Hunt interview

[Begin Tape 1, Side 2]
Warren: Now, when I was looking at your yearbook, I noticed that there was a big
fire on Main Street in December of 1950. There are some pictures in the back of your
yearbook. I wondered whether you saw that or-
Hunt: Fire on Main Street?
Warren: Is that the '51 yearbook?
Hunt: Yeah.
Warren: I'm a big·one for local history, so I'm always-
Hunt: It may be on the back. Let me see.
Warren: It's right towards the end. You can see the aftermath of a fire. It was at the
corner of Main Street and Washington Street. It was one of these groupings.
Hunt: Oh, I know what you're talking about. Downtown burned down.
Warren: And it must have been a big deal.
Hunt: Oh, yeah. The main block of downtown Lexington burned down, across the
block in front of the hotel, and it burned the whole block down.
Warren: The whole block?
Hunt: Yeah. It took out the whole block. I'd forgotten about that.
Warren: Did you all go up and watch?
Hunt: Oh, yeah. Yeah. It was quite a disaster. It burned-if you'll check the city
records up there, I'm sure you'll find something about it.
Warren: Oh, I'm sure I will, but I just noticed it, and I said, "Oh, I've got to ask him
about this."

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Hunt: Yeah. Well, it was just a fire. There used to be a restaurant on Main Street
up there across from where the hotel was, but essentially it was that whole block
that caught on fire. They took it out, which so often happens, you know, in small
towns.
Warren: That must have been a big deal. Now, all right, you mentioned a
restaurant. A while earlier you talked about going down to the diner. Are you
talking about Steve's Diner?
Hunt: Steve's Diner.
Warren: Tell me about Steve's Diner.
Hunt: Well, Steve's Diner was a-at that time it was like the old-fashioned diner. It
really looked like a dining car, and had booths in it, and it would stay open all night,
being on the highway there, would fill up with truckers, etc., but it was a place that
you could go get something to eat regardless of what time of night it was. So bottom
line is, it was kind of a hangout. I can remember it had, in letters that had been
poked in, I guess like felt, you know, where they have the things that you can stick
them in, and it said, "Be patriotic. Lick your plate clean." Obviously a holdover
from World War II, and it was still up there even then. But Steve's Diner was
down below the filling stations there.
Warren: I'm hoping to get a picture of Steve's Diner, because it obviously-
Hunt: Well, the last time I was back, Steve's had moved. It had been torn down
and Steve's was moved out of town up on the hill up there.
Warren: Right. Right. Even that's gone now.
Hunt: That's gone, too?
Warren: Yes.
Hunt: And then, of course, there was the grill on up the street going the other way,
but it closed at night. You know, after twelve, one o'clock, it would close. It had
good chili. I remember being in there one night, all sitting around drinking beer.

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The goldfish-eating craze was going on, and they had a fish bowl in the front there.
One of the guys had had a few too many, reached in and got a goldfish by the tail and
swallowed it, and they didn't discover it until we started paying the check and going
out the door, and they really put up a real protest about that. [Laughter]
Warren: Well, that's the first goldfish-eating story I've had. What other Lexington
hangouts were there?
Hunt: That's about it. There wasn't all that much to do in Lexington.
Warren: It was sort of a sleepy little town, wasn't it?
Hunt: Well, it was either those two or one of the fraternity houses, and, you know,
with all the fraternity houses and the lounges and the parties that went on, you
didn't need to have other places.
Warren: Tell me about the parties. What were they like?
Hunt: Well, you know, parties could be at almost any time any night, but often
some of the early party-goers would start on a Thursday night and have a party, but
normally, you know, sit around and drink beer. It was always the joke around the
Beta House that their children were going to be born blind and deaf because the
basement, the lounge, was always dark, and the music was always turned as loud as
it would go. [Laughter]

         Brian Bell, I can remember he always would like to play the piano. The piano
was on the main floor. He couldn't play it very well, but he liked to play it anyway
because everybody would sing with him.
Warren: Were there any particular bands you remember, or musicians, acts that
would come?
Hunt: Not really. I know for the Fancy Dress they'd always try and have a pretty
good-sized name band, and that was more for girls, I think, than for the fellows.
Warren: Did you go to Fancy Dress?
Hunt: Yes.

