VT Stories Oral History with Thomas "Tom" Hughes, October 9, 2015 (Ms2016-015)

Claire Gogan: Okay this is Claire Gogan. I'm interviewing Tom Hughes on

Virginia Tech campus on October 9th, 2015. Tom can tell us your date and place

of birth please?

Thomas "Tom" Hughes: Yes the date was October 4th, 1957 and I was born in

Winston-Salem, North Carolina.

Claire: Happy late birthday.

Tom: Yep

Claire: What years did you go to Virginia Tech?

Tom: So I attended Virginia Tech from 1975 to 1980, and was in the architecture.

Claire: Can you tell me a little bit about where you grew up and what you

remember about the area?

Tom: Sure. I grew up in Durham, North Carolina, which is in the triangle area of

North Carolina. I attended basically all K-12 schooling 00:01:00there. It was a nice

place to grow up, a very diverse community. My father was the city manager in

Durham, so he was a fairly well-known person there in the community. My mom was

a stay-at-home mom and I had two sisters and one brother. I went to Hillside

High School, which as a matter of fact tomorrow night I'm attending my fortieth

reunion in Durham, so it's kind of a special even for me.

Claire: That sounds like fun. What made you decide to come to Virginia Tech?

Tom: Well, I decided fairly early on I guess in my early high school days that

architecture was what I wanted to pursue. 00:02:00In those days there were not a lot of

options in North Carolina. NC [State University] was sort of the main option

there, and UNC Charlotte was a new kind of fledgling architectural program. So,

I kind of reached out and looked at some other options that were out there in

adjacent states, and Virginia Tech was one of those that caught my eye, and

there were several programs in the State. And it was not too far away from home,

so that was one of the reasons I took a look at Virginia Tech.

Claire: Did you find yourself traveling home a lot when you were at [Virginia] Tech?

Tom: Actually I didn't. I think that once I got sort of through my first

semester at Virginia Tech I just really loved the school and the environment and

I didn't go home that often. I really sort of immersed myself in the campus 00:03:00 and

some of the things that were going on on campus, so I didn't go home that often.

Claire: What's your first memory of Virginia Tech?

Tom: That's a great question and it's an easy question for me because I remember

when I first came to visit the campus it was wintertime, and we arrived in

Blacksburg right after nightfall and there was snow on the ground. Really

anybody that's been up here and knows Virginia Tech in the wintertime with the

snow on the ground it's just a very beautiful campus, and it just sort of drew

me in immediately. The environment and the beauty of the campus it was love at

first sight for me personally.

Claire: When you first 00:04:00started attending [Virginia] Tech what did it feel like

being on campus?

Tom: Well, for me, unlike a lot of kids that attend here from Virginia I knew

very few people that were here on campus. I think there might have been one

person from my high school other than myself that attended Virginia Tech, so it

was really like starting all over for me. It was an entire new experience,

development of a whole new set of friends and relationships. For me, from where

I came from that was okay with me. It was an exciting time and it was really

kind of a rebirth for me to start all over again. That was exciting for me to be

able to do that, plus I was going into architecture which prior to coming here I

had really no exposure or experience in that world other than just high school

drafting 00:05:00courses. So architecture was just like you know, a whole new beginning

for me as well.

Claire: Did you find that you had much time for a social life with your

architecture classes? I know that's a notoriously intense program.

Tom: Yeah. I would say that there were many times that I found myself not doing

as many social events as a lot of other people did just because I did spend a

lot of time in the work and in the program. Being in the studio kind of late

nights and that kind of thing, but I still allowed myself the opportunity to

have fun and go outside and do things.

Claire: Who were some professors who you remember at [Virginia] Tech?

