Interview of D. Barry Marshall. Interviewed by George Gilliam, Mason Mills, of The Ground Beneath Our Feet project.

The Honorable D. B. Marshall was a founding member of the Charlottesville Education Foundation in 1958, an organization to promote private segregated academies as an alternative to integrated public schools.

This interview was taken in 2000 for "Massive Resistance," episode four of "The Ground Beneath Our Feet: Virginia's History Since the Civil War," a production of George H. Gilliam and the Central Virginia Educational Television Corporation. George H. Gilliam is the Producer of the series, William G. Thomas, III the Assistant Producer, and Mason Mills the Director of Photography.

The transcripts represent what was said in the interview to the best of our ability. It is possible that some words, particularly names, have been misspelled. We have made no attempt to correct mistakes in grammar.
Judge Marshall: I am D. B. Marshall.
Mr. Gilliam: What is your date of birth?
Judge Marshall: June 22, 1919.
Mr. Gilliam: And you came to Charlottesville to practice law in what year?
Judge Marshall: Well, I finished - I came here to live and to really get ready to practice law in 1946 right after I got out of the service. I attended the University from 1935 to 19 -1936 to 1942 before the war and then I went off. And then when I came back I finished law school and passed the bar in 1947 and started practicing law at that time.
Mr. Gilliam: Had you been politically active as a young lawyer?
Judge Marshall: When I was here in early career - yes, I had been a member of the city democratic committee and I had served a year of an unexpired term as Commonwealth Attorney of Albemarle County. I also had been president at one time of the Young Democrats of Charlottesville and Albemarle County.
Segregation Academies
Mr. Gilliam: There came a time in 19- the middle 1950s when the question of racial segregation of the schools became a lively public issue. Did you have children at that time?
Judge Marshall: Yes. I had two children in Venable School at that time, a daughter and a son. And we of course were anxious to know what was going to happen. The legislature of Virginia had passed the so-called Massive Resistance Laws and it became apparent before too much longer - certainly in 1958 it became obvious that those laws were going to be enforced because the Federal District Court judge had assigned two black children - one to Lane High School and one to Venable School here in Charlottesville. And then under the Massive Resistance Laws the closing of the schools became automatic. There was no discretion on the part of the governor. And so in the summer of 1958, I was asked to join a group of people who wanted to do something about - first about emergency schooling during the period when the public schools would be closed - or the two public schools in the city would be closed and also look to the possibility of a future system of inexpensive private schools in this community. That notion appealed to me. We had not been too pleased with our children's experiences in the public schools here in Charlottesville. The quality of instruction from one year to the next was very inconsistent depending on whether you had a good teacher or not. And they weren't all good. So we were interested for our own children. And then I was more or less drafted, I suppose you would say, to attend a meeting that was taking place at the home of Harold Burris, who was then our representative in the General Assembly, I believe - and there were a lot of people there and Dick Middleton who became our representative in the General Assembly was there. He had a copy of the Prince Edward County Educational Foundation Articles of Incorporation, and he suggested we all ought to form a similar corporation in Charlottesville and Albemarle. And so the people decided they wanted to do it. And I was drafted to draw the Articles of Incorporation. I was not the only lawyer present by any means, but somehow or another it devolved on me. And I did so. And I think that was sometime in the summer of 1958 that we got incorporated. In the meantime, it had become apparent that the actual entry of the two black children into the two schools here in Charlottesville would take place in September 1958. Our people in the Charlottesville Educational Foundation were busily organizing a private elementary school, grades one through seven. And we rented a big old house out in the southwest section of the city, which in its day I guess had been quite a mansion. And we- it had been renovated and new heating put in and that sort of thing so it was useable. And we used that for the original elementary school known as Robert E. Lee School. And we started that operating in September of 1958 with a core of teachers who had been Venable School teachers, and they were with us from the very beginning. And it was through their assistance that we were able to organize a viable elementary school in such a short time. And we did so and that - meanwhile there was another group in Charlottesville that was interested only in providing schooling in the emergency while the schools were closed. They had no future plans at all. I think they called themselves the Committee for Emergency Education or something like that. Anyway, the teachers at Lane High School informed us and the people on the other organization both that they would not teach for either group alone but if we would get together, they would offer their services. Meanwhile they were promised they would be kept on the payroll of the City of Charlottesville public school system. So we got together with the Emergency Education people, who were providing for elementary schools in people's basements all over town. Mostly on the Rugby Road area because that's where Venable School drew from. And we had the teachers from Venable, mostly veteran teachers, the ones we thought were the best ones; and they did a good job for us out there that year. But then in the winter of early 1959, the Massive Resistance Laws were ruined by the courts. They were demolished you might say by court decisions, and Venable and Lane High School reopened. The joint operation between the two groups for the high school ended. All the high school children went back to Lane High. We continued to operate our elementary school, Robert E. Lee School, for the remainder of that year; and set about to try to organize permanent locations for both schools beginning in the fall of 1959. And we did that. We built several buildings, small convertible buildings which could be converted into residences, and over on Westwood Road we had Robert E. Lee School. And we had purchased from a sympathizer the Rock Hill Estate at the corner of Park Street and the U.S. 250 Bypass, and we had the high school there. And we had to recruit a faculty for the high school, but we were able to do that with mostly experienced teachers. But not people who had worked at Lane High.
