VT Stories Oral History with Gene James, November 20, 2015 (Ms2016-015)

David Cline: So this is David Cline for the VT Stories Project. Today is November the 20th, 2015. I'm here in the Alumni Center, and we are very pleased to have a special guest with us today, and if you would introduce yourself.

Gene James: Thank you David. My name is Gene James. I was born in Gresham County Virginia, which isn't far southwestern part of the State of Virginia, probably not even a town in Elk Creek Virginia, which is probably 15 miles from the North Carolina line. So that's where I was born and lived there for a while, and then my parents moved to Blacksburg, and so I grew up in Blacksburg. I went to grade school and high school and went to Virginia Tech of course.

Cline: What year did you graduate from high school in Blacksburg?

James: 1949.

Cline: Can you tell us a little bit, I'm just personally really interested to hear what Blacksburg was like in the 30s and 40s.

James: Blacksburg was pretty calm back in those days. GIs had come back from World War II, so there were a lot of people here for I would say three of my years of Virginia Tech, but they were graduating and moving on. So when I graduated from high school I suspect there were 5,000 students at Virginia Tech. Many of them returned from service and that sort of thing.

Cline: And that had been a major increase from what it had been.

James: Yeah, had been, and by the time I graduated as I recall I think there were 3,000 students at Virginia Tech.

We have high schools now far larger than that, so the University has grown over the years as you might expect. Blacksburg was a great place to live. It was a 2:00great place for me living at home. Back in 1949 when I started though you had to belong to the Cadet Corps. And of course I did, but I was what was known as a town student. I participated in all the military activities, parades and drills and classes, but at the end of the day I didn't have to go back to the dorm and be subjected to all the abuse that some freshman did. Well maybe all freshman did, so I was an exception in that I got to back home and get out of my uniform, put on comfortable clothes and come back to school the next day.

Cline: So you were insulated from some of that.

James: Some of it, although I got enough to know what it was like.

Cline: I'm sure. I tell you, so many of the folks I've talked to so far have 3:00talked about the rat year being so difficult, and more than one have said they called home the first night and said, "What am I doing here?"

James: Well I didn't have to call home. I simply got on my motor scooter and went home. I had a motor scooter back in those days. It was a Cushman motor scooter. I guess they're out of business now, but anyway, that's the way I traveled from the Southern part of Blacksburg then to college. No problem in finding a parking place; there weren't very many cars in Blacksburg. There were hardly any cars that students had. I would guess that there weren't over 100 cars, student cars when I entered Virginia Tech, which is absolutely amazing when you look around at the traffic these days.

So Blacksburg was small, a charming community, and connected with the college so 4:00that made it much more interesting than just being in a small town, and it was a small town. My parents had a Crosley automobile, which was a very small car. That was my mom's car, and so we drove that a lot and I would drive it downtown at night. And I guess I was probably not supposed to do that being a Cadet, but I would drive it downtown and come back and find it on the sidewalk with a parking ticket. But the car was very narrow and it could go anywhere.

So I was flagged down by the town's only policeman in Blacksburg. The college had no police force at all, and I was flagged down and he said, "The Mayor wants you to come to his office." And so I went to see the Mayor and I knew him, and 5:00he says, "You've got 125 parking tickets." [Laughs] So I explained to him that most of them were a result of people doing something with my car and getting a ticket, so he gave me a little lecture and said, "Don't do that anymore."

Cline: Were these other Cadets that were doing pranks?

James: Probably, probably. I'm sure, that put the car on the sidewalk, but my brother graduated from Virginia Tech as well, two of them in fact, he drove the Crosley, found it in the second floor of Patten Hall and had to drive it down the steps to get out, so interesting experiences. A small town, a small college, 70 in my high school class.

Cline: What did your father do for work?

James: He worked for Southern States Cooperative, a farmers' organization, and I ended up going to work for him out of school. He wanted to be here because he had three sons at the time. My oldest brother went here and majored in aeronautical engineering, and my other brother who is also a couple of years older majored in architecture, so he's an architect. It's a long history.

Cline: Did you always have an interest in agriculture or did you know what you would be studying?

