Kate Williams Tabor, 85, died peacefully surrounded by family at 
Sibley Hospital in Washington, DC Sunday morning. The cause of death 
was congestive heart failure.

She was born June 15, 1927 in Baton Rouge, LA, during the great 
Mississippi flood of that year. She was the daughter of David 
Rogerson Williams and Martha Hill Williams.  Her father's engineering 
and pipeline construction company, a forerunner of The Williams 
Companies of Oklahoma, had been taking natural gas into the city of 
New Orleans.

She was raised at Mulberry Plantation outside Camden after her father 
purchased it from relatives in 1928. She also spent early childhood 
summers in Oklahoma due to her father's work. Starting in 1937, her 
family spent summers in the North Carolina mountains, at Linville, 
NC.  Mrs. Tabor was a  great, great niece of Southern diarist Mary 
Chesnut.

She attended Camden schools in the 1930s and graduated from the 
Garrison Forest School in 1945 and from Sarah  Lawrence College in 
1949. During the 1940s and early 1950s, Mrs. Tabor, an accomplished 
horsewoman, was often a whipper-in with the Camden Hunt under Master 
of Fox Hounds (M.F.H.) Edith Dubose.

After her marriage to John K. Tabor in l952, she lived in Pittsburgh, 
PA.  She was an original member of the  Women's Committee of the 
Carnegie Museum of Art.  She was one of the  founders of Pittsburgh's 
Three Rivers Arts Festival for which she received a Public Service 
Citation from the Mayor of Pittsburgh.   She also often served as 
field master with the Westmoreland Hunt in western Pennsylvania, 
which later merged with the Rolling Rock Hunt.

After a period of years when her husband served in state government  
in Harrisburg, the Tabors returned to Pittsburgh where she joined the 
Board of Three Rivers Youth.

In l973, she moved to Washington, DC when her husband was appointed  
Undersecretary of Commerce by President Nixon. She became Chairman 
of  the Women's Committee of the Corcoran Galley of Art and an ex-
officio member of the Corcoran Board of Trustees from 1982-l984. She 
was a President of the Georgetown Garden Club.  She also worked part-
time for the Clerk of the Works at the Washington National Cathedral  
during the Cathedral's final years of building. She was an active 
member of Georgetown's St. John's Episcopal Church.

For almost 60 years, she and her family have spent summers on 
Cuttyhunk Island,  MA.

She is survived by two sons, John K. Tabor, Jr. of Portsmouth, NH 
and  William H. Tabor of Alexandria, VA; a brother, Joseph H. 
Williams of  Charleston, SC; one granddaughter, Laura H. Tabor of 
Boulder, CO, and  three grandsons, Maxwilliam W. Tabor of Portsmouth, 
NH, and Emmett F. and  Charles H.Tabor of Alexandria, VA.

A celebration of her life will take place at 2 p.m. December 10th at 
St. John's Church, 3240 O Street NW in Washington, DC. In lieu of 
flowers, donations may be made to the church or the Women's Committee 
of the Corcoran Museum of Art.