DescriptionVideotaped oral history interview with Robert and Ellen Solender. An executive at the Dallas Times Herald for more than twenty-five years, Robert Solender was head of the paper's advertising department in 1963. Ellen Solender, a longtime SMU law professor and social rights activist, was vice president of the Dallas chapter of the League of Women Voters in 1963. The Solenders were politically active at the time of the assassination and attended both U.N. Ambassador Adlai Stevenson's speech in Dallas on October 24, 1963 and the Dallas Trade Mart luncheon on November 22, 1963.
Interview conducted at The Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza on October 27, 2004 by Stephen Fagin. The interview is fifty-six minutes long.
Curatorial Commentary
During his long career at the Dallas Times Herald from 1949 to 1975, Robert Solender rose to the position of vice president and general manager. Upon leaving the newspaper, he founded his own real estate consulting firm while concurrently serving as director of NorthPark National Bank for twenty years. He passed away on November 10, 2008.
Ellen van Raalte Karelsen Solender sought a law degree at the age of forty-four and became a professor at Southern Methodist University, serving on the faculty from 1973 until 1994. Shortly before her death on August 1, 2015, she donated $2 million to the SMU Dedman School of Law to fund an endowed chair for women in the law. The Ellen K. Solender Institute in Free Speech and Mass Media Library at the Dedman School of Law was founded in her honor. --Stephen Fagin, Curator
