McGuire interview [Begin Tape 1, Side 2] Warren: We're talking about Washington and Lee being conservative, and it was conservative when I came in 1977. McGuire: Well, relatively speaking. Relatively speaking. Warren: It was and the students were, but they were all these relatively recent graduates who obviously had not been conservative. McGuire: It was a funny little anomaly in there in the middle of everything, because, yeah, it was very conservative. Of course, when we came, as I said, there were all of those dear old professors. They wouldn't have thought of themselves as conservative; that was the way things were. They were just Southern and lovely. They were just lovely. Dr. Flournay and Dr. Gilliam. I guess Dean [William Webb] Pusey was probably the last of that old guard. He was the youngest of the old guard. I don't know. Warren: It swung back pretty conservative now. 17 McGuire: I wonder if it will ever go that way again, I really do. Probably not. I mean, after all, it took a national movement practically to even impinge on this place, sort of lapped up on the shore of Washington and Lee for a few years and then went away. Warren: So were you there? Were you a witness to what happened in May of 1970? McGuire: You mean the strike? Warren: Yes. McGuire: We were in Europe. We missed all that good stuff. That was Odell's sabbatical. We were in Switzerland. We missed Camille. We missed the great flood of '69. Warren: That was a good thing to miss. McGuire: Oh, yes. My kids were really bad. They were really bad. They were at that age with, "Hey, we would have got out of school. Look at all that water." We got all these pictures from the newspaper and everything. Oh, look at that. Anyway, no, Cully was our--he was here for that, when they sent him to Vietnam. Protesters. Yeah, he got so involved in student politics there that his grades dropped off and he automatic-ed out and had to go to Vietnam. Warren: Who is this? McGuire: Cully [Coleman] Blake. He came back and he knocked their socks off. He's really brilliant. I guess he's got two or three degrees in theoretical physics and stuff like that. He's some kind of computer whiz and genius, worked for the Miter Corporation up in Washington for ten or twelve years. He's really bright. I think he's Odell's soul son, you know. They are really a lot alike. Cully was one of the original Mongrel Hoard, too. He loved the old-time music. He couldn't play anything. He's got about as much musical talent as I do, but he found a juice harp. They let him play. He really had a good time with that. Warren: Back to this fraternity stuff. Now, don't groan too much, Mata. You know, I went to a school that didn't have fraternities. McGuire: So did I. Warren: So coming here in the seventies was not eye-opening, it was eye-popping. McGuire: Of course, they had absolutely trashed the houses by then. 18 Warren: Can you describe what was happening then, since they were right around the comer from you? McGuire: Well, all right. What was it, '72 or '73, anyway, we were living in the Hollow, you know, off on Letcher, that very first house. I'm not sure who's in it now. Randy Emmons had it after we did. I don't know who's in there now. Anyway, we lived there, and I remember sitting out on this screened-in porch one night and seeing it was either Phi Delt or PKA bum a piano. That was the sort of thing that was going on. It was "Animal House" all over the campus. They were really just trashed. Warren: And was this every night of the week? McGuire: Well, I mean, they didn't bum a piano every night, but basically--! remember when Chris Leva was a freshman, I had to go over and pick up a guitar at the Beta House that he left there for his older brother James. The smell when you walked in the door of that place, I have never been in--well, the rankest bar I can think of in Lexington was Estelle's down behind Leggett's. Now it's that lovely doctors' building and everything. But Estelle's was a really low- down beer bar with sad people sitting around drinking beer, and it stank, but it didn't smell anywhere near as bad as the Beta House smelled when I walked in the front door. I mean, barf, stale beer, urine, funk. It was nasty. It was just nasty. And they were like that. All the houses were like that. I mean, it's no wonder they had to put several teen million dollars into fixing them up. Warren: So what do you think of this idea of instead of just shutting them down, saving them? Do you think that was a good idea? McGuire: I'm sure financially it had to be done. Building dorms for all those people would have been--1 don't think it would have been cost-effective. And the houses, I mean, they are definitely a whole lot better than they were. I don't know what's happened in the last couple of years. I haven't been keeping up. But I don't know. Fraternities aren't what they used to be. When we came here in the sixties, they were gentlemen's clubs and there was a fraternal feeling, you could tell. That was back when they still had house mothers, and it was kind of genteel. Faculty were 19 invited. Odell was a SPE, so we were invited to the SPE House quite often for dinner and things like that. You were always invited to Parents Weekend cocktail parties and stuff. Everything was sort of under control. They also taught their brothers how to drink like gentlemen instead of like pigs. Of course, it went downhill, but then again, everybody quit joining fraternities, you know. There was a period there when they went from like ninety-six percent of the student boy belonged to fraternities, and if you didn't get asked, you hanged yourself or something, and then it dropped off to about fifty percent. Warren: Why do you think that was? McGuire: Well, that was that period when everybody was peace, love, and live out in the country and have a dog and go fishing, that sort of thing. I think that's when fraternities were kind of at their low ebb, and that's when they tore up the houses pretty much, too, I think. I always thought that the move to the country was not a bad thing at all for students, get to know the environs as well as just the ivory tower at the university. I think it's been hell on real estate. Yeah, that was definitely the move to the country. Warren: What was the feeling in Lexington? I wasn't here at that time. What was the feeling in Lexington when they proposed saving the fraternities? McGuire: I think probably there was a great sigh of relief, because they were really a mess. They were eyesores, and I'm sure that the people downtown and in town were relieved to think that they were going to fix them up. Of course, it looked like Lebanon or Beirut in town while they were doing it. [Laughter] God, it was a mess. But I'm sure they were relieved, because they do, they look a whole lot better, definitely. Warren: Tell me what you mean, it looked like Lebanon. McGuire: They leveled everything. There were piles of rubble and they knocked down all the trees and it was tore-up dirt. It really did, it looked like Beirut while they were doing it that summer, especially that summer. Red Square, when they tore up Red Square, there wasn't a whole lot left except the shell of those three