Hotchkiss interview

[Begin Tape 1, Side 2]
Hotchkiss: There is a guy that you probably heard of, whose name was Fitz
Flournoy, and Fitz Flournoy thought he was Falstaff, and he would get up on stage.
He was a huge man, and he'd just bellow, and he'd sometimes get so carried away,
he would literally fall off the platform. In those days, the classrooms used to have a
little raised platform on which was usually a desk where the professor sat, and you
know, this wasn't a great fall, but it was a step, and Fitz would just gyrate himself
right on off that step.

         This fellow, Sleepy Williams, his favorite trick was, in the springtime when
the windows were open-he was in math-he would try to throw a piece of chalk
into the gutter right outside the window. I wasn't in the class when this happened,
but what I've heard, it may be purely apocryphal, but one day finally he hit the
gutter and dismissed the class, he was so overcome. [Laughter]

         Then there was a guy who's still here, whose name is Charlie Turner. Do you
know Charlie Turner?
Warren: I know who he is.
Hotchkiss: Know who he is?
Warren: I know who he is.
Hotchkiss: Again, I wasn't in his class, but he used to demonstrate, be talking about
what was called the defenistration of Prague, and I couldn't tell you exactly what
caused that, but it was in Prague when the prime minister or one of the very high
government officials was literally thrown out the window. The story goes-and it
was true-that Charlie would demonstrate that by just tossing a book out the
window.

         So anyway there was just a lot of-I just think that-I'm not saying that
education was taken any less seriously, but I think it was taught perhaps more
dramatically to a certain extent than it is now, because there really were just a cast of
real characters around here, there really were. I don't mean all of them were, some
of them were just as calm and cool as can be, but many of them weren't.

         Ed Atwood, he had gotten all three of his degrees at Princeton, we all thought
Ed had nothing but tailor-made clothes and all his shirts, we thought, were tailor-
made. Years later, after I'd come back on staff, I finally worked up enough courage
to ask him if that were the case and he said, "Oh, no, I'm just one of those lucky
people that a size fits exactly right." [Laughter]

         Ed was the guy, Mame, he was really funny, Ed finally-he was professor of
economics and he became dean of students, and then he became dean of the
Commerce School. He was dean of Commerce School when we were rehabbing
what used to be the library to become the commerce school. And Ed claims, and he
still would claim this, that he never realized that there was a complete tiled
bathroom, including a shower, being built in the commerce school off of his office.
The thing was almost finished, I mean, the tile was going up and everything, when
the Ring-tum Phi got wind of it. And I'll never forget, the issue came out-it'd be
fun to find this issue-and it showed where Dean Atwood could take a shower,
because he was living in the Lee-Jackson House, so he could take a shower there.
He, theoretically, if this had gone through, could have taken a shower in the
commerce school. Ed always ran at lunchtime, so he could take a shower over at the
gym. They had this diagram on the front of the Ring-tum Phi showing where the
dean could take a shower. Well, the shower, all that all of a sudden got changed
into a closet, never was finished. But Ed never would admit that he knew that that
was being built in the commerce school.
Warren: That's great. [Laughter]
Hotchkiss: His private bathroom.
Warren: Well, speaking of really important figures, you haven't mentioned Francis
Pendleton Gaines.
Hotchkiss: You know, the reason that I haven't, Mame, is that I'll bet you that I
didn't lay eyes on Francis Pendleton Gaines more than once or twice a year. He was,
by the time I was here, which was-I graduated in 1958 and he retired in 1959, he
was truly at the end of his tenure here. He was not well, and we, as students, never
saw him. Now, we, as students, would go to university-wide assemblies where he
would just hold you absolutely spellbound. I mean, he was just an orator. You've
probably heard tapes. He was without match. But he didn't, at least in my student
days, he didn't have much contact with the students at all. Frank Gilliam and Mr.
Mattingly, Earl Mattingly, were the ones who, leaps and bounds, were the ones who
had the student contact.
Warren: I'm curious about that. I was hoping you'd have a lot to say about him,
because you're listed as having been on the President's Advisory Council. What
does that mean? I've never heard of that before.
Hotchkiss: What that was, was a group of students who purportedly would give the
president advice on issues that he wanted us to say something about. Mame, I think
I remember we had one meeting one year where the question was-something to
do with automobiles. Maybe it was whether freshmen ought to be able to have cars
or whether in order to have an automobile on campus you needed to have a certain
grade point ratio or something like that. But honestly, that is the only time I can
remember that group ever meeting. I think it was just sort of a-
Warren: It looked good on your resume.
Hotchkiss: It looked good on a resume, yeah. I really don't remember but one
meeting of that thing, because Dr. Gaines really was-I wouldn't want to say he was
failing, he was old and he'd been the president for nearly thirty years.
Warren: For a long time.
Hotchkiss: I think I just happened to be on the end of his line.
Warren: Another thing that I noticed in the yearbook-you had a good yearbook,
Farris, I must say, it was very entertaining-there were a number of pictures, and
there were no captions on it, but it was quite obvious a minstrel show.
Hotchkiss: Uh-huh.
Warren: Was that a tradition?
Hotchkiss: Oh, yeah. We had what was called SWMSFC.
Warren: Could you spell that for me?
Hotchkiss: You've never heard of SWMSFC?
Warren: No.
Hotchkiss: Well, SWMSFC was-
Warren: Now, wait a minute, you're going to spell that.
Hotchkiss: What it stands for is Student War Memorial Scholarship Fund
Committee. Okay? And that committee was a student committee that raised
money for student war memorial scholarships. One of the things that that
committee did, in fact, by far its top moneymaker, was to have the minstrel show
each year, and the minstrel was in the Troubadour, it was black face. One of our
great emeritus trustees, Ike Smith, was, I can't remember, I think he was Mr. Bones.
But you had Mr. Bones and the interlocutor and the whole schmeer and the banjos
and all of it, and it was just a packed and jammed performance. In fact, I think there
was more than one of them in the little old Troub. The tickets cost a dollar or
something like that. But that was one of the student activities to raise money for
this scholarship fund, and it went right on through-I think, Mame, it went
through my junior year, and then I think that Dean Gilliam called a halt to it in
what would have been my senior year, I believe, because I think he realized, first of
all, by 1958 standards it was getting a little risque, example. It's just so darned mild
and tame today that students wouldn't even get it, I don't think.

