VT Stories Oral History with Curry Roberts, November 21, 2015 (Ms2016-015)

Jenny Nehrt: Hello.

Curry Roberts: Hello.

Nehrt: Would you mind stating your name and the date?

Roberts: Curry Roberts, November 21, 2015.

Nehrt: Great. So tell me about your family Curry. Where did you grow up?

Roberts: I grew up in a little village in the western part of Bedford County,

about 18 miles from Roanoke, typical parents who you know, a baby boom baby.

Both parents grew up in the depression, my dad on a really sizeable dairy farm,

my mom just a small subsistence farm. Both of them were heavily influenced but

that experienced and then my dad was in the Army and in Europe during World War

II as an infantryman. My mom actually worked at the Radford Army Arsenal during

the War, and then they met after the 00:01:00War. They married and dad became a

machinist and mom worked in the same factory in Bedford that he did but she was

in the Sales Department. And I have two older brothers, one is actually ten

years old, Chester, who is also a Tech grad, and a middle brother Robin, who

really enjoyed his freshman year here so he wasn't invited back. He went on and

got an associate's in business from Virginia Western, and he's obviously the one

that has been the most successful of all three of us financially. I have two

children from a previous marriage. They are both in their 20s and both are Tech

graduates. Currently my wife Irene and she's Mary Washington graduate and she

has twin 7-year-olds.

Nehrt: Wow, it seems like a Virginia Tech family.

Roberts: Well, yes. I really 00:02:00didn't know I had any choices until I got to Tech.

My case was a little bit… I always wanted to come here. The very first

football game I ever saw Virginia Tech play was in 1963, and in those years they

still played VMI in Roanoke. Now I wasn't in the Corps when I was here, but

Thanksgiving Day Parade was a big deal in Roanoke when I was a kid and we went

to the parade and went to Old Vector Stadium and watched the game. Probably came

here to watch a football game the first would have been about 1967 or 8, so Lane

Stadium was still new then. And had a family that lived in this area and worked

for the University, but how I really ended up here, my oldest brother even

though significantly older he left home and went off to college in 00:03:00 '66.

And then it was sort of at the peak of the Vietnam War and the draft and he

joined the Navy. And so he was really gone most of the time I was growing up as

an adolescent, and then he came back, got out of the Navy in 1972, worked for a

few years, a couple of years, and then decided he needed to come back and get a

bachelor's degree, so he came to Tech. He had one year of credit. Some credit he

could transfer from Virginia Western and then went into the financial aid office

to get his GI Bill information all in order. There was a note in his file that

he needed to meet with the head of financial aid; it was Frank Butler. Frank

Butler is Sue Ellen Rockovich, I don't know if you… Sue Ellen is from Roanoke.

Her husband John is on the Board of 00:04:00Visitors, well Mr. Butler was Sue Ellen's

father and he was head of financial aid here for most of the 60s and 70s, and

just a great guy.

But he called my brother in because as it turns out a man who had a large farm

in our part of Bedford County who passed away in the 50s, when the farm sold he

endowed a scholarship here for anyone from the little community that I grew up.

It had been in place since the mid-60s and nobody had ever gone on it. So

between the GI Bill and what is the Barry Clark Mosely Scholarship my brother

was pretty covered for his four years. So as soon as my parents learned that any

options I might have had to go somewhere else disappeared, but that was okay. I

applied early, decision was accepted, of course fortunately enough to also be a

recipient of that scholarship, and so virtually all of my school funding was

paid for and then I worked the whole time I was 00:05:00 there.

Nehrt: Wow. That's a great story.

Roberts: I was very fortunate.

Nehrt: Where did you work when you were here?

Roberts: I worked summers and then off and on during the year for a woman who is

an interior decorator here in town and hauling furniture. I would haul furniture

in high school, and then my sophomore year I began taking winter quarters. We

were on a quarter system then and I would take winter quarters off and work for

a state senator in the Virginia Assembly, Elliot Shull who was in Lynchburg, and

it was a great experience. I'm a political science major and so it fit right in.

That was being taught theoretically here and thinking of practical application

of it both on the political side and in public administration, and so I did that

for three years while I was here. And then one summer, I think it was my last

summer 00:06:00 here…

The first or second year I did that, I think it was the summer of my sophomore

year I really didn't want to come back to summer school that year. So my dad

said that's fine, but you're not going to just sit around the house, and so the

only job I could get a high school friend of mine that married the daughter of a

guy that had an asphalt paving business, so I spent all summer back in Bedford

paving, which was quite an inspiration to come back to school. And then the next

two summers while I was here doing all that I graduated a quarter late, but the

last summer I was here I worked building apartments.

Nehrt: It sounds like your family had a real strong work ethic they gave down to you.

