LEXINGTON — Adron Doran, who for 23 years was president of Morehead State University and was a formidable politician as well as an educator, died Thursday afternoon at University of Kentucky Hospital after a brief illness. He was 92.

        Dr. Doran, who lived in Lexington, had been hospitalized Oct. 21 with what friends characterized as heart disease.

        Morehead State was a sleepy teachers college with 700 students when Dr. Doran became its president in 1954. The school gained university status in 1966. Enrollment had increased tenfold — to nearly 7,700 — when Dr. Doran retired in 1977.

        Donald Flatt, a Morehead State history professor who wrote an account of the university's integration, said Dr. Doran forced the university to come to grips with itself.

        At a convocation in September 1957, Dr. Flatt wrote, Dr. Doran told students, “If you have any objections to the presence of (black) students who may be sit ting beside you, you can find an institution of higher learning more to your liking further south.”

        A major building on the campus, the Adron Doran University Center, is named in his honor.

        “President Doran unquestionably has been the most dominant figure in the 114-year history of this institution and a great leader in public education,” current President Ron Eaglin said in a statement Thursday. “We will miss his wisdom and good humor.”

        Before going to Morehead, Dr. Doran was a state representative and was speaker of the House during the 1950 General Assembly. He was president of the Kentucky Education Association in 1946.

        Dr. Doran was born Sept. 1, 1909, near Boydsville in Graves County and attended nearby Cuba High School. He held an associate's degree from Freed-Hardeman college in Henderson, Tenn.; bachelor's and master's degrees from Murray State University; and a doctorate in education from the University of Kentucky.

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