Lilla Dunovant McCutchen Richards
April 17, 1939 ~ September 22, 2020
The Honorable Lilla Donuvant McCutchen Richards, gracious hostess and former debutante, fishing enthusiast, lover of Siamese cats, marksman, gardener, civic activist, former Dranesville District Supervisor, and tenacious defender of her family name, passed peacefully from this earth she worked so hard to protect on September 22, 2020 in Arlington, VA. Mrs. Richards was born in Washington, DC on April 17, 1939, the middle of three daughters of James Malcolm McCutchen and Emily Barnwell Dunovant McCutchen. She was predeceased by her parents and her siblings, Emily Johnstone McCutchen Murphy and Charlotte Barnwell McCutchen, MD.
Lilla grew up in Arlington, and was a merit-scholarship semi-finalist at Wakefield High School. She spent summers with her grandparents, George McCutchen and Lilla Johnstone McCutchen who lived in what is now known as the McCutchen House, located in the Horseshoe or old campus district at the University of South Carolina. From her grandfather she learned to hunt and fish, hobbies she carried with her into adulthood. Distinguished as the first woman student in the school of electrical engineering, she was graduated from the University of South Carolina with degrees in education and economics. She and her sisters endowed a continuing engineering scholarship in honor of their father, economics professor James Malcolm McCutchen, in 1984. She was presented to society at the Arlington Holly Ball in December, 1957 wearing a gown of pale blue taffeta, and the Assembly Ball in Columbia, South Carolina, as well as the St. Cecilia Ball in Charleston, SC. (Washington Post and Times Herald. Jan 3, 1958 B6}.
Lilla always signed her name Lilla D. McC. Richards. She never left home without her southern manners and without stopping first at the hairdressers to maintain her always perfectly coiffed bouffant hair. She entertained graciously in her Brook Road home with its lemon yellow living room and brocaded mahogany furniture, a dining room with corner cabinets housing the family silver, a trio of ornate candelabras and a tray and tea set that sat on the buffet, a polished table for 12 dominating the room to the right of the front entrance. If you dined, the table was set with fine china and crystal and the salt and pepper shakers were delivered by miniature electric train controlled by the hostess to your place. She had a succession of Siamese cats - Pele, Princess, and Dammit. She loved her home to which she added a screened porch in later years so she could enjoy the view of the wooded stream valley below. Not all perfect hair and dress, with friends she kept a boat in Deale, Maryland and spent weekends fishing on the Chesapeake Bay, until one one winter it sank at its mooring. She and Stan traveled most summers to Mackinac Island in Michigan and she caught a prized red snapper one year off of Cabo San Lucas with friends.
An editor for the US Department of Agriculture’s Economic Research Service after college, she was an innovator launching The Farm Index, a magazine for economists. She also wrote for the US Department of Agriculture and her work was published in The Washington Post and other papers. She married Stanley I. Richards, a graduate in economics from Oberlin College with a masters in Public Administration from Harvard University, in 1965. Richards joined his family company, The Richards Corporation, a small firm that manufactured aerial and satellite imaging equipment in 1967 and later became president and chairman of its board. A Richards Light table is on display at the National Museum of American History. The couple moved into their first home located on Spring Hill Road, now where The Rotunda is located.
In 1969, they built their own home on 3 acres on then rural Brook Road overlooking the wooded Rocky Run stream valley in the Woodside area of McLean. A skilled marksman, Lilla helped design one wall in their basement as a shooting range but it was never completed. From there the couple combined their talents and for three decades held leadership positions in the area’s civic and service organizations. Stan served as president of his civic association, the Rotary Club and its Foundation, and the McLean Business and Professional Association.
Land use and protecting the county from what was considered overdevelopment during the 1960’s and 70’s was a major concern of people who lived in the county and the many more who were moving there. Lilla used her engineering talents to learn the County’s zoning rules testifying against applications of the most powerful developers. She joined the McLean Citizens Association (MCA) founded in 1914, and served on its planning and zoning committee and later as president. The organization also had a long-held goal of building a community center so organizations would have a place to meet. Implementation originated with Robert Alden who headed the MCA’s Community Center Committee from the mid-1950’s. The MCA had voted in 1961 to establish a committee to support a “community complex vision” that would include a future community center, theater, library, green and central park at the corner of Old Dominion Drive and Route 123. Stan served as president of the Friends of the McLean Community Center, that encouraged support to purchase the land and to collaborate formation of a special tax district to build and operate it. After years of work, the McLean Community Center was dedicated in 1972 completing the MCA’s historical goal. With the earlier acquisition of McLean Central Park, what had become the community’s vision for a “civic center” for McLean was also realized. Stan and Lilla both became strong advocates for the Center, Stan helping to raise funds to build a balcony in the Center’s Bob Alden Theater.
