Farrar interview [Begin Tape 1, Side 2] Warren: Well now, you've brought up one of the major subjects I wanted to talk to you about, the black students. From what I understand, your father was very important in that whole development. I understand that you weren't here, but what do you know about that? Farrar: Well, it's just a function of the times and what was right and what had to be done. W&L, again, we've always been a decade behind the curve when it comes to change, for better or for worse. We're just slower to pick up on it here, not altogether bad, I don't think, in lots of cases, but nevertheless we didn't integrate until the late sixties, early seventies. The focal point is always going to be on the admissions office in a case like that, and certainly today, you know what Bill faces in trying to bring in the right mix of males, females, and all that kind of thing, and he's certainly got a lot of his pressures. But at that time, it was black students, it was integration. Everybody in the school knew that it was right and had to be done, and it just came on my father's 18 watch. He was the type of person who wanted that to happen, and I think he accelerated it. I'm sure that if there had been somebody else in that position less interested in causing the integration to happen, it would have been slower in coming, probably. My father was never interested-that's not the right word. He never spent a lot of time with the "face men," the guys who looked good and were-I can't find the right way to describe it, kind of looks but no real substance. The people that he really admired and felt close to were these guys, some of the names of which I've mentioned, the Bobby Paynes and Jamie Andrews and people like that, who were willing to give their time and do the important things. One of the things he really enjoyed was being able to get blue-collar kids to W&L, kids out of the public high schools in central Pennsylvania, guys like that to come down and really give some diversity beyond just black/white kind of thing. Those are the kind of kids that he really, really enjoyed watching grow here. But there's really not much. The black thing, the integration of black students at W&L was just something that had to happen, and he was absolutely convinced that it was right to happen, and it did, again probably more slowly here than lots of other places. I don't remember it being particularly painful, at least in terms of our family, but I'm sure that there was a tremendous amount of pressure on him, and that was the struggle, finding the black students who'd be willing to come here and integrate and be the first. We can only imagine how hard that was, with Gene Perry and a lot of those guys, the Smothers family, and I'm trying to think of the name of the Smothers boy who graduated from W&L in the early seventies. I can't recall it, but he's now-I saw him recently at his niece's or his cousin's wedding, but he's with AT&T or IBM or somebody like that. I can't remember where he is now. At any rate, the point is, for the early blacks it must have been really hard. They didn't really have anywhere to go. They relied very heavily on my father as a 19 support person, because he was the one who had recruited them here, and quite obviously we didn't have an office for minority affairs. We didn't have any of that stuff we do today. He was it. The admissions office was it, and sympathetic faculty. But that was it. That certainly is why he had a close following from those students. Warren: Would he entertain the students at home? Farrar: Oh, God, yeah. We had people in and out of the house all the time. Yes, surely, a lot of people. Warren: So you were a student, really, during this transitional period. Farrar: But I was oblivious to it, I really was, like most of the kids. Warren: You didn't see any tension, any racial tension? Farrar: Yeah, yeah, we'd see some of it, but we just really didn't-at least the group that 1-1 was much more interested in sports. I never really saw, or if I did, I never really paid much attention to the fact that there were black students here. It didn't matter to me. It wasn't a big deal for me. That's just the way it was. I was playing football in the fall and lacrosse in the spring. I had my circle of friends, and that's just the way it was. Warren: So you didn't realize you were witnessing history in the making? Farrar: Well, yes, in a way we did. But it was never an issue, really, for the students. It's always much more of an issue for the alumni than it is for the students, I think. Most of the time, the student body, most of the people are going to handle it pretty well. It's a small group that tends to be the vocal group in changes like that. That's the way I remember it. Warren: Well, for example, Gene talks about a few white friends he had and that they were ostracized for being his friend. Farrar: Yeah, I'm sure that happened. There were some black students who played football. Bob Ford is the one I'm