Born in Villisca, Iowa in 1919, Harold Leroy Enarson grew up in New Mexico. His brother, sister and father all died of tuberculosis, and Harold worked while attending high school to support his mother. He graduated from Albuquerque High School in 1936 with a scholarship to attend the University of New Mexico, where he graduated with honors in 1940. While at the University of New Mexico, he met his wife, Audrey Pitt from Crown Point, New Mexico, whom he married in 1942. After graduation, he worked in the Bureau of the Budget in Washington, D.C., and enlisted in the Army after Pearl Harbor. He served from in the Pacific and European theaters from 1943 to 1946, when he was wounded in Germany. After World War II, he finished his master's degree at Stanford University and resumed his position as a budget examiner for the U.S. Bureau of the Budget. He taught at Stanford, served as executive secretary to the Steel Industry Board and as a consultant to the National Security Resources Board. He earned his Ph.D. in political science from American University in 1951 before serving two years as labor affairs assistant on the staff of President Harry S Truman. In 1954, he took up the position of assistant director of commerce for the City of Philadelphia, and served as executive secretary to the mayor of Philadelphia. He also spent six years as executive director of the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education (WICHE), based in Boulder, Colorado. WICHE was designed to improve cooperation and resource-sharing among higher education administrations in the West. His academic career began when he was named Administrative Vice President at the University of New Mexico in 1960, becoming the Academic Vice President a year later. There he created a four-year medical school, and he developed one of the nation's largest Peace Corps training programs for Latin America. He was later awarded the James F. Zimmerman Award for his contributions. In 1965, he accepted the presidency of the newly established Cleveland State University, a position he would hold until 1972. During the tumult of the Vietnam years, Enarson worked to encourage student participation and ensure that student's voices were heard and to increase enrollment of women and minorities. His presidency of OSU began in 1972, and he immediately went to work to protect the University's funding during a time of state budget cuts. He was also a Professor of Public Policy and Management. He oversaw great changes on campus, including the establishment of the Departments of Black Studies and Women Studies, the Office of Minority Affairs and the OSU Child Care Center. After retiring in 1981 as President Emeritus, he was a senior advisor to WICHE and a commissioner on the Colorado Commission on Higher Education for 15 years, and served on a special oversight committee established by the Northern District Court of Alabama to respond to Title VI remedy actions on racial discrimination in universities. In 1992, he received the "Distinguished Service Award" as Public Higher Education Board Member of the Year from the Association of Governing Boards of Universities and Colleges. Harold Enarson died on July 28, 2006, in Port Townsend, Washington.
From the guide to the Harold L. Enarson Papers, 1971-1981, 1972-1981, (The Ohio State University Archives.)
