Memorial Statement
Dr Marilyn Marie Hinson (AAKPE Member #271), age 72, retired from Texas Woman’s University since 1992 and living in Heber Springs, Arkansas, died Monday, January 17, 2005, after a multi-year battle with esophyseal cancer. Many of us, both faculty colleagues and ex-students, visited Marilyn and her companion Dr Barbara Gench over the years, enjoyed their hospitality, and the beauty of the wooded setting, near a fish-filled lake, where their mobile home sat. Always present, also, was Pepper, Marilyn’s beloved black cocker spaniel. Like all of Marilyn’s dogs of the past, Pepper could do more tricks than any animal we’d ever seen. As with human students, Marilyn was a phenomenal teacher of canines, and many of us went to her for help in training our own dogs. Generally Marilyn and Barbara entertained out-of-doors, where we spent hours entertained by Marilyn’s gift for telling anecdotes, stories, and jokes. She was conversationally one of the most fluent and interesting persons I ever known and was always surrounded by a circle of appreciative friends sitting around a campfire or at a picnic table. This was true also on the many RV camping trips that Marilyn instigated after moving to Arkansas, when she and several friends from Denton joined a women’s RV group and took to the road for days at a time as a means of continuing to see each other on a regular basis and to enjoy the leisurely lakeside living that fulltime employment at TWU had made impossible.
Marilyn Hinson was born in El Paso, Texas, on July 15, 1932, and grew up as an only child. She graduated from high school in Dening, NM, earned a bachelor’s degree from Western New Mexico University, a master’s degree from Indiana University, and a doctoral degree from the University of Minnesota. Before joining TWU’s faculty in 1970, she taught at Beloit College and the University of Wisconsin at River Falls. When I first met Marilyn in 1970, she was still limping from a serious ski accident and was totally ready to return home to Texas. She never talked much about the past, but I gathered that she had taught a variety of subjects, mostly oriented toward exercise physiology and biomechanics, and had coached basketball.
In 1970, I was teaching all of TWU’s biomechanics (then called anatomy and kinesiology) as well as the research classes afforded by our College, and Marilyn and I got acquainted as we divided up the tremendous amount of work "in the science areas" to be done in the College of Health, Physical Education, Recreation, and Dance (later this became the Kinesiology Department), where faculty (regardless of tenure and rank) typically taught 4 or 5 courses each semester and, if qualified, also directed at least 6 master’s theses and doctoral dissertations. Academy member and AAHPERD leader, Anne Schley (Nancy) Duggan, was still Dean, and this was the era that we oldtimers now call "the Golden Age." We worked day and night, because Dean Duggan expected it and because she had attracted a group of faculty who loved their work and were strongly committed to the 2-year requirement of physical education for all university students as as part of their liberal education (equal to the other academic subjects) and to high quality professional preparation.
Marilyn taught a variety of courses and directed much research during the tenures of Deans Anne Schley Duggan, Aileene Lockhart, and Jane Mott. As a teacher, researcher, advisor, menter, and committee chair, Marilyn was one of the hardest workers I have ever seen. Moreover, I have never known a classroom teacher as much beloved and revered as Marilyn Hinson. Within our College, Marilyn was the one to computerize the teaching of statistics as well as the functioning of our secretaries and willing faculty. Small wonder that, when the time was right, she was elected by our faculty to be Chair of the Kinesiology Department and later Dean of the College!!!
Soon, however, upper level administration wanted Marilyn, and she could never say "No." First, she accepted the position of Registrar and Director of Admissions, with the expectation that she would computerize this office and later the entire campus. This accomplished, she was appointed Provost of the University and recognized as a leader of university-wide activities, including writing of the final reports of numerous accreditation studies and other administrative endeavors. For a while, Marilyn tried to teach one or two classes in addition to her fulltime administrative positions, because she loved the teaching so much. But this was impossible!!! Marilyn, attired in a dress and heels each day (the expectation at TWU at the time), worked day and night. Her friends (including me) seldom saw her. When Marilyn retired in 1992, she almost immediately left Denton for the beautiful wooded lot in Arkansas, a chance to enjoy nature, fishing, golf, old and new friends, and all of the things that she had denied herself for years. We miss her greatly.
