Transcript of
Oral History interview

COLGATE W. DARDEN, Jr.

April 7, 1975
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Sweeney: Today I am very pleased to be interviewing former Governor Colgate W. Darden, Jr. asking him certain questions about his involvement in the early history of the Norfolk Division of the College of William and Mary. Governor Darden, Could you relate any information which you might have about community interest in having a college in Norfolk in the 1930's?

Darden: There was a considerable interest. It arose mainly out of the fact that the depression was closing in and a great many children, who were not able to get away to college. It was accurately thought that the organization of some work here within Norfolk would be well worth while. That was the real basis of it, I think.

Sweeney: Could you tell me about the individuals in Norfolk who organized the cooperative effort with the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, e.g., such men as Mayor S. Heth Tyler, mayor of Norfolk, and Mr. A. H. Foreman, chairman of the City School Board?

Darden: I think Mr. Foreman took a lead in it. He not only was chairman of the school board, he was a great William and Mary fellow, and William and Mary was then operating in Norfolk an extension division. It was around this division that they expected and did in fact organize the college in Larchmont. Mayor Tyler, so far as I know, was always friendly to the college and wanted to help it. Whether he took any active part in getting it under way, I do not know, because I was not close enough to it. Mr. Foreman did; he worked overtime. He brought a great many other people into the effort along with him. Louis Jaffe was one of the effective people who was head at the Pilot. He saw early the need for help here in Tidewater, and he exerted himself to that end with great effect. I don't know or did not know many of them, although as time went on, I worked with the first one and then another when I was in the House of Representatives to help them there with things. Alvin Foreman was the man who carried the stroke over, and he was backed up by Louis Jaffe and around that group, around them was formed a group that put this thing over. But the compelling thing was the hard times here in Norfolk that made it necessary to organize some higher education here within the reach of families whose children could live at home and get a college education.

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Sweeney: Did you know Mr. Joseph E. Healy, the principal of Blair Junior High School, who handled the affairs of the Norfolk Division in the 1920's when the College of William and Mary sent their faculty to Norfolk to conduct late afternoon and evening classes for teachers and adult study groups?

Darden: I knew him very well and I worked with him. When he left here he had charge of the School for the Blind in Staunton and then later, I think he was down in the House of Delegates, a Doorman, Master of, Sergeant of Arms or something like that. But, he was keenly interested in education in Tidewater and closely associated with it and did an awful lot for it.

Sweeney: Was it true that Dr. J. A. C. Chandler, the president of the College of William and Mary, desired to establish a two-year branch in Norfolk so as to forestall the development of a competing four-year college so close to Williamsburg?

Darden: I don't think so. I don't think that had anything in the world to do with the organization of the work here. I think Dr. Chandler responded very generously to the request from the citizens of Norfolk that he expand his extension work here. But, I don't think it was an idea to forestall any effort because I don't believe there was anything in mind in the State toward that end. Moreover, Dr. Chandler for years maintained that the Commonwealth of Virginia was his campus; he didn't restrict it to just Williamsburg. He operated any way in the State that he thought that he could operate, and Norfolk was in a way an ideal situation for him.

Sweeney: How did the community respond to the opening of the Division?

Darden: It responded with a great deal of warmth, not with much financial support because it wasn't able to give it much. It is difficult now even with this recent turn down, it is difficult for us to realize how grim those days were in the 30's, '31 and '32 and the early days of William and Mary. But there has never been in the early days of what is now Old Dominion University or the Division of William and Mary, never has been any lack of warmth or support on the part of the community for the institution so far as I know.

Sweeney: Was there any reaction in the General Assembly, to William and Mary's opening the Norfolk Division?

Darden: No, there was no reaction there other than a friendly reaction, but it never went far enough to grant it any

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financial support because the Assembly then was desperately pressed to find money to keep the state institutions going that were already in existence. It just wasn't possible for them and was not possible for them until some years later to extend state aid.

Sweeney: In the autumn of 1930 a second institution of higher learning opened in the Norfolk area, Atlantic University of Virginia Beach. Was there any connection between the opening of the Norfolk Division and the founding of that institution?