buildings. I'm not too sure that having a concrete slab between the three of them was a great idea. It just means all the glass was broken instead of 20 imbedded in mud. Oh, well. And I did miss the trees, but they said most of them were ailing and probably going to die anyway. I'll never live long enough for them to grow as big and pretty as they were. Warren: One thing we haven't even touched on slightly is coeducation. What do you think that has meant? McGuire: It's meant that the academic standards have gone back up where they belong. Girls are smart, they're really smart. I think they give the boys a boost, too, I really do. Actually, you know, there has to be something else wrong with the boys we're recruiting, because they're all bright. I mean, they're getting good SAT scores and things like that. They don't have to dig around down in the 1100s anymore. But there's sure something missing. Warren: What do you mean? McGuire: Well, I don't know. I really don't know. All I can put my finger on is that someplace there in the last few years they've ceased to be civilized. They are not the well-bred young men that we used to have. They are not Washington and Lee gentlemen. They're little savages, but they're very bright little savages. Are they just recruiting for grades now and they don't look at the other parts of their personality? I don't know. I don't know what the standards are anymore, what they pick them on. I really don't. I tried to sit down with Julie Kozak because she works over there in recruiting, and we never had time because I was feeding Sam's geology students the summer program, the Keck program, so I never did get to really pick her brain. But something's happened. I never had all that much contact with the girls. About the only time I ever saw the girls was when they were at a party and, boy, I'll tell you, sometimes they're as bad as the boys, if not worse. I have heard some language out of some of those girls that really would curl your hair. Oh, me. Warren: Do you miss being in the thick of it? McGuire: I don't miss the university anymore. I was getting so discouraged about the whole place that I really--! loved it so much, I really did. I don't know why I was such a believer, but I hate what's happened to it, I really do. It's funny, but some of the alum notice it, Alumni 21 Weekends, and you talk to some of the like fifteen-year and more, they really notice it. The five- year returnees just want to be back, they just want to be loud, be drunk, be crazy, and the ten-year returnees all want to brag about, "My wife's more expensive than yours. My car's bigger than yours," you know, that sort of thing. By the time they've been out for fifteen years or so, they pretty much know who they are and they look back and they think, "This is not the way it was. 11 Warren: Of course, each one has a little four-year window which determines "how it was. 11 McGuire: That's one of the things that I used to try and get through to the guys at Phi Delt. I said, "You know, part of the trouble is that you're losing something every year. You're not passing down anything but the party traditions. You're not passing down even job descriptions of the officers. You're not telling your new officers what they're supposed to be doing. You're not filling them in on the history of the house. Do you even have a historian?" Things like that. Used to be that it was part of the rush ritual and all of that stuff, that they got the history of the fraternity that they were joining. Their big brother sort of inculcated them in what was expected of them, and the oral tradition of the house, say, but they keep losing it and it's getting to the point where all a fraternity is is a place where they all get together and raise hell. Warren: What were some of those oral traditions? What were the differences among the houses? What would the difference be from one to the other? McGuire: Well, I don't know. That's all the secret stuff, you know. Warren: That's why I'm curious. Were you, as cook or as house mother, were you around during Rush Week? What happened during Rush Week? McGuire: I probably knew more about ZBT than any of them because, for one thing, they had left behind all their records. When it was a Jewish fraternity, I mean, they used to get all the top honors academically. They had incredible athletes in the house, and they had left all this stuff behind. Of course, the little Gentiles that were there when I was there, I had one half-Jewish boy, he was the only--we used to make him bear the whole weight of Yorn Kippur and everything. [Laughter] Oh, dear. But anyway, they weren't all that interested or they didn't treasure or respect--well, not respect, because they did respect things. They did. But they didn't feel it the 22 way I think the Jewish boys that had started the house would have, because they did, there was a whole ritual. It wasn't just a secret ritual that happened in the chapter room, but there was a whole--and the boys that I knew, it wasn't theirs. They had come along after it had died. They built their own little tradition there. I mean, they were brothers. They were a little band of brothers, they truly were, and they were tight and they still are. But they're not a Jewish fraternity anymore. Warren: So during Rush Week, what went on? What did you witness during Rush Week? McGuire: Well, that was another thing that ZBT wasn't particularly into all that much, drinking and smoking cigars and eating nasty things and throwing up a lot and that sort of stuff, but they really weren't into whaling on each other and being disgusting. They weren't mean. They weren't mean. Most of the stuff that was done at ZBT, as far as rush was concerned, was probably a little on the childish side. It's all childish, but it wasn't mean. It wasn't meant to demean anybody, and I don't think anybody ever paddled anybody at ZBT. Mostly they just got rip-roaring drunk together, you know, as I say, threw up a lot. That's one thing I tried to teach them. You do not drink Ripple, you do not drink Red Dog or Mad Dog, or whatever that stuff is. You can get just as good a buzz on good liquor and less of it and you won't feel so bad tomorrow. Warren: It's an important part of their education. McGuire: See, that's what the brothers used to do for them. They used to teach them how to drink like gentlemen. I taught them how to drink Irish Whiskey. Actually, whenever they come back, they usually bring me a bottle of Jamison's. I don't drink anymore. About the only people I would even bother to drink with. Warren: A while back you made a reference to a phenomenon that I was very intrigued by when I first moved here: the law wife. People were always talking about law wives. "We can get law wives to do this." McGuire: Sure. Warren: And I couldn't get a job because of the law wives. 