NORM LORD

                                                  April 16, 1996

                                                 Mame Warren,
                                                    interviewer

Warren: This is Mame Warren. Today is the 16th of April 1996. I'm in Newark,
Delaware, with Norm Lord, the "Lord" himself. That's what everybody says you
are.
Lord: Got that right! [Laughter]
Warren: Now, if I may, I'd like to sort of go a little bit chronologically here. First,
I'd like to concentrate on what brought you to Washington and Lee in the first place.
Lord: Well, Washington and Lee, I had never heard of it. I went to the University
of Delaware during the Depression, and I had never heard of the school. However,
during World War II, I went to Washington and Lee in 1943, in November, and
took a course there to train officers and enlisted men how to conduct fun programs
and fitness programs and friendship programs. That's where I stole the idea I used
for eighty-six years at Washington and Lee-fun, fitness, and friendship. So I left
near Thanksgiving in November to go back to the 11th Airborne Division, which
was my basic unit.
Warren: Was it called Special Services at that time?
Lord: When I went, it was called Special Services School. It was a school designed
to train officers and enlisted men welfare programs and athletic programs and
rehabilitation programs, all kinds of things which are not combat. In other words,

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we didn't learn how to fire a rifle, we didn't jump in a tank, or anything like that. It
was all classroom and field work, without military equipment. We did have to
dress in uniforms, though. I was a second lieutenant.
Warren: So what kind of people were there? Why would you have been selected,
or why were other people selected to go to the School of Special Services?
Lord: I really don't know why I was selected, except I was directed by the battalion
commander, when I arrived from Camp Davis, North Carolina, out of Officer
Candidate School as a second lieutenant. He knew that I had had an athletic
background, so he said, "Lord, I want you to build a football field." So I recruited
soldiers, and got the engineering unit to come in with their bulldozer and stuff like
that, and I built a playground for our battalion.
Warren: Where?
Lord: That was at Camp Davis, North Carolina, where I got my commission, but it
was Camp McCall, North Carolina.
Warren: Okay, I was confused. I thought you were saying to build a field at
Washington and Lee, and that would've already existed.

         So, all right, you arrive in Lexington. Tell me what the town was like then in
the middle of the war, with School of Special Services.
Lord: Well, I remember riding with a lieutenant from 11th Airborne Division, in
the engineering battalion, and we didn't know where Lexington was. We came
north from Camp McCall, North Carolina, which was near Pinehurst, North
Carolina. We missed a turn in Buena Vista, and instead of going west on U.S. 60,
we went east on U.S. 60, and we went over the mountain. I said, "Something must
be wrong, because we should be there by now." So we spent the night in some
home which took in boarders. The next morning, we got up, and we got to
Lexington in time to not be AWOL.
Warren: Okay. So you arrived in town. What was it like?

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Lord: I arrived in town, and we were processed and so forth. Since I was young and
full of fire and ginger, I was put in a group which supposedly was supposed to be
really fit, because the curriculum for us so-called jocks was a little different than the
intelligentsia and the older people. They had people there from age twenty-I'd say
twenty to sixty.
Warren: So you know what the campus is like today. What was the difference in
wartime?
Lord: Well, they still had the front-they didn't have anything on the back campus,
so called. Reid Hall was still there. They had the front campus. It was exactly like it
is now. We went to all those classrooms. The co-op now, which is the co-op and
bookstore, was a dining hall for the soldiers. They put an addition onto it and we
ate there, unless you were married and living in private apartments. You ate and
slept there, on the campus. I slept off campus. I lived on Taylor Street, down by the
old Mayflower Hotel.
Warren: So was the town full of uniforms?
Lord: Well, yes. Of course, you had VMI, which had what they called ASTP, Army
Specialized Training Program. Later on, Washington and Lee got an ASTP, Army
Specialized Training Program, which were college-aged students. So you had that
military atmosphere, and you had the army, navy, marines, coast guard. They
didn't have an air force then. It was the air corps. When you went down the street,
or down to the drugstore, or whatever, went to the movie, you had to dress in army
uniform. You could not dress in civilian clothes.
Warren: So did you have any interaction with the faculty, the normal faculty, of
Washington and Lee at that point?
Lord: Well, Dean Gilliam later came. He was there. We did not have any actual
classes taught by faculty. The army had their own faculty there. The navy had
people there. Marines. But most of them were army.

