DOUG HUNT ’75 February 9, 1997 — Mame Warren, Interviewer Warren: This is Mame Warren. Today is February 9th, 1997. I’m in Dallas, Texas, with Doug Hunt, otherwise known as Sparky. Come on. Let’s just go for it. Get it over with, and then you won’t have to worry about it. Hunt: Okay. What do you want me to start with? Warren: Tell me about why you’re known as Sparky. Hunt: Okay. Where that came from was my sophomore year. The pledges at the Pi Kappa Alpha fraternity did a raid one night, and it happened to be the same night where I had been booking for a midterm. I probably didn’t do this but two or three times my entire collegiate career. I was so exhausted, I’d fallen asleep at two or three in the morning on my bed, studying, still in all my clothes. And about 3:30 or 4:00 in the morning, the pledges hit with this raid, and I don’t know what they set off. I was on the third floor in an outer bedroom of the fraternity house, and I don’t know what they set off in the hallway, but it sounded like an absolute train wreck. I remember coming to, thinking, "There’s a train wreck out in the hallway." I wear contact lenses and, of course, did not have them in at that time. So I came staggering out in the hallway, looking around, trying to see what was going on, and all I could see was little bits of fire on the rug down the hall. I was a might bit tired, so, you know, my first thought is, "Oh, there’s little bits of fire in the hallway. You need to put 1 that out." And so I thought, "Well, I’m not going to do this all by myself." As I walked toward the bathroom, which was in the middle of the hallway, I called, "Fire!" so I’d get some other guys out there helping. Well, I walked into the bathroom about the point in time I realized I hadn’t even woken up enough to pick up a trash can, so I had nothing to put any water in anyway, but then started thinking, "Wait a minute. That fire didn’t seem to be spreading. Could this be a raid?" I stepped back out of the bathroom, and I’m looking, and there goes one of my roommates from the other end of the hall, down, out, going right out the fire exit down from the third floor, running down the fire exit. And I’m going, "Oh, boy." I walk over to one of the little spots of fire that I notice isn’t spreading. I bent down and looked at it, and, sure enough, it was a smoke bomb. My eyes were so bad, I hadn’t been able to tell. So now I knew what was going on, and apparently, I didn’t see it, but one of the other guys, I guess while I was in the bathroom, apparently had come to and heard the word, "Fire!" He had come running out, grabbed his stereo, unplugged it and come running out and was carrying his stereo down the front stairway before he realized what had happened. Anyway, I then realized what was going on, and I came back toward the hallway, and about this time the fraternity brother, who was the excitable type anyway, who had gone racing down the fire escape, comes walking back in, takes a look around and just starts jumping all over me, "You stupid idiot." Anyway, the unfortunate part about all this is unfortunately the pledges, as they had finished setting everything in the raid and taking off, and heard the word "fire" when I’d yelled it, and so they got a kick out of that, and somehow somebody remembered an old cartoon about Sparky the fire dog. So that, unfortunately, became my nickname for quite a while after that. We were always big on nicknames. In fact, I remember we had one fraternity brother who was a year older than I was, and he had picked up the nickname, "Doorstop." And from what I understand where that nickname came from is, his 2 freshman year he had been fairly active in partying, and down on the second floor of the Pi Kappa Alpha House we had, in each quarter of the hallway, three bedroom suites, and there would be two outer bedrooms, one at the very end of the hallway and one next to the bathroom and the interior end of the hallway. The third bedroom was in between them but had no door to the hallway. So to get to the third bedroom, you would have to go through one bedroom or the other. Apparently there was a party one time during the week in one of the interior bedrooms, and it appears that this fraternity brother had been holding a door open, and everybody else had gone through it, and apparently he’d picked that exact moment to pass out at the doorway of one of the outer bedrooms leading into the hallway. So the party continues on for a while, and somebody happens to come out to go to the restroom or whatever, and starts to walk out and looks down and sees that his body is blocking the door, and he says, "Hey, come here, everybody. Come see our new doorstop." So forever after, he was known as Doorstop Jones. That nickname stuck so thoroughly that, I remember, my sophomore year, which was a year later, we had a fellow come to the fraternity house at lunchtime. It was right after lunchtime, so generally it was before afternoon classes had started, and that particular day we had at least fifteen, maybe twenty, fellows sitting around the fraternity house before either heading home or going back up the Hill. It was on a Friday afternoon. This fellow comes walking in and says, "Hi. I’m looking for Rick Jones." And there’s silence. A guy says, "Oh, you mean Craig Jones." He said, "No, Rick Jones." He says, "Well, there’s not a Rick Jones here." He said, "Well, I’m pretty sure he’s in Pi Kappa Alpha fraternity." We were looking at him, thinking, "That guy looks familiar. He’s been here before." The guy says, "Well, are you sure he’s not in the Sigma Nu fraternity?" 