Mr. Gilliam: Go back a little bit and fill in just a couple of details, or a couple of questions. The litigation against the schools started in Charlottesville in 1952, and then in '54 the Supreme Court Brown decision was announced, in '56 the Massive Resistance Laws were enacted, and then in '58, as you say, the District Court, Judge Paul, announced that he was going to compel the integration of the schools in September. There was a period there of about six years that people had to plan for this eventuality and it sounds, based on your description, like it was really just really a few months before either the emergency people or your group really got into high gear on this. Was it the threat of immediate integration and the school closing, the immediacy of it that got people going in the summer of '58?
Judge Marshall: That's the way I can recall it. I had no involvement certainly until then, and the only planning that I knew that had taken place before then was some of our people who were also active in the Venable School PTA had talked to the veteran teachers at Venable and had received assurances from them that they would work for us. That's the only thing I knew, I had nothing to do with that. A bunch of ladies mostly did that, and that was done when we had our first meeting I attended.
Mr. Gilliam: In June of '58 just as all the various groups were trying to figure out what to do, the-a poll was conducted of the Venable parents - I think by the PTA - I think they drafted it and they polled- they got 305 responses, which is a pretty good number of the Venable parents, 177 of those who responded said they would accept some desegregation and 128 said close the schools. So it was pretty evenly divided. Was that an accurate reflection you think of community wide sentiment?
Judge Marshall: I suppose so. Yes. I wouldn't- I wasn't in on the polls or anything like that. I don't know who conducted them or where they went, but I suppose it was a fairly even division of authority - of a feeling on it. Now within the group...
Mr. Gilliam: Evenly divided in that...
Mr. Gilliam: ... within the -both of those groups, I think there were wide variations of intensity of feeling. Let me put it that way. I think certainly there were in our group. I don't think any of our leadership here in Charlottesville ever seriously considered permanent closing of public schools or the abandonment of public education in this community. There may have been some people in Charlottesville who were willing to follow the Prince Edward County route and do that. But if so, they didn't make themselves known and they certainly were not among the leadership of our organization. Most of us, I think, saw the program as a, you might say a three pronged effort. The first thing and the most immediate in need was to provide during the emergency when we knew the schools would be closed. However you may approve of the Massive Resistance Laws they were the law and the schools were obliged to close. So we knew that was going to happen and we knew that the first step-the first need was to provide for that. And that's what we did. Now at the same time we had a little longer range view in that we wanted to keep the schools operating as a vehicle for choice for those parents who were not ready to accept integration of the schools and who would not-not-who would fear or be apprehensive about integrated schools and possible disorders that may result. So we felt that we had a place in the community, even after the schools-public schools had reopened. Then in the still longer range, and this is something that was important to me, I had in mind, and many of us did, that we would have a permanent private school system here, private day schools for children at a cost considerably less to the parents than the existing private schools at the time were charging. We felt, I felt, I think, and I think many of us did, that the public schools could use a little competition. That perhaps they could improve a bit if they had some competition and certainly it couldn't hurt them. The idea of tuition grant legislation, which you know came about through a somewhat tortuous process through the Gray Commission, and that was - that gave us a big boost at the beginning to know really that the powers that be in Richmond were not slamming the door in our faces; and also that it would be a help to the people of moderate means who wanted to patronize our schools. Of course, this same thing is still going on with the school vouchers that some of our presidential candidates are fighting over today. It was a natural out-growth, I think, of the tuition grant program.
