WALTER BLAKE

                                          May 2, 1997

                                                —
                                        Mame Warren,

                                          interviewer

Warren: This is Mame Warren: Today is the second of May 1997, and I'm in
Lexington, Virginia, finally with Walter Blake. I'm so pleased to finally be with you and
to finally be meeting you.
Blake: Thank you.
Warren: It comes as no surprise to you the primary reason I want to talk to you is
because you're one of the first two black students at Washington and Lee who
graduated. Can you tell me how that came to happen in your life?
Blake: Yes. Very easily. As you know, or probably may know, I am a native of
Lexington, actually grew up at 9 North Jefferson Street, the first seven years of my life at
9 North Jefferson, is currently the parking lot between the Phi Kappa Sigma House and
the University Cleaners. Literally my first conscious memories, other than parents and
immediate family, were Washington and Lee students, especially Phi Kappa Sigma
brothers who taught me to play Frisbee and do all of those kind of fun things that little
kids like to do.

         I remember looking up at the Hill and thinking, "God, that's really kind of a neat
place. I like it. I was indoctrinated very early from not only the proximity, but the fact
that my mother worked for William P. Coleman, a local attorney who was a
Washington and Lee graduate. So it was kind of in the blood.

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         When I went through school locally, I did fairly well academically, and in 1967, I
believe, the fall or whenever it is you take the PSAT, or whatever the test is that takes
you on into that next level, did quite well and became a semifinalist, or whatever it was,
in the National Achievement Scholarship Program, and was targeted or pinpointed, or
whatever you want to call it, as a minority with talent at that time.

         So in 1968, my senior year, I was recruited by—I lost count, but something along
the order of recruited, contacted, a combination of the two, by something like two
hundred schools, and those schools ranged all the way from Harvard down to Grenell
College in Iowa. But by that time I'd pretty much made my mind up that Washington
and Lee was going to be it for me. I had it in my heart, and I had it in my heart for
several reasons. One was that in 1966, I believe, Dennis Haston, another product of the
Lexington school system, had come, and Dennis was a friend of mine, kind of a big
brother to some extent. It pretty much worked him over; he didn't last, as you know.

         I was probably brash enough and confident enough in my ability to say one of
two things. First off, I wanted to prove that a black student could come here and
withstand whatever this institution threw at him and make it out. That was clearly a
selfish motivation on my part at the time. An even more selfish motivation on my part
was the fact that I understood even then at the age of sixteen that if I was serious about
making a life professionally in the South, which I really wanted to stay in the South,
defined as in my mind anything from Maryland south, Washington and Lee was clearly
the preeminent and premier institution for me to do that just because of the contacts,
the education. You couldn't beat it.
Warren: How did you know that at sixteen?
Blake: I don't know. I really don't know, but I just had this feeling, and I recall—and
this is one of the strange things that happened in my life. I got a letter my senior year
from Harvard informing me that I had been accepted in the entering class of 1968, and
that I was the recipient of some scholarship; I have no clue what the name of it is now.

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But it was a significant amount of money and it was a significant piece of financial
assistance. I remember thinking to myself, "Man, these are some fairly arrogant rascals
up there, you know, to presume that I want to go to Harvard. Clearly, Harvard's a nice
school, but I don't particularly want to do it. So I jotted a nice little handwritten note on
the bottom of their letter and sent it back to them, and suggested to them that I wanted
to attend Washington and Lee because I considered it to be the Harvard of the South,
and I was a Southerner. I never heard from them again one way or the other, so, you
know, they probably put it in some round file and said, "We'll give it to the next guy on
the list," which clearly they had no problem doing.

         But I just knew it. I don't know. I think because if I had not been a native of
Lexington and had not really come through that culture from the earliest days, I
wouldn't have known that, but I had been so immersed in this institution and the
students and faculty and administration. The kids of some of the faculty members and I
used to play together on the front campus over here, which is now a parking lot. We
had a football coach, assistant coach, whatever, named McCann, and he had a son
named Michael. Apparently—and I do remember this very plainly, but I was six years
old and it was just before I started elementary school—Michael and I were playing.
Michael was probably four years old and I was probably just turned six. Michael darted
out in front of a car on Jefferson Street, and they tell me that I pushed him out of the
way and got nailed myself. Well, all I can recall is saying, "Hey, I'm going to try to make
it across, too. If he's going to make it, I can make it. I didn't go out consciously to push
the little kid out of the way, but I did. So that kind of ingratiated me with a number of
people on the Hill.

