BILL WALKER — Mame Warren, Interviewer Warren: This is Mame Warren. Today is the 28th of January, 1997. I'm in Miami, Florida, with Bill Walker, class of 1968. Where did you come from when you went to Washington and Lee? Walker: I was born and raised in Cincinnati, Ohio. Warren: How did an Ohio boy end up at Washington and Lee? Walker: As I recall, I had been something less than a stellar student in high school, and switched after my ninth grade year to a small Country Day school in Cincinnati, which had something of a tradition of sending kids to Washington and Lee, and somewhat found myself academically, only somewhat, but decided, with some nudging, I think, from my parents, that what I needed was a small liberal arts men's school, and although I don't particularly remember why, I didn't have any great interest in schools in the East or the Northeast, and, as I recall, my three principal choices were Washington and Lee, Davidson, and Sewanee, all three of which I visited with my father. Originally, I think when I was a tenth or eleventh grader, when we first looked, that Davidson was my first choice, but somewhere along the line I had changed my mind, and Washington and Lee became my first choice. We had one family friend who was there. It seems to me he graduated the year before I got there. Maybe he was there one year with me, but I think he left before I got there. I was accepted at all three, as I 1 remember, and I decided to go to Washington and Lee, and there were a fair number of Cincinnati boys that went to W&L. Warren: You're my first. Can you remember your first impressions when you saw the campus? Walker: Oh, yeah. It was love at first sight. I think my father had the good sense to— he was familiar with Washington and Lee. In fact, it had been one of the places he was interested in going, but because of World War II and whatnot, it just wouldn't work out. He ended up staying at Centre, which is where he was born and raised, which was a competing college in those days. They were in our athletic conference. But he had the good sense to park in the little lot next to Lee Chapel, as I remember, so my first view was up the Hill, and I felt then, and I've always felt, that unless somebody is blind, dumb, and stupid, they just can't see that view of the Colonnade and not fall in love. It's one of the prettiest views around. We were there in the spring. I loved the place at first sight, and I was taken by all the things that, I think, attract people to Washington and Lee—the speaking tradition. Everybody, in those days at least, was well dressed, and the town, wherever you went downtown, people were very open and friendly and nice, and the university was to me like it is, I think, to so many people, just a comfortable old shoe from day one. Warren: That's a nice description. You mentioned that everybody was well dressed. That's one of the things—why I wanted to talk to somebody from your time period. Walker: Conventional dress. Conventional dress. Well, my time period, because I stayed there seven years and went on to law school, which was something of an accident, I suppose, at the time, in any event, I was there from '64 to '71, and it was an extremely interesting time in a lot of respects, but conventional dress was one of those. When I started as a freshman, everybody was conventionally dressed. You had to wear 2 a coat and tie. You were expected to wear a coat and tie even in town, not that everybody did, but that was sort of the expectation. As I recall, we were the first year without freshman beanies, but we still had—I think it was called the Assimilation Committee—it was that or the Student Control Committee—that would fine you if you were seen on the Hill and, theoretically, in town without a jacket and tie. But it wasn't a big issue. People just did it because that's what you were supposed to do, and it was only occasionally that whichever committee it was was even called into action if somebody turned you in. With Vietnam and drugs, the whole culture at the university changed over the ensuing seven years to the point that when I left as a senior law student, virtually only the senior law students were uniformly wearing—pardon the pun—uniformly wearing conventional dress. There were other law students as well, but the incoming, the freshman law school class that year, it seems to me, was probably less than 50 percent conventional dress. The faculty had all but stopped insisting on it. In probably my junior year, undergrad, I was turned away from an exam because I didn't have a coat and tie on. I had awakened very late and literally rushed from my apartment to the Hill, and ran into class just as the books were being handed out, and I was told that I couldn't come into the room that way and I should have a jacket and tie on, so I had to race back to my car and back to my fraternity house, which is closer than my apartment, and I grabbed a coat and a tie from somebody and ran back to the Hill. I probably missed fourteen or fifteen minutes of a two-hour exam. It made lasting impression. But it was not—it was nothing I thought of as artificial or a strain. It wasn't difficult to do. It's just what everybody did. The Country Day school I