David Wyant

[Extraneous material redacted.]

GEORGE GILLIAM:  It is Wednesday, November 11th, 2021.  We are at the home of David Wyant in Albemarle County.  Present is David Wyant, Lorenzo Dickerson, George Gilliam, Phyllis Leffler, and Annie Valentine.  Do you have collected in any one place mementos, awards, press clippings, any of that kind of stuff that would be of interest to somebody doing a film about you?

DAVID WYANT:   [00:00:48] I got a number of press clippings, depends on what it is.  My mom kept up with everything that ever hit the paper.  And right there before she passed away, they gave me the box of stuff, [00:01:00] and I did not know that she had kept all that stuff, newspapers, daily progress, and other things like it.

GG:  [00:01:08] Well, it’s kind of fun to have a picture of that, and then you talking, and another picture of that.  So if you would, at some point in the next several weeks, let us take a peek at some of that stuff that would be wonderful.

DW:  [00:01:23] I would be glad to.

GG:  [00:01:25] Great.  What is your date of birth?

DW:  [00:01:28] January 26th, 1947.

GG:  [00:01:35] We’ve already discussed that you are a mere baby, a mere child, compared to one of us here.

DW:  [00:01:41] Yeah, yeah.  (laughter)

GG:  [00:01:44] What did your parents do?

DW:  [00:01:47] We grew up on a dairy farm.  And dad went off after milking in the mornings.  At first, when I was old enough to remember, he went to the ABC Store that was up on Main Street right across from the railroad station.  [00:02:00] And he would come back at night and milk out on the dairy farm.  Lambs Road is my mom’s family name.  I grew up at the end of that road where the radio towers are and that was 200 and some acres.  And it went across and backed up to the Barracks.  Daddy then -- when they went to Barracks Road to put that ABC Store and daddy said at the time he didn’t want to be the vice office manager or something because he felt like it was too much money to deal with.  So Daddy left there, and then went to the post office.  So he spent 30 some years at the post office carrying mail, didn’t want to work inside, wanted to be out meeting the public and walked every day.  And he’d walk all through town.  He’d walk about 15 miles a day carrying a backpack with the mail in it.  And then, Mama, she was a nurse.  And Mom only worked night shift, 11:00 to 7:00, [00:03:00] which I thought was so unique.  She’d work about three nights a week.  And the reason she went with the night shift from 11:00 to 7:00, she’d go to work about 10:00-10:30, and she’d make sure that we’d had everything ready and go to bed.  And then she was home to put us on school bus in the morning and everything.  And then when we got near Albemarle High School back in those days, I had to walk to school because that road, Lambs Road, was only a mile long.  Anybody on Lambs Road had walk to school, and I was down the road about a quarter of a mile.  So she nursed, and she did private duty at first at the University Hospital back in the -- I remember back in about the ’50s.  One guy had an automobile accident, became a real good friend of the family.  And Mom and Dad used go see him down in Fredericksburg, and then she left private duty and went to Martha Jefferson and was in charge of a floor.  And so she’d have 20 some patients with one other nurse all night long.  [00:04:00] So, nowadays, you look at the hospital and how many nurses and everything you got to do a floor of maybe not that many patients.

GG:  [00:04:06] So which schools did you go to growing up?

DW:  [00:04:10] I went to McIntire in the first through the fourth grade.  And I loved it when I went back there to see my grandson at Covenant because I can remember the back of it.  And there was a couple great memories I had through the fourth grade.  If you look over one of the doors, it has boys and has girls over the other one.  And so when you came back from recess, you had to go down in that door.  And the restrooms were near that door.  That was one reason they went in that way.  And I remember in the back had a sidewalk (phone ringing) -- sorry.  I had a -- just want to wait on it?

GG:  [00:04:49] [Yeah, we can wait on it?].

DW:  [00:04:57] I ought to kill that thing.

GG:  [00:04:58] The warranty on your car is about [00:05:00] to expire.

DW:  [00:05:01] Yeah.  (laughs) But at McIntire, I went there through the fourth grade, but I can remember the sidewalk in the back.  And it used to have a dirt strip between there, and we used to play marbles.  You never hear anybody talked about playing marbles.  And my brother was really good at it.  He’d take like five marbles to school and come home with every pocket full.  And I could take all my pocket full and come home and everything.  And [Mr. Herbert?], Tom Herbert, he was there. 

GG:  [00:05:31] This is still at McIntire?

DW:  [00:05:33] Yes, sir, at McIntire.   And I saw Mr. Herbert one time, we were down at Applebee’s at Barracks Road.  And I walked up to him, and he was in a wheelchair.  I said, “Mr. Herbert,” I said, “I want to introduce myself back to you.  I’m Dave Wyant and everything.  And I was one of your students at McIntire.”  He said, “I remember you.”  I said, “I want to tell you one other thing.  You’re the only principal that ever gave me a whipping.”  He said, “I’m sure you deserved it.”  (laughs) [00:06:00] And that was over -- a girl bit me.  I mean, I grew up on a farm where there was like 17 grandkids, so we fought all the time.  I mean, we just had all kinds of wrestling matches and fights.  This girl bit me on the arm, and I hauled off and coldcocked her and knocked her back over the table.  And she didn’t get a whipping, but I did.  I didn’t think that was fair, so I told him that.  Then in the fifth year, in my fifth grade, all the sudden my piano teacher at Ivy Creek Methodist Church, where I went to church and everything, she picked us up there and we went to Meriwether Lewis.  So I went to fifth, sixth, and seventh grade to Meriwether Lewis.  I didn’t know why that all happened, but it turned out that’s when annexation was going on.  And they annexed some of Charlottesville and then that’s when they said y’all need to go up to Meriwether Lewis.  It was nice.  And the other thing is at Meriwether Lewis, and it goes back and daddy filled me in on this, [00:07:00] when you got to be in the sixth grade, you had a baseball team.  And you played Greenwood and you played Crozet.  And what that went back to -- and this is what I love about history, and there’s a reason I wanted to tell you about, is that there were high schools back when my daddy went to school, and they only 11 grades.  My daddy went 11 grades at Crozet.  But since they were high schools, they played each other.  Crozet played Greenwood.  Greenwood played Meriwether Lewis and stuff.  And we kept that tradition going on.  And the other little thing, I think, and I served, later on, on the board, used to have weekday religious education.  And they had it.  They put a trail on the ground.  And I’ll never forget a lady came out.  And if you were like a seventh grader, you had one period that you could go, sixth graders could go another, and parents gave you permission to go.  And we went out in a trailer and had religious lessons out in there.  Then, finally, the regulations came, and they had to move it across the road over at Meriwether Lewis on the other side.  And then, later on, I got on the board.  [00:08:00] And then, finally, that went away.  That whole program went away.  I was in the seventh grade at Meriwether Lewis when that tornado came through.  I think that was like -- was it 1959 or something?  It came through, and it killed that family, had just gone through Ivy and killed the entire family of seven or nine in Ivy, and everything.  And I remember we were in the seventh grade.  And they made us lay on the floor.  And I could see, somebody was telling me, and I raised up enough to see that big tornado coming across the far end of the baseball diamond and just missed the school, not knowing until later on that it had already wiped out that family.

