I probably ought to explain a little on the background of our affection for W&L. We lived in Virginia, we lived in Richmond, we drove up and down Monument Avenue with the Southern heroes' statues, the centennial of the Civil War occurred in 1965, there were markers and defense fortifications still in place (like in Windsor Farms near FPC), and we both grew up reading the Landmark series of biography (one year much, much later John gave me a copy of the Landmark bio of Robert E. Lee and still owned the Landmark version of the Monitor and Merrimac at his death). John went to Douglas Southall Freeman High School (the Rebels at the time), Lee's most famous biographer. We both revered Robert E. Lee as a man of honor and integrity. We didn't pause to think about the cause he fought for (other than the South was the underdog) and we didn't think about slavery. Actually we didn't really think about his stellar accomplishments as an educator leading vanquished southern manhood toward reintegration and reconciliation either. But we revered the idea of St. Bob Lee.
Lee Chapel (now University Chapel):
This is a painting of REL in his office in the basement of the chapel:
We chose a primo room (266 in the old dorm, now known as Graham Lees), overlooking Traveller’s (Lee's horse) stable converted into the President’s garage. It was a double room
which we made into an outer more social room and then an inner room for sleeping.
Our predecessors left a place in the closet where a floorboard had been pried
up to create a small place to store alcohol (banned in the dorms). Back in
those days there was a man employed to clean the rooms every so often and maybe
even to make our beds.
Graham Lees quadrangle (our room was on the left side of this photo but on the other side (street side) of what is visible here, diagonally through the inner corner):
During the summer between high school and college the
fraternities had some social events to get to know the incoming freshmen
before Rush. I particularly remember meeting Bob Priddy for the first time at one of
those. I can remember Phi Kap, SAE (at Virginia Beach), and SPE having those summer parties. John,
being much more socially adept, did great at those events. Me, much less so.
Next to us on our floor in the dorm was Troy Kenneth
Cribb from Spartanburg SC, about whom John had at least two good stories (one not quite acceptable to recount ) and now a pretty big member of the GOP. Then there was
Lawson Cannon; Big Jim Lawson (really big, really smart, really really profane, hardly ever going to class);
Rick Strauss, about whom John had many, many stories including one involving my bunk; Walter Sales from Louisville
Ky; Gary Herman, also from Louisville; Greg Wolinski; Mac Squires; and Larry Mann
who later married the girl everyone wanted to know, the daughter of our bookstore manager. Sally Munger Mann is now a famous photographer. I can’t believe the name, but our Dorm
Counselor was Philander Cox.
After Freshman Camp at Natural Bridge, which was held to let the class begin to know each other and to inculcate us into the Honor
System and other campus traditions, we took placement tests. John of course
placed up a half level in English. We both placed up half a level in French
even though I don’t think either of us had taken French recently. I remember
reading Camus’ L’Etranger en Francais.
It was also at this interlude before class started in earnest that we all had to pass our swim test (to graduate), swimming naked en masse in the Doremus Gym pool.
Rush Week came early, right as classes were starting, which
in my opinion is a bad idea I am glad
they have gotten rid of. John and I generally went to the Rush events together
and at times wandered the Colonnade late at night after an event together where
we met the statue (later I found out it was the grave) of Jockey John Robinson,
a great benefactor of the U, but now his role is downplayed due to the fact that
his bequest involved slave labor.
John got more fraternity bids than I did including
one from the infamous Betas posed to him by one of the most infamous Betas of all time. We anguished over our bids. In the end John chose Phi Kappa Sigma and I
chose Sigma Nu (side note- my Big Brother at Sigma Nu is now famous for
yelling “You Lie” during one of Barack Obama’s State of the Union addresses).
