VT Stories Oral History with John Frasier, May 19, 2016 (Ms2016-015)

David Cline: So today is the 19th of May, 2016. This is David Cline from the

Department of History at Virginia Tech. I am here on behalf of the VT Stories

Project with Mr. John Frasier. John, the only time I will coach you at all, but

if you could introduce yourself with a full sentence, I am or my name is, where

you were born and your year of graduation.

John Frasier: Okay. I am John Frasier. I was born in 00:01:001933 in Washington, DC. I

grew up in Arlington, Virginia. I came to Virginia Tech and I graduated with a

bachelor's degree in Civil Engineering in 1954.

Cline: Okay, great. Thank you. Can you tell me a little bit about your family?

You said a little bit about where you were born, but a little bit about where

you grew up.

Frasier: I grew up in Arlington, Virginia. I went to the public school systems

there. I was in Arlington, Virginia because my mother was from Minnesota and had

moved to the Washington area to work for the 1920 census, met my father who was

from Lowden County and they married. I have one sister who is older than I am.

We were both born for anybody who might be 00:02:00a history buff in the Washington

Hospital for Women in Washington, DC, but my parents were living in Arlington at

the time. I had a nice childhood I guess like most young kids. It was depression

years. We lived in a neighborhood, but there were a lot of people who had

chickens in their backyard, and it was understood that the reason people had

chickens was to have meat. But we were I think well off, adequately well off, in

a neighborhood where everybody was employed, most everybody was.

Cline: What kind of work did your family do?

Frasier: My father was head bookkeeper of a bank in Washington, DC and my 00:03:00 mother

had worked as a civil servant in Washington, DC. In about 1937 or 8 my father

who had had polio as an infant fell and broke his hip and spent the rest of his

living years on crutches with a heavy brace on his leg, and at that time my

mother went back to work. So certainly during junior high school and high

school, I never thought of it that way, I was in some sense a latchkey child.

But the neighborhood was close enough that that really wasn't a major problem,

particularly once I was in junior high school. I got home at 4 o'clock and my

mother probably got home at 5:30 or quarter to 6 or so there was a time when "I

was 00:04:00 unsupervised".

I had always understood that I should be headed towards college. There was never

any question about that. My mother had planted that seed I guess early on yes

you're going to college. And at some stage it turns out that I was good in math

and things like that. Washington Lee High School in Arlington was the only high

school in the county, but it was a very good high school. There were a lot of

kids in it. My graduating class was close to 500 graduating seniors. That's a

big high school.

Cline: Yeah, certainly.

Frasier: So anyhow, since I had this interest in sort of technical things I had

decided at some stage to be an engineer, not quite knowing what that 00:05:00meant, and

decided to be a civil engineering, knowing even less about what that meant. But

nonetheless… I graduated from high school in '50 and somewhere along the

line it was sort of understood, maybe sometime in my late sophomore or junior

high school year that Virginia Tech is the place to go. In the church we went to

there were other families that had children at Tech.

Cline: Oh okay. So there was a little bit of a pipeline.

Frasier: Right. In Arlington, from the standpoint if I said names I don't know

whether you know any of these, but they were all from either Washington Lee High

School or George Washington High School in Alexandria.

There were like Ed Buntz and 00:06:00Larry Ayers and Eddie Orangeberger, and me, and

Mack Rein, etc. The point is it was a relatively compliment of young males who

were headed off to Virginia Tech in my high school class, and there was a number

in the classes before and after us I'm sure. So anyhow, off we went.

Cline: And mostly interested in engineering of one kind or another or some different?

Frasier: Engineering -- no. Ed Buntz ended up actually in the biosciences. I

don't know whether you know Ed, he's retired.

Cline: I don't.

Frasier: I guess emeritus faculty member, I guess he was biochemistry or

something like that. It was a relatively broad spectrum. The ones I named I

don't 00:07:00remember any in business. Most of them were in I guess engineering or

sciences. None of them went into agriculture or something like that. We had a

bunch of the guys from the neighborhood who grew up on an eighth to a third of

an acre, city or suburban lots. There wasn't much farming background there.

Anyhow, I came here. I had a very good background particularly in math, but just

educational background coming out of Washington Lee High School. It was a good

high school I think when I look at things.

