Margery Ann "Kitty" Langford

MARGERY ANN (“KITTY”) LANGFORD Margery “Kitty” Langford was born on January 21, 1933, to Bernard and Margaret Staley and grew up in Waseca, Minnesota. The first in her family to go to college, she received a scholarship to Grinnell College earning a degree in Physics in 1953. She moved Schenectady, NY, to work for General Electric doing acoustical research for a nuclear submarine. It was there that she met her husband, John (who nicknamed her ‘Kitty’). John joined the Air Force, and together they travelled the world, to Belgium, California, Ohio, Panama, and Iran, before settling down in Vienna, Virginia. To engage with their overseas friends Kitty learned French, Spanish, and even some Farsi. She worked in real estate and did other work for DC-area organizations, but she loved to volunteer: singing with the Air Force Skylarks, leading a Girl Scout troop, organizing charity events for the Officers Wives Clubs at the bases where John was posted, teaching English in Panama, manning the Suicide Prevention Hotline, qualifying to lead exercise classes for the elderly, serving as a poll watcher. But the work she loved most was as an Arlington Lady, representing the Secretary of the Air Force to welcome the bereaved families who came to bury their beloved heroes at Arlington National Cemetery. Kitty loved being their guide, comforter, and advocate. She loved the friendships that she forged around the world in a lifetime of serving as a military wife, and she loved her prize-winning Dandie Dinmont Terriers that always graced the fireplace hearth at home. She derived great enjoyment from her needlework, quilting, reading, the NY Times crossword, travel, and watching the birds who visited her multiple feeders in the garden. But her greatest claim was that she raised her family on four continents. Kitty passed away on February 1st, 2021. She is preceded in death by her husband, Lt. Col. John W. Langford, Ret., and survived by her three children: Mary Elizabeth, of London, England; Margaret (“Meg”) Carol, of Covington, Virginia; and Dirk William, of Nashville, Tennessee. Her spirit of life and love lives on in all who knew her; her family genuinely believes that Kitty is on to her next big adventure and will miss her every day. A service will be held at the Ft Myer Old Post Chapel on August 31, 2022, at 11:00am. Interment will follow immediately at Arlington National Cemetery.