Fishburn interview [Begin Tape 1, Side 2] 16 Warren: All right, I'm going to jump back to the beginning of where we started here. What are the White Friars, please? You were a White Friar. Fishburn: Was I a White Friar? Warren: Calyx thinks you were. Fishburn: I was a White Friar!? Warren: What does it mean to be a White Friar? Fishburn: I know this is going to sound stupid and it's going to seem that I went through four years in an alcoholic haze, and I really didn't. I don't know what a White Friar is. Warren: Oh, good. Fishburn: I really don't know. You may not find—White Frair may be along with us Mongolian Minks. Warren: They take their picture. Fishburn: I remember gathering and thinking, "Do I know you?" gathering for the photo and thinking, "You're Bill, but I don't remember your last name." That's terribly embarrassing. It's terribly embarrassing to admit it after all these years. One of them may have been publications oriented, because I was with the Ring-tum Phi, and did a dreadful job. God, that was embarrassing. I remember after my year at the Ring-tum Phi was over, during which I left the— you know, this was where you typed out on these little old plates and then ran it through the Multilith or lithograph or whatever it was for the address, and the ink went through the little plate. Well, I got the plate screwed up, I couldn't type, I got the list screwed up, and at the end of the year I was automatically on the publications board, which led to being on the Executive Committee, because they took one person from the publications board. We met to choose my—this is for my benefit, because I felt so guilty about this. This is one of those times when you wish you got before Saint Peter and he said, 17 "Fishburn, I'm going to give you twenty minutes in one minute increments, and that means you can go back to Earth and right twenty times, R-I-G-H-T, those few moments when you did something that you wish you hadn't done." This would be among my twenty. We were choosing my successor, and politics got into it. I knew exactly the young man who should have had it. He helped me. He straightened me out. He got my files going. He was wonderful. He was enthusiastic. He wanted to be in journalism. I had it tossed at me, and this guy wanted it so badly he could taste it. The politics of it was that it was Red Square versus something else, and Red Square was trying to wrap up the publications that year and get all of the dance posts and all this, you know, chest beating, and I voted against this apprentice and went with some jerk who was a Red Square candidate. I won't say jerk, because you can look in the Calyx and find out who the next guy after me was. But the young man who really wanted it and who had worked for me and I knew deserved it got it the following year and was wonderful as the business manager of the Ring-tum Phi. I wake up in the middle of the night about this, I really do, and I want to call him and say, "Marvin, I'd like to apologize to you for overlooking you that time because of campus politics, because it was petty and stupid and asinine and juvenile." I went so far as to write him one time when the new W&L registry came out, alumni registry. I never got a reply. But before I leave, throw off this mortal coil, I'm going to get in touch with him and apologize. It's just those little things that get you. Warren: Oh, truth telling. Fishburn: Yeah. Warren: I'm going to pause for a moment. [Tape recorder turned off.] I'm just really kind of interested in all these things that you were involved in. 18 Fishburn: Okay, there was one more. In conjunction with this, there was Marvin laboring in the shadows because of the Red Square. It wasn't Red Square. There were two sets of fraternities, and I've forgotten— Warren: Was it Big Clique and Little Clique? Fishburn: Big Clique and Little Clique, you've got it. Warren: I've heard that expression, but I don't really know what it means. Fishburn: Big Clique was Red Square, and the Little Clique was—and essentially you had the Red Square fraternities versus the others, and being a member of the Big Clique, it was important. Why, I don't know, because it now seems so unimportant. But when I voted against Marvin, it seemed very important. It seemed almost as though the fortunes of the Democratic and Republican party were going to ride on my vote that day, and, of course, the whole thing was a stupid, it was a mock battle, mock political battle. There was another thing that will remind, I think, some people of that period. All the sets at all the dances, virtually every drop of paint, every nail, every board, every backdrop, every design, was done by one person, a guy named Henry Heyman, and all the—I'm not saying all of them, but I know that the people I knew who got any kind of dance chairmanship, in which your responsibility was to get appoint a committee