attended in Cincinnati was jackets and ties, a little less dressy in the sense that we all had one tie in high school that we left hanging on the hook in our closet, and our parents would send us with one sportcoat that was going to be destroyed, that hung on a hook in our locker 3 at our closet. By the end of your year, your senior year, if you wore the same tie year after year, the knot was so small from being run up and down that you could have stuck it through the head of a needle. W&L wasn't like that. Everybody was—the word, as I remember, was "tweedy," and most men were pretty conscious of not only having a jacket and a tie on, but a decent jacket and a decent tie and a nice shirt and khakis—there were no blue jeans—or slacks. So all in all, it was a pretty well-dressed group, and, as I said, most fellows were conscious of what they wore. So it was more than just bare compliance with the whole tradition. As it turned out, I ended up working my junior and senior year and then through all three years of law school at the College Town Shop, so I became particularly dress-conscious, I suppose. We couldn't be paid in cash. That was not available. We were paid only in clothes. So we kept a running charge account to which they would credit our hours, and most guys, including myself, by the time you graduated, you still had not made enough to pay off your bill. So leaving town was always a—I remember winning a cash prize my last year in law school of two or three hundred dollars. I don't remember what it was, it was the something award for something, and I took it straight to the store. I didn't even leave the Hill. I walked straight over to the store and gave them the money for fear I'd lose it or spend it on something else and I'd never get out of town. So conventional dress was in effect, technically, I guess, the whole time I was there, but it had pretty much died through Kent State, the spring, and, you know, all the rebelliousness. Warren: Did people rebel against conventional dress before May 1970, or was that the date? Walker: I don't think it was a given date. As Washington and Lee's realization of the whole war movement elsewhere developed, there was a small group of the more 4 radical, if you will—it seemed like such a strange word in Lexington—the more radical students who started to show up for class without jackets and ties. I can't remember specific instances, just based on experience. I'm sure there were clashes with faculty who wouldn't let them into class. Warren: Were you still an undergraduate when that was happening? Walker: Yes. Well, no. The worst of the war years—I guess '68 was the big build-up, which was my senior year, but it had started. One of my fraternity brothers was the—at least we believed him to be the first drug dealer in Lexington. He was a very prominent athlete, and he'd get a shoe box from his brother in New York every month or so. Of course, we were more accustomed to having boxes from home full of cookies or something, so everybody picked them up and started to shake them immediately. I remember they'd shake this shoe box, and people would say, "Yeah, it sounds like it's just grass." This was before we had any—we knew what grass was, and that's obviously what it was. My junior and senior year, probably more my senior than my junior year, it was beginning to happen in Lexington. My recollection is that it was not a—we were way behind the Ivy League schools and the California schools in terms of open rebellion to authority. I distinctly remember the afternoon on the front lawn—it had to be my second year of law school, right after Kent State, when Bob Huntley was literally shouted off the podium. He called the student—I guess he didn't call the student body together, the student leadership had called them together to try to close the school and shut it down so everybody could leave. One of my fraternity brothers, Fran Lawrence, was the president of the student body, and one of my classmates, Gates Shaw, at that point had graduated but come back to Lexington and was working on a—I don't know what he was working on. I don't think he was any longer technically in school, but he was still living in the county, and he was something of a leader in the student movement. 5 There was this meeting on the front lawn, and the student body was gathered across the Hill, and there'd been a microphone set up in the little circular sidewalk in front of the chapel, which was fairly new then. I don't think that had been there a long time. And Huntley ended up addressing the student body to try to petition for a little more peace and civility and common sense and go back to class and one thing or another, and he was literally shouted off the microphone, which, as I stood there—I had some role in that, I don't know exactly what it was, as a representative of the law school, but I distinctly remember my shock, thinking that in six years we've gone from what it was when I got here as a freshman to this. It just seemed unthinkable this all could have happened in such an incredibly short period of time. I remember thinking in those years that when I had gotten to W&L as a freshman, a big weekend, or a typical weekend, would be two or three