JEFFERSON DAVIS FUTCH III August 19, 1996 Mame Warren, interviewer Warren: This is Mame Warren. Today is the 19th of August, 1996, and I'm very happy to be with Jefferson Davis Futch III, in Lexington, Virginia. Did you want to start right off, that you had something you wanted to say? Futch: We can start with one little tip I want to give you. If you' re interested in World War II photographs of people connected with W&L, I want to call your attention to Milton Colvin, who was in combat in World War II. His life was risked · in Yugoslavia on a mission that I understand was very ironical, but he obviously survived. His wife was a German citizen at that time, who spent the war in Heidelberg, because I suppose they were hoping it wouldn't be bombed. That's the way it worked out, because the Americans had designated Heidelberg as one of their future headquarters. So the Americans did not want to set up their headquarters in a ruined town, and so Mrs. Colvin has told me about constantly diving into air raid shelters. But the American bombers always went on elsewhere. Immediately after the war, he married her. So there may be some interesting stories there. But he undoubtedly has photos of him with other-conceivably with W &L guys. He was a faculty child. His father taught in the law school before the Second World War. So he could well have met some W&L boys in Europe in 1944- 45. Warren: That's a great tip. Thank you. 1 Futch: I did want to mention what has got to be a photo collection of Dr. and Mrs. Colvin. Warren: That's a great idea. I will follow through on that. Futch: John M. Gunn was in the Second World War, the newly-he's semi-retired. I started to say newly retired; he's semi-retired. And he very may well have met some W&L grads or guys who had interrupted their education in that war. Likewise, a man who lives in the town now, Dean Finny [phonetic], who was in the class of 1945-now, I suppose that implies that he entered in '41, and perhaps his education was interrupted by military service. If you get in touch with Dean Finny, he might have some photos of that period, maybe overseas or maybe in this country, perhaps at a training camp in the United States. Maybe some W&L guys were photographed in front of a barracks at Fort Dix or someplace like that. So those are some men from the World War II period who are still living. Don't tell them I said they're still living, but I think all three of them may have some photos. Warren: All right. I'll follow through on that. Futch: But I need to mention that. Warren: I know from your interview with Richard [Weaver] that you arrived here in 1962. Futch: Only yesterday. That's right. Warren: Yes. Take me back to Washington and Lee in 1962. What was the campus like? Futch: Well, of course, in many ways it was physically as it is now with the trees and the white columns and the red bricks, all of which dazzled both my parents and me. My parents were extremely anxious that I teach here, and I thought the red bricks and the white columns and the trees are nice, and then I saw all these young men dressed like young bankers in coats and ties, not usually suits, but a sports 2 jacket that didn't match the trousers, but nice shirts and ties and cuffs showing and all of that. And I thought, "Wunderbar! This is heaven on Earth." So it was what was called conventional dress, the coat and tie routine. It was that more than anything else that made me fall in love with the place. And, of course, I came to love the white columns, the red bricks, and the trees as well, but it was the extremely decorous appearance of the student body, and, along with that, their politeness, beautiful manners, obviously kids who'd been brought up very, very nicely. I simply fell in love with the place instantaneously. It was one time when I did not buck my parents' wishes. I said, "Absolutely. If they'll offer me a job, I'll be happy to come here." So the job was quickly offered, and all three of us were very happy. Warren: So were you instantly welcomed in? What was the social scene in Lexington in the early '60s? Futch: Oh, the faculty social scene-as we called it, the cocktail circuit-I gather that this may have disappeared by now, but how can I put this politely and discreetly? The faculty was deeply into liquid refreshment. Every afternoon at 5:00 or 5:30, usually at faculty homes, very seldom administration homes, and also the homes of-oh, yes. I'm glad you asked this. The old dowagers of Lexington, though I suppose a dowager refers to a married lady of stately grandeur and advanced years, some of these ladies, such as Miss Eleanor Gadsden, the late Eleanor Portia Gadsden, were unmarried ladies. And I don't know what title is given to a lady of extremely advanced years never married. But, of course, Mrs. Francis P. Gaines was a widow after 1963 and was a dowager, and there was a Mary Tucker who was a dowager, a widow. And Miss Gadsden, aforementioned, was unmarried. These ladies were very much a part of the cocktail circuit, along with faculty members. And