Obituaries

-- Patricia Sullivan

Martha P. NewellPre-School Founder

Martha P. Newell, 76, a founder of Washington Preschools Inc., a nonprofit group that supported racially and economically integrated preschools, died Feb. 18 at her home in the District. She had lung disease.

Mrs. Newell helped start WPI in 1967 as an outgrowth of her participation in civil rights and social justice causes.

With her husband at the time, a Presbyterian minister, they opened their home to Stokely Carmichael and other activists. They also started integrated schools in church basements, a model for what became WPI.

Institutions supported by WPI included the Columbia Road School, Capitol East Children's Center, Midtown Montessori School and Spring Knolls Cooperative Nursery School.

Mrs. Newell served as WPI board chairwoman for several years and was active in raising funds for the schools, many of which were absorbed by the 1980s into the federal Head Start program for low-income families.

Martha Paine Newell was a Boston native and a 1955 graduate of Boston University.

In mid-1970s, she took classes in social work at Catholic University and did volunteer work at Woodley House, a halfway facility in the District for psychiatric patients. About the same time, she also worked with Catholic Charities on refugee resettlement as the Vietnam War was ending.

Mrs. Newell's grandfather was a founder of the Paine Webber stock brokerage and investment banking company, and philanthropy became a central part of her life during the past three decades.

Much of her giving stemmed from her travels. She gave to relief programs in Africa, criminal justice reform organizations focused on China and theater programs in Eastern Europe and Russia.