thinking of. For us, it just wasn't a big deal. For me, it just wasn't a big deal. 20 But yeah, I'm sure that the white guys who befriended the black students, I'd be willing to bet you money that they weren't in fraternities, they were independents, and they came from communities or high schools where there was probably a fairly significant black representation, and so it was much more natural for them than it was for other guys, the guys from the South who probably went to segregated schools and that kind of thing. I'm making gross generalizations here, but that's probably the kind of people who were interested in making friends with the black students. And clearly they were going to be in the minority and just weren't going to be in the mainstream. There was a guy. He is now the public information director at a school in, I think it's in New Jersey, Dean Golembeski. He was a classmate of mine, class of '74. See, I'm much closer to the black students, the black alumni in that era now than I ever was then. Gene Perry came on the alumni board after I had come back. Bill Hill several years ago began helping out. He began helping recruit black students and now is on the law council. He's got his daughter here. Thomas Penn from Roanoke, he and his wife sent Courtney here. Their son is an alumnus. He's down I think getting a master's degree or something like that in teaching or education down at the University of Georgia. So I'm much closer to the black community now than I ever was then. As I said a minute ago, my friends in the circle that I was in, it was never a big deal. But I would be quick to say that that's because, I'm sure, I was a SAE, and my affiliation with that fraternity would have caused all of the black students to want to have nothing to do with us. Warren: Why? Farrar: Because that fraternity, and there would be others, like the Phi Delta house and the Phi Kappa house, were predominantly Southern. They were occupied by Southern whites who either consciously or subconsciously, purposely or not, 21 represented all the bad things about the black/white kind of relationship, and there were plenty of guys in my fraternity who would be very intolerant of blacks. That's just the way it was. For a black, other than being on a team or having a friendly relationship just out on the colonnade, no black would want to be associated with the SAE or the Phi Delta house, that kind of thing, simply because of what it stood for. That's just the way it was. The blacks, at that point, if they joined a fraternity, it was the ZBT house, because the ZBTs then, it evolved-of course, as you know, back in the fifties and sixties there was a much larger Jewish population at W&L. The PEP house and the ZBT house were Jewish fraternity houses. By the mid-seventies, the PEP house no longer existed, and the ZBT house had kind of become the fraternity for the misfits, for that part of the community that just didn't fit, whether they be Jews or blacks. They kind of drew some comfort in being together in that association. So that was where those blacks who joined fraternities-with some exceptions. There were a couple, I think, who might have been Phi Garn or maybe another fraternity. But that's where you would see the blacks and the Jews headed is to the ZBT house. Warren: Why do you suppose there are so few Jewish students now? What happened there? Farrar: I don't know. When I say there was a significant population of Jewish students at W&L in the fifties and sixties, I can't tell you what the percentage actually was. Warren: I think you're right about that. Farrar: There was, but I don't want to suggest it was forty-eight percent or anything like that. But probably maybe fifteen percent or some figure like that, that would give a fairly significant Jewish population on campus. I don't know how to account for that, I really don't. I really don't know why that happened in the first place, and 22 I really don't know why, other than perhaps societal changes. I don't know how many of those Jews at W&L then were from-I know a number of them were from the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast, but some of them also were from Southern Jewish families, as well. I don't know generationally how that evolved, whether it came to-it may be that some of our Jewish alumni possibly began to feel that we were a less welcoming place for Jews as we moved through the sixties and into the seventies, but I don't know. I don't know how to account for that. I do know that it has been an issue on the minds of the alumni office, rather the admissions office, to develop some strategies to try to attract more Jewish students to W&L. Warren: Yeah, why aren't their kids coming here? Why isn't that tradition being handed down there. It's an interesting question, isn't it? Farrar: It is, and I can't begin to address it. I mean, society flows, the currents shift, and I suspect part of it might have been the fact that-and this would cut across black, white, religious