A straight interview with Harris Saunders, Jr., class of 1945, conducted by Marilyn Summers on April the 27th, the year 2016. We are at his home in Mountain Brook, Alabama. And the subject of our interview today, his life in general, his experiences at Georgia Tech. Beautiful Mountain Brook, Alabama, and a beautiful home. Thank you so much for letting us come visit you today. I'm looking forward to hearing more about your story. We've been chatting for a little bit, and there's lots of good stuff in there. 

So we're going to begin at the beginning. Tell me, where were you born and when? 

I was born in Birmingham, Alabama. My family lived in Kansas City at that time. My mother was from Birmingham, and she wanted to go back home to have me. 

And where were you in the family lineup? 

Were you her firstborn? 

No, I was her second born, but I had an older sister and an older ward with the family that lived with us all her life as a child. 

So, your mom and dad really lived in Kansas. Why? 

Was that where your dad was from, or why were they in Kansas? 

They lived in Kansas City. Why? 

Missouri. 

What did your dad do there? 

Why were they living there? 

They were there in the car rental business. 

Okay, so was that home place for your father? 

Is that where he was from? 

No, he was from Omaha, Nebraska. All right. And they started the business in Omaha, Nebraska in 1916. 

And they were the first people to rent cars on a commercial basis, so they were in business before Hertz and Avis and all the others. 

So it was the very first rental, but commercial rental, trucks and cars in the country. In 1916 there weren't even that many cars or that many roads. No. 

As a matter of fact, they decided to go into the airplane rental business, and they bought a couple of airplanes. There weren't that many of those either. 

Well, the problem was, though, that there were only about five licensed pilots in the country at that time. 

So they didn't do that. About a big market. You did not say what year you were born. 

So let's bring that up. 1925. 

So in 1925, and it was really nine years before that, that your father and your grandfather started this business. Yes. Right? 

So let's talk a little bit about them. Let's start with your dad, first of all. He came from a big family, a small family? 

Fairly big. He had, there were four boys and one girl. Yep, good size. And his family, that he was part of. Uh-huh. And they were born, and he was born in Nebraska, you said? 

Yes. Okay. 

Do you know how long the family, the Saunders family, had been in Nebraska? 

I know it was a pretty long time, but I don't know how long. 

So maybe they had settled when the land grants were given out, when the big rush was to the west? 

You don't know? 

I don't know. I don't think so. You don't think so? 

They weren't in something like the Oklahoma Glen rush. They were not in that. They were not in that. 

Well, how would they get to Nebraska? 

Where were they from originally, do you think, the Saunders? 

Virginia. From Virginia? 

Mm-hmm. Okay. Do you know how far back your family goes? 

Oh, yes. All the way back to 1700s. 

So you were a son of the American Revolution then? 

Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. 

So you can track your family all back. Yes. 

Now, before you... We're going to talk a little bit about your dad's side of the family first. Okay. 

So first of all, describe your dad to me. How do you remember him? 

What was he like? 

Well, he was sort of a quiet person, very studious. He never went to college, but he taught college, a college course in Birmingham, in accounting. 

So he was pretty smart, self-educated, pretty smart, huh? 

Yes, right. Yeah. 

And was it his idea that he and Grandpa start the business, or was it Grandpa's idea? 

His brother, Joe Saunders, from Chicago, is the one that started the business. My father and two other brothers joined in, and their father joined in. It was a big family enterprise then. Five father and four children were in it. And they started it in Nebraska, in Omaha. Yes. And once it got on its feet, then they moved it to different places, you said. That's right. And that's how you got to Kansas. Right. 

The second location was in Kansas City. I don't know why they picked that, but it was close by. It was a big city, and they wanted a big city. 

So they established a second situation. Some people stayed in Omaha, and some people came to Kansas. That's right. And your dad was the Kansas City guy. 

Yeah, and the third place was Birmingham, and the reason it was in Birmingham was because my father's wife was a Birmingham girl. That's your mother, your father's wife. Yeah, my mother. Zoe, is that what her name was, Zoe? 

Yeah, Zoe. Zoe Black. 

So Zoe was from Birmingham, and so why not, huh? 

Yeah. Why not start a new business there? 

Well, it just looked like a good place to start it, yeah. Yeah. All right, let's go back and talk about your grandfather. Do you remember him? 

Just barely. He died when I was about five. 

So you only remember what you were told about and what you heard, right? 

Yes, yes. Did you have any time that you can remember that was just you and him? 

No. No. 

So you have no real clear memory of him? 

No, I remember stories about him. 

Well, tell me, what's one story you remember? 

Well, his wife died some years before. 

So you never knew your grandmother then? 

No. 

Well, no. 

But he lived in Kansas City. He had a room at the YMCA there. That's where he operated from. 

He was in Birmingham because he owned some property with four other partners in Shannon, Alabama, what was in Shannon, Alabama. 

And that partnership sold the property to a steel company, I don't remember which one, and put it on their books at about five times what they paid for it. Creative financing, is that what they call an accounting? 

Yeah. 

My father was not present when they sold it, and they really sold it out from under him as far as his interest was concerned. 

So he sued them because he wanted to recover the amount that was valued by the steel company. Of course. 

And he has his lawyer, a man named Bew White, who was an early partner of the White Bradley Rose and something law firm. Did they win? 

What? 

Did he win? 

He died before the suit came up, and so it just fell. The attorney died, or your dad died? 

My dad died. My granddad. Oh, your granddad we're talking about. 

Okay, yeah. He died. And so you ended up without having any recompense from that, isn't it? 

No. 

But your dad and his brothers dug in and kept the business going? 

Well, at that time there was no Saunders Drive-It -Yourself system. This was probably about 1914 or 15. Oh, okay, you're telling me what happened before. 

So then, I thought your grandfather was part of starting the business. Oh, he was. He came into the business, though, that my brother, that my Uncle Joe started. 

Uncle Joe was the founder of the business and his four, his three brothers and father came into the business later, so my grandfather used to say that he and his four boys were Now, it's interesting that your Uncle Joe was in Chicago, but he started the business in Nebraska. 

Well, that's because they lived there. The way it started was that they were in the real estate business. 

They had a car, one of them had a car that was available, and some customer of theirs the real estate business needed a car for a couple of days or so. 

So they sat down with him and decided he would bring it back, and he did. And I think they charged ten cents a mile for the rental. It could have been the first car rental in the country, who knows? 

Well, it was. It was one of the earliest ones for sure. 

Well, we claimed that it was the first. That's pretty neat. 

Now it's so routine, and it had to start somewhere. That's right. 

The Hertz people have tried to claim to have started the business, and I wrote them a letter and told them they were wrong on that. Good for you. And their lawyer wrote a letter back to me and evaded the question, but they never tried that again. I thought they started in 1922 or something like that, one of their ads, so they're way behind you. Yeah, yeah. They were. 

So let's go back to your childhood. 

So you remember your dad as being a quiet chap, didn't have a whole lot to say. Did he play with you? 

Yes, he did. 

So you have a good memory from that. I have a very good memory from that. Yeah. And we used to play catch with the baseball. Good, good. And we… How much older than you was your sister? 

Five years older. Oh, that's quite a bit then. 

So you were her baby boy for her to play with. That's right. Although we didn't play with, I didn't play with my sisters much. No, but when you were a baby she was playing with you. That's right. Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah. I keep an eye on it. What was her name? 

Your sister? 

Zoe. Named after your mother then? 

Uh-huh. All right. And then you said there was a ward that always lived in your family. What was her name? 

Mary Reed. And she always lived with you. You have a memory of her from your whole childhood then? 

Yes. They were very close to the same age she and Zoe were. 

So you had two older people, older women, looking after you. Yeah, I consider that I had two older sisters. Right, that's what it sounds like. And then who came along in the family after you? 

My brother, Bob Saunders. 

Okay, your brother. And he was seven years younger than I. Oh, that's another big jump there. Yeah, it was. Yeah, so that was like your mom had a second family there. Yeah. Yeah, with him. Do you remember when he was born? 

About 1930. No, no, I mean, do you remember it? 

Thirty-two. 

I mean, when you were a kid, do you remember when your mother went off to have him? 

You know, when he was born? 

When he was born. 

Well, I remember him as a baby. You know, because that's a pretty big deal. I mean, you were already seven years old, you said? 

That's right. 

So a seven-year-old, what the heck, there's some other kid coming in the house? 

What was that all about? 

Do you remember it? 

Well, I remember it, and I was very happy with it. I had a little brother to play with and teach. And by this time, you're a big shot. You're starting a school already. Yeah, that's right. 

So were you raised in Kansas, or in Missouri it was, you said in Kansas City? 

How long did you— We were there until I entered the third grade. All right, so you did start school there. You remember starting— I started school there, and I remember that. Okay. 

Let's stop there for a minute and now talk about your mother a little bit, because we've talked about your dad's side of the family. And on your dad's side of the family, you kind of got ******. You didn't have grandparents around for very long. No. No grandma. Your grandfather's gone by the time you're five. Yeah. 

So how did you do on your mother's side of the family? 

Do you remember her parents? 

Well, one of her father died in the 1918 flu epidemic. 

So no grandpas at all. Yeah. He was gone then. You never met him. 

What about your grandma? 

Did you get to meet her? 

My grandmother lived with us until she died, and she died in her eighties, I believe. 

So you got to know her pretty well. Yes, very well. What did you call her? 

Mama Black. Mama Black. Okay. And what was she like? 

Well, she was sick most of the time. 

Oh, no, really? 

And she lived to be in her 80s, but she was sick all the time? 

Not all the time, but she had one bout I remember. She nearly died. She had double pneumonia, and we thought she was going to die, and my mother was very sad about it. 

But she recovered. She recovered. Yeah. 

