"All the Hoos in Hooville" : We Will Remember Them

From the beginning of the University's history, students and alumni have laid down their books and left their vocations to fight for their beliefs and the freedom of themselves and others. Ten years after the first students enrolled, alumnus Richard Stockton fell at the Alamo. He was followed by many, some famous, others forgotten: John S. Mosby, the Confederate "Gray Ghost"; Bernard Farrar, Union Colonel of an African-American regiment; Walter Reed, conqueror of yellow fever; Ella Katherine Fife, nursing in France in World War I; Samuel Rowland, parachuting behind German lines on D-Day; and "Pete" Gray, dead in Vietnam.

RICHARD L. STOCKTON

Richard L. Stockton was born in 1816 in Essex County, New Jersey, and attended the University for one term in 1833. Stockton traveled to Texas in 1835 and soon after was sworn into the Volunteer Auxiliary Corps of Texas at Nacogdoches. His company, commanded by Captain William B. Harrison, became known as the Tennessee Mounted Volunteers and included the already well-known Davy Crockett. As a rifleman in Harrison's company, Stockton reached San Antonio de Bexar around February 9, 1836. When the Mexican army arrived on February 23, the Tennessee Mounted Volunteers held the responsibility of guarding the town while the rest of the men fell back into the Alamo. On March 6, Santa Anna's 3,000 men broke through the Alamo's defenses after a two-week siege and put every defender to the sword. Richard Stockton, aged 19, died somewhere in the inner courtyard of the Alamo's south wall while defending the low wooden palisade which ran between the chapel and the low barracks.

"Remember the Alamo" game board. TSR Hobbies, 1982. Courtesy of Michael Brian Hanzel, Class of '99.

Dozens of University of Virginia alumni served with the U.S. Army in the Mexican War. Several of these veterans later commanded Confederate troops in the Civil War including generals Carnot Posey, Lafayette McLaws, John B. Magruder, and Douglas H. Cooper. The latter was a planter from Mississippi and a captain of the 1st Mississippi Rifles in Mexico. After the war President Franklin Pierce appointed him U.S. agent in the Indian Territory where his service was so exemplary that he was officially adopted as a member of the Chickasaw tribe.

In 1861 the Confederate government requested Cooper to secure the allegiance of the Indian tribes and commissioned him a Colonel of the 1st Choctaw and Chickasaw Mounted Rifles. He commanded his Native American troops in several engagements including Pea Ridge, where the Indians were falsely accused of scalping fallen Federal soldiers, and General Sterling Price's second invasion of Missouri. After the war Cooper prosecuted the claims of the Choctaw and Chickasaw tribes against the Federal government over the infamous Indian removals.

Autograph letter, signed. Walter C. Preston to his uncle, John M. Preston. 1861 April 29.

Preston rose to the rank of Captain in the Confederate Army and afterwards farmed near Culpeper, Virginia.

WALTER C. PRESTON

In this letter, Walter C. Preston, a student from Lewisburg, Virginia, describes the war fever that swept through the University in the spring of 1861. A new flag flew over the Rotunda and two student companies, the Sons of Liberty and the Southern Guard, soon left for Harper's Ferry. He relates how anxious all the students are for a "fight with Gen. Scotts collection from Yankeedom, Ireland, France, Spain, Germany &c, just merely to show that we boys are not afraid to shed our blood, or get a scratch or so for the honor of the Old Dominion....We expect...that we will have to fight a good many battles, but not hard ones; as yankees consider man's first duty to be taking care of himself; & they will in all probability find that the cheapest & surest way to secure that desirable end-- self preservation--when an army of Virginians come to the charge, is to drop their arms & get out of the way as fast as possible."

Photograph of Lucius E. Polk. No date. From the collections at the Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. Copy print courtesy of the Museum of the Confederacy, Richmond, Virginia.

