Donald Quested Coster – Colonel, United States Army, Government Official

DONALD Q. COSTER, FORMER A.I.D. OFFICIAL

WASHINGTON, June 8, 1984 – Donald Q. Coster, a former official of the Agency for International Development, died last Thursday at the American Hospital of Paris.  He was 76 years old and lived in Paris and Washington.

Mr. Coster headed the agency’s activities in Algeria in the early 1960’s.  When the mission was downgraded in 1963, he was named to the faculty of the Foreign Service Institute.

Mr. Coster, who had a part in the D-Day landings in World War II, won the Legion of Merit and the North African-European Campaign Medal with five battle stars and two arrowheads.  In 1940, while serving as a volunteer ambulance driver with the American Field Service, Mr. Coster was captured by German troops and held for six weeks.

After the war France awarded him three medals and Belgium awarded him two.

Mr. Coster, who graduated from Princeton University in 1929, was a Vice Counsel in Casablanca in 1941-42.  Later in the war he was assigned to the Office of Strategic Services with the ranks of Lieutenant Colonel and Colonel.

After the war he was an advertising executive in New York and Paris.  In 1959 he joined the International Cooperation Administration, forerunner to the A.I.D., as Deputy Director of its mission in Vietnam, where he worked until his reassignment to Algiers.

Mr. Coster was an adviser at the Army’s John F. Kennedy Center for Military Assistance at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, for several years until 1970, and was an executive at the American Hospital in Paris from 1971 to 1975.

He is survived by his wife, Ruth, and a son, Michael David Coster of Manhattan.

He will be buried Monday with full military honors at Arlington National Cemetery.


COSTER, DONALD QUESTED

  • COL   US ARMY
  • DATE OF BIRTH: 12/02/1907
  • DATE OF DEATH: 05/31/1984
  • BURIED AT: SECTION 1-JJ  ROW 18  SITE 2
    ARLINGTON NATIONAL CEMETERY

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