INTERVIEWER: Okay, we're good. Do you want to you leave your glasses on? G.T. WARD: I better. INTERVIEWER: It's up to you. Okay.
G.T. WARD: I want to mention that Mr. Wright
wasn't the only speaker we had that year. Two weeks after that, and by then we were
into June -- school went until June -- now you're out of
here by early May -- but we invited Richard Buckminster Fuller -- F U L L E R -- a Naval
Academy graduate, a very brilliant engineer. Two weeks later his fee was $75,
where we paid Wright a thousand dollars. But between the two of them, it
was an emphasis on architecture and engineering. And incidentally Wright was
educated as an engineer at I believe the University of Wisconsin. He did not
graduate because he went to work before he graduated, but he had an intuitive
structural engineering understanding. The Johnson Wax office building and the
Imperial Hotel in Tokyo are examples of his intuitive engineering background.
And as I reflect back upon the University and how we began expanding
with Wright being here, I note items like Virginia Tech was
opened up worldwide with the recognition and acknowledgement of what we can do.
As I mentioned earlier Dr. Hahn expanded the University in all directions,
including the creation of the College of Architecture, no longer in Engineering,
but an independent college. And he engaged Dr. Burchard or Dean Burchard
as I recall. In the meantime the college has created this international travel
program in Europe and acquired the property at Riva on Lake Lugano in Switzerland.
We've been recently ranked as the top architecture college in the
US, with the next year after that we were tied with others in that ranking. And as
you may know Dean Davis wants to add a new research building over in the
research park which is an important undertaking to continue what we're
trying to do.
And Tech continues to be one of the the best buy examples of all US
universities.
INTERVIEWER: Let me ask you, I want to go back to the Wright and Buckminster Fuller. That for a
student, I can't imagine how influential that must have been, how
incredible it must have been for you to meet that...
G.T. WARD: It was unbelievable to have those
two people there within two weeks of each other. And they were both
totally giving. They gave their time, they gave their responses. They both were very
wonderful guys. Buckminster you may recall designed the geodesic dome --
smart man, he made models of everything, and in his lecture, if you had to go the
bathroom or you had to leave, he said, "Don't leave now, don't leave now. You're
gonna miss something. You've got to get it all in your head. You've got to get it all."
Unique individual. INTERVIEWER: So how did Wright at that point -- if my history is
correct -- he wasn't you know really controversial, but Mr. Fuller was a
little bit. Were the professors excited to have these guys here? Were they
concerned that they were gonna influence you in some way...
G.T. WARD: I don't think they were.
They were just pleased that we had the initiative to get it done. And then the
bottom line is that we made enough money on the Wright deal to turn out to the next
group of juniors $1,000 to do the next year. So it all worked out very well, and
as I mentioned, there was no Big Daddy. We had to do it two dollars at a time. INTERVIEWER: Did that change, do you feel like that changed the course of your career? Did that influence you in a profound way?
G.T. WARD: It taught me to be alert to what's going on and know what the opportunities were and
are. I look back on Wright, and I ask myself, why are there not more
Wright apprentices -- which he had over the years, hundreds -- why aren't any of them
outstanding architects in their own right? I cannot answer that. It may be
that the US response is that there was only one Wright. Nobody can really
replace him. He was a true American genius -- absolute genius.
He was also willing to write books, willing to talk, willing to even comment
on the European influence that came over here. He liked Mies van der Rohe, but
he did not like Walter Gropius.
And interesting, in his early career when he worked with Adler and Sullivan in St.
Louis -- no, I guess it must have been in Chicago -- he called Adler "chief," and Sullivan he
called the Meister -- the master -- that was all a part of his background. And if
you read Wright's biography, he had a lot of ups and downs. Many people could not
understand what he was doing or did not believe he would be right. He was
challenged by building inspectors and other engineers and other architects, but
he was always right. But not a perfect life or not a perfect career. His
wife, his last wife, Olgivanna, or the European princess, as I recall,
[from] over near Yugoslavia, one of the smaller countries,
I don't remember which one, but she was very nice. I remember on the luncheon,
she said -- she called him, "Father, don't eat the crust on that apple pie, only eat the
apples," and he listened to her. "Father, father, father."
