1949 and resumed full-time teaching. A graduate
of Harvard, Manahan came to the university in 1916 as a full
professor and four years later organized the School of Education.
There were 17 students when Manahan became dean
and 253 when he relinquished the position. He retired from
teaching in 1957 and was tendered a dinner, a gold watch, and
a bound volume of letters. Professor Manahan served for sixteen
years as secretary-treasurer of the Virginia Association of
Colleges and then was elected its president.

One of the major figures in the university's life, James
Southall Wilson, retired in 1951 as graduate dean and also
from active teaching. Stimulating lecturer and widely-recognized
scholar, he was the first editor of the Virginia Quarterly
Review, for the success of which he deserved a large share of
the credit. Dean Wilson left a lasting impress on the university
in various directions. Following his retirement he was visiting
professor of English at various institutions, including Davidson

College and Louisiana State University, and he continued
as a lecturer for several summers at the Breadloaf School in
Vermont. A volume of English studies in his honor was presented
by his university associates, and Prof. Armistead C.
Gordon, Jr., wrote perceptively in the foreword of his "measured
but unstudied eloquence, made alive by apt illustration,
circling humor, and a sense of the dramatic." An anonymous
alumnus endowed a James Southall Wilson graduate fellowship.
Professor Wilson died in 1963. Six years later the new
arts and sciences classroom building was named for him.

Two veteran members of the School of Education faculty,
Prof. William R. Smithey and Miss Louise Oates, retired in
1953. Dean Stiles commented on the former's contribution:
"Dr. Smithey completed 33 years in the service of the university,
establishing an enviable record of leadership in the field
of secondary education." Smithey had served as secretary of
the State Board of Education before joining the university faculty
in 1919 and was subsequently elected president of the
Southern Association of Colleges and Secondary Schools. He
founded the Virginia High School Conference, which met
each summer to give secondary school teachers an opportunity
to discuss their problems. Concerning the service of Miss
Oates, Dean Stiles wrote: "Professor Louise Oates established
the Cabaniss Memorial School for Nursing Education, and
served as its only head for 24 years. . . . The task of improving
the preparation of nurses engaged in teaching, supervising
and administering in Virginia presented throughout her entire
professional career almost insurmountable problems.
Upon the background of her efforts the future of nursing
education in the University of Virginia will be developed."

British-born Prof. Sydney W. Britton retired from the medical
faculty in 1952, after twenty-four years' service as professor
of physiology. He and Mrs. Britton sailed for Nigeria
where he would serve as Fulbright professor in the University
of West Africa, doing research in the field of the endocrine
glands, especially the adrenal glands of native Africans and
giant apes. Professor Britton was widely recognized for important
discoveries having to do with the adrenal cortex.

The Law School suffered a loss with the resignation of Prof.
John Ritchie III, '17, to accept the deanship of the Washington

79. Law Prof. Mortimer M. Caplin as U.S. commissioner of
internal revenue.

University School of Law in St. Louis. Ritchie had been a
member of the University of Virginia law faculty since 1937
and was assistant dean from 1942 to 1948.

Dean Ivey F. Lewis, an administrator and teacher who had
been at the center of things at the university for decades, retired
in 1953. He joined the faculty in 1915, and two years
later, at age thirty-five, trounced Robert W. Bingham, Jr.—a
student who had won the tennis singles championship of the
university the previous year—in three straight sets with the
loss of only four games. Then in the finals of the tournament
he walloped F. R. Smith, a student who had been intercollegiate
champion of New England, in three straight sets with
the loss of only five games. That was on the eve of World War
I, when professors played in the university tournaments. Ivey
Lewis gave up tennis almost immediately thereafter, but he
was a formidable performer as long as he was competing.

In 1934 he succeeded Dean James M. Page as dean of the
university, and at the time of his retirement was dean of the
university and the college. As James Southall Wilson wrote of
Lewis: "His office . . . was administered by the dean and his
faithful secretary, Miss Mary Proffitt, with simplicity, sympathy
and dignity. Throughout the years the students of the college
have come into closer relationship with Dean Lewis and Miss
Proffitt than with any other officials of the university, and
many of them have expressed their respect and affection, lasting
often long after their college days." Ivey Lewis served as
president of the American Society of Naturalists, the Botanical
Society of America, and the American Biological Society—
remarkable evidence of his national stature in the world of
science. A botanical garden and arboretum were planted in
his honor between McCormick Road and Scott Stadium, the
gift of former students and friends, who also provided a portrait
of him by Irene Higgins. Dean Lewis lived until 1964 and
died, aged eighty-one, at the university.

E. A. Kincaid, a member of the faculty since 1922, who also
served as vice-president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond,
retired in 1954. A University of California Ph.D., Kincaid
was professor of commerce and business administration.
His advice as a consultant was sought by the state of Virginia
and the city of Richmond, among others. An unusually stimulating
lecturer, he contributed to trade journals and financial

publications. Upon his retirement, Kincaid was tendered a
dinner by admirers. He died four years later.

A recognized authority on the literature and civilization of
Spain and Latin America, James C. Bardin, professor of Romance
languages, also retired in 1954 and was the guest of
honor at a dinner. Bardin edited several texts in Spanish and
did much research on the drama in the American colonial
possessions of Spain and Portugal. He gave the university's
first courses in Latin American civilization and history. Possessed
of marked literary ability, Bardin was student editor of
the University of Virginia Magazine in 1908-9 and won all three
of the gold medals offered by the magazine for poetry, short
stories, and essays. He contributed prose and poetry in later
years to a variety of publications in this country and Latin
America.

Harry Rogers Pratt, a leading figure for three decades in
music and the drama at the university, retired in 1954. He had
acted with the Ben Greet Players and other companies before
joining the faculty in 1923 as assistant professor of music. Enrollment
rose, in time, to over three hundred students, and he
developed the Glee Club into an organization of ninety voices,
which gave concerts throughout Virginia and in New York
City. A skilled organist, Pratt played at many university functions.
At the invitation of President Alderman he organized a
School of Dramatic Art as part of the McIntire School of Fine
Arts. Pratt offered the first courses at the university in playwriting
and production and directed the performance of
original one-act plays by students. Luther Greene, later the
husband of the famous Judith Anderson, was Pratt's first assistant
director. Mrs. Pratt was Agnes Rothery, author of wellknown
works. Some years after her death Harry Pratt lost his
life in a fire at their home on Rothery Road.

Another professor who retired during these years was
Franz K. Mohr, who had taught German since 1926. He wrote
widely in that language, in both poetry and prose. Mohr was
a native of Silesia, had studied in Vienna, and then graduated
from the University of Chicago.

Tipton R. Snavely, '17, a major figure for many years in economics
instruction and research on both the graduate and undergraduate
levels and in the founding of the Graduate
School of Business Administration, retired as chairman of the

Department of Economics in 1956 after thirty-three years in
the position. He continued teaching until 1961. Professor
Snavely had been adviser to many state and federal agencies,
was president of the Southern Economic Association, and author
of a history of the Economics Department and a life of
George Tucker, chairman of the university's first faculty and
authority on finance. The Department of Economics under
Snavely produced no fewer than seventy-three Ph.D.s, and
forty to forty-five of those dissertations were supervised personally
by him, more than were directed by any other faculty
member in the university down to that time, with the exception
of history Prof. Edward Younger. Snavely was honored
by fifty former students and colleagues at a special breakfast
during the annual meeting of the Southern Economic Association
in Atlanta, where he was presented with a collection of
letters from all the students who had taken the Ph.D. under
his supervision. Establishment of the Snavely Scholarship
Fund, underwritten by his former pupils to provide scholarships
for economics students, was announced at the breakfast.

Dr. David C. Wilson, '19, first chairman of the School of
Medicine's Department of Neurology and Psychiatry, which he
headed for twenty-one years, retired from the position in
1956. Dr. Wilson's portrait was presented to the School of
Medicine in 1959 at a dinner and lecture in his honor. Following
his retirement as department chairman he continued his
teaching and also served as director of the Division of Alcoholic
Studies and Rehabilitation.

Dean at one time or another of the College of Arts and Sciences
and of Admissions, as well as Registrar, and teacher of
psychology for thirty-seven years, George O. Ferguson retired
in 1956. In addition to the foregoing he had a leading role in
guiding the university's athletic affairs immediately after it
joined the Southern Conference. Ferguson had been a member
of the faculty since 1919, after receiving his Ph.D. from
Columbia University. He died in 1960.

Chapin Jones, professor of forestry, who had taught conservation
and forestry-related courses since 1915, was another
who resigned in 1956. He was Virginia's first state forester and
founder of the state forest service. The first state nursery and
state forest also were created under his supervision. Chapin
Jones was a Master of Forestry of Yale University.

80. Political science Prof. Robert K. Gooch holding the silver
mace that he carried in official university processions.

Prof. Albert G. A. Balz, `09, noted authority on the philosophy
of Descartes and head of the Department of Philosophy
since the death of Albert Lefevre, retired as chairman in 1957
but continued to teach. The Balz Philosophy Fund was established
in tribute to him. He and Professor Manahan of the
School of Education were the first two faculty members to be
chosen professors emeriti. An emeritus professor may continue
to work with his former students on theses or dissertations,
serve on university committees, speak and vote in faculty
meetings, and participate in academic functions. Balz was
the author of several books and numerous articles. He had
been a full professor since 1920, and for six years was chairman
of the Charlottesville School Board. An expert flower
gardener, he was also an enthusiastic fisherman. Professor
Balz died only a few months after his retirement from the
chairmanship.

Joseph K. Roberts retired in 1959 after a third of a century
on the geology faculty. A Johns Hopkins Ph.D., he came to the
university from Vanderbilt in 1926 as a full professor. The
author of several books on geology, he was active in Sigma Xi,
the honorary science fraternity, serving as president of the
university chapter for one year, treasurer for ten years, and
secretary for fifteen.

Retirement of Prof. Wilson Gee in 1959 brought to an end
a career that had real significance, especially in its impact on
graduate work and research at the university. Publication of
books by members of the faculty was greatly stimulated
through grants from the Institute for Research in the Social
Sciences, which Gee headed from its inception. He had been
brought to the university by President Alderman with a view
to providing at Charlottesville something of a counterweight
to the University of North Carolina's Howard W. Odum. The
latter's Institute for Research in Social Science and Journal of
Social Forces were pioneering efforts that brought much prestige
to Chapel Hill. Gee never achieved fame comparable to
Odum's, but his influence at Virginia was a salutary one.
Scores of books and hundreds of articles were sponsored or
stimulated by the university's institute. Gee was never fully accepted
by the University of Virginia faculty, although some of
those who criticized him behind his back did not hesitate to
apply for and get grants from his institute. There were mixed

reports from his students. Some, especially undergraduates,
regarded his courses as dull and said he passed practically
everybody, whereas others, notably graduate students, were
almost lyrical in praise of what the Cavalier Daily termed "his
understanding, his sincerity, his genuine goodness." As the
time approached for Gee's retirement, he learned that it was
proposed to abolish his Department of Rural Social Economics
and merge it with the Department of Economics or the
Department of Sociology, perhaps both. He objected strongly,
but to no avail. Upon his retirement, the department was
eliminated and its functions absorbed. A committee of his former
students established the Wilson Gee Library in Social Science
as part of Alderman Library's collections. Wilson Gee
died suddenly in 1961, aged seventy-two, at Urbana, Ill., as he
was preparing to teach a course at the University of Illinois.

The year 1953 marked the retirement from the university
staff of two women who were themselves almost institutions—
Miss Mary Proffitt and Mrs. A. E. Walker.

Miss Proffitt had served as secretary to Dean Page and Dean
Lewis since 1912, but she was much more than a secretary.
Her role was almost that of an alter ego for the dean, since
she was privileged to make decisions far beyond the role of
the average secretary. Not good looking, in the usual sense,
and without anything remotely resembling what is termed
"sex appeal," Mary Proffitt had a down-to-earth personality
and a wealth of common sense that gave her remarkable influence
over the students. Miss Proffitt's portrait was presented
at retirement ceremonies on the Lawn along with a likeness of
the also retiring Dean Lewis. Both, it turned out later, were
members of the Seven Society.

Mrs. A. E. Walker, a widow, had been the beloved and indefatigable
hostess at the Student Union for thirty-five years
when she terminated her active career. The university "has
lost one of its most cheerful faces," the Cavalier Daily commented.
"She will be sorely missed." It pointed out that Mrs.
Walker "opened her home to students on countless occasions
and aided almost every university organization from dance societies
to publications." Known as "the Queen," Mrs. Walker
was on such close terms with the boys that she often sat in on
meetings of the Student Union and even presided over some
of them. She arranged and chaperoned hundreds of dances.

Her base of operations was always Madison Hall, headquarters
of the Student Union until the construction of Newcomb
Hall. When a social and recreational center for first-year men
was opened on McCormick Road in 1950, "there was only one
thing to call it, `Queen's Club,' " said the Alumni News. There
the Queen helped to carry out President Darden's program
for aiding entering students to become adjusted to university
life. The Seven Society presented Mrs. Walker with a silver
platter after her retirement. She died in 1965.

Another admired woman in the university community was
Mrs. Theodore Schultz, Rotunda hostess for more than a decade,
who retired in 1958. She organized the University Guide
Service, which grew to thirty members, and conducted tours
of the university grounds. Mrs. Schultz, an experienced hostess
who had represented Virginia at the Canadian National
Exposition, wrote the pamphlet A Brief Guide to the Lawn and
Ranges. A dinner in Newcomb Hall was given her by the Student
Guide Service when she retired. Mrs. Edwin Betts, widow
of Professor Betts, succeeded Mrs. Schultz as Rotunda hostess.
Mrs. Betts, who had been associated with the university for
nearly a third of a century, designed a complex pictorial map
of Albemarle County that was sold for many years in bookstores.

The impending resignation of Colgate Darden as president of
the university was rumored from time to time in the middle
fifties. Questioned in 1956, he said he might give up the post
in a year or two, but not until some of his plans had matured
more fully.

During this period an amusing episode occurred at Finals.
President Darden's son Pierre got two engineering degrees
that year, and when he went up for his second, his father extended
his hand in congratulation, as he did with all the other
graduates. What happened next is best told by Colgate Darden
in his Conversations with Guy Friddell: "Pierre turned loose
in the palm of my hand an electrical device that spun around
and gave me a shock that lifted me straight up in the air about
half a foot. I never was more provoked in my life. I came
within an ace of just giving him one awful kick in the
rump. . . . It was like being hit by lightning. I reckon the spectators
thought I'd lost my mind . . . that the long hot afternoon

had finally gotten to me, that I had lost control and was
jumping up and down on the platform. In a second it was all
over and he was gone."

Pierre Darden was lost at sea in 1959, to the intense grief of
his parents. An experienced sailor, he nevertheless ventured
into the Atlantic in the late fall, in a small sailboat, en route to
the Caribbean. He and his companion were never seen again.

Colgate Darden announced in 1958 that he would retire as
president whenever the visitors chose his successor. Rector
Frank Talbott, Jr., appointed a committee from the board to
deal with the problem, and a committee from the faculty was
appointed, on his recommendation, to have a significant and
continuing part in the selection process. Darden was scrupulously
careful to ease the transition in every possible way and
to give his successor, whoever he might be, complete cooperation.
His thoughtful willingness to confide in the faculty Senate
concerning his intentions did much to allay hostility toward
him among some members of that group. Rector Talbott
was emphatic in saying that there must be no more leaks such
as occurred in the early 1930s after the death of President
Alderman, and one prospective successor after another was
rumored in the press—correctly as it later turned out—to
have declined the position.

The Board of Visitors passed resolutions of highest praise
for Darden's achievements in the presidency. Mentioning additions
to the physical plant totaling over twenty million dollars,
the resolutions went on to cite reorganization of the College
of Arts and Sciences, establishment of the Graduate
School of Business Administration, a steady improvement in
student standards and admissions, the unremitting effort to
raise the scale of faculty compensation—it was doubled—and
the notable expansion of Alderman Library's holdings and
their greater use by students and faculty. The "loving attention"
of the president to the "ancient beauty of the Grounds"
also was mentioned, as well as his "generosity and kindliness
to those who have worked with him" and "the inspiration of
intellectual leadership, initiative and research on the part of
the faculty." A special tribute was paid to Mr. Darden's "wife
Constance, whose warm, vital, attractive personality has effectively
aided her husband's effort." Mrs. Darden received the

Algernon Sydney Sullivan Award at the 1959 Finals as a person
in the community with "such characteristics of heart, mind
and conduct as evince a spirit of love and helpfulness to other
men and women."

Whereas faculty and students had been decidedly skeptical,
even hostile, in 1947 when Darden was chosen president of
the university, they had done a 180-degree turn by the time of
his retirement a dozen years later. Corks and Curls and the Cavalier
Daily united in lauding his administration unreservedly;
the faculty gave him the Thomas Jefferson Award, and the
students presented him with the first Raven Award they had
granted to anyone since he became president; the Class of
1959's gift was $1,000 for the purchase of books in his name
for Alderman Library, especially works on history and political
science. Members of the American Association of University
Professors (AAUP) on the faculty, about one-fourth of the
whole, adopted unanimous resolutions praising him for his
"scrupulous adherence to the principles of academic freedom
. . . and above all for the sense of security which the academic
community has derived from the knowledge that the
president . . . understands that a university can fulfill its function
only if its members are free to pursue the truth without
fear or favor." The AAUP members said they were "expressing
the sentiments of the entire faculty." A fountain commemorating
the presidency of Colgate Darden was placed on
the east side of the Rotunda in 1960 "by the professors and
staff of the university."

Important matters not mentioned specifically in the AAUP
resolutions were the increase in the university's endowment
from just over $12,000,000 to $40,000,000, and the quadrupling
of the annual appropriation by the General Assembly to
the institution. On an entirely different level there is the astonishing
fact that it was not until the Darden years that rest
rooms were installed at Scott Stadium, dedicated in 1931.

Although Darden announced cancelation of his subscription
to the New York Times in 1957 because he felt material it
had published concerning the university's position on segregation
was "negative," the paper praised him highly the following
year. Comparing him to Thomas Jefferson, it declared
that the had "widened and deepened the appeal" of the university

81. English Prof. Peter Taylor, who has been called "the American Chekhov."

and had stressed the thought that the liberal arts are
"the fountain of our culture."

There were a few adverse criticisms of President Darden,
even near the end of his term. "He tried to run the university
out of his vest pocket," in the oft-quoted words of a prominent
professor. This observation appears to have had some validity.
Darden was loath to employ adequate staff for his office, since
he felt that the funds were needed elsewhere. Consequently
he did too many routine things. Over his opposition, the
Board of Visitors directed him to appoint a provost, and he
did so.

An outside firm made a survey of the Darden Administration
and concluded that he did not offer the faculty sufficient
"leadership." His comment, years later, was, "I never thought
that the business of the president was to lead the faculty
around like a nurse leading a pack of children." He saw his
function as "to set the ground for independent scholars to
carry on their work. . . . I never thought of myself as the `boss'
of the university." A few faculty members remained unenthusiastic
concerning the manner in which he conducted the institution's
affairs.

Darden had special problems by virtue of the fact that
whereas he took over the presidency with an inflated postwar
enrollment of around five thousand, this soon fell drastically
to around three thousand four hundred. When he relinquished
the office, the number of students was moving up
sharply. It would accelerate as a result of the "baby boom" that
followed the war.

During the dozen years of his presidency, Darden managed
to bring about an increase in the number and percentage of
Virginia public school graduates attending the university, but
not to the extent that he had hoped. His prime objective as
president was to achieve a substantially larger number of public
school matriculates and thus to make the university the
"capstone" of the educational system that Jefferson envisaged.
He conceded in later years that his success in this regard was
only "modest."

While public school graduates in Virginia continued to go
elsewhere in large numbers, a trend had been set in motion by
President Darden, who did much to make the university more
attractive to them. Furthermore, the consensus was that he

advanced the institution in many other directions, intellectually,
physically, and financially. The University of Virginia
was regaining the prestigious position in the educational
world that it had held much earlier. The foundations had
been laid for the remarkable progress that was to be made
under the administration of Colgate Darden's successor, Edgar
F. Shannon, Jr.

7. SEVEN

Shannon Carries
the Institution Forward

THE FOURTH PRESIDENT of the University of Virginia, Edgar
F. Shannon, Jr., was a forty-year-old professor of English
who had been a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford and had taken his
Ph.D. there as a specialist on the works of Alfred, Lord Tennyson.
At Washington and Lee University he had made
straight-A grades in all subjects for his four undergraduate
years, with the exception of one B in Latin. A veteran of
bloody battles in the Pacific in World War II, Shannon went
down with the U.S.S. Quincy in the desperate engagement off
Savo Island and was in the water for several hours before he
was finally rescued. His principal administrative experience
was gained in the navy as assistant operations officer and task
group fighter director.

Shannon had been on the university faculty for three years
and had just been promoted to full professor when he was
elected president. He came to Virginia from Harvard, where
he was head tutor in the English department, "a sort of chairman
for the undergraduates," as he put it.

When the committee in search of a president for the University
of Virginia called on Henry Wriston, the noted former
president of Brown University, in the hope of getting advice,
he gave them some. "The only thing I have to say, gentlemen,"
declared Wriston, "is take a good look at his legs. If he happens
to have any brains, it's convenient, but not at all necessary.
Legs are the important thing." Wriston then proceeded
to outline the strenuous duties of a typical university president,

with all the foolish demands that are made upon him.
"After dinner in the evening you generally go out and dedicate
some damn garage," he said. And, he added: "For God's
sake don't look for a distinguished man. The day you make
him president of the University of Virginia he will be just as
distinguished as he can be. . . . Look for quality. . . . That's
ahead of everything."

Edgar Shannon was not well known, even to the faculty of
the university when he was chosen president. The selection,
made in full cooperation with the committee from the faculty
senate, headed by William S. Weedon, was kept completely secret
until it was announced on Feb. 28, 1959. Rector Frank
Talbott, Jr., presented Shannon to a faculty group without
mentioning his name, and one professor present was quoted
as remarking to a colleague, "This is all very fine, but who the
hell is he?"

Mrs. Shannon, the former Eleanor Bosworth of Memphis,
Tenn., had married Edgar three years before, after resigning
as dean of women at Southwestern College, Memphis. She was
a magna cum laude graduate of Sweet Briar, with an M.A. in
history from Cornell. Personally charming and good looking,
she was admirably qualified for her new and demanding duties.

Outgoing President Darden was altogether cooperative with
his successor and helpful in many ways in smoothing the latter's
path. The two men complemented each other, and their
administrations were rightly described as a continuum.

The new president was inaugurated Oct. 6. It was a beautiful
autumn day, and the ceremonies were held in bright sunshine
on the Lawn, with Rector Talbott presiding. Geoffrey
Reginald Gilchrist Mure, warden of Merton College, where
Shannon had studied as a Rhodes Scholar, was the principal
speaker. "Everybody in the college knew him, respected him
and liked him," Mure declared in referring to Shannon. "He
liked us and even, I think, respected some of us. He threw
himself into every strange British activity. He played village
cricket. He now and again played Rugby football." Gov. J.
Lindsay Almond also welcomed the new president. Responding,
Shannon reaffirmed the "Jeffersonian tenet that the University
of Virginia be not only an exceptional state and regional
university but also a great national university."

The university's new head got off to a rousing start with the
faculty by announcing that Governor Almond had approved
salary increases, effective for the session of 1959-60. Full professors
would receive an additional $1,000, associates $800,
assistants $600, and instructors $250.

Shannon had taken office at a propitious time for advancing
the university in all directions. "There was a thrust of interest
in education," he said, and the Federal government was beginning
to make large sums available through the National Science
Foundation and the National Institutes of Health. These
things coincided with the rapid rise in the population, which
brought an increase in the number of applicants to the university.
Higher entrance requirements could be instituted
without slowing the university's growth. These stiffer requirements
had an impact throughout the institution, especially in
the Schools of Engineering and Education, since before that
time an applicant rejected by the College could apply to either
of those schools. The larger enrollment also was significant in
making possible the building of a stronger faculty, for distinguished
professors could be obtained much more rapidly as a
result. This, in turn, attracted promising younger teachers,
and "the whole thing snowballed" as Shannon expressed it.

Another factor carrying the university forward was state
legislation enacted during the Darden regime, and at Darden's
instigation, which provided that it is the policy of the commonwealth
to encourage state institutions to develop endowments
from private funds. This enabled the university to build
a substantial endowment and to use it, along with other private
and federal resources, to give the institution its "margin
of excellence," Shannon declared. Then, somewhat later, Gov.
Albertis Harrison was instrumental in having the commonwealth
establish the Eminent Scholars Fund with state money,
to be matched by the various institutions. "That made it possible
for us to compete nationally with salaries for any faculty
member that we really tried to get," Shannon said. An anonymous
gift of $2,000,000 launched the fund at the university,
and it has been substantially increased. All this resulted subsequently
in putting the University of Virginia among the top
twenty institutions belonging to the American Association of
University Professors, with respect to median faculty compensation.

The only other state universities in the top twenty were
California, Michigan, and Iowa.

At the first Finals held during Shannon's presidency (June
1960) tablets in memory of the 321 Virginia men who died in
World War II and the 29 who died in the Korean War were
unveiled on the north portico of the Rotunda. Rear Adm. Lamont
Pugh, ret., '23, former chief of the navy's Bureau of
Medicine, delivered the address. The World War II plaque
was presented by the classes of 1943 and 1948, while that for
the Korean War was the gift of the Seven Society.

"Reading days," in effect at numerous other institutions,
were introduced at Virginia in 1960 at the suggestion of the
Cavalier Daily. Dean William L. Duren of the College stated
that May 27 and 28 would be set aside as a two-day review
period before final examinations, during which attendance in
class would not be required, but the professors would be available
for consultation. The plan was temporarily abandoned until
the 1962-63 session, when reading days were reinstituted
before exams in January and May. In 1969-70 each department
was authorized to grant up to five days for this purpose.

The Echols Scholar program, named in honor of the late
Prof. William H. Echols, was launched at the 1960-61 session
and has been a pronounced success. Under this program topflight
high school and preparatory school graduates are given
much more freedom in choosing their courses and much less
supervision than run-of-the-mine students. When the plan
was gotten under way, thirty-five students entered, twentyseven
of them from Virginia. They lived in Echols House, one
of the newer residence units, and were excused from first semester
classes in math and English, while courses not generally
open to first-year men were made available to them.
Echols Scholars were selected not only for their high academic
standing but also on the basis of "intellectual, cultural and
community interests other than those solely related to academic
work." There was a certain amount of jealous jeering at
this privileged group when they first entered the university,
and "Reserved for Echols Scholars" was painted on sidewalks.
This attitude was apparently short-lived. By 1963-64 there
were almost twice as many of these superior students as three
years before. In 1970-71 it was announced that most of the

eighty students who entered that year achieved combined college
aptitude test scores of at least 1,400 and were in the top
5 percent of their high school graduating classes. These exceptional
students had to meet fewer and fewer requirements
under the evolving rules, and there was an increased emphasis
on individual learning and initiative. They were encouraged
to spend a semester or session away from the university, since
"a high degree of restlessness" was prevalent among them in
that era of widespread campus turmoil. Echols Scholars were
not "mere" intellectuals and bookworms, the Alumni News
pointed out. "An Echols Scholar is president of the Student
Council," it declared, "another is an editor of the Cavalier
Daily, still others helped found and now administer the Experimental
University, which offers nonacademic courses to
the community. They work at the student radio stations, play
in the orchestra and participate in intramurals."

Pres. John F. Kennedy appointed three university alumni to
important positions. He named his brother Robert, '51, attorney
general of the United States; law Professor Mortimer F.
Caplin, '40, commissioner of internal revenue; and David
K. E. Bruce, '20, ambassador to the Court of St. James's. The
assassination of President Kennedy in 1963 caused postponement
until Thanksgiving Day of the university's football game
with Maryland, scheduled for Nov. 23, the day after the murder.
President Kennedy had promised to deliver the Founder's
Day address at the university in 1964.

When U.S. Sen. and presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy
was assassinated in 1968, Dean Hardy C. Dillard of the
Law School delivered a memorial tribute at the request of
President Shannon. He announced that the graduating class
in the Law School had, through voluntary subscriptions,
funded the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Scholarship, with
preference to be given to members of minority groups when
the awards were made. In 1959 Kennedy had established in
the Law School the F. D. G. Ribble Scholarship Fund, under
which a yearly scholarship would be granted.

Mortimer Caplin, the newly appointed commissioner of the
revenue, had been editor of the Law Review in his student
days, a star on championship boxing teams, as well as president
of the Virginia Players and one of their most talented

actors. Upon graduation he was given the Southern Society
Award as the student who had contributed most to university
life. After practicing law in New York as a tax expert, he returned
to the university as a member of the law faculty.

David Bruce, one of the ablest diplomats of modern times,
was the only American ever to serve as U.S. ambassador to
London, Paris, and Berlin. His record in all three posts was
exceptional.

Appointment of Marvin B. Perry, Jr., as dean of admissions,
"a new position of vital significance to the university's future
development," was announced by President Shannon in 1960.
Perry was a university B.A. and a Harvard M.A. and Ph.D.
who had taught English at Virginia for four years and then
served in the Washington and Lee English Department for
nine years. He would remain as dean at the university until
1967, when he accepted the presidency of Goucher College.
Admission requirements for all the university's colleges were
placed under him and were sharply upgraded.

Paul Saunier, Jr., was appointed in 1960 as assistant to the
president for university relations and development. He was a
University of Richmond graduate who had served in Washington
for nearly a decade as secretary to Rep. J. Vaughan Gary
of the Richmond congressional district. Saunier was given responsibility
for all activities of the university affecting relations
with the public and for coordination of the development program.

Dean William L. Duren, Jr., of the College resigned that
post, after serving since 1955, to devote his full time to teaching
mathematics, and Irby B. Cauthen, Jr., who had been assistant
and associate dean, was named to succeed him. Dean
Cauthen was an able teacher of English as well as the author
of well-regarded works on English and American literature.
In addition to higher admission standards, said he, the student
body had come to accept the stiffer requirements covering
probation and suspension, put into effect two years previously,
although "there had been some initial bewilderment,
shock and disbelief." Dean Cauthen added that the number
graduating after four years in college had jumped from 59.5
percent in June 1959 to 75 percent four years later. He also
noted that 83 percent of those expecting to graduate in June

1964 planned to go on to graduate or professional schools, 18
percent more than in 1960. By the fall of 1963 almost threefourths
of the first-year students came from the top quarter
of their high school classes, and they also ranked well in extracurricular
activities, with numerous class presidents, captains
of athletic teams, and editors of school publications. Scholastic
Aptitude Test (SAT) scores rose markedly over those of the
preceding year, with average verbal scores of 606 and math of
646. A record number of Guggenheim, Fulbright, and Woodrow
Wilson fellowships were awarded to students and faculty.
The honors program, launched in the 1930s, was more firmly
established than ever and more widely incorporated into the
curricula of the various departments of the College.

A munificent gift of over $3,500,000 came to the university
in the early 1960s in the will of Robert Coleman Taylor, a Law
School graduate and prominent New York attorney. The
funds were unrestricted and were devoted principally to professorships,
but also to faculty disability insurance and honor
scholarships.

The position of dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences
was created in 1962, with the occupant of that position responsible
to the president of the university for all matters affecting
the faculty, with special emphasis on faculty procurement.
The office of dean of the College, previously concerned
with administering faculty affairs, as well as advising undergraduates,
was reoriented to concentrate, with the assistance
of associate deans, on programs involving undergraduate students
and the significant changes in the curriculum that were
to follow. Deans of the Faculty, beginning in 1962, were: Rowland
Egger, 1962-63; Robert J. Harris, 1963-68; Fredson T.
Bowers, 1968-69; David A. Shannon, 1969-71; Robert D.
Cross, 1972-73; and Edwin E. Floyd, 1974-. More will be said
later concerning several of these men.

The university ranked first in 1962 among public institutions
in this country in the book value of its endowment in
proportion to enrollment, according to a survey by the American
Association of University Professors. Only a dozen institutions
in the United States rated higher in the AAUP tabulation
with respect to endowment, compensation of faculty, and
related aspects of fiscal strength. There were 545 faculty
members at the university, ranging from full professors to lecturers,

82. World Court Justice Hardy C. Dillard, former dean of the
Law School, in his judicial robes.

some part-time. A bill was introduced in the Virginia
General Assembly to limit out-of-state students to 25 percent
in all state-supported institutions of higher learning. Governor
Harrison opposed it, and the measure was defeated.
President Shannon said the following year that the university
would seek to maintain a top enrollment of 10,000.

Shannon spoke in 1961 of the need in Virginia for a system
of community colleges, and the suggestion was well received
in various quarters, including the sanctums of several Virginia
newspaper editors. He proposed that first-year and sophomore
courses be taught at a number of locations, with this
instruction expanded into a system of community colleges, as
needed. Several years later the General Assembly established
a system of nearly two dozen community colleges.

Two-year branch colleges of the university opened—Patrick
Henry College at Martinsville in 1962 and Eastern Shore at
Wallop's Island in 1964. George Mason and Clinch Valley were
already in operation as two-year university branches and
would be upgraded to four-year institutions. All these colleges,
except Clinch Valley, which now had 780 students,
would ultimately be separated from the university. George
Mason, with 3,100, became independent in 1972, and the
other two were absorbed into the statewide community college
system when it was established.

The university was becoming more and more distinguished as
a center of scientific research. There was increased emphasis
on science in virtually all U.S. institutions as a result of Soviet
Russia's putting a sputnik in space.

John Wesley Mitchell, a fellow of the Royal Society in London
and internationally known for his studies of large metal
crystals, joined the university faculty in 1960. Mitchell was
born in New Zealand and had worked at the University of
Bristol, England, with Spanish-born Professor Nicolas Cabrera,
who was already on the University of Virginia faculty,
and was also internationally celebrated. They pursued their
researches together in the physics laboratory at Virginia and
were hoping to find ways to strengthen structural materials.

The prestige of the university in the field of science was
already great, thanks to the presence on the faculty of such
men as John H. Yoe, Allan T. Gwathmey, and Randolph T.

Major, all in chemistry; Ralph Singleton in biology; Gordon T.
Whyburn and Edward J. McShane in mathematics; and Jesse
H. Binford, W. Dexter Whitehead, and Frank L. Hereford,
Jr., in physics.

Frank Hereford, although only in his late thirties, was already
known in Europe as a nuclear physicist and was in demand
as a speaker both in this country and overseas. Named
in 1962 to head the Physics Department at the university, he
was chosen by the magazine Industrial Development and the
Manufacturer's Record as one of three men to represent the
South's "new leadership." The magazine said that his advanced
training, international outlook, professional dedication,
and sense of responsibility in serving the public led to his
selection. Hereford had hardly settled in his position as department
head when he was also appointed dean of the
Graduate School of Arts and Sciences as successor to Dean
Geldard. After four years as graduate dean he was named
provost by President Shannon, in which position he would be
the principal academic officer after the president. The office
was a new one, and not identical with that occupied previously
by Joseph L. Vaughan. All academic deans, as well as the chancellors
of the Medical School and the community colleges,
were to report to Hereford. In the year he was appointed
provost Frank Hereford received the Thomas Jefferson
Award, the highest award made to any faculty member.

The university's eminence in nuclear physics was the major
factor in the institution's obtaining a $705,000 grant from the
National Science Foundation for the acquisition of a 6,000,000-volt
Van de Graaf nuclear accelerator and a new nuclear
physics laboratory. Part of the amount was to be matched by
university funds. The physics lab would house not only the
accelerator but a 75,000,000-volt synchroton given the university
by General Electric. With this up-to-date equipment the
university would have research facilities in nuclear structure
physics comparable to the best anywhere.

