JAMES WHITEHEAD

                                       October 3, 1996

                                                —
                                        Mame Warren,

                                          interviewer

Warren: This is Mame Warren. Today is the 3rd of October, 1996. I am in Lexington,
Virginia with James Whitehead.

         I was talking to our old friend Frank Parsons this morning, who says that you're
P.T. Barnum himself.
Whitehead: I’m glad to think Frank thinks that highly of me.
Warren: Well, I’m pretty impressed by that. But I’d like to skip back to the beginning
and find out why you came to Lexington in the first place. What was the attraction of
Lexington?
Whitehead: My family and I lived in New York. I was associated with a group of fine
independent colleges in the state of New York, twenty-three, I believe, liberal arts
colleges, that banded together to seek funds for support from business and industry
back in the mid ’50s. It was a wonderful opportunity to observe the various fine small
colleges in the state of New York, all the way from the city, out to the western side at
Alfred, near Buffalo, and in Buffalo there were colleges. I had in my group Barnard and
Sarah Lawrence and St. Lawrence and Vassar and Hamilton, Colgate and then Alfred,
as I said. It was just a good group of colleges and I enjoyed working with them, but
with a growing family and two small sons, I left Long Island on the Long Island
Railroad every morning before daylight and I returned every evening after dark, and I
only saw my children in pajamas, and I decided this was no way to raise a family.

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         A good friend of Washington and Lee had met me at one of the association
meetings. I was with the Empire State Foundation For Liberal Arts Colleges and Lea
Booth in Lynchburg and I became friends, and Lea evidently mentioned my name to the
president then, Dr. Gaines, and to a member of the board of trustees who, fortunately
for me, was a friend of the family.

         I was interviewed in New York to see if I knew anyone that might be interested
in coming to Washington and Lee. That was the way it was approached. Then I had an
invitation from Dr. Gaines, the president, to come down.

         I returned to New York, and I can recall it vividly, talking to Celeste and she
wanted, of course, to know what I felt about it, and I said, "I think it’s a wonderful,
wonderful institution."

         She said, "Well, what would be your job?"
         I said, "I don’t know."
         She said, "Well, what would be your salary?"
         I said, "I do not know, but if I’m offered the job I’m going no matter what it is."
And I’ve never looked back. We’ve never looked back. It was the one decision in my life
that was absolutely perfect. So that’s it, that’s why I came to Lexington.
         I came down by railroad at the time, not by plane, but by a great train that came
into Buena Vista. Arrived in the morning after having breakfast somewhere in the
valley along the mountains, with starched white tablecloths and silver and crystal, and
reaching Buena Vista and then being met by the then alumni secretary, Cy Young, that I
had known previously. I came to the campus and met Dr. Gaines and Mrs. Gaines at a
luncheon in their home and I felt that I had returned to certainly the nineteenth century.
         The Lee House was decorated as it had been for many, many years, in a manner
that was just absolutely perfect for the period. We had midday meal, which they called
dinner and I called lunch at the time. It was a dinner in the dining room, with Gardner
Henderson serving and Alice Ware in the kitchen cooking. It was just a superb

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introduction to Lexington. Dr. Gaines never mentioned the job, nothing about it at all. I
had a tour of the campus and stayed at the Robert E. Lee Hotel, and in those days it was
quite a nice establishment.

         The next morning I got on the train and went back to New York, or the next
evening I went back to New York. So that was the beginning.
Warren: Did anyone ever mention the job?
Whitehead: Oh, no, no. Certainly, I knew it had to be in fund-raising because the
gentleman that had interviewed me in New York was Christopher Chenery, the owner
of Secretariat, he was on the Board of Trustees at the time. And he wanted to know if I
knew someone that might be interested in the job of fund-raising at Washington and
Lee, and I named a few people that were connected with the colleges that I knew, but all
the time I sat there I couldn’t help but wonder if this what I had been looking for,
although I didn’t give him my name.

         Then it was shortly after that that Dr. Gaines called me. I had a very good family
friend through my wife’s family, Mr. Lykes, who was on the Board of Trustees, and
evidently Mr. Chenery checked with him.

         So we arrived in Lexington. I came down in May, and Celeste and the boys came
down in June. That was in 1958, so it goes back a few years.
Warren: Describe what Lexington was like when you got there.
Whitehead: I will say this, coming out of New York City and directly into Lexington, it
probably looked far grander because of the great contrast than it was at the time,
because a great deal of work has happened in terms of sprucing up Lexington. The
downtown area where the present restaurant, the White Columns [Willson-Walker
House], that entire street was really not in a state of decay, but it would soon reach that
stage. The hotel across the street that now is the inn, the Withrow House, all of those
places, that would have been the slums of Lexington. That didn’t seem to have any
impression on me at the time.

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         I stayed at the Robert E. Lee Hotel, as I said, and that was a very nice experience.
I don’t remember much more than that, other than when I came here, I saw the green
grass on the front of the campus, on the lawn in front of the Colonnade, and I felt that
here was a place where the grass was greener. It really was, and it’s always been that
way in my mind, it’s always been greener there than anyplace else. So I really can’t tell
you much more than that about Lexington.

         The great contrast with New York came to my family when my wife and I, and
my wife especially, had to transport the children to school, to the movies, to get a
haircut. They were never out of our sight, and here they could walk up and down the
street, they could go to a ball game, they could do most anything on their own. That
was quite a contrast. So I guess that had a great deal to do with wanting to come to a
small community. We’d go back, and certainly that’s always nice, but never have I ever
regretted the move.

         The people were wonderful, the administration was quite small, and I say the
administrative staff was quite small, the president, the dean of students and the
treasurer, and there was a dean of the School of Law and a dean of the School of
Commerce, and that was it. There was no other—that was the administrative offices at
the time. They were all very kind to us.

         Really, in the case of Mr. Mattingly, who was a bachelor, he more or less adopted
us and looked after us when we came here, saw to it that we met people and were
involved in a level of the community that would have been not possible in most places.
Warren: Tell me about Mr. Mattingly.
Whitehead: I had a feeling you wouldn’t be interviewing me if you weren’t interested
in Mr. Mattingly. Mr. Mattingly. I’m trying to think. The first time I saw him was the
day I came down to be interviewed, and Mr. Young took me into Mr. Mattingly’s office.
Their offices were across the hall from each other. He had on a gray suit, he was bald.
At the time I had hair, but since then that’s gone; I understand. He had on the finest

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tailored suit. He loved to go to a tailor for his clothes to be made, rather than buying
anything off the rack, the proper tie, starched shirt. He sat behind that desk and he was
very, very cordial and cold. He didn’t, I think, want to think that he in any way felt that
I was right for the position until he was sure of it, but he was nice, but cold.

         Then when I accepted the job and came down, he came to see us in the house that
we were living in during the summer while we were searching for a home, and took us
for a ride around Lexington and told us, I guess, the occupants of at least 75 percent of
the houses of Lexington he knew who lived there. He pointed with pride at some that
the university had the mortgage on, places that he had an interest in and had loaned the
money for.

         So when it came time for us to settle in at a place, Celeste and I found a house, it
was five miles outside of Lexington, at the, I guess you’d call it, convergence of Buffalo
Creek and another creek, a small house built in the 1700s that had been unoccupied for
a time, that we just felt was just perfect, we would love to restore it and had all the
details. I came in to see Mr. Mattingly and I told him we’d found just the place we
wanted. "I will not let you take your wife into that area that far away from town with
two boys," he said. "I will not approve any loan for that house." Well, that was our first,
really, time to see another side of Mr. Mattingly and I felt badly about it. Then started
looking further, and the longer we lived here, we knew he was absolutely right.

         Five miles on Long Island when I commuted three hours every day seemed like
around the corner, but to leave Celeste, and the fact that I traveled, out there in the
woods really would not have been the right thing to do. Since then the house has been
bought and beautifully restored by a couple here in Lexington and now is in the hands
of a W&L alumnus that appreciated the beauty of that period and that old house. So
that was another experience with him.

         We then became great friends over the years. He never ate a meal in his little
house over here. Next to the Mattingly house is a little white three-sectioned house, and

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it’s where he lived, and he rented two sections and he lived in the other. But he never
ate at home, he was always out every night for his meals. He would go over to what we
call the Co-op and have his breakfast and then walk somewhere. But at night he was
usually invited to someone’s home. In those days, there was more of that than there is
now. People entertained in their homes; they didn’t go out. Then periodically he would
repay by taking his guests out sometimes to the Southern Inn—well, sometimes the
Southern Inn, mainly the Virginia House, where he would order steaks for them and
repay his debt that way. But I guess he was at our house at least three times a week. We
remained friends, and he was a good friend.

         He loved Washington and Lee. He was very careful with Washington and Lee’s
money, but liberal with his own. That was just his nature. He’d come here on a
scholarship after being at, I guess it was at Front Royal Military Academy, had to work
every day of his life to sustain himself while he was here. Then after he finished W&L,
he, at some period, I don’t know when, was here as registrar and then became assistant
to the treasurer and then treasurer of the university.