A few more stories from Freshman Year in the dorm:
John and Margie must have started seeing each other when he was a senior at D S Freeman and she a junior. It is hard to conduct a long distance romance. During the fall of our freshman year John was worrying a lot about Margie because she had told him she was going to a school dance with Raoul or Rafael, the Freeman foreign exchange student from Chile. The only telephone available for us was a public pay phone on the first floor of the dorm. If one of us got a call, the guy who picked up would yell upstairs to find the right recipient. As you might guess all calls were thus very public. Once when John got a call from Margie, many of the guys from the hall were with him in the background. As John and Margie discussed (or argued about) the upcoming dance and Raoul or Rafael, there was a steady chorus from John's dorm friends of "Dump her, Dump her, Dump her!". Nothing like good friends and peer support. John was smart enough not to listen.
For Homecoming or Parents' weekend all freshmen were supposed to run the Turkey Trot during half time of the football game. We did it, all the while being exhorted by Coach Norm Lord "You can still make it!". But maybe I have this anecdote confused with all of us in Phys. Ed trying to pass the mile run in under 8 minutes that we was required to graduate. John and I hitchhiked home one weekend freshman year and got a ride with another PE Coach, Joe Lyle, famous for telling the boys in class to "line up in a circle".
During this Freshman time period right after Rush, John's story of 16 moons from his pledge class and the resulting social probation took place. It would have been only a bit of Pledge Week tomfoolery if a little old lady from the town hadn't been walking on Washington Street at the same time. Decades later at a Bob Priddy sponsored lunch he asked the upperclassmen at the time who made the 16 moons request about the incident. Plausible deniability- they said they don't remember that.
A photo of John and some Phi Kaps including denier in chief-
Left to right standing- Bob Priddy, John, Dave Hulbert, Bill Rasmussen, Ralph Schenkel, and Bill Rogers (the two Bills came to John's funeral). Seated- Glen Moore, Wick Vellines, Wendell Winn, and Jim English.
Sophomore year at W&L is the year when the students lived in their fraternity houses. That means this is when the bucket of water over the door of his neighbors' room story took place. John and I spent so much time together at the PKS house that the frat asked me to join them and to leave Sigma Nu. It was a hard thing to do but I did it and never really looked back. (I did get a letter from the national Nu office saying I was going to be followed by a mean guy on a white horse for a long time, or something like that- wish I had saved the letter.)
Junior year John and I had a couple of classes together. One was Classics in Translation with Dr. Leyburn. This was one of the best offered at W&L and the Iliad and Odyssey stuck with both of us through the decades, culminating in a W&L Alumni World Affairs Cruise to Malta, Sicily, and Greece during 2019.
Here we are exploring Sicily and Greece on the Ponant on the World Affairs cruise- on deck, going through the Corinthian Canal, and in Olympia:
On the other hand, second semester Junior year was our worst semester ever because of Statistics- we had a horrible teacher, we did not keep up with the work, and the whole grade depended on a final exam. The end result was we both repeated Statistics.
John was an economics major and I was split between pre-med and business administration. At W&L economics students tended to pick one professor who gave them good grades and to take all of that prof's courses. My economics prof was Chuck Phillips who had me grooved for a "B" in every class. John's prof was The Grif, Dr. Griffith, whose specialty was labor law. John could do a very credible imitation of The Grif's gravelly voice. Money and Banking under Dean Edward "Eddy the Axe" Atwood (later known as "The Clean Dean" for installing a shower in his office for him to use after racket ball even though the gym showers were less than 100 yards away) was probably the hardest economics course and it was unavoidable for an economics major. From Dean Atwood, a Princeton man, John had a brief flirtation with tweed coats and a tobacco pipe.
John really liked his freshman English teacher, Dr. Sidney Coulling, his math teacher, Bobby Johnson, and his Religion professor, Dean Sprunt. One of John's often told stories was about his Modern European History professor, Dr. Jefferson Davis Futch. Dr. Futch particularly liked Italian history. One of the guys at the Phi Kap house invited Dr. Futch to dinner at the fraternity house. He arranged for a black cab driven by a guy in a black suit, black shirt, and black tie to pick Dr. Futch up and to bring him to the house. There they served a spaghetti dinner and lots of wine. The exam for the course was tough and all the guys thought they had failed. John was worrying about his grade and stopped by Dr. Futch's office to ask him how he did on the exam. Dr. Futch asked what fraternity John was in, and, when John said "Phi Kap", Dr. Futch quickly and without looking at his blue book replied "B".
