Shannon interview, April 15, 1996

[Begin Tape 1, Side 2]
Shannon: It was just a wonderful place to grow up, because Lexington, as a town, was
a wonderful place to grow up, but also the campus gave you so much room to play on.
We used to play—in the summertime, for years, Miss Belle Larick [phonetic] used to
run the Campus Inn in one of the dormitories. I guess she was in the—Lees dormitory
is the first one. What's the second one?

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Warren: Graham-Lees?
Shannon: Yeah, I guess it was in Graham dormitory. People used to come there from
Richmond and some places in the tidewater, and other people from away, sort of as a
summer resort place. It's a little higher ground, a little cooler in Lexington, in the
summer nights, before we had air-conditioning. She used a certain number of the
dormitory rooms and used what's now the bookstore. It used to be the dining hall. It
was always called the Beanery, and served food there.

         This aunt and uncle from Erie, Pennsylvania, and two cousins, who were slightly
older than I was, they used to come and stay for a week or so. There were enough
children around, so we used to play what we called Fox and Hounds, I can remember.
It was a kind of Hide and Seek game, on the campus.
Warren: Was this run by the university, or they were just using the facilities?
Shannon: No, they just let her use the facility. I don't know, she may have paid
something for it. I guess she did, but she was just running it privately.
Warren: And what years would this have been, about?
Shannon: Oh, this would have been, I guess, probably from about 1928, '27, something
like that, to probably into the thirties. She may have run it earlier than that, but I think
she stopped. She lived on Lecher Avenue, had a house on Lecher Avenue, and took
students to board, but then ran this thing in the summertime.
Warren: Oh, I'll have to watch for that. That's about where I am in my research, so I'll
have to watch for mentions of that.
Shannon: Then the ravine over there, you know? I mean, it was just a woods in those
days.
Warren: Is that where Woods Creek is?
Shannon: Yeah, what we used to call a ravine. When I was, I suppose, six, seven,
something like that, they still ran the sewage in Woods Creek, so you couldn't play in
the creek, but still, there were all kinds of those paths down through there. There were

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just all kind of woods to play in, and play Hide and Seek and things like that. Then, I
guess by the time I was ten or eleven, something like that, they piped the sewage and
cleaned the thing up, and you could catch frogs and water snakes, and all that sort of
thing.

         Then you could play tennis, when we got a little bit older. I guess we were
playing tennis by the time we were ten or something like that. So we played tennis on
the tennis courts, and then, of course, there were athletic events to watch. Of course, I
was a big W&L fan of W&L football, basketball, baseball, track. Particularly used to go
to the baseball games. I think we were more interested in baseball than football in those
days.
Warren: Really? So I bet you knew The W&L Swing before you knew anything else.
Shannon: Oh, yeah. [Laughter] Certainly did. As I say, you just couldn't imagine a
more ideal place to grow up. When we were older, we used to play touch football.
There were a bunch of us, I guess when we were in high school, those first two years I
was in high school, we used to play touch football down on the VMI Parade Ground.
There were a number of boys my age, sons of VMI professors, that lived on Letcher
Avenue and around. We used to play touch football on that little part of the Parade
Ground which is right opposite the Marshall Library. Even when the cadets were
drilling some, we'd be pretty much out of their way up there. One of them, John
Cooper's father, was a professor who lived in one of those houses, faculty houses just
around the bend from the Marshall Library. That sort of gave us the authority to play
there, because his house was right there. We used to have a marvelous time with those
football games. So we were playing touch football long before the Kennedys made it
popular. [Laughter]
Warren: Was it a foregone conclusion that you were going to attend Washington and
Lee as a student?