The Physics Department received a bequest of $360,000 in
1970 from William Jackson Humphreys, '89, and the fund was
used to support graduate fellowships. Humphreys had been
chief physicist of the U.S. Weather Bureau and professor of
meteorological physics at George Washington University.

For the overall development of science at the university the

National Science Foundation made a grant of $3,780,000 in
1965. This grant was one of six made to that number of institutions,
and was given to centers of learning that were deemed
to be on the brink of "recognized excellence in research and
education in the sciences." When a distinguished group of university
presidents and scientists made a two-day site visit in
order to determine whether the grant should be approved by
the National Science Foundation, a member of the visiting
team inquired as to whether all this emphasis on research and
graduate study would result in undergraduates being shortchanged
and instructed by none but junior members of the
faculty or teaching assistants. When it was pointed out that
two sections of first-year college physics were being shared
that year by Jesse Beams, a member of the National Academy
of Sciences, and John W. Mitchell, a Fellow of the Royal Society,
there were no more questions along that line.

Establishment in that year of the Center for Advanced
Studies, with Prof. W. Dexter Whitehead as director, was the
outgrowth of the foregoing recognition and the liberal grant
that accompanied it. Subsequent alumni contributions of
$3,500,000 for faculty made it possible to include the humanities
and social sciences in the center and to attract
distinguished scholars in those fields as well. The salary level
was comparable to that in the country's foremost institutions.
Whitehead was successful in obtaining nearly $2,000,000
more from the National Science Foundation in 1969.

And, thanks to another grant from the foundation, the university
acquired the only high-voltage electron microscope in
operation at any American university. Custom-built by the Radio
Corporation of America, the 500,000-volt microscope allowed
scientists to scrutinize minute defects in the crystalline
structure of alloys, the protein formations in human cells, and
viruses floating in space. It was operated in the School of Engineering
and Applied Science.

About thirty scientists, astronomers, and other specialists
were moved to Charlottesville in 1965 from the National Radio
Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) at Green Bank, W.Va.
They would make use of the astronomy apparatus and facilities
there, and those of the other sciences and disciplines at
the university. Most of the work of collecting data and studying
the universe through radio telescopes would continue at

83. Thomas H. Hunter, vice-president for medical affairs.

Green Bank, 115 miles west of Charlottesville. A $660,000
building was erected near the university on Mt. Jefferson, formerly
Observatory Mountain, for the use of NRAO staff
there. The university's Department of Astronomy was
undergoing an extraordinary degree of expansion under the
chairmanship of Laurence W. Fredrick. It had moved from
the basement of Cabell Hall to Gilmer Hall, part of the growing
science complex, and whereas at the former location it had
one faculty member and one graduate student, eleven more
faculty and staff were added by 1967, with twenty-six graduate
students and nine undergraduate astronomy majors. An important
part of this expansion was the new facility on Fan
Mountain, some nineteen miles south of Charlottesville. Its
thirty-two-inch reflector telescope, with sophisticated supplemental
equipment designed to study the spectra of stars,
added greatly to the department's potential. All this, combined
with the NRAO staff and facilities, constituted what was
said to be one of the largest groups of astronomers in the
world. A 40-inch astronometric telescope was soon added at
Fan Mountain, thanks to the National Science Foundation and
other agencies. The twenty-six-inch refractor telescope, given
to the university in the 1880s by Leander McCormick, was still
in use. With that relatively primitive instrument, the university
had collected 69,000 parallax plates, believed to be the world's
largest collection. They show where the stars were fifty years
ago and where they are now; stars do move, as viewed from
the earth, it was explained. Such information is important in
developing a system of space navigation.

Another significant gain for the university in the scientific
field occurred in 1962, when the navy's Project Squid was
transferred from Princeton University to Charlottesville. This
was the navy's major long-range research program in aircraft,
missile, and space propulsion.

By 1960 the School of Engineering was modifying its curricula
and research to include post-World War II changes in
science and mathematics. A new curriculum introduced engineering
sciences and increased time for the humanities and
social sciences, replacing the last vestiges of shop and field
training. A core of studies common to all engineering programs
was developed to include instruction in computer techniques.
The Division of English became the Division of Humanities,

charged with providing essential aspects of the
humanities in the curriculum by teaching and advising students
on elective choices in the arts and sciences.

The growth of research was closely related to the increasing
graduate enrollment. The research laboratories for the engineering
sciences actively sought and managed research support
from government and industry. In addition to programs
of study previously offered, new graduate curricula in materials
science and biomedical engineering were introduced.
These programs typified the increased attention to advanced
science and to expansion of engineering interests into new
areas of public concern.

Lawrence R. Quarles retired as dean in 1973. He had presided
over a period of growth in enrollment and a qualitative
change in program comparable to that under William M.
Thornton (1875-1925) and Walter S. Rodman (1933-40).

"Changes in the university's approach to engineering education
have reflected a profound national revolution," T. Graham
Hereford and O. Allan Gianniny, Jr., have written in
their Short History of Engineering and Applied Science at the University
of Virginia. "Stimulated by the need for modern analytic-science-based
technology developed in World War II, engineering
education was reoriented toward an analytic
methodology-based activity. The effect was to make engineering
education more like other scientific studies. . . . This revolution
was accomplished in the incredibly short time of a decade
or less in the nation, and it had been largely accomplished
at the University of Virginia in 1973 when [Dean] Quarles retired."

John E. Gibson was named dean and Commonwealth Prof.
of Electrical Engineering in 1973. He was a Yale Ph.D. in electrical
engineering and former dean at Oakland University,
Rochester, Mich. Dean Gibson's first year suggested new priorities
for the school, with strong efforts to integrate the knowledge
and skills of engineering with the concerns of public
policy and to admit a significant number of women and minorities.
The faculty numbered approximately 130 at that
time, the undergraduates 868 and the graduate students 316.

The Law School experienced significant changes and improvements
in the 1960s. F. D. G. Ribble reached the age of

retirement as dean in 1963 and was succeeded in that position
by Hardy C. Dillard. Ribble continued as James Madison Prof.
of Law and Dillard as James Monroe Prof. of Law. A direct
descendant of John Marshall, Ribble had served for twentyfour
years as head of the school, during which time it had
been strengthened in many ways. He was honored at an
alumni dinner as part of Law Day activities. Dillard, a member
of the faculty since 1927 and a retired colonel in the army
reserve, was experienced as a lawyer, consultant, administrator,
scholar, author, international lecturer, and teacher.

The Law School was collaborating with the Schools of Foreign
Affairs and Political Science in offering a new course in
"transnational law." Two world-famous authorities in the field
had been added to the university faculty—Percy E. Corbett,
who had held important posts at Princeton, Yale, and Oxford
and had been dean of the McGill University Law School, and
Quincy Wright, who was internationally known and had come
to Charlottesville from the University of Chicago. Teaching,
research, and publication were on the agenda of the course in
"transnational law." With the acquisition of two such scholars
as Wright and Corbett, the university was said to have "the
best international law team in the United States."

The Law School's programs in 1965 were expanded and invigorated
by gifts, bequests, and trusts totaling over two million
dollars, about 85 per cent of it from outside the state.
Included were a trust established by Lammot duPont Copeland
of Wilmington, Del.; bequests by Tazewell Taylor, Jr., of
Norfolk and Joseph M. Hartfield of New York; and grants
from the Henry L. and Grace Doherty Charitable Foundation
of New York. The funds were used for financial assistance to
students and special programs for enrichment of the curriculum,
for research grants, and to augment some faculty salaries.

The degrees of Doctor of Juridical Science and Master of
Law being offered by the Law School were bringing students
from all over the globe. Eighteen legal scholars from the universities
of Cairo, Freiburg, Ghent, Cambridge, Sydney, and
Seoul, not to mention Harvard, Yale, and Northwestern, were
enrolled for the session of 1967-68. Most of them planned to
teach law or enter government service, and all were outstanding

in their fields. More and more applicants were seeking to
enter these courses each year.

Dillard retired from the deanship in 1968 after a productive
career in that post and continued to teach. In 1970 he was
named to the International Court of Justice at The Hague. No
other University of Virginia alumnus except John Bassett
Moore had ever been elevated to the World Court, as it was
commonly called. The Hardy Cross Dillard professorship of
law was established in Dillard's honor at the Law School.

His successor as dean was Monrad G. Paulsen, professor
and legal scholar at Columbia University Law School. Paulsen
was an internationally recognized authority on criminal law
and law as it relates to children. He had lectured throughout
this country and in Europe. His wife, Dr. Elsa Paulsen, joined
the medical faculty as associate professor of pediatrics. Daniel
J. Meador, dean of the University of Alabama Law School, succeeded
Dillard on the Virginia faculty. Chief Justice Roger J.
Traynor of the California Supreme Court retired from that
post to teach at the University of Virginia Law School for the
second semester of the 1970-71 session. Three years later the
school received a bequest of $2,000,000 from Roy C. Moyston,
'13, who had had a highly successful legal and business career
in Texas and Maryland.

President Shannon announced a reorganization of the Medical
School staff in 1964 in the interests of administrative efficiency.
Dean of Medicine Thomas H. Hunter was appointed
chancellor for medical affairs, and Dr. Kenneth R. Crispell was
named to succeed him as dean. John M. Stacey, director of the
University Hospital, was appointed director of the Medical
Center.

Grants from the National Institutes of Health and the National
Science Foundation totaling around three million dollars
were received in 1966. They were to extend over a period
of years and were designed to strengthen programs in the basic
medical sciences and aid in establishment of a general clinical
research unit. Three years later the U.S. Department of
Health, Education, and Welfare provided nearly two million
dollars more for improving selected clinical departments.
Then in 1970 the National Institutes of Health awarded the

school $2,700,000 to enable it to turn out more physicans.
This also made it possible for the university to provide broadened
educational experiences for medical students in a community
setting, define admission criteria for potential medical
students from lower socioeconomic groups, and emphasize
training in family medicine.

The entering class jumped from 82 to 96 in September of
that year, and the new federal grant would enable the school
to admit 114 to the first-year medical class in 1971 and 120 in
1972. All this would be made possible by completion of the
new $9,100,000 medical education building then under construction.

Community hospitals in Roanoke, Lynchburg, and Winchester
were to be used in a "second faculty" concept. Certain
members of the medical staffs of those hospitals were named
as full-time faculty of the university Medical School and would
engage in teaching duties there. Medical students at Charlottesville
were permitted to obtain part of their clinical training
in these community hospitals. As for the program in
family medicine referred to above, it was planned to increase
the faculty for the purpose, and approximately two hundred
families would be a part of the program.

Another innovation revolved about an eight-week summer
course involving up to thirty white and black applicants to the
Medical School who were disadvantaged but had promising
personal characteristics and were highly motivated. Drawn
mainly from colleges in Virginia and southern Appalachia,
these young men and women were given an opportunity to
demonstrate in the summer course, which was tuition free and
included a $400 living allowance, that they were Medical
School material.

Thirteen departments in the Medical Center were devoting
almost one-third of their floor space to research and treatment
in the fight on cancer. An interdisciplinary center for
the attack on this disease was contemplated, and the National
Cancer Institute made $150,000 available for planning. The
investigation was completed after eighteen months of study
on a nationwide basis, and a report was made. The new cancer
center would be molded around the Division of Cancer Studies,
under the direction of Dr. Robert M. McLeod.

84. Charlotte Kohler, editor of the
Virginia Quarterly Review,
1946-75.

Dr. Thomas H. Hunter, who had been appointed vice-president
for health sciences some years previously, retired from
administrative duties and Dean of Medicine Kenneth R. Crispell
was named to succeed him. The deanship was filled with
the appointment of Dr. William R. Drucker, chairman of the
Department of Surgery at the University of Toronto since
1966. An M.D. of Johns Hopkins and a Markle Scholar, Dr.
Drucker chose the University of Virginia over various other
institutions that were seeking his services.

A new medical curriculum introduced in the summer of
1973 made it possible to complete medical school in three
years instead of four. A group of twenty-five students entered
the school in July, with a view to pursuing the more intensified
schedule of work, which included eight-week summer sessions.

The Medical School was the recipient of a $4,000,000 bequest
from Mrs. Roy C. Moyston, whose husband had left
$2,000,000 to the Law School. The Medical School had as its
scholar in residence for 1973-74 Dr. Robert Q. Marston, former
director of the National Institutes of Health, a native Virginian
who would become president of the University of
Florida.

A controversial division of the Medical School was its wellendowed
Division of Parapsychology within the Department
of Psychiatry, with Dr. Ian Stevenson as chairman. With him
in the division in 1974 were Professors J. Gaither Pratt and
Rex G. Stanford. Such phenomena as reincarnation, extrasensory
perception, and psychokinesis were studied. Some in responsible
positions in the university were by no means convinced
of the value of these inquiries. The division was set up
under a bequest of $1,000,000 from Chester F. Carlson, with
the specific proviso that the money was to be used for the work
of Dr. Stevenson in parapsychology. After much discussion
and debate, the Board of Visitors decided to accept the funds.
The division gave no courses and was concerned solely with
research. Dr. Stevenson traveled to various areas of the world
collecting data on reincarnation and has written a number of
books on the subject. Pratt was on the research staff of the
parapsychology laboratory at Duke University before coming
to Charlottesville. Stevenson, Carlson Professor of Psychiatry

in the Medical School, held one of only four endowed chairs
in parapsychology in the world.

Zula Mae Baber, later Mrs. Raymond C. Bice, succeeded
Dean Margaret G. Tyson as acting dean of nursing following
Tyson's nine years of exceptional service. Dean Bice also made
a notable record, and following her death a memorial lectureship
was established in her honor. She was succeeded by Dean
Rose Marie Chioni, under whom the School of Nursing was
further upgraded. The three-year diploma program was
phased out in 1968, and in 1972 the master's degree was offered
in pediatric and psychiatric nursing. McLeod Hall and
Fenwick Auditorium were opened in the latter year, and a new
student housing facility went into operation soon thereafter
on Brandon Avenue. The nursing program now covered four
years plus a summer semester and included two years of liberal
arts. Regular hospital bedside duties were eliminated, but
clinical training included bedside care. The school conducted
courses in several Virginia cities. Undergraduate enrollment
in 1974 was in excess of four hundred.

Frank A. Geldard was appointed dean of the Graduate School
in 1960, succeeding Lewis M. Hammond, who resigned and
went on a two-year leave to serve as educational attaché in
Bonn, West Germany. He had served as dean for a decade.
Geldard, head of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's advisory
committee on defense psychology, had just presided at
Paris over NATO's first defense psychology symposium. Geldard
had been chairman of the university's Department of
Psychology since 1946 and a member of the faculty since
1928. He was for three years chairman of the National Research
Council's committee on military psychology and was
the author of books and numerous scientific papers in the
field. He resigned in 1962 as Graduate School dean to join the
faculty of Princeton University and was succeeded by Frank L.
Hereford, Jr. During Hereford's four years in office the number
of graduate degrees expanded in both quantity and
quality. When he was named provost, Edward Younger was
appointed to the deanship.

Younger had been chairman of the History Department for
the preceding four years. That department had expanded

greatly under his chairmanship, with the number of faculty
and graduate students increasing markedly. His most valuable
service was his direction of scores of Ph.D. dissertations in the
field of Virginia history since 1865. As a result, he was said to
have "done more than any living man to increase our knowledge
of the history of Virginia since the Civil War." Between
1949 and 1974 Edward Younger personally directed fifty-six
Ph.D. dissertations, more than any member of the university
faculty had ever done, and the great majority dealt with the
state's postbellum period, concerning which there had been a
great dearth of information. He was the author of John A. Kasson:
Diplomacy and Politics from Lincoln to McKinley, which won
the university's Phi Beta Kappa Prize, and the editor of Inside
the Confederate Government: The Diary of Robert Garlick Hill Kean,
which was a Civil War Book Club selection. In 1974 Younger
was elected an honorary member of the Virginia Historical
Society and appointed Alumni Professor of History.

Dexter Whitehead, who succeeded Younger as graduate
dean, reported in 1970 that the Graduate School was continuing
to produce more and more degree recipients and that
quality continued to mount. He stated that registration in the
Graduate School had nearly tripled in the decade 1960-70
(1,212 as compared with 426), with a corresponding jump in
the number of degrees granted. As director since 1965 of the
highly successful Center for Advanced Studies, Whitehead
had been a key factor in bringing to the university a large
number of eminent scholars for teaching, study, and research.

Leading institutions from coast to coast were losing some of
their most distinguished faculty members to the University of
Virginia. For example, Prof. Norman A. Graebner of the University
of Illinois was induced to come to Virginia as the first
professor in the humanities brought in by the Center for Advanced
Studies. Nationally known as a "superstar" who
packed 500 students into his Illinois classroom to hear his lectures
on American history or American diplomacy, Graebner
was greatly admired by faculty and students alike. The students
demonstrated when they found he was leaving for Virginia,
and university administrators at Urbana were indignant
that one of their most brilliant lecturers and seminar conductors
had been lured away. Similar concern was expressed by
students and faculty at the University of Pennsylvania when

Henry J. Abraham left for the University of Virginia, to occupy
an endowed chair as professor of government and foreign
affairs. A refugee from Nazi Germany, Henry Abraham
was decorated in World War II for his service in General Eisenhower's
headquarters military intelligence unit. He joined
the University of Pennsylvania faculty after the war and made
a great reputation as a scholar and lecturer. In his final year
there he was chairman of the faculty Senate. Various other
high-ranking teachers were attracted to Charlottesville by the
excellent salaries and topflight library and laboratory facilities
and the beautiful grounds. More than fifty faculty and visiting
professors were brought to the university during the first decade
of this program, greatly enhancing the quality of instruction
and of life.

Similarly, an endowed chair in architecture brings to the
School of Architecture each year a world-famous architect,
who, as Thomas Jefferson Foundation Professor of Architecture,
is given a medal and a $5,000 prize. Funds for the above
accolades for the noted recipient are provided by the foundation,
which also underwrites ten annual scholarships at
$1,000 each for graduate students in the school. And there is
a "spirit of camaraderie" among the students of architecture.
Prof. Frederick D. Nichols has said that this spirit is such that
"it is difficult to get them to take electives in the College or to
attend lectures around the Grounds."

The Department of Art in the College of Arts and Sciences
acquired the services of internationally famous Prof. Frederick
Hartt, chairman of the Art Department at the University
of Pennsylvania, who left that institution to become chairman
of the department at Virginia, succeeding Charles Smith, who
had retired. Regarded as one of the world's foremost art historians,
Hartt had been sent by the U.S. Government to Florence,
Italy, following the devastating floods there in the
middle sixties, to assess the damage and organize assistance.
He has been decorated twice by the Italian government.

The School of Education raised its entrance requirements
in 1962-63 to require that every entrant complete at least two
years of acceptable college work, or the equivalent, with fiftyfour
hours of course work. This was to include a minimum of
twelve semester hours in the humanities, the social sciences,
and the natural sciences, with three hours in health and physical

education. However, except for the twelve-year period between
the sessions of 1950-51 and 1962-63, students had always
been required to complete two years in the College in
order to enter the School of Education.

The school was strengthened in 1965 when Prof. Francis G.
Lankford, Jr., returned to the faculty as head of the Office of
Institutional Analysis, after ten years as president of Longwood
College. Commonwealth Prof. of Education and the author
of textbooks in mathematics, Lankford also had served
in 1962-63 as educational adviser to the Ford Foundation in
Pakistan. He retired in 1972. Another admired member of
the staff was Prof. William H. Seawell, chairman of the Department
of Administration and supervisor of the School of
Education.

Frederick E. Cyphert of the Ohio State faculty was named
to the deanship in 1968 as successor to Dean Cherry and remained
in the position until 1974. Cyphert resigned in that
year to return to Ohio State, and Richard M. Brandt, who had
served as a department chairman in the school, was appointed
to succeed him. During Dean Cyphert's six years the faculty
doubled to about one hundred members, and the dean was
successful in obtaining significant grants. The Evaluation Research
Center and Child Development Center were established,
and Malcolm Provus and Donald Medley, said to be
among the nation's top two or three scholars in evaluation and
research, were added to the staff. The School of Education
moved in 1973 into its modern new building, Ruffner Hall, on
Emmet Street, planning for which had been under way for a
dozen years. The faculty of the College of Arts and Sciences
voted in 1970 to give no further degree credit in the College
for physical education courses in the School of Education. A
Department of Physical Education, separate from the College
but under its dean, was established, and the course carried
credit toward a degree.

Bruce W. Nelson, a University of Illinois Ph.D., came to
Charlottesville in 1973 from the University of South Carolina
as dean of the School of Continuing Education and assistant
provost for continuing education. He succeeded André C. de
Porry, who retired the previous year.

The Institute of Government got a new director in 1973
when Weldon Cooper retired from that position, and Clifton

85. The heifer that was mysteriously transported to the Rotunda roof in May 1965 and died after being
brought down.

McCleskey of the University of Texas faculty succeeded him.
Cooper, who continued to teach, was elected to the newly established
Robert K. Gooch professorship. Praise came to him
from many directions for his service with the institute and the
News Letter, and he received a special citation from Gov. Linwood
Holton. In the same year the institute was the recipient
of a scholarship and a fellowship. Morton L. Wallerstein, '11,
and Mrs. Wallerstein established the scholarship. Wallerstein
had served as executive secretary of the Virginia Municipal
League from 1921 to 1941 and had helped to found the institute.
The Board of Visitors established a graduate fellowship
in the name of Harold I. Baumes, who succeeded Morton
Wallerstein with the Municipal League and who had just retired.

Special study centers for Latin-America and South Asia
were established in 1965 and 1969, respectively. The former
was one of only five undergraduate "language and area centers
for Latin America" in this country. It was supported by
funds granted under the National Defense Education Act,
and students could obtain a B.A. degree with a major in LatinAmerican
studies. Participating students would take courses
in Spanish, Spanish-American literature, and Portuguese,
with related courses in economics, geography, government,
foreign affairs, history, sociology, and anthropology. Charles
E. Reid, associate professor of Spanish, was chairman of the
committee in charge of the program. The South Asian studies
center was under the direction of John T. Roberts, assistant
professor of Hindi and Sanskrit, and it would coordinate
courses bearing on the area in the fields of government, foreign
affairs, sociology, anthropology, history, general linguistics,
religious studies, education, economics, and architecture.
Degrees would not be granted by the center but by the various
departments cooperating with it. An interdepartmental major
in South Asian studies was available to undergraduates. The
center planned to sponsor lectures and other cultural events.

In that era of nonconformity on college campuses the university's
Student Council initiated a survey in 1967 of student attitudes
toward the curriculum and the faculty. Five evaluation
forms were sent to each undergraduate in the College of Arts
and Sciences, with questions as to the courses and the professors

and incisive queries as to the latter's performance. T. Jackson
Lears, Jere R. Abrams, Stuart Pape and Ken Barry were
supervising editors for the survey, and among their conclusions
were the following: "Our investigation . . . uncovered a
malaise which requires much more than cursory attention.
There is evidence here to justify a radically new approach to
the university's function as an institution, and more specifically
to the undergraduate program." They called for "a more
dynamic institution than now exists."

Adoption of a new curriculum for the College, pursuant to
a careful study by a seventeen-member committee of deans,
professors, and students, appointed in 1968, was a notable
event. It would seem to have been an at least partial response
to student criticism. Prof. Lewis M. Hammond was chairman
of the committee. The new program of study replaced the
long-established curriculum that "was set up after Noah
landed," as Dean Cauthen expressed it. Much greater flexibility
in the choice of courses by undergraduates was a salient
feature, as was abandonment, at the discretion of the professor,
of the rigid "no cuts" rule and of a comprehensive examination
on the eve of graduation, if deemed desirable by the
instructor. The plan with respect to class cuts replaced one
adopted when enrollment was far smaller, and keeping track
of wayward youths was consequently far easier. There had
been almost endless grousing by students over the strict monitoring
of class attendance. As for "comprehensives," it was
pointed out that they had been held almost simultaneously
with final examinations, and that many of the questions were
identical.

Dean Cauthen noted that the students were now better prepared
and more mature than formerly, and he felt that they
had earned the greater flexibility offered by the new curriculum.
In addition, he said: "The faculty provided all sorts of
other opportunities for independent work, for work in seminars,
possibilities for going into new and different majors, taking
courses on pass/fail options, and expanding the number
of courses that can be taken outside the College. Our students
are ready for this kind of program. . . . This new curriculum
has been the most far-reaching academic change and the most
obvious example of our deepening commitment to the main
tradition of this university. And it seems to be working out

well." The committee on the curriculum recommended abandonment
of degree credit for Reserve Officers' Training
Corps courses offered by the army, navy, and air force at the
university. This was a period when the ROTC and all military
training were unpopular because of the Vietnam War, and
there were demonstrations against the ROTC in various parts
of the country. The committee's recommendation as to degree
credits was followed for a brief period, but a few months later
it was reversed by the Arts and Sciences faculty. One factor
could have been that the students voted 4,141 to 2,985 in favor
of giving credit for the courses. About 780 were enrolled.
Another factor was the virtual certainty that the naval ROTC
would leave the university if credits were denied, and the
probability or possibility that the army and air force would do
likewise.

There was acute intellectual ferment on the campuses of
America in the late sixties and early seventies, and a questioning
of ideas and attitudes previously regarded as immutable.
Evidences of this were soon seen at the University of Virginia.
An early sign was the organization in the spring of 1968 of the
University Forum, under the leadership of Peter Schenkkan,
an able student, later a Rhodes Scholar. "Some university-connected
gripe on your mind?" Schenkkan asked in a letter to
the student newspaper. "Causes, coeducation, counseling, culture?
. . . Would you like to tell somebody besides your roommate
about it?" The forum, with both faculty and students
involved, would give the two groups a chance to know each
other and work together for common objectives. The Cavalier
Daily pronounced it "by far the most promising and encouraging
venture we have seen undertaken here in some time."
The forum was organized in May at a meeting in Maury Hall.
By the following fall an Experimental University had been set
up as part of a nationwide movement to supplement or replace
existing degree programs. The prevailing curriculum
offered "no challenge" and there was no motivation to do
more than learn by rote, said the dissenting students at the
university. They wanted, among other things, an opportunity
for "give and take" with the professors. Leading figures in the
administration were sympathetic and several faculty members
agreed to conduct seminars. Elimination of "unsatisfactory"
courses and substitution of others was an objective of the participating

86. Kenneth R. Crispell, vice-president for health sciences,
1971-.

students. Proposed subjects for courses included
"civil disobedience," "the generation gap," "Vietnam," "development
of pop music," "educational TV," and "history of the
mass media." It was proposed to "supplement, not supplant,"
the existing educational system, and it was hoped that credit
would be given for the projected courses. Dean of Student
Affairs D. Alan Williams was quoted as expressing "direct sympathy"
with the concept but as warning that too much
shouldn't be expected from it and that no "politically-oriented
group" should be allowed to get control. About four hundred
students registered for the thirty-one courses—considered an
excellent beginning. By the second semester the emphasis had
been changed, and sample courses were "foreign policy and
morality," "bartending," "McLuhan and the media," and "introduction
to general witching" (for women only). In the Experimental
University, it was explained, there are no "teachers,"
"leaders," or "students"—only "participants." By the
second semester of the session, 1969-70, the curriculum and
method of operation had undergone further changes. It
should be noted, however, that the Experimental University
was purely informal, that it was set up by students and a few
faculty members, and that it enjoyed no sanction or approval
by the faculty, administration, or Board of Visitors. During
the session of 1972-73 the program was in full swing, and
over four hundred students were still registered. The experimental
institution had "switched from academics to a more
diverse curriculum," with such courses as "men's liberation,"
"balloon-making," "bee-keeping," "harmonica," "massage," "auto
mechanics," "bridge," and "photography." Group leaders offered
their services without charge, and the one-dollar registration
fee was devoted largely to publishing the catalogue
and providing class facilities.

First-year men were by no means immune from the currents
sweeping over the campuses of the country, and twentysix
liberal arts seminars were offered at the session of
1969-70. Most of the seminars had more applicants than
could be accommodated, with over four hundred registrants
by early September. The seminars were held in the afternoons
or evenings, with no extra compensation going to the professors
in charge. Associate Dean of the College Marcus Mallett
was director of the program, and degree credit was offered to

those making satisfactory grades. By far the most popular
seminars dealt with the following: "races, ghettos, and revolutions,"
"radicalism in politics," "the study of the future processes
of social, economic, and political change," "the nature
and meaning of revolution," "psychiatry, morality, and the
law," "law and civil disobedience," "nonsense: its meaning and
effect," and "sports: their role in the culture of man." A glaring
light on the social and political climate of the era is shed
by the eager interest of college freshmen in such subjects as
these.

On a more conventional level the School of Continuing
Education was offering adults throughout the commonwealth
opportunities to continue their schooling in a great variety of
fields. More than fifteen hundred graduate and undergraduate
classes were available in 120 localities. Both credit and noncredit
courses were available on the undergraduate level in
liberal arts, commerce, engineering, technology, and education,
and on the graduate level in engineering and education.
Classes were held mostly at night. In addition, the school
sponsored conferences, institutes, and short courses at the
university for business and professional groups and also made
available audiovisual services, including films and tapes, for
use by discussion groups. Furthermore, the school helped to
develop courses for the new FBI Academy at Quantico. In
doing so the university cooperated in creating a national program
of higher education for law-enforcement personnel
throughout the United States. Some two thousand state, city,
and county officials experienced in the criminal justice system
were selected to attend the academy annually, taking courses
in the behavioral sciences, law, management, communication,
and forensic science. The academy opened in 1972. André C.
de Porry had become dean of the university's School of General
Studies in 1968, succeeding James W. Cole, Jr., who relinguished
the post after serving for a decade, in order to return
to full-time teaching. De Porry edited the book For the Commonwealth:
Extension and Continuing Education by the University
of Virginia, 1912-1973.

Soviet Russia's pioneer sputnik caused the universities of
America to place so much emphasis on scientific advancement
that other disciplines were having difficulty obtaining sufficient
funds. It was gratifying, therefore, that $1,000,000 was

given to the University of Virginia in 1969 to finance up to a
dozen professorships in the fine arts and the humanities. The
donor was the William R. Kenan, Jr., Charitable Trust. Kenan,
a North Carolina native, began his career as a schoolteacher
in Radford, Va., and then became one of the nation's most
prominent industrialists and a great benefactor of the University
of North Carolina. Income from his gift to the University
of Virginia was matched by the state's Eminent Scholars Fund.

Additional emphasis was placed on the humanities at the
Old Dominion Humanities Institute for Teachers, held at the
university for four weeks each summer from 1966 through
1971. H. I. Willett and Lucien D. Adams, city school superintendents
in Richmond, were successive chairmen of the Advisory
Board. A carefully selected group of about sixty high and
preparatory school teachers from all parts of the state attended
these institutes, at which prominent university faculty
members lectured. Professors Joseph L. Vaughan, T. Graham
Hereford, and O. Allan Gianniny, Jr., were leaders in organizing
and operating the institute, which was pronounced a notable
success by many teachers who attended. Unfortunately,
the program had to be terminated after the 1971 session for
lack of funds.

Thirty-nine university professors received grants in 1968,
totaling about $65,000, for study in the humanities and the
social sciences during the summer, both in the United States
and abroad. This represented a substantial increase over the
amount available the preceding year and evidenced the growing
emphasis on these disciplines.

A Federal Executive Institute for high-level government executives
was formally opened in 1968 at the former Thomas
Jefferson Inn, which, with its eight surrounding acres, had
been leased for the purpose. Important officials in the federal
establishment and other specialists were to lecture, along with
university professors, during the series of eight-week courses,
with a maximum of sixty persons enrolled for each.

A center for training historical and literary editors was established
the following year, with George H. Reese, former
assistant director of research at Colonial Williamsburg, in
charge. Instruction for graduate students in English and history
would be emphasized, and opportunities given for postdoctoral
training and practical laboratory work in documentary

editing. Reese, who held three degrees from the university,
was appointed professor of humanistic sources and associate
editor of The Papers of George Washington, to be published by
the newly established University Press of Virginia. After
World War II Reese spent six years in the foreign service. He
subsequently headed the publications division of the Virginia
State Library and was agent for the Virginia Committee on
Colonial Records. In the latter capacity he spent eight years in
England and France finding, abstracting, and filming millions
of manuscripts relating to colonial Virginia.

Professorships in the Department of Economics and the
School of Commerce were established about 1970 by groups
interested in honoring persons eminent in the political and
business worlds. The Virginia Bankers Association raised half
of a $250,000 fund, with the other half contributed by bankers
throughout the United States, for professorships in the
Department of Economics in honor of U.S. Senators Carter
Glass and A. Willis Robertson of Virginia. The first incumbent
of the Robertson chair was Herbert Stein, former chairman of
President Nixon's Council of Economic Advisers. Stein stated
shortly before his appointment that Milton Friedman and the
University of Chicago's conservative school of economics had
been influential in shaping the courses in economics at Virginia
and other institutions. Stein was a graduate of Chicago.

Some $2,500,000 was given to the university by Burkett
Miller, a law school graduate, for the establishment of a conservative
center for the study of public affairs, especially the
presidency, with an equal amount to be bequeathed after his
death. Miller took several years to decide whether to make the
gift, since he feared that the center would fall into the hands
of the radicals who were so active in the late sixties and early
seventies. Finally he became convinced that the university
could be trusted in the matter, and half of the money was
made available. Plans were got under way in 1974 for the establishment
of the White Burkett Miller Center of Public Affairs
the following year. Prof. Frederick E. Nolting, Jr., was
selected to be the center's first director.

Slightly over 62 percent of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences
were tenured during the session of 1973-74—that is, they
were assured of their positions until the age of retirement unless
they engaged in some extremely serious misbehavior. The

remaining 38 percent had three-year appointments which
they were allowed to renew for another three years, after
which a decision would be made by the administration as to
whether they would be accorded permanent tenure. The faculty
voted by a large majority to extend this six-year period by
one year, if the candidate, the department chairman, and the
dean of the faculty so desired. The question was raised
whether it was wise to have as much as 62 percent of the faculty
tenured. Some expressed the view that 50 to 60 percent
was a more desirable figure.

The university's facilities were being used during the summer
months by business, professional, educational, and governmental
groups. Taking one such summer at random, we
find the Graduate School of Business Administration holding
a six-week management course with forty registrants from
many states and the following groups meeting for from one
to three days: national convention of Sigma Phi fraternity,
School of Consumer Banking, Virginia Bankers' School,
Nursing Home Institute, Realtors' Institute, Virginia Association
of Insurance Agents, Steelworkers' Labor Institute, Virginia
Credit Management Institute, Local Government Officials
Conference, Virginia Association of Assessing Officers,
Class Room Teachers' Conference, State School Superintendents'
Conference, and Virginia Press Association News Seminars.

Prof. Robert K. Gooch relinquished the post of grand marshal
of all academic functions in 1964 upon his retirement from
active teaching. He had served for thirty-two years, having
succeeded Armistead M. Dobie when Dobie was appointed
dean of the Law School. Dobie had been grand marshal since
"sometime after 1907." Dean B. F. D. Runk succeeded Gooch
as marshal. Both men carried a handsome silver mace at the
head of academic processions; the mace was presented to the
university in 1961 by the Seven Society. It was made by Patek
Philippe of Geneva, Switzerland, and bears a number of engraved
university scenes and emblems. The university seal,
pictures of the Rotunda, the serpentine walls, a colonnaded
walkway on the Lawn, and the statues of Thomas Jefferson
and James McConnell all appear on the artistically designed
symbol of authority.