3 He says, "No. I really know he’s here." Rick Jones, Rick Jones, who could that be? This went on for about eighteen or twenty seconds. Finally someone said, "Wait a minute. Could you be looking for Doorstop?" And people were talking, "What’s Doorstop’s first name? Oh, yeah. Yeah. Doorstop, yeah. He’s right upstairs." So nicknames tended to stick pretty well at the time I was there. You asked a question about professors and which I remember best in a lot of respects. Some of those are still very much active at the university. The professor I probably got closest to while I was at the University was Len Jarrard, and that’s kind of an interesting story. I’d always wanted to take a psychology class, but for one reason or another, either I hadn’t been able to work it into a schedule, or eventually somebody told me, "Jarrard’s the best teacher in the department. You ought to wait until you get him for Psych 101." Well, he only taught one introductory psychology section. So when I didn’t get him once or twice, I figure, "Well, I’m in no hurry to take this course. I’m not planning to be a psych major, so I’ll just drop that course and I’ll try again next semester, and if I don’t get it then, I’ll quit worrying about it." I ended up as a Psych 101 student my senior year. Now, Psychology 101, that’s introductory psychology. Dr. Jarrard taught one section, as I say, and his course was fascinating, and I came in afterwards, asked some questions of him, and I found it amazing that the head of the department, who was also, some other guys had told me, very much a well-known research professor in his profession, would take the time to literally help a senior who obviously wasn’t going to be a major and obviously was not a long-term player in psychology, and I think that says a lot about the University. Another professor who certainly sticks with me and who’s still, although he’s retired, still very much around Washington and Lee is Dr. Johnny Gunn. I took Dr. Gunn for international economics, and it was one of the most fascinating courses I could imagine, and one of the fun things about it is you never could be absolutely certain 4 what we were going to spend time on when you came in class, because we might be going over some arcane facet of international economics, a question would come up on—I think one time it was metallurgy, another time it was nuclear fission, and Dr. Gunn knew what was going on. He’d say, "Well, let’s take a while and talk about that." And we’d get off on a subject that actually had more to do with international economics than you would guess, but certainly wasn’t anything to do with the curriculum, and we might spend an hour on that subject. In fact, I look back on it, I think most of the students in there clearly enjoyed the course because it was an afternoon course, it was an hour-and-a-half course, and regularly, it was not unusual at all that we might not finish up until more than two hours after the class started. That was the only course I had where that was actually part of the class, and it wasn’t anything that Dr. Gunn ever said. I don’t think there ever would have been a problem if somebody had had to leave the class after an hour and a half. I think we were all interested enough that we chose to stay. And that happened, as I say, more than once, probably a dozen classes during the year, at least. And again, I consider Dr. Gunn a good friend. Another professor who I really enjoyed was Dr. Colvin. I had two courses under Dr. Colvin. In fact, I told him a story that I think may have halfway horrified him, quite honestly, because I don’t think he found it nearly as funny in retrospect as I did. But one of the big facets of Washington and Lee that is very beneficial is independent exams, both to the student and, I think, to the student’s sense of responsibility, and, as you may be aware, with independent exams you have some flexibility to change your exam schedule if, for some reason, you decide that’s appropriate. I had one semester where I had chosen to take two courses from Dr. Colvin that semester. One was American Foreign Policy, and the other one was international relations. I forget the reasons why, but I had originally set my course schedule one way, and I changed it. I had originally been planning to take my American foreign policy 5 exam first, and I changed my course schedule. Excuse me. I think I was originally going to take my International Relations exam first, and I changed my course schedule to American Foreign Policy, but after I made that change, I lost that sheet. So when I started doing my studying, I was working off of the old sheet. And I’m studying very hard for my American Foreign Policy exam. I get in there for independent exams and look and pick up my book, and to my horror, it’s international relations. I’m thinking, "What happened?" And then all of a sudden it hit me, "I changed my exam schedule. I’ve just spent several hours studying for the wrong exam." Well, Dr. Colvin’s pretty much an understanding type, so I immediately went up looking for him to his office. He wasn’t in his office. Oh, my gosh. So I asked somebody, "Have you seen him?" They said, "Well, look over in the Commons." I went over. The exam’s already started, and I’m running around hunting for my professor. He’s not in the Commons. I did a little more looking around. He wasn’t anywhere to be found. I’m looking, thinking, "What am I going to do?" Well, I kind of realized, "Look, one thing I’ve noticed this semester is there’s a lot of similarity between American Foreign Policy and International Relations. To heck with it. Let’s go take it. I can at least try." And lo and behold, turned out I think I did as well as I would have if I’d studied for the correct exam, because there was so much overlap with the two courses. And I think that’s what horrified Dr. Colvin, that I even thought I could have done as well. It made the studying for the second exam a lot easier. I think almost everybody has got a story or two like that on exams that they think back and wonder, "How could I have been so crazy as to do that?" But Dr. Colvin’s courses were fascinating and always helpful. Another professor who I might mention who ’s still there, Dr. Delos Hughes was my advisor for my politics major, an excellent gentleman, although he would be the first to tell you I was not much of a student in his course. I