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Mabel Thorp Boardman was an American social activist. She was leader of the American Red Cross.
Background
Mabel Boardman was born on October 12, 1860, in Cleveland, Ohio, United States. Both her parents, William Jarvis Boardman and Florence (Sheffield) Boardman, had distinguished antecedents. William Boardman, a wealthy Ohio businessman and lawyer, numbered among his ancestors Gov. William Bradford of Plymouth Colony; John Mason, colonial soldier and Indian fighter; and Elijah Boardman, Revolutionary soldier and senator from Connecticut, whose son immigrated to Ohio's Western Reserve. Mabel's mother was the daughter of the wealthy New Haven merchant Joseph Earl Sheffield, benefactor of the Sheffield Scientific School at Yale
Education
Mabel Boardman studied and traveled in Europe after attending private schools in Cleveland and New York.
Career
From 1889-1893 Mabel Boardman lived in Germany, where she enjoyed the social life of the kaiser's court as the guest of her uncle William Walter Phelps, United States minister to Germany. On her return she settled in Washington, D. C. In Cleveland she had done volunteer work at the Children's Day Nursery, and in Washington she served on the board of Children's Hospital. During the Spanish-American War she recruited army nurses. At this time public confidence in the American Red Cross was at an ebb; charges were rife of unbusinesslike management by the dedicated but aging founder Clara Barton. When in 1900 the Red Cross received a formal federal charter, Boardman's name appeared on the list of incorporators - without, she always said, her consent. She nevertheless assumed an active role. Accepting membership on the executive committee, she studied foreign Red Cross societies and concluded that further changes in the American association were necessary. Weak in organization and operation, it had never established branches throughout the country. Complaints persisted, moreover, that Barton made important decisions without consulting her executive committee and received disaster funds directly rather than through the treasurer.
A struggle for control ensued, with one side loyally supporting Barton and the other moving forward under Boardman's leadership. Barton won the first round, but President McKinley's death removed a strong supporter and brought into office a new president, Theodore Roosevelt, whose sister Anna (Roosevelt) Cowles was in the Boardman camp. Early in 1903 Roosevelt withdrew government support from the Red Cross, and the conflict broke into the public realm. After a complex series of maneuvers, victory went to the proponents of change. Barton retired gracefully, and Congress in 1905 enacted a new organizational structure under which Boardman emerged as the dominant figure, with her good friend William Howard Taft as the society's president. The Red Cross was now a quasi-governmental organization; the president of the United States appointed the chairman as well as five members of the eighteen-member central committee. The society's financial records, moreover, were audited by the War Department.
Although Boardman was unwilling to accept either the presidency or the central committee chairmanship, her control until 1917 was as complete as that of her predecessor. Both the central committee and its steering group, the executive committee, accepted her recommendations as a matter of course. Again like her predecessor, Boardman never married and made the Red Cross the focal point of her time and energy. An important difference was her refusal to participate personally in relief efforts; her place, she believed, was in Washington organizing resources. Another difference was the emphasis that Boardman placed upon leadership by the socially elite as a means of inspiring public confidence. Termed the "administrative genius" of the Red Cross, Boardman transformed a society that had scarcely existed between disasters into a continuing national organization. She was indefatigable in her efforts; as unpaid secretary she worked with untiring zeal at her Washington desk and faithfully attended meetings of the executive committee, on which she held continuous membership until 1918.
In 1908 Boardman adopted a suggestion for an antituberculosis Christmas seal project, which, after a decade of successful sales through Red Cross volunteers, was turned over to the National Tuberculosis Association. Several times she served as delegate to international Red Cross conferences, and after the Russo-Japanese War she toured Japan, where the nation's four million Red Cross members inspired her to build a national organization that would rival foreign societies. Moving from a one-room office to quarters in the War Department provided by Taft and then in 1913 to temporary larger accommodations, Boardman launched a campaign for adequate permanent headquarters. She obtained a federal appropriation matched by private contributions, and in 1917 saw the opening of the Red Cross's massive "marble palace" on a block of federal land. When the society outgrew this building, she raised funds for a larger structure behind the first. In 1930 she was similarly successful in financing the construction of a fine building for the District of Columbia chapter.
