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Dean Burch Papers 1964-1973

FM MSS 142

Biographical Note

Roy Dean Burch was born on December 20, 1927 in Enid, Oklahoma, the son of Bert A. and Leola Atkisson Burch. While his father was employed as a guard, he lived at the Alcatraz penal institution in San Francisco Bay and graduated from Galileo High School in San Francisco, California in 1945. In January of 1946 he enlisted in the U.S. Army and served in the 7th Cavalry Regiment in Tokyo until his discharge in 1948. In 1953, he earned an LLB degree from the University of Arizona and served as assistant to the Arizona Attorney General from 1953 to 1955.

In 1955, Senator Barry Goldwater selected Burch as an administrative assistant. In Washington D.C. Burch participated in the Rackets Committee investigation of labor union practices and was active in Senator Goldwater's campaign for reelection to the Senate in 1958. Burch became a member of the law firm of Dunseath, Stubbs and Burch in Tucson in 1959 and worked as regional campaign manager for Arizona Governor Paul Fannin.

In November of 1963 Senator Goldwater invited Burch to become the Deputy Director of the Goldwater for President Committee. Upon his nomination as the GOP presidential candidate in July of 1964, Senator Goldwater selected Burch as Republican National Committee Chairman. He and his family relocated to Washington D.C. and at age thirty-six he became one of the youngest GOP Chairs. In the following four months he presided over the hectic presidential campaign activities. Immediately following Goldwater's defeat in the November election, Burch became the lightning rod for intense criticism. At the same time (November–December 1964) he was at the center of the Republican Party's internal struggle to define its future leadership and direction.

In January of 1965 Burch resigned as Chairman in an attempt to forge unity by appeasing various factions in the Republican Party. At the same time, he and Senator Goldwater resisted a strong grass roots movement to form a new conservative political party. In April of 1965 Burch left the Chairmanship position and returned to his law practice in Tucson. In 1968, he was a significant participant in managing Goldwater's Arizona Senate campaign. In January of 1969, Governor Jack Williams appointed Burch to the Arizona Board of Regents.

Burch was named Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission by President Nixon and again relocated to Washington D.C. in 1969. During his tenure (October 31, 1969-Spring 1974), Burch was influential in improving television programming for children. Burch was the White House political counselor in the last months of the Nixon administration in 1974 and in the first months of the Ford administration. Eight years later, he served as chief of staff for George Bush's vice presidential campaign and as his counsel and personal advisor.

From 1975 to 1987, Burch was a partner in the law firm of Pierson, Ball and Dowd in Washington D.C., which was involved with telecommunications. From 1987 to his death, he was Director General of Intelsat, the global communications satellite consortium of 121 nations. He received the Alumni Achievement Award from the University of Arizona in 1972. Dean Burch died of bladder cancer on August 4, 1991 at age 63.

Burch was married on July 7, 1961 to Patricia Meeks, a school teacher. They had three children: Shelley (Burch) Bennett, Dean Alexander Burch, and Dianne Ruth (Burch) Butterfield.

Scope and Content Note

This collection focuses on two distinct periods in Burch's career: his chairmanship of the Republican National Committee (1964-1965) during the 1964 presidential campaign and its immediate aftermath and his chairmanship of the U. S. Federal Communications Commission (1969-1973). It is arranged in three series: Series I: Republican National Committee; Series II: 1964 Presidential Campaign; and Series III: Federal Communications Commission.

Series I: Republican National Committee covers the period between late July of 1964 and April 1, 1965, when Burch was Chairman of the Republican National Committee. It is divided into three sub-series: Sub-Series A: Executive Correspondence, Sub-Series B: General Correspondence, and Sub-Series C: Personal. This series does not contain the files of the Republican National Committee Executive Director nor the organizational records of the six hundred RNC employees for this period.

Sub-Series A: Executive Correspondence is ordered by a simple numerical system. The original numbers are included on the folders. A copy of the classification system is located in the front of the first folder. The accompanying card index contains entries by correspondent and occasionally by subject referencing these folder numbers. There are gaps in the numbering sequence that indicate that some folders were removed sometime prior to the papers' transfer to the Arizona Historical Foundation.