Tom: Well, I would say the two that kind of stand out for me, one of whom is

still professor here 00:06:00is Donna Dunay in the architecture program, and the other

one was Professor Brown, Bill Brown. I had each of those professors as kind of

primary ones for me for several years, so they were really sort of mentors and

provided a lot of guidance in me and helped me with development of critical

thinking and really developing a really strong work ethic and getting a job done

and seeing it through to completion. Those kinds of things in the work world

that are very important as you move on to the next level.

Claire: I guess those were your mentors or advisors who you felt were

particularly 00:07:00influential while you were here, or were there other people?

Tom: Well, I guess there were others that maybe didn't stand out as much, but I

think just from an overall perspective I felt like the professors that I had

here and the training that I had I felt like the quality level of the leadership

there was really strong for me. And then really helped kind of guide me in terms

of for how I work and the way I do things. I just think, particularly in

architecture school there was just a lot of emphasis on critical thinking and

problem-solving and working together as a group in group projects, those kind of

things to achieve [an end]. In my practice I find the same things that I use

those every 00:08:00 day.

Claire: What are some of your favorite memories or experiences?

Tom: I think just general things I think a lot of people would probably focus

on. [Virginia] Tech is a beautiful campus and I enjoyed being outside here at

[Virginia] Tech, and things like the duck pond, things like social events like

going to a ring dance, those kinds of things are memories that I have. I guess

one of the funny stories that I would say is the first day in architecture

school our professor said, go back to your room, which for me was all the way

across campus, and put on articles of clothing that represent what you did this

summer. And so that was an effort to kind of think about creativity, 00:09:00and people

came back to the studio with lots of silly things that they were dressed in.

When I came back to the studio the professor said, sorry, whatever you've done

is not good enough. You have to go back. I was dressed in a bathrobe and golf

cleats and whatever I could find that represented what I did for the summer, but

anyway, so I had to walk back across campus and do a little bit more and then

come back. That's a funny memory really from the first day of architecture

studio, so that kind of stayed with me through the years.

Claire: Did everybody have to go back?

Tom: No, I was singled out. There were others that had to back. There were

others that had to go back too. But yeah, it was really just one of the studios,

so we were broken up into I don't know, maybe five different studios, so I'm

sure the 00:10:00rest of the students there got a pretty good kick out of seeing us go

through that process.

Claire: So I did not do my undergraduate here, but I have a couple of friends in

my program who did and everybody seems to talk about the ring dance. Do you want

to talk a little bit about--I know you mentioned that.

Tom: Yeah, well I mean I think it's something that all the students look forward

to and just kind of a fun time. And the thing that sticks with me that happened

one particular dance we went to, it was one of those nights in Blacksburg where

the windshield was like about thirty miles an hour and it was I don't know,

twenty below or something like that and we were walking across campus. My date

had the long dress on but not a lot of 00:11:00cover up and so we were just kind of

freezing the whole way, but that's just really kind of a cool tradition that

Virginia Tech has. I think many of the students look forward to that. It's a

pretty big deal.

Claire: Any other memories or experiences from your time here you want to talk about?

Tom: Well, a couple of things I guess. One is that I met my future wife here and

we lived in dorms that were really literally adjacent to each other. That's been

kind of the light of my life. I credit just kind of being here in the right

place at the right time being at Virginia Tech, which is the nice thing that

happened as a result of being here as 00:12:00well. The other thing is just the fact

that I just the weekend before last I had a little reunion with college friends

that we met here and we still get together yearly and even more often than that.

But just relationships and friendships that were developed as a result of being

a student at Virginia Tech. We've just got lifelong friends that were a result

of being here. You can't trade that for anything at all.

Claire: What were some of the difficult experiences you had at [Virginia] Tech?

Tom: Well, I would say that most students experience some adversity when they

start out. One of those was when I came to [Virginia] Tech, I mean I had a great 00:13:00GPA and didn't have a lot of difficult with classes. I think the first semester

I had I think it was a calculus class and I ended up with a D on the first test.

