In July 1993, he was elected President and CEO of the Foundation and in the last six months became Chairman Emeritus. Today, Calvin is foundation chairman. Read more on bizjournals.com. What do the younger sons of the celebrated Washington hostess hope to gain by waging legal war over their mother's will? "That black sense of humor asserts itself, or he'll do something outrageous." "I make no other provision in this will for the benefit of my children," it states, "as their financial needs are adequately provided for" by the old agreement giving them $7 million each. Recognizably brothers, the youngest of them nearing his fifties, they were a striking presence at the party. Calvin Frazier - Wikipedia He will always be remembered and loved by our team and the thousands of people whose lives he touched for his humility, kindness and willingness to go above and beyond in service of our great city and community.. Perhaps the most remarkable member of this third generation is his daughter Julia, who dropped out of Brown University four years ago with a classmate to found a band named Pussy Galore. Most of the band's song titles are too profane for citation in mainstream reviews (or newspaper magazines such as this); one, a song that would surely have outraged the vocalist/guitarist's grandparents, is titled "You Look Like a Jew.". Irene Bloch, as she is called, is a wealthy department store owner's wife who mounts a relentless campaign for acceptance in Washington society. Her skin had an unhealthy, pouchy pallor; extending an uncertain hand, she had the air of a dreamer deploying remembered charms. I hope they will. But maybe they just don't want Gwen Cafritz to have the last word. Implicitly, Carter and Conrad Cafritz are also challenging her designation of Calvin, the eldest, as the only son who will have a future role in running the foundation, which already controls assets of more than $220 million. Two and a half years later Gwendolyn Cafritz was dead of cancer, at 78, and the following summer -- three years after that final party -- her two younger sons filed suit in D.C. Superior Court to have her will overturned and her estate, worth at least $140 million, divided among her children. Rachel M. Ratowsky Obituary To slip out of the speedy traffic on Foxhall Road into the half-circle driveway was to slip back in time. In the 1400 block of Spring Road NW is a row of seven almost identical walk-up apartment buildings. Remembering Calvin Cafritz - Meyer Foundation Calvin Cafritz, D.C. developer and head of the Cafritz Foundation, dies They have helped us to be innovative and to expand. Grief researchers say holding that missing funeral service, even a year or more later, can still help us heal. That's why her final victory rather delighted me. David Kessler's top 4 tips for dealing with holiday grief. The only thing worse might be to watch deals go on without him: Along with becoming chairman of the foundation, Calvin Cafritz has taken the helm of the old Cafritz Co., andis reportedly trying to bring it tonew life. The singers belonged to the Domingo-Cafritz Young Artists Program (YAP), one of the opera world's most prestigious breeding grounds for the next generation of Pavarottis and Renee . In his later years he established one of the Washington region's leading philanthropic entities, the Morris and Gwendolyn Cafritz Foundation. With him at the helm, the foundation distributed hundreds of millions of dollars in grants to a range of organizations, including the National Gallery of Art, Bread for the City and the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. With support from the Cafritz Foundation, the Center for Excellence in Public Leadership hosts a yearly awards gala to honor D.C. government employees who demonstrate outstanding public service. To Martin Atlas, she left $50,000 and a Chagall painting. Vidal wrote, "Irene's evening dress was much too vivid, too personal, too fashionable for the calculated dowdiness" of a dinner in old-line Washington. Decedent lacked sufficient capacity to, and did not, dispose of her property with judgment and understanding, considering the nature, character and extent of her estate.". Obituary | Betty Colvin of Warren, Arkansas | Frazer's Funeral Home Comment * document.getElementById("comment").setAttribute( "id", "a33c63ad631098ddb002d9da023fc09f" );document.getElementById("gab125c3ec").setAttribute( "id", "comment" ); Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment. In 1971, he resigned from the company amid reports of conflict with his mother, and by the time she wrote a 1977 will, all three sons, including Calvin, had been dealt out of any inheritance. Once it was built, he wasn't interested in it.". Upon Morris Cafritz's death in 1964, he became president of the Cafritz Co.; and in the first will Gwendolyn wrote, in 1969, which included all three sons, she made Calvin an executor and left him the Foxhall Road house. I just make speeches.". But it has that air of a property just turning past ripeness, toward seed. The control of so much money, especially in a city with limited corporate philanthropy, brings enormous power. Mr. When the Duke and Duchess of Windsor came and danced