VT Stories Oral History with George Fox, May 19, 2017 (Ms2016-015)

Ren Harman: 00:01:00Good morning this is Ren Harman, the project manager for VT

Stories, today is May 19th, 2017 at about nine o'clock a.m., we are in the

Holtzman Alumni Center on the campus of Virginia Tech and we have a very special

guest with us today, so the first question I'll ask you, and this is the only

time I will prompt you, if you could state in a complete sentence your name, and

your date of birth, and where you were born.

George Fox: My name is George, middle initial--name Elliot, last name Fox,

F-O-X. I was born August the 1st, 00:02:001942 in Charleston, West Virginia.

Ren: Thank you, what years did you attend Virginia Tech?

George: [19]60 through [19]64.

Ren: And your major when you graduated?

George: BS in mechanical engineering.

Ren: Mechanical engineering. Thank you. The first question I'll ask you is if

you could just tell me a little about growing up in Charleston and a little bit

about your family.

George: Well my father is a graduate of Virginia Tech in industrial engineering,

1941. I have a great uncle who was in the class of [19]15 and my father said

that our extended family has over twenty graduates of Virginia Tech, so when it

came chance to pick a school to go to, I didn't have one [laughs].

Ren: [Laughing] Sounds like me.

George: Yeah you will go to Virginia Tech. So when 00:03:00I was about five years old

the family moved from Charleston to Pearisburg which is only twenty-six miles

west of here.

Ren: I spent my summers there. Narrows and Pearis.

George: And lived there until I was end of my sophomore year of high school and

moved back to Charleston for my junior and senior year of high school. So I went

from a class of fifty at Pearisburg to a class of five hundred at Charleston,

West Virginia, so it was quite a shock to be yanked up in the middle of your

high school career.

Ren: What do your mother and father do?

George: My father was an industrial engineer who was a Master Mason, he was the

Master of the Lodge, he was an elder in the Presbyterian church, he was

President of the Virginia Society of Industrial 00:04:00Engineers, and he was a Vice

President of Singer Corporation. My mother was trained as a school teacher at

Concord College, although she never taught.

Ren: Do you have any brothers or sisters?

George: I have three sisters, I am the oldest and my youngest sister is fifteen

years younger than I am. So I'm a big brother.

Ren: Did you have to take care of those three younger sisters?

George: Well my mother said she had a babysitter then she had the babies, which

is really true.

Ren: Having spent some time, or actually a lot of time, in Giles County and

Narrows and Pearisburg as a child my parents have a place in Narrows there right

off New River, was the high school you attended, was that Giles?

George: Giles High School, now yeah.

Ren: Okay, what was it then? Was it Giles also?

George: No, no it was Pearisburg High School, Red Devils.

Ren: 00:05:00Oh Red Devils, okay. Right. So what are some stories about growing up in

that area? What kind of things did you guys get into?

George: Well being a small community we had youth basketball team but there was

only four teams, so you played the guys over and over again and the same thing

with baseball and stuff like that. Scouts. Was very laid back history when you

grow up in a small town.

Ren: Right, spend some time on the New River?

George: A little. It was considered a dangerous river for kids.

Ren: So when you were in high school and you were thinking about college, you

said you didn't really have much of a choice in where you would go, so how did

those conversations start happening when you were deciding about coming to college?

George: Well it was a strange story about deciding on 00:06:00Virginia Tech and et

cetera. I think it was around December 1959, I got the application to be

admitted to Virginia Tech and I'm filling it in and I guess I wasn't such a

great reader but it said, do you want to be in a company or a squadron. I read

it, do you want to be in a company or a squad.

Ren: [Laughs]

George: And I thought to myself, what do I want to be? A company or a squad?

Squad sounds smaller, I think I'll do that. So I turned to my father and I said,

dad should I be in a company or a squad? And he said, I don't know. So I checked

squad, okay? And that's how I got in the United States Air Force. One check mark

changed my whole life.

