Leitch interview

[Begin Tape 1, Side 2]
Leitch: -did back then at the corner of Sellers and-
Warren: Main Street?
Leitch: Main Street, yes. It's certainly kind of baroque rococo now. But we had this
huge party going on for these Texans, and he had staff in the kitchen, and Professor
Stevenson, as a matter of fact, was in the kitchen. He and Whitehead were big buds.
In fact, that was the first time I had met Stevenson was at that party. Southern
Comfort served as the waiters, and we would walk around with trays of champagne
and canapes and stuff like that, serving, and then periodically we'd put our trays
down, and we'd form up beside the piano, and we'd sing a few songs. Everybody'd
laugh and sing and clap, and then we'd go back to work, and we'd be waiters again
for a while.

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Warren: Oh, how charming. Oh, my God.
Leitch: It was fun. Apparently it worked.
Warren: The checks must have been flowing.
Leitch: Well, Whitehead seemed pretty happy. And we did that-Mrs. Gottwald
and her family. He was schmoozing her in the Reeves Center, actually had a dinner
for her in the Reeves Center. We were making fairly inappropriate jokes about we
even had to go to the Reeves Center and sing for Mrs. "Gotrocks," because
Whitehead was-I don't know, wanted to be nice to her. So we went over and we
sang, and it sort of culminated with this, she seated in a chair, and we're kind of
surrounding her in a semi-circle. I've seen a photograph at school of that
somewhere. I don't remember when, fairly recently. You ought to talk to Spice.
But we sang, "Let me call you sweetheart," to Mrs. Gottwald. Apparently, that was
successful, too.
Warren: So you were also in Southern Comfort.
Leitch: Yes, I sure was.
Warren: I love Southern Comfort. I just think they are great. Tell me about that.
Leitch: That was great. That was the group that really got to travel and go to alumni
functions. We pretty much did it ourselves. I mean, Spice was sort of the
benevolent overseer. He'd sit in on some rehearsals and, I think, just made sure
that things didn't get too inappropriate. But we basically did what we wanted.
Warren: So it's student-directed pretty much?
Leitch: Oh, yes, it was.
Warren: That's funny, it seems to be.
Leitch: Yes. Todd Jones was sort of the, I don't know, the brains behind the
organization-he was a year behind me-by just oozing with show, theatrical talent.
He selected a lot of the repertoire. We did a lot of choreography. None of us-Todd
said it once, and it's true-he said, "I don't have a formal dancing background, and

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I'm happy to say that it shows in our performances." It's really true. We did
"Officer Krupke" from "West Side Story," and we just used our bodies for
choreography, made desks and psychiatrist couches and lamps.

         The great thing for Comfort was going to the Greenbriar every Christmas, and
they still do it, too. I think we really tested them a few times we were there. But
what a gig. In exchange for singing one number at tea, at the end of tea, and for
singing for an hour and a half in the old White Club, we got to stay, and we got
breakfast and dinner. Just the modified American plan was ours just for singing
and bringing people in. What a gig. I mean, it still costs a fortune just in terms of
bar bills, but it was a lot of fun.

         We pushed them. We were fairly loud, there were complaints from time to
time with the parties that were going on in our rooms. We ran out of ice once, so
we stole the "G" ice sculpture that was out in front of the hotel, and put it in the
bathtub and chipped off pieces of that for our drinks. We were ice skating pretty
drunk, scaring the kids. But a lot of people came back just because we were there.

         One summer we went out to Indiana. Chris Schram lived out there. I drove
out with Anne Coulling, who was Dr. Coulling's daughter, who was dating Chris at
the time. We drove out, Todd came down, and we all went to Kings Island for a
day. There's this sort of haufbrau [phonetic] house, and the show going on, and we
had been drinking some beer, and we started heckling, and by the time we left that
day, we were on the little shuttle bus to the parking lot, we were in rare form.
Smurfs were really big back then at that time, and Todd told one kid on the bus that
Papa Smurf blew up. The kid was like, "Papa Smurf blew up!" The kid's father
looked at Todd and grinned and said, "You guys going to be back at the Greenbriar
this Christmas?" [Laughter] This guy knew who we were. It was scary. It was like,
"If you don't tell them about this episode, maybe. Sorry." We had great times, great
times in Southern Comfort.

