Interfaith Coordinator, Teacher, Diplomat's Wife - Elsa Wells Kormann died on Thursday, October 13, 2016 of natural causes. She was active for many years as an interfaith coordinator, promoting understanding between religious groups, as well as an organizer in mission outreach work and projects for the homeless at Chevy Chase United Methodist Church (CCUMC). Her sensitivity to the needs of others began at an early age. While attending the American University of Berlin after WWII as the daughter of Roger Wells, the Deputy Director for Civil Administration for American Occupied Germany, she volunteered to teach English to the Jewish concentration camp victims in the Berlin Duppel Center Refugee Camp. She was only 17 years old at the time. "It was a heart-breaking experience," she later recalled to an audience at the Holocaust Museum. "I was admonished never to discuss the victims' experiences, for to do so brought on terrible trauma." Mrs. Kormann accompanied her husband, John G. Kormann, a Foreign Service Officer, on assignments to Germany, the Philippines, Libya and Egypt. While overseas she taught English and Civics at a German high school, and History and Government at the American School of Manila. Her many letters detailing their eventful diplomatic life served as a basis for her husband's book, Echoes of a Distant Clarion. These included the Kissinger "Shuttle Diplomacy" in Egypt, the rise of Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos in the Philippines, and the Arab mob attack on the American Embassy in Benghazi, Libya at the outbreak of the 1967 Arab-Israeli War. During the latter, Mrs. Kormann and her three children were evacuated with other Americans in a daring airlift by a US Air Force C-130 "right under the noses of Egyptian jet fighter planes" on the airfield. Her experiences were also highlighted in Married to the Foreign Service, a book by Jewell Fenzi. Mrs. Kormann is the co-author of an extensive official US Government Report to the United Nations on Freedom of Information in the United States. She was a docent and researcher for years at the National Archives; a researcher at the National Building Museum; a tutor for the Literary Council of Montgomery County and a volunteer with the Hospitality and Information Service (THIS) for foreign diplomats. She was a member of the Bryn Mawr Club of Washington, the League of Women Voters and the Association of American Foreign Service Wives. More recently, she played an active role in the Scions of the 17th Airborne, chartered by her husband Col. Kormann to remember the sacrifices of veterans who served with the 17th during WWII. She was a committed volunteer preparing and delivering food downtown for Martha's Table and a devoted member of CCUMC's Tuesday morning Bible Study group. Mrs. Kormann was born in Bryn Mawr, PA in 1929. She attended the Baldwin School and graduated from Bryn Mawr College summa cum laude, first in her class in 1951. Her elder son, Wells Bradford Kormann (married to Catherine Buckley), died in 2005 and her husband of sixty-five years, John G. Kormann, in 2015.