Mr. Gilliam: When the Massive Resistance Laws were passed and the tuition grant legislation was included as part of that package, I understand what you're saying about it providing some support for the schools initially. When the courts, both the state and federal court, invalidated the Massive Resistance Laws in the winter of 1959, the tuition grant laws were also invalidated.
Judge Marshall: I don't think so. Not the way I remember.
Mr. Gilliam: Yeah. They came back and rewrote it.
Judge Marshall: Yeah, well perhaps so.
Mr. Gilliam: They changed the dispersal.
Judge Marshall: Certainly, the tuition grant program was continued.
Mr. Gilliam: Right. But there was a period there from early 1959 until the summer of '59 when there was no tuition grant program in effect, and in fact, Rock Hill closed during that time. Rock Hill didn't reopen until September of 1959.
Judge Marshall: Rock Hill never opened until 1959.
Mr. Gilliam: I'm sorry.
Judge Marshall: Robert E. Lee School.
Mr. Gilliam: Yeah, Lee, I'm sorry. Robert E. Lee School closed when the court invalidated the tuition grants and then reopened in September when there was another tuition granted. What I'm trying to get a handle on is sort of how important, how critical, the tuition grant was to the success of the independent school vouchers? Their program at the beginning?
Judge Marshall: You're telling me something now that I don't remember at all. Hiatus when the schools, when the - Robert E. Lee School was closed. I don't remember that. Maybe it was. Maybe it's true. I don't recall.
Mr. Gilliam: They allowed the-the Charlottesville School Board in January of '59 passed a resolution saying if you will give us until September, we will get a plan in place and we will integrate the schools by September. So Judge Paul allowed the schools to reopen as segregated schools.
Academies As A Safety Valve
Judge Marshall: I think that's true. I think it was as you call a safety valve. As a matter of fact, on that safety valve matter I might say, this I distinctly remember the late Tom Michie, who was mayor of Charlottesville at that time and became a Federal judge later on, told me personally that he thought we had performed a great service in providing an alternative for people who felt very strongly opposed to integration of the schools; and we had therefore eliminated any possibility of city disorders that might take place ala Little Rock. This was of course what the city was most concerned with. And he congratulated me and thanked me for my services. Then, of course, we were so occupied at that point in 1959 with trying to get these schools opened by September, both of them. New locations. We had our faculty made up of course from the teachers at Venable who had taught with us the previous year, but we had to recruit a high school faculty. And one gentleman who was very helpful in that regard was the late Dean Ivey F. Lewis from the University of Virginia. He became the chairman of the committee we had for teacher recruitment for the high school and set up an office down on Court Square and interviewed people and worked with people and he got us a faculty. Not single-handed but he was certainly the symbol of the rectitude of our efforts and I think his presence added a lot to our prestige. Because no one had been more popular or better, more highly regarded in this community than the university community than had Dean Lewis. But we were able to get the faculty together and open in September. As I remember we were a couple of weeks late of the initially projected September date. But we got open. The buildings were completed and we were able to have a viable high school program. Matter of fact I think we had a football team and a pretty good one. [laughter]
Mr. Gilliam: Did ah - Let's see. Your youngest child graduated from Rock Hill in the early '70s.
Judge Marshall: 1971.
Mr. Gilliam: 1971.
Judge Marshall: My oldest child graduated in '64. The next one in '67. And then, '70 and then '71. All of them I might add graduated from Rock Hill, did well in college. One of them has gotten three - four college degrees. One has gotten two and the other two have just got one apiece. But, the two girls were Phi Beta Kappas. We were pleased with the academic side of Rock Hill throughout. We always emphasized it. We had good teachers, and small classes and everybody knew everybody. And I think apparently the devotion of the parents to the program added a lot to the quality of the schools. If the children tried to do something disruptive. I mean their parents got on them. Discipline was not much of a problem.
Mr. Gilliam: During the time you had children at Rock Hill, to your knowledge did any blacks apply ever for admission?
Judge Marshall: Not that I know of. We constantly were thinking about that and wondering if some would and not necessarily knowing what we would do if the occasion arouse. But it never did. They of - a few years after we opened we were fortunate to secure the service of a man William Story, who had been a principal and superintendent, I believe, in the schools of the city of South Norfolk before it was merged into the city of Chesapeake. Will Story came up here and was the head of our schools. Principal at Rock Hill, Headmaster of Rock Hill and overall Superintendent. And he was a man with a lot of prestige in education circles in Virginia and he was a strong guiding hand. And he worked with us for several years. He was already retired. And then he retired completely. By that time we had another man in here who was doing a good job for us who had been an assistant principal. And then he left for more renumerative employment somewhere else. And then Bob Allen, who had been the principal of Woodrow Wilson High School in Portsmouth, Robert Allen, came here to be our Superintendent and Head Master at Rock Hill. And he served in that position for several years until his retirement. We had a succession of good people running those schools and I think it was reflected in the quality of the program. We were fortunate to get those people.