How many children, how many brothers and sisters did your mother have? 

Was she from a big family? 

No, she just had one brother. One brother. 

That's how she got the responsibility of taking care of Grandma then, huh? 

Mama Black came where she would be cared for. That's right. 

So tell me about your mom. What was she like? 

Well… Your dad was very quiet. 

What was your mother like? 

One thing, she was very devoted to her mother, and she spent a lot of her time looking after her. 

When she died, and my mother was still alive, she got into a lot of different clubs and things that she had not had time for when her mother was alive. Oh, that's interesting. 

How was she with you? 

What do you remember growing up with her? 

Was she a good cook? 

Well, she cooked things that I liked, and I appreciated that. What was your favorite thing she made? 

Spoon bread. Ah, nobody even makes that anymore. Well. Yeah, that's a good memory. Did you watch her make it? 

I think so. 

Can you see yourself as a little guy in the kitchen watching her do that? 

I don't specifically remember watching her, but I'm only sure I did. 

But you can remember what it smelled like, can't you? 

Yeah. What would you put on it? 

Maple syrup. Maple syrup, yeah. That's a good memory, too. It was wonderful. Did you live right in town? 

We lived in Birmingham. We lived on the south side of Birmingham. 

I bet when you were still in Kansas, when you started school, where did you live then? 

Oh, we lived—there was a big shopping center fairly near where we lived, and I'm I'm trying to remember the name of it, but it's still there, and it's thriving. 

So it was in town. It was definitely not in the country. No, it was not in the country. 

So you were raised as a city kid. Yes. 

So when it was time to go to school, was there a neighborhood elementary school around? 

Yes. Did you walk? 

I think I did. 

So it would have been 1930 when you started school. 

Well, I'd have been five years old then. Yeah. That's probably when you started, don't you think? 

Well, maybe the next year. Didn't go to kindergarten then? 

No, we didn't have kindergarten. No kindergartens. 

Okay, so you were six years old when you started first grade. First grade. Can you see yourself going to school? 

Yes. 

Were you walking, or was your mom driving you, or what was going on? 

I can't remember whether I walked or she took me. Your older sister. I probably did some of both. Maybe, yeah. Your older sister was already in school. Yes. 

So she would have been up, you know, way ahead of you, and maybe she was responsible for seeing you go to school. 

Well, maybe. For some reason, I don't know why, but many people remember their first grade teacher's name. Do you? 

No, I don't. Think about it for a minute. She was the first authority figure you had outside of your house. You can't remember her? 

I can't remember her. I remember the name of a couple of the boys that I became friends with. You had buddies in school? 

Tell me who. They were your best friends in school? 

Yes. What were the names? 

One of them's name was, last name was Brown. He lived across the street from where we did. 

Okay, so he was a neighborhood guy. Yeah. 

Well, we were in the same grade in school. 

The other one was Wilmot Taylor, and he lived about three blocks from where I did. 

So you probably met him at school. Yes. As a matter of fact, he was the head of the gang, and the gang chased me all over the school grounds. And then he ended up being your friend? 

Yeah. 

So you have some good memories about that, huh? 

Oh, yes, I sure do. 

You can think about what it was like to live in that community, and you can remember the people, what the houses looked like on the street. It was a happy time for you? 

Very much so. 

But the Depression came along and my father— And ruined everything, huh? 

Yeah, right there. My father had to sell our house. That's just what he owed on it. Yeah, so he lost out. And that's when you moved to Birmingham then, sometime? 

We moved to Cincinnati. Oh, first to Cincinnati? 

You didn't tell me that. That was just for three months, three or four months. 

Oh, why? 

Do you know why the family went there? 

Well, my father had a car rental business in Cincinnati. The company had gone broke, and he bought one of those branches, which was in Cincinnati. 

So he moved there, but only for three months, because why? 

What happened? 

The Depression? 

Well, my mother wanted to get back to Birmingham, and I think that was why they wasn't happy with that move at all. And if Mama's not happy, nobody's happy, right? 

That's right. 

So you all moved to Birmingham. And did Dad buy a house there? 

Didn't settle in? 

No, we rented. You rented, but you settled down. That was going to be home place. Yes. We rented about four or five houses in a row. Why would you rent so many houses? 

Well, we didn't rent them at the same time. Oh, you just happened to be in the neighborhood. Yeah. 

The first one we rented was close to downtown, and it was pretty nice, but the rent was only $35 a month. You can remember that? 

Wow. $35. I can remember all what we paid in all the rental houses. We moved from there to a very nice house in Mountain Brook, and we had to pay $75 a month there. That was really uptown then, wasn't it? 

Yeah, it was. And each time you moved, could you stay in the same school? 

Yes. What was the name of the elementary school you attended? 

Lakeview. Lakeview. Okay. 

So, could you walk to school from wherever you lived, or did you have to be driven? 

Well, when we lived in that second house, I think we had to be driven. 

But in the first house, we were closer to the school, and we could walk, and that's what we did. 

That whole decade, the 30s, were really a challenging time for families, because the Depression came and went, but it didn't really go that far, did it? 

It was still hard times for everybody. Oh, that's right. 

I remember I had a friend that lived across the street from us on 26th Street South, and he marveled at the fact that my mother had bought me some kids' shoes, and the way she had bought was she robbed my piggy bank. She let you buy yourself some shoes on with your money. I mean it was hard times. 

I don't think everybody really understands that today that when we talk about hard times, it was across the board. 

There were a lot of people that really had to choose between buying shoes or having enough to eat, right? 

That's right. 

But I don't remember being put upon or… You were happy. Everything was going fine for you. Yeah, I was happy. 

Well, you were lucky because your dad was very enterprising and he kept things going so that you had options and had income. Your mom never worked outside the house, did she? 

Not after she married my father. She worked in the Selective Service office that my father also worked in. Oh, really? 

They had government jobs to start with then. Yeah, that was during World War I. They knew each other there. That's how they met then, must be. Yes. Ah, that's really interesting. In Birmingham? 

In Birmingham. 

So your dad was there working for a job at that time. I was going to ask you if you knew how they met. 

Well, they met working across a desk for each other. Fickle-finger-up -bait, there they were. 

And that was long before you were born, if it was World War I, so your father probably was exempt from fighting in the war because he was working in a special job for the government. Perhaps. 

I don't know why he was… Were any of your uncles in World War I? 

None of my father's brothers were, but a brother-in-law of his was a colonel in the army. 

So when you grew up, you knew you had relatives who had been in the military. 

If we were to go back into the Saunders family history, if we had access to everything right now, there probably would have been Saunders that were involved in the Civil War, and the Revolutionary War, right? 

Yes. You could probably go back all the way. Somebody was involved somewhere along the line. 

But your dad got exempted because of the high-profile job he had with the government. I guess that would be it. And then he went into business with the family, and now here he is. You were eight years old when you moved to Birmingham? 

Third grade. Seven or eight, yeah. You said third grade, yeah. Probably eight. Was it hard for you to leave all of your friends back in Kansas? 

Yeah, it was. You know, the young men that you can remember their names? 

Yeah. There was one that I didn't say anything about that was about a year older than the rest of us. I don't know whether I remember it, I just remember the pictures of it. We played together just before we moved, and the three or four of us were buddies there. Did you play pick-up baseball and stuff like that? 

Not there. Not there. Not in Nebraska? 

No. And not in Kansas City either? 

No. 

But by the time you got to Birmingham, you were eight years old. You probably were pretty interested in anything like that, right? 

Yeah. I loved to play marbles. Oh, well that was a big deal. Yeah. Collecting them. And playing keeps with marbles. Oh, so you could take somebody else's marbles if you want them then, huh? 

Yeah. Did you have a sack full of them? 

Yeah. I can remember seeing people that had drosting sacks that they kept their marbles in. Yeah, well, I was pretty good at it. Aggies, is that what they called them? 

Yeah, Aggies, that's what you shot with. Oh, you shot with the Aggie. Uh-huh. 

Where did you get the marbles? 

You'd have to buy them, like in a 5 and 10? 

Either that or you had to win them from one of your friends. 

Well, you'd have to have something to start with, right? 

Yeah. Yeah. Did you ever go to the movies when you were a kid? 

Oh yes, I sure did. I was a real movie fan. 

Were you? 

Saturdays? 

On Saturdays, my father would take me down there, he worked on Saturdays, so I'd ride in town with him and I would go to the Alabama Theater and see the Mickey Mouse Club and the cereal and a feature film all for a dime. 

Isn't that something? 

Then after I got out of that I'd go to Silver's five and ten cent store and have lunch. They had a counter? 

A counter? 

Yeah. Yeah, it consisted of four doughnuts and the biggest upper ten soda pop that they sold. That was your lunch, doughnuts? 

Yeah, my lunch. And then after that, I would go to two other theaters and see movies at then. 

So you could go to three movies in one day? 

Yeah. Wow. And then at the end of that, I'd go up to my father's office and we'd come home. You'd go home. And you'd been at the movies all day long. It was the greatest babysitter ever, wasn't it? 

Yeah. I think my mother really won out on that. She had gotten rid of me for a whole day. A whole day. And you saw all the old-Tomo westerns, the serials with Hopalong Cassidy and Lash LaRue. and some of those old movie stars. And they used to show the world news too, movie tone news. Whether you understood it or not, you found out what was going on. You were probably telling all the sad stories of the Depression, I think, at that time. What was happening around the country with all the people doing without. Because all of that was before World War II. 

So it was just a time of... 

So that's great that you got to go to the movies. 

Did you have chores at home? 

Did your parents raise you to believe you had to do some work? 

Yes, somewhat. To justify your life. I had to stoke the furnace for quite some time. That's a big job. We had either coal or coke. And I would go into the basement, which had a dirt floor, and a snake every now and then. Oh boy. And I'd shovel the coal or coke into the furnace. 

