Joy Rosenheim Simonson, 88; Activist Led Local and National Women's Groups

She was a member of the national commission on the International Women's Year and was a delegate from Washington to the 1977 National Women's Conference in Houston. She also attended the U.N. women's conferences in Copenhagen in 1980 and Nairobi in 1985.

She also served two terms on the national board of OWL, an organization dealing with issues of midlife and older women. In 1992, Ms. Simonson was elected to the D.C. Women's Hall of Fame.

Besides tennis, she enjoyed figure skating, especially on the C&O Canal. During one particularly long cold spell, she coaxed her children to skate across the frozen Potomac River and back, upstream from Chain Bridge.

A Washington Post reporter caught a 75-year-old Ms. Simonson, during a spate of single-digit temperatures in 1994, skating on the Reflecting Pool on the Mall.

"It has been ages since I've been out here," she said. "That Park Service is so darn conservative, they never let you come out to skate.

"I was on the phone with 'em right away Thursday," she went on, "and when I found the right person, and they said it was frozen enough to skate, I thought, 'That's for me.' Look around. How much more beautiful could this be?"

With her husband watching from solid ground, she had been on the ice for quite some time. "But I'm not leaving," she said before dashing off for another lap, "until his feet get too cold."

She had a passion for travel and visited 52 countries.

Her husband, Richard C. Simonson, died in 1998.

Survivors include three children, Kenneth Simonson of Washington, Donald Simonson of Darnestown and Karen Simonson of Los Angeles; a brother; and five grandchildren.