hundred students in a room that wouldn't begin to hold a hundred in normal circumstances, all guzzling beer or booze or both, and the idea was to be as drunk and as Lewd as you could, but it was very together, very packed in a room, Lewd, noisy, rambunctious sort of entertainment. And at least for the undergraduate students, by the time I left in '71, it was one or two couples smoking marijuana in a dark apartment somewhere. Fraternity life—it never shattered, but what had been a very sort of crowd-oriented social scene had become a very fragmented sort of individual social scene. It's just amazing. All that happened in this one little place in such a short period of time. Warren: Quite a transition. Walker: It really was. It really was. What were we talking about? Warren: Lots of things. Walker: Yes. I tend to sort of just go off. We were talking about conventional dress. What were we talking about? Warren: You mentioned Fran Lawrence. Walker: Francis McQuaid Lawrence. 6 Warren: I talked to Fran. I didn't realize you knew each other. I should have figured it out. Walker: We were fraternity brothers, and he and my wife were great buddies. I'm a year older than Fran. She was our fraternity sweetheart and knew a number of the guys in the house, and the two of them had a great relationship. But he also stayed around campus for a while, so— Warren: It took him a while to get through. Walker: Yeah. So he and I were—we were probably there on campus together for five years, maybe. Warren: One of the stories he told me was that at some point while you were there, there was somebody who made a protest about not wearing ties and that there were signs up, like "Free Bobby Seal" signs, or there was like free somebody, because the Assimilation Committee was trying to throw them out of school. Walker: I don't remember. Warren: Does that ring any bells with you? Walker: No. Warren: I can't get everybody to verify that. Walker: I don't remember that. Warren: I don't know whether it's Fran going off or not. I love the story. Walker: The only sort of tie thing I remember, and it wasn't even really a protest when I was in law school, some enterprising law wife had started making ties out of sort of drapery fabric kind of things, really wild, Lilly Pulitzer kind of fabrics, and it started as a cottage industry, selling them in the law school, and then the undergraduate faculty sort of got into them, and to the extent that there was still a substantial number of students wearing jackets and ties, they kind of sold like hot cakes for about three months, and then the whole thing died. She made a fortune in a very short period of time. 7 But I don't remember any specific incident like that. Probably your best source on something like that would be the dean of students back in those days, which I guess would have been Lew John. Warren: He came in with Bob Huntley. Walker: Right. And Bob Huntley— Warren: This would have been in Fred Cole's time, I think. Walker: No. Cole was gone when I got there. My president was— Warren: No. It was Fred Cole. Walker: Okay. Was it really Fred Cole? And then Huntley took over— Warren: From Cole. Walker: I guess I—it's funny I don't remember. That's not who I would have said it was. Huntley took over my freshman year in the law school. I interviewed with Dr.— not McLaughlin. The then dean of the Washington and Lee Law School had been born and raised in Danville, Virginia, which was my father's home town, which is where Centre College is. [sic, in Kentucky] Warren: Charles Laughlin? Walker: No. Not Charley. Oh, McDowell. Warren: Charley McDowell. Walker: Charley McDowell. And Charley McDowell, Sr., and my granddaddy had been—I'm not sure they were great friends, but they were acquaintances and had great respect for one another, and my dad had known Dr. McDowell when he was growing up as a kid, and the McDowell family. So I interviewed with Dr. McDowell, and it was all—I just remember it's all tied together with Huntley being made president. Then when I came back to law school, by the time I got back there, Dean Steinheimer had been brought in as the dean, and we were his first class to go all the way through together. How did I get to that? But I don't remember a tie revolution. 8 Oh, I was talking about Lew John, yeah. Ed Atwood was the dean during my undergraduate years, and then Lew John stepped in, "Eddie the Axe." Warren: Maybe he would now about— Walker: Yeah. I would think that one of the two of them would be the most likely, if there was such a thing, to remember it. And I'm sure you can find stuff in the Ring-tum Phi. Warren: Well, I like the story, but I've got to find some verification. Walker: Oh, it's got to be in the Phi if it happened. I spent some time, two years ago, I guess, when I was on the alumni board, I spent a half a day in the library looking for an article I'd written in the Ring-tum Phi, which I finally found, not where I thought I was going to find it. It was not in the time period I thought I'd find it. But I had more fun going back through old newspapers, and it was sort of like the Petite Madeleines, seeing these pictures and recalling events that were all gone. A friend of mine, Rob Hartmann, who was a classmate