Blanche D. Coll
Blanche D. Coll died on the eastern shore of
Maryland on March 8, 2003, at the age of 86. Coll, who received both her
graduate and undergraduate degrees from Johns Hopkins, was a pioneer in
the field of policy history. Over the course of a long career with the
federal government, she worked for the U.S. Maritime Commission, the Army
Corps of Engineers, and the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare.
A graceful stylist, a talented researcher, and devoted to the craft of
history, she wrote, with collaborators, histories of the U.S. Maritime
Commission’s shipbuilding program in World War II and of the contributions
of the Corps of Engineers to the war effort. Turning her attention to social
welfare policy, she contributed an article on the Baltimore Society for
the Prevention of Pauperism that was published in the AHR in October 1955.
She also wrote a frequently cited and widely distributed history of public
welfare, Perspectives on Public Welfare, which appeared in 1969. Upon retiring
from the government in 1979, she set out to work on a history of the modern
public assistance program, winning plaudits for her book, Safety Net:
Welfare and Social Security, 1929–1979, published by Rutgers University Press
in 1995.
—Ed Berkowitz
George Washington University
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Last Updated: January 18, 2008 2:51 PM