         I knew him, I did not know him in these other capacities, but I’ve had many
alumni tell me as I traveled around the country, first in fund-raising and then in public
relations with the Reeves Center, that Mr. Mattingly had seen them through this
university in one way or another. So he should be recognized as a true friend of the
college.

         He was a good friend to Mrs. duPont, squired her when she was in town, and
that was his big social. Those were the social events of the season when she came to
town.
Warren: I understand that you were quite good at courting the ladies, too.
Whitehead: Well, I learned. I don’t deny that. I don’t know that I would call it courting.
I know I’ve had the good fortune of meeting some very nice ladies and I’ve certainly

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enjoyed their company, but it’s company that has included my family. I was just not out
running around. Mr. Mattingly was a bachelor, he could do things that I shouldn’t do.
Warren: That’s one of the things that I’ve become most intrigued with, is the
relationship of these ladies who have been so generous to Washington and Lee, and I
figured somebody was courting them in some way.
Whitehead: That’s right.
Warren: I’d like to know more about that.
Whitehead: Well, I call them angels. I really do. This university has been fortunate in
developing over a period of time friendships with ladies, and I’ve had the good fortune
of being a part of some of that. But if you look around this campus, you’ll find that
there are a number of buildings that carry the names of these ladies. Fairfax Lounge
over in the Student Center, that center developed. There was a dining hall and then the
building that’s on the corner which was there, but that became joined and became a
student union complex and that was made possible by a lady from Roanoke, Virginia,
by the name of Ms. Ronald Fairfax.

         I would certainly give Mr. Mattingly the credit for taking care of that particular
lady over the years, although we had the good fortune of getting to meet her and being
with her a number times before she died. But she thought a lot of Mr. Mattingly. She
thought a lot of men, not just Mr. Mattingly. She was always the lady that wore a tiara
at the symphony ball in Roanoke, and she was always squired by a number of
gentlemen, always in white tie and tails when these events would happen, and Mr.
Mattingly was always a part of it. I think he died before Mrs. Fairfax.

         But in any event, we went to see her shortly before she died, and she said she
had to get to Washington because she wanted to change her will. We had no idea why
she was doing this. But anyway, arrangements were made for an ambulance. In those
days, ambulances don’t look like these first-aid things now, they were just sort of
limousines with some cot in them or something. But anyway, she had this limousine

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pick her up at the Hotel Roanoke in Roanoke, and she was driven to Washington,
where she signed and had her lawyer change her will.

         I don’t know that her will before she changed it, I’m sure it included Washington
and Lee, there’s no question about that, but I think we did benefit from the change. But
she was going to give, through her will, a major bequest to one of her male friends who
ran the Barter Theater in Abingdon. I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of the Barter
Theater, but it’s quite an institution in the state of Virginia. And he was the director of
it, and he’d been no different than Mr. Mattingly in his attention to Mrs. Fairfax, but she
appreciated it.

         Well, just after she became ill, she learned that he had married, and she had to
get to Washington to take him out of her will, and she did. His name was Bob
Porterfield. He was quite a character in the state of Virginia.

         Another lady, Mrs. duPont, that you’ve heard about from numbers of people, all
coming in at different directions. We met Mrs. duPont when she came down for a visit,
and Mr. Mattingly, quite nervous always when she was in town or learning that she
was coming, asked us—well, he didn’t ask, it was almost a command performance, said
that Mrs. duPont would be here and that the schedule was, and he told me what the
schedule was, and he said that they’d have dinner at Dr. and Mrs. Gaines’ home and
then they were going down to what was then the Troubadour Theater. After the
Troubadour Theater he thought it would be nice if they stopped by our house and had a
glass of brandy after dinner. That’s fine. You’ve heard this story from others, but
anyway.

         They arrived at our house, and here are our two young boys, we sent them to the
top of the staircase to the second floor because this had to be so right. I had bought
some proper brandy that Mr. Mattingly felt that she would like, and I forget what I
bought for the Gaineses. But in any event, it had been a cold night and they arrived, and
so I met them at the door of this big old house that we lived in here on Main Street, and

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Mrs. duPont was, well, spectacular in her appearance at that age. I mean, she must have
been in her early eighties, seventies or early eighties, and to describe her would be to
say that she—all that I can remember was all the net and lace that she seemed to be
enfolded in, and great big orchids and her hair high on her head and all of the pearls
and everything, It really was a spectacular sight. It was obvious that she was a lady of
means, there was no question about that.

         Well, they came in and we ushered them into the living room. We were nervous,
the boys were hanging over the banister upstairs seeing what this lady—and Mrs.
duPont said to Celeste, "Mrs. Whitehead, may I retire to your"—I don’t know what you
call it, powder room or whatever. Well, this house had not had—well, it had plumbing
put in it, I guess, in the 1910s or twenties, but anyway, it was down a long hall and
these heavy walnut doors, magnificent doors, opened into this little bathroom, and it
was used as a guest bathroom. I mean, that was because it was not used by anybody
else.

         So she goes in and closes the door while I go back up to the living room, and
Celeste is up—I’m in the living room with the Gaineses and Mr. Mattingly. Celeste
comes in, and Mr. Mattingly said, "Do you think everything’s going all right? Do you
think she’s having a nice time?" Dr. and Mrs. Gaines were by this time were feeling real
good, and everybody agreed that Mrs. duPont was having a great time.

         Well, then I heard the door, it sounded like a banging on the door and I thought,
oh, my gosh. The poor lady, in pulling the door to, it had these antique locks on it, it
was awfully hard to turn, they were porcelain knobs, but the locks were quite old. She
was in that room and couldn’t get out.

         So I got back there and I said, "Just a moment, Mrs. duPont." I turned the handle
and opened the door, and there stood Mrs. duPont. Her hair now had come all the way
down, all the lace and the net or whatever it was that surrounded her was drooped

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down, the orchids were dangling. And I thought, my God, what in the world had
happened.

         It turned it out that, you may have seen these, but you’re too young maybe to
have seen it, that above the commode there was a five-gallon container that when you
pulled the chain, water would come down and flush the commode. In this case, it didn’t
work and all the water came out over the top and right onto Mrs. duPont, Washington
and Lee’s greatest benefactress, and here we were trying to make an impression. She
didn’t say a word, she was just the lady that she was, walked right back to the living
room, sat down with Mattingly, and I don’t know that Dr. Gaines and Mrs. Gaines
really saw what he saw or what we saw, they did, but it wouldn’t have mattered. She
had her brandy and sat there wringing wet. And that was the entrance to my fund-
raising at Washington and Lee. That was my first attempt. So that’s Mrs. duPont, a
great lady.
Warren: Well, now, wait a minute, let’s finish up with Mrs. duPont. What then
happened? I mean, we do have a duPont Hall. It couldn’t have been too much of a
disaster.
Whitehead: No, the duPont Hall was not named for Mrs. duPont. It was for another
member of the duPont family, it was a duPont connection, but it was not named for
Mrs.—as far as I know, Ms. Warren, it was not named for our Mrs. duPont, Mrs. Alfred
I. duPont. I don’t know how I could find that out. Oh, well, it can be found out. Frank
should know that. But I don’t think it was Mrs. Alfred I. duPont. I think it was a
duPont—may have been from Mr. duPont, but it was not named for Mrs. duPont.

         Evans Hall was named for Mrs. Letitia Pate Whitehead Evans. It was the
Whitehead money and not the Evans money that made that building possible, Coca-
Cola money. She was a great friend of Dr. Gaines, and I had the opportunity of meeting
her just once over at the Hot Springs. She had a great mansion. It was a mansion. It was
called the Pink House, a big colonial mansion. When she was ill, Dr. Gaines would go

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over and read poetry to her. She was a great friend, so when she died, the gift came to
the university, was made possible—well, its funds held in trust by others, but it’s a
magnificent bequest and was at the time and therefore Evans Hall was named for this
lady.

         She would give Dr. Gaines a gift every time he would go there, one sort of
another. One time he came back and he said, "This is for my boys’ tennis courts," and he
would be able to build tennis courts. But he was great, he was just a—oh, what a great
gentleman.
Warren: Let’s talk about—
Whitehead: The ladies?
Warren: Well, no, let’s talk about President Gaines for a minute.
Whitehead: All right.
Warren: He was still president when you came?
Whitehead: He was. He was president for one year, but traveled with me on a fund-
raising campaign for the next couple of years, I guess.
Warren: Really?
Whitehead: Yes.
Warren: After he had retired?
Whitehead: After he had retired. He went around to alumni meetings and spoke.
Warren: I didn’t know that.
Whitehead: I heard the same speech maybe forty times, and I can honestly say that
there was not a time that I heard it that it just didn’t—it lifted me out of my chair every
time I heard him. He was so good. He was an orator. He could make you cry one
minute and you’d be laughing the next. He was so—he was just an orator of the old
school. You don’t find—I don’t know any now quite like Dr. Gaines, but he was
something else.

