University of Virginia Library

6. SIX

Significant
Progress under Darden

FAR FROM BEING a handicap, Colgate Darden's service was
governor was a great asset to him in his university presidency.
Some felt that a politician without experience in academe
would not have the know-how and background to be a
successful educational executive, but matters turned out decidedly
otherwise. As governor, Darden had been able to obtain
long-deferred aid for the university through larger state
appropriations and also to learn much concerning the institution's
needs and goals. In addition, he had solidified his
friendships in the legislature, so that when he took over the
presidency of the university, he was successful in obtaining
funds to cover essential improvements.

In fact, the finesse that he exhibited in dealing with the lawmakers
left experienced observers shaking their heads in admiration.
Carter Lowance, confidential brain truster to half a
dozen governors, was awe-struck. He said concerning Darden's
modus operandi: "When he became president of the
University of Virginia, he became the only head of a state institution
in my memory who was able to submerge dollar figures
of his budget in such philosophical rhetoric as to emerge
with near unanimous legislative approval without his ever having
mentioned the sum total of his requests."

President Darden was anxious to increase the number of high
school graduates attending the university, and many of his
plans and programs were directed toward that end. The statistics

were discouraging. Of 352 accredited high schools in
the commonwealth, only 54 sent students to the university
during the session of 1950-51. Richmond's two high schools
for whites, Thomas Jefferson and John Marshall, sent only 38
graduates to Virginia during the three years ended in 1950
out of 750 to 800 who went to college from those schools. The
great majority were attending VPI, VMI, and William and
Mary.

An orientation period was instituted at the opening of the
1948-49 session for the benefit of the first-year men. It lasted
for four days, and the new students were given a number of
tests preliminary to their enrollment, were told about the university
and its student activities, and became acquainted with
one another. Dean James H. Newman organized the affair; it
was felt to have been a success and worthy of continuance.

Separation of the College into Upper and Lower Divisions
was announced during the same session. As explained by
Dean Ivey Lewis, "The plan involves closer supervision of the
younger and less experienced students, more encouragement
to good academic performance, and increasing freedom for
those students who demonstrate their ability to do good work
at the college level." He added that "normally a student will be
enrolled in the lower Division for his first two sessions and
earn advancement to the Upper Division by successful completion
of the program of studies advised by the Lower Division."
As soon as the new dormitories could be completed they
would be used by the new students, and would be units of the
Lower Division.

The university now was operating on a two-semester basis
for the nine-month session instead of the previous three
terms. The summer session was accordingly revised, and instead
of two terms of thirty class days each, it became a single
eight-week session of forty-eight class days. For the session of
1948-49, summer enrollment was 1,862 as compared with
1,598 for the year before. This substantial increase contrasted
with the decline in enrollment being experienced in nearly all
the large summer schools in the United States.

Faculty salaries were being raised during these years. There
was marked improvement in the late 1940s, and then a substantial
increase was announced in 1955, to be financed, in

63. Roberta Hollingsworth Gwathmey, dean of women,
1934-67.

part, by higher student tuition. The Medical School did not
share in this latest advance since salary adjustments had been
made there the year before.

Enrollment in the university, which had been falling for several
sessions, was taking an upward turn in 1954 and was just
under three thousand six hundred when classes closed for the
Christmas recess. It had gone beyond five thousand immediately
after World War II. Distinctly better work was being
done by entering students. Credit for this improved showing
was being given, in part, to the president's plan for supervision
of the first-year men in the new residence houses.

Since 1952 out-of-state students applying for admission had
been required, with a few exceptions, to take college board
examinations, and this requirement was extended in 1957 to
Virginia applicants. The University of Virginia thus became
the first state university in the country to rule that all persons
seeking admission must take the college boards.

In order to bring persons of distinction or promise to the
university for scholarly research, the Alumni Board of Trustees
of the Endowment Fund established the Thomas Jefferson
Fellowships. The sum of $15,000 was made available for the
session of 1953-54, and the plan was to make a similar
amount available each year. Grants would average about
$3,000 annually, but might go as high as $5,000 for research
in literature, the arts, or the sciences in materials available at
the university.

A number of important shifts in administrative positions
took place in the mid-1950s.

Vincent Shea, bursar and administrative assistant to the
president as well as secretary to the Board of Visitors, was elevated
to the new post of comptroller, created by the board.
Shea became a key figure in the university's affairs, with great
behind-the-scenes influence over many aspects of the institution's
life. In fact it would probably be fair to say that for a few
decades nobody in the institution except the president was as
quietly potent as he. Admirably trained, with a fine business
mind, his influence was decidedly salutary.

Francis L. Berkeley, Jr., university archivist and library curator,
was persuaded by President Darden in 1953 to take over
the secretaryship of the Board of Visitors, succeeding Vincent

Shea. A recognized authority in the archival field, Berkeley
had been with the library for a decade and a half, interrupted
by war service, and had performed valiantly, touring the state
for years rounding up manuscripts for the Alderman archives.
He demurred when approached by Darden, for he realized
that the profferred post was a demanding one, and he
wanted to remain where he was. He had returned the previous
year from ten months in England and Scotland under a
Fulbright grant, during which he had uncovered valuable material
having to do with Virginia's colonial past. It was his desire
to do some writing in that field. However, in response to
the president's urging, he consented to accept the secretaryship
of the Board of Visitors. It was the beginning of some
two decades of service rendered by Frank Berkeley to the university
in areas largely divorced from his archival specialty.
First he was secretary to the visitors, and when Edgar Shannon
was elected president, succeeding Colgate Darden, Shannon
prevailed on Berkeley to become his executive assistant,
and Weldon Cooper was chosen secretary of the board and
administrative assistant to the president.

George O. Ferguson, Jr., retired in 1951 as dean of college
admissions after a quarter of a century in that position. He
served as acting dean of the college following the retirement
of Ivey F. Lewis in 1953 and then was appointed dean—the
second time that he had held the position. In addition, Dean
Ferguson had been registrar since 1946, and for thirty-five
years had taught educational psychology. He was for many
years faculty representative on the Athletic Council and
helped to organize the Southern Conference when its membership
ranged from Virginia to Louisiana.

With Ferguson's relinquishment of control over admissions,
a new arrangement was made, with a five-member faculty
committee and a director of admissions. Richard R. Fletcher
was named to the latter post, but a year later was appointed
director of student affairs, in which position he became a
storm center, as noted in the previous chapter. He resigned in
1954 to become general secretary of the Sigma Nu Greek letter
fraternity. Fletcher was tendered a farewell dinner by sixty
residence hall counselors who presented him with an engraved
silver tray in appreciation of his "19 years of unselfish

service to the University of Virginia." When "Dick" Fletcher
joined the university staff he was director of first-year athletics
and head coach of football, basketball, and baseball.

As successor to Fletcher, Raymond C. Bice, assistant professor
of psychology and a superlative lecturer, was appointed
director of admissions for the college. In order to facilitate his
work and provide prompt information concerning the admissions
picture, "Ray" Bice performed the amazing feat of inventing
a computer from parts taken from pinball machines
confiscated by the Danville police. A decade would pass before
digital computers would be placed on the market, which
meant that he had to put together miscellaneous parts from
pinball machines with little to go on except his own ingenuity.
Yet the thing worked, and Bice was able to furnish information
almost instantly concerning the various categories of applicants
and their status. He decided in 1958 not to "make
admissions a career" and was named assistant dean of the College,
later associate dean. At the same time he was an Association
dean, with responsibility for some four hundred students.
Just what an "association" was is explained later in this
chapter.

B. F. D. Runk, associate professor of biology, was named
Student Adviser in 1955, in which capacity he took over the
principal duties exercised by Dick Fletcher. The latter's responsibility
for working with student residence house and hall
counselors was assigned to Donald M. McKay, director of
housing. Runk was instructed to work with the fraternities in
putting into effect new regulations governing them. The following
year he was named registrar of the university, and in
1959 was appointed dean of the university, with powers not
exercised by any dean since the retirement of Ivey Lewis. He
said he would continue to teach some of his courses; his ability
as a teacher and lecturer was exceptional. In his new post he
had supervision over student government, exercised by President
Darden for the preceding decade. "Dee" Runk had an
excellent relationship with the students; he was the recipient
of the first IMP Award, given by the IMP Society "to a faculty
member who had been outstanding in promoting student-faculty
relations and perpetuating the traditions of the university."
Subsequently he received the National Service Award of
Omicron Delta Kappa, presented in the United States only

once every three years. Edward W. Lautenschlager, '56, an instructor
in the Department of Biology, was named registrar,
succeeding Runk.

Weldon Cooper became director of the Bureau of Public
Administration, succeeding Rowland Egger, who was in such
demand, both in this country and overseas, that he was on
leave a large part of the time. For the 1956-57 session, when
Cooper was made head of the bureau, Egger was chairman of
both the university's Woodrow Wilson Department of Foreign
Affairs and the Department of Political Science. During the
previous year he had been on leave as Near East representative
of the Ford Foundation, with headquarters in Beirut,
Lebanon. Weldon Cooper had been associate director of the
bureau for some years, and, beginning in 1950, served for
fourteen months as executive assistant to Governor John S.
Battle. Upon the retirement of Professor Wilson Gee in 1959,
Cooper would take over the editorship of the University of Virginia
News Letter, of which more anon.

William L. Duren, Jr., chairman of the Department of
Mathematics at Tulane University, became dean of the College
of Arts and Sciences in 1955, succeeding George O. Ferguson,
Jr. Dean Duren was a nationally known mathematician who
had succeeded the university's Professor McShane as president
of the Mathematical Society of America. Duren was given
a leave of absence to finish a college textbook in math; he had
been named chairman of a committee of the mathematical society
to produce this book. During his absence Prof. Robert K.
Gooch served as dean.

Joseph L. Vaughan, '26, professor of English in the School
of Engineering and a superlative teacher, was appointed provost,
a newly created position, by President Darden. In that
capacity he would serve as an administrative assistant to the
president and would act for the president whenever the latter
might be absent from the university. He would also study
longtime requirements of the educational program of the university,
building and space needs, and assist on budgetary matters
affecting operation and maintenance. Professor Vaughan
was relieved of many of these duties a few years later and
given supervision over the Clinch Valley and University
(George Mason) Colleges with the title of chancellor. But his
first love, his real forte, was teaching. He returned to that, and

the office of provost was discontinued for the remainder of
the Darden administration.

Lewis M. Hammond, professor of philosophy, was appointed
dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences,
succeeding James Southall Wilson, who retired in 1951. He
was a University of Virginia Ph.D. who had been assistant to
the president of St. John's College, 1942-45, and assistant
dean of the university's summer session for several years. He
had also been president of the Society for Philosophy and Psychology
and of the Episcopal Guild of Scholars and a member
of the editorial board of the Anglican Theological Review. After
serving as graduate dean from 1951 to 1960, he would hold
the chairmanship of the Department of Philosophy for six
years.

Dean Hammond reported in 1954 that the Graduate School
consisted of approximately 315 students working toward the
M.A., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees. A notable event of the session
then ending was the opening of the redecorated and comfortably
furnished room at 59 West Range, designated as the
Graduate Students' Center. It contained writing materials,
books, magazines, and facilities for making coffee and tea.
Most important, the center provided a convenient meeting
place for graduate students where they could become acquainted
and exchange ideas. By 1959 the number of these
students had risen to about four hundred, with around one
hundred degrees awarded annually. At that time, there was an
"overwhelming demand for Ph.D.'s in response to increased
enrollments and greater need for college teachers," the dean
reported.

There were nine schools in the university—College of Arts
and Sciences, much the largest, with 160 faculty members and
1,600 students in 1959; Law, Medicine, Engineering, Education,
Graduate Studies, Architecture, Graduate Business Administration,
and Commerce.

The College of Arts and Sciences was divided into four "associations,"
under a system devised by Dean Duren, and another
was added in anticipation of future growth. Each association
was given its own dean and two resident advisers. The
system was designed to provide closer relationships among the
students and between them and the faculty. Each association
included two of the residence houses, and upperclassmen who

64. Allan T. Gwathmey, professor of chemistry.

did not reside in the houses were arbitrarily assigned to one
of the associations. Thus each association had about onefourth
of the college population. The purpose was to create
in each association the atmosphere of a small liberal arts college.
The philosophy was said to be one of an advisory service
rather than paternalism. Writing in the Alumni News, Prof.
Irby B. Cauthen, Jr., declared that "the system has provided a
closer supervision over the academic and extracurricular affairs
of the college students, and has inculcated a growing
awareness in students of the importance of proceeding satisfactorily
to the college degree." He went on to say that "a student
must maintain an average close to a `C' to be permitted
to remain in the college after his first year."

Faculty pay was rising, but sabbatical leaves for faculty
members, whereby professors would be able after, say, seven
years, to take a full year off with half pay or half a year with
full pay, had never been possible at Virginia. Colgate Darden
said in his inaugural address that this was one of the university's
principal needs, but he was unable to put such a system
into effect. Not until the sesquicentennial in 1969 would it be
possible to institute a series of faculty leaves roughly equivalent
to the sabbatical system.

Stringfellow Barr returned to the faculty in 1951, for two sessions
as visiting professor of political science. He gave a course
on the origin and development of American political institutions
and was anxious to establish at the university something
along the lines of his Great Books seminar at St. John's College,
where he had been president. After "Winkie" Barr's departure,
Associate Dean Marcus B. Mallett built on the foundations
Barr had laid and developed what was known as
Lower Division Seminar 1-2, which was nondepartmental and
was designed to enrich the curriculum. From this course and
the one that preceded it, various undergraduate honors programs
were developed, growing out of the pioneering done
by Prof. Robert K. Gooch back in the 1930s.

In a penetrating examination of the university as an educational
institution, published in 1956, Robert B. Eggleston, editor
of the Cavalier Daily, praised the honors program. Under
it, he said, "one may spend the third and fourth years pursuing

a course of study independently of the normal system."
The student "conducts research under faculty guidance, attends
classes as he wishes, and holds discussions with his advisor."
He receives no grades, but has "a chance to discuss
ideas," and he "must pass a much more rigid comprehensive
examination than the other students." Eggleston believed the
honors program "affords the best means of education open to
an undergraduate at the university."

He was pessimistic with respect to certain aspects of the
overall situation. "It is so easy to go through four years here
without ever being required to put forth one iota of thought,"
he declared. "Our student body has a mental capacity higher
than its anti-intellectual attitude would indicate."

Several efforts at course evaluation were made from 1954
to 1958 by student committees, with faculty cooperation. Results
from the first two were unsatisfactory, mainly because too
few students were willing to fill out the questionnaires. Some
professors were apprehensive at first, thinking that the
evaluation was a malicious plot on the part of dissatisfied students.
It was explained, however, that the purpose was to be
helpful to both professors and undergraduates. Another attempt
was made in 1955, and the response was more representative.
The results were published at great length in the
Cavalier Daily. However, that publication concluded that the
operation was "of little benefit, except to air student complaints
of certain professors." In 1958 another evaluation, on
a different basis, was attempted. This time Dean Duren and
the Student Council sent questionnaires to selected students
in each department. Questions had to do with the importance
of lectures and textbooks, the value of outside reading, and
the usefulness of discussion. Results were reviewed by the Student
Council, the Cavalier Daily, and the dean's office.

Members of the liberal arts faculty were holding seminars
during the middle fifties "to enhance the value of the baccalaureate
degrees by providing intensive work in the liberal arts
tradition." In 1957-58 for example, eleven faculty members
were conducting seminars for three hours each week, with
from seven to fourteen students in each section. There was no
field of concentration or area of honors work or grade program.
Professors taking part received no extra compensation.

A sore point with the students in another part of the curriculum
was the requirement that first- and second-year men
take physical education classes. After they had entered fervent
and long-continued protests over a period of years, it was announced
that those entering in the fall of 1955 would have to
take only one year of "phys ed." And there would be no more
classes at what the boys termed "the insane hour of 8 A.M." As
far back as the early 1930s there had been lamentations over
the required physical education course. The Cavalier Daily
joined in 1952 in attacking it, and John Heatherly, writing in
the paper, called the course "an absolute farce and a mockery."
The Jefferson Society recommended its complete elimination.
All this failed to produce the desired result, but reduction of
the course to one year and abolition of the 8 o'clock "outrage"
were gratefully received.

Needy but able students were being assisted financially by
duPont scholarships. Made available in the middle 1950s,
twenty-five regional scholarships were awarded annually, with
one going to the winner in each of the 10 congressional districts
and 15 to top-ranking Virginians without regard to geography.
The amount of the stipend ranged from $2,000 to
$3,400 for the four years.

The largesse from Philip du Pont that made the foregoing
possible had been forthcoming back in the 1920s, but other
smaller donations had come to the university in more recent
years. John Lee Pratt, '05, contributed $125,000 in 1949 for
research of "trace elements" by the Department of Chemistry
under Prof. John H. Yoe. Dr. Yoe had been doing studies in
the field for two decades and had published a two-volume
treatise on the subject entitled Photometric Chemical Analysis.
Mr. Pratt provided $500,000 anonymously for the Department
of Physics in 1952, the money to be expended under
Prof. Jesse Beams. Part of the money was to be used the following
session for fellowships in graduate and postdoctoral
work, while other funds would supplement faculty salaries,
provide special equipment, and bring promising students to
Virginia. "Some of the fellowships will be as attractive as any
offered in the United States," said Beams, who termed the gift
"magnificent." Pratt also gave $500,000 anonymously to the
Department of Chemistry and another $500,000 to the Department
of Biology. In 1958-59 the National Science Foundation

65. Thomas P. Abernethy, professor of history.

renewed the $250,000 grant it had made available the
year before to enable selected high and preparatory school
teachers of science and mathematics to study for a full session
of special advanced courses at the university. The importance
of scientific study and research was stressed still more after
Soviet Russia created a worldwide sensation by putting up its
first sputnik in 1957.