to get the band and then decorate the gym, Doremus Gym. They were the only two things you did, really, is set a date, get a band, and decorate the gym. Henry was always so enthusiastic. He wanted to do the decorations, and as I remember, he did such a beautiful job. I think I was head of one dance, and this is tell it all, brother, time. I think I went over there maybe five times to check up on his progress, and that's about all I did for that dance. So sometimes you see these lists in the Calyx, and the lists may or may not mean very much. As a matter of fact, the recipient of that ink might not even know what those organizations were that he was a part of. 19 Warren: Well, you were Fancy Dress vice president. Is that what you're talking about? Fishburn: Well, I was thinking of Fancy Dress, but I think I was also— Warren: You were also one vice president of Spring Dance. Fishburn: Yeah. In one case I was in charge of decorations, and, of course, all I did was go straight to Henry and say, "What do you have in mind?" Warren: What did Henry have in mind? What kind of things did he do? Fishburn: Henry was just full of ideas. You don't have a Calyx, do you? Warren: No, not here. Fishburn: You'll find him in there. He was this wonderful guy who loved, I guess—I hope he turned out to be a scenic designer on Broadway. I have no idea what happened to Henry. But he's my other guilt trip, because he just was there to— Warren: It sounds like he was having fun. Fishburn: Oh, he was having a good time, and I guess it was a symbiotic relationship. But I always felt after I graduated and got a few years on me that Henry was terribly used, because as far as I know, he never got any recognition. I think it was H-E-Y-M-A- N. Warren: That's what I was going to ask you. Fishburn: I'm not sure. We can look it up. But as far as I know, that's all Henry Heyman did was decorate for dances, and I think he did it at least once or twice every year. He may have done every dance for two years. I really don't know. Warren: Take me to one of those dances. What was it like? Walk me in the door. Fishburn: You're talking about a Fancy Dress or a regular dance? Warren: Both. What's the difference between? Fishburn: Not much, really. Fancy Dress, of course, had a lot more prestige because it was the dance of the year. But I think in general you had two divisions on campus. One loved to, quite frankly, drink, because it was an excuse for some heavy partying and drinking, and loved to dance. The other element wanted to get as far away from all 20 the foolishness as they possibly could, and you're just going to have decide yourself which was the more mature of the two groups. But the dances were wonderful, because they could transform that rather dark, dingy gym—at least Henry could—into a wonderful place. Of course, back then they still had the big bands coming around, and we had Tommy Dorsey and Stan Kenton, and I'm sure we had Glenn Miller's. If there was a Glenn Miller Band, it wasn't Glenn Miller because he died during the war. But we had all the major bands and probably occasionally some regional bands for the off dances, Spring—what did we have, Spring and Fall and Fancy Dress? Warren: And there was openings and finals. They just seemed to go on and on. Fishburn: They did go on and on, because that was the excuse for partying. Warren: But how dressed up did one get? Fishburn: For Fancy Dress, they picked the theme, of course, and it had to be a reasonably practical theme, and you went to a certain room and ordered your Fancy Dress costume long in advance of the actual ball. That was reserved for the best bands and the most gorgeous backdrop and scenery, etc. I think our year it was the Roman— it wasn't a toga party, but it was Roman, I think. I think our senior year was Roman, and Henry, of course, had the columns and the capitals and the steps. It was wonderful. I like to dance. I love to jitterbug. I thought it was just quite special. There was no hoopla. I mean, it was drinking and dancing. We didn't have a figure, as such. I think at one point the president of the dance and the vice president and maybe about three or four couples would come through the arch or whatever it was with their dates and start dancing, and that was it. That was the only ritual. But it was just very special. It was a way of saying, not just come over and sit in my fraternity house in the basement on the sawdust and drink some very bad punch. It was a way of saying, "This is special. Come over and go to a dance." I mean, that was a much higher order of date. Do we still have dances? 