Cline: Can you tell me about first impressions of campus when you first got

here? Did you visit before you came as a student?

Frasier: No, no.

Cline: Or you just showed up?

Frasier: We had an 00:08:00orientation week and they were pretty good at showing us

around, a lot of meetings and we got together. We didn't sing Kumbaya, but you

know, I guess initial bonding process or something, or familiarization process.

That went well. Now a feature was I knew I was going to be in the Cadet Corp. In

those days unless you were 4F or a veteran you were in the Cadet Corp for the

first two years. I had signed up, we were asked somewhere along the line what

part of the Army do you want to be involved with? Well I said I want to be an

engineer. We also got to make a…given the option of a roommate we would

like to be 00:09:00 with.

So I had agreed with a guy named Mack Rein who is deceased, R-e-i-n, and we had

been in grammar school, junior high and high school together. It wasn't like I

was coming down here alone and didn't know anybody. I knew a variety of these

guys. But anyhow, we arrived and some friends had driven me down and dropped me

off at a motel in Christiansburg and then Mack I guess came down with his folks

and we stayed at Robert's Motel in Christiansburg. People old enough will

remember Robert's Motel in Christiansburg. We arrived one afternoon I guess and

spent the night, then the next day we were to be here and go through our

business, which I'm sure we had to appear at various tables confessing who we

were 00:10:00and they would send us in the right place. I think mostly associated with

getting to dorms and being put in the right place for what Cadet company we were

going to be in.

It turns out my first introduction to the Army related things, they said, "You

asked for engineers; you've been assigned to ordinance." Okay. Hmm. I didn't

know what ordinance was but I had been assigned to it. And Mack who was to be my

roommate he was assigned to I guess artillery, so we were assigned to different

Cadet companies. I remember walking back and forth carrying a mattress, because

one of the things you had to do when you came was buy a 00:11:00mattress. So I walked

off to where I expected to be quartered, but no, you're not going to be

quartered there. You're not going to be an engineer; you're going to be in

ordinance, so this wasn't an incidental event. This was upper quad to lower quad

carrying my mattress down.

Cline: Your gear and all that.

Frasier: But anyway, that got sorted out and in turns out that I was put into a

company particularly at my class level, which were just outstanding people to be

with. No future presidents of the United States, but really very decent, right,

intelligent enough people. And on top of that, I don't know whose idea it was, a

large number of us in that Cadet company, it was Company I, were civil

engineering students, so we had many 00:12:00classes together during the day and we

lived together actually.

I made very strong friendships that are lasting to this day, and so as an aside

that I think was a feature of the being in the Corps.

[Someone comes in for next 00:13:00 interview]

I was just extoling the Corps. I thought the Corps was…

Cline: Since we have a break let me quickly just ask you about did they call it

the rat year back then?

Frasier: Yes, oh yes.

Cline: How was the rat year experience?

Frasier: Um…

Cline: I can't tell you how many people have said they called their parents on

day 1 and said, "What have I done?"

Frasier: I guess I had a little bit of inkling upfront from the fact that,

probably my mother fed this to me, she had friends who had sons who had been to

Tech and in the Corps ahead of that and had a little bit of an idea of what it

was 00:14:00like. He's passed, but I have an uncle who is a West Point graduate and they

have, I don't know whether they call it a rat year, but sort of like a plead

year where, I guess Naval Academy, but anyhow first year at West Point where you

go through I'm sure a certain amount of hazing.

But the hazing, there were some I guess a good word for them for the purpose of

an interview were not particularly pleasant people who in the system were likely

to be…or not likely, were above you, like when you're a freshman then

there are sophomores there and some if not all sophomores feel like they can

tell you what to do, and you actually learn a lot about the personalities of

people when that's going on now, how people handle certain interpersonal 00:15:00 skills.

But all in all…

Cline: So it was a trial.

Frasier: All in all, yes, a trial, but all in all I was with I thought a very

good group. We were very cohesive, so in some sense we insulated ourselves from

the hazing part that you might find very unpleasant, but you know, there are

certain things you sort of live and do and do it you know. When you walked just

in the hallways you had to square all corners. You walk down a hall and if

you're going to the restroom you walk down a hall and take a sharp left and

walked in through the door, and I don't think I had that. I didn't have to march

up and salute the urinal or anything like that, but you had to do that.