Establishment of a Graduate School of Business Administration
at the university was suggested in the summer of 1946 by
Prof. Tipton R. Snavely. Pointing out that there was no separate
graduate business school in the South, he said in a written
report that the University of Virginia was the logical place for
one. The following October, Rector Edward R. Stettinius
urged in his convocation address that the university establish
a school of this type. In January 1947 Professor Snavely devoted
seven pages of his annual report on the Department of
Economics and the McIntire School of Commerce to a detailed
proposal for implementing the plan.

President Darden was skeptical at first because of the cost,
but he soon became enthusiastic and extremely active in pushing
the proposal. A committee, headed by Homer L. Ferguson,
president of the Newport News Shipbuilding and Dry
Dock Company, was appointed, with the objective of raising
an adequate endowment and persuading the General Assembly
to appropriate funds. This committee was succeeded,
upon the formation of the school, by a Sponsoring Committee
headed by Henry E. McWane, '16, president of the Lynchburg
Foundry Company and member of the Board of Visitors. It
evolved into the University of Virginia Graduate School Sponsors,
Inc., with McWane still as chairman and J. Harvie Wilkinson
Jr., '27, prominent Richmond banker, vice-chairman.
Both McWane and Wilkinson were deeply involved and extremely
effective in promoting the project. President Darden
spoke in its behalf in all parts of the state.

One of the major arguments for the school was that its location
at a southern university would tend to encourage
graduates to remain in the South, and, more specifically, in
Virginia. Hundreds were going to Harvard, the University of
Pennsylvania's Wharton School, and elsewhere and making
their careers in the North or West, all of which tended to drain

the South of many of its most promising business and industrial
leaders. As Wilkinson put it, "No region can remain vigorous
and suffer continued drain of its mental topsoil and its
centers of ferment and creativity."

Business organizations throughout Virginia were favorably
impressed by the plan, and a drive for funds was launched. It
went slowly at first, but after several years a total of $1,250,000
was raised, and the state legislature matched the amount. The
General Assembly also made an annual appropriation of
$50,000.

In the spring of 1954 it was announced that Charles C. Abbott,
a magna cum laude Ph.D. of Harvard and Converse Professor
of Banking and Finance in the Harvard Graduate
School of Business Administration, would be the first dean of
the Virginia school.

"Charlie" Abbott, who had written widely on business and
financial problems and was frequently voted the favorite professor
of the Harvard students, was almost ideally fitted for
the position at Charlottesville. As a student at Harvard he had
edited the Lampoon and composed the class poem. Endowed
with a keen wit, he described himself as "a carpetbagger," but
his birth in Kansas and his schooling in the North were no
hindrance to his success in Virginia. An admiring writer for
the Alumni News said he was "the only dean at the university
who keeps ready access to Beechnut chewing tobacco."

Dean Abbott arrived Sept. 1, 1954. Discussing it later, he
said, "I think Mr. Darden wanted the school to open September
15, but I said I wanted a year to open, and we opened in
1955 with 38 students." After considerable conversation with
Darden and "asking questions which Darden didn't understand,
he [Darden] said `Well, why don't you do what you
damn well please; everybody does here, anyway.' That's all the
instruction I ever had."

The school opened in Monroe Hall, with two faculty members
besides Abbott planning the curriculum and preparing
for the session of 1954-55. One was John D. Forbes, professor
of business history, who "arrived in an elderly yellow Rolls
Royce from Wabash College, Indiana," where he had taught
since 1946. Forbes had done graduate work in economic history
at Harvard, got his Ph.D. there, and held other degrees
from the University of California and Stanford. The other

member of the planning and teaching staff was Forrest J.
Hyde, a 1915 law graduate of the University of Virginia who
had served on its law faculty for several years and then entered
practice in New York City, where he was associated with
important business and financial interests. The rest of the faculty
included Almand R. Coleman, Lee R. Johnston, Everard
W. Meade, Maurice Davier, and Forrest E. Keller, with A. W.
Zelomek as visiting lecturer. It was a two-year course, leading
to the degree of Master of Business Administration (M.B.A.).
Harvard's case system was used. Ability to communicate by the
spoken and the written word was stressed, since it was felt that
businessmen are deficient in these areas.

A "loyal friend of the university" created a Student Loan
Fund, enabling talented students without means to attend the
school. This anonymous "friend" who came forward frequently
over the years to aid various university causes was almost
certainly Colgate Darden. His identity was seldom made
public, but time and again his generosity (or that of his wife,
who also remained behind the scenes) helped to pull the university
over a financial hump or to provide funds that could
be used in imaginative ways to further the progress of the institution.
In recognition of his wholehearted support as president
of the university and as a continuing benefactor, the
school was named for Mr. Darden in 1973. In the present instance
this "loyal friend" offered a substantial sum to the sponsors
of the graduate school on condition that they match it.
They did, and $100,000 or more became available for the Student
Loan Fund. Incidentally, Colgate Darden never accepted
any salary from the university.

Describing the curriculum of the graduate school in broad
terms, Dean Abbott said:

The prototypical student in the school has had two or more
years of managerial or other significant work experience.
While today admission standards are much tighter, attrition
still ranges between 10 and 15 percent. About 40 percent of
the students are married when they enter the school and 60
percent by the time they graduate. Virginia-born students enrolled
have averaged around 43 percent of the total enrollment,
those from the rest of the South 16 percent and from
elsewhere 41 percent, according to The First Twenty Years: The
Darden School at Virginia, edited by C. Stewart Sheppard.

A program leading to the degree of Doctor of Business Administration
(D.B.A.) was instituted in 1965. The program is
intended to train students for professional careers in teaching
and research in business management. The degree may theoretically
be earned in three years, but the demands of dissertation
research are likely to extend the time to four years or
more.

The faculty has expanded steadily from the early days,
when there were nine members until now faculty and lecturers
number about forty. As described by Corks and Curls: "Both
the business and the academic worlds are well represented.
Professional competence in engineering, history, psychology,
law, economics, speech and public service are included in the
group, as well as skills in the characteristically [sic] business
fields of accounting, finance, marketing and production." The
most significant single factor in the school's effectiveness "may
be its small enrollment [about three hundred] and low facultystudent
ratio," Professor Forbes has written. Eventual enrollment
was projected at 480, to be achieved without sacrificing
the intimacy of faculty-student relationships that characterized
the school's early years.

A new headquarters building was felt to be essential, and
the General Assembly was urged to appropriate the necessary
funds. It made $3,200,000 available for a building to be
erected on the Duke property northwest of University Hall.

President Edgar Shannon, like President Darden, favored the
project, as did Dean Abbott and virtually the entire faculty of
the school. Ground was broken in 1973, with completion
scheduled for 1975.

An important feature of the Darden School is the Tayloe
Murphy Institute, which began functioning in 1967 as a research
affiliate. Named for the late W. Tayloe Murphy, an ardent
supporter of the school, much-admired member of the
General Assembly, and longtime friend of Colgate Darden, it
received a million-dollar endowment from an "anonymous
donor" whose identity was not difficult to guess. The gift was
conditioned on $600,000 additional being raised; it was. The
Institute now includes the former Bureau of Population and
Economic Research, which was consolidated with it in 1972.
Prof. Charles O. Meiburg of the Darden School faculty was
made executive director. Dr. Lorin A. Thompson, for many
years head of the Bureau of Population and Economic Research,
had left in 1966 to become chancellor and then first
president of George Mason College. The Tayloe Murphy Institute
monitors the business progress and climate of Virginia
and the nation and issues statements and statistics from time
to time putting the business situation in perspective.

Another important activity of the Darden School is carried
on by the Center for the Study of Applied Ethics. This grew
out of the action of Mrs. Signe Olsson in establishing a chair
in 1966 in memory of her husband, Elis Olsson. She had the
following objectives, according to the Board of Visitors: "The
donor has in mind the enormous importance of integrity in
human affairs, and seeks through this gift to stimulate general
public interest in and understanding of the ethical implications
that necessarily adhere to the exercise of authority in
both public and private life." Prof. Frederick E. Nolting, Jr.,
was named to the Olsson chair. Major conferences on ethics in
business were held in 1973 and 1974, and several publications
were issued.

When Charles C. Abbott retired as dean in 1972, he was
succeeded by C. Stewart Sheppard, who had joined the faculty
in 1961, after serving as dean of the Graduate School of Business
and Public Administration at Cornell University. Dean
Sheppard is a native of Wales, an M.B.A. of New York University,

66. Llewellyn G. Hoxton, professor of physics.

and a Ph.D. of Columbia University. Soon after his arrival
in Charlottesville he established the Institute of Chartered Financial
Analysts, a professional organization located in the
university's William Faulkner House. It tests and certifies financial
analysts throughout the United States and Canada,
and since it enjoys worldwide recognition and acceptance,
membership is eagerly sought.

The Darden Graduate School of Business Administration
has a high reputation throughout the United States. Certainly
one of the premier graduate schools of business in the South,
it is competitive with the best of its type in this country. A
survey by Columbia University in 1974 placed it among the
top eleven such schools in the United States. It has been disappointing,
however, in that fewer of its graduates remain in
the state and region than had been hoped for by the school's
founders. For example, about 150 companies sent representatives
in 1974 to recruit that year's 133 M.B.A. recipients. Of
these, 48 percent accepted positions in the Northeast (half of
them in New York City), 26 percent in the South (only 12 percent
in Virginia), 11 percent in the Middle West, with the remaining
15 percent going to the Far West or to foreign countries.
There is evidence also that Virginia employers, for some
unknown reason, are less zealous in seeking these graduates
than employers from other areas.

"The Darden School is a net exporter of M.B.A. talent from
Virginia to the rest of the world," Prof. John L. Snook, Jr., has
written. "Of nearly 400 M.B.A.'s whose domicile was Virginia
during their student days, more than 200 have moved to other
states, while fewer than 100 `foreigners' have been attracted
to Virginia. . . . We may have to develop strategies to make
Virginia business and industry more attractive to future
M.B.A. classes."

The Darden School has over two million dollars in endowment,
plus $500,000 in liquid assets. Sydney F. Small of Roanoke
left it $500,000 in 1973 for a series of fellowships.
Sustaining annual income from the sponsors totals over three
hundred thousand dollars. Endowed chairs in honor of Dean
Abbott and Professor Snavely were established in 1972, and
resources for other faculty chairs were being solicited. As generous
as the Sponsors' financial support had been over the

years, continuing assistance would be needed if the excellence
and diversity of the school's programs were to grow.

Steadily improving its performance and turning out extremely
well-trained graduates year after year, the Darden
School soon came to be recognized as among the foremost
graduate schools of business administration in this country.

On another level of instruction in business and economics, an
important development took place in 1952-53, when the
McIntire School of Commerce was given status as a separate
school, with its own faculty and dean. The James Wilson
School of Economics remained as a department of the College
of Arts and Sciences. Professor Snavely had been chairman of
both departments since 1923.

After Professors Rutledge Vining and Lorin A. Thompson
served briefly as successive deans of the independent McIntire
School, Frank S. Kaulback, Jr., associate professor of accounting,
was named so the position. As head of the school, he directed
a two-year course of study leading to the B.S. degree in
economics, and in 1972 a master's degree in accounting was
added. Dean Kaulback was a consultant to bankers' associations
and other corporations and was active in national organizations
operating in the business education field. He interviewed
each degree candidate personally, advising him or her
as to academic, vocational, or placement problems.

The Department of Economics offers the M.A. and Ph.D.
degrees. Economics had been taught at the university since
the institution opened in 1825, so that it was one of the first
universities in this country to give instruction in that discipline.
The James Wilson Department was found by the
American Economics Association to rank "eleventh among 42
leading American universities in the number of doctoral dissertations
which were in progress . . . 1941-50." And in 1956
a magazine article "listed Virginia as among the `Big 15' in
respect to graduate work and research in economics." The
philosophy of the university's economics faculty might be described
as middle of the road. It is decidedly less liberal than
the faculties of most American universities.

The economics faculty was strengthened in the mid-1950s
by the addition of an able young professor named James R.

Schlesinger. He remained for seven years and later served in
Washington as chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission,
director of the Central Intelligence Agency, secretary of defense,
and secretary of energy.

The Thomas Jefferson Center for Studies in Political
Economy was organized at the university in 1957, with Prof.
James M. Buchanan, chairman of the Department of Economics,
as director. The impetus for the establishment of this interdepartmental
agency came largely from the economics faculty.
Its aim was to bring together economists, philosophers,
political scientists, historians, and scholars in related fields.
Prof. G. Warren Nutter, who was heading a special study of
the Soviet economy, on which he was a recognized authority,
was associate director of the center, and Prof. Leland B.
Yeager, also of the economics faculty, was executive secretary.
Financial support for the operation was provided by foundations.
It was announced that the center would bring to the
university each year a distinguished visiting scholar, would
sponsor individual lectures or seminar discussions by invited
guests, grant fellowships to graduate students and postdoctoral
candidates, and act as a clearing house through which
independent research projects by permanent members of the
university faculty were administered.

President Darden had been in office only a few months when
the long-forgotten controversy between the Medical School
and the Medical College of Virginia in Richmond surfaced
once more. Financial deficits of the two institutions disturbed
Gov. William M. Tuck, who suggested, in the interest of efficiency
and economy, that a "partial merger" might be desirable.
The question was referred to Dr. Alan Gregg of the
Rockefeller Institute, who left no doubt as to his position by
recommending strongly against this. Dr. Gregg found medical
education to be "ideally situated" in such an environment as
that provided by the university, and he added that "the long
future of medical education in the State of Virginia lies in the
development of the Medical School at Charlottesville."

This ended any discussion of a partial merger between the
two institutions, but it did not resolve President Darden's concern
over what he termed the university hospital's "huge operating

67. Gordon T. Whyburn, professor of mathematics.

deficit." Darden pointed to the hospital's $900,000
shortfall for 1952, of which $300,000 was a loan from the state
the previous year and $600,000 the current year's deficit. He
termed this the most critical problem facing the university and
appealed, with only a limited degree of success, to the city of
Charlottesville and the surrounding counties to help in meeting
this heavy cost, caused, in large measure, by the health
needs of their indigent citizens. Dr. Richard J. Ackart became
director of the hospital in 1951, succeeding Dr. Carlisle S.
Lentz, who was given the post of consultant after twenty years
as superintendent and additional years as medical director.

The Medical School also obtained the services of a new dean
of medicine at about this time—Dr. Vernon W. Lippard, who
came to the university in 1949 from Louisiana State, where he
was medical dean. A highly regarded Yale graduate, he remained
at Charlottesville four years and then accepted the
deanship of the Yale Medical School. Dr. Lippard was succeeded
at Virginia by Dr. Thomas H. Hunter, a cum laude
M.D. of Harvard, who had taken part of his medical education
at Cambridge University, England. At the time of his appointment
as Virginia's dean of medicine he was associate dean of
the Washington University Medical School, St. Louis. Dr.
Hunter was widely known for his studies of bacterial infection
of the heart, usually associated with rheumatic heart disease.

Dr. William H. Muller, Jr., one of the nation's leading heart
surgeons, was named head of surgery in 1954. A native of
South Carolina and graduate of the Duke Medical School, he
was acting chairman of the division of general surgery at the
University of California Medical Center, Los Angeles, at the
time of his appointment as successor to Dr. Edwin P. Lehman,
who retired after a successful career. Various members of the
university's medical faculty were involved in many constructive
activities beyond the boundaries of the institution, but Dr.
Muller surpassed then all. For example, during the 1957-58
session, taken at random, he delivered ten addresses, from
Chicago to Galveston, took part in seven discussions of papers
in several different areas of the country, and had thirteen publications
with four more "to be published." Dr. Muller also had
five research projects in process or completed, while serving
on eighteen committees and on the American Board of Thoracic
Surgery.

A cobalt unit for cancer therapy superior to anything of the
kind in Virginia at the time was obtained in 1956, thanks to a
campaign for funds led by Mrs. Henry B. Mulholland, with
the assistance of the dean's office. This was a cobalt-60 teletherapy
unit, and as more money was raised than expected,
"a 1,000-curie source" was obtained, Dr. Vincent W. Archer,
chairman of radiology, stated.

Dr. Henry B. Mulholland arrived at age sixty-five in 1958
and hence was retired as assistant dean of the Medical School,
while continuing to teach. "Hank" Mulholland, widely liked
and admired, had been extremely active in a number of different
directions—as a member of the House of Delegates of
the American Medical Association and various committees of
the AMA, as well as of the American Diabetes Association, not
to mention several committees of the Medical Society of Virginia
and the State Department of Health. He was the major
influence in launching the Virginia Council on Health and
Medical Care, which won national recognition for its placement
of hundreds of doctors and dentists in rural areas sorely
in need of their services. For these conspicuous achievements
an endowed chair was named for him in the Medical School,
the first chair in the university to be named for an incumbent
professor.