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Shannon: Well, pretty much so. I think my family thought I ought to—I was an only
child, and I think they thought I ought to have some other experience, that I ought to go
away somewhere. I was pretty adamant that I wanted to go to Washington and Lee, so
that really was one of the motivations for my going to prep school, for my going to
Darlington, so that I would get—well, my father wasn't satisfied entirely with the—
certainly, with the Latin I was getting at Lexington High School, and just didn't think I
was getting as strong an academic preparation probably as I needed at that point, so
they were inclined to think prep school would be a good thing, and then, particularly, if
I were coming to Washington and Lee, to get some experience somewhere else.
Warren: Can you remember why you were so set on going to Washington and Lee?
Shannon: Oh, well, I had grown up there. It was just a part of me. I knew the
students. I had, as I say, thrown footballs and baseballs with them, and I just couldn't
wait 'til I could be a part of it all. Having been there and lived there, but just being a
boy, not being able to do it, I just wanted so much to be there and be a part of it, as I say.
They'd talk to me some about Harvard or Princeton, but, boy, I was absolute, by the
time I was at Darlington and getting ready to go to college, why, I was really set on
Washington and Lee completely. So they didn't really push it very hard. [Laughter]
Warren: So what was it like to make that transition from being the kid who was
playing these games, to the student in the classroom of the fathers of your friends?
Shannon: Well, it had some interesting aspects. Of course, I knew them all, and most
of them knew me as a boy. I did live in the dormitory my first year. Again, the family
thought it was important for me to live in the dormitory and get to know my class, not
just live at home, even though I was just about 100 feet away from home. But it meant I
was completely—I was at Washington and Lee, rather than being at home.

         I didn't pledge a fraternity right away. My family were pretty strong that I
should take my time. In those days, they started rush as soon as you landed on the

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campus, and you could pledge by the time you actually matriculated. So in some
instances, it meant that Rush Week lasted about three days.

         So they insisted that I hold off, and I'm so glad they did, because I would've
pledged Delta Tau Delta instead of Beta if I'd done it that first week. It's a good
fraternity. I mean, I certainly would've been happy there, but—I guess, to some
extent—my grandfather, my mother's father, my grandfather, was a Beta, and my father
had been instrumental in getting the Beta chapter started at Washington and Lee. He
was a DEK, actually, and they had a group that organized to petition a fraternity, and
they petitioned DEK, and didn't get it. My father felt they were a fine group of young
men, and they ought to go ahead and get a fraternity, and when DEK didn't give them a
charter—I don't know all the background, but some way he'd got to know some of the
presidents and national leaders of Beta Theta Pi, and thought it was a good institution,
so he helped them petition Beta, and they got it.

         I think a cousin of my mother's, and I think maybe one of my father's cousins,
was, by that time—yeah, Howard McCain, they were both in this group that was
petitioning. So anyway, he had a hand in getting the Beta chapter started, and my
mother. It had been a strong chapter all along, and my mother's father, my grandfather,
being a Beta, I think they wanted to be sure that I had a good look at Beta before I
pledged. It was all right. I mean, they weren't going to insist I be a Beta at all, or that I
not pledge something else, but they wanted to be sure I took a good look at Beta.

         So I did, and joined Beta, I guess in late October, early November, something like
that. Then I ate all my dinners at the Beta House, and went home for lunch, so I saw my
mother and father at lunch. So I felt I was away at college, that I wasn't just living at
home and going to college.

         It was interesting being in some of those classes, with people I knew quite well.
I'll always remember Dr. Livingston Smith, Livingston Waddell Smith. I don't whether
you've come upon him or not.

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Warren: Not yet.
Shannon: He was a Cincinnati professor of math, and quite a character. He was a
grandson of the founding superintendent of VMI. I had freshmen math with him. His
daughter was a year younger than I was. I used to play with her. We'd go to birthday
parties of hers and so on. She was very shy, and I never really did know her that well.
But anyway, she was part of the social scene, and I knew her mother and father quite
well.

         Again, he had a big classroom up in Washington Hall, and it was set up so that
about half of it was open. There were blackboards on both sides and in the front, so the
blackboards went all the way around, then seats were the other half. He regularly
taught class by—I had trigonometry with him the first term and college algebra the
second term. He always taught class by sending a lot of people to the blackboard, to
work problems on the blackboard, and other people worked at their seats. He'd lecture
and teach part of the time, then work these things, and then he'd go over what was on
the blackboard, and show what people had made mistakes, and what the problem was,
and he'd work on it.