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Warren: So could you be in Southern Comfort just because you wanted to be? Or
did you have to-
Leitch: No, you had to audition.
Warren: So obviously not all members of the Glee Club are in Southern Comfort.
Leitch: No, when I was there, and I don't know how-my impression is things may
have changed some, but there were three and one alternate on a part. So a total of
sixteen guys. So it was a fairly small-
Warren: As this part of your rehearsals, do you have to sit and watch Fred Astair
movies to get that casual elegance? How does that happen?
Leitch: That's a little too structured. No, that just sort of-it was a Zen kind of
thing. It just sort of happened.
Warren: Those guys just crack me up. The Christmas concert, I just sit there and
wait, "Come on, come on, come on," for them to come out.
Leitch: They sang at Todd's service, which I thought was really nice. They did "Java
Jive," which was an old standard that we had done, and they sang "Mountain Dew,"
which we did for the first time, I guess, when we were there. So it was nice. It was, I
think, really appropriate to have them perform at Todd's service.
Warren: How far back does Southern Comfort go? Was it in existence when you
arrived?
Leitch: Yes.
Warren: Because looking at yearbooks, there was something called the Serazacs?
Leitch: Sazeracs.
Warren: Sazeracs?
Leitch: Yes. Mish was in the Sazeracs, and Mish graduated in '76, so Southern
Comfort, like Athena, I think, just sprang full grown from somebody's forehead
somewhere in between. It was already in existence and, my impression is, had been
in existence for more than just a year when I got there.

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Warren: Because yearbooks are not real helpful after a point.
Leitch: No.
Warren: They're wonderful picture books, but they don't have a lot of information
in them after a while.
Leitch: Yes, I know. You can't trace much of a history from the Calyx, I don't think.
Warren: Up to a point you can. Up to a point they're very helpful, for older guys, I
just run to the Calyx, but you guys, other than getting a feel for the times, it's kind of
worthless. But I'm sure it's fun, still. How about Fancy Dress?
Leitch: How about Fancy Dress?
Warren: How about Fancy Dress?
Leitch: Well, you had to go. I mean, you had to go. Although the best time I ever
had at Fancy Dress was when my girlfriend and I had broken up just before it, and
my friend Eric Hindson [phonetic] and his date sort of fell through, so Eric and I
spent that Fancy Dress in my apartment. He was playing the guitar and we were just
kind of sitting around doing nothing. I know that's bad, but ...

         Fancy Dress was fun. Usually Lester Lannon and his orchestra was there.
You didn't want your date to wear anything long, though, because you'd be walking
around in beer usually about that deep once the evening wore on. But it was fun.

         Some of the dinners-we had a dinner, a bunch of us got together and cooked
a really good meal one night, I guess that was '83, before FD. A big part of it was the
whole weekend long. It was a huge deal for some people, and not as much of a deal
for others. I probably fell in the latter category, I guess. I don't know that my time
there was really the glory years of Fancy Dress. My impression is those were
probably earlier.
Warren: Well, I think it kind of comes and goes, but we're hoping in 1999 to go back
to full costume.
Leitch: Oh, that'd be great. And what an appropriate year to do that.

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Warren: Wouldn't that be cool?
Leitch: I might have to come back for that.
Warren: Oh, yes. We won't be able to move. I think everybody's going. I'm
inviting everybody, anyway. So were there any particular Fancy Dresses that you did
attend that stand out?
Leitch: The Diamond Jubilee. There was a seventy-fifth-I have posters from all of
them. They kind of blend together, which is perhaps more indicative of substance
abuse, I guess, than anything else. None stands out to me, anyway, as being a
quintessentially great thing. They all kind of blur for me. Cathy hated them. I took
her to one. Didn't like it, too loud, too much beer on the floor, can't move. So the
last one I went to was in '86.
Warren: You know, they don't serve beer at Fancy Dress anymore.
Leitch: No, I didn't know.
Warren: It's completely just sodas is all that's served at Fancy Dress.
Leitch: That's probably better.
Warren: Well, it was very civilized last year.
Leitch: Well, that's good. Yes, I guess with the age, it just gets so hard to try to
monitor your twenty-one-year-old.
Warren: Were you there in the time when the drinking age was eighteen?
Leitch: Oh, yes. You could buy beer when you're eighteen. That's why I'm as large
as I am now. I got to W&L and I weighed about 180 pounds. Those days are gone.
Warren: I have a friend who just graduated from W&L, and when he left, he was a
little on the heavy side. Well, I went and saw him when I was in Atlanta a couple
of months ago. He's like a whole different person.
Warren: Back to normal?
Leitch: Yes.

