On the last day of August, 2007, on the grounds of the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, John William Warner, one of the most honored and popular United States Senators in the history of the Commonwealth of Virginia announced that he would not seek an unprecedented sixth term.

Warner entered the Senate in January of 1979 after a long career of service to his country, which began, officially when he was a boy of 17.

Born in 1927, in Washington, D.C., he left St. Albans School in 1944 to join the Navy. Discharged at war's end as a Petty Officer 3rd Class, he was admitted to his father's alma mater in Lexington, Virginia, Washington & Lee. His father died the same year. Young Warner graduated in 1949 and entered law school at the University of Virginia.

When war broke out in Korea the next year, Warner joined the Marines, and served as a ground officer with the 1st Marine Air Wing and later in the Marine Corps Reserves.

After the war, Captain Warner returned to UVA, where he was awarded a law degree in 1953. After graduation, he served for a time as a law clerk under US Court of Appeals Judge E. B. Prettyman, and then as an Assistant US Attorney. In 1960, he entered private practice.

In February, 1969, President Richard Nixon made him an Undersecretary of the Navy. Three years later, in May, 1972, he succeeded John Chafee as Secretary of the Navy.

Though Warner has, over the years, become the iconic senior Senator, the quintessential "gentleman from Virginia," he entered politics almost by accident. In 1978 the Virginia GOP chose Richard Obenshain instead of Warner as its candidate for Senator. When Obenshain was killed in a plane crash just months later, Warner became the Party's candidate. He won a hard-fought campaign against a former Virginia Attorney General, the popular Democrat, Andrew Miller, and has been "Senator Warner," ever since.

On Wednesday, November 14, Senator Warner talked with the Eccentric about his beloved state of Virginia ... past, present and future. Excerpts from that conversation follow.

The Piedmont

"I've often said, I've traveled the world, I've traveled every town, village and crossroads in the great State of Virginia, but there's nothing like that Piedmont region. From Leesburg, down to Warrenton; with Middleburg at the heart of it, up to Aldie, I know every square inch of it. I just love it dearly. It was my home for many years. I started there in the late 1930's on a farm, worked with all dray horses. We rarely used tractors ... only when we did threshing of the orchard grass, and then the wheat and barley, and then at corn-cutting time to fill silo. The rest of the time I was relegated to working in the horse barn and in the fields, and I loved it. That's where I learned my love for horses and the outdoors."

"My love for this district has no limitations, and I often come down to speak to the Piedmont Environmental Council and urge them on to protect what can never be replicated or recreated."

The World War at 17

"People don't think much about it now, but in the fall of 1944 and the winter of 1945, there were a number of very serious battles, beginning with the Battle of the Bulge in Europe in December ... followed then, in the Pacific, by Iwo Jima ... and the battle of Okinawa. My whole age group of youngsters, 17 years old, were anxious to join. It wasn't any big deal. We just felt that we had to join because of the intensity of the fighting in that period of time. We all ran around and enlisted! I enlisted in the Army Air Corps ... I enlisted in the Navy, and I wanted to enlist in the Marine Corps ... but ... you had to have parental consent. So I enlisted, and waited patiently at home to see whichever letter would come. The Navy letter came first. I didn't quite finish high school. I just went on in. I'm not suggesting that I'm anything special. We all did it, all of us who were 17 years old.

On the End of the War

I never got overseas. I was in the training command the whole time. Our age group was training to go in on the invasion of the mainland of Japan. I remember well when the Atom Bomb dropped, transformed the war, and quickly brought it to an end. ... We were grateful. All you have to look at is the Battle of Okinawa, where we had casualties of 38,000 ... killed, wounded, or missing ... in a period of nine weeks, I think it was. It started on Easter Sunday and ended nine weeks later ... 38,000 men in a period of nine weeks ... The invasion would have been deadly ... and I think more so for the Japanese civilian population than for the soldiers on both sides.

