VT Stories Oral History with Gene James, November 20, 2015 (Ms2016-015)

David Cline: So this is David Cline for the VT Stories Project. Today is

November the 20th, 2015. I'm here in the Alumni Center, and we are very pleased

to have a special guest with us today, and if you would introduce yourself.

Gene James: Thank you David. My name is Gene James. I was born in Gresham County

Virginia, which isn't far southwestern part of the State of Virginia, probably

not even a town in Elk Creek Virginia, which is probably 15 miles from the North

Carolina line. So that's where I was born and lived there for a while, and then

my parents moved to Blacksburg, and so I grew up in Blacksburg. I went to grade

school and high school and went to Virginia Tech of course.

Cline: What year did you graduate from high school in Blacksburg?

James: 00:01:00 1949.

Cline: Can you tell us a little bit, I'm just personally really interested to

hear what Blacksburg was like in the 30s and 40s.

James: Blacksburg was pretty calm back in those days. GIs had come back from

World War II, so there were a lot of people here for I would say three of my

years of Virginia Tech, but they were graduating and moving on. So when I

graduated from high school I suspect there were 5,000 students at Virginia Tech.

Many of them returned from service and that sort of thing.

Cline: And that had been a major increase from what it had been.

James: Yeah, had been, and by the time I graduated as I recall I think there

were 3,000 students at Virginia Tech.

We have high schools now far larger than that, so the University has grown over

the years as you might expect. 00:02:00Blacksburg was a great place to live. It was a

great place for me living at home. Back in 1949 when I started though you had to

belong to the Cadet Corps. And of course I did, but I was what was known as a

town student. I participated in all the military activities, parades and drills

and classes, but at the end of the day I didn't have to go back to the dorm and

be subjected to all the abuse that some freshman did. Well maybe all freshman

did, so I was an exception in that I got to back home and get out of my uniform,

put on comfortable clothes and come back to school the next day.

Cline: So you were insulated from some of that.

James: Some of it, although I got enough to know what it was like.

Cline: I'm sure. I tell 00:03:00you, so many of the folks I've talked to so far have

talked about the rat year being so difficult, and more than one have said they

called home the first night and said, "What am I doing here?"

James: Well I didn't have to call home. I simply got on my motor scooter and

went home. I had a motor scooter back in those days. It was a Cushman motor

scooter. I guess they're out of business now, but anyway, that's the way I

traveled from the Southern part of Blacksburg then to college. No problem in

finding a parking place; there weren't very many cars in Blacksburg. There were

hardly any cars that students had. I would guess that there weren't over 100

cars, student cars when I entered Virginia Tech, which is absolutely amazing

when you look around at the traffic these days.

So Blacksburg was small, a charming 00:04:00community, and connected with the college so

that made it much more interesting than just being in a small town, and it was a

small town. My parents had a Crosley automobile, which was a very small car.

That was my mom's car, and so we drove that a lot and I would drive it downtown

at night. And I guess I was probably not supposed to do that being a Cadet, but

I would drive it downtown and come back and find it on the sidewalk with a

parking ticket. But the car was very narrow and it could go anywhere.

So I was flagged down by the town's only policeman in Blacksburg. The college

had no police force at all, and I was flagged down and he said, "The Mayor wants

you to come to his office." And so I went to see the 00:05:00Mayor and I knew him, and

he says, "You've got 125 parking tickets." [Laughs] So I explained to him that

most of them were a result of people doing something with my car and getting a

ticket, so he gave me a little lecture and said, "Don't do that anymore."

Cline: Were these other Cadets that were doing pranks?

James: Probably, probably. I'm sure, that put the car on the sidewalk, but my

brother graduated from Virginia Tech as well, two of them in fact, he drove the

Crosley, found it in the second floor of Patten Hall and had to drive it down

the steps to get out, so interesting experiences. A small town, a small college,

70 in my high school 00:06:00 class.

Cline: What did your father do for work?

James: He worked for Southern States Cooperative, a farmers' organization, and I

ended up going to work for him out of school. He wanted to be here because he

had three sons at the time. My oldest brother went here and majored in

aeronautical engineering, and my other brother who is also a couple of years

older majored in architecture, so he's an architect. It's a long history.

Cline: Did you always have an interest in agriculture or did you know what you

would be studying?

