This is a living history interview with Bob Vaughn, class of 1951, conducted by Maryland Summers on August the 24th of the year 2004. We are at his summer home in Highlands, North Carolina. The subject of the interview today, his life in general, his experiences at Georgia Tech. Mr. Vaughn and I may call you Bob. It is a pleasure to be up here in this, I think we call it God's country, don't we? 

You're right. Up in the mountains, just a wonderful ride to get up here, and we're in your guest cottage. And it's just a pleasure to be here, and thank you for allowing us to come up today. You're welcome. I want you to start by telling me where you were born. I was born in Tampa. Tampa, Florida. Tampa, Florida. In what year? 1930. 

Now, what were your mom and dad doing in Tampa, Florida in 1930? 

My dad was a well driller, and that's how he made a living. We lived in North Tampa. Was he born there? 

No, he was born about 35 miles north of there in Dade City, Florida. 

So he was an early Floridian then? 

Yes, he was. How about your mama? 

Was she too? 

My mama was born in New Orleans. In New Orleans? 

They met in World War I. In World War I? 

Do you know the circumstance? 

Yes. 

Dad had been in the hospital and went to a Red Cross dance and asked mother to dance and after a few steps it was obvious he had no idea how to dance. And they sat down and she said she'd been sitting ever since. Isn't that cute? 

He gave her a line right off the bat. Was he in the war? 

Was he a soldier? 

He was in the Navy. He was one of the first enlisted pilots in the Navy. He eventually went from New Orleans over to Pensacola where he flew, they looked like paper kites. Really early in the aviation industry then. A good pilot? 

Did he stay with a pilot? 

No he didn't. They were kind of co-pilots. I don't think the real pilots were commissioned HE WAS A FIRST MAID OR SOMETHING. BUT THE FAMILY WAS FROM FLORIDA BECAUSE THAT'S EARLY DAYS FOR FLORIDA. YEAH, DAD WAS. AND OF COURSE, MOTHER, HER PARENTS WERE STILL ALIVE AND APPARENTLY NOT WELL. AND SO THEY WERE SOME TEN YEARS BEFORE THEY MARRIED. AND THERE WAS ANOTHER STORY IN WHICH... 

HE ASKED HER TO DANCE, FELL IN LOVE, and didn't marry her for 10 years for 10 years and well well the story of mother's story was she said you know if your dad was as slow and business as he was in his love life we you would have been poor as church life huh but my father's answer was you know always that yeah and you know I guess maybe her answer. 

She said that, yeah, and if you made as good a decision in business as you did in love life, we'd have more money. 

But at any rate, shortly thereafter, the Depression came, and we didn't have any house. Ah, yeah. 

But that is a long courtship, 10 years. It's amazing that they hung in there that long with each other. 

But when they married, they settled in Tampa, and that's where you were born. First in Dade City, then in Tampa, yeah. 

Were you an only child or brothers and sisters? 

Actually, they were two born prior to me, but they both died very shortly, died at birth or shortly after, yeah. 

So you were their lone... I guess you'd say I was an only child for all practical purposes. All practical purposes. 

So they got to spoil you to pieces then? 

Oh, I guess, yeah. And they were older by the time you came along, and not in their early 20s anymore. No, no, no, late 30s, yeah. Late 30s when you were born. Oh, you were a spoiled baby boy, I bet. 

Well, I don't know about that. 

Well, people in those days really didn't spoil children in the 30s, so. 

So you were born just in time for the Depression and for all the hard times, but how do you remember your childhood? 

It was very pleasant. 

So you were totally unaware. Raised in North. 

Well, no. 

You know, I can remember very well, waiting for my father to come home because we could go to Spears Grocery because we had credit there. 

So they, they coped with it the best that they could. That's right. It was a tough time for everyone. Do you remember when you started school, elementary school? 

Yes. 

And how were you as a student? 

Did you take to school well? 

Probably better then than I was at Georgia Tech. 

Well, let me tell you something. 

Usually only children really love going to school because it's an opportunity to have, you know, other kids to play with and more activities. That was true. Did that prove for you? 

Yeah. 

So you enjoyed going to school. 

How many years did you actually go to school in Tampa? 

How many years did you live in Tampa? 

Was that your whole… Until I went to Georgia Tech. Okay. 

So it was your whole existence. Did your parents raise you with the concept that you were going to go to college? 

Yes. Or did it just kind of happen? 

Yes. Although neither of them had ever finished high school. 

But they knew it was important for you. It was… understood. That's the word I was looking for. We would save money and I would go to college. Understood is the word. 

Some people just by osmosis observed that from their parents and others it was a surprise that they were going to college. 

So you knew you'd be going someday. How did you do in high school? 

Interested in high school classes? 

I was an honor student. 

So you did very well. Were you into athletics at all? 

No, I played in the band fortunately. What did you play? 

I played the clarinet and several other woodwind instruments. 

So you were a musician. Yeah. Did they give you lessons or just from the school? 

Well I had lessons. Oh that's great. 

So they were willing to invest in you? 

Well yeah. And they paid for some of them and I paid for them. I had jobs of saving, you know, salvage. 

During the war, a kid that had a bicycle and a wagon, you could haul newspapers and coat hangers and old rubber tires and make money. And you were being a patriot at the same time. 

Well, I guess so, but I have to be real honest, I was more interested in the war bonds, the e-bonds that I was getting, because they paid a good bit of Georgia Tech. 

So your parents did give you a work ethic, they didn't spoil it to the point that you had to go out and do it. Tell me about what kind of music you were interested in. 

Well you know pretty much whatever the band director told you to be interested in. 

But I like classical to this day. 

So it turned out to be a hobby as well as an occupation for you. It also worked out that I got a scholarship at Georgia Tech. 

Because of the band? 

Because of the band thanks be to god to ben logan sisk we got to talk about that because i didn't know they even gave scholarships back in those days they did for doing whatever sisk told you to do you know i shined instruments and hauled the uniforms out to the cleaners truck let's let's step back a little bit and decide how did why georgia tech how did that even come into the picture well as i told you earlier my father was a weld roller and some of his good customers were engineers and the phosphate mines and the citrus canning plants and this type of thing. 

And you know, as you got up into thinking about going to what you were going to do for the rest of your life, I was interested in math and science were my good courses and Dad said, well, you know, come meet some engineers, you know. 

So cool. 

So he gave you a chance to have a little Yeah, went to some of his friends and customers and one in particular he did business with a Mr. Langston was on Tampa Armature Works and he was a Georgia Tech graduate. 

He spoke highly of it or he just said it was a good education? 

No, he encouraged me and he made a couple of phone calls and in those days you didn't take SATs. Georgia Tech was more on, I think, who you know than what you know. 

He called a lady up there who was a Miss, she was a Miss, Miss Ira Jarrett or Jarrell, I don't remember today, who was the superintendent of schools for Atlanta in those days. 

She She was well positioned in politics and she made a call and in a few days I got an acceptance letter. Isn't that cool? 

Yeah, that's the way that went. And that was in 1940? 

Well I went in in September of 1947. I guess this happened in maybe 46 or early 47, I don't remember. And had you ever been to Georgia Tech? 

I'd never been to Georgia. 

Much less Georgia Tech huh? 

So you were going to a foreign territory, sight unseen, going to turn yourself over to this strange place because it was the thing to do. Did you apply at any other school or it was a one track thing for you? 

No, I didn't. I had two other scholarship offers through the band. 

Well, how did you get the scholarship offer from Tech? 

Was it after you were already there? 