Cline: You still do have to square the corners by the way.

Frasier: All in all, there were things, but I quite frankly for 00:16:00me with the way,

I guess a combination, I handled it and the people around me handled it, it

turned into a very strong bonding experience for me with my classmates and the

ones who were in the Corps. And I think you see that to today, until today. I

mean you look at we're back here for our 62nd Reunion, and you look and you see

that typically probably you could get a better statistic on this, but in classes

from my time and before around probably 80% of the people who are here are

within the Corps, and when I was here it was about 00:17:0050%, because when I was here

there was still a relatively large number of World War II vets here on the GI

bill, so it didn't make sense to make them be in the Corps. So you had a large

number of those people. I guess some transfer students who might come in after

they had two years' worth of credits so they didn't have to be in the Corps,

that type of thing. So anyway, my recollection was a student body was about

half and half.

Cline: I'm really interested in that time period when there were so many

veterans here, and still here even then.

Frasier: Yes, and before us there was even more. I showed up in the fall of

1950, and so that's essentially 4¬Ω-5 years after World War II 00:18:00 ended.

The guys that got out right away they were in college and graduating maybe, but

there were still a fair number of them around. You got to know them. We got

along well with them. I never experienced any friction between the Corps and a

civilian student body. It was two groups of people both here to get an education

and so it was the conditions.

Cline: Did you have classmates or friends that went off to Korea? That would

have been summer of '50.

Frasier: Friends, yes. No classmates that I… That's not to say that there

weren't some. There must have been some, but not ones that I know. The ones I

know mostly went off to Europe. Our situation was we came in here in the fall of 00:19:001950. Korean War was going on.

Cline: It just started, yeah.

Frasier: We had student deferments and I can remember thinking my choice when I

go to college is I go to college and I'm a Cadet Corps and I graduate and I get

commissioned and I'll go to Korea, I'll be an officer. Or, I cannot do that, go

off and try to be a bricklayer or something and the Arlington County draft board

nobody slipped through their fingers. I remember the woman's name. Her name was

Payne, maybe Alice Payne. You didn't slip through the Arlington County draft

board, so I would get drafted and I would go off. So I've got buddies I grew up

in my neighborhood and a lot didn't go off to college, they went off to Army and

ended up in Korea or ended up in the Navy and went on 00:20:00ships and some of them out

to sea and all that kind of stuff.

I forget now what brought that question on.

Cline: Because we were talking about the veterans of World War II, but I was

just thinking your time period is right in the War, yeah.

Frasier: You asked me whether I knew any that went to Korea, yes, my best buddy

from when I was in high school. He was a very talented capable guy, but he was

into being an automobile mechanic and he ended up being an HVAC

designer/repairmen, but he was off in Korea. But continuing my story which I

diverted from, in '53, no '52 I guess right, Eisenhower got elected. In '53 he

went out and they signed the truce for Korea, so I was 00:21:00among you know Virginia

Tech like many ROTC systems, so essentially was a second lieutenant production

facility, okay. So I was on the assembly line or production line and then after

Eisenhower took office and the "truce" or "peace accord" or whatever you want to

call it occurred, all of a sudden I guess the services, the Army in particular

sits there, it's like Lucille Ball if you remember when she's doing something on

the production lines with the cakes. This is my vision of the Army all of a

sudden, what are we going to do with all these second lieutenants?

So their solution to that was they came through and said some of you, because

all in my class had signed the contract for the last two years 00:22:00to get your

commission. For some of these they basically, oh slipsies, not so sure. We would

like to have you that. I don't know what they told them, we'll write a letter to

your draft board or something. Based on your training you should be made a

sergeant or whatever. But anyhow, the consequence of that I was in this

production line and the Army all of a sudden figured I didn't need all these

second lieutenants right off, so I decided to go to graduate school. So the

faculty member in the Civil Engineering Department got a letter from a faculty

member or a head of a department at Penn State, etc., etc., so I went off to

Penn State in '54 and got a master's degree in engineering mechanics in '56 and

a PhD in '58.

