Richard Stalder

Stalder is one of four children of Edgar A. Stalder (1923-2015) and the former Mildred A. Strahm (born 1923) of Topeka, Kansas. His father was reared on a farm along the Kansas-Nebraska border. After distinguished service under General George S. Patton, with the United States Army in World War II, he received the Silver Star. He was recognized by the historian Stephen E. Ambrose with the placing of Stalder's war memoir at both the Eisenhower Center of the University of New Orleans and in the National World War II Museum in Washington, D.C..

Edgar Stalder worked for the United States Department of Agriculture in New Orleans and later Washington, D.C. He and his wife had four children: Richard, Robert, Ronald and Susan.[2] The children attended local schools in the cities where their father worked.

In 1971, Richard Stalder began working as a prison officer to earn money while he was attending Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge.

He found opportunities in the Department of Corrections and made a career there after college. He worked his way to the positions of federal programs administrator, corrections budget officer, and the superintendent of Louisiana Training Institute in Monroe, Louisiana. He served as deputy warden of Dixon Correctional Institute in Jackson, Louisiana; and warden of David Wade Correctional Center in Homer.[3] From 1998 to 2000, Stalder was also the president of the American Correctional Association.[4]

Stalder was the choice for Secretary of the Louisiana Department of Corrections of the Louisiana Wardens and Superintendent (LAWS), a new group founded in 1991. The driving force behind LAWS was Burl Cain, a long-term warden at Louisiana State Penitentiary in Angola, under whom Stalder had previously worked as deputy warden at the Dixon Correctional Institute.

Stalder was at first reluctant to take on the statewide position because he preferred to remain warden at David Wade Correctional Institute, the only prison in Louisiana at the time to have been accredited by the American Correctional Association. Stalder's colleagues persuaded him to meet with Edwards, then a candidate for a fourth non-consecutive term as governor, to discuss the secretary's position. After some delay, Edwards appointed Stalder; the position had been traditionally given to political supporters of the governor.[5]

Stalder is a registered Republican voter in East Baton Rouge Parish.[1] In 2003, he was inducted into the Louisiana Political Museum and Hall of Fame in Winnfield.[4] He resides in Zachary with his wife, the former Pamela Davis[2] (also born 1951). The couple has two sons, Jonathan Eli Stalder (born 1978) and Christopher Davis Stalder (born 1981).