Raymond Muse Papers, 1947-1975

Born in 1915 in Webster County, Missouri, Raymond Muse graduated from Marshfield High School in 1932. He taught in a one-room country school near there while attending Southwest Missouri State College, where he graduated in 1938. He taught from 1938-1940 at the experimental Pipkin School in Springfield. He entered the Stanford University graduate program in 1940. While attending Stanford, Muse taught English and was a residence counselor at Menlo School and Menlo Junior College. His masters thesis was "The Constitution of Provincial Massachusetts."

Muse served in the U.S. Army from 1942 to 1945. Following the war, he returned to Stanford University where he completed his Ph.D in 1948. His dissertation evaluated the work of William Douglass, a physician and historian in colonial America.

In fall 1948, Muse became an instructor in the department of history and political science at Washington State University. The following year he was promoted to assistant professor. By 1956, he had become chair of the newly formed department of history, a position he held until his retirement in 1979, by which time the department had developed an excellent national reputation. When he retired, Muse was the longest-serving department chair in WSU history. He played a significant role in WSU's efforts in the 1960s to create the American studies program, expand ethnic studies and expand faculty governance.

His two favorite courses for teaching were the Introduction to American History (where he could excite potential history majors) and American Constitutional Law (where he could excite students about the important legal and social issues of the day).

He served as advisor to Crimson Circle, Phi Alpha Theta, Phi Kappa Phi and other student groups.

Muse participated in a variety of professional and governmental organizations. He was a fervent supporter of civil liberties and free speech, demonstrated best perhaps by his testimony in the landmark John Goldmark libel trial in 1964 and his ongoing participation in Washington politics.

The eighth floor of WSU's Orton Hall dormitory is named in Muse's honor, as is the history department office.

Muse had a tent or cabin beginning in the early 1950s with Paul and Lois Castleberry at the Beaver Creek Camp, on the thoroughfare between Lower and Upper Priest lakes in Idaho where other WSU faculty families had leased or purchased land from the US Forest Service.

Muse married former teaching colleague Alberta "Bertie" Baldridge of Springfield, Missouri, in 1942. She taught music and was a church organist. They loved gardening and traveling. She died in 1968.

In 1969, he married Marianne Johnson, widow of Verner L. Johnson of the WSU College of Veterinary Medicine and a longtime family friend. In 1971, Muse introduced his stepson Kyle to Carol Harding, the granddaughter of former WSU history colleague Herman Deutsch. The pair married 10 years later.

Raymond Muse died in 2003.