Willett interview [Begin Tape 1, Side 2] Warren: You started talking about Arnold Toynbee. Let's talk about Arnold Toynbee. Willett: We sort of just came out, because it was a wonderful experience for me. He needed a secretary, and now I'll have to go back and tell you that the day I graduated from Randolph-Macon, I thought I was pretty hot stuff. Talk about top of the heap, I was an English major. I knew everything. My father, who just absolutely adored me and all that, informed me, sort of gave me a shock when he said, "Well, honey, you are now qualified to do two things." I thought, "Two things?" He said, "You can file alphabetically and numerically. That's your total value in terms of any employer." And he said even in his office—he was in the insurance business—I was of no value to him except I could file. So I had just graduated. This was like, I don't remember, a Thursday or Friday. And he said, "Now, next week you'll go right downtown to Phillips Business College." This was in Lynchburg. Well, I was outraged. Well, I, needless to say, have thanked him over and over and over and over and over again in my life, because it's the best thing that ever happened to me. Well, not really, as my English degree was wonderful. But here I was at W&L and I had three young children, and I had worked in the alumni office before I had children when we 17 first came to W&L. But here in the late fifties they were looking somebody to work for Dr. Toynbee for that brief period, and somebody said, "Well, maybe Aunt Farrar could do it." I had worked in the alumni—I could type and I could take shorthand. So I don't remember exactly how, I guess Dee Meyers probably called me up and asked me if I'd like to. And I was just thrilled to death. My mother in Lynchburg was thinking, "Oh, darling, how can you possibly do that with three children?" But we had a very close friend at Randolph-Macon who said to my mother, "Of course she has to do it. She must do this." And Jim was very supportive, "Yeah, this is great." My office was in the kitchen of Mulberry Hill. Mulberry Hill was, at that time, Miss Tyree, who owned it, Winifred Tyree, was away for the winter, so the house was rented. In other words, there were a couple of students living in the house, and so the Toynbees occupied the house, and my office was the kitchen. So my little typewriter. So I had the wonderful experience and delightful. His wife, Veronica, of course, was with him, and alumni chapters asked him to come speak and various clubs, women's clubs and things, asked him to come speak. And I took him to all those places and up to Washington to the policy-making committee, whatever it was called then, at the State Department. It was just a marvelous, wonderful experience, and we became very close friends. He gave me a lot to think about over the years. He used to talk about the—what was his term? I would send out to colleges, Mary Washington and others who wanted him to speak, a list of his lecture topics. The colonial problem was one. And they would say, "Oh, that sounds nice. Would he'd come and speak on the colonial problem?" Well, you know, we thought that our colonial problem was probably the colonial problem. Well, it wasn't it at all. He was talking about the black situation, things that Americans did not want to hear in the fifties, the running sores on the face of the earth, the Gaza Strip. We were like, "Gaza Strip?" South Africa. The black problem 18 in this country. You know, these things nobody particularly didn't want to hear a British historian telling them about these problems, when you think about it. Oh, I've thought so often of him when we've had now all the Persian Gulf problems. The oil, you know, the whole situation, what was going to happen out there. They were sitting on all this oil. And ARAMCO would send—American engineers would go out and they'd all live in a compound, whereas the Russian engineers who were there were living amongst the people. But we just didn't think about those things then. We really resented him telling us. [Laughter] So I think they were very interesting times, and he was wonderful with W&L students. There was always a question period after those lectures. I suppose it's the— what's the method of questioning? Socratic method always is to turn the question back. You know, you don't state the fact. You know that better, I'm sure. The question is, "Is that not so?" A student would screw up the courage to ask Toynbee a question, and I always admired his, I think now I would say, Socratic method of answering the boy's question without making him look foolish at all and turning it, ending it with another question, which made the student, of course, pulled it out and made him more involved. And then a conversation would develop between teacher and student. It was a very interesting time for them, and it has certainly opened my eyes. I've been very grateful for that experience. Warren: Were the lectures well attended? Willett: Yes. Packed. Because a lot of townspeople. You know, it's wonderful. I miss now the academic community. Townspeople were there in large numbers, and people would come from other