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Warren: And did your future wife come?
Hunt: Yes. She even-had her come up for Fancy Dress all the way from Texas. I
guess it was the sophomore year after she came back home and showed up, and I
had a rented costume for her, which is what they used to do.
Warren: And was Fancy Dress a big deal?
Hunt: Well, it was a big party. Oh, yeah, it'd be a three-, four-day party. It would
start, depending on how soon your girl could come, why, it would start Thursday,
Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. Always a big brunch at the frat house on Sunday late
morning, lunch-type arrangement.
Warren: Sort of wind the whole thing up?
Hunt: Yeah.
Warren: Now, where did all these girls stay?
Hunt: Well, a hotel downtown. Often, as I recall, they would-sometimes they
would have a room in somebody's home or something in town, there'd be three or
four of them in a room, but usually they came with a chaperone and had to report
in by a given time, and I don't know, they must have slept four in a bed or
something like that in the hotel because there weren't that many rooms in town,
obviously.
Warren: It doesn't seem like there could have been. I'm always intrigued where
this tiny little town absorbed all these girls, where they all stayed. So was there a big
Texas contingent?
Hunt: Yes. Yeah. There were quite a few Texas boys up there, and there's still.
You'd be surprised how many boys periodically go right out of Highland Park High
School to W&L. But when I was up there, why, there was a boy by the name of Eric
Gambrell from here in Dallas who died shortly after college. John Ryan was there
from over in Fort Worth. So there were always quite a group of Texas boys. One
problem with the Texas boys is a lot of them would go up there for a year or two and

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then go to the University of Texas. Paul Stephens was a friend of mine that went up
there, he was an SAE, again, I don't remember whether he stayed one or two years,
but then he went to the university. A boy by the name of Don Lloyd from here went
up there but didn't stay, I guess, over a year. I think he even left in mid-semester. I
don't recall right offhand.
Warren: Now, would they leave because they had to or because they wanted to get
back to Texas?
Hunt: Oh, some of both. There was a boy by the name of Dick Brown that went up,
but he was very sweet on a girl here in Dallas and he came back just because he
wanted to be near his girlfriend.
Warren: That's a good reason.
Hunt: Yeah. I guess so.
Warren: We talked about this a little bit at lunch. You were there with a bunch of
really remarkable people were there at the same time you were, or at least they've
gone on to be, make names for themselves.
Hunt: Yeah. I think that's basically that, you know, it's a time frame that-getting
old enough that you know a lot of people, and, yeah, there were some people there
that are well known. Roger Mudd was there, Pat Robertson, and John Warner. He
was a Beta and one of my roommates.
Warren: Was he?
Hunt: Yeah.
Warren: Tell me about John Warner as a student.
Hunt: Well, you need to talk to him.
Warren: Well, I'm hoping to, but, like I say, it's always better if I know something
about them.

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Hunt: John was a very-I'm sure he made good grades. He was a very astute
student and was a typical politician even in college. He's done well. I don't want to
be recorded on that. I'm surprised how well he's done.
Warren: He's married well.
Hunt: Yeah. Yeah. John and I-let's see. You know, at that time, the Beta House
had big rooms on the third floor. There were only three of them plus a trunk closet
on the third floor, and, of course, housing was pretty tight back in that day and time.
And the two rooms on the end-oh, they could be anywhere from-there were
bunk beds in there, so there could be anywhere from eight to twelve people in each
room, and then the center room was six or eight. So I say I roomed with John
Warner. We were up there in that melee, and, you know, you room with a lot of
people when you have those kind of arrangements.

         Lamar Wangert [phonetic], who we mentioned at lunch time, who I'm sorry I
can't find in the books, he was in law school. He and I roomed together for a year or
two years. One or two? I guess it was one year we roomed together in what was a
trunk closet. It had a double bunk, deck bed in it, bunkbed, and the bottom line is
we'd have to take turns getting up because there wasn't enough room for two
fellows to stand up in the room at once, and especially with him because he was
about six feet five and 240 or 250 pounds or so.
Warren: I expect you let him get up first if he wanted to.
Hunt: You had to let him get dressed and out of the way before you could get out of
the bed.
Warren: That must have been tough if you both had class at the same time. So was
Fred Vinson a Beta, too?
Hunt: Sure. He was a Beta. Fred was a real congenial guy, one of the older fellows,
thirty-plus.
Warren: He was? Oh, he was a veteran?

