John Massengale, Professor Emeritus of Kinesiology at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, passed away at home on November 27, 2013. John was a good friend to many of us in NAKHE and other professional and academic societies, a mentor to still more, and a leader in kinesiology who helped to develop the profession of physical education into the discipline of kinesiology. He will be missed by all who knew him.
John D. Massengale was born in Pontiac, Michigan in 1939, and grew up in the Detroit area aspiring to be an athlete. After graduating from high school in the late 1950s, John moved to Missouri where played football at Northwest Missouri State University and studied physical education and sociology. This was the beginning of a 50-year academic career that revolved around sport, physical education, coaching, and higher education and which lasted until his retirement in 2008.
John’s first professional duties were as a high school physical educator and coach from 1963 to 1967, first in Kansas City and then in Illinois where he earned his masters degree at Illinois State University. In 1967 John moved to Albuquerque, New Mexico, where he studied for his doctorate while working as an assistant football coach and adjunct instructor of physical education. It was at this point that John demonstrated the ability to balance his professional life as a coach with his academic life, a skill that the developing field of physical education promoted and which many of his contemporaries aspired to, but which few mastered as well as John.
John was proud of the New Mexico doctoral program of that period and spoke fondly of his days there as a student. He often noted that all of the graduates in his cohort at New Mexico either became a department chair or senior academic administrator, or published textbooks in physical education. Led by faculty such as Larry Locke, John’s fellow students at New Mexico included Ron Feingold, Chuck Corbin, and others who would became well-known scholars in our field.
In 1969, John moved to Eastern Washington University taking the position of assistant professor of physical education and assistant football coach. In the late 1960s the “model” faculty in higher education physical education was being redefined, and John took advantage of these changing times by living as a “Renaissance Man,” a faculty capable of teaching, coaching, and writing. Not all of his contemporaries agreed with this model (at the time the idea of publishing was relatively new in physical education) but John excelled at all three and thereby demonstrated that this model was doable.
John moved through the faculty ranks at Eastern Washington in record time, earning associate professor and tenure two years after joining the faculty, and promotion to professor – and promotion to head football coach – in 1975. It is amazing to think that anyone could achieve tenure and promotion to professor in six years, let alone promotion to head football coach while earning tenure and academic rank. John managed to do all of this simultaneously, a simply remarkable achievement. Similar accomplishments are unheard of in contemporary kinesiology. In retrospect these achievements show how John was a leader in the field. He was the kind of person who believed that one should take advantage of the opportunities that present themselves, and he did just this in his own career.
In 1975, John accepted the position of Department Chair of Health and Physical Education at Eastern Washington University, a role that began his career as an academic administrator. He also served as Athletic Director. As AD, John argued that there were faculty and coaches who could perform both academic and coaching duties, and set about demonstrating this by hiring coaches who held doctorates.
His successes illustrate how universities were changing – and how senior university administrators can be hypocritical about intercollegiate athletics. As AD, John was under increasing pressure from his university president to hire coaches who could win, and this implied 100% commitment to their coaching duties and a lesser role for their academic responsibilities. John argued that he could hire coaches who were also academics, qualifications that his president felt could not be met.
John proceeded to hire basketball and baseball head coaches who held the doctorate. In classic doublespeak, Eastern Washington’s president proceeded to boast in the press that Eastern Washington was the only university in the country to have head coaches in all major men’s sports who held the doctorate! John’s career as an athletic director ended unceremoniously, though, when he went on vacation one year and, upon his return, found that Eastern Washington had a new, full-time athletic director. When asked how he felt about this change and the way it was made, John characteristically explained his president’s actions in terms of how higher education and intercollegiate athletics were changing; with humor, without animosity, and with insight.
It was during this time that John established himself as one of the leaders of what is now the National Association for Kinesiology in Higher Education (NAKHE), and what was at the time two separate societies: the National College Physical Education Association for Men (NCPEAM) and the National Association for Physical Education for College Women (NAPECW). In the late 1970s, John and other leaders of these organizations worked to combine them, and this effort led to the formation of the National Association for Physical Education in Higher Education (NAPEHE, and later NAKHE), an organization over which he would preside in 1995. The joining of the NCPEAM and NAPECW was politically difficult, and John noted that NAPEHE membership dropped from over 2,000 to around 1,200 as a result of the merger. John, however, worked steadily to promote both the field as well as NAPEHE, and presided over the organization during its most successful conference with Ernest Boyer, then the President of the Carnegie Foundation, keynoting.
John left Eastern Washington to take the position of founding dean of the College of Human Performance and Development at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas in 1986. It was in this role where John flourished as an administrator, and he continued on as a faculty member in 1993 after stepping down as dean. John picked up where he left off as faculty, publishing his fifth book with Dick Swanson, History of Exercise and Sport Science, in 1997. He continued to teach and write up until his retirement in 2008. In retirement John traveled to all of his professional society meetings with regularity and continued to mentor those of us who sought him out in that role.
As a professional friend and mentee, and later a personal friend, I realize in writing these words that no obituary can capture a life. These highlights and anecdotes of John’s life simply do not describe the richness that John brought to all of us who knew him and who came to love him. He simply lived life excellently, and those of us who looked forward to seeing him at every NAKHE conference or other professional venue were influenced by him in ways too numerous to fully describe in such a short space. It will have to suffice to say that John Massengale was simply a “man in full,” one who really did strive to be excellent in every capacity. And what is so remarkable is that he took so many of us along with. As one who benefited so much from his mentorship and advice I can say that I am thankful for having known him, and known him well. For that I will always be grateful. Farewell, old friend.
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