In November 1985, I was a VMI cadet in my junior (2nd class) year. At VMI, there are several remarkable events that occur during cadetship, with one of those being the annual November Ring Figure weekend which celebrates the receipt of a cadet’s VMI college ring.
Ring Figure is an important milestone in every cadet’s college experience, which usually includes a military “Pass in Review” parade led by the second classmen, a weekend football game, and a formal dance and party celebrating the receipt of one’s class ring. In 1985, Ring Figure was scheduled for the weekend of Nov. 8.
On or about Nov. 5, the famous flood of ‘85 struck Southwest Virginia, including Roanoke, Lexington and all areas in between. Despite being just three days away from the big Ring Figure weekend, the VMI administration mobilized the majority of the Corps of Cadets, deploying us to Goshen, Glasgow and Buena Vista to assist with flood recovery efforts.
Academic classes were cancelled and all available cadets were trucked out to different parts of the county to help out in any way possible. Many of us spent hours shoveling mud from homes situated along the Maury River; collecting random personal effects that ended up on the streets or in people’s yards or disposing of volumes of trash and debris that had collected around tree trunks, in bushes or on porches across every part of the county. The sheer volume of damage and the invariable discovery of domestic pets that failed to escape the ravaging floodwaters were the most heartbreaking memories of that week.
Although most of the VMI Corps continued the relief efforts throughout the weekend, true to tradition, the 2nd classmen managed to clean themselves up on Friday by noon, just in time to greet their Ring Figure dates upon their arrival at VMI on Nov. 8. Despite Mother Nature’s best efforts to cancel Ring Figure, we went forward with the celebration, albeit tempered by sights and situations we’d experienced over the prior 72 hours. For those of us who worked it, the flood was definitely the most impactful event of the year for cadets attending VMI in 1985. Craig Covert VMI ‘87 Collierstown
THE VMI yearbook from 1986 included these two shots, one of the devastation in downtown Buena Vista and the other of cadets removing furniture from Dominion Bank.