23 McGuire: The law wives come, and it's helped the Lexington school system immensely because they come, they teach for three years, and they go away, and you can start somebody back at base salary again. They never are here long enough to run up a big bill, and they're usually intelligent and personable and attractive. I had great law wives working for me in the restaurant, waiting tables. Usually most of them would try and get something like a teaching job. But there were always a few that were willing to hob-nob with the--besides, it was fun to work at the White Column Inn, it really was. A big family, and I fed them well. Warren: You fed everybody well, Mata. McGuire: Oh, me. Warren: So are they still law wives in the same kind of way? McGuire: I think so. Warren: Aren't there law husbands now? McGuire: Well, now that there are more women over there, I suppose there's a shorter supply of law wives than there used to be, because it must be about half and half over in the law school now, isn't it? Warren: Looks that way. McGuire: I don't know what law husbands do. I haven't a clue what law husbands do. Commute, maybe. It's not the greatest place in the world to get a job. Do they go to law school in tandem now? Both of them go? Two-lawyer family? [Laughter] You know, that's something else somebody ought to look into, probably, ask somebody that knows more about it than I do, I'll swear I think that when the law school moved over across the field there and sort of amputated itself from the colonnade, there was a loss of maturity somewhere. I mean, the law school now is so totally separate. I mean, even the judicial hardly impinges on each other. I guess there is the Honor Court and all that, but they have so little contact anymore. Warren: What was it like before? McGuire: Well, they were just there on campus and they were up to three years older, and they were thinking about being adult citizens soon. That does, I guess, cast some kind of maturity over 24 the scene, except for that one year the law students were so much fun. They're usually a pretty stodgy bunch. I mean, I've had a table of like 18 or 20 law students come in there, and I've seen more cheerful, more lively funeral directors' conventions. Seems like all they talk about is law class. That one class, '81, oh, yes, I think this is going to be their fifteenth reunion this year, it was the smartest class that ever hit Washington and Lee. I mean to tell you, all of them were incredibly bright. Carrie Wilson and Neal Brickman [phonetic] and several of them worked for me. God, they're bright. Incredible, all of them, and fun. They didn't have to work very hard because they were so bright, and they partied and they blew away the law professors. I mean, they just didn't know what to do with them. They'd have big, enormous poker parties and they had some of the nakedest Halloween parties I've ever seen in my life. I mean, you know, half of them go as mud people. Warren: That could be chilly at the end of October. McGuire: They were definitely lively, not a funeral directors' convention. Warren: Speaking of the kind of people who would come into the White Column, you must have had some pretty interesting alumni come in, too, people who had gone out and made something of themselves in the world and came back for reunions. McGuire: Well, as I say, the only people that hung out at the Columns as undergraduates were mavericks. We didn't really appeal to big groups of students coming in. The only concession we ever made to the students was we did have Law School Happy Hour, and that was mainly because of that class and all those guys that worked for me, and we'd do that on like Wednesday night or something, and fill up with law students, and they'd all talk about law and drink and get crazy. But asking about alumni that came back to the Columns, it would be the mavericks that had hung out there. We were open for ten years, so they'd go away and come back, and we did have some of those. Warren: But you had the best restaurant in town, hands down, so people coming from the class of '52 would come back. Wouldn't they have eaten at the White Column? 25 McGuire: Oh, yeah. I mean, like Alumni Weekend and Parents Weekend, we had lots and lots of people in there. We used to have celebrities. I mean, Lady Bird Johnson ate there and Tom Wolfe, and they'd always bring them over there when they had somebody for Contact and what have you. We had Admiral [Elmo "Bud"] Zumwalt and all these people. Ralph Nader; he did have a hole in his shoe. He drank orange juice. Warren: He did have a hole in his shoe? McGuire: He drank orange juice. When Lady Bird came, there was a student here whose parents were good friends of Lady Bird's and she came with them to visit him, and they came in and we had the Secret Service all over the place. Wayne Killy was waiting on them, and the Secret Service men said, "Don't get between me and Mrs. Johnson, never." Wouldn't think of it. [Laughter] Sitting around talking to their pens and things. Kind of weird. Warren: One other thing I've never heard described, when exactly was it that the wires got put underground in Lexington? McGuire: [Laughter] Oh, that was so much fun. It wasn't just the wires. Mame, they dug it up three different times. Warren: I've never heard that. Tell me about that. McGuire: Well, it was right in front here, and we were sort of cut off from the world. Everybody had to leap through piles of dirt to get in there. It wasn't great for business. Warren: What year was that? McGuire: I'm trying to think. It must have been like '74 or '75, because I was still living upstairs. It was before I bought the house in the country, so it was early on when we first got started. Warren: It was all done when I moved here in '77 and when I started visiting in '76. It was all done. McGuire: Yes, so it must have been '74, '75, sometime like that. Of course, they did most of it in the summertime when the tourists were supposed to be in town, of course. I never quite understood that. But they dug up the damn Main Street three different times. Showed a whole lot 26 of lack of foresight to me that they didn't dig it all up and put everything underground. They had to put the sewer, the gas, the lights, and the phone, I think, and I think they did manage to get two of them down at once. I don't know, the phone and the electric might have been in the same conduit or something, but they'd dig it up and they'd pack it down. They'd dig it up and they'd pack it down. Seemed like it went on for a long time, but I guess it didn't. I don't know how long it took them, but it sure was dug up. There was one whole summer when I couldn't use the front porch upstairs because it was so dusty and ugly. It was a mess, but it was a good thing to do. I mean, we never would have gotten--what's that silly movie--"Sommersby" if we'd had all that garbage running overhead. It's just amazing how little time it took them to set up like back in 1860. Looked good. Looked good. That was fun. That was a lot of fun. We had all of the wardrobe in the Phi Delt house and all of the makeup over in Sigma Nu across the street, so we had all the extras coming in and out. It was a lot of fun. We enjoyed it. It's a good thing it was a cool summer, because, man, I mean, those people had on some real costumes, like long stockings and pantaloons and all of that under whalebone and wool and shawls and those bonnets. They'd have been dropping like flies if it was as hot as it usually is in June. Oh, dear. I think we got all of about a minute and a half