Washington-area obituaries of note
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Version 0 of 1. Obituaries of residents from the District, Maryland and Northern Virginia. Sidney D. Anderson, 90, a retired State Department official who participated in arms-control talks in the 1970s, died Feb. 28 at an assisted-living center in Fairfax County, Va. The cause was a cardiopulmonary ailment, said his daughter, Emily Sullivan. Mr. Anderson, a native of Wilmington, Del., worked for what was then the Veterans Administration and National Science Foundation before joining the State Department in 1962. He was assigned to the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency from 1971 to 1979 during the SALT I and SALT II treaty negotiations. He retired from the State Department in 1984 but continued as a consultant until 1990. Mr. Anderson, a longtime resident of Annandale, Va., was an amateur pianist, a docent at the National Museum of American History, and a Sunday school teacher at Hope Lutheran Church in Annandale, where he was a member for 53 years. Charlotte Schlosberg, 86, a longtime volunteer with Washington Performing Arts who later served on its board of directors, died April 19 at her home in Chevy Chase, Md. The cause was cancer, said a son, Jeff Schlosberg. Mrs. Schlosberg was born Charlotte Kaufman in Richmond. In the 1950s, she taught music in the Norfolk public schools and later worked as a flight attendant for the old Capital Airlines, based at Washington’s National Airport. She was a volunteer for the National Council of Jewish Women and, since the mid-1960s, volunteered with Washington Performing Arts (formerly the Washington Performing Arts Society). Robert P. Beliles, 83, a toxicologist who retired in 2002 from the Environmental Protection Agency’s National Center for Environmental Assessment, died March 23 at a care center on Hilton Head Island, S.C. The cause was cerebellar degeneration, said his wife, Eloise Beliles. Dr. Beliles, a former Oakton, Va., resident, was born in Louisville. He was a university professor of pharmacology and radiation biology before settling permanently in the Washington area in 1975. After five years with the firm Litton Bionetics in Kensington, Md., he joined the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, where he oversaw carcinogen standards. He later was a senior staff scientist at the National Academy of Sciences before joining the EPA in 1992. On his retirement, he moved to Hilton Head. Michael A. Taylor, 53, the superintendent of systems maintenance and power at the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority, died March 6 at a hospital in Silver Spring, Md. The cause was a heart attack, said a sister, Lynette Rogers. Mr. Taylor, a Fort Washington, Md., resident, was born in Lynchburg, Va. He served in the Coast Guard for eight years before joining WMATA in 1989. His responsibilities included overseeing lighting in Metro stations, bus shelters, parking lots and garages, among other operations. He held leadership positions with the Masons. Ellie Jespersen, 83, a former special-education teaching assistant who retired in 2013 as an administrative assistant with the Montgomery County Board of Elections, died March 21 at her home in Rockville, Md. The cause was a brain tumor, said her husband, Charles Jespersen. Mrs. Jespersen was born Elnora Haney in Rush, Ky., and settled in the Washington area in 1948. She worked in the Montgomery County Public Schools from the late 1960s to the late 1990s, tutoring students from the elementary grades to high school, before joining the Board of Elections. She belonged to the NAACP and the American Civil Liberties Union, held leadership positions in Rockville United Church and volunteered with groups including the Girls Scouts, the Cub Scouts and Community Ministries of Rockville. James B. McCeney, 74, a former chief financial officer of the Organization of American States and a civic activist in Laurel, Md., died March 19 at his home in that city. The cause was idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, said a daughter, Margie McCeney. Mr. McCeney was born in Baltimore. He was a senior accountant for the firm then known as Price Waterhouse before moving in 1971 to the OAS, where he was director of the department of material resources. He retired in 2000. He was a past treasurer, president and chairman of the Laurel Historical Society and served on the city’s Historic District Commission and pension board. He also belonged to the Laurel Citizens Police Academy Alumni Association and Community Emergency Response Team. Mary Costigan, 96, a co-owner of Capital City Engraving in Rockville, Md., died March 27 at a senior living community in Kensington, Md. The cause was congestive heart failure, said a daughter, Louise Hilton. Mrs. Costigan was born Mary Prendergast in Philadelphia. She settled in the Washington area in 1960 and was a sales supervisor at Montgomery Ward’s catalogue department in the 1960 and 1970s. She helped her husband and later a son-in-law run the family’s engraving business for four decades, first in Kensington and later in Rockville. She belonged to St. Catherine Labouré Catholic Church in Wheaton, Md. Mildred