VT Stories Oral History with Sam Lionberger, May 12, 2015 (Ms2016-015)

David Cline: This is David Cline and today is Tuesday, May the 12th, 2015. We're in Roanoke, Virginia. And Sam, if I could just ask you to introduce yourself for the recording, your name and your date of birth and place of birth.

Sam Lionberger: Okay. Sam Lionberger, or Samuel Lewis Lionberger, Jr. I was born here in Roanoke. I'm an odd one, one of natives [chuckles], July 7th in 1940. Just a little before the start of the Second War. My mother and father lived here in Roanoke. My dad his family is from the Luray area, up in the upper part 1:00of Shenandoah Valley but had moved down to Roanoke where his father was employed by a steel fabricating firm here in Roanoke. Dad graduated from Jefferson High School, happened to be in the first class to go all the way through Jefferson High School, and then attended Roanoke College for two years, and from there went on to University of Virginia and got his degree in Civil Engineering.

My mother is from South Carolina, born in Spartanburg. Her father was a lumber wholesaler, a representative for a lumber wholesaler. And along the way in the late, early '30s, 1935 or so he got transferred into Roanoke and just happened that they lived about a block apart from each other, so that's how they met. And I have one sister, Lucia who was born in 1945. She and her husband, who...I don't know how he got away from us but he went to VMI, a really nice fellow 2:00there, and they live in Winchester, Virginia. She's a retired school teacher and currently works at the admissions office of Shenandoah University, so kind of a quick background of our family there.

David: Yeah. And so you were raised here in Roanoke?

Sam: Yes. I grew up with... I don't remember personally a lot about it because I was little, but when I was about a year and a half old, the Second World War started up.

And the company here at that point was called John C. Senter Company. It was 3:00named after my father's uncle. Started in the upstairs storage area of a garage out in southwest Roanoke behind his house. Anyway, but pretty much a lot of businesses like the construction shut down. So my father was too old to go on active duty, so we moved to Kingsport, Tennessee when I was about a year and a half old. And he worked for the Holston Ordinance, which is very similar to the Radford Arsenal that we know now, and they made the propellant bags for the heavy cruisers and battleship guns and so forth. So I kind of grew up until I 4:00was about five years old and the War ended out in Kingsport. A lot of memories of blackout curtains and air raid warnings.

One thing that kind of sticks in my mind, I had to have my tonsils out, so they took me to the doctor's office. I don't know why I remember it, but I remember it. He laid me on his desk and put a ether rag over my face, took my tonsils out and when I woke up my mama gathered me up and took me home and fixed me some soup and off we went. [Laughs] That's the way it went.

But I was very proud of my dad to work, because it was pretty dangerous what they made. So we moved back here in 1945 when my sister was born. Dad went to work with the company, Uncle John and in 1950 Uncle John retired. We always called him Uncle John; Uncle John retired and my father took it over. At that point changed the name to Lionberger and with that point it was S. Lewis 5:00Lionberger Company, and now it's just Lionberger Construction, anyway, but he was a wonderful man.

I guess reminiscing, one of the things that I remember about Uncle John was he absolutely Well, he loved to build, but he also loved to fly. And he flew some of the first air mill, from the Richmond area in to Roanoke in an open cockpit plane, landing in what was then just a farm field out where Valley View Mall is now. He would tell us stories of the farmers lighting bonfires for the pilots that flew in along the way. And every once in a while, in the summer if a 6:00thunderstorm came up sometimes you'd have to turn around and go back and outrun it. [Laughs]

But he was a wonderful builder. But apart from that, I think one of the things that impressed me was, it was sort of a life changing experience because, you think, oh, well, everybody has a job and you know, you grow up... In the '30s he was the low bidder of a big high school in Roanoke called William Fleming High School. He also built a lot of landmarks, built a lot of the airport, built the Ponce de Leon Hotel and things like that downtown. But on that particular job I can remember him sitting and telling me why the value of a job was so important, 7:00and the value of integrity. The morning after he had submitted the bid and was announced he was the low bidder, before any contractor was [00:06:55 ], he said, "I woke up and there were over 200 men standing on the lawn at my house in total silence looking for a job." And that, I mean, it gets to me even today to talk about something like, that we didn't realize how those times were back then. It was tough.

So anyway, things went along. Dad took it over. I went through Virginia Heights Elementary School onto Woodrow Wilson Junior High School, and Jefferson High School which is closed now. And didn't think much about going to Virginia Tech. Everybody in my family for three or four generations had gone to Roanoke College, so it was just assumed I would go to Roanoke College, but I really kind of did enjoy the concept of building. So as a teenager in the summers I went to work. I kind of laugh about it, that dad said he really wanted me to learn the construction business from the ground up, and he gave me a pick and shovel and I started going the wrong way the first day, the ground down. And we dug them then but we didn't have a lot of equipment. And then we were building a church in 8:00southwest Roanoke, and I guess about my third summer or so, and I was rolling gravel and rolling concrete and general labor stuff, for some reason it seemed like I had the world's biggest wheelbarrow. At least they filled it up that way on me, but he came out with the superintendent and was standing... I was in the foundation standing up and he said, "Well, do you think Sam is ready for a hammer?" And at that time, if you carried a claw hammer you were considered a carpenter's helper, so I'm really excited, I'm getting a promotion. It had nothing to do with union or anything, it was just a tradition.

Unfortunately, I guessed wrong and the hammer that he gave me had a big air hose hooked to a compressor. And he put me on a jackhammer all summer long in the basement of another church that we were working on. [Laughs] And I mean, you get an appreciation, but I laughed. I had a lot of muscles that summer, I just couldn't eat soup. [Laughs] But you know, and I credit my dad, I loved my dad, but it taught me how to work with the men that eventually I would come to supervise, and how to respect for what they did.

David: Was that his plan do you think?

Sam: Oh yes. Oh yeah, very much so. He very much cared for his workers. To this day, 92 years old, we have never laid a superintendent off because of lack of work in the history of the company. We've had to let some go who didn't measure up, but he cared so... And not only that, but for their families. We tried to do 10:00the same thing and we're very proud. We have several families that are third, three, and one would have been fourth generation with our company. And it just means a lot to me, because I learned so much from those guys. And they were kind enough to teach me. I mean, I'm not an accomplished carpenter or whatever, but they took the time. I can remember dad saying, "You walk on a job, if you see the men straining under a load or something you jump under there. I don't care if you've got a tuxedo on and do it." And the men, I think, kind of realized 11:00that I wasn't some high and mighty thing. When they'd come in the office here I kind of had a thing ... I liked to see them. I don't care if I'm on the phone. I don't care if your shoes are full of mud. Just say hi. I just want to talk, because a lot of people think that in a construction company it's the boss that does everything. To be honest with you, if I were building you a building, my field superintendent or the carpenters will have far more interaction with you than I will. They're the real salesmen for our company. Our workers sell more contracts... And the owners would say, "I want Joe or I want Billy or Jerry to be the superintendent." And they'll wait for them, which really means a lot.