Sub-Series B: General Correspondence is arranged alphabetically by correspondent. Sub-Series C: Personal contains more confidential material and is arranged alphabetically by topic. Two sub-files in this sub-series, "General Correspondence" and "Personal Correspondence", contain similar correspondents and content information.

Although Series II contains records directly connected with the 1964 presidential campaign, many of the files in Series I relate to the presidential campaign tangentially. Of particular note in both series are files on the media campaign and the controversy over equal television and radio time for the Republican Party that resulted in hearings before the Federal Communication Commission in the fall of 1964.

Series II: 1964 Presidential Campaign is divided into five subseries: Sub-Series A: Goldwater For President Committee, Sub-Series B: Goldwater-Miller (G-M) File, Sub-Series C: Tour Committee, Sub-Series D: Public Relations Division, and Sub-Series E: Goldwater Correspondence.

Sub-Series A: Goldwater For President Committee (1963 November-1964 July) covers the Goldwater bid for the nomination leading up to the Republican Party Convention in San Francisco, California in July of 1964. There are very few documents covering the Convention itself.

Sub-Series B: Goldwater-Miller (G-M) File, identified by the staff as the "G-M file", is the primary record of internal campaign work. It was established in July of 1964 after the Goldwater-Miller presidential nomination in San Francisco and continued to the November 1964 election. The state files document local citizen opinions, reports of local party officials, campaign developments, and advice from campaign headquarters. The card index references most correspondent names as well as a few subjects/issues like "Negro who endorsed Senator Goldwater", "Goldwater secret meeting with Gov. Rockefeller", and "Democrats for Goldwater". The index also contains references to prominent individuals referred to in the correspondence, for example "Humphrey, Hubert", "Luce, Clare Booth", and "Burch, Dean".

Sub-Series C: Tour Committee contains the candidate's complete schedule, tour arrangements, and follow-up. It also provides details about last minute on-the-ground developments, handling local problems, and schedule changes.

Sub-Series D: Public Relations Division houses possibly the most complete extant series of news releases issued during the campaign. These materials are filed in chronological order. The Senator Goldwater speech file contains some speeches not found in the Personal and Political Papers of Barry M. Goldwater (Arizona Historical Foundation, FM MSS 1). Surrogates of audio recordings have been created for research use and are filed in the appropriate folders in this subseries.

Following the November 3, 1964 presidential election, Senator Goldwater received a tremendous volume of mail sent to his Senate office and Phoenix home expressing sympathy for his defeat, support, and strong opinions about the future of the conservative movement and the Republican Party. In February of 1965, Burch reported that Senator Goldwater had received more than 100,000 letters and telegrams. This correspondence and similar correspondence sent concurrently to the Republican National Committee in this series and also in Series I documents a remarkable, passionate groundswell of support for political conservatism in the United States. Because his Senate office staff was closing and there were few RNC staff to handle this flood, only a few hundred letters sent directly to Senator Goldwater between late October and mid December of 1964 were answered or filed. A random sampling of five linear feet of this correspondence was retained and is filed alphabetically by correspondent. The remaining nine linear feet of similar repetitive, unfiled correspondence was discarded. Similar correspondence addressed concurrently to the Republican National Committee and Dean Burch was answered.

Subsequent correspondence to Goldwater beginning on December 22, 1964, was answered primarily by form letters, some possibly by volunteers in December of 1964 and January of 1965, and was filed by date. This subseries only contains incoming correspondence and does not contain response letters. The 1965 correspondence is noteworthy in addressing the national conservative grass roots response to the civil rights movement, race relations, the Vietnam War, the Johnson White House, and Goldwater's founding of the Free Society Association. Also significant is the volume of correspondence from residents of Southern states and from youth across the United States. After leaving the RNC Chairmanship on April 1, 1965, Burch continued to handle Goldwater's post election correspondence through November of 1965 when this subseries ends. One linear foot of get-well cards sent by Goldwater's admirers following his July 28, 1965 surgery in Phoenix was discarded.

