"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. 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. 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. Certainly it is Conrad who seems to embody, in one slight frame, the polarities of his parents' lives and personalities. But he reached outside that circle when he finally married. They charge in their suit that Rogers and Atlas influenced her to leave all the property she controlled to the foundation. Washington, DC 20007 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. He is survived by his loving and devoted wife, Jane Lipton Cafritz, a distinguished Washington lawyer, whom he married on June 1, 2000. These two, according to the complaint by Carter and Conrad Cafritz, "exerted undue influence" in Gwendolyn's decision to leave her entire estate to the foundation, of which they are both trustees. There is no photo or video of Calvin Cafritz.Be the first to share a memory to pay tribute. Click here for full story from WTOP and the Washington Business Journal. Conrad's strategy has been diversity. Marvin LaVerne Katz, 83, of Dallas, Texas, passed away on November 22, 2019 in Dallas. The complaint further asserts that "when Decedent allegedly executed the purported Will and Codicil that have been offered for probate herein, Decedent lacked a sound and disposing mind and was not capable of executing a valid deed or contract. 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. 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. He also is a director. Her statements in the press, even the adoring press of yore, suggest at the least a daunting mother. "Carter Cafritz is just a genuine nice fellow," says Raymond Carter, a former vice president of the Cafritz Co. "Conrad is more in the father's mold. Cafritz was a tireless promoter of the city. 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. Expand the Memories and Condolences form. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, The Morris and Gwendolyn Cafritz Foundation. . For another, he is said to alternate in seconds between a manic intensity and a mumbling diffidence. We welcome you to provide your thoughts and memories on our Tribute Wall. Read more on bizjournals.com. He was 91. But Carter and Conrad Cafritz are not named in their mother's will. 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. At seated dinners for 22, she entertained ambassadors and justices, senators and Cabinet secretaries. Among the guests that June evening were her three sons, Calvin, Carter and Conrad. 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. (202) 338-4833, Georgetown Media Group. "Getting along with her," says one developer who knows the family, "was something none of them ever mastered. The suit was filed by the middle and youngest Cafritz sons, Carter, 53, and Conrad, 51. Her skin had an unhealthy, pouchy pallor; extending an uncertain hand, she had the air of a dreamer deploying remembered charms. 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. You can still show your support by sending flowers directly to the family, or plant a tree in memory of Calvin Cafritz. That's what we call a success story. There were of course the grand exceptions like the Warburgs, and Walter Lippmann, and Arthur Krock . ", Conrad Cafritz is, in a word fondly used by friends, weird. "Old Washington was very antisemitic, as you know," continues Vidal, whose childhood here as the stepson of lawyer and investor Hugh D. Auchincloss and the grandson of Oklahoma Sen. Thomas Gore gave him an intimate education in Washington society. In Washington, D.C., when Irene Bloch's husband dies, a character says, "We should build him a monument, and dedicate it to the Unknown Husband. That's why her final victory rather delighted me. 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. 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. Once grown, the sons established limited, perfunctory contacts with their mother. He resigned seven years later to form Cafritz Enterprises. 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. Only between the lines or in conversations with old friends can one make out how nakedly she wore her ambitions, and how hard she was working to measure up. "With so-called friends all around her, she was a very lonely woman," says Dowling. Mr. Cafritz was married previously two times; his first wife was Enid Cafritz and his second wife was Joyce Smith. With him at the helm, the foundation distributed hundreds of millions of dollars in grants to a range of organizations, including the National Gallery of Art, Bread for the City and the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. To those who thronged to the parties, the children were rarely in evidence. ", Interviews suggest the sons will not lack for evidence to support their argument. The Morris and Gwendolyn Cafritz Foundation is already, with its more than $220 million in assets, the largest source of private funds earmarked for the District of Columbia. "He's creative, he's smart, also ambitious, like his father. 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. Recognizably brothers, the youngest of them nearing his fifties, they were a striking presence at the party. It is, as always, unclear where her inborn quirkiness shaded into the effects of alcoholism; but many of her friends, in later years, simply came to think of her as "difficult" or "eccentric"; Almost everyone has a story about her forgetting their names, or making some sudden comment of shocking rudeness. It took lawyers and IRS agents 4 years to settle the estate, which was valued in 1968 at $66 million. ", 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. Calvin Cafritz, D.C. developer and head of the Cafritz Foundation, dies at 91. bizjournals.com - Michael Neibauer 20h. 