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Title
Oral history interview with Dorothea M. Lensch [Session 01, Part 1]
Date(s)
- 1977-10-20 (Creation)
Extent
Audiocassette; 00:25:45
Name of creator
Biographical history
Dorothea Marie Lensch was born in Portland, Oregon, in 1907. She earned a bachelor's degree in health and physical education from Mills College in Oakland, California, and in 1930 she earned a master's degree in health from Wellesley College in Wellesley, Massachusetts. She was head of the dance departments at Rockford College and at George Washington University. In 1936, she returned to Portland and became director of recreation at the Portland Parks Bureau, now known as Portland Parks and Recreation. In 1965, she became the first person to earn a doctorate in recreation from the University of Oregon in Eugene. She greatly expanded recreation programs and facilities for the city's parks, and retired in 1972. She died in 2000.
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Scope and content
Tape 1, Side 1. In the first interview session, conducted by Mischa Creditor on October 20, 1977, Lensch discusses her early life in Portland and her education at Mills College in Oakland, California; at the University of Oregon in Eugene; and at Wellesley College in Wellesley, Massachusetts. She speaks about her work as director of recreation for the Portland Parks Bureau from 1936 to 1972. She shares her reasons for returning to Portland after living and teaching on the East Coast for a decade, talks about lobbying for the bureau's plans to expand community recreational programs, and discusses her work setting up community centers in war housing projects during World War II. She talks about developing and funding youth sports programs, including programs for children with disabilities; speaks at length about the people she worked with in the Parks Bureau, particularly Paul Keyser; and discusses working with Portland city government and other city departments. She describes the circuses that the bureau once produced. She speaks about organizing and funding the bureau's youth camp programs, particularly the camp for children with disabilities.
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Copyright for this interview is held by the Oregon Historical Society. Use is allowed according to the following statement: Creative Commons - BY-NC-SA, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/
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- English
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Name access points
- Creditor, M. Mischa (Contributor)