Walter Neustadt Jr. loved the University of Oklahoma and served it as few others have. Make a list of high-level boards and committees at OU, and Walter probably served on them—often chairing them. The Bizzell Memorial Library Board of Directors? He was on it. The OU Foundation Board of Trustees? He chaired it from 1976 to 1985. The Alumni Association, the OU Press Board of Directors and the Seed Sower Society? Yes, he was a member of all three. The OU Board of Regents? Of course, and he served from 1969 to 1976. 

I count at least 30 such boards, committees and commissions, and there are likely more. Walter’s service to OU will probably never be matched, but it also provides a lesson about the role of courage in a difficult political and social environment, much like our own, skewed by extreme polarization.

Walter was a family man, and much of what drove him started from that fact.  In 1950, he and Dolores Susan Krasne met and married that same year in Kansas City, Mo. They settled in his birthplace of Ardmore, Okla., where the couple had three daughters. Walter quickly showed himself to be a leader and a highly successful businessman with the Westheimer-Neustadt Oil Company, which later became Neustadt Land and Development. Though growing a business and raising a family, he still found time to serve OU through commitments that approximated a full-time job. 

Walter’s business success opened possibilities for charitable giving, and he was eager to give back to his community. He often told others (I heard this from him myself) that philanthropy should be less about the donor’s ego and more about actually doing real good in the world and improving people’s lives. In the early 1970s, while still in his 30s, Walter began supporting OU in incredibly thoughtful, strategic ways—just as he approached everything—and started a personal quest to transform OU into an institution with enhanced national prominence.

His family’s generosity to OU had begun years earlier, including when Walter’s mother, Doris Westheimer Neustadt, led her family to endow the Neustadt International Prize for Literature in 1969. Walter built on that tradition, and by the 2000s the long list of Neustadt contributions to OU included land for a university airport, a major renovation of Bizzell Memorial Library, two prestigious literary awards, a student scholarship fund, and the endowed position I now hold as executive director of the World Literature Today organization (my personal favorite of their many gifts!). 

Walter was also an idealist, and his conception of leadership arose from deep convictions about democratic institutions, free speech and a willingness to support important causes. In 1970, for example, students protested peacefully on the OU campus after the death of students at Kent State University. Annoyed by the students’ actions and OU President J. Herbert Hollomon’s willingness to allow the protests, Oklahoma Gov. Dewey Bartlett moved to fire Hollomon.

Walter joined with other OU regents in defiance of the governor and kept the president in place. He was well aware of Hollomon’s shortcomings, which he candidly noted in a letter to the president. But Walter feared that Bartlett’s political interference would harm the university in a variety of ways. He chose the wise course of advocating for everyone’s return to a focus on OU as an institution serving the State of Oklahoma and the nation. 

In 1975, the OU Speaker’s Bureau invited Angela Davis, who was politically active in the Communist Party and Black Panther Party, to campus for a talk. When some at OU opposed her visit on political and ideological grounds, Walter publicly supported her. He noted the university’s important, unique role as a major forum for free speech and open debate. He and those supporting the talk won. To this day, there are still people at OU who remember when Walter bravely defended democracy and free speech. 

In 1982, referencing Walter’s courage in defense of the university and its public responsibilities, OU President William S. Banowsky nominated him for the Council for the Advancement and Support of Education Ernest Stewart Award for Alumni Volunteer Involvement in acknowledgment of his constant willingness to promote the university’s critical mission in a free society.

He served OU during difficult and tumultuous times.  Like Walter, we currently live in an environment of polarized values, political extremism and social strife. Faced with such challenges, we are truly fortunate to have the example of his intellect, integrity and courage to guide us. I see his influence in how his daughters, Nancy, Susan and Kathy created an OU international literary award—the NSK Neustadt Prize for Children’s and Young Adult Literature. This award celebrates stories from around the globe—in effect, inviting, as Walter did, differing and sometimes unusual perspectives into a circle of free exchange, critical debate and discovery on OU’s Norman campus.  

His spirit also lives through us as we remember how he promoted OU’s stature, financially and through long service, in every way possible. Walter loved OU and wanted it always to be known as an institution celebrating and strengthening democratic ideals. We would do well to remember his example of working tirelessly to advance that goal even when doing so meant that he had to stand alone.

In January 2010, Walter Neustadt Jr. died at the age of 90. 

Robert Con Davis-Undiano is executive director of  World Literature Today and serves as both OU’s Neustadt Professor and a Presidential Professor of English. He is an inductee of the Oklahoma Higher Education Hall of Fame.

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