Holland interview

[Begin Tape 1, Side 2]
Warren: I’m really excited to talk to you, because you’re my first wrestler. I want to
hear all about wrestling.
Holland: Well, you could pick a lot better. I saw the lights in the ceiling more than
once. [Laughter] Dick Miller was the coach, and he began as a track coach and then was
the wrestling coach. Great camaraderie. The trips that we would take, I mentioned the
West Virginia—Don Fowler who lives, who is a surgeon in Staunton, do you know his
name?
Warren: No.
Holland: He was on the wrestling team, and John Hollister, they were two West
Virginia boys, they were really tough. It was fun. One nice thing was that wrestling had
the longest training season of any sport, and so that kept us out of the parties for a good
chunk of the year, which was a good idea, because we did keep training rules.
Warren: Tell me about that. What kind of training rules?
Holland: No Cokes, no drinking, not even Coca-Colas.
Warren: Really?
Holland: Yeah. I didn’t like to run very much. He made us run a lot, but it was fun to
try to be in good shape. I never was in as good shape as—well, who is? We had some
great wrestlers. I guess Gibby McSpadden from Memphis was probably the greatest
wrestler when I was there. His picture is in the gym. Do you know his name?
Warren: No. McSpadden?
Holland: McSpadden. Gibby McSpadden. I remember going up to wrestle West
Virginia in the wintertime and pulling ourselves up those icy hills by the rail. I
remember going down to wrestle the Citadel when it was cold in Lexington and you’d
go down to Charleston, and people would be cutting the grass and the girls would be in
light spring dresses and it was—palm trees. One of the best trips we made was up to

                                                                                                                    16
Lancaster [Pennsylvania]. We wrestled Millersville and—what’s the other school up
there? I can’t think of it. You know the one I’m talking about? Well, in any case, seeing
the Amish going to the big—
Warren: In Lancaster?
Holland: Yeah. The big farmer’s market and seeing the men in hats, they’d meet and
embrace and the women would shake hands, and you had all of this wonderful
produce, and walking around seeing that, I’d never seen anything like that. Franklin
and Marshall. We’d go up and wrestle those two teams. Then we wrestled University of
Virginia. I remember whoever lost at 77, John Hollis and I often would have wrestle-
offs, we’d have eliminations, whoever lost would have to wrestle heavyweight because
we didn’t have a heavyweight.

         I remember wrestling—oh, I’ll think of his name. But there was one fellow from
Duke, a big football player, that week I lost, so I guess John probably wrestled in 77. It
was a big football player, he didn’t have any teeth. And in those days you could stall.
They didn’t call it stalling. Now if you don’t try to escape if you’re on the bottom, or try
to turn over your man if you’re on the top, you get a warning and then points are given
to your opponent. Well, in those days, the matches were nine minutes, they were longer
than they are now, and so I was pretty good at stalling. I’d run out of gas.

         I remember putting an elbow in this fellow’s toothless mouth and he couldn’t
turn me over. Boy, he beat the tar out of me, but he couldn’t turn me over, so a certain
amount of satisfaction in that.
Warren: I have a photograph of a wrestling match that I just love because everybody’s
standing on the sidelines in coats and ties and there’s this one girl there, and she’s
straightening up her glasses, and I just have the feeling that her glasses must be all
steamed up.

                                                                                                                    17
Holland: Yeah, that’s right. I remember wrestling Henry Jordan. He later went on to
play professional football. He was at UVA. He was a splendid wrestler. He could turn
you over and pin you in the gentlest solid fashion.
Warren: So did you used to like, or do you still like to watch wrestling?
Holland: Oh, sure. Oh, yeah, I always go up. I watch the team, support the team here,
too. I wear my W&L tie, but I cheer for Davidson. That’s how I resolve that. But I go up
for the W&L tournament, for the dual meet. My wife says within about an hour of
Lexington, I begin to giggle and laugh, begin to laugh.
Warren: Why did you pick wrestling over other sports?
Holland: Well, I’d wrestled. At Episcopal High you have to go out for three sports.
Everybody has to. So I played football and wrestled and tried to play tennis. So I kept
up the—they de-emphasized football just before I got to W&L. They had a cheating
scandal.
Warren: Was that talked about much when you were there?
Holland: No, not much, but there was no secret. I remember a coach came around to
the fraternity house once to find people to suit up to play Fork Union, I think, a high
school, so we played—Hollister played in that, too. He’s an athletic guy. So we suited
up and played, I guess Fork Union or whatever. That was the only football game I
played in. So now they have a good football team and they have spoiled the Davidson
homecomings more than once.
Warren: Well, they’ve had their homecomings spoiled some years.
Holland: Yes, we’ve spoiled theirs, too. Yeah. The lacrosse team was prominent and we
had a number of all-American lacrosse players, a lot of those Baltimore boys. They went
to England in the summers to play exhibition games in England. So Al Mead was on
that team. Do you know that name? Baltimore. Lots of Baltimore. That’s another nice
thing about W&L, we met young men from all over. I mentioned Jacques Dubois from
Mexico, and in the States—well, Philippe Labro was there when I was there, the French,

                                                                                                                    18
the well-known French, whose novel, I think, is really a distortion and ridiculous.
Actually, we were in Dean Leyburn’s sociology and anthropology course together.

