McDowell interview

[Begin Tape 1, Side 2]
McDowell: ... all these purposes, because that meant that my mother started being a
legal secretary in Jacksonville, my father was at the Jacksonville Naval Air Station
and ultimately in Saipan for many years. I was back in W&L, having been in the
Navy myself and come home, and my father was still in Saipan. My mother and

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John and I lived in the SAE House on the second floor, which was a rooming house.
Most people were not back from the war. I was back early because I was in the Navy
flight program, and they discharged a jillion of us as soon as the war was over,
because they didn't want to train a whole lot of fliers they didn't need. So I was
home early. I mean, I was home just like that.

         My father was still in Saipan. I think he served six or seven years in the
service. So did lots of W&L professors. My father and Larry Watkin drove to
Richmond the week after December 7 [1941], Pearl Harbor, and volunteered to go
back, my father to go back in the Navy, and Larry to join. Then Larry was made an
officer, and my father had been in World War I in the Navy, a flier, so it all made
sense.
Warren: Was Larry Watkin the one who became a recruiter for the Navy?
McDowell: Yes, I'm sure he did.
Warren: And that's why a lot of W&L people wound up in the Navy.
McDowell: Yeah.
Warren: Oscar Riegel told me that story.
McDowell: Oh, God, I'd love to talk to the Riegels. Put the Riegels both into that
circle in that living room, because they were always in it, and they were marvelous.
Warren: Delightful people.
McDowell: My father was always a little troubled at Dr. Gaines and his
administration, but there wasn't much administration there but Dr. Gaines. They
found it inconvenient that faculty members resigned and went off to be in the
Navy. Because I can't verify this, this has to be off the record, but you ought to ask
somebody, that when a lot of them that were in the service heard from W&L toward
the end of the war, it was, "Hope you can find work elsewhere, because we don't
expect W&L to be itself again for many years." They couldn't foresee the rush of
students·. But it was an outrageous thing, and some people took it awful hard. But

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I'm not an authority on that, and I can't prove that, and I don't remember any first-
hand information about that. I just remember that wicked thought being loose.
Warren: Tell me about that decision to go to school at Washington and Lee. There
were lots of schools in the United States. Why did you choose it?
McDowell: I just thought it was absolutely marvelous, and I thought seriously
about how there were all those other schools, but here was a place 1--I'd just been
away, you know. If you'd never been anywhere, but I'd been to Jacksonville, I'd
gone to this high school, I'd played basketball in a good basketball league, I'd worked
at the naval air station in the ship's service store, I had then been sent by the Navy
to the University of Miami and I'd attended the University of Miami for a year as a
V-5/V-12. Then off to Iowa State for pre-flight training, Iowa State University.
Then I was discharged out of there. So I felt like I'd been to school elsewhere.

         I got the fun of getting to go to my college, which I loved, you know. Then
the benefits were amazing. I received the full G.I. Bill. Sons of faculty got to go free
anyway, so we accepted the G.I. Bill and gave it to W&L. Then they even paid a
piece of your rent for your room. And I think this has to be checked, that my
mother got $35 a month or something as my landlady, as I employed the G.I. Bill to
go to college. I think that's correct. And if so, fine. But I didn't want to go off
anywhere. I knew that I'd go to graduate school, which I did. I went to Columbia
when I got through at W&L. I had already been away.
Warren: So did you go for four years to Washington and Lee?
McDowell: Yes. Well, three, really, because it was enough credits from the
University of Miami. Three.
Warren: And were you a journalism major?
McDowell: No, English major.
Warren: Well, good. I'm an old English major myself.

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McDowell: I knew to be an English major, and my father would never have let me
be a journalism major, and that was difficult, because Tom Riegel was such a good
friend, but my father said, "We want you to just have a major that requires history,
a lot of English, a lot of basic courses, but don't go over there and learn how to
write." So I took four or five journalism courses, took all of Tom Riegel's courses, I
mean, they were so superb, but I was an English major. And if my father had had
his way, I would then have gone to law school and then gone into the newspaper
business. He said, "If some of you newspaper guys could just learn the law, it would
improve newspapers four hundred percent," and all that, but I didn't do that.

