Huntley interview

[Begin Tape 2, Side I]
Warren: This is Mame Warren. It's the fourteenth ofMay 1996. This is tape two with
Robert Huntley.
Huntley: They're embarrassed when it doesn't, as ifyou were going to their home, and there
were years when they couldn't afford to make it look good. There really were. Couldn't keep
the grass growing and they were acutely embarrassed in those years. We just couldn't do
anything about it.
Warren: When would that have been?
Huntley: Oh, when I became president, that was true. The campus was ragged-looking and
we couldn't afford to make it-it wasn't anybody's fault. There just wasn't enough money to
keep it. You understand that at that time we were borrowing money every June to make the
payroll through to September.
Warren: No, I don't understand that.
Huntley: Well, okay, it's easy to do if you just get the financial records out and look at them.
[Laughter] The endowment of the school was like fourteen million dollars or fifteen million,
and we were broke. So things had to give, that had to give.
Warren: Let's start to talk about that period. One thing I found out in my quick research this
morning is that you had a leg up when you came in as president. You were secretary of the
board for a couple ofyears.
Huntley: Well, yeah, that didn't really mean anything much, but, yeah, I was. Fred Cole
asked me to help him out on one or two assignments-I was teaching at the law school-one or
two assignments that were legal or quasi-legal in nature, and got to know me and asked me ifl
were to assist him in relationships with the board, which I, of course, did. I think he eventually
formalized that by calling me secretary to the board. I'd been doing that for a while before I had
any title involved.

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Warren: Tell me about Fred Cole. I really don't know anything about him.
Huntley: Well, that's unfortunate that you don't, because Cole was president for eight years
here, and I think he was one ofthe most marvelous men that I ever knew. He was soft-spoken,
quiet, even timid, and therefore, except by the faculty who were here then, and they will
remember him with praise, but the alumni don't remember him terribly well, because he didn't
ever succeed in establishing a close relationship with many ofthem; some, but not with many.
The strengths he brought, academic strengths he brought to the faculty, were important. He was
a marvelous, marvelous president, I thought.

         I did not want him to resign when he did. He did because he had concluded that he was
not the right man for the job at that time, and I thought he was wrong and told him so, but he was
determined. He had great devotion for the school. He loved it more than anything else he had
ever done. So it wasn't for that reason that he left. He just didn't think it was a job he could
do.
Warren: Where did he go?
Huntley: He went to run a library organization in Washington that was funded by the Ford
Foundation, called the Council on Library Resources. He ran that until he retired at age seventy,
I suppose, and died a few years ago. His widow is still living.
Warren: And I understand he has a son.
Huntley: A son, Taylor.
Warren: A couple of people have mentioned his name.
Huntley: He was a wonderful guy, just marvelous, I thought. Frank has vivid recollections of
Fred Cole and could share those with you, Frank Parsons, and Farris and Jim Whitehead, and Sid
Cou1Iing.
Warren: So at the ripe young age of thirty-eight, you were asked to fill Dr. Gaines' shoes.
Huntley: Well, I don't think it was put quite that way. [Laughter] No, it wasn't.
Warren: Sitting here listening to you talk about Dr. Gaines, it occurs to me that that's what
you were doing.
Huntley: No, I didn't think of it in that way. Actually, it was Cole I was succeeding and not
Gaines. I thought very highly of Cole. It was a real humbling experience. I was on the search
committee, which probably the records would reveal, the Presidential Search Committee.
Warren: What does it mean to be on a search committee?

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Huntley: Well, that means you've got to go out and try find somebody, to develop a list of
possible people who you'd like to have as president and who you think the faculty and board will
accept. It was a difficult time to seek a president for Washington and Lee.
Warren: Why?
Huntley: Well, the school was not in robust condition financially. The reputation was still
good, but it was not an easy time. I don't exactly know how I came to be suggested, because I
was not present when that occurred. We were talking with other people, the committee was,
interviewing people and trying to find people. And in some way, I really don't know. Some
members of the committee, other than me, eventually talked to the board, and the committee was
still in process of trying to find somebody when the director of the board called me in late 1967,
probably November or early December of ' 67, and asked me ifl would consider.
Warren: Who was director then?
Huntley: Huston St. Clair, marvelous person and a strong Washington and Lee family from
West Virginia. A medical doctor who didn't practice medicine. His family had been in the
coal business and he'd been on the board for many years, and his father before him. He was
rector during the first several years that I was president.
Warren: So what was it like getting that call?
Huntley: Well, it was startling. I didn't anticipate that. I hadn't aspired to be dean of the law
school, certainly not to be president. So it was a matter on which Evelyn and I had several
weeks deciding whether to do it or not. But I knew, because I had been close to the situation,
that the job to be done was going to be kind of hard sell to a new president from outside. So I
concluded that maybe it was a duty I needed to do, and that really was the way I thought about it,
because the main thing I liked to do was teaching. If I had wanted a different kind of career, I
would have stayed in law, which I believe I could've succeeded at, and was doing all right with,
so it was not a job I felt ambitious to have. But as I said earlier, most of the administrators of
Washington and Lee never had the ambition to be administrators, and that was true. But I never
regretted doing it. It was a marvelous fifteen years, which is several years longer than I
expected it would be. [Laughter]
Warren: As you say, it was a very difficult time.
Huntley: Well, all times are. They're just difficult in different ways.
Warren: It seems like it. One of the things that seems obvious to me with historical

