End of an Era



Diana McLellan Queen of the Hill

 The Hill Rag, August 2014

There was champagne and plump strawberries dipped in chocolate, baklava coiled like escargot and topped with crumbled pistachio. The bartenders were busy at the tables set under the trees. The sun shone brilliantly on a polished crowd. Diana McLellan's funeral, held a few days after her death on June 25th, was quite the bash.

Neighborhood friends rubbed shoulders with journalistic glitterati, names you'd know if not the faces: Maureen Dowd, Kevin Chaffee,  Michael Satchell, Chuck Conconi, Annie Groer, Stephanie Mansfield, Mike Mossetig,  Susan Watters, Ann Geracimos, Marguerite Kelly.

Washington's grande dame of gossip, a Brit of fabulous cleverness and style, who lived in wabi sabi splendor on Constitution Avenue for fifty years, was laid to unorthodox rest on a bed of lavender, wrapped in a glorious saffron-colored silk shroud that peeked through the intricately woven wicker basket that served as her coffin for the "green" funeral she had carefully planned in her last days.