         All right. I don't know where we were, but that's--
Warren: We're embarking on your student career.
McDowell: All right.
Warren: So tell me about being a student at Washington and Lee.
McDowell: Well, it was a very good period to be a student, because, for instance, I
played basketball on the same squad--! was then a second-teamer--by the time stars
of the teams I had known as a kid were back.
Warren: Were back?
McDowell: Back to play basketball. They had gone away early in the war. People I
remembered watching play were back to finish up their college, so I knew lots of
interesting people, played with people I'd thought of as another generation, loved
having all the interesting people that were there at once.

         I wrote down somewhere the other day for somebody, but by sort of bringing
together a whole lot of different people you had a--I don't know what it has to do
with anything, but you had a school in which we had Roger Mudd and Fielder
Cook, who went on to do Hollywood movies and many of them in Broadway
shows. He was a marvelous director. And Roger was, I thought, the best of
television journalists in his time. And Ed Jackson, who was a real star journalist for

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the UP [United Press]. And Tom Wolfe, the writer, there he was. It just goes on and
on and on, people who have been successful. Linwood Holton and John Warner,
and we had a host of politicians, many of them from West Virginia, you know, that
became politicians. It was a really outstanding class of people that were around
there, some of them seniors younger than some coming to W&L for the first time,
after having been in the service. It was married students around, students with
babies, a whole field full of apartments growing up out by Lexington High School
and another field of them out behind the Shelley's house. Dr. [Henry Vogel] Shelley
taught Greek, and his son Dana was my best friend. That's up by the grammar
school, like you're going to Buena Vista. There are now two or three fraternities out
there and the SAE House.
Warren: Davidson Park?
McDowell: Yeah. Well, is that Davidson Park, where the SAE House is and the
grammar school, which is now the City Hall, sort of like the city office building? I
don't know where I was.
Warren: City Hall was the grammar school?
McDowell: Well, if it's that building out there on that street just before you bear
right to Col Alto, yes, that's where I went to grammar school.
Warren: I didn't realize that.
McDowell: That was the Ruffner, fourth through eighth grade.
Warren: I didn't realize that.
McDowell: There you are.
Warren: You are a wealth of information.
McDowell: [Laughter] I didn't know it.

         In any case, the student body was impressive. And into my second year there,
Charlie Rowe came home from the service, and he owns the Fredericksburg paper
now. And Joe Rowe, his brother, and a whole host of people. I met Harrison

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Kinney there, who just wrote the biography of [James] Thurber that weighs fourteen
pounds, costs $40, too. It's the biggest book in the history of the world. Have you
seen it?
Warren: No.
McDowell: Well, Harrison was in our class, and his Thurber biography is so much
too long you don't believe it. I want him to meet Ken Burns, who made the baseball
series too long, because they'd love each other. [Laughter] They're both good, too. I
liked everything about Burns' series, and I like every page of Kenny's book, but it's
too long for the average citizen.

         But we had a very interesting class, very lively, interesting, fun class. It was
fun to watch it develop.
Warren: Were you still "Charley Boy" to the faculty?
McDowell: Oh, some, and they tried not to do it, you know. They tried to be careful.
Then I was "Footnote" to some others. My father, being a law professor, his
students called me "Footnote." A footnote is big in law. I don't know whether I was
just one of the footnotes in his life, but I was called "Footnote."

         Another small-world thing that I forgot to tell you, when we went to Florida
and lived in that house and he went to the naval air station every morning and I
went to Robert E. Lee High School, what we did on weekends was go to the beach at
Jacksonville Beach and stay, with an open invitation to come anytime you can--we
tried not to stay the night every time--with Margaret Ann Moreland, dean of law
school's daughter, and Jack Ball, star student from the W&L Law School, who was
already rising to be a leading lawyer in Jacksonville. So we moved to the children
and student of among the dearest friends my parents had ever had. I mean, nothing
was hard. W&L made everything easy wherever you were, whatever you were
doing.
Warren: Well, that's true even today.