grounds-but single sex might have had a big role in that, and just the attrition that happened. The lack of interest displayed in W&L through the seventies and early eighties because it was single sex may have had an impact within that Jewish community, as well. So there are things like that. I think clearly it's multi-layered answer. I think you'd find a lot of societal influences and those kinds of things, single sex, mixed in with whatever thoughts maybe our Jewish alumni might have had about W&L. And then you also just have the fact that kids want to go to different places, too. That's just a natural siphoning process, as well. Warren: You mentioned single sex. Were you here when that vote was taken? Farrar: No. Warren: Sometime in the seventies there was a vote taken that the students voted for. 23 Farrar: Well, there may have been. I don't remember. Again, I wasn't really tuned in to that. If I voted for it, I voted for all male, only because that's what everybody then-if they were interested in coeducation, not many people came out for it. We were pretty much following in each other's lead. I can remember saying to my father on any number of occasions-he said this long ago. I mean, he saw it way down the pike. He said, "W&L will be coed. It's not a matter of if; it's just a matter of when." My typical sophomoric response was, "Over my dead body," kind of thing. That was just the typical student reaction of the day. But he knew. He knew long ago that it would be coed. Warren: Were you here the day the decision was made? Were you on campus? Farrar: No, I was at Episcopal. I was working there then. But I did a little survey prior to that, probably in that same year. I guess the decision was made in '83, right, a special meeting of the board in June of '83. Warren: Yes. Farrar: I guess it was '82, '83, or in the winter of '83 when this debate was going on. See, for years I was at Episcopal, and Episcopal had always been a very popular feeder for kids coming to W&L. Episcopal at that point was all male, and schools like W&L, Carolina, Virginia, Princeton, the standard kind of traditional schools, Davidson, places like that, always attracted a lot of kids from Episcopal. I can remember talking with kids over the years. We'd sit at the dinner table or something, eat, talk to the guys at your table and say, "What schools are you interested in?" It was always a standard litany of Vanderbilt, Virginia, Carolina, Davidson, Duke, blah, blah, blah, all down the list. You'd say, "What about a place like W&L?" "Yeah, W&L's a good school, but it's not coed." What am I going to say? 24 I can remember early on I tried to defend it and say, "Well, you know, there are some good things about it," and you'd try to put that spin on it. Finally, one day I just said, "Why am I trying to beat this horse? I can't sway these guys. They either want to go to a single-sex school or they want to go to a coed school, and nothing I can say is going to make them change their mind." So I did a little survey. This was in that coed year, the debate year. I think it was eight questions long. It probably couldn't have been more unscientific if I had tried, but it was questions like-I tried to make it scientific. I tried to make it a logical kind of flow of questions, like, "What kind of school are you interested in?" "If you are interested in-." There were a couple of questions I got real specific. I said, "If Washington and Lee were coed, would you be-circle one-very interested, moderately interested, not interested at all." I put this survey every senior's box, in every mailbox, every senior mailbox, and I must have gotten about twenty or so. At that point, the senior class was maybe seventy-five or eighty. So I got twenty back, which was pretty good, at least those people who might have had an interest in Washington and Lee. Whatever the questions, the end result was that out of those that came back, the ultimate question was, "If W&L were coed, to what extent would you be interested in applying there?" The end result was that out of the roughly twenty or twenty-one that we got back, I think six said, "I would be very interested in applying," and another eight said, "Moderately interested," and then the rest said, "Not at all." So, rightly or wrongly, the conclusion I drew was that there were fourteen students at that moment at Episcopal alone who were interested, at least moderately interested, in applying to W&L if it were coed. So I copied that and sent it off to the W&L board of trustees, and that was my little contribution. It was clear at that point that we were just losing our shirts out there in the marketplace, and all these great guys-and that didn't even speak to the 25 female population, but all these terrific guys were interested in all the schools by virtue of the fact that we were single sex. So that was kind of a no-brainer if you look at it that way. Warren: When the decision came down, and there were a lot of people who hadn't