B.O. Holman attended the University of Virginia from 1850 to 1852. After leaving, he studied law in Tennessee and practiced in Alabama. When the war broke out he enlisted in the 13th Regiment Alabama Volunteers. Holman was captured at Gettysburg, probably when Michigan's "Iron Brigade" overran McPherson's Woods on July 1, 1863. He was incarcerated at Ft. Delaware where he contracted smallpox and died January 1864.

Holman's University of Virginia autograph album was signed by future Confederate Brigadier General Lucius E. Polk. Wounded four times in the war, Polk returned to his home in Columbia, Tennessee, on crutches. There, despite his handicap, he successfully defied and routed a group of Klansman attempting to whip a local field hand. Later he served as a delegate to the Democratic Convention of 1884 and was elected to the Tennessee Senate in 1887.

In the autograph album of Joseph A. Turner, a Confederate ordnance officer and later professor at Hollins College, is a message from Charles A. Briggs of New York City. Influenced by a relative, Charles Briggs came to the University to pursue classical and modern languages under Professors Gildersleeve and Schele de Vere and moral philosophy under McGuffey. When the Civil War broke out, Briggs returned to his home state and volunteered in the 7th New York, the same regiment in which Robert Gould Shaw began his famous career. When his brief enlistment was up, he enrolled at Union Theological Seminary and became a Presbyterian pastor in New Jersey. His work in Old Testament criticism eventually led to his conviction in a trial for heresy by the Presbytery of New York in 1892. Later he took orders in the Episcopal Church and taught at Union Theological Seminary until his death in 1913.

Autograph album of Joseph Augustine Turner. (Bohn's Album and Autographs of the University of Virginia. Washington: Bohn, 1859.)

CHARLES A. BRIGGS

Photograph of the Reverend Charles A. Briggs. No date. From the collections at Union Theological Seminary, New York, New York.

TO THE MEN OF ALBEMARLE

Broadside, "To the Men of Albemarle." 1863 June 28.

Professor John B. Minor and prominent local citizens Eugene Davis, Slaughter W. Ficklin, and Egbert R. Watson responded to a call from Confederate Secretary of War James A. Seddon and rallied the local citizens to arms on June 28, 1863. On June 23, a Union cavalry raid from Yorktown, Virginia, had burned the Central Railroad bridge over the South Anna River and rumors had reached Richmond that Union General John A. Dix had 25,000 men at Williamsburg and 5,000 more at White House on the Pamunkey and was preparing to march. With the main body of the Confederate Army moving into Pennsylvania, Virginia would have to rely on local militia to repulse any Federal strikes.

A student from the border state of Missouri, Farrar sided with the Union, was appointed provost-marshal-general of St. Louis, and became Colonel of the 13th Regiment Missouri Infantry. On January 21, 1864, he transferred his command to an African-American regimentthe 6th United States Colored Heavy Artillery--and participated with his troops in skirmishes and expeditions in Louisiana and Mississippi, helping hold the area for the Union while Sherman took his seasoned veterans on their march to Atlanta and the sea. In March of 1865 he was breveted a brigadier general.

ROBERT GARLICK HILL KEAN

Robert Garlick Hill Kean. Diary. 1861-63.

On July 7, 1863, Kean wrote that Lee had captured 40,000 of the enemy at Gettysburg but remained skeptical as there was no official news. The next day, he recorded the truth. "The week just ended has been one of unexampled disaster since the war began." Vicksburg had surrendered and Gettysburg was "a virtual if not an actual defeat."

"Garlick" Kean, an 1853 University graduate, young lawyer, and member of the Home Guard in Lynchburg, Virginia, was mustered into the 11th Virginia Infantry Regiment ten days after the firing on Fort Sumter. His scholarly and legal attainments and family connections did not go unnoticed and he soon landed on the staff of his uncle-in-law, Confederate Secretary of War George Wythe Randolph, Jefferson's grandson and himself a University alumnus. A week later Kean was appointed Head of the Bureau of War.