GG:  [00:08:41] So after Meriwether Lewis, where did you go?

DW:  [00:08:45] Albemarle High School, five years -- see, you didn’t have middle school, so you had Albemarle for five years.  I tell you something unusual back then for schooling, in the seventh grade, my morning teacher was a guy named [00:09:00] Mr. [Billard?], turned out later on, he was just right out of college.  When he finished in the morning, during the lunch period, he drove all the way to Stony Point and taught in the afternoon down there.  When you hear these people talk about conditions of employment, look at what they used to do in some of these -- and then afternoon, I had Mr. Simmons.  He was the principal.  And he was our teacher for the seventh-grade afternoon session.

GG:  [00:09:28] So what year did you graduate from Albemarle?

DW:  [00:09:32] Nineteen sixty-five.

GG:  [00:09:36] So you started there in 1960?

DW:  [00:09:40] ‘60, it would be, right?

GG:  [00:09:41] Yeah.

DW:  [00:09:43] So that would have been ’59 that that tornado came through there.  I think I was looking at that Rosenberg’s photo album that my wife had just the other night.  And I think that’s when he showed the photo of when that tornado -- that’s how I [00:10:00] can remember the year that that occurred.

GG:  [00:10:03] So when you graduated from high school, you were preparing to go on to the University of Virginia.  Had you selected engineering as your field of interest at that point?

DW:  [00:10:14] I tell you one thing; I say the good Lord looks after us.  I’ll tell you what happened.  I had a chance to go to the Air Force Academy, and I turned it down.  And I had a chance to go to Tech.  I had applied there, not realizing how far away it was, to me.  And I didn’t want to leave my mama and daddy, so I turned it down.  I had not been accepted at UVA.  Mr. Hurt pulled me out of class one day, gave me the keys to his car.  Now, you can imagine doing this today.  He says, “Go down to your house, get yourself a coat and tie on.  I’m going to get you an appointment with the dean of admissions at UVA,” and turned out it was a guy, he went to Hampden-Sydney, I found out later on.  [Caviness?], I believe his name was.  And I thanked that man years later when I ran into him for that.  [00:11:00] And I went to see him, and he looked at my grades, and all that stuff, and the SATs.  My verbal is still not much.  I told him when I went there that my -- they wanted to do a foreign language.  I told him English was my foreign language and everything.  And my verbal was real low.  My math was real high.  He said, “You either got to go in math, or you got to go in engineering.  If you go in math, you got to write papers.  You go into engineering, you’ll write paragraphs.”  I said, “I’m going to engineering school.”  And that’s how I got there.  It’s really interesting how all these choices were made for me in my life.  And they worked out well for me though.

GG:  [00:11:37] So did you live on the farm while you were at UVA?

DW:  [00:11:39] No.  I lived in Charlottesville in housing.  Since I was local, I lived at home, and then I lived -- and I’d gotten married.  And so I lived in Charlottesville, and I didn’t have to live in the dorms or nothing like it.  So I was driving back and forth from school.  I was one of the few, [00:12:00] I think, on your senior year could you have a car at that time at UVA.  So I was driving back and forth, riding a scooter in the snow, and everything else, believe it or not.  And so I had advantage over everybody else.  I don’t know.  I was playing baseball up there too, so I had a lot of stuff even going on back in my early years.

GG:  [00:12:21] So there was a lot going on in the big world outside those years?

DW:  [00:12:26] Yes, sir.

GG:  [00:12:28] Where did you get your news?  Did you read the Daily Progress?  Did you watch TV news?  Where did you learn about what was going on in the world?

DW:  [00:12:38] A lot of times at lunch and breaks -- I didn’t have a lot of time with engineering taking all the hours that you took.  And I’d glance at the Daily Progress, but I had some classes one time that involved some mental -- it was mental resources.  And I would get the Wall Street Journal, believe it or not.  I’d pick it up at the Corner and read that.  [00:13:00] And then, of course, we had the Cavalier Daily up at UVA, and that was about all I knew.  I listened to the radio on the ride when I was driving my cars.  On the ride home, I’d listen to that.  But the rest of the time, I had to focus on studies.  I pulled a lot of all-nighters back in my days, didn’t get much sleep.

GG:  [00:13:25] Were you aware of the so-called Massive Resistance Movement in Virginia?

DW:  [00:13:31] No, not much at all.  I learned about it later on through others.  I didn’t realize a lot of this stuff.  To me, things went on, they seemed to be smooth.  I didn’t see any resistance.  I wasn’t involved.  You know, when you’re at UVA, there’s a lot of people that pull for you to join groups and stuff.  And it, to me, was -- I was pretty [00:13:31] basic, down to earth, just a -- I’d just mind my own business.  And I cared about people.  I mean, that’s what you’re taught.  My family upbring was you cared about everybody.  And then I didn’t get very far off the middle path.  I think you’ll find I’m kind of midstream, not off on the other side on anything.

GG:  [00:14:24] Well, when you were at Albemarle High School, did you ever wonder where the Blacks were?

DW:  [00:14:35]  No.  On the farm, we grew up with them.  And, to me, when they came to school, I didn’t see any difference.  I didn’t see resistance.  And I’ll have to tell you, I’ve thought about it a lot, I really think -- I went to church.  Later on, I went to church with Mr. Hurt and Mr. Cale.  And I think it’s like my boss [00:15:00] used to tell me, and he’s from Turkey.  He says, “The fish stinks from the head.”  And I really think -- and Mr. Hurt and his approach to it, caring about all the children that ever came to Albemarle High School -- he knew everybody’s name.  He would know it today if he was living.  And I used to sit with him at church.  And he’d say, David, you know, so and so is the brother of so and so.  I didn’t remember those things, but Mr. Hurt was the best.  I never saw him show any partiality towards anybody.  He cared about everybody.  And Mr. Cale, he’s another one of those great -- those two men are two of the greatest Christians I’ve ever known.

GG:  [00:15:37] So were there any Blacks at Albemarle in the years that you were there?