colleges around. When I sometimes mention in a conversation that I had a great time working for Arnold Toynbee at one time in my life, people say, "Who?" He's not exactly a household word, and his theories of history were controversial, and very controversial among the W&L faculty. Many of my dearest, dearest friends, European historians of great stature, will snip a bit at some of—he 19 treated centuries and millenniums and all rather casually. [Laughter] Shall we say, he had the broad view. He didn't worry too much about it. But, anyway, it was a stimulating time, whether you agreed, whether you were a scholar as, of course, full-time faculty were scholars, as our faculty were, or whether you were just plodding along like me and anxious to know more and stimulated by what he was telling us. But, yes, they were very well attended, and I've been surprised that—you ask Frank. I asked Frank once, Frank Parsons, where all that stuff is, and he said he didn't know. I think I probably have more of it and it's in a box somewhere, and I'll dig it out for you. Warren: We need to find that, Anne. Willett: Yeah. Yeah. Warren: Now, did he have classes with the students? Willett: No, not really classes. He was writing all the time, and if I had my materials here with me—I didn't bring all that with me. It never occurred to me anybody would be talking to be about my W&L life. He wrote in this tiny little script, and then he would give it to me to type. I would hold it sideways and upside down trying to figure out what—tiny little script. And he would write across the bottom of the page and up the side of the page and across the top of the page. He must have gotten so tired of being invited by ladies to come to tea, but he would sit with his overcoat on and his scarf and his hat and at his desk waiting to be picked up when he and Mrs. Toynbee were going to somebody's house for something. He didn't want to waste a minute, and he didn't really want to leave his work. But that's the way he would do it. I would then be handed a sheaf of papers with all this little scrunchy—you get used to anything. I got to the point—because I'd then have to type up these lectures or whatever it was, long letters or whatever he was sending back to the Royal Institute of 20 International Affairs in London. And she was his colleague. She did all of his translating. Warren: His wife? Willett: Uh-huh. And she did that right along beside him when she wasn't reading mysteries. [Laughter] They were delightful, charming people. Warren: And so there was a lot of interaction with the Lexington community. Willett: Yeah. Oh, yeah. Remember, again, these are the fifties when there were book clubs around. I remember taking him—all of a sudden, I had a lot of new friends who suddenly were calling me, did I think I could arrange for Dr. Toynbee to come to Danville to speak to their book club and others of that sort. He did go. He spoke at Randolph-Macon. I'm trying to recall. I think he may have spoken to the student body there, because he appeared on the front of the alumni magazine or inside—I'd have to find that picture somewhere—in academic robes, as I remember. So he was asked by Sweet Briar and various places to come to convocations and whatnot. But, as I say, he was much better known then, I think, than he is now. He was talking about religious ideas that we were not accustomed to hearing. That is there is more than one way. Because he believed in, you know, the power of these great religions in civilizations. East Meets West was one of the titles of one of his books. We really hadn't given a whole lot of thought to that before the war. So here he comes in the late fifties and the world was changing. So there was a lot to think about and a lot of resistance to all this, because we didn't want to think that we weren't this straight arrow. We were the good guys. We'd won the war. As I said a while ago, we certainly never thought of ourselves as minorities, which brings us back to where we were. In the first place, we've come—and these are very different years now, the nineties, from those years. Warren: Well, that's why I think it's so important to talk to people who've lived through these various times, because it's so misleading to look at things only through 21 the eyeglasses of the nineties and their political correctness. We have to think about what it was like to be there then. Willett: I hope the social life at Washington and Lee is as rich now. I think I mentioned this to you when we were talking last night. I think how fortunate I was to have my friends, Jim's and my best friends, as it were, men who had taught him. When he came back to Washington and Lee in '52, I guess it was, when we came back to live, he'd only been out, you see, he graduated in '49. So Bill Pusey had taught him German, and it was very hard for Jim to not call Bill Pusey Dr. Pusey. But these were our colleagues and our friends. And nobody had any money. You know, the academic community, you just did it because you loved it. And the conversations were always, you know, I would hear them talking about books that suddenly I'd think, "I've got to read that." And