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Warren: But not to me. To me, his roundness was normal. I was like, "Richard,
what happened to you?"
Leitch: Well, you know, you can buy a six-pack of Budweiser and drink that, and
then a case of "Natty Bo" for about the same that you paid for the six-pack of Bud.
Once you've had a six-pack of Bud, National Bohemian doesn't taste all that bad.
You buy a lot of beer economically, and once you were eighteen you could do it. In
high school we used to-Covington's about seventeen miles away from White
Sulphur Springs in West Virginia. You could buy liquor in West Virginia at age
eighteen. It would give new meaning to the words, "Go West, young man," because
you'd have your eighteen-year-old seniors who'd drive to West Virginia and make
your purchases for you. Has nothing to do with Washington and Lee, but it's the
background that I came from.
Warren: So you've used the term-it's your term, not mine-substance abuse.
Leitch: Yes.
Warren: Looking back from your wizened old age now, what do you think about
the amount of alcohol that's consumed by these undergraduates?
Leitch: Well, I can't point at anybody and damn them, because I'm the biggest
sinner myself. I drank a lot of beer, a lot of alcohol. I don't know that it was
institutional. We got into huge trouble. I think it was my freshman year, and the
Glee Club went to Charleston, West Virginia, to perform for the alumni, and they
had just built a new recital hall or something we were singing in, and the AO
Wiffenpoofs, which were like the be-all, end-all kind of male college ensemble, had
just been there a few weeks before and had been absolutely top drawer and fabulous.
Then we went, and for some reason, don't know why, for some reason, they threw
the cocktail party-it's funny, I say the cocktail party like it was the obligatory
cocktail party. They threw a cocktail party for us before the concert, and Spice, I

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think, kind of saw the writing on the wall, and he said, "Okay, a two-drink limit.
Nobody drink any more than two drinks, because we've got to perform."

         I don't know that anybody drank just two drinks, and there were a number of
fairly inebriated singers, and the sound was not that good. The regular pianist could
not play one of the pieces that we were supposed to play. I had to play it. He
couldn't do it. Spice was furious. We were talking, but it's really funny, we were
talking about that after Todd's service, and we were talking about Spice and the one
time that virtually everybody could remember him as being visibly angry was that
time.

         But, yeah, there was a Jot of drinking going on. There was a lot of things
going on when I was there.
Warren: A lot of things?
Leitch: A lot of pot, cocaine. Cocaine got really big. Cocaine got big in the middle
eighties nationally, and it was coming on strong. But I mean, you're there
surrounded by a number of upper middle-class or upper-class, young white males
with a lot of disposable income. That was a breeding ground for that kind of stuff
anyway, I think. I was aware of it going on. I've smoked the occasional joint, I
suppose. I never got ambitious and did anything else other than that, but it was
certainly there and available if you wanted to.

         I hate to think, and I don't really think, that the university actively fostered
that kind of environment, but I think that kind of environment just sort of
naturally grew up there at the university. I don't think that either the
administration or the faculty or anybody was particularly permissive or lax or didn't
exhibit the proper kind of vigilance or concern, but just some things that are going
to develop in those kinds of settings, and that sure did.
Warren: Well, also it reflected what was going on in the rest of the world, too.

