The Washington Post - 13.03.2020

B6 eZ re the washington post.friday, march 13 , 2020

obituaries

ratory School and graduated in

1951 from the College of New

Rochelle, a Catholic women’s col-

lege in New York that closed its

doors last year.

She lived in Potomac, Md., for

many years before moving to

Chevy Chase. She was a longtime

Democratic Party activist and

fundraiser, particularly on behalf

of female congressional candi-

dates. She was a parishioner at

Holy Trinity Catholic Church in

Georgetown and served on the

boards of Georgetown Universi-

ty; her husband’s a lma mater, the

College of the Holy Cross in

Worcester, Mass.; and Catholic

Relief Services.

Mrs. Williams raised her hus-

band’s three children from a

young age and had four children

of her own. The oldest of the

seven, Joseph Williams, died in

2004. Survivors include six chil-
      dren, Ellen Bender, Peter Bennett
      Williams and Edward “Ned” Wil-
      liams, all of Potomac, Dana Ful-
      ham of Newton, Mass., Anthony
      Williams of Los Angeles and
      Kimberly Sandefur of Atlanta; 15
      grandchildren; and a great-
      granddaughter.
      [email protected]

Bennett Williams were married

in 1960, a year after the death of

his first wife, the former Dorothy

Guider. At the time, he had three

children, none older than 5.

Mrs. Williams — “one of the

three best lawyers I’ve ever

known,” her husband said years

later — gave up her l egal career to

manage a household t hat eventu-

ally came to include seven chil-

dren. She had “more rules than

the IRS” when raising her chil-

dren, her husband once quipped.

Edward Bennett Williams

went on to became one of Wash-

ington’s most prominent lawyers

and power brokers, founding the

firm of Williams & Connolly and

advising top government offi-

cials. He became a part-owner of

the Washington Redskins and

later the principal owner of the

Baltimore Orioles baseball team.

After her husband’s death in

1988, Mrs. Williams became the

Orioles’ owner before selling the

franchise a year later.

Agnes Anne Neill was born

April 16, 1930, in Washington.

Her father was an engineer, her

mother a homemaker.

Mrs. Williams was a graduate

of Georgetown Visitation Prepa-

195 0s, had defended Sen. Joseph

McCarthy (R-Wis.), Te amsters

head James R. Hoffa and under-

world figure Frank Costello.

Mrs. Williams, then known as

Agnes Neill, assisted in prepar-

ing the legal cases and some-

times argued before judges in

notable cases. She and Edward

Some of the professors and

male students were boorish and

unaccommodating, but Mrs. Wil-

liams was not deterred.

“A fter a couple of weeks,” she

said, “I thought, ‘This is my cup

of tea!’ ”

She won the moot court com-

petition for first-year law stu-

dents and became the first wom-

an named to the staff of the

Georgetown Law Journal.

“A ctually, I was either the vic-

tim or beneficiary of sexual ste-

reotyping, because a couple of

the [male] editors invited me to

join the staff as a first-year stu-

dent to do the typing,” she told

the Holy Cross magazine. “A nd I

said, indeed, I had had a summer

job typing and had passed the

civil service examination, so they

welcomed me. But I got to know

them in a very nonthreatening

way, and then the next year I was

a staff member.”

After graduating at the top of

her class in 1954, she joined

Edward Bennett Williams’s law

offices.

Williams, who had graduated

from Georgetown Law in 1945,

was already a well-known court-

room advocate who, during the

BY MATT SCHUDEL

Agnes Neill Williams, who was
in the first class of women to
attend law school at Georgetown
University, then practiced law
with noted defense attorney Ed-
ward Bennett Williams before
their marriage in 1960, died
March 4 at her home in Chevy
Chase, Md. She was 89.
The cause was congestive
heart failure, said her son Antho-
ny Williams.
Mrs. Williams, a native Wash-
ingtonian, had just graduated
from college in 1951 when she
learned at a friend’s wedding
that Georgetown would admit
women to the law school for the
first time. She was among fewer
than 10 women to enter the law
program that fall.
“I arrived at t he school by bus,”
she told the alumni magazine of
Holy Cross University in 2013.
“There was a bus stop at t he front
door, a nd the e ntire sidewalk was
covered with returning male stu-
dents. I didn’t have the courage
to get off the bus, so I rode to the
next stop. But you know? Once I
got there, I did not f eel intimidat-
ed at all.”

agnes neill Williams, 89

Among the first women to attend Georgetown Law School

Family photo

Agnes Neill Williams was the

first woman on the staff of the

Georgetown Law Journal.

of note

obituaries of residents from the
District, maryland a nd n orthern Vir-
ginia.