         Henry Howard, professor—whatever, I believe treasurer, his name was Howard,
lived in the house right over on the street next to the church, his family, the McCanns,
the Fishwicks, those were all families that I knew, I knew their kids, and I knew the
institution through those people. It just was ingrained in me. I always could perceive,

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even then, that this place was somehow special. It used to be a ritual of mine, every year
when I finished up school—I went to elementary school at Lylburn Downing—every
year my treat was getting out of school on that last day and walking home, and the way
I would walk home, rather than coming basically through the neighborhood, I'd come
down Main Street, come up the little alley right over in front of the Red Front grocery
store by Professor Wise's house, and then walk down the Colonnade. Usually it was a
fine spring day right around Memorial Day. There was just something about those
columns and that red brick and that grass lawn that just kind of jazzed me, for lack of a
better word.

         That's how the decision was made. I didn't seriously consider any other
institution. I clearly had options galore, but consciously there was no consideration
whatsoever that I would go anywhere else other than here, and I think I always knew
that.
Warren: That's fascinating.
Blake: Actually, I think I always knew that I was going to go to school here. I was just
kind of like, "Okay, I'm going to do it," whether I was first, second, third, fifteenth, it
made not really much difference. It just happened to be the luck of the draw that I
happened to be the one who was one of the first to do it. Needless to say, it was
interesting. It had its moments.
Warren: Let's talk about those moments.
Blake: Okay. Where do you want to begin? Because there are so many.
Warren: You start. Obviously you have your moments.
Blake: My moments started at Freshman Camp. My moments really started at
Freshman Camp. We were going to Natural Bridge Freshman Camp then, which was
just an incredible experience. In 1968, discounting the fact that Linwood and I came in
1968, the class that came in 1968 was probably one of the landmark classes in the history
of the institution anyway, not so much because of the makeup of the class, but just

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because of the times. We were a class that suffered large attribution because of Vietnam
and the war, and guys trying to figure out ways to get out of the military or getting
drafted or transferring because of the threat of being drafted.

         We were the last class to have mandatory Saturday classes. We were the last
class with a dress code. We were the last class with the six-cut rule in effect. We
probably were the last full class in which ROTC was mandatory for the first two years, I
believe. So that time was really kind of a very interesting time in not only the life of the
institution, but the life of the country in which the institution was located. While the
institution reflected very much those nice traditional values and style that it had for so
much of the fifties and early sixties as I recalled it, it was beginning to change simply
because the world around it had changed so radically.

         My class entering was one that really kind of hastened that change. For instance,
I'll use the Kappa Alpha house, which was considered, at the time I came along, the
flower of white Southern manhood. Well, when we went through Rush, I went through
Rush pretty much on my own, and I went to the Kappa Alpha house, knowing, of
course, their restrictions of ever being able to offer me membership, but that didn't stop
me from going back on several visits simply because we all got along real well. We
liked each other, and it was kind of apparent that there was some rapport and
camaraderie that had developed just because of the force of personality or style or
whatever you want to call it. Maybe I was different enough that these guys could
perceive, "Let's talk to this guy. He's fun to be around."

         That class, I'd say the class was the first to have what I'd call a serious hippie
contingent, because my class, while there were hippies in classes prior to mine, mine
really was the class that defined "hippiedom" at Washington and Lee. The class of 1970,
I think they took the credit for the demonstrations on campus. They may have been the
leadership, but clearly the foot soldiers in that whole campaign were class of '72
members. The true foot soldiers were guys in my class. They were an amalgamation of

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guys who would be considered traditional Southern rockers like the Allman Brothers
fans, who had been formerly straight, short-haired, conservatively dressed KAs and
SAEs, to your traditional Northeastern Jewish liberals that were ZBT house members. I
was a ZBT.

         So that class kind of defined a period in the university's history, and I had an
interesting role in that class because I was one of only two black students in that class.
Race relations in this country were at an interesting state. We'd come up with riots. The
Black Panther Party was a high-profile political cause and issue.