Ren: Unbelievable.

George: Through stupidity really.

Ren: That's a great 00:07:00story. Did your father and your uncle also, did they share a

lot of stories about Virginia Tech when you were growing up?

George: A little bit.

Ren: Did that influence your decision at all?

George: No I didn't have a choice, I told ya [laughs].

Ren: They just said, you're going to Virginia Tech.

George: Yeah sorta, yeah. It was only logical cause we left Charleston after I

graduated from high school and moved to Roanoke and the cost to go to Virginia

Tech versus private schools was a big difference. I mean, I think I did the

calculator the other day. It was for tuition, room and board for the entire

year--and laundry--was $842 or something like that.

Ren: Wow.

George: The whole shebang

Ren: That's like a parking pass now.

George: That's right

Ren: Can you think back and maybe remember the first 00:08:00time you stepped on the

campus and what it smelled like, and what it looked like, and how did you feel?

And maybe this is before you came here as a student.

George: Yeah I came to a number of football games with my dad and I think it was

1957 we were in the stands and the Corps marched in and the two or three kids

that were cadets who were being the road guards came running back into

formation, they were all Black kids. And my dad said, there are Black kids in

the Corps now. It was the first, I guess [19]57 was the first year they had

multiple Black kids in the Corps.

Ren: So he was surprised?

George: He was surprised [laughs].

Ren: Right, right. So you entered into the Corps of Cadets.

George: Correct.

Ren: So I'm sure you have plenty of stories about 00:09:00what is known as your rat

year. So you want to share some of those?

George: One thing about the parents talking about Virginia Tech before the

history of the family is that they talked about the Huckleberry. Taking the

train to Victory Stadium for the football game. But do you know there was a name

for the track?

Ren: No, I did not.

George: Well there was. It was the Pumpkin Vine. So maybe that's a piece of

history that's been missing.

Ren: Yeah, I haven't heard that.

George: Okay, then another story that they talked about the past was that one

day some cadet got agitated with the steam whistle on 00:10:00top of the laundry and so

he took his .30-06 [Springfield] and put a hole right through it.

Ren: Oh my gosh!

George: So what they did was they took a soda straw and put it through the hole

and looked through the soda straw to see which window the shot came from [laughing].

Ren: Wow.

George: So that's another piece of history that's just a minor little thing.

Ren: Yeah, where did you live your freshman year?

George: In Eggleston East, it was A Squadron.

Ren: Right off the Drillfield.

George: Correct.

Ren: In your rat year, was there a lot of-- did they give you a rough time a

little bit?

George: Well that's sort of the routine. As you reflect on it you say, I'm glad

I did it when I was young cause I wouldn't do it again.

Ren: When you entered 00:11:00Virginia Tech what was your major, was it what you

graduated with or did you change majors?

George: No not really, it was mechanical engineering all the way.

Ren: Who were some notable professors or mentors throughout your four years

here? Professors or advisors?

George: I want to skip that question, because a lot of it wasn't pleasant.

Ren: Oh, okay. That's okay, that's perfectly okay. So coming here as someone who

had a family history with Virginia Tech, when you were a student did you kind of

ask your dad for advice, or did he give you advice about how to navigate the

campus? Or did he give you any suggestions on how to move through Virginia Tech?

George: Well he knew the routine. He knew it 00:12:00was going to be a test of

fortitude. Get through the rat system, then it was a matter of being able to

navigate the academics. So he had some empathy for what a kid was struggling to

get through.

Ren: Do you feel like you were prepared to attend a university of this size? As

coming out of high school?

George: I think the schools did a good job, I just didn't do a very good job.

Ren: What are some of your favorite memories from your time here?

George: I think it's the camaraderie that you have with your rat buddies. A lot

of things that went on you depended on each other and it's lasted a lifetime

just as we did this weekend, or this week.

Ren: Do you 00:13:00come to these old guard reunions often?

George: Oh every other year.

