David L. Rickard, born in Logansport, Indiana, in 1939, he has lived as an adult in Washington, DC and Boston, MA before moving to Arkansas over 20 years ago.

He worked for the Federal Aviation Administration for over 21 years. While stationed in the FAA’s New England Region, he wrote and got approved the first Environmental Impact Statement for Jet Operations at a commercial airport.

In Arkansas, he worked for the Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families and then served as a special assistant to the Director of the Arkansas Department of Human Services. The last four years he has been a consultant for health policy matters.

Throughout the last 30 years he has served as a fundraising consultant, serving over 250 Unitarian Universalist congregations.

He has also been president of the Unitarian Universalist Church of Little Rock and of the Massachusetts Bay District. He was twice elected to the UUA General Assembly Planning Committee.

He served on the Arkansas Ethics Commission that developed the Initiated Act passed in 1987. He also served on the Governor’s Commission on Health Care Reform.

He has served for over ten years on the Central Arkansas Library System including three years as president. He also is on the Board of the Arkansas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, serving as chair for three years. He served for 12 years on the Board of the Arkansas affiliate of the American Civil Liberties Union.

He was named the Arkansas Civil Libertarian of the Year for 2002.

He graduated from DePauw University in 1961. In 1071, he was selected for the federal Education for Public Management Program and earned a MPA at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.

He is married to Judith Safly Rickard and has two grown sons, Mike and Ken, and two grandchildren, Elijah and Sophia.

For the UU Church of Fort Lauderdale in 2003, Mr. Richard assessed our plans for a new building project and told us that there were some preliminaries that we had best take care of first.