Sessoms interview

[Begin Tape 1, Side 2]

                                                                                                                        17
Sessoms: So we were having a meeting, a trustee meeting, and I got the three of
them to the side, and I said, "Something's going to come up. You're going to hear
something come up at this meeting that I feel very strongly about," and I did feel
very strongly about it. I said, "We're making a huge mistake, in my personal view.
We're going to let this property go by the wayside. VMI will buy it. It's not that the
man can't find a buyer, it's just that he's given us the opportunity, and John and
Jim, John Wilson and Jim Ballengee, aren't that interested in it, and I think that's a
criminal mistake, and I hope we'll get it."

         So they agreed with me and they immediately said, "Well, what if we offered
to buy it for the university?"

         I said, "Well, I can't imagine then that the trustees would turn it down. It's a
gift. Why would they turn it down?"

         And that's exactly what happened. The issue came up at the trustee meeting.
It came up because it was a significant enough offer that I think President Wilson
and Jim Ballengee, the director, felt like the board should know. They also said, "We
just aren't going to acquire it." At that point my, little friends raised their hand and
said, "We'll buy it for you." And so we got that house.

         Now, it became important in the Lenfest story, because it was that house that
Frank Parsons was talking about in his great talk to the thirty-fifth reunion class of
the class of 1953, their thirty-fifth reunion in 1988. Now you're going to know the
rest of the story, because that's what most people pick up. They don't know the
background. But Frank was talking about a gift that a member of that class had
made, and Lenfest is in the audience. What happened was that Gray, in the final
analysis, said to Ted Van Leer and to Bill Lemon, "Look. I want the privilege of
doing the whole house. Linda and I want to make that gift of that house to the
university ourselves." So the others back away and Gray did it.

                                                                                                                        18
         So Frank, in making the talk to the thirty-fifth reunion class banquet, I think
it was, mentioned that a member of the class had made this wonderful gift. Well,
the purchase price turned out to be about $250,000 or something, about that number.
Then Lenfest, after the speech, said to Frank, "If you ever have something akin to
that kind of a need come up again, I hope you will let me know." And Frank was
thinking $250,000, as I'm sure you have heard. At that time, that was the cost of
what was going to be this all-weather track around Wilson Field. We had the center
track then and it was the last center track in North America. Every high school in
the state of Texas has an all-weather track, but Washington & Lee University didn't.
So that's how that happened.

         Then Lenfest said to Frank, Frank said, "We want a quarter of a million
dollars to do this track."

      ~.,Jerry says, "Well, I had something more significant in mind. Aren't you
trying to build a theater?"

        -Frank says, "Well, yeah, but that's a $3 million shortfall there."

                 '-"

       ..Jerry just didn't blink an eye and said, "Well, send the president up to see
me." So that's how all that happened. But I don't think to this minute you could
send this tape to John, and John Wilson would be amazed to know that my little

                                                                         ,,.-.

                                                                                                     l

finger was in the gift of the house that caused)~rry to-
Warren: What's that house used for?
Sessoms: Well, right now we have, I think, a professor up there. It has been used,
in the seven or eight years now, gosh, it's been eight years. That's where Randy

             ,.

B____ was used to attract the new dean of the law school. So the B~- -
lived there when they first came to town. After them, Michael Walsh, the athletic
director at the time. At one point, Litzenburg lived there. So it's been used early on
as a place to, in effect, attract-it's a wonderful house. I would love to have had it.

                                                                                                                     19
         To finish the story, after we did get the house and the university was gifted
the house by Gray Castle, it was now in our possession, I went to the president and I
said, "John, now that we own that-" I still hadn't told him what my little part had
been in Gray Castle's decision to give it to us, but I said, "It truly is right there.
We've got all the parking. Could we write into the contract, into the rental
arrangement with whoever you put in there, that I can use the house with the
alumni program a couple of times a year for like homecoming and spring reunions
and things?" It's a marvelous place. I could just see blue and white tents all over the
lawn and great parties out here and the parking is all worked out.

