McThenia interview
                                                                                                                17
[Begin Tape 1, Side 2]
McThenia: John Fletcher, Lowry, a guy named Ted Gray, who, I think, teaches at the
University of Tennessee Law School, maybe. I can't remember if that's Grayfred
Gray. That was his name. But those folks were independent in a lot of ways. They
were independent thinkers, they were interested in issues of civil rights more than I
was, but I was just in a position to write the letter and kind of provoke the issue
with the board of trustees.
Warren: So you were the president of the Executive Committee. Was that unusual
for a law student to be president?
McThenia: It was in those days, yeah. After that, lots of times that happened, but
apparently it was fairly unusual in those days.
Warren: What happened, ultimately? There's no happy ending here. He didn't
suddenly get an invitation and come.
McThenia: No.
Warren: No Hollywood endings here.
McThenia: No. What happened was, I think that it was agreed that the University
would set up some sort of speakers committee, and if the board didn't like-there
was no happy ending. My guess is that President Cole probably got crunched on that
some by us and by the board of trustees. I think he probably felt in the middle.
Warren: Do you know where he came down on it?
McThenia: Yeah, I think he came down opposed to the board's recision of the
invitation. I'm pretty sure he did. There are probably records around to indicate
that. But clearly the impression I had, he was opposed to the board's action, but I
don't think he ever said anything to me one way or the other. We were fairly close,
but he was very circumspect, also. He wasn't going to kow-tow to some jerk
student. He was always very friendly and always very forthright, but my
recollection is he did not disclose his position to me, but I think it was generally

                                                                                                                18
assumed in the community that he thought it was a bad decision to overrule that
group [Christian Council] and rescind the invitation. I don't know whether the
invitation was ever extended.
Warren: Who extended the invitation?
McThenia: The Christian Council extended it, if it was extended, and I think it was.
Hodges would know for sure. Hodges is a good guy and I love him, but I would rely
on John Jacob's letters more than I'd rely on me or Hodges, and John's got them
downstairs. Do you know John?
Warren: Yes, I did, from Marshall Library days. So how would they be filed, do you
think?
McThenia: He has them.
Warren: John would know where they are?
McThenia: Yes. They were personally under the Powell Papers, but there are also
some trustees things that he had down there. If he can't find them, I may have
copies of some of them somewhere.
Warren: I sure would like to see those. That's something I had heard about and it
was actually on my list to ask you if you knew anything about it. Little did I know
that you were right in the middle of that.
McThenia: I was, and I was sort of the precipitator of it.
Warren: As president of the EC, you had a tight relationship with Fred Cole as
president. What were your perceptions of him?
McThenia: He was a really good person, a man who had a vision for Washington
and Lee. My guess is-and again I don't know, but my sense is that he really
improved the morale of the faculty and improved the quality of the faculty, and did
that with the board of trustees, which was probably not as interested in education as
he was. I think he probably took the University several giant steps. Again, my
hunch is that the university was not functioning very effectively in terms of its

                                                                                                             19
presidential leadership before that, so I think President Gaines was not functioning
very effectively.

         That's the stories I've heard. But Dr. Cole was careful, thoughtful, and,
without question, so far as I'm aware, really did bring the faculty along in terms of
its salary and hiring people. I never heard anything really bad about him. Smoked
too much. He was a hell of a handball player. I used to play handball with him a
lot. He was very good. He had a way of not being "hail fellow well met," but also
seemed to know people and know something about them, and was generally
interested in them. I think one of the great things he did was hire Bob Murray. You
know Bob Murray? That's a name you ought to have, to find out what really
happened at Washington and Lee for twenty-five years.

         Bob Murray was the first head of security here. He was security here. When I
was a senior in college, we were such jerks-this is before I went to law school-that
in 1958, if you looked in the old newspaper files, you will see that this town was
outraged by our behavior, as it should have been, because we were drinking too
much, partying too much.

