• RUPERT LATTURE September 27, 1982 Prof. Charles Turner, interviewer TURNER: Mr. Latture, we would like to ask you a bunch of early life and just where you were born and something about your early experience before you came to Washington and Lee. LATTURE: Well, I was born in Sullivan County, Tennessee, which is about sixteen miles from Bristol, Tennessee. I was there until about fourteen, fifteen years old. I finished the fifth grade. I finished the fifth grade in this school that I attended, and that was all the school there was. There wasn't any more for me to go to. So I worked that winter, that year, driving a four-horse team hauling lumber from the area where we lived to the station at Piney Flats, Tennessee, and I drove four horses all winter long, hauling lumber. The next year, my father and mother moved to Bristol, Tennessee, so we could go to school. There were six children in the family and they wanted us to get more schooling than I was able to get where we lived. So we moved to Bristol, Tennessee, and I attended school there until I finished high school. I went in and took-the two halves of the sixth grade were in the same. room, so I took both the A and B section and finished the sixth grade in one term. The next year, the seventh and eighth grade were in the same room, and I took both of them to kind of catch up. So I finished the high school, however, and then the question was about going to college. I thought I was going to the University of Tennessee, because I didn't think I could afford Washington and Lee, as it was at that time, because tuition was $85 a 1 year, and I didn't have that much money to spare. So at any rate, during the summer, the principal of our school, William E. Anderson II, the nephew of William E. Anderson who was well known in Lexington, and was attorney general at one time of the state of Virginia. Mr. Anderson went to visit his uncle in Lexington. While he was here, he saw Dr. George H. Denny !.ph-Orl,e ·c, who was president of Washington and Lee, and they must have got in a conversation about possible students, and Dr. Denny told Mr. Anderson to tell me to come on up to Washington and Lee and he'd see that I got along all right here, which he meant by that, I think, that he would see that I got some financial aid or something of the sort. At any rate, I decided to come to Washington and Lee then, although I'd already reserved a room at the University of Tennessee. I came here in 1911. Dr. Denny was president, and while he told me he'd look after me, he left Washington and Lee at the end of the year and went to the University of Alabama as president. We know that he'd started the big football teams down there that's still rolling. Dr. Denny was much interested in football, so that he had even the year I came in, we had several good football players came into the school. We had a very good record of football in those days when our teams could play on an even keel with VPI and University of Virginia and North Carolina and North Carolina State, teams like that. At any rate, I came to Lexington with a friend of mine from Bristol. We'd graduated together, and he came along with me to Lexington. We roomed together, slept in the same bed for four years at a boarding house where we had our room and took our meals. TURNER: What boarding house was this? LATTURE: This was George Deaver's boarding house, which was across the street from the old Stonewall Jackson House. 2 Well, I did get some financial aid from home for two years, and after that I had to go on my own, because there were other children coming along, and my father was in the postal service and got a fair amount of salary, so that he couldn't help me after my second year, which I continued. A very surprising thing happened to me. I came back to college my junior year and I had $75 to see me through the year. When I got to my room, I found a note from Dr. Easter ho etic], who was head of the French Department, saying that he'd like to see me as soon as I could get out to his house on Jefferson Street. So I went out to see Dr. Easter and wondered what in the world he wanted to see me about. He told me that Dean Cameron [phonetic] was ill and that he'd been asked to serve as dean of the college that year, and he wanted me take a section of elementary French to teach. That, of course, was a big surprise and meant a lot to me financially, because it paid $250 for teaching the section for a year. So at any rate, that helped me meet my expenses. Well, I didn't take much part in athletics, although in the class, in football and basketball, I did participate. Actually, the senior year, I was captain of the 1915 basketball team on the campus, and we won the cha~p).pnship of the school for the Row0o-> four academic classes and the two law classes. I rode on the boat crew for two years, -.J\ (:)0SUY actually three years, because the first year I was on the second crew, and then I ~- (2.. on the first crew two years. We won one year and we lost one year. That, I suppose, is fair enough to break even. An odd thing also is that Dr. Franklin Riley came. In my senior year, I had a class with him in history-Greek and Roman history. Then the next year when I was here