ARMSTRONG, Warren B(ruce) 1933-2004

OBITUARY NOTICE— See index for CA sketch: Born October 16, 1933, in Tidioute, PA; died October 1, 2004, in Grand Lake, OK. Historian, educator, administrator, priest, and author. Armstrong was a history professor and former president of Wichita State University. First studying theology at what is now Baptist Bible College of Pennsylvania, where he earned his Th.B. in 1956, he completed a master's degree at the University of Michigan in 1958. While working on his doctorate, Armstrong began teaching history at Olivet College. He completed his Ph.D. at the University of Michigan in 1964, and the next year accepted a position at the University of Wisconsin at Whitewater. Here he taught during the late 1960s, also serving as assistant dean of the College of Arts and Sciences and becoming associate dean from 1969 to 1970. During the early 1970s, Armstrong was dean and professor of history at St. Cloud State University in Minnesota. He was then named president of Eastern New Mexico University in 1975, where he worked until 1983. That year, he was hired to lead Wichita State University. During the next ten years, Armstrong would do much to bolster academics at the university, including adding a number of doctorate programs, establishing the National Institute for Aviation Research, and successfully implementing the university's first major fundraising program. Leaving administrative work in 1993, he remained at Wichita for several more years as a history professor. He also was ordained an Episcopal priest, authored the book For Courageous Fighting and Confident Dying: Union Chaplains in the Civil War (1998), and edited Populsion Revived: The Selected Papers of Governor Joan Finnay (Kannas), 1991-95 (1998).

OBITUARIES AND OTHER SOURCES:

periodicals

Los Angeles Times, October 9, 2004, p. B19.

online

Wichita State University Web site, http://webs.wichita.edu/ (October 1, 2004).