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In the days before World War II, the Annual Thanksgiving Day Military Classic was played in Roanoke between Virginia Polytechnic Institute (V.P.I.) and Virginia Military Institute (V.M.I.) to determine the state football championship. In addition to the game, there were many festivities, parades, dances at the major Roanoke hotels, dinners, and parties in Roanoke followed by formal dances at the German Club and Cotillion Club when the cadets returned to Blacksburg.

In 1917 Pop Owens served his first Thanksgiving dinner for more than 500 hundred on the Sunday after Thanksgiving at the Mess Hall. Young ladies who remained over from the dances were guests in the private dinning hall along with their dates. The Thanksgiving repast became a much anticipated tradition at V.P.I. for as long as Pop Owens lived.

John Joseph Owens (V.A.M.C. class of 1879) was appointed Mess Steward for the 1917-1918 school year to replace the late John H. Shultz. Owens had experience with large dining operations at the University of Chicago and at Johns Hopkins University as well as with the Roanoke Elks Club. Under his stewardship, Mess Hall (soon to become the Dining Hall) took on a new excellence, and he became a favorite of the cadets and earned the affectionate nickname Pop. For Christmas 1917, the members of Company B presented him with a $50 gold piece in a handsomely wrapped box.

Pop Owens was legendary as the dining hall steward. Of course, there were a few bumps along the road. Owens introduced soft-boiled eggs for breakfast that first October. The eggs all disappeared up the sleeves of the cadets. None were eaten. After the cadets marched back to barracks and were dismissed, the air was suddenly filled with flying eggs in a brief but fierce battle. Pop never served soft-boiled eggs again.

Thanksgiving week of 1921 was an exciting time as the Corps of Cadets was invited to participate in the celebration in Richmond in honor of Ferdinand Foch, Marshall of France and Generalissimo of the Allied Armies during World War I. At the Thanksgiving Day classic the next day, V.P.I. triumphed over V.M.I., 26 – 7.

The 1921 Thanksgiving Dinner menu includes Fatimas, a brand of cigarette marketed as exotic Turkish tobaccos but produced in the United States by the Liggett & Myers tobacco company. Collectible cards of popular actresses of the day were included with each pack.

The outcome of the 1929 Annual Thanksgiving Day Military Classic of the South would once again determine the state football championship. Although Floyd Hard Times Mead drove a pair of turkeys instead of the usual one, regaled in orange and maroon ribbons, V.M.I. won the game 14 – 0.

V.P.I. avenged the past three years of losses to V.M.I. with a 24 – 0 win in the 1930 Thanksgiving Classic. Once again V.P.I. claimed the title of State Champions.

The 1930 Thanksgiving menu indicates a locavore concern with eating local foods with the Montgomery County raised turkey and Virginia salt peanuts and creamery butter.

To learn more about the history of Virginia Tech, visit Special Collections on the first floor of Newman Library.

Source: Harry Downing Temple, The Bugle’s Echo: A Chronology of Cadet Life (Blacksburg, Virginia: Virginia Tech Corps of Cadets, Inc., 1998), vol. III, IV, and V.

Special Collections is collaborating with the Department of History, the Ex Lapide Alumni Society (the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer alumni network at Virginia Tech), HokiePRIDE, and the LGBT Faculty/Staff Caucus in an oral history project that seeks to document the LGBTQ experience at Virginia Tech. The University Archives started the project at the request of the Ex Lapide Society.

Beginning in the fall of 2014, David Cline and the students in his oral history classes studied LGBTQ history and began collecting oral histories to document the history of LGBTQ life in the 20^th century American South and specifically at Virginia Tech. Cline is Associate Director, Public History Program in the Virginia Tech Department of History. Megan Lee Myklegard of Ocala, Florida, a junior majoring in marketing management in the Pamplin College of Business, collected additional oral history interviews. Myklegard received an Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) Creativity and Innovation Grant to collect and transcribe nine interviews. The University Archives also conducted oral history interviews for the project.

A new web archive created in Omeka by Adrienne Serra, technical archivist for Special Collections, features full text and sound of the interviews, along with images, historical documents, and a timeline of significant events in the LGBTQ history of Virginia Tech http://digitalsc.lib.vt.edu/exhibits/show/vtlgbtq-history. The new site uses Oral History Metadata Synchronizer (OHMS) to enhance access to the oral histories, providing a word-level search capability and allowing users to move from the interview index to the corresponding moment of the recorded interview online.

Sharing Our Voices: A Celebration of the Virginia Tech LGBTQ Oral History Project will include an exhibit of Special Collections materials and web launch on Saturday, October 10, 2015 on the first floor of Virginia Techs Newman Library. The exhibit will be open on Saturday from 2:00 pm to 5:00 pm and on Monday, October 12 from noon to 4:00 pm.

