Lawrence interview

[Begin Tape 1, Side 2]
Lawrence: This was a first, you know. Actually, I'd had some confrontations in relation
to CORE and I've had a few confrontations with people in the street, but I never, before
or after, dealt with mob issues than I had here, and this was less so, but a little bit. This
group of people was actually ready to have some other idea, and they weren't really
into this. They were a little bit worked up, but not to the point that I felt any concern or
fear for myself or anybody else, but it just was a bad idea. I feared if they got up there
to Virginia, who knew what would happen.

         So actually I had this great sense of being Jack J____. Now that I live in
Charlottesville, I know who he is, but I didn't then. I knew of Paul Revere. That this
was certainly going to be in Lexington the next day. You'll just have to figure out when
he spoke. I can't tell you when it was. I just can't. I can't believe they could have gotten
us that worked out if Kent State hadn't already happened. So I think it had already
happened like the day before, although the speech had been scheduled for a long time.
Warren: Kent State happened because of the invasion of Cambodia.
Lawrence: I know.
Warren: So that was why Kent State was so worked up. So everybody was worked up.
Lawrence: I know they were. But then what happened at Kent State worked us up
even more. I think we got worked up by Kent State more than Cambodia, but I'm not
certain. I know that there had been some things at Virginia earlier that spring, like out
on the lawn with foaming stuff, and Virginia had a higher presence of this anti-war stuff
than Washington and Lee did.
Warren: We're doing this for posterity. Let's explain what Kent State means.

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Lawrence: Kent State is that four students were shot dead by the National Guard. It
meant that somebody actually fired on students. From the standpoint of the student
perspective, it was beyond the pale that they had killed students, that "they," meaning
the government, had actually killed students who were basically just protesting because
of this crime of expanding the war into Cambodia. I think that the students felt at Kent
State, and we felt, that even the people who were sort of just on the fringe—and I would
describe myself as being opposed to the war, but not adamantly, and maybe as a
function of not being drafted, although I don't know. Somebody will have to figure out
what role that plays. But I'm more of a moderate. I'm not a radical. Radicalism I've
never really been very fond of. I'm a rational person.

         But anyway, I was opposed to the war, I thought it was a bad idea, I thought we
shouldn't be there. I was not pro-Communist, nor was I even a socialist, and I suppose
there were some people who were opposed to the war because they basically thought
that the North Vietnamese system offered more hope to the country than capitalism
did, or than those people, those robber barons that ran South Vietnam. But mine was
more, it was a bad war, it was a bad idea. People were dying for basically no really
good reason.
Warren: Did you have a sense that there were people who were that radical at
Washington and Lee?
Lawrence: Some, yeah. I think probably the first group was. They may well have
identified themselves as Communists or socialists. Certainly socialists. My guess is that
that small group really would have identified—Jeff Gingold would probably call
himself a socialist, even though he had been a Republican once and I think he's
Republican again. So I think there were some that they would have said that they were.

         So the Cambodian thing was an expansion of the war, it just seemed, and it
seemed to fly in the face of what the students were saying, mostly, "This is a bad war."
So not only was it an expansion of the war, but it was a kick in our face, as was the

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shooting of students. It had become very personal at that point, and it kept being a
factor in what happened, I think. It was disrespectful of us, and, of course, we thought
that we knew what we were doing, and we did.

         So anyway, so Kent State occurred and we had this sort of extra impetus coming from
Charlottesville. I was so much in the middle of that, I don't know that I helped create the
problem as opposed to solve the problem, but my belief was that the kids who had been at that
speech were excited enough that they would have a dramatic effect in Lexington.

         I felt strongly enough about it that when I got back to Lexington, I actually went to see
Bob Huntley, and I believe that that meeting at two o'clock in the morning involved "Swede"
Hendberg, Bob Huntley, myself, and Staman Ogilvie said he was there, and I think he probably
was. He was the student body senior Executive Committee member-elect, and he'd been on
student government the whole time. He's in the class of '71. He was back for reunion.

