EDGAR SHANNON part I April 15, 1996 — Mame Warren, interviewer Warren: This is Mame Warren. Today is the 15th of April 1996. I'm in Charlottesville, Virginia, with Dr. Edgar Shannon. I'm intrigued by—we've been talking about being an administrator, being presidents of colleges, because one of the things I just realized, as I was driving over here, is that you grew up on the campus of Washington and Lee, right? Shannon: That's right. Warren: So did you know Henry Louis Smith? Shannon: Oh, yes. Warren: I've been reading lots and lots of things by Henry Louis Smith just in the last few weeks. I'm fascinated by him, and so it's exciting to me to think that you actually knew him. Can you tell me your impressions of him? Shannon: Well, of course, I suppose he was—I was fairly young. I was born in 1918, and moved into the house, what's now called the Lee-Jackson House, next door to the president's house. My father and mother moved in there when I was two, so I lived in that house from the time I was two until I was twenty, when my father died. He died in May of 1939. Well, '38, excuse me, the year before, really at the end of my junior year. So I lived next door. My first memories are knowing Dr. and Mrs. Smith and some of his children. His children were all older than I was. I guess the youngest two were two boys, who 1 were Norris and Frank, and I think Frank was the youngest. I think Frank must have probably—by the time I was taking things in, when I was eight or nine or something, I think Frank must have probably been a teenager. He must have been sixteen or something like that. I don't know the exact ages, but I should guess he was six or seven years older than I was. Dr. Smith, I guess, died in—I think he was thrown out of a car, of an automobile, and got a concussion, and I think never recovered from it. I think that's the report. Warren: I haven't gotten that far yet, so I don't know that. I can't confirm or deny that. Shannon: Yeah, I think that was the reason for his death. But anyway, I'm pretty sure Dr. Gaines came in 1930. Is that right? Warren: Yes. Shannon: So I think probably Dr. Smith died in '29 or early '30, anyway. I was twelve by the time he died, so I was old enough to know him. He was very dignified, By that time he was very dignified, sort of a white-haired man, and very courtly. I was in and out of the house over there quite a bit, and, of course, I'd always see him, as I did Dr. Gaines, walking back and forth from the Lee House, across the campus, in front of our house, going over to the Colonnade, to their offices. I suppose he was kind of legendary for quotations that he'd tend to exaggerate. He was known for exaggeration. He recognized it himself. There's a story about him that maybe you've come upon, that he used to have chapel. He was talking in chapel, and he said, "Now, young gentlemen," he said, "beware of exaggeration. It's a very bad trait." He said, "My dear young chaps, myself, I have wept bushels of tears over that very same subject." [Laughter] Warren: That's great. Shannon: He was a Phi Delta Theta, and his sons, at least Norris and Frank, and, I guess, Raymond. I guess it started with Raymond. Raymond was the eldest, I think. Anyway, they all became Betas, and someone asked him how he felt about his sons 2 being Betas. Phi Delts didn't have too good a reputation at that time, apparently. He said, "Oh, I'd much rather my sons would be godly Betas than drunken, carousing Phi Delta Thetas." [Laughter] At any rate, he was considered something of a character, but very highly regarded, highly respected, very fine man. Warren: Well, the period I've been reading about, he just seems to have an answer for everything. He's sending out these proclamations to the universe, and telling people why they should be moral people and why they should do the right thing. It's so unlike a modern president, and I'm kind of intrigued and charmed by it. I just wondered if he was like that in person. Was he constantly emoting little sermons? Because that seems to be what he was doing in writing. Shannon: A great deal, I suppose. I suppose so, but, of course, from childhood to twelve, I really didn't see much of that side, though, of course, he came from a very, I guess, a very strong Presbyterian family. I guess one of his brothers was a Presbyterian minister in Little Rock, a very well-known Presbyterian minister in Little Rock. His brother, Alphonso Smith, was an English professor who was actually the Edgar Allan Poe Professor of English here at the University of Virginia. When Josephus Daniels became Secretary of the Navy under Woodrow Wilson, he asked him to come to head the English and Humanities Department at the Naval Academy. Josephus Daniels brought civilians into the Naval Academy to improve the quality of instruction, and that's continued ever since. The other two academies have only military faculty, but the navy has a considerable civilian faculty. Alphonso Smith, his brother Alphonso, had a whole series of grammar school textbooks. I grew up on something like fifth- and sixth-grade textbooks written by C. Alphonso Smith. [Laughter] I still remember the example in the book, the difference between the active and the passive voice. The active is, "Marat stabbed Charlotte Corday." The passive was, "Charlotte Corday was stabbed by Marat." [Laughter] From the French Revolution. 