In 1974 the county revised the comprehensive plan with the three-year Plus Plan process and Lilla chaired the McLean Planning District Task Force that recommended future development. She served as the president of the Fairfax County Federation of Citizens Associations, the county’s umbrella homeowner association, from 1976 to 1977, and was president of the McLean Citizens Association (MCA) from 1977 to 1978 when both organizations were focused on development-related issues and the growing need for more schools and services. Civic organizations gave residents a voice as the county’s population grew. Lilla and Stan were founding members of the Fairfax Committee of 100 in 1977 which brought county leaders together for regular dinners to discuss issues of interest. She was also a member of the McLean Planning Committee working to preserve the retail and service function of the McLean Central Business District for the surrounding community. She became a close friend of Bill Elvin, fellow citizen activist and owner-editor of the hometown newspaper, The Providence Journal, which reported extensively on the Plus Plan, other controversial issues, and local elections. Her name appeared frequently. Lilla said “I found my voice. People actually listened to what I had to say.” after impressing the crowd in the Langley High School Auditorium with her zoning knowledge about a controversial land use issue featured. It was then she realized that she might be able to make a difference.
One of her proudest accomplishments was helping to establish the McLean Citizens Foundation (MCF) in 1980 with fellow former MCA presidents, the endowment of which came from the sale of property that the organization had acquired over the years. One of her greatest disappointments occurred when the name was changed to the McLean Community Foundation in 2009 because she feared it would no longer be associated as the charitable arm of its parent organization. To date the organization has given over $1.75M in grants to the Greater McLean Community.
Lilla helped sponsor the Friends of Pleasant Grove Church in 1982 on Lewinsville Road, located not far from her their first home on Spring Hill Road, to acquire, rebuild, and preserve the community landmark building. The structure was built by descendants of freed slaves, the first services being held in 1896. For seven decades the church was the center of religious and community activities until membership declined and the building was sold in 1980 to an owner who removed many of the architectural elements and left the building in ruins. Under Lilla’s leadership, proffers for a parking lot, water, sewer, and catering kitchen with builders of the nearby housing development. Private, business, and government assistance has enabled the Friends to restore the building, replace the steeple that was destroyed by lightening, and make the building available for community uses. Today it also houses the Francis K. Moore Museum named for a descendant of the church founders.
Historic Pleasant Grove.org
Other organizations to which she belonged during the 1970’s and 1980’s included:
Northern Virginia Advisory Panel of the Virginia Commission for the Arts; Chairman, Dranesville Parks Advisory Committee; Chairman, Dranesville Annual Plan Review Task Force; Chairman, Tysons Task Force land use, housing, and urban design chair; McLean-Falls Church Counsel; McLean Planning District Plus Task Force; Chairman of the Fairfax County Task Force on Voluntary Campaign Guidelines; Member of Fairfax County Committee on Sewer Policy (Cole Committee), as well as executive committees of Woodside and Rocky Run Citizens Associations, the Northern Virginia Service League, the Northern Virginia Fine Arts Association, and the CIA Traffic Advisory Committee.