Dr. Mulholland was succeeded as assistant dean by Dr. Byrd
S. Leavell, an able and dedicated member of the medical faculty
since 1939 and professor of internal medicine since 1945.
Dr. Leavell was known for his clinical research and his writings
on functions of the liver, on leukemia, pernicious anemia,
sickle cell anemia, and other blood disorders. He was chief of
the division of hematology from 1946 to 1971, chairman of
the department of internal medicine from 1966 to 1968, and
author of over fifty scientific papers and several books and
monographs. Dr. Leavell was coauthor with Dr. Oscar Thorup,
'46, of a textbook, Fundamentals of Clinical Hematology,
which has gone through several printings.

Dr. Charles J. Frankel, associate professor of orthopedic
surgery, in charge of the athletic teams, took a law degree in
1957. He had been teaching law in the Medical School for
three years and medicine in the Law School for two years, and
planned to continue both types of instruction. Dr. Frankel
wrote many articles on the treatment of athletic injuries.

The Medical Center's School of Nursing was established in
1956, and replaced the old Department of Nursing. This reorganization
set the school apart as a degree-granting body,
coordinate with the Schools of Medicine, Engineering, and
Law, and was the culmination of studies and proposals made
over the preceding decade. Under the new arrangement the
nursing students became more active participants in the affairs
of the university community. For example, they placed
themselves under the university's Honor System and incorporated
their yearbook into Corks and Curls. Dr. Margaret G.
Tyson was appointed dean, with responsibility to the director
of the Medical Center. A leader at this time in nursing affairs
at the university was Roy C. Beazley, who had served over a
period of thirty-six years as nursing superintendent, acting
department cochairman, director of nursing service, and faculty
member. She became the university's first woman professor
emeritus. The basic professional degree program was established
in 1950. Under its terms the applicant spent two
years at an approved institution, then gained practical training
at the university and completed the course for a Bachelor
of Science degree in nursing, and obtained a license as a registered
nurse. Another year of study was required for the
M.A. degree in nursing. For a time the school also continued
to offer a three-year program leading to a nursing diploma.

There were serious suggestions that the entire medical complex,
including the hospital, be moved to the North Grounds
and rebuilt from the ground up. The group of buildings located
near the Corner since the turn of the century had been
enlarged from time to time, but it had been impossible to plan
the expansion properly, under such circumstances. The argument
was made that economy and efficiency would be enhanced
if a well-planned and well-integrated facility could be
constructed de novo. However, so huge a construction project
would have entailed expenditures beyond the university's capacity,
and President Darden was strongly opposed. It was decided
to keep the medical complex where it had always been.

The Law School would not move to the North Grounds for
some two decades, but already, in 1950, it was tending to drift
away from the other schools at the university. Its students
were concentrating on their legal studies and on the Law

School's extracurricular activities. The contrast was noted by
Dean F. D. G. Ribble during the session of 1948-49: "I can
remember, from my own student days, a substantial number
of law students who looked on the study of law as very definitely
a part-time pursuit. The life of the fraternity house, of
the athletic field, or the social organizations and university
politics received a very great share of their interest and time.
Such is not now the case." He said that there had developed
"a more complete concentration on the law," with extracurricular
activities consisting of work connected with the Virginia
Law Review, the Reading Guide, the Virginia Law Weekly, the Legal
Forum, the Student Legal Research Group, the Law Student
Council, and the Law Clubs. The dean expressed the
view that these activities "develop in the law student a capacity
for leadership, a capacity for meeting problems, for seeing
their implications and for reaching solutions."

The Law School during the 1950s was a mixture of Virginians
and other southerners plus a remarkably high percentage
of Ivy League graduates. Dean Ribble said that "not counting
the home state, this Law School probably has the highest percentage
of Southern students of any school in the nation." As
for the Ivy League, Harvard, Yale, and Princeton graduates
made up, on the average, more than one-third of the total
enrollment.

Former World Court Justice John Bassett Moore, class of
1880, presented 5,000 volumes on international law to the
Law School Library in 1946. He had previously given the library
2,500 volumes in the same field. Moore was professor of
international law and diplomacy at Columbia University from
1891 to 1924. He died in 1947, and two years later his bust
was placed in Mural Hall at the Law School, the gift of his
daughter, Mrs. de Raisnes Storey.

William Jett Lauck, one of the nation's leading labor economists,
gave 5,000 volumes to the law library in 1948. Lauck
had served with the Immigration Commission, the War Labor
Board for World War I, the National Recovery Administration
(NRA), and the railway arbitration commissions.

The 100,000th volume was presented to the library in 1953
at special ceremonies, with U.S. Supreme Court Justice Stanley
Reed, '08, making the presentation. The library had become
the largest law library in the South.

Miss Eleanor Gibson's work as associate director of placement
for the Law School was praised "in the highest terms" by
Dean Ribble. William H. White, Jr., was director of placement,
but the greater part of the work was done by Miss Gibson. "It
would be hard to overestimate the importance of an effective
placement office on the morale of the Law School and our
relationships with the alumni," said the dean. The placement
office helps graduates seeking assistance and alumni seeking
jobs or change of jobs.

Dean Ribble spoke of the significance of the Judge Advocate
General's School's locating at the university. It is "a national
service of importance to this university," said he. "Our
school gains prestige through being the location of the legal
center of the Army of the United States." He quoted General
Dahlquist, commanding general of the army within the U.S.,
as saying that the J.A.G. School "gained prestige and stature
by its association with a law school of the first rank."

Edward Watts Saunders, '17, was named dean of engineering
in 1947 as successor to the late Dean Rodman. Saunders,
president of his graduating class in engineering at the university
and member of the State Board of Engineering Examiners
since 1929, led in revising the undergraduate curriculum,
developing the Master of Engineering degree, and
expanding the research and service activities of the department.
The M.E. degree required four graduate courses and
residence for at least one session. There were a comprehensive
examination and a thesis based on original research. Half
of the required research time could be completed in industrial
or governmental centers.

The department had offered extension courses since 1929
in the state's industrial areas. These courses, initiated by Prof.
Arthur F. MacConochie, provided strong support for the first
new graduate degrees. Enrollment had grown to the point
where in 1948 about seven hundred persons had matriculated
in thirty-six classes.

Organization of an alumni association of the Engineering
Department was an important event of these years.

Also, the university joined with the Virginia Highway Department
to establish the Virginia Council of Highway Investigation
and Research. Under its auspices the first International

68. James Southall Wilson, professor of English and dean of the
Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, 1937-1951.

Skid Prevention Conference was held at the university
in 1958. European countries were devoting much more attention
than the United States to problems of skidding by motor
vehicles. Papers were delivered at the five-day conference by
speakers from Great Britain, West Germany, Holland, and
Spain.

Students at the university were able to take advantage of the
research opportunities afforded by the Oak Ridge Institute of
Nuclear Physics at Oak Ridge, Tenn., operated under a contract
with the Atomic Energy Commission. Virginia was one
of fourteen southern universities affiliated with the institute,
and physics Professors Jesse Beams and Leland Snoddy were
members of its council.

Saunders resigned as dean in 1950 because of ill health, and
Charles Henderson was named to the deanship. He too had
been president of his engineering class when he graduated at
the university in 1920. By the end of Henderson's five years as
dean, graduate programs had been instituted in chemical,
civil, electrical, and mechanical engineering, and degrees were
offered for the first time in aeronautical engineering and engineering
physics. The School of Engineering (in 1952 the
terms "department" and "school" were interchanged throughout
the university) had grown to such an extent that it had a
larger enrollment than either law or medicine. At about this
time Christopher G. Memminger made a bequest of $300,000
for chemical engineering.

Charles Henderson reached the mandatory retirement age
for deans in 1955 and resumed full-time teaching for six more
years. He was succeeded by Lawrence R. Quarles, '35, who led
the school for the next eighteen years until his retirement in
1973. A Charlottesville native and University of Virginia
Ph.D., he had worked for several years with Westinghouse,
specializing in electronics; he also had spent two years with the
Oak Ridge Institute.

Dean Quarles developed a three-pronged nuclear energy
program of teaching, research, and aid to industry and other
agencies. He named a Nuclear Energy Advisory Committee to
work with industrial, agricultural, and other concerned organizations
and interests. A new degree—Master of Nuclear Engineering—was
introduced, and the School of Engineering
collaborated with the Department of Physics in offering the

degree of Doctor of Science in Engineering Physics. A Doctor
of Science in Chemical Engineering, the school's first doctoral
degree, was initiated. Advanced extension courses in nuclear
engineering were offered throughout the state.

Construction of a million-watt swimming-pool-type nuclear
reactor was one of the university's significant building projects
of the time. The reactor was used by many departments and
schools of the university. Chiefly because he supervised its
construction and served as the U.S. State Department's consultant
to the Philippine Government on nuclear reaction, a
chair in the School of Engineering and Applied Science (the
new name of the department, reflecting the changed emphasis)
was established in honor of Lawrence Quarles. This was
one of only three such chairs that have been named for incumbent
professors in the university.

Quarles's efforts to revise undergraduate curricula led to
the first major changes since the end of World War I. They
involved increased time for mathematics, science, humanities,
and social sciences, and an expanded faculty.

The School of Medicine was using nuclear energy in two
important ways, treatment by means of nuclear energy products,
or radiation, and analysis by the use of these same tools.

The Department of Education underwent a transformation
for the better during the Darden years. President Darden was
determined to strengthen the operation, and on the retirement
of Dean Manahan he brought in Lindley J. Stiles as
dean. Previous emphasis on methodology was sharply reduced,
and attention was focused to a much greater degree
on subject matter—that is, every teacher was required to study
the subject to be taught, rather than methods of teaching.
Dean Stiles said in 1955 that entrance requirements had been
raised to provide that "a B average or better" was required for
entrance, as well as "adequate scores on Scholastic Aptitude
Tests or achievement tests, and personal qualifications, including
promise as a prospective teacher." It was possible to major
in physical education, and thirteen football players were enrolled
in the School of Education at that time, according to a
letter in the student newspaper.

For the first time the school was offering graduate courses
leading to the Master of Education and Doctor of Education

degrees. The M.A. and Ph.D. in education would still be offered
under the supervision of the Department of Graduate
Studies. Dean Stiles regarded the training of graduate students
as the principal function of the school.

The School of Education was now functioning as a separate
professional department, "enjoying a status similar to that accorded
the Departments of Engineering, Law and Medicine,"
the dean reported. "Students in the Department of Education
are privileged to participate in the general student affairs of
the university through elected representatives on the Student
Council, the Honor Committee and the Women's Student Association."
The School of Health and Physical Education and
the intramural program were placed under the department.

The McGuffey Reading Clinic, headed by Prof. Ullin W.
Leavell, was established by him in 1946 and developed in the
succeeding years into an important agency for the improvement
of reading ability for persons of almost all ages. Leavell
was a pioneer in this field. In the late 1950s he directed an
annual reading clinic with hundreds of participants from all
over Virginia and beyond.

The phone in Leavell's office rang one afternoon, and he
answered. It was a call from Ohio, and the operator said, "Is
Mr. McGuffey there?" "No," said Leavell, "he is not here." "Do
you know where he is?" said the operator. "Well," said he, "I
think he is in one of two places." "When will Mr. McGuffey be
in?" asked the somewhat impatient operator. "Mr. McGuffey
died in 1873," was the answer. "God rest his bones!" said the
operator, "Who's in charge now?"

During the five years of Dean Stiles's incumbency total enrollment
in the Department of Education tripled, while
graduate enrollment, including part-time extension courses,
increased tenfold. The number of degrees awarded jumped
astronomically. Establishment of the Division of Education Research
was a feature of these years. It would serve the research
and evaluation needs of educational agencies throughout the
commonwealth. Prof. Francis G. Lankford, Jr., relinquished
his post as director of the Division of Teacher Placements to
serve as director of the new division. Dean Stiles did much to
modernize and improve the Department of Education. In
1953 he accepted the deanship of education at the University
of Wisconsin. Stiles was somewhat tactless at times, and he antagonized

some of the administrators and professors in other
departments, but his record was a constructive one.

Dr. Ralph W. Cherry was the next dean of education. He
came from the University of Texas and took over the deanship
in 1956, remaining in the post until 1968, after which he
taught for six more years. He directed the summer session
from 1956 to 1974. It was the opinion of influential members
of the Arts and Sciences faculty that Dean Cherry raised the
stature of the School of Education markedly within the university.

He aided the school's faculty in establishing annual conferences
in subject matter areas, such as English, social studies,
science, and mathematics. Still more significant was the fact
that during his regime the school received accreditation by the
National Council for Accreditation and Teacher Education,
while the Division of Field Services was established under his
leadership. The latter served as a formal channel for association
with the state schools and educational agencies. The size
of the faculty was more than doubled, and the number of matriculates
rose to a record high of 300 full-time and 500 parttime
graduate students. Those who commented on Dean
Cherry's personal characteristics stressed his integrity, personal
warmth, and human understanding.

Prof. Orland E. White relinquished the directorship of the
School of Biology's Blandy Experiment Farm in Clarke
County in 1955, after holding the position since 1927. White
was curator of plant breeding at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden
when he took over as professor of agricultural biology and
director of the farm, with a view to making the latter a center
for research in genetics. It was, as he put it, "a neglected piece
of land with some dilapidated buildings, no modern improvements
of any kind, a 20-year-old apple orchard of about 65
acres and more kinds of weeds that I had ever seen in my life."
When he stepped down twenty-eight years later he turned
over "a scientific institution with a laboratory and dormitory
setup worth $100,000 or more, a good working library, muchimproved
farm buildings, a two-compartment greenhouse,
and 130 acres of experimental plots, lawns, and arboretum
landscaped and scientifically arranged with over five thousand
species of woody plants, farm land in good condition, a herd
of around 150 head of high grade Hereford cattle, a drove of

hogs, up-to-date farm machinery, and a worldwide reputation
and contacts." More than one hundred technical papers had
been published by the staff and the students, more than forty
graduate students had obtained high degrees, mainly Ph.D.'s,
through their investigations and experiments at the farm.
Foreign students had come from Germany, China, India, Ireland,
and Canada. Orland White was succeeded on July 1,
1955, by W. Ralph Singleton, Miller Professor of Biology.
White died in 1972.

The other institution affiliated with the Miller School of Biology
and Agriculture is the Mountain Lake Biological Station
in Giles County—described in some detail in chapter 3. During
the twenty-five years the station had been in operation
more than twenty-five courses in biology had been offered.
Approximately seventy-five biologists from colleges and universities
in this and other countries attended. Prof. Bruce D.
Reynolds was in charge and had occupied that position during
much of the time since the station was established.

Another university activity situated at considerable distance
from Charlottesville was the Seward Forest in Brunswick
County, an affiliate of the School of Forestry. It consisted of
3,600 acres bequeathed to the university in 1932 by Dr. W. M.
Seward, '86, of Triplett. Active development of the area was
begun in 1935 under the direction of Prof. Alfred Akerman.
The Seward Forest was operated as a teaching facility for various
methods of reproducing, caring for, and harvesting timber,
and as a center for research. By the mid-1950s it had from
ten to sixteen full-time employees, including several university
students who gained practical experience in this way. Lectures
in the school were occasionally supplemented by fieldwork in
Brunswick County, but since the forest is 140 miles from
Charlottesville, frequent field trips were impossible. Courses
were on an undergraduate level.

The Division of Art and Architecture of the McIntire
School of Fine Arts was expanding its curriculum in the late
1940s and preparing to require a five-year course as a prerequisite
to the B.S. degree in architecture. The School of Architecture
had been fully accredited since 1944, when the national
accrediting board was established, but the board
stipulated that the school would have to offer a five-year
course in order to retain its accreditation. Prof. Edmund S.

69. Henry Jordan, star university tackle and heavyweight wrestling
champion of the Atlantic Coast Conference, 1957, shown
in the uniform of the Green Bay Packers.

Campbell, head of the division, stated in 1948 that provision
was being made for every degree applicant to spend a year in
the college and then four years taking the professional course.
The division also was adding courses in painting, drawing,
and design. In each of the two preceding years there had been
over four hundred applicants to the division for only thirtytwo
places.

The university community was shocked in 1950 when Professor
Campbell died suddenly in Washington while attending
a meeting of the American Institute of Architects. He was
sixty-five, and had come to Charlottesville in 1937 as head of
the Division of Art and Architecture. Campbell had served as
consulting architect for various projects around the Grounds
and was recognized as a leading critic of design. He was also
one of the nation's foremost watercolor artists, with examples
of his work in many national exhibitions. Professor Campbell
had been a member of the Virginia State Fine Arts Commission
and of the State Examining Board of Architects.

He was succeeded by Thomas K. Fitz Patrick, who came to
the university from Iowa State College. Fitz Patrick was appointed
to head the university's School of Architecture, which
was separated from the College of Arts and Sciences and established
as a separate professional school under the name of
McIntire School of Architecture. Its origins went back to
1919, when Prof. Fiske Kimball became chairman of the newly
established McIntire School of Fine Arts.

Classes in architectural history, as well as art history, were
held in the Bayly Museum, an innovation introduced by William
B. O'Neal, professor in the School of Architecture and
museum curator. New degrees in architectural history and city
and regional planning were offered in 1958-59. Enrollment
in the school at that time was slightly in excess of one
hundred.