to get my master's degree, Dr. Riley asked me to teach the course which I had had the year before, which shows you the kind of standing they had back in those days. So I was teaching two sections of French and one section of history, 3 which meant that I was comfortably fixed as far as eating and paying my room and board concerned. So I had that experience. TURNER: Who was the fellow that roomed with you? LATTURE: Samuel G. Keller from Bristol, Tennessee. His father ran a saloon. He was a saloon keeper, as they said, but I recall particularly the fact that Sam's father cautioned him about drinking. He was a saloon keeper, but he knew the evils of drink, and so his son, Sam, never took a drink at Washington and Lee, as far as I know. We got along without any liquor in our room. Of course, the teachers I had that year were quite revealing, I think. The fact that I had English under a man who was here, Amos Lee Harold, was working for his master's degree and he taught a section of freshman English. Mr. Dalette [phonetic] taught the elementary French course. He was in the law school. He had worked with Dr. Easter at Randolph-Macon before he came to Washington and Lee. I had mathematics under a man by the name of Handliss [phonetic], Herbert Handliss, who was a law student and also a good basketball player. I had math with him, and had history with a man from down in Norfolk; I forgot his name now. I can think of it directly, maybe. But at any rate, four of my classes were with student instructors. One class that I had with Dr. Letton [phonetic], who was well known in history, and the next year after I had worked with him, he went to Johns Hopkins as dean of the graduate school at Johns Hopkins. But that is something that doesn't happen anymore at Washington and Lee, to have a lot of student instructors. You can understand that when you say what I've already said, that tuition was $85 a year and a good many students had $50 scholarships. A very interesting story involving "Captain Dick" Smith, who was well known on the campus for many years as the director of, well, I guess they call them graduate manager of athletics. I heard Captain Dick tell this story, which I think 4 may be probably to say here. Captain Dick came here from Fishburn Military Academy over at Waynesboro. He didn't have any money. He was a good baseball player. When he went through the line to register, he went to the treasurer's office. John L. Campbell, who was treasurer, said, "You don't have enough money to pay." Captain Dick-he wasn't called Captain then, but called that later-he thought he had two scholarships, $50 each. The school gave a $50 scholarship to a student from a high school or preparatory school who had the best grades of those who applied to Washington and Lee. Well, at any rate, Captain Dick had that scholarship from Fishburn, and he thought he had another one from Dr. Denny himself. Mr. Campbell told him that only one scholarship could be honored; he couldn't have two scholarships. So Captain Dick said he'd have to leave school, and he started to leave, packed up his things, and students gathered around to do something about it because he was a good baseball player. People took baseball pretty seriously in those days. So the students went up to see Dr. Denny and told him the story. Dr. Denny said for Captain Dick to come up and see him, and he did, and he told him his story. Dr. Denny said, "Why didn't you tell me you didn't have any money?" Well, he thought he had two scholarships which were each $50 and would put him through as far as tuition was concerned. Well, finally, Dr. Denny wrote him out a note for another scholarship so that he as able to stay. So Captain Dick went over on Randolph Street and found a room that he could rent for $5 a month. It had a double bed in it. So he came back up the street and met a student who was looking for a place to room. Captain Dick said, "Will you room with me for $5 a month?" That's what he was paying for his room. So this boy said he'd pay $5 a month, so the two of them slept together and spent the year that way. 5 Then he came up to the town again. There was a restaurant where ~t~ A LV W-- Dennis -fphonetrc store is now, and he went in to see the proprietor of the restaurant and told him that he would like to do something to earn his meals. So the man told him, "You see that table over there? That table will seat eight people. If you get seven more boys to buy their meal tickets here and eat there, I'll give you your meals." So Captain Dick went out and got students to take their meals there at this restaurant. [Laughter] So that was the way people did back in those days to get along and meet their requirements. At any rate, I myself was interested in a good many things in college. I was very active in the YMCA, was president by my senior year of the YMCA, which was pretty active in those days. I was interested in the literary society. I won a [unclear] Medal in the Graham-Lees Literary Society. I went out in the country and served as superintendent of a Sunday school out at Poplar Hill ·, to pass away my Sunday afternoons, and there were several activities of one sort or another that I took part in. Well, that