Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, July 6, 1993 TAG: 9307060068
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: CODY LOWE STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
"You know I wouldn't have agreed" to an interview, he says with a smile to longtime assistant Nancy Alexander.
Retiring after 35 years as director of the Presbyterian campus ministry at Virginia Tech, Leach was hoping to exit with minimal fanfare.
That was impossible for a man whom one colleague described as the "George Bailey of the New River Valley." Bailey, you'll recall, is the lead character in the movie "It's a Wonderful Life," in which he gets to see how the quality of life in his hometown would have been diminished had he never been born.
"The New River Valley community is so much better off because Woody Leach has lived there," said David Nova of Planned Parenthood of the Blue Ridge. Leach is a "strong and unequivocal" supporter of Planned Parenthood.
"If he weren't there, an awfully big hole would have existed," Nova said.
Minister friend Bill Jackson points out, however, that Leach still has a few rough edges.
At a recent meeting of Presbytery of the Peaks, Jackson roasted Leach: "I'm not implying Woody's not going to heaven. On the other hand, I think there's a good chance that St. Peter will meet him at the gate and wash out his mouth with soap!"
For a couple of months before his June 30 departure, friends, colleagues and admirers let Leach know that he's going to be missed at the office. Those who know him well, however, say they don't expect him to fade quietly out of the community's public life.
\ The Rev. Hugh Underwood Leach was born 64 1/2 years ago in Southwest Georgia. He grew up in rural northwest Florida, the son of a Presbyterian minister.
He went to Presbyterian-affiliated Davidson (N.C.) College, where his father was a trustee. He roomed for a while with a brother and for a while with Bill Cline, now pastor of Roanoke's Second Presbyterian Church.
Leach played football against Virginia Military Institute, North Carolina State and other then-Southern Conference teams before graduating in 1951.
He served an Army tour in Europe. After discharge, he entered Union Theological Seminary in Richmond, where he was ordained in 1958. A couple of months later he got his first - and what would turn out to be his last - ministerial job as director of Presbyterian campus ministry at Virginia Tech.
\ When Leach and his wife, Nancy, moved to Blacksburg, Virginia Tech had 4,800 students, all white. The new minister - technically at that time an associate at Blacksburg Presbyterian - "came here really not knowing what I was supposed to do," Leach said.
It was a "strictly student-oriented ministry. Sunday night suppers, Bible study, volleyball, retreats. I'm not saying that's not good stuff," Leach said, but he now sees the ministry's mission as a broader one to the whole community - faculty, staff, students and the New River Valley.
Within five years of his arrival, "Tech did admit two African-American cadets," setting the stage for a career- and life-altering experience.
The corps of cadets had a tradition of putting on an annual minstrel show, advertised with pictures of cadets in blackface, made up with exaggerated lips.
"How could they do that?" Leach wondered.
"It made me so angry. I don't think I ever got over that anger - the insensitivity of the cadets and the university."
He was out of town when the show was put on, but a group of Presbyterian students stood outside the door handing out statements of protest.
A sense of responsibility to combat what he saw as injustices germinated then, he said, influenced strongly by the lead students were willing to take.
In the mid-1960s he led summer student teams to Prince Edward County to teach black children who had been shut out of their schools for years in "massive resistance" to desegregation.
"That radicalized me," Leach said. He still has "a seething fury, way deep down inside of me over what Virginia did to those kids in Prince Edward County."
"Then along comes Vietnam."
He and a few other campus ministers took vocal positions against the war and started counseling services for students who opposed it.
The experience "pushed me away from what I would say is traditional campus ministry."
It also pushed him occasionally into the public limelight, where some were not happy to see him. He's been called a Communist - and worse - in letters to the editor.
He decided from his experiences during desegregation and Vietnam that "this university never was on the cutting edge of social change.'
In the mid-1970s, a gay student alliance was denied permission to meet on campus. The Cooper House board decided the gay students could meet there and that it would petition the university to allow the group to meet at the student center.
"The s--- hit the fan at presbytery," the regional governing body in the Presbyterian church, Leach recalled.
There were "overtures" - requests from churches - to castigate Cooper House, to cut off funding, to censure. The presbytery declined to do any of those things.
"It's interesting. The thing I feel best about is the support of people on my board and in the community."
Even when board members didn't agree with his positions, "They'd say, `We believe this guy has integrity. Don't push him around.' "
He continued to be involved - directly and indirectly - with far too many causes to mention them all.
He served a term on Blacks/burg Town Council, helped open a Planned Parenthood clinic, led visits to Nicaragua and spoke out against U.S. policy toward that Central American nation, and helped guide Virginia Mountain Housing's program to build homes for low-income families.
Leach said he expects to take a break - maybe six months - before deciding how he is going to use his retirement time. "Nancy and I want to do some stuff. Traveling, spending time together" and with their three children and their families.
"I do think I'll want to get back into something."
The Cooper House board is going to take some time deciding how the ministry should be run in the post-Leach period.
Co-workers Nancy Alexander and Steve Darr are more than capable of keeping the place going in the meantime, Leach said.
They - as well as a number of former co-workers - have been fortunate to have complementary talents and styles.
"I'm stubborn, strong-willed, don't give in easily," Leach said. "Some see that as a weakness, some as a strength. I have no apologies for that."
He does concede, however, that maybe "I could have been a little more diplomatic."
Leach is not the kind of guy who sits around bemoaning such things, though. "It's been a very enjoyable life for me. I'm gonna miss it."
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by CNB