Elinor Kenney Farquhar

Elinor Kenney Farquhar, a native of Washington DC from age eight, died at her home on Massachusetts Avenue on August 1, surrounded by her immediate family after suffering from congestive heart failure. The eldest of four children born in Pasadena, California, Elinor moved to Washington in 1942 when her father, W. John Kenney, joined the Navy Department soon after the attack on Pearl Harbor. W. John Kenney served as Under Secretary of the Navy 1947-1949, and Operating Chief of the Marshall Plan, based in London, 1950 -1952. Elinor attended the Potomac School, the Madeira School, Brillantmont International School in Lausanne, Switzerland and graduated from Vassar College in 1954. She had a wartime childhood at the heart of official Washington, sharing White House play dates with Diana Hopkins, daughter of Harry Hopkins, Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s longtime aide; and she stood in the small group of approximately 100 who gathered in the snow for FDR‘s fourth inauguration. Elinor‘s Vassar undergraduate thesis analyzed the origins of the Marshall Plan and the period leading up to the 1947 Economic Cooperation Agreement authorized by Congress, and was distinguished by several personal interviews she conducted with principal protagonists, including Secretary of State Dean Acheson, Richard Bissell and Leonard Miall: a copy resides in the Library of Congress and at the George Marshall Foundation Library.

She worked for Senator Henry “Scoop” Jackson on Capitol Hill before marrying Philip Brown, a lawyer, in 1959. She was widowed in 1980 and remarried investment banker Norman Farquhar in 1981. Over decades in Washington, Elinor Farquhar was an active player in the civic life of the city through board service with multiple organizations. She was passionate about education, tutoring students, advising and supporting the Lab School and the Kingsbury Center, and serving on the boards of the Potomac School, in McLean, Virginia; and The Hotchkiss School in Lakeville, Connecticut. She was an active member of the board of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, Council chairman at Woodrow Wilson House, and a board member of the National Cathedral Foundation as well as a longstanding fundraiser for the Cathedral.

As a board leader of the Corcoran Gallery of Art in the late 1980s, she ably navigated public controversy over federal funding for politically and culturally polarizing exhibitions. In 2023, she donated Sam Gilliam’s 1972 painting Yellow Edge to the National Gallery of Art.

Farquhar is survived by eight children: Lisa Brown, Sarah O’Hagan, and Marcia Brown, Katherine Farquhar, Douglas Farquhar, Ned Farquhar, William Farquhar and Witt Farquhar; as well as 18 grandchildren and 17 great-grandchildren, each of whom will miss her dearly. Friends and family across generations will remember her fondly for her perennially astute observations on Washington politics, as well as her love of family, notable in her insistence on maintaining the standards she sought to transfer to successive generations; and in her vibrant personal relationships with each of her grandchildren.

A Memorial Service will be held in the Bethlehem Chapel of the Washington National Cathedral, 3101 Wisconsin Avenue NW, Washington, DC on Thursday October 15 at 10:00 AM.

In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to the Washington National Cathedral Preservation Fund and or the National Trust for Historic Preservation.