         My major, which was an independent major, kind of concentrating in economics
and engineering and all those things leading to a planning degree, allowed me the
freedom to indulge myself in some activities that my very dear friend Linwood
Smothers couldn't. He was an engineering major, and Linwood, basically on his first
day, got his books and went over in a corner somewhere and started studying, which he
had to do. Well, I had to study, of course, just to stay here, like everyone else. You didn't
get 2.0s or whatever in order to be initiated by not doing anything; you did have to
work a bit. But it was a bit easier taking my course of study than it was taking his
course, plus my nature is a bit different than his. I'm one that, you know, like once
again, force of personality, I don't mind jumping into something, and that evolved from
just being a fairly gregarious person to one that began to take on a sense of purpose and
understanding a cause and by doing that, got involved in a whole range of just
interesting situations on this campus, things like the spring of 1970 demonstrations and
protests.
Warren: What was your role in that?
Blake: I defined myself as one of those foot soldiers in the class of '72. Jeff Gingold
clearly was the titular leader of that whole effort. There were a number of other people.
But while Gingold was the identified leader, I was what I think he would define as a

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trusted lieutenant, or if not trusted lieutenant, a darn good private who would kind of
go out and do what had to be done.

         One of the things that I did along with one of my classmates is go to Washington,
D.C., and recruit several members of the Black Panther Party to come to campus and
make a speech. The speech was made in Lee Chapel.
Warren: Tell me about that.
Blake: To a packed house. One of the most amazing, surreal experiences I've ever in
my natural life gone through. I was telling someone last night, I still marvel at the fact
that we went to Washington one afternoon, picked up several people, brought them
back to campus, they spoke, and we turned around and took them back that same
night. But it was an announced event. As I recall, I forget the time that we had planned
to do it, maybe seven o'clock, something like that, whatever it was, sometime after
dinner, and we, of course, get to Washington and pick up our guests, visitors,
passengers, whatever you want to call it, and we get delayed coming out of the city,
trying to get out of Georgetown. Traffic is just humongous. Key Bridge is backed up
from here to there. We're running way late, so we get on the telephone. We stop and call
and say, "Look. We're going to be probably an hour late or so," thinking, well, you
know, maybe that will dampen the enthusiasm, but it didn't.

         We get to Lexington, now I forget exactly how late we were, but we walked into
Lee Chapel, and Lee Chapel was basically packed to the gills. I'll never forget we had
people sitting in the balconies, and I'll never forget Mark Grobmyer and Lloyd Wolf
were sitting in the balcony kind of looking over the side, and there was this rumble
among the crowd when we walked in, because everyone was talking. And we walked
in and they saw these people, and it was absolute silence. It was like [imitates sound].
And I'm thinking to myself, "Man, what have I—this is unbelievable."

         Members of the Black Panther Party standing in front of the recumbent statue,
talking, and, as I say, it was surreal. It was a great reception, relatively speaking. I

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mean, it was a civil reception. I mean, there wasn't any provocative action that would
cause one to get themselves hurt or anything. They listened and there were some
questions and we left. It was like, "Well, I'll be darned. I remember driving back up the
road, just thinking to myself, "What just happened there? You know, that was pretty
weird when you think about it.

         Went back to Washington and came back, and that's when it really started.
Warren: Let me understand. Was this during the eight days in May, so-called eight
days in May?
Blake: Yes.
Warren: This happened as part of that?
Blake: It was either the eight days in May or sometime in late April, or whatever. It
was that period right about the time that the institution closed down early, because we
closed probably two or three weeks ahead of schedule. I know we had talked about it
the end of—this was my sophomore year. We had talked about—I think the standard
graduation date would have been June sixth or something like that, fifth, sixth. School
probably closed around May sixth. So maybe a month early.

         It had started with all these things going on nationally. There was an
announcement that we'd been doing secret bombings in Cambodia. Kent State
happened. The Black Panther trials and the Chicago Seven trials were going on up in
New Haven and Chicago and other places. It was happening on campuses all over the
country. I mean, there was this sense of just pure outrage. The draft was going on. The
war had been a sore topic forever. Since I came, even my freshman year, the war was a
very sore topic, because 1968, the Tet Offensive, and we were getting our people killed
right and left.

