University of Virginia Library

20-Year Sentence

Former Student Awaits Appeal

By Rob Buford
Cavalier Daily Staff Writer

—Editor

Arrested last February 24 for possessing
marijuana, Frank LaVarre, a former
student at the University, is now serving a
20-year sentence in the Danville city jail.
His story is told in an article appearing in
the October 31 issue of Life magazine.

A track and cross-country record breaker
at McCallie School, Mr. LaVarre
entered the University in 1967 with a full
scholarship. Last fall he helped Rapier
carry its "Olympic Flame" to Washington,
running eight miles nonstop instead
of the usual one-mile stint.

The Life article says, "But his next
long-distance run was not on his own legs but in
a Trailways bus, and his cargo was not a torch
but three pounds of what court records were to
call 'a brown green grass like substance' -
marijuana. In the Commonwealth of Virginia
the minimum penalty for possessing more than
25 grains (about a half a teaspoonful) of
marijuana is 20 years, the same as the minimum
penalty for first-degree murder."

The bus was headed for Atlanta where Mr.
LaVarre was to deliver the cargo to friends,
who had wired him $700 for its purchase. In
jail, he was asked by detectives to give them the
names of all University students he knew of
who used drugs. Mr. LaVarre failed to
cooperate and his bail was raised to $50,000.

After pleading guilty in court last July, he
was sentenced to 25 years in the penitentiary,
with five years off for good behavior. Judge
Archibald Aiken, who is in his eighties, told Mr.
LaVarre, "Now I want to say to you, young
man, that you still have time to mend your
ways and make a useful citizen out of
yourself."

Says the Life story, "That thought did not
console Frank's mother and other kin in
Nashville, Tennessee. They feared the exposure
to veteran criminals and homosexuals that the
20-year-old boy, who had never so much as
stolen a hubcap, could expect in the penitentiary."

The story states that until three weeks
before his arrest, Mr. LaVarre had never tried
marijuana. "I used to think grass was oh-oh,
horrible, dangerous stuff," he said. After
hearing much to the contrary, he did some
investigating in the Medical School library.

"He prepared for getting stoned," one of his
friends said, "the way you'd prepare for a trip
to the moon." He tried it and liked it. His
friend continued, "When Frank liked something,
he liked it super."

"So it was with photography," the article
continues, "('He'd stay out all night working in
the darkroom . . . '), and music (Frank's taste
had switched from Mahler to Bob Dylan) and
food (he liked to astound his friends by
cooking escargots and beef Stroganoff). So it
was with his own dark brown hair, which to the
woe of his elders grew down to his shoulders."

"I'd have grown it long sooner," Mr.
LaVarre told Life, "but, see, McCallie is a
semi military school. His headmaster wrote to
college admissions officers, "He is very
personable, a boy of high ideals and character,
cooperative, loyal, interested in good literature
and artistic things - a well-rounded, fine young
man."

One of his friends speculated, "I guess they
figured Frank for a big-time head, the brains
being a ring of pushers, who was planning to
make a big profit. But he was not even going to
carn his bus fare. He was incredibly naive. In a
way I envied his innocence. Friends asked him
to carry them some pot . . . so he was going to
do it."

Life's article quotes a Danville official as
saying, "He may not have been pushing, but he
was doing right much transporting." So much
that the court was little swayed by the 50-odd
letters that came in requesting leniency in the
case." One letter offered to arrange group
therapy sessions if the boy could be paroled to
Nashville," says the article. "Another, from a
corporation president, offered him a job. 'We
need young men like him,' the letter said."

The article continues, "Through some of
Frank's friends regarded him now as a heroic
martyr-hero, others make it clear that he is, as
one says, 'no rose' . . . He was suffering an
extreme case of a syndrome known to his
mother as Sophomore Slump, and to his
contemporaries as a Freakout or Zapout. His
grades had slipped so badly that the university
had suspended him for a semester.

"Frank hoped to work that semester as a
photographer in Atlanta. His arrest n route
there was instigated by a tip to the
Charlottesville police chief. The tipster, suggested
a classmate, 'had to be a close friend of
Frank's, who was worried about him and
thought it would be doing him a favor to get
him busted. Some favor."

Another friend has speculated that "it was a
nark (undercover narcotics agent). Remember,
Frank was a loudmouth. All his broadcasting
around town about how great grass was could
have got to the wrong ears. With pot, he was
like a kid with a new go-kart: cautions at first,
but then reckless..."

Life quotes an honor student at the
University as saying, "The older generation had
better get used to pot, because it's here and I
don't think it's going anywhere. If they're going
to lock up people like Frank LaVarre, they're
going to have a violent revolution on their
hands."