Lutheran Resettlement Pioneer Cox Died

CORDELIA COX DIED

Cordelia Cox, 95, former director for Lutheran Immigration
and Refugee Service , died March 5 in Richmond, Va. Cox
became the first woman to head a major Lutheran agency in
the United States. During her tenure from 1948 to 1957 Cox
led the resettlement of more than 57,000 refugees from the
Baltic countries and Eastern Europe, admitted to the United
States under separate laws passed by Congress. She saw
the refugees as "people of strength, integrity and real ability."
Cox helped develop a previously undefined church-state
relationship for resettling refugees; she once said, "I think we
strengthened both our church and our country immensely."
Nearly all U.S. Lutherans cooperated in the resettlement
effort. After leaving LIRS and until her retirement in 1961 at
age 73, Cox served as executive secretary of the Lutheran
Welfare Council of Metropolitan New York. She served as a
consultant for the standards-setting Council on Social Work
Education from 1961 to 1966 and as a consultant in
undergraduate education for the U.S. Department of Health,
Education and Welfare from 1966 to 1971. She was also a
consultant for training of foreign students in social work. Cox
was a member of Lutheran Church of the Reformation,
Washington, D.C. LIRS is a joint ministry of the Evangelical
Lutheran Church in America, the Lutheran Church-Missouri
Synod and the Latvian Evangelical Lutheran Church in
America.

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