Archives and Special Collections Mansfield Library, University of Montana Missoula MT 59812-9936 Email:
[email protected] Telephone: (406) 243-2053 This transcript represents the nearly verbatim record of an unrehearsed interview. Please bear in mind that you are reading the spoken word rather than the written word. Oral History Number: 270-066, 067, 068 Interviewer: Annie Pontrelli Interviewee: LeRoy W. Hinze Date of Interview: June 23, 1992 Project: University of Montana Centennial Oral History Project Annie Pontrelli: LeRoy, we’ve talked about so many interesting things before I even started the tape, but let’s start out by talking about some of your University related experiences. Just for the record, why don’t you tell me first your affiliation with the university, the years you were there and we’ll continue on from there. LeRoy Hinze: I came here in the fall of 1947 to establish the academic program in theater. H.G. Merriam had been chairman of the English department since shortly before the First World War and they sponsored some work in theater and some work in speech. Many good people had been on campus here in both fields long before I came. After the war, there was an explosion in enrollment with all of the G.I.s coming back. It was pretty obvious to H.G. and everybody else that if these programs were to really mature—well, survive first of all—there would have to be separate departments for speech and for theater. Ralph McGinnis, who had been here before the war doing the work in speech, was assigned the job of establishing a department of speech and I was hired to establish the department of theater.