ELIZABETH CAMPBELL

                                      November 8, 1996

                                        Mame Warren,
                                           interviewer

Warren: This is Mame Warren. Today is the eighth of November, 1996. I'm in
Arlington, Virginia, with Elizabeth Campbell, and we've been spending some
wonderful time together talking about your husband's family, but now I want to talk
about you, because you had an interesting career before you got married and I'd like
to talk about that. You were dean of students at Mary Baldwin College.
Campbell: I was dean of the college. I came to Mary Baldwin to help them move
from a junior college into a senior college.
Warren: What year would that have been?
Campbell: That was in 1929, and I was twenty-seven years old. The first year that I
was there was quite unhappy for me, because Dean Higgins, who had been the dean
of the seminary, stayed on for a year. She was very imposing, and she was not very
happy to see me. She thought I was too young, and she was going to leave at the end
of the year, but I was going to be taking her place. So that was unfortunate for the
first year, but the faculty were young and I made many friends and enjoyed it.

         The president of the college was very anxious that we improve the academic
standing, and so the second year we employed Martha Stackhouse [phonetic] who
had just graduated from Agnes Scott, to come and help to work on the academic
standing of the school. I came to know the girls very well because we had a small
student body, and they felt that I was young, and they would talk to me, and when
they had their dates they would often come back and sit on the floor and tell me
about the evening. In those days you could not date except on Friday and Saturday

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and Sunday nights, and all of the dates had to be in the college parlors except the
dates for the seniors, who could have a special privilege to go out, provided we
knew where they were going.

         The young men who called, many of them came from Washington and Lee.
When they came into my office, which was just to the right of the front door of the
main building, they would come in, give me their names and then the name of the
date that they had. Well, the dormitories at Mary Baldwin were all at the top of the
hill. We had an intercom system, so I could telephone up to the girls, or if I were not
on duty that night, my assistant could. We would call and tell the girl that her date
was waiting. Well, often it would take them a long time to get themselves together
and come down the hill, so the dates would sit in the office and talk to me. In the
wintertime, I kept apples there and a fire burning in the fireplace, and I got quite
well acquainted with some of these young men. When they had to leave, they had
to say goodbye at the front door. Occasionally they would wander across the porch to
the top of the steps, but that was as far as they were allowed to go.

         After I married and came to live with my husband, who was a Washington
attorney in the Washington metropolitan area, when I would go to him to some of
the parties in Washington, a young man would come up to me and say, "Do you
remember me? I used to come to Mary Baldwin." And I would say, "If you will tell
me whom you were dating, I might remember you." So I carried the Washington
and Lee tribute over to my early married life.
Warren: Well, Washington and Lee seems to follow people everywhere all
through their lives.
Campbell: Right, and, of course, Ed had been born on the campus of Washington
and Lee, had gone to college at a very early date, year, had graduated and then had
gone to Harvard to get a master's degree in economics. Then he came back to
Washington and Lee to go to law school and graduate in law. Then he came to

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Washington D.C., and became a member of a prestigious law firm in Washington,
and remained a member of that firm until he transferred after the senior members
died, he transferred his partnership to another firm and they made up the Jackson &
Campbell firm, and that was his firm up until the end of his life. He loved the law
and he was really a great lawyer and was known because of the cases that he won.
First of all, he broke the integration law with the case in Norfolk that he won and
opened the schools there. Then he won the case before the Supreme Court, and I
was so proud to be there with him to see him argue that when that was one
man/ one vote, which, of course, has made all the difference in the world in our
representation.
Warren: Did he ever talk to you about the importance of having gone to school at
Washington and Lee? Did he see that as being very important in his life?
Campbell: Oh, yes, it was very important. In fact, he felt the same way about
Washington and Lee that I felt about Salem College. What he learned there, he
learned very well, and it gave him a background for everything else that he learned
the rest of his life. When I told him that I would marry him, I told him that he
would have to announce it to the girls at Mary Baldwin. So he made the
announcement one night and said he was going to take me away and that he knew
they loved me and he would try to make it up to them by serving the college, and
Mary Baldwin took him literally. He was a member of the Board of Trustees for
many years, chairman for quite a while. During some of the very difficult days
between interim presidents, he and Martha Stackhouse-Grafton were the ones who
were really in charge of the college. So we have kept very close to Martha and Tom,
and they are still living in a retirement home in Harrisonburg now, but they go
over to special events at the college.

