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. She could no longer make an entrance, of course. I just make speeches.". Carter Cafritz, who sits on the board of WETA, began his career in partnership with Conrad, building apartments and town houses in and around the city. Throughout his career he was recognized not only for his natural intuitive insight but also for his in-depth study and acute analysis of every possibility for investment in real estate. We welcome you to provide your thoughts and memories on our Tribute Wall. ", 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). But Gwendolyn sometimes took pains to tell friends that she herself was not Jewish. Add a photo or a video 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. "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 decanter always had to be full," Dowling says. Marvin Katz was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma to Dr. Donald LaVerne Katz and Lila Maxine Katz on December 12, 1935. "He just wanted to build, build, build, build!" ", Conrad Cafritz is, in a word fondly used by friends, weird. He often conveyed his conviction that believing in a cause obligated one to support it financially. Her two younger sons have also filed a separate petition that pursues only the marital trust. ", Other documents filed in court indicate that the sons will argue their mother was incapacitated by alcoholism. 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. Perhaps one day Calvin, or Conrad, or some Cafritz now unknown, will find a way to bring together the opposite forms of ambition that thrived in this house, and give a second start to the dynasty that never was. 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. Since 1989, Cafritz led the Morris and Gwendolyn Cafritz Foundation, a charitable organization named for his parents. 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. In 1962, when it was the product of Morris Cafritz's vision, the largest grants went to the United Jewish Appeal and the Community Chest Federation. The foundation also gave generously to support the recent GW Hillel building renovation, as well as to provide ongoing support to other civic-minded programs at GW. The daughter of a Hungarian immunologist who had a role in devising the early Wasserman test to detect syphilis, Gwen Cafritz was the opposite of her husband. In addition to his loving family, he leaves behind a long-time member of the family household, Lilian Punzalan, and countless admiring friends. "She was a classic case," summarizes Vidal. We will miss his gracious and generous presence..

. 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. A unique and lasting tribute for a loved one. 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. Cafritzs passing was confirmed by the charitable organization named after Morris and his wife, The Morris and Gwendolyn Cafritz Foundation. "That what she wanted was pointless is not for us to judge.". "She was not, as they say, invited anywhere at the beginning," recalls Gore Vidal, whose novel Washington, D.C. includes a character "suggested," he says, by Gwendolyn Cafritz. It is a jolting reminder that Peggy and Conrad, a black woman married to a white Jewish millionaire in a racially divided city, represent a fascinating reshuffling of the social deck that produced the polarized marriage of Morris and Gwendolyn. Conrad's strange, and doesn't mind people thinking that he's strange; he kind of encourages it.". ", According to friends, her confidence was badly shaken when she was robbed at home in 1969 by gunmen who bound and beat her, stealing most of the spectacular jewelry Morris had given her. In 1971, Mr. Cafritz resigned to form Calvin Cafritz Enterprises, with investments in aviation, communications, and Washington area real estate. 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. Echovita offers a solidarity program that gives back the funds generated to families. ", Interviews suggest the sons will not lack for evidence to support their argument. All three had become local real estate developers, successful, if less spectacular, emulators of their father. "She felt that was the end, when she couldn't function socially.". They have helped us to be innovative and to expand. Operating under his own banner, Calvin Cafritz Enterprises, he has built both residential and commercial buildings in D.C. and Virginia. 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. Gwen Cafritz and her chief rival, Perle Mesta, were in fact the first of a new breed -- celebrity hostesses who openly courted the press and saw no shame in self-promotion. And by 1970, arts and humanities took the largest share of the funding. The George Washington University community is remembering the life of Calvin Cafritz, a businessman, philanthropist and longtime supporter of GW. In plain English, Gwendolyn Cafritz's two younger sons are contending in court that their mother was too feebleminded to write her will; document requests filed in court suggest they may try to prove she was incapacitated by alcoholism. He was an excellent listener and always got both the big picture and important details by asking insightful questions. Conrad has six children -- three adopted sons, who were Jennifer's by a first marriage; two daughters with Jennifer; and, with Peggy, 5-year-old Zachary. ", While she cultivated the mighty, Morris looked closer to home, helping to found the Washington Community Chest, becoming an activist in local Jewish groups. But almost no one noticed what seemed apparent to Gore Vidal, in brief glimpses of her during the '60s: "Toward the end {of the decade}, she was always drunk whenever I saw her. 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. 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. Conrad and Carter Cafritz are pursuing this stake in two ways: One is a lawsuit naming all her beneficiaries and her executors -- William P. Rogers, Martin Atlas and Riggs National Bank. Her statements in the press, even the adoring press of yore, suggest at the least a daunting mother. Where he was meat and potatoes, earnest frugality, civic pride, she was flashing dark beauty, mercurial moods and social ambition. . In his later years he established one of the Washington region's leading philanthropic entities, the Morris and Gwendolyn Cafritz Foundation. It took lawyers and IRS agents 4 years to settle the estate, which was valued in 1968 at $66 million. Required fields are marked *. 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. Mr. Cafritz was married previously two times; his first wife was Enid Cafritz and his second wife was Joyce Smith. At the heart of the lawsuit is a quest to gain at least partial control over the whole empire of which Gwendolyn's estate is an integral piece, over the whole legacy that Morris Cafritz created. He was 91. He was 91 at the time he died. 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. Late last year, Calvins wife Jane was elected to succeed her husband as the foundations president and CEO and he was named chairman emeritus. Leave a sympathy message to the family in the guestbook on this memorial page of Calvin Cafritz to show support. CAFRITZ James Edward Cafritz James Edward Cafritz of Bethesda, MD, passed away on Tuesday, December 22, 2020, at the age of 90. 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. All three stayed in Washington to work at some variation of their father's trade. "He's always very, very protective of the Cafritz name, as if it were his own. . It is intriguing to imagine what different directions Conrad Cafritz might urge -- and how much they would draw from the activism of his wife, who has likely pondered what difference the Cafritz endowment might make to her lifelong campaign to wrest the arts from Washington's white upper classes. But in the end, her siege of Washington society outlasted most of those limits. . The Cafritz Foundation was one of the biggest in the D.C. area, with over $400 million in assets and around $65 million in annual revenue and expenses, according to The Washington Business Journal. Or purchase a subscription for unlimited access to real news you can count on. I hope they will. To slip out of the speedy traffic on Foxhall Road into the half-circle driveway was to slip back in time. Baron and Baroness Constantine Stackelberg . Send simple, comforting meals with Home Chef. "Right at the moment he could be most charming, he does something to undercut it," says one friend. 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. In any case, he was at least 20 years older than his bride when they married in 1929. Meanwhile, for as long as it takes, Conrad's childhood home turns a sleeping face to Foxhall Road, drapes drawn at all the windows. Senator Barry Goldwater . GECS offers business development, bid proposal writing training, and resume preparation services for individuals seeking employment with the Federal Government, and provides knowledge management services to assist businesses with succession planning. Mr. But it has that air of a property just turning past ripeness, toward seed. All Rights Reserved. Calvin Cafritz, a native and longtime resident of Washington, DC, was born March 29, 1931, as the eldest son of Morris and Gwendolyn Cafritz. ", Conrad and Carter Cafritz have chosen instead the purgatory of probate court, where their complaints suggest less lovely memories.