So that's what they call stoking it? 

Stoke it. You stoke it. That's right. And that would last all night. 

So that was your last job of the day, for you to go down and make sure everything was cooking right. That's right. That's good. If it didn't, everybody would be cold, because it would shut down then, right? 

I guess so, yeah. Wow. 

So your folks let you know that work was part of living. You didn't always just get to play. I think they did, although never in an oppressive way or anything like that. This is the way life is. Yeah, I was just delighted to do something. 

I used to ask my mother in the summertime, what can I do, what can I do? 

She got very irritated with me about that. Go out and play. Yeah. Was I. Did you ever get involved with scouts? 

Were you ever a Cub Scout or a Boy Scout? 

No, I wasn't. You didn't have that option, huh? 

No. 

Well, I did have the option, but I didn't want to be a scouter. 

So every day in the summertime, what did you do to amuse yourself? 

Were the kids playing baseball that you could go play with them? 

Well, one thing I did when I was about eight or nine, I went into business. I had a drink stand. A drink stand? 

Soft stands. Soft drink stand with the neighbor boy. He and I were partners. 

But he was older than I, so I don't know whether he really treated me right on that one. Did you have an actual wooden booth or something? 

Yeah, we had a stand. 

And you put it out where? 

On the front of your house? 

Yeah, on the street right in front of my house. And what were you selling? 

Oh, Coca-Colas and Pepsis and up-and-tends. Oh, you didn't make lemonade. You were selling real products then. Yeah, yeah. Did you have a business license? 

No, nobody ever asked me for one. You'd need one today. You'd need one today. 

So where did you get your products from then? 

Well, the Nehi Bottling Company made soft drinks of various types. I remember orange and grape were Nehi. Yeah. And then they probably also sold drinks they got from other bottlers like Coca-Cola and 7up. 

So would you buy wholesale and sell retail? 

Oh yeah, we had a big markup. Oh, so you knew just what you were doing. A case of soft drinks was I believe 24 drinks and it cost 80 cents for the case. We sold the drinks for a nickel apiece and so we got a dollar twenty out of it. We had paid 10 cents for the block of ice to keep them cold. Oh, okay, so that was out of your profit, too. 

Yeah, so we probably wound up all day long in that drink stand and made maybe 20 cents, something like that. We were in business. 

But you learned a lot. We moved right after the year I did that. Yeah. 

We moved to a new house, not a new house, but a house in Mountain Brook, and I built a drink stand there and sold drinks. This you did by yourself this time, though. Yeah. I didn't have a partner. I got to keep all the property. No splitting on the property. Yeah, you got to keep the money yourself. It was hard work. You'd have to stay out there the whole day, then, if you had customers. 

Imagine my mother, now, see where she is, she has to take care of the family and everything, and she could, she'd take me in the morning to buy the drinks and the ice, and then that was all she had to do all day long, because I was out there at the street stand trying to sell drinks. 

So she had a good thing going for her, too. She had a very good thing going for her. How much business did you get? 

Would you sell 24 bottles in a day? 

Yeah. Really? 

Usually we'd get to sell the whole case in a day. That's pretty good. 

You probably in a week were making more money than some grown-ups were, because it was still bad times. It was still hard times. It was. It worked that hard. Did you get to keep the money you made? 

Yeah. Your parents didn't make you turn it in? 

No. 

But if you wanted something special, like marbles, did you have to buy them yourself or did they buy them for you? 

I had to buy them. Okay. 

So you learned what it was to earn money and spend money, right? 

Yeah. That's the American way. That's a good thing to learn. 

Oh, where I really learned that, though, was when I was at Lakeview Grammar School was in the second and third grade or second grade, I had a set of lead soldier molds. And I molded— You poured lead? 

Yeah, I got the lead and melted it and poured it in the mold. And I sold those for, I forgot what, maybe a nickel apiece or something, a skew. That sounds dangerous, heating up lead. 

Everybody would be scared of that now, I suppose, because lead, you could get some kind of lead poison. And I did burn my fingers. A few times? 

A few times, yeah. 

So what you were is born to be a businessman. 

You weren't messing with Boy Scouts because you were already in business for yourself, right? 

Well, that's probably part of it, yeah. Early, early you were doing that. 

And would you sell to the kids in the school then? 

You'd bring your soldiers in yourself? 

Yeah, I sold them to the kids in the school. 

So you were an enterpriser guy. That's amazing that you could do that. 

So what'd you do with all your money then? 

I was rich. You were compared to some folk, I bet you were. I bet you were. 

So when you were at Lakeside, which is when you lived in Mountain Brook, that's where, you went through grade three to what? 

How long could you stay in that school? 

Just two years. 

So they had a junior high or a middle school? 

What did they call it? 

Grammar school. 

No, after grammar school, what did they go? 

Well— After you got through the sixth grade, where did you go? 

Well, I was in Birmingham then. Yeah, yeah, that's what we're talking about, Lakeview. Yeah, Lakeview Grammar School, and I went to Ramsey High School from there. Oh, so they didn't have a middle school. Didn't have a middle school. Did elementary stay through the eighth grade? 

Yes. 

Okay, and then nine through, was it eleven or twelve? 

Twelve. About twelve. 

So Alabama had four years of high school then. That's right. Okay. 

So now we're talking eighth grade, seventh and eighth grade, that's when boys generally start learning about teams and belonging to teams and they also start noticing girls. Yeah. Would you say you were on cue for that? 

Oh, yes. Yeah, you were right on cue for that. 

Did you ever get a job besides your drink stand, like a paper route or anything like that? 

No, I don't believe I did. 

Well, how long could you stay with your drink stand? 

Did you do that for summer after summer? 

Just for summer. 

But for years? 

Well, a couple of years. 

So what happened then when you got out of, let's say, eighth grade? 

When you got out of eighth grade, you went into high school. What high school did you tell me was the name of it? 

Ramsey. Ramsey. Okay. Have a drink. 

So Ramsey High School was in town. 

So were you able to walk there or ride a bike or how would you get to school? 

My mother usually took us to school. Did your folks always have a car then? 

Yes. Because of the business your dad was in. Yeah. Because a lot of people never even saw cars. I mean they just didn't have them in the 30s. 

So you were lucky. 

What kind of car did your dad have for a family car? 

Well, the one I remember was after three or four years was a Mewick Special. Don't you wish you had it now? 

Yeah, it would probably be worth a lot of money. Oh yeah, it would be worth a lot of money if you had it now. 

But it was just part of your deal. You got dropped off at school. school. 

How did you like high school? 

Were you a good student? 

Well, I think I was average or a little better. I bet you were a little better. We know you were already a businessman. You knew how to give change. You knew how to charge for your product. Yeah. High school was a high point for me. Tell me why. What do you remember? 

Well, I was very active in my social fraternity, high school fraternity. Oh, you had one of those. Yeah. There were probably seven or eight such organizations. And so I was very active in that, and I was president of it. Did you have socials? 

Yeah. I mean— We had an annual dance. Everybody knew how to dance in those days, didn't they? 

Yeah. They tried anyway. Yeah, but it was very acceptable to do ballroom dancing. Yes. Yeah, very much so. 

So you had dances, and did you participate in any sports or band? 

Yes. 

The fraternities usually had baseball teams and football teams, and I was active in both of those things. 

So you got plenty of exercise. Yeah. And you can remember that as being quite a happy time? 

Oh, yes. Yeah. Did you have individual dating then, or was it mostly group dating? 

Individual dating. Okay. 

So where would you take a young lady if you asked her to go out? 

To the movies was probably the biggest thing. The biggest thing was movies, right? 

Yeah. And also dances with the other fraternities and sororities would have. 

So you would invite everybody, not just your own circle? 

Yeah. Okay. Where would they have the dances? 

At the school? 

No. 

When I was in high school, they had a place at Five Points South, that was the Pickwick Club, and it was strictly a dance club. And it was busy all the time, I expect, huh? 

Yeah. And had these lead-out dances from the fraternities and sororities, and we were there a lot. 

When you were in high school, as you think back to that time, ninth and tenth grade, you were busy, you were involved, you knew lots of people, it was a happy time. 

When did you start thinking about going to college? 

Or did you always know you'd go to college? 

Well, I assumed I would go to college. You did assume that. Your family? 

Everybody else I knew went to college, so I suspected to go. Had your older sister gone to college? 

Yes. They went to Randolph-Macon for two years. Oh, they did. Okay. 

And then one of them went to Birmingham Southern, and the other went to Alabama for the rest of the day. 

So it was expected you were going to go to college then, pretty much. Yeah. Yeah. 

So how do you decide where you're going to go to school when you're living in Mountain Brook, Alabama? 

In nineteen what? 

What year did you graduate from high school? 

Oh, 1941, maybe. No, no, no, no. 37 or 38, maybe. Maybe 1937 or 38. 

Well, what decided me on where I was going to go to college was I would go where my high school fraternity brothers were going. Peer pressure. Yeah, peer pressure. And I expected to go to Auburn to school. 

Did you know what you wanted to study? 

I think I knew that I wanted to study some sort of engineering. You did know that. Okay. 

So tell me, were there any high school counselors that talked to you kids about that? 

No. No. You were on your own. Whatever you could figure out, right? 

No internet, no telephones, no nothing. 

You just had to try to figure out by word of mouth what other people were Yeah, our parents would help, of course. 

So in 1930, we have to look this up, but probably 1938 you graduated. Because I know you didn't go right to Georgia Tech, you went somewhere else first. Yeah, Birmingham Southern first. 

Okay, so why? 

Why did you go to Birmingham Southern first? 

