Futch interview

[Begin Tape 1, Side B] Futch: ... that I heard in '62, '63, '64, somewhere in there. You'll be glad to know I didn't keep a diary, so I can't check this out. But it was very soon after I arrived, and I thought, "This is not really very smart of him." I believed it, because after a short exposure to him, I saw that he was both crazy and very gross, very-how can I say? His mind was never [unclear]. So there was no reason to doubt the story. 
But I thought when the boys bring their dates from Hollins and Sweet Briar and such places on Saturday mornings to classes, which was one of the traditions, [unclear] Friday night, then the girl would get up and come with the boy to class on Saturday morning, I thought any of these girls could be the niece or the granddaughter or the daughter of a W&L trustee, or the niece or daughter or granddaughter of somebody's who's about to give a million dollars to W&L, and for a faculty member to say something extremely offensive like that in class, and especially offensive to women, that this is very unwise, but it's his problem. I didn't dwell on this. 
Then twenty-five years later, by the late 1980s and early '90s, the story was being told about me. I thought, well, since that is untrue, I may be stupid, but I'm not suicidal, since that was untrue, maybe Shillington never told that. I wonder if it was something that was invented in a frat house basement in the 1950s or early '60s, was laid at Shillington's door in those days, and now a quarter of a century later, it's being dropped in my lap, and the answer is, no, I never told that. And now I'm sort of skeptical as to whether he ever did that, because even for him, there might have 
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been limits, and to say something that would upset the family of a trustee or a major 
fat cat donor, this would not be too smart. So that is all I know about that. Weaver: Do you resent stories like that if they pop up, or do you dismiss them? Futch: Yes. Both. Yes. I resent them, but what can you do? I can't conduct a Clintonian FBI investigation as to who is spreading this. So there's nothing you can do. For example, there was a story that came to my attention about Professor Boatwright, who was a piece of filth, who taught here in the sixties, seventies, and eighties, died of AIDS in 1988, having gone on terminal medical leave in '87. He and I, to say the least, were not buddy-buddy. In fact, we're, I suppose, known by some people to be mortal enemies. 
So the story got spread in the eighties, I guess both before and after his death, that he and I had had a huge, hair-pulling cat fight in the lobby of the library, with verbal, very nasty verbal exchanges. I resented that very much because it was not only untrue, it was implausible. I think students at this school, at least, I mean, this is not that state college in northern New Jersey where Ahmed Amid Kadul [phonetic] gives wild speeches. I mean, at Washington and Lee, professors never have fights in front of students. I've never heard of any sort of blow-up between two professors in a place where students would see it or hear it. So I resented that very much. Secondly, it never happened. What happened was that we were off speaking terms. We did not have angry exchanges. We didn't speak. So, yeah, I resented that. The fact that it was untrue and the fact that it was a very unpleasant story, I resented that very much, but you have to develop a rhinoceros-like hide and just sort of shrug your shoulders and say, "What the hell. What can I do about it?" Weaver: Do you think that professors, in general, are more civil towards each other than the students are towards one another? Futch: Well, I don't know how civil or uncivil the students are towards one another. In my presence, the students are always very nice to one another. 
However, one also hears stories about frat houses on Saturday nights and two 
students are drunk. Yeah, I guess there are bad moments among students. 