Roberts: Yeah, we didn't sit around much. Well and the other thing is we never

learned that, our parents were great and they instilled a lot of very good

values, sometimes we don't always live up to them as well as we should, 00:07:00but way

before their time I was in a relatively gender-neutral household when it came to

work. With three boys we didn't differentiate between doing the dishes, helping

with the kitchen, doing the laundry because we're mowing the yard or working in

the garden. It was all work and we did it all. Actually my dad was a pretty good

cook so we learned to cook from him, a lot of just very practical dishes because

he worked a different shift than my mother so by the time mom got home dad had

already fixed dinner. Yeah, and that's a great lesson, and so we've never had

trouble pitching in to do anything and never view any work other than something

that's valued.

Nehrt: Cool. Was there a bit of a culture shock when you got here between the

differentiation between work or it didn't really matter because you're on 00:08:00 campus?

Roberts: Um, no. I can't say all of my work ethics spilled over to my academics.

That was the first…you know, it's the biggest adjustment. There were 500

people in my village where I grew up, and so I walk into freshman geology and

there are 400 people in freshman geology. It was an adjustment because back then

the student body was about 15-16,000, and it had grown dramatically since the

late 60s and was still in a growth mode. Housing was pretty tight on campus.

There was already a lottery if you wanted to stay beyond your freshman year. And

it was an interesting time to be here, but once you sort of settled in and you

quit taking advantage of all this…it was like a kid in a candy store, you're

out of this small 00:09:00village, you're out of your parent's house.

You've come to what effectively is a medium-size city, sort of that maturing a

little bit on how to deal with that was probably the biggest challenge the first

couple of quarters, but once you got through that it was… I was never

overwhelmed by the place because there were so many people here just like me who

had come from rural parts of Virginia and were adjusting and getting used to the

place, so I never really felt uncomfortable or out of place. It was just a

bigger version of what I was used to.

Nehrt: So thinking back to your first day what was that like? What was the

experience of stepping on to campus knowing that you're a student now?

Roberts: Well, you know the first day is just move in, so I'm not sure I

realized. I thought I was going off to camp. [Laughs] That's what the first day

was really like. That probably hasn't changed any, but it's just such a mob

scene. You went into your 00:10:00dorm. That was more like going to camp. I think it was

probably, it wasn't until the first of class that it dawned on me that you were

a student and that hey, this is very different than high school. They give you a

course schedule and you really are on your own. And I think that's probably the

biggest challenge, and also one of the greatest things that you learned when you

come to a place like Virginia Tech, you really do have to grow up pretty quick

if you're going to take advantage of it. It can both be daunting for some

people, or it can create some self-confidence, that hey, okay, I can do this. I

can deal with this. There are a lot of life lessons in that about responsibility

and self-motivation. It's all laid out here for you, but nobody is going to make

you do it, so you're going to have to be a 00:11:00self-starter to fully take advantage

of it.

And it probably took a year to figure that out, and fortunately I was able to

survive my freshman grades in order to get to the more enjoyable parts of the

academic career, which I enjoyed more and more the last three years I was here.

So the first year is just almost a maturation process and the remaining three

years is when you really can take advantage of everything that a comprehensive

university has to offer.

Nehrt: What drew you to political science for your major?

Roberts: Well, I grew up in a household where politics was always discussed.

Both sides of the family have been politically interested and involved, and it

was always the topic around especially Sunday dinner tables. We watched morning

talk 00:12:00shows and we read the newspaper. As a matter of fact, we used to race to

see who got the newspaper first, and not to get the sports section.

You also have to remember the era, had grown up in the 60s when so much was

going on in Vietnam, the Civil Rights Movement and student protests and then

Watergate came along, and all of those things were intriguing. This sounds

bizarre but there are good aspects and bad aspects of all of that, but it did

create a certain political awareness. It was an era when government still could

do things, so I was intrigued by that. You know political science is like a lot

of liberal arts majors, it is what you make of it and I picked it because I was

fascinated by 00:13:00it, and my oldest brother was a major in political science as

well. And we were fortunate to have the same course advisor, Jim Herndon, who

was just phenomenal, a course advisor and professor and had worked on Capital

Hall. He came to political science with a very practical background. But, it was

also a great major for several reasons. There's a all-empirical analysis of

political science, you can apply that to anything. I mean it's all statistics

and it's all levels of probability. You can use that in almost any walk of life,

almost any occupation, so that was a great skill. Had to take back then what

they call Computer Science, which you all would laugh at today, but you know,

that was the first real exposure to technology and we sort of got over a fear of

technology with that, which obviously is so critically important.

