Ren Harman: For the recording, this is Ren Harman with the School of
Education for VT Stories. Today is Wednesday, May 19th at about 12:05 p.m.. So,
if I could ask you for the recording to state your name as my name is--, and
then your birth date please.
John "Jack" Kise: I'm John Kise and my birth date is May 8, 1935. And I really
go by the name of Jack most of the time, and that was because we have other
Johns in the family and my mother wanted to make sure that she was calling the
right person when she had something to say. Usually it was something that I did
wrong and she would say, Jack!
Ren: Tell me a little bit about your family. Where were you raised? What was
growing up like?
Jack: I was born in New Haven, Connecticut. My father went to Yale University,
got his PhD there in chemistry and became a chemical engineer for the Solvay
Process Company, Allied Chem and Dye was the holding company. We moved to
Syracuse, New York. Of course, I was a baby at that time and he worked there
through the Second World War. We then moved with the company to Petersburg,
Virginia in 1945, the end of 1945 and lived in Petersburg until 1949 when he
took another job as Director of Research and Vice President of the Virginia
Chemical Company in Portsmouth, Virginia, where I grew up and went to high
school and got most of my early education there, other than Syracuse and
Petersburg. But graduated high school, Woodrow Wilson High School in Portsmouth.
Then noted that many of my engineer friends, technically qualified friends were
coming to Virginia Tech and they had quite a reputation, not only that, but of
course at that time we were known as VPI and there was an extension in Norfolk,
which was called the VPI William & Mary Extension. So I was very knowledgeable
and decided I would like to attend.
Ren: Your father attending Yale University was there ever saying, Jack let's go
to Yale?
Jack: No, no, not at all. He did his undergraduate at Lehigh [University] in
Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, and that's where all of the relatives and some still
live in Allentown, Pennsylvania, and so we would visit there every Christmas and
so on, and visit the relatives. And of course, Lehigh was right there. My
brother went to Lehigh. Why I didn't, I was more interested in the Virginia
category and other people that I knew in Virginia were going or were going to go
to Virginia Tech. We called it VPI at that time. There was no Virginia Tech at
that point.
Ren: Right [laughs], what year was that your first semester?
Jack: My first semester, first quarter was in September 1952.
Ren: What's your first memory of Virginia Tech?
Jack: I think the first memory was how quiet it was here in the mornings
compared to the vast metropolis of Portsmouth and the Norfolk and Virginia
Beach, because you could hear the cows mooing you know, [laughs] from the fields
around. Blacksburg was a very small community. Basically, what you see downtown
is what we had. There was a downtown next to the movie theater which is still in
the same place. There was an old streetcar. It was called Ralph's Diner, and
that's where most of the people who lived in the town like I did at that point
were breakfasting and suppering, and they got together so to speak at Ralph's.
Ralph was a veteran of the war and had a lot of stories to tell also. It was a
very-- We were called 'townies' I guess at that point, but anyway, it was a
different category from the normal Virginia Tech student at that point, because
the Corps of Cadets was the major "family" at Virginia Tech.
Ren: Your first semester you weren't in the Corps?
Jack: No.
Ren: What was the relationship between Corps of the Cadets and then as you
described in this town these were regular folk?
Jack: It was very good. It was very good. A lot of the times we provided the
audience for the Corps when they were practicing, when the Highty-Tighties were
practicing. No, it was a very cordial and very close relationship because we
attended the same classes, and we had the same problems with the homework and we
would get together with them, so it was a very cooperative situation.
Ren: What was your major?
Jack: My major at that point was pre-engineering, scientific I guess you might
call it. The first two years you didn't have to choose really between going, and
so you had all of the preliminary courses and chemistry and physics and math,
statics and dynamics and all that kind of good stuff.
Ren: Right. So when you graduated your degree was in just engineering, chemical?
Jack: Well, my degree?
Ren: Yeah.
Jack: No, my degree I chose electrical engineering in Patton Hall. Patton Hall
was electrical engineering period, and the downstairs basement of Patton Hall
was a what we would call a mechanical laboratory. The motor generator laboratory
because Claudius Lee, who was a very famous start way back then had an office
down there and he was a professor previous to my arriving. He was retired at
that point, but he sort of oversaw what was going on down there in the power
laboratory where we plugged in all of the cables to the 220 and the 120 and made
the machines run, the shop generators and series generators and motors that ran
them, the torque converters and all the measurements that we did. So that was
basically the area that we learned for the first year of electrical engineering,
which would be your junior year. We all were sort of thrown together and then
you split.
Ren: Okay.
