PSU, community arts activist dies

Adam Smeltz

Jules Heller, who helped lead the first Central Pennsylvania Festival of the Arts and was founding dean in the Penn State College of Arts and Architecture, died Dec. 28. He was 88.

Heller died in Arizona, where he lived in Scottsdale after retiring from Arizona State University in 1985. Complications from cancer were the cause of death, his family reported.

He long stressed “the importance of genuine interdisciplinary thinking by all university people — so that scientists understood the artists, and artists understood the scientists,” said Gloria Heller, his wife of 66 years.

She said Heller, an artist, professor and university administrator, was eager to help all students make “arts part of the society, including the political.”

Born and raised in New York City, Heller earned degrees at Arizona State University, Columbia University and the University of Southern California.

During World War II, he served in the U.S. as an instructor in the Army Air Force.

His career in teaching soon grew, as he held visiting professorships in Thailand and Argentina. He also led the USC Fine Arts Department before Penn State invited him to be founding dean in the College of Arts and Architecture at University Park.

The Heller family moved to State College in 1963 and stayed through 1968.

Gloria Heller, a political scientist, said her husband’s task was to build a plan for the incipient college. Doing so took him a year, she said.

“His vision was to bring all of the arts into one college. They had been spread out among various departments,” Gloria Heller said.

The college now incorporates visual and performing arts, art history, architecture, landscape architecture and music education. It enrolls about 1,900 students.

Before the arts college was solidified, daughter Nancy Heller said, “Penn State was certainly on the map” for its reputation in agriculture and football.

“But it hadn’t had the same concentration on visual and performing arts,” she said. The college “made other people in the arts, and beyond the arts, aware of the (university).”

Indeed, Gloria Heller said, Jules Heller’s biggest impacts at Penn State included the creation of a regular performance series and programs to draw visiting artists, dancers, musicians and philosophers.

As part of that outreach, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. visited Rec Hall in 1965 and spoke before a crowd of 9,000.

He, like other prominent visitors in that period, were entertained at the Hellers’ home in West College Heights, on Westview Avenue.

Violinist Isaac Stern, author James Michener and a young Joan Baez were some of the others who made appearances.

“The object was to enlarge the knowledge base and the exposure base of the student body as well as the community,” Gloria Heller said. “I must say it was met with great enthusiasm.”

Jules Heller also was general chairman of the first Central Pennsylvania Festival of the Arts, held in State College and on campus in 1967.

The State College Chamber of Commerce initiated the event and sought Heller’s — and Penn State’s — support, former chamber President Wallis “Wally” Lloyd said.

“I think the university was always interested in getting people here,” Lloyd said. “It was a way to get people here in the summer.”

Heller left Penn State in 1968, when he was recruited to lead the Faculty of Fine Arts at York University in Toronto. From there, in 1976, he returned to Arizona State.

He served as a dean there until his retirement.

In addition to his wife, Heller is survived by two daughters and their respective husbands: Jill Heller and Charles Davis, both of New York, and Nancy Heller and Robert Regan, both of Philadelphia.

Also surviving are two grandchildren, Sonia and Evan Davis.

Adam Smeltz can be reached at 231-4631.