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Leitch: Yeah. I don't think you could expect W&L to be this little island, this
Brigadoon.
Warren: That's fine. A couple of people have described it as Brigadoon.
Leitch: In some ways it is. I think the Honor System kind of makes it a Brigadoon
of sorts, because you can really stop worrying a lot about those kinds of issues, about
cheating, about stealing, about dishonesty, and it still happens, but not to the degree
that it does in the real world. So in that sense, it kind of is, but in terms of some of
the sins of the flesh, I guess, that society as a whole was susceptible to, it's no
different than any other place, like you said.
Warren: One of the other uniquely Washington and Lee things, practically
uniquely, is Mock Convention.
Leitch: Yeah. Missed it.
Warren: You missed it?
Leitch: Missed it. Mock Convention was in 1984, and I was in Germany.
Warren: Well, you missed it. It occurs to me that it had to have been one of the
more boring Mock Conventions. It was all a foregone conclusion, I would think, in
1984.
Leitch: Pretty much. Yes. It was.
Warren: Who the sacrificial lamb was going to be.
Leitch: Oh, well. These things happen.
Warren: So you were in Germany.
Leitch: Yes. I did the spring term, spring semester abroad.
Warren: Of your senior year?
Leitch: Yes. Kind of silly.
Warren: That's extraordinary.
Leitch: Well, I don't know if it's extraordinary. I really wanted to do it. Glee Club
went on tour in Germany in 1982, in the winter of '82, and it was a profound

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experience for me. I had the best time. Really kind of became a Germanophile of
sorts at that point, and my friendship with Stevenson, too, had really, after I met
him at the Whitehead party, we got to be really good friends. In fact, my mother
kind of laughs that she got kind of jealous of Stevenson, because I used to go home
like once a month or so, and I stopped doing that. I just spent free time that I had
with him. Anyway, all of that sort of caused me to take German. I started taking
German junior year, and was good, modestly speaking. But you're good at the
things you love, I guess. So I really wanted to do the spring term in Germany, and
the only opportunity really to do that was my senior year. I decided I wanted to do
that more than just hang around and do the normal "seniorly" kinds of things, so I
went. I got back a couple of days before baccalaureate.
Warren: Oh, my gosh.
Leitch: Yeah. Twenty pounds heavier. No lie.
Warren: I believe it. I've been there.
Leitch: I've got the pictures to prove it.
Warren: I've been there. I know. It ain't "Natty Bo" over there.
Leitch: No. And I lived with a butcher, darn it. That was great. I got up at 5:30 with
his sons and went over to the shop and worked for the mornings. You'd work from
about 5:30 to 7:30, then you'd have coffee and cold cuts, or coffee and hard rolls or
something. Then noon you'd have the mid-day-they'd cook a fairly big meal, and
have a couple of beers. So begins my day, and I was off to the university for classes
in the afternoon.
Warren: After two beers. [Laughter]
Leitch: Yeah. And then frolicking in the evenings with my new German friends.
Warren: Well, Nick, you know what? We've been talking for at least an hour, and
we haven't mentioned the classroom at all.
Leitch: [Laughter] [unclear].

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Warren: Don't you think we ought to?
Leitch: Yeah. Let's pay lip service at least to what we were there for. What do you
want to know?
Warren: You've already mentioned Stevenson a lot.
Leitch: Oh, yeah.
Warren: He was a real important person.
Leitch: Yes, that really [unclear].
Warren: How was he in the classroom?
Leitch: He was great. My favorite Stevenson classroom story. He was explaining
German, different prepositions will take different cases, accusative, dative,
instrumental, that kind of stuff. He was explaining the German preposition "an,"
and it means if you would say that the picture hangs on the wall, you would use
that preposition. It doesn't mean "on" in terms of "the cup is sitting on the table,"
but you would use "on"-his line was-he had this nervous tic that he would,
when he was nervous, the ends of his sentences or words would be in kind of an
"uh" like that. It happened. I don't know why. But anyway, he was explaining
"an." He said, "Like a picture hangs up against, as in 'Up Against the Wall, Redneck
Mama'." [Laughter] I laughed so hard, I cried.