somebody called the faculty 3 social life a floating cocktail party because it was virtually every afternoon at somebody or other's home, and a good deal of fermented potations were taken. I remember being very amused that all of these stately, dignified professors and their wives just got soused virtually every evening. So there was a lot of that, and I think in the 1990s' atmosphere of puritan disapproval of this and that, cigarettes and booze and whatnot, I think that this must have slowed down or maybe evaporated altogether. One odd thing that happened quite recently is that a man who was a part-time teacher here and part-time teacher at VMI throughout all of the 1960s and who left in the '60s-pardon me, Christmas of '69-and worked in the Library of Congress for something like twenty-five years, all of the '70s, all of the '80s, and first half of the '90s, had now come back here for his retirement. And he thinks that the-how shall we say-the rather exuberant cocktail party life of the '60s is still here, and he is going to plunge back into this pool of alcohol, this great swimming pool of alcohol, of Lexington high society, the blending of Lexington society and faculty society. And I don't think it's going to happen. I think he's going to end up listening to compact disks at home, listening to Mozart quartets, because the whole tone of faculty life, I sense, has become very serious, very lacking in hedonism nowadays. I think that the socializing and the gossip and the boozing has either disappeared or been down- scaled very dramatically in the last thirty-some years. After 1970, I sort of drifted into increasing reclusiveness, because one was expected to reciprocate, and the requirement of reciprocity, or the understood-it wasn't a stated requirement, but the implied requirement of reciprocity did not apply to bachelors, young bachelor professors, who lived in rented rooms, as I did when I first came here. It was understood that in a rented room one can't have fifteen or twenty cocktail party guests. 4 But after I got a fairly big apartment in 1970, I sort of sensed that the cocktail circuit would be pleased if I would entertain them on the basis of reciprocity, and I just was too lazy to do that. That's a lot of washing of glasses and plates. So I very gradually eased myself out of that. But certainly in the '60s, the social scene, 5:30 p.m., was extremely active and would greatly delight today's Lexington police department because, of course, all these drunks were driving home through the streets of Little Arcadia here, undisturbed by the cops, because the gendarmes would have said in the 1960s that it wasn't nice to arrest the old Professor So-and-so and his wife. So the obsession with drunken driving that we have now, or the phobia about drunken driving, of course, didn't exist then. So these people could sort of weave through the streets of Lexington in their 1965 gas guzzlers without any anxiety about the police consequences. So in that respect, as in many others, it was a very, very different scene at that time. Of course, these people were extremely gracious, and the scene was very pleasant, but I will say it became quite repetitive. There was a lady here in town whose father was president of the university just after the turn of the century, and she was an unmarried lady of great wealth who was one of the queens of the cocktail party circuit. I remember once somebody gave a party that was so big, it was on the second floor of the Robert E. Lee Hotel, today known as the Welfare Arms, but it was the R.E. Lee Hotel in those days. And there was a second floor ballroom or banquet room or so with a little terrace looking out over Main Street. I met this lady at a cocktail party circa 1970, and she was throbbing with excitement and said, "Oh, isn't this thrilling?" meaning for us all to be together. I thought, "Madam, you have been guzzling with these same people for the last forty or fifty years. How exciting can it be for you?" But I think she was quite sincere. I think she was thrilled to be reunited with the gossip buddies and booze flowing freely. 5 So it was a scene that we wouldn't find today, I think, among the faculty. Of course, the grand old ladies have died off now. Les grandes dames are now in Paradise, and the elderly ladies of Lexington society, I don't think hobnob as obsessively with the faculty. Warren: I'm very sorry to have missed those ladies. I really would have liked to have interviewed them. When I saw that-was it Mary Monroe Penick died? Futch: Mary Monroe Penick died about what, a year or two ago? Warren: Yes. And I said, "Oh, I missed that one." Futch: Oh, she was one. Now, I'll tell you something that you can't put in the book, but I'll tell you a very funny story. When I came here, Professor Crenshaw was the head of the History Department, and he arranged for me, I guess through the registrar's office, he got a list of ladies who had rented rooms. Of course, I couldn't afford an apartment, let alone to buy a house. Professor Pemberton, certainly