After I was there. 

Okay, so you were going as a paying student originally. I did between my E-bonds and my parents the first term. We were on a quarter system in those things. And the first term we paid and thereafter Mr. Sisk picked up the tuition and I think also the room. I'm not real sure of that. That's pretty amazing. I'm just shocked to hear that. 

One of the things I did for him was that he had a lot of ideas of how to do halftime shows and he would tell me what to do and And then I would draw it out and make little individual booklets for the individual band members. Thank God we didn't have too many then, but unfortunately we didn't have Xeroxes in those days. 

So you had a hand drew each one then? 

Well no, the only one, we did have a, they were called ditto machines, the old purple and white. You came out kind of two-tone when you were through with it. 

So were these like little schematics that took them off the auto bars? 

They were little deals where every time the music changed or you got to a certain place and the music, you went right or left, or so many steps ahead and there would be a little note or something. 

Well that's a big picture project, so you had to oversee the whole thing. At any rate, that's what I did. Tell me about Ben Sisk. What was he like? 

Oh he was a fine man, you know, obviously, he helped me get through tech. Financially he was a real supporter of that. He was a good musician, a good band director. 

Now he was not a full-time band director, was he? 

No he wasn't. 

And he was a full time high school band director and he came there part time, three afternoons, four afternoons, maybe a week and then the Saturdays that we played in the fall for concerts and this type of thing. He was part time. 

Did you find him to be a really caring man that, you know, I mean this was important to him? 

Well it seemed to be, yes. Shape up the troops? 

Yeah. We have some early recordings that he did, you know, so I know he was a presence there. 

But no one ever has described him to me in any way. He was just a nice man. He was... Older man? 

No. 

I would say that Sisk was, when he was band director when I was there, he would have been a man in his forties. Okay. Yeah, forties. I'm guessing. I don't know. Did you all have uniforms? 

Oh, that's an interesting story I'll tell you about. No, we didn't. It was right after World War II, and there were a few left. 

We were in the old Crenshaw building, which eventually was taken by the interstate, and afterwards they kept, usually a band furnishes the bigger instruments, the tuba, the bass drum, this type of thing, and the students would furnish something like a clarinet for me or a trumpet for somebody and but we had virtually no uniforms there were two or three as I recall left there in 47 and Sisk realized that you know we couldn't do anything well one of our first games once we really got it all together was against Alabama who had the million dollar band they were fancy dancy yeah and so Sisk thought about this a bit, and we did a farmer in the dell routine where we all went out in red or plaid shirts, dungarees, and that was our farming regalia and the only uniform we had. 

And the And next Monday, Sisk was called in by Colonel Van Leer, the then president, and told that he had embarrassed the school, and Sisk said, I'm sorry, but you know, you told me to go out there, and I told you it was going to be kind of tough, and so we did the best we could. 

And he says, well, how much do uniforms cost? 

And Sisk said, well, we really need a hundred, because we were growing more and more. 

We started out with, I don't know, 30 or 40 early in the year, and maybe by then he realized we wouldn't grow to 100. And he said, you know, we'll need $10,000. Ooh, a lot of money in those days, too. And it was a lot of money, and Van Leer apparently said, you got it, just don't embarrass me again. That was the right thing to do, make him farmers. Because Van Leer was pretty, he was real military. Oh, he was, yeah. Very appropriate. We had another interesting band story there. 

There was a big parade in Tampa called the Gasparilla Parade, and still going today after a hundred years or so. And half a million people show up and stand on the sidelines to watch this parade. It's very much like a Mardi Gras parade and festival. And so I had talked to a couple of people at home, Mr. 

Warren with Coca -Cola and one of the men, Christopher, with the Chamber of Commerce and got them to say they'd pay some money and house us at MacDill Air Force Base and bring the band down to march with the University of Florida and the University of Miami and some of the others. 

And so Sisk apparently was told by the department head that he'd have to get Dean Narramore, Phil Narramore's permission. 

And so I went in to this guy and Sisk said he thought it'd be better if a couple of us went from the band, you know. Safety in numbers. Right. 

And that we had a band captain and I was the organizer and this sort of thing And so we went there and Naramore looked at me and he said, you have a girlfriend in Tampa? 

And I said, of course. He says, you're just trying to go on a boondoggle. No, I'm not approving. And so I went back and told, so we went back and told Sisk this and he said, you know, that's wrong. He said, you've gone down, got the money and all. 

But in those days, we had to have excused absences. I mean, they were pretty strict on us. You were no cuts. You weren't allowed cuts. And so Sisk said, I'm going to talk to my boss. I don't know who it was, but I guess they had departments in those days that he was in. And so he did, and an appointment was arranged with Colonel Van Leer, who had just had brain surgery. 

In fact, his head was still wrapped in some sort of thing, and he was on recuperation, but we were on a short time schedule. 

So we met him. 

He had just moved into the president's mansion, and so we met in his new home, in his den, and he heard our story, and he said, I think that'd be wonderful advertisement for Georgia Tech. 

I DON'T UNDERSTAND THE DEAN NOT APPROVING IT, BUT I DON'T WANT TO GO OVER HIS HEAD AND LET ME TALK TO HIM. WELL, THE NEXT DAY IT WAS APPROVED. HE JUST HAD A FEW WORDS WITH PHIL. THAT WAS THE END OF THE STORY. AND SO YOU WENT. WE WENT. 

DID YOU GET YOUR NEW UNIFORMS IN TIME? 

OH, WE HAD, YEAH, THAT ACTUALLY, THIS GASPARILLA CAME A YEAR, COUPLE YEARS, ONE YEAR MAYBE LATER. 

NOW, HOW DOES A BAND GET A NEW UNIFORM? 

DOES SOMEBODY HAVE TO DECIDE WHAT IT'S GOING TO LOOK LIKE? 

As I recall, Mr. Sisk decided what we'd wear and when we'd wear it, you know. It had been years since they've had really good uniforms. 

Somebody told us that the few that were there in the attic were from the 30s, and they sure looked it. Oh, it would have been sooner, earlier than that. I actually know for a fact. Is that right? 

Well, I don't question it. Yeah, it would have been in the 20s. 

Now, what did he decide? 

I mean, were they white and gold? 

They were white and gold, a shako-type thing. the hats looked like the hats that Richard Nixon tried to put on the guards at the White House, if you remember what they looked like, some European deal. 

But that was what bands wore in those days, and we looked pretty much like the rest of them, and if I do say so, we looked pretty good. Pretty spiffy, because I've seen pictures of them. And I would go up then in the announcer's booth and prompt him. 

The last few years I I was there, I did that at least, and I had my own little cheat sheet, you know, to prompt him and all. At any rate, I went from that, and then I was head of the joint military bands. 

We put together all three, the Navy, the Army, and the Air Force into a joint military band, and in my senior year I was the Colonel. 

Now, when you were overseeing all this stuff, did you still play? 

Well, obviously I couldn't play it when I was sitting upstairs with the booth, but But the rest of the year, yeah. You kept your hand in on the music. 

Now, besides playing at football games, what would the band in 1948 to 52, that era you were there, where else would they have ever performed, or did they? 

Well, we did some concerts. On campus? 

On campus and off campus. 

And we went, I remember, once down to a VA hospital and I'm trying to remember where, I forget, but we did several off-campus events. 

So it was a year-round activity. You were always learning new routines. And we received credit for it. In fact, that was my physical ed, per se, and I didn't have to do LaNouze, Drownproofing. You escaped. I got out of it because of band. Oh, my word. 

