Elizabeth Cless; Pioneer in Adult Education

Elizabeth Lawrence Cless, a heralded educator who spent most of her career helping adults renew their lives, died Monday in Cambridge, Mass., at the age of 76.

A family spokesman said she had suffered from cancer.

Mrs. Cless, a 1938 Radcliffe graduate who worked for the U.S. State Department and as a fashion director before devoting herself to education, established the first continuing education program for older women at the University of Minnesota in 1958.

In 1965 she moved to California and began a broadened version of that program for men and women, encouraging them to pursue goals in their later years that they might have discarded earlier.

In 1979 she established the Plato Society at UCLA, a program of intellectual growth for retirees with graduate degrees.

There, older men and women with skills in diverse areas learned how agriculture and trade developed in ancient cultures or, how the Inca quipu, a method of keeping records with knotted strings, functioned.

She started that program through the UCLA Extension after determining that there were no creative programs for seniors with professional or executive skills.

“Their problem,” she said in a 1980 interview with The Times, “is how to meet new people they can respect as peers.”

Among her many honors were recognition as the Radcliffe College alumnus of the year and a Los Angeles Times Woman of the Year, both in 1970.

A widow, Mrs. Cless is survived by a daughter, Julia M. Fair; a son, Peter Clark, a nephew and three grandchildren.