The other thing that was great about political science is it allowed you so much

leeway for 00:14:00electives. So I took numerous economics classes. I took a lot of

history as a matter of fact and I took a lot of English and Literature, and was

fortunate to have… I had great professors who through different ways continue

to emphasize a work ethic and attention to detail, and also for quality, quality

of the product that you produce whether it's a physical product or whatever, a

written product. So that's how I ended up in political science. I don't regret

the major at all. It's come in very hand in every job I've had in and out of

government, so I wouldn't have done it any different.

Nehrt: You mentioned a few professors. Would you consider any of them 00:15:00 mentors?

Roberts: Well in different ways I would consider all of them.

Dr. Herndon was very good about both getting us aligned with what we needed to

do to get through our major and staying on track with that, but he had a very

practical approach to political science, a very analytical approach. One of the

first, the first empirical analysis that we did with him was the ability to

predict looking at past voting records how congressmen would vote depending on

the topic. I forget which topic it was, but something in congress that was

coming up and we went back and looked at three years' worth of voting records

and within about 90% accuracy we predicted pretty accurately about the past

behavior of congressmen and how they could vote. 00:16:00That's what you do with polling

today. You look at past behavior of voters and go from there. But again, you can

apply that to anything, racehorses, what sort of a calf is a certain cow going

to have if mated with a certain bull. I mean there are agricultural applications

to that sort of empirical analysis. Understanding that you could adopt that sort

of theory across all sorts of disciplines was quite helpful.

Ann Chaney was an English professor here who I had one course, in whatever,

Introductory to English is or whatever one of your base courses are, and ended

up taking three literature classes from her. She was a fascinating character.

She would come to class, back then you could still smoke in the classrooms, and

so she would come to class with a pack of 00:17:00cigarettes and a thermos and she

smoked the whole time. Drank that thermos, was the most hyper person I ever met

in my life, but just an absolutely wonderful person to open up World Literature.

We had one sort of unique thing in common, both of our grandmothers had been

post-mistresses in small villages back before there was a civil service, so they

were politically appointed post-mistresses. But I took three southern literature

classes and then one on women writers that I wasn't signed up for and recruited

for male students out of her classes because she didn't want an all-female class

talking about women writers. She wanted to inject different perspectives and she

did that, but she was great. She was terrific, and I still enjoy reading

southern 00:18:00literature and especially southern women writers.

Nehrt: So you enjoyed the class?

Roberts: Oh I enjoyed all of her classes, oh yeah.

Her classes were highly entertaining. And yet the knowledge and appreciation of

that genre of literature I still have and got from her. Two history professors

stick out and come to mind. Larry Shumsky who taught a variety of courses here.

I don't know if he's still teaching.

Nehrt: Yes, he is actually.

Roberts: He's a great guy. I took three history classes from him and two of the

sections were on the History of Urban America, which was on the political

science side you needed that for your public administration disciplines, because

what the history of urban America was really about was how commerce influenced

the design of cities. You 00:19:00could predict what the industry of the city was by its

layout. He was a great professor, a great lecturer, but the most valuable lesson

he really taught me, I guess I was a freshman, probably third quarter of my

freshman year, I did a paper and I don't even remember what the topic was, and

really worked hard on that paper and thought I had nailed the topic, which I

did, but I made 22 grammatical errors and he caught them, fortunately. And so

when I should have gotten an A on the paper I ended up with a B- because he took

off for all the grammatical errors.

And so I went to see him during his office hours and said, "Dr. Shumsky you gave

me a B-. I thought I had the subject pretty well covered." He said, "Oh no, you

did, but you need to work on these grammatical 00:20:00errors, because if you can't

write it you don't know it. So if you can't convey the knowledge it doesn't

matter that you know it." And I don't write a letter today that I don't remember

that. I am painful about it. I still make errors. Spellcheck was the greatest

thing that ever happened to man.

Nehrt: Agreed.

Roberts: That was a great life lesson and I've had a chance to tell him that. He

was an excellent professor. And then there was a Russian history professor here

then, Wizinsky, Joseph Wizinsky who was the son of Polish immigrants. He had

again, one of these people with a very practical background who came back to

teach here, he had worked for the CIA in the 50s. He was fluent in Russian and

they put him in a CIA radio monitoring station on the Turkish border. And so he

had a very 00:21:00interesting, especially being Polish with all of the history of

Russians and the Polish disputes and he just had such a wonderful…

He was a tall man with a very deep voice and could be quite imposing. I think he

intimidated most students, but when you would go to his office he just could not

have been more gracious and more open, especially if you were curious about the

topic. And given, I also took a class on Soviet political systems that was not

from him, because it really was…another political system to look at, but he

was great, and I still read Russian history. It helps you put in perspective

when you look at it. It's very easy to predict. It's interesting how much the

old saying is that the best way to predict the future is to study 00:22:00 history.