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Warren: Was President Gaines there on campus?
Lord: President Gaines-I never met President Gaines. I think he was on campus,
but I never met him until, I think it was about the 15th of September. I'm not sure.
I came back in 1946, but I didn't meet him while I was a student for the army.
Warren: Did you get much of a sense of Lexington during that time, during the
war?
Lord: Oh, yes. Everybody loved Lexington. We fell in love with it. We never
heard anybody complain. Even the people with nationally known names, like Red
Skelton, and some of those people-I'll think of them later-they just loved the
place.
Warren: Were you there while those performers were there? I've heard about the
entertainments that went on in Lexington.
Lord: Every person that went through the school had to learn a little bit about
athletics and the arts-music and drama and crafts, public affairs. You got a
smithering of everything related to taking care of people-morale, welfare type of
thing.
Warren: This may be hindsight or it may be just totally off base, but the other day,
in preparation for coming to see you, I got out the files on the School of Special
Services, and there were these really neat programs about all these athletic things
and all these games that were taught. I didn't have time to sit down and read it
carefully, but the impression I got was that you were being taught how to teach
games.
Lord: That's exactly right. We were told, and taught, how to teach and spread this
game thing to the people to play. We had to use improvised games sometimes. We
used all kinds of games. In fact, they wrote a manual about it. Informal games,
things like dodgeball, tug-of-war, hide-and-go-seek, everything. [Laughter] If it was

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fun for kids, we turned the old guys into kids. We had them learn how to play,
because we knew that they had to teach soldiers to do it when they left Lexington.
Warren: So what was the goal out there? Who and when were these people going
to have time to play games when they were going off to war?
Lord: Well, I'm glad you asked that question. In fact, I have a pamphlet in my
doghouse, downstairs, where I have all kinds of data. The Department of
Information and Psychological Warfare published a manual called, "What the
Soldier Thinks." They asked all kinds of questions and they did all kinds of survey,
scientific survey, from combat people, from people that were in training camps,
people who were on the boat going over, and they found out that a happy soldier is
a better soldier. Hence, the gentleman General Marshall, I think he brought up the
idea of using Washington and Lee as a base to open this school to train supervisors
of this fun, fitness, friendship concept.

         I called it "Give 'em a little hunk of home." It was stereotyped, but we used
that word for that, "Give 'em a little hunk of home." Of course, we had other
expressions. It was an enjoyable feeling to know that you were learning how to
promote this idea. Now, I was a student there, remember, so I learned there, but I
had already had a background in the athletic part. I had no background in music-
well, I had it in high school, in junior high school, but I never sang in the choir, if
you want to know that. [Laughter]
Warren: They wouldn't let me in, either. Well, one of the things that seemed to be
stressed was the idea of teaching games that could be used in small quarters.
Lord: With small quarters, sometimes without equipment, and also how to have
games for the skilled player, because, as you know, many athletes in all the
professional sports-basketball, football, and baseball-were drafted, or they
volunteered, for the services. So those people established the so-called skilled
competition all over the United States and in foreign countries. During lulls in

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combat, they would actually find a space, and participate in so-called athletics-
softball, basketball. They had portable basketball baskets to settle down in the
ground. You've seen them in backyards, with kids, those kind of things. They just
played on the ground. They'd play basketball on the ground. They'd play baseball
on a diamond. We just threw the bases down. It wasn't a carved-out infield or
anything like that.
Warren: It seems like it was really important work that was being done, to keep the
soldiers happy and healthy.
Lord: See, that's why we even had there, as students, some professional baseball
players. In my class, we had a guy by the name of Patrick Mullin, who played for
Detroit. We had-I'm in a lapse. Before the interview's over, I'll give it to you.
But we had several baseball players, football players, basketball players, from college,
and they were experts.
Warren: So you graduated.
Lord: I graduated from the school, and we got on the bus, and my wife joined me.
While a student there, she came to Lexington, and because we had a child, a baby, we
had difficulty. That was the one thing-the people of Lexington, like they are today,
they don't want a family with small children moving into their apartment. They'd
rather have one without babies. We did end up getting a place on Taylor Avenue,
with a child.
Warren: So you were in Lexington just a few months.
Lord: I was in there for one month. We got on a Greyhound bus, because I didn't
have an automobile. We rode all the way back to Southern Pines, North Carolina.
We rented an apartment, rented a home, really, which had a nice apartment. The
landlord lived in the downstairs apartment, and we lived upstairs.