in law school, we met—it seems to me we may have met the night before classes finally started. I'd been an undergraduate there, so it was like an Old Home Week to me. He was coming in from Proctor and Gamble, was a war vet, had a baby, which was pretty radical in those days. In any event, we became fast friends before school even started, and we ended up, to my complete surprise, because I'd flunked out of Washington and Lee my freshman year and had to be reinstated, we ended up at the end of the first semester of law school, I think he was number one in the class and I was number two or three, which in my entire academic career, this was a totally new circumstance, one with which I wasn't terribly sure I was comfortable. And then over the next five semesters, we see-sawed back and forth between one and two, and I think at the end, when we graduated, I finished number one in the class and he finished number two. I think we were divided by three-one-thousandths of a point, but we were great buddies. 9 In any event, what made me think of it, I guess our senior year, a second-year law student was convicted of an honor violation, and we ended up representing him in a public honor trial, which, as I remember, was the first in a number of years that had been requested—actually it's Lew John that made me think of this story. We defended him, and our very dear friend Phil Thompson prosecuted. He was a classmate of ours. It was a jury of law students, and he was acquitted. I take no great pride in it. I don't think there was much of a—with a jury of law students I always thought it was going to be a slam dunk, but our approach to the thing was that what this kid had done was something that people did all the time and that it was an accepted practice, and therefore the ultimate penalty of expulsion was inappropriate. In effect, we sort of attacked the system. Lew John, to this day, has not forgiven me for that. He says he has, but I know he hasn't deep in his heart. [Laughter] In the four years I was on the alumni board, I'd see him twice a year at these meetings. I always sort of shied away from Lew, who I've always greatly admired, but he was awestruck that we would do such a thing, I think more myself than Rob, because, you know, Rob had not been there as an undergraduate, and I think people just expected more of seven-year men, who were supposed to be inculcated with this tradition. Warren: And what had the person done? Walker: He had come into class at the end of class—and the law school in those days, when the professor would walk in at the beginning of the class, he would walk to one corner of the room and hand out a roster, and you would scratch off your name and initial it as the roster went around the room, to indicate you were in attendance. You could come into class in the first thirty seconds, scratch your name off, and leave. You could come into class and scratch your name off and wait five minutes and leave and never come back. He came in right at the end of class, as I remember. I mean, he was 10 there for no part of the class. He came in as the classes were changing and scratched his name off. It was a professor who professedly did not keep attendance records, and we all knew that, as opposed to a Charlie Laughlin, who did keep attendance records and very pointedly told you that if you missed more than so many classes it was going to affect your grade. So this was a professor—I think it was Bill Ritz—who did not pay any attention to cuts. In fact, we had unlimited cuts, and he only kept it because it was a policy of the school to keep it, and we all knew that. And although clearly this guy's intention was to indicate that he'd been there when he hadn't, because there was no other reason to come in and sign it, he'd made a point of coming up the steps, walking in, and signing it then walking back out. It just seemed to us at the time somewhat horrific that his potential law career would be ruined. At that point we were applying for bar exams, and we knew what that meant on his bar application. It just seemed totally unfair that he could be kicked out of school forever for doing what people in the law school didn't feel was really wrong, even though, clearly, it was a lie. So there was no question he did it, and the defense of it was based on getting a number of other students to admit that they thought nothing of coming into the class and, if they didn't intend to attend the class, coming in and scratching their name off and then leaving, although I suppose the prosecution argued that there was a difference in that because the professor would at least see you get up and leave and he could react to the fact, which really wasn't true, because if you did it when classes were changing, unless he had started the class before he sent the sheet around, you could accomplish the same thing at the beginning of the class that you could at the end. But I think at the end it was just a matter of—we weren't going to get twelve law students on the jury who weren't going to say, "You just can't kick a guy out of school for that." So in any event, he got off, and it wasn't so much, I think, the fact that he got off as what we said, what I said. And in retrospect, I