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perspective that was happening at that time was the issue of integration.
Huntley: True. That's right.
Warren: Can you talk about that?
Huntley: Sure. It was happening, and I had been active with Fred Cole in discussions with the
board about reaching the decision that the faculty would be the agency that would determine
admissions at Washington and Lee. That understanding was confirmed by the board during
Fred Cole's presidency.
Warren: What's the distinction you're making there?
Huntley: The distinction I'm making was that it was not the Board's role to determine who's
admitted to Washington and Lee.
Warren: And had it been in the past?
Huntley: No, as far as I know.
Warren: You just wanted to clarify it?
Huntley: Exactly. And that had been confirmed by the board, I think an important step for
Cole to have taken, because it made it clear to the board mainly that they knew that this issue
was the admission ofblack students and Fred did not want an after-the-fact suggestion from the
board or any member of the board that the decision as to whether or not to admit black students
was a board decision. So, in effect, the board made the decision without ever passing a
resolution that the institution was not closed to black students and that the faculty would decide
whom to admit, though I don't think you'll find that in any board resolution. Maybe you will.
I don't think so, because there had never been any resolution to the contrary, as you just noted by
your question. There had never been any suggestion that the board did control admissions.
There was nothing in the record of the institution indicating that the institution would not accept
black students, nothing anywhere in its history. No resolution that they wouldn't. So a
resolution that they would would've have been gratuitous. Nevertheless, it was wise that there
be a consensus among the board that that was the fact, and that Cole got accomplished. It was
one of the things that he asked my assistance with in those years that I was secretary.
Warren: And how did you assist?
Huntley: I just explained it to the board in those terms.
Warren: In one-on-one?
Huntley: Yeah, one-on-one, as did he.

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Warren: Was there resistance?
Huntley: No, no, there wasn't resistance. Among some of the older board members, there was
reluctance, but no resistance. Reluctance may not be the right word. There was trepidation
about what this would signify, about how successful we could be in having black students who
would succeed at Washington and Lee come here-trepidation that was well placed. That's a
legitimate concern, still is. But we felt it had to be faced and attempted, and then we did begin
to admit black students, to seek black students who would want to be admitted, and then to admit
them as aggressively as we could in the years that followed.
Warren: How do you think it worked out?
Huntley: I think it worked out as well as I suspect we could have expected. There were fits
and starts and some false starts and some failures, so the course wasn't a smooth one, but we
were fortunate in finding a number of young black men who wanted to come here, of which
number a substantial percentage succeeded. Ofthat substantial percentage, a number of them
are avid alumni ofthe school and did absorb the devotion that the white students had had about
the school. It was a tough time for them.
Warren: Why?
Huntley: It required a lot of courage on their part. Well, why not? They were in a
community of a previously all-white community, a school with the names of the guys who
fought the Civil War at its masthead. What could have been easy about that? And whether or
not they were caused to feel it, they obviously were going to feel some extent of alienation, and
all of them did. All of them did. I think there are no exceptions to that. And I think to the
degree it succeeded, I believe it did, it did because people here were anxious to have it succeed.
And I think it's for the same reason other things at Washington and Lee seem to work,
eventually. If it didn't work at first, we just kept trying.

         I think the black students, even those who felt alienated, even those who continued to feel
alienated, and some did, I think even those knew that most of us here were an.xious for them to
succeed and did all we could to help them succeed. There was certainly many hours of
conversation with them, and they learned to come to us with conversations and also learned to
accept negative answers when we couldn't do things they wanted done.
Warren: Do you have any examples ofthat?
Huntley: Well, I can recall early on, the ideas that were so prevalent in those days, I guess still

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are, of having separate living quarters. Well, that was just not something we were going to do,
and I explained to them why I thought that was wrong. They didn't do that. They could and,
of course did, form social organizations that were separate. That was something they could
certainly do, and did do. But separate dormitories and separate curricula, those ideas were so
prevalent in those days, were bound to arise here. I'm not sure that any of them wanted that, but
they were discussions we had to have. I know those young men to this day, the ones you
mentioned and others. Some of them come by to see me occasionally.

         I'll tell you a story. I guess it was successful. A modest success, I guess it was, I'd
describe it as. Modest success from hard work.
Warren: I'm intrigued by your making reference to the masthead, that General Lee is the name
of the place.
Huntley: No black student ever mentioned that to me, incidentally. They must've thought
that, but it was never mentioned to me.
Warren: I was flabbergasted by Eugene Perry saying that's one of the reasons he was attracted
to the place because he read a lot about Robert E. Lee.
Huntley: Well, no black student, while I had complaints from them about many things, many
of the complaints justified, some of them not justified-that was also true of the white students, I
might add-I never had a black student, even when they were, for one reason or another,
outraged, I never had a black student ever express to me any resentment about the Lee heritage.
I had some of them, as Perry apparently told you, refer to that heritage favorably. I never had
anyone express resentment about it, nor was there even days when it was popular to demonstrate,
you know, in those days when people wore their hearts on their sleeves and usually on sign
boards, no one ever had a demonstration that would have protested Lee. Now, you would've
thought that might have happened. Looking back at the 1969-'70 period, you might have
thought that somebody would've done that. No one ever did. I'm glad they didn't, because I
don't know how I would've handled that. [Laughter]
Warren: That would've been pretty tough, wouldn't it? That would be pretty hard.
Huntley: With Lee's recumbent statute lying behind the podium at Lee Chapel, it's amazing to
me that that never happened. I don't believe they, any more than the others at Washington and
Lee, think ofLee primarily as a leader ofthe Civil War battles. That's how histmy thinks of
him, but that's really not the way he's thought ofhere.