         He said, "Not a chance." [Laughter] So he never let me use it the way I
wanted to.

         But that house, to this minute, I think I could make a case for its institutional
use, the grounds thereof. Of course, I felt strongly about it, I'm sure Frank and Farris
and others did, too, early on, because it is so close to Liberty Hall. It is absolutely
within spitting distance of the great cradle and the great origins of this university,
and the thought that we couldn't control that property would drive me up the wall,
causing me to do things behind people's backs that I shouldn't do. But I really felt
that-of course, that little bit relates to all my years in Williamsburg. One thing you
learn there, of course, it's a great, that whole Rockefeller organization there, the way
the real estate was acquired there, a great American example of acquiring property. If
you can control it and it's contiguous to your property, whatever the price is, you go
get it. That's just something you learn, particularly if you have any sense of the
history and the preservation and all that.

        Jim Ballengee said to me one time, "Damn it, Sessoms, you're always trying to
get us to buy some old house." I feel just as strongly about the Sigma Phi Epsilon
house that the university let go a year and a half ago, which now a private owner
has come in and beautifully restored. So now it's restored to its elegance. And I

                                                                                                                          20
think that's criminal. I think the university has had a very spotty record. We've
done well to preserve the historic national landmark, but in terms of some things
that were close to the university that we didn't do, that house that I'm talking about
now is the house that the Civil War poetess Junkin, described, Margaret Junkin,
described the bombing of VMI from that front porch. She wrote that poem or
whatever-
Warren: For posterity, where is this house?
Sessoms: Well, it's at the end of Lee Avenue and the intersection today of Lee and
Preston Street, next to the Phi Gamma house. It had been, in recent years, the Sigma
Phi Epsilon house. I thought it would make a wonderful faculty club. I also
would've taken it in a heartbeat and considered making it a sorority house, too. I
mean, there are just a lot of uses for a house that size.
Warren: I'm sorry. I shouldn't interrupt.
Sessoms: No, no.
Warren: You know who would be interested in probably helping out with a faculty
club? Jack Warner. He took me to lunch once at the University Club in Tuscaloosa.
He's very proud of that.
Sessoms: We don't have a faculty-the Alumni House tends to be the closest thing
we have to a faculty house. Only a few of the faculty go over and drink coffee every
morning, but our faculty ought to have that kind of a facility. We built one of the
great teaching faculties in the country and that's the sort of thing that I hope as we
evolve, we will think about doing. It's not a high priority. It's the sort of thing that
you have to find a donor, someone that really wants you to have that for your
faculty. But that particular house, because it is so historic, General Preston of VMI
owned that property. What just absolutely floors me is that sometimes it is possible
for a college, even as old as ours, and as mature as we are in many ways, to make
decisions in board rooms without full knowledge of the history of what we're

                                                                                                                        21
dealing with. I felt like in the case of that particular house, the board of trustees were
not aware of its history. Had they been aware of the house's history, they might have
felt a little bit more precious about selling it. People make decisions to sell things
without knowledge, without the knowledge of that history.
Warren: You mentioned much earlier that there were things you learned in
Williamsburg that you put to work here. I presume this is one of the things. Are
there other things that you learned there?
Sessoms: Yeah, maybe. In the last few minutes I've been talking about my great
interest in preservation and in preserving old things and having a feeling for old
things. I went to Williamsburg as a staff writer in their press section and had a
wonderful experience dealing with radio and television, as well as the writing press.
Because of its international and national standing, whatever you want to call the
attention that Williamsburg receives, I was coming from a little PR job in
Lexington, Virginia, working with the Roanoke newspaper and the Richmond
Times Dispatch and the Washington Post, maybe, at the highest possible level and
local radio and TV stations, and you go to work for the public relations staff for
Colonial Williamsburg and suddenly you're dealing with National Geographic and
New York Times and network television, and it was moving to a whole different
league.

