James Whitehead

                                November 9, 2009

                                       Interviewed by Mame Warren

Warren: This is Mame Warren, and today is November 9, and we’re in 2009—I’d better learn
that before the year is over—and I’m in Lynchburg, Virginia, with my dear old friend—
Whitehead: Oh!
Warren: Not so old. My friend Jim Whitehead. And, Jim, I want to go back to the very
beginning, and I want you to tell me a little bit about what brought you to Washington and Lee in
the first place, and then I have some follow-up that I want.
Whitehead: All right, fine. Well, thank you for coming to Lynchburg today, Mame. It’s an
honor to be a part of your project. My association with Washington and Lee began really, I
guess, in 1957, the year before I actually joined the staff. I was director of the Empire State
Foundation for Liberal Arts Colleges, representing twenty-two private colleges in New York. It
was through that association that I met a W&L alumnus who had the same position in the state of
Virginia with the Virginia Foundation for Independent Colleges, Lea Booth. We were at a
meeting and became friends. It was in that meeting that I mentioned to Lea that I had to leave.
My son in New York had an attack of asthma and I had to rush home and also I was convinced
that we had to move out of New York State, because we lived on the island and I commuted
three hours every day to and from [work]. Lea, in the meantime, without saying anything to me,
must have contacted Dr. [Francis Pendleton] Gaines that I was giving thought to leaving New
York State and that I might be interested in coming to Washington and Lee. At that point, that

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was not on my mind at all.
         Within about a week of my meeting with Lea, I received a telephone call from

Christopher Chenery. Mr. Chenery was on the board of trustees of Washington and Lee
University at that time. He was also the owner of Secretariat, the racehorse, and you’ve heard
about, maybe, this story before, but anyway, Mr. Chenery called me at my office in New York
and said that Washington and Lee was looking for someone. Did I know anyone in my twenty-
three colleges that might be interested in being interviewed for the job? He said, “Why don’t you
come down and have lunch with me?”

         I went down and had lunch with Mr. Chenery, thinking that the real reason for his
interview was what he had said. It turned out that was not the case. In the meantime, I somehow
told him—not somehow—I told him it was a project I would look into, and I would check with
the different college fund people and see if any were interested in a school down in Virginia.
Well, in the meantime I had mentioned to Mr. Chenery I had a close friend—my wife’s family
was close friends with a W&L member of the board of trustees, Mr. Joseph Lykes, of the Lykes
Brothers Steamship Company. I guess within forty-eight hours of my meeting with Mr. Chenery,
I had a call from Dr. Gaines at Washington and Lee asking me if I would come down and take a
look at Washington and Lee.
Warren: Where had you met with Mr. Chenery?
Whitehead: At his office in downtown New York. I don’t remember if it was on Wall Street or
Maiden Lane, or what it was, but it was in the financial section of—he was a great gentleman in
every way, and we became friends over the years. I mean, very close—and Mr. Lykes was the
same. We’d always have Mr. Lykes and Mr. Chenery for breakfast at our house when they’d
come to board meetings at Washington and Lee, and that is a complete story in itself: the board

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of trustees at that point in 1958—but anyway, I was invited by Dr. Gaines to come to
Washington and Lee to take a look.

         There was an overnight train out of New York to Buena Vista, Virginia, and I had a
sleeper. I remember the morning. As we approached Buena Vista, Virginia, looking out the
window and seeing the beautiful Blue Ridge Mountains—we were right in the middle of them—I
said, “What a beautiful, beautiful place this is.” Then I was met at the station quite early by Cy
Young, who was the alumni secretary of Washington and Lee, and I’d met Cy at the University
of Tampa, when I was connected with the University of Tampa. We’d had a meeting of alumni
secretaries. That was my first professional job—was at the University of Tampa, where I’d
graduated, and where Celeste [Whitehead, Jim’s wife] also graduated.

         At the station was Cy, and we went to breakfast at the Robert E. Lee Hotel on Main
Street, and that was the social center, I guess, of the area at the time. But the breakfast was
wonderful. Then we drove the two blocks to the campus of Washington and Lee University, and
I saw for the first time what I considered then, and still consider the most beautiful facility for
higher education. I haven’t found anyplace quite like it. I always said that when you said the
grass is greener, I meant it. The grass at Washington and Lee was greener than any grass I’d ever
seen. The columns were white; even though they needed repair, they were white, sparkling
white. And the red brick—it’s a beautiful, beautiful place.
Warren: How had Christopher Chenery described Washington and Lee to you? When you met
with him in New York, and he was explaining the needs of Washington and Lee, what did he tell
you?
Whitehead: Well, that they were in the middle of a campaign for new science buildings, and that
Don Smith was the director of development, and was leaving Washington and Lee to—oh, I wish

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I could remember—to head up the development work at another institution. Mary Coulling
would know because Mary was his right hand at the university at the time, as she was for me
when I eventually went there.
Warren: Well, I didn’t know that.
Whitehead: Well now you do.
Warren: Oh my gosh.
Whitehead: Mary—what was her name? Her mother and father—I can’t remember Mary’s
maiden name, but anyway, she was a part of the development program that Don Smith—I hope
it’s Smith—
Warren: Yes, it is.
Whitehead: —devised for the university, and then announced that he was leaving. So, Mr.
Chenery was quite forward in explaining to me that they were looking for someone really to take
Don Smith’s place and keep this campaign going.
Warren: Now, Don Smith, as far as I can tell, was the first development person.
Whitehead: He was. That’s right.
Warren: And had you been—in your role in New York, you were certainly a development
person.
Whitehead: That’s right.
Warren: And how long had you been a development person?
Whitehead: I came out of the Navy in 1942—no, in 1945—the latter part of 1945—and while
still in the Navy, Celeste and I were married in Tampa, Florida, and I went over to see what I’d
remembered as my four years of the greatest four years that I can ever imagine in this wonderful
old building. Have you ever been to Tampa?

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Warren: I’ve been to Tampa, but not to the university.
Whitehead: Well, the university occupied at that time—and still does—the hotel that Mr.
[Henry B.] Plant of railroad fame built on the west side of Florida. It was Spanish Moroccan
architecture with thirteen minarets, and still the most beautiful, beautiful buildings that I can
imagine, inside and out. I lived in one of the minarets for a while. And surrounded by all these
art treasures that he and Mrs. Plant—did I use Plant or Platt? Plant.
Warren: Plant.
Whitehead: I think it’s H.B. Plant. But anyway, he owned the west coast railroad line, and
Flagler owned the east coast. And while Flagler was building these great hotels on the east coast
from St. Augustine south, Plant was doing the same thing on the west coast to bring people into
that state. Well, anyway, the question has escaped me. Anyway, I went by the university just to
see it, and met the president who had just been elected president of the university: Mr. Nance,
Dr. Elwood Nance. And we talked, and at that point Celeste and I were living in Pensacola,
where I was flying for a short while after returning to the states. He knew that the university was
not accredited. It needed everything in the world that you can think about. When I left Tampa, I
received a telegram when we stopped in Jacksonville to visit my family, from Dr. Nance, saying,
“You have been elected slumni secretary of Washington and Lee.” [sic, he mans University of
Tampa ] The telegram was badly typed, or whatever they do, and it came out slumni instead of
alumni. But anyway, I went as alumni secretary to Washington and Lee, and that began my
career as a fundraiser.
Warren: At University of Tampa.
Whitehead: At the University of Tampa.
Warren: So, my understanding—I’m trying to become more knowledgeable about just the

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whole world of higher education in those days. What’s your sense of when Washington and Lee
first got it, that it was important to start paying attention to the bottom line, and to raising
money?
Whitehead: I don’t know, Mame, how long Don had been there.
Warren: How established was the concept of development at Washington and Lee?
Whitehead: Well, Mary [Coulling] would be a good one to tell you the answer to that: what they
began with. They began with absolutely nothing. Don, and Mary, and maybe a young lady by the
name of [Ella Mae] Kirkpatrick worked with them. Ella Mae Kirkpatrick, I believe. Something
close to that. They developed a program, and if I recall correctly, it was under way when I
arrived, and it was a continuation of a program that was established before I arrived there. I
arrived in 1958, and I don’t know how long Don was there, but he could not have been much
more than a couple of years, and it was at that point they developed the program, and the
different grading of gifts, and so forth. Prior to that time, and even continuing, it was not the
proper thing to do, to ask for money.
Warren: I’m going to pause [to begin track 2].
Warren: Tell me what you mean, it wasn’t the proper thing?
Whitehead: I’ll have to assume why it was not felt to be the proper thing to ask for money.
Washington and Lee, unlike most institutions, was privy to a group of angels that managed to see
to it that Washington and Lee did not have a deficit at the end of the year, and if they did, money
would be forthcoming; they’d take care of it. It was only after—it took, I think, three years for us
to raise $2 million. Are we on or off?
Warren: We’re on.
Whitehead: Oh, we’re on.

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Warren: Please keep going.
Whitehead: A major gift would have been a thousand dollars, but what we asked for were
pledges of a hundred and fifty dollars to be paid over a three-year period. That was the basis for
the first major—they did have a campaign, which I am not familiar with the details—at the
university’s—would it have been the bicentennial?—that Dr. [Lucius Junius] Desha was—
directed. What it was like or how much they raised: any of the details of that period, I really
can’t say. I don’t know how many other institutions had the friends that the likes of Dr. Gaines
had pulled together for support of the school. I had the great pleasure of working with Dr. Gaines
for a year before he retired.

