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Title
Oral history interview with Dorothea M. Lensch [Session 02, Part 1]
Date(s)
- 1978-03-10 (Creation)
Extent
Audiocassette; 00:32:10
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 3, Side 1. In the second interview session, conducted by Carol Spellman on March 10, 1978, Lensch speaks further about working with Paul Keyser, describes his parks philosophy, and talks about his work planning Peninsula Park, Washington Park and the Rhododendron Garden. She discusses fundraising to purchase land for park projects, and revisits the topic of her work setting up community centers in war housing projects during World War II. She talks about cultivating leaders through the Parks Bureau public programs, about bringing electricity to the parks, and about the campaign for a parks levy on the Portland city ballot at the time of the interview. She speaks further about the development of programs for children with disabilities. She shares her experiences as a woman in municipal government; looks at documents and photographs and talks about them; and discusses the development of Parks Bureau programs and youth centers for teenagers. She closes the interview by talking about race relations in Portland during the 1950s and 1960s, and their effect on public park programs in Portland.
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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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- Spellman, Carol (Contributor)