87. William L. Duren, Jr., dean of the College, 1955-62, and
University Professor of Mathematics.

A number of significant administrative changes occurred in
the 1960s. Robert J. Harris, chairman of the Vanderbilt University
Department of Political Science, came to the university
in 1963 as dean of the faculty of arts and sciences. A Princeton
Ph.D., author of books in the governmental field, and former
president of the Southern Political Science Association and
editor of the Journal of Politics, he served as dean at Virginia
for five years and then occupied the James Hart professorship
of government. Upon his retirement as dean, he was succeeded
by Prof. Fredson T. Bowers, who served for one year.
Then David A. Shannon, chairman of the Rutgers University
History Department, a lecturer in both Europe and the Orient,
author of numerous historical works, and a University of
Wisconsin Ph.D., succeeded to the position. Shannon occupied
the deanship for two years and then was named vicepresident
and provost. Ernest H. Ern, assistant dean of the
College of Arts and Sciences, was appointed dean of admissions
in 1967, succeeding Marvin B. Perry, Jr., who left the
university. A Ph.D. in geology from Lehigh University, Ern
received two National Science Foundation grants in the preceding
four years. D. Alan Williams, assistant provost since
1966, was named dean of student affairs two years later.
B. F. D. Runk had resigned as dean of the university, and that
office was discontinued. He remained as Samuel Miller Professor
of Experimental Agriculture and Forestry. A Ph.D. of
Northwestern University and professor of history, Williams
would be responsible for student government and discipline,
dormitory and student counseling, student health, and placement
of financial aid. He also had supervision over foreign
students, intramural athletics, and the University Union. The
transition from Runk to Williams took place as turmoil in this
and other student bodies throughout the nation was mounting
steadily. The Cavalier Daily commented that "as chief disciplinarian
and chief administration official in charge of student
affairs" Dean Runk "has fulfilled his duties in these areas
strictly but fairly. . . . His contributions to the university . . .
are invaluable." Raymond C. Bice was named assistant to
President Shannon and secretary to the board of Visitors. In
the latter capacity he succeeded Weldon Cooper, who remained
as head of the Institute of Government. William A.
Hobbs, '34, resigned from the Board of Visitors to fill a new

position as head of the Department of Development and Public
Affairs. He had been president of the M. A. Hanna Co. of
Cleveland, Ohio, and senior vice-president of Clark, Dodge
and Co., a New York investment banking firm. He would assist
the university comptroller in assessing the institution's financial
requirements.

A significant restructuring of administrative positions took
place in 1970 when five vice-presidents were appointed by
President Shannon. It was the first time that the university
had had any vice-presidents. Four of the appointees were already
there, and a fifth was brought in. The president explained
that the basic functions of his principal deputies
would continue, but as vice-presidents they would have "primary
administrative responsibility and authority over the major
divisions . . . that they administer." The five were: Provost
Frank L. Hereford, Jr., appointed vice-president and provost;
Comptroller Vincent Shea, vice-president for business and finance;
Chancellor for Medical Affairs Thomas H. Hunter,
vice-president for medical affairs; Dean of Student Affairs D.
Alan Williams, vice-president for student affairs; and Edwin
M. Crawford, who was serving as director of the Office of Institutional
Research for the National Association of State Universities
and Land Grant Colleges, vice-president for public
affairs. William A. Hobbs, director of development and public
affairs, had resigned several months before to accept the
presidency of an investment firm. Crawford would be responsible
for university-wide development, including all fund raising,
and relations with local, state, and federal governments
and alumni organizations.

The following year Dr. Kenneth R. Crispell, dean of the
School of Medicine for the preceding six years, was named
vice-president for health sciences, succeeding Dr. Thomas H.
Hunter, who was returning to full-time teaching and research.
As dean, Dr. Crispell had led the drive for increased production
of health care personnel at the university, including a substantially
larger enrollment in the Medical School. He was
largely instrumental in securing the funding for the $9,100,000
medical education building, which would make possible
still higher enrollment.

Frank L. Hereford, Jr., resigned as vice-president and provost
in 1971 to go back to teaching and research, and Dean

David Shannon was named to succeed him. Shannon also was
made chairman of the Committee on the Future of the University,
a post held by Hereford.

Robert T. Canevari, '64, assistant dean of students, was chosen
dean, succeeding D. Alan Williams. Richard L. Godine,
'53, a Charlottesville business executive, was appointed director
of university development by Vice-President Crawford.
Godine died about a year later, and Ward Sims, a '65 law
graduate, was named to succeed him.

In the same year Robert D. Cross, until recently president
of Swarthmore College, who also had been president of
Hunter College and history chairman at Columbia, came to
the university as dean of the faculty of arts and sciences. He
succeeded W. Dexter Whitehead, who relinquished the post
but continued as graduate dean. Cross would be chief adviser
to the vice-president and provost on courses of study in
graduate and undergraduate arts and sciences. He was typical
of distinguished academicians who were being brought to the
university during these years.

The first appointment of a student to the Board of Visitors
occurred in 1970, when twenty-five-year-old J. Harvie Wilkinson
III, an honor graduate of Yale and member of the second-year
law class at Virginia, was named to the board by Gov.
Linwood Holton. Wilkinson had written a widely praised book
on U.S. Sen. Harry F. Byrd and his political organization and
would soon join the law faculty, where he would be recognized
as one of its ablest young members. His father, J. Harvie Wilkinson,
Jr., retired from the board to make way for him.

Dean of Admissions Ernest H. Ern was appointed vicepresident
for student affairs in 1973, succeeding D. Alan Williams,
who relinquished the position to return to teaching. Ern
was to retain supervision over admissions, under a shift of authority,
with direct control as dean vested in George B. Matthews,
who had been serving as assistant dean of the School of
Engineering and Applied Science. Matthews, a Princeton
Ph.D., joined the faculty in 1960.

Edwin E. Floyd, former head of the Department of Mathematics,
was appointed dean of the faculty of arts and sciences
in 1974, succeeding Robert D. Cross, who resigned to return
to the classroom. Dean Floyd had been a member of the faculty
since 1949, and his work as a mathematician had been

praised in the highest terms. Students protested that they had
not been sufficiently consulted in connection with his selection
as dean. Their opinions had been sought concerning several
previous appointments, and they seemed to think that no one
should be named to the administrative staff without prior ascertainment
of their views.

William Faulkner, whose appointment as writer in residence
during the fifties was mentioned in the previous chapter, continued
as lecturer and consultant at the university until his
death at Oxford, Miss., in 1962. The Nobel Prize winner, who
divided his time between Charlottesville and Oxford, gave
prestige to the institution's expanding sources and studies in
American literature. Faulkner's observations on "Virginia
snobs" caused something of a sensation. He liked the state, he
said, "because Virginians are all snobs, and I like snobs. A
snob has to spend so much time being a snob that he has little
left to meddle with you, and it's very pleasant here."

There were mixed reports on Faulkner's performance as
lecturer and consultant. Corks and Curls said after his death
that he "gave freely of his greatness to this university which
had so special a place in his affections." It went on to declare
that he "met dozens of classes and other university and town
groups, reading from his works and answering all manner of
questions . . . held conferences with students and participated
in the life of the university from classroom to athletic field."
But an unnamed professor was quoted as saying: "A few times
a year he meets with students reading his work, but often
sheds little light on it. When asked about the meaning of some
deeply significant passage, he is likely to say, `Oh, it's just an
old Mississippi folk tale, livened up by imagination,' or `I was
just trying to say something about the human condition.' Legend
has it that when a puzzled student told him he had read
`Absalom, Absalom!' three times and still didn't understand it,
Faulkner told him, `Read it a fourth time.' " Faulkner left his
manuscripts, books, and other materials to Alderman Library—described
by President Shannon as "the most extensive
[collection] in existence on the work of a single author."

Other writers in residence during the sixties and early seventies
included Stephen Spender, English poet and critic;
Richard Murphy, young Irish poet; John Dos Passos, novelist

and historian, who left numerous manuscripts to the library,
greatly supplemented after his death by Mrs. Dos Passos, to
constitute one of the most complete collections anywhere for
a single writer; Shelby Foote, American Civil War historian;
and George Garrett, American novelist.

Former Ambassador Charles F. Baldwin became the university's
first diplomat in residence in 1965. He had served as U.S.
ambassador to Malaysia and in other diplomatic posts in many
areas of the world. Baldwin did not teach a specific course but
lectured in the Woodrow Wilson Department of Government
and Foreign Affairs. The idea was to "expose the students to
his practical experience." An eminent scholar in residence was
Sir Robert Menzies, former prime minister of Australia, who
spent four months at the university in 1966-67, lecturing in
the Law School and the Woodrow Wilson Department. His wit
was widely commented upon, and he and his charming wife,
Dame Pattie, were extremely popular. Sir Robert was succeeded
as scholar in residence by Sir John Wheeler-Bennett,
the internationally known British historian to whom reference
was made in chapter 3. He had lectured at the university periodically
since the late thirties. Another distinguished visiting
scholar was Lewis Mumford, historian and educator, who was
on the Grounds in 1972 as Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation
medalist and Foundation Professor of Architecture.
He conducted a seminar in the School of Architecture on
"The City in History." Pedro Beltran, former Peruvian prime
minister, came for a few months as scholar in residence and
lectured in the Graduate School of Business Administration.
Beltran was publisher of Peru's largest newspaper as well as
former ambassador to the United States.

The remarkable progress made by the university in its "pursuit
of excellence," to employ one of Edgar Shannon's favorite
phrases, is graphically illustrated in the number of the institution's
endowed chairs. As already noted, establishment of
the Center for Advanced Studies and the state's Eminent
Scholars Fund had made possible the bringing to Charlottesville
of prominent scholars from some of the nation's most
prestigious universities to occupy these chairs. By 1974 the
number of chairs was in excess of one hundred.

88. Edward R. (Butch) Slaughter, coach in several varsity sports
and director of intramural athletics, 1957-73.

The degree to which excellence had been achieved also was
evidenced in the number of important awards and other accolades
won by faculty members during these years.

The highest award of the American Institute of Electrical
Engineers was conferred on Engineering Dean Lawrence R.
Quarles. He was made a fellow of the institute for his "contributions
to engineering education and nuclear engineering."

Prof. Quincy Wright was chosen in 1961 by the American
Council of Learned Societies as one of ten professors in this
country to receive prizes of $10,000 for distinguished accomplishment
in humanistic scholarship. He had been president
of the American Association of University Professors, the International
Political Science Association, and the American
Political Science Association, was the author of important
books, and had lectured in many parts of the world.

Various honors came to Dr. William H. Muller, Jr., chairman
of the Department of Surgery. He was elected president of the
Society of University Surgeons and later was chosen president,
in the same year, of both the American Surgical Association
and the Southern Surgical Association. Dr. Muller was named
by Duke University as one of the five most distinguished medical
graduates in the institution's history.

Prof. Joseph L. Vaughan, teacher of English in the School
of Engineering and Applied Science, was one of only three
active professors in the university for whom an endowed chair
was established. He also was given the Alumni Association's
Distinguished Professor Award in 1971. "It is common knowledge
in the Colonnade Club, Alumni Hall, and around the
Grounds that Joe Vaughan is one of the all-time great teachers,"
said an article in the Alumni News. "Somehow he has managed
to convince some very hard-boiled students of science
and business that there are horizons worth noticing beyond
their slide-rules and statistics." Among Professor Vaughan's
recreational diversions are painting and playing the violin.

The sixth annual Distinguished Service Award of the
Mathematical Association of America went to Prof. William L.
Duren, Jr., a former president of the association. He had been
a delegate to various international gatherings and was the recipient
of other honors, including appointment as University
Professor in 1963-64. In that capacity he was considered a

member of the faculty as a whole, and not attached to any
single school or department.

Thomas P. Abernethy, Alumni Professor of History emeritus,
was given the Award of Merit of the American Association
of State and Local History for "writing state history with insight
and distinction, furnishing a model for scholarly writing
of localized history." Four of Abernethey's books were in the
permanent library at the White House.

Frank S. Kaulback, Jr., dean of the McIntire School of Commerce,
was chosen president of the 12,000-member American
Accounting Association. He was also a member of the executive
committee of the American Association of Collegiate
Schools of Business, and for a number of years was a consultant
to the comptroller general of the United States.

Prof. Jesse W. Beams added to the many honors that he had
received previously when he was awarded the National Science
Medal in 1968 for his contributions to the technology of
the ultracentrifuge—one of twelve men who received this
medal from the president of the United States. Five years later
he was accorded a citation by the Atomic Energy Commission
for his contributions to the nuclear energy program.

The Commander's Cross of the Order of Merit of the German
Federal Republic was conferred on Prof. Oron J. Hale in
1969 for his service as deputy commissioner and commissioner
for Bavaria more than a decade and a half before. Hale
was a former chairman of the university's History Department
and director of the Institute of Public Affairs. His Germany and
the Diplomatic Revolution won the George Louis Beers Prize of
the American Historical Association. Professor Hale received
the Thomas Jefferson Award at Founder's Day in 1969. He
retired in 1972.

Two members of the university faculty were named to high
positions by President Nixon. Prof. Edwin S. Cohen, '36, professor
of law since 1963, was appointed assistant secretary of
the treasury for tax affairs. A nationally known tax lawyer who
had practiced in New York City before joining the faculty, he
was a member of Nixon's task force for tax reform during the
1968 presidential campaign. Prof. G. Warren Nutter, chairman
of the Department of Economics and director of the
Thomas Jefferson Center for Studies in Political Economy, was

appointed assistant secretary of defense to represent the Department
of Defense on the National Security Council. Nutter
was considered an authority on the Soviet economy. In 1973
he was appointed an adjunct scholar at the American Enterprise
Institute for Public Policy Research.

Two university faculty members were awarded the golden
Grand Prix by France's minister of Housing and Equipment
at the Festival of Building and Humanism at Cannes. They
were Miss Merete Mattern, visiting professor of planning, and
Mario I. Sama, assistant professor of planning in the School
of Architecture. More than five hundred proposals from
twenty-eight countries were submitted, and the university's
winning entry was a projection of a theoretical community for
the Fort Lincoln area of northeast Washington, D.C.

The university's English Department became one of the
most distinguished in the nation during these years, and
members of the faculty were winning awards right and left,
both for teaching and for the writing of important books.
"There's a kind of electricity in the community," said Douglas
Day, one of the award winners, "something that encourages
writing." He termed the department "better than excellent; it's
superb." Day won the National Book Award for 1974 with his
biography of Malcolm Lowry. He had taken three degrees at
the university, including the Ph.D., and joined the faculty in
1962.

Principal credit for building up the department to so high
a degree of distinction should go to Prof. Fredson T. Bowers,
the noted bibliographer, who headed the department for a
number of years. Also deserving praise for bringing several
noted writers and teachers to the English faculty is Peter Taylor,
a master of the short story, sometimes termed "the American
Chekhov." A native of Tennessee, Taylor came to the
university in 1967 from Harvard and was named Commonwealth
Prof. of English. A New York Times reviewer described
him as "one of the greatest writers America has ever produced,"
while a New Republic critic termed his work "old-style,
Southern fried realism." He has contributed short stories to
the New Yorker for many years. Taylor was elected in 1974 to
the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He has won the
National Academy Award for fiction. His wife, Eleanor Ross
Taylor, is an accomplished poet and has taught poetry writing.

English Prof. Francis R. Hart was chosen in 1969 by the
Danforth Foundation to receive the $10,000 E. Harris Harbison
Award as one of ten outstanding teachers in the United
States. Hart was the author of various highly regarded books
in the field of nineteenth-century British fiction and biography.
In 1972 English Prof. Verdel A. Kolve, a specialist in
medieval literature, won this same award. And Jacob C. Levenson,
Edgar Allan Poe Professor, won it just before joining
the English faculty. This gave the department three Harbison
Award winners, the only English faculty in the country which
could make that boast.

Longtime member of the English faculty Atcheson L.
Hench, a recognized authority on the language, contributed
to various dictionaries, including the Dictionary of American English,
Standard College Dictionary, and World Book Encyclopedia
Dictionary, as well as to the journal American Speech. He retired
in 1962 and died in 1974.

Prof. Arthur Kyle Davis's Matthew Arnold's Letters received
the university's Phi Beta Kappa Prize, and his three books on
Virginia ballads were given the University of Chicago's Folklore
Prize. Davis, a veteran English professor, had worked for
forty years collecting more than three thousand songs and
variants for the Virginia Folklore Society. His views on university
affairs were often unconventional. As coauthor of the
Gooch Report on athletics he urged abolition of all athletic
scholarships, and he advocated elimination of Greek letter
fraternities. Davis was also one of the early advocates of the
admission of women to the university on the same basis as
men. He retired in 1968 and died four years later.

A new award for professors deemed to have rendered special
services to the university community beyond their academic
or staff assignments was given by the Z Society in 1972
to law Prof. Charles Whitebread. In the two succeeding years
it went to Kenneth G. Elzinga and Dante L. Germino, professors,
respectively, of economics and history. These awards
were presented at the annual dinner given by the Z Society to
first-year students who had contributed significantly to the
university in such areas as student government, sports, publications,
or counseling. The society's 1971 Organization Award
went to the university Glee Club for its excellent concerts, its
album The Sun Dial, and its successful European tour. The

services of U.S. Circuit Judge Albert V. Bryan, '21, who had
just retired as rector of the university, were recognized when
the Z Society established an intramural high point trophy in
his honor in 1964. The society has been giving awards annually
since 1953 to the student in each of about a dozen
schools or departments who makes the highest grade for the
session.

A father and son, Dr. Byrd S. Leavell of the medical faculty
and Byrd S. Leavell, Jr., a third-year student in the College,
received two of the university's highest awards in 1972. Dr.
Leavell won the Distinguished Professor Award of the Alumni
Association, his son the "Pete" Gray Award of the Arthur P.
Gray IV Foundation, established in honor of "Pete" Gray, a
much admired university student who lost his life in Vietnam.

Seven professors were cited in 1973 by a national committee
of college and university officials for their exceptional service,
achievements, and leadership in education. They were history
Prof. Willie Lee Rose, College Dean Irby B. Cauthen, Jr., engineering
Dean Lawrence R. Quarles, education Professors
Richard M. Brandt and Richard A. Meade, architecture Prof.
James A. D. Cox, and physics Prof. Robert V. Coleman.

An addition to the women's dormitory was named Roberta
Hollingsworth Gwathmey House in honor of Roberta H.
Gwathmey, dean of women from 1935 to 1967.

8. EIGHT

The Passing
of the Old University

THE DECADE OF the sixties and the early years of the seventies
witnessed significant changes in the size and makeup
of the university's student body, and this, in turn, brought
drastic revision of some time-honored attitudes, traditions,
and customs. The enrollment of hundreds of blacks and thousands
of women in the seventies could not fail to bring farreaching
breaks with the past. The Honor System was affected
in important ways, and this will be given detailed attention in
chapter 10. But the institution's faculty, academic standards,
and intellectual level were sharply upgraded, and the students
manifested a greatly augmented concern for the less fortunate
elements of society. The university's élitist image as a sort of
academic pleasure dome where partying and drinking had
been regarded—erroneously—by segments of the public as
almost the sole interest of the undergraduates underwent considerable
modification.

In the years immediately following World War II the prevailing
student attitude was "complete opposition to any
change whatever," Dean Raymond C. Bice wrote in the University
of Virginia Magazine for April 1961. Also, a popular divertissement
of the boys was shooting out the lights on the
Grounds with rifle fire as soon as they were installed, with the
result that "concertgoers found it necessary to carry flashlights
when attending events in Cabell Hall," Dean Bice recalled.
And John A. Carter, Jr., '53, a brilliant student at the
university and later a leading member of the Wake Forest faculty,

wrote from that campus: "Should the whole continent of
Europe be destroyed tomorrow by nuclear power, it would not
surprise me to read letters to the Cavalier Daily which discussed
the effect of that catastrophe upon the parking problem
and rushing regulations."

Despite such attitudes and the cantankerous behavior of the
postwar generation of university students, they "continued to
behave as gentlemen," Dean Bice wrote. "Generations of faculty
members have observed that University of Virginia students
are a joy to teach because of the consistently courteous
and cooperative attitude. On the other hand . . . the post-war
student seemed satisfied with a `C' grade, and the `never-stickyour-neck-out'
attitude was prevalent."

The "turning point for the University of Virginia student
body" came during the middle and late fifties, Bice wrote. It
was then that the students "began placing emphasis on excellence,
rather than the previous emphasis on being permitted
unlimited freedom." A general tightening up of academic
standards brought no serious complaints from the undergraduates.
Also, there was "an immense increase in interest in
the affairs of the university, the nation, and the world."

The Honors Program, begun in 1937, had developed remarkably
in the ensuing decades. It was "unique" and "the
bravest program, the most thorough-going of any in the nation,"
David C. Yalden-Thompson, the professor in charge,
and a graduate of both Oxford and Cambridge, said in 1962.
The program called for rigorous study, a weekly conference
with the faculty tutor, auditing of lectures thought desirable
by the tutor, in addition to those regularly attended, preparation
of papers and often of a thesis in the final year, extensive
reading both during the session and the summers, and final
honors examinations. The average number of students taking
the course was six until after World War II, when the number
increased gradually. There were twenty-five in 1957 and
thirty-five two years later, seventeen of whom were candidates
for degrees with honors.

As for student customs, one of long standing had undergone
considerable modification, Prof. Robert K. Gooch said in
an address at the 1965 Finals. This was the practice of not
speaking to another individual to whom one had not been introduced.
And the custom of donning coats and ties was

89. Edward Younger, professor of history and dean of the
Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, 1966-69.

gradually fading out, until in 1969-70 and especially in
1970-71 the wearing of these habiliments stopped. Many students
also wore no socks. When pictures were taken for the
annual, a number of the boys were inclined to dress up, but
under ordinary circumstances coats and ties were seldom
seen.

Prof. Jesse Beams noticed a young man outside his office
window who was so frightfully dirty and unkempt that he sent
his secretary to tell him that whereas "we no longer expect
students to wear coats and ties, we can't have them going
around looking as though they had just crawled from under
a freight car." He urged the youth to take a bath, put on a shirt
and shoes, and shape up. When the secretary returned from
delivering the directive, she said, "Do you know who that is?"
"No, who is it?" asked Beams. "That's your new assistant professor
of physics from Berkeley." At about this time Dean of
the Faculty Fredson T. Bowers admonished the professors
concerning their dress. "This is certainly no order," said his
memorandum, "but it is a strong suggestion that persons who
meet their classes in less formal dress than many of their students
have very little idea of good manners or of the proper
dignity that ought to accompany this profession." A senior faculty
member remarked that he and several of his friends had
stopped going to faculty meetings because so many of the
younger members were attending in their bare feet. Such capricious
behavior by a minority of professors was a temporary
phenomenon.

A fundamental difference between the university of this era
and that of four or five decades earlier was the lack of participation
in campus affairs by students in the professional
schools and members of the principal athletic teams. Before
World War II, class officers, editors of publications, and members
of ribbon societies and other social organizations were
often students in the law or medical schools, prominent athletes,
or both. But in later years this was no longer true, at
least not to anything like the same extent. The embryo lawyers
and doctors were kept so busy with their studies in that highly
competitive age that they had little time for anything else. Besides,
the lawyers were separated geographically in their new
home on the North Grounds. As for the athletes, notably the
football and basketball players, they underwent such intensive

training for so much of the year that they too were no longer
able to participate in other extracurricular activities.

However, some students, almost all of them in the College,
were more involved in university affairs than ever before. In
1967, for example, they had asked for and obtained membership
on many committees that formerly were composed entirely
of faculty and administration representatives. These included
the committees on fraternities, housing, the calendar,
university catalogues, awards, student activities and fees, registration,
and the sesquicentennial.

Stricter discipline was imposed on the students when B. F. D.
Runk took over as dean of the university in 1959. Upon him
devolved the duty of enforcing the new rules, and there were
not many dull moments for him during the ensuing years.
Inevitably he was the target of brickbats from students who
resented all efforts to control their misbehavior. In the words
of Corks and Curls, "It is Mr. Runk who is called to the station
at two in the morning to bail a student out, and it is he who
presents the students' complaints to the Board of Visitors. He
is in the ticklish position of trying to be friend and disciplinarian
at the same time." The dimensions of Dean Runk's problem
also may be glimpsed in the statement of Prof. T. Braxton
Woody concerning the "tradition of freedom" at the university:
"Those who cherish this tradition believe in the inalienable
right of every student to do as he pleases, to live where he
pleases, to take whatever courses he likes, to cut classes, to
drive a car and park it anywhere, to get drunk, to get a real
education, not merely to earn a diploma by passing a fixed
number of courses."

There was a frightful uproar, for example, when rules were
promulgated that forbade students from bringing whiskey
bottles, buckets of ice, sixpacks of beer and similar drinkables,
and their auxiliaries to the stadium at football games. This
regulation was intended to achieve compliance with the state
law that banned consumption of alcoholic beverages in public.
But the student reaction was predictable: "Virginia is becoming
just another prep school," "One more evidence of stateUism,"
and similar observations. "Get thee to a nunnery!" was
the admonition of one student to the dean. All this brought
various students to Runk's defense, one of whom wrote: "I,

for one, am fed up with his role as scapegoat. The number of
people who make him a scapegoat, thereby betraying their naiveté
and stupidity, is astonishing." The student added that the
problem was not Dean Runk but the university's skyrocketing
enrollment.

Two student riots in early November 1961 brought the university
much unfavorable publicity and resulted in a ruling by
President Shannon, concurred in unanimously by the Student
Council, that any student participating in a riot would be suspended
and that presence at a riot constituted participation.
About four hundred students took part in both disorders,
along fraternity row on Rugby Road. The first was said to
have been triggered by a reduction in the Thanksgiving holiday,
although the reduction had been announced a year previously.
Several nights later there was a more serious riot when
parties ended in the fraternity houses on Openings weekend.
Twenty-one persons were arrested, only six of them students.
This latter disturbance was blamed by the authorities primarily
on outsiders who had come to the fraternities' "open
parties." It was announced that no more open parties would
be held.

University Chief of Police Rea Houchens sounded an encouraging
note two years later when asked if the behavior of
the students had improved during his thirteen years as chief.
He said it certainly had. "Back in 1950," said Houchens, "we
had a bad bunch of GI's here. Now they [the students] are
much less rowdy."

The drug problem was growing more menacing in the late
sixties, at Virginia and on campuses throughout the land.
Dean Runk issued a warning against the use of "hallucinogenic
drugs, particularly marijuana and LSD," saying that
their possession or use by students "is considered an indication
that they are not constructively interested in academic
work in this university community, and may be given an immediate
opportunity to withdraw or be suspended." This
warning was repeated by D. Alan Williams when he succeeded
Runk in 1968. Later, in commenting on his retirement from
the deanship, Runk said concerning the demonstrations and
other disorders that were mounting near the end of the decade,
"I don't think I could have lived through the turmoil."

Smoking of marijuana, or grass, by the students was growing
rapidly in 1966-67, according to one student publication,
and eight fraternities were said to have had "internal problems
with marijuana" during the session. An unnamed seller
of the drug was quoted as estimating that "at least one thousand
students" were smoking it, many regularly and others
occasionally. He said he was "sick" over the fact that "speed"
and heroin were also being used by some students. The prevailing
view seemed to be, however, that drug use at the University
of Virginia was below that at many other institutions.
But by 1971 state narcotics agent Carl Deavers said the heroin
problem had "grown immensely in the last year, not only at
the university level but at the high school level as well." Charlottesville
was said to be the center of the drug traffic in central
Virginia, with the university grounds its "nucleus." Marijuana
was so much in evidence at concerts near the opening of the
1972-73 session that students were warned that the events
might be called off unless the smoking ceased. Several girls
left one concert for fear of getting high from the grass being
smoked around them.

The university community was shocked in the spring of
1973 when seven members of the Zeta Beta Tau fraternity
were arrested on "flagrant" drug charges. It was Zeta Beta
Tau's second offense, since it had been put on probation two
years before on similar grounds. The university, in conjunction
with the fraternity's national headquarters, revoked recognition
of the local chapter until 1976. This prevented ZBT
from conducting any kind of rush or participating in any interfraternity
functions for three years. It changed its name to
"The Anchorage," and the spokesman said that although it
was not recognized as a social fraternity, it fully intended "to
campaign for and take in new members this year, just as will
all the fraternities."

A poll sponsored by the Student Council in 1973 indicated
that drug use at Virginia was below the national average.
Based on a 7 percent "representative sample," the returns
showed that 53.6 percent had used marijuana as against 67
percent in the nation; of those at Virginia almost 60 percent
said they used it only once a month or less. Use of hallucinogens
(LSD, peyote, mescaline, etc.) was 17.4 percent as against
27 percent nationally, with 95 percent of those at the university

using these hard drugs no more than once a month. As
for alcohol, 91.3 percent of the sample said they had drunk it
compared with 98 percent nationally. About 88 percent declared
that they had begun using it before they came to the
university.

The fraternities were the source of many of Dean Runk's
problems. He believed in them, provided they behaved themselves
reasonably well and kept their houses in decent order,
but their behavior and their living quarters often left much to
be desired. Contrasting conditions in the houses in the 1920s
and those prevailing some forty years later, Runk said that in
the twenties the boys "liked to keep them up and liked them
to look neat and orderly," and they were "entirely different
from the hovels which are there today."

Fraternity houses were sometimes almost wrecked by the
big weekend parties of the sixties and seventies. "It seems like
some students get the idea that party weekends are occasions
for the systematic demolition of furniture, walls, doors, etc.,"
the Cavalier Daily said in 1967. "The more frustrated members
of the [student] community exercise their frustration by reducing
windows and pianos to fragments." On the morning
after parties the terrain in front of the houses, notably along
Rugby Road and Madison Lane, was often littered with beer
cans by the hundreds, whiskey bottles, and other debris. The
student newspaper compared the university's fraternity houses
to those at VPI, "the school you find so uncouth." It said those
at VPI were "immaculate . . . the furniture like new, the walls
clean, the stairs and doors in excellent shape and the party
rooms veritable show places."

Early in the decade the dean put six fraternities on social
probation for celebrations held in connection with Bid Sunday.
Then Father William A. Stickle, Roman Catholic chaplain
at the university, said it was "a sin for a Catholic to join a
fraternity which follows morally objectionable practices." He
provided no specifics, and contented himself with references
to fraternity parties "or practices" and "immoral conversation."
Lee Farris, a Catholic layman and Charlottesville schoolteacher,
said in a letter to the Cavalier Daily that he considered
Father Stickle "woefully misinformed . . . if he is convinced
that serious sin of any kind takes place at the fraternity parties."

90. Charles C. Abbott, dean of the Graduate School of Business
Administration, 1954-72.

The Interfraternity Council pointed out that "each
fraternity must have a local adviser to both aid and guide it,
and a university-approved chaperone to insure proper conduct
at all social functions."

For each of the preceding ten years the scholastic average
for fraternity men had been below that for all male students.
This despite the rule that a pledge had to make a grade of at
least 2.0 out of a possible 4.0 to be initiated. Also, any house
with an overall average of less than 2.0 was put on social probation.
The IMPs gave a trophy for the highest academic average
achieved by a fraternity. At about this time Alderman
Library sent emissaries into the fraternity houses, with no
questions asked, looking for books that were missing from the
library's shelves. They returned with seven truckloads.

The session of 1965-66 brought improved conditions in
the Greek letter organizations. For the first time in a decade
their overall scholastic average was better than that for the
university's male population as a whole. As Corks and Curls expressed
it, the fraternities were "attempting to help themselves
through constructive action, constant evaluation and
continual activity." Improved service to the community was
stressed, as well as better scholastic performance. "New projects
. . . were added to our standard Children's Rehabilitation
Carnival, as all thirty-one houses gave their helping hands to
Charlottesville through orphan parties at Christmas, work for
the Recording for the Blind, collection drives for the Salvation
Army, and contributions to the Rescue Squad," said the university
annual. "The IFC aided the UGF throughout Charlottesville
and also lent support to underprivileged children in
`big-brother' campaigns."

Yet the fraternity system was heading into an era when it
would be under heavy attack and when its influence would
reach its lowest ebb in the university's history. Leading fraternity
men freely predicted during this period, when all aspects
of "the establishment" were being assailed, that the Greek letter
organizations might well be on the way out. Dean of Student
Affairs D. Alan Williams said that while he did not foresee
their "immediate demise," they would have to improve in
order to survive.

Addressing a specific phase of the problem, the University of
Virginia Magazine (November 1967), edited by Lawrence Siegel

and Robert Aaronson, referred to "the yet almost completely
unbroken agreement of non-integration between the
Jewish and Christian fraternity houses. . . . The great enforcers
of this . . . have been the fraternities themselves; undoubtedly
the Jewish fraternities have been the most adamant supporters
of the previous status quo, but the Christian houses
have not been far behind. This year's rush has been officially
declared open by the IFC. . . . We of the UVM hail the event."

Rules covering rushing were an almost constant subject of
controversy. The period when rushing was to take place and
the conditions that had to be observed were changing from
time to time. Various fraternities were charged with violating
the rules in an effort to gain an advantage over their rivals.
"Dirty rush has never been more rampant," said the student
newspaper in 1968, "and there is some evidence that the despicable
practice of extracting rushees' invitations from their
mailboxes has occurred again."

By the session of 1969-70, when the university and many
other institutions of higher learning were in turmoil over the
war in Vietnam, the fraternities were being sharply assailed in
Cavalier Daily editorials. Robert B. Cullen, the editor, referred
at the opening of the session to the fraternity system as "a
slowly dying anachronism" and advised first-year men, "Don't
rush, don't pledge." Yet Rod MacDonald, the paper's managing
editor, took an adversary position in a signed reply. He
suggested that the incoming student "weigh the real facts and
meet the people himself before deciding whether to join." The
student should not be "bullied into passivity by the ballyhoo
of opposition," he declared.

At the 1970 Easters fraternities at the university embarked
upon one of the most incredible forms of diversion in the annals
of education. Students and their dates created artificial
mudholes by hosing down areas in front of their fraternities
and in Mad Bowl behind Madison Hall, and slithered around
prone in the gunk. Large cans of grain alcohol mixed with
fruit juice added zest to the occasion as the boys and girls got
mud in their eyes, in their hair, down their necks, and all over
their clothes. The affair was pronounced such a howling success
that it became larger, noisier, and more frantic each succeeding
year, with electronically amplified rock bands on
Rugby Road providing an unbelievable din, passing motorists

splattered with mud, and kindred spirits arriving from up and
down the East Coast for what Playboy magazine described as
"the best party in America." After this had gone on for three
of four years, some ten thousand persons, many from distant
parts, were estimated to be participating. The university's
plumbing was being stopped up on a gigantic scale by students
who repaired to their dormitories to remove the mud. Eight
of the McCormick Road dormitories were turned into "mud
torrents" in April 1972, an irate Dean Alan Williams declared.
He pronounced it "the worst mess I've seen in my fifteen years
here." Showers were plugged with mud, entire floors flooded
and several dorm entrances "sealed with mud." On top of all
else, the dorms had just undergone a major renovation. Students
would be expected to clean the buildings and would be
assessed for any needed repairs, Williams said. By 1974 it was
becoming obvious that a halt would have to be called on these
stupefying collegiate gambols.

By that year it was also obvious that fraternities were staging
a comeback, not only at Virginia but in most institutions
throughout the land. In 1973 the largest number of first-year
pledges in the university's history, approximately 45 percent
of the entering class, were signed by the various lodges. Fraternities
were once more important in the university's undergraduate
affairs.

