John Cushman Truesdale Jr. (July 17, 1921 – July 3, 2011) was an American lawyer and civil servant who served two terms as executive secretary of the National Labor Relations Board, four terms as a board member, and one term as board chair. Early life and career John Truesdale was born on July 17, 1921, in Grand Rapids, Michigan, to John C. and Hazel C. Truesdale. He was one of four children, and he had three sisters: Patty, Anne, and Mary. In 1927, his father was appointed professor of physical education at Grinnell College in Grinnell, Iowa. His father later was the college's men's basketball coach, and young John grew up in Grinnell and attended public schools there. Like his siblings, he enrolled at Grinnell College and received his A.B. degree in social studies in 1942. He joined the United States Coast Guard and entered the service in 1943. His first post was as an anti-submarine warfare instructor. From April 1944 to 1946, he was the anti-submarine warfare officer on the USS Peterson, an Edsall class destroyer escort serving convoy duty in the North Atlantic. On April 15, Truesdale's first day aboard ship, the Peterson and two other destroyer escorts engaged and sank a German submarine, the U-550. He became a lieutenant (junior grade). Truesdale enrolled in September 1946 at the New York State School of Industrial and Labor Relations at Cornell University. He graduated with an M.S. in industrial and labor relations in May 1948. Cornell University had the only school of industrial relations at the time, and each year NLRB staff traveled to the school to hire qualified staff. One of Truesdale's professors had his entire class take the NLRB exam, and Truesdale scored well on it. The Board offered Truesdale a job, and he was hired by the Buffalo field office as a field examiner in 1948. For several months after his appointment, he rented a room from fellow labor lawyer and friend Richard Lipsitz Sr. Early NLRB career Truesdale proved to be a highly regarded field examiner. The NLRB offered to transfer him to more highly sought-after posts in other field offices over the next three years, but he declined each time. But believing that another refusal might hurt his career, he accepted a transfer to New Orleans in 1951. There he met Karin Nelson, a field examiner and labor economist from the San Francisco office