AL FLEISHMAN

                                       October 4, 1996
                                                —

                                        Mame Warren,
                                          interviewer

Warren: This is Mame Warren. Today is the 4th of October, 1996. I’m in Lexington,
Virginia, and I’m with Al Fleishman. I’m just real tickled to finally get with you. I’ve
heard wonderful things about ZBT, and, at this point, you are Mr. ZBT, so I would like
you to speak on behalf of all your brothers who came before you, and who came after
you, and who were there with you. So what first attracted you to Washington and Lee?
Fleishman: I got to Washington and Lee sort of by chance of fate. When I was in high
school, we didn’t have—I graduated from high school in 1937, and most of the people
who would be on the other end of this can’t relate to those days, but we didn’t have the
kind of communication or information about places. Like everybody else, I was in South
Carolina, which was a very poor state in those days. I can remember as a child, when I
was seven years old, my mother had an open Buick touring car, and I rode in the
parade with her and some other people in the car that celebrated the hundredth
anniversary of the founding of Anderson, South Carolina, where I was born. In the
parade, marching in front of us, was some Confederate veterans, believe it or not. So I
go back a long way.

         The South was very poor. My great-uncles came down there in the 1880s as
peddlers, pack peddlers. They found towns that they liked, and they established a
storehouse, and they became a store. The Fleishman family had fifteen or twenty stores
in towns in South Carolina, North Carolina, and Georgia, long before most of the chains

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were in business. Belk’s and Sears and Penney’s and people like that weren’t even heard
of yet.

         My father was born in Baltimore, Maryland, and he came down to work for his
uncles when was twelve years old, and aunts. My father grew up there working for his
Uncle Sam, who was my great-uncle, whom I knew. He was drafted in World War I,
was overseas in France, and he came back home.

         In those days, among the Jewish people, they generally arranged marriages like
you’ve heard about in the books and “Fiddler on the Roof,” and things like that. My
father married my mother, who he had been set up to marry. I was born in Anderson,
South Carolina, about a year and half after they were married, and I’ve lived there ever
since.

         I got to Washington and Lee. I was in the local high school and did real well, was
fortunate enough to be valedictorian of my class, which was very unusual, because
there were only three to four Jewish kids in the high school at that time, and we
received—I know a little something about discrimination and about things like that,
and prejudice, and I was fortunate enough to do that.

         When I started thinking about colleges, there were four that interested me:
University of North Carolina, because some of my relatives had gone there; Duke
University, because I heard what a wonderful school it was; and Citadel. Poor me, I
would have never been anything at the Citadel. I would have blown the place up, and
wound up in the brig, because that wasn’t my kind of place.

         Our attorney, a man named Leon L. Harris, who was class of ‘15 at Washington
and Lee, he was the family attorney and the store attorney, and Mr. Harris used to tell
me about Washington and Lee, and it sounded real interesting to me. I had never seen
the place. So he suggested that I apply. And the reason I came to Washington and Lee—
of course, in those days, they wouldn’t have questioned acceptance. You just showed up
with the money and went to school. I received a letter from Washington and Lee

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indicating that I would get a hundred-dollar scholarship against the tuition. None of the
others made that offer, and that’s the reason I came.

         Tuition at Washington and Lee my freshman year was $250, and the other three
years, it was $300 a year. I was fortunate enough to have scholarships all three years,
the other three years, so the only tuition I paid was $150 the first year I came here. Does
that tell you how I got to Washington and Lee?
Warren: That’s a pretty good indication. Well, did you visit the campus before you
came?
Fleishman: Never saw the place. My mother and father, and we had a gentleman who
used to work for us, who used to do driving on long trips, they drove me up here in our
family car, which was a 1928 Buick, and they left me here. I’d never been away from
home for any length of time. I was sixteen. We only had eleven grades, and I was a little
younger than most of the people here. I was in Room 316 in Graham dormitory. I was
there by myself, waiting to go to Freshmen Camp. We used to have Freshmen Camp
here when I was here, and it was a wonderful thing, because we had three or four days
out at—I think it was Cave Mountain Lake. It was wherever the Boy Scout camp was in
those days. There were about 150 of my classmates, and we all wore name tags, and we
learned to know who was which, and we had all the people from the school speak to us.
Dean Gilliam, and, of course, Dr. Gaines, and three or four other of the dignitaries told
us about Washington and Lee, and what life at Washington and Lee was like, and what
the academics were like.