When that happens it kind of shakes you a little bit and you start to question

am I in the right place and am I going to be able to be successful here, that

kind of thing. So just kind of going through that your first semester of trying

to make those adjustments, and for me that was a little bit of a difficult

transition just going through the math that I did there. But I was able to turn

that around and I ended up graduating with a very good GPA from school here. But

I can't think of any other difficult experiences other than just architecture

was a very challenging 00:14:00program, and I think that for those who graduated and

continued on into the profession it's a pretty difficult program. I think the

professors really try to challenge the students, and so I would say that if

anything it would be just the degree of difficulty of trying to work your way

through that program and feel like you can achieve to the level that you want to

achieve. That was kind of the greatest challenge I guess for me.

Claire: What was it like being away from home? I'm assuming that was the first time.

Tom: Yeah. I would say, as I mentioned earlier in the interview, I think for me

it was a good transition. I was kind of ready to be out on my own and make that

transition away 00:15:00from home and that environment. I really immersed myself into

Virginia Tech and didn't go home that often. I took full advantage I think of

the environment here and the things that you could do and kind of enjoyed the

campus. I played golf a lot while I was here, particularly my senior year just

because my schedule would allow it a little bit better, but I certainly enjoyed

being outside. I just think there are a lot of fun things to do, going up to

hike up in the cascades and that kind of thing. I think there's just a lot of

amenities here that you don't necessarily see it when you first come to the

school, but you find out about these things a little bit later on.

Claire: What was your freshman year like, just broadly?

Tom: 00:16:00Well, I would say broadly it was just getting accustomed to the level of

work and how hard I needed to work. I really kind of set a schedule for myself

and stayed with that, really for the rest of my time at Virginia Tech. But I

think that it was really establishing sort of a work ethic. I would get up early

in the morning and I didn't sleep in. I was maybe different than other students,

but I would go to breakfast and I would go to work and go to the studio and get

started. I considered myself to be a hard worker, so I think the first year was

just sort of getting into the mode of working all the time and working hard.

Because you know you come from high school and maybe things aren't necessarily--

You're not applying yourself as much as you might have, but I feel like once I 00:17:00started college I made that transition. I was really trying to work as hard as I

could and really take advantage of the opportunity that I had to be here at

Virginia Tech.

Claire: So what about your later years. Those are just kind of more of the scene?

Tom: Yeah, I think it was more refinement, but an architecture is sort of a

progression that you go through in terms of the things that you do and the kinds

of projects that you're working on and things are getting more detailed. There's

also a little bit more technology that gets involved as you move on through. The

architecture program maybe unlike some others is fairly focused, so you have a

little bit of latitude in doing electives, but really it's kind of limited, so

you're really focused on more of the things within the college 00:18:00requirements that

you have to do. Ours is a five-year program, so that's a little bit different

than some of the others. Once you get to the fifth year then you're kind of

narrowing down to a specific project maybe that you're going to work on over a

longer term.

Claire: Like in graduate school?

Tom: Yeah, kind of like that. The fifth year becomes a little bit almost like a

graduate year in a way.

Claire: This might be kind of an obvious question, but how have you used your

Virginia Tech education experience in your life?

Tom: Well, I started as all architectural graduates who are going to pursue

architecture as a profession, started working 00:19:00for a firm in Charlotte, so I

worked for three years in Charlotte at one firm and then worked for another firm

for a year. Then I moved on to another firm in Winston-Salem. I was an intern,

which that's a three-year process that you go through in architecture where

you're sort of working your way towards registration, and that's a little bit

different I guess than other professions in that we have to actually take a

written test in order to get registered. So it's kind of like the bar exam I

guess for attorneys, so we have to kind of work our way up through this

three-year process in order to do that. Once I had gone through that then I was

able to get 00:20:00licensed at the end of the three-year period. So at that point you

are eligible, you've got your license and you can go practice on your own or you

can practice with others. So I worked in Winston-Salem for a number of years and

then in 1987 I decided I was going to start my own firm. So that's what I've

been doing in Winston-Salem since 1987 is I have a firm there. We are presently

nine people in our firm. We've gone through many transitions through those

years, but I feel like it's been a successful venture for me and I feel like the

education that I got was very very beneficial to me being able to kind of go

through that whole path and go through the process of becoming 00:21:00licensed, and

really being in a position to start a firm. A lot of that involves things like I

mentioned earlier with critical thinking and being able to solve problems and

work together with others. All those things are really applicable in a firm-type

setting where you're the guy in charge or you're one of the people who are in charge.

