Vic Fazio, a moderate California Democrat who became an influential party leader in the U.S. House of Representatives during his two decades on Capitol Hill, died March 16, 2022 at his home in Arlington, Va. He was 79. The cause was melanoma, said his wife, Kathy Sawyer, a retired Washington Post journalist.
A self-described institutionalist, Mr. Fazio represented the Sacramento area from 1979 to 1999 and was a member of the House Appropriations and Armed Services committees. He supported ethics reforms as well as environmental and water-reclamation programs. He provided government funding for projects in his area, including a vast wetland and wildlife preserve between Davis and Sacramento that is known as the Vic Fazio Yolo Wildlife Area. It was dedicated by President Bill Clinton in 1997. Mr. Fazio was chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee in 1994 when Republicans won control of the House for the first time in 40 years. Nevertheless, as a measure of his standing and ability to work across the aisle, he was chosen the next year as chairman of the House Democratic caucus and served for four years.
Victor Herbert Fazio Jr. was born in Winchester, Mass., on Oct. 11, 1942, and grew up partly in Madison, N.J. His father was an insurance salesman, and his mother was a homemaker and dress shop manager. He graduated in 1961 from the private Williston Academy in Easthampton, Mass., (now the Williston Northampton School) and received a bachelor’s degree in history in 1965 from Union College in Schenectady, N.Y.
He came to California on a Caro Foundation fellowship in public affairs and worked as a legislative consultant. He also was a co-founder, in 1970, of the now-defunct California Journal magazine, which covered state government and politics. He served in the California State Assembly before winning a U.S. House seat in 1978. After leaving Congress — he did not seek reelection in 1998 — he spent more than two decades as a lobbyist, first with the firm of Clark & Weinstock and then with Akin Gump. Over the years, his clients included Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, the industry’s premier trade association. At his death, he was board chairman of the National Parks Conservation Association and served on the board of the Prevent Cancer Foundation.
His first marriage, to the former Joella Mason, ended in divorce. His second wife, Judy Neidhardt Kern, whom he married in 1983, died in 2015. A daughter from his first marriage, Anne Fazio, died in 1995 of complications from leukemia. In 2017, he married Sawyer. In addition to his wife, of Arlington, survivors include a daughter from his first marriage, Dana Lawrie of Granite Bay, Calif.; two stepchildren, Kevin Kern of Fair Oaks, Calif., and Kristie Kern of Portland, Ore.; and four granddaughters.

David Walter Garrett, 78, of Charlotte, VT, died unexpectedly on August 17, 2021 from heart failure brought on by a breakthrough COVID infection. Though tragic, it was as he would have wanted it: over in an instant, at the end of a perfect Vermont summer day, at his home of four decades, the historic Cedar Farm, on Thompson’s Point in Charlotte.

A woodsman, artist, investment manager, entrepreneur and hotelier, he had extraordinary creativity and vision. Across all his endeavors, things that seemed impossible regularly came to be real – from a cabin deep in the Adirondacks that he built by hand, to a boutique hotel company that set new standards for ultra-luxury accommodation and historic preservation.

David was one of the most experienced developers of small, high-end hotels in the world – a credential he earned after years as a successful investment banker. His hotel career began in the 1980s, with the purchase and rejuvenation of an old Rockefeller Great Camp on Upper Saranac Lake, NY, known as The Point. The hotel became one of the most lauded luxury properties in the country, and led to the purchase of other historic hotels that commanded high room rates and delivered incomparable services to guests.

David and his wife Christie ran the properties under the banner of Garrett Hotel Group, which at one point comprised The Point and The Lake Placid Lodge in the Adirondacks, The Wilcox in Aiken, SC, and The Inn of the Five Graces in Santa Fe, NM. David was also instrumental in the creation of Twin Farms in Barnard, VT, and advised on other properties. Over the years, David served as North American president of the prestigious Relais & Chateaux hotel association and on its international board of directors.

He helped invigorate the boutique hotel movement in the U.S. and inspire a renaissance of all things Adirondack. Himself a master woodworker, he tapped into the Adirondack style of “rustic elegance” – a phrase he used often – and enlisted local craftspeople to build pieces for the hotels. He also made many pieces himself – from enormous twigged credenzas to wine cellars bedecked in branches. David’s works remain on display in his most recent hotel project, The Ivy, in Baltimore, MD; in the barn he turned into an office in Charlotte, VT; and on his website, Corkiture.com – named for his early fascination with using corks in his furniture making.