         Those Red Square fraternities down there had the arrogance to rope off Henry
Street on Sunday afternoon to sell beer and have bands playing out there. The
Henry Street Baptist Church, the black Baptist Church right across the street, would
be having church or funerals or something, and here you've got a bunch of hotshot
fraternity guys out there roping the streets off, slobbering beer all over the place. So
the town really was pissed off. Excuse me.

        During the next year or so, said, "You folks have got to be more responsible,"
and one of the pieces of responsibility was that Fred Cole-I'm sure it was Fred
Cole-hired Bob Murray off the Lexington Police Department. Bob Murray was a
guy who grew up as a blue-collar kid in Lynchburg, who'd played ball for E.C. Glass
High School, and had been a policeman in Lexington for years, and had not been

                                                                                                                    20
particularly friendly when I was here. He'd been sort of friendly to me. I didn't
know him well, but he was sort of friendly to me because I played football.

         But he came up here and he tamed more rampant drunk lions, and there
would be a lot of people who would be in jail today and would have serious
criminal records had it not been for Bob Murray. He just looked out for students, he
always knew when somebody was in trouble. He knew when they were getting
ready to do something stupid, he knew when they were too drunk to drive a car. He
traveled the whole town all the time. Every party we had, all night he'd just drive
around, look for people and make sure they weren't doing something stupid or
breaking up something. He was a wonderful guy.
Warren: What was his style? How would he do this?
McThenia: He would hang out. Just hang out. He'd hang out around the gym or
he'd hang out in his old sort of yellow car, or he'd walk around the campus.
Warren: One person all by himself?
McThenia: For years, Bob Murray was it, 'til Burr Datz came to work for him. Ask
Burr about him. You know Burr? Burr's now a Catholic Student worker for the St.
Patrick's Catholic Church, and Burr was in many ways-Burr is still in many ways
like Murray.

         I've always thought that Burr was God's way of playing tricks on Washington
and Lee. They went through all this brouhaha about hiring a chaplain a few years
ago and decided not to do it, and it's because-that's another story I'll talk to you
about. We pride ourselves on being a secular university in whatever we do, but I
always thought it was interesting that Burr, who knew where everybody was buried,
because he learned where the graveyard was from Bob Murray; he knew every
student who was in trouble, who was strung out on drugs around here in the
seventies and early eighties, Burr was touched, and he quit that job and became a
Catholic Student Worker.

                                                                                                              21
         It's like if you read Luke's Gospel, all these fancy things are happening in
Jerusalem and there's the king of this and the king of that, and John the Baptist was
born in the wilderness, well, Burr Datz came out of the wilderness. He came up
from the lowliest part of the University, the security staff, and I think Burr saved
more souls and more lives at Washington and Lee than anybody except Bob Murray
in the last fifteen or twenty or thirty years.
Warren: Who is this person?
McThenia: Burr Datz. He would not be on Farris' list, but he really is-he plays
music. He just knew where kids were when he was in security. He knew who was
in trouble, and he always knew who was in trouble, and he still knows those folks
the same way. But Bob Murray started that whole enterprise. Bob Murray just
would hang out, and by hanging out, he kept a lot of guys out of trouble, helped the
guys who were in trouble. When people needed to be held responsible, he held
them responsible. He worked under the Dean of Students' Office from '59 onward,
'til he retired. He still lives here in Lexington.

        My judgment is that-not judgment. My guess is that a lot of people would
not have made it into adulthood if it hadn't been for those two guys, particularly
Murray. A lot of the stuff that I'm proudest of in my life in Washington and Lee
has come from what I learned from those guys.

        I remember fifteen, ten years ago, fifteen years ago, used to be a guy here I
knew, a freshman in college, because I knew his dad, he used to meet the Federal
Express truck at eight o'clock in the morning. Isn't any reason for him to be
meeting a Federal Express truck in the morning. He was buying drugs. So I did
what Murray used to do. I said, "I know what you're doing. You know I know what
you're doing. If you don't quit it, the community's going to kno~ what you're
doing. You're going to be in serious trouble." And never say word about any of it.