Well, in my senior year in high school, I discovered, or my family discovered, that I could take an entrance exam at Birmingham Southern, and although I didn't graduate from high school, I was allowed to go to college. You didn't graduate from high school? 

No, I'm a dropout. No, you didn't. I was a legal dropout. 

You were a legal dropout? 

What does that mean? 

Well, that means that they accepted me at Birmingham Southern. Before you actually had graduated from high school? 

Yeah. Is that it? 

Yeah. 

The last year of high school, I could, the last half of the last year of high school, You could start college. I could start college if I could pass the examination. 

Well, see here, you told me you were only average, and that's not true at all. You must have been pretty doggone smart. 

Well, I had two good friends that took the exams to get to college with me, and neither one of them made it, but I did. Oh, no kidding. You were the one of the three that got in. And so, make me familiar with Birmingham Southern. Is that a two -year school, or a full -year? 

No, it's a four -year school. It's a full four-year school, right here in Birmingham. A very fine school. 

Okay, so you enrolled in there, and did you take core classes? classes? 

What did you enroll for? 

Engineering program? 

Well, no, not professors, just the general studies, history, English. And did you do well? 

Yeah. 

But you were the only one of the fraternity. 

All the other guys were going somewhere else? 

Well, yeah, but none of them were skipping the second half of their senior year in high school. 

Okay, so you were ahead of the pack. Yeah, I was head of the back on that. 

So how long did you attend classes there? 

Two quarters, they had quarters instead of semesters. 

So two quarters was half a year, and that's for half a year I was there. 

So you were just turning eighteen and you already had two quarters of college in? 

Yeah. 

But you didn't stay? 

Well, the Navy sent me to Georgia Tech. 

Now there's the story, okay. 

How could the Navy do that? 

Did you join the ROTC program? 

How did you get in the Navy? 

How did the Navy get ahold of you? 

Well, I remember being sworn in in Birmingham at the recruiting camp. Did you enlist? 

Did you enlist? 

Yeah. Oh, you went down and enlisted. Yeah. How did your folks feel about that? 

They were all for it. They were all for it because they felt that I was better off there than in the trenches overseas. A common thought, yeah. 

Because what was happening is the world was becoming more and more aware, or I should say the United States was becoming more aware of the world's problems. And we could see that there was going to be some conflict, right? 

Yeah. If we're talking 1940, 1941. 

So did you enlist in the Navy before Pearl Harbor? 

No, after. 

So it would have been 1942 then that you enlisted. 

So you were one of those guys that heard about Pearl Harbor and went and enlisted, right? 

Well, no, I didn't go running and enlist then. I found out, I think my father found out, that the Navy had this program that I could join. And they'd pay for your college education. And they'd pay for my college education. Do you know where you were when Pearl Harbor occurred? 

Yes, of course. Tell me. It was in the driveway of our house on Salisbury Road in Birmingham when I heard it. 

On the radio? 

I walked a block to where we had fraternity meetings, and we were all talking about the ******* of Pearl Harbor, what did it mean. 

Where was it? 

A lot of people didn't even know where Pearl Harbor was, right? 

That's probably right, yeah. Did you have any idea at all at that time when you think back of what you were like. You were so young that it was going to change the whole future for you. Nobody really could understand that, I think, right when it happened. No, I don't think so. 

So, you finished up your quarter at Birmingham Southern, made the decision to enlist in the V12 program, and where did you go for your boot camp? 

But we didn't go to boot camp, we went straight to Georgia Tech. No training at all? 

You just get a uniform and go to Georgia Tech? 

Yeah. 

And we went over there on a train, and there was hundreds of us on that train going to check in at Georgia Tech. What did you feel about getting that kind of an assignment? 

Were you okay with it? 

Yeah. You would never have considered going to Georgia Tech other than that it happened to you. 

Is that correct? 

Like you said, you would have probably gone to Auburn if you had stayed out of the military. 

So the V-12 program was very interesting. The military rented Georgia Tech's facilities, both the Army and the Navy had programs there. 

And they rented out the dormitories and the Britain Dining Hall and even the library, which you probably didn't realize. Mrs. 

Crosland was counting all the sailors and soldiers that went out in and out, and then she would bail the government for that money. It kept Georgia Tech going through a really hard time. It sure did, yeah. 

So once you got to Tech, you did not participate in the regular Navy ROTC program. That was going on. 

But you were separate from that, your own unit, correct? 

Yes, my own Navy unit. Different uniforms. 

Oh, you did have a different uniform? 

Because they were reserve and you were regular, probably, right? 

Well, we were sailors and they were officers to be. Oh, that's right. You would have been considered just a… Swabby. A Swabby. Yeah. 

So you get to Georgia Tech in the fall? 

Would it have been for the… We were on quarters then. We got to Georgia Tech. In the summer of the fall. Summer, yeah. Summer of 42. Yes. I think they wrote a song about that. It sounds familiar. 

Okay, so summer of 42. There was a movie about that. There was something about that, yeah. And you landed up in a dorm. Yes. What was your first dorm? 

How old did you tell me? 

How old. How old. And you were in a, how many roommates did you have? 

One. Just one? 

So you had a suite? 

That's only one. 

Did you luck out and have a decent roommate? 

Well, we really didn't— Get to know them very well? 

No. And each semester, they'd send us to a new dormitory. Each quarter. We were on the quarter system. Because Georgia Tech was going to school all year round, four quarters. 

Well, they had three semesters a year. They A normal semester in Pistai would have been eighteen weeks. They cut it to sixteen weeks for this program so that we could fit in three semesters in one year. I thought it was four quarters in one year. 

Well, it would be four quarters in one year, but that would be… Twelve weeks. I thought it was twelve weeks, four weeks. 

Well, it doesn't matter. You know what you were doing. And every time the period of training ended, then you had to move out and go into some place. That's how come you covered so many dormitories when you were there. That's right. You weren't there. Every year. I don't know why they did that every time you changed it. I don't know why they moved us around that way, they just did them. 

So you get enrolled, did you get to choose that you wanted to be a mechanical engineer? 

Yes. 

But you already had your core classes in, so did you start right into engineering classes? 

Or did you— Pretty much that. We had a woodworking professor there, Grandpa Tommy, I think it was. In his class we made a birdhouse or something like that. And another one that was a— Just be careful. You got it. Another glass was Grandpa Billy. 

Well that was Billy Van Houten. That was what his name was. I remember Uncle Billy. They used to call him Uncle Billy. Yeah, Uncle Billy. Yeah, Uncle Billy. 

Well actually, it was Uncle Heine that had the wood shop. Because Because the uncles were all still there. They didn't leave until the fifties, and you were there in the forties. Do you remember them? 

They were pretty interesting old guys, and they'd been there for fifty years. Yeah. 

So they did make you take shop classes, even though you were in the V12 program. Yeah, we had one class, and we made molds and poured a little bit of it. The Foundry. The Foundry, yeah. Yeah, the Foundry. And that was, I think, Uncle Billy's territory, he was the one that ran the Foundry. Yeah. I didn't know, I forgot that you would still have been doing shock classes. We had a lot of professors that had been there for a long time. There was one, I'm going to ask you a couple to see if you remember. There was one called Dr. D. M. Smith, he taught mathematics and calculus. Yeah. 

Did you ever have him for a class? 

I'm told he was one of the finest teachers in the whole world, but that he was pretty funny. Do you remember him? 

I don't remember that. I just remember the name and the title that was in his class. And then there was another one called Glenn Rainey. Dr. Rainey taught English, Persuasion, and several other classes like that, public speaking. Did you ever have him? 

I took public speaking one time, and also took radio speaking one time. That would have been Glenn Rainey then that taught those classes. And he had been at Tech for a really long time. He was a really, I'm told, a very fun man. That some of those old guys used to tell stories and such. 

So it was an interesting time. And some of them, of the professors had gone off to war. 

So we did have a shortage there. 

There was a chemistry professor that graduated and became a professor immediately because the professor that taught him went off to the war, so he had a fellow in the space. His name was Erling Grovenstein. Do you remember him? 

No, I don't remember him. I had, in my physics class, I had a professor that disappeared right in the middle of the semester. And we didn't know where he'd go, but anyway, they had a substitute for him. And learned later that he got sent to Tennessee to the atom bomb. Oh, he was working there. Yeah. Yeah. Manhattan Project. Yeah, on that project. 

There was a lot of stuff going on like that, that no one really talked about at the time, like the things going on. 

So he was probably a specialist and they just plucked him right out of there. Yeah, they needed a physicist or whatever. Yeah, and it sounds like they would have needed every physicist they could get their hands on. 

They were going back to Alabama, to Huntsville, because there was a lot of stuff going on in Huntsville. And then there was all the stuff up in Tennessee. And y'all were just kids, watching what was going by. 

So you had to wear your uniform every day, is that correct? 

Yes. 

There were some students in school that were just civilians, the really young kids that were just coming in? 

Yeah. 

Yeah, they would come in and then they'd be signed up for the draft and they'd be there, and then one semester or two semester. And they'd be gone. And then the Army had the ASTP program. 

And I remember hearing the story that one of the professors had encouraged everybody to sign up for that program because it would guarantee that they wouldn't have to, they could finish their degree. And like what, six weeks later they were all gone. All off to camp. 

Yeah, they all went to training and the next thing you know they were the ones that were in the trenches over in Europe. Yeah. 

So your dad was right about that, the Navy was a better shot for you, on that regard. 

So Harris, and you did have a nickname I found out when I was talking to Ann, it's, what did they call you, Sonny, or Sondry? 

Sonny, when I was young, in high school, one of my girlfriends at the time christened I mean Sondy. Sondy. 

A little bit of play on your last name here, huh? 

What about in the Navy? 

In the Navy, no nicknames. You were Saunders. Yes, sir. 

