Robert E. R. Huntley

President Huntley, who signed our diplomas (and rescued W&L from financial calamity), lives in Lexington with his wife, Evelyn, in a condo village that has sprung up across Route 60 from the Liberty Hall ruins. He resigned the presidency in 1982, just in time to escape the trustees’ vote in favor of coeducation, and became president and chief executive of Best Products, now defunct but which basically invented the big-box store concept. (Best Products was the brainchild of Frances and Sydney Lewis, who gave all that money for the law school and who became, successively, trustees for many years.) President Huntley is the longest-serving director of Altria, the successor to Philip Morris.

A couple of years after we graduated, when angry Vietnam protesters surrounded the Lee House, Mrs. Huntley late one night opened the door and said to them, “If it gets too cold, will you move the geraniums into the garage?”, and they all said, “Yes, ma’am.”