Ren Harman: Good afternoon, this is Ren Harman, the Project Director for VT
Stories. Today is June 8th, 2018. We are in the Holtzman Alumni Center on the
campus of Virginia Tech with a wonderful guest with us today. If you could just
state in a complete sentence my name is--, when you were born, and where you
were born.
James "Bud" Robertson, Jr.: My name is James Robertson. I was born July 18th,
1930 in Danville, Virginia.
Ren: You were born in Danville and you grew up there, right?
James: I grew up there.
Ren: Can you talk a little bit about your early life and growing up?
Bud: My home was very close to a railroad, to the southern railroad and I became
a railroad buff at an early age. Two of our family friends were yard engineers
on the southern railroad and so I spent most of my youth not in playing sports
or other student activities, but in riding locomotives in the Danville
switchyards and shoveling coal and what-not. And until the age of about sixteen
all I wanted to be was a railroad engineer. That's all I wanted to do. The
yardmaster, a Mr. McCormick sat me down one day when I talked with him about it
and said, I'll tell you what I'm going to do. You go to college and get you a
degree and the day you graduate I will put in a cab as an engineer. Of course he
knew full well that once I went to college and got a degree I wasn't going into
a locomotive engineer, so how smart he was. But I'm still a railroad nut. I can
sit alone on a bank beside railroad tracks contented all day long just watching
the trains go by.
Ren: You were an only child, right?
Bud: Yes.
Ren: You were raised by a single parent too, right?
Bud: My father was a bank teller and my mother a housewife and I was an only
child. I did my undergraduate work at Randolph Macon College which is just
outside Richmond and at that time it was all-male. And I just couldn't make up
my mind what I wanted to do. I had scored so high in chemistry on the high
school qualifying exam they put me as a freshman into a junior course in organic
chemistry. The professor came in the first day and said, hello, my name is
Professor Miller. Which is the last thing he said I understood in that course.
[Chuckles] And so I had no idea what I was going to do and the Korean War was in
and so I dropped out of college and went into the Air Force, got my wings as a
navigator, a gunnery officer on jet interceptors. I was in an interceptor
squadron, but this was at a time when we expected the Russians to come over the
North Pole and bomb the United States. So my foreign duty was in Detroit,
Michigan and we had to be in a hangar right at the end of the runway to scramble
very quickly if something came up. And so we did twenty-four on twenty-four off
kind of detail and that had nothing to do with Meade, and I just started,
naturally, into civil war history because Danville is so full of civil war
history. It was there that I figured well when and if I get out of all of this
military situation I think I will major in history to see how far I go, which is
what I did. I took a lot of correspondence work during the three years in
service and then the squadron was deactivated and I came back to Macon and
finished there. The dean of the college at Randolph Macon urged me to go to
Emory University in Atlanta. I was a Methodist, Randolph Macon is Methodist,
Emory is Methodist. And I looked up the Civil War historian who was there and
his name was Bill Wiley and he was a social historian. He wasn't a battles and
leaders man, he was a historian of the people and that turned me on, and so I
went to Emory. I was married with three little children and went through the
long, long ordeal of graduate work and if a family can survive four years of
graduate school they can survive anything.
Ren: [Laughs] Right.
Bud: So I worked on the side and I had to do full-time work and fortunately I
was a big band drummer, so I was pretty much gone on weekend nights. I still
needed income for the growing family and so I got a job with one of the larger
funeral homes in Atlanta, so I stayed at the funeral home and played big bands
all the way through graduate school.
Ren: I want to back-up a little bit, when you were in high school why Randolph
Macon? Was it solely because of the Methodist?
Bud: Partly so, partly so. It was just a good school and I had hesitations about
going to a big university. I much preferred the smaller classes and I wanted to
go to one that was strong in history. And as I was telling someone last evening
I think what turned me on to all of this history situation was my high school
teacher, Miss Murray Oliver who was a typical old spinster, gray long hair,
club-footed. But I still remember in the eighth grade her talking about the
suffering of Washington's men at Valley Forge and the Revolution and how they
were willing to endure all of the hardships and face death for nothing more than
the dream of freedom. And as she was talking big tears were coming down her
cheeks and I just thought by golly that is cool, so that started it.
Ren: Your service in the Korean War, what was that experience like? You said you
had a lot of time when you were twenty-four on and twenty-four off, what other
stories or feelings or memory do you have from that time?
Bud: Nothing because nothing happened [chuckles]. We were oftentimes scrambled
at two o'clock in the morning or four o'clock in the morning simply to keep us
on the alert, but by and large, you just sat there and waited for the Russians
who never came or never had any intention of coming.
Ren: Were you ever--I don't know if scared is the right word, but were you ever
worried that something would happen?
Bud: No, not really. Not really, because we flew two different aircrafts, the
F90 Scorpion and the F94 Starfire, which was suburb aircraft, fully armed, so it
was nothing much to be afraid of. We just do our duty sa we did. We played
around with the RCAF quite a bit. We would have dogfights and carry on with them
to keep practice, but as far as action is concerned there was no action at all, fortunately.
Ren: Your story about organic chemistry is funny because a few years ago my wife
and I and our family, we moved to a new house. I was a biology major here and
was going to go to medical school and then fell into graduate school and then
fell into this job, but I found some of my organic chemistry work and it was in
my handwriting and looking at it, it might as well had been in Greek. I mean it
was unbelievable how much I had forget in just a handful of years, so I can
attest to the organic chemistry struggles.
Bud: Yeah, I was going into medicine. I had decided I would become a physician,
but that organic chemistry stopped me from it.
Ren: You mentioned so many things I can relate to. I'm also a drummer and I've
played drums since I was a child. A big band drummer at that time who did you
look up to? Was it Buddy Rich, was it those kind?
Bud: Yeah, Buddy Rich. In fact my nickname is Bud but all through high school I
was called Buddy Rich. But I played with Skeets Marvis had a band in Richmond
which was a full orchestra, and then when I went to Atlanta I played with a band
led by Al Clarke. He played what we called Les Elgart book. It was a book with
arrangements all in the Les Elgart mode of playing. And if you are interested in
it you can look up Les Elgart on the internet and hear his music. It is a
distinct clip kind of soft good music. It was just fun. I taught myself to read
music, which few drummers do. They just play by feel rather than by music, and
so I was always in demand. If one of the bands wasn't playing one weekend I
would get a call to fill in for another.
Ren: A lot of jazz rhythms?