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Warren: Tell me what you mean.
Huntley: Well, he's thought of here for his years as president and for the attitude he brought to
the place, which is the attitude that has been perpetuated, I think, over the years. The personal
involvement. The Lee letters. Have you read the Lee letters he wrote? He knew all the kids.
He wrote letters back to the parents about them and everything. It was his personal touch.
And, of course, he never dwelled on the Civil War. He wouldn't talk about the Civil War. He
had put that behind him. As he said in the letter he wrote to his wife shortly after he arrived
here, he hoped the Lord would spare him to do something useful with the years he had left. And
that's the way he saw it. So he saw the pinnacle of his career as the years he had here, which
were not related in his mind to his years as General Lee, and somehow that must have seeped
through to the students, black and white.
Warren: I think it did. I think it did.
Huntley: I'm sure Perry wouldn't be thinking ofLee, when he thinks of him favorably,
wouldn't be thinking of him as the guy who ordered Pickett's Charge. [Laughter]
Warren: What he's talking about is the tradition of honor.
Huntley: Right.
Warren: Which he knew a lot about before he ever walked on the campus.
Huntley: Of course. And they do. Those are the things that people remember of him. The
distinctive figures ofWashington and Lee, in my judgment, are severalfold, and most of the folks
who worked here know and even articulate them and work hard to preserve them.

         It's a combination, not necessarily in this order, it's a combination of a large, very large
liberal arts curriculum, as large a curriculum as you would find at the undergraduate level at
major universities, coupled with a small student body, small enough so that the students can, and
do, know each other and can, and do, know their faculty, not just the sub-cliques in which they
find themselves, but the whole group, know each other personally and feel a sense of
responsibility for each other, or can at least do so. It can occur that they can develop a sense of
responsibility for each other. It doesn't always, but it's small enough that it can. So, small
size, small in that sense.

         Free choice. A wide measure of free choice among this large curriculum, across this
large curriculum. Not totally free choice. A choice that is channeled into various directions by
wise faculty, but within those broad ambits, a wide measure of choice. In other words, a school

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that does not have to subsidize its cuniculum by forcing students into certain comers of it. That
requires some balance in terms of administration, to have a curriculum that's this large and have
it populated by a small student body, because all parts of the curriculum may be populated just
because you're going to have it. Faculty are not going to remain, even if you pay them, if they
don't have students, and good students. So ifthe curriculum is going to be large and
demanding, the students need to populate that curriculum, and if you have to force them into its
corners in order to populate it, you've lost one ofthe features I'm describing. So it needs to
have that balance.

         Then the fourth element is the element of which the honor system is a premiere condition,
the sense of trust and community that exists in the group. Those four elements are what makes
the school distinctive and what is difficult to find anywhere else, not impossible, I don't suspect,
but difficult to find anywhere else. Those four elements are why students want to live here, and
they' 11 tell you one of those four things. If you go talk to them, one of those four things is what
they'll hit on, sometimes all four of them. But those will be the reasons that they like it.

         And those that didn't like it, of which there are some, usually will be something relating
to one of those four areas that caused them not to like it. They couldn't identify with the honor
system, not necessarily because they're dishonorable, but they didn't like the thought. They saw
that as something different than what it is, or their own personal circumstance was such that they
did not succeed in relating themselves to the community, or they chose badly within the
curriculum and did not, as it happened, get the kind of advice they could have used, or didn't
seek it. That's one of the features ofthis school, is that advice is available here from anybody,
but it's rarely forced. I used to tell the freshmen this as emphatically as I could, and again and
again during their freshmen year, and some don't remember it: faculty and others here are
available to advise students at almost any time on curricular or non-curricular matters, but rarely
do they force the advice. Rarely does a faculty members seek out a student and say, '"You
know, you really made a bad choice there." That again is part of the process of-they've got to
grow into men, not be grown into men. And so the students who don't seek advice and make
mistakes, which, as a measure ofyour freedom, you can make, may have a bad experience. So
it doesn't suit everybody, but it suits, I think, the majority of those who come here.

         So that's about all I know about the place. [Laughter]
Warren: That's certainly succinct. You know what you're saying there, especially towards

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the end, makes me think of what an incredible contrast it is between this institution with the
white columns and the other institution next door and their point of view.
Huntley: Well, yes, it's a contrast, but there are similarities, I suspect. It's, of course, small,
develops a devotion and a sense of community among its students by different means from what
wedo.
Warren: Did you interrelate with \lMI very much?
Huntley: Yes. I was very, very fond of the superintendent who was there most ofthe time that
I was president, Bud Shell, General Shell, who was one of the most marvelous, I think, just a
wonderful man. I don't know what his physical condition is now.
Warren: I think they're failing, both, a little.
Huntley: Did he talk to you?
Warren: I haven't attempted to, but that's a really good idea.
Huntley: He would be interesting to talk to.
Warren: That's a very good idea.
Huntley: He would have a view ofWashington and Lee that would be interesting to know.
Warren: That's a really good idea.
Huntley: But I thought he was just one of the wisest men I ever knew, and I should tell you
that during the early years I was president, I sought his advice on more than one occasion, and he
gave good advice. During 1970, when the students were parading around here like a bunch of
lunatics from time to time, Shell was a good source of counsel for me. Not many people know
that.
Warren: Tell me aboutthat.
Huntley: Well, I talked to him, I knew him well, and I talked to him about it. He was very
wise. He was not [unclear] military school. But his view was, if we remained open but firm,
open but firm, firm in the things that really mattered, the final things that really mattered, that the
students would, in due course, recognize the value of that position. He was right.
Warren: Let's go back to 1970.
Huntley: Let's don't. [Laughter]
Warren: Oh, come on.
Huntley: Well, it wasn't all that bad. It was an interesting time. Watershed years, I guess.
I'm not exactly sure where the water shed to, on either side ofthe watershed-watershed just for