         And he had a very funny way of talking. In trigonometry, I remember, he used
to take a yardstick, and he'd make angles with his yardstick, sitting at his desk, and
then ask you questions about it. I can remember, and he'd say, "All right, what would
the cosine of Angle B be? Shannon?" You never knew who he was going to ask, and
he'd scare you to death, nearly. [Laughter] Then he used to get up and work examples
for us, teaching us on the blackboard. In the spring, particularly, spring and fall, he'd
have the window, big window, open, out to the side of his desk, and he'd get the chalk
down a little short. He'd throw the chalk out the window. [Laughter]

         Generally, he was known as "Dr. Liv," and I grew up as boy, you know, calling
him Dr. Liv. I remember, "Great day!" was one of his favorite expressions. He'd say,
"Great day! Jones, you ought to know better than that!" Another one—he had a fellow

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named Faulkner, I remember, in the class. By this time, a lot of people in his class were
sons of people he'd taught before. I remember, Faulkner wasn't doing too well, and
he'd say, "Faulkner!" and he'd stumble around, and he'd say, "Great day, Faulkner!
Your father could do better than that!" [Laughter]

         So one day, he was working something on the blackboard, and there was some
discussion about what was right, and so on, and I got into a discussion with him. He
said something, and I was intense about something, and without even thinking, I said—
I can't come up with it, but anyway, I said whatever it was, "Dr. Liv." The rest of the
class nearly fell out of their chairs, calling this austere figure "Dr. Liv." [Laughter] But,
of course, he was familiar with me. It didn't bother him. He never blinked an eye, we
went right on with the discussion. But it just came out inadvertently, "Dr. Liv." People
asking me, "What in the world are you doing, calling him 'Dr. Liv?'" [Laughter] So that
was one aspect.
Warren: Wonderful story. Tell me about some of the other faculty members. Tell me
about the other people you thought a lot of, or interacted with, or people you didn't
like.
Shannon: Well, another one of the great characters in my time was Hig Williams. I
don't know whether you've heard about him or not.
Warren: Tell me about him.
Shannon: He was an excellent teacher, and quite a character.
Warren: What did he teach?
Shannon: He taught political science. I had, as a sophomore, introductory, general
political science, I guess a full year of it with him. Then he taught a course in
international law, which I took my senior year. It was big class. We had about fifty
people in that class. He'd been in the diplomatic service. I think he'd been a consul in
the state department. I've forgotten. I think he'd been a consul to Ceylon, and so he

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had some stories about diplomatic service overseas. He lectured and asked questions,
and he was really a very good teacher, but he also, as I say, had his quirks.

         I think that senior year was a good class, that international law course. It was
really sort of the history of international law, introductory history of international law.
It was a good course, but, I don't know, quite frequently, he'd come in—I don't know
whether he wasn't well, or what, he'd come in, and call the roll, and then dismiss the
class. [Laughter] He'd call the whole roll, nearly fifty of us in there. "Shannon" was
down toward the end of the roll, in that course. I can remember his calling the roll,
getting down to "Shannon," and somebody named "Wysong". A man named Wysong
was the last man on the roll, and he'd call through this roll, and say, "All right, class
dismissed." [Laughter] As I say, we got a lot out of it, and he mostly lectured in that
course. I remember it was a good exam. I enjoyed taking his exam. But he dismissed
class quite frequently. We used to go in there sometimes, taking bets on whether we
were going to get dismissed or not. [Laughter]
Warren: Did you ever know why that happened?
Shannon: No, I don't know why it happened. He just had a marvelous personality,
and he was good. I mean, you really learned a whole lot from him. He did expect good
performance. I remember in that sophomore class, he used to throw pop quizzes every
now and then in that sophomore class, give you a little pop quiz for about ten minutes
at the beginning of the class. One day, I really hadn't done my homework. I was on the
Dean's List. I don't know what they do now, but in those days, if you were on the
Dean's List, you had unlimited cuts. Otherwise, other students had only so many cuts.
You could only miss so many classes without getting on probation. But I had unlimited
cuts, and I came into this class and sat down. I saw him get up and start writing on the
blackboard, and I knew he was going to write a pop quiz up there, so while he was at
the blackboard, I got up and walked out. [Laughter] I was told afterwards that he was
going on talking about something, and he would ask questions from time to time. And

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he was going along, and he said, "Well, what about that, Mr. Shannon?" and no answer.
He looked up, and somebody said, "Mr. Shannon's not here." He said, "Well, I thought I
saw Mr. Shannon in this class. In fact, I'm sure I saw Mr. Shannon in this class!"
[Laughter]
Warren: Gotcha!
Shannon: Yeah. But he didn't give me a hard time about it. Anyway, I avoided that
pop quiz.