Jack: You went to--of course I chose power engineering at that time under
Professor George Burns, who was really the power man, power professor so to
speak, Professor Pauly. I believe it was Professor Fisher who was a lead of the
department. And you also then had the group that went into electronics, and we
thought they were a bunch of eggheads, because all they had to deal with was a
bunch of electron tubes you know that glowed in the dark, that had the filaments
and so on. So they went over to the radio laboratories while we were in the
power laboratories. So we were going to control all the high voltage
transmission lines and do all that kind of stuff while they would just kind of
fiddle around with their vacuum tubes. Little did we know that somebody like a
Bill Gates would in the future convert those. But they started out with, it was
hard to believe, when I went to graduate school in Chicago that a building about
the size of the Newman Library housed nothing but one little computer.
Ren: Wow.
Jack: This one little computer had nothing but vacuum tubes, stacks of these
vacuum tubes. They had to have the air-conditioning going year around because
the filaments in these vacuum tubes caused so much heat.
Ren: Wow.
Jack: So, and all that vacuum tube did was turn on and turn off, turn on and
turn off. And that represented a 1 and a 0, and that represented what we had to
learn later on in graduate school as bullion algebra we called it, 1s and 0s.
But of course little did we know that our electronic friends would go on into
the industry and very soon in life the Bill Gates' and people would transform
these things into the solid state, use a solid state to now where that big
building is represented in an iPhone.
Ren: Right, it's amazing.
Jack: So the amazing thing was that actually what we were being prepared for was
in the power industry was not only did we have to generate the power and move it
and distribute it, but we had to do that efficiently using computers that would
be invented and sold to us by our friends who went into the electronics.
Ren: Your friends you gave a hard time to, right?
Jack: [Laughs]
Ren: You mentioned some notable professors. You mentioned Claudius Lee, right,
and if my history is correct Lee Hall is named after him I believe?
Jack: I believe so, yes.
Ren: Were there some other notable professors or advisors that you can remember
from your undergraduate days that were really influential on your life?
Jack: B Bob Smith, Professor Smith was statics and dynamics I think, and I can't
remember what department that, but we called him B Bob. He was a very
interesting fellow, and so my roommate and I we had a summer course I believe. I
believe it was, it wasn't statics, but anyway it was a mechanical course taught
by him. So at that time we had, I forget how I did it, but I changed my
roommates grades from an A to an F and B Bob thought that was kind of funny what
I did, because my roommate thought he had flunked the course. But B Bob got his
last laugh because they used to post the final grades on the door you see,
outside the door; Kise had an F and my roommate had an A [Laughs].
Ren: Oh my goodness.
Jack: But anyway, those were more days where you could do something that like
because the computer hadn't taken over everything.
Ren: You could still kind of mess with some things.
Jack: It didn't officially go into-- Clarice Slusher was the gal who was in
charge of collecting all the data and the grades and pumping them all out, so
your slips and all that, and of course she got the correct--
Ren: Slusher Hall, right?
Jack: Probably, yes.
Ren: That's obviously a favorite memory, but what are some other favorite
memories or experiences that you had of Virginia Tech in your years?
Jack: I think just the comradery that we had among us. As of course we got to
our senior year and our classes were small at that time, it was a smaller group,
you know, such that the power class was a class, electrical engineering of
thirty-ish people and the same thing for electronics, so you had a graduating
electrical engineering group of that magnitude. And at that point the whole
school was five thousand or so and the whole graduating class, the whole
graduating class amounted to some thousand people.
Ren: Wow.
Jack: I mean you had five thousand people entering the class each year. You have
thirty-two thousand students. It's hard to see how it grew, but it's wonderful
that I could have been a part of the school as it was growing and the magnitude.
And it is now interesting that I can-- I was visiting with my children and
grandchildren and my wife and I were up in Woodstock, Illinois just two weeks
ago. That's northwest of Chicago, and it's a relatively small town. Most people
at this point would remember by Bill Murray doing Groundhog Days, and that was
filmed in Woodstock, Illinois, so the square. In fact, I met Mr. Murray on the
street and he is a very personable fellow. But the point of the story being I
was driving down the street near my son's business, he owns a metalworking
business there, and right down the street a half a block away I saw a garage
door open and a jeep marked inside, and on the spare tire in the back guess what
it said? VT. Oh boy. Small world.
Ren: Right.
Jack: That's way up northwest of Chicago and a block away from where I was staying.
Ren: Right. So the reverse side of memorable experiences and things on campus,
were there some difficult times? Was there anything that kind of affected you
that were particularly hard or difficult?