Bud: Yeah, jazz and dancing back in the old big band era, Stardust and Whirlwind
and songs like that were the big hits. Sinatra was the wow, he was the king,
this kind of thing.
Ren: You mentioned you graduated from Randolph-Macon, was that in 1955?
Bud: 1955.
Ren: And that was a Bachelor of Arts in history.
Bud: Yes.
Ren: And then your master's from Emory University in 1956.
Bud: And that may require some explanation. Randolph-Macon was one of the few
colleges back then that required a thesis for a BA, and I did a biography of a
confederate general named Daniel Harvey Hill. And apparently it was very very
good. When Dr. Wiley read it he said, here's your master's thesis. Let's prune
it up a little bit but your thesis is basically your BA thesis, so that's why I
got the MA in one year. I had a choice of staying at Emory with a teaching
fellowship or I could go to LSU on a full scholarship to work under then Dr. T.
Harry Williams who was one of the great names in Civil War history. I concluded
that having three years of teaching experience on my resume would be all to my
advantage when I finally got the PD, so I stayed at Emory and never regretted
it. It was just a wonderful education, first-class scholars.
Ren: Your PhD from Emory University in 1959, can you talk about Dr. Wiley?
Bud: He was very demanding. He was a nice guy. He could get quite lovable but
very demanding. My first wife disliked him very much because he just pounded me
all the time to get better, you can do better and better. And later on when I
had gone into government work at my doctorate Dr. Wiley came out one evening in
Washington and had dinner with us, and admitted at that time -- apologized
really for what a strong mentor he had been. And he apologized by saying, I look
on my graduate students as alter egos of myself and I demand perfection. But he
taught me a lot of things about the common folk and people, and most of all he
taught me how much emotions play in history and people don't think very much
about that, but emotions will cause just about any shift in history one way or
the other. And this debacle we are going through now people are totally
dysfunctional. Basically they are just emotionally out of control.
Ren: I want to ask you about your dissertation work. What was your dissertation
focused on? What did you write about and what did you research?
Bud: He had a list from which I could choose and I chose the Stonewall Brigade.
It was a confederate unit commanded by the now-famous Stonewall Jackson. Most of
the troops came from the Shenandoah Valley. Nothing had ever been written on and
indeed no brigade history of the Civil War had ever been done and so I undertook
it and did my research in newspapers and microfilm and all that, and it went
into print in 1963. And I'm proud to say it is still in print. After fifty or
sixty years it is still in print and I am just very proud of it. That's when I
became a genuine Stonewall Jackson fan, which leads up ultimately many years
later in the 1990s when I did a 950-page biography of Jackson, which is
considered definitive. I'm not sure of that, but still it's the basic work on
Jackson because I just found everything there was to find.
Ren: When you graduated with your PhD from Emory, where did life take you? Where
did you go after that?
Bud: I had an offer to go to Millsaps College as a professor and then I got an
offer from the University of Iowa to edit a quarterly journal they had called
Civil War History and to be adjunct professor and teach classes. And we of
course took the Iowa position. This was in 1959. 1960 arrives and we are
beginning the Civil War centennial, and very few people today can remember back
then at all the hoopla and all the genuine excitement that was going on with
that, because today it's not like it was back then. Eisenhower was taking naps
in the White House. We weren't at war with anybody. The biggest thing going then
was building interstate highways which was actually a nationalism, states
working together on the super highway system. So it was ready to have a good
time to celebrate history. But the Centennial nicely fed by Congress just got
off to a bad start. They wanted to celebrate, not commemorate. The director, the
executive director of the commission was a public relations man and he wanted
cigarette lighters with the confederate flag on it or beach tiles and all kinds
of memorabilia and what-not. By 1961 we were fighting re-enactments and just
carrying on like it was a circus. They were not aware that Jack Kennedy had a
keen sense of history and a keen love for it. And finally after two or three
disasters Kennedy did the not common thing of purging the commission. He forced
the chairman to quit. He fired the executive director and they moved about
fourteen or twenty-two members, all of whom served at the pleasure of the
President. Suddenly I found myself at the age of thirty-one the executive
director of the United States Civil War Centennial Commission, and that came
about because the vice chairman was a congressman named Fred Schwengel and Mr.
Schwengel represented the first congressional district of Iowa where the
University of Iowa is located. And Fred had heard me speak a couple of times in
Rotary Clubs and what-not and he was convinced that I was the one for the job,
and Kennedy wanted a young historian, a professionally trained historian and the
newly-appointed chairman, Allan Nevins, then the dean of American Historians
felt the same way. And so I drove all night to meet with Allen at 8:30 in the
morning at the University of Illinois Library. He was guest lecturing there to
talk, the incoming chairman and the perspective executive director.
Ren: How old were you at this time?
Bud: thirty-one, and we chatted about the problems that were facing the country
and all the mess the Centennial was and what we might be able to do and
what-not. After we chatted ten or fifteen minutes he stood up and said, well I'm
convinced. I'm going and call the White House. I will see you in Washington
around Christmas And by the time I got back to Iowa the newspaper reporters were
calling and it was hitting the wire services, and so a short stay in Iowa City
which ended -- I love the Midwest - our stay was short but the day after
Christmas I went to work in Washington, DC.
Ren: You mentioned something that I want to ask you about. This celebrate versus
commemorate, can you talk about the differences between those? Especially around
these large anniversaries, Civil War and so on, how do you see those two things
similar and then also different?
Bud: Well in a celebration you have a parade. You do all kinds of things like
you would at a country fair. It's just a great big national picnic. When you
commemorate you take time to go to a national cemetery and look at those stones
and reflect on the blessings that you face thanks to those faceless stones. You
treat it with reverence not as a recreational outlet. And Kennedy had his faults
but he had a strong sense of history, and by that I mean what will history say
if we do such and such. And so I met Kennedy. Both Allan and I had a meeting
with him shortly after we got to Washington. We met in the Oval Office and I on
one white sofa, Allen on the other and Kennedy in his rocking chair. President
Kennedy was a charming guy, a very likable guy, but most people forget he was a
Boston Irishman with a salty language and he just let loose. He used language I
never heard football coaches used. He was just fed-up with the whole thing and
he just basically told us, Dr. Nevins and myself, you've got to straighten it
out or we are just going to cancel it. We will give it no further support and
let it run loose. So we had a lot of pressure on us but he gave us full leash.
He gave Allan and myself full reign to do whatever we thought we could do to
straighten it out.
Ren: Being as young as you were and heading this -- obviously being that age, my
age, meeting the President, did you feel pressure? Were you nervous about
heading up this large undertaking? How did you approach this?
