Title:
Oral History Interview with W. Gerald Akers - History of College of William and Mary (Norfolk Division)
Creator:
Akers, William Gerald
Contributor:
Sweeney, James R. (Old Dominion University Archivist)
Date:
undated
Description:
One-page typewritten history of the Norfolk Division of the College of William and Mary for the 1930s and 1940s. Written by W. Gerald Akers, with edits.
Subject:
College of William and Mary--Norfolk Division--History
Coverage:
Norfolk, Virginia
Transcript:
College of William and Mary (Norfolk Division) 1930's 1940's In the early days of the College. which was affectionately known as Larchmont Tech, there was only the one old brick building on the northwest corner of Hampton Boulevard and Bolling Avenue. South of Bolling Avenue were open fields, ending in a brook or ditoh, running southwestward through the present min campus. Students came by streetcar, the fare being 5 cents. During the depression years of the 1930's, this was more than some students could scrape up every day, and some walked for considerable distances. Dr. Ernest Gray, Head of the English Department, was a short, rather chunky man, but a pretty good athlete, and performed well in baseball games with the faculty playing (and losing to) the student varsity. Dr. Gray was an incessant smoker -of cigars, mostly. When he tried to quit, he kept a good supply of candy bars in his pockets. He was an inveterate punster and wit (E.g.: Sitting by another faculty member, Lee Smith, at a windy football game, Gray said he wanted to be on the lee side ot Smith.) On a few occasions in the early years the students put on a Take-off, or caricature impersonation, of faoulty members. These were received with varying degrees of appreciation by the faculty. Dr. Lewis W. Webb, later president of the College, came in the fall of 1932 from Virginia Tech, where he had just received his Master's degree in engineering. One day when his fiancee, the very pretty Virginia Rice, came to the campus to leave a message for him, Professor Arthur G. Williams (Foreign Languages), stared after her with a beatified expression, and said to his colleague, Gerald Akers, "Akers, tell me: How can an ordinary fellow like Lewis Webb land a beautiful girl like that?" (She is the present Mrs. Webb). [Note: The following paragraphe is crossed out.] Dr. E. Ruffin Jones, Jr., Head of the Biology Department, was considered a very tough instructor. It was rumored that he flunked about one-third of the Biology 101 class just as a matter of principle. As a product of the then strictly male University of Virginia, he was felt by some female students to be unduly hard on them. [End of crossed-out paragraph.] In the mid thirties, eight faculty members signed a letter to the editor of the morning newspaper protesting the Norfolk Sohool Board's decision to continue the dual salary scale for teachers, whereby black teachers were paid substantially less than whites. This caused some uproar at City Hall, where, we were told, "the boys are hoppin' mad". It was some years before the radical notion of paying teachers equally, regardless of color, was implemented. In those days before air conditioning, summer school classes faced a severe problem. Often classes were taught outside, where ants, traffic and absence of blackboards were felt to be the lesser of two evils. The trees, planted in the early days of the College under Dean Wm. T. (Billy) Hodges, were never more appreciated. Many lasting friendships were formed, and romances, leading to marriage, blossomed. In some cases this involved student and teacher. Gerald Akers, Professor of German, first met the present Mrs. Akers (Anna Barnes) in an evening German class he was teaching.
Media Format:
Drafts (documents)
Source:
RG 10-2A OH 1-2
Collection:
Oral History Collection
Publisher:
Old Dominion University Libraries
Rights Statement:
IN COPYRIGHT; http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/
Rightsholder:
Special Collections and University Archives, Old Dominion University Libraries
Disclaimer:
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Identifier:
oh-akerswg-history