Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, February 10, 1992 TAG: 9202100119
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JUDY SCHWAB CORRESPONDENT
DATELINE: BLACKSBURG LENGTH: Long
TECH TRADITION LINGERS ON DANCE FLOOR
The last vestige of a century-old dancing tradition at Virginia Tech hangs on - despite two decades of female students on campus and the competition of social freedoms and choices college students now enjoy.Last Friday and Saturday nights, the annual Midwinters - one formal and one semiformal dance - transpired at new and improved Squires Student Center.
Midwinters is the last remaining dance weekend of the German Club, founded 100 years ago to promote a coed social life at an all-male military school.
"A lot of girls came in on the Norfolk and Western" during the 1950s, before Tech opened the doors to females a decade later, said John Clarke, a member of the German Club Alumni Foundation. "We had to have our wits about us to get a ride to Christiansburg to get our dates."
While cars were becoming a part of campus life, they were scarce in those days and had to be shared.
About 70 percent of Tech's 5,000 students in the '50s were in the Corps of Cadets. Some were veterans of the Korean conflict.
But everyone danced.
Major changes at Tech started in 1964 when membership in the corps became voluntary. Civilians and women have been pouring in ever since.
"There was a dress-up dance recession when I was a student," said German Club alum Mike Eggleston, Class of 1973. By his era, the club was holding three dances a year, only half the dances the club used to throw.
Now they're down to a one-dance weekend.
In the '70s, to help finance the dances, the club sponsored concerts and brought in such groups as Three-dog-night and Chicago. But the dances never made money.
They still don't.
Eggleston paid $5 to attend two dances during a weekend in the '70s. Last weekend he paid $15 for the same deal.
It's still a good time and place to observe German Club members and try to identify the breed.
Plumage at the Friday night formal affair was definitely black and white, sometimes including black tails.
Members also were identified by the purple band on their otherwise white chests - narrow purple ribbons pinned to their shirts with the German Club pin placed strategically in the center.
German Club colors are purple and gold and the pin is similar to a fraternity pin.
Occasional military plumage also was in evidence, with the older males of this species displaying impressive multiribboned and medaled breasts.
Female plumage Friday night was more colorful than their escorts' dress, with plenty of satin, sequins and decorative facial markings.
Topknots were particularly fetching. Females also were observed carrying or wearing flowers.
As for behavior, German Club members perform intricate and free-form dance movements quite well, and they appeared to be having a good time.
When younger members were confronted by the elder of their species, their manners were stylized and impeccable and their calls contained plenty of "Yes sirs" and "Yes ma'ams."
Midwinters retains some of the tradition with which the club began. Friday night especially was reminiscent of the old days in its formality.
Not only were people formally attired, the music by the Kings of Swing was a throwback to the 1940s. The musicians stood behind their individual bandstands and dipped and swayed in counterpoint to each other as their saxophones and trombones glittered in the stage light.
"Gonna Take a Sentimental Journey," a World War II hit, sent the crowd of about 400 into various forms and skill levels of the jitterbug, with the older alumni clearly the more expert.
Decor in the darkened ballroom included an Eiffel Tower, lighted from within, and miles of crepe paper streamers crossing the high ceiling.
A three-dimensional Arche de Triomphe contained the names of club members and was a favorite spot for picture-taking, as friends recorded each other in their best duds.
Friday night's formal was definitely the night for the alumni to show up. Mr. and Mrs. James McComas, president and first lady of the university, and Mr. and Mrs. Adger Johnson - he a German Club alumnus, Class of 1928, were honorary chaperones.
When the club began, chaperones were serious guardians of female honor. Young ladies simply did not traipse about the country unescorted, and certainly not in the company of single young men.
The building Johnson danced in as a cadet in the '20s is long gone. There were 1,200 students back then - only a dozen or so of them women, he said. Those women lived in a dormitory known as the cow barn, and not because of its architecture.
A German Club romance blossomed - later - for the Johnsons. Johnson's current wife was his date in 1928 when they led the Midwinters dance. They were married in 1987, having rediscovered each other after their spouses had died and he had retired to Blacksburg from New York City.
Johnson, 84, got a big cheer when he was introduced as a chaperone Friday night. Johnson has worn out more tuxedos than succeeding generations have had long pants.
About 900 attended the Saturday night's semiformal event, a younger, more contemporary crowd with fewer old alums.
The setting was the same as the night before, but the music by The Maxx was definitely louder, rowdier, and more '90s than Friday night's nostalgia.
Both dances provided a look at today's relaxed dress code.
Men in tuxedos that haven't changed much in 30 years sported shoulder-length hair. Others could have been mistaken for Cary Grant - until you got to their eraser-head haircut.
While women at Friday night's dance wore both short and long dresses, Saturday night brought every imaginable sort of costume from ball gown to nice daytime dresses.
The men wore coats and ties, but abandoned their jackets as The Maxx heated up the place.
A young woman in a short black dress so enthusiastically danced that her skirt turned into a sort of great lacy tail. Had she been on television, there would have been a warning not to try this at home.