Benjamin Russell Chapin
Russell Chapin, an attorney for the U.S. Department of Justice for twenty-five years, died on May 23 at his home on Amelia Island, Florida. He was 91 years old.
Mr. Chapin was born on his parents’ farm near Winfield, Kansas, in 1920, and raised on a farm near Red Rock, Oklahoma. After graduating high school as senior-class valedictorian, he earned a bachelor’s degree from Southwestern College in Winfield, Kansas, where he was a successful debater in intercollegiate competition.
Mr. Chapin volunteered for military service in World War II and served for three and a half years in the Army Air Force. When honorably discharged in 1946, he was Assistant Post Sergeant Major of Goodfellow Field in San Angelo, Texas.
Following World War II, he completed his law degree at the University of Oklahoma and was recruited to the law firm of Donezal and Chapin in Perry, Oklahoma. It was there that U.S. Rep. George Howard Wilson, newly elected to Congress, persuaded him to join his staff in Washington, D.C. Mr. Chapin met his wife of sixty-two years, Helen Chenault Chapin, in an elevator on Capitol Hill. They were married in 1950.
Soon afterward Mr. Chapin began his work for the Department of Justice as a trial lawyer in the Civil Division. He was soon invited to join the Appellate Section. U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice Warren E. Burger, then head of the Civil Division, made Mr. Chapin chief of a litigating section, the first of three that he headed during his tenure at Justice: Veterans Affairs and Insurance, Torts, and General Claims. His 527-page Veterans Affairs Practice Manual led to his writing a 567-page Federal Tort Claims Practice Manual as chief of the Torts Section. He also authored portions of the U.S. Attorneys Manual.
Mr. Chapin took on numerous special assignments for the Justice Department. In 1958 he embarked on a trouble-shooting mission to Japan and the Philippines. As Security Officer for the Civil Division in the early 1960s, he was involved in the first planned evacuations of key personnel from Washington, D.C. For a number of years, he served as Legislative Officer for the Civil Division, preparing analyses and evaluations of significant legislative proposals. He served as chairman of the interdepartmental legal committee that drafted legislation to reorganize the Executive Branch of the federal government in 1971 under President Richard M. Nixon.
In 1976, Mr. Chapin left the Department of Justice when U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Carla Hills persuaded him to take the position of Director of Regulations and Issuances at HUD. He later became Director of Legislative Analyses for the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, where he worked for six and a half years before retirement in 1985.
Through the years, Mr. Chapin maintained strong ties to his native Oklahoma. He was active in the Oklahoma State Society of Washington, D.C., for many years and served two terms as its president in the early 1960s.
A devout, lifelong Christian, Mr. Chapin began teaching Sunday school in Perry, Oklahoma. In Washington, D.C., he served as Chairman of the Board and Chairman of the Pulpit Committee and, with his wife, led the youth group of National City Christian Church. He and his wife were subsequently members of Fourth Presbyterian Church of Washington, D.C., and Amelia Plantation Chapel on Amelia Island, Florida.
Mr. Chapin’s survivors include his wife, Helen, of Amelia Island, Florida, and their three children, Craig Chapin of Aichi Prefecture, Japan, Carol Chapin of Madison, Wisconsin, and Clark Chapin of Black Mountain, North Carolina, as well as four grandchildren, Jesse and Everett Chapin and Liam and Lydia Olson. Other surviving relatives include cousins Carol Marie Wiebe of Paso Robles, California, Doris Priest of Winfield, Kansas, Donna Clark of Sun City West, Arizona, and nephew Michael Chapin of Clackamas, Oregon.
His family remembers him as a strong, quiet, moral, and modest man, who loved to garden, help neighbors, correspond with friends, tell jokes, recite poems, sing snatches of old songs, and entertain children.
Mr. Chapin will be laid to rest at Arlington National Cemetery this summer with a memorial service to be held at National City Christian Church in Washington, D.C.