To my knowledge, the faculty is cordial. Not only can I not imagine a faculty run-in within earshot of students, I can't imagine a faculty run-in in the hearing of other faculty members. I guess it is possible behind closed doors, two professors might say something harsh. I mean, how can we exclude that possibility? I don't know. But I think in front of other people, professors are quite courteous with one another. I will say that professors, who are very far from seeing eye to eye, are polite when they meet in hallways, or meet at [unclear] or someplace like that. I would say faculty relations are superficially quite cordial. Weaver: With the exception of Boatwright, you found that you've gotten along well? Futch: Yes. He was a man who resented my politics. He describes himself as a Marxist. He used to say, "My dear." He addressed men as, "My dear." "My dear, I'm a revolutionary Marxist." As opposed to being a Marxist revolutionary, because that would imply going down to Nicaragua or El Salvador and carrying weapons [unclear] or something of the sort, maybe torturing conservatives to death. So he called himself a revolutionary Marxist, as though to say, in parentheses, armchair variety. "I sit in an armchair and contemplate the glories of Marxism." So my Goldwaterite, Reaganite views not only offended him, I mean, my views offend 98 percent of the faculty, he regarded this as a moral failing, as if I burned down orphanages, or eviscerated the homeless, went through the streets of Washington and·disemboweled those derelicts you see sleeping on heating grates in Washington. He regarded me as satanic, as demonic, and so speaking terms didn't seem to be feasible. But we never had a scratching, clawing fit, either behind closed doors or in front of other people. 
And getting back to your question, I resented that falsehood very much. But again, I think it was probably innocently intended, and that some drunks in a frat house basement probably said, "Hey, if those two met in the library, imagine the two of the meeting in the library lobby. Mr. Boatwright would say something, and Dr. Futch would probably reply so and so." I assume that's how it started, so I don't lie awake nights worrying about these things. Weaver: From my impression, you've always been very popular with the students. Futch: I hope so. I hope you're right. I'm devoted to them. I would love to think so. Weaver: One story I heard my freshmen year is that you came into-actually it was Sigma Nu, my fraternity, and you came to the basement and had some gin, and sort of held court with the students. Do you ever go down to the fraternity houses and socialize like that, or is that false? Futch: Some. Not very often, as I get old and tired. You [unclear] how tired one is at the end of the day. But I do it less and less, but I have been in the basement of the Sigma Nu house since the rehab. I guess it was rededicated about 1990 or so, wasn't it? Weaver: Yes, 1991. Futch: '91. So since the rehabbing of it, the students did invite me, the brothers of the lodge did invite me down there, and somebody might have given me something, some refreshment or other, that's quite possible. So I have been to a number of the houses since the rehab. Yeah, I tremendously enjoy those things, but I enjoy them more on Saturday nights, when I haven't been in school all day. Weaver: Do you find that the antics of the fraternities are reformed at all now that they have new houses? Futch: Antiques? Weaver: Antics. 
Futch: Antics. The antics of the fraternities. Again, I don't know, because they 
didn't indulge in antics in front of a professor. For the whole thirty-four years I've been here, in front of me there were no antics. The antics were probably postponed until after the faculty left. But what I gather is that there are monitors who go through the frat houses to look for nicks in the wall, or the paint may have been marred by something, or glasses been broken, or a chair leg has been damaged in some way, and so I assume that the antics are impossible most of the time, because there are people who check on the physical condition of the houses. 
Now, speaking of antics, I remember once before the Fraternity Renaissance, maybe 1980, perhaps, I don't know, driving back from, again, one of those wicked weekends in D.C., coming down Highway 11 at twiHght, I suppose, and seeing a huge column of smoke rising from Lexington. I, of course, thought of World War II and the bombing of Berlin and things like that, but what this turned out to be was something less. It seemed when I got into town, I got very close to the campus, I saw the smoke was rising, in fact, from Red Square, and Sigma Nu, you'll be happy to know, in fact, that the Sigma were not involved. But your neighbors, Phi Delta, Theta, and Pica, had apparently, all of them, contributed vast amounts of furniture which had been mangled amid antics in recent weeks, and a huge mountain, or a funeral pyre of furniture, had been put in that open space shared by the backyards of-Weaver: Beta and Phi Delta and