         He was a great teacher. He was just a great teacher. He taught me so much
about-he taught romance languages when he was there. He taught Russian. He
started the Concert Guild. He taught German, he taught art history. It was
incredible what he knew. He was married briefly in the seventies to a Swiss actress.
He married late. He was already, shoot, in the seventies, he was in his forties. And
the marriage lasted for only a few years, and then she moved back to Basel,
Switzerland.

         But you're right, classes, probably we should talk about them some. I started
out not really sure what I wanted to major in. I thought I should be practical, so I

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was taking classes in the C school, which I just loathed. Finally, I don't know how it
happened, but I started-English is what I loved, and just decided this is what I love,
and so what if it's not practical. I love it and that's what I'm going to do. So I
switched my major from politics to-how practical can you be?-to English and
things. Took a decidedly happier turn at that point.

         Survived calculus. Professor Vinson struggled valiantly to get me through
calculus. Did you ever hear the story about him? It was before my time. I don't
know-
Warren: I don't even know the name.
Leitch: Tom Vinson, V-I-N-S-0-N.
Warren: No.
Leitch: He's still there. I don't know if it's apocryphal or not, but he used to-
classes were in Robinson Hall, and his classroom was on the first floor, and after
class, to avoid the crush in the hallways-he usually had a tennis match in the
afternoon, so he'd go over and just hop out the window and run on to his tennis
match. Well, one year they moved his class to the second floor. I don't know if it's
true or not. I've heard that story. You probably ought to ask him. But I heard that
he did it. So I don't know. It would have been seventies-I guess late seventies
sometime when that happened.
Warren: I haven't heard that. [Laughter]
Leitch: He's wacky. The first five minutes of every class with Tom Vinson, he
would discuss that day's Gil Thorp comic strip. It was a big thing. We'd talk about
what was going on in Gil's life and what the future looked like. Then we'd start
doing differential equations. For the first five minutes I was fine, but then we really
turned to substantive calculus, I started sucking.

         I spent most of my time in Payne Hall where the English Department was,
with Sid Coulling, who was just an incredible professor.

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Warren: Talk to me about him.
Leitch: Oh, boy. You come kind of close to idolatry with him. He's just sort of the
consummate W&L-just a complete gentleman, never seen him angry or raise his
voice, and he can get up and talk about Matthew Arnold until the cows come home,
and you just kind of listened in rapt attention. He taught a course on the romantic
poets, which I took, and the Victorian poetry course, which is just wonderful, just
wonderful.

         But you can kind of talk-all the English professors I had, I thought were just
fabulous, and I think English has been, at least, I don't know what it's like now, but
was one of the real strong powerhouses when I was there, in terms of the faculty.
Severn Duvall with American literature. Bob Huntley, he taught the British novel.
There were three courses that he taught, sort of a survey of the British novel, from
Moll Flanders to-what was the most recent? Graham Green, I guess was the most
recent author. I took all three British novel survey courses. Just great stuff.

         I'd be sitting back at the apartment, just kind of-I can proudly say that I read
every assignment that was made. I can proudly say I never used Cliff Notes or
anything like that. Thanks to taking typing in high school, I typed all my own
papers and didn't have to pay anybody to do that. Once I finally stumbled into the
English Department, it was a great two and one-half years, I guess.

         Took two years of Russian, and can't do much Russian anymore. My
German's still good, but my Russian-I can say, "[Russian phrase]," which means-
it's one of those important grammatical sentences. It means, "The new tablecloth is
a joy to the young housewife." [Laughter]
Warren: My transcriber is going to really appreciate that you said that.
Leitch: I'll write it out for you. Took a few music courses, romantic music class, to
Spice's opera seminar, which was fun. Took voice lessons from Spice. I had a
semester of piano lessons from Jay Cook. Took microeconomics from John