Anything else I can cover? INTERVIEWER: Yeah, well I'm very curious since you've stayed engaged with the School.
G.T. WARD: Yes. INTERVIEWER: You can really... I really would love to hear you talk about how the
school program has changed, presumably for the better,
from that time that you were here through now, if you can. I mean I know
that's a lot of time to cover, but if you can just give me an idea of how the
program has evolved.
G.T. WARD: Well the College and the University has
evolved and developed in a lot of ways, and I've been lucky enough to observe
the whole thing. I came here 18 years old, right out of high school. And as I said
this was a small school, isolated, had to ride a train down here from DC because
we were right at the end of the war, but we still had gas rationing -- there was no
gas to get here. I remember had a cab driver met us over in Cambria on the
railroad track over there, and for $1 he hauled my trunk and myself over here. But as I
said earlier, there were only 800 enrolled here then because even though
the war was over -- the veterans had not returned. So I began in the end of September and
in the next January, I arrove for the next quarter, but I got a letter, and the President
said, "The draft needs you." So I was drafted, and then I went away for two
years and came back. They would not let me in until winter quarter two years
later, but I went to Japan, involved in the occupation of northern Japan. And the
army taught me how to jump out of airplanes and how to type -- the only thing
I could use here in the college was how to type -- I was able to type my entire
masters presentation. But I remember walking around the campus on the last
day I was here, looking at all the buildings. Many are gone now. One or
two of the old laboratory buildings on our left up here
are gone now. The old mechanical lab was gone. And we had hardly any women here.
It was all males, all white, it was almost all Protestant, but we did have the
beginnings of a mixed group. But being in the Corps, you had to live by the Corps:
up at six o'clock, class at eight o'clock lights off at ten o'clock. That was your life.
You had to work everything around that schedule. INTERVIEWER: Everybody here at that point was in the Corps.
G.T. WARD: Everybody was in
the Corps. If you were a returned veteran, and there weren't many here
when I started in the fall of 1945, but when I returned two years later, there
were a lot of veterans here. They could not... they had the option to either
return or not be in the Corps. A few were in the Corps. When I returned I went back
in the Corps because I decided if ever had to go again, I wanted to be an officer, not
enlisted man. But I made the mistake of going in the Army Reserve, and my
enlistment there went out about one week before Korea started, so I was very lucky
in that respect. But I've observed the University evolve over these years,
over good leadership. I think Marshall Hahn and Charles Steger -- outstanding leaders.
Bill Lavery was very good, others in between.
Paul Torgerson, very good. We've had some very good leaders, all dedicated, that's
the important thing -- all committed to Virginia Tech.
INTERVIEWER: And Steger came from Architecture, right?
G.T. WARD: Yeah, that is part of what we've
contributed. I was his chairman of his Advisory Committee for six or eight
years. When he became Dean he generated that group to help him get things done,
and many of us who were on that committee have remained committed to VPI.
I mentioned T.A. Carter. He designed and owned where the Holiday Inn is now. It was
originally a Marriott. He owned it when it was a Marriott. So he remains committed
here.
One thing I do appreciate very much is that Mr. Cowgill and the staff of that
time let me skip one quarter of residency because I was running out of GI bill
money. I had all the coursework done, more than I needed, but he let me skip one
residency quarter, so the GI bill did not run out. It was very nice, and I will
remember that. INTERVIEWER: There seems to be a tradition of that kind of
accommodation and respect to the students here.
G.T. WARD: And I remember that when I began English down here, English was what
what they were using to wipe out a lot of young guys. And at that time Virginia had
a lot of high schools, but were only 11 year schools, not not 12 year schools, so a
lot of these young men really were not ready to hit VPI with everything.