         The first day there—I still hear from two of those people, and I’ve seen them at
our reunions—Charlie Gilbert, and Don Godehn is going to be back for this reunion.
We were in the same bunk. It was alphabetical. I was scared to death, and the first day, I
had a terrible pain in the side, which I’m sure was psychological, because I just didn’t
know anybody and didn’t want to be away from home.

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         One thing I forgot to tell you, though. When I was in the dormitory, as soon as I
checked in, one of the representatives of Phi Epsilon Pi, which was the other Jewish
fraternity—we had Phi Ep and we had ZBT—were the two Jewish fraternities. They
knocked at the door, and were real nice to me, and took me to lunch.

         Then a fellow named Robert E. Lee, believe it or not, was in my class, and I don’t
know that he was related to the other Robert E. Lee, but probably. We used to call him
"Buzz." He was the guy that won the blanket. He got a Washington and Lee blanket for
naming the most people that were in the freshmen class on the last day. I was second. I
don’t think I got any prize, but he got a wonderful blanket that I remember.

         Then also, as we were standing in line for registration, there was a great big guy
standing next to me, and I’ll never forget it, he had on a wine-colored, or brown, I
guess, herringbone tweed suit. I looked at him, and I thought, "Well, this looks like
might be a fellow to be friendly with." And this was Marvin Stanley Winter, who was
also Jewish. He was from New York. He became a very close friend of mine, and still is.

         When we got back, of course, we were busy with the registration, and I’ll never
forget Dr. Gaines’ speech down in Lee Chapel. He introduced the—started telling some
of the things—the rest of the class, the other hundred people that weren’t there. We had
like 280 in our class. The other hundred people who weren’t at Freshmen Camp were all
there. We came a few days early for orientation. And I’ll never forget when he
mentioned the University of Virginia, he never called it by the name, he said, "That’s the
school over the hill from us, in Charlottesville, whose team will be so soundly beat by
us," whatever day was coming up.

         We also had the wonderful opportunity of hearing Cy Young talk, and Cy
Young’s mother-in-law was our housemother, Mrs. Neely. And so we were close to Cy
Young, and I still see Cy’s son, Neely Young, once in a while. Of course, he was named
for the family Mrs. Neely was part of.

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         It was a whole different thing then. The traditions were very well represented,
and, of course, again, as like I said, we didn’t have the communication or the ability to
do some of the things. We had a great newspaper, and I had been on the high school
newspaper, and I thought that would be a good thing for me to do, and so I applied to
become a reporter, and I worked for the Ring-tum Phi all four years I was here.

         Eventually, in my quest to do things that people didn’t always like, I decided we
should—the big entertainment in those days was the State Theater. Everybody was on
the show team. You know, "Were you on the show team today?" And most of the
fraternity brothers used to go to the movies as soon as they changed, so I thought that
would be a good thing. So I wrote a column called "Reviews and Previews" in the
newspaper. They wondered how I ever saw all those movies, and I never saw any of
them. I used to get the poop sheet that they had, which had the information in advance,
the advance sheet.

         A wonderful man named Ralph Daves was manager of the theater, and he was
the son-in-law of a man named Ike Weinberg, who was sort of our patron saint at ZBT.
Mr. Weinberg owns a couple of businesses in town and also several buildings, and he
helped us to build the fraternity house. Of course, I was rushed by ZBT, and if you want
this information, Mame, I’ll tell you about that Rush Week.
Warren: Please do.
Fleishman: All right. We had two Jewish fraternities. There were nineteen fraternities, I
think, when I was there, and everybody—this was something else that bothered people,
there were no upper-class dormitories. If you didn’t belong to a fraternity, you’d have
to room out in town. We didn’t have any of these facilities that you have here today.
Even when the young ladies used to come for the dances, they had to stay in boarding
houses. There were no motels or hotels, well the Robert E. Lee was the only thing.

         And so when we had Rush, the Phi Eps—in my class was a man named Bert
Schewel, who was very famous here at Washington and Lee. He raised a lot of money

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for them and he was a great donor, and his family owned the Schewel Furniture Stores,
which are still in Virginia, and his sons are still a part of it. He and his father, and his
father’s brother, I think, were the people that ran it, and they were very big Washington
and Lee supporters, but they were also supporters of Phi Epsilon Pi, which was the
other Jewish fraternity.

