James K. Hitt

Your daily dose of news, notes and links from around Kansas University.

• James K. Hitt, a former longtime KU university registrar, died last Friday at the age of 96.

Hitt worked at KU from 1940 until 1977.

The middle initial became something like tradition, said Richard C. Morrell, who served as university registrar after Hitt, who left KU to become the vice president for student affairs at the University of Central Missouri.

The registrar before Hitt was another man who used his middle initial named George O. Foster, who also served KU for a long period of time.

So long, Morrell said, that Foster and Hitt both served as president of the university registrar’s professional organization, the American Association of Collegiate Registrars. Foster did it in 1915, and Hitt did it 50 years later, in 1965.

Morrell joked that he, at one point, hoped to become the organization’s president 100 years after Foster in 2015.

But it was through the association that Morrell got to know Hitt, because everyone would ask about him at the meetings.

So he reached out to Hitt after coming back from one of the meetings, and the two of them set up regular lunches. Morrell remembered that Hitt had a reputation as a stern taskmaster, but he found him to be a kind and gentle personality, who continued to serve as a gentle caretaker for his wife, who suffered from Alzheimer’s disease as he got older.

Morrell enjoyed Hitt’s many stories of older days at KU, and remembered that the first year of six-digit KU ID numbers (today they are seven digits long), was 1955, and basketball star Wilt Chamberlain got one of the early six-digit numbers that year.

“So I don’t know what Wilt Chamberlain’s ID number was, but I bet it was really low,” Morrell told me.

• I heard from a number of sources that the KU delegation that went to Eutin, Germany, this past weekend to perform a concert was greeted there as a rousing success.

Frank Baron, a KU German professor, told me that the city of Eutin has contributed some funding for a return trip over the summer, so many more students will likely have the chance to travel to Eutin for a summer festival later. Baron said specific details are still being worked out, but that the initial reception from German officials were a good sign.

• Speaking of KU musicians, student Evan Epperson, a member of the Louisiana Street Band, told me that his band recently was named national champions of General Mills’ U Rock! Battle for the Best contest.

The band rode a wave of student votes to a competition in Los Angeles before a panel of judges from the music industry.

The University Daily Kansan described their music as inspired by the Beatles and Neil Young. And, as one band member told the paper, they’ll never use Auto-Tune. “And that can go on the record,” band member John Skoch told the Kansan.

You can hear some of their music on their MySpace page.

Heard on the Hill will never have a MySpace page. And you can put that on the record. Send me tips the old-fashioned way — by e-mail! — at ahyland@ljworld.com.