Vladimir Putin is absolutely doing nothing different than Czars had done in

Russia, or every leader of Russia has done for thousands of years. Very

predictable, and a lot of it born from… And this is a hard thing I think in

this country, I'm not excusing his behavior, but it's hard for us to appreciate

how overrun the Russians have been in history, how many times they've been

invaded, how many times they've been subjugated to Mongol rule or European influences.

And a lot of it very tragic and a lot of it is what forms or always forms their

foreign policy. They are absolutely paranoid about their borders. If I hadn't

taken these classes I never would have had an appreciation for that. And sort of

again that kind of practical knowledge that lets you look at a situation and

predict well they're really not doing anything 00:23:00different. Now in history how do

you cope with that or how do you deal with someone like that.

The other thing you quickly learn is Russians, and I don't mean this badly, but

they only respect power as a people, so any… That doesn't mean you go bomb

them every time you don't like something or whatever, but any time you look like

you're going…weak with them is a mistake. Anyway, those are some of the

professors I had.

There were people I did meet and deal with here who did not teach me, but oh,

there was another professor that I really enjoyed his classes and used what he

taught, not in my major. I took, it was three sections of environmental law, and

back then that was over at the College of Agriculture. The professor that taught

that was Jake Looney, whose dad had been a Supreme Court Justice in 00:24:00 Arkansas.

And Jake ended up going back to Arkansas and becoming Dean of the Law School at

the University of Arkansas, and then ultimately the President at the University

of Arkansas at Little Rock. And he had great classes. Again, environmental law

back then was sort of an emerging discipline, but very very helpful in terms of

thinking through. I didn't go to law school, but looking at environmental issues

and he created quite a different perspective at that point.

Nehrt: Did you remain in contact with any of these professors after you graduated?

Roberts: Off and on with Dr. Herndon. I don't think I ever saw Dr. Wizinsky

again after I graduated. Ann Cheney I did, she passed away a few years ago. I

came back and was on the alumni, I've been on the alumni board twice, once in

the 90s and I came back on it 00:25:00in 2003 I think. In the first couple of years the

second time I was on the board the faculty rep to the alumni board was Dr. Shumsky.

Nehrt: Oh, that's nice.

Roberts: Great chances, and I had an opportunity to tell him that story and how

appreciative I am now of that. I don't think I appreciated it all that much at

the time, but just what a big influence that was. And then Dr. Looney I did, in

a job I had there was a very technical tax case for an employer that I was

working for that was an arcane piece of agricultural law, a tax law related to

agricultural enterprising. The attorneys representing the employer sent over two

names and just simply asked, these were two national experts on this topic, and

one of the two names was Jake 00:26:00Looney, so I called him just to see. He was not

available to come and consult on that, but we had a great chat and talked for

about an hour and a half, but that was gosh, probably '93, '92 or '93, but I

haven't talked to him since. And Dr. Herndon I think is in a nursing home.

Nehrt: What were your other favorite memories about Tech besides classes? A good

social environment?

Roberts: Yeah, it was a good social environment. It's a big social environment,

but you sort of make your friends around who is in your freshman dorm, who's in

your major, and then by working winter quarters in Richmond I stayed in a

boarding house where there were a lot of Tech co-op students who were out of

engineering or forestry who were co-oping when I was in Richmond. Actually I

still stay in touch, my roommate when I moved off campus when I started working

winter 00:27:00quarters, and had a roommate in an apartment and he and I are, in fact I

talked to him this week, we're still friends and we get together several times a

year. He lives outside of Philadelphia.

So you would have one or two really close friends that you stayed in touch with,

then there was a broader universe of people that you see and you know. You also

to remember the drinking age was 18 when I was here, so it made a different

atmosphere at the bars. Unfortunately, disco was the music of the day and so

that had a different…

Nehrt: So you boogie-oogied all night?

Roberts: Not very well. I'm not the dancer in the family. I didn't get that gene

somehow. Both my brothers did and my parents had it, but you can't get it all I

suppose. But no, it was a fun time to be here. I think the biggest difference

then to now, I mean I'm not sure we won ten games in four 00:28:00years when I was here

in football. Basketball was the big thing. And what you see in Lane Stadium

today you saw in Castle Coliseum in a smaller atmosphere. Castle was a rocking

place then. We had good teams that had come off winning the NIT in '73 and we

went to post season all four years I was here. Not because I was here, but just…

Wayne Robinson who is now on the Board of Visitors he and I were seatmates in

two sections of geology when we were freshman and then ended up back on the

alumni board together. A great guy, and I had seen him off and on over the

years. But it was obviously in so many more ways kind of an… It was not the

school it is today; it was much smaller, and that's not a criticism at all. The

good news is I think a lot of the friendliness and small-town 00:29:00feel the

University has retained even though it grew, and I think that the culture that

was created then…

It was an interesting time also to be here because the Corps was at the smallest

because of the hangover from Vietnam, I think the Corps when I was here was 4 to

500. They had only created the Marching Virginians about two years before I got

here, so they were not nearly what they are today. There was not as much hype

around the football program. Beating UVA was the big thing. I could care less. I

think we lost to VMI twice in the four years I was here.

