An obituary is not available at this time for Calvin Cafritz. 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. Influence over the city's future -- no doubt. ", Gwendolyn reportedly raised her children according to the dictates of her European background -- under the aegis of servants, to be seen and not heard. ", The Cafritzes slept in separate bedrooms, Morris rising at dawn to get to the office. January 27, 2023. 2017-2023 Tribute Archive. Some observers speculate that Conrad, hardheaded real estate man that he is, simply wants some say in the disposition of the real estate owned -- in many cases, co-owned -- by the foundation and Gwendolyn's estate. a medically-induced . 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. "I just thought she maybe had had enough of running around, and she was maybe going to stay in a while. Cafritz Calvin Cafritz Washington developer and one of the region's leading philanthropists, died Thursday morning, January 12, 2023, at Sibley Memorial Hospital, in Washington, DC. She retained the right to will awaythe remaining three-quarters, or $63 million, which sheleft to the Morris and Gwendolyn Cafritz Foundation. ", Interviews suggest the sons will not lack for evidence to support their argument. That's what we call a success story. Calvin Cafritz, D.C. developer and head of the Cafritz Foundation, dies Mr. Cafritz is also survived by his brother Conrad Cafritz. He often conveyed his conviction that believing in a cause obligated one to support it financially. And he still fights his battles with a surprising intensity, rarely bothering with the shake-hands-and-forget-it bonhomie common in Washington business. ", Conrad and Carter Cafritz have chosen instead the purgatory of probate court, where their complaints suggest less lovely memories. 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. 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. You can still show your support by sending flowers directly to the family, or plant a tree in memory of Calvin Cafritz. But it has that air of a property just turning past ripeness, toward seed. If you could walk around to the back, you might look out at the famous view; and you might almost see as far as Southeast D.C., where Morris lies with his in-laws, still waiting. "He just wanted to build, build, build, build!" Cafritz is survived by Jane, his third wife, who is a lawyer in the area. "Maybe we try a little harder because our family name is well-known," he told a reporter in 1965. 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. His father, Morris, established one of the Washington region's leading philanthropic entities, the Morris and . In 2001, the Cafritz Foundation gave $1 million toward the Cafritz Conference Center in the University Student Center. 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 . Conrad's strange, and doesn't mind people thinking that he's strange; he kind of encourages it.". Cafritzs encouragement has particularly strengthened the Washington-area communitys appreciation of textiles as a vital form of artistic expression and global cultural heritage.". JAMES CAFRITZ Obituary (1930 - 2020) - Rockville, DC - The Washington Post Her hair was still a lacquered black, heavily dressed as always at the back of her head. His faith was great enough to lead him into investments that would later seem visionary: He developed the Temple Heights tract at Connecticut and Florida, for example, buying the land in 1945 with developer Charles H. Tompkins and sitting on it for 12 years before selling the northern part for development of the Washington Hilton, and building the two Universal Buildings on the southern part of the site. No one needed to be told that this was Gwendolyn Cafritz's last hurrah. "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. The "Cafritz" in the Domingo-Cafritz Young Artists Program. What do Conrad and Carter Cafritz hope to gain from an arduous legal proceeding that already involves at least 12 law firms and threatens to stretch on for years? 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. He warmly greeted staff and fellow philanthropist alike, making no distinction between people. For another, he is said to alternate in seconds between a manic intensity and a mumbling diffidence. "Calvin is a very sweet, very nice person," says D.C. lawyer Max N. Berry. She was forever trying to tell me some long story I could never make head or tail of. 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. 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. 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. Cafritz died in 1964 of a heart attack. James Edward Cafritz Obituary Conrad's strategy has been diversity. "The boys used to make a joke of their mother. "Carter, he always did what the other two did," says Casey. He was elected to the Board of Directors of the Morris and Gwendolyn Cafritz Foundation in December 1988 and since February 1989 had served as Board Chairman. 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. Calvin Cafritz (1931-2023) | The Georgetowner Calvin Cafritz, the eldest son of real estate developer Morris Cafritz, died last week at the age of 91. 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 . Morris had one vision, and Gwendolyn another; whoever now gains control might offer still a third. recalls Raymond Carter, a former vice president of the Cafritz Co. "He always had a new job going. At the time the lawsuit was filed, family sources told The Washington Post that the marital trust was worth $84 million. January 16, 2023, 1:16 AM 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. To slip out of the speedy traffic on Foxhall Road into the half-circle driveway was to slip back in time. He was 91. 