         I stayed there about a week, and I got word that they were calling me back to
Washington and Lee, to be on the faculty of the school. They said the reason why

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they needed me was because I was always "juiced," enthusiastic about the program.
Well, they had to let me go back, and I went back and was there during the first part
of December, and then my commander of the 11th Airborne was so mad that they
stole me, that he went to the War Department and they said, "Hell, no, you can't
have him." And I had to go back to the 11th Airborne Division. They said, "Sorry,
but we wanted you badly."
Warren: So you did go back to Lexington for a short period of time?
Lord: For a short period of time. I can't remember whether it was fifteen days or
what, but I went back on orders. Additional TDY, they call it, temporary duty
training. I was all happy and everything, but then all of a sudden, General Swing ,
the commanding general, had a lot of pull in Washington, and he said, "I want that
man back."
Warren: Boy, you were a popular fellow, weren't you? [Laughter]
Lord: Well, yeah, I came back.
Warren: Okay. So you left Lexington for X number of years. What brought you
back to Lexington?
Lord: I didn't go back for X number of years. I was only back-
Warren: No, no. You left for X number of years.
Lord: I went back from Lexington-
Warren: In '44.
Lord: -to Camp McCall. Southern Pines is where I was staying. Then I came back
to the school again and taught in the school. And then the general stole me back,
and I went back to Camp McCall. I stayed there until 1944. It was March of 1944, and
the division had to go overseas, to the South Pacific. And then somebody in
Washington said, "That man is coming back." So I no sooner got there than I had to
come back. I was put on an assignment in Camp-I don't even know the name of

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it, now-it was some camp with a-it was depot, personnel depot, down in
Louisiana.

         Then all of a sudden, I got word that I was being put on permanent change of
station, PCS, permanent change of station, from Louisiana to Washington and Lee
University, Lexington, Virginia. So I came back a third time. I went there as a
student; I came back as faculty. I left, and went back to the 11th Airborne. I then am
called back to Lexington again. So I stayed in Lexington from March 1944 to January
1946.
Warren: Tell me about that period, coming back as faculty.
Lord: Coming back on the faculty, I worked wide open from-classes started at eight
o'clock, but I had to be on duty by 7:30 and be ready to go. So I was at the gymnasium
at 0730 every day except Su~day. Monday through Saturday. We had classes from
eight o'clock until 1630, which is 4:30.
Warren: What was the gym like? What was going on in the gym at that time?
Lord: We taught them how to give exercises. We made sure that they knew how to
do the exercise properly, because when they went back, they had to become an
instructor for their unit. So we are actually training teachers now. Just like they
trained me to become a teacher, now we're training them to become a teacher, or a
coach, when they go back to their unit. So we taught them calisthenics, and in the
pictures, you'll see some of the stuff that we did.
Warren: Who's "we"? Who else was doing this?
Lord: We had a staff that was such a wonderfully trained staff, and already qualified
people. Just the cream of the crop was there.
Warren: Were these military people who were coming from elsewhere?
Lord: They were military. Every one of them were military.
Warren: Nobody from Washington and Lee?