Ren: Every other year?

George: Yeah.

Ren: Yeah. Any other favorite memories or experiences that you can remember that

you may have wrote down there?

George: Well, yeah. I'm one of the three cannon boys. So some of the vivid

memories of the skipper and getting that to commission and Sonny Hickam, you

call him Homer Hickam, but his friends call him Sonny because his father was

named Homer to differentiate between the two. He was Sonny. He was my roommate

Ren: Oh okay.

George: For fall quarter of our senior year. We talked about making charges for

the cannon and he wanted to put them in some kind 00:14:00of metal container, it was

very convenient. And I said no you can't do that, because if it ends up being a

projectile it could hurt somebody. We made an agreement it wouldn't be made out

of metal. So one day I came in and there he was at his desk and he had pounds of

black power and he had these plastic vials that wood screws come in from

hardware stores. The idea was to fill the vial with the black powder and I said,

that's not going to work either. He said, why? I said, well because the black

powder in order to make a boom has to be compressed and this is going to be like

a roman candle, it's gonna go woosh, and you're gonna get a big fireball type

thing, not the sound that you want. He said, how are we gonna solve that? I

said, well you need a detonator, something like a cherry bomb in the front to

set it off. Okay so we got that all square. Well the cannon 00:15:00finally came and our

room overlooked old number one, looking at old number one the far left wing of

number one is where they set the cannon and it was made by the foundry in

Roanoke, the Huffmans and it was a green sand casting and it looked nothing like

it does today. Nice and all polished and shiny. It was kind of rough. They had

cadets out there sanding and filing and polishing to try to make it look decent.

I think it was the Tuesday night before Thanksgiving that we finally got it to a

point where we were going to go test fire 00:16:00it. So we made up three charges, the

first one had one of the plastic cylinders, clear plastic cylinders, about two

inches long and we took three of them and stacked them vertically, so it made it

like a stick with a cherry bomb at the end. And then we decided, well if three

is good, six is better. So we made a double stick. And then, well let's go for

it. Let's go for three. So we made a bundle of nine. Nine vials with a cherry

bomb at the end. Then, I think we had a pickup truck that towed the carriage of

the cannon down to the golf course. There was the old duck pond and behind that

was the golf course and we 00:17:00put it out over the faraway. And we wanted to test

fire it before it was dark and at nine o'clock they would have a pep rally

behind Hillcrest. So we got it all lined up and Sonny was going to hold the

first stick and I was going to light it and he was going to shove it down the

barrel. But, I'm sorry that this is recorded, he had a tendency to be a little

spastic, I love him like a brother, but I said, you let me hold the stick and

you light it, then I'll put it down the barrel. So we did that, we lit it, we

slid it down there, we all backed up and oh what a great sound. KLEH-BOOM, it

was about a four foot flame came out the barrel, and we said, yes this is it!

And then two seconds later out over the golf course there was just a BOOM. It

was a second 00:18:00boom. What happened was the charge, it did get detonated, the

charge did explode, but it blew the cherry bomb out of the barrel. I mean it was

spectacular, but it was not exactly what we planned on. And then we decided to

use the six vials for the next one. Same effect, and this time it had about a

six foot flame coming out of it and then the boom out over the golf course. It

wasn't exactly what we planned, but it was fun.

Ren: But it was fun.

George: So we had the one charge left, I said to, I think it was Butch Harper,

was gonna take it up for the pep rally, just be sure which way you point this

thing when you shoot it off the next time.

Ren: Point it away from the student body.

George: Yeah that's right. Cause I had an 00:19:00exam the next day and I just couldn't

stay for the pep rally. That was my story about test firing for the first time

the cannon.

Ren: When was it incorporated into sporting events? Specifically I guess football.

George: That was on Tuesday night, it would've been Thursday at Roanoke.

