Heffner, Ray

Ray Lorenzo Heffner, thirteenth president of Brown University, was born in Durham, North Carolina, on May 7, 1925. His father, at that time a graduate student at Chapel Hill, was later a Spenser scholar at Johns Hopkins and the University of Washington. His mother taught high school Latin and English. Ray, Jr. went to Broadway High School in Seattle where a respected physics teacher encouraged him to be a physicist and a teacher unofficially involved in student guidance directed him to Yale. Although his aptitude was shown to be in the humanities, he was determined to become a physicist, leading his advisor, Professor Maynard Mack, to say, "I'll pray for you," and to draw him into the experimental English seminar for freshmen which Mack conducted. It was not, however, Mack's influence which made Heffner change his concentration to English. He came to that conclusion during his three years of World War II Navy service, which involved building coral airstrips at Eniwetok and Tinian with the 110th Naval Construction Battalion, and later studying Japanese at Stillwater and Oklahoma A & M before being discharged as an Ensign in naval intelligence.

Back at Yale, he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa, the Elizabethan Club, and Scroll and Key, and was on the Board of Deacons of Yale's Battell Chapel and Secretary of the Labor Party in the Political Union. He graduated in 1948. He earned his master's at degree at Yale in 1950. Advised to take a year off before committing himself to study for his Ph.D. degree, Heffner found a position teaching English at the University of Kentucky and also found Ruth Adele Kline, who was teaching a special English course for athletes. He even started a magazine for freshman writing, called The Green Pen, and required Miss Kline's help in supervising its publication. They were married before his return to Yale. With the help of a Yale College Fellowship and later a Sterling Fellowship, he received his Ph.D. degree in 1953. He wrote his doctoral dissertation on the Elizabethan poet Michael Drayton (and acquired a dog named Michael Drayton Heffner). His occupation during the following summer was assembling inner tubes for Armstrong Rubber Company. In the fall he went to Indiana University as instructor in English on the advice of Dean William C. DeVane, who had recommended that he "get away from the Ivy atmosphere" to gain wider experience. He was promoted to assistant professor in 1956 and associate professor in 1960. He resigned in January 1963 to become Vice-President for Instruction and Dean of the Faculties at the State University of Iowa. In June 1964 he returned to Indiana as full professor and Vice-President and Dean of the Faculties.

...