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         He made friendships with people across this nation and mainly a great number
of them during World War II when he was assisting in the selling of war bonds across
the country. But he could inspire people to do most anything he wanted them to do. He
was not well when I came here, and that did not improve. He had cirrhosis of the liver
and that had probably been brought on by an excess of alumni meetings and social
events where he was a member of the party.

         But anyway, he made a great contribution and some of the success, I truly
believe, of what we’ve seen in subsequent development drives can be tied back to Dr.
Gaines. You can do a lot of fund-raising, but it does not necessarily come to fruition
while the campaign is going on, and there are people that are fund-raising that don’t
even know that they’re fund-raising, that are responsible for gifts down the road. So I
like to give credit back to people that have made a contribution, and he certainly did, to
this institution.
Warren: It’s certainly coming out in the interviews.
Whitehead: Is that right? You feel that?
Warren: Oh, yes. People talk about him and they nod their heads when they say his
name.
Warren: That’s right? He had a summer place out in the country called Penn Robin,
and that’s where Mrs. Gaines grew these magnificent gladiolas. A car would pull up at
the house, Gardener, the chauffeur who had been the waiter at their home and also the
butler, a man that seldom left Dr. Gaines, would bring in these beautiful bouquets of
flowers.

         He and Mrs. Gaines knew the names of all the children of the faculty members.
They were just phenomenal when it came to making it a family, giving you a sense of
family as it related to the university. Some people don’t believe in that, and it’s not
possible as you get larger and grow, but there can be an attempt at it. You don’t have to
just not do something because you become large. That’s not a reflection on anybody

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here or any one person, but I think there is a tendency to think that the larger you get,
that you don’t have to do some of those things. It means a lot to the people that work
there.

         Salaries were not great, but there were other benefits that offset that, that money
could not necessarily buy.
Warren: What kind of benefits?
Whitehead: The feeling of belonging, the feeling of knowing that there was somebody
that cared enough for you that if anything happened, they would be right at your side.

         I’ll tell you something that I’ve learned of my own situation. I never would bring
this into the conversation, but it relates to what your question has led me down the road
to whatever. My son was a W&L graduate, Jim, and was a Navy pilot and then became
a banker in Texas, and seven years ago he had a massive stroke that left him in a coma
for over three years, but completely paralyzed, he can only use two fingers. He knows
what’s going on, we know it, but he cannot communicate because it was a head injury
and there was brain damage. Okay. He worked for a small bank in Texas that he helped
get established and he worked for these people. When Jim had the stroke seven years
ago, this group of people that he worked with, including the man with the major
portion of the funds that were in the bank, really acted as though he was one of their
own members of their own family. From that day to—where was I, in Washington over
the weekend, from that day to this, there has never been a quarter, in terms of time, that
there’s not been contact between that bank and our son in some way, some form. They
come to see him, they send various people up, they’ll send a computer if they think it
will help Jim.

         This is what I’m talking about, the family. They’re small and they’re remaining
small, but he is still a part of it. They’ve named a room in their new headquarters
building that’s an exact replica of Monticello. In fact, Dan Jourden [phonetic], who is the
director of Monticello, is speaking there today.

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         But that’s the way it was with Washington and Lee, and that’s what I meant by a
feeling of family. I see Washington and Lee now because I am at the nursing home and
there are some W&L people there or connected with the nursing home. There is a sense
of family. There’s an outpouring, I think, at Washington and Lee when tragedy strikes
or when someone becomes ill in one way or another, but that begins to decrease in time
and suddenly you’ll have a professor at Washington and Lee that was highly regarded
sitting in the nursing home and nobody coming to see him, unless it happens to be an
alumnus that thought a lot of him and they’ll come over.

         That’s true in families. Families tend to forget the parents or grandparents. I
don’t mean totally forget them, they’ll send them a card or they’ll come by to see them
and bring them a flower now and then, but how it decreases. That was what
Washington and Lee was when I came here in ’58. I truly—don’t get me wrong, I can’t
believe it could continue because I was treasurer here, I served in several capacities and
I know in my own case I think back to what I could have done that I did not do for
some of these people that had one sort of tragedy or another, but it was not that way
when Gaines was here.

         Dr. Cole, who followed him, was another personality. Dr. Cole was a very
reserved, private person, so you didn’t see that same thing, although they tried awful
hard to—I don’t know if they did or not, I mean, I don’t know that they understood that
either, what it had been like. But I do think that—
Warren: They, the Coles?
Whitehead: Yes. But I do think it was such a shock to the alumni and to the
Washington and Lee family that knew, and were part of the Gaines’ period, that they
just didn’t quite understand President Cole. Yet I don’t think we’ve ever had a better
president. He was just absolutely—he was a scholar, he was a gentleman, and a man I
respected for his talent. I really did. Not in the same category that I admired Dr. Gaines,
but I certainly admired this man. I thought he was excellent.

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Warren: Well, I’ve wondered about that. Just looking at the number of years, it seems
like to most people Dr. Gaines must have been here forever.
Whitehead: That’s right.
Warren: Then it seems like those shoes must have been awfully big to fill.
Whitehead: They were. They’d be awfully hard. [Laughter] Mr. Mattingly was the first
one to—I don’t mean suffer the change, but to sense the change. Dr. Gaines was here for
thirty some-odd years and just like a father or brother, depending on your age. Dr. Cole
comes in, and, as I say, a very private person, and coming here from a large institution,
Tulane, living in an atmosphere totally different than Lexington, Virginia. If there was a
comparison, I guess, New York would be one place and New Orleans would be another
that would be poles apart from Lexington.

         Well, Mr. Mattingly was the first one to become close to the Coles, because he
had to work with Mrs. Cole, as well as Dr. Cole, and he was not accustomed to this kind
of thing. The house that the Gaines lived in, the Lee House, it would be in terms of, as I
remember, as close to being something that Faulkner would have written about. If you
had walked into it, you were definitely in the Deep South. There were fringe on all of
the lamps and there was never highly lighted. It was a genteel poverty. That’s a cliché,
but it really was. I mean, everything was fine, but it was getting old and worn out and
nobody cared.

         Also when Mrs. Cole, from New Orleans, comes with her decorator, this was a
shock to Mr. Mattingly because all of a sudden they were putting drapes up that cost as
much as the Gaines had spent probably for furnishings in their entire tenure at
Washington and Lee. Then she wanted to make some structural changes. She is the lady
that had the dining room where Lee died, the alcove where Lee died, opened so it gave
flow that you could escape. Because these parties and alumni weekends, you got into
the dining room and living room and you were just like being at Grand Central at rush
hour. So she had that done.

                                                                                                                     15
         Well, all of this, to Mattingly, was just sinful. It was just sinful. They had the first
air-conditioned car, and it was a Lincoln, and this was another thing that bothered Mr.
Mattingly. Here he was at General Lee’s institution, but Dr. Cole had been with the
Ford Foundation, had done work for them, and so they had probably gave the car to
Dr. Cole. I don’t know. But anyway, it caused Mr. Mattingly some concern.

         Yet it was Dr. Cole, the association with the Ford Motor Company people, that
brought about the restoration of Lee Chapel in the early 1960s. So that first restoration
of the chapel can be attributed to Dr. Cole’s connections. Of course, there were other
people that worked on it, too. I worked on it.
Warren: I was about to say, you must have gotten involved.
Whitehead: Benson Ford, one of the Ford brothers, happened to be a friend of mine,
and he came down for the dedication. So it didn’t hurt to have these contacts. I had met
him when I was working with the National Conference of Christians and Jews in New
York, when I first went to New York, and he led a national campaign along with his
brother, Henry. I worked in Detroit every week for two years. But Dr. Cole had truly
brought it about.
Warren: Let me ask you about that. I’ve seen a photograph of the work done on Lee
Chapel then, and the roof is gone.
Whitehead: They took it apart, yes. It was absolutely gutted.
Warren: What did they do? Describe what was done.
Whitehead: Well, I can’t do it as well as Pat Brady, who was the superintendent of
buildings at the time, but it was not safe to be in there, in that chapel, and the balconies
all had to be rebuilt and support beams of steel put in so it would be safe and air-
conditioning, and all the mechanical things had to be done. But do that they had to take
the roof off, shore up all of the brickwork. The crypt, as such, was not changed, but the
greatest improvement in that area was the fact that they put marble slabs over all of the
vacant slots so when you walk in you just didn’t see these places waiting for someone to

                                                                                                                     16
be placed. Now we take them out and then put someone in, but at first those were all
open slots and you’d count and you’d say, well, they’ll be able to take ten more, or
thirteen more or something like that. But it was, it really was.