I guess I was just really lucky that... if I put it truthfully, I probably hadn't worked too many days in my life. I love to build. If I could stay away 24 12:00hours a day, I'd build 24 hours a day. I just loved it.

David: It really comes across, even when you were talking about Uncle John, I could hear the admiration if your voice when you said he loves to build. So you really were raised with that.

Sam: That was it.

David: Was there ever any doubt?

Sam: But my father never pushed me to come into construction. My mother did, but my father didn't.

David: But was there ever any doubt in your mind?

Sam: Not really. Not after I knew what I wanted to do. So anyway, 1958 I graduated from Jefferson High School and went on to Virginia Tech and entered the Cadet Corp, not quite the way I had intended. In July of that year I was hit 13:00head-on by a drunk driver, and I didn't walk away from it. I busted my arm and messed up my knee and so forth. So I entered Virginia Tech with my arm in a cast, as a rat, a freshman, and went through, but got through everything. And had some wonderful upperclassmen that didn't cut me any slack, but they...fortunately by the time September in six weeks time I wasn't maybe a month with that kind of thing, but I just grew to love Virginia Tech.

David: So you were starting to say... I'm sorry to interrupt, but Roanoke College was where the family had gone, but what drew you to Tech was the 14:00construction program?

Sam: Yes. Roanoke College, good liberal arts college. I'm still tied into Roanoke College because I was the first one not to go. My father and his brother and...a lot of, almost all the family went to Roanoke College. Being Lutherans and being it's a Lutheran school. So I did still chair a post-graduate course there called the Management Institute that... Kind of an odd thing, but I was talking with Melinda Cox who is the development director for Roanoke County and this is 26 years ago, and it's hard to believe 26 years ago, and we were having lunch and we were kind of talking about things that would help the Valley. And the Chamber of Commerce has a program they call Leadership Roanoke Valley, which is very good, but there's really nothing that tied businesses together.

So we literally came up with this idea over lunch on a napkin that we 15:00called...eventually called the Management Institute, where you could get people in various disciplines, insurance, banking legal, manufacturing, whatever and if you're in middle management of a company coming up, you're kind of [00:15:11] about your job.

But as you move up the higher levels of responsibility you've got to broaden that. And that's what the Management Institute does, is it goes through the things, ethics, upsizing, downsizing, a lot more global type things taught then. So she and I took it to Roanoke College and they said that it sounded interesting, and so it was kind of a pilot and it started and we had one little quirk. The quirk was, we limited it to about 20 students, because that's all they could accommodate, and so we set up a thing that could only be three from any one discipline things, so we got a cross-section. And then the thing was, 16:00you can't apply to it. The only way you could get in is to be nominated by your boss who then it's an honor, saying, hey, I have confidence in you and you're coming up, one exception being if you are the boss. So if you're the proprietor of a company you could do it. But anyway, it's just caught on and we celebrated our 25th last year, 25 years of success. So Roanoke College didn't let me go. [Laughs] They made me pay a price for going to Virginia Tech. I guess I laugh about it.

David: What a great project though. And how that must draw the community together too, just building on that.

Sam: Oh, it does, and it builds on leadership, and it's taught by the senior professors and the department heads, so Roanoke College puts a lot of emphasis on it and it's been special to me. So I don't know, I've been head of it since it was. I'm trying to tell them it's time to get somebody else. [Laughs] So anyway went into Tech and at that time I enrolled in building construction, 17:00which was a part of the College of Architecture. Had a wonderful professor who was really a father image to a lot of us. And Bill Fabral, F-A-B-R-A-L, Bill Fabral. He was just of such a personable professor, to us very knowledgeable, but he took a really...and we weren't just a number. We were a real person. He would have us over to his house very often and we'd talk about things and so forth. And he would push us and then we also had to take some courses in architecture, the traditional core courses as you start up.

I remember, kind of funny... I'm drawing a blank. Stop the thing just a minute.

There was a professor in architecture whose name was Dean Carter, who was a very well-known sculptor but also a very good professor. He's in his 90s now, and I hope he's still alive. I haven't had any contact with him. But we had to take first year architecture, and I was maybe an average draftsman, but I wasn't a super draftsman, and then you had to do these collages with paper, all this crazy stuff. And I asked him one day when he was going to start teaching me building. And he said, [laughing] "Remember, you can't build anything Lionberger until somebody designs it." [Laughs] So okay. But, and we had a fun kind of 19:00going at each other. It turned out, for whatever reason, I got the award for the Outstanding Freshman in the College of Architecture my freshman year and he had to give me the award. And it was real funny. So he says, "Well, I'm not sure my heart's really in it." But we became very good friends and I loved him dearly. He's an institution at Tech, he's very well known. It's people like that that Virginia Tech has that a lot of schools don't have that really care about me. And that's one of the things that I will always appreciate about Virginia Tech is how much they cared about me.

David: Were there others like that for you?

Sam: Oh, yeah. Of course, Favre was my primary one and he felt that way. Professor Atkins, and there are a lot of others. Then also the Cadet Corp meant 20:00so much to me because of the camaraderie. I mean, of course at that time you unless you had already been in the military you had to be in the Corp at least two years. But probably half the people stayed in. I stayed in all four years and got my commission and then went on into the Corp of Engineers.

Along the way somehow I messed up and got elected president of my class. I didn't realize at that time that it was a permanent position, so I'd also get to run all the reunions. We had a lot of fun times. And I was honored enough to be 21:00in the different association clubs and things. But the thing I remember, Ring Dance, is the big, of course, social thing of your cadet career there.

This was in 1961, yeah, 1961. The country was still in a period of segregations. And while there had been some other African American students at Tech, we had the first one in the Corp. Socially at that point events were still segregated, 22:00but he wanted to come to Ring Dance. He was part of the class. I don't know all the...but it was sort of suggested to him that maybe, can't tell him he can't come, but it was strongly suggested... Well, he and I spent a lot of time together. I liked him, a great guy, and our position was as students he was a member of the class. And there was some conflict with the university. I don't want to go into a lot, but anyway, the Dean of Student Affairs, others got into it and there were some political threats made against the dance and maybe even an injunction to stop it. You can take... put your place, a little junior at Virginia Tech's never done anything like this, and the resolution that we reached is he did come, but he was to sit in the balcony of the [War] Memorial Gym where we held the Ring Dance. Well, my date and I sat up there too, and everything...and he came and it all worked out fine. It all worked out fine, but I learned a lot about people and how things change. You know today I don't care 23:00if a person's red, black, white. I could care less. And that's the way we were. He was a wonderful guy about it. He was brought up in...but he was there. That was the key.

David: Well, I think it's interesting that you sat up there in the balcony with him. Was that a difficult decision for you to make?