Bud: I would feel that way now. Back then I was too young. I was just eager to
let's get to work and get something done, and the nation was a mess. There were
thirty-four state Centennial commissions, but they had since up until then with
all of this celebratory stuff going on and fights over principles of whether
slavery was part of the Civil War or what. But they had worked themselves into
three clichés - the Midwest, the northeast, and the deep south, and no three
were never talking together. Two might be talking to each other but not three.
They were at war with each other so we basically had a second Civil War going on
when I came in. As a result I spent the first I would say three months on the
train traveling and I went to every state and sat down with the director and
more often than not with the governor and said, this is what we need. This is
what we want. The White House may do this but the White House is not going to do
that. We slowly turned it around. It's just a lot like these snowflakes today
are trying to distort history. A lot of these people are going to jump to false
conclusions. For example Dr. Nevins was accused of being a Jew who was out to
turn everything Jewish when actually Allan was a deep Presbyterian. I was a
southern turncoat who had rebuked my own Virginia background and gone to live in
the north in Iowa. So I meet with say with these southern delegations, these
state southern delegations, I would say let's compare our family trees if we
can. Because my great-grandfather and my great uncle were both in the
confederate army. They both survived Picket's Charge. They were among the 20
percent who came out alive and so my family lineage is pretty strong. And once
we just cleared the air out and sat down and did what makes democracy work,
discuss things, and compromise if compromise be needed, but in this case I think
it was just simple enlightenment, and things turned around. And I thought we had
all things considered an extremely good Civil War Centennial. The problem we had
all along was we were in constant conflict with the then-active Civil Rights
Committee. The Civil Rights movement was going full blast and somehow or other
the black leaders, not the black Americans, the black leaders just were not
willing to compromise. We tried our best for example to work up a huge ceremony
to mark the Emancipation Proclamation Centennial. Have it at the Lincoln
Memorial. We did have it. All three major networks carried it live. Kennedy was
to give the speech, a grand opportunity, but the black Americans wanted nothing
to do with it. And I asked one, and he is so familiar I'd rather not mention his
name, I asked one, what's your problem? And his response -- I will never forget
it, his response was, it's whitey's war. I remember saying, how can it be when
those who gained the most from the Civil War were black? You can't say it's
whitey's war. Whitey died but blacks were able to secure that freedom. They
didn't want to take it that way. So we were seen so often to be in conflict with
Civil War and Civil Rights and that was I think the basic impediment we faced
all through [18]61 to [18]65 was that attitude. But we did the best we could and
we avoided some real catastrophes that could have occurred. I was supposed to be
at Gettysburg on the Centennial but instead I had to go to Vicksburg because
they were having a problem in Mississippi with Civil Rights versus Civil War.
But I never felt any egotism, any vanity being the President's representative. I
just felt -- my thought was we've got to get through this. We've got to make
history and we've got to make good history. But I was generally introduced as
Representing the President of the United States here is the Director of the
Commission. So it got a lot of weight and we got a lot of things that we might
not have done without the sense for the White House being there, and Kennedy was
fully supportive of what we did, and so was President Johnson, but I think
Kennedy was more attuned in history's judgment than Johnson was, though I was
very fond of President Johnson.
Ren: He seemed to have been quite a character.
Bud: He was.
Ren: In the Robert Caro books and other things I've read and seen he just seems
to be--
Bud: He was actually a very funny man with a sense of humor.
Ren: What were the beagles, Him and Hers, what that their names?
Bud: Yeah.
Ren: In 1963 in a way the world really halted with the assassination of
President Kennedy. How did that day affect you and I know you were influential
in planning his funeral, can you take me through that time period?
Bud: Well everything shut down with the announcement that he was dead. Our
office was just across the street from the White House in Lafayette Square, so
like all Americans I went home. And credibly enough and people see some
religious symbolism here, but between one and two that afternoon when the news
exploding it began to rain and it just rained and rained for the next
twenty-four hours. So I went home and around seven o'clock that night my wife
and I were doing what all other Americans were doing glued to the television
set. The television rang and it was I believe Ken O'Donnell. I can't remember
which one it was but I think it was Ken O'Donnell called and said Ms. Kennedy
wanted the East Room set up in a [inaudible] to - that it had when Lincoln lay
in state there. She wanted it to look the same for President Kennedy's remains
and could I help. I have often wondered how that came about, because I'm the
world's authority on executions and bombings in the Civil War mainly because
there's nobody else there I can make that claim to it, but I knew much about it
based on the years I had spent working in the funeral home going through
graduate school.
Ren: Right.
Bud: So I had done a lot of research on Lincoln's death and funeral and
what-not. When O'Donnell said, "Can you help us?" "Sure." I knew for example
that the Lincoln catafalque still existed, the platform on which you place the
coffin. And Congressman Schwengel who had gotten me there to start with was then
president of the Capitol Historical Society, OL, the building, and he had taken
me on a tour there. Several times I had gone on tours. Many people do not know
that there are about 30 floors underneath that building. It's a lot of
basements, and I remember distinctly at something like level twenty-one the
catafalque was there. So I told O'Donnell where the catafalque which was
shocking. I said, "You've got to find a lot of black bunting, a lot of black
bunting and I need to get to the Library of Congress to get copies of the two
leading pictorial newspapers of that time frankly as is in Harper's Weekly. And
then once I get those I need to get them to you." So he said, "Go ahead," and he
gave me a number to call when I was ready to come to the White House. Well back
in those days of peace and prosperity and no need for security the lights in the
Library of Congress went out at seven o'clock on Friday night and they didn't
come back on until six o'clock Monday morning. But the Assistant Librarian of
Congress was a member of the National Commission, so I called him and he came
and met me in the rain and we went into Library of Congress which is a block
square, millions of volumes. I had a flashlight and he had a flashlight and into
the bowels of that building we went until we could get to those newspaper, and
on the front page of each were drawings of the East Room. With that I called the
White House and told them what kind of car I was driving and they told me to
come in the northwest entrance to the White House, which I did. But it was
pouring rain and I had these huge two-foot by one-foot newspapers and trying to
cover them up in my raincoat and trying to get from my car into the Executive
Branch of the West Wing, and I inadvertently stepped right between the
television cameras and NBC's Sander Vinocur then their premier. And I will go to
the grave remembering the glare because the whole world suddenly just sees this
blur come across in front of him.
Ren: So the bigfoot tape.