         There was a fire there, I’ll never forget, during the restoration, and if that had
really gotten out of control, there would have been—there was paint cans that had been
stored in the basement while they were working, and I don’t if it was a spark or what
caused it, but it caught on fire. The fire department was able to extinguish it without
causing the building any damage. But that’s while it was still pretty much under
construction.
Warren: I’ve never heard that.
Whitehead: Yeah, there was a fire in there.
Warren: I need to turn the tape over.
Whitehead: Okay.
[Begin Tape 1, Side 2]
Warren: I’m intrigued about Dr. Cole. I was here when Bob Huntley was president, so I
have a pretty good sense—
Whitehead: A good friend of Dr. Cole’s, too.
Warren: I’ve interviewed him, so I have a pretty good sense of that administration, and
Dr. Gaines is just legendary, but it’s almost, I don’t want to say a black hole, but it sort
of a brown hole, the Cole administration, and the more you can tell me about that, the
better educated I’ll be.
Whitehead: I don’t know if you’ve heard about any of the personal characteristics of
Dr. Cole. Well, he’s the only man that I’ve ever seen smoking three cigarettes at one
time. You’d walk into that office where part of his office was until Dr. Wilson moved,
and you could hardly see across the room. I was a smoker, so I was not as concerned
about that when I was smoking as I would be today or anyone else. Well, you wouldn’t
go in the room, it was just—but he would have one in his mouth, one in his hand, and

                                                                                                                     17
one in an ashtray. It was just like a constant cigarette, he never let up. Poor man died,
I’m sure, of complications because of it. So that was a personal characteristic.

         Beautifully groomed, always the finest suits and looked fine. One-to-one, he
could be very personable, but in a group he was very uncomfortable, and that’s the why
the alumni never really took to Dr. Cole, because he was just not comfortable. He would
have Frank write his speeches. I guess Frank would. I’m sure Frank wrote some of
them. He just was not a public figure, but he could stand and—he’s the one, I think,
brought us out of the Dark Ages in terms of faculty and salaries and recognizing what
the university needed in terms of upgrading its faculty, upgrading salaries. He was
excellent at that kind of thing. He can certainly be given credit for it. He had a vision.

         I’ll tell you this, I don’t know that it was written down anywhere. I walked into
his office one day and he was looking—I’m trying to acclimate you—but Washington
Hall is there, his office was on the back of Washington Hall, overlooking the ravine to
where now the law school is. One time he visualized, I recall, C______ College for
Women there. It could be a part of Washington and Lee University, but would be a
separate college for women before we went co-ed. So he really had that vision of us
eventually becoming a co-ed institution, I’m positive of that. Or at least I felt that in
what he said to me.

         We traveled together. He was a good friend. He was just private, he was not a
public figure. Mrs. Cole worked so hard on anything that she did, and that Lee House
had to be absolutely perfect, and she worked so hard to achieve it that by the time it
occurred, she was a nervous wreck. Poor thing. She’s still alive. She came by here a few
months ago and stopped over in the Reeves Center because she had known, she had
met Mr. and Mrs. Reeves once. I was anxious to hear her comments about that.
Warren: Was it during the Cole administration that President Truman came?
Whitehead: President Truman. It would have to be during Cole’s administration,
because Dr. Gaines was only here for a year, and I don’t think it occurred when Dr.

                                                                                                                     18
Gaines was here. Arnold Toynbee came when Dr. Gaines was still in office. But
President Truman spoke at a Mock Convention, everyone was disappointed because it
was such a mild talk compared to what they thought it was going to be. I can’t tell you.
It must have been during that, and I’m thinking, could it have been during the period of
Dr. Pusey’s interim acting presidency that he was here. But I know that Mr. Nixon came
during Pusey’s administration, that short period in between Cole and Huntley.
Warren: He was here in ‘68. I have a number of pictures.
Whitehead: Well, that would be—
Warren: So what was it like having that level of—of course, we had so many interesting
people come to campus. Were you involved in hosting any of those people?
Whitehead: Certainly neither Nixon or Truman. I can remember being involved with
Goldwater when he came, but, no, I was not involved in that area of the university at all
at that point. Most of that was done by students, and that was really a student affair. If
you were invited to something, you certainly went to it and those kind of things. But
nothing to do with the arrangements or anything like that, that was all the students.
Warren: Were you here when Toynbee was here?
Whitehead: Yes, I was here only for his last public appearance in the chapel and then
the Gaines had a reception in their home after that affair. It seems to me that it was
covered by a national magazine here, or the staff from a national magazine was
covering Toynbee, but I don’t recall which one it was. All of a sudden National
Geographic comes to my mind, but I don’t think it was National Geographic. It was
another one. But I’ve heard so much about Toynbee. But that last lecture he gave was
not a sold-out event, where some of them, of course, when he first came, getting a ticket
to hear Toynbee was [unclear]. But there again, Frank was the one that was involved, I
believe, as anyone on this campus at the time.

         But going back to women—let me do that.
Warren: Please do.

                                                                                                                     19
Whitehead: Mrs. Evans, a lovely lady, an heir to the part of the Coca-Cola fortune
through her marriage to Mr. Whitehead, and then she later married Mr. Evans. That’s
where we got Evans Hall.

         Doremus Gymnasium, funds for that came before I arrived here, but it came
through both Mr. and Mrs. Doremus, so she was very much a part of that gift. That
story has been told and retold so many times now. That was before I came. I’m just
trying to think of women and names on the campus.

         Newcomb Hall, Mrs. Newcomb from, I guess, New Orleans, gave the funds in
honor of her husband and Newcomb Hall. Sophie Newcomb, the college Sophie
Newcomb in New Orleans, is the name of the lady who gave us really the money for
Newcomb Hall. That’s another lady.

         Lewis. That’s Frances and Sidney Lewis, but there again there’s this lady that
was very close to the university.

         But there’s some others. Of course, the ones that I’m most familiar with would be
the Reeveses, Mrs. Reeves, who was the ultimate donor of the Reeves Collection. Mrs.
Watson of the Watson Pavilion. A great lady. There’s more ladies. I’m forgetting some
of these angels. Anyway, one time I made a list of all these people. It seems to me it’s
something to do with—those are the ones who are recognized that have been large
contributors to the university in one way or another.
Warren: Miss Parmly.
Whitehead: Parmly, that’s the lady. She was great.
Warren: Tell me about Miss Parmly.
Whitehead: You’ve heard this from everybody, but she was, she was just absolutely
super. I may be the only person that ever spent the night with Miss Parmly, but not in
her room, but in her apartment. I had a meeting in New York and I came up, and I
couldn’t get a room at any hotel. Ms. Parmly had asked me to help her with getting,
sometimes, some transportation, things that you could get in Lexington, it’s

                                                                                                                     20
unbelievable, but in New York she couldn’t get it because just the throngs of people that
were trying to get things. I can do some things for her, which I did.

         I had to go to New York. I called her and I said, "Miss Parmly, I’m having a very
difficult time getting a place to stay. Do you have any suggestions?"

         "You stay right here," she says, "there’s a guest room here in 825 Fifth Avenue."
Well, the guest room really was what had been the maid’s room for one of the people
and it could be used. So I stayed until about midnight in that room. It had no window,
and I got up and walked on over to the Plaza about midnight. And there was no bath. I
asked them at the Plaza if they had a room, and they did, and I checked in there because
it was only a couple of blocks from where I was. Anyway, I spent part of a night with
Miss Parmly.

         We had a party for Miss Parmly at our house. Bob Keith’s favorite story. Here
again, it was sort of like Miss duPont, and Miss Parmly was coming, and this is when
Bob Huntley was president, and he and Miss Parmly got along fine. He’d get along fine
with anybody. But she was coming, so we were going to have a dinner party for her at
this old house of ours. There certainly wouldn’t have been over fourteen, because that’s
all we could seat at the table, and so everybody kept telling me everything we should
do. So I loaded up on everything conceivable, the brandy, and I thought, well, she
would like scotch. I had everything right.

         So here I am. Miss Parmly arrives. I don’t believe I’d seen Miss Parmly at this
particular time, never seen her before. She arrived at the house and came in. That’s
when we had drinks in the library then. Miss Parmly came in and everybody else had
been there for sometime before she arrived and I’d already given them something to
drink. And I said, "Ms. Parmly, may I fix you a drink?"

         She said, "That would be nice."
         I said, "What would you like?"

                                                                                                                     21
         She said, "I’d like a bottle of beer." I didn’t have a cold bottle of beer in the
house. I went back and threw a can in the freezer and wrapped ice around it and did
everything else. But Bob Keith likes to kid me about that one of giving Miss Parmly—
then after we became friends, a very wealthy lady living with her mother most of her
life and not doing anything that I could figure out would be fun, I’m sure she did many
things that she enjoyed doing like hiking and saving islands off of Georgia and
developing beaver dams in Vermont and New Hampshire, but she’d never had an
opportunity to attend some of the things in New York she liked to do. So Bob Huntley,
when he’d go, he would ask her where she’d like to go to have dinner or something and
she’d tell him.

         So I was going up one time and I said, "Miss Parmly, where would you like to
have lunch?"

