Wednesday, December 14, 2005
David Hamilton SmithSurgeon, Tennis Enthusiast
David Hamilton Smith, 82, a former Arlington surgeon who was a nationally ranked amateur tennis player, died of leukemia Nov. 26 at a nursing facility in Salisbury, N.C.
Dr. Smith had a private medical practice in Arlington from 1962 to 1977. During that time, he was associated with area hospitals, including what is now Inova Fairfax Hospital and Virginia Hospital Center.
As a tennis player, Dr. Smith played daily and competed in tournaments, winning several Virginia state championships.
In 1977, he moved to Salisbury to work at a Veterans Administration hospital. After his retirement, he devoted more time to competitive tennis. He was twice credited with saving the lives of tennis partners who collapsed on the court.
In the past 15 years, he had been ranked among the top 100 men in his age group.
Most recently, he played tennis in the national 80-and-over age division at the Army Navy Country Club in Arlington, where he was a member.
Dr. Smith was born in Anderson, S.C., and raised there and in Washington, where he graduated from Western High School.
He graduated from Washington and Lee University and received a medical degree from the Medical College of Virginia in Richmond.
He served in the Navy as a medical officer during the Korean War and did his residency in surgery at what is now Washington Hospital Center.
He was a diplomate of the National Board of Medical Examiners and a member of Phi Beta Kappa and the Alpha Kappa Kappa medical fraternity.
Survivors include his wife of 51 years, Charlene Fator Smith of Salisbury; three children, Holly Smith Flannery of Lovettsville, Dr. Karen R. Smith of Lafayette, La., and David H. Smith Jr. of Creedmoor, N.C.; and five grandchildren.
Bettye Holtzman LeischBusiness ManagerBettye Holtzman Leisch, 89, a business manager in the 1940s for several Washington retailers and appliance stores, died of a heart attack Dec. 12 at the Virginian, the assisted living community in Fairfax where she lived.
Mrs. Leisch was born in Petersburg, Va., and grew up in Baltimore. In 1936, when she was 15, she was admitted to the University of Baltimore. On her way to class in the second semester of her freshman year, her neck was broken in an automobile accident in downtown Baltimore. She had to drop out of school because of her long convalescence and never returned for her degree.
Two years later, her father died, and she helped her mother run the family business, Baltimore Luggage Co., until her brother took over. Throughout the 1940s, she worked as a business manager for a succession of Washington area companies, including Campbell Music Co., Brown Bros. jewelry and appliance stores, and Fox and Kasmir appliance and TV repair outlets. She was responsible for arranging the sale of the jewelry operation of Brown Bros. when the company decided to concentrate on appliances.
During the 1960s, she moved with her husband and eldest son to Evanston, Ill., where she was business manager for Jack E. Leisch and Associates, her husband's transportation engineering consulting firm. She was the primary architect of the firm's 1988 merger with the Florida-based engineering company Post, Buckley, Schuh & Jernigan. She retired in 1991 and moved back to the Washington area.
Mrs. Leisch was deeply involved in charitable work on behalf of the American Institute of Holy Land Studies, an Illinois-based agency devoted to training ministers in Israel and fostering ties between Christians and Jews.
Her husband of 55 years, Jack E. Leisch, died in 1991.
Survivors include two sons, Joel Leisch of Edwards, Colo., and Gregory Leisch of Alexandria; two sisters, Molly Bergman of Arlington and Selma Carton of Baltimore; a brother, Samuel Holtzman of Baltimore; five grandchildren; and five great-grandchildren.
I. David SillmanSenior EngineerI. David Sillman, 83, who was a senior engineer at the Public Broadcasting System for 20 years, died Dec. 4 of pneumonia at Sibley Memorial Hospital. He was a resident of Chevy Chase.
At PBS, he led the team that developed the closed-captioning system for the hearing-impaired. He retired in 1991.
Mr. Sillman was born in New York City and graduated from City College of New York with an electrical engineering degree. He worked for Hazeltine Research Corp. in Chicago and Westinghouse Corp. in Metuchen, N.J., before joining PBS. He moved to the Washington area in 1979.
His first wife, Mildred Morris Sillman, died in 1971.
Survivors include his wife of 32 years, Gladys Levitan Sillman of Chevy Chase; two children from his first marriage, Deborah Sillman of Apollo Pa., and Sanford Sillman of Ann Arbor, Mich.; and two grandchildren.
Winifred 'Winnie' FarmerPrince George's County PrincipalWinifred Lancaster "Winnie" Farmer, 81, the principal of Seat Pleasant Elementary School from 1966 to 1981, died Dec. 7 at her home in Washington. She had cancer.
Mrs. Farmer began teaching in her native Prince George's County in 1946 at the segregated North Brentwood Elementary School. She later transferred to Lincoln Elementary School.
In 1964, she and another teacher reportedly were the first to racially integrate the faculty at Seat Pleasant Elementary. Two years later, she was the school's first black principal and tried to temper the hostilities arising from court-ordered busing.
She recalled a white parent whose child was bused to the school asking her about what she would do to stem drugs and crime at the school.
"I said, 'Nothing. Madam, do you know that this is an elementary school?' It floored her."
After her retirement, the school named its library in her honor.
Mrs. Farmer was born in the southern Prince George's County black enclave known as Chapel Hill. She was a 1942 graduate of Frederick Douglass High School in Upper Marlboro and a 1945 graduate of what is now Bowie State University.
She received a master's degree in education from New York University and did graduate work in educational management at Catholic and American universities.
She was a member of Hughes Memorial United Methodist Church in Washington and a former president of the Retired Teachers Association of Prince George's County.
