Interviewee: Judith Clark Adams
Date: Nov. 16, 2017
Location: Adams residence in Chevy Chase DC
Interviewers: Joan Solomon Janshego and Cate Toups Atkinson
Transcribed (from audio recording) by: Cate Toups Atkinson

Let’s start by asking what is your birth date and where were born?

Feb. 23, 1926 in Madison, Wisconsin.

Were there other children in your family?

My sister.

And where were your parents from and what were their occupations?

My father, James Clark, was from Wisconsin, my mother, Dorothy Funk Clark, was from Iowa. My father was a civil engineer, my mother was an artist — charcoal, portraiture.

Did you get some of those talents yourself?

No. Skipped. My children are all artistic. Although I love art, I’ve studied a lot about it. I’m very appreciative of art, but I have no talent. None, whatsoever.

You are a widow now? How many children and grandchildren do you have, and where do they live now?

My husband (journalist Timothy J. Adams), died in 1992. Cancer. Three of my children live in this area, and I have a son in Los Angeles and a son in Maine. I have 12 grandchildren.

What brought you to Chevy Chase?

The Peace Corps, 1961. My husband was a newspaper man and he was recruited to work in public information at the very beginning of the Peace Corps. We were married and had four children at the time. We had a fifth child after we moved to Washington. (Her husband, a graduate of Bowdoin College, began working for the San Francisco Chronicle in 1949 and later worked at the San Francisco Examiner. In 1961 he joined the Peace Corps as staff.

Where did you go to college?

I started at Sophie Newcomb (Memorial College) which is now part of Tulane (University) and finished at George Washington University. I majored in English. Then I went out to California, where I met my husband. We were married in 1950. We lived in San Francisco until 1961, when we came back to Washington.

Was that a big change for you?

Well, yes and no. I had family here and I had friends here. My mother and father were living here. My father had been in the Navy. He’d gone to (the Naval Academy in) Annapolis, but had a hearing problem and had to drop out. He went to engineering school, and was called back into the Navy in World War II for his engineering skills. Later we moved to Houston. I graduated from Lamar High School. My father worked on the ports. Then he was transferred to New Orleans, then here in ‘45. They stayed here in Georgetown after he retired. My mother had an antique shop in Georgetown for years on Wisconsin Avenue. Their home was on 31st and P.

So then you had some experience living in Washington as a young person? About how old were you when you came here?

I was 19.

Where did you live when you came here as a married woman?

In ’61 we had a house on Jenifer Street. The kids went to Murch School. We lived there til ‘66 and then we went overseas with the Peace Corps for two and a half years and then we came back and bought this house.

Where overseas were you, and how did you like that experience?

Thailand. Fantastic. Well, it was interesting, especially after having (recently) watched the Vietnam series on PBS. While there was a huge, huge military presence in Thailand at that time — and I knew lots of women whose husbands were serving in Vietnam because they were living in Bangkok — we were not as aware of the Vietnam War as you guys were because we did not see it on television. So watching that series, I was absolutely overcome with what it must have been like to be back here, watching that happen. And I think it was a challenge for the Peace Corps volunteers (her husband, as director of the Thailand Peace Corp program, supervised 450 volunteers) managed because of the huge military presence in the country. It was an interesting time. But Thailand is a beautiful country; it was a fascinating experience.

Have you been back there since?

No. I don’t want to go back. One of my sons has been back a number of times. In fact, he lived in Japan for a long time. It’s changed too much. I’d rather remember as what it was.

And then you moved back here, when? And why did you decide this house, and this neighborhood?

In 1968. My husband left the government service (to help his Peace Corps boss, Charles G. Peters, start a magazine, the Washington Monthly. He served as managing editor). I wanted to live in the city, and I wanted to live on a bus street so I wouldn’t have to drive the children everywhere — and where they could walk to school and to the library, and that was very important.

In the late 1960s was this a neighborhood that was attractive to live in?

Oh yes, very. But my memories go back to the other side of Connecticut Avenue in the early ‘60s and what it was like living in Chevy Chase in the early 1960s.

Tell us about it.

Well, one of the things that fascinates me is that there seemed to be less people but more children, because all the children were out playing. And there were fewer people actually because there were no lines. I mean, you went to the bank and you just went to any clerk that was available. You went to the post office and there were no lines anywhere

Of course, there was no Safeway, there was no community center. The Safeway was a hilly, wooded lot. The windows in all the stores on Connecticut Avenue had displays. There was a cafe in Drug Fare, which was in the middle of the block. The liquor store has always been there. Shupp’s Bakery was big. People’s Drug Store was on the corner. So you had these two (drug) stores right there. And People’s had a counter. And those stores had many teenagers as clerks after school and during the summer. Those were not career jobs at that time. I mean there was always career staff, but there were lots of jobs for teenagers.

There were bikes everywhere. They weren’t locked. Nobody locked their cars. It was very easy parking.  No traffic (laughs). There as a library where the community center is now, a beautiful old building

The women were home — a huge difference. There were no landscapers — the teenagers would do all that work. They mowed your grass if you needed it done. They did the raking, they did the snow shoveling – all these jobs for money. Babysitters were 25 cents an hour, and that was a big job for teenager girls.

Everybody dressed up. The kids had school clothes and when they came home they put on their play clothes. Then they went out to play, and then they came home for supper and did their homework and went to bed. You dressed up to go to the doctor’s. You dressed up to go downtown shopping. And you went downtown to shop, although Woodies was in Friendship Heights, and Woodies was very important.

All the windows (in people’s houses) were open all the time. You never locked your windows. You didn’t lock your back door; you locked your front door. And for schools. The elementary school was a very tight ship. There was tracking. There were no librarians. The library was staffed and filled with books by volunteers. There were no lunchrooms.

There were girl aids. If the kids took their lunch, they ate at their desks with a girl aid monitoring them. But almost all the kids came home from lunch. All the children walked to school. I don’t ever remember a parent driving their kids to school — ever. There were boy patrols. Girls were not allowed to be patrols, just boys. And the boys had white sashes. It was a big deal. It was a very responsible job because so many kids were walking.

After school all the kids were out playing. Oh, the other thing — in school there was lots of music and singing. They sang in the classroom as well as in the musical program at Murch. Instruments were given out by the city. And that was one other thing I wanted to mention — the DC Department of Recreation was fantastic. There was a very good cooperative nursery school run by DC that the parents ran at the 42nd Street playground.

And then I wanted to talk to you about the social life. Almost all the mothers volunteered for all those jobs that are now paid jobs everywhere. And the fathers of course volunteered. People did not eat out much. I think the Chevy Chase Lounge was the only bar on Connecticut Avenue, and I’d be hard pressed think of a restaurant. I mean, Hot Shoppes was down Connecticut Avenue. But people entertained at home.

I don’t remember how much food cost, but when you think that we had a family at that time of six people and one salary and a car, and we went out and entertained, food was not expensive.

Then we go to the ‘70s. Drugs and crime. Protests. Demonstrations. Civil rights, Vietnam. The window displays are gone. The bikes are gone — they’re stolen if you leave them. You closed your windows and you locked them. You locked your doors of your car. You locked your back door and your front door. You couldn’t leave anything outside — they even smashed pumpkins at Halloween time.

The Safeway came in. The community center came in. They were very popular, very welcomed, and the new library opened. That was an advantage. Now nobody dressed up anymore. Jeans became ubiquitous. Counts over on Wisconsin Avenue was a gathering place for the teenagers. It was a western store and since jeans became so popular, you really wanted to have Counts jeans, but then you distressed them, you know — you beat them up. Counts was in the next block from where Le Chat Noir is now. And there was a photography store there, too. Cameras were big.

There was just an enormous change in the clothing for kids at school. That was the beginning of using thrift shops for your teenagers. Because they didn’t — they wanted to look — how can I put it? They did not want to look fresh and clean and neat, let’s just put it that way. But the department stores start disappearing, although Woodies — I can’t remember exactly when it left, but before it left it was a department store that offered all kinds of free classes. One of my daughters learned to knit there. They had almost a whole floor devoted to materials and fabrics and knitting supplies, and it was a fantastic resource for this community.

The malls start to appear, so people stopped going downtown to shop. But driving was still fairly easy. Traffic was so mild you could go downtown and pick your husband up at work, which I did a lot — it’s amazing to think that you could go downtown to pick your husband up and come back  and it took, what, maybe half an hour, down and back?

Schools. Well the schools had a nervous breakdown, seeking new identities. All kinds of new learning came in. There was a changed environment. Lafayette had what they called open classrooms and carpeted floors. At Deal (Middle School) they did away with bells announcing a change of classes. At Wilson (High School), because they started busing in a different population, the word was, you don’t have to like each other but you have to get along.

The white flight begins, to private schools or to Montgomery County. And there were quite a few people in this neighborhood who paid tuition for their kids to go to high school to BCC (Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School).

Recess was still part of the curriculum. In elementary school there was recess morning and afternoon, and you know, recess is beginning to just disappear from the curriculum. The Lafayette spring fair was an important neighborhood event. It was much more ad hoc than I think it is now. I haven’t been for years but the last time I went it seemed much more manufactured that it was during the ‘70s

And the social life: People still entertained at home. The DC Department of Recreation was fantastic during the ‘70s.They had a young woman named Patty who ran the playground at Lafayette, and if you used an improper word you were sent home, and you stayed home, until you were allowed to go back. And they offered free tennis lessons. They offered fishing; they’d take you to Chesapeake Bay. They had fantastic day camps in Rock Creek Park in the summer.

And there were still teenagers in the ‘70s working after school and in the summer. And doing yard work. And babysitting now was 50 cents an hour. There were lots of marches. That’s interesting to think about because my older kids were moving into high school and college. And hordes of kids would come from colleges and stay in people’s houses in sleeping bags for these marches. This neighborhood was very active politically in civil rights.

Did they come here?

Some did. I didn’t put up that many. Some people had 10 kids, but I had so much (going on) here.

And there were still big families in the big houses. You know, now you have these monstrous houses and you have two people.

Now we get into the ‘80s. Well, the big money starts coming in. In this neighborhood, the women went back to school. I should have mentioned that in the ‘70s, almost everybody was a college graduate already, but they went back for law degrees, they went back for library science degrees, you know, there were physician assistants. So you had those two salaries and it started changing things.

Landscapers came in. Nannies came in. The driving starts to be extremely stressful. Parking becomes very difficult. But the Metro comes in and the Metro’s fantastic, so if you went downtown to the Smithsonian or elsewhere (you could take the Metro).

I have to say, during these three decades the children were what they now call free-range kids. I mean, my children all went down to the Smithsonian by themselves as soon as they were old enough to manage the buses. And they went down on the Metro later. But it was such a different environment. The children were so much more independent. And it was safer. I think probably they were allowed to have so much freedom because it was safer.

Integration begins calming down in the public schools, and the scholastics start setting down too. They do away with the open classrooms and all that stuff. But, the stress of the college applications begins. I don’t mean to say there wasn’t concern about the older children going to college, but it wasn’t until my youngest child — because I had a fifth child in 1963 — that the stress on the younger generation began in the ‘80s and you know now it’s such hysteria. It’s crazy. I mean, none of my children applied to more than three schools at the most, (and) now you have kids applying to 15 or 20 schools, it’s really ridiculous.

Restaurants start to come in and become very popular because women are working. They don’t want to cook, and people start meeting in restaurants instead of meeting at home. That’s a big difference. And the Kennedy Center comes in. The Arena Stage has always been a part of the social scene really, but the Kennedy Center changed everything as far as real entertainment, outside entertainment.

And then I’m leaving the ‘90s and 2000s to you ladies.

So you have five children, and the older ones were born in the ’50s?

Yes, the eldest is 12 years older than the youngest. The first four are two years apart (each).

You mentioned tracking. What does that mean?

Tracking in the school by ability. They were tested and put in classrooms by ability. As you can imagine, that did not go over well in the ‘70s. I’m sure there was informal tracking (in the ‘70s) because when we came back from Thailand and we had kids going into middle school and high school they did have to take placement tests in math and English, I think. And also, I meant to mention, that by the ‘80s, when our youngest child was at Wilson, there was an informal (division among students). High achieving kids really formed their own school-within-a-school, of all colors. And that’s one reason integration started settling down. By that time, it had been a decade in place really. But it was rough at the beginning. And you can understand why. It was a shock to everybody.

You mentioned window displays. Did you mean they didn’t have them anymore because it was too dangerous, that people would knock the windows out? Did that happen?

That’s exactly what I mean.

It sounds like you had one type of experience in Chevy Chase before you left for Thailand, and a different one in the late ‘60s when you returned? Was there a stark difference?

Well, we came back to the Chicago Convention. We didn’t have a place to live — we’d rented a house (on Jenifer Street) before. And we were sitting there watching on the television the Democratic convention in Chicago, and we thought, what has happened in this country? And of course what had happened was the first assassination in ‘63 and then the Robert Kennedy assassination and then Martin Luther King, and the country had changed. So there was a terrific difference between being here in the early ‘60s, and then leaving the country for two and a half years and then coming back … to this terrific disruption in the country.

The ‘70s were really a difficult decade for the United States, I think. And that was reflected in the city’s streets. Look at the riots, look at 14th and U — look what it’s become, and look what it was after the riots. It took 20 years for that neighborhood to come back.

And I wanted to live in the same neighborhood (after leaving Thailand). When we came back there was no question that we would not look for a house in this neighborhood. And the public schools have always been excellent in this neighborhood.

When white flight happened, and your neighbors were sending their kids to Montgomery County schools, why did you decide to stay?

I believe in the public school system and I still do. I do not like the idea of charter schools. I mean, I understand that some people feel they are necessary, but I believe in the public school system and I think it’s part of what American was very good at for centuries.

Do you have an idea of what percentage of people in your neighborhood left DC schools?

No, but it was noticeable. Usually what people did was keep their kids in the elementary schools and when they reached middle school and high school they either went to private school or parochial schools or to Montgomery County. But Chevy Chase DC is big, I mean, you know, in this immediate neighborhood is Blessed Sacrament parish, and a lot of children were already going to Catholic school. But I knew in my own close-knit group of friends I had three friends who moved to Montgomery County because of the schools. And they just felt that their children needed a more stable school environment. It wasn’t that they were against integration, they just felt it was too disruptive until it became settled.

You mentioned people in the ‘60s entertained at home. Did you have dinner parties in your neighborhood? Did you have block parties?

No block parties because of the buses. But dinner parties, oh yes. I mean, babysitters were 25 cents an hour. The thing was, people were not foodies. I mean, the food was excellent, but you didn’t have to have the emphasis that is now put on food. You could have a casserole, a tossed salad, a bottle of red wine, and you know, a simple dessert. It was for conversation, it was not to show off your culinary skills.

Were the kids were part of it?

No, no, my goodness, kids were in bed, are you kidding? When they were young they were in bed by 7:30, and when they got older, of course they greeted your guests and then they went to their rooms. I mean, I don’t know what happens now.

What was a typical party like? Who came?

A broad range of people — people from the neighborhood, friends from all over the city, the Peace Corp friends, friends I reconnected with from GW. There were usually eight people.

If you don’t mind me asking, what did you pay for this house?

I think we paid $36,000. Yes, I know, that’s ridiculous.

What do you know about the history of the house, when it was built?

I think it was built in 1919 (but) I’m not sure. It was probably the first house on the block. I know where this little brick house is was once the garden for this house. There are a lot of houses that look like this in the neighborhood. They evidently took the porch off. It’s possible it’s a Sears house, but I’m not sure of that.

Did you change the structure of this house in any significant way?

No, I added a powder room downstairs a couple of years ago. But no major renovations. That’s another interesting thing that started happening in the ’90s — the tear-downs and the add-ons. That has been a significant change in the neighborhood, I think. As you drive through you can see houses like this have been torn down and great big houses put up. And then the additions, right down our alley, many people have put on additions. And that’s a change. Evolving, I’ll put it that way.

What were the occupations of people who lived in their neighborhood?

Well, there were a lot of newspaper people who used to live in the neighborhood. And newspaper men at that time before Watergate were not stars, they were just working men and women. But mostly everybody worked for some aspect of the government. Almost everybody we knew was connected in some way to the government.

Besides the building changes, what are other ways things have changed in your neighborhood?

There were very few black families in the neighborhood the way there are now. And there were some huge families. I mean, when we first bought this house one of the first things I did was to teach my 5-year-old how to cross the street because there were 15 kids among the two houses that were on the other side of the street. And I thought, I’m not going to be able to keep him from that magnet. So there were very large families. I would say that’s the difference. I don’t think there are such large families now.

What teenagers do now is get internships. But one of the things that was really good for the kids in this neighborhood was being able to work, to have a real job, where they were responsible.

Do you remember some of the jobs your kids had?

Carving meat at the Hot Shoppes. Working at the Hechinger’s when Hechinger’s went in over there (at Tenleytown). Babysitting. Teaching fencing up at the community center. Newspaper delivery. Newspaper routes. And then, all the boys did yard work and shoveling snow, things like that.

Broad Branch Market is a neighborhood institution; did you frequent it?

No, before this Safeway went in we went to the other Safeway off Wisconsin Avenue. Clover Market (on Connecticut Avenue between Nevada and Fessenden streets) is where a lot of teenagers worked; it’s been there a long time. Shupp’s (also on Connecticut Avenue) was a wonderful bakery — delicious food.

I remember the Parthenon. And during the ‘80s there was a Thai restaurant down probably where Comet is now. And the Avelon Theatre — there was a ballet studio that was upstairs.

That’s why we like doing these histories — you learn something different from each person. But you are the most organized person I’ve ever done an oral history with because of (the extensive notes prepared for the interview). You kind of did everything for us.

Well it was fun. I could have gone back through all of my diaries and it would have been much more thorough, but I thought you’d like a general sense of what it was like (to live here in the ’60s, ’70s, and ’80s) because for those 30 years it grew into a quite different place. But the past 20 years it seems to me have been just a little more of the same. I mean, goodness knows what’s going to happen to us all now with our current (political) regime but so far things have been pretty stable in this neighborhood, I think.

You’re saying the changes aren’t as dramatic as they have been? I think occupations have changed. Most government employees couldn’t afford to live here now.

Yes, you are quite right. I’m a little shocked at the money. I mean sometimes I feel as though it’s a different ethos in the neighborhood from what it once was. And it feels much more like Georgetown once felt. And I’m really not crazy about that change.

I’d rather have it be more down home. But of course it’s very difficult because you can’t move into this neighborhood and get a house for under a million dollars. It means you are not going to get the diversity. I don’t like it that you get priced out of a neighborhood like this. I think it benefits everyone to have diversity.

Before marriage and children, did you have a profession?

I did. I was an advertising copywriter for Magnum’s (store) in San Francisco. And then I went back to work when my youngest son went to Deal. I taught nursery school at Chevy Chase Children’s Center for years. I wanted a job where I was home in the afternoon. I felt that the teenagers needed to come home and I’d be in the kitchen where I could listen to see what’s going on.

Well, bad things were happening. I mean, drugs really hit Wilson hard. I used to have a golden retriever and I’d walk where Fort Reno Park is, and you would see kids over there shooting up heroin. It was very, very upsetting — it was bad times. Things were in such turmoil.

They used to have concerts at Fort Reno. Has anybody told you about that? You’d have to think it through — and I’m not a sociologist — but as the jobs dried up for teenagers they didn’t have that much structure in their lives, and I think that was what lead them to try drugs. Alcohol was not the problem that drugs were. And Fort Reno started having concerts giving teenagers some place to go and some place to be together, because teenagers like to be together and that’s great.

This was in the ‘70s. By the ‘80s things were calming down. I don’t remember Wilson having the same terrible challenges (as it did a decade prior). And Wilson by that time had a very active theater program and my youngest son was very involved in the theater program.

Who put the concerts on at Fort Reno?