probably leads me up to the matter of ODK [Omicron Delta Kappa]. f My senior year, I roomed with Carl Fisher phonetic], my best friend in college, and we got the idea of-started out with the thought of organizing the student assistants, the student instructors. That was the first idea. Then we changed that to selecting what we considered to be the leading students into an organization with some faculty members to deal with problems of students on the campus. So we started that in 1914-December 3, 1914-with a public announcement made of the organization, which consisted of twelve students, two faculty members, and the president of the university. Dr. Henry Louis Smith was president of the university. Dr. Easter was my special friend because he'd taken me in as an instructor in French. Fisher's best friend was Professor Humphreys in engineering. 6 Fisher was in the Engineering school, and we had an engineering school in those days. So we had Fisher's favorite professor and my favorite professor, and the president of the university, and the twelve students. Sad to say now that I'm the only one in this group of fifteen still living. I don't know how that happened or why it happened, but that's the way it is. Well, we got ODK started, and two of our alumni were at Johns Hopkins University doing graduate work, and we encouraged them to talk up ODK at Johns Hopkins, and that's the way we became the Beta chapter of the circle, we called it, ODK. I was on the debate team against the University of Pittsburgh, and was wearing an ODK key, and the Pittsburgh members of the debating team were curious about that ODK key. So the result of that ·was that they organized a circle of ODK at the University of Pittsburgh. That's the way the organization got started, and, of course, as you know pretty well, more than 180 schools have circles of ODK, which is an amazing thing. TURNER: Would you tell us something about the general purpose of ODK? LATTURE: Well, the purpose of ODK, so we said, was to honor students who exhibited exceptional leadership qualities on the campus, and for them to undertake to do anything they could to promote the best interests of the students on the campus, and to have faculty members participate so that there would be the best possible relations between students and faculty members on our campus. I think it has worked to some extent along that line, although it has changed a little, but very little, since we started it. It's remarkable. I guess one of the things that I should say with regard to my part was to design the key. The group wanted a symbol of some kind to represent the organization, so they asked people to make suggestions. Several suggestions were made as to keys and different forms of some emblems, but I happened to, when I was in philosophy 7 class, Dr. Howerton's [phonetic] philosophy class, I took a card out of my pocket and two coins of unequal size, and drew the circle and put the letters inside the circle, which is familiar on the campus now. But when they passed around the other suggestions on paper and nobody seemed to like any of them, so I gave this out, and the group felt that was the thing to do. So that was adopted as the symbol of ODK, and it hasn't been changed any since. It's remarkable that it should continue in just exactly the form in which it originated. TURNER: Where is its headquarters? LATTURE: Headquarters in Louisville, Kentucky, the University of Kentucky. They have a full-time secretary now. That's just about a year ago they decided they had to have a full-time secretary, because with 180-some circles to keep track of, they couldn't do that and hold another job. One of the first national secretaries was William Mosley Brown [phonetic], who did that on the side. Then Dr. Bishop was secretary for many years, a very fine man in every respect, a splendid man who was executive secretary for many years and did a splendid job, and we're greatly dedicated to him for the service which he rendered in that capacity. He's still living and he's retired now from active duty, but he still lives in Cincinnati and is a real good friend of mine. I'm very fond of Bob Bishop. TURNER: Would you tell us, you went into the service in the First World War. What time in your career was that? LATTURE: As I said a while ago, I was active in the YMCA here, and when the First World War came on, I was asked to serve in some capacity in the YMCA, the national YMCA. I went down to Fort McPherson in Georgia to the officers' training camp, thinking I might go into the camp itself, but I hadn't been there long when I had a call from somebody in Washington-at least the officer at Fort McPherson said that I had been called, somebody wanted to speak to me, and I got on the 8 telephone and they said they would like for me to go to France to be with the French Army, and would I be willing to do that. So I said, "Yes, I'll do it." So I went with the first group that went over in what they called the F__ de Soldats. We didn't know what we were going to do when we got over there. Actually, when General Pershing arrived in France in July of 1917, he marched with his contingent of American troops on the Champs d'Elysees, and soon discovered that