Pantzer succumbed in Spokane to pneumonia.
During his tenure, from 1966 to 1974, Pantzer was faced with student riots in the wake of Kent State, racial issues, classroom censorship and a work-study scandal that rocked the athletic department.
Pantzer was appointed to the president's post in 1966 after serving four months as acting president. As a graduate of UM's school of business administration, Pantzer had a unique, inside view of the university he was chosen to lead.
He had returned to UM to get his law degree in 1947 after serving in World War II from 1941-45 where he earned both a Purple Heart and the Bronze Star. He served on numerous political boards and as president of the Law School Alumni Association.
Pantzer's law career included stints as county attorney of Liberty County in Chester until 1950, Park County attorney from 1951 to 1955 and city attorney in Livingston until 1957, when he accepted a post at UM.
He served as a professor of business administration, financial vice president of the university and acting president before being named president.
Pantzer was, perhaps, best known for his response to the student riot on campus in 1970.
UM students had taken over the ROTC building while others protested peacefully on the Oval. He closed the ROTC building and asked those occupying the offices to leave the building. They complied.
"After Kent State (where National Guardsmen killed four students), going out on our Oval and talking to the students and respecting their opinion; allowing them to have a voice and not get out of control. ... It was amazing what he was able to do," said Bill Johnston, director of the UM Alumni Association.
In a report to the state Board of Regents about the incident, Pantzer wrote that college students, earlier criticized for their apathy, raised their voices in dissent over the Vietnam War and the deaths of the Kent State students, as did students at many universities.
"It was a very difficult time. All kinds of opinions from the Legislature whether he was right or not; should the students be allowed to do that. He held firm to what the university is all about," Johnston said.
In September 1968, Pantzer sent a statement of his beliefs to the regents in reference to requests to censure an English course.
"There are many, many preconceived notions by many people, and prejudices existing within them, about what should or should not take place in the classroom," he wrote.
"What may be the rule at the elementary or secondary level of education is quite different from the role of teaching and learning at the college level - at a time when the students are no longer children but when their maturity exhibits the need for them to free themselves from their prior, basically spoon-fed learning."
Later on in the statement, he wrote: "... the college student can only mature and gain a broad education by grappling with the strange, the bizarre, the unusual and the full breadth of human knowledge though some of that will be repugnant to many men."
Academic freedom at the university, Pantzer wrote, is "the place in the formal education process where the student must be free to learn, a freedom in its broadest sense, and likewise the teacher having like freedom to teach."
Johnston said as he has traveled around the United States, he's often asked about Bob Pantzer.
"Only a couple of alums have become president," Johnston said. "Wherever I would go, people would ask. He had a huge impact on people."
To honor him, the Robert T. Pantzer Award was established in 1974 and is presented to a person who has made a substantial contribution toward making UM a humane and free environment for inquiry and learning. A new dorm, Pantzer Hall, also honors the former president.
After retiring from UM, Pantzer became an administrator for the law firm of Rutan and Tucker in Santa Ana, Calif., in 1975. Several years later, Pantzer and his wife, Ann, moved to a retirement community in Santa Rosa on the edge of a golf course. There, they golfed and golfed and golfed, according to Pantzer's son David.
But they missed Missoula and moved back in the late 1980s. Pantzer became involved in many Grizzly activities as long as he could.
No public memorial ceremony is planned, said David Pantzer.
"My mom's desire and my brother's and sister's is to have a small family memorial for him," he said.
Robert Pantzer's body was cremated in Spokane and the ashes will be returned for the family observance.
For his obituary, see Page B3.
Reporter Donna Syvertson can be reached at 523-5361 or at dsyvertson@missoulian.com.
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