Virginia's Holtons Say Yes

TWO decades ago, Virginia, the philosophical leader of the South since the days of Jefferson and Madison, initiated the misguided doctrine of "massive resistance" to desegregation. It is thus ironic and yet totally appropriate that Virginia today is attempting to show that integration can work. No more dramatic sign of this effort has occurred than the decision of the state's Governor, Linwood Holton, voluntarily to send his four children to mixed or predominantly black schools.

Not that Holton, Virginia's first Republican Governor in 84 years, favors the court-ordered busing plans that are desegregating his state's schools. "We disapprove, dislike and deplore busing across town to achieve racial balance," he says. Despite his disapproval, however, he has urged all Virginians to obey court busing orders and, in the face of sometimes bitter opposition, has adamantly refused to seek a reversal in the Supreme Court. "I think it is unfortunate that we are losing the neighborhood school concept," he says, "but the community is going along with the new order. People are finding out that the youngsters can handle the situation."

His own children, in fact, are handling the situation as well as any. Though he could have sent them to any public school in Richmond--the Governor's mansion is excluded from busing plans because it is on state rather than city land--Holton has put his elder daughter, Tayloe, 15, into a high school that is 88% black; Anne, 13, and Woody, 12, attend a middle school 86% black, and Dwight, 5, a school that is 50% black. All seem to have thrived.

Tayloe is one of the two white cheerleaders (out of a squad of twelve) at John F. Kennedy High School, and her grades have risen since she arrived. Anne and Woody have specifically asked to ride the school bus (there is no school bus stop convenient to the downtown mansion for Tayloe and none at all for Dwight). As for five-year-old Dwight, "I don't think he knows the difference between black and white," Holton says. "Isn't that great?"

Aside from being Governor--not necessarily an advantage for his children when they are in the classroom --Holton is different from most parents in his ebullient optimism. On his office In box is pasted the slogan, TODAY IS OPPORTUNITY DAY. DO SOMETHING, and twelve-year-old Woody is awakened by his father each morning with the call, "It's opportunity time." His wife Jinks is also enthusiastic, and is trying to get more black parents into the schools' P.T.A.s. In the same situation, other parents and other children might not have had the same happy experience. Still, when the Governor says, "I have seen it work," the people of Virginia know that they are not listening to just another politician ordering them to do what he would not do himself.

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