Person

Cavert, Twila Lytton

Twila Lytton Cavert, an educator who was an early advocate of higher status for women in church affairs, died on Tuesday at her home in Bronxville, N.Y. She was 96 years old.

After World War II, Mrs. Cavert directed a two-year study of women in churches in 54 countries. She was chairwoman of the resulting International Conference of Church Women in Baarn, the Netherlands, in 1948. This preceded the meeting in Amsterdam of the First Assembly of the World Council of Churches, which recommended that churches give a full range of responsibilities to women.

Mrs. Cavert received a bachelor's degree in 1915 at Ohio Weselyan University and a master's at Columbia University, She taught social studies at Ohio Wesleyan, at Women's Union College in Tokyo, Lawrence University in Appleton, Wis., and Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville. She was a director of the Young Women's Christian Association from 1928 to 1944. In 1941 she became a director of the United Council of Church Women.

In the 1930's she was a trustee of the Women's College of Yenching University at Beijing, and of Mount Holyoke College.

Her husband, Samuel McCrea Cavert, general secretary of the National Council of Churches, died in 1976. She is survived by a stepdaughter, Mary Cavert Ramsey of Santee, S.C.; two grandchildren, and two great-grandchildren.

New York Times, May 17, 1991, Section B, Page 7