Jack: I think the difficult times, in my times weren't here at [Virginia] Tech,
but were should I say part of the history of [Virginia] Tech, very much part of
the history of [Virginia] Tech, because my roommate and I drove up from
Portsmouth where I lived and we went down there for the homecoming of my high
school team, and we were driving back and we went to a little town in Virginia
to fill the gas tank. I mean they didn't have big Exon stations and all this at
that time and it was just a small town, a little general store with a pump in
front of it, and the town didn't matter. It was some small town on Route 48
someplace or Route 460, at that point was just a two-lane road. We were inside
and one of the fellows, one of the town persons there who obviously was a very
opinionated person saw the Virginia Tech sticker on the car. Well, I won't
explain the whole detail of it, but that was the year that the first African
American entered Virginia Tech, and we took the brunt of it right there. You
boys are from that place that-- And I don't have to finish the story.
Ren: Right.
Jack: We got out of there very quickly. And so that was part of the history, a
very big part of the history of [Virginia] Tech, but part of my personal
history. What's wrong with these people, you know. It was a very difficult time
for us and maybe for a lot of [Virginia] Tech students, because a lot of them
came from small towns, where people out in the hinterlands did not understand
why [Virginia] Tech was doing this type of thing.
Ren: Right.
Jack: And it has become a very proud history of [Virginia] Tech to have
participated in that.
Ren: In your years here did you see evidence of racism or any type of racism
going on that was easy to pinpoint because of [Virginia] Tech allowing the first
African American student to attend?
Jack: Did I see that here?
Ren: Yeah, from students or faculty members?
Jack: No I did not. I never saw anything like that.
Ren: Just in that gas station?
Jack: Just in the station, in the presence of maybe some uneducated people.
That's all I could say.
Ren: How has your education from Virginia Tech kind of played out? You mentioned
graduate school in your life.
Jack: It has become a very important part of my life because I was prepared to
go to graduate school and I went to Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago
and belonged to a religious group, a Lutheran group, and nearby was a hospital,
and so the reverend, the young fellow who was in charge of our group weekly
meetings of the Lutheran Student Association as it was called, said, I think I'm
going to invite some of the nurses over. And of course all the guys go, hmm. But
one of those nurses that came over that March in 1959, in fact it was on St.
Patty's Day I believe it was, became my wife on October 10th of that year.
Ren: Wow.
Jack: And so Virginia Tech played a very important part in that because if I
hadn't come here and got recommendations from my professor I wouldn't have gone
to Illinois Tech where they had an electrical engineering group, nor would I
have been in the Lutheran Student Association and I wouldn't have met my wife
now of fifty-seven years.
Ren: Wow. Incredible. So it all started from Virginia Tech?
Jack: I would say yes. I would say that that is part of the starting history,
because if I had gone into the agricultural then I would have ended up in
another school someplace else.
Ren: I'm sure you have shared that story with children and grandchildren about
how you and your wife met. Have you always tied it back to Virginia Tech do you think?
Jack: I think so. I think they are very aware of that type of thing. Obviously I
have two students who are engineers, my son who went to the University of Tulsa
in mechanical engineering and now has a partnership with a good friend of his in
a business in Woodstock, Illinois in the woodworking business. My daughter
became an electrical engineer and worked for Commonwealth Edison Company. I
wonder why she chose electrical engineering, right, but she did, and so she was
an engineer before having children and being a stay at home mom for Commonwealth
Edison which is part of the Exelon Company.
Ren: Are you still involved with Virginia Tech in some capacity today or are you
just a proud alumni?
Jack: I'm a proud alumni, proud alumnus or whatever you want to call it. I try
to go to the local meetings wherever they might be, but yes, I wear my jacket
and students ask me way far beyond Woodstock, Illinois, oh, that's the football
team. Well we're not just known for that good football team you know that won so
many games and had gone to the Orange Bowl or whatever it is. No, we have a very
good school down there and you ought to look at it because it had certainly
grown since I've been there, and the research facilities. We have a medical
school. It's just a vast-- It's hard to believe. When I come across 460 and I
say Virginia almost starts at the Christiansburg City limits. And I was noticing
today where there was some more construction going on, and I'm saying it's even
closer to Christiansburg. [Laughs]
Ren: Very true, very true.
Jack: To me, no, I try to tell them that we of course in Portsmouth Virginia
Tech is well known for its research and some of the facilities in that area.
Ren: Right.
Jack: It is not hard to present Virginia Tech. It is well known throughout the country.
Ren: There was a recent Gallup survey that talked about Virginia Tech being one
of these universities where the alumni become really engaged in some capacity,
and you kind of hinted at some of these things as to why, but what are some
other reasons you maybe think that Virginia Tech alumni are so engaged once they graduate?