         Also, there was a quota system here. They allowed fifty Jewish young men to be
in the total population of 1,000. There were 5 percent. The population of the Jewish
people in the United States was 5 percent of the total, so we had a quota. But we all
knew it. Of course, nobody talked about it, but we knew that there was a quota as to
how many Jewish young men could be here. And so there were fifteen young Jewish
fellows in my class when we registered, and, of course, the Phi Eps and the ZBTs rushed
us. They didn’t rush anybody that was non-Jewish.

         When they came to select the pledges, thirteen of the fifteen pledged ZBT. One
pledged Phi Ep, and one remained non-fraternity. Of the thirteen pledges, one was Bert
Schewel, whose family had supported Phi Epsilon. So there was a big hullabaloo, and
his father and his uncle got the other fraternity to protest, "Dirty Rush," so they had two
more days of Rush, and it wound up ZBT got twelve, and Phi Ep got Bert Schewel and
Bob Younger. And the other guy, Marion Simon didn’t pledge, but he pledged our
fraternity the next year. Thought that might be of interest to you.

         And, of course, the fraternity life is an entirely new thing. In those days, the
pledges were like servants. My pledge master was a man named Jim Fishel, who was
class of ’39, who became a big-time advertising executive. He’s still alive. I see him
when I go to New York. He’s in poor physical shape. He was on the tennis team, and he
was a great person. And he was, incidentally, the first Jewish editor of any major
publication here on the Washington and Lee campus. He was editor of the Southern
Collegian in his senior year.

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         Getting back to the Ring-tum Phi, I worked on it all four years. I don’t know
whether you want to use this or not, but we used to have something called the Big
Clique here. You’ve heard about that before, which were the six major fraternities. I
may not have all of them right: ATO, which is no longer here; Phi Delta Theta; Beta
Theta Pi; Sigma Nu; Kappa Alpha; and I think maybe Kappa Sig, I don’t know. I’m not
sure about Sigma Nu. It may have been Sigma Chi. But anyway, there were the six
major fraternities out of the nineteen.

         Also, when I came here—this is incidental, too—ZBT was last in scholarship. Our
class brought them from last to first in one year. We were first in scholarship at the end
of our freshman year, and we stayed first or second in scholarship for the four years I
was here. We had three members of our class who were Phi Beta Kappa, which was
very unusual, out of those twelve pledges I was telling you about.
Warren: When you say "first in scholarship," you mean you had the highest grade point
average?
Fleishman: Yeah, grade point average. I don’t know whether they still do that among
the fraternities here or not. But I just saw it in the old Ring-tum Phi, what we were at the
end of the time.

         Anyway, to finish up this thing with the Ring-tum Phi, we had a young man, who
was a freshman with us, whose father was a very famous typographer, named Gilbert
Farrar. Fred Farrar was in our class, and Fred was a reporter with us, but he dropped
out after the first year or two. Fred was a Beta Theta Pi.

         We wound up with three—and I don’t know whether you want to use this or
not, because it’s controversial, I guess, but this is how I saw it. We wound up, we had
three Lambda Chis, who were almost as low-grade as a ZBT. We had one ZBT and one
non-fraternity person, who were the major staff my junior year, from whom the editor
had been selected. And there was an ATO, who was editor, who I won’t tell you his
name, and he decided that because of the Big Clique arrangement, that they bring Fred

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Farrar back and make Fred the editor. And the other five of us got together, and I guess
I was the lead in that crowd. I told you, I’m always protesting. I was the lead in that
crowd, and we decided that we would resign from the Ring-tum Phi, and they wouldn’t
have a newspaper if they didn’t elect Bill Buchanan editor. He was non-fraternity. He
had no political clout at all.

         So Bill Buchanan, who became the head of your Department of Political Science
here, or whatever they call it, politics, and still lives in Lexington, was elected editor,
because the other four of us decided that was the thing to do. The person who had been
selected, and you better not use his name now—Fred Farrar—because he hates me
anyway—I think he does—was not elected editor of the publication board. That was
one coup that we felt we were able to do.

         Anyway, getting back to the Ring-tum Phi, we did a lot of unusual things, and
when I found out we didn’t have upper-class dormitories—we only had freshmen
dormitories—just Graham and Lees. We had no place for the upperclassmen to live at
all, except at fraternity houses. And as I told you, something like 85 percent—it’s still a
high percentage here—of the people who belong to fraternities. And, of course, it was
all male. So I wrote an editorial about upper-class dorms, and I was as happy as I could
be when they decided to build that upper-class dorm, which was like thirty years later.