         Then it was fun to get to know the Texas and the Deep South men and women,
Mississippi and Alabama and Texas. We had a number from the North that were good
friends. The SAE House at the time, it had very few people from Virginia in it. They
were from other parts.
Warren: How did you choose your fraternity?
Holland: Oh, they had this archaic rushing system where you chose the first week you
were there. It was kind—the black ball system. I don’t know what they do now. I’m not
sure it was a great method, but we made some very good friends, but I had plenty of
friends, particularly the athletes in other fraternities. How does it run? Do they do it the
same way?
Warren: No, it’s the first year they’re doing a delayed rush and then they’re not going
to do rush until January, I think. There’s all kinds of fallout. There’s been a shakedown
period now. One of the consequences was that there was only one float in the
homecoming parade, because apparently they usually have the pledges do all the work
on the float. Kind of a pathetic homecoming parade.
Holland: I think the fraternities have a much bigger say up there than they do at
Davidson. I think perhaps they used to at Davidson.

         John McLin was a Rhodes scholar, he was a couple years behind me. He was
from, I think, Arkansas. Did you get that far?
Warren: No, I haven’t driven that far. I talked to several of the Rhodes scholars, pretty
impressive people.

         Let’s talk about the whole issue of coeducation.
Holland: Okay. I don’t think that’s as fascinating a subject as a lot of people, because I
don’t really see any difference in the classroom, but as far as the social side goes, see, I
think we had a good arrangement. I’m delighted that our daughter went to W&L, but I

                                                                                                                    19
think that some of the arguments are specious, but I’m all for it. But I think that in
saying—for example, at Davidson they said it will improve the academics of the school.
That’s nonsense. They did it simply to go along with everybody. I think that single-sex
schools have a real place, but I think that W&L, as far as the admissions picture across
the country was going, probably was forced to do that because the quality of the
applicants had slipped, it’s my understanding. But I don’t think that it improves
academics. I think those women’s colleges were very strong and it didn’t help them
any. So I think that if they had recruited, been better recruiting, they need not have
done it, but the times are for coeducation and that’s the way it is, but I do think there’s a
real place for single-sex schools. I like the idea of choice. I don’t think every school has
to be the same, run the same way.
Warren: Can you put yourself back eleven or twelve years ago when it was under
discussion? Did you talk with your fellow alumni about the issues?
Holland: Yeah.
Warren: Did you already know how you felt and—
Holland: No, I didn’t buy the argument that the admissions people—it was my
understanding that the admissions people said “we have to do it,” and I did not buy
that argument. I thought if for other reasons coeducation was smart, fine, but I don’t
think—at Davidson also I think that the reasons they gave were sort of PR reasons. I
don’t think it was necessary.

         For example, and I don’t suppose you want to put this in, but our son graduated
from Episcopal. Don’t put this in because it looks like I’m bragging. He got a
Moorehead to Chapel Hill. Do you know that they didn’t even not only recruit him,
they didn’t even get in touch with him.
Warren: "They," Washington and Lee?
Holland: Yeah. A legacy who was terrific, co-captain of the soccer team at Episcopal
High, senior monitor, got a Moorehead. So it seems to me, and I told John Wilson that,

                                                                                                                    20
that says it all. You can’t say that you’re really doing a good job recruiting if you didn’t
even give him a letter. When you deal with these institutions, as you know, you have to
cut through a lot of stuff, window-dressing. There’s a lot of phoniness in all these
schools. It’s human condition. So I really didn’t buy that argument.
Warren: Was there a lot of discussion among the alumni?
Holland: Well, I’m kind of isolated down here. I don’t get into Charlotte unless I have
to, and so I don’t go to the chapter meetings usually. There are no W&L people on the
faculty here, and so there’s nobody to talk to about it. But I talked to a couple people
who agreed, who said exactly the same thing I was saying. If they had mounted a
vigorous campaign to attract better students, they wouldn’t have needed to go
coeducational.

