“Driving Mrs. Beaver”
By Raymond Thomasson, Class of 1969
Nashville, Tennessee
Riverside was my academic home from 1967 to 1969. Two commonalities are shared by
cadets. Attendance usually was the result of an unrelenting insistence by our parents that a
change in our lives was imminent. Riverside is as much about people and experiences as it is
about classroom education.
The fall began in Gainesville. We wintered in Florida, spring returned us to Georgia. The
movement of students, faculty, and supplies used a combination of bull-ring labor and hired
tractor trailers, more akin to moving Ringling Brothers than to moving a school.
From Hollywood chartered buses accompanied blue and silver Riverside “Blue Bird or
Wayne” buses. No bathroom. No air conditioning. Ahead lay an arduous, uncomfortable
marathon 14 hour drive to Gainesville. This picture of my first years return trip didn’t
particularly thrill me. I wondered if there was an alternative.
The General’s wife didn’t like to fly and it had become a practice for a selected senior
cadet to drive his wife and car back to Georgia. As a first year, non-senior cadet I didn’t think I
would ever be on any selection list, much less a short list.
At this time, General Beaver was a bit like the Wizard of Oz. His often unseen persona
maintained the school through his pronounced investment skills. Cadets might see and hear from
him in Chapel, if he chose to leave his Lanier Hall lair. Gritty determination dictated that I was
going to pull the curtain back and meet with General Sandy Beaver!
This initial experience of obtaining an appointment with General Beaver was not only a
grand achievement, but a grand reward. Those fifteen minutes with him and his interest in me are
remembered warmly. Subsequent meetings with him would take place before I graduated. But on
this day, before taps was blown, I was advised that I was going to drive Mrs. Beaver and her
Buick Electra 225 from Hollywood to Gainesville. The following year would be repeated
driving the General’s limousine-like black Cadillac.
I got to spend two wonderful 13 hour drives with Mrs. Beaver before she died in 1968.
The First Lady of Riverside, Annice Lowery Beaver of Columbia, South Carolina was a genteel,
gracious, kind and educated southern lady. She generously shared stories about the General, her
family, the students, and the school. Oh what rides!
The highly efficient Riverside Accounting Department, as always, accounted for
everything, whether laundry or haircuts. At the close of 1968, I received a voucher billing me for
the “bus ride and food” from Hollywood to Gainesville. To say I was amused was an
understatement. It appears that I had at least paid for half the gas of the General’s big Cadillac- but the trip and experience was well worth it because it was while I was “Driving Mrs. Beaver”!
And I got to know the General too.
General Beaver died the year after I graduated. I felt I had been part of a transitional era
at Riverside. I feel like I was pretty lucky.