Chandler: I went to William and Mary and graduated in 1924 with a B.S. degree in physical education. During my undergraduate years I played on the baseball team four years and was on the track team three years. I was captain of the baseball team my senior year, also president of the senior class. I got the nickname of "Scrap" in high school because I was real small.

Chandler: Well, I thought I'd go into physical education teaching and I was lucky to have an opening when I graduated that kept me right there at William and Mary, and that's where I stayed for seventeen years before I came to Norfolk.

Chandler: Yes. Well, they needed somebody to teach, and I had done a lot of practice teaching and did pretty well in handling the boys on the campus in the practice teaching job. So they immediately asked me if I would like to come teach there.

Chandler: Yes. During that seventeen year period I had to supervise the building of a running track, a cinder running track --we had plenty of cinders over at the power house and I had to supervise the building of that. And they made me track coach; although my main sport had been baseball, they made me track coach in 1925. And I continued coaching track every year. And now and then I had to take swimming, when they didn't have somebody to fill in. But my main job was coaching track, and I had some outstanding teams.

Chandler: Well, I wanted to make a change because I didn't think I had too much doing at the parent college. The main thing, I wanted to get out on my own and be my own boss. And this job down here at Norfolk opened up, and my former roommate was director of the Norfolk Division of William and Mary, and he asked me if I'd like to come down. He had two people teaching physical ed and coaching, but both of them were leaving. One of them went away to play baseball, and the other one was going away to do something else. So there was an opening, and naturally I liked the school. I'd been down here quite a bit and had contests with them against my freshman teams.

Chandler: Charlie Duke. He was the head before Hodges.

Chandler: Well, my main duty here was to have charge of physical education for two years, girls and boys. I also coached swimming and coached track, and I had to take charge of the William and Mary stadium -- the Norfolk William and Mary stadium here in town -- take charge of running off all the football games where the high schools played and the colleges played. So I had charge of the stadium.

Chandler: Well, we had a very fine track here. I had to have a lot of work done on it, putting in new cinders and clay. And so we got that all ready. So the high schools had no track in the city, and they could come over and use our track, and I ran off a track meet for them.

About reviving the swimming, the boys just came in after the war, and I just went ahead and had a swimming team. We swam against Carolina, Virginia Varsity, and Randolph Macon and Lynchburg and Roanoke -- they were all in the Mason-Dixon at that time but we were only a junior college, but they were nice enough to take us on the schedule.

Chandler: Yes, yes.

Chandler: Some of the early members -- of course, I had Miss Sarah Rogers. She was a graduate of William and Mary, and she had charge of all the girls' athletics and the intramurals and all the physical ed classes. She had hockey, fencing, swimming, badminton, ping pong, archery, lifesaving, and so on. I taught all the boys' gym classes. And in 1945 I started a track team. And that year I had Everett Tolson to coach baseball and the next year I had Woody Gray to coach baseball, and I had to have track at that time. In basketball --I had to coach swimming and I had to get a basketball coach --so I got Julius Rubin to coach in 1947. The next year I had Jack Callahan to coach in 1948. In 1949 I think I took over basketball.

Chandler: In 1925 after I had the track built up at William and Mary, I had the idea of having a track meet for all the schools in the Tidewater district, the Tidewater section of Virginia. And I called it the Tidewater City High School Track Meet. That meant just the cities, not counties. So the track meet was confined to schools in their own class, like John Marshall in Richmond, Thomas Jefferson Richmond-Petersburg High School, Suffolk High School, and Norfolk and Newport News and Hampton. They all came up there for a track meet which was held about the middle of April. I ran it off along

with the help of a lot of the boys on the track team who acted as judges and so on. It was a great drawing card for our school. Boys would come and like the school, and we would talk them into coming there for track. We had no scholarships, but we did have some jobs in the dining hall, and a boy could get to work his way through college.

Chandler: Not too much. I remember we had a real good team. We had fine boys, Dave Prosser and Pompey Virgili, who went to VPI, and Crenshaw Reed went to VPI and played on the team. We had meets with a lot of the navy teams in this territory, and they were very good to us about letting us come down to play. But we had an excellent team. I know all those boys, we were sorry to see them leave next year.