1968-69 was the heyday for muscle cars. A guy a year ahead of us, Toad Man, started things off in my memory with a GTO. The alternative was an Olds 442; I had a purple or maroon version. This was also a time period when GM was having union troubles and quality suffered. Once when I was taking Margie back to Hollins for John, on I 81 near Fincastle, I downshifted from 4th to 3rd and my gear shift lever just flopped over and went limp. Margie and I both looked at where the gear stick was and we could see bare black pavement going by under us at 65 mph.
A little later John got a GTO before he got his 1970 Volvo which he must have kept for 30 years.
There was at least one more adventure involving the Road. It was either junior year or early senior year. I read a news story that the state of Virginia had finished the last section of I 81 between Roanoke and Lexington. The story said the governor was going to be in our area the next day to open the highway officially. John and I figured that if they are going to open it tomorrow it had to be finished today. That night we took off and explored the new section at a somewhat higher speed than the limit. We decided that since it wasn't open yet there would not be any state troopers patrolling. I have to admit I was a little worried that the state may have left a small gap in the interstate to discourage people like us. However, I felt a lot better when I saw someone else across the median going the other way at higher speed.
If I remember correctly, for our Junior and Senior Years, John lived above The College Town Shop and record store in the "Womb Room" with Rick Armstrong and Chuck Garten. John had many stories about those living arrangements.
At sometime in here, after we were roomies, John began calling me "Pal", and I began calling him "Bud".
Music- We both started college with a fond regard for Motown and soul music. The tip top tempting Temptations came to Lexington as did the fabulous Four Tops, Martha and the Vandellas and many others. Two songs I particularly remember were "Apples, Peaches, Pumpkin Pie" which Bob Priddy could never get enough of and Bobby "Blue" Bland's "Who'll take the girl with the Skinny Legs?". We also loved the Beatles. At some point each of us drifted away from soul and toward Iron Butterfly, Buffalo Springfield, Cream, and the like. I am not sure when John's affection for the Grateful Dead came along, because somehow I missed that.
Entering Senior Year (1969-1970) we had no idea what was ahead of us. The Viet Nam War kept heating up but it was far away. Then it wasn't. There was a draft lottery which we all watched on TV. I didn't have to watch long since my birthday came up as Number 4. John's number (195) came up later but not far enough out to protect him from the draft. We spent the next couple of days figuring out our options and then hit the interstate to Fishersville, Va. (near Staunton, but nowhere near any navigable waters) and joined the Navy Reserve as enlisted men, not on the Officers Candidate School track. Our commitment was 2 years of monthly reserve meetings, Boot camp for two weeks at Great Lakes, Wisconsin during our Spring Vacation of senior year, Active Duty Training (AcDuTra) for two weeks somewhere in the summer, and eventually two years of active duty followed by two more years of reserve meetings. If I remember correctly, Rick Armstrong had already signed up and Ned Powell came with us.
John and I flew to Chicago in March to catch up with the others going to Boot Camp. We evidently weren't spiffy enough for the other real Navy guys in the O'Hare USO and they told us to fix our caps, spit polish our belt buckles etc. Beyond having our heads shaved, standing watch at night for no purpose, and cleaning the head, Boot Camp was a real experience. We met a broad slice of American manhood, from the barely literate (the "Woo Woo" story), to the absurdly profane ("My name is JC Gibson, as in Jesus _ing Christ Gibson," our petty officer), to the "What do we have here- an epicleptic?", to an outrageous fabricator of tales (the swarthy guy who said he and his girlfriend took his motorcycle to Woodstock), to another college guy from Boston College who was our good friend then and whom I wish I could find now (Master Tom Bates) (behind me below). How the US ever won a sea battle with this quality of raw material is a miracle.
