Write Us!

THE HISTORY OF THE GREENBRIER AMERICA’S RESORT

THE GOOD DOCTOR AND HIS GOOD FRIENDS

BY

ROBERT S. CONTE, PH.D

In the midst of the commotion caused by President Van Buren’s vacation at White Sulphur Springs, it was easy to overlook the laborious experiments being conducted by a young physician seeking to understand the mysterious curative powers of the sulphur water. Yet the work of Dr. John Jennings Moorman, begun in that summer of 1838, transformed the practice of taking the waters from an act of faith into a systematic method of health care. For the next forty-five years, Dr. Moorman’s guidance was sought by thousands of visitors hoping for relief from a wide array of ills. In time, the Resident Physician at White Suphur Springs became the nationally recognized authority on the uses and abuses of mineral water.

Today, the custom of drinking and bathing in sulphur water seems a dubious form of medical treatment, at best a mere antiquated curiosity. The practice, however, was followed by scores of divergent cultures. Ancient accounts in Egypt, Persia, India, and China prescribed spring water; Aristotle, Hannibal, Cicero, Emperor Hadrian, and Charlemagne all habitually resorted to mineral springs to preserve or enhance their health. Over two thousand years ago, Hippocrates studied the properties of mineral water, and later the Romans constructed hundreds of structures for public bathing. Since the early fifteenth century, Europe’s most eminent scientists had analyzed and classified French, Swiss, Swedish, German and British waters. There is good reason why people have venerated mineral spring water throughout history- water is a basic element of life, without which humans cannot exist. Water containing chemical ingredients in solution, which leads to predictable results upon and within the body, has always been viewed as something near miraculous.

Dr. Moorman’s lifelong pursuits in the field of sulphur water therapy must be set in the context of available medical options in nineteenth century America. When he began his studies, bloodletting was still a common antidote for almost all diseases, the existence of germs was unknown, and all kinds of herbal concoctions, forms of hypnotism, and age-old superstitions, remained the typical methods of fighting sickness. It followed that cynicism toward the medical professions was rampant: “Medicine slays its thousands and quackery its tens of thousands,” warned Godey’s Lady’s Book in 1839.

James Calwell realized the urgent need for a Resident Physician at this growing resort and invited Dr. Moorman to establish that position. The thirty-six-year-old doctor had recently settled nearby, following two years of travel after his wife’s death, and he took to his new position with great enthusiasm. “I at once turned pretty much my entire attention,” he wrote in his memoir forty years later, “to the investigation of the chemical characters and the specific applicability of mineral waters generally; but primarily, these of the White Sulphur, which has long been regarded as the most highly medicated and efficient mineral water of its class in America, if not in the world.”

Other doctors had visited the springs before Dr. Moorman, but their analyses were based upon brief examinations of the water and informal conversations with persons taking the water. A guest in 1791 remarked that “the towel I wiped with after bathing smelt so strong when I carried it to the fire that I could not bear it near me.” The next year, a Dr. John Rouelle began performing rudimentary experiments at the spring. He first confirmed the existence of sulphur by placing a piece of silver in the water, and it immediately turned black. He then noted the odd fact that birds never flew directly over the spring, while vegetation grew quite well in the water. He speculated that the spring sat in the crater of an ancient volcano, and then recommended the water for diseases of the skin. His conclusion was that the sulphur water was “endowed with more powerful properties than any that I have analyzed when I traveled and lived in Europe.” Dr. William Horner, of Philadelphia, also investigated the water at White Sulphur Springs. In 1833, he remarked that the waters, drunk at the rate of six to eight glasses per day, “impregnate the system so much that a sulphurous smell exhales from the skin.” But he seemed baffled by the specific applications of the water, and was unable to distinguish which illnesses were actually eased by its use.

So the challenge for Dr. Moorman was to discover the precise diseases the water alleviated, and prescribe the proper method of use. He took a very pragmatic approach, hoping that his observations might be beneficial “not by dazzling and futile theories, or by an attempt to create hopes that might end in sad disappointments, but by plain practical facts in relation to the nature and use of our mineral waters.” Moorman’s first apprehension was the misuse of sulphur water, which sometimes led to painful consequences. His first published work in 1839 contained explicit directions for avoiding these problems; the essence of his message was that sulphur water is a strong medicine and like all medicines must be taken with caution. The most common error he found was the belief among visitors that “they are benefitted in proportion to the quantity which they drink.” He was startled and alarmed at the enormous quantities of sulphur water that people drank. The diary of one sixteen year-old girl, for instance, recorded her daily intake, amounting to eighteen large glasses every day for five weeks. Dr. Moorman, on the other hand, recommended four to eight glasses per day at first, working up to ten or twelve glasses at most after two weeks. As a general rule, he believed that two weeks was the minimun period of time for the water to be effective, usually it benefits began to appear after three to six weeks.

