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Beside the University of Virginia's famed serpentine walls, Stettinius walked a straight path. He taught Sunday School in an Episcopal church, became president of the campus Y.M.C.A., headed the under graduate honor system. Other students sometimes journeyed up to the Ragged Mountains to fill Mason jars with moon shine. Ed Stettinius went there only to do missionary work among the hillbillies. And as he neither smoked nor drank, fraternity brothers gave him a nickname: "Abstemious Stettinius." This was to distinguish him from an older brother (Big Stet), now dead, who was a more consistent hedonist, and known as "Continuous Stettinius."
His father thought Ed was taking evangelism too seriously, so he sent him abroad. His traveling companion was a philosophy instructor who has since become one of the University's legendary characters : William S. A. ("Billy") Pott, half Virginian, half Chinese. Billy Pott and Ed Stettinius bounced around Middle Europe in a second hand Fiat, stayed mostly at simple inns. The philosophical Mr. Pott (now president of Elmira College, N.Y.) helped leaven his companion's seriousness. Yet Ed was not unpopular in college: he was holy, but not holier-than-thou; he was elected president of the University's exclusive society of hell-raisers, the IMPs.
The Rise. Scrawled now across his academic record are the shining words "Phi Beta Kappa," but he won this not during the indolent early '20s as a student, but in 1941, when he was made an honorary member. In almost four years of college, he was out for two terms—once for sickness, once to travel. In the end, Stettinius earned only six of the 60 necessary credits, and did not graduate. "Abstemious" had particular trouble in a course in Government. Passing was 75; his grades were 54 and 57. Said Virginia's President John Lloyd Newcomb: "He certainly wouldn't be allowed to stay here today with those atrocious grades."
With his hair already greying, he drove about Charlottesville in an archaic model T, a seedy overcoat and a pair of trousers with a hole in the seat, conscientiously trying not to appear wealthy. And he helped put several fellow students through college, without ever mentioning the fact to anyone. He did such a good job of rounding up jobs around town for needy students that his organizing ability and earnestness are still remembered. This brought him to the attention of a Virginia alumnus—John Lee Pratt, a vice president of General Motors (Stettinius Sr. was a G.M. director).
In 1924, Pratt started young Ed "at the bottom," in a 44¢-an-hour stockroom job in a G.M. subsidiary. Within two years Stettinius was wearing a white collar and the title of assistant to Mr. Pratt. In another five years, he was himself a vice president of General Motors, in charge of industrial and public relations.