Jack: For my own part, I mean from my own experiences here is that it was just a
group. You had a small, well you had a class group. They were your friends, your
only friends for four years, or basically they grew up and you graduated with
them. And here you have, at that time we had this monstrous class of one
thousand people graduating, and here we had this small group of electrical
engineers that we knew. They were our friends and amongst a growing population
here. And so that group you follow, and I can't believe some of the things that
happen. I'm walking down in New York City and I'm going to, I forget what studio
it is but they have tours you know, broadcasts, now it's a big TV studio. At
that time, this was years later after graduation, after, I hadn't moved to
Chicago yet I guess, but anyway, somewhere I was downtown New York and touring
around. I'm going up the escalator, I get to the top and there's Mr. Gladstone,
a guy that graduated electrical engineering with me, in the middle of New York.
Ren: [Laughs]
Jack: Well wonders never cease. The same thing happened in Chicago. I'm walking
down by Marshall Fields on State Street and here's a fellow standing there
looking up at the buildings, another graduate. He was from your area down there
near Richland.
Ren: Okay.
Jack: His name escapes me, but he graduated at the same time. Immediately you
think you want to hug this man, because it's like somebody you've known all your
life. So the type of relationship that you build up here follows you. I wanted
something at VEPCO, they called it Virginia Electric Power at that time, I would
get on the phone and call my friend who graduated with me at VEPCO, who now has
raised himself up to a managerial level. And of course, I was working for
another utility or researching a problem that I had with, in the business I was
in I had become managers of a high voltage laboratory, one of the few in the
United States. So I would depend upon my friends in the industry, how do I do a
test and simulate an insulator in salt air? What kind of conditions do I have to
have in a laboratory of a big shower room so to speak, how do I simulate this,
because I want to simulate it in the middle of Woodstock corn country. I don't
have an ocean with this stuff coming in. And so I would call my friends at VEPCO
or I would call my friends in New York or at utilities around the United States
and/or down in Florida and say, can you help me out with this? Oh sure. Why
don't you come down and visit? Get on the airplane and go on down. [Laughs] But
they were very helpful because they could describe what was happening to their
power lines because of certain weather conditions. And as a result of their
description to me I could simulate this in a laboratory, and then you could
present this at a industrial conference in Chicago or the Institute of
Electronics and Electrical Engineers, or the Power Engineering Society and you
would have that type of thing. I still am able to do that and be able to
instruct people when I go to the local Electrical Engineering Society meeting in
Portsmouth or in the Norfolk Hampton Roads area we call it. People working in
the shipbuilding industry to produce shipbuilding, building the submarines for
instance. We have to connect this big cable that's running from one end of the
nuke sub to the other and we have to do it you know under--and it's got to be
spliced here and there. What conditions did you run into back when? Let me call
somebody. I know somebody that's been in the business for you, put the two
together you see. This type of relationship from Virginia Tech has followed me
and helped me throughout.
Ren: Some would say there's a Hokie everywhere, right. There's always someone
that you could run into.
Jack: Absolutely.
Ren: Who has some connection to this university.
Jack: Absolutely, it's like the garage door in Woodstock. It was opened and
there's a VT symbol on the back of this jeep, and I can remember. I said, aha,
517 McHenry Avenue. I've got to write a, to whom it may concern letter, to
whoever lives there.
Ren: That's awesome. What changes have you seen over time? You graduated in the
late 1950s, not just structural changes, but maybe cultural and societal changes
as well at the university. Obviously it's a lot different looking place than
when you graduated, right?
Jack: Yes, and one of the things that I see and we talk about when we get
together with other guys, is how much money they could spend on scholarships if
they didn't pay the coach so much money on the football team, you see. And it's
hard to understand for some guys like me and others at how important the sports
program plays in the advertising of not only the research for, but
internationally. I mean when [Virginia] Tech goes to a Bowl game and they, I
always wonder why they don't show the halftime show with the Highty-Tighties and
all of that. It would be nice if they did that. But they always show you know,
Virginia Tech. They have a segment somewhere here, or if they broadcast here
from Lane Stadium, here we are at Virginia Tech and they show the expanse how
important that is. Tell many people who are out there going, oh my, that's quite
a place isn't it? I wonder if they're accepting students this year. Get in line
buddy, they've got a long line to get in.
Ren: Very true.
Jack: [Laughs] But it is important that you have this type, and so you asked how
do we accept it, we accept it from that point of view. You have to. You have to
say what it is and sometimes that doesn't come through too well. The other
expansion is it's gone from so small to so large and trying to keep it small.
Trying to keep the homey atmosphere or that atmosphere of friends and all that
kind of thing. The Alumni Association does it, and that's about one of the most
important things that they do. I mean maybe it is the most important thing. It
keeps the guys together. It keeps the class together. Oh yeah, we're going to go
back to the alumni football game, party party party and all that kind of stuff,
but the undercurrent of the whole thing is the association's, oh hi Joe. What
are you doing now? Well I'm president of-- Oh you are? It's very-- Tomorrow and
the next day when we get together in the room, of course we're all the old guys
now. I was at one of these meetings, and I can't remember maybe four or five
years ago, I had been coming for what, ten years now?