And all the while once a year I filled 00:23:00in a report that said I wanted an

extension in my date of call to active duty, as long as I was in good standing,

and I don't know whether my department head or a dean or somebody I think had to

sign off and say it was okay. But regardless, come I forget now whether it was

June or July of 1958, I reported out Aberdeen Proving Ground and my PhD was

awarded while I was standing inspection on Saturday morning inspection at

Aberdeen Providing Ground.

Now, from the standpoint of talking about my career if I can do that, summarize

it in 2¬Ω minutes.

Cline: Please, and then we can come back to Tech, yeah.

Frasier: I reported to Aberdeen Proving Ground for duty. They assigned me to a

research laboratory, Ballistic Research Laboratory. I worked 00:24:00there essentially a

year and a half or 20 minutes and liked it after I had gone through the Army

schools at Aberdeen. Then I had wanted to teach. I went off and I got an

assistant professor position at Brown University in the Division of Engineering,

and went there with the idea I would have an academic career, and I didn't like

it, which was a bit of a surprise because I had taught as a graduate student and

enjoyed it. So since I had worked for the Army for a year and a half or 20

months and enjoyed it, I went back to work for the Army. That would have been in

1962 and continued to work for the Army in one way or another until 1996.

Cline: As a civilian?

Frasier: Director of a laboratory and things like that.

Cline: What did you mostly focus on in your 00:25:00 career?

Frasier: Guns, bullets, explosives, propellants, and armor, ordinances. Well

ordinance is about that, and ordinance is about trucks, I mean logistics stuff,

and I was more on the…I would call it the war material side.

Cline: So the Corps was prophetic when they assigned you to ordinance.

Frasier: That's right. It turns out the decision to stick me in ordinance with

no idea about it ended up had major consequences on my professional career,

right. Who is to know when you're 17? How are you going to figure that out?

Cline: So looking back at your years at VPI were there any particular professors

that you had that were mentors or that you have particular memories about?

Frasier: Yes. I guess it was in 00:26:00our senior year civil engineering, a man named

Grover Rogers came in and taught and we essentially all liked him as good

as…and he made structures, highway, bridges, buildings, football stadium

stands, all that kind of stuff, an interesting topic. He was a young man at the

time, could probably relate to us. He was a Tech graduate, had done his PhD at

Harvard. Yeah, I could think of him. Professor Brinker who was head of the

department, was a good guy. He taught surveying. I spent a summer 00:27:00surveying. But

I had I guess always good math teachers. We had a guy once named McGeechie who

taught I think economics. A guy teaching economics to engineers, but you know,

he had a job on his hands but he was interesting. But I would say Grover Rogers

is the one that I knew and I kept in contact with. He went down to Florida State

and was some sort of a dean or associate dean or something after he had been here.

One of the most influential people for me actually was when I look back on it I

think of this, was my roommate my senior year -- I'm sorry, my sophomore 00:28:00 year…

In my freshman year my roommate was a man from Roanoke that he and I sort of got

along, but before the freshman year was out I changed and roomed with a

different old lady named George Palmer who is a wonderful guy. I really liked

him, a good guy. And I made adequate grades. I had a good high school

preparation, so I did well particularly in the math courses. I had gone through

at least College Algebra in high school, so the math courses freshman year were

a repeat to a certain extent of the things I had in high school, and I had a

good high school math program. But 00:29:00anyhow, my roommate my sophomore year was a

man named Tommy McDaniel. I can remember to this he said to me, he said, "Let's

make all As." Now it hadn't occurred to me to make all As, but Tommy thought

let's make all As. So I had come out of my freshman year, in those days a 3 was

a full A. I think it's 4 now probably, but 3, I probably came out of my freshman

year with a 2.0 or something like that. And there were times when I hadn't

worked near as hard as I should have, so Tommy said, "Let's do that," and I

said, "Oh okay."

So sure enough I did that, except I probably got a B in military or something

like that, but I ended up with 00:30:00a 2.85 or something like that. So, being in a

Cadet Corps provided me an environment where you could study. You didn't have

people running in and out of your room, at least not after 8:30 or 8:40 or

whatever it was where they had that. So when you needed to study you could sit

down to study. In fact, sometimes there wasn't a whole lot to do other than sit

down and do that. So anyhow, I really learned how to sit down and study then and

found out that if I studied I could make good grades, right. So I ended up with

a degree with honors. I think underneath my name the with honors is kind of 00:31:00small. Probably they didn't want to do that until the last quarter was over.

