Wooldridge interview [Begin Tape 2, Side 1] Warren: This is tape two with Dan Wooldridge on July 28, 1996. Wooldridge: I'll tell you why I never went back to a certain institution for a date. My first date that I had at Washington and Lee, I believe it was a Sunday afternoon. I had been pledged to the fraternity that day, and they had arranged for all of us pledges to have blind dates. I ended up in a car going over to Sweet Briar. They had, as I said, arranged blind dates for us. Here it is maybe the ninth of September or the 23 twelfth of September, something like this. My date comes down the stairs, and she has on what is apparently a full-length mink coat. I mean, it's hotter than blue blazes out, but she's got this coat on. It turns out that she was the daughter of a senator, as I recall. Anyway, we all went to the movie, which I thought was very nice, and we had a very nice time. I think that she had decided it was too warm for a coat and took it back. But anyway, we went to the movie. After we went to the movie, it was decided that we would all go to the White House restaurant for dinner. Having very little money in my pocket, I was appalled at this, but nevertheless had really no choice but to go. So we went out to the White House restaurant. As I recall, there were four couples there, and the young lady on my left started, and she ordered a hot dog or whatever. Anyway, all the dates ordered either a hot dog or a hamburger. It came around to my date who was on my right, and she ordered the New York strip steak. So the waitress turned to me and said, "What will you have, sir?" I asked her, I said, "What kind of soup do you have?" And she told me. I said, "How much is that?" She told me. I figured, I can make it. I said, "Do crackers come with that?" She said, "Yes." I said, "Fine, bring me a bowl of that soup and all the crackers that you can spare, because my date just did me out of most of my money, but I have-" Well, I did that deliberately figuring that the young lady would say, "Oh, for goodness sakes, why didn't you tell me? I'll have hamburger like everybody else." But she did not. She had her sirloin steak, and I did not go back to Sweet Briar ever again. Later on, two years later, I had the good fortune to have a little automobile of my own that lasted for about a little over one semester. But I was going down for a date at Randolph-Macon one time when a fraternity brother of mine asked me 24 could I would drop him off at Sweet Briar and pick him up on the way back. I believe it was a Saturday night. I said, "Sure." So we went over to Amherst and turned right and went out toward Lynchburg. We pulled up in front of Sweet Briar, and I said, "Here you are." He said, "Well, the school is like a half a mile back in there." I said, "I know very well where the school is." He said, "Well, take me back there." I said, "No." I said, "I don't set foot on that place." I said, "I'll let you out here and this is where I will pick you up." I would not go in there again. Warren: Boy, she really made an impression. Wooldridge: And never did to this day. Warren: Can I ask what happened to your car? Wooldridge: It finally gave out. It was a 1935 Plymouth, and I have no idea how many miles it had on it. It was just a one-seat in the front with a regular trunk back, and I reversed the trunk door and made a rumble seat out of that back there, which made it kind of fun. That lasted almost a year, as I recall. I think I ended up selling it for about as much money as I bought it for, as I recall. I didn't really have a need for an automobile. There were plenty of other people that I could get rides with, and I did so. Warren: So that must have been a real challenge to get dates. Wooldridge: It wasn't too bad. I think at one time, at least I always felt that I held the record. I had twenty-six straight nights at Hollins College. Warren: You've got to tell me about that. Wooldridge: And I didn't have an automobile. Warren: You've got to tell me about that. Wooldridge: Well, there was no story to it. There was a girl at Hollins College that I was very fond of. In fact, there were several, but there was one in particular. I 25 wasn't bent on setting any record or anything like that, but it just ended up that I managed to be able to be down there twenty-six evenings in a row, which is quite some doing without an automobile. Warren: I dare say. And you managed to keep your grades up? Wooldridge: Yes. Warren: How exactly did that work? I mean, it takes a while to get down there. Wooldridge: Yes, it does. It takes a while. Warren: So how could you keep your studies up and spend all this time on the road? Wooldridge: Well, I can't explain that. I just know that I got it done. Warren: So what would you do when you went to Hollins? Not to get too personal, but I would love to have a description