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Margaret E. Vartanoff, widow of expatriate Georgian prince, Michael Sergius Vartanoff, died peacefully at her home in Aspen Hill, Maryland, on November 13, 2010 one day short of her 96th birthday, from advanced dementia.

Born in Chicago, Illinois, she was the daughter of environmentalist attorney John A. Brown and granddaughter of industrialist Arthur W. Glessner, who founded the Excelsior Steel Furnace Company of Chicago. Educated at the Faulkner School and Bowen High, she received her B.A. in Humanities in 1939 from the University of Chicago. She interrupted her doctoral studies there to join the war effort in Washington, DC, in 1942, working for what was then the Army Map Service as a cartographer specializing in eastern European geographic names. There she met and married Mr. Vartanoff, a naturalized citizen who was born in Tiflis (now Tbilisi), Georgia, during the Tsarist era, and came to this country in 1922. His pre-US citizen name was Prince Mikail Sergevevitch Iskanderbeg-Khodjiminasoff-Dolguruki-Vartanoff. Mr. Vartanoff was also the simultaneous translator for Secretary of State Edward R. Stettinius, Jr. during the San Francisco Conference that founded the United Nations in 1945. Mr. Vartanoff retired from the Army Map Service in 1969 and died in 1970.

Margaret Vartanoff worked in the Montgomery County Public Libraries and was a lifelong world traveler and patron of the arts. She was an active parishioner of the Ascension & St. Agnes Episcopal Church in Washington, DC, for many years. After retirement, she volunteered as an ESOL coach and Smithsonian Institution docent.

She was preceded in death in 2003 by her sister, Elizabeth K. Brown, of Chicago, IL, and Rockville, MD. Mrs. Vartanoff is survived by her three children, David Vartanoff of Oakland, CA, Irene Vartanoff of Hedgesville, WV, and Ellen Vartanoff of Rockville, MD, and one grandchild, Trevor Vartanoff of Rockville, MD.

Aviator Says New York Attorney Is Leftist Agent. Several Indictments Are Planned in Enlistment of Fliers for Spain.

New York, January 15, 1937 (Associated Press) Back from a month of dropping bombs on behalf of the Spanish loyalist government, Eddie Schneider, Jersey City, New Jersey, aviator, said today he was signed up by a New York lawyer to serve in the Spanish war at $1,500 a month. Schneider was questioned by Assistant United States Attorney John F. Dailey, Jr. who announced he would seek indictments from the Federal grand jury next week against several New Yorkers in connection with their enlistment of American aviators for Spanish service. Interviewed as entered Dailey's office, Schneider said the lawyer negotiated with him for his services and handed him his steamship ticket for transportation to Spain. The flier said he quit the war to comply with President Roosevelt's neutrality policy, and that the Spanish Embassy in Paris advanced him his fare home pending payment of his salary. Schneider said he participated in daily bombing raids in Spain for three weeks, flying remodeled sports planes and dropping bombs through a hole in the cockpit floor. He has a record of more than 2,000 air hours since 1928, and has set several transcontinental flying records, he said. He left here six weeks ago with Major Fred Lord, who is still in Spain. Dailey said it was unlikely the grand jury would hear testimony from Bert Acosta and Major Gordon Berry, free-lance fliers who returned yesterday from Spain and, whom Dailey questioned, but that agencies hiring Americans for Spanish service would be prosecuted "to the limit." The district attorney said Federal agents were investigating the stories told by Acosta and Berry.

Source:
The Washington Post; January 16, 1937, page 7