Lilla was elected as Dranesville District Supervisor in 1987 ushering in a slower growth County Board in reaction to the commercial office boom of the 1980’s which had led to an unsustainable increase in traffic. During her term of office, she supported a zoning ordinance change to manage office growth (Commercial and Industrial Districts), was Chairman of the National Capital Region Transportation Planning Board (TPB), chair of the Board of Supervisors Transportation Committee, served on the Northern Virginia Transportation Commission, co-chaired of the Metropolitan Washington Council of Government’s (MWCOG) Task Force on Land Use and Transportation, the Northern Virginia Planning District Commission (now the Northern Virginia Regional Commission), and the Route 28 Transportation Improvement District Commission. She also championed the establishment of a county Transportation Commission. She sponsored “spot-safety” transportation improvements in her district and led in establishing bus and future rail sites in Tysons Corner and along the Dulles Toll Road. Lilla was adamant in supporting residents in protecting Great Falls Street, Georgetown Pike, and Dolley Madison Blvd from unnecessary widening. She also championed the transition from an appointed School Board to an elected one and advocated for quality day care. Threatened by a possible sale of McLean’s original Volunteer Fire Department building in downtown McLean following construction of a new firehouse on Lowell Avenue, it was saved by the joint effort of the Supervisor and the community as a Teen Center in 1990 and now operated by the McLean Community Center.
Lilla and Stan were long time supporters of the arts and sustaining members of the McLean Orchestra. Friends remember Stan’s deviled eggs and the couple’s graceful waltz at the orchestra’s annual fundraisers. When the Emerson Art Gallery, established in 1962 and incorporated as the McLean Project for the Arts (MPA) in 1984, lost its rental space in the business district, Stan was president of the McLean Community Center Governing Board. He and Lilla secured a permanent space which opened to the public in the Community Center in 1990 where the private 501 C-3 organization continues to reside, providing art classes and exhibits.
Having lost re-election in 1991 in the middle of a recession, Lilla returned to her civic and arts roots. Having served as a trustee of the Greater Washington Research Center, Lilla was appointed by Governor Douglas Wilder to the George Mason University Board of Visitors in January, 1992 and served until June, 1997.
Lilla and Stan amicably parted ways in the mid 1990’s. Lilla’s remained in their Brook Road home shared with a succession of her beloved Siamese cats and with an extensive personal and professional archive in the basement and an upper bedroom that functioned as her office. She, Bill Elvin, and Henry Mackall, a member of one of McLean’s original families, imagined in 1998 a McLean Room added to a potential expansion of Dolley Madison Library that would give a safe home to their document and photograph collections and residents a place to research McLean history. The Library expansion was completed by 2010 without a McLean Room and her valuable collection remained in her home.
In her later years she would don her garden hat to protect her elegant hair and tend to her large vegetable garden where she grew prize versions of everything but was constantly at war with the deer. She was honored on her 75th birthday in 2015 by the McLean Project for the Arts for her work in finding a permanent home for the organization. That same year she joined other past presidents of the McLean Citizens Association to celebrate that organization’s Centennial. The following year, she was honored at the 25th anniversary of the founding of the Old Firehouse Teen Center.
Lilla sold her Brook Road home in 2015 and moved into the Jefferson in Arlington finally releasing the contents of her basement and office to two members of the MCA. Over the next several years, with MCF Grants, archivists in the county’s Virginia Room in the City of Fairfax completed the processing of the Lilla D. McC. Richards Collection. The McLean History Portal, an official online index of McLean’s historical documents, including the Mackall and Elvin papers, is now available for use not only at the main archives in Fairfax City, but at the Dolley Madison Library in McLean becoming a 21st century version of her long-wished for McLean Room.
McLean History Portal.org
It is fitting that she was honored by the University of South Carolina for her family’s contributions at a ceremony in 2019 at the Congressional Country Club in Bethesda, Maryland. Asked what she wanted her family legacy to be, she said simply “Hospitality and Friendship.”
University of South Carolina.org
Lilla leaves to mourn and is survived by her sister-in-law and brother-in-law, Kathy and Harold Richards as well as her cousins, Jane McCutchen Brown of Charleston, SC, George McCutchen of Columbia, SC, Elizabeth McCutchen Williams of Murrell’s Inlet, SC, David McCutchen of Portland, OR, Mary McCutchen Duncan of Rockville, MD, Tom Strother of Annapolis MD, and numerous NJ cousins. In addition she will be sorely missed by her devoted and loyal friend, Renee Gordon O’Neill, her special “intern,” Michelle Jacoby, her loyal caregiver, Edith Fosso Jean Paul, and her lifelong friends James Lawless, Betty Thompson, Rufus Phillips, Glenn Yarborough, Kate Giaimo, Lynn Morrison Clipp Chiappone, and Wanda Borne.
Lilla will be laid to rest in the cemetery at Historic Pleasant Grove Church.
