Famebridge C. Payne, an educator and businesswoman, died in her sleep May 18 at Gilchrist Center Howard County in Columbia. The former Baltimore resident was 90.
“Words can hardly explain who she was,” said Cathy Bell, a former McDonald’s owner/operator.
“She was a loving, giving and accomplished lady, and she and her husband sent a whole lot of people on the McDonald’s path,” Ms. Bell said. “She had a real sense of good about her.”
Famebridge Frances Cunningham, daughter of Charles Cunningham, a railroad porter, and Katherine Banks Cunningham, a domestic, was born and raised in Richmond, Virginia.
After graduating in 1950 from Armstrong High School in East Highland Park, Virginia, she earned a bachelor’s degree in elementary education in 1954 from Virginia State University and began working as a schoolteacher in Richmond public schools. She later studied at the University of Pennsylvania.
In 1960, she was attending an education conference in New York City, when she met her future husband, Osborne A. Payne, who had moved to Richmond in 1957 to teach at the old West End Elementary School.
He was also attending the conference, and had surrendered his seat on a crowded transit bus to the woman who would become his future wife.
They fell in love and married in 1961.
In 1962, he took a job with the U.S. Agency for International Development in Liberia as an education adviser.
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While in Liberia, Mrs. Payne worked in the physical education program at Cuttington College, where her husband was acting dean of instruction from 1963 to 1965.
The couple moved to Roanoke, Virginia, in 1965, where she taught in Roanoke public schools and her husband helped organize Total Action Against Poverty, a social services organization.
As the agency’s educational director, he helped establish 10 day-care centers in the Roanoke area.
The couple moved again in 1967 to Washington when Mr. Payne accepted a job with the National Education Association, while she taught at Sherman Elementary School.
Living in Silver Spring, Mrs. Payne began teaching in 1969 in Montgomery County public schools
While speaking with an NEA colleague at a Miami convention, she told him that her husband was planning to purchase an airplane so he could commute daily from his Washington home to his new job in Philadelphia.
“Wow, what kind of business pays that kind of money?” Mr. Payne asked.
“McDonald’s,” she replied.
Mr. Payne, who was known for bringing McDonald’s restaurants to inner-city Baltimore, applied for a franchise, and the family opened their first McDonald’s in 1974 on Broadway in East Baltimore, with his wife as vice president.
“Famebridge was very much his business partner,” said Arnold Williams, the couple’s accountant and business consultant. “She was the treasurer of Broadway Payne, as the business was known, and was involved in the operation of the stores over the course of the years. She also handled their real estate holdings.”
Mrs. Payne continued teaching until retiring in 1977 from New Hampshire Estates Elementary School to join the family business full time, which subsequently expanded to include four in Baltimore, and one on Liberty Road in Baltimore County.
“The family was recognized for training and employing thousands of Baltimore City youth and remained active in community and charitable causes,” according to a family-submitted biography of Mrs. Payne.
“My husband and I were refugees from corporate America and newbies when we decided to open a McDonald’s in 1990 in Columbia,” Ms. Bell said.
“We were new operators, neophytes, and turned to Famebridge and Osborne. She was highly involved and partnered with her husband in the business, and they met us with open arms,” she said.
“They always supported us, and Famebridge was a person who always told you the truth and was full of ideas. She was a socialite, and she told us who we needed to get to know, because she knew everybody.”
She added: “Famebridge was a very pleasant person and she was never too busy to take a call, and they were never too busy when it came to doing what they could for others.”
A Columbia resident since 1976, Mrs. Payne was a longtime member of the NAACP; the Columbia Alumnae Chapter of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority; and the Columbia Chapter of the Links Inc.
She was also a member of the Red Hat society and the Que-ettes, wives of members of the Tau Pi chapter of Omega Psi Phi fraternity.
Mrs. Payne was a longtime active communicant of St. John’s Episcopal Church in Ellicott City, where she was a Sunday school teacher, and a member of the Handbell Choir and the Antiques Show Committee.
Mr. Payne, who retired in 1999, died in 2012.
“She was an avid reader and liked to read about medical advancements and treatments. She constantly read medical journals and newspapers because she wanted to learn new things,” said a daughter, Famebridge S. Witherspoon, of Columbia.
“She was a very, very traditional Southern woman who was quiet about a lot of things. I’ll miss her ability to remember things and her mind was very clear until the last moment,” Ms. Witherspoon said
“She was in my opinion, the matriarch, who cared very much about her family and family matters,” Mr. Williams said. “She was sharp and alert until the last day and was still handling business with what I call great humility. I thought her the most caring and sweetest lady.”
Funeral services will be held at 1 p.m. Saturday at her church at 9200 Frederick Road, Ellicott City, with a visitation from 10 a.m. to 11 a.m., followed by services at 11:30.
In addition to Ms. Witherspoon, she is survived by another daughter, Sarita Payne, of Columbia; five grandchildren; and five great-grandchildren. A stepdaughter, Andrea Kyles, died in 2004.