         I said at this meeting that I felt like it was my belief that there would be increasing—that
we had to deal with the issue, that the student body was going to become increasingly concerned
about what was happening, and I felt like these students who were listening to this speech were
gravely concerned about the situation, meaning the war. Kent State had happened by then, and
the expansion of the war into Cambodia. And we needed a response to that.

         My belief is that I did that out of a sense that they had a right to be heard. I may have
just been a rat. I mean, I may have been just ratting out, you know. I always was a little
uncomfortable with my position. I was in support of the students, but also I felt like I had some
responsibility as an elected official or as a to-be elected official, so I guess I viewed myself as a
facilitator to what needed to happen, but I didn't want it to get out of control. That was an
uncomfortable position to be in, I think.

         Nonetheless, somehow we had a plan to actually open up the next morning a student
forum, a kind of free-wheeling student forum that was not associated with either the student
leadership or the university leadership. I don't know whether we decided on that that night or
whether it came the next morning, but Gates Shaw was a fifth-year student there then, he

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decided he wanted to go into something different, so he came a fifth year to take English courses,
I believe. He was from Alabama, and his father was an industrialist in Birmingham or
Tuscaloosa or something. He was well thought of. He was thought of as being kind of a—he'd
been a conservative southern boy. He would become more liberalized and more radical, and kind
of had long hair, and everybody liked him.

         So he installed himself, or we installed him, in the Student Center, which was
then called the Cockpit, like at ten o'clock the next morning, and somehow with an
open forum on the situation, and people went in there in tens and twenties and thirties
and fifties and sixties, and met for twelve hours. I can't tell you how they got there or
who told them to go there or whether there were signs or whether it was word of
mouth. I can't remember whether they ended up being a steering committee or
whether it was banged out among this sort of open town hall participatory democracy
or whatever you want to call it.

         That same night—I think this is what happened, that same night there was a
faculty meeting. This was the day after Jerry Rubin, so Kent State had happened. It
happened either the day of Jerry Rubin or the day before that, because it wouldn't have
moved that fast. So the faculty met from seven to eleven o'clock on that night. Bob
Huntley knows about that meeting. Bob Murray, Murph, the university proctor, knows
about it, because he actually—and I think, although I'm wrong, I think that they did this
deal on the faculty. The faculty was still mixed, had those liberal people in it, but had
conservatives, and they were damned if they were going to let the students tell them
what to do.

         Bob Huntley felt very strongly that they needed to permit the students to withdraw, take
an incomplete, go to Washington, do whatever they wanted to do, express their concern about the
grave situation in the country, and that's what Jeff Gingold, as a representative of the left, had
said he wanted to have—the ability to leave school and not have it penalized.

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         So this meeting lasted for at least four hours, and I remember coming into it with
"Swede" Henberg and making some brief remarks to the faculty. I can't remember what
I said. I remember—I swear I remember, or maybe it's my imagination—that Murph
came in at some point and called Huntley out, and showed him a gun. All right? This
is just one of those asides. It's like it will never be proven or not proven unless Murph
remembers it. I think he found the gun somewhere, and I always thought that he had
showed it to Bob in a not-too-subtle way, so that some of the faculty got a flash on it.

         Anyway, Bob got the vote. You'll just have to ask. I don't know where I came
with that. It's just fixed in my memory. And it worked. It probably wasn't intentional,
but Bob really wanted the faculty to go along with this closing. He felt it was important
he was right. I mean, he basically did a masterful job of getting the students out
without closing the place down, and he got favorable editorials and all. They had
banged Edgar Shannon, who was the president of Virginia, because he caved in to the
students.

         Anyway, so what happened was the faculty voted to let you withdraw. I've got
the statement in the materials, and so does Frank Parsons. If he can't find them, I can
find them, that talks about it. A letter was sent to all the parents. That's in the stuff, too,
saying, "Here's what we're doing." A couple of letters were sent home.

