Petitt, Clifford W.

Clifford Walter Petitt was born February 7, 1890 on a central Kansas farm. His elementary schooling was in a one room school house a three-mile walk away. After graduating from Concordia Normal School and the Salt City College of Business, he worked as a secretary for a real estate operators and bankers in the Kansas cities of Plains, Liberal and Hutchinson.

Petitt's YMCA career began in 1911 when he was invited to become assistant to the general secretary of the new Hutchinson, Kansas association . He later became financial secretary at Lafayette, Indiana and then general secretary for the LaPorte, Indiana association. He was appointed secretary of the International Committee for service in China in 1918. He went to the Peking School of Chinese Studies and then to his assignment with the National Committee in Shanghai.

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