                                                                                                                      22
That's what Bob Murray used to always do, just go to folks who were getting
themselves in trouble, and say, "Get out of trouble. Quit doing that."

         I think what makes this place run is Fred Cole hired good people. But I think
it's the Bob Murrays, it's the Boyd Williamses, and it's the Burr Datzes who have
been the stuff that students come in contact with and has been as important as a lot
of the intellectual life in this community. I'm sure there are other people. Those
are the ones I know very well, though.
Warren: They sound like real unsung heroes.
McThenia: Oh, they really are. I bet you if you take anybody on any football team
from 1959 to 1975 or maybe even '80, and ask them, "Who's the most important guy
in your memory?" that either the first, second, or third on that list will be Bob
Murray. I don't know if Gene Perry had him on his list or not. But he was an
incredible man. Still is. He doesn't spend any time over here now. Maybe at the
gym. But there are a lot of those unsung heroes.

         A guy who ended up destroying himself, worked too hard, was Moe Mays,
was another one. He was a black guy here, was on buildings and grounds. He was a
janitor in duPont Hall and then did another job. He just worked too hard. But he
was important for a lot of students, particularly in the early days when there weren't
many black students around here. His wife, Lucille, is still alive. She doesn't work
anymore. She used to work in the Alumni House.
Warren: Gene Perry did mention, he said there weren't role models and they had to
look for role models anywhere they could, and that the janitors were wonderful
people.
McThenia: And the guy in this law school who was that way was Napoleon Borgus.
Do you know him?
Warren: Napoleon Boris?

                                                                                                           23
McThenia: No, Borgus. Is that his name? Yeah. Napoleon is still around here.
He's a bartender here.
Warren: B-0-R-U-S?
McThenia: B-0-R-G-U-S. Let's see if I've got the right name. Yeah, and his wife's
Dolly. Napoleon, on Randolph Street. He was the janitor in this law school in the
basement 'til he retired, by the time he moved over here 'til he retired. He was the
incredible confessor to most of the Afro-American students who went on through
here.

         Another couple of people in town who were that role were Jerry and Pooh
Roane, for Johnny Morrison, Bill Hill, Gene's brother, Tony Perry. They're good
people you ought to talk with.
Warren: You were obviously witness and aware of that whole era of the first black
students arriving. What was your sense? Was the University ready for them?
What was your sense of what was going on?
McThenia: I don't think it was, but I'm not sure you can ever get ready for a change
in your culture like that.
Warren: They got ready for women on the undergraduate level.
McThenia: Yes, but. Yes, but. Let me leave it there for a minute. [Tape recorder
turned off.]

         I think those role models that are most important are the folks outside the
main structure. I think Napoleon was one of those. Moe Mays was, before he got so
broke down, and he finally, I think, fell apart. Napoleon was really an important
role model for a lot of black students. And Murray, Burr Datz. It's a combination
of-role model is not so much, it's more confessor.

         Roger Groot has been one of those guys, here in the law school. He's a real
confessor to a lot of people. I used to be before I got so old, but you know when you
get old, nobody pays attention to you anymore.

                                                                                                           24
Warren: What was your impression of those first couple of years when the black
students arrived? Did they arrive in the law school simultaneously?
McThenia: The first black student that came to Washington was a law student,
Steve Smith [sic]. He graduated from St. Lawrence. Not St. Lawrence, but St.
whatever it is in Lawrenceville. I've forgotten the name of that students. St.
Augustine's. That's not even it. But it's a black Episcopal college, part of the United
Negro College Fund colleges, and it's in Lawrenceville, Virginia, and I can't
remember the name of it. But he graduated there, came to law school, I think in '66,
because when I came in '67, he was a second-year student or maybe graduated in '68.