The biggest thing I liked was especially being here in the summers. It's such a

beautiful natural area and I like to fish and I like to hunt and I like to hike.

The whole area there's so many opportunities to do 00:30:00that. Even though I had grown

up close by this is a little bit different topography here, so you just took

advantage of all this stuff.

Nehrt: Did a lot of students stay over the summers?

Roberts: No. Maybe a couple of thousand. If I took, I'm trying to remember the

course that I took that would normally if I had taken it in cycle the class

would have been 200 people and I think there were 21 or 22. I don't remember

what that was, probably a history class of some kind or an economics class --

macro, it was macroeconomics, which would typically be a much bigger lecture.

The good news out of that is that is not an easy course, so having a little bit

of a smaller class was helpful.

Mentioning culture, it was sort of an interesting blend of cultures over that

four years. Came out of Vietnam so you had returning veterans, Vietnam veterans.

Then you had people who 00:31:00had been very active and even traveled in the anti-war

circles, so you still had… So you've got Vietnam veterans coming home. You've

got 60s hippies who didn't finish and now they're coming back.

And then you've got those who sort of grew up in the 60s and there's a whole

just cultural change with us. We're almost, you're almost viewing the world

through three very different prisms of influences, and that created lots of

interesting discussions. But, they were mostly civil, unlike today when no one

can seem to have a civil disagreement about anything. It was still a pretty good

level of civility even though there were some very deeply-held views by people

who had been so active in the 60s on both sides of the 00:32:00 war.

Nehrt: Did these very different groups of people were they able to come together

and create a community on campus?

Roberts: Over time, yeah, I think they did. Again, I think people are also sort

of tired, tired of the heated rhetoric of the 60s. They were tired of how much

invective had been thrown around about the war. I think people wanted a little

bit, they didn't want to go back to the 50s in sort of an overly structured

life. It was a freer time in a lot of ways, coming out of the 60s in some ways.

So I think there was a little bit of just sort of we're kind of tired of this.

We're tired of fighting over this stuff, tired of arguing about it. We can just

have a civil discussion, but I don't hate you and you don't hate me and you're

not evil and I'm not bad. Yeah, by and large, I 00:33:00don't remember any real

invective being thrown around.

Two very different issues came up here. The Iranian hostage crisis occurred and

in those days we had a fairly sizeable Iranian student body, because they had

come here for engineering or architecture or one of the art sciences. And I had

two Iranian students who were in my major and then had gotten to know two others

who lived on my hall. Well I'm sure there was some of it, I'm sure they ran into

hostile… I remember calling them because two of them were in an apartment and

just saying, "I know you're here and you didn't have anything to do with 00:34:00 this."

They couldn't go home. Their parents told them not to come home during that time.

While there was a release the hostages rally I don't remember it being like a

reaction to what's going on. I just don't remember it being that open and

hostile. You would run into some people who would make comments to these guys,

but I think by and large they never felt uncomfortable here. I don't recall

anybody particularly blaming them for what was going on.

But the other really burning issue that went on, it sounds so trivial now, but

you know we only had the one campus bookstore in those days and so there was a

monopoly on textbooks.

Nehrt: No Amazon.

Roberts: Right. And then, 00:35:00and I don't know if it's still set up this way, but

the bookstore was actually leased by the University Student Aid, and so the

profits of the bookstore went to help fund the athletic scholarships. Now

there's a good side to that in that we have very little activity fees, with very

little activity fees then in a relative sense. Well, none of that was open. You

could not get, it was not subject to…the Student Aid Foundation was not

subjected to FOIA, Freedom of Information Act. The student government and some

of us who were active in different organizations thought it should be, and I'm

working for a state senator so they called me in. I wasn't in student

government, but I talked to a couple of the officers about it, so there were

maybe eight or ten of us who were working for this legislator.

Well, my oldest brother was interning. Ray 00:36:00Smoot was the treasurer of the

University in those days, and any governmental relationship flowed through Ray.

So my oldest brother is working for Ray whose whole goal was to make sure that

the Freedom of Information wouldn't be extended to Student Aid. So we send a

whole… We had an interesting Christmas before the legislative session. The

bill got introduced and even now my brother and I we still debate that topic.