DW:  [00:15:43] Yes.  They were there my junior year.  I looked in the annual and saw it, but I remember more of my senior year, and the two seniors.  They became real good friends of mine.  It was one boy and one girl.  And I used to -- [00:16:00] another way I made money and everything, and I got my lunch free, was I ran the bookstore at the high school.  I’d drive the athletic bus after school.  But in the mornings, I’d get up there early, and I’d open up the bookstore so you could buy pencils and paper.  And then same thing at the lunch periods.  At a lunch period that they had it, the boy and the girl that were seniors came to there and stood up there at the bookstore with me.  And we talked and we came closer and closer.  The relationship really kind of bonded and formed when the young fellow got cut off the football team.  And I was one of the co-captains.  And when I came in for the two a day practice, the coach gave me keys to his car.  He says, “Take Daniel to wherever he wants to go.”  And I said, “Whoa, what happened?”  And so I got in the car with him.  And I took him up to the Trailway Bus Station there in town.  And we talked on that way over.  And we were really -- he told me [00:17:00] he had been cut off the team and everything.  And we became really close and tight.  And then along came the other girl who was a senior, and two of the nicest young people you’ve ever known.  And, years later, finally, when we’d been looking for class reunions, I told my group they had not -- they weren’t as, I guess, aware of them or [want them?].  But I said the two people I really want to see again are [Daniel?] and [Madeline?].  And I think Daniel has passed away, but Madeline came to one of our class reunions about 15 years ago.  And one of the fellows came into one of our meetings and said, “Hey, I found her.  She’s coming.”  I said, “Oh, that’s great.  I’ll been looking forward to seeing her.”  And she walked in, and her husband was walking behind her coming to the icebreaking night.  And I looked and I had known him for years at the feed store.  He had worked at H.M. Gleason’s and then he went to Southern States.  And he always loaded my feed [00:18:00] and everything.  And I said, “I should have known you two nice people were married to each other.”

GG:  [00:18:06] Yeah, that’s nice.

PHYLLIS LEFFLER:    [00:18:07] Do you remember their last name?

DW:  [00:18:08] Yeah, White.

PL:  [00:18:10] Daniel White?

DW:  [00:18:11] Oh, no, Daniel [Garland?].

PL:  [00:18:13] Garland?

DW:  [00:18:14] Yes, ma’am.  And I think he -- I looked him up and I think he grew up at Cismont, but I’m not positive about that and everything.  But it was a Daniel Garland that passed away, and I’ve not been able to get enough stuff to figure out what -- and the ladies’ name was Madeline Johnson.  And she married James White, who worked at Southern States.  He may be retired now, but he worked in the back and loaded the trucks.  He was at H.M. Gleason’s, really, really nice man.  I’d always go in and ask him, “If he was still with my girlfriend,” and he would laugh.  (laughs)

GG:  [00:18:54] So what sports did you play during your years at Albemarle?

DW:  [00:19:00] I played football, basketball, baseball, and ran track.

GG:  [00:19:07] At what level, varsity letters in all of them?

DW:  [00:19:11] Yeah, I got varsity letters in all of them, but track.  I got tired of that running there.  I played five years of football and basketball and four in baseball there.  You had a question?

PL:  [00:19:26] Yeah, I just wanted to follow up to George’s question about African Americans at Albemarle.  It sounds like from what you’re saying that there were very few, is that right?

DW:  [00:19:40] There’s five.  If I’m correct, there was five my senior year, and there’s three in the underclass.  I think it was maybe three of them were in junior class.  And so, we came in in ’64, so we graduated in ’65, two in my senior class, Madeline and Daniel.

PL:  [00:19:58] Do you have any idea why so [00:20:00] few?

DW:  [00:20:01] Well, it was choice then.

PL:  [00:20:03] It’s just the way the school was districted?

DW:  [00:20:07] No.  They had a lot of resistance in Charlottesville. I remember that because I remember they closed the schools and all that.  And that’s when, if I’m correct, Rock Hill was created.  And I didn’t think that was right.  I mean, I’m sorry that was my -- we all go to school and everything like that.  But you realize too they had  Albemarle Training School back then.  And one of the fellows up at the store, I talk to him a lot about it.  Two of Black guys come up here to the store because I want to know their experiences and how they were.  They lived up here and went all the way down there to Albemarle Training School, which if you -- and I’ll tell you, it’s across from Four Seasons right down.  And I want them to show me that building.  They tore it down, but he thinks that maybe the front wall is still left away of where he went to Albemarle Training.  So, one day, I want to go down with one of the two [00:21:00] and see that because see where Four Seasons was, was a golf course.  Most people didn’t remember it.  When I get talking about it and everything, I said, “That was a golf course right across the way.”  And they used to ride a bus.  Mr. Barber and there was one more would take the Black kids from here and, I think, over at Greenwood and bus them all the way down to the Albemarle Training School.  I didn’t even know the training school was there when I was a kid growing up.  And I rode by it on a bicycle to go play ball and everything.

GG:  [00:21:33] Let me pursue the sports a little bit more.  Did you ever play in games, or even witness games as a spectator involving Burley?  Did you ever go to watch their team play?

DW:  [00:21:51] No.  I didn’t go to Burley, but I remember my daddy talk about going to Burley.  Back when I was growing up, I listened to Lane High School on the radio.  [00:22:00] And they couldn’t beat their sister (inaudible) back then, and I’d turn that thing off.  But daddy said, “If you really want to see good football, you go to Burley.”  And so a lot of folks around town used to go to the Burley Bears game on Friday night.  Now, later on, I got to meet a bunch of those guys because I played in the Sunday Black baseball league.  I was the only white fellow on the team, but they became real good friends of mine and everything.  And they’d tell me stuff about what went on with the Burley Bears and stuff, so I’ve learned from talking to people because I’m fascinated by the history of that and what (inaudible) back then.  Hardly be anybody at Lane.  Everybody would be over at Burley.

GG:  [00:22:48] I’ll tell you some stories later.

DW:  [00:22:51] Would you?  And you know back earlier Lane and Albemarle played, and this was before I got to Albemarle, and they must have had some fights or [00:23:00] something after the game.  And while I was at Albemarle High School, the five years, we never played Lane in any sport.  Now, we scrimmaged in basketball and that was it.  And I remember scrimmages when Gene Arnette and George Foussekis and those, but that was just in basketball.

GG:  [00:23:23]  So I did not know that Albemarle had never played Lane.

DW:  [00:23:29] They started playing about two or three years after I graduated.  Ralph Harrison had came, and he and Theodose were really good friends.  Of course, Ace Harrison had worked on Theodose’s staff.  And when we officiated together, I talked to Ace because I was -- I’m kind of like, well, y’all are asking me questions, well, I wanted to know from them all this stuff that went on.  And so they played against each other, and they played at Scott Stadium.  They went to a neutral site when the first played [00:24:00] and everything.

GG:  [00:24:02] You strike me as being interested in your school.  You go to reunions.  You stay in touch with it sounds like a pretty good number of people.  How did you feel?  How did you react when Burley was closed, and they started sending large numbers of Black kids to Lane and some to Albemarle?

