Obituaries

Edmund E. Pendleton Jr.International Lawyer

Edmund E. Pendleton Jr., 85, an international lawyer in Washington for four decades and a former D.C. Republican Committee chairman, died May 20 at his home in McLean. He had pancreatic cancer.

In private practice, Mr. Pendleton represented foreign governments as well as companies engaged in foreign commerce.

After retiring in 1990, he did consulting work for nongovernmental organizations in developing nations and worked to establish cash-commodity exchanges in Europe and Africa.

Edmund Embree Pendleton Jr. was born in St. Louis and raised in Texas and New York. He was a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School of Finance. He served in the Army Medical Corps during World War II.

He was a 1948 graduate of Georgetown University's law school and received a master's degree in law from George Washington University's law school in 1951.

During his early career, he held periodic government assignments that suited his expertise in international law and his interest in Republican politics.

In 1969, he was elected to a three-year term as D.C. Republican Committee chairman. He had a role drafting legislation that created the D.C. Council and spent his last year as committee head trying to distance the committee from the turmoil associated with the Watergate scandal.

He was an elder at National Presbyterian Church in Washington. His other memberships included the National Defense Executive Reserve, the American Foreign Service Association and the Chevy Chase Club. He was a former trustee of the D.C. Legal Aid Society.

His marriage to Josephine Culbertson Pendleton ended in divorce. A daughter from that marriage, Helen Rowe, died in 2003.

Survivors include his wife of 17 years, Kyoko Makino Pendleton of McLean; four daughters from his first marriage, Junia Baker of Singapore, Mary Jo Pendleton of Wilmington, N.C., Lucille Seaton of Jacksonville, Fla., and Margaret Humphrey of Pacifica, Calif.; and six grandchildren.

-- Adam Bernstein