         I had lost a cousin just before coming here, in the war, and was fairly ambivalent,
to say the least, because I didn't see much rhyme or reason for it. It was getting crazier
and crazier and crazier. It was like, "Well, this makes no sense to me," and it made no

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sense to any of my peers, of course, because we were the guys getting shot at. You
know, sense of duty and loyalty, I think all of us had it, but it's like, "Look. If we're
going to do this, let's understand the purpose."

         So surprisingly, Washington and Lee really was one of the earlier schools in the
country to have what I'll call a consciousness-raising on campus. I won't call it an
uprising or whatever. I'll call it a consciousness-raising, because that's really what it
was. People who I never in my wildest dream, never in my wildest dream, would have
imagined would have taken positions or participated in situations that did, that made
statements, that listened, that, in the traditional Washington and Lee way, engaged in
what I'd call relatively rational thinking and debate and came up with some
conclusions. At that point in time it was so foreign as a concept to this institution that I
really think the faculty and administration, primarily the administration, thought to
themselves, "You know, what is going on? We have some significant potential here for
some serious kinds of things to happen."

         People were taking off and going to Washington to the protests. We were having
guys getting arrested and jailed at the stadium, along with tens of thousands of other
people. The university made the decision to basically call it off early, because that was
seen as a way, I believe, to basically put the lid on anything that may happen that could
be considered inciteful to a more violent or physically challenging confrontation. And
the university said, "Look. We'll do it rationally. We will call off classes—we will
reschedule examinations. We'll once again—back to the Honor System. We were able to
work with individual professors with regard to the schedule for taking exams, finishing
up whatever year you happened to be in.

         That happened to be my sophomore year, which pretty much was a wash for me,
as far as I was concerned. Freshman year, you came in, you were terrified, me
particularly because it's like now I'm in what one would consider, or I considered, to be
the big leagues. I'm competing against guys who have advantages that I've only

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dreamed of. And how do I do it? I did it all right. I did pretty doggone well, as a matter
of fact. It became a situation where it was time to take leave.

         So we took leave in May of 1970. In May of 1970, when I left, Linwood Smothers
and I still were the only two black students on campus. When we came back in
September, much to my joy and my surprise, we had nineteen, I believe, nineteen
freshmen. It was interesting, because I had a conversation with Dean John or someone. I
had decent relationships with most of my professors just because we respected each
other. Politically we may not have agreed. Typically, just kind of a wild nineteen-year-
old or whatever, eighteen-year-old, whatever the guy is at the time. We agreed to
disagree, but we always respected each other.

         When the nineteen guys came, I remember kind of picking out seven people and
immediately struck up a bond with these seven guys. I mean, it was just like we had
never met each other in our lives, but within five minutes we were brothers. I mean, it's
like, "I know you. I don't know your name, I don't know where you're from, but I know
you. And we became like this. The others weren't quite that close to me, but that initial
core of people—Thomas Penn, Philip Hutcheson, Bob Ford, Bill Hill, Johnny Morrison,
Matthew Towns, and Bobby Smith—that was kind of the core of what became SABU,
Student Association for Black Unity.

         We had a meeting over in the Co-op when these guys were a freshman. There
had been a number of minor incidences on campus, mostly incidences that related to
what I'd call items of insensitivity, things that people get bent out of shape about just
because they've got nothing better to do than get bent out of shape. We're here in
Lexington, we're isolated, we're away from the ones we love, in most cases, and we've
got to go to a basketball game and listen to "Dixie.” Well, I had no problem with
"Dixie.” I knew what it was, and it didn't bother me one way or the other. As it was
being used by certain people, it became somewhat inflammatory, and there were some

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other comments that were made, some of the guys, and some actions were taken,
sometimes not by students but by members of the community.

         We decided we needed to adopt a model, and if that that model was something
along the lines of the Black Panther Party or whatever, we needed to do it because we
needed to band together for what I'd really call self-preservation, and we did. We met
over in the Student Union and created SABU, Student Association for Black Unity. I
was the first president of SABU and founding director or whatever you want to call it.
SABU, for a number of years, became really the focal point for black students on
campus. It became a fairly effective organization, went through its own internal
struggle because there was a change in the nature of the student that came through
here.

