Dale Pontius has spent his life saying what he felt needed to be said. Sometimes that tendency for frankness made him a hero, at other times a villain. He spent much of his professional career as a political science professor at Roosevelt University, but he is best known in Chicago for his often high-profile way of staring down officials on a number of controversial issues.
Pontius was arrested for heckling the intensely anti-communist Sen. Joseph McCarthy in 1952, for example, when the junior senator from Wisconsin was giving a nationwide radio and television address at the Palmer House.
Pontius also made the front page of the New York Times in the early 1960s when he traveled to Moscow during the height of the Cold War and argued for global peace, criticizing both the United States and the Soviet Union.
Thursday Pontius celebrated his 100th birthday, and he did it surrounded by well-wishers at the university where he kicked up so much fuss.
True to form, the political scientist is still opinionated, still passionate, still standing for what he believes in. He uses a cane these days to support his tall, wiry frame, but he has no trouble taking the stairs to his third-floor walk-up apartment in Hyde Park. In a conversation with Tempo, he talked about prohibition and Vietnam, Harold Washington and the Democratic Party. Here is an edited transcript:
Q. You seem to have been embroiled in one controversy or another for much of your career. How did you become such as activist?
A. I didn’t really see myself as an activist. I guess I simply spoke up and said when I thought things were not true or that a wrong had been done. If I didn’t agree with something, I would say so. I have never regretted saying what I thought was right.
Q. You protested the war in Vietnam and served in World War II. Are you against wars in general?
A. I do know for sure that I was against World War II but I was drafted, so it didn’t matter much. In that case, I did conform. But for Vietnam, I protested in the streets. I even walked up and down the sidewalk right there near the Tribune building. But it was a peaceful protest, of course.
Q. You were not only a professor but an outspoken political advocate. Did you always identify with one particular political party?
A. Well, I think I would have said I was a Republican in college. But the longer I lived, the more I identified with the Democrats on issues. I actually broke with the Republicans over prohibition. I was against prohibition and the Democrats kind of had that position. I thought it was a matter of individual choice.
Q. I have read that former Chicago Mayor Harold Washington (Chicago’s first black mayor) was once your student assistant. What is your most interesting anecdote about him?
A. Well, I do remember one time that Harold was with me when I traveled to Springfield for some political matter. And I remember that when we got down there and it got to be nighttime, we had to find a place to stay. There were four of us and three of us stayed with one family and because of the way things were back then, Harold stayed someplace else. He said, “I have got some friends down here.” But it just bothered me, you know, that I didn’t know where he slept.
Q. It is interesting that Roosevelt University, where you are a retired professor, is hosting a celebration in your honor when it seems that you were often at odds with the administration during your tenure.
A. It is true that I wasn’t popular with the administration. Even when I retired (in 1971), there were other professors who stayed on longer past retirement age but that was not done for me. I guess they had had enough of me. But look at how things turned out (he laughs).
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ctc-tempo@tribune.com