I’m trying to remember, but it could have been the DC Department of Recreation. For years it was such a fantastic resource. And the (Chevy Chase) Community Center was also. They had an excellent pre-school and they put out a catalogue of courses. People used to wait for those and line up to get in the classes. It was an excellent resource for the community. They used to have woodworking and they had all kinds of lecture classes in the evening and they had a Scrabble group and a chess group and I think they had knitting and you know all kind of handicrafts. They used to have a theater group. My son was in Tom Sawyer there. That began his theatrical career actually, acting at the community center!

Tell us about the Marion Barry days in DC.

Well, Marion Barry, as you know, really started out as a hero, I mean there is just no question about that. And then I think things went downhill. I think his aim was to elevate a lot of African Americans into the middle class by stuffing the government with workers. And I think that was a noble aim, but not such a great idea because you got incompetent people that bloated the bureaucracy. I did have a great deal of respect for him in early days but I lost respect because of his sexual indiscretions and also his drug use.

But that’s a very complicated situation and it’s also part of the whole public school history in the District of Columbia, where the most attractive professions for black women were teachers. But it created a teacher’s union that became very insular, which was not good for the school system. But on the other hand, you can see why they wanted to protect the careers of even incompetent teachers because that was their entry into the middle class.

What would you say the caliber of the teachers were that you experienced?

In the early years, excellent. Those ladies (career teachers) were something else. They were really something.

What about in junior high and high school?

Well, I would say that both in junior high and high — well, my kids are very smart and they were achievers no matter what. And there were always excellent teachers available. But your concern really should be for the kids who need excellent instruction and I would say that the level of instruction went down. But I don’t know what it is like now.

So do you think your children benefited by the culture diversity they experienced at Wilson?

Some did, some didn’t. Let’s just put it that way. I’ll be frank about it. I think it was much harder on the girls than the boys.

Why?

Well, for one thing, both girls were at the very beginning of the integration of the schools and the most shocking thing to them were the fights between the black girls, which were vicious. And that came as a huge shock … and one of my daughters told me she never raised her eyes to confront a girl directly because that was a challenge. Of course they never told me anything (about that) until years later.

What about the boys’ experience?

Well, they did sports. And sports was a matter of ability, and it was different.

Did they have African American friends?

Yes and no. It was only by the time it got down to (the years when her youngest son was in high school) that they were friends. There was a tight group of friends of black and white kids, but they were all college bound and they were either in athletics or they were in theater.

But not so much for the older children?

Well, no. It was not the same. It was just a different time.

Did your kids ever express to you if they were happy to have that experience or if they would have preferred to go to a private school?

I think some of them would have preferred to have had a more stimulating environment. It was not that they felt they didn’t want to be with people of color, that was not it at all. But I think they felt they could have benefitted from a more intellectually demanding environment. There were a few AP classes then, but not many.

Back in the ’60s and ’70s, did residents here hire domestic help?

In the ’60s we had cleaning women. Women who came in one day a week, and that was your day out. You know, that was the day you went and did a lot of chores. And how much did we pay them? Well, you can imagine, not much, because if babysitters were 25 cents an hour … but I can’t remember. In this house I had a cleaning woman for a while, and it’s crazy to think about because I had five children; she had four. And of course she cleaned houses. And I do remember asking her what she did with her children and I think her mother took care of her children while she cleaned houses.

These days, the women who clean houses around here are mostly Hispanic it seems.

Oh, she was African American — they were all, in the ’60s and ’70s. Then I didn’t have anybody in the’‘80s. Isn’t that fascinating? See, that’s a change I hadn’t even thought about. When I think back about going to a doctor’s or dentist’s office or anyplace in the ’60s and the ’70s it was all white help, and now it’s all black help. All the cleaning women were black, now they are Hispanic. All the landscapers are Hispanic too. These are things you don’t think about, such a gradual change.

Did anybody have cooks?

I don’t know anybody who did. You know, mothers were home. And then in the ’80s you started meeting people in restaurants, that was when the big change started, everybody went back to work.

How did things change for you in the ’90s?

Well my husband died in ‘’2. Then I did a little bit of traveling. I started doing other things. Stopped volunteering, started just having fun.

Where did you volunteer?

At the Textile Museum for years, and then all during the school years I was always doing something for the parent and teacher organization. Then I had an automobile accident unfortunately two and a half years ago and that’s why I’m on a cane, so I’m not traveling anymore.

What would you say to the next person who might live in this house?

Well, you know, I just hope they enjoy it. It’s a very, very pleasant environment. And the interesting thing to me is you are really not aware of the buses and the traffic. And the garden is quite big. And we used that extensively — that’s something that’s fascinating. When we bought this house in 1968 we started using the garden a lot, and we had dinner, and lunch, and breakfast out there and there were no mosquitos. Now, believe it or not, there were no bugs. And we had dinner parties out there. And now, you can’t use it because of the mosquitoes. I don’t know what the difference is — none of us can quite figure it out

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Beach Ancestors Had First-Hand Experience with Lincoln, Kaiser Wilhelm, and The New Deal

Interviewee: Allen Beach
Date: Sept. 11, 2011
Interviewers: Joan Solomon Janshego and Carl Lankowski
Transcribed (from audio recording) by: Carl Lankowski
Location: Janshego residence in Chevy Chase DC

OK, we’re talking to Allen Beach this afternoon. Allen, welcome. Let’s start with your birth date.

AB: My date of birth is June the 25th, 1933.

And where were you born?

AB: I was born in North Adams, Massachusetts. And only because the town I lived in, Williamstown, had no hospital. Even though it was a college town, it did not have a hospital. So, you had to go 5 miles to the east to the hospital.

So, when did you come to Washington?

AB: I came to Washington in 1941, I think it was.

What was your first address in Washington?

AB: 3415 Morrison Street, NW—just down below Broad Branch Road. My father rented a house from the Edward Jones Company. And Jones & Co. used to be in the Chevy Chase arcade for many, many years, where there’s an art studio now.

How long did you live there?

AB: Until July 11, 1942, at which point we moved to 5719 Chevy Chase Parkway. And that house stayed in my family for 65 years. Owned first by my father and mother, then by my brother, then by me.

You live there now?

AB: No, I haven’t lived there since 1955. I was the last in the family to have title to it. I sold it, but had already lived at 3342 Stuyvesant Place for 20 years by then. I lived there since 1964. I moved out of Chevy Chase Parkway when I got married in 1963.

Describe the house on Morrison Street.

AB: As you’re going from Broad Branch to Nevada Avenue it’s either the second or third house on the right hand side, just past the alley.

What does it look like?

AB: it’s a very light brown house. It was more of a brownish house when I lived there.

Is it brick?

AB: Stucco.

Regarding the Chevey Chase Parkway house, did your parents buy it new?

AB: No, we were the second owners. That was 1942. The house was green and for 65 years it was green. The Snows had it first, the original owners. Then my father bought it from them.

Stucco also?

AB: No—green shingle. It’s yellow now.

Do you have any idea when that house was built?

AB: 1926-1927—something like that. I don’t know anything about the builders or architects.

And the Styvesant house?

AB: That’s a 1942 house built by Mikkelson—a well-known builder. He built a lot of houses on Rittenhouse, Runnymeade, Stevenson, and Stuyvesant. The Stuyvesants were the last ones to be built. When I first got married we moved to another house—3032 Stevenson, which is on the east side of Nebraska Avenue. We bought that house and lived there for 19-1/2 years, so it was ’83 or early ’84 when we moved to Stuyvesant.

Let’s go to your family. Are there other children?

AB: Yes. I have two brothers, one older and one younger. My older brother is Arthur and my younger brother is Walter.

And when were they born?

AB: My older brother was born 1931 in Boston. My younger brother was born in 1934 in North Adams. My father had at that point left the teaching position he had at Harvard and accepted a teaching position in 1932 at Williams College.

Are your siblings still alive?

AB: My older brother, Arthur, is still alive. He lives in Columbus, Ohio. Walter passed away.

When were your parents born?

AB: My father was born in Pullman, Washington, in 1901. My mother was born in Berlin, Germany on Christmas Day 1909.

What were their backgrounds? First your father—his occupation?

AB: He was an economist. He was a college professor, having taught at Stanford, Bowdoin, Harvard, and Williams.

Do you know what his ethnic background was? Where they came from? Had they been in this country many generations?

AB: Approximately since 1630. About 10 years after the Mayflower.

Have you done research?

AB: Not really.

It’s family lore?

AB: That’s right. The background in his family tended to be either professors or preachers.

So the ancestors came from England?

AB: Yes. I believe from the area of East Anglica. But that’s the best I can figure out. Now my mother was born in Berlin, Germany as a result of the fact that her mother had been born in Sacramento, California. At one point her mother—my mother’s grandmother—said, “well, I’m going to take the girls and we’re going to go and visit the family homes in German.” And so they went over there and went to art school, the girls did. After about a year, all but my mother went back to Sacramento. My mother at that point was doing some art work or something like that and eventually got a nanny type job and eventually, she was introduced to this military officer, Edgar von Usedom, and after a period of time, they got married. And that’s how my mother was born in Germany. However, when World War One started, a day she remembers very well, only because her father took her down to Unter den Linden, the main street in Berlin, and they were all cheering about the war going on, which didn’t mean anything to a 4-year-old, except for the fact he was smoking a cigar and dropped an ash someplace on her hand and created a scar she remembered to her very death.

After World War II — he had fought in the Franco-Prussian War as an officer. By the time the [First World] war ended, things weren’t so good for them. And then they had the great inflation of 1923-1924. And the father had died. So her mother said, “well, we’re wiped out—I’m going home.” That meant Sacramento, California. And for a 15-year-old in 1925 it was “go home? Go where? I don’t want to leave all my friends.” “We’re going.” So in 1925, they boarded the SS Cleveland in Hamburg harbor and set sail for New York. Now, for my mother it was a great trip, because her mother was sick the whole way over. So, she was able to run around and do what she wanted to do, carouse with the boys that were on the ship. She had a hell of a good time, to be honest. When they arrived in the United States and since her mother was an American, they said “where were you born” and she could say Sacramento, California, so they said “walk in!” So they didn’t have to go to Ellis Island. And they went to Jersey City, where there was somebody they knew. They stayed there about three days and then got on a train and started west.

Well, one of the family member’s husbands—one of grandma’s sister’s husbands worked for the Central Pacific Railroad, I think, and could get free passes. So, she got on the train in Sacramento, where they lived and boarded the train and went as far east as he was allowed, which was Ogden, Utah. And there is where my mother met up with some of her family for the first time. They lived at 1214 H Street in Sacramento. For my mother, this was a huge come-down. First off, it was all women living there. Most of the men in that family had died. Secondly, in 1925 she came from this beautiful apartment in Berlin with a lovely living room and dining room as well as indoor plumbing. 1214 H Street had plumbing out back. Well, I can tell you that a friend of grandma’s took her under her wing and saw to it that she got into a school, learned some English, and in a year and a half graduated from Sacramento High School. She went to Sacramento Junior College for two years. And over the dead bodies of all the members of her family she then transferred to Stanford University in Palo Alto. She was in a summer class and lo and behold it was Professor Beach who was teaching it. So, they got to know each other. She got a B+ for the course. To her dying day she said “I deserved an A-“ He always said “you deserved a B+.”

Was it an economics course?

AB: yeah, something in economics. That’s how they met.

Did she graduate from Stanford?

AB: Oh yes—she graduated from Stanford in the class of 1930.

What was her major?

AB: History or political science, something like that. So she graduated and a couple of weeks later she got married in Aunt Creaty’s house. Now, Creaty is a funny name and actually her name is Margaret. But when she went to Germany they Germanicized it a bit. From Margareta to Greta and Creaty. And the other sisters were named Dora, and the last one’s name was Bertha, but she was the little one, and she was called Aunt Baby to the day she died at age 80. So, in 1930 my parents, having gotten married, went east because my father was teaching then at Harvard and he went back to teaching there. A little less than a year later my oldest brother was born in Boston. That’s Arthur. And two years later I came along.

At the end of 1939—Williams College had been a very good place to teach because they had a lot of well-to-do students and they could maintain the salaries. But by 1939 they were in a pinch and were starting to move to lower salaries. My father had taken a civil service test. And lo and behold one of his PhD buddies from Harvard years ago called him and said “Hey—come and work for me!.” They had to check to see whether he could get in by civil service, because in those days civil service had state-by-state quotas. So, my father got into the civil service and he went to work for the Commodity Exchange Authority, which is now the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. At that time it was part of the Department of Agriculture.

A New Dealer, then.

AB: Absolutely. My parents were clearly New Dealers. No question about it. You scratch a lot of people living around here and they were New Deal people, too. There were lots of them. In the block I lived in, in addition to my father there were a number of economists. They included people like Bump Hoover, his real name was Edgar Hoover.

Any relation to the FBI Hoover?

AB: No, not the FBI Hoover. He and his wife were in to violins, violas and all that. I don’t know exactly what he did, but I can tell you he was a population economist and I know he worked for the CIA. Draw your own conclusions what he was doing. Across the street from us was a gentleman by the name of Molton. He was head of the Brookings Institution. And it is very interesting that at one point my younger brother, Walter, worked for Brookings—in the ’70s or ’80s. I remember Molton because he had a 1939 Packard car. I always loved Dr. Molton’s car. I remember when someone was completing a wedding service and promised a limousine and turned up with a 1939 Packard, and I said “Wow!” What a great car. Why don’t you just say, let’s go” you know.

Do you remember others from that street, and their occupations?

AB: Let me think. The number two guy in the FBI lived in a house near where Nebraska and Broad Branch come together, on the south side there.

Who was that?

AB: It may have been Tillitson, but I’m not sure. Back in those days, the traffic wasn’t quite as bad as today. So when you got out of school you’d play with your friends and one of the most popular places was on Nevada Avenue between McKinley and Northampton Streets. Bunny Howe, Billy Joe Howard, the Mayer boys, and of course the Hoover boys, these were all people who lived very close there. The only big concern was not cars—it was the police. If you saw one coming you split—up the alleys, every which way so that they didn’t see you.

They didn’t want you in the street?

AB: No, they didn’t want us in the street. But we used to play football and baseball in the street and in our back yard we had a basketball net up. We played there a lot—all the boys did. Pickup games were the thing. You’d go up to Lafayette in the afternoon and there would always be pickup games. Whoever came played.

So you just happened to be on Nevada because that’s were the kids lived.

AB: That’s right. From Chevy Chase Parkway I just walked out my back door and through a yard and there I was on Nevada Avenue. One thing I remember about living there on Chevy Chase Parkway—I’m going to tell you about June 6th, 1944, D-Day. In those days, we relied on newspapers for news. We were not big radio people. And I remember Captain Johnny Curtis, who lived on Oliver Street, and he would cut through someone else’s yard and through our yard to get up to Connecticut Avenue to the bus terminal at Connecticut and Oliver. In those days, if you were going downtown you got on the back side of the L7 express bus. It pick up people as far south as Albermarle and then proceeded without any further pick ups down to M Street, so it was a good service. I used to ride that, too. Anyway, Captain Curtis came through my yard and quickly yelled to my father “it’s D-Day!” My parents turned on the radio to find out what was going on. I also remember that during that period of time I delivered newspapers. The first newspaper I served was the Washington Evening News. My route at that point was on the west side of Connecticut Avenue. And my stop was what you may remember as the Lisner Home at the corner of 42nd Street and Western Avenue. What I remember is that I gave out around a dozen papers to the ladies who subscribed to it from there. They forever were urging me to bring the paper earlier: “Come on, deliver it earlier!” It took me awhile to figure out what they wanted. In those days, you got your financial information in the newspaper. The women, if they got the paper before 4:00 o’clock, could look at the noon quotes that were there and then make some stock decisions. And that’s what they wanted the paper earlier for. “Get it here earlier!” I did that for a couple of years, then I did The Washington Post. That one I did mostly on the east side of Connecticut Avenue from Chevy Chase Parkway to Nevada Avenue, Patterson, Oliver Streets—that area. That was a nice money-maker for kids. But my father thought I should be patriotic. “What do you mean?” “Well, don’t you want to buy some war bonds?” So, I did. And you could usually tell which boys served newspapers compared with those who didn’t, because when it was war-stamp days, the people who didn’t have newspaper routes would buy maybe one stamp for 10 cents. The boys who has newspaper routes would by a dollar-fifty’s worth. We’d all fill up our books and when you got to $18.75 you turned it in and got a $25.00 bond. I had a bunch of those and kept them until I was in the Army, when I traded them in. That was in 1956 in El Paso at Fort Bliss. I turned them in and bought a car. That was my father’s great savings plan for us. Speaking of my father. You had a little book in which you kept your receipts and expenses. If it was balanced, you got your allowance for the week. If it wasn’t balanced, you had to balance it up and get it right before you could get your allowance. My older brother and I never had problems with that, but my younger brother did.

What sort of expenses did you record?

AB: Every thing you bought you put down: sodas, candy bar, movies, everything. You wrote it all in then subtracted it from what you had to see what your balance is. A lesson in accounting. A very early learning of accounting principles.

Do you recall what you were paid as a paper-boy?

AB: Maybe $20 a month. It wasn’t a whole lot.

And you got tips?

AB: Oh yeah—sometimes. At Christmastime is when you got your tips. You had people that were difficult to collect from. They didn’t want to be home when they saw the newspaper boy coming. You had to go back a couple times. I do recall that one time they had one of these “back the attack” shows. If you bought a bond you got a ticket to it. So I got this ticket and went down to the “back the attack” show, which was on the Washington Monument grounds on the side towards 14th Street. Well, I was sitting so far away—up the hill, the band was towards Constitution Avenue—I could watch the bass drummer swing his baton and hit the bat—I learned something about how long sound traveled before it was heard.

What were “back the attack” shows?

AB: They got you to buy war bonds. In 1942 or so I can remember efforts to arouse kids’ interest in doing things to enhance the war effort, like bringing the newspapers up, taking your grease to the butcher’s, saving your tin cans and that kind of stuff. You know: recycling as we call it today. They brought a jeep—and I had never seen one before—and they took it down to the playground at Lafayette, and they ran it up the stairs from the playground to the school building. About twenty stairs. I had never seen a car go up stairs like that before. That was a very amusing day there. The other one who used to come around was the yo-yo guy; he came in the spring and tried to get you to buy x, y, z-brand yo-yos.

Did you buy them?

AB: Oh sure, everybody did.

So how did the recycling work. Where did you take things?

AB: You took your papers and tin cans to school and the grease to the butcher—in other words to the Safeway store up on Connecticut Avenue.

Was it Safeway already then?

AB: Well, when I first came in 1942 there were three stores and they were called SANITARY and Safeway bought out the Sanitary brand, so there were three Safeway stores. One is where MaGruder’s is today. A second one was below—not where the liquor store is today and not Bread & Chocolate. Bread & Chocolate is where there was a baker. And the third one was in the next block. And it was in the 60s that Safeway consolidated them all in the one market where it is today at Connecticut and Morrison streets, which they got over the objection of many people. But by that time they had let the National Bank of Washington in, now Wachovia or Wells Fargo. And the citizens allow them to break a covenant of no commercial on the east side of Connecticut Avenue. So when the citizens objected, the court overruled them—you broke your own covenant so it doesn’t apply any more.

What was there before?

AB: It was an empty lot. The same was true of the block that now is home to the Exxon station, the fish store and Blue44 restaurant. It, too, was an empty lot.

Were the lots taken care of?

AB: No, it was wild, with trees and stuff growing in them. The only thing there at the time was the E.V. Brown School, which was located on the west side of Connecticut between McKinley and Northampton. It closed in the summer of 1942, interesting to me because that’s the time I moved from Morrison Street to Chevy Chase Parkway. Our new address was in the E.V. Brown district—Nevada Avenue westward. In the middle of July they said “sorry-EV Brown is closed.” They were planning to use it for distributing ration coupons or some such. In our family, I was the one who counted up the coupons and kept track of when each of them was valid. “Mother, you’ve got so many sugars, so many cans, good until x, y, z-date.”