downstairs in "the Club," with the dance floor lighted from below. Says a friend, "He thinks they're a lot of fuddy-duddies living in the 17th century." "He just wanted to build, build, build, build!" "He took me into the kitchen and showed me how the cook would leave coffee for him in the morning," remembers the friend. Their differences were, in fact, a part of their legend, for they were one of the earliest families to bring together the two cities on the Potomac: On the one hand was the ethereal world of social and political Washington -- her world, which venerated either good birth or a seat in the Senate; on the other hand was his world, the corporeal city of sewers and streets and buildings and real citizens, men and women who grew up above grocery stores the way Morris Cafritz had. Thanks to the support of the Cafritz Foundation for the last 25 years, CEPL has supported organizational transformation across the public sector in the city. Calvin Cafritz Obituary It is with deep sorrow that we announce the death of Calvin Cafritz (Rockville, Maryland), who passed away on January 12, 2023, at the age of 91, leaving to mourn family and friends. He left it as follows: Half to the Morris and Gwendolyn Cafritz Foundation. CAFRITZ V. CAFRITZ - The Washington Post Since 1989, Cafritz led the Morris and Gwendolyn Cafritz Foundation, a charitable organization named for his parents. It is hard not to wonder what the effect might have been of hearing Gwendolyn Cafritz's will read for the first time. The strange paradox of her marriage was that Morris's money enabled her to carry out her lavish social dreams, while the family's being Jewish also placed limits on her chances of realizing them. including, but not limited to, any facilities located in Washington, D.C.; Palm Beach, Florida; or Monte Carlo, Monaco." . Calvin Fritz Obituary (1952 - 2021) - Legacy Remembers Despite leaving a fragmented recording history, both as a singer and guitarist, Frazier was an associate of Robert Johnson, and recorded alongside Johnny Shines, Sampson Pittman, T.J. Fowler, Alberta Adams, Jimmy Milner, Baby Boy Warren, Boogie Woogie . sales@governmentexecutiveconsultingservices.com, Copyright 2022 Government Executive Consulting Services. Her hair was still a lacquered black, heavily dressed as always at the back of her head. A unique and lasting tribute for a loved one. ", She kept up appearances even in the privacy of her home, where she drank Scotch from a decanter in the living room. Calvins brother Carter passed away in 2019. Morris and Gwendolyn Cafritz were oil and water, a marriage forged out of surprisingly dissonant elements. Cafritzs encouragement has particularly strengthened the Washington-area communitys appreciation of textiles as a vital form of artistic expression and global cultural heritage.". As the hostess had asked, Ridgewell's Caterers heaped the silver platters and chafing dishes with the same filling, fusty food -- the whole poached salmon, the ham and turkey and carved tenderloin; none of the pastas or blackened seafood or grilled vegetables then in fashion. Conrad's strange, and doesn't mind people thinking that he's strange; he kind of encourages it.". Baron and Baroness Constantine Stackelberg . For the sons of Gwendolyn Cafritz, to accept her last will and testament would be to allow her, in more than one sense, the last word. Gradually, he branched into entertainment, operating the first open-air movies in Washington (a matter of setting up chairs in vacant lots), and then a bowling alley and pool hall in Southeast, near the Navy Yard. Even as the chaos of wartime Washington started to loosen social strictures, Washington's leading hostess, Evalyn Walsh McLean, stopped entertaining; this opening, together with a boost from Eleanor "Cissy" Patterson, publisher of the Washington Times-Herald, gave Gwendolyn her opportunity. "That what she wanted was pointless is not for us to judge.". Calvin Cafritz, the eldest son of real estate developer Morris Cafritz, died last week at the age of 91. They're not a map to follow, but simply a description of what people commonly feel. Calvin Cafritz Obituary (1931 - 2023) - Washington, DC - The Washington All are multimillionaires, and Conrad Cafritz, by most accounts the prime instigator of the lawsuit, has spun his inheritance from his father into a vast personal fortune of at minimum $100 million. 5.8K. ", While she cultivated the mighty, Morris looked closer to home, helping to found the Washington Community Chest, becoming an activist in local Jewish groups. Age: 91 years old Also known as: Mr Calvin Cafritz, Calvin Cafritz View Full Report Mobile number ADS View Current Number Landline number (202) 223-3100 Email addresses ccafritz@cafritzfoundation.org Relatives Calvin Cafritz Jane Cafritz Current address 1642 29th St NW, Washington, DC, 20007-2901 See more results for Calvin Cafritz A memorial service will be held at a later date. Washington, DC 20007 The judge's decision, though in favor of Conrad and Carter Cafritz, is of little. The Washington Harbour purchase, along with a current joint venture to develop a riverfront office and hotel project in Rosslyn, has caused speculation that Conrad