Ren: Ever since then it's kinda been--

George: Ever since then it's been part of the Corps. See what tetched it off was

the fact in 1962 I went over, VMI had a cannon. It actually wasn't a cannon, it

was more like a mortar. The proper name is coehorn, is what it was. It was

probably three hundred pounds of 00:20:00solid brass with a barrel about a foot long,

and a bore that was probably six inches in diameter. And it was on a skid and it

had four handles so four cadets could lift it, actually move it. It's a good

deal. And it had the VMI shield embossed in the barrel, it's a beautiful piece,

it really was well done. And what they would do is they would take three silver

size, which is like three cherry bombs, put it in the bottom, and then one of

the cheerleaders would light a cherry bomb and throw it in on top of it. Boom.

It worked very nicely. And so we were definitely envious of VMI that they had a

cannon and we didn't. So that sort of got everybody worked up cause the cadets

at VMI during the game would say, where's your cannon? Where's your cannon? [Laughs]

Ren: [Laughs] Kinda settle that.

George: They had no response to that. That was the impetus 00:21:00for the Corps to

agree to find a cannon, cause it was an internally funded project and I don't

think Mr. Huffman ever charged us to cast it. I thought for a while he was a VPI

graduate, turns out he wasn't, he was a Greenbrier Military School graduate. His

son, though, is a [19]71 graduate from here so the foundry had a connection to

Virginia Tech.

Ren: And you mentioned your roommate, Homer Hickman, maybe for those who don't

know he's a famous author, right?

George: Right.

Ren: We've actually been trying to get an interview with him for VT Stories,

maybe I can say, hey I interviewed George Fox, maybe that will speed up the process.

George: Well I'll tell you what would really happen [laughs].

Ren: [Laughs] Great.

George: No, he's a good friend.

Ren: Yeah, wonderful stories

George: Now you can ask 00:22:00him to tell you about the swimming pool. It was our

senior year and somebody figured out that if you take the shelves out of the

closet, and you put them over the opening of the shower and then you put plastic

over it and then you plug up the drains with some plastic, you can make a

swimming pool out of the third floor shower. So we were in the shower and it was

up little more than belly button high and we were in there swimming on the third

floor until Tony Most came along and threw a bottle of ink in there, that kind

of made everybody get out of the pool. And I told my father what we did, of

course being an engineer, he said, do you realize what the floor loading was

with all of that water? He said, did you know you could have 00:23:00collapsed the whole floor?

Ren: Yeah!

George: I said, no I guess we didn't! [Laughs]

Ren: [Laughs] That's a great story.

George: Let's see what else. Oh there were two of our classmates who, they were

townies so there was not enough room that freshmen year for them to be in the

dorms, so they made all the formations and everything but they were living in

town. Well, for excitement, down at the end of the mall, I don't know what

direction that is. Is that west?

Ren: Uh.. yeah I see. It would be east, I think. Had to think for a second.

George: There was a laundry down there.

Ren: Cook's Laundry?

George: I don't remember the name of it, 00:24:00but Dwight and Jeff went down there and

they waited until it had quite a few women in there doing their laundry. They

went in and they put a dime in the dryer and Jeff got into the dryer and Dwight

closed the door and he would go around and around and around.

Ren: Oh my gosh!

George: And he would open the door and then Dwight would get in and Jeff would

close the door and he would go around and around. But they would do this totally

with no expression, total dead-pan expression. And they would just act like this

is perfectly normal. Then they walked out and then they'd go around the corner

and then they'd come back and peek in, see the women go, oh hohoho did you see

what those crazy cadets did? [Laughs]

Ren: [Laughing] That's hilarious.

George: Okay that's about all the crazy stories I got about.

Ren: That's hilarious, I can't imagine. That's so funny. That sounds like

something I would've done when I was an undergrad here. Get in a dryer and act

like 00:25:00a--that's really funny.

George: You know they're big dryers.

Ren: Right.

George: Easy to crawl into.

