Ever Wonder Who Received the First Ph.D. at UNM?

Hec­tor Lee, Ph.D.

Marie Pope Wal­lis, Ph.D.

In his book “Mir­a­cle on the Mesa”, Bud Davis notes that two stu­dents — Marie Pope Wal­lis and Hec­tor H. Lee — were the first to get their doc­tor­ates at the June 7, 1947 commencement.

Lee’s degree was in Eng­lish — Amer­i­can Stud­ies, Amer­i­can Civ­i­liza­tion, and his dis­ser­ta­tion was titled, “The Three Nephites: The Sub­stance and Sig­nif­i­cance of the Leg­end in Folk­lore,” which was pub­lished by UNM Press in 1949. Lee went on to teach Eng­lish at the Uni­ver­sity of Utah and Sonoma State Col­lege in California. He pub­lished over eight books and many arti­cles and reviews. UNM has some of them, includ­ing “A Bib­li­og­ra­phy of the Archives of the Utah Human­i­ties Research Foun­da­tion, Salt Lake City”, in 1947; a col­lec­tion of record­ings of “Folkore in the Mor­mon Coun­try” in 1964 (which includes his own sto­ries); “Tales of Cal­i­for­nia from the His­tory,” “Folkore of the Far West”, 1974 and “Heroes, Vil­lains and Ghosts: Folk­lore of Old Cal­i­for­nia”, in 1984. He died in 1992.

Wal­lis’ degree was in Iber­ian Amer­i­can Studies/Spanish and Ibero Amer­i­can Lit­er­a­ture, and her dis­ser­ta­tion was on “Mod­ern Women Poets of Brazil.” She did a trans­la­tion called “Inter­sec­tion,” of the Peru­vian poetry of Teresa Maria Llona in 1950. A con­den­sa­tion of her Brazil­ian poets study came out in 1972. She was received into the Brazil­ian Acad­emy, one of the high­est hon­ors a lit­er­ary scholar can achieve.

A search of the Access News­pa­per yielded sto­ries about the pass­ing of Wal­lis in the Albu­querque Tri­bune of Nov. 24, 1975 and the Albu­querque Jour­nal of Nov. 29, 1975. In the Jour­nal arti­cle Marie Pope Wal­lis is described as the first UNM Ph.D. grad­u­ate.  (Per­haps 1947 chivalry pre­vailed and Pres­i­dent Wer­nette handed one to her first before Hec­tor Lee?)

Wal­lis had an amaz­ing life. She was from Iowa and beyond UNM had stud­ied and worked in Cal­i­for­nia and Okla­homa, as well as in Mex­ico, Puerto Rico and Peru. Wallis joined the Women’s Army Corps dur­ing WWI and help found the first army coun­sel­ing library. She became the first Civil Air Patrol Coor­di­na­tor for women pilots in New Mex­ico and the first in the U.S. to pro­vide avi­a­tion train­ing to teach­ers. Wal­lis set up the first Inter Amer­i­can train­ing pro­gram for New Mex­ico His­pan­ics in 1929, was the first Com­mu­nity Ser­vice Con­sul­tant for the State Pub­lic Wel­fare Depart­ment, and was the Albu­querque WPA zone direc­tor. Wal­lis served with the United Nations Relief and Reha­bil­i­ta­tion Ser­vice in war torn Europe, and was a vaude­ville actress who directed her own shows at the Albu­querque Lit­tle The­ater. She was also pres­i­dent of the Albu­querque His­tor­i­cal Soci­ety in 1966. 

Wal­lis earned six higher degrees, taught in the Albu­querque Pub­lic Schools, at the Laguna Indian School and in the UNM His­tory and Lan­guage depart­ments, as well as in Italy, Spain and South America. Some of her papers are at the CSWR and oth­ers at New Mex­ico State University.

Story by Nancy Brown Martinez