Donations may be made in her honor to the Friends of Pleasant Grove Church, McLean Community Foundation, or a community cause of your choice.
Historic Pleasant Grove.org
Many thanks to Merrily Pierce, Paul Kohlenberger, and all those who contributed in gathering this information about Lilla’s life.
An interesting and full life which took us on a journey that was well lived, well loved, and well done.
Lilla grew up in Arlington, and was a merit-scholarship semi-finalist at Wakefield High School. She spent summers with her grandparents, George McCutchen and Lilla Johnstone McCutchen who lived in what is now known as the McCutchen House, located in the Horseshoe or old campus district at the University of South Carolina. From her grandfather she learned to hunt and fish, hobbies she carried with her into adulthood. Distinguished as the first woman student in the school of electrical engineering, she was graduated from the University of South Carolina with degrees in education and economics. She and her sisters endowed a continuing engineering scholarship in honor of their father, economics professor James Malcolm McCutchen, in 1984. She was presented to society at the Arlington Holly Ball in December, 1957 wearing a gown of pale blue taffeta, and the Assembly Ball in Columbia, South Carolina, as well as the St. Cecilia Ball in Charleston, SC. (Washington Post and Times Herald. Jan 3, 1958 B6}.
Lilla always signed her name Lilla D. McC. Richards. She never left home without her southern manners and without stopping first at the hairdressers to maintain her always perfectly coiffed bouffant hair. She entertained graciously in her Brook Road home with its lemon yellow living room and brocaded mahogany furniture, a dining room with corner cabinets housing the family silver, a trio of ornate candelabras and a tray and tea set that sat on the buffet, a polished table for 12 dominating the room to the right of the front entrance. If you dined, the table was set with fine china and crystal and the salt and pepper shakers were delivered by miniature electric train controlled by the hostess to your place. She had a succession of Siamese cats - Pele, Princess, and Dammit. She loved her home to which she added a screened porch in later years so she could enjoy the view of the wooded stream valley below. Not all perfect hair and dress, with friends she kept a boat in Deale, Maryland and spent weekends fishing on the Chesapeake Bay, until one one winter it sank at its mooring. She and Stan traveled most summers to Mackinac Island in Michigan and she caught a prized red snapper one year off of Cabo San Lucas with friends.
An editor for the US Department of Agriculture’s Economic Research Service after college, she was an innovator launching The Farm Index, a magazine for economists. She also wrote for the US Department of Agriculture and her work was published in The Washington Post and other papers. She married Stanley I. Richards, a graduate in economics from Oberlin College with a masters in Public Administration from Harvard University, in 1965. Richards joined his family company, The Richards Corporation, a small firm that manufactured aerial and satellite imaging equipment in 1967 and later became president and chairman of its board. A Richards Light table is on display at the National Museum of American History. The couple moved into their first home located on Spring Hill Road, now where The Rotunda is located.
In 1969, they built their own home on 3 acres on then rural Brook Road overlooking the wooded Rocky Run stream valley in the Woodside area of McLean. A skilled marksman, Lilla helped design one wall in their basement as a shooting range but it was never completed. From there the couple combined their talents and for three decades held leadership positions in the area’s civic and service organizations. Stan served as president of his civic association, the Rotary Club and its Foundation, and the McLean Business and Professional Association.
Land use and protecting the county from what was considered overdevelopment during the 1960’s and 70’s was a major concern of people who lived in the county and the many more who were moving there. Lilla used her engineering talents to learn the County’s zoning rules testifying against applications of the most powerful developers. She joined the McLean Citizens Association (MCA) founded in 1914, and served on its planning and zoning committee and later as president. The organization also had a long-held goal of building a community center so organizations would have a place to meet. Implementation originated with Robert Alden who headed the MCA’s Community Center Committee from the mid-1950’s. The MCA had voted in 1961 to establish a committee to support a “community complex vision” that would include a future community center, theater, library, green and central park at the corner of Old Dominion Drive and Route 123. Stan served as president of the Friends of the McLean Community Center, that encouraged support to purchase the land and to collaborate formation of a special tax district to build and operate it. After years of work, the McLean Community Center was dedicated in 1972 completing the MCA’s historical goal. With the earlier acquisition of McLean Central Park, what had become the community’s vision for a “civic center” for McLean was also realized. Stan and Lilla both became strong advocates for the Center, Stan helping to raise funds to build a balcony in the Center’s Bob Alden Theater.