Mr. Gilliam: Well, a lot of the leaders of Charlottesville today are graduates of Rock Hill. I mean, two of our local judges are graduates.
Judge Marshall: There are such a good many.
Mr. Gilliam: After, or starting about the time your children finished, your youngest child finished, the enrollment started to diminish -
Judge Marshall: We were having a problem maintaining enrollment that's true.
Mr. Gilliam: What do you attribute that to?
Judge Marshall: Increased cost as much as anything else. Also, some feeling, I think, on the part of some people that integration was here to stay and they might as well accept it. It became - the tuition grant was a good program. I don't mean to criticize it. It was very helpful to us. But it was administered in such a fashion that it didn't begin to pay anything. They had defined as instructional costs only. And the public school people defined instructional costs very narrowly. So the tuition grant was far below the per-pupil costs in the city schools and far below what people had to pay us. Because we couldn't operate on that either. But I think that was probably - I don't anybody locally had anything to do with that. Those things were decided in Richmond, I believe, at the headquarters of the education department.
Demise of CEF and Segregation Academies
Mr. Gilliam: When did Rock Hill and R. E. Lee as independent schools close?
Judge Marshall: I was trying to remember the other day when you and I were talking and I couldn't. I still can't. My connection with the schools ended when my youngest child graduated in 1971. I thought it was time to get off that board of directors. I had been on it for twelve years. And pass it on to other people and I did so. Not really in the feeling that I was certain it was a sinking ship. It wasn't that bad. But it was true we were having some enrollment problems. We had a good number of people who had been coming to our school for several years from down in Louisa County. As a matter fact we ran a daily school bus to Robert E. Lee and Lee School from Louisa to accommodate the maybe ten or fifteen children that were coming up every day. Maybe it was as many as twenty I don't know. There were seven- eight or ten families and how many children they had at any given time in the schools. Elementary and high school. And those people had helped maintaining our enrollment when the city enrollment fell off. But it was a problem and was becoming more so all the time.
Mr. Gilliam: What happened to the physical facilities?
Judge Marshall: Well, as I say I was no longer connected with the corporation in any fashion after I resigned from the board. The last person with whom I had any close contact who served as president was one of those men from Louisa, Donald E. Atkins. Mr. Atkins had six or seven children and they were all in school up here. And he was a soldier. A real soldier in the war. And he became president of it. And they were having a very hard time maintaining enrollment by that time. And when they actually threw in the towel I don't know. Several of the older teachers at Robert E. Lee School retired. And then, I think Dr. Allen, Robert Allen the one who I referred to a little while ago, he retired. And it was, I think they just felt they couldn't go on any longer. The facilities themselves- I think they were heavily indebted. There was much debt against the corporation. And as I remember what I heard at the time. It was second hand; I was not involved in it. What I think they did was they turn over the property to the Covenant School. The Covenant School assuming the indebtedness against the property. I doubt that any money changed hands at all. But Covenant School continued to operate there for some time. Several years I think. And then they - in the mean time the YMCA had taken over the old McIntire School over off the by-pass. And they made a trade. The YMCA wanted Rock Hill because they had a nice big gymnasium where we used to have - where our kids played basketball, and they needed that. So, they made a trade with the YMCA for the - and Covenant moved over to McIntire School where they still exist and the YMCA took over Rock Hill. Then I think the YMCA had some financial difficulties and now I believe it's the Monticello Community Action Agency is headquartered there which of course is quite a switch don't you think?
Mr. Gilliam: One of those delightful little ironies.
Judge Marshall: Full circle as they say.
Mr. Gilliam: You mentioned that while you weren't a part of the survey, that the notion that there was a-the community was split in several different ways over integration - segregation issues in the late '50s early '60s. And then you mentioned by the early '70s that a lot of the people that you - had been active stated, "Well integration is here to stay and we better accommodate to it." What - When did this attitude start to change locally do you think, and how did it manifest itself?