         You would either laugh or cry as Dr Gaines spoke; [he was an] eloquent—as I’m sure
you’ve heard from others that have been interviewed, I’m sure—speaker, and a wonderful man, a
wonderful human being. This is something you can take off the [record]—
Warren: Would you like me to pause?
Whitehead: Yes, please.
[Pause]
Whitehead: My first job—well, I haven’t been actually appointed yet, have I? I get back to New
York, and Celeste and the boys met me at the station in Huntington [NY] on Long Island, and
she said, “Are we going to Virginia?” I said, “They didn’t ask me.” She said, “Well, what is the
job that you were interviewed for?” I said, “I don’t know.” She said, “Well, what was the salary?
Did they mention the salary?” I said, “No, but if they offer me the job, no matter what it is, I’m
going.” And I meant that. And within a couple of days—a week or so—I was invited to join the
staff at Washington and Lee. It was then that I met Dr. Gaines and all of these other good folks.
Warren: But one thing I want to really explore: you were coming from New York State and

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other institutions, and working with these various other institutions, so you had a sense of what
was going on development-wise in New York State.
Whitehead: That’s right.
Warren: How did what you found in Lexington compare to the sophistication of what was going
on other places at that time?
Whitehead: Well, I think that the sophistication that I found was due to Don Smith and the fact
that he had come there from another institution, and I can’t remember, Mame, what that was.
Mary [Coulling], I’m sure, would remember. But he brought the knowledge of what fundraising
at a college or a university was really like to the university. He was responsible for getting an
organized development program going. Compared, I had Colgate, and Hamilton, and Barnard,
and Alfred, and Wagner [Colleges], and Manhattanville Institute of the Sacred Heart. There were
twenty-two colleges. I think in most of those institutions that I worked with, very few had formal
development programs going. The president was the major fundraiser, as he still is in most
institutions, I guess, but to say that there were programs in development organized and ongoing,
I would say very few had them. It would mean maybe one or two people in an office that were
the fundraisers for the school, and if an institution had good friends and so forth, that’s where the
funds to make up the deficit at the end of the year came from, as Washington and Lee did with
Mrs. [Alfred I.] DuPont, and Mrs. [Letitia Pate] Evans, and others, the [Mr. and Mrs. Robert P.]
Doremuses.
Warren: So when you arrived in Lexington, how did what you found compare with what you
had left?
Whitehead: Well, I couldn’t compare it because my position as director of the Empire State
Foundation was fundraising for a group of colleges from business and industry. At that point—

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here my mind is going blank—I don’t remember the year that it became legal for a—let’s say
Campbell Soup: it was not considered legal for a corporation to give away stockholders’ money,
and therefore, the great gifts from the very wealthy corporations did not exist, and if so, they
were getting in trouble because the stockholders were against giving money to the schools—in
some cases. There were other cases when it was not that way. So, the presidents—I had to come
up with a program to try to broaden that base once it became—there’s a law, and I have
forgotten—that was passed that made it possible, say, for the New York Times to make a gift to
the colleges in New York State. Well, the procedure for making those gifts would be that a
college president and I would go to visit the corporation—the business or corporation—and
would ask for their support of the private colleges in New York State, the ones that were
represented. Most of them were—liberal arts colleges and residential colleges—Keuka [College
in Keuka Park, NY]—there were some wonderful schools in that group: Union College, and I
mentioned Hamilton, and Colgate, and Vassar, and there were others.

         But anyway, the organization: I had two people in my office in New York and we would
do research on the corporations in a certain area that might be prospects for giving. Then the
president of one of the colleges would write to the president of that corporation and say, “I plan
to be visiting my alumnae or alumni in such-and-such an area on such-and-such a date. I would
most thankful if you would give me a few minutes of your time,” and that was the basis of
fundraising: the letter to the president or a major officer of the company. I had the wonderful
opportunity of each school appointing alumnae or alumni from their college to be in charge of an
area. In New York, I had Millicent MacIntosh, [who] was the president of Barnard at the time.
They were a part of Columbia, but they were more—what should I say?—separated than it later
became. So, Millicent McIntosh is the president. Then I would—after we began raising a little

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money, we developed a group of donors from corporations that would volunteer to go with the
president. I couldn’t go all the time, but the president of a company—a large one, say Campbell
Soup and all these—not Campbell in New York State—anyway, the president of a corporation
would go, and then many times I would go. That was the organizational chart.
Warren: So, when you arrived at Washington and Lee, did President Gaines start going out with
you?
Whitehead: President Gaines? Yes, he went. Well, President Gaines and Bill Qullian, who is
alive and well in this institution here [Westminster-Caterbury retirement community, in
Lynchburg, VA].
Warren: Bill who?
Whitehead: Qullian. Q-U-I-L-L-I-A-N? Anyway, that can be looked up. Bill Qullian was
president of Randolph Macon Women’s College at the time. He and Dr. Gaines were responsible
for organizing the independent college group here: the Virginia Foundation for Independent
Colleges, and Lea Booth headed it up as executive director. But Dr. Gaines would make calls
with Lea Booth, or with another college president. It was that forming this network within the
state—I would sometimes be concerned when they would come into New York State, because of
course so many of the corporations were headquartered in New York State. I felt they belonged
to the Empire State rather than to Virginia, but anyway, we were good friends.
Warren: Take me on one of those trips with you and Dr. Gaines. What was it like travelling
with Dr. Gaines?
Whitehead: Let me tell you what it was like traveling with a nun that was president of
Manhattanville College of the Sacred Heart: Mother O’Beirne, who was a good friend of the
Kennedy family. Anyway, Mother O’Beirne and I would go to the corporation, sit in the outer

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office, and finally be called into the president’s office, and Mother O’Beirne in her garb would
always be greeted with the greatest amount of courtesy. Most of the companies that we went to
call on, with Mother O’Beirne or any—I had about five or six Catholic colleges in this group,
and they were all female. The people we were calling on were mostly—were always male. I
can’t remember calling on a president of a company, or a vice president, but always in the
hierarchy of a corporation—I never thought about it, but I don’t think we ever called on—
anyway, when Mother O’Beirne and I would arrive, the president would immediately get up and
have us sit in the most comfortable seat in his office. The thing I’ll never forget is we went to
this company in New York City, and he offered Mother O’Beirne a chair and offered me a place
to sit. He was so nervous, the president of the company was so nervous with this nun sitting there
in his office that he said, “Mother O’Beirne, may I smoke?” Mother O’Beirne said, “Of course,
please.” She said, “The hardest thing I had to do when I went into the”—what is it called?
Warren: Convent?
Whitehead: Yes. “—when I decided to become a nun was to give up smoking,” and that put the
man at ease immediately. She had a knack for doing that as we travelled around the country. We
had meetings at Manhattanville College of the Sacred Heart and at other institutions, and just
built—there were no mass mailings or anything of that sort. This was a very personal type of
fundraising in those days, unlike it is today.
[Begin Whitehead 3]
Warren: So, let’s get back to Lexington and go out with Dr. Gaines.
Whitehead: I always felt with Dr. Gaines, my major job was not the one of calling on the
companies like I did with Empire State Foundation; this was calling for Washington and Lee. We
built a program around Dr. Gaines’ last year at Washington and Lee University. So, these were

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alumni meetings around the country, and—please pause. [Pause] Is it [the machine]—?
Warren: Yes, it’s on.
Whitehead: Dr. Gaines was a great orator, and I never saw him at a single meeting that I
attended with him, and it could have been as many as twenty or thirty during that last year of his
reign as president of Washington and Lee University. My major job, after I got the meetings set
up, and I had always to take what was then a reel of pictures of the campus to bring out
memories of the university to the guests in the audience. I had to take—Bill Washburn was the
alumni secretary, and—are we on or off?
Warren: We’re on.
Whitehead: Bill was alumni secretary, and highly thought of by the alumni of the institution, but
we had three things that had to be done: and each meeting we had to take the reel of the
university [photos], a university flag, and there was a third thing that had to be—now I can
appreciate—Bill would always bring two, but never the third thing. But the point with Dr. Gaines
was I had to see to it that he was ready to go on, because of his alcoholism that made it—would
have been a tragedy if he had appeared before the alumni. So, I saw to it that he had a glass of
Coke in his hand at all times before the speech. But after the meeting was over and we went back
to our hotel rooms, I would let him have his drink then.
Warren: Was this something that you decided was your job, or were you told that was your job?
Whitehead: I didn’t know it was my job. I just found it out. I found out he was allergic to
shrimp, and every place we’d go would have a shrimp cocktail. I had to be sure they didn’t
have—so that was part of fundraising.
Warren: Well, you had an interesting job travelling with Francis Pendleton Gaines.
Whitehead: We travelled to—I think it was Houston with Joan Crawford.

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Warren: Oh my goodness, I haven’t heard that story. How did Joan Crawford get involved?
Whitehead: She just happened to be on the plane, seated across from us. In fact, I found a
picture she sent me, our picture. If I’m not mistaken—oh, I’m not mistaken about it. We were on
a—what is the plane that they quit flying because it blew up in the—I forget which one. It had
just started; it was one of the fastest flights that you could get from Houston to Washington. We
left out of Washington. I remember Joan Crawford, getting on with her. She was head of—her
husband was head of Pepsi Cola at the time. She got on with an ice container full of champagne.
That was something to remember. Once we landed, we got off all right, but it took a while for
them to get Joan ready for her entrance to the—I think Dr. Gaines thought that the media was
there to welcome us. I may have told him that; I don’t know. [Laughter] But anyway, I’d
forgotten that story.
Warren: So you didn’t recruit her as a donor to Washington and Lee.
Whitehead: No, we did not, but we enjoyed her hospitality.
Warren: So on those trips, when you would talk, or when you would meet with the alumni, and
you’re talking about it being Dr. Gaines’s last year. So, he had already announced that he was
retiring?
Whitehead: Yes.
Warren: And what was the mood at those alumni groups with the impending retirement?
Whitehead: Well, I came in about the third year after football was deemphasized, and you’ve
had this story all about that from Frank [Parsons] and others that were involved in that. I was not
involved in it, but I did see the reaction to that three years later. I think he did it in ’55 [sic, it was
1954], and I was there in ’58.
Warren: Tell me more about that. Tell me what you mean.