         And the other thing that I did, I had been in the high school band when I was in
high school, and when I got to Washington and Lee, we had a pretty good football
team. We used to play big-time football. We played people like Duke, West Virginia,
North Carolina, Tennessee, some of the big-name schools in this area. Of course, we
were a little bitty school, and we used to win a game every now and then, and some of
my best friends are the people off the football team, today.

         Junie Bishop [phonetic] was the fullback, and Junie made Phil Beta Kappa, and I
thought that was absolutely wonderful. And he’s always said—and he’ll be back for
this—he’s somebody else you may want to talk to, because he was a football player.

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He’ll be back for our reunion. He’ll be here today. When Junie used to go on the football
trips, you know, he missed the days in class, and I always lent him my notes and went
over my notes from class with him, and helped him whenever I could, which—he’s a
pretty smart fellow, and he’s always said the reason that he made Phi Beta Kappa was
because of my notes, which I don’t believe. But anyway, he and I have been close all
these years, and I’ve seen him in all kinds of places.

         But I figured Washington and Lee needed to have a band, and we didn’t have a
band—rag-tag, sort of like you’ve got now. So I helped organized a band, and we had a
forty-piece band, and we used to march and travel with the football team. We got some
uniforms. I don’t remember how I raised the money for the uniforms, but we got
uniforms. We went all over the country with them. One of the games that I remember,
we played Maryland in the Baltimore city stadium, where the Baltimore Colts used to
play. It held like 55,000 people. You know where I’m talking about?
Warren: Memorial Stadium.
Fleishman: Yeah. I think Notre Dame used to play Navy there. So anyway, oh, it was
in November. I think it was the last game of the season. It may have been Thanksgiving,
or the weekend after, or the weekend before, and it was very cold. It snowed like the
devil. We marched in our little lightweight uniforms in that snow, with snow up to our
ankles. It was so cold, in fact, before the game ended, they brought the buses out on the
field for the football teams to sit in while they weren’t out on the field. We almost froze
to death. There couldn’t have been over 500 people in that 50,000 stadium. I remember
that. But anyway, I was very proud of that, that we had a band. We had a man named
Varna [phonetic], who was the music director before you had a good music department
like you have today.

         Let’s see, what else do I need to—I’m rambling. I don’t know what else to tell
you.
Warren: No, you’re doing great.

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Fleishman: All right. Well, let me see what else I remember. I don’t remember a lot
about the freshmen year. Our fraternity was last in intermurals, and we brought it way
up. I don’t know where we were—fifth or sixth. We had a lot of people who were
interested in sports, and all of us played. I don’t know what I was doing out there. We
used to play tag football. The ATOs were always the top crowd, because they were the
ones that had the real football players, and they helped the other guys. And we had a
great ping-pong team, which I remember. We were good at ping-pong.
Warren: Tell me about what life was like in the fraternity house.
Fleishman: Well, it’s what you make it. That’s the way I looked at those things. I never
drank. I was always the guy that drove the car, even before they told you to have a
driver, and I was always the person that was the bartender. I tended bar. I didn’t care
anything about the alcoholic beverages, particularly. Not that I had any scruples; it just
didn’t do anything for me.

         The first house party that I remember, the ZBT house used to be on Jackson
Avenue. If you know where the Phi Gam house is today, right across the street from the
Phi Gam house. The house is still there. That was our first—I’ll tell you about that, too.
That was our first fraternity house, and it only had room for about ten or twelve people
to sleep there. We decided we needed a bigger and larger house, and my freshmen year,
Jim Fishel, Alec Loeb, a man named Ned Brown, who has passed away, and we had a
fellow named Luria here, whose family was the Luria Iron and Steel people from up in
Redding, Pennsylvania, who sold a lot of scrap steel, and they had lots of money, even
then. We decided we would build a new fraternity house. So we got together, and we
raised $5,000 from the parents and alumni, and Mr. Weinberg signed a note for us for
another $5,000, and the university lent us $15,000 and gave us the land. We built a
fraternity house for $30,000.
Warren: Where was that?

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Fleishman: We got in the house in my sophomore year, 1938, we got in the house. We
started in ’37, started the drive when I first got here. The ZBT house now I think is the
Kappa Sig House, across from the Lambda Chis. The ZBT is no longer on the campus.
Warren: Where is it on the campus?
Fleishman: On Nelson Street, on your way out toward the shopping centers, right
before you get there. The hospital is up there, I think, to the right someplace, right
before you get there.

         Anyway, I was on that committee, too, because I could type. See, a lot of those
fancy brothers of mine never took typing, because they were all going to be big
executives. I took typing when I was in high school. So I typed many of the letters—
most of them, I guess—that got us the money.

