Aide Prepared Daily Reports For Eisenhower and Nixon

Albert P. Toner, 91, a White House aide in two Republican administrations nearly 20 years apart, died of congestive heart failure May 21 at his home in Brunswick, Maine.

Mr. Toner prepared the daily information report for President Dwight D. Eisenhower on problems and activities submitted by government agencies and the White House staff. He returned for his second White House tour during the Nixon administration to do essentially the same job.

Albert Plummer Toner was born in Lewiston, Maine, and graduated from the University of Maine in 1939. He received a master's degree from the Iowa Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa in 1941. He later did graduate study at George Washington University and graduated from the National War College in 1963.

He worked for a variety of federal agencies, starting before World War II in the central information division of what would become the Office of Strategic Services. He served in the Army during the war, then joined the secretary of state's Central Secretariat, working on the Marshall Plan for presentation to Congress. He witnessed the signing of the North Atlantic Treaty, which brought NATO into existence.

Mr. Toner also worked in the office of the assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs as a national security specialist and policy planner. He also was an assistant to deputy and acting directors in the Office of Emergency Preparedness and was the U.S. representative to Brussels and Venice meetings of the NATO Committee on the Challenges of Modern Society. He received the Distinguished Service Award from the Office of Emergency Preparedness for his work. After his 1973 retirement, he worked briefly for the Commerce Department, then became an editorial consultant for books and studies on international security and economic affairs.

A longtime member of Diplomatic and Consular Officers Retired, he also was active in Walker Chapel United Methodist Church in Arlington County. He was an Arlington resident until four years ago, when he moved to Maine.

Mr. Toner was a regular contributor to the old Washington Star's letters page and was often cited on word use in the columns of former Washington Post writer Bob Levey. He also contributed column fillers to the New Yorker magazine.

His wife of 64 years, Mary Gardner Toner, died in 2006. A son, Karl Albert Toner, died in 2008.

Survivors include his daughter, Ann Frey of Brunswick, Maine; two granddaughters; and two great-grandchildren.

-- Patricia Sullivan