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Whitehead: The alumni—so many of them were not only vocal about their dislike for the fact
that football was deemphasized. After all, they’d been to the Gator Bowl in Jacksonville, which
was, I guess, the one bowl game that will be remembered longer than in the history of any
institution. But, it was after that that football was deemphasized. I don’t know the details of all of
that, because that would be Frank and Bob Huntley would be able to give you all the information
on that. So, there was not always a pleasant crowd. They were always wonderful to Dr. Gaines,
and he could have you laughing or crying within a matter of minutes. I don’t recall any negative
reaction at the dinners that we had for Dr. Gaines in these various cities. There may have been
forty-four cities. I don’t know why that number forty-four keeps coming to my mind, but it was
almost a constant travelling schedule that we had him on because he was so good, and he was so
wonderful, and he’d made so many friends at Washington when he was president.
Warren: What was his stamina like at that point?
Whitehead: He was all right until noon, and then he would rest in the afternoon, and then be
ready for his speech at night. He was not well. He had psoriasis, and this was a terrible affliction
for him. But he certainly influenced me. Is it me or I?
Warren: Me.
Whitehead: [Laughs] I was hoping that was correct. He influenced me greatly by the human
element as a college president. Washington and Lee I don’t believe was being run by the
president. I think it was Earl Mattingly, the treasurer, and Frank Gilliam, the admissions dean. I
think they ran the university.
Warren: Tell me about those people. Let’s start with Mr. Mattingly. Tell me about him.
Whitehead: Mr. Mattingly was the most generous person in the world with his own money, but
he was the tightest person when it came to university money. There were no budgets in the

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university at the time, and if [I was] the head of the history department, or the English
department, if I wanted a three-cent stamp, I had to go to the treasurer’s office and ask Mr.
Mattingly for the money—I mean, for the stamp. He was not the most—as I say, he was not
liberal with the university’s money at all, but if I went to him and told him I was having—my
wife needed an operation, or I had to have something—his own money was available to people,
and even to students. He would be most liberal with students who were having a hard time
financially after the war going to college, even with the GI Bill of Rights. Many of them were
married and they had Quonset hut-type facilities left over from the war years. What was Mr.
Mattingly like? We call him—in our family, Celeste and I call him our third child.
Warren: Tell me what you mean.
Whitehead: Well, Mr. Mattingly came to our house practically every night. He had a Cadillac.
He bought a new Cadillac every other year. Every two years, he’d buy a new Cadillac. He’d buy
it in the summertime when the students and the faculty were not there. He didn’t want them to
know he was changing cars. But when the automatic windows came out, he came by our house
and picked us up, and we rode down Main Street, and he did nothing but push the button and the
windows went up and down, up and down.

         I found him dead. I found him. Dr. [William] Pusey, the dean of the college, and I. He
had retired then. The greatest personal story I have, and one that I treasure is the fact that in
Washington Hall, there’s a vault—or was. I guess it’s still there—connected to the treasurer’s
office. That would be natural. But when I was announced as treasurer to succeed Mr. Mattingly,
he would not give me the combination to the vault. I’m sure it was six to eight weeks before he
ever gave me the combination to the vault. I had visions of money stacked in piles, and great
treasures, and there was nothing but all the receipts for everything. There was nothing

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spectacular about what was in it; it was just the idea that he would not give up that one treasure
of his, which was the combination to the vault.
Warren: So how did that come to be, that you wound up succeeding [him]?
Whitehead: You ask a good question. I was, initially I guess—I don’t think I was called director
of development. I don’t know what I was called when I went there. As I told Celeste, I didn’t
care what the job was; if they offered it to me, we were going, and we did. But, maybe I already
said that. You just asked me, Mame, a question.
Warren: How—
Whitehead: How did I—
Warren: I’m asking, how did you wind up succeeding [Earl Mattingly]?
Whitehead: All right. We had a new president that succeeded Dr. Gaines, Dr. Fred Cole, a
scholar, a wonderful man. I had the same position with Dr. Cole that I had with Dr. Gaines. We
picked up, when Gaines left off, his tours of the alumni and so forth in his retirement; we had the
possibility of introducing the new president to the alumni around the country, and I traveled with
Dr. Gaines and so forth. Lee House, where Dr. Gaines lived, was right out of a Faulkner novel.
The first time I went—oh, I’m getting off the subject. The first time I went there when I went
down to be interviewed, and I had lunch in—the midday meal was the main one—at Dr.
Gaines’s house. Cy Twombly took me over to Dr. Gaines’s house where we had—
Warren: Cy Young or Cy Twombly?
Whitehead: Cy Young. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. Cy Young took me over, and Mrs. Gaines had us to
lunch. Your question had to do with Dr. Cole. Well, I really felt that I was entering another
world. Here’s this magnificent campus that I’d seen, and to walk into surroundings really right
out of the history of the turn of the century. Had Lee been sitting there in a chair, it would not

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have surprised me. It was the same feeling that I had. Fringe on the lamps. Mrs. Gaines had
enough silver behind a screen in her dining room to take care of the alumni when they’d come
back there: maybe a thousand people. I don’t know how many. Anyway, she was—it was just
something out of a novel. And the best food you could ever imagine. Alice Ware was her cook.
Great lady. Black. And Gardner Henderson was the chauffer and doorman. Gardner Henderson:
how did I remember that and I can’t even remember my name? I keep looking at this. Okay.
[Begin Whitehead 4]
Whitehead: —had lunch, and that may have had something to do with my decision. But,
anyway, Cole becomes president of the university: scholar right out of Tulane. I think he was
vice president [at Tulane University], or—no, he wasn’t vice president [Fred Cole was vp for
academics at Tulane]. Anyway, he was certainly highly respected in the academic world, and a
wonderful man. But, Mrs. Cole was a very—Lois Cole was a wonderful lady, in her way, which
usually was her way. In order for them to come to Washington and Lee, the board of trustees
approved redoing the Lee House. That was the first major restoration, I guess, while I was there.
And in doing this there was, on the staircase leading to the second floor from the main hall of
Lee House, a finial that was like a cannonball: it was round. Well, Mrs. Cole [thought] this did
not go with her New Orleans decorating style, or the lady she had—I think the lady she had help
her may have come from Lynchburg. I don’t know. But anyway, they removed the ball all of the
newel post. Is that what it is? A newel post?
Warren: Yes.
Whitehead: It was this round ball. Well, when Mr. Mattingly found out that Lois Cole had
removed this cannonball from the whatever that is—now I’ve forgotten—they never saw eye-to-
eye. And Dr. Cole, after travelling with me, and the fact that I worked with Mr. Mattingly, along

                                                                                                                              17
with Dr. Gaines, I found myself in the position of being the go-between between what Mrs. Cole
wanted and what Mr. Mattingly wanted, because Mr. Mattingly still had a great deal of power at
that university, along with Mr. Gilliam, as I said before. A lot of the board leaned towards Mr.
Mattingly’s recommendation more so than sometimes Dr. Gaines.
Warren: So Mr. Mattingly worked directly with the board?
Whitehead: Mr. Mattingly was secretary of the board of trustees.
Warren: Oh, right.
Whitehead: And when he retired as treasurer, I may have become secretary to the board before
he retired, but I don’t think so. I think I became—I was treasurer and secretary of the board of
trustees at the same time, and director of development, and peacemaker between the president’s
wife and Mr. Mattingly.[Laughs]
Warren: Now, you mentioned very early on—you made an allusion to how different the board
was in 1958 to the board we know today. Tell me what you meant by that.
Whitehead: I attended board meetings—Dr. Gaines insisted that I attend the board meetings,
which didn’t make Mr. Mattingly too happy, but anyway, I did.
Warren: Why was he unhappy about that?
Whitehead: This was, again, his territory. Wonderful man. But, anyway, the first board of
trustees meeting I went to, Mr. Jim Caskie was the rector, I think, of the board of trustees: a
bachelor from here in Lynchburg, a wealthy individual. I can’t remember if he was nearly blind
or nearly deaf, but he was in his seventies, and he was the head of—so, I gathered all of the
material I had for my first board meeting about the campaign: where we stood, how much money
had been raised, how much had been pledged, and so forth. So, I was invited to sit in with the
board at that point. That was the beginning. Well, Mr. Caskie could not see, and I would have to

                                                                                                                              18
sit next to him to take notes, and read them—or read the agenda to him. And the agenda—do you
know what the agenda was? The agenda for the board of trustees would be Dr. Gaines, the
president’s envelope—large, single-page envelope—with notes written down, and that was the
agenda for our board meeting. And we met in the outer office of the president, which is now
someone else’s office; I don’t know who’s in there now. And we sat at a table—the board of
trustees of Washington and Lee University sat at a table, and it’s a miracle—this table was no
larger than this table right here.
Warren: Oh, my gosh.
Whitehead: It was a drop-leaf table, and they lifted the leaves at the end. I mean, but still, if
there were more than five or six board members there, I don’t remember them. And I felt that
most of the time after I’d been there a while and attended a few, they really were more anxious to
know what Mrs. Gaines was going to be serving at our luncheon than they were in what was
going on at Washington and Lee.
Warren: Well how could they conduct business with that few trustees?
Whitehead: There really was not much business to discuss. Mr. Mattingly would give a report
on the finances, and Dr. Gaines would lift them out of their seats telling them some story about
what Mrs. DuPont had done, or Mrs. Evans had done. It was not really much more than—I’d
hate to go back and find out that the minutes of those meetings would make a liar out of me—
Warren: I don’t think they do.
Whitehead: But what I remember or I recall had very little to do with outside of just finance,
meaning the yearly budget—not budget, but the yearly income and outgo of the university, and
how much Dr. Gaines had asked Mrs. DuPont for, and she had filled the gap. So, it was not a
board meeting like developed after Cole came there and after Bob Huntley came there when we

