Monday, December 18, 2006; B04
Marelyn Tank, 91, past president of the Woman's National Democratic Club, died of pneumonia Dec. 12 at Washington Home hospice. She was a District resident.
For 30 years, Mrs. Tank was active in the Democratic Party, serving as president of the Woman's National Democratic Club from 1985 to 1987. She held a number of leadership roles in the organization, including program coordinator of seniors for the 1992 Clinton-Gore campaign, and frequently acted as a mentor for younger women. In the 1960s, she worked for the Democratic National Committee and on the staff of Rep. James Roosevelt (D-Calif.).
Born in Madison, Wis., she graduated from the University of Wisconsin and studied at the Sorbonne in Paris. She married Martin M. Tank, who during World War II was an Army cryptographer based in Washington. Mrs. Tank worked in the prisoner of war division of the National Red Cross and taught foreign languages in local middle and senior high schools.
Her husband became a Foreign Service officer after World War II, and she lived overseas. Based in Paris from 1948 to 1956, she and other embassy wives took lessons at Le Cordon Bleu culinary school, launching one of them, Julia Child, on her career.
Mrs. Tank taught grass-roots democracy at the American Quaker Center in Germany; chaired the embassy speaker's bureau in London; encouraged education for girls in Libya; edited a magazine for the U.S. community and worked with a school for the blind in Bangkok; and co-chaired the embassy refugee program in Saigon.
For the past 33 years, she had lived at the Columbia Plaza apartment complex in Foggy Bottom, where she was past president of the tenants association. She also served as a board member, annual concert chairwoman and vice president of the United Nations Association of the National Capital Area. She was a member of the vestry of the Church of the Epiphany.
Her husband of 40 years died in 1980.
Survivors include two children, Holly Tank of Washington and Jeffry Tank of Woodbridge; three grandchildren; and two great-grandchildren.