         I had a wonderful mentor there, who was a former Nieman Fellow, Clark
Mollenhoff, of all people. My boss down there was a fellow named Don Gonzegos
[phonetic]. Don had been president of the White House Correspondents Association
and president of, I guess in those days, the State Department Correspondents. My big
boss there, the president of Colonial Williamsburg, Carl Hummelsein [phonetic],
had worked under five Secretaries of State and had been on General Marshall's staff
in World War II, the youngest colonel in the Second World War for the United
States Army. So I had some pretty strong people to learn from my whole fifteen

                                                                                                                     22
years there. For whatever reason, they took me under their wing, but I was given a
lot of responsibility at a very tender age and became, after a couple of years in the
press area, where I had done such things as coordinate-one time I coordinated a
Barbara Walters/Hugh Downs television special in Williamsburg, a two-hour show
that emanated there.

         I did a lot of funny things. Once I worked on the "Lassie" television show.
Lassie even visited Williamsburg. [Laughter] I had a lot of interesting experience
working with writers from around the country and the world. Lots of film crews
and lots of magazine writers and photographers of every kind.
Warren: How have you brought that experience to Washington & Lee?
Sessoms: Well, just general public relations background and making decisions. I
was-gosh, if you get me on the Williamsburg stuff, I'll go all night.
Warren: That's why I'm pulling you back to Washington & Lee.
Sessoms: Yeah, right bring me back. I guess maybe the most specific thing, just
beyond the general PR experience there, seeing the big picture, probably, the greatest
thing I learned there. Know the detail, but always keep the big picture in mind. In
terms of detail, the one job that I had there that I can absolutely have applied to my
Washington & Lee experience was that for nine of ten years I was director of special
events at Williamsburg. Now, in terms of special events, I have to talk a bit about
that, then I'll bring it back to Washington & Lee. But there, for example, I was in
charge of, over my years, the visits of something like sixty or seventy visiting
foreign heads of state. I worked with the State Department and the White House on
visits of-well, let me think. Hirohito, the Shah of Iran three or four times, King
Hussein, Sadat, presidents and prime ministers of all these countries.

         I was the first person that worked-I mean, I was the person who got the
phone call from the State Department. "Dick, we want to bring Pre'sident So-and-so,"
or Prime Minister So-and-so. "Can you make the arrangements?" So in making the

                                                                                                                   23
arrangements for everything from dietary-from meals, menus, I wrote the
operations plan, in other words, for the visit of those sorts of people. You learn an
awful lot when you do that. You work with embassies. You work with the State
Department. You have to do a lot of research on the country that you're
entertaining. Of course, we were a great stopping place on official visits to
Washington. So I worked many, many nights, I can't tell you, with Secret Service,
about security matters. One of my proudest, I guess, possessions is an award I got
from the Secret Service when I left Williamsburg. They don't give many of those,
but I've got a wonderful award from the Secret Service.

         In any event, the detail of planning all that and planning such things as the
Williamsburg Forum Series, within my job description, I also handled the Antiques
Forum, the horticultural event, the Williamsburg Garden Symposium, and I
handled board meetings there. In other words, I did the logistical detail, just like
Farris Hotchkiss does of the Washington & Lee trustee meetings, I made the
arrangements for board dinners, for evenings at Carter's Grove. So I had to develop
after-dinner entertainment, not only for the prime minister of Australia, but for our
own board of trustees. And let me tell you, the Williamsburg Board of Trustees is a
pretty powerful group of people. We had a lot people on there that have remained
friends of mine.

         Not to digress too much, but last night I happened to watch this wonderful
program on David Brinkley and the great career of this wonderful journalist and the
impact he's had on television. Well, it just so happen that David Brinkley was a
trustee of Colonial Williamsburg. In fact, I handled his wedding, his second
wedding. I did all the arrangements for David's and Susan's wedding.