James: I did, I did, and the reason that I did is that we had what would be known now as a farmette outside of Blacksburg. If you're familiar with Blacksburg it was in the Black Woods area up near the old golf course, so we had four acres. We had two milk cows and we had big cattle and we had hogs and we 7:00had what a working farm would have. Sooner or later it fell to me to run that, so I did. I developed a keen interest in agriculture. My dad being with Southern States I knew about that part of agriculture and decided that I would like to do something like that, so that got me started in Virginia Tech and things got better as they went along.

Cline: How was the program here when you started in agriculture?

James: It was really good. I selected animal science, which was animal husbandry at the time, because it afforded me the opportunity to take a lot of the electives in communications, English, writing, that sort of thing, and a lot of 8:00business courses and a lot of other courses that I thought would really be a help to me if I went to work for somebody engaged in the commercial end of agriculture, and it did. Professor Ralph Hunt was the department head and he was really helpful in guiding me through on what to take and really how to have a curriculum in agra business before there was anything like that.

Cline: Very interesting. Yeah.

James: I was really fortunate fortuitous. I never would have gotten all of that together on my own. Having the department head interested in me, and as a matter of fact he had taught my father when my father attended Virginia Tech, so 9:00everybody knew everybody when I was in Blacksburg.

Cline: When did your father come through Virginia Tech?

James: I think he was in the class of 1930.

Cline: It was in the family. This was destined to be.

James: In the family. My mother went to Radford and my dad attended Virginia Tech, all three of us graduated from Virginia Tech in various fields, and uncles attended Virginia Tech. I notice one of the questions that you had on the discussion paper was why did you decide to attend Virginia Tech. I never did think about anything else. I didn't know there was another college to tell you the truth, and so it was really easy to make that decision. Interesting though that, and I'm tell me if I'm rattling on.

Cline: No, not at all. This is perfect.

James: It was interesting in that I had good grades in high school and graduated 10:00top of my class, and didn't think I would have any difficulty being accepted at Virginia Tech. Back then school got underway at Tech in probably mid-September, and so it was a quarterly system. I waited until about then to go over to the Office of Admissions to say I want to come here, so that was it. No testing.

Cline: That was it.

James: Yeah. But I knew the head guy of Admissions too, so being a native of Blacksburg helped out in a number of ways.

Cline: So a few things have changed over the years.

James: I would say that was probably the understatement of the century.

Cline: You mentioned Dr. Hunt. Did you have other professors who you grew close to in your time here?

James: You know I was here from 1949 until 1953 when I graduated from Tech. 11:00That's probably more years than I can go back and calculate, and I had a lot of great professors. I remember one, and I can't remember his name, in the English Department. I was good at English and English composition and I knew it I thought really really well, and the first day in class he announced that he was going to fail almost everybody in the class. And so I thought well it's not going to be me, and so I managed to get a B under him. I think his name was Richardson. Anyway, a lot of interesting experiences back then at Virginia Tech, a wonderful school. It was then, still is, and of course being not a native, but living in Blacksburg for a number of years I knew as much about the colleges, 12:00most of the people in Blacksburg and most of the staff. I knew as much about Virginia Tech as they did and attended football games and other schooling events back when we never won. [Laughs]

Cline: What was it like, you mentioned that obviously there was a spike in attendance after, with people coming in on the GI bill after the war, and then that went down again, but what was it like having those veterans around? I guess probably for a year or two while you were here there were still veterans here.

James: You know it was good really. You got a different perspective from a different level of students. Some of them had had horrific experiences, others had not, but it was a good part of my education to have that opportunity to see 13:00people that had been out and come back.

Cline: I'm just trying to imagine that you know for myself I came in as a bright-eyed 18-year-old and then there were these fellows who had really experienced something. That would be real different.

James: Yeah, and they were probably in their 20s most of them, and I was 17, so it exposed me to probably a good mix, a good education, really a practical education being around a diverse group of people like that, and one that you couldn't buy, one that you couldn't have most any other place.

Cline: Did you have any difficult experiences during your time here?

James: No. I never did. I know that a lot of people were unhappy, the people that were in the Cadet Corps especially the freshman year. I knew what to expect 14:00because both of my brothers older than I am had gone through it and I knew it would be over sooner or later. The freshman, the rat year didn't really bother me much. I guess one of the more difficult things about that was that some of the upper classmen decided that town students had not yet paid their dues. And so they were always on the lookout for things that they could do to town students.