A lot of 'em got wiped out on English. I remember Dr. Williams over there, every error you
made in writing -- in punctuation, spelling, anything it was -- you lost one grade. A
down to B: if you did that too many times, you were gone. So that was really
tough in the old core. Anyway I watched this all evolve into a University, into
a National University, into a worldwide University. I think Charles's leadership
is outstanding, and where we are today, being able to build buildings in the
economy we're dealing with. Even though I'm retired now, I still own one half of our
architectural firm, and it's not doing anything in this economy we have. We need
to get the world moving again. We need to build up. We need to build America.
Anything else I can cover. INTERVIEWER: That's wonderful.
Any other stories you want to tell or anecdotes...
G.T. WARD: If I can check one more time my notes. INTERVIEWER: I think it's such a tremendously unique
perspective you have, really watching the school grow from you know eight hundred
people to what it is now, that that must be incredible.
G.T. WARD: When I was enrolled the entire enrollment was 800 I said. Three Corps
companies was all we had and a band, that was the total thing. There were just
a few women here then, and no veterans back, so it was very limited. INTERVIEWER: And now it's a world-class...
G.T. WARD: Correct.
I'm very very pleased we have Dean Davis here, a very good academic and
architecture background. He knows the world as it is, and his leadership and
helping us win the worldwide LumenHaus.
Outstanding effort, that was all built right here on campus. INTERVIEWER: Yeah, that I think was tremendously important.
G.T. WARD: We looked at it when it was in DC. Very good job. It was all built right over here in the
research park where they want to build another research building.
The only other thing is to compliment Charles [Steger] on the job he's done with some
real important ups and downs in his 10, 11, 12 years as President. INTERVIEWER: I have a question for you about President Steger. Do you think...
architecture to me is such a wonderful background for anything,
that I'm very... it seems to be that his time here as a student under
you know the tremendous leadership that there was then, to him becoming Dean, that
it's... of course he's a good president because he had this background
through Architecture and through the leaders like Burchard and Ferrari, those kinds of people.
Do you agree with that? Do you think that?
G.T. WARD: Absolutely. Also I was on the committee
that chose him to be the president, and I remember in the interview, he mentioned
a thing I was unaware of. He said his whole life he had trained to
be President of Virginia Tech. I was unaware that had been in his mind
the whole time, but it was important to know that. And you may not remember this,
but he was also interim vice president for one or two years while he was
the Dean of the College of Architecture. He had two roles, so he was really ready.
But you look back, and Architecture had wonderful men. Mr. Cowgill and the entire
staff, they were outstanding. I'm convinced that his whole curriculum in
part was aimed at helping us get registered because I had no problem at
all getting registered. He had a great emphasis on engineering, and we also had
a lot of artwork at that time. We had a lot of sculpture, oil painting, watercolor,
art history, architectural history, very good background.
And I do compliment Marshall Hahn for all he did in expanding architecture,
creating a college which had to receive approval by the state I'm sure.
But getting that done and getting Cowgill Hall built, that was major major major.
Look how useful it is even today. And I mentioned earlier in the introduction,
Wright. Henry Shriver was involved in that. Henry was also the architect of this building,
of Cowgill Hall. And later on he was joint architect with SOM on the
Burchard Hall addition. So Henry was involved the whole time. So those were
the young men who were examples of the leadership we had in our class, and that
we're still here -- we're still here to help do what we can do. I think that's
all I can tell you. INTERVIEWER: Okay, well that was fantastic. G.T. WARD: Josh, we thank you. INTERVIEWER: Okay.
G.T. WARD: I remember the day when Olivio and Lucy [Ferrari],
Charles [Steger], Janet, my wife Margaret, myself, we were going over the Alps between Lugano,
you know between --
what's the capital of Switzerland? -- INTERVIEWER: Geneva? G.T. WARD: No. INTERVIEWER: No idea.