21 Warren: I went to my first Fancy Dress this year. Fishburn: You've got Fancy Dress, but they don't go in for it the way we went in for it. Warren: No, unfortunately. But Fancy Dress was fun. It was really fun. Fishburn: It's great fun. I'm not apologizing for it. I'm apologizing for Henry's doing all the work. Warren: You said it wasn't a toga party. Fishburn: It wasn't a toga party. Warren: Were there toga parties in your day? When did the toga parties start? Fishburn: I would say toga parties were—there were panty raids, I think, in the fifties. I know there were. I think the panty raid, the rage for panty raids I believe started sometime in the early fifties. Warren: For posterity, explain what a panty raid is. Fishburn: A bunch of drunk guys get together, pick a particular women's—it's better if it's not coed, because you don't want guys around protecting the—I started to say virginity of, and I don't mean that—protecting the reputation of the women. So you pick a fairly obscure dorm on a fairly obscure women's campus, and you get together in a car or three cars or four cars and you Rushthrough the dorm and steal panties and then run out again. I guess they counted the number of panties or whatever. I had to, for my freshman, one of the things I had to do for the Phi Deltas, go to a college in I think it was Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, or one of the Pennsylvania colleges, Chambersburg, maybe Chambersburg, unimportant, and get signed underwear from some guy's girlfriend that he had up there. I think that was sort of an offshoot of the idea of it's great fun to raid a dorm and steal panties. Then I think part of it was to come home and hang the panties out of the windows of the fraternity house, and, of course, the more panties you got, the more successful was the raid. Now, if you're asking me to justify it, I mean I can explain it, but if you're asking me to justify it, I have no idea. I do know that a lot of the women considered it a 22 privilege to be raided and would leave the panties out in very prominent places in order to make it easy. That's a panty raid. The toga party came later. Of course, you know that the fifties were not in any way goody-two-shoes, and we certainly had some drunken parties. I don't remember anything that could be vaguely called—I won't say that. I started to say I don't remember anything that could be vaguely called orgiastic, but there were some pretty raunchy parties. The Phi Delts got put on social probation the first time, I can remember. The Phi Delts were put on social probation, I think, about three or four times for untoward activities. The first time they got a couple of strippers from a carnival in Buena Vista and brought them into the house and thought that was great fun, and the administration did not think it was nearly as funny as the Phi Deltas thought it was. I was not there. That was my freshman year. I remember the aftermath of it because we couldn't have a party in the fraternity house for a long time. But I actually was seeing Joan of Arc. Warren: And you expect me to believe that? Fishburn: No, I really absolutely was. I missed it entirely. I would have been there and I probably would have joined in the hooting and the hollering had I been there, but I missed it entirely. But fraternities were routinely put on social probation, not for just drinking, but for damage or anything like—I would imagine back then a toga party would have done it. But toga parties came in in the late sixties, seventies, didn't they? Warren: I have a photograph that I'd say is about '63 or '64 of a toga party. Fishburn: Here? Warren: Uh-huh. Fishburn: Huh. I guess I was thinking about Animal House. Warren: Well, I think by that time they were so well established. 23 Fishburn: It had sifted through the public consciousness. No, I didn't realize it was that early. Where are we? Warren: We're all over the place. This is just wonderful stuff. So you were on the EC, because of being on the publications board. Fishburn: Right. I was on the Executive Committee during the time that they had the football scandal, and that was painful. Warren: You were! Oh, my God, I hadn't done that arithmetic. Will you please tell your experience of that. Fishburn: Watty Bowes was the head—that's B-O-W-E-S, Watty, Watson. They called him Watty Bowes, who was really probably our class star, very smart and into everything, was the head of the Executive Committee. You know the background. Warren: Please tell the story. Fishburn: Here we had a school of, what, 1,000, 1,200 undergraduates. Was it that large? It was around 1,000. Let's just say it was 1,000, 1,000, 1,100, not including law school, trying to support a major football program. Not a major athletic program. Basketball was good, but we didn't field every team that the NCAA has, but we fielded teams. We tried to have a professional football team. I won't say professional, a good college football team in the middle of a small university—you would almost call it, in size, a college—which was very difficult to do unless the athletes were housed separately, fed separately, unless they had some feeling of being separated from the rest of the institution. You had to have an athletic dorm, although I remember that Bob Thomas, who was a great athlete. I think our athletes lived in the dorm, but they must have been separated in some way in what they ate or their athletic facilities or something. 