Claire: If somebody just says the words, Virginia Tech, what is the first thing

that comes to mind for you?

Tom: Well I thought about that question a lot, and I think really it probably

applied when I was here, but I think it's gotten even more this way as time has

gone on. I stay very much connected with Virginia Tech, but I think the word

that comes to my mind is, community. I just think that when I was 00:22:00here I felt

like I was part of a small community, because I don't know how many kids were

here, maybe there may have been eighteen thousand students here when I was here,

but you really didn't feel like it was a huge University. You felt like you were

in a smaller place because of the dorms and where you lived and the dining

halls, but you just felt like you were a part of a community. I think if you

talk to students even today that they feel that way, that it's very much a community.

Claire: You said you are still involved with VT. In what ways are you?

Tom: I have been very involved with Virginia Tech. I have been the president of

our local alumni chapter. I did that for like five or six years, and that's down

the triad area in North Carolina. I am now serving on the University Alumni

Board, 00:23:00and that's been a very rewarding experience. I've gotten to know a lot of

great people and kind of working with them to help to sort of set the direction

of the alumni activities for the University and how we're going to engage with

students and alumni and so forth, and that's just been a very meaningful

experience for me. We have been regular season ticket holders in football for

many years and we come up to all the home games. Since we're in North Carolina

we've been able to since they've joined the ACC to enjoy a lot of the away games

like Duke and Carolina and Wake Forest, so we've been able to really see even a

lot more than just the home games here in the recent past. We have lots of great

friends that we will tailgate with and that kind of thing, so really it's really

a great experience for us to be able 00:24:00to stay engaged for that period of time.

And so the other thing is just that we really get together with alumni friends

that we've gotten to know really through some of the alumni activities. We've

developed great friendships through those people and we get together with them

all the time.

Claire: Why do you stay as involved as you are?

Tom: Well, I guess I feel a little bit of a need to kind of repay what Virginia

Tech has given to me, but I think probably the most important thing is that the

more I have stayed involved with the alumni association I just feel like that I

have been able to develop more and more friendships and relationships with

really great people. 00:25:00And I guess I kind of feed off that a little bit, but my

wife will tell you too, she and I both have just really developed some great

relationships with people. I don't know, I mean Virginia Tech is something that

is very meaningful to me. I find myself hard to just kind of turn and walk away

from the University because it's just meant so much to me through the years.

Claire: So why do you think so many VT graduates stay involved with the

University after they leave?

Tom: I would say it probably goes somewhat back to what I was saying earlier

about the sense of community. I think it's both pride and Virginia Tech and the

sense of community. I think you develop 00:26:00relationships, and I still a lot of

people stay engaged because they want to come back and see friends-- friendships

that they've made here. I think athletics, I was coming to basketball games; we

would come to basketball games quite a bit too, so I was up here maybe, I don't

know, twenty or twenty-five times a year. I loved being here when I was here and

so it's kind of hard to just say, it's hard to not come back here just because I

loved it so much.

Claire: What are some of the changes that you've seen at the school kind of

since you've been here over the years?