         She said, "I’d like to go to 21." So it’s pouring rain. Oh, it’s just raining, and I’m
staying at some hotel and I get a cab to go over to 825, and when I got out of the cab to
go in to usher her out, I stepped in water that came up halfway up to my knee. I mean,
it was running by the curb. Well, that didn’t matter.

         I go in, and here’s Miss Parmly. She’s got a ski cap on pulled way down over,
she’s got her rubber boots and an old coat, and here I am taking her to 21 thinking that,
oh, Lord.

         So when I walked in, I had made a reservation through Ross Millhiser, who had
friends there. The people weren’t as shocked as I was. But anyway, this couple,
wringing wet, had come in and they took us to the best seat in the house and next to us
placed Van Johnson, who was—you probably don’t remember Van Johnson. Van
Johnson the movie star. She was so thrilled, I don’t think she could eat, being in this
place that she had always wanted to and then sitting next to a movie star, one like Van
Johnson, who was so nice to her. We were seated on a long whatever it is along the

                                                                                                                     22
wall, and he was right next to her and he started a conversation with her. Oh, what a
wonderful lady. What a wonderful lady. What a wonderful lady.
Warren: I have some pictures of her here and she just looks so delightful.
Whitehead: Isn’t she nice?
Warren: She has this angelic smile. She looks like a cherub.
Whitehead: She does. She told me the two things that she had enjoyed most was her
association with Washington and Lee, which came late in life, and this island off of
Georgia that she had helped save, preserve. Those are the two things that came from
her life. It was through an alumnus of ours that she became generous to Washington
and Lee, who was, I guess, counseling her on her estate to be and so forth, and
mentioned Washington and Lee. She had heard about Washington and Lee through her
father talking about Mr. and Miss Doremus and what they had done for this school, and
she loved General Lee, as well.

         So no one person is ever responsible for a gift. I mean, it takes a lot of people
working together. It’s the total group that brings about happy situations. All of us
would love to think that we were totally responsible for it, but that’s not true. Not true.

         There’s another lady that I liked. Miss Gottwald. Miss Gottwald is an angel. It
was her money that made possible the Reeves Center. So she was—
Warren: I don’t know Gottwald. Who is she?
Whitehead: Mrs. Floyd D. Gottwald is the wife of Floyd D. Gottwald, Jr., who was
president and chairman of the Ethyl Corporation. He was a VMI alumnus on the board
of directors or the board of governors. But they had two sons that came to Washington
and Lee. The family’s tradition was VMI, but their two sons came here.

         Once when they were here for Parents Weekend, Celeste and I were at the same
table with them over in Evans Hall in the private dining room over there, and I
mentioned this collection of ceramics that had been given to the university, and they
both indicated they would love to see it.

                                                                                                                     23
         So it was in a basement at that time, and I took them down in the basement and
they opened some of the cartons that the stuff was in. We became friends. Then when I
found the paintings that Louise Herreshoff had painted, she saw those and both of them
then were very excited and she said they’d be happy to give her a show at their home in
Richmond, where they had a gallery almost. Well, it was a nice place. We didn’t do that
because we were able to have a one-woman show at the Corcoran.

         But I always said we had a collection in search of a home, and that’s what it was.
I had talked to them several times and they’d ask me what was going to become of this,
and I thought, well, the way things are going, we had so many needs at Washington
and Lee that certainly a place to house dishes was unheard of. So one day they had been
asked to give to the new library—I mean, to the Commerce School, to the Law School,
and they did not have any interests.

         So I talked to Bob Huntley one day and I said, "I know you’ve never given me
permission to ask for funds from anyone that was a prospect for all of our other needs
here," but I said, "would you permit me to talk to the Gottwalds?"

         He said, "You won’t get a damn penny from them."
         And I said, "Well, let me try."
         So Celeste and I make an appointment to see them. They were at their beach
home in Virginia Beach, and we drove over. I showed them a little model that I’d had
made up, and they gave us the money to restore the building for that purpose, without
letting us put their name on it. I mean, they’re that kind of people. So that was a gift of
almost a half a million to do that.
         Then down the road they made a gift of, I think it was 750,000 to endow the
directorship, which was my position, and that was their second gift. And then after that,
I think when I retired, I never knew the amount, but I think it was enough to bring that
probably up to a million dollars, maybe a little more. And then at another point they
gave another major gift. So they were very good to the Reeves Center. Mrs. Floyd D.

                                                                                                                     24
Gottwald, Libby. She’s still alive. She is one of the few ladies that, along with Frances
Lewis, is alive. So that was that one.

         Then Miss Watson, after we got the collection, she and her husband came over
and had lunch at Bill Pusey’s house. He was acting president, I think, at the time. I
showed them the basement where all the porcelain was stored and, by that time, the
paintings, and she and her husband who had lived in the Orient, they invited us to
come over to Lynchburg to see theirs. Then over a period of years she became friends
and would travel with us. That was the key to the support of the Reeves Center.

         The Gottwalds traveled with the students every spring when we’d take them to
some special place. We had another couple in South Carolina, the Carters [phonetic],
that financed it, and Miss Watson traveled with us. They saw what happened to these
young people when their eyes would open to art and these different great collections
that we tried to expose them to. So Mrs. Watson’s gift was a major gift to the university,
probably around three million, I would imagine. The Bill Lindon [phonetic]
Endowment and the professorship begins to add up.
Warren: Help me to understand that the porcelain that’s in the Watson Center is part of
the Reeves Collection?
Whitehead: Some of it is. Well, we’d hoped, and I hope that it will continue, that the
Watson Pavilion would be an extension of the Reeves Center to the extent that it would
take us back in time in the history of ceramics to the Neolithic period. That’s where we
wanted to start, and that’s the big jugthat you see over there that Celeste and somebody
else, I had to have somebody help me because I couldn’t have done it by myself. We
bought that, because that’s where it really begins and then comes forward up to the
17th and 18th century.

         But part of it in that building belonged to Mrs. Watson, some of it belonged to
the Reeves Collection, and then other additions have come from the McBrides that lived

                                                                                                                     25
in Blacksburg, of all places, but now in Florida. Tom was very active in getting that
collection on display there by the time the building opened.
Warren: Tom Litzenburg?
Whitehead: Tom Litzenburg, right. And he’s more acquainted with the McBrides. They
met me once when they came up here to see the Reeves Collection, I let them in and
showed them around. But Tom really worked more closely with them and continues to
do so.
Warren: You mentioned the building that the Reeves Center is in. You mentioned the
building. What was that building originally?
Whitehead: It was built in 1842 [sic 1840] as a faculty house and remained a faculty
residence until, oh, it really was a faculty residence when I came here. One professor,
Dr. Howe, that Howe Hall is named for, lived in the house for fifty-five years. It was
built in 1842 for $3,500, those four houses, two on each side of the Colonnade.
Warren: Each one was built for $3,500, or all four?
Whitehead: The building was built for $3,500 in 1842. My figures, I may be off one, but
I think that’s about right. 1842. They served in that capacity really up until the only one
now that’s a faculty home is Howisons. It was usually seniority in terms of faculty that
were able to live in the houses. But before we restored the Reeves Center, it was an
extension of the Law School, there was some law school offices in it, as well as religion
and some other departments. So it served for a while as a classroom or faculty offices,
mainly.
Warren: Which house did Leyburn live in?
Whitehead: He was in the Reeves Center.
Warren: He was in that house?
Whitehead: He was in that house, and he was the last faculty occupant of the house. It
was just falling down.
Warren: So after law school—

                                                                                                                     26
Whitehead: After Leyburn, faculty offices, including one time the archaeology group
was in there and then there was some in there from religion department, and then I
think mainly law school offices were there as the law school began to expand and
before they moved into their new building. So it was a faculty. It’s the only one that was
used for that purpose of the four.

         Now, the one that Howison is in, the dean of students, the Lee-Jackson House,
has always remained that.

         I didn’t get on Miss Morris, but anyway Mrs Morris, she another name, surely
don’t want to forget her. That house was a faculty home until it was restored for a guest
house. She and her husband were from Houston. Mrs. Morris loves history and
preservation and restoration. She and her husband always entertained whenever they
had these national meetings that their particular company held. They own Stewart Title
Company, which is a mortgage insurance company, and they have offices in over
2,000—she wrote to the president, who was then Wilson, to said that she would like to
bring a group of guests to Lexington. Am I right about this? No, it was before Wilson.
That was before Wilson, I guess, maybe Bob Huntley—for entertainment and would
like for them to be able to see Lee Chapel. So he turned the letter over to Captain
Penniston, and he turned it over to me, and I thought, well, there’s no reason not to try
to accommodate these people.

         So I called this lady in Houston and told her, yes, that we could arrange for it,
could she give me some details about the dates and her organization, and she said yes.
She said, "We’d like to bring them over and I’d like for them to have lunch in the Lee
House where General Lee died."