         But Ike Smith, one of the little acts in this thing, was going to get married to
somebody, I don't remember who, and someone asked him, "Where are you going
on your honeymoon?" and the answer was, "I'm going to Tampa with her."
[Laughter] Well, Frank Gilliam just thought that was just filthy dirty, and he just
couldn't-we just couldn't abide that. So the minstrel show was cut off.

         Those were the days, you see, those were the days when the dean could say,
"Sorry, guys, no more minstrel show," and that'd be the end of it. There wouldn't
be any protests, you didn't have to have a committee to investigate anything. He
just said, "No more minstrel show."

         Right about that time, I think a little later than that, we used to have a
publication here on campus called the Southern Collegian. I don't know if you've
seen copies of that, but it was a campus humor magazine and it got a little-again,
in relationship to those days, it got a little out of hand. Again, today it would be
nothing at all, and Dean Gilliam closed it down. And we were perfectly accepting of
that. It never seemed to us that it was unfair or there was anything wrong at all
with what was essentially dictatorial power.

         And Dean Gilliam, if you came in to see Dean Gilliam in July before school
began in September, and if he liked you and you had a reasonably decent record in
high school, even though theoretically the admissions game had been closed for a
long time, he'd take you. You know, it was a different time. But he was so
respected, as was Dr. Gaines, even though we never saw him much, and as was Mr.
Mattingly, and was another fellow for whom this library is named, Jim Leyburn,
that you just accepted what they thought best, with very little argument.
Warren: Was Leyburn still dean?
Hotchkiss: He wasn't dean, but he was a professor.
Warren: He was a professor. Did you ever take any courses from him?
Hotchkiss: No, I really-
Warren: You missed the giants, didn't you?
Hotchkiss: I really need to go back and start all over again, yeah.
Warren: Well, if you figure out how to take a Leyburn class, I'd like to take it with
you.
Hotchkiss: Would you? Okay. I can't imagine. I just can't imagine, Mame, now
why in the world I didn't take a Leyburn class. I just don't. He had a reputation. I
think I know why, actually, because he had a reputation of your having to do a huge
amount of writing, and I just, frankly, wanted to have time for the Ring-tum Phi
and the Calyx and the dances and all that kind of stuff. I was a student who started
off very academically inclined in my freshmen year, and my grade point average
just went like that all the way down through my senior year. There was an inverse
relationship between my grades and what else I was doing around here. [Laughter]
Warren: But at Washington and Lee, you were richly rewarded for that.
Hotchkiss: Well, it was thought those days that that in some respects was more
important.
Warren: That was part of your education.
Hotchkiss: I mean, well, even more than that, I kind of believed that I would get a
better job offer in my senior year from IBM or, you know, one of the companies,
more based on my extracurricular activities than based on my raw grades. Now, I
probably wouldn't have had that opinion at all if I had thought that I was going off
to graduate school or something like that, but to just go get a job, the general
consensus back then or the belief was is that your extracurricular activities were
more attractive to Standard Oil or to AT&T than your grades. I think that, to a
certain extent, was true.
Warren: One of the things that I learned about very early when I arrived here, that,
to me, is the ultimate reward for being successful extracurricular, is being an ODK,
and you made that.
Hotchkiss: Yeah, I made that.
Warren: I saw that you made that. Was that a big honor for you?
Hotchkiss: That was a big honor, yeah. It was a big honor for anyone. This sounds
kind of self-serving, but back then it was on par with Phi Beta Kappa. It's not
anymore. Phi Beta Kappa now, in my opinion, carries much more distinction than
ODK, although ODK is very much an honor. But I think Phi Beta is a heavier factor
in your resume than ODK.
Warren: Tell me what ODK meant to you.
Hotchkiss: Well, I guess it's kind of that badge that you get for having sort of gotten
yourself up on a certain relatively high level, in that particular case in leadership
and extracurricular activities.