G.T. WARD: Anyway upper Switzerland and Lugano, we had to go
over the Alps, and Olivio knew one road, or one open pass, because a day later
it snowed up there and closed everything. But I remember how lonely
that place looked. I couldn't imagine being there at night. Wow.
Olivio was a genius though, and whoever brought him here was a brilliant move. He
was a very wonderful teacher, everyone who had him. My younger daughter Donna
went to University of Tennessee, Knoxville, two years in interior design and
transferred up here as a junior. And I was able to get her into the
architectural group going to Europe that year. And Olivio and Lucy led
that group, and that really changed her life. INTERVIEWER: Yeah, I've heard, that's what I've heard. I missed him. I was
actually here as an undergraduate. I missed him by one year; he passed away in
'94 I guess, and I was here in '95.
G.T. WARD: Wonderful man.
Lucy I hope is still doing well. I haven't seen her in about a year.
INTERVIEWER: Yeah, she's coming up I believe in November, and we'll be talking to her.
G.T. WARD: But you look at all these leaders we've had,
and it is interesting that Olivio and two or three others that we recruited
have been recruited from Europe to Auburn University. We draw them up here. I
don't remember the others, but one or two are still here I think. INTERVIEWER: Gene Egger.
G.T. WARD: One went to Texas. INTERVIEWER: Yeah.
G.T. WARD: I don't remember names. INTERVIEWER: Yeah, Gene Egger is one, and Randolph, John Randolph.
G.T. WARD: I think that rings a bell, right.
INTERVIEWER: Yeah, no it's incredible, I mean it's, you know, it's... this school... as far as people are concerned in the
middle of nowhere, right? It's had this incredible...
G.T. WARD: Correct. I meant the interstate opens us up,
and the airport in Roanoke and our own Airport opens us up. I remember when
Dr. Hahn said the airport runway was just barely enough to get the Georgia Pacific
jet into a close call. INTERVIEWER: Well, I, yeah, I grew up in West Virginia, and decided
to come here as a freshman and ended up transferring to Cooper Union in New York and then ended up
going into film, had a career in film, and decided to come back to architecture
and get a masters, and this was the only place I wanted to come.
G.T. WARD: Very smart.
One other name I wanted to mention who I like very much is... Cut that off a minute, I'll remember.
INTERVIEWER: I'll just leave it on, it's fine... G.T. WARD: Okay. INTERVIEWER: Can I help you?
G.T. WARD: Alexandria, who's our head man there? INTERVIEWER: Jaan Holt?
G.T. WARD: Yes, okay.
Jaan Holt has been very good to me, and I've tried to help him all I can. He has a wonderful
program in Alexandria. My brother Richard, who also has a master's from Tech in
urban design, [his] middle boy went to Minnesota in architecture, and he got him
here to get his master's under Jaan Holt, and Jonathan is doing very well now. But I've
got to compliment Jaan for everything he's done in Alexandria. And that took a
lot of gumption by the Board of Visitors to approve everything he's done
up there. You know we own about a half a block of land in Alexandria.
Between the university presidents and Jaan and the Virginia Tech Foundation, they had
the guts to say, this is all good, let's do it. And it's a wonderful thing.
And he's been open to other schools. He's had enrollees from University of Texas
and all over the country, if not all over the world. In fact Jonathan met his wife
to be there. She is an either Taiwanese or Korean girl. Nice.
INTERVIEWER: Unless there's anything else, I'm thrilled.
G.T. WARD: All I can add is that my mother and dad sent three boys
here, all graduated. Richard is our one that's over-educated. He has two other
master's degrees from the University of Washington in St. Louis, one in
architecture, one in
MBA. That's all I can add. We thank you Joshua. INTERVIEWER: Thank you. G.T. WARD: I had a grandson by the name of Joshua, who...
INTERVIEWER: You've got some Frank Lloyd Wright stories which I think would be wonderful to hear, so why don't we start.
