Dan Wooldridge

                                             July 28, 1996
                                        Mame Warren,

                                          interviewer

Warren: This is Mame Warren. Today is the 28th of July, 1996. I'm in Lexington,
Virginia, with Dan Wooldridge, who has fabulous stories about fraternities. Go for
it.
Wooldridge: No fabulous stories.
Warren: Oh, yes, you do.
Wooldridge: Just a few things that happened over the years. I do recall one
particular time, a fraternity brother of mine had a Model A Ford and, of course, at
our fraternity, you parked your car around back behind the house. We had a rather
large parking lot back there. Several of us decided that we wanted to play an
appropriate trick on this fellow. So a number of us got together, and we waited until
we were sure that he was sound asleep. Then we went out into the back yard. A
Model A Ford was not difficult to get into at all in those days. We took that Model
A Ford, and we rolled it around to the front of the fraternity house.

         The house had a very wide front step, probably about twelve, thirteen feet
wide, and had double front doors. So we managed to carry the car up the steps, and
opened both of the front doors, and fit it into the front hall at the base of the stairs,
and closed the doors. Of course, we all went to sleep.

         The next morning, our fraternity brother came downstairs and found his
Model A Ford sitting in the middle of the hall on the first floor, and having, of

                                                                                                                       1
course, no idea how it got there, but even worse, I think it took him quite some time
to enlist the aid of various and sundry people to figure out how to get it out of there.
Warren: What was his reaction?
Wooldridge: Well, of course, he was astounded at first. He was a very good sport
about the whole thing. He laughed uproariously, and thought it must have taken
us several months to figure how to pull that on him, when, in fact, it didn't take us
very long at all.
Warren: Is he somebody who would have pulled the same kind of trick on
somebody else?
Wooldridge: Oh, easily.
Warren: Did this kind of thing go on all the time?
Wooldridge: No, this is the only time that we had anything at our fraternity house.
I'm not conversant perhaps with what went on in some of the others. But that was
all that happened at our house.
Warren: What time period are we talking about?
Wooldridge: This would have been about 1949, I would think. There were a lot of
veterans back at school, which was a very good thing, '47, '48, '49, in that period.
Tempered some of the younger people and had them act a little more like adults
than they might have done under other circumstances.

         However, on another occasion, one of those particular veterans had a little
too much to drink, and we gathered him up and put him in the living room on a
couch, put a blanket over him, and folded his hands across his chest. We went
down in the basement and got a six-candle candelabra, very tall, and we put that at
the foot of the couch, and we got an equally tall one and put it at the head of the
couch. Then we all sat around drinking beer, waiting for him to wake up. Of
course, from time to time we would make a little noise in order to make sure that
he wasn't going to sleep peacefully all night long.

                                                                                                                                2
         And he finally did wake up, and when he did, and he opened his eyes and
saw his hands were folded and looked down at his feet and saw the candelabra down
there-of course, all the other lights in the room were out-then he looked up
above his forehead and when he saw the candelabra up there, he immediately said,
"If I'm alive, why am I here? And if I'm dead, why do I have to ago to the
bathroom?" which sent us all into uproarious laughter. One wonders perhaps at
that remark if maybe he were not significantly awake when we put him on the
couch, but who knows.

         We had a regional fraternity meeting. Our fraternity was, of course, in what
was called District Two, so we had colleges and universities represented from
Maryland, North Carolina, Virginia, West Virginia, and Kentucky, I think. We had
a regional meeting, which is held periodically, and was moved around annually to
various and sundry participating fraternities in what was known in those days as
Region Two, in our particular fraternity. Having these boys come from other
universities which were coed, this put a little bit of a burden on us, because we,
being at that time an all-male institution, we didn't have any way to get these
fellows dates. It was traditional that on the first night you had what was called the
smoker, which was just a gathering of everybody to have a few drinks and sit
around and talk and whatnot, the business of the fraternity being done in the
daytime. The second evening, or the closing evening of these festivities was to be
sort of a dance and that sort of a thing. We did not, as I say, have access to any girls
on the campus at that time.

         So I was appointed the chairman of the Entertainment Committee to take
care of this. I went to a neighboring institution seven miles away, in Buena Vista,
and inquired of a lady who was in charge over there, if there was any possibility at
all that sixty or seventy, I really didn't know how many would be required, of her
girls could come over on, I believe, a Thursday night, on a week night, and could

                                                                                                                        3
perhaps get dispensation to stay out a little later than normal on a week night, and
be participants in this activity. I really didn't know how this request would be
received, but much to my surprise, she thought it was a very fine thing, and said
that she would be very happy to cooperate, and she would permit her girls to stay
out, as I recall, until 11:30 or midnight, which was very unusual in those days for an
all-girls institution of the particular type, since they were basically an institution that
was not a full college. It was two years of high school and two years of college. It
was a junior college.