Series III: U. S. Federal Communications Commission documents Burch's tenure as Chairman of the FCC (October 31, 1969-March 1974) and shows such notable issues as children's programming, public broadcasting, fairness in political broadcasts, network television programming practices, cable television, obscenity, and movies on pay TV. It is divided into ten sub-series: Sub-Series A: Calendars, Sub-Series B: Correspondence, Sub-Series C: Invitations, Sub-Series D: Memorandums, Sub-Series E: Personnel, Sub-Series F: Personal, Sub-Series G: Public Appearances, Sub-Series H: Reports, Sub-Series I: Requests for Appointments and Interviews, and Sub-Series J: Requests for Speaking Engagements and Appearances.

Among the correspondents in Sub-Series B: Correspondence are Vice President Spiro Agnew, Steve Allen, William Buckley Jr., Al Capp, Charles Colson, Ron Crawford, John D. Ehrlichman, Gerald R. Ford, Senator Barry Goldwater, Senator Daniel Inouye, Senator Edward Kennedy, Denison Kitchel, William Kleindienst, David Levy, Senator Warren Magnuson, Jeb. S. Magruder, J. William Middendorf II, Newton Minow, John N. Mitchell, William Rehnquist, Donald Rumsfeld, Anton Scalia, Senator Herman Talmadge, Jack Valenti, Senator Lowell Weicker Jr., Caspar Weinberger, William Westmoreland, and Arizona Governor Jack Williams.

Although the files date from 1969 to 1973, Sub-Series G: Public Appearances contains files dating only to November of 1971. This subseries is the primary location for copies of Burch's speeches and remarks. No materials exist showing the final months of Burch's Chairmanship (January-March 1974).

Arrangement

Restrictions

Access Restrictions

To view this collection, make an appointment at least five business days prior to your visit by contacting Ask an Archivist or calling (480) 965-4932. Appointments in the Wurzburger Reading Room at Hayden Library (rm. 138) on the Tempe campus are available Monday through Friday. Check the ASU Library Hours page for current availability.

Copyright

The Arizona Board of Regents retains copyright to this collection for and on behalf of the Arizona State University Library. Requests to publish, display, or redistribute information from this collection must be submitted via our online application.

Related Material

Interested researchers may also wish to consult:

MS 102: Dean Burch (1927-1991) Republican Party Materials (12 linear feet) at the Arizona Historical Society Library in Tucson.

FM MSS 1: The Personal and Political Papers of Barry M. Goldwater at the Arizona Historical Foundation and the Steven Shadegg/Barry Goldwater Collection Papers, 1949-1965 (31 linear feet) at the Center for American History, University of Texas-Austin for additional materials documenting Goldwater's 1964 presidential campaign.

Steven Shadegg's What Happened To Goldwater (New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1965) for an insider's interpretation of 1964 events within the Republican National Committee. Shadegg probably did not have access to these Burch papers when he wrote the book in 1965.

Access Terms

Administrative Information

Custodial History

Some of the files in Series I, Sub-Series A and C and Series II were microfilmed by the Cornell University Library in 1965 and then sent to Tucson. Cornell staff noted some files were damaged in the initial transfer from Washington D.C. to Ithaca. Burch deposited other sections of his papers in increments at the University of Arizona Library in 1965, 1966, 1967, 1968, and 1981. By the 1987 inventory, there were fifty-five records boxes in the collection. All of these unprocessed boxes were transferred to the Arizona Historical Foundation on November 30, 2006.

Preferred Citation

[Identification of item], Dean Burch Papers, FM MSS 142, Arizona State University Library.

Provenance

The Arizona Historical Foundation transferred these materials to the Arizona Collection in 2012.

Processing Note

After forty years of various box transfers and storage situations, some files were incorrectly located out of sequence and in random boxes. Every effort was made to reconstruct the original file order based on the original folder headings. Some scattered files are missing from the number or alphabet sequence. The AHF decision was to arrange alphabetically by correspondent the previously unfiled, unorganized, and voluminous correspondence to Senator Goldwater.

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