C O P Y


Michael J. Missal


[address redacted]
Washington, D.C. 20002
10/23/83

Dear President Wilson,

I am a 1978 graduate of Washington and Lee and am currently an
attorney with the Securities and Exchange Commission in Washington.
Dave McLean, a former classmate of mine, recently attended an alumni
conference in Lexington and he informed me that the most talked about
subject during the weekend was the strong possibility that W&L would
shortly become a co-educational institution. Knowing the controversy
that is certain to accompany this issue, I would like to express my
feelings and to offer you my support and assistance.

I graduated from the Kingswood-Oxford School in West Hartford,
Connecticut in 1974. The school had been all-male since its inception,
but became co-ed in my junior year. I heard many of the same arguments
against co-education at that time that I hear now with W&L. However,
I felt that Kingswood became a much better school due to the change, and
I know I personally benefited from it.

I believe that these same benefits will accrue to W&L if it goes
co-ed. While I greatly enjoyed my four years in Lexington, and grew more
in those years than in any other period of my life, I constantly thought
about what W&L would be like as a co-educational institution. I believe
that co-education would not only attract a higher caliber student, but
would strengthen overall student life as well. W&L could quickly
become the academic equal of an Amherst or Williams, without losing its
special traditions.

I thus offer my whole-hearted support to the proposition of W&L
going co-ed. I also offer my services in whatever way you deem best
to help sell the plan. I feel that co-education is a necessary step
for W&L to make if it is to maintain, and hopefully strengthen, its
place as one of the outstanding academic institutions in the country.

I hope that you are enjoying your tenure as president. I have
heard some terrific things about you and I look forward to meeting you
at the Washington alumni chapter dinner on November 2.

Sincerely,


/S/ Mike Missal



C O P Y

[pb]

October 28, 1983



Mr. Michael J. Missal
[address redacted]
Washington, D.C. 20002

Dear Mr. Missal:

Your note has been received and is most welcome, I assure you.
The matter remains an open one for us at this stage but I deeply
appreciate having the kind of testimony you have given. It is much
easier to wish that things could always remain as we think we remember
they were. In fact the world continues to change very rapidly and it
is important for Washington and Lee to be certain that it is preparing
its students to take up places, important places, in their world, not
in the one we were born to.

Anyway I do appreciate having your note. I very much look forward
to meeting you and your colleagues next week in Washington.

Most sincerely,



John D. Wilson
President

JBW/bcb