         I said, "Well, that’s not possible. That’s a private residence for our president."
I’m sure it was then Bob Huntley, because they moved out and used it only for
entertainment. I said, "That won’t be possible."

         She said, "Well, I’d certainly like to do it."

                                                                                                                     27
         I said, "Mrs. Morris, that won’t be possible."
         So then she went on to the next thing of what she wanted to do, and I said, "Why
don’t you come up here? You’ve never been to Lexington, and just see what it’s like."
         Well, I went to the airport to meet this lady, and she got off the plane and she
was this tall, strawberry blonde, big lady, graceful though big, with this high-pitched
voice. Everyone thought, "You’re dealing with a real dizzy blonde." Well, what had
happened, she had an operation on her throat that causes her to do this. Smart as a
whip, I found out.
         Well, anyway, she got off, we came over here, and the more I was with her, the
more I liked what she had in mind, but I said, "That’s not possible."
         "Jim, do you think..." Anyway, she had a certain way about her.
         Well, the way it turned out, her guest list at the Homestead included 125 people
that she had buses sent, they had the big buses bring them to Lexington, they arrived.
They both loved carriages and horses, and they had friends in Virginia that had these
big carriages and so forth come into Lexington, and we had a parade downtown and
the horn blower that they brought up from Texas.
         They arrived at about 11:30, and we had lunch at the Lee House. We had it. Sat
them on the porch and all around, and these people from all over the country had never
been anyplace like this. Then after lunch, Pam Simpson gave them a tour of the campus
and historic buildings, and they went through the Reeves Center—no, we didn’t even
have the Reeves Center then, it was just before we opened. Then they took them
downtown and I had the mayor give them a proclamation in Lee Chapel, and got the
city to put up the flags, and we called it Stewart Title Day, and they were very
impressed, and we became friends.
         Later, they came up shortly after that to the dedication of the Reeves Center, and
I took Stewart around. I could tell he was a very sensitive-type man. I’d talk about Lee
and Washington, and every now and then he’d have to wipe a tear. Well, then he asked

                                                                                                                     28
me if I would speak to their organization or a similar organization in Boston, the
Gardner Museum, and I said yes. He said, "Well, I’ll pick you in our plane." He was
flying his own jets at the time, so he and Joella—her name was Joella—picked Celeste
and me up in Roanoke and flew us to Boston. And as we were making our approach to
Boston, we were at about 30,000 feet, I think. "Stewart, I’ve had something on my
mind," I said, "Washington and Lee needs an official guest house. Would you think
about restoring one of those historic houses that you saw when you were up there,
exactly like the Reeves Center, as a guest house in honor of Joella?" And the plane
almost did a nosedive.

         But anyway, we landed, and I didn’t hear a word from him. Then they came to a
meeting where I was speaking in Natchez, Mississippi, and he said, "Have breakfast
with us tomorrow morning."

         When I got there, he had a folded piece out of a yellow tablet and it said, "Dear
Jim Whitehead, I give you $250,000 to restore the Morris House." So that’s where that
got restored.

         So I do think in that case I did have a little something to do with it, but the rest of
it took a lot of people working hard.
Warren: You had them more than over a barrel, you had them over a planet.
Whitehead: I really did. But they’re such nice people. Great people. He was at
Washington with me this past weekend, and we dedicated a new sixteen-sided barn at
Mt. Vernon. That’s been my outlet has been Mt. Vernon, in a volunteer capacity, and it’s
a great institution.
Warren: I read about that.
Whitehead: Oh, you did. I have not seen a thing about it, because I haven’t seen any
papers.
Warren: It was written up in the Post. It was quite a write-up.

                                                                                                                     29
Whitehead: I’ll have to look upstairs, because it would have been—although I knew
the news media was there, but I had no idea.
Warren: It might have been last—
Whitehead: Well, it was dedicated last Friday, so it had to be in Saturday or Sunday’s
paper.
Warren: Or it might have been in the "Home" section last week, in the tabloid section.
Whitehead: Oh, yeah, right.
Warren: I think it might have been that. My husband was reading all about it and kept
reading out loud to me. He was very excited about it.
Whitehead: Oh, they did such a beautiful job. They had someone, though, who has
done things here for us who acts as Washington and thinks he is Washington, he looks
like Washington. See, Washington’s great love was farming, that was number one. They
had maybe 500 schoolchildren in different colored T-shirts sitting on bales of hay in
front of the barn, and as they came around they had them, each giving them a little
stack of wheat to take in to put in the barn before the horses went in and so forth.

         Roger Mudd, our Roger Mudd, who is on the advisory committee up there with
me, was the master of ceremonies, and, oh, what a beautiful occasion. Then they had the
children, each with one of their animals, a pig or a lamb and then there were sheep and
so forth, walk up with these and tell George Washington why they were so important to
farming and so on. I think if they’d have passed a plate, we could have raised—we’ve
got to raise $60 million annually.

         Kellogg provided the funds for this. They gave us the money to do the barn.
Fortunately, there had been an old photograph that had been saved by somebody that
showed what the barn looked like as it was deteriorating.

         I’ll have to look up in the library here and see in the paper.
Warren: It was in the Post. I know it was written up. I just took things to the recycling
center or I’d bring it to you.

                                                                                                                     30
Whitehead: That’s all right. You’ve had enough for one day.
Warren: Are you done?
Whitehead: No, I’m all right. I have to go to the hospital to be with my son around four
o’clock.
Warren: Okay, I know that, but I would love to have just a few minutes, and it’s
probably a much longer story than that, but let’s get the essence of the Reeves story. I’ve
got to tell you, whenever I have visitors come to see me, the highlight of the tour is to
take them to the Reeves Center. It is my favorite thing on this campus. I love those
paintings.
Whitehead: Right. Oh, gosh.
Mullan: Porcelain is one thing, but the paintings just tear me up.
Whitehead: That’s right. Porcelain is a known factor, you can research it and it’s been
around for a long time, since 900 A.D., and it’s all chronicled, but to find somebody that
was an artist like that.
Warren: Tell me about that.
Whitehead: I’ve told you this story—
Warren: No, you have not told it to me.
Whitehead: Okay.
Warren: Please.
Whitehead: Well, you can’t tell the story unless you start at the beginning. A postal
card, a penny postal card, arrived at this university, I think in the alumni office. But
anyway, Dr. Cole was president, and I’m assistant to the president. I’m not treasurer at
the time, I’m assistant to the president. My major job as assistant to the president was to
keep peace between the Office of the President and the treasurer, if you really want to
know the truth. That was a major job, because Mr. Mattingly could never accept what
was happening at the university. Although it was all good, it was still impossible for
him to go beyond the Gaines years in terms of his ways of thinking.

                                                                                                                     31
         Okay. This postal card arrives and it says, as best as I can remember, "Some day I
may wish to give a work of art to the university. Are you interested?" signed, "Euch
Reeves, class ‘27, law." That’s all it said. Well, that card went around from office to
office and finally came into my hands, and I thought, well, when you say "gift," that
caused me to give it a little more attention.

         President Cole and I were going to be in New York for a meeting with our
advisor at U.S. Trust Company, Henry Grady. So I called Mr. Reeves, this man that
wrote the card in Providence, and said, “Mr. Reeves, I’m going to be in New York with
Dr. Cole in early February. Would it be possible to come by to see you?”

         "I’d love to have you come," he said. Southern accent. He was from South
Carolina.

         So the date was set, and I called, and he said try to arrive in time for lunch. So I
thought, well, on the map Providence looked like it was a suburb of New York, and it
was not. I went over to Grand Central and picked up a ticket and got on, and it took
until about noon to get there, to Providence. But in any event, it was cold, ice cold and
was just terrible, snow everywhere. I get in a cab and tell him I wanted to go to 89
Benevolent Street, and the cab driver, obviously a very talented driver, got started up, I
think it’s called College Hill, past all these magnificent Federal houses. It was just like
going into another century. Magnificent mansions, as well as some of the houses that
were built at the time of the Revolution there, Benefit Street and Waterman and Hope
Street, all those kinds of things. So he started climbing that hill, and I just kept looking
and I thought, gosh, I wonder what in the world he has to give us? Because my only
connection with art, I had no knowledge of art whatsoever. Of course, the university
had a Peale portrait of George Washington and a Waliston of Martha’s family. I
thought, "I wonder if he has a Copley or a Peale or something like that."

         Well, he drives up by these mansions and turns the corner and pulls up on
Benevolent Street in front of this little house. You’ve seen the picture of it, and that’s a

                                                                                                                     32
wonderful picture of the house. That day it looked far worse. But anyway, it was a little
one-room-wide, two-and-a-half-story, wood-shingled, little house. I said to the driver,
"Is this 89 Benevolent Street?"

