Eric B Wentworth

Born Frederick Clay Bartlett III on June 29, 1932, he was the only child of Frederick “Clay” Bartlett II and Mary Tilt, two young artists in Chicago, Illinois. The Bartlett family of Chicago made its reputation in the mail order hardware and banking industries, but Eric’s grandfather, Frederick Clay Bartlett, avoided the family business and became a painter and art collector, renowned for amassing the Helen Birch Bartlett Memorial Collection at the Chicago Art Institute, a legacy he would pass on to his son, and eventually to Eric himself.

After divorcing his father, Eric’s mother remarried a decorated WWI fighter pilot and well-known Chicago architect named John Wentworth whose ancestors were notable politicians, including a Mayor of Chicago and a colonial Governor of New Hampshire. John Wentworth adopted Eric, who then assumed the last name Wentworth, and the new family split time between Chicago and Miami, Florida, where Eric attended middle school at Miami Country Day School, and developed a love of the sea and fishing on trips to Bimini on his stepfather’s boat.

Eric attended high school at Phillips Andover Academy, graduating cum laude in 1950 with a desire to be a writer. He attended Harvard University, where he joined the ROTC, and after graduating in 1954, served as a lieutenant in a tank battalion in post-war Germany. Upon returning stateside, he married his first wife Mabel “Muffie” Hobart of Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1956, and attended the Columbia University Journalism School in New York City.

After graduating from Columbia with honors in 1958, Eric and Muffie struck out for Oregon, where Eric reported for the Medford Mail Tribune in 1958-59, served as The Oregonian’s Education Editor from 1959-62, and welcomed children John and Elizabeth “Sissy”. In 1962, he was awarded a year-long fellowship focused on legislative affairs in Washington DC, where he would spend the rest of his career and the balance of his life.

Eric was hired by the Wall Street Journal where he worked from 1963-66, and was subsequently recruited by Ben Bradlee to join The Washington Post in 1966 to serve in a pool of beats Bradley colloquially called "SMERSH — science, medicine, education, religion and all that s- - -” in which Bradlee took little interest, but Eric found inspiration.

At the Post, Eric worked beats including Agriculture, which took him to Vietnam to cover the war’s environmental impacts, and Education, which put him at the center of 1968 student unrest in Paris, as well as at Harvard and other U.S. campuses.

In Washington, DC, Eric and Muffie welcomed a third child, Alexandra, before divorcing. Eric went on to marry a Post researcher named Jan Krause in 1969, with whom he had two boys, Thomas and Benjamin, but later divorced.

Leaving journalism behind in 1977, Eric took time off to pursue his lifelong love of painting, and then finished his career at the Council for the Advancement and Support of Education as a Senior Vice President with expertise in federal tax law for colleges and universities.

He married Ansley Wallace, with whom he opened the Wallace-Wentworth Art Gallery in Dupont Circle. After divorcing for a third time, and closing the gallery, Eric continued to find inspiration in watercolor painting, drawn to local landscapes along the towpath and the Eastern Shore, and further afield from Deer Isle, Maine to Bhutan. He was an active member of the Washington Watercolor Association, perennially entering his paintings in group shows, often winning awards.

In retirement, Eric threw himself into researching his own family’s artistic legacy, taking particular interest in piecing together the life and work of portraitist Rufus Wright, an ancestor on his Bartlett side.

At heart, Eric was a wonderfully kind, thoughtful, patient, and curious soul. He will be remembered as so many things; a writer, a journalist, a humorist, a fisherman, a painter, a scribe for his Andover class, an endlessly curious student of life, and, most importantly, a deeply devoted father above all.

He is survived by his children John Wentworth of Mammoth Lakes, California, Elizabeth “Sissy” Yates of Middleburg, Virginia, Alexandra Wentworth Stephanopoulos of New York City, and Thomas Wentworth of Brooklyn, New York; grandchildren Angus, Jack, and Josie Yates; Elliott and Harper Stephanopoulos; and Clay, Vaughn, and Ava Wentworth; as well as his half-brother, Landy Bartlett of Arlington, Vermont, and cousin John Morgan of Newark, Ohio. He is predeceased by his son, Benjamin Owen Wentworth, his half-sister Elisabeth “Libby” Sturgis, and cousin Daphne Langlois. He leaves behind two ex-wives whom he counted as friends, Muffie Cabot of Boston, Massachusetts, and Jan Wentworth of Darien, Connecticut.

A memorial service is planned for the Spring of 2024, but memories can currently be shared at memorialsource.com/memorial/eric-bartlett-wentworth.