Because you were the accountant guy…

AB: That’s right—I knew how to handle that. Of course my mother worked during the war. She worked for the Department of Terrestrial Magnetism of the Carnegie Institution, down there at Broad Branch and Jocelyn Street. Now they brought their geophysics lab into it and expanded it. It is still there.

What did she do?

AB: She worked under a contract for the Navy. I’m not exactly sure what they did at that point. She could walk to work from there. About a 10-15 minute walk. After the war she went back to work for them in the radio-astronomy section. She was a computer. In those days, computing meant exactly what it says. She put numbers down and calculated them this or that way. They had sight places in Durwood MD, Juancayo Peru, and in Wellington, New Zealand. And her job was to put them all together in GMT time, so that they could look at them all at the same time. In other words: this happened—how did Durwood measure it; Juancayo, Wellington? She stayed there until she retired. She was about 65, so that would have been about 1975.

Did your father stay with the Commodity Exchange Service?

AB: Yes, he did. He passed away in May of 1956.

Was he retired by then?

AB: No, he had years of work to go. He was 55, so he had another 10 years to go. He died of cancer, lung cancer.

And when did your mother die?

AB: She was 82, so it would have been around 1992. She lived in that house on Chevy Chase Parkway until she died. When her mother was still alive, she used to go to California where her mother lived. After living in Sacramento for many, many years, she decided that she wanted to go into an older-peoples home. So, she moved into a place called Altenheim, that’s German for old peoples house, in Oakland, CA. And she moved in under a lifetime contract, where she gave them $4,000 and they were going to take care of her for the rest of her life. Try that today! I don’t know what Ingleside is, but at minimum it’s $200,000. I don’t know how much you get back, and you still have to pay monthly fees on top of that. That was the bargain of the century.

Back then $4,000 was a lot of money.

AB: Yes, but no one though inflation was coming back. Who thought about inflation in the late 1940s? We hadn’t had any inflation in this country since 1910 or earlier.

You mentioned about E.V. Brown closing to your surprise. Then what happened?

AB: I went back to Lafayette School. They just expanded the Lafayette School zone.

You were at Lafayette before.

AB: Yes, I was in the 2nd grade there before. So I went back to Lafayette for the 3rd grade. What appeared to be a boundary change turned out not to be. The E.V. Brown School have since been taken down and that’s where you now have the library and the community center. Back in the 1940s, the library was on Livingston Street, west of Connecticut Avenue next to Lee’s Laundry, the Chinese laundry.

So did you ever end up going to E.V. Brown?

AB: No, never. After the war that building became the community center. I remember going there many times as a teen. My brothers and I would go quite often.

What kind of things did you do there?

AB: Played games—ping pong, billiards and that kind of stuff. One of the things you can always tell about boys who have gone to E.V. Brown School. They’re easy to spot. All you need do is look at their knees. They have ground-in cinders in their knees. How did they get them? It was a coal furnace. The left-over cinders were dumped in the school’s back yard. They guys got into it, banging themselves up out there. When I lived in Williamstown as a kid, I know we had a coal furnace, because my father would stoke it up in the morning. Being a professor, he came home for lunch and could do more then. Same in the late afternoon. Last thing at night he would stoke and put more coal in. By ’42 when we got to Chevy Chase Parkway, it was an oil burning furnace we had. It was converted from coal. When I was selling the house, everybody who came in I showed them something. I said “do you know what this is?” “No,” “No.” Finally someone said “yeah—that’s the thing you stoke the coals with.” It was an iron rod with a little hole-like thing at the end. Someone had finally figured it out. And you can see where the coal bin had been in the house. The house of Chevy Chase Parkway had a frame on the back side, a framed wooden thing you could open and close—well, that’s where you put the ice in. Before we got there they converted away from that, but at one point they brought ice into the house through this window in the back. And that little smallish room that was on the back side of the kitchen—my mother always had that as an alternate refrigerator in the wintertime. It was about two by four feet, enough so that she could use it as an auxiliary refrigerator. That’s why I was asking you about your ice-box here.

How was the coal delivered? Was it dumped into the cellar/basement?

AB: Not sure, but there must have been a chute somewhere to bring it in. By the 1940s, hard coal was going out and oil and gas were coming in an awful lot of places. I know when I was in college our fraternity had a coal-burning furnace. We had a big debate whether to convert to oil or not. The one man who mounted a mighty defense of coal came from Winburg, PA, a coal-mining area. That was soft coal and we had hard coal, but he was defending coal interests in general.

That’s near Johnstown.

AB: Right, near Johnstown.

Where did you go to college?

AB: I went to Dickinson College in Carlyle, Pennsylvania.

What did you major in?

AB: Economics.

Oh, what a surprise!

AB: Surprise, yes. My older brother went to Swarthmore and my younger brother followed me to Dickinson. He was a political science major.

What did you do after college?

AB: Well, it was 1955 when I graduated. Let’s go back. When I graduated from high school in 1951, lo and behold, we were at war. The Korean War. So your choices were, if you got into college you tried to stay there. And remember that if you failed one course you were no longer a full-time student. So, it was a great stimulus for the boys to study, because you didn’t want to fail a course and suddenly be draftable. I managed to survive four years in college, despite thinking I might not get that far without being drafted. I remember the beginning of the Korean War—I am going to back up here. It was June 25, 1950 and I had just finished an aquatics camp. I was standing on a highway in Massachusetts waiting for a bus by some sort of a café and I heard the news come out: we are at war. I said “Oh !@#%”(expletive) because I was 17. I knew I was raw meat for going into the military even though I had another year of high school to do. But I did manage to finish college in my four years because all the boys studied hard then. So, when I left college the alternatives were pretty slim pickings. You couldn’t get a job anywhere unless you were going to be 4-F, the military category which meant that you were not acceptable. If you were 1-A, which most of us were, you were prime meat for that. So, your choices really were to go to graduate school—and at that point I really didn’t feel like that—or to figure out how to serve the military. You had two or three choices. They were where did you want to go, how short you wanted to be in , how long you wanted to be in. My older brother figured out that he wanted to go as short as he could and I wanted to do the same thing so I actually volunteered for the draft. I was picked up a month later and I served my two years in the U.S. Army. I went first to Fort Jackson for basic training and then Fort Monmouth for the second eight-weeks training. I can’t tell you what we were trained in, but I can tell you that every once in a while the Newark airport would call down and tell us “you son of a…turn that GD thing off!” Radar jamming. After that I was assigned to Fort Bliss in El Paso, Texas. About eight or nine of our class went there. I’ll always remember the guy who said “Oh, I’m so glad I’m not going to Taiwan.” “Oh, OK”, I said. “Look at my orders,” he said. Signed at the Pentagon for reassignment to Formosa. I said “you don’t know your geography, do you? Formosa is the real name for Taiwan.”

So where were you?

AB: Fort Bliss—I was there the whole remaining time. Was it the most profitable use of my time? No. But do I begrudge having served? Absolutely not. I’m glad I did serve. It was interesting. I mean, there were times like being a stockade guard for a week. It was a good experience. Because you would take prisoners out and they would say “don’t point that gun at me!” You had a fully-loaded weapon. Small carbine. But the prisoners didn’t want to be shot at.

What kind of prisoners?

AB: They were in the stockade for doing all kinds of misdemeanors.

Army people.

AB: Yeah, Army people. At one point I was in a barracks right behind the stockade. I knew you couldn’t do anything to harass prisoners. But you could have fire drills. It’s amazing: They’d have two or three a night. “Everybody out! Fire drill! You’re going to march around…hup, two!…” I was actually in a unit that taught people how to operate generators. Not the kind you have in a car, but a bigger one, the size of a truck engine. We needed them because the whole area we were in was anti-aircraft. The anti-aircraft guns were controlled by radar and they had to have electricity, so they had to have these big generators to make them work. So, I learned something about mechanical generators, engines and that sort of stuff.

Did you serve with people of a sort that you wouldn’t otherwise meet elsewhere?

AB: To some degree. I would say that when I was in basic training a third of the group were college graduates and two-thirds were not.

And from different parts of the country?

AB: Oh yeah. My older brother served up here at Edgewood Arsenal. I never knew what he did until a few years ago. He was a chemist. Edgewood Arsenal—you know what they did? They were working on some sort of gas—mustard gas or something like that. I called him not long ago and said, “now I know what you did at Edgewood Arsenal—you worked on mustard gas.” He said “yup.”

He never told you.

AB: No. It was secret work. That reminds me about another story about security clearances which I love to tell. Around 1944 my mother was interviewed by an FBI agent. They were interviewing about a person who lived across the street. “Do you know this person?” “Yes.” “Do they have friends like everybody else?” “Yes.” “Do they look ok?” “Yes.” “Do they look like Communists?” My mother replied “What’s a Communist look like?” He said, “well, you know.” And she said “no, I don’t know.” So, whenever I have been interviewed for anyone since then I have said “don’t ask me if they look like a Communist. I don’t know what a Communist looks like. Don’t ask me what a terrorist looks like. I don’t know. You’ve got to tell ME.” You can see how people could use that sort of a statement.

So, when you got out of the Army, what happened?

AB: Well, I came home and looked for a job. My next door neighbor was another one of these economists, Dr. Charles Morgan, a transportation economist. He put in a good word for me at the American Trucking Association. So, I went to work for them as a very junior employee, doing economic work of sorts. I helped develop information and pamphlets and that sort of thing. I worked there for about two years. I was standing on a corner and a man came by and gave me a ride and asked me where I worked. How did I know him? His son was in our scout troop, Boy Scout Troop 52 at All Saints Church. I had been associated with it for many years. My brothers and I were all Eagle scouts there. So he talked with me and six weeks later I went to work for him at the National Cotton Council of America. And I stayed there until I retired and after that continued as a consultant through today, so that’s 1960 through today.

You are still there as a consultan?

AB: Yes, I don’t go very much now, but I am still there. I am involved in export promotion, now more in the accounting side. During my time with the Cotton Council I also worked with an affiliate called Cotton Council International. I travel a lot. I ran programs in Japan, Korea, Philippines, Thailand, Hong Kong, and Canada. Not everything, but I spent the biggest chunk of the money, let’s put it that way. I did the Canadian program for 25 years. I’d go up to Montreal three or four times a year. People would come up and say “oooh, there’s a new restaurant”. “What is it…yeah I went there the last time I was here.” I knew a lot in Montreal.

Did you enjoy all that travel?

AB: Yeah, in a way. My wife didn’t, because when I went to the Far East I went for 21 days and by that time we had three young children, so it was a little hard on her.

Speaking of your wife, how did you meet her?

AB: It was at some organization, I think the Young Democrats. We got to know each other a little bit and about December of 1962 we started dating. We got married in September of 1963.

And her name is…

AB: Martha.

What is her background. Is she from here?

AB: No. She is from Hyde Park, Vermont. Not the one in New York. She went to local schools there and went to the University of Vermont and graduated. Then she came down here; she had a brother who lived near the GEICO headquarters at Wisconsin Avenue. We got engaged about June of ’63.

So, she came here to work?

AB: Yes, to work. At that time she was working at what became the Department of Education; it was part of HEW then.

Did she continue working after your children were born?

AB: For a short while. Then she left to devote her time to raising our three kids.

Is your wife still alive?

AB: Very much so! We’re coming up on our 48th anniversary in a little over a week from now.

You talked about people living nearby, whose fathers were economists. A coincidence.

AB: Probably not. They probably talked economics all the time, though their fields were different.

Do you remember any other families you haven’t already mentioned in your immediate neighborhood? What they might have done occupation-wise?

AB: Well, high school was more interesting from that point of view. My high school class had some very interesting people in it.

This is Wilson?

AB: Right, Wilson. Congressmen and Senators kids, there were plenty of those. Jean Douglas, Senator Douglas of Illinois, is one I remember. Mary-Lou Judd—her father was Congressman Judd of Minnesota. I talked to her at our 60th high school reunion recently. She said her father would be appalled at how things are now. We had some baseball people. Harris, Harris—can’t remember his first name—they called him rats-leg Harris. He was the son of Bucky Harris, who was the manager of the Senators. He was one of the great players when they won the (World) Series in ’24 and they were in the Series in ’25 and in ’33. Before my time. There was another boy; his name was Keith Einen. His father was like the secretary of the Senators. Judy Morse was in my brother’s class and that was (Senator) Wayne Morse’s (Oregon) daughter. Senator Douglas was an interesting person because in 1948 he and the Democratic candidate for governor—his name was Green—they won the state by 500,000 votes, a huge win. And all night the Truman margin kept sliding and sliding during the 1948 presidential election. Then suddenly Cook County would produce a few more votes, then downstate and upstate votes came in alternately. Finally, by 4:30 in the morning it was declared that Truman had won Illinois. It was that close. You remember that’s when the Chicago paper had “DEWEY WINS!” on the headline and Truman was holding it up.

So all these people lived in the neighborhood, then, and went to school there?

AB: Ahh umhummm (yes). By the way, some of my classmates had also been in Warren Buffet’s house near Tenley Circle. Warren Buffet went to Wilson four years before I did. Well, his father was a Congressman from Nebraska. That’s why he was here. He lived somewhere around 43rd Street and Tenley Circle. I didn’t know him and my older brother didn’t know him, but some of my classmates knew someone in the family because they can remember going into the house. There was Tommy Caudle in my class. His father was T. Lamar Caudle, a big shot in the White House under Truman.

Do you know where Senator Douglas lived?

AB: No, I don’t know where he lived.

Any of the others you mentioned?

AB: Not really. Truman, you know, lived at 4701 Connecticut Avenue when he was a senator.

And he used to walk to work.

AB: No, it would be too far to Capitol Hill. In those days, they only wanted to rent for eight or nine months, because Congress went out. It wasn’t a 12-month-a-year job. But there were a lot of people like that in our classes. Wilson was a very scholarly school at that point. I would say that 95% went on to college. Something like that. And you would find that, with a couple of exceptions that I will come back to, the higher you were in the class, the further north you went. The lower you were in the class, the further south you went. The further south, like the University of Alabama. The two exceptions were Duke and Vanderbuilt. So, you can see that I went to school in Carlyle, Pennsylvania just above the Mason-Dixon line, so I was in the middle of my class.

What you are saying is that it was a very competitive environment.

AB: Oh yes. A very competitive environment. I can tell you that the percentage of Wilson students going to college is still in the 90 percent bracket. But I wouldn’t phrase it as the north-south divide as it was in my time. And some of the schools I never heard of are now quite popular.

What was the racial mix of the school?

AB: 1951? This was before Brown vs. Board of Education. DC schools were segregated.

Were you personally aware of this?

AB: I was not. My younger brother said he was. Behind Deal at that time was the Reno School, which was the Division-2 elementary school.

Division-2 meaning what?

AB: I was in Division-1.

Where was the school?

AB: Next to Deal. Deal will take it over for some purpose.

So, if I am understanding correctly, African-American kids went to that school?

AB: That was their elementary school.

They didn’t live in the community, did they?

AB: Absolutely, they did. They lived on 41st Street. There was a big African-American community on 41st Street.

Whereabouts on 41st Street?

AB: Ahhhh-do you know where the Dancing Crab (restaurant) is on Wisconsin Avenue? You go straight down that street (between Brandywine and Military) and that street was pretty much an African-American community at that point. The African-American migration to Washington DC started downtown and had gone west towards Georgetown, up Wisconsin Avenue, all the way up to that 41st Street block. Around 1937-1938 there was a move afoot for whites to move into Georgetown. So when I was a youngster and you said I’m going to Georgetown, the question was “which side?” There were two sides. I don’t think it made a whole lot of difference, but that’s what it was.

So, Reno was a high school?

AB: No, no. It was an elementary school.

Where did the kids go after that?

AB: I don’t know. Out biggest competitor when I was there was Western, which is now School of the Arts. The other one was Coolidge, but more Western. If you were Jewish you would tend to look at Coolidge as the big competitor.

Why is that?

AB: Coolidge was a heavy Jewish school.

Where is it located?

AB: Coolidge? Northwest, on the other side of the park.

And Western, was it Africa-American?

AB: Both were division I schools. When I read obituaries—anybody who says I went to Coolidge, McKinley Tech, Anacostia, and they’re my age, I can tell you their race. They went to a division I school.

Is that what they were called?

AB: Yeah—division I and division II.

And everyone understood what that meant?

AB: I didn’t, but my parents did. When we moved to this area, my father, having been a professor at Williams, had also been on the admissions committee at Williams. So, he knew schools all up and down the east because people applied to Williams. He knew that in this school you go to this bar and to that school to another. And in those days the schools in Virginia, to be honest, were not that good. And even those in Montgomery County were below those in DC. So DC was the place to go. And that’s why the people I named in my high school class were there.

They didn’t necessarily live here?

AB: No, no. They lived here. There were a few Maryland kids to came across. In those days they could come and go free in DC. We had some kids who lived just on the other side of Western Avenue who came to DC schools—particularly Wilson.

So what was your first awareness of race and discrimination?

AB: Probably when I got to the military. Though I didn’t see much. By that point the military didn’t care who you were. Stay in line! Do what I tell you!

This was after Truman…

AB: When I graduated from college, I was about in the middle of my class. Gotta remember: I graduated high school in the middle of my class, college in the middle of my class. And here I went to the military. Boy! That was an awakening. There were a number of kids who were like me, but there were some who were not. One of the first economic experiences that that led to was the night before they said: Tomorrow we’re going to go to the dentist. I thought to myself: yeah, so what? You never heard such hooting and hollering in your life from the young fellows there. By the end of the next afternoon after our excursion there were two of us in the barracks who had no teeth pulled. And the average was like two or three. Some had six—that was the maximum they could take out. Even before that I realized that there were some people who thought the military wasn’t so bad. You had a place to sleep. Clothes that were clean. And a bed to sleep in and three meals a day! For many in this country that wasn’t taken for granted. It was a great experience for me. Maybe not the best use of my time, but I don’t begrudge it.

We talked about African American discrimination. But what about Jewish people and discrimination?

AB: Not really. When I was in elementary school—this isn’t an absolute—the Catholic children tended to go to Blessed Sacrament and you tended to have Protestant and Jewish children at the public school, like Lafayette. And back in those days, before we banned reading the Bible, they could read the Bible. Looking back on it I have two observations: when the Jewish kids read from the Bible, it was easy—they read from the Old Testament. The Protestant kids read from the New Testament. No big deal. Then we said the Lord’s Prayer (not everyone seemed to do so) and then we got down to the very end “forever and ever”…one noticed voices dropping off. Those were the few Catholic kids. That came more as hindsight.

Memories of Lafayette?

AB: I see you have LAFAYETTE LIFE. I mentioned some things already—recycling of cans and that sort of thing. I do remember that after school we went up and played in the playground. I wasn’t the greatest student in the world. I remember in 5th grade I had to go to summer school to catch up a little bit. A week or so ago I took my grandchildren and youngest daughter out to the aviation museum out near Dulles airport. A few minutes after walking in I said “hello, Russell!” What are you doing here? I come here every Thursday, he said. I went to 2nd grade through high school with Russell Morse. Why was he interested in aviation? He went on to become a pilot for American Airlines. Lafayette had a pretty big zone, also because Hawthorne was added in the 1950s.

Any memories of Deal?