Bud: And it was I with those books and I stayed and worked I guess until two or
three o'clock in the morning and we got the room, I hate to say decorated but we
recreated the East Wing.
Ren: I don't know my history well enough to know the answer to this question,
but what was the reason behind Mrs. Kennedy wanting the room to resemble that of
President Lincoln.
Bud: I have no idea. She took the credit for all the work for a long time, which
didn't bother me at all. I certainly wanted no glory for being out in the fields
of it, but I don't know where she got the idea unless she more or less acquired
some from Kennedy who was an avid student of history. But it was her idea to do it.
Ren: Wow, following your time with celebrating the Civil War Centennial, where
did life take you after that? Did you stay?
Bud: I stayed on until the end in June or July of 1965 and by then I was sick to
death of Washington, DC. I just wanted to get as far away from it as I could,
and I did. I took a job at the University of Montana in Missoula, Montana and
out to the west we went. We stayed there two years and Montana is a man's
country. I mean if you don't fish or hunt or ski there's nothing left to do but
drink, and it has one of the highest alcoholism rates in the country [chuckles].
My wife was also from Danville and we were quite unhappy there, and in 1967 the
wheels turned in the right direction. A Civil War historian here resigned
angrily when he wasn't named dean of the college. And several alumni knew of me
and began to throw my name into the pot to Burruss Hall. My predecessor resigned
from [Virginia] Tech and went to North Dakota State University, and as he was
going to North Dakota State University I was coming from Missoula, Montana, so I
figured somewhere around Des Moines, Iowa we crossed paths. [Laughs] But I came
in and interviewed for the job in the spring of [19]67 and took it. I had never
been to Blacksburg in my life and when I first came here, but obviously I like
it. The school was very good to me and I like to think I repaid the favor.
Ren: When were you hired at Montana, a tenured track position as an assistant
professor when you were hired out there?
Bud: I was an associate professor.
Ren: And then when you were hired at Virginia Tech the same?
Bud: I came in as full professor.
Ren: How old were you at that time?
Bud: I had done two or three books by then. That's your basic requirement in
history for a tenure position and I had done the necessary books and I had I
guess enough reputation, so then I came in as a full.
Ren: How old were you when you arrived at Virginia Tech?
Bud: Thirty-seven.
Ren: Can you take me to the day when you came for the job interview? Do you
remember seeing campus for the first time?
Bud: Hmm.
Ren: Do you remember how you felt, what it looked like, any memories from that day?
Bud: The college was beautiful. The town was in the boondocks. I mean, it was up
in the mountains and I had never lived in the mountains. Well, I had in Montana,
but I had never been in the mountains in Virginia, so I was struck by it was
just a little college town, but with a promising campus. But it was in Virginia
and it was a land-grant university and those reasons were the leading factors in
coming here and was a decision I have never regretted.
Ren: Do you remember the campus buildings? What did the campus look like? Much
different than it is today, I'm guessing.
Bud: The biggest difference is the upper quad. All the old buildings were there.
The History Department which was traditionally put in the oldest building on a
campus, the History Department was in Lane Hall so we worked up there. The Corps
of Cadets of course were in the upper quad. But basically around the Drillfield
was the campus, all these buildings and the second and third tiers were put up
in the four decades when I was here. But it was a small campus. perhaps its
visions were short-sighted across the board but they were not with the
president. Marshall Hahn was a university builder and Marshall was convinced
that we ought not to be a VPI only, which is a training school for farmers and
engineers. He wanted something bigger. I worked under five presidents and came
to be close friends with them all, and I marvel at how unanimous they were in
their thinking and their planning and their ideas for this school, and so
Virginia Tech reflects them all.
Ren: Yeah. When you came here as a young professor in [19]67 President Hahn a
couple of years after had changed the requirement for incoming freshmen no
longer had to be in the Corps of Cadets. Do you remember that time very much? Do
you remember the discussion around that topic?
Bud: I just remember the building thing, how important it was that we get on our
feet and make some strides. What I remember the most was involvement in the name
change. Dr. Hahn just did not like VPI. He just felt that we were a university
and deserved to be such. And he got the idea that what we should do is merge two
schools and we would start by absorbing the Engineering School at Virginia
State, and to that end we hired the dean whose last name I can't remember. His
first name was Jim, just a wonderful man. Jim come up here to take over business
and the idea was to get a title and an intermediary title until the merger could
take place. So we became Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University,
the idea being to drop Polytechnic Institute and out of it eventually and we
would be Virginia State at Blacksburg and Virginia State at Petersburg, much
like the North Carolina system. That was the idea. We had problems. First off,
the first time they printed the letterheads for the school stationary with that
long moniker of Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University they put it
in a wide bold type. It looked like you spilled printer's ink all over the top
of the page. But as I said at Iowa I edited a journal and I was close friends of
the manager of the printing plant and I contacted Mr. Coleman and told him about
the predicament and asked him if he could design us a title we could use, which
he did free of change. The font, the style he sent was the one that was used for
years and years and years. It was my font, but I never took any credit for it,
but nevertheless it was pretty fun. When Dr. Hahn left and went with Georgia
Pacific the name change thing sort of died and Dr. Lavery did the worst possible
thing, he assigned it to an academic committee which was the kiss of death you
know. If the Ten Commandments came up for a vote, two would be accepted, four
would be rejected and then they would spend the rest of their time harping over
what the word 'covet' means for months and months and months, so that's the way
it went. I do know that several years ago-- Provost McNamee got interested in it
and he called the Alumni Distinguished Professors together, and what Mark wanted
was VTSU, Virginia Tech State University. But just weeks after that became to
take seed that idea came to massacre and I don't know what if anything has taken
place with the name change now. Though I still think it would be most
advantageous if we could change the name to either Virginia State University at
Blacksburg with a merger, or else Virginia Tech University, or something to that
effect. It's kind of a waste of time to have to explain to people who you really are.
Ren: Yeah, I want to ask you about your friendship with Uncle Ambler Johnston
and this story. Can you tell that story?
Bud: He was chairman of the Richmond Civil War Centennial Committee and there
were about 150 of those city committees and they were very very progressive,
very productive. Uncle Ambler chaired the Richmond Committee, so I got to know
him from my position in Washington and his in Richmond. I knew of his love for
this school. He had a couple of I think scandals would be the word for it to
beset his committee and I helped him clear the load on that and we just became
very close friends. So much so that I was not aware of how deep his connection
was with this school until I accepted the position to come here, whereupon he
threw a welcome party for me and started the invitation list with Dr. Hahn on
down to all the deans and vice presidents. I'm probably, I don't know, maybe the
only faculty member who ever got a welcoming party. It was Uncle Ambler who did
it. I'm speaking to the alumni tomorrow on my memories of Virginia Tech and I'm
probably going to overdo it but I don't think I will. Nobody will ever know how
many poor kids he sent through this school at his expense. He wouldn't tell you.