One of them as I recall was I think it was a corporal, I was always a private, town students couldn't be anything but privates, and so that suited me fine, but he decided in my freshman year that somebody needed to inspect me every day since they were being inspected. So trying to find somebody in that company to 15:00inspect me, I would have to go to the barracks and look around and find somebody that I didn't really want to inspect me and avoid them and go with the ones that maybe would let me go. I found one in one of the classes. It was a business course, so I asked him if he would inspect me every day three times a week, so he did that. So that's probably one of the more aggravating experiencing that I had. And once freshman year was over it was clear sailing.

Cline: Any particularly wonderful memories that stand out over your time?

James: Well I played on the Virginia Tech golf team for three years and that was a wonderful experience. I had been a golfer as a result of my parents being golfers back in the days when not very many people played golf. So I was always 16:00interested in it. My other two brothers also played on the Virginia Tech golf team. All of us were captains of the golf team at one time or another, probably unique in the history of sports at Virginia Tech. But those things stand out when you have that kind of experience. The whole college experience for me was fantastic. I wanted to learn. I knew the institution. I knew a lot of the professors, and that helped. I was not a number to many of them.

In fact, I started at Virginia Tech in mining engineering because there was a scholarship available in my engineering and I didn't know what I was getting into. I had no idea what a mining engineer did, but I signed up and first 17:00semester, or a quarter then, a professor by the name of Tulloch was a professor of engineering drawing. And I just could not see how you could turn a block and then projected what it looked like, and I thought you know I may be on the wrong track here. I'm not cut out to be an engineer. So at the end of that quarter I switched over to agriculture and animal science.

Cline: Fairly quickly.

James: Yeah, I made pretty good grades though in engineering. I point out the fact that it was helpful to be from Blacksburg because Professor Tulloch would say, "Why don't you come over to my house and I will go over it with you again," and so that was really helpful. About the only thing I could do I thought that 18:00was right was print well. That seemed to be hard for a lot of people, so at least I had some skill, but I was glad to get out of that.

Cline: How about your social life then and dances? What was happening on campus in those days?

James: Oh yeah, that was amazing. The main thing, during the year the dances, the German Club and Cotillion Club dances, didn't always take the same person, but managed to find a date to go to the dances. The dances were I guess the pinnacle of the social life at Virginia Tech. I'm sure a lot of things went on in the dorms that I didn't experience from a social standpoint, but that was okay too. The dances were a highlight in the four years that I was here. I 19:00attended I guess Cotillion dances more than German Club. I don't know why, but I just did. Maybe they had better bands.

Cline: Did you have ring dance then?

James: I was on a golf trip. [Chuckles] Some things take precedent over others.

Cline: After you graduated from Virginia Tech did you know that you would follow your father into the company or did you go elsewhere first, or did you have any idea?

James: No, I didn't really expect to follow him.

My dad worked for the government in Raleigh, North Carolina. In fact, I didn't live in Blacksburg the whole time. I was in the 4th, 5th, 6th, and 7th grade in Raleigh, and so he came to work for Southern States then and I came in '45 I 20:00think. The war was over and so he had an office in our home because he was a district manager with a lot of retail points and I used to read everything that came through to him. I knew about Southern States, and so when I started interviewing for jobs I got a job offer from Kroger and from Southern States and from the Extension Service, and all of them were pretty nice offers, but I chose Southern States even though it paid the least of any of the offers that I had. The Kroger was as a store manager trainee. Southern States' offer was a store manager trainee. Kroger was going to pay me $350 a month which sounded like a fortune, just fantastic, and Southern States offered me $275 a month. That's 21:00$3,300 a year, not very much according to today's standards.

But anyway, I knew about Southern States. I thought well why not do it? They had a nepotism policy, so I could never work in any of the departments that my dad happened to be in. But it certainly didn't hurt me at all that I was in his son, because again, like living in Blacksburg and going to Virginia Tech a lot of people knew my dad in the company and so they knew I was working for the company. I went to work in Bedford, Virginia as a store manager trainee.

Cline: Did you stay in that area or did you soon move on?