I loved that part of our life. Of course, Jim was extremely bright in his way. He taught, but his strength really was dealing with students and working with students. But he had this mind and, after all, he was a Washington and Lee graduate and a trained mind and an English major and so forth. So it was just a very enriching experience and to interact socially with people who were much older. But there was never any thought of that. We were all colleagues and good friends. Life is very different now. Lexington had no caterers, no dining hall. [Laughter] I don't know whether—I guess there's nobody to tell you about this, because they're all gone. I'm trying to think who. Well, there was no dining hall, so it was decided we had to have a dining hall. So it was further decided that a group should tour New England and look at outstanding dining halls at secondary schools and colleges. So Jim and Jim Leyburn and Earl Mattingly, who was then treasurer, and I'm trying to think who else, piled in the car and did the New England tour, which Jim knew so extremely well because he was a product of a secondary school, Choate, and knew all of the secondary schools and recruited there. He and Frank Gilliam knew all the right people. 22 So Frank Gilliam, Jim Leyburn, anyway, Earl Mattingly, this mix of people you cannot imagine being closed up in a car with, and they played word games and, of course, Jim Leyburn won them all. You know, it was really—it was very funny. It makes me laugh when I think about it, because Jim's stories about that tour. Well, they came back, though, and ultimately we have now our beautiful, handsome dining hall. Well, now you can order food. You know, if you're going to have a party, if you Mimi Elrod decides to have a party, she can all the dining hall, and they do such beautiful, as you know, beautiful things. I think Parents' Weekends, sometimes Alumni Weekends, our alumni are just blown away. But as Jim said, "Well, they expect it to be first class." He always did, everything Washington and Lee did was first class. You don't do it if you're not going to do it first class. Over the years, I came to understand exactly what he meant. Well, we were there before all of that. Dr. and Mrs. Gaines, graduation, always the reception at home. All the entertaining was done at home. I have to laugh when I think about all of us would cart our silver up for the reception for parents at graduation. The Gaines had a farm outside of town. Somebody from Building and Grounds would go out and whack down the climbing roses in June and all the lilacs and everything. All of us faculty wives, we'd be summoned to help. So somebody would do flowers, and somebody else would do something else. I can see those climbing roses now, twined over the fireplace in the president's house, just as it is now, over the mirror, over the fireplace. And so Southern. It was all just so Southern. I remember a grandmother stepping up. I was pouring punch one night. She was a charming woman from Bethesda [Maryland] or somewhere. I knew her grandson well. She came over. He went on to become a physician. She came over and leaned over to me and she said, "Tell me, my dear. Does this handsome silver go with the house?" Because it was a very traditional house. Everybody knew it was Lee's house. And I looked around and I saw Nel Stallings' [phonetic] punch bowl, and my 23 candlesticks, and Virginia Drake's candlesticks, or Libby Washington's or whoever, you know. And that was just the way it was in those days. When anybody in the South, I guess, really had a party, everybody brought—and it always amused—I had to refrain, I wanted to burst out laughing right in this lovely woman's face. And I sort of said, "Well, yes." I don't remember what I said. [Laughter] So it was always that way. Whatever was going on, we just all did it. Of course, all that's very different now. We call somebody to do whatever. I can see Mrs. Gaines. Mrs. Gaines was much younger than Dr. Gaines, and he always treated her like she was this china doll and would tell you about his having found this flower of his life in his class. He was a very eloquent, you know, golden- toned author and all. And I can remember Mrs. Gaines in the receiving line, and I said, "Oh, Mrs. Gaines, everything is just lovely." And she said, "Darling, I was making those tomato roses at four o'clock this morning." You know, to do a tomato, I've never achieved that skill, but it looks just like a rose. So even Mrs. Gaines had been up all night long doing it. But it was a charming lifestyle. It wasn't just that it was laid back. It's just that nobody had any choice. [Laughter] Warren: Well, it sounds like there was an army of women who were really making things work. Willett: Well, faculty wives. Nobody objected to being called—you know, the term "faculty wife" is no longer valid, because it's "faculty spouse," because it's not just the women. But, you know, you've got to remember the forties and fifties, that's the way it was. Just as a great source, a great resource, for Lexington for so many years were the so-called law student wives. Well, that term certainly went out a long time ago. Warren: Talk to me about law wives. 