Goodwin interview [Begin Tape 2, Side 1] Warren: This is Mame Warren. It's the 18th of September 1996. I'm still with George Goodwin. This is tape two. Before we go on to something else, you were just saying that you had talked to Andy Young and Jimmy Carter about their experiences here. Can you share that with me, what they had to say? Goodwin: They were very positive. I forget which years they were here. Warren: Carter was here in '72. I don't know about Andy Young. Goodwin: I would have talked to him after '72. He was a client of ours as governor of Georgia. Andy was here more recently, former mayor of Atlanta. But I think the Mock Convention was well regarded nationwide, because it hasn't been allowed to be messed up. 29 Warren: Do you come back for it, ever? Goodwin: I've been here for one. Warren: I thought it was thrilling. I thought it was absolutely thrilling. I was there for every single minute of it. I had goose bumps through the whole thing. Goodwin: I remember Senator Hollings from South Carolina was speaker when I was back here for it. I think it coincided with maybe our fiftieth reunion. Warren: One of the things that I found myself thinking about while I was at the Mock Convention, and certainly they were talking about it, was how thrilled the students were last year because they finally got to have a Republican convention and they didn't have to act anymore. So I found myself thinking, "Oh, boy, that would be really intriguing to see these people trying to pretend to be Democrats." But in your day, they were having— Goodwin: I think we had probably a 50-50 split. I always give the other guy the benefit of the doubt. Warren: But you were having to do a Republican convention. Goodwin: Yes. Warren: So what do you think about that, about that idea of having to pretend you're something you're not? Goodwin: I don't think it makes any difference. You don't really get into that side of the convention. There are two sides to it—or were. I presume it hasn't changed that much. One was the research and the need to be as accurate as you could as to what will the Georgia delegation do in situation A, situation B, situation C, and home over Christmas you asked six or eight people questions like that. Of course, in those days there was no doubt what Georgia was going to do. Georgia was going to vote Democratic in situations A, B, C, D, E through Z. Now it's a doubtful state. And I think those who put on the convention managed to inculcate students in the need for dedicated accuracy in that process. 30 And then the other aspects of it are the fun parts, the humorous delegates, the banners, and then, I think, the speaker, the visiting speaker, and the school has been able to attract some very good ones. I can't remember who was the speaker during my freshman year, but that's asking my memory to go back a long way. Warren: It sure is. You know, when I met you a few months ago, you told me a pretty remarkable story about how Washington and Lee had made an impact on your life and the speaking tradition. Do you think you can tell that story succinctly? Goodwin: Yes. One of the stories that was pounded into us when we were here was the speaking tradition and the story of the still-unidentified younger student who took some time out to take Robert Parker Doremus around the campus back in the teen years or early twenties or something like that, and it came back simply because the fellow spoke to him. Well, ever since I have found it fairly easy just to say how do you do to somebody you meet. You don't know them. They're going that way, you're going this way, and, "How do you do? Good afternoon," in elevators or wherever. So in 1947, I was engaged in investigating voting frauds in Telfair County, Georgia, which were at the root of a crazy time in Georgia history when we had, for a few days, three governors and, for sixty-eight days, two governors. The story turned on some votes that we found in the bottom of the state capital of Georgia there in Atlanta that indicated that a group of people in the home county of Herman Talmadge, who was one of the claimants of governor, had voted in alphabetic order. We discovered this on a Friday, and on Saturday I had to go to Telfair County and try to find those people. Well, fortunately, during some preliminary investigation on the story earlier in the week I had gone to make a telephone call at a little railroad station in Helena, Georgia, and I spoke to a man in overalls, "How do you do?" I made my phone call and came back out, and he was standing by my car. He said, "I know why you are here." "So?" He said, "Yeah, they tried to get me to vote for Herman, and I wouldn't do it." 31 So we talked for a while. The call that I made to the office resulted in my being called back to the office, because we were going to have a conference on the story the next day. So he gave me his name. His name was Dan Browning. I went back to the office, and then it was subsequent that we found these