in the film. [Laughter] Warren: If that. McGuire: Oh, dear. Boy, I'll tell you, that's a well-planned operation, though. I really admired the logistics of that whole thing. They really had that thing under control. They knew what they were doing. But you can see why movies cost so much. Oh, dear. Warren: Any final words of wisdom you'd like to impart about Washington and Lee and Lexington and Rockbridge County? McGuire: Well, I'm not planning on leaving. I still love it here. I'd just like to get back over on the other side of the county. Warren: We'd love to have you. 27 McGuire: It's a friendly county, basically, you know. I love it. I spent one summer up in D.C. and I wondered what it was, it was driving me crazy, what did I miss. What I missed was the fact that you didn't say hello to anybody, you know. In Lexington, you can't go fifteen feet without running into somebody you know, and everybody's friendly. I like that. I like living in a small town. I still love that university. I just hate what's happened to it. I'll tell you, it pisses me off what they've done to Frank. If there's anybody anywhere that loves that university more than he does, that got a shorter end of the stick, I don't know who it is. Frank, I love you. Warren: That's a great way to shut the tape down. I love you, too, Frank. [End of interview] 28 ps and they took care of it. Everything worked very nicely. That went to hell in a bushel basket. I don't know what happened, but the students that we got in the house and the students that other people were talking about in other houses, they just got all out of hand. What I said was the first batch had parents. I met their parents. Their parents cared. Their parents came. They obviously lived with their parents, they'd eat with their parents, like normal families. Then all of a sudden I got a batch that were hatched, and I don't think they ever ate meals with their parents and I don't think--I don't know. Warren: What time period are you talking about? McGuire: Just before I quit over there. 11 Warren: When? Give me a year. McGuire: Well, I'm here two years now. '91, '92, in there. Warren: And before that, you were with Z--- McGuire: Yes, I had ZBT way back. Warren: When is way back? McGuire: After I closed the Columns. '83, '84. I was over there for five or six years. I loved those guys [at ZBT]. Man, they were the funniest bunch of little misfits and smart, and they have all grown up to be such wonderful people. They came back, I had thirteen of them here for New Year's. They stayed in the motel, and we were living in the Presbyterian Manse over here, Ann and I and I, and they came for New Year's with wives and babies and sweethearts and everything. I got a card the other day from Will Barber, he's in Prague teaching. Warren: Frank asked me to ask you about your experience with the ZBTs. McGuire: Oh, God, I loved those kids. Warren: He says that at some point it was primarily a Jewish house. McGuire: Listen. There used to be three Jewish houses on campus. Warren: Tell me about that. McGuire: Well, before the academics began to fall off, there was a big Jewish population at W&L. There was ZBT, there was Sammys, and there were the Peeps. The Peeps were where the KA House is now, and I can't remember where the Sammys were. They weren't here all that long. They had a real good pre-med program here. Dr. Starling's pre-med program attracted a lot of Jewish boys. I went to school with Jewish kids in New York City, you know, and they are very much into good academics, the prestige of good academics, and when the prestige from the academics start to fall off, they're not going to send their kids anymore. You can't blame them. Actually, the end of ZBT was just about when academics bottomed out here. Really, that was kind of the low point, just before they went coed, because they were scraping. They were really scraping. But those Zs, they were so sweet. Most of them were poor. Most of them didn't have much money, and they were so bright. They were definitely misfits. They were not your general 12 run-of-the-mill fraternity boys. Most of them lived in the house for three years and they treated it like a home, and when they did the survey for the renovations, that house required less money to be put into it than any house on campus because they hadn't trashed it. Warren: That's what Frank was telling me. McGuire: They hadn't trashed it, because they loved it, they lived in it, it was their home for at least three years. Some stayed longer. It wasn't long toward the end, there weren't that many of them. But, oh, God, they were a wonderful bunch of kids. I loved them and I still love them because they still come back. I had a much better rapport with them than with the Phi Delts. Warren: So that fraternity actually closed down at Washington and Lee? McGuire: Yes, yes, they just faded away. Warren: That was while you were there, it faded away? McGuire: Yes, just shortly after. I kept them going a lot longer than they probably could have. When I took over over there, oh, man, they'd gotten themselves into a terrible pickle with bills, because they were buying their groceries at the grocery store instead of doing anything wholesale and everything, so I fed them on about half their budget the first year I was there so I could pay off their bills. [Laughter] They all learned a lot. Taught a lot of them how to cook, too. Warren: You taught them how to cook? McGuire: Yeah. I almost wrote a cookbook for them. Well, I mimeographed a lot of it for them, and I never did get it all together in book form. You know, how to make gravy without lumps, stuff like that. Warren: And the guys actually came into the kitchen? McGuire: Oh, gosh, they hung out there all the time. We had a grand time. Warren: Tell me about that. McGuire: Well, when I closed the White Column, Mollie Messimer said, "Mata, you know, you really ought to go over to JMU and get your counseling degree," and I said, "Mollie, I know myself pretty well, and if I go over there and I find a professor that I really admire and respect, I'll become a disciple and I'll lose all my instincts. If I don't find anybody that I feel like that about, 13 I'll probably open my mouth and get thrown out. And besides, who's going to go to a counselor that has to chop carrots while they're talking to you?" [Laughter] Because this is the way it always is. Warren: I would. McGuire: It was that way at the Columns. People would come out in the kitchen and tell me their problems. "Here, chop carrots. It's good for you." And the same way at ZBT. Let's face it. They were sort of a funny little bunch, dear, dear children, but they were misfits and they didn't have a whole lot of luck with girls. I remember one of the first things they said to me was, "How do we get girls to come here?" I said, "Clean the bathrooms." I had enough of them coming into the White Column to use the bathroom because they wouldn't use the bathroom at any of the fraternities. I said, "Clean bathrooms." And it worked. They didn't stay long, but they did come. [Laughter] Then the smart ones stayed, and we had a lot of really nice girls that could see beyond the fact that they didn't have any money and