Over the past century, the YWCA Retirement Fund has been guided by women and men who have donated their time, expertise, and resources to the growth and continuation of this unique benefit. From the initial discussions about its inception, through decades of challenges and change, the following are among those who have made a lasting imprint on the Fund.
Our Benefactors
(L-R) John D. Rockefeller and Laura Spelman Rockefeller, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
John Davison Rockefeller (1839 – 1937)
J.D. Rockefeller was born in Richford, NY, to William Avery Rockefeller and Eliza Davison. In 1853, he moved with his family to Cleveland, OH where he studied bookkeeping. With partner Maurice B. Clark, Rockefeller built an oil refinery in 1863 and bought out his partner two years later. In 1864, he married Laura Spelman, with whom he had five children. Two years later, Rockefeller joined his brother William to establish Rockefeller, Andrews, & Flagler, which was the largest oil refinery in the world at the time.
In 1870, Rockefeller’s company was renamed Standard Oil and incorporated numerous competing oil competitors throughout the 1870s. To more efficiently manage his growing business interests, Rockefeller became the founder, chairman, and major shareholder of Standard Oil Trust, a conglomerate of forty-one separate companies. Standard Oil’s nearly complete control of oil refining and marketing by the end of the 1870s resulted in accusations of monopoly and the creation of the Interstate Commerce Commission and Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890.
Laura Celestia Spelman (1839-1915)
Laura Celestia “Cettie” Spelman was born in Wadsworth, OH, to Puritan descendants Harvey Buell Spelman and Lucy Henry, who had moved to Ohio from Massachusetts. Her father was an abolitionist active in the Congregationalist Church, the Underground Railroad, and politics. Her family eventually moved to Cleveland, OH. Spelman met John D. Rockefeller in Cleveland while attending accounting classes. She later returned to New England to attend Oread Institute, planning to become a schoolteacher. After returning to Ohio to teach, she married John in 1864.
Throughout her life, Spelman was active in the church (she joined Rockefeller's congregation, the Northern Baptists). Once the family business, Standard Oil, began to prosper, she further devoted her time to philanthropy and her children.
She is the namesake of Spelman College, founded to educate black women in Atlanta, GA, and the Laura Spelman Rockefeller Memorial.
"To promote the well-being of mankind throughout the world."
The YWCA Retirement Fund and other Charitable Works
J.D. Rockefeller was an active philanthropist, who gave regularly causes relating to higher education, including the establishment of Spelman College and the University of Chicago, medical science, and the Northern Baptist Convention. He created the Rockefeller Foundation in 1913 by an act of the New York State Legislature, "to promote the well-being of mankind throughout the world".
In 1918, Rockefeller established The Laura Spelman Rockefeller Memorial Fund (LSRM) to honor his late wife’s charitable causes, with funds totaling almost $74 million. Among the donations made by the Fund was a $1.8 million grant to seed the YWCA Retirement Fund.
The foundations merged in 1929, and the Spelman Fund of New York was chartered with $10 million to continue activities of the LSRM that were not absorbed by the Foundation. After a few initial years of conventional charitable giving to Baptist churches and other large organizations like the Salvation Army, the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts, and the YWCA and YMCA, LSRM began to pursue goals in the social sciences more in line with the “scientific philanthropy” of other Rockefeller organizations.
Founding Board of Trustees
Dave Hennen Morris (1872-1944), President
Dave Hennen Morris was minister to Belgium under Franklin D. Roosevelt from 1933 to 1937. He met his wife, Alice Vanderbilt Shepard, on board the Europe-bound ship Majestic. Alice’s father, millionaire attorney Elliott F. Shepard, did not approve of the marriage, as Dave and his father owned racehorses, and therefore made much of their fortune from gambling. However, the couple eloped, and Dave went on to become a distinguished attorney. Alice was Vice President of the World Service Council of the YWCA and together, the couple founded the International Auxiliary Language Association (IALA).
Lyman Rhoades Jr. (1881-1960), Vice President
Lyman Nash Rhoades Jr. was a successful banker, as were his forefathers. He held an office on Wall Street that was directly in front of the September 16, 1920, bombing incident.
William D. Murray (1858-1939), Secretary and General Counsel
William D. Murray was an attorney for the National Board of the YWCA and a founding board member (1910) and leader of the Boy Scouts of America, and author of The History of The Boy Scouts of America (published 1937) and other titles. He was a member of the International Committee of the YWCA for 48 years.
Ernest C. Wagner (1871-1952), Treasurer
Ernest C. Wagner was born in London, where he worked for the Chartered Bank of India, Australia, and China from 1893 to 1903. He then came to the U.S. as manager of the Seattle, WA, branch of the London and San Francisco Bank, Ltd, and moved to New York in 1919 as Vice President on the Discount Corporation, which specialized in bankers’ acceptances and U.S. Government Securities. He was later named president (1922) and Chairman of The Board (1935). He was a treasurer and trustee of the Fund until 1937.
Mrs. Lewis H. Lapham (1861-1956)
Nee Antoinette N. Dearborn, Mrs. Lewis H, Lapham was born in Brooklyn, NY, and married businessman and entrepreneur Lewis H, Lapham in 1882. The couple had four children, among them Roger D. Lapham, who served as the 32nd mayor of San Francisco from 1944 to 1948, and Ruth Lapham Lloyd, mother to the actors Christopher Lloyd and Sam Lloyd and a major benefactor to the town of New Canaan, CT, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Miss Mabel Cratty (1868-1928)
Mabel Cratty was General Secretary of the newly created YWCA National Board from 1906 to 1928, overseeing 110 secretaries in 13 countries and across 1,300 U.S. associations. Upon leaving the University of Ohio in 1890, she became a public-school teacher and then principal teacher at the high school in Delaware, OH. She was part of the John. D. Rockefeller Jr. party’s four-month tour of “the Orient” in 1922.