Now, there would have been a lot more people in the band if the word got out about that. 

Well I also had a physical problem in which one arm is somewhat shorter than the other. 

So they exempted you? 

Well they put me in the, remember there was, you may know from your history, that they had a gym quarter and a swimming quarter and a track quarter. How they arranged who got what first I have no idea. 

But I went to the gym and the young coach that was there getting us started had these ropes hanging down from the ceiling or somewhere, you know. And he said, climb that rope. 

And I know from past experience I cannot climb a rope, so I held my arms out and I said, how? 

And he says, son, I don't know, you know. 

So I, the next, he told me just to take a seat for a minute, I did. 

The next thing they had something like the low bar that they have at the Olympics and you know he said do a chinning on that and I did the same routine. 

How? 

He says I'll talk to you tomorrow or the next day whatever it was every other day I think we had two times a week whatever it was. At any rate they excused me from phys ed and I played in the band for four years. 

Well I know that Freddie Lanoux could make a grown man cry with his drop proofing so So you escaped quite an undertaking with that. Actually you probably would have enjoyed the water, though. Yeah, I never did bother to tell him I'd been a lifeguard. I wouldn't think you would have, because he was a little hard on people. It's also an unreasonable course that should have been eliminated a long time ago. Oh, it was there for a long, long time. I know. And you know, a lot of people feel that it gave them confidence and helped them survive. 

So there's a yin and a yang, you know, both sides of that. 

Yeah, but there were others that tear up because you couldn't get out of school if you didn't have that credit. 

Did you ever hear the story about the kid that passed out and went to the bottom of the pool? 

Oh, I've heard, yes I have. The father was an attorney in New York. And that's probably. He came down and had a little talk with Van Leer and it was not as pleasant as mine. 

I'll tell you, Herb McCauley was Freddie's successor and was a student there, so he did tell us that story we heard about. 

But he said, you know, nobody ever drowned. Nobody ever drowned. Come close, maybe, but nobody ever drowned. This man wound up in Crawford Long coughing up blood. Really? 

It was really hard on him then, huh? 

Okay, let's go back to you start school. 

You come there you've never been to Georgia much less Georgia Tech your parents bring you up or did you come by bus or train or what they brought you up in a car and more or less you got a blind assignment to go to a dormitory and I guess you'd call it that I don't know well you didn't pick out who you were in the room with that was a blind assignment and so you ended up you had a roommate a one or more no just one in that time, yeah. Okay. Joe Bresnahan. Do you remember his name? 

And also that his suitcase said Brenda Bresnahan. Which we thought, what am I getting? 

Oh my God, what a deal, such a deal. Quickly found out he had his sister's suitcase probably. What were your feelings at that time? 

Were you scared or was it exciting? ******. ******. Because you don't really know. I mean, it was going to be an entirely different environment for you. How well prepared were you academically? 

Very poorly. Really? 

Very poorly. 

Even though you were good at math and science? 

I was good at what they gave me, but I remember very clearly that one of my very good friends was from Attleboro, Massachusetts, and he had had chemistry out of the same book that we were studying in. Ah, where you didn't have that advantage. Oh, man, I don't know what I had, you know. 

So you had to learn to focus, to study? 

You got that right. 

How long did it take you to catch on? four years it was an uphill climb all the time I mean usually people come in from smaller communities thinking they're pretty cool because they always got good grades so you were honor society you always got good grades sure it was it was a shock for you to find out what the workload right yeah how much time did you end up spending on studying when you weren't at the band I bet you're studying right yeah pretty much so it's tough anything short of Sunday morning, you know. And your parents had expectations that were relatively high. They did not like my report cards. Yeah, because you always spoiled them by doing so well. 

And when you got your first report card, did they have things to say about that? 

Uh, they were kind. And thought you could do a little better? 

They were kind. We'll leave it at that. Okay. You were lucky. 

It's a shock to find out that you're going to have to take on that much information that quick, isn't it? 

I mean, that's what it's all about. Sure was to me. It's drinking from the fire hose, you know, so much coming on. Thank you very much. It's a good way of putting it. Yeah. It's just, you know, it's not little sips of education. It's pouring it on. And you either ship up or you... Ship out. Yep, that was it. You shaped up. We were talking before you started your interview about George Griffin. and Dean Griffin had a way of breaking you into the fold, you know. His favorite was look to your left and look to your right, look at yourself. Two of you won't be here four years from now. He was pretty much on the mark too wasn't he? 

He was. The guy on my left was Carl West and the guy on my right was Lou Levinson. Did they stay? 

No. 

Well, West dropped out after one term, flunked out. LEVINSON GRADUATED, BUT IT TOOK HIM AN EXTRA YEAR. SO IT WAS PRETTY CLOSE. YOU KNEW YOU WERE GOING TO BE PAYING ATTENTION AND REALLY BUCKLING DOWN. 1948 AT GEORGIA TECH WAS A MADHOUSE BECAUSE OF THE GI BILL. SO WAS 47. 47, 48. 

YOU GO IN THE SHOWER AND THE FIRST THING THAT THE GUY DOWN THE HALL DID WAS TAKE OFF HIS ARTIFICIAL LEG. SHOCKINGLY. WELL, YOU KNOW, FOR A 17-YEAR-OLD. Yeah, shocking. I never even thought about that. I knew there were a lot of gnarly veterans that had come back. I never thought of them coming back disabled or... I'll tell you another little story about the veterans. There was a head of the English Department, was a Dr. Andrew Jackson Walker, who had graduated from Harvard and had a Ph. D., and he was very proud of it, and he was very good, and he worked his way up to be head of the department but he loved to teach freshmen and he proceeded to tell us that his full name and his degree and so forth and that he was head of the English department and this big what we would call a ******* in the back stood up and says hi my name is Joe and I'm from Fitzgerald Georgia let's get on with this **** thing I'm here for an education not to hear about your about your your history. Was he a veteran? 

He was very much a veteran. Yeah oh boy. Later found out he had walked from one end of Italy to the other. Yeah he was there to get an education. And that definitely had an impact on the student body. 

You as a high school teenage kid coming in were being exposed to somebody who'd been through untold hardships. 

There wasn't a whole lot of tolerance on their part for fooling around so they raised the standard and how there's another story if you'd like to hear it I would it was in the freshman English class freshman chemistry class there was a fellow that in those days the it was a young man teaching freshman chemistry and this big ex-Marine had figured out that if he got the 30-point question, which they always did at the end of a chemistry deal, that he would pass. And if he passed, he stayed in Georgia Tech. If he didn't, he'd flunked enough other hours that he was gone. 

So they always went over the test with you at the end, and this was the final one. 

And so he listened to how the prof did it, and then he turned to Zelvin Levine, who eventually was our number one guy in our class, a fellow from Augusta, as I recall, Augusta, Savannah, Augusta, I think. 

And Zelvin said you know that's different than the prof did it but you're right you're okay with that ask for your credit so he did afterwards he waited till the class was over and then he went to the prof and the prof took a big you don't like the way i grade he said sir i didn't say that And I was standing right next to the man, and he took a big red pen and pencil and put an X through the man's paper. 

Well, this ex-Marine lost it. 

And this guy was fairly short of stature and light of weight, and the Marine picked him up with a scruff of the neck and the seat of the pants. Picked him off the floor? 

Up the floor, out the door of the old chemistry building. Oh, what a sight to see. 

Passed the old library and up the front steps of the ad building, yelling, last chance to spit on, and he didn't abbreviate anything, and walked into Narraboer's office. 