Ren: Right.
Jack: And I was sitting next to a fellow and, what did you do? Well I graduated
and went into the Air Force. He really couldn't talk about it. I said I thought
something was wrong. No, he flew jets over Russia with Francis Gary Powers. He
worked for the CIA. He explained to me that his family didn't know where he was
for five years.
Ren: Wow.
Jack: That was a [Virginia] Tech graduate who was involved-- And then of course
we had people who initiated the countdown on some of the first spaceships. Gee,
I knew that name from somewhere, I knew it, you know. And so that is my memories
of [Virginia] Tech and how this whole system works and how it spread its
tentacles out, but it's a very important part of [Virginia] Tech now. All of the
high school programs that they do and the student programs, they get written up
in the local newspaper. It's certainly a lot different, but somewhat the same,
but to me it's held together by, I wouldn't know any of these guys now if I
didn't come to these.
Ren: What about land and building changes, I mean the Drillfield looks
drastically different than it did.
Jack: It is drastically different and I understand that the Ag Department was a
little upset that they had to move the cows out ten miles, [laughs] because
another development, or I know, they had to put in the clover leaf to get around
to Bryce's Fork Road or something. It is getting so busy.
Ren: Yeah, it is.
Jack: And there's so much activity. I think that Virginia Tech has played a very
important part in a lot of lives, because now you have international places as
explained to the alumni in some of our meetings. You have a research area
internationally, India, and that's bringing knowledge to [Virginia] Tech that
the new students will by bringing this research and bringing these students
here, because it becomes an international thing. And when I went to Chicago to
Illinois Tech we called it in the Indian Institute of Technology because there
were so many people from India there. And the nurses that I mentioned, the
graduate nurses were from England and France and Scotland. It was a very
international thing. I came from a farm community at Virginia Tech into an
international community. It was quite a difference. Now, Virginia Tech is more
international, much more international than it was then, so your students that
come here are not only getting the technical qualification, technical education
they need, but they're getting the I guess you would call it social or
sociological education that they also need to adapt into this international
world. It is international now. You go to work for a company most of them have
facilities or maybe the corporate holding company is in Italy for crying out
loud and you better know something about the language and about their customs.
Ren: Yeah.
Jack: Oh yeah, I had a couple of Italian fellows that went to school with me at
Virginia Tech.
Ren: That's interesting.
Jack: That's a very important part of your schooling and the research projects
that go on here. So I look at it in that manner. I guess it may be different
than some people look at it, but I think it's a very important part.
Ren: What are some changes you would like to see? Do you have any specific
things you would like to see different or anything like that?
Jack: Even though I wasn't part of the Corps I think the Corps hopefully will
continue to exist and be an important part of the school. Even though I wasn't
in the military because my birthday was just good that I missed all the wars and
wasn't inducted in the services, but I appreciate the need for and living in
Portsmouth where we have at any one time these aircraft carriers that I mean
it's hard to believe, an aircraft carrier carriers a crew of 2,500 people. And
when they're loaded with all of the marines and the air force people that go
along with the flight crew they've got eight thousand people on that little
ship. Imagine just feeding eight thousand people three times a day. But I worked
and having a Virginia Tech history I was able to get a job at the shipyard down
there, so I was able to work down at the ships there and become, for summer
jobs, and able to appreciate, become appreciative of our military. And I'm very
appreciative of our military, and so I still think it plays a very important
part in our country and I would like to see [Virginia] Tech still play an
important part.
Ren: If someone just says 'Virginia Tech' what's the first thing you think of?
Jack: Boy that's a hard question. It really is. Hmm. If somebody says Virginia
Tech the first thing, of course it depends upon who they are and what they are
when they say that. In my own mind, it just brings back my school, and it brings
back my history with the school instantaneously and that cover a broad range.
Then the next thing I wonder is whether he's an electrical engineer or he's
technical, or she, and what part they played you know and where they went to
school and so on. So that's really what brings up to mind right away the
instantaneous thing. It's like seeing that jeep with the thing on the back,
right, is this a graduate? Is this a student? Is this a parent? That's what it
brought to mind right away. Why? And any time I see it it's like seeing these
guys in the middle of nowhere, you know, my friends who graduated with me in New
York and Chicago. What have you been doing all these years that I haven't seen
you and so on. What brings back that when you see them of course it brings back
your history with them. When somebody just mentions Virginia Tech I wonder what
they're saying, what they're talking about. If they're talking about the
football team I don't know a lot about the football other than they probably won
the game or didn't win the game, if they're talking about football in the fall.