Can you see me okay? G.T. WARD: I can, yes. INTERVIEWER: Okay, great. Why don't we start. Just let me know who you are and what
your relationship to the College of Architecture is.
G.T. WARD: My name is George
Truman Ward, known as G.T. Ward, and I graduated here with a bachelor's in
1951 and master's in '52, a masters in architecture. INTERVIEWER: Okay. You're a distinguished alumni.
G.T. WARD: I've been involved in almost everything here on the campus: the Board of Visitors, the College of
Architecture Advisory Council, and everything else.
INTERVIEWER: Great. G.T. WARD: Over the years. INTERVIEWER: So '51, '52, that was... my understanding...
tell me if this is wrong... that was right after the program was accredited, right?
G.T. WARD: Well, I don't know exactly when that happened, but it was after the World War II
and after all the veterans had returned. When I began here in 1945,
the enrollment was 800 people. That was it. When I returned after being in the Army
for two years, it was 5,000. So that's how we grew.
INTERVIEWER: And also I forget to mention, I'm not... I cut my voice out of it, so if you can
just sort of restate the question a little bit. So if I say... G.T. WARD: Okay. INTERVIEWER: You got it.
G.T. WARD: Understand. INTERVIEWER: Okay. So tell me about the program in those days.
G.T. WARD: Well I began in EE, went in the Army, met an architect there,
came back and changed to architecture. At that time Architecture was a department
of the College of Engineering. I went into Dean Norris and told him I wanted
to change. He said, "Boy, I want you to complete one year of engineering, then
you can change." So that's what I did. INTERVIEWER: And so when you graduated, was it still
part of engineering or had it...?
G.T. WARD: It was. Both my degrees are in Engineering, and
Architecture was then located on the upper level of what is now Patton Hall.
That's all we had was that upper level.
INTERVIEWER: And so can you tell me the... I understand that you were responsible for
inviting Frank Lloyd Wright here.
G.T. WARD: I was one of the ones involved. We were in our
last year of BS work, and there was a group, we got together, said we ought to do
something unique in behalf of the College. We said we're gonna invite
the best architect in the world to come right here, and we did. We had no money, no
sponsors, no Big Daddy, but I wrote -- I was elected the chairman --
I wrote to Mr. Wright, and we had to negotiate a while, but we had to... His
quotation there to speak was $1,000, which was a lot of money then. I tried to cut him
in half, but that did not work, because as I said we had no money to start with. It
was all a matter of belief and faith that we could do it. And he agreed to
come. At the time he was 83 years old, and would only do five lectures out of his area
a year, so we were lucky to get one of them. At the time he was on the way to Italy
to receive awards over there, so we had to agree on the schedule, the date, how to
meet him at the Roanoke Airport, and all that, which is interesting correspondence.
And I will leave with you all at the College copies of that correspondence.
INTERVIEWER: Great. That's great. G.T. WARD: But he was always very much the gentleman to deal with. INTERVIEWER: So can you
tell me, did you go pick him up? and tell me the whole story...
G.T. WARD: We met him at the Roanoke Airport -- this is very
interesting -- before he was coming here, the Roanoke
newspaper got word of it. They covered it very well before, during and after. And
the local campus newspaper also was aware of it.
We met he and his wife Olgivanna at the Roanoke Airport. He got off the plane,
and to give you an idea of how alert he was in everything, he had a terracotta
jacket on. He looked around, there was work being done at the airport. There was a
lot of exposed earth. "Look how smart I am, my suit matches that terracotta earth
perfectly." And it did. Anyway the newspaper covered all of that. Then
our schedule was to take them to Radford for lunch at the then Gov. Tyler Hotel,
which is no longer active, but that was where we had lunch. We drove down
from Roanoke to Radford in T.A. Carter's car. It was an older car, and every tire
was bald -- no tread at all left on that car. Here we had this one-of-a-kind
man with us in that kind of car, but it worked out. We got there and had a good
luncheon at the hotel. At the end of the luncheon, my wife was with us, and
he looked at her and said, "Ask her to take care of me," which she did. So he was
very kind with things like that. And after he had a rest in the afternoon, we came
back after in the early evening to get over the Burruss Hall where the event
was to be. And I remember as we were going over the New River at Radford, I
picked in my pocket and gave him the envelope with the $1,000 check.
