| KAY SHEPHERD SCHATTNER |
Garfinckel's Model Fashioned Careers In Radio, P.R.
Kay S. Schattner, 89, a Washington area fashion model, radio commentator,
newspaper columnist and public relations official, died March 9 at Potomac Valley
nursing home in Rockville after a stroke. She was a resident of Bethesda.
Mrs. Schattner, who for much of her career was known as Kay Ferrell, did
modeling early in her career at Garfinckel's department stores, a Washington
institution that defined the city's elegant fashion tastes.
She came to prominence locally as a radio personality on WFAX in the 1950s.
She hosted "Kay's Korner," a news and community service program that featured
fashion and beauty tips as well as interviews with politicians and entertainers
passing through town, including singer Johnny Mathis and comic actor Ray Bolger.
The magazine TV Picture Life named her radio star of the year in 1960. She tried
to parlay her name recognition into a seat on the Falls Church City Council, running
as the lone woman among 13 candidates, but her bid failed. She also did volunteer work for the congressional
campaign of real estate developer Henry Rolfs, an unsuccessful challenger to Rep. Joel T. Broyhill (R-Va.).
Mrs. Schattner remained involved in community affairs, from raising money to build what is now Inova Fairfax Hospital to
helping keep score among the stock cars racing at Old Dominion Speedway in Manassas.
In the 1960s, she wrote columns on dining and beauty for the old Washington Daily News while also deepening her
public relations work. Among her clients was Robert Schattner, a dentist-turned-inventor who created the Chloraseptic
sore-throat medicine and the Sporicidin disinfectant used widely to sterilize medical instruments. They married in 1969.
Through the 1970s, Mrs. Schattner handled public relations as vice president of the R. Schattner Pharmaceutical Co. In
1972, she received recognition as a "woman of distinction" from the Advertising Club of Washington, where she had
been executive secretary and a board member.
Kay Shepherd was born in Brookfield, Mo., and raised in Washington, where she graduated from Wilson High School.
She attended the University of Missouri before entering modeling school.
Her first husband, Vincent Bergin, died in 1940 after being struck by a car. Mrs. Schattner, who had been married less
than a year, was also injured severely in the accident and required nearly two years of rehabilitation. Her second
marriage, to Ralph "Rick" Ferrell, ended in divorce.
Besides her third husband, of Bethesda, survivors include two daughters from her second marriage, Kay Mikula of
Oakton and Deborah Fedynak of Richmond; two stepsons, Richard Schattner of Rockville and Ronald Schattner of
Potomac; a sister, Sylvia Shepherd of Bluemont, in Loudoun County; three grandsons; and a great-granddaughter.
-- Adam Bernstein
2009