Ashley Doherty

1949 - 2022

DOHERTY

ASHLEY DOHERTY

Ashley Doherty, 73, of Washington, DC died on December 20, 2022. A litigator for forty years, Ashley spent most of her professional life at the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, which she joined in 1991 during the savings and loan crisis, and where she stayed through the financial crisis of 2008, until she retired in 2016. At the FDIC, Ashley worked as a litigation attorney, Senior Counsel, and Assistant General Counsel. Although she had not previously thought of herself as a "math person," Ashley was deeply curious and loved a challenge, so she plunged into the complexities of banking law with the same restless intelligence she brought to all her other projects. An extrovert among introverts, she also invested in her colleagues, mentoring fellow lawyers and FDIC staff in their own educations and careers.



Born in Columbia, MO, in 1949 as Dorothy Ashley Doherty, she was known to all as "Ashley." With her parents and four siblings, she grew up in Fayetteville, AR, Oxford, MS, and Manhattan, KS, before moving to Morgantown, WV in 1963. She graduated from Morgantown High School in 1967 and attended Bryn Mawr College, thanks in part to several scholarships, including the Betty Crocker Homemaker of the Year Award. At Bryn Mawr, she gained instant campus celebrity as the freshman captain of the College Bowl team. In 1971, she graduated with a BA in English (cum laude) and moved to New York City, where she worked as a paralegal at Sullivan & Cromwell for one year before starting law school at New York University.



New York City is also where she met Joseph Edwin Fortenberry, a young lawyer from Oxford, MS. Believing that 22 was too young to get married, Ashley waited until a week past her 23rd birthday in November of 1972.



After graduating with her JD from the NYU School of Law in 1975, she joined the law firm then known as Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy. She transferred to their Washington, DC office when she and Joe moved to DC in 1979, shortly before the birth of their only child. After ten years at Milbank as an associate attorney, Ashley moved to the US Department of Justice, working as a trial attorney in the Environment and Natural Resources Division, from 1986-1991, protecting wetlands and enforcing toxic waste site clean-ups.



In addition to her career, Ashley was an enthusiastic wife, mother, daughter, sister, and friend, who derived great joy from encouraging those around her. From 1997-2000, while still working for the FDIC, she attended the Johns Hopkins Graduate Writing Program for five semesters and reviewed fiction for Publishers' Weekly. Inspired by her friendship with her brother-in-law, Charles Fortenberry, Ashley began volunteering with the DC Autism Society, where she was able to make meaningful change and new friends. She was also an active member of Holy Trinity parish in Georgetown and, after relocating to Capitol Hill, St. Peter's Church. Her other interests included rowing with the Capitol Rowing Club on the Anacostia River, attending local productions of theater and opera, and, in retirement, discovering unexpected animal sculptures in the urban landscape.



In 2019, Ashley was diagnosed with melanoma, the disease that ultimately took her life. Always particular about language, she preferred not to describe her experience with cancer as a "battle," since, to her mind, it was "more of a hostile takeover situation." Despite the difficulties of the disease, and the challenges of the pandemic, she continued to travel, visiting her grandchildren in California, going to the theater in New York, and attending her 50th college reunion. Shortly before a fatal metastasis was discovered in her brain, she went to see the opening night performance of her daughter's most recent play. When challenges from illness meant that she could no longer live alone, she moved to assisted living at the Kensington Reston, where she characteristically threw herself into making new friends and organizing new activities, including trips to the local library.



Ashley was preceded in death by her husband, Joe, who died in 1987. She never remarried. Her parents, William and Dorothy Ashley Doherty, sister Catherine (Doherty) DeKrey, and her brother-in-law Charles Nolan Fortenberry Jr. also died before her.



She is survived by her daughter, Dorothy Ashley Fortenberry, son-in-law Colin Wambsgans, and granddaughters Dorothy Ashley Wambsgans and Josephine Mae Wambsgans, as well as by her brother Victor Doherty, his wife Pat, sister Julia Doherty, brother William T. Doherty III, his wife Penny, and her late sister Cathy's widower, Gary DeKrey, their son Will DeKrey, and his husband Sean Garren.



There will be a funeral Mass held for her at St. Peter's on Capitol Hill on Saturday, June 3, 2023 at 11 a.m. In lieu of flowers, donations in Ashley's honor may be sent to Legal Aid DC or the DC Autism Society. To celebrate her memory, consider an unfamiliar perspective or new information. As Ashley liked to quote from The Once and Future King, "The best thing for being sad is to learn something."