of the various women's colleges and what it was like going there. Wooldridge: Well, a lot of times we'd just sit around and talk. They had lounges, and you could go for a walk, or you could go out to a movie theater. Some of their . seniors had cars. In fact, one of the girls down there lent me her Oldsmobile convertible, and I used to drive back and forth in her car, which wasn't all bad. It was kind of fun. I don't remember it being anything fantastic or anything like that. We just had a nice time. We would go for walks and we would sit in the lounge and talk. Occasionally, if I felt like it, I might even bring a book down there and study a little bit. Warren: What were the roads like then? Wooldridge: Route 11, three lanes, and 81 was not in existence at that time. There was a cutoff around Buchanan, so that you didn't go down through the main street of Buchanan. It was doable in a reasonable length of time. You could make it down there in forty-five minutes. 26 Warren: What was the difference between a Hollins girl and a Randolph-Macon girl? Wooldridge: That's hard to say. I think at that point in time, Randolph-Macon had a better scholastic standing when compared to Hollins. I don't believe that's necessarily true anymore, but at that time it was. I remember one particular girl. I was down there at Randolph-Macon. I had a date. An absolutely gorgeous girl came walking into the lounge down there and greeted her, via my cadet date, and said, "Oh, I've forgotten something. I've got to run back up to the room. I'll be right back down again." I had a fraternity brother with me who was very sharp mentally. So I immediately told him, I said, "You're absolutely wrong. I know I'm right, and I will bet you fifty cents." He said, "Well, you're on, I'll bet you fifty cents." "Okay," I said, "there's only one way to get it settled." So I turned to the VMI cadet and said, "We're having an argument." I said, "We both think we have seen your date before." I said, "I think she's from Mississippi, and he says she's from Alabama." He said, "You're right. She's from Mississippi." I said, "Pay up," which he did. So that let me figure out where she was from. So then I could look her up, which I did, and find out her name. I called her on the phone and identified myself and told her how I got her name. She thought that was rather clever. I said, "I'd like to come back down to Randolph-Macon and perhaps we could go out for dinner or something." We made a date for the next night. So I went down there and we had a marvelous time. When I saw her to the door of her dormitory, she said that she had had an absolutely marvelous time, and had one of the best evenings she had ever had. I said, "Fine." I said, "We should do this again." She said, "Let me run up and get my date book." 27 I said, "Fine." So she went up and got her date book and she came back down, and she said, "Oh," she said, "I have an opening on Friday night, nine weeks from today." I said, "Nine weeks? I might be dead in nine weeks." I said, "I don't really want to make arrangements that far in advance." I said, "Why don't you do this. Why don't you see if you can get that date book down to about three or four weeks. Deny dates for a while and I'll call you in about three weeks." She said, "Oh, that would be great." I gave her a goodnight kiss and off I went. Well, I waited three of four weeks, very patiently, and I called her on the phone. I said, "How does your date book look?" She said, "Well, I'm getting it down." I said, "That's marvelous." She said, "Yes, it's down to eight weeks." I said, "That's not the agreement that we had." I said, "I'll tell you what I will do. I will let you call me." I said, "When you get it down to three or four weeks, you call me and we'll see if we can't make it out for dinner another day." She never called. She ended up to be, oh, I don't know, Native Cotton and Miss Southern Hospitality, and three or four other things like that. It was a very beautiful girl. I'm sure that she deserved all of that accolade that she was getting from the various cadets at VMI, or the guys from the University of Virginia. I never saw her at a Washington and Lee party. I never saw her over here. I have no idea what she was doing with her social life. Warren: She was doing something with it. Wooldridge: Absolutely. Absolutely. Warren: Did you go up to Staunton? 