Gloria Lubkin,
physics editor
Gloria Lubkin, 86, former editor
of Physics To day magazine who
retired in 2009 after 36 years with
the publication, died Jan. 26 at a
hospital in Raleigh, N.C. The cause
was colon cancer, said a daughter,
Sharon Lubkin.
Mrs. Lubkin was born Gloria
Becker in Philadelphia. She joined
the magazine in 1963 and was
named editor in 1985. She moved
to Raleigh from Chevy Chase, Md.,
last year.

Joseph Halbe,
CIA employee
Joseph Halbe, 84, a covert CIA
employee from 1961 to 1977 whose
postings included Vienna and Zan-
zibar, died Jan. 22 at an assisted-
living center in Columbia, Md. The
cause was a brain tumor, said a
niece, Maureen D olan.
Mr. Halbe, a resident of Glenn
Dale, Md., was born in Girardville,
Pa., and moved to the Washington
area in 1955. He spoke German,
Czech and Swahili. From 1979 to

1993, he was a bookkeeper in

Greenbelt, Md., for MSM Security,

which conducts background

checks.

Richard Kager,

police officer

Richard Kager, 86, a D.C. police

officer for 20 years who retired in

1980, died Dec. 29 at a hospital in

Leonardtown, Md. The cause was

congestive heart failure, said a son,

Roger Kager.

Mr. Kager, a resident of College

Park, Md., was born i n Washington

and served five years in the Navy

before joining the police depart-

ment, where he was a K-9 officer.

Ramon Alvarez,

FAA executive

Ramon Alvarez, 82, a Federal

Aviation Administration officer

for 24 years who retired in 1983 as

deputy director of air traffic, died

Dec. 23 at a hospital in Arlington,

Va. The cause was head injuries

from an accidental fall, said a

daughter, B onnie Alvarez.

Mr. Alvarez, a resident of Falls

Church, Va., was born in Cabo

Rojo, P uerto Rico. He s erved in the

Air Force for four years as an air

traffic controller before joining t he

FAA in 1959. His FAA postings

included New York and Puerto

Rico. Later, he ran an aviation-re-

lated small business from 1983 to

1994.

Kenneth Salins,

data architect

Kenneth Salins, 59, a data archi-

tect who helped design and imple-

ment interchanges of data with

several companies and organiza-

tions in the Washington area, died

Jan. 5 at a health-care center in

Silver Spring, Md. The cause was a

pulmonary embolism, said a

daughter, L ena Salins.

Mr. Salins, a Silver Spring resi-

dent, was born in Washington. For

the past year, he had worked for

Applied Information Sciences.

Earlier he had worked 10 years for

Digital Infuzion.

Samuel Watson III,

Army colonel

Samuel Watson III, 80, a retired

Army colonel who commanded an

infantry company during the Viet-

nam War and was an executive-

branch adviser on arms control

and national security, died Dec. 23

at a health center in Arlington, Va.

The cause was an illness of the

pancreas, said his wife, Wendy Fi-

bison.

Col. Watson, a resident of Alex-

andria, Va., was born in Sisters-

ville, W.Va. He retired from the

Army in 1992 after 30 years of

service. From 2009 to 2011, he was

a health, diplomacy and gover-

nance adviser in Iraq. He a lso com-

muted to the University of Pitts-

burgh, where he taught in the

graduate school of public health,

from 1999 to 2005.

Mary Hanrahan,

college professor

Mary Hanrahan, 70, a professor

of early-childhood education at

Northern Virginia Community

College from 1987 to 2014, died

Jan. 2 at her home in Springfield,

Va. The cause was pancreatic can-

cer, said a son, James Sneeringer.

Ms. Hanrahan was born in

Cleveland and had lived in the

Washington since 1972. She was a

preschool director before joining

the NVCC faculty.

James O’Meara,

agricultural officer

James O’Meara, 76, who retired

in 1999 as director of the USDA

Foreign Agricultural Service’s

emerging markets office and then

was an international development

consultant, died Dec. 18 at a hos-

pice center in Rockville, Md. The

cause was pneumonia, said a

daughter, Molly Sheehan.

Mr. O’Meara, a resident of

Bethesda, Md., was born in Chica-

go. He s erved with t he Peace Corps

in the Philippines and with the

Agency for International Develop-

ment in Vietnam, Indonesia and

Washington before transferring to

the Foreign Agricultural Service in

1992.