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McDowell: Sure it is.
Warren: This network seems to be everywhere. Tell me about what that's meant in
your adult life.
McDowell: Well, in my adult life, I've never been anywhere where there weren't
W&L people. They look out for each other. It's not very conscious, like "We
Harvards have lunch every two weeks together." We W&Ls don't, I don't think,
but we take care of each other and see each other. There's plenty of W&Ls, you
know, around.

         Gee, I was just thinking of the people that I see every day. I mean, not every
day, but as the weeks pass. Bob McNeil, who was at W&L with me, from Blacksburg.
Andy McCutcheon, he's in Richmond, but we moved up here when he was here.
He was a congressional assistant. And I could name five more that we just still see a
lot of because we knew them in Richmond when we were on the Times Dispatch.
When I moved from Lexington to go to work in Richmond, I moved into a place
called Twin Maples, which was a bunch of unmarried people, but among them were
Bob McNeil and Andy McCutcheon. They ultimately both came to Washington.
They both worked on the Richmond newspapers, then they both came to
Washington to be congressional assistants. I came to Washington to be a newspaper
guy, and we keep up and we see each other routinely like a bunch of brothers and
sisters. It's marvelous. We've followed each other, when someone pioneers these
things.
Warren: Have you ever considered how one would go about spelling W&L?
McDowell: No, it's a good one. No one gets it.
Warren: I'll be my transcriber out there in California says, "W&L? What's W&L?"
McDowell: W&L. When I write it, I find that I do something that I don't do in any
other--and you made me think about it--1 wrote "W" and here's an"&"--
Warren: Ampersand.

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McDowell: Ampersand. "L." Without spaces.
Warren: That's the right way to do it.
McDowell: W&L. I mean, that says to me, W&L.
Warren: Frank puts the spaces in.
McDowell: No, no.
Warren: And I have to go in and take them out.
McDowell: Take 'em out. [Laughter] That's exactly right.
Warren: The official way to do it is, it's Washington and Lee. You always spell out
the "and."
McDowell: That's all nice. I certainly do. But W&L.
Warren: But never use the ampersand with "Washington."
McDowell: Ignore spaces. I mean in W&L. Right. Good for you.
Warren: Doesn't it sound like a word?
McDowell: It does to me. W&L. And I've never heard anyone shorten it or find
any other thing to call it.
Warren: What else would you want to call it?
McDowell: I don't know what you would do.
Warren: But there's a challenge for you.
McDowell: Well, VMI, you can say "the Institute." No one says "the College." No
one says "the University." They say W&L. VMI people a lot say "the Institute."
"The Institute will be heard from today."
Warren: What was the relationship, as you were growing up, with VMI? How
about the VMI faculty kids? Did you play with them?
McDowell: Yeah.
Warren: Or was it a different world?
McDowell: It was a little different world, but if you were close enough to see them
in the course of the day, there wasn't much difference. Bobby and Eloise Knox were

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dear friends of ours. They lived two doors from me. KA House, four doors from
the KA House on Letcher Avenue. We knew somebody, I've forgotten who, across
the street.

         I didn't know a whole lot of VMls, but I knew the ones that were close. Bill
Swann, whose father was a teacher there, lived across the street from the Knoxs.
Kept up with those people. My folks knew the superintendent at VMI for a long
time. He was kind of a friend. I don't remember what his name was. Sorry. And
my folks went to parties at the Knoxs', and the Knoxs came to my folks' parties, so
there was connections. If you made the connection, you made the connection.