Tom: Well, the obvious physical changes are that there are many new buildings,

so there's a lot of in-fill that's happened on 00:27:00campus. Very recently with the

new mall center, I mean so many new projects that have gone on. That's kind of a

physical thing, but I think that the other thing, and maybe this has happened

and been happening and I just wasn't as aware of it because maybe I haven't been

as involved at the university level with the Alumni Association, but I sense

that there's a very strong commitment to try to keep alumni engaged and try to

figure out ways to keep the alumni engaged and kind of reach out to the

graduates. Because obviously we've got a huge base there of people that

graduated from Virginia Tech, so I think the university is continuing to try and

really pushed hard to sort of make that a 00:28:00much stronger focus than maybe it was

before. And maybe that's just me, but I really feel like there's a very

concerted effort to do that.

Claire: Do you interact with current students at all? Have you noticed any

changes in the students over the years or anything like that?

Tom: The only way that I have really interacted with students is just through

friends who their kids have gone to school here and family. Actually my wife's

niece is a student here now, so that's been sort of a way to try to keep a

little bit of a pulse on what students are thinking. We tailgate before football

games, and so we usually have half a dozen students at our tailgates, so we get

a chance to chat with them and kind of see how they feel about 00:29:00things. I always

get a good vibe from them as to how things are going. I probably then to engage

them more than I do with sort of inquiring about that, but I think that what I

see is that the overall, if you want to call it talent level or the type of

student that Virginia Tech has now is far and away higher than it was when I was

a student here. I don't even know whether I would be able to get into Virginia

Tech if I applied now, because I mean when you look at the numbers the GPAs and

so forth are just kind of through the roof. It just says a lot for what the

university has done and it's on the map, and so many students know about it from

around the country and around the world 00:30:00now. I know it's one of the places where

students want to go to school.

Claire: What have you heard from your wife's niece about it?

Tom: She loves it here. And actually her brother has just applied for early

admission here, so he's kind of falling right in line. His dad, or their dad

attended Virginia Tech in engineering, so they've been coming to Virginia Tech

games and been to the university a lot through the years. They obviously see

something in the university as well that really has attracted them.

Claire: So what are some of the changes that you would like to see at the school?

Tom: I would say one of the things that occurred to me was that just to continue

to reach 00:31:00out to the alumni that are out there to engage with them and get them

to come back to campus, because there are oftentimes when I'll run into a

Virginia Tech grad and say when was the last time you went back to [Virginia]

Tech or when have you been to a football game, and the answer might be, oh, I

haven't been back in ten years, or, I haven't been to a football game in

X-number of years. To me that just kind of blows me away when I hear that,

because I'm thinking how can you not have gone back to Virginia Tech to just

kind of reconnect? So I would just say that I think it probably continues to be

our goal and emphasis to maybe continue to engage those who have not been back

and kind of reach out to them, and maybe encourage them and figure out ways to

kind of entice them to come back and kind of 00:32:00 reconnect.

Claire: I guess broadly what would you like people to know about you?

Tom: Well I would say that I am one of those sort of hard and fast, dyed in the

wool, supporters of Virginia Tech. I know a lot of people are not that way, but

I guess having been as involved as I have I mean it's just kind of in my blood I

guess, that I am extremely supportive and proud of what Virginia Tech is and

what it's done. I think in terms of me, I would say that's one of the main

things. I feel like I've had a successful architectural firm and I feel like I

owe, and my training that I got here. I took business 00:33:00classes too, but it's one

thing to run an architectural firm, but you also have to make it successful from

a business standpoint as well. So I feel like that's been a success just in

terms of from 1987 until now, and not all businesses can say that they have

sustained for that period of time. The other thing that I would say might be of

interest to people is that architecture is a creative venture, and more recently

in 2007 we moved out to the country and I planted a vineyard along with another

Virginia Tech grad who I met the first day in architecture school. So we went

from one creative venture to another, and so we now sell wine and we have a

wine-tasting room. So I live on the farm and I still have the 00:34:00architectural firm

that I'm doing full-time during the day, but other times when I'm not doing

architecture you can catch me out in the vineyard or kind of managing that

operation. So that's been a very interesting diversion that's happened more

recently. It wasn't a lifelong dream or anything like that, but just something

that I became interesting in. We decided to pursue it and make it happen and now

we're producing one thousand cases of wine here.

