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the campus that everybody spoke to everybody else. If you
go back to those days, you'll find out that was supposed to be
a tradition.
P: Of course, I know that.
L: You spoke to everybody on campus and there he wouldn't speak to
me. It kind of worried me, it just made me wonder why he
wouldn't speak to me. Later I heard of a man who became a
very prominent attorney in Orlando who was very active in the
movement to get rid of Dr. Tigert. His name was Bob Bishop. I
asked, "Why is Bob Bishop so much interested in having Dr. Tigert
removed as president?" They said Bob was a very serious student
on the campus and was an older man when he came. Dr. Tigert
gave a talk someplace and made a reference to something and
gave a quotation. Bob met Dr. Tigert on the campus and told him
that he enjoyed his talk. He said, "Dr. Tigert, would you give
me the quotation of that poem you recited?" And Tigert just
faced up, walked away, didn't even answer him. That is a report
that I heard. Now, I realize what the situation was, and in
view of my own experience and Bob's experience, I know that it
was sort of a personality problem, shall we say, about Tigert,
that when he found a seridus problem er something that was a
little embarrassing, he just raised his head and went forward.
I think that was right, and I think that was a personality
problem.
P: You think he just refused to confront the situation.
L: He refused to confront the situation. I expected, he looked at
me and remembered that talk and then wondered if I read Time magazine.
This was within a week or two. But the Time article specifically
referred to the fact Stearns had been selected three years before.
P: And he was embarrassed that you knew that, in view of his little
conversation with you at the Primrose.
L: Yes.
P: Did you ever have any other confrontations or personal relationships
with Tigert?
L: Not confrontations. In a way I did. I lived on old Palm Terrace
on the campus and about 1940, '41, I mentioned in the spring of
the year to Roy Wilmont, a neighbor out there, that Gainesville
was a beautiful city with all the azaleas blooming. I said to