ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, September 24, 1996 TAG: 9609240050
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-1 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
DATELINE: BLACKSBURG
SOURCE: ROBERT FREIS STAFF WRITER
Gen. Douglas MacArthur said, "Old soldiers never die, they just fade away," and Virginia Tech's Class of 1936 has finally saluted and obeyed that order.
Henceforth they'll be part of the Old Guard, the alumni designation established for all Corps of Cadets members who graduated from Tech 50 years before.
The Class of '36 battled the clock to the end, which occurred last weekend as its members gathered for their 60th and final reunion.
"We decided we would stop while we were ahead," said John Crafton, class president.
In all, 24 class members came to Blacksburg as a unit, as they have annually since 1981. Other Tech classes meet for reunions every five years or so, and the over-50 year grads are grouped together in the Old Guard.
The thirty-sixers have maintained their solidarity throughout, mostly just to show everyone else - including Father Time - that they could do it.
After having graduated during the depths of the Depression, then survived World War II, the Cold War, the 1960s, coeducation in the corps, Watergate and now the Macarena, this is no small achievement.
"Listen, honey, we're all old," said Crafton's wife, Susan. "This is a very unusual class. This is remarkable that we're still together."
The final gathering attracted big time recognition for the classmates. Tech President Paul Torgersen and Corps Commandant Gen. Stan Musser paid their respects in person at a Friday night banquet. Following Saturday's football game, members of the present-day corps passed in review in honor of the Class of '36.
"No doubt in my mind, you are the greatest class in the history of the corps," Musser told them from a podium at the Blacksburg Holiday Inn.
Other Tech classes notwithstanding, the thirty-sixers may be the savviest of all time. Eight years ago, when Musser came to Tech, they made him an honorary class member - the only corps class that's embraced him in such a fashion.
And why not, Crafton said, since 1936 was the year of Musser's birth.
All over 80 years old, some spry as grasshoppers, others getting around with the aid of canes and walkers, they pounded each others backs, bussed wives and reminisced with a merry spirit.
Curtis Mast, a former Tech animal science professor, talked about the old Thanksgiving Day football games against VMI, when the entire corps would ride the train to Roanoke and parade down Jefferson Street to the stadium.
He also recalled taking a chilly late-night dip in Mountain Lake after the Ring Dance one year.
"Now it's substantially different," Mast said of Virginia Tech. "In those days everything was the corps. Your company was your social fraternity."
Now retired after serving as Tech's assistant dean of arts and sciences, Forrest Rollins still remembers riding the old Huckleberry train from Cambria to the Blacksburg campus for the first time in 1932.
Classmates credit Rollins and fellow Blacksburg resident Steve Burrows with planning the reunions and keeping them going over the years.
Burrows, former owner of Blacksburg Hardware, established a lifelong bond with the area as a student when his future father-in-law - a Tech professor - flunked him in calculus.
"It's become routine," Burrows said of the reunion's logistics. "I'm not going to miss that. It takes a lot of time, but it's been worth it."
Musser surveyed the banquet room of thirty-sixers and spoke about the sense of continuity Virginia Tech's corps has brought to the university.
"It's not fundamentally different than it was when they were in school," he said. "The camaraderie is just incredible. Classmates are still lifelong friends."
The older fellows like to relive bygone glories such as the midnight shower room sweat parties conducted by upperclassmen, where a "rat" could loose 10 pounds during one session. These days, Musser said, the philosophy of introductory training is "more positive."
Inevitably, on the weekend when VMI's governing board debated coed status for that traditionally all-male military school, discussion turned to coeducation of the Tech corps, which was accomplished in 1972.
Musser told the thirty-sixers that the present Tech corps is nearly one-quarter female, the highest percentage of women at any military school in America.
Members of the all-male Class of '36 - who used to look to all-female schools such as Radford State Teachers College, Hollins College or Longwood College for companionship - say they've accepted women in the corps.
It's equally clear that the old-liners haven't fully embraced the idea of women in the military, however.
Ralph Roope of Richmond said the women who forced VMI to go coed should have applied to Tech instead, and left things well enough alone in Lexington. "We at VPI would have loved to have them. It's a shame they didn't apply here."
This year's Tech corps membership stands at 600, Musser said, and the school's goal is to have 1,000 in the corps by the year 2000.
"Six years ago, we were looking at the total demise of the corps. There's been a tremendous turnaround," he added.
Five years ago, the thirty-sixers brought 30 of their cadet sabers to donate to cadet seniors. In the mid-1930s the sabers cost about $35; today, they're $500 and a considerable expense to first-classmen.
Sam Jones brought his saber from Norfolk over the weekend to donate. The idea is that the cadets who receive them will pass these sabers on to future members of the corps, a gesture of unbroken solidarity.
Next year, many of the thirty-sixers will return to Blacksburg as members of the Old Guard. They say it won't be much different.
Asked if he felt nostalgic at his final class reunion, Curtis Mast said, "Not particularly."
Thinking about the place in time he and his classmates have occupied, Mast said: "We've gone through so many changes during the past 60 years that we just constantly look for change."
LENGTH: Long : 109 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: ALAN KIM/Staff. Surviving members of Virginia Tech'sby CNBClass of '36 pause for a moment during their 60th and final reunion
last weekend. color.