A number of pranks, most of them involving the Rotunda,
occurred during the Shannon years. The first was the flying
of a Confederate flag from the roof of the building on Feb.
26, 1961—the one hundredth anniversary of the flying of a
similar flag from the Rotunda dome on the eve of the Civil
War. Seven students apparently clambered up after midnight,
despite high winds, and flung the banner to the breeze, where
passersby saw it next morning. The Rotunda dome was again
in the spotlight on May 5, 1965, when persons on the Lawn
noted a calf lying tied on the roof. Investigation showed that
students had somehow gotten the animal up there in the
middle of the night, after sawing through the latch designed
to prevent such monkeyshines. The young Angus steer was
given a tranquilizer and brought down. It died a few hours
later from unknown causes. The episode got into the press,
worldwide, and an avalanche of protesting letters arrived at
the president's office from animal lovers. The students who

were responsible doubtless were much grieved over the young
steer's unexpected demise.

The Rotunda clock came in for some undergraduate attention
in 1967 and again in 1971. In the former years, the countenance
of Mickey Mouse suddenly shone forth from its face
on the weekend of the University of North Carolina football
game, and in the spring of 1971 Vice-President Spiro Agnew
peered forth from the same spot. Nobody could ascertain who
was responsible for these hazardous escapades.

What could have been a much more serious prank occurred
on Saturday evening of the Easters weekend in 1968 when
parties unknown toppled the statue of Thomas Jefferson from
its pedestal in front of the Rotunda. It was found lying on its
head in the grass. Fortunately, the bronze figure was not damaged.
The halyards on the nearby flagpole also had been cut.

The fad for "streaking," that is, running about in public
with few or no clothes on, swept the country's educational institutions
in 1974, and the University of Virginia was no exception.
Several male students were streaking about the
Grounds on Feb. 20, despite the wintry atmosphere. One, clad
only in a Batman's cape, sprinted across the Lawn, while another
raced through Alderman Library wearing a motorcycle
helmet and nothing else. Two days later dozens of streakers,
including several coeds, appeared, especially in the McCormick
Road dormitory area. A number of male students
were arrested on Feb. 25 for displaying unwonted portions of
their epidermis in public.

Homosexual students at the university began coming into
the open in 1972. On May 12 of that year the Cavalier Daily
devoted two pages to the subject and appeared not unsympathetic
to this once-despised lifestyle. The Gay Student Union
(GSU) had been formed shortly before, with some thirty
members, and had adopted a written constitution "formalizing
their commitment to the liberation of homosexuals at the
university." "As many as 40 gays came to a GSU private party
in the dorms last month," said one article. In the following fall
the Student Union voted 12 to 9 in favor of allocating $45 to
the Gay Student Union, but the Board of Visitors, on recommendation
of President Shannon, vetoed the plan. The board
held that "the GSU cultivates and advocates a style of sexual
life," and "this is a private and personal matter which has no

relationship to the educational purposes of the university. . . .
The board has no power to authorize a disbursement of funds
unrelated to the purposes of the university." The Cavalier Daily
assailed Shannon and the board for their decision.

Although barriers to the enrollment of black students had
been breached in the middle fifties, only a few had matriculated
a decade later. Wesley Harris entered the Engineering
School in 1960, and was graduated with honors in 1964. He
was the first black student to be given a room on the Lawn.
Harris endured many "venomous racial slurs" during his four
years, according to Bryan Kay's "History of Desegregation at
the University of Virginia: 1950-1969." The first black professor,
Nathan Johnson, a former school superintendent in
southside Virginia, joined the School of Education faculty in
1967. In the middle and late sixties there was much agitation
among certain elements of the faculty and students for an end
to what was termed "racism" in the institution. Some three
hundred paraded down the Lawn in the rain in a "sympathy
for Selma" demonstration, exhibiting solidarity with the civil
rights leaders who were under heavy fire in Selma, Ala.

As the end of the decade neared and agitation of various
kinds swept the Grounds, the race question was much to the
force. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored
People claimed that the university's Student Aid Foundation
was discriminating against black athletes, but President
Shannon replied that "the established policy of the university
is not to discriminate against any persons by reason of their
race, color, religion or national origin." Difficulty was being
experienced in getting blacks of all kinds, whether athletes or
not. The first black athlete was enrolled from Lane High
School in Charlottesville for the session of 1967-68, but others
were slow in coming. The university demanded high academic
performance, and some blacks felt that there were few
opportunities for social diversion and contacts in and near
Charlottesville.

President Shannon resigned from the Farmington Country
Club because it did not admit blacks as members. Explaining
his action later, he said: "I felt we just couldn't possibly . . . be
in good faith if we were using that facility and reimbursing
people for those expenses." Comptroller Vincent Shea accordingly

91. D. Alan Williams, vice-president
for student affairs, 1970-73.

[ILLUSTRATION]

92. Lawrence R. Quarles, dean of
engineering and applied science,
1955-73.

sent each department head a written notice that university
funds could not be used for entertainment at any segregated
facility. Some alumni criticized the decision, but the
Board of Visitors backed it as did the Student Council and
students in other leadership positions. As early as 1966 the
council, by a 10-4 vote, had declared off limits every local
business that refused to serve anyone for racial reasons. The
Cavalier Daily attacked the action, saying it was taken with
seven council members absent and that the stand was "inconsistent
with freedom of the individual and freedom of choice."
But the following year the Student Council was threatening to
request copies of the various fraternity constitutions with a
view to determining whether they contained racially discriminatory
clauses. In 1968 it voted unanimously that all university
organizations should be prohibited from using segregated
facilities. By then the council had one black member, elected
by the student body.

The Cavalier Daily, edited by Charles C. Calhoun, a future
Rhodes Scholar, was now a militant advocate of better attitudes
toward the treatment of blacks, but it denied that the
university was "racist." Richard B. Gwathmey, Jr., who succeeded
Calhoun as editor, was still more militant. "The University
of Virginia, wallowing in its whiteness, like a hippopotamus
in the mud, took the first step toward lumbering out of
that whiteness when it hired a black admissions officer last
month," Gwathmey wrote in 1969. The paper demanded that
any advertisements placed in its columns seeking housing for
students' dates be accompanied by a signed agreement not to
discriminate on racial grounds. Student Council passed a
unanimous resolution urging university personnel to boycott
barber and beauty shops that refused to accept black patrons.
It also took a stand against racial discrimination in any student
organization officially recognized by the council.

The university reacted to the murder of Martin Luther
King, Jr., in early April 1968 by flying the Rotunda flag at half
mast, taking part in the march to services in Zion Baptist
Church, and holding services of its own in Cabell Hall on the
"national day of mourning," with President Shannon and
Dean Robert J. Harris as speakers. During King's funeral,
classes at the university were made optional for both faculty
and students.

Mrs. Elizabeth Johnson, a black on leave from the Virginia
Union University faculty, was appointed full-time assistant
dean of admissions, succeeding Fred T. Stokes, who had been
serving only part-time. She would travel over the state talking
with black high school seniors in the hope of doubling the
university's Negro enrollment. Two blacks, John Thomas of
Norfolk and George Taylor of Hampton, were appointed student
assistant recruiters who would also travel in search of
matriculates.

On Founder's Day 1969 the relatively small group of students
who had been agitating for some time, albeit in orderly
fashion, against what they termed "racism" at the university,
staged a rally at the Rotunda. They urged those present to
write their legislators in criticism of university practices. Having
held their rally they moved to Cabell Hall for the
Founder's Day ceremonies. On the program was a special humanitarian
award of the Seven Society for promoting racial
harmony in the community. The agitators against "racism" apparently
assumed that the recipient would be "just another
racist," and they stamped out of the hall as President Shannon
rose to make known the name of the winner. They were left
looking decidedly sheepish when they found later that the
winner was the Reverend Henry B. Mitchell, the black rector
of Charlottesville's mostly black Trinity Episcopal church.

As early as the session of 1966-67, President Shannon had
issued a directive that where there was a black and a white
applicant for a faculty or staff position and qualifications of
the two were approximately equal, the black should be employed.
Prof. William A. Elwood of the English Department,
who was named subsequently an assistant to Shannon as coordinator
for programs to further equal opportunity, said that
in 1967-69 "there was quite a turnabout in student opinion
here. . . . Students recognized the need to actively seek blacks
and said so." In 1969 Shannon appointed a committee of both
faculty and students, headed by William Rotch, to study the
problem of increasing black enrollment and make recommendations.
It reported in August of that year and urged appointment
of a dean who would serve as coordinator of all activities
relative to recruitment and retention of black students and
faculty" and creation of "a new administrative position of significance
responsible for generating and coordinating the development

of a more broadly based student body." President
Shannon "was able himself to administratively implement
about 90 percent of the recommendations," said Vice-President
and Provost David Shannon. He stressed the difficulties
in getting qualified blacks for this and other university programs
and pointed out that of all the Ph.D.'s in the United
States, only 1.3 percent were black. "We have to pay them
more than a white person with similar qualifications, simply
because of the market," David Shannon said.

Two courses dealing with the history of the Negro in
America were added to the curriculum at about this time, with
Edgar Toppin of Virginia State as the instructor. Some seventy-five
students showed up for the first lecture, but only
eight or ten were black. An interdisciplinary course in AfroAmerican
studies, to be conducted in part, by visiting black
lecturers, was offered as the first portion of a new AfroAmerican
studies program. Paul M. Gaston, associate professor
of history, was the director. The student Committee on
Fraternities passed a resolution affirming the university's
stand against racial discrimination in the fraternity system.
Among the 578 students pledged on Bid Sunday in October
1969, five were black. The Negroes had no fraternities of their
own, but several of their fraternities and sororities would soon
establish chapters at the university. These fraternities were
"service oriented," they emphasized, and were not primarily
social organizations. Their "major goal," they said, was "to
serve the university and the surrounding community, aiding
them through such projects as working for the March of
Dimes, taking blood pressure readings, holding blood drives
and sponsoring Boy Scout troops." These fraternities and sororities
at the university had no chapter houses and were in
need of a suitable place to hold meetings.

Summer programs to aid disadvantaged high school juniors
and seniors in preparing for college were launched at the university
in 1969. Also, there was a special institute for minority
students who had graduated from college and wished to attend
law school. High school students were given an opportunity
in the summer, as part of the Upward Bound program,
to learn more about college life and what might be expected
of them and to undergird their academic performance.
Would-be law students were given six weeks of intensive orientation

designed to improve their analytical and verbal abilities
and also aid them in deciding whether, after all, they
wanted to attend law school. The institute was one of ten in
the country held under the auspices of the Council on Legal
Education.

Recruiting efforts at Virginia were paying off as total black
enrollment in the fall of 1970 was 236, compared with 102 the
year before, or almost 2.2 percent of the student body as
against 1.3 percent. By the fall of 1971 the figure had been
increased to 344. The university was praised by the National
Association of State Universities and Land Grant Colleges for
using black students as recruiters.

An important advance for the minority group came when
James R. Roebuck, Jr., of Philadelphia, a black student in the
Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, was elected president
of the Student Council. Two years later Linda Howard, a black
from Petersburg, was chosen president of the Law School.
There were 31 Negroes in that school out of a total enrollment
of 911.

Black Culture Week was being held annually, under the auspices
of the University Union and Black Students for Freedom.
There were exhibits, lectures, films, and discussions, all
dealing with the general theme of black culture's influence in
the United States. Many whites attended. Black History Week
was held simultaneously. The Students for Freedom changed
their name to the Black Students Alliance and provided a variety
of services, including advising first-year black students
on how to study and to cope with academic problems, acquainting
undergraduates with members of the Charlottesville
community, and providing dances, cookouts, and theater
trips. The Muntu Fine Arts Guild, which began as the Muntu
Drama Guild, and included a dance group, was organized.
Black Voices of the University of Virginia, an organization of
gospel singers, gave renditions in and near Charlottesville.

Despite the foregoing, there were vehement protestations
from students of both races that there was no equality of treatment.
Tom Collier, white president of the Student Council,
declared in 1971 to a protest meeting on the Lawn that "we
live with racism every day at this university." Willie Ivey of the
Black Students Council read a list of grievances. He called a
meeting of his organization in Newcomb Hall to discuss these

problems and ousted two white students who sought to attend.

An Equal Opportunity Counseling Program was set up in
the summer of 1973, with Paul Saunier, Jr., who had been
named Equal Opportunity Administrator, and the Student
Council cooperating. Larry Sabato, president of the Student
Council, was a leader in establishing the program. By that fall
four national black fraternities and one sorority had chapters
on the Grounds, and the black enrollment had risen to over
five hundred. Numerous members of that race had been
added to the university faculty and staff.

The Student Council and Cavalier Daily began a crusade in
1974 intended to persuade members of the university community
to resign from the Farmington Country Club, since it
had no black members. "Our worst suspicions have been confirmed,"
said the student newspaper, edited by Tim Wheeler.
"Farmington Country Club is a racist, all-white, discriminatory
organization." It rapped university administrators who
belonged to the club and praised President Shannon for resigning
some years before. The paper published an entire
page of interviews supporting its position. It called on Frank
L. Hereford, Jr., who had just been elected president of the
university as successor to Shannon, to resign from the club.
He replied that he intended to remain as a member and to
work within the organization for a change in admission policies.
The Cavalier Daily praised the IMP Society, saying that "it
has in some ways taken the lead," by electing to its membership
"students who may have been left out of other groups,
especially women and blacks."

Black students in 1974 were taking their places more and
more as integral parts of the university scene. They were
being elected to high office by the white students and chosen
as members of the honor societies and ribbon societies, not to
mention IMP and Z. A few were elected to the predominantly
white fraternities, but many preferred to join their own organizations.
In athletics they were making a significant contribution.
All in all, despite openly expressed dissatisfaction by
some black matriculates, integration was proceeding at the
University of Virginia, and to a degree that would have been
unthinkable a few decades earlier.

93. Irby B. Cauthen, Jr., professor of English and dean of the
College, 1962-.

Women students in the middle sixties were limited principally
to the graduate and professional schools, but they could enter
certain undergraduate schools if they had had two years of
college work elsewhere. Two were elected to the Student
Council in 1966. More and more discussion was being heard
concerning the desirability of admitting them to all schools on
the same basis as men.

Attention at that time was focused primarily on requests
from male students for permission to have their dates visit
them in the dormitories, within certain specified hours. The
Student Council voted unanimously in 1964 in favor or requesting
permission for such visitations in the Alderman Road
and Monroe Hill (graduate) dormitories. It was noted that few
of the students in the Alderman Road dorms belonged to fraternities
or had cars and that consequently they had only limited
facilities for entertaining young ladies. Modest hours for
visitations were suggested—Saturdays from 11 A.M. to 9 P.M.
and Sundays from 11 A.M. to 7 P.M on Alderman Road, and
11 A.M. to midnight both days on Monroe Hill. Dean Runk
turned down the request. "I am opposed to unsupervised visiting
of females in male dormitories at any time," he said.
"Likewise, I am opposed to males visiting in females' dormitories.
I do not believe this is in accord with the sound educational
philosophy and progress of the university." He added
that he also did not think "the counselor system should be
burdened with the problem of enforcement." Years before, in
the Darden administration, a similar request had been turned
down. In 1966 President Shannon rejected another request
that girls be permitted to visit in the Alderman dorms. These
rejections accorded with prevailing opinion at the time, although
attitudes appeared to be shifting and in a few years
would be completely reversed.

Mary E. Whitney, assistant to the dean of women at Northwestern
University, was appointed dean of women at Virginia
in 1967, succeeding the much admired Roberta H. Gwathmey,
who retired after serving for a third of a century in that position.
When women were admitted in 1970 on the same basis
as men, the position of dean of women was abolished.

The male contingent, which some years before had deplored
the spectacle of coeds appearing in shorts, now deplored
their wearing slacks. "We find it quite appalling," said

the Cavalier Daily, "that women students are beginning to wear
slacks to classes. . . . Most girls look rotten in slacks; they (the
pants, not the girls) reveal quite a bit which under a skirt or
dress might best be left to the male imagination. . . . They
hardly seem proper attire for young ladies attending classes. . . .
Ladies, let the men wear the pants around here, please." A few
months later the paper repeated what it had said many times
before, that it looked "with horror" upon the prospect of a
"large-scale female invasion, other than for the purposes of a
party weekend, of these traditionally male Grounds."

During the season of 1967-68, it was decided by the Board
of Visitors and the president that the boys could have girl visitors
during specified weekend hours in the living areas of upperclassmen's
dormitories and in rooms on the Lawn and
Ranges. This decision was the result of a year-long study by a
faculty-student committee. Student committees were appointed
to supervise enforcement of the new regulations. The
first visitation by girls in the dorms occurred on the football
weekend of Sept. 29-Oct. 1, without untoward incidents. In
the spring of 1969 the rules were liberalized again to allow
first-year men to have girls visit in their rooms on Fridays,
Saturdays, and Sundays at specified hours. Another novelty
of that year was the appearance of female cheerleaders at
football games.

Rules for visitations in the dormitories between members of
the opposite sex were modified in a few years to allow this
around the clock. One of the principal advocates of lowering
the barriers was the Reverend Charles Perry, assistant rector
of St. Paul's Episcopal Church, who said in a sermon in 1967:
"If you wish to raise up men who will conduct themselves with
honor, give them the privilege of entertaining women in their
dorms. A community which limits assignations to automobiles,
motels, and apartments is no more moral for it. If you wish to
raise up men of honor, remind them that honoring a woman
is far more important than honoring an exam pledge or the
rules of a card game, and then let them have the freedom to
exercise that honor." The foregoing strange reasoning may
have had an impact on opinion in the university, although
there was a nationwide trend at the time in favor of allowing
male and female students to live together in university dormitories,
and this would doubtless have happened at Virginia

in any event. The newly adopted practices extended on a
more informal basis to the fraternity houses, where girls had
no hesitation about partying upstairs as well as down. The
contrast between the rules and conventions of 1970 and 1920
could not have been more glaring.

Discussion of the desirability of admitting women to the College
on an equal basis with men had reached such dimensions
in 1967 that the Board of Visitors accepted President Shannon's
recommendation that a study be made of the "need for
admission of women to the College of Arts and Sciences."
Shannon appointed a committee from the faculty, headed by
Prof. T. Braxton Woody, to make the study. An important factor
behind the scenes was realization that if the university
didn't admit the ladies voluntarily, the courts in all likelihood
would order it to do so. Such was the opinion of Rector Frank
W. Rogers, a prominent Roanoke Lawyer, and others.

However, opposition to the move at the university had diminished
steadily over the years. The committee circulated all
faculty members of professorial rank, and those who replied
were 15 to 1 in favor. Members of the leading student honor
societies were about evenly divided. A letter to the forty thousand
alumni brought only ninety-eight replies, of whom twothirds
were opposed. After an eighteen months' study, the
seven-member Woody Committee recommended in favor of
the ladies with only one dissent, that of History Prof. Julian
Bishko. The final conclusions of the six other members were
that the existing arrangement "unfairly discriminates against
women. . . . The quality of academic life at Charlottesville
would be strengthened by coeducation. . . . The social life of
students of both sexes . . . would be improved, and coeducation
would better prepare the students for the relationships of
later years." The committee found that the University of Virginia
was "the only state university in the nation which, by
closing its main-campus college to women, forces them to attend
a separate, autonomous college sixty-five miles away
from the parent institution."

An aspect of the problem that gave the committee much
concern was the effect admission of women might have on the
Honor System. Its concern was especially acute, since the
Honor Committee had concluded, after an investigation, that

"coeducation will hurt the Honor System, and thus should not
be recommended." The Honor Committee based this opinion
to a large degree on the findings of William J. Bowers of Columbia
University in his Student Dishonesty and Its Control in College
(Bureau of Applied Social Research, Columbia University,
1964). Terming this work "generally recognized as the most
comprehensive and authoritative . . . of its kind," the committee
pointed to Bowers's conclusion that "an honor system at a
coed school is slightly less than half as effective as an honor
system at an all-male school." It conceded that its own correspondence
with honor committee chairmen at thirty colleges
and universities brought inconclusive results. Some thought
coeducation would not harm the Honor System at Virginia,
others thought just the opposite, and still others felt that it
would have no effect.

Although the Woody Committee was disturbed by the conclusions
of the Honor Committee, it believed that coeducation
would not, in all likelihood, harm the Honor System. It was
impressed by the fact that at Princeton, which has an excellent
honor system extending to all academic matters, 85 percent of
more than two thousand undergraduates responding to a
questionnaire said they did not think the system would be affected
by coeducation, while 7 percent felt that it would be
strengthened. Spokesmen for the University of Virginia
Honor Committee conceded that "they saw no detriment to
the effectiveness of the Honor System in the present enrollment
of some 1,000 women in the university."

The Woody Committee's report was made in November
1968, and the Board of Visitors directed President Shannon
to prepare a plan for the gradual admission of women. As one
evidence of changing opinion, the Cavalier Daily commented
that the committee's conclusions "doubtless proved gratifying
to most students (and faculty)." By the following fall the newspaper
was strongly favoring the committee's recommendations.

But before the administration could put the plan even partially
into effect, a suit was brought in federal court designed
to force the immediate admission of women on a wholesale
scale. This despite the fact that rooming facilities, toilet facilities,
and many other accommodations could not be made
available to that many female students within a few weeks or

months. Fortunately, the three-judge U.S. Circuit Court allowed
two years for full compliance—much less than was felt
to be wise by the university authorities, but greatly preferable
to forced compliance at once, as the suit demanded. The administration
agreed to admit 450 women to the College in
September 1970 and 550 more the following September, with
open admission thereafter.

The hundreds of girls who entered in 1970 seemed to want
to outdo the boys in the slovenliness of their dress. As was the
prevailing custom during that period throughout the United
States, both groups garbed themselves in patched, faded,
frayed blue jeans. The boys wore long, unkempt hair and
beat-up shoes. Both groups began dressing more neatly as the
years passed, but in 1970 the emphasis was on the sloppiest
conceivable attire.

Barriers to women in various honor societies and social organizations
around the Grounds were not long in coming
down. The Ravens, IMPs, and Tilkas soon took them in, as
did the Air Force ROTC. The Jefferson Literary Society maintained
its male chauvinist stance until 1972, when the threat
of a suit caused it to relent. Omicron Delta Kappa leadership
society began electing women in 1974. Eli Banana, the last
holdout of importance, had not admitted any by that year and
gave no evidence of planning to do so in the future. The privilege
of living on the Lawn and Ranges was accorded to leading
women students in the early seventies.

With women admitted to the university on the same basis as
men, there was the problem of how to arrange for their housing
in the dormitories. Some dormitories were set apart exclusively
for women, some for men, and the remainder were
mixed. Where the two sexes were placed in the same building,
they were on different floors, and the women had a good deal
of control over who came and went. Sexual relations took
place in the dormitories between male and female students,
especially between those who were "going steady," but probably
not to the extent that some imagined. Many of the girls
objected to promiscuity and did what they could to prevent it.
President Shannon felt that students should have the choice
of living in mixed dormitories or in those reserved for a single
sex, and he saw to it that they had the opportunity to choose.
Nationwide changes in mores concerning relations between

94. Joseph N. Bosserman, dean of architecture, 1966-.

the sexes had brought about a brand-new situation at Virginia
and at nearly all other colleges and universities.

Applications from women for entrance to the university increased
150 percent in 1971 over those for the preceding year.
About twenty-five hundred sought to enter the College compared
with 970 the year before. Applications from out of state
nearly trebled. The number of women who were full-time faculty
members rose to 92 for the session of 1971-72, or nearly
10 percent of the whole. They were mainly in the College,
Graduate School, Medical School, and School of Nursing. The
number increased to 131 the following session and to 155 the
session after that, or about one-eighth of the full-time faculty.
There were then over one hundred women on the faculty fulltime,
in addition to 47 in the School of Nursing. A still greater
increase in the part-time women faculty members was shown.

By 1972 it was being said that nearly everybody thought
complete coeducation was a good thing. Malcolm Scully, '63,
wrote after a visit of several days to the university: "In conversation
with students and faculty members and administrators—old
and new—I found no one who had serious doubts
about the move to coeducation. They all agreed that women
had improved the university's intellectual, cultural, and social
atmosphere." The following year Frank Hereford said the admission
of women was "a change that was very much for the
better. . . . It really hasn't been as dramatic as many alumni
who have been away a good many years may think." A disturbing
aspect was the increase in rapes. There were twelve rapes
or attempted rapes on or near the Grounds in 1972 as compared
with seven the previous year. These events led the university
to establish an escort system for women returning to
their lodgings late at night. A more gratifying result of coeducation
was seen in the fact that the male students were under
less temptation to "roll" (to drive down the road) to nearby
girls' colleges. These expeditions were not only distracting
and time consuming but risky in that all too often the boys
drank too much, and some were involved in fatal automobile
crashes.

At the end of the two-year transition period, women constituted
39 percent of the entering class, and the College was 45
percent female. Two years after that, at the session of 1974-75
the first-year class of 2,317 was 42 percent female. Total enrollment

in the university was 14,200, with two-thirds of the
first-year class Virginians and 80 percent from the public
schools.

Entry of women into the university on the same basis as men
has been the most important development in the history of
the institution since its early years. That, and acceptance of
blacks, another event of the most far-reaching significance,
has changed Mr. Jefferson's university so drastically that a
graduate of, say, 1920 or even 1960 finds the university to be
a greatly altered institution. Many of its basic virtues remain,
but its outward manifestations are often in direct contrast to
those of earlier days.

Among the areas in which the students of today have shown
marked improvement is that of community service. The radical
tendencies of the 1969-70 era have been transmuted into
a remarkable solicitude for the disadvantaged. In direct contrast
to the almost total lack of social concern on the part of
earlier student generations, at Virginia and almost everywhere
else, many of today's undergraduates are anxious to aid
the underprivileged.

Between 1969 and 1973 more than one thousand students
at the university were involved in projects of this type, under
the sponsorship of what was then Madison Hall. They devoted
several hours each week to this unselfish activity. Operation
SCRUB was created in 1969 to aid victims of hurricane Camille,
which devastated nearby Nelson County and adjacent
regions. After the hurricane victims had been aided, the project
was expanded in order to help meet local housing needs.
Operation SCRUB received a citation from the National Center
for Voluntary Action in Washington, which termed it the
best project of its type in the United States.

The original Madison Hall, long the home of the YMCA,
underwent a complete transformation when it was sold to the
university in 1971, along with Mad Bowl, for $725,000. The
charter of the university "Y" was revised to sever connection
with the International YMCA. Madison Hall's usefulness, as
the home of the Student Union, had declined steadily after
the opening of Newcomb Hall, which provided facilities formerly
available at Madison Hall and a great deal more. It was
accordingly decided to redirect the "Y's" resources, so the Office

of Volunteer Community Service was established, with
headquarters in another Madison Hall on Lewis Mountain
Road across from Memorial Gymnasium. This institution provided
Operation SCRUB, Big Brother-Big Sister programs,
tutoring, companionship therapy, medical services, consumer
information and professional services, action line, and youth
recreation. In recognition of its extraordinary contributions
over the years, the Seven Society gave Madison Hall its Organization
Award for 1971.

Then there was the role of an agency called the University
Year for Action, launched in 1973, with offices in Peabody
Hall, which offered participants an opportunity to obtain
academic credit. On its agenda were programs dealing with
mental health and retardation, community and children's
education, counseling in cases referred to the police, and improvement
of foster care and day care.

In addition to all this, university law students belonging to
the Virginia Legislative Research Service worked on proposed
legislation for members of the General Assembly, while classmates
did legal and environmental research on ecological
problems. Furthermore, about two hundred fifty students
from the Graduate School of Business Administration and the
Schools of Commerce and Law provided free assistance each
year to area residents in preparing their tax returns. Students
in Alpha Phi Omega, a national service fraternity for undergraduates,
installed playground equipment at a rural Virginia
school and built a riding ring for Holiday Trails, a unique
camp for handicapped children. Some seventeen hundred
students participated regularly in service activities through
the Interfraternity Council and the fraternity houses. Twentytwo
houses formed basketball teams of Charlottesville boys,
ten to twelve years old, and set up a basketball league. Preparations
were being made at the end of 1974 to transfer headquarters
for student volunteers from Madison Hall to newly
constructed Madison House at 170 Rugby Road, an independent
nonprofit corporation supported by private and public
funds. Madison House was not linked officially with the university
but would draw nearly all of its volunteers from the
university community.

The foregoing is only a partial list of the community and
humanitarian activities in which University of Virginia students

have engaged in recent years. It should be noted that
these unselfish manifestations are by no means unique to the
university. A Gallup Poll in 1974 found that approximately
half of all college students had participated to some degree in
volunteer social work, with about four hundred thousand on
seventeen hundred campuses contributing their time on a
regular basis.

A change in the traditional Finals exercises on the Lawn was
instituted in 1962. The president conferred all degrees there,
but graduates, except those in the College, went later to separate
ceremonies for their respective schools and were given
their diplomas. In past years graduates had sometimes waited
for hours in the hot sun to get their sheepskins, whereas now
the exercises were much briefer, and were described as "more
dignified and meaningful." The Student Council evidently
disagreed, since it had voted 16 to 1 in April not to change the
format of the exercises. The Council was overruled.

The university's College Bowl team won five straight contests
in 1963 over national television with that number of institutions
and received a $9,000 scholarship, while each of the
team members was given a $500 scholarship for graduate
studies. Prof. T. Graham Hereford, the coach, was awarded
$500 for postdoctoral work. Students announced that they
would raise funds to supplement the $9,000 fund. Members
of the winning team, the ninth from the entire country up to
that time to remain undefeated in the College Bowl, were Michael
Bennett, captain; Talmadge Wyatt, Jr.,; Richard Greer;
and John Mortensen. Virginia defeated four of the five institutions
by wide margins, namely, Oregon State, Ohio University,
Drake University, and Washington State. It barely nosed
out the University of Maine. Graham Hereford, who coached
the team, was a University of Virginia Ph.D. who was associate
professor of English in the School of Engineering and assistant
to the dean of the school. Regarded as a dedicated and
effective teacher of English, he also did an exceptional job
with the College Bowl team.

University debaters were making excellent records during
these years. The team tied for second place in competition
with thirty other schools at the St. Joseph's College debate
tournament at Philadelphia in 1961. Among teams they defeated

were those from Dartmouth and Carnegie Tech. The
following year debaters from the university won first place
against thirteen schools in the Alleman Interstate Novice Debate
Tournament at Louisville, and they also won the Atlantic
Coast Conference Debate Tournament at Duke University. In
1963 the debaters from Charlottesville were victorious for the
first time in sixteen years in the District VII eliminations for
the National Debate Championship at Wilkes-Barre, Pa. The
top record in the Ford Motor Co. Invitational at Oberlin,
Ohio, in 1971 was made by Jim Poe and Greg Bittner of the
university, in competition with eighty-eight of the ablest debaters
on the East Coast. Other highly creditable records were
made during these years by the university's representatives.

Considerable controversy arose in 1963 when the John Randolph
Society at the university, a conservative student organization,
invited Gus Hall, secretary of the Communist party
U.S.A., and George Lincoln Rockwell, commander of the
American Nazi party, to speak on the Grounds. President
Shannon and the Board of Visitors agreed that the invitations
were ill-advised but took the position that since they had been
issued the programs should proceed, provided assurances
were given that order and decorum would prevail. Both
speakers addressed capacity audiences in Cabell Hall. A few
catcalls and hisses were heard, but there was no disorder. The
Board of Visitors admonished all student organizations "in
the future to exercise an increased sense of responsibility toward
the impact of their actions on the welfare of the University."

Martin Luther King, Jr., was heard by a large audience in
Cabell Hall the following month, under auspices of the Virginia
Society of Human Relations. He said the special objective
at the time was to double Negro registration in the South,
and added that integration was proceeding much too slowly.
There was no disorder of any kind.

Coveted scholarships were being awarded to outstanding secondary
school seniors both inside and outside the state. The
University Regional and Honor Scholarships had been established
in 1952 in tribute to Philip Francis duPont, whose
$6,000,000 bequest in 1928 had approximately doubled by

95. W. Dexter Whitehead, director of the Center for Advanced
Studies, 1965-, and dean of the Graduate School of Arts and
Sciences, 1969-.

and was providing about $240,000 annually in scholarship
funds. In a more or less typical year, 1962, Regional Scholarships
were awarded to twenty-one outstanding high school
seniors, fifteen of them from Virginia. Another eighteen were
granted Honor Scholarships, the next category of awards,
while regular one-year scholarships went to twenty-eight
promising high school seniors.

A still more coveted series of merit scholarships was established
in 1963 by concerned alumni. Known as the University
Honor Awards, they were offered annually to a select group
of secondary school seniors. Counted among the thirty-five
Honor Award holders, representing four classes enrolled in
the 1966-67 session, were numerous Echols Scholars, staff
members of the three major student publications, varsity lettermen,
honorary society members, a number of participants
in the university's counseling program, and past and present
Honor Committee chairmen. The awards carried an annual
stipend of $1,000 for Virginians and $1,500 for non-Virginians,
without regard to financial need, and were renewable for
each of a student's four years, provided the recipient maintained
a dean's list average and participated in other phases of
university life.

Since the cost of attending the university was said to be considerably
higher than for most state universities, the need for
scholarships was especially great. A survey by the student
newspaper in 1968 found that the average undergraduate at
the University of Virginia paid $1,704 per year for tuition,
fees, room, and board, whereas the approximate cost at other
state universities was $1,160. The survey at the university included
the graduate and professional schools, whereas the paper
did not know whether the figure for other state universities,
compiled by the National Association of State Universities
and Land Grant Colleges and Universities, included them.

Students in need of financial assistance could often find it
through the Student Aid and Placement Service, with offices
in Minor Hall. Directed since 1959 by Frank A. Williar, with
Robert Canevari as his assistant, it provided scholarships,
loans, and part-time employment. A counseling service also
was part of the plan. Alumni in need of new positions found
the service helpful.

Guidance of a different type was provided by the university's
Counseling Center, directed by Earl Glosser, and established
in 1967. Four full-time counseling psychologists and
five half-time counseling interns were providing the service.
Advice was furnished to students seeking to cope more effectively
with themselves and their surroundings, Glosser explained.
Once the student had achieved greater self-understanding,
he or she was referred to the Aid and Placement
Service for any additional guidance.

The number of students in the College who were on the
dean's list had risen steadily, with the result that in 1972-73
the figure was over 50 percent. This was, in part, a reflection
of higher and higher standards for entrance, but the rise was
related to the fact that grading throughout the United States
had become more lenient. Students at Virginia from the state's
public schools were getting the best grades of any secondary
school group, a survey for the period 1958-64 showed. Next
came graduates of out-of-state public schools, with Virginia
private schools coming in third and out-of-state private
schools fourth.

Greater intellectual, cultural, and social exchange between
faculty and students was the aim of the Serpentine Society,
formed during the 1961-62 session by a group of upperclassmen
who were members of St. Paul's Episcopal Church. It expanded
rapidly, and professors and students of various religious
backgrounds were brought in. The society met informally
in the homes of faculty members for "social seminars"—pleasant
evenings for animated discussions of current topics, usually
led by a specialist in some particular field. Bedford Moore
of the School of Engineering's English faculty was faculty adviser.

The Society of the Purple Shadows, a secret organization
which, in the words of Marvin Garrette in the Richmond
Times-Dispatch, "borrowed several of the Sevens' traditions,"
was formed in 1963. Like the Seven Society it had a page in
Corks and Curls, but no list of members. There was no further
information concerning it or its activities.

Another organization formed at about this time was the Society
of the Cornish Game Hen. It recognized fraternity and
nonfraternity men "who have given outstanding service but

who," in the words of the Cavalier Daily, "have not been recognized
by the other honorary societies because their participation
was in lesser known or recognized organizations, such
as the University Union or the Virginia Debaters."