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.". 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. He never tired of committing himself to this mission, which only grew bigger with time. "That what she wanted was pointless is not for us to judge.". Then there is the charitable legacy. They're not a map to follow, but simply a description of what people commonly feel. 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. But he's much different from his father, in a lot of ways. 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. In Memoriam: Calvin Cafritz. "She was good to me, and she was a good woman in my eyes," he says. "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. January 2023 - Page 189 - obituaries death Calvin Cafritz, a successful businessman, was involved in real estate for more than fifty years. ", 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. We welcome you to provide your thoughts and memories on our Tribute Wall. Calvin Fritz Obituary (1952 - 2021) - Legacy Remembers Her husband, along with her parents, was buried in Washington Hebrew Cemetery, in Southeast, in a nicely landscaped, square plot designed for four under a monumental headstone reading CAFRITZ. It is hard not to wonder what the effect might have been of hearing Gwendolyn Cafritz's will read for the first time. And in the two decades of her advocacy, she has established a high profile -- and raised a lot of hackles among the old guard that runs most of the city's major cultural institutions. Echovita offers a solidarity program that gives back the funds generated to families. Ridgewell's had produced, out of retirement, the same waiter who had announced the guests eight years before. 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. The D.C. community is better for his engagement and we will miss him terribly.. The trust was established at the death of Morris Cafritz in June 1964 in the interests of saving estate taxes. Mr. Cafritz' 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. Yet Morris made little impression on Gwendolyn's social world, and she often went out or took vacations alone. Site design by, D.C. developer and head of the Cafritz Foundation. "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. In relation to real estate, Calvin Cafritz dove deep into area projects over the years like the Riverdale Park Station in Prince Georges County as well as developments at 5333 Connecticut Ave. NW and 1725 I St. NW. Operating under his own banner, Calvin Cafritz Enterprises, he has built both residential and commercial buildings in D.C. and Virginia. Certainly it is Conrad who seems to embody, in one slight frame, the polarities of his parents' lives and personalities. But Carter and Conrad Cafritz are not named in their mother's will. His father, one of Washington's leading commercial and residential builders from the early 1920's to the 1960's, distinguished himself as an outstanding civic leader known for generosity. In Remembrance. 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. Was believed to be 102. He was "greatly respected and liked, even in an antisemitic society," recalls Dixon. ON JUNE 10, 1986, GWENDOLYN D. CAFRITZ GAVE HER LAST PARTY. In the 21st century, it's not just urns and gravestones anymore. As time went on, she lost complete control, and she had to drink more. Receive obituaries from the city or cities of your choice. 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. 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. They keep china and glassware sufficient to serve hundreds. 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. 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. Then, in 1988, came the announcement that Conrad Cafritz, with Japanese partners, had bought Washington Harbour, the glitzy development below K Street in Georgetown that had been troubled from its opening; the original developer of Washington Harbour was Western. But he reached outside that circle when he finally married. Calvin Cafritz Obituary The Morris and Gwendolyn Cafritz Foundation has Died January 17, 2023 Calvin Cafritz Death, Obituary - Calvin Cafritz, the eldest son of Morris and Gwendolyn Cafritz, died Thursday at Sibley Memorial Hospital. Cafritz Calvin Cafritz Washington developer and one of the region's leading philanthropists, died Thursday morning, January 12, 2023, at Sibley Memorial Hospital, in Washington, DC. 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. She has pressured the Smithsonian to increase the number of minorities in high-ranking positions and has been arrested outside the South African Embassy as a leader of Mother's Day protests there. Her skin had an unhealthy, pouchy pallor; extending an uncertain hand, she had the air of a dreamer deploying remembered charms. To one interviewer she said that art was "the theme, you might say" of her life, "as in a Wagnerian opera." 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. Kateryna Pyatybratova directs the centers Cafritz Awards program. 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. I hope they will. What kind of arrangement is appropriate, where should you send it, and when should you send an alternative? 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.