Cafritz is increasingly eager to be identified with high-quality, high-profile projects that might bring him more notice. Mr. She could no longer make an entrance, of course. The D.C. community is better for his engagement and we will miss him terribly.. For better or worse, he is the son who has tried to live out both their ambitions -- to build on a scale that will make an impact on the city, and to develop a persona that will make him an actor in the capital. They had a large fund-raiser for Jesse Jackson in 1988, and for Conrad's 50th birthday, Peggy gave him an enormous black-tie dinner at home. She was born January 30, 1936 in Kennett, MO to the late David Richard Roberts and Betty Burbank Roberts. And Gwendolyn's estate is not, in the end, the only -- or even the main thing -- at stake. "He wasn't overly enthused about it, but those were her wishes, and he sort of enjoyed it in a quiet way. Two and a half years later Gwendolyn Cafritz was dead of cancer, at 78, and the following summer -- three years after that final party -- her two younger sons filed suit in D.C. Superior Court to. Once grown, the sons established limited, perfunctory contacts with their mother. Cafritz developed real estate here for more than four decades, until his death in 1964, and by the sheer volume and variety of his building activities was for a time the undisputed king of his field. Late last year, Calvins wife Jane was elected to succeed her husband as the foundations president and CEO and he was named chairman emeritus. It asks the court to rule that under Morris's will, which gave Gwendolyn the right to leave the trust to "such person or persons" as she wished, the foundation -- technically a corporation -- could not qualify to receive the trust. He was 91. "She wanted something, and she put up with a lot of {expletive}, and she got it. Gwendolyn Cafritz, 78, Washington Hostess - The New York Times Md.-based government contractor relocates headquarters to Fairfax Co. Montgomery County, MD Files Lawsuit Against McKinsey and Company, Inc. for Companys Role in Creating Opioid Epidemic, GSA Seeks Commercial Procurement Data Solution. The Cafritz Foundation is also responsible for developing Art Place at Fort Totten, a huge mixed-use project in the Northeast D.C. area. He's truly out to make a big impact on the city, I think. She was multilingual and had studied art history at the University of Budapest. She appears every week on the WETA-TV arts show "Around Town." D.C. developer, businessman and philanthropist Calvin Cafritz, the eldest son of real estate icon Morris Cafritz and his wife Gwendolyn, died Thursday at Sibley Memorial Hospital. She was a member of Main Street Church of Christ in Monticello, AR. Information and advice to help you cope with the death of someone important to you. They charge in their suit that Rogers and Atlas influenced her to leave all the property she controlled to the foundation. All rights reserved. All three had become local real estate developers, successful, if less spectacular, emulators of their father. Carter appears something of a cipher even to old family associates. Kateryna Pyatybratova directs the centers Cafritz Awards program. At the same time, he and Tompkins had the foresight to buy the land now known as Pentagon City. If she gave them an order, they took it lightly, because she liked to drink. There he built the massive River House apartments; his estate eventually sold most of the land for others to develop. Gradually, as Gwendolyn took command of it, its character changed. It is with deep sorrow that we announce the death of Calvin Cafritz (Rockville, Maryland), who passed away on January 12, 2023, at the age of 91, leaving to mourn family and friends. The importance of saying "I love you" during COVID-19, Effective ways of dealing with the grieving process, Solutions to show your sympathy safely during the Covid-19 pandemic, SAGEL BLOOMFIELD DANZANSKY GOLDBERG FUNERAL CARE INC. While he was head of the foundation, Cafritz distributed grants to places like The National Gallery of Art, Washington National Opera and The Kennedy Center. Calvin Cafritz, D.C. developer and head of the Cafritz Foundation, dies All three stayed in Washington to work at some variation of their father's trade.

. Recommend Calvin's obituary to your friends. It charges that Rogers and Atlas "exerted undue influence" on her decision to leave all her money to the Morris and Gwendolyn Cafritz Foundation, and that Gwendolyn herself "lacked testamentary capacity," meaning that she was incapable of writing her will. He died on Thursday, Jan. 12, at age 91. There is no photo or video of Calvin Cafritz.Be the first to share a memory to pay tribute. Named in the lawsuit, besides Calvin, is everyone to whom Gwendolyn Cafritz made a bequest, including her former servants and grandchildren, two nephews and an old escort. ", Conrad Cafritz is, in a word fondly used by friends, weird. Of the three Cafritz sons, says restaurateur Herb White, "Conrad seems to be the one who has something to prove to himself.". "Decedent's condition deteriorated after the death of her husband in 1964 and grew worse in the following years. Cafritz was a tireless