Darden: I don't think so. As far as I know, William Moseley Brown organized Atlantic University and he was a good scholar and a good person. But, I don't think that it ever had the undergirding that was necessary to make it go. I don't believe that the money was available for the faculty that he wanted nor were there enough students available, but it had nothing to do with the William and Mary venture in my opinion.

Sweeney: Did Governor John Garland Pollard desire to see a state institution established in the Norfolk area rather than a private college headed by his opponent in the 1929 gubernatorial election, Dr. William Moseley Brown?

Darden: I don't believe so. Gov. Pollard, who for years had been associated with William and Mary, taught there. He was sympathetic to the idea, but I don't think he was influenced in any way and I think that I would have heard something of it had he been, because I was a member of the Assembly then. I don't believe that he was influenced in any way by the organization of Atlantic University.

Sweeney: Do you have any recollections of the Norfolk Division's first director, Edgar H. Timmerman (1930-1932)?

Darden: No, unfortunately I do not. I know that he was here, but I don't recollect working with him nor do I have any memory of it at that time.

Sweeney: Were you disturbed in the 1930's by the fact that the College in Williamsburg contributed no financial support to the Norfolk Division?

Darden: Yes, I was. But there again the college wasn't able to do much. It was desperately pressed to keep going in Williamsburg. We all wanted help, but we were not able to get it.

Sweeney: Did you, as a Congressman, assist the college in obtaining funds for the construction of the main

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building fronting on Hampton Boulevard? And also, did you assist the college in obtaining Works Progress Administration funds for constructing Foreman Field and for landscaping and enclosing the campus?

Darden: Only indirectly. I helped along wherever I could, but the determining effort was made really by Alvin Foreman through Cary Grayson, who was an admiral, who had been Wilson's physician, who was a great William and Mary man. Cary Grayson, retired of course and living in Washington, knew them all down in the headquarters there. He was a great friend of Roosevelt and everybody around the White House. More than anybody else, Cary Grayson was the man that got the W.P.A. money and other funds for William and Mary here in Norfolk, I think. He was the one I've always thought and I think Alvin Foreman felt that it was Cary Grayson who was the effective fellow in getting the funds for the stadium, although it bears Mr. Foreman's name and rightly so because Mr. Foreman was keenly interested and unflagging in his efforts there.

Sweeney: Could you recall your objectives when in 1937 you gave the college $500.00 to be used as a loan fund?

Darden: Yes, I can. It was a very small gift, but I thought that it might set in motion a plan whereby other people might chip in and contribute to a loan fund. I took it from a fund that I had that arose out of money that I received as a retired officer of the Marine Corps. I retired because of a plane injury, a back injury, and after I went to Congress it occurred to me that something should be done with my retired pay. I am not sure that there was some argument in Congress as to whether you could serve and draw your retired pay. I don't know how that was resolved. I know that there are individuals in the Congress presently, at least I understand that there are, who draw retired pay. But, I resolved it by simply setting up a scholarship fund in which I put now for some forty years the money that I received as a retired officer and I have used it first in one educational venture and then another. The little venture of William and Mary was the first of its kind with them and was done with the hope that it might be the foundation of a fund contributed to by the people. Since that time my wife and I have made other contributions to William and Mary, to Old Dominion, but we have not added to the little loan fund that I started.

Sweeney: Dean William T. Hodges, director of the Division from 1933 to 1941, experienced severe difficulties at the end of his service due to the altering of students records. Yet his popularity in the community caused many to come forward to defend him. What were your

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impressions of Dr. Hodges?

Darden: My impressions were favorable. I knew him very well. He was bitterly wrong about what he did in altering the grades, and he caused William and Mary no end of difficulty. The result was that accreditation of the parent institution was withdrawn.

John Stewart Bryan, who was then President, and I talked about it a number of times after I was governor. It was an awful hard thing to get back and get it on track again. I never thought that Billy Hodges did what he did because of any personal gain or profit or anything of that kind. I think that he was a deeply sensitive and sympathetic and compassionate man and I think he did it in an effort to give children another chance. It worked out very badly and it caused a great deal of difficulty, but I think that he was prompted by motives that were good--they were just wrong.

Sweeney: When you were Governor, was there any talk about the Commonwealth directly meeting the Division's capital expenses since the College of William and Mary did not use any of its appropriation to support the Norfolk Division?

Darden: I have no recollection of it; it may be that it did come up, but I don't remember it now.