he bought a house as soon as he arrived here or within a year. So I had to find a rented room, hopefully with a private bath, which I did find, for, I think, thirty-five dollars a month in a private home of a married couple. But Dr. Crenshaw provided me with a list of landladies of Lexington, elderly ladies, widows and spinsters of very advanced age, such as Mrs. Gravit [phonetic], who rented rooms out. My mother and I divided up the list, and my mother went to Miss Gadsden's house. Miss Gadsden says, "Oh, I don't think that your son would be happy here. There's no private bath. He would have to share a bath with a student, and I don't think a faculty member would wish to share a bath with undergrads." Well, she would have said "undergraduates." So that, of course, did not lead to a rental arrangement. But Miss Mary Monroe Penick's name was on my list, my mother and I splitting the list up. And so I followed this to the address 104 White Street, and when I got there, having never set foot on White Street or in Lexington before, Miss 6 Penick was down on her hands and knees pulling weeds out of a stone retaining wall that kept her front lawn in place. She was pulling the weeds, and I said, I thought rather reasonably, I said, "Excuse me. Would you be Miss Mary Monroe Penick?" And she looked up at me with a characteristically feisty look and said, "And just who do I look like to you, the old colored mammy?" So I was a bit flustered. I was sort of, "Madam, certainly not." So she was a character and very sarcastic, as you can imagine, and she would have been a great interview. Was I going to mention somebody else to you who would have some-yes, somebody who might have photos of Miss Gadsden, maybe a student in Miss Gadsden's house in 1920, Miss Louise P. Moore of Lexington high society, who's a lawyer in town. Warren: I need to talk to her. Futch: Absolutely you do, because she is the closest living relative of the Gadsden ladies who rented to students for decades and decades and decades. Miss Eleanor Gadsden. They were twins, the Gadsden sisters. Warren: How do you spell Gadsden? Futch: G-A-D-S-D-E-N. They were related to the man who made the Gadsden Purchase before the Civil War, 1853, that sliver of land we bought from Mexico. After having ripped off a good deal of land from Mexico, we bought a little bit more to make southern Arizona or something. I don't teach American history. I don't have to know that. But the Gadsdens were old Southern bluebloods, the daughters of General Lee's artillery chief, the Reverend William Nelson Pendleton, a timid general known as Granny Pendleton, married-Granny Pendleton's daughter married a young man, a student or a brand-new alumnus named Gadsden, who lived just long enough to become the father of the twins in 1886 and then died, so 7 that the Widow Gadsden brought the twins back to her, the widow's, hometown, Lexington, from South Carolina, where the twins were born. So one of the twins lived ninety-eight and a half years, died in December of '84, the twin that I knew, and the other twin daughter died in 1961, about a year and a half before I arrived in Lexington, in January of '61. They are buried closer to Stonewall Jackson's grave than anybody in the cemetery is buried close to Stonewall Jackson. So Miss Gadsden died in, as I said, in December of 1984 at ninety-eight and eight months, I think, born in April of '86. And so the nearest relative, to my knowledge, is Louise P. Moore, and any photos that were in that house, I assume have passed to Miss Moore. Warren: Good. I will check on that. Futch: And there may well be photos of the Gadsden ladies with some students, the Gadsden twins with some students, in the 1920s, perhaps. Warren: Well, their names have come up, so I would very much like to find them. Futch: They were identical. I'm told they were identical twins. Miss Eleanor, whom I knew, had worked in the W&L library for many years. Miss Anzolette. The other one, Anzolette, A-N-Z-0-L-E-T-T-E, Miss Anzolette Gadsden, worked in the VMI library. And if a W&L student or VMI cadet would go to the desk of either library and ask for a certain book, the two sisters, who were librarians, might say to the student or to the cadet, "Well, we don't have that book." They had that very grand way of talking. "We don't have that book, but if you go to the other library on the next-door campus, the book is in their collection, and you will find it there." And so the student or the cadet would go to the other campus and find, seemingly, the identical woman, because they were identical twins, and they would wonder how this lady had managed to get so quickly from one campus to the other to be at the desk. 8 So the Gadsden twins were great town characters, and they remember the daughters of Lee, the last two surviving daughters of Lee, Mary and Mildred, because the Lee daughters frequented the Gadsden house, the Pines, that Dean Bezanson had, until I think he sold it a month or two ago, this summer perhaps, called the Pines at the corner of Lee Avenue