Bert Kinzey: When I was teaching here they didn't know who got with honors until

almost the day of graduation when the grades come in, so the registrar would get

me on graduation morning in her office in Burris Hall to

announce…[00:31:27] with honors myself. [Laughs]

Cline: For the record that's Mr. Bert Kinzey, Class of '42 speaking. That's great.

Frasier: And that was helpful, because then I went off to graduate school and I

did that, you know. I mean you have to work at graduate school, but I did that,

I don't want to say it was so much with ease, but you 00:32:00know, I never had a hazard

about getting through graduate school except when finally you have to sit down

and write your dissertation. And even though we had English courses and had to

write stuff, I never sat down and easily wrote something out. It's work for me

to write things. Anyhow.

Cline: In what ways do you think Tech, looking back and either from in terms of

graduate school or later prepared for what you later encountered?

Frasier: I think it was a very good basic education and technical disciplines. I

think it was great in as I said, teaching me a little bit how to study, and the

fact that I could do well academically, intellectually, that kind of activity.

You come bebopping here when you're 17 years 00:33:00old and you know, I had… I

graduated like 125th out of a high school class of 497 or some such number. I

just being in the upper quartile by some two or three guys or gals flunked out

and didn't arrange to graduate. Probably at the beginning of the year I was in

the top quartile. By the time the year was over and we had gone from 502 or 3

members of the graduating class to 497 I understand. So it was good for me to

find out that I could sit down and study and do well. Sometimes probably even

you would say excel, but I did well in an academic environment, so that was good.

I learned a certain amount about how to get along with 00:34:00people and how to handle

people. In the Cadet Corps the system in those days is as a freshman you were a

private. As a sophomore you're either a private or a PFC. As a PFC you had a

responsibility sort of as an assistant squad leader, okay. If you were a junior

you were either a private or a corporal. A corporal would be a squad leader. So

there was a certain amount of leadership learning going on there. I don't know

that we were trained much. They train now, which I think is very good, but there

was a certain amount of learning about what you 00:35:00could and couldn't do with

people. By the way, part of the learning experience as a rat, when you saw what

people did to you you know what you liked and didn't like, right. And depending

I guess on your sensitivity, if you found what you didn't like you could decide

I'm not going to ever do that to people that I saw that SOB do to somebody, and

generally do something to them. It's almost all verbal. There was no corporal

activity at all. I'm just not going to do that. So I think that's a good

learning experience.

Senior year I was a battalion commander. So again, there was a certain amount of

leadership responsibility you're handed there. I didn't think about it like that

so 00:36:00much, but being there with three previous years you sort of saw how things

are done and I learned how I like to deal with people. I found that a meaningful

learning experience.

Cline: Did you ever see anybody drummed out?

Frasier: Yes.

Cline: How did you internalize that experience if at all?

Frasier: How did I visualize it?

Cline: What lessons did you draw from it?

Frasier: One of the first things we were taught about when you got here was the

honor system, that and how to tuck your shirt.

Cline: How to iron the shirts.

Frasier: You were never a Cadet here or anyplace?

Cline: No.

Frasier: Before we're done… You were a Cadet, were you 00:37:00ever? I'll show you

how you put on your shirt.

Cline: [Laughs] I always laugh because we just had graduation and my office is

over by all the barracks, right, and there's always this enormous pile of

ironing boards when they graduate. That's the first thing they want to get rid of.

Frasier: Oh.

Cline: They never want to see that again.

Frasier: And pressed, if they had Duck pants or something you would want those

to be pressed, but no, we were not pressers. We would send them over to the cleaners.

Cline: Right.

Frasier: Let me see, you got me off on…

Cline: So honor system, I had asked about drumming out.

Frasier: Yes. Anyhow, I quite frankly liked it and bought into it. The whole

business like the Cadets if you face Owens Hall on the right hand side is where

the Cadets stay. On the left hand 00:38:00side is where civilians stay. But you know

when you went to lunch if it was a nice day you are carrying… I carried a

clipboard or a notebook with your stuff on it, a slide rule and stuff like that.