On Becoming a Virginian

My father's family came from Amherst, Virginia, a little village untouched, almost, to this day. I used to start my campaigns there, on the Courthouse steps .... I came out of the Navy and went to Washington & Lee, my father's school. My father graduated in 1903. I'll never forget ... he was dying ... really in his last days. I came home in my sailor's suit and we sat in his library and he said, "I'd like to have you go to school at Washington & Lee." And I said, "Well, Daddy, I haven't really finished high school." And he said, "Well, I'll work on it." I remember it well. He called Francis Pendleton Gaines, the President, spoke to him, and then told me "Trot on down. They're going to look you over." I went ... and enjoyed three wonderful years there and got my degree, and then went on to the University of Virginia.

Almost a Newspaper Man

I almost became a newspaperman early in my career. In those days The Fauquier Democrat was owned by ... Hubert Phipps ... and Phipps' home was about a mile from where I lived in Atoka. He took a liking to me. He was a great horseman; a great polo player ... and I later acquired the polo field he built and ... several other properties he'd owned ... because he knew I wanted to keep the land the way it was ... and he liked that. One day he said to me, "Would you be interested some day in owning the paper?" I said, "Well, you know, I'm now practicing law ... but ... I'll take a look at it!" And he said, "Well, if I pass on, its in the general estate, and my son (who at that time was just a youngster) will have first call on it." Well, he died, and his son expressed no interest in it to my recollection, and the trustees of the estate put it up for sale. I went in and put what I thought was a very good bid down, and the trustees, and Fauquier Bank, and everyone else it seemed, thought that I would get it. Then, out of nowhere came another bidder, a woman, who topped my bid and got the paper. She struggled with it for a couple of years, and in that interim, four of us started The Piedmont Virginian, a little newspaper that came out weekly. It was a wonderful little paper, and we had a lot of fun with it, and made, I think, a contribution. ... it had been designed to promote the preservation of historic properties and things of that nature. But, then someone I'd known very well, Nick Arundel bought the Fauquier Democrat and started doing what I thought was a pretty good job ... which led us to decide to allow the slow demise of the old Piedmont Virginian.

The Sixties

In the sixties I had not yet begun to get into political life very much. I had gone to law school with Bobby Kennedy. I knew him, and his brother, then "Senator Kennedy." They were always trying to lure me into the Democratic Party ... but I was still, "apolitical" so to speak. And then I married into a very famous Republican family, there are a number here, the Mellon family, and that was a wonderful expansion of my sphere of life and existence. Paul Mellon took me under his wing and did so many wonderful things for me and it was he who encouraged me to go into public life. I attribute what success I've had to Paul Mellon and to one or two others who said, you know, you're destined to do public life. So here I am, finishing up 30 years in the Senate, the longest serving Republican Senator in the history of Virginia, second only to Harry Byrd in overall service. I remember well the early days of the civil rights movement. I'd been in the US Attorney's office in Washington, as an Assistant US Attorney and saw a great deal of the last vestiges of legal discrimination ... the large number of African Americans arrested and sent to trial underrepresented by the legal profession. I helped start, with some others, an adjunct to the Georgetown Law School ... a small segment of that law school which is still in existence to train young lawyers in criminal practice and so they could do pro bono criminal work. It's not well known, but ... I was much taken ... by the swiftness with which Martin Luther King was gaining a foothold in so many ways. I went down, just as a spectator and stood in the proximity of the Lincoln Memorial during the great march on Washington. I still recall ... the emotion of the crowd ... it was enormous. And in my own psyche, in my own mind at that time, it played a role in kindling thoughts of a role for me in politics. In later years I was pleased to be one of two or three members of Congress who helped get the legislation through to create his memorial here in Washington on the tidal basin. I also played a role in doing some of the most simple things; helping folks like Jane McClary to get things like running water and sewer service extended to some of the predominantly African American communities near Middleburg. But, despite some of my affiliations with what you might term some of the liberal causes of the '60s, once I got into the center of gravity of politics, I was very definitely aligned with what I would call the "conservative moderate" wing of the party ... and I've remained that way ... perhaps drifting a little more towards the conservative ... but certainly the center-right is where I've tried to maintain my base throughout my political career.

What's Changed and Why?

Change in Virginia has been driven by several factors. Number one is the burgeoning growth of the Nation's Capital and the growth of the Federal Government. That drew a lot of people in, and that, in turn expanded the suburbs. Then the co-location of the military industrial complex that's a central part of our national defense system ... in Northern Virginia ... transformed this area. But we still have an agricultural base .... I used to love to farm. I had a nice farm there in the Middleburg/Upperville area for many years.