He swore admissions never to admit it, but it runs into the scores of poor kids
who had the mental ability but not the financial ability to make it and he sent
them through. I was in his office one day when he called one of those kids, who
by then was a brain surgeon in Miami and Uncle Ambler said, I've got a project
going at VPI and I need $25,000 from you, send me a check. Good to hear from
you. Bye. And this is just the way he was. We see him all the time. It was he
who designed Burruss Hall which is the prototype of the gothic architecture
which is so beautiful here in Hokie Stone and he started that. He felt that we
ought to have something for the alumni so he called his classmate and he always
referred to him as 'Don', said, Don I need $2-million from you for a facility I
have in mind, and Don happened to be Donaldson Brown who was president of DuPont
and Don Brown gave the $2-million that Uncle Ambler requested for the Donaldson
Brown Institute. He designed himself Lane Stadium and he was proud that there is
not a bad seat in the place. And secondly and most importantly it is expandable
in every direction and has proven that all the way through. So meanwhile in 1969
my father passed and about two weeks passed and about two weeks Uncle Ambler's
only son died, and in our grief we came together. He would call me two or three
times a week or I would call him about something, but he would always say, I
want you to hurry up and come down to Richmond and we will talk a little history
and drink a little whiskey, and we did both many many times. I freely confess he
treated me like a son and I loved him like a father. His death in 1974 was just
a real blow, but as I'm going to say and because I firmly believe it you cannot
look at this campus that the spirit of Ambler Johnston doesn't hover over everything.
Ren: Can you talk about the microfilm collection that you convinced him or he
convinced you to purchase these rolls of microfilm?
Bud: I thought it would be nice if the land grant university had the compiled
service records they are called of all Confederate soldiers from Virginia, so
about 1,300 rolls of microfilm and he paid for it. It's a base for Civil War
research and scholars from all over the place come here because the only other
place you find it is in the National Archives and we have the microfilm here,
and it was just the first of many many gifts he made towards Civil War history
here at Virginia Tech.
Ren: It's hard with the time that I have with you today to really cover your
extensive history with Virginia Tech and your time here, but I will ask you
this, some of your favorite memories and times here as a professor in the
History Department and working with students or teaching, research, speaking,
what are some of your favorite memories that really always come back to your mind?
Bud: I just have so many. I just have so many. I was president of the Athletic
Board for twelve years here. I chaired the committee that hired Frank Beamer and
Frank and I have always been the closest of friends, and I like to remind people
that Frank Beamer was here twenty-nine years and not once did the phone ever
ring from the NCAA Infractions Committee. That's almost miraculous. I mean
southeast and conference schools take turns being on probation for misbehavior
of some sort or another. But I enjoyed the athletic kind of things. It was not
pleasant once we got put on probation when the Bill Dooley scandal hit, etc.,
but we worked ourselves out of it and one of the greatest honors I have is to be
a member of the Virginia Tech Sports Hall of Fame. I mean to walk in the shadow
of all those outstanding athletes is humbling for a poor professor to do. But I
think just being with students. I'm sure I'm partial, but I just find Tech
students a special breed, a special kind of people. Now there are snowflakes
here, kookaburras among thirty thousand students, of course there would be, but
I find that the overwhelming majority to love this school and I don't think that
there's any doubt that the massacre made us a family. I think one of the most
moving memories and the memory I know I will never forget is going to class the
Monday after the massacre. Dr. Steger shut down the university on Tuesday and
then they decided that if a student had their choice for the last week of the
semester they could come back and take the courses, or if they preferred to stay
at home and take the grade they had going in. And I think everybody expected
maybe a fourth or fifth might come back and 80% of them -- 80% of them came home
walking into class that Monday morning. There they were. And usually you know
you go in a big class like that there's all sorts of noise and confusion and by
the time you get the [inaudible] on and the notes on they will quiet down, but
there wasn't a sound, not a sound. I don't remember what I said to them, not
specifically. I said something to the effect, you don't deserve this. You are
too young to go through something like this but you have and it's hit and it's
hit hard and you hurt. I went on to say something to the effect that, there's
three hundred of you sitting out there and you all want to share your grief and
you will never have another opportunity to have three hundred people help you
bear this out. So I said, somebody talk to me, and some co-ed stood up and said,
so-and-so is my sorority sister, and she lost it. But before long they were all
standing up and all complaining and all trying to remember and all breaking
down. It was just amazing to watch those kids. I watched them through the hour.
A boy would put his arm around a girl who was emotional and very upset. He had
no idea who she was. She had no idea who he was but he was comforting her. And
then after a while I saw a dozen or more girls just leaning their heads on
shoulders seeking help. I don't think I totally eliminated, no one could the
grief that was there but I think I helped it very much by getting them to just
it all hang out and let's all band together and hand in hand we will make it
through this. I know it works. I was in I think it was Sarasota, Florida
speaking in a hotel and this good-looking woman came up in her thirties and
tears were flowing out of her eyes and she said, I was in class that Monday.
That's all she said, I was in class that Monday, and she never forgot it, so
that's comforting. I'm sorry to get somewhat emotional but it was an emotional
time. I mean this campus just broke down.
Ren: I was a senior in high school and I had decided early mission to come to
Virginia Tech and I obviously came to Virginia Tech in the fall of 2007. I
remember the first class I had was a principal's biology class with a professor
and it was in Torgerson 2150. It was mostly freshman in the class, probably two
or three hundred and he asked any students who weren't freshmen to stand up and
then he kind of gave this long kind of speech about these people, these students
that are your age they have been through probably the most traumatic experience
of their lives, and you look to them to know what it means to be a Hokie, to be
a proud student of this university. And like you I will never forget that. I was
eighteen years old, scared to death, didn't know what I was getting into and I
walked past Norris Hall going to class before and every time you think about it
and it's hard to put it out of your mind. When I was talking to Coach Beamer
about this and when I read one of his books and he talked about kind of walking
around campus and just trying to comfort people and talk to people because it
was just a hard time. But I think what the Virginia Tech community did was
really I think stand up to the world and just show them we are not going to let
one individual define us and who we are, but really kind of bound together.