“The sensible medicinal effects of this water,” Dr. Moorman wrote, “are most obviously displayed in its action upon the bowels, liver, kidneys, and skin.” He stressed that the water was not a panacea and therefore prescribed it for only a limited range of diseases, including dyspepsia (which he defined as a “derangement of functions in the organs of digestion”), chronic rheumatism, neuralgia, jaundice, scurvy and a few others. He found it of limited use, along with other treatments, for addiction to alcohol and opium. The sulphur water should not be used, he wrote, for acute diseases, cancerous infections, or heart problems.

Did the sulphur water indeed cure such diseases? To answer this question, Dr. Moorman, at least in the early years and following the practice of most physicians, printed testimonials in his published works from respected professors, prominent citizens and doctors. In later years he thought that such testimonials were no longer necessary, as the efficacy of the sulphur water had been clearly established through many years of use. Those who did write of their experiences ranged from individuals with very specific complaints that were relieved by use of the water, to more general benefits as noted in an 1849 letter: “We leave our lowland homes languid, listless and without appetite. In one week we feel comparatively strong, and eat beefsteak for breakfast.”

Dr. Moorman did acknowledge that a cure, or at least relief, derived from a combination of drinking the water, (he thought that bathing in the water was useful only after drinking the water for a period of time) plus attention to a moderate diet, sensible clothing, daily exercise, abstaining from liquor and breathing the clean mountain air. Whether or not this regimen in fact “cured” people is difficult to ascertain, but water-drinkers did return year after year, decade after decade, and many reported that they felt much better when they left White Sulphur Springs than when they came.

Despite Moorman’s attempts to promote intelligent use of the sulphur water, many skeptics wondered out loud about the remedy. This skepticism was fed by extravagant claims that a veritable fountain of youth poured forth from the White Sulphur Spring. One excited visitor wrote, “It cures ugliness itself, being a kind of elixir of eternal youth,” and furthermore, it “restores physicians to health, causes sailors to forget, and lawyers to confess the truth.” Writer Peregrine Prolix polled visitors’ opinions and reported that according to popular belief it cured just about everything, “except chewing, smoking, spitting and swearing.” He listed the standard chemical components in the sulphur water but included as one “a very strong infusion of fashion.” Prolix supposed that this last ingredient was the key: “Its quantity cannot be precisely ascertained….but no doubt it contributes greatly to the efficacy of the water. When submitted to the ordeal of analysis, it vanishes into smoke.”

Contemporaries described Dr. Moorman as a man who always dressed neatly, wore gold-rimmed glasses, and carried a gold-headed cane. He was a professor at Roanoke College, in Salem, Virginia, and at Washington University School of Medicine in Baltimore. In Salem, he owned a drug store and was president of a bank. He also served in the Virginia House of Delegates from 1833 to 1835. President Fillmore appointed him the U.S. Commissioner to the 1851 World’s Fair held in the Crystal Room in Hyde Park, London, after which he visited some of the famous spas of Europe. For most of the nineteenth century, his name was closely linked to White Sulphur Springs, not only because he was a familiar figure at the resort each summer, but because of his writings on the use of mineral waters, the first of which was a slim, thirty-five page pamphlet entitled, A Directory for the Use of the White Sulphur Waters. This eventually grew into a much larger 1847 volume that included studies of the neighboring mineral springs of Virginia, and finally evolved into his major work, Mineral Springs of North America (1873), which provided descriptions and analyses of over one hundred thirty mineral springs from Mississippi to Canada.