went back and told Lew John, 11 about ten years ago, I said, "You know, I was wrong." And I really believe I was. But in any event, I don't think he's ever forgiven me for it. Warren: What did the Honor System mean to you while you were at Washington and Lee, and what's it meant to you in your life? Walker: Well, I think it probably meant more after than it did there, because I don't know that most eighteen- to twenty-one-year-old kids are able fully to appreciate what it means while you're there. I think it meant a lot while we were there, but in a sort of a non-emotional sense. It was just the openness of student life. I can't remember anybody ever locking a door, either in the fraternity house or in the dorms, and all these kids came with what at the time, at least, seemed like fancy stereo systems and electric typewriters and—electric typewriters, remember those? Warren: Quaint little things. Walker: Yeah. Weren't they quaint? Though everybody had a lot of nice things, and W&L was a reasonably affluent place so, I mean, kids had nicer things than you might have seen in a state school, but they were never locked up. Kids never locked their cars, either in town or on the campus. I do remember I lost a coat one time, had my wallet in it. It was my first or second year, and I got it back about a week later, and my wallet was still in it, and all the money was in it, and I don't even think I was astounded at the time because by then it wasn't surprising when things like that happened. I was called in front of the English faculty after my first semester exams of my—I guess it must have been my junior year because I'd already declared my major, and I was called in, and Sev Duvall laid my three exams, as I remember, on the table, and the faculty was gathered around this conference table. It was a regular faculty meeting. They just had brought me in. And they said, "Mr. Walker, those are the last pieces of written work this department will ever receive from you. You may take them back to your room and type them, and have them back here by noon Friday." I had like forty- eight hours to get them typed and resubmit them, which I did. But in retrospect, that 12 was a pretty amazing thing. I now had all the questions. They couldn't read a thing I'd written, and I could have taken them back to my room and fixed them right mightily, had I chosen to do so. Warren: What was the issue? Walker: They couldn't read them, my handwriting was so bad. But what made me think of that is, from that point on, literally they said, "We're not going to take any more written work from you," and as an English major, that's basically all we did was write. So I'd taken typing in high school, although I'd never learned how. So I had very quickly to get my typing to the point where I could keep up. It turned out to be a huge advantage, particularly in law school, but it was just an advantage because even a reasonably decent typist can type a lot faster than most people can write, and even if you're a good writer, if you're writing in a hurry on an exam, it's a slight edge with the professor, subconsciously, if he can easily read what's in front of him. In law school it was a great advantage, because we went on a numbered grading system, I think, starting my freshman year or my sophomore year, second year, theoretically designed to achieve more equality to avoid the old reality, really, that the rich got richer and the poor got poorer, that professors admittedly would pick up a top third of the class students' paper and expect more than the bottom third and whether or not it was there, his expectation was often realized in his just assuming it was a better paper. When we went to blind grading, there were about three of us in my class, maybe four, who typed, and it was always clear—they knew it was one of the four. I, to this day, believe that one of the reasons I did as well as I did in law school, I don't know how big a reason it was, but it helped. So in any event, the Honor System, starting with when I started typing all my exams, I couldn't take them in a room with everybody else. So I would either be in a room by myself somewhere or I'd just take them back to my apartment and take my 13 exams in my apartment. And that's an amazing thing when you think about it, particularly in the Vietnam years when kids were reacting, rebelling against everything. In my law school years, it was not uncommon—we didn't have self-scheduled exams. They were sort of coming in in the law school. I think they came in the law school before the college. Some professors would just, the beginning of exam week, they would lay the questions on a chair outside their office, and you could come pick up the questions, take them somewhere—you had three hours, I think, for most exams— and bring them back and pledge the exam that you didn't give or receive help and you only took three hours, and put it back on his chair, where it might sit for two or three days before he picked it up. So not only could you get the questions ahead of time, but you could get somebody else's answers ahead of time. And it just didn't really occur to anybody that there was anything crazy about the system or to abuse it. People cheated. I