         The other time I've been a wedding consultant was I did the same thing for
young Winthrop Rockefeller. So you handle a Rockefeller wedding, I mean, I'm
talking about getting everything from doing not the bridesmaids' dresses, but I did

                                                                                                                           24
have to get the tuxedos and the morning coats for all of his groomsmen, because
they were all flying in from all over the world. So I've had those kinds of
experiences.

         Now, what did that mean to Washington & Lee? Very few people up here
really know what I did down there. Farris knows. I think there are a few people up
here that know what I did down there. I guess the quickest example I could give you
would be when it came time for us to do the campaign for Washington & Lee, this
most recent campaign that I was-
W arren: On the Shoulders of Giants?
Sessoms: On the Shoulders of Giants. I think I'm the person that said, "Well, we've
got to start at Mount Vernon." That was my idea. I was very much in favor in
taking something I wanted to call the treasures of Washington & Lee on the road, a
traveling exhibition. Well, we didn't have the wherewithal to do it as big as I
wanted to do it, but a piece of my idea did get involved. That is to say taking the old
George statute and the two portraits, all of this was part of a larger concept that I had
to engender the kind of spirit that I wanted to have around the country. I would
never come up with those sorts of ideas had I not had those fifteen years in
Williamsburg, where that sort of thing was my job there. We routinely did things of
that nature.

         Another example might be probably one of the best alumni events that I well
remember that I did in my seven years over in the alumni office, was once we did a
big reception at the Swiss Embassy in Washington, and that's a great story in itself.
I'm going to tell you because it's a funny story and it's a good story.

         Professor Doyon, in our art department, had made me aware, several years
before this came up, of a painting of Robert E. Lee by a Swiss artist by the name of
Frank Buxser [phonetic]. Buxser had painted Lee from life, only the third time
General Lee posed for a picture. The Buxser painting of Lee had been done in 1867, I

                                                                                                                  25
believe it was, or '68, or maybe it was '69 even, but it was before the general died, of
course. The Swiss government had sent this famous artist over to paint American
heroes, and he was in Washington painting everybody, generals and so forth. People
in Washington said, "Well, you've got to go to this little town, Lexington, Virginia,
to Washington College, and paint General Lee." So he came down and painted Lee,
and Lee and he got off on a good start, and Lee, I guess, enjoyed posing for it and
whatnot. Well, the painting, the completed painting, went back to Switzerland right
then and there, because it had been commissioned by the Swiss and had resided for a
hundred and some-odd years in the Swiss National Museum in Bourne, I think it
is.

         Well, I happen to pick up the paper one day and see that a new ambassador
had been named and had arrived in Washington, that the Swiss had sent over, a
man named Bruner. Ambassador Bruner, it so happened, had brought this painting
of Lee. Okay. Now, I have that information. He's got the painting of Lee. It's only the
third painting of Lee from life. We got the Benjamin West, I guess, down in Lee
Chapel, and there's one other.

         So I called Ambassador Bruner and it took a little temerity, I guess, to do that.
But I called him and I said, "Ambassador Bruner." I got through to him. First of all,
it's hard to get through to ambassadors sometimes, but I knew how to do that. I said,
"I'm Dick Sessoms, I'm director the alumni program of Washington & Lee
University, and I'd like to talk to you about something, an idea I've had that would
involve your embassy."

         Of course, he said, "What on Earth is that?"
         And I said, "Well, our university's developed a nice tradition of celebrating
one of our patron saints' birthdays." I said, "General Lee's birthday is January 19th
every year, and we celebrate it. Our alumni all around America celebrate it with
receptions, etc. General Lee is a man who is greatly revered by the alumni of this

                                                                                                         26
institution and we have our largest alumni chapter in Washington. I propose that
you give us a reception and let us come see your painting, because we're fascinated
to know that it's here and we would love to see it, and before you answer, let me tell
you now what I'm going to do for you. We have in Washington a group of alumni
that I personally promise I can deliver, and I'm going to just drop eight or ten
names, but these are people I think that you would want to entertain. I'll start with
the Supreme Court Justice Louis L. Powell, Jr., the Washington correspondent Roger
Mudd, and Charles McDowell, U.S. Senator John Warner, Robert E. Lee IV, a direct
descendent of General Lee, and the Secretary of the Army John Marsh," and I just
kept going. "Commerce Secretary Robert Mosbacher." So I dropped every name I
could-former Governor Linwood Holton, I just rolling them off. I said, "I promise
you they will all be there." And incidentally, I made that happen. Every single one
of them came, because I called them and wrote them. I said, "This is very important.
I promised, and you've got to come."