Charles W. Smith, who had served temporarily as acting
head of the University of Virginia Press, was named chairman
of the Division of Art in the College of Arts and Sciences. A
famous Virginia-born artist and university alumnus, with exhibits
in this country and Europe, he would be awarded a Certificate
of Honor by Yale University "in recognition of his
achievement as an artist and his distinguished contribution to
the culture of his time." Smith had worked in oils, wood engraving,

typography, lithography, and block printing, and he
had experimented successfully in the design of wallpaper and
textiles. His "block painting" process was revolutionary. William
B. O'Neal, chairman of the university's Division of Architectural
History, placed him "in a rank seldom achieved by an
American artist." He retired as department chairman in 1963.

The Department of Music had made steady progress since
the 1940s, when Randall Thompson began moving it forward.
Further advance was achieved under Stephen Tuttle, and in
more recent years much credit is accorded Ernest C. Mead,
Jr., for the department's accomplishments. Mead returned
from a year at Harvard and eventually became head of the
department. The department had direction of the Glee Club,
band, orchestra and brass ensemble, and the teaching staff devoted
much time to each of these operations.

Ernest Mead had been a pupil of John Powell, for many
years a devoted alumnus. Powell received what seems to have
been a unique tribute when Gov. John S. Battle proclaimed
Nov. 5, 1951, to be "John Powell Day."

Powell and Mead were enthusiastic supporters of the Virginia
Music Festival, which came to an end in 1950, after functioning
for four years and bringing musicians and music lovers
to the university from all over the state. Scott Stadium was
the scene of some of the major events, but the weather was so
uncertain that Col. Francis P. Miller, festival association president,
announced reluctantly that the affair could not be continued.
Miller added that the festival did not have an adequately
broad base of support.

The Institute of Public Affairs was revived in 1950 after
having been suspended for eight years on account of World
War II. George B. Zehmer, director of the Extension Division
and dean of the summer session, was its director. Part of its
nineteenth session, in 1952, was broadcast around the world
in eleven languages. The Institute's two-week program overlapped
the latter part of the eight-week summer session of the
university.

George Zehmer, who had headed the Extension Division
since 1925, retired from that position in 1958 but continued
to teach in the School of Education. He had relinquished the
deanship of the summer session in 1951, after nearly a decade
and a half in the post, and was succeeded by Dean Lindley

Stiles. The Extension Division was expanding so rapidly that
Zehmer wished to give it his undivided attention. Enrollment
in 1925-26 had been only 370, distributed among twenty-six
communities, whereas in 1955-56 there were nearly seven
thousand persons enrolled from eight-six communities.

Upon his retirement as dean of the division, Zehmer was
succeeded by Chemistry Prof. James W. Cole, Jr., whose new
title was dean of the School of General Studies. Cole, a Ph.D.
of the university, organized and directed the Academic Year
Institute for Teachers of Science and Mathematics and planned
to continue this work, financed by the National Science Foundation.
He was chemical consultant to the U.S. Air Force and
the Air Research Development Council. Zehmer died in 1961,
and in that year the name of the school was changed to School
of Continuing Education. A building on an eighteen-acre tract
adjoining the university Grounds, formerly used by the Red
Cross, was purchased. The structure was renamed Zehmer
Hall.

The Bureau of Population and Economic Research was engaged
in a five-pronged program of activity. Lorin A. Thompson,
the director, reported in 1952 that it was functioning in
the following areas:

The growing body of research being compiled by the bureau
was "finding its way into the instructional materials of the staff
members of the schools of economics, business administration
and sociology," Thompson reported.

The Bureau of Public Administration was observing its
twentieth anniversary, and Rowland Egger, the director, reported

70. C. Waller Barrett, donor to the university of the greatest
collection of American literature in existence.

that "especially since the war, the bureau has remained
essentially a service agency providing consultant and technical
advisory services, with research, training and education, and
clearing house activities in a distinctly subsidiary role." The
bureau was preparing a textbook on Virginia government, to
be published by Crowell.

The question of whether one of the former state teachers' colleges
should be made coordinate with the university had been
to the fore during the gubernatorial administration of Colgate
Darden. He recommended the appointment of a commission
to study the advisability of designating Mary Washington at
Fredericksburg as the university's women's college. The commission
was appointed, and it approved the plan. Mary Washington
became coordinate with the university in 1944. It had
been founded in 1908 as the Fredericksburg State Normal
and Industrial School, later became Fredericksburg State
Teachers' College, and in 1935 Mary Washington, in honor of
George Washington's mother. In 1944 it was no longer an institution
for training teachers, since for the session of 1943-44
fewer than one percent of the students registered for teacher
training.

Affiliation of Mary Washington with the university was
deemed by those who shuddered at the thought of coeducation
at Charlottesville to be a legal and proper solution of the
coed problem. Daughters of Virginia taxpayers were now provided
with adequate educational facilities at a state-supported
institution—so the argument ran. Faculty and students at
Mary Washington were enthusiastic over their new affiliation.
President Newcomb, under the law, was designated chancellor
of Mary Washington, and its chief administrative officers, with
Morgan L. Combs, president of Mary Washington, as chief
local administrative officer. The two institutions were placed
under the university's Board of Visitors, which was enlarged
by four members. Committees from the two faculties were
named to work out details of the relationship. Dr. George O.
Ferguson, dean of the College at the university, was chairman
of the university's committee, and Dr. Edward Alvey, Jr., dean
of the College at Mary Washington, headed that institution's
committee.

The necessary arrangements and planning were completed.
Within a few years it was possible to work out cooperative relationships
between the two institutions whereby courses in
nursing, elementary and graduate education, and medical
technology could be offered, with both the university and the
college participating.

All went smoothly until the session of 1953-54 when serious
problems arose at Mary Washington. The trouble began
when the eighty student waitresses in the dining hall were directed
to wear caps and uniforms. This was bitterly resented,
on the ground that the directive "demeaned the position of
waitress to a servile role," as Dean Alvey expresses it in his
history of Mary Washington. Hostility had been mounting
among the students toward the administration, and the directive
as to uniforms brought matters to a head. Dean of Women
Isabelle Gonon resigned and there was considerable turmoil.
President Combs was given an opportunity to be heard at a
special meeting of the Board of Visitors in December 1953,
and the board met again the following month. The outcome
of all this was that there was a "rearrangement" of President
Combs's responsibilities, and "supreme administrative authority"
for Mary Washington was vested in Colgate Darden,
chancellor of the institution. Combs retained the title of president
but was relieved of all jurisdiction over "faculty relations,
student relations, curriculum, internal budget and control."
His authority extended only to "construction and development,
solicitation of funds and related matters." Combs wrote
the board that the arrangement "has my full approval and the
implementation of it will have my full cooperation." Darden
announced that Dean Alvey and Edgar Woodward, bursar,
would divide administrative duties at the college and would be
responsible to him. Alvey was placed in charge of faculty relations
and curriculum, with Woodward handling the business
side.

Morgan Combs became increasingly dissatisfied with this arrangement
and more and more suspicious. In December 1954
he charged that five members of the college faculty and staff
were engaged in a conspiracy against him and that when he
signed the letter almost a year before agreeing to cooperate
with the new arrangement, he did so "under duress." At about

this time a document termed "scurrilous" by the Board of Visitors
and entitled "The Whole Story at Mary Washington College"
was widely distributed. No one knew who wrote it, but
Combs was aware that it was being circulated. The visitors expressed
"resentment of the completely false charges" and announced
that "continued retention of Dr. Combs in any active
capacity at Mary Washington would be against the best interests
of the college." It removed him from office, effective April
9, 1955.

Morgan Combs was obviously not well; he was found to be
suffering from leukemia. He entered a hospital in July and
died in October, aged sixty-four. It was a sad end for a career
that had been useful to Virginia education. President Darden
expressed deep distress, saying that he had known for some
time that Combs was gravely ill. The latter's career as president
of Mary Washington had spanned twenty-six years, and
during that time the institution has grown from a small teachers'
college to a well-regarded liberal arts college for women.
Enrollment had trebled, and whereas only four faculty members
had the Ph.D. when Combs became president in 1929,
nearly half of the almost one hundred teachers had the doctorate
when he died. The handsome and greatly enlarged
campus was much admired, the physical facilities had been
expanded substantially, and the standards raised. When the
new science hall was completed in 1959, it was named for
Morgan Combs.

After a careful search, the Board of Visitors elected Dr.
Grellet C. Simpson, dean and professor of English at Randolph-Macon
College, Ashland, as chancellor of Mary Washington.
A native of Norfolk, he was a B.A. of Randolph-Macon
and an M.A. and Ph.D. of the University of Virginia. The
college made excellent progress under his leadership, and he
remained in office until his retirement in 1974. During President
Simpson's eighteen-year administration, admission standards
and degree requirements were raised, teaching loads
were reduced and faculty salaries improved, and the physical
plant was upgraded. The granting to the college in 1971 of a
chapter of Phi Beta Kappa was convincing evidence of the
progress that had been made.

Doubts concerning the value to Mary Washington of its affiliation
with the university began to arise as the years passed.

These were accentuated in 1965 when Dr. John Dale Russell
issued his report as chairman of the Higher Education Study
Commission surveying the colleges and universities of the
commonwealth. The report said that "Mary Washington College
enjoys few advantages from its relationship with the University
of Virginia, and there are some disadvantages"; and it
went on:

However, the report went on to say that "Mary Washington
will not achieve its potential as a distinguished institution until
it has its own Board of Visitors and can enjoy equal status with
the other state-controlled institutions of higher education in
Virginia."

The advisability of terminating the relationship between
Mary Washington and the university became obvious in 1970,
when women were admitted to the university on the same basis
as men. A coordinate college for women at Fredericksburg
no longer had any reason for existence. Hence legislation was
passed at the 1972 session of the General Assembly bringing
the affiliation to an end. At the same time, admission of men
to Mary Washington was authorized.

Foundations for two-year colleges in southwest Virginia and
northern Virginia, affiliated with the university, had been laid
by the Extension Division.

In the mountainous southwest numerous extension centers
had been opened. There was no college or university in that
extreme southwestern tip of the state. President Darden,
Dean Zehmer, and Dean Stiles made a special trip to the extension

center at Clinch Valley, Wise County, where enrollment
was close to three hundred, with both daytime and
nighttime classes going full tilt. They were greatly impressed.
Soon thereafter leaders from that section of Virginia urged
that a two-year community college be established at Clinch
Valley by the university, and the university administration decided
to open such a college on an experimental basis for the
session of 1954-55. It was an immediate success, despite numerous
handicaps. President and Mrs. Darden bought about
one hundred acres of land, two lakes, and other property for
the campus. The first building was named for George Zehmer.
A major influence in the development of the institution
was exerted by a remarkable man, Joseph C. Smiddy, son of
a coal miner who rose to become chancellor of the college
and guitar-playing leader of the Reedy Creek Boys bluegrass
quartet.

The Clinch Valley curriculum was divided into two parts,
the terminal program and the transfer program. The former
consisted of largely vocational and technical courses, while the
latter was modeled on the first two years of work in the College
of Arts and Sciences at the University. Those who successfully
completed the transfer course could shift to a fouryear
institution of higher learning.

So much eagerness was demonstrated by the students and
so much cooperation by the surrounding area, that the General
Assembly appropriated $110,000 for operations at its
1956 session and $500,000 for an academic building. It was
clear that Clinch Valley College was there to stay.

By the 1958-59 session the framework of the new academic
building had been erected, and the Seven Society announced
that it would provide a bust of Thomas Jefferson. Six houses
and a four-unit apartment house for faculty members had
been completed, and plans were being drawn for a gymnasium-auditorium.
Prof. Archer Jones, who had received his
doctorate at the university in June 1958 took over as the first
dean of Clinch Valley.

Somewhat similar things were happening in northern Virginia,
where the population was far more dense, and a large
percentage of the citizenry were connected with the federal
government in Washington. A great need for extension
courses was evident. An extension center was established

71. James Bakhtiar, all-American fullback, 1957.

there in 1948, and in 1956 the university's Board of Visitors
authorized the setting up of a two-year coeducational branch
college, which opened the following year in temporary quarters
at Bailey's Crossroads, under the directorship of J. N. G.
Finley, postwar dean of counseling at the university. It was
called University College. In 1959 the City of Fairfax purchased
150 acres for a permanent branch campus, and donated
it to the university. The institution was named for
George Mason, the revolutionary statesman, and given the
status of a community college.

Extension Division classes were being conducted by hundreds
of study groups in practically every city and town in the state,
with particular concentration in northern Virginia and the
Hampton Roads area. In the latter region such highly technical
subjects as the aerodynamics of supersonic flight, naval architecture,
and advanced electronics were being taught. Some
regular members of the university faculty were giving these
courses, as with those elsewhere, but teachers from virtually
all the colleges and universities in Virginia were participating
in the far-flung activities of the Extension Division.

Accolades to President Darden and members of the university
faculty came from many directions during these years. Darden
was given highly important responsibilities of national if
not international significance. In 1954 he spoke at Santiago,
Chile, at the Congress of Latin American Universities, representing
the Association of American Universities. The following
year he was named a delegate to the United Nations. He
spent about two months at the U.N. and returned to the university
on several weekends when university business was
pressing. In 1957 he left on a fifty-two-day world tour as a
member of President Eisenhower's special committee on foreign
aid. Some twenty-two thousand miles were covered and
a score of countries in Europe and Asia were visited. When
the group returned to Washington, they were in session at the
old War and State Department Building across the street from
the White House, and one member said, "Come on, let's walk
over and give the President our report." "Oh no," said John L.
Lewis, czar of the United Mine Workers who was a member of
the committee. "We've got to go up in style. You phone and
get a White House car." So a chauffeured Cadillac was summoned

and the delegation drove to the main entrance, a distance
of one block. All of which seemed highly absurd to Colgate
Darden. . . . Two years thereafter he served as chairman
of a commission to examine southern education. It issued a
notable report, Within Our Reach, in which the point was made
that the South must be judged on the same basis as the rest of
the United States, with no more alibis for the region based on
lower living standards or other differentials.

Teachers at the university also were honored in many
ways—by European, Asian, and South American institutions
or governments, as well as by some of the most prestigious
universities and agencies in the United States.

Tributes to Prof. Joseph M. Carrière of the Department of
Romance Languages were paid repeatedly by the French government.
He was made an officer of the Academy, a knight of
the Legion of Honor, was twice awarded the Prize of the
French Language, elected a member of the Centre Catholique
Intellectuel Français, and awarded an honorary degree by Canada's
Laval University. Professor Carrière was chosen president
of the American Association of Teachers of French and
the American Association of Teachers and was elected twice to
the presidency of the American Folklore Society.

Prof. Rowland Egger's awards and distinctions were so numerous
as to be almost bewildering. A partial list would include
financial and administrative adviser to the Bolivian government
and administrative adviser to the prime minister of
Pakistan, vice-president of the United Nations Administrative
Tribunal, representative of the Ford Foundation in Lebanon,
administrative consultant to the U.S. Departments of State,
Treasury, Commerce, and Agriculture, and U.S. government
representative at several meetings of the Pan American Congress.
Dr. Egger was decorated by the governments of Bolivia,
Belgium, and Lebanon. He was the first American to receive
the British Royal Institute of Public Administration's Haldane
Prize.

Prof. Oron J. Hale of the History Department was on a twoyear
leave of absence in 1950-52, serving as U.S. deputy land
commissioner and then commissioner of Bavaria. Appointed
by John J. McCloy, German high commissioner, as deputy to
George N. Shuster, he succeeded Shuster when the latter returned
to the presidency of Hunter College, New York. "Pat"

Hale was a recognized authority on modern Germany, the author
of highly praised books and articles on that country's
twentieth century history and politics.

Prof. Allan T. Gwathmey, '36, of the Chemistry Department
received the Southern Chemist Award for 1952, a gold medal
given at the southeastern regional meeting of the American
Chemical Society. It was for his notable work with metal crystals,
his leadership in establishing the Virginia Institute for
Scientific Research in Richmond, which he served as president
and board chairman, and "for distinguished service to the
profession of chemistry in the Southern states." "Pete" Gwathmey
also won the Jefferson Research Prize of the Virginia
Academy of Science, of which he was elected president. The
research award of the Oak Ridge Institute of Nuclear Studies
likewise went to him, and he lectured to several professional
groups in Europe on his work with crystals.

Recognition as one of the foremost bibliographers in this
country and Europe came to Prof. Fredson T. Bowers of the
English Department. He received a Fulbright grant to work
on the bibliographical aspects of various Restoration plays and
was in demand as a speaker in England, where he addressed
the Student Book Collectors' Club in Oxford and the Bibliographical
Societies in Oxford and London. His invitation to
address the London Society was a most exceptional honor. Six
years later, in 1958, Professor Bowers served as Sanders Lecturer
in Bibliography at Trinity College, Cambridge, the first
American to be invited to occupy this, the oldest bibliographical
lectureship in England. The following year he was at Oxford
for two months as James R. Lytell reader in bibliography.
He also lectured at various leading American universities.
Mrs. Bowers is Nancy Hale, the nationally known short story
writer, novelist, and biographer, winner of numerous important
literary awards.

The Butler Medal was awarded by Columbia University in
1952 to Prof. Albert G. A. Balz, '09, longtime chairman of the
Philosophy Department. The medal goes annually to the Columbia
graduate who has shown the most competence in the
fields of philosophy or educational theory. Balz, a Columbia
Ph.D., published Cartesian Studies in 1951 and Descartes and the
Modern Mind in 1952.