And I get this part of the story from one of the gals that used to date some of the guys at the fraternity house. He apparently slung him ****** across Narraboer's office. 

The man crumpled on the floor, and Narraboer's famous word was, Now, now, son, what seems to be the matter? 

Isn't that a riot? 

What did seem to be the matter, huh? 

Well, the matter was this guy got credit for the... They rethought the position. They rethought, kind of like, did you watch the Olympics last night? 

I did it. 

Well, they rethought one of the scorers there, and they rethought this kid's score, or this man's score. 

Well, he felt that he had a genuine point. Oh, he did. He was correct. There was more than one way to do the problem, and the prof wanted it his way or no way. He was just dealing the hard way that so many of them did. Wow, I wonder if he remembered that lesson for the rest of his teaching career. I doubt if he had much of a teaching career. He was fired on the spot, as I recall. At the end of the term or whatever. Yeah, just let him go. Yeah, that wasn't too good. What a life lesson that was. 

It was very hard to think that, I mean, these were older, maybe not older in age, but they were older in their spirit for what they had been through. 

Well, they were, most of them were four, five, six years older, some of them more, yeah. And that, but their spirits were much older, because they'd been through ****. 

So it was, they weren't going to fool around, or, and whereas a professor like that could intimidate an 18-year-old kid, well, he was biting off more than he could handle with a big guy, huh? 

That's quite a story. I never heard that story before. 

What I've heard is, is that it was a good thing in the long run to have the veterans there because they did. They brought a lot of maturity to it, you know. And they made you guys, they kept the standard high. 

One of my good friends and fraternity brother was a fellow, Ken Morrow, who had been a pilot in the war and had been shot out and bailed out over Europe and been in the POW and, you know, been in the camp and apparently came out real thin and this sort of thing, but you know, yeah, he was mature. 

And when some of the guys wanted to do some of the foolishness that fraternities do, or did in those days, he was a maturing voice. Influence, shall we say, yeah. What fraternity did you join? 

Delta to Delta. 

Now, the early days of the fraternities, the 20s, the 30s, and even the early 40s, they had all kinds of little rituals and hazings and indoctrinations and orientations and things like that. 

But when you were there, which was post-war, was that still going on? 

Very limited. No hazing. Very limited, no. 

It was more, as I understand, I know they would get after you if you didn't have good grades, so it was more of a monitoring and keeping the standards high, was really the good thing about it. 

It was a challenge for George Griffin, we understand, to monitor some of those older fellows as far as, you know, they were old enough to imbibe and have alcoholic beverage. 

And I'm told that George used to, like, try to keep an eye on them and the younger kids, but that it was a bit of a challenge. He was lenient, I think, to both groups as a, you know. Did you have a chance to get to know George? 

Oh, yeah, he's a wonderful man, yeah. Do you have a favorite George story? 

Well, yeah, I guess so. 

So did you ever, I think I might have started to tell you this story in the old Y building when I was with John Minor about the Dooley Frolics. Tell me the story again. There were lots of Dooley Frolics over the years. 

The Dooley Frolics, of course, are at Emory in the spring and Dooley crowns the spring queen out there or whatever they call it. 

Well some of my esteemed fraternity brothers decided that they would kidnap Dooley prior to the crowning. 

And so Don Usher went in with some story about that he had some gifts for the new queen and he needed help, and, Dooley, would you come help me bring these gifts in from Rich's or whatever story he made up. And so... The poor chump went, huh? 

Yeah, the chump went. 

And when he did, Hoot Gibson, who was built like an NFL linebacker, didn't play on the tax team, but boy he was tough. 

He grabbed this guy, put him in the back seat of the car and sat on him and the wheelman took off and to make a long story short they left him in the middle of a farm out in what's now Duluth and took his costume with them and left him in his underclothes. 

Well this became quite a, he eventually walked to a farmhouse and someone came and got him, But long story short, it got in the newspapers and the Emory president said that he was going to prefer charges and this and that and the other. Oh, I didn't know that. That came back to Dean Griffin then. Yeah, well, the Dooley costume was hidden in the Delt attic for a week or two. I don't remember the time now. and the guys decided it would be smart to go see Dean Griffin about this matter and tell him the truth. 

So the three of them that had been in, three or four that were involved, plus whoever was the president at that time, went to Dean Griffin and told him the truth. And the only thing Griffin said was, fellas, for God's sake, don't say anything. And they said, the whole fraternity knows it. He says, don't say it to anybody else. Let me handle it. 

And he did, and he apologized on behalf of Tech, and I think the guys had to go out and personally apologize to Dooley and the President and Emory and blah, blah, blah, but it was all put to bed by Dean Griffin. He was a master of that. Oh, he could handle it. He could handle it, yeah. He was a master of it. And Lord knows they gave him a lot of challenges over the years, didn't they? 

Oh, they did. Oh, they did. Yeah, sometimes it's mind -boggling what those guys could think up, you know, to challenge him with. It's because they weren't thinking that he was so challenged, and we come right down to it. I didn't realize that it got up to the level where, you know, everybody was aware that it happened. I think that happened more than once over the years that Billy was waylaid. I know that it happened. That time for sure. At that time, maybe that was, would have been 50 or 51, I forget now. 

We'll have to go back and look at the newspapers then, because there'll be something in the newspapers. There might be, yeah. Yeah, find something about that. Those kinds of stories are great Georgia Tech stories, the tough, you know. You love to tell them where there's going to be... Dean didn't think, Dean Griffin didn't think they were very great, I'll tell you that, yeah. Oh, dear. 

Well, you were having a good time, even though you were studying hard, weren't you? 

Well, yes. Tech was a pleasant experience. 

I mean, you were really having a true college experience in that you were playing with the band, and you were into fraternity and into some, well, innocent enough mischief, but something to have memories to talk about anyways. And you stayed in the campus the whole time you were there. I did. You went from dorm to dorm. Yeah. Made a lot of good friends. Fifty bucks a quarter. You can't beat it. Who could believe that, huh? 

Did you make a lot of good friends? 

Sure. Were they lifetime friends, Bob? 

Unfortunately, most of them know a few, yes. **** Veenstra, an architect in Jacksonville. We've stayed together and visited each other's homes over the years. 

My very best friend had the same last name as me, to spell one letter different, Vic Vaughn from the young fellow that I mentioned in Attleboro that had the same chemistry book, and he unfortunately He definitely died in 89 of cancer, but we stayed close to his wife. It's a funny thing about that, how you bond in a college experience. 

Well of course you were at all the football games, you were at everything with the band. I mean the band got involved in everything. Last summer I decided that before I got too old I wanted to see a couple of these folks. 

And I had a good friend, Dodd Strange Boston, his fraternity brother, I'd been at his wedding the day I graduated. He was an usher, a groomsman, whatever he called it. 

So he lives in Richmond and so we got in our car and we drove to Richmond and then I had a couple of good friends from graduate school, one in Wilmington and one outside of Philadelphia, Then a high school friend in New York, and then Vic's widow in Providence, and then a Georgia Tech and a MIT friend, Glen Armstrong, lived in Maine, and we got together. 

So at any rate, I got to see some of the others. There were lots and lots of good memories to talk about. Graduation, or getting out, came on schedule for you. You did it in four years, which is... 

Well I did, plus I went one summer to take some other work. 

Was there ever a question about chemical engineering? 

No, I always liked it, particularly one professor there, Dr. Joe Delaval was a fabulous guy. Really inspired you. Oh yeah. 