         ZBT was like any other group of people. You had some people that were
introverts and some that were extroverts. I guess you’d call me an extrovert. I’m not too
sure exactly what that meant, but I was always involved in stuff. And then I used to
study a lot, but not in the fraternity house, because it was hard to do there. My room,
the first year I was in that house, didn’t get finished until about, oh, I guess the fall of
’38. I moved in as a sophomore with my roommates, who were Charlie Thalhimer and
Jean Friedberg, and you know Thalhimer from the stores. Charlie was the son of Mr.
William Thalhimer, who’s president of Thalhimer’s. They were convivial, and they had
their things that they did, and I had the things that I did. I used to do my studying
mostly after supper.

         I’ll show you sometime, if you want to, in the old commerce building, which is
your philosophy and religion building now, or psychology, or politics, I guess. I’m not
sure what it is. Newcomb Hall. The library was up there, the commerce library, and
that’s where I used to study. They always made fun of it. They said they’re going to put
a plaque on the wall over that seat that I sat in for three years, but that’s where I’d be
every night, and that’s when I did my studying, was when it was quiet.

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Warren: What was your major?
Fleishman: I majored in accounting, but I took everything in the commerce school they
had, except two courses. The only courses I didn’t take—and I was sorry that I didn’t
take this one called investments, taught by a man named Lou Adams. And the other
was inland transportation, which I’m just as glad I missed. I didn’t care anything about
that anyway, but I’m sorry I didn’t take the investments course. It would have helped
me.
Warren: Were there any faculty members who were particularly important to you?
Fleishman: Yeah, Louis K. Johnson was. Have you heard that name before?
Warren: Tell me about him.
Fleishman: Well, Louis K. Johnson taught us marketing. I teach marketing today at a
community college, and I use his precepts every day. He said some wonderful things,
and anybody that ever took marketing from L. K. Johnson will remember him, because
he meant a lot to us, and he was here for a long time. He was nice enough to invite me
to his retirement dinner after forty years, and the same Bert Schewel that I told you
about made the speech at the retirement dinner. Bert was a real character and had
wonderful stories to tell about everything. Of course, he took the courses, too, from
him. And he had this old beat-up watch that was wrapped in a beautiful package, that
he gave to Dr. Johnson as a gift. And really what we had, we had a silver tray, which he
had under the table, that we all had signed in the silver, with our names on it.
Everybody was there. It was really something when he presented it.

         Dr. Johnson and I were friends forever. He was in the Navy, too. I was in the
Navy during World War II, and when I got back to the States after a year and a half in
the South Pacific—I was fortunate enough to be on a destroyer, and fortunate enough to
get back without anything happening—but we participated in every landing in the
Solomons from Guadalcanal to Bougainville. Our ship had eleven battle stars, two unit
citations, and thank the Lord it wasn’t hit a single time.

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         But anyway, when I got back to the States—I’ll back up a little bit—when I
graduated, I was a real dumb bunny, a damn fool. I had a two-year scholarship to the
Harvard Business School and didn’t take it. Get the pistols out and shoot yourself in
both sides. But World War II was on the way, and I was terribly in love with somebody,
and I could see whether that would interfere with me going into the Navy, which I
planned to do, and the other part.

         So anyway, after I came back, I was a supply officer. I was in the second supply
class at Harvard Business School that the Navy had, and I left for the South Pacific in
September 1942. They landed in Guadalcanal, August the 7th of ’42, and I was out there
a few weeks later. When I finished my service as a supply officer, but they didn’t have
supply officers on destroyers, which I was on. They would have a supply officer for a
squadron or a division of ships. I was a supply officer for two ships, and then down to
one. It was considered hazardous duty, because they were sinking like two of those
things a week when I was out there.

         So when I got back, the Supply Corps was nice enough to suggest that they
would give me some kind of duty that I wanted, which almost made me faint. By then I
was a lieutenant, full lieutenant. So I requested any Navy yard on the East Coast, and I
got the Philadelphia Navy Yard.

         In the meantime, when I was on that ship, whenever anything came across, they
had requests like you were telling me about what you saw in the Rockbridge Gazette, the
Lexington Gazette, or whatever it is now. They used to advertise for people who had
certain specialties. And, of course, my accounting specialty was something I thought
was pretty good. So I sent in an application. Never heard anything. It was like in May of
’43, never heard anything.