72. William S. Weedon, University
Professor of Philosophy.

[ILLUSTRATION]

73. Joseph C. Smiddy, chancellor of
Clinch Valley College.

Mathematics Professors Gordon T. Whyburn and Edward
J. McShane were winning so many honors that it was difficult
to keep up with them. Whyburn was elected president of the
American Mathematical Society and McShane was chosen almost
simultaneously as president of the Mathematical Association
of America. Several years later McShane was named to
the presidency of the society. Whyburn was also vice-president
and chairman of the American Association for the Advancement
of Science and served as managing editor of the Journal
of the American Mathematical Society. Both men represented
the United States at the International Mathematics Conference
at Amsterdam in 1954. McShane also was a delegate to
the International Mathematical Union at The Hague.

Dr. G. Slaughter Fitz-Hugh, chairman of the Department of
Otolaryngology in the Medical School, was elected president
of the American Laryngological Association and the Virginia
Society of Ophthalmology and Otolaryngology, as well as
chairman of the Section of Otolaryngology of the Southern
Medical Association. He received the Certificate of Merit of
the American Academy of Ophthalmology and Otolaryngology
and the Robley Dunglison Award of the university's Medical
School.

Law Prof. Hardy C. Dillard, '27, was addressing prestigious
groups in this country and abroad. A partial list of his appointments
and engagements during the middle 1950s would
include: member of the executive committee, American Society
of International Law and of the editorial board of the
American Journal of International Law; civilian consultant to the
Army War College and lecturer there and at the Armed
Forces Staff College; delegate to important conferences at
Stanford University and Arden House, New York; lecturer at
The Hague on "Some Aspects of War and Diplomacy," the
lectures published in the Recueil des Cours of the Académie de
Droit International.

Another member of the law faculty, Prof. Charles S. Gregory,
was the recipient of honors that were international in
scope. At the invitation of the Australian universities' law
schools he spoke before seven of them in all parts of the country,
under the auspices of the Carnegie Foundation. He also
gave a series of public lectures in Australia on torts and labor

relations. In addition, Gregory was appointed by Attorney
General Herbert Brownell, Jr., to a committee for the study of
the antitrust laws.

Prof. Jesse W. Beams was winning awards of great prestige
for his invention of the ultracentrifuge. This device was not
only significant in the development of the atom bomb, but it
also contributed to the solution of biological and medical
problems involving viruses, hormones, and enzymes. Solutions
were brought nearer by virtue of the fact that it was possible
with Dr. Beams's extraordinary device to spin tiny
spheres at one million revolutions per second. The American
Physical Society, of which he was elected president a few years
later, awarded him the John Scott Medal and a check for
$1,000. The Lewis Prize of the American Philosophical Society
went to Dr. Beams for his address to the society on the
ultracentrifuge. He was also the recipient of the University of
Virginia's first annual Thomas Jefferson Award. This award
was made possible by a gift from Robert E. McConnell of The
Plains, who provided for a grant of $500 each year to the
member of the faculty who has contributed "by personal influence,
teaching and scholarship toward inspiring those high
ideals for the advancement of which Mr. Jefferson founded
the university."

Edward C. Stevenson, '31, professor of physics, was one of
forty or more leading civilian scientists and industrialists who
were serving on the Army Scientific Advisory Panel, established
to advise the secretary of the army and army chief of
staff on the development of a more effective and economical
fighting force. Professor Stevenson was on the Harvard faculty
for eight years before World War II and later was transferred
to Los Alamos, N.M., where he helped to develop the
firing mechanism for the atomic bomb.

The Fisher Award, highest award of the American Chemical
Society in the field of analytical chemistry, with a check for
$1,000, went to Prof. John H. Yoe in 1957. Dr. Yoe also was
chosen chairman of the society's Division of Analytical Chemistry.
In addition he was named as one of eleven U.S. delegates
selected by the National Academy of Sciences and the National
Research Council to represent the Academy Research
Council at the Fifteenth International Congress of Pure and

Applied Chemistry at Lisbon. Yoe also attended a meeting of
the International Commission on Analytical Reactions in the
same Portuguese city.

Prof. Frank A. Geldard of the Department of Psychology
was on leave for the session of 1956-57, serving as scientific
liaison officer for the U.S. Office of Naval Research, with headquarters
in London. He had served during the previous year
as president of the Division of Experimental Psychology of the
American Psychological Association and was elected to the
Committee on Awards of that association and to the council of
the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

A remarkable series of honors came to Dr. Vincent W.
Archer, '23, chairman of the Department of Radiology in the
Medical School for well over a quarter of a century. He was
chosen in 1958 to head the American College of Radiology,
with over five thousand members. Three years later he was
awarded the College Gold Medal, the organization's highest
honor. Dr. Archer had been a member of the American Medical
Association's House of Delegates for many years. He also
was credited with a greater degree of responsibility than any
other individual for the Virginia General Assembly's $5,900,000
appropriation in 1955 for the multistory addition to the
university's Medical Center. Dr. Archer had received the first
award of the Southern Medical Association in 1949 and in the
same year the American Roentgen Ray Association's silver
medal.

Lecture engagements in all parts of India were filled in
1958-59 by Prof. Edward Younger of the History Department
under a Fulbright lectureship at the University of Allahabad,
where he taught U.S. history and government. He
would return for another lecture engagement in India three
summers later and in 1960-61 would be on leave to the U.S.
Naval War College as Ernest J. King Professor of Maritime
and Diplomatic History.

Prof. Frank L. Hereford, Jr., accepted an invitation to
spend a year as Fulbright scholar at Birmingham University,
England, doing research with their multibillion-volt ion accelerator.
He was cowinner, with S. Berko, of the J. Shelton
Horsley Research Award of the Virginia Academy of Science.

Dean Thomas K. Fitz Patrick of the School of Architecture
was elected president of the National Architectural Accrediting
Board, of which he had been secretary for some years. He
was past president of the Association of Collegiate Schools of
Architecture and in 1957 was elected to the College of Fellows
of the American Institute of Architects.

Studies of the Soviet Union's economic growth by Prof. G.
Warren Nutter of the Economics Department had attracted
"worldwide attention," according to Prof. James M. Buchanan,
chairman of the department. Nutter had been engaged in this
inquiry for four years, and the results had been "widely acclaimed."

The foregoing list of distinctions, citations, lectureships,
and other accolades accorded University of Virginia professors
during these years is by no means complete. It is, however,
representative of the wide range of important recognition
received by the institution's administrators and teachers.

Gregory Swanson, a black graduate of the Howard University
Law School who had been practicing law for two years, applied
for permission to take graduate courses in the University
of Virginia Law School for the session 1950-51. Attorney
General J. Lindsay Almond informed the university's Board
of Visitors that "refusal to admit Swanson cannot be successfully
defended in court." The board, nevertheless, rejected
Swanson's application on the ground that acceptance would
be a violation of Virginia law. Swanson appealed, and the U.S.
Circuit Court of Appeals ordered him admitted, an outcome
said on good authority to have been in full accord with President
Darden's wishes. He entered the Law School in the fall of
1950. The black was well received, according to various opinions,
but he remained in school only a few months and
dropped out in July 1951. In Darden's view he did so because
he was not sufficiently well prepared for graduate work. Swanson
said that the university students did not care about racial
equality or the welfare of the country, according to Bryan
Kay's "History of Desegregation at the University of Virginia:
1950-1969."

Actually, Swanson had not been the first Negro enrolled at
the institution. The decision of the court in the Swanson case

validated the entry of other black graduate students, and Walter
N. Ridley, with baccalaureate and master's degrees from
Howard University, applied in January 1950 in order to complete
his doctorate in the philosophy of education. Three
years later the degree was awarded by the School of Education,
and Ridley became the first black to earn a doctorate at
a major white southern university.

In 1958 a tense situation arose in the Charlottesville public
schools, two of which had been closed under the state's "massive
resistance" policy, and student leaders at the university
cautioned matriculates arriving in September to "refrain from
any actions that may tend to aggravate the problem." They
seem to have heeded this advice.

The coed question was a lively one during this period, and the
prevailing view among the male students continued to be that
such ladies as were already there had to be tolerated, but no
more were wanted.

True, Elinor Mickey was nominated in 1949 by the Student
Party for a place on the Student Council, an unprecedented
thing. She was from the Department of Education and active
with the Virginia Players. Miss Mickey agreed to run, but the
Cavalier Daily demurred. It pointed out that the women students
had their own governing association and that the Student
Council "is concerned with the activities of male students."
The council "would be embarrassed, we submit, by the
presence of a coed member," said the editor. Miss Mickey withdrew
from the race.

At the same time, the newspaper expressed sincere regret
that Lucy Stockwell was resigning from the University News
Service. "Her news releases, which are carried by the CD almost
every day of publication without a by-line are a boon to
harried city editors and . . . a boon to the paper and its readers,"
said the publication.

In another area the coeds had installed a branch of the
Lychnos Society at the university. It recognized women students
who were foremost in scholarship and leadership. Lychnos
was not unlike the Raven Society.

"There are women everywhere—in my classes, all over the
Grounds and generally in the hair of myself and of most of

74. Vincent Shea, vice-president for business and finance.

the friends I have made since I arrived here," Brockett Muir,
Jr., a first-year man, wrote in a letter to the student newspaper.
"Do not think I am a woman hater. I love them—in their
place. But a woman's place is not in a gentleman's university. . . .
I want to send my sons here, but not if the place has become
infested with women."

Cavalier withers were being wrung by the spectacle of Virginia
coeds returning in shorts from playing tennis. "All of
the women's colleges in Virginia require a young lady to wear
a raincoat at the very least when she is wearing shorts," the
editor of the Cavalier Daily admonished. "And here at the university,
where all the men attire themselves as befits a gentleman,
even that little bit is not being done." The paper suggested
that coeds should always "wear stockings and heels to
classes, which (we are naturally and excusably a bit shaky on
our facts at this point) seems to be the female equivalent of
coats and ties."

Yet by the close margin of 1,237 to 1,064, coeds were given
the right to vote in student elections. The decision had previously
been made that they were ineligible for seats on the Student
Council since they had their own governmental apparatus.

Tantrums erupted in the sanctum of the Cavalier Daily when
an announcement was made asking "all students, male and
female, interested in cheerleading . . . to attend the practice
today." "After years of futile struggle," wailed the editor, "we
have finally become at least tolerant of the female race in the
classroom. . . . But must we face the unpleasant prospect of
hearing their titters and giggles in front of us at every football
game?"

A strong dissent from the bleating of these misogynists was
sounded in verse by Jack Cole, who boldly proclaimed:

This amusing dissent seemed all the more noteworthy in
view of the vast preponderance of student sentiment in the
opposite direction.

In another area of student opinion it was even more obvious
than before that Jews were accepted without prejudice by the
great majority at Virginia. William L. Shapero was elected
president of both the Law School and the Class of 1951, and
was a member of Tilka, IMP, and the Thirteen Society. A few
years later Tom Hofheimer was vice-president of the Student
Council, treasurer of Skull & Keys, and a member of the Ravens,
Omicron Delta Kappa, and the Thirteen Society. About
a decade after that, Tony Markel was an Eli, Z, and Thirteen,
as well as vice-president of the College and a member of the
IFC governing board. Other examples might be mentioned.

It was during these years that C. Waller Barrett, '20, was donating
his monumental collection of books, manuscripts, and
letters by American authors to Alderman Library. Authoritatively
described as the most valuable assemblage of materials
on American literature in existence, it includes some forty
thousand books and three hundred thousand manuscripts
valued at tens of millions of dollars. Having built a fortune in
shipping, Mr. Barrett retired early and devoted his ability and
energy to putting together this amazing collection, representing
well over one thousand novelists, essayists, short story
writers, historians, poets, and dramatists extending from the
American Revolution to the present. Numerous rare manuscripts
and letters, as well as first editions, many inscribed by
the authors, have been brought together. Nearly five hundred
of the writers were considered by Mr. Barrett to be of such
importance that he collected them in depth, that is, everything

in printed form, as well as manuscripts and letters by or related
to them.

The breadth of the collection may be partially glimpsed
from the fact that seven New England writers are so fully represented
that "no research on these authors can safely be undertaken
without consulting the material in the Barrett library,"
Herbert Cahoon, curator of manuscripts in New York
City's Pierpont Morgan Library, has stated. The seven are
Hawthorne, Longfellow, Holmes, Thoreau, Emerson, Whittier,
and James Russell Lowell.

The finest collection in existence of works by Edgar Allan
Poe was an early presentation by Waller Barrett. It was given
in honor of James Southall Wilson, whose letter to Barrett in
the early 1940s turned his attention as a collector to Alderman
Library. Included were Poe's rare first published work (1827)
as well as El Aaraaf, Tamerlane and Minor Poems (1829), both,
unfortunately, stolen from the library in 1974 and never recovered.

Other southern writers, such as William Gilmore Simms,
Paul Hamilton Hayne, Henry Timrod, Sidney Lanier, Joel
Chandler Harris, and O. Henry are covered in depth. Important
modern authors, such as Willa Cather, Steinbeck, Hemingway,
Dreiser, Mencken, and Vachel Lindsay are well represented.

The Barrett Library, consulted by scholars from all over the
world, is handsomely housed in a paneled room adjoining that
of the McGregor Library, also in an appropriate room of its
own.

When the Barrett collection was formally dedicated, many
who attended the ceremonies adjourned to the Farmington
Country Club. Two university students were discussing the
gift, and one was overheard by Barrett to remark: "This university
needs a football team, and what do we get—a goddam
liberry!" Nobody laughed any more heartily at this abysmal
gaffe than Waller Barrett.

The Alderman Library archival resources had been sharply
upgraded by the intensive work of Francis L. Berkeley, Jr., in
the years immediately after World War II. He had been appointed
university archivist succeeding able Lester J. Cappon,
who resigned to accept a position with the Institute of Early
American History and Culture in Williamsburg. Berkeley was

"an ideal successor" to Cappon, in the opinion of Librarian
Harry Clemons, and he spent the next five or six years "prowling
through Virginia," as he put it, in search of manuscripts.
It was high time that a dedicated effort of this sort was made
to counteract, as far as possible, the massive roundup of Virginia
materials carried away in the 1920s and 1930s by J. G.
de Roulhac Hamilton and others, who carted them off to
North Carolina and elsewhere. In a few years Alderman Library
had so many manuscripts that it had difficulty making
room for them, and it was obvious that the building would
have to be enlarged. For his part in achieving this result and
for his other services to scholarship, Frank Berkeley received
high praise. Walter Muir Whitehill, an international authority
in the field, wrote more than a decade later in his book Independent
Historical Societies: "Few men are as widely beloved as
he for their unobtrusive and disinterested service to learning.
Berkeley continues not only to guide the manuscript division
[of Alderman] but to play a vital role in the affairs of the Virginia
Historical Society, of the project for microfilming Virginia
materials overseas, and of most scholarly enterprises that
concern Virginia history."

Harry Clemons retired as librarian in 1950 after a highly
productive career during which he made an immeasurable
contribution to the library in many directions, "while," as one
of his associates expressed it, "subtly arranging matters so that
somebody else got the credit." When Clemons became librarian
in 1927 the book collection totaled 151,333 volumes
and when he retired twenty-three years later the figure was
1,592,333. But the bare figures tell little of the "development
of the personality, spirit and service of a great institution," as
the Alumni News put it. Mr. Clemons's retirement was in large
degree nominal, since he embarked at once on a threepronged
program which included a history of the library, an
appraisal of its books and other collections, and preparation
of a list of materials it needed.

Harry Clemons's successor was Jack Dalton, '35, who had
been on the library staff since 1936 as reference and associate
librarian. He was in the office for six years, at the end of which
time he resigned to accept appointment as director of the international
relations office of the American Library Association.
An innovation of his incumbency was to open the library

stacks to undergraduates. Dalton enjoyed "high esteem in the
ranks of his colleagues throughout the world," John Cook
Wyllie, '29, who succeeded him as librarian, wrote following
his departure.

John Wyllie had been curator of rare books and of the
McGregor Library when chosen librarian at Alderman. Described
as one of the two ablest professional bibliophiles in the
United States, he had a remarkably diversified career. After a
year in the early 1930s spent touring Europe and visiting libraries,
binderies, and booksellers, he was named curator of
the Virginia manuscript collection. When Alderman Library
opened he was appointed director of the rare books and
manuscripts division. Before the United States entered World
War II, Wyllie joined the American Field Service and drove
ambulances for the British in the Middle East. Then he served
as an officer in the U.S. Air Force, had hair-raising experiences
in the China-Burma-India theater, and was decorated
by the American, British, and Chinese governments. After his
return to the university he received the Raven and Algernon
Sydney Sullivan Awards. Wyllie reorganized the University of
Virginia Press in 1948 and took a leading role in establishing
the Albemarle County Historical Society and the University of
Virginia Bibliographical Society. His indefatigability is seen in
the fact that he sometimes worked all night at the library and
was found asleep in his chair in the morning.

Wyllie appointed Francis Berkeley and Louise Savage associate
librarians in 1958, and Berkeley resigned as secretary to
the Board of Visitors. He was succeeded in the latter post by
Weldon Cooper, professor of political science and director of
the Bureau of Public Administration, which changed its name
in 1964 to the Institute of Government. "Frank" Berkeley continued
as curator of the library's millions of historical and literary
manuscripts. As chief of acquisitions, Miss Savage, who
had been with the library since 1930, continued to schedule
the flow of some 40,000 or more books added to the collections
each year.