         So unfortunately, about the same time, the Cockpit participatory democracy, led
by Gates Shaw, came up with a resolution that basically closed the school down. It
closed the school down, but it was, "If you want to go to school, you can still go to
school," which meant the school was closed down, but it went on. So if you wanted to
go—because the second part of it was a compromise. It was like some of these things
they're doing in Washington now, you know. To make it more palitable, we had to
close the school down, because that was the only way to make a statement from
Washington and Lee. It would make a difference in a conservative school like
Washington and Lee could close down in protest to the policy of the United States

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Government, and anything less than closing down wouldn't make a statement. But we
didn't want to take the kids that didn't care away from class, so we're going to have
them go to class at the same time.
Warren: So where was the faculty in all this? Did the faculty continue to go into the
classrooms in case students wanted to come?
Lawrence: No, no, that never happened. The faculty voted at eleven o'clock to do the
"You can leave school," and that's all they ever did. The same evening, the students
came up with the "Let's close it down." All right?

         That participatory proposal became a ballot that was held either the next day or
the next day. Okay? And so we voted. We had a forum outside in front of Lee Chapel,
I think, to debate—I think there were two forums. One of them was to debate the issue
of shutting down or not, and open microphone. I remember I did some remarks, other
people did remarks, and we had this. Okay? And it voted 99 percent to close it down.
I mean, who wouldn't vote for that, right?

         So my sense was that the campus was becoming a little more—the clothing was
changing a little bit, but it hadn't dramatically changed, because the real event was that
this went to the faculty, the faculty met that night, or whatever, sequentially, the same
meeting again, and they just reaffirmed. They did not vote to close the university
down; they just reaffirmed the thing they had already done, which was, "You can drop
out of students and take an incomplete, take your exams next September."

         That result came at about, I'm going to say, 7:30 or 8:00 at night. It must have
been a late evening faculty meeting. By 9:30 at night, there were 600 to 700 students in
Evans Dining Hall, better than half the student body, maybe even, seven-twelfths of the
student body. I mean, lined up, full. Full.

         Gates Shaw was there; I was there; "Swede" Henberg might have been there;
Staman Ogilvie was there. I don't guess "Swede" was there. "Swede" actually was
uncomfortable with playing a high-profile role. He was actually [unclear]. He was the

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active student body president. He kind of kept a lower profile. Staman Ogilvie and I
were higher profile with this, Staman because he was interesting, as always.

         Staman was very conservative, but he had got in the middle of this and handled
himself well. Actually, he was interested and he was concerned about it. He
radicalized. He didn't like the war. He'd be an interesting person to talk to, because
there wasn't a liberal bone in his body then or now, but he still was active in the student
stuff there, and I'd be interested to know why. He may tell you.

         So anyway, that was the second time. That was probably the scariest thing of the
whole thing. Gates couldn't get them. Staman talked to them, Gates talked to them,
and finally, actually—and I'm tooting my own horn here, but I guess maybe my
memory's contorted, but I actually remember thinking of a scheme. When I say
"scheme," I mean a device that would keep this from becoming a nightmare. What they
wanted to do was they wanted to hit the campus, take over buildings, do something,
and I think somebody—I believe I talked to Bob Huntley, somebody, and there were
rumors of people coming. By then the rumor mill was working, and there were rumors
about state troopers, that there was 150 state troopers at the motel down the road, and
Lexington police officers and Rockbridge County sheriffs. We thought if the students
were on the campus that night, there would be somebody killed, and that was a realistic
thought, because somebody had been killed at Kent State. Murph may have said to
some of us this.

         But anyway, so I gave a speech that said, "We don't need to do this now. We can get
them in their pocketbook. We can strike, too, so what we'll do is we won't register." It was
registration for classes. "We'll bring the students to its knees by not registering for classes, not
paying the fees for next year," two or three different things that seemed like a plan. That was
enough of a plan that people found it acceptable, and it dissipated. Everybody went home.