Sam: Not for me. No. I thought that was good. And he was in the [00:05:38 figure]. He didn't sit up there long either. We took care of that. Once the thing got going it was pretty easy to take care of. But it was a lot of fun. It was a... Of course didn't have Castle Coliseum or anything; it was under 24:00construction. As I recall, we built kind of a...

We had Woody Herman as the band and the Four Lads sang, were the singing group. We built kind of fake front of a southern mansion and the engineers developed a moon. Of course you know the beautiful song Moonlight, VPI, the moon they engineered it so it went across the gym during the dance. I sure am glad you're building Castle Coliseum because it was a nice scrap lumber that we to build it, and it was a real special occasion. Now, I don't talk too much about it because 25:00my wife was not the date I took to Ring Dance and she often reminds me of that. So, went on to senior year and things went along and then got my commission.

David: And you were class president your senior year?

Sam: Yeah, I'm still class president. [Laughs] That's one you can't end. So anyway, I got my... My mother and father were very very kind and they thought, well, you're going in the army engineer so they'll probably send you out to Fort Leonard Wood in Missouri which is 50 miles from nowhere, so they gave me a trip to Europe as a graduation present. And I went to Europe and went over on the Queen Mary and came home on the Queen Elizabeth, and I was with about 30 something other college kids. We were stuck in the bottom of the ship, but we 26:00didn't really care. We had a ball. And so after getting back, then I figured I'd got to Leonard Wood. I got my orders and it sent me right back to Europe. And I was originally... My skill was a combat engineer. I guess that's when you're young and stupid. But with my construction background and the fact that it was the Cold War era they needed construction count, so they shifted me to a construction engineer.

So in January I shipped out to... Well, I went to Fort Belmar [00:08:35] for my training. A fellow that really worked me over but became good friends was a guy 27:00named Lou [00:08:40 Shubert]. He was an all-American at VMI. [Laughs]

David: Keeps coming back.

Sam: [Laughs] But a good guy, a really wonderful guy and he did his job very well.

And my wife's family came here from Schenectady, New York. Her dad was with the General Electric Corporation and was with the original group that came and opened the General Electric Plant in Salem. We were not too happy about these 'Yankees' coming down here, and I was terribly jealous. Her folks and my folks happened to play in a bridge club together, so that's how we ended up meeting. I was so jealous of her because she had a swimming pool at her house and we didn't. But anyway, so we got together and in December before I shipped out we 28:00got engaged to be married, and at that time she was attending William and Mary. So after...and we decided we would wait until I would maybe come home and get married, but then after it was... I kid people, I say it was cold as heck over in Europe and so I decided we'd get married sooner, [laughs] so we got married in the following September. And then she was able at that point to come over with me, and she was only 19 years old at the time, and to leave home and go to Europe, not only to be married, but for what we were facing over there.

David: And where were you stationed there?

Sam: I was originally stationed in a place called Toul-Rosieres, which is not too far from the big city of Nancy. Nancy was a pretty good size city, about the size of Roanoke, and Toul-Rosieres was about the size of Salem. It was the site of an early World War I air base. A lot of people, including my wife's grandfather, flew out of there. And then we did construction work in and around that area with D Company 97th Engineers.

I remember reporting for duty and the first morning we got up and my commander was an airborne ranger West Pointer. And you do the exercise called the Army Daily Dozen, except the street had about three inches of ice on it. It was so cold, so we had to put gloves on so that our hands wouldn't stick, but we still did them because the army said you have to do them. A wonderful guy... He and I ... He's a West Point graduate as I said, but just a good commander and we became very very good friends, but also he was a demanding commander and I 30:00learned a lot from him.

And I remember reporting in and then he said, "Okay, Lieutenant, you go in and see the first sergeant and he will tell you what all..." So I get in there and the sergeant then was Singleton. And the first question he asked me, he says, "Lieutenant, you know who runs the army?" And I said, "Yessir, I think I know who runs the army, and it isn't the lieutenants." And he said, "You're right." He says, "The NCOs run the army." [Laughs] And we just became very good friends. And I did a lot of construction work over there. We had a little problem from time to time because this is still not that far after World War II. And in the 31:00depots and they were beginning to assimilate a lot of material there just because of the tensions with the Russians, but some of the East German, they put spies ... but they get into the depots and try to sabotage some things. So that's what part of we had to do, patrols and so forth, and we actually had the killer dogs. They were trained by the Polish...a lot of the Polish army people who survived and they trained them. Several times at night you'd go along a patrol by a fence and those dogs would hit that fence and it will scare the fire out of you. Two East Germans got in the depot one night and the dogs got to them before the guys did, and they didn't kill them but they took a few chunks out of them, but after that we didn't have too much problem. Every once in a while doing construction we'd might run over an old mine or something of that nature. 32:00One time it was enough to separate the treads, but most of them had gotten pretty weak by then, but we still had to watch out for them.

David: So you had been a teenager during the Korean War, right?

Sam: Yes.

David: And then you're over there and then Vietnam is on the horizon.

Sam: Vietnam, had I stayed in, I would probably have gone to Vietnam, but at that point dad was getting ready to retire and I had done my time and so, I'll get down the road and I'll tell you. I was still involved, whatever. So yeah, I stayed in the reserves for eight years. I was a captain when I got out of the reserves. A very meaningful Captain Johnston who was my commander nominated me for the Army Accommodation Medal, which I was honored to receive after I got back here for work.

We had one project to take a hangar, a airplane hangar, and it was 200 feet wide, 50 feet high clear span. And it was about 300 feet long, and it was theoretically designed to be portable. My idea of portable and the government's idea of portable were a little different. But it had laid on the end of a runway since the late '40s and they never put it up, so we were given the job of putting it up. It was the largest construction project underway that the Corp of Engineers had underway anywhere in the world using Army troops. It was in [00:15:40 Brianne Chateau], and that's when my wife came over and joined me at that time. We were in [Brianne 00:15:48].

David: And you were in charge of that project?

Sam: Well, the company, our company was in charge. Captain Johnston was kind of the one, but the company we each had things to do and it was interesting. But we still had to meet Corp of Engineer specifications, but we didn't have much equipment. We actually mixed concrete in a little highway paver and carried it in dump trucks. I mean, you think about things... The concrete we got was French concrete and it was pretty halfway hard anyway, it wasn't the best quality, but we still...a lot of things, but we got it done. The interesting thing was though it was the largest project in the world in our Army troops and it went along really pretty good. But you see there are also fun because it was a military base that they had army aircraft there, the light aircraft and helicopters. And 35:00we'd put the frames up and everything and we'd be working, those nuts would come and fly through the hanger underneath. I could have dropped a wrench down and taken a helicopter out, but it was a good time. I was just very fortunate.