         He said, "Yes."
         I said, "I don’t think so."
         He says, "There is no North Benevolent, or no South Benevolent, no East
Benevolent or West Benevolent. This is the only Benevolent Street."
         I said, "Okay. Well, keep the motor running I’m going to the door to find out if
we’re at the wrong place. I may be wrong about the address."
         I knocked on this door and it was flush with the front sidewalk, it was right on
the sidewalk. The sidewalk was right at the house, and there was a Christmas wreath
on there—this now is February—and it was dried and had reached the point of decay. I
knocked on the door, and finally the door opened and this real dark-eyed and dark-
haired man opened the door. I thought, "Is that Mr. Reeves? I know now that I’m at the
wrong house."
         And then I heard a voice say, "Is that you, Jim Whitehead? I hope you’ve come
to stay two weeks." And that was Mr. Reeves.
         I walked into a vestibule that was only four feet wide, and there was a table
there, and here was Mr. Reeves with his handyman, Whitehead, and a barking dog, and
the dog was a little toy Boston bull terrier. The dog was so excited, he was jumping
vertically. It was unbelievable. But three grown men and a dog, plus a table. I couldn’t
see where I was because I’d just come out of the ice and here I am in a dark house. He
said, "I hope you’ve come to stay two weeks. Joe has readied the guest room."
         I thought, "Oh, my God, if I stay more than two minutes, it’s longer than I want
to."
         So I walked in from the vestibule. He guides me, and I’ve got on a coat that I
held like this to keep from knocking things off. He sat me down in the chair and he had

                                                                                                                     33
to move some porcelain and magazines out of the chair, and when I sat in it, I almost
went on the floor. I don’t know that anybody’d been in that chair in years other than the
stuff he’d piled there. He sat on a little daybed right across from me.

         So he talked about Washington and Lee and how he loved it and so forth, and
that’s when our relationship began.
Warren: What was he like?
Whitehead: Well, he really seemed to be completely out of place in those surroundings.
He was dressed in a very nice pinstripe, he had on a white starched shirt, and he had a
silk tie with a diamond stickpin, and all around was this old faded wallpaper that was
peeling off the walls, no item that had been touched to clean or to dust in years, and so
crowded that you could not move. Yet he spoke with a very soft Southern accent he’d
never lost, but continually talked about his wonderful years at Washington and Lee.

         In fact, Mr. Mattingly and Mr. Gilliam, who was the dean then, both said to me,
"Jim, you’re on a wild goose chase. Euchlin Reeves will never do anything worthwhile
for Washington and Lee." They remembered him as a student in the law school, and he
didn’t have a dime when he was here. He was a college Joe if there was ever was one.
But that day he was a scholar.
Warren: Let me switch tapes quickly.
[Begin Tape 2, Side 1]
Warren: This is Mame Warren, and I’m continuing with James Whitehead on the 3rd of
October.
Whitehead: And she’s worn out from all this talk.
Warren: No, I’m not, I’m getting more excited.
Whitehead: Anyway, so I sat there and listened to him, and then he started talking
about all of this porcelain. I didn’t know what Chinese export meant, I didn’t know
what [unclear] meant, I didn’t know what—oh, I may have known what Mycin was, but
all of these other names were as foreign to me as if I were in another world. And

                                                                                                                     34
suddenly, and finally my eyes adjusted to the surroundings, and I was in a room—
really, this is pretty close to the size of the room, it was not quite this wide. I’m in this
chair and he’s on a daybed over there. There’s a grand piano between the foot of his
daybed, with the keyboard pushed against the front window, nobody could get to it to
play, and there was an old black-and-white television set sitting on it and a telephone,
and those were the only two things in the room that indicated that he was in the
twentieth century. There was a light bulb hanging from a wire in the center of the room
and there was one little table lamp, and there I was sitting with this man I’d never seen
before. There was a desk next to me, a fold top—what are those things? At an angle
that you open up.

         But anyway, and there was a chest of drawers. But by his bed was the telephone,
and then the bookcase/secretary that’s over in the Morris House. I could see in the next
little room was what had been a dining room was a hospital bed all piled with books
and so forth and a dining room table with medicines and open cereal box, and that’s all
I could see.

         But as he talked on about Washington and Lee he said, "I made reservations for
lunch at Carr’s [phonetic]." Well, that didn’t mean anything to me, but I was so happy
to think that we were going to get out of there and I said, "Fine."

         So we go outside, and parked at the sidewalk where the cab had been, it was this
long black Cadillac sedan, almost like a limousine. Joe, the handyman, had opened the
doors for us. We got in and he put a lap robe on us. This was the only sign of affluence
that I had seen. We get in there, got in the car, and he said, "I’ve invited Anita Hinkley
to have lunch with us."

         He, in the meantime, had told me that Miss Reeves was sorry that she couldn’t
join us because she had not been well and was in a nursing home, but he expected her
home any day.

         So I said, "I’m sorry she can’t be there, too."

                                                                                                                     35
         So we get in this car, drive back to one of these great streets and turn in an alley,
and there we’re in the back of one of these mansions, and coming out of the back door
of this mansion was Mrs. Hinkley. She was tall, had to be six feet tall, all in black with a
cape all the way to the ground and a walking stick, a lady now in her eighties.

         Joe, the handyman, goes and meets her and brings her out to the car, and we’re
introduced and she says, "Oh, I love Washington and Lee." Said, "My daughter was
there for your Fancy Dress Ball once and we stayed at the"—she remembered every
detail of Fancy Dress Ball. That made it easier, made you feel so good.

         We go to Carr’s Tea Room and they talk about porcelain and art. She was a
[unclear]. I listened to them and I knew nothing about what they were saying. It was a
little lady’s lunch, it was little tiny serving, and I was hungry.

         But anyway, what was so great, when this car pulled in in the back and Joe gets
out of the car and goes over and picks her up and brings her back, and she gets in the
car and the three of us are sitting in the back seat, all of sudden, without even starting
the car, the car makes a 180 degree turn. I’d wondered how we were ever going to get
out of that crowded back lot. It was on a turntable, and I found out just recently, within
the last month, that those were used for carriages back when people had carriages and
horses, that was the way they turned the carriages around. But I thought, my Lord,
what kind of place is this to have that? I was more impressed with that than I was
impressed with any porcelain.

         So after lunch, we go back to her house and she shows me through these great
rooms. Her family had been in the house for three generations, and it was a mixture of
all the periods from Queen Anne, Chippendale, Federal, right on up to the present day.
But it was great. So it was enjoyable meeting her.

         Then we go back, get in the car, and it turns again on this thing; I’m so excited
about that. Go back and the car pulls up in front of the house next door to Mr. Reeves’,
which is a brick house, the one you’ve seen in pictures. And that’s when he said,

                                                                                                                     36
"Would you like to see our little museum?" And he opens that door, and it was so dark
and so cold, there was no light, heat, or anything in that building. They had lived in it
when they first married and then filled it up and had to move next door, and then he
kept putting stuff in it, or they kept putting stuff in it.

         There was not an aisle. I had to step over pieces of ceramics on the floor and
around furniture. He kept talking about all these things that I didn’t know what he was
talking about. It was so dark in there, he carried a little flashlight. He takes an Oriental,
what would it have been, a hanging off the wall, and behind that wall was a steel door
like you’d find in a bank, and he evidently had to use a combination to open it up, and
here when he opened it up, we were standing right there, out rushes this pent-up, I
don’t know what it would have been called, atmosphere of something that has been
cold and damp for fifteen years, just suddenly rushes out, you know, so happy to
escape being in that vault. It was a vault, and the vault was about again, the half of it
that we looked into was about half of the size of this room. Then there was another steel
door that went into that room.

         But the first steel door he opened made this groaning, terrible noise, and it was
just like it was in great pain. Then behind that were two more little steel doors, metal
doors, that he had to open. He put his flashlight in there and here was this table stacked
high with dishes. He said, "That’s a plate that belonged to George Washington, that’s
the set that belonged to Paul Revere," and he kept doing that. He said, "Don’t you want
to go in and see them?"

         And I thought, "I’ve never seen this man until today. All he has to do is for me to
get in there and slam that door and nobody will ever know what ever became of Jim
Whitehead." [Laughter] So I said, "Oh, thank you," and I put one foot inside the vault
and then kept my hand on the steel lock on the outside, and he explained, then closed it
up and left.

                                                                                                                     37
         But that house had not been touched in eighteen years except to add to it. So that
was an experience.

         Going into the room, I noticed on the wall a painting of an old lady, and I
thought that was Mrs. Reeves because Joe had whispered to me, "I don’t think she’s
coming home. She’s an old woman." And I thought, "Well, that must be a picture of
Mrs. Reeves." Then there was another one just like it in the little dining room in that
house. But it turned out to be Aunt Lizzy.

         Well, I went back and had dinner with him in this little dining room in his house,
and he pushed all of these open cereal boxes and medicine containers to one side, he
put two Willowware plates, like you get at the dime store—this is no exaggeration, I
had a jelly glass, he had a jelly glass, and he said, "Jim, Joe has prepared us some
supper," and he said, "Would you like a drink before dinner?"