3 Really, my recollections of him are more anecdotal, and also just being generally aware of him, but not old enough to have heard much of his prognostications or his tending to preach. Of course, there was just a lot more of that in the air in Virginia. For example, this thing about my father, he's an elder in the Presbyterian Church, and deeply interested in moral training of those under his care, and I think that's true. I think there was a lot of emphasis even in my day about the importance of character and developing character. I think that still persists at Washington and Lee in the Honor System, but you still don't hear much. That's talked about very much, but in general, I think you don't hear talk in general or exhortations about character and morals in the same way you did fifty years ago, say. Warren: Were you aware of the Honor System as you grew up on campus? Was it talked about it in your household? Shannon: Oh yeah, oh yeah. Sure. Warren: Tell me about that. Shannon: Well, I mean, it was just—the ethos was very much there, and symbolized and talked about. Students left books all over the campus. They'd be going downtown or something. They'd leave books just by the gate there, by the Episcopal Church. Not by the gate, but the opening of the fence there. They'd dump books there and walk on downtown, and so on. So there was a lot of emphasis on how open everything was. You didn't lock your door in the dormitory or anything of that sort. So it was very much in the air. Then, of course, living there right on the campus, and right next to the dormitories, students were—from the time I can remember—students were around. I used to go out and watch as they were pitching baseball behind the dormitory and so on. As I got a little older, why, students were always awfully nice to me. They'd throw the balls with you, and throw footballs, and things like that. So I grew up sort of playing with the students, to some extent. Then when I had relatives, who were cousins 4 who were at Washington and Lee, they would drop in to the house, and talk about it, and talk with my father and mother about what was going on. The Honor System was just present all the time. So I really grew up with it. We had an Honor System at—I went two years to Lexington High School. We had an Honor System there, and also at Darlington [phonetic] School, where I went. I was president of the Honor Council at Darlington, and then came to Washington and Lee. So it was a very natural part of life when I came to Washington and Lee. In my senior year, I was vice president of the student body and on the Executive Committee, so I had a lot of experience with it. Warren: What was that experience, being on the Executive Committee, like? Did you have any cases that were particularly difficult? Shannon: Yeah, we didn't have a large number, but we had—you felt it as a very grave responsibility, and, of course, we had the tradition that as soon as a charge was made, you dropped everything and followed it through. I remember particularly the last one that I was on involved a classmate who was a senior. It happened in exams. He was just within days of graduation, and he was charged with cheating on a test. Somebody said he had seen him, and that he had some kind of material and was turning his pages in a notebook back and forth, and copying from this thing. So we had an eye-witness, but the question was, it still lacked evidence and proof. Kind of ironically, one of his fraternity brothers was the junior representative on the Honor Committee, and he said, "Well, let me go down to the house and check on it." He was a Pi KA. He went down to the Pi KA house and came back with a notebook that had leaves of some text torn out, or cut out, and interleaved in this ring notebook. This tied in with the examination. Of course, the professor had provided the examination book, so it was clear he was copying his stuff out. So it was an open-and- shut case, but it was very sad. It was sad, because you didn't think this person really 5 needed to cheat. He was probably going to graduate anyway. He may not have got a very good grade, but he probably would have graduated, and to do that after four years of Washington and Lee just seemed to be unbelievable. And then it was tough for a fraternity brother essentially to convict him. On the other hand, this was remarkable evidence of the honor code taking