they were not die-stamped out of the same mold that everybody else was. A lot of them have managed to find lovely little ladies to marry, who appreciate the finer qualities. Warren: So did you get recruited to be a house mother? How did it come to be that you became a house mother? McGuire: Joe Goldsten, when they needed a house mother at Phi Delt after the renovations, my daughter-in-law, Jenny, saw this as in the paper and she called, and it was Joe Goldsten, and he said, "Oh, well, it wouldn't work for you, because you have a family and you'd want to live at home, but have your mother-in-law call me." [Laughter] I called and said, "What's up, Joe?" Of course, I'd known Joe forever and all this kids and Addie, his daughter, used to work for me at the Column. Joe liked the old-time music, too. He says, "We need a house mother like you." I said, "A house mother. Hmm. I don't know whether I'm going to like this or not." He says, "Well, you can try it." 14 I said, "Well, I've tried everything else. I might as well." So that's how I got into the house mothering business at Phi Delt. Joe retired the same time I quit. Warren: You went to Phi Delt first or ZBT first? McGuire: ZBT was way back in the eighties. Warren: So then there was a period you weren't a house mother? McGuire: Oh, yeah. I wasn't really a house mother at ZBT. I was their mother. I was their cook and their mother and their overseer and everything else, but I wasn't a house mother. Warren: This wasn't an official position? McGuire: They didn't have house mothers at that time. That was before the renovations. Warren: But they used to have house mothers. McGuire: Uh-huh. I think that Laura Fletcher, who was the ZBT house mother, was one of the very last to go. I think she was there until maybe '70, '73, maybe. Warren: Were you paid to be doing what you were doing at ZBT? McGuire: I was paid like a cook or whatever. I mean, actually, you know, cooks get paid better. Most cooks get paid better than house mothers. Did you know that? Warren: No. McGuire: My son's a cook at PKA. Makes a hell of a lot more than I did. [Laughter] Warren: So there was a period after ZBT. Then what did you do? McGuire: Stuff. I worked for a couple of CIA chefs out at Ramada Inn for a while. Did different things for a while, nothing very spectacular. I liked working with those CIA chefs. Man, they are good. Warren: They know their stuff, huh? McGuire: You can learn a lot just watching those people. Warren: I actually went up there one time and had lunch there. It was very impressive. McGuire: Jesse wants to go. He's decided to go. Warren: So you got recruited for Phi Delt. This was right after the renaissance program was under way? 15 McGuire: Yes. Warren: So you were sort of part of that? McGuire: Uh-huh. Warren: Can you describe the fraternity renaissance program from your point of view? McGuire: Well, of course, most of it was done by the time I got involved in it. I'll tell you one thing, that architect was an idiot, and they should have got somebody. They should have got somebody from the university to ride herd on that bunch. They got ripped off big time. Man, did they get ripped off big time. Warren: How so? McGuire: Well, Doug Harwood said, "You know that great big expensive brick wall in the back of the gym, it's got nothing, no windows, no nothing? They ought to paint a great big tit on there, because that's what everything thinks Washington and Lee is, it's a great big tit." My personal experience with the interior decorator that they fired, finally, she was ripping them off big time, evidently, and the people she was working for, too, I guess. They would have had, I think, a lot better luck had they let the students have a little more say in what kind of decorations they put in the house, what kind of furniture and what have you. I think they did a pretty good job of the room furniture for the student rooms upstairs, but I'll tell you, some of the furniture they put in the living rooms was pretty darn silly for students. Warren: What do you mean? What kind of things? McGuire: I mean, you know, little love seats for boys. I had a stupid little couch in the living room at Phi Delt, and I had two 6'9" basketball players and one of them would fill this stupid thing, you know. Well, they've had it reupholstered at least once. They don't stand up under the kind of wear that students give. Warren: Did your opinion get asked? McGuire: By the time I got on board there, most of that stuff was already wished on us. I did manage to talk them into putting in a laundry in the basement. The architect was such a fool, he didn't remember that there was duct work going up, so the measurements we gave him for two 16 washing machines and two dryers weren't right, because the room wasn't the right size, because there was this large duct thing in the corner room. He didn't know anything about electricity, because they were underpowered. You could not use both dryers at the same time. They had to have the electrician come in and rewire. I mean, there were so many things like that. The man drew pretty pictures. That was it. I mean, he did lovely renderings of what these things were going to look like, but I don't think he knew a damn thing about practical reality, you know--electrical, plumbing, heating, air-conditioning, leakage, gutters. Gutters. Instead of getting the already baked-on enamel gutters, they got plain old gutters and then they painted them and the paint peeled off, and they got the worst painters. Man, I mean to tell you they had some of the worst painters. There was just an awful lot of that. They should have got Pat Brady to come in and supervise that whole thing. I know he loves the university, he probably would have done it for little or nothing, just come kick ass, make sure that they were doing what they were supposed to do. Warren: Let me turn the tape over. [Begin Tape 1, Side 2] Warren: We're talking about Washington and Lee being conservative, and it was conservative when I came in 1977. McGuire: Well, relatively speaking. Relatively speaking. Warren: It was and the students were, but they were all these relatively recent graduates who obviously had not been conservative. McGuire: It was a funny little anomaly in there in the middle of everything, because, yeah, it was very conservative. Of course, when we came, as I said, there were all of those dear old professors. They wouldn't have thought of themselves as conservative; that was the way things were. They were just Southern and lovely. They were just lovely. Dr. Flournay and Dr. Gilliam. I guess Dean [William Webb] Pusey was probably the last of that old guard. He was the youngest of the old guard. I don't know. Warren: It swung back pretty conservative now. 17 McGuire: I wonder if it will ever go that way again, I really do. Probably not. I mean, after all, it took a national movement practically to even impinge on this place, sort of lapped up on the shore of Washington and Lee for a few years and then went away. Warren: So were you there? Were you a witness to what happened in May of 1970? McGuire: You mean the strike? Warren: Yes. McGuire: We were in Europe. We missed all that good stuff. That was