You just put it down on the steps and you walked in. Came back 30 minutes later

and you expected it to be there, and in my four years of experience it always

was. Now there's a lot of places where you couldn't do that right. You would

have chained your bicycle to a post or something like that. So I liked that. I

never saw a guy cheat the whole time I was here. Now I didn't spend a whole

month taking exams like that, but you know, after a while you got to a place you

mostly minded your own business when you're taking an exam. You've got stuff to

do, you've got to take it. But 00:39:00if people were doing dicey things you probably,

they are probably going to be seen by somebody somewhere looking up.

But getting to the drumming out, I've got two examples, only one drumming out,

but I know of two other dismissals. There was, I think this must have been my

rat year, the first year. I'm pretty sure it happened on the lower quadrangle.

One night the bugle calls, there was a bugle call at about 8:30 or 8:40 or

something like that, which might have been named Call to Quarters or something

like 00:40:00 that.

But basically at that time you were to be in your room doing what you're

supposed to be doing in your room and there wasn't supposed to be wild parties

going on. And no problem if you wanted to study with another guy you went and

did that, right, but somebody had to know where you were. So anyhow, there was a

bugle call then, then at 10:30 there was a call called Tattoo. Have you ever

heard of Tattoo?

Cline: Hmm.

Frasier: I always thought it was the prettiest bugle call, and then Taps was at

11. I don't know whether it was around the time of Tattoo or some other time.

Maybe they blew assembly, okay, but let me pretend it was 9 o'clock or

something. What's going on? "Fall in everybody." I 00:41:00don't remember whether we had

to be in uniform or not, because most of us were probably sitting around in our

khakis or pajamas or something studying. But anyhow, my recollection is it was

dark. But anyhow vrrrumm, the drummers were there and they drummed and somebody

read something out in a loud voice. Had a full battalion, four companies around

to watch it. I guess, I don't know whether they ripped his buttons off or what.

Not quite as dramatic for those of you who have watched [Jakus 00:41:36] where

they ripped everything off of [00:41:39 Dreyfus], but he was clear. He was

drummed out.

The other events I know of is honor court, actually I know of some others, I sat

on some honor court juries, but another one, there was 00:42:00a… It might have

been my junior year, the guys ahead of us. A guy who had been in the company

with us all the time I was there, the same company, he got caught stealing,

taking money from I think his roommate's… His roommate was the treasurer

for some activity. It might have been some event that just within the company we

were going to have and he collected the money and we were going to have a dinner

together or something. But anyhow, one evening again, we were told, "Okay,

everybody fall in." Marched us down probably to the holding hall, which was

where probably mineral sciences or something like that was there.

You had to go 00:43:00in and were told, "Bring your wallet." So we did that. Went in,

and under a UV light you had to hold your hands out and open up your wallet.

They had seeded, dusted, whatever the right word is the cash in this drawer

where the cash was disappearing and put it in there. Apparently he went and

opened it up and it lit up light the 4th of July or something, so he was out of there.

And the other one was a classmate of mine who was, I think he might have also

been studying metallurgy or something like that. He cheated by copying 00:44:00on like a

mechanical engineering or something like that lab report, and boom, he was out

of here. And I guess there was a trial for that or maybe he came in and was

accused and said, "You got me red-handed." I don't know how they decided that,

but that's a long answer to your question. Yes, I saw a drumming out very early

on. I know of two other dismissals for honor court violations. And there were

probably, I think I knew of some who were like some suspensions or something

like that, but those three stand out. They were close by. Two of them involved

guys who were in my Cadet company, so we knew about that.

Cline: So did the honor code and the ethics inherent in the honor code did you

carry that with 00:45:00you from Virginia Tech?

Frasier: Yes, yes, and I suspect most people do. I don't know that for a fact,

but you know you can combine certain things. I know I'm not a very good liar, so

in most cases it's cheaper to tell the truth. But also from an ethics standpoint

I don't like it. I worked for the government for a long time, and have the same

system there. Some people are…well you know, I take pens and pencils home,

and I wasn't against that, but I lived in a rural part, semi-rural part of

Harford County when I worked at Aberdeen Proving Ground. They had a school

principal there that I only met once and he was sort of a 00:46:00hard-nosed guy.

