It is with profound sadness that our family announces that John Herbert Washington passed away peacefully on Wednesday, June 23, 2021, at the Harlem Nursing and Rehabilitation Center in New York City. He was 92, and had been in declining health in recent years from Alzheimer’s dementia and chronic kidney disease.

He was born in Harlem on February 28, 1929, to Lewis Paul Washington of Charleston, South Carolina and Myrille Watson of Barbados. His father was a bricklayer, whose work was said to have contributed to one of the city’s most iconic piles, the Empire State Building. His mother’s work as a homemaker, which his birth set in motion, could not have been less arduous than his father’s was: “Herbie,” as family called him, was the eldest of their thirteen children. As a child he was an acolyte at St. Martin's Episcopal Church in Harlem — today an official New York City landmark — where he had been baptized.

John served in the U.S. Navy in the late 1940s peacetime between World War II and the Korean War. In the early 1950s his first marriage to Nellie Moss — living in the Todt Hill Housing Projects on Staten Island with their two sons — ended in divorce in the mid-1960s. It was during that time that John joined the ranks of “smoke eaters” in the Fire Department of New York, before switching to the Harlem-based job of fire inspector that he retired from.

Though he loved music and athletics — particularly tennis — John found his truest passion in the game of bridge. He was an active member of the American Bridge Association (ABA) — which Black tennis players (who were also bridge enthusiasts) had founded in Buckroe Beach, Virginia, in 1932 after long being denied entry to “whites-only” guilds. John’s travel itineraries to various regional and national tournaments became the basis of his vast social network. A dense forest of trophies attested to his mastery. But one “nationals” tourney in 1969, at New York's Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, became the fateful setting of an even deeper passion — that for a novice, but earnest player named Cynthia who stayed in the game for over half a century.

On December 9, 1970, John married Cynthia Ann Regis, who was also a Harlem native. At the time of his death, John and Cynthia Washington were approaching the fifty-first year of their union (second marriages for each), and of their residency in Harlem’s Esplanade Gardens.

Apart from his wife, John is survived by his two sons, Reginald V. Washington of Bradenton, Florida, and Eric K. Washington of Harlem; his step-daughter, Anne-Sojourner Wendell-Cobb and step-granddaughter Thea Cobb of Sonoma, California; granddaughters Chloe Washington and Elizabeth Reiber, and three great-granddaughters and one great-grandson in Dallas-Fort Worth, Texas. Of his twelve siblings, the four surviving him are Enid Hewson, of Glassboro, New Jersey; Harold Washington, of Englewood, New Jersey; Marion Hays, of Fishkill, New York; and Isabella Smith, of Harlem; and countless nephews, nieces — as well as grand- and great-grand nieces and nephews — in various locales near and distant.

Owens Funeral Home in Harlem is making cremation arrangements for John, whose inurnment will be on Thursday, July 8, 2021, 10:30AM, at Trinity Church Cemetery and Mausoleum in Washington Heights, Manhattan. Masks are still required on the cemetery site for funereal gatherings.

The Washington Family