the French morale was lower than people in this country realized. So they wanted to do something, and one of the things they did was to ask some Americans who could speak French to go along the front, being distributed among the French at the front, to counteract the German propaganda which was to be effected. People were being deceived by their leaders that America was not going to really help the war, and that what they should do is really throw down their arms and go home and look after their families-that sort of propaganda. But it was our business to explain to the French why America did not send over a big contingent of soldiers immediately after we declared war, because it took all of our soldiers we had to train the great number of civilians coming into the service. So that was the work of the F__ de Soldats. This was an organization which was-I never took any combat training, but I was at the front for a year in this service around the Verdun area. I probably was one of the youngest of the group went over. Most of the people who went were French teachers in the colleges. I was about the youngest, so they put me up front in the Verdun area, which was a very interesting place. Of course, you probably are aware of the fact that more people, I suppose, died in that war, in that battle, than in any other battle in history. The place was just torn to pieces, of course, with the bombing that went on for weeks. The Germans took Verdun during the war, the French retook it, and I went into the service just as the French recaptured Verdun. 9 There was an underground fort badly battered, and one of the things we did was to furnish a room something like this-they called it a casement [phonetic], with a table and with a phonograph and some books, and some writing paper. That's one of the things that we did to be able to mingle with the French. We'd gather around and, of course, they were interested in Americans, find out information about what was going on, what they could expect. So that was a very interesting experience I had there in Fort Dumas [phonetic]. I was at an artillery camp for two weeks, and then go up to Verdun for two weeks, because two weeks was as long as they thought anybody's health would stay in the underground fort. So that was my experience there. Then after the Americans got into the war, then that answered the question about what Americans were willing to do, so I went in the American Army and served as an interpreter then, and translated for the U.S. for another year. I was luck to get out, I suppose, without a scratch. TURNER: Then when did you return to Washington and Lee again? ' LATTURE: I came home in the end of the summer of 1919. I referred a wh~le ago to William Mosley Brown, who was one of the founders of ODK. Fisher and I had invited Brown to join us. He was the third member of the group to start with, and he had taken a position as the head of the Central Academy out in Patrick{p1lemefic] County, Virginia, and he had been offered later the principalship of the high school in Danville, his home town, and he wanted to take that, and they told him they'd relieve him at Central Academy if he'd find a replacement. I arrived in New York, and William was at Columbia University studying that summer when I got back, and he met me and offered me the job. I didn't have any job or any money, and I had a wife that I'd married on my way to France, married on Tuesday night, sailed on Saturday morning, and I was gone for two years. It was quite a honeymoon, I guess. 10 At any rate, I took the job at Central Academy. At the end during that year, John Graham, who was a member of our faculty, a very popular man on our faculty, was teaching French and Spanish, and he decided to go to Princeton to study for his graduate degree. So Dr. Easter wrote to me and asked me if I would come to fill in for John Graham for two years. So I did, and they never did get rid of me since. TURNER: Then when did you start teaching the courses in government and politics? LATTURE: Well, I taught in the French Department four years, and then I was doing graduate work in the summer at the University of Chicago. Then I moved over into political science. I had majored in political science as an undergraduate. TURNER: Would you tell us something about some of the interesting professors here? One in your department, I guess- LATTURE: Dr. Easter was a very interesting man. They called him "Cutey" Eastern. He was a very witty, clever, pleasant man to deal with, be had a strange of way of rating students by third or fourth decimal point sometimes. In class he would grade papers most meticulously. A student would ask, "Dr. Easter, how did I come out on that course?" He just chuckled and said, "Well, you almost passed that. You almost passed that, but not quite." [Laughter] He'd chuckle and tell him. Well, that was one of his characteristics. There are nicknames we had for our professors then. "Syssy" Stevens in physics, I had a course with Dr. Stevens, and they called him Syssy Stevens because he was so systematic. You can't imagine how meticulous and systematic he was in his requirements. And "Slouch" [unclear] was philosophy. On morning one of his colleagues-