University of Virginia Library

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.