The exhibit will have two parts. Each of the eight screens in the multipurpose room will feature different materials related to the project or to the interviewees. The projects web site and timeline will be on display so that users can explore the site. One screen will show a video of the 1986 AIDS Conference held at Virginia Tech. Its Reigning Queens in Appalachia, a film by Carol Burch-Brown, Professor, Studio Art and Creative Technology in the School of Visual Arts, will be screened. The film includes audio clips and photographs from the Shamrock Bar, a gay bar in Bluefield, West Virginia. Megan Lee Myklegard prepared a short film to highlight the oral histories she did through her ACC grant. Luther Brices chemical magic show will be shown. Brice, also known as Merlin the Magician, won both the Wine and Sporn awards for excellence in teaching at Virginia Tech. Mark Webers (class of 1987) student slide show on transvestites will be on display. Images from campus groups, including HokiePRIDE, o-STEM, QPOC (Queer People of Color), and the LGBT Faculty/Staff Caucus will be highlighted on another screen.

The second part of exhibit will be in the skylight area of Special Collections and will feature books, art, and archival materials related to the LGBTQ experience or created by individuals who identify as LGBTQ. Laurel Rozema, Processing and Special Projects Archivist, and Anthony Wright, Resident Librarian curated the exhibit.

During the month of October, there will also be a special seating area outside the multipurpose room with screens where one might access the new LGBTQ timeline on the web site and other relevant materials. A selection of books from Newman Library will be available to read or check out. Books include Gregory Edward Allen’s Lambda Horizons Collection and winners of the Stonewall, Lambda Literary, and Rainbow List awards.

Refreshments will be served at the Saturday celebration. The event is free, and the public is welcome.

Charles L.C. Minor, 1835-1903, was the first president of Virginia Tech. A Virginian and former Confederate officer, Minor took a keen interest in education. In 1872, he arrived in Blacksburg to launch Virginia Agricultural and Mechanical College. Minor found success building the campus and student body, but his clashes with faculty (including a fistfight) over military training led to his departure in late 1879.

The colorful stories about the tenure of Virginia Techs first president have appeared in several books and articles, but less is known about his career after leaving Blacksburg. In 2013, Special Collections acquired a unique acquisition related to Virginia Techs first president, which gets us closer to understanding the real Charles Minor.

After leaving Virginia Tech, Minor continued as an educator. In 1880, he purchased the Shenandoah Valley Academy in Winchester, Virginia. In 1888, he moved to Baltimore to direct the St. Pauls School. He also served as associate principal of the Episcopal high school in Alexandria, Virginia.

In the 1890s, Charles Minor retired from teaching and began writing essays on the Civil War. The consummate educator, Minor wanted to record his recollections of the 1860s so students could better understand that crucial decade. He published several newspaper articles and other pieces that criticized the character, leadership, accomplishments, and personality of Abraham Lincoln. For the basis of his research, Minor focused on the words and actions of a number of Lincolns associates.

Minors writings attracted the attention of Kate Mason Rowland, an early member of the United Daughters of the Confederacy and the author of several historical works. She compiled Minors articles and other research into The Real Lincoln, a pamphlet published in 1901. It also included an anti-Lincoln essay written by Lyon Gardiner Tyler, son of President John Tyler and President of William and Mary College from 1888-1919. In the pamphlet, Minor asserted that biographers deified Lincoln and evaluated him only through the lens of the northern perspective on the Civil War. Readers with Lost Cause sympathies embraced the pamphlet, while others criticized Minor for only focusing on the negative aspects of Lincolns presidency. Minor continued his research on Lincoln and planned to publish a book on the topic.

Minor began his revisions by working from the published 1901 pamphlet, by literally cutting and annotating the printed text. In 2013, a book dealer contacted Special Collections with a unique findCharles Minors annotated copy of the 1901 pamphlet. The item, marked on the front and back as property of Charles L.C. Minor, included handwritten notes, cut-out sections of the text, references to other sources, and other annotations. These markings formed the basis for his expanded version of the book. The annotated pamphlet revealed the authors editorial process and his thinking about what to include in the new version. Special Collections acquired the item (MS 2013-057) and made it available for researchers.

By early July 1903, Minor completed the draft of the book on Lincoln. Nearly four times longer than the pamphlet, the manuscript provided details on how northern eulogists bestowed excessive honor, or apotheosis, on Lincoln and his legacy. On July 13, 1903, Charles Minor died at Beaulieu, the home of his sister, Kate Mead Minor, and her husband, Richard M. Fontaine, in Albemarle County, Virginia, leaving behind a nearly completed manuscript. Charles Minors brother, Berkeley Minor, and sister, Mary Willis Minor, edited the manuscript and added a biographical note about the author. In 1904, Everett Waddey and Company in Richmond published a revised and enlarged edition of The Real Lincoln.