From his well-placed position inside the Confederate bureaucracy, Kean observed the inner workings of the Confederate government and recorded characterization of many of the chief men in his diary. Stonewall Jackson was a "character of antique beauty, simple and severe." Braxton Bragg had the "repulsive traits" of "prying, indiscretion, vindictiveness, and insincerity." Jefferson Davis, though "honest, pure, and patriotic," was "the worst judge of men in the world." Robert E. Lee frustrated Kean by keeping mechanics in the army when they were needed on the railroads. Joseph E. Johnston was "morbidly jealous" of Lee but showed a "mastery of the situation, a sagacity in anticipating the future, and a comprehensive view" when facing Sherman in Georgia.

Micajah Woods. Diary. (Almanac and Annual Diary and Memoranda for 1864. Johnson & Schaffter: Lynchburg, Virginia, 1864.)

Micajah Woods, of "Holkham" in Ivy, Virginia, joined the Confederate Army in August 1861 at the age of seventeen. Under military age, he spent the winter of 1861-62 at the University and then joined the 2nd Virginia Cavalry. In 1863, he became a First Lieutenant in Thomas E. Jackson's Battery, Virginia Horse Artillery, and saw action at Gettysburg, New Market, and Cold Harbor. After the war Woods returned to the University and earned a Bachelor of Law degree. He practiced in Charlottesville and in 1870 became commonwealth attorney, a position held until his death 41 years later. Today he is remembered locally as the prosecuting attorney in the murder trial of Charlottesville mayor Samuel McCue and the father of Maud Coleman Woods, the first "Miss America."

In stark contrast to Kean's carefully composed work, Woods' small pocket diary contains a few sentences scrawled in pencil mark each day, with an occasional entry in ink. Like many battlefront diarists, Woods writes only of the action immediately surrounding him with no immediate sense of the overall battle. For the action at Cold Harbor, Woods records: "Moved to better position about 700 yds to rear and commenced fortifying with infantry line. Enemy advanced to within 500 yds on our front & opened tremendous sharp shooting. We gave them shell & canister--My gunner Wm Crist of my third gun killed almost instantly by a minieball a noble & faithful young man...."

MICAJAH WOODS

Photograph of Micajah Woods, ca. 1903.

On July 30, 1864, Confederate General Jubal Early sent the cavalry brigades of John McCausland and Bradley Johnson to Chambersburg, Pennsylvania. Unless the citizens paid $100,000 in gold, the town would be destroyed in retaliation for Union General David Hunter's destruction of private property in the Shenandoah Valley. The citizens refused and the town was burned. Confederate surgeon Malcolm Fleming, an 1860 medical school graduate, described the scene in a letter to his mother.

"Nothing exaggerated can be said about the burning of Chambersburg.... I entered the Town with a stiff neck & stubborn heart, but as much as I hate the yankees, I could not stand it long....The citizens refused to pay the tribute; whereupon McCausland at once ordered the city to be laid in ashes--The scene which followed baffles all description--- Shrieking children & panic stricken men & women running in every direction begging assistance. I saw several women faint upon the side walks....the town was sacked-- soldiers turned loose upon private houses & then the order issued to burn...."

Another former University student, Colonel William E. Peters of the 21st Virginia Cavalry, refused to carry out the order to torch the town of Chambersburg. He handed over his sword to his commanding officer as he had not enlisted to fight innocent women and children. After the war Peters returned to the University as Professor of Latin. Here he continued his contrary ways, by advocating the admission of women, the building of a gymnasium, and the raising of the student contingency fund by $2.50 per year to cover the costs of chapel maintenance and religious services. His respect among the students was so great that "Old Pete" was single-handedly able to quell a riot by the Washington Society, warding off their mass arrest by the local sheriff for a breach of the peace.

