BLACKSBURG, Va., April 15 -- Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University issued the following news release:
Bill Pierson and his wife, Mary Ellen, had never set foot in Blacksburg before arriving from Purdue University in the summer of 1980. She was pregnant with their first child. He had just been accepted into a veterinary school that did not yet physically exist.
They turned off the highway, drove past campus, and saw an orange-and-maroon sign: "Future site of the College of Veterinary Medicine." Behind it, four concrete pillars stood in a swampy field.
"We both just looked at each other," Pierson said. "Oh my word. What have we done? We just bought swamp land in Florida."
They stayed. Four decades later, the Virginia-Marylan...