and-is it Preston Street? Right across from the Phi Gamma House. The house still has the same exterior appearance as it had throughout this century. The inside, I'm told, was greatly and very necessarily rehabbed in the late 1980s, because the bricks and the wood and the mortar and all of those things were crumbling. A faculty wife, Nancy Roosevelt Taylor, sank a great deal of money into the rehabbing of that house. But Louise Moore can give you the history of the house. Warren: All right. I'll talk to her. Futch: And the Gadsden ladies, as I say, were the landladies of endless years of W&L students, and there may be photographs. Warren: Okay. I'll follow through on that one. Now, a while ago you mentioned a theme that I really am fascinated in pursuing and I've gotten a lot of interesting commentary on, the idea of conventional dress. Futch: Oh, yes. Yes. That's why I'm wearing a tie today, in memory of it. Warren: But you have witnessed so much of what has happened to conventional dress. Futch: Yeah. Very depressing. Very, very sad. Warren: Can you tell me what you've seen in your years here? Futch: Well, of course, they now look like kids who have summer jobs at the beach, except in the dead of winter. It's just very, very sad that the administration of the mid 1960s did not insist on the preservation of conventional dress. What happened was that around '66, a student body president was elected in the spirit of '60s' 9 rebelliousness, who got rid of the enforcement committee. There was a committee, sort of named in Orwellian fashion, the Assimilation Committee. The Assimilation Committee imposed fines on boys who would have dared, if any did dare, to show up, I think in town as well as on the campus, without a tie or without a proper shirt. I don't know how often these fines were levied, because it was absolutely understood that conventional dress was required, and it was hardly a rebellious student body. But when this kid was elected student body president approximately in '66, he got rid of the committee and sent a signal that he was against conventional dress, because the rebelliousness at Berkeley and Columbia University and places like that became an inspiration to students who liked to pose as radicals. So the signal was sent from the Student Executive Committee, or at many schools I guess it's called the Student Council, that conventional dress is neither important nor desirable. But habit is a powerful thing. ·So for the rest of the '60s, the decline of conventional dress was very gradual, and only a very tiny handful of kids would depart from the tradition, and most of them sympathized, of course, with the tradition and had no wish to depart from it. I remember around '67 or '68, there was some kid sunbathing in a bikini on the lawn directly before the front door of the president's house, of the Lee House, and I recall exactly who it was. He has now, I'm told, become a great conservative, but he was doing that in order to make a point, wearing not much more than a fig leaf on some spring day, I guess possibly September, but more likely a spring day. And that was a fairly dramatic revolt against conventional dress. But the others, of course, stuck with it until, I would think, if I can get this down right, the freshman class that entered in '69, I believe, was the one that-I don't think in any concerted action, I think it was just a zeitgeist and what they saw on TV, with ragged protestors at Berkeley and other places, other campuses around the country, I believe it was the 10 freshman class of '69 that deliberately, though spontaneously, went to the dogs as far as dress was concerned and, of course, drugs too. It was in that four-year period of '69 to '73 that saw the end of conventional dress, though through the rest of the seventies, if you look at the yearbooks, you'll see that when they posed for their senior photographs, that most of them, even if they had long hair like a biblical apostles, as a number did, most of them would don a coat and tie for their senior photos, and when their mom and dad back home said, "You be very certain to have a coat and tie. We want to show your grandmother a nice photo in your senior yearbook." So on the rare occasions when they were photographed for the yearbook, the big majority did have a coat and tie, though they would go through the graduation line very often in sandals or less on their feet. Sometimes in the graduation line in the '70s and later, you would see a kid who was obviously wearing a polo shirt-or what are they called nowadays-a T- shirt under the black robe. But at any rate, getting back to the chronology, I would say '69 to '73 was the time when a sort of sartorial revolt broke out. The behavior continued to be very polite. They showed their good upbringing in their courtesy, their personal courtesy. But the question that you asked had to do with conventional dress, and I would say that it was at that point that it ended. I continued to ask, obviously knowing that no administration would back me up, I