Ren: That's so funny. When you were here in the early [19]60s there was a lot of

changing times in our country with various events, do you remember any kind of

what was being played out in the national news. What was happening in

Blacksburg, especially in the Civil Rights Era and so on and so forth.

George: Well, there was a lot of racial strife and there were church bombings

and fires and things like that. Which brings me to the involvement of my father.

The day before, the Wednesday before, Thanksgiving before the first use of the

cannon at the football game. 00:26:00I was able to get a leave to go home to Roanoke to

make the charges for the game because we already used up the three. So I had all

the paraphernalia, I went home that Wednesday and Wednesday night I prepared all

the charges for the cannon, so I ended up with nine or ten charges. In order to

get them into the game, I had to march in and so my grandfather was a country

doctor and he had these black doctor's bags and we put all the charges in the

black doctor's bags. You know it's about eighteen inches long and ten inches

wide and eight or nine inches tall, black with a handle. Just like the kind some

anarchist would have. So my 00:27:00father agreed that he would carry the charges in to

meet us at the cannon. Alright, yeah. Well here he is, standing in line with all

these charges in this black bag at the time of the racial strife and everything

was in the media. And he got up to buy a ticket and all of a sudden he broke out

into sweat. He said, here is the Master of the Lodge, the elder in the

Presbyterian church, Vice President of the Singer Corporation. What if they ask

me what's in this bag and I say nine bombs?

Ren: [Laughs]

George: Or if they look in there and see what they are? [Laughs] I'm gonna be

thrown into a cell. So he got the tickets and he shuffled over to meet us at the

cannon and deliver them, but it's 00:28:00funny all of a sudden it dawned on him that he

might be in deep deep trouble.

Ren: I was just thinking that if you tried to do something like that today it

probably wouldn't go so well.

George: No it wouldn't.

Ren: Were there a lot of protests and marches, things you kind of remember about

campus life?

George: I only remember one protest the whole time I was here. I know that later

on with Vietnam, there were many protests with the police involved. My tenure

here, the Cadet Corps as I remember, had a minstrel show every year. It was

tradition. And there were a couple of people out front with placards protesting

the minstrel show, but that's the only overt demonstration that I ever saw.

Ren: So somewhat pretty calm and peaceful, you would say, for the most part.

George: I thought 00:29:00 so.

Ren: Right. Kind of on the reverse side of this question and you mentioned a

little bit, and if you don't feel comfortable talking about it, it's perfectly

okay, but some difficult experiences as a student here. Do you remember anything

that kind of sticks out in your mind that you would like to talk about?

George: Well, I don't want to talk about it but I will. After I left [Virginia]

Tech, I spent four years in the Air Force. And when I came out I decided I might

want to be an attorney, and so I went to Washington and Lee in the January of

1969. I would say after a week at Washington and Lee, when I would walk down the

sidewalk I would see one of the professors that I 00:30:00had and he would say, good

morning Mr. Fox, how are you? It's good to see you this morning, okay. And I was

absolutely shocked that a professor would know who I was after only being there

for a week. And I can't think of a single professor that would ever know my name

here at [Virginia] Tech. It, it imprinted on me that professors were state

employees as opposed to-- what's the word? Personal instructors of some kind. It

left a bad taste in my mouth.

Ren: Did you have classmates that had that same experience, do you think? The

professors were a little distanced?

George: I can't speak to them, I don't know. Like they said, look on the left,

look on the right, one of you is going to 00:31:00graduate. It felt like you were a

number and you either learned it or dropped dead.

Ren: Would you say all your professors were like that?

George: I'm categorizing, just how I felt about it. Bad taste in my mouth.

Ren: Right, right. We'll move on from that, it's okay VT Stories we want to

capture everything. This isn't just the good, we want to get everything. It's

perfectly okay, don't feel like you're speaking out of line or anything.

George: Well I think that today the education process is structured differently.

As a mechanical engineer and as a cadet, I didn't have time to fool around. My

hours, talk about time management, I didn't have time to goof off. Or not much.