The family of the late John Stewart Bryan gave the library
valuable letters covering the period 1770-1887. The Randolph,
Tucker, and Bland families, among others, were represented,
and the collection included 150 letters from John
Randolph of Roanoke, 200 from St. George Tucker of Williamsburg,

75. Dr. Henry B. Mulholland of the medical faculty.

and numerous others from Theoderick Bland,
Judge Henry St. George Tucker, Nathaniel Beverley Tucker,
William Wirt, and Francis Walker Gilmer.

Valuable collections on optics were acquired through the
good offices of two alumni, James P. C. Southall, of the Columbia
University faculty, and Lincoln M. Polan, of the Zenith Optical
Company. Southall was instrumental in securing the collection
on optics of Adolph and Henry C. Lomb of New York
State, and upon his retirement he presented his own fine collection
on physics, a considerable part of which dealt with optics.
Polan paid a portion of the cost of cataloguing the Lomb
collection and solicited contributions from other optical companies
toward a fund to expand the university's optics collection.

The Virginia Quarterly Review celebrated its twenty-fifth anniversary
in 1950 amid tributes from various directions, and
with a contributors' list over the years that sounded like an
international who's-who of literary luminaries. Every short
story published in the magazine the following year was selected
for republication or honorable mention in one of the
best-stories-of-the-year collections. The autumn issue had
three nonfiction articles chosen among the country's "ten best"
by a Council of Librarians. The VQR had three more articles
among the "ten best" in its 1953 winter issue. Five years later
the magazine received a remarkable tribute in the Times of
London. Oliver Edwards stated in the newspaper's "Talking of
Books" column that the Virginia Quarterly "provides as stimulating
a harvest of reading as one can find anywhere." Charlotte
Kohler was editor during this period and would remain
so for nearly three decades, making a distinguished record.
She succeeded Prof. Archibald B. Shepperson in 1946; he had
returned from the service and resumed the editorship for one
year. Miss Kohler had been acting editor during the war. A
$125,000 bequest from Emily Clark Balch provided $1,500 a
year for literary prizes to be awarded annually by the quarterly.
Part of her legacy also went toward increases in salaries
of English faculty members, and part made possible the appointment
of writers in residence.

The first such writer was Nobel Prize winner William Faulkner.
He came with Mrs. Faulkner during the second term of

the 1956-57 session, visited with English classes, and answered
questions concerning his books and writing in general.
He also consulted with faculty and students and gave several
public readings. Faulkner accepted an invitation to return as
writer in residence for the second term the following session.
He had been a frequent visitor to the university, since his
daughter Jill was married to Paul D. Summers, Jr., a student
in the Law School.

Katherine Anne Porter, author of novels and short stories,
was the next writer in residence. She came in the fall of 1958
for one semester.

Dumas Malone, on a sabbatical from Columbia University,
came back to Charlottesville for the session of 1958-59 as visiting
professor of history. He conducted a seminar on the Jeffersonian
period and worked on his monumental biography
of Thomas Jefferson. Malone retired at that time from Columbia
and remained at the University of Virginia as Thomas
Jefferson Memorial Foundation Professor of History, a chair
established especially for him. He subsequently became professor
emeritus and biographer in residence, with grants from
various national foundations to aid him in his work.

Serving with Malone at the university was Merrill Peterson,
also an internationally recognized authority on the master of
Monticello. Peterson, who succeeded Malone as Thomas Jefferson
Memorial Foundation Professor, was the author of Jefferson's
Image in the American Mind, awarded the Bancroft Prize,
Thomas Jefferson and the New Nation, and other highly regarded
works. He and Malone were two of the three leading authorities
in the world on the career of the university's founder.

The University of Virginia Press—at that time, as it is now, a
printing establishment but not a publishing house—was winning
acclaim for the quality of its product. It moved in 1950
from the Corner into its new building between Scott Stadium
and Thornton Hall. Managed from 1935 to 1950 by John S.
Peters, an alumnus, the press had its origins as far back as
1829, when it was founded to publish the Virginia Literary Museum.
Operations were fragmentary and primitive for many
years. In 1912 President Alderman approved the purchase of
a multigraph, which was set up in the southwest wing of the
Rotunda in what was then the bursar's office. The press

printed examinations and tests, hospital forms, circulars, and
letterheads under the direction of Virginia E. Moran, an assistant
in the bursar's office, until she left in 1919 to become assistant
registrar. It functioned under the general supervision
of the bursar until Peters came. Much better equipment was
obtained at that time and the press turned out a series of
books in collaboration with the McGregor Library and another
for the Bibliographical Society, after the society's founding
in the late forties. The first volume issued under the sole
imprint of the University Press was a new edition of Charles
Smith's The University of Virginia—Thirty-Two Woodcuts. Soon
thereafter a new edition of Memoirs of a Monticello Slave, the
recollections of Isaac Jefferson, was produced. Peters had left
to accept a position at the University of Georgia, and Charles
E. Moran, Jr., '36, recently proprietor of the Shamrock Press
in Charlottesville, succeeded him. Under his direction the
press continued to win awards for the quality of its work. In
1957, for example, two of its half-dozen books were chosen
among the twenty-five best for the year in design and format,
in competition with seventeen other publishers and printers.
At that time the plant was printing the Cavalier Daily, university
catalogues, and the University News Letter, as well as news
letters for the Departments of Law and Medicine, hospital
forms, and miscellaneous materials. President Darden had
said early in his administration that establishment of "an endowed
University Press" was one of his major objectives, but
he was never able to bring this about. It remained for his successor
in office, Edgar Shannon, to find the money and set in
operation the University Press of Virginia. Important steps toward
this objective were taken during the incumbency of
Charles E. Moran, Jr.

Unprecedented expansion and improvement in the university's
physical plant was carried out under President Darden.
By the opening of the session of 1950-51 the following major
undertakings had been completed or were under way:

Residence houses for men on the old golf links, ten units to
accommodate 1,244 students, $3,000,000. They were named
for Professors Charles Bonnycastle and John Patten Emmet,
from the original faculty, and Professors Richard Heath Dabney,
William H. Echols, Charles Hancock, Charles W. Kent,

76. B. F. D. Runk, dean of the university, 1959-68.

Albert Lefevre, John Calvin Metcalf, James M. Page, and Milton
W. Humphreys, from more recent times.

Annex behind Cabell Hall, five stories and basement, Ushaped,
accommodating all departments of the College of
Arts and Sciences except the natural sciences, business administration,
music, and art, $1,800,000.

Student Union Building (Newcomb Hall), three stories behind
Peabody Hall, a center for all student activities, $1,800,000.

Chemical engineering wing for Thornton Hall, $250,000.

Hospital wing to provide more space for care and feeding
of patients, $370,000.

Cancer research wing of Medical School, three stories with
upper floor devoted to neurosurgery, $250,000.

Women's dormitory near Alumni Hall, corner of Routes
250 and 29, $465,000.

Heat and power lines and plant, $1,000,000.

In addition, President Darden took a special interest in the
beautification of the Grounds. He appointed a Restoration
Committee, headed by Prof. Allan T. Gwathmey, and initiated
a ten-year program. Many trees on the Lawn were in bad condition,
and these were replaced. With the cooperation of the
Garden Club of Virginia a plan to restore Thomas Jefferson's
gardens between the Lawn and Ranges was launched. Mrs.
Herbert McK. Smith of Staunton, a leader in the Garden Club
and member of the university's Board of Visitors, was a key
figure here. Proceeds from Garden Week over a number of
years were devoted to the project, and the Maverick Plan, engraved
by Peter Maverick for Jefferson in the 1820s, was followed.
Restoration of the West Gardens was completed during
Darden's term, but the East Gardens were not finished until
he had retired from the presidency. Throughout his incumbency
he spent much time touring the Grounds with Sylvester
O'Grince, buildings and grounds director. From one hundred
to two hundred trees, on the Lawn and elsewhere, were replaced.
A shade-tree replacement nursery was opened on
Copeley Hill, and a program of planting flowering trees to
supplement shade trees was got under way. Darden sent to the
Norfolk Botanical Gardens for azaleas, some of which were
planted between Cabell Hall and its annex. An azalea and camellia
nursery was opened in the picnic area across from the

new dormitories. A small garden was planted at the Engineering
School.

As part of Darden's plan for reducing the cost of attending
the university, a cafeteria accommodating 600 students was
opened on Emmet Street between the new residence houses
and the university's academic buildings. "Good chow at a reasonable
price," in the words of one student, was offered. The
price was $190 per semester for all meals. Accommodations in
the new dormitories were $135 for the session, and it was calculated
that a student who took his meals at the cafeteria and
lived in these dormitories would save something like $200 on
the session.

A landmark was liquidated when the gymnasium's reflecting
pool was filled in. Completed in 1923, the pool had been
used for skating in winter and by youthful and overoptimistic
fishermen in summer. But it filled gradually with mud, became
an eyesore and was dubbed "the little Okefenokee." The
area it had occupied became an intramural playing field.

A new organ for the University Chapel was dedicated in
memory of Robert Osborne Price, '88, the gift of his widow.
Mrs. Price came from California for the occasion. Bishop
Henry St. George Tucker, '95, retired presiding bishop of the
Episcopal Church, conducted the ceremonies, and Prof. Vernon
McCasland, chairman of the Department of Religion,
made the presentation on behalf of the donor.

Pavilions II, III, and VI on the Lawn were being restored in
the mid-1950s, under the direction of Prof. Frederick D. Nichols,
to make them as nearly as possible exactly as they were
in Jefferson's day. All were to be occupied by professors. With
the completion of the Cabell Hall annex the Department of
Romance Languages moved there, and Pavilion VI, the Romance
Pavilion, became available as a residence. Each of the
ten pavilions had been enlarged at one time or another. These
additions were not being given the strict restoration treatment
that was accorded the original structures, but modern conveniences
were installed in some of them.

A new $1,500,000 home for the Department of Physics on
McCormick Road across from Thornton Hall was ready for
the session of 1954-55. Together with the latter structure, it
formed the nucleus of what was envisaged as the university's
center for pure and applied science. The U.S. Army was using

the university as its principal center for giving atomic scientists
advanced training in nuclear physics.

Excavation was begun for a new dormitory costing approximately
three hundred thousand dollars and located on the
hillside back of Clark Hall, home of the Law School. The
building was to be leased for five years to the Judge Advocate
General's School for the use of officers staffing it or studying
in it. The school's military men were attending classes in Clark
Hall, where they had their own study hall and access to the
Law School's excellent library. About one thousand two
hundred officers were passing through the school each year.

Two famous rooming houses were in the news. Fire destroyed
the third floor of Miss Betty Booker's fashionable
rooming house, corner of University Avenue and Madison
Lane, and damaged the first and second floors. Mrs. E. M.
Page closed her boarding and rooming house, a landmark in
the community for nearly sixty years. Mrs. Page sold the big
brick building, and it was torn down to make way for a parking
lot. Generations of students had lived there or taken their
meals at her table. It was long the most socially acceptable dining
facility on the Grounds.

When Newcomb Hall was opened in 1958, many wondered
how there could have been so much student opposition. Kendrick
Dure, president of the Student Union, remarked that he
had heard numerous students say "I don't know how we've
gotten along without it."

The new facility contained two cafeterias serving one thousand
eight hundred students three times a day; lounges, meeting
rooms, music rooms, and a large, handsome lounge that
could be converted into a ball room, an auditorium, a motion
picture theater, or a banquet hall for from five hundred to six
hundred persons. The structure was six stories in all, including
space for meat and food storage in the basement, air conditioning
and heating operations, several dark rooms, and
eight bowling alleys. There were billiard and pool tables, table
tennis, game rooms for chess, checkers, and bridge. In addition,
the offices of the Honor Committee, Judiciary Committee,
and other student organizations and publications were in
the building. Grass, shrubs, and trees were planted on the surrounding
area.

Thornton Hall, built originally for not more than three
hundred students, was being enlarged once more, at a cost of
$761,000. This addition was to accommodate aeronautical
and mechanical engineering students. Total enrollment had
risen to 887 by 1959 with the largest group in electrical engineering,
aeronautical and mechanical tying for second place,
civil engineering next, and chemical last.

In order to attract instructors and assistant professors who
would aid in caring for increased enrollment throughout the
university, twelve small family housing units were being built
on the Piedmont, or Maury, estate on Route 29 south of Charlottesville
near the Albemarle County line. Six or eight more
such houses were planned.

The new University Hospital, costing $6,700,000, was completed
in 1960, after several years of construction. It provided
beds for 419 patients, giving the hospital an overall total of
620 beds, all fireproofed and air conditioned. Of the total cost,
the commonwealth appropriated nearly $5,900,000, with the
rest coming from Hill-Burton and other federal funds.

Guiding and supervising the growth of the university's
physical plant since 1931 was Frank E. Hartman, '11, who directed
the planning and construction of a score or more of
buildings over nearly three decades and the enlargement or
renovation of many others, all at a total cost in excess of
fifteen million dollars. Hartman succeeded Charles H. Chandler,
'15, as director of buildings and grounds, a title changed
by President Darden to "director of new construction." "As
long as he had supervision of the university grounds, he gave
constant care to their improvement and beautification," said
the Alumni News. Frank Hartman died in 1959.

An ambitious program to raise $7,800,000 for university development
was launched in 1947, with Fleet Adm. William F.
Halsey, 1900, as chairman. Admiral Halsey, one of the heroes
of the war in the Pacific, stated that part of the money would
be used to acquire a new Alumni Hall to honor the alumni
who served in the armed forces in World War II. The drive
was launched in the spring of 1947 and continued for three
years. At the end of that time only $1,431,000 had been
raised. Various explanations were offered. Among them were

unexpected postwar conditions that kept taxes high, the fact
that various other institutions were carrying on similar fundraising
efforts, and the argument that the financial needs of a
state institution should be met by the state. Only 18 percent of
the alumni contributed, and not a single gift was obtained
from any endowed foundation. In view of this disappointing
outcome, a permanent fund-raising group called "Mr. Jefferson's
Sponsors" was set up with Knox Turnbull, '41, a prominent
Charlottesville insurance man, as president.

Despite the failure of the postwar drive for funds, money
was secured to complete the remodeling and expansion of
Alumni Hall as a memorial to alumni who died in the war. A
loan for completion of the work was made from the University
of Virginia Endowment Fund. It was expected that $80,000
could be raised in the annual alumni fund drive to pay off the
debt on the building. Nearly one thousand alumni were on
hand for the opening at the 1950 finals.

Other vitally important financial assistance had been made
available from the university's Endowment Fund when it provided
half the cost of acquiring Copeley Hill for the erection
of housing for veterans returning from the war. The fund also
made possible the acquisition of the property at the southwest
corner of highways 250 and 29 on which a dormitory for
women was erected. Another service was the purchase for
Alderman Library of the notable book collection of Edward L.
Stone of Roanoke, illustrating the history of the printing art.

A gratifying development in the area of alumni affairs was
the selection of the Alumni News in 1949 as the best alumni
publication in the United States and Canada with circulation
between 4,000 and 6,999. Marvin B. Perry, Jr., was the editor.

A brick wall enclosing the yard on the side of Alumni Hall
was contributed in 1955 by Mr. and Mrs. Colgate Darden in
tribute to J. Malcolm Luck for his twenty-five years as director
of alumni affairs. It bears a tablet expressing "grateful appreciation
of the years of faithful service which Mac Luck has
given the Alumni Association . . . . and as a token of devotion
and respect for him." Edwin B. Meade, '20, president of the
Alumni Association, announced that $6,150 had been raised
from 927 alumni as a gift to Luck, and a check in that amount
was presented to him. Three years later, at age sixty-five, Luck
retired and was the guest of honor at a largely attended dinner.

77. Mary Slaughter, first woman to win a varsity "V," 1954,
and women's eastern intercollegiate tennis champion that same
year.

President Darden was the speaker, and the retiring
alumni secretary was presented with a Cadillac automobile,
$5,000 in cash, a handsome silver tray, a portrait, and other
gifts. Responding, Luck thanked Darden for his unfailing cooperation
and his willingness to speak at countless alumni
meetings. He added that President Alderman also had been
quite cooperative, but that while President Newcomb's attitude
was friendly, his position, in effect, was "let the alumni
run the Alumni Association and leave the running of the university
to me."

Gilbert J. Sullivan, '48, assistant to Luck for a decade, was
chosen to succeed him. A native of Fredericksburg, "Gilly"
Sullivan received his B.S. in commerce at age nineteen, was a
varsity quarterback in football, and member of O.D.K., Tilka,
Z, the Raven Society, and Sigma Alpha Epsilon social fraternity.
He had been named to the assistantship when Jere Hanson,
the incumbent, was drowned. During his ten years in the
post, Sullivan served as secretary to the Student Aid Foundation,
member of the Colonnade Club's board of directors, and
commanding officer of Company K, 116th Infantry, Virginia
National Guard, the Monticello Guard.

Clay E. Delauney, '35, became director of the Alumni Fund
in 1957, succeeding George B. Eager III, who resigned to accept
a position with Colonial Williamsburg. Delauney had
been on the staff of the National Association of Manufacturers
for the preceding nine years.

Lewis D. Crenshaw, first full-time secretary of the Alumni
Association, died in 1947 in New York City. A boulder in his
memory was placed behind Alumni Hall in 1965 by the Class
of 1914. The tablet says it was "in gratitude for his services in
peace and war to his fellow alumni."

Many leading members of the faculty died during President
Darden's incumbency.