So you never changed your major, you got through in four years, one summer only, got out on time and made a decision you weren't done with school. How did that come about? 

The decision was kind of made for me. How? 

Well the government, you know, the Korean War was on. And you either had a choice, you know, you could go to Korea or you could go to graduate school. Oh, that wasn't too big of a choice, was it? 

So Dr. 

Delaval had gotten me a kind of a work fellowship over at the research, what's called the research station in those days, I don't know what it's called. Right, experimental station. Experimental station, something like that. At any rate, that seemed like a good thing to do, a lot better than going to Korea. 

I had joined the National Guard because they would pay you a dollar a day if you came to a weekend warrior type of thing, but when I went in to advance to ROTC they discharged you fortunately because that bunch got pulled in and actually they went from the Air National National Guard to the Army National Guard. 

It was all in one deal, and they went in I think what they called the Inchon Reservoir, got opened on them, and most of them got killed. It was a very sad situation. 

Yeah, and so at any rate I- What were you doing at the experimental station? 

Well, I worked in the lab of the Chem E. The Chem E building in those days was an annex of the old chemistry building. 

It was down in the basement in the back end, and you know, Joe Delavalle always had something he wanted done. 

And did he inspire you then to go on to graduate school? 

Well he would encourage you to work, do better, learn how to, there was a Mr. 

Mays, thank God that probably I learned more from him than anybody else, he taught me how to thread pipe. Joe Mays? 

Yeah, he was the assistant in the basement down there. Yeah. He would help you put these monstrosities that Delaval dreamed of together. Dreamed of together, yeah. Eventually, you know, he became the president of Southern Engineering. Did he? 

Joe Mayes did. He had a brilliant career. He was great. You were in good company and, you know. I think the same man that had been the assistant down in the basement. Was that right? 

Yeah. Because he was getting on. Did you, how did you decide on MIT? 

I mean, that's a pretty lofty shot. I mean, how did you get in there? 

Well, that's the story, too. I went to an interview, and Fred Ajax, you know, did a wonderful job. He got interviews when God couldn't have gotten an interview. 

And so you went to these interviews, and of course, Ajax had some pretty strict rules, and you know, coat and tie, and clean. Young gentlemen. Yes, sir. At any rate, I came out of the organic chem lab making something that smelled terrible. Today I don't remember, but I mean, I stink, stunk. 

So Glen Armstrong, my buddy in Maine, said, you go into the Cabot interview. I said, what's that? 

And he said, well, the guy's from Florida originally. I think he'd enjoy it. And I said, well, Ajax will kill me. He says, oh, come on. He grabs my arm and in we go. 

So I went in and I sat out. 

So when he got through the little speech that the interviewer usually makes, so he said, well, who wants to talk to me? 

Well, Armstrong went in and talked to him. 

And then I followed him in and I apologized for my appearance and I had a red corduroy shirt on, kind of like the band shirt. And he had on the most awful tie I think I've ever seen. And I began unbuttoning my shirt and said I'll trade you for that tie. And Dr. Stokes broke out laughing and he said, man you never met a stranger. And I said, well no, you see my nice guy. 

And we got to talking and I told him that I was going to work for Delaval and go to grad school there, anything better than Korea. 

He says, well, why don't you go to MIT? 

And I said, why don't you look at my transcript before you make that suggestion, you know. All right. 

So we chatted a while, and then he left, I left. Ajax saw me, and I caught for the way I was dressed. For the way you were dressed, no doubt. And I don't know that I ever told Freddie how that came out. I should have. 

But at any rate, in just a few days I got a call from Indigiro, Stokes' secretary said Dr. Stokes would like to see you in Boston. 

And I said, well, fine, how do I get there? 

Oh, we're mailing you an airline ticket and we'll pick up your expenses, which was typical of the interviews. Really? 

Yeah. 

And you usually have to do it and then bill them, but I had interviews and offers from DuPont and I think Phillips and I forget, one of the rubber companies and all. 

But anyway, you have to come up with the money and then they reimbursement. Anyway, they sent me money. I had an expense check and an airline ticket ahead of time, which was very nice. 

And I went there and Stokes said, you know, you're still thinking about going to Georgia Tech? 

And I said, yeah. And he said, well, how about interviewing at MIT? 

And I said, Dr. Stokes, I told you to look at my transcript. 

He said, you'll do all right come on let's go with this we go down we get in a taxi cab we go over he goes to the back door of the chairman of the department's thing opens the door and the bible in chemical engineering in those days at least was walker lewis mcadams and gilliman i mean that was the unit operations book we used it at georgia tech i suspect they may still use parts of it i don't know. And he said, Ed, I want you to meet Bob Vaughn. He's coming to MIT, the graduate school. 

And I'm kind of, oh, my God, what am I got into, you know? 

And so, at any rate, I met him, man, and we chatted. 

Then he took me down the hall and introduced me to a professor Williams, Glenn Williams, bless his heart. 

And we chatted, and I got a tour of the campus and this sort of thing in the grad house, and it was a lot better than my start at Georgia in Tech. 

And so in a few days, I guess, maybe a week, I got a call from Professor Williams and he said, are there two people by the name of Vaughan in your class? 

I said, no, sir. He says, well, what were you doing the first few years? 

He had looked at your transcript. He had looked at the transcript in depth, you know. And I said, well, still things. 

I said, I had three operations and cured a lot of problems, but he said, well, once you got started, you did real well. He said, you know, your senior average, you can get into MIT, but the rest of them I'm not sure of. I said, well, it wasn't my idea. 

And he said, well, you know, two of the cabots are on the MIT board, and apparently they're pretty hot to get you here. Okay. he says I'll make you a deal he says you come up here for the summer and take four courses and if you can make you know what amount of a B2C average halfway in between the way they did things quality points and all you can stay otherwise you're out I said well I was planning to go to Georgia Tech anyhow he says I know I got nothing to lose I got nothing I said you know it's just a This is a win-win. Right. Stokes had offered me the industrial fellowship, which paid my expenses, you know. Wow. And then I learned about the technology loan fund, and I borrowed money from it immediately. And so I went to... There you are, MIT. 

At the end of the summer term, I passed Williams in the Hall, and I said, Did you see my grades? 

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I got two A's and two B's, so... 

Now, this time you were prepared. I was prepared. Georgia Tech has to be a preparation for anything in the world can handle, right? 

In life. The whole life, yes. 

So it wasn't like you stumbled in there from Tampa. No, I was not 17. Yeah, and you enjoyed it. I did enjoy it. You did enjoy it. It was a great experience for you. The interesting thing part about it is they don't call it an MS in chemical engineering. Isn't that strange? 

And I really don't know what SM. In a lot of ways, many of the schools up there tend to go the old way. It's a real preppy environment. 

Well, yeah. I know. I just had a grandson graduate from Georgetown, and his whole diploma was in Latin. None of us know what it says. Just one of those things, huh? 

So you have an SM in, I'm assuming, Chemical Engineering. In Chem Engineering. I took my minor, thank God, in business. Because that was pretty handy to have, too. They had just started the Sloan School there. Oh, really? 

So you were... 

So I know I was not a fellow in Sloan School. 

But you got some exposure to it. 

But I took my minor, 20, what was it, 20 -some hours you had to get, 20-some credits, whatever. And that's the only thing, basically, I use for most of my life. it's been the more usable thing for you you got through in one year yes it was pretty intense to get through in one yes that's all I wish I had lost I could lose as much weight as I lost that year so tell me Bob what does the young fellow due in 1952 with two degrees under his belt. 