John used to tell a couple of good stories about our being gassed with tear gas in training, the use of live ammo screeching over our heads, the wild rumors flying around the base about call ups for Viet Nam and extensions of our time in training, the order for us to ship out directly to Nam, and being bumped out of the cafeteria line by some very brawny, very hungry Seals.
Next curve balls during our senior year were Kent State, Nixon's bombing of Cambodia, and the significant protests even on the W&L campus about these current events. We got to take our electives Pass Fail which was a help.
Graduation time finally came- June 5, 1970. On D Day, June 6, John married Margie. They soon went to live in Roanoke while she was finishing school the next year. John went to Mayport Florida for AcDuTra and had the incident of loading live ammo in the hold of his Destroyer Escort while being supervised by a noticeably drunk petty officer. I went to Philadelphia for AcDuTra aboard the DH Fox, which never left port because it listed significantly to one side. We did chip it and then painted it gun metal gray all over again.
In 2022 I visited a Destroyer Escort, the Cassin Young, on display in Boston, just like the ones John and I were on, and I sent John a photo of the ship, the triple layer bunks, and the ammo hold to remind him of our fun times.
Probably the most memorable moment of our Navy experience was when we left Reserve training at the Norfolk Naval Reserve Center a little early. We knew we had to go to monthly meetings and we were going to be at Virginia Beach together so we decided to go to the USNR meeting there. It turned out they didn't exactly know what to do with us and did not keep very good rolls. After classes and the touch football after lunch, John and I looked at each other and kind of figured they would never miss us if we left. So we dragged our feet after the football game and went to John's car (I slumped down in the passenger seat of the blue Volvo) and left the Center. We went back the next day and no one had missed us at all.
This was highly uncharacteristic of either of us, both being rule followers. Every so often John and I separately and together would shutter at what the consequences of that day could have been for our lives if it had turned out differently. The thought of time in the Brig was truly scary.
In
the summer of 1970, my brother Jim told us about a rock concert that was to
take place on the top floor of a parking deck at 7th and Marshall in downtown Richmond. We
decided to go. The group was called Steel Mill, and its lead was Bruce
Springsteen! Here's the link to the concert-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t30b35WbtVw
For 1970-1971 John was in Roanoke and I was "teaching" at St. Christopher's. John was deciding about seminary and I was deciding about medical school. I left Richmond to go to Smith to get my premed classes out of the way and then went to med school at Tulane. John entered seminary. Margie was teaching at St. Catherine's. John Jr came along in 1972, I think.
For the next significant period of time, I know the facts about what I was doing but know much less about John's specifics. We got together fairly often given the distance between where we lived. John and Margie did come to my med school graduation in NOLA. I remember once in summer of 1976 when John, Margie, and I went out fishing fairly close to shore off Virginia Beach. It was a really foggy day. Suddenly out of the mist we could see a huge multi masted sailing ship emerge with some sailors in white uniforms up on the masts. It was a training ship for some foreign country on its way to or from 4th of July celebrations in NYC. That day we saw three of them in all. Very impressive. It felt a bit like we were on the sea in the John Paul Jones era.
On July 6, 1977 John performed Jimmy and Nancy's wedding ceremony at my parents' house. It was hot and most guests ended up in the pool.
Fall 1977- John and Margie and I had a date to meet for lunch at Clyde's in Georgetown, DC. We went up there separately and I got to Clyde's early. From where I was sitting I could John and Margie pull up in a cab. John got out and stepped immediately into a pothole filled with fresh cement. It was a great lunch though.
Since most of these recollections are not documented and come from my hazy memory, the dates of certain things may not be accurate. The next photo is from about 1978 or 1979, probably July 4th weekend, at Virginia Beach. Besides John, me, John D., Meg, and John Junior, there's fellow W&L alum and med school friend Rick Sands. Margie must have been the photographer. In my files I call this one "When We Were Young".
In the fall of 1979 things changed a bit. Connie and I had started dating. I remember introducing John and Margie to her at one of John's favorite restaurants, Grace Place on Grace Street. I am very glad they took an immediate liking to her.