In addition to Minors handwritten version of the 1901 pamphlet, Special Collections has another item that relates to the story. There are two copies of Minors The Real Lincoln from 1904 in Special Collections. One of those copies was inscribed as a gift from Berkley Minor (who worked with his sister to publish the posthumous version of The Real Lincoln in 1904) to his niece Louise B. Fontaine in the late 1920s. This copy contains a significant number of handwritten notes made by Berkeley Minor, a letter to the editor of the Staunton Spectator in March 1909 regarding Lincolns character, and other loose papers. Berkley Minors annotations in the 1904 volume included new references, additions of text, clarifications of events, and small grammatical changes. This annotated volume served as the basis for the revised and enlarged edition of the book in 1928, which was edited by Berkeley Minor and M.D. Carter. The book itself came to Special Collections in the 1980s from the grand-daughter of Kate Mead Minor and Richard M. Fontaine.

Only a handful of Charles Minors letters and papers have survived, so having an annotated version of his book in his own hand is an extraordinary resource. But even more unique is to also have the subsequent annotated version of the book in the hand of his brother Berkeley Minor. Charles Minors writings on Lincoln from the early twentieth century continue to have relevance in the early twenty-first century. In fact, todays readers can download an e-book version of The Real Lincoln from 1904 or order a reprint of the text. But, Special Collections at Virginia Tech remains the only place where readers can see how the work evolved through the handwritten notes of the author and his family.

A recent gift from Dr. H. William Gabriel (class of 1956) lets us step back into time to the life of a V.P.I. (Virginia Tech was then called Virginia Polytechnic Institute or V.P.I) cadet and student in the Forestry and Wildlife Conservation (FWC) Curriculum in the 1950s. One of the unique items in the Gabriel collection is a watch chain worn as a Senior Class and Junior Class privilege. According to the Student Life Policies, 1955-56, the watch chain may be suspended from the watch pocket to the right hip pocket of the trousers. … The chain worn to the hip pocket may have no more than five devices suspended therefrom. Gabriels chain has four keys indicating membership in four honor societies: Pershing Rifles (military), Phi Sigma Xi (forestry), Alpha Phi Omega (Boy Scouts service fraternityhe had been an Eagle Scout), and Phi Sigma (biology).

The Phi Sigma Xi key is unique. The forestry program then was tinyonly about 100 studentsand it lacked the recognition afforded students in other curricula. In 1955 Gabriel organized an honorary fraternity for forestry students called Phi Sigma Xi. It was intended to last only a few years until the V.P.I. forestry program could qualify for membership in the established national honorary known as Xi Sigma Pi.

The fifth key on his watch chain was lost. It was a small replica of a double-bit axe representing the Forestry Club. The little pen knife at the end bears the crest of Thomas Jefferson High School Corps of Cadets and was a favor received from his date at a formal military ball there in 1951.

Because Dr. Gabriels own Forestry Club patch was very worn, George K. Jim Frischkorn (FWC 59) donated his patch.

All freshman Cadets (“rats”) were required to wear the belt buckle of brass on white web belt in place of the black leather belt. By tradition, on the last day of “rat” status, at the end of the freshman year, classmates signed each other’s belts. He defaced the buckle with a 56 and added a very faded blue and white Pershing Rifles ribbon (usually worn on the uniform shirt) and an Alpha Phi Omega pin, two organizations he joined as a freshman.

Dr. Gabriel’s collection also includes Student Budget: A Daily Record of the Cost of an Education in which he recorded the income and expense of his sophomore year. The booklets were sold in the college bookstore, and he used it to estimate if the War Savings Bonds bought $0.10 and $0.25 at a time would get him through college. His income for the 1953-54 academic year was $956.23, and his expenses were $807.72.

Room in the college dorm and board in the college dining hall cost $95.80 the first quarter, $110.80 second quarter, and $110.80 the third quarter. No expense was recorded for tuition because he had a $300 scholarship that covered those costs. Clothing expenses were virtually nil because he has purchased all necessary uniforms as a freshman.

His job in the dining hall paid $30 to $42 per month. In December he received $11.50 for work on a forest fire, and in May $25 as an ROTC uniform allowance. Other income came from selling his used books, selling photos he took of other students, a Christmas Saving Club account, and cashing in mature U.S. War Savings Bonds that his frugal mother, a single parent, taught him and his brother to buy and save for a rainy day.

Dr. Gabriel wrote:

The week I turned 12 years of age I got a work permit, a Social Security card, and a job that paid more than minimum wage. I had worked ever since. The summers of 53, 54, 55 I hitchhiked out West to work for the U.S. Forest Service on national forests in California and Idaho. Each Christmas vacation I delivered mail from the Westhampton P.O. substation in Richmond. And so I managed to pay for my education.