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the nation, I mean, and, I guess, in some ways for the school, but the students had somehow had
come to the-and I won't attempt any sociological analysis, but had somehow become alienated
in many cases from their families to a greater degree than I ever saw before or since.
Warren: What do you mean?
Huntley: Well, just specifically that. They were not relating to their families. I recall we had
to keep the dormitories open during the holidays because they wouldn't go home, for example.
So I mean it literally. Not just here, lots of places. Washington and Lee seemed to them, again
the sense of community and a sense of the importance of the place to them. I said it earlier the
alumni had a downside. There was a downside where the students were concerned, too.

         So they, in a sense, were ambivalent about Washington and Lee. They had a love/hate
relationship with it, some of them did at that time. And of course they were upset about the
things that the students were getting upset about then, about the Vietnamese War and other
things they saw as unjust. They had the kind of passion that youth always has, I once described
as deep convictions lightly held. That's true ofyouth. Each passion is more significant than its
predecessor and they don't necessarily last long. Some do and some don't, but this is part of the
process of growing up. This is way the mind and the intellect and the emotions develop.

         Young men between the ages of seventeen and twenty-one are a potent chemical force.
[Laughter] And that had been ignited, to a degree, by the events occurring nationally and
internationally.. And by whatever sociology goes before that, the years since World War II and
the things that had occurred in American society that caused youth to feel less close to their
families, all those things coalesced in the late sixties and early seventies, here and elsewhere, and
surfaced in terms of unrest and demands for this or that concession, as they saw it, by the school
and so on.

         But we got through it well. I think we got through it well because the faculty remained
staunch in both senses of the word. They declined to give up the institution's autonomy to the
students, the curricula of autonomy to the students, they declined it. They would've declined to
give it up to the board, too, but they declined to give it up to the students, and at the same time
remained open to the students. So they didn't feel alienated from the students, even though in
some cases students seemed to feel alienated froIJJ. them and remained opened, and the
conversations that could and did occur, could occur here, couldn't have occurred at a school any
larger than this or with a different background. It just wouldn't have happened. It just couldn't

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have happened.
Warren: What kind of conversations?
Huntley: Endless conversations about all the issues that were bothering them. I mea~ you'd
sit up for hours. Nobody would ever cut them off. Everybody had all the time for them they
wanted, as they always had. Eventually good sense prevailed. Not all the incidents of that
period were good and not all the outcomes were good, but on balance it was good. The school
retained its sense of purpose, and the students agreed with that eventually.

          So it was an interesting time. I don't think of it with any bad thoughts. A lot of those
students who were here, I knew most of them, a lot of them who were here then I see regularly
now. The class of 1970, I guess it was. The reunion two years ago, the twenty-fifth, and I was
very honored, they established a scholarship in my name.
Warren: Well, now if that isn't flattering.
Huntley: A six-figure scholarship in my name. They said they gave me so damn much trouble
that they owed it to me. [Laughter] I said, "'Well you certainly did."
Warren: What goes around comes around.
Huntley: Yeah. So they were interesting times, but we got through that.
Warren: Were there any personal vignettes, personal things that happened? It's such a huge
historical time. But on the personal level.
Huntley: Oh, well, lots of them, yeah. I remember, for example, living in the Lee House, the
kids had various camps amongst students then. It was even difficult for me to keep track of
which camp was which sometimes, although I knew them all. And this camp would sort of
distrust that camp, and one group of students was of the view that another group was likely to be
violent. None ofthem ever was violent. And they wanted to sit on the front porch of the Lee
House. They came to the Lee House about eight o'clock one night, rang the doorbell. Evelyn
went to the door, and he said, "Mrs. Huntley, we thought we should let you know that several of
us are going to be sleeping out here on your front porch tonight, because we think that maybe
some of these other kids out here need watching."

         So Evelyn said, "Well, I don't think they need watching, and it's going to be a cold night
tonight. It's going to be frost tonight. We're going to have frost." It was early May and we
were going to have frost like we did last night. She said, "I think you're going to freeze out
there. It doesn't make any sense."