was aware, generally aware, throughout college and law school that some people cheated. I never felt compelled, and I don't think I ever would have felt compelled, to turn somebody in that I knew was cheating if they were a good friend or a fraternity brother, even. I just can't imagine having done that, much as I respected the system and understood that was part of making it work. I don't think many people would have turned in a good friend or a fraternity brother. I never had cause to turn in anybody else. I don't know, therefore, if I would have or not. I suppose I think I would have, particularly if it had been—particularly if it had been really egregious. I might have turned somebody in, even a fraternity brother, for stealing something major, but for lying, you know, unless it was a real significant lie of some sort or really blatantly cheating, I don't think I would have turned somebody in, again not somebody I knew well. A stranger, I don't know. But I think what made the system really work is that fact that that wasn't a big issue. It didn't come up a lot. It wasn't like there was rampant cheating and a lot of people turning a lot of people in, but it went on. The system, I think, sufficiently 14 minimized its occurrence so that it wasn't a huge issue. I think we all respected it while we were there, and it made life there a lot more pleasant. I'm sure that it enhanced relationships among students and between students and faculty in ways that, even now, I don't understand or perceive, but I think, really, more after we left there, I think people really realize what a wonderful thing it was, because when you get out in the real world, if you will, you can't help but realize what an unreal experience that was to be with people that you automatically respected enough to deal with them in that kind of an honest relationship, particularly, I think, people in my generation. I'm increasingly frustrated by sort of the general quality of young people today. The young lawyers that we hire here are—there is a great concern in the legal profession about the kind of young lawyers that are coming in, in terms of their integrity, their civility. The profession has become much less a profession, much more of a business. Young lawyers tend to be far more combative than they used to be, which breeds all kinds of other undesirable things, and it's my personal view that it's not lawyers, it's young people. I think people are growing up in a different world—the nuclear family is disappearing, and all of the things that have changed society so drastically, television. So as I look back, particularly from this vantage point, and I think back to those years and that little microcosm, it just seems like a miracuLews thing that we were able to live together under that system and that it pretty much worked. Warren: You've mentioned your fraternity a number of times. Which fraternity did you belong to? Walker: Phi Kappa Psi. Warren: And what did that mean for you? Walker: Oh, it was, I think, a very seminal event. I've just been through this with my daughter, who's a freshman at Duke, who did not get into the sorority she wanted. So I was recalling very vividly—this happened Sunday—I didn't get into—I went to 15 Washington and Lee, never heard of Phi Psi. My dad was a Beta, and I knew a lot of SAEs and I quickly learned that Phi Delt, along with SAE and Beta, those were the "in" houses. Those were where all the BMOCs were, the big men on campus, and I wanted desperately to be a Beta, because my father—or an SAE or a Phi Delt, and I don't think I got past the first day of Rush at any of the three of them. I don't remember how I ended up at Phi Psi, but it's not because at least in the first forty-eight hours of Rush I wanted to be there, but I ended up joining. I was happy about it when it happened, although I still, I think, if I could go back to that day, I still would have said I'd really rather be a Phi Delt, a Beta, or an SAE. We were the smallest pledge class on campus that year. There were eight of us in my pledge class, and I will say in retrospect, although the class grew to maybe eleven or twelve with some guys we had later, there are only a couple out of that group with whom I'm still in fairly regular contact, and some of them, I have no idea where in the world they are. I have other close contacts still with guys that were a year ahead or a year behind, but my closest friends for the next four years were in the house. I have a son that graduated from Washington and Lee two years ago now, and he was a Phi Psi, so I'm sort of attuned to the way things are today, too, and I don't think things have changed a great deal in terms of where friendships lie in the intervening thirty years. His closest friends were clearly in his fraternity house. He took all his meals at the house the way we did. He had to live there a year the way we did. The fraternity was absolutely the center of all life at Washington and Lee in those days. Everything revolved around your fraternity. We had to live there our sophomore year, could our junior and senior year. Most people didn't want to, but it wasn't an issue for us. We always had enough guys to fill the house the next two years. I