         There was a man named old Colonel Letcher that had lived at VMI, and he
must have dated back damn near the Civil War, but he had a cane and he was old,
and he would walk through the Harmony Hollow. We called that Harmony
Hollow, by the way. It was a joke, because had been times when there was so little
harmony among the faculty members down there, that Harmony Hollow was funny
to some of the old-timers. But it was very harmonious as far as I could tell. They
were mocking when they said Harmony Hollow. But Governor Letcher, known as
"Gov," I doubt if he'd been governor, but he--
Warren: Yes, he was.
McDowell: Was he? Okay. "Gov."
Warren: Or his father was.
McDowell: That's what I think. Whatever, there sure was, but "Gov" would walk
through with a cane and sort of wave it at us boys. We had a community with only
the Desha girls, everyone else were boys. The Desha girls were older, so the whole
youth group was boys in the Hollow. But "Gov" would say hello to us and all, and
he'd walk through and then walk back. We would go to dress parades and we
would go down to the stables and watch the horses, see them play--they tried to play
polo down there sometimes. It was fun to see them try to do that. We attended

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VMI things. The library was open to us, and I remember by high school we would
sometimes use the VMI library for something we wanted. Different people down
there were nice. Everyone was nice to us.

         There was just no connection between the two places except Charlie Light,
who'd been to VMI and now was next door, and he didn't marry 'til late, so he was
our bachelor buddy and babysitter for me and John when the folks would go away.
Charlie Light would come and sleep over or do something, kind of look out for us
kids and tell us marvelous stories of VMI.

         See, I'd never heard about how it was to be there, even, and I learned that a
tradition at VMI that's perfectly reasonable is that at night, with those strict rules,
the student officers who presided through the night were supposed to check every
room at 11:30 or some such hour and be sure everyone was in there with the lights
out. But the rule was, somebody had to be in the bed; it didn't have to be the VMI
cadet. So VMI cadets, if they were going to sneak out, they were taking a
considerable risk that they'd be caught coming in or going out or whatever, but if
they wanted to sneak out, they'd pay someone a quarter to sleep in their hay, as they
called it. I only ever did that once, but I made my quarter and I wanted to have done
it. I remember the door was opened and then it was closed. There was some body in
the bed. Under VMI's rules, that's what you did. You didn't have any waking
anyone up. All that gets a little complicated. But you just didn't bother anybody. I
remember that well.

        I can remember the awful time that--gee, it's a long story and I don't ever
remember it real well. The Betas stole a cannon from VMI. Is that widely known?
Is that in your stuff?
Warren: Yes.
McDowell: Do you remember the cannon's name? Those cannons all had names. I
don't. But the four cannons had names and they stole one.

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Warren: Quite a while ago you mentioned a place that I really am showing that I
didn't grow up in Lexington.
McDowell: Good for you.
Warren: The Corner Store. Was that a landmark?
McDowell: An awesome, awesome landmark.
Warren: Take me into the Corner Store.
McDowell: All right. The Corner Store, absolutely directly opposite the post office,
catty-cornered from the post office, across the street from the Ann Smith School,
across the street from Liz Ship's [phonetic] house, who I went to high school with.
The Corner Store was a place that there may not be other colleges that have a place
that lucky. It was a place where students and faculty relaxed at once, not with each
other, but together. I mean, there would be two booths full of faculty and six booths
full of students, and everybody knew each other. They didn't mingle and socialize,
but they went to the same club at night.
Warren: Was this a store or a restaurant?
McDowell: It was a drugstore. No, no, not at all a drugstore. It was a counter that
served Cokes and sandwiches.
Warren: A soda fountain?
McDowell: A soda fountain. Pardon me. That's exactly what it was, known as the
Corner Store, and it had two or three famous owners, one of whom lived up in
Monroe Park, and I can't think of his name, and one of whom ultimately bought
the clothing store next door and ran the Corner Store and the clothing store sort of
as a joint venture. I'll tell you who knows all about that is the Mish family, because
Bobby worked in the clothing store and can tell you everything you'll ever want to
know about the Corner Store. But Jabo was a character in the town, and he ran the
pool hall above the Corner Store.