White Sulphur Springs was one of about a dozen mineral spring resorts in the area, known collectively as “The Springs of Virginia.” Although Moorman directed most of his attention to White Sulphur Springs, he also offered guidance to the use of the waters at those other watering places: Blue Sulphur Springs, twenty-two miles west of White Sulphur; Warm Springs, which- along with Sweet Springs- was in use as early as the 1760s; Sweet Chalybeate (then known as Red Sweet Springs), a source of iron water that Dr. Moorman used for his own ailments; Hot Springs, with its six baths ranging in temperature from ninety-six to one hundred six degrees; Salt Sulphur Springs, where a rare iodine spring was discovered in 1838; and Red Sulphur Springs, highly regarded as an antidote to “confirmed consumption” or tuberculosis. Travelers in this western region of Virginia frequently visited three or four resorts in one season, making what was called “The Spring Tour.” These resorts straddled the continental divide and about seventy-five miles separated the most northern, Warm Springs, from the most southern, Red Sulphur Springs. Each was about one day’s stagecoach ride from its neighbor, and all were connected by good turnpike roads. The mineral waters varied in their chemical components and temperatures, in fact in some cases invalids traveled with a physician’s prescription to visit a number of springs in a strict sequence. Most of these resorts consisted of cottages surrounding a springhouse, and featured a lively social life; White Sulphur Springs was always the largest and also had the advantage of being located in the center of the springs region, so it was on almost everyone’s itinerary.

Overshadowing motives of pleasure-seeking, fashion and poor health, however,was a much more ominous inducement to head for the mountains each summer. Dreaded epidemic disease broke out with frightful regularity throughout the nineteenth century, at times fostered by conditions in the humid, swampy parts of the Southern coastal areas, or the lack of sanitation in the burgeoning cities. The first great epidemic in the United States was the 1832 outbreak of cholera, which spread from Europe, killing thousands of people. It is probably no accident, then, that 1832 seems to be the year White Sulphur Springs and the other springs resorts were discovered as good, healthful places to spend mid-July through mid-September. Yellow fever- known as the terrible “Yellow Jack”- was a constant threat, particularly in lowland Virginia, the Carolinas, and Lousiana; malaria, scarlet fever and measles were also incurable. As a consequence, physicians of the day advised people to leave those areas for as long as possible. Dr. James P. Baker, the founder of The Greenbrier Clinic, studied the medical history of Virginia’s mineral springs, and discovered that while fourteen springs resorts operated in 1830, the number more than doubled in the next thirty years, after epidemics caused devastating mortality rates. These springs prospered throughout the remainder of the century, but Dr. Baker observed that most went into a steady decline with the discovery of a cure for cholera in 1883, and Walter Reed’s identification, in 1900, of the mosquito that carried yellow fever.

In the course of his professional duties, Dr. Moorman, more than any other individual in White Sulphur Springs’ history- except James Calwell of course- became a representative figure associated with the resort. He was in a unique position for almost half a century, until the year before his death in 1885, to form personal acquaintances, and sometimes lasting friendships, with many of the prominent people who vacationed at White Sulphur Springs. Fortunately, near the end of his long tenure as the Resident Physician, Moorman recorded his impressions in a private memoir, and in it he repeated stories drawn from his experiences with clergymen, governors, philanthropists, generals, poets, biblical scholars and U.S. Presidents. His chronicle remains, even today, a fascinating guide to the human side of many of the great names in American history as well as an inside view of social interactions at White Sulphur Springs.

Dr. Moorman, of course, got to know Henry Clay quite well. Known the “The Great Commoner,” Clay was described by Moorman as “tall of stature, full six feet, I think, in height; spare and erect; remarkable for a somewhat prominent nose, thin lips and an uncommonly large mouth To his contemporaries I need not speak of this latter feature, however, for everyone knew very well that his mouth was fully capable of speaking for itself.” Like other Americans who witnessed Clay’s legendary rhetorical style, Moorman was in awe: “I have never seen a man of more easy, lofty and elegant volubility of tongue than Mr. Clay.” But Clay’s prowess was not limited to speaking to political crowds from podiums; his wit and manners extended to the kind of personal encounters expected at a social resort like White Sulphur Springs. Moorman observed Clay’s “natural gallantry- and open, frank and manly expression of sentiments and, in his conversation with ladies, an irresistible tendency to say agreeable things.” On one occasion, Dr. Moorman was approached by a woman who begged him to get a lock of Henry Clay’s hair as a souvenir. Moorman duly delivered the request, and the next day saw Clay engaged in animated conversation with the woman. She was apologizing for the trouble she had caused, but Clay smiled, offered his then quite grey lock of hair, and said, “O Madam, don’t mention it- it has been a very great pleasure to me- and I beg you to believe that not only a lock of my hair, but my heart and all I am are yours, except only my hand which is Mrs. Clay’s.”