alphabetic names on a voters list. So I had a contact, and I called him from Atlanta. I said, "Do you know these people?" He said, "Yeah. That one you just mentioned is dead." I said, "I'll see you in the morning at seven o'clock." So I left Atlanta early of a Saturday morning and went to him at the railroad station. He ran a junkyard nearby. He got in the car, and he knew where all those people who were still in the country, who showed up as having voted that day, lived, and he led me through the back roads of this country. We were able to do some twenty interviews in maybe four hours. And then I got a call from the paper to get back and start dictating the story immediately, that it was going to run for Sunday. We had thought it was going to be later than that. And so there was no doubt that without Dan Browning, we would never have been able to have confirmed that some of the people listed were dead, others had moved away, or we were able to talk to relatives of those who had moved and they told us where so-and-so lived nowadays, out of the voting district. And so we had a pretty good story for Sunday's paper. It was a light year for Pulitzer Prizes, and it won the Pulitzer Prize in 1948 for stories reported in 1947 in the category of local reporting. As you can imagine, for a newspaperman, it changed his life. I was at the activities marking the seventy-fifth birthday of the Pulitzer Prize a few years ago, and I forget who the speaker was. It may have been Russell Baker. But he looked out at the audience and all these various winners, and some winners in the arts, as well as journalism, were there. He started his speech, and he said, "Well, I know the first three words of all of your obituaries." [Laughter] 32 Warren: That's great. That's wonderful. And true. And so the speaking tradition, you know, as I walk around this campus and take pleasure in the speaking tradition, I think your story is so powerful, to let them know why they're doing it. So I'm glad to have to that. Goodwin: You never know. You never know what it might lead to. I dare say, some practice of the speaking tradition has led to marriages and Lord knows what else. Warren: Now, you mentioned a long time ago that the SPE house, the SPEs are the most generous. Goodwin: SPE. Warren: Uh-huh. I'm sure you know what you're talking about. I don't know one fraternity to the next on that issue. What I know is that alumni of this university is incredibly generous. Why do you think—what is the driving force behind that? Goodwin: A measure of it has to be Gaines for the thirty years that he was here. Huntley I didn't know as well, although he and I were here about the same time. He apparently had an ability to stir students. I think one part of the answer is, Washington and Lee has an unduly high percentage per capital of people in Who's Who in America, and recently was shown, a surprising number of chief executive officers. You get into Who's Who in America in part by being a politician. There are a lot of newspapermen in there because the Pulitzer Prize people are there. A lot of teachers, college presidents, all of which we kind of turn out. A lot of preachers, too. But I expect part of the answer Washington and Lee people are generous is that Washington and Lee people are pretty successful financially in their careers. It may relate to that the family had money, and thus they were able to come here. Warren: They could give their money a lot of places, but they're giving it here. Goodwin: I think some of it may have harped to, in four years in an all-male environment, you learned how to get along with men. If you didn't, there was no place 33 to hide. And there's some intangible aspect of that, and that's about as far as I can go or that I care to go, because I don't want to offend all these terrific women that we now have here. But there was something in that, and I don't mean this silly business like at VMI or the Citadel, but being in an all-male atmosphere and one that's charged pretty much with campus politics—liberal arts, a law school—somehow that all adds in. So I think these fellows—in a lot of cases, it's been luck. Gaines deals with it. He points out that both George Washington and Robert E. Lee married the wealthiest women of their eras, and urged his boys to go and do likewise. He tells that delightful story when he was the bottom teacher at the University of Mississippi until he married the dean's daughter. But I think also there is that—I think our isolated location has something to do with it, or semi something. Now you've got available all the TV channels of the world, but as recently as five years ago, in Lexington, Virginia, you did well to get one TV channel. So somehow there weren't the distractions, and there are these meaningful physical moments sitting in Lee Chapel, coming out of the chapel and blinking in the sunlight and seeing that line of buildings up at the top of the lawn, looking at those buildings at night, looking down between the columns and the buildings, down the line of them, at night. Those are sort of special impressions. Oh, the footbridge. You can walk on that footbridge on a spring evening, when the fireflies are down over the creek, and you can have a conversation with General Lee. I think all of those experiences, or like an experience my wife and I have had many times, most recently this summer, standing on the floor of Zion National Park, looking up at the towering peaks above us. You feel small, but you feel a sense of majesty around you. I think that definitely impacted our people. Still does. That's about as close an answer as I can give you. Warren: That's about as good an answer as I've gotten. 