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         The other thing was that, "Tomorrow morning, starting at nine o'clock, we're going to
have open microphone on campus and take whatever needs to be done." So nobody did take over
the campus. Everybody went home.

         Then the next morning—but mad. This night, these people, that was the
radicalization. There were pre-med students there, there were business students there,
who were furious that the faculty had, basically in a two-hour meeting or an evening,
just said, "You guys are all full of crap. You're all full of crap. We're not going to do
that. It's crazy. We have no respect for you." They had no respect for our judgment.
They had no respect for what we had worked so hard to do, what we had voted
overwhelmingly.

         So it was a students' rights issue and a respect issue. That was the instant bell-
bottom trousers. That twenty-four-hour period was a complete change in the
appearance of the Washington and Lee campus, as I remember it, and the people that
were in the Evans Dining Room were so surprising in terms of where they had been. If
you polled probably, three hundred of them had been radicalized by the faculty's
action, by the vote, by the mature student process of open forum and adoption of
resolution, by consensus, by putting on the docket, by voting in an orderly and lawful
manner, and respectfully for delivering it to the faculty and having them go [spits].
That just blew these people out.

         So it was amazing, and that was the clothing change. The whole campus, within two or
three days after that, looked entirely different. I mean, nobody would think of wearing coat and
tie. If you wore a coat and tie after that night, you made a huge statement: you were saying, "I
want nothing to do with you other 60, 70, 80 percent of the university, or 90 percent of the
university." I mean, most people would either duck it, so if you wore a coat and tie—the ones
who wore coats and ties were the ones who became the monographers or the monolithers on the
right, and there were some of those who wrote, and some of those are in the materials, too, who

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wrote the other view. There were some people who made a point of wearing a coat and tie, but
there were very few.

         So the next day, we were all set up on the front lawn at ten o'clock, and the microphone
was open. This was the analogy to the French Revolution, is that the experience of the people, the
leaders who had carried the student body to that point—and I was identified as one of those—we
might as well have been dead. In other words, all the leadership—Gates Shaw, myself, "Swede"
to some extent—although "Swede" had stayed away from it—Staman Ogilvie—who were
perceived as leading student government into this vote, and who had been crushed by the vote, it
was like we were dead.

         In the French Revolution, of course, they would have guillotined us. I was
studying the French Revolution at the time. I remember it was a wonderful analogy of
events outstripping themselves, and radicalization, and Lafayette, who was kind of a
moderate leader, you know. They didn't kill him, by they went right by him, and the
next level, they killed them. So we were executed, we were guillotined that morning.
You could see it.

         But nonetheless, we spoke, and I remember saying something, that, "We can't
close the student—" By then Huntley and I had met again, and Huntley called me over,
as only he could do, and we had more meetings. He, in the clearest possible terms, said
that if Washington and Lee closed down, it would never reopen, which is probably a
little overstated. [Laughter] But what did I know? Even though it was another year, I
was twenty-two instead of twenty-one, I was still—and I believed that we could not do
anything else that would be helpful. But he certainly helped me come to the conclusion,
although I'm not sure I had any influence at all at this point, probably didn't.

         So I said, in essence, "We can't close the place down," sort of acknowledging that
that may be Judas-like.

         "Swede" said something. Actually, somebody told me last week that we went
and got Bob Huntley, and I think Jeff Spence said this. I don't remember that, but

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maybe we did. And went over there. He said he remembered going over to see Bob
Huntley and saying, "You need to come speak to the students," and some safety issues,
and we assured him he was safe. You'll have to ask him about that. He did speak to
them, whether he was scheduled to speak or whether we went and got him. He came
and spoke and gave a very good speech, although I'm not sure they listened to him
much either. Actually, Jeff Gingold probably, as much as anybody.

