1906 - 1993 (86 years)
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Name |
Lillian E. Kravetz |
Nickname |
Helaine |
Born |
24 Nov 1906 |
Baltimore, Baltimore City, Maryland, United States |
Gender |
Female |
Died |
21 May 1993 |
Washington, District of Columbia, United States [1] |
- Helen Kravadze Williams, 86, who taught classes in protocol for 25 years to diplomats, government officials and others unsure in the ways of Washington rank and etiquette, died May 21 at Georgetown University Hospital after a stroke.
Mrs. Williams, always known as Mrs. Gladstone Williams, was the sole instructor of the School of Protocol, conducting courses up until the late 1980s in her 22-room town house on Embassy Row. As the center of diplomatic life in Washington, it is one of the last neighborhoods in America where formal etiquette still is taken seriously. Mrs. Williams was the high priestess of form.
Her four-part classes, at $195 a head, were always well subscribed by representatives of foreign countries just posted to Washington as well as freshly elected members of Congress and their spouses, newly appointed Cabinet officers and generals.
One typical class included the wife of the Venezuelan ambassador to the Organization of American States, a congressman from Texas, an executive secretary at Comsat, a Japanese journalist, the chief of protocol for the chief of staff of the Army, a White House fellow, a Georgetown International school student and an official of the Federal Railway Administration.
Mrs. Williams, usually dressed in a graceful sari, her hair raven and her face white and smooth, led her students through the complexities of artichokes, calling cards, seven-course dinners, finger bowls, servant training and tea pouring.
She taught students how to dress formally, conduct a dinner party for six without household help, seat guests by rank, reply to invitations and survive faux pas. The latter included name-dropping, replying to an engraved invitation by typewriter and leaving a dinner party before the ranking guest.
"Smile pleasantly" after making a terrible mistake of etiquette, she instructed, "and as soon as possible, tell the story to a friend. It eases the pain."
Mrs. Williams told interviewers that she was born in Oxfordshire, England, and meticulously bred in Maryland by European parents who instructed her to speak only when spoken to and keep her hands in her lap at dinner. In fact, she was born in Baltimore, to parents who had emigrated from Russia.
She moved to Washington in the 1930s, where she wrote a column for the women's section of the old Washington Evening Star newspaper and organized fashion shows, which she later conducted with Bootsie Hearst, wife of William Randolph Hearst.
In 1944, she married Gladstone Williams, the Washington bureau chief of the Atlanta Constitution and the McClatchy newspapers in California. They entertained frequently, achieving the rank of mid- level socialites.
During the 1950s, Mrs. Williams taught thousands of young women in a finishing school she directed at Southeastern University in Washington. She began her protocol course in 1962 as part of the school's non-credit continuing education program.
As America's attitudes toward formality changed, and the country endured the upheavals of Vietnam and other social revolutions, Mrs. Williams seemed more and more a memento of times past. But she was encouraged when the Reagans came to live at the White House. She said she welcomed the return to "higher standards" after the "sort of homespun" Carter years.
While she continued to give her students homework - organizing a tea party and other refined pastimes - she did not resort to the use of texts. She said she had no faith in etiquette books that came after the original Emily Post. The others contradicted each other, she said, "and none of them were written by Washingtonians."
Mrs. Williams was a member of the Women's National Press Club and the Sulgrave Club.
Her husband died in 1968. Survivors include two sisters, Sylvia Cullen of Surfside, Fla., and Mathilda Forin of San Carlos, Calif.
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Notes |
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Person ID |
I4432 |
Himelfarb Family Tree |
Last Modified |
1 Jan 2008 |
Father |
David Kravetz, b. 15 Jun 1883, Wilna, Russia , d. 3 Mar 1943, Baltimore, Baltimore City, Maryland, United States (Age 59 years) |
Mother |
Blanch Lichtenstein, b. Telse, Lithuania , d. 20 Oct 1963, Miami Beach, Florida, United States |
Family ID |
F1607 |
Group Sheet | Family Chart |
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