         Of course, Fitz Flournoy was really one of the well-known teachers. I guess he
was our first Rhodes Scholar. He got a "first" in English at Oxford. I had Chaucer with
him my senior year. I would have had it with my father. I did have Shakespeare with
my father, which, of course, was a great experience, my junior year, all year. He died
just, I guess about three weeks before the end of the term, had a coronary thrombosis.
I'd come home for lunch, and he said he wasn't feeling very well, didn't feel like eating
very much, and just ate an egg and a piece of toast, I think.

         We'd generally lay down for about fifteen minutes after lunch and just chatted,
Mother and I and my father. We had two big double beds in the big front room there,
on the second floor, in the Lee-Jackson House. I was lying on the bed beside him, and
all of a sudden, he sort of snorted, and I thought he'd just dropped off to sleep, as he
occasionally did after lunch. But then he got very red in the face, and it looked as
though he were choking, and I realized something was wrong. Mother said, "Run, call
Dr. McClung."

         The doctors all used to have their offices on Washington Street, just going up on
the right-hand side, going from Washington and Lee up to Main Street. They were on
the right-hand side going up the hill there. So I called Dr. McClung. He was in his
office. It was one o'clock or something. By this time, we had abandoned the old two-
hour dinner thing. There was a break from 12:30 to 1:30, or something like that, and

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then there were afternoon classes, a couple of hours of afternoon classes. You did have
lunch and ate dinner at night.

         He just had a coronary, and so was gone by the time the doctor had got there.
There was really nothing that could have been done about it.

         But at any rate, of course, it was a great experience to have that class with him. I
was going to have—my senior year, I would have had Chaucer, Anglo-Saxon, and
nineteenth century poetry with him. I would have had three out of my four classes
with him, which was a great loss.

         I did have Chaucer with Fitz Flournoy, which was very good. It made me think
of it also, when we had that case, that honor case, it was the night before my Chaucer
exam, and that just knocked out my final review for the Chaucer exam. I had an "A"
going into the exam, but I certainly knew if I didn't have a chance to study—so about
eleven o'clock, I got back from the Honor Committee thing, and I called Fitz—I didn't
call him Fitz—but called him, and told him what the situation was, and asked him if I
could have the morning to study and take the exam in the afternoon. He said, "All
right," he would do, and if I'd be sure not to come on the campus and talk to anybody
who had taken the test. He'd just give me the same test, which, of course, I said I'd do.

         So I did get a chance to study, but it had sort of broken my routine. I went into
that exam and looked at it, and the first question, I just drew a blank. I couldn't—well, I
had sense enough just to let it go, and went on. I saw questions I could answer, and I
went on and answered questions. Then by the time I'd got relaxed and got in and
answered the other questions, I went back to it, and it all came to me, and I was able to
write it down. But it was a scary, scary feeling. I just suddenly tensed on it somewhat.
Warren: Tell me about him as a teacher, Fitz Flournoy.
Shannon: Well, he was a very good teacher. Again, he was something of a character. I
never observed it, but the story was, he used to come to class with a black shoe on and a
brown shoe on, sometimes. [Laughter] But he loved the literature and the Chaucer. He

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loved to read it, and he loved to talk about it, so he was a very warm, infectious teacher
of literature.

         And then Ollie Crenshaw, I had history with Ollie Crenshaw, American history
with Ollie Crenshaw. He was an excellent teacher. Big, tall, gangly fellow. He used to
walk around a lot at the front of the class, but nobody walked around the way Liv
Smith did. He'd start a problem on one blackboard on this side, and keep on going all
the way around, come all the way around, walking around, doing the thing on three
blackboards, demonstrating it on three blackboards, and then throw his chalk out the
window. [Laughter] Sometimes he threw chalk at people, too, when he got
exasperated with some boy who hadn't done his homework, or wasn't coming up with
the answer, he'd throw chalk at you. I never got chalk thrown at me.
Warren: I can remember an eraser hitting me on the side of the head in high school. I
know the feeling. It only happened once, though.
Shannon: To go back to Liv Smith, also I remember one time he sent a bunch of us,
about six of us, to the blackboard to work, and he had the rest of the people working
down at their desks. It was a very hard problem. I can't remember. We were all
struggling with the darn thing, and I think none of us had really finished the problem,
and finally, he said, "Well, let's see what the bright boys have done." [Laughter] We
were all "A" students that he'd sent to the board, and none of us had gotten it, so he
went over it and showed how we'd all messed up. "Oh," he said, "they didn't do very
well today, did they?" [Laughter] He really liked to ride people.