April 16th comes up in a lot of stories that we've interviewed and is obviously
the darkest day in Virginia Tech's history. But what I love about people say
after that is, but we showed the world what it means to be a Hokie and to be on
this campus, and that's obviously reflective in the story that you just shared.
Bud: That's right and that was a great negative aspect to it as well. The
reporters descended on this campus like a bunch of bloodsuckers and they tried
to get the students to say the university was out of control. They tried to make
the students criticize Virginia Tech; it wouldn't work and some of them are
those so-called reporters. Geraldo Rivero, Soledad O'Brien, Katie Couric
immediately come to mind. Just went to all sorts of lengths to lie and connive
and it starts to increase the flames or whatever going on. What they ended up
doing was to create among a new generation an absolutely contempt for the press,
and I think really much of the negative attitude we have toward the American
media today comes right from that massacre.
Ren: Yeah, absolutely. You mentioned Virginia Tech's Sports Hall of Fame in
2008. What was that phone call or email like when you found out about that?
Bud: As you caught me the membership of the committee is secret but I can say
now I was a member of the selection committee, and we had had our meeting and
forwarded the name and about a week letter I get this letter from Jim Weaver
[chuckles] informing me I had been elected. So I immediately called Dave Smith
who was the PR man or the press relations guy at the coliseum and I said,
there's been a total mistake here, and he said no, this hadn't been a mistake. I
said, I can't take it. I mean my contributions to athletics are not that
outstanding, but they talked me into it. Did not talk me into it just said,
you've got to take it.
Ren: Along with your distinguished career, author and editor of more than
twenty-five books, the book that you mentioned the nine-hundred-page on
Stonewall Jackson, I think you might have mentioned this earlier but you were
the faculty representative from Virginia Tech to the NCAA. And then also what I
wanted to ask you about, you were an ACC football referee, is that correct?
Bud: Yes, yes.
Ren: Can you tell me about how you got involved with that?
Bud: It began with my first academics job at the University of Iowa and it began
from all people that manager of the printing plant who designed the font for
VPISU. He was also the commissioner of the Local Officials Association and he
knew I was an avid sports fan and one day he said, we really need officials to
work these junior high and high school football games. You ought to think about
coming out. And it started with that and then I came to work Washington and I
officiated for the Northern Virginia Association and went to Montana and worked
there and came back here. When I came to [Virginia] Tech I moved up to the Old
Dominion Athletic Conference and then in 1976 I was asked to join the Atlantic
Coast Conference. I served sixteen years as a ACC referee and worked nine bowl
games and I thoroughly enjoyed it. For one thing it kept you in shape and
another, if you are there at Florida State with ninety-thousand people in the
stands and a million people watching on television the Civil War was the last
thing that's on your mind, so it was a release of that. I just thoroughly
enjoyed it and working with the leagues and athletics as well, because I was
very athletically inclined. From the beginning I kind of worked into athletic
programs all the time, wrestling matches and sometimes an umpire baseball
workout and then of course once I got into the football aspect of it we worked
all the [Virginia] Tech scrimmages. But I never worked a [Virginia] Tech game.
Of course I couldn't, but I worked UVA many many times, which is a totally
different story. Really you don't think too much about who the school is. It's a
jersey. It's a blue team or white team, but I just thoroughly enjoyed it. It was
a great time.
Ren: Ron Cherry, do you know Ron?
Bud: Oh yeah.
Ren: I met him at a restaurant in Charlotte one time. I was with a guy who
recognized him and we got to talk to him and it was pretty neat. My
father-in-law refed local high school sports - basketball and football for many
years and I always found it fascinating, the things they would say to him and
dealing with fans. He did some state football games and things, so I saw that
and I was like I've got to ask him about that. Can you talk about the Virginia
Center for Civil War Studies, Research and Education Center?
Bud: Donna Huffman who is an attorney in Roanoke, Virginia came up with the idea
we ought to have a center at Tech. Kind of fast-forwarding that one of the real
jewels in Virginia Tech alumni is Bill Latham and Bill got very interested in
it. Quite frankly he wouldn't like me saying it, but I just ought to admit it,
Bill laid down the seed money and got us started, and we have such a collection
of Civil War material now. People have donated manuscripts, diaries and what-not
that you really cannot avoid Virginia Tech if you are doing research in Civil
War history. And nobody in 1967 would ever have predicted that this school would
head off in that direction and go as far as it has.
Ren: The book collection is pretty extensive.
Bud: Extremely extensive. We have two private collections and actually three of
my own that's into that. There was an assistant Librarian of Congress named Josh
Billings who spent his life collecting Civil War and he had seven-thousand
volumes. Josh participated in a couple of programs we initiated, so weekend and
week-long campaigning with Lee in the summertime. Josh was getting old and
feeble and one day he just said, would Tech like to have my book collection? and
that was the motherload. And then a second friend of mine, Vicki Holley who is
retired from IBM had only about one-thousand volumes but they were extremely
rare books, she added hers. And then when I retired I gave [Virginia] Tech about
three-thousand volumes which they didn't have, so we have an enormous Civil War
book collection. Probably, I have heard it said we are second only to the
Library of Congress in Civil War books.
Ren: Yeah, seven to eight-thousand is the number I heard.
Bud: Billings was seven-thousand and every one of them is just as rare as it
could be.
Ren: Bill Latham we actually interviewed Bill for VT Stories early on. His story
is on our website, just a wonderful interview and a wonderful guy. We are lucky,
a real jewel of this university history. I want to ask you just some questions
that we always like to ask folks that we interview. If someone simply says the
words Virginia Tech what's the first thing that you think of?
Bud: Students. They are a class of their own the students. I have spoken to
dozens of college campus, I just never encountered a student body like this and
they are everywhere. I can't go anywhere that somebody doesn't come up and say,
you don't remember me but I was in your class. And I think the greatest feeling,
the greatest happiness I have is of my course. It was an elective course. Nobody
was forced to take it, and yet in forty-four years I had twenty-two thousand
students went through that class. That's warming indeed, very warming indeed. My
last class was May 5, 2011 and everybody had a good cry. I just loved the students.
Ren: I was worried, I was thinking to myself if he comes through the main hall
down there he's going to get mobbed by students and alums that are here for the
reunion. I said, they are going to recognize him and I saw you coming down the
hall and I thought he might have dodged it there.
Bud: I love them to death. Hokie Nation is a reality. It's not just a dream or a
hope or slang expression, it is a nation. It is a family. Unfortunately it took
a massacre to do that, but the kids are just great.
