ROANOKE TIMES 
                      Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times

DATE: Tuesday, August 20, 1996               TAG: 9608200071
SECTION: VIRGINIA                 PAGE: C-3  EDITION: METRO 
DATELINE: WASHINGTON
                                             TYPE: NEWS OBIT 

WOMAN WHO URGED NOW'S CREATION DIES

Catherine S. East, a retired federal worker who was instrumental in forming the National Organization for Women, is dead of congestive heart failure at age 80.

She died Saturday at a life-care community facility in Ithaca, N.Y., where she moved in January after living in the Washington area since 1939. News of her death was reported in The Washington Post.

The Post said that in 1966, she was largely responsible for persuading author Betty Friedan to found NOW.

Friedan has been quoted as saying that East was the ``valiant, incorruptible woman who cajoled me into the act of starting NOW'' and was the ``midwife to the birth of the women's movement.''

She held a number of jobs in the federal government, including positions with the Civil Service Commission and the Labor Department, and held senior staff positions with every presidential advisory commission on women from 1962 to 1977.

Since about 1980, she had lectured and done consulting work.

- Associated Press

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