24 Willett: Well, law student wives, we all called them, they taught school. Many of them were putting their husbands through law school. Our public schools were wonderful in those days, because, for example, Bill Pusey was chairman of the school board faculty while on the school board, VMI as well, but it seems to me W&L predominately. And law student wives worked in all the faculty offices. I remember Chester Puller's wife told Jim, flattered him out of his mind, when she brought their son for an interview, and she said to Jim when Jim allowed as how he admired General Puller and he was an ex-Marine Corps sergeant. And she said, "Oh, Mr. Farrar." She said, "General Fuller thinks the world is run by Marine Corps sergeants." Well, we thought the world was run by law student wives. They were everywhere—the offices, schools, as I said—and were a huge resource to the community. That has phased out, of course. You understand it was all male. Well, now in these days and times, had those gals been around, they'd be in the law school themselves. I'm sure many of them were at least as bright or brighter than their husbands they were putting through law school. But that was the climate. That was the way it was then. I hadn't thought about them for a long time, but I can think of those who worked in Jim's office and really did make the office go around. He couldn't have done it without them. Warren: It sure sounds like it, to me. They were the oil that kept the machine going. Willett: The improvements such as the law school—well, of course, the new law school—because it was on the front campus then. You know that. The law school was on the front campus under the Colonnade. Warren: Tell me about it. 25 Willett: The relationship between the undergraduate and the law school was very, very close, not only physically but in every way, because the life of the school was there, all of it along the Colonnade. That was a change. Of course, we are much stronger. We're a different institution now. But that was a wrench when the law school moved across the ravine. And, again, there were many alumni who felt that was a major loss. Of course, in some ways it was, but on the other hand, look what we have, and the law school is so strong and all of that. There's been a major effort for a lot of reasons to keep that bond so that they're not totally apart, each going at their business without any interaction. There's some, I'm sure, who feel strongly that—well, I know there are—that the law school should have its own development, it should have its own this, that and the other, and it should not be, I suppose they think, controlled, as it were. And I'm certainly not the person to talk to about that. I just know that there are two views of how that should be. It used to be lawyers, as we called them, many of them were graduates of Washington and Lee and then went on, of course, to law school. But there has been that intimacy among our constituencies, and I think lawyers, law students, law graduates are reluctant to think that that will become weakened. So that's something that, as I say, I'm not really not qualified to talk about to give you chapter and verse on. I just know that and you can imagine there would be feeling. There are those who came as the law school began to change, and we had students from Syracuse and students from here and there and other places. That was a cultural shock, to some extent, and I'm sure for them it was. We had been, I want to say, predominately—but I'm not sure of that, I'm not sure that the law school student body was predominately Washington and Lee undergraduates. Certainly it was more regional, just as our student body was. Warren: It was high numbers. 26 Willett: Yeah. But it would be strong from the same community, same states where we were drawing undergraduates students. But I think it would have been mostly Washington and Lee undergrads. So that's been a change. But I think on the whole, I was shocked here, when I first came to live in Chattanooga, to live at Lookout Mountain, talking to an alumnus and I said, "Well, have you been back?" He was a journalism major. I knew that. I hadn't known him as an undergraduate. I said something, "Have you been back?" And he immediately said, "No." He said, "Well, I stopped. I was driving through Lexington and I stopped there three or four years ago." And he said, "No, I'm not going back." He said, "I was shocked by the hideous buildings they've put up." Well, I was shocked when he said that. But I figured obviously I wasn't going to change his mind, so I just let that pass. But he was referring to, I guess, the law school, Gaines Hall, the dining hall. I think—well, now that we're talking about that, on the other hand, there's a family here whose—the grandmother is a friend of mine, and she was telling me about going to her grandson's graduation. Her son was a graduate, now her grandson, her son-in-law. And she was telling me how perfectly beautiful graduation was, how gorgeous the campus was, how beautifully done everything was, and, what pleased me more than anything else, how attractive