So we were just discussing the fact that you had some interesting teachers, but you told me you joined a fraternity, and so I want you to tell me that story because I did not know that Navy V-12s could join the fraternities at Tech. 

So what did they have? 

A regular rush for you? 

Well, I joined the SAEs in Birmingham Southern. Okay. 

So you transferred there. 

And then I transferred, and I didn't participate in the fraternity for the first semester, but then I got active in that. after being there a few months and we met in the Chi Phi house for a while and then they let us go into the SAE house. 

So it was just business as usual for the eternity. There were civilian kids and military kids both? 

Yeah. 

But you You could go there for social events and they almost always had them. We were talking about big dances and having regular dances. 

That was pretty common then for the fraternities too, correct? 

Well, yes I think we had them at Georgia Tech. We had parties I know, house parties and regular parties. You did have a lot of social life if you wanted, it was then. A lot of social events. Yeah. Where did the girls come from? 

The high school seniors in Atlanta. 

Probably the nursing students, too, maybe? 

Huh? 

Weren't there some nursing students that used to come over, too? 

Probably. The local hospitals? 

Yeah. I think there were. Agnes Scott, did they send over girls a lot, too? 

Well, we went to New York with Agnes Scott. Oh, you went from there to get the girls at Agnes Scott. 

But there was no shortage of women, even though it was an all-male campus. That's right. 

If you had a dance, there would be someone to dance with, right? 

Yeah. What about the football season? 

What? 

Football. One of the things— Yeah, you can have dates for football games. Yeah, but there were football games. Some schools didn't have football when the war was on, but Georgia Tech kept up. Yeah, Georgia Tech kept up. 

We had, Coach Alex was still recruiting, and they say that he had a big advantage because there were a lot of good guys in the Navy. Yeah, that's right. That he recruited. 

So it was an advantage. 

So did you go to the games? 

Yeah. 

Well, one game I remember we played Navy, and we won, the score was 17-15, and the lead changed hands about four or five times. 

I remember hearing that, and when the Navy came during those days, they always brought a goat with them, because that was their mascot, I guess. 

Why would the Navy have a goat mascot? 

I remember talking to a Navy guy who was responsible, a tech guy. He was on the cheerleading team, and he was responsible for stealing the goat. And he said that he didn't realize a goat smelled so bad when you handle it, you know. And he said nobody wanted him to come back because he stunk to high heaven. He had a goat all over him. 

So I believe that's a true story. It sounds true. It's a true story, yeah. a really funny story at that time. 

So who did you cheer for, Georgia Tech or Navy? 

Oh, Georgia Tech. 

So once you got there you were definitely a tech guy. It made you a tech man even though you had never considered doing that before. Kind of interesting isn't it? 

When everybody around you is doing it, you do it too. And we had some pretty good teams. They sure did. Coach Alex went to a bowl game. Bobby Dodd was a coach after. 45. 45 is when he came in as head coach, but he'd been there for years. Coach Alex made him wait a long time before he let him be head coach. He was hanging on to it for a long time, but at 45 he finally decided. And you were gone by that time, I think. 

Well, I graduated in the fall of 45. 

So it just had happened late that summer, so yeah. 

Stinky Bowen, there was a lot of different names for the football players, but- I don't remember that one. Do you remember Luke Bowen? 

His name was Luke Bowen. He had a nickname of Stinky on the side. Paul Duke. Paul Duke, I knew. And we were talking before about Frank Broyles. Yeah. He was a big player for Georgia Tech at that time. That's right. There were a lot of really good players. And what happened, they went to the 1941 Orange Bowl. Oh. That was before you got there. Yeah, just before. Yeah, and then the following January. Yeah, Clint Castleberry, I think, was a star. That's right. Casaberry was a big deal in 41, but he was gone by the time you came. 

But in 42, just about the time you got there in 42, a lot of the players that Coach Alex had been grooming all quit and went into the war. They all went unactivity. 

So he had to rebuild his team. And I read about it in the newspapers of the time. 

But he was doing good. 

But there were a lot of schools that didn't have his resources, as they said. Did you ever meet Coach Alex? 

No. 

Did you ever see him? 

Do you remember seeing him on the sideline? 

I think I do, but I don't remember. You don't have any real memories about him? 

No. I like to ask people if they know anything about him, because he was gone long before I came around. Bobby Dodd, I knew. You used to see him? 

I used to see him. He came to Birmingham. 

Oh, in later days, he used to come tell stories, didn't he? 

Yeah, he'd tell stories about Bear Bryant and when he came, he was coming to raise money or something like that. 

But I took him to dinner that night. Oh, you got to know him pretty good then. Yeah, well, he and his family, I think girls or something, were my guests at the club. them, and I enjoyed that very much. Miss Alice was his wife's name. She came with him, too? 

I think so. Yeah, he liked to tell stories about the bear. He said the bear wanted to recruit a hotshot quarterback from up in Pennsylvania somewhere. somewhere, but that boy had already decided to go to Notre Dame, he was a Catholic. And so they had that drawing. 

But the bear dressed one of his assistant coaches up as a monk, sent him to see that boy and tell him that God wanted him to go to Georgia Tech. How crazy is that, huh? 

And when he got him, though. Did he? 

Really? 

He came? 

Oh, wow. They were friends, but they were rivals, Bobby Dodd and Bear Bryant. They were definitely rivals back and forth. Sure. I think one of the funniest things that I read that Dodd had written was he hated calculus. And John Heisman, before him, had hated calculus. 

Coach Alex never had anything against it, because, of course, he went to Georgia Tech, and he took calculus. 

But Heisman used to threaten to quit all the time because he couldn't get in, you know, the calculus made it too hard to get the dumber players. 

And Dodd said he'd go recruit somebody, and if he saw that there was a, you know, the calculus book anywhere there, he'd know he'd have to leave, you know, because it would be that Georgia got them before them. 

The Georgia team used to bring calculus books and say, this is what you're going to have to do if you go to Georgia Tech to scare off the recruits. 

So, Dodd said calculus was his, oh, he thought it was the worst thing ever. He didn't know why we had to have calculus. He said it ruined many a good football player. And he had really good football players. And he made them all graduate. That was the difference between today and back in the day. They still have that, that the football players have to graduate? 

Oh, no, that went out years ago. It went out with Dodd. I mean, you know, he was, they don't coach like that anymore. He made those kids want to please him. They so respected him. You know, they didn't want, so many of them. 

Paul Duke told me, if coach opened a window and dad said, go ahead and jump out, he said, I'd have gone because I didn't think he'd ever do anything to hurt me. I believed in him so much. 

So you were there to see these really, really great men. Oh, yeah. And there was another guy that was around all the time then by the name of George Griffin. Yeah. And I bet you got to see him from time to time. One of those pictures he showed me was a picture of his son. Yeah. He was in class with you. Yeah, he was in class with me, and he was the president of the S. A.s. Oh, he was? 

Yeah. I was the vice president. Oh, so you were buddies with Clayton then? 

Yeah. I knew him well. Did you get to know George at all? 

His father? 

No, I didn't know him at all. 

You didn't know him at all? 

Almost everybody tells me a George story, but you don't have one? 

No, I don't have one. He was so, such a character, and so beloved by everyone. Still to this day, you know, we think of him as a legend of Georgia Tech. Yeah, he certainly was, yes. You were there when, just at the end of the career of Britton, Dr. Britton was still president when you got there. He was trying really hard to retire. They couldn't find anybody because the war was going on. And finally, in 1944, just before you graduated, President Van Leer came in. Who did? 

Van Leer. Van Leer, yeah. You remember? 

Blake Van Leer. Yep, he was Colonel Van Leer, Blake Van Leer. 

He had many titles, and he had a lot of patience, and he knew all about boys and military because he was military all his life. 

So he came in, and dear Dr. Britton got to retire. He was worn out by that time. He'd been at Tech since 1921. Oh, my goodness. 

So he was ready to go. It does wear you down, you know. Oh, I'm sure it does. It's a real grind to be there. 

Did you have to go through military training and stuff while you were there? 

I mean, the physical things, I mean, did they make you do exercises and all that kind of stuff? 

Yeah, we did calisthenics every morning. Every morning, oh, okay. I don't know whether we did that the whole time I was there, but we did it. When you got there, that's what was going on. Yeah. 

They had a field right across from the Howell Dormitory, and the guys from other dormitories had to march by ours before we went out for the calisthenics. and they would count off and wake us all up. 

So you could hear it. Yeah. And so I and some of my buddies in Howell had had enough of that. 

So we set about to have a plan. And my room was right over the front entrance of Howell. 

So we gathered up a lot of garbage from the Britton home. And the next time they came out of there, we threw all that garbage at them. Oh, no. 

From out of the windows? 

Huh? 

Out of the windows? 

Down on them? 

Yeah, out of the windows of my room. 

Well, I was the fall guy then, and the lieutenant in charge of the sloth calisthenics and all. I think he really wanted to send me to boot camp, but some reason or other he didn't. 

I don't know whether somebody put in a good word for me or what, but I dodged the bullet there and I stayed in school. I'm glad. I'm glad. Did they make you always go out and clean up the mess? 

No. They didn't. I wonder who ended up cleaning up all the mess. Oh dear. 

You ate all your meals in Britton Dining Hall, correct? 

I ate at the fraternity house some, but I think I ate mostly in Britton Hall. I've seen pictures and it's just filled with Navy uniforms. Uh-huh. We had some young girl who was a Hollywood movie star come see us in the Hall, the Britain Hall. Anne Withers. Jane. Jane Withers, yeah. Jane Withers. Very ugly girl. Was she? 

Really? 

She was a child star. She was probably in some of the early movies you saw, she was a child star. I don't remember what she looked like. She must have been a glamour girl, no? 