         I think he had come here because there was a relationship between
Washington and Lee-St. Paul's was the name of the college-between Washington
and Lee and St. Paul's, that it was a really poor school, destitute, no money, and the
old president was a friend of Fred Cole's, and Fred Cole, I think, had been part of
trying to get the public schools reopened in Prince Edward County. This is just on
the other side of Prince Edward County. Claiborne Griffith, I think, used to teach
economics down there sort of on loan from here, and Washington and Lee may
have paid his salary. I don't know that. I was practicing law in Washington at the
time.

         But the first black student was a law student who came from St. Paul's and
graduated here, went to work for the Department of Justice, and was murdered a
couple of years after he got out. I don't think they ever found the murderer.

         But then the college began to integrate in the next year or two, and my
recollection of that first class, there was a big guy whose name I can't remember.
After he graduated, he became some sort of Dean of Students' Office person. Then
he went to law school and left.

         Then there were two other guys. One was John Morrison, who left here and
went to the Commonwealth Attorney's Office in Portsmouth. He was raised in the

                                                                                                          25
projects in Portsmouth, came here, went to college, then went to law school, and
became an incredibly good lawyer, Commonwealth attorney, later was named to the
circuit court bench. He's a judge, I think, on the circuit court in Portsmouth.

         Then another guy named Bill Hill. I think his daughter may be here now.
Bill Hill was from Atlanta. He was an upper middle-class black guy. I think
Johnny's background was probably very different. Bill went back to Atlanta and was
in the attorney general's office for a number of years, then became a judge, and now
is a practicing lawyer.
Warren: Let's talk about the dynamics of what went on then, rather than the
personalities, the dynamics of what happened.
McThenia: I don't know. I'm not sure I can answer that question. I know in the
law school-Les Smith was his name. Les Smith was already a student here. To my
recollection, things proceeded, he took courses like everybody else, did well, I think
he was on the Law Review, and I saw him hanging out with a lot of students. It was
not as if he were isolated. I don't know about the college.

         I know that Bob Huntley was president when that happened, and the
dynamics that he tried to work for were dynamics of inclusion. I remember him
telling me-he'd just been named president, I think-that he made rounds of all
these fraternities and got word to all these fraternities, "You'd better pay attention to
this part of our community that's coming in here." It was obviously a small part, a
very small community. So he tried to make it a welcome place. But I don't have a
good sense one way or the other, because I was in the law school and involved in
those kinds of things. I just don't remember what was going on.
Warren: Let's shift our focus to the law school. Let's take a couple of steps back to
you being a student in Tucker Hall. Tell me about Tucker Hall.
McThenia: A wonderful building. It was a great building. It was a very different,
small, personal but sometimes insecure place. I think the Law School was better

                                                                                                   26
than it thought it was. It always was in the shadow of the University of Virginia in
those days. If you were a Virginia resident, you'd go to the University of Virginia (a)
because it was cheaper, and (b) because it was a better law school. At least it was
thought to be better. That's a blue smoke and mirrors thing. It probably was; it was
a bigger law school.

         The Law School was very small, and that was just before the threshold time
when law schools had that kind of big growth period in the seventies, so it was a
small place, had been small for a long time, very collegial, some would say ingrown.
The faculty was older and small.
Warren: Who was the faculty? Who were the people who taught you and
influenced you and made an impression on you?
McThenia: Bob Huntley was an incredible teacher. He had been in law school when
I was in college, and I'd known him, kind of a leap-frog thing. He'd been in the
same fraternity I was before he went into the Navy. I came to school, he came back
to law school, he was involved in student politics while I was in the undergraduate
school and fraternity. Then I left, he graduated from law school, went to practice
law in Alexandria, came back and started teaching about the time I left college. He
was teaching by the time I left college. Then he hired me to come here and teach
after I finished law school. He was my teacher in law school.
Warren: Tell me about him as a teacher.
McThenia: He was a really incredible teacher, demanding, never insulting, but
always, when you thought you had an answer, he took it away from you. He'd
make you squirm about it. He just had ways of building a class that made you reach
further than you thought you could, but you usually didn't get it. He had the ability
to do that.

