Blair, Nature Conservancy ex-head, dies

William D. Blair Jr., a former reporter and State Department spokesman who was president of the Nature Conservancy, a land preservation organization, from 1980 to 1987, died Aug. 5 at his summer home in Vinalhaven, Maine. He was 79.

He had multiple system atrophy, a neurodegenerative disease.

Blair worked for the State Department from 1959 to 1980, retiring as deputy assistant secretary for public affairs. During those years, he was also an active member of environmental organizations, including the Audubon Naturalist Society and the Nature Conservancy.

With Blair at the helm of the Nature Conservancy, membership, staff and fundraising rose markedly. He raised $300 million in private funds, and the organization started several conservation efforts abroad. His awards included the Chevron Conservation Award in 1987.

He wrote “Katharine Ordway: The Lady Who Saved the Prairies,” published by the conservancy in 1989. The book was about the 3M mining company heiress who gave millions to the conservancy.

William Draper Blair Jr. was born in Charlotte, N.C., and raised in Washington and New York.

His great-great-grandfather was Francis Preston Blair Sr., a member of Andrew Jackson’s kitchen cabinet, a group of unofficial advisers, and co-publisher of the former Washington Globe newspaper. The family house became what is now known as Blair House, where visiting dignitaries to the White House stay.

Blair was a 1944 graduate of the Hotchkiss School in Lakeville, Conn., and a 1949 magna cum laude graduate of Princeton University. He served in the Marine Corps at the end of World War II.

Hired by the Baltimore Sun in 1949, he became a Korean War correspondent and received the Purple Heart after he was shot in the back. Afterward, he became the paper’s roving European correspondent.

In 1953, he joined Newsweek magazine and became bureau chief in Bonn and Paris before leaving for a State Department press job.

He was a recipient of State Department honors for distinguished public service.

Survivors include his wife of 57 years, Jane Coleman Blair of the District of Columbia and Vinalhaven; two daughters, Jane Gelston of Naperville, Ill., and Elizabeth Jones of Bethesda, Md.; and four granddaughters.