Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, January 25, 1992 TAG: 9201250282
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-5 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BY DWAYNE YANCEY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LEXINGTON LENGTH: Medium
IRON LADY CALLS VMI TO ATTENTION
Virginia Military Institute wouldn't accept a grocer's daughter, or anyone's daughter for that matter, as a student.But the cadets will salute one.
Former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was to have reviewed the cadets' weekly parade on the parade grounds Friday afternoon, but the frigid weather kept her inside the Superintendent's Quarters.
Instead, the parade came to her. She emerged onto the porch while an honor guard stood at attention and a unit of the regimental band played "God Save the Queen" and "The Star-Spangled Banner."
Four cannons boomed a 19-gun salute. The corps' first captain, William Sharp, snapped a quieter one.
A clutch of Anglophiles and North American Thatcherites waited two hours or more for a glimpse of the former British leader. They saw no irony in her reviewing a military parade at an all-male institution whose admissions policy has been under legal attack.
"I don't think the Men of Steel mind the Iron Lady being here," said Dale McGlothlin, an ad agency executive who came all the way from Johnson City, Tenn., with his father, Joe Blair McGlothlin of Tazewell County.
Others in the crowd speculated whether Thatcher, who took her country into war against Argentina over the Falkland Islands in 1982, would find VMI's admissions policies objectionable.
"No, not the Iron Lady," said Kent Schlussel, a federal government worker who brought his family over from Charlottesville. "She's probably for it."
Thatcher wasn't saying, although she lavished praise on "this distinguished military institution whose very name stands for honor and values" during her nighttime lecture.
Thatcher's political toughness was the main draw for many in the crowd of curiosity-seekers who showed up to catch her reviewing the parade. One of her admirers was 90-year-old W.W. Archer of Richmond, a member of VMI's Class of 1922.
"I don't know much about English politics but I admired how she handled the Falklands. That was the first time I heard of her," Archer said. "I think she's done a hell of a good job."
Thatcher's stay was a brief one. She flew into Roanoke from Cleveland in midafternoon, then flew out late Friday night for warmer climes - Palm Beach, Fla.