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         They said, "No, ma'am, we think we're going to stay out here."
         She said, "Well, if you' re going to stay out here, I'm going to leave the front door
unlatched. You see the geranium sitting here? Ifyou see it frosting, set it in the front hall."
[Laughter] True story.
Warren: She had her priorities straight.
Huntley: And we left the door unlocked to the Lee House, in the middle of the nation's-sure
enough, the students put the geraniums in the house during the night. They remembered that
story when that kid graduated that year. He said he couldn't believe that. There we were
woni.ed about the fate of the world and Mrs. Huntley told us the door was unlocked and put the
geraniums inside.
Warren: And were they still there in the morning?
Huntley: The students?
Warren: Yes.
Huntley: Yes, they were. They were still there in the morning and probably for a day or two
thereafter. They were camped all over the front lawn. They were literally camped on the front
lawn. All over the place.
Warren: Tents?
Huntley: In some cases, tents, yes.
Warren: It must have been a little bit like the Civil War starting up again.
Huntley: Yes, it was. It was. And in the middle of that, we had alumni reunions. Imagine
an alumnus who hadn't been here in fifty years, for example, coming back and looking at the
front campus, here are these kids running around looking like savages, dressed in the ways which
you may be able to remember students liked to dress in those days-I mean, you know, bare
from the waist up and no shoes, and with tents pitched around the campus, growing scraggly old
beards and long hair and so on. And you can imagine what the alumni returning thought of that.
But we survived that too, you see. They forgave us. [Laughter] Right in the middle of alumni
reunions occurred right in the middle of that period.
Warren: That must have been really dramatic.
Huntley: It was less dramatic then it sounds to tell about it.
Warren: It just sounds like you've got a cast of characters. There must have been drama.
Huntley: Well, there was. Actually it was good that the alumni were here, because that gave

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them a chance to talk to the students, and we facilitated that, because they weren>t nearly as
savage as they looked, you know. They weren't savage at all. So we facilitated the alumni
talking to them and they went away with a much better feeling then they would have had if
they'd only seen pictures, which a lot ofthem didn't see anything but pictures. So it was
probably good, on balance, that we had a big group of alumni here, who were able to go back
home and say, "It's really not as bad as it looks. 11
Warren: So let's talk about these "savages. 11 That was something else that happened during
your tenure, your presidency. Conventional dress went by the-
Huntley: Well, yeah, it had already started to go before I became president. It had become
less and less conventional.
Warren: How did that happen?
Huntley: The year before that. It didn't happen overnight.
Warren: And it isn't a university thing.
Huntley: It never was. It never was.
Warren: Explain that to me.
Huntley: Well, it never was. I don't know when the custom began. There was a custom.
But you need to put it in time, in perspective of the times. When I was a young man, for
example, coming along, when I was a boy, a child, my father never came to the dinner table
without a coat and tie. Rarely went out of his room without a coat and tie. My grandfather
probably never went out of his room without his coat and tie. So that normalcy in a civilized
community was, for most people, unless they were in physical labor at the time, was a coat and
tie. That's probably how the custom began. Again, they thought they were growing into men,
they might as well behave like men, and that's the way men behaved in those days. It no longer ·
is. I mean, I don't put on a coat and tie to go to dinner and I ain't got one on now. But that
wouldn't have been true at the time I came here.

         So the custom started and then the custom was enforced by the student body. It's not the
way it began, it's just the way it ended, really. The student government had a conventional dress
understanding and had a committee called the Assimilation Committee, which would punish
students-they made them wear beanies or something-who didn't dress conventionally, in the
years after World War II. This is mainly after World War II when the conventional dress
Assimilation Committee would have been quite active. Conventional dress had been around

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long before that. I'm not suggesting that it occurred then, but the enforcement of it was
probably more rigorous after World War II than in earlier times.

          The prevalence of the custom of dressing like that was always changing, and it would
have already been true by the mid-fifties, that you would see students occasionally without coats
and ties, whereas you never saw that when I was a student, unless you were actively engaged in
an athletic endeavor. You never left your room without a coat and tie, never. I never did,
unless I was literally going out on the crew or the tennis courts. But that had already begun to
change.

         Then the emphasis came on enforcing it, as always happens when something is changing,
you know. Then the emphasis came on the enforcement techniques. Well, it obviously was not
something the University was going to enforce, never had, and I was not about to make
conventional dress analogous to the honor system. The University doesn't enforce the honor
system either. But I was not about to suggest to the students that I thought they should treat
conventional dress as they treated the honor system, because I didn't believe that. I thought it
would be fatal to the honor system, or at least dangerous to it, to burden it with that false
analogy. They weren't enforced in the same way, incidentally. Conventional dress was not
enforced by the Executive Committee, which is the group that enforced it. And slowly it just
slowly petered out over a period of a decade, I would say.
Warren: I was intrigued by an article in the current alumni magazine, an interview with Larry
Boetsch, the new dean, who says that he can remember going off for a year in Spain his junior
year and coming back, and conventional dress was gone. For him it happened in one year.
Huntley: But it really didn't, though. It didn't. It happened slowly over a long period of time.
I saw it happen over all those years.
Warren: Do you think something was lost or gained?
Huntley: Oh, I don't think anything was gained. I suppose something was lost in the
communal sense that we referred to earlier, but I'm not sure that that it was anything significant.
I think it's important that students concern themselves now about how they look. I don't like to
see them now looking like ragamuffins, unless they're required to look that way, which I don't
think they are. I don't think it's helpful to one's own psyche to dress like a barbarian unless you
are a barbarian. I don't think it helps. So in that sense, I guess, something's lost, but I don't
think most of them dress like barbarians now. To a degree they do, I think that's bad. To the

                                                                                                                       41
degree they dress conventionally, that is in the way that the conventions of the time suggest
civilized people dress, then I think that's fine.