James: I did, I did, and the reason that I did is that we had what would be

known now as a farmette outside of Blacksburg. If you're familiar with

Blacksburg it was in the Black Woods area up near the old golf course, so we had

four acres. 00:07:00We had two milk cows and we had big cattle and we had hogs and we

had what a working farm would have. Sooner or later it fell to me to run that,

so I did. I developed a keen interest in agriculture. My dad being with Southern

States I knew about that part of agriculture and decided that I would like to do

something like that, so that got me started in Virginia Tech and things got

better as they went along.

Cline: How was the program here when you started in agriculture?

James: It was really good. I selected animal science, which was animal husbandry

at the time, because it afforded me the opportunity to take a lot of the

electives in 00:08:00communications, English, writing, that sort of thing, and a lot of

business courses and a lot of other courses that I thought would really be a

help to me if I went to work for somebody engaged in the commercial end of

agriculture, and it did. Professor Ralph Hunt was the department head and he was

really helpful in guiding me through on what to take and really how to have a

curriculum in agra business before there was anything like that.

Cline: Very interesting. Yeah.

James: I was really fortunate fortuitous. I never would have gotten all of that

together on my own. Having the department head interested in me, and as a matter

of fact he had taught my father when my father attended Virginia 00:09:00Tech, so

everybody knew everybody when I was in Blacksburg.

Cline: When did your father come through Virginia Tech?

James: I think he was in the class of 1930.

Cline: It was in the family. This was destined to be.

James: In the family. My mother went to Radford and my dad attended Virginia

Tech, all three of us graduated from Virginia Tech in various fields, and uncles

attended Virginia Tech. I notice one of the questions that you had on the

discussion paper was why did you decide to attend Virginia Tech. I never did

think about anything else. I didn't know there was another college to tell you

the truth, and so it was really easy to make that decision. Interesting though

that, and I'm tell me if I'm rattling on.

Cline: No, not at all. This is perfect.

James: It was 00:10:00interesting in that I had good grades in high school and graduated

top of my class, and didn't think I would have any difficulty being accepted at

Virginia Tech. Back then school got underway at Tech in probably mid-September,

and so it was a quarterly system. I waited until about then to go over to the

Office of Admissions to say I want to come here, so that was it. No testing.

Cline: That was it.

James: Yeah. But I knew the head guy of Admissions too, so being a native of

Blacksburg helped out in a number of ways.

Cline: So a few things have changed over the years.

James: I would say that was probably the understatement of the century.

Cline: You mentioned Dr. Hunt. Did you have other professors who you grew close

to in your time here?

James: You know I was here from 1949 00:11:00until 1953 when I graduated from Tech.

That's probably more years than I can go back and calculate, and I had a lot of

great professors. I remember one, and I can't remember his name, in the English

Department. I was good at English and English composition and I knew it I

thought really really well, and the first day in class he announced that he was

going to fail almost everybody in the class. And so I thought well it's not

going to be me, and so I managed to get a B under him. I think his name was

Richardson. Anyway, a lot of interesting experiences back then at Virginia Tech,

a wonderful school. It was then, still is, and of course being not a native, but

living in Blacksburg for a number of 00:12:00years I knew as much about the colleges,

most of the people in Blacksburg and most of the staff. I knew as much about

Virginia Tech as they did and attended football games and other schooling events

back when we never won. [Laughs]

Cline: What was it like, you mentioned that obviously there was a spike in

attendance after, with people coming in on the GI bill after the war, and then

that went down again, but what was it like having those veterans around? I guess

probably for a year or two while you were here there were still veterans here.

James: You know it was good really. You got a different perspective from a

different level of students. Some of them had had horrific experiences, others

had not, but it was a good part of my 00:13:00education to have that opportunity to see

people that had been out and come back.

Cline: I'm just trying to imagine that you know for myself I came in as a

bright-eyed 18-year-old and then there were these fellows who had really

experienced something. That would be real different.

James: Yeah, and they were probably in their 20s most of them, and I was 17, so

it exposed me to probably a good mix, a good education, really a practical

education being around a diverse group of people like that, and one that you

couldn't buy, one that you couldn't have most any other place.

Cline: Did you have any difficult experiences during your time here?

James: No. I never did. I know that a lot of people were unhappy, the people

that were in the Cadet Corps 00:14:00especially the freshman year. I knew what to expect

because both of my brothers older than I am had gone through it and I knew it

would be over sooner or later. The freshman, the rat year didn't really bother

me much. I guess one of the more difficult things about that was that some of

the upper classmen decided that town students had not yet paid their dues. And

so they were always on the lookout for things that they could do to town students.

