Lowell Harrison
Dr. Lowell Harrison was born in Russell Springs, Kentucky, on October 23, 1922, to Chester and Cecil Harrison. Dr. Harrison served in the Army during WWII and saw active duty as a combat engineer with the 104th Division in Europe. In 1946, he graduated from WKU with a major in history and earned an M.A. (1946) and a Ph.D. (1951) from New York University, where he taught history and worked in university administration.
It was in New York that he met his wife Elaine “Penny” Harrison, who was working at the Admissions Office of NYU and pursuing graduate work. They married on December 23, 1948 at Washington Square Methodist Church. They were married for 63 years before his passing in 2011.
In 1951-1952 he was a Fulbright Scholar at the London School of Economics. From 1952 to 1967 he taught at West Texas State University, where he served as head of the Department of History. In 1967, he and Penny moved to Bowling Green. There Penny worked as the manuscripts librarian at the Kentucky Library and Lowell joined the History Department as a senior scholar and graduate adviser. Twice elected to the Board of Regents, he retired from full-time teaching in 1988, but continued to teach part time until 1994.
Actively involved in research and writing, Dr. Harrison was the author or editor of some 15 books, including The Civil War in Kentucky, Western Kentucky University, and A New History of Kentucky. He also published 115 articles in various publications and authored several hundred book reviews. He was widely praised for his work, receiving the Faculty Excellence Award at West Texas State University in 1965, the Minnie Stevens Piper Foundation Texas Faculty Award in 1966, the WKU Faculty Research Award in 1971, and the Public Service Award in 1986. In 1999, he was elected to WKU’s Hall of Distinguished Alumni, and in 2001 he received the Thomas D. Clark Award for Excellence in Kentucky History from the Center for Kentucky History and Politics. Finally, in 2010 he was awarded the Kentucky Historical Society Distinguished Service Award.
Lowell was also active outside of his teaching, writing, and editing career. He served on various state historical organizations including the Editorial Board of the University Press of Kentucky, the Publication Committee of the Filson Club and the Kentucky Historical Society, the Kentucky Oral History Commission, the Governor’s Advisory Committee on Public Documents, the Kentucky Historical Records Advisory Board, and the Kentucky County History Project.
To honor Lowell’s incredible work on the Hill and beyond, family and friends established the Lowell Harrison Scholarship Fund on September 19, 1997. The fund was created to assist deserving full-time WKU upperclassmen majoring in history. Through this fund, Dr. Harrison’s legacy as a historian and educator carries on in perpetuity.