precedence over other loyalties. It was the supreme loyalty. Warren: What happened to that person? What happens to someone when a violation— when they have—is it a conviction? I mean, would you call it a conviction? Shannon: Well, in that case, the committee is satisfied, and I guess the chairman of the Honor Committee simply gets in touch with the person, and tells him he has to leave, leave the university within twenty-four hours. I don't know how they do it now, but that's what they used to do. Warren: And when he leaves, what happens to his records? Can he then transfer to another school? Shannon: Well, I don't know what—since he was so close to graduation, I don't know what he ever did or whatever happened. Most people do transfer to other schools. Certainly, here at the University of Virginia, we have almost a completely successful record of people who have been convicted, going on to other universities. I don't know what's done right now, but I'm sure in those days, it was on your transcript. It went on your transcript that the person had been separated from the university for violation of the Honor System. I don't know what they do now, and I think it still goes on your transcript here. The law has gotten so tricky on a lot of these things now. I don't know whether it still goes on the transcript or not. Warren: Well, it's certainly an impressive system. It brings a lot of pleasure to me to be in a place where you can trust people. Shannon: Yeah, it really does. Generally, that was the procedure. There is the provision that you can appeal the Executive Committee's decision to a public trial, and 6 those come up from time to time. There was one public trial when I was not on the committee. It was, I think, when I was a sophomore. It was the first one that had occurred in years, and they had a public trial in the old auditorium in Washington Hall. That's before it had been remodeled and had the president's office in where it is now. There was a large auditorium on the second floor, in the front of Washington Hall. Matter of fact, that's where the lectures my father used to—for the sophomore English class, which was a history of English literature, he used to lecture one period. We went three days a week in those days. He used to lecture one period, and then I think all the other members of the department had sections of the class that had twenty- five or thirty in them, that met for the other two days for discussion groups. You wrote a theme a week in that one. But anyway, they had the trial in that auditorium. They selected a random jury, and had some law students as judge and prosecutor and defender. They set up the trial very much in accordance with normal court procedure. It was a day-long trial, and it was open. I remember going and listening to it. I think people came and went because of classes and so on. I don't remember being there for the whole trial, but, actually, they cleared this person. The Honor Committee had convicted him, but on the public trial, he was cleared. He left the university. It was in the spring sometime, and he finished the year, I think, and didn't come back. But anyway, he was cleared. That was kind of extraordinary and memorable. There have been others since then, but I think that was the first one since, oh, something like 1905, or something of that sort. Warren: Well, that's interesting that you were able to witness that. I guess that is pretty extraordinary. I made a note a few minutes ago that I'd like to pursue. It may be a dead-end street, but it seems like there's a real connection, at least at that time period, between Arkansas and Washington and Lee, because President Denny, Dr. Smith's predecessor, 7 left Washington and Lee to go to Arkansas in, I believe, 1912, and then your father comes in 1914 from Arkansas, right? Shannon: No, Dr. Denny went to Alabama. He didn't go to Arkansas. Warren: Oh, Alabama. That's right. Okay, yes, all right. So forget—there's no Arkansas. Shannon: Right. There used to be a fairly strong connection, at least to students who came from Arkansas to Washington and Lee. My father had at least two, I think—he had first cousins who came to Washington and Lee from Little Rock before he came. My father had two first cousins, Ross McCain and Arthur McCain, who both graduated from Washington and Lee while he was still at the University of Arkansas, and then he had another first cousin who came as a student after he was at Washington and Lee. Then he had another first cousin, once removed, who was a student, Sam McCain—they were all McCains—who was, again, from Little Rock. I think he graduated, I think in '27. He was a Rhodes Scholar from Washington and Lee, I think the second Rhodes Scholar from Washington and Lee. So there were a lot of family Arkansas connections with Washington and Lee, and there used to be a pretty steady stream of students from