But today you have sessions where you have team, you have collaboration, and you 00:32:00have professors that are leading projects with students and we didn't have that.

Ren: Once you graduated form Virginia Tech you spent--

George: Four years in the Air Force.

Ren: For years in the Air Force, right. And then where did your life go from

there, just to rundown of what happened after you graduated.

George: I think it was spring of my senior year, I got a notice to go down to

the detachment, the ROTC detachment, and talk to the staff searant down there.

So I went down there and he said, Fox, what do you want for your AFSC? Which is

your designation of your occupation. And I said, 00:33:00well I hadn't thought about it

a lot. He said, well I see you're qualified to be a pilot, you want to be a

pilot? I said, no. He said, why not? I said, well I'm an engineer, I know what

makes them fly and it's damn little. And he said, how about you be a navigator.

I said, same answer. He said, uhh we can make you a missile launch officer. And

I said, ehh Jim Hall a year before me agreed to that, and he's in a hole in the

ground in Minot, North Dakota right now, so I don't want to do that. So he said,

how about, well what do you want to do Fox? I said, sergeant, I got 10W30

running through my veins, I just love diesel. He said, son, Air Force don't have

diesel. [Laughs] So he says, how 00:34:00about we make you an aircraft engineer officer.

I said, okay I'll do that. So the Air Force sent me to school at Rantoul Air

Force Base--not Rantoul, Illinois Chanute Air Force Base for a full academic

year. Good school, very good school. They did a nice job. Then I graduated from

that Air Force school and I spent four more years on active duty. And when I got

out, there were a number of companies that had job offers for me because of that

training. It was a good choice rather than being a missile launcher.

Ren: Where did you go after you got out of the Air Force?

George: Well then I spent that next semester at Washington and Lee and then

after that I got an offer from 00:35:00General Electric Company to go in their training

program they were called the MDC Management Development Program. So I went to

Cincinnati, to the aircraft engine group, making all the big jet engines.

Ren: Did you spend the rest of your career with--

George: Nooooo uhh so I was there for the training program and when I got off of

the training program, which was [19]71, Vietnam was winding down, so the

military was cutting back on programs, and so here I am a graduate waiting for a

management job and there wasn't any. So I looked broader at other parts of GE

and the turbine division for General Electric is connected in New York. And I

wanted to go to the state of New York like getting a root canal. Southern boy 00:36:00doesn't want to go up there with all that ice and stuff. But it was a chance to

get a full-time job and I did that. And I pretty much spent twenty, twenty-six

years in the Schenectady area. Because it was a headquarters there, a lot of

layers of opportunity.

Ren: And you retired--?

George: I retired in 1968, not [19]68, it was [19]98.

Ren: [19]98, okay.

George: [19]98. After twenty-nine years with GE.

Ren: And made your way to warmer weather.

George: Yeha well GE had what they called an early retirement program. It was

twenty-five fifty-five, if you were over fifty-five and had more than

twenty-five years of service, you could ask to retire. It was strictly voluntary

on both sides. 00:37:00And so I turned in my paperwork and they accepted. I had enough

well paying jobs that I didn't have to work. Also my father passed away when he

was fifty-nine, my grandfather passed away when he was sixty-one. So I'm saying,

here I am, I'm fifty-six, how many years do I have? And so what was the

incentive? If I could afford it financially and with your medical background,

what's the right thing to do? Just roll the dice and say I'll take the early retirement.

Ren: That's awesome. So these questions here are bigger, big broad questions,

but if someone simply says Virginia Tech, what's the first thing you think of?

George: Engineering 00:38:00school. Large. Not like Lehigh or something like that. You

could classify them an engineering school, but not big. I would think-- that a

good place to put on your resume looking for jobs. I'm a graduate of Virginia Tech.

Ren: So there was a gallup poll a couple years ago about the sense of loyalty

that Virginia Tech graduates had to the university, why do you think that is? Or

maybe what are some reasons you would have to offer?