         But as I said, I couldn’t have been happier than when our daughter was up there.
I mean, really, and she loved it. She loved it. She was an English major and she’s a
writer and an editor now. She really liked Sid Coulling and Dabney Stuart, and of
course, Dabney went to Davidson. It was a great place for her. She loved the ratio.
[Laughter] She didn’t marry a W&L man, but she sure enjoyed it and learned a lot.
Went on the French Semester, whatever it was. They worked with her so that—well, she
went to France with one of the French teachers, but she was able to go to China in ’89
with my wife and me and live with us over there, although she came back before the
demonstrations started.

         So I think she got a good education and it was also—I think there’s more
education abroad. The students there now are more likely to study abroad. I don’t
remember many people studying abroad when I was there, so I think that’s a good
change. That’s a good change.
Warren: So when your daughter was there, were a lot of those first women students
daughters of alumni?
Holland: You’d have to check the numbers, but it seems to me—

                                                                                                                    21
Warren: Well, when you went to Parents Weekend—
Holland: Yeah, we always had a big picture in front of what used to be the library,
always, seems to me we did at least once, fathers and sons and daughters. I like the idea
of legacies going to the same school. I don’t think it weakens the school. You don’t want
all of them, of course, but I like that sort of family loyalty. I think that’s a good idea, and
that’s one of the things that I think W&L should continue to stay strong. Bring in other
people, but also—that’s a little off the subject, I guess.
Warren: No, not at all.
Holland: Let’s see, what haven’t we touched on that I wanted to be really sure—
Warren: Let’s talk about what you want to talk about. I know you need to go.
Holland: There’s one of the students whose father is here from London and I met him
this morning, but I said I would be in the library between 4:00 and 5:00. Let’s see, I
mentioned—my goodness, I guess I’ve mentioned the dramatic moments, Faulkner,
Toynbee, Armstrong, Barkley. The sadder side, the automobile wrecks. Sports,
academics, fraternities, Honor System, the beauty of that part of the world. You make
the camaraderie. I mentioned Gaines and Gilliam and Leyburn. Sprunt was a very noble
presence.
Warren: Dave Sprunt.
Holland: He’s a Davidson graduate.
Warren: There seems to be a lot of relationships between Davidson and—
Holland: Well, I think that the Presbyterians, they say, tried to take over W&L when
they started. They didn’t succeed. But, of course, the Presbyterians founded Davidson.
There’s a French teacher who’s a Davidson graduate. Dabney Stuart’s a Davidson
graduate. Jimmy Williams in Spanish, he’s Davidson.
Warren: Several people from Washington and Lee came here to study what you all had
done when you coeducated.

                                                                                                                    22
Holland: Yeah, that’s a group that came down. I had lunch with them. Right, yes, they
did. I can’t remember who besides—maybe Bill Washburn.
Warren: Pam Simpson, she talked about coming down here to find out what you all
had done.
Holland: Well, I think that they must have done a very good job up there, once they
made the decision. Our daughter certainly—she lived with a bunch of girls over in that
big house, I know you’ve seen it on one of those streets just up behind McCampbell Inn,
about two or three streets up over there. I’m sure you’ve found a great deal of loyalty to
the school. Not many people disliked it, that I recall. I’m sure some people transferred
out.

         I can remember one fellow who—let’s see now, what are some other things? So I
don’t know how much tie, I’m not sure of the ties between Davidson and W&L are that
strong. There are certainly similarities and we play each other in some sports now,
which that’s good.
Warren: Well, we’ve made it through my list. Is there anything you’d like to—
Holland: Well, I looked for some letters, but it was hopeless. I looked in the furnace
and my wife said, "Look in the furnace room." Hopeless.
Warren: Not in the furnace, I hope.
Holland: No. I’m not sure we have them. But I will definitely edge my way around the
house and see if I can come up—what’s your deadline on this?
Warren: I’d need to have that kind of thing by early next year.
Holland: Well, I’m not making any promises I can’t keep.
Warren: Well, I’d love to see anything that you have.
Holland: Because I did write a lot. I mean, I like to write letters, and so I’m sure I wrote
a lot of letters.
Warren: As you know, letters are a real window.

                                                                                                                    23
Holland: Yeah. I like to type, and I remember I would type all those letters to—it was
fun taking friends, to date, at Randolph-Macon and then go to our house in Lynchburg
for dinner. That was a great treat. My parents liked that. That was quite special, so they
knew a lot of my friends.

         I guess you didn’t talk to Richard Wilburn, he’s from Meridian, Mississippi. His
aunt lived in Lynchburg. She was actually down for the wedding a week and a half ago,
our daughter’s wedding. She’s about ninety now.
Warren: Very strong relationship between Lynchburg and Washington and Lee.
Holland: Yeah, real strong.
Warren: Very impressive.
Holland: Real, real strong. I tell you, Mame, I’ve kind of
run—
Warren: Well, let’s cut it off. I think we’ve done a good job here.
[End of interview]

                                                                                                                    24