Editor’s Blog
Lexington Miscellany
Everyone knows that W&L was founded in 1749. Even a U.S. postage stamp said so. But Dr. Crenshaw (who, after all, wrote General Lee’s College) differed. We may have been founded before 1749, he said, or perhaps after 1749, but nothing suggests that we were founded in 1749.
Everyone remembers and reveres Professor Jefferson Davis Futch III. He was always a burr under the collective saddle of Lexington’s city fathers. He prolifically wrote letters to the editor complaining about every change (usually because change meant new forms to fill out, bigger government and a tax increase). The letter I remember best came when the city caused mayhem by digging up every downtown street to bury the power lines. The project went on endlessly, and eventually JDF wrote to the newspaper demanding to know when the Lexington subway system would finally be completed. Even John Doane, the beleaguered city manager, cracked a smile.
 |
Sally Mann was a regular at the Hancock Lunches, and one day she brought along her camera |
Those of us who were involved in producing the alumni magazine in the ’70s had a Very Special Benefit, thanks to Rom Weatherman, W&L’s publications director. Rom effectively controlled the print business for most of the colleges in western Virginia because he was a genius at negotiating price and quality. All the other publications managers followed his lead (and no doubt demanded raises for being so smart). So Bob Hancock, the salesman for Saul’s Lithograph, which printed the W&L magazine, drove down every Wednesday to call on Rom, and Bob always took a few of us to lunch at the Keydet-General. But soon Bob came to us with a problem. Saul’s was located in high-price Washington, D.C., and because Rom influenced such a large volume of business, Bob’s bosses were worried that he wasn’t spending enough money on cultivating Rom and Rom’s posse. Complication: In those days there wasn’t anywhere in Lexington where you could spend more. Solution: We created Hancock Lunches. When we arrived at the K-G each Wednesday they immediately plunked a ton of Heinekens on our table and we were off to the races, all to give Bob Hancock a D.C.-size expense receipt. Hancock Lunches became legendary, and all sorts of campus folk angled shamelessly to get invited. We didn’t get a lot done when we finally ambled back to our offices, but all of us did work later than anyone else every other day of the week to make up for it. I swear.
In 1978, when Elizabeth Taylor visited W&L with her husband, John Warner, ’49, then a W&L trustee and now a Senator, she turned her back on me.
Long after I left Lexington, I returned and went for lunch to the White Columns Inn (where the College Inn was, in our day). I ordered my usual: a hamburger on an English muffin with horseradish, which I admit is out of the ordinary. A moment later, Mata McGuire, who owned the place and was working the stove that day, looked at the order ticket and yelled from the kitchen, “Bob Keefe must be back in town!”
My brother John graduated in 1976. Years later he visited and, for old times’ sake, brought his family to the Liquid Lunch. As soon as they walked through the door Mrs. Duck opened the famous cigar box and said, “John, here’s an I.O.U. from when you were a student.”
Remember how we found out if we made graduation when Colonel Head posted everyone’s grades on the Colonnade? (Imagine the privacy lawsuits if they tried that today.) I flop-sweated over my final exam in Dr. Crenshaw’s U.S. Diplomatic History class. I admit that I sort of slacked off toward the end. Jolly Ollie had a reputation for not reading exams very carefully, especially on tight graduation deadlines, but I was terrified that my nearly blank bluebook would attract even his attention. But when grades were released, I passed! Thus it was that along with most of you I stood in the graduation line in my cap and gown, in front of the Atwoods’ house, on June the the seventh, awash in pride and relief as the faculty processed down the sidewalk. When Dr. Crenshaw passed he hissed at me, with as broad a grin as you ever saw, “Ho, ho, ho, Mr. Keefe, we didn’t pay much attention to the biography of Harry Hopkins, did we?”
— Bob Keefe
* * *
Coming in April: Changes you’ll enounter on campus and in town when you return in May