of done definitive research you had, did you make any attempt, were you at all involved in trying to get them to see that it was a good idea? Farrar: To the extent that you're able to individually. I can remember pointing out to friends that this really is the right thing to do. You can share the concern, and I had the same concern, too. It was right to go coed, but then you began to worry about how it was going to affect all the other things that W&L people hold so dear, whatever those things are, however important they are to you. The civility and the honor code and athletics and all these things, how was that going to be affected by coeducation. So we all shared the same concerns. The difference was that for me, as opposed to some others, I was in favor of coeducation, but just uncertain how it was all going to take effect, and others were opposed to the coeducation and were very concerned with how it was going to affect everything. So there was a little bit of that sort of handholding that we all went through, what's going to happen, wringing of hands and worrying that all the institutions were going to hell in a handbasket, and, of course, just didn't. It immediately became stronger. I think it's been proven now it really isn't an issue anywhere out there. People are curious. They want to know how things are going and how productive is the school. They're interested in all of those things. But clearly the coed debate is ancient, ancient history. Warren: I want to go back to a couple of things we talked about before. Conventional dress. When you were here, it was really the transitional period. Were people wearing ties? Were people wearing bell bottoms? What were people wearing? 26 Farrar: History majors would wear coats and ties on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, when most history courses were taught, and then on other days you didn't. Warren: Why? Farrar: Just because you were dressing to the professor. You were really dressing to the discipline, if you will. Warren: Was there some particular reason why history? Farrar: Just because they're more conservative. Dave Futch "required it." There were people in his classes who didn't wear coats and ties, and I'm sure he thought they were from Mars. There was a lot of that going on, but most people-you could tell who was in what area. C school types would have done some of that stuff, too. And just like today. It still goes on today. You tend to play to the whoever's leading the orchestra. You do what you need to do to fit in. You want to make the right impression and do the right things. There's probably less of that today than there was then, but I suspect that a lot of students still fall into that kind of mind-set. You just do what is accepted in the C school, whatever that is. Spending time up in the computer lab, for example. There were guys that I knew who used to go down to Charlie Turner's office. Oh, this one guy was just notorious for playing up to Charlie Turner. It was really awful when you think about it, but it was pretty hilarious then. Kind of funny now, too. Charlie Turner loved for students to come to his office and his classroom and study. So this guy would get up early in the morning, and he would not shave and he'd put on an old shirt and he'd go down to Charlie Turner's office before Charlie got there, before Dr. Turner would get in, and would make it look as if he had been there all night studying. I'm sure that this fellow wasn't alone. There are other guys doing it in their own ways. You had a lot of that kind of thing going on. 27 But conventional dress, it was on the wane, but a lot of people still wore coats and ties or ties to class, in certain classes. I guess probably history, which would tend to draw more or less a conservative crowd; C school pretty much the same way. You wouldn't see them in the English department. You'd see more long hair and free spirits in the English department. So at that point when I was here, you could pretty much identify where people were coming from given the way they were dressing, and then it just evolved out and conventional dress became whatever party T-shirt you were sporting that week and the blue jeans and that kind of thing. Warren: It feels to me like we have our own version of conventional dress. Farrar: We have conventional dress, absolutely. There is a uniform, and it's very, very evident, maybe much less evident to the kids, to the students. When you look at the way our kids dress at football games, it blows my mind. Our kids aren't there interested in a football game. The girls, honest to God, dress as if they have just walked out of Vogue or Cosmopolitan, but in the college chic. I've seen girls show up in dresses that I would be embarrassed for anybody to be seen in. It ain't leaving much to the imagination. And the guys-it really does crack me up. I don't know if you noticed this, but there is a studied and calculated casual dress that the guys in particular effect to