We will miss his gracious and generous presence.. Cardiac Arrest.Most Shocking Celebrity Deaths of All Time, Over the last few decades, there have been some shocking and untimely deaths of few celebrities, Celebrity deaths in 2022: Remembering the famous faces we lost this year . Small wonder that, as he approached his forties unmarried, he was one of the most eligible bachelors within the small, closed circle of Washington's Jewish society. Services Guestbook Condolences. She set aside bequests for two nephews ($35,000 each); a former company employee, Dorothy Casey ($10,000); and four former servants (two bequests of $50,000 and two of $25,000). Mr. "I think it has the clean linear design of a Botticelli, and the elegance of an English portrait," she burbles, in her faintly accented great-lady voice, "and that's the way I would like my children to remember me. By 1915 he was known locally as "The Bowling King" but still restlessly sought an opportunity that would truly engage him. In the last half-century, the Morris and Gwendolyn Cafritz Foundation has awarded more than $507 million in grants. Write your message of sympathy today. Because Gwendolyn's estate has not been probated, its value is hard to establish. That task was left to her closest relatives. Perhaps as a result, he works hard, with much of Morris's old drive. Mr. Cafritz has been an exemplary advocate for excellence in government and nonprofits in D.C., and the foundation has been a force for community self-efficacy. (Conrad and Peggy were both involved in Barry's first election campaign, and Peggy is the godmother of Barry's son, Christopher.) Calvin Cafritz, the eldest son of real estate developer Morris Cafritz, died last week at the age of 91. One quarter to his widow, in a "marital trust" that would pay her interest until her death and give her the power to "appoint" the ultimate heirs to the principal; if she did not exercise this power, the principal would pass to the Cafritzes' sons upon her death. All three sons were rumored to have difficult relationships with their mother, and it was rare to find them together, bearing in unison the family standard. It is a secretive organization: The foundation would answer no questions for this article. "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. There is still a sign directing deliveries to the back of the house, as if tradesmen were still streaming up to the front door to importune the lady of the house, and Ridgewell's were due at any moment with more shrimp and cocktail sauce. Information and advice to help you cope with the death of someone important to you. including, but not limited to, any facilities located in Washington, D.C.; Palm Beach, Florida; or Monte Carlo, Monaco." He was the eldest son of real estate titan Morris Cafritz and his wife Gwendolyn. Cafritzs grace, elegance, discernment, desire for excellence and commitment to making the most of every day and every situation will continue to inspire and motivate all who knew and loved him, his obituary reads. 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. The Meyer Foundation is sad to learn of the passing of Calvin Cafritz, a Washington-area developer and one of the region's leading philanthropists. January 27, 2023. The most famous of these was the Cafritz Building, at 1625 I; ballyhooed in 1950 as the first "park-at-your-desk" building, it had ramps rising 10 stories at the building's core. But it was hard to remember, here, the titanic social ambition that had made her what she was. Irene Bloch, as she is called, is a wealthy department store owner's wife who mounts a relentless campaign for acceptance in Washington society. "Conrad was persistent as hell in getting that project," says one person familiar with Conrad's business. 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. 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. He died on Thursday, Jan. 12, at age 91. But he's much different from his father, in a lot of ways. There is no photo or video of Calvin Cafritz.Be the first to share a memory to pay tribute. 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. 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. 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.". It took lawyers and IRS agents 4 years to settle the estate, which was valued in 1968 at $66 million. Calvin Cafritz, the eldest son of real estate developer Morris Cafritz, died last week at the age of 91. ", High culture was one of her chosen routes to acceptance. The "Cafritz" in the Domingo-Cafritz Young Artists Program. The foundation is Washington's largest source of private funds earmarked exclusively for local projects, large enough to give the person who controls it a potentially shaping influence on the city. There are also real estate assets at Arlingtons 3701 N. Fairfax Drive, which is the former home of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. Recommend Calvin's obituary to your friends. . ", 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. 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. An obituary is not available at this time for Calvin Cafritz. He was for years the president of the Jewish Community Center and donated the land for its first headquarters on Q Street NW. Mild, self-effacing, decorous, humble, and unfailingly courteous, Mr. Cafritz led by example and always with a smile. In 1929 he also built the since-demolished Ambassador Hotel, at 14th and K streets NW, where he and his family lived until 1938. Even her friends laughed at the way she would seat herself intently in the lobby of the Paris Hotel in Monte Carlo, at a table "very strategically placed," in the words of one, to court the passing society. 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. Her skin had an unhealthy, pouchy pallor; extending an uncertain hand, she had the air of a dreamer deploying remembered charms. "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.