                                                                                                                              19
really got down to business—and Wilson.
Warren: So, how did Dr. Cole change things? How did he get things down to business?
Whitehead: Well, the first thing—it was not easy. What am I trying to think that he did that
would be one of the first things? Well, we established budgets for the departments.
Warren: There hadn’t been budgets before?
Whitehead: There had not been budgets. That’s when the three-cent stamp had to be—you had
to go to Mr. Mattingly to get the three-cent stamp.
Warren: So, were you involved in that process of developing budgets? Were you in the
treasurer’s office yet?
Whitehead: Not at the point that we didn’t have budgets. I went into the treasurer’s office after
Cole became president. But he put me in a position first of being the intermediary between his
wife and the treasurer.
Warren: Were you part of that process of establishing budgets? Tell me about that.
Whitehead: If they were compared to budgets of today, it would be awfully hard to call them
budgets, but I made it—I signed every check that paid every bill at that university. Every bill had
to be hand-signed: all the salary checks. Every check that was written was a handwritten check
that I signed. Mr. Varner, who was a great man in my office, and Mrs. Lothery would—Andrew
Varner, and Vernon Snyder, and Lothery.
Warren: Lothery?
Whitehead: L-O-T-H-E-R-Y. Ann Lothery. There was a Mrs. McCoy in there, too. We had one
electric adding machine, and one manual machine, and that was the extent of the mechanization
of the treasurer’s office.
Warren: That’s hard to imagine today.

                                                                                                                              20
Whitehead: Can you imagine?
Warren: No. Now, who were these Andrew Varner and Vernon Snyder? What were their jobs?
Whitehead: Well, Vernon really came in after I became treasurer. Andrew was Mr. Mattingly’s
right-hand man, a wonderful Southern gentleman who never spoke above a whisper, afraid to
death of Mr. Mattingly.
Warren: Why were people so afraid of him?
Whitehead: He had the purse strings of the university. I guess that’s the reason they were
frightened. I was never frightened of him. My sons thought the world of Mr. Mattingly. Celeste
was awfully good to put up with him, because every night that he didn’t have something to do,
he would come to our house. But he was so generous and so kind; he was a good man.
Warren: There were some interesting policies that had been—I’m not sure when they came into
effect. I know the concept of the university providing scholarships for local Rockbridge County
students had been in existence for many years—
Whitehead: Yes.
Warren: But how about the policy of helping faculty and staff with their children’s education?
Was that in existence?
Whitehead: You know, that’s a very good question. I don’t believe it was.
Warren: In your time?
Whitehead: I think if they came to Washington and Lee, they may have been tuition-free; I
don’t know. But, the policy of providing tuition up to the amount charged at Washington and
Lee, minus $100 went into effect, I feel quite sure, with Dr. Cole.
Warren: So it was while you were at Washington and Lee.
Whitehead: It was while I was at Washington and Lee, but not as treasurer or secretary of the

                                                                                                                              21
university.
Warren: And was that something that was done elsewhere as well, or was that something that
Washington and Lee—
Whitehead: Well, it was a very generous thing, very, very generous. I’m not too sure there were
too many—we had another program that was in effect there, prior to that one where several
colleges banded together in an organization—it may still be in existence, I don’t know—that
would permit a son or a daughter—I think that’s how they got by with the female part of it—to
go to, say, Colgate, if we accepted someone from Colgate at Washington and Lee, and that had
to be balanced. And that was an awfully hard thing to do. A well-qualified student might find
that the only place he could go would be to a school that he didn’t want to go to, just because that
school—we had accepted some of the students from that institution. I think that was in effect
when I went there.
Warren: Now, would that have been the domain of admissions, though, to keep track of all of
that?
Whitehead: No, I think it was the treasurer’s office, Andrew.
Warren: That’s a lot to keep track of.
Whitehead: Yes, sure it was. But I don’t know when that went out of existence, and I don’t even
remember what it was called, but it was a cooperation of several colleges that banded together to
swap tuition, but the tuition that Washington and Lee would give to that school would be what
was charged at Washington and Lee, not what was charged at the other institution.
Warren: There was also—and still is—a program for providing faculty and staff with
mortgages.
Whitehead: Oh, they had that. That came into effect—I don’t know if it was in effect when I—

                                                                                                                              22
no, it had to be in effect, because we borrowed the money to buy our home and availed ourselves
of it. At that time, it was 4 percent, was the rate of interest. Then it reached a point, I guess after I
became treasurer and then after I was, that it was 1 percent above prime, was the amount of
the—and I assume maybe that’s still the situation. I do not know. I haven’t been in the
treasurer’s office since the ’80s, so it’s been some time.
Warren: But that policy was already in effect, because that’s how you bought your house?
Whitehead: Yes. The policy of the 4 percent, but not of lending—gosh, what was the—they
would lend up—I think I had to put so much down and I got it. I think it changed later. You
could borrow up to so much—I don’t know whether it was 75 percent, or 90 percent, or what it
was—at that favorable rate, but that started after I was treasurer. I don’t take credit for that, but I
was under the program of the 4 percent.
[Begin Whitehead 5]
Warren: And what was—take me back into Washington Hall in the late ’50s, early ’60s. Who
had which offices, and what were they like? Were there secretaries? Were there many people in
each office, or were they one-person operations? What were they like?
Whitehead: Ask me how many telephones there were at Washington and Lee in the
summertime.
Warren: Tell me.
Whitehead: I would say if there were more than six or eight, it would be—Mr. Mattingly had
the telephones disconnected at the end of the summer. You could keep your telephone if you
paid the telephone rate, but otherwise, it was cut off.
Warren: For the summertime.
Whitehead: For the summertime. He had one, the dean of the college had one, and maybe

                                                                                                                              23
admissions had one, and the dean of the law school had one. But there weren’t many who had a
telephone. I had a telephone because I was in fundraising. I had to have a telephone.
Warren: So there were many offices that didn’t have any telephone at all, or just during the
summer?
Whitehead: During the summer, but there were many—none like today. Maybe the dean
[chairman?] of a department would have one, but a regular faculty member, a professor, or an
associate professor, or an assistant professor with a telephone? No. That describes Washington
Hall. Mr. Mattingly’s vault was there, and there was a counter, and Mr. Mattingly was known for
his ability to remember student names, and when they would come back as alumni, he could call
them by name. Well, his secret was that Mr. Varner would come out and go into Mr. Mattingly’s
office and say, “Mr. Mattingly, there’s a young man here that would like to say hello. He’s
passing through Lexington.” Mr. Mattingly would say, “What was his class?” And Andrew
would say, “Well, he told me his class of...” Andrew had certain questions that he would ask, and
he would tell Mr. Mattingly what class. He said, “What’s his name?” And Andrew said, “He
didn’t give me his name.” Mr. Mattingly had all of his books there: the Calyx, is that it?
Warren: Yes, the yearbooks.
Whitehead: And he had a little window, and he could look out and see the student, and
remember many of them by their looks and call them by name when he went out. It doesn’t mean
he didn’t call a lot of them by name that he actually remembered, but he did have this uncanny
way of remembering someone because he used his books to look up their names.
Warren: That was probably very handy to you in development, to have people feeling so
welcome when they came back.
Whitehead: I was going to say, I learned a lot from Mr. Mattingly about that, and a lot from Dr.

                                                                                                                              24
Gaines. The real organization part I learned from—when I say I learned, I gained a lot about the
organization from Don Smith and Mary Coulling.

         What was Washington Hall like? We had a janitor. And the name won’t come to me, but
this is really—that a lot of people felt [he] looked like General Lee.
Warren: The janitor?
Whitehead: The janitor looked a lot like General Lee. That was not the case.
Warren: So, was there one janitor for all of Washington Hall?
Whitehead: There was one janitor for all of Washington Hall. Washington Hall—the president’s
office was at the rear of the second floor on one side, and the dean of the college was on the
opposite side, and the dean of admissions was on the second floor. Development office was on
the second floor, and what had been in Lee’s time the chapel, the second floor of the chapel, the
front of the building evidently was open, and that floor was put in that gave space on the second
floor. I don’t know if they’ve taken that floor out or not. That’s where the president is now.
Warren: He’s in the front where the chapel was.
Whitehead: Yes, looking down. That was what was—when I was there, that was the
development office. His office was where I was as director of development.
Warren: So there weren’t all that many bodies in Washington Hall.
Whitehead: Classrooms were on the third floor.
Warren: There were classrooms on the third floor?
Whitehead: Yes. Classrooms were on the third floor. No consideration for the handicapped that
I can recall. When I say consideration, it just was not thought of as anything you would do. They
just would not come to Washington and Lee if they needed help.
Warren: You mentioned some other names. You mentioned the dean. Tell me about Dr. [James

                                                                                                                              25
G.] Leyburn. Did you interact?
Whitehead: I did not really ever know Dr. Leyburn. He retired as dean shortly after I came to
Washington and Lee, if that’s correct. Pusey was dean, and then acting president between Cole
and Huntley. Cole and Huntley, yes. But I can’t remember—Dean Leyburn lived in what is now
the Reeves Center. That was his home.
Warren: So you didn’t know Leyburn that well, but you did mention Frank Gilliam. Tell me
about Frank Gilliam and his part in the administration.
Whitehead: Well, Dean Gilliam was highly respected by many, many of the alumni. I guess
back in those days, they didn’t have public relations and various offices that they have today, but
Dean Gilliam was recruitment, admissions. He did many things for the university, and he and
Mr. Mattingly, while on the surface were close friends, Mr. Mattingly was frightened to death of
Dean Gilliam. He was just frightened.
Warren: Why?
Whitehead: Why? Well, Dean Gilliam was a horticulturalist, as you may know. Magnificent
gardens in his home, and did a lot of things around Washington and Lee. Mr. Mattingly did not
like pink dogwood on the campus, and somehow I think Dean Gilliam must have planted a pink
dogwood tree, and it happened to be right outside Mr. Mattingly’s office in Washington Hall.
But, that I cannot prove.

