Anne Ginsburgh Wolfe

Anne Ginsburgh Wolfe, 97, of McLean, Va. and Arlington, Va. died on July 26. She and her twin sister, Martha, were born at Fort Totten, N.Y. while their father, Army Capt. A. Robert Ginsburgh, was stationed at Governors Island. Anne liked to recount how she and her sister were nearly born in a New York City taxi after their parents took the ferry from Governors Island to lower Manhattan to hail a cab to Fort Totten, as the latter had a maternity ward. Anne graduated from Radcliffe College in 1947 and went to work at Time Magazine in New York City where she met her future husband, Sheldon Wolfe, of Terre Haute, Indiana. Sheldon was working for his father’s coal mining equipment company and liked to visit the Big Apple for fun. In New York City in late 1950 or early 1951, Sheldon ran into a member of his Harvard class of 1942 on the street. They arranged a double date—a serendipitous one, as Anne and Sheldon were married in November, 1951. They were married for 58 years before Sheldon’s death in 2010. Anne had a close knit group of friends and family who admired her inveterate optimism, her kindness and empathy, and her many interests, which included Democratic politics, Impressionist and American art, world history, foxtrot dancing, reading FDR biographies and great novels—including those by Zora Neale Hurston and Toni Morrison, and eating steak—rare and bloody—an interest with which Sheldon had captured her heart during their long conversations in New York City restaurants in 1950-51. “Aw. Come on and kiss her!” a drunken reveler in Times Square exclaimed to Sheldon on New Year’s Eve, 1950-51 upon seeing the couple. Anne leaves behind her son, Frank Jerome Wolfe, and daughter-in-law, Pamela Geer Wolfe, of Arlington, Va.; grandson, Luke Pittas, and his mother, Tanya Pittas, of Silver Spring, Md.; granddaughters, Courtney and Emma Verscaj, of California and New York; niece, Debbie Vilar, and nephew, Robin Wolfe, of Florida; and a number of friends. Those wishing to remember Anne may make a contribution in her name to the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, 1500 K Street, N.W., Suite 900, Washington, D.C. 20005