Warren: Is it something that's a goal that you work towards, or is it something that
you're pleasantly surprised by?
Hotchkiss: Well, a little bit of-no, you're not pleasantly-I mean, by the time
you're a senior, either you are relatively sure that you're going to be tapped into
ODK or you're not. I don't think in my day there were many people who were
either surprised that they were or disappointed that they weren't. They pretty well
knew where you had to be, and basically you had to hold at least one really
significant campus position somewhere along the line. It could be in anything. It
could be, you know, in the Troubadour Theater, it could be on an athletic team, it
could be in publications or student government or anything, but you sort of had to
get one office that was the top office, generally.

         I don't remember, Mame. Of course, we were a smaller school then, but my
memory is that there were much fewer students-maybe it was just because we
were smaller-who got into ODK back then than who do now. I guess, again, that
just stands to reason, because when I was here, we were, I think, about eleven
hundred, so we weren't quite half the size, but almost. So I guess just the number
game would put you there.

         One of the things that was always a lot of kind of fun, but then we really were
proud of it, was our what was called conventional dress.
Warren: My next question.
Hotchkiss: We really did. I mean, it was fun to complain about it, but you were
really proud you were doing it, and I really wish we still did. Because we really
believed that Washington and Lee University students were somewhat set apart
from others. We were better dressed, we thought we had better manners, and we
thought we were, you know, just, frankly, a cut above. Some of what passed for
conventional dress was fairly shabby. I can remember several of my good friends
who I think wore the same shirt and the same jacket for months, but it was,
nevertheless, a coat and tie. I would go back home and feel very puffed up about all
that. I can remember kind of kidding some of my friends who were at UVA and
other places and were running around in T-shirts and blue jeans, that we, you
know, we wore coats and ties. As I said, I was really very proud that we did.

         I think that it went beyond that. I think there's something intangible about
the way you dress. I'll bet you that if you took a picture, a photograph of classes now
and the things our students wear, versus classes when we were wearing coats and
ties, and I'll bet you that you'll find your students looked more attentive. Now,
whether they really were or not, I'm not so sure, but I bet you they were sitting up
straighter and seemed to be at least more engaged in what was going on than they
are now. I'm probably wrong about that, it's probably silly.
Warren: You were here, you were back when the change started happening. What
was that like for you to see the change?
Hotchkiss: Oh, I just hated it. It was one of those things you sort of felt like the ship
was pulling out and there was not a darned line to throw to shore because it wasn't
going to budge. What all of us realized once I was back on staff is that if we had
clung to conventional dress, we probably wouldn't have had a freshmen class. I
mean, this country got to a point very quickly where no high school senior would be
remotely interested in going to go a school that required that you wore a coat and tie,
and you'd just forget it.

         I think probably, Mame, if we had tried to stay with that, and at the same time
began losing our popularity because we were all male, it would have been a double
whammy that would have either put us out of business or we would have quickly
dropped our insistence on conventional dress and maybe become coeducational
earlier than we did. I don't know, it might have happened.
Warren: That's an interesting thought.
Hotchkiss: Because, you know, let's face it, students who enroll make a choice.
They don't have to go to Washington and Lee, and they are comparison shoppers. I
mean, they look at us and look other places and compare, and they often make their
judgments on things that have not much to do with academics, because they know
that all the schools they're looking at are good academically, so there's no question
about that. So they're looking at student life and what they like about the campus
and the physical facilities and things like that.