         He said, "Well, that sounds interesting." He said, "Suppose we do this on the
nineteenth." Of course, I had the schedule, it was a Friday night. "We'll do it here at
my residence. Would 150 people be about right?" I wanted more. but obviously I
was going to accept whatever he was going to offer.

         So I said, "That would be wonderful."
         I then wrote a letter to the, what, twelve, thirteen hundred alumni in that
chapter, and I said, "You're going to get an invitation in about a week, and it's a first
come/first serve deal. You must respond quickly. No exceptions made. First
come/first serve, because we anticipate a heavy response." So this was a November
letter I was writing or December, probably somewhere in late November. So the
invitation went forward. Of course I worked all this out with the embassy, they
worked out the exact language for the invitation under the sponsorship of the
ambassador, etc., etc.

                                                                                                                   27
         The invitations arrived and then the response came in. On the very first day
we had 150, thereabout, responses, the first day, return mail. The second day, double
that number. So I picked up the phone and called Ambassador Bruner. I thought
about this a long time, of course, before I made the call. Mind you I hadn't cleared
this with anybody down here. I mean, John Wilson was amazed to discover himself
at the Swiss Embassy a month later, wondering how in the devil he got there. So I
called Ambassador Bruner. I said, "Ambassador Bruner, I have this wonderful
response to this great party you're doing for us, and I have another proposal to
make."

         He said, "Well, what is that?"
         I said, "I want to offer to pay for half of the party."
         He said, "Why would you do that? I've already offered to do that."
         I said, "Well, Ambassador Bruner, I want to bring twice as many people."
[Laughter]
         He said, "Okay." So now I was up to three hundred. What I finally did,
Mame, and again this is based on my experience at Williamsburg a little bit, I
doubled, I overbooked it. I think we wound up accepting three hundred and fifty
people, and it shook down to the three hundred, because there's always a no-show
factor.
Warren: Especially on January nineteenth.
Sessoms: Particularly in January. So the ambassador's social secretary could've
killed me. She was woman who had been there for a while, I guess, and, boy, I was
the last thing she needed. In working with them, I decided to pull back on some of
my Williamsburg experience, so I called one of my dearest friends who was for
many years under Richard Nixon and, I guess, in those Republican administrations,
the assistant chief of protocol, a man named Bill Curtis. I called Bill and I said, "Bill,
I want you to do me a big favor and go with me out to the Swiss Embassy." So I took

                                                                                                             28
him with me, and, of course, when you walk in with a protocol% ssistant chief, and
as soon as he saw Bruner, well, they had met at Senator Mansfield's two nights
earlier and whatnot, and we just overpowered the social secretary, who was about,
I'm sure, going to kill me for bringing three hundred people. They had to move
furniture. They had to do all these things for us.

         Anyway, to make a long story short, I think you can check, but there are
plenty of alumni that are still talking about that Swiss Embassy party, it was perfect
because it had everything that you wanted. First of all, there was a reason for it; the
painting was everything. The interest was in the painting. The locale, even to our
so-called jaded and sophisticated Washington alumni, hey, they were dying to get to
the Swiss Embassy for a party. We had more than seven hundred people who
wanted to come. I dare say it will be a long time before we'll do another alumni
event in D.C. that would draw seven hundred people.

         Would I have done that without the Williamsburg-I would never have-in
fact, people then said, "How on Earth, why, how could you have done that?"

