TAYLOR, Theodore W(alter) 1913–2005

OBITUARY NOTICE—See index for CA sketch: Born December 22, 1913, in Berkeley, CA; died March 12, 2005, in Falls Church, VA. Government official and author. Taylor was a longtime employee of the U.S. Department of the Interior where he specialized in Na-tive American affairs, later publishing four books on the subject. Graduating in 1935 from the University of Arizona, he went to Syracuse University to earn an M.A. in public administration in 1938. Later, in 1960, he completed his Ph.D. at Harvard University in this subject. During the late 1930s he was a manager for the Rural Electrification Administration in Washington, D.C.; he then joined the Department of Agriculture as an administrative assistant, soon rising to the job of director of the Federal Extension Service. When the United States entered World War II, Taylor worked in personnel for the U.S. Navy's Bureau of Ships. When the war was over, he joined the Department of the Interior, initially working as a budget officer for the Office of Territories and Island Possessions. His interest in Native-American affairs was sparked in 1950, when he became chief of the Branch of Management Planning for the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Before leaving the Department of the Interior in 1959, he spent three years as mobilization officer for defense electrical power. Taylor next joined the Smithsonian Institution, where he was an assistant to the secretary from 1959 to 1965. He returned to the Bureau of Indian Affairs as deputy commissioner in 1966, remaining there until 1974, with the exception of a year spent at the Brookings Institution. Taylor was assistant to the bureau's commissioner from 1971 to 1974. In his later years he continued to work as a freelance consultant and writer, publishing the books The States and Their Indian Citizens (1972), American Indian Policy (1983), and The Bureau of Indian Affairs (1984). He also edited Federal Public Policy: Personal Accounts by Ten Senior Civil Service Executives (1984).

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Washington Post, March 15, 2005, p. B7.