Adrienne Odenthal Burch

Adrienne Odenthal Burch, 98 and a half, and a native Washingtonian, passed away peacefully on March 10, 2016 at the Leewood Assisted Living facility in Annandale, Virginia. She was born on October 26, 1917 - five days after the first American troops entered combat in France during WW I. A strong yet remarkably feminine woman, she was destined to always be a woman ahead of her time. Her first home was on Capitol Hill where she lived with her parents Hugo and Ella Odenthal and her younger brother Hubert. After her brother was diagnosed with asthma, the doctor said he needed the kind of fresh air available only in “the country”. Taking their cue, the Odenthal family decamped and moved to “the country” – settling into a new life in Clarendon, Virginia. Since there were no schools yet built in “the country”, she got her first driver’s license in 1930 (at age 13) and would drive herself and her brother into the District each day to attend school. Eventually schools were built and she was in the first graduating class of Washington & Lee High School. Deprived of a college education by the Great Depression she nonetheless dove into classes at the then Strayer Business School. After graduation she joined the US. Government as a clerk sorting redeemed US Savings Bonds into numerical order. Thirty years later, she retired from the Treasury Department, Office of the Secretary, as a GS-13 Personnel Specialist in a time when the personnel function was truly charged with maintaining the wellbeing of federal employees. In 1946 she married Charles F. Burch and they lived “temporarily” with her parents in Clarendon. After seven years filled with sadness and prayer the couple rejoiced with the birth of their first and only child, a son they named Charles F. Burch, Jr. Five years later the entire extended family move into a new home in Falls Church where they lived for forty years. During this time Adrienne retired from the US Government, then took a job with a travel agency that eventually closed its doors after ten years (and she was there to turn out the lights). And while riding the elevator down that last day she learned of, was offered and accepted a job with an Advertising and PR agency in the same building that did work for all the major film studios. Neither Adrienne nor Charlie ever met anyone who did not soon become a friend. And their friends fondly remember their parties at Christmas, on Derby Day and of course the “Prayer Meetings” at their Cottage on Cobb Island, MD. She will be fondly remembered and sorely missed by everyone who had the honor to know her. She is survived by her only Son, Chuck and his wife Pat, by her granddaughter Abigail and her husband Tyler Tolle, by her great grandson Christopher Tolle and by her “other” granddaughter, Cara and her husband Cody Harvey. In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to the St Bernadette Music Ministry. Adrienne will be buried in a private service at Columbia Gardens Cemetery in Arlington, VA.