         So now we've got the open microphone. Okay. We guillotined the leaders.
Huntley's done the best he can, but even though he's young, he's way older than us. At
that point, the 700 people along were ripe for the picking, probably. Then C. Turner,
who was this funny funky guy, read a poem, because he was all worried about he could
feel violence in the air, and he read a poem on "Let’s not be violent. Love your
neighbor," and all.

         Then Jeff Gingold said—and he's a wonderful speaker, still is, was then, is now—
he got to the microphone and he could have [growls], and instead, he said, "Eh, we got
ours. What are you guys bitching about? If you care, get in your cars, withdraw from
school, and let's go to Washington. And if you don't care, go back to classes. But what
else do you need? Goodbye. I'm going to Washington."

         And that was pretty much the end of it. The Free University was in place. A
number of students took incomplete. I did, just because I felt like I needed to do that. I
didn't go to Washington, but I got involved in the Free University, and we were the
Strike headquarters for the South, and there were telephone calls back and forth, and
there was a newsletter published almost every day. I'll get all this for you.

         The Free University had a schedule, and everybody had meetings, and we can
see the subjects of them. I remember going to a Free University meeting of a guy from
Cambodia who explained how disastrous the invasion was to his country, it basically
was the beginning of the whole "Killing Fields" thing. It broke up the—they had this

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kind of tenuous relationship amongst the various political groups there, and it blew it
all up. Whether it's true or not, I don't know.

         Staman Ogilvie reminded me, within a week or so, we were out at Twin Falls. A
number of student leaders just happened to "coincidentally" be out there, drinking beer
and laying in the sun. But some people left, some went to Washington. A lot of people
got involved with the Free University. As I said, the campus looked entirely different
from then, in May, until—I mean, it wasn't that much longer, three more weeks of class,
two more weeks of class.
Warren: Let me ask you a couple of wrap-up questions. Did reunions happen during
all this?
Lawrence: Yes, reunions happened right in the middle of it.
Warren: Tell me about that.
Lawrence: I remember them being there, and I remember engaging a number of them
in discussion. There may have been a panel of some kind. I don't remember more than
that. I remember it was interesting. Some were pissed about it, but some were actually
kind of interested in it.
Warren: To jump ahead, you just have had the twenty-fifth anniversary of this whole
event.
Lawrence: Right.
Warren: Those people who were there who had their twenty-fifth anniversary, were
now back for their fiftieth anniversary. At the event that happened last year, was there
any interchange?
Lawrence: No, no. I hadn't thought of that. I hadn't thought of that. I remember some
small discussion of it. You know, there's probably tapes of that.
Warren: Yes, I've listened to them.
Lawrence: I don't remember. I remember it was interesting that they were there, and I
can't tell you which day they were there. You'd have to look at the materials to put that

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together. If you want to do a follow-up, you can. I remember having some talks with
them. There may have been some institutionalized things going on. I think it was after
the heat. In other words, it was after this day I described to you, where the open
microphone was sort of the end of it. So it must have been that next weekend. This
may have been Wednesday or Thursday. Things were still popping.
Warren: I bet the Alumni Office was loving what you were doing. [Laughter]
Lawrence: Yeah.
Warren: Then the ultimate follow-up question is, what happened the next fall? How
did the year end, and then what happened?
Lawrence: The next fall, it drizzled out. Free University went to the end of the year.
The people returned in the fall. It was not a remarkable—I was student government
president. We created the University Council then, and we created two organizations,
one that lasted until like two years ago, the University Council of Students, which took
away the power from Student Affairs Committee and put it into a bigger group of
students and faculty. So there was some changes in student participation at
government level. We actually had a constitutional convention and adopted a
resolution for a new form of government, with a Senate and all, which was voted down.
So we had a constitutional convention to actually replace the Executive Committee, and
the student body voted it down, probably correctly, because it was too unwieldy.

         The University Council was actually formed to become more powerful than the
Student Affairs Committee, which had been eight or nine faculty members and two
students. The University Council was equally students and faculty.