In 1974 the county revised the comprehensive plan with the three-year Plus Plan process and Lilla chaired the McLean Planning District Task Force that recommended future development. She served as the president of the Fairfax County Federation of Citizens Associations, the county’s umbrella homeowner association, from 1976 to 1977, and was president of the McLean Citizens Association (MCA) from 1977 to 1978 when both organizations were focused on development-related issues and the growing need for more schools and services. Civic organizations gave residents a voice as the county’s population grew. Lilla and Stan were founding members of the Fairfax Committee of 100 in 1977 which brought county leaders together for regular dinners to discuss issues of interest. She was also a member of the McLean Planning Committee working to preserve the retail and service function of the McLean Central Business District for the surrounding community. She became a close friend of Bill Elvin, fellow citizen activist and owner-editor of the hometown newspaper, The Providence Journal, which reported extensively on the Plus Plan, other controversial issues, and local elections. Her name appeared frequently. Lilla said “I found my voice. People actually listened to what I had to say.” after impressing the crowd in the Langley High School Auditorium with her zoning knowledge about a controversial land use issue featured. It was then she realized that she might be able to make a difference.
One of her proudest accomplishments was helping to establish the McLean Citizens Foundation (MCF) in 1980 with fellow former MCA presidents, the endowment of which came from the sale of property that the organization had acquired over the years. One of her greatest disappointments occurred when the name was changed to the McLean Community Foundation in 2009 because she feared it would no longer be associated as the charitable arm of its parent organization. To date the organization has given over $1.75M in grants to the Greater McLean Community.
Lilla helped sponsor the Friends of Pleasant Grove Church in 1982 on Lewinsville Road, located not far from her their first home on Spring Hill Road, to acquire, rebuild, and preserve the community landmark building. The structure was built by descendants of freed slaves, the first services being held in 1896. For seven decades the church was the center of religious and community activities until membership declined and the building was sold in 1980 to an owner who removed many of the architectural elements and left the building in ruins. Under Lilla’s leadership, proffers for a parking lot, water, sewer, and catering kitchen with builders of the nearby housing development. Private, business, and government assistance has enabled the Friends to restore the building, replace the steeple that was destroyed by lightening, and make the building available for community uses. Today it also houses the Francis K. Moore Museum named for a descendant of the church founders.
Historic Pleasant Grove.org
Other organizations to which she belonged during the 1970’s and 1980’s included:
Northern Virginia Advisory Panel of the Virginia Commission for the Arts; Chairman, Dranesville Parks Advisory Committee; Chairman, Dranesville Annual Plan Review Task Force; Chairman, Tysons Task Force land use, housing, and urban design chair; McLean-Falls Church Counsel; McLean Planning District Plus Task Force; Chairman of the Fairfax County Task Force on Voluntary Campaign Guidelines; Member of Fairfax County Committee on Sewer Policy (Cole Committee), as well as executive committees of Woodside and Rocky Run Citizens Associations, the Northern Virginia Service League, the Northern Virginia Fine Arts Association, and the CIA Traffic Advisory Committee.
Lilla was elected as Dranesville District Supervisor in 1987 ushering in a slower growth County Board in reaction to the commercial office boom of the 1980’s which had led to an unsustainable increase in traffic. During her term of office, she supported a zoning ordinance change to manage office growth (Commercial and Industrial Districts), was Chairman of the National Capital Region Transportation Planning Board (TPB), chair of the Board of Supervisors Transportation Committee, served on the Northern Virginia Transportation Commission, co-chaired of the Metropolitan Washington Council of Government’s (MWCOG) Task Force on Land Use and Transportation, the Northern Virginia Planning District Commission (now the Northern Virginia Regional Commission), and the Route 28 Transportation Improvement District Commission. She also championed the establishment of a county Transportation Commission. She sponsored “spot-safety” transportation improvements in her district and led in establishing bus and future rail sites in Tysons Corner and along the Dulles Toll Road. Lilla was adamant in supporting residents in protecting Great Falls Street, Georgetown Pike, and Dolley Madison Blvd from unnecessary widening. She also championed the transition from an appointed School Board to an elected one and advocated for quality day care. Threatened by a possible sale of McLean’s original Volunteer Fire Department building in downtown McLean following construction of a new firehouse on Lowell Avenue, it was saved by the joint effort of the Supervisor and the community as a Teen Center in 1990 and now operated by the McLean Community Center.