24 But, by and large, not the athletes I knew, but a great many of them felt that they weren't a part of the university, they were somehow separate from and probably a little bit above the student body, the slobs, the everyday potbellied slobs. And you can see why. Good athletes in the middle of a university where day-to-day contact is very important, and they are segregated in certain ways. So they didn't feel a part of the university, and I imagine they took a somewhat jaundice view, some of them, the ones who were involved in this scheme, took a somewhat jaundice view of the Honor System, because they just didn't feel they were part of it. They were playing for dear old Washington and Lee, but I don't think some of them felt any allegiance to dear old Washington and Lee. So they, as I understand it, got in good with one of the secretaries, who had a key to the third floor of one of the administration buildings and therefore had access to the Multilith machines, where the exams were copied, and somehow got copies of exams and took it from there, and suddenly were making wonderful grades in certain courses, and somebody figured it out. Warren: So they had advance copies of the exams. Fishburn: They had advance copies of the exams, because the professors would, in advance, make the class copies up there. Somehow they got the master copy or got a copy of the exams. I don't know in which courses. I don't know anything about it. That's just the way it came to us. I do not remember too much about the testimony. I just remember it was an extremely painful process because they were caught dead to right, and it was the bulk of the offense and a lot of defensive players, all of whom everybody knew. So they paraded in front of the Executive Committee one at a time, and the Executive Committee had very little recourse. Most of them were open-and-shut cases. There were a few who kind of got dragged into the scheme kicking and screaming, and I think 25 there were some special circumstances. But mostly it was just lower the boom, lower the boom. I remember Watty Bowes being very organized and everything was fairly cut and dry. I say cut and dry legally, because there wasn't anything we could do about it. But it was so painful because it wasn't like kicking out Joe Schimitzki [phonetic], Michigan State All-American. It was the guy whom you'd lived with in freshman dorm and it could have been a fraternity brother or it could have been your best friend. That seems to contradict what I said about their not being part of the university. They were part of the university, but there was a psychological, probably a psychological segregation. Warren: Were there very many? How many of them— Fishburn: God, Mame, don't pin me down about that. I just remember that we couldn't honor our contracts to play the next year because we just didn't have any players. I seem to remember that virtually the whole offense was wiped out and most of the defense, so that would have been—gee, you know, you can go back and check—at least twenty people. Then at that point, of course, we decided to go, we called it amateur, and play the small colleges in our division. We did field, I think, in 1955 we did field a team. We played the schedule in '55, I believe, with people who were horses who wanted to go out and just see how they could—they all played in high school, and some of them played for W&L and were not involved in the scandal, in the cheating scandal. So they fielded a team the next year, I think it was something of a disaster. Warren: How did it feel to be in the middle of that? Fishburn: It felt terrible. I mean, my God, because you were not only sorry to see some very decent people go who got caught in a rather ridiculous situation, and some of them did get caught. They just had the damn exam thrust under their noses and said, "This is it." 26 But it was terrible, although I think there was a suspicion on the part of the W&L community that we could be quite good with people like VPI, Virginia, University of Richmond, and still have our butts kicked by the major colleges. See, we were in kind of limbo. In '50, we went to the Gator Bowl. We lost, but we went to the Gator Bowl. '51 we had a wonderful Gil Bocetti. You'll run across his name. And Bob Thomas was the end, and they set all kinds of records. We beat Virginia 42 to 13 or something, and, I mean, it was just great. But we realized that even though we could play competitively in Virginia schools, that year Maryland, which was national champion, came down and beat us 55 to nothing. So