Petitt, Clifford W.

Clifford Petitt was born in Kansas in 1890. He began his life-long YMCA career at the Hutchinson, Kansas YMCA in 1911 and later worked for the YMCAs in Lafayette and LaPorte, Indiana. In 1918, he was invited to serve as a YMCA secretary in China, where he spent the next 15 years in Shanghai and Qingdao (Tsingtao). In 1936 he returned to the Shanghai Foreign YMCA. In 1939, he left China to become the business manager of the Metropollitan YMCA of New York. In 1955, Petitt retired, but he maintained his association with the YMCA as president of the International Association of Retired Directors (IARD) and secreatary-treasurer of the Employees Alliance of the YMCAs.