DW:  [00:24:30] Well, it didn’t bother me as much as the numbers coming, but I’ve always been worried about the loss of history of things.  One of the ladies at our church, she’s passed away, was a Black lady that lived down Rose Hill Drive and everything.  And my daddy carried mail at Vinegar Hill.  And knowing from engineering how the evolution and how cities grow, and, eventually, they become the slums and then it becomes the commercial.  How do we keep [00:25:00] that history?  I’m doing the same thing here in Whitehall with what I’ve got here.  That’s the only reason I bought my great grandparent’s house from our uncle, and I got our store.  And I got all the other property of the Wyants, not to be a land bearer, but I want to keep the history. I got a lot of -- I was telling my daughter-in-law this morning, I got a lot of history up here.  Most people don’t even know about, but I want to maintain that.  So here was at Burley, here becomes a big building, that was a great school.  How do we keep that history?  Not that we had the kids come in.  I did learn a little bit more about the transition from how you take teachers and bring them in.  That was an issue that -- I keep thinking back on what Mr. Cale had to face as a superintendent.   How do you merge these together and everything?

GG:  [00:25:56] We’ve heard stories about parents of kids [00:26:00] who were at either Lane or Albemarle whose male child lost his starting position because a Black kid came in from Burley and took it away from him.  Did you ever hear any of that stuff?

DW:  [00:26:21] I didn’t hear, but I can show you that it would happen.  And it’s like, I dealt with how we run baseball and football programs and everything here.  And people are, “I don’t want my kid replaced by that one.”  It’s not a game because of who you are.  It’s a game by who’s the best athlete.  I mean, you look at the NFL and what I dealt with all up there.  They played the best.  They’re not there to show favoritism.  And a lot of parents say, well, I -- and I’ve dealt with, especially in baseball over here and Crozet, my kid ought to be [00:27:00] playing because I’m so and so.  That doesn’t cut it with me.  I’m sorry.  That’s me.  But I also believe in that all children have to get -- they get the same rights and get the opportunity.  But, as a coach, I think I look at stuff a whole lot different.  I don’t care whether we win or lose.  The main thing is you teach them about life.  So you got a kid that’s on the bench, you need to be able to teach him about you’re not successful at everything you do, but you work hard at what you’re doing and hoping that one day you get that opportunity.  I did not go to the top right off without a whole lot of trials and tribulation of my own.  So I use a lot of time to explain, hey, you know, I started down here.  They were kicking my heinie when I went to Virginia.  I mean, I was at Albemarle, and I pitched in the summertime in the American Legion.  I struck out 21 in one game.  [00:28:00] I went up to Virginia, the next thing I know them balls are coming back by my head like it was shot out with a cannon.  I said, uh, he was just lucky.  So I throw another one up in there, the next one about takes my feet off.  I’m saying, well, I don’t think I’m as good as I thought I was.  So there are little lessons that you teach and everything.

GG:  [00:28:20] We’ve heard stories again, and I’m sure you’ve heard the same stories, that in the period, say, from ’67 up to ’72-’73, there were so few Blacks that were in prominent positions on the teams that when they did something noteworthy, some fan, some spectators would unfurl a confederate flag, or the band would play Dixie to sort of taunt them a bit.  Did you ever see any of that or hear any of that?

DW:  [00:28:58] I didn’t hear any of that.  [00:29:00] It was something, and I’m not sure exactly, when Harrison Davis came to Virginia to play quarterback, it was some stuff that went on then, and I can’t quite remember what it was.  I’ve always said, and I was taught this by, I think, it was [Carl Dean?], you’re never a failure unless you don’t try.  And the people that are on the field really upsets me still today that people boo those young people even in pro football.  That guy under that helmet is only 22 or 24 years old.  And I don’t see you out there taking a chance, and taking the risk, and performing well, and not everybody’s going to succeed on every play or every game.  I always say that people beat you today, but, tomorrow, I’ll play you again.  And it might be a different story.  And that’s the kind of lessons you need to teach the young people, but [00:30:00] I didn’t know of any of that stuff or heard of anything like that going on.

GG:  [00:30:09] Did you continue going to Albemarle games after you had graduated?  Did you ever go to them?

DW:  [00:30:16] Yeah, I started refereeing when I was a first year at Virginia.  So I’ve not known anybody that officiated as many years as I had, even in the NFL.  Most of them are -- I had 25 years or so, I think, before I got to the pros.  Most guys in the pros that’s the most they have ever done.  And so I didn’t go back.  I remember going to one game when I was a freshman with my daddy, R.E. Lee Staunton.  We used to beat them in JV football, and they beat us in varsity.  And they had four guys in the backfield that went on to college, and the Army, and one of them went down to VMI, and stuff like it.  So we had Greg Godfrey, [00:31:01] who’s here in town as a realtor, and there was somebody else on that team.  (clock music) Sorry.  That was a gift from my mama.  It plays on the hour.  I got one here, and I got one out back in the shop.

PL:  [00:31:25] Wow, it just rings (inaudible), doesn’t it?

DW:  [00:31:29] My cuckoo clock might go next, I’m sorry.  (laughter) Hey, just come over to the Wyant family.  What was I talking about?  I forgot what I was telling you.  That’s a little sad.  What was it, George, you asked me about?

GG:  [00:31:47] Yeah, I was just asking if you kept up with Albemarle by going to their games and how about with UVA?  You didn’t actually play football?

DW:  [00:32:00] No, I played baseball up there.  I went to one Albemarle game I can remember.  I went all the way to R.E. Lee with my daddy to see -- and it was really good teams and everything.  And I went over there to the [church?] the night that Albemarle beat R.E. Lee at Staunton because later on, I refereed Alger Pugh’s games.  Alge was a real successful coach like Tommy Theodose and everything.  Matter of fact, they had a long winning streak, and they played Lane, and they won the game down there or tied the game, I believe and everything.  Later on, Alge Pugh went to GW Danville and I used to officiate his ballgames and everything.  But I went over to see him and that night we beat him.  At Virginia, when I went -- because if you remember back in the old day -- back in these days, in the ’60s, we had the big mainframe computer.  It was up in Gilmer Hall.  It figured -- and you’d have to do the little card reader.  Well, you couldn’t get time in there to put this thing and then it [00:33:00] would take forever to get your program back.  So I had engineering work to do, and I was taking -- and, I mean, I almost like studied seven days a week and trying to play ball and everything.  So during the football game, the thing was freed up a lot.  So I used to run over to the game, go in anytime you want, and then I go back and I’d do my computer work and everything.  So I didn’t see a lot of ball games back in my days.  And I refereed like Tuesdays and Fridays and Saturdays too.

GG:  [00:33:31] Tell me how you got to be an NFL official.  What was the progression that you went through?