          To me, at least, the method of dressing should not be a statement. I believe there are
better ways to make statements than by attire. I think conventional dress, at one point in its
evolution, was not a statement; it was the way one conventionally dressed himself to live life.
There are different ways now one dresses himselfto live life, and that's the way they ought to
dress, I think. I don't know, I never thought clothes make the man. I think that's true of
conventional dress or highly unconventional dress. Neither one makes the man.

          We went through a petiod in the sixties and seventies when students thought clothes
make the man. They didn't think it was conventional clothes that make the man;
unconventional clothes made the man. And it didn't either way, you see. Dressing like you're
impoverished does not make you poverty-stricken, nor does it imply any real empathy with those
who are.
Warren: Good point.
Huntley: So I dislike that talk. Polonius' advice to Laertes was badly flawed, and as you
recall from reading your Shakespeare, Shakespeare painted Polonius as a trite old fool. And all
ofhis advice, everything he had to say, Polonius' advice to Laertes is wrong, including what he
had to say about clothes.
Warren: I need to tum the tape over.
[Begin Tape 2, Side 2]
Warren: One of the other things that I believe was suspended during your time was Fancy
Dress.
Huntley: Well, it was wasn't suspended, they just quit having it. It petered out and then it was
redeemed. It was revived.
Warren: Was there a sadness to that?
Huntley: Well, yeah, I would say, although, again, when things peter out, it's less sad than
when they're shot. Fancy Dress had been a rather unsuccessful event for several years prior to
its-
Warren: Oh, really.
Huntley: Yeah, it really had, because it didn't work very well. During that time period,
students were not as interested as they had been earlier and probably are now in carefully laid

                                                                                                                           42
plans for large celebrity weekends. That sort of thing was not popular in the early seventies.
That's when it died out. I've forgotten when. I've forgotten the years, you'll have to look it
up. And I've forgotten when it was revived.
Warren: I think it was '70, '74, something like that.
Huntley: But it was a mere shadow of its former self before that.
Warren: So when it came back, did it come back full force?
Huntley: Well, it came back anew. No, it didn't come back as it had once been. It came back
as a new creature. And as a new creature, it better suited the times than we live in now. You
couldn't bring back the dance sets of the forties and thirties.
Warren: Oh, wouldn't it be fun, though?
Huntley: It would be fun, but you couldn't possibly do it. It would be an act to try to do it.
Fancy Dress, when I was a student, was a three-day dance set, three days, three nights and with
two different bands, sometimes with both bands in the same night. I mean both Dorseys, for
example. Both bands, real bands. Bands that don't even exist now. You couldn't get them
now if you wanted to; they don't exist.

         We had two bands, one for Thursday night and one for Saturday night and two for Friday
night, and dressed formally all three nights, one night in tails, one night in tux, and one night in
costume. To revive something like that today would be silly. You might put it on as a play
once, but you couldn't sustain it as a tradition.

         There were four dance sets in those years, all formal. Dance set in Opening Dances,
there was Fancy Dress, Spring Dances and Finals. The other three dances were two night sets
with big bands. You couldn't do that today. As I say, it would be kind of silly if you did.

         So Fancy Dress is not what it was. That's not to say it isn't good. They still dress fancy
and they still have a nice party.
Warren: Do you ever go now?
Huntley: I have been. I haven't been in the last several years. I never missed one when I was
here.
Warren: I think it's a great party.
Huntley: It is.
Warren: I went to my first one this year and had a fabulous time.
Huntley: It is, it is a great party.

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Warren: Well, speaking of parties, one of the things I remember most when I lived here in the
late seventies is fraternity parties.
Huntley: Yeah. Well, they had them and I suppose they still do.
Warren: Tell me about your relationship with fraternities.
Huntley: Well, generally my relationship with fraternities was good. We had troubles with
various fraternities from time to time, and still do, I guess. I thought, on balance, fraternities
served a useful purpose for those who joined them. I didn't think they should have an exclusive
hold on the social life of the school. I thought we ought to try to afford the students who didn't
belong to fraternities some social alternatives, and that we've attempted to do. But I was never
opposed to fraternities, and knew them well. On balance, I think they performed well. They
provided support for students. The good fraternities provided support for students that they
needed, social support as well as other kinds of support, and the bad ones didn't.

         And all of them were sometimes good and sometimes bad. They were fraternities in
cycles. Fraternities went in cycles. X fraternity might be good for three or four years and not
so good for three or four years. I'm sure that continues to be true. I don't have any present
view of how well they're run, but they probably still serve a useful purpose.

         They fell into disrepair physically, and mainly that occurred in the sixties and seventies
when everything else fell, when the students ceased to take care of things. It wasn't all the
students' fault. Some of it was, a lot of it was. The houses were very old physically, of course,
and the school really couldn't afford to own them at that time. So as the houses fell increasingly
into disrepair, it's a vicious circle, the sense of pride in them fell into disrepair, and it was hard to
refurbish. But they've done a marvelous job with that. The Fraternity Renaissance program,
seems to me, has been very successful. John Wilson's Fraternity Renaissance program, I'm very
complimentary of the way that's worked.
Warren: Would anything like that have ever been possible during your administration?
Huntley: Oh, yeah, sure, but we hadn't gotten to the point where we could afford to do that. I
think it was the right thing to do. I really do. It seems to be working.
Warren: It sure seems to be. Those places look like show houses now.
Huntley: They do. They do.
Warren: And, of course, the other thing that was talked about a lot during your administration
was coeducation.