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Lord: No. None of them were from Washington and Lee. Later on, say the last six
months of 1945, they did open up another school, which was taught at VMI and
Washington and Lee. They had part of them at VMI and part of them at
Washington and Lee. Because now Washington and Lee has specialized training
program students, ASTP, and VMI only had a handful of regular college students,
just like Washington and Lee had a handful of regular college students, who either
had what they called 4F-they were physically unable to go and fight in the army, or
navy, air force, marines. So they had a few regular students, and VMI did, too.
Warren: What about those students and their athletic requirements? Were they
able to use the gym?
Lord: We did not teach them.
Warren: But were they able to use the gymnasium?
Lord: Very seldom.
Warren: You really had control of the whole facility.
Lord: Yeah, they did. I saw a few of them, and I remember two or three of them, but
I never saw them participate in a class. But they did have classes. Like, we'd be out
on the field teaching the soldiers show class, how to act out in the field, in a ravine, ·
and you had to improvise stage. All the students would be out there, so on that day,
they would be using the swimming pool and the gymnasium, and so forth, and
bowling alleys.
Warren: You mentioned these performers. From what I understand, they gave
shows.
Lord: Yes, they gave beautiful shows.
Warren: Did you used to go to them?
Lord: We not only went to them, we had to act in them.
Warren: Oh, tell me about that.

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Lord: I was an actor. I was a tree. I was a tree. I stood up on the stage. I didn't have
to say anything. I was a tree. I was a prop. [Laughter] But, yes, we had Red Skelton.
He's the one that comes to mind. He was there. He was quite an actor. At the end
of each month, they had the soldiers' show, and they had it in the Doremus
Gymnasium. The townspeople would try to get tickets to come. But the students
either had to be in the play, or they had to be watching the play so they could critique
it. But some town folks did come to that.

         As a sideline, my wife, when she was pregnant with twins, Red Skelton was
there and he gave that crazy bubbling gin act. I don't know whether you ever heard
of it or not. A bottle of gin, where he starts out sober, and he takes a drink of the gin,
and then he gets a little more inebriated, and then he takes another drink. And
before the end he's all-but each time, he adds more to his act.

         We had beautiful actors, and actresses, because remember, every branch of the
service had women in it. We had WACs and marine women and navy women.
Warren: So were they really plays?
Lord: Yeah, oh yeah. Well, some of them, they had to write the script. Some of
them were plays that were copyrighted, because they had people with that talent.
They had the artists.
Warren: I guess I've always assumed they were variety shows, but they weren't.
They were real plays.
Lord: They had variety shows and they had other shows, but they had people who
could write the script.
Warren: That's great.
Lord: And they had people who taught the students how to make the props. Is that
what you call it? . Decorations.
Warren: The sets.

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Lord: And curtains. How to put the curtains up, and how to pull the curtains. I
wasn't into that, because I didn't have that kind of talent, but I was in a play as a
student. Everybody had to-they had the thing, mass participation. Everybody
participated. I even used [unclear] when I was on the faculty. We had a class in
improvised musical instruments. So the students had glass bottles of water in glass
hanging up, and you'd play a tune on the bottles, and they had all kinds of
improvised music. I had to teach a course in that. I took the equipment that was
made by the experts, and when the students came around in, say, groups of eight or
six or ten, I would let them beat on the-play "doe, re, mi, fa, so, la, tee, doe."

         Also, we had to teach singing. I had to get out in front of a group of-I
learned to do this when I was a student, but then when I came on the faculty, I had
to have so much-so I'd get out and lead them in singing. I didn't know how, but I
just got out and just-[singing].
Warren: Waved your arms around, huh?
Lord: Believe it or not, did it.
Warren: That's great. All right. So the war comes to an end. Were you there when
the Special Services School closed down?
Lord: The Special Services School, when the war was closing down, the emphasis
was on rehabilitation, psychological rehabilitation and physical rehabilitation, and
how to return to civilian life. So we put in different courses then. They called them
educational rehabilitation and physical rehabilitation. Then they had public affairs,
and then they had the information and education.

         All the sections except one moved to Carlisle, Pennsylvania. The one section
which did not went to Fort Lee, and that was called the Physical Training and
Athletic Directors School. And the ones that went up there were called the Public
Information School and the Public Affairs School. Then the two rehabilitation
schools went to a hospital. I think one of them was in Colorado and one of them

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was in Washington. They learned how to treat bedridden soldiers and soldiers with
psychological problems.