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         So you had a clothing store, very male clubby clothing store, where you'd
actually go sit around and talk, and further down the same block was Tally's
Toggery, where Don Huffman worked as he was growing up, and it was the same.
My father hung out at Tally's Toggery. You went into the shoe department and sat
in the chairs where they tried on shoes, and talked, talked to whoever was around.
It's where the townspeople and the faculty crossed paths, was at Tally's Toggery.
Don Huffman, who I think now is chairman of the Republican party of Virginia, of
all things to be, but he sold shirts and suits there as a kid growing up and going to
high school, and he moved on up to the next-door place, whose name I can't think
of.

         One of the owners of the store next to the Corner Store went on and opened
branches in Richmond and Roanoke and was hugely successful, chain store, men's
clothes operation. I'm just ridiculous not to think of his name.

         But the Corner itself, the people behind the counter, I don't think they came
to your table. I think you went and got your stuff at the counter and went over and
sat at the table. There was a clock so you could tell when it was class time. People
would go over there between classes instead of to the co-op. But the faculty would
be there.

         When I was a little boy growing up, we had a maid who we paid $7 a week,
and the going price was $5 a week, and Mother had to answer to that a lot. "Why do
you pay Emma $7?" I don't recall why, but my father had these notions about
unions, labor, and help. When Emma finished washing the dishes from dinner,
we'd put Emma in the car, and me and my father and usually my little brother John
would drive Emma home up at the other end of town. You went to the Mayflower
Hotel and turned left and went out, a remote area.

         Then we would come back to the Corner, and there a faculty kid was quite
well admitted to a place where there would be students drinking beer. I think that

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would have been one of the secrets. The faculty didn't drink beer in front of
students. As I recall, that was a matter of principle. But they'd drink Cokes.
Students would be there having a good time, talking. Often an exchange between
faculty and students. The faculty might stand by students' table and talk, wouldn't
sit down.

         Then there was my generation, a couple of little boys hanging around there. I
used to go outside on nice times, and there was a nice sidewalk out there, and sit
around and talk to people, or I used to run around the block. I've never been sure
why that was, but some professor put me up to it. "I'll time you. You run around
the block." So for years I'd run around the block and look and see how long it took.
It was just a pleasant way of life, again, again. A very pleasant way of life.

         One of the professors that my parents liked very much rented a room in the
house between the Corner Store and the fraternity house, and he would come over
to the Corner Store nearly every night. It was really key. It was the W&L hangout,
period. I mean, there was no competition.

         McCrum's is where my mother and Miss Mary Barkley would go for their
Cokes in the morning, mid-morning, and there would be a lot of the women that
worked at W&L would walk up to McCrum's. But the Corner Store was faculty and
students. I'm trying to think. My brother still knows the guy that had the store next
door. He lives in Williamsburg, and he and my brother see each other. He could
tell you some stuff. I'll try to get you--I'll just call John and get his name and pass it
to you.
Warren: How about up on Main Street or other streets?
McDowell: McCrum's was fundamental. That was where everyone bought their
pharmaceuticals, their newspapers, magazines. That was the magazine store, sit-
around-and-talk store, more for townspeople, but a lot of us went in there anyway.
Then there was a pharmacist that did a land office business always. It was the bus

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station. Out the back was the bus station; the front was McCrum's. Adair Hutton
was the basic clothing store in the town. Then you'd come to McCrum's. No, then
you'd come to the hardware store. Adair Hutton's, hardware store where you
bought any hardware that you would ever need, McCrum's, Woolworth 5 & 10,
some kind of little store. You're working your way up toward the bank. I don't
know which bank it was, but it was the bank. The bank was on two corners when
you got up to whatever that street is.

         Across the street was the courthouse and a men's clothing store run by a
famous guy whose name I can't remember, but he was really very famous, but he
had real fancy clothes, real good clothes. Then the old hotel. What was that hotel's
name?
Warren: Robert E. Lee.
McDowell: Robert E.
Warren: Silly question.
McDowell: How dumb. So that's where you had functions of various kinds. And
the Mayflower was sort of out of it. I don't know why, but it was too far out or
something. But the Robert E. Lee always had some action. Grocery store next to the
Robert E. Lee. McCrory's had stores on two corners, one block away, two McCrory's
stores.
Warren: Two?
McDowell: Two McCrory's groceries, one down next to the--
Warren: McCoy's was a grocery store?
McDowell: Yes, two McCrory's groceries. One was at--if you came up from the Beta
and the Phi Kap House, and what's the old marvelous old hotel where Fred Perry
lived when he was visiting W&L? It's got an "old" in it. Inn.
Warren: Alexander Withrow House?