remember—this probably 6 happens to every student also—I had Dr. Hughes for law and constitutionalism, and it was one of the tougher courses I ever took, and I also took it on a semester when I was taking Elementary Statistics, which for most students was a bit of a crip course. For me it was disastrous. Not being a computer jock, I just didn’t know what to do. I probably spent 50 percent of my total exam studying time trying to figure out how I was going to pass Elementary Statistics, and that semester, Law and Constitutionalism suffered rather severely. I remember going in to my Law and Constitutionalism exam, sitting down, and for the first hour to an hour and a half just being completely blank. Five exam questions, I don’t where to start. I don’t how I’m going to pass any of these, and finally got going and did, in fact, pass the course although with an embarrassing gentleman’s C. But, again, Dr. Hughes was just a delight to work with and somebody who I still remember fondly and enjoyed visiting with him a couple of years ago when I was back for my reunion. Had Dr. Phillips for Government and Business. Again, one of the most interesting courses I can remember. I believe Dr. Phillips is still there, isn’t he, or did he recently retire? Warren: I think he’s retired. And D. Hughes retired. Hunt: Oh, he did retire this year? Warren: Yes. Well, he’s in partial retirement now, I think. He’s in the phased retirement. Everybody was very surprised because he’s so young. Hunt: Well, Dr. Jarrard was telling me he was getting a little bit nervous about it, because every time they have the graduation ceremonies, it seems, he gets closer to the middle, and he told me, "I’m not so sure I like that aspect of it." But I certainly have very fond memories from the professors I had there, and I’m very grateful that there are that many still there at the university. 7 One thing that you probably heard more of than you want to hear, but bears repeating, and again, I wish it was something I had thought to do much earlier, Dr. Rupert Latture, I’m sure you’ve heard more stories about Dr. Latture than you could imagine, but I remember the day of—oh, what did they call it, not matriculation, but the day all the freshmen checked in? Warren: Freshman Camp? Hunt: Right. Freshman Camp. Well, now I was after they had the Natural Bridge Freshman Camp. They had phased that out a couple of years before I got there, but they had— Warren: Orientation? Hunt: Orientation, matriculation, whatever it is. I’d already been there for a week, week and a half, for football, so I was pretty well settled in as far as the dorm rooms go, but I remember coming out into the Freshman Quad, which still was very much an institution at that time. There was this old gentlemen with about four or five people around him, talking to people, and I thought, "Well, this is strange. I’ve got to go find out what’s going on here. He obviously doesn’t look like he fits here." And it was Dr. Latture basically visiting with the freshmen, any who were interested, on the history of Washington and Lee. And it was so fascinating, I think I ended up standing there listening to him—and people would come, and people would go—in excess of an hour. It may have been an hour and a half. I don’t know, a long time, and ended up leaving eventually because I kind of felt this—I had to go matriculate and I needed to do this, but it was one of the most amazing experiences I’ve ever had, because I just was—my mind was boggled. This man is retired. He doesn’t have to do this, and he thinks enough of this university and these students, enough of this university to want these students to understand some of this. I wish I could remember all he told me. I know I remember he told me many things about the university that I never heard anywhere else. So I owe him a debt of gratitude. 8 I remember about three years ago, I was listening to a sermon, and the fellow teaching the Sunday school class said, "Look, have you ever tried for a week stopping and telling somebody thanks for something they’ve done that you always appreciated and just never got around to saying it?" And that got me to thinking. I remembered Dr. Latture and sent back, through the university, a "thank you" note to him, just a quick letter saying, you know, "I know most of us didn’t know. We were young, in a hurry, and didn’t stop to say thanks, but I hope you’ll realize—I know that meant a whole lot to me. It means more to me now even than it did at the time, perhaps, although it meant quite a bit then, and I’m confident I can speak for a lot of other guys who really, genuinely appreciated it." I got a letter back from his son who—you know, you always regret doing something when it’s too late, but his son wrote me a letter back and said, "Hey, we appreciate it. I’m sorry, my father is now in a home and not really able to understand what you’re saying." So that’s the lesson in life of not waiting too long to tell somebody something. That’s something, quite honestly, I’d almost forgotten about for years but always appreciated, and if it is of any benefit, I’ve told that story to several other young men who’ve been considering going to Washington and Lee subsequently, some of which who have gone. So, believe it or not, Rupert Latture is still remembered even though I suspect by now he’s dead and gone. Warren: Yes. He died last December, a year ago December. Hunt: But as far as stories, I was in Pi Kappa Alpha fraternity, and I guess— Warren: How did you pick Pi KA? Hunt: Well, you know, it’s kind of interesting. I remember it was down between two fraternities. One was the Delta Tau Delta fraternity, which at that time was very much known as the jock fraternity, particularly lacrosse, but had several football players who I knew as well, and Pi Kappa Alpha was, at that time they had a reputation for being the party fraternity, but they were also a very diverse fraternity. They had people from 9 everywhere. They had different types of guys. What