         He didn't have time to get prepared. When I was in law school, he would
spend a lot of time in Washington Hall, because Fred Cole depended on him. He

                                                                                                            27
was president then, and Bob was doing a lot of stuff over there. My second year in
law school, he was away. I think he was at Harvard getting some kind of degree. My
last year in law school, he was back and in full force and full form, but he was also
spending a lot of time working for Fred Cole, for the president, and I think he was
probably secretary to the university or something by that time.

         The story is-I don't know whether it's true or not, but I believe it to be
true-that the board of trustees was sort of a self-perpetuating, probably ingrown
group at the time, and Huntley would go to the board of trustees' meeting and go to
the minutes from the last meeting and have nothing written on a piece of paper.
[Laughter] He'd just tell them this is what they did. I've heard that story enough to
believe it to be true. So he was, even then, an eloquent spokesman for the
University with the board.

         Then he was Dean for a Day and was named president. He was dean for one
semester, I think, in law school, and he was named president. He had all kinds of
things going on in his life other than teaching law, but he was an incredible teacher.
I knew he couldn't have been prepared, because he had been entertaining alumni
and drinking whiskey with them and stuff at night, coming in the next morning for
class, and you'd have your mind run loose. He was a very good teacher.

         Charles Laughlin was a very good teacher.
Warren: Tell me about him.
McThenia: He was, by that time, an older guy. His widow still lives here, Hope.
Warren: Her paintings-
McThenia: Her paintings are in the hall. She's a very talented artist.

        He was a wonderful man. You'll find somewhere all I know about him if
you look over in those records, because I delivered his funeral eulogy.
Warren: I have that, but tell me about him as a teacher.

                                                                                                          28
McThenia: He was a very pedantic kind of guy in some ways, always fussing with
his notes to make sure they were in the right place or in the right order, but he did
love his students and he loved to teach. He had no pretensions to be anything other
than what he was in the classroom, as a kind of befuddled teacher, but not befuddled
in a bad-he was just a dedicated teacher. He always expected things of you, and
he'd be disappointed if you didn't do it, but he'd somehow think it was his fault.
[Laughter] When you weren't prepared or something. He was a really good teacher
and never imaginative in the sense that somebody like Huntley was, but he never
thought it was his job being imaginative.
Warren: What courses did he teach?
McThenia: Taught evidence and civil procedure, and later-he was imaginative.
The courses he always wanted to teach, he never got to teach when he was younger
and sort of an outsider, but he started the jurisprudence course here, did a
wonderful job with it. He taught procedure and evidence, jurisprudence. I don't
know what else. Conflicts of law, I think he probably taught for a time. But the
school was so small in those days, people taught nearly everything.
Warren: Would the same people teach the same thing?
McThenia: Most of the time, 'til somebody finally died or got tired of teaching that
course, and somebody else would teach it. But Charles, when I was in school, always
taught evidence and procedure.

         Bill Ritz was an incredible scholar and probably such a good teacher that we
didn't appreciate him. Very soft-spoken, hard to follow, partly because of his soft-
spokenness and partly because of his shyness. Had an incredible mind and did some
work which I think was extraordinary work, and people who know that work say it
really was. A lot of it remained unpublished at the time of his illness. He had a
stroke and couldn't write, couldn't talk for the last nine or ten years of his life, nine
years. But part of his work was on the Judiciary Act of 1789 that two folks published,