Chandler: Some of them might have been ... we couldn't travel, but we had mostly Navy teams and then William and Mary freshmen.

Chandler: During the war we couldn't travel. We didn't have any gasoline to put in the cars, and I mentioned a few minutes ago that the fellow at the Naval Base that went to Columbia University with me came down here, and I saw his name in the paper and called him up and told him my predicament. He was Jack Curtis, the Lieutenant Commander in charge of athletics at the Naval Base. And he would call me up when a boat would come in and want to have a basketball game, and we'd either go down there and play or a lot of the time we'd play at school. Also, the Navy Y.M.C.A. had a nice basketball court, and the man down there would call me up and say, "Would you like to play a game on a certain night," and I'd say, "Sure." So -- "Come on down." So that's how we got by during the war.

Chandler: We did have a very good team that year, and some of the boys came back who had been here before. And Rubin had to coach. I got him to coach because I had to coach swimming. And the only reason I gave up basketball was .... that's the reason I had to coach swimming because a lot of boys came in who wanted to have a swimming team. And that's the reason Rubin was hired. He was only here one year. He taught math over here too. And he was here only one year, and he went away to a government job which was very good. I understand he has an excellent job right now; I forget just what his duties are.

Chandler: Callahan had been here to school and went to VPI, and he was back in town. He was selling motors, electric motors, and he had his own business. And I knew about him because he was an outstanding boy over here in the early years, so I got him to come over here to coach basketball. He was an outstanding boy in every way, and a very fine student. That's the reason I was induced to hire him. He left after one season because Bud Metheny was coming in.

Chandler: The women's athletic program was very good, very thorough. They had hockey, basketball, and tennis, and may have played some others. But I don't think they had any intercollegiate competition at that time. The significance of the women's athletic program has been that we had the same for women as we did for men; we had no partiality whatsoever. And if we had enough people to have a team, we were supportive.

Chandler: Yes, well, Mr. Lewis Webb took over, and he, after my insistence, gave me certain funds which he took out of student fees, certain funds to maintain athletic competition for girls and boys. And that's the way it came about. I had a budget for the overall program. I also had so much allotted to each sport. And I had a book which was like a check book, and on would correspond to the check to take it up to the business office, and they paid all the bills. I went through the business office.

Chandler: Yes, Bud was one of my good friends up at William and Mary. He had been a student up there when I was teaching, and I taught him in gym classes. He took a major course in physical education. He was an outstanding baseball player, probably the only William and Mary baseball player who played in the Big Leagues. He was also a very good basketball player. He was teaching at Maury High School when I was struggling over here with myself doing all the work, and I went over to see him. He said he was going down to Birmingham to play baseball.

Well, that spring we saw that a lot of boys were coming in, and so Mr. Webb and I said we ought to hire him. So I called him up on the telephone in Birmingham, Alabama, and told him that I had a job for him. He'd be his own boss. So he decided he'd take it and give up baseball and came on up here.

Chandler: Contrary to what you all looked up, it wasn't the unbeaten team of '56. It was five and four; we won five and lost four. And at that period we had a lot of good boys come in, boys who had done a lot of swimming around, around the beach and all around, and they were good enough to have a team. Now, I wouldn't have a team unless I just knew that they were going to be a winning one. Now we had meets with Carolina University, Randolph Macon, Lynchburg, the Naval Base had a team. And as I say, we had five and four, nine meets. And about eighteen boys were on the team, as I remember, a very fine team, a very fine turnout. And we had no scholarships; all the boys paid their own way, and all were good students. And we just had a real good time.

Chandler: No, no, it wasn't my best team, no.

Chandler: The best team we had was years after that when we had --I just don't remember exactly what the best team was. I could look it up in a school book, but I haven't got the school books with me. We had a lot of good teams after that. We probably would win five and lose one. Also in the years after that we got in what's known as the "Little Eight" swimming meet and team. Although we were a junior college, they let us in. And we won the meet several years, in fact, seven or eight years out of ten we had. And we'd have the meet here one year and then we'd have it at Lynchburg one year and have it at Roanoke one year and have it at Randolph Macon one year. Those were the teams that we entered in what they called the "Little Eight." And they were in our class of competition and made good competition and clean competition. As I say, all the boys-- we didn't have any scholarships, so we just took what came in and made the best of it.