most people didn’t realize is we had a lot of straight guys, too, guys who did very well in school, etc. [Tape recorder turned off.] Pi Kappa Alpha had an event that, I guess, in some parts of the university and the city became a little bit notorious. It had started the year before I got there. It was known as the Pi Kappa Alpha Annual Festival of Mud, also known as the Mud Slide. Have you heard about this one yet? Warren: Keep going. Hunt: Okay. The year I got there, I think it was the Second Annual Festival of Mud, and the mud slide really consisted of two parts. If you look at the front yard of the Pi Kappa Alpha house, you’ll notice that there is a slope right near the sidewalk going in through the front of the house. If you’re facing it, the left side is higher elevation-wise, and then you have a drop of about four feet, I would guess, to the right-hand side of the yard. The Festival of Mud was twofold. Number one, in the yard in between the Phi Delta house and the Pi Kappa Alpha house, we had a big mud pit, also known as the grovel pit, and in front of the house we had what was called a mud slide contest. People would run from the high side, coming across from in front of the house, and when they hit the slope, they’d take off sliding, and the idea was to see who could slide the most, who could do this, who could do that. I remember we actually had people with scorecards grading the slides for form. It was a pretty wild party with grain punch, etc. It was very, very typical. While I was there, it was either my senior year or my junior year, they just started back up having grain parties in the area in between the Beta House, Phi Delta house, and Pi Kappa Alpha house in Red Square, and I don’t know what had happened to those grain parties and why they had disappeared before I got there, when I first got there, but they were, needless to say, very popular, and I notice they still do that. 10 Warren: When you arrived was a period when fraternities were sort of at the low point in membership. Hunt: That’s correct. I think either the year before I got there or my freshman year was the first year that less than 50 percent of the freshman class joined fraternities. Warren: Was that an issue for you? Did you know you wanted to be in a fraternity? Hunt: Not a big issue. Really, I was from Dallas. There were five or six guys from my home high school, and I think we had twelve or thirteen total from Dallas in that year, but, no, I didn’t feel a burning need to be in a fraternity, but I must admit, I found I liked a lot of the guys who were in the fraternities, and I could see a real purpose to it. You know, for all the talk about freedom and not having to be in a fraternity, I knew I didn’t have to, but I could see some pretty concrete advantages. Warren: Like what? Hunt: Well, one of them is, the fraternity would have a pretty good place to stay. Number two, you’d have some social curriculum out there that you could pretty well count on, and that wasn’t such a bad deal either. Other than that, the only real reason to be in a fraternity was friendship, and I think that term—and, you know, excitement, see how it all worked out. And I know it’s rather interesting, most of the people who became my best friends out of my pledge class and my fraterny were not the reasons why I pledged it, and I wouldn’t have expected them to be my best friends going in. So then I think that’s how life works a lot of times. So being in a fraternity was an enjoyable adventure as well. But the fraternity system you did have was still pretty healthy and active, needless to say. I think we probably may have been—I can’t say this with any base of knowledge of other time periods, but we were as rowdy as it gets, I imagine. Warren: Tell me what you mean by that. Hunt: Oh, a lot of it was the sort of silliness that you wish didn’t happen, have some guy breaking a chair, etc. I remember down in our basement, where we had our TV, by 11 the time you got to spring, your couches, the legs had pretty much been knocked out of them. They were just sitting on the floor and hopefully the springs weren’t busted out of the couch, and it was pretty tough to find chairs. You’d sit on anything you could find because the chair—you know, furniture had a hard time surviving indefinitely the combo parties. I know at the PKA House, we used to have, my sophomore year or thereabouts, we would have a couple of inches’ movement in the floor sometimes when we really got a combo party going in our kitchen area, and we finally called in a fellow to look at it structurally because we were afraid maybe our floor was breaking, and we ended up moving our parties down to the basement, figuring that would be safer, and still felt we were having some problems, so we did various things and finally called in somebody who told us, structurally, "Man, you’re just putting a heavy load on it. Don’t worry. It’s not going to collapse." So we made various changes as we went, trying to hang in there. But there was a lot of silly stuff, where you’d have people bust out windows. We tried to combat that by requiring the guy who busted it out to go buy a new window and replace it. I remember one time we proposed, and I thought we approved this, but I don’t know if it ever got done, going ahead and requiring that any windows replaced be replaced with Plexiglass so it wouldn’t be easy to keep breaking them out. Warren: Smart idea. Hunt: I remember one time—I thought this was—this one hurt me to see it happen, but I guess the guys who were taking it out there were the ones who had always played the piano. When I was a freshman, we had a piano in the house, and we had some guys who were pretty good on that piano, could play it pretty well, but due to the beating it had taken during combo parties, etc., because sometimes you get a big combo party, and the next thing you know, you have a couple of guys on top of the piano dancing along with the band or whatever that didn’t have dates, etc. The piano had taken a pretty good beating. It was in pretty bad shape. 