couldn't order or demand or require, but I continued to ask for conventional dress throughout the '70s, and they went along with that, and kids who didn't approve or who didn't want to do that wouldn't sign up for my classes, which was fine, fewer papers to grade. So that was not a problem for me. But in the '80s, what happened was, again with beautiful personal manners and deportment, they began wearing cruddy clothes, and eventually, by the end of the '80s, would wear T-shirts with neckties. And of course, a necktie on a T-shirt 11 looks grotesque and silly and particularly when they would wear this shirt every forty-eight hours, if it was a Monday, Wednesday, Friday class, a necktie that they loosened to the point where it could be put on over their heads without having to- it was never completely untied. It just looked like sort of a sailor's or enlisted Navy man's tie that is knotted sort of halfway down his chest. And so at that point I quit talking about it, because I thought a T-shirt without a necktie looks better than a T-shirt with a half-tied necktie. So it was useless to insist on that. But I've always said if-when I become president of the university- not if, when-I will reintroduce conventional dress, and coat and tie, or jacket and tie, will be required. Warren: Now, I found recently a photograph of some fellows standing out on the Colonnade, and two of them are wearing shorts, and I think they were wearing like an oxford shirt with a tie. Futch: There was a lot of that. Warren: And I looked at that, and I said, "I wonder if they just came from Dave Futch's class? Would that be a reasonable assumption to make? Futch: In the seventies and '80s, that was a very reasonable assumption, but I would say more in the seventies, because I think they began wearing something less than oxford shirts, little sport shirts or something that were not really meant for a necktie, or T-shirts. Warren: Did you stand alone in this stand? Futch: Oh, yes. Warren: Were you the only person who felt this way? Futch: Yes. Well, I don't know how the others felt, of course, but I think American men are extremely wimpy, and the other faculty members didn't-don't use the word "wimpy," please, in the book. But I think that the other faculty members, 12 whatever they felt, I think they just said, "Well, we'll surrender to the zeitgeist." So I was the only one who insisted on it. I was told-students have to tell one professor what other faculty members say. They carry tales back and forth, which is quite useful. Very interesting, in fact. They told me that other professors referred to me as a mental case. So some of the other faculty members were very annoyed because I was implicitly criticizing them for not doing the same, and I really don't know what the sentiments of the entire faculty were, but I was the only professor who insisted on this as long as I could. Warren: It seemed to me that it would be very flattering that if the students never wore ties any other time but they just wear them to your class- Futch: Oh, it was. Warren: -that it would be flattering for them to sign up for your class, knowing that that was the price. Futch: You're exactly right. I was very complimented that they did that, and it gave me a good feeling throughout, I guess, all of the '70s when they did that. When they began doing it with T-shirts, however, in the '80s, I was less flattered. But when they would wear the proper kind of shirt with a tie, I was quite pleased, so that's a perceptive thing for you to say. I was delighted. Warren: Well, I've talked with several people who've been your students, and you're very well thought of. Futch: Well, I'm thankful to be told that. Warren: One person who particularly impressed me was Gene Perry. Do you remember Gene Perry? Futch: Spelled- Warren: Eugene Perry. P-E-R-R-Y. Futch: Yes. Yes, I do remember him. Warren: He really thought a lot of you. 13 Futch: Really? Well, I'm complimented. If you meet him again, give him my good wishes, please. Warren: I was interested in that. Futch: Yes. I'm delighted and very complimented to hear that also. I do remember him. Warren: It was a long time ago. Futch: Oh, yes. He was '70s maybe, 1970s? Warren: Early '70s. Futch: Yeah. Yeah. I was thinking of Commodore Perry, Admiral Perry, who became Admiral Perry. Yes, I do remember Gene Perry. Well, if you encounter him, I send him my warm greetings. Warren: Good. Okay. · Futch: A very nice young man. Warren: Now, speaking of your fellow faculty members- Futch: Oh, dear. Warren: You mentioned someone a while ago. I feel like I'm tiptoeing. I'm sort of tiptoeing. I can hardly say I'm filling his shoes. Futch: Boatwright? Warren: No, no, no, no, no. Ollinger Crenshaw. Futch: Oh, one of my great- Warren: I'm tiptoeing behind him. Futch: Oh, yes. I thought you meant you were tiptoeing on thin ice. Warren: No. No. No. I'm tiptoeing behind him. Futch: Yes, as an historian. Yes. Warren: Yes. Yes. I can hardly say I'm walking boldly in his shoes. Futch: Well, you're unnecessarily modest. Warren: Well, I feel like he's God around here. 14 Futch: It's a wonderful book. Well, he was God. You've read his book, of course. Warren: Of course. Futch: It's a wonderful book. Warren: Of course. I take it off the shelf at least once a day. Futch: Yeah. Well, he was one of my great heroes. You can't put this in your book, of course, but I had the great pleasure of getting an expression of his esteem for me, and he was not effusive at all. Verbally he never said, "I think you are fantastic," but when that book was published in May of 1969, General Lee's College, I, of course, asked him to-I think he gave me a copy, and I asked him to autograph that, and what he wrote-it was out at the Keydet Gen~ral Restaurant at lunch, and he wrote on the flyleaf, "To Dave Futch," such and such a date, May-I think May the 5th of '69, and he said, "If I did nothing else for Washington and Lee, I brought Dave here," signed Ollinger Crenshaw, and I thought that was a marvelous thing for him to write in the book. And that was ten months before he died. So I was grateful, and later, ten months later, I was more grateful that before he died, he had something nice to say to me. So needless to say, his and my good feelings were reciprocal. Warren: Tell me about what that time was like when the book was published. Was it a lot of hoopla here? Futch: Yes, there was a lot of hoopla on campus. Indeed, yes. Sure. There was an autograph party in the bookstore, of course, and people were delighted to get it. May I tell you something in confidence that will not appear in this book? He said that it could have been published many, many years before it was, but there was some material in it that would have annoyed some of the trustees, who were mostly-well, I was going to say when they [unclear], they were mostly curmudgeons at that time, and I think that although Dr. Crenshaw was a senior professor and nothing would have happened to him, nothing bad would have happened to him, there would apparently have been expressions of irritation from 15 some of the trustees about various details of this and that in the book, and that accounted for the delay in the publication by many years. And he may have done some polishing up. He wanted to wait for old Mr. So-and-so to die and old Mr. So- and-so to die and another Mr. So-and-so to die, as they all did, accommodatingly. In his lifetime, though only barely as I say, he did not live twelve months after the book was published. So he undoubtedly did some little addition of this or that, but the bulk of it was finished long before 1969, and he just wanted there to be nothing but good vibes. He didn't want complaints and criticisms from the trustees about the book. You'll notice it went up only to 1930, which meant that Taylor Sanders has a running start. If his runs from 1930 to the year 2010 or something of that kind, then that'll be a big piece of history. And in a way, Taylor is lucky to have a big piece of history to deal with since Ollie Crenshaw stopped in 1930, but he felt that trustee toes would be stepped on if he dealt with matters later than 1930. I mean, that was not laziness on his part; that was a desire to avoid ruffled feathers. Warren: What kind of issues do you think he didn't want to touch on? Futch: Well, of course, coeducation and race never came up in those years, so I don't really know exactly what they were. Warren: He does mention right at the very end, he just sort of has a foot or an end note where he talks about the first black students coming in. Futch: Well, that was 1966, of course. But in a book that stops in 1930, that really is a footnote. Warren: Yeah, it really is very much an end note. Futch: So what the issues were in the '30s and in the '40s that he didn't want to deal with-remember, the book was in the making since the late '40s. And there was one thing I heard. I don't know if I heard it from his lips, but I heard somewhere or other that it was to have been published in 1949 for the two hundredth anniversary, 16 and yet it appeared twenty years later. So there were matters that I guess we would call unimportant today, or uninteresting, perhaps, today, having to do with the '30s and '40s that he didn't want to deal with at the expense of irritating trustees. But it was interesting, I thought, or it is interesting, looking back on it, that some of these people lived on, some of the trustees lived on into the '60s whom he did not want to irritate. I mean, he had nothing to fear. He would not have been fired or anything like that. I think he wanted-in fact, I know that he did not like unpleasantness, and an unpleasant personal encounter would have been very distressing to him. He was somebody who liked personal relations to run very smoothly and all other relations to run very smoothly. I think that a man who was so diplomatic, who was such a master of euphemisms, wanted, above all, tranquillity. So we might be surprised today to know how trifling from our vantage point something in the '30s or '40s was that he did not want to have caused