While a University student, the famous "Gray Ghost" of the Confederacy spent several months in the Albemarle County jail in 1852 for the provoked shooting of a fellow University student. In 1861, Mosby enlisted in the Confederate cavalry. He served as a scout for General J.E.B. Stuart, guiding him on his famous ride around McClellan in June of 1862. In 1863 he and nine other men began acting independently as partisan rangers, raiding through Union-held territory in northern Virginia. In May 1863 he crept through Federal lines with a small band of men and captured Union General Edwin H. Stoughton. With a command that eventually numbered about 200, he controlled an area of eastern Virginia known as "Mosby's Confederacy" and continually hindered General U.S. Grant's Wilderness campaign. He also harassed General Philip Sheridan's 1864 Shenandoah Valley campaign, at one point hanging seven randomly selected Union prisoners in retaliation for the execution of seven of his own men. After Lee surrendered he disbanded his rangers and personally surrendered in June.

Shortly after Mosby captured Stoughton, he met General J.E.B. Stuart in Culpeper, Virginia. Impressed with Mosby's daring, Stuart had General Orders printed commending Mosby and gave him a number of copies. The year before his death Mosby presented a copy to his alma mater "as a memento of my affection and as a relic of our war," adding, "In the coming years I hope it may [be] of interest to the Students of the University of Va."

Law student William J. Pegram enlisted in the Confederate Army in the spring of 1861 as a private. By 1862 he was an artillery captain winning fame at Mechanicsville where he held his ground under enemy fire although four of his six guns were disabled, half his horses killed, and more than fifty of his ninety cannoneers killed or wounded. Pegram and his battery fought in the battles of Cedar Mountain, Antietam, Chancellorsville, Gettysburg, the Wilderness, Spotsylvania, Cold Harbor, and Petersburg. On April 1, 1865, eight days before the surrender at Appomattox, Pegram was killed in the battle of Five Forks. In four years of active service he had never lost a gun.

After the war, Pegram's college classmate, Captain William Gordon McCabe, wrote to Robert E. Lee about why Pegram was never promoted to brigadier general. Lee replied that "no one in the army had a higher opinion of his gallantry & worth than myself....Col. Pegram had the command of a fine battalion of artillery, a service in which he was signally skilled, in which he delighted & in which I understood that he preferred to remain. I do not think under the circumstances that he would have considered the command of a brigade...preferable to the position he held."

William C. Holmes, a University of Virginia student and later captain of Company B, First Mississippi Battalion of Sharpshooters, was given this verbena blossom by Miss Alice Ray of Lexington, Mississippi. He kept it in his diary, wrapped in a piece of paper inscribed, "What is home without a Mother?" Fifty-three years later it was encased in the locket and given to his alma mater so that "the generations to come on viewing it will know that in that cruel age of war, there was a star, brighter than any in the galaxy-- 'woman's tenderness.'"

Holmes lost the use of his right arm in the war and returned to the University where he became partners with George L. Christian of Richmond, who had lost one foot and half of another. Holmes helped Christian walk to classes and Christian helped Holmes with note taking. Holmes later became a physician in Texas; Christian a judge in Virginia.

In June 1912, the University of Virginia hosted over two dozen surviving Confederate alumni at a reunion on the Grounds where they posed for this photograph in front of the Rotunda. The thirteenth man from the left is W. Peyton Moncure. The fifth from the right is Robert Herndon Fife. The man in the center on crutches may be Judge George Christian. The others are unidentified. Each veteran was presented with a brass medal; the medal on display was sent to Nathaniel Hite Willis of Charleston, West Virginia, who was unable to attend the reunion.

Walter Reed earned his medical degree from the University of Virginia in 1869 at the age of eighteen. Several years later he joined the Army Medical Corps, served as surgeon at frontier outposts and did post-graduate study in the new science of bacteriology. When malaria struck U.S. troops in Cuba, Reed, who had investigated an outbreak near Washington in 1895, was appointed head of the Army Yellow Fever Commission.