One of them as I recall was I think it was a corporal, I was always a private,

town students couldn't be anything but privates, and so that suited me fine, but

he decided in my freshman year that somebody needed to inspect me every day

since they were being inspected. So 00:15:00trying to find somebody in that company to

inspect me, I would have to go to the barracks and look around and find somebody

that I didn't really want to inspect me and avoid them and go with the ones that

maybe would let me go. I found one in one of the classes. It was a business

course, so I asked him if he would inspect me every day three times a week, so

he did that. So that's probably one of the more aggravating experiencing that I

had. And once freshman year was over it was clear sailing.

Cline: Any particularly wonderful memories that stand out over your time?

James: Well I played on the Virginia Tech golf team for three years and that was

a wonderful experience. I had been a golfer as a result of my parents being

golfers back in the days when not very many people 00:16:00played golf. So I was always

interested in it. My other two brothers also played on the Virginia Tech golf

team. All of us were captains of the golf team at one time or another, probably

unique in the history of sports at Virginia Tech. But those things stand out

when you have that kind of experience. The whole college experience for me was

fantastic. I wanted to learn. I knew the institution. I knew a lot of the

professors, and that helped. I was not a number to many of them.

In fact, I started at Virginia Tech in mining engineering because there was a

scholarship available in my engineering and I didn't know what I was getting 00:17:00into. I had no idea what a mining engineer did, but I signed up and first

semester, or a quarter then, a professor by the name of Tulloch was a professor

of engineering drawing. And I just could not see how you could turn a block and

then projected what it looked like, and I thought you know I may be on the wrong

track here. I'm not cut out to be an engineer. So at the end of that quarter I

switched over to agriculture and animal science.

Cline: Fairly quickly.

James: Yeah, I made pretty good grades though in engineering. I point out the

fact that it was helpful to be from Blacksburg because Professor Tulloch would

say, "Why don't you come over to my house and I will go over it with you again,"

and so that was really helpful. About the only thing I could 00:18:00do I thought that

was right was print well. That seemed to be hard for a lot of people, so at

least I had some skill, but I was glad to get out of that.

Cline: How about your social life then and dances? What was happening on campus

in those days?

James: Oh yeah, that was amazing. The main thing, during the year the dances,

the German Club and Cotillion Club dances, didn't always take the same person,

but managed to find a date to go to the dances. The dances were I guess the

pinnacle of the social life at Virginia Tech. I'm sure a lot of things went on

in the dorms that I didn't experience from a social standpoint, but that was

okay too. The dances were a 00:19:00highlight in the four years that I was here. I

attended I guess Cotillion dances more than German Club. I don't know why, but I

just did. Maybe they had better bands.

Cline: Did you have ring dance then?

James: I was on a golf trip. [Chuckles] Some things take precedent over others.

Cline: After you graduated from Virginia Tech did you know that you would follow

your father into the company or did you go elsewhere first, or did you have any idea?

James: No, I didn't really expect to follow him.

My dad worked for the government in Raleigh, North Carolina. In fact, I didn't

live in Blacksburg the whole time. I was in the 4th, 5th, 6th, and 7th grade in

Raleigh, and so he 00:20:00came to work for Southern States then and I came in '45 I

think. The war was over and so he had an office in our home because he was a

district manager with a lot of retail points and I used to read everything that

came through to him. I knew about Southern States, and so when I started

interviewing for jobs I got a job offer from Kroger and from Southern States and

from the Extension Service, and all of them were pretty nice offers, but I chose

Southern States even though it paid the least of any of the offers that I had.

The Kroger was as a store manager trainee. Southern States' offer was a store

manager trainee. Kroger was going to pay me $350 a month which sounded like a

fortune, just 00:21:00fantastic, and Southern States offered me $275 a month. That's

$3,300 a year, not very much according to today's standards.

But anyway, I knew about Southern States. I thought well why not do it? They had

a nepotism policy, so I could never work in any of the departments that my dad

happened to be in. But it certainly didn't hurt me at all that I was in his son,

because again, like living in Blacksburg and going to Virginia Tech a lot of

people knew my dad in the company and so they knew I was working for the

company. I went to work in Bedford, Virginia as a store manager trainee.

Cline: Did you stay in that area or did you soon move on?