The mysterious P.U.M.P.K.I.N. Society emerged during
these years. About ten pumpkins were delivered annually to
that number of recipients, both faculty and students. The basis
for selecting those thus honored was not altogether clear.
Sir John Wheeler-Bennett, one of the chosen, kept his pumpkin
on his dining table "for several months, until it disintegrated
to the point where visitors couldn't tell it from a
squash."

Another altogether different organization was the Walter
Reed Society, with thirty-two charter members and others
added in subsequent years. Medical students and house staff
officers were eligible, together with research fellows of the
Medical School and the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.
A prize was awarded annually for the best paper in the field
of medical research.

Returning students in good standing who had completed at
least two full semesters with a cumulative grade average of 2.0
and were not receiving financial aid were allowed to have automobiles
under rules approved in 1968. These privileges
were extended to first-year men two years later on substantially
the same conditions.

The Student Council inaugurated a bus system for students,
faculty, and staff in the spring of 1971 in an effort to cope with
traffic and parking problems. Busses were leased from a local
firm on a trial basis. A survey the previous session had shown
that there were 9,700 students, and only 5,831 parking spaces
for 7,220 cars. The university attacked the problem in the fall
of 1972 with a comprehensive bus service and a plan for pay
parking. Visitors were required to park at metered spaces.

Campus politics was rather hectic at this period, reflecting
the somewhat turbulent conditions prevailing at the university
and throughout the country. A new party calling itself the Anarchists
emerged in the 1968 College elections, announcing its
intention to "put life in the Student Council." It elected its
candidates with record-breaking pluralities and then disappeared.
The Virginia Progressive party took its place at the
next election, with some of the same candidates and supporters

as the Anarchists, and they too were highly successful. The
conservative Jefferson party emerged in the fall of 1969, and
Skull & Keys and Sceptre (formerly Lambda Pi), which had
been influential in College politics over the years, albeit with
many ups and downs, voted themselves out of existence. In
the spring of 1970 the Jefferson party swamped the opposition
with a clean sweep of all offices.

The Student Council was being rapped in 1973 for "apathy
and inaction," and "the failure of an alarming number of
council members to work." Students, furthermore, were not
attending council meetings and were unfamiliar with what the
organization was doing.

The Council was galvanized into action when Larry Sabato
of Norfolk was elected its president in 1973. An extraordinary
number of programs were launched under his dynamic leadership,
including a campaign before the General Assembly for
a new undergraduate readers' library, testimony before the
Housing Study Commission, expansion of the university's
transit system, support for appointment of an ombudsman
and off-grounds housing complaint service, publication of
several booklets for students and for women's safety seminars,
publicizing the equal opportunity counseling program, supporting
new landlord-tenant legislation, improving alumnistudent
relations, and various other programs. Sabato was
successful in achieving many of his objectives. President Shannon
praised his "prodigious leadership." He was chosen a
Rhodes Scholar.

Residents of the first-year dormitories were getting more
constructive attention from older students. As the Alumni
News expressed it in 1973: "This year there has been a variety
of activities in the dorms not seen often before, ranging from
seminars on human sexuality, which sound provocative, to
bull sessions with the football coach, which don't. In between
there have been both formal and informal undergraduate
classes and orientations, both academic and social, lectures
and mixers designed to give students more than just a feeling
of living in a room in a building." The counselor system had
its inception in 1950-51, when the new dormitories on McCormick
Road opened; it developed in various directions in
the intervening years.

Byrd S. Leavell, Jr., cochairman of the resident staff's firstyear

component in 1973 and winner of the Arthur P. "Pete"
Gray IV Memorial Award the previous year, said that the objective
was "to keep things happening in the dorms," and to
offer "everybody a chance to become involved in something
that interests them." A novel feature was the plan whereby
coeds briefed the incoming first-year men on university traditions,
an innovation that, in earlier days, could have brought
older alumni to the verge of apoplexy. Resident advisers, who
were either instructors or graduate students, also lived in the
dorms with a view to aiding students with academic or other
problems. The university administration credited the counselors
and advisers with a major role in achieving a dramatic
decline in the number of first-year dropouts.

Counseling in the upperclass dormitories was concerned
primarily with academic orientation and career guidance. A
program also was instituted for the 85 percent of the thousands
of upperclass and graduate students who were living
off-Grounds. They were mainly in houses and apartments,
and seminars and social events were arranged for their benefit.
Transfer students were given special attention, including a
garden party during orientation week, when they could meet
student leaders.

The rapidly mounting enrollment, well beyond expectations,
was receiving much attention. An ultimate maximum of
18,000 students, double the figure for 1969, was seen by the
administration as acceptable. Much of the increase already experienced
was accounted for by the sharp reduction in the
academic failure rate which, in turn, was tied to the steady rise
in the qualifications of entering undergraduates.

But many of the students were greatly disturbed over the
prospect of so rapid an increase in enrollment. As early as
1967 the University of Virginia Magazine expressed alarm lest
the university become another "State-U" with a huge number
of undergraduates and mediocre standards. It was concerned
lest "the vital character of the university be lost." Four years
later an enrollment of 18,000 by 1980 was officially envisaged.
But ere long serious doubts began to arise in the administration,
the Board of Visitors, and the Alumni Association's
Board of Managers concerning the desirability of allowing enrollment
to rise that high.

The students became greatly agitated. They pointed out
that housing, classroom space, and parking were already critically
inadequate, and in the fall of 1971 their opposition became
louder and louder. On the night of Oct. 19 some twentyfive
hundred marched through the Grounds in vehement disapproval,
and five hundred spent the night on the Lawn, despite
temperatures that dropped into the forties. They carried
signs with such legends as "United We Stand Because We
Can't Sit Down," "Help Stop Expansion, Eat a Student," and
"Hell, No, We Won't Grow." Next day they staged a "study-in"
at Alderman Library and an "eat-in" at Newcomb Hall, designed
to show the inadequacy of facilities. The result of all
this was that the Board of Visitors decided to limit enrollment
to 16,500 for the foreseeable future.

Getting into the university was not easy. College board Scholastic
Aptitude Test (SAT) scores for university entrants in
1974 were 592 verbal and 623 math for the College, 562 verbal
and 659 math for engineering, and 608 verbal and 662
math for architecture.

The student body was much more cosmopolitan than that
of most state universities. President Shannon was quoted as
saying that "outside of the University of Colorado we have
more out-of-state students than any other state university."
The large number of Harvard, Yale, and Princeton graduates
who attend the University of Virginia has been noted.

The university has always been among the top institutions
in the country in the number of its students awarded Rhodes
Scholarships to Oxford University, and far ahead of all other
state institutions. Its total of thirty-five scholarship recipients
through 1973 was the same as that for Stanford and was exceeded
by only Harvard, Yale, Princeton, the U.S. Military
Academy, and Dartmouth. The University of Washington is
runner-up among state institutions with twenty-five, while the
University of Mississippi is second in the South with twentyone.

Use of university facilities for meetings of officially recognized
religious groups was approved by President Shannon in
1973, provided there was no discrimination by race, creed, or
sex. This was a reversal of a long-standing rule, adopted and
maintained in deference to Thomas Jefferson's insistence

upon complete separation of church and state. Shannon made
his decision on the recommendation of the Calendar and
Scheduling Committee, which felt that such meetings would
not conflict with Jefferson's desires. Shannon had taken the
opposite position in 1966.

The religious composition of the student body had undergone
radical changes in the preceding decades. By 1973 and
1974 the percentage of Roman Catholics had grown to approximately
double that of the second largest denomination
on the Grounds. For generations the Episcopalians had led,
but now the Roman Catholic percentage was nearly 22, or
twice that of the Episcopalians, who were in a virtual tie with
the Presbyterians, Methodists, and Baptists for second place.
It was one more bit of evidence that the university had entered
a new era.

9. NINE

The University
Rides the Storm

TURMOIL AND CONVULSION erupted across the campuses of
America in the late sixties, and the University of Virginia
was not immune. Many students were outraged over events in
the Vietnam war and were determined to show their feelings
by demonstrations and even violence. Small cadres of Marxist
revolutionaries seized upon the situation to promote their
goals. A few of these were operating in the shadow of the Rotunda.

Two busloads of University of Virginia students went to
Washington in the fall of 1967 and joined in a march to
the Pentagon by some seventy-five thousand others from
throughout the nation who were protesting the war in Vietnam.
There were arrests and clubbings on the Pentagon steps.
A few days later the Cavalier Daily published five columns of
letters, pro and con, concerning the war. One group of faculty
members signed a statement terming the conflict "immoral
and unjust," while another faculty group retorted that such
demonstrations as had occurred in Washington "tend to prolong
the war."

The Virginia Weekly, an ultraradical publication, began appearing
at the university in 1967, and the Student Council
made it a grant of $500. When the journal expired in 1972,
the Cavalier Daily said its purpose had been "forging a revolutionary
party capable of leading the working class to socialism."

Violence was escalating on campuses from coast to coast in

the spring of 1968, with Columbia University the focal point.
Vandals wrecked the office of President Grayson Kirk, whereupon
faculty members threatened to lie down to prevent police
from clearing occupied buildings. Kirk ordered the police
away. On other fronts U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark
was temporizing with looters, arsonists, sitters-down in public
thoroughfares, and other disrupters of the public business.

Aware that there was unrest at Charlottesville, President
Shannon issued a sweeping statement on May 3, 1968, designed
to prevent the spread of violence to the Grounds. It
contained the following provisions:

The foregoing had been put together following a conference
with student leaders. High praise was heaped on President
Shannon for his forthright stand, which was cited as
being in sharp contrast to the spineless surrender of some
other educational executives.

A few days after this manifesto was issued the students
elected two Anarchist candidates to the Student Council by
unprecedented majorities. Walker Chandler and Charles
Murdock wrote in a letter to the student newspaper on the eve
of the election: "We are not running as a joke. We selected the
title Anarchist because we intend to destroy the present style
of student government. . . . Gentlemen, we are NOT kidding."
Slogans for their campaign included: "What Has Order Gotten
You?" and "Political Power Grows Out of the Barrel of a
Gun—Chairman Mao." They said they hoped to bring about
student strikes and sit-ins and to employ "skillful use of the

threat of force, and force if necessary." Some students seem to
have voted for these men as a sort of lark, but Chandler polled
the biggest total in the history of Council elections down to
that time, while Murdock was not far behind and well ahead
of the third candidate. The following year the Anarchist party
became the Progressive party, and Murdock ran for another
term on the Council; he got an even bigger vote than Chandler
had polled in 1968. The Progressives elected their entire
slate, with one exception. The party, among other things, was
definitely antifraternity and stood on a "liberal" platform.

Unrest and disorder on campuses throughout the land were
intensified by the rioting that summer at the Democratic National
Convention in Chicago. Some of the same persons who
led the Chicago riots were active in the institutions of higher
learning.

President Shannon held the first of a series of two-day retreats
at Mountain Lake, Giles County, in September 1968
when selected Board of Visitors members, administrators, faculty,
and students discussed various problems with a view to
defusing rising resentments and getting to know one another
better. These yearly meetings were held later at Graves Mountain
Lodge, Madison County. Agitation among the students
for more active and aggressive recruiting of black matriculates
was a major topic at the first retreat. Another was implementation
of a rule that second-year men would have to live in the
dormitories. The latter issue aroused such antagonism that
the Visitors, on Shannon's recommendation, rescinded the
rule before the opposition could be fully organized. Editor
Gwathmey of the Cavalier Daily wrote later that "after one
meeting student members . . . were practically ready to go
back home and riot. . . . Happily some of the meetings after
the bitterest one were the most harmonious and productive.
The participants found that they could get along after all."

Students for a Free Society, a "New Right" organization, was
formed at the university as a counterweight to Students for a
Democratic Society (SDS) and the Southern Student Organizing
Committee (SSOC), both of which were active. The president
of the conservative organization dedicated to "reform
rather than revolution," was John Kwapisz, a second-year student
in commerce and Russian-Communist studies. He also
headed Young Americans for Freedom (YAF) at the university

and the following year would debate with both faculty and
student leaders in behalf of his firmly held views.

An eleven-point program drafted by the Student Coalition
was announced at a rally on the Lawn in February. Something
like one thousand students attended and heard speeches by
Professors William A. Elwood and Willie Lee Rose, as well as
Arthur (Bud) Ogle, a member of the Student Council and an
ordained Presbyterian minister; the Reverend Howard Gordon
and the Reverend David Ward, local clergymen; Robert
Rosen, a fourth-year College student who edited Rapier Magazine;
and others. The eleven-point program included higher
wages for university employees, their affiliation with national
labor unions with the right to strike, more black students,
blacks on the Board of Visitors, a Black Studies Program,
more aid for disadvantaged students, and a full-time black Assistant
Dean of Admissions. President Shannon's reaction to
the above proposals was regarded as unsatisfactory by the
sponsors. A delegation of students went to Richmond to seek
Governor Godwin's support but got no encouragement. He
told them that as students their role was to get an education
and not engage in social protest.

Rioting on the nation's campuses was intensified in the
spring of 1969, when Harvard and Cornell were centers of
agitation, and disorders of the year before erupted again at
Columbia. Harvard deans were physically ejected from their
offices by students, confidential papers were copied and made
public, and administration buildings forcibly taken over. At
Cornell about one hundred black students, many carrying rifles,
shotguns, and belts of ammunition left Willard Straight
Hall after the administration, apparently in order to avoid
bloodshed, met demands the students made when they took
over the building. At Columbia about two hundred students
occupied Philosophy Hall, barricaded the doors, and trapped
professors and other students inside. Various extreme demands
were made.

The resignation of C. Stuart Wheatley, Jr., from the University
of Virginia Board of Visitors was demanded by both SDS
and SSOC because Wheatley, as a member of the General Assembly
years before, had been a supporter of "massive resistance"
against integration of the races. The organizations
called for the appointment of a black in his place. In addition,

they demanded the resignations of several board members,
whom they termed "élitist." The calls for Wheatley's resignation
were echoed by various other student leaders and organizations,
who called his presence on the board "an affront to
the black community." Wheatley finally convinced his critics
that he had reversed his views on integration and the agitation
subsided.

In the fall of 1969 President Shannon received legal advice
that he felt made it necessary for him to modify his ruling of
the year before with respect to student demonstrations. He
was told that there was a considerable body of case law and
court decisions necessitating this revision. On Sept. 4 he accordingly
set forth the new requirements under which it was
no longer necessary that organizations holding demonstrations
be officially recognized by the Student Council, nor was
it necessary for them to obtain permission four days in advance.
Students were still forbidden to use university space in
a manner that is "physically destructive [or] unlawful" and to
"disrupt academic activities or any scheduled events." Students
violating the rules would be "subject to standing university
disciplinary procedures," including suspension, but due
process was guaranteed.

The Cavalier Daily, which had a series of ultraliberal, if not
radical, editorial executives during this period, had a new
setup in September 1969 with a publisher and also an editor.
Charles A. Hite III occupied the former position and Robert
B. Cullen the latter. The new management lost no time in taking
its far-out stance. "People leave because they find the university
socially childish, politically repressive, or academically
irrelevant and uninteresting," said the paper. Addressing the
first-year men, it declared: "We welcome you to the University
of Virginia, not with a call to seize the Rotunda (yet), but with
an urgent exhortation that you will strive to be activists in the
finest sense of the word, actively seeking to better yourselves
and your university."

Extremely sour notes concerning the 1969 Mountain Lake
retreat issued from the paper's sanctum, which apparently
spoke for a small minority of those present at the conference.
"The president's remarks reminded me of a father addressing
his children or a nineteenth-century plantation owner addressing
his slaves," wrote Publisher Hite. Shannon had told

the "60-odd persons in the room that he had poured his heart
and soul into the betterment of the university. . . . They believed
him and applauded. We sat, arms folded, and tried to
fight off the sense of hopelessness and frustration welling up
inside." Hite added that students had "the ability and right to
have a direct control in guiding their lives at the university. . . .
This was the root of the distrust at the conference."

In an effort to obtain this much-discussed "student power,"
a group of undergraduates launched a movement the following
week to "reform the University Senate" so as to include
student members along with administration and faculty. Student
Council approved the plan unanimously, and its president,
"Bud" Ogle, was named chairman of a committee to
work out the details. A senate with student representation had
been set up at Columbia University following the riots there.

The faculty of the College of Arts and Sciences at the university
voted to admit representatives of student publications
and the two university radio stations to its meetings, but only
as observers.

An electronic "bug," or eaves-dropping device, was found
attached to the underside of the table in the room where the
Board of Visitors was meeting in October 1969. It was not
known how long the bug had been there. An investigation was
launched, but the guilty party or parties were never discovered.

The so-called Vietnam Moratorium was observed nationally
a few days later, Oct. 15. About three hundred students and
others gathered the evening before in front of the first-year
dormitories, and marched, carrying candles, to University
Avenue and Rugby Road. President Shannon joined them at
their request, and spoke briefly to them, saying: "I come to
join with you in what I know is your desire and my desire for
a peaceful resolution of this war. I understand your interest
and your concern . . . to give consideration to all aspects of
our foreign policy and the aspects of our responsibility and
your concern as citizens of your country. And I do wish you
well." He walked with them partway on their procession
through the Grounds. As the marchers passed, some residents
of the Alderman Road and Observatory Hill dorms chanted
verses from "Dixie," yelled "Win the war!" and waved Confederate
flags.

96. Linda Howard, black president of the Law School,
1972-73, in conversation with another student.

Talk of canceling classes for the moratorium had begun the
previous month, and Chairman Kwapisz of Young Americans
for Freedom announced that legal action to prevent it would
be taken if such a move were tried. President Shannon announced
early in October that classes would not be canceled.

"Many students exercised their right to stay away from
class" on Oct. 15, the Alumni News said, "opting for formal and
informal discussions of the war, for chapel services, or perhaps
study."

The main event of the day was an address from the Rotunda
steps at noon by Karl Hess, speech writer and campaign
aid for Barry Goldwater in the 1964 presidential campaign.
About one thousand persons heard Hess hail the moratorium
as a "reassertion of our rights as citizens. . . . It tells Mr. Nixon
much more than just the fact the war must end. We must become
citizens again."

Ceremonies signalizing the climax of the university's yearlong
sesquicentennial observance—treated more fully in
Chapter 11—took place the following week. When these were
concluded, President Shannon accepted a prestigious award
from the Danforth Foundation for two months at Oxford
University. He had declined a similar offer the year before because
of the pressure of events at Charlottesville. Those events
left him very tired, according to Frank Berkeley, his executive
assistant, and he needed a rest. However, Berkeley said further,
in his oral deposition concerning these happenings, that
"if he had been here at home, and had his ear to the ground
better, I think a lot of things would have worked out
better. . . . There were things building up at the university that
he did not have his ear to the ground on." When Shannon
returned he had to plunge into hearings before the General
Assembly.

If he did lose touch, to some extent, with events at the university
while he was in England—which he denies—he says he
benefited greatly from the restful sojourn abroad. It enabled
him, he declares, to stand the "continuous strain and virtually
sleepless nights" which he endured during the demonstrations
that erupted in May.

Another huge demonstration against the Vietnam war took
place in Washington in mid-November, and some seventy-five
university students attended. They gathered under a Virginia

banner, took part in peaceable demonstrations at the Capitol,
and marched to ceremonies at the Washington Monument.
They were not involved in violence that broke out at the Department
of Justice.

Meanwhile, at the university Rep. John Marsh of Virginia
and Mayor G. A. Vogt of Charlottesville addressed a "Tell It
to Hanoi" rally of over one hundred students called by Young
Americans for Freedom at the Barracks Road Shopping Center.
They stressed the need for telling Hanoi to begin serious
negotiations looking toward an end for the war and demonstrating
support for President Nixon in his efforts to "achieve
a just and lasting peace in Southeast Asia."

Somewhat typical of the times was a letter to the Cavalier
Daily from Jeremy Kahn, a fourth-year student, berating the
paper for "prominent placing" of the Episcopal HighWoodberry
football score. A small box on an inside page with
"Episcopal High School 21, Woodberry Forest 0" was all that
was published. Kahn commented, "It seems that the past represented
by these exclusive schools is even more evil than that
represented by today's bourbon drinkers."

Richard M. Kleindienst, deputy U.S. attorney general, appeared
at the Legal Forum in December. The Cavalier Daily
urged that he be given a courteous hearing, since "if his
speech is disrupted, the effect will be to give the administration
. . . evidence that it is the Left, and not the Right, which
is intolerant and repressionist." He was interrupted repeatedly,
and "outbreaks of verbal harrassment occurred frequently."
Tom Gardner, a fourth-year College student, one of
the principal agitators during this period, was a leader in these
disruptive activities.

The left-wing Progressive party captured the four Student
Council seats up for election. Judy Wellman, editor of the
radical Virginia Weekly, was chosen by a big majority from the
Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.

A strike was in progress at the General Electric plant in
Waynesboro, and Tom Gardner exhorted students to aid the
strikers. He solicited financial contributions. Thirty university
students picketed the plant and distributed strike leaflets.

Corks and Curls for 1970, material for which was prepared
during the 1969-70 session, was permeated throughout with
extreme leftist doctrine, and the prominently featured article

in the front of the volume was by "Bud" Ogle. Among other
things, he said: "The promise is great. And administrators
and `student leaders' are frittering it away. Our mentor Karl
Marx [italics supplied] once said: `Until now philosophers have
only sought to understand the world. The point, however, is
to change it.' The point is to change it."

The foregoing is one more illustration of the fact that a
group of extremists at Virginia had gotten control of important
organs of student opinion and other agencies, as happened
at a number of institutions. They worked while the average
undergraduate slept. The surprising thing was that so
many of the rank and file seemed to acquiesce in their plans,
or at least not to oppose them. The students, as we have seen,
voted these Marxists and other radicals into important offices
on the Grounds. Undoubtedly some of this was due to a perverse
desire on the part of college youths to oppose the Establishment
"for kicks." And there is the further fact that the climate
of opinion in most colleges and universities in those few
years was much more leftist than at any time before or since.
The Vietnam war was a prime factor in bringing about this
condition.

In all this turmoil Rector Frank W. Rogers was spokesman
for the conservatives on the Board of Visitors. He remained
staunchly opposed to unwarranted concessions to the radical
student agitators. He was also uninhibited in expressing himself.
On the eve of his retirement as rector in February 1970,
Rogers was quoted by the Associated Press as contrasting the
current situation with that which prevailed eight years before
when he went on the board. "Eight years ago you couldn't
conceive of that terrible bunch of thugs that now make themselves
so articulate" at the university, he declared. Rogers was
referring to the handful of Marxist agitators on the Grounds.
By contrast, some of the other leaders in the demonstrations
were remarkably courteous.

J. Harvie Wilkinson III, the student member of the visitors,
asked the Student Council for help "in making student opinions
known to the board" and said he was "available to talk
with any of you about matters concerning the university."
Wilkinson added: "I might not agree with some of your views,
but I think I could convey your ideas to the board, whether I

agree with them or not." Several members of the council expressed
satisfaction with his offer.

A peace fast, sponsored by the Vietnam Moratorium Committee,
was held April 13-15 and was endorsed by a large
number of presidents of undergraduate organizations and by
student publications.

This relatively quiet situation became explosive when President
Nixon announced the bombing of Cambodia. Soon
thereafter four students at Kent State University were shot
and killed, and nine wounded, by Ohio national guardsmen.
These events aroused outrage on campuses from coast to
coast and intensified unrest at Virginia and many other colleges
and universities. Students everywhere in the United
States had been tense and on edge since the preceding fall,
when the draft lottery was instituted, with consequent termination
of student deferments.

Students held a rally at the Rotunda on the night of May 4,
the day after the Kent State killings, whence several hundred
marched to Carr's Hill and read President Shannon a telegram
they were sending to President Nixon. Shannon indicated
that he shared their concern, but he refused to sign the
telegram.

Some of the students marched thence to Maury Hall, headquarters
of the naval ROTC, and tried to take it over. David
Morris, president of the College, and Dave Bowman, vicepresident,
stood in front of the door for about fifteen minutes
and refused to let them pass unless they agreed to be nonviolent.
They agreed, and were admitted. President Shannon
had had an injunction drafted in advance, to be ready for such
an emergency, and this injunction, ordering evacuation of the
building, was issued that night by Judge Lyttleton Waddell. It
was delivered to Maury Hall by the police at about 4:30 A.M.,
and the students vacated the building without resistance.

About half of the group had gone back to Carr's Hill, arriving
at around 3:30 A.M. They yelled "Strike!" and knocked on
the door. President Shannon was not there, but Mrs. Shannon
was. She came out and faced the crowd, told them that they
would awaken the children, and insisted that they go away.
They did.

A memorial service to the Kent State victims was held in
Cabell Hall at about noon, on call of President Shannon and
James Roebuck, black president of the Student Council. At
the ceremonies Shannon expressed agreement with the students
as to the Kent State shootings but stressed the necessity
for nonviolence. He had been up all night, and when he spoke
of his love for the university and the need to preserve its traditions,
tears came into his eyes. The press reported that he
was crying, which gave a distorted picture.

A strike committee, numbering about three hundred fifty
students, was urging a "strike," or boycott, of classes. The term
strike, as used by them, it is important to note, had no relationship
to the sort of strike that takes place in industrial plants.
The Student Council endorsed the plan unanimously and
called on all students to stay away from classes. Twenty-nine
of the thirty-three fraternities also endorsed the boycott; three
of the remaining four had clauses in their constitutions that
prevented their doing so. Over one hundred fifty faculty
members supported the students' right to boycott. Some professors
did not hold classes on May 6, although there had been
no cancellation by the administration.

In an effort to calm the rising discontent, President Shannon
and his advisers decided that it would be wise for the
president to announce on that day that he had made arrangements
with Senators Harry F. Byrd and William B. Spong to
see and talk with students from the university the following
Monday. He made the announcement to students gathered in
front of Alderman Library. Professors Charles Whitebread
and William Harbaugh, who had the confidence of the dissidents,
were requested to follow Shannon's remarks with supportive
statements. They did so. "Their appearance enabled
the president to leave the rally," said Provost Frank Hereford.
"We were genuinely concerned that there might be violence,
particularly because of the large group of outsiders on the
Grounds."

Weeks before these developments, radical student organizations
at the university had invited William Kunstler and
Jerry Rubin to speak in University Hall on May 6. Kunstler
was defense attorney for the Chicago Seven, whose violence
had disrupted the Democratic National Convention, and
Rubin was one of the seven. Appearance of these men only

two days after the Kent State shootings could not have happened
at a worse time for the cause of law and order at Virginia.
Their inflammatory remarks were like pouring gasoline
on a smoldering fire. Kunstler, who had led the protests at
Columbia, said: "We must now resist to the hilt. These fists
have to be clenched, and they have to be in the air. When
they're opened we hope it's in friendship, not around the trigger
guard of a rifle. But if we're not listened to, or if the issue
is forced, they may well open around trigger guards." "Yippie"
Jerry Rubin then delivered a rambling, hour-long harangue,
interlarded with innumerable obscenities, that turned
off the audience. Many walked out while he was speaking.

After this program had been concluded a crowd estimated
at two thousand, some of whom carried Viet Cong flags, assembled
in front of the President's residence on Carr's Hill.
Kunstler stood on a chair and all but told the shouting gathering
to rush the building. He quoted Marie Antoinette's famous
"Let 'em eat cake." President Shannon was conferring
inside with university officials and student leaders. About
thirty student marshals were lined up across the front of the
house, determined to prevent any mob violence. After Kunstler
finished speaking, nothing much was happening for several
minutes. Somebody called out, "On to Maury Hall!" and
the crowd melted away. In the group were a number of persons
unknown to the university authorities who had come
from elsewhere.

A couple of hundred of the demonstrators went to Maury
Hall. After they had occupied it, a small fire broke out in a
mattress in the basement, causing considerable smoke. This,
coupled with a rumor that the police were coming, caused
evacuation of the building.

Shannon had established various "command posts" and he
moved from one to the other, "so as not to be a focal point,"
he said later. One of his temporary headquarters was in a
room at the hospital where there were desks and telephones.
A fantastic rumor got out that he was ill or having a nervous
breakdown, and had entered the hospital for treatment.

An important asset for him in all this turmoil and confusion
was the relationship he had with Jim Roebuck, the black president
of the Student Council. "We didn't always agree," Shannon
said, "but we had confidence in each other as human

beings. . . . I felt that I could keep him advised of what I was
thinking, what I was planning . . . and I sought his advice as
much as possible. . . . Jim was concerned that the university
not be damaged, and was absolutely trustworthy."

Students began interfering with traffic at the intersection of
Route 250 and Emmet Street on the night of Thursday, May
7. The city police called for help from the state police, and
there was a confrontation between students and law enforcement
officers on Emmet Street below the Monroe Hill dormitories.
When Dean Alan Williams announced on a bullhorn
that the police were leaving and that the students should do
likewise, they dispersed.

President Shannon, who had kept in touch by telephone
with faculty and student leaders in the crowd and with the
police, saw that there might be trouble the following night. "I
made arrangements," he said, "for the State Police to be in the
area Friday night in force, and to be responsible for security."

That night a large group of students congregated behind
the stone wall on University Avenue in front of the Rotunda.
Contrary to Shannon's wishes, Charlottesville Commonwealth's
Attorney Jack Camblos arrived on the scene and invoked
the Riot Act, with the result that state police charged
the crowd and arrested sixty-seven persons, mostly students.

The precise circumstances surrounding these arrests are in
dispute, which is probably typical of such situations when tensions
run high. On the one hand, it is stated that police pursued
students to the Lawn, entered some rooms, and arrested
those who lived there. Also, in the University Avenue area student
marshals who had volunteered their services in helping
to maintain order on the Grounds were taken into custody, as
well as such innocent bystanders as a senior employee of the
university and a man delivering pizzas. There was a sense of
outrage on the part of many professors and students, who felt
that the police exceeded all proper bounds.

On the other hand, there are those who contend that the
police did not behave irresponsibly, but were simply carrying
out orders in pursuing students who had been warned repeatedly
that they would be arrested if they did not disperse.

All those taken into custody were released immediately on
bail, and the commonwealth's attorney later nol-prossed the
charges.

With the Riot Act in effect, it was unlawful for as many as
three people to congregate, and police cars were parked
bumper to bumper along University Avenue and below Carr's
Hill. President Shannon persuaded Captain Boone of the
state police to withdraw his men from the central grounds in
order to let scheduled university activities proceed on Saturday
afternoon and evening. These included a political rally,
baseball and lacrosse games, and a formal ball.

D. French Slaughter, Jr., president of the University of Virginia
Alumni Association, sent a telegram on Saturday, May 9
to parents of all the undergraduates, urging them to "call your
son or daughter expressing confidence in them to act
thoughtfully and responsibly in this critical situation." The
message said that students and outsiders were using the war
in Southeast Asia "to demand that the university be closed
down," and that "we feel this is no solution of the problem."
Slaughter went on to say: "The administration is determined
to do all it can to avoid violence, to keep the university operating
while maintaining orderly and free discussion. Whether
these objectives can be accomplished rests primarily with the
student body." Many students resented the sending of the telegram
and the student Council formally censured the Alumni
Association for doing so.

President Shannon addressed students and faculty from the
Rotunda steps on the afternoon of May 10. He had put his
speech together hastily, with the aid of several persons, and it
was poorly received, until near the end. At that point he attacked
President Nixon's invasion of Cambodia, and said he
would send a statement on the subject to Virginia's senators
the next day. This brought loud cheers.

Copies of the message were left on the steps of Pavilion VIII
on the Lawn so that anybody wishing to sign could do so. It
expressed grave concern over "many evidences of anti-intellectualism
and growing militarism in the national government"
and went on to say:

Nearly five thousand students and faculty signed the letter
within twenty-four hours, and a delegation of students delivered
the communication to the senators in Washington.

Explaining why he sent this message, Shannon said long afterward:
"I was prepared to feel that the president shouldn't
get into major public positions that have political implications,
[but] that at this juncture it was really important and necessary
to do so and appropriate to do so." He said his speech at the
Rotunda, stating that the message would be available for signatures,
"tended to turn things around. . . . This took the student
pressure off me. . . . We were all together. It tended to
pull the university together instead of having factions."

But if a substantial majority of the students and faculty were
in accord with the president in this matter, many alumni were
in violent disagreement. Gov. Linwood Hilton said, "I disagree
with President Shannon's position." The recently chosen
rector of the university, Joseph H. McConnell, '31, one of the
leading business executives in the United States, president of
Reynolds Metals and former president of Colgate-PamolivePeet
and the National Broadcasting System, was an immediate
dissenter. When he learned in Richmond of Shannon's speech,
he called the president on the telephone to say that the speech
should have been cleared with him in advance, and that he
would never have agreed to its delivery.

Shannon said later that the principal thing that bothered
him about his remarks at the Rotunda was the fact that somehow
"the word `frightening' got in there." He had referred to
the "frightening fashion" in which students had shouted outside
his home shortly before. The word frightening should
have been menacing, he said, since "I wasn't frightened. . . . A
lot of people thought I was scared to death." He was trying in
his speech to explain "why the police had to come in." In Shannon's
behalf, it should be said that anybody who, as a naval
officer, had taken part in half a dozen of the most desperate

Pacific landings in World War II, and had gone down with the
Quincy when she was sunk off Savo Island, would hardly have
been "frightened" by a group of students.

Alumni Association President Slaughter wrote Shannon,
apropos of the telegram to parents that the "overwhelming
majority" of alumni "are opposed to any officials of the university
taking a stand on political issues in a context which
would indicate that this represents the views of the university
in any way."

Shannon contended that the letter to Byrd and Spong "has
been misunderstood and misinterpreted as criticism of President
Nixon's decision to enter Cambodia," whereas "it referred
to the `announcement' of the decision being `used' for
personal public relations purposes." However, this appears to
be "a distinction without a difference," since Shannon himself
said in the oral deposition he made years later that his Rotunda
speech was "pretty critical of Mr. Nixon."

Thousands of letters from alumni poured in to Shannon's
office, according to Frank Berkeley, his executive assistant.
While many were extremely critical of the president, and
some even demanded his resignation, more than 80 percent
of those received in the first few months were favorable,
Berkeley stated.

Elements of the press attacked the Shannon letter to the
senators, and argued that there was a lack of punitive measures
at Charlottesville against obstreperous students, in contrast
to the arrest and jailing of more than one hundred students
at VPI.

The comparison with VPI was not a fair one. The 108 VPI
students who were arrested and jailed overnight had occupied
Williams Hall and refused to leave when ordered out by the
police. They did nearly $1,500 worth of damage to Williams
Hall, and materials for making fire bombs were found there.
Of those arrested, 101 were fined $50 and given a 30-day suspended
jail sentence, while several others were fined $100 and
made to serve five of the 30 days. The University of Virginia
students had left Maury Hall promptly and peaceably when
Judge Waddell's injunction was read to them. No arrests or
fines were necessary.

While the disorders at the university were led by a relatively

97, 98. Gravestones side by side near the entrance to the University
Cemetery commemorate the devotion of the students to their
two mascots "Beta" and "Seal."

small and tightly organized group of radicals, the extent to
which the student body seemed to sympathize with some of
their principal "demands" is surprising. On May 13 the students
voted on ten issues raised by these agitators, including
nine "demands." The Student Council had voted, 11 to 10, to
submit the demands to the students in a referendum. Six of
the demands were given overwhelming approval by the students.
These included revocation of Judge Waddell's injunction;
prohibiting university officers from carrying firearms
and outside law enforcement officers from coming on the
Grounds; and public support by President Shannon "for the
right of university employees to strike and bargain collectively."
By 6 to 1 the students approved a demand "that the
university include women on an equal basis with men in both
recruitment and admissions for all schools at the university";
and by over two to one that the university "publicly commit
itself to a goal of 20 percent for the enrollment of black students
and an allocation of $100,000 for black admissions programs."
A demand that was rejected called for the abolition of
the ROTC and defense-related research.