David Garrett was born in New York City on Dec. 12, 1942 and grew up with his older brother, Daniel, in Scarborough, NY. His parents, Daniel N. Garrett and Louise Benson Garrett, were transplanted Southerners, and David nurtured a lifelong fascination with the South and family genealogy, tracing Garretts and Bensons back centuries and often paying unannounced visits to distant relatives in his many travels.

As a boy, David was drawn to the woods and fascinated by the television show, Daniel Boone, impressed by the depiction of warm family life in a log cabin, with wild adventure all around.

He attended The Williston Northampton School and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. A devoted Tar Heels fan, hardly anything could get between him and a Carolina basketball game. At Chapel Hill, his independent streak and passion for the woods were on full display: he skipped the dorms and lived in a log cabin.

After college, while living in New York and working at his father’s printing business, he met his wife, Christie Coursen, then a flight attendant for TWA. The two would soon have their first of three daughters while spending a year in Paris.

During this time David made two key moves that would shape the course of his life. The first was to purchase 165 acres in the Adirondacks in 1967 and begin carrying out his dream of a cabin in the woods. He built the cabin on high ground above a still pond, surrounded by ancient wooded state land. He spent the next 54 years expanding and improving the cabin, making it his sanctuary and family retreat. All important life decisions, he’d say, were made at the cabin.

The other key path David took was to begin working as an investment banker. The work suited his tolerance for risk, clear-minded decision-making, and keen sense of a good bet. He was a broker at Moseley, Hallgarten Estabrook & Weeden, and later First Albany, managing offices in Cambridge, MA and Burlington, VT. In the early 1980s, David also helped the Vermont Teddy Bear Company go from a small pushcart to a booming Bear-Gram business that continues today.

In 2008, David and Christie started Garrett Hotel Consulting, where they worked with clients on the development and management of properties around the country.

David is survived by his wife of 53 years, Christie of Charlotte; daughter Erin Garrett-Metz and her husband Andrew Metz and three children Lydia, Daniel and Miriam of Manchester by the Sea, MA; daughter Moriah Garrett ’95 and her husband Rob Arthur and three children, Samuel, Elouise and Olive of Baltimore, MD; and daughter Caitrin Garrett of Burlington, VT.

John Konheim passed away on Sunday, May 30, 2021, the day before Memorial Day, in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, at the age of 78. John was preceded in death by his parents and his brother Bud, and by his wife Lynne (Taylor) Konheim, and his wife Jane (Sampson) Konheim. He is survived by his partner-in-life Anne Ekstrom, his dear family-by-choice Michelle Wood and her children, his loving sisters Barbara Kolb and Jane Kasov and his loving niece and nephews and their families and by certain people he regarded as family. John was generous in his love and concern for others. Throughout his life he collected people in a loving embrace. He did everything he could to aid or befriend them, and the people who were closest to him had that quality too.

He was given a good start in life by parents he always greatly admired, learned to achieve just by being one of four children in a home that was a busy hub, and was given a fine academic and spiritual education at Williston Academy in Easthampton, Massachusetts. He explored New York City when he was on vacation from Williston, mingling with and getting to know the work of all the many people who interested him.

He began to draw quick sketches with a Rapidograph pen, in art class. Soon he could quick-sketch entire scenes such as weddings or buildings such as a Japanese temple. (Visit konheim-art.com for a gallery of sketches from all over the world and his artist autobiography.) Fifty years later he could be seen amiably and routinely sketching folks in their friendship or family groups on a local Florida beach, or, now as a tourist, sitting and sketching the street scene in Saigon where children gathered round to see him work.

For college he chose a New York school, Columbia, his father’s alma mater, and studied while pursuing a wide variety of interests or working. John often drove a cab, once in a blizzard when there were no cabs out at all, he proudly told a nephew. An activist for student social rights at Columbia, he got coverage from Gael Greene of the “Times.” In his travels abroad in the Sixties, he acted boldly in Berlin when he saw help was needed to get friends out to the West. John was not risk averse when it came to stepping in quickly to help and often achieved dramatic successes.