28 Wooldridge: A couple of times. Not very much. Two or three times, I think. More than anything, I suppose, I enjoyed going up there because I discovered that I had an economics professor who was dating a teacher from Mary Baldwin. We ran across each other up there, and he was very easy to kid. So I proceeded to kid him about that on a number of occasions, before class and after class, but never during class, never in front of anybody else. But I teased him about it. The teacher he was dating was quite attractive, and I offered to switch dates with him and that sort of thing. I didn't go up there very much. Most of my dates were predominantly at Hollins, a few at Randolph-Macon, but not very many, mostly at Hollins, and a few at Southern Seminary. Warren: So you wound up settling. Wooldridge: And a few at Greenbriar College for Women, which was up at Lewisburg, West Virginia. Warren: That's the first I've heard of that. Wooldridge: Greenbriar College for Women. It was a junior college up there, far away from anybody and, therefore, when the girls at Greenbriar College for Women heard that there were some Washington and Lee men coming over, they would generally line the windows up there and wave. It was quite an event for them. Greenbriar Military Academy was nearby, but that was strictly a high school, and these girls were last two years of high school, first two years of college, so many of them felt that the Greenbriar Military Academy boys were beneath them. So they liked to date Washington and Lee students. Warren: So how would you decide who to invite for something like Fancy Dress or finals? Wooldridge: Well, whoever you happened to be going with at that particular time, if you were going steady with someone. Generally speaking, you obviously never 29 took a blind date to one of those, or at least, I certainly never did. It was a significant amount of money. Warren: What kind of money? Wooldridge: I believe Fancy Dress was probably, oh, I don't remember. My guesstimate is it would probably be around $100 or $110, something like-see, in those days, you had a Thursday night dance, Friday afternoon tea dance, Friday night dance, Saturday afternoon, Saturday night dance. Warren: Good grief. Wooldridge: This was quite a social event. Warren: Would the same band play for all? Wooldridge: Sometimes you would have two bands. Warren: Do you remember who performed? Wooldridge: Glenn Miller was one. Warren: Really? Wooldridge: Yes. I believe at that point, of course, Glenn Miller had died, I believe it was Tex Beneke and the Glenn Miller Orchestra. I don't remember all the bands that we had. It was first-class, no question about it. Warren: Would you rent your tux? Wooldridge: Oh, yes. Fancy Dress, of course, was always a theme, and it was quite often, in fact, most of the time, it wasn't a tux, it was costume, and the costumes came down from New York City. We sent them the sizes and they came in. Warren: Do you remember what you went as? Wooldridge: I really don't. I honestly don't. Warren: I wonder if your date would. Wooldridge: I'll tell you a story. I don't know what went on other places, but when I was a freshmen, a fraternity brother, one day relatively early in the year, like maybe the tenth or twelfth, fifteenth of October, said to me, "Go down to the ABC store and 30 sipping on our Seagrams Seven. They were talking and I was just sitting there saying nothing. Finally, Red says, "Well, Ma, what do you think? What does it look like?" She said, "Oh, I think eleven is about right." He said, "Eleven. Okay." He said, "You think that's for sure?" She said, "I wouldn't swear to it, but I think it's about right." So he said, "Okay. W~'ll be here shortly after midnight." She said, "Fine." So I reached for the bottle and Red promptly restrained my hand and said, "Come on, we're leaving, the bottle's for Ma Gehring." She thanked me profusely for that. So we left. We were walking down the steps and out to the street, and I said, "Red, what is going on?" He said, "Don't you realize this weekend is the big VMI weekend? Ma has girls staying at her place. Sometimes she has fifteen, eighteen girls. But when they come in, Ma decides which ones might want to go out after the VMI cadets have to be in." He said, "She's got eleven that will want to go out tonight, so you and I have got to find nine other guys." I said, "Oh, okay. I-think we can do that." I said, "But wait a minute. Who picks and chooses who :for who?" He said, "Well, Ma will line up you date and mine because she's got our names, but she doesn't have the names of the other nine." He said, "\Ve'll just go across the street and we'll have some drinks and have some dancing and some music, and whenever the girls want to go home, we'll take them home." I got mine in at 8:15 the next morning. [Laughter] Her VMI cadet, I believe, was coming up the walk as I was going down, as I recall. Warren: Was Ma supposedly a chaperone to these girls? 