She traveled to every continent but Antarctica.
Her husband of 55 years, George "Spike" Farmer, also a principal in Prince George's County, died in 2001.
Survivors include a daughter, Sharon Farmer of Washington, a former director of White House photography under President Bill Clinton; a son, Jonathan Farmer of Alexandria; a brother, Robert Lancaster of Chapel Hill; a sister, Gloria Brown of Upper Marlboro; and a grandson.
Ruth Elinor AddisonExecutive SecretaryRuth Elinor Addison, 84, a former secretary to members of Congress and assistant postmasters general, died from complications of pulmonary hypertension Nov. 22 at Palm Garden of Gainesville, a rehabilitation center in Florida, where she lived.
Mrs. Addison was an executive secretary to several assistant postmasters general at the U.S. Postal Service from 1975 until her retirement in 1983. Previously, she worked for a series of congressmen and senators from 1960 to 1974, including Sen. Bourke B. Hickenlooper (R-Iowa), Rep. Benton Jensen (R-Iowa) and Rep. Donald Clausen (R-Calif.).
She was born in Lucas, Ohio, and graduated from Muskingum College in New Concord, Ohio. She moved to Florida about 1984, after her retirement.
Her marriage to William W. Addison ended in divorce.
Survivors include a son, Mark Addison of Arlington; a brother; a sister; and a grandson.
Laverne Stansberry LongD.C. School Worker, Pastor's Wife
Laverne Stansberry Long, 87, a Baptist pastor's wife and an administrative assistant at Bunker Hill Elementary School in Washington from the mid-1950s to the mid-1970s, died Nov. 25 at her home in the District. She had congestive heart failure.
Mrs. Long was involved in affairs at Mount Airy Baptist Church in Northwest, which her husband, the Rev. Clarence M. Long Jr., led from 1956 until his death in 1978.
She organized an annual Palm Sunday fundraising tea, called the Pastel Tea after her color scheme.
For the events, she brought in an array of cultural figures, including opera singer Jessye Norman and Sylvia Meyer, a harpist with the National Symphony Orchestra.
Mrs. Long was born in Tchula, Miss., and attended Tougaloo College in Mississippi.
During World War II, she had an oversight role handling government life insurance claims for a federal agency in New York. She married in 1946 and accompanied her husband on his church assignments until settling in the Washington area in 1956.
After leaving Bunker Hill Elementary, Mrs. Long worked briefly for Riggs Bank, handling special foreign embassy accounts at the Dupont Circle branch.
Survivors include three children, Clarence M. Long III, Patricia L. Tucker and D.C. Superior Court Judge Cheryl M. Long, all of Washington; and a grandson.
Luciana A. IaconoLanguage TeacherLuciana A. Iacono, 85, who taught Italian and French in the Washington area for many years, died Dec. 13 at the Sunrise assisted living facility in Arlington. She had emphysema.
Mrs. Iacono, who was born in Rome, immigrated to Washington with her husband and two children from Italy in 1957, first renting an apartment near what was then the Italian Embassy in Mount Pleasant. Her first job in the United States was in the better-dresses department at the Garfinckel's store downtown.
In the 1960s, she worked for about 10 years at the National Gallery of Art, helping European tourists who couldn't speak English. She then taught French at Northern Virginia Community College for about three years before becoming an Italian teacher at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, where she worked for many years until the early 1990s. She also was an accomplished watercolorist and painter.
She had lived in Arlington and Falls Church.
Her husband, Luigi Iacono, died in 1998.
Survivors include two children, Daniela Deane of Arlington and Max Iacono of Bangkok; and two grandsons.
John Alfred DaschbachFederal EmployeeJohn Alfred Daschbach, 73, a retired manager in the Department of Health and Human Services, died of complications related to a fall Dec. 2 at the Washington Home Community Hospice. He had Parkinson's disease.
Mr. Daschbach, a District resident, worked for the federal government for nearly 44 years, retiring in 1995. In addition to HHS, he worked for the Departments of State, Labor and Housing and Urban Development and the Office of Economic Opportunity.
He was born in Pittsburgh, and he attended the University of Pittsburgh. He lived in Germany and England before moving to Washington more than 50 years ago.
He was an avid reader, with special interests in sports, British political history and world politics. He was known as the "trivia king" at the Georgetown Retirement Residence, where he was a frequent winner of weekly trivia contests since moving there three years ago.
There are no immediate family survivors.
Donald Louis FratinoIRS LawyerDonald Louis Fratino, 74, a lawyer who worked for the Internal Revenue Service from 1962 to 1983 and specialized in international tax law, died Dec. 11 at Anne Arundel Medical Center. He had a cerebral aneurysm.
After his IRS retirement, Mr. Fratino was briefly in private practice before serving as an administrative law judge for Maryland from 1989 to 1994.
He was a native of Norwalk, Conn., and a 1954 graduate of East Carolina University. After Army service, he attended Catholic University's law school, graduating in 1959.
He was a member of St. Elizabeth Ann Seton Catholic Church in Crofton and its social justice committee. He was a former president of the Huntington Woods homeowners association in Gambrills, where he lived.
He did volunteer work at the information desk at Baltimore-Washington International Airport. His hobbies included tennis, bicycling and boating.
Survivors include his wife, Mary McPartland Fratino, whom he married in 1957, of Gambrills; three daughters, Catherine Welker and Teresa Williams, both of Crofton, and Julia Klipstein of Flower Mound, Tex.; a brother, James Fratino of Queenstown, Md.; and 11 grandchildren.