                                                                                                                          44
Huntley: Yeah, it certainly was. I guess we had two formal studies of it and more than two
semiformal ones, deciding both of them to remain, for the time being, at least all-male. The
major reasons I think we decided to stay all-male, I've already touched on, were financial, plus
the desire to retain those four features I referred to, one ofwhic~ you remember, is size.

          The most difficult feature of coeducation, I thought, was going to be retaining the small
size of the school, which would require both fortitude and money. I'm glad to say they've
seemed to me to be able to do that so far. The school is larger, sixteen hundred as distinguished
from perhaps thirteen hundred, but I think it's still within the scale that allows the teachers that I
described in my earlier description of the four features of Washington and Lee that I think are
distinctive, none of which, you remember, was gender. Those same four features could be
found in some all-female schools, incidentally. But I think those four features are vital, and if
any one of them has to be sacrificed, it will make a substantial difference. Washington and Lee
would lose the characteristics that make it distinctive.

          So if coeducation was going to occur in a context that compromised one of those four,
then it would have been a mistake, but I think eventually we reached the point where that wasn't
true, and clearly the correct move for Dr. Wilson and the faculty to have taken when they did
take it, and it seems to me to have been done very, very well. The women students whom I've
talked to, and graduates, seem to me to be as caught up in the mystique of the place as everybody
else.
Warren: They fit right in, don't they? It's remarkable. It's like they found another corner of
the cloth and just kept cutting.
Huntley: One feature of coeducation today as distinguished from what might be true, let's say,
thirty years ago, is that women now more nearly tend to take a wide array of courses in a large
curriculum than they would've done in 1930 or even 1950.

         One of the features of the school that I described to you is a student body that populates a
large curriculum, a small student body that populates a large curriculum. Some earlier
enrollment patterns in the forties and so on would've implied that women didn't do that as
clearly as men. They do now, the reason being that they have opportunities for uses of
education that are greater than they were in those days. So that the need to populate the
curriculum can occur with a mixed student body easier than it could've and still retain its small
size.

                                                                                                                          45
         When you can't populate the large curriculum, the temptation, there is only one of three
things you can do: you can cut the curriculum; you can subsidize the curriculum-that is to say,
force students into it, which is never going to work for very long-or you enlarge the student
body. Those are the only three things you can do, and all three of them have serious
disadvantages, financial disadvantages and, more important, community disadvantages. But I
think the school has reached a point financially, and society has reached a point culturally, where
it looks to me like it works very well.
Warren: Would you have liked to have been part of the coeducation change?
Huntley: Yeah, I would've liked to have been. But I'd been president long enough. Fifteen
years was long enough. Longer then I had thought I would be president. I always maintained
when I took the job that I would stay only long enough to achieve an identifiable set of
objectives and then get out. I've seen presidents remain in the position too long, and I was
determined not to be one of them ifl could help it, and it took fifteen years. I had hoped to do it
in ten or twelve. I took fifteen years to get to a point where I thought it was a stopping point.
You've got to find a stopping point. You can't walk off in midstream. It took fifteen years to
get to what I perceived to be a stopping point. Most of the things I had thought had to be done
when I became president had either been done or abandoned. In most cases they had been done,
and it was a good place for me to stop.
Warren: I don't want you to retire quite yet. I want to pursue the coeducation just a little
more.
Huntley: Sure.
Warren: There was that major study done.
Huntley: There were two studies done.
Warren: Why do you think it didn't happen at those times?
Huntley: I think for the reasons I've given you. I think I gave you the reasons.
Warren: Do you think there was just too much resistance from the board?
Huntley: No. I didn't recommend it. Don't get the idea that I was striving to get the school
to go coeducation and the board wouldn't let me. That's not true.
Warren: That's what I want to clarify.
Huntley: Well, I can clarify that for you right now. I didn't recommend it.
Warren: Okay. It wasn't the right time.

                                                                                                                         46
Huntley: I didn't recommend it. The faculty well knew that. They haven't told you
otherwise, have they?
Warren: No. No, no, no. I just want to hear it from you. I just want to make sure that
question is asked in that way.

         I'm still not going to let you retire yet. I want to talk about, as an entity, the grand
capital campaign that you oversaw. That has to be a crowning achievement.
Huntley: Well, I don't know if it's a crowning achievement. It was just a chore that had to be
done. We had good people to do it, to help do it, and a generous constituency, which, once
informed of the level of need, over a long time period-you can't inform people overnight about
such things-once convinced that the need existed, started stepping forward to meet it. It takes
a long time for those things to happen. You can't wave a wand and make them happen
overnight, but you can start the momentum going and develop a habit, develop the conviction.
The basic conviction about the importance of the school was already there. What was lacking
was any understanding by the alumni the school needed them. That's what they didn't know.
You have to go tell them.
Warren: How do you go about doing that?
Huntley: You just go tell them.
Warren: Go to the chapters?
Huntley: Go tell them. Time and time and time again, go tell them.
Warren: And are you going to the chapters, the same groups, are you going to individuals?
Huntley: Both. You're going to both, chapters and groups, and you're sending faculty. Lots
and lots of the faculty went out, frequently at my request or Bill Washburn's request or Farris
Hotchkiss' request, to see alumni, and we developed increasing programs to get them back on
campus.
Warren: What kind of programs?
Huntley: Well, we made bigger deals out of the reunions than we used to, and then we began,
of course, the Alumni College events during those years. They were much smaller then, but
that's when they began. We would find ways to get them back for any occasion we could, and
they responded-again, slowly at first. It takes time to develop these things. But we went out
on the road a lot.
Warren: Did you have a role model in doing this, or was this the Washington and Lee way of