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Winkley, a dear man, but economics just sort of-I don't get it. It always hit me as
like small little men trying to put definitions on huge concepts that really can't be
defined.
Warren: [Coughing]
Leitch: Need something to drink? Need a glass of water or something? A tea?
Warren: No, I think I'm okay.
Leitch: Scotch? Bourbon?
Warren: [Laughter] No, I did not go to Washington and Lee.
Leitch: I'm a W&L man. Get you a beer?
Warren: No, no.
Leitch: Glass of wine?
Warren: No, I didn't go to W&L.
Leitch: Heroin?
Warren: [Laughter] No, thank you. You're very gracious.
Leitch: Thank you.
Warren: So how did an English major make a transition into the law school? How
did you make that decision to do that?
Leitch: Didn't want to leave Lexington.
Warren: Oh, I love that answer. Keep going. That's the right answer, Nick.
Leitch: Well, it's pretty much true. The options were teach somewhere at a private
school, teach English at a private school somewhere, which just wasn't what I
wanted to do; go on and get an advanced degree in English and perhaps teach at
another level, not what I wanted to do, I didn't think, and paying for it, more
importantly, would have been a problem. Law school, there was some scholarship
help. My family was not a family of means. In fact, next December I finish paying
off my guaranteed student loan, so I will have paid for my education next year.
Warren: Congratulations.

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Leitch: Thank you very much. Law school interested me. A law degree opened up
some career avenues that otherwise would not have been open to me, and I got to
stay. I know that sounds dumb, but I got dug in pretty deep in four years, and loved
Lexington. In fact, when I graduated from law school, and even since then, I
thought real seriously a couple of times about trying to move back, because I just
love it. It's just such a great place. So W&L Law School was the only law school
that I applied to and I got in, so I went.
Warren: Why is Lexington such a great place?
Leitch: I visited lots of big cities, I mean, New York, San Francisco, London,
Munich, been there, seen 'em, love 'em for the short stretch, but would not want to
live there. Don't want to live on a farm, because I'd get bored too quickly. So by
definition, I've sort of restricted myself to a smaller town or a small city. Lexington
combined all the things that I found, and still for the most part find, to be desirable
in a place to live. It's small and fairly intimate, but the people there, by and large,
are intelligent, well educated, artistic, fun. I don't know, it just combines all of
those. The size is good, the kind of people who are there are interesting. What goes
on on both campuses, both at VMI and at W&L in terms of lectures, concerts,
exhibits, speakers, is all very interesting and challenging.
Warren: Talk to me about that. Were there any particular people who impressed
you in the time you were at Lexington?
Leitch: Impressed.
Warren: Yes, there are some fairly impressive people who come through that place.
Leitch: Yes. Let's see, some of the noteworthy ones. G. Gordon Liddy, he was
impressive for all of the wrong reasons. He spoke in the chapel. He scared the pee
out of me. He got ticked off while he was speaking, though, because Pete
Whitehead, who was in my class, had brought a rubber Nixon mask and put it on at

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one point in Liddy's talk, and Liddy saw him, and said he knew a hundred ways to
kill a person with a pencil, and don't push him. [Laughter] He was like, "Okay."

         All kinds of-well, shoot. You remember Jeff McNelly, the political
cartoonist and he also drew "Shoe," that comic strip? He was different. He came.
He was showing some drawings, and they threw the floor open for questions, and
somebody asked him why he put shoes on his birds. "What took you there? Why
did you do that?"

         He said, "Well, thought it would be different and interesting, and I can't draw
birds' feet."

         "Okay, thank you very much." [Laughter]
         The Concert Guild brought through really good ensembles. The Audubon
Strings would come through. Leon Bates, a really good pianist, who's made more
and more of a name for himself as time has gone on. The first time I heard him was
there in Lee Chapel.
         I don't know. You're right. There is sort of an impressive array of people
coming through to speak. Roger Mudd was there, an alum. I don't know, there's
just lots to do in Lexington. A lot of people would complain, friends of mine would
complain about, "Yikes, small town, nothing to do." I was like, "Come on with me
to Covington, I'll show you nothing to do. We can go watch the paper mill."
Warren: Let's go back to the law school and teachers who made a big difference for
you there.
Leitch: Yes, there were great professors there. Uncus McThenia, a really, really good
professor, good man, too. I've gotten to know him since then some. We're both
Episcopalians. We disagreed fairly fundamentally about some of the stuff that went
on during the Pittston strike when he was so involved in the mineworkers' strike.
        There was Groot, Roger Groot. Scare you to death. He used the Socratic
method, and he would call on you, and he would stick with you until you died. I