Then I had a serious thing. I had to go to Berlin on assignment, and I couldn't take my wife with me. At that time, the Cold War, we were going to drive in, so we went to the little town of Helmstadt and that's where we got an orientation and they showed us photographs of every intersection. And don't pay any attention to the road signs, because the Germans they would turn them around and try to throw you off, and if you got off, they had the right to arrest you. And so we also had to go through Russian checkpoints to get a pass to go through the 36:00East German checkpoint because the United States didn't recognize the East German government. So remember we're just 19 and 20 years old.

...21 then. And we went along fine until we got to the Russian checkpoint outside of Berlin and went in and presented my orders. And I don't exactly know why, but all of a sudden two Russian soldiers with machine guns ran out to either end of our car and they held us there about 40-45 minutes. I didn't speak Russian. I just smiled and hoped they were in a good mood too, but eventually they let us go. So we went on into Berlin. Berlin was a nice, bustling city. 37:00Still some remnants of the war, but a nice bustling city. We were able though to go on an escorted trip over through what was then Checkpoint Charlie. Go through the wall, into East Berlin. West Berliners were not allowed to go into East Berlin. That's probably the ugliest thing I have ever seen in my life. The pictures that you see here don't do justice at all. I mean to build a wall to keep people in, but that was what faced West Berlin. What you didn't see behind it were the other lines of barbed wire fences and the mine field, and it was like 50 yards.

And there were buildings, if it was on the border you would see windows just blocked up, everything. The fence ran along the top with heavy heavy jagged 38:00glass in the barbed wire. But got out there and in East Berlin there were broad avenues and what appeared to be nice buildings. Almost all of them had a red drape of [00:20:02] on it. But being a builder I kind of looked at things a little differently, and it didn't take too long to realize that probably a third of the buildings were stage fronts and it was just rubble behind it. And there weren't many people out and very few cars. They would stop and tell us things. People there could see we were Americans because of the uniform. I've never looked in the eyes of somebody and seen hopelessness, and I really learned what freedom was all about that day, and it changed my whole life. Freedom isn't free 39:00and it's not permanent and it's not something you take for granted. I mean those people looking you know and I could go back and probably they had relatives on the other side of the wall over there. It was a very somber sobering day and it changed my whole outlook from that point on.

So anyway, so eventually we came home. Well the other thing that happened, I was there when unfortunately President Kennedy was assassinated. We had some people over to our apartment and at that time we were living kind of downtown and we had no TV or no computers. We had a radio, an armed forces radio, and the first reports we got were that President Johnson had been shot. Then pretty quickly it changed to no, it was Kennedy. We didn't know if he was alive. But then the 40:00alerts went off because we didn't know if it was some balloons going up, we didn't know. And here is my 19-year-old wife and she had to take the car. Now we did have to keep some water, some C-rations and blankets in the back of the car and we had to keep the tank always half full, that was a requirement so that if something did occur she was to get in the car. She had a map to get back into a little further in toward Western France. The Western coast of France faces the United States so we can get away. And then the government would commandeer my car. Never knew whether they would pay me for it or not, but then they would try to get the dependents out and we would go do what we had to do and I would revert to a combat engineer.

So this went on and then we found out it was the alert and then finally they realized it wasn't an attack. I didn't really understand the charisma of 41:00Kennedy, but the Europeans loved him. They were far more emotional about his death than Americans were. The paper the next morning out in the street had a big deadline Kennedy is Dead and the French would come up and they would hug you and they were crying. They would say, "I'm so sorry," and really a closeness there. But anyway, that was a life-changing time too.

David: That must have been a stressful time before you really knew what was going on.

Sam: Oh yeah, we didn't know. I mean I put on my steel helmet and told my wife goodbye. 19 years old. I'm 23...yeah. But we knew what we were in for. We knew 42:00why we were there and we had to do it and so we did it, and so did everybody else that was there. It wasn't just me.

David: That just speaks to that time during that Cold War, the feeling that anything could happen at any moment.

Sam: Exactly, exactly. And we knew...

We had already practiced. One time one of the projects I was involved in, they did a massive undertaking, the first time they had ever done it called Operation Big Lift, and they flew the airlift and the entire 4th Army Division from Ft. Hood Texas to a place called [Sheterva 00:24:19] in France which was Eisenhower's headquarters during the Second World War for a time. It happened to be an airfield there, and here I am a little junior 2nd lieutenant and my platoon was assigned to build a 4,000-man tent camp along this runway at this 43:00airport. Then the rest of the company was back, they would build some of the things that we needed to support us, but we were the field crew. It was interesting to build all that stuff.

I remember I got so mad. There was a major who I guess was trying to get further up, but he insisted that I survey in the tent pegs so they were really straight, so when the general flew over to land it would look beautiful, and I'm just trying to keep them out of the mud you know.

David: 4,000 tents. [Laughs]

Sam: Yeah, anyway. So we had to build some access roads off the runways and were kind of spread out, so I guess I'm used to it. So I took the bulldozer and I 44:00just go along and grade the road because I go by the various platoons and I would see it, and the captain just flipped out. So they made me wear tans instead of fatigues for a while because I was too close to the work. [Laughs] So anyway we built the camp. The guys came. They flew the 4th Army. It was successful. These are just little things coming to mind, but as they pulled out to go other places one of the things in the Army is you police your area or you clean up. Well this one battalion pulled out and they didn't do a very good job. Here I'm a 2nd lieutenant, but I called my captain and I said, "I don't mind building the tents, I don't mind building the latrines, but I just don't feel like I'm the garbage man." And he said, "Well I think you're right." I thought 45:00okay. I was going on to do something else, and my jeep driver came up and said, "Lieutenant there's a general that wants to talk to you." A general? Uh, okay. So I knocked the dust off my boots and I go in and report to this Brigadier General, found out he was the Deputy Division Commander of the 4th Army Division.

"Lieutenant I understand you've got a problem." Well I'm not going to lie to him. I mean I happen to be a judge in the Honor Court when I was at Tech and I'm not going to lie to him. I said, "No sir, this is what I think." I said, "We should clean up the area" He said, "Well I went out there and looked at it." I thought okay, he's going to say get your butt out there and clean it up. He said, "You're right. I turned that battalion around, they're coming back." And I saluted and said, "Thank you sir; I'm kind of busy." [Laughs] And I got out and figured he would find me hanging from a tree somewhere. Little things like that that tell you it meant a lot to me as a lieutenant that a general would say that.

David: And you mentioned the Tech Honor Court, so something from Tech that was playing out for you.

Sam: Yeah. I started out I was sergeant arms and then secretary and we had two judges...class schedule, so I was one of the judges. But you know there was one of the wonderful people -- gosh it's all coming back, named Lawrence Koontz. Now Lawrence went on to become a member of the Junior Supreme Court, but he was the defense attorney one year. We didn't have many cases obviously and gladly, but if a student got off with what we might have considered a little bit lighter sentence Lawrence would take them back to one of the rooms of the Squires Center and it was worse than the Honor Corp. And he did more to straighten people out and I have always had the highest respect for him for that, because he was a 47:00student too. I mean he was a year ahead, he was a senior. But I just thought that was...that he took a real interest and we saved a lot of kids. I mean he did a lot.