DW:  [00:33:41] I’m telling you, I started back at the Little League level and everything, but it’s because of other people I got there.  I was very fortunate to have Carl Dean and Bob Sandell here in this town, two great men and everything.  And Carl Dean used to go to games and work with me.  I used to go on Sundays when we couldn’t get [00:34:00] anybody to work little league football there at that McIntire.  And I used to go and work it all by myself.  And the first year Carl Dean’s standing on the sideline.  And during the timeouts, he would say, David, you do this and that and all -- you know, he was kind of ruling here and there and everything.  And so I worked high school ball.  And I did a game at Lane.  I had a real tough call.  I got the thing right and only because Carl Dean had taught me about this particular play.  It was an option play and everything.  And I got it right and everything.  And I talked to Tommy Theodose about it.  And he still is like -- he likes to -- (cuckoo noises) that’s my cuckoo clock.  And he liked to -- he’s, “Oh, you missed.”  Tommy loved teasing me.  Well, it turned out.  (cuckoo noises) (inaudible)

GG:  [00:34:49] Does it say cuckoo at the end?

DW:  [00:34:51] No, it doesn’t.  It’ll quit when it gets -- when it hits [eleven?] you’ll know.  So it turned out that I worked [00:35:00] like for Carl.  And Carl was at that game.  He saw me there, so he started give me bigger ball games.  And so I was working on the end of the line.  You have people like [Dwayne Bickers?] and [Mickey Bickers?], really good line of scrimmage people.  So I was competing against them.  And he saw me make that great call.  And next thing I know, I’m getting big ballgames.  Then I was trying to get the ACC -- well, I was working on getting in small college.  And Earl [Gillespie?], who’s the only one of all these people who have helped me along the way, is still living, ran the Virginia High School League.  And he told Dan [Wolries?] in Salem, who ran the ODAC conference said, “Here’s a guy you need to take in.”  I got in there.  And when you have these tough calls, you hope you do -- because of the training from Bob Sandell and Carl Dean, I had a tough call in the Hampden-Sydney game.  And next thing I know, I’m working the Hampden-Sydney making classic every year.  I worked it my last five years.  When I worked the Super Bowl, they asked and said, “What are your greatest football [00:36:00] memory that you got?”  I said, “You won’t believe but it’s division three college football.”  I’ve worked the classic my last five years of college ball meant the world to me.  But then I could get in the ACC and Carl Dean and Bob Sandell recommended to the new supervisor that you need to take this guy in.  Never seen me officiate, which is real rare, gave me six games.  I worked four different positions.  Nobody has ever done that.  And I had the critical call.  End up the last game of season -- they gave you a whole schedule.  The last game of the season was NC State with Clemson and NC State for the championship.  Turned out, I was on national TV for the first time in my life.  And I had that same pitch play, option play.  And I nailed that thing on national TV.  Nobody knew what I’d done.  And, today, if it hadn’t been for Carl Dean teaching me that and everything -- and when I did that, next thing I know, I was working all the big ACC games.  And they were scouting a guy that played at the University of Maryland.  The NFL was because [00:37:00] one of the bosses in the NFL office coached him at Maryland.  And they saw me with him on all the big ball games.  And that’s what got me up to the big one.

GG:  [00:37:10] I remember seeing you at that very special football game.  You were the one wearing the stripes, right?

DW:  [00:37:18] Mm-hmm.  Yep.  Special game.  I tell you what you work at classic game (inaudible) Hampden-Sydney, it turned out Ralph Harrison was working one time.  And Jim Blackburn, Coach Blackburn’s son, who played linebacker behind me at Albemarle High School, he was a junior.  And his came in in my junior year to UVA.  Turned out, he’s coaching Randolph Marker.  And it turned out that bush down at Hampden-Sydney was over at Lexington at [BMI’s?] or one of them.  And it was a real good friend of Mr. [Knowle?], [00:38:00] who the gym is named at Albemarle High School after, Ed Knowle and he was my basketball coach and my JV football coach.  And they were good friends.  And so he knew that.  So I’m working for -- and those coaches picked you, so they kind of knew me and selected me for that game.

GG:  [00:38:20] Let me see if Phyllis has any questions.

DW:  [00:38:24] Sorry.

PL:  [00:38:25] So you played baseball at UVA?

DW:  [00:38:28] Yes, ma’am.

GG:  [00:38:29] That’s the only sport you played?

DW:  [00:38:30] Yes, ma’am, up in college.

GG:  [00:38:33] And when you were at UVA, I just need to be reminded of those years, ’60 to ’65.  There would have been no Black students on the baseball team.

DW:  [00:38:45] No.  And remember too then, we had freshman baseball.  That’s before they changed the rule that allowed freshmen to be playing varsity ball.  So I played JV -- I mean, I played freshman baseball.  And I loved it when we played over at the -- what I call, the colonnade.  It was great.  There were those stands behind you.  And Coach (inaudible) was the track coach, and he’d holler at me when I run sprints and stuff.  And the old track had a broken inside board, and you could cut across, didn’t run a real quarter.  So when they played -- when they ran against other teams and Coach Honesty was a great -- he kind of coached me some too.  And we played there, and the guy you may know, Ralph [Law?] was my freshman baseball coach.  And then he came over to -- I think it was [Burley Moran?] to be the principal then, and then he and I refereed football together and everything.  And then I played for Coach West, Jim West.  And remember back then is when we went to Burley, and they started the Hornets baseball team.  And my father-in-law then was a vice president of that thing, but I was one of the two locals that -- well, it was three locals, but I was considered a college student.  And you could only have two locals on a team that [00:40:00] were not college students.  Major League Baseball, they contribute money to the [Valley?].  Most people don’t know how they’re set up.  So [Maxie Gentry?] and Roger [Genini?], who were local guys that I played ball with, they were on the team with Coach West.

PL:  [00:40:19] And when you organize reunions, is it just for your own class that you’re doing that [for Ablemarle?]?

DW:  [00:40:23] Yes, ma’am.  We had talked about doing -- you know people in the -- like a lot of times in high school, I didn’t know a lot of the underclass people.  They know you’re seniors.  It was like me, I knew my -- I remember my seniors and everything like that.  I’ll tell you a little story.  I went to Louisa and that was old [George Shifflett].  And we got down there one time in Louisa, and Donnie [Wright?], who went to Albemarle was ahead of me a couple years, who played for major league ball, we were going to referee the ball game.  So Sherman [Shifflett?], that’s who it was.  Sherman was on the football team [00:41:00] when I went up to the varsity to play when I was a freshman at Albemarle High School. And so Sherman, he was a cut up.  Well, it turned out he was the athletic director and everything, eventually, I think, became a school superintendent.  So he’s back there in the back with us, and we are talking about old days and cutting up.  And all of the sudden the guy that ran the clock, who was involved with the Methodist church camp that my daddy and I were involved, he come in and said, “Y’all going to officiate this basketball game?”  Said, “Why?”  He said, “Only two more minutes left on the clock for you supposed to tip off.”  We was back there -- and so the sports world has allowed me the opportunity to see all these people.  And the class reunion stuff, I wouldn’t the president of the class.  I was only a CA.  But it’s almost like everybody, like they turned to me.  The girl, they always -- we come back. And tell you how we do it, now, Friday, December the 3rd, I think it is, we got a little -- [Sherrie Archer?], [00:42:00] [Kitty Heper?], the girl from over here, and another girl, Linda.  She’s a Shepherd, and there was a girl I was in 4H with and dated a little bit that (inaudible) and their husbands and wives, we’d get together for a meal every couple of months, and just talk about what we’re going to do and this, that, and the other. They’re the main core of the people that put those reunions together.