         But our section-and I had to go with it, because I didn't have enough points
to get out. In 1946, they started letting people out, but not a lot. Only until after the
bomb was dropped, did they have mass-what do you call it?-return home. But
the reason why they went to Fort Lee was because they were going to bring them
back to Norfolk and New York City, the soldiers. They were going to put them
through another training program for fighting the Japanese, and then they were
going to go. Of course, when all this started, it was all over because of the bomb.
Warren: So you got sent to Fort Lee?
Lord: I got sent to Fort Lee, because I didn't have enough points to get out. Now,
there were a few who did get out, because they were older than I was, and who had
been in the army longer than I was.
Warren: Okay. But you didn't stay in Fort Lee. At some point, you made the
decision to come back.
Lord: Now you're beginning to get to the point to where I just couldn't believe it
when I got a telephone call from my old coach at University of Delaware, and he
said, "Norm, I want to come down and talk to you." He was a graduate of Duke
University and played football at Duke, Coach Murray. He said, "Well, where can I
meet you?"

         I told him, "Meet me at Fort Lee, such and such a building."
         So he came down. He said, "I want you to come back and be on my staff at
University of Delaware."
         I said, "Oh, that's great." Because that's where I met my wife, see, and she
liked Newark. I said, "Well, send me the details."
         He said, "There are no details. I just want you to come back and be on my
staff. I can't pay you much money, but how does $2,500 a year sound?" Of course,

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that was a lot of money, pre- World War IL I'll relate it to the story a little more
when I say that I had thirty days of leave, starting in August, and I was going to go
on my leave, but they offered me a job. I got discharged on August the 6th, I believe.
August the 6th, I was discharged at Fort Meade.
Warren: 1946.
Lord: 1946.
Warren: A year after the war ended.
Lord: Right. 1946. This was August, and I had this leave, and they're going to pay
me for the leave. So I've got almost a month's salary. I was a first lieutenant. But
they also needed a person to work at Fort Lee, because some of the staff that they had
were leaving. So they hired me as a civilian, and I never knew there was that much
money in the world, and I hadn't been offered this job at the University of
Delaware. They offered me $5,999.95, and I could not believe that amount of money
was being offered me. My ranking, civilian ranking, was a GS-16, which is big bucks,
for me, being a poor boy. I was all excited. I was working. I was now a civilian, not
wearing a uniform, but doing the same work I would have been doing had I stayed
in the army.

         And then I get this call from Coach Murray, and he came down to Fort Lee. I
told him how much I was making, and he said, "We can't pay that much. We'll
give you $2,500. But remember, your job will be eliminated as soon as the army goes
down, and has a big discharge rate."

        I said, "You're right there. Let me think about it." So I thought about it. He
calls again, and I said, "You know, I haven't talked it over with my wife. Could you
give me about three or four more days?"

         He said, "I can't give you three or four more days. I'll give you one more
day."

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         On that day, I got a call from Washington and Lee University, and it was Cy
Twombly, who was the director of physical education at Washington and Lee, and
who knew me while I was an officer and a member of the faculty in that Special
Services School. He said, "Norm, I need you badly. Can you come?"

         I said, "Well, how much can you pay me? I've got a job here. I'm making
almost $6,000. I got a job offered to me at University of Delaware."

         He said, "I'll tell you what. I'll make a special exception. I'll go to the Board
of Trustees. I'll get a special salary for you, and I'll give you $3,000 for nine months'
work."

         I said, "Well, that's not $6,000."
         He said, "But you'll have three months off in the summertime, and you get
all this vacation. We're going to give you a rank of assistant professor. That's
unusual, because you don't have your doctorate."
         I said, "No, I don't have my doctorate." So I got to thinking about it. I talked
it over with Gel, my wife, and, lo and behold, we decided that we'd go to Lexington.
         Now, this was about the 29th or 30th of August, and I told him that I could
not go over and break up until the first of September. He said, "That's all right. If
you can leave there on the first of September (this is Cy Twombly talking to me), we
can still let you. You'll still meet the contract." Because my contract went from
September the first, for one year.
        So sure enough, I said, "Okay. I'll check the bus schedules. I'll get on a bus,
but I don't have a place to stay."
        He said, "Norm, there's no way to get a room. You're either going to have to
live in a hotel-"
        I said, "I don't want the job. I can't afford to live in a hotel."
        He said, "Tell you what. We'll make sure you have a place to sleep. Will
living in the gymnasium be okay?"