we just were so wavering. I think the worse thing we possibly could have done, and I think history's proven that, for a small institution to try to field a large football team is just ridiculous, because it takes so many resources. We didn't have the alumni to get the players. We didn't have the facilities. I mean, it was wonderful while it lasted, but I think there was a feeling that this was sort of a clarifying, as bad as it was, it was a clarifying issue that pushed us to make a decision that we would have inevitably had to make anyway. Can you see us playing a major foot—basketball, fine, because it's only ten people. It's all you need. But football, sixty players. You just couldn't do it. So that really pushed us, I think, on the road to inevitability. But it was terrible. You can talk to some of the people who were on that Executive Committee. It was awful. I don't remember anybody else, except Dewey Oxner, who is now a lawyer down in South Carolina. Warren: Did it strengthen or make you question—what did it do for people's feelings about the Honor System? Fishburn: From my memory and my point of view, there was kind of a protective rationale. We didn't say, "Oh, God, there goes the Honor System. We're doing everything wrong." We said, "This was a special case where you had a group that was not really a part of the university." 27 Now, that may be a really bad spin and simply a rationalization to help us through a bad period, but I think a lot of people took it that way. It's not broken. It still works under normal circumstances, but these were extraordinary circumstances, and I think we told ourselves you can understand why it didn't work under these circumstances. This was a very tight-knit group within the university and yet not fully a part of the university. And yet, God, we lost some very decent guys who just kind of got caught in the web. I'm not saying they weren't guilty, but they were just decent people. Every time I saw one of them walk out of the room, I thought, "My God, what is this going to do to his life?" Because like every other thing like that, it seemed like wonderful fun at the time. But it was just so damn clear cut. There was nothing anybody could do about it. So a lot of what we did was almost a formality. We did not have great long trials with ringing defenses and ringing prosecutions, because by the time they got to us, most of them had admitted what they had done, so it was just, boom, but nonetheless, painful. Warren: When you arrived, was the Honor System something new to you? Was it drilled in? Fishburn: We had it at the prep school I went to. Warren: Was that true for a lot of people? Fishburn: No. There were really three groups in '51 when I arrived. You had the public school people, of course, and you had the prep school people, probably far more preppies that you've got now, which is probably a good thing, and then you had the veterans. Still in 1951, the veterans in fairly large numbers were taking advantage of the GI Bill for both W&L and the law school. And there were three entirely different perceptions. By and large, the preppies came in better prepared, but also more laid back, more ready to, having been in a rather restricted situation socially, they were—I remember the first time I stayed in freshman dorm I bolted up from looking at the schedule or something and said, "I don't have to 28 be in tonight. I won't have anybody checking me out of the dorm, checking me in the dorm." For four years, I had been under very tight supervision. I could go out and do anything I wanted to. Well, for most prep school kids, that was a tremendous sense of freedom, and so they naturally took advantage of it and studied only what they had to study, but made good grades, again because of this preparation. They knew how to study. The public school kids came in with all kinds of intensity, but not knowing how to study and not having the boost of the course material that we had had and didn't do as well. But pretty soon, crossover. We were like this and they were like that, and in most cases they passed us rapidly. And then there were the GIs, who wanted to take advantage of every single second. They ruined the class curve because they could party, and I swear they could party all night long, the ones who weren't married, and get up and study hard. They knew the importance of their time and this education, and they were dedicated partiers and dedicated studiers, and they could somehow mix the two. Those of us who tried to emulate them were dead in the water. I never did, because I had the good sense to know that they had the years on us, the stamina, and the maturity. So I didn't do it, but a lot of people said, "Oh, hell, if this guy can do it, so can I." Well, boy, the veterans really cut a huge swath through the W&L in the early fifties, and I think there was still a few