Washington-area obituaries of note
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Version 0 of 1. Obituaries of residents from the District, Maryland and Northern Virginia. Marion G. Lawrence, 86, a biochemist for the National Institutes of Health’s critical care medicine department from about 1985 to 2009, died Sept. 28 at her home in Silver Spring, Md. The cause was cancer, said her daughter, Valerie Tennant. Mrs. Lawrence was born Marion Baker in Central City, Ky., and moved to the Washington area early in her teenage years. Before her NIH career, she had accompanied her first husband, a Navy officer, to posts in Hawaii and Spain; owned an AAMCO Transmissions business in Annapolis; and sold real estate in Annapolis. Frederick B. Arner, 91, a lawyer who specialized in disability guidelines while working for the Congressional Research Service, a House Ways and Means subcommittee and the Social Security Administration, died Oct. 7 at an assisted living center in Woodstock, Va. The cause was prostate cancer, said a son, Rob Arner. Mr. Arner, a resident of Kensington, Md., was born in Champaign, Ill., and grew up in the Washington area. After military service as an aircraft tail gunner in World War II and the Korean War, he joined the Congressional Research Service in 1952, becoming a specialist in Social Security legislation. In that job, he worked for congressional committees and subcommittees, and then became a staffer for the House Ways and Means subcommittee on Social Security and in the late 1980s the Social Security Administration. He retired in the early 1990s. Sholom Wacholder, 60, a biostatistician and cancer epidemiologist at the National Cancer Institute, died Oct. 4 at his home in Rockville, Md. The cause was prostate cancer, said his wife, Michele Rhone. Dr. Wacholder was born in Fort Worth. He was an assistant professor at McGill University in Montreal before moving to the Washington area and joining the National Cancer Institute staff in 1986. Since 1992, he had been senior staff investigator in the epidemiologic methods section of the biostatistics branch. Dorine E. Smoot, 73, a secretary at Kendall Demonstration Elementary School on the campus of Gallaudet University in Northeast Washington, died Sept. 26 at a hospital in the District. The cause was cancer, said a daughter, Sabrena Barfield. Ms. Smoot, a native Washingtonian, was a lifelong resident of the city. In the 1970s and 1980s, she was secretary to the principal at Kendall. Marilla S. Cohen, 66, a nurse at Shady Grove Adventist Hospital in Rockville, Md., from 1981 to 1993, died Oct. 1 at a care center in Rockville. The cause was Alzheimer’s disease, said her husband, Lenard Cohen. Mrs. Cohen, a resident of Darnestown, Md., was born Marilla Standish in Oak Park, Ill., and she had lived in the Washington area since 1974. She had done volunteer work with the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Rockville. Rebecca “Beck” Offutt, 97, a fixture for decades at the annual Montgomery County Agricultural Fair where she traditionally composed and read a poem, died Sept. 30 at the home of a daughter in Berkeley Springs, W.Va. The cause was congestive heart failure, said a grandson, Steve Kinsey. An 80-year resident of Darnestown, Md., she was born Mabel Rebecca West on a farm in Seneca, Md. As a young woman, she held secretarial and office jobs. Later she was a poll worker at elections, an enumerator in the 1940 Census, a regular participant in History Day observances at Darnestown Elementary School, and an organizer of a retirement group that met each morning at the Quince Orchard McDonald’s in Gaithersburg, Md. Kate Talev, 72, an historical abstractor who worked for the Congressional Information Service in the 1980s and 1990s, died Sept. 16 at a nursing home in Round Rock, Tex. The cause was complications related to early-onset dementia, said a daughter, Margaret Talev. Dr. Talev, a resident of Rockville, Md., was in Texas to be near a daughter. She was born Kate Kirchner in Neptune, N.J., and had lived in the Washington area since 1974. As an historical abstractor she read and condensed U.S. war documents. She was a linguist who had studied Slavic languages and for several years assisted Eastern European immigrants in the Washington area. In 2001, she self-published a book of poems about early memory loss, clinical depression and aging. — From staff reports |