Mayor Zeidler received first UWM Honorary Degree
By Brad Stratton
Frank Ziedler (right) and Paul Melrood,
a founding member of the UWM Alumni Association,
at the 2004 Fromkin
Lecture at UWM,
which dealt with Zeidler's tenure as mayor of Milwaukee.
Photo by Alan Magayne-Roshak
It was a little more than 48 years ago when Milwaukee Mayor Frank P. Zeidler was awarded the first honorary doctorate degree by the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Zeidler died July 7 at the age of 93. He was the third of Milwaukee’s three Socialist mayors in the 20th century, serving from 1948 to 1960.
For most of its first decade, UW-Milwaukee academics were overseen by the University of Wisconsin faculty in Madison. After the Madison faculty and University of Wisconsin regents approved the honorary degree for Zeidler in early 1958, the mayor was offered the option to accept the degree in Milwaukee or Madison. Zeidler chose to accept the honor in his Milwaukee hometown.
Zeidler’s acceptance letter shows both the humbleness and practicality for which he was well known throughout his long career of serving Milwaukee and Milwaukeeans. After telling UWM Provost (later Chancellor) J. Martin Klotsche that he was overwhelmed by the honor, Zeidler thanked Klotsche for providing the exact time of the ceremony and showed his appreciation that someone from the university staff had contacted him to learn his dimensions for the cap and gown he would wear at the ceremony. And in the margin, it appears the former mayor added in handwriting that the cap and gown would only be required “as a loaner.”
It was Andrew T. Weaver, a Madison speech professor, who presented Zeidler to receive the honorary degree at UW-Milwaukee’s second-ever Commercement ceremony on June 13, 1958. And it was Edwin B. Fred, president of UW-Madison, who bestowed the honor at the outdoor ceremony held at Pearse Stadium (present-day site of the Engineering and Mathematical Sciences, and Chemistry buildings).
The text of the honorary degree, which was read at the ceremony by Weaver, is a tribute to Zeidler’s numerous career accomplishments and his approach to governing. It reads, in part, “With clear vision and courageous leadership, he has attacked the perplexing problems of library and museum expansion, parking facilities, harbor improvement, slum clearance, traffic safety, human rights, and the enrichment of educational opportunities in city and state....
“Here at home, his life is an open book which reveals a man of irreproachable integrity and extraordinary administrative talent, devoted to the finest ideals of public service. In the turbulent maelstrom of politics he carries himself with notable dignity and poise.”
Fred conferred the degree with these words: “Frank Paul Zeidler, because of a distinguished record of service to this metropolis you have achieved eminence in the field of municipal administration; because you have enhanced Milwaukee’s world-wide reputation for clean and efficient government; and because you have given generous support to the program of higher education in Wisconsin, I take pleasure in conferring upon you the honorary degree, Doctor of Laws.”
All available records from that day suggest Zeidler did not deliver an acceptance speech.
In his books about higher education, Klotsche credits Zeidler for supporting high-quality university education in Milwaukee and for keeping Milwaukee’s university as close to downtown as possible. Zeidler favored locating the university downtown, where University of Wisconsin extension courses were held. If that was not feasible, Zeidler supported acquiring property surrounding the 30-acre campus Kenwood Boulevard campus on Milwaukee’s east side. An estimated $10 million in university structures existed on the land at that time. (Those 30 acres remain as the southern section of the university’s current 93 acres.)
Klotsche wrote that Zeidler favored the city location because “children of low-income families could best be served there, that this was where job opportunities were most available and that students could use public transportation to get their education, something that would not be possible on a campus located on the outskirts.” Zeidler knew the necessity of easy access to public transportation firsthand; he never drove a car.
The Milwaukee Journal editorialized on the topic of Zeidler’s degree in its May 7, 1958 edition. “If ever an ‘honorary’ degree has been scholastically earned,” it said, “it is the doctorate of letters that the University of Wisconsin regents have awarded to Frank P. Zeidler....The university honors itself by this happy decision.”
Historical documents courtesy of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Archives Department.
