T. Harry
Williams Center for Oral History Collection
INTERVIEWEE NAME: Thomas Blakeney 4700.0181
IDENTIFICATION: colonel in United States Army and commandant
of LSU ROTC cadet corps
INTERVIEWER: Ruth Thompson
Carville
PROJECT: WWII and LSU
History
DATE(S): 1 October 1992;
6 October 1992 FOCUS
DATES: 1930s-1969
ABSTRACT:
Tape # 254
Family
background; life as child in Stephenville, Texas; early influences; early
educational background; high school life; decision to attend LSU; gets job as
laundry worker on campus; begins work as a trainer for football team; mother
encourages him to study medicine; joins Sigma Chi fraternity; lives in
dormitory on campus; plays clarinet in LSU band; freshmen hazing at LSU; majors
in zoology; involvement in ROTC; ROTC becomes Blakeney's favorite aspect of
college life; joins army after graduation in 1939; marries in 1940; begins
working at LSU in 1966 as commandant of the ROTC; memories of Chancellor Cecil
Taylor; recollection of Dean of Student Services James Reddoch guarding
flagpole after Dr. Martin Luther King's assassination; friendship with Dean of
Men Arden French; ROTC becomes non-compulsory in 1968; controversy surrounding
decision to make ROTC non-compulsory; opposition to compulsory ROTC by John
McGuinness, editor of the Reveille.
Tape # 255
Blakeney
supports shaving the heads of incoming freshmen; effects of Vietnam War on ROTC
cadets and campus life in general; ROTC enrollment decreases dramatically after
it becomes non-compulsory; ROTC storage room set on fire as part of Vietnam War
protests.
Tape # 256
Early interest
in the military; summer jobs as a teenager; assigned to Fort Knox, Kentucky in
1940; transferred to Camp Bowie, Texas and joins Seven-Sixtieth Tank Battalion;
receives training in modern tanks at Fort Benning, Georgia and Camp Pickett,
Virginia; ordered overseas for invasion of North Africa in 1942; engages in
battle with Rommel's Afrika Corps; receives orders to invade Italy; lands in
Italy near Naples; returns to U.S. and Fort Knox, Kentucky; participates in
Task Force Frigid in Fairbanks, Alaska; involved in plane crash in Alaska;
granted four months recuperation leave; re-stationed in Fort Knox, Kentucky;
becomes instructor at general staff college in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas;
attends Army War College in Pennsylvania; transferred to Heidelberg, Germany;
joins faculty of U.S. Air War College in Montgomery, Alabama; accepts
assignment in Vietnam; serves as head of Army Concepts Team in Saigon; returns
to LSU in 1966.
# of CASSETTES: 3 TOTAL PLAYING
TIME: 2 hours
#
PAGES TRANSCRIPT: 70
RESTRICTIONS: None