By Dr. Walter S. Griggs Jr., R’63, L’66 and G’70
In my world, the University of Richmond occupies a special place. I cannot walk across campus without opening floodgates of memories—recollections of a time when I was a bewildered college student full of hopes and dreams.
I look at Boatwright Library and remember the days I spent reading book after book trying to complete my degree in history. I pass Ryland Hall and recall the day one of my classmates brought a duck to class, or when Dr. Spencer D. Albright asked me to make a speech on behalf of the Prohibitionist Party. And I still recall the night I drove to campus around midnight to check on a grade. I got out of my ancient Dodge with flashlight in hand and timidly headed toward the biology building. Finding the door, I turned my flashlight on the grade sheet, and there it was in all its glory—“W S GRIGGS D.” I fell to my knees and thanked the Almighty that I would never have to cut up another frog. My mind is somewhat foggy on what happened next, but I think I recall hearing a chorus of frogs in Westhampton Lake croaking the “Hallelujah Chorus.”
But the University is more than buildings, books, frogs and grades. I met and married a woman named Frances Pitchford, W’63, who walked the long, cold path from Westhampton College to the bus stop almost a mile away. Frances is responsible for many of my memories of the University, especially my memories of Cannon Memorial Chapel. One day Frances and I agreed to meet at the back of the chapel following a mandatory convocation. But there was a problem. She thought the back of the chapel was the area behind the building, and she went there to wait. I thought the back was the place where people entered the building (the back of the sanctuary) and I waited there. We never found each other that day. Every time I see Cannon Chapel, it reminds me of this missed meeting and how a misunderstanding almost ended a beautiful relationship.
When Frances and I were playing “ring around the chapel,” we did not know the history of this building. The chapel was made possible by a gift of $125,000 from Mrs. Lottie Southerland Cannon. It was built in memory of her husband and named the Henry Mansfield Cannon Memorial Chapel. Mrs. Cannon said of her gift, “I finally decided for myself that the University of Richmond would be here as long as the city itself and that I should place my memorial on the University campus.”
The chapel’s design is Collegiate Gothic, an architectural style that is supposed to suggest “eternal values” and “exalted ideals of education and religion.” When construction started, World War I was still on the minds of students, who said the construction noise was reminiscent of artillery fire at the Battle of the Marne. Some of the noise came from dynamite that blasted out rocks on the chapel site.
The University dedicated the chapel in 1929, following an address by Dr. Clarence A. Barbour, the president of Brown University. Barbour suggested that religion was able to solve many of the problems of modern life. With the singing of “The Church’s One Foundation,” the chapel became a place of reflection for the entire University community. At the time, freshmen were known as rats; and a rat was defined as “incorrigible reformatory timber in dire need of reformation, and an iconoclastic invader of the domain and freedom of upperclassmen.” Surely, the Richmond rats found some much-needed peace and even “amazing grace” while attending chapel services.
Across the years, the chapel’s walls have witnessed many prayers, sermons and speeches. The chapel also has hosted many choral performances, vesper services and traditional events, such as the Westhampton College Proclamation Night. In 1931, a speaker told Westhampton students that they needed to attend camp in the summer to be “exposed to the warm sunlight and dashing rain while listening to the music of the wind.” In that same vain, Westhampton women were told to become missionaries for a year so their boyfriends would miss them.
Fred Waring, a popular band leader, introduced a new U of R Fight Song in a chapel concert in 1940. One stanza of this “masterpiece” contains these words:
Yes, the Spiders on a spree!
We’ll chase ’em up a tree!
We’ll beat them, yes-siree!
We’ll fight for victory.
When the song ended, the gothic arches of the chapel echoed with the screaming approval of all those who were “spider-born and spider-bred.” Although the students did not know it at the time, within a year many of them would be engaged in the desperate battles of World War II.
During the war, bond drives were held in the chapel. Faculty, staff and students, standing on the roof of the Chemistry Building watching for German aircraft, could easily see the chapel. Surely they prayed that the end of the war might come soon and spare their loved ones. After the war, one of the most memorable programs occurred in 1946, when Adm. Chester Nimitz and Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, were awarded honorary degrees in a chapel ceremony. General Eisenhower said, “There was not one man to come back from France who wanted to see his son have to go through another war.”
In the 1960s, I attended many mandatory chapel programs. But the only one I remember included a comment from Dr. George M. Modlin, president of the University at the time, who cautioned about speeding cars and told some awful joke about men not wearing shirts of the “T” model on campus. When Dr. Modlin died, his funeral was held in the chapel. As they carried the casket from the chapel, strains of “When the Saints Go Marching In” were heard across campus.
The chapel has been used for many funerals and weddings, many of them presided over by the Rev. Dr. David D. Burhans, who served as the University’s chaplain for more than 30 years. In his sermons, he often invoked the words of the Apostle Paul to encourage students to “not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that you may prove what is the good and acceptable will of God.” More recently—on the day after Sept. 11, 2001—the chapel was filled to capacity when the ancient words of the 23rd Psalm were repeated. Surely the students reflected on the verse “yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death.”
But Cannon Chapel has been more than a religious sanctuary. It has been the venue for such unspiritual pursuits as playing cards, knitting, gossiping, and writing love letters. Such activities frequently occurred during mandatory convocations. The chapel also was the place to find the University’s debate coach and chairman of the speech department, Dr. Bert E. Bradley Jr. Tucked away in a converted coat closet, Dr. Bradley’s office did not have a phone for fear that it might ring during a chapel program. The office was crammed with note cards, note card boxes, yellow legal pads, and piles and piles of books. Dr. Bradley became my role model, my mentor, my campus father. As I look at his old office, which is now a meeting room, I cannot help but recall all of the long conversations we had and all of the debate trips we planned there. It was in this chapel office that Dr. Bradley convinced me that screaming at an opponent would not replace outthinking an opponent. It was in this chapel office that I learned the value of research and copious note-taking. Dr. Bradley lit within my soul a love of learning that has never flickered, and I will never forget what he did for me.
Generations of students have come and gone since Cannon Memorial Chapel opened its doors. And the chapel has undergone renovations and the installation of a magnificent organ. Yet, in many ways, its walls remain the same. They will always hold in sacred trust the thoughts of students who have met the challenges of life by sitting in the chapel and reflecting on the academic discipline of “Westhampton, Wondrous Mother True” or the memories of “Dear Old Red and Blue.”
The first students who entered the chapel carried textbooks and book bags. Today, students tote laptops and iPods. Richmond students no longer have to memorize the definition of a rat, but they still have to learn something about science. And, perhaps, when they leave the chapel, they might hear the croaking of a frog whose ancestor’s life was spared by the “D” I got in zoology.
This article is dedicated in loving memory to Dr. Bert E. Bradley Jr. by all of his debaters at the University of Richmond who, in the language of intercollegiate debate, affirm as one: Resolved: Dr. Bradley, we will never forget you!
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