promoter of the city. Money -- to be sure. Cafritz Family Obituaries | Cafritz Last Name Obits It was an invitation to stroll around the house and remember: When Gwen Cafritz, with her 19-inch waist and Balmain gowns, her raven hair and regal air, had won constant publicity for her parties -- 22 to dinner, with toasts over champagne, and enormous receptions like this one each spring and fall. Services Guestbook Condolences. They keep china and glassware sufficient to serve hundreds. The entire time, he fought with gloves off, publicly charging his rivals with bad faith. ", As is often true when the secretive disease of alcoholism is combined with the see-no-evil sociability of Washington, Gwendolyn's problem was rarely recognized. She also made bequests of $100,000 each to 10 of her 13 grandchildren -- excluding the children Conrad adopted, to whom he has remained a committed father. Gwendolyn left the $14 million landmark to the foundation, with the very Gwendolyn-like wish that it become "a center in which scholars, statesmen and civic leaders may conduct research, conferences, seminars and other func-tions relating to issues of interest tomankind.". Under the terms of an old agreement, each of the sons will automatically receive $7 million, tax-free, in recompense for having forfeited, in the late '60s, some money from a different trust. But the fourth square in the plot remains empty; Gwendolyn Cafritz was memorialized in a Presbyterian church and had herself buried far north in Rockville's Parklawn Cemetery, among strangers. Of the three sons, Calvin seems to have had the best relationship with his mother. Conrad is angrily aware, say friends, that his success will always be explained away. Only between the lines or in conversations with old friends can one make out how nakedly she wore her ambitions, and how hard she was working to measure up. When Morris Cafritz died in 1964, his estate was worth $66 million, mostly in the form of stock in dozens of closely held corporations he had established to manage his real estate. . But she had a disconcertingly self-serious way of advertising it. "She was good to me, and she was a good woman in my eyes," he says. The house on Foxhall Road, completed in 1938, was explicitly designed to fulfill that ambition. What kind of arrangement is appropriate, where should you send it, and when should you send an alternative? Calvins father Morris built the now-demolished Ambassador Hotel at 14th and K Streets NW, homes next to the National Arboretum, the Greenwich Forest neighborhood in Bethesda and several office buildings downtown. It is, as always, unclear where her inborn quirkiness shaded into the effects of alcoholism; but many of her friends, in later years, simply came to think of her as "difficult" or "eccentric"; Almost everyone has a story about her forgetting their names, or making some sudden comment of shocking rudeness. "There were moments when you wanted to go around and have everybody wear not just a name tag, but a bio,"says their good friend Margaret Lenzner. It is also different from proving that a respected lawyer and former Cabinet member, in league with a longtime family associate, unfairly loaded the dice. Cafritz was a native and longtime resident of Washington, DC. Ways to honor Calvin Cafritz's life and legacy. Marvin Katz Obituary - Richardson, TX - Dignity Memorial (91 years old). Calvin Cafritz and the Cafritz Foundation have been part of the GW Honey Nashman Center from its earliest roots in the Office of Community Service and the Neighbors Project in the 1990s through to the present, said Amy Cohen, executive director of the center. She was 78 years old. Authorize the publication of the original written obituary with the accompanying photo. By 1915 he was known locally as "The Bowling King" but still restlessly sought an opportunity that would truly engage him. That task was left to her closest relatives. Rogers, an attorney general under President Eisenhower and secretary of state under Richard Nixon, declined to be interviewed for this story; he has denied the allegations in papers filed in court. From the others he solicited their names, bending to murmur prompts into the ear of the star. The Cafritz Foundation is also a longtime supporter of GWs Honey W. Nashman Center for Civic Engagement and Public Service. Devoted father to Laurence (Sherri) Cafritz and Jodi (Mark Bronsky) Cafr She was forever trying to tell me some long story I could never make head or tail of. Dean Liesl Riddle of the GW College of Professional Studies (CPS), where GW CEPL has been housed since 2005, said, Our college was launched to make an economic and social impact through innovative professional programs that cultivate talent for employers and propel students careers forward. ", Other documents filed in court indicate that the sons will argue their mother was incapacitated by alcoholism. January 2023 - Page 189 - obituaries death According to Susan Boerstling, GWs assistant vice president for corporate and foundation relations, the partnership of the Cafritz Foundation with GW is unique in terms of other universities in the area. The annual Cafritz Awards Gala has been held on campus for many