James: I soon moved on. I recall that 00:22:00they tried to get managers who would train

people like me, and really when you finished the six-month training program you

would be able to manage a store. Well the first day the store manager handed me

a broom and he said, "Your job while you're going to be here is to sweep the

store out, the salesroom and the warehouse." And my first thought, and I'll tell

you this because they used to tell our trainees, after I got to be the CEO of

Southern States, I used to tell them the story, and my first thought was I knew

how to sweep a floor before going to Virginia Tech, and so I've completed four

years and why do I have to do this?

And I've told it so many times I think it's probably true, I said the very next

thought was if they want me to sweep the floors it's going to be the best swept 00:23:00cleanest store in the kingdom. And you know, from that day on I really liked

everything I had to do. I only stayed there for a month, and then they made me

an assistant manager. They must have been really hard up for personnel. [Chuckles]

Cline: Or it was a really clean floor.

James: Yeah, right. Well I was not the assistant manager there, they sent me to

Cumberland, Maryland, and so that was a great experience too. I had so many

great experiences in Southern States that when I guess I got to be the CEO in

1980 and served in that position for 17 years, and I knew the company. I knew it

from 1945 when I used to read my dad's mail right on through all the jobs I had

moving up the ladder, and so it was such an easy thing for me to move into that

job. I 00:24:00knew what to do and probably had more confidence than I should have had,

but I may have been wrong but I always thought I was right.

Cline: Obviously you have a lot of ties, more than many in some ways with your

having grown up here, but what has kept you so connected to Virginia Tech and to Blacksburg?

James: That's a good question. That's an interesting question. You know, after I

graduated from college and I was in the Air Force for a couple of years as a

result of my ROTC commitment and then came back, I was on military leave from

the company and came back and had a lot of people in Southern States that were

connected to Virginia Tech. Southern States itself was connected to Virginia 00:25:00Tech, and as I moved up I had the opportunity be involved in the alumni

association and the Virginia Tech Foundation, and I was invited up several times

to speak to students as a visiting whatever they call them. [Laughs] And so that

just really increased my connection with Virginia Tech. After I was CEO in

Southern States it got more and more connected.

We used to have all the deans and directors and commissioners of agriculture

every two or three years in a conference to go over foreign policy and what

farmers were doing and what Southern 00:26:00States was doing. And so every two years I

would have an opportunity to see those people, the dean of the School of

Agriculture, the dean or director of the Extension Service, and then from the

State the Commissioner of Agriculture, so it sort of honed my interest if you

will in Virginia Tech. Then as I got time close to retirement then that's when I

really started my connection with Virginia Tech from the standpoint of alumni

association. Tom Tiller asked me to serve on the board if I got elected and I

did, and then I was president of that board for a year I guess. Then it was a

term of one year and now it's two. And 00:27:00then got asked to serve on the Board of

Directors of the Virginia Tech Foundation. Somebody thought I had either money

or good leadership skills. It turned out to be the latter and not the former.

[Laughs] But it was great to be associated in those really official connections

you know. I got to know Charles Steger extremely well and others in leadership

positions at Virginia Tech, so one thing led to another. I think I was longest

serving chairman of the Virginia Tech Foundation. Actually I was president when

we did away with that job, and so as a result of that I stayed one extra year on

that particular term. So anyway, it's been a lot of fun.

Cline: Let me ask you this and we'll come back to Virginia 00:28:00Tech, but I'm just

curious, do you keep in touch with what's happening in agriculture in the State

still? Do you keep abreast of what's going on in terms of policy?

James: Some, but of course not nearly as much as I did when I was actively

working. I retired in 1997. It's hard to believe that that's 18 years ago,

almost 19, and so things have changed a lot both in state government and federal

government. I was very active in the national scene for a number of years.

And so no, I don't keep up as much as I did. I don't keep up with anything as

much as I did. [Laughs]

Cline: Yeah, I imagine it would be nice to take a break from it, but also hard

not to give it up entirely.

James: Well that's true, and I 00:29:00think that's what drove me in the beginning of

wanting to be involved and wanting to get in a leadership position. I think it

was well you've got time now, you've retired. You can do this and you can give

back to Virginia Tech what they gave to you, or at least try to. And so it was

you know, I don't think I've ever had a bad day, whether it was at Virginia Tech

or whether it was working or whether it was after I worked and in retirement.

I'm sure a lot of people would love to be able to say that, but everything has

been really good.

Cline: That's wonderful to hear. Let me just ask you a few more questions if you

don't mind.

