Texas Tech Archives Receives History of Financial Planning Memorabilia

Texas Tech University’s Center for Financial Responsibility and the Southwest Collection/Special Collections Library (SWC/SCL) recently received from the widow of Loren Dunton a collection of rare items documenting the founding of the field of financial planning.

“Clearly, this is a major accomplishment to acquire the original scheduling documents with handwritten notes of the meeting that founded the financial planning discipline,” said Bill Gustafson, senior director of the Center for Financial Responsibility.

Dunton, considered one of the founding fathers of financial planning, was a financial consultant and mutual-fund salesman who started a consulting firm in Colorado in 1968. Due to the need of a professional to coordinate a person’s financial affairs, he invited a group of thirteen business leaders in the financial services industry to a meeting on Dec. 11, 1969, at the Chicago O’Hare International Airport.

This meeting marked the beginning of the financial planning movement and the Certified Financial Planner™ designation.

Nineteen years after his death, Dunton’s life work and memory will live on in Texas Tech’s Archives for the History of Financial Planning because of Ben Baldwin, a longtime friend of Dunton’s.

“Baldwin came to Texas Tech to present a workshop for personal financial planning students,” said John Gilliam, director of master’s programs in the Department of Personal Financial Planning (PFP). “The program brings top professionals from around the country to the university for a workshop for students and Baldwin was one of these professionals.”

After the workshop, Baldwin decided Dunton’s memorabilia needed to be in the SWC/SCL. In addition, Baldwin referred Gilliam to Dunton’s widow, Marta Dunton, who lives in San Francisco.

“When I told Marta a home was found for Dunton’s memorabilia, she cried because she was concerned her husband’s memory would be lost forever,” Baldwin said.

The SWC/SCL is home to the Archives for the History of Financial Planning, and the department has collected data, memorabilia and more than 300 oral interviews since 2005.

Dunton’s books, published newsletters, awards and copies of original documents currently are available at the SWC/SCL for students and the public to understand the history of financial planning.

Graduate students in the PFP department also are in the process of going through the documents, digitizing and cataloging them so they can be available on the web.

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