12 I remember my senior year, I think, somebody had the bright idea—there was a bonfire in Red Square. Somebody started a bonfire, and a couple of guys got the bright idea, and since they were the ones who had always played it, you know, we kind of felt like it’s fair if that’s what they want to do, they took the piano out and threw it on the bonfire. Of course, at that stage it was just an ornament, quite frankly, because it had been beaten up so much and really wasn’t very playable. But there’s a lot of silliness like that that I don’t think the university needs to miss. Warren: What do you mean by that? Hunt: Well, what we were talking about earlier. When I went back for my twentieth reunion, the students had not changed that much. In fact, I remember when I went back for my tenth reunion, I was amazed at how little things had changed in some respects, as far as the students and the type of people who were there and the fact that they still partied. Heck, I’d been told they don’t party at the PiKA House anymore. Well, I went back and looked around and said, "Hey, it looks just the same to me. These guys haven’t slowed down any." But I think the regimentation by the university, a lot of the university’s positions are good and sound. You don’t want destruction of the house, but some of it’s a little bit too regimented, and that is a concern to me, but I’m not close enough to it to make a firm judgment there. Warren: Did you have a housemother when you were there? Hunt: We did. When I got there for my freshman year, we were on our fifth housemother in four years, and she had actually lasted—she had actually lasted a year and a half when I got there. Her name was Franny, and I remember—the way she handled combo parties was she had a sister in Clifton Forge, and on Friday afternoon, early Friday afternoon, she’d leave to visit her sister in Clifton Forge, and she’d get back Sunday night, so she didn’t have a problem there. At the time I was in the fraternity, we had a housemother, but all the work and all the planning and all the decisions were made—the housemother was just an 13 ornament, because we were supposed to have a housemother. All of the work right down to the meals were run by the students. We had our cook, but the menu and directions for the shopping was the responsibility of the vice president. So while we were—had finally found a housemother we could get along with, I remember, gosh, I guess it was the end of my freshman year, they took out the absolute requirement you must have a housemother, and we looked at it and said, "Gosh, we like Franny, but this is ridiculous. There’s 5 percent of our budget." It may have even been 10 percent of our budget. "We’re doing all the work anyway. There’s no point in having a housemother," and I mean to the extent there was—I think there was a belief a housemother was a restraining influence. Sorry, it didn’t work. So that’s why we took one out of the curriculum, and I understand they put them back in. I don’t know whether it makes sense or not. I do hope that the housemothers provide a real contribution if they’re going to have one to begin with, because I don’t think, from what I’ve seen, the students haven’t changed much. I remember once having a professor tell me that the faculty didn’t want to go coed because they felt it would be a moderating influence on the student body. I got a chuckle out of that. I said, "Don’t count on it. " And my understanding is that maybe it has slightly, but not much. Warren: How did you come down on coeducation? Hunt: I was not in favor of it. You know, interestingly, that was partly based on prior experience. I told you I got into some interesting discussions with John Gunn, and one of those, somehow we got into the subject of the economic impact of coeducation on the university. This was while I was a student. You may recall that there was a move to go coed back in 1975, which would have been my senior year. Maybe it was ’74. I think it was ’75, though, ’74–’75 range, and I remember visiting with Johnny Gunn, and there had been—I didn’t know this, it turned out there had been a move to go coed, oh, five or six years before, and Dr. Gunn had been on the committee that had examined the 14 impact of going coed, and he pointed out to me the problem was there was a serious economic impact on the university because they had looked at going coed, and it wasn’t just facilities, the curriculum choices didn’t match up. So you would have to make significant changes in your curriculum, broaden it in areas where Washington and Lee was narrow, probably narrow it down in areas where Washington and Lee was broad and stronger, and the fit wasn’t there. Now, I relayed that concern to people at Washington and Lee during the coed debate, and what I was told is that wouldn’t be the case, and it appears to me that has turned out to be the case as best I know. I think there was real concern on my part, and I think others’, that this is not a necessary move, and it’s being taken for the wrong reasons. I don’t know if it was taken for the wrong reasons, but it has turned out well, admittedly. The Festival of the Mud, the mudslide happened, I guess this is my junior or senior year. We had a schedule for Saturday which was the same Saturday that the lacrosse team had a game. Now, remember while I was there was the golden age of lacrosse at Washington and Lee. Warren: I wanted you to talk about that. Hunt: Tibert [phonetic], Lichtfuss, you know, Chadwick, Englehart, you know, some of those players that are truly legendary by major college standards. So we happened to have a mudslide scheduled, and at that time being fairly fervent lacrosse fans, we didn’t want to miss the game. So we had the mudslide and then, must have been twenty-five or thirty of us, marched up to the stadium and watched the game. Now, you need to understand, the mudslide, one of the most amazing things about it