Yeah. She won in my book. I'd a lot rather have Shirley Temple or something. 

Well, a lot of stars used to stop by. 

They came to raise money for savings bonds, and they'd had events out on Grant Field to try to get people to raise money for savings bonds. It was all about money all the time, trying to raise money. 

So a lot of the starlets would make the trip around and see everybody. That was going on. There was a woman by the name of Daisy Daniel that ran the Britain Dining Hall. Oh. Do you remember her? 

No. You don't remember Daisy? 

That's why the guys used to call it Daisy's Hash House. Some people called it Tomo Tavern, too. It might have been what you heard at the time. Yeah, that's probably more likely what I heard. Yeah, I recently just discovered her in some old newspaper articles and stuff. She was the first female dining hall manager that we had at Georgia Tech. She had an apartment upstairs in the Britain Dining Hall. Oh, my goodness. 

And those windows that were over the front door of it, and they said she used to open the windows just like you, threw things down on people. She'd open the windows and yell at the guys if they were doing something she didn't think was right. She'd get after them, huh? 

She'd get after them, yeah. Were you having a good time, Harris? 

Did you enjoy being at Georgia Tech? 

Yes, I did. 

How prepared were you for the classes? 

Did you do well? 

Well, I was a C student, and that's what I wound up as. I did a little better earlier on. It's hard to be a C student at Georgia Tech. That doesn't mean you were goofing off. 

Well, Ann and I went to a big gathering over there and had a big dinner on the 50 -yard line on the field. 

And one of the speakers, an ex -student of Georgia Tech, said, You know, I was a C student at Georgia Tech, but that's the best you can be because the C students are the ones that get out in the world and hire the A students. 

Well, it's hard to be a C student. I mean, it's not that you're asleep at the wheel. It's just a really hard school. And you found that out. It's a hard school. You had to learn how to study. And if you didn't pass your classes, if you flunked, you'd probably ship out, wouldn't you? 

Yeah. I mean, the Navy expected you to do well. 

The first semester there, starting July 1st of 1942, they shipped out about a third of all the Navy boys. Because they couldn't make it? 

They couldn't make it. Yeah. 

So you were one of the lucky ones hanging on to your seats, right? 

Yeah, I was hanging on. Yeah, hanging on. 

What do you remember best about that time period? 

I mean, the world was at war, and you knew a lot of people that had gone off to war. Yeah, I did. 

And here you are in your uniform every day doing your calisthenics and doing all the things they expect of you and learning, learning to stay in there with grit holding on. And you knew that sooner or later it was going to be over and you'd be shipped out somewhere too. Yeah. 

So it must have taken a lot of courage to just put one foot in front of the other. I mean, you were just a kid. 

Well, the way I felt about it at the time was I was sort of embarrassed, I guess, by the fact that all my buddies were going overseas and fighting and all, and there I was in this cushy position at Georgia Tech. Only it wasn't so cushy. It wasn't. Although, I'm interested to hear that there was fraternity life. I didn't realize there was that much of that going on at that time, so it was pretty okay. 

And the Interfraternity Council used to have these really great big dances, and you got to go to any of those with the big bands coming? 

You know, I don't remember those, but I must have gone to them if— Phil Harris and Alice Fay came. There was a band at Georgia—an orchestra at Georgia Tech called the Technologians. and they played for a lot of the dances at the Biltmore at the North Druid Hills Country Club I mean you guys were having dances all over the place the fraternities were and I had a chance to talk to some of the people that were in that band and one fellow told me that he never the whole time he was at Georgia Tech he never danced once because he was always playing the music there was a lot of money to be made oh yeah Yeah, you know, because big bands were very much in the band. The guy who organized the band was Mack Conway. Did you know him? 

That sounds familiar. 

He was a pretty big deal at Georgia Tech, two of the years you were there, and then he was gone after that. And the guy that told me that he was always playing the music was a guy named Floyd Blair. He's a few years older than you. He got out earlier than you did and went right to war, you know, so he knew what that was all about. 

But really, it kind of bothered you that you were still there and your friends were off fighting, huh? 

Yes. 

Did you write letters to anybody? 

Did you write home to your mom? 

Well, I came home from time to time, but usually hitchhiked home. I got out on Highway 78 and stuck my thumb out. No problem getting right, I'm sure. No, well, I had on my uniform and I got some crazy rides, I tell you. Did you? 

One was a hearse and there was a dead guy in the back. Oh, and he stopped for you? 

Oh my gosh. Yeah, he stopped for me. I looked around back there. There was a casket? 

And there was two shoes sticking up there. Oh my God, he wasn't even in a casket? 

No. It was just on a gurney or something? 

Yeah, just back there. Oh, that would have been pretty spooky, huh? 

Yeah. I'd like that. 

But did you write to your mom? 

Yeah, I wrote to her, and I got letters from her, and from her dad, too. Did you? 

Because, you know, of course, that's a lost art now. People don't do that anymore. And I like to bring it up because I think it's interesting that everybody wrote letters. Yeah. That's what we did to communicate. Telephone calls were expensive. Yeah. 

Not to mention it was hard to find a phone, right? 

Hard to find a phone, it took forever to get the line and get through on a telephone. See, and people don't even believe that's a fact, but it really was. You know that. Yeah, because they had operators moving you from one station to another. And you have to stand in line to get the phone to start with if you were at Tech. There weren't that many phones on the campus. I think some of the dorms had one. There was one at the Y. And that was about it. Yeah. 

So it was hard to come by a phone. 

So writing a letter was the thing that you did. You'd go to the post office and hope somebody sent you something, uh-huh. Yeah. Did you ever go to the Y, the YMZ on the campus there? 

Not to participate in their activities. 

No, you never attended any of the, the band played there sometimes, the glee club saying you didn't go to any of those things. Any of the dances they had. That's where the barbershop was, too. You never went over and got a haircut? 

Well, I must have gotten a haircut there. I don't know. Because you would have had to keep your hair cut. Yeah. That was rules. That's right. 

So the first few years went by, and you find yourself being a senior, and there was military everywhere. 

You were with the Swabies, as you said, but you also had Army, I don't know what you called them, squadrons or whatever, because there was the ASTP program going on. 

Well, it ended a couple of years before we got out. 

But we still had Army ROTC training and Navy, both training. And there was a great big armory that had opened in 1935. Did you ever go to the Naval Armory? 

Oh, yeah. That's where you hung out and played basketball, maybe? 

No, well I wasn't interested in basketball. That's where the Navy had its nurses and doctors. The whole health center thing. Health center, yeah. And I think they even used to open it up for dances, didn't they? 

I think so. 

In the basketball area, because I remember people saying that they had gone to the I see it in writing. I mean, you know, we see it in the old newspaper. The Heisman Gym was there, with the pool, which was— Oh, yeah. What was that pool? 

What was it? 

Freddie Lanoue. Did you ever go to— His classes, yeah. It was called Drownproofing. 

I remember that if you were able to tread water for a certain length of time, time, you didn't have to go back anymore. You had to learn how to swim underwater both lengths of the pool, though. Oh, yeah. 

Do you remember doing that? 

Well, I don't remember that specifically, but that's the kind of test we had. It was to teach you how to survive if your ship got torpedoed or something. 

We had to take off our pants in the pool and fill them with air and go over your head like that, and that was your life jacket. It worked, didn't it? 

Yeah, it worked. He saved a lot of people's lives with all of that kind of training. 

But people used to, I've seen, I mean I've interviewed people who actually come to tears over it because it was so hard for some people. 

If you didn't know how to swim or you were afraid of water, which a lot of people are just afraid of water. Yeah. It was a nightmare. It didn't bother you a bit. No, I've been swimming for years. I understood that you didn't wear bathing suits in that class. Do you remember that? 

No, but I'm not surprised. I didn't think you would be. No, it was all what they called natural. Oh, not your brawl. Yeah. 

Freddie didn't want anybody in cut-off pants or anything like that because the strings would clog up the system, the filtration system. 

When it first opened, they found that out, and that was the end of bathing suits and cut-offs and everything, until women came much, much, much later. 

So it was the big band. It wasn't really such a bad assignment, was it? 

No, it wasn't. And you got through mechanical engineering in three years. Your credits from Birmingham Southern transferred in. Yeah. And you were ahead of the game. I graduated when I was 20 years old. Just 20. You were still baby. Yeah. You didn't think so, though, did you? 

No, no. I thought I was on top of the world. Yeah, I bet you did. When you graduated, did your parents come to see you? 

Yes, they did. My girlfriend did. Oh, you had a girlfriend at that time. She was an Agnes Scott girl. Oh, you've got a local girl. Oh, how about that? 

So you pretty much knew what was going to happen, didn't you? 

Yeah. You were going to go into the military. You were going to go on active duty. Yeah. 

The interesting thing about your timing, and everything in life is timing, isn't it, is it was the end of the war. You got in towards the latter part of it. Most of the people that had immediately entered the war were already all worn out. Half of them were dead because it was so ****** on the European continent. 

So what were your assignments? 

Did you get it the same day you graduated, or when did you get your orders? 

When I graduated. Right then and there. Where did they send you? 

They sent me to the west coast to a ship there. 

What was it called? 

Do you remember? 

I don't remember that one, but we went to the ship, about three of us, I think. Oh, only three of you? 

Yeah. And you took the train to get out there? 

Yeah, through Chicago. Through Chicago? 

That's a different route. Yeah, going west from there. Had you ever been that far on a train before? 

No. Had you ever gone that far? 

I'd been on a train before when I'd gone that far. 

So that was an experience. It would take a few days, probably? 

Yeah, it took probably four or five days. Where did you go, northern California or southern California? 

San Francisco, I believe. That was the northern section, okay. 

And they put you on a ship? 

