Ruth Denney, legendary Texas theater director, died March 26, 2007 at age 93. Denney began her career in the 1950s in Houston, where she taught at Lamar High School. While she was there, her students won six state championships in the University Interscholastic League's one-act play contest. Tune was one of her students. "High school theater was extremely important for me in helping to shape my later career," Tommy Tune told the Houston Chronicle in 2003. After more than a dozen years in the classroom, Denney took an administrative job with the Houston Independent School District and began to scheme about creating a high school for the arts.

In 1971, she founded and became the first principal of Houston's High School for the Performing and Visual Arts, only the third such fine arts magnet school in the nation when it opened. Skeptics doubted the school would give students a solid education, and the school wasn't even accredited its first year. In recognition of her contribution to its success, the Houston performing arts high school named its theatre the Denney Theatre.

In 1976, Denney became a professor of drama education at the University of Texas. She taught at UT until 1988. At retirement she was named professor emeritus and many of her former students and colleagues helped establish a scholarship in her honor. The Ruth Denney Endowed Presidential Scholarship in Theatre helps benefit theater arts students.

After her retirement, Denney was key in lobbying Austin Independent School District officials to establish the McCallum Fine Arts Academy at McCallum High School.

Denney's contribution to the arts has been honored many times by organizations including the American Association of Theatre Education, Theatre Under the Stars and the Texas Education Theatre Association. In 1987, she was selected to receive the Houston Mayor's Award for Outstanding Contributions to the Arts for her role in creating a strong arts community in Houston. In 2002 she was inducted into the Austin Arts Hall of Fame.
Obituary information from AMERICAN-STATESMAN ARTS WRITER, March 27, 2007

 April 9, 2007.  So interesting! Last year Tommy Tune was in Tucson on a tour. I created a card with a collage of pictures of him that I scanned from the Orenda and asked the door attendant to take it backstage to him. Tommy always comes out to the lobby afterward to meet anyone who wants to hang around. So I did, and we had a rompin' stompin' Lamar reunion!! Some of the cast gather round to meet "my classmate who dredged up all those dreadful pictures of me." He gave me a run down on Miss Denny and her activities since our days at Lamar. I was surprised she was still with us then, so this is a sad note to end a long and successful career of  mentoring.
Cheers!

You know I was in the orchestra, of course, and who will ever forget the rehearsals till the late hours of the night for the annual musical.  Tommy was the comic lead in the last in the last show I played, Pajama Game.  It was all highly professional including the fights that would break out between the director, Denny, the choir director, Stecher, and of course Mr. T (Trongone) of how something artistic should go.  The students would at least get a break for a few minutes while they fought it out. Just like in the real world of theater.  We learned as much about artistic expression from those artistic eruptions as we did from anything we were taught in the arts. Bless 'em for being the artists and teachers they were.

I had the experience many years later when I was teaching a Black Junior High when we did our first musical, Carnival!, which stared Patrick Swayze  with me as orchestra director along with my associate, the band director.  Yeah we fought those moments out too. Learned from the great ones.

Carol Henderson wrote April 9, 2007
So sad! So sad about Ms. Denny!!  Tommy Tune and I have been friends all our lives.  Our parents were very close friends.  Mr. Tune used to cater all my father's Farm and Ranch Club parties.  Tommy writes to me frequently and sends me some of his art work!  He is a very, very special man and precious friend.  I forwarded to him the obits on Ms. Denny.  He lives in New York.  So, I thought he would like to have them.  Doubt if they would have been in a New York paper.