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Clarence Addison Dykstra was an American administrator.
Background
Clarence Addison Dykstra was born on Ferbruary 25, 1883 in Cleveland, Ohio. He was the second of six children of Lawrence Dykstra and Margaret (Barr) Dykstra. His father, a clergyman of the Dutch Reformed Church, served in several pastorates during Dykstra's childhood.
Education
Clarence Addison Dykstra received much of his early education in the Chicago public schools. An honor student at Iowa State University in history, French, and Greek, he was also active in debating, dramatics, and the college newspaper. It was at Iowa that Dykstra first became interested in municipal government, in which field he achieved national fame as both a scholar and a professional administrator. After receiving the B. A. degree in 1903, Dykstra began graduate work at the University of Chicago, where he spent a year as a fellow in history and an assistant in political science.
Later he returned to the University of Chicago in 1906 for additional advanced study.
Career
During 1904-1905 Dykstra taught at private schools in Pensacola, Florida. After a year (1908-1909) as an instructor in history and government at Ohio State University, he moved to the University of Kansas, where at the age of thirty he became head of the newly created department of political science. At the University of Kansas (1909-1918), Dykstra became recognized as a leading theoretician in state and municipal administration. His first move into active participation in governmental affairs took place in 1918, when he returned to Cleveland as executive secretary of the Civic League. His prolonged but unsuccessful struggle in Cleveland with the Van Sweringen interests over the building of a union railway station marked him as a civic reformer. In the next few years he moved on to similar positions in the Chicago and the Los Angeles city clubs.
In 1926, Dykstra became a commissioner of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, contributing to the establishment of the Metropolitan Water District, the building of the $300 million aqueduct for the Los Angeles area, and the construction of hydroelectric plants. In the same year, he became the department's director of personnel and efficiency. In his spare time, he helped Dr. John D. Haynes, the father of direct legislation in California, to draw up plans for the Haynes Foundation, later a leading private civic research organization in the Pacific Southwest. He also resumed his academic career, serving as a part-time lecturer and professor of public administration at the newly created Los Angeles branch of the University of California. In 1930 Dykstra was appointed city manager of Cincinnati, Ohio, the nation's most prestigious professional job in municipal management.
Dykstra had been among the candidates for the first managership of the city in 1925, and when Sherrill resigned in 1930 to take a position with Procter and Gamble, he was quickly selected to replace him. Dykstra's identification with the successful "Cincinnati experiment" established his reputation as one of the country's leading professional administrators.
In his seven years at Cincinnati, he carried forward the work begun by Seasongood and Sherrill, expanding and improving city services despite problems brought on by the depression. Although he instituted improvements in zoning, waste collection, purchasing, public works, and social programs, Cincinnati's tax rate remained the lowest in the nation for a city of its size. At Cincinnati, the six-foot-three, two-hundred-pound Dykstra was at the height of his career. He served in important capacities in many organizations, such as president of the International Association of City Managers, member of the Technical Advisory Board of the National Emergency Public Works Administration, and president of the National Municipal League (1937-1940).
Dykstra viewed his stint as a professional city manager as field experience for his academic career, and by April 1937 he returned to academic life as president of the University of Wisconsin. He assumed his post at a particularly difficult time in the university's history - the major handicaps stemmed from a bitter struggle between the regents and his predecessor, Glenn Frank. Although according to Time, he "kindled no fire among faculty or students, " his leadership received generally favorable reaction as he applied the same techniques of administration that he had used to advantage in Cincinnati. In 1940, President Roosevelt appointed Dykstra as the first director of the Selective Service System. In this capacity he organized the peacetime draft and devised the structure and policies that characterized the system throughout the war. Early in 1941, he left this position to become chairman of the newly formed National Defense Mediation Board, a forerunner of the War Labor Board. Dykstra retained his university post while in Washington, and after leaving the Selective Service Board, he was able to devote more time to the university, although throughout the war he continued to serve on numerous national boards and committees. He played an especially significant role in developing the Army Special Services and the Armed Forces Institute. In February 1945, he returned to the University of California at Los Angeles as provost and set about molding the loosely organized, rapidly growing, former teachers' college into a university.
Cool and unemotional, he lacked the charisma of Cincinnati reform mayors Seasongood and Russell Wilson. His speeches were direct, terse, deliberate, and lacking in humor. His only hobby was music, but even here he was once described as the type of man who after performing a better than average rendition of Debussy's Clair de Lune would get up from the piano saying, "The man we need for the police job is. .. ." Despite this detachment and apparent aloofness, citizens found Dykstra readily approachable.
Connections
Dykstra was married on July 31, 1909, to Ada M. Hartley, who died in 1926. They had one daughter, Elizabeth Sylvester. On December 25, 1927, he married Lillian K. Rickaby, who had been dean of women of the Riverside School in California.