Well, fortunately, the Air Force apparently didn't want me when I graduated, and so... They were keeping track of you. Yeah. 

I had an opportunity to go that summer to Delf Institute, is it, in Holland, and they wouldn't permit me to leave, sort of a thing. I guess they thought I was going to skip the country or something. 

Well, you were. No, not really. Just for the summer. 

But at any rate, I got a job there working for the summer at Cabot and continued to live in the grad house at MIT. 

And then in the fall they let me live in the grad house and I continued to work full time for Cabot, except But my office by then was just, at Cabot, was just down the street. 

They're still there, that red brick building, Godfiel and Cabot, which is down, if you know the area, down the river, up the river, and, oh, the other way down the river, anyway. Worked there and continued to take courses at MIT. Oh, you did? 

Were you thinking of a Ph. D.? 

No, no, I have to say in all honesty, I was more interested in the business courses than I was. 

But I did take a couple of more courses in Chem-E. You were just biding your time. Yeah, I knew the Air Force, you know, every time you checked the mail you figured you'd had it. And eventually here it came. 

So the end of the year I finally, I had to, in fact I asked to finish, I told them I'd taken some courses and all. They did, at any rate, in that July I went, in 53 I went in the service. And what branch of the service was it, the U. S. Air Force, and you went in as a commissioned officer because you had degrees. I was commissioned at Georgia Tech, the day we graduated, I guess, or the day before or something. It was part of the whole routine. And you would have reported where? 

You still had to go through. 

Well, they had us, we were reported to Fort Myer, Virginia, which was the paper shuffling office for the Pentagon, at which point, after about three weeks, they finally decided that they were sending me to the Rocky Mountain Arsenal outside of Denver, because the Air Force had a contract with the Chemical Corps to make nerve gas, and they needed two lieutenants to run errands for a colonel that was out there monitoring the contract. 

So it wasn't a decision based on the fact you had a chemical engineering education? 

Well, I think it was. All the guys they sent out there, the junior officers, were chemical engineers. The senior officers, like this colonel Childers, that... Was not. No, no, this guy, you know, he didn't know how to get out of the ring, but anyway. 

So out you went to the Rocky Mountains. and you were there for how long I was there one year and during that year I married I came home okay so now now we've got to talk about Francis where did you meet Francis second grade oh my word you're kidding well you had a longer courtship than your mom and dad then it wasn't a courtship no she was your good friend all that time? 

You know, well actually our parents were friends, and there were nine women in the north end Semile Heights of Tampa, they call themselves the Nine Nitwits, and they played Penny Annie poker every other Wednesday until they couldn't get two of them together anymore. Some of them lived to be, most of them into their eighties, some into their nineties. And your mama was one of them, and Frances' mama was one of them. And of the nitwit brats, as we were called, we were the only two that married, so. I'll be darned. 

Well, so did you court her over that whole period of time? 

No, just were friends? 

No, we knew each other. When did you start dating? 

Oh, college, on and off, sort of a thing. 

Well, once you got up to MIT, you were no longer. 

Well, I wasn't even around, you know. Yeah. Are you lucky somebody didn't take her? 

You're right. In fact, I used to bring buddies home and fix them up with her. You're kidding. I'm a hand of God. 

When did it occur to you that maybe this was somebody you should marry? 

Well, when I came home, after I had been to, I was already in the Air Force, I came from Fort Myer, I came home and then I went to, back to Tampa and then drove to the Rocky mountains and we got real serious on that leave i you know what that means that she was your good friend she was a good friend alone that's the kind of marriage there is we had our 50th anniversary last february that's amazing because that's the best marriage there is is when you marry your good friend that's right so you you did good buddy that was real smart so then you you quickly then courted her and then came home at Christmas time. And you got married at home then in Tampa? 

Yeah, I got married in Sacred Heart Church in Tampa. Oh, I bet the NITWIS were happy about that. 

Well, they were all there. 

On the ring I brought her home at Christmas time for an engagement ring, you needed a microscope to see it. To see it, yeah. I got a job in the Denver Public Library stacking books after work to make enough money to go buy it. Yeah, it wasn't high wages to be in the military, we know. No, in fact I think I was paid 180-some dollars a month. Kind of hard to save up for an engagement ring on that, right? 

No. 

But you scraped something together and came home and did you propose on bended knee? 

No. No? 

Oh, well good for you. And you did decide to get married as soon as possible. Came back in February and married. Oh, that was good then. 

So then did she get to go back with you for your last year of military? 

Yes. And where did they send you after? 

A year and a half, really. 

Where did they send you then? 

Well, from then, after that six months she was out there, then we went to Eglin Air Force Base, and I was what they call a project officer for a year. MS. 

So you were doing military things, not chemical things, not chemical engineering things? 

MR. 

We were called a project officer, a project engineer, and out in, certainly out in the arsenal in Denver, they were chemical engineering, making nerve gases, a very intense process. MS. 

I stayed up until midnight to sign out, because my two years were up, and I figured they'd declare war. Something bad was going to happen. 

So I signed out. Yeah. Good for you. 

And what was the plan with the young couple then? 

Where were you going to head? 

Well, I came home then, as I told you, and I worked part-time with my dad and worked for U. S. Phosphoric. 

But you came home to Tampa? 

Yes. Yes. Then when she said she was pregnant with a second child, I quit the U. S. foster work. Whoa, whoa, whoa. 

What happened to the first one? 

When did your first child come? 

Well, she was pregnant when we came home from the Air Force. Oh, okay. 

So then you came home and started a family. Yeah. 

So your oldest child was born in Tampa then? 

Yes. Okay. All of them. 

And then when you got the second child coming along, you said, maybe I need to go somewhere and make more money than this? 

Well, you know, by that time we had begun to get some decent contracts with our construction company. 

Which was your daddy, something your daddy had started, right? 

Well, he was a welder and had started. He didn't do any real construction work until I came home. Kind of took over and helped. 

Well, I had the education to be able to read the plans and do this and do that. Right, right, right. At any rate. 

So you and Dad were partners in getting this company built up. Yep, yep. How big up did it get built? 

Well. By employees. How many employees did you end up having? 

Oh, I don't think we ever had more than about 30. That was plenty. 

But you only had you and Dad to start with, so it did a pretty good growth period then. And you stayed with that firm. Yeah. 

The first year, I think we probably did less than $100,000 worth of total volume of sales. Your dad must have been thrilled to death. The last year we did $3 million. Yeah, he must have just been thrilled to death to have that experience. 

Well, we had a good time together. Did you? 

Yeah. You were a good friend of his? 

Oh, I think so. That's really good. How long does your father live? 

He lived until 69. 

So he saw that company grow and become very successful. Oh, yeah. It was a nice thing. Actually, John Miner, who you know, knew my dad before he knew me. 

Really? 

How did John know your dad? 

Well, he sold him equipment for some of the pumping stations and all. Oh, okay. Is that how he met you? 

Mm-hmm. Through your dad? 

Well, for heaven's sake. It's for business, yeah. Who would have thanked that, huh? 

Georgia Tech men bonding. There you go. There you go. 

So you, along the way to being a successful businessman and building your dad's firm up, you decided to look into some other parallel careers, we're calling these. All right. Because you got your fingers in all kinds of pies. It wasn't just the chemical aspect, but you're more interested in the business aspect. Money. Building business. You get real interested in how can we make, how can we do something better. That's right. 

So what was the first thing that caught your eye along the way to building that company? 