Arkansas. Interestingly enough, both my mother and father's family were really originally from Virginia. My middle name is Finley and there are a lot of Finleys over in Augusta County. Both my mother's family were here, and some of hers were here in Albermarle County, and my original Shannon ancestors, they were originally a sect of the McDonald clan, came over to northern Ireland and lived in the Ulster area of northern Ireland for about 100 years, then probably landed at Newcastle, Delaware, in about 1845, and settled in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. My ancestor, Thomas Shannon, came down here to Albermarle. It was when my mother had an ancestor, and Thomas Shannon, were both on the first board of justices of Amherst County, when it was cut off from Albermarle County. 8 Thomas Shannon had a brother, William Shannon, who went out to Kentucky, and he became quartermaster and commissary general under George Rogers Clark in the Northwest in the Revolution. He settled in Kentucky and was in the Virginia legislature briefly, and then was in the first Kentucky legislature when it was cut off from Virginia, what, about 1790, '91. So he kind of called the rest of the family and said, "Come on out to Kentucky. It's God's country out here." So my ancestors moved on out there, and my mother's family got out to Kentucky. My father grew up in Kentucky. It was after the Civil War, of course, but my mother's father sold his land in Kentucky and went to Arkansas after the Civil War. My father was teaching at the University of Arkansas, and my mother was in one of his classes at the University of Arkansas, and so that's how they met. It was rather interesting. He did have a woman first cousin who was married to Frank Moore in Lexington, who was a Washington and Lee graduate, of course, and was a lawyer there in Lexington for a long time and lived on Jordan Street. I guess the family still owns that house. At any rate, that's really how my father got to Washington and Lee. Warren: Through that connection? Shannon: His cousin, who was Mrs. Moore, cousin Lois, was living there in Lexington, and they knew Dr. Currell was retiring, and so they alerted my father and alerted Washington and Lee, and it all worked out. [Laughter] So we were originally from Virginia, and went through Kentucky to Arkansas, and got back here, and I was born within about 75 miles, I guess, of where most of my ancestors had been a few 150 years earlier, or something like that. Warren: It seems, again, destined, wasn't it? Shannon: Yes. 9 Warren: Well, tell me about growing up on campus. What was it like on campus at Washington and Lee in the twenties? Who were the people you interacted with? What was the atmosphere? Shannon: Well, it was a very pleasant atmosphere, on the whole. I grew up—I've got a picture I surely should pull out and show you. I used to ride my kiddie car on the sidewalks when I was just big enough to move around. I used to ride my kiddie car down the hill, down in front of the R.E. Lee Church. Then later, of course, as I got larger, I had a tricycle and then I had a bicycle. Those walks on the campus, I'm not sure all the roads were even paved in town in those days. I know out where Farris lives and all out that way was all dirt roads, and so a lot of the young people, my age particularly, when we were, I guess, about twelve, ten to twelve, fourteen, something like that, after school, used to congregate on the W&L campus and ride bicycles around. It got to be, I guess, so many of us, that we got to be a nuisance. [Laughter] Mr. Penick, who was then the treasurer and looked after buildings and grounds and so on, came down with an edict that we couldn't ride bicycles on the campus anymore. By that time, I'm sure by the latter part, I remember, the streets were paved, and I used to ride bicycles around, ride a bicycle around town on the streets quite a bit. Of course, the traffic wasn't anything like it is now, and, of course, we never thought about helmets, or anything of that sort. The students were always walking back and forth, certainly in the daytime, not much in the afternoon. The meal situation in those days was that everyone had the big meal, dinner was in the middle of the day, and the college schedule ran 'til two o'clock. All the classes ran 'til two o'clock, and then everybody had dinner at two o'clock, and then the afternoon was free. There were no afternoon classes. Afternoon was free for athletics and that sort of thing. But the whole town was really on that schedule. Then you just had supper at night. You didn't have a big meal at night. Usually you had supper about six o'clock, and fraternities had a meal at six o'clock. 