hPARA `PAR@ ` TEXT ` ·Boardman, Mabel Thorp1860╨1946Red Cross leaderBorn in Cleveland on October 12, 1860, Mabel Boardman was of a well-to-do family and was educated privately in Cleveland and New York City. For several years in her youth she traveled, spending some time enjoying the German imperial court, where an uncle was U.S. minister. She also devoted time to various social philanthropies, such as the Children╒s Day Nursery in Cleveland and the Children╒s Hospital in Washington, D.C. During the Spanish-American War in 1898 she was active in recruiting nurses. In 1900 her name appeared, apparently without her knowledge, among those of the fifty incorporators on the application of the American Red Cross for a congressional charter. She accepted the involvement, secured a seat on the executive committee of the Red Cross, and began studying its work and that of foreign Red Cross groups. She quickly concluded that the arbitrary administration of the aging and autocratic Clara Barton was largely responsible for the low esteem into which the Red Cross had fallen, and she began to agitate for change. Barton successfully resisted attempts to curb her authority until 1903, when Boardman used her political contacts to influence President Theodore Roosevelt to withdraw governmental support and to call for an investigation into the management of the Red Cross. Complicated maneuvers resulted in Barton╒s resignation in 1904. By congressional act of January 5, 1905, drafted by Boardman, the Red Cross was rechartered, its president was made an appointee of the president of the United States, and the War Department was given authority to audit the books. Roosevelt appointed William Howard Taft president, but Boardman, resuming the seat on the executive committee from which pro-Barton forces had earlier suspended her, remained the effective executive power. She refused even the chairmanship of the committee, insisting that the occupancy of the conspicuous positions by men was necessary to retain public confidence. To that same end she worked hard to develop support for the Red Cross among the socially prominent. By her indefatigable labors the Red Cross accumulated a large endowment fund, established branches across the country, greatly improved its lifesaving, first aid, and other services, in part through hard-won cooperation with such groups as the American Nursing Association, and developed a readiness to respond quickly to disasters and military needs. In conscious contrast to Clara Barton, Mabel Boardman refrained from appearing at the scenes of disaster work, remaining instead at her administrative tasks in Washington. A major fund drive made possible the erection of a huge headquarters, dubbed the ╥Marble Palace,╙ in Washington, D.C., in 1917. In 1915 she published Under the Red Cross Flag at Home and Abroad. As the European war required increasing attention from 1914, the resources of the Red Cross were taxed, and by 1916 moves were afoot to reorganize the administration of its work. In April 1917 a Red Cross War Council superseded the regular executive committee, and Boardman was relegated to relatively minor tasks. She failed to win reappointment to the reconstituted executive committee in 1919. In September 1920 she became, on appointment by President Woodrow Wilson, the first woman member of the Board of Commissioners of the District of Columbia. In 1921 she returned to the Red Cross as central committee member and national secretary. She opposed unsuccessfully the development of permanent social services by the Red Cross under the leadership of professionals, and from 1922 she devoted herself mainly to continuing the tradition of volunteer service. She organized the Volunteer Service (later Volunteer Special Services), including nurses aides, a motor corps, a canteen corps, a home service corps, and the ╥Gray Ladies,╙ and was director from 1923. Her notion of these corps as the domain of the elite, however, was increasingly at odds with social realities. She resigned as director of the Volunteer Special Services, whose 9 corps then numbered over 2.7 million volunteers, in August 1940, retired from her local chapter in January 1944, and resigned from the central committee of the Red Cross in December 1944. She died in Washington, D.C., on March 17, 1946. &styl ` ! ¬ 5¬ 5¬ 2 !I - 5¬ . !I ╬ !I ▐ ┌ !I ╡ 5¬ ╢ !I