         I could hardly talk because the dust from that other place was so great. I said,
"Yes, I certainly would." Well, he brings out a bottle of Manhattan mix cocktail, that
syrupy sweet stuff. He didn’t put anything in it.

         He had a problem at some time in his life, probably when he was at W&L, with
alcohol. But that’s all he had. To him, that was having a drink. He poured some in my
glass, and then we had little pieces of sliced country ham that he had left over from
Christmas, some biscuits that Joe made, and some beans, and here we were surrounded
by silver, porcelain, art, and we were eating off of dime-store plates and drinking from
jelly glasses. But that didn’t bother him in the least, he was oblivious to anything
around him. They never let anybody clean, because they were afraid they’d break
things, and they would have.

         So then I call a cab and I go back to the station, and all the way back to New York
all I did was write down phonetically what I had remembered he’d talked about that
day. Then I asked an alumnus of ours, Jim Martin, and his wife, Teen Martin, who was
on board of trustees, Jim had been a classmate, if they were ever going to be in that part

                                                                                                                     38
of the country and they said, well, they were going up for their goddaughter’s wedding
in June. I said, "Would you go by and tell me if what I’ve seen has any merit or value?"
I said, "I think it’s a treasure."

         They go up and visit with him, they send me a telegram saying it is a treasure,
and it was. They recognized what they were looking at.

         So then we started working with him. The original thought would be that it was
going to be at Col Alto, you know, Col Alto, the big house here. They had an architect
here at the university, Henry Ravenhorst, draw up plans, and I sent those plans to him,
and for almost three years he worked with placing every object where he thought it
would go. It added years to his life, there’s no question in my mind about that.

         Then one day I got a call from his lawyer, saying Mr. Reeves was in the hospital,
he had a stroke, and then a few hours later he’d died. He said, "Mrs. Reeves would like
to have you come to the funeral," and we went up and we met her then after three years
for the first time.
Warren: That was the first time you met her?
Whitehead: First time.
Warren: This was three years later.
Whitehead: Three years later at Ruth’s Nursing Home on East 4th Street in East
Providence, Rhode Island. We go in and here’s this old lady, she’s just sobbing and
crying and kept saying, "Why did he have to go first?" It was then later after a lot of
digging and the story that I found, that they’d been married in 1941 when he was thirty-
eight and she was sixty-six, and they lived to celebrate their twenty-fifth wedding
anniversary.

         She, the lady that she was, there was only one—in those days, nursing homes,
maybe they still are, were in private homes, more so than institutions as we know them
today. People would develop these in residential areas, these houses, and nurses would
care for these elderly people. She was in a room with, I think, one or two others. There

                                                                                                                     39
was only one chair in the room, and she said, "Mr. Whitehead, won’t you be seated?"
She said, "Boy,"—she called him Boy—"loved Washington and Lee and he told me
about your visits. I’m so sorry that I could not be there to greet you."

         Of course, we found out why he’d never let us meet her was he was afraid she
would want to give the collection to Brown University, because she was the great-great
granddaughter of John Brown and John Brown and his brothers, Brown University was
named for.

         The Herreshoff side was that a man from Prussia came to this country in the late
1700s and married John Brown’s daughter. He was Herr Herreshoff, and that became
Herreshoff later, but he married John Brown’s daughter, Sara. It was from that union
that they had a son, and from that union there was nine children born, and they were
the great boatbuilders of Providence. Her father, Mrs. Reeves’ father, was a talented
chemist, founded the American Chemical Society, wealthy.
Warren: Did you ever talk to her about the paintings?
Whitehead: Never. I did not even know they existed. What happened was the day that
I went up and signed the papers for the porcelain that was being packed, she was going
to give it to us in her will and then she changed her mind and said that she was going to
give it to us right then, because she thought vandals—and this was at the height of the
student unrest on college campuses and especially at Brown and Rhode Island School of
Design, it was pretty big. She was afraid they would break in and just destroy it, so she
said, "I’m going to give it in my will."

         So when I went up to sign the papers, there was this van that literally stretched
from in front of the two houses. The mover, Mr. Lands, said, "Mr. Whitehead, there are
some old frames in the attic, do you want them?"

         I said, "Well, if there’s any room in the van after you put the porcelain in." She
said we could have anything that his family did not want in terms of the art. I didn’t
know, I just thought they were maybe just worthless frames. He put them in boxes.

                                                                                                                     40
         That was in April now of 1967, and they come to the university, they go into Col
Alto, all of the furniture and these boxes, then the porcelain cartons went into the
Student Union Building in the basement.

         I got a call right after we’d gotten it down here from the lawyer saying, "Mrs.
Reeves would like to have the sauce book that belonged to her great-great grandmother
given to the Rhode Island School of Design."

         I said, "Oh, my God. Please ask Mrs. Reeves what room it was in." Fortunately,
every carton had said what room it had come from, but did not say the contents of it.
Well, he tells me, and it was in the little pantry. Well, in the third carton that I opened
out of two hundred, we found the sauce book.

         Then I’m walking across the campus, and I’ve never unpacked now those
paintings. Never. They’re all in those boxes. Walking across the campus, and this lady
speaks to me, she and her husband, I assumed it was her husband, said, "Mr.
Whitehead, you don’t know who we are." And I hate people who say, "You don’t know
my name, do you? You don’t remember me."

         I said, "I just have to ask you."
         She said, "I’m Mrs. Reeves’ nurse."
         And I said, "Yes, you’re Mrs.—" whatever her name was. And I said, "How’s
Mrs. Reeves?"
         She said, "Well, she’s fine. We took her to the cemetery in Boston where he is
buried, and she was able to be taken out of the car and she put six roses and six stones
on his grave."
         I said, "Well, I’m sure glad."
         They said, "How is the collection doing?"
         I said, "We’ve just finished displaying a case in Lee Chapel. Would you like to
see it?"

                                                                                                                     41
         I went down and it was not Pat Hineley, but somebody took pictures for me that
could be—well, they were Polaroids, and I said, "Would you take these back to show to
Mrs. Reeves?" Because we’d promised her we’d put the most important items on view,
and that’s what we did in Lee Chapel because we had no other place to do it.

         So they go back. That was on Friday, at least they got back up there on Friday,
they show her the pictures on Saturday, and she dies on Sunday. Now, that’s May, and
not once did I ever know she was an artist. I talked to her about porcelain the whole
time, everything was about porcelain, that’s all she talked about. The only clue to the
fact that she was an artist was at the nursing home when I’d go out to see her after he
died and I’d be up there with the lawyers and so forth, Bob Huntley drew up all the
legal papers and so on, he was still in law school, she had a charm bracelet and on that
charm bracelet was an Eiffel Tower, a little Eiffel Tower. I said, "Mrs. Reeves," and by
this time I was calling her "Doll." I asked her if I could call her Doll and she said,
"Please." Everybody else called her Doll. I said, "Doll, tell me about the Eiffel Tower."

         She said, "Frances gave me that." Frances was Mr. Reeves’ niece, who was
teaching in Europe at one of the American schools, and she had brought that Eiffel
Tower charm bracelet back, and she was still wearing it. She was paralyzed on one side.
But that was the only clue until the obituary came out and it said that she’d studied
with Raphael Coline [phonetic] and John Paul Arenz [phonetic], who were just—if you
told me she studied with Mr. Hostetter and Mr. whoever, it would have meant as much
to me.

         But then one day I was over to the place, and I opened one of those boxes and
pulled out this frame. There was glass on the frame, and literally there had to be a
quarter-inch of dirt and dust on that frame over the glass. I thought I’d see a steel
engraved—I didn’t know what I was going to see. I wiped with an old green towel. I’d
wish I’d kept the green towel. I wiped it across that glass, and here was poppies and I
couldn’t believe my eyes. I’ve used the term years ago, it sounded a little silly, but it

                                                                                                                     42
was, it was like an explosion of color that came out of what I thought was just going to
be absolutely nothing in terms of color. The name on it meant nothing to me, it said
Eaton, I think it said, [unclear]. Then I picked up another one and it was totally different
from that one. So I didn’t know what we had.

         I asked Marion Junkin, who was head of our art department, if he’d go over
there and take a look with me, and he did. He said, "Who did these?"

         I said, "I don’t know. I know where they were, but I don’t know who did them."
But eventually working with him, I was able to determine that she had done them all
and that she had been married for a short period, three months only, in 1910, left the
man after three months, but his name was Eaton. She didn’t like him, but she liked his
name. He was a fourth cousin, I think.

         I thought, oh, boy, now I know how to date. Anything with an E or Eaton on it
has to come up to 1911, when she had been married to him, but that didn’t work. She
had gone back and put Eaton on things she’d done when she was a teenager. So that’s
that.
Warren: Oh, we have got to continue this story.
Whitehead: No, that’s it.
Warren: I have questions. No, another time.
Whitehead: Okay.
Warren: Another time. Thank you.
[End of interview]

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