         Let's see. I guess—whom else? I can't think of his name—we had a man, Dr.
Hoyt was the head of the biology department. Of course, his nickname was "Bugs,"
Bugs Hoyt. But I didn't have a course with him. Again, he had two sons. I was just the
age of the youngest, and the other was about two years older, and I played a lot with
them. They lived over on Washington Street, over there, right opposite the SAE House.

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I played a lot with them. There was a younger man who died real early, whose name I
can't remember, but I had biology with him, and I really enjoyed that biology course.

         I took Dr. Howe—it was not the introductory. I'd had physics in high school, in
prep school, so I was able to take—I didn't take the absolutely introductory course in
chemistry. I took the first term of it, I guess, and then went into a more advanced
chemistry course. That was a big course. There were about fifty of us in there. I
learned a lot of chemistry, and Dr. Howe was quite an eminent professor. He didn't
teach; he lectured, primarily. He really didn't teach a lot. He threw an awful lot of stuff
at you without—we used to have all kinds of homework problems that we didn't get
much help with. You had to figure it out yourself. I didn't feel often that he was as
helpful as some other professors. I got an "A" in the course. I think there were only
about six or eight of us that got "As," and it was a five-hour course, so an "A" with a
five-hour course, you got fifteen quality points. That was a big help in those days.
[Laughter] So it was a good experience, and I knew Dr. Howe well. I knew him
growing up as a child, very fond of him, but I didn't feel he was as good a teacher in his
subject as some of the others were, particularly this man in biology whose name I can't
remember.

         Dr. [Leonard Clinton] Helderman in history was an awfully good man, also. I
didn't have a course with him, but I wrote an essay for the Society of Cincinnati Essay
Prize, which I got, and I guess he was really the judge for the competition. I don't think
there was much competition. I don't think there were more than about three or so of us
that wrote for it. He called me in afterwards, after I won it. I knew there were records
in the state library, original documents. He said I ought to go consult those original
documents and add to my essay and get it published. so he was very encouraging
about that. And I did, that summer, after I graduated, I went down and spent about a
week working in the state library, and got all those documents, and—well, it really was

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an essay about my collateral ancestor, William Shannon. I got it published in the South
Atlantic Quarterly. He was a very fine scholar and teacher.
Warren: Tell me about Ollie Crenshaw. Of course, you know I'm following in the
footsteps of Ollie Crenshaw, with his having done General Lee's College. So I'm very
intrigued by him as a person.
Shannon: Well, I don't know exactly what to say about him. He was a good teacher,
covered the work thoroughly, and his presentations were interesting. He was a big, tall,
lanky fellow. He played on the tennis team. He was just an awfully nice guy. He was
just a very enjoyable person to have a class with. It was an interesting class. It was only
that one class that I had with him. His nickname was "Jolly Ollie." He was always very
jolly. [Laughter]
Warren: I've never heard that before. There are some great nicknames at that place.
There are some wonderful nicknames.
Shannon: Well, Dr. Easter, who was the head of French department, he taught French;
I guess he was head of Romance Languages, he lived in what's now the Morris House
the whole time I was growing up. I guess he died there about the time I was a
sophomore at Washington and Lee. His nickname was "Cutie." He was a little sort of
chubby fellow, and smoked a little pipe that ran down like that. So he was known as
"Cutie." [Laughter] I never had a class with him.

         I took French. I had French with George Irvin [phonetic] my first year, and with
a man named Smith. I guess he died in my freshman year, because a man named
Smith—what was first name? I can't think. At any rate, I had second-year French with
him. He was a good teacher. Boy, did he ever bang those French idioms into us. We
really worked like dogs on those French idioms. Can't remember any of them now,
probably. [Tape recorder turned off.]

         I guess we were talking about Ollie Crenshaw. I don't think I can add much
more to that. He was just an awfully nice man and a very good teacher.