Pica. Futch: Beta, Phi Delta and Pica. They had just made a gigantic heap of debris previously called furniture, and it produced a tremendous fire. I imagine that both the administration and the police department would go berserk if a huge fire were built by three fraternities in an antic mood. So, yeah, I think things like that have undoubtedly quieted down. But what may happen in frat house basements at midnight, I have no way of knowing. So young boys being young boys, I imagine the antics still go on somewhere, somehow, but probably more carefully orchestrated than once upon a time. Weaver: Do you remember what year that was that took place? Futch: Let's say around 1980. I'm quite sure it was before John B. Wilson, because I think that even before the Fraternity Renaissance, the kiddies got a pretty clear idea by 1983, when he embarked on his duties in January of '83, I think they understood that an iron hand had descended, and I doubt that they would have done that after January of '83. So I would say in the very early eighties. And I don't think that would be in the Ring-tum Phi, because none of the fraternity houses caught fire. So there's no reason for that to have been recorded. But it sticks in my memory, certainly, because a gigantic column of smoke was an unexpected sight upon returning to Hillbilly Heaven. Weaver: Does Fancy Dress bring back any memories for you over the years? Futch: No, I never learned how to dance in my youth, point A. Point B is that I don't like tuxedos. Someone gave me a tuxedo, a faculty member, the late Professor Rob Stewart. As his waistline expanded about 1964, he gave me a tuxedo that he could no longer wear. I went to something or other. I can't remember why I wore it. But now my waistline has expanded to the point where if I could find this ancient thing, I should give it to someone else. But I hate tuxedos, and I would look like an idiot if I tried to dance. So I've never been to a fancy dress. But I have sometimes been invited by the guys who fix up the gymnasium with a certain motif. I have often been there, and they want me to see what they have done to duplicate Paris or Vienna, or-I don't know if the Vatican-has there ever been a Vatican motif for Fancy Dress? [Laughter] Weaver: I imagine the papacy is the thing. Futch: The papacy would be wonderful, because Pope Alexander VI, the [unclear] Pope, had held many dances in the Vatican. He turned it into sort of a 
bordello/dance hall/banquet hall. So I think that the Renaissance Vatican would be a great theme for Fancy Dress some year soon. Weaver: But do you have any curiosity at all about going in the future? Futch: No. It's just people dancing, isn't it? Weaver: The people dancing, and the music playing, and the orchestra. Futch: No, I have no curiosity at all, people dancing and music playing. Now, if the music were all Mozart quartets, I might go for the music. But, no, dancing is so far away from anything I've ever done. I've done a lot of weird things in my life, but dancing is not one of them. Weaver: Is there something about Lexington or Washington and Lee that you think that we don't know that we should know about? Some neat quirk or nook or cranny? Futch: All of the scandals, la cronique des scandals! What I always tell people is that it's time for a truly bombshell novel to be written, because the novels that have been written over the last sixty years, of which there are three or four, I think are pretty tame stuff, and that a novel, that it would be like a novel by Brit Easton Ellis [phonetic]. You know the name. Weaver: Yes, the American Psycho author. Futch: Yes. [Laughter] Also, his first novel was called Less Than Zero, and then, yes, American Psycho came next. So I think Brit Easton Ellis ought to do a Lexington/W&L/VMI novel. After all, VMI is no den of puritans, after all. It and W&L and kinky little Lexburg, altogether, would make a wonderful novel. Weaver: Give me a little hint to what might be in this novel. Futch: Oh, my goodness. How can I give a hint without being fired? What on earth-I mean, alcoholism is so tame that there's hardly even any-the drunken old Episcopalian dowagers of Lexington who sometimes would send their servants to BD to get alcohol, and Presbyterian alcohol, if that is not a contradiction in terms, 
old Presbyterian dowagers used to, even more, used to have to send out for booze 
