As a youth Dick was already a very active person with a paper route before school and an after-school job at the hardware store. He was a Cub Scout, Boy Scout, and Sea Scout. He also had an interest in flying so he joined the Civil Air Patrol and acquired a private pilot license at the age of sixteen at the Concord Flying Club.

After graduating from Concord High in 1944, Dick had aspired to become an air cadet. Instead, he started his career at Davis Transformer. Under the GI Bill, his friends were able to attend college and urged Dick to join them, so Richard then enrolled at UNH under the ROTC program. Richard graduated in 1951 with a BS in mechanical engineering.
Upon graduation, he was chosen as one of ten ROTC graduates from schools across the country to receive a direct commission as a 2nd Lieutenant in the newly minted USAF. Within a year Richard was already into his second assignment at Sandia Air Force Base in Albuquerque, for training to be an atomic weapons mechanical officer.

Military life meant many more special training, travel, and assignments throughout the states including an assignment to Wright-Patterson AFB in Ohio for graduate school. While training there for work as a Base Civil Engineer in 1957 he earned his professional engineer license (and remained a P.E. for 42 years until retiring in 1999). Dick then received secret orders to ship to Topsham Air Force Station in Maine-a new base responsible for air defense of the northeast-where he reported directly to the base commander. According to military policy, an imminent birth prevented Dick from being sent to the Korean war, so instead he was sent to Cape Romanzof, AK, a remote radar site whose closest city was in Russia. He started off as base engineer-the second ranking officer to the base commander. In that role he received the award for the Best Preventative Maintenance program. Not long after, the Base Commander became ill, and so Richard took over command of the base until a replacement could be found, and by that time the assignment was over. Dick’s final ‘Cold War’ assignment was at the Bomarc missile site in Long Island, NY-the new site to protect New York City from Russian bomber attack. His role was to organize the maintenance and operation of the self-sustaining power plant for the base. He and his family moved nine times in nine years in the service. Richard culminated his career in the Air Force as Captain on May 31, 1960, and returned to New England.

After the Air Force, Richard immediately got a position training to be a plant manager in the paper industry. Dick left this position to help his dad retire from Merrimack Sheet Metal, the company Eugene had founded in Concord, NH. Next, he started a new business with his brother, Bob, called Merrimack Engineering Associates in Nashua. Richard then started Dussault Engineering in Hudson, NH in 1972. The ability to set roots for a couple of solid decades in Hudson allowed Richard to be active in civic matters. He was president of the Hudson Rotary Club, President of the Hudson Chamber of Commerce, Citizen of the Year for Hudson, NH, President of the NH Chapter of the American Society of Heating, Refrigeration, Air-Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE), elected to be a Fellow in ASHRAE, and chosen by the Engineering Societies of NH as Engineer of the Year. Richard owned and operated Dussault Engineering for 27 years in Hudson.