                                                                                                             47
doing things?
Hundey: No, I didn't have any role models. It was just a job to be done. It was easy to see
what needed to be done.
Warren: You flidn't study how Harvard had done it, or Princeton?
Huntley: No, I still don't know how they did it.
Warren: This was the Washington and Lee way of doing things?
Huntley: No, I didn't study any role model.
Warren: Because it seems very unique. It has a feel of being a singular way of doing things.
Huntley: I just don't know the answer to that. There just didn't seem to be any other way to
do it but to take it on, head on. Just like, for example, we were talking earlier about Roy
Steinheimer in the law school and the students, you just take it on head on. If you need
students, you go find them. You can't sit back and wait for these things to cure themselves.

         The alumni responded in time to the needs they began to see existed. And because they
shared the conviction that the school required, the school had these characteristics I've described
to you, used to tell them that, too, they agreed with that and they wanted to see it perpetuated and
they treasured their own experience and wanted others to have that experience. Eventually,
enough of them came forward to make it possible, and the momentum is good. It looks to me
like the momentum is good on that score. They do come forward.

         One of the things that occurs to me for a person who is president ofWashington and Lee
now, I think we have a magnificent president in John Elrod. I think the board showed great
wisdom and courage. I say courage for the following reason. The school is so strong now, by
the time the president to succeed John Wilson was being sought, the school was so strong
because of the things that had happened before and because ofthe strength that Wilson brought
to the school, that they had open field on who could be president. I don,t know that, I wasn't
part of the committee, but I know the world well enough to know they could have gone outside
Lexington and hired any one of dozens of people.

         An easy course for a board to take, it occurs to me, in a situation like that, and in some
ways one thafs good for the board's ego, is to go out and try to find some prestigious name from
elsewhere just to demonstrate the visibility and the strength of the school. That must have been
a temptation. I don't know that it was a temptation, but it must've been. But I think their
wisdom in staying home and choosing Elrod was great.

                                                                                                                           48
          But it occurs to me that a person becoming president of Washington and Lee now, as
John had just become, has a whole different set of issues from those that faced me or, indeed, to
some degree that faced John Wilson. Those that faced me, to a large extent necessity dictated

. my agenda, and my job was to tum necessity into virtue, and that's a lot easier. When your

range of choice is limited by circumstance, it's sometimes easier to make the choice. The
present generation of those running Washington and Lee had a far wider array of choices than I
had, than my predecessors had, and probably than John Wilson had in all the terms we can think
of--in terms of the size of the school, the curriculum of the school, the objectives of the school,
the vision of the school, and so on. They have a wider array of choices and, hence, a much
more difficult job than the one that faced me.
Warren: An interesting point.
Huntley: Really much more difficult, in my opinion.
Warren: That's an interesting point.

         Well, I have worked my way down my list, and I've taken up a lot of your morning.
Huntley: That's all right.
Warren: Is there anything more you would like to say?
Huntley: No, I don't think so.
Warren: Was retiring difficult?
Huntley: Well, yeah, sure. Sure, it was, but it was the right thing for me to do. I thought so
then and I think so now. I was still a young man, I thought, when I retired, but your level of
enthusiasm for a job of that kind is hard to sustain for an indefinite time period, and needs to be
there every day if you' re going to do it right. It's an unusual job. Not the hardest job in the
world, I don't think. It's not as hard as a lot ofjobs I can think of It's certainly not an
unpleasant job. You certainly work with the finest and best-intentioned people. But it required
that you maintain a sense of mission and enthusiasm daily, with lots of constituencies. And
that's just not something you can do forever. When you've become aware ofthe fact that
you 're not doing that, then you'd better quit before anybody else becomes aware of it. And
that's what I tried to do.

         John Wilson will put that much more eloquently than I did. I bet you he would echo a
similar thought, because he was president at the time, twelve years, clearly a very popular man,
at the height, the ascendancy, of his popularity. So why did he quit? I'm not asking you to

                                                                                                                       49
answer that; I'm asking rhetorically. My guess would be for something like the same reason
that I just stated, although I'd say more eloquently put then I did. Elrod will reach that stage,
too, but not, I hope, for a very long time.
Warren: He t eems pretty happy with himself
Huntley: Well, he is, but you see, you can see the enthusiasm he brings to the mission, and
that's what you've got to have. If you can, as president, find it possible to step out at the very
moment when someone like Elrod, or in my case, like Wilson, can succeed to a happy situation,
if you can leave a happy situation for a successor who can bring a new level of enthusiasm to the
job, then you've done the ideal thing. I feel like I did that, and I think Wilson did, too.
Warren: I think Washington and Lee is very fortunate in its presidents.
Huntley: They're lucky. Lucky to get them when they got them. It's possible that I was the
right person to do the job at the time I became president. Certainly Wilson was at the time he
became president. I think Elrod is. It's also possible that none of the three ofus would've been
very good if switched around into other slots in that three-decade period. It's entirely possible
that any one of the three ofus would've either failed or been less successful if we'd switched
roles, which is back to my guardian angel theory, that Washington and Lee's always had a
guardian angel that bails it out whenever it gets in trouble.
Warren: Thank you so much.
Huntley: You're welcome. You're welcome.
Warren: This has been an honor and a privilege.
[End of interview]

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