         This institution, I'll maintain to this day, this institution, while it has blessed a
number of us with the education that it gave us, I also think that a number of the ones
who came through in that initial group enriched this institution, because they came and
they brought a very different perspective on the world, and it helped sensitize a lot of
people. Literally I developed friendships twenty-five years ago—more than that, nearly
thirty years ago—with people in my class that have gone on 'til today, and these
relationships have been with people that are as diametrically opposite of me as you can
imagine. I mean, guys from Shreveport, Louisiana, whose fathers were corporate
executives of oil and gas companies, kids from enormous family wealth. These guys
have been lifelong compatriots, guys that I can speak with, and we've talked over the
years and they've all said things like, "You guys helped sensitize us more than we
sensitized or educated you.

         One of the things we tried to get across was the fact that it's a big old world out
there and all of us are different and we all come from somewhat different frames of
reference. While I may not be exactly like you, in many respects I'm exactly like you,
because there is no way in my mind that one could come to this institution—and I have

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said this and I will go to my grave saying this—this is, like many institutions that have
something unique about them, this place attracts a certain type of person, and either
you are built to come here and succeed or you're not. And you can't force fit the mold.
It's like some people go to the military and do very well and some people go in and
wash out quickly.

         Guys who've come here, who've been what I call moderate performers, average,
have gone on in life and done just incredible, incredible kinds of things. There is
something innately imbedded in people who have come here and done well, and that
trait has been as evident in the black students that have come here and done well as it
has been in the white students who have come here and done well in later life, or
succeeded, or have survived. You had to be a survivor to make it through here. You
absolutely had to be a survivor.
Warren: As a black student?
Blake: As any kind of student. As any kind of student you had to be a survivor. You
especially had to be a survivor to be a black student. When I showed up here, if I didn't
have what I call a mean, ornery, contrary streak in me, I'd have been a dead puppy after
about two weeks. Basically it's an attitude that bothers my wife to this day. I can take
anything and go home to bed and go to sleep. It's just like, "So what? I'll deal with it.
And once you develop that ability—and this place clearly honed that ability in me to a
fine razor edge—it's something that has held me in good stead to this very day and will
for the rest of my life. But if you didn't have that innate whatever it took, you didn't
stay here.

         If you looked at the nineteen people that came in 1970, in the fall of 1970, a
number of the ones that were very highly rated according to the—I like to laugh—
standard statistical measure, they washed out very quickly, because they were not of a
mind-set to put up with the kind of challenge that was put down before them. There is a
saying, "I'd rather switch than fight. Well, our saying was, "We'd rather fight than

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switch. We are who we are, and we are going to fight to maintain it. We can all coexist
within the framework of this institution. And all of us understood that the one thing we
could all get from here was just an incredible education and an incredible base of
contacts.

         Look at Johnny Morrison, look at Bill Hill, you look at Matthew Towns, you look
at all those guys who came here and survived out of that original group and have done
well for themselves in later life. They all had that fundamental toughness, that
survivability. Frankly, if they didn't have it, they would have been gone by the end of
the first semester. In one case we had one guy who may have been gone before the end
of September. I don't know how long he lasted, but it wasn't a tremendous amount of
time.
Warren: Walter, you have gone seventy-five different directions I want to pursue.
Blake: Okay.
Warren: You are a wonderful interviewee. I'm tempted to go back in chronological
order, but I want to stay where you are right now. I've interviewed Hill, who tells me I
can't call him Bill, I have to call him Hill. He talked about what a difference you made to
those guys, that you helped them see how to survive. Did you have a "big brother"
relationship to them? What was that relationship? It sounds like you're describing
something a little different than he described it, but I may not understand.
Blake: It is almost what one would call a "big brother" relationship. Hill and I talk
about that a lot. But in some cases I wasn't much older than they were. Philip
Hutcheson and I are six months apart in age, at most. So there was not a tremendous
age difference, but experientially I had two years on them. As I said, there were six or
seven guys out of that nineteen or eighteen or whatever that I, to this day, don't
understand the connection that we made. I didn't even know their names, but we just
looked at each other and we knew that, "Yeah, okay. You are a guy who can make it
here. I took it upon myself to hold hands, cajole, protect, do whatever I had to do to get

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those guys through. If they considered me a big brother, then that's more power to them
or me or whoever, but we were just close. We were absolutely truly friends in the most
fundamental sense. If one of us ate, all of us ate. If one of us didn't eat, none of us ate. I
mean, that's just the way it was. You did not do something to one of that group unless
you did it to all, and it was pretty much known around campus that, "You really don't
want to go mess with this one, because if you do, you're going to have six or seven
other people to deal with. So you just keep 'em happy. We're not real sure which way
they might go."