years, Boerstling noted, representing a partnership between the university, the foundation and the Office of the D.C. Mayor. The outcome of the lawsuit is unpredictable, though clearly it will be an uphill fight: Showing that someone was alcoholic is very different from demonstrating that she was incapable of writing a will. Another asks the bank to produce "all documents relating to purchase or provision of wine, champagne, or liquor on behalf of or for Gwendolyn Cafritz or for delivery to or consumption at 2301 Foxhall Road. This is in alignment with GW efforts to benefit the local community., Cafritz was a leading force in the establishment of GWs Center for Excellence in Public Leadership (CEPL) in 1997, to help support the D.C. government just as it was coming out of receivership from the U.S. Congress. ", Interviews suggest the sons will not lack for evidence to support their argument. To offer your sympathy during this difficult time, you can now have memorial trees planted in a National Forest in memory of your loved one. He has interests too in a booming brokerage firm he helped bankroll, and in a Midwestern shopping-center conglomerate. But of the property over which she had control, Gwendolyn left her children only "such photographs, family mementos, and similar objects of domestic use or ornamentation as my executors, in their absolute discretion, shall determine that I would wish to have preserved for my children.". Mr. Cafritz was married previously two times; his first wife was Enid Cafritz and his second wife was Joyce Smith. There is a poignant moment in Gwendolyn's 1956 interview with Murrow when she points out a portrait of herself that hangs on the wall. And other times she didn't. The Morris and Gwendolyn Cafritz Foundation, the charitable organization Calvin Cafritz had led since 1989, confirmed his passing and provided a copy of his obituary, which didnt disclose cause of death. The "Cafritz" in the Domingo-Cafritz Young Artists Program. It took lawyers and IRS agents 4 years to settle the estate, which was valued in 1968 at $66 million. "I've just bought 100 acres of downtown Washington," he was fond of saying. Cafritz is survived by his third wife, Jane Lipton Cafritz, a Washington lawyer whom he married in 2000; his three children; three stepchildren (including Olivia Rubenstein, who earned a masters degree from GSEHD in 2018); and numerous grandchildren and step-grandchildren, as well as his brother, Conrad Cafritz, chairman and CEO of Cafritz Interests. Calvin, 58, who finds himself a defendant in this lawsuit, is usually described as gentlemanly, methodical and reserved. And given the life she had lived and the kind of friends she had cultivated, few people were close enough to her to understand why. He had emigrated from Russia as a boy with his family, which stopped briefly in New York before settling down to run a grocery store at 24th and P streets NW. So if some of these nostalgic callers had once doubted or mocked her, with her grand house and her grand airs and her husband's enormous fortune, it was surely too late, in 1986, for any of these social acquaintances to want to shatter this fading legend. 'Their Financial Needs Are Adequately Provided For'. Giving to charity is a meaningful way to honor someone who has died. Website by Red Clay Creative, Chances are, many Washingtonians might not even realize how much real estate the Cafritz family is responsible for in the area. Except for minor bequests to former employees and other family members, she also left to the foundation all of the property she owned outright. "When I heard about it, I wrote Conrad and told him I thought it was a horrible thing he and his brother were doing to his mother," says Dorothy L. Casey, a retired secretary who worked for the Cafritz Co. for decades, reflecting a widespread tendency to speak of Carter as his brother's satellite. He was for years the president of the Jewish Community Center and donated the land for its first headquarters on Q Street NW. "For over 30 years the Cafritz Foundation has supported The Textile Museum, especially as a prominent proponent of the museums move to the George Washington University,"said John Wetenhall, director of the George Washington University Museum and The Textile Museum. The majority of this property was already owned by the Cafritz Foundation, but Gwendolyn was partial owner of many of the buildings; even a limited power to control their disposition would presumably attract men with ambitions in Washington real estate. There are hints too that he has social ambitions on Gwendolyn's scale, if not exactly of her type. "Those were her orders: The Scotch should never be let go beneath the neck of the decanter. Her two younger sons have also filed a separate petition that pursues only the marital trust. He has always been involved in the bread and butter real estate of housing, from building single-family homes in Prince William County to renovating apartment complexes in Alexandria; he was a major beneficiary of the Washington condo boom. He and his wife, Jane, and the Morris and Gwendolyn Cafritz Foundation have made major contributions to the city of Washington, DC and the region.