An advisory role was impossible for Boardman; she expected her instructions to be followed to the letter. Apparently unable to delegate responsibility, she handled matters down to the finest detail. In accepting the new position of central committee vice-chairman in 1915, Eliot Wadsworth did so on condition of "freedom from domination of one not having express authority. " It was not until the United States entered World War I, however, that Boardman's control faded. The wartime crisis produced a sudden expansion in membership as well as a flood of offers from eager volunteers. Neither an overwhelmed headquarters staff nor the society's financial resources seemed adequate to meet the emergency. Duplications and delays, moreover, resulted from lack of any clear definition of officers' functions. At Wadsworth's request President Wilson called a meeting of leading businessmen and bankers, and as a result of this conference a new group assumed control. The central committee temporarily delegated its executive committee's authority to a war council, the chairmanship of which went to a member of the J. P. Morgan banking firm, Henry P. Davison. Boardman was relegated, as the Washington Post later put it, to the society's "shadowy background. " At the close of the war the new group's influence led to President Wilson's appointment of Livingston Farrand as the executive committee's first salaried chairman, and Taft, who resigned, failed to achieve Boardman's appointment to the executive committee. The aim of the Red Cross was thenceforth professional social work.
Boardman briefly turned her considerable energies to another quarter. In 1920 she accepted President Wilson's appointment to a term on the three-member District of Columbia Board of Commissioners, the first woman to be appointed to the District's governing body. Given charge of the area's charitable institutions, she visited them all personally. By 1921, however, she was back on the Red Cross executive committee as national secretary. At the 1922 convention she took a strong stand against the trend toward professional leadership and against the professionals' view that the society should engage in social welfare work in the intervals between emergencies. She was destined to lose; soon afterward the central committee stated unequivocally that while military and disaster aid were primary concerns, the nursing and family welfare programs would continue.
Boardman now carried her conviction regarding the importance of volunteer leadership into a new Red Cross project, the Volunteer Service, later renamed Volunteer Special Services, of which she became director in 1923. Her purpose was to maintain specific volunteer community services and to keep volunteers trained through regular activity for prompt disaster service. Successful applicants, drawn primarily from the ranks of the social elite, pledged a minimum number of hours to their chosen service. Of the nine corps that were established, the Gray Ladies, serving in veterans' hospitals, and the Nurses's Aides became especially well-known. Upon her retirement from the directorship of the Volunteer Special Services in 1940, the membership roll totaled 2, 720, 000. Continuing as national secretary and central committee member, Boardman directed relief projects during World War II until her retirement in December 1944. In 1946, at eighty-five, she died of a coronary thrombosis at her Washington home.
Achievements
During her work at the American Red Cross Boardman created or improved the Red Cross life-saving, first-aid, and nursing services - the latter through a fruitful affiliation with the American Nurses' Association. Her intensive campaign and success in obtaining a permanent endowment fund put the society on a sound financial basis. During her forty-five years of service she also received many awards, including decorations from foreign governments, the Red Cross's first Distinguished Service Medal and honorary degrees from Yale, Western Reserve, and George Washington universities and Smith College. Boardman also was the first woman member of the Board of Commissioners of the District of Columbia. Given charge of the area's charitable institutions, she visited them all personally.
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Religion
Boardman was an Episcopalian and a member of Washington's St. John's Church.
Personality
A tall, impressive figure with a broad, firm mouth and lively blue eyes, Boardman carried herself with "majestic dignity. " She was described as "straight as a ramrod, and at ease, but with a touch of military tension. " Fashionably dressed and fond of jewelry, she wore her hair in a pompadour reminiscent of the 1890's and pinned a hat atop it in Victorian style. Her appearance bore such a marked resemblance to the dowager Queen Mary of England that the former Prince of Wales, seeing her in 1919, was startled into comment on it. She entertained graciously in her spacious Washington mansion; an invitation to her home was almost as significant in Washington social circles as an invitation to the White House.
Quotes from others about the person
"She is not the president - she is not the chairman - she is the Red Cross. " - William Howard Taft
