26 Oct 1915 – 13 Nov 2010
Great-Grandson of Philip Cardon and Martha Marie Tourn
Grandson of Thomas Barthelemy Cardon and Lucy Smith
Son of Ariel Frederick Cardon and Chloe Smoot
John A. Cardon, 95, a Washington lawyer who specialized in tax law, profit-sharing and pension plans, died Nov. 13 at Sibley Memorial Hospital of a stroke. He lived in Bethesda.
Mr. Cardon began his law career in the early 1940s at the firm of Alvord and Alvord, but he spent most of his working life – from 1947 until retiring in 1983 – with the firm of Lee, Toomey and Kent.
John Ariel Cardon was born in Salt Lake City. His grandfather, Utah Republican Reed Smoot, was a U.S. senator from 1903 to 1932, and Mr. Cardon came to Washington as a young man in the late 1920s to serve as a Senate page. He graduated from Western High School in Washington in 1932.
He went on to graduate in 1936 from the University of Cincinnati, from which he also received a law degree in 1939. He served as a Navy lieutenant in the South Pacific before settling in the Washington area.
Mr. Cardon was a member of the University Club and St. Dunstan’s Episcopal Church in Bethesda.
He also enjoyed the art of bonsai and was a member of the National Bonsai Foundation’s board of directors. He volunteered his bonsai skills at local schools and at the National Arboretum’s Bonsai and Penjing Museum.
His wife of 28 years, Jane Brutton Cardon, died in 1968.
Survivors include his wife of 39 years, Edythe Wetzel Cardon of Bethesda; three children from his first marriage, Martha Cardon Irmer of Tiburon, Calif., Susan Cardon Lewis of Newtown, Conn., and John C. Cardon of North Potomac; a stepdaughter, Frances W. Card of Bethesda; five grandchildren; and six great-grandchildren.
-Published in the Washington Post, Friday, December 3, 2010