The Greatest Teacher

His name was Tom Smith, and he changed my life. He lived in the top floor apartment on the right at the front of 9700 Foxridge in Blacksburg. I lived in the bottom apartment on the right of the same building. We spent most of our free time talking to the two girls that lived on the floor between us. Tom Smith, was as he might say it “a good looking dude,” a finance major, who prefaced all remarks with, “Hey Man.” He was like a surfer except he was from Richmond. We became friends. He got me playing golf again. We went to Masters golf tournament together. He used to tell ladies out in clubs that we were Tom and Tom, TNT Dynamite.

In the fall of 1981, Tom said to me, “Hey man, you should take this Civil War class. I think you would really like it.” Up to that time, I was more interested in the American Revolution, and I hate to say this out loud because it might incense my Hokie Brethren, but I was interested in Thomas Jefferson.

I signed up for the class in the spring 1982 quarter. VT was still on quarters, not semesters then. I went to McBryde 100, a gigantic room that held at least 300 students in the bottom of the huge building named for former VT President John McBryde. It was about 9 a.m. when the teacher entered the room and mounted the stage. When James I. Robertson, Jr. opened his mouth, I heard the familiar Danville accent. I joined him halfway through the Civil War as the fall quarter covered the coming of the war and the early stages.

This was for me like Saul on the road to Damascus. Looking back, it was a moment that changed my life. While Bud might find it humorous as he is an ordained Episcopal minister, who loves to talk about Chaplains in the Civil War. From that day thirty-seven years ago to this this day there is nothing I would rather do than sit in a big auditorium and listen to him talk about the Civil War.

Bud passed away on Saturday. The last time I saw him was in my mother’s hometown of Augusta, Georgia, where I was visiting family and noticed he was speaking to their Civil War Round Table. He looked up at me and said, “What are you doing here?” I told him I came for class. He liked that!

He was the faculty representative to the NCAA for Virginia Tech. As Tech's Faculty Chairman of Athletics and President of the Virginia Tech Athletic Association from 1979-1991 he was on the committee that brought Frank Beamer back home to Blacksburg. In 2008, Bud became a member of the Virginia Tech Sports Hall of Fame.  

When I knew Dr. Robertson as a student, he was an ACC football official. He spent sixteen years doing that. Occasionally, I would see a coach berate him on the sidelines. One memorable memory is the time I saw Clemson coach, Danny Ford, eviscerate my Civil War professor on national television. Someone asked him about it in class and got eviscerated themselves.

I had Bud for two Civil War classes and one class called Representative Americans. Part of the grade for the latter was to teach the class one day during the quarter about a person from American History. Again, with apologizes to Hokie Nation, I chose Thomas Jefferson. Never in my life have I been more mortified to stand up in front of a group of people and talk because I knew that if I did not do a good job, the sharp knife of Robertson was waiting to cut me into little pieces, eviscerated. Until that time talking in front of a group of people terrified me, a surprise no doubt to those who hear me now, but that day changed my life too. If I can survive talking in front of “Bud,” no historical association or civil war roundtable is going to bother me.

I loathed speech class at Surry Community College in the late 1970s and once at Virginia Tech in the early 1980s, I recount the sheer terror of standing in front of James I. “Bud” Robertson to teach his class Representative Americans on Thomas Jefferson. I survived, and now I think nothing of getting up in front of a group to talk about history. This because I know my subject much better now than I did then, and my confidence has grown. I came to feel that it was important to talk about the history that interested me.

Bud came to help me raise money for the Bassett Historical Center over a decade ago. I picked on him by showing slides during his introduction pointing out that over the years Bud has made friends with many important people. I showed a photo of Robert Duvall and Hokie Bird saying there were two of Bud’s best friends. Bud consulted on the movie Gods and Generals starring Robert Duvall as Robert E. Lee.