32 Wooldridge: I don't really think so. I think she let various and sundry colleges in the area know that she had room at her place for girls. I think as far as the other women's colleges that were concerned, I think they knew if their girls were at Ma Gehring's, they were safe while they were at Ma Gehring's, you know. I mean, they weren't at the local hotel. In those days, see, we didn't .have a lot of motels and hotels and that sort of thing around. There weren't a great number of places for these young ladies to stay. If it hadn't been for people like Ma Gehring, we would have had a little more difficult time getting dates into town. There was the Mayflower Hotel and, I think, the Robert E. Lee. It was advantageous for the girls from the standpoint that Ma Gehring didn't charge them a lot of money. I mean, she put ten cots in one room or something like that. She had them sleeping all over the .place, upstairs, down in the basement, all over. Warren: No wonder the girls didn't want to go home that night. [Laughter] Wooldridge: It was a lot of fun. Warren: So in Annapolis where I come from, that was called late dating. Wooldridge: That's what we called it. That's what we called it. Warren: Was it the only time you participated in that, or did it become a regular thing? Wooldridge: Oh, that was not the only time. No. No, that was not the only time. Warren: That's just when you learned how to do it. Wooldridge: That's right. I was at the foot of the master, you know. He knew exactly how to get them. Warren: So when your time came around to be a junior or a senior, did you do the same kind of thing for freshmen? Did you break them in? Do you remember doing that? 33 Wooldridge: I don't remember doing that. It's entirely possible that I did, but I don't remember doing that. I do remember one of my fraternity brothers, I got very upset with him. He came to me and he said, "I'm having a tough time in economics," in Economics 201, I think elementary economics. I said, "What seems to be your problem?" He said, "Well, I wonder if you would tutor me." I said, "I haven't got the time to tutor you. I'll tell you, you read the course chapters that are assigned to you, and I know that professor, because I had him, and he will not test you on outside reading. He will perhaps expect you to do some, but he will not test you on the outside reading. He will test you on the textbook. So when you get ready to have a test, you come in and tell me what sections, what chapters the test is on, and I will go over them with you." I said, "There are certain things that you just have to be able to pick out of the book to know that these are important and other things are not important. As long as you know the important things, because that's the only thing he's going to ask you, he's not going to ask you some of the obscure things." So he did. Two days before the exam, he came in and he brought me his book. We went over it and I had a red pencil, and I underlined the things that were important, and I said, "Now, this is all you have to study. Don't study anything else, just what's underlined. Forget about the rest of it." He took the test. He came back when he got his test results back, and I said, "What was your test result?" He said, "I flunked." I said, "Okay. Let me ask you another question." He said, "Sure." I said, "Was anything on the test that was not underlined?" He said, "No, you had it exactly right." 34 I said, "Then it's not my fault." He said, "No, it's not your fault." I said, "I can't help you anymore. I'm sorry. That's the best I can do." But he was a nice young fellow who eventually, I think, flunked out. But he just wouldn't apply himself, and suffered. Warren: I hear we have had some pretty remarkable C students who have gone on to make real stars of themselves in the world. Do you know of any examples of that? Wooldridge: I don't think so. Most of the students that I know that have gone on to what I would consider great things, were really good students-outstanding. Warren: You were here at a pretty remarkable time. You had some pretty interesting classmates. Wooldridge: Yep. Warren: Were you buddies with any of them? Wooldridge: Not particularly. Probably Jack Marsh. I was probably as close to Jack as anybody. I knew Roger Mudd pretty well and, of course, Charley McDowell. There were others that did marvelous things that perhaps didn't make the newspapers or that sort of thing. Warren: What was Roger Mudd like as a student? Wooldridge: Roger was a good student. He was a serious student. Roger was on the crew. In fact, he was one of the-at that point in time, originally when I got here, we really didn't have a coach for crew. The boys got together and did it themselves. Roger, as I recall, was number-six oar, which is a very important oar on the crew. The year after that, after that first year, we did have a coach, but at that particular time we did not. 35 Roger was a history major, as I recall, so I didn't get to see him much over at commerce school. But a very, very nice, serious guy, but also a fellow with a good sense of humor. Quite unquestionably a leader on the campus. Warren: I'm going to flip the tape over.