Ren: And to that point there was a gallup survey a few years ago that kind of
started the basis for VT Stories about Virginia Tech alumni having this love and
this appreciation of their university in comparison to other colleges and
universities. Not saying that they give at the same rate, but really loving
where they went to college. What do you think it is about Virginia Tech that
makes alums come back for reunions like this week or football games? What do you
think it is?
Bud: Well athletics has a lot to do with it. Athletics is the front porch of any
university. The football teams have done well in great part to Frank Beamer.
They have re-established a tradition here. I think the isolation of the school
has a lot to do with it, in contrast say to VCU which is in Richmond and their
buildings are scattered all over the place down there. That's no way to build a
campus spirit because nobody knows where the campus is, it's just kind of
everywhere. But here it's isolated, it's compact. It's absolutely beautiful.
It's terribly difficult to get in here, and so once you get in here you have a
built-in love for it by the very fact that you've been to Tech, so I think those
things all add up to it. Once a Hokie always a Hokie.
Ren: From 1967 to 2011, forty-five years, twenty-two thousand-plus students, you
were professor of history, department head, all these things. When you decided
to retire, how hard of a decision was that?
Bud: It was difficult. It was difficult. The Director of Personnel is a close
personal friend and I bumped into him at lunch one day and we talked about my
future and income and what-not was concerned. He said, you've been there so
long. You have accrued so much unused time. I went one semester on sabbatical to
do research on Jackson. He said, you have reached a point where a pay increase
is not going to help you at all. You might want to think about the joys of
retirement. So I did and my first wife passed and in 2010 I married a second
angel, so it was just a combination of those things and okay, we are getting
married and let's start a new life. And Betty worked for the Alumni Association
at the time, so we wanted to live on the water. I always have wanted to live on
the water and she is from the northern neck of Carilion and so we started
looking. I didn't want to live on the ocean with the tourists and the wind and
the sand, but I wanted a lot of water and we found a place on the Potomac at
Colonial Beach. The river is six miles wide at that point. You can barely see
[inaudible] in the distance, so it has all the amenities of being at the ocean
but you actually are on the Potomac River and we just love it. I miss the kids.
I can't say I don't wish I were back. I would love to come back and teach a week
or so and get your feet wet, but with retirement you have to go to McNamee.
Provost McNamee had an idea when ADPs retired that they might come back and
teach a half semester or something like that but it never went anywhere. But I
would certainly be delighted to get back in the classroom for briefly. [Laughs]
Ren: In retirement now what kind of things do you do? I'm sure you're still writing.
Bud: I'm more active than I was on the faculty, yeah. We travel almost
constantly speaking, doing a lot of writing. When I retired I had the absolutely
naïve belief that I would not be doing any more research so I gave the bulk of
my library to Virginia Tech and Randolph-Macon. And I've written five books
since then so what is so disgusting is now I'm writing a book, or if I'm writing
a book I write out questions of things I know that are in books and I take this
list and I come to Blacksburg to use my books in the Tech Library and then go
back to Colonial Beach with the answers. [Chuckles] I'm trying to work out a
deal to get in a library [alone]--I'm not sure it's going to work or not. [Chuckles]
Ren: Hopefully they can work that out for you. I just have a few more questions
and thank you for being so generous with your time. I know you have a talk
tomorrow and you are going to be shaking a lot of hands and talking to a lot of
folks. When you look across this campus and the state of this university what
inspires you and also what concerns you?
Bud: I think the beauty of the place inspires me. It's just an absolutely
gorgeous university and the tradition of it inspires me. It is a conservative
school by and large which as a conservative I appreciate. We don't get the
cuckoo things that E Cal, Berkley or Stanford would have. What concerns me is
the nature of students today. The mentality has changed. Too many students now
graduate with a sense of entitlement. I've graduated, you owe me. They don't
want to go to work for a company they want to head the company. They expect too
much. They are victims of the computer age in that they may be computer geniuses
but they are culturally illiterate. We have students, I know of high school
students who cannot sign their names. They can print their names, they can't
sign them. This kind of alarms me. We are not going to escape the computer. It's
with us forever. We are going to be victims rather than lead them I suspect in
the future. But we are [inaudible] for their culture and what this is creating
among other things is there are snowflakes out there who are distorting history.
I mentioned an example to the group last night the big demonstration at the
University of Wisconsin not too long ago, students were protesting a statute. A
local reporter came up to the leader of the group raising the placards and
shouting and said, who is that guy? The fellow said, he's Abraham Lincoln, one
of the largest slaveholders in the south, which is totally totally out of
character with the facts. We've got too many perpetually offended people who are
just negative in their thinking today. This bothers me because we live in the
greatest nation that planet earth will ever see, but it's a tenuous government,
a democracy. And democracy has a synonym, democracy and compromise are one in
the same. You can't have one without the other. And today in this dysfunctional
atmosphere we can't agree on anything because we don't want to agree on
anything. My way or the highway. This is what disturbs me. The Civil War came
because we had a total breakdown in the feeling over compromise. And today I see
the same thing taking place here. Congress talking much, saying little, doing
nothing, this kind of thing. We are just barely need not merely leadership, we
need a brotherhood. Sometimes I feel we almost need another 9/11 to shake us
loose of all this cuckoo stuff we are doing and bring us back together again as
one. That worries me. I'm not sure the college students are causing it as much
as they are the victims of it, but I do have anxieties over the future.
Ren: I know you've probably been asked these types of questions hundreds of
times if not thousands, and you mentioned it a little bit there, but when we
start thinking about our history as a nation and we see the statutes being
removed and we see the Confederate flag being removed and then people adopting
the Confederate flag as a sense of pride or heritage or whatever it may be, from
a historical perspective and from someone who is a leading expert in this field
how do you feel about those things with the statues and the flag? What does your
heart and gut and mind tell you about those?
Bud: I am not for tearing down monuments, I am for creating more monuments. This
nation is probably one of the most historically ignorant nations in the world.
90 percent of the American people could not pass a simple American History exam.
90 percent can't tell you what the Declaration of Independence is or who Abraham
Lincoln was, they don't know. The first Actium I ever learned in graduate school
is that in the three-thousand years of recorded man's history any nation that
forgets its past has no future, and it has been proven over and over again.
History is not something to erase or not something to alter. You can't change
it. It's not something to manipulate. You learn from history. If nothing else
you learn not to make the same mistakes twice but you learn from it. This I
think we have fallen incapable of doing. This is my great concern. I spoke at a
town meeting last night on this subject and I just worry that we seem to have
lost values in things, in some things. We just can't keep this up. Something has
got to happen.