At the time, yellow fever was believed to spread by contact with an infected person or his possessions. In 1900 alumnus Henry Rose Carter, a quarantine officer with the U.S. Marine Hospital Service, published an article demonstrating an incubation period that pointed to a host carrier. Reed was skeptical of the popular theory and Carter's work helped convince him to focus on the mosquito as a possible transmitter. In a series of controlled experiments, including one involving future student John J. Moran, Reed and his colleagues proved that the disease was spread by mosquito bites and not by contact with infected clothes and bedding.

Reed returned to Washington, and another alumnus, Major Jefferson Randolph Kean, chief sanitary officer of Havana, launched a massive mosquito eradication campaign, covering stagnant bodies of water with oil, screening drinking water barrels, and fumigating the houses of victims. The measures were successful immediately. In 1901 cases dropped precipitously from 1400 in Havana alone to 37 throughout Cuba. In 1902 no cases were reported.

Photograph of Major Walter Reed en route to Cuba. 1900. Courtesy of Historical Collections and Services, The Claude Moore Health Sciences Library, University of Virginia.

Photograph of Dr. Henry Rose Carter. No date. Courtesy of Historical Collections and Services, The Claude Moore Health Sciences Library, University of Virginia.

Congressional medal awarded to John J. Moran for his role in the conquest of yellow fever. 28 February 1929.

Walter Reed to Emilie Reed, containing diagram of the yellow fever hut used in the Reed experiments. 1900 December 25. Courtesy of Historical Collections and Services, The Claude Moore Health Sciences Library, University of Virginia.

Board and smoke stack from the yellow fever shack in Havana, Cuba, in which Walter Reed conducted his experiments. Courtesy of Historical Collections and Services, The Claude Moore Health Sciences Library, University of Virginia.

In July 1918, the men and women of the University of Virginia's Base Hospital #41 established their unit at L'Ecole de la Legion d'Honneur at St. Denis, France. A week later the unit had 700 wounded soldiers in the wards. Though the staff itself was devastated by the Spanish influenza epidemic, by Armistice Day they had treated 3,000 men. Ella Katherine Fife of the University of Virginia Nursing School, Class of 1912, was one of the nurses. On October 28, 1918, she wrote home about the flood of patients. "The convoys still roll in...at present I have conval[escent] patients entirely helping the doctors do surgical dressings--it leaves the nurses free to bathe and help make the patients comfortable...the majority of the wounds are dressed every day...there are two nurses besides myself in our section of tents, giving 46 patients to the care of each one of us, most of them stretcher cases...many of our boys come directly from the front and get their first operation here, while others are sent from evacuation hospitals." Three days after Armistice Day, she described the celebrations: "The big Cathedral bell began to ring fast and furious...that old bell seemed to be sounding down thru the ages all the wars and troubles these poor French people have had for generations...the streets were full of them--mobs of them, and all weeping like babies from sheer joy--Flags went up everywhere in a jiffy and Paris was simply wild."

In the pre-dawn hours of June 6, 1944, troopers of the 82nd and 101st Airborne and the 505th Parachute Infantry parachuted behind enemy lines in Normandy, seized the La Fiere bridge and liberated the town of St. Mere Eglise. The 82nd Airborne, under the command of Colonel James Gavin, next turned west to capture St.-Sauveur-le-Vicomte and then drove south towards La Haye du Puits in thirty-three days of continuous fighting without relief or replacements. By the time the division was relieved on July 8 it had suffered a 57% casualty rate.

Among those troopers was alumnus Samuel Rowland. In a letter to his uncle, he comments on his landing in a swamp, the ruthlessness of the Germans who bayoneted unfortunate troopers tangled in their "chutes," close calls from shells landing near his foxholes, cooperation of the liberated French civilians, and taking out a camouflaged German machine gun nest, ending, "I've seen men, our men, drop around me. I've seen my friends go down; but I've seen more Hynies go down, and if they must be killed, thank God I'm able to kill them."

