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Early life and influences
SESSION 1: The First Term (December 1970-April 1973)
Q: Mr. Ruckelshaus, could you tell me about your upbringing, family life and education?
MR. RUCKELSHAUS: I was born some 59 years ago and raised in Indianapolis, Indiana. I had an older brother John, about two and a half years older, and a younger sister, Bonney, who is eight years younger.
My father was a lawyer, as his father before him, practicing law in Indianapolis. He had a short stint as a corporate attorney for Ulen Construction Company in Lebanon, Indiana, a town just north of Indianapolis. They did a lot of international construction but went out of business during the Depression. So he rejoined his father in the family law practice in Indianapolis. My brother is still in that law firm; in fact, for about 150 years there have been John Ruckelshaus lawyers in Indianapolis.
My father was quite active in political life. He was five times the chairman of the Platform Committee at Republican Party Conventions. He never ran for an office himself, but he was quite active politically all his life. My grandfather had also been active politically. He was state chairman of the Republican Party in Indiana in 1900. So we've had a long history of family involvement in politics.
We had a very close family. My father and mother are both dead now. He died at the age of about 60 in a drowning accident while fishing in Michigan. My mother lived into her early 80s. I spent my childhood years in Indianapolis, went to parochial schools there, and then transferred to a school in Rhode Island midway through high school. It was a Benedictine school called Portsmouth Abbey, run by monks in Portsmouth, Rhode Island.
I went from there to Princeton, then to Harvard, and then back to Indianapolis, where I joined the Indiana Attorney General's Office in 1960. 1 worked both in the Indiana Attorney General's Office and practiced law with my father and brother until Dad died in 1962. 1 ran for Congress in 1964 in Indiana and was defeated when Senator Barry Goldwater's forces swamped the Indiana primaries. I was not for Goldwater and my opponent was. I had the support of the Republican organization, but that was of no value in that period of the party's evolution in Indiana.
Then I ran for the state legislature in 1966, was elected, and became majority leader. Between the elections of 1964 and 1966, we went from 22 Republicans out of 100, to 66 out of 100. So there were a lot of new people in the legislature.
I had already been active in the state legislature through my work in the Attorney General's Office, having directed a group which reviewed all bills that came out of the legislature to determine their constitutionality. As a result, I had become quite familiar with several legislators and the way the process worked, and I think because of that was elected majority leader. I was only in there for a two year term and then ran for the United States Senate in 1968. 1 was defeated by Birch Bayh. That's when I went to Washington.
Q: Who were the most important persons in your life? Who were the mentors who changed the direction of your life?
MR. RUCKELSHAUS: My father was the dominant person in my life. My mother and I were very close and had a wonderful relationship. But in terms of really inspiring me to a sense of high moral purpose in life, far and away the biggest influence was my father. He was a very religious man; I'm not a particularly religious man, but my father was. He not only was religious in the sense of being a regular church goer; he went to church every morning for the last 25 years of his life and took communion. But he lived it. His religion was very important to him, important in everything he did. He wasn't somebody who attended church and then conducted his daily affairs as if he had never gone. It was a terribly important part of his life. The high integrity which encompassed everything he did was very inspirational. I would say that among the people who had an influence in my life, no one was even close to him.
I've met several people with whom I have been close and have helped me along the way; you don't do anything without some help. I have always felt that people can help you get a position, and if you're lucky they might move you beyond where logic would suggest you were qualified. But then it's up to you. If you don't produce, then the help you may get does not make any difference. Certainly, I never would have been EPA Administrator had it not been for John Mitchell. But, John Mitchell wasn't going to make me either succeed or fail as EPA Administrator. He was the one who suggested my name to the president and got me there to begin with. Then it was up to me.
Ed Steers, the Indiana Attorney General, was a very helpful person in the early development of my legal career. He gave me increasing responsibilities and then made me the Chief Counsel of the Attorney General's Office, when I had been out of law school for less than three years. There were some 63 lawyers in the office at the time, so it gave me some early management experience, to the extent anybody manages lawyers. Again, it was lucky I happened to be in the right place at the right time and he helped me. But then it was up to me to figure out how to do it.
Q: Your father seems to have had such a powerful influence on you. Could I return to him for a moment and ask you to describe him in greater depth?
MR. RUCKELSHAUS: You have to bear in mind that I'm not exactly objective or unbiased about him. Through the eyes of others, including myself, he had a wonderful sense of humor. He loved to tell stories. He had an absolute wealth of stories to fit any situation. He was a sought after after-dinner speaker because of his humor. It wasn't a biting kind of wit, but more in the style of Indiana politicians of those days who would tell stories to illustrate a point. He argued a lot of jury trials and would use this technique in trying law suits. He was a very intellectual man. He loved philosophy and one of the most important parts of his life was his dedication to reading the great thinkers of history. He was part of the Great Books movement in the middle west, when Robert Hutchins and Mortimer Adler were active at the University of Chicago. He started one of the first Great Books reading circles in Indianapolis before the Second World War and it lasted until he died. The group he led would read a book and get together every two weeks to discuss it. When I got out of law school and joined, it had already been around for 20 years, so it must have started around 1940.
He also taught a class in jurisprudence at Indiana University Law School, which was in some ways more important to him than the practice of law. My father had only three or four lawyers working for him and had no interest in building a powerful practice. In fact, he was almost offended by these big law firms. He did like to handle a variety of legal problems, but, obviously, with that size firm it was not possible to undertake some of the larger matters that big offices do today.
My father was taller than I am--about 6'5"--and loved sports. He was a basketball player when he was in high school, and in those days was the tallest man in Indiana, about 6'4 1/2".
He was a charming man, a very kind person; the kind of person who people in trouble wanted to talk to. They loved to unburden themselves to him. My father could listen with great openness, tried to understand others, and helped them think things through without making judgments. This is what people Re when they have problems. He was probably tougher on his children than anybody else. With my brother and sister and me he was judgmental and more inclined to express his views on life, which is understandable.