is, when the mudslide got into full gear, you could not tell who anybody was because everybody was totally covered with mud. You could walk up to somebody you knew, and if they weren’t standing up, you’d have to stop and look for a while and see the profile if they weren’t saying anything, to tell who they were, and even then you might not be sure. So 15 I’m sure that was quite a shock for a lot of people in the stands to see what must have looked like people coming out of the dead, marching up into the stands and sitting down. I think we were kind enough to leave a fair distance from everybody else, but I imagine that the section of stands we sat in, nobody else chose to sit there until they had at least a couple of good hard rains afterwards. Warren: So you really were there in that golden time for lacrosse. Hunt: Oh, yes. Oh, yes. Warren: I take it you didn’t play lacrosse? Hunt: No, I did not, although there were some Texans who did. I remember Steve Norris, for one, took up— Warren: Stephen Norris? Hunt: Was it Steve? Warren: I don’t know. I’m not— Hunt: I think so. Steve Norris, he was from Dallas two years behind me. I doubt he’d ever seen a lacrosse game unless he saw one while he visited up there before he came up, but he took up lacrosse and ended up playing on the lacrosse team. He was always a reserve, as I recall. But a lot of Texans really took to lacrosse. It is a very fun game to watch, but Texans are used to football, so it’s got a lot of the same natural elements to it. So that was always very interesting and exciting. But as far as just true agility, majesty, you know, the sort of beautiful sporting events that are amazing to you, it would be hard to exceed some of the great games, great Washington and Lee games, that happened while I was there. So that was fairly exciting. Let’s see here. I do remember one thing from Washington and Lee, one tragic story coming out of a lacrosse game, the Roger Lloyd accident coming back. I don’t know if you—my senior year. We had been very fortunate. There’d been some accidents, but we hadn’t lost anybody that I can think of out of our freshman class all the way up through our senior year. And then I remember the spring of my senior year, 16 a couple of Phi Kaps were back, just running at the track for exercise. One of them had some sort of congenital heart condition that he knew about but I don’t think he had told many other people about, and he was running with one of his fraternity brothers and had heart failure and died right there on the track. And "Bulldog" Jones, I think, happened to be nearby, and they got Bulldog over immediately so that, you know, it wasn’t a matter of lack of attention. He just flat—there was nothing anybody could do, I believe, if I remember right. I may be getting him mixed up with Dr. Penny, when he died out on the tennis court, which was after I left. But I remember my senior year, we had an away lacrosse game—gosh, I think it was when we beat Johns Hopkins in Maryland. We beat them, and I remember a bunch of us who did not go to the game were meeting the team when they brought them back to the stadium, stadium locker room, after the game, and, you know, that was pretty unheard of behavior for people from Washington and Lee. We must have had three or four hundred people up there. And I remember the word came back that after the game, Roger Lloyd and two other Phi Delts had been in an automobile accident, and two were killed immediately, and the other one died a couple of days—had serious— Roger Folmar, I think it was, had serious internal injuries and died a couple of days later. And I remember, it turns out one of my fraternity brothers who was a good friend of Roger’s, Roger Lloyd had asked him, had said, “Hey, I’ll give you a ride home.” This was a fraternity brother who was pretty wild himself, and he didn’t feel comfortable going back with Roger, so he got a ride with somebody else. And it turned out that, the best they could piece together, Roger fell asleep at the wheel, and apparently the other guys weren’t awake, and one of them came awake right as they were about to go off the highway, jerked the wheel, jerked it back the opposite side, sent them out into an open field that, oh, I don’t know, must have been 80 or 90 miles an hour from—Guy Kerr here in Dallas, I think, was driving behind them and came up behind and saw it, and they hit the only thing they could out in that field, 17 which was a highway sign. Unfortunately it was the old-style signs that were hard metal. One of our fraternity brothers was in Winchester, Virginia, and got the Winchester paper, and they had a photograph of the fellow trying to cut the top off of it to get the bodies out, and he said this guy’s standing on the back hood of the car, leaning over, working his blow torch, and they said his head was almost touching the pole as he was working, it was that accordianed. So a very tragic accident. Let’s see. What else have you got in mind? Warren: Did you get involved with Mock Convention? Hunt: Yes, I did. The Mock Convention while I was there was my freshman year, so I was not as involved as I might have been, but, yeah, it was enjoyable. That was a fairly wild one, because, you may remember, that was the one when we had a major argument on the floor as to whether or not Ted Kennedy would accept a draft, and we came very close to forecasting that one right because—let’s see, what was it? In the second ballot, George McGovern came within, oh, probably a dozen votes of getting over the top, but he did not make it over the top, and I think, what was it, the sixth or seventh ballot we nominated Hubert Humphrey. No. No. Wait a minute, because— Warren: You went with Kennedy. Hunt: Oh, it was Kennedy? Okay. Well, I remember there was a—that’s right, the Texas delegation was busy working with other delegations trying to draft Humphrey as an alternative candidate. And I remember when the Massachusetts delegation chairman came up to throw Kennedy’s hat