suggest that they have not taken time to get dressed, but in fact have thought out and planned everything about what they've put on. They put on the hiking boots and socks with shorts, with a Oxford shirt and a tie. So they've got the shirt and tie, shorts, and the outdoor gear, and that doesn't happen by accident. You don't do that accidentally. There is that studied casual. You can see I've given this some thought and observation, but there is a conventional dress here, and you really do see the party T-shirts and the T-shirts everywhere, and hats, of course, are huge, and people become identified by their 28 party shirts and by the hats they wear, and whether it's blue jeans or shorts is really irrelevant. Warren: I wondered about that attire your talking about, the shorts, the Oxford shirt, and the tie. Are those kids coming out of Futcher's class? Farrar: Some are, yeah. Warren: Because I came across a picture of that situation that looked like it was maybe ten years old, and I said to myself, "Oh, he just came out of Futch's class." Is that a reasonable assumption to make? Farrar: Well, you can't go too far. I think, because of where those guys come from, and they're probably some of the Phi Delt, KA, SAE, that kind of group, the more traditional Southern guys for whom that dress is in, and they're likely to be some of the same guys who are going to be gravitating to a Futch kind of thing. So there's probably a loose relationship there, but a lot of it is fraternity. Now, you wouldn't see the Phi Gamms necessarily dressed like that, because they tend to be more Northeast and Mid-Atlantic, New Jersey. I see some kid from New Jersey in a white Oxford shirt and a striped tie. So a lot of it is just their background and where they're coming from. But it is hilarious. I just want to see some guys in blue jeans and just plain old regular T-shirts in the stands cheering the football team as opposed to this parade. I guess out in nature it's the mating dance of one species or another of bird as they fluff their feathers and do all the preening and stuff. It's hilarious, it really is. It's a stitch. It's so predictable, so predictable. Then again, I guess most of us are. But the kids like to think that they're not, but you can go to the bank on it. It's hilarious. By the way, I think our kids are well dressed by most college and teenage standards. All the T-shirts and stuff aside, I think they look pretty darn good. I mean, it is a comfortable, casual sort of dress that they have, and it's not altogether 29 unattractive. I think the styles today are much looser and are aimed that way for the young people. I think they're in step, they're in sync. Lord, I don't have any problem with it. I think they look just fine, by and large. Warren: But you don't see the jeans with the big holes in them here. Farrar: Not really. You do, some of the kids. Warren: Not much. Farrar: No, not much, not as a rule. Warren: They're probably Lexington high school kids who come through. Farrar: Probably my blue jeans. I've got the holes in the blue jeans that I like to wear. Warren: You also mentioned the people in the football stands. When did Lee McLaughlin die? He had died by the time you were on the team, right? Farrar: I can remember it vividly because Lee and I went to Episcopal together. It was the summer before my senior year at Episcopal, so it would have been the summer of '69, I think, because I graduated from high school in 1970. Yeah. I had plans of coming to W&L and playing for Lee McLaughlin. That's what I wanted to do. Warren: So what happened there? What was it like to come and not play for Lee McLaughlin? Farrar: It was awful. It was awful. There was a real void. And I don't mean this. I'm going to say some things I probably shouldn't be on tape as saying, but it was really awful. It was not anybody's fault. Lee McLaughlin died in the summer before. I mean, this is a month before football is to start. So what happened was, they got Buck Leslie to come in as interim coach. Warren: Let me ask you. Would you rather me turn it off or are you willing to talk on record here? Because I think this is a real important period, and you're the only person I've talked to who lived through this. 30 Farrar: Well, I want you to hit the stop for just a second. [Tape recorder turned off.] What happened was, they got-again, I'm may not be getting it quite chronologically correct, but I think I am. Buck Leslie was asked to come in as interim coach. Warren: And he had been assistant coach? Farrar: Right, an assistant coach, and a W&L alumnus and a Rockbridge County native. Buck had spent most of his life in this area and at W&L, and Buck is a wonderful guy. But what happened was that, because of the timing, it was just awful timing, we struggled, absolutely struggled through some pretty dismal seasons when I was here because of the lack of real leadership to pull the program out of the doldrums after Lee died. It's just a leadership void in all of