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Warren: Let's go back to those days when you were dean. Were there ever any
episodes, any amusing things that went on with Washington and Lee students? Did
they always keep to the rules, or did they ever try to stretch them?
Campbell: Well, all of the students who came tried to stretch them, Washington
and Lee and University of Virginia. It was a little harder to get to the University of
Virginia, particularly over the mountains if the weather was bad. So Washington
and Lee and SMA, the seniors at SMA were just about the age of freshmen at Mary
Baldwin. So many of the freshmen dated SMA.
Warren: That's Staunton Military Academy.
Campbell: Staunton Military Academy, which is no longer in existence. But the
older girls, the juniors and seniors, dated Washington and Lee. If they were invited
over to some of the dances and were going to spend the night, I would go over and
meet with their hostesses and find out what time they were to be in and asked them
to see that they got in or let me know if they didn't. Now, that was a very common
thing at that time. The dean at Sweet Briar would also come over to Lexington to
inspect the homes where the Sweet Briar girls were going to stay. Of course, there
was a good bit of competition between Sweet Briar and Mary Baldwin for dates.
Warren: Tell me about that.
Campbell: Well, in those days, if you went to the dance, you usually had a car and
you knew with whom you were going to be dancing, so it was question as to how
many dates a Mary Baldwin girl could get with a Washington and Lee man, who
was preferred, at that time, over Virginia. I don't know why, but he was. They
would come back-in fact, I owned a car which I didn't like to drive. If they had to
get back for an early morning class on Monday, I would drive over or get somebody
to drive me over to pick them up so I could get them back in time for their class.
Warren: Ah, aren't you a good dean.

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Campbell: Well, I loved the girls and they loved me. Even now when I meet them,
they talk about how much fun it was to be there. We had a good student
government association. I'll never forget the first real discussion we had as to
whether Coca-Colas could be used on the campus. Of course, we had our own honor
system, which is still there at Mary Baldwin.

         So I was there from 1929 to 1936. It was a wonderful period in my life. I loved
it. I loved the girls. I loved being there. I loved working with the faculty. I grew in it
myself, of course. I always taught at least one course, because I never wanted to stop
being a teacher. So I had one section of freshmen English. Then I inaugurated a
course in comparative literature. I went out to the University of Michigan one
summer just to get the background that I needed for that. So I never thought of
leaving there, and I wouldn't have if I hadn't fallen in love with Ed Campbell.
Warren: Well, if you've got to have a reason, that's a good reason.
Campbell: Right, a very good one.
Warren: Now, when you were there, this was the Depression.
Campbell: Right.
Warren: Did that have an impact? Did students have cars? Were they able to
come back and forth between Lexington and Staunton?
Campbell: Well, they had to make very careful arrangements. They were pretty
clever at finding somebody, you know, who could drive them.
Warren: The girls or the guys?
Campbell: The girls. Yes. They were the ones who really set up the riding. It all had
to be approved in my office. We would not allow anybody who had-well, they
used to say that my assistant, Mrs. Stollenwerck, who took on a lot of the evening
chaperone chores because I got to be so busy with the other, as the enrollment
increased, I found more and more that I had to deal with the academic side and
meeting the people who came and that kind of thing. They said Mrs. Stollenwerck

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would smell the breath of the boys who came to date, and if she smelled any alcohol,
they were not allowed in. So we didn't have very much trouble with that, because
Mary Baldwin had a reputation not allowing them in, and that got around, you
know. So that was one of the funny things.
Warren: So when you went to Lexington to check things out, what was your
impression of Washington and Lee?
Campbell: I thought it was beautiful. The campus was beautiful. I thought that the
boys had very good manners, at least to me they had. I remember being there on the
campus in the daytime and being impressed by the fact that they spoke to you in a
very pleasant way. Now, I was not happy with the fraternities, and I didn't like the
girls being in the fraternity houses too late, and that was one of the reasons why I
talked to their hostesses to see that they got back in their places where they were
supposed to spend the night at the time that had been set. I didn't set the time, I left
that up to the hostess, but it was really around midnight, mostly.
Warren: Were there problems? Did you ever encounter problems?
Campbell: Well, not really serious problems. In those days, it seemed to me the
girls really enjoyed any privilege that they got and made the most of it. But when I
say made the most of it, they didn't go beyond the rules.
Warren: I've heard from the male point of view about the idea of late dating, that
sometimes the girls would come down and have dates with VMI people and then
go back to their houses and then go out with Washington and Lee students?
Campbell: Well, of course, I'm sure that happened, but actually my responsibility as
to what happened on the campus, I considered I fulfilled when I talked to their
hostess, and after that, I just didn't bother. It's better not to know. I don't think many
of them abused the privilege, I really don't. It was expensive to spend the weekend
there, so they couldn't do it too often. There were some girls who just couldn't do it
at all because they didn't have the money. You had to have a special permission at

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home in order to be able to do it at all, either in a letter or I would accept a phone
call if they couldn't get a letter in, in time. Some of them would get a late invitation
and they wouldn't have the letter, so I would talk to their parents on the phone. But
they never spent a night out away from Mary Baldwin without special permission
from their parents.
Warren: That's interesting. How about Fancy Dress, the Fancy Dress Ball?
Campbell: That, of course, was very exciting, and, again, the girls who went to that,
there were not very many. Again, it was a matter of money, and the boys didn't
have any money, so the girls had to take care of their own expenses, and that meant
overnight and special clothes.