PL:  [00:42:22] So I do have I think one more general question. This project that we’re doing, which we’re calling Race and Sports, I think there’s an assumption in this project that sports brings people together across backgrounds, across racial lines, etc.  And, of course, you’ve been involved in sports all your life.  Do you believe that’s true?

DW: [00:42:50] I’m going to tell you, there was a thing I told George the other day, you can get a bunch of children out on a field, throw a ball down, none of them speak the same language, [00:43:00] it becomes the common denominator.  But I have seen this, and I have had a winning team.  It was in little league.  And a guy worked with me at my office.  And back here in Crozet, they used to play little league at Greenwood Community Center, and they played at the Crozet Park, and two teams up at Greenwood Community Center.  And the fellow that coached the one team -- you do the draft.  We knew how he was.  He did not want any Black kids.  The Black kids up they say they’re 11 years old, 10 years old.  They play it at the community center all day long.  They just get out there and play baseball and everything. So they’re playing against 15, 16-year olders.  And so playing against another 11, 12-year-old doesn’t mean anything.  We knew he did not want to draft any of those Black kids.  So what we ended up doing, we ended up picking out any of the white kids that was in the count, got them first, and then we got all those Black kids.  And it turned out two of them -- one of them went on and played pro ball.  [00:44:00] They were 11-year-old, two 11-year-olders pitching for us, and we did not lose a ballgame.  They were the best athletes up there because they played, but we knew how that guy was towards them.  And those kids -- and I was umpiring baseball down at Burley for Albemarle High School.  Donnie Wright was coaching and a young fellow’s [named Ronnie?], “Hey you, Mr. Wyant,” like that, and I’m out there working games.  And I’ve had these associations with these kids when they were 11 and 12 years old.  I tell you something else.  I did it my first basketball -- I was a freshman in Virginia.  My uncle had come here and started running the rec department.  After [Nan Crow?] retired, he was the next parks and rec director and Joe Hicks came out of pro baseball.  Joe and [Em?], they used to call the individuals to umpire baseball.  They are the ones who taught me, especially Joe Hicks, who grew up right down the road with my dad and them up here, Joe taught me about umpiring ball.  But my uncle Ed said, “Hey, you want to make a little money and officiate basketball?”  [00:45:00] I started officiating little league -- I guess you call it little league basketball at Jefferson School.  And I’m going to tell you, I didn’t even know the kid’s name.  One of them was named Swamp and another one named Catfish.  And I’m over at Charlottesville High School officiating basketball and across from the court, they set over there, “Hey, Mr. Wyant.”  I said, “Hey, Swamp,” like that.  I didn’t (inaudible).  And it wasn’t long ago, I think it was about two months ago.  I went into Korner Restaurant.  And I walked in and that guy’s saw me, “Hey.”  And it was Swamp again.  And I got to ask him.  I said, “Where is old Catfish?”  And he said, “Well, he passed away.”  I didn’t even know their name, didn’t know his name either, but that’s what we knew.  I tell you two really good little ballplayers.  You want to give him a good story.  (laughs)

GG:  [00:45:54] We have run into somebody named Cherry Pie, [00:46:00] same thing as Swamp Land or whatever.

DW:  [00:46:03] Yeah.  Well, when I played ball, we ended up -- you have nicknames for everybody.  And I’ll tell you something else in sports.  I played fast pitch softball, and I’m going -- matter of fact, Carol keeps asking me when it is, but I’m being put in the Hall of Fame for the fast pitch Softball.  And I was the old catcher for Stacy’s for all the years.  And I played against guys like [Jess Curs?].  He was an NBA basketball official.  I saw one when I did a game out in Seattle.  I played for [Wilson Powell?] out of D.C. and all like it, but the one thing that Stacy’s Music Shop had -- there was a guy in town, he’s passed away and his son’s really nice.  And he was a coach at Monticello High School basketball.  It’s Alfred Martin.  Alfred Martin was built like a tight end, and he played third base.  But he was playing in the adult league, industrial league, when my uncle was running it, right after I started.  [00:47:00] And I was working over at Buford, I’ll never forget.  And he threatened me one night.  And my uncle called him in, and they suspended him for a week.  Well, through that thing, Alfred, he didn’t like the way I called the ballgame with the other guys.  But we came good friends.  Next thing you know, Alfred is the only Black we have playing.  He played third base for us for Stacy’s Music Shop.  And that’s when we were state champs and went on to regionals.  And he could flat play.  He was big.  He’s passed away now, but he joined us there in Stacy’s.  It’s kind of unusual some things you’d think that a Black person wouldn’t come get involved in, but we had some like Stacy’s.  We were glad he came because he really made our ball team with him on that team.

GG:  [00:47:47] Annie?

ANNIE VALENTINE:    [00:47:49] Do you know why Daniel Garland was cut from the football team at Albemarle High School?

DW:  Let me why I was really upset about this thing.  We had 32 players.  [00:48:00] He would have been 33 and everything.  And we had a couple white kids on the team.  They were almost -- like I said, they couldn’t chew bubblegum or spit tobacco juice and everything.  And Daniel had a terrible looking stance and everything, and he wasn’t a really good ballplayer.  But those kids were just -- they were equal to him.  And none of them were gonna play much, if at all.  So, to me, even then, when I drove, he told me what happened.  This is just the way I’ve been all my life, I guess.  And I’ve been taught because my mom dad would knock me around if you felt that.  We grew up on a farm where everybody’s treated equal and everything.  My granddaddy Lambs was a tough, tough, tough man, but we all ate together.  We lived together.  There were Black folks that granddaddy had working on the farm that lived in the house with my grandma and granddaddy.  They had a bedroom up there.  There was no discrimination [00:49:00] whatsoever dealing with that stuff.  So it ended up when Daniel -- I thought, Lord, that is so unfair.  And I told him just exactly how I felt in that thing, and I think that’s what bonded us two together.

AV:  [00:49:15] But why?  Why was he cut?  You said it was so unfair.