Odell's sabbatical. We were in Switzerland. We missed Camille. We missed the great flood of '69. Warren: That was a good thing to miss. McGuire: Oh, yes. My kids were really bad. They were really bad. They were at that age with, "Hey, we would have got out of school. Look at all that water." We got all these pictures from the newspaper and everything. Oh, look at that. Anyway, no, Cully was our--he was here for that, when they sent him to Vietnam. Protesters. Yeah, he got so involved in student politics there that his grades dropped off and he automatic-ed out and had to go to Vietnam. Warren: Who is this? McGuire: Cully [Coleman] Blake. He came back and he knocked their socks off. He's really brilliant. I guess he's got two or three degrees in theoretical physics and stuff like that. He's some kind of computer whiz and genius, worked for the Miter Corporation up in Washington for ten or twelve years. He's really bright. I think he's Odell's soul son, you know. They are really a lot alike. Cully was one of the original Mongrel Hoard, too. He loved the old-time music. He couldn't play anything. He's got about as much musical talent as I do, but he found a juice harp. They let him play. He really had a good time with that. Warren: Back to this fraternity stuff. Now, don't groan too much, Mata. You know, I went to a school that didn't have fraternities. McGuire: So did I. Warren: So coming here in the seventies was not eye-opening, it was eye-popping. McGuire: Of course, they had absolutely trashed the houses by then. 18 Warren: Can you describe what was happening then, since they were right around the comer from you? McGuire: Well, all right. What was it, '72 or '73, anyway, we were living in the Hollow, you know, off on Letcher, that very first house. I'm not sure who's in it now. Randy Emmons had it after we did. I don't know who's in there now. Anyway, we lived there, and I remember sitting out on this screened-in porch one night and seeing it was either Phi Delt or PKA bum a piano. That was the sort of thing that was going on. It was "Animal House" all over the campus. They were really just trashed. Warren: And was this every night of the week? McGuire: Well, I mean, they didn't bum a piano every night, but basically--! remember when Chris Leva was a freshman, I had to go over and pick up a guitar at the Beta House that he left there for his older brother James. The smell when you walked in the door of that place, I have never been in--well, the rankest bar I can think of in Lexington was Estelle's down behind Leggett's. Now it's that lovely doctors' building and everything. But Estelle's was a really low- down beer bar with sad people sitting around drinking beer, and it stank, but it didn't smell anywhere near as bad as the Beta House smelled when I walked in the front door. I mean, barf, stale beer, urine, funk. It was nasty. It was just nasty. And they were like that. All the houses were like that. I mean, it's no wonder they had to put several teen million dollars into fixing them up. Warren: So what do you think of this idea of instead of just shutting them down, saving them? Do you think that was a good idea? McGuire: I'm sure financially it had to be done. Building dorms for all those people would have been--1 don't think it would have been cost-effective. And the houses, I mean, they are definitely a whole lot better than they were. I don't know what's happened in the last couple of years. I haven't been keeping up. But I don't know. Fraternities aren't what they used to be. When we came here in the sixties, they were gentlemen's clubs and there was a fraternal feeling, you could tell. That was back when they still had house mothers, and it was kind of genteel. Faculty were 19 invited. Odell was a SPE, so we were invited to the SPE House quite often for dinner and things like that. You were always invited to Parents Weekend cocktail parties and stuff. Everything was sort of under control. They also taught their brothers how to drink like gentlemen instead of like pigs. Of course, it went downhill, but then again, everybody quit joining fraternities, you know. There was a period there when they went from like ninety-six percent of the student boy belonged to fraternities, and if you didn't get asked, you hanged yourself or something, and then it dropped off to about fifty percent. Warren: Why do you think that was? McGuire: Well, that was that period when everybody was peace, love, and live out in the country and have a dog and go fishing, that sort of thing. I think that's when fraternities were kind of at their low ebb, and that's when they tore up the houses pretty much, too, I think. I always thought that the move to the country was not a bad thing at all for students, get to know the environs as well as just the ivory tower at the university. I think it's been hell on real estate. Yeah, that was definitely the move to the country. Warren: What was the feeling in Lexington? I wasn't here at that time. What was the feeling in Lexington when they proposed saving the fraternities? McGuire: I think probably there was a great sigh of relief, because they were really a mess. They were eyesores, and I'm sure that the people downtown and in town were relieved to think that they were going to fix them up. Of course, it looked like Lebanon or Beirut in town while they were doing it. [Laughter] God, it was a mess. But I'm sure they were relieved, because they do, they look a whole lot better, definitely. Warren: Tell me what you mean, it looked like Lebanon. McGuire: They leveled everything. There were piles of rubble and they knocked down all the trees and it was tore-up dirt. It really did, it looked like Beirut while they were doing it that summer, especially that summer. Red Square, when they tore up Red Square, there wasn't a whole lot left except the shell of those three buildings. I'm not too sure that having a concrete slab between the three of them was a great idea. It just means all the glass was broken instead of 20 imbedded in mud. Oh, well. And I did miss the trees, but they said most of them were ailing and probably going to die anyway. I'll never live long enough for them to grow as big and pretty as they were. Warren: One thing we haven't even touched on slightly is coeducation. What do you think that has meant? McGuire: It's meant that the academic standards have gone back up where they belong. Girls are smart, they're really smart. I think they give the boys a boost, too, I really do. Actually, you know, there has to be something else wrong with the boys we're recruiting, because they're all bright. I mean, they're getting good SAT scores and things like that. They don't have to dig around down in the 1100s anymore. But there's sure something missing. Warren: What do you mean? McGuire: Well, I don't know. I really don't know. All I can put my finger on is that someplace there in the last few years they've ceased to be civilized. They are not the well-bred young men that we used to have. They are not Washington and Lee gentlemen. They're little savages, but they're very bright little savages. Are they just recruiting for grades now and they don't look at the other parts of their