from BD. Then the old dowagers of Episcopal and Presby high society-that is high society, there is no other high society around here-those old blue-hairs over the decades had some extremely odd disciples from W&L. So I think, yes, a novel is in order. If you, Richard, would stay here for five years and just-Weaver: Perhaps I might see. Futch: -talk to people and talk to me with no electronic recordings anywhere near. It's not the bland little milquetoast town-lukewarm, milquetoast town as it appears to be. Weaver: Speaking of society, would you say that being a W&L faculty member automatically puts you into the height of Lexington society, or do you have to sort of make it in a different way to be part of that Presbyterian-Futch: Episci-Weaver: Yes, the Episci and-Futch: Episci-Presbyterian, or vice versa. Weaver: Right. Futch: It's a toss-up. Ever since Robert E. Lee's day, it's been a toss-up as to which of the two, the Episcis or the Presbys, which of the two is the king of the hill. I think at one time, probably not true today at all, but I think that when I came, that to be a W&L faculty member, and maybe to be a VMI faculty member, meant that one was 80 or 90 percent of the way to high society membership. If one refused to socialize, and acquired the reputation of a surly recluse, then, of course, nothing would happen. But one got an enormous head start, and the old ladies of boozie high society-well, all that's sort of redundant-were very interested to sort of draw me as a young man. I was described, "Oh, he's so courtly." They were very interested to draw me into this sort of utopia of blue hair, booze, and gossip. But I regarded the scene as amusing for two or three years, and went to a lot of these blue-hair receptions-not receptions, cocktail parties, I guess they would have been called. But after several years it got old. As kids would say today, "Man, got old." So I sort of tapered off. I didn't declare war on them, but I just quit answering phones. I found that that's a way to control, to minimize one's social life. Weaver: And you still don't answer phones, do you? Futch: Oh, less than ever. Do I do it now? One of the few advantages, and among the quirks of old age, you do a lot of things. Being inaccessible is certainly one of the few pleasures of old age. But I would say that you're on to something, and that there was an extraordinarily close tie-in, once upon a time, between the faculty cocktail circuit and the Episci-Presby, blue hair, cocktail circuit. I think if a faculty member came across it being low rent, tacky, that that would have been a handicap. But of course, people who were tacky and low rent weren't hired, for the most part. So that was not really an obstacle. But as the years passed, this whole scene has altered. I was about to say something I won't say. 
May I tell you a story? Do we have enough room on the tape for this? Weaver: Oh, sure. Definitely. Definitely. Futch: To show you the importance of the tie-in between school and altar, once upon a time-remember in Europe they talked about throne and altar in M 's day. Well, this was school and altar: the faculty and the churchy high society of Lexville. When I was hired, there were two or three days of interviews, meeting the president, meeting the dean, meeting some senior faculty in a social setting, and, of course, the department members, with the exception of one, who was, how shall we say, put on the shelf and kept out of sight. They didn't want him to meet interviewees, because he was so zany. They thought no interviewee will ever come here if the interviewees meet him. So that's a whole different story, though. As the students would say, a whole nother story. 
But after several days of these various interviews, I was taken to the bus 
station. Remember Lexington didn't have passenger train service, and I was much too poor to have a car in 1962. So the way I got down here for the interview and got back was to go by train from Baltimore to Washington to Staunton, and then take the Hound, the Greyhound, from Staunton to teeny, tiny Lexville. What is now that railroad station connected to the Lenfest Center, the 1883 former railway station that is right smack up against the Lenfest Center, that had been the passenger station until 1942, I think. Then it became the Greyhound station. 
So the department head drove me in his 1940 Packard. He had a twenty-two­year-old Packard sedan. He and I drove down in the Packard, which was known as the getaway car, because it looked like something Al Capone would have used in a Chicago bank robbery. Weaver: Who was the chairman? Futch: Professor Crenshaw, who wrote the book, General Lee's [unclear]. 
So Ollie Crenshaw, in his 1940 Packard, drove me to the bus terminal, maybe half an hour before the bus was due, which I didn't attach any importance to for the moment, but he wanted discuss something with me, that got me somewhat discombobulated for a while. He said, "Well, I hope you have enjoyed your visit here, and we will be contacting you about-" meaning yea or nay, thumbs up or thumbs down. "We will be contacting you very soon, and it has been the greatest pleasure meeting you." 
I said, "Well, thank you, I've enjoyed every moment, and it's a great pleasure to meet you." I thought that was it. So he said, "However, there is one question which I am compelled to put to you." I said, "Oh, of course, please. Go ahead." 
He said, "Now, please keep in mind, this is not my idea and certainly not my 
desire," with this Deep South accent of his, the southern accent [unclear]. He said, "This is a question that I would never, never ask, if it were up to me, but it is not up to me. The trustees require that this question be asked." 
