(July 24, 1932 – Nov. 27, 2019). Born in Indianapolis, Ruckelshaus attended local parochial schools until the age of 16. His final years of high school were completed at Portsmouth Abbey School in Portsmouth, Rhode Island.
After graduation, Ruckelshaus served two years in the United States Army before leaving service in 1955. He spent the next five years completing his college degrees, which included a Bachelor of Arts (A. B) from Princeton University in 1957 and a Bachelor of Laws (LL.B.) from Harvard Law School in 1960. He returned to Indianapolis after law school and started his legal career at the family firm of Ruckelshaus, Bobbitt, and O’Connor.
During this same period of time, Ruckelshaus was appointed deputy state attorney general with an assignment to the Indiana State Board of Health. Under this role, he helped draft the 1961 Indiana Air Pollution Control Act, which served as the state’s first attempt to address its air pollution problems.
Following the Board of Health assignment, Ruckelshaus served two years as chief counsel for the Indiana Attorney General’s Office before transitioning to politics. In 1966, he won a seat in the Indiana House of Representatives and became the first freshman legislator to be elected majority leader. Two years later, he lost to Democrat incumbent Birch Bayh in the 1968 U.S. Senate elections.
Despite the Senate loss, Ruckelshaus entered federal service at the start of President Richard Nixon’s first term. In 1969, the president appointed him U.S. assistant attorney general for the Civil Division of the U.S. Department of Justice.
The following year, Ruckelshaus was appointed the first administrator of the Environment Protection Agency (EPA), which was formed by President Nixon on December 2, 1970. In his two and one-half years on the job, Ruckelshaus laid the EPA’s foundation by hiring its leaders, defining its mission, deciding priorities, and selecting an organizational structure. He also compiled a long list of environmental accomplishments, including setting the first air quality standards to protect public health under the Clean Air Act, ordering cities to curtail sewage discharges into rivers, and banning the use of the dangerous pesticide DDT.
By 1973, the Watergate scandal had broken in successive waves over the Nixon administration and forced some of the president’s closest associates to resign and face criminal charges. During a cabinet reshuffling in April 1973, Ruckelshaus was appointed acting director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). Three months later, he accepted the role of deputy attorney general at the U.S. Department of Justice under newly appointed Attorney General Elliott Richardson.
As deputy attorney general, Ruckelshaus assisted Richardson in investigating charges that Vice President Spiro Agnew had taken kickbacks from contractors while serving as governor of Maryland, which was a situation unrelated to Watergate. The case eventually led to Agnew’s no-contest plea on a tax evasion charge and his resignation from office on October 10, 1973.
Ten days later, in an event known as the “Saturday Night Massacre,” Richardson and Ruckelshaus resigned from their positions within the Justice Department rather than obey an order from President Nixon to fire Watergate special prosecutor Archibald Cox, who was investigating official misconduct on the part of the president and his aides. The order was carried out later that evening by Robert H. Bork, the new acting attorney general following Richardson’s and Ruckelshaus’ resignations.
News coverage of the “Saturday Night Massacre” set off a firestorm of protest across the country. It also resulted in the start of the impeachment process against Nixon in the U.S. House of Representatives on October 30, 1973. With the prospect of impeachment almost certain after months of formal hearings, President Nixon resigned from office on August 9, 1974.
Following the “Saturday Night Massacre,” Ruckelshaus entered the private sector by joining the D.C. law firm of Ruckelshaus, Beveridge, Fairbanks, and Diamond in 1973. Two years later, he moved with his family to Seattle, Washington, and accepted the position of senior vice president of the Weyerhaeuser Company, one of the nation’s largest lumber companies.
In 1983, Ruckelshaus was asked by President Ronald Reagan’s administration to serve as the fifth administrator of the EPA. He accepted the position in an attempt to win back the public’s confidence in the agency, which was now riddled with corruption and caught up in several scandals caused by his successors. While Ruckelshaus helped stabilize the agency, restore professional management, and subdue the scandals, he was unable to rebuild the EPA’s budget or get many initiatives passed. These challenges were often the result of an untrusting Congress and/or competing business interests within the Reagan administration.
At the start of Reagan’s second term in office, Ruckelshaus resigned from the EPA and returned to Seattle. He worked at the law firm of Perkins and Coie from 1985 to 1988. His next role was chairman and chief executive officer of Browning-Ferris Industries, one of the nation’s largest waste-removal firms, from 1988 to 1995.
In the late 1990s and early 2000s, Ruckelshaus was appointed by various state and federal leaders to numerous environmental initiatives. Notable examples include U.S. envoy in the implementation of the Pacific Salmon Treaty by President Bill Clinton (1997-1998), chairman of the Salmon Recovery Funding Board for the State of Washington by Governor Gary Locke (1999), and member of the Commission on Ocean Policy by President George W. Bush (2001).
On October 10, 2006, Washington State University (WSU) and the University of Washington (UW) established the William D. Ruckelshaus Center. A joint effort between the two universities, the Ruckelshaus Center was created to foster collaborative public policy in the State of Washington and Pacific Northwest. Areas of focus for the center include community and economic development; land use; natural resources; transportation; agriculture; healthcare; and federal, state, tribal, and local governance.
Ruckelshaus continued his environmental endeavors during the late 2000s and early 2010s. Notable appointments include chairman of the Leadership Council of the Puget Sound Partnership (2007), cochair of the Joint Ocean Commission Initiative (2010), and cochair of Washington State’s Ocean Acidification Blue Ribbon Panel (2012).
In 2015, Ruckelshaus was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Barack Obama. It is the nation’s highest civilian honor.
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