But that's what that Honor Court does for. I think it's one of the traditions of Tech that's so good and we still maintain that and it's student-run as opposed to faculty-run, and I think that's part of the character of Virginia Tech. At least I liked him and he was a good judge on the Supreme Court. He's retired now.

David: Why is it important that its student-run?

Sam: Because it's our school and it's our Honor Code, student-run Honor Code. I think with the faculty...one of those people doing it. It's a 'we' thing. It's why we are in the Cadet Corp. It's why we teach the honor and integrity of being 48:00a cadet.

And it's passed down from class to class to class to class because we value that. I mean you don't lie. You don't lie, cheat, or steal. I mean you don't sort of lie, sort of cheat, you don't, and I just think the fact that it was student-run it means more to the students than the faculty. The faculty had a lot of other things they had to do, but that's part of the cadets. I just think it's an integrity builder you know. A lot of fun. Oh gosh, here we go on to senior year and some of the people happen to be on staff my senior year. ...Commandant, my senior year because I still had class president duties to do 49:00and it was really fun.

And we lived in the tower at Eggelston Hall. Band company, the highty tighties lived in a portion of Eggelston Hall too. They were our protectors, because one of the deals with the freshman is you are supposed the throw the staff in the Duck Pond. Well we didn't worry about it at all because we had the band there you know. And they had some [00:31:24] some raids. At that time they had 50:00commandants or assistant commandants who actually lived in the barracks up on [00:31:35] Hall and Eggleston and so forth. And everything worked okay until the spring of my senior year when one night my room was filled with members of the highty tighties who did escort me to the Duck Pond. [Laughs] And I can tell you why it's called the Duck Pond, but...yeah. [Laughs] But you know that's part of the fun. We did a lot of pranks and a lot of stuff. At that time you didn't have to be in the military, but we had a lot of people come back from Korea at that time too, so those guys were half crazy. Lots of stuff happened.

David: What was that like? There's the Corp, but then you've got some veterans coming back in. What was that like?

Sam: Well sometimes, one that they kind of thought it was a little Mickey Mouse 51:00sometimes. We had never been in combat and things like that, whatever, but some of them were really good, and they do some crazy stuff now and then. See they didn't have to be in the Cadet Corp, but what they were on was the GI Bill, so they also valued that educational experience. It was just kind of fun. Then of course the football was picking up at that time. We didn't have Lane Stadium. We didn't have Castle Coliseum.

My class was actually the very first class to see basketball in the coliseum, the senior class, but there were no seats in it. We sat on the concrete risers.

David: Where was basketball played before then?

Sam: In the War Memorial Gym, not a very good place for visiting team. If you're coming for a layup and of course the basket is here and you're not going to stop when you get here, well the football players all sat there and you would end up 52:00about 20 rows up with a few kidney punches on the way down. [Laughs] Anyway. And I remember we played Florida State. Florida State was ranked #3 in the country and they had this famous end named Fred Balitnickoff and we beat them and he was so mad he threw a football all the way over Miles Stadium.

The dining hall, we made a lot of fun at the dining hall. Sunday nights when you would come back, you had been home, you had come home and they would have what we affectionately called mystery meat. We don't know what it was when it was delivered. We couldn't tell what it was. And some nights you could play baseball with the rolls they were so hard.

David: Have you eaten there lately?

Sam: Oh yes.

David: It's a change.

Sam: Now we're #1 or 2 in the country you know. But you know, pranks and back 53:00then they put in a tray conveyor, because we used to have to carry out stuff. One day they were dissecting a little piglet or something and he brought it over there and they put it on a tray, stuffed it full of napkins and just before it went through they lit it with a match and it goes down. And I remember now, I can hear now the screaming of the ladies, "Ah!" But then it started backing up and the tray starting [peeling off the line.] They told us what would happen if we ever did that again. But overall you know, we had one time that unfortunately they get a hold of something... Now you can't put this too much in your thing, it was in the spring and there was some bad meat that got in there and we all 54:00got diarrhea. I mean we were wearing white uniforms and it lasted for about a week. Somebody would be walking down in front of Burruss Hall and all of a sudden you would see them take of running. We almost demanded that the governor come down and eat some of it. [Laughs]

David: You laugh about it now, but at the time...

Sam: So anyway, so I came home from the service and came back here and began to get back involved with Tech and I was asked to serve on the alumni board for several terms, which was a big honor.

And then from there involved in several other things, including the Smith Mountain Lake 4H Center, which is tied in the foundation. And that's where I met 55:00a man who also was a very strong mentor to me, his name is Bill Skelton and that center is named after him. Bill headed up the Extension Service of Tech. He was also the International President of Rotary I believe it was, just a great guy. We were kind of building the thing along, so I finally found out he was the one behind a nomination that I got the Distinguished Alumni Award. I guess it was 1999, which I was totally surprised. I can remember going to his house and he had this little study, a little office and he would go in and sit down and he would talk about weather for maybe a minute. Then he would pull out his pad, 56:00"Okay Lionberger, this is your assignment," and give me a report on everything. Yes sir Dr. Skelton, but we loved him dearly. We just loved him dearly. And now that 4H Center and through the generosity of a lot of other people including Marshall Hahn and others it's probably the #1 4H Center in America. A lot of people don't know what's down there, and it's part of Virginia Tech. And I have [00:37:50], but it's such a great place. A lot of lives have been changed down there.

Then got in the building, I was part of the steering committee for the [capita campaign, the billion dollar campaign], and I've just done different things. I kind of draw a blank as to why it is, but along three years ago, it was right 57:00after the bad day there at Tech, I remember the day very well it happened. We were building an addition to the high school up there. My nephew who was the one in the Navy Seals was at the Osteopathic College and they put a lot of those kids there to help the rescuers you know. We never thought something like could ever happen at Virginia Tech and it did. It was just something none of us could believe.

Anyway, the next morning I had a meeting I already scheduled with the Chief Operations Officer at the hospital and I called him up and I said, "Do you want to meet?" He said, "Yeah, the state police have the high school cordoned off and 58:00I'm just directing traffic so to speak." So we went up there and met and learned about some of the stuff. They were trying everything they could to get in and get interviews. Of course they wanted the dramatic stuff and whatever. The police kept them out and Blacksburg...they actually ended up putting porta-johns out in the parking lot. They wouldn't let the media in because they were so badly... And you would drive up to the alumni center and there were probably 100 satellite trucks out there. And bless their heart the students put a little paper on every satellite truck that said 'please go away. Leave us alone and let us deal with it.'