Well, you know, we began to do different types of jobs and larger jobs really well. Then you sell them a pump. Then you sell them a house around the pump. Then you sell them the equipment to go in the house. 

So it really, commercial real estate began to appeal to you at that point? 

Well, at that point, I was still doing pumping stations and water plants and this type of thing. 

And having an engineering background and all, I could go and talk to some of the consulting engineers that did design this sort of work and put it out for a bid and all. At any rate, we did fairly well at it. 

And then along the way I began to, there was an attorney in town, Joe Garcia, that I got to know, and Joe, Mac Burnett, and a few others, and I began to buy real estate. 

So that became like a limited partnership that we were talking about? 

We had a number of limited partnerships. Joe was the lawyer, Mac was the groveman. 

Well, Florida was the place to be looking for land. I mean, that was a good time to be looking. You could throw a dart at a map and make money. Yeah. It was hard not to do well if you were wise enough to invest. Right. There were a whole lot of people there that didn't even think about doing that. 

So you had to be just a little ahead of the curve to know to do that. 

My dad had the land where they had lived in one thing or another, and I still own that land to this day, and it went from, you know, $100 an acre to about $10 a square foot, you know. 

Isn't that amazing? 

As the land rush went to Florida, people were coming from the north, the snowbirds I believe you call them. Yeah, but they're still coming. Yeah, it's never stopped. And I don't blame them. It's never stopped. Having spent two years in Boston, I don't blame them. Yeah. Why would anyone live up there? 

Don't you wonder that? 

It's cold. Why do people live up there? 

It was cold. It's cold up there. Yeah, very cold up there. 

So you slowly but surely developed your commercial real estate interests. Yes. 

Now how did you get the first idea of going into a car dealership, automobile dealership? 

From the guy that I bought cars from, Bob Bryan. We lived there in the bedroom village of Brandon, just outside of Tampa. I met Bob and I bought one day, my mother decided that one Saturday I should go buy her a car. And so I did. And I met this band Bob Bryan and I liked him and continued to buy cars from him. And one day I said to him something to the effect of why don't you get your own dealership. He said I don't have any money. I said well I've got a little money but I don't know much about dealerships. Uh-huh. Partnership was born, huh? 

Yeah. 

So at any rate one day he came in and brought these two guys from Chrysler into my construction company office, which was a very modest office, a typical contractor's office. 

What we call no frills. No frills, no. 

And I looked at the one man that was there and didn't say anything for a while and finally after we met for a while we went to lunch and I said, I know you. You went to Georgia Tech. And he said, yeah, and and his name was George Schnabel and he was a class of 51, civil engineering. George had all the honors that I never got. ADK, ODK, ANAC, top honors grade wise and all you know. 

But he was working for Chrysler Corporation running as their regional real estate manager and unfortunately George died in his sleep in his early fifties. 

And the kind of an interesting Georgia Tech story, some years after I met him and had built the dealership there in Brandon and all and had sent you know Brandon Chrysler up and it was going. 

George invited me to a Georgia Tech alumni local chapter meeting at his home, and I walked in and I looked at his wife, who I had not met up to that time, and I said, my God, you were the sweetheart of Delta Tau Delta in 1950. You knew her too, huh? 

Oh, yeah. That's where you have to say, what a small world. Oh, yeah, absolutely. You didn't even know he had married the sweetheart, huh? 

No, no. I left, went to MIT as service to work. Yeah, yeah. You have a good memory though. That's great. 

So those Georgia Tech connections didn't hurt at all, did they? 

They made it a little more graceful to get into things. Yeah, yeah, yeah. At any rate, I did that, and we got that one going. 

So you were like a venture capitalist. You put the money in and then let this gentleman teach you the in-the-house. 

He ran it, and Bob's a great guy, and he to this day will tell you that, of course if If it hadn't been for him, he wouldn't be in business. And if it hadn't been for you, for me, that I could understand debit left, credit, right. Because he didn't know much about business, accounting. He just knew cars, huh? 

He knew cars. He knew he was a great salesman. It takes a little bit more than that. It takes more than that. 

So you guys were a really good partner. We were a good pair. We eventually bought another store over in Lakeland, which Bob has to this day. I finally last year sold in my share. 

Well you picked two commodities that just don't ever end, which are cars and land to get yourself involved with, so that's pretty wide. Water and sewage. Yeah, you were really on the front end, yeah. 

They're with us forever as they say, everybody's going to need, always re -need a car, you know, so it's a repeat business thing, and land was a sure fire thing, so there was always going to be water and sewage, yeah. 

So you positioned yourself very, very wisely, and worked hard, and you took risks. A lot of people are afraid to take risks, and if you take a risk, you get a good reward. 

If you don't, you get what you put into it. We built that Chrysler agency up to one of the larger sales in the country. They have what they call their pacesetters, which are the guys of the top 100 in the country. We were one for 15 consecutive years. Wow. 

So that was a big dealership. It still is. It still is. I sold it to Hasbury Motors out of New York City. They now run it as part of their courtesy chain. We kept the real estate. They sent us a very nice check once a month. Very smart, putting the two jobs together there. 

And you stayed put in one place as opposed to having to move all over the country by putting your roots right down there. They were there and you cultivated them in the same place. We lived in the back end of the store so to speak. 

There was 15 acres on the corner that my parents had bought that I had hand-vined to, and too thick and thin. We built a home on the back and the dealership on the front. 

Lived there 30 years and in 99 after I sold the dealership my wife said, I don't want want to live behind somebody else's dealership, so we moved to Tampa and built a very nice home there. 

But still stayed in the two -year Florida roots to this day. Let's talk about these kids. Let's start with number one, who was the first one born? 

Beverly. 

So your firstborn was a daughter, and Beverly is married. Yes. Where did she go to school? 

Rollins. 

Well, that's a long story too, and I don't know if you want to get into that. She graduated, she got her MBA and her pastor is from Rollins. Which is a very well known private school in the Florida area, yeah. That's great. Does Beverly have children? 

Beverly has two boys. She has Will, who lives in Germany, is married, and has a child, a little girl. 

So you have a grand, a great grand. I guess you'd say so. Thank God he finally got married. 

And then she had the younger boy that's Reed, who is our, we're very proud of Reed's now, and just started medical school at the University of Miami. Ah, great. This second child was? 

Bob Junior. 

Okay, and where did he go to school? 

Bob Junior, well, he went to Loyola undergraduate, and then he announced he wanted to be a lawyer. there. 

So I said, you know, Bob was a good student, but not a great student, shall we say, and so he interviewed a number of schools. I made him a deal that anybody didn't interview him I'd buy him a ticket to go there. 

And he went to the University of Puget Sound, and I accused him of using a compass to pick the father's law school from Tampa. 

But anyway, He already went there, and he's a lawyer today. Who even knew they had one up there? 

Not I. 

But he loved it. He was a, what do they call them, they work for a judge, I don't know, the assistant clerk. Clerk, yeah. A clerk. He clerked for a Superior Court Judge Carol Fuller out there. Cool. 

And then came back to Tampa, opened his own practice, and then worked for another large firm for a number of years, and recently has gone with Liberty Mutual, and they're in the house council. 

So he proved you wrong. Tampa. It was a good career for him. He's a fine lawyer. Yeah, and he has children? 