AB: Ahhhh…yes. Back in those days there was a little bit of hazing going on. One of the tricks was to task the haze-ee with counting all the bricks in a wall. I’m sure my older brother put him up to it. I started to count. Then the bell rang and everybody went in. There was a big field out back there. We all played baseball, basketball, softball. One of the best hitters was a fellow by the name of Paul Minukian, who was in my class. You don’t recognize the name? That’s Minukian Rugs. They’re still in business over on Georgia Avenue. There was another person in the rug business in my younger brother, Walter’s class. If I said how good Minukian rugs were, he’d say how good the others were. About the time I was 12, when we were living in Chevy Chase Parkway, my younger brother and I decided we should get a radio. Doesn’t sound like a big deal, but in 1945 that was a big deal. I remember we saved up and between us we had $8. We went down to Sun Radio at Connecticut and Albermarle Street, next to the car wash place, which is still there. My brother and I got on the bus, went down there and bought ourselves an $8 radio, which we kept for years and years—a little boxy AM radio. It was a big deal, because in our house all we had was an old-fashioned radio – a dome kind of shape with a little thing in the middle, you’d see the light in there and turn the dials. We did listen to the radio back then. I remember listening to Captain Midnight, C A P T A I N M I D N I G H T ! And you had a little decoder. At the end of the show some numbers were given to decode – a clue about the next day’s radio program. And there was Jack Armstrong – JACK ARMSTRONG, JACK ARMSTRONG, THE ALL-AMERICAN BOY. Jack Armstrong was 5:30, Captain Midnight was 5:45. Then on Monday-Wednesday-Friday at 7:30 was THE LONE RANGER. If you listened closely they played some music that gave you a clue as to what kind of story they would have that night. We got our first TV around 1953, before I went to college. Can’t remember the name, but I remember it had a green tinted screen. My father liked that because he had bad eyes.

Do you remember what kind of shows you watched in ’52?

AB: No—there wasn’t that much in ’52. I do remember that WTOP over at Tenley Circle used to have Boy Scouts come over—when they started the day at 5:30 and played the Star Spangled Banner. When they closed at midnight, too. That was their day—5:30 to midnight. Channel 5 was Dumont, which is now Fox.

I remember Dumont in Pennsylvania. You mentioned being an Eagle scout. Where did you meet?

AB: I was in the Cub Scouts in Pack 57. That was at the Chevy Chase Presbyterian Church. My father was the Pack-master one of the three years I was in it. Then I went into Troop 52, which is at All Saints Church, and still is. That troop is 98 years old now. In 2013 it will be 100 years old. The Boy Scouts are only 100 years old this year—2011. My older brother was in the troop before me and then I went in and Walter came behind me. We had a great troop when I was there. The first scoutmaster we had was George Anderson. He lived on Patterson Street, about two or three doors down from Blessed Sacrament Church. He was in the Army Quartermaster Corps. Very often we would see some new equipment – a little can, a cylinder maybe a foot high, for example: set it up, put a match to it and there was a stove. About the time he left, we got a new assistant scoutmaster, Elliott Sellinger, who was with the troop for many, many years. Very innovative, very interesting person. Really did a great job for Troop 52. And during that time, I don’t know how many Eagle Scouts—we had lots of them. I know my brothers and I were not the only ones. There were lots of Eagles then. We’d go camping a lot – owned a piece of property up at Seneca. If you look at a map of Seneca Creek up there, you’ll see a T-52 in the middle of Seneca State Park, owned by the Troop 52 Forest Preserve Association. We had it under a different name. Later when I went to get the property off the tax rolls the name caused some confusion with the authorities.

Did you become scoutmaster?

AB: I was assistant scoutmaster for a while. It was a very interesting time with Troop 52. I remember one trip that started with a few clouds in the sky. Before the afternoon was over we had eight or nine inches of snow on the ground. We stayed overnight—actually it stopped snowing around midnight.

So where is Seneca State Park?

AB: Route 28—Montgomery County. We thought it was a haul to go way out there at first. That was in the middle of nowhere, before anything was developed. It’s surrounded now by Seneca State Park. About 15 miles from here. We went on other trips: Chimmney Forest in Pennsylvania, for example, usually between Christmas and New Year’s. Three days. That kind of stuff. We always had campaigns to raise money so we could go places and do things. I guess we went once to Groton, Connecticut. I was assistant scoutmaster then. I went into an atomic submarine. But the best story about scouts comes up when my brother was in the Army in Orleans, France. He was in the Medical Corps. He was a lowly clerk, being a private. One day all the majors and colonels were talking. They were talking about the head of the medical corps, General Wergerland. In the midst of this my brother piped in: “I met him. I know him”. The eyes rolled: “how the hell did this lowly private has this insight? “His son was in our Boy Scout troop.” He wasn’t the only famous person who was in our troop. We also had the secretary of agriculture, the former governor of Minnesota. His son was in our troop. Those were the kind of people who would go through our troop.

They lived in the neighborhood?

AB: Troop 52 was both DC and Maryland.

It sounds like Boy Scouts were a large part of your growing up.

AB: Yeah, I was part of that for about six years.

What else did you do as a child?

AB: Well, the competition wasn’t like it is today with Little League and football and basketball and God knows how many other things kids can participate in. In those days scouts were a more prominent feature in the landscape of opportunities. In my estimation that is one reason why the scouting movement has not grown in tandem with the general population. They’re facing competition they didn’t have back then. There weren’t such things as Little Leagues when I was growing up. It was pick-up games.

Did you have any hobby back then?

AB: Not that I can recall.

Did you like to read?

AB: Not that much.

Were you assigned household chores?

AB: I’m sure I was. I’m sure my mother said you have to do this and that, but I don’t remember them specifically.

Speaking of your mother, particularly her German background, did you learn German yourself?

AB: Well, the answer to that is no. The reason is simple. I should have started when I had been between 8-12 years old. That was 1941-1945. Nobody spoke German. If you had a Germanic name, you tried to downplay it. That just wasn’t the right milieu to learn German. Nobody did it.

Did you study a language in school?

AB: Yes, I did study French. And in my senior year in high school I took German and I took German in college. So, I learned a little bit.

Did your mother ever communicate in German with you?

AB: Not really. The odd word or phrase. I mean, when my mother came to the United States in 1925—I have at least one diary left—in ’25 it was all in German; in ’26 it was all in German, but by 1930, everything was English. By the way, in about 1933 or so, she was in Williamstown and said, I don’t know what my legal status is. On my father’s side, we had somebody who worked in the State Department, one of his cousins, somebody like that. So he went to him and he said I don’t know what you are. So, my mother, now with three children, a high school graduate, a college graduate from Stanford University, knowing plenty of Political Science, was suddenly enrolled in immigration classes to become an American citizen.

What year was that?

AB: My younger brother was already born, so it was 1935 or so.

So, she took the exam…

AB: Passed right through, easy. She was doing this in northern Massachusetts where most of her classmates were French Canadians.

So, she was actually naturalized.

AB: Yes, she became a naturalized citizen. Well, it wasn’t clear as to what her citizenship was when she came over in 1925. I think she had some piece of paper that said she was the daughter of this [American] person. But it didn’t say what her citizenship was. It wasn’t clear. When my mother came up they asked her where were you born. She said Sacramento, California. They said pass through. Hey—you’re an American citizen, by definition.

Did the family belong to a church?

AB: When my parents lived in Williamstown I know my father and mother went to the Congregational Church up there. When we came here we went to All Souls Unitarian Church on 16th Street. We went for several years, but the war was a different problem for men and for my father Sundays was just too much after he worked six days a week to get up and go to church on Sundays. So, he stopped going.

Did you go to Sunday school as a child?

AB: Well, I went here at All Souls Church. All Souls Unitarian—not the Episcopal one on Connecticut Avenue and Woodley Road. That’s the church where my wife and I got married. The assistant minister lived across the street from me. His name was James Reeb. Not a famous name to you, but several years after we were married, he went to one of those freedom marches in Selma, Alabama. He was hit over the head with a brick or some such and died at the age of 35, 36, something like that.

Did your parents belong to any organizations?

AB: Yes. I do know that at first my parents did not want to join the Chevy Chase Citizens Association because it was discriminatory. And once CCCA stopped being that, they joined.

Was it in their bylaws?

AB: Yeah. It was in the bylaws. When Chevy Chase Citizens Association started they were clearly discriminatory. No question about it.

Blacks and Jews excluded?

AB: Blacks as far as I can remember. But they weren’t the only ones. The guy who developed Sumner – that was very discriminatory—Blacks and Jews at that point, out there in Maryland. It wasn’t unusual. And those clauses, by the way, by the time I bought my first house, they said the covenants are there, but they are unenforceable.

Again, what year was that?

AB: It certainly existed through 1950. I can’t tell you when it ended. Now, my father was a singer and he belonged to the Chevy Chase Chanters for a number of years.

I never heard of that organization…

AB: Well, they sang at the Presbyterian Church. It was a men’s singing group. And I know that my mother belonged to the Chevy Chase Women’s Club—the one in Maryland—mostly so that we could participate in the social activities they had there. They used to have dances out there, which were very good. Although, Deal had its Friday night club every so often. That was sort of a dance night. And of course Wilson in those days actually had dances on property, except for senior proms and things like that, the fancy ones.

The Deal Friday night clubs were at Deal?

AB: Oh yeah. The one job you didn’t want to get is the one who handed out Cokes, because you had to put your hand in the ice water to bring ‘em out.

How did the Friday Night Club work? Kids just showed up? No live music, I imagine…

AB: Oh—right—there were records. Back in those days, in the first or second semester in 8th grade you were taught to dance. The boys lined up in the boys’ gym and were led to the girls’ gym and they taught you how to dance. It was during the war and the boys actually had a female gym instructor, Miss Plimpton. In junior high and high school I may not have been the best athlete, but I learned how to referee a lot of sports. That’s one of the things I learned in junior high school, along with how to handle a little money in the scouts.

Did you have fewer male teachers because of the war?

AB: Absolutely.

When D-Day was announced, do you remember any celebrations? Or reactions to Pearl Harbor?

AB: I don’t remember Pearl Harbor, but I do remember a few months later when the Chinese town of Fuchow fell. Why do I remember that? It was insignificant in the war, but my neighbor down the street had a dog named Fuchow. I do remember May, 1945 when the war ended. It was very clear that it was coming to an end. Some people guessed wrong by a day or two. We didn’t go down town, but a lot of people did. And I know that at VJ Day I was in summer camp in Wilmington, Vermont, the camp I went to for many years. When it was announced we rang the bell all day. They had a bell to tell you to come to dinner and that kind of stuff. That camp was very nice—got out of the heat, humidity and poison ivy of Washington.

How long did you typically spend there?

AB: Eight weeks. It was very nice. We had rowing, canoeing, sailing, swimming, riflery, archery. We put on plays. We did a circus. We did circus side-shows. I remember the circus side show: to get money to participate in the side-shows, for every couple blueberries that you picked, you got half a cup of beans you could use to spend at the side-shows. It was a way to get us to pick the blueberries they had on the 300 acres they had. It was a clever device. We all appeared in the circus. I remember I did boating, tennis, riflery, archery. My younger brother was much more into horseback riding than I was. I did it some, but he was much more into that. That was fun doing that. For a number of years we’d take the train to go up there. You would arrive in Brattleboro at 3:00 a.m. They would meet you and get you up to camp. It was a big deal.

Back to the war years, do you have memories of things like rationing?

AB: Yeah, I remember rationing, very much so. In general, with families of the size we had, if you were reasonably prudent, you didn’t have a problem. You had to know when to use your coupons—your sugar, your cans, and so on. My wife who lived in northern Vermont, and by that point her father had passed away at the beginning of the war, with only two people, it was tougher to make the coupons work for two, but for five, it was easier.

You mentioned cans.

AB: Tin cans. They were rationed. It was a metal ration.

Did that encourage you to have a garden?

AB: Yes. We had a little one, but at Lafayette School there were victory gardens on the Northampton side, which has now got a new wing. I remember the stuff we grew, the most famous thing was chard, because it was easy to grow and very nutritious.

So, families had a plot?

AB: Just so.

Do you remember the black-outs?

AB: Yes. I remember on Morrison Street we had these things that you put black paper in frames and into the windows. You went outside to make sure that no light would come through. And my father was an air raid warden and he had one of those white hats with the funny thing on the top and the brims, you know. He was a block warden or whatever it was.

What were the warden’s duties?

AB: If they had a black-out he went around and insured that no one had a visible light. That your windows were completely sealed up.

And how did he know there was a blackout?

AB: A siren went off.

How often did that happen?

AB: Not very often.

It was more of a practice…

AB: Yes. To find out what people were thinking and doing. Because there were very few actual attacks on the United States during the war. There was one out in the Aluetian Islands; another on the west coast and I think one of my aunts had a piece of property damaged by some Japanese something or other. Nothing much except for Pearl Harbor.

A few German commandos were landed on Hancock Point in Friendship Bay in Maine, across from Bar Harbor.

AB: Oh, did they? But basically, the U.S. was unscathed by the hostilities. That was both an advantage and a disadvantage. The advantage was we were unscathed. The disadvantage was that by the 1950s a lot of our industries were behind the times compared with the newly developed industrial bases of Germany, France, Japan, UK. They were more competitive that we were for a while.

What was the most common method of transportation used by your family?

AB: During the war it was the bus. No gasoline. Like my friend John Curtis was commenting about the fact that he had three gallons of gasoline for the month. Hell, he said, we drank more gin than that! I remember that after the war ended in 1945 when we had a little more gas, on Sunday afternoons we’d go out to Silver Spring. Now, my father having grown up in west Pacific Pullman was real railroad-oriented. In those days, when he started, that was the big mode of transportation. So we’d go out there, arriving just before 5:30 and we’d watch the Capital Limited, which was the B&O train that went to Chicago come through and take on some passengers and then we’d wait about 15 more minutes and then they had the National Limited, which was the B&O train that went to St. Louis. And then we’d go over to Gifford’s and have ice cream. Right there on Georgia Avenue. About the first time we had enough gas to go to the ocean – I remember going to Rehobeth in 1948. I was 15 then. Our family went there for a week. In those days that was a big deal because you had to go to the bay and get on a ferry boat.

How did you get to Vermont?

AB: Train. The first time we went, my older brother was in charge. It was supposed to have been a through train from Washington to Montreal. But when we arrived in New York we were told: no, it ain’t a through train—you’ve got to get off this one and get on that one. So we changed trains. The new one was absolutely packed. Of course all the trains were packed then. All the buses on Connecticut Avenue were packed. The bus company made money during the war here.

What was the bus company called?

AB: Capital Transit. It was owned by an insurance company. They were all packed. And that was before they had air conditioning and before they had automatic transmissions. So it was uh uh uh uh, jerking up the street. Quite a ride. But if you only had three gallons of gasoline with you’re A-coupon/sticker, that’s all you got, so

What kind of car did you have?

AB: We had a 1933 Chevrolet. That was the first car my father and mother ever bought. The year I was born. Yeah, we had that through the war. And then they bought a ’48 Chevrolet. The ’33 Chevrolet they bought in McMann’s Chevrolet dealership in Williamstown and the ’48 car they bought at Chevy Chase Chevrolet out in Bethesda. My mother bought several cars there. I know she bought the ’48 and another one after that. At least two more from them. My older brother’s favorite place to buy was Paul’s over there on Wisconsin Avenue. Oldsmobile dealership. He bought several, so every time they saw him coming in the door they would say yes Mr. Beach, what can we give you today? He’d say Allen, do you think that car is OK? I said yeah. He said: I’ll buy it—how much? They’d figure it out and he write them a check.

Where on Wisconsin?

AB: You know where Kinko’s is? Across the street. There is still a dealership of some sort there. Anyway, he’s not the only one who bought cars. I only bought one car in my life on credit. When I came out the military the car I had had a cracked block so I needed to buy another car. So I went down to Georgetown and bought myself a car for $600. A used car. I borrowed the money from my mother and I paid her back in nine months. Ever since then I have been buying cars with cash only. If I don’t got it, I don’t buy it. That’s sort of a Depression psychology. You’ve got to save and have it. I’m still that way, I think. If I don’t got it I can’t buy it.

In this neighborhood cars are not that important.

AB: Well you know when I first moved over to Stuyvesant when you saw somebody had a new car, that was a big deal. But a new car today doesn’t seem to be anywhere near as big a deal as it use to be. I don’t know: maybe I’m just missing something. It’s not what it used to be.

We have a generic question for these histories: What are some of your most happy memories in Chevy Chase?

AB: Married here, children here.

Growing up here?

AB: The school was fine. A lot of friends. Used to play with them. Athletics. I got along well with my brothers. Well, I’ll describe that this way: my older brother was “kind of the mountain.” He could control his two younger brothers. But by the time we got to Chevy Chase Parkway—I can’t tell you whether it was ’42, ’43, or ’44—my mother referred to a big Coke bottle mark on the ceiling of the room. She said you and your brothers must have had a hell of a fight. Well, we did. And from that day forth, my older brother knew he was no longer king of the mountain. That was it. I did more things with my younger brother Walter than I did with my older brother, all throughout out history, even to this day. If I don’t call him, he doesn’t call me. Even though he’s not that far away in Columbus, Ohio. So, those are some of the things I do remember. To some extent, I think the world was simpler and more naïve back then than it is today. I think kids today are much more up on communication and things that I paid no attention to, like drugs. I didn’t know what they were until I was in my 20s. Today kids in their teens know all about it. That’s what has happened. Is that good or bad? I don’t know.

How would you describe the community, as far as cohesiveness, knowing each other…

AB: Oh I think people knew each other, particularly on the streets and blocks of the schools you went to. Particularly any family who had children anywhere near our age, particularly if they were boys and we played with them. My first experience with another person, a Navy captain who lived three doors up from us. I was probably 14 or 15. He had us come up and help him move some things around. He said, well I’m going to give you some pie—pizza pie. What’s that, I said. It was my first experience with pizza. That was about 1948. He went on and was head of the Navy unit at White Sands proving ground about the same time I was in El Paso, so I remember going up there and visiting with him once. I didn’t have my uniform on, so I was royally treated. He didn’t care that I was a private; he remembered me as a good neighbor. We did have another neighbor—I think she’s still alive, I think she lives in Virginia Beach. Clearly, she was a Thalidomide kid. Her mother must have taken it, she had a short a foot. Every once in a while you’d see those kinds of things. By the way, when I was growing up—I’m thinking about polio now—everybody was scared. In the summertime people were scared about letting you go to the swimming pool. So we didn’t go to Chevy Chase Lake pool. It wasn’t the cleanest pool, because I remember once I did go and I got a rash on my rear end. But as much as we knew that the president had some problems, no one ever saw that he had polio. But we all knew it, because at the end of January is when the March of Dimes came and if you went to the movies, the Avalon, for example, they would always pass a canister around and ask you to put a dime in. And we always did that in late January, which was near his birthday. Everybody thought that the disease was water-borne so they were scared to let you go to swimming pools. That’s one of the reasons my parents sent me up to Vermont in the summer.

FDR got it swimming at Campobello.

AB: Is that right?

Is there any question we should have asked you?

AB: When I lived in Stephanson Place, the ANCs had been instituted a couple years before, where I was on the east side of Utah, the seat became open and I ran for it and won.

What year?

AB: 1979. I held it for four years, then I moved to Stuyvesant and ran for the seat I now have held since 1984. In that earlier period, I was also involved in the Chevy Chase Citizens Association. I was president of CCCA for two years. And my brother Walter was elected president two years later—ca. 1973-74 and 1976-77, respectively. One of the things I have subsequently learned: there was a trolly line on Connecticut Avenue, first developed in 1893. And the superintendant of that trolly line was my Great Grandfather. AJ Warner. He had become a friend of Senator Newlands through the silverite movement back in the 1890s.

Really?

