KATHERINE SLEVIN

SLEVIN Katherine Day Slevin Of Chevy Chase, Maryland, died at home on January 19, 2020. She was 98. Born in Chicago, Illinois, at age seven she moved with her family to Coral Gables, Florida. She graduated from Fort Lauderdale High School in 1939, and from the University of Illinois, with a degree in journalism, in 1943. After college, she worked in Boca Raton for the war effort. In the mid-1930s, she moved to Washington for a year to live with two older sisters who worked for the federal government. She lived on Ashmead Place and attended Alice Deal Junior High School. At that time, anyone could sign a White House register to have tea with Eleanor Roosevelt. Katherine traveled to the White House for the monthly tea. "I was always the youngest." Katherine Day Slevin was the devoted, loving and loved wife for 61 years of Joseph R. Slevin, who preceded her in death by 14 years. They met as students at the University of Illinois. On their first date, December 7, 1941, they turned on the car radio and heard the news of Pearl Harbor. They married in 1943 while he was on active duty in the Navy. Katherine and Joseph shared a passion for public policy, politics and the workings of democracy. After the war, they moved with their young family to Washington, DC. Together, they built a thriving newsletter, The Washington Bond Report, covering monetary policy and the Federal Reserve. Joseph reported and wrote; Katherine did the back-office work of subscriptions and renewals. On snow days, she sometimes bundled up the children and rode the bus from Hollin Hills, just south of Alexandria, to the Capitol to watch the legislative proceedings. She later worked as an Election Day judge at her Chevy Chase Village precinct. One of five children of Zillah Price Day and J. Walter Day, Katherine came from a stock of strong Texas women. She had a zest for life and a special love for children. She was the mother of four, the grandmother of nine, the great grandmother of three. Devoted to all, she delighted in all. She lived to know six generations of her family and came to be seen as the unpretentious matriarch of an extended family. In her final days, Katherine listened to her Daddy's fictionalized autobiography, "The Casual Men," read aloud by her children - Ann Peck, of Chevy Chase; Michael Slevin, of Baltimore; Jonathan Slevin, of Bethesda; and Peter Slevin, of Evanston, Illinois. It is a story of cattle country, of cowpunchers, of love and devotion. It is gentle and kind and in it are stories her father told of the nation's last trail drives. She asked that donations in her memory be made to WETA or WAMU, the public broadcast stations that she depended upon for news and debate. A memorial service will be held in Washington, DC, on June 20, 2020.