James: I soon moved on. I recall that they tried to get managers who would train 22:00people like me, and really when you finished the six-month training program you would be able to manage a store. Well the first day the store manager handed me a broom and he said, "Your job while you're going to be here is to sweep the store out, the salesroom and the warehouse." And my first thought, and I'll tell you this because they used to tell our trainees, after I got to be the CEO of Southern States, I used to tell them the story, and my first thought was I knew how to sweep a floor before going to Virginia Tech, and so I've completed four years and why do I have to do this?

And I've told it so many times I think it's probably true, I said the very next thought was if they want me to sweep the floors it's going to be the best swept cleanest store in the kingdom. And you know, from that day on I really liked 23:00everything I had to do. I only stayed there for a month, and then they made me an assistant manager. They must have been really hard up for personnel. [Chuckles]

Cline: Or it was a really clean floor.

James: Yeah, right. Well I was not the assistant manager there, they sent me to Cumberland, Maryland, and so that was a great experience too. I had so many great experiences in Southern States that when I guess I got to be the CEO in 1980 and served in that position for 17 years, and I knew the company. I knew it from 1945 when I used to read my dad's mail right on through all the jobs I had moving up the ladder, and so it was such an easy thing for me to move into that job. I knew what to do and probably had more confidence than I should have had, 24:00but I may have been wrong but I always thought I was right.

Cline: Obviously you have a lot of ties, more than many in some ways with your having grown up here, but what has kept you so connected to Virginia Tech and to Blacksburg?

James: That's a good question. That's an interesting question. You know, after I graduated from college and I was in the Air Force for a couple of years as a result of my ROTC commitment and then came back, I was on military leave from the company and came back and had a lot of people in Southern States that were connected to Virginia Tech. Southern States itself was connected to Virginia Tech, and as I moved up I had the opportunity be involved in the alumni 25:00association and the Virginia Tech Foundation, and I was invited up several times to speak to students as a visiting whatever they call them. [Laughs] And so that just really increased my connection with Virginia Tech. After I was CEO in Southern States it got more and more connected.

We used to have all the deans and directors and commissioners of agriculture every two or three years in a conference to go over foreign policy and what farmers were doing and what Southern States was doing. And so every two years I 26:00would have an opportunity to see those people, the dean of the School of Agriculture, the dean or director of the Extension Service, and then from the State the Commissioner of Agriculture, so it sort of honed my interest if you will in Virginia Tech. Then as I got time close to retirement then that's when I really started my connection with Virginia Tech from the standpoint of alumni association. Tom Tiller asked me to serve on the board if I got elected and I did, and then I was president of that board for a year I guess. Then it was a term of one year and now it's two. And then got asked to serve on the Board of 27:00Directors of the Virginia Tech Foundation. Somebody thought I had either money or good leadership skills. It turned out to be the latter and not the former. [Laughs] But it was great to be associated in those really official connections you know. I got to know Charles Steger extremely well and others in leadership positions at Virginia Tech, so one thing led to another. I think I was longest serving chairman of the Virginia Tech Foundation. Actually I was president when we did away with that job, and so as a result of that I stayed one extra year on that particular term. So anyway, it's been a lot of fun.

Cline: Let me ask you this and we'll come back to Virginia Tech, but I'm just 28:00curious, do you keep in touch with what's happening in agriculture in the State still? Do you keep abreast of what's going on in terms of policy?

James: Some, but of course not nearly as much as I did when I was actively working. I retired in 1997. It's hard to believe that that's 18 years ago, almost 19, and so things have changed a lot both in state government and federal government. I was very active in the national scene for a number of years.

And so no, I don't keep up as much as I did. I don't keep up with anything as much as I did. [Laughs]

Cline: Yeah, I imagine it would be nice to take a break from it, but also hard not to give it up entirely.

James: Well that's true, and I think that's what drove me in the beginning of 29:00wanting to be involved and wanting to get in a leadership position. I think it was well you've got time now, you've retired. You can do this and you can give back to Virginia Tech what they gave to you, or at least try to. And so it was you know, I don't think I've ever had a bad day, whether it was at Virginia Tech or whether it was working or whether it was after I worked and in retirement. I'm sure a lot of people would love to be able to say that, but everything has been really good.

Cline: That's wonderful to hear. Let me just ask you a few more questions if you don't mind.

