Charles I. Schottland; Headed Social Security

Charles Irwin Schottland, a former Los Angeles lawyer and California executive who served as commissioner of Social Security in the administration of President Dwight D. Eisenhower, has died. He was 88.

Schottland, a national expert on social welfare policy who also served as president of Brandeis University, died Tuesday at his home in Tucson.

In 1950, California Gov. Earl Warren named Schottland state director of social welfare after a search committee described him as “for many years, one of the outstanding executives in the social welfare field in the U.S.”

Schottland was appointed by Eisenhower to the federal Social Security post in 1954 and served until 1958.

In 1959, he became the founding dean of Brandeis’ Florence Heller Graduate School for Advanced Studies in Social Welfare. The teacher and administrator, who wrote three books and more than 130 articles on social welfare and served as an adviser to many national groups, was president of the university in Waltham, Mass., from 1970 until 1972.

A native of Chicago, Schottland studied political science at UCLA, social work at the New York School of Social Work and law at USC. He later taught at UCLA, USC and UC Berkeley, as well as at Brandeis.

During World War II, he was a lieutenant colonel on Eisenhower’s staff at Allied headquarters, in charge of displaced persons. For his work in repatriating more than 5 million people, he was decorated by France, Czechoslovakia, Poland, the Netherlands and Greece. After the war, he was assistant director of the United Nations Relief Administration in Germany.

In California, Schottland also served as director of the state Emergency Relief Administration in 1936 and 1937, and then became executive director of the Federation of Jewish Welfare Organizations of Los Angeles County.

In his later years, Schottland served as chairman of the Governor’s Advisory Council on Aging in Arizona. He was invited to last month’s meeting of the White House Commission on Aging.

Schottland, whose wife, Edna, died recently, is survived by a son, Richard, and two grandsons.

A memorial service is scheduled for Sunday in Tucson, with burial later in Arlington National Cemetery outside Washington.