Lt. William Noland Berkeley, Class of 1936, landed in France six weeks after D-Day and participated in the great Allied drive across the country. On August 17 and 21 he wrote home enclosing souvenirs and describing the throngs of Frenchmen lining the roads and throwing flowers at passing troops while children scrambled into G.I. trucks for free rides. According to a telegram of September 15, 1944, Berkeley was reported missing in action on August 26. For the next few months his parents frantically tried to ascertain his whereabouts, assuming he had been made prisoner and was in a German P.O.W. camp. In February of 1945 they learned the truth. Lt. Berkeley had died in action. Finally on June 10, 1945, Virgil M. McCloud, liberated from a German camp by the advancing Russian army and the sole survivor of the ambush that killed Berkeley, wrote to Berkeley's parents about his death ending "Lt William N. Berkeley was a soldier and died a soldier. I am proud to have served under his command and to have been his friend."

William G. Suhling, of the Eighth Evacuation Hospital, became commanding officer for Italian operations in the Office of Strategic Services Italy, officially known as Co. D, 2677th Regiment (Provisional), on July 1, 1944. In his log entry for August 8, 1944, Suhling records "General [William] Donovan...arrived at 1400. Gen. Donovan discussed and approved Mangostine with Capt. Holohan in charge." On September 26, the Mangostine mission was dropped more than 100 miles behind the German lines carrying a radio, arms, and an undisclosed amount of money for partisans fighting the Germans. Three months later a message was radioed to headquarters that Holohan had been slain in a German ambush. Suhling suspected foul play but only years after the war did the truth emerge. Holohan was murdered by his own men in a dispute over the money and the arming of the communist partisans. Suhling later offered evidence for the subsequent trial of the two American officers involved.

Suhling's son, William "Billy" G. Suhling III, captain-elect of the Virginia football team and the center who snapped the ball back to the famed Bill Dudley, forfeited his senior year to enlist in the Marines in February of 1942. Four months later he died in a training accident.

Withers, a student from Roseland in Nelson County, Virginia, enlisted in the Royal Air Force and participated in the famous May 30, 1942, night-bombing raid on Cologne, Germany. The raid devastated the city, starting 1700 major fires and destroying or heavily damaging almost 28,000 buildings. The city burned so brightly that the returning fighter planes could still see it 150 miles away. A week later Withers wrote to Dean George A. Ferguson describing the raid and the homeward run dodging flak and search lights. Ferguson's secretary made a copy of the letter for Professor Atcheson L. Hench who noted that Withers was killed soon afterwards.

Staige D. Blackford, professor of internal medicine at the University of Virginia hospital, organized the Eighth Evacuation Hospital and acted as chief of medicine with Dr. E. Cato Drash as chief of surgery and Ruth Beery as chief of nurses. The unit sailed in November 1942 for North Africa and served there until September 1943 when it crossed to Italy in the wake of the Allied invasion. The ship bearing their equipment was sunk on the Mediterranean crossing and the unit had to scrounge for more. They followed the American army north, operating in tents pitched in the cold, snow and mud of the mountainous Italian winters. By the war's end they had treated 93,000 patients in their hospital and out-patient departments.

Shortly after the news of Pearl Harbor, the University Volunteers, a group of students who planned on enlisting in the near future, began drilling on the grounds between 7 and 8 each morning, earning the nickname "Dawn Patrol." As they were a voluntary unit, they supplied their own uniforms and equipment and trained themselves.

John Cook Wyllie, Curator of Rare Books and Manuscripts in Alderman Library, entered the war before the United States did. Wyllie joined the American Field Services and drove ambulances for the British in the Middle East. He later became an officer in the United States Air Force in the China-Burma-India theater. Several "hair-raising" experiences there led to his decoration by the American, British, and Chinese governments. At the war's end he returned to his desk in Alderman, bringing with him a bullet-riddled Japanese radio as a souvenir.