He has two children, two girls, Grace and Madeline. Great. And that brings us to number three. That's Glenn. Glenn. Glenn. And Glenn went first to Georgia Tech. Yay! I was wondering if we were going to get another wreck out of you. He stayed there for four quarters. That's good enough to say he's a wreck. He called me up and said, Dad, if I don't get out of this place, I'll never get in medical school. Which he wanted to do from the day he went there. When he was on our scout troop, he carried a first aid kit. I mean, this kid loves medicine. He was one of those folks that knew he was going to do it. 

And Georgia Tech was killing as a grade point average, huh? 

In those days, you know, calculus, I don't know, whatever it was. 

So I said, well, what do you want to do? 

He said, I want to go to the University of Florida, I've called them, they'll take all my credits and everything. He had good grades, but not med school grades. Yeah, it's so tough to get into med school. 

So he went to Florida, graduated with honor, could not get into medical school in Florida or Miami, went to Grenada, to St. 

George's, was there two years, took the ECFG, ECFMG or whatever it's called, the foreign student's exam, the Monday after the results were out Miami, called home and said, please come. 

So he went there, graduated, got the Converse Award and he went on to do his residency. Was meant to be a doctor. A fellowship. Met a young lady in medical school and married and they have two sons, Miles and Wade. And they were recently up here. And that brings us to Francis, our baby little Francis. Little Francis has two girls. Did she go to school? 

She went, yes, very much so. She went to the University of Florida and made very good grades. Came home, married, unfortunately that one didn't work out. Had two kids, but at any So what were their names? 

Clare and Rochelle. And at any rate, she was married too young. She had dated this guy, nothing was wrong with him. They didn't get along, whatever. And they just didn't get, you know. 

So you have four of each? 

Four of each. Four boys and four girls? 

Yeah, four boys and four girls. 

At any At any rate she decided to go back to school and she obviously needed some help and so she went to the University of South Florida which is a very fine university now with forty or fifty thousand people in it. By that time she, son if I were you I wouldn't have eaten that wire. At any rate she got her Master's and her PhD in Public Health. Oh wow. Wow. 

So you ended up with two doctors in your family. Yeah. Oh, and a lawyer's a doctor, too. J. D., yeah. And Beverly got her MBA. 

So you're a very well -educated group of youngsters you raised there, huh? 

They've all got good education. If they can't make it on their own, they're on their own. 

At any rate, Francis now works for an arthritis institute and reviewing their research and papers and publishing and this sort of thing. Wonderful. He was married to a really neat guy. You got to be very proud of their accomplishments. Oh, all of them. Very proud of them. 

You expected them to go to college like your mom and dad expected you and they outdid themselves for you. They did. They did well. Yeah. You decided to retire what year? 

Well, I don't know. Of going to work from 9 to 5, let's say. 

Well, in 1999 I sold the last dealership that I was truly active in, Brandon Chrysler Jeep, and then that was pretty much the end of your nine-to-five days. Nine-nine-to-five. I never did figure out how to do a nine-to-five. 

Were you a workaholic? 

You were gone from morning till night? 

Yeah, I learned to fly our own airplane because one morning I walked out of the house and little Francis ran after me and said, Daddy, Daddy, you forgot your suitcase. And I kind of said, hmm, that's the message. 

So I went to the Plant City Airport nearby and learned to fly and eventually bought my own planes, and the vice president of my construction company flew also. 

So you could be home more? 

After that I could count on one hand the nights I spent away from home for business. Oh, that's wonderful. I would make payroll in Miami and Tallahassee the same day. Yes, you didn't have to depend on the commercial airline, which is so time-consuming. Yeah. That's a wonderful way to do. Yeah. You still fly? 

No. No? 

I lost my medical in 1990. I had a ****** in 94. What was that all about, huh? 

I don't know, honey. What's a ****** about? 

Period. You wake up one morning and some parts don't work, you know. 

But that also teaches us a lesson, doesn't it? 

Well, I guess so. Yeah. I'm not sure what lesson that was. 

Well, probably take better care of yourself. Yeah, I could lose some weight. I could lose some weight. Yeah, can't we all? 

But, I mean, you know, you learn to appreciate your life and what things count. It's a way of prioritizing. 

The really good thing was that I was on the hospital authority in those days, and when I arrived at the hospital, I got some really fine care. Talk about that. 

Stack on the deck on that one, huh? 

Who knew that was really a good idea? 

You've been involved in community always. 

I mean, even from your early experiences with your construction company, You were part of the Water Sewage Authority. 

Well, I was in Coalesce, and then I was on the Water Management Authority. Yeah, taking care of things and giving back to the community. How many years did you fly? 30? 20? 

A good 30, I guess. A good 30 years. Boy, that added a lot of time to your family life by being able to do that. 

So you prioritized wisely there. 

And once that you shed yourself of the bigger responsibilities, you still keep your hand in on investments and things of that sort, you and Francis could have a little more time to travel and enjoy things. We have. We're real fortunate as a Chrysler dealer and a volume Chrysler dealer. We've won all sorts of trips all over the world. 

Did you? 

Have you been everywhere? 

Well, pretty well, you know, Africa, India, China, you name it, Europe, all over Europe. great way it's nice if you're going on somebody else's ticket right so you've seen pretty much seen the world but I know when I tried to run you down to get an interview you were in Italy I had to wait for you to come back so and you pretty much divide your time between North Carolina and Florida now correct this is a summer and then you still go back to Florida for the winters best of all worlds we hope so yeah no reason and I'd like you I always try to figure out Why do people live up north when it gets really cold, and yet they do? 

Make a living. Family, live, making a living, you know, lots of reasons, sure. 

So you're lucky that you got born into the right area to make your living right down You go to college up there to meet some gal and marry up there, and that's where they live. And then they end up staying there. Just like my friend Armstrong, his parents were professors at Clemson, and he lives in Maine. explain that one huh explain that one i don't know how they survive i don't know how they survive so the story is a pretty serendipitously happy story and that you met francis at an early age and she didn't run off on you she waited for you uh i was the right mate and you have a very good life a wonderful life look forward to the future and when you looked backwards like i've made you do today. Any regrets about choosing Georgia Tech? 

No. What was that man's name? 

Mr. Lang, Langley? 

Langthorpe? 

What was the name? 

Langston. Mr. Langston. We owe it all to him. Not all of it. My father was the one that instigated it, but he put in the good word for you. And no regrets at all. No, not really. That's great. Not really. There were times at Georgia Tech I regretted it, that's for sure. You could regret being alive. like every Friday but it gives us off something to talk about now that's the times of hardship it honed you it made you who you are today and it made you a problem solver that's for sure nobody comes out of tech without not I think it teaches you approach more than it does anything else if you can survive tech you can approach any problem and survive it does teach you how to think you have to if you're not quick enough you're one of the guys that didn't make it that's the guy on the left yeah so it does it's got that I mean it nobody was kidding you from the get -go you know what the story was gonna be it is a test it's a test of you in every aspect so glad you passed the test Bob me too so glad you're a rambling wreck and that you stay attached to the school we're delighted try to leave that you are and we're going to be looking at those a little grandchildren who aren't so little anymore and see if there's not another record to somewhere in there you know it's the future generation that knows we let in girls know we do it in girls and boy are they smart they sure Sure are. The gal that got the Delaval Scholarship has a 4.0, she'll graduate this year. And they're just so creative and there's just amazing minds. Is that scholarship something that you funded? 

Yes. In honor of your professor. What greater tribute could there be? 

That's amazing. Good man. Yeah. And he was an influence on your life. He was. 

Well, it's been a pleasure hearing your story today. I hope you've enjoyed the little trip down memory lane. Sure. That's been great, and we thank you so much for your time. Thank you very much, Madeline.