He said, "Had I known this was all being raised by the students, I would
have not charged you a nickel." But he never went back in his pocket and
returned the check. So anyway we got over to Burruss, and what we had done in
getting this all organized, we knew we had to sell at least 1,000 tickets to
cover everything. They were two dollars apiece.
All my... all the enrollees in architecture went all over the area, all the back
roads trying to sell $2 tickets, but we finally made enough to cover him and had
some left over. But I remember that Louis Goldstein, he was here to do graduate
work from New Orleans, went knocking on the doors of all these rural people: "Come
to Virginia Tech -- it was then VPI -- come hear Frank Lloyd Wright." "Who is he?"
He had to explain it, but he had no reservation knocking on the doors. So
that's how we got it all organized. Mr. Cowgill and all the profs. were very
cooperative, but as I said there was no Big Daddy. There was no money. We had to
raise all the money, but we handled that. We had over 1,000 at the event. We had
all the local colleges had brought all their art and architectural students:
Hollins, Lynchburg, everything else, all the way to Richmond. And it was really a
very good event. Interesting, Henry Shriver...
no, Dr. Walter Newman [University president at the time] acknowledged that he was here, and said, "Nice to have you."
And Henry Shriver, one of my classmates introduced him. But Dr. Newman in
acknowledging his being here mentioned, "I want to thank the
agricultural speakers committee, not the architectural one, the agricultural
speakers committee for inviting Mr. Wright, so that brought down everybody's
laugh. And Harry Adrian, one of my one of my classmates, was down
up front, and he jumped out and said, "I knew he'd do it. I knew he'd do it." But the main theme
of his talk was the worth of the individual and the ability of the
individual. He put a lot of emphasis on that. He looked around the interior of
the auditorium over at Burruss, he noticed all the military gothic details. He said,
"The military mind is a dead mind," so he got little zingers like that
interspersed with everything. And after the talk he went over to
Patton Hall, and we walked him up to the upper level -- he was 83 then, but he
had no problem walking up there. Then he lectured for about an hour and a half,
answers questions of all kinds, answers them. But his main theme when he was
unhappy with architecture in the world then. He said his way was the only way, so
that was the main theme, the theme of the individual. But it was outstanding, and I
remember at that time he lectured for about an hour and a half, then he had a
brief open house. We may have had some entertainment there, some cookies and
punch, I don't remember, but it was a good thing.
The things I don't remember is how we got him back to the Radford Hotel,
how he got to the airport in Roanoke the next morning. It happened, but
I don't remember how. But he was an outstanding speaker, and he really... to me,
the main part of what he did, he opened up VPI to the world. We were an isolated
small college then, mainly engineering and agriculture. It was an A&M college,
a land-grant college. But he opened everybody's eyes, and I think that led to
the coming of Dr. Hahn and other leaders under Dr. Hahn, that the
university expanded rapidly, became a university. Enrollment went from 5,000 to
8,000 -- to 10, 12, 18. Dr. Hahn had a major building program here. He also I think
was involved in hiring of Dean Burchard to come
after Mr. Cowgill retired. And as I remember also
the local newspapers emphasized his comments about the worth of the
individual, the importance of the individual. Can you cut it off a minute?
Let me check my notes here. INTERVIEWER: Yeah, we can, and actually I'm going to fix the tape is off on your mic... I didn't do a very good job here... This is excellent, it's perfect...
G.T. WARD: Let me check if I left anything out.
Let me scan this just a minute. INTERVIEWER: Okay, it's no problem..