The papers of Richard Van Dusen reflect his public career and his close involvement with George Romney. The papers divide themselves into two series. Political and Legislative Files relates to his own political career and to his association with state Republican party politics and his relationship with Governor George Romney. The other series concerns his work with Romney within the US Department of Housing and Urban Development.
Richard C. Van Dusen was born on July 18, 1925 in Jackson, Michigan. In 1943 he graduated from Deerfield Academy, Deerfield, Massachusetts, and, having joined the US Navy V-12 program, was assigned to college training at Central Michigan University. In February 1944 he was transferred to the Naval ROTC program at the University of Minnesota. Graduating in October 1945 he served on several ships in the navy's Seventh Fleet in the Pacific area.
In June 1946 he was released from active duty. In October he entered the Harvard Law School, from which he received an LL.B. in May 1949. Returning to Michigan, Van Dusen joined the Detroit law firm of Dickinson, Wright, Davis, McKean & Cudlip, a firm heavily involved in corporate law. Van Dusen remains associated with this firm, now known as Dickinson, Wright, Moon, Van Dusen & Freeman, although his work with it has been interrupted several times to serve in posts of public trust.
Republican politics ran in Van Dusen's family. His maternal grandfather, W.B. Campbell, served as a Republican state legislator. Van Dusen, too, was attracted to partisan political activity. He began working within the Michigan Republican party soon after his graduation from Harvard. By 1952 Van Dusen had become chairman of the Birmingham Republican Club and chairman of the third legislative district Republican Committee.
In 1954 Van Dusen successfully sought elected office, becoming the representative of the State House's twenty second district. In 1956 he ran for state attorney general, but was defeated along with the other Republican statewide candidates.
His defeat led Van Dusen back into full-time private legal practice, supplemented briefly by teaching a course at Detroit College of Law. Van Dusen continued to be interested in politics, however. In 1960 he served as Vice Chairman of Michigan Volunteers for Nixon. He was elected as a delegate to the state constitutional convention of 1961-1962, where he served as Chairman of the Committee on Rules and Resolutions, and as a member of the Committee on Taxation.
Van Dusen's role in con-con was paralleled by his involvement with the political career of George Romney. Van Dusen served first as an advisor to Romney in the 1962 gubernatorial campaign. At the campaign's successful conclusion Van Dusen acted as a special assistant to the governor-elect and then as legal advisor to the governor.
In 1964 Van Dusen returned to private legal practice, but he remained a member of the Romney inner circle. He was a key advisor in the Romney presidential campaign of 1966-1968, and served under Romney as an undersecretary of Housing and Urban Development from 1969 to 1973. After leaving Washington, Van Dusen resumed private legal practice.