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. What do the younger sons of the celebrated Washington hostess hope to gain by waging legal war over their mother's will? In addition, there are at least 10 apartment buildings in D.C. Conrad, say friends, has watched in frustration as downtown Washington boomed and the foundation failed to take maximum advantage of its holdings. With that philosophy he built a substantial reputation for philanthropy. He never tired of committing himself to this mission, which only grew bigger with time. I just make speeches.". Says a friend, "He thinks they're a lot of fuddy-duddies living in the 17th century." Of the $54 million the foundation has given away since 1970, $32 million has gone to the arts and humanities, almost $9 million to community services, $8 million to education and almost $5 million to health. Her two younger sons have also filed a separate petition that pursues only the marital trust. To slip out of the speedy traffic on Foxhall Road into the half-circle driveway was to slip back in time. 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). No one needed to be told that this was Gwendolyn Cafritz's last hurrah. Cafritz was a native and longtime resident of Washington, DC. At the same time, he and Tompkins had the foresight to buy the land now known as Pentagon City. The mission of the foundation is improving the quality of life for all Washington, D.C., metropolitan-area residents, Boerstling said. 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. It is hard to imagine, in this competitive atmosphere, that a single person could have dominated the field as Morris Cafritz once did. Comment * document.getElementById("comment").setAttribute( "id", "a33c63ad631098ddb002d9da023fc09f" );document.getElementById("gab125c3ec").setAttribute( "id", "comment" ); Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment. None of the Cafritz sons can be said to need the money that is at stake. Her gown, as in the past, was spectacularly formal: folds of purple satin sweeping to her ankles beneath a fitted bodice. Site design by, D.C. developer and head of the Cafritz Foundation. He was for years the president of the Jewish Community Center and donated the land for its first headquarters on Q Street NW. After their marriage in 1981, Conrad and Peggy bought Sen. Stuart Symington's house in the Foxhall Road area, studied it for a while, then tore it down to build a new house. The George Washington University community is remembering the life of Calvin Cafritz, a businessman, philanthropist and longtime supporter of GW. 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. Jane Lipton Cafritz was elected in the second half of 2022 to succeed her husband as the foundations president and CEO. Website by Red Clay Creative, Chances are, many Washingtonians might not even realize how much real estate the Cafritz family is responsible for in the area. In the process, he amassed one of the first great fortunes to be carved out of Washington itself. The strange paradox of her marriage was that Morris's money enabled her to carry out her lavish social dreams, while the family's being Jewish also placed limits on her chances of realizing them. ON JUNE 10, 1986, GWENDOLYN D. CAFRITZ GAVE HER LAST PARTY. 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. Calvin, Carter and Conrad, all of Washington, and 13 grandchildren. But like all wills, the one now known in probate court as 3035-88 offers more than one legacy, and thus more than one motive. The foundation's board of trustees consisted of Gwendolyn Cafritz and the two men who would become her executors -- Atlas and William P. Rogers, her attorney. There are, superficially, great similarities among the three brothers, who all share their mother's dark coloring. Washington, DC 20006. "Those were her orders: The Scotch should never be let go beneath the neck of the decanter. Rachel M. Ratowsky, of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, passed away peacefully in her sleep on Tuesday, February 2, 2021. He was preceded in death by his brother Carter Cafritz. Marvin Katz was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma to Dr. Donald LaVerne Katz and Lila Maxine Katz on December 12, 1935. But she had a disconcertingly self-serious way of advertising it. What kind of arrangement is appropriate, where should you send it, and when should you send an alternative? Grief researchers say holding that missing funeral service, even a year or more later, can still help us heal. 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. Another longtime beneficiary of Cafritz Foundation support has been The Textile Museum. Where he was meat and potatoes, earnest frugality, civic pride, she was flashing dark beauty, mercurial moods and social ambition. And he still fights his battles with a surprising intensity, rarely bothering with the shake-hands-and-forget-it bonhomie common in Washington business. There is, for example, the very palpable legacy of real estate developed by Morris Cafritz, including several lots and office buildings downtown. You can still show your support by sending flowers directly to the family, or plant a tree in memory of Calvin Cafritz.