It's funny how all these years later it still comes up, but we lost. We didn't

get it extended. I think we started chipping away, not very competitive nature

of how books were handled in those days. There was actually a write-in at the

library, a thousand students showed up to send cards to their legislators to

support making them open the books on the bookstore. So that was our bit of

social activism.

Nehrt: 00:37:00A lot of people were involved, thousands, a lot of people.

Roberts: It was about 1,000 signed postcards.

Nehrt: So 1,000 people came, signed.

Roberts: Well that's my recollection. You've got to remember that's now 37 years ago.

Nehrt: Your brother who worked for Mr. Smoot did he agree with Mr. Smoot or was

he just in an awkward position?

Roberts: He's never going to admit he didn't agree with Ray, even after all

these years.

Nehrt: Even now?

Roberts: Even now. He would never do that. Even if he didn't he wouldn't say it.

I mean they had an argument that you can't, the principle of opening [00:00:44]

for every auxiliary service, which is not state-funded, there's a legitimate

argument about 00:38:00that. I'm not debating that. The issue we had was how do you

lease a publicly-built building to an auxiliary service and then we don't

understand how much that auxiliary service, if for no other reason are you

charging enough rent for them? You could make that argument. But there is a

legitimate argument that that's a slippery slope if you start requiring opening

the books for every auxiliary service. I didn't happen to agree with it in that

scenario, but that's really what the debate was around.

Nehrt: Yeah. Well, [00:01:32] bookstore prices, so I'm on your side. You can

restart this.

Roberts: [Laughs] Some issues never changed.

Nehrt: That's true. It sounds like overall you had a really good time at Tech.

you were active in the community. Did you have any difficulties you would like

to share?

Roberts: You 00:39:00know, nothing really sticks out. Well I'm sure it did. I'm sure

there was something, but I really can't think. I don't recall ever having a bad

classroom experience. I don't recall… No. I really can't think of anything

that in any way was a huge negative.

Nehrt: Well that's great.

Roberts: Nothing.

Nehrt: I'm glad there aren't.

Roberts: I mean you know, my traffic tickets or whatever. No, I don't really

recall something that sticks out that just tainted the experience. You have the

normal bumps in life, but nothing about the University 00:40:00itself. It was a normal

yes I want this class now but I can't have it, the typical cycle stuff you just

do and have today. So no, I can't think of anything that was particularly

negative. It was a great time to be here.

Nehrt: So you graduated in 1980, right.

Roberts: Hmm.

Nehrt: By 1986 you were already appointed Secretary of Commerce I believe?

Roberts: I was deputy secretary and in those days it was Economic Development,

and I became secretary in '88 for the remaining two years of Jerry Blouse's

administration. Then I was the Deputy Secretary to a Tech graduate. I had worked

on three 00:41:00statewide political campaigns when I left here. As a matter of fact,

just as soon as I graduated, just before I graduated I started working for Jerry

Blouse who went on to be Governor, but he was running for Attorney General in

'81 and won. And then worked on the U.S. Senate race in '82. Dick Davis was the

Lieutenant Governor. Paul Trible who is now the President of Christopher Newport

University was the Republican. He had been a congressman from eastern Virginia.

The most interesting thing about that race, we lost, but the most interesting

thing about that race was who, I was the finance director and the campaign

manager was James Carville. You still see the pundit today of James Carville who

ran Bill Clinton's campaigns. He's an interesting character. Coming out of

Louisiana he had a very different brand of political style than…brought up

here. And then worked on the gubernatorial race again as the finance director in 00:42:00'85, and then went to work in the administration. Had no real, you know the one

thing about having been finance director you learn a lot about sales and

marketing in a way, and so Economic Development was sort of a natural place to go.

Dick Bagley who was a Tech graduate from Hampton, a very prominent one, he had

been a Corps commander when he was here in the 50s, subsequently went on the

Board of Visitors here. Dick had been for ten years the Chairman of the House

Appropriations Committee. I didn't know him well. I had met him several times

and when Jerry named him secretary he specifically asked for me to be his

deputy, which I took as a big compliment because I had not worked with him all

that much, and he was great. I mean he was a great guy to work with, but he had

a health issue in '87 that ultimately he ended up having to retire and that's

how I became 00:43:00secretary at a way too young age.

Nehrt: That is a fast turnaround.

Roberts: That was a great experience. It was a fun job. It was a great

administration. Up until two years ago it was the last time there was an

[00:06:12] transportation package. We got that passed in '86. It was the last

time the gas tax was really raised in Virginia. There are a lot of issues today

about transportation that you couldn't foresee back then. Nobody foresaw that it

would take 30 years to get another transportation package. It was a good time in

Economic Development. If you go back and look in the early 80s we were still

coming out, both we had a recession and then we had incredibly high interest

rates. When I graduated unemployment was 7 or 8%, which doesn't sound bad, but

we were coming off of year over year over year of being less than 5 and then

interest rates were in the 00:44:00double digits. So if you think about zero interest

rates today effectively I think the interest rate when I graduated was 16½%. So

in the mid-80s when things started correcting it was a good time to be in

Economic Development.