The funny thing, when I pulled up that morning there were three reporters, these people running to my car. I didn't hardly get the door open. And one of them, he 59:00was I remember from the Los Angeles Times and so, "Are you a doctor? Are you a doctor?" And I said, "No, I'm a builder." He said, "Oh." That made me mad because I like to build. [Laughs] They were trying to get somebody to ease them into the hospital. I mean just all kind of stuff. But the outpouring of... We play UVA a lot, I mean they are our competitor, but John Casteen and UVA and other schools, I mean we saw what it meant, what friendship meant. I would be very happy to see some kind of a memorial or a monument to John Casteen because he was the rock. And to go into Squires Hall or others and see the flowers and everything, I mean I you would cry. I mean you just couldn't help but not do it.

But, that kind of changed everything. Well it was about that time that later, 60:00right after that I got a call that Charles couldn't come because he was obviously tied up with this stuff. And so Dr. Flanagan came and [Ray 00:41:48] came with her. I'll think in a minute, but I met at Salem and that's when they told me that I was going to get the Ruffner medal, and I cried.

I still do. I mean I've never had anything like that happen to me. I'm just a graduate of Virginia Tech you know.

David: What did it mean? Why did you have that response?

Sam: Well, I mean that's an award they gave to like [00:42:26], people of that 61:00statute. I'm not in that group. I mean I admire all those people. I was happy to do whatever I do, but I never... It just blew me away. It still blows me away. So now you know next year I'll go in as president elect, or this year's president elect of the Old Guard. I think they just... If you're an old class president then you've got [laughs] [00:42:57] the Old Guard. But still it's a place I just never really left there and I don't ever want to leave there. There's something about Virginia Tech that it's not like any other college university, and I'm chairman of Ferrum College right now, a small college. I would love for it to have that aura that Virginia Tech has, you know, camaraderie of students. I use the Honor Code. I use a lot of things at Ferrum 62:00to try to motivate. And it's a good school but of course much smaller, but to bring along that...

It's like trying to define what a Hokie is you know, and it's very very hard to do. One of my friend's said, "Well it's a [turftee] with a lot of integrity that will kick your rear-end," [laughs]. But what tech produces the quality of the students, and that's why we're moving up every year and the employers are coming because they know our kids get a good Corp foundation, what you and I might call the old reading, writing, and arithmetic. But when they graduate they're ready to go to work and they become productive for an employer faster than somebody 63:00that's unfortunately got a lot of way out stuff that you've got to unlearn they learned. At Tech they teach you nobody owes you anything. Just because you graduated doesn't mean anything, but it gives you those skills that you can count on. It doesn't matter what you go into, you get that Corp value. But it's also that integrity and that honor of truthfulness and how you work with other people. It's so hard for me to put into words what Tech means to me and what it means to everybody that's graduated, not just me.

I'm sure it means the same thing to everybody else, why that school and why we stay connected, because we don't ever want to leave. We just go up there... I didn't tell anybody about it, I was very proudly, the daughter-in-law that was Virginia's Junior Miss back when they had the Junior Miss programs. And she went 64:00on to Tech; remember the High Techs and she was also Ms. Montgomery County while she was there. But she and my son got involved with the state pageant for Junior Miss and we had only had four boys, so we keep three girls. One year three of the girls, we had three girls and I think two of them came and they had been at the house 10 or 15 minutes maybe before we started talking about Virginia Tech. And one girl said, "Well they just have cows grazing out there on the drill field." And I said, "What?" And she was from Eastern Virginia. I couldn't handle it and I was supposed to not take them out of Roanoke County, but about 11 o'clock that night I had them riding around the drill field at Virginia Tech and we were eating pizza and stuff and they learned a little bit. [Laughs] I violated every rule [laughs].

It's so hard to put into words what it's like, but I've been on a lot of other 65:00campuses and I've never seen anything like that. One of my relatives, my nephew's son I just took him up there a couple of weeks ago, and of course it's grown so much, but the walking around and he's tried to apply to Tech. I think he will get in okay, but he said, "Sam it's just different here isn't it? Everybody speaks to you." I said, "Yeah, most people do. That's what we're supposed to do." And of course he loved it. The campus sells itself; it's so beautiful. And he said, "You know I think I would really like to be here." You can't hardly find much wrong with Virginia Tech. And then of course with all our new people coming in, Dr. Sands, athletics does a lot with it. I'm a member of 66:00the Hacking Hokies. We support the golf team. I guess that's a pretty good name for us, for our golf skills.

But like this winter we were in Florida. I get a call from Coach Hardwick, the golf coach. "Come on over, we're playing Mission Hills." We went over and he met us, met all the team. We didn't take a lot of time because they were in their tournament which we won, but for him to take the time out for someone like me, just to call me up to come all the way... It wasn't far over there, but to come just because he knew we were there, and that's class. That's just wonderful. I get tired of people thinking we're some kind of cow college you know. We're pretty classy.

David: And as you said you've seen a lot of change. There's been a lot of change 67:00and growth. So what are some of the changes that you've found most interesting in the long view?

Sam: I think one of the things that has impressed me so much is the growth of the Corporate Research Center. Joe Meredith is a good friend and we built several of the buildings in there, the Osteopathic College and so forth. But I don't think a lot of people realize how far up the chain Virginia Tech is in research now, and that's part of the future. I don't think they also realize the solid foundations that we built. We don't push a lot of way-out stuff. I think that the way we do an orientation now for new kids coming in and I get involved 68:00in that some, called Hokie Camp. You should go over sometime, it's a hoot. But, think about yourself when you went to college the first time -- who are all these, I don't have any friends. When you get to Hokie Camp you go up there and you come down on the bus. You get there and the cheerleaders are cheering and everybody...and you leave there with 150 or 200 friends, so when you walk back up the campus to start it's not like you don't anybody. You already know people and you know the traditions and you know why Virginia Tech is ranked so high in a lot of employers' minds. It's because we care. We care about people.

The research that's going on up there in the Corporate Research Center is just phenomenal. I went to a thing for the Cancer Society not long ago and the 69:00speaker was the head of the [Vet] School, and they are doing cancer research and nobody ever thought Virginia Tech doing medical research? They are kids.

But he said, "We think out of the box. We brought the young engineers in, electrical engineers in and said maybe there's something we can do together." And they said, "Well Doc, you're going in..." And they are using animals, and I don't know a lot about cancer although my wife has had some issues... But cancer cells don't like to be messed with. Well now they can actually go down and literally almost hit a cell. And the electrical guy says, "Well I think I can get a little wire down there and we can zap it." And the head of the [Vet] School is literally jumping. I mean he's so excited. He said, "We haven't been 70:00able to cure cancer; we've been able to kill it." I mean everybody is standing and applauding you know. It's just fabulous. That's just one thing and there's so many other ways.

But Virginia Tech is not afraid to think out of the box. That maybe is one of the things that sets us aside. It's not the same old same old. It's always new and of course all the new construction going. I was part of the architecture and look where architecture is going and building structure. Nowadays people used to think of people like me, yeah well, he's got a decent car and a saw that's not too rusty, maybe he can do something. Now construction is a very sophisticated business. I mean we are very sophisticated. Computers, models and everything that it takes to do it in today's environment because there's so much 71:00more...buildings are a little more complicated, but you still use the same principles. But like my dad said, if you shake a man's hand it better be better than any piece of paper you sign. You don't do it.