I'm a motor-homer. Karen and I have a motor home. In fact, we're over at Claytor
Lake now parked over there. Several people in the group, we belong to a group
called the Colonial Virginians, and there are several Virginia Tech graduates in
there. One is a 1960 class I guess, class of [19]60. He should be here but I
don't think he's coming yet. We always talk about the class, right, and what we
did, the fun things we did. We talk about the dances which you don't have
anymore, but we had the big band dances. We had Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey, Harry
James for our--
Ren: I saw a Tommy Dorsey flier down here when I was waiting and that was pretty
interesting, and his trombone, right?
Jack: We had, who played for Bob Hope, oh Les Brown and His Band of Renown we
had for our ring dance.
Ren: That's cool.
Jack: He was Bob Hope's guys then. That was a history all in itself, and of
course we were civilians. We were dressed in tuxes, but boy those cadets looked
awfully good and when they put those swords up and the gals when under them and
all that kind of stuff, I mean it was-- So you get to talk with that type of
history with the guys, if they are from that time. But now you know it's a
different story entirely, and so you talk to the younger group and see what
they're thinking in terms of, because they're taking different courses. They're
taking technical courses that are beyond, you know, it's not algebra and
calculus. You know what I mean. Davidson Hall when we did an experiment they
didn't have enough airflow in there and we would be choking on the fumes.
[Laughs] I mean you know you pour one thing into another, you get the fumes. Oh
boy, open the windows you know. Now of course they have a brand new laboratory,
a facility and it's wonderful that they can have that, because you remember back
and say my God they needed that for about fifty years, that type of thing,
mechanical engineering. When you go in the engineering hall you just look at the
donated engine. What is it, a 747 engine or something like that?
Ren: Yeah, I think so.
Jack: When you look at that it's my God these guys are studying that, they
actually go into that and study that, and as an alumnus I wouldn't have seen it
if I hadn't been here for a old guard reunion and what they're doing, and what
the companies are doing. And you become very appreciative of the financial input
that companies and what people are doing to go out and get that participation
financially and research-wise. So I am very gratified by the expansion of
[Virginia] Tech, even though I hate to see it to be such a big school. Nobody
else has an engine hanging like that from their engineering building, or a
building where they have a room for doing vibration studies, the whole thing
vibrates. The whole room vibrates, right. We didn't have that. We had a little
thing, B Bob Smith you know. The facilities that you now have, and when I talk
to a student someplace and they go, oh we were in the vibrating room and we did
this, what vibrating room? Vibrating room? Or we were in the midst of the 747
engine. We were checking the velocity of the air and this person--whew! Man. How
did you do that? We didn't do that kind of thing. It's so far beyond when you
talk to a young person. When you talk to an older person you're talking about
the good old days, right, but the good old days are not what's now. It's now so
vast, so different. And the school has adapted to meet the challenge and that's
the only way that you can. And VMI, which we used to have the Thanksgiving game
with, and I remember that time we went over, some of the boys went over the day
before the game or whatever they did and polished the gonads on General Lee's
horse or whatever it was. [Laughs]
Ren: That's good.
Jack: I guess it was that, but they came over you know, their Cadets came over.
They didn't come over, they hired, somebody had a nice beautiful good old car, a
convertible. They knew a blonde, I mean a sexy blonde. She came over you know
and she was acting like the typical blonde, a typical blonde, short skirt and
all driving this big convertible and came up to a couple of Cadets, can you show
me, direct me to so and so? Oh they couldn't jump in the car fast enough. Next
thing you know they put the top up and they took the guys, the Cadets back to
[laughs]. But anyway, they brought the Cadets back at the game. They were being
let out with the band.
Ren: That's hilarious. That's funny.
Jack: That type of thing you see, but it's a different thing now.
Ren: That kind of stuff might get you in trouble these days.
Jack: Well, yes. You know, when the Cadets would get on the what did they call
it train? The old steam train. They used to have a steam train that left here on
the tracks, not the Old Holkie, oh what did they call it, I can't think, but the
guys would get out there and grease the tracks and this thing would try to get
up the hill.
Ren: The Huckleberry.
Jack: The Huckleberry, yeah, the Huckleberry. [Laughs] So then the Cadets had to
get out and push the train. [Laughs]
Ren: That's a story we've heard a couple of times.