In those days it was a little bit different, much more structured than it is

today in terms of a Governor's influence over Economic Development. It was more

traditional as a cabinet secretary. There were 15 agencies I think. When you

think about it Economic Development was only one department under that cabinet

secretary. Ultimately Forestry became a separate agency, or was a separate

agency, is a separate agency, and then the Port Authority was under that

secretary, but then we had Labor and Industry which does all the OSHA

inspections on facilities. Commission for the 00:45:00Arts of all things was in that

secretary, so it was a very wide ranging broad secretary, but relatively small

in terms of the overall budget of the State. Several thousand employees. I

forgot what the size of that budget was at the time. It was a great time. He was

a great Governor to work for. We had an excellent cabinet, and it was a good

General Assembly. You had people there who would still make the tough decisions

if it was in the long-term best interest of the State, regardless of the

consequences. It didn't mean they didn't play politics because they did, but it

was just a different climate.

Nehrt: It sounds like a huge position to have and a relatively short turnover

from graduating.

Roberts: It was. Up until I guess the Warner administration I was still the

youngest cabinet secretary, and then he named some Tech guy who was 27 years

old, some wiz, and then the current, had to 00:46:00laugh, the current Secretary of

Commerce who was a Rhodes scholar, the joke is boy that job has gotten tougher,

you have to be a Rhodes scholar, Maurice Jones. He's got a wonderful story of

his own and just a great guy.

Nehrt: What did you do after you left this position?

Roberts: I went to work for a man named John Kluge. John at the time was #2 on

the Forbes of wealthiest Americans. He had made his money in broadcasting

initially in independent radio stations, and then he actually built Metromedia

Broadcasting, which you know today as the Fox Network. It was public when he had

it and then in the late 80s he took it private, and it owned a lot of other

stuff. At one time it owned the Ice Capades, the Harlem Globetrotters, part of

the Philadelphia Eagles, I mean just a massive 00:47:00thing. And in those days you

would take stuff that was public that you thought you could get more value out

of it by busting it up and selling off the parts, and he did that. He took the

company private and sold off parts and pieces, and ultimately he sold Metromedia

Broadcasting to Rupert Murdoch who was the founder of Fox.

John, he had grown in Detroit, a great story. He had come to this country, a

great immigrant story, had come to this country right after World War I as a

German immigrant when Germans weren't all that popular in this country because

of World War I. Couldn't speak the language. Went through Detroit public

schools, got a scholarship to Columbia, a totally self-made guy. Started out as

a paper product salesman after World War II, or during the depression and then

got into the radio business and food distribution business after World War II.

But he had lived in Virginia since the 50s. He had had a farm in northern

Virginia and then he had come down and accumulated about 10,000 acres outside of 00:48:00Charlottesville. He had this operation of about 150 employees and several

different departments trying to manage 10,000 acres with 50-something buildings

and 22 residences and four registered landmarks and it was like a town. And he

had nobody centrally managing it, and he also owned a farm on the eastern shore.

He had bought a business in Danville and he wanted to invest in other

agri-business related enterprises, but he wanted to do all that on his personal

side and not out of his corporate…

So in late '89 I had decided that I really didn't want to work, I wanted to do

something other than just work in government and politics. I was out doing what

you do, I was self-networking and I was entertaining a job offer from 00:49:00 Hampton

for helping a guy set up a finance company. I was talking to a real estate

developer in northern Virginia about being a COO in his company. I got a banker

in Charlottesville who asked me if I would be interested in talking to John

Kluge about a job. So I went up on one Saturday afternoon and spent Saturday

afternoon talking to him about this job, left. It was fascinating. He was a

fascinating guy to just talk to and at that point John was already in his 70s.

He called about a week later and wanted to know if I would come back and talk to

him again, which I did. This was in the spring of '89. Still we didn't leave

office until January of '90. He made me an offer, but he wanted me to come right

away and I said I can't do that. I had committed to Jerry Blouse that I would

stay 00:50:00through the end of the term when he made me secretary. John even said,

"Well I will call the Governor and talk to him about it," and I said, "No, no

you won't. No. This is about me having given him my word and Jerry and I have a

lot of background in common." He was from Patrick County originally and I said,

"No, I'm not going to do it."

