David Lloyd Kreeger; Insurance Executive, Arts Patron

David Lloyd Kreeger, 81, former chairman of the Government Employees Insurance Co. (Geico) and longtime patron of the arts. A New York native who attended Rutgers University and Harvard Law School, Kreeger was a private attorney, with Geico as a client, when he formed a group to buy shares in the insurer in 1948. In 1957, Kreeger gave up his law practice to become a Geico vice president. He was chairman and chief executive of the company from 1970 until his retirement in 1974. Kreeger served as president of the National Symphony Orchestra in Washington from 1970 to 1978 and gave his name to three buildings there financed with the help of his donations at area cultural institutions--the Kreeger Theater at Arena Stage, the Kreeger Music Building at American University and the Kreeger Auditorium at the Corcoran Gallery of Art. He served as president and chairman of the Corcoran for 20 years. His art collection contained works of the most famous artists of the 19th and 20th centuries, including Degas, Renoir, Van Gogh, Picasso and Kadinsky, but he cared most about music. Kreeger was an amateur violinist and owned a Stradivarius, which he sometimes played in concerts at his home in the company of such musical luminaries as Leonard Bernstein, violinist Isaac Stern and cellist Pablo Casals. In Washington on Sunday of cancer.