Chandler: Well, I wanted to upgrade the athletic program, and so the Mason-Dixon was a nice conference. They were made up of teams like Randolph Macon, Lynchburg, Roanoke, Hampden- Sydney, Bridgewater, Catholic University, Loyola of Baltimore, Johns Hopkins. And we were lucky to get in it. They were getting to voting, and it ended that we had to have two men come down here and check us over, scholastic standing and also how we handled the money. And the main thing was to have better competition and to be in a conference where we could play for a championship and have something for the boys to do.

Chandler: On March 1,1942, I came down here, and they had a very fine swimming pool, but no place to teach youngsters to swim. Mr. Tom Scott, who had a summer camp before that, had swimming along with a lot of other stuff, but I decided I'd just have swimming. So in 1942 I started in with a small group, of course, and as we progressed it got bigger and bigger. And the classes worked this way. We had the camp for five days a week for four weeks. We gave twenty lessons -- in June, we started about the middle of June and finished up in July, the first week in July. Then we had another twenty-lesson session

in August. I had Miss Jean Outland, who lives here in town and was a graduate of William and Mary, to look after the girls side, and finally Miss Pittman came in 1952, and she took charge of the girls' side. As I say, I think we've been kind of written up by a boy who got his master's degree in swimming. I think we had 15,000 students go through the program.

Chandler: They were mostly for Boy Scouts, where I'd give the lifesaving and give the Scout tests. Also, we had Mr. Paul Jackson from downtown, the American Red Cross lifesaving, to give the instructor's course. And some of the people who wanted to be instructors in lifesaving could take a course. He was the national representative down there for the American Red Cross swimming.

Chandler: In 1963 I was 65 years old, and Mr. Webb got a letter from the state saying that I was 65 and had to give up administrative duties. So that was all there was to it.

Chandler: Well, the change I brought about was working primarily for a four-year degree. We had all kinds of gym classes, and we were working for a B.S. degree in physical ed. Time changes that came in, as I say -- we added different people from time to time. And Miss Emily Pittman came in 1950 and took over girls' physical ed. She coached basketball, hockey, and tennis. Up until 1954 we were a junior college, having contests with college freshmen and "Little Eight" teams. In 1954 we became a four-year college. The first degree was given in 1956. In 1956 Lou Plummer came to help teach physical education and coach track along with Chandler. Lou Plummer had been a track man at William and Mary and had a master's degree at William and Mary. Emily Pittman had a master's degree from Longwood. Then in 1958 -- am I getting too far ahead? --in 1956, as I said, Lou Plummer came, and we were building for a four-year program. That was our aspiration. And that

had to be approved by the State Physical Education Committee. And we were the first ones out of all the colleges in the state to get a four-year program approved, where we had all those things that they wanted, like biology, kinesiology, and all that stuff that goes into a physical education course. In 1958 Beverly Burden came to teach physical education and also coach the girls' swimming team. She also had a lot to do with the health program. Natalie Etheridge came in 1958 to teach dancing. For girls we wanted to have swimming required, we wanted to have dancing given, and then other team sports. We tried to have it so that we'd have a team sport that had one credit and an individual sport. Pete Robinson came in 1958. Pete had been on a wrestling team at Springfield College. He was an outstanding coach, and he had many boys to make All-American. He had two boys who made the All-American, in 1969 (Carl) Ragland, in 1970 Wayne Bright. While he coached under my regime he had 124 meets. He won 66 and tied six. He was a Mason-Dixon championship coach for seven years. He also coached golf, and he had the Mason-Dixon championship two years in golf, 1965 and 1966. I believe that covers that.

Chandler: Yes, after I had given it up to Bud Metheny in 1963 he decided to go a little bit further in the athletic program and get on a better schedule. And my highlights of my tenure were putting in new teachers, putting in new sports, and as I already mentioned by having Pete Robinson and them, different ones come in. I also had Al Tatem to come in. Al Tatem had been a tennis player at Springfield College and also teaching physical ed here in the city, and I got him to come over to take charge, to coach the tennis team, and he could also teach tennis in the gym classes. He could also teach wrestling. He was a good all-around man.