That winter we made the mistake of going to Virginia Beach on a cold weekend (maybe New Year's). We stayed at what my mother called "The Annex" which is 4900. I should have realized that the beach is a summer resort and the houses are not insulated nor even heated at the time. This is the weekend when we burned old furniture in the fireplace to stay warm.
John was the unofficial photographer at our wedding in 1981 (along with Jim and Nancy and John and Meg, we got married at my parents' house) and here are two of his wedding photos-
For Dad, Connie, and me, the late 1970s and early to mid 1980s were peak times for running in the Richmond Marathon. John liked to bike along with us at times to lend support. One year he biked up to my Dad and asked if he could get him anything. My Dad replied- "A beer, please!" John took off, found him a beer and then caught back up with him to give him the beer. That must have been one of those really hot marathon years like 1979.Time marches on. We moved to Greenway Lane in 1985 and some time after that John and family moved to Matoaka Road, about three blocks away so we were neighbors again.
In about 1987 the big best seller was "The World According to Garp" (later a movie with Robin Williams, John Lithgow, and Glenn Close). Margie loved this book, and one night when we were all at the beach together she called the author John Irving at his home in New Hampshire. I don't know how she found his number. The boldness of making the call has stuck in my mind but I have no idea what she said to him when he answered.
I think we took this next photo in 1996. Bob Priddy, John, Farris Hotchkiss, and I were having lunch at the Commonwealth Club. I think it was Bob who whipped out a camera and asked one of the staff to take our photo in the hallway with REL's portrait. It is doubly ironic, given St. Bob Lee's fall from favor in the 2000 teens, in that we asked a black staff member to take this picture and in that, now, poor, much maligned Bob Lee was taken out of the picture by the flash.
I'm not sure when John and family moved to Dahlgren Road. Maybe it was about the same time that we moved across the river to Cherokee Road. I'm not sure when Margie got sick. She died in the fall of 1998 and it was a very sad time.
Because of John's schedule, with funerals any day, weddings on Saturdays, and services on Sundays, we missed a lot of time together. I was reluctant to ask about going out of town for weekends or about going out on a Saturday night knowing John would want to be prepared for Sunday.
After Margie died I became more diligent on some weekday lunches, and I got him to come with Richard Knapp and me to Virginia Beach a couple of times to watch the UVA vs. Va. Tech football games. We had fun but it wasn't much consolation to John.
At some time, when John Elrod was president of W&L, I recommended to John Elrod that John Miller would be an excellent Bacchalaureate speaker on campus. John Miller gladly accepted and threw his heart into the address. This is from the day he gave it- June 4, 1997-
For sure, John Miller and John Elrod became friends. John and Margie and Connie and I attended the opening of the new Science Center at W&L in 1996. Maybe this is when they became buddies. What I most remember about that event is that W&L had a very distinguished popular science author as a guest, Stephen _____. Impromptu, he sang some operatic piece solo from the top of the steps in the Center. We also heard from him at dinner and Margie and I agreed he was very full of himself and of it.
When John Elrod got sick and knew he didn't have long, he gave John Miller his W&L 250th Anniversary belt needle-pointed by a Trustee's wife. It was sad because you can see the belt marks retreating as John Elrod lost weight. John Miller gave me the belt much later when it better fit my waist (but long before John Miller got sick).
John was pretty much my family's full service "padre" on call. In late September 2001, John came to Virginia Beach to do the marriage counseling needed for Leesa and Gordon. Then he stayed on for Gordon's bachelor's party which involved going fishing and eating tuna sashimi on the stern while at sea. John loved that!! On October 6, 2001 he performed their wedding at St. Mary's, which was good compromise between some Roman Catholic parents and some FPC parents.
Later he christened Leesa and Gordon's children August (2004) and Thomas (2009).
This is from Thomas' christening or baptism.
He also performed the wedding ceremony for Bruce G Jr's children B iii and Caroline (now Ryder).