Judge Marshall: All I know is what I read in the papers at the time and my recollection is not a hundred percent I'm sure. But as I recall it the president of the CEF by that time who was a lawyer, Robert Blutenger. He announced more or less publicly I guess that the school was going to have to take black children and there was an uproar from the Louisa contingent and some of the other people about that and the next thing I knew Mr. Blutenger was not president of it and Donald E. Atkins was, again after having been it earlier. So, my assumption is that they split pretty badly over that issue. But as far as the people who were in it to begin with, many of the people were like me; once their own children were educated they felt they should turn it over to other people. However much of our own sweat, blood and tears were in it, and there was a lot, we felt that it was time for other people to take it over. Not because it was dead or anything like that; but, because new blood was needed and our own children were through. Parents of the children presently attending were the lifeblood of that school.
Mr. Gilliam: In terms of changes in public attitudes, the first blacks were elected to the city democratic committee in 1965. Ray Bell was the first black appointed to the school board in 1965.
Judge Marshall: Who was?
Mr. Gilliam: Ray Bell, the undertaker. Then Henry Mitchell was appointed when Bell went off. Mitchell was appointed in '67 or '68. And then Charles Barber got elected to City Council in '72. So, there seemed to be more blacks moving into public positions-
Judge Marshall: Well, I think that's true. I think that's true.
Mr. Gilliam: Do you think that was a reflection of changes in public attitudes or do you think it was more attributable to the just fact that the blacks were getting politically organized?
Judge Marshall: I don't know George. I think both factors were certainly at play. And not only were blacks getting more organized, but they were playing more important roles in the organizations that were controlling the political system in Charlottesville, namely the Democratic Party. (Long pause). When we started out, as I said before, we were interested in first avoiding any inflammable disorders that might take place when the black children entered the school. Secondly, we were interested in providing a emergency education for as long as the emergency might continue.
Mr. Gilliam: Do you need a tape?
Mr. Mills: No, I was just having you back up because-
Mr. Gilliam: Oh, I'm sorry. Did I get in your-
Mr. Mills: I liked what he was saying there.
Judge Marshall: Certainly, we wanted, I wanted at least, and I think many of us did, hoped that we would have a permanent private school system. I like to think that maybe we were the Godparents of the Covenant School, which has been so successful. The fact that they were in the same location originally is-shows that there was some interest. I also noticed this. We have some friends who have some children at Covenant. They invited us to- I'm a Godfather of one of the little boys- and they invited us to come to their grandparent's day at the school. And when we went out, my wife and I went out there, we discovered a number of our old friends from Robert E. Lee school and Rock Hill were there because they were grandparents of children at the Covenant School. So, I think maybe we are Godparents of the-
Mr. Gilliam: Some continuities.
Judge Marshall: Yeah, I think. Some of our old friends we hadn't seen for a long time turned up at the same function.
Mr. Mills: I would like to pick up where you just were if we could?
Mr. Gilliam: All right.
Mr. Mills: And that would be about the reasons why people went to the private school one more time and you can add on to that George.
Mr. Gilliam: You indicated, I think, that a major impetus if not the major impetus was to provide an alternative for those who were most opposed to integration.
Judge Marshall: Yes, I think it was.
Mr. Gilliam: How did that play through into the Covenant School movement? In other words, do you think the Covenant School is again supported by those who are the most opposed to what is going on in public education today?
Judge Marshall: I think so. Particularly of course in that case, with the extremes to which the federal courts have carried the ban on prayer in the public schools. I think this-Covenant is one of many schools that call themselves Christian schools. And Christian thought and Christian practice is taught in those schools. And of course you just can't get that in the public schools any longer and I think that it is a reaction to that fact that has been one of the principal impetus to the growth and success of Covenant and many other Christian schools all over the United States.
Mr. Gilliam: Where the initial schools Lee and Rock Hill, would they have been financially feasible without tuition grants?
Judge Marshall: I can't say. They certainly would not have had the enrollment they had initially. As you know Covenant school started from very small numbers and it has grown steadily over the years to where now it has a substantial number of children both at all grade levels. So, probably without the grants maybe we would have had to start like that. Start small and grow. But with the grants we were able to start pretty large with some 600 students as you said a little while ago. In the two schools combined to begin with. You know, I've had a proverb. I've coined a proverb about this business and that is. What different people do the same things for different reasons. Many of us had complicated motivations for what we did. Not necessarily the simple motivation of preservation of segregation. It was not that simple. And I think that in history generally, I think the failing is that scholars and others tend to oversimplify those things. And think that everybody thought alike when they joined together to do something. But of course that's not true. You only have to go back to the American Revolution to recognize that and certainly the Confederacy, there were many degrees of feeling on slavery among the supporters of the Confederate States of America. And I think there are degrees of antipathy to segregation among those of us who started the private schools.