Gov. Holton said it was "time for the students to go back to
class," and Senator Byrd criticized Shannon for a "lack of
firmness." A minority of the university's administrators and
professors agreed with Byrd. They believed that sterner measures
should have been employed by the president.

In a public statement on May 13 President Shannon declared
that "several hundred major universities" had been
drastically affected by the events in Southeast Asia and at Kent
State, and "most [of them] have been forced to suspend operations
for varying periods of time, or to close." One that
closed in early May for the rest of the session was Princeton.
"The university [of Virginia] is still open," the president went
on. "I am determined to keep it open. . . . All schools and departments
are open. . . . No person has been injured on the
university Grounds, and no serious damage to property has
occurred. . . . The Students' Strike Committee has adhered to
the university's provisions in the scheduling and location of
the planned rallies. The responsible university committee
temporarily suspended its rules for several impromptu gatherings
that appeared reasonable under the circumstances. . . .

Disciplinary measures . . . are being initiated . . . and some
persons (not all of them students) will be subject to prosecution."
A former student, charged with attempted arson, was
prosecuted, at Shannon's insistence.

The administration provided various options in the spring
of 1970: A student and teacher could arrange any of the following
for the undergraduate: (1) Complete work on time and
take examination on the scheduled date; (2) accept the grade
up to May 1 as the final grade; (3) take the exams during the
following semester up to October 1; (4) substitute another requirement
for the exam by June 1. The more active agitators
left the university for Washington or worked in the community.
Those wishing to leave without taking exams had to sign
the following: "Because the dictates of my conscience do not
allow me to continue academic work in this time of crisis, and
because I feel that each person must actively contribute toward
the solution of our pressing problems, I pledge my
honor as a gentleman that I am actively working toward the
goals of peace and the objectives of the Virginia Strike Committee."

While there was criticism of the foregoing arrangement, the
fact remained that disruption at Charlottesville was much less
than at numerous other institutions. No classes were canceled
or suspended. As President Shannon expressed it: "Class attendance
remained normal in many departments and schools,
and returned to an essentially normal level by May 13 in all
schools. A total of 1,974 students met the deadlines for their
degree requirements and were graduated on schedule. . . .
The work of student leaders and marshals was outstanding;
our tradition of student self-government was strongly reasserted,
and the rights of all were respected." At Finals President
Shannon received a standing ovation from the graduating
class.

It was a time of high tension, with Marxist agitators seeking
to foment revolution, and under the circumstances, it was almost
inevitable that mistakes would be made. The Board of
Visitors placed its stamp of approval on Shannon's actions
during the period. By an 11 to 4 vote it commended him for
keeping the university in operation, maintaining its academic
standards, preserving the right of free speech, and "avoiding

the violence experienced elsewhere . . . despite individual differences
of opinion as to methods used."

The session of 1970-71 witnessed a cooling of the revolutionary
fires at Virginia. The National Student Association,
with which the Student Council was affiliated, called for a general
strike in February to protest the escalated bombing in
Vietnam, but there was no strike at Charlottesville. About two
weeks later Dr. Benjamin Spock addressed a student group at
the university, and urged them to work for revolution. He
said, however, that if they sought to achieve it now, they would
be "reduced to grease spots." The following month the student
newspaper stated that "this year [at the university] there
were no demonstrations, only the most feeble protests against
the war." The 1971 Corks and Curls continued to express a farout
leftwing viewpoint, but its tone was one of resignation, if
not despair, since things were drifting back to the status quo
ante.

There was a mild uproar a year later when U.S. Solicitor
General E. N. Griswold spoke at the university. About eighty
students walked out soon after he began and then returned to
question him concerning the government's handling of the
antiwar demonstrations. The question period was punctuated
with "shouts and heated protests." Next day a few students
picketed the Charlottesville draft board, and a score were arrested
in Washington for taking part in civil disobedience disturbances.
About a year after that, in the spring of 1972, the
Student Council, in a telegram to President Nixon, unanimously
protested the stepped up bombing of Vietnam, but
this was far milder than the riots at Harvard, the University of
Maryland, and elsewhere.

The fact was that most of the steam had gone out of the
radical movement at the University of Virginia, which at one
time threatened violent disruption of the institution. It was
refreshing in the fall of 1973 to note the words of the Cavalier
Daily, then under the direction of Tim Wheeler, editor in
chief, and William B. Bardenwerper, editor. Commenting on
the student attitudes of a short time before, the paper said:
"Our frequent categorizations, blanket accusations and arrogant
assessments were shallow, and the rut we had fallen into
of thinking slogans rather than ideas only furthered [sic] to
illustrate our fits of immaturity."

That about sums it up. Thanks largely to President Shannon's
leadership, the radicals had been thwarted, the university
had survived the crisis of 1969-70 better than many institutions,
and Jeffersonian principles of academic freedom and
freedom of speech had been kept inviolate.

10. TEN

The
Changing Honor System

THE UNIVERSITY'S FAR-FAMED Honor System has often been
described as the institution's most priceless possession.
Prof. Robert K. Gooch said in an address at Finals in 1965 that
he regarded it as "the finest thing about the university." He
added that "the great body of alumni are convinced that their
association with the Honor System was the most important,
the richest, the most permanently influential experience
which they had during their search for truth as students at
this institution."

Prof. George W. Spicer stated in the middle seventies: "I
was here for 40 years. . . . As far as my own classes were concerned,
as far as my own personal experience goes, there was
only one occasion in which I had reason to believe a student
had cheated." Prof. Arthur F. MacConochie said at about the
same time, "In 39 years of teaching I had only one black
sheep."

The Honor System at Virginia evolved over the years.
When founded in 1842 it consisted of a pledge by the student
that he had received no assistance on an examination. Later
the pledge was amended to forbid the giving of assistance to
another, but until the Civil War professors continued to keep
a watchful eye on the boys during all written tests.

It was during the years following the Civil War that the university's
Honor System, or Honor Spirit as some prefer to call
it, is believed to have reached its finest flower. The institution
was small and homogeneous, many of the students came from

preparatory schools that had honor systems, and there was no
further watching over them by the faculty during examinations.
The Honor Spirit, as part of the code of the honorable
gentleman, was probably more vitally alive during the closing
decades of the nineteenth century than at any other time.

The spirit remained much the same during the early and
middle years of the twentieth century. Enrollment was still
relatively small, although several times as large as it had been
in the late 1800s. Not until the period immediately following
World War II did enrollment pass the five-thousand mark,
and it soon fell to around three thousand five hundred upon
the graduation of many returned servicemen who had flocked
back to college. So the problems experienced by those who
sought to preserve the Honor System were still readily manageable.

Rules of procedure for enforcing the system were first codified
in 1909. They provided that anyone suspecting a breach
should confront the suspect and "demand . . . an explanation
of his conduct." (This, be it noted, is the exact opposite of
talebearing, the allegation sometimes made against the system.)
If the suspect's explanation was unsatisfactory, the accuser
or accusers were to demand that he leave college. He
had to do so at once or stand trial before the Honor Committee.
In 1909 the committee consisted of the presidents of the
five departments plus the vice-president of the department in
which the alleged offense occurred. The accused and the accuser
or accusers were allowed to have counsel from the student
body. Votes of five of the six Honor Committee members
were necessary for conviction, and from the verdict there was
no appeal. A change was made in 1917 to provide that the
participating vice-president should keep minutes of the proceedings.
In the event of acquittal the minutes were to be destroyed.

"Honor cards" were introduced in 1932, with each first-year
man signing a statement indicating his acceptance of the system.
It was done at small group meetings where there was an
opportunity for questions and a complete explanation.

Further changes came in 1934. It was recommended by the
committee that minutes of trials be kept by a professional stenographer,
if possible. A case resulting in a conviction could
be opened only upon production of new evidence. It also was

provided that all first-year men should hear an address at the
opening of the session explaining the Honor System. Furthermore,
members of the Honor Committee would meet the incoming
students in small groups and discuss the system in detail.
Explanation of the system appeared in early issues of
university publications.

Some years later the president of each department appointed
a "student adviser." These appointees consulted with
the accused and accusers before a problem was brought before
the Honor Committee, with a view to determining
whether there was sufficient evidence to justify a trial. The
committee felt that "by constant association with honor trials
the advisers would be in a position to offer valuable assistance."
After the dismissal of a student, the record of the proceedings
could be opened to possible employers, to another
college or university to which the offender might be applying,
or to the armed services or the government, in the event that
he was attempting to obtain a commission or an appointment.
Or the record might be seen by his parents. As a regular practice
the Honor Committee did what it could to aid any convicted
student who sought to enter another institution or to
obtain employment. Far from hounding the unfortunate after
his dismissal, the committee and the university authorities
were, and are, anxious to assist in his rehabilitation, and to
give him a chance to rise above his difficulties and become a
useful citizen.

It is important to note that the system at Virginia is entirely
in the hands of the students and that there can be no appeal
from their verdicts to the faculty, the administration, or the
Board of Visitors. Many believe that therein lies the principal
reason why the system has survived at the university while systems
operated along different lines were failing at so many
other institutions.

In earlier times students were expelled under the Honor
System for a variety of offenses. Dean William M. Thornton
writes in his Genesis of the Honor System (1904):

Even in 1901 there were those who seemed to think it acceptable,
under the Honor System, to answer "present" in
class for their friends at roll call, when the friends were not on
the premises. There appears to have been uncertainty at that
time as to the scope of the system since College Topics said in
1905: "We are glad that it [the Honor System] does hold sway
in the examination room, but why should it be limited to that
sphere?. . . . Why should its spirit not pervade all college life?
We believe that the present state of affairs can be remedied if
the sentiment of the student body demands it."

Down the years the problem of just what offenses should be
regarded as violations of the system has been debated, and in
1935 the written guidelines, later known as the "Blue Sheet,"
contained the following: "One of the greatest dangers to
which an Honor System can be exposed . . . is that of being
`overloaded' with offenses. To avoid this, it is essential that the
Honor System shall concern itself solely with those offenses
which are classified as dishonorable by the public opinion of
the student generation involved." At least as early as the second
decade of the century the students appeared to focus on
lying, cheating, and stealing as the three offenses that, by general
agreement, could not be tolerated at the University of
Virginia.

By 1955, however, doubts began to arise as to what constituted
lying. Students were going to the ABC stores to obtain
liquor and were giving false information concerning their
ages. Honor Committee Chairman Howard Gill stated that
such conduct constituted an honor offense, while others maintained
that "lying to obtain liquor was a violation of state law
but not of the code." The Cavalier Daily supported Gill, saying
that "if a breach is allowed to become an accepted practice, the
entire system will be placed in danger." Three years later the
paper reiterated this opinion and added that multiple use at
one meal of a contract cafeteria meal ticket was "clearly dishonorable."
It also stated that "the improper removal of books

from the various libraries of the university" is construable as
an honor violation.

There were ominous indications that long-established views
concerning the Honor System were changing, not only among
the students but among numerous younger members of the
faculty. A Raven Society committee for the College of Arts and
Sciences reported in the spring of 1961 that almost half of the
students interviewed favored grades of punishment for Honor
System violations. Furthermore, said the report, "it is felt that
many faculty members have neither a feeling for the spirit of
the Honor System nor confidence that it works." The Raven
committee went on to say that this "is particularly important
in view of the fact that many of the first-year courses are
taught by instructors new to the university." The foregoing
situation was to a major degree an outgrowth of the university's
rapidly increasing enrollment which brought in thousands
of students who had never experienced an honor system
before. This made the task of indoctrination at the
opening of each session doubly difficult. The Cavalier Daily,
echoing statements made since the 1920s, had declared in
1958 that "the Honor system can be preserved only if there is
action on the part of the administration to limit the size of the
university." Such action, as we have seen, came some years
later.

It became customary, beginning in 1958, for the Honor
Committee to send each member of the faculty just before
final examinations, a memorandum warning against "subjecting
students to unnecessary temptations." Among the practices
warned against were take-home quizzes, giving the same
quiz to more than one class section, and providing less than
"ample room" between students seated during an exam,
which "places the student in a delicate position."

The Honor Committee also issued a list of guidelines for
examinations in 1965, which was repeated in several successive
years, in order that students might "avoid circumstances
which could be construed as suspicious": (1) Don't take books,
notes, or unnecessary scratch paper into an examination
room; (2) exams should be taken in the location designated by
the professor; (3) while taking an exam, don't leave the room
for too long a period; (4) don't stare around an exam room
needlessly, for this could be interpreted as trying to copy another's

answers; (5) once you are through the exam leave the
immediate vicinity before you discuss the exam, because
someone who is not through may overhear you.

Lack of understanding of the Honor System "on the part of
many members of the student body, faculty, and university
community," was mentioned by a former member of the
Honor Committee as "the main problem." He also stressed
that another weakness lay in "the fact that new members of
the committee are not well-versed in the system."

Sharp disparagement of the system by students in the Law
School became a special problem. The Law School had become
"the `hot box' of the university, with very severe criticism
aimed at the Honor System," Scott Sykes, chairman-elect of
the Honor Committee, wrote President Shannon in 1961. A
committee from the Law School had just studied the system
and had interviewed approximately 10 percent of the school's
student body. Roughly 85 percent of those interviewed felt
that "codification of the Honor System is necessary, if not imperative"
because "the spirit of the Honor System here does
not correspond to the ideals and morals of the world outside
our doors." The report detected "a strong feeling that the
Honor System is overextended" and cited the illegal purchase
of liquor at ABC stores by students not twenty-one as "the
most prevalent example," with "many gray areas that have
grown up in recent years." Also, "A majority of the [law] students
consider the lack of an appeal [from conviction] one of
the greatest weaknesses." The report referred to "the failure
of the orientation program" and asked the amazing and truly
staggering question: "Since there is no honor in the world,
why try to force an old outdated concept of integrity on students
who are preparing to live in this modern world?"

The fact that any appreciable number of University of Virginia
law students openly expressed this superlatively cynical
view explains many of the problems experienced by the
Honor System in those years. Furthermore, a visiting professor
in the Law School dismissed the system as "a period piece
reflecting the supercilious style of class consciousness."

There was much criticism of the system also in the Graduate
School of Arts and Sciences. That school was growing rapidly,
and it had a larger and larger contingent of students from
institutions where honor systems were unknown. To a somewhat

lesser degree this situation prevailed in the Schools of
Medicine and Engineering.

The Honor Committee was expanded in 1961-62 from six
to nine members, with the presidents of the Schools of Architecture
and Commerce and the Graduate School of Business
Administration added. Two years later the president of the
School of Nursing became a member. A four-fifths vote was
necessary to convict.

Although more and more persons were beginning to feel
that the Honor System was being overextended, two Honor
Committee chairmen in the middle sixties were firm in taking
the opposite view. Chris Leventis, chairman for 1963-64, said
concerning the question whether students on vacation are covered
by the system, "We feel that if a student represents the
University of Virginia, no matter where he is, he is bound by
the Honor Committee." And George Morison, who succeeded
Leventis, stated that in his view, the system "pertains to all
phases of a student's life." Yet several older dormitory counselors
were quoted as saying that they understood the system
did not apply to any student on vacation.

Morison's Honor Committee recognized "no areas of `gray'
in the system." It also declared that "a student is considered a
representative of the university no matter where he may be
and no matter what the time of year. . . . A man could be held
responsible for an act committed in the middle of the summer
miles away from the university." While it was admirable to attempt
to hold the line in this fashion, the question was
whether it had become impossible.

One of those who felt that such broad interpretation of the
system's jurisdiction was self-defeating was Prof. Hardy C. Dillard.
"Although it may seem illogical to refrain from extending
it to all the manifold affairs of life, it is yet wiser to limit it
to academic matters, or, at least, to matters of honor which are
focused on the academic community," he said.

Some years before, Dillard also had expressed the view that
"after a half century of brooding" he had concluded that the
Honor System would ultimately collapse if graduated penalties
were introduced as a replacement for the single penalty of
expulsion. Supporting this view in 1966, the Cavalier Daily
said: "We must recognize that it would be unfair to the university
community to readmit one who has already violated the

trust of his peers. And the necessity with graduated penalties
of the Honor Committee's deciding not only guilt or innocence,
but also the degree of seriousness of the offense, would
place too great a subjective strain on the fairness of committee
members."

Hardy Dillard, a member of the Honor Committee in his
student days, also enunciated the thesis that a "consensus of
honor" should be the basis for decisions as to what was and
was not properly included under the Honor System. In other
words, those things that the students regarded as dishonorable
should be so regarded by the Honor Committee. Relying
to a considerable extent on this concept, the committee ruled
in 1968-69 that thereafter its jurisdiction would not extend
beyond the confines of Charlottesville and Albemarle County
and that "lying for liquor" would not be within the system's
purview. While it seems probable that the majority of students
were in agreement with this decision, there was considerable
doubt as to just what most Virginia students of that era could
agree upon as to the precise metes and bounds of the Honor
System. A large number of students objected to the committee's
exclusion of "lying for liquor," and a petition protesting
the ruling was signed by well over two thousand undergraduates.
There were less strong objections to the geographical
limitation. The committee's ruling with respect to misrepresentations
at the ABC stores was "motivated largely if not predominantly
by the probability that a first-year student dismissed
for that offense could lodge a successful appeal in
court against his dismissal for a non-University-related action,"
Shearer D. Bowman, `71, wrote in his history of the
Honor System. This line of reasoning was not made public, he
said, since the committee "was apparently afraid" to do so.

The time had come to reevaluate the system, in the opinion
of Theodore S. Halaby, a Harvard graduate and third-year
law student, who said he was "greatly impressed by the beneficial
effect the system has had on the university community."
Halaby objected to the single penalty and expressed the view
that there should be "degrees of guilt," as in our legal system.

The approach to Honor Committee trials was becoming increasingly
legalistic. A visiting law professor raised the possibility
that "the total absence of any appeal from the Honor
Committee's decision violates due process of law." Dean of Admissions

100. Students and their dates slither about in the mud as a
favorite Easters diversion in 1974.

Marvin Perry had insisted that the Honor System
and especially honor trials be kept "from a dry and spiritless
legalistic system rather than a living expression of a spirit of
honor," but the Honor Committee of 1967-68 thought otherwise.
It initiated a movement "toward a more `legalistic'
Honor System," according to Bowman, "paralleling `a clear
trend' in contemporary legal opinion concerning educational
institutions `for the courts to hold a student's interest in pursuing
his educational opportunities to be more than a privilege,
and to recognize educational opportunity as an emerging
right.' "

In two Cavalier Daily articles Carroll Ladt examined the
workings of the Honor System as of 1968. After describing
cheating on quizzes and examinations, and widespread skepticism,
if not opposition, on the part of graduate students, law
students, and some faculty, he concluded that more intensive
orientation was essential to the system's preservation.

The Honor System was attacked in 1969 by the Radical Student
Union, a pro-Marxist group. Joel Gardner, a fourth-year
honor student in the College, said the organization "hit a new
high in absurdity" with its assault. The RSU had said that we
have finally come to see our "farcical" Honor System as one of
the two greatest irrelevancies in the pursuit of knowledge, the
other being the grading system. It added that the system generates
an élitist feeling among university students, causing
them to look down on their "common neighbors." Rather
similar criticisms of the Honor System were being voiced by
certain clergymen in the community.

The students voted in 1969 by 1,779 to 941 that the system
should be altered to cover the university administration, faculty,
coaches, and staff. The suggestion got nowhere. The persons
concerned would have had to agree, and the Honor
Committee would have had to be revamped.

A number of significant changes in the system were made
in 1969 and 1970. First came the Honor Committee's decision
to permit an appeal from a guilty verdict "upon a showing of
good cause," as contrasted with its previous position that no
appeal was possible except when substantial new evidence was
produced. Another change permitted the accused in honor
trials to retain the services of a local attorney. Such an attorney
was allowed to sit in on trials, but not to act as "oral advocate."

And there was also the important announcement that the
question of "intent" should be carefully weighed. In other
words, even though the student committed a violation of the
code, if he did not have "dishonorable intent," he could be
adjudged not guilty. An example would be the commission of
an offense by a person who was drunk and not fully aware of
what he was doing.

Problems that plagued the Honor Committee during the
sixties grew out of what some might term fine-spun distinctions.
For example, a law professor explained: "A student accompanied
by an eager and experienced companion of the
opposite sex, not his wife, to a motel, is not breaching the
Honor System when he signs the register with a false name; a
student, whether so accompanied or not, who registers at a
motel under a false name to bilk the proprietor of the rent,
is." The foregoing was published several times as guidance for
students.

The turmoil on college campuses in the late sixties and early
seventies and the consequent weakening of traditional concepts
and values had their impact at Virginia and elsewhere.
This disorganization and disruption increased the problems
of the university's Honor Committee.

Yet it is noteworthy that, despite this situation and greatly
increased enrollment at Virginia, there were fewer dismissals
annually under the Honor System from 1967-68 through
1970-71 than between 1960-61 and 1966-67. For the later
period, the number expelled under the system each year
ranged from three to ten, whereas for the earlier, dismissals
ranged from eleven to twenty-one. Enrollment had more than
doubled between 1960 and 1971, so that the falling off in expulsions
is extraordinary. An interesting aspect of the dismissals
over this period is that a larger and larger percentage were
expelled for academic offenses, that is, cheating and plagiarism,
and a smaller and smaller proportion for other offenses.
This would seem to indicate that student opinion was leaning
more and more away from regarding nonacademic offenses
as honor violations worthy of permanent dismissal. One is also
driven to the conclusion that since the number of expulsions
dropped, despite much higher enrollment, the system was not
working as effectively as formerly.

Student opinion was responsible in 1971 for a reversal by

the Honor Committee of a guilty verdict. A first-year student
was ordered dismissed for stealing several drinks from an
open vending machine. There was such a strong and immediate
adverse reaction that the Honor Committee met again,
reversed the verdict, and stated that "the current student generation
does not consider this act so reprehensible as to warrant
permanent dismissal." It was the first time that such a
reversal had taken place. Justification was seen in the words of
the Honor System's "Blue Sheet": "The Honor System shall
concern itself solely with those offenses which are classified as
dishonorable by the public opinion of the student generation
involved." A few months later a straw poll of 1,100 students
chosen at random by the Honor Committee resulted in a return
of 750 ballots, and a 93 percent vote for maintenance of
"an honor system." There was much less unanimity among the
respondents as to what the system's precise metes and bounds
should be. There was a 47 percent vote in favor of the single
sanction, that is, dismissal for any conviction, as against 37
percent who favored graduated penalties.

The Seven Society, always a zealous supporter of the Honor
System, provided the funds for publication of a special issue
of the Cavalier Daily devoted entirely to the system. It appeared
Mar. 13, 1972, and contained valuable analyses and
discussions. Prof. T. Braxton Woody, who had delivered a
much-admired address on the Honor System to the first-year
students for a number of years, was presented with a special
award by the Sevens for his contribution to the "continuing
growth and vitality" of the system. But he soon stopped giving
the address. "The Honor System was just not what it used to
be, and I began to feel that I just could not give that same talk
again," said Woody.

The Honor Committee voted 7 to 4 in 1972 not to introduce
a two-penalty system. Such a system had been suggested
by a group of law students, and the four committee members
who voted in favor of it were all graduate students. Two weeks
later a student poll returned a 68 percent vote in favor of retention
of the single sanction, 3,717 for and 1,748 against.
Gordon Peerman, who had just been elected president of the
College, said he had consistently taken the position that if any
changes came in the Honor System "they should come in
scope instead of sanction." The Honor Committee voted

unanimously the following year to retain the existing scope
and sanction.

"Several thousand books were missing before the [check]
system was enacted [at Alderman Library]", the Cavalier Daily
said. "Many of the books were undoubtedly purloined. . . . We
have a roughly analogous situation in the Newcomb Hall cafeteria
. . . `Thefts numbered in the hundreds per day,' [and protective
measures had to be instituted]."

The dispersion of the student body, especially its upperclassmen,
in housing far from the Grounds, was noted by
Honor Committee Chairman Peerman as a major reason for
the difficulties being experienced with the Honor System. He
stressed the need for interpreting the system "both as something
of value to the individual and to the university community"
and stated that the increasing numbers of students who
are not provided with adequate facilities are the crux of the
problem. "You can't fabricate community," he said. "We're
simply going to have to provide residential facilities for the
students. It is impossible to maintain any kind of community
for students who feel no more profound relationship to the
university than that of simply attending classes."

Another aspect of this problem is seen in the removal of the
Law School from Clark Hall to the North Grounds, where it
has become more and more isolated and out of the main
stream. Placing of the Graduate School of Business Administration
on the North Grounds had a similar effect.

Not only so, but students in the Graduate Schools of Arts
and Sciences, now numbering several thousand, were not indoctrinated
in the principles of the Honor System as were the
first-year undergraduates, Ben Ackerley, Honor Committee
Chairman in 1964-65, told the Board of Visitors. "The expanding
enrollment, especially in the graduate schools, is
making it doubly difficult for the Honor Committee to orientate
everyone," said Ackerley. "Effective orientation is still
being maintained with first-year students through the dormitory
complex, but no such control is available for graduate
students."

Although incoming faculty members were under instructions
from the president to attend the orientation session of
the Honor Committee, difficulty was being experienced in getting
them to obey this injunction. In 1974, for example, only

about 25 out of 240 new faculty members went to the briefing.
Those who did not were urged to respond to the committee's
next invitation.

Gray areas of the Honor System were being handled increasingly
by the student Judiciary Committee which, with the
university's mounting enrollment, became much more active
in the seventies. Five to ten trials were being held each semester.
An example of a gray area would be misuse of student
identification cards to obtain admittance to sports events. The
committee was concerned with student misbehavior, much of
it unrelated to the Honor System.

The trend toward greater legalization of Honor Committee
trials, brought about by law students and such organizations
as the American Civil Liberties Union, caused the committee
to rule in 1973 that a written statement of accusation would
be required in all cases. This was in order to "further insure
due process," the committee explained. Such a written statement
was no substitute for the original verbal confrontation
and accusation, it was emphasized.

A film on the Honor System was provided by the Seven Society.
It was paid for with a check for $47,777.77, buried seven
inches from one of the goal posts at Scott Stadium and exhumed
just before the University of North Carolina football
game.

Testimony to the honorable conduct of students in repaying
loans to the Seven Society and Ivey F. Lewis loan funds was
given in 1974 by Dean of Students Robert T. Canevari, who
was in charge of both operations. Neither fund requires any
security for loans. The record of repayment in both cases was
almost 100 per cent.

It is obvious that the University of Virginia's Honor System
in 1974 was by no means identical with the system that functioned
there for more than half of the twentieth century, not
to mention the one that was in operation in the nineteenth
century. The Honor Spirit that dominated a student body
ranging in number from fewer than one thousand to some
three thousand five hundred could hardly be unaffected by
the stresses and strains induced by a skyrocketing enrollment
several times as great. The more recent student body was not
only much larger but much more heterogeneous, and for the
first time included many women and blacks. Whereas in earlier

101. The Seven Society's mysterious symbol, visible only to passing airplane passengers, appeared suddenly
in 1966 on the dome of newly completed University Hall.

days there was prevailing uniformity of background, with
matriculates coming overwhelmingly from Virginia and other
southern states, there was in the sixties and seventies far
greater ethnic, geographic, and ideological diversity.

Like all human institutions, the university's Honor System
evolved with the times. In the College the Honor Spirit
burned brightest, for it was there that the first-year men were
given orientation at the beginning of the session. In the
graduate and professional schools, to which students came
from all corners of the globe, it was relatively difficult to indoctrinate
the newcomers. They were more mature, and those
who had attended other colleges and universities which were
without honor systems often had formed their own opinions
on the subject before they arrived at Virginia.

Possible modification of the university's revered institution,
such as the introduction of graduated penalties or a jury system
for trials, were being considered, although such drastic
modifications had been voted down more than once by the
students. Restriction of the system to purely academic matters,
such as cheating and plagiarism, also was being viewed as a
possibility.

Older alumni deeply lamented the necessity for changing
the system in any material respect, but modern trends dictated
certain alterations already made, and others were conceivable
for the future. In the oft-quoted words of Thomas Jefferson,
"Laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress
of the human mind." The University of Virginia which he
founded has been unable to avoid the application of this principle
in the evolution of its Honor System.

11. ELEVEN

Mr. Jefferson
Would Be Proud

ESTABLISHMENT OF A university press, a long-sought objective
at Charlottesville, became a reality in 1963. An oral
agreement in the 1920s between President Edwin A. Alderman
of the University of Virginia and President Frank P. Graham
of the University of North Carolina had been an obstacle.
Alderman was understood on good authority to have told
Graham that a press would not be established at Virginia to
compete with the one at Chapel Hill so long as Chapel Hill
refrained from launching a magazine in competition with the
Virginia Quarterly Review. This agreement held for several decades,
but finally was allowed to lapse. The Carolina Quarterly
appeared, and there was nothing to prevent establishment of
a university press at Virginia.

The Virginia Historical Society in Richmond led in pushing
the latter project. When there were delays, Samuel M. Bemiss,
president of the society and a university alumnus, prodded
the university into action. The result was that President Shannon,
who was strongly in favor of the plan, was able to announce
that the University Press of Virginia was ready for
business. It would be the first university press in the nation to
publish the scholarly output of all educational and other
learned institutions within a state, and other such presses soon
followed its example. Victor Reynolds, longtime head of the
Cornell University Press, and former president of the Association
of American University Presses, a man with a national

reputation in the field, was the first director of the University
Press of Virginia. The board of directors included four University
of Virginia professors and three representatives of
scholarly organizations. Operations were begun in cramped
quarters in the Rotunda but moved in 1967 to a nine-room
house on Sprigg Lane. The family of Samuel M. Bemiss, who
had since died, made the move financially possible, and the
organization functioned much more effectively in its commodious
building—christened Bemiss House.

The press began publishing almost at once and more than
met the publishing schedule originally laid out. After establishing
it on a firm foundation, Victor Reynolds retired in
1969 and was tendered a dinner in the Rotunda. He was succeeded
by his assistant, Walker Cowen, a native of Texas and
Ph.D. of Harvard, where he was a Woodrow Wilson Fellow.
Cowen had been with the press for three years and was a lecturer
in the English Department. Under him the press has
come to be recognized as one of the foremost university
presses in the land, with management that has kept it in the
black, in contrast to some others, and with a list of scholarly
publications that is the envy of many.

The University Press of Virginia publishes and distributes
books for no fewer than sixteen learned societies and groups
outside the commonwealth, including such prestigious organizations
as the Morgan Library, American Antiquarian Society,
Winterthur Museum, Colonial Society of Massachusetts,
and the Grolier Club. All this has made the University Press
of Virginia the principal publisher and distributor for the
learned societies of this country. Inside the state it has published
works from a majority of Virginia's colleges and universities,
as well as such notable organizations as Colonial Williamsburg,
the Virginia Historical Society, and the Virginia
Museum of Fine Arts. Its two major publishing projects are
the multivolume Papers of George Washington and Papers of James
Madison, the largest single publishing enterprise dealing with
the papers of the Founding Fathers. It has also issued
hundreds of books on a great variety of subjects. Assessing the
significance of the press in the life of the university, President
Shannon said: "It has immensely encouraged and stimulated
the intellectual life and scholarly production of the faculty and
graduate students, and has enhanced recognition of the university

as a scholarly and cultural center. Another result has
been its perceptible effect in drawing the university closer into
relationships with sister institutions throughout the state."

Charlotte Kohler's retirement as editor of the Virginia Quarterly
Review was arranged in 1974, to become effective the following
year, the fiftieth anniversary of the magazine. She had
served for nearly three decades in the position. Managing editor
during World War II, she was appointed editor in 1946.
The magazine received many tributes for its excellence during
her editorship. A B.A. of Vassar College and M.A. and Ph.D.
of the University of Virginia, Miss Kohler joined the university
faculty in 1965 as associate professor of English and became a
full professor in 1971.

Staige D. Blackford, Jr., editor of the Cavalier Daily in his
student days and subsequently an editor at Louisiana State
University Press, press secretary to Gov. Linwood Holton, and
assistant to President Edgar F. Shannon, Jr., was named to succeed
her.

New Literary History a publication that had an international
impact, was founded at the university in 1969 as part of the
sesquicentennial observance. Ralph Cohen, Kenan Professor
of English, was the editor of this highly esoteric magazine,
which attracted contributions from such writers as John Cage,
Marshall McLuhan, Claude Lévi-Strauss, René Wellek, and
Max Black. The journal "is designed as a forum for scholars
rethinking such basic issues as the nature of literature in the
lives of men," said Editor Cohen, and it was believed by many
to be "altering the whole concept and theory of literary history
in this country," said the Alumni News. New Literary History was
the first American journal to publish an article written for it
by a member of the Institute for World Literature. Issued
three times a year, the magazine inquires into such matters as
"what happens when a person reads, the concept of symbolism,
form in nature, and the theme of a Mozart piano sonata."
Cohen said in 1972 that there were 1,200 subscribers, considered
good for so recondite a publication. He also was encouraged
by the increasing intellectualism of his students. They
were beginning to ask questions, he said, "not about rhyme
schemes in a sonnet but basic questions about literary perception."

William H. Wranek, Jr., retired as director of the University
News Service in 1961, after serving in that post since 1922
when he founded the service. Wranek also had been editor
and managing editor of the Alumni News off and on for a good
part of that time. He was, in addition, lecturer on journalism
in the School of Education for seven years, and many of the
journalists turned out at Virginia were trained under him,
either in his course or on the student newspaper. He continued
to serve the university as consultant and special writer
after his retirement.

Bevin Alexander, Richmond newspaperman, was named to
succeed him but with a new title, Director of Information Services.
He remained for five years and resigned to accept another
position. William H. Fishback, Jr., also a Richmond
newspaperman, was appointed Director of Information Services
in 1966. He was in fact editor of the Alumni News, although
it was decided to list Director of Alumni Activities Gilbert
J. Sullivan as editor, a position he had held previously.
Sullivan had plenty to occupy his time directing the expanding
Alumni Association, which he was doing successfully,
while the editorship of the magazine was being ably handled
by Fishback. A valuable service was rendered by Fishback during
the student disorders of 1969-70 when he furnished the
Virginia press with accurate information concerning happenings
at the university, as a counterweight to the grossly biased
material that was appearing in the Cavalier Daily. In 1973
"Bill" Fishback was promoted to the position of Director of
University Relations, a new position. In that capacity he gave
attention to community and state relations, and worked with
the university's president and the vice-presidents on a variety
of problems in the area of public affairs. He retained his responsibilities
with the Alumni News.

A new student publication, Plume and Sword, appeared in
1960 and survived for eight years. Its contents, frequently
critical of such agencies and organizations as the Student
Council and the Cavalier Daily, consisted mainly of topical features,
news and interviews, and some poetry and fiction. Its
circulation was small. As for the University of Virginia Magazine,
it was enjoying much greater acceptance from the student
body in the 1960s. It frequently published authoritative articles

102. Elizabeth Johnson, assistant dean of admissions, who
helped in recruiting black students.

by distinguished faculty members. For some reason it
went out of existence in 1969 and was succeeded by a revived
Virginia Spectator. The original publication of that name had
been liquidated by President Darden because of its obscene
content. In its new incarnation the Spectator "verbally assassinated"
various prominent individuals, while nearly everybody
else was "slightly slurred," according to an article by Fred Heblich.
"But scattered among the dirty jokes and uncalled for
insults is some legitimate literature and some clean humor," he
added. Still another publication, The Declaration, a weekly
newsmagazine, appeared in 1973. It was devoted to in-depth
news, features, and sports and was a creditable enterprise.
Like most student organs, it tended to be on the liberal side
and endorsed Henry Howell for governor. The Cavalier Daily,
for its part, got the highest award it had ever received from
the Associated College Press in the spring of 1969—a "firstclass
honor" rating for the first semester of that year. It had
been rated "first class" for several other semesters during the
1960s. The Virginia Law Weekly continued to win praise from
the American Bar Association as the best student newspaper
published by a law school with enrollment of between five
hundred and one thousand. It was given this preeminent position
in 1974 for the eighteenth consecutive year.