34 Goodwin: But most of us look back and realize that it was our years here that really shaped us. Of course, you're there in the shaping time of eighteen to twenty-two. You learn about whiskey. You learn about women for the first time. You learn there's a world you didn't run into in high school. Oh, and a very important thing. You either proved or failed to prove that you could stand on your own, because you were totally free. There were just those three rules, and anything else, you might get your knuckles slapped, but those were the big ones. It probably is a collection of a lot of intangibles. Probably some of our closest male friendships are developed in those years, too. Well, the best I can do with it. Warren: Well, that's pretty good. My last question is, I'd like to know how you responded to the whole concept of coeducation. Goodwin: At first, I was opposed to it and didn't know why. Then late in the controversy, I began to realize that there might be something in that male bonding theory that I was sharing with you a moment ago, and I'd like to go off the record a minute on one thing, if I may. Warren: Want me to stop it? Goodwin: Yeah. [Tape recorder turned off.] So I think you would have to say that I was among those alumni that were certainly not wildly opposed, but somewhat opposed to the idea of coeducation. But I must tell you a story. It involves our granddaughter, Emily, who is now eighteen. When she was no more than four, her brother, who was two years older than she and had a Washington and Lee shirt with the year 1999 on it, was lauding it over, saying, "I can go to Washington and Lee and you can't, because you're a girl." She said, without a moment's hesitation, my wife heard this, "That's all right. I'll go to Sweet Briar." This kid's four years old. Well, she's no more than six, probably nearer to five, when the coeducational issue is resolved, and her father was telling her about it, that Washington and Lee is 35 now open to women. And she looked up and smiled and said, "Now I won't have to go to Sweet Briar." [Laughter] Warren: That's great! Goodwin: I realized we can't control the sex of our children and grandchildren, and so now I'm a strong advocate of coeducation here. I told that story to Jim Ballengee, who was chairman of the trustees at the time of the row, and he said he used it in some speeches with pretty good effect, because, of course, it is true. I'd be very pleased if our granddaughter would elect Washington and Lee. I don't think she will. I think she's hoping to get into Brown on early decision, or failing in that, she's got Colorado College. I don't think it's anything we can press. But I thought that little story really was the summation of the coeducation issue. Warren: That's pretty good. Now, when the vote happened, were you still opposed, by the time the vote took place? Goodwin: Yeah, but as I told you, because her comment about, "Now I won't have to go to Sweet Briar" comes after the vote, but it certainly brought me up short. I said, "Wait a minute, you've got two grandchildren here." Now we've got four. Two of them are much younger. Because Ballengee was still chairman when I shared the story with him. Warren: So what do you think now? Goodwin: As I said, I'm an advocate of it. I think it was good. Warren: You're here a lot. You see these women. Goodwin: Pardon? Warren: You come back on campus a lot. Goodwin: Where else can you get a pretty girl to say hi to you at my age? [Laughter] Warren: What was your experience of that first year or two? Were you here as the transition happened? 36 Goodwin: Oh, sure. In fact—well, I can't be sure, because we come in the fall sometimes and in the spring. I can't remember, but I think it was a class agents’ weekend, which would have been a fall time, that I shared that story with Ballengee. So it was probably the fall after the action in the spring. I don't know. Warren: Is there anything more you want to share? Goodwin: Pardon? Warren: In your notes there, is there anything more you'd like to share? Goodwin: No. I do want you cut the machine off a minute. Warren: Okay. Well, I want to thank you. This has just been fabulous. [Tape recorder turned off.] We're back, and we're going to turn the tape over, because we have a Fancy Dress story.