Obituaries

Friday, January 5, 2007

Martha Robinson Byrd CookTravel Agent, Horsewoman

Martha Robinson Byrd Cook, 72, a former travel agent and horsewoman, died Dec. 29 of lung cancer at Winchester Medical Center. She was a Millwood resident.

Mrs. Cook was born in Winchester and graduated from Holton-Arms School and Bennett Junior College in New York state.

A homemaker with an interest in politics, she volunteered in the successful 1969 Virginia gubernatorial campaign of A. Linwood Holton Jr., a Republican. She drove the "Jinxmobile," the Volkswagen bus that Holton's wife, Jinx, used to campaign across the state.

Starting in the early 1970s, she worked 20 years for Waters Travel Service in Washington and arranged trips for women from Virginia and the Carolinas to visit the noted English gardener and flower arranger Sheila Macqueen.

Mrs. Cook developed the Sheila Macqueen Garden at Long Branch in Clarke County, Va., and her own garden at Claytonville, the name of her Millwood estate, where she held parties and charitable events over the years.

As a horsewoman, Mrs. Cook hunted for many years with the Blue Ridge Hunt and other nearby packs. In the 1990s, she entered the racing world with Claytonville Stables, home to a celebrated national hunt horse, Jolie Summer. She won the Carolina Cup in 2004.

Her marriage to B. Beverley Byrd ended in divorce.

Survivors include her husband of 44 years, William F. Cook Jr. of Millwood; two daughters from her first marriage, Anne Byrd Dean of Worcester, England, and Westwood Beverley Byrd of Richmond; and three grandchildren.

Barbara Ann O'NeillCIA Employee

Barbara Ann O'Neill, 57, a retired employee of the Central Intelligence Agency, died Jan. 1 of lung and liver cancer at her father's home in Arlington. She lived in Falls Church.

Ms. O'Neill was born in Washington and graduated from Immaculate Conception High School in 1968. She joined the CIA that year and served as an agency secretary in London from 1971 to 1974.

Promoted to staff operational officer, she worked in the Near East and South Asia division from 1974 to 1990, providing support to U.S interests in countries including Lebanon, Libya and Yemen.

She was transferred to the National Resettlement Operations Center, a unit in the Directorate of Operations that manages the resettlement of defectors. She served as a resettlement case officer and chief of the operations support group.

Ms. O'Neill retired in 2004 and received the Career Intelligence Medal. In retirement, she worked as a contractor for BDS Corp.

Survivors include her father, John E. O'Neill Sr., and a brother, John E. O'Neill Jr., both of Arlington.

Dale FrySocial Services Official

Dale Fry, 51, director of the early Head Start program for the Family Services Agency of Montgomery County Inc., died Dec. 29 at her home in Germantown. She had gastric cancer.

Mrs. Fry joined the Family Services Agency in 2002 and became director of the early Head Start program the next year.

Before joining the agency, she worked for two years for the federally funded Women, Infants and Children program administered by Montgomery County's health department.

Dale McGee was born in Elkton, in Cecil County, Md., and raised partly in the Philippines, where her father was a civilian employee of the U.S. Coast Guard. She graduated from Gaithersburg High School in 1973.

She was a 1977 health education graduate of Towson University. Before her recent illness, she did graduate work in curriculum and instruction at Hood College in Frederick.

From 1979 to 1987, she was a health education teacher in Howard County. She then spent 14 years as a coordinator with a Montgomery public schools program for young children and their parents.

Survivors include her husband, Rodney Fry, and two children, Shannon Fry and Wesley Fry, all of Germantown; three sisters, Wanda Anastasi of Rockville, Cora Rencher of Arlington, Tex., and Sandi McGee of Potomac; and two brothers, Walter Nelson McGee of Hagerstown and Larry McGee of Frederick.