Donald Shelton Dawson, 97, a lawyer who as the Truman administration’s patronage chief was accused of peddling influence and accepting favors from federal loan recipients, died of a stroke Sunday at his home in Bethesda, Md.
Mr. Dawson, special executive assistant to President Harry S. Truman from 1947 to 1953, was accused by a Senate Banking subcommittee in 1951 with being part of a “web of influence” that affected loan policies of the old Reconstruction Finance Corp.
“Senator, I did nothing improper,” he said in subcommittee testimony, then added, “but I would not do it again.”
Mr. Dawson was never charged with a crime.
Mr. Dawson was born in El Dorado Springs, Mo., and graduated from the University of Missouri. He moved to Washington in 1933 to work for the RFC, and later for the Federal Loan Administration.
After World War II, he was one of the architects of Truman’s 1948 whistle-stop presidential campaign.
