Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, March 20, 1993 TAG: 9303200169
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-1 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: ROBERT FREIS STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: BLACKSBURG LENGTH: Medium
1ST CADET'S JOURNEY ENDS IN LOUNGE
What would William Addison "Add" Caldwell find if he duplicated the pilgrimage 120 years ago that made him Virginia Tech's first student?Too many changes to absorb, no doubt.
Caldwell, then a 16-year-old Craig County farm boy, strolled 28 miles from Sinking Creek Valley to register at Virginia Agricultural and Mechanical College.
On that October day in 1872, the new school opened its doors for the first time, and its small faculty was nervous about when, or if, students would show up.
So appreciative were they when Add Caldwell appeared that they immediately awarded him a scholarship.
Even though it's said that Caldwell was motivated as much by curiousity as by serious scholarship, he walked right into Virginia Tech history and left footprints followed by more than 150,000 students since.
Now his name and story are cast in metal, on a plaque unveiled Friday at the new William Addison Caldwell lounge in the G. Burke Johnston Student Center.
Many contrasts were evident during the dedication ceremony about the world of difference between Add Caldwell's day and now.
Given his chances of finding a parking space in the school's commuter lot, Caldwell might as well walk to class once again.
And the fact that his lounge is located a floor above a Burger King and a I Can't Believe It's Yogurt counter casts the present in a frivolous light, compared with circumstances of Caldwell's journey.
Tech historian James I. Robertson Jr. spoke at the ceremony about Caldwell's era, when he and the new school emerged from the "ashes of a terrible war."
The region, like the state of Virginia, was scorched by the deprivations of the Civil War, making "want and need a way of life," Robertson said.
Without public schools in Craig County or anywhere else, Caldwell probably had to depend on tutors or his own initiative for his early education.
Either by reading a newspaper advertisement or by word-of-mouth, Caldwell learned of the new land-grant school and walked over two mountain ranges to check it out.
He became one of 132 to enroll that first year, paying $210 for tuition, room and board. Like the rest, he was a member of the Corps of Cadets and his class elected him alumni secretary when it graduated in 1876.
Thereafter, Caldwell worked variously as a teacher, a clerk or a salesman in Western Virginia and eastern North Carolina until he died in 1910. He was buried in the family cemetery in Radford.
Caldwell never married, yet the dedication was attended by a number of relatives including Del. Arthur R. "Pete" Giesen Jr., R-Waynesboro, his great-nephew.
Giesen spoke on behalf of the Caldwell family, noting that Virginia Tech's "dedication to education and the quality of learning hasn't diminished" since young Add's trek so many years ago.