. Certainly it is Conrad who seems to embody, in one slight frame, the polarities of his parents' lives and personalities. 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. There are hints too that he has social ambitions on Gwendolyn's scale, if not exactly of her type. He was 91. Carter appears something of a cipher even to old family associates. Calvins brother Carter passed away in 2019. Echovita Inc is a registered trademark. In 2000, under Mr. Cafritz' leadership, the foundation's board established the Morris and Gwendolyn Cafritz Foundation Awards for Distinguished DC Government Employees, an annual program designed to recognize and reward outstanding performance and exemplary service by locally based federal employees. Calvin Cafritz, D.C. developer and head of the Cafritz Foundation, dies at 91. bizjournals.com - Michael Neibauer 20h. Under an earlier agreement between Gwendolyn and her sons, she gave up her power to "appoint" one-quarter of the trust, meaning that $21 million -- or $7 million each -- would automatically go to her sons upon her death. She left $25,000 to a favorite former escort, a Brazilian former employee of the Inter-American Development Bank who now lives in Rio de Janeiro. . Conrad, who was a losing bidder for the job, waged a lengthy challenge, arguing that Western was giving short shrift to the minority partners whose participation qualified the partnership for the contract award; though he finally lost last year, he succeeded in forcing a renegotiation of terms between Western and the Redevelopment Land Agency. Money -- to be sure. . He often conveyed his conviction that believing in a cause obligated one to support it financially. His most notable contribution was in the streamlined art deco apartment houses designed, either singly or together, by architects Alvin L. Aubinoe and Harry L. Edwards, including the Majestic, the Hightowers, the Empire and the since-demolished Gwenwood on 19th Street NW. He was 91 years of age. To send flowers to the family or plant a tree in memory of Calvin Cafritz please visit our,

An obituary is not available at this time for Calvin Cafritz. His class yearbook is littered with references to his family's money; in a list at the back of "most likely" candidates, the last two entries read, "Most Likely to Succeed: Johnson, Clague," and "Doesn't Have To: Cafritz. In 2001, the Cafritz Foundation gave $1 million toward the Cafritz Conference Center in the University Student Center. In May, Jane Lipton Cafritz hosted a lunch that brought together a number of young opera singers and many of their supporters and admirers. 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.". No one needed to be told that this was Gwendolyn Cafritz's last hurrah. Finally, there is the legacy contained in any will: The power to reward or to punish the living, to define or rearrange the narrative of a family's history. 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. There are no events at this time. 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. But she had a disconcertingly self-serious way of advertising it. He never tired of committing himself to this mission, which only grew bigger with time. To slip out of the speedy traffic on Foxhall Road into the half-circle driveway was to slip back in time. Each is in his second marriage; each is in some way involved in the arts. Finally, there is an emotional legacy to be earned -- or perhaps shed. For another, he is said to alternate in seconds between a manic intensity and a mumbling diffidence. He warmly greeted staff and fellow philanthropist alike, making no distinction between people. Through his dedication to the Foundation and his beloved Washington, DC community, Mr. Cafritz was deeply committed to building a more just and beautiful region with access to opportunities for all. In particular, he has carried on an epic feud with Herbert S. Miller, chairman of Western Development Corp. Western won a city contract in 1985 to develop the so-called Portals site at the foot of the 14th Street Bridge, potentially the largest commercial development in the city. "I'm sure part of it was to show Herb Miller he was serious.". ", She kept up appearances even in the privacy of her home, where she drank Scotch from a decanter in the living room. Send simple, comforting meals with Home Chef. 