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Hunt: Oh, sure.
Warren: Oh, I didn't realize that.
Hunt: If you'll go by and if you'll take the, say, 1948 Calyx and the '51 Calyx, and you
look at the pictures of the people, you can see they start to get younger as you come
forward. Yeah, Fred was a veteran and a very congenial guy. As a matter of fact, I
used to go to Washington, D.C., with Fred on weekends sometimes, and also Brian
Bell was one of my fraternity bothers. One weekend I went home with Fred Vinson,
and we stayed at his place there with his mother and father, and we got there, and
his dad, Justice Vinson, asked me if I knew how to play bridge, which I did not.
They handed me Goren's book and said, "Read this." We got there about two thirty
or three o'clock in the afternoon. He said, "Read it and study it," so I read it and
studied it. And then we had dinner, and then we sat down to play bridge.

         That was on a Friday, and on a Sunday afternoon we came back and we had
never left the bridge table other than to eat and sleep. So I learned how to play
bridge.
Warren: They took it seriously. That's fascinating. Did you know Charley
McDowell?
Hunt: Charley McDowell.
Warren: His father was in the law school.
Hunt: The name is familiar. What class was he, do you have any idea?
Warren: He was either '50 or '51, I'm pretty sure.
Hunt: Was he in the law school?
Warren: No. Charley's gone onto make a name for himself in journalism.
Hunt: I really don't place him, so I probably didn't know him very well. But I'll
find his picture, I'm sure I'll know who he is.
Warren: How about Pat Robertson? Were you friends with him?
Hunt: Yes, I knew Pat.

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Warren: What was he like as a student?
Hunt: Well, I don't know how good he was as a student, grades, etc., but a very
congenial guy and [unclear].
Warren: All right. And you were there with Roger Mudd, too.
Hunt: Yes.
Warren: And he was one of those veterans.
Hunt: Yes. Yes, he was.
Warren: Do you remember him particularly?
Hunt: Oh, yeah. I knew him. You know, he was a big dog on the campus in the
journalism school and all, and I didn't know him intimately, but certainly he would
know who I am and I know who he is, and then we had contact.
Warren: Now, speaking of being a big dog, I got this picture of huge signs for Fred
Vincent running for something.
Hunt: Running for president.
Warren: President of the EC?
Hunt: Of the student body.
Warr~n: So he was a politician.
Hunt: Yeah.
Warren: Do you remember that election, and did you get involved in student
politics at all?
Hunt: Oh, there really wasn't all that much to student politics. It was a matter of
putting up some signs, and then everybody voted, but as far as getting out and doing
any door-to-door campaign or anything like that, there wasn't-it was, you know,
very low key, you just put your name up and say, "I want to be it," and maybe get
some of the leadership in some of the different houses to say, "Okay, guys. There's
an election up. Vote. I can't tell you how to vote, but if you want to vote for this
guy, it'd be all right with me," you know, that sort of thing.

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Warren: Did you get involved in politics at all?
Hunt: No.
Warren: How about the Mock Convention?
Hunt: Yes, yes, I took part in the Mock Convention, as everybody did. The whole
student body was there.
Warren: That was '48?
Hunt: Yeah. No, '49. '48-'49 year.
Warren: Did you have memories of what it was like? That would have been the
first one after the war.
Hunt: Yeah.
Warren: That was probably a little different then. Tell me about what you
remember.
Hunt: Well, as I remember, one of my friends dressed up as a very pregnant lady,
and another one was dressed up as would-be husband, and I was the one marching
behind with a shotgun, and the pitch was that it's a shotgun wedding, but she's
casting two votes for-and I don't even remember who we were assigned, or
whoever we were assigned. I didn't see a picture in here, but I'm sure there were
pictures that were taken of the whole group coming down.
Warren: I think that was one of the years you got it right. Did you nominate
Dewey? Do you remember?
Hunt: Yeah.
Warren: Yeah, I think that was one of the years they got it right. Well, the Mock
Convention is still a very big deal. It's one of the big shows we put on.

         How about-one of the things that I think makes Washington and Lee really
stand out is the Honor System.
Hunt: Uh-huh.