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had classmates who got nauseous and had to leave the room. He'd always call on
the Vanderbilt person first, though, so you pretty much knew that first day, anyway,
that if there was anybody in your section from Vanderbilt, he or she was going to be
the one who got reamed out first.
Warren: Did they know it?
Leitch: Word sort of got around, so they would be prepared for whatever the
material was for the first class. He called on me finally. I'd had him for criminal
law. I will go to my grave knowing that larceny is the capture and asportation of the
personal property of another with the intent to permanently deprive him or her of
ownership. It's sort of etched into my brain. "Mr. Leitch, let's say you're over here
at Harris Teeter. And let's say you put a pizza in your cart. Is that capture?"

         "Yes, sir."
         "That asportation?"
         "Yes sir."
         "Is that larceny?"
         "Well, no, sir, I'm going to pay for it, so I don't have any intent."
         "That's right. That's good."
         He was scary. There was a veneer of frightening-a scary veneer to Groot,
and then once you kind of got past that, he's kind of a sweetheart. Lives over in
Buena Vista. Go figure. He used to say, "If you can't get it in Buena, you don't need
it." [Laughter] I was like, "Okay. I'll take your word for it."
         And [Edward O.] Henneman. I just love Henneman. He taught all the trusts
and estates classes, which I really dug in law school. Since then I have written
maybe a half a dozen wills. I mean, that's just not my practice. I litigate. I'm in the
courtroom. But in law school, I really liked that subject matter, and he used to say-
they weren't really one-liners, but usually every lecture, one thing he said I thought
was just memorable and noteworthy, so I carried a notebook with me, and I would

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record his little Hennemanisms. In fact, I posted them on the bulletin board one
year at the end of the semester. One of them was, and I still remember, "Joint
tenancies are wonderful things. They give the surviving spouse a place to sleep
after the funeral." I swear, my father died in '87, like ten days before I graduated
from law school, and one of the things I remember thinking at the graveside was-I
got tickled a little bit-was, "Well, joint tenancies are wonderful things. We've got
a place to go." He was a really good professor and has turned into a good friend.

         That was one of the good things, I thought, about W&L in general on both
sides of the ravine, and I hope it never changes, the student-faculty ratio was such
that you really were a name. I mean, my professors knew me and knew who I was.
They knew what I did. It wasn't just because I was something special or important.
I mean, they knew who their students were; they knew what their parents did; they
knew what their backgrounds were; they knew what their interests were; and they
were there. You didn't even have to take a class from them.

         I got to know Dr. [Nancy A.] Margand. She's in the Psych Department. Never
took a psychology course, never ever, but I just knew who she was. In fact, I saw her
when I was up for Todd's service, just kind of bumped into her, big hug and "Hi,"
and, "How you doing, Dr. Margand? Nice to see you."

         It was a really good environment for developing meaningful relationships, I
think, with faculty. Stevenson, obviously, was the big one for me, and Spice.
K__ was a friend. Henneman and Uncus McThenia on the law side are good
friends. Joan Shaughnessy. Just all the people I've rattled off were at my wedding.
They came. I got married in Covington and they came. It was really weird.

        It was a wonderful place. It was a great place to learn, it really was. Warts and
all, all of the problems that I sort of associated with the uni-gender kind of
education, and the bad things that kind of flow from that, that even couldn't really

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blot out what a great place it was to put new things in your head. It really was great.
If money were no object, I could just go back and probably stay forever.
Warren: Well, that's a wonderful way to end. This thing is beeping at me. I could
pop in another tape if you have other things you want to talk about.
Leitch: No, better not, actually. Thank you.
Warren: That was a wonderful ending line, though. Thank you, Nick. Thank you,
Rob, for sending me here.
Leitch: Well, I wondered. I was laying awake trying to think of anecdotes, the past
few days, because I really didn't-I kind of worried about this, to be honest. I wasn't
sure what I had to say that was noteworthy.
Warren: You've done just fine.
Leitch: Well, thank you.
[End of interview]

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