wealthiest families, in his campus home on faculty row. Heth, who lived at Whitethorne, an antebellum mansion on a 1,500-acre estate near Blacksburg, later died of his wounds in a Roanoke hospital. Due to the Heth family's wealth and political connections, Vawter's position as head of the VPI physics department, and the scandalous extramarital affair that led to the shooting, the resulting murder trial was one of the most sensational in Virginia history (Vawter was acquitted, and left the school). Eggleston attempted to suppress news of the affair in the media with considerable success, possibly due to the Russian Revolution and the US declaration of war on Germany that stole the headlines in the spring of 1917.
=== College reorganizations ===
During Thomas Nelson Conrad's tenure as president, the college switched from semesters to the quarter system, which remained in place until the late 1980s. Under the 1891–1907 presidency of John McLaren McBryde, the school organized its academic programs into a traditional …