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McDowell: No. It had a hotel sound to it, a hotel name, the Old something. Old
hotel. But there was McCrory's grocery below that. There was a hardware on up
that street. Then there was a McCrory's store up catty-cornered from the
courthouse. There was enough business that there could be two McCrory's stores.
No one's entirely sure why. And across Washington Street from the courthouse
was the old pharmacy that was sort of historic for the old. It was some ancient
pharmacy that had a name out of the history books, and there was an ancient old
man in there when I was very young. He died. I don't know, the store gradually
closed. I'm lost in some of that. I don't know what that's about.

         What else?
Warren: Something you've mentioned numerous times, fraternities. Were you in
a fraternity?
McDowell: Yes.
Warren: Did you go into the fraternity houses?
McDowell: Uh-huh, yeah.
Warren: Describe fraternity life for me.
McDowell: Well, fraternity life was not like now. I mean, there was nobody
damaging the buildings or tearing them up. They were where you lived at W&L. I
joined because it was cheap to be a member of the SAE House and stay home and
live at my house, so I paid some very small monthly thing for which I got lunch
and a membership, but I'd just eat lunch there.
Warren: What did that membership get you?
McDowell: Social order in your life. You belonged to something. You had a place
to go and a place to--I don't know what it did. I didn't feel very devoted to the SAE
concept, but everybody did it, and I didn't have the nerve not to. So I was just an
SAE, went to meetings once every two weeks or three, ate lunch, and there was
always somebody from there who was going down to Mary Baldwin, where I had a

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girlfriend, and we'd take turns with a car or whatever. It was a place that had little
house parties sometimes, and then during dances it was a place you'd have events
at.

        W&L looked to me vaguely uncomfortable without a fraternity, but I knew
plenty of people who weren't members of any, and they were fine. But my father
had been an SAE at Centre College in Kentucky, and he did not object to my being
one, and I sort of enjoyed it, really. I'm not too sure why, because I don't like
exclusivity or any of that crap.
Warren: When you were a child, would you have gone into fraternity houses?
McDowell: Into the KA House. I had been in there three or four times because it
was a neighbor house, and I guess some nice student walked me in or out. They
weren't evil places at all. There was nothing. They had house mothers who lived
in a very prominent part of the house, not lost somewhere. But usually off the
main hall in the main part of the fraternity house was this house mother, and she
was going to keep that an orderly place. See, now we wouldn't stand for that, I
guess, but that made it all go in those days.

        Girls from any of the girls' colleges would come to the fraternity house and
know that they were minimally protected there. I mean, that woman was going to
be around. They weren't going to go up any steps. They could go in the big lounges
and downstairs into where the drinking took place. Those girls could do that, but
they were accounted for, sort of. It seemed to work. I think it worked.
Warren: Drinking is an important thing at Washington and Lee.
McDowell: Yes. It was important in my house. My folks both drank.
Warren: And they thought it was fine for the students to?
McDowell: They didn't drink with students. [Laughter]
Warren: But they knew students were drinking?
McDowell: They knew students drank, yes, they certainly did.

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Warren: And all through Prohibition, that was going on?
McDowell: I assume so.
Warren: Were your parents there during Prohibition?
McDowell: Well, when was Prohibition? My parents were there from 1926.
Warren: That still would have been Prohibition.
McDowell: Yeah.
Warren: But you probably wouldn't remember.
McDowell: I don't remember, but I bet you that they did. I mean, my folks would
not have objected to bourbon whiskey drinking any time. They would have been
with that. They did observe whatever those rules were and not drink with students,
but if the students wanted to drink, bless their hearts. Now, what the different rules
were that those house mothers worried about, I don't know, but my hunch is they
didn't pay any attention. That was something they let slide past.