         So having gotten her approval, it then occurred to me that there had to be
some way that we should select these girls, and I asked her how could we select
these girls, and she reached down and handed me the yearbook and said, "Take this
back to Washington and Lee with you and submit to me the list of the names of the
girls that you would like, and I'll ask them whether they would like to come over."

         Well, I thought this was a marvelous thing, one of the more latter-day
additions of the rogues gallery, I suppose, you might say. So I did that and we sent
her a list. We sent her a list, I think of something like eighty-five girls and said that
we really needed sixty-six or something like that, because we figured that some of
them would not want to come.

         The girls came. We had a marvelous party. We had a chaperone there who
was from that seminary, and she was quite small, about five-foot-two or three, or so.
She came in with the girls. The girls all arrived in taxicabs.

         I had a punch bowl in one room that had nothing in it but grapefruit juice,
and I had a punch bowl in the other room that had a few other things in it. We, of
course, assured the chaperone that the punch bowl with the grapefruit juice in it
was the only thing that anybody was going to be drinking that evening. And the
party went off very, very well. I did not take a drink the whole evening, because I
was concerned to make sure that everything went well.

                                                                                                                            4
         When the party was over with and the girls were headed back to their cabs
which had lined up in front of the fraternity house, I finally broke down and was
drinking a beer when this little chaperone came running up the walk, and came
running up the stairs, and came running up to me, and sort of stomped her foot,
and looked up and me and says, "Young man, you're in charge of this. It's your
fault."

         I said, "What is my fault?"
         She said, "I've lost seven girls."
         I assured her that I was sure that she had not lost seven girls. I told her I was
sure that they would turn up certainly that evening. I didn't want her to think they
would turn up the next morning. But it was true, she was short seven girls. I
looked all over the place and couldn't find them. It finally occurred to me that
perhaps they would much rather ride back seven or eight miles with a Washington
and Lee student, or some student from Pennsylvania, than to take a cab back along
with five other girls. As it turned out, that's exactly what happened. I inquired the
next day, and all of the girls did get back safely, and they all did get back on time, and
everything worked out very well. It was a very happy occasion for everybody.
Warren: What do you mean the business of the fraternity was done in the day?
What kind of meeting was this?
Wooldridge: This is a regional fraternity meeting. At that particular point in time, I
was not one of the officers. You had several, as I recall, three delegates from each
chapter who were attending this meeting. It had to do with general fraternity
matters, a scholarship, participation in the athletics, or various endeavors that were
important to each university, and attempt to get perhaps those fraternities who were
perhaps not top drawer at their university, to instill them with some of the desires
and some of the recommendations that the more successful fraternities had to assist
them in becoming campus leaders and that sort of thing.

                                                                                                                  5
Warren: I want to know what brought you to Washington and Lee in the first place.
Wooldridge: Well, it's kind of an unusual story. My father worked for the
Chesapeake and Ohio Railway Company, and in those days we had passenger
service all over the place, which we don't have today. I told him, and he agreed,
and so did my mother, that I wanted to go away to college. I was from Cleveland,
Ohio. There were obviously a number of colleges in the state of Ohio that I could
have attended. Many of my high school friends were going to Oberlin, Ohio
Wesleyan, and Kenyon, and whatnot, in Ohio. My father said, "If you're going to go
away to school, it would be very helpful to me, financially, if you would pick
someplace that is on the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway route." So I looked up and I
found up that, in general, Washington and Lee, and William & Mary, and the
University of Virginia, and perhaps with a little stretching, Duke, were all in that
particular category.

         I guess it was probably February or January, I graduated from high school in
January. I was a mid-year graduate. You didn't really have to have your names in
with colleges until March or April, so immediately after graduation, I took my little
railroad pass and I started out on a trip. I visited Washington and Lee, and William
& Mary, and the University of Virginia, and Duke, spent approximately two days at
each. When I came back, I told my parents that there was no school that I wanted to
go to other than Washington and Lee, that that's where I wanted to go-period.
Fortunately, I did manage to get in.
Warren: But why Washington and Lee? What appealed to you?
Wooldridge: Well, I was born in Richmond, Virginia. My parents were from
Richmond, even though I was never raised there. Washington and Lee, to my
parents, was sort of the Harvard of the South, and they liked the idea of me going
back to school in Virginia, in the state in which I was born. That really was their
reason for coming.