AB: Senator Newlands had grown up in the south and went to California and then met a girl, whom he married, whose father was head of the Comstock Company in Nevada. So Newlands went to Nevada where he practiced law. In those days it was the state senate that appointed the federal senators. So Newlands was appointed and that’s how he got to be a U.S. senator. And of course he was always for the silver movement—16:1 instead of 15:1 , which would make silver cheap, and therefore would be the metal in circulation. And that meant more silver would have to have been mined, an important point for Senator Newlands. And for my Great Grandfather, it meant that money was cheap and he could borrow more money to start businesses. He started what became part of a railroad; he started what became part of an oil company. In 1893 Newlands wanted to find someone with railroad experience and my Great Grandfather had built the line from Marietta to Cleveland, so Newlands turned to him to be superintendant of the Washington DC project. There is still evidence of what they accomplished today on Connecticut Avenue. If you go to the corner of Connecticut and Albermarle, you will see a couple of buildings on the east side of the Avenue that appear to be at street level. As they indeed are. But to do that, earth needed to be shaved from the hill on the other side of the Avenue and pushed into the ravine on the east side. The up-and-down was reduced. If you look at the buildings on the east side, which is now where the Office Depot is, at one time there was a bowling alley in there on the lower floor and a skating rink on the top floor. But if you go behind it, there’s a huge drop off. My neighbor Dr. Morgan, who I mentioned, the transportation economist, he told me at one point in 1923 he got to Connecticut and Everett Street, he cut off his engine and coasted all the way down town. He started at the highest point and it was like a roller coaster—you go up and down.

Where did your Great Grandfather live?

AB: Marietta, Ohio. He’d been a Congressman a couple of times, too. Sometimes he won and sometimes Charles Dawes won. And that’s the Charles Dawes that became Vice President with Calvin Coolidge.

The Dawes known for the Dawes Plan for German reparations?

AB: That’s it—you got it.

Did your Great Grandfather ever live here?

AB: He lived here during the Civil War when he was serving in the Union Army and also while he was building the trolly. But other than that, no.

This ancestor is on your father’s side?

AB: Yes. He fought at both Antietam and at Gettysburg. He got wounded at Antietam. He was at the Lincoln Gettysburg Address and he was in Indianapolis, still serving, when Lincoln died and when the body came through he was an honorary pall-bearer. AJ Warner—AJ was Adiniron Judson. His mother gave him Biblical names.

So he was a witness to the Gettysburg Address?

AB: Yes, he was a witness. He was actually there.

What a history!

AB: He was quite the man. He started businesses. One of them became Pure Oil Company, which was eventually sold for $300 million. I didn’t get any of it. He went to Delonica, Georgia and decided he would wash dirt down the mountainside to pull the gold off. And the gold he pulled off is on top of the Georgia capital.

What he a mining engineer?

AB: No, he was an entrepreneur. He wanted money and that’s why he wanted cheap money. At one point he had to go to London to raise money for one of his enterprises. He was quite a character. One of his daughters married my grandfather. Oh—and a favorite he taught—he was teaching at Stanford—was Warner. So one day she went to visit Pop Warner’s wife. Now Pop Warner might not mean anything to you, but he was a famous football coach. A very successful one at Stanford. She went to visit the wife and he walked in. Before she left they figured out they were second cousins. So, I am somehow related to Pop Warner. And he is now famous for Pop Warner football—leagues organized for kids roughly 8-12 years old. It’s sort of like the day at Palisades Pool—I am treasurer of a pool out here—and I was told that we had a summer member who I said we should assign member number #44. And the women all said huh? All the men said: got it! It was John Riggins. By the way, building the line to the Chevy Chase line, there is one pole at Chevy Chase Circle one the All Saints Church side that is a survivor of trolly infrastructure that held up the electrical lines. That line went out of business in the late 1920s, I think—and went to buses. And there is still the building down on Champlain Street which was a power house and if you go out Connecticut Avenue to Chevy Chase Lake there’s a building which was the Chevy Chase Bank and before that the trolly car barn, sitting at an angle to permit the trollys to turn. And if you go to 18th and Florida Avenue you’ll see that the street turns in an odd angle to facilitate the trolly.

I think we are done.

AB: Let me tell you one more thing about big snows. The biggest one I ever remember is Palm Sunday of 1942. We lived on Morrison Street and from the top of that block of Morrison Street you could get on your sled and go down to Nevada Avenue, then you’d go up Chevy Chase Parkway and go down the other way. I remember that big snow. Palm Sunday 1942. 

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Recalls Pinehurst Neighborhood in an Uproar Over Racially Mixed Couple in 1940s

Interviewee: Ralph Benson
Date: March 12, 2011
Interviewers: Joan Solomon Janshego and Carl Lankowski
Transcribed (from audio recording) by: Joan Solomon Janshego
Location: Janshego residence in Chevy Chase DC

Q – This is Ralph Benson. When were you born?

A – December 14, 1938.

Q – Where were you born?

A – Washington DC, Georgetown Hospital, I believe.

Q – Describe your family.

A – My mother, father, and I have an older sister and a brother.

Q – What is your sister’s name?

A – Claire Matilda Boyle

Q – And your brother?

A – Roy Paul Benson.

Q – Your parent’s names were?

A – Eleanor Davis was my mother’s maiden name. My father was Leroy P. as in Paul. He didn’t want anyone to know his middle name. It was unusual.

Q – Let me ask you where your parents came from.

A – They were born in Washington DC. I can’t tell you the address.

Q – What neighborhood?

A – It had to be downtown. They were born in 1908 – both in the same year.

Q – Was it in the neighborhood where the old church [St. Paul’s Lutheran] was located?

A – No. They went to Keller Memorial. I was baptized there.

Q – Is that Lutheran?

A – Yes.

Q – Is it still in existence?

A – The building is still there, but it is not a Lutheran church any more. I was baptized there. I think I came to St Paul’s [Lutheran Church] I guess at 2 years at age – around 1940.

Q – Is that because your parents moved up here?

A – Yes.

Q- What was your parents’ background?

A – My father worked for the telephone company. He was an installer. My mother was a housewife until we were teenagers. Then she worked some. She worked for District Photo, which was a film processor.

Q – Did she process?

A – No. She was an administrator – answered the telephones. She won contests. She would have a lucky streak. I didn’t have it at all. They would have drawings for different things. She would often win.

Q – Do you know how many generations your family goes back in Washington?

A – I never knew my father’s parents, because they died when I was very young or before I was born. The only one I really knew was my grandmother – my mother’s mother. She was a Washingtonian. I think she was probably a native also. I know our family goes way back to Brooklyn, but I can’t tell you when.

Q – You don’t know how many generations back?

A – Probably about two or three back

Q – Is this both your father and mother?

A – My father’s background is some German but mainly Norwegian, and my mother was Catholic before they got married. So I don’t know that much about her – although I knew my grandmother. But I don’t know too much about her background.

Q – You don’t know what her nationality might have been?

A – Probably English and some French.

Q – How about Irish since she was Catholic?

A – Not Irish. English, French and maybe some German. That is the best of my recollection.

Q – So as far as you know, your family was Lutheran for a while.

A – My father always had been, and my mother was Catholic. They didn’t know what they would be when they got married. So they went to a Lutheran church and a Catholic church. Apparently back in those days they had a high mass that evidently was no fun, and my father said “no way.” So my mother became Lutheran.

Q – That was the story in the family?

A – Yes.

Q – So then they moved to Chevy Chase – in what year?

A – In 1936 maybe. I may be a year or two off.

Q – So that was before you were born.

A – Yes.

Q – Then they moved to the house on Upland Terrace.

A – It was Upland Terrace.

Q – Do you know when they were married?

A – They were married in 1930.

Q – And the house on Upland Terrace, was that a new house?

A – Yes

Q – Did they have it built?

A – No. It was already built. They found it by accident during the Depression while they were looking for a place. They had a bungalow on 49th Street, and they happened to make a right turn on Upland Terrace and saw the house at the corner of Upland Terrace and 33rd Street. They could not afford it, but my grandmother had some money, and she had some connections. It was interesting to see the mortgage, they didn’t really have a mortgage in those days. They bought it for $12,000. They had twelve $1,000 notes. Each year they had to re-up them. There was no mortgage as such.

Q – They were able to do that during the Depression?

A – Yes. I think, as I said, my grandmother probably helped. She wasn’t too happy with my father.

Q – Why?

A – He took her daughter away form the Catholic church.

Q – In those days, that was a big thing.

A – That was a big thing, yes. She was a strong-willed person, and she made a fair amount of money in her lifetime. She was a businesswoman.

Q – What did she do?

A – She rented properties. She bought properties and rented them and bought and sold the properties. I never knew her husband, because he died before I was born, I think they probably would have had a divorce if it was today. He lived in the basement. That was the way in those days.

Q – Where did they live?

A – She moved around. I think back then, I am trying to think the name of the subdivision adjacent to Kenwood – in suburban Maryland, off Wisconsin Avenue. Then she moved to Second Street NW and there probably could have been other houses. I have no idea.

Q – So she was a strong woman?

A – She was a strong woman, yes.

A – Did your mother have her kind of personality?

Q – My mother was much kinder, very loving. My mother took care of people all of her life. She took in people who were neighbors from four or five blocks away and cared for them. She cared for her mother until she died.

Q – You mean she literally took them into her house if they didn’t have a place to stay?

A – Yes.

Q – So you remember that as a child?

A – Yes. They actually had to rent rooms, because they couldn’t afford the house. They had the one master bedroom, which had a bath attached. They rented it to a wonderful woman. I remember her she was like a member of the family. Her name was Edith. She was great.

Q – Did she eat with the family?

A – I don’t recall her eating with us. But she was in the family, and she put up with us kids when we were small. We would come in, and she would have things for us to play with. She was a fantastic person.

Q – How many bedrooms in your house?

A – It had three bedrooms on the second floor and a finished attic, which was used, as two bedrooms mainly for them [my parents] and the kids. So the kids had a large area and the stairs were kind of in the middle. So my parents would be up there when we rented out the house. They had another room that they rented out from time to time also. I had a room on the second floor for part of my childhood and on the third floor. I liked the third floor. It was a lot of fun. My sister also had a bedroom on the second floor and she was up on the third floor at times. It depended on what the economic situation was.

Q – What about your brother?

A – My brother always slept on the third floor.

Q – You had separate bedrooms?

A – Yes.

Q – But you had at least one person outside of the family living in your house.

A – Yes

Q – And that was for a number of years?

A – Yes it was a number of years. One person lived with us, with no rent involved, when her husband passed. She was a member of St. Paul’s. Also her sister for a year or two. As I said, my mother was very kind and giving.

Q – And your father was OK with it?

A – Yes. He was OK with it. The last person that was there, he was not OK with at all. It was my cousin, who was a nasty person, and took advantage of my mother. But my mother said he was her nephew and “we have to take care of him.” That was the only contention that we probably had in the family, but that was well after I was gone.

Q – So she did this even after the kids left?

A – Yes she continued until probably five years before she died.

Q – What year did she die?

A – She died in 2001

Q – She was into her 80s?

A – Actually she was about 91 – 2000 or 2001. My father died probably 10 years before my mother died.

Q – Do you know anything about the house as to who the builder or architect was?

A – No. The only thing I know about the house is that the same builder built the house next to it. They were different houses, but they were somewhat similar.

Q – At that point was the whole neighborhood filled in already?

A – Almost. Their were two lots on Upland Terrace that were still vacant, and I watched them being built.

Q – Growing up, do you remember who lived on your street? What kinds of families? What were the occupations of the parents?

A – Once again, being a kid, I knew some occupations. One of my best friends was Sue Koenig and her parents. I saw plaques on their walls. They were politicians, I think from Arizona. They were Jewish, and my father would also take Sue, my friend, to Sunday School and church. The mother didn’t care. The father didn’t like it, but he normally wasn’t there. He was on the road quite a bit.

Q – You don’t know if they were in elected politics as opposed as to being in the political scene?

A – He was maybe an Attorney General.

Q – Do you remember his first name? Maybe we could look him up.

A – Yes. Nathan and the mother was Rose.

Q – Well as a child, you would not know his first name. You would just say “Mr. Koenig.”

A – Yes, I think it was Nathan Koenig. There was one maid in the neighborhood. That was Maggie, and she was mainly the Koenig’s maid. But she would work at different people’s houses for a day here and there.

Q – Did she live with them or in the neighborhood?

A – No.

Q – What do you remember about her?

A – I saw her a lot, because often times the parents were not there and she was the one taking care of the house. Back in those days, the maids were black. So she was a black lady. Very nice. She was kind of loved.

Around here, this was a time when segregation was rampant in DC. I remember one time at Pinehurst Circle right before you get to Western Avenue, a house was sold to a mixed marriage couple, and the neighborhood was up in arms. They raised money and bought them out. They had the last laugh because they [mixed marriage couple] probably made lots of money.

Q – What year would that be?

A – Probably back in the 1940s. I can’t tell which end. Maybe 1948. I would be 10 years old.

Q – That would be the only black people in the neighborhood?

A – That was the only black person. Because one was white and one was black. It was a mixed marriage.

Q – When you went downtown, did you see black people then?

A – I might have. The only time I went downtown was when I took piano lessons when I went to Lafayette, and I took the old bus routes – M2 down to 14th Street. I took the streetcar into a neighborhood that you would not want to walk around in now. The times were different then.

Q – Your teacher was not black?

A – No. He was white. Actually, he taught both my parents piano. They also played some violin. They never played violin when I was around. I think that was something they took, but they never used it. I think they met through him. His name was Mr. Oats. I can’t tell you his first name. He was very old, and I think probably almost blind. I remember he had very thick glasses, and his eyes looked huge when I looked at him. He was a nice man. Back in those days when you had music lessons in the ’20s and ’30s they would have small orchestras with their students. I think that is how my parents met.

Q – How many years did you take piano lessons?

A – Two or three. It was not my favorite thing in the world. My father played the piano all the time. I never heard my mother play. She was always busy being a housewife. I remember coming from school. I walked to school, walked back from school for lunch, and then walked back to school and back home from school at day’s end. I didn’t mind that at all. I was on patrol, rode my bicycle when I could. She was always home at that point. She was the old-fashioned mom.

Q – You talked about school, what do you remember about school?

A – I went to Lafayette. It was towards the end of the war, and we had a victory garden at the side of the school – on the south side. And we would bring newspapers, I think it would be Thursday, I believe. We would have competitions as to who would bring the most poundage, and we would get stripes to put on our coats.

Q – What were the newspapers used for?

A – It was for the war effort I have no idea what they used it for.

Q – In the victory gardens, did each class have a garden?

A – I think some of the classes. I don’t know if all of the classes did. I liked growing things; and that was fun. Maybe that is why I like to grow things now. My father did too. We had a little garden at home.

Q – What else do you remember about Lafayette?

A – I remember a couple of the teachers.

Q – Like a teacher that stands out?

A – Ms. Tyler, Ms. McKenna and Ms. Henderson. Ms. Henderson was probably kindergarten. Kindergarten was only half a day. We would have a nap half way through.

But in those days dogs could run loose. There was a dog across the street from us. His name was Blackie, and he knew me. The family was Catholic, and the kids went to Blessed Sacrament School. One day he must have followed me. I remember I had to take Blackie home because he knew me.

Q– He followed you to school?

A– Yes. They asked me to take him home. I said OK. I got out of school. I came back.

Q – What else do you remember about Lafayette – extra curricular activities. Were they still doing the May Pole when you were there?

A – Yes. We had the May Pole, and we had the lower field. I am not sure what they call it now. It had the track. Back in those days, there was a little house that sat on the top of the hill. We used the hill for sled riding when it snowed. There was a smaller building up there. I don’t think we had any playground equipment. Maybe one or two but a lot less than they have today.

Q – So would you say that the teachers were pretty good?

A – The teachers were very good

Q – Did you have extra things like music, art, and orchestra

A – Not as such. We had certain things that would happen. Like one time we brought our hobbies to the auditorium. I had rings. I had my parents’ rings, and my sister would make a dollar bill ring – stuff like that. I went over after school was over and half of them were stolen.

Q – When you say rings, what do you mean?

A – Just regular rings. I cried all the way home. But they didn’t have separate things like music, sports. Sports, they probably had. The only sports that we had was in school. We had no teams. Does Lafayette have teams now, or do they wait until junior high?

Q – Then you went to Deal?

A – Yes. Alice Deal Junior High, Wilson High School, and American University. I like to kid around and say that I didn’t want to get lost so I stayed on Nebraska Avenue.

I can remember a lot more about junior high and high school then elementary.

Q – What do you remember?

A – Well, girls. In junior high it was the time that you recognized girls. In 9th grade, which was the last grade in junior high, we had the Friday nightclub, which was a dance. The boys would go on one side and the girls on the other side. It was very segregated by the sex. I always went to the girls’ side, because I thought that was more fun. But I also remember when it snowed, and it was the Friday nightclub. My father took a cab to pick me up, but the cab couldn’t get up the hill on Nebraska Avenue. I ran into him, and we walked home together.

I had great parents. They were wonderful.

Q – What about high school?

A – I was not into a lot of extracurricular activities. There were things we had to do. We had races. We went to football games. One thing I do remember was we practiced for our baton race, and we always won. When May Day came, they switched us around and it made me last. They made the fastest person last and that was not me. We had a pretty good lead when they got to me, and I got the baton and the other team caught up to me halfway to the end of the race. But I am a stubborn person. I was not going to let him pass me. He didn’t get past me. He even said afterwards, he could not believe it. He was a lot faster than I was. But I almost fell. My body was going faster than my legs were.

Q – Did you like academics?

A – It was OK. I was not great academically. I was a C and a B student. It was not the most important thing. Even when I went to college, I went two years and never knew what I wanted to be. That was the time when the Berlin Airlift was going on, and we all thought we would get drafted. I remember going to Fort Hollabird. And as we left, they said “see you in a couple weeks.” I said to myself, “no way. I am not going to live in a fox hole.” So I enlisted in the Air Force. The Air Force was four years and the Army was two years. Actually that was during Vietnam. I was glad I wasn’t in the Army. I may not have made it back.

Q – Did that interrupt your college years?

A – Yes. It did. I was in San Antonio most of the time. As soon as I got to the point of being in almost two years, I could pursue my education. So I went to St. Mary’s, a Catholic college in San Antonio. This was my growing up process – the Air Force – as much as I didn’t want to be in it. I grew up and said I don’t want to be like some of these people that I saw there. I needed to go to college. I went there part time. I was married at that point, and my son was born. So when I came back, I went part time and had to work full time. Finished college and got my degree at American University. My first wife – she was too young when we got married- was 18 when we married. We got divorced seven years later.

I met my current wife about four years after my divorce from my first wife. She was a good influence on me, because I was a little lackadaisical about things. I became an accounting major. She said, “What are you going to do now?” I said, “I guess be a CPA,” which in those days was about a 3-1/2 day exam. She said, “What do you have to do to do it?” I said, “You go to prep school.” I said, “I need a year off. I just finished college.” She said, “No. Do it now.” And so I did. I wanted to look good to her – this was before we were married. It was interesting. I worked full time and went to school. My mother was great, because she helped me. Before I remarried, I had custody of my son. The way we did things, I would have gone to jail for abuse today. He took care of himself. He was grown up at 6 years old. I think by the time he was 6, he was a latch key child, because he was very responsible. He never had a problem. He let himself out, locked the door. My mother would come by at the end of the day if I was going to school and take him home with her until I was out of class.

Q – Where did your son go to school?

A – In Wheaton – But he was great. The only time I had a problem with him was one summer when I had my niece taking care of him, and I had a few kids breaking into the house. She was not any good. But he was great.

Q- So you had one son only?

A – One son and two stepsons. When I married my current wife, she had two sons – 6 and 7 years old. I brought them up too.

Q – When did you get your own business?

A – It was not long after we got married, because I worked for a non-profit downtown and I did some work for them when I started out. My wife said, “Start your own business – give it a try.” She is a strong person – very smart. I always called her my in-house intellectual.

Q – Let’s get to the neighborhood and see if we can get a better feel for the neighborhood. The houses were pretty much filled in when you were growing up. What was it like living here? You went to school and you mentioned you rode your bike.

A – Rode bikes. We played ball in the street. We didn’t have TVs .

Q – What games did you play?