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         One of my extremely valuable experiences at Washington and Lee was actually a
course in art history taught by a man named Wahl [phonetic], who wasn't there very
long, so he was not really much part of the history of the faculty at Washington and
Lee, not a person that we really—I think he was associated with Washington and Lee,
but he really gave us a good course, and we used Gardener's [phonetic] book of—
Gardener's—what's her name? Helen Gardener, I guess. Probably superseded now,
but it was a standard for a long time, a history of art. That was a two-semester course,
from the beginning to modern times. We had a lot of emphasis in the second term on
the French Impressionists.

         VMI—actually, Dr. Mosely [phonetic], Colonel Mosely, down at VMI, was a very
good art teacher there. VMI really had a better collection of prints and slides than we
had, so we spent a lot of time at the VMI library. Again, Wahl made us know this stuff.
The tests were slides, where you had about a minute. He threw a slide on the board,
and you had about a minute to identify the name of it and the painter, and write a quick
little comment on it.
Warren: That was a fairly new thing, to have the arts at Washington and Lee at that
point.
Shannon: Yeah, it was. It gave me an enrichment and a background that I've treasured
ever since. I got a wonderful education at Washington and Lee, really, and a very
broad one. I majored in English, but I took quite a bit of history and political science
and language. I did French through third-year French, and I did one year of German,
and did science with a full year of biology, and a full year of chemistry, a good year of
math. Dr. Liv wanted me to—it was funny, in those days, calculus was a sophomore
course, and very few people took calculus. I didn't take calculus in high school, so I
never had calculus, but Dr. Liv wanted me to go on. I was doing so well, he wanted me
to go ahead and take calculus. I would liked to have done it, but with all the stuff that I
knew I wanted and needed as background to go ahead, I was pretty sure I was going

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ahead in graduate school in English, and generally, with other things I thought I needed
to have for English, I just didn't have time to take it. My sophomore year, one term, I
think I took—I think I had something like seven classes one term there. It nearly killed
me, but I managed it. [Laughter]
Warren: That's quite a load.
Shannon: Yeah. I may be exaggerating. I had quite a few extra hours, just in order to
accommodate what I needed to do at that point.
Warren: Well, you've really spent your entire adult life in education. Looking back, do
you feel that Washington and Lee gave you a good background?
Shannon: Yes, it really did. Excellent. It was just such a marvelous place to be, too. I
don't think I could've done any better. I might have been challenged more at Harvard
or someplace at that point than I was at Washington and Lee, but I had all I could say
grace over. Also, I was very much interested in campus politics and extracurricular
activities in those days, too. [Laughter] I was trying to keep up a first-rate academic
record, and very much interested in learning. At the same time, I was interested in
what was going on outside of Washington and Lee.
Warren: Well, I know Washington and Lee is very proud of you.
Shannon: Well, I'm very grateful to Washington and Lee, and I'm very proud to have
had the opportunity to stay in touch with Washington and Lee, and particularly to
serve Washington and Lee by being a member of the board, which was a very high
honor and a great experience. Certainly pleased to do it. One of the nice things about
the board is getting to know people that are from different eras of the university. I was
just out skiing with Fox and Zinkie Benton, out in Utah, about ten days ago. Fox and I
were on the board, and also, Jerry South, we were on the board together. Both of them,
I think, were something like class of '61 or '62, something like that, so they were a good
fifteen years behind me. I didn't know them at all. When we served on the board, we
got to be great friends.

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Warren: What years were you on the board?
Shannon: I think something like '74 to when? Two six-year terms from '74 would have
been—I think to '86. I think '74 to '86, something like that.
Warren: So you were on the board during the coeducation decision?
Shannon: Yeah, I was chairman of the Academic Policy Committee when we did—
Warren: I thought we were going to end up, but can I have ten minutes more of your
time, and pop in another tape?
Shannon: Yeah.
[Begin Tape 2, Side 1]
Warren: This is Mame Warren. I'm still with Edgar Shannon in Charlottesville,
Virginia, on the 15th of April 1996.

         We just got to talking about his period on the board, and I'm real excited,
because you were involved in the coeducation decision. Tell me about your experiences
with that.
Shannon: Well, I think it really was a fine experience for the board, because we did
spend a little over a year, I suppose, with each committee of the board, undertaking a
thorough study of what coeducation would mean, how it would affect that area of
Washington and Lee. By the time we got through with that analysis, of course, it was
solid background we needed to make the decision, but we knew more about
Washington and Lee than we'd ever known before. So I think the board really had the
feeling of—I certainly had the feeling that I understood and knew more about the entire
institution than ever before. So I think it made us all better board members than we
would have been otherwise.

