HAROLD W. STOKE, COLLEGE PRESIDENT (original) (raw)
HAROLD W. STOKE, COLLEGE PRESIDENT
https://www.nytimes.com/1982/04/07/obituaries/harold-w-stoke-college-president.html
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April 7, 1982
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Dr. Harold W. Stoke, an educator who served as the president of the University of New Hampshire, Louisiana State University and Queens College in New York, died last Tuesday in Seattle. He was 79 years old.
Dr. Stoke, an administrator who was known for remaining calm in moments of tension, served as president of Louisiana State from 1947 to 1951, when the university admitted its first black student. He headed Queens College from 1958 to 1964, when members of the Communist Party were banned from giving speeches there.
In his 25-year career, Dr. Stoke spent time at numerous colleges and universities and encountered a wide variety of experiences. Shortly after arriving at L.S.U. in 1947, for example, he waged a personal war against an atmosphere that he characterized as too ''candy and cake.'' Among other things, he instituted a policy that restricted student phone calls to the evening. Served on Government Panels
Dr. Stoke also served on a number of government panels, among them the Personnel and Education Commission of the National Science Foundation and the Tennessee Valley Authority. He was a historian and political scientist by training, and was the author of ''The American College President,'' published in 1959 by Harper & Row.
Dr. Stoke was born in Bosworth, Mo., on May 11, 1903. He was a graduate of Marion College in Indiana and received his doctorate from Johns Hopkins University in 1930. He served on the faculty of Berea College in Kentucky from 1926 to 1928. He then went to the University of Nebraska, where he was appointed dean of the graduate school in 1938.
In 1940, Dr. Stoke moved to the University of Wisconsin, where he became associate dean of the graduate school until 1944, when he became president of the University of New Hampshire. After leaving Louisiana State in 1951, Dr. Stoke was named dean of the Graduate School at the University of Washington and then in 1955 became dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences at New York University. In 1958, he became the third president of Queens College.
He is survived by his wife, Persis Warren of Seattle; a daughter, Marcia Simpson of Madison, Wis., and four grandchildren.
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