Chris P. Rosenfeld; Did living portraits
Hyfler/Rosner
Author, Historian, Performer
BYLINE: Yvonne Shinhoster Lamb, Washington Post Staff Writer
Chris Prouty Rosenfeld, 83, a longtime Washington resident
who combined her love for history and performing to bring
the famous to life at the National Portrait Gallery, died
Feb. 8 of injuries from a fall at her home.
Mrs. Rosenfeld, a historian and world traveler, began doing
what she called living portraits at the gallery in the late
1970s. She would stand in front a portrait and present the
person's life story. Sometimes she would enlist the help of
others to play additional characters.
In one of her last performances in the early 1980s, she
portrayed Belva Ann Lockwood, the first woman to practice
before the Supreme Court and the first woman to run for
president, in 1884 and 1888.
Mrs. Rosenfeld was born in El Monte, Calif., and in 1943
graduated from Antioch College in Ohio, where she was the
first woman to be elected community manager or student body
president.
After graduation, she joined thousands of other young women
who poured into Washington to work in the war effort. She
worked for the Senate Subcommittee on War Mobilization,
helping to prepare a report on food supplies.
"She was 22 and came equipped with her new college degree,
$50, some friends who had an apartment, and a pair of black
patent leather pumps she'd bought with a No. 17 ration
coupon," her daughter Megan Rosenfeld wrote in a 1999
Washington Post article. "It was more than enough."
Early in her career, she volunteered at the National Council
of Negro Women and wrote speeches and letters for its
founder, Mary McLeod Bethune.
After marrying in 1944, the "government girl" joined her
husband in London during the war, where he was working for
the Office of War Information. After the war, they lived in
New York and started a family. By 1952, they were back in
the Washington area.
In 1956, her husband was posted to India by the Office of
War Information's successor, the U.S. Information Agency.
While the family was there, she became active in the local
theater movement in New Delhi. She directed the first
production in the round there, the wartime drama "The Hasty
Heart." Her travels took her all over India.
When the family returned to Arlington County in the early
1960s, Mrs. Rosenfeld did research for the television show
"A Tour of the White House With Mrs. John F. Kennedy."
In 1964, she moved to Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, where among
other things she helped organize one of the first Saba Saba
Day observances celebrating the 1954 founding of the
Tanganyika African National Union, a Tanzanian political
party.
When the couple transferred from Tanzania to Ethiopia, Mrs.
Rosenfeld discovered her true love -- Ethiopian history.
"Empress Taytu and Menilek II: Ethiopia, 1883-1910," her
1976 book, told the story of Emperor Menilek's wife, who was
the most powerful woman in Africa for nearly three decades.
Her husband's last posting with the U.S. Information Agency
was in London, and the couple returned to Washington in
1974. She was a trustee of the D.C. Public Library and a
member of the library foundation, which she also chaired for
a short time.
She volunteered at the Washington Ear and the National
Archives. She also was a member of the Society of Woman
Geographers, where she edited the newsletter for a number of
years.
She was co-author with her husband of "The Historical
Dictionary of Ethiopia and Eritrea" (1994).
Her husband of 55 years, Eugene Rosenfeld, died in 1999.
In addition to her daughter, of Washington, survivors
include three other children, Eric Rosenfeld of Baltimore,
Steven Rosenfeld of Silver Spring and Vitolini, Italy, and
Peter Rosenfeld of Albany, Calif.; one sister; and five
grandchildren.