FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT: MELINDA SHELTON, 767; DIANE MINOR, 773
NOW activists nationwide today mourn the passing of Catherine East, 80, of Ithaca, N.Y., a retired federal worker who was one of, if not the, key behind-the-scenes people who pressed for a new grassroots feminist activist group like NOW.
"She was what we today would call a visionary," said NOW Action Vice President Rosemary Dempsey. "She championed the idea that only outside pressure from a group like NOW would force government action on discrimination against women."
After encouraging NOW's first president, Betty Friedan, and others to form NOW, East continued to serve as the movement's most important source of information about the status of women, and was a strategist who helped reconcile differences between women active in the labor and feminist movements, according to Marie Cantlon and Rebecca Davison, co-authors of a forthcoming history of NOW, tentatively titled "Ordinary Women, Extraordinary Acts" (Penguin Viking, 1997).
East died Saturday (Aug. 17) of congestive heart failure in a life-care community facility in Ithaca, N.Y. A former Arlington, Va., resident, she had lived in Ithaca since January.
Since about 1980, she had lectured and done consulting work. She previously held senior staff positions with every presidential advisory commission on the status of women from 1962 to 1977. She began her federal career with the U.S. Civil Service Commission, and worked from 1963 to 1975 for the Labor Department.
East is survived by two daughters, M. Victoria East of Seattle and Elizabeth R. East of Ithaca; a brother, Charles D. Shipe of Great Falls, Va.; and a granddaughter.
NOW members extend their condolences to her family and their gratitude for her lifetime of feminist leadership.