It is with a great deal of pride that I saw my former professor on the History Channel and on Blue Ridge Public Television. I listened to him for fourteen years on public radio on Friday mornings. They released CDs of his talks. Stonewall Jackson’s students at The VMI wrote many dreadful things in the margins of their workbooks housed in Lexington. I have placed my notebooks from the Civil War class in Special Collections at Virginia Tech, but there is nothing bad in them about my professor.

Bud worked as in a funeral home while in graduate school at Emory University in Atlanta under Bell Wiley. Bud wrote on his mentor quoting an Atlanta newspaperman saying, “He was the first man I knew personally who could take hold of the past and make it come alive.” Anyone who thinks history is boring never had Bud Robertson as a teacher. I have seen him bring grown men to tears talking about the Civil War and put people on the floor laughing while he talked about embalming practices during the Civil War. As he likes to say he is the world’s leading authority on the subject. The fact that he is the only one in the world interested in that subject is irrelevant to the title. Seriously, a great teacher brings his subject to life. I was blessed with a great teacher. On the dedication page of my book on Patrick County in the Civil War, you will see a dedication to my father who is here tonight with my mother, who also has a book dedicated to her. Just underneath you will see a quote from my Civil War father. “You will never understand what the United States is until you understand what the Civil War was.”

            Dr. James I. Robertson, Jr. of Virginia Tech often said, "One can never understand what the United States is until one understands what the Civil War was." The war is still with us today.

My Civil War professor at Virginia Tech encouraged audiences and the largest Civil War class in the nation to visit those cemeteries and take the time to listen and meditate on the Civil War. He spoke of “Americans who loved their country more than they loved life itself. That is the greatest legacy that comes out of that war, and we must never forget it.”

            In 2011, I went back to college. My professor Alumni Distinguished Professor James I. “Bud” Robertson, Jr. was retiring from teaching the largest Civil War class in the country after over half a century at Virginia Tech. I took the opportunity when in Blacksburg to do some research on William T. Sherman and his march through Georgia and the Carolinas for my friend R. Wayne Jones for a book about the Battle of Aiken, a cavalry fight between Joseph Wheeler and Judson Kilpatrick.

            Bud taught then in the Colonial Room of the Squires Student Center, but in my day, it was 100 McBride Hall. In 1982, I sat in on my first quarter of Civil War with him and it changed my life. To this day I am still amazed at how he brings the war to life and keeps the attention of twenty somethings most of whom didn’t know or care about Lee, Lincoln and much less Jefferson Davis and U. S. Grant. This was reinforced to me as I sat waiting for class to begin. The students behind me were bemoaning the fact they did not have DVR to record a recent showing of Gettysburg on Turner Classic Movies and one male regretted not seeing Molly Ringwald in Sixteen Candles, which made me laugh. Then a very attractive tall and blonde coed came in engaging the crew behind me and during the course of the conversation state that she hated that the Civil War class was about to end. She said she wished this class could go on forever. What better compliment could a teacher have, and I am sure Bud would have enjoyed the fact it was an attractive female who said it.

            When Bud came in, I spoke to him briefly and I was pleased to see his nearly eight decade old eyes light up and a big smile saying to me he could not believe I would come to class.  Bud then came to tell us all how much he hated computers, but that he had to do something called a PowerPoint presentation and that with the help of another young coed he had discovered something called Google and that there are images on there of everything. He had most of us in stitches laughing at something we had known for years. Computers were just coming into vogue in 1982 when I started at Virginia Tech and a personal computer sat on a desk and was called an Apple 2E or an IBM PC with 640K memory. My how things have changed.

            Well, it was my “last lecture” with my professor at Virginia Tech. He spoke about “Why the South lost the war” concentrating on Jefferson Davis and in his inability to get along with most of his generals, his vice-president Alexander Stephens, and the Confederate Congress. The fifty minutes passed much too quickly and although the time passed way to quickly and I had heard the talk before I remembered why this man meant so much to me. He could bring dry and boring material to life with humor and a presentation that still marvels my mind.

            Bud used to say that, “History is the greatest teacher you will ever have.” He did not have James I. Robertson, Jr. as a teacher, the greatest teacher I ever had.