Theodore Roosevelt Dalton

Theodore Roosevelt Dalton (July 3, 1901 – October 30, 1989) was an American attorney and a United States district judge for the United States District Court for the Western District of Virginia. He was known as Virginia's "Mr. Republican."

Education and career

Born on July 3, 1901 in Carroll County, Virginia, Dalton received an Artium Baccalaureus degree in 1924 from the College of William & Mary and a Bachelor of Laws in 1926 from William & Mary Law School. He entered private practice in Radford, Virginia from 1926 to 1959. His law partners included Richard Harding Poff and James Clinton Turk. In later years both, Poff and Dalton were mentioned as potential nominees to the Supreme Court of the United States, and Turk later became a federal judge as well. Dalton was Commonwealth's Attorney in Radford from 1928 to 1936. He was a member of the Senate of Virginia from 1944 to 1959.

School desegregation seemed the major issue in the 1957 election (in the wake of the 1954 and 1955 decisions in Brown v. Board of Education), and Dalton lost badly to Democrat J. Lindsay Almond. By 1956, Byrd Democrats including Almond had responded with "Massive Resistance", vowing to close schools to avoid integration. Passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1957 and efforts by the federal government to enforce desegregation in Little Rock Central High School were used against Republicans, and led to the widened margin of defeat for Dalton in his second statewide campaign. Dalton had criticized the Brown decisions, and proposed a pupil placement plan that would allow most schools to remain segregated "for maybe a hundred years." He also wrote to President Eisenhower, urging withdrawal of the troops from Little Rock, Arkansas. Nonetheless, Dalton managed just 36.5 percent of the vote. When Senator Byrd announced retirement plans in 1958, Senator Dalton cast the only vote in the General Assembly against a resolution urging Byrd to run again, which Byrd did.

Federal judicial service

Dalton was nominated by President Dwight D. Eisenhower on July 21, 1959 to a seat on the United States District Court for the Western District of Virginia vacated by Judge John Paul Jr., who took senior status and continued to sit on 3-judge panels required of desegregation decisions. The United States Senate confirmed Dalton's judicial appointment on August 12, 1959 and he received his commission on August 13, 1959. Dalton served as Chief Judge from 1960 to 1971, and assumed senior status on October 12, 1976. Dalton's service terminated on October 30, 1989 due to his death in Radford.

Dalton served on the three-judge panel in a case rejecting a constitutional challenge to Virginia's method of distributing state money for education to the various school districts across the state.

Family

Dalton was born in Carroll County, Virginia to parents Currell Dalton (November 4, 1866 – November 29, 1919) and Loduska Vernon Martin (December 10, 1869 – 1920). His wife, Mary Turner, died September 1988. Dalton's grandmother Clarissa Goad Dalton (August 18, 1841 – February 28, 1907) was related to Dexter Goad (November 5, 1867 – July 1, 1939), the Republican clerk of court in Carroll County at the time of the courthouse shootings following the conviction of Floyd Allen in March 1912. Dalton's nephew whom he had adopted as his son, John Nichols Dalton, was elected as a Republican as Governor of Virginia in 1977. Their next-door neighbor in Radford was Charlotte Giesen, who became the first Republican woman elected to the House of Delegates in 1957.

Honors

In 1968, Dalton was selected as an honorary member of the Order of the Coif of the law school of Washington and Lee University. Dalton also received an honorary doctorate of laws degree from the College of William & Mary in 1972.

Death and legacy

Dalton died at Radford Community Hospital of complications from pneumonia. He outlived his son, John Dalton, by some three years. Dalton's former law clerks included Glen E. Conrad, who in 2003 succeeded United States District Judge Glen Williams on the United States District Court for the Western District of Virginia, but whose nomination to the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit lapsed at the end of the term of President George W. Bush.

Dalton's personal papers are held by the Special Collections Research Center at the College of William & Mary.