10 One of my experiences, particularly, was—well, let me go back. I'm wandering around here. You saw the students walking back and forth all the time, and, of course, we had the old speaking tradition, where everyone spoke to everyone else, whether you knew them or not, but Washington and Lee was small enough. We held it to, I guess, 900. I think it was 900, maybe 950, when I was in college, but I'm sure it was a bit smaller, probably only about 800, something like that, when I was growing up. So most all of the students knew each other by name, at any rate. So it was a friendly atmosphere. The students all wore freshmen caps. I mean the freshmen wore caps. You had a sort of a little beanie, a little blue cap, sort of like a baseball cap, but it didn't have anything like the visor that you have on a baseball cap now. Just a tiny little visor, and then a cap to wear on the back of your head, with a white button on it. I think it had W&L on the front of it. You had to wear that as a student, a freshman. You had to wear that your first term, so that freshmen were all identified. We had an Assimilation Committee that if you were smart-alecky and didn't speak, or things like that, you got called up before the Assimilation Committee, and got paddled. [Laughter] Warren: Literally paddled? Shannon: Literally paddled. Then the second term, you had a sailor hat, which was a dark-blue sailor hat with a white band around it. You wore the sailor hat about half- way through the second term, I guess, and then you finally got rid of your identification as a freshman. But that's jumping over a little bit. My particular experience growing up on—what made me think of this, and everybody wore hats then, too. I mean, you wore these caps as a freshman, but everybody else wore a regular felt hat. So when the snow was on the ground, we were really—I can't remember who the other culprits were, but at least there were some kids my age, say when we were about eight or nine, when it snowed, we used to throw snowballs at students' hats. [Laughter] As they came, we'd get up there on the bank, 11 just as they came into the campus, right by the Episcopal Church, we'd get up on that bank and throw snowballs at them, and then run away. [Laughter] But we weren't very damaging. I don't think we ever really hit a hat, maybe once. But my special experience was that I had a pony. My uncle—well, my father sort of believed, from Kentucky days, that a boy couldn't grow up without a horse. I had an uncle out in Arkansas, my mother's brother, who had a farm out in Arkansas. He was raising a few ponies just for fun. He just liked them. He had a pure-bred Shetland pony that was a stud pony, and he was raising some. I was out there to visit. My mother and I went out there to visit, I think when probably I was about five, and he had a colt that he said he was going to send me when he got the colt broken, and so on. After about a year, when the colt would've been old enough to be sent to me, I guess, he decided he didn't like his temperament, thought his temperament wasn't quite right. So anyway, by the time I was seven, he had the stud gelded. He was a wonderful pony. He was a pure-bred Shetland, had blood lines that were registered, and had already been named before my uncle got him, Marshall Foche [phonetic]. So his name was Foche, and he was a flax chestnut pony with flax mane and tail, and he had a wonderful disposition. So he sent me this pony when I was seven, from Arkansas, and I wasn't really old enough to handle him properly, but in those days, the campus wasn't groomed and kept up the way it is now. There was just lots of tall grass around the edges, and even the grass didn't get cut that often on the campus itself. Living in that house, the Lee-Jackson House, we had a pretty good size of a backyard and a high privet hedge. There's still a privet hedge there, but it's kept to only about chest-high now, but this used to be up to seven or eight feet. So it was a pretty completely private backyard. So I kept the pony in the backyard a good deal of the time, and then at night, particularly in the summertime—and, of course, we had no 12 summer school of any kind in those days—I'd just drive a stake in the ground with a rope, and stake him out on various parts of the campus to graze overnight. I guess my first two or three years we had him—I probably wasn't seven, eight— until I was nine, and certainly in the winter, we always boarded him out on a farm. From the time I was nine 'til I was thirteen, I think, I had that pony, and just really kept him on the campus from May, something like May 'til October. Warren: Where did you ride him? Shannon: Well, as I say, in those days, all the roads, the minute you got out of town, except for U.S. 11, were not paved. They weren't even graveled. They were just dirt roads, and they were marvelous for riding. He had very hard hooves, and I wasn't riding him that hard at first, so that I guess for a couple of years, we never even shod him, never even put horseshoes on him. When I got to riding him a good