Claire: Great, what's the name of your vineyard?

Tom: It's called Divine Llama Vineyards, and it's located in East Bend, North

Carolina, which is about twenty minutes from Winston-Salem.

Claire: That's cool, what would you like people to know about Virginia Tech?

Tom: Oh I think Virginia Tech is, and I'm going to talk about this from the

North Carolina perspective, 00:35:00that Virginia Tech was at the time that I applied to

school here, and I think it still is to some extent, it's probably the best kept

secret in North Carolina. People will think that Virginia Tech is a long way

from North Carolina and they really don't know that much about it, because you

have obviously a lot of prominent schools in the State of North Carolina with NC

State in North Carolina, the big four, Duke, Wake Forest. So you've got a lot of

schools in North Carolina that people are very familiar with and kids grow up

there in North Carolina and they want to go to one of those schools or one of

the other schools in North Carolina. And so a lot of times they don't consider

Virginia Tech. They think it's a long way just because they cross that border

into Virginia and it's like they think it's a long way from home. But the good

news is for us it takes us about an hour and 45 00:36:00minutes to drive from

Winston-Salem to Virginia Tech, so we drive much less than many people in

Virginia drive. Richmond and Northern Virginia it's a lot further than that to

drive to Virginia Tech. So that's the thing that I would sort of shout out there

to the people that are maybe in neighboring states is that Virginia Tech, you

ought to check it out because it's a very impressive school and it's really easy

to get to. I think that if you ask any of the kids who go to school and graduate

from here they love it and they want to tell people about it, and they want to

tell people to go to Virginia Tech. So I think those are the things I would say

about the school.

Claire: The next question I have is what do people not know about Virginia 00:37:00 Tech?

Tom: Well that probably falls a little bit into a similar answer to the one that

I just gave, is that Virginia Tech just has so many great things about it, and I

think kind of getting the message out there is kind of the biggest challenge

sometimes that we have. I think people just don't know about Virginia Tech,

particularly the ones that are outside of the State of Virginia. So to me I

think that's the biggest thing is just being able to put that show on the road

to let potential students know what Virginia Tech is all about.

Claire: Is there anything I haven't asked that you would like to talk about?

Tom: I think one thing that, we talked about this 00:38:00earlier but I may not have

fully answered the question, is why did I pick Virginia Tech as an architecture

program. And when I went and visited the other programs, and I probably visited

maybe five or six other schools, Virginia Tech's architecture program stood out

head and shoulders above all of the other programs that I looked at. When I

walked through the studios the kids were actively involved in building models

and they were diligently working. In fact, when you walked through the studios

they were a wreck because there was so much going on. To me that was exciting,

and when I visited other schools I just didn't get the same vibe when I walked

through the studios. I think just like what I said earlier about my first 00:39:00 sense

of when I came to Blacksburg that really it was sort of like love at first

sight; it was the same thing about the architecture program. When I walked

through the building and I felt the energy that was going on within the studio,

I mean that's something that just struck me right off the bat, so that was the

reason why. I mean all of those reasons that I described both earlier and

because of those things those are the reasons why I decided to go to attend

Virginia Tech in architecture.

Claire: What were the other schools that you looked at?

Tom: I looked at the University of Virginia and NC State and UNC Charlotte and

Clemson, so those were the ones that I took a look at. But I just didn't find

anything that was even comparable in my own mind that I would even consider.

Virginia Tech was kind of like all or nothing Virginia Tech for 00:40:00 me.

Claire: Okay, anything else?

Tom: I don't think so. Thank you very much for the opportunity to do this interview.

Claire: Thank you for sharing your story.

Tom: Sure.

Claire: Alright.

[End of interview]