George: 00:39:00[Pause] Well. I think when you look at loyalty to a cause, it's a matter

of shared beliefs. Shared objectives, shared beliefs. And I think that the

people that come to this school, there's enough people from Virginia, West

Virginia, North Carolina, the area, to give it the sense of belonging. We all

share fundamentally some shared beliefs, not like you go to Columbia.

Ren: Different, right.

George: There's kind of like a thing of 00:40:00loyalty, I'm a hard die hard

Confederate, and I'm going to die for the cause, right?

Ren: Right.

George: I mean that's a shared belief, right?

Ren: Yeah.

George: That's a shared loyalty.

Ren: A sense of community maybe.

George: Yeah.

Ren: Yeah, are you still involved in any ways with VIrginia Tech, other than

just being a proud alumni?

George: Well you know Butch Harper, Sonny, and I came here two years ago to make

a presentation to the Cadet Corps about our experiences with Skipper.

Ren: That had to be exciting.

George: Yeah that was good fun. But other than that no, other than contributions

to the alumni association.

Ren: What kind of changes, and you have a good broad range of years, with your

dad being a graduate and coming here as a child and then your time here and then

as an 00:41:00alumnus, what changes have you seen over time and what do you think about

some of those changes?

George: The change after 1967 was hard to swallow. The Cadet Corps went down to

less than twelve-hundred and seemed like it was just cast aside. I'm not sure

what happened, but if my cynical side takes over it says because a lot of the

major donors for the school are ex-cadets, so they had to make a decision of how

they're going to keep that faction of the alumni happy. So whatever the reason,

the rationale, I don't know. The revival of Cadet Corps as a matter of pride for

us 00:42:00alumni. The system for the Cadet Corps is totally different. We had sixteen

different units and there were two thousand cadets and they were one Cadet Corps

commander and four assistants. That was a total supervision we had, and today

you have guidance for every unit to help them through the process. Total

differences, maybe fashioned after the Air Force Academy, I don't know. But it's

different than the old rat system.

Ren: Have you been able to go tour the new dorms? The new cadet dorms?

George: I have done that.

Ren: They're pretty impress--

George: I'm not thrilled with the idea of having three people in a room.

Ren: Oh, okay I didn't 00:43:00know that.

George: Two people is sometimes too many [laughs].

Ren: [Laughs] It's true.

George: But ask three people to be non-disruptive makes the magnitudes more

difficult than two.

Ren: Any other changes that you've seen and what you've thought about them, or

is it just what you've said there?

George: Well, just this morning they were talking about cadets who were going to

Normandy to do a project with the beach landing and cadets who have gone to Peru

and done projects. That never happened in our time. Never would have even

thought about 00:44:00 it.

Ren: We'll kind of wrap up here. Last couple questions, what would you like

people to know about you and know about this university?

George: Um, I'm seventy-five years old. What people think about me is not important.

Ren: [Laughs] But what would you like for them to know that they don't?

George: I don't know, I think when I'm talking to friends and they say, well

where did you go to school? It's a matter of pride to say, I went to Virginia

Tech. Rather than saying I went to Northeastern, or Baltimore Polytechnic.

That's all I care.

Ren: Last question, is there anything that I haven't asked you that you want to

say? It's kind of an open floor question, I know you have some notes there. If

there's anything left that you'd like to say, I'll leave it to you.

George: No, I think I've taken up 00:45:00enough of your time.

Ren: Oh no, thank you for being so generous with your time and just want to say

on behalf of VT Stories, thank you for your service to not only our country but

also your service to this university and for spending some time with us this

morning. So George Fox, class of 1964, is that right?

George: Yeah.

Ren: Thank you very much sir.

George: It's been a pleasure on my part too.

Ren: Thank you.

George: I enjoyed it.

Ren: Thank you very much

George: I hope I've been somewhat helpful.

Ren: Yeah it was great!

[End of interview]