He also said...I remember it very clearly, he said you try to give a man a dollar and a nickel for his dollar you'll have work all the time. You might get a little low but you will never run out of work and he's right. That's what we live on. Integrity is #1 at this company. We're not the low bidder. We don't want to be the low bidder. I used to tell clients price, quality, and time -- choose two. [Laughs]

David: I was just thinking, because you live here, this is where you live, and it must be nice to be able to drive around and see that your family helped build 72:00this City in some ways.

Sam: I love it. I do. I love driving and see it and the families that built it, yeah.

I remember fun things, like Coach Hartman came to see me one day at Tech, former baseball coach. And they had kind of a crappy baseball stadium. He said, "Why don't we build a baseball stadium?" I said, "Okay." So he and I got together and [raise gifts and 00:54:20] whatever, so we built the stadium. [Laughs] It's kind of funny. I don't know all the where's and why fors, but the State of Virginia came in and says, "You can't do that, that's on State property. I see where the Corporate Research Center is on private property. You can't do that on State property." Hartman said, "We've already done it." We were getting ready to build 73:00a penthouse you know. Tech doesn't sit back. Tech...he gets things done and now look at it.

David: So what are your hopes going forward then?

Sam: Oh me. Well, that's a very good question. One, I hope my health...helds up so far, I'm lucky, because I'd like... I'm really looking forward to the next 25 or 30 years. I don't know, maybe I will make a golf tee time when I'm 95. I don't know.

David: I wouldn't be surprised.

Sam: I love to stay involved. I love the people, not only at Tech but other places. I like to stay close enough to the company that I kind of know what's going on, but I'm not... I've got to back off because my son Sam is ready to run 74:00it. He's doing a good job of running it and he doesn't need me trying to run in here saying-- I just back him up 100%. It's nice they do give me a refill on my coffee, [Laughs] when I come in.

I'm somewhat concerned about education today. Well I'm a lot concerned about education today. What we're seeing now, and this is both from Virginia Tech Roanoke College and Ferrum, all three, but we're starting to see the number of graduates starting to flat line, not necessarily the number that goes to college. And I think we've got to really look at changing our educational system, particularly one of the things we've got to work on a little bit is with the community college system which is very good, but now they have gotten to the 75:00point you can go to community college and then if you have a certain grade average you are guaranteed a slot at Virginia Tech or UVA or whatever.

I had a kid came to me two years ago. He was [00:57:01] 4.0+ graduate, GPA, wanted to transfer to Tech. We couldn't get him in because the slots were reserved for community college. So I think we've got to look at that because once we get them at Tech and they stay there then they will be supporters and they will become CEOs. At one point we were #3 in the country in the graduates that are CEOs in major corporations. We may still be, I don't know. And that doesn't mean they are all A students and whatever. I mean a lot of CEOs are C students. I was...I'm not sure I could get in Tech now. [Laughs] I think we have 76:00to really look at where we are in the world. We've got to take a more global perspective. I think unfortunately politics has played an ugly role in education. When you see that we're ranked #30-something in math skills in undergraduate education in the world that's pathetic. That's pathetic. We've done so much screwing around with teaching and the whole thing is kind of a mess and unfortunately it's the politicians and there's too much politics in education. We need to get education back to be education.

But we also need to challenge students more. And I think so often we're expected...well you just go ahead...and everybody has got it, we don't want to 77:00make anybody feel bad. Yeah, you know, I finally found out that 'F' didn't mean favorite you know. [Laughs] I took second quarter calculus and we had a...you know what [koofers] are?

David: Hmm.

Sam: Okay. Well I just happened...we got a set of koofers at every quiz hit. So [00:59:17] and I just pretty soon memorizing that and got in there, and I went into the exam with about a 90-92 average. The exam I had memorized that sucker, but it really wasn't the exam I looked at.

David: Oops.

Sam: I got a 47 on the final exam and the professor wrote across the top, "Sam, 78:00don't trust koofers! F." So I retook the course, but I learned a lot from him. He taught me more in that one little phrase I think than anywhere. [Laughs] But he did me a favor you know.

Now theoretically even though I had an A average and at that point they could only drop you two grades so I got a C in the course, but I didn't know calculus. I don't use it much now, but he taught me something. It was fun. I hadn't thought about that in a while. But I think we've got to get back to making education more stimulus. We are the best and freest country in the world. Until you've been away from the United States you don't realize what we have here. And 79:00then too many people... I'm really worried about this influx of immigrants coming in and this ISIS and all these things. But the turmoil -- our school systems are always in turmoil, and there's so much petty stuff going on that we've got to get back to learning, just pure learning. We're 30th-something in the world? That's pathetic, and we've been there for a while and we're not making any progress on it.

And we're still the shining light on the hill to the rest of the world, but I think we short-change students sometimes by being too easy on them. Most people, you know you talk to a lot of people in business you know what experience is. Experience is when you failed because you didn't do something right and you learn how to do it right.

I had an architect, he was an old marine named Roy Kensick and he used to talk 80:00to me about the cold hard business of architecture. But Roy said, "You know," one day we were having lunch or something and he says, "Do you want to know what design really is?" And I said, "Well yeah, tell me." And he said, "It's the logical discarding of ideas that weren't worth a darn in the first place." [Laughs]

David: I like that.

Sam: But we have to look at things and we have to be creative, but we've got to get back to our rightful place in the world. I was asked to run for congress by both parties, which is kind of interesting. I mean I wasn't at the point economically or anything that I could do it, but I'm still trying to stay 81:00involved somewhat. My wife and I belong to the Heritage Foundation, which supports the Constitution and I very strongly support the Constitution, and I think we've got to get back to some of our roots...

And start being the example to a lot of other countries in the world. We can outdo anybody. We can outdo anybody because that's a part of our American heritage, but we've got to unloosen the things that are restricting us from doing it. there's too much sensitivity in racial harmony, too much sensitivity in other things. Yeah, I can't change the fact that I'm white and somebody else isn't. But I recall one of the first times I went to build a church that had 82:00predominantly...an African American church. I went in and sat down with the building committee. Yeah, he noticed, I'm the only white guy, for maybe three or four minutes. It doesn't matter. They are just people. They are just people like us that care. And we've got to get over that stuff. Some of my very best friends are African American and we don't... I mean it never enters your mind anymore.