         So when I got back to the States—I left the following February. After I got my
leave, I was stationed at Philadelphia Navy Yard. I had been there about thirty days

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when they called me from the personnel office, and they said, "Lieutenant Fleishman,
we got a set of orders for you."

         I said, "How the hell can you have orders for me? I just got back. I’ve only been
back three months."

         They said, "Well, we got orders."
         And so I went up there, and it was orders to the Harvard Business School. It was
a new program that they had, called Navy Material Redistribution and Disposal
Administration. The war was winding down. This was in ’44. They could see the end of
the war was imminent, that we would do the contract termination, and pay off the
contractors, and get rid of the surplus of whatever they had, and get them back into
civilian production. So I had four months up at Harvard, and I was able to get a degree
from the business school after all.
Warren: That’s great.
Fleishman: Isn’t that a good story? It really happened. And then I finished World War
II, of all places, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Warren: That’s great. Now, when we were talking on the phone, you told me a couple
of terrific stories about running into Washington and Lee people.
Fleishman: Oh, yeah. Well, I’ll tell you about some of those, too. But I started to tell
you about Junie Bishop, who I was telling you about was the football player. When I
was at Harvard, the first trip, in the supply school, I was standing on the corner,
waiting across the street, on the Harvard Business School campus. I don’t know
whether you’ve ever been there, and I don’t know what it looks like now. This was in
1944, I guess—’43—’44, yeah. And these Air Force people there, too, "Off we go into the
wild blue yonder," and there was Junie Bishop, walking across. I went up to him. Of
course, he was in ranks, he couldn’t say anything.
         And then, Art Smith, who was a member of my class. I was sitting with a load of
supplies on a miserable island named Espiritu Santo. It wasn’t all miserable. That was

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the island that was the model for South Pacific that—oh, you know the guy that wrote
all the—oh, he wrote all that stuff, including Chesapeake.
Warren: Michener.
Fleishman: Yeah, that’s right. Michener. We knew where the Frenchmen lived and we
knew where [unclear] was. There was an island called Savo Island that they used to call
[unclear]. But anyway, also, I was sitting on a load of supplies with my working party,
waiting for my boat to take us back to our ship, and here comes this fellow. I could see
his jeep coming down, and about from his waist up was above—the windshield was
down, his waist up was above the jeep, and it was Art Smith.
Warren: So you were in the jeep?
Fleishman: No, I wasn’t in the jeep. I was sitting with a load of supplies on this
miserable island on a dock, in the boondocks, really boondocks, waiting for our boat to
pick us up. We had gotten some food from one of the warehouses there. I saw this jeep
coming down the road, and there was this tall fellow driving. I said, "That’s got to be
Art Smith. Nobody else is that tall." I got out in the middle of the road, and stopped the
jeep, and sure enough, it was Art Smith.

         I was standing on the bridge of our ship as we came into an island—well, we
came into Samoa. We were in Samoa, in the Fiji Islands. Anyway, I was waiting for the
captain to give me orders as to what to do, and I was standing on the bridge while the
captain was bringing the ship alongside a cruiser, and there on the bridge of the cruiser
was a classmate of mine named Johnny Preston, who’s passed away. I used to see them
all over.

         To get back to Louis K. Johnson, to Dr. Johnson, and all those wonderful things
that he taught me, Dr. Johnson was stationed in New York City in the Naval Officer
Procurement Office, and his job was to get recruits for naval officers. I found out he was
there, and I went to see him, and he and I had dinner. I was stationed in New York for
about six or eight weeks while I was in this new program being acclimated to what the

                                                                                                                      15
paperwork was like. He and I used to eat dinner together quite often, maybe every
other night, when we were in New York. Anybody that ever had him for classes loved
him. He was a wonderful, wonderful man, and he taught us a heck of a lot.

         The other professor that I remember—I had a wonderful—and maybe you’ve
heard of him. We had an English professor here named Fitzgerald Flournoy. Did you
ever hear of that, the Flournoys?
Warren: Tell me about him.
Fleishman: Okay. Well, Dr. Flournoy was a real character. He was rather rotund, and
he wore the most miserable clothes I guess I ever saw. And since I’ve been teaching in a
college, I can understand why he did, because there are certain things that happen. You
never know what the weather’s going to be, and you leave early in the morning, and
you don’t know when you’re going to get home. But anyway, he taught us freshmen
English. Dr. Flournoy—I can remember him now, telling us about Chesterton’s Le
P_____ [phonetic], "Dim drums throbbing in the hill," half heard, and he’d bang on the
lectern. He had a wonderful way of talking.