         The relationship, I can't even begin to describe it at times, because sometimes it
was almost like we could finish each other's sentences. We were so simpatico, I mean, in
terms of our thinking and our habits and our styles and everything, it was just
something that we felt comfortable together. We felt protected, and it was like my
extended family. They were my brothers, not necessarily little brothers, they were just
my brothers. I didn't particularly think of them as little brothers that I had to nurture
and bring along; I just looked at them as my brothers. Whatever a brother would do for
me or I'd do for a brother, that's the way I treated those guys. I mean, that's just kind of
the way it was. There were guys in that class, in that same class, that I didn't have that
relationship with; it was a much more formal type of relationship. We were friendly, we
spoke, we talked, we joked around, but there was not that sense of "If it really comes
down to it and I have to put it on the line for this guy, will I?" sense. But there was that
core group that it was like, "Yeah, we'll do that."
Warren: Were those other guys in SABU?
Blake: They were all in SABU. Everyone was in SABU. Every black student on campus
kind of was in SABU, whether they wanted to be or not. Really, going back to the old
analogy "cream rising to the top," it's just the natural leadership and force of personality
of that group. You can tell we had some strong personalities in that group, and
managing the personalities was not really a chore, but it was something that had to be

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done, and I managed to get it done. But those were the guys who I think everybody else
said, "We'll be in SABU as well, simply because we know we feel protected. They
weren't as blatant in their membership of SABU as we were. We wore our SABU jackets
everywhere. Everybody may have been a member of SABU, but you really knew who
SABU was. SABU was six, seven, eight guys, and that basically was it. Technically,
SABU was twenty-some, twenty-one, twenty-two people, but the core group of SABU,
the SABU Seven or Eight or whatever you want to call them, you know, that's those
guys.
Warren: When you first talked about them coming in in 1970, you said you were
delighted and surprised. Did you really not know there were going to be more black
students?
Blake: Well, you know, I didn't really know it simply because there was so much
confusion going on in the spring of 1970 with regard to everything else going on, that
there was no real announcement that anything was going to happen. With the
uncertainty that my sophomore year ended, you really didn't know what the institution
was going to do come September or August or whenever we'd come back to school. So,
no, no one in the administration came to me and said, "Look. We've got some help
coming," because I don't think they perceived it as that, but I did. It was like, "Yes! I got
some help? Thank you, thank you! Up to that point, I had been a member of ZBT, and
that was basically my campus family. My fraternity brothers were my campus family. It
was immediate when the guys showed up, it was like, "Yeah. Finally. I mean, my ZBT
brothers were very close to me and still are very close to me, but there was still
something that I'm able to share with that six or seven guys of SABU that I couldn't
share with anyone else.
Warren: Did you then leave ZBT?
Blake: I never really left ZBT any more than any other member of my class did,
because at that point in time it was not atypical that your freshman year you were

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active in the fraternity, trying to get pledged. Once you got pledged, then kind of that
was it. Your sophomore year, which is the year I call the year of great confusion, that
was the year that I lived in the fraternity house. Then traditionally on campus at that
time, juniors and seniors lived off campus or in housing, and they became less active in
the house. They would go and have a meal and pretty much just kind of do their own
thing.