But everybody knew him and I think liked him and respected him very much, but he

was sitting there and he had, in his class he had the children of professional

employees of the Army at Aberdeen Proving Ground, mixed with kids who were rural

farm workers, or workers on a farm, and he had a sense of propriety. He said,

"If your kid comes in here (you a parent of a child) with a pen that says United

States Government on it…" It's not the way he said it, but was very clear

what he meant was I'll have your ass. He said, "I'm not going to have those 00:47:00 kids

of some sort of privilege in here with this kids from rural farm workers who

their families, the honest trustworthy hard working ones have trouble buying

their kids pencil and paper to come to school." I agreed with him with that

100%. I didn't mind a government employee if he went out and puts a government

pen in his shirt in the morning and comes home and the next day to work and

pulls it out and writes again with it. You can waste more of the taxpayers'

money than it's worth trying to make everybody check in their government pens at

3-cents apiece before they go home.

Cline: Let me ask you too about, obviously I'm a historian and what I focus on

is change over time. Can you reflect a little bit about 00:48:00change at this place and

on this campus? An enormous amount of change that I'm sure you've seen over the years.

Frasier: I guess the fact that the Cadet Corps is not a bigger factor in the

student body. When I was here it was at least half of the student body. Now how

many students are on campus, 20-something thousand?

Cline: Hmm.

Frasier: I was told there's like 1,000 Cadets, so that's a big change which you

see. You certainly see the change in the physical plant, all the buildings. You

see the change in the athletic facility in the standing of the athlete's teams.

I mean you know, 00:49:00I would have to go back and look at it, but my freshman year I

wouldn't be surprised to find out that the Virginia Tech football team was 2 and

7 or something like that. We didn't go to football games expecting a win. And

somebody mentioned last night at our dinner, and I had forgotten this, but it

might have been our freshman year. Somebody mentioned that we played William &

Mary and the score was 54 to nothing in William & Mary's favor. So as a member

of the class of '54 nice things were not said to us over that.

Cline: That's funny.

Frasier: Humiliating I guess, I don't know why we should be humiliated by 00:50:00it. So

anyhow, the fact that you have this team and everybody is so rah rah about it.

It wasn't like that to my awareness in the 50s. I knew a civil engineering

classmate of mine was a man named Hunter Swink who was captain of the team in

his senior year. As far as I can tell and he was a classmate in the civil

engineering classes for four years, he never got anything special, and I can't

imagine that's the case anymore with the athletic situation we have here at the time.

In my freshman year there 00:51:00was a number of, in the first quarter I remember there

was three or four guys clearly who were here on football scholarships, big guys

that have bruises and scabs where they had been beaten up playing football. Most

of them were gone certainly by the end of the freshman year. I presume that was

because of academics as well as, it might also had a little bit to do with

athletic performance. So anyhow, that's a change, that role of athletics. I

don't keep up enough with the academic program to say much about it.

It appears to me there's more research going on 00:52:00now than there was when I was

here. Basically I saw it as an institution dedicated to turning out good

bachelor level people to meet the needs of the State. It was similar… I

did my graduate work at Penn State. Penn State when I first went there was much

more than Pennsylvania's is willing to pay it to be now…very clearly

responsible for meeting the development needs of commerce and industry in the

State. Pennsylvania with all those mines and stuff up there had a very good

mineral industry program. Mining here I guess was a good mining engineering 00:53:00program, a good geology program for going out and figuring out what riches were

underground in Virginia.

I guess it appears, I don't get to really see it, observe it, there's more

attention to the arts now. Here engineering and I would say and science,

agriculture business, I don't know if there was much of a home economics program

or not. There was a small number of female students, but I thought most of them

were likely to be in an agricultural program, ag economics or agronomy or feed,

seeds and fertilizer, whatever you call those agricultural 00:54:00 programs.

Cline: What did you do for a social life? Were there dances?

Frasier: Oh yeah.

Cline: Were there girls brought in or dates?

Frasier: Yeah. The main dance events each quarter were put on by two

organizations, a German Club and the Cotillion Club. Had you heard of them?

Cline: Absolutely. Yes.

Frasier: I was in the Cotillion Club, got inducted in I guess my junior year and

that was nice. It was a lot of work actually. There was a near disaster I had. I

got the job of being in charge of decorations, which had to do with decorations

and party favors and all that stuff. So we decorated the whole War Memorial 00:55:00gymnasium. I don't know if you've ever seen pictures of the decorated gymnasium.