         So anyway, I just think, as much as I wish otherwise, I think conventional
dress was doomed from about-I got back in '66, and I'll never forget, Mame-this
has got to be the dumbest thing you've ever heard-I never will forget we drove in
on Friday night and stopped at what was then called the Lexington Motel here on
the south edge of town, got up on Saturday morning, our moving van was
supposed to get there on Monday, and so we had the weekend to kind of work on
this house that we had gotten here. I woke up on Saturday morning and really
debated-this was in August, whether- [Tape interruption]

         ... to get a broom. Because it wasn't just that you had to wear a coat and tie on
campus, you had to wear a coat and tie everywhere. Theoretically, you were even
supposed to wear a coat and tie when you were at home, and we didn't, but you
wore a coat and tie until you were out of Rockbridge County, and most of us wore it
longer and farther away than that. But again, we'd complain about it and love it all
at the same time. We really did. That and the beanie. You've heard about the
beanies?
Warren: Oh, tell me about the beanie.
Hotchkiss: You had to wear the beanies when you got here if you were freshmen.
All the freshmen had to wear a little blue beanie. I've still got mine.
Warren: You do?
Hotchkiss: Yeah, I've got my beanie.
Warren: I'd like to put it in the exhibit.
Hotchkiss: All right, put it in the exhibit. You had to wear a blue beanie, and you
couldn't walk on the grass. You had to wear a blue beanie, you couldn't walk on the
grass, and you had, of course, to say hello to everyone you encountered. We had
what was called the Assimilation Committee, and the Assimilation Committee was
a fairly large committee, and no freshmen ever knew who in the world was on it,
obviously.
Warren: Oh, really?
Hotchkiss: Oh, no, you didn't know who these people were. They were all
upperclassmen. So if you were observed to either be without your beanie or if you
didn't have on conventional dress, or if you failed to speak, you could get turned in.
And if you got turned in, you were warned to either-you'd better wear your beanie
from now on or whatever your problem was. As I recall, if you got turned in
twice-I think I'm right about that-you then had to wear a yellow beanie.
[Laughter]
Warren: I assume you don't have a yellow beanie.
Hotchkiss: No, I don't really remember many yellow beanies on anyone, for that
matter. Anyway, you'd wear these blue beanies until usually about the middle of
the football season, at which time, and it would not be any particular game
necessarily, but somewhere in the interior of the football season you would have a
pep rally, and the word would just get around, kind of like osmosis, that you could
throw your beanie in the fire. I kept mine. But you got to the point, sort of like at
VMI when you get out of the rap line, you finally are able to get out of the beanie-
wearers. That all went along with the pajama parade. You've seen pictures of that?
Warren: I have pictures of it, but nobody's ever talked about it.
Hotchkiss: Well, I only did it-I think the pajama parade stopped maybe the year
before. I never did it. I think it lasted as long as about the year before I got here.
You'd just put pajamas over your regular clothes and parade down Main Street with
torches.
Warren: It was freshmen who were wearing the pajamas?
Hotchkiss: Yeah.
Warren: Because they all look like uniforms. They looked like they're wearing
uniforms.
Hotchkiss: It was freshmen. I heard stories that Dean Gilliam had arranged with
the State Theater that they'd parade down Main Street and that the State Theater
would let them come into the movie theater without having to pay, which was just
a way to get them off the streets, basically. That had just stopped before I got there,
the beanie thing hadn't, but the pajama thing had. I think the way it worked
originally was, is that you'd parade down Main Street in your pajamas, with these
torches, you'd get somewhere and throw the torches in a great heap and throw in
your beanie, as well, and that was the end of it. But as I said, that had stopped before
I got here, just before I got here.
Warren: I need to talk to somebody a little bit older.
Hotchkiss: Yeah.
Warren: You're talking about being a freshmen. You were a Freshmen Camp
counselor.
Hotchkiss: Uh-huh.
Warren: So you got to tell some year's freshmen all this stuff?
Hotchkiss: That was when Freshmen Camp was at Natural Bridge. Again, I'm sort
of old-fashioned, but I still think that was a good idea.
Warren: There are a lot of fond memories of Freshmen Camp.
Hotchkiss: Well, you know, what does bonding mean? Whatever bonding means,
there was a lot of bonding out there. It was crowded, and you probably, again,
couldn't do this these days, but the little cabins we stayed in had two double beds in
them and they put four guys in all these cabins. So you were sleeping together in
these double beds, and you were in these cabins alphabetically. I was in there with
John Hollister and Hutch Hutchinson and John Huffard and Farris Hotchkiss. See, I
remember that. I'll never forget that. And it was all for a very real purpose. It was,
number one, to get a lot of very good, helpful, practical, useful advice that our
students still get, you know, on the Honor System and all kinds of mechanical
things. It was for the purpose of becoming a class, sort of bonding together and
becoming a class. And, third, it was for the purpose of learning names.