Yeah, and the captain of the ship found out that he had three boys that had been in school all during the war. None of them had ever had any Navy training. He said, I don't want these boys, so he turned us back to the assignment place. 

Who knew they could do that, for goodness sake? 

Well, I don't know whether he knew that either, but he did it. 

And so what did they do with you? 

What was it, in San Francisco? 

Well, I was footloose in San Francisco for weeks, I mean like four or five weeks. 

You and the other two guys are just— Well, I don't know where they went, but I went to a hotel that they assigned me to. You enjoyed the sights? 

Mm-hmm. You enjoyed the sights, as they say. Yeah, yeah. And then what happened? 

Well, then I finally got assigned to another ship. That ship was an aircraft service ship. They could lift planes out of the water onto their deck. Onto the deck? 

It was Cumberland Sound, and that's where I finished up in the Navy. 

So you were assigned to that ship? 

Yeah. And where did it go? 

Well, it went to Hawaii for a shipload of post -soldiers going home. And then the next time it went out, we went all the way to Bikini Atoll, where they had a bomb test. 

So I was there for the test able, the two tests that they had there. Did you know what they were doing? 

Yeah. And you watched the whole thing from the ship? 

That's right. saw every bit of it. 

Now, there were two tests, and after the first test, we were given the opportunity to get out, and I took that opportunity, because I knew what I wanted to do. The war had tapered right down. I mean, we already had— The war was over. It was over, yeah. Your timing was excellent. 

So anyway, I didn't see the second—the second bomb test was an underwater test for the bomb. The one I saw was about three or four thousand feet in the air. 

What was it like to see that? 

What was that like to see? 

What did it look like? 

Well, for one thing, they gave us welder's glasses. 

Oh, they did? 

So they did try to protect you? to protect us, and they told us not to look directly at it even then, and we didn't. 

So it was just a big explosion in the air? 

Well, in the air and on the water, and they sank some ships that they had as target ships. 

So it was pretty awesome to see it then, it was enormous power? 

Sure was. 

After you saw the explosion, it was about three or four or five minutes later that you felt the blast of air from it. This was after they had already dropped both of the bombs in Japan. In Japan, yeah. And they were still testing after that. Yeah. Wow. 

I was in communications then, had mechanical engineering in school, so what they do with me, after I'd been in engineering on that ship for about a couple of months, the captain decided I didn't know anything about engineering. 

So he put me in communications where we handled all coded messages, like I didn't know anything about typing either. I did learn about typing. You did, huh? 

One message that was most important, I guess, got a message for the captain. 

It was a top-secret message that I took to him, and it basically said, don't let the Russians see anything. How was that supposed to happen? 

I don't know. I guess it didn't happen. 

So you had been in for one full year, and they said, you know, it's over now because we're going to send you back. 

Did you go back on that same ship on the Cumberland Sound, or did you go on another ship? 

No, we came back on another ship. It was crowded full. We had five tiers of books. 

As people were getting the points that they needed to get out, they were coming and everything that would go, right? 

That's right. 

So did you go back to San Francisco? 

Or did you go to New York? 

Which way did they bring it? 

We didn't go to New York. We went to San Diego probably. San Diego, that was another option, yeah. 

But the food on that ship was terrible. As a matter of fact, the bread had weevils in it. Ooh, that's terrible. There probably wasn't very much of it either. You were getting the dregs of the war, as they say. Everything was all gone by that time. That's right. 

But you were going home, and that's what makes the difference. That's right. 

So did you have to go back to Atlanta to be mustered out, or could you go? 

I got mustered out in New Orleans. In New Orleans. 

Okay, see the world, huh? 

Yeah, see the world. And then your plan was to go back to Birmingham and join the family business. Right. 

Now, your dad had passed away. No, your dad hadn't. It was your grandfather who had passed away. 

So your dad was running the business in Birmingham. 

Well, his brother -in-law was really the head of the business at that time. 

When the family came to Birmingham, my father went to work for his brother-in-law, who had these eight locations of car rental offices. And did your father stay in Birmingham the whole time you were at Tech and in the military? 

Yeah. Okay. 

And he welcomed you back to work with him? 

That was the plan? 

Well, not directly with him, but I worked in a shop where they worked on the trucks. 

And the government gave me a thing of tools to work with, and— The government gave you a—why would they give you tools? 

Because I was a returning service man. That's so great. I didn't know they did that. Did they ask you what you want, or they just happened to give you tools? 

No, they just had them. They came in a toolbox, and that was it. I never heard that before. Thanks for your service. Here's a box of tools. Yeah. Yeah. 

But they also subsidized my pay. I was making forty cents an hour. Oh, my gosh. And I think they contributed another maybe twenty cents more. 

So you came back to Birmingham to be a working man, working with your hands, actually fixing cars and trucks? 

Yes. 

Had you had any training in doing anything like that? 

Because that's not what mechanical engineering is. 

Well, no, I didn't have any real training in that, hands-on. 

So you were learning as you went along. That's right. Just like the old drink business. You just learn as you go. 

Well, after I worked there for several months, four or five months maybe, my dad sent me to Nashville, Tennessee, to the Nashville Diesel School. I'm not getting the name just right, but anyway, it was a trade school. And there I had an engineering degree and I was working on trucks in this trade school. He wanted you to learn more about it? 

Yeah. I learned more about it that way. 

So that's what I did. After that, I didn't go back to work for my uncle's business. I went to Cincinnati to work in my father's business. Because your dad had an office in Cincinnati. My dad had an office. 

So what would you have done when you went to Cincinnati then? 

I mean, did you Did you stop fixing cars then and work from the office? 

I did both. I worked on the trucks some, and worked in the office renting the trucks. 

So you were learning the business, inside out as they say. Yeah. Everybody was hands -on until everybody knew what everybody was supposed to know. Yeah. 

Did you like it, or did you feel you had to do that because that was what your family did? 

I liked it. Good. 

So you saw a future there. Yeah. 

So you stayed in Cincinnati for a while? 

How long? 

Maybe six months. Short time training. Okay. 

And then what came next? 

Next, I came back to Birmingham, and my mother and father and little brother, little fella at that time, got in the car and drove to Texas to find a suitable place for me to open a car and truck rental business. and we stopped in Beaumont, and we were quite interested in a place there, but then we went on to Houston, and we got in the hands of a real estate man that became my good friend, and we decided that as far as we needed to go, we were going to go to Madison Houston. 

Well, that must have been a good decision, because it sure turned into a big city, didn't it? 

Yeah, yeah. We had planned to go to San Antonio and Dallas in addition to that. Didn't have to do it. Ended up, didn't you? 

Didn't do that. What was your brother's name? 

I forgot to ask you. Bob. Bob, okay. John Robert Bob. He was around for the little ride, huh? 

Just so he'd get settled away. And we held his diapers out the window to dry. Oh, he wasn't that young. He wasn't that young. He was. He was seven years younger than you, Well, you were a college graduate. You went in diapers. No, that doesn't make sense, does it? 

No, he went in diapers. No, no, no, no. You'll never make me do that. I remember holding those diapers out to window. Not for that trip. Somebody, not for somebody. 

So when you got to Houston, you actually purchased a property then? 

And opened a branch? 

We leased a property and built a small building. Oh, you built a building. We were in business. Right in the heart of Houston. You were. You were in business. Your dad didn't stay. No, he didn't stay. 

So he and Mama went back to Cincinnati or Birmingham, which one? 

Birmingham. They went back to Birmingham. 

Did he work remotely from Cincinnati? 

Did he go back and forth between his businesses? 

He went back and forth, but his principal occupation was with the business headquarter in Birmingham, put on by my uncle and my mother's brother. 

So that's where he principally had a deal with my uncle to let him keep the place in Cincinnati on the side. 

Now, what did you know about opening up a business? 

Did he just go off and leave you to do that all year on your own? 

Well, I checked with him on various things. 

But you were a one-man operation or did you hire some people when you got there? 

I hired two or three people to begin with. 

So you were in business. Yeah. You were in charge. Yeah. And you knew the business pretty well by that time. Yeah. 

So what do you have to do when you go open up a business like that? 

You get your building, you hire your people, and then you have to buy the cars? 

Yeah. You have to go buy cars and trucks that you know you're going to rent. Yeah, that you hope you're going to rent. Yeah, you hope you're going to rent. 

So how long does it take to start a business like that? 

Is it a few months or many months? 

Well, probably a few months. I think I started getting vehicles to rent before they finished building this building for me. 

So you were ready to roll when it was opened? 

Yeah. How long did you operate out of Houston? 

About ten years. Really? 

That's a long time. You stayed there a long time. 

While I was running that business in Houston, I also went to Shreveport and opened a place there, and to Meridian, Mississippi and opened a place there. And you were putting out all kinds of places then. Yeah. 

How do you manage multiple places like that? 

You find somebody reliable that can hang in there with you while you go from place to place? 

Yeah. And were you driving from place to place in those days? 

Yeah, driving. You were on the road then. That's right. Yeah, you were on the road. And you had to manage, it ended up being four places then. Yeah. After that I was in Birmingham. 

I decided that I needed to be in Birmingham where the headquarters of the company was, and so I moved with my wife and children to Birmingham. 

So by this time you had a wife and children? 

Uh-huh. Okay. We're going to talk about your children later. 

Tell me, did you give up the businesses in Texas, or you still manage them remote control? 

No, I manage them from Birmingham. I had managers in all those places. 

Okay, so that's what happens when you expand like that. 

And that's the way to make the business super successful, is to have more and more branches, right? 

Right. That's the only way for it to be a lucrative thing. 

So you were thirty years years old by this time? 

Yeah. And you already had multiple places that you were responsible for. Right. And you knew that's what you wanted to do for the rest of your career. Yeah. Want to open more branches and have more volume and sell our business. That's what it's all about. You have to join local community groups and stuff. 