in the ring, there was a major argument with, I think it was the New York delegation who had addressed the thing with Kennedy’s handlers, too, and had been told no way he’ll accept the draft. So I remember they actually had to go back in the room and argue for about fifteen minutes over whether to allow Kennedy’s name to be placed in nomination. So it was a pretty wild and wooly convention. Warren: I’m going to flip the tape over. 18 [Begin Tape 1, Side 2] Warren: I’ve interviewed two people from 1974, both members of the class of 1974, and I did them several months apart, and it wasn’t until sometime after I’d done both interviews that I realized that these two people were from the same class, because it was like they were from two different worlds. And there’s no other time period that I’ve had that experience as I’ve done interviews. Most people and people from your father’s time all seem to have had similar experience, but when you were there, it seems like there were the fraternity people and the non-fraternity people, and it sounded like you were in two different places. Did you experience that? Hunt: Oh, very much so. Washington and Lee was a very diverse—you’re probably well aware how geographically diverse it was at that time, and still is, for the most part. In fact, I remember Dean Gilliam telling me that a few years before I got there, right before he had retired, he had gotten a call from Dartmouth one year, saying, "Well, we did a special study of geographic diversity of major academic colleges, and we expected to win, but I guess we’re duty bound to call you up and tell you we came in second, and you guys won." So you had all types. We had guys who were so far right wing, they were scary. I mean, John Birch was liberal, in their view. We had guys who were so far out on the left-wing fringe, you know, and everybody kind of fit together. There was a pretty open attitude, "Hey, nobody expects you to hold to a company line around here. So that’s fine. Be what you want to be." I ran for University Council a couple of times, so that gave me a chance to start to—I’d met a lot of people at Washington and Lee, but to have a reason to go out and visit with guys who I hadn’t necessarily gotten to know, maybe fellows who were over in Davis Hall and fellows who were back over in other areas. At that time, I think, what was it, Preston House, we even had some guys over there. And, you know, there were a lot of guys there, their approach was different. But I think one thing that was interesting is that the basic right of people to be different was pretty well respected. You know, 19 people might feel they’re not comfortable bumming around with you because you’re different, but I don’t think there was really a feeling of people looking down on other people. Maybe that was just a part of the way the mid ’70s was. But you’re right. I think there probably was a lot of difference between those guys who were in fraternities and those guys who were not, because the guys who were not probably were leaning more heavily on a smaller group of close friends, and guys who were in a fraternity maybe spread it out a little bit, although even within fraternities you had your close friendships and your guys who—sure, they’re acquaintances in the fraternity but you didn’t go out of your way to spend time with them. You just weren’t the same type of guys. One of the nice things about my fraternity was diversity. We had some of the hardest partiers in the university, yet we also had some guys who were academic whizzes. It was quite a diverse group. In fact, I remember our pledge class came in, and they had a tradition. Pledges ate in the fraternity house one night a week, and after the first-semester grades came out, they had guys up on tables giving their grades—or I think in mid-semester, I think they gave out—at that time, they gave out a mid- semester grade or something, an indication, nothing official. They had guys standing up on tables giving their grades. Well, you know, the guy who had a point-five got a standing ovation, and the guys would point out, "You’re ruining our reputation here. A lot of you guys are coming in with too high an academic standing." And I think of, like, sixteen fraternities, we went from a period—in a year from being number fourteen academically to being number two, behind the "lamb chops." Lambda Chi was traditionally the number-one fraternity. In fact, I think we passed the Lambda Chi’s one semester while I was there and came in number one academically, and it sure wasn’t because we were trying to recruit academic whizzes. We had some fellows, though, who certainly brought up the average. And that was fun. You had different types of 20 guys. You had guys who were wild as could be, and you had fellows that you could trust on your life, and that was interesting. Washington and Lee is a place where I really enjoyed and appreciated being around different types of people, because I’d never been around people from the Northeast before I got to Washington and Lee. A lot of the people I played football with were from the Northeast, and I got to know them a little bit, and while a lot of them were really nice guys, you start to realize there’s a different culture here, and they treat people differently. When they look at somebody who’s not part of their group, it’s different. And that was probably the first time I’d been around people from the Deep South much. That’s very different. The first time I’d been around people from the Midwest. Had some good friends from California, and that’s a different experience as well. That’s something I don’t think I’d have gotten many other places. Warren: One of the things that was still fairly new when you arrived was having black students on campus. Hunt: Yeah. That was one part of campus that, while I was there, never meshed very well, and I think that was really unfortunate. I think there were—this is probably not very politic of me to say, but I think there