DW:  [00:49:19] I just think the coach didn’t want a Black kid on the team.  See, they were starting to integrate, but it was so unfair to him because when you look at those others that we had, why didn’t you cut them?  That was my belief.  I mean, be fair across the board, but my coach didn’t feel that way.

AV:  [00:49:37] You said Mr. Cale and Mr. Hurt were really trying to figure out how to make desegregation make sense.  Do you think they did a good job?  Do you remember what they did to kind of prepare everyone for that?

DW:  [00:49:50] I heard all kinds of stuff when they were talking about this naming the schools.  It hurt me a lot because I went -- let me tell you, if you ever went into church and been around [00:50:00] them, Mr. Hurt and Mr. Cale, I tell you what, I don’t think it was anything bad about those men.  And they loved everybody that they were -- I saw Mr. Hurt and Mr. Cale around Crozet and at the church and [the things they did?], but the thing that -- what limited knowledge is about what happened at Albemarle High School with Mr. Hurt and everything, and everything that went down.  I heard stuff when they were talking about the naming of the school that happened at other schools.  And it was pretty disturbing to me because I know the Cale family was there, and they blame Mr. Cale for this and that’s why they -- you know, in life, there’s thing’s that’s going to happen to all of us one time or another it, but people don’t forgive and forget.  I do.  They haven’t forgotten my bad calls; I can tell you that.  I hear more about them than my good ones.

GG:  [00:51:00] Do have other questions, Annie?

DW:  [00:51:08] See, Annie, the other thing is did the other school have a principal like Mr. Hurt?  Remember when I said the fish stinks from the head.  When Mr. Hurt set that standard at that school, and the way people were treated and everything, I think that’s why Albemarle High School at the time I was there went easy, smooth.  You never even knew it.  You didn’t see color, but I can’t say that happened at the other schools because I don’t have the experience.  And that’s what I would love to know.

AV:  [00:51:37] Did you hear later on from people who graduated after you that when Burley joined in with Albemarle High School, meaning a lot more people came in after Burley closed, was it still sort of the same feeling and environment?

DW:  [00:51:49] What limited knowledge I had was -- I’ll be honest I had the confidence that Mr. Hurt would make that transition.  That’s a tough transition for all.  [00:52:00] I used to think about Daniel and Madeline, and how uncomfortable they were because they didn’t go down to the lunchroom and eat.  They stayed up there with me at the bookstore to eat, and they weren’t supposed to.  And I thought about myself, suppose I was in that part, would I feel out of place?  And as time goes on, it got better because you take me when I played in that Black baseball league, [Mack Davis?] and them down at Barboursville, man, I mean, they loved me.  I coached their kids, his kids, and then I coached him in [senior league?] ball.  And, now, we’re playing together on Sunday in the league, and I’m the only white guy amongst, I don’t know.  I didn’t care.  They treated me just great.  But, see, how many years later was that?  That was probably -- from the time I was at Albemarle that may have been 20-25 years later.  So we progressed that much.  Now, granted, we got more progression to do, but we I think people need to do these things and understand history.  [00:53:00] If you understand history, you can see where you’re going.  I don’t like us.  I’m afraid we’re going to repeat some stuff.  And I learned through my work in research.  And I just worry about the people that it will hurt.

AV:  [00:53:13] That’s why we’re doing this project to remember the history.

DW:  [00:53:17] Yeah, Howard [Newland?] taught me it all.  I’m going how in the world do you see problems that are coming up and what’s coming down the road for us in research?  And I thought, Lord, how do they do this?  But one of the first years I was there working at the Research Council, and I was in grad school, but I worked full time, Howard had his normal seminars and stuff with the staff.  And he was talking, and he taught in the architects.  He says, “Learn your history.  You’ll see your future.”  And so when I was in (inaudible), I was looking at what we were doing there to see the project.  The environmental, we weren’t doing much and everything.  And so it really helped me.  And I worked GPS before you ever knew it existed.  I was here.  Nobody else wanted [00:54:00] to tackle that thing.  When they came to the national meeting we had in D.C., and a guy wanted to come to the Research Council and talk to us about GPS and what a potential it could be, everybody ran out the room and said, “Dave Wyant can do it.”  I mean, everything, everybody, Dave Wyant.  And I was sitting on the back wall about half asleep.  And it was the greatest blessing in the world to me.  The guy came out of Cedar Rapids, Iowa.  And we rode around and did GPS with only eight satellites, not like 24 or 26 up there.  Then came GIS.  You see, everybody used GIS.  I developed that.  I was the one that came from the state.  I went from GPS into GIS not knowing that eventually the state was going to have an interest in that and turned out the people in Richmond came to me and got me to move out to Fontane my last three years with the state to develop GIS and the coordination between all the different state agencies.  But it was only because of that history that I got to that point.

PL:  [00:54:56] Lorenzo, you got some questions or not?

LORENZO DICKERSON:  [00:55:00] I don’t think I have any questions.

DW:  [00:55:00] I didn’t not flag you, did I?  Don’t get nasty now just because I threw a flag on you.  (laughter)

LD:  [00:55:09] No.  I don’t think I have anything.  Daniel’s younger brother though is still around here, Nathaniel.

DW:  [00:55:15] Is he?

AV:  [00:55:16] Oh, he was a great athlete too at Albemarle.

DW:  [00:55:20] Who’s that Nathaniel?

AV:  [00:55:21] Yes.

PL:  [00:55:22] Nathaniel who?

AV:  [00:55:23] Nathaniel [Garland?].

DW:  [00:55:24] You know what, and it wouldn’t bugged me.  I mean, Daniel had a bad looking stance, but that don’t mean he can’t carry the football.  Everybody looks at all this other stuff and they say, hey, what am I about?  I’m about scoring, maybe he -- Gale Sayers look at what that thing would do.  He wasn’t no prince out there standing around.  You know what that thing would do, he’d run up through the middle and he’d fall in the bottom of the pile.  And the officials used to come up real close.  Old Gale Sayers would reach out there and grab the shoestrings and tie the shoestrings together.  (laughter)  See, you didn’t know that kind of stuff went on.  Oh, there was stuff going all around.

GG:  [00:56:00] You can go ahead and pack up because I want to tell him a story, but I don’t want you to get [it on tape?].  (laughter)

DW:  [00:56:11] Hey, you know what, you know how you come across to people and you get along?  I mean, up here at the store, you saw us the other day.  I was cutting up with the Black guys and stuff like it.  In NFL officiating, be 120 some of us, and there’d be 400 or 500.  And we’d go to lunch.  And the Black guys would sit over there at one table.  Here I go through the line, “Hey, Wyant, come over here.”  And I was the only one out of all the whites that they’d want to come over and eat with all of them.  And I’d sit over there and talk.  And I thought, you know, it’s just how you come across the people.