                                                                                                                                6
         My reason for coming was, frankly, because on the two days I spent at the
campus, every student spoke to me and it felt like I was home, and that suited me
just fine.
Warren: Tell me what the speaking tradition was like then.
Wooldridge: Well, basically you spoke to everyone on the campus. It didn't make
any difference if he was, for example, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, who
did visit the campus. His name was Fred Vinson. His son, Fred Vinson, Jr., was in
school here at the time. And it didn't make any difference whether it was the local
janitor or some gas station attendant, or a truck driver, or a fellow student, or
which. If they were on the campus, you spoke. You said, "Hi there," or "Good
morning," or "How you doing?" or "Hey, you."

         One particular fellow who I enjoyed over the years and who later turned up
to be for about six sessions a congressman of the United States, I'll never forget him,
because Jack Marsh is his name. His favorite greeting to anybody was, "How you
making it?" That's what he always said, and that's how I remember him.

         I had occasion one time to impress a friend of mine who was in Washington,
D.C. from Chicago, and he had never been in the Capitol before. I took him around,
and we were driving up to what is the front entrance of the Capitol Building on the
east side. Every thinks the front entrance is really the west side. It's not. We were
driving up there and the policeman stopped us and said we were not allowed to do
that. It just happened then I saw Jack walking down the steps of the Capitol. I asked
the policeman, "May I get out of my car for one moment?"

         He said, "Yes."
         I got out and I said, "May I yell at that man?"
         He said, "Yes."
         So I let out a whistle and said, "Hey Jack, how you making it?"

                                                                                                                              7
         He turned around and came over and shook hands, and I introduced him to
my friend from Chicago, and he told the policeman, he said, "This is a friend of
mine." He said, "Let him drive around back here if he wants to do this."

         Of course, the officer said, "Yes, sir, Congressman."
         So it was a nice reunion. He and I had not seen each other for perhaps, at that
point, maybe twenty years, that sort of thing.
Warren: So the speaking tradition does pay off.
Wooldridge: Oh, absolutely. Absolutely.
Warren: That's a great story.
Wooldridge: Jack was a delightful man, and still is. Later he became Secretary of the
Army, after he decided he didn't want to be a politician anymore. He's one of the
real dear people that went to school here.
Warren: You mentioned Fred Vinson. That reminds me that you were here during
the Bicentennial.
Wooldridge: Right.
Warren: Tell me about what went on then.
Wooldridge: Well, that was a huge event. Of course, Dr. Gaines was president of
Washington and Lee at the time, and gained the distinction of being known as the
silver-tongued orator of the South, which he was without question. He could speak
for hours on end without a note, on virtually any subject that you could think of.
         But the Bicentennial was very special. We felt that starting with Liberty Hall
Academy, we had been here a long, long time, and we were going to be here for a lot
longer. I think probably at that point in time we had our attention drawn to the fact
that each one of us does, in fact, owe some gratitude to George Washington. At that
Bicentennial, more than the previous time, a couple of years that I was here, I think
his part in donating $50,000 to the school was more emphasized than it had been
previous to that. You'll find it now in most of the university publications, but I

                                                                                                                      8
don't recall that it was pushed real hard, not until the Bicentennial, but I could be
wrong about that.
Warren: So what kind of events happened?
Wooldridge: Oh, gosh. I really can't recall everything that went on. There was a
number of ceremonies and that sort of thing. After I got out of here, I think one of
the things that I was most impressed with is I came back when the front campus was
declared a national historical landmark. I don't remember exactly what year that
was. Linwood Holton, I think, was governor of Virginia at that time. Of course, he
was a graduate of Washington and Lee. I don't remember just exactly when that
was.
Warren: That was a big event?
Wooldridge: Very much so. Very much so.
Warren: Have you come back a lot as an alum?
Wooldridge: Oh, yes. Oh, yes. I've come back a lot before they started the Alumni
College, and I've come back a lot after it was started. I served on the Alumni College
Board, and it's been a very, very great experience.
Warren: We were talking a little bit before about the devotion of the alumni. Can
you tell me something about that?
Wooldridge: I think it's a very special thing. I hope that under the new-it isn't
new anymore-but under the arrangement of being a coed institution now, I hope
that that will survive. There's an awful lot of loyalty here. We had a meeting here
three weeks ago, and a gentleman came down from Washington, D.C., to speak to
us, from the Smithsonian. He has spoken at a lot of colleges and universities across
the country. He made the comment to me that he had never seen or been at an
institution where there seemed to be as much loyalty on the part of the alumni as
there is at Washington and Lee. It's just a real warm feeling. Everybody kind of
hangs together.