Cline: Well I've seen it for a ring dance. I've seen those pictures.

Frasier: Yeah, a ring dance is the same thing. We decorated the whole business.

You would put crepe paper. We bought it in big rolls about that wide. Covered

the whole ceiling, etc. Anyhow, I was in charge of that and we were all

organizing. One of the big expenditures for it was for all this crepe paper. So

I forget which way it went, but I think they were ordering the crepe paper

through a place downtown Blacksburg. And then I found out that, I don't remember

the name of the company, but an outfit Everett [Wady] in Roanoke. You could

order it from them as well and we would have gotten it for less from 00:56:00them, so

being of Scottish heritage I was figuring out how not to spend that money. And

this turned into close to a disaster.

So anyhow, the shipment comes in to decorate for the dance. And this would have

been spring formals in probably in 1953, because there was a theme for the fair,

it was called Spring at the Fair. And I went down and you go down into the

basement of the gym and there's an area there where they put the packages that

had been delivered, boxes like this. And so I went down and I 00:57:00opened it up, it

was the wrong order. I remember the first box I opened it up I couldn't believe

it, because we didn't order anything that was less than this wide and a roll

that was this big around. And this box is filled with things about toilet paper

size roll of red crepe. Oh my God we've got the wrong stuff. So I go back trying

to figure out well how do I get the right stuff. Can't do that. You have to get

the order right we're sending and you have to ship the other stuff back. And

maybe a day or two or something went by, not much. I went back down into this

place where this stuff was stored, it's filled with water. All these wrong boxes

of the wrong stuff are down there covered in this water. The sub pump had 00:58:00 broken.

Cline: Oh no.

Frasier: So I'm in a panic. I forget, I had literally only a few days to get

this working because we had all these people ready to come in because it was, I

don't know what you want to call it, it was like a blitz when it came time to

decorate the gym. The people in charge of athletics aren't going to say, "Yeah,

go ahead and take three weeks." When your dance starts Friday or whenever it was

and okay, on Wednesday you can come in or something like that.

So I was in a deep kimchi. The president of the Cotillion Club was a classmate,

a civil engineering classmate of mine Bob Bass, and the man who ended up being,

I guess he was president of the Corps of Cadets, Frank Fuller, both of them also

were in 00:59:00the Cotillion Club, they went to work and got this stuff ordered and

shipped in by air. It came I guess on a DC3 that landed in Roanoke and somebody

went down there and picked it up and brought it out. I'll never forget one of

the guys on the decoration committee, because we were no longer in any position,

we took the colors that they had available that sort of could have been

described by the same color blue, one of the guys on the decorating committee I

remember, I don't remember his name, a tall thin guy, he said it was a

technicolored nightmare. [Chuckles]

But everybody enjoyed the dance. It didn't make much difference. But you know

the tickets were sold. There was a tradition of years standing of this gym is

going to be all decorated up for 01:00:00this. Anyhow, those were some social activities.

There were also hops and the likes. I did very little of those. We would go to

Radford and see the ladies of Radford on occasion. There would be some sort of

event, or they might come over for a hop or something like that.

Cline: Anything that I didn't ask you that I should have asked you about?

Frasier: That's one of my last questions as well. [Laughs] No, I can't think of

anything. I thought it was a very good experience. I felt myself very fortunate

to be here. I felt myself very fortunate to be involved, put together with the

set of people that I was involved and put together 01:01:00 with.

Lived on a day to day basis, studied, worked, laughed, got in trouble with, etc.

The get in trouble with you can read that thing and see a little bit about that.

We were on the verge of being expelled. The event was we were involved in

painting the water tower which was a [01:01:30] at one stage. So that's all I

have. You can just run this through the copier if you need two copies. Or do you

need me to do something to this?

Cline: No. This one's for me. This one is actually for you to keep and I will

just sign it myself and then you can fill in the rest if you want 01:02:00 to.

Frasier: I will put this in my old gold folder, old guard folder.

Cline: Well thank you so much for that. I really appreciate it.

Frasier: This was 19th we decided, right?

Cline: Yeah.