Clare Lebling,

social worker

Clare Lebling, 87, a social work-

er who specialized in military and

family-life counseling, d ied Jan. 22

at a hospice center in Edgewater,

Md. The cause was a stroke, said a

daughter, Madonna Lebling.

Mrs. Lebling, an Annapolis r esi-

dent, was born Clare McManus in

Washington. She was a social

worker for the University of Mary-

land and then for the Defense De-

partment as a civilian until 2003,

when she retired from government

service. S he was a social worker in

private practice until 2013.

— From staff reports

BY LUZ LAZO

A software upgrade will be
pushed out on Metro’s 7 000-series
train cars this spring to eliminate
a glitch that caused doors to close
without the automated “Step
back, doors closing” message, the
Washington Metrorail Safety
Commission said Thursday.
The commission opened an in-
vestigation into the problem last
fall after a rider posted videos on
social media showing the doors
shutting without warning as
trains picked up passengers at
multiple stations.
Metro said then that the clos-
ings happened only on rare in-
stances when trains made brief
stops at s tation platforms, depart-
ing before the automated arrival
message sequence for “doors
opening” ended. After the inci-
dents, operators were told to keep
doors open until the warning
pl ayed.
Metro is expected to upgrade
the door software by May, safety
commission officials said at the
panel’s monthly meeting.
Metro on Thursday described
the problem with door notifica-
tions as relatively minor and long
resolved. Spokesman Dan Stessel
declined to comment further on
the commission’s report, saying
Metro is focused on the global
pandemic.
Sharmila Samarasinghe, the
sa fety commission’s chief operat-
ing officer, said that while prob-
lems with the closing doors is
infrequent, it is a major safety
concern for some riders. The re-

the region

Software

fix coming

for Metro

door issue

phase of the Silver Line project.

David L. Mayer, chief executive

of the commission, said Metro

asked the agency in December to

do enhanced inspections as part

of its safety oversight responsibil-

ities and in doing so add another

layer of scrutiny to ensure that the

rail line is safe to carry passen-

gers.

Mayer said the inspections are

part of the function of the com-

mission, which was certified to

provide oversight of Metro about

a year ago. Commission inspec-

tors have most recently focused

on inspecting fire safety at the

new stations, including commu-

nication for first responders, May-

er said.

[email protected]

At Thursday’s meeting, com-

mission officials said they found

human error played a role in all

three of the 2019 incidents, and

they urged better communication

between the control center and

train operators.

Metro has taken some steps

that have helped reduce the inci-

dence of misrouted trains, such a s

issuance of bulletins to control-

lers providing additional guid-

ance on avoiding setting incorrect

routes, and requiring them to ac-

knowledge and confirm routes to

ensure proper routes are main-

tained.

At its Thursday meeting, the

safety commission also said it

continued to conduct inspections

on the ongoing w ork of the second

an update on the investigation

into three instances last year in

which trains were misrouted.

In one case, an Orange Line

train bound for New Carrollton

ended up on the Blue Line tracks

to Largo To wn Center after a Rail

Operations Control Center con-

troller set an incorrect route for

the train operator, who then failed

to notify control center of the

mistake.

The train was offloaded at Ben-

ning Road Station, and the pas-

sengers boarded a n inbound train

to return to Stadium Armory to

continue to New Carrollton, the

commission report said.

Metro has cited signal prob-

lems as the cause of misrouted

trains in past incidents.

corded warning is critical to alert

passengers entering and exiting

the trains, especially those who

are visually impaired. It is also a

federal requirement listed in the

Americans With Disabilities Act.

“A passenger could be injured

or trapped between doors,” she

said.

Metro at the time said rail car

engineers and technicians con-

ducted an inspection of all 7000-

series cars and found no other

glitches. But they found that the

rail cars’ audible messaging sys-

tem can play only one informa-

tional message at a time. The

software upgrade will fix that.

The commission, an indepen-

dent government body that over-

sees Metro safety, also provided

salwan georges/the washington post

A Metro 7000-series train, seen in 2018. Doors on these cars can shut suddenly without warning, but a software fix is expected by May.

DEATH NOTICE

MARYFRANCES ALLEN

Members of Naomi Chapter No.

9, OES,PHA, are notified of the

Memorial Service forPAGL Mary

Frances Allen. Memorial Service

11 a.m., Saturday,March 14, 2020

at JohnWesley AME Zion Church,

1615 14th Street, NW,Washington, DC 20009.

