William S. Banowsky

Banowsky was born in 1936 to a religious family.[6] He was raised in Fort Worth, Texas, where as a teenager he preached at Church of Christ congregations.[6][7] He attended David Lipscomb College in Nashville, Tennessee, where he studied history and speech on a baseball scholarship.[2][6][7] He received his master's degree in speech from the University of New Mexico.[2] In 1959, Banowsky became an assistant to Norvel Young, the president of George Pepperdine College.[7] The same year, he enrolled in a PhD program in speech at USC.[6][7] Within two years, he had advanced to the role of dean of students at Pepperdine, and in 1963 he completed his PhD.[7]

In 1963, Banowsky became the minister of the Broadway Church of Christ in Lubbock, Texas, a congregation of about 2,000 people.[6][7] In 1968, Banowsky returned to Pepperdine as executive vice president of the school's South Los Angeles campus. He helped the school raise $36 million to fund its expansion to Malibu.[7] In 1971, he was named the fourth president of the recently re-christened Pepperdine University.[7] His presidency saw the expansion of the university from 1,000 to 8,000 students and from 33 acres to 650.[6] He also expanded the university's assets from $8 million to more than $100 million.[4][8]

During his tenure at Pepperdine, Banowsky was involved in Republican party politics.[9] He was the chairman of the Los Angeles County Committee to Reelect the President and also the California Republican National Committeeman.[4][7] He considered running for the U.S. Senate in 1976,[7] but he decided against it.[10] In 1975, Banowsky expected to be nominated by President Ford to the position of undersecretary of the Department of the Interior, but the nomination fell through.[11] He also served as a fundraiser for Ronald Reagan in the 1970s.[12]

In 1978, Banowsky was named the tenth president of the University of Oklahoma.[13] During his tenure at Oklahoma, the university's endowment more than doubled, as did the size of the Bizzell Memorial Library.[14] In 1982, he resigned to become the first full-time president of the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce.[4] Just six weeks after taking the position, however, Banowsky regarded the decision as a "major mistake in judgment" and returned to his position at Oklahoma.[12] Banowsky left the university again in 1984 to head Gaylord Broadcasting, and in 1988 he was named executive vice president of National Medical Enterprises.[8]

Banowsky died April 28, 2019, at the age of 83.[2] He was the author of several books, including The Malibu Miracle, a memoir about his time at Pepperdine, and The Mirror of a Movement, a history of the Churches of Christ.[15][16] Banowsky Boulevard, a street on the Malibu campus of Pepperdine University, was named in honor of his service to the university.[2]