                                                                                                                                     9
         I think part of it in my time frame was the fact that I was here with a lot of
veterans. It wasn't all seriousness. They all had a lot of fun, but they were
interested in getting through school. They had given years to the war effort, and
they were behind in their feeling. They were here to study, and they were here to
get out in the world and make their mark. I think that did a lot for those who were
not veterans at that particular time. I think it did more for them than it actually did
for the veterans when you come right down to it.
Warren: So having the veterans here enhanced your experience?
Wooldridge: Absolutely. Absolutely.
Warren: In the classroom?
Wooldridge: Yes.
Warren: How would that manifest itself then? Why did they make a difference?
Wooldridge: Well, they were interested in studying, they participated in athletics,
they participated in all phases of the university life, but they did not waste their
time. They were not interested in wasting their time. I think they felt that they had
given up several years, some of them many years, of their lives, and they were
interested in getting on to the purpose of raising a family, doing their job, and
getting their career going. They did not want to be interrupted in that effort.
Warren: So tell me about your academic experience here. You were thrown in a
classroom, and you had not only people your ·own age, but a lot of considerably older
people?
Wooldridge: Oh, yes. Well, I was fortunate in that I came from a very fine high
school. I went to school in Lakewood, Ohio, and it was an outstanding institution.
We had even calculus and analytical geometry taught to us in high school, which
was rare. When I came here to Washington and Lee, I don't know how it is today,
but in those days, the first four or five days you did nothing but take tests. Then
they called you in, and they permitted me to elect out of a number of freshman

                                                                                                                       10
subjects. So I started out in a lot of sophomore courses rather than freshman, which
made it a little bit tougher for me, and it meant that I was unable to attain some of
the goals that I really thought that I should have attained, but it was good experience
for me.

         I really enjoyed the good lecturers, and we had some really fine, outstanding
lecturers. L. K. Johnson, in particular, comes to mind, who was a tremendous
lecturer in the business school. Of course, we had some that weren't so fine, but
they didn't last.
Warren: What faculty members made a difference to you?
Wooldridge: L. K. Johnson. Lewis Adams, who had been formerly a broker on Wall
Street. He was almost entire bald and, of course, we naturally called him "Curly
Lew." He was dean of the commerce school, and a very, very, very, tough professor,
unquestionably. We had a professor in taxation accounting, whose name escapes
me at the moment, but I really enjoyed his courses. I really feel that I think as most
of our graduates do, is any success that we have had in our lives has been to a great
extent owed to Washington and Lee, the Honor System, the way the school
conducted themselves, and the way we conducted ourselves.
Warren: How has the Honor System made a_ difference, then and now?
Wooldridge: I can't speak to it now, other than I'm a little concerned, if what I hear
is correct, there seems to be now some gradation of the Honor System that there
seems to be a feeling that some violations of honor are not as bad as others. When I
was in school here, you either violated the Honor System or you did not, and if you
violated the Honor System, you had twenty-four hours to get out of town.

         I had one particularly dear friend of mine who was expelled. He turned in a
paper-it was not a term paper, it was just a monthly-type paper, and he quoted
directly from a book that was not the textbook. It was a book that was in the library.

                                                                                                                                  11
He did not put quotation marks around that quote, nor did he down at the bottom
put a footnote, nor did he say, "As So-and-so says in their book thus and such."

         The professor recognized the quote, found the book, handed the book and the
paper over to Honor Court. They called him up and said, "Is this your work?"

         He said, "Yes."
         They said, "This is an obvious direct quote."
         He said, "I should have put quotation marks around it. I neglected to do that.
It was an error on my part."
         They said, "You have twenty-four hours to get out of town."
         Now, I don't think today, from what I hear anyway, that the Honor System is
quite as stringent as that, but it was definitely stringent in my day, and I was proud
of the fact that the professor would hand out his test, and then say to the students,
"If any of you have any question, I will be in my office," and he would leave the
classroom. You were on your honor. So far as I know, I never cheated, and I never
saw anybody that cheated. It just became a way of life.
Warren: I need to turn the tape over.