A – We were big on being cowboys. You have to recognize that Western Avenue goes into Montgomery County. When you went to Montgomery County, it was rare to see a house. It was still cows and horses. They didn’t build a whole lot of houses until after World War II. I can remember one time seeing my mother up on the stoop of the house and my best friend, Donald Judson, was with us. Horses ran down the street with a car chasing it. It was like a round-up except it was cars instead of horses chasing the horses. My friend was going to catch one and lasso it. He got across the street before the horses got there.

Q – Is Donald Judson still around?

A – Yes.

Q – Do you know where he lives?

A – Probably in Rockville.

Q – He was your best friend?

A – Yes

Q – So where you lived, which was right near Western Avenue, on the other side, it was basically farms. Were there horses and cows?

A – Yes. I remember only one house there. There was an older gentleman, and he had a horse that the children would ride. It was basically a farm area.

Q – Did you play over there? Or did you stay on this side?

A – We mostly stayed on our side. We probably played some. But we stayed in our neighborhood.

Q – Did you go to Rock Creek Park?

A – I went to the edges of Rock Creek Park. We had a garden there. They still have the gardens there. My father and I grew things. We also had a very small garden at home. My father was for flowers and I did some vegetables.

Q – Did you go to Connecticut avenue as kids?

A – Yes. That was the Avenue, as we called it. “I am going over to The Avenue,” we would say. We went to the Avalon Theater. That is where we saw our movies.

Q – What kind of movies?

A – Mostly westerns. My father took me every Friday night to the movies. Just me. My brother was too young, and my sister was too old. She could care less. She was a teenager.

Q – What else attracted you to the Avenue?

A – The stores. When it was Mother’s day or something. I can tell you where the hardware store was. It was on the first block coming down from Chevy Chase Circle. And there was Shupp’s Bakery.

Q – What is there now?

A – It is the Arcade. That’s where Shupp’s Bakery was.

Q – Where was the hardware store?

A – It was on the next block up towards Chevy Chase Circle – about two doors away from McKinley at the streetlight. There was a Haskins variety store. They would have models that boys would like. It was like model airplanes, cars, and dinky toys. Then there was the bank. Riggs is not there, but it is still a bank. It was three blocks below Chevy Chase Circle.

Q – Apparently there was a dance studio in the Avalon. Dallas Dean told us about it.

A – She was more active than I was.

Q – Other friends besides Donald Judson?

A – Donald Judson, Sue Koenig. The people across the street who were Catholic – the O’Connor’s. I think it was the only house that was a Sears Roebuck house. I know that the O’Connor’s house is.

Q – Did the O’Connor’s have kids?

A – Yes. They had five.

Q – Were any your friends?

A – Yes. We were all friends. Michael the boy. I didn’t fool around with the girls.

Q – So there were a lot of kids on that block?

A – There was another kid a couple doors down from us. Somehow I didn’t do anything with him. I could not tell you what his name was.

Q – You would go in and out of the houses?

A – Yes. We would go in the houses. One of Donald’s and my hobbies was Lionel trains. We spent a lot of time with them. I can remember the year I got my train for Christmas 1946, I still believed in Santa Clause then. Our roomer, Edith, gave me a little house with the man who came out with the lantern that went with the train. I wondered how she knew that I was getting the train. I was very naïve back then.

Q – Still have the train?

A – Yes. I have not put it up for years and years. I still have them in the garage.

Q – Do you remember holidays?

A – Yes the 4th of July we shot off our own fire works Even then it was not legal, but nobody cared. We would get them and shoot them off in the side yard. Every so often it would land on our neighbor’s roof. We hoped that we didn’t burn the house down. Never did. We did sparklers and what they called fountains. In Maryland it was legal. It was a good family get-together.

Q – Did you have picnics in the neighborhood?

A – Not in the neighborhood – actually church.

Q – On the lawn?

A My father was superintendent of the junior department, and we had something called lawn parties. It was like a little carnival with ponies and games. But the whole Sunday School would have a picnic in Rock Creek Park in early summer.

Q – In one of the pavilions in Rock Creek? Did they rent them?

A – They probably did. There was a lot of kids and adults too. A lot more people went to Sunday School at older ages. It was an older congregation until about 20 years ago. There were a fair amount of classes for adults. There was the Domer Class for one and the Huddle Class was another. But then life centered on the church.

Q – What other activities?

A – Luther League.

Q – What did you do at Luther League?

A – It was Dr. Snyder’s era [at St. Paul’s Lutheran Church]. He was my mentor. I looked up to him. In Luther League, we would have a little religious ceremony and then we would dance afterwards. In those days, dancing on Sundays was a “no no.” We would go through our little religious ceremony, and then Dr. Snyder would leave and we would dance. He knew what was going on but did not let on. He lived at the end of the Everett Street and his son, Dr. Luther Snyder lived there after he left. Dr. Luther Snyder was married to Gladys. After Dr. Luther Snyder died, she married Dr. McKnitt. My poor mother, every time she would come to church she would tell the same story about Dr. McKnitt saving her son’s life years before.

We would dance after the religious ceremony in Schaefer Hall at the church. Then we would all get to the car and go to the Hot Shoppe which is not there anymore. It was on Connecticut Avenue going south three, four blocks from McKinley. It was on the west side of the street (right if you are going down). We would drive-in at the Hot Shoppe, and they brought the food out.

Q – There was enough land there, that you could do that?

A – On yes. There were a lot of kids there – especially on Sunday nights. And the kids ran around seeing their friends. I guess the Hot Shoppe didn’t like that. They always called the cops.

You would park, and when I first started going there, someone came and took your order and things progressed and you would have a little box with a speaker. You pressed a button to order and they would bring out the order to you.

The only drive-in theater I went to very much was the Rockville Drive-In. It was interesting, because Rockville Pike was a three-lane road. It was really only two lanes and the third lane was for passing. When you came to a hill, you had to switch lanes.

Q – What establishments were along the side of the road?

A – The commercial stuff that is along Rockville Pike was not there until you got into Rockville.

Q – Were there farms along there?

A – Little farms, yes, The streetcar also ran on up Wisconsin Avenue to Bethesda.

Q – When you wanted to take the streetcar, you went to Wisconsin Avenue.?

A – Yes. They had a terminal I think it was right at the Maryland-DC line.

Q – Isn’t there a terminal on Connecticut Avenue north of the Post Office?

A – That was only a bus terminal. It was never for streetcars.

Q – So there was no streetcar on Connecticut Avenue that you could recall.

A –You took buses to get to Wisconsin Avenue and then a streetcar going down town.

Q – Did you in fact do a lot of walking around here?

A – On yes. I loved to walk. I still do.

Q – Going back to holidays, what did you do on Halloween?

A – We would go treat and treating. Some kids would do tricks like putting honey on doorknobs. My sister and her friends, who were six years older than we were, would go to the neighborhood houses and trick them. We didn’t. We were good kids. We just knocked on doors and got the candy.

Q – Did you have Halloween parades?

A – At school – nowhere else that I knew of. Of course Christmas was a big deal. At church, my father had a manger scene, which we still have. It is probably in very sad shape. He took it to Sunday School, and I waited for it to come home. Church was a big deal for me. I did not consider myself a super religious person at that point but church was important. My father said, “I don’t care what time you get home on Saturday night, you are going to Sunday School and church on Sunday.” That was the way that it was.

Q – So you have literally gone to that church your whole life.

A – Yes. I was about 2 when we got there. Some day when I find the records, I can find out when they became members. It was probably around 1940. I don’t remember the church that I got baptized in. I was too young. There were streetcars going up and down there [where I was baptized] near the Capitol.

Q – Did you go to the Capitol and other places by streetcar?

A – Sometimes we did as a family. We would do that.

Q – Did you go the Art Gallery – the National Gallery of Art.

A – I have been there a lot but since I got married. My wife was into going to the art galleries. The zoo was a big deal. I enjoy the zoo.

Q – You went to the zoo as a child?

A – Yes

Q – Did you go by yourself or with your parents?

A – I didn’t go alone. I went with Sue or Donald. I also went with my parents. They drove us there.

Q – Did you mother drive also?

A – Yes. She drove when she worked in Beltsville.

Q – Did you have two cars?

Q – There were times when we had two cars. I remember a 1932 Ford with a rumble seat. Great fun. I wish I had that car. It was dangerous as all get out, because in a rumble seat you could only get 2 people in it. Have you ever seen one? The back flips out and you have a little seat there.

During the war too, there was rationing. There was food rationing, There was gasoline rationing and whatever. I remember one time I had an uncle – he was in the black market. We called him Uncle Buck because every time that he came over to our house, he gave us a silver dollar. Actually, in those days, that was a lot of money.

Q – How did you know he was in the black market?

A – Every so often we would get things that you could not get unless you had the rationing tickets for it. We went downtown, I am not sure why. We went shopping. I went down town with my mother, and we had a 1938 Oldsmobile. The battery was under the front seat and so was the gas tank. That is probably not the best combination, but that was the way that it was. I remember coming up Connecticut Avenue, and standing up in the back seat. There were no seat belts in those days, and she said “something is burning.” So she pulled off. I think it was at the Kennedy-Warren, and she went in and she said “I think that my car is on fire.” The lady there said “are you sure?” She said “I don’t really know if it is on fire or not.” So the gardeners went out there with a hose. I remember seeing them take the front seat off and there were flames in there.

Q – They hosed it off?

A – No. They called the fire department. It could have exploded. That is where the gas tank was.

Q – So what kinds of things were rationed?

A – Food, gasoline – everything was.

Q – I mean sugar, flour, and butter?

A – Yes. Butter was for sure. Cream. In those days we got milk and butter delivered to us by the milkman and Thompson’s Diary. I can’t remember what the other one was. We had a little insulated box out there by our back door for dairy delivery. Everything – eggs, and meat was hard to come by.

Q – So meat was rationed?

A – Yes. You could only get so much of a certain thing. When you ran out of ration tickets, you didn’t get that anymore. That was a good incentive to have a garden especially in the summer time. I remember one time, my parents really never had much money, but we went on vacation to a farm in Virginia. Where it was I have no idea, and I remember gasoline was rationed. If you had no more rationing tickets, you had no more gas. My father started going home the wrong way – towards North Carolina. We finally figured it out. It was scary, because no more tickets, no more gas.

Q – But you made it?

A – Yeah. We made it.

Q – So there were not many vacations you are saying?

A – No, I went to Camp Nawakwa It is in Pennsylvania – Ardensville. I know when I went because it was 1950 when North Korea invaded South Korea. I remember reading a newspaper when I got up there.

Q – You went by yourself?

A – My father took me up.

Q – Was it a church camp?

A – It was a Lutheran Camp. Actually, it is still there. It has changed a lot, because I took my granddaughter there the year before last. It was completely different. We used to get water out a spring. It was like a cistern. It was a big stone spring that poured out water. They stopped it – probably because it probably was not healthy. But we never got sick. It tasted good. It was spring water. The swimming pool was also spring fed. There would be snakes in the pool at times. It was fun. They had a waterwheel. I remember that it went around I am not sure what it was for. We would get on it. It was a simple life. We didn’t have the things that kids have today.

Q – Getting back to the war, do you remember things during the war like black outs?

A – I remember blackout curtains.

Q – Would the sirens blow?

A – Yes. Once again, I was pretty young, but I do recall that.

Q – Do you remember when the war was over?

A – Yes.

Q – Do you have specific memories?

A – I don’t remember specifically that the war was over in Europe and then we dropped the A bomb in Japan. What I remember is that I liked things like models and things. I remember they had a fly over – a lot of planes. They were in formation. I thought that was great guns. It was probably 1945 or 1946.

Talking about things in grade school, we used to have these Filipinos that would come over. They sold yo-yos. They would make all the tricks with the yo -yos and try to get the kids to buy them. I don’t think I ever bought one. My parents didn’t have the money. They had to make ends meet. I remember they would put the church envelopes in the middle of the dining room table and put so much in them every day so that they would have enough to take to church. In those days there were 2 envelopes. There was a monthly envelope and a weekly envelope.

Q – It was important for them to put the money in for the church?

A – Yes. Very much so.

Q – So when you were talking about the air formation, do you think that was one of the times when the war was over – either in Europe or Japan?

A – The war was over at that point.

Q – Do you remember when Franklin Roosevelt died?

A – No. Not until years later [laughs].

Q – When did you leave Upland Terrace?

A – I left when I got married the first time – 1961 – and I went into the Air Force for four years and then came back there.

Q – Now in 1961 there was a point of time when things were not as good in this neighborhood?

A – No. They were still good. Of course, Western Avenue was all built up.

Q – When do you think it started to get built up?

A – I think it was at the end of the war and thereafter. I think it was Post-War when most of the houses were built.

Q – Someone who used to live in my house for a brief period of time and was born in 1933 called me and said that he went to kindergarten at Lafayette, and he thought there was a CCC camp there. That would be before your time. You would not know about that and your parents did not talk about that?

A – No.

There was a story that I heard that at the end of the war, there was a spy ring at a house at the end of Western Avenue – going towards the park – on the DC side. I don’t know if was true. I have heard the story over the years. I think it was probably a house that was abandoned, and it looked like a haunted house to the kids and they made up some stories

Q – Have you ever heard of the Purple Iris?

A – Oh yes.

Q – Tell you what you know about that.

A – The Purple Iris – I always thought there were a bunch of crooks that went there, because it goes back from the road. I think it was on Rittenhouse. There was a fair amount of land there.

Q – It was literally purple in color?

A – It was purple. To me, it was so far back that I didn’t see much of it, and I didn’t pay much attention. You saw cars come there and drop people off. I am sure that some parked around there, but I don’t remember that. So we always thought once again the criminal element was there.

Q – Was it a public place?

A – I never knew it to be public

Q – Did it have a sign?

A – I don’t recall. I don’t remember being back there. It was something different, and we made stories up [about it]. We had a good imagination. Kids today don’t have good imaginations. because they have too much stuff. We had to use imagination to play. We played baseball. We played in the street, and you wouldn’t get run over like today. It was fun. We had a good time.

Q – Did your parents assign you household chores?

A – I know I took care of my room. I had to make my bed every morning before I went to school. I wish I could get my granddaughter to do this. She won’t. We did the dishes, getting things off the table. Washing dishes – no dishwasher. My parents’ kitchen was small. You came into the backdoor and the refrigerator was there. There was an entrance into the dining room and there was a stove. That was it. You had a little sink – very small. Dirty dishes on one side. We washed the dishes on one side, and rinsed them off and put them in a holder. It had a breakfast room off the kitchen. I think they [people who live there now] probably took the wall down. It was too small and made the kitchen tiny.

Q – It was like a nook?

A – Yes it was like a nook. That is where we ate all the time – except for Sundays or holidays. Then we would eat in the dining room.

Q – Did your mother make a full cooked meal every evening?

A – Yes. She cooked and she made cakes and pies.

Q – Did she can?

A – No she did not can. My first wife’s grandmother did but that is getting away from our neighborhood.

Q – What did you do in the evening? Did you have television?

A – We got it in 1948. I think when Truman was inaugurated. The brand was Farnsworth. Do you know who Farnsworth was? He invented TV. The worst TV we ever had. It would last a day or two and then go out. Things were different. There was no TV in the morning.

Q – What time did it come on?

A – It came on at 5 o’clock with Howdy Doddy. And we got Hopalong Cassidy for the westerns. We finally got an Admiral TV.

Q- Were you the first people in your neighborhood to get TV?

A – I think we were second. We might have been the third. The O’Connor’s across the street had one of the first. It was a Hallicrafters. It had a 7-inch screen. In front of it and attached to it was a magnifying glass. We had a large TV. I think it was 10 inches. We had John Cameron Swayze for news. He would come on at quarter to eight, and he would go off at eight o’clock. We would get all the news and weather in 15 minutes. Things are a lot different now.

Q – How many channels?

A – Channel 4, 7 and 9. That was it. We could have gotten Baltimore but in those days, it was not strong enough for pick up.

Q – Do you recall before television things that your family did together?

A – Yes. In the summertime especially. We had a screened porch. We would hang out there all together as a family on the screened porch. We would make Kool Aid and freeze it in ice cube trays and put the ice cubes in a glass and chop it up. We had fun doing that.

Q – Did you play any games?

A – Monopoly, Parcheesi. That type of games. Not intellectual. We didn’t do intellectual games.

Q – Did you do much reading when you were a kid?

A – I read what I had to.

Q – For school?

A – Yes. It was not a “biggie.”

Q – Do you have hobbies?

A – I made models – trains. I liked to grow things – which I still like to – grow things. Bonsai – I like bonsai.

Q – Speaking of organizations, did your parents belong to anything else other than the church?

A – My father was unionized. That was one of the biggies. At Christmas time, there were family parties, and my father would take my sister and me.

Q – What kind of union was it?

A – Communication Workers of America. Back in those days it was AT&T before Verizon and all the rest. He worked late some times, and we would drive down and pick him up down at 13th Street. I recall going in during the war. He had to go to work, I went with him, and we would sit there and play. We could talk to each other on the microphone. My father would be there only an hour or two. It was fun.

He would take the bus to work and back. and my mother and I would pick him up across the street from the church [St. Paul’s Lutheran] on Connecticut Avenue on the other side.

Q – It sounds like you had an ideal childhood.

A – It was nice but probably boring to most people today. I enjoyed it and looking back I would like to go back to those days.

Q – Did your mother do the shopping in the family?

A – Yes. She did the shopping, My father did the wash. Well, they both did.

Q – Did you have an old fashioned machine or an automatic?

A – We had a wringer/washer. They had two sets of tubs. Wash goes into the first set tub. Shake it around and get it rinsed a little more then put it through the wringer. Then it went to the last water. Then it went through the wringer again. There was a basket there, and then they took it outside and hung it up.

Q – So your father did this?

A – Yes. But my mother did too.

Q – So he helped?

A – Yes

Q – Did you help?

A – I might have helped a little. I remember once one of my arms getting caught in the wringer, and my mother having to push the release bar.

Q – You were going to tell us about the time that you almost died – about Dr. McNitt.

A – I was six months old My sister was 4 years old, and she kissed a boy and she brought me home whopping cough and chicken pox. My mother took me to a pediatrician, who said “take Ralph home and make arrangements. He is going to die.” This is the story I heard from my mother. My mother and father stayed up and walked me up and down the hall. I had whooping cough. But I survived.

When I was 7, I got the measles and mumps together. Evidently, measles have to come out, They stayed in too long, and it made me sicker. Once again, the pediatrician said, “take Ralph home. He is not going to make it.” Edith [our roomer] came in handy. She said, “I know this doctor – Dr. McKnitt. He doesn’t take children but he will see Ralph.” So you can see how things happen. Realistically, if that did not happen I would probably have died.

Q – Did Dr. McKnitt have an office on Everett Street or somewhere else? Is that where he lived – by the church?

A – Dr. McKnitt did eventually live on Everett Street but not at that time. I don’t know where his office was or where he lived when he treated me. Dr. Snyder had a son [Dr. Luther Snyder] who was a doctor and lived on Everett Street with his wife. Dr. Snyder was a heart specialist. When he died, his wife married Dr. McKnitt. So Dr. McKnitt eventually lived at the house at the end of the block on Everett Street.

Q – Speaking of doctors, we learned that there was a Dr. Havel on McKinley Street, and he had a house on the triangle of Nebraska and McKinley. He had his office in his home You don’t know about him?

A – No. I remember a doctor on 45th Street, Dr. Tilley. He was my first wife’s doctor.

Q – I want to skip to something about the war. Was your father in World War II?

A – He was not in World War II, because he was considered essential being in communications. Also, I think he was in between the age limits. He was too old. My uncle did. My uncle enlisted.

Q – You would remember the Korean War?

A – I know the Korean War. I was 12 when it started.

Q – Do you have any memories about it?

A – I thought in those days since we won World War II, this would be a piece of cake. Basically, the North Koreans pushed us off the continent. The Chinese were not in at first and then [General] MacArthur took over, and he invaded up by Seoul, which is the capitol of South Korea. The basic idea was that the North Korean Army would get pushed back. The Chinese got word about what we would do. MacArthur wanted to go to China. Truman would not let him. The Chinese pushed the Americans forces and South Korean forces back.