         We had what we called the name contest at the end of the time, and all of us
would parade, we'd make a great big kind of line and you'd walk across the podium,
 and except for yourself, you'd turn around and try to write down the names of
 everybody, and the person who could name the most number of people won a
 beautiful Washington and Lee blanket. I'm not even sure they make those blankets
 anymore, a great big blue blanket with our crest on it. It was a really fun, very
 effective exercise.

          But again, we were a smaller school. The freshmen class back then was
 probably about three hundred, or maybe not even quite that large, instead of four
 hundred and forty. But it was wonderful. We'd all kind of spend two days, you
 know, running around doing crazy things like having tugs-of-war and ice races,
 where you had to run with a block of ice and give it to the next guy, you know.

          Then at the end of the time, though, at the end of that second day, we'd all
 put on our coats and ties and go down for an elegant, beautiful dinner in 'the dining
 room of the Natural Bridge Hotel. And that was a nice contrast. You'd kind of been
 sloppy and roughing it, and then you got cleaned up and went down, had this very
,,elegant dinner, and you really felt good, Mame. It really was a-then they'd load
 you into school buses and take you back to campus, and you get back here kind of
 feeling at home and knowing a lot of people. It was a very good exercise.
 Warren: It seems like it. I'm kind of sorry because it stopped. I look at the
 freshmen and say, "You're missing something."
 Hotchkiss: Well, we probably, nowadays, we probably deliver more information. I
mean, we probably give them more facts and information and that kind of thing
even than we did then, but it's done in a different context. Again, you'd have to
have-well, Natural Bridge wouldn't work with the size freshmen class we have.
Well, it would. You'd have to be in a big hotel.
Warren: Can you remember how you learned about the Honor System and what it
meant to you?
Hotchkiss: It was at Freshmen Camp. I mean, I had heard about it, but by the time I
got here I knew about it, because you hear about it during your admissions
interviews and all that kind of thing, but they really came down hard on it at
Freshmen Camp. So when you got here after Freshmen Camp, you truly
understood what the Honor System was all about, and it was just as natural as night
following day. Usually it would be the president of the student body, pretty much
the same way it's done now, the students would-because it's a student system, it
was presented by students.

         You'd come back from Natural Bridge, and everybody, as is true today, had a
faculty advisor, and just as is the case today, you usually would be invited to dinner
at that faculty advisor's house, and he would talk about the Honor System. It was
really repetitively drummed into you. Usually when you started your first classes,
the professor generally would touch again on the Honor System and just remind
you how to pledge your papers and that kind of thing. So there was a lot said about
it.

         I don't remember-when I was here, I don't think we ever had a public
honor trial, so you never knew of an instance where someone was accused of an
honor violation and then was found not guilty, because if you were accused of an
Honor System violation and found not guilty, the fact that it happened at all was
theoretically invisible. And if you were found guilty, you were gone. So the Honor
System was a good deal more opaque in many respects than it is now. I mean, you
knew about what it meant and what you must do and not do.

         As I recall, we didn't know as much about how it actually operated, what the
mechanics really were, because they were really done, frankly, in secret, and, I must
say, in not a very good way. I mean, it really was a bit of a kangaroo court. I mean,
you'd get hauled up before the E.C. at ten o'clock at night with no warning at all. I
mean, it didn't have any of the humane protections that we have now. No
warning, no one along to help you. I must admit it wasn't administered all that
well, but you lived by it.

         Mame, I've got to go, unfortunately.
Warren: I know, I'm being selfish.
Hotchkiss: I've got to go, and I'd be happy, if you want to, I'd be happy to get
together again.
Warren: Well, I do want to because I want to talk you about life after your student
days.
Hotchkiss: All right. I'd be happy to do that.
Warren: I'll have to come back.
[End of interview]