         Right about that time, that was probably the most stressful time in the life of
W&L fraternities in modern times, because lots of fraternities were suffering from
significant attrition just because the nature of the beast was guys were going, "Hey, you
know, fraternities had become irrelevant in my life and I don't need them anymore. So I
was no more or less active in ZBT than some guys were active in SAE or Phi Kappa
Sigma or PiKA or any other house.
Warren: That's a good point.
Blake: I didn't withdraw from ZBT.
Warren: I hate to do this, but I'm going to take you back, Walter.
Blake: Okay.
Warren: You mentioned Freshman Camp and Rush. Although I'm very interested in
1970, I'm class of 1972 myself, so I understand a lot of what you're saying. That was the
crux of our lives.
Blake: Exactly.
Warren: But let's go back to '68.
Blake: Okay.
Warren: You were the first who stayed. What was that like? You were the first to go
through Rush, right?
Blake: Linwood went through Rush as well, I believe. I think Linwood went through
Rush. I think Linwood didn't go through as extensive a Rush as I—I mean, I kind of just
signed up for everybody. I didn't care. My attitude was, "Hey, let's just get out there

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and meet some guys and drink some beer. I mean, whoop-dee-doo. It's a big old party.
I'm just kind of a wide-eyed kid in a big city, three blocks from home, but a wide-eyed
kid in the big city, of course.

         When we started, as I recall, we came on campus for, I don't know, maybe a day,
a couple of hours or whatever it was, and then immediately got on school buses and
went to Natural Bridge. At Natural Bridge you are assigned to cabins by alphabetical
order, and I forget how many people were in each cabin. I can't even remember, but I
think we had two people to a bed, which most of us found pretty appalling. It's like,
"I'm not sleeping with this guy. You've got to be crazy."

         But you go to Freshman Camp and you spend a day or two, or whatever, at
Natural Bridge, which is quite nice. Then you come back and you begin the Rush
process. Of course, this time you're going through your advanced placement testing and
your registration, getting your classes squared away, and it's just this wide-eyed time
when it's like, oooh, this stuff is whirling around you.

         As I say, we came in as a very clean-cut traditional Washington and Lee class.
We had a dress code. We had to wear a coat and tie to class. Most of us had relatively
manageable hair in terms of length. We were all relatively clean-shaven, all mannerable
people, traditional Washington and Lee students of the 1960s, late 1960s, guys who
liked to have a good time, drank a little wine, a little beer, a little whiskey, whatever,
chased a few women if we could find them to chase. That was us. Sixteen, seventeen,
eighteen years old, whatever the guys were in the class, that's kind of who we were.

         We all showed up. I came back to campus and went through Rush, as I recall, I
don't know how many houses I visited, but a very high percentage of the houses that I
visited initially invited me back for a second visit. As I recall, the process had a deal
where you went in for an initial kind of, "This is who we are," you drink a beer and you
talk to the guys, and either they hate your guts and you never see them again, or they

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invite you back a second time, which means they kind of like you and there is some
possibility. Then after that, that's when they really got serious about it.

         Well, I knew at the time that there were probably only two houses on campus
that I'd really have any kind of a chance at all of getting into, one being ZBT, the other
was Phi Epsilon Phi right across the street, but I went to ZBT and PEP and Lambda Ki
and Sigma Ki and Phi Gam and maybe Sigma Nu, even. I think I even went to Beta. I
mean, I think the only ones I didn't go to were Phi Delt and SAE and maybe one or two
others, because you can only do so many of the eighteen. But I did as many as you
could do. As I say, of the number that I could do, got invited back to a significant
portion of those, and had just a very good experience.

         A lot of that went back to the fact that having been, well, being what I call a
townie, I had an unfair advantage, because a lot of these guys, I wasn't new. A lot of
these guys I had known, and I attribute it to the fact that I knew some of these guys
from the time I was in high school and worked at the dining hall. I knew some of these
guys when they were freshmen, and now they were juniors or seniors and they
remembered me, of course, and it was kind of like old home week. "I remember you.
We used to work together at the dining hall when they were on work study or
whatever. So I think a lot of it clearly had to do with the fact that there was some prior
knowledge and they felt comfortable with me and I felt comfortable with them, but
whatever the number of houses I got invited back to a second time, I chose to go with
ZBT.

         ZBT, up until that time, had been almost exclusively Jewish. I think my class
probably was the class that had the first couple folk in it that were non-Jewish. Me and
Tom Rogers and maybe one or two other people went into that class that were not
Jewish. Just, you know, went into that situation, made very good friends with my
fraternity brothers, very close to my fraternity brothers, and just had a traditional
freshman year here.

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Warren: I need to turn the tape over.

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