Mr. Trevor Arnett (1870-1955)
Trevor Arnett was born in Little Hereford, England, and graduated from the University of Chicago in 1898. He served as Trustee of the University from 1916 to 1922, from 1926 to 1928, and from 1937 to 1941, and he also studied at the University of Minnesota, and received honorary degrees from Carleton College in 1926 and from Colby College in 1939. He served as Secretary of the General Education Board from 1920 to 1924 and as President from 1928 to 1936. He was also President of the International Education Board from 1928 to 1936. He was a trustee of the Rockefeller Foundation, the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research, the Davison Fund, Atlanta University, and Morehouse College, and President of the Board of Trustees of Spelman College. He was recognized as the foremost authority in the United States on fiscal accounting and financial administration of colleges and universities, and he was the author of various publications on the subject, including College and University Finance (1922).
Mrs Frederic M. Paist (1880-1945)
Theresa Wilbur Paist was born in Boone, IW, and studied at Stanford. She taught mathematics at Pasadena High School from 1903 to 1904. She was President of YWCA National Board from 1932 to 1938, and a Fund trustee until 1945.
Notable Others
Mrs John French (1869-1951), Fund trustee 1946 -
Mary Montagu Billings French was the daughter of the lawyer, financier, and politician Frederick H. Billings, from whom she inherited the March-Billings-Rockefeller National Historical Park. Her daughter, also named Mary, married Laurence S. Rockefeller, the son of J.D. Rockefeller Jr. and Abby Aldrich Rockefeller. Mary Sr. was named President of the YWCA National Board in 1938, and her daughter was also very active within the YWCA – she flew over 50,000 miles for YWCA activities around the world.
Margaret P. Mead (1887-1971) Fund trustee 1941-1961
Margaret P. Mead, was Vice President of the YWCA National Board from 1940 to 1945 and an active member from 1923 to 1958. She was born in Plainfield, NJ, where she was active in the Presbyterian Church, League of Women Voters, and Consumers League. She attended the Masters School in Dobbs Ferry, NY. She was a representative on the World YWCA Council from 1924 to 1940 and on its World Service Council from 1946 to 1969.
Mrs Savilla Millis Simons (dates unknown), Fund trustee 1954 -
Mrs. Savilla Millis Simons was named General Secretary of the YWCA National Board in 1953. Prior to her nomination, she was director of the manpower and community services staff of the Technical Cooperation Administration at the State Department. Before going to the State Department, she was Assistant Director of International Relations in the Federal Security Agency. A trained social worker, she carried out international assignments for the Social Security Board in connection with the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration and the social welfare programs of the United Nations.
Miss Edith M. Lerrigo (1911 – 1989) Fund trustee 1960-
Edith M. Lerrigo was National Executive Director of the YWCA from 1960 until her retirement in 1974. She joined the YWCA in 1937 and served as Director of its college and university division, traveling to Mexico, Denmark, Australia, and Ghana before she was appointed to the Executive Director's post. She was also a trustee of the Riverside Church in Manhattan and a delegate to the general board of the National Council of Churches. She was born in Lithia, MA, the child of medical missionaries. She was a graduate of Bates College in Lewiston, ME, and received a master's degree in religious education from Teachers College, Columbia University.
Miss Lilace Reid Barnes (1900 – 1989), Fund trustee 1962
Lilace Reid Barnes began her work with the YWCA as a volunteer secretary in 1926 and became the first American World President of the YWCA in 1947. She held this office in Geneva, Switzerland, until 1955, when she returned to the U.S. and became head of the YWCA National Board – which she remained until 1961. She became the first woman appointed to the Lake Forest College Board of Trustees in 1944 and served until 1962. In 1968, she was made an honorary life member, and her impact remains evident on campus at the Lilace Reid Barnes Interfaith Center and with the donation of Reid Barnes collection to the Library Archives and Special Collections.
Glendora Putnam (1923-2016), Fund trustee in early 2000s
Glendora Putnam was a civil rights pioneer throughout life. After being excluded from a YWCA club as a teenager, she later spent decades serving the YWCA as it became fully integrated. She was elected president of the YWCA National Board in 1985 and traveled the world to represent the organization. She received a bachelor’s degree from Bennett College, a historically African-American school in Greensboro, NC, in 1945, and graduated three years later from Boston University School of Law. She became the first African American woman to serve as an assistant attorney general in Massachusetts, leading the civil rights division. She also chaired the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination in the 1970s. She received many honors and accolades throughout her life. In 1970, the Boston Business and Professional Women’s Club named her “Woman of the Year.” In 1988, she was inducted into the Academy of Distinguished Bostonians, and into the YW Academy of Women Achievers by the Boston YWCA in 1997. The following year, she received the BU Law Silver Shingle Award for Distinguished Public Service. The Museum of African American History declared her a “Living Legend” and presented her with the Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin Lifetime Achievement Award in 2007. In 2013, the Boston YWCA gave her the Sandra B. Henriquez Racial Justice Award.
Carol Holbrook Baldi (died 2017)
Carol Baldi was one of few women to work on Wall Street in the 1950’s. She started as a trainee and became a portfolio manager and investment analyst and then Vice President of the U.S. Trust within 20 years. She then set up her own investment company, Carol H. Baldi, Inc., which she managed, which her retirement in 2012. She served on many boards throughout her career, including United Mutual, YWCA USA, and Mitsubishi Trust. At the Fund, she served as President of the Investment Committee.
Do you have any further information about past trustees of the YWCA Retirement Fund? Contact us at communications@ywcarf.org.