         I said, "Well it starts with knowing what the ambassador's job is. Look. That
ambassador could kiss me. Why? Because I got him a wonderful, I've got to tell you,
a huge article in the Washington Post." Maxine Cheshire, one of the great society
writers, came and did a huge article on this party and the Swiss Embassy and the
new ambassador, and, of course, it is his job to relationships with the American
public. That's the only reason they've got an embassy there. So from his point of
view, here comes a guy that's coming in with my kind of experience, saying, "I'm
going to bring all these wonderful people to your embassy for a party to see
something you've got." So it was a master PR stroke for the embassy of Switzerland,
in addition to being a great alumni event for W&L. So that's too long a story.
Warren: No, that's a wonderful story. I'm just thrilled. That's [unclear].

                                                                                                         29
Sessoms: Somebody, John Falk, the president of the Washington chapter, had an
event at, I guess, the Supreme Court Building. John grew up in northern Virginia
and lived next door to Chief Justice [William] Rehnquist, used to mow his lawn.
Warren: I wondered how that happened.
Sessoms: Yeah, and so John was able to do an event that Barry Sullivan spoke in
Washington at, at the Supreme Court the other day. He called me up and he said we
had two hundred and fifty or two hundred and seventy-five people. It was a huge
success. He said, "My greatest compliment came when one of the alums, someone
up there said, "This is a Sessoms-style event."

         I said, "Well, that made my day, too, to have you tell me that."
Warren: That's great.
Sessoms: But one of the things that I've learned about Washington alumni in all
this is that they do respond to quality in whatever form it takes. So whether it's
quality in the events we do or in the way we do the magazine or the way we do
anything here, our people expect us to do it well and they respond best to
imagination and some creativity. So I've tried to apply that not only to the
Washington and Lee alumni program, but to the development program and the so-
called development events. You get me talking about this stuff, Mame, I'll be here
all day.
Warren: Well, that was a good one. I want to switch gears a little bit to talking
about Washington & Lee here. You came in 1980. There were some things
happening on this campus and around this campus that were not its finest day in
1980. I was living here at that time.
Sessoms: Yeah, that's right, you were.
Warren: It was not its finest days in some ways. Can you describe that?
Sessoms: Well, the fraternity scene was just totally out of control in 1980. In fact,
sometimes when I think about the faculty today and the complaining about too

                                                                                                                      30
many parties or whatnot, I say, "Gosh, you don't remember. You're suffering from a
total memory loss." It is so much improved today compared to the early eighties,
it's mind-boggling. Maybe we don't want to tell the students that, but the fact is that
we have things under greater control then we did in 1980 when totally it was just
out of control.

         But in the early 1980s, we had still some of the brightest students, as bright or
brighter than we have today, not across-the-board bright, but at the top of the
pyramid, the kids in those days were just as bright as ever. I think the university's
decision to coeducate probably provided me with the greatest, maybe, personal
challenge in my sixteen years.
Warren: Let's talk about that.
Sessoms: Well, in 1983, John Wilson came as president, and in February that year, I
think, or March, maybe it was March, I became John's, I think, first significant
appointment because I was named to succeed Bill Washburn as alumni secretary in
the spring of 1983. So I was, I guess, the first "cabinet-level," if you think of the
Monday group in those days, known as the Monday lunch bunch, John's first
appointment at that level. John probably saw something in me that he saw not
unlike himself, an immigrant, maybe. He knew that I had gone to Hampden-
Sydney. He knew that I had worked in Williamsburg, and John, I think, appreciated
that background of Williamsburg. I guess I was being promoted by Farris and others.
I'd been here for two and a half years, and when Bill Washburn had resigned, he
resigned only because he was sixty-five years old, he was retiring. I don't mean to say
that he left for any other reason. He'd been in the job for twenty-five years. But there
had been a national search for his successor, and that's why I can tell my earlier story
about not a Washington & Lee man would take that big a cut in pay to take that job.
They had looked for almost a full year and had not come up with the person they

                                                                                                                        31
wanted. I think they had made an offer, one or two offers, for all I know, but they
just weren't coming up with the right person.