                                                                                                           29
put together later, and apparently it's seminal work in the field. People have to
change their opinions when they read this work. But Lash LaRue and another guy
put that work together. The other guy's Wyth Holt. They published that book five,
six, seven years ago.
Warren: Wyth Holt?
McThenia: Wyth Holt is the other person who worked on the book with Lash.
Warren: So that was Charles Laughlin. Were you a student of Charles Light's?
McThenia: Yes.
Warren: Tell me about him.
McThenia: He was the dean most of the time I was here, and didn't teach a lot.
Taught me constitutional law and maybe administrative law. He was a really good
man. I'm not sure he and I ever got on the same wavelength as a student and
teacher. Always very friendly, very nice guy, but he's not one of those
recollections-sometimes you can hit a pitcher and sometimes he strikes you out. I
think generally I struck out.
Warren: I heard a name that I'm terribly curious about, and I don't know anything
about this person, "Red Eye" Johnson.
McThenia: Didn't know him. I know of him. Never knew him. He was dead
probably before I ever came to college. I heard of him from Charley McDowell.
Warren: Me, too, and I was hoping maybe you'd crossed paths with him. And
"Skinny" Williams, was he before your time?
McThenia: Skinny may have been dean for a semester while I was here. He taught
me property. He was an incredible old lawyer, very bright, very good, very
demanding teacher. He was the only teacher in law school in those days who made
you stand up to recite. I guess everybody did that one time or another, but when I
was in school, nobody did it except Skinny.
Warren: What do you mean? Describe the situation.

                                                                                                           30
McThenia: "Ms. Warren, tell me about this case, Estep against Jones. Yes, you can
stand up, Ms. Warren." "You said that. Why did you say this and what would you
think if, Ms. Warren?" "Do you find it interesting that, Ms. Warren?" And he'd go
on that way. He used to keep me on my feet for a whole hour.
Warren: He'd keep one student?
McThenia: Usually didn't do it to one student, but he did it to me.
Warren: [Laughter] But you he liked.
McThenia: Sometimes I'd have to come back the next day and do it again.
[Laughter]
Warren: Do you know why he was called Skinny?
McThenia: Because he was just skinny as a beanpole. He was a great hunter and
always had a bunch of dogs. Wonderful-looking shotguns. He had been, in his
earlier life, a Commonwealth attorney up around Woodstock, up in Page County,
but he'd been here I don't know how long, but he was a legend and was a wonderful
teacher and a great bird hunter, and I suspect he probably died hunting. He was still
teaching the first year I came back here to teach. He died that year.
Warren: Was he called Skinny by everybody?
McThenia: Never to his face. The students always called him that.
Warren: But never to his face.
McThenia: No.
Warren: What was his real name?
McThenia: Clayton.
Warren: I've never heard that. I've only heard "Skinny."
McThenia: Clayton Epes, E-P-E-S, Williams.
Warren: That's funny, because I've never heard anybody say anything else.

         How about Charles McDowell, Sr.? Did you have him?
McThenia: Oh, yeah.

                                                                                                                  31
Warren: How was he?
McThenia: He was a great guy. He was a very good teacher. He didn't demand
enough of us, but I think in those days he probably wouldn't have demanded much
of himself. He was tired. He was old. Drunk too much. He had drunk too much.
You really did learn a lot from him, but he never did demand much 'til the exams.
He'd tell you the same thing, tell you today what he was going to tell you, and he'd
tell it to you, and tell you this afternoon what he told you. Tomorrow you might get
sort of a new chapter, but not quiet.

         My best friend in life was in law school with me and was a semester ahead of
me, I guess, in some courses, and in some we were together. He was a really
careful-still is-a very careful note-taker, and he'd take notes in class. But then at
the bottom of each page of his notebook he would put "Charley McDowell's jokes
for the day," and so we knew them all. He had them all in his notebook. [Laughter]
Warren: Oh, where are those notebooks now?
McThenia: I think ~e's got them. Call this fellow. Joe Spivey. Joe lives here in
Lexington. He doesn't live here. He's a partner at Hunt & Williams, but he's
cashed out and he's here most of the time. Not most of the time, but he keeps a
home here. Joseph M. Spivey.