Jack: Oh yeah, well it was true, it was true, so you know that's some of the
good old days. But you look back on the history, but it getting back to VMI, VMI
hasn't changed that much. They've only got what, two thousand students. We were
over there for one of the professors here, I can't think of his name, he has a
history of Virginia group and VMI was one of the things we went over to
Lexington in that historical area and we had lectures over there. The Corps of
Cadets there which is basically VMI they did a retreat for us, or we were
present at the retreat. That symbolizes to me that's what Virginia Tech used to
be many years ago, land grant school type of thing. And look at Virginia Tech
now and Virginia Military has chosen just to stay the way they are. You know I
don't know how you chose that, but that's just the way it is. And that
comparison is right there like it was when we were here back in the late [19]40s
and early [19]50s before the veterans came in and so on, but that's just the
comparison. That's Virginia Tech back then and not now.
Ren: One thing you mentioned which I find interesting is when you were here it
was obviously a smaller University and it almost had like a family, or it was a
family-like atmosphere. Did you consider or do you still consider Virginia Tech
to be home in some regards to you?
Jack: Oh yes, certainly. Yes. When you spend those years there it's not many
years. It's only forty years out of your life, four years out of your life I
guess you would say, but very important, very sensitive four years. When you're
transforming from a high school teenager to a college graduate that's a hell of
a transformation in four years. And the professors had a lot of work to do and
they did it, and that's one thing that Virginia Tech still has to do, so don't
lose that. But they have to transform these guys into producing engineers or
sociologists, historians, whatever, business people. I mean you just can't
predict. You know when we were in the dormitories, in the last few years I lived
in the dormitories my roommate had been in the Corps but he got out, he was in
two years, but next door were two business students and they never wanted a
class before nine o'clock in the morning. And the engineers we always had the
eight o'clock classes, and lab, gee whiz.
Ren: Not much has changed.
Jack: [Laughs] So my roommate and I, nasty as we were put a 2 x 4 and wired it
across their door so they couldn't get out. [Laughs] They wondered who did that.
Or, do you know, I think we were in Femoyer Hall at that time, if you know where
Femoyer is up there?
Ren: Yeah, hmm.
Jack: George Barnes took us on a trip to a power plant in West Virginia, the
Kanawha River Power Plant. And they showed us how they ground the coal to blow
it into the, I mean that was the deal. You ground the coal up into very small
particles and blow it like a dust into a boiler, and this was very educational
for us. I mean here we are students seeing a boiler, hmm.
Ren: Seeing it in person.
Jack: Yeah. Oh what are these over here? They are all stacked up. oh, those are
the big balls that they have in the grinding flames. They are this size but now
they end up like this. Can we take one back? Can we have one? Oh yeah. Just took
that and put it in the trunk of the car see. Well, do you know that if you take
one of them suckers in Femoyer Hall and roll it down the hall at eleven o'clock
at night it vibrates the whole building? [Laughs] And then the dorm counselor
gets all upset and he comes running up four stairs, four flights of stairs and
wants to know. Meanwhile, my roommate had opened the window and tossed it out
the window and it buried itself it's so heavy in the law outside. [Laughs] Now
you say, what's that got to do with anything? The education. Education. What
is--? I mean even though we do engineering do you know, if I was an architect I
would say, my, the whole building is vibrating because they're just rolling a
metal ball down-- Hmm. Got to be some way to do a better job in a building of
soundproofing it. I mean it's a silly thing to think of, but everybody thought
that's really silly how noisy that thing really is, rolling down a metal
building, a metal and cement brick building.
Ren: Yeah.
Jack: So it taught a lesson even though it was a prank.
Ren: That's great.
Jack: To take apart a car, a Volkswagen, and rebuild it on the roof of one of
the dorms, which they did, and that was a military group, how to take apart a
whole Volkswagen and rebuild it up there in one night. [Laughs] Now it's a
prank, but it's an engineering prank and it's a hell of an engineering prank to
be able to do that, and then take apart again and rebuild it and it runs. It is
a prank, but they safely did it and it was-- All right, so back to college
education in four years. We had fun, and it was a prank or whatever, but these
things that's the social part of it. Don't lose that. Don't ever lose that,
because if you get too big you might lose it and you become somewhat sterilized.
You've lost something there. As an executive, and as a president of a company or
as something, it expands your mind. It expands your thoughts so that when you're
a president of a company and you're in a company in a meeting with all your
directors of departments, you can say with total thought, I mean total
education, did you think of maybe that, how that affects this? Because if you're
a president of a company, even if you're a business student how, and by the way,
those guys that we locked they became presidents of companies you know. Doggonit
the engineers didn't make it and those guys did, but to just have a full-rounded
education, social education is important.
Ren: Yeah.