         The other story about Mr. Mattingly and Dean Gilliam was in front of what is now the
commerce school—it must be the Williams School—there were magnolia trees on each side that
Mr. Gilliam had planted, and at some point, Mr. Mattingly had the groundskeeper—probably
didn’t have more than two or three men on grounds work. I don’t know. That’s just a guess on
my part. But anyway, they cut the lower limbs off of the magnolia trees so they could mow and

                                                                                                                              26
get under the trees and keep things—from Mr. Mattingly’s standpoint, this was the economical
thing to do. To Dean Gilliam, he’d committed a sin by taking off the lower branches of a
magnolia tree. So, that was one of the—
Warren: But you say he was fearful of him?
Whitehead: Yes, he was. Well, Mr. Gilliam was old Virginia, right from Lynchburg, right here.
And Mr. Mattingly was, I think, from Washington. I think he was born in Washington, if I’m not
mistaken. But, in the hierarchy of society of the days, the Gilliams were at the top of the list, and
Mr. Mattingly respected them for that, but also felt—I use the term fearful, maybe that’s wrong.
Maybe that’s too strong. But the two of them together really looked after that university.
Warren: Were they about the same age?
Whitehead: I can’t tell you. They must have been about the same age. Mr. Mattingly may have
been a wee bit older, but not much. They were about the same age.
Warren: So, tell me what you mean by they took care of that university.
Whitehead: I don’t know how to explain it other than the business of the university, really—
keeping a top-notch faculty really was, I guess, the major aim of a certain area of responsibility,
and that would be the dean of—whoever was the dean then. I guess Leyburn may have been dean
when I first came in, but he, I was always told, made quite a difference in—who was dean before
Dean Leyburn?
Warren: That I can’t tell you.
Whitehead: I don’t know.
Warren: I don’t remember that.
Whitehead: Because Pusey came after Leyburn, but somehow in that grouping, Leon
Sensabaugh was the dean for a while, but I don’t know where he comes in. I think he must have

                                                                                                                              27
come in after Pusey became—no, I don’t know. Pusey was the acting president, and that would
have been after he was dean, wouldn’t it? He wouldn’t have been acting president before he was
made dean. I’m all mixed up. I’m too old.
Warren: That’s okay. Well, that’s my job, to straighten all of that out. Let’s talk about a big
event that happened in 1964, and actually leading up to that. Where did the Gaineses go after Dr.
Cole came in?
Whitehead: They built—the university built a home in Lexington. They owned a home in
Penrobin, out near Natural Bridge: beautiful, old, Southern. That’s where they spent their
summers, was at Penrobin. That was the name of their farm. Where did they go? Then they built
a house—the university, I believe, built a house. I was not privy to that. Mr. Mattingly would
have been—built a house in Lexington where they lived during the winter months. I don’t know
if you know the house or not. Washington Street, across Main, then by fraternity houses, then on
the right side was—oh, I know. Do you know what we called faculty apartments?
Warren: Yes.
Whitehead: Right across the street from faculty apartments on the same side of the street.
Warren: Okay, so it was on East Washington.
Whitehead: On East Washington. Built a house, and then—the university built it, but I think—I
don’t know the financial arrangements that were there, but I do know that it became—it was
owned in the end by—was it by Washington and Lee, or by the Gaineses? I don’t know. I can’t
remember.
Warren: Did Dr. Gaines remain a presence on campus?
Whitehead: Not to the extent that it would interfere with anything that Fred Cole wanted, or had
in mind for the university. Mrs. Gaines, now, may have felt differently, but Dr. Gaines never

                                                                                                                              28
showed it.
Warren: And he didn’t last all that many years.
Whitehead: No, he didn’t.
Warren: He died in 1964.
Whitehead: Yes, he died in 1964.
Warren: Was that a major event?
Whitehead: He had not been well for a long time, so it was not surprising. I was by his house
maybe the day before, or the day he died in his bedroom. I can remember them taking him out of
the house, but I—he was not a well man for some time. But, he was such a—he was a national
figure, really, in terms of the war efforts, and selling of bonds, and things of that sort. I was
always told that.
Warren: That’s my impression, too. So, let’s get more into the Cole administration, and talk
about what the changes were when Fred Cole took over.
Whitehead: Well, I think he brought the university into the twentieth century.
Warren: Well, you must tell me what you mean by that, because this is 1958 we’re talking
about.
Whitehead: Yes. Was it ’58 or ’59? I thought I was—
Warren: Fifty-nine. You’re right.
Whitehead: I mean, the standards set by a university like Tulane, with its organization and so
forth, Fred Cole brought along to Washington and Lee. One fundraiser I had called [Washington
and Lee] a sleeping giant, and [Cole] brought an organization to what had been—maybe I’m
giving him too much credit, but I mentioned once before: budgets were established. Different
matters as they related to—did desegregation take place during Cole’s administration?

                                                                                                                              29
Warren: It did.
[Begin Whitehead 6]
Whitehead: And it would have probably caused some concerned among alumni and—the
alumni did not care for Cole like they cared for Gaines. He was not personable. One-to-one, he
couldn’t have been easier to understand and like, but he was not good in crowds. He did not play
the room, or work the room, as it’s called. He was a gentleman of the first order, but before a
group, if he had to make a talk to the alumni at any point—he brought in a speechwriter to help
him with his speeches. Maybe Frank [Parsons] helped him with his speeches. I don’t know. But,
it was during his early years there that Lee Chapel was restored, and his association with the
Ford Foundation—but it was the Ford Motor Company Fund that paid for the restoration of Lee
Chapel. But he was close to that restoration.

         Lee Chapel caught on fire. Did anybody tell you that?
Warren: Tell me.
Whitehead: While they were in the state of restoration—they’d moved everything out,
fortunately, and piled some paint buckets down in the lower level where Lee was first entombed.
Is that a word?
Warren: Yes.
Whitehead: And somehow it caught fire, and it was quite a bit of damage that was done to the
thing, but… I’m going to tell you a story that I don’t want you to have on your machine, but I’m
going to tell you.
Warren: Okay.
Whitehead: Have you ever been in the crypt where Lee is buried? Behind—that’s over where he
is buried. He’s buried down in the basement. You’ve been down where Lee’s office was?

                                                                                                                              30
Warren: Right, and there’s a gate there.
Whitehead: Yes, that’s right.
Warren: I’ve never been behind that gate.
Whitehead: Oh, no. Don’t go back there. When I was there, I was always told that all of those
places were reserved for members of the Lee family, and they had been except for the husband
of—who was it the husband of? Husband of Bob Lee’s sister is Mary Lee. What is her last
name? Bowman. Mary Lee Bowman. She’s still alive. Don’t you dare tell her this. Oh, Mame, I
would be—well, I can’t remember who was president at the time. It may have been Bob Huntley.
I think [the president] was on an alumni trip to the west coast, and I was left there alone. There
was no dean, nobody, when Mary Lee Bowman’s husband died, and I got a call that this funeral
company in San Francisco was handling the arrangements. I didn’t think twice. “Fine. I’ll do
what I’m supposed to do.” They would like to have a small reception after the burial. The funeral
company in Washington will be handling all that, and they will arrive at a certain time. But, I had
to pick the slot to put—no, that’s another story. I think I’m burying the wrong person. I think I
had two burials. Well, I’ll leave it this way: when the basement was built, the slots were
somewhat smaller than [can] take care of today’s caskets, and as the crowd came down for the
ceremony, and the casket is in front of all the other tombs—not tombs. Whatever they are.
Crypts? I had it banked with some sort of greenery so it didn’t look so dead. That’s a good word
[chuckles]. And so when they all went up to the alumni house, all the family and so forth—the
Lees—went up to the—the hearse then—the people from the funeral home were there, and the
slot where we were going to put this in was up high, so I had had to get one of these conveyances
that lift up to put the casket on to lift the casket up. We got the casket up to go in and it won’t go
in the slot. What do you do? The family [had] now left, fortunately, but there I am with the

                                                                                                                              31
casket of a Lee. This was, I think, Bob Lee’s mother: Mrs. Bolling Lee. It was not Mary’s
husband like I thought. That was another story. But this was burying—finally, I said, “Will it go
in on its side?” And it went in on its side, but not until we had to open it and take the handles off
of the—but they were gently put into the casket, so if they ever had to reuse it, the handles would
be there.
Warren: But, Jim, a lot of people sleep on their sides.
Whitehead: I know it. Somebody said that very thing to me, but I never told that story outside of
the closest, closest friend of mine or someone like that, that Mrs. Lee is there on her side.
Warren: Well, that may have been her preference. You may have just put her back the way she
spent many a night.
Whitehead: She was more at home.
Warren: She may have been, she may have been. So, how are relations with the board during
the Cole administration? Because they had to tackle that issue of integration.
Whitehead: Yes, and that was when the strong statement was made by someone, I can
remember, at the meeting that we were always integrated, that we’d been integrated for years,
that this black handyman for one of the students—what do they call them? The student who was
wealthy enough to have someone go off to college with him.
Warren: Well, John Chavis had been [a student at Liberty Hall Academy, in 1795]—but that
was many years before. John Chavis was the first black student.
Whitehead: Yes, well, that was what they were talking about, that that was—I can remember
that coming up in a board meeting, that Washington and Lee had been integrated, and there was
no reason for any formal action, but that’s a very blurred time in my memory, Mame.
Warren: Well, let me ask you about some correspondence that I came across a couple of weeks

                                                                                                                              32
ago.
Whitehead: Okay.
Warren: You’re the first person I’m talking to after I read this series of letters. I got into Mrs.
DuPont’s papers. As you know, the library has Mrs. DuPont’s papers.
Whitehead: No, I did not know that.
Warren: Ah, well, that was part of—after she died, all of her papers came to Washington and
Lee. They were sorted out, and some went to various other institutions, but the bulk of them are
at Washington and Lee, and so I got it in my head that there might very well be some things
related to the university in it, and indeed, all the years she was a trustee, there are files and many,
many personal correspondences between her and members of the Gaines family, but then there
are also these files relating to trustee business, and there’s one [file] for every year. Well, in
1964, there was a flurry of letters, and I’m trying to remember who started it. It may have been
Joe Lykes, but I’m not positive. Somebody was just furious that Dr. Cole had said something
publicly about the Civil Rights Act of 1964. I think it may have been whoever was rector at the
time, and he was extremely unhappy, and had written to Dr. Cole and copied all of the trustees.
Whitehead: I wonder who would have been the rector in ’64?
Warren: Could it have been Caskie?
Whitehead: No.
Warren: Caskie was before.
Whitehead: Caskie was blind, and in his late seventies, and he was succeeded by Dr.
Hutchinson, who was deaf. My time was either keeping one of them awake; Dr. Caskie would go
to sleep during the meetings, and Mr. Hutchinson couldn’t hear what was being said. That was
my job with the board.