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Warren: What are your memories of how you learned about the Honor System,
and what did it mean to you?
Hunt: Well, basically, it worked on the basis that you were expected and, you know,
there was no effort that I ever knew of by anybody to cheat, but you were expected to
always conduct yourself on the basis that there could be no suspicion of you. You
were expected to do your work and tell the truth, and bottom line is, it worked.
Now, I know what took place with the football team later on, and obviously the
Honor System was much more important than football because they did away with
the football team for a period of time. And when they did bring it back, they did it
on a much lesser scale. I think it's probably one of the most important things about
W&L, is the Honor System.
Warren: Has it been a presence in your life since you left there? Is it something that
you still think about or you're aware of?
Hunt: Oh, yeah. Of course, you know, I'm in the business world where, you know,
I don't have to worry about that sort of thing, because whatever I do is-you know,
you have a certain amount of security around an office, but as far as I'm concerned,
that's just to make sure your files don't get lost. [Laughter] I think the Honor
System is very important. It is a disadvantage for an American businessman,
especially doing business overseas, because corruption does take place in most
foreign lands, and that's something we don't ever participate in. I'm not trying to
be self-righteous, because if you ever get involved in that sort of stuff, there's no end
to it, and we've walked away from many a transaction because it smelled. You
know, if it's not on the up-and-up where you don't mind anybody looking at it, I
don't want to be involved in it. So, yeah, I'd say it had an effect on my life and still
has an effect on it. That's the way we've run our business.
Warren: It certainly seems to have made lasting impression on most people.
Hunt: Yeah.

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Warren: In fact, I often wonder why-I'm very aware now that there's this huge
Washington and Lee network of people who didn't necessarily go to school at the
same time, but it seems like if you know somebody went to Washington and Lee,
you know they're okay. You can trust them. So I think that is a real lasting benefit
to the Honor System.
Hunt: Yeah.
Warren: And the other thing that impresses me about Washington and Lee is the
speaking tradition, the idea that everyone says hello to everyone. Was that very
much in-
Hunt: That was very much the case, but, of course, I came out of the Hill School
where it was also the custom to speak to everybody. So it wasn't all that much
difference for me, but I note this today, I still am probably a little out of place,
because I speak to people all the time on the street, etc., and I get some funny looks
for doing it, because most people walk by and look away, or that's their demeanor to
do it, and I always make a point to speak to everybody.
Warren: Well, I have one last question on my list, and then anything else you want
to talk about. But I have heard more than once, and I can't begin to tell you-don't
ask me who told me this because it's a long time ago, before I really knew who you
were, but somebody told me that you bought a gas station in Lexington. Is that true?
Hunt: Yeah. I didn't physically buy the station. The station belonged to the dealer,
but I bought the lease on it from a fellow who-well, it was a Sinclair station. Of
course, Sinclair no longer exists. Remember it was the picture of the dinosaur, the
brontosaurus. Anyway, it was just below the Beta House there, and I guess I owned
and operated it for two years, two school years and one school summer, and so I
learned at a very early age I'd rather be in a business where I don't have to deal with
the end user. I'd rather-just because there's so much work and contact that has to
go to it.

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Warren: So why did you do it? Why did you have a gas station? That's unusual,
for a student to have a gas station.
Hunt: Well, my father's in the oil and gas business, and, of course, he would have
told him me not do it had I asked him. I didn't ask him. I understand that when he
found out I'd done it, that he said, "Well, he's going to learn a good lesson."
[Laughter] But anyway, you know, I thought it was a way to make a little money,
and, bottom line, I could run down there after school and work, make sure-you
know, had to have hired people with it because it stayed open 'til midnight, and I
even tried staying open all night, but we were so confined there, we couldn't handle
trucks, big trucks.

         Bottom line is, I just thought it would be a good way to learn business, and
then it also was a way for me to study. In other words, after dinner at the fraternity
house, I'd go down and keep the station open 'til twelve o'clock and take my books
with me and sit up there and do my homework and studying between filling up
cars. And, of course, you didn't have that much business that you didn't have time
to do it.

         I do remember one disaster. A guy came in. He'd bought some new tires and
wanted me to change them out for him. And I told him, I said, "Okay, I'll do it,
but," I said, "I'll tell you, I've never changed a tire before, but I'm willing to try."
And after about a hour and a half getting the first one done, why, he said, well, he
says, "I understand. Thank you." [Laughter] And he didn't make me do the other
three.
Warren: Were there many students who had businesses going on or were working
like that?
Hunt: Oh, one boy had a slot machine in the fraternity house that was business. He
made money. Every now and then, it would hang up, though, and it would pay
out-it would give out-it was a nickel slot machine that would give out nickels

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regardless of what came up on the front. So I think finally he pitched the machine
out. In other words, you could stand there and just put a nickel in and get three or
four back each time until it emptied. But mechanical problems put him out of
business.