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. The longtime GW supporter had a unique relationship with the university and the city of Washington, D.C. Center for Excellence in Public Leadership, Honey W. Nashman Center for Civic Engagement and Public Service, GW is committed to digital accessibility. She appears every week on the WETA-TV arts show "Around Town." In the past two decades Washington has been one of the hottest real estate markets in the country, building new fortunes, multiplying old ones, constantly attracting new players from other cities. The Cafritz Foundation is also a longtime supporter of GWs Honey W. Nashman Center for Civic Engagement and Public Service. James Edward Cafritz <p>James Edward Cafritz of Bethesda, MD, passed away on Tuesday, December 22, 2020, at the age of 90. 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. CALVIN FRITZ OBITUARY Wyoming - Calvin "Roger" Fritz, 69, of Wyoming, passed away at 5:29 p.m. Friday, December 24, 2021 at his home. After college and military service, he rejoined the firm in 1956 and served in various positions, until the death of his father in 1964 when he became President of Cafritz Company, Cafritz Construction Company, and Ambassador, Inc. During his tenure, the companies developed, constructed, and leased a number of additional office buildings in Washington's central business district. Ways to honor Calvin Cafritz's life and legacy. 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. Washington, DC 20006. He was 91. At the least, then, Gwendolyn's will disposes of more than $140 million. Her gown, as in the past, was spectacularly formal: folds of purple satin sweeping to her ankles beneath a fitted bodice. In 1904, with a $1,400 loan from his father, he started out running a coal yard at Fourth and K streets NW, then a saloon near Fourth and O. So he began buying real estate speculatively, and in 1920 opened a real estate office on 15th Street NW. 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. Throughout the '40s and '50s it was her custom to give a large cocktail reception each spring, and to mark the opening of every fall season with a party honoring the start of the Supreme Court term. But Conrad has rolled out impressive legal artillery, captained by former White House counsel Lloyd N. Cutler, and seems prepared to dig in for a long siege -- at least long enough, perhaps, to wring a settlement from his opponents. 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. Influence over the city's future -- no doubt. Another longtime beneficiary of Cafritz Foundation support has been The Textile Museum. Expand the Memories and Condolences form. To those who thronged to the parties, the children were rarely in evidence. 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.". 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. Authorize the publication of the original written obituary with the accompanying photo. Her two younger sons have also filed a separate petition that pursues only the marital trust. Cafritz died in 1964 of a heart attack. 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. The foundation, among Greater Washingtons largest with more than $400 million in assets and some $65 million in annual revenue and expenses, according to its most recent Form 990, is expected to issue a formal statement in the coming days. Nor, apparently, is it for us to judge what her sons now want from a D.C. Superior Court judge: All three declined to beinterviewed. And it is over the foundation, established to memorialize the name and works of the Cafritz family, that the Cafritz family is now at war. 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. Morris had one vision, and Gwendolyn another; whoever now gains control might offer still a third. "I think he went along," says a longtime business associate, Irwin Altman. ", Gwendolyn's estate is worth at least $140 million, including both her personal holdings and a trust passed on from Morris Cafritz's will (see box, Page 32). 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. 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. Morris and Gwendolyn Cafritz were oil and water, a marriage forged out of surprisingly dissonant elements. 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 . After Morris Cafritz died, his close associate Martin Atlas became executive vice president of the company, and vice president and treasurer of the Cafritz Foundation, while Gwendolyn Cafritz ultimately became president of both. 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. Roger was born on September 30, 1952 in Toulon, the son. Conrad's ex-wife, former D.C. School Board Chairwoman Peggy Cooper Cafritz, recently resurfaced after her art-filled home was destroyed in a fire last year. 