         I don't remember drinking being too big a deal with the students. I can
remember that at dance set time there would some too much drinking, but I don't
recall that if you went to the SAE House in the evening there was any drinking
going on. There might have been, but if it wasn't a party, I don't think it was much
of a factor.
Warren: We haven't really talked about parties. Tell me about some memorable
Fancy Dress.
McDowell: Well, there 1--well, Fancy Dress. I don't think I ever attended but one as
a student, and I'm trying to figure out why. I dated a girl, the same Lexington girl, at
Mary Baldwin, and then one other a little bit. I went to Mary Baldwin enough--this
has just come back, because I forgot. I also wrote a column on the paper, Ring-tum
Phi, I got a men's room put in Mary Baldwin College. That's my claim. For two
years they had a little sign, said McDowell Memorial Bathroom. I wrote columns
about saying that to go to visit a girls' school and to have to go across the street to a

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police station to go to the men's room was an outrage. And Mary Baldwin finally
instituted a men's room.

         But I'm trying to think why Fancy Dress has never been big in my life. I went
to so many of them as a kid.
Warren: Did you sneak in?
McDowell: Oh, you didn't even have to sneak. Just go in and wave to whoever was
on the door and go up in the balcony and sit and watch.
Warren: What did you see?
McDowell: We saw people in these Hollywood outfits. It was magnificent. It was
marvelous. You know, we stayed forty minutes; that's enough, because also you
saw very famous bands. God, all the--1 mean, it was nothing to see Kay Kaiser. I
mention him because I particular liked his band and how funny some of the
members were and how they put on a show one afternoon and it was just hilarious
comedy they did besides the band. But all the well-known bands of the era, both
Dorseys and all of them, came to W&L. W&L hired the best. They paid whatever
you had to pay to get these big bands, and they'd have about three dances on the
weekend. It was amazing. You'd have two nights and an afternoon, and it would
be very festive. Fancy Dress Ball was fun because Miss Annie Jo White had told us
how great it was, and you would go get those suits. But I'm trying to think why
would I have shie~ away from Fancy Dress Ball.
Warren: Where did the costumes come from?
McDowell: A rental agency came with the biggest truck you ever saw, and parked it,
and you went over there three, four, five days ahead, and picked a costume that
would fit, and tried it on and paid your rent.for it.
Warren: Did the girls come up days ahead of time?
McDowell: You're going to be able to find all that out. Damned if I know. But I
think you had their dimensions and you got them--but that wouldn't be very

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satisfactory. Those girls would take them a long time to get them adjusted just right.
So I'm drawing a blank, and I don't understand it. It may have been that it was all
too much for me, and I was shy about it and didn't go. I remember once, and it went
fine, but I don't remember but the one. And how we got Mary Sue the right dress, I
do not know, except she lived in Lexington, and my hunch is that her mother
participated and had the thing sitting in her room. But what happened to a girl
from Sweet Briar who came over there and was going to be dressed as a Southern
belle with a hoop skirt, how she got organized for the hoop skirt is beyond me.
You've got to ask somebody.
Warren: I'll find a Sweet Briar girl.
McDowell: Out of three kids, I have two who are psychologists, therapists, and I will
tell them that I can't seem to remember anything about Fancy Dress, and see if
they'll tell me what that tends to betray, but I don't know what it is. I don't know
what it is.
Warren: You have just been absolutely wonderful. I'm done with my list. Is there
anything I haven't asked you that you would like to say?
McDowell: Lexington. Lexington. I find, for instance, that other people, my
contemporaries in the news business and in politics, when I covered politics so long,
don't really understand the delight of a very small, pretty town with two
educational institutions, as tradition-soaked as VMI and W&L, and as reputable. I
find that people can't dream of how much fun it was to go see a VMI game in the
afternoon and a W&L game at night, and to watch the VMI cadets march to church
in those white pants and those gray-tailed coats they wore on Sundays to march.
They'd march across Letcher Avenue and down the hill past the Beta House. I find
people don't get the drift of that, or how interesting it really was to have that many
well-educated college faculty people that were the center of the town. I don't find