Rev.Rosemarie Jones,WM

James K. Saunders,III, WP

DorothyJ. Reese,Secretary

ALLEN

BARBARAT. BENSON

August 24, 1935–February 28, 2020

BarbaraThomas Benson, 84, of Bethesda, MD

departed this lifeFebruary 28, 2020 surround-

ed by her loved ones.Barbarahad many

names: Bar,Bobbi, Mom, and her favorite

one,Nana. Her husband, RichardC.Benson,

preceded her in death, as did her parents,Alton

and Yvonne Thomas,one brother,AlThomas,

and her sister,Norma Osbourne.Survivors

include her daughter,DeborahB.Thrift (Kavie),

her son, Thomas R. Benson (Sonia), grandsons,

Richard K. Thrift and CameronT.Benson, her

brother,James R. Thomas,her loving partner of

40 years,Alan Ney,and many other friends and

relatives.

Barbaralived her entire life in the DC area. She

wasaFederal employee for 30 years,retiring

from the Nat’l Endowment for the Arts.She

loved art, reading, her dogs,and the beach.

Mom was funny,not always intentionally,and

loved to laugh. Interment at Resurrection

Cemetery,Clinton, MD on Saturday,March 13

at 1:30p.m.Celebration of Life has been

postponed untilalater date.Please bring a

story oralaugh to share.

In lieu of flowers,please consideradonation in

Barbara’sname to Montgomery Co.Hospice at

https://www.montgomeryhospice.org orPart-

nership for AnimalWelfare at https://paw-

rescue.org.Barbarawas devoted to and loved

by her family and her many friends.Wewill

miss her.

Change to service information

BENSON

STEPHANIE BIDDLE

Stephanie Biddle ofWashington,D.C.died

unexpectedly Saturday,March 7, 2020.

Mrs.Biddle (neé Greher) was born on

August 25, 1947 to Harold and Darcy Greher

of Riverdale,NewYork City.She attended

the Ethical Culture Fieldston School and

NewYork University where she earned a

degree in Political Science at the age of 19.

She becameasuccessful book editor for

several top NewYork publishing houses.

There she was responsible foranumber of

best sellers including Report from Engine

Company 82 and Buzz Aldrin’sautobiogra-

phy Return to Earth.

She married Albert George Wilkinson Biddle

Jr., (“Jack”) in 1974 and joined him at the

Computer and Communications Industry

Association (CCIA) as Executive VP.She

was appointed President of CCIA in 1991

and retired in 1994. The Association played

key roles in government reforms that sig-

nificantly expanded theVenture Capital

industry,opened the US Government to

competitive contracting, and ushered in

the subsequent dominance of American

information technology innovation.

She is survived by her son and daughter-

in-law A.G.W.(Jack) Biddle III andForeé

Biddle,her daughter and son-in-law Alexan-

draBiddle Mouw and Adam Mouw,her five

grandsonsJackson IV,Caldwell and Brooks

Biddle,and Ethan and Cooper Mouw,and

her sister and brother-in-law Leslie Greher

Zimmermann and AlanJ. Zimmermann.

Stephanie will be remembered for her com-

passion, quick wit, and outrageous sense of

humor.

The funeral will be private.

BIDDLE

JOHNNIE FRANK BOWDEN

May 6, 1935–March 4, 2020

Beloved father,grandfather,great-grand father

Johnnie Frank Bowden passed away on

Wednesday March 4, 2020 in his hometown

of Clinton, NC.Alongtime resident of the

Washington Metropolitan area, Johnnie was

employed by Gallaudet University and Grand

UnionFoodWarehouse in addition to operating

aprivate cleaning business.Adevoted sibling

to his brothers and sisters Johnnie provided joy

and support to his family and friends.Heleaves

to cherish his memory four children, Jeffery

Bowden (Sharon),Jacqueline White (Theodore),

Janette Bowden, and Juliette Davis (Freddie);

four grandchildren,Jasmyn Price (Michael),

Ja’Net—Precious Richmond (Alvin), Jillian

Davis,andJames Bowden; three great-grand-

children; and one sister,Minnie Everette.Heis

also survived by many loving family and friends.

The homegoing celebration will be held at the

Western Assembly Disciples of Christ, 9677 US-

701, Newton Grove,NC,on Saturday March 14,

2020 at 2:30p.m.

BOWDEN

When the

need aris es,

letfamilies

find youint he

Funeral Services

Directory.

To be seen in the

Funeral Services

Directory,pleasecall

paid DeathNotices

at 202-334-4122.

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