Outspoken Dean of National Cathedral

Sayre's career addressing social challenges was not a lonely crusade. He found support for his causes from many pulpits across the country. His prominence and eloquence made him one of the church's leading figures of the period, said James D. Anderson, a retired Episcopal priest who worked at the cathedral from the late 1960s to the late 1980s.

Sayre's legacy was also in the building itself. Although not officially completed until 1990, the cathedral's bell tower and nave were finished on his watch. So were a majority of the stained-glass windows, including one containing a moon rock from the Apollo 11 mission.

Trying to rush the construction for the bicentennial celebrations, however, left the church in heavy debt.

Francis Bowes Sayre Jr. was born Jan. 17, 1915, in the White House. He was the fourth grandchild of President Wilson and the first-born of Wilson's daughter Jessie, who died in 1933.

His father, a Harvard University law professor, became an assistant secretary of state in the 1930s and was U.S. high commissioner to the Philippines during the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

The younger Sayre had grown up around the world and graduated from Williams College in 1937 and what is now the Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, Mass. He served in the Navy Chaplain Corps during World War II, and afterward oversaw a parish in an industrial part of Cleveland before assuming duties at the National Cathedral at age 36.

His wife, Harriet Hart Sayre, whom he married in 1946, died in 2003.

Survivors include four children, Jessie Sayre Maeck of Lexington, Mass., Thomas H. Sayre of Raleigh, N.C., Harriet Sayre-McCord of Durham, N.C., and F. Nevin Sayre of Vineyard Haven, Mass.; and eight grandchildren.