John C. Wyllie was named university director of libraries, and
Ray W. Frantz, Jr., director of libraries at the University of
Wyoming, was appointed to succeed him as university librarian.
The community was shocked when Wyllie died suddenly
in 1968, after less than a year in office. The Bibliographical
Society of the university established in his memory
the John Cook Wyllie Memorial Fund for the publication of
books in the field of bibliography. Also, the Clinch Valley College
Library was named for him. Frantz was appointed director
of libraries.

Ray Frantz managed the university's library system well, but
facilities were inadequate to cope with the steadily rising acquisitions
and the mounting student enrollment. An addition
to Alderman Library, costing about $1,500,000 was outgrown
almost as soon as it was opened, and more space became essential.

Dr. Wilhelm Moll was brought from the University of Kentucky's

Medical Center to take charge of the similar center at
Virginia. He had a leading role in arrangements for a medical
library in the projected Medical Education building. The old
medical library had been badly overcrowded for years in a
wing of the School of Medicine. In the middle sixties the medical
library and the other library units at the university became
a part of the teletype network (TWX), by which information
could be obtained in a matter of minutes from libraries or
business and governmental organizations in all parts of the
United States.

The finest collection in existence of the works of Nathaniel
Hawthorne and one of the finest on Robert Frost were two of
the notable additions by C. Waller Barrett to his Barrett Collection
at the library. A dinner was tendered him there on his
seventieth birthday in 1971 with some seventy-five men of letters
in attendance. Rare works were presented in his honor.
Speakers at the dinner were President Shannon and Prof.
Fredson T. Bowers. The following year Barrett was given
Princeton University's Donald F. Hyde Award for "distinction
in book collecting and service to the community of scholars."
His collection was termed "unrivaled in quality and quantity."

A Tennyson collection, said to be the greatest remaining assemblage
of Tennyson materials in private hands, was presented
to the library by alumni and friends in honor of President
Shannon, a leading Tennysonian scholar. Another valuable
acquisition was a 10,000-volume collection of Chinese classics
in the Chinese language, presented by the Ellen Bayard Weedon
Foundation. Also, a rare collection of original cartoons
and comic strips, ranging from Thomas Nast to Walt Disney
and from H. T. Webster to Charles Addams, donated by Bernard
M. Meeks of Arlington. And the extensive Walter Reed
Yellow Fever Archive, assembled over three decades by Nobel
Laureate Philip S. Hench was presented to the library by his
widow. This archive was especially useful to Dr. William B.
Bean, who is writing a biography of Reed. A different type of
acquisition was a Gilbert Stuart portrait of George Washington,
which had come down through the Rives family of Castle
Hill, and was given to the library by Mrs. F. Bayard Rives and
her son, George L. Rives. It was placed in the Mount Vernon
Room at the library, a copy of Washington's library at Mount
Vernon.

The 150th anniversary of the university's founding was observed
in 1969 with a year-long celebration that brought renowned
scholars to the Grounds from a number of countries.
Its theme was expressed in Jefferson's famous phrase "The
Illimitable Freedom of the Human Mind." The observance
opened in January with a Charter Day dinner, was followed a
few days later by a dinner in New York at the Hotel Pierre,
under the auspices of the Newcomen Society, with President
Shannon as the speaker; continued on through Founder's Day
in April, and culminated in a three-day celebration Oct.
19-21. It was decided that the sesquicentennial observance
should not be an occasion for self-congratulation but rather
an opportunity to review the university's commitment to the
fulfillment of Jefferson's ideals.

This was the era of nationwide campus agitation, and there
were sour notes at Virginia from a small group of students,
led by Robert Rosen, and calling themselves the Coalition. On
Founder's Day they held a "counter-convocation" on the Rotunda
steps, with perhaps one hundred persons in attendance.
As the academic procession marched down the Lawn to
Cabell Hall for the convocation, about a score of these students
walked along carrying placards with such legends as
"Thousands of Dollars for the Sesqui, But Not One Dollar for
Integration" and "150 Years of Racism—What the Hell Have
You Got to Celebrate?" These pickets, according to a statement
by President Shannon years later, "were being partially
instigated by the ministers over at St. Paul's, and they were
making all their signs . . . in the basement of the church." A
number of them walked out of the ceremonies at Cabell Hall.
Before doing so they heckled the speaker, Esmond Wright, a
university graduate in the class of 1940, member of the British
Parliament and professor at the University of Glasgow. The
Cavalier Daily termed the convocation "a monument to hypocrisy."

Except for these minor distractions, the sesquicentennial
was a great success, with strong support from faculty, students,
alumni, and the public at large. Such internationally
known scholars and writers as Robert Lowell, Raymond Aron,
Daniel Boorstin, and Philip Hauser appeared on various programs
during the year, and a climactic event was the address
in October by Philip Handler, president of the National Academy

103. Barry Parkhill, all-American Basketball player, 1972.

of Sciences, who spoke on "The University in a World in
Transition." Handler stated that Thomas Jefferson "would be
pleased and proud to see . . . his university . . . giving to his
state its leaders for a century and a half, spreading the Enlightenment,
giving tone and character to Virginia and these
United States." European institutions represented at the final
ceremonies included the universities of Padua, Oxford, St.
Andrews, Poitiers, Leyden, and Groningen, as well as scores
of colleges and universities from all parts of the United States
and many learned societies. A special feature of the celebration
was the announcement of fifteen Sesquicentennial Professorships
and the filling of these with the appointment of
that number of distinguished men from the faculty. They
were known as Sesquicentennial Associates of the Center for
Advanced Studies and were freed of all teaching duties during
the year while they pursued their researches, either at the
university or elsewhere. These professorships were approximate
equivalents of sabbaticals. Their number was substantially
increased in subsequent years.

In thanking those who were chiefly responsible for arranging
and carrying out the sesquicentennial program, President
Shannon said: "Particular appreciation must be expressed to
A. E. D. Howard, chairman of the committee who planned
the celebration; to B. F. D. Runk, executive chairman for the
sesquicentennial year, who directed all the activities with flair
and enthusiasm; and to William A. Hobbs, alumnus, former
member of the Board of Visitors, director of development and
public affairs, who graciously carried the administrative responsibility
for the entire undertaking."

The most dismal athletic record in the history of the university
was being compiled in the late 1950s and early 1960s. To the
loss of twenty-eight football games in a row was added the loss
of nineteen basketball games in 1957, and three wins and
twenty-two losses in 1961. The baseball tally for 1960 was
equally devastating—two games won, fifteen lost, and two
tied. Students gave little support to the teams, and there was
much talk of pulling out of the Atlantic Coast Conference.
Gus Tebell resigned as director of athletics, a post he had held
since 1951. He had come to the university in 1931 and
coached football, baseball, and basketball at one time or another.

He was elected to the Basketball Hall of Fame in 1964.

Steve Sebo, head football coach at the University of Pennsylvania
and then general manager of the Titans, later the Jets
of the American Football League, was named to succeed Tebell.
He filled this position until 1971, when Eugene F. (Gene)
Corrigan, who had been director of sports information, was
appointed director of university athletic programs, a new position,
with overall charge of athletics. Sebo retained his title
and was given various duties, including scheduling the games.
His associate director was Evan J. (Bus) Male, a former football
player for the Cavaliers and a wheelhorse in the athletic
department for several decades. Male's chief responsibilities
were attending to the finances and administering University
Hall and the other athletic facilities.

Since the departure of Art Guepe as football coach, a series
of successors in the job had been highly ineffective, but with
the hiring in 1961 of William T. Elias, the George Washington
University coach, there was a rift in the gloom. Elias began by
telling the football squad, "Your first duty is to get an education,
and your second duty is to play football"—refreshingly
novel doctrine from a mentor of the gridiron. Eighty men
came out for spring practice, a record. "Pep rallies" were held
before several of the games, something that had happened
hardly at all for years. William and Mary was defeated 21 to 6,
and by the end of the season Virginia had won four and lost
six, the best record since 1952. Elias was chosen ACC "coach
of the year."

Yet despite these successes the students seemed largely indifferent
during the games and "sat quiet-mouthed and
placid, as though . . . attending some type of wake." The "V"
Club was also criticized for lackadaisical behavior.

Gary Cuozzo, who quarterbacked the team at this time, was
a Phi Beta Kappa and a Raven. He went from Virginia to the
Baltimore Colts, where he was backup for the famous Johnny
Unitas. When Unitas was injured in 1965, Cuozzo threw five
touchdown passes against the Minnesota Vikings, more than
Unitas had ever thrown, and the Colts won, 41 to 21.

The studied indifference of the student body came to an
end with Virginia's 35-14 victory over Army in 1964. "Football
frenzy captured the university. . . . What has happened to
the traditional `don't-give-a-damn' atmosphere which is supposed

to prevail over Virginia?" the student newspaper asked.
The Cavaliers won five and lost five that season, but despite
the marked improvement remained in the ACC cellar.

The victory over Army was apparently responsible, in part,
for the fact that Bill Elias was wooed away from the university
by the U.S. Naval Academy. He left in January 1965 and was
succeeded by his assistant, George Blackburn. Elias had recruited
some genuine stars—Gary Cuozzo, Bob Davis, Don
Parker, Tom Hodges, Ed Carrington, Jarvis, Stetter, and Kowalkowski—but
the team seemed not to realize its full potential.
Davis, Parker, Carrington, and Stetter were chosen as
ACC all-stars in 1966, and Virginia ranked third in the conference.
Quarterback Robert E. Davis, Jr., of Neptune, N.J., 6
feet 2 and 195 pounds, set a Virginia and ACC record for total
offense, with 4,025 yards over a three-year period, compared
to Bill Dudley's 3,469. Davis also had the highest total yardage
in the conference for a single season, 1,688. He was chosen
ACC athlete of the year and signed with the Houston Oilers.

Execrable taste was shown by some Virginia students before,
during, and after the VPI game of 1966—which VPI
won, 24 to 7. Adopting its usual sneering attitude toward the
Blacksburg institution, the Cavalier Daily published an editorial
entitled "Needed: Someone to Hate" a few days before the
game. One sentence was, "Let's greet our guests with all the
odium, execration, aversion and abomination in our twisted,
venomous little minds." When the visiting team came on the
field, it was loudly booed, as was the Highty-Tighty Marching
Band. Two Virginia students ran back and forth through the
band while it was maneuvering. The Cavalier Daily, apparently
blissfully unaware of its own crude insults, sharply criticized
the Virginia students the following week for their "blatant
rudeness and ungentlemanly conduct." The newspaper received
a barrage of denunciatory letters from university students
who were embarrassed by its ill-bred comments. The
Student Council wrote a letter of apology to the HightyTighty
Band.

Virginia won four games and lost six in 1967, and then in
1968 it had its first winning season since 1952, with seven wins
and three losses. Frank Quayle, the star back, was named ACC
player of the year, the team averaged 32.8 points per game,
and George Blackburn was named ACC coach of the year.

North Carolina State won the ACC championship, however.
Offensive guard Chucker Hammer and offensive tackle Greg
Shelly were all-Conference, while quarterback Gene Arnette
and fullback Jeff Anderson were also outstanding. Quayle
signed a contract with the Denver Broncos.

One reason why Virginia had so few seasons such as that of
1968 was that the institution's admissions standards were
higher than those of the other universities in the Atlantic
Coast Conference. Virginia led the ACC usually, but not always,
in the number of its athletes with at least a B average in
their studies. Prof. D. Alan Williams, faculty Chairman of athletics
and president of the ACC, said in 1973 that the university
"has the highest standards in the conference, and the ACC
has the highest standards in the nation. We were the only
school in the country last year to totally abide by the 1.6 grade
projection." Virginia also may have been the only one that required
a foreign language for entrance. A perfect example of
the consequences of the university's higher standards is seen
in the case of Don McCauley, who wanted to come to Virginia
but was turned down because his grades were not high
enough. He was promptly admitted at Chapel Hill, where he
broke many records, was chosen ACC player of the year for
two successive seasons, and was the nation's all-time leading
rusher.

Coach George Blackburn laid down some curious rules for
the Cavalier team in 1970, including "regular Sunday church
attendance . . . avoid swearing and obscene words." The Student
Council objected strenuously, and rightly, saying that the
rules were "contrary to the spirit of personal dignity, religious
freedom and amateur athletics." It also objected to the football
players' having to live together for four years, unless they
could present an acceptable excuse.

Coach Blackburn's contract was not renewed after the 1970
season, and he was succeeded by Don Lawrence, his assistant
for four years. Lawrence remained in the post until 1973,
when Ulmo (Sonny) Randle, `59, was chosen to replace him.
Randle had starred at Virginia as the leading pass-receiver
and kick-off returner in the ACC and had then gone to the
pros. As end on the St. Louis Cardinals he was all-pro four
times. He came to Charlottesville from East Carolina, where
as coach he had been highly successful.

The arrival of Sonny Randle as coach of the Cavaliers
opened a new era—temporarily. An intense, highly strung individual
who demanded more complete dedication to the
gridiron than had ever been demanded at the institution,
Randle aroused great enthusiasm among football-minded
alumni and misgivings in virtually all other quarters. Season
ticket sales broke all records, but soon after the season opened
various players left the squad. Randle put too much pressure
on them, they said, and called on them to put football ahead
of everything, including their classes. The latter allegation was
denied by Randle, and he was supported by the President's
Advisory Subcommittee, which concluded that the allegation
was untrue. Yet nobody questioned that Randle was frantically
emotional and almost on the verge of apoplexy during
games—charging up and down the sidelines, often moving a
few feet onto the field, waving his arms and growling at both
officials and players. "There's a wild man over there," said one
official. Randle's record for 1974 was four wins and seven
losses, and while he expressed determination to do better the
following year, there were serious misgivings as to whether his
almost fanatical approach to football was what the University
of Virginia needed.

Several players went to the pros. Harrison Davis, an end,
was drafted in 1973 by the San Diego Chargers, and Paul Ryczek,
a center, by the Atlanta Falcons. Kent Merritt, a speedy
back who as a member of the track team tied Rector's longstanding
9.3 university record for the 100-yard dash, went to
the New Orleans Saints as a wide receiver. The following year
Dick Ambrose, all-ACC linebacker for two seasons, was
drafted by the Cleveland Browns, and Ken Shelton, a recordsetting
pass receiver, signed with the Denver Broncos.

Behavior of some university students at games during the
1974 season was vigorously rapped. The North Carolina State
marching band was showered with beer cans, ice cubes, and
obscenities, the Cavalier Daily said. Conduct of certain students
at the game the following Saturday was described by a writer
to the paper as "barbaric."

The doings of Virginia undergraduates at basketball games
over a period of years also were deplored, both at the university
and outside. In 1965 a Sports Illustrated article called the
University of Virginia's Memorial Gymnasium "one of the notable

104. Dr. Byrd S. Leavell and his son, Byrd Leavell, Jr., who
won the Distinguished Professor Award of the Alumni Associa-
tion and the "Pete" Gray Award, respectively, in 1972.

snake pits" in the ACC. Students insisted, at many
games, on throwing paper cups and other debris onto the
floor and booing visiting players and officials. Similar lack of
sportsmanship was shown when the games were moved to
just-completed University Hall. "This is in sharp contrast to
the excellent behavior of students of rival ACC schools on
their home courts," said the Cavalier Daily. In 1973 Director of
Athletic Programs Gene Corrigan wrote the paper protesting
that "during the past several games 25 or 30 people have cast
a black cloud over the university. . . . This not only gives the
university the reputation of having the poorest crowds in the
ACC, but it hurts our basketball team." By contrast, the Cavalier
basketball players were praised for their continuing
sportsmanlike behavior, despite a series of years in which they
lost most of their games.

In 1971 Virginia had its first winning basketball season since
1954, with a record of 15 and 11. Coach Bill Gibson, who had
been on the verge of being fired a few years before, was
named ACC coach of the year. Barry Parkhill was the team's
bright star. In 1972 the Cavaliers won 21 games and lost 7.
Parkhill was ACC player of the year, Gibson coach of the
year, and Parkhill was named a second all-American by the
UPI. His jersey was retired. Scott McCandlish was a great rebounder,
and others on this exceptional team were Frank
DeWitt, Jim Hobgood, Tim Rash, and Chip Miller. Virginia
ranked tenth nationally.

"Hoot" Gibson resigned as coach in 1974 to take a similar
post at the University of Southern Florida and was highly
praised at a farewell dinner. Shortly before, he had recruited
such superior performers as Wally Walker, Gus Gerard, and
Billy Langloh, who would play the following season for Terry
Holland, Gibson's successor. Holland had made an exceptional
record as coach at Davidson, and had played on that
college's first nationally ranked basketball team.

In lacrosse the Cavaliers continued in the sixties and seventies
to maintain their national ranking. As members of the National
Lacrosse League they played against none but the top
teams in the country and were regular contenders for the
championship. As early as 1952 Virginia had a two-way tie for
the national title, and then, after a three-way tie in 1970, won

the NCAA championship in 1972. The Cavaliers also defeated
a strong Oxford-Cambridge team in 1961. Virginia's firstteam
all-Americans between 1961 and 1974 were Henry Peterson,
Hy Levasseur, Deeley Nice, Snowden Hoff (twice),
Dick Peterson, Peter Coy, Jim Eustace, Doug Hilbert, Jim Potter,
Pete Eldredge (twice), Tom Schildwachter, Tom Duquette,
Bruce Mangels, Barry Robertson, and Boo Smith. Jay Connor
was not only all-American twice in lacrosse but once in soccer,
as well, while Mac Caputo won the same honor once in each
sport.

Virginia's extraordinary record in lacrosse was due in no
small measure to Gene Corrigan, coach from 1959 through
1967, himself an all-American at Duke. His reputation was
such that he was offered the post of head lacrosse coach at
Yale but turned it down. When Virginia won the lacrosse
championship of the ACC in 1962, it was the first ACC title
won by the university in any sport. Corrigan received the IMP
award in 1967.

He was succeeded as lacrosse coach by Clayton Beardmore,
all-American at Maryland, who remained for two years. Glenn
Thiel, coach at Baltimore Community College, then took over.

In soccer Gene Corrigan was highly successful as coach
from 1955 to 1967, during which time he had only two losing
seasons. Paul Saylor was an all-American in 1960. ACC soccer
championships were won in 1969 under Coach Gordon Burris
and in 1970 under Jim Stephens.

The baseball team, coached by Jim West, won its first ACC
championship in 1972. Its record was 9-4 against ACC teams
and 20-9 overall. Standout players were Terry Dan, Steve
Sroba, and Robin Marvin. A particular star of that era was
Mike Cubbage, who went on to a successful career in the big
leagues.

The Cavalier wrestlers were second in the ACC for each of
the five years ended in 1973, and then in 1974 they dethroned
Maryland, which had been invincible for twenty-one years.
Wrestling at Virginia owed much to psychology Prof. Frank
Finger, who coached the team for the seventeen years before
1963 and usually had a winning season. He was succeeded by
Mebane Turner, one of the foremost grapplers in the university's
history. Mike Caruso, who had just graduated from Lehigh,

where he won three NCAA championships, followed
Turner in 1967, but it was George Edwards whose team
achieved the victory over Maryland.

The university's Law School provided two members of the
1963 U.S. Davis Cup tennis team for matches against Iran.
They were Donald Dell and Gene Scott, who ranked seventh
and eighth nationally and came to the Law School from Yale.
C. Alphonso Smith, Jr., one of the foremost tennis players in
University of Virginia history, was the nonplaying captain.
The Americans made a clean sweep of the matches with the
Iranians in Teheran.

The university's tennis facilities, provided by Lady Astor,
had been outgrown, and in 1971 the Perry Foundation of
Charlottesville donated the funds for eleven more courts near
University Hall and at Bonnycastle Dell. Nevertheless by 1974
there were long waiting lines at all three complexes. The Perry
Foundation also provided three new basketball courts in the
"cage" at University Hall, these to be available to students
when the varsity was not practicing in the building.

Outstanding facilities for track and field were completed on
Copeley Hill near University Hall in 1970, replacing those
abandoned on Lambeth Field. The complex was named for
Pop Lannigan, the university's first track coach. Most of the
required $200,000 was provided by the Athletic Department,
with the rest coming from former members of the track team
and the Alumni Fund. A baseball diamond also was constructed.

Scott Stadium, completed in 1931, was rehabilitated and upgraded
in 1974. Over $360,000 was pledged by descendants
of Frederic W. Scott the original donor, and an anonymous
benefactor contributed $300,000 for the purchase and installation
of astroturf. This last made possible much greater use
of the stadium, especially for intramural sports and "phys.
ed." classes.

With the coming of full-scale coeducation in 1970, women
were increasingly active in athletics, on both intercollegiate
and intramural levels. Barbara Kelly was appointed director
of women's intercollegiate athletics at Virginia, and in 1974,
for the first time, varsity women's tennis, basketball, and field
hockey were played. These teams were eligible for university

funding to cover equipment, travel, coaching, and publicity.
Swimming and diving were to be added the following year.
The first woman swimmer in the history of the ACC had been
Mary Brundage, a third-year student at the university and
member of the varsity swimming team in 1966. Women's
teams had early success in varsity competition with other
women in the seventies. The varsity field hockey team had a
9-4 record in 1974 and sent Kathy Devereaux and Cindy
Hook to the Eastern Regional Tournament. The basketball
team had a 10-5 record. In swimming, Ellen Feldman placed
first in the 100-meter backstroke in the 1973 World University
Games, and distance swimmer Susie Allen and backstroker
Dottie Dilts competed in the National AAU championships
the following year. Women constituted 40 percent of the 1,000
students taking "phys. ed." classes at that time and were extremely
active in intramurals, where many of the games were
coeducational. Men and women teamed together against similarly
mixed competition, and found it exciting and enjoyable,
according to the Alumni News. "This year," it said, "the hit of
the season was inner-tube water polo, in which some 50 teams
competed." Funds of the Student Aid Foundation were being
used to finance women's sports, and it was anticipated that
athletic scholarships would soon be awarded.

The Student Aid Foundation was launched in 1951 with a
fund of $46,000; by 1965 the fund had risen to $115,000, and
in 1974 was approaching $500,000. Grants in aid were given
in the latter year to about 130 student athletes in football, basketball,
golf, lacrosse, soccer, swimming, track, cross country,
and wrestling. Baseball and tennis were not included.

The time had come when there were only female cheerleaders
at varsity games, in glaring contrast to a decade before,
when the male contingent was aghast at the mere thought of
girls in that role. But while the males were not thoroughly
acclimated to the presence of women in their classes and
dorms, they concluded that cheers led by none but girls were
a bit too much. In 1974 it was decided to divide the twenty
cheerleaders equally between the sexes.

Intramurals at Virginia had expanded spectacularly under
the able leadership of Edward R. (Butch) Slaughter, who retired
in 1973 after forty-two years on the university's athletic

staff and sixteen years in charge of intramurals. The latter
program was said to be the best in the ACC, with many thousands
of participants in a score of sports. Several tournaments
in a number of different leagues were run each semester. As
an example of the tremendous involvement, some twelve
hundred students were taking part in 1972 in 185 basketball
games in Memorial Gymnasium. Nonfraternity men and
coeds made up a substantial percentage of the players in the
various types of competition. In addition to directing this farreaching
program, Butch Slaughter, an all-American football
player in his student days at Michigan, had coached football,
baseball, and golf at Virginia and served as chairman of the
Department of Physical Education. "He is probably a friend
to more university students than any other man" said the
Alumni News. Slaughter was given an award by the Seven Society
for his devoted service to the university.

Another sports celebrity was honored when "Al" York was
paid tribute for his leadership in boxing. Captain of the team
when Virginia boxers were national powers, and coach thereafter
for many years, York was given a watch by the Z Society
at a dinner attended by over two hundred and fifty persons.

At varsity football and basketball games in the seventies a
new and refreshing element was introduced by the antics of
what was laughingly known as the Fighting Cavaliers Indoor/
Outdoor Precision(?) Marching Pep Band and Chowder Society
Revue. An outgrowth of the Pep Band that functioned
spasmodically in the fifties and sixties, this zany outfit burlesqued
the precision maneuvers of well-drilled bands at other
institutions. Its clowning was deemed highly amusing and
added a waggish note to the contests in Scott Stadium and
University Hall.

The Alumni Association was growing steadily in memberships
and contributions during the sixties and seventies. Gilly Sullivan
had succeeded Mac Luck as director of alumni affairs in
1958, and a drive was launched during the 1958-59 session
for life memberships at $200 each. This effort paid off handsomely,
and a decade later Association President James L.
Trinkle was able to announce that there were 6,116 life members
(LM's), and the association's endowment had reached

105. Avery Catlin, executive vice-president of the university,
1974-.

$700,000, largely as a result of these memberships. Since
many were buying them on the instalment plan, nearly five
hundred thousand dollars more was to be collected. Life
membership funds were placed in trust, and only the income
was used. In that same year total membership in the association
exceeded ten thousand for the first time, since there were
more than four thousand regular members in addition to the
LM's. "In recent years," said the Alumni News, "the figure for
total alumni support has been in the area of $1,500,000." Circulation
of the News was "rapidly approaching 20,000," and it
was a remarkably good source concerning university happenings
and trends.

There were so many different alumni organizations of one
kind or another that the Office of University Development,
established in 1970, had as one of its functions the coordination
of their efforts. These agencies included the Law, Engineering,
Graduate School of Business, and Student Aid Foundations,
and the alumni associations of the schools of Law, Medicine,
Graduate Business, Nursing, Education, and Architecture.

Funds received by the University of Virginia Alumni Association
from dues contributed substantially to the association's
activities. These included publication and distribution of the
Alumni News, alumni chapter activities, homecomings and reunions,
individual services to alumni, grants and loans to students
and faculty members, and upkeep of Alumni Hall.

Officers from about thirty alumni chapters gathered at the
university in the fall of 1963 for the first of a series of annual
workshops designed to acquaint them with the progress of the
university and the operations of the alumni association. After
busy sessions on Friday afternoon and Saturday morning,
they attended the Virginia-North Carolina football game, and
then were guests at a dinner with two other alumni groups.
President Shannon gave the address.

Three years later the association established two annual
awards, one for outstanding teaching and the other recognizing
exceptional student leadership, the awards to be made at
the class day exercises each June. The faculty award carried
with it a check for $500 and the student award $200. Both
included life memberships in the association.

Also in 1966 the places where most university alumni live

were tabulated. Of the 37,058 alumni at that time, Virginia
had 15,444, New York 2,729, Maryland 1,626, New Jersey
1,408, Pennsylvania 1,372, Florida 1,124, California 1,042,
and North Carolina 984. Richmond was said to have "the largest
concentration of university alumni in the world," with
2,072, followed by Charlottesville, with 1,951, and Norfolk
with 1,023. Several years before, a faculty committee headed
by Dean F. L. Geldard polled alumni for suggestions concerning
the university. More than 40 percent of the replies urged
continuation of the policy whereby a substantial percentage of
out-of-state students attend the institution. It was held that
there were distinct educational advantages in enabling the students
from Virginia to have contacts with those from other
states and that it enhanced the university's reputation as a national
center of learning.

Contacts between students and faculty at the university
were made closer and easier by a plan inaugurated in 1970.
The alumni association made funds available to faculty members
who wished to entertain students in their homes. Up to
$35 was provided for each occasion, with a maximum of three
such opportunities per professor.

By 1974 membership in the alumni association was just under
fifteen thousand, a record, and contributions to the
Alumni Fund totaled $583,035, another record. Alumni Fund
Director Clay Delauney said that over the years about twothirds
of all contributions to the fund had come from outside
Virginia, and much the same could be said of endowments.
Under a succession of able presidents and with the competent
work of Alumni Activities Director Sullivan the association
was making gratifying progress.

The building program under Edgar Shannon was tremendous,
although this was not anticipated when he took over the
presidency. At the end of Colgate Darden's term, Darden remarked
to Shannon: "Well, I've got the the buildings pretty
well done now. Once you get the chemistry building, you can
concentrate on the faculty." Shannon did concentrate on the
faculty, with splendid results, but he also had to devote much
attention to construction of additional physical equipment,
made necessary by the unexpectedly rapid rise in enrollment

and the accompanying expansion of the teaching staff.

The program for the decade 1960-70 was summarized as
follows by Shannon:

All this came to over fifty million dollars in state, federal,
and private funds. By the time Edgar Shannon went out of
office in 1974, the total would be more than double that
amount.

The addition to Newcomb Hall in 1965 brought forth additional
scathing comments from the students, despite the
hall's indispensability, and its constant use by these same students.
Termed an "environmental blunder" by a writer in the
University of Virginia Magazine, and said to resemble a "dead
elephant," the author declared that the addition made the hall
look "like an even bigger dead elephant." He conceded that
the addition provided "much needed space." Similar architectural
criticisms had appeared in the Cavalier Daily, which also
pronounced Newcomb Hall too expensive for what it provided.

Seven new dormitories on Alderman Road, estimated to
cost three million dollars and housing more than eight
hundred students, were built in the mid-1960s and were
named for Professors Robley Dunglison, Edward H. Courtenay,
and Socrates Maupin from the early faculty, and
Thomas Fitzhugh, Francis P. Dunnington, William Minor Lile,
and Albert H. Tuttle from the later.

106. The Big Tent was going strong in 1970 as a gathering
place for returning alumni.

Morea, built in 1834 by Prof. John P. Emmet on what was
later called Sprigg Lane, was purchased in 1960 through the
generosity of Prof. and Mrs. William S. Weedon and the
Alumni Board of Trustees and given to the university. It was
renovated and furnished with antiques and then made available
as a residence for visiting celebrities. The place was
named Morea from the Latin word morus, meaning "mulberry
tree." Emmet, the builder, planted mulberry trees there in the
vain hope of introducing silkworm culture. The first VIPs to
live there after the building's renovation were Prof. and Mrs.
Arthur L. Goodhart. He was the only American to become
master of a college at Oxford or Cambridge—University College,
Oxford—and had recently retired as master there.
Goodhart was visiting professor in the University of Virginia
Law School for the second semester in 1965.

Acquisition in 1964 of a $1,000,000 Burroughs digital computer,
replacing one that was much less sophisticated, was an
important forward step. It was located in the basement of Gilmer
Hall. At about the same time a $400,000 IBM computer
was acquired for the university's administrative data processing
center in Garrett Hall.

Working drawings were being prepared in 1965 for the new
$5,100,000 chemistry building on McCormick Road, between
Thornton Hall and Gilmer Hall, rounding out the group of
scientific and technical schools in that area. It was expected to
be ready in about two years, replacing the Cobb Chemical
Laboratory built in 1920.

A new master site plan for the university was submitted that
fall, the result of a three-year study by a university committee
headed by Comptroller Vincent Shea, in collaboration with
the Watertown, Mass., firm of Sasaki, Dawson, DeMay Associates,
Inc. It called for five academic areas; liberal arts in and
around Cabell Hall, science and engineering near Scott Stadium,
fine arts on Carr's Hill, medicine at, and to the southeast
of, the present center, and a graduate and professional area
centering on the Law School in Clark Hall and the Graduate
School of Business Administration in Monroe Hall. This blueprint
was followed in subsequent years, with the exception
that the Law School and Graduate School of Business were
moved to the North Grounds. Wooded slopes of Mount Jefferson
below the McCormick Observatory were reserved, under

the plan, for special research facilities associated with the
university's academic program. The nuclear reactor, physics
acceleration building, radio-astronomy building, and research
laboratories for the engineering sciences were already in place
there. The University Center Area near Newcomb Hall would
include the main library, administrative offices concerned with
student affairs, dining halls, and student activity facilities. Intercollegiate
athletics would be based on Scott Stadium and on
Copeley Hill at and near University Hall, where new track,
lacrosse, soccer, and baseball fields were to be provided. This
would make Lambeth Field available for dormitory construction.
Except for the abovementioned deviation with respect to
the Law School and Graduate School of Business, the foregoing
recommendations became a reality in the ensuing years.

University Hall—the auditorium, gymasium, and fieldhouse
complex—was opened in 1965 with a concert by the
Czech Philharmonic Orchestra. The long-sought structure
was the result of seven years of hard work and planning.
Shortly after the concert the first basketball game was played,
against the University of Kentucky, with a capacity attendance
of over nine thousand. Connected with the main building was
"the cage," described as a "giant empty box used for indoor
practice by the football, lacrosse, baseball and track teams."
University Hall cost more than four million dollars, of which
the alumni contributed $500,000, the General Assembly appropriated
$2,367,692, and the rest was raised by revenue
bonds. In 1970 additional facilities were made available.
These included handball and squash courts and a six-lane,
twenty-five-meter Olympic-size swimming pool.

The new fine arts center was a striking complex, situated on
Carr's Hill and extending northward from the president's
house. It comprised the School of Architecture and the department
of drama. A new library, named for Fiske Kimball,
first head of art and architecture at the university, served all
departments. There was also a theater. An "exterior committee,"
composed of artists, architects, and scholars, mostly from
Harvard and Columbia universities, had provided advisory
help.

The home of the School of Architecture was said by Dean
Joseph N. Bosserman of that school to be "the most significant
building constructed at the university since Jefferson designed

and built the original academical village, in terms of style,
character, innovation, quality and almost any other good thing
you choose." It was named for Edmund S. Campbell, head of
the school from 1927 to 1950. Architects for the $3,300,000
structure were Rawlings and Wilson of Richmond, and it was
designed by Pietro Belluschi and Kenneth DeMay of Sasaki,
Dawson, DeMay Associates, Inc. Fayerweather Hall and the
Bayly Museum, used for years by the school, were converted
for use by the Department of Art.

The nearby $3,000,000 drama building on Carr's Hill was
opened in 1974. It "makes a magnificent learning facility for
students interested in acting, design and directing," David
Weiss, chairman of the Drama Department, declared. The
theater, seating 600 persons, is named for Sarah Gilder Culbreth,
mother of Dr. David M. R. Culbreth, a medical graduate
of the university in the class of 1877, who left $625,000
toward the cost of the ultramodern structure. Dr. Culbreth
was the author of an interesting volume of reminiscences concerning
his days at the university.

Restoration of the Rotunda to its original state, as conceived
and carried out by Jefferson but with certain twentieth-century
additions and modifications, had been a long-sought objective
of Prof. Frederick D. Nichols of the School of Architecture.
He initiated the project in the 1950s but had difficulty
obtaining financing. A building committee with Francis L.
Berkeley, Jr., as chairman and Nichols as consultant was
formed in 1965 to work on the plan. A few years later a trust
fund left by the late Dr. Cary D. Langhorne, a medical graduate
in the class of '96, suddenly became available. The trust
provided half of the cost of restoration on condition that this
sum be matched. The matching amount was forthcoming
from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development,
for an overall total from the two sources in excess of
two million dollars. There was opposition by some faculty
members and persons in the community since they regarded
Stanford White's restoration after the 1895 fire, with its huge
dome room extending to the roof, as superior to the Jeffersonian
plan, which provided for two chambers, one on the
ground floor and the other under the dome. But preponderant
opinion favored Jefferson's original design, and work was
begun in 1973 with a view to restoring the structure in accordance

with his concept. It was anticipated that the project
would be completed in time for Founder's Day 1976 and that
the dedication would be a notable event of the nation's bicentennial
observance. Ballou and Justice of Richmond, headed
by alumnus Louis W. Ballou, a firm that had restored Jefferson's
capitol in Richmond, were the architects, and R. E. Lee
and Son of Charlottesville the building contractors.

