Born in Queens, New York, on December 24, 1916, McCormick moved with his family to Tenafly, New Jersey. He graduated from Tenafly High School in 1933, and was encouraged to apply for college by a typing teacher in his senior year. He hadn't planned on attending college and had been in enrolled in a "general curriculum" that would mean that he didn't have the required courses he needed to apply for college. During a post-graduate year at Tenafly High School, he completed the four years of math courses he needed to be eligible for college enrollment. McCormick received a Bachelor of Arts in History from Rutgers College of Rutgers University in 1938 and proceeded to earn a Master of Arts from Rutgers' Graduate School in 1940. During his undergraduate years, McCormick was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. He earned his Doctor of Philosophy in 1948 from the University of Pennsylvania submitting a dissertation entitled Experiment in Independence: New Jersey in the Critical Period, 1781-1789 which would be edited for his first monograph. In 1945, he began teaching at Rutgers University in the department of history. From 1961-1962, Dr. McCormick was appointed a fellow of Jesus College, University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom. In August 1945, Richard P. McCormick married Katheryne Levis in Baltimore, Maryland whom he met at the University of Delaware in Newark, Delaware while teaching Army Specialized Training Reserve Program in 1944. McCormick was chair of the Rutgers College history department from 1966 to 1969 and dean of Rutgers College from 1974 to 1977. In 1971 he chaired a committee on coeducation at Rutgers College and in 1969 he chaired a special faculty committee to address issues raised by African-American students at Rutgers. McCormick retired from teaching in 1982. McCormick was instrumental in the establishment of several influential historical organizations, including the New Jersey Historical Commission, the New Jersey State Historical Records Advisory Board and the New Jersey Tercentenary Commission, and served as research adviser to Colonial Williamsburg, and as a member of the American Revolution Bicentennial Commission. His books The Second American Party System: Party Formations in the Jacksonian Era and Rutgers: A Bicentennial History received the biennial book prize from American Association for State and Local History in 1965 and 1968 respectively. In 2002, McCormick was recognized with the Award for Scholarly Distinction from the American Historical Association. A longtime resident of Piscataway, New Jersey, McCormick moved with his wife to Bridgewater Township, New Jersey in the years before his death. McCormick died on January 16, 2006 at the age of 89 after an extended illness. He was the father of two children, Dorothy, and Richard Levis McCormick, who was the nineteenth President of Rutgers University. After Richard L. McCormick became a history professor at Rutgers in the mid-70's, the two McCormicks taught at least one history course together, American Political History.
Works
New Jersey from Colony to State, 1609-1789.
The Second American Party System: Party Formations in the Jacksonian Era.