         The dress code, the campus continued to be diverse, more diverse in appearance.
The dress code continued into the next year, for the most part.
Warren: Did the Assimilation Committee just die?
Lawrence: Gone, gone. It had been gone. It had been gone since '66–’67. It had been
gone that whole time.

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         You can look at a yearbook, if you look at the yearbook for that year. Lawrence
McConnell—my picture as president of the student body is in a chair with a cigarette,
the most horrible picture, hanging out of my mouth, and Lawrence McConnell, who's
now the editor of the newspaper here in town, actually took the picture. He was a
conservative and I was a liberal, although we were friendly, but he'd kind of get at me
and I'd get at him in a playful way. Anyway, he showed me the picture. He said, "I
need your permission, because this is such a bad picture, to run this as the student body
president picture." Of course, I felt like it was perfect to do that, because I was still into
this kind of needed to change things. So anyway, you look at the picture of me in that
yearbook, and I wish now, twenty-five years later, that it was a better picture.
[Laughter]
Warren: Is he a source of photographs of this time period?
Lawrence: I guess he should be. But wouldn't they be in the yearbook?
Warren: Yearbook doesn't help me; I need original prints.
Lawrence: He might be. He was editor of the yearbook. Lawrence McConnell. He's
now the publisher of the Daily Progress.

         And the student government was even, to a man, it was more liberal than it had
ever been before, even though many of them were elected as conservatives. So we tried
to expand student participation. That was key. And in loco parentis was rolled back.
The faculty was also given more liberal rules. I can't tell you what they were, but that
was changing all the time. There were no notable events that I can recall. It was
certainly a more open community, I thought.

         The issue of fraternity membership or not became increasingly irrelevant, both
ways. In other words, you could be in one or not be in one. There was a time when
being in one was a statement that you didn't believe in back to the New Left and the
Paramount. You couldn't eat at the Paramount if you still were active in a fraternity.
That was my sense. It was more open.

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         It was a good year. My memory is it was a great year in terms of comfortable.
Now, maybe the conservative students felt that they were getting banged on that year,
but certainly those of us who felt like we had been more liberal felt more welcome than
we ever had before.
Warren: I know you need to run. I could keep talking to you for another hour or two.
Lawrence: If you have follow-ups or whatever, I'd be glad to do them. I'm sorry. This
changed my schedule, and I thought I was going to be already set an hour.
Warren: After I go back and listen to this, I may call you to try to schedule another one.
Lawrence: Please. And find those materials. If you don't have them, I'll get them for
you. Because actually I spanned—then I stayed, but I didn't really stay in touch. I got
married in '72. I left school to be a carpenter. So that tells you how much—when I
graduated, I went to Wyoming to be a carpenter. It seemed perfectly normal.
Warren: You and a lot of other W&L grads. [Laughter]
Lawrence: I know. I know. So anyway, I stayed in town more and more. There were
lots of changes.
Warren: You came back for law school, though?
Lawrence: Yes.
Warren: All right. I'll be back.
Lawrence: Okay. So I was there from 1965 to '75, and actually my great compliment, I
got a little bit of an ovation from buildings and grounds when I graduated as a law
student, and I was carried in the Lexington News—Gazette, as a local.

         The other funny thing that happened when I was a senior in law school, my wife
and I were at a local 7-11 store and I was buying some beer and I got carded. The
woman, who looked to me to be in her mid-forties, I gave her my ID and she said, "Fran
Lawrence. You can't be Fran Lawrence. I dated Fran Lawrence when I was a senior in
high school." So when I was a freshman in '65, she was a senior in high students, and

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this was now ten years later. She was twenty-eight and had worked hard and had three
or four kids, right, so she looked much older than I did.
Warren: And you're still fooling around being a student. [Laughter]
Lawrence: That's right. [Laughter]
Warren: Thank you, Fran.
Lawrence: You're welcome.
[End of interview]

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