Did you do all that kind of stuff in Birmingham? 

Like the Rotary Club, I know you joined the Rotary. Yeah. Was that in Birmingham? 

Yeah, my father helped me do that. He was a Rotarian. 

So he advised you it was good to be part of the community. Yeah. 

In Houston I wanted to join the Rotary Club down there, but somebody already had that position, a car rental or whatever. You mean they only let one person? 

One person from each business. Each trade? 

I didn't know that. Yeah. I had no idea that there weren't like 10 people of the same profession. They limit it so that it's only, so you're non -competitive when you're in there then. Yeah. You stayed with the Rotary for a long, long, long. I mean, you still are. You're still with the Rotary, right? 

Yeah. You've been with them pretty much all of your business life. Yeah. You got involved in the National Association. Of Rotary? 

No. 

National Association, look, look, look, of the National Rental thing you told me you were involved with them. Yeah, yeah, the Association of Rental Accompancy. And you got involved, that was a national organization, and you were the president of that. Yeah. And at that one time of your presidency, they made a big move. You told me you were responsible for seeing them move from Nashville. to D. C. That was a different organization. That wasn't the national group? 

Well it wasn't the national group for car and truck rental. What was it the national group for? 

For the United States Business and Industrial Council. Oh that was much broader. Much broader, more than just rental companies. Tell me about how you engineered that. 

That was an engineering Yeah, how do you move a whole organization to another city? 

Well, we had a head of the organization that had been with them for a long time. And I had to get him on board for doing that, and he acquiesced that we needed to be in Washington. Washington was politically more critical for you to be there? 

Yeah. And so I didn't have any problem getting them smoothed. We just moved them. That organization was an outgrowth of the U. S. Chamber of Commerce back in the 30s, probably early 30s. They had spun off from there because they didn't like what the chamber was doing on something. And it was founded in Nashville? 

That's where it was headquartered when I got involved with it. I don't know that they were anywhere else, though, before that. 

You know, when we talked for a little bit before, too, you told me about a great hobby that you had that turned into one of your passions, and that was being a sailor, not in the U. S. sailing Navy, but in the sense of sailing your own sailboat. Do you remember the first sailboat you ever had? 

Oh, yeah. Where were you living then? 

Birmingham. 

And what lake would you have gone to? 

Lake? 

Yeah, wouldn't you have sailed it on a lake? 

I was sailing in the oceans. 

Well, you're not even close to an ocean here unless you go down to the south those days. 

Well, you go down south. 

So you had You had your own sailboat, and you would haul it down to where? 

South Alabama? 

I kept it down to South Alabama, or the Florida Panhau. And that's where you would sail from? 

Yeah. 

Okay, I want you to tell me about the wild idea you got in the 1970s, to sail across the Atlantic Ocean. That's a pretty wild idea. 

Well, I'd had that idea for a long time at that point. 

So how did you organize that? 

Well, on my sailboat, I had a captain and a mate as a husband and wife. The wife was a cook, and then I would go to the sailboat and invite friends to come sail with me. 

Did you invite anybody to sail across the Atlantic Ocean? 

Huh? 

Did you invite somebody to sail with you? 

Yeah, I invited— How many people went? 

I think there were seven of us. That's a pretty scary thing to do. 

So where did you start out from? 

I think we started out from the Canary Islands, which are off the coast of Africa. 

So how did you get there? 

Well, my crew, my captain and his mate, got the boat there. Then I joined it there. And you sailed back then? 

Yeah. From Africa to where? 

Where did you guys come in at? 

Antigua, the islands. It took four weeks. Yeah, we had a lot of time when we were becalmed and just couldn't go anywhere. As a matter of fact, one time while we were becalmed, I was looking for something to do. 

So I decided to go swimming in the ocean. We were in 9,000 feet of water. 

Did you practice Freddie Lanou movements? 

So anyway, I jumped in the water and swam around a little bit and got back out. My son-in-law at that time, my oldest daughter's husband, was with us. And his comment about it, he was in the boats too, but not like I was. His comment at the time was, if the sharks will stay out of my boat, I'll stay out of their oceans. That was his philosophy, huh? 

So he thought you were cuckoo for jumping in the water. Yeah. There could have been sharks. Yeah, there could have been. 

But you were bored, so that's what you did, huh? 

Yeah. That was quite a trip, four weeks. I was only on the water about fifteen minutes or so. Enough to be able to tell me the story today, right? 

Yeah, yeah. 

But that was quite an accomplishment to sail across the whole Atlantic, wasn't it? 

Yeah, it was. You really loved the sailing. You had a series of boats, you said? 

Mm -hmm. You owned more than one? 

That was the second one, I think. What were the names of your boats? 

Did you name them? 

Mm-hmm. 

The first one was what? 

James Mason, I believe was that. The James Mason. Okay. What was the second one, then? 

The second one was, you got them mixed out, an order mixed out. It doesn't matter what order. One of them was named the Twelve-and-a-half. 

Well, that's an interesting name. 

Well, the reason it was named the Twelve-and-a -half was because I had sold my company for twelve-and -a-half dollars per share. Oh, for goodness sakes. And the next one was Scheherazade, because I thought that was an exotic name. It definitely is an exotic name. 

And then, after Sheherazade, I think is when I went to Power Boats, and I named my Power Boat Life Support. It was your life support then, huh? 

Yeah, it was my life support. You really enjoyed the waters. Oh, yes. And that was your real passion then, huh? 

It really was. Yeah, a good memory. when you look back as I've made you do today your family has been in the country since the American Revolution or before they immigrated from what country do you know from England I think England and that would have been in the 1700s probably maybe 1600s it could have even been the 1600s so they came to Virginia and settled and then traveled It's the great American story. Traveled across the country, across the continent, started businesses. Ultimately, at the peak of the company, how many different centers did you have? 

Eighty-some-odd. Eighty -some-odd. And you would have employed how many people at that time? 

We had a thousand people. A thousand people. And we had three thousand tractors and pole trailers on the road. We had three thousand trailers and we had one thousand trucks. That's a lot of vehicles. 

We were number three in the country, and when I sold, and Rider System, number one, and Penske, number two. Did it make you sad to have to sell it? 

Yeah. Because it was in the family for such a very long time. Yeah. In fact, this year would have been a hundred years ago that it all came together. That's right. You said 1916. How long did your father live? 

He died at 93. He had a long life. 

So he certainly saw you be successful. Yeah. He had a long, long life. How long did your mother live? 76. 

So she not so long as him. 

But did she get to see you be successful? 

Yeah. 

So I always think it's wonderful if, as parents, we see our children be successful. It makes a big deal. Tell me about your children. 

We end up, when we count up how many children you have, you have six children and how many grandchildren, we think we counted 18. 18 or 19, I forgot who it is. 19 with Ann's grandchild. Yeah. And now you're working on great-grandchildren. Yeah. And I think you've got maybe eight of those. Eight or nine. 

Whoever knew you were going to end up with a whole caboodle of people like that, huh? 

Every year, I take them to Callaway Gardens for a week. Oh, that's wonderful. 

So everybody gets to see everybody else, and cousins reunion. Yeah. Cousins get with cousins and all. It's great fun for everybody. 

This last time, I set up a schedule of all All of my children, and I think their husband, I was going to spend an hour a piece with each of them so I could find out more about what they were doing. It really takes organization when you have a big crowd, doesn't it? 

Sure does. It really takes a lot of organization. 

But they would have a great time, I do too. You would never have dreamed all of that. 

Now, you need to tell me about Ann, who is really George. 

How did you ever marry George? 

Well, George lived about a block up the street here, and she was a widow. Her husband had been dead for ten years or more. and also up the street was a woman that we both knew who told her about me. 

So you got set up, huh? 

Yeah, that's right. Turned out to be a pretty good deal, didn't it? 

It did. I was very pleased. George takes very good care of you, only we call her Ann. Yeah. She never goes by George Ann. She always just goes by Ann. Some places she uses Georgia Ann, but mostly she's Ann. Mostly she's Ann. With no E. Right, no E. 

You have been a very faithful rambling wreck to Georgia Tech, and you earned a Distinguished Hall of Fame award, even though you've never really been a mechanical engineer, right? 

In the truest sense of the word. No, that's right. 

I guess by working on the trucks, when I was first in the business, I wanted to learn from the ground up about how to maintain trucks. That's the best way, is to learn. And I thought that's all I thought the engineer would do. 

Everything you learned at Georgia Tech, though, is more than just mechanical engineering, right? 

Oh, yeah. You learn how to solve problems. That's right. You learn how to think. Yeah. And you learn how to love being a rambling wreck, right? 

That's right. 

I can count on you for that forever and ever, can't I? 

You'll always be a rambling wreck from Georgia Tech. Yeah. I'm going to Sea Island in June for a meeting of the Hill Society of Georgia Tech. The Georgia Tech Foundation. Yeah, I sent the letter in yesterday. Oh, well, you'll have a good time. They always have a great time. We're going to drive and there's all the driving on the road like that. That's great. And we'll stop along the way there and all the way back at different places. And we'll take about three days to get there. That sounds like a fun trip. Oh, I think it's going to be a great trip. And you're going to have a good time. They're celebrating the end of the Capitol campaign, and it'll be really lots of fun. 

Well, it's been a pleasure, sir, to spend time with you today and to hear your story. 

I probably never am going to interview anybody who crossed the Atlantic Ocean in a sailboat in four weeks. 

So that'll be the claim to fame in my mind for you. 

Well, you might talk to somebody who swam across it. Oh, that'll be a big surprise, and if I do, I'll let you know. 

Okay, yeah, let me know. Sir, thank you so much for your time. 

Well, thank you for mine.