I was getting a little unsettled. The bowels were getting a little loose at this point. I said, "Oh, well, please go ahead. Whatever." As Bob Dole says, "Whatever." 
He said, "Now, this is not the president's idea, this is not the dean's desire, this comes from the trustees." He said, "It is a deeply embarrassing and distressing thing for me to have to ask you, but I must." 
My God, what kind of [unclear] is about to be dropped on me? I said, "Oh, well, please, do feel free." 
He said, "This is so distressing." He went on and on about how embarrassed he was and how distressing this was. Finally, he said, "I must ask you, in the name of the trustees of the Washington and Lee, what is your religious affiliation?" 
I thought, "Oh, thank God. Praise God from whom all blessings flow," because I had something quite different in mind. I said, "Well, as a small child I was sent to a Presbyterian Sunday school," which was a way of saying, "In recent years I haven't set foot inside any place." 
Quoting Gilbert and Sullivan, he said, "Nothing could possibly be more satisfactory," because the Presbyterian ascendancy in Lexington was even older than the Episcopalian one. So he was pleased to be able to tell the trustees, "His roots appear to be Presbyterian, or are, in fact, Presbyterian." 
The trustees consisted, in those days, of a bunch of Presbyterian bankers from Lynchburg, so I'm sure they were satisfied, and I was relieved beyond words to have so innocent a question put to me. [Laughter] Weaver: Is there some even morsel of a story you can tell me? 
Futch: Even more what? 
Weaver: A morsel of a story of the intrigue. Futch: Well, I don't know, with the microphone hanging on my necktie. I don't know. Of course, there are some absolutely outlandish stories about the time between W&L and Lexington, but I don't know if there's anything, really, as a morsel that I would want to have on a tape recording. Weaver: Well, I guess we'll move onto another question, then. Futch: Yes. Weaver: In the relationship between Lexington and Washington and Lee, which is the more dominant group? Futch: Well, I don't know. It may be that, like [unclear] and Mars, they're very close together, but I don't know that either one affects, or rather dominates the effect. wouldn't say either one dominates the other. I assume that the city council and the city manager and the mayors, one after another, are all aware that Lexington would become simply a depopulated place, such as BD is turning into, without Washington and Lee and VMI. 
I suppose you could say, now that I think about it-you kind of caught me off guard with that question-I guess the schools are dominant, in a sense, in that there wouldn't be a Lexington any longer. There wouldn't be any economic life here. Not enough people come to see the grave of Stonewall Jackson to keep the town going. And just as lovely Buena Vista is dying before our very eyes, and not a moment too soon, I suppose Lexington would also expire-of course, as the locals would say, "expar"-if it were not for the two schools. So the two schools must be aware that they have the upper hand in a way. Yet Lexington could probably make life unpleasant for the administrators of the two schools if they chose to do so. Weaver: Do you think that Washington and Lee uses its upper hand appropriately in dealing with the town? 
Futch: I have no way of knowing. This question is so far beyond the things that I know about or hear about, I really don't know. I don't know of any case where either the school or the town has abused the other. You're always hearing about drug abuse, and self-abuse, and this abuse, and child abuse. So I don't know that W &L has abused Lexington or vice versa. I assume that the town and the school coexist cordially, if not affectionately. Weaver: Would you say the school has been good to you over the years? Futch: Oh, indeed, yes. Yes, yes. I have often blessed the day that I came here. When I came here, the only thing I knew about it was that Lee was buried here, and that it had been on a postage stamp. Of course, in youth, I collected stamps ardently, and still pay some attention to them, though I can't afford to collect them anymore. But I have a huge stamp collection from youth, and that blue three-cent stamp of 1949, of course, I remember when I was in high school and collected it, never dreaming, looking at the Colonnade on the stamp, I never dreamed that I would set foot there more than a few times. So, yeah, I would say the school has been very good to me. I certainly cannot complain about that. Weaver: Well, that's perfect. [End of interview]