Lilla and Stan were long time supporters of the arts and sustaining members of the McLean Orchestra. Friends remember Stan’s deviled eggs and the couple’s graceful waltz at the orchestra’s annual fundraisers. When the Emerson Art Gallery, established in 1962 and incorporated as the McLean Project for the Arts (MPA) in 1984, lost its rental space in the business district, Stan was president of the McLean Community Center Governing Board. He and Lilla secured a permanent space which opened to the public in the Community Center in 1990 where the private 501 C-3 organization continues to reside, providing art classes and exhibits.
Having lost re-election in 1991 in the middle of a recession, Lilla returned to her civic and arts roots. Having served as a trustee of the Greater Washington Research Center, Lilla was appointed by Governor Douglas Wilder to the George Mason University Board of Visitors in January, 1992 and served until June, 1997.
Lilla and Stan amicably parted ways in the mid 1990’s. Lilla’s remained in their Brook Road home shared with a succession of her beloved Siamese cats and with an extensive personal and professional archive in the basement and an upper bedroom that functioned as her office. She, Bill Elvin, and Henry Mackall, a member of one of McLean’s original families, imagined in 1998 a McLean Room added to a potential expansion of Dolley Madison Library that would give a safe home to their document and photograph collections and residents a place to research McLean history. The Library expansion was completed by 2010 without a McLean Room and her valuable collection remained in her home.
In her later years she would don her garden hat to protect her elegant hair and tend to her large vegetable garden where she grew prize versions of everything but was constantly at war with the deer. She was honored on her 75th birthday in 2015 by the McLean Project for the Arts for her work in finding a permanent home for the organization. That same year she joined other past presidents of the McLean Citizens Association to celebrate that organization’s Centennial. The following year, she was honored at the 25th anniversary of the founding of the Old Firehouse Teen Center.
Lilla sold her Brook Road home in 2015 and moved into the Jefferson in Arlington finally releasing the contents of her basement and office to two members of the MCA. Over the next several years, with MCF Grants, archivists in the county’s Virginia Room in the City of Fairfax completed the processing of the Lilla D. McC. Richards Collection. The McLean History Portal, an official online index of McLean’s historical documents, including the Mackall and Elvin papers, is now available for use not only at the main archives in Fairfax City, but at the Dolley Madison Library in McLean becoming a 21st century version of her long-wished for McLean Room.
McLean History Portal.org
It is fitting that she was honored by the University of South Carolina for her family’s contributions at a ceremony in 2019 at the Congressional Country Club in Bethesda, Maryland. Asked what she wanted her family legacy to be, she said simply “Hospitality and Friendship.”
University of South Carolina.org
Lilla leaves to mourn and is survived by her sister-in-law and brother-in-law, Kathy and Harold Richards as well as her cousins, Jane McCutchen Brown of Charleston, SC, George McCutchen of Columbia, SC, Elizabeth McCutchen Williams of Murrell’s Inlet, SC, David McCutchen of Portland, OR, Mary McCutchen Duncan of Rockville, MD, Tom Strother of Annapolis MD, and numerous NJ cousins. In addition she will be sorely missed by her devoted and loyal friend, Renee Gordon O’Neill, her special “intern,” Michelle Jacoby, her loyal caregiver, Edith Fosso Jean Paul, and her lifelong friends James Lawless, Betty Thompson, Rufus Phillips, Glenn Yarborough, Kate Giaimo, Lynn Morrison Clipp Chiappone, and Wanda Borne.
Lilla will be laid to rest in the cemetery at Historic Pleasant Grove Church.
Donations may be made in her honor to the Friends of Pleasant Grove Church, McLean Community Foundation, or a community cause of your choice.
Historic Pleasant Grove.org
Many thanks to Merrily Pierce, Paul Kohlenberger, and all those who contributed in gathering this information about Lilla’s life.
An interesting and full life which took us on a journey that was well lived, well loved, and well done.
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