Chandler: Well, I was kind of doubtful about football until Mr. Webb, the director of the school, said, well, we couldn't possibly have it because football costs too much money. He'd had several inquiries about it from the newspapers and other people,

and he just told them how much money it would cost. And he didn't have the money, and the college students weren't paying them enough money to carry the thing, and he wasn't going to go into debt like they did before. They'd been in debt in 1939 when football was discontinued -- from 1931 to 1939 they went in debt -- and Mr. Webb didn't want to have any part of getting in debt because he wanted to keep on an even keel with his budget and keep his budget balanced. So we decided to go for basketball and other sports that we had money enough from the student fees to handle okay.

Chandler: Well, I was teaching on a part-time basis. That was the only reason-- I really hated to give it up. I was still young enough to coach and teach, but the state said I had to give it up, so when I was 65 years old in 1963 I had to give it up. I hated to do it, but I kept on for another five years.

Chandler: For five years I had it on a part-time basis, and from 1963 until about '71 I had a full load-- fifteen hours of physical education and still coaching swimming.

Chandler: I was on the executive committee for the Virginian-Pilot relays. The relays were instigated and run off by a boy who had been on my track team at William and Mary who was city editor of the Virginian-Pilot, Ralph Larson. And he wanted to have some outstanding track men at each track meet. Also, the main idea was to have a little higher grade track meet for the high school, like in different relays, which they only had then they had high school meets. They didn't have much. And so he instigated that, and then another fellow down there at the newspaper office, McKay, I think his name was, he was in charge of all the special events. And he got busy on inviting different ones. We had Reed Erwin, a fellow in Virginia Beach, who had been on a track team at Duke. And he got Dave Sim to come up here to be a special event in this hundred yard dash. Every year they had some special events. And one year they had 10,000 people out there. It was really an affair. I was a starter. I shot the gun and started all the races and of course I had to get the track in shape. It was

up to me to get the track in shape. I had people help me get it lined off and dig up the pits and all that stuff that went along with getting ready for a track meet.

Chandler: It was an all-around thing; it wasn't absolutely football. They had boys from other sports. And they got me because I had had very good success in coaching track up there for seventeen years. We had outstanding boys who went to the Penn relays, who went to the intercollegiate meet, and we got into what you call the I.C. 4-A, which was made up of about 70 colleges from all over the country. And the Harvard team had come down here and had stayed a week at William and Mary, and the coach and an athletic director were down here, too. They were having their spring training during our vacation, and they told me that we ought to apply for the IC 4-A, which we did. And we were taken in. And as I say, we went to the meets, went to the West Coast, and had a very outstanding boy we placed in several of the meets and had a big drawing card for telling good boys that could get to come there to go to this big meet.

Chandler: That was in February 1971. I thought I'd give it up, and it was time to retire. So that's how I happened to give it up.

Chandler: Well, the program developed along more or less what we had when Bud Metheny took over, and we had--I would say we had all the sports. We had basketball, and baseball, swimming, track, tennis, wrestling, and golf. And my hopes have been realized there just fine. And to move into NCAA Division I status, I was all for it, for we were getting too big for the Mason-Dixon conference and the "Little

Eight" conference, and we ought to move into the NCAA Division, which we did, and which we are carrying on now.

Chandler: My chief satisfaction was, as I say, building up a program and adding new players, new teachers, and making a new department. The main idea was to become a four-year college, and we had to work for that, and we had good teachers and a well-rounded program. We became a four-year college and, as I said before, we had to submit our program to the State Health and Physical Education Committee, and I might say that Dr. Fink, who had charge of the education, helped get up a program along with Grayson Daughtrey, who was one of my teachers, who had charge of physical education here in the city of Norfolk, and he advised us of the courses to offer. We modeled our course after the University of North Carolina, Columbia University, William and Mary, and we had a very fine four-year program. And we turned out a lot of good teachers who took a place around here in the neighborhood.