Sweeney: As Governor, do you recall any direct involvement you had with the Norfolk Division?

Darden: No, I do not other than discussing it a number of times. Charlie Duke was then there handling its finances and he was often in Richmond. Dr. Chandler was his uncle, I believe. Anyway, I talked many times to Charlie about what could be done there, but I don't remember any legislative effort. Everything was held in abeyance during these war years. I was governor of Virginia during the war; the war had broken out a few weeks before I was inducted into office and it ended just a short time before I went out of office. The capital building expenditures were stopped entirely, the roads program was stopped almost entirely and we were to use whatever funds were necessary to retain that faculty that we could gather; student bodies were way down; many of them were away and in the service.

Sweeney: In 1946 you were appointed Chancellor of the College of William and Mary. During the year you held this title were you able to advocate the interests of the Norfolk Division to the Board of Visitors?

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Darden: No, nor did I need to. The interest in Norfolk was building then considerably, and every effort was being made to get them to expand and enlarge their operations here. The position of Chancellor was entirely honorary, I was never called upon to do anything while I was Chancellor. The college has never had anything other than my good will wherever I have been able to help it. I have been glad to help it because I am a great admirer of it and great supporter of it, but I have no recollection of any individual or separate activity during that period.

Sweeney: After your retirement as president of the University of Virginia in 1959 and your return to Norfolk, did you notice a strong desire among community leaders to make the college into an independent four year institution?

Darden: Yes, there was a great feeling that way and they were successful. The first move, I think, as I remember it, was to adopt a plan of a university system that embraced a number of institutions. It was awkward and in my opinion unworkable and that was laid out. The Division receded from it and then later was named Old Dominion College; it became a separate college, which was all to the good.

Sweeney: Were you ever consulted by any local leaders or Governor Albertis Harrison for your thoughts on the separation of the college from William and Mary?

Darden: I don't remember that I was. I was always strongly of the opinion that it ought to be separated. I thought not only it should be separated from the college because I think that it had reached a point that it could go along alone. I thought that the demands on it were such as to make it difficult for William and Mary to make its demands in Williamsburg and at the same time advocate what we needed in Norfolk. The university hook-up that you will find came in there was even more cumbersome than just the William and Mary Division. It never did make much sense, but it was appealing in that it had size and it called itself a university. They were then starting on a program to make everything a university. I am surprised that they haven't used the name in connection with advanced high schools in Virginia. I thought certainly by this time we would have fifty or a hundred universities in the public school system. That was simply an example of what was going on there. They had to join a university. It was not a sound or not a reasonable thing, but at least it can be said for them, they had enough sense to get out, pull back and start on the course that they are following now.

Sweeney: On April 14, 1965 you sat with the Old Dominion College Board of Visitors as a representative of Dr. Woodrow Wilkerson, Superintendent of Public Instruction. You declared that the college could not be too ambitious in the acquisition of land, and if proper projections were not made, the College would be faced with a fearful situation 15 to 20 years from then when available property would be at a premium.

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Do you feel that the college has carried out a proper program of land acquisition?

Darden: Yes, I do. I don't think that it arose out of my suggestion. I simply fell in with the proposal that happened to come up for consideration with the Board the night that I was over there. I think that they have carried out a first rate plan and I think that now they are well established in that line. I happened to be over there because of a provision in the Virginia law that I never liked, that is what made the Superintendent of Public Instruction an ex officio member of all the boards in the state. It didn't make any sense because being a member of all the boards in the state meant that he didn't have time to run the Public School System. There are a number of institutions in Virginia and if he was galloping around attending first one meeting and then another, instead of staying in his office in Richmond attending to his job where he ought have been, there would be a lot of trouble. When I proposed that the thing be changed it was immediately seized upon by some of the people in education as indicating my dissatisfaction with the Superintendent of Public Instruction, who in my day was Dabney Lancaster, who was ... who died a few days ago, you may have seen it in the paper. He was a very distinguished educator and that was trumped up to such a point that I let it drop. It never had anything to do with my belief that the Superintendent of Public Education ought to tend to his job and that the Board members ought to be made up by other people who had time to do it. I was over there that night because Woodrow had called me asking me to go over and represent him. The law had been changed a little bit, so that the Superintendent could call on individuals to go over and attend when he wasn't able to go. That wasn't very sound and that was later changed and the law was changed so that he didn't have to be on all those boards of the state. But, I felt strongly that ample provisions should be made for the land that they needed and that they have done and done it in great part through the generosity and thoughtfulness of the people of Norfolk. The Norfolk government has been very cooperative in developing the kind of institution that we have there now.