probably was something of an inferiority complex. I mean, some of the things that the black student group would do, you’d look at it and say, "Why is this a big deal to them unless they’re sitting around here worried about being inferior, and nobody around here is looking down on them, so why are they looking down on themselves?" One thing that I think was a problem, and I personally suspect if you went back and looked at the records, it would be true, but at that time, I’m well aware that Ivy League schools and everywhere else were going well out of their way to recruit black students, and I think some of the black students at Washington and Lee, I always got the impression, had a hard time academically, and I got the impression they’d been recruited in even though it was going to be a tough row for them to handle the 21 academic standards. That was not true of all the black students. I know of one in freshman year that, quite frankly, I think he was sharp as a whip, and I think it was a problem for him because instead of being able—when he was in the freshman dorms, it was great. He got along well with everybody, but I think it was a challenge for him because I think he felt the pressure to be part of the Student Association of Black Unity. Warren: Who was that? Hunt: Lacy McClarty. I believe that’s the last name, real good guy. Warren: I don’t know him. Hunt: And I didn’t know him as well because he wasn’t in my dorm section. He was in the dorm section of some fraternity brothers of mine, so I spent some time around him and had occasion to ask about him as well, and everybody I know spoke highly of him. Warren: Did he stay all four years? Hunt: You know, I’m not sure. I lost touch with Lacy. I’m not sure whether he did. Warren: I haven’t heard that name. I’ve interviewed several of those early black students. Hunt: I think it was McClarty. I’d have to go back and look at a yearbook to be sure. Warren: No. I can double-check that. One last question, and it’s just something I’m curious about. Did you know Doug Harwood? Hunt: No. Doug Harwood. What class was he? Warren: I believe ’75. Hunt: I don’t believe so. I’d probably be embarrassed when I saw the picture. I’d probably recognize him, but the name doesn’t ring a bell. Warren: Well, he would have been one of those alternative people. He definitely would not have been a fraternity person. Hunt: Well, you know, odds are I did know him, because, quite frankly, one of the great things about Washington and Lee, by the time you finished your freshman year, you knew on a first-name basis 80 percent of the freshman class, I mean, unless you 22 were a hermit. And that was wonderful. The unfortunate part is you develop friends from other classes, if you were into a fraternity, you didn’t get to see some of these guys nearly as much. But he doesn’t ring a bell. Warren: You know, I didn’t ask you the most basic question. Usually it’s my first question, but we’ll make it my last question. Why did you go to Washington and Lee? Hunt: My junior year, when I talked to a recruiter there, or I guess it was my senior year, fall semester, I was so excited about it I was ready to quit football and just go to college if they’d have taken me. Sounded great. But I kind of changed my mind as I went along, and I think I went to Washington and Lee for two reasons. Number one, it was far, far away from home. I knew I’d never have to worry about my parents dropping in on me unexpected, and it was going to be new and different. I didn’t have anything at high school tying me down, so I wanted to go somewhere where I could be doing different and my past was irrelevant. But number two, its broad curriculum and academic reputation. I didn’t know what I wanted to major in, but I knew that if I went to Washington and Lee, if I wanted to transfer, I could go pretty well anywhere I wanted. If I stayed, I had a lot of flexibility, which turned out to be very important to me, because, I don’t know how many people do this, but I filed as a triple major my sophomore year because I had no idea of what—I still wasn’t sure what I wanted to major in, and I ended up majoring in the least likely of my triple major. I was a political science major, and the reason why was because when I looked at the course requirements, it required courses in history, economics, politics, business administration. I basically said, "I’ve got to get this major even if I do a double major because I only have to take about two extra courses beyond what I plan to take anyway," and I don’t regret the decision. It was a good one. HERB HUNT: [Unclear]? 23 Hunt: We had five I think, and that was the high-water mark for—that was the most that had been up there, I think, in quite a while from my home high school, and we had about twelve, I think, from Dallas. There were several from Saint Mark’s, etc. HERB HUNT: Five boys from one high school. Warren: Five boys from one high school. HERB HUNT: One public high school. Warren: That’s impressive. Hunt: Since that time, I know they’ve had years when I think they had double figures from Highland Park a few years—about seven, eight years ago. Warren: We have a large Texas contingent. Hunt: Well, but I mean double figures in the freshman class. It was pretty hard to believe, and, I know, it was the year before last year, when I was back for my reunion, I believe you all ended up with flat zero, or at least at that time it was zero. That might have changed, and there may have been somebody who went there, which was hard for me to imagine. Warren: Well, I have a feeling we could keep going all afternoon. This is wonderful, but I’m not sure whether your father has that much patience. Hunt: Well, you’ve got me pretty much talked out, though. Warren: Well, thank you, Doug. This has been marvelous, because I need to talk to people from your time period. You know, those old guys are great, but you young guys have something to say, too, and you need to be represented. Thank you. [End of interview] 24