         We had told John Wilson, as a part of the interview—I was on the selection
committee for John Wilson. When we interviewed him, he actually said he admired
Washington and Lee for, to some extent, sticking to its guns, maintaining an all-male
institution when so many people are going otherwise. But we also told him—and I'd

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been on the committee that reviewed coeducation—when was it, in '75, I guess—and
we came to the conclusion that everything was going well, and other than the fact that
we were denying a Washington and Lee education to women, there was no compelling
need, in terms of the quality of the institution—alumni support, finances, and so on—to
become coeducational, but we felt, in our report, that situations can change, and the
whole educational ethos and the circumstances of higher education can change, and
we'd need to revisit it, and be prepared to revisit it as circumstances warranted.

         So we told John, and I think some of the other members of the board weren't
aware of this until, really, at the time we were making the decision. I was glad we had
the chance to clear it up, actually, but the selection committee had told him that we
realized that things could change, and that we felt that he should be free to examine
this. If he became president, he was free to examine coeducation. We weren't saying
it's cast in stone.

         So after he'd been there a year, maybe into his second year, he was getting word
from Hartog that there were real problems in admissions and we weren't getting the
quality of admissions. Our admission was dropping off, and the faculty were getting
disturbed about the quality they were seeing in the classroom. So he asked Hartog to
make a study and make a report to the board, and Hartog had done a very thorough
study that showed trends, he felt, in the next ten years, and that the trends were going
to be going against us, particularly because we were only able to deal with half of the
cohort that was out there—half or maybe not quite even half—and that probably we
were going to be slipping down academically pretty badly.

         So at that point, John said he would like to study the whole thing further, and
would the board go ahead and study it by committees, which we did. Certainly on the
academic affairs side, it was perfectly clear that our selectivity, and the board scores and
rank in class and everything, was dropping. Over a three-year period, it was just
dropping steadily, and it didn't seem it would reverse. Particularly the Student Life

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Committee, they were very much concerned, of course, about how it would affect the
fraternities and athletics and all of that sort of thing.

         And then the question of the size of the institution was a big one. We felt that
one of the strengths of Washington and Lee was its relative smallness. I guess the
Finance Committee felt it would help the finances. At any rate, we were in a position
where the committees all studied the thing thoroughly and all made their reports. Of
course, having been through it over here, at the University of Virginia—I was president
when we did it over here. Of course, we had the added impetus. Legally we didn't
have a leg to stand on as a state institution. Washington and Lee was not under that
compulsion, but, still, I think we were all beginning to be concerned that we were
isolating ourselves from a lot of experience that we needed and that men needed.

         At any rate, we had a few people who were diehards, to some extent, but a very
open-minded board, I think. I guess we had a preliminary meeting where it pretty
clear, where we had the reports from the committees, I think. No, I guess we had a
special meeting in the summer, specifically to address this, and I guess we had a day
meeting for committee reports and discussions. Then we decided that we would have
the final discussion and vote. There was some concern, a feeling that it ought to be
decisive, that we didn't want to be in a position where it was a split vote, maybe only
carried by one vote or two votes, and so the board was split. We came to a basic
agreement that whichever way it went—and at that point, literally, I had no sense of
which way it was going to go. I felt very strongly that we should go coeducational,
particularly on the academic side, but I no idea where it was going.

         There was then some idea that maybe we ought to pass a resolution that unless it
was, say, two-thirds—I think there were twenty-two on the board then, something like
that—unless we had seventeen for it or against it, we wouldn't go with the majority.
We'd stay where we were until we could go with it further. But we voted that down.
We decided we ought to leave it just however it came out. And then we agreed that

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whichever way it went, everybody would fall in line, that we weren't going to have any
minority reports, we weren't going to have any people trying to undermine things. We
would stand by whichever way it came out.

         Then we started going around the table and letting everybody have his say. We
started with the president here, and started on his left, going around. I was next to the
last one, I think, over here. But by the time it got around to me, it was pretty clear we
were going to go—I mean, we were going to go coeducational. But, of course, I put in
my strong view about it from the point of view of academics.