James: Sure.

Cline: I really do appreciate your time. There's obviously the understatement 30:00again of the year in terms of there's been a lot of change here, so what has been your take on the change that you've seen on this campus, and where do you think we're headed and where would you like to see us headed? Any concerns?

James: Another good question. Now of course the University is much larger and you're talking about budgets that were unheard of back in my day. The emphasis on collegiate sports is a lot more now than it was then. I'm glad to see that we continued to put equal if not more emphasis on the academic side. Even though I 31:00play golf I'm very much interested in the academic side, and that really I think is much more important than sports. I think sports is good for the people that do it. It's another experience, a building block in their life, but the University has an awesome responsibility really to educate students that are coming along now, students that are far different than when I started at Virginia Tech. Students are better educated probably when they start than I was when I finished, and so that's a real challenge.

I think a big challenge that has always concerned me is how do we educate people that have come through high school and maybe have not achieved a level of success to get them into a first class educational institution. And yet I've 32:00seen a lot of people that didn't bloom until they got maybe halfway through college, and some of them don't get in Virginia Tech because we used to talk about it and we do about the SAT level of our entering class. There are a lot of people in there that should have made that didn't get selected. I don't know how you solve that problem. I think they are working on trying to get more students in Virginia Tech that perhaps didn't show that kind of skill level when they took their SATs.

There's a lot more than just SATs to determine whether a person can be a success 33:00at Virginia Tech and I've seen a lot in business and I've seen a lot here. I saw a young man that wanted to come to Virginia Tech and he was homeschooled, and so I put in a good word for him and he took all the tests and he passed everything in really good form, and he graduated in three years and that's just an example I think of those kids that are out there that could if we can find them and get them to Virginia Tech. I think that's a real challenge, and I don't have the answer.

Cline: How about our growth and where we're headed in that direction?

James: Well, it seems to be the handwriting on the wall. I'm not sure bigger is 34:00better. It hardly ever is, but that seems to be the way that all college educators and institutions are going with more and more students. It's mind-boggling to think that we have what, 30,000 students enrolled at Virginia Tech? And we're going to have more. It's terribly expensive these days, so that's another challenge. How do these students afford to come to Virginia Tech or go to the University of Richmond or any other school really? The cost is tremendous.

Cline: What do you think we could do better at? You already told me one thing in 35:00terms of giving people opportunities I think. Anything else?

James: Beat North Carolina. [Laughs]

Cline: Amen.

James: Not really. I was so involved at Virginia Tech over the last 18 years and often in a leadership role, and as we went along I saw a lot of progress, and for me to come back now and say they are weak in this area or weak in that area, if I thought that I probably would have raised that issue when it would have meant something. No, I think Virginia Tech is on the right track. It's going to be interesting to see with a change in leadership what direction the University 36:00goes. I knew what direction Charles Steger was going because I knew him so well. I've only met Dr. Sands two or three times and he probably doesn't know me from as the old saying goes a side of bacon, but he seems to really be on the ball. He seems to be very enthusiastic about the University and about where it can go, and so the challenge is to get it there and that's his job. [Laughs]

Cline: Finally somebody else's job to lead things, right.

James: Right.

Cline: Just to wrap up I always end with the question of is there something you were expecting me to ask or something I should have asked that I didn't ask you today?

James: Well, maybe I took off and went to so many places.

Cline: Not at all.

James: That I covered most of your questions, but no, I don't think so. You covered my early upbringing very well, or I did and to move on to Virginia Tech and my interest in Tech. No, I don't think I can think of a thing that you should have asked that didn't come up. It's been really enjoyable to go back and think about those things and about the experiences that I had here, and the experiences that I had in Blacksburg.

The high school that I graduated from I think is now the Communications Building. It's certainly not the high school they had, but it's on the edge of 38:00the campus as you head into Blacksburg on the right on top of the little bridge. I think it's the Communications Building, but small, and didn't have the problems that high schools have these days.

Cline: [Sure enough]. Well thank you so much. This has been really enjoyable for me and very valuable for Virginia Tech, so thank you.

James: Well I hope it works out. Most will land on the cutting room floor where it belongs. [Laughs]

Cline: [Laughs] Thank you very much.

James: I enjoyed it.