deal and getting out on the roads a lot, we did put shoes on his front hooves, but never had them on his hind hooves. Used to ride on the VMI Parade Ground quite a bit. You'd gallop up and down on the Parade Ground. I had one other friend, who was two years older than I was, who, I guess by the time I was about ten, he got a small horse, and then we later had another friend who had a horse. But with this friend with a small horse, Souther Tompkins—he graduated from Washington and Lee, also. He's been an orthopedist. He's retired now, but in Oklahoma City for many, many years. At any rate, we used to ride regularly, and take long rides out in the country, on the country roads. But this pony, I think he really had a sense of humor, and I can remember some rides. I rode him bareback much of the time in the summer. I can remember riding bareback on the VMI Parade Ground. It wasn't a lot, but I can remember from time to time I would inadvertently slide up a little forward, up on his withers, where I wasn't comfortable to him to be quite that far up over his—and I'd be galloping on—over his shoulders and his forefeet. He never bucked, and I don't think he ever kicked me but 13 once. I think one time, some way again, I inadvertently tickled his flanks, some way in currying or something, and he kicked out with one foot, but that's the only time I ever remember his kicking. So he had an excellent disposition. Some ponies have sort of mean dispositions, but he had an excellent—anyway, he would just stop, and I'd go right over his shoulder. So he didn't buck to throw me. He'd stop, and I'd slide over his shoulder. I would be hanging on, so I wouldn't go anywhere, and I would fall right down under his feet. He'd stop, dead stop, so he didn't step on me, and then would just stand there and kind of nuzzle me, like, "What the heck are you doing down there?" [Laughter] I was visiting an uncle up in Erie, Pennsylvania, an uncle and aunt up in Erie, Pennsylvania. They had a summer place out on the lake, and they said, "I think we've got a pony cart up in the attic in the barn out there." So we went out and looked at this pony cart, and they did. It was a very nice pony cart. It needed a little bit of paint and repair, but they sent me this pony cart, so I had a pony cart. It was a little big for him, but Foche could handle it all right, and it didn't take any problem breaking him to pulling the cart. So I had him with this pony cart, and used to drive him around town a lot with this pony cart. I remember, I guess when I was something like twelve or so, I had a crush on a girl that lived out on Sellars Avenue, and I used to drive my pony cart out there. There were all these children who would sort of collect around the pony cart, and I'd give them rides up and down Sellars Avenue in the pony cart. Warren: Were there many other children on campus? Shannon: Yeah, there were. I think I was sort of in between. The Smith children were a bit older. Dr. Campbell had a couple of sons. The younger one was several years older than I was. But then there were quite a few children down in the hollow, down below the chapel, you know, Charley McDowell and the Bean boys. Those I remember particularly. I can't remember for sure. But there were quite a few that, say, were about 14 four or five years younger than I was, that were growing up down there, and you saw something of them, and all that levels out, even when you get up toward teen age. But when you're children, if you're twelve and somebody's seven, you're aware of them, but you're not really playing with them very much. Talking about seven, I remember my seventh birthday, we had a birthday party. It was a baseball party, and I remember we had about—I don't know, it must have been a fairly good-sized group. I think we had about fifteen people for the party, and played baseball out between what's now the Commerce School and the Morris House. Doesn't seem like much room in there now, but the building wasn't quite as big as it is now. That was the old library. We played baseball out there and had a marvelous time. Of course, it wasn't very good baseball at seven years old, but we thought it was terrific. [Laughter] I guess I had my—really, the person just my age was a boy named George Barton. His father was a professor at VMI, taught Latin and Greek at VMI, and lived in one of those houses that's just on the bend going down to Gaines Hall. There are about three houses in there, and they lived in the last one, I think the last one that's still there next to Gaines Hall. We played a lot together, particularly when we were about third- grade age. What would that be? I guess in those days, I guess we were about eight, something like that. We were pretty much inseparable. So he was not on the campus, but he was right nearby. We played on the campus a lot. Warren: Let me turn my tape over. Just a moment.