that, and we just didn't have the right people. As great people as they were, we weren't able to get the right person to be the leader, to be the head football coach. I think Buck Leslie was interim coach for like two years, and then Bill McHenry took it over for maybe two or three years. It didn't work out with Buck, and it didn't work out with Bill. Bill, for all of his great personal qualities and points, Bill wasn't the guy to lead it, either. There was a lot of cheerleading, but no substance within the program, and I can say that was the case with Buck and with Bill. It wasn't their fault. They just weren't the right people at the right time to pull this thing together. Nobody expects a Knubby or a Gary Fallon to drop dead all of a sudden, so there really weren't any contingency plans. Mike Walsh, if you want to look at it this way, Gary died at the end of April. Mike had three or four additional months to work with than W&L did when Lee McLaughlin died, and Mike had to make the same decision that Bill McHenry had to make when Lee died. 31 These situations paralleled each other in a frighteningly close manner. Mike, as it turns out, had the good fortune and the good sense and had the benefit of having the guy who has, at least for right now, turned out to be the best guy for the job. Frank, of course, was named, Frank Miriello was named interim, and then in the middle of the season, Fulton. That's the advantage that Mike Walsh had that Bill McHenry didn't, that he had a guy right there on staff who was able to do it. I mean, there are plenty of people who weren't sure that Frank was going to be the guy, but as it turns out, happily for everyone, they had a fine season, that they dedicated to Gary, and it looks bright for the future. So Mike dodged a bullet there. Everybody came off looking good. The problem after Lee died was that we floundered in those next four or five years, however long it was, before Gary came. We just didn't have a real football head coach. We had nice people, good assistant coaches, but they weren't head coach material, and the result was that the football experience for me-I can only speak to myself, although I know others who shared the same feeling-was a real, real disappointment. There was no real morale, no sense that you're really moving the program forward. It was just bad timing. But I personally had the outlet of lacrosse at the same time. While football was taking a nose-dive, football was headed toward its nadir, and we were headed towards the zenith of the lacrosse program. So that was good for me personally. It wasn't like I just had football that was going down the tubes. But the McLaughlin thing and the years after his death were, in my mind, a real unfortunate low point. Nobody's fault. It was nobody's fault. It was just the way it happened. We just didn't have the right people at the right time, like it appears that Mike has had. Warren: Do I understand correctly? I came too late in the season, but do kids not go to football games anymore? 32 Farrar: There are more kids going to football games now than there were some years earlier. Warren: Because looking at. the pictures, it looks like there's nobody in the stands, hardly anybody. Farrar: We've got a fair weather, to some extent a fair weather fan base out there. You see it in basketball. I mean, it was hard this year. It was hard for a lot of people to go to the basketball games this year. It's always hard when you're not doing well. It's easy to go when you're having a great season. It's funny. People don't come to W&L because of the athletics, by and large. There are some kids who come who really want to play sports in college. But the rest of the people don't come because of sports. If they wanted to go to college for big-time college sports, they'd be going to the University of Georgia or Notre Dame or wherever. So they're not coming here because of the big-time major sports. They're coming here for other reasons. So on Saturday afternoon, it's not unusual to see that half-time or third quarter exodus, where people are headed back to their farmhouses or the fraternity houses and they can hunker down and watch Georgia-Florida. I don't care how many buddies or good friends are out there. When those kinds of games come on TV, the kids from Georgia and Florida and the big-time college fans are going to go watch that game. That doesn't make a lot of sense. You'd think they'd stay and watch their friends and people play. And I'm sure a lot of the kids do, but you do see that exodus. Our students will come at some point early in the first quarter and stay through typically a half or three quarters, and then they're out of there. It's weird that way. But again, some of it is cultural. A lot of these kids grew up in places where there's so much focus on the big-time sports that it just becomes second nature to them. 33 Warren: We're at the end of the tape. Can we put one more in, because I'd like to talk about lacrosse. Farrar: Sure.