I'm not trying to say I'm some super person that's done that. I mean I recognize it, but sometimes I think we've got too many political groups that are too sensitive, or that make money. And I'll be honest, I think there are a lot of people in this country that are very well known that make a lot of money over racism. They want the problem, not the solution. The problem makes them money. 83:00They get a solution and... I think we've got to get over that, and I hope we can, whether it takes a change in leadership. How much change in leadership I don't know. We'll just have to see, but at some point we've got to respect people for being people. To me that's important. Where you come from, what your color is that should be something we could care less and maybe I can be a small part of it before I leave this earth. Well I'm not going to leave the earth; I've got a cemetery plot over there. [Laughs]

David: I really appreciate your time today. I like to end by asking was there 84:00something you thought that I might have asked that I didn't ask or I should have asked you?

Sam: It was pretty good. I care about people.

I guess you would say I'm a people person because I love people. I love learning, and I don't think you ever get too old to learn. And just because somebody is younger than you doesn't mean you can't learn from them. I learn from my kids. I learn from my grandkids you know. And I think also we've got to stop putting this country down. Until you've been away, even as bad as things may seem to be here we're so much better than most of the other countries, but we're sliding down. We need to pick up because we need to be the example. We 85:00have the ability to be the example. If you have the ability you have the responsibility, and our education system is what's going to do it. I really love education. My involvement even little Ferrum College over here.

David: How did that involvement start? Do you have a personal tie there?

Sam: We built some buildings over there for them and just started in and Dr. Boone was the president at that point. My father had two very good friends who had donated significantly to Ferrum. It was started by United Methodist Women as kind of a high school for students and then sort of evolved. I kid them, I say well you know when I first went on the board I was the token Lutheran, so you know what kind of jobs I got. [Laughs] But it was a rural school and it tried to 86:00help that class of people in Franklin County and the surrounding areas that didn't really have a chance to go to a Tech or a UVA, but yet they cared and people cared about them.

Oh there are so many stories I could tell you about students who came there with nothing. We had a kid from Kenya two years ago that his parents got enough money to send him to the U.S., didn't understand him. He was supposed to be going to Liberty. Got on the wrong bus. He ended up in South Boston, didn't have any money. It was cold. He had actually taken his socks off and put on his hands, was cold. And a lady that happened to be a member of our board her church took him in and talked to him and sort of figured Liberty is a great school but it was too big, it would overwhelm him, and took him to Ferrum and he graduated in four years. I had dinner with him the night before graduation and I asked him 87:00what are you going to do? He said, "I'm going back to Kenya and I'm going to tell them that all of this stuff they've heard about America is wrong. America is a wonderful wonderful place."

You can buy that anywhere. You can't do it. One thing led to another and I served a couple of terms and then I've been chairman for five years or so, which doesn't mean anything but I get to take the trash out after a meeting.

David: Well you're keeping more than busy then.

Sam: Well maybe. I enjoy it. And another thing, back to the military, there's a group of us started a little organization called Military Family Support Center. We now cover all of southwest Virginia and we try to help families of people that are deployed from the area. All over southwest it's a lot of factory jobs 88:00and many of them supplemented their income by serving in the reserve, while not realizing that they would be called up 1, 2, 3 maybe 4 or 5 times now.

David: Yeah.

Sam: And these families are really hurting because they can go -- they are up and down, depending on the economy. If you get laid off they come to you for a job and you ask about... "Well my unit -- I'm in the reserves, my unit is scheduled for deployment in four months or five months." Well you're not going to hire them because you can't even train them in four months. But their pay stopped there, but the government doesn't start it until they actually report for duty. I mean these families some of them are just... And I mean I'm not talking about just privates too; I've talked to some captains and majors. And thank goodness for grandmothers who step in. But a way that we can help them and 89:00it's such a caring area here. We have a lot of businesses that will either pro bono or plumbers, electricians, painters, mechanics, accountants, anybody, and help them with a discounted cost, knowing they can donate that to help these families who are going over and helping us.

We run a pantry of dry goods, staples and things we can do. You wouldn't think you would have to give a family gas money to come and get things we can give them. They are that tight. It's just something we need to do. We need to do that as Americans to help them and so far... We're always begging for money, but we're trying to help wherever we can. It's something I've enjoyed doing. It's 90:00interesting, these people -- the one thing you don't ever say to them is this is charity. That's what they don't want. They don't want charity.

Give them a helping hand -- okay, that's fine. So we're trying to you know keep that going. Tech has been very good. Occasionally we've had the Cadet Corp come. We've had other schools, but we go all the way up to Tennessee and I enjoy that. I just enjoy kind of helping people. And you meet some great folks. I meet some wonderful people that way. They can tell you some stories. I have a little kid that will always be a little kid to me, but his father was a businessman here, and with our boys many a Saturday or Sunday I would go out in the rec room in 91:00the morning and they're all sacked out on the sofas you know and stuff.

So he ended up, he went to VMI. I didn't hold that against him too much. He went to VMI and got his commission, he was in the Army and he was in Korea and he had risen to the rank of captain, but he had an affinity for the Coast Guard and he really wanted it. So he took a voluntary demotion in his career, went back to [01:13:20], came up through the Coast Guard. His last command, he was lieutenant commander, was the Coast Guard station that took on New York Harbor, all of New York Harbor. I'll always see him as a little 5 or 6-year-old kid. But fate had it he was the duty officer when Captain Sullenberger called in.

David: Oh wow, yeah.

Sam: And this little kid coordinated all the rescue of the people on that plane. And because of what he learned at VMI and through our schools, he said when the alert...when he punched the button or whatever it is in a plane, he said, "I told them to start the boats because we didn't know." And he said, "Because we were ready we were at that plane in two minutes and everybody got off." And he said, "But the one that impressed me was Captain Sullenberger was the last one. He had on his coat and his hat when he walked off that plane with everybody." But just... Ordinary people do great things you know, like that. I was so proud of him and we're still pretty good friends. I saw him this weekend. [Laughs]

I don't know if I'm saying it right, but we have so much going for us if we just take advantage of it.

Virginia Tech has that intangible can-do attitude when you leave or when you're there as you go along, to return something back. I just thought of it. I love talking to the students. I love having them down here or going up, when I go up and give lectures at [Building] Construction. I probably give a dry lecture, but then we go out and get a few, let the kids...

David: You have the students come up over here to the company?

Sam: Oh sure, from time to time, yeah, they're down here or go up there and talk. Yeah, it's just... I think that's part of what we owe. I mean they have to 94:00have contact with businesses and they need to be out and get out. Some need financial help to do that, but nothing teaches like experience. And the professors are wonderful, and they can do the book learning, but when you talk to the guy that's there you know, what he's doing, that's when you really can learn and get your hands dirty. You know feel what's going on. A construction project gets a heartbeat to me.

David: Yeah, I bet.

Sam: You can begin to feel it going. Anyway, I get...

David: You still love it.

Sam: Oh I do. I do love it.

David: That's great.

Sam: I love to travel a little bit too and I've got to spend some time with my wife.

David: All right.

Sam: Well thank you very much.

David: Thank you so much. That was just terrific.

Sam: Probably kind of boring, but anyway.

David: No, not for a second, not at all.