the student body was. The valedictorian was marvelous. This is a woman who is so outspoken she would not have hesitated to tell me, "What a dump! Those kids!" I mean, in the strongest terms she would have said, "They were the pits." Not at all. And many people, a number of people who saw on CNN bits of the Mock Convention, including the most loyal UVA alumnus in the world, who's here on this mountain, couldn't say enough about the Washington and Lee students and how well they performed, how articulate, how attractive they were, and the young women who 27 spoke. They just went—I mean, they raved more than I would dare rave, and I was thrilled to hear that. So we have our, you know, our dissenters and our fans. That particular alumnus, I think, is missing a lot by refusing to go back, but then there are always people who want no change, and I can understand that, too, who want no change, and you have to kind of show them that it works. Warren: One of the things I've found out in doing these interviews is that there are a lot of people who don't come back for a long time, and then something clicks. I think it's something in their own lives clicks and they come back and it works. So don't give up on that thought. Willett: Well, you become conscious of your own mortality and— Warren: And then they need to go back to the source. Willett: And you need to go back and touch base, and it's thrilling to go back and find—you know, if you go back, for example, to find your old home, let's say, in the city, chances are it's been torn down. So it is a thrill to go back. You and I were talking, I think, this morning earlier about how you loved seeing the stones that are worn in the Colonnade and the handrail in Washington Hall that so many before you—I'm reminded of someone who is not a Washington and Lee alumnus whose company sent him to one of our summer programs. It was one of those business efforts, I think. Jim was active in marketing those programs to alumni and all that for a while. We used to go to everything, which is something now that's changed a lot. We went to everything. Well, this one morning I was there for breakfast with this group, because you had to make them all feel at home, you know, and all. And here came this guy puffing and blowing, and he was staying across the footbridge over at the Woods Creek Apartments. He came across, and he was just absolutely almost speechless. He said, "Do you people—" He said, "I'm at this place. I can't believe it. I walk across in the 28 mist across that footbridge, and I think George Washington made a gift to this place. Robert E. Lee was president." I mean, he was from a part of the country that didn't have this long tradition that we just take for granted, and it was newer. He just never got over it. The whole week he was there, he was just knocked out by the beauty, the reminders around us all the time. I've always loved the fact that the board decreed that the faculty houses—to us they were Dr. [Lucius Junius] Desha's house. The faculty lived, in other words, in the two houses on either side of the Colonnade. Only recently—I'm trying right now to think is anybody living in any of them. I don't think they are. Warren: Dean Howison is in one of them. Willett: Oh, that's right. Yeah, that one. But the board decree that when there were improvements made physically to keep them from falling down, that they would always be in use. I think in the early days they envisioned their being lived in by faculty, because that's why they were built. It was thought that it would be a good idea for these young men at Washington College, it would be a good influence to be surrounded by their teachers. But they are all in use for an academic purpose, which is very meaningful. They were built in, I think it's 1840? Warren: Very close to that. Willett: Yeah. And students may or may not realize that it's part of their everyday life. It's just great that we have—well, we've been so blessed. We've been protected and everything that could possibly still—well, we never had any money either. You have to remember that during the war, after the Civil War years and so forth, everything, they had to make do. That reminds me back to Dr. Toynbee, he so enjoyed his time at Washington and Lee, he and his wife. Her nephew then came as a student, Hugh. Hugh was coming. I forget the details now, but he was going to get there ahead of the student body. So the Toynbees had asked Jim and me if we would allow Hugh to stay at our house until 29 school started and he could get in the dorm. I now realize he was a very self-conscious young man, totally out of his element. He came from the north part of England up near York, and he'd gone to an academy right on the Scottish border, and here he was suddenly in the South. I remember he being at our house, and he was—I was trying to give him the kind of food he was going to find, like sandwiches and stuff he was going to run into, and he would say things like, "Oh, you Americans do like things between bread, don't you?" And I was, "What?" But one of the things, I pointed out the house that Matt and Maureen Paxton live in now. Matt's old, elderly