In 1968, a few years after graduation, he joined the Army, went through training at Fort Sill, Oklahoma and completed a tour of duty in Vietnam. Already proficient in French, he applied himself now to acquiring Vietnamese language and dialect quickly and ultimately got to interview Montagnard children and record their music near where he was stationed. He also made audiotapes of battles, (for example: YouTube – Konheim – Vietnam Battle Field Audio November 1969). He and Lynne (Taylor) announced their engagement via a joint audiotape from Vietnam and Michigan, which they sent to parents and family around the U.S.

John lived in Columbus, Ohio and worked as an insurance broker/agent for many years. It was a great job for him, involving assessing risk and helping people. For fun, he and Lynne belonged to a friendship group that took lessons in social dancing at their gatherings. They also invited people onto their houseboat on the long, narrow reservoir near their home. They were deeply connected to Lynne’s family as well as his over the years.

As volunteers in Columbus, Ohio he and his wife hosted opera singers from all over who were engaged for rehearsals and performances in Columbus. As part of their hosting foreign economic visitors to Columbus, they visited Cuba with an economic mission from Columbus. On their last day in Havana, John was detained for sketching his hotel, the Hotel Nacional de Cuba. Luckily, he found a business card in his pocket (from a finance minister he’d just met with) to show the police, and they then whisked him out of jail in time to make the plane home. Lynne and John continued to take foreign trips accepting the risks that go with it.

When John lost his first wife, he was brought low but did not give up on life. In time, he met Jane. They celebrated their wedding with a crowd of friends and family on board a ferry that picked them up from their dock, cruised the Intracoastal in Fort Lauderdale, and at the end of the evening started to catch on fire a little bit. But all was well; he and Jane had many happy years together and moved permanently to Fort Lauderdale. He embraced her family, and she embraced his wide circle of friends in Fort Lauderdale and Columbus as well as his siblings and families. Together they created art, exhibiting with art societies in Columbus and Fort Lauderdale. Jane did a fine painting of John’s beloved cat Cristal, a beautiful white cat, smart enough to learn to ride on John’s bike to the delight of onlookers as John rode daily around Fort Lauderdale.

John found himself bereft when Jane passed away suddenly. His ability to move forward and reclaim life was never more striking than in these years. With time, he went out and about. He served as president of his co-op organization, worked at his insurance business innovating a way to do health insurance economically for the buyer. He joined Single Sailors and met Anne Ekstrom, who served as Vice Commodore of the sailing association. She was an inspiration to him. John and she found new happiness together. They traveled to Italy; they went on a cruise to Colombia. John bought a sailboat and daringly sailed it up from Miami running aground along the way. After that he worked on it till both he (the captain) and the boat’s auxiliary electric motor were shaped up and ready to go out through the Intracoastal and into the ocean, and, of course, guests could come aboard.

As John grew older, he found a way to connect with his much older brother Bud: He called him every day to talk. Bud said at lunch with a cousin a few years ago that he found John’s loyalty remarkable and moving. For John there were no tests to meet when it came to love. There was only love. As his sister Barbara said of him, John made the world a better place because he lived in it.

Charles (Cam) Campbell Savage, Jr. died of heart failure at home in Burlington, VT, January 11, 2021. He was born January 28, 1942 in Schenectady, NY. He moved with his family to Stowe in the early 1940s and remained there for the better part of his life. Cam graduated summa cum laude from Williston Academy in Easthampton, Mass., and from Dartmouth College and Pratt Institute with a degree in architecture. He took time off before graduating from Dartmouth and headed to Hollywood to try his luck at stardom. After a few bit parts in “Gunsmoke” and “The Beverly Hillbillies,” and a brief stint modeling, he decided a college degree was the better choice. Cam designed, built and renovated commercial buildings and private homes throughout his career. He was a creative soul and expressed himself through a variety of mediums. Cam was a lone wolf and took great pleasure in cruising the back roads of Vermont on his various motorcycles. In his youth he played football, hockey and was a wild and crazy skier. The companionship of his dogs and cats over the years gave him solace. In spite of his physical discomfort and challenges, he maintained his sense of humor, avid curiosity and sobriety until the end. He leaves his son, Noah Greer, his sisters Janet and Paige Savage, and his nieces, their husbands and children. Thank you to Cam’s kind neighbors for their help thoughout the last year. In lieu of flowers and cards we ask that you double up on treats for your pets today.