Melvin H. Wunsch, an administrator of the Social Security Administration (SSA) during its formative years, was born on January 9, 1912 in Rockland (Manitowoc County), Wisconsin, the youngest son of Carl Wunsch. His father was a farmer of Prussian descent who taught his son the value of discipline and frugality. From 1929 to 1934 Wunsch was a student at the University of Wisconsin, where he majored in journalism, studied with Selig Perlman and John Hicks, and was active in journalistic and forensic activities. After graduation, his studies led Wunsch to a series of short-term news and public relations jobs until a long-forgotten civil service application brought him to Washington, D.C., late in 1936 in the first batch of recruits to be trained for the new Social Security Administration.
Wunsch's ensuing activities consisted of a series of geographic assignments and a gradual string of promotions in civil service grade classifications. Beginning as an assistant personnel clerk (grade 3), Wunsch ended his days at the Social Security Administration as an assistant division chief (grade 15). For the majority of his career, he served on the Social Security field staff, beginning in Minneapolis in 1936, and moving successively to Milwaukee, Green Bay, Oshkosh, Lafayette, Muncie, Rockford, Indianapolis, Chicago, Baltimore, Chicago, Cleveland, and Kansas City. In the field, his public relations skill, early emphasis on training functions, and managerial skill in trouble-shooting organizational problems won him a reputation as an able administrator. As the years passed, Wunsch was promoted to increasingly large urban centers.
After brief stints in a public relations capacity for Social Security in Chicago and Baltimore from 1947 to 1948, Wunsch shifted to supervisory duties as assistant regional representative in Chicago from 1948 to 1951, where he served as a liaison to a large network of Social Security field officers. For a brief period from December 1951 to May 1953 Wunsch left the Social Security Administration and served with the Bureau of the Budget as budget examiner in the Chicago regional office, where he had duties similar to those he had held with the Social Security Administration. Upon dissolution of the Budget Bureau regional offices, Wunsch returned to the Social Security system, once again as assistant regional representative, first in Cleveland and then in Kansas City.
A move to the Baltimore central office in May 1963 represented a major shift in career direction, as Wunsch took a place on the central planning staff. The bulk of his work there revolved around management of information systems in the Social Security Administration. Bureaucratic struggles in the central office ultimately led him to join the systems staff of the Bureau of Health Insurance, which was responsible for implementing Medicare. He briefly headed this division in 1971 and 1972, before retiring in January 1973.
Melvin Wunsch married Margaret Blocki on May 7, 1946.