Middleburg

Despite, or perhaps because of its reputation for fox hunting and the rural life, many many good people retired to the Middleburg area and continued to lead extraordinary, active lives. Very active. And they can discuss international politics, domestic politics, literature, and the rural situation as well. I've always found great intellectual stimulus there.

What Still Keeps You Awake at Night?

I'm gravely concerned about the military. A considerable portion of my mind and time is devoted to thinking about that, around the clock ... I had two careers in the military ... one in the Navy in World War Two ... another in the Marines during Korea ... and they were ... my roles, that is ... were of no great consequence. I just did my duty as millions of others performed theirs. But it enabled me ... through the GI Bill ... to finish Washington & Lee ... and after the Korean War another GI Bill got me through the University of Virginia's Law School. So I've always felt that I have a personal debt to the military ... and I've devoted much of life here trying to repay it. I've been on the Armed Services Committee for 29 years ... I've been Chairman of it three times ... and I've had a marvelous opportunity to work with the men and women of the armed forces all over the world.

Which of Your Achievements Pleases You Most?

If you ask me what is the single most important achievement as a Senator for Virginia, it's the following. I love to fish and I've fished the streams of Virginia here, there and everywhere, and many a time on the Shenandoah River, which, unfortunately, and for reasons biologists can't exactly determine, is not supporting a healthy fish stock any more, sporting fish or otherwise. I continue to try to channel small amounts of money into research ... to study what the problems are. The river's sick, for some reason. But the Rappahannock is one of my favorite streams, and I've fished it, and canoed it, from one end to the other. For many years we looked at an old coffer dam, built sometime in the early 1800's, which blocked the natural migration patterns of spawning fish from the Atlantic Ocean, through the Chesapeake Bay, and up the Rappahannock and its tributaries to the Blue Ridge Mountains ... particularly the native Shad, and the eel, and herring and so forth. I spent fifteen years in the Senate trying to get the funds, and working my way carefully through the environmental laws (and I say that respectfully.) Finally, we got a permit through the Army Corps of Engineers and I was the one who got to push the plunger and blow up the old coffer dam. We blew it up, and tore a bridge down, and restored the river, as best we could, to the state it was in when man first inherited this region. Now the spawning fish travel freely from the Atlantic to the shadows of the Blue Ridge Mountains, almost as far as Culpeper.

Virginia's Natural Resources

I think it will always have a very strong place within our Federal Republic of Fifty States. Its future, I think, is somewhat dependent on the ability of citizens today to see themselves as trustees ... to allow reasonable growth ... but not to allow that growth to take away the important and magnificent natural resources and beauty that we have in this State. I'm working quietly, and I swear I'll get it through, on legislation to protect Route 15 from Gettysburg to Charlottesville, "The Journey Through Hallowed Ground." It's through the Senate, but is being held up, for technical reasons, along with a bloc of five other similar bills for other states ... but I think we'll get there. And we're just finishing setting up another wilderness area in the southwestern part of the state.

On the Greenhouse Effect

My most recent foray into the environment is what they call the "Lieberman-Warner Bill" which is being marked up here in a few weeks, to put us into the cap-and-trade for greenhouse gases, which speaks to the core of a major controversy about the implications of man's production of those gases on our nation's environment and our basis weather patterns.

On the Virginia Delegation

I'll tell you one other unique thing about Virginia ... the Congressional Delegation from our state has worked very closely together on behalf of Virginia, irrespective of our political affiliations ... regardless of whether we're Republicans or Democrats. And we're the envy, here in the Congress, of other states, for the way in which we all work together for the common interest of Virginia.

On the Corps

There's a certain bond between people who've served together in the Marine Corps. That's true. It has something to do with the rigor of our training, that's just not duplicated elsewhere ... and the bonding of a small group ... we're relatively quite small in numbers compared to the Army and the Navy and the Air Force ... and we feel that we're bonded for life as Marines, and that carries forward. I make no claim to be one of great valor or achievement in the Corps ... I just did my small part ... and stayed in as a reserve for another ten years after the Korean war.

On Interviews with John Warner

Frankly, the less said about me, the better ... that's my attitude.