trouble in the '60s. Warren: What was he like as a person? Futch: Extremely affable, very convivial, very chatty, very conversational. He was a repository of anecdotes from the past, from the 1920s. He arrived here as a freshman in 1922. So he remembered all sorts of campus characters who had, of course, died off by the time I got here, as recently as '62. If you include his student and faculty years, he was here for forty-eight years, 1922 to 1970. So an enormous number of characters had come and gone, such as De la Warre Benjamin Easter of the French Department, whose name you could never forget. Professor Easter apparently was an old sourpuss of the '20s and '30s on the faculty, and he spelled his name, the state of Delaware but in the eighteenth century way, Lord De la Warre. So if you look in an old Calyx you will see this little sourpuss, De la Warre Benjamin Easter spelled in that way, not spelled like the state of Delaware today. 17 And, of course, Professor Leyburn, who was Dr. Crenshaw's great bete noire. I guess in the 250th anniversary book you can't point to this, but Professor Crenshaw and Dr. Leyburn were bitter, bitter enemies for reasons that went back, again, to the time before I came here. Dr. Leyburn came in '47, I think. Ollie Crenshaw, of course, had been on the faculty for something like twenty years at that time and had another twenty-two years to go. I'm sure one of the distressing things in Dr. Crenshaw's life was that Leyburn was still around when he died. He would have been happy to see Leyburn head off to West Virginia. I think Leyburn had originally, when he retired in '72, headed off to some family acres in West VA, purportedly the world's biggest watercress farm, and Ollie Crenshaw would have been very pleased to see the east end of Leyburn on a horse going west, to West Virginia, because no love was lost there at all. Warren: What were the issues between them? Futch: I think, for one thing, he regarded Leyburn as a pompous and intellectually pretentious sort of character who was by no means-for example, in the cocktail circuit, one cannot imagine Leyburn relaxing at a cocktail party, exchanging gossip with the old dowagers of town society or with anybody else. Leyburn had a very structured sort of life, as you've probably heard. Between the hours of whatever it was, 5:00 to 6:00, he would be playing Beethoven's sonatas, and between 6:00 and 7:00 he would be dining, with his servant bringing the various courses to his solitary table or where he ate, at the table where he ate in solitary splendor like the Pope. Popes, until very recently, ate alone. It was a tradition. I think only in the last twenty or thirty years have Popes begun eating with other people. So Leyburn, although purportedly a Presbyterian, was very papal in his aloofness and his sort of majestic isolation. Warren: You, of course, knew Leyburn. Futch: Slightly. No one knew Leyburn very well. I knew of- 18 Warren: What do you mean by that? Futch: Because he was a very unsociable sort of character, and if you passed him along the Colonnade, he would nod sort of like a Prussian general and almost inaudibly say, "Good morning," "Good afternoon," something like that. The idea of a conversation with Leyburn is almost a contradiction in terms. Dr. Crenshaw, who was so convivial and so chatty and so loved talking to people generally about light topics, not about politics or religion or atheism, nothing heavy was to Dr. Crenshaw's taste, always what old Ms. So-and-so said in 1920 when thus and such a person arrived in Lexington, the chronicles of the town, he greatly enjoyed, in a somewhat condescending way. I mean, he realized that we were all frogs living in a very tiny pond. And so I think for a man who came from the suburbs of Atlanta, if I'm not mistaken, West Point, Georgia, that's where he was born, I believe, I think he knew that Lexington was a sort of a-what can one say?- an elegant little backwater, something like that. And so he greatly enjoyed anecdotes from the history of the upperclass of the town. He took no interest in the rednecks and in the lower classes at all, none. But what old Ms. So-and-so, Confederate granddaughter or Confederate granddaughter, perhaps, had to say to a VMI cadet when a cadet made a faux pas, a conversational boo-boo or faux pas, and said so-and- so to old Ms. So-and-so, that she came back with a snappy retort that annihilated a cadet forty years earlier, that was the kind of thing that he liked. If Leyburn had discussed anything at all conversationally-do you need to change the tape? Warren: Yes, but go ahead, just finish off. Futch: If Leyburn had indulged in a conversation, it would be about the formation of the Greek personality and the fact that the ancient Greeks had attached great importance to this or that personal trait and we must attempt to emulate the best of classical civilization. Dr. Crenshaw would have said, "Please, this is the cocktail hour. Must we talk about the Greek personality?" 19 Warren: We're going to turn the tape over. 56