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         I said, "Is there a room in there?"
         He said, "No, but you can sleep in the gymnasium."
         I said, "Cy, I want to come back so badly, I'll sleep anyplace in that gym you
want me to sleep. Just have a mattress on the floor, and I'll come and sleep."
Warren: What about Gel?
Lord: Gel would have to go home with the baby. So Gel leaves and goes back to her
family. I get on a bus, and I get to Lexington on the first day of September. I don't
have a contract. All I had was, Cy Twombly said, "You don't have to worry about a
contract. That'll come later. I know you can do the work. I know you can handle it.
Just put up with living in the gym." So the whole first year, I lived in the
gymnasium.
Warren: Oh, my gosh. That's devotion.
Lord: Yeah. But it was a godsend, really, because I had no place to eat, so I had to eat
all my meals at-they called it the Beanery, which is right behind Washington Hall
now. I think it's been torn down. Yeah, it's been torn down.
Warren: Tell me about the Beanery. I haven't talked to anybody else. I've heard
about the Beanery.
Lord: The Beanery was run by the university for the students who were there, who
were the ASTP, Army Specialized Training Program students, and by the few
Washington and Lee students. They also used that during the war to feed their own
students. But then as the war wound down, faculty were coming back from all over
the world for their job, and their wives had to stay where they were, because they
didn't have anyplace for their wives and family to live. So practically all the faculty
were eating in the Beanery. That's where I learned all the faculty members. They
learned my name; I learned theirs. I ate three meals a day there, they ate three meals
a day. Students waited on tables. It was a cafeteria, no table service, but the food was
good.

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Warren: You mentioned that you got to know the faculty. Who was the faculty at
that time? What kind of people were you meeting?
Lord: Dr. Hinton was there. Mr. Mattingly, he ate there. The new faculty, I can't
remember their names. A lot of the new faculty, Winter Royston, who is still
living, and now retired, he ate there. Dr. Flick, who was psychology and social
studies, he ate there. If you give me a few minutes, or maybe later, I'll remember so
many of them. Even the campus crew would eat there. They were allowed to eat
there. They ate on shifts. It was a continuum flowing in and going out.
Warren: Really? So were other people sleeping on mattresses in other buildings?
Lord: No, no. I was the only. I don't know why, because I didn't have to pay
anything for my room.
Warren: I should hope not. [Laughter] That would have been high rent if you had
to rent the whole gymnasium.
Lord: Then I got promoted. They found a bed, because as September rolled around,
later in the month, they had teams coming in from West Virginia, Maryland, North
Carolina. Athletic teams would be coming in. In those days, you didn't stay in a
hotel. They slept in our gymnasium. The football players slept there, the basketball
players slept there, the first few years. But then later on, after the war actually settled
down, people were getting out. More people had access to the apartments in
Lexington, and some of them owned homes there in Lexington, so their home was
available. Then the people eating in the Beanery, then, of course, ate, because their
wife has moved back to Lexington. Things begin to settle down like it was before the
war.
Warren: So at this point you had a one-year appointment.
Lord: I had one year, right.
Warren: When did it settle down, and you begin to-

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Lord: Dr. Desha was the dean. I did not have a contract. He said, "I know you and I
know Cy. I think he'll renew your contract. Don't worry about it."
Warren: And?
Lord: So when June came, of next year, graduation, I think they had a few people to
graduate, but not like now. Oh, they had summer school then, too. So they had
summer school, students are coming back from World War II, they're going to
summer school, law students. The university just bloomed. Boom! And it's got a
tremendous student body. And the faculty are all coming back. Practically every one
of them are back.

         Now Washington and Lee is Washington and Lee. Because, remember, on
January the 15th, 1946, I believe everybody left except what they called the rear
detachment. The rear detachment is what stays to make sure that all the files are
moved, and any chairs that are broken are assessed, so they can be replaced. So I
think by the first of February, 1947, the school is a school is a school, university.
Warren: It's back to being its old self.
Lord: Yeah, being its old self. And the old order is still there.
Warren: All right, hold on. It's a good time to turn the tape over.