French Prof. Richard H. Wilson passed on in 1948. There
was probably never a faculty member like him, at the University
of Virginia or anywhere else. As his colleague Prof. T.
Braxton Woody expressed it: "He lived in a house down on
Park Street. He would receive no one, no one was allowed
inside his house. He cut himself off completely from the life
of the university. He would come to his classes . . . leave to go

home. He never went to a faculty meeting, he never was on a
committee, he never did anything. He didn't have a secretary,
he didn't have a typewriter, he didn't even write letters. It's
just unbelievable that a man could be head of a department
(Romance Languages), and do absolutely nothing as chairman."
And that isn't all. "He had an elaborate contempt for
what is now called scholarship, and he did not want any of his
men to do any research. . . . No professor in the department
ever published anything. . . . He was immensely popular, very,
very eccentric. . . . His classes were enormous."

Professor Woody's account of oral examinations for the doctorate,
held by Professor Wilson in the Salle Lafayette of the
Romance Pavilion is equally memorable. The room had no
light, no heat, and no air conditioning. "We would hold these
things at night," said Woody. " `Dickie' Wilson was a great
showman; all the professors and candidates had to have on
evening clothes. You would come in a tuxedo by candelight,
and you would have a silver pitcher and glass of water, and
that was all. I will never forget one night that it was so blistering
hot up there that we all nearly died. That was the night
that Fillmore Norfleet and Roberta Hollingsworth Gwathmey
got their Ph.D.'s."

A remarkable number of nationally eminent teachers of Romance
languages were trained under Wilson. For years he
taught all the French, Italian, and Spanish in the university,
but was best known as a teacher of French. He wrote novels
under several pseudonyms, two of which were successful, as
well as numerous short stories.

Another loss was the death in 1949 of Prof. Garrard Glenn
of the Law Faculty. Called preeminently "a lawyer's lawyer," he
was much admired by his students and by the legal profession.
He wrote highly acclaimed books on creditors' rights, fraudulent
conveyances, liquidation, and mortgages. Prof. Armistead
M. Dobie said of him that "as a teacher, Glenn had a few
equals in the annals of American legal education. . . . A profound
master of every subject he taught, he spoke as one having
authority, yet the soundness of his scholarship was
matched by his genuine humility and his enduring kindliness."

Almost simultaneously with the death of Garrard Glenn
came that of Walter A. Montgomery, professor of Latin and a
pupil at Johns Hopkins of the great Basil Gildersleeve. He had

been on the faculty since 1929. Prof. John C. Metcalf wrote
that he was "a man of wide and varied culture, versed in foreign
languages and literatures, as well as in the classics. . . He
knew his Shakespeare as well as his Plautus and Terence." Metcalf
referred also to Montgomery's "ready wit, his infallible
sense of humor, his clever repartee, his tolerance, and his
genuine interest in life and letters."

A few months later the university community was shocked
by the death of Dr. Staige D. Blackford, professor of the practice
of medicine. Only fifty years of age, Dr. Blackford was at
the height of his career when coronary thrombosis struck. He
had reorganized the hospital's Outpatient Department and
served as chairman of the Committee on Postgraduate Medical
Education, both of which responsibilities he had discharged
with unusual ability. In addition he was the first chairman
of the hospital's clinical staff and first editor of the
Medical Alumni Bulletin. Dr. Blackford had been a popular and
admired leader since his days at Episcopal High School. At
Virginia he had been captain of the football team and president
of the class of 1925. The Raven Award was his in 1942.
He enlisted as an ambulance driver in World War I, although
under age for military service, and organized the 8th Evacuation
Hospital in World War II, was decorated in both wars,
and ended his career in the second with the rank of colonel.
There was universal sorrow at the untimely death of this exceptionally
talented and dedicated student of medicine and
teacher of youth.

Only a week after Dr. Blackford's death the Medical School
suffered another serious loss with the death of Dr. Robert V.
Funsten, professor of orthopedic surgery, who succumbed to
a heart attack at age fifty-six. He had been on the faculty since
1932 and had served as president of the Virginia Orthopedic
Surgeons. Dr. Funsten wrote many scientific reports and developed
numerous devices used extensively in the cure of orthopedic
patients. His textbook on orthopedic nursing was regarded
by many as the best in the field.

Another death in the summer of 1949 was that of Professor
W. Harrison Faulkner, head of the Department of Germanic
Languages and a member of the faculty since 1902, the year
he got his Ph.D. at the university. He had retired four years

previously, recognized as one of the superior teachers in the
institution.

John Calvin Metcalf, one of the admired and beloved patriarchs
of the university community, died in the same year,
1949. Dean of the Graduate School and professor of English,
chairman of the faculty Library Committee, and longtime adviser
to the Virginia Quarterly Review, Metcalf touched the life
of the institution at many points. He had retired in 1940 and
been honored with a volume of essays to which nineteen members
of the faculty contributed. Raven and Algernon Sydney
Sullivan Awards came to him. Metcalf's lectures, notably those
on Shakespeare, were arresting and his manner ingratiating.
The author of a number of books, including histories of English
and American literature, he was an authority in both
fields. In 1950 a memorial fund was established in his honor,
to be used for the purchase of books for Alderman Library.

William Patton Graham, member of the faculty for a third
of a century as professor of Romance languages, died on the
last day of 1949. Professor Graham had studied at the University
of Grenoble and was an authority on Maupassant, whose
short stories he edited. He had retired in 1945 on reaching
age seventy.

One of the most promising and popular of the younger faculty
members was taken in 1950 when Peters Rushton died at
age thirty-four. In his short life he had won a secure place in
the esteem and affection of his colleagues on the faculty and
the students in his English classes. A graduate of Princeton
and Harvard, he studied for a year at Cambridge University.
President Darden appointed "Pete" Rushton assistant dean of
the college and of students, and Rushton was instrumental in
founding the McGregor Room Seminars in contemporary
prose and poetry, a series of lectures by distinguished critics
and writers. It developed after his death that he had paid all
expenses for carrying the lectures through their first year.
The Peters Rushton Seminars were established in his memory
as a sequel to the McGregor Room Seminars.

Dr. Dudley C. Smith, '16, nationally known authority in dermatology
and syphilology, died suddenly in 1950 when on a
professional visit to Washington. He was chairman of the
School of Medicine's Department of Dermatology and Syphilology,

which he founded in 1924. At the time of his death he
was chairman of the American Medical Association's section
having to do with these specialties. For the previous seventeen
years "D. C." Smith had been a consultant to the U.S. Public
Health Service.

Another loss to the School of Medicine occurred with the
death, at age fifty-three, of Dr. George McLean Lawson, professor
of preventive medicine and public health. He served as
secretary of the medical faculty and chairman of the Medical
Planning Committee that prepared for the extensive building
program of the 1950s.

Dr. Lawrence T. Royster, '97, founder of the university's Department
of Pediatrics, died at about this time. He served on
the State Board of Health and was the author of various works
on pediatrics.

A particularly distressing loss was that of fifty-two-year-old
physics Professor Leland B. Snoddy, '29—another notable
teacher taken at a comparatively early age. As the Alumni News
expressed it, his death "not only depleted the ranks of outstanding
scientists, but brought to countless associates, students
and others an acute sense of personal loss, the loss of a
great teacher and friend." Professor Snoddy had done significant
work on experiments during World War II with the atom
bomb and on atomic and guided missiles for the Navy Bureau
of Ordnance.

And as if this catalogue of calamities were not sufficient,
young English Prof. Dan S. Norton died at age forty-three.
He had made a secure place for himself on the faculty and in
the community. As Prof. Archibald Shepperson put it, the loss
was "as serious as the university faculty and students could
well sustain. . . Few, if any, have contributed as much to the
advancement and enrichment of the best purposes of the university
as he did during the 10 short years he spent here." Dan
Norton had been first chairman of an organization founded
in 1947 called the Friends of the University. The idea was suggested
by Martin Hiden, a student, but Norton took hold and
made it a reality. The organization's purpose was to bring to
the university superior programs in the arts, literature, music,
and drama. Within a few months 600 members had been enrolled
from students, faculty, and community, and a score of

78. Edgar and Eleanor Shannon at the time of his election to the
presidency of the university in 1959.

programs were presented at the ensuing session. The Friends
became a fixture. Dan Norton's death and that of Peters Rushton
removed two of the ablest members of the English faculty
when they were on the threshold of what promised to be brilliant
careers.

One of the veteran members of the faculty was lost when
Gardner L. Carter, professor of chemistry since 1918, died.
He retired in 1952 for reasons of health and died a year later.
Of diminutive stature, he enlivened his lectures with stories
that were regarded as somewhat pungent. Professor Carter
was the author of several laboratory texts in chemistry.

Robert H. Webb, '06, professor of Greek for more than
forty years, died. Described by President Darden as "one of
the great humanists of the academic world," he had retired
only a short time before and was busying himself with a translation
of a play by Aristophanes. Enrollment in his classes was
small, since fewer and fewer students were taking Greek, but
Professor Webb was highly regarded as a teacher of the language
and literature of ancient Hellas. He was also instrumental
in organizing the music festivals of the Charlottesville Evening
Concert Group. Following his death, a fund was collected
with which to buy books for Alderman Library bearing a special
bookplate in his memory.

Prof. Armistead C. Gordon, Jr., died suddenly in his middle
fifties. A veteran of both world wars, he had served on the
English faculty for three decades and was described by President
Darden as a "keen and mordant teacher of American
literature." Gordon had taken his B.A. at the College of William
and Mary and his M.A. and Ph.D. at the University of
Virginia. He was the author of Virginian Writers of Fugitive Verse
and contributed well-written book reviews to leading media
and many articles to the Dictionary of American Biography.

A memorial plaque was unveiled in 1954 to Charles H.
Kauffmann, longtime director of placement and military affairs
at the university, who had died a few months before. The
plaque described him as "devoted leader, wise counselor and
patriotic soldier." On the eve of World War II, the Cavalier
Daily paid high tribute to Kauffmann, saying that the university
had become "a happier place for thousands of students"
because of the work done by him and his staff.

The death of John Lloyd Newcomb in 1954 cast a pall over
the community. As president of the university succeeding Edwin
A. Alderman, he made a highly creditable record in the
face of handicaps caused by depression and war. Without brilliant
intellectual talents or spectacular personal qualities, and
not widely known when he took over the presidency, he carried
the university forward by dint of great administrative
ability, intimate knowledge of the institution's affairs, and
complete dedication. Acquisition of Alderman Library was the
most important single achievement of his administration. Additional
improvements in the physical plant were mentioned
in chapter 3 and 4, along with the inauguration of the honors
program and other scholarly advances. Enrollment jumped
from about two thousand five hundred to over four thousand
and the faculty was doubled, while the number of Ph.D.'s
granted was vastly increased. Research was emphasized and
the professional schools strengthened. The final years of Newcomb's
incumbency were shadowed by the death of his wife.
As one of his longtime colleagues expressed it, "Until the cares
of the world pressed too heavily upon him, his merry wit and
lively humor made him a favorite among his circle of friends."
Following his retirement from the presidency, his executive
talents were put to excellent use by President Darden, who
persuaded him to supervise the university's massive building
program from an office on the Lawn. It was a particular satisfaction
to Newcomb to preside over the erection of the sixstory
addition behind Cabell Hall, a concept he had originated.
As dean of engineering and simultaneously the man
who kept the university running under Alderman, as the
president who carried the institution forward in difficult
times, and then as the able coadjutor of President Darden,
John Lloyd Newcomb left the University of Virginia deeply in
his debt.

Dr. Stephen H. Watts, one of the foremost surgeons in the
university's history, was memorialized in exercises at the end
of 1954. Dr. Watts had died the preceding year and left
$500,000 to the Medical School, from which he had retired
long before. Dean Thomas H. Hunter said at the ceremonies
that the legacy had made it possible to establish a chair of surgery
in Dr. Watts's name, with Dr. William H. Muller, Jr., as

the first incumbent. A portrait of Dr. Watts was presented to
the Medical School. President Darden said Watts had begun
making gifts to the school before World War I, "including a
priceless collection of rare books on the history of medicine."

Prof. George T. Starnes, a recognized authority in the field
of labor economics, died in 1955 after serving on the faculty
for thirty years. He "made outstanding contributions to his
chosen field of labor economics through his teaching and writing,
as well as by his extensive work in the mediation and
settlement of labor disputes," Professor Snavely wrote after his
death. Both labor and management sought eagerly for Starnes's
assistance in settling such disputes, Snavely declared, so great
was their confidence in his "fairness and justice."

The death of economics Professor Duncan Clark Hyde
from a heart attack brought special grief to his students, with
whom he had a close rapport. Born in Canada and a Harvard
Ph.D. who had taught for six years in Japan, Professor Hyde
joined the university faculty in 1929. His dress and mannerisms,
as a result of his sojourn in the Far East, were such that
one of the students inquired of the department head, "Where
did you all find Dr. Hyde?" But this feeling was short-lived,
and he demonstrated such genuine concern for those in his
classes that when he died, graduate students majoring under
him asked the privilege of serving as his pallbearers. A scholarship
was established as a memorial. Hyde had served as
president of the Southern Economic Association.

Prof. Bruce D. Reynolds, '20, chairman of the Department
of Biology, was another heart attack victim. He died at age
sixty-three after thirty-three years on the faculty. A Johns
Hopkins University Ph.D., he was the first director of the
Mountain Lake Biological Station. A Biology Department
spokesman was quoted as saying that Professor Reynolds was
proud of having had more students complete requirements
for advanced degrees than any other member of the department
faculty. Graduate students and friends announced plans
for a living memorial.

Another loss in the late 1950s occurred with the death of
political science Prof. James Hart, '19, a member of the teaching
staff since 1936. He had been president of the Southern
Political Science Association and held important elective offices
and chairmanships in the American Political Science Association.

Professor Hart was an authority on the American
presidency and administrative law.

Prof. Llewellyn G. Hoxton retired as head of the Department
of Physics in 1948, aged seventy, after serving in that capacity
since 1916. A Johns Hopkins Ph.D., he succeeded Francis H.
Smith as the university's only professor of physics for a decade,
at the end of which time he got assistance from Professors
Carroll H. Sparrow and Frederick L. Brown. Professor Hoxton
was a stimulating teacher with a sense of humor. On one
occasion he put an examination on the board and announced
that he would be in his office if anyone wished to ask him anything.
"Are any of those questions optional?" a student inquired,
as he gazed anxiously at the blackboard. "Hell yes,
they're all optional," the professor replied, "Take them or
leave them." Under him the department was built into one of
the university's strongest, as it was he who brought in Jesse
Beams and Leland Snoddy. Professor Hoxton's zeal was such
that for years after his retirement, when he was well into his
eighties, he continued to go daily to the physics laboratory,
working on research projects in which he was interested. He
died in 1966, aged eighty-eight.

Prof. John L. Manahan, first dean of the School of Education,
a post he had held for twenty-nine years, retired from
that office in 1949 and resumed full-time teaching. A graduate
of Harvard, Manahan came to the university in 1916 as a full
professor and four years later organized the School of Education.
There were 17 students when Manahan became dean
and 253 when he relinquished the position. He retired from
teaching in 1957 and was tendered a dinner, a gold watch, and
a bound volume of letters. Professor Manahan served for sixteen
years as secretary-treasurer of the Virginia Association of
Colleges and then was elected its president.

One of the major figures in the university's life, James
Southall Wilson, retired in 1951 as graduate dean and also
from active teaching. Stimulating lecturer and widely-recognized
scholar, he was the first editor of the Virginia Quarterly
Review, for the success of which he deserved a large share of
the credit. Dean Wilson left a lasting impress on the university
in various directions. Following his retirement he was visiting
professor of English at various institutions, including Davidson

College and Louisiana State University, and he continued
as a lecturer for several summers at the Breadloaf School in
Vermont. A volume of English studies in his honor was presented
by his university associates, and Prof. Armistead C.
Gordon, Jr., wrote perceptively in the foreword of his "measured
but unstudied eloquence, made alive by apt illustration,
circling humor, and a sense of the dramatic." An anonymous
alumnus endowed a James Southall Wilson graduate fellowship.
Professor Wilson died in 1963. Six years later the new
arts and sciences classroom building was named for him.

Two veteran members of the School of Education faculty,
Prof. William R. Smithey and Miss Louise Oates, retired in
1953. Dean Stiles commented on the former's contribution:
"Dr. Smithey completed 33 years in the service of the university,
establishing an enviable record of leadership in the field
of secondary education." Smithey had served as secretary of
the State Board of Education before joining the university faculty
in 1919 and was subsequently elected president of the
Southern Association of Colleges and Secondary Schools. He
founded the Virginia High School Conference, which met
each summer to give secondary school teachers an opportunity
to discuss their problems. Concerning the service of Miss
Oates, Dean Stiles wrote: "Professor Louise Oates established
the Cabaniss Memorial School for Nursing Education, and
served as its only head for 24 years. . . . The task of improving
the preparation of nurses engaged in teaching, supervising
and administering in Virginia presented throughout her entire
professional career almost insurmountable problems.
Upon the background of her efforts the future of nursing
education in the University of Virginia will be developed."

British-born Prof. Sydney W. Britton retired from the medical
faculty in 1952, after twenty-four years' service as professor
of physiology. He and Mrs. Britton sailed for Nigeria
where he would serve as Fulbright professor in the University
of West Africa, doing research in the field of the endocrine
glands, especially the adrenal glands of native Africans and
giant apes. Professor Britton was widely recognized for important
discoveries having to do with the adrenal cortex.