         Also, we had a major survey of the alumni. We got a firm to do a major survey,
and the alumni, obviously—I've forgotten exactly the figures, but they were something
like 76 percent against coeducation, if you just—on coeducation, or not, on the
"druthers." But they also had a question—they had other questions—but they had a
question, "If it's a matter of the academic quality of the institution that hinges on
coeducation, would you approve it?" I think it was something like 82 percent said if it
was a question of academic quality, if that was what was required, why, they would
support it. So that was evidence of some pretty strong support, even though sort of
intuitively most people felt, this is the way it is and we don't want to change it, it's done
well for all these centuries.

         At any rate, by the time we got through, it was pretty—and some people said
they woke up in the middle of the night and made the decision finally that they should
be in favor of it, and hadn't made up their mind until then.

         I think that a few people blamed John, were a little bitter about it, because they
thought he had come with an agenda to make it coeducational, which was not so at all.
Those of us who had been on the selection committee, we knew that it was just the
opposite, actually, and he had only come to it and finally recommended it through
careful study and evaluation of the whole situation, and feeling for the future of the
institution. And he was very wise, too. I think he said to me, he said—he may have

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said it to others, probably did—that he felt we had to get this behind at the beginning of
his time, that either we'd get it settled one way or the other, and go ahead, or it would
be dragging on, and it would be interfering with everything the whole time. And so I
think he was very wise to go ahead and face it right away, even though it was going to
be a hardship, and he got a lot of hate mail.

         At any rate, we then took a straw vote, and I think it was seventeen to six, or
whatever, seventeen to five, or whatever it was. So we had what we would have
required had we passed that resolution. Then we took a formal vote and passed it, and
went out and told the press. A couple of the people, several of us, I think about four of
us, went to the press conference, and at least one member who had been very much
opposed to it came right along and stood right behind it. So we never had any
acrimony or division on the board about it at all. It was really, I thought, a very
heartwarming, wonderful process that we went through to come to a decision that
turned out to be vital, and a great help to Washington and Lee in the long run.
Warren: Did you ever have any hesitations, as an alumnus, about doing it, or had your
experiences at the University of Virginia overwritten any hesitations you might have
had?
Shannon: Well, back in '75, when I was on the committee, I was certainly in favor of
staying single-sex then, but by the time we got to the second go-round, it was clear to
me that the welfare of the institution really depended on it. And so it wasn't just that
we needed—it wasn't because we were losing a lot of women, but the quality of the
men was really deteriorating, because men didn't want to go to an all-male institution
anymore.

         We were still being considered a selective institution, but that last year we
admitted something like 60 percent of the people that applied, so we were not selective
at all. Davidson and other institutions that really were our peers had already done it
and had excellent results from it, so all the testimony we got from other places, too, was

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very favorable. So I had no qualms about it at all, thought it was essential, and, of
course, it rescued our selectivity. I think this year, we're something like 30 percent, only
accepting 30 percent of our applications. So we're in the high selective area now.

         And, before, the faculty were opposed to it, also. There were only a few people
in the faculty. I guess the time before, the faculty were split on it. They were slightly—I
think it was nearly fifty-fifty, maybe 51 percent for it, for coeducation. This time, the
faculty was over 80 percent for it. I mean, the faculty were really demanding it, almost.
They could see what was happening in the classroom.
Warren: Well, there are a lot of grateful people, to you and to the people who made
that brave decision. It was a brave decision.
Shannon: Yeah, well, it was, and we took it very seriously. As I say, I think we really
did an excellent—it wasn't something we hurried into or jumped into. We did an
excellent exercise of leading up to it, and everyone, or most everyone, was convinced,
and the people who opposed it, as I say, fell right into line. I think even all of them
have come around now.
Warren: I don't see anybody who's regretting it now.
Shannon: Had a little tension there at first, because some of the residual male classes
were not as strong as the entering classes and they were challenged a lot by these
women, these bright women who came in, too. There was a little friction for a couple of
years, but, still, considering everything, it was a very smooth transition.
Warren: Well, thank you. I've taken a great deal of your time, but I am really, really
grateful to have gotten that down.
Shannon: Well, I'm grateful to have a chance to talk with you.
Warren: It's been really delightful, as everyone promised me it would be. Everyone
said, "Oh, you're going to see Edgar Shannon? You're going to have a great time."
Thank you.
[End of interview]

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