Eileen Mary Hammond

English actress Eileen Mary Bennett Hammond (age 105) of Washington, DC died March 9, 2025. Eileen attended St. Christopher's school in Letchworth, England before being accepted to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art at the age of seventeen. She emerged as a prominent London actress during the war years. In the midst of the Blitz she performed in BBC radio plays, in films playing major roles with well-known actors such as Sally Anne Howes, Stewart Granger, and George Formby. A regular on the BBC radio Play of the Week, Eileen was one of two young women chosen for their perfect diction to be the first on-air program announcers for the BBC's television broadcasts. She starred for two years in the smash hit comedy "Arsenic and Old Lace" at the Strand theatre. She remembered how the theatre was frequently shaken by the bombing, but the audience almost always chose to stay and keep watching the play rather than head to a bomb shelter. In the latter days of the war she married US Army Colonel Thomas West Hammond, Jr., who was stationed in London as an adjutant to General Eisenhower. Eileen became very good friends with Kay Summersby, Eisenhower's driver and confidant. Following VE Day she and her husband served at posts in Paris, West Point, Fort Benjamin Harrison in Indiana, the Pentagon, and finally as military attache at the US Embassy in Paris, a city they both loved. Eileen had two sons, David and Nicholas. Soon after retirement Thomas Hammond died from a heart attack. Eileen remained in Washington for the rest of her life, with her son David and his family nearby. Like so many who survived the Blitz, she was never known to complain, and never wanted to dwell on the negative. She worked as a docent at Hillwood museum, where she became very knowledgeable about Russian history, art and artifacts. After many years in Georgetown she moved to the Army Distaff retirement community at Knollwood. She settled into life among retired military personnel and was active as a library volunteer, a regular and popular reader of the lesson in the Chapel, and a vivacious participant in her weekly scrabble nights. Until her health started to fail she was an avid reader of the Washington Post and completed the crossword puzzle each morning before breakfast. She will be greatly missed by her loving family: her sons David and Nicholas, her granddaughter Jessica, and her two daughters-in-law, Nancy and Robyn. A memorial will be held at a later date.