In contrast, Hengry Clay’s attitude toward his political enemies was bold and defiant. In another incident Dr. Moorman recalled, a number of distinguished gentlemen had gathered in the Colonnade cottage of Clay’s friend, Colonel Richard Singleton. The group included Andrew Stevenson, a congressman from Virginia and a former ambassador to Great Britain. Since Clay had strenuously attempted to block Stevenson’s appointment as ambassador, the two were not on speaking terms. “Mr. Clay deferred an intended call upon Colonel and Mrs. Singleton,” Moorman wrote, “until he knew that Mr. Stevenson and other of his enemies were in the Colonel’s room- when he boldly walked in among them. Passing through the group without the slightest recognition of them, he approached Colonel and Mrs. Singleton with the greatest cordiality and volubility of speech, keeping up a lively conversation until all his enemies withdrew- leaving him just such a triumph as he desired, and which in the opinion of his friends then at the springs, he had sought for.” It is no wonder, then, that Dr. Moorman described Clay in admiring terms: “Hengry Clay was for many years a central object of attention among the visitors at the White Sulphur…and when there, was always the most noted, honored and observed by all.”

Besides Hengry Clay, whenever historians cite the greatest political orators in ante-bellum America, two other names invariably top the list, John C. Calhoun and Daniel Webster. All three of these men frequented White Sulphur Springs in the 1840s (although it has been said that if they were not getting along with one another, they would schedule their visits so as not to overlap), and Dr. Moorman, of course, wrote at considerable length about each man and his impact on the resort. John C. Calhoun was the vice president under both John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson, held the posts of secretary of war and secretary of state, served as the senator from South Carolina, and was the most sophisticated political thinker in the South. He was also quite a talker. Moorman wrote that Calhoun “was always ready to engage in intellectual conversation, and to do all the talking himself if you desired.” Nevertheless, he met stiff competition at these springs where agile public speaking was in abundant supply. Calhoun, Moorman recalled, “talked so well, so fluently, so sensibly, that ordinarily he had the lion’s share of it, except perhaps when he met with such other talkers as Governor Tazewell or Governor Henry A. Wise (both from Virginia), neither of whom was ever known to yield the field of talk quietly for any length of time.”

Daniel Webster was the defender of New England’s interests in Congress and therefore viewed with suspicion by Virginians until his eloquent address to them in 1840. The speech was so impressive, Dr. Moorman thought, “that no one who heard it was likely to ever totally forget” Webster’s words. At a party after the speech, where the wine flowed freely, Webster relaxed among his new friends and there Moorman overheard this remark to a Virginia military man: “I am told, General, that I am not popular in Virginia, and I cannot well account for it, for I am sure I am very Virginian in all my tastes and habits. I drink, I fail to pay my debts, and I am not overly scrupulous of my marital relations. Such qualities, I would think, ought to make me very popular with Virginians.”

As White Sulphur Springs’ fame spread, many European travelers included a visit to the resort on their “American Grand Tour.” From England, Lord Morpeth, the Seventh Earl of Carlisle, arrived for a six-week stay in 1842, and he told Dr. Moorman that White Sulphur Springs was “the most beautiful watering place in the world.” The Spanish Ambassador to the United States also visited, but he received a less-than-dignified welcome from the imperious Major Baylis Anderson. Ambassador Decolderon was turned away from a cottage, according to Dr. Moorman, because he arrived “plainly dressed…looking more like a steady old valley farmer than a foreign minister.” When Major Anderson was informed of his faux pas he exclaimed to Moorman, “the devil you say, I have made a mistake,” and promptly assigned the ambassador an appropriate room in the President’s Cottage.