Q – You were young then. You remember all of this?

A – Yes. I could tell them what kind of planes they used. I was interested in the mechanical things that boys liked in those days.

Q – Were you also interested in public affairs?

A – No. My wife is.

Q – But I mean back then?

A – No.

Q– But for some reason, you were interested in Korea?

A – I was interested in mechanical things – planes, cars, and boats.

Q – I think you talked a lot about happy memories. One of my questions is, what do you remember as happy memories of living in Chevy Chase?

A – It was where everybody was a neighbor. We all knew each other. We looked out for each other. If something happened, and my parents weren’t there, there was almost any house that I could have gone into.

Across the street was an older couple. We used to go sled riding in their back yard. They were sweet.

Q – What were their names?

A – The Murphy’s. And Blackie, the dog, comes back into the picture. They had a cherry tree that we climbed up in. We would climb up in the tree and say, “sic em.” That poor dog would go nuts. We just did things that kids do. When I was a kid, we played with pots and pans when I was younger. We didn’t have any toys. As I said, my parents didn’t have much money. My bicycle was an English racer – second hand. It was a good bike, and I had a dog when I was probably a younger teenager – Sonny – who I loved. He got himself killed by a truck. He would chase after them, because the vehicle made a lot of noise and the truck tried to outrun him.

Q – You did not replace him?

A – No We had a cat before that – Skippy. The dog was Tippy. So it was Skippy and Tippy.

Q – Is there anything that we haven’t asked you?

A – I probably will think a whole lot about other things after I leave. It was a wonderful time. It was a safe environment. Everybody was friends with everybody else. It was a fairly closed knit community.

Q – Were you aware that you were living in the nation’s Capital, or did you just think you were in a neighborhood?

A – No I didn’t think much about it being the Capital.

I didn’t think much about segregation so much in those days. There actually were not very many blacks in DC at that time. We used to go to the beach in summer time.

Q – Which beach?

A – Mayo – on the Chesapeake Bay – we didn’t go to the ocean. I remember that it was not only the blacks but also the Jews who were discriminated against. When I got older I drove into Mayo, and there was a sign there and it would say “gentiles only,” which meant no Jews allowed. I would ask my father “what does that mean?” He said, “no Jews allowed.” It is interesting to see how things changed. They changed for the better. Now we don’t discriminate against Jews or blacks or anyone else. Now some Americans want to discriminate against Muslims, and that is not fair. But we did it during World War II – taking Japanese out of California and putting them in concentration camps.

Q – You probably were just not so aware of race and discrimination. It was not an issue. You probably learned about it during the Civil Rights era.

A – Actually I think I knew about drinking foundations – for black and whites.

Q – In Washington?

A – In Washington.

Q – Where at?

A – Everywhere, No matter where you were. Bathrooms too. I never got into the bus situation because where I lived, it was all whites. There weren’t any blacks.

Q – How about the stores – like Woodies?

A – They had black people working there like janitors. That sort of thing.

Q – You didn’t see black people shopping?

A – Downtown I may have seen one or two. I don’t really recall. Woodies and Lansburg – their windows would be mechanized at Christmas time, which was fun. They got de-mechanized during the war. They were there but they couldn’t use electricity.

We did things. We went to the Washington Monument and the Capitol. Actually most of the things that I did was through the school – the Capitol and Washington Monument. I do more for my grandchild now. My parents were too busy. We made up our own schedule and did our own thing. The zoo was about as far as we would go.

Q – You would not go independently to the Smithsonian and places like that?

A – No. I could have gone with my sister. She was six years older. I had my first date in DC.

Q – Where?

A – At the Uptown Theater with Sue Koenig. She was my first date. I was 11, I believe. I had a dollar or two I think. We went to the Uptown Theater and came back to what was Peoples’ Drug Store on the corner of McKinley Street. They used to have a fountain. We had a Coke and hot dog. I remember I came home and told my mother, “this is too expensive. I am not going out again until I have a driver’s license,” and I didn’t until I got my driver’s license.

Q- Did you walk to the theater? How did you get there?

A – We took the bus. So I didn’t start going out with girls again until I was 16.

Q – Did you go to the prom?

A – Yes. I went to the senior prom and to the junior prom.

Senior prom I just had broken up with the girl I was going with. So I went with another girl I saw in the hall. We never went out again. I ran into a gal that I knew from high school about five years ago, and she was a slum landlord. She said, “I never thought I would be a slum landlord when I grew up.” I don’t know if she is alive or not. But I wish I could remember more.

Q – I think you remembered a lot. Any questions you want to ask, Carl?

Q – I resonated with one of the comments you made by San Antonio because I was in the Army at Ft. Sam Houston. You were at Lakeland?

A – You had Lackland Randolph AFB, Kelly AFB, Medina that you probably never knew about. The Atomic Energy had that. I had a story about that. There was an explosion there. A radioactive thing went off. I gave tests when I was down there. In the morning we had testing basic training, and in the afternoon there was a permanent party. I was leaning back in the chair, and I was feeling dizzy. All of a sudden, the building felt it got picked up and shifted back again. This was not supposed to leave the room. I went out to the hall, and the guy at other end is looking out the window. I said, “what the hell was that?” He said, “there it is.” I looked out, and I knew that Medina AFB was an Atomic Energy Commission facility. There was a mushroom cloud. I said “Oh Geeze, we’ve had it now.” What they told us was that it was a conventional explosion, but it did consume some radioactive material but it was not a radioactive explosion. That is why my eyeballs light up every night. [laughter].

Q – What was it like when you were at the age when you were going to be drafted?

A – I had never been on an airplane until I took my first plane fight going down to San Antonio. That was my first flight. It was on a Constellation – It had three rudders. It was a prop plane. They didn’t have any jets as such. They did shortly thereafter. They had jet props. It was an English plane. Then I was in Mississippi and went to tech. school there.

Q – Where in Mississippi?

A – Greenville. They had a little airstrip there. Once every three days a plane would fly in. That was different. But they closed it down. I remember the coldest place in my life was in Mississippi. I remember the electricity went off, because the wire went down from town. We are all sleeping in the barracks – in one room. I was asleep. The head guy was a captain who came around carrying blankets. He said, “are you cold?” I said, “not until you woke me up.”

I went to the Mississippi River one time. I think it was Biloxi.

We had a lot of free time at Greenville Air Force Base. I had one friend, he writes me once in a while. I was married. The others had passes and went to town. I didn’t because I was trying to save my money. I had very little. I usually was asleep when they came home.

San Antonio was interesting, because they had a small black community and a Hispanic community.

Q – Anything more you would like to say about living in Chevy Chase?

A – No. I think we covered a lot. But I may think of something later.

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Interviewee: Dallas Dean
Date: March 11, 2011
Interviewers: Joan Solomon Janshego and Carl Lankowski
Transcribed (from audio recording) by: Joan Solomon Janshego
Location: Janshego residence in Chevy Chase DC

Dallas Dean died of cancer in Middletown, DE, on Aug. 28, 2024. She was 83.

Q – Tell us your birth date.

D – March 8, 1941. I just turned 70 years old on Tuesday

Q – You were born where?

A – I was born in Columbia Hospital in DC

Q – Let’s talk about your family first. I know that you are an only child.

A – Yes

Q – Where was your family from?

A – My father was a Washingtonian and was born in 1899. So was his father, who was born in 1864 in Washington. The family name was Plugge. My great grandparents on my father’s side came to Washington in the 1850s or early 1860s from Germany. The story I heard was that my great grandparents knew each other in Germany, and my great grandmother came first and my great grandfather followed. I don’t know if the spelling is right, but I have been told that they came from Rheda/Stauew Warendorf.

And my mother came from Minnesota. She came in 1923 for something that was supposed to be temporary, and she was here until she died on August 4, 1993. The family name was Moehring.

Q – Did she live on a farm in Minnesota?

A – No she lived in a small town. She had no desire to stay there, because they had all of the chores of a farm even though they lived on the edge of town – which was in LeSueur, Minnesota. That is the original home of Green Giant and the LeSueur peas.

Q – Do you still have relatives there?.

A – I have a first cousin that lived there but he has moved to Minneapolis. He called me Wednesday. He is the only one and there are some second and third cousins. I have a long-time friend that still lives in LeSueur.

Q – What was your mother’s background?

A – My mother was from a large family – seven children. She was the third oldest, and she went to school in LeSueur. Then she went to business school for a year after she finished high school. Then she worked temporarily for government agencies – on Indian reservations. She worked at Red Lake Reservation in northern Minnesota. I think she also worked at Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. She worked in the office. Someone came up with the idea as to whether she would like to come to Washington. As I said, that was in 1923, and so she worked at temporary jobs – mostly government. She did not go back to work after I was born.

Q – Did she work for Indian Affairs?.

A – It might have been Indian Affairs.

Q – Was she a secretary?

A – Yeah

Q – What was her ethnic background?

A – German

Q – Did she speak German?

A – She did when she was a young girl. She went to church where there was a German-speaking pastor. I have some pictures of the old days. She came to Washington and then one of her brothers came. Then two of her sisters followed. She was the first one here, but the others followed and spent most of their adult lives in Washington.

Q – And then she met your father?

A – Right

Q – Did she say how she meet him?

A – I think they lived around the corner from each other. My father lived at 1310 13th Street, and my mother and her sisters and probably others had an apartment together around the corner. I don’t know if it was N Street or O Street, but in that general area.  They went together for 11 years before they married, and so that may be part of the reason why I am an only child.

Q – Did your father live in his father’s home?

A – Yes at that time.

Q – Was it near Luther Place?

A – Yes. My paternal grandfather had seven sons. My grandmother died in 1916. She was from Brunswick, Maryland, originally. Her father worked for the railroad and had come to the Washington area for employment. Campbell was the oldest of the seven boys and was named after his mother’s maiden name. My father was the second youngest. In later years, four of the seven brothers lived in Chevy Chase – all within walking distance of each other.

Q – Tell me who the other brothers were.

A – My cousin, Fritz’ father was Campbell. He lived on McKinley Street – 3209. Then there was another brother, Wilbur. They sometimes called him Pete. He lived on Northampton Street on the other side of Lafayette. I think it was 3316. There was another brother, Gordon, who lived on 2812 Military Road. My father lived at Nebraska and Rittenhouse where I have lived all of my life.

Q – What was your father’s name?

A – Norman

Q – What brought your father to Chevy Chase?

A – My grandfather – so the story goes – purchased 40 acres of land in the Chevy Chase area. This had to be – I am guessing – at the beginning of the 1900s, because my father used to say that he would often times take a streetcar out and get off at Chevy Chase Circle or go to Chevy Chase Lake. And then they would walk down to here to the property. In those days, it was all woods. There were no houses. And then when my father got married, my grandfather offered him a piece of the property so he could build the house. It [the property] had been in the family for a while by that time. My parents were married in 1936. It has been in the family for a few years before that. A lot of the other brothers were already settled on McKinley and Northampton Street, and so he choose the property where we are now. As I said, at the time it was all woods. My grandmother did not want to move to this area, because she said it was too country. She died in 1916. I meant to bring a map along. You may have seen some of those maps of the old neighborhood. We had one of the lots that my grandfather had. He divided them up and gave each one of his sons two lots. My father had another lot beside where we have the house. but he exchanged it with another brother. So that we had the lot right behind us that we still own.

Q – The other brothers did not build on this property as I understand?

A – No. They had already had their houses or bought houses already built.

Q – What happened to all that property?

A – My grandfather died in 1945 and that property was sold, I heard, to pay the inheritance taxes. Now whether that was so or not, I don’t know, but that was what was said. The houses along Rittenhouse Street were built in the early 1950s – 2700 block and down along Nebraska. I think there were a few houses that were there before Stephenson Lane was cut through, but that was before or during that time. Mr. Bill Montgomery owned what is now Knollwood, and that was his home. Then after he died and his widow died, she had given that property to the Army Distaff Hall. At first it was called Distaff, then later they let the men come in. They have since added wings and buildings.

Q – So there were buildings there?

A – It was a mansion. It still stands. It is part of Knollwood. It is that stone house structure. I think it is a clubroom now for Knollwood. I knew that people have social functions there. It used to be a big house sitting on top of this knoll and hill so to speak and that is how it got the name Knollwood. At first it was called Blythe Knoll in the old days, and then when the government took it over – the distaff took it over – then it became Knollwood.

Q – When about would that be? When did Bill Montgomery die?

A – I don’t know when he died. I think this wasn’t done until his widow died, and she was a little bit younger than him. I am pretty sure it was after my grandfather died. I think Knollwood wasn’t built until I am guessing the 60s. I don’t know the exact date. There used to be just the house there and mostly a wooded area.

Q – Did Mamie Eisenhower live at Knollwood?

A – She donated her beauty salon at the White House or wherever she had it to Knollwood. I don’t know if she actually lived there.

Then talking about the neighborhood, Mr. Montgomery had some [help]. Maybe originally they were slaves, but of course this was way after slavery time. But they must have been slave descendants that used to live up on 27th Street. When I was real young you know – 3, 4, or 5 – somewhere along there, I remember this little cabin there. It sat just halfway up on the left hand side on 27th Street where these black people lived. They didn’t have plumbing. They didn’t have electricity. I remember the oil lamp, because we could see it from our front yard. We could look up there. Evidently, they had a lot of kids, and they used to work for Mr. Montgomery. Maybe they were descendants of some of the early free blacks who lived there for many, many years. And then that house was torn down when the house that is there now was built. So that was probably in the late 1940s.

Then if you go down Nebraska and make a left on Oregon, you go up past Knollwood on the corner where Chatsworth is today, that property used to be an estate. There was a low white farmhouse low to the ground – sprawled out. I can just barely remember that. Then at one time there was talk about whether the Russian Embassy was going to be built there. There was a lot of opposition from the people in the neighborhood about traffic, too much congestion. That was true of Knollwood, too. In any event, that house was torn down and that was the area where Chatsworth is now. The estate was called Bonnie Brae. Bonnie Brae had acreage. But the other houses that people owned there, they were just homes with maybe three or four acres or maybe not that much. It was a lot of land for a house.

Going further up Oregon Avenue, there used to be a family that lived there. I don’t know what their name was right now, but they had the same house number that we had. They were 6040 Oregon and we were 6040 Nebraska, and I can remember that when I was just a young kid sometimes the mail would get mixed up. Sometimes they came up and brought some mail, and sometimes we went down there and brought them some. Maybe we had a new mailman or something. I don’t know what happened to that house. I think it was right around or a little bit further out on Oregon from where that street that is cut over now. I don’t know the name of it. Not Beech but the one that is between Tennyson and Beach right past Chatsworth. I don’t know whether it was cut through all the way to Western, but it used to be just woods there, and then they put in that development. That has been fairly recent in comparison with some of the other houses.

A–Do you recall if people had animals there? Was it almost like a farm or farmette?

Q – I don’t remember that. The only animals that I can remember around here – besides household pets – were the horses over in the horse stable in Rock Creek Park. We used to walk over there lots of times. The victory gardens over in that area also and then it became a CCC camp over in that area.

Q – Is that where the victory gardens were?

A – Yeah – a little bit further back than that. The gardens were back further towards the park and towards the woods.

Q – In the nature center?

A – Yes

Q – Is that also where the current stable are today?

A – No. I think the current stables are on the other side of Military Road. I haven’t been back there for years though

Q – Do you know of a CCC camp at Lafayette? Someone who lived across the street from Lafayette told me that there was one.

A – No. I do not know. But there could have been one.

Q – Did you ever go to the CCC camp as a small child?

A – No. I think I remember my parents talking about that. I guess that was right after the war – maybe even during. I don’t know.

Q – Concerning your cousins, you mentioned that you spoke to one of your cousins in the last few days.

A – Yes – Gordon’s son, Gordon, Jr. He grew up here. He was like a brother to me. But he is younger. His sister was also like a sister to me, because I didn’t have any brothers or sisters. They were close to my age, and we used to get together a lot to go down to St. Mary’s county together.

Q – St. Mary’s County is where you grandfather had a summer home?

A – Yes, We were able to go down there as kids until 1965. Gordon’s parents brought the property and moved down there. They were not down there very long, because my uncle had taken sick and he died. The his wife moved back up here to the city to Leisure World, and the house was sold.

Q – Gordon, Jr. – the son – now lives in Florida?

A – Yes. He lived in southern Maryland in Charlotte Hall for a long time, and then he retired recently and moved to Florida four or five years ago.

Q – And he was telling you some things that he remembered?

A – Yeah. He was telling me about his neighborhood. He lived on Military between 28th Street and 29th. He said that there is a place over there across from the other side of Military that is called Little Forest. I think that you can go there the back way. They had a nursing home that used to be there on the corner of Utah and Military. I think by that time it changes to 27th Street, but that is going to be taken over by the Methodist Home, as I understand, and it will be an Alzheimer’s facility. I think they will be moving into it any time now, because there was a recent meeting about that.

Q – What does he remember about the Little Forest?

A – He didn’t say too much about it. I think he called it by a different name. He said that Pat Buchanan lived over in that area. I think he lived up the street on Utah – near St. John’s. And there was another guy who lived over there – Red Auerbach – who was the couch of the Celtics. I think he lived on 32nd Street one block from Military. I didn’t know that before. St. Johns at that time when he lived there was not the present structure. It was just a small farmhouse that housed the freshmen that went to St. Johns because the others were downtown on Vermont Avenue I believe. Then when they built the new facility, they moved – maybe each year – I don’t know for sure – maybe the sophomores in as the freshmen became sophomores. I don’t know too much about that. I remember it being there. But it wasn’t anywhere near what the facility is now.

Q – Did your cousin say anything else?

A – Not too much. I was trying to get him to see if he remembered what some of that property was behind – you know if you went from Military Road to 27th Street – I don’t think 28th was cut through at the time. If you went behind that down to the park, there was a beautiful old house down there. It had the softest grass. It looked wonderful. My cousin and his sister lived there from the time they were born until she got married and he went into the service. It was in the mid 1960s. And then they did not come back to live there after that.

Q – Then you have other cousins?

A – Fritz [Frederick] of course, who just died. His oldest sister passed away over 30 years ago – 1977.

Q – And Gordon’s sister is she still alive?

A – On yes. She lives down at Solomon’s, Maryland. They just moved from Charles County in Bryantown where they lived for about 30 years. Her name is Peggy.

Q – Then you had other cousins?

A – Well Fritz, as I said, over on McKinley. He had the older sister who died in 1977. The both of them grew up in the neighborhood. They both went to Lafayette, Deal and Wilson, and she moved home for a while to take care of her mother when her father died. and then she died. So they both died within a period of about three years. She had cancer.

Q – What about the other brothers?

A – There was another brother who lived on Northampton Street – Wilbur. He had one daughter, but by the time they moved here the daughter was already married or soon after that was married. She moved to the Philadelphia area, and then she moved to New Hampshire and she passed away a few years ago. She would be almost as old as my parents were. She was born in 1917, and she has been gone 10 years perhaps. Her name was Dorothy. She was the oldest of our generation, but she didn’t go to Wilson or even Lafayette or Deal. She went to Central.

Q –Do you have other living cousins?

A – Yes I do. But they didn’t live in the Chevy Chase area. I have a cousin who lives in Cherry Hill, New Jersey – one of the older cousins. Her father went to dentistry school at the University of Pennsylvania. Then he stayed around the Philadelphia area. He had two daughters – one that lives in Cherry Hill – and the other recently moved to Texas. She lived in Rhode Island. She is 89, but they are not familiar with anything in the Chevy Chase area. They came to visit and that was when my grandfather was living and he lived in town. By that time, they were married and on their own and so they did not return to Washington very often.

Q – Fritz told us about your going to your grandfather’s house particularly during holidays. Do you have recollections of that?