The Law School suffered a loss with the resignation of Prof.
John Ritchie III, '17, to accept the deanship of the Washington

79. Law Prof. Mortimer M. Caplin as U.S. commissioner of
internal revenue.

University School of Law in St. Louis. Ritchie had been a
member of the University of Virginia law faculty since 1937
and was assistant dean from 1942 to 1948.

Dean Ivey F. Lewis, an administrator and teacher who had
been at the center of things at the university for decades, retired
in 1953. He joined the faculty in 1915, and two years
later, at age thirty-five, trounced Robert W. Bingham, Jr.—a
student who had won the tennis singles championship of the
university the previous year—in three straight sets with the
loss of only four games. Then in the finals of the tournament
he walloped F. R. Smith, a student who had been intercollegiate
champion of New England, in three straight sets with
the loss of only five games. That was on the eve of World War
I, when professors played in the university tournaments. Ivey
Lewis gave up tennis almost immediately thereafter, but he
was a formidable performer as long as he was competing.

In 1934 he succeeded Dean James M. Page as dean of the
university, and at the time of his retirement was dean of the
university and the college. As James Southall Wilson wrote of
Lewis: "His office . . . was administered by the dean and his
faithful secretary, Miss Mary Proffitt, with simplicity, sympathy
and dignity. Throughout the years the students of the college
have come into closer relationship with Dean Lewis and Miss
Proffitt than with any other officials of the university, and
many of them have expressed their respect and affection, lasting
often long after their college days." Ivey Lewis served as
president of the American Society of Naturalists, the Botanical
Society of America, and the American Biological Society—
remarkable evidence of his national stature in the world of
science. A botanical garden and arboretum were planted in
his honor between McCormick Road and Scott Stadium, the
gift of former students and friends, who also provided a portrait
of him by Irene Higgins. Dean Lewis lived until 1964 and
died, aged eighty-one, at the university.

E. A. Kincaid, a member of the faculty since 1922, who also
served as vice-president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond,
retired in 1954. A University of California Ph.D., Kincaid
was professor of commerce and business administration.
His advice as a consultant was sought by the state of Virginia
and the city of Richmond, among others. An unusually stimulating
lecturer, he contributed to trade journals and financial

publications. Upon his retirement, Kincaid was tendered a
dinner by admirers. He died four years later.

A recognized authority on the literature and civilization of
Spain and Latin America, James C. Bardin, professor of Romance
languages, also retired in 1954 and was the guest of
honor at a dinner. Bardin edited several texts in Spanish and
did much research on the drama in the American colonial
possessions of Spain and Portugal. He gave the university's
first courses in Latin American civilization and history. Possessed
of marked literary ability, Bardin was student editor of
the University of Virginia Magazine in 1908-9 and won all three
of the gold medals offered by the magazine for poetry, short
stories, and essays. He contributed prose and poetry in later
years to a variety of publications in this country and Latin
America.

Harry Rogers Pratt, a leading figure for three decades in
music and the drama at the university, retired in 1954. He had
acted with the Ben Greet Players and other companies before
joining the faculty in 1923 as assistant professor of music. Enrollment
rose, in time, to over three hundred students, and he
developed the Glee Club into an organization of ninety voices,
which gave concerts throughout Virginia and in New York
City. A skilled organist, Pratt played at many university functions.
At the invitation of President Alderman he organized a
School of Dramatic Art as part of the McIntire School of Fine
Arts. Pratt offered the first courses at the university in playwriting
and production and directed the performance of
original one-act plays by students. Luther Greene, later the
husband of the famous Judith Anderson, was Pratt's first assistant
director. Mrs. Pratt was Agnes Rothery, author of wellknown
works. Some years after her death Harry Pratt lost his
life in a fire at their home on Rothery Road.

Another professor who retired during these years was
Franz K. Mohr, who had taught German since 1926. He wrote
widely in that language, in both poetry and prose. Mohr was
a native of Silesia, had studied in Vienna, and then graduated
from the University of Chicago.

Tipton R. Snavely, '17, a major figure for many years in economics
instruction and research on both the graduate and undergraduate
levels and in the founding of the Graduate
School of Business Administration, retired as chairman of the

Department of Economics in 1956 after thirty-three years in
the position. He continued teaching until 1961. Professor
Snavely had been adviser to many state and federal agencies,
was president of the Southern Economic Association, and author
of a history of the Economics Department and a life of
George Tucker, chairman of the university's first faculty and
authority on finance. The Department of Economics under
Snavely produced no fewer than seventy-three Ph.D.s, and
forty to forty-five of those dissertations were supervised personally
by him, more than were directed by any other faculty
member in the university down to that time, with the exception
of history Prof. Edward Younger. Snavely was honored
by fifty former students and colleagues at a special breakfast
during the annual meeting of the Southern Economic Association
in Atlanta, where he was presented with a collection of
letters from all the students who had taken the Ph.D. under
his supervision. Establishment of the Snavely Scholarship
Fund, underwritten by his former pupils to provide scholarships
for economics students, was announced at the breakfast.

Dr. David C. Wilson, '19, first chairman of the School of
Medicine's Department of Neurology and Psychiatry, which he
headed for twenty-one years, retired from the position in
1956. Dr. Wilson's portrait was presented to the School of
Medicine in 1959 at a dinner and lecture in his honor. Following
his retirement as department chairman he continued his
teaching and also served as director of the Division of Alcoholic
Studies and Rehabilitation.

Dean at one time or another of the College of Arts and Sciences
and of Admissions, as well as Registrar, and teacher of
psychology for thirty-seven years, George O. Ferguson retired
in 1956. In addition to the foregoing he had a leading role in
guiding the university's athletic affairs immediately after it
joined the Southern Conference. Ferguson had been a member
of the faculty since 1919, after receiving his Ph.D. from
Columbia University. He died in 1960.

Chapin Jones, professor of forestry, who had taught conservation
and forestry-related courses since 1915, was another
who resigned in 1956. He was Virginia's first state forester and
founder of the state forest service. The first state nursery and
state forest also were created under his supervision. Chapin
Jones was a Master of Forestry of Yale University.

80. Political science Prof. Robert K. Gooch holding the silver
mace that he carried in official university processions.

Prof. Albert G. A. Balz, `09, noted authority on the philosophy
of Descartes and head of the Department of Philosophy
since the death of Albert Lefevre, retired as chairman in 1957
but continued to teach. The Balz Philosophy Fund was established
in tribute to him. He and Professor Manahan of the
School of Education were the first two faculty members to be
chosen professors emeriti. An emeritus professor may continue
to work with his former students on theses or dissertations,
serve on university committees, speak and vote in faculty
meetings, and participate in academic functions. Balz was
the author of several books and numerous articles. He had
been a full professor since 1920, and for six years was chairman
of the Charlottesville School Board. An expert flower
gardener, he was also an enthusiastic fisherman. Professor
Balz died only a few months after his retirement from the
chairmanship.

Joseph K. Roberts retired in 1959 after a third of a century
on the geology faculty. A Johns Hopkins Ph.D., he came to the
university from Vanderbilt in 1926 as a full professor. The
author of several books on geology, he was active in Sigma Xi,
the honorary science fraternity, serving as president of the
university chapter for one year, treasurer for ten years, and
secretary for fifteen.

Retirement of Prof. Wilson Gee in 1959 brought to an end
a career that had real significance, especially in its impact on
graduate work and research at the university. Publication of
books by members of the faculty was greatly stimulated
through grants from the Institute for Research in the Social
Sciences, which Gee headed from its inception. He had been
brought to the university by President Alderman with a view
to providing at Charlottesville something of a counterweight
to the University of North Carolina's Howard W. Odum. The
latter's Institute for Research in Social Science and Journal of
Social Forces were pioneering efforts that brought much prestige
to Chapel Hill. Gee never achieved fame comparable to
Odum's, but his influence at Virginia was a salutary one.
Scores of books and hundreds of articles were sponsored or
stimulated by the university's institute. Gee was never fully accepted
by the University of Virginia faculty, although some of
those who criticized him behind his back did not hesitate to
apply for and get grants from his institute. There were mixed

reports from his students. Some, especially undergraduates,
regarded his courses as dull and said he passed practically
everybody, whereas others, notably graduate students, were
almost lyrical in praise of what the Cavalier Daily termed "his
understanding, his sincerity, his genuine goodness." As the
time approached for Gee's retirement, he learned that it was
proposed to abolish his Department of Rural Social Economics
and merge it with the Department of Economics or the
Department of Sociology, perhaps both. He objected strongly,
but to no avail. Upon his retirement, the department was
eliminated and its functions absorbed. A committee of his former
students established the Wilson Gee Library in Social Science
as part of Alderman Library's collections. Wilson Gee
died suddenly in 1961, aged seventy-two, at Urbana, Ill., as he
was preparing to teach a course at the University of Illinois.

The year 1953 marked the retirement from the university
staff of two women who were themselves almost institutions—
Miss Mary Proffitt and Mrs. A. E. Walker.

Miss Proffitt had served as secretary to Dean Page and Dean
Lewis since 1912, but she was much more than a secretary.
Her role was almost that of an alter ego for the dean, since
she was privileged to make decisions far beyond the role of
the average secretary. Not good looking, in the usual sense,
and without anything remotely resembling what is termed
"sex appeal," Mary Proffitt had a down-to-earth personality
and a wealth of common sense that gave her remarkable influence
over the students. Miss Proffitt's portrait was presented
at retirement ceremonies on the Lawn along with a likeness of
the also retiring Dean Lewis. Both, it turned out later, were
members of the Seven Society.

Mrs. A. E. Walker, a widow, had been the beloved and indefatigable
hostess at the Student Union for thirty-five years
when she terminated her active career. The university "has
lost one of its most cheerful faces," the Cavalier Daily commented.
"She will be sorely missed." It pointed out that Mrs.
Walker "opened her home to students on countless occasions
and aided almost every university organization from dance societies
to publications." Known as "the Queen," Mrs. Walker
was on such close terms with the boys that she often sat in on
meetings of the Student Union and even presided over some
of them. She arranged and chaperoned hundreds of dances.

Her base of operations was always Madison Hall, headquarters
of the Student Union until the construction of Newcomb
Hall. When a social and recreational center for first-year men
was opened on McCormick Road in 1950, "there was only one
thing to call it, `Queen's Club,' " said the Alumni News. There
the Queen helped to carry out President Darden's program
for aiding entering students to become adjusted to university
life. The Seven Society presented Mrs. Walker with a silver
platter after her retirement. She died in 1965.

Another admired woman in the university community was
Mrs. Theodore Schultz, Rotunda hostess for more than a decade,
who retired in 1958. She organized the University Guide
Service, which grew to thirty members, and conducted tours
of the university grounds. Mrs. Schultz, an experienced hostess
who had represented Virginia at the Canadian National
Exposition, wrote the pamphlet A Brief Guide to the Lawn and
Ranges. A dinner in Newcomb Hall was given her by the Student
Guide Service when she retired. Mrs. Edwin Betts, widow
of Professor Betts, succeeded Mrs. Schultz as Rotunda hostess.
Mrs. Betts, who had been associated with the university for
nearly a third of a century, designed a complex pictorial map
of Albemarle County that was sold for many years in bookstores.

The impending resignation of Colgate Darden as president of
the university was rumored from time to time in the middle
fifties. Questioned in 1956, he said he might give up the post
in a year or two, but not until some of his plans had matured
more fully.

During this period an amusing episode occurred at Finals.
President Darden's son Pierre got two engineering degrees
that year, and when he went up for his second, his father extended
his hand in congratulation, as he did with all the other
graduates. What happened next is best told by Colgate Darden
in his Conversations with Guy Friddell: "Pierre turned loose
in the palm of my hand an electrical device that spun around
and gave me a shock that lifted me straight up in the air about
half a foot. I never was more provoked in my life. I came
within an ace of just giving him one awful kick in the
rump. . . . It was like being hit by lightning. I reckon the spectators
thought I'd lost my mind . . . that the long hot afternoon

had finally gotten to me, that I had lost control and was
jumping up and down on the platform. In a second it was all
over and he was gone."

Pierre Darden was lost at sea in 1959, to the intense grief of
his parents. An experienced sailor, he nevertheless ventured
into the Atlantic in the late fall, in a small sailboat, en route to
the Caribbean. He and his companion were never seen again.

Colgate Darden announced in 1958 that he would retire as
president whenever the visitors chose his successor. Rector
Frank Talbott, Jr., appointed a committee from the board to
deal with the problem, and a committee from the faculty was
appointed, on his recommendation, to have a significant and
continuing part in the selection process. Darden was scrupulously
careful to ease the transition in every possible way and
to give his successor, whoever he might be, complete cooperation.
His thoughtful willingness to confide in the faculty Senate
concerning his intentions did much to allay hostility toward
him among some members of that group. Rector Talbott
was emphatic in saying that there must be no more leaks such
as occurred in the early 1930s after the death of President
Alderman, and one prospective successor after another was
rumored in the press—correctly as it later turned out—to
have declined the position.

The Board of Visitors passed resolutions of highest praise
for Darden's achievements in the presidency. Mentioning additions
to the physical plant totaling over twenty million dollars,
the resolutions went on to cite reorganization of the College
of Arts and Sciences, establishment of the Graduate
School of Business Administration, a steady improvement in
student standards and admissions, the unremitting effort to
raise the scale of faculty compensation—it was doubled—and
the notable expansion of Alderman Library's holdings and
their greater use by students and faculty. The "loving attention"
of the president to the "ancient beauty of the Grounds"
also was mentioned, as well as his "generosity and kindliness
to those who have worked with him" and "the inspiration of
intellectual leadership, initiative and research on the part of
the faculty." A special tribute was paid to Mr. Darden's "wife
Constance, whose warm, vital, attractive personality has effectively
aided her husband's effort." Mrs. Darden received the

Algernon Sydney Sullivan Award at the 1959 Finals as a person
in the community with "such characteristics of heart, mind
and conduct as evince a spirit of love and helpfulness to other
men and women."

Whereas faculty and students had been decidedly skeptical,
even hostile, in 1947 when Darden was chosen president of
the university, they had done a 180-degree turn by the time of
his retirement a dozen years later. Corks and Curls and the Cavalier
Daily united in lauding his administration unreservedly;
the faculty gave him the Thomas Jefferson Award, and the
students presented him with the first Raven Award they had
granted to anyone since he became president; the Class of
1959's gift was $1,000 for the purchase of books in his name
for Alderman Library, especially works on history and political
science. Members of the American Association of University
Professors (AAUP) on the faculty, about one-fourth of the
whole, adopted unanimous resolutions praising him for his
"scrupulous adherence to the principles of academic freedom
. . . and above all for the sense of security which the academic
community has derived from the knowledge that the
president . . . understands that a university can fulfill its function
only if its members are free to pursue the truth without
fear or favor." The AAUP members said they were "expressing
the sentiments of the entire faculty." A fountain commemorating
the presidency of Colgate Darden was placed on
the east side of the Rotunda in 1960 "by the professors and
staff of the university."

Important matters not mentioned specifically in the AAUP
resolutions were the increase in the university's endowment
from just over $12,000,000 to $40,000,000, and the quadrupling
of the annual appropriation by the General Assembly to
the institution. On an entirely different level there is the astonishing
fact that it was not until the Darden years that rest
rooms were installed at Scott Stadium, dedicated in 1931.

Although Darden announced cancelation of his subscription
to the New York Times in 1957 because he felt material it
had published concerning the university's position on segregation
was "negative," the paper praised him highly the following
year. Comparing him to Thomas Jefferson, it declared
that the had "widened and deepened the appeal" of the university

81. English Prof. Peter Taylor, who has been called "the American Chekhov."

and had stressed the thought that the liberal arts are
"the fountain of our culture."

There were a few adverse criticisms of President Darden,
even near the end of his term. "He tried to run the university
out of his vest pocket," in the oft-quoted words of a prominent
professor. This observation appears to have had some validity.
Darden was loath to employ adequate staff for his office, since
he felt that the funds were needed elsewhere. Consequently
he did too many routine things. Over his opposition, the
Board of Visitors directed him to appoint a provost, and he
did so.

An outside firm made a survey of the Darden Administration
and concluded that he did not offer the faculty sufficient
"leadership." His comment, years later, was, "I never thought
that the business of the president was to lead the faculty
around like a nurse leading a pack of children." He saw his
function as "to set the ground for independent scholars to
carry on their work. . . . I never thought of myself as the `boss'
of the university." A few faculty members remained unenthusiastic
concerning the manner in which he conducted the institution's
affairs.

Darden had special problems by virtue of the fact that
whereas he took over the presidency with an inflated postwar
enrollment of around five thousand, this soon fell drastically
to around three thousand four hundred. When he relinquished
the office, the number of students was moving up
sharply. It would accelerate as a result of the "baby boom" that
followed the war.

During the dozen years of his presidency, Darden managed
to bring about an increase in the number and percentage of
Virginia public school graduates attending the university, but
not to the extent that he had hoped. His prime objective as
president was to achieve a substantially larger number of public
school matriculates and thus to make the university the
"capstone" of the educational system that Jefferson envisaged.
He conceded in later years that his success in this regard was
only "modest."

While public school graduates in Virginia continued to go
elsewhere in large numbers, a trend had been set in motion by
President Darden, who did much to make the university more
attractive to them. Furthermore, the consensus was that he

advanced the institution in many other directions, intellectually,
physically, and financially. The University of Virginia
was regaining the prestigious position in the educational
world that it had held much earlier. The foundations had
been laid for the remarkable progress that was to be made
under the administration of Colgate Darden's successor, Edgar
F. Shannon, Jr.