He is survived by his loving and devoted wife, Jane Lipton Cafritz, a distinguished Washington lawyer, whom he married on June 1, 2000. . She was multilingual and had studied art history at the University of Budapest. "Getting along with her," says one developer who knows the family, "was something none of them ever mastered. 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. Conrad's strange, and doesn't mind people thinking that he's strange; he kind of encourages it.". To one interviewer she said that art was "the theme, you might say" of her life, "as in a Wagnerian opera." 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. But he's much different from his father, in a lot of ways. G Guest 4 hours ago Comment Share T The staff at Sagel Bloomfield Danzansky Goldberg Funeral Care Inc a day ago We plant this tree as a living memorial to Calvin. We welcome you to provide your thoughts and memories on our Tribute Wall. There are no events at this time. . Atlas too declined to comment, but he issued a statement when the suit was filed saying that he had no role in drafting the will, and no advance knowledge of its contents. No one needed to be told that this was Gwendolyn Cafritz's last hurrah. ", Conrad and Carter Cafritz have chosen instead the purgatory of probate court, where their complaints suggest less lovely memories. In 1929 he also built the since-demolished Ambassador Hotel, at 14th and K streets NW, where he and his family lived until 1938. 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 . Her hair was still a lacquered black, heavily dressed as always at the back of her head. Calvin's younger brothers, Conrad and Carter, are behind-the- scenes players in many business and charitable ventures players. Prepare a personalized obituary for someone you loved.. March 29, 1931 - Calvin Cafritz, the eldest son of real estate developer Morris Cafritz, died last week at the age of 91. . . 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. ", Other documents filed in court indicate that the sons will argue their mother was incapacitated by alcoholism. He too has denied the sons' allegations in his formal answer to their complaint. 2000 Pennsylvania Avenue NW It is a secretive organization: The foundation would answer no questions for this article. All rights reserved. Its annual reports list a fairly traditional, staid set of beneficiaries, and its grants are studied by an advisory board heavily weighted toward the kind of high-profile, high-society arts philanthropy that Gwendolyn favored: Among the members are National Gallery of Art Director J. Carter Brown, retired Smithsonian secretary S. Dillon Ripley and retired librarian of Congress Daniel Boorstin, as well Carolyn Deaver, wife of former White House deputy chief of staff Michael K. Deaver, and a social friend of Gwendolyn's, Mrs. Tazewell Shepard. It took lawyers and IRS agents 4 years to settle the estate, which was valued in 1968 at $66 million. ", Today, he still combats a version of that assumption, pithily summed up by one detractor in this way: "You don't have to be Albert Einstein to take money and make additional money in real estate." 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. The Cafritz Foundation is also responsible for developing Art Place at Fort Totten, a huge mixed-use project in the Northeast D.C. area. Required fields are marked *. Rogers had served as her personal attorney since her husband, Washington real estate magnate Morris Cafritz, died in 1964. Expand the Memories and Condolences form. Copyright 2023 Echovita Inc. 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. But Gwendolyn sometimes took pains to tell friends that she herself was not Jewish. Would you like to offer Calvin Cafritzs loved ones a condolence message? She was 78 years old. . He was 91. 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. January 12, 2023 The best poems for funerals, memorial services., and cards. It is hard not to wonder what the effect might have been of hearing Gwendolyn Cafritz's will read for the first time. Two and a half years later Gwendolyn Cafritz was dead of cancer, at 78, and the following summer -- three years after that final party -- her two younger sons filed suit in D.C. Superior Court to. 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. In his later years he established one of the Washington region's leading philanthropic entities, the Morris and Gwendolyn Cafritz Foundation. 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. Of the three Cafritz sons, says restaurateur Herb White, "Conrad seems to be the one who has something to prove to himself.". A minor but colorful part of Cafritz's legacy was an idea borrowed from Harry Wardman, his predecessor as the leader of the field. She retained the right to will awaythe remaining three-quarters, or $63 million, which sheleft to the Morris and Gwendolyn Cafritz Foundation. 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. He was an excellent listener and always got both the big picture and important details by asking insightful questions. Because Gwendolyn's estate has not been probated, its value is hard to establish. 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. If she gave them an order, they took it lightly, because she liked to drink. 5.8K. 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. Receive obituaries from the city or cities of your choice. Devoted father to Laurence (Sherri) Cafritz and Jodi (Mark Bronsky) Cafr 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. He was 91. She had not given a party for eight years, and even then, she had been memorializing the past; the real tradition, the old wine being decanted on this lambent June evening, had been decades in storage. Carter appears something of a cipher even to old family associates. James Edward Cafritz <p>James Edward Cafritz of Bethesda, MD, passed away on Tuesday, December 22, 2020, at the age of 90. Age: 91 years old Also known as: Mr Calvin Cafritz, Calvin Cafritz View Full Report Mobile number ADS View Current Number Landline number (202) 223-3100 Email addresses ccafritz@cafritzfoundation.org Relatives Calvin Cafritz Jane Cafritz Current address 1642 29th St NW, Washington, DC, 20007-2901 See more results for Calvin Cafritz Today, he is married to Peggy Cooper Cafritz, who is a local power in the arts and in liberal political causes -- and the only Cafritz listed in Who's Who. He was 91. Morris Cafritz is remembered more for the quantity than for the aesthetic quality of his works. 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. "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. 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. 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.". 2017-2023 Tribute Archive. . ", 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). It is easy to imagine that for a son of Morris Cafritz, watching great deals go unmade is a kind of hell. He is a leading supporter of the Global India Fund, and the Ukapav Indian-American Scholarship Foundation. Then there is the charitable legacy. Mr. Cafritz began his career with Cafritz Construction Company in 1947. 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. 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. 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. 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. But almost no one seems to doubt that Conrad is the main force behind it. But it was a heady enough wine to call out 300 guests, and the ghosts of many more who had preceded them.
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