         A lot of people-I don't know of a lot of people that were in business or
trying to do something like that, but, you know, it's always a way to earn some
money, so I just thought I'd give it a try. The reason I got out of it was that,
summertime, when you weren't there, why, you just literally had no control over
it, and things went to pot in a hurry. So I figured after two school years I wasn't
going to try another summer.
Warren: So what did you do then? Did you find somebody to take your lease?
Hunt: I sold it.
Warren: Well, that was an education, then. You learned you've got to stay around
and watch your business.
Hunt: That's right.
Warren: Well, we've gotten through my list. Is there anything we haven't talked
about?
Hunt: Nope. No big questions.
Warren: Actually, you know, on tape we didn't talk about the Bicentennial, that
you were there during the Bicentennial.
Hunt: Uh-huh.
Warren: Do you remember any of the events or anything that happened?
Hunt: Yeah. You know, the Bicentennial was a big affair. I don't remember that
there were any great social events that went with it or anything of that sort, but I do
remember it was very much on everybody's mind, and were we going to have a
good team, etc. Other than that, I don't remember an awful lot about it.

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Warren: I only have a few pictures from the Bicentennial, but they always
prominently figure President Gaines. Was he as much a presence on campus as he
appears to have been?
Hunt: Yeah, he was very much on everybody's mind. He was a dynamic speaker,
and, yeah, he was very respected, very looked up to or whatever you want to have it.
Whatever happened to him, out of curiosity?
Warren: He retired, but stayed in Lexington, and then died very shortly thereafter,
just a couple of years after he retired.
Hunt: I see. Okay.
Warren: But he stayed pretty close and actually continued to help raise funds for the
school.
Hunt: Does the president still live in the house up there?
Warren: In the Lee House. Sure does. Sure does.
Hunt: And does the garage that Lee-Traveller's stable still the garage for the Lee
House?
Warren: It sure is. It sure is.
Hunt: I'll be darned.
Warren: Well, I sure want to thank you. I appreciate this. It's been a real pleasure
for me.
Hunt: All right. Good. [Tape recorder turned off.]
Warren: We've got one more story coming.
Hunt: Well, as concerns the ex-G.I.s, and I should have thought of this. You
mentioned did any other boys do anything to earn money. This boy, Toby Hanson,
as I recall, he was an ex-paratrooper, and he used to go to the air shows that might be
around the country on weekends. Bottom line, he'd take his parachute and figure
out how to get to the nearest air show, and he'd do one or two jumps, and he

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usually got twenty-five dollars a jump. So he could earn fifty bucks on a weekend
making air shows.

         There was another boy named Posie Starkey, who was a fraternity brother-
both of these are fraternity brothers-and he was ex-service. I don't remember
exactly what he'd do, but he'd take off on jaunts like that for a weekend or so.

         Then there was some boy in the house I remember, and I can't put a name to
it, that when the Korean War broke out, he had been a sergeant in the U.S. Army,
but he had been assigned to Korea as an advisor for the South Korean Army for
several years at the end of World War II. When the war broke out, he was in law
school, and he got his orders two days after the North Koreans made their move,
and his orders were to report to Tokyo and pick up his uniform. We got a letter back
from him about a month later, and literally within ten days after he got his notice,
he was in the front lines in Korea. So that sort of thing was happening with the ex-
G.I.s that had been in the service and then came back. It was a very unusual time.
Warren: How about younger people like you? Did you get drafted? Was there a
draft?
Hunt: There was a draft when I was in high school, and it ended, I think, my senior
year. No, I take it back. Since I was going to college and I was a science major-
that's one of the reasons I took science-I was deferred from the draft. Then when
the Vietnam War broke out-oh, I take it back. They had stopped calling up people
on the draft just as I got out of high school. Then when they started on the Korean
War, they reinstituted the draft, but since I was in college with a science major, I was
deferred. Then I was married, and while there was still a draft out there, they
weren't drafting anybody that was married, and then they started drafting married
with one child, etc., two children. I was always a child ahead of them, so I missed it.
I missed it. And finally, I guess it was [Richard M.] Nixon that did away with the
draft. Who was it?

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Warren: It was during Nixon's administration.
Hunt: Yeah. It was Nixon that did away with the draft. You know, I just happened
to be in there where I didn't have to go, and I didn't go down and sign up.
Warren: Were your classmates signing up when Korea broke out?
Hunt: No. No. I mean, it was strictly a matter of being called up. It wasn't like
World War II where people rushed off to enlist. I think the world had had enough
of fighting, and they weren't anxious to go halfway around the world.
Warren: I would think your generation would be very realistic about what it meant
to go away to war.
Hunt: Yeah. Okay.
Warren: Thanks.
[End of interview]

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