Sweeney: At the same Board of Visitors meeting, you emphasized to the Board members that every consideration should be given to the training of teachers for the handicapped child, and such training schools should be at Old Dominion College. You urged that at least a minimum request of $150,000.00 be included in the budget request for the next biennium. Did the Board members and President Webb seem receptive to this suggestion? Have you been pleased with the progress in the area of training special education teachers at Old Dominion?

Darden: Yes, they have been. They were receptive. It arose because an argument had broken out here between Lewis Webb and others out there and the medical society as to whether the college could train or could do the examination of the handicapped children. The problem

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wasn't doing the examination. The problem was to train teachers who could detect the difficulties and help them. I thought it important, and Webb thought it important, that the college be kept in that business, and it was. It wasn't particularly easy. They have made, I think, from what I can understand, they have made very good progress along that line. It doesn't interfere with the medical examination of the child and, of course, the advice and the treatment of the child rests in the hands of the doctor. Training of teachers, that is another matter that doesn't belong to the medical profession nor to any other profession, except the educators or the school authorities themselves. And that work has gone hand in hand out there with other work in the university and gone along successfully, I understand.

Sweeney: When the college was separated from William and Mary you were not enthusiastic about proposals to name the institution after you. Yet the School of Education is officially known as the Darden School of Education. I was wondering how this came about?

Darden: I never have been enthusiastic about naming schools in Virginia after anybody. I very much appreciate it, the kindness and the suggestion that the school bear my name. As a matter of fact, if it had been named after anybody, there have been a great many people around here whose name ought to have been used ahead of mine, who were deeply concerned with it, and who had worked with it. But, my objection went beyond that, I think. Running around here naming colleges and universities after a person is just wrong. I think the idea of identifying them with the community in which they work or which they serve is far better. If you don't do that, those of us who are in public life end up naming everything for ourselves and shutting off the efforts of people in the future who might want to be interested in doing something or being associated with it. I was very grateful for the naming of the School of Education, although I never thought that the plan was a good one. Frank Batten talked to me about it several times, and he said that he was very much interested in doing it, and that he and I had been good friends and are good friends, and we had worked together on a number of projects. He seemed to feel that it would help them in their development. I rather think that it was partiality to me as an old friend really, because I don't think that my name on the school has helped any. I think that the work of the university and the development of the school has been very good and I am very pleased with that. But, I don't believe in popping people's names on every public undertaking and financing it with public money and building a monument to individuals in that way. I just don't think much of it.

Sweeney: Could you evaluate the performance of President Lewis W. Webb, Jr. in his administration of Old Dominion College?

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Darden: I can, and I would evaluate it favorably. Unless you had lived with it over the years as I have, you would not understand or think possible the difficulties that Lewis Webb had in kind of pulling it together. He went out there near the beginning. Lewis went out there as a professor, as I recollect about '30 or maybe '28, about the time that they opened up out there. He carried the heat and the burden of the day and he saw it through its bitterest times, hardest times. He made a very great contribution to it. Things are much easier now, they have gotten related and were related to the state budget before Lewis gave up there. But, I think that it was his patient understanding of the role of a community college, his knowledge of Norfolk and their confidence in him that made him valuable. The school grew very rapidly toward the end under his administration because a very interesting thing had happened. At first, its student body was made up in large part by children whose families didn't feel they could send them out of Norfolk. They didn't want to send them out to the extension, they wanted to send them away to school in many instances, but they weren't able to do it. From that, it came to a point where they wanted to send them to Old Dominion or what was the predecessor of Old Dominion, because they thought they could get a good education there. That transition came about under Lewis Webb. That was a development that he brought into being and he struggled manfully for state appropriations in the thing and with a good deal of success. I would think, and I have said this many times to him -- I went out there and made a little talk when he retired to the graduating class -- I think that we all are in his debt for the work that he did there for so many years, under such very great difficulties.