         The other thing I remember about Dr. Flournoy, we had Benny Goodman here
for Fancy Dress, 1939, I guess, in the old Doremus Gymnasium, and he was on the
upper deck where that little track is, that they run around, if it’s still there. I haven’t
been in Doremus lately. I remember us watching him, he was right above the band,
beating time to the music, banging on the metal rails around while Benny Goodman’s
band was playing. But he was a very interesting character.

         I also had Larry Watkins for business English, and that was a man that rode On
Borrowed Time. You remember about him, I’m sure. Since you’re an English person, you
know all about that stuff. He was a pretty famous man.

         The other thing, I had—let’s see. Gosh, I’m trying to remember some of them. Dr.
Tucker, who was the dean of the university for a while, and, of course, he was head of
the commerce school, but Dr. Tucker taught us a transportation course. I don’t

                                                                                                                      16
remember exactly what it was, but it was about railroad and truck transportation. The
inland transportation course was more about the—anyway, we also had a taxation
course that we took from him.

         We had Dr. Hancock. I think he’s got a building named for him or something.
Glover Dunn Hancock. Used to be in the old Newcomb Hall. He taught me money and
banking, which was probably the toughest course I had while I was here. And I had a
man that I got a real kick out of. I was fortunate enough to make—I only made one B
while I was here. Everything else was As except I didn’t do very well on my physical
ed, but that wasn’t important. That didn’t count anyway. Because I wouldn’t show up
half the time. I had other things to do that I figured were more important. This was a
man named Bob Gray [phonetic] that taught business law, and I figured up my grades
based on the way that we were told on the syllabus as to how they were going to be
figured. At the end of the first semester, he had given me a B and I figured my grade
was 93, and I went to see him.

         I showed him what it was, and he said, "Well, you got an A."
         I said, "Aren’t you going to change it?"
         He said, "Well, you did get an A. Let’s call it a ‘moral A’."
         And that was the only B I got, and I don’t know whether this is true or not, but
somebody at Washington and Lee told me this, that Bob Gray was picked up by the
Secret Service, the FBI, whatever it was, for being a Nazi sympathizer. I don’t know
whether that’s true or not. I could be paranoid, and I probably am about a lot of things,
that among them.
         Where were we? Talking about professors, weren’t we?
Warren: Yes.
Fleishman: Okay. Who else do I remember very well? Let’s see. Hancock. Oh, Dr.
Royster, who just died recently, taught us math. Who else were my freshmen teachers?
I’m trying to remember who else I had.

                                                                                                                      17
Warren: Was there anybody who was really exciting in the classroom?
Fleishman: Oh, yeah. Johnson was exciting. Oh, I tell you who else was exciting, we
had a man named M. O. Phillips, Merten Ogden Phillips [phonetic]. He taught us
natural resources. Natural resources, something like that. Business and resources, some
course about that. He was very exciting in the classroom. M. O. Phillips. And the most
exciting class I had, I was lucky enough, Dr. Gaines would pick twenty-five students
that he would teach a philosophy course to every year. They were juniors and seniors.
Have you heard this before?
Warren: Tell me about it.
Fleishman: Dr. Gaines, of course, he was gone a lot of the time. But it was called The
Bible as Literature, and I’ll never forget it. I still have the textbook. It was very, very
interesting. Wonderful, wonderful course, you can imagine, with him in a classroom.

         What else? I remember Gilliam pretty well. Oh, and I had geology, too, from—
I’m trying to remember. They had two people. Our geology department, even then, was
known all over the country. Our classroom was in Washington Hall. There was a
lecture room that held like a hundred people. That was the biggest class I had while I
was at Washington and Lee, as far as numbers. And I can still remember the geologic
time scale, if you want that recited.
Warren: Well, tell me about Dr. Gaines as a teacher.
Fleishman: Oh, he was just wonderful. He had wonderful stories about everything.
Philosophy—he had wonderful philosophy. Somehow, I don’t know, we were
discussing some part of the Bible. He was talking about the—I guess, they didn’t call
them Muslims then. I guess it was Islamic—Mohammadism is what it was called in my
day—about the view of the female. And I’ll never forget that. He said, "The
Mohammads believe that a female’s body should be completely covered sometimes, but
the main thing that they leave uncovered is the eyes. After all, that’s the thing that’s
mostly different about people. You can say a lot about their eyes. They weren’t so dumb

                                                                                                                      18
after all. The rest of the body’s pretty much the same, except different proportions." I
remember that part. He didn’t say it exactly like that.

