Harrison, A. Cleveland 1924- (Allie Cleveland Harrison)

PERSONAL:

Born August 17, 1924, in McRae, AR; married Marian Blair Gammill, June 22, 1946; children: Kathleen Louise, Lee Cleveland. Ethnicity: "Caucasian." Education: Little Rock Junior College, A.A. (with honors), 1947; Ohio State University, B.S. (cum laude), 1949, M.A., 1951; University of Arkansas, M.A., 1958; University of Kansas, Ph.D. (with honors), 1967. Religion: Presbyterian.

ADDRESSES:

Home and office—Auburn, AL. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

Little Rock Junior College, Little Rock, AR, instructor in English, 1949-50, instructor in speech and theater and director of theater, both 1951-57; Little Rock University, Little Rock, assistant professor, 1958-59; University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, assistant professor, 1959-63, associate professor of basic fine arts, 1963-69, professor of speech and dramatic art and department chair, 1968-70, department head, 1963-70; Auburn University, Auburn, AL, professor of theater, 1970-91, head of department, 1970-79 and 1989-91. Military service: U.S. Army, 1943-46; served in European theater; received Bronze Star and Purple Heart.

MEMBER:

National Collegiate Players, Phi Theta Kappa, Phi Delta Kappa, Alpha Psi Omega, Omicron Delta Kappa.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Fellow of National Endowment for the Humanities at University of Iowa, 1979; Alabama Theater Hall of Fame Award, Alabama Conference of Theater and Speech, 1996; Forrest C. Pogue Prize, Eisenhower Center for American Studies, 2001, for Unsung Valor: A G.I.'s Story of World War II; selected as member of fine arts faculty for Academy of Teaching and Outstanding Teachers, Auburn University, 2003-04.

WRITINGS:

(With V.L. Baker, R.T. Eubanks, and K.B. Hart) Principles of Effective Speaking, Braun-Brumfield (Ann Arbor, MI), 1963.

The Ladies of Fashion: An Adaptation in Verse of Moliere's "Les Precieuses Ridicules," Literary Discoveries (San Francisco, CA), 1965.

The Dramatic Theories of Dion Boucicault: A Study of Statement on Dramaturgy in His Published Essays, University of Kansas (Lawrence, KS), 1967.

Unsung Valor: A G.I.'s Story of World War II, University Press of Mississippi (Jackson, MS), 2000.

Contributor to history books. Contributor to periodicals, including Playbill, Quarterly Journal of Speech, Players, Educational Theater Journal, Arts in Society, Pulaski County Historical Review, and Journal of Aesthetic Education. Associate editor for drama, Southern Speech Journal, 1969-75.

SIDELIGHTS:

A. Cleveland Harrison told CA: "I spent my career as a professional educator, teaching speech, oral interpretation, acting, and directing at the university level, concerned with interpreting the written works of others. In retirement, I decided to interpret events that I considered of vital significance in my life in my own words. Initially, that meant describing my adventures in the Army of the United States in World War II, the most exciting and traumatic events of my life, for my children. Once I embarked on the project, I discovered that little had appeared by ordinary soldiers during the war, and that most war memoirs had been written by statesmen, generals, diplomats, and heroes. As an ordinary guy, I had extraordinary experiences in combat and military government with significant persons in important places not mentioned by others. So I wrote what happened in the Army Specialized Training Program, the 94th Division in the United States, Lorient, France, the Battle of the Bulge, the Army medical pipeline for the wounded, and military government in Versailles, France, Frankfurt-am-Main and Berlin, Germany. The publication and success of Unsung Valor: A G.I.'s Story of World War II proved to be an interpretation of events that interested others.

"Since then, I set out to recall my childhood in Little Rock, Arkansas, in the 1920s, 1930s, and early 1940s, convinced that Americans know little about Arkansas history except for the integration crisis at the senior high school and the election of Bill Clinton to the presidency. Even many Arkansawyers today don't know that most people in the state still lived out in the country in 1930, most on farms, two-thirds of them working someone else's land, raising cotton that was tilled on more than half the state's acreage. Even in the few cities and towns, the number of clerical and managerial white-collar jobs was small, with less than one-tenth of the population working in wholesale and retail trades, and fewer than five percent of the population were considered to be professionals. By the time the Great Depression was underway, Arkansas had already suffered floods, droughts, tornadoes, race riots, and bankruptcies; so the trends merely worsened.

"A series of essays that I wrote for the Pulaski County Historical Review suggests that, even though Little Rock's population remained below 100,000 throughout the 1920s and 1930s, the city equaled much larger cities in the United States in modern municipal conveniences, the public school system absorbed the best in American educational trends and courses were taught by teachers with college degrees at a time when most teachers around the state did not possess them. I believe that my personal, middle-class experience in Little Rock schools from elementary through junior high, high school, and junior college reflected public school education in the political, economic, educational, and cultural center of Arkansas during the Great Depression. These essays will be the basis of a book to be called Family Blessings: Growing up in Little Rock before World War II. I hope the narrative of my life will reveal what middle-class family life was like then."