And so I left thinking well that was nice, but I'm not going to take that job so

I can concentrate on these other two offers I had. So about a week went by and I

got a phone call from John's secretary and she asked if I could slip up and meet

with him again. So I did and he said, "Okay, I can wait until January but how

soon can you be here?" So I thought it over for a couple of weeks and called him

back and took the job. It was a great experience. It was like somebody paying me

to get an MBA, when you work for someone who has been so successful in that

business. I learned about businesses I didn't know anything 00:51:00about. We got into

the meat-packing business. We got into the peanut-shelling business, the

business he had bought in Danville. John ended up being the proud owner of the

largest chain of coin laundries, a nice size coin laundry business of about 70

stores. By the time I left working on that stuff in '97 we had grown it to about

160 spread over three states. And that was an interesting business, because you

had to learn about cash security and that sort of stuff, so I ended up working

for John until 2003.

Nehrt: Neat.

Roberts: Hmm.

Nehrt: Throughout this time, you had been active with Virginia Tech still, right?

Roberts: Hmm. I was on the alumni board in the 90s and then came back on in the

early 2000s. I can't remember when, '03. You probably know, but '03, '04. And

then was fortunate enough to be asked to be President of the Alumni Association

in the second 00:52:00cycle, and that was a wonderful experience. I served on an

advisory board for the Vet School. I was one of the people that was asked to

serve on a focus group during the search for the current Dean of the College of

Agriculture, and then I'm on an advisory board now for the Dean of the College

of Liberal Arts and Human Sciences, which is the first time I've really been

asked to do something for my own college. And that's great, I'm really enjoying

it. But yeah, even when I was secretary I worked on a couple of things that were

important to Tech. One that sticks out is indoor aquaculture was an emerging

technology then. Purdue had done some work in it and there was a big push in

Virginia to expand aquaculture exterior, exterior ponds. Virginia State and

Petersburg already had a very good program in that, but they were still trying

to work the bugs out of doing 00:53:00it indoor. So got the administration to put, and

this is not because it was Tech, I was working with a lot of people on this

including the speaker at the time and it was very interesting. But we helped

find the funding to set up a recirculating water aquaculture system here indoor.

That was about in 1980…I guess that thing got set up in late '89-90. And it's

hard to imagine that's basically the state of the art today, or the way it was

done, but back then it was a completely new theory. I mean it was oversized

aquariums, but you had to start somewhere.

So I worked with Tech on that and worked on a couple of issues that the College

of Engineering needed when Paul Torgersen was the Dean of Engineering. And I had

actually known Dean Torgersen when I was here, not because I was taking any

engineering classes, but his daughter 00:54:00Karen was in the Young Democrats here with

my brother-in-law and she and I ended up on the board together.

Nehrt: That's nice.

Roberts: Yeah, very good.

Nehrt: You must notice every time you come back the constant change,

construction, bigger student body. How has it felt to keep returning and see

things different?

Roberts: Good. You know, I don't know where you risk the community atmosphere

based on the size that you have, and I don't know where that is, and there are

people smarter than me that can think about that. I've never seen that as a

particular risk. I think if we got to a big [10] size I think you run some risks

where you've got multiple campuses. As long as it's still in a contained campus

I think it's great. It creates a vibrancy of, I was listening last night to Tom 00:55:00Tiller, the Head of the Alumni Association is retiring, and when he became

executive director of the Alumni Association in the late 70s… That's not

right, it wasn't the late 70s, it was the early 90s, mid-90s, and when he first

came to work for the Alumni Association in the 80s there were only 40 or 50,000

living alumni and today there are over 200,000. Well that's obviously going to

create a vibrancy, and as you can see from surveys there are so many of us who

had such a wonderful experience here we would really like our children or people

we know to come have that same experience, and so there's a demand. Tech has got

duly warranted demand for admission. I think it's great, because there's so many

universities struggling with excess capacity, and yet we continue to 00:56:00grow and

persevered and stayed relevant in a lot of ways across all curriculums, not just

the vocational curriculums, which is not the right word, but across the hard

curriculums, the physical curriculums like engineering or architecture, which

are in high demand, but all the programs are in high demand. As long as the

University can continue to provide a quality service and not lose that community

atmosphere that it has then I think growth is fine. When growth starts damaging

either one of those then I think we need to take another look.

What I really like is how they returned to the stone, because the growth was so

fast in the late 60s and early 70s some of the buildings went up with brick, and

not particularly architecturally pleasing, and the fact that they've been a lot

more disciplined about it I commend them.

Nehrt: To wrap up is there any 00:57:00question that I should have asked you that I

didn't or a story you would like to tell?

Roberts: No. I think you've done a very good job ferreting out. Is there anything…?

Nehrt: I think we're okay. It was a joy to listen to.

Roberts: Oh, thank you. Be sure you take that part and send it to my brothers,

absolute joy to listen to me. This has been a lot of fun, thank you for asking.

Nehrt: Great.