Perhaps the most interesting sections of Dr. Moorman’s memoir are those giving his impressions of U.S. Presidents he met at White Sulphur Springs. His reactions, based on first-hand encounters, are more personal than those given in historical accounts. Dr. Moorman thought that Martin Van Buren “was a very nice gentleman, entirely unaggressive in manner and language, and reticent to a degree beyond any other public man I have known.” Millard Fillmore, who visited for a week in 1852 with his Secretary of Interior, Alexander H.H. Stuart, struck Dr. Moorman as a “lusty farmer-like looking man of good manners and genial temper.” Of the Mexican war hero and twelfth President Zachary Taylor, Moorman wrote, “I have rarely seen anyone that looked less prepossessing or less at ease.” John Tyler, of Virginia, visited White Sulphur more often than any other President, before his election to office, during his term (1841-1845) and frequently afterwards. The first President to be married in office, Tyler spent part of his 1844 honeymoon at White Sulphur Springs with his new bride, Julia Gardiner, of New York (which raised a few eyebrows because the widower President was fifty-four and Miss Gardiner was twenty-four). On one occasion, relates Dr. Moorman, ex-President Tyler was embarrassed by the unexpected arrival of his long-time political and personal enemy, none other than Hengry Clay. Before Clay’s appearance, Tyler was “literally the lion of the grounds,” according to Moorman, but all attention soon turned to Henry Clay when he entered the grounds. “Mr. Tyler, evidently chagrined, stood this for a few days,” Moorman explained, “and then having his baggage loaded upon a stagecoach at the very instant that a large crowd with a band of music was surrounding Mr. Clay’s cottage, drove- unattended and as silent as a funeral procession- through the grounds to reach the highway of exit from the springs.”

On the Fourth of July, 1854, President Franklin Pierce arrived with his wife at White Sulphur Springs in a Concord coach drawn by six white horses while the band on the lawn played “Hail Columbia.” He was greeted by a delegation of twenty-four congressmen headed by ex-President John Tyler and escorted to his cottage. One newspaper reported, “never before in the history of the country had a similar incident occurred, of an ex-President being called upon to address the actual President under such circumstances, and never did a more cordial feeling prevail.” Dr. Moorman seemed strained to find something strongly positive to say about President Pierce. He was “what you might call a nice little gentleman, always nice and tidy in his dress, and nice in his manners. I think nice rather than elegant is the word for his manners. He made himself agreeable to his associates, and was always kindly attentive to all around him.”

Summing up what he called his “Reminiscences of White Sulphur Habitues,” Dr. Moorman concluded that he wanted “to notice hundreds of agreeable acquaintances I have formed in the summers I have passed at White Sulphur.” He specifically mentioned three clergymen: the Reverend Dr. Dodd of Princeton, the Reverend Dr. Thornwell of South Carolina, and the Reverend Dr. John Hall of New York. “The latter gentleman,” Moorman commented, “is the only clergyman I have ever known to be invited by the guests of the Springs, after hearing him on the Sabbath, to preach again during the week and at night, to the abandonment for the time of the usual gaieties of the ballroom.” Dr. Moorman did not forget to acknowledge women at White Sulphur Springs: “I have not referred particularly to the distinguished ladies that have constantly adorned society at the White Sulphur. Among such have been found those who have acquired distinction for their literary productions in poetry and prose; others that were distinguished for their marked intelligence, beauty, wealth, or peculiar elegance of manners.” Citing the influence of numerous “high toned gentlemen” of South Carolina- specifically including Colonel Richard Singleton and Colonel Wade Hampton- Dr Moorman captured the social flavor of the Springs in the decades before the Civil War: “together with many similar spirits from all the Southern States, all exercising their high and refined social qualities wherever they went, they were the main power in getting up a reputation for the White Sulphur (where they annually assembled) as the most fashionable and altogether the most refined place of public resort in America.”

In the midst of this whirl of exclusive society, Dr. Moorman also found himself embroiled in an intense controversy over the proper applications of the sulphur water. Perhaps as a method of increasing revenues in the depressed years of the early 1840s, James Calwell initiated the sale of sulphur water in bottles and barrels for home use. The sales campaign began in 1841 with the publication of a brochure promoting home use, complete with testimonials of its effectiveness from editors, professors, legislators, doctors, pharmacists, merchants, lawyers, and Henry Clay. The marketing effort was so successful that in later years this branch of the resort’s operations became a major source of income. However, the practice of bottling and transporting the sulphur water to apothecaries in major cities quickly drew Dr. Moorman into an unusually nasty dispute with the proprietor of a competing mineral spring resort. The medical argument began when William Burke, the owner of the Red Sulphur Springs, some forty-two miles south of White Sulphur Springs, questioned Moorman’s motives in advising James Calwell to sell the water in this manner. Burke charged in an 1842 book that Dr. Moorman had concocted a theory “fraught with injury to the reputation of this justly popular water.” The central point in this dispute was the source of the White Sulphur water’s medicinal virtues: Did the water’s curative power lie in its gaseous content or in its solid salt contents?