                                                                                                                              33
Warren: Well, it wasn’t either of those names. This was somebody who was on his toes.
Whitehead: All right. Now, would it have been Huston St.Clair?
Warren: No.
Whitehead: Would it have been—Lewis Powell was never a rector of the board.
Warren: No.
Whitehead: And he wouldn’t have written that letter to begin with, I don’t think.
Warren: And it may not have been the rector, but anyway—
Whitehead: Oh, I’ll bet anything that it was Stemmons.
Warren: John Stemmons? No, it wasn’t John Stemmons, because I’ve met him. No, it wasn’t
John Stemmons. Anyway, it was somebody I’ve never met. But then the tone of—various other
trustees responded back, and apparently it just was this whirlwind of trustee correspondence, and
I wondered if you were privy to any of that, or do you remember?
Whitehead: No, I was not.
Warren: Okay.
Whitehead: I was always in the meetings, but I was so strong in my own opinion that there were
times when I would absent myself from the meeting because I didn’t want to be a part of it.
Warren: Tell me what you mean.
Whitehead: Well, they would get to the point where there would be vocal—I don’t ever recall
anyone doing anything that would be personal in terms of their feelings. The words are not
coming. I think I’m saying that they didn’t let their personal feelings for each other get in the
way of the action that was being taken, but there were heated arguments. Now, was Bob
involved in that as dean? He may have been. He may have—’64.
Warren: Bob Huntley?

                                                                                                                              34
Whitehead: Yes.
Warren: Yes, he was involved by the time—whether he was part of the whole thing or not, I
don’t know, but by the time it got to where they might have had a vote, he was the one who
pointed out that Washington and Lee had never had a discriminatory rule, so there’s no need to
revoke it, which was a very clever way to deal with it.
Whitehead: It really was. It was the way to deal with it that would not have been the case in
most institutions that were doing this, having the same problem at the same time. That was—a
smooth public relations event occurred because of it, and that was the acceptance of the first—at
that time—black student, as being the son of one of the waitresses in the bookstore [where the
snackbar was located at the time]. Famie Smothers’s son, I believe was the first—I think Ted
Delaney may have written that in something that I’ve read.
Warren: Yes, I know that whole story of what happened afterwards; it’s the process that I’m
finding very interesting to understand. So, tell me about Bob Huntley coming in and becoming a
presence with the board of trustees. Had you known him before that?
Whitehead: I knew him when he was dean of the college.
Warren: The School of Law.
Whitehead: The School of Law, right. I can’t recall anything that made more people happier
than when Bob was made president. I know Lewis Powell called me to Richmond, and I went,
and wanted my opinion. I was flattered that—Lewis was not on the Supreme Court at the time,
but he was certainly highly respected. He was on the board of trustees, and he was on the search
committee and all that.
Warren: So he called you to Richmond? Tell me about that.
Whitehead: Well, evidently, he was getting—I don’t think I was the only one. I’m positive I’m

                                                                                                                              35
not the only one, but I was very flattered when Lewis said would I come to Richmond, and he
told me what he wanted to talk about, and what was my reaction? I guess Bob and I had been
very good friends for some time, even before. See, Bob, as dean of the School of Law, helped me
with the Reeves Collection by going with me to visit the lawyer of Mrs. Reeves to draw up her
will. And we flew on this airplane that two days before had Allegheny [Airlines] that the
stewardess had been sucked out of the plane, and that was one of our long-remembered events.
Bob and I—

         I’ll tell you something that I don’t know that I’ve ever even mentioned this to anybody
else. Maybe I have. I was made treasurer by Cole, but it was not for my financial ability; stock,
bonds, interest rates meant nothing to me. I was just not that type of finance man. I like raising
money, nothing pleases me more, but I never liked raising money for something I didn’t believe
in. I have to believe in it truly and sincerely. Well, what Washington and Lee needed as much as
anything when I was treasurer was a finance man to get Washington and Lee on a good, sound
financial basis. I was friends of our advisors; I met with them. I did the normal things, but they
needed someone with qualifications more than Whitehead could offer in that aspect, and I was
delighted. I can’t remember. It may have been during Bob’s administration that—who was made
treasurer? Oh, Stew Epley. He came from McKinsey & Company, and I never had any problem
with Bob because of that. In fact, it was a great relief because I was in fundraising every day of
my life that I was at Washington and Lee. I had the Reeves Collection; I was secretary of the
board of trustees. I had more than my share.
Warren: You had a lot of hats on your head.
Whitehead: I did, and enjoyed them all. It was a great part of my life.
Warren: Tell me exactly: What is the job description for a treasurer of Washington and Lee?

                                                                                                                              36
What were your responsibilities?
Whitehead: Well—
[Begin Whitehead 7]
Whitehead: After I became treasurer, we developed the budgets for the university, and I think
that was a step forward in many ways. We took a real look at the salary scale at Washington and
Lee as compared to other institutions. We did the budget process, and maybe I’ve mentioned that
several times. These don’t mean that they were refined to the point that they were the best, but
they were a step forward from what we’d dealt with in the past. I guess I thought of the
treasurer’s job as being more like Mr. Mattingly’s than maybe what I brought to it. By that I
mean I’d been under Mr. Mattingly—when did I become treasurer? I don’t know.
Warren: 1966 to 1980.
Whitehead: I know one of the things that I didn’t know—I didn’t know enough about stocks and
bonds, and I didn’t know enough about—I followed pretty much the same path that they’d had
there for years: U.S. Trust was our financial company, and I accepted their advice. Nothing
pleased me more than to receive a gift of property, and then I would seek a buyer that would
bring increased income to the university through being sly in my way.
Warren: Oh, you’re not letting that slip by. What do you mean, being sly in your way?
Whitehead: Well, there was an alumnus in Texas that had a World War II airplane, and he
wanted to give it to the university. Well, now we needed an airplane like nobody’s—but he could
get a tax deduction if he gave it to the university, but we had to agree to—back then, they
weren’t quite as tight as they are now about getting all the forms filled out and so forth. So, I
flew to Texas. I think I flew to Dallas, and he lived in Ft. Worth. He said he wanted—I saw the
plane, and he said the most he could get for it was so-and-so, but he wanted—so forth. I attested

                                                                                                                              37
to the value of the plane as being what he wanted, because that’s what he was selling it for and
he wouldn’t sell it for less. So that was my only out was the fact that that was the price of the
plane. I call that sly. I didn’t say dishonest; I said sly. And it really wasn’t dishonest.
Warren: So what did you do with the airplane?
Whitehead: We sold it to—what is it? I was always told it was sold to a trafficker of illegal
items from South America, so it wound up in some drug cartel.
Warren: Very sly indeed.
Whitehead: Don’t mention that while I’m alive.
Warren: Well, then I won’t mention it because I don’t want you going anywhere.
Whitehead: Okay.
Warren: So, you mentioned public bonds. Tell me more about the role of the treasurer, and
learning all those things. How did you go from a development person to being a treasurer?
Whitehead: Well, I’m going to tell you a story that is not in answer to what you’re saying, but it
tells you a little bit of how I got in trouble by this. When the Reeves Collection came to
Washington and Lee, Wilson—did Bob Huntley follow Wilson, or did Wilson follow Bob
Huntley?
Warren: Wilson followed Huntley.
Whitehead: Well, I can’t remember. This would be 1958. Who was president then?
Warren: Fifty-eight would have been the end of Gaines followed by Cole.
Whitehead: Cole. And I’m in New York in ’63, ’64; who was president then?
Warren: Cole.
Whitehead: Cole. When did Bob become president?
Warren: Bob would have been secretary of the board of trustees.