James: Sure.

Cline: I really do appreciate your time. 00:30:00There's obviously the understatement

again of the year in terms of there's been a lot of change here, so what has

been your take on the change that you've seen on this campus, and where do you

think we're headed and where would you like to see us headed? Any concerns?

James: Another good question. Now of course the University is much larger and

you're talking about budgets that were unheard of back in my day. The emphasis

on collegiate sports is a lot more now than it was then. I'm glad to see that we

continued to put equal if not more emphasis on the academic side. Even 00:31:00though I

play golf I'm very much interested in the academic side, and that really I think

is much more important than sports. I think sports is good for the people that

do it. It's another experience, a building block in their life, but the

University has an awesome responsibility really to educate students that are

coming along now, students that are far different than when I started at

Virginia Tech. Students are better educated probably when they start than I was

when I finished, and so that's a real challenge.

I think a big challenge that has always concerned me is how do we educate people

that have come through high school and maybe have not achieved a level of

success to get them into a first class educational 00:32:00institution. And yet I've

seen a lot of people that didn't bloom until they got maybe halfway through

college, and some of them don't get in Virginia Tech because we used to talk

about it and we do about the SAT level of our entering class. There are a lot of

people in there that should have made that didn't get selected. I don't know how

you solve that problem. I think they are working on trying to get more students

in Virginia Tech that perhaps didn't show that kind of skill level when they

took their SATs.

There's a lot more than just 00:33:00SATs to determine whether a person can be a success

at Virginia Tech and I've seen a lot in business and I've seen a lot here. I saw

a young man that wanted to come to Virginia Tech and he was homeschooled, and so

I put in a good word for him and he took all the tests and he passed everything

in really good form, and he graduated in three years and that's just an example

I think of those kids that are out there that could if we can find them and get

them to Virginia Tech. I think that's a real challenge, and I don't have the answer.

Cline: How about our growth and where we're headed in that direction?

James: Well, it seems to 00:34:00be the handwriting on the wall. I'm not sure bigger is

better. It hardly ever is, but that seems to be the way that all college

educators and institutions are going with more and more students. It's

mind-boggling to think that we have what, 30,000 students enrolled at Virginia

Tech? And we're going to have more. It's terribly expensive these days, so

that's another challenge. How do these students afford to come to Virginia Tech

or go to the University of Richmond or any other school really? The cost is tremendous.

Cline: 00:35:00What do you think we could do better at? You already told me one thing in

terms of giving people opportunities I think. Anything else?

James: Beat North Carolina. [Laughs]

Cline: Amen.

James: Not really. I was so involved at Virginia Tech over the last 18 years and

often in a leadership role, and as we went along I saw a lot of progress, and

for me to come back now and say they are weak in this area or weak in that area,

if I thought that I probably would have raised that issue when it would have

meant something. No, I think Virginia Tech is on the right track. It's going to

be interesting to see with a change in 00:36:00leadership what direction the University

goes. I knew what direction Charles Steger was going because I knew him so well.

I've only met Dr. Sands two or three times and he probably doesn't know me from

as the old saying goes a side of bacon, but he seems to really be on the ball.

He seems to be very enthusiastic about the University and about where it can go,

and so the challenge is to get it there and that's his job. [Laughs]

Cline: Finally somebody else's job to lead things, right.

James: Right.

Cline: Just to wrap up I always end with the question of is there something you

were expecting me to ask or something I should have asked that I didn't ask you today?

James: Well, maybe I took off and 00:37:00went to so many places.

Cline: Not at all.

James: That I covered most of your questions, but no, I don't think so. You

covered my early upbringing very well, or I did and to move on to Virginia Tech

and my interest in Tech. No, I don't think I can think of a thing that you

should have asked that didn't come up. It's been really enjoyable to go back and

think about those things and about the experiences that I had here, and the

experiences that I had in Blacksburg.

The high school that I graduated from I think is now the Communications

Building. It's certainly not the high school they 00:38:00had, but it's on the edge of

the campus as you head into Blacksburg on the right on top of the little bridge.

I think it's the Communications Building, but small, and didn't have the

problems that high schools have these days.

Cline: [Sure enough]. Well thank you so much. This has been really enjoyable for

me and very valuable for Virginia Tech, so thank you.

James: Well I hope it works out. Most will land on the cutting room floor where

it belongs. [Laughs]

Cline: [Laughs] Thank you very much.

James: I enjoyed it.