The question had practical ramifications because in the bottling process the gases inevitably escaped. This was an unacceptable consequence for William Burke, who maintained that the water without its gases was worthless. He believed that the gases which gave the sulphur water its pungent odor were also the main ingredient curing invalids. Dr. Moorman disagreed. He advocated use of the water either fresh from the spring, with the gases intact, or after standing for some time, when the solid saline components alone performed the cure. Different diseases, Dr. Moorman explained, required different forms of sulphur water. As might be expected, Burke ridiculed this position and accused Moorman of fabricating a theory solely to justify the profitable sale of sulphur water. Burke’s concluding attack on Moorman was couched in the strongest of terms: “His facts are without foundation in truth; his arguments puerile and shallow; his theories untenable; his absurdities ridiculous; his motives palpable and culpable; and his efforts to bolster up a selfish practice, a gross imposition.”

Dr. Moorman was of course quick to defend his practice and reputation. He devoted forty-seven pages of his 1847 book, The Virginia Springs, to a detailed rebuttal of Burke’s accusations. Mindful that Burke was charging that profit was the true source of his ideas, Moorman called attention to Burke’s monetary interest in the matter: “He is the proprietor of a would-be rival watering place, we, the Resident Physician. Which, under the circumstances, we would ask, is likely to feel the deepest interest in the reputation of that water?” Moorman further charged that Burke was simply trying to siphon off business to his own mineral spring resort. Although Moorman’s retort was generally carried out in moderate and scientific language, he unleashed his sharpest comeback when he proposed the following as an appropriate subtitle to William Burke’s book: “An Elaborate Puff of an Second-Rate Mineral Spring, by the Proprietor Thereof; With Brief, and Sometimes Disparaging Notices of Other Watering Places.”

While there was no clear resolution of the conflict at the time, it should be noted that William Burke soon faded from the scene and Dr. Moorman’s career blossomed. And the sale of water from White Sulphur Springs continued unabated; in 1880 it could be purchased from agents in Richmond, Baltimore, Washington, Philadelphia, New York, New Orleans and Charleston, South Carolina; in 1902 White Sulphur Water was available in almost any American drug store, at five dollars for a case of twenty-four quarts. In fact, the sale of bottled water- in concentrated form and billed as “America’s Favorite Morning Laxative”- continued until as late as 1942, when the bottling equipment was dismantled.

Upon the White Sulphur Springs, Virginia

Come all you, who thirst for the waters of life,

Whether father, or son, fair daughter, or wife;

Come, drink at this fount, and you’ll certainly find

Relief for the body, as well as the mind.

For, the man who to-day, but totters along,

By using it freely will soon become strong;

The wife, who was losing her beauty, and charms,

Returns well again, to her husband’s fond arms-

The pale cheek of the lass, once blooming, and red

Will revive here again the rose that had fled-

And the sweet child, his father’s dear boy,

Who no health from his birth could every enjoy,

Here begins like the lambkin, to sport and to play,

And chase from his mother, all sorrow away-

And thousands it’s prov’d itself able to save

Whom the doctors had said, must go to the grave.

It confers all its blessings alike upon all,

Fits the old for their chat, and the young for the ball;

Where the lover may dance, with the girl of his heart,

And Hymen, will whisper, they never shall part.

Robert S. Conte was appointed Historian at Greenbrier in June 1978. He established and maintains the resort’s archives and is the curator of the President’s Cottage Museum. His tours, lectures and presentations have made him a well-known personality to Greenbrier guests.

A native of San Jose, California, Dr. Conte received his undergraduate training in history at Santa Clara University and was granted a Ph.D. in American Studies from Case Western Reserve University. Before coming to The Greenbrier, he worked at the National Archives in Washington, D.C. and the Western Reserve Historical Society in Cleveland, Ohio.

Dr. Conte is a member of the Organization of American Historians and served on the Board of Directors of the West Virginia Humanities Council from 1985 to 1991. He contributed an introductory chapter to The Greenbrier Cookbook: Favorite Recipes From American’s Resort narrating the history of dining and entertaining at the resort.