H. Willard Reninger

From Philosopedia

H. Willard Reninger (20 March 1900 - 13 December 1988)

Reninger was born in Youngstown, Ohio. He received all of his academic degrees from the University of Michigan: his B. A. in 1924, his M. A. in 1927, and his Ph. D. in 1938.

Professor Reninger started his career as a high school teacher in Detroit but soon moved on to college level teaching. He taught at the Michigan State Normal College as well as the University of Michigan before coming to the Iowa State Teachers College in 1939 as an associate professor of English. Professor Reninger was promoted to Head of the English Department in 1940. In 1943 he took a leave of absence in order to join the US Navy, being commissioned a Lieutenant Senior Grade and sent to Missouri to teach in the V-12 program.

An important member of the college administration along with Professor William Lang and other faculty members, he helped to develop the new Humanities program for the college. In addition, he sat on the committee that suggested changing the name of the Iowa State Teachers College to State College of Iowa, which was not effected. In 1961 Professor Reninger was named a Fulbright Scholar and went to India for a year to teach American Literature at the University of Gorakhpur and Lucknow University.

Reninger's most famous student was Mona Van Duyn, who was appointed US Poet Laureate and won a Pulitzer Prize for her poetry. He is also remembered for bringing James Hearst, one of Iowa's finest poets, to the college faculty.

One of his students, Warren Allen Smith '48, recalled the following:

• H. W., as some of us called him (who of us knew his first name!), was feared as well as loved. With the free G. I. Bill that financed my education, I returned to the school in which I already had studied for two years. I had been on Omaha Beach and spent a year working as the Chief Clerk of the Adjutant General's Office, Hq. Oise, in Reims - he and the A. G. both had a military snap in their walk and their talk. When I switched from being a music to an English major, I had to get his permission. Waiting a long time in his office, I saw a person leaving who had come to get a job. "What that guy needs," I heard him say to the secretary as I entered his private office, "is a red steak, a double shot of whisky, and a redhead! And what do you want, young man?" he said gruffly to me almost in the same sentence. It was too late to leave, so I explained that I'd written in my college newspaper column an article that asked if the honorary music frat, Phi Mu Alpha, was anti-Semitic, and wondered if I could switch my major from music, where I was becoming persona non grata, to English inasmuch as I had so many credits. "You're the reporter who wrote there's only one correct way to pronounce 'pianist,' aren't you?" I said yes, that people played a pee-AN-o, not a PEE-a-no, adding that I was a pee-AN-ist. Whereupon I got a private lesson in prescriptive grammar and how I should read his material about descriptive grammar. At some meeting I attended when he described seeing and hearing T. S. Eliot, I laughed at his acerbic comment, "When Eliot entered the room, the room's temperature dropped several degrees!" Although I didn't look forward to returning to his private office, he did call me back just before I got my B.A. to say he had heard good things about me from departmental members. He was jovially avuncular, not at all what I'd first pictured him to be. He appreciated my putting in a plug for two faculty members in his department, Fagan and Cowley. Years later, the New York City recording studio I founded took UNI tapes of poet Jim Hearst reading his own poetry, and I produced an LP as well as a disc, sending H. W. copies. Our correspondence over the years was inspiring. When I learned that he had instituted the humanities course at ISTC, and I had followed suit upon heading the New Canaan High School English Department in Connecticut, he was pleased when also he learned I had become a descriptionist in grammar. When I did my M.A. thesis with Lionel Trilling about "the seven humanisms," he was amused at my categorizations and unhesitatingly said he was a freethinker and an Emersonian.

Reninger retired in 1968 but came back to the University in 1970 to serve as Acting Vice President. He served in that position for one year.

A scholar as well as a teacher and administrator, he published articles in journals such as American Literature and American Schoolmaster. He co-authored several publications including an American Literature textbook designed specifically for Indian students; Interpreting Literature (1960), a textbook that went through a number of editions; and A Psychological Approach to Literary Criticism (1933).

Professor Reninger was also active as a member of the Modern Language Association of America, the National Council of Teachers of English, and the American Association of University Professors. He was a member of the Iowa College Conference on English and served as its President from 1946-1948 and its Vice President from 1941-1942.

H. W. Reninger died December 13, 1988. He was survived by his wife Bette, son John, and daughter Katherine. {See entries for John Cowley, Brock Fagan, and Warren Allen Smith.}