Memorial Resolution: H. Donald Winbigler, Ph.D.

H. DONALD WINBIGLER, Ph.D.

(1909-2000)

On August 5, 2000, with the death of H. Donald Winbigler, Stanford lost one of the last survivors among the central figures of President J.E. Wallace Sterling's 19-year administration. Professor Emeritus of Speech and Drama, Dean of Students for 17 years, before that University Registrar, and afterwards the first Academic Secretary, Don Winbigler was the quintessential faculty member-turned-University civil servant, always ready to accept a new assignment, to work where he was most needed in an institution that was enjoying a phenomenal rise to great prestige and attainments.

He was born in Alexis, Illinois, on June 3, 1909, and graduated from Monmouth College, Illinois, in 1931. He earned a doctorate in speech and drama at the University of Iowa, and came to Stanford as an assistant professor on the eve of World War II, in 1940. In 1949 he was made full professor, but by that time he had already begun his notable administrative career, appointed University Registrar in 1945 by then-President Donald Tresidder.

Five years later he was made Dean of Students by the new President, J.E. Wallace Sterling, and served in that position until 1967, just a year before Sterling's own retirement. In a 1992 tribute, Winbigler's old friend and colleague, Frederic O. Glover, longtime Executive Assistant to Sterling, said he met the demands of the deanship with boundless sympathy, good humor and unflappable composure. His nerves stood the test of panty raids, student pranks, a stripteaser who almost won the presidency of the student body, skirmishes with fraternities and with Chaparral, the student humor magazine. The "skirmishes," as Fred recalled at Don's retirement in 1974 "usually centered around a Crash Comics issue in which the student editors repeatedly underestimated the ability of the administration . . . to understand a dirty joke. The most celebrated such episode included a four-month suspension of the Chaparral's editor, Bradley Efron, who had produced a parody of Playboy magazine that was deemed offensive to the standards of that time. As Efron recalls the conflict, "It was clear that Dean Winbigler was only transferring the news of my suspension, and didn't like doing it very much. He was very nice about it. He wasn't a stern disciplinarian." Winbigler sent Efron a Christmas card every year for 20 years after that, and no doubt took pleasure in the fact that the erstwhile miscreant joined the faculty of the Statistics Department and, a quarter century after Don's retirement as Academic Secretary, chaired the Academic Senate in 1998-99.

Don Winbigler presided over the period in which student affairs work changed dramatically, thanks to the decline and surprisingly rapid fall of the traditional doctrine by which an institution of higher education served in loco parentis during the student's absence from home and biological parents. When Don took office, parietal rules were enforced, even to the point of a dress code, and punishment for infractions was meted out by Deans of Men and Women, generally with advice from handpicked students serving part-time as residence staff.

Gradually, through the decade of the 1960s, all of this structure came under fire from various quarters. Undergraduates became less parochial, as they attended overseas campuses or went to support civil rights in Mississippi. After a short, sharp crisis in 1964-65, provoked by the Dean of Women's clumsy attempt to enlist students to report on the sexual content of Freshman English teaching, the Deans of Men and Women disappeared, and the relaxation of parietal rules could hardly keep pace with the realities of student life. If it was fine for men and women to live in the same building in Florence, Italy, why was it treated as sinful in Florence Moore Hall on campus?

Protests against U.S. defense and foreign policy grew apace, beginning with a vigil against the University's plan to construct air raid shelters in 1963, and reaching the point of Stanford's first sit-in, at the President's Office in the Spring of 1966. Dean Winbigler's position grew increasingly uncomfortable, being seen more and more as someone carrying bad news for the central administration and less and less as the students' advocate in the higher councils of the University. Yet it was clearly the latter role that Don Winbigler preferred. At his retirement dinner in 1974 a letter was read from an African former student named Nkamara, who had flunked out of Stanford in 1954, but was given a second chance through the Dean's intervention and proceeded to receive both bachelor's and master's degrees from the University. He wrote:

I shall never forget the joy in Dean Winbigler's voice and his hearty laugh when he called me back to break the news. It was a father's satisfaction and happiness, and not that of a white academic adviser to a black boy from Africa.

The post of Academic Secretary was created in 1967 to provide staffing for the new Senate of the Academic Council, whose charter was nearing completion. The Senate first met informally during the summer of 1968, and officially in September that year. Don Winbigler served until his retirement from the University in 1974, and established the practices and procedures that made the Academic Secretary' office the Senate's institutional memory and the guarantor of continuity, since the occupant of the Chair changed every Fall. In the tumultuous times in which the new Senate was having to find its way, the Academic Secretary once again demonstrated the "boundless sympathy, good humor and unflappable composure" of which Fred Glover spoke. President Lyman told the Trustees in reporting Don's forthcoming retirement that he had "been absolutely invaluable in making the Senate the functioning academic government unit that it is." And Bill Clebsch, Senate Chair in 1969-70, wrote "Few are there to whom so many owe so much as to Don.

Although retirement at age 65 was still the norm at that time, Don Winbigler remained active in a number of volunteer roles. It was a mark of his institutional devotion to Stanford that he was involved from the start in the creation of the Stanford Historical Society and remained a mainstay of the Society, including a term as its President in 1980-81. For five years he was secretary to the Faculty Club. A resident of Los Altos Hills for 51 years, he was active in the civic life of the local communities, presiding over both the Palo Alto YMCA and Kiwanis Club and serving as a trustee of the Los Altos Foundation.

After the death of his wife of 61 years, Mary Elizabeth, in 1998, Don moved to the state of Washington to be near their son, Myles. In 1999 he created the H. Donald and Mary Elizabeth Winbigler Scholarship Fund to support Stanford undergraduates. His sense of humor combined with his lack of pretensions, as exhibited in a pastime that Myles Winbigler recalls: keeping a list of all the ways in which people managed to mangle his name, from Winbungled to Hinburgler to Winbaggle.

He was a faithful University servant and a widely loved and respected man.

Committee:

Richard W. Lyman, chair

Albert H. Hastorf

Bradley Efron