cousins occupied that house and it's just this handsome, elegant, pre-Revolutionary house. Our house had a view of it, and I pointed this out to Hugh. Hugh Bolton was his name. And I said, "Hugh, that lovely handsome stone house down there in the field is a very elegant, handsome, pre-Revolutionary house." And he turned to me and he said, "Oh, really? Which revolution?" Of course, I immediately rose to the bait and said, "The recent unpleasantness with your country." [Laughter] I often thought, speaking of minorities, that boy was blonde and blue-eyed, but he must have had a rough year as a young Englishman with no idea what he was about to experience. But anyway. [Laughter] Warren: That's a wonderful story. I'd like to go a particular direction talking about young boys. What was it like for you to raise your kids in this environment? Willett: Oh, it was just marvelous. Warren: Tell me about it. Willett: Oh, I never had to—my friends, with whom I had grown up in Lynchburg, and my sister were carting their children, carpooling, doing all that stuff all the time and complaining about, "Oh, I just live my life in the car. I always have to pick up somebody and take them to dancing school." None of that in Lexington. As soon as 30 the boys were old enough, they would either ride their bike to school—they could to Waddell, which was nearby—or they'd come home, drop their books, jump on their bikes, and ride over to W&L to the football field or lacrosse or whatever was going on. The recent alumni magazine, the picture of Lyle, one of my grandsons—you know, the picture to which I refer? It's out on the porch now. He's shagging balls. It's déjà vu. That's what his father did. That's what Scotty did, both my sons. They just grew up on the campus, and the students were wonderful to them. Oh, the boys had, you know, their heroes. Butch West, who all of his sons have come from Baltimore to W&L and to the law school, he was back from Vietnam and he was in law school then. He was coaching lacrosse in the afternoons. Guys like that who had known Jim so well as students would take them even on the team bus, invite them to go on the team—oh, I remember the boys coming home, "Mom, we've been invited to come to the Duke game on the team bus!" Well, they were just thrilled. And they will tell you that. I'm sure if you've ever talked to Jimmy very long, you realize that it was just—I mean, it was like every day was Christmas for them to be part of that. When Mock Convention was going on—they were just school children now—all of that, to be a part of it. Lexington was safe. Everything was five minutes away. It was just almost—the word "idyllic" comes to mind. Nothing's perfect, but it was certainly—we had decided Jim very much wanted them to have a secondary school experience. He had loved his. He certainly was the strongest possible supporter of public schools. It wasn't that. He just felt it was an enrichment that he would like to give his children just because he had benefitted greatly from it. So our boys did go to Episcopal High School at the ninth grade. But one reason, it wasn't just the experience, he wanted them to have—both of us want them to have an experience away from Lexington so that they could consider Washington and Lee along with other colleges. We felt it would give them a more objective view than had they just stayed in Lexington and never left. 31 So, as it turned out, it was their choice. We felt that we would choose the secondary school. Lee McLaughlin, who was much lamented, who died so tragically when he was just really getting started a few years into his job as football coach and then hadn't really even gotten—he was to take over AD, I think that fall and then he died. But our boys have gone to Lee's camp outside of Lexington, and he and Jim were great friends, and Jim admired him so as a man and wanted them to have that kind of influence. So that was one reason we chose Episcopal High. Plus the fact that from an admission officer's point of view, Episcopal boys did extremely well. Boys from Westminster and Atlanta and from a private school in Houston, St. John's, I think it was, just performed so well, he felt that that was the place. And, I must say, we also were influenced by the fact that we could be there a lot and see all their games and stuff, and that's exactly what we did. We were there. I always felt they were the best years of Jim's life professionally, because it took him away from his office. He never gave himself permission to leave his office normally, and during those years, the six years that they were away, he was there often, and it was far better for him to be there, because admissions is pressure work. So I was always very grateful. Of course, his obligation, as he saw it, to his children was pretty strong, and therefore he was able to leave on that Saturday and go to their game and not honor that alumnus who might have called and said, "Could you meet us at your office Saturday morning? I want Johnny to—I want you to show him the campus." Warren: Right. Willett: Yeah. He ever said no. Warren: We're at the end of this tape. I'm going to pop in another one.