         We had the two daughters of Mr. Hunt, the very wealthy Texas man, and
Margaret, the older of two, was not a very attractive girl and she didn't get too many
invitations. When she would get one, she'd come in to me and want to accept it
right away, and I wouldn't have the letter. So I would have to call Mr. Hunt and ask
his permission for her to be away overnight. Well, having done that two or three
times he said, "Now, Dean Pfohl, I'm paying Mary Baldwin to take care of my girls,
and I expect you to do that. You have my permission, but it's your responsibility,"
and so I accepted it. Margaret is the alumna who was there when they planted the
tree in Ed's memory, and she came up and she said, "I was in the dining room the
night that Mr. Campbell made the announcement and said he was going to marry
you." And said, "We were all in tears, we thought he was so handsome and you
were so beautiful."
Warren: That's a wonderful story, and what an interesting person to have telling
the story.
Campbell: Well, my life has been made up of chapters, and the Mary Baldwin
chapter was a very happy chapter.
Warren: Did you ever get to go to Fancy Dress?

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Campbell: I went once.
Warren: Did you?
Campbell: Right, right, with one of the professors at Mary Baldwin.
Warren: Really. Wow.
Campbell: So that was fun.
Warren: Do you remember it? Can you tell me about it?
Campbell: Well, I think I was so anxious, because the girls knew I was there, which
kind of spoiled it for me and made it a little less fun than it would have been if I had
been where nobody knew me. My date was Dr. Kenneth Smoke, who was head of
the Psychology Department at Mary Baldwin. The girls used to kid me about him.
He played the piano and he would go into the red parlor, which was across the hall
from my office at that time and play "Smoke Gets In Your Eyes," and the girls would
come by and say, "Do you hear it, Dean Pfohl? Do you hear it?" So that was fun.
Warren: That's charming. Now, was that unusual to have a faculty member of one
of the women's college going to Fancy Dress?
Campbell: It was unusual. It was unusual, but I was young, and I didn't know it was
unusual. [Laughter]
Warren: Well, I love going to Fancy Dress. I think it's great. One of the other things
you mentioned that I wanted to hear a little more about is, was there competition
among the various women's colleges?
Campbell: Yes, there was, because at that time we were all looking for students.
Sweet Briar was older as a college than we, than Mary Baldwin. We got our
accreditation on my birthday, December the fourth, I think it was 1932, and that was
just very exciting. They always celebrated my birthday, because the dietitian had
been with me when I was a dean at R_ _ College for Women in B___, and
she was so good that I got her to come to Mary Baldwin as the dietitian. So on my
birthday, they always had a special celebration. The girls enjoyed it because it meant

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special food and the cake and candles and so forth. But I think because I was young
and because I loved the girls and they loved me, we had really a special relationship.
I treasure it still.
Warren: I think that's marvelous. Was there competition among the girls from the
various women's colleges? Were they all competing to get dates?
Campbell: Not really. Hollins, of course, was also one of those, but the real
competition was between Sweet Briar and Mary Baldwin. Sweet Briar was always
holding up its head. Dr. M_ Glass was the dean at the time. Well, the girls at
Mary Baldwin thought that Sweet Briar girls were a little bit, you know, hoity-toity,
and they would laugh about it.
Warren: Did they encounter that, say, when they went to Lexington and they
would see girls from the other schools?
Campbell: I don't think so. They went with their dates, and the dates pretty well
took care of them. In those days, I think, and I don't know how it is now, but I think
the date felt responsibile for his date, and I think Washington and Lee men wanted
to give their dates a good time but didn't want to get them in trouble. So I suppose
compared with what happens today, it would seem very tame.
Warren: You mentioned being concerned about the fraternities. What were you
worried about?
Campbell: Well, I was worried because they had drinks there. The girls were
absolutely told that they could not have a drink. We felt that it put them under a
real strain to be going in there, where their date might not be drinking, but the
others around, there was a good bit of drinking at the time. It was frowned upon at
Mary Baldwin, absolutely. That was our problem. So we didn't welcome the
fraternity houses.
Warren: Was it frowned upon by Washington and Lee? [Telephone interruption.]
We need to stop.

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[End of interview]
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