Ren: The confederate flag?
Bud: Oh the confederate flag I agree completely with Robert E. Lee on that. It
belongs in a museum. I don't care how many people get angry at me, but it
belongs in a museum. The war is over. The war is memory. Memorialize it in a
museum. Don't ask me to believe that these people standing on street corners
looking like jobless wonders waving that flag with all that strength are showing
any reverence at all. They are showing defiance and it would break Robert E.
Lee's heart to see that done. I have strong feelings about Lee himself. In fact
I have a book on Lee coming out later this year. No American, no American worked
harder in the five years after the war for reconciliation than Lee, nobody. He
could have gritted his teeth, shaken a fist, uttered an obscenity, and the
fighting would have kept on. He didn't. He just set an example that it's just
absolutely marvelous. He wouldn't write his memoirs. He wouldn't grant an abuse.
He wouldn't attend veterans reunions or battlefield dedications. He just didn't
think that they achieved anything. And my problem with the monuments, and I said
this on CBS Sunday Morning a couple of months ago, I think with these monuments
you need to put plaques on them to explain who the person was. Lee was a soldier
yes, but there was a whole lot more to Lee than that. I point out to people that
you look at the big Lee statue in Richmond, which is the center of opportunity,
that statue is not there in defiance, it is there in nobility, loss, and
sadness. And at the bottom of that huge statue of Lee there is no long narrative
or anything, it's just simple the word 'Lee'. And if I had to change anything to
that monument I would take a uniform coat on it and put a civilian coat on him,
because I think those five years, he died in 1870, those five years he devoted
his life to restoring this union. It was the greatest achievement of his life.
And so questions like what would you do when the confederate flag comes up I
think what would the General have done.
Ren: So with the statues conversation, so VT Stories is a member of this
Virginia Tech History Council and that's something that has came up in
conversations that we've had. Some people point to the argument that these
statues were erected at a time around Jim Crow era. Is that true of a lot of statues?
Bud: Absolutely false. When a war ends you don't start putting up monuments. I
mean the wounds, the scar, the wounds are still festering. The memories are
still there and so it takes twenty-five years or so to get over that war,
twenty-five years added to 1865 is 1890 when the first Lee statue went up.
Meanwhile in the 1880s, in that ten year period Union veterans put up
two-hundred monuments on the Gettysburg Battlefield. Now they weren't putting
those things up saying, ha-ha we won, we are the Union. What are you going to do
about it? They put them up in reverence to their colleagues and in reverence to
those who didn't come back. I think the Lee statue is the same thing. You will
notice that there is very little said about Stonewall Jackson statues because
anyone that knows anything about Jackson knows that faith in God was his
overwhelming attribute. Everything he did was in the name of God, and so I think
the snowflakes kind of leave him alone out of this. But no, I think these
monuments were put up to remember, not to remember with a hell-bent resolution,
but just to remember the hard road we have traveled. People criticize Washington
and Jefferson for being slave holders. Well white supremacy had been invoked for
one-thousand years in the west. It wasn't Washington and Jefferson who invoked
slavery, they inherited it. So again, I think you have to view those people in
the context of their own time and when you do that the issue I think becomes
quite simple to see. Slavery was on its way out. Today they argue the slavery
issue could not be compromised. Of course it could have. We have accomplished
it, everything we've ever done in this country through compromise, there were
real factors that could have been brought into play then, but the north wasn't
willing to wait and the south wasn't going to let them step on them anyway. And
so as a result of this you have what is taking place. I just feel very sad that
the victim of all of this is Robert E. Lee, one of the most noble people who
ever lived. And it's because Lee, people don't understand Lee. They look at the
present through the lenses of the past. Today the federal government does
everything for us but breathe. In 1860 it affected, the government touched you
one way, they delivered the mail to your local post office. Other than that you
never had any contact. The United States fell apart in seventy days, 1861. By
then Lees had been in Virginia for 225 years, and so when Lee talked about his
country, his family, his birthright, he was talking about Virginia. States were
still wrestling with the issue of where the States should be visa vie the
federal Union. I shock a lot of people by saying if Virginia had stayed in the
Union, Lee would have fought for the Union. I have no reason to think otherwise
because Virginia was his home. But people today don't understand this, because
that all-powerful federal government is taking care of everything.
Ren: Right. You are wearing a class ring there. Is that from here?
Bud: The class of 2011 and my wife combined to give me this ring and I will
fight you to the death if you try to take it away.
Ren: So it's a 2011 class ring? That's mine, so we share a class ring. I don't
mean to bring this back up, and I'm sure you know this, the Confederate flag was
an option on the class ring until the 1980s, correct? Did you ever bring that up
to anyone?
Bud: No, no. Because I just do not believe there is any room in today's society
for the waving of that flag. General Lee would never have wanted it. And
Washington and Lee, if you have ever seen the incumbent statue in the chapel it
was surrounded by confederate flags and I never did appreciate that really. W&L
took them down and when they did I told friends there, well you are halfway
there. Now put American flags around and we will complete the circle, because
Lee was first and last an American.
Ren: Thank you so much. I could talk to you for hours because I am so interested
and fascinated by your life, your history, the things that you've accomplished,
your research. I grew up in a small town in Southwest Virginia in Richlands.
Bud: Oh yes.
Ren: Which is a pretty historical area I guess in its own right. I guess the
couple of last questions, and I always preface this question with kind of a long
introduction, but what would you like people to remember about you?
Bud: I've often been called the peoples' historian because I think professional
historians come in two classes, the ivy leaguers, I mean the academics who argue
revision and philosophy all the time, and then there's the class who tries to
make history a good story, an interesting story for all people. I have several
times been called the peoples' historian and that to me is such a high honor.
Ren: What does Virginia Tech mean to you?
Bud: Virginia Tech has been my life. I will be buried in Blacksburg. I just love
the school. For forty-four years I've been in love with it and it's been in love
with me and that's why I think the closeness is there. As we have gone through
all these things today I have just made so many friends, so many contacts over
the years that I don't think you can separate me from Virginia Tech.
Ren: Thank you again for talking with us and sharing just a slice of your life
and your history both with this university and without. Dr. Bud Robertson thank
you so much and it's just a real pleasure to meet you and thank you for sitting
down and talking with us.
Bud: My pleasure.
Ren: Nice to meet you.
Bud: Thank you sir.
[End of interview]
00:01:00