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. There are, superficially, great similarities among the three brothers, who all share their mother's dark coloring. Operating under his own banner, Calvin Cafritz Enterprises, he has built both residential and commercial buildings in D.C. and Virginia. He left it as follows: Half to the Morris and Gwendolyn Cafritz Foundation. 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. Waiters passed shrimp with cocktail sauce, while full bars offered prehistoric spirits such as bourbon and gin, defiant holdouts in the age of chardonnay and bottled water. Obituary. Here, beyond the threshold, was the stunning circular entrance hall, dramatic enough to live up to the woman who once swept down the stairs to greet her guests. Their complaint challenges her wish to leave all she owned, except for minor bequests, to the Morris and Gwendolyn Cafritz Foundation, a charitable trust her husband had established 40 years before. She was a member of Main Street Church of Christ in Monticello, AR. From the others he solicited their names, bending to murmur prompts into the ear of the star. Since 1989, Cafritz led the Morris and Gwendolyn Cafritz Foundation, a charitable organization named for his parents. "The decanter always had to be full," Dowling says. Giving to charity is a meaningful way to honor someone who has died. Among the guests that June evening were her three sons, Calvin, Carter and Conrad. Yet in Morris's absence, the family was anything but the tight-knit dynasty he had paved the way for. A minor but colorful part of Cafritz's legacy was an idea borrowed from Harry Wardman, his predecessor as the leader of the field. He is also survived by his brother Conrad Cafritz, chairman and CEO of Cafritz Interests, a real estate company. 91. Cafritz started by investing in real estate, and was always ready to make a prescient purchase, but his true passion was construction. ", Conrad Cafritz is, in a word fondly used by friends, weird. He may sometimes have yearned for recognition: One night, after one of the glamorous dinners, he drew a friend of Gwendolyn's away from the dining room and into the kitchen. Calvins father Morris built the now-demolished Ambassador Hotel at 14. and K Streets NW, homes next to the National Arboretum, the Greenwich Forest neighborhood in Bethesda and several office buildings downtown. "Maybe we try a little harder because our family name is well-known," he told a reporter in 1965. And by 1970, arts and humanities took the largest share of the funding. His commitment to causes and institutions extended beyond writing checks to giving time and energy. Calvin Cafritz, a successful businessman, was involved in real estate for more than fifty years. The India-born founder and CEO of District-based software company Hunch Analytics is an active benefactor of both Washington and Indian causes and nonprofit groups. 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. Twenty-four years later, when Gwendolyn Cafritz died, her estate consisted of two parts: the marital trust established under Morris's will, and her own property -- the landmark house on Foxhall Road and various real estate, stocks, bonds and savings accounts. In 2021 alone some 430 grants were given to 413 nonprofits of all sizes, including the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, the Washington National Opera (through the Cafritz Young Artists of Washington National Opera program), the Phillips Collection, the National Gallery of Art, and countless colleges, universities,and schools throughout the DC area. He started by buying -- for $700,000, in 1922 -- the equivalent of 90 city blocks in Petworth, including the Columbia Golf Club, and ultimately built 3,000 houses there. 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. Mr. Cafritz recognized and championed this work, and its success is a part of his inspiring legacy., Throughout the years, he gave feedback constructively and in a helpful manner, said Jim Robinson, executive director of GW CEPL. Click here for full story from WTOP and the Washington Business Journal. Grief researchers say holding that missing funeral service, even a year or more later, can still help us heal. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, The Morris and Gwendolyn Cafritz Foundation. Peggy, the product of a well-to-do black family from Mobile, Ala., has worked especially at promoting arts in the black community: She almost single-handedly founded the Duke Ellington School for the Arts and was Marion Barry's first chairman of the D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities. Betty Lou Roberts Colvin, age 84 of Warren, AR passed away November 5, 2020 at Chapel Woods Nursing Home in Warren, AR.