ended up living in a magnificent home with three other guys my junior year, and they were all seniors. They were a year ahead of me my junior year, and then four other guys my senior year. We lived at 901 Thorn Hill Road, which in those days— 16 they've done something behind it that changed the configuration, but it was three acres, a very long lot that backed up to the Lexington Country Club Golf Course, which, in those days, was only nine holes. We had an apple orchard in the back acre of it. It was a beautiful old two-story red brick Southern home that belonged to a woman in Roanoke who had to be crazy to rent it to us, and we didn't treat it terribly well. We didn't treat it like a fraternity house, but we still didn't treat it terribly well for the two years that we lived there. But these other three guys, particularly in my junior year, became bosom buddies. One of them was dating a girl that I had known and dated a little bit in high school, who was a freshman at Sweet Briar. Two of them married women who were my wife's roommates, so we had three roommates marry three roommates. That's how my wife and I met, a Sweet Briar blind date. All of those things, in retrospect, never would have happened had I not joined Phi Psi and fallen in with these three guys, and we moved into this apartment together, this house. So the fraternity was everything. Other than the fact that you were at Washington and Lee, most things about most people were defined in terms of their day-to-day life by their fraternity. Warren: Were Big Clique and Little Clique still in existence when you were there? Walker: Big Clique and Little Clique. Warren: You'd know exactly what I mean if they were. It must have died just before you got there. Walker: I don't think so. Warren: All politics revolved around Big Clique and Little Clique. Walker: I was not politically astute. I was not involved in student politics at all. I had no interest in student politics any more than I have in political politics today. Warren: You mentioned that your wife was a Sweet Briar girl. Walker: Yes. Warren: Did you go on road trips of anything like that? 17 Walker: Oh, did we go on road trips, yeah. Tuesday night, of course, was Sem night, and there was always a trip to Southern Sem. On Tuesday night there was a party somewhere. But it was terrible, and we were awful about Sem girls, and nobody—I shouldn't say nobody—very few people seriously dated girls from Sem. I had one fraternity brother that married a girl from Sem and another who was madly in love with a girl from Sem, but it was sort of looked down on. My fraternity dated, I guess principally Sweet Briar, followed closely by Hollins and Mary Baldwin, and each fraternity tended, as I recall, to date a little more at one place than another. Some fraternities were principally Hollins, and it just depended on where the brothers at any given time were dating. Because I flunked out my freshman year, I didn't have a car in my sophomore year until second semester. So when I was going down the road, it was going with friends. Once I had a car, I don't remember that I went down a great deal during the week until I met my wife, but on Friday and Saturdays, that was just what you did. You went down, and if you were dating the girl regularly, as I was my wife beginning the early in my junior year, we'd generally go down and pick them up Friday after classes and take them home Sunday afternoon after classes, and they'd spend the weekend. Of course, they had to be in hostess housing. Her little group stayed with a woman named Bea Copper, who was one of the nicest ladies that ever lived. Bea's house was—if you go out Route 11 South, as you clear the long straight strip of the big old homes and Main Street curves, a big slow curve up to the left, and there's now a little 7-Eleven kind of thing on the left-hand side, there was a fork in the road. Main Street actually went on out toward Thorn Hill Road, and I think still does. Her house was a huge old home right in the "V," and she must have had two or three acres of land in there. She lived there with an old maiden aunt who was then in her nineties, I guess. 18 Bea must have been in her seventies, and she took in girls, mostly Sweet Briar girls, because the girls knew her and loved her, and her house was always full so there wasn't much room for anybody else. Most of the hostess housing, again they'd tend to be a Sweet Briar house or a Hollins house or whatever. The girls had to be in at one o'clock on Friday night and two o'clock maybe on Saturday night, and they had to turn themselves in under the Sweet Briar Honor System. They got late minutes if they were two or three or four minutes late. But they'd spend the weekend there, and we'd just sort of hang out for the weekend. That was pretty typical if you had a regular girl. If you didn't, you might go back and forth all weekend, have one date Friday night, a different date Saturday night. Warren: That was convenient with the location of your house, wasn't it, to where her house was? Walker: Oh, yes. We were only about a forty-second drive, and we had it down to a science between the two, to race back in and drop her off. Warren: I need to turn the tape over.