                                                                                                                              38
Whitehead: Right, okay. When the Reeves Collection came to us, maybe after—it came to the
university in ’67, I think it was. Well anyway, I went to the president and said we need a place to
house this. This has educational merit as well as being just a collection of dishes. [There was]
much history here, [including] items that belonged to some of the early founders of—early
contributors to Washington and Lee. Items that belonged to Washington, to Jefferson—well, a
number of people, I said. Nobody would believe me that it had any value, but Bob Huntley was
always very receptive of what I was trying to do. So, I went to Bob. Bob is now president, I
think, and I said, “I want a place to house it, and there’s a house on this campus that needs
restoring. If I can raise the money for it, would you let me use it to house the Reeves
Collection?” He says, “You can go and ask for money for that project as long as they’re not
prospects for any project that we have.” That was one of the first big campaigns. “As long as you
don’t ask anyone that would be giving to the regular campaign.” And I promised that. Celeste
and I went to a couple that we felt would be interested, and they were VMI people, and they gave
us the money.
Warren: Really?
Whitehead: $250,000. Was it $250,000? No, $450,000.
Warren: But they were VMI people.
Whitehead: Yes. They had two sons at Washington and Lee, and they came to a parents’
weekend thing, and we were seated at the table with them, and I got the conversation around to
ceramics and art. Maybe I didn’t. Yes, it was at that one, because he said they collected—they
were great wild game hunters, and they had these mounted all over their house. He said, “We
have a trophy of a roan antelope. Would you like it?” And I said, “Yes.” I didn’t know what a
roan antelope was. Now, that’s sly. I said, yes, we’d like it. We’d put it in the Cockpit [the

                                                                                                                              39
student hangout in Evans Dining Hall], being the very thing we need is a roan antelope.
         And this roan antelope arrived on the campus within a few weeks, wrapped in a big

plastic bag, carried by the son of them, and I thought he was walking—I was in the treasurer’s
office, which was in the back of the Washington Hall. I see this boy walking up the walk there
with this package. I knew it was someone that was dead; I thought it was a dead person. And he
was bringing me the roan antelope. And it was that friendship that devoted—that came from
accepting something that I knew absolutely nothing about. I could say the same thing about
bonds and stocks. I invested in the stock market when I first came out of the Navy with the little
amount of five hundred dollars. Lost every penny of it within about a month, so I never put
another penny in stocks, had nothing to do, never read the stock page. That’s not what a treasurer
should be. He should be someone that understands all those things.
Warren: Well, how did you handle the job all those years?
Whitehead: I did it. I don’t know. There were many things involved in being treasurer other
than—human element things: families with problems, divorces, need for money beyond what
they were being paid, advance on salaries. We’d even do that. I wasn’t supposed to, but I did it.
Paying for renovation, keeping the grounds up, trying to keep the buildings looking decent. So,
those were all the treasurer’s responsibilities.
Warren: Well, Bob [Huntley] told me—and I know he talks about this frequently—that when he
became president, that Washington and Lee was broke, that they were borrowing money every
summer.
Whitehead: They would borrow money in the summer, and then pay it back when the students
paid their tuition in the fall. That was the normal procedure through Mr. Mattingly’s tenure. And
even when I became treasurer, we probably did the very same thing. But, we did have one

                                                                                                                              40
positive note in all of that. We weren’t always broke, because Mr. Mattingly or Dr. Gaines would
show Mrs. DuPont the amount of money that we needed to balance the books, and she would
take care of it. And I recall one time it was as much as over two hundred thousand dollars, it
seemed to me. We didn’t have a penny. We were just like most of the South after the Civil War:
genteel poverty. The Gaines’s home was a monument to what it was like.
Warren: Speaking of Lee House.
Whitehead: Yes.
Warren: Bob Huntley told me I should be sure to ask you about your help in redecorating the
Lee House.
Whitehead: Well, when the Gaines moved out, most of the furniture, except for the piano,
which had been given to the university, belonged to the Gaines. So, Dean Pusey was made acting
president—the Huntleys bought a home in Lexington, and used the Lee House for entertaining,
mostly.
Warren: But not at first. They lived in the Lee House for a while.
Whitehead: Oh yes, they lived in the house, but then it became an entertainment place. I don’t
think they were in the house when John Warner was there, was he? And Elizabeth Taylor?
Warren: No, they weren’t.
Whitehead: Yes, they were out.
Warren: But you can tell me that story, too.
Whitehead: No, I’m not going to tell you that. They called Celeste and me and asked us if we
would be chaperones. He was bringing this young lady that he was going to marry down to
introduce her to Washington and Lee, and when he said it was Elizabeth Taylor, I was suddenly
on my way to New York. I had to excuse us. I said Celeste and I would not be able to chaperon,

                                                                                                                              41
which meant that we would had to have gone over to the Lee House and spend the night.
         Redecorating. I didn’t redecorate it. When the Huntleys moved there, we used a lot of the

furniture that came from the Reeves Collection.
Warren: Ah. He said that you were involved in bringing appropriate furniture.
Whitehead: Yes. The mirror in the front hall, the highboy in the dining room, the mirrors in the
dining room, the kneehole desk that the Reeves paid seventy-five hundred dollars for that’s
worth a million dollars today. No, that’s too much. I’d bring it back to $750,000, easy.
Warren: So, all of the furniture we’re talking about came from the Reeves home?
Whitehead: Not all of it came from—there were certain items like the piano, and maybe there
was something left there, but most of the furniture at the point that—who moved in while it was
still there? Was Bob back in the house? When the Coles came in I think is when a great deal of
the furniture went into that. It was stored in Col Alto, but then went to the—[distractedly] I’ve
got to check [my wife,] Celeste. I’m sorry.
Warren: Okay. We’re going to take a stop.
[Begin Whitehead 8]
Warren: Well, now let’s talk a little bit about a young fellow who followed in your footsteps in
terms of development. Tell me about this Farris Hotchkiss guy.
Whitehead: I can’t imagine I can tell you anything you don’t already know. He’s just an
exceptional young man. He was, I guess first helpful to Dean Gilliam, or he was very close to
Dean Gilliam in the early days.
Warren: Who picked him as the right person for development?
Whitehead: Dean Gilliam? I don’t know what Farris did. Farris worked for his father-in-law,
that’s what he did. The paper business. I don’t know what area of it he was in at all, but I know it

                                                                                                                              42
was Judy’s [Judy Hotchkiss] father that he worked for. That was in Atlanta, and then he came to
Lexington, and we became very good friends. He had a lot to do—when I say a lot to do, he was
always helpful to me in people that he felt would be receptive to the Reeves Center. Well, he was
just a natural-born fundraiser, because that was his nature.
Warren: Well, that’s certainly true, but tell me about that transition when you were shifting out
of development as your primary responsibility, and how did that transition happen? Did Farris
come in right behind you?
Whitehead: I think so. I can’t recall anyone in it. It took three years, as I said, to raise $2
million, and a big gift was—gosh, a five hundred dollar gift was a major gift. I don’t know, but
Farris and Judy both loved to entertain.

         I think that one of the qualities that helped me with fundraising was Celeste, because she
would talk—. A lady that called yesterday that heard that we would be moving to Texas [in
February 2010, but Celeste Dervaes Whitehead died on January 16, 2010] and said that her most
vivid memory of Washington and Lee was the luncheon that Celeste gave to the wives of the
board of trustees when she came on the board, and Celeste introduced her at the lunch. I’ve never
known that story, and yet, I always knew that all of the—when I was still in charge, we had the
responsibility for organizing the program for the wives, and that’s when Celeste would come up
with these different things, and do things. But from both Judy and Farris, how they could do as
much as they’ve done is beyond me, and still lead an almost normal life.
Warren: They’re extraordinary people. Now, there is something that would, I think, fall within
the realm of the treasurer’s office that I’m really unclear about, and I know the history of how it
came to Washington and Lee, but the management of the John Lee Pratt estate. Tell me about
that.

                                                                                                                              43
Whitehead: Yes. That was one of the most amazing things.
Warren: Well, I know about the train ride.
Whitehead: I don’t know about the train ride.
Warren: Well, that’s how the original connection developed.
Whitehead: Oh, is that right? Well, I remember my first meeting with Mr. Pratt was in what is
the back room would have been Mrs. [Robert E.] Lee’s bedroom when she was confined and
would be rolled out onto the porch that surrounds the [Lee] house. Dr. Gaines called me one
afternoon or one evening and said that he was having a very special guest for dinner and
overnight. Would I be able to come over and meet with him? He said he’s not married [his wife,
Lillian, had died in 1947], and therefore it will just be a stag affair, and I went over and met Mr.
Pratt. I had no idea of his background, and that he was—I think I was always told the largest
stockholder in General Motors at the time. But anyway, he was a wealthy man. He and I got to
talking, and it turned out that his wife was a collector. She [had] collected Faberge eggs.
Warren: Oh, he was married.
Whitehead: Oh, yes.
Warren: Just his wife wasn’t with him.
Whitehead: No. That’s right. He was married. And I’m sure she was still alive at the time [sic].
We had a casual acquaintance. Nothing—had something to talk to. I had something I could talk
to him about that we both knew a little something about, but not a great deal. Anyway, when the
will was read [after John Lee Pratt died in 1975] and this—I went to Richmond. I can remember
going to Richmond and meeting at a bank in Richmond that handled his affairs, or the one that
named a number of colleges and universities and a certain amount to each one, but the main
clause that was so important that I thought of his admiration for [Francis Pendleton] Gaines and

                                                                                                                              44
for General Lee was that in case a recipient—meaning an institution—does not follow the outline
of my wishes, then the fund reverts to Washington and Lee. So, I always had that hanging over
my friends’ heads that were treasurers at the different colleges. I never checked one of them, but
they all spent it for good causes, which were for the most part, I think, were scholarships, if I’m
not mistaken.
Warren: What did he specify? Something that it was not to be used for the endowment.
Whitehead: I can’t recall.
Warren: Which is fairly unusual for a gift.
Whitehead: I thought it was for scholarships.
Warren: I think it was for the discretion of the president, but it was not to go into the
endowment.
Whitehead: Yes.
Warren: So I thought it would be interesting to know what you as the treasurer decided it should
be used for.
Whitehead: I could be wrong. That really does go back.
Warren: Okay. Well, what haven’t we talked about that we should since we’re running out of
time? I tell you one thing that I think would be interesting: from what I understand, the campus
itself was in lousy condition.
Whitehead: Oh, God. When I think if it was in the same condition today, just the physical plant,
as it was—I’m not thinking about the endowment and other things—as it was when I went
there—. The Morris House, which is a guest house [restored with funds from Stewart and Joella
Morris of Houston, Texas], was given because of the Reeves Collection. They [the Morrises]
came to visit; they’d never been on the campus, and I got hold of them, and we’ve been friends

                                                                                                                              45
from that day to this. He calls every week.
Warren: How did you figure out the priorities—
Whitehead: I didn’t. They just fell in.
Warren: No, I mean the priorities for fixing up the campus.
Whitehead: It was purely accidental. I guess Lee Chapel—no, it was either the Lee House or
Lee Chapel that was the first that I can recall. Then Farris [Hotchkiss] raised some money for
what was the [Lee-]Jackson House. Stonewall Jackson was married to [Elinor Junkin, daughter
of George Junkin, then president of Washington College]—I think he’s the one that got that
[money for restoration].