         In the meantime, Bob Huntley retired, the man that brought me here, really,
and John Wilson was in the saddle now. I think somewhere along the line, I got a
phone call to come up and chat with John. It later turned out that that was the
conversation, I guess he was just trying to size me up a little bit, get to know me a bit
better. But in the final analysis, Farris later told me that, "Well, we decided that you
had all the PR communications background, the skills, special events training that
that job could really best use, so it was kind of dumb to say, well, just because he isn't
an alum, we aren't going to think about him for that position."

         So you could've blown me over with a feather. It said a great deal about
Washington & Lee, too, that they would hire, for a position like the alumni
secretary, a non-alumnus. So the qualifications and experience really drove that
bargain. So I went into the Washington & Lee alumni office on the first of July 1983,
when Bill retired. I had about a week with him. I had known Bill and admired, I still

                                            •, ~

love Bill. Bill Walsh is a man that has a zillion friends, and people think well of Bill
and always will, and certainly I lead that charge.

         I went in over there, and within, what, one month, two months, of my taking
on that new job, suddenly this bold and new president had unleashed this great
controversy for the next few years, which was this whole coed debate. I was engulfed
immediately. It was almost unfair, because suddenly I became, along with John
Wilson, the agent of change. If you could imagine how an alumni would feel,
"What's going on now at Washington & Lee? A new president and, my God,
they've got a guy running the alumni program who's not even an alum." You can
sort of understand the kind of reaction that John Wilson and I would get when
we've move around the country together. Talk about the blind leading the blind.
I'm out there taking John to all these chapters and he was relying on me, and I'm

                                                                                                                          32
wandering into a mine field in practically every city in the country because of the
strong feelings that people had. Now, there was a lot of support, too, but there were
questions, to say the least. I think if I hadn't have had my Williamsburg just plain
public relations experience, I would never had survived that job, because those were
trying times for John Wilson more so than me, I'm sure. But I got my share of nasty
phone calls, too, in those days.
Warren: What kind of things did they say?
Sessoms: Well, "What are you guys doing to ruin-I resent that you're tampering
with my university. How dare you sort of tell us what we know is best for your
university? You're sort of Johnnies-come-lately to the scene." John was getting
that, not so much me. There was just questions, I suspect, about me. I'd been there
long enough to have had-two and a half years, I had been around the country in
twenty-two cities running area campaigns, so I had enough people who knew me
that knew where I was coming from. But I determined from day one, I think my
previous PR experience taught me this, to try very hard to empathize with people.

         I knew that the only way I could truly survive would be not simply to go
down the middle on it, but to understand people and where they were coming from,
because what I learned, and what I think we all learned, was that what people
brought to the debate, they took away from the debate. Logic did not work. This was
an emotional issue. So it wasn't a case of convincing anyone. Just forget it. What
they came with, the way they were built, the way they fought, wasn't going to
change. So I determined in my own mind what I was going to do, was that every
time I got a phone call and it was someone who was absolutely opposing the
decision that he felt was being made, I would take the other view and tell him all
the things that coeducation, all the benefits that it could bring. Now, flip-flop, if
someone called and said, "Oh, my God, I'm so proud of Washington & Lee. We're
finally getting into the twentieth century. We're finally admitting women. Praise

                                                                                                                       33
Allah, thank you, Dick, thank you, John," I would say, "You have to understand

what the other side is feeling here. It's an emotional thing. It really is tearing them

to pieces. Please help us with this crowd." So I was working both sides of that street,

just as indeed, John Wilson, I guess, was. John could articulate the reasons for it, for

remaining all male, better than any of the all-male proponents. He could also, of

course, disarm that argument, and he did.

Warren: He could articulate anything.

Sessoms: He would articulate both sides of it, but he would beautifully disarm his

own argument for remaining all male.

Warren: We need to pop in a new tape.

[End Tape 1, Side 2]