Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, October 11, 1994 TAG: 9410110109
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: ALLISON BLAKE STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
They came one year after the great tectonic shift at old VPI, when women were admitted in greater numbers and men no longer had to join the corps of cadets. Between their arrival and departure, nearly 2,100 strong, Virginia Tech swelled by 3,300 students.
"Well, there must have been a lot of brilliant people in that class," joked Frank Beamer, the star defensive back who grew up to be head football coach of the Hokies.
Just look at the '69 alums, listed among current administrators and teachers: Ray Smoot, vice president for finance now, SGA president then. Tom Tillar, alumni director now, senior class treasurer then. English instructor Joyce Gentry Smoot, married to Ray Smoot these 25 years, English instructor and department co-chair, academic whiz in the old days. And, of course, during this high-profile football seasion, Beamer and his dream team, late of ESPN and USA Today.
The roster marches on: Director of Development Charles Steger (missing from his yearbook's senior class photos). Tom McAnge, assistant director of the Virginia Extension, and Rheda Griffin, Tech's manager of cost accounting. Don Massie, now supervising the Biomedical Media Center; Ed Whittemore, helping to run the New Century Council; Joe Meredith, head of the university's corporate research center. And more, it is rumored, although their names could not be confirmed at press time.
What is it that drew this disparate group to a changing campus then, and brought them all back now?
"I don't know, other than there were a number of us who really liked the area," said Massie.
Blacksburg in the late '60s was a small town with a university sprawling ever-larger in its midst, courtesy visionary president T. Marshall Hahn. Squires Student Center was closed at the time, recalled Massie, which sent his social group packing on weekends.
"There was only one theater in town, the Lyric," he said. And the Lyric changed shows mid-week - so many students already had seen the new movie by Saturday night.
"There was not much to do," he said. "So everybody went home."
Ray Smoot, on the other hand, hung with his fraternity. And Meredith, an aerospace engineering major, was just glad for the spare study time.
"My sense is that students weren't nearly as mobile back then as they are today," said Ray Smoot. "We might go home once or twice a semester, but, basically, we stayed."
Weekends featured frat functions, basketball games, or football games.
Joyce Smoot came as a transfer student in '67 - an era that saw an infusion of transfers.
"All of a sudden, [Tech dorms] Main Eggleston, East and West, was women. See, I had been at Mary Washington, which was a women's school. I thought I would love [co-ed Tech]. Frankly, it was much more intimidating than I anticipated."
That was on account of being the only woman in many of her classes - a state of affairs to which she eventually became accustomed.
Tillar went directly from life as a student to life as an administrator in the student affairs office after graduation.
"I guess I had been very involved as a student, and was offered a chance to stay [working] in student events and programming. It sounded to me like a career I wanted to explore," said the former biology major, by way of explaining his first choice in jobs.
"There's obviously a sense of ownership that I think all of us feel for the university that got us started in our careers. I think all would agree with me: It was such a positive force in our lives, an opportunity to put something back in the university," Tillar said.
But the cusp class members who stayed on past graduation '69 soon discovered that the changes they'd been a part of as Tech surged in growth soon took a back seat to the greater social shifts underway in the land. In 1970, the social turmoil that had swept across campuses from West Coast to East finally hit Blacksburg.
Members of the Class of '69, said Tillar, fully expected to be drafted and sent to Vietnam. By contrast, the Class of '70 fully expected to resist.
The changes were stark.
"Not only dress, but attitude. Anti-administration attitude. At that point, I was administration," Tillar said. "You had to look at the issues more objectively, at what was really driving [student] concerns: A war in Asia that they translated into defying local authority to protest a war in Asia.''
In the spring of '70 came the famed occupation of Williams Hall, when the police broke in, arrested 107 students, and the university suspended them for the rest of the quarter.
"I was very surprised and remember wondering how to deal with it," said Joyce Smoot, who had stayed on to earn a master's degree.
"I was really perturbed a lot about how I felt about Vietnam. Worried. Trying to decide how to take a stand, and what stand to take," she said.
For Massie, the issue was rather quickly settled. He was drafted. And he things his year in Vietnam might explain why he returned to Blacksburg - and stayed for more than 20 years.
"I was going to take my business degree and strive to be a CEO of a major corporation," said Massie.
"Nothing like sitting there on guard duty in a bunker, staring into the dark, to change your priorities. Maybe there was more to life than chasing around the world looking for the greatest number of dollars."
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