         Charley McDowell carried a Pepsi-Cola and a Camel cigarette, and he'd carry
that thing down in the lounge. Back over in Tucker Hall there was an old bunch of
pipes and they put a Coke machine down there, and he'd sit there and smoke that
Camel cigarette and drink on that Pepsi, the ashes would go down his shirt. He'd
just kind of hang out. In the afternoon, he'd go downtown to J. Ed Deaver's
Clothing Store and just talk all afternoon with those old boys. You'd go in there,
and Charley would maybe grab you, but he'd be in there talking, and he'd talk about
you, then he'd go on talking, and they'd just be in there sitting all afternoon.

         And Catherine [McDowell] ran the Law School.

                                                                                                           32
Warren: Tell me about that.
McThenia: She really did run the law school. She came out of Kentucky and
Charley came from Kentucky also. He had been at Centre College and had played
football out there in the days of Bo McMillin who was a big-time old-timey
thousand-years-ago football player of the Knute Rockne era.

         They were both radical for this community. They didn't believe in God, (b)
did believe in Franklin Roosevelt, and (c) hated the Byrd machine. So you don't
come to Lexington if you're from Kentucky and not be a Presbyterian, let alone don't
believe in God. So they were in many ways marginalized, my guess is, in this
community, by the good burghers, but they were both very smart.

         Charley had taught here for a short time before he went in the Navy Air
Corps, I think, and they were in Florida during those years, then they came back
here. I don't know when she started working in the dean's office, probably when
they were young, but they used to work in old Tucker Hall, and they accused her of
burning it down because it was so damn ugly.

         When I came here, she really did run the law school, I mean the deans were
there but if you wanted something, you went in Catherine's office. She was very
thoughtful of people and of students. She used to be a buffer between students and
faculty. If we got unhappy with the faculty, she'd sort of cool that down. She'd help
you find jobs. She was a placement director, sort of, and everything else.

         She was really an amazing woman, very bright, and all of us who know say
an incredible bridge-player. I never played bridge with her. She had that kind of
mind. Even after Charley died, she must have worked ten more years. She finally
retired. No, more than that, I guess. She worked until we came to this building,
and she wouldn't come over here, never came in. I think she did come in this
building, but only after work to drink with Edgar Graves. She'd never come here
when we were in school.

                                                                                                           33
Warren: Is that true, she refused to come?
McThenia: Uh-huh.
Warren: I'd heard that.
McThenia: I think she did come over here on Friday nights when Eddie Graves was
over here. You probably heard Eddie. He's from Lynchburg, an adjunct professor
here. He'd come over and fix martinis, and she'd come drink with him, I think.
Warren: So you say she was helpful to you both as a student and when you came
and joined the faculty?
McThenia: Yes. I preached her funeral.
Warren: I didn't know that.
McThenia: There's a story over there about her in the archives.
Warren: Well, preach to me about her. Tell me about her.
McThenia: Well, see, when she was retiring, I think she retired in 1976, because we
were living in Toronto. I taught at Osgood Hall Law School in the winter in
Toronto. There was a retirement party for her, and I wrote her a letter saying what a
scoundrel she'd been or something like that, and said, "God knows that if she had
typed this letter, she would have changed it to make it look like I thought she was a
nice person." I sent that to her and I think I sent a copy to Charley and John, because
I'd known both them. Because our youngest son was born and went into labor, we
left Charley's house one night up in Alexandria, and she started having labor pains,
and we went by the hospital. That's how I remember that. So I'd known those two,
Charley and Catherine's boys. They were a little older than I.

         So anyway, I sent that letter to Charley or something when she retired, and
then when she died, he called me and said, "Would you deliver the eulogy at the
funeral?" because (a) she liked to drink, and (b) she was not a believer, and (c) she
was from Kentucky, or something. So I did, and it was not very often in my life that
I think I do something that's right, but I knew I did something right that day. Most

                                                                                                           34
people were friends, but there were a few good solid church-goers, and they didn't
quite know what to make of this whole thing.

         It was out at the-