E.M. Pickarts; Head of U.N. Advisory Group

Evelyn M. Pickarts, former national governor of the United Nations Assn., a private organization of U.S. citizens who advise the State Department on the role the United States should play in the international organization, has died.

A spokeswoman for the Pasadena chapter of the U.N. organization said the retired family education specialist with the Los Angeles Unified School District was in her 80s.

Mrs. Pickarts, who died Oct. 17, was a former president of the Pasadena/Foothills chapter of the U.N.A., the largest chapter in the national group.

She came to the U.N. advisory group after 50 years with the Los Angeles school system in which she was often quoted in the media on the urgency of ongoing dialogue between teachers and parents. She said the lessons she learned in school, of modifying behavior by talking through disputes, served her in good stead in her U.N. work.

In 1983, she was selected to deliver the organization’s rebuke of then-U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Jeane J. Kirkpatrick, charging that Kirkpatrick had forfeited her leadership role through a series of petty squabbles.