"Steve Canyon," the adventurous pilot hero of the popular comic strip, was a U.S. Air Force officer in Korea and Vietnam. When the Korean cease fire was announced in 1953, Canyon mourned the loss of his comrades by reciting an inscription on the monument to University of Virginia Civil War dead.

Canyon's tribute was appropriate but his creator, Milt Caniff, had some of the details confused. The verse, taken from Laurence Binyon's "For the Fallen," was first published in the London Times of September 21, 1914, and was inscribed on a monument to the University of Virginia dead from World War Inot the Civil War. The last line Canyon quotes actually reads "We will remember them" both in the poem and on the monument.

Congressman Hugh D. Scott, Jr., a 1922 graduate of the law school, was on a special intelligence-gathering tour of duty as a U.S. Navy Reserve Commander during the Korean War in August 1950. Scott recorded his impressions and contacts with U.S. and South Korean military personnel during the bitter early stages of the fighting that began on June 25, 1950, with Communist North Korea's surprise and massive invasion across the 38th parallel.

The embattled United Nations force had valiantly fought a bloody and costly delaying action that served to contain the threat of being forced off the peninsula while awaiting reinforcements from the United States. On August 25, 1950, Scott met with the U.N. Commander, General Douglas MacArthur, who discussed the improving battlefield situation and was quoted in Scott's diary as saying: "We will utterly destroy their forces and we will beat them before they get back to the 38th parallel. The tide has turned--definitely."

Three weeks later, MacArthur launched his highly successful amphibious landing behind enemy lines at Inchon Harbor.

Athlete, scholar and student leader, Arthur "Pete" Gray was an outstanding member of the class of 1968. He entered the University on an Honor Award scholarship, played varsity football and track, served as a residence hall counselor, was elected president of the College of Arts and Sciences and chairman of the Honor Committee. He belonged to Zeta Psi fraternity, the Raven Society, Omicron Delta Kappa, the German Club, the Thirteen Society, IMP and TILKA. He received the Alumni Association's Distinguished Student Award and the Atlantic Coast Conference Scholar-Athlete Award and was a Rhodes Scholar nominee. Gray joined the Marine Corps after graduation and, as a lieutenant in the First Reconnaissance Battalion of the First Marine Division, he led eight reconnaissance patrols behind enemy lines in Vietnam. He died on July 19, 1970, from injuries received in a training accident. On his death his membership in the Seven Society was revealed.

Peter Gray's life and influence was summarized by his commander: "...to speak only of the man's accomplishments is to risk the danger of overwhelming Pete Gray and to mask the great humanity that was Pete's finest quality. He gave so completely and selflessly of himself that he positively affected the lives of countless people...a man who enriched our lives merely by having lived among us." On the Grounds today Pete is memorialized by the Gray-Carrington Scholarship Award.

"Fritz" Nolting, Class of 1933, was appointed ambassador to Vietnam in 1961 with orders to support the government of Ngo dinh Diem. He was successful at first, convincing Diem to sign a treaty with Laos and monitoring the development of the strategic hamlets program. An anti-Diem faction in the U.S. government, led by Kennedy advisor W. Averell Harriman, determined to replace Diem who had lost support of the American public after the well-publicized self-immolation of an elderly Buddhist monk. Nolting was recalled and on his flight home drafted a letter to the New York Times castigating the Times for "anti-government and anti-Diem editorials...used since 1961 by Hanoi radio to undercut & undermine heroic efforts by the Vietnamese, U.S., & others to strengthen S[outh] V[iet] N[am] against Viet Cong attack & subversion."

Nolting was succeeded as ambassador by Henry Cabot Lodge who was approached almost immediately by anti-Diem generals planning a coup. Nolting, back in the United States, unsuccessfully tried to persuade President Kennedy from such action. The constitutionally elected Diem was assassinated on November 1, 1963, an action Ho Chi Minh himself reputedly called "stupid," and the military government of General "Big Minh" assumed power.

Autograph letter draft. Fritz Nolting to "Editor, New York Times" written after his recall. 1963.