One lunch, probably in late summer of 2005, Richard asked us if we wanted to go to see the Rolling Stones in Charlottesville in October. He said he and his friend Rocky were going and he was going to rent a limousine. Rocky's wife was also bringing a young, widowed friend of hers, Lisa Johnson. John said yes. I passed.
In November 2006 John and Lisa got married. After a short while they moved into the house across Cherokee Road from us and we were neighbors again.
John stepped up for W&L again in 2008 for the Baccalaureate address. The subject was A Culture of Civility.
(insert link to speech from bacca Ruscio 2008)
I only remember seeing John a couple of times while he lived across from us on Cherokee. Maybe he or I were taking out the trash. I don't remember ever going inside his house. In retrospect, I now understand things weren't going well over there.
Sometime in June 2011 or so, I invited John and Richard to come over for a ride on the pontoon boat. We also took our two dogs- Toby, a little Jack Russell terrier, and Rusty, a golden retriever. As we went upriver, both dogs went out on the bow to catch the fresh breeze and any new smells. We got as far as the 288 bridge and turned around. I can't remember when but we were mostly home when one of us noticed that Toby wasn't on the boat. I nearly panicked because Toby was Beth's dog and I had previously run over and killed another of our dogs by accident. We turned around again and started back toward the 288 bridge, all the while trying to remember when we saw Toby last. After seeing nothing on the upriver leg and on the north side of the river, we turned and headed home looking on the south side. As we reached the Virginia Power Boat Club, Richard saw Toby. He was in the lap of a woman who was having a picnic, and Toby was enjoying being hand fed shrimp and ham biscuits- a dog's perfect life.
John later managed to turn this near disaster and rescue into a sermon.
The next February I had my 64th birthday and Connie gave me a party with the theme of the old Beatles song "When I'm 64". My birthday may have been just her means to accomplish another purpose. John was there as was Connie's new BFF and FPC friend Deborah. The guests sang Happy Birthday to me. John and Deborah were standing near each other at that time.
Above: That magic moment.
But nothing is easy. It took a lot of pressure from us and maybe others to get John to call and ask Deborah to go for coffee. It seemed like an eternity but he finally got the courage. After the first coffee, we got the feedback from John- "She's the real deal!!". That sounded pretty optimistic.
In July 2012 Helga threw a gigantic birthday party for my Dad's 90th birthday. John and Deborah were there.
Soon we got John and Deborah to come to Virginia Beach a few times. Connie and I mostly left them alone. There were long conversations over coffee and wine on the little south side porch and on the beach.
On November 17, 2012, John and Deborah got married. Big smiles all around.
The four of us went to the Arcularius (hiked around this lake in Yosemite)
and to the Abacos in 2014:
The four of us went with Leesa and Gordon to West Andros in 2016 to fish and celebrated John's birthday there.
The four of us went on the W&L World Affairs Cruise already noted.
2020 came along and was a totally new experience. There was Covid. And there was George Floyd. The Monuments on Monument Avenue got decorated and then came down.
That provoked a lot of discussion. John had saved his 7th grade Virginia History textbook and showed us the welcome Africans got when they arrived in Virginia, according to some-
W&L buds at the 2021 FPC picnic:
In January 2023 we went to Key West (Tennessee Williams house and the Butterfly Garden as well as the closest point to Cuba) and the Marquesas-
The four of us met my California friends Rich and Darla Guess for a cruise in Maine and Massachusetts in August 2023.
Gloucester Massachusetts monument to "those who go down to the sea in ships":
As one might expect, each time we got together some (many) of the stories mentioned above (and others) would be told and retold with lots of laughs. The repetition helped my memory a lot.
This is the trip where Deborah and John developed a real liking for Lobsta Rolls.
And, we spent a great week together at Virginia Beach in August 2024 before things took a sudden downhill turn.
Here's John staying positive throughout his illness-
I close by showing a photo of the Mission Statement of Washington and Lee University. W&L formed so much of our friendship, and, if there was ever anyone who fulfilled this mission, it was John.
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