Sweeney: Do you believe that the college grew too quickly and reached university status too soon during the hectic decade of the 1960's?

Darden: Oh, I think so, very probably, but I don't know how it could have been helped. You had a tremendous upsurge in interest in education, the demand for this or that and then, of course, the desire prompted in part by the management of Old Dominion, the desire to become a university. That found ready acceptance by the people of Norfolk, many of whom didn't realize fully that it takes more than a name slapped on a place to make it a university. That's what I made reference to earlier in my talk, when I said in the early part of the 60's, I thought it would be extended to the large high schools in Virginia. It was just a tidal wave of creating universities. Just as it has been in my life time a tidal wave of creating college graduates, many of whom are incompetent. They are not well educated in many

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cases. They are not particularly well prepared to come to grips with the problems that they are faced with in life. As a matter of fact, they don't understand the fact that a college education is a worth, but it is only a worth if it really sharpens up the mind. Going through with a lock step and getting a degree isn't of any consequence; it probably does more harm than good, and the vast increase in college graduates has not been an unmixed blessing, by any means in my opinion. I think that is especially true in the fabulous number of Ph.D.s who are floating around here in the United States. I expect that there is as much incompetence masqueraded behind the Ph.D. as it is in any one place in America.

Sweeney: Could you give me some information on your services as a member of the Educational Foundation?

Darden: I haven't been a member of the Education Foundation. Do you mean at Old Dominion?

Sweeney: Mr. Kaufman said that you were. I don't know that you were either.

Darden: No, he is talking about my brother. My brother was a member of the Educational Foundation, but I was never a member of it. That group, or the later day people, that was put in place in the late 40's and went along until they made it a separate institution with a separate board. Is it still in existence?

Sweeney: You're talking about the Advisory Board?

Darden: Yes.

Sweeney: The Advisory Board was created in 1947 and went out of existence in 1962 when the school became independent.

Darden: They never had any other foundation other than that, did they?

Sweeney: This Educational Foundation was related to raising funds from private sources.

Darden: You are talking about John Alfriend, the director for a long time, for the supplementing of salaries. I was a contributor to it, and I might have been a member, at John Alfriend's request, but I don't remember it. I went to one or two meetings. He was interested in helping to raise funds, but as I remember it, I went as a contributor and that's all. It served a very useful purpose. It did a lot of fine work. That's still in existence.

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Sweeney: In conclusion, could you offer some observations on today's college students in comparison to the students at the time you were in college and those you knew when you served as President of the University of Virginia from 1947 to 1959?

Darden: No, I don't believe that I can offer any suggestions that can amount to anything really. I think that the thing that we have to watch carefully is really whether the work that is being put to them is good work, hard work. I don't believe that the demands made on a student are great enough today. I believe that they are not as great as I remember them some years ago. Maybe it was when I went to Charlottesville, as a student. That's been a long time ago, sixty years ago. We've got a real problem in the torrential tide of young people coming on. Certainly in theory at least, if you train their minds, you equip them better to deal with life. If you don't do the training, I'm not sure that you don't unfit them rather than help them. I think that the difficulty arises out of the confusion in the consideration of the system of education. Confusing it with a gigantic Day Nursery rather than as an engine of education and development. Now both are important. Public education is of great importance, and a good Day Nursery system is of great importance, but they are not the same thing by any means. The educational system -- unless it's selective, unless it's hard -- does not serve any useful purpose. I would guess that today we have erred on the side of leniency. I think that the desire to keep these free wheelers in there and give them another opportunity and then another opportunity is probably a mistake. I don't think that it is so much a mistake for the taxpayer, as it is for the other members of the student body. I think that they interfere with the process of education, rather than help it. I think the good student -- I don't mean just "A" students, I mean the fairly good average students -- are going to carry the heat and the burden of the world. I think they are pulled back in many cases by just troublemakers, the people with very modest intellectual capacity for which the institutions of higher learning can't do a great deal. In a comparison of today with what has obtained (?), I fall into the thing that all old men fall into, a wistful looking at the past when as a matter of fact the past frequently is not as good as things are now. But in this particular instance, I believe that our system of education in the past by its rigid adherence to some fixed standards is superior to that which we have today in many places.

Sweeney: Thank you very much Governor Darden for your comments.