Jack: If you have blinders on it doesn't work. That doesn't work. You've got to
have a well-rounded education and that's why taking history, and everybody goes,
aw I don't take history courses. I got a B in that sucker, you know, History of
Virginia back in high school, wait a minute, I wish now I had studied more,
because if I go around I see things that I should have known for a long time. To
get back to that thing on integration it was a difficult time in Virginia. My
father was president of the school board in Portsmouth during the time that
things had to change and that was a very difficult time for a lot of people. I
wasn't here at that time, I was in Chicago, but even Chicago it was a difficult
time. I became the president of a civic association Southside of Chicago, a big
civic association of five thousand homes, a very large civic association. In
1967 when the changes occurred, and I think it was about Lyndon Johnson was
president at that time and things were dictated that this change had to occur,
it was very difficult in Chicago, very difficult. And I remember that our time
was they had riots. Martin Luther King I think marched, Dick Gregory marched,
and so in the part of town I lived in it was very difficult. We had the south
side organization. What I'm getting to is that a group of four of us had a
meeting with Richard J. Daley, and I mentioned Richard J. and Richard, oh the
mafia men. What are you talking about? I said, Richard J. Daley.
Ren: Mayor of Chicago?
Jack: Was a Mayor of Chicago and the four of us had a half-hour meeting with
him, and we came out of that meeting the guys were there, Channel 2, Channel 5,
Channel whatever. What was that meeting all about? Well, we had things we can't
discuss. Nobody ever has a half-hour meeting with the Man. Well we did, and what
we did was lay out our problems. But what I didn't tell them was that one of the
gals was a Polish gal. Now they had a great Polish community in Chicago, Irish
and so on, and she told a Polish joke and you wouldn't think that Richard J.
Daley when he laughed the walls vibrated. Oh man. So for every Polish joke she
told he told an Irish joke and for fifteen minutes we were telling jokes. If
they knew what we were doing, but my point there is he loved his city and in
fifteen minutes he told us how much he loved his city and how he wanted to help
us get through this situation he had to negotiate, basically negotiate between
the U.S. Government, the new rules basically of integration and so on, the new
laws, and how we could work very well with the schools and so on for our area.
And in fifteen minutes he told us how he was going to do it. If you had this
problem see your alderman, he will come see me or come see me directly. He was
very personable. You think a man in that position would invite you back to his
office? He did, and he loved his city that much. He lived downtown by the way.
He lived in a Chicago bungalow not far from where I worked and he was a very
fine man, and he was not-- He had a district that was, eh the boys, but that was
Chicago and he couldn't do anything about it. I mean that was the district and
so on and so forth. But anyway, what I get at is that I would have not been able
to deal with such situations being president of that group in Chicago if I
hadn't have gone to work for jobs in manufacturing in electrical engineering,
and I became director of the Lab and I couldn't have done that if I hadn't have
had my education here, my power education at Virginia Tech and had the social
engineering, that little episode back in that small town when they scared the
hell out of us and we got in the car and took off. That was social engineering
and that was part of the education that Virginia Tech afforded me. And I grew
into it and I was able to deal and help other people deal with this situation in Chicago.
Ren: We always like to end with this question of--
Jack: I'm sorry I took so much of your time.
Ren: Oh no, not at all. This is great. Is there anything that you would like to
say about Virginia Tech or about yourself? One thing I really like about this
project is all of these recordings are going into special collections in the
library, so one hundred years from now grandkids and great-grandchildren can
come back and listen to these stories that you're telling, so is there anything
just kind of that you would like to say about yourself or about Virginia Tech
that you may want people to know, or what kind of legacy you would like to
leave? I know that's a big question.
Jack: I think the legacy of Virginia Tech as I, what says on your diploma and my
diploma is that Virginia Polytechnic Institute, what's it say, State University?
Ren: State University.
Jack: And State University. Everybody says, what is that? [Laughs] The official
legal name, and the important part is Virginia. We have a great State and this
State is becoming a very important seaport. It is already, shipbuilding. They
are building, they just laid the, we were out for the JFK, John F. Kennedy
carrier. They are finishing up the Gerald R. Ford carrier there, a nuclear
submarine. I want you Virginia Tech to make sure you train the people that can
go down there and continue to make the State of Virginia great. Now you can be a
politician and live in Fairfax, you know, and that's fine if you want to be
that, because Virginia Tech will also train you to be a fair, equitable and
honest person, so I want Virginia Tech to do that and to continue to do that.
And be international in scope so they can deal with all of the international
people that are here all the time, visiting Virginia for instance just looking
at our history.
Ren: Right.
Jack: And so I want Virginia Tech to continue to be able to support the State
and make the State of Virginia great and ultimately then the United States.
Ren: Right.
Jack: Militarily, industrially, economically. That's what Virginia Tech and what
we should be looking forward to. As we make these developments, yes we can have
cows out here because they're going to produce more milk or whatever. The
different schools, history, sociology, business, do the best you can to prepare
our students to go out into the world and make it a safe and nice place to live.
Ren: Right. Thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate it. Thank you
so much.
[End of interview]
00:01:00