Dahl, 96, a homemaker who belonged to Holy Family Catholic Church in Hillcrest Heights, Md., died March 30 at an assisted-living center in Rockville, Md. The cause was pneumonia, said a daughter, Nancy Lucy. Mrs. Dahl, a former Hillcrest Heights resident, was born Mildred Domash in Springfield, Mass. She settled in the Washington area in 1949 and worked for several years as a ticket agent with Eastern Airlines and as a cosmetics clerk at the Woodward & Lothrop department store. She volunteered with the Girls Scouts. Robert I. Keimowitz, 76, a professor and administrator at George Washington University’s medical school who served as dean of the school from 1989 to 1998, died March 25 at a hospital in Boston. The cause was acute myeloid leukemia, said a daughter, Alison Spodek. Dr. Keimowitz was born in Middletown, N.Y., and came to the Washington area in 1967. He was a kidney specialist at the National Institutes of Health and a surgeon with the U.S. Public Health Service before joining GWU’s medical school faculty in 1970. He directed the admissions office and was associate dean for student affairs before becoming dean of the medical school. As dean, he led efforts to revamp the admissions process and curriculum. He became an emeritus professor in 2003. Throughout his academic career, Dr. Keimowitz maintained a clinical practice at the university, focused on internal medicine and geriatric medicine. He lived in the District for many years before moving to Chevy Chase, Md. Jack K. O’Connor, 91, a product engineer at the Consumer Product Safety Commission from 1975 to 1995, died March 11 at his home in Chevy Chase, Md. The cause was collapsed lungs, said a daughter, Jeanne Wyand. Mr. O’Connor, a native Washingtonian, was a Navy veteran of the battles of Iwo Jima and Okinawa in World War II. He began his career as a design engineer with the firm of General Kinetics in Reston, Va. At the CPSC, he tested products including toys, Christmas lights and roller coasters, and helped design reflectors for Schwinn bicycles. He belonged to the Senators Club, an alumni organization at Catholic University, and the Catholic Shrine of the Most Blessed Sacrament in Washington. Charles R. Damon, 65, a National Park Service supervisor from 1988 to 2012 of the White House Kenilworth Greenhouses, where plants and flowers for the White House grounds are grown, died March 23 at a hospital in Arlington, Va. The cause was complications from oral cancer, said his partner, Ben Sherman. Mr. Damon, an Arlington resident, was born in Chicago. Early in his Park Service career, he worked at Yellowstone National Park, Valley Forge National Historic Park and Fredericksburg National Military Park. Joan W. Howard, 77, a former partner of Chevy Chase Travel Agency in Bethesda, Md., died April 2 at her home in Boyds, Md. The cause was Alzheimer’s disease, said her husband, Don Howard. Mrs. Howard was born Joan Wayland in Washington. She was the office administrator of her husband’s accounting practice in Rockville, Md., until the mid-1980s, when she joined the travel agency, which organized domestic and international travel for groups and individuals. She retired in the mid-2000s. Mrs. Howard belonged to the Alpha Delta Pi sorority. Cecelia F. Maloney, 85, an academic counselor at several Washington-area schools in the 1970s and 1980s, died March 16 at a hospital in Washington. The cause was multiple organ failure, said a son, Tim Maloney. Mrs. Maloney, a Beltsville, Md., resident, was born Cecelia Fitzpatrick in Philadelphia. She taught sociology at what is now Trinity Washington University and was a child-welfare worker in the District in the 1950s. Later, she was a counselor with the American Red Cross and at Strayer University, Elizabeth Seton High School in Bladensburg, Md., and the University of Maryland University College in Adelphi. She was an adult literacy tutor and volunteered with her local Prince George’s County public library, the Beltsville News and St. Joseph Catholic Church in Beltsville, where she was a parishioner. Her husband, Walter H. “Mike” Maloney, a member of the Prince George’s County Council, died in 2001. Donald Hoan Nguyen, 83, the founder of Capital Building Services, a Washington-area building maintenance operation, died March 27 at his home in Falls Church, Va. The cause was complications from diabetes, said a son, William Nguyen. Mr. Nguyen was born in Saigon, came to the United States in 1975 and became a U.S. citizen in the early 1980s. He started his business in 1979 and serviced buildings including the Pentagon and the Old Executive Office Building before retiring several years ago. He belonged to Holy Martyrs of Vietnam Catholic Church in Arlington, Va. Grace Evans, 98, a personnel supervisor who retired in 1971 after 30 years with the Farm Credit Administration, died March 25 at a retirement community in Springfield, Va. The cause was congestive heart failure, said a great-niece, Jennifer Shymansky. Miss Evans was born in Peckville, Pa., and settled in the Washington area in 1941. She belonged for 75 years to Calvary Baptist Church in Washington and moved to Greenspring retirement community in Springfield 17 years ago. — From staff reports |