Nadegsda 'Nadia' Stanley, D.C. Volunteer, Dies at 78

Nadegsda "Nadia" Stanley, 78, a volunteer at Washington National Cathedral and the National Gallery of Art who also tutored disadvantaged youths in reading programs, was found dead by firefighters Oct. 2 at her home in Georgetown.

A spokesman for the D.C. fire department said that the cause of the fire had not been determined but that it was accidental. A spokeswoman for the D.C. medical examiner's office said tests were being conducted to determine the cause of death.

Mrs. Stanley was a longtime presence on Washington's social and diplomatic circuit. She was the widow of Timothy W. Stanley II, a defense policy adviser who in the late 1960s was a Paris-based assistant to Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara. Stanley died in 1997; they were married 45 years.

Mrs. Stanley was born Nadegsda Leon in Naples and grew up in Venice. Her father, a Russian Jewish émigré, was deported by Nazis in 1944, and he died at Auschwitz. Her mother had died at the beginning of the war of appendicitis, and Nadia and her two brothers were placed in the custody of nuns after their father was taken away. Their maternal grandparents, living in Rome, claimed the children at the end of the war.

Mrs. Stanley graduated in 1951 from the University of Rome, where she studied law. She met her future husband on a transatlantic boat trip when she was 18 and he was 21. Both were chaperoned, and his mother insisted that he ask "that nice Italian girl sitting with her grandmother" to dance.

The Stanleys settled in the Washington area in the mid-1950s. Mrs. Stanley developed an interest in art, and she completed a master's degree in art history at George Washington University in the mid-1970s.

Survivors include four children, Timothy W. "Terry" Stanley III and Alessandra Stanley, both of New York City, and Christopher Stanley and Flavia Stanley, both of Boston; two brothers; and six grandchildren.

-- Adam Bernstein