when I graduated in '55. I don't when the great influx was. I guess it was '46, '47, but again, you can check that. There's an interesting, I think, I guess you'd call it a sociological study to be done on the impact of the veterans on this place in the late forties, early fifties, because it was really intriguing. Of course, those veterans who were married came in with a tremendous advantage. I remember the law students who were married just did nothing but hit the books, because they couldn't have as much social life. I mean, they 29 were not dry as dusts, but they knew how to allocate their time, they were driven, and they were absolutely awesome. I remember one law student, Jim Foltz, had a corner room. He was not married, but he had a corner room in the Phi Delta house. You'd walk in his room, and he would have, I don't know what they called them. They were large sheets of paper about like this. He wrote tiny, too, and every single case that he covered in there was done by one of these sheets. He had, in effect, rewritten the book in his language. I looked at that and said, you know, he reminded me of some medieval monk doing illuminated manuscripts. It was beautiful in a way, but it was so frightening in a way because I'd never seen evidence up until that time of that much just sheer hard work. If I had entertained any, any desire to be a lawyer, at that point it went right out of my head, because I just decided there wasn't any way I was going to be able to do that. Marginalia was all I was destined to do. But the veterans really set the pace and the tone of a lot that went on on campus in the early fifties, which is both good and bad. The good being that there was a level of maturity we needed. The bad being that if we tried to do what they did, we were lost in the wake. Warren: One of the distinctions that you had, and you keep downplaying all these things that I think you did. Fishburn: Well, no. I'm just being honest. Warren: You were tapped for ODK. Fishburn: Well, that was probably the only legitimate thing on the list. Warren: I go to those ceremonies and I say, "Wow, these must be cool people." Fishburn: But see, it follows from the things that I had downplayed, because with ODK you had to have a certain number of activities. For ODK purposes, it didn't make any difference if Henry Heyman did the actual work while I took all the glory of the dance. It didn't matter to them that I probably never opened my mouth in the Executive 30 Committee. I can remember opening my mouth about twice in the Executive Committee. It didn't matter to them that my Executive Committee position came from publications. Warren: Who is "them"? Fishburn: Well, the ODK, they have a screening committee, don't they? I don't know, Rupert Latture, didn't he found ODK? Warren: Did you feel honored to be tapped? Fishburn: Oh, of course I did. I'm playing this down. I loved it. I loved the activities, and there was a certain amount of satisfaction in the activities. I'm just saying that some of it just you fell into by virtue of being in a certain fraternity and knowing certain people. It wasn't by virtue of being a R.E. Lee type person or a great leader or anything else. I mean, you kind of fell into it. Warren: So I should be less impressed when I see these people? Fishburn: I think, by and large, the amount of ink in the yearbook is not really the final indication of what type of person you're dealing with. In many cases, of course it is, and in many cases it's an indication of very hard work. But I'm being quite honest in saying in my case it was just kind of being in the right place at the right time. But I was proud of ODK, and I did go with Rupert Latture to an ODK meeting in Louisville and drove him down and drove him back. That was a very interesting trip. Also, talk about Saint Peter and the gate and that one minute. I also had to escort Russell Kirk around the campus, I think about 1953, '54, and I remember that as being very, very stilted, because here was the modern engineer, one of the modern engineers of the conservative revival, one of the great conservative scholars, from all indications a wonderfully funny and engaging man, and I doubt that we said more than three words. We had nothing in common particularly, but I was his escort on campus. I was too embarrassed to ask him a question. I was afraid this great mind would think it was a totally stupid question. I've since learned to ask questions whether you think they're 31 stupid or not. No other way, I say I'd like to have that moment back, one of those not so golden moments. Boy, would I ask Russell Kirk a lot of questions, because this was about the time he put out The Conservative Mind, which was a seminal book. You know, the innocence of youth. Warren: We're at the end of this tape. I have a few more questions. Can I put another one in? Fishburn: Sure.