personality? I don't know. I don't know what the standards are anymore, what they pick them on. I really don't. I tried to sit down with Julie Kozak because she works over there in recruiting, and we never had time because I was feeding Sam's geology students the summer program, the Keck program, so I never did get to really pick her brain. But something's happened. I never had all that much contact with the girls. About the only time I ever saw the girls was when they were at a party and, boy, I'll tell you, sometimes they're as bad as the boys, if not worse. I have heard some language out of some of those girls that really would curl your hair. Oh, me. Warren: Do you miss being in the thick of it? McGuire: I don't miss the university anymore. I was getting so discouraged about the whole place that I really--! loved it so much, I really did. I don't know why I was such a believer, but I hate what's happened to it, I really do. It's funny, but some of the alum notice it, Alumni 21 Weekends, and you talk to some of the like fifteen-year and more, they really notice it. The five- year returnees just want to be back, they just want to be loud, be drunk, be crazy, and the ten-year returnees all want to brag about, "My wife's more expensive than yours. My car's bigger than yours," you know, that sort of thing. By the time they've been out for fifteen years or so, they pretty much know who they are and they look back and they think, "This is not the way it was. 11 Warren: Of course, each one has a little four-year window which determines "how it was. 11 McGuire: That's one of the things that I used to try and get through to the guys at Phi Delt. I said, "You know, part of the trouble is that you're losing something every year. You're not passing down anything but the party traditions. You're not passing down even job descriptions of the officers. You're not telling your new officers what they're supposed to be doing. You're not filling them in on the history of the house. Do you even have a historian?" Things like that. Used to be that it was part of the rush ritual and all of that stuff, that they got the history of the fraternity that they were joining. Their big brother sort of inculcated them in what was expected of them, and the oral tradition of the house, say, but they keep losing it and it's getting to the point where all a fraternity is is a place where they all get together and raise hell. Warren: What were some of those oral traditions? What were the differences among the houses? What would the difference be from one to the other? McGuire: Well, I don't know. That's all the secret stuff, you know. Warren: That's why I'm curious. Were you, as cook or as house mother, were you around during Rush Week? What happened during Rush Week? McGuire: I probably knew more about ZBT than any of them because, for one thing, they had left behind all their records. When it was a Jewish fraternity, I mean, they used to get all the top honors academically. They had incredible athletes in the house, and they had left all this stuff behind. Of course, the little Gentiles that were there when I was there, I had one half-Jewish boy, he was the only--we used to make him bear the whole weight of Yorn Kippur and everything. [Laughter] Oh, dear. But anyway, they weren't all that interested or they didn't treasure or respect--well, not respect, because they did respect things. They did. But they didn't feel it the 22 way I think the Jewish boys that had started the house would have, because they did, there was a whole ritual. It wasn't just a secret ritual that happened in the chapter room, but there was a whole--and the boys that I knew, it wasn't theirs. They had come along after it had died. They built their own little tradition there. I mean, they were brothers. They were a little band of brothers, they truly were, and they were tight and they still are. But they're not a Jewish fraternity anymore. Warren: So during Rush Week, what went on? What did you witness during Rush Week? McGuire: Well, that was another thing that ZBT wasn't particularly into all that much, drinking and smoking cigars and eating nasty things and throwing up a lot and that sort of stuff, but they really weren't into whaling on each other and being disgusting. They weren't mean. They weren't mean. Most of the stuff that was done at ZBT, as far as rush was concerned, was probably a little on the childish side. It's all childish, but it wasn't mean. It wasn't meant to demean anybody, and I don't think anybody ever paddled anybody at ZBT. Mostly they just got rip-roaring drunk together, you know, as I say, threw up a lot. That's one thing I tried to teach them. You do not drink Ripple, you do not drink Red Dog or Mad Dog, or whatever that stuff is. You can get just as good a buzz on good liquor and less of it and you won't feel so bad tomorrow. Warren: It's an important part of their education. McGuire: See, that's what the brothers used to do for them. They used to teach them how to drink like gentlemen. I taught them how to drink Irish Whiskey. Actually, whenever they come back, they usually bring me a bottle of Jamison's. I don't drink anymore. About the only people I would even bother to drink with. Warren: A while back you made a reference to a phenomenon that I was very intrigued by when I first moved here: the law wife. People were always talking about law wives. "We can get law wives to do this." McGuire: Sure. Warren: And I couldn't get a job because of the law wives. 23 McGuire: The law wives come, and it's helped the Lexington school system immensely because they come, they teach for three years, and they go away, and you can start somebody back at base salary again. They never are here long enough to run up a big bill, and they're usually intelligent and personable and attractive. I had great law wives working for me in the restaurant, waiting tables. Usually most of them would try and get something like a teaching job. But there were always a few that were willing to hob-nob with the--besides, it was fun to work at the White Column Inn, it really was. A big family, and I fed them well. Warren: You fed everybody well, Mata. McGuire: Oh, me. Warren: So are they still law wives in the same kind of way? McGuire: I think so. Warren: Aren't there law husbands now? McGuire: Well, now that there are more women over there, I suppose there's a shorter supply of law wives than there used to be, because it must be about half and half over in the law school now, isn't it? Warren: Looks that way. McGuire: I don't know what law husbands do. I haven't a clue what law husbands do. Commute, maybe. It's not the greatest place in the world to get a job. Do they go to law school in tandem now? Both of them go? Two-lawyer family? [Laughter] You know, that's something else somebody ought to look into, probably, ask somebody that knows more about it than I do, I'll swear I think that when the law school moved over across the field there and sort of amputated itself from the colonnade, there was a loss of maturity somewhere. I mean, the law school now is so totally separate. I mean, even the judicial hardly impinges on each other. I guess there is the Honor Court and all