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many people that know how fun Lexington would be. They would think, "It's a
little country town, isn't it? Good God, no." [Laughter]

         I mean, Judas Priest, I'll bet, growing up, I knew more athletes, I'll bet I knew
more Rhodes Scholars, I'll bet I knew more future generals. I mean, it was an
amazing place. The two libraries, the idea that by the idea you were seven or eight
years old, you could go over to the library and get yourself a book, and that you were
encouraged to do exactly that, and one of the librarians would come say, "Charley
Boy, what can I do? What do you want to read now?" You know, God! Wow! And
Harold Lock, I went to school with Harold, and his father Harold ran the printing
press where theRing-tum Phi was printed, and you'd go watch a press turn out
newspapers. I'm sure that had an effect on me. Very accessible, you were welcome
in there to do that. You were welcome in the library. You were welcome anywhere
in the school. A gymnasium to hang out in and watch any of the sports. Lee
Chapel. My Lord!

         I'll tell you one more anecdote. A guy named Bill Ellis was an athlete, and he
worked Saturdays showing tourists through Lee Chapel, and I'm sure other athletes
did. I don't know. They were paid some tiny sum or whatever. But the lady in
charge of Lee Chapel was Mrs. Flournoy, I guess the mother of Professor Flournoy,
not the wife. I have down that it's the mother. So I could always walk into Lee
Chapel without paying or anything, just say hi. But when I was ten or eleven, I
started going up there and helping Bill Ellis on Saturdays. One time he told me,
"Now, Charley Boy, next week I've got to be away." On football season, he was a
great football player, so he wouldn't have been doing it, but this couldn't have been
football season. He says, "You know enough about showing people." He showed
me how to do the little spiel, and I could show you ·through Lee Chapel today, and
I'd remember most of the spiel.

         But Traveller--you know this story?

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Warren: No.
McDowell: Traveler was not in a case then. Traveller was not even stuffed.
Traveller was a skeleton, just a skeleton. The buildings up at the head of the
walkway up to Washington Hall were being rebuilt, and some kind of little biology
lab or something that wasn't over in the chemistry building was then in the
Colonnade, had a little skeleton of a little Australian horse, and a lot of its stuff was
stored in Lee Chapel. Somebody put the little skeleton out around kind of like
around the corner. Here sat Traveller, the skeleton, with the carvings on the
tailbone and all, and people's names and hearts drawn and all. Students had been
mistreating Traveller's bones for years. Then around the corner was this little
thing, but the tourists could see the little thing if they stepped over there.

         So Bill Ellis said, "Here's how you describe that," and I did it the next day for
eleven or twelve tourists in different times, and only one set of tourists challenged
me on it. Bill Ellis said, "Tell them this is the skeleton of Traveller, General Lee's
great war horse, who, in the Civil War, was as well known to his Army as his
troops, a magnificent gray war horse. And this is Traveller when he was a colt."
[Laughter]
Warren: And only one person questioned? [Laughter]
McDowell: One person out of eleven or twelve that morning questioned that that
was right. They'd look at you. And Bill Ellis said, "They won't say a word."
[Laughter] I thought it was the most remarkable thing I'd ever seen.
Warren: What a great story.
McDowell: I think it is, too.
Warren: I want to tell you something that's happening in Lexington today for those
of us who love being there, as much as you loved being there. A friend of mine has
made up tee-shirts that say, for those of us who live there, ''I'm Living the Dream
I'd be Having if I Were Living Somewhere Else Making a Lot More Money."

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McDowell: Oh, God, that's marvelous. Oh, that's marvelous! That's Lexington.
It's so good that people recognize that, and they always did, I thought. We're the
luckiest people in the world, everyone would say. We say, "We know that." But
that's right. It's awesome, and I think it's held most of its own. I don't see it all
corrupted.
Warren: That's why I'm there. I'm going to stop the tape.
[End of interview]

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