Join us on February 8, 2015 in a celebration of the life of Winthrop Carty.
On that date, the GALA Hispanic Theater in Washington, D.C. will host a memorial performance of Los Empeños de una Casa / House of Desires, a social comedy set in 1940’s Mexico, followed by a reception for family, friends, and former colleagues to remember Win.
The performance is at 2:00pm on Sunday, February 8th. To purchase tickets, call the GALA box office at 202.234.7174. Please specify that you are part of Win Carty’s memorial. If you are unable to attend the performance but would like to participate in the reception please specify “Win Carty reception only” with the box office and arrive at 4:30; an usher in the reception area will escort you to the reception.
You are also invited to drop by the home of Win and his wife of 61 years, Lee A. Carty, who passed away on December 26, as we share among friends and family surrounded by the artwork they collected around the world in their journey together over six decades.
4:00 – 7:00pm, Friday, February 13
10:00am – 1:00pm, Saturday, February 14
Winthrop Peirce Carty
Born April 18, 1927 in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Win never quite lost his Boston accent even though his family moved to Forest Hills, New York, when he was very young. His parents were both New Englanders: Mary Peirce, the daughter of H. Winthrop Peirce, a prominent artist, and John Russell Carty, a radiologist and the son of General John J. Carty, chief engineer of Bell Labs and an innovator in the early days of the telephone.
In 1953 Win married Lee Anderson. A year later, the couple moved from New York to Bogota, Colombia, where Win served as string correspondent for Time and Life magazines during a period of dictatorship, revolution and economic recovery. After seven years, they returned to the US, where Win joined Visión, a Spanish-language news magazine, in New York and then as Washington bureau chief. Later he became editor in chief of Americas, the monthly magazine of the Organization of American States (OAS). He then joined the Population Reference Bureau as in-house editor, where he organized and ran Global Edition, a worldwide coalition of journalists dedicated to reporting on environmental issues.
Journalism took him to many parts of the world, sometimes with uncanny timing; an assignment to Guyana in November, 1978 placed him among the first international journalists on the scene of the Jonestown massacre, and in 1980 he found himself a couple of blocks from the assassination of the exiled former Nicaraguan dictator, Anastasio Somoza, in Asunción, Paraguay. His writing revealed a dry insightful wit and encyclopedic knowledge of world events. These and many more travels yielded a large collection of folk art from around the world
In 1989 the Cartys moved from the Georgetown house, where they had lived since 1963, to 3900 Watson Place, where they merged two adjoining apartments to make a large and accessible home.
Winthrop Peirce Carty died peacefully at home on October 10, 2014, surrounded by his family. Win is survived by his three children, Winthrop Carty of Cambridge, Mass. Jane Carty MacNealy of Silver Spring, Maryland and Elizabeth Galvan-Carty, of El Cerrito, California who all came to Washington to be with him in his last week, and five grandchildren.
Donations in his memory can be made to the GALA Hispanic Theater at galatheatre.org.