GG:  [00:56:43] I have asked -- I’ve had a lot of athletes in class.  And I’ve seen the way they really do break up by race for lunch time, whatever.  So I’m just saying, what’s going on?  You all don’t like each other?  [00:57:00] What’s the deal?  No, it’s not that.  They’ve got their games.  We’ve got our games.  They’ve got their music.  We’ve got our music.  They’re fine.  We’re good, but --

DW:  [00:57:14] Yeah, same thing.  See, I went to training camp.  Every year you go to what they call the OTAs, and then you go to training camp.  Well, you go you go there, and we have lunch with them and all like it.  And when the players come out and they get at a table, you’ll see they’re predominantly that way.  And the other thing is there’s a little (inaudible), those linemen and everything, but you’ll see the quarterbacks go sit together.  They spend a lot of time in the meetings, but they sit -- and when I went to the Giants training camp, and that was Charles Way, Tiki Barber, and one other guy.  And here we are, we sat and ate every meal together while I was there for those three days.  And we were talking about stuff here in Albemarle and Virginia because, see, Charles Way is a civil engineer too.  And he was on the engineering [00:58:00] foundation.  So Charles and I would talk about UVA and everything like it.  And then Tiki and Rhonde, they got on TV.  And when I started doing the scouting for new officials, I’d be up in the press box.  Well, I walked down into their -- I gave Rhonde a couple of tips on Philadelphia one time and stuff that they were doing when they had that coach that came out of Oregon or something up there.  We always sit in the locker room.  Here we are.  And you’d look at all the different kind of things on what we call a [Flipcard?].  It has all the schools, what year they’re drafted and everything.  And when you would look at when that guy was there coaching, we would look at how many people weighed over 300 pounds or 400 pounds.  His staff was less of those.  That’s when the guy came out of Oregon.  They ran a lot, ran a lot.  So there’s a lot built on speed and not on the heavy weight.  And they had not paid any attention.  You think we officials just out there throwing a flag [00:59:00] and (makes a fart sound). (laughter)

GG:  [00:59:03] That isn’t the way it works?

DW:  [00:59:04] No.  (laughs) Yeah.

GG:  [00:59:07] (inaudible).

LD:  [00:59:08] How long were you at the Research Council?

DW:  [00:59:10] I was 30 years.  I graduated in June and July 1, 1970 when I finished my undergraduate, I went there then, and I stayed 30 years straight was the state.  I had many offers, like I said, to leave, but I got my retirement.  So I left out of there real early in my things.  And they wanted me to go to Richmond.  I was always promised to live here.  I said, “I am not going to Richmond.”  And so when my 30 years came, bye.  And I was doing consulting.  And I had a call yesterday about some structural stuff, but I let my PE license, professional engineers license -- I love serving people.  And it kind of hurts a little bit, but I’m 74, and I’ve done a pile of stuff.  And I want to enjoy my life.

LD:  [00:59:58] My father-in-law works there now.

DW:  [00:59:58] Huh?

LD:  [00:59:59] My father-in-law works there now.  [01:00:00]  He’s worked there for 30 years.

DW:  [01:00:02] Who’s that?

LD:  [01:00:03] Benjamin [Cattrell?].

DW:  [01:00:05] So he was -- what department?

LD:  [01:00:08] I’m not sure.  He’s been there since like ’80.

DW:  [01:00:10]  Yeah, see, and that was after I went to Fontaine.  I went out there for those three years.  I was out there between mental resources, forest, the police department down there.  Charlie Hale was up here at the store this morning played football in Virginia.  He worked under George Allen Gilmore administration, headed up the minerals and the mines and stuff like it, and lives right down the road.  His wife’s a nurse practitioner for Doc Campbell over here.  But old Charlie worked up there and that’s why we renewed old acquaintance and had a good time up there.  But I was trying to merge all these state agencies, get them -- DMV, I went over to DMV.  My buddy at DMV was running the DMV.  I played football against him.  He went to (inaudible) to be an investor.  And he called me over, “If you don’t realize your driver’s license, your automobile and your driver’s license don’t -- those databases don’t communicate to each other.”  [01:01:00] And he wanted to see if I could do it with the GIS and make those merge together.

PL:  [01:01:06] So I have a tiny, tiny, little question here.  We’re going to get transcriptions of all of these.  So you mentioned at McIntire that you had a principal named Tom Hulbert??

DW:  [01:01:20] Tom Hulbert, yes, ma’am.

PL:  [01:01:22] Do you know how to spell that name?

DW:  [01:01:23] H-U-L-B-E-R-T, I believe is right.

PL:  [01:01:26] (inaudible) got that spelling here, so I’m glad I asked.  H-U-L-B-E-R-T?

DW:  [01:01:32] Yep.

PL:  [01:01:32] Okay.  Good.  I think that’s the only one that I didn’t [have?].

DW:  [01:01:36] Yeah, Mr. Simmons, James Simmons.  I think his first name was James.  See, one of those Simmons was a band leader, a band director, at Albemarle High School, not the same fellow.  You know, when I spoke -- I got put in the hall of fame at Albemarle High School.  They asked me to come back and be the keynote speaker the next year.  And I talked about this thing about the hall of fame.  [01:02:00] I got really upset when they put somebody in not long ago, and I didn’t go to that one.  It was all because of money.  And I’ll tell you what I spoke about.  I talked about we’re lacking basics now in education.  I get people up here, you get something $2.87, and you give them $3.02.  And they look at you like you got three heads.  I still do a pile of math in my head.  I said we need to teach basic stuff.  But the other thing is when you start looking for people for the hall of fame, I want to tell you all about two guys that meant a lot to me at Albemarle High School.  And these are two Black guys, was the custodians, James and [Harold?].  I used to go -- my brother and I used to go down to the furnace room and sit down with James and Harold.  And it’s amazing what you can learn just from them.  See, you don’t see how many degrees and stuff I got it.  You don’t even know what I’ve done.  I feel bad.  [01:03:00] I put them out there in that room I built.  I built a woodworking shop, and I’m putting my football stuff out there.  And we’re still redoing it, but I never hung my diplomas nowhere, not even at the office.  I didn’t want to seem like I was bragging about it.  When I went to the pros in football, I didn’t want to seem like -- I’ve always heard if you can come back, if you’re the same as you were the day you left, you’ve been successful.  And I always wanted to be just me and that’s what my wife says all the time, “You’re just Dave Wyant,” and that’s all I am.  I stayed the same, but Harold and James taught us a lot.  And you know what, they’ll never be in the hall of fame at Albemarle High School, and, to me, they should.  But, see, other people didn’t have the experience I had with those two guys.

PL:  [01:03:46] So if you want to break up your stuff, Lorenzo, go ahead.

 

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