         You’ve really hit a tender spot. The back area where we added for the Reeves Center, the
gallery that Mrs. Gottwald gave me that was the only thing she’d let us put our name on, the
screens were falling out of the window frames. They were in just terrible condition, all four of
those great houses. The main front buildings of Washington Hall, Mr. Mattingly would have
them paint up so high on the columns so when you viewed the columns they looked like they had
just been painted, but they only went up to maybe the second floor in painting. Isn’t that a
strange thing?

         The house that is now the guest house [Morris House], I believe was the dean’s home.
You could look from the second floor down to the first floor through the cracks in the floors.
When I think back, to use the word shambles, parts of the campus were in shambles. They really
were. But, to view it from a distance, I always said it was an optical illusion. It looked great: the
white columns and the red brick and so forth. But if you got close to it, it was not that way at all.
It needed renovation, so one-by-one—. Now I understand it’s a priority to redo the entire front
campus.

                                                                                                                              46
Warren: They’re working on Newcomb Hall now.
Whitehead: Yes, and I hope it will happen. But I did feel that the Reeves, in giving us the
collection, had saved the house that it’s housed in, and had saved the guest house, the money
that—I was making a speech somewhere in Mississippi where they have forums every year on
antiques, and the Reeves Collection was the center of attraction, and after the meeting, this man
came up to me and said, “Are you and Mrs. Whitehead free for breakfast in the morning?” I said,
“Yes.” He said, “Please join us.” I said we’d be there, and we went. When we got there, Mr.
[Stewart] Morris handed me a folded sheet of legal-size paper and said, “Jim Whitehead, I
hereby give you two hundred and fifty thousand dollars to restore—” a certain house that was
called something—“as a guest house.” And that was just the beginning of the gifts.

         So, how do you train to be a fundraiser? You don’t. You just love it. Anything that you
think—he had come to the opening of the Reeves Collection, and I’d walked him around the
campus, and when he got into the back of what is now the admissions office, it was in such
terrible condition, he started crying. Stewart Morris started crying, he loved [Robert E.] Lee so.
To think that it was in that condition. And I figured, there’s a prospect, and I didn’t let up.
Warren: Oh yes, those tears always are a sign, aren’t they? You mentioned another gift that I’m
curious what your thoughts are now after all these years. Do you think Col Alto was an asset or a
liability?
Whitehead: Well, at the time that it was given, as you may know, the present president’s home
[Lee House] had just been restored, so it was a big—that may have been part of Mattingly’s
problem with Mrs. Cole. I don’t know. But, it was decided that they did not want to move out of
the president’s home, the Lee House, over to Col Alto. So, it became a storage place, and then I
approached Sydney and Frances Lewis on their first visit to talk about making a gift to

                                                                                                                              47
Washington and Lee. I took them to Col Alto, thinking they would do it and it would be the site
of the Reeves Collection, since their interest [was] in art, and they chose to build a building [the
law library and school]. I was thinking in terms of $500,000, and they were thinking not $500
million, but $5 million or $7 million, whatever it was. You asked me a question. I didn’t answer
it.
Warren: Whether Col Alto ultimately was an asset or a liability.
Whitehead: To see it in its present shape [as the central section of the Hampton Inn in
Lexington], I think it was a liability. We lost—I think there were those that felt strongly that it
should have been, but the restriction was that it would be the president’s home. What a beautiful
place for a president’s home. I’m more convinced that Mrs. [Lewis] Tyree’s home that has been
sold at KA [Kappa Alpha fraternity] would have been the proper place for the president’s home,
or the alumni house. I think it had more reason for being a part of the university’s history. I’ve
always been told by Pam Simpson—not Pam Simpson, but John—he was head of the
archaeological dig at—John McDaniel.
Warren: John McDaniel.
Whitehead: That there are original bits of Liberty Hall still under—what is it called now? What
is that house known as? The Tyrees lived in it, but it had a name.
Warren: Oh, Mulberry Hill?
Whitehead: Mulberry Hill.
Warren: That’s a lovely place.
Whitehead: And to think that you’d be on the grounds of history. It’s just like raising the money
that we received from Wamsutta Mills by having that archaeological dig at Liberty Hall was a
wonderful thing. John—

                                                                                                                              48
Warren: I don’t know the Wamsutta Mills story.
Whitehead: You don’t? I had a man from Roanoke who was speaking at the law school or
someplace, Carter Burgess, who was—I think he’d been head of one of the airlines. I don’t
know. He was a very outstanding businessman. He’d come to visit the university. It may have
been when Bob Huntley was president. I met him. I’d heard the name. I’d met him, but somehow
in the dinner conversation, I mentioned Chinese export porcelain, and he said, “You have some
Chinese export porcelain? My wife collects Chinese export porcelain.” He said—I eventually
met her, poor thing. I said, “I hope that maybe if you have time this visit that you’ll take a look.”
We [the Reeves Collection] were still in the basement then of the ROTC building. And the next
day, I got a call—I’m sure it was from Bob [Huntley]—saying that Carter Burgess had some
time before the next class, and he would like to see the collection. Well, it was in barrels, and he
unpacked it, and I always had some there for somebody to unpack because it made them feel that
they’d really been in the bottom of the barrel. Anyway, he said, “I have a friend in New York
that should see this collection.” And I said, “Really?” He said, “Yes. He’s president of Wamsutta
Mills.” I didn’t think anything more about it. Wamsutta Mills meant nothing to me. It did to
Celeste, but it didn’t to me. Well, I’m in my desk in Washington Hall and Mrs. Grey, my
secretary, sweet little thing, came in and said, “Mr. Whitehead, there’s some strange looking
people out here.” I said, “What do you mean?” She said, “There are five people out here and they
said they’d like to see you.” I said, “Well, who are they?” She said, “I don’t know. They said
they were from New York.” I said, “Well, please have them come in.” I went to the door to meet
them.

         It was Bill Fine, his designer, his public relations director—there was one other. Anyway,
there were five of them, and they came in the office and they said, “Carter told us about your

                                                                                                                              49
wonderful collection. We were in this area.” They had been down to one of the mills in South
Carolina. “We thought we’d drop by and see if it would be possible to see it.” Well, they had
with them their design man, Peter Neil, and I took them down to the basement, and they went:
“Wow.” And Peter would say, “Wouldn’t this look great on the…” And they saw certain
designs. It was [in the early 1970s, when the United States was] getting ready for the nation’s
bicentennial, and they said, “Is there any way that we might arrange to have some of the designs
on sheets and pillowcases?” And I said, “Gosh,” and “Washington and Lee [would] receive a
royalty.” I said, “Well, that’s something the board of trustees would have to approve,” and I was
told, “Absolutely no,” in a board meeting. “You can’t have Washington and Lee embarrassed by
having it advertized as having it on sheets. And John Warner, who married Elizabeth Taylor,
spoke up and said, “I think it’s great.” And he was chairman of the nation’s bicentennial at the
time. So, he was responsible [for the board’s approval].

         So, they sent down Peter Neil and their public relations people, and we were to receive, I
think, 3 percent on wholesale, and I thought wait, that’s three hundred dollars, or at the most
three thousand dollars. Well, anyway, one of their patterns was a success. It was called Blue
Butterfly, and in the New York Times, a full page—after I told the board of trustees they’d do
nothing to embarrass the university, here’s a full page in the New York Times, full page, showing
the butterfly in blue and white and the headline was: “This butterfly has a B.A. from Washington
and Lee.” I knew I was fired. So, I called John [Warner] and John said, “Don’t worry about
that.” He said, “I want to have some things. Will you come up and talk to me about it for our
bicentennial?”

         I went up and that’s when I met Elizabeth Taylor. She asked me to stay for breakfast, and
I said the worst thing. I mean, the most stupid thing I’ve ever said in my life. She said, “Mr.

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Whitehead, will you stay for breakfast with John and with me?” And she was cooking it. She
was in the kitchen cooking the breakfast, and I said, “I’ve already had breakfast.” That would be
my swan song.
Warren: Oh my goodness.
Whitehead: But I had so many things like that happen, just out of the blue. And then we had,
after we did the sheets and pillowcases—another company that had heard about what we had
done was the Van Wagenberg family of Maryland who had two sons at Washington and Lee, and
they owned a foreign advisory service. And they came and said would we permit them to have
reproductions of some of the pieces we had in the thing [the Reeves Collection], and after we’d
done so well with the sheets and pillowcases, I had no trouble in getting permission.

         So, what does the treasurer do? What does the public relations man do? What does the
fundraiser do? What comes naturally. But anyway, it was a great time. I can’t imagine a finer
association. And then to see our university come to life after the first fundraiser that came there
with Don Smith, saying it’s a sleeping giant, and that’s what it was.
Warren: Well, you helped to wake it up.
Whitehead: Well anyway, I made points several times, but that’s all right.
Warren: Jim, this has been wonderful. I know you need to get back to Celeste.
Whitehead: I’m afraid. If she takes one step, she will fall.
Warren: Well, we don’t want that to happen. Thank you so much.
[end of interview]

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