Chad John Flake was born December 28, 1929, in Snowflake, Arizona, a town founded by his grandfather William J. Flake. Chad was the son of John Taylor Flake and Carrie Lindsey Flake. His mother died when Chad was nine. Later his father married Annise Jackson Flake. Following his graduation from Snowflake High School, Chad attended Northern Arizona University and Brigham Young University. He received a Master of Arts degree from Denver University. He served on a mission to Great Britain.

Chad joined the faculty at BYU, where he served as General Reference Librarian, Documents Librarian, and was eventually appointed Curator of Special Collections. Under his direction, the Lee Library developed the finest collection of rare books in the Intermountain West and the second finest Mormon collection in existence. He was instrumental in acquiring and preserving rare manuscripts for BYU. One of Chad's greatest contributions to BYU and to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was a monumental work Mormon Bibliography, 1830-1930, for which he received the John Whitmer Association Award for the best Mormon book of the year and the Mormon History Association's award for best book of the year. College and Research Libraries recognized this bibliography as one of the two significant religious reference works of 1978. This work and its supplements remain an essential resource for researchers today. Chad created the Aldine Classification Schedule which expanded the Annales de L'imprimerie des Aldine…by Antonio Auguste Renouard. He served as a member of the Library of Congress Classification Committee; and as a member of the Library Preservation Committee, he wrote a disaster preparedness plan that received wide recognition at the Cambridge 1980 International Conference on the Conservation of Library and Archival Materials and the Graphic Arts. An active member of both the American and Utah Library Associations, Chad also served as president of the Western History Association.

Chad J. Flake died on June 18, 2003.