WILLIAM RUCKELSHAUS CELEBRATES EIGHTY

WILLIAM D. RUCKELSHAUS

b. July 24, 1932

WILLIAM RUCKELSHAUS

in his second term as

E.P.A. Administrator

Published in BUSINESS WEEK

August 22, 1983 (p. 108)

Hoosier and Harvard Law School; Princeton and the G.O.P; drill sergeant in the U.S. Army; time in two Washingtons and one Texas. Briefly acting head of the FBI, and then the second Massacree (after Elliot Richardson) in the Saturday Night Massacre. Founding Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (the EPA), under Nixon, in 1970, the year of the first Earth Day, and then, more or less literally, clean-up man the second time around, under Reagan. The headline for the BW story for which this photograph was an illustration was "The Environmental Impact of the EPA's Mr. Fix-It."

The EPA has two biographies for William Doyle Ruckelshaus, First Term (1970-1973) and Second Term (1983-1985); the former includes a biographical timeline (which does not, however, mention the Army service; that is found here).

There is a long 1993 EPA interview here; and a new oral history garnered by Douglas Brinkley described here and available online here (with a contemporary photograph here).

In celebration of his eightieth birthday, Ruckelshaus went fishing and caught a salmon said to weigh nearly twenty pounds (he lives in the state of Washington these days); photograph and story here.

PHILIP SHARP IS SEVENTY

PHILIP RILEY SHARP

b. July 15, 1942

PHILIP R. SHARP

as Democratic

Representative from Indiana

Published in BUSINESS WEEK

March 14, 1983, p 26

Philip Sharp served in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1975-1995. He then taught at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government and became the director of the K-School's Institute of Politics. Since September 2005 he has been President of Resources for the Future (RFF); his website there, including a contemporary photograph, can be found here.

RICHARD LUGAR MARKS EIGHTY

RICHARD G. LUGAR

b. April 4, 1932

SENATOR RICHARD LUGAR (R-Indiana)

at the 1980 Republican National Convention

Detroit, Michigan

in which Ronald Reagan was nominated as the

Republican candidate for president (he won)

The photograph above was taken half a grown-up lifetime ago, when former Indianapolis Mayor was in only his fourth year as U.S. Senator. Now in his thirty-sixth year in the job, Lugar is the third most senior member of the Senate, widely thought to have compiled a distinguished record, especially in arms control and foreign policy, and in what looks to be the battle of his political life.

He is, it is thought by tea-partiers and such, not conservative enough.

There have been rumblings, or grumblings, that if Ronald Reagan came back today, he would not be conservative enough.

So this year Senator Lugar has an opponent in the May 8 Republican primary, the state treasurer, Richard Mourdock. And there will be a Democratic candidate this time around too (unlike the last time, six years ago), U.S. Rep. Joe Donnelly.

The biggest, easiest-to-digest knock on Lugar so far? He sold his home in Indiana back in 1977; therefore, how can be be a real Hoosier? (He still has a farm in the state, which has recently been officially accepted as his voting residence.)

And the subliminal target of opportunity? His age.

Richard Lugar turns eighty today.

For more on Lugar's record and on Lugar today, see here and here and here and here and here.