Richard Dahl, founding faculty, inaugural librarian

05/25/2007

Richard Dahl, founding faculty, inaugural librarian

 Richard in office
 Richard Dahl


Read a profile of Richard Dahl

    Richard Charles Dahl, professor emeritus of the Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law and its founding librarian, died April 16, following a seven-month battle with bone-marrow cancer. He was 85. 
    Richard was recruited by Willard Pedrick, the founding dean of the ASU College of Law, and came to the College in 1966 as one of the founding faculty. He amassed the 60,000 volumes needed for accreditation and then the 100,000 needed to establish research library class. He also taught legal research, ethics and government.
     “Part of Professor Dahl’s legacy is our high-quality library,” said Patricia White, dean of the Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law. “As one of the founding faculty of this law school and its inaugural librarian, he played an essential role in the remarkably quick move from idea to important institution that this school made. 
    “No law school can be a good law school without a highly effective library. It’s one of the hardest things to do when creating a law school. Our library was good from day one.”
     Richard’s love of books was remembered at a celebration of his life held recently at the law school.
     “Everyone expects librarians to like books, but that was an understatement with Dick,” said William C. Canby Jr., judge for the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, and a founding faculty member of the College of Law. “They were a living part of Dick’s life. He had thousands and thousands of them, and he read them all. That gave him a broad overview, but he was not a flaunting intellectual, in fact, he almost concealed it."
     Richard was born in San Francisco in 1921. He earned a Bachelor of Library Science from the University of California at Berkeley School of Librarianship in 1951, and a J.D. from Catholic University in 1958. After retirement, he earned a master’s degree in history from Arizona State University.
     From 1942-46, he served as a member of the U.S. Army Quartermaster Corps in England and France. 
     Before coming to ASU, he served as a law librarian at the University of California, and was the law librarian for the University of Nebraska, the Office of the Judge Advocate General for the Navy, and Washington state. He also was the Civil Division Librarian for the Department of Justice and the U.S. Treasury Department’s librarian.
    Richard met his first wife, Grace, in England. She died in 1976. In 1980, he met Jeannine Dunwell, a psychiatric nursing professor at ASU. They married later that year.
     “What I remember the most about Richard is our wonderful conversation,” Jeannine said at the celebration. “He enjoyed every conversation we had. We argued every morning about things in the newspaper, but we were never really angry with each other.
     “He was fiercely loyal to his family and very loyal and supportive to me. He would walk over hot coals for me, but he wouldn’t take out the trash.”
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