Donald Newton Dedmon (13 August 1931–13 February 1998), president of Radford College (later University), was born in Wright County, Missouri, and was the son of Clarence R. Dedmon and Ola Edith Garner Dedmon. He received a B.S. in education in English and speech from Southwest Missouri State College (later Missouri State University) in 1953 and taught high school before enrolling at the University of Iowa in 1955. There Dedmon received an M.A. in speech in 1956 and a Ph.D. in 1961 after completing a dissertation entitled "An Analysis of the Arguments in the Debate in Congress on the Admission of Hawaii to the Union." By September 1957 he had married Geraldine Mary Sanders, a native of Canada. They had two daughters.
Dedmon taught at Saint Cloud State College (later University), in Saint Cloud, Minnesota, from 1959 to 1962 and at Southern Illinois University, in Carbondale, from 1962 to 1964, when he became chair of the Department of Speech at Colorado State University. From 1966 to 1968 he was a communications consultant at the pharmaceutical company Smith Kline and French Laboratories, in Philadelphia.
In 1968 Dedmon became dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at Marshall University, in Huntington, West Virginia. Named executive vice president the following spring, he helped manage the university after the president resigned, effective 31 July 1970, and became acting president on 15 September of that year. On 14 November, the day after Dedmon had withdrawn his name from consideration as the university's new president, a charter plane carrying most of the members of university's football team, much of its coaching staff, and some fans crashed, killing all seventy-five passengers and crew. The 2006 motion picture We Are Marshall depicted Dedmon's role as the school's leader in the event's aftermath. The university hired a new president in January 1971. A few months later the executive vice president's position was abolished, and Dedmon shifted to academic vice president. In 1970 his article "A Comparison of University and Business Communication Practices" appeared in the Journal of Communication. During his career he published other work in such journals as Communication Education, Communication Studies, and the Quarterly Journal of Speech.
On 29 January 1972 Radford College, a 3,600-student women's school, founded as a teacher-training college, hired Dedmon as president to replace Charles Knox Martin, whose strict and outdated rule over the campus had spurred civil liberties-related lawsuits from both professors and students. Before Dedmon's arrival, applications, standardized test scores, and admissions had declined, while other Virginia colleges and universities had experienced growth in size and quality. Dedmon took office on 20 March 1972. During his first months on campus he lived in one of the campus dormitories and ate in the dining halls. An editorial in the school's newspaper described the new administration as "a great deal more than any of us dared even to hope for."
Dedmon spent his first year changing the social and admissions policies to reinvigorate enrollment and morale. The board of visitors surrendered control of students' off-campus lives and significantly loosened its regulation of their activities at the school. Dedmon announced that the all-female undergraduate school would become coeducational in June 1972 and gave three convocation speeches that autumn in which he called for reforming the college's internal governance and broadening the curriculum to prepare graduates for a wider range of jobs. In January 1974 Dedmon joined about 200 Radford students and faculty members at a General Assembly committee hearing to oppose a recommendation that Radford merge into Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. Five years after Dedmon arrived on campus, enrollment had increased about 52 percent, and he presented an inaugural award recognizing excellence in teaching to the principal faculty member who had been involved in the Martin-era lawsuits. Beginning in 1978 Radford also presented an annual Donald N. Dedmon Distinguished Teaching Professor Award.
During the remainder of his presidency, Dedmon fostered continued growth but also faced concerns about his governing style and Radford's academic standards. A year after his arrival, the campus newspaper complained that he had staffed the administration with his appointees in order to create a power base. In 1975 the same paper published an article charging that Radford's emerging reputation as a party school arose from the institution's need to drive up enrollment. A reputation for forsaking academics in favor of social life stuck to the school throughout Dedmon's time as president.
Radford nevertheless acquired university status in 1979, propelled by an expanding graduate program, and started taking on the trappings of a higher-profile school. It began linking itself with the region's Scots heritage by nicknaming its athletic teams the Highlanders, renaming the student newspaper The Tartan, and adopting a tartan-inspired color scheme in 1978. That same year Radford purchased a larger president's house, which provoked one of the first protests against Dedmon when a student threw a pie in his face at a Christmas party.
Dedmon oversaw continued growth in the 1980s. The 58,000-square-foot Donald N. Dedmon Center for athletic events opened in 1981, but naming it for the sitting president caused some complaints. In 1983 a member of the university's administration was fired after clashing with Dedmon and complaining that ideas not coming from the president were blocked. Some observers saw echoes of Dedmon's predecessor. Both men fostered growth but became entrenched and distant from the faculty. Dedmon's micromanaging style included requiring written permission to move furniture.
Dedmon's increasingly difficult position eroded when he spent much of the early 1990s away from campus, part of it on a Hawaii sabbatical and a great deal of time recuperating from a ruptured spleen at his South Carolina beach house. In 1993 an anonymous person asked the state to audit Dedmon's discretionary fund. The audit found no wrongdoing, but he repaid the state $2,862. After his administrative assistant received tenure later that year with the traditional six-year process waived, the faculty very nearly passed a vote of no-confidence in the president. The faculty referred to the board of visitors more allegations of wrongdoing with the discretionary fund and on 8 June 1994 turned over documents that led to a second audit. Dedmon announced his retirement the next day, though he officially held the presidency while taking medical leave until 15 August 1995. The investigation forced Dedmon to repay about $1,800. The Roanoke Times concluded that Dedmon's governing style, seen as both bureaucratic and autocratic, and not serious financial irregularities, had ended his tenure.
Dedmon spoke at Radford for the last time in September 1995 during the inauguration of his successor, Douglas Covington. He retired to southern Florida and never again communicated with the university. Donald Newton Dedmon died of a heart attack on 13 February 1998 in Naples, Florida.
Sources Consulted:
Birth and death dates in Social Security application, Social Security Administration, Office of Earnings Operations, Baltimore, Md.; Donald N. Dedmon Official Papers, McConnell Library, Archives, and Special Collections, Radford University, Radford, Va.; "A Day with the President," Radford University Magazine 1 (fall 1979): 2–7 (portraits); Roanoke Times, 30 Jan., 24 Mar., 9 June 1972; Radford News Journal, 31 Jan. 1972; Grapurchat (Radford College student newspaper), 10 Feb. 1972 (quotation), 21 May 1975; Richmond Times-Dispatch, 1 Feb. 1974; Washington Post, 14 Jan. 1979; Roanoke Times and World-News, 10, 11 June, 28 Aug. 1994; obituaries and memorials in Roanoke Times, 17 Sept. 1998, Richmond Times-Dispatch, 18 Sept. 1998, and RU: The Magazine of Radford University (Nov. 1998), 4.
Written for the Dictionary of Virginia Biography by Matthew S. Gottlieb.
How to cite this page:
Matthew S. Gottlieb,"Donald Newton Dedmon (1931–1998)," Dictionary of Virginia Biography, Library of Virginia (1998– ), published 2016 (http://www.lva.virginia.gov/public/dvb/bio.asp?b=Dedmon_Donald_Newton, accessed [today's date]).
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