Mr. Mills: Could he detail that?
Mr. Gilliam: Yeah. Could you expand on that in terms of what you see the fractures within the white community or the gradations in the white community?
Gradation in White Community
Judge Marshall: Well, I don't know. I certainly can't cite any numbers or statistical bases for my view. But just from my recollection of conversations with those with whom I was working in that program. And for some of us it was a full-time job there for a while. We were together all the time. But some of them - we just didn't talk much about what they were doing in Prince Edward. We didn't talk much about the - we didn't say ugly things about black people. And we didn't talk much about supporting Governor Wallace in Alabama or any of those things. And I think there may have been some people in our organization who felt very strongly. There may have been supporters of Governor Wallace. But I never heard them say so and I don't think-and many of us certainly were not. And that's what I mean when I say people do the same things for different reasons. They do have different motivations that have cause them to follow - to join together and follow a particular policy. I just hope that maybe that in the society's acceptance of the historical literature on the subject they won't come to feel that everyone of us was an intolerant Jim Crow.
Mr. Mills: Well, for those that might try to portray you, you know, as - As you say, some historians may try to portray that everyone had the same ideal, or idea. How - What would you say in - How - What was your perspective at the time. What would be your way of separating some people from the -?
Judge Marshall: Well, let me say this. I myself am not a Virginian. I was born and raised in the West. And I went to integrated schools in Wyoming and Nebraska before I ever came east to Virginia to go to school. And it didn't hurt me any. Of course the numbers were small in Wyoming and Nebraska, but the high school I went to in Omaha, Nebraska had a substantial black enrollment. We didn't have much to do with each other. (Chuckle) It was defacto segregation you might say. Which was true all over the North, of course, in those days. I'm talking about the 1930s. But then - But that part didn't frighten me. Let me say that. I wasn't upset about that. But I was concerned, or apprehensive about what hot heads on either side of the fence might do. And that was our short-term objective was to defuse that kind of thing. And then, as I said before, I was hopeful that we could lead into a successful permanent private education program because I felt the public schools badly needed competition.
Mr. Gilliam: Charlottesville avoided much of the - Let me back up and say. Thurgood Marshall personally selected Charlottesville as one of the first targets of integration and of federal court action. And he, when he visited with the local NAACP said that if we can't get it done in a community like Charlottesville, we can't get it done. I think he felt that the university offered a moderating influence. And then as you've pointed out, the willingness of a group of parents to not demonstrate in the streets but go form an alternative school and provide an outlet may very well have also had a moderating influence on actions. Why do you think Charlottesville was reasonably successful without violence in a reasonably short period of time? What do you say the factors are?
Judge Marshall: Well, Virginia is not like Arkansas, or Mississippi, or Alabama. It never has been and it never will be. Charlottesville is certainly not like Little Rock, or Birmingham. It's people, in Virginia and Charlottesville, perhaps more so than some other places, are civil to each other. There is a tradition of civility that is very strong here in Virginia. I think that that tradition had a lot to do with the orderly transition that took place then and then again with the pretty orderly element of integration of the public schools. I think both black and white people behaved with restraint here and it's turned out pretty well.
Mr. Gilliam: Mason, do you have any other?
Mr. Mills: Well, the only other thing I'll say, is how do you feel about it now? Looking back.
Judge Marshall: Well, of course I'm out of this school business now. My youngest child is forty-six years old. But, it's - I guess they're getting along pretty well and I'm glad to see Covenant thriving. For the same reasons that I hoped our schools would become permanent. Because I think the are providing very meaningful competition with the public schools now. Of course these are more prosperous times. People are more able to afford private school tuition. Many more people are able to afford it than were forty years ago. Maybe that's got something to do with it too.
Mr. Gilliam: A lot choices.
Mr. Mills: One quick real quick question. So, looking back you look at it as a pretty successful venture and the decisions that were made. Would you repeat them?
Judge Marshall: I was going to say, I think our efforts were not in vain. I think we accomplished something. Didn't accomplish everything we hoped to accomplish. But I don't have the feeling that it was entirely a lost cause. I've - a lot of my people have been involved in lost causes over the centuries, but I don't know that this was one. Because I think that we're all better for the way it went.
Mr. Gilliam: Thank you.
Mr. Mills: Thank you.
Mr. Gilliam: That's a good last line.


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