         But he was an interesting man. He had a wonderful, wonderful philosophy of a
lot of things. And see, he came from my part of the country. He was from Duesse
[phonetic], South Carolina. I don’t know that he went to school at Ersten [phonetic], but
his family is still—and there’s still some people down there that are related to him, that
come in once in awhile and say hello to me, and tell me about Dr. Gaines, believe it or
not.

         I’ve met W&L people all over the world, every place I’ve been. It’s always
something. This last time, since I’ve been at this Tri-County Tech, where I’m an add
junk faculty member, I tell them I adjunct to the faculty, I teach the marketing courses,
and like I told you, I mention L. K. all the time, because he said a couple of things. He
said, "Tell the employee, and tell them why," and, "You can eliminate a middleman, but
you can’t eliminate his function," and "You can’t cross the crowd." Those are three of
his statements that I use over and over and over again, which are true in marketing, no
question about it.

         But anyway, since I’ve been at that tech school, I’ve organized a trip to New
York, to take students to New York City, and, of course, Washington and Lee has
helped me in that, too. We take anywhere from twenty—most people I ever had is
thirty-eight, and that’s too many. Last year we had twenty-two.

         And Marvin Winters’ son—they have a big real estate operation. They bought a
building on 57th Street. If you know New York City, it’s on 57th and Fifth. If you know
where Harry Winston’s jewelry place is, it’s the next building over. It’s called the
Crown Building. It’s got all that gold at the top of the building. And they have mostly
men’s apparel manufacturers’ showrooms in there, and Marvin’s son, Jimmy, does the
presentation, and all the little girls from South Carolina ask me always, "Oh, Mr.
Fleishman, is he married?" They love him.

                                                                                                                      19
         And also through Washington and Lee, last year the alumni office put me in
touch with a man who is now president of the New York Stock Exchange, who’s class of
‘61 here. And they did a wonderful presentation for us. We’ve been going there, but just
the visitors’ thing. But we actually got into the boardroom, and this gentleman and his
assistant actually gave us the real business about what goes on. It was real cute, the way
they presented it to us, and, of course, it was real exciting. If you ever watch the CNN
program, or the business program, when they show the close of the Stock Exchange,
you’ll see him. He’s a little gray-haired fellow with a beard. Bill Johnson. He’s class of
‘61.

         What else can I tell you? About more of life at Washington and Lee, I guess,
would be nice.
Warren: One thing that I’m very intrigued by, in looking at the Calyx, you were on the
Christian Council. I am intrigued by that.
Fleishman: Well, I’ve done that. Also, one of my highest accomplishments in
Anderson, South Carolina, I spent three years on the board of the Catholic school there.
That’s almost unheard of.

         But anyway, I had a friend here whose name was Harry Philpott, and I think he
became a minister. His father was a minister. I don’t remember. You’ll have to look him
up. He was class of ’38 or ’39. Very, very nice gentleman, and I became interested in
some of the things Harry did, and he thought I might be of use to him on the Christian
Council. My job mainly was to help him organize the activities that they did, which,
nothing wrong with that. And, you know, like I used to tell one of my daughters—I
have four children—and my eldest daughter, Margaret, used to have a rough time at
school, every now and then, somebody would start picking on her, and, boy, she came
home one day in tears, and I said, "What’s the matter, Margaret?"

         She said, "Daddy, Reed Sharrod [phonetic] called me ‘Rabbi’ in front of
everybody. It upset me."

                                                                                                                      20
         I said, "Well, the next time somebody says anything like that, you point a finger
at him and say, ‘Roses are reddish, violets are blueish, if it hadn’t been for Jesus, you’d
all be Jewish.’" And that’s sort of the way I felt about it. I mean, Judaism was a
foundation, the beginning of all the other religions. I don’t have any argument with any
of them. I just figure that the main thing is to do good for people. I don’t like for people
to tell me that I don’t believe correctly, and I won’t tell anybody that, either.

         But that was the thing about the Christian Council. Whatever activities they had,
it was mostly helping out the local people, fund-raising, things like that. What should I
say? Golden, silver opportunities for the young people here at W&L, and I believed in
it. That’s about it.

         The main thing is, I was on the Calyx. I wrote the sports for the Calyx. I was a
busy fellow. I was always doing something, and I’m still that way, which is stupid, I
guess. Don’t have time to smell the roses. And I look around, and I say, "My God, I’m
seventy-five already. How did I get there so fast?" I stay busy.
Warren: By staying busy. I need to flip the tape over.