While the importance of restoring the Rotunda would seem
to be obvious, the extraordinary lack of information in some
quarters concerning the building was a bit staggering. Two
eighteen-year-old girls on a sight-seeing tour entered the university's
version of the Roman Pantheon and inquired, "Where
are the bedrooms?" On being informed that there weren't any,
they asked cheerily, "This is Monticello, isn't it?"

The Rotunda had previously been listed in the National
Register of Historic Places, and in 1971 the original Grounds
as a whole were so listed. They were also included in the Virginia
Landmarks Register.

The new $5,000,000 home of the Law School on the North
Grounds opened in the fall of 1974, following its dedication
the preceding spring. It made possible expansion of the
school from an enrollment of 950 to 1,050. This figure was to
be increased to 1,200 by the second phase of the construction
program, to begin almost immediately, at a cost of $2,500,000
raised from private sources. It was expected that the Law Library
would have 500,000 volumes upon completion of the
second phase. Arthur J. Morris, '01, founder of the Morris
Plan of consumer credit, gave $350,000 "to furnish the library"
and then bequeathed $100,000 for a Morris Plan chair
of consumer banking. The Law School, the $3,200,000
Graduate School of Business Administration, and the $5,000,
000 Judge Advocate General's School were all going up simultaneously
in the early seventies on the North Grounds.

The seven-story, $10,700,000 Harvey E. Jordan Medical
Education building and the five-story, $2,400,000 Josephine
McLeod School of Nursing building were both dedicated Nov.
10, 1972. Five basic science departments plus an animal research
area were housed in the Jordan building, along with
lecture halls, laboratory space, and student activity facilities.
Closed circuit classroom TV and equipment for independent
study, along with bedside demonstration of nursing techniques,

were features of the nursing building. Both structures
were important elements in the university's plans to increase
its production of health care personnel.

Also highly significant in the foregoing program was the
grant of over one million five hundred thousand dollars in
federal funds toward construction of a new Health Sciences
Library and Information Center. These funds were to be combined
with General Assembly appropriations, plus contributions
from alumni, friends, and foundations. More than
eighty-six thousand medical texts and journals were to be
housed in the library, which would be equipped with reading
rooms, seminar and conference rooms, study cubicles, audiovisual
facilities, and offices, plus stack capacity for 170,000 volumes.
It would replace the libary built in 1929, planned for
6,600 volumes and a seating capacity of seventy-six. The new
facility was to serve the current enrollment of over 750 medical
and nursing students, as well as interns, residents, faculty,
and visiting physicians. It too was expected to play a significant
role in training more health personnel for the commonwealth
and improving health care through continuing education
and affiliated hospital programs.

With the removal of all athletic contests from Lambeth
Field, plans were carried forward for the erection there of
student apartments. Three of the twelve apartments in Phase
One were ready for occupancy in September 1974, and the
first 100 students moved in. All twelve apartments were completed
a few months later, and 408 students were accommodated.
Phase Two was expected to be ready in September
1975, with 840 students housed in the entire project. Restoration
and renovation of the colonnade rimming the stadium
was to begin shortly, thanks to a $75,000 alumni gift.

Plans were under way in 1974, with C. Waller Barrett as
chairman, to seek $8,000,000 from various sources to construct
a manuscripts and special collections library. It would
house the invaluable materials cared for in Alderman Library—the
Barrett, McGregor, and other collections and the
millions of manuscripts—and would be placed on the site of
the McIntire Theater. The latter facility had fallen into disuse
as a place for ceremonies and concerts and was used as a parking
lot. The McIntire site would be filled in to the level of
surrounding buildings, under the plan.

107. Carl Zeisberg provided to returning alumni a multilingual
exhortation for maximum attendance.

New dining facilities for students were made available in
1974 on McCormick Road, to provide breakfast and dinner
for some fifteen hundred who had previously had all their
meals at Newcomb Hall. Lunch was available to them at whichever
of the two they preferred. At the same time, the Newcomb
Hall grill had been remodeled and was open weekends
and evenings, serving beer and delicatessen and short-order
foods.

Extensive improvements on the Lawn were carried out in
the late sixties and early seventies through the generosity of
Mrs. Robert M. Jeffress, widow of a 1909 law graduate and
prominent Richmond financier. The Lawn crosswalks were restored
to their original herringbone pattern and brick splash
courses laid along the colonnades, as protection for the white
columns against the red mud of Albemarle. Brickwork around
the statues of Washington and Jefferson was renovated, and
the metal railings on the roofs of the buildings surrounding
the Lawn were replaced with new white wooden railings of
Jefferson's original Chinese Chippendale design. Mrs. Jeffress
also contributed to the refurbishing of the Gwathmey Room
at the Colonnade Club, a memorial to her brother, Allen T.
Gwathmey, noted professor of chemistry and longtime secretary
of the club.

Thomas P. Abernethy retired as professor of history in 1961,
after thirty-one years on the faculty, during which time he was
department chairman for a decade and director of the graduate
history program for twenty-eight years. Eleven of his former
students contributed to a Festschrift in his honor. Abernethy
had supervised personally more than thirty doctoral
dissertations and dozens of master's theses. He had taken his
own doctorate at Harvard under the celebrated Frederick
Jackson Turner, but following graduation he had written
books that took issue sharply with Turner's much-quoted thesis
that on the frontier "American character was constantly
put to the test and remolded to be tough, resourceful and independent."
Abernethy set forth a contrasting thesis in his
From Frontier to Plantation in Tennessee (1932). He contended
that the frontier produced "not democracy but arrant opportunism,"
and, in the words of his colleague D. Alan Williams,
he argued that the frontier "fed the greed of the land-speculator

politicians who promoted settlement and controlled government."
Furthermore, "the voice of the people was negligible
in the early years."

Charles Henderson, former dean of the School of Engineering
and Applied Science, retired as professor in 1961.
The Charles Henderson Professorship of Engineering was established
in his honor.

The retirement of Robert K. Gooch in 1964 as professor of
political science was the occasion for almost unprecedented
tributes. In the words of the Alumni News: "Bob Gooch is one
of the few persons at the university who, by general agreement,
is praised by students, faculty and alumni as a `master
teacher, eminent scholar and beloved gentleman of Virginia.' "
The Cavalier Daily termed him "the living symbol of the university,"
and the University of Virginia Magazine said he was "the
students' professor" and "the Virginia man's Virginia man."
For twenty-five years Gooch was the "inspiration, innovator
and chairman" of the Honors Program. He had shocked the
university community in 1931 with an attack on the institution's
undergraduate program, which he compared to a "kindergarten
or grammar school," a characterization that was a
factor in bringing the Honors Program into being a few years
later. Subsequently he provided the spark that led to establishment
of the Liberal Arts Seminars. Bob Gooch was not only a
star athlete in his student days but a Rhodes Scholar. He went
on to get his Ph.D. at Oxford. His specialty was comparative
government, and he wrote three books on French parliamentary
government, one book on British, and another on American
government. Gooch served for many years as chairman of
the university's Department of Political Science and, for
shorter periods, as chairman of the Woodrow Wilson Department
of Foreign Affairs and the Institute of Public Affairs. He
was president of the Southern Political Science Association
and a member of the executive committee of the American
Political Science Association and of the board of editors of the
American Political Science Review; he was for many years an advisory
editor of the Virginia Quarterly Review. The Robert Kent
Gooch Scholarship Fund in the college was established in his
honor by alumni, faculty, and friends, with the stipulation that
the winner must have the approximate qualifications of a
Rhodes Scholar. The Z Society provided an annual fund for

the purchase of books for Alderman Library as a tribute to
Professor Gooch. The Robert Kent Gooch chair of government
was established following his retirement.

Chemistry Prof. John H. Yoe, an international figure in the
scientific world, retired in 1963, after serving on the faculty
since 1919. His many awards and distinctions have been mentioned
in earlier chapters. The year following his retirement
a pamphlet listing all of his publications was issued. There
were no fewer than 412 books and articles, beginning in 1910.
Two of his books were translated into Russian and several into
French and Spanish.

Dr. Carl C. Speidel, professor of anatomy and a member of
the medical faculty since 1920, retired in 1964. His nationally
acclaimed discovery in 1931 of important secrets of nerve
growth, which won for him the research prize of the American
Association for the Advancement of Science, has been
noted. He also won half a dozen other research prizes.

Dr. James E. Kindred, another veteran of the Medical
School, also retired in 1964. On the faculty since 1923, Dr.
Kindred was professor of anatomy for most of his career. He
was twice winner of the President and Visitors Research Prize
and coauthor with Dr. Harvey E. Jordan of a textbook on embryology
that went through five editions.

Stanislaw Makielski retired in the same year as professor of
architecture after serving since 1923. He received a citation in
1959 from the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture
as "one of the great teachers of architecture." Professor
Makielski served for a decade on the State Board of Architectural
Examiners. The Cavalier Daily said he was "deeply admired
and respected" by both students and faculty. He died in
1969.

Dr. Edwin W. Burton, a member of the medical faculty since
1930 and head of the Department of Ophthalmology for
twenty-five years, retired from that post in 1965 but continued
to teach. Twenty of his former students gave him a dinner at
the Farmington Country Club and presented him with an inscribed
silver tray and an album.

Thomas K. Fitz Patrick resigned as dean of the School of
Architecture in 1966, after thirteen years in the position, to
return to teaching. He was past president of the American

108. The Clifton Waller Barrett Library.

Collegiate Schools of Architecture, a member of the National
Architectural Accrediting Board, and first chairman of the
American Institute of Architect's Committee on Nuclear Facilities.
During this deanship the curriculum was reorganized
to establish three divisions: Architecture, under Prof. Frederick
D. Nichols; architectural history, Prof. William B. O'Neal;
and city planning, Prof. Paul S. Dulaney.

Assistant Dean Joseph N. Bosserman was named to succeed
Fitz Patrick. A native of Harrisonburg, Va., and graduate of
the University of Virginia and Princeton, Dean Bosserman
had held Fulbright professorships in England and Germany
and had also lectured in Spain and Scotland. He was a fellow
of the Royal Society of Arts in England and served on the
board of governors of the American Association of Architectural
Bibliographers.

Chemistry Prof. Arthur F. Benton, a graduate of Princeton
and California Institute of Technology and former chairman
of the Chemistry Department at Virginia, retired in 1966. He
served on the chemistry faculty for forty years.

Political science Prof. George W. Spicer retired in 1968 after
a career in which he was especially active in promoting better
county government. He was influential in drafting the Virginia
legislature's act of 1932 establishing the county manager
and county executive forms and was chosen chairman of the
Virginia Commission on County Government in that year, a
position he held until 1938. Professor Spicer also wrote several
authoritative books in the field. In addition, he was active
on behalf of civil rights, and in 1959 was consultant to the first
U.S. Civil Rights Commission. Spicer served a term as president
of the Southern Political Science Association.

Dr. Oscar Swineford, a member of the medical faculty for
thirty-nine years and a specialist in allergy, retired in 1967. He
was noted for his efforts to encourage the teaching of allergy
in medical schools and was active as an author. The Oscar
Swineford Allergy Fund was established in 1961 by former
students. It made possible the holding of a yearly postgraduate
conference on allergy at the Medical School.

Dr. Charles Bruce Morton II's significant surgical career
came to an end with his retirement in 1970. He had brought
to the Medical School a surgical technique different from that

of the famous Halsted-trained Dr. Stephen Watts, and by his
innovations "kept the surgical program from provincialism
and inbreeding." Dr. Morton was the author of seventy papers,
as well as a history of the Department of Surgery. He
performed nearly 13,000 major operations during his career,
and his earnings above salary contributed over $600,000 to
the department.

Dr. E. C. Drash terminated his career as a thoracic surgeon
in 1970, after forty years on the medical staff. He had been
absent from 1942 to 1945 as chief surgeon of the university's
World War II Eighth Evacuation Unit. During his years at the
university Dr. Drash "developed associations with the various
sanatoria for tuberculosis in the state," Bruce Morton says in
his history of the surgical department, "and enjoyed phenomenal
success in treating their patients."

Another leading member of the university faculty who retired
in 1970 was the beloved T. Munford Boyd of the Law
School. One of the first professors to win the Thomas Jefferson
Award (1957), "Munny" Boyd was active in many phases
of student life, despite the fact that he was totally blind. One
of the university's foremost interpreters of the Honor System,
his statements on the subject were memorable. The Algernon
Sydney Sullivan Award was given him the year he retired for
"excellence of character and service to humanity."

Several veteran members of the faculty retired in 1972:

Frederick T. Morse, professor of mechanical engineering, a
member of the faculty since 1933.

William B. O'Neal, professor of architectural history, on the
faculty since 1946.

Lorin A. Thompson, professor of business administration
and president of George Mason University, member of the
faculty since 1940.

Bernard A. Mayo, professor of history since 1940. As a student
at the University of Maine in the early 1920s, "Bernie"
Mayo was manager of a student orchestra that employed the
subsequently famous Rudy Vallee to play the saxaphone at $5
a night. "Rudy was a nice boy, but he never could sing well,"
said Mayo. While at Virginia, Professor Mayo wrote Henry
Clay: Spokesman of the New West and Myths and Men and edited
a collection of Jefferson's writings entitled Jefferson Himself.

Upon his retirement former students produced a volume of
essays in his honor.

Professors who retired in 1974 included the following:

Dr. Andrew D. Hart, professor of internal medicine and
former director of student health, after serving on the faculty
since 1928.

Dr. John M. Nokes, professor of obstetrics and gynecology,
on the faculty since 1931. He was a former president of the
Virginia League for Planned Parenthood.

Francis L. Berkeley, Jr., curator of manuscripts and university
archivist; in his latter years executive assistant to the president,
a member of the faculty since 1938.

Richard H. Henneman, professor of psychology, on the faculty
since 1947.

Edward C. Stevenson, professor of electrical engineering, a
member of the faculty since 1950.

Edward J. McShane, Alumni Professor of Mathematics,
member of the faculty for thirty-nine years. A three-day symposium
in his honor was held by the Department of Mathematics,
followed by a reception.

The departure of Prof. Neil Alford in 1974 to accept the
deanship of the University of Georgia Law School was the
cause of widespread regret. He was described by Tom Lankford
in The Declaration as "one of the most outstanding
teacher-scholars, who departs after 26 distinguished years";
he has "utterly charmed students . . . with his Southern drawl,
his wide, friendly grin." Alford "collaborated with his mentor,
John Ritchie, and with Richard Effland to produce what is the
most widely used textbook on trusts and estates in the country."
He also performed superbly for years as the university's
attorney.

Dr. McLemore Birdsong, admired professor of pediatrics
for thirty-four years, was preparing in 1974 to retire the following
year. At various times president of the Medical Society
of Virginia and the Virginia Pediatrics Association and chairman
of the pediatrics section of the Southern Medical Association,
"Mac" Birdsong was regarded as an exceptionally able
teacher. He was the author of over thirty published works in
the field of pediatrics.

Secretary to a succession of deans since 1926 and graduate
programs assistant in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences

since 1965, Miss Elizabeth Purvis was honored by both
the Seven Society and the Ravens for her conspicuous contribution.
She began as secretary to Dean John C. Metcalf, then
served Deans John L. Newcomb and Walter S. Rodman, and
in 1938 became secretary to the Graduate School.

Prof. Oreste Rinetti, whose classes in Italian were said to be
next to the largest in any American university, died suddenly
in 1960. A native of Italy, he had taught Italian language and
literature in his native land before coming to the United States
in 1925 to join the Yale University faculty. He became a professor
at the University of Virginia three years later. Professor
Rinetti was made a cavaliere of the Crown of Italy by virtue of
his great success in teaching Italian at the university.

The death of English Prof. Archibald Bolling Shepperson
in 1962 brought tributes from the Cavalier Daily and others.
The paper described him as "uniquely a gentleman" and
added: "As a teacher, a writer, as editor of the Virginia Quarterly
Review, as a member of the Raven Society, he rendered
notable service to the university. But it is for his laudable personal
virtues that we shall most remember him."

Prof. Allan T. Gwathmey died in 1963, aged fifty-nine, at
the height of his career. In addition to accolades received by
him in earlier years, he was voted the meritorious service
award of the Virginia Academy of Science and the university's
Thomas Jefferson Award. "Pete" Gwathmey's dedication to
the cause of scientific progress and to the advancement of the
university's scholarly standing was also recognized by his winning
both the Raven and Algernon Sydney Sullivan Awards.
The Allan Talbott Gwathmey Memorial Fund was established
by colleagues and friends after his death to provide an annual
scholarship for an outstanding graduate student doing research
in the physical sciences.

Dr. Henry B. Mulholland died in 1967, five years after his
retirement from the medical faculty, on which he had served
for over forty years. He entered the private practice of medicine
in Charlottesville following his retirement. The Thomas
Jefferson Award went to him the year he retired, and in 1966
he was voted a mastership in the American College of Physicians,
the organization's highest honor. The Seven Society, of
which he was a member, contributed $777.77 toward the

Henry B. Mulholland Chair of Internal Medicine, established
as a tribute to him.

A unique member of the medical community, Dr. Halstead
S. Hedges, `92, died in 1968 a few days before his 102d birthday.
Dr. Hedges, a pioneer ophthalmologist on the medical
faculty, was honored at a reception on his 100th birthday, at
which time a fund named for him was announced. His versatility
was acclaimed by English Prof. Joseph L. Vaughan, who
said: "Dr. Hedges is a man whose medical ability is matched
only by his ability to outfish and outwalk all his residents, and
who can calmly lean back and quote the first half of Book One
of the Odyssey in the original just for the pleasure of hearing
Homer's thundering lines."

Wilbur A. Nelson, who had served as chairman of the
School of Geology and State Geologist from 1925 until his retirement
in 1959, died ten years later. He had been a consultant
for various governmental and business organizations.
Nelson served as president of the Charlottesville Chamber of
Commerce and helped to promote the establishment of the
Shenandoah National Park and the Blue Ridge Parkway. In
World War II he was director of priorities in the Office of Production
Management and later organized and became director
of the mining division of the War Production Board.

The passing in 1970 of F. D. G. Ribble, retired dean of the
Law School, brought many tributes of admiration and affection.
He was credited with major responsibility for a number
of the school's advances, notably the establishment of the Law
School Foundation in 1951-52. Member of the law faculty for
forty-two years and dean for nearly a quarter of a century,
Professor Ribble was not only a capable administrator but an
editor and author of note. He edited the second edition of
Minor on Real Property (1928) and wrote State and National
Power over Commerce (1937), both of which were often cited in
the courts. He received both the Thomas Jefferson and IMP
Awards.

James S. Miller, Jr., professor of electrical engineering, a
member of the faculty from 1920 until his retirement in 1969,
died in 1972.

Dr. W. Gayle Crutchfield, professor of neurosurgery, a member
of the faculty from 1941 to 1971, died the following year.

109. New home of the Law School.

The Medical Center sustained a loss in 1973 with the death
at age fifty-five of John M. Stacey, its director for nearly a decade
and previously director of the university hospital since
1953.

A nationally distinguished art historian and painter was lost
by the untimely death in 1974 of Prof. William C. Seitz. Representatives
of the Museum of Modern Art in New York and
the National Gallery of Art in Washington attended his funeral.
His monograph on Claude Monet (1960) was regarded
as a masterpiece, and he soon came to be considered a major
recorder and interpreter of the work of modern artists. Seitz
was "literally irreplaceable," Prof. Frederick Hartt, Art Department
chairman, declared.

Misses Betty Booker and Betty Cocke, two ladies who had
kept much-patronized rooming houses on University Avenue
for generations, passed away during these years.

Miss Booker, whose establishment was at the corner of Madison
Lane, died in 1967 at the age of ninety-one. She had a
notable career as a lyric soprano in this country and Europe
and made her debut at Covent Garden in 1911 with the Royal
Opera at the coronation command performance of King
George V and Queen Mary. Betty Booker sang in Cabell Hall
on many occasions, usually for the benefit of St. Paul's
Church. She gave up her operatic career to look after her
mother and opened her rooming house at the university. Mrs.
Booker had kept a close eye on her daughter during the latter's
career on the stage. When Betty was in her late teens in
her native Richmond, she was in a rehearsal for an opera with
an Italian tenor from New York. As Miss Booker described
the incident many years afterward, her mother was on the
front row when the tenor complimented Betty and said, "And
now, Miss Booker, this evening I give you one big kiss." "Oh
no you don't!" exclaimed Betty's mother, as she rose indignantly
in her seat.

Miss Betty Cocke, a great-granddaughter of John Hartwell
Cocke of Bremo, one of Jefferson's coadjutors in founding the
university, died in 1973 at age 100. Her sister, Louise, had
died in 1969 at 101. They operated their rooming house next
to St. Paul's Church for nearly seventy-five years, with Betty as
the dominant figure. The Alumni News said after her death:
"Aside from her captivating warmth, wit and sense of humor

and matchless integrity, she had an uncommon ability to communicate
with youth."

The University of Virginia was making rapid forward strides
in the 1960s and 1970s as a center of academic excellence.
State sales tax revenues and bond issues, growing out of reforms
sponsored by Gov. Mills Godwin, helped markedly to
strengthen departments and finance additional buildings and
facilities. By 1970 the impact of both this increase in revenues
and the remarkable achievement of the Center for Advanced
Studies in bringing nationally known faculty to Virginia were
evident in the university's improved educational ranking.

In 1970 the American Council on Education released the
results of a survey of graduate programs in thirty-six disciplines
in 130 institutions. Eighteen departments at the University
of Virginia were rated above average or better, with
four of these in the highest category. The four were English,
ranked ninth in the country; history and math, twenty-third;
and developmental biology, twenty-seventh. Six departments
were rated "good," or in the second category of excellence,
namely, astronomy, economics, physics, physiology, political
science (government and foreign affairs), and zoology. Eight
other departments were in the third category, or "more than
adequate," namely, chemistry, chemical engineering, French,
microbiology, molecular biology, pharmacology, philosophy,
and psychology. The foregoing rankings were based on replies
from some six thousand scholars and department chairmen
throughout the country, and it was a far better showing
than the university had made four years before in a similar
survey. Yet in 1970 the University of North Carolina was given
twelve departments in the highest category compared with
only four for the University of Virginia. While the state of
North Carolina was appropriating substantially more to its
state university than the commonwealth of Virginia, it had a
much smaller endowment, and persons informed as to the two
institutions did not believe that there was so wide a disparity,
if indeed there was any at all. Ian McNett, writing in Change
magazine, said that the university at Charlottesville had "acquired
a reputation as a first-rate academic institution according
to all the traditional barometers of academic excellence."
Loren Pope, College Placement Bureau Director in Washington,

D.C., writing in Newsday praised the university's educational
program and declared that among those institutions
striving for individuality and diversity, "no private college
does a better job than Virginia or Michigan."

Despite the foregoing favorable judgments, it appeared that
the facts concerning the remarkable progress at Charlottesville
had been slow in getting across to other sections of the
United States. Many were judging the institution and its departments
on the basis of impressions formed years before.
About two decades are apparently required for word concerning
the sort of progress made at the university to percolate to
all areas of the nation's academic community.

Although there had been notable advances, the Carnegie
Commission on Higher Education listed the state of Virginia
in 1971 as one of twenty-one states that, in its view, were not
providing sufficient support for institutions of higher learning.
Fortunately the university's endowment of more than
$100,000,000, as of 1974, helped to make up the deficiency.

The university had other assets, both tangible and intangible.
Dean Joseph N. Bosserman said in 1968 that Charlottesville
and "the intangible university atmosphere" were strong
points in attracting faculty. He added that visiting professors
"almost invariably go out of their way to comment on how
polite and how bright the students are." He also cited the
Honor System as a conspicuous asset, saying "a teacher knows
that he doesn't have to go around spying on the students."

Four years later Vice-President and Provost David A. Shannon
said he found that once prospective professors came to
the university, "our chances of recruiting them are improved
considerably. . . . They see it's an alive, dynamic institution"
rather than "a sleepy coat and tie school."

The average compensation for all faculty at Virginia in 1973
was $21,369, higher than Princeton's $20,712, according to
figures released by the American Association of University
Professors. Harvard's average was $25,448, Stanford's $23,784,
Duke's $22,313, and Yale's $22,040. In average compensation
for faculty, Virginia stood second only to Michigan
among the twenty-three public universities belonging to the
prestigious Association of American Universities. The Alumni
News reported in 1968 that "in terms of fringe benefits we
have as good a program as you can find at a state university."

More than twenty-five hundred students were receiving financial
aid in 1970-71, totaling more than two million dollars.
The average scholarship award was $884, the average amount
paid on work-study programs $652, and the average loan
$725.

Standards for admission were being raised steadily, and the
number of applications also was rising rapidly. The institution's
growing reputation for scholastic excellence was an important
factor in the mounting number of applicants. Also,
"the university is now one of the less expensive state-supported
institutions in the commonwealth," Admissions Dean
Ernest H. Ern declared in 1971. The preceding fall, entering
college students averaged 590 on the verbal SAT test and 616
on math, more than 130 points above the national average.
Applicants were being judged on the following basis: (1) the
total academic record in secondary school and the school's
evaluation of the candidate; (2) college entrance exams, board
test scores; (3) extracurricular interests and activities. For the
session of 1972-73 no fewer than 81 percent of the entering
students ranked in the top 20 percent of their secondary
school classes, a figure that had been rising steadily. Academic
attrition amounted to less than 2 percent in the college annually,
compared with 30 percent nationally. By 1974, 54 percent
of the students in the college were on the dean's list.
Furthermore, a much higher proportion of the entering class
than ever before was graduating, and the number of graduates
was mounting each year. For the session of 1973-74 the
university awarded 3,741 degrees, including summer school,
or 15.8 percent of all degrees granted by Virginia's state institutions.
Included were 237 Ph.D.s, or 57.1 percent of those
awarded in the commonwealth.

Forty-seven percent of the entering students came from out
of state in 1959, but by 1973 this figure was down to 30 percent.
While this was a substantial decline, it accorded with
what appeared to be prevailing sentiment in Virginia. And it
should be noted that the latter percentage was twice as high as
that for the University of North Carolina and the University
of Wisconsin, for example, where a 15 percent limit was fixed
by state law. Every city and county in the Old Dominion was
represented at Charlottesville in the 1973-74 enrollment, as
well as every state in the union and forty-eight foreign countries.

Black students numbered 463, and there were 4,524
women, about one-third of the total. The Schools of Law and
Medicine "continued to be by far the most sought-after divisions
of the university," President Shannon declared.

The first of the "chairs dinners" for holders of endowed
name professorships and their spouses, was held in October
1973. They were an annual feature thereafter. More than one
hundred of these chairs had been established at that time, seventy
of which had been added since 1966.

Faculty-student relations were close, according to Frank
Hereford, who said in 1974, "Certainly they are closer than
they were when I was a student" in the 1940s. He added his
"firm belief" that "the quality of student life is far better than
it was when I studied here."

After struggling for many years to obtain adequate financing,
Alderman Library emerged in 1973 in first place among
Association of Southeastern Research Libraries, in both expenditures
for books and total expenditures. It ranked among
the top twenty-five university libraries in the United States.
The next task was to obtain funds from private sources for an
additional building to house its invaluable collection of rare
books and manuscripts.

By 1974 the university's physical plant had been vastly expanded.
The fifteen-year program under President Shannon
totaled almost $115,000,000 in state tax funds, federal and
foundation grants, private gifts and bequests, and revenue
bonds.

Shannon told the Board of Visitors at its February 1973 meeting
that he planned to resign as president in August of the
following year. He would have been in office for a decade and
a half, he said, and "I wish to pass on my duties to another
while I am still enjoying them as I do." He added that his
fifteen-year term of office was well beyond the average for college
presidents, and that he wanted to spend more time with
his wife and five daughters. Desirous of returning to his "first
love . . . teaching and scholarship," he stated that he planned
to continue his classes in the works of Tennyson, some of
which he had taught throughout his presidency. He was
elected Commonwealth Professor of English upon his retirement.

110. Inside the Darden Graduate School of Business Administration.

The senior class of 1973 presented him with two silver Jefferson
cups "with thanks for a job well done." The Alumni
Association gave him $1,000, to be spent on the Tennyson collection
in Alderman Library, and said it was a token of his
"demonstrable leadership in the university's rise to enviable
distinction among the nation's institutions of higher learning."
The Z Society announced an annual scholarship in his honor.
Six years before, when the Thomas Jefferson Award went to
him, the citation spoke of his "brilliant performance as president."

Since his election to head the university in 1959, Edgar
Shannon had been chosen to high positions in the educational
world. A partial list would include president of the Association
of Virginia Colleges, of the Council of Southern Universities,
the Council of Presidents of State Institutions of Higher Education,
and president and chairman of the executive committee
of the National Association of State Universities and Land
Grant Colleges. He also served on the boards of the U.S. Naval
and Air Force academies, as well as on countless committees.

It can readily be seen that much of Shannon's time was
taken up with his duties in these various posts, not to mention
the attention that had to be devoted to dealing with the General
Assembly and with foundations and various other groups
and agencies. A similar situation prevailed with most university
presidents. In fact, one estimate was that these men and
women spend as much as half of their time coping with such
matters. Shannon expressed the view that this estimate was
perhaps a bit too high but not greatly out of line.

Tribute to the remarkable progress made by the university
between 1963 and 1973 was paid by Malcolm Scully, an alumnus
who had served on the editorial staff of the Chronicle of
Higher Education and was a contributing editor of the Saturday
Review. He wrote: "If you have been associated with the world
of higher education over the past five years . . . you have become
aware that the University of Virginia has grown into a
first-rate national university. You hear it at scholarly meetings
when young Ph.D.s talk enviously of colleagues who have obtained
positions at the university; you see it in the attention
afforded the university in national magazines, you sense it in
the general respect which the university receives in academic
circles across the country. . . . Clearly the university is no

longer simply the genteel, introverted place I left a decade
ago."

Edgar Shannon had given the leadership that brought the
university to this position among the nation's institutions of
higher learning. He had achieved this despite the fact that he
was not considered primarily an administrator; important
members of the Board of Visitors did not feel that administration
was his forte. Yet they were unanimous in acclaiming the
striking advances made during his presidency and happy to
accord to him the lion's share of the credit.

His wife, Eleanor, was regarded as having played an admirable
role during his presidency. She received the Algernon
Sydney Sullivan Award in 1972. The citation described her as
"in the great tradition of the university president's wife . . .
firm of belief, quick of mind, warm of heart," and spoke of
"her many contributions . . . her many nameless acts of kindness,
and of love to the university."

A committee headed by Rector Joseph H. McConnell chose
Frank L. Hereford, Jr., as Edgar Shannon's successor in September
1973, one year before Shannon retired. Hereford's selection
from a field of 159 nominees followed a seven-month
search. He was Robert C. Taylor Professor of Physics at the
time, as he had relinquished his position as vice-president and
provost in 1971 to return to the classroom. With wide administrative
experience in previous years as department head,
graduate dean, provost, and vice-president, Frank Hereford
was admirably equipped for his new task. Born fifty years before
in Lake Charles, La., he was a B.A. and Ph.D. of the university.
In his student days he was a member of Omicron Delta
Kappa, Tilka, and Alpha Tau Omega social fraternity, as well
as Raven and Phi Beta Kappa. Prof. Jesse Beams said Hereford
was the ablest student he had ever taught. Personable
and outgoing, with a quick and inventive mind, Frank Hereford
appeared to be the man for the job. As provost he had
had a significant role in attracting topflight faculty, and as
chairman of the Committee on the Future of the University
he had been involved with planning for the institution's development
and the admission of women.

In addition to being an experienced administrator and an
internationally known scholar, Hereford was fortunate in having

married the former Ann Lane of Petersburg, who had
studied at Swarthmore and Sweet Briar and was a B.S. of the
university. Ann Hereford had just the right qualities for a university
president's wife—lovely and charming, she knew how
to entertain parents and alumni graciously, and at the same
time was sufficiently knowledgeable to have a role in her husband's
important decisions. The Herefords had two sons and
two daughters.

Before taking office, Frank Hereford appointed Associate
Engineering Dean Avery Catlin to the newly created position
of executive vice-president of the university. Catlin was a B.A.,
M.A., and Ph.D. of Virginia who had been on the faculty since
1948. He was to coordinate all aspects of the university's academic
and physical planning and serve as the institution's
principal administrative officer for university development.
He would function as acting president in the president's absence.

The new president was inaugurated on Oct. 9, 1974, a crisp
and sunny autumn day. Several thousand persons were on the
Lawn as the procession marched to Cabell Hall, led by Grand
Marshal B. F. D. Runk, who had planned the program. Rector
McConnell presided and the speakers were Gov. Mills Godwin
and Frank Hereford. The latter spoke of the need to establish
a "conscious perspective" in the relation between science and
the humanities and proposed further study of the "intersections"
between the two. He hoped that in this way mankind
could attain "new understanding of the human situation, cultural
unity through unity of understanding."

The university almost lost its new president in late December
when he narrowly escaped drowning in the icy waters of
Chesapeake Bay. He was on a duck hunt, and the small boat
into which he, his son, and a friend were crowded, together
with a dog, was swamped in choppy water and sank. The two
boys managed to swim to a buoy, and the dog got to shore.
But Frank Hereford's heavy clothing became waterlogged as
he tried to swim, and he was barely able to stay afloat. Creek,
the Labrador retriever, was alert to the emergency. He ran
dripping to the lodge where they had been staying, rushed
around barking and whining, jumped on his master's bed and
lay there whimpering. The keeper of the lodge became
alarmed, leaped into his boat, and headed for the duck blind

111. Frank and Ann Hereford accepting congratulations after his inauguration as president of the
university in 1974.

in the darkness. En route he encountered the floundering and
foundering Frank Hereford, who was barely managing to
keep his head above water and would almost certainly have
drowned had it not been for the warning given by his faithful
dog.

The University of Virginia stood at the pinnacle of its prestige
in modern times as Hereford settled into the presidency
as successor to Shannon. Both men were hailed enthusiastically
in the Virginia press. It was pointed out that the university's
College of Arts and Sciences and its professional schools
were widely admired, the faculty was of distinguished eminence,
and the student body of unprecedented quality.
Whereas in earlier times about a dozen Virginia counties were
customarily unrepresented among the students at the university,
such was no longer the case, for all the counties were now
sending matriculates. And both blacks and whites, males and
females, were enrolled in large numbers, testifying to the fact
that the people of the commonwealth were the beneficiaries
of the instruction being offered at Charlottesville. The public
schools sent a much larger proportion of the student body
than in former years. All this, it seems safe to say, would have
gratified the university's founder, whose oft-expressed desire
was to provide the widest possible system of education for
those Virginians capable of profiting from it.

Truly, the center of learning that he founded had traveled
far since that distant day in 1825 when some forty young men
from southern plantations entered its portals. The Lawn and
Ranges, the arcades and colonnades, were almost unchanged
since the first contingent of students arrived and gazed upon
the half-finished Rotunda. But the university's inner spirit and
mission had been transformed. What some had called in modern
times, with considerable exaggeration, "the country club
of the South," had vanished. In its place had arisen a nationally
ranked university, wide-ranging in its scholarship and untrammeled
in its search for truth. If Mr. Jefferson could look
down upon it today from his mountaintop, he would be
proud.