that, but they have so little contact anymore. Warren: What was it like before? McGuire: Well, they were just there on campus and they were up to three years older, and they were thinking about being adult citizens soon. That does, I guess, cast some kind of maturity over 24 the scene, except for that one year the law students were so much fun. They're usually a pretty stodgy bunch. I mean, I've had a table of like 18 or 20 law students come in there, and I've seen more cheerful, more lively funeral directors' conventions. Seems like all they talk about is law class. That one class, '81, oh, yes, I think this is going to be their fifteenth reunion this year, it was the smartest class that ever hit Washington and Lee. I mean to tell you, all of them were incredibly bright. Carrie Wilson and Neal Brickman [phonetic] and several of them worked for me. God, they're bright. Incredible, all of them, and fun. They didn't have to work very hard because they were so bright, and they partied and they blew away the law professors. I mean, they just didn't know what to do with them. They'd have big, enormous poker parties and they had some of the nakedest Halloween parties I've ever seen in my life. I mean, you know, half of them go as mud people. Warren: That could be chilly at the end of October. McGuire: They were definitely lively, not a funeral directors' convention. Warren: Speaking of the kind of people who would come into the White Column, you must have had some pretty interesting alumni come in, too, people who had gone out and made something of themselves in the world and came back for reunions. McGuire: Well, as I say, the only people that hung out at the Columns as undergraduates were mavericks. We didn't really appeal to big groups of students coming in. The only concession we ever made to the students was we did have Law School Happy Hour, and that was mainly because of that class and all those guys that worked for me, and we'd do that on like Wednesday night or something, and fill up with law students, and they'd all talk about law and drink and get crazy. But asking about alumni that came back to the Columns, it would be the mavericks that had hung out there. We were open for ten years, so they'd go away and come back, and we did have some of those. Warren: But you had the best restaurant in town, hands down, so people coming from the class of '52 would come back. Wouldn't they have eaten at the White Column? 25 McGuire: Oh, yeah. I mean, like Alumni Weekend and Parents Weekend, we had lots and lots of people in there. We used to have celebrities. I mean, Lady Bird Johnson ate there and Tom Wolfe, and they'd always bring them over there when they had somebody for Contact and what have you. We had Admiral [Elmo "Bud"] Zumwalt and all these people. Ralph Nader; he did have a hole in his shoe. He drank orange juice. Warren: He did have a hole in his shoe? McGuire: He drank orange juice. When Lady Bird came, there was a student here whose parents were good friends of Lady Bird's and she came with them to visit him, and they came in and we had the Secret Service all over the place. Wayne Killy was waiting on them, and the Secret Service men said, "Don't get between me and Mrs. Johnson, never." Wouldn't think of it. [Laughter] Sitting around talking to their pens and things. Kind of weird. Warren: One other thing I've never heard described, when exactly was it that the wires got put underground in Lexington? McGuire: [Laughter] Oh, that was so much fun. It wasn't just the wires. Mame, they dug it up three different times. Warren: I've never heard that. Tell me about that. McGuire: Well, it was right in front here, and we were sort of cut off from the world. Everybody had to leap through piles of dirt to get in there. It wasn't great for business. Warren: What year was that? McGuire: I'm trying to think. It must have been like '74 or '75, because I was still living upstairs. It was before I bought the house in the country, so it was early on when we first got started. Warren: It was all done when I moved here in '77 and when I started visiting in '76. It was all done. McGuire: Yes, so it must have been '74, '75, sometime like that. Of course, they did most of it in the summertime when the tourists were supposed to be in town, of course. I never quite understood that. But they dug up the damn Main Street three different times. Showed a whole lot 26 of lack of foresight to me that they didn't dig it all up and put everything underground. They had to put the sewer, the gas, the lights, and the phone, I think, and I think they did manage to get two of them down at once. I don't know, the phone and the electric might have been in the same conduit or something, but they'd dig it up and they'd pack it down. They'd dig it up and they'd pack it down. Seemed like it went on for a long time, but I guess it didn't. I don't know how long it took them, but it sure was dug up. There was one whole summer when I couldn't use the front porch upstairs because it was so dusty and ugly. It was a mess, but it was a good thing to do. I mean, we never would have gotten--what's that silly movie--"Sommersby" if we'd had all that garbage running overhead. It's just amazing how little time it took them to set up like back in 1860. Looked good. Looked good. That was fun. That was a lot of fun. We had all of the wardrobe in the Phi Delt house and all of the makeup over in Sigma Nu across the street, so we had all the extras coming in and out. It was a lot of fun. We enjoyed it. It's a good thing it was a cool summer, because, man, I mean, those people had on some real costumes, like long stockings and pantaloons and all of that under whalebone and wool and shawls and those bonnets. They'd have been dropping like flies if it was as hot as it usually is in June. Oh, dear. I think we got all of about a minute and a half in the film. [Laughter] Warren: If that. McGuire: Oh, dear. Boy, I'll tell you, that's a well-planned operation, though. I really admired the logistics of that whole thing. They really had that thing under control. They knew what they were doing. But you can see why movies cost so much. Oh, dear. Warren: Any final words of wisdom you'd like to impart about Washington and Lee and Lexington and Rockbridge County? McGuire: Well, I'm not planning on leaving. I still love it here. I'd just like to get back over on the other side of the county. Warren: We'd love to have you. 27 McGuire: It's a friendly county, basically, you know. I love it. I spent one summer up in D.C. and I wondered what it was, it was driving me crazy, what did I miss. What I missed was the fact that you didn't say hello to anybody, you know. In Lexington, you can't go fifteen feet without running into somebody you know, and everybody's friendly. I like that. I like living in a small town. I still love that university. I just hate what's happened to it. I'll tell you, it pisses me off what they've done to Frank. If there's anybody anywhere that loves that university more than he does, that got a shorter end of the stick, I don't know who it is. Frank, I love you. Warren: That's a great way to shut the tape down. I love you, too, Frank. [End of interview] 28