Parrington Oval - University of Oklahoma - Norman, Oklahoma
Posted by: gparkes
N 35° 12.583 W 097° 26.730
14S E 641493 N 3897407
The Parrington Oval is named after Vernon Louis Parrington. Many college buildings are along this oval, along with the historic markers indicating their past.
Waymark Code: WM8A3B
Location: Oklahoma, United States
Date Posted: 02/25/2010
Views: 10
The narrative on the marker reads:
Parrington Oval
This part of the campus is named in honor of Vernon Louis Parrington (1871-1929). Born in Illinois, raised in Kansas, and educated at Harvard College, he came to the University of Oklahoma on September 8, 1897 to teach English. When he arrived the campus consisted of a single building on this oval which now bears his name. For the next eleven years he threw himself into every aspect of the life of the University. He edited and then served as advisor to the school newspaper; he was the University’s first football coach and he played on the baseball team; he assumed responsibility for publishing the University’s Catalogue: he literall built the Department of English from nothing; he even made a meticulous study of campus architecture in the United States and proposed a far reaching plan for the future development and layout of the University’s buildings.
Vernon Louis Parrington was a brilliant, magnetic, and beloved teacher. For eleven years, he introduced the youth of Oklahoma to the beauties and importance of literature. One of his students wrote: “People everywhere were charmed with him, with his appearance and with his manner. Among students he made disciples…”
In 1908 in a highly controversial move, the Board of Regents, not known for its tolerance, fired the pioneering President David Ross Boyd and six outstanding faculty members including Parington. Six more faculty members resigned in protest.
Later in his illustrious career, in 1927, Vernon Parrington won the Pulitzer Prize in History for the first two volumes of his masterful and pathbreaking study of American literature Main Currents in American Thought.