A – Yes. He lived at 13th Street during those years and it was a good neighborhood. I mean it didn’t change until much later than that. He lived in a row house. None of us knew our grandmother because she died in 1916. I remember going to his house as young child. I was only about 4 when he passed away, but he would have Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s in this row house. It was a beautiful old home. You only had light coming in on at the front and the back of the house. There was a long living room, a beautiful stairway going up on the side of the hall. My parents were married there at his home. That was in October of 1936, and then they moved out to here in Chevy Chase in 1938 – in October.

Q – Though you were very young, you do remember the family gatherings there?

A – Yeah – parts of it. I remember the interior because it was impressive. The living room had three nine-by-twelve rugs in it. It had two marble fireplaces in it. Of course, they had heat, but maybe before that, they had the fireplaces. And it was three stories high. It had several bedrooms but only one bathroom on the second floor. My grandfather had a library and an office on the second floor adjacent to his bedroom. This is sort of getting off the beaten track, but it is amazing to remember how that neighborhood has changed.

Q – Do you remember what he did for a living?

A Yes to start with, he was in the liquor business. He had a store around O Street – 7th and O – in that area. So when Prohibition came, of course, he had to close down. So he became president of the 7th Street Savings Bank that evolved into Hamilton Bank and then from there it went to National Bank of Washington and then to Riggs and now to PNC.

Q – Was he involved in banking for quite a while?

A – Yes. I would say from the end of Prohibition until when he died in 1945. He was also on the Board of Directors of another bank which I think was Second National and then his parents had been in the tobacco business down at E Street – 917 E. It was around where Weschler’s Auction is today. Ginn rented that building for a long time from the family but it has been sold

Q – What do you mean by the tobacco business?

A – The making and selling of cigars – mostly and snuff products. They didn’t manufacture cigarettes in those days. They didn’t use cigarettes too much. It was cigars, pipes and tobacco.

Q – What did your father do?

A – He worked for the government – originally in the Quartermaster Corps. He was a transportation supervisor. He worked in later years at Cameron Station in Alexandria, and he managed the shipping of household goods and materials for Army officers. He worked for the government for 34 some years. He retired in 1954. He died in 1961.

Q – Your mother lived to a ripe old age.

A – Yes she was almost 92. She missed it by a couple months.

Q – The house where you lived in, did you parents build that house?

A – Yeah. They moved in October 1938.

Q – Do you know who the builder was?

A – No – I should look that up, because I think I have some of the plans.

Q – It is a stone house?

A – Yes. Most of the later houses are brick.

Q – So you lived there all of your life?

A – Yes.

Q – Can you remember who else lived on your street?

A – Well in the beginning it was all woods until early 1950. There were a few people who lived there originally after the houses were built. One was named Marie Thomas. She lived there for a long time. She died a few years ago. Her husband was I believe a captain in the police force. There was another family who lived there – Joseph Orlove. He had a meat business – the O Street market. That was before and after World War II. Most of the other people who were there have moved even though some of them lived there quite a long time. But there are none of the original people left.

Q – As far as occupations are concerned, you mentioned two occupations. Can you think of what some of the others father did for a living?

A – Not offhand, because, as I said, a lot of those people who were original owners died or moved away and the kids didn’t stay there. One of them was Carl Rowan’s son who lived there for a while.. He lived on Rittenhouse Street – across from our house. He would only be about sixty years old now.

Q – So there were a lot of woods around your house. Did that mean that you played a lot in the woods?

A – I remember as a young child that my father and some of his brothers would cut wood on Rittenhouse Street for our fireplace. In those days oil was rationed and things were kind of tough for heating. But they didn’t have power tools, and it was done with a two-man saw. I can remember my father going over there at least a couple weekends a year. It would be him and one of his brothers who would come up and help.

My mother and I used to walk over in the woods lots of times. Many times we would gather wild flowers. There used to be an old foundation of a springhouse that was in the woods behind Rittenhouse Street before Stephenson Lane was cut through. You could see the foundation, but there was no building on the top. How long that had been there, I don’t know. We used to walk through there and there used to be a large white rock. It was at least as big as this table and maybe bigger, and it was partly out of the ground. It was kind of a goal to try to find it. We would sit there for a while and then come back. Probably it wasn’t that big of a space, but you think of it as being big when you are little.

Q –Who were your playmates? Were they in the neighborhood?

A – No. I didn’t have too many kids who lived right in our area. There were some that I went to school with that I was friends with. One lived on 32nd Street. One lived on 33rd up near Morrison. Another girl lived over on Tennyson. But there wasn’t anyone really close, and even the kids that used to go to church with and Sunday school, many of them lived in Montgomery County

Q – Are these playmates still around?

A – I think they are still living, but they are not in the area.

Q – Are you in touch with them?

A – No. But I see their name in the reunion book – Wilson’s reunion book

Q – What are their names? Do you remember?

A – One is named Nadine Eisenberg. She lived on 33rd Street. Her father used to own Pearson’s Liquor on Wisconsin Avenue. Diane Koonin lived behind where Dr. Havell lived – 32nd between Morrison and McKinley. And Carol Peterson, on Tennyson Street.

In one way we were playmates, but then in another way, we weren’t. But we were in the same class at Lafayette. They were trying to even out the grades so that everyone would graduate in June and so the four of us that year – there may have been some others too – were pushed ahead. We didn’t go the first year. They pushed some ahead – it was in 4th grade the year we went. And so we skipped the second half of 4th grade so everyone would graduate in June.

Q – So the neighborhood was a lot different than it is now. You had a rural, wooded area and then as you got older, houses were started to be built. I guess the woods gradually were gone. How old would you have been?

A – I would have been 9 or 10 as more and more houses were being built.

Q – Do you remember watching the house being built?

A – Yes it was fantastic for us to see. My father and I would often go to see how much they had done during the day. These houses were going up in our backyard so to speak and across the street.

Q – Did you like that – that there were more people around?

A – It didn’t bother me – people were closer.

Q – Let’s move over to Connecticut Avenue. What was Connecticut Avenue like when you were young?

A – Between McKinley and Morrison, where the CVS is now, it used to be a People’s Drug Store and before that a Dart Drug Store in the middle of that block. Then were was Schupp’s Bakery, Edward’s Shoe Store, and a five-and-dime store. There was a gas station on the corner and Riggs Bank for many years where PNC is today. In the Arcade, there was the Peking Restaurant and a beauty shop.

Between McKinley and Northampton, there used to be a Safeway Store – right about where Magruders is today. And then there was also another little grocery or some kind of a store where Washington Permanent is today. You went up a few steps to the door. I don’t know if we ever shopped there. But I remember going to the Safeway with my mother. Chevy Chase Pharmacy used to be where the post office is now, also Brentano’s Book Store. And I took dancing and piano on Connecticut Avenue for 12 years when I was in elementary and up to senior high.

Q – In what building?

A – That was above the Avalon Theatre. It was called the Dimetrif Studio. Tamara Dimetrif was Russian by nationality. I remember that she had an accent. We used to go up the stairs to the studio – on the right hand side facing the street. Now I think you go up the other side for some reason. Anyway, there used to be some stairs there – a wide stairway. And there was a large room over top of the Avalon where they had the dance studio. I took ballet there, as I said, for 12 years under Kathryn Mulloney, and then there were smaller rooms where they taught piano in that building. That was before it was taken over by the theater. The theater was but there but they didn’t take over the theater upstairs at that time.

Q – They didn’t have a theater up there at that time?

A – I think it was Avalon II. That didn’t take place until probably the 60s or more because in 1958, and a few years later, it was still a dance and piano studio.

Q – So the years you took dance were about when?

A – I took it until 1958 and figure 12 years before that – 1946 probably.

Q – Did you do it once a week?

A – Piano once a week and dance at least twice and sometimes three times a week.

Q – And did you have performances?

A – Yes we had recitals.

Q – At that place?

A – We usually had them in later years at Wilson High School. Before that, I think it was at the elementary school in Bethesda right off of Old Georgetown Road – it might have been Wilson Elementary on Wilson Lane. I can see it but I don’t know what the names of those streets were. Then Kathryn Mulloney, who was the dance instructor, moved the production to Wilson High School. Mulloney’s father was a judge in the District. The family lived on Chevy Chase Circle. I think she used to dance with the Metropolitan Opera before she came back to DC and started teaching dancing.

Q – Did you also have piano recitals?

A – Yes. Piano was not my forte. I just loved to dance and later taught it – not ballet. I taught ballroom dancing as a part-time job when I was in high school – senior in high school and then came back in the 3rd and 4th year when I came back from college.

Q – Where did you teach?

A – At the Jewish Community Center over there at Meadowbrook. I started with Lou Tupler, and he wanted me to take it over rather than just be his assistant. It was good – a couple hours a week.

Q – Anything else you remember about the Connecticut Avenue corridor?

A – Across where the community center is of course that was the old Brown School and that turned into the community center and it seemed like they had an old community center there before they built the new one. The library too before they built the new place.

Q – Did you go there at the child – the old community center?

A – Not as much perhaps as some people because we did not leave nearby, and when I went up to the Avenue it was always for music or dance.

Q – Anything else you remember about the Avenue?

A– You know people make fun of me today when I say I’m going up to the Avenue – “Oh the Avenue, what is the Avenue?” [Connecticut Avenue] they say.

Q – That is what you called it back then?

A – Yeah. People who were closer I guess like Fritz and his sister would go up there for shopping, but they were half the distance that I was.

Q – How did you get there – did you walk?

A – No my mother would take me and pick me up, too — especially pick me up because it was after dark when I finished.

Q – Did you ride a bicycle?

A – Yeah. But I didn’t learn to ride a bicycle until I was pretty old – in comparison to other kids.

Q – What kinds of things did you like to do as a child?

A – We used to jump rope, play jacks. I wasn’t into sports stuff. I never liked those child games that we had over at Lafayette. That just was not my bag and a lot of things like we mentioned about playmates and etc., my parents were older than many parents at that time. I had a lot of aunts and uncles that were always around – and some cousins. But as far as girlfriends my age, there weren’t too many of them.

Q – That reminds me – this may be a little off the subject – but I remember that you told me some time ago that there was some sort of a speakeasy house on Rittenhouse Street.

A – You are talking about the Purple Iris.

Q – Tell us about that.

A – It was right up here at 32nd and Rittenhouse. Just within the past year, somebody from Wilson alumni , I think he was in my class, had written into the Alumni Beacon about wanting to know if anyone had any information about the Purple Iris. Well, a lot of information was written in over the past few years – about what they heard it was. Somebody had looked up some old newspaper clippings that said there was a teahouse there. Al Zaner, who used to belong to St. Paul’s [Lutheran Church], lived on Military Road. (I think he lives in Florida now.) He had written that his mother had warned him not to go around there – that it was kind of taboo. Of course, he lived quite a ways from there – being on Military – but in those years people on Military Road went to Lafayette. Later they changed those people who lived on Military and sent them to Murch School. I always thought of the Purple Iris as a Road House. It sat – as I said – at the corner of 32nd Street and Rittenhouse. Three houses are in that corner now. But it sat back in the lot. I think the name intrigued me because I like purple. My mother used to say – I don’t know if this is hearsay or true – but Army officers would take their extra marital affairs to the Purple Iris, and it was kind of a speakeasy kind of thing. I don’t know if that was true or not.

Q – So this discussion that you said has been going on concerning the Purple Iris – was this on email?

A –Not really email. Wilson has an alumni association for anyone that wants to be a member no matter what year they graduated. They have a bulletin that they edit and bring up every quarter, and if you have questions or want to remember about something about Wilson or the neighborhood, this is where people had written about the Purple Iris.

Q – Was this there in Prohibition days?

A – No I don’t think so. This would have been in the late 30s and 40s. I don’t know where that business came that about girlfriends of Army officers. I think maybe it was when my father was in service that we heard that. It would be interesting to know if was true.

Q – I wonder when it was razed and houses built there?

A – Probably in the early 50s. Somebody I think wrote in and said that they had a fire and it did not get rebuilt. It was a kitchen fire.

Q – Previously you mentioned about some prominent people who may have lived here like Ray Auerbach, Do you know anybody else – maybe someone from the government?

A – I think there was some DC government officials that lived in the neighborhood. Years ago one of the three commissioners lived there. His name was Walter Tobriner. He lived on the corner of Rittenhouse and 33rd Street.

Q – What are some of your memories of Lafayette?

A – I think I put it in the Lafayette book that often times we don’t realize how good we had it until it is over with. I think we had a good education in those days – the foundation for our continuing – not just Deal and Wilson but also college and then your life. But you don’t realize it when you are a kid and going through it.

Q – Tell me about your teachers. Did one stand out?

A – Well I think my first grade teacher – Ms. Younkin – she was always wonderful I thought. But they all were good. And the majority of them– or at least they appeared to us – older. They were not just out of college, but maybe they were, but it seemed to us they were older because we were so young.

Q – I think I read that you did a Maypole Celebration every year at Lafayette.

A – Yeah, they had May Day every year. You know I had several pictures that I sent for the Lafayette book. Jay Guerber’s kids were at Lafayette at the time and they were doing this oral history project. He suggested a few of us that he knew had lived in the area for a long time and had gone to Lafayette. So this one picture that I submitted that my mother had taken – it was of a partner of mine – Eddie Wye. After that book came out, Eddie called me up one day. His sister is still in the area – over in the Janney area – over on the other side of Wisconsin. He introduced himself and told me who he was. I said I remember that he was always in trouble, fighting and carrying on. He said his mother was always writing notes and apologizing for his behavior. His father finally got fed up and pulled him out of Lafayette, and he went to some other school. But now – he is probably retired – I believe that he was an English professor at I think it was the University of Washington. I was thinking he was such a problem. I think the teacher paired me up with him, because I was always quiet and I didn’t say much and this kid was always picking a fight. He was like a Dennis the Menace type. But it was amazing to me that he called and gotten the book. I’m not sure about the spelling of his name Wiel, Wihl or Wye – I don’t know. It sounds like Why.

Q – Your family belonged to St. Paul’s Lutheran Church?

A – Yes they used to belong to Luther Place first. I was baptized at Luther Place. You know it was a problem to go downtown, and by that time the neighborhood was changing in that 13th/15th Street corridor. So when I was quite young, my parents transferred to St. Paul’s [Lutheran Church].

Q – So you went to Sunday school at St. Paul’s and got confirmed there?

A – Yeah. I was confirmed in 1953 at St. Paul’s – in March I think. That was when St. Paul’s was a basement congregation. The bottom part of it – which is now the lower auditorium – was what you could see above ground on the Connecticut Avenue side. The main church was put up – around 1958.

Q – What was the reason that it took so long for the church to be put up?

A – The Depression had come and then the War. The price had gone up and it just took longer to put out that much money for a new church.

Q – So when you went there as a child, the church service was in the basement?

A – Yeah. The whole time. Schaeffer Hall was there, but the rest is where the lower auditorium is today.

Q – Let’s talk about your home life. Did your mother require you to do any household chores that you can recall?

A – Not that she required me. But I helped to do a lot of thing’s – some cooking – preparation maybe. She taught me to iron and do laundering. I helped my father with the grass and yard, and then when he died in 1961, I had it to do all myself.

Q – Any kind of handiwork, needlework?

A – Yeah. She instilled that in me. I don’t know that she taught me. She wanted to teach me crocheting. But I never could pick it up with thread. But I picked it up on my own with yarn which was much easier. Later I went back to the thread. One thing that I wish I had her to teach me was to tat. A lot of those old things are coming back in now – that younger people are interested in;

Q – Did she do a lot of handiwork like that?

A – Yes. Mostly crocheting and tatting. She did not do as much stitchery as I like to do.

Q – As a child did you like to read?

A – Not very much and I still don’t today. I do it because you have to, but it is not one of my favorite pastimes. I would much rather be doing stitching, because I feel that I am accomplishing something. I like using my hands to show a finished project .

Q – I know that you taught school. What did you teach?

A – I had 5th grade. I taught at Rogers Heights Elementary School in Prince George’s County for 30 years.

Q – Where is that?

A – It is in Bladensburg. It is behind Bladensburg High School. It is across the street from Elizabeth Seton Catholic High School for Girls.

Q – Did you always teach 5th grade?

A – Well I had 4th/5th sometimes and sometimes 5th/6th But mostly 5th.

Q – Where did you go to college?

A – I went to St Mary’s College of Maryland first for the first two years, because it was only a two-year school at that time. It was called St. Mary’s Female Seminary Junior College. And then after I graduated from there, it became a four-year college. Now it is St. Mary’s College of Maryland and is a Public Honors College. When I finished at St. Mary’s, I transferred to American University the last two years. My father was sick at the time and so I lived at home. I have stayed connected with St. Mary’s through the Alumni Association for many years.

Q – Did you always want to be a teacher?

A – I don’t know if I always wanted to be, but I had decided to go along those lines the first year or so at college.

I think that if you think of the history and environment and changes over the years, that this is fantastic project that you people are undertaking, I am sure that you get to talk to other people – in different sections of the Chevy Chase area – I think it is just great. This was my major in college – history. So I think anything that deals with the historical viewpoint is great.

Q – You have a history degree?

A – Well it is in history and education. It is in secondary education. I didn’t get a job right away. There was an overload in the social studies area, and so they offered me 5th grade where emphasis on U. S. Social Studies was taught. I was glad that I changed. But I had to go back to get all the elementary courses to teach math, science and everything else.

Q – This is an open-ended question, but what are some of your most happy memories living in Chevy Chase?

A – Well I love to go by the Chevy Chase Circle when the fountain is going. The flowers and plantings that some of the Historical Society has put in there over the past few years – still sort of instills in me a feeling of “gee this is a nice place to live.” In the old days when we were kids there used to be some devils who would put some soap suds in the Chevy Chase fountain and the soap suds would bubble up and over the Chevy Chase Circle, and the cars would come in not knowing which way to go.

Q – It almost sounds like a Halloween trick. Do you remember some of the holidays, such as Halloween?

A – I never did like Halloween to be frank with you. Kids like it when they get dressed up, but I really got turned off of Halloween when I was teaching. The kids would ask “when is Halloween?” and I thought this is the last Halloween I will ever do.

Q – You didn’t do trick or treating when you were a child?

A – Yeah – a little bit – but not too much. We always had parties at school and dressed up. That was always fun to do that.

Q – Did they have a parade with costumes around the school?

A – I think they did.

Q – How about 4th of July, was there something special then – or Memorial Day – any parades? Do you recall?

A – I don’t remember that too much. I remember Memorial Day. It was a family tradition when my father came home from work, my mother and I would gather up some flowers in the yard. Most of the time we had something blooming in the yard. We would go to Rock Creek Cemetery where my grandparents were buried – and some of my great aunts and uncles – and we would decorate the graves.

Q – On the 4th of July – did you go to fireworks – either in town or in the neighborhood?

A – I don’t believe that there were any in the neighborhood. There may have been some. We went down a few times to the Monument to see them as people do today.

Q – What are your memories of Christmas?

A – Well we had a family celebration among my father’s brothers families, and we would often times get together for dinner or an exchange of gifts, We had a glass of eggnog. We would visit in the homes for a snack.

Q – Were winters difficult? Did you have lots of snow?

A – Lots of snow. We used to do some sledding down Rittenhouse Street.

Q – How about ice-skating?

A – No.

Q – In summers you probably didn’t have air conditioning?

A – No.

Q – How did you get through summers? Did you have a sleeping porch?

A – Yes we did, but I don’t think we used it too much. We had fans maybe. It didn’t seem to bother me too much then. Neither did the cold, but I think it did bother my parents. And often times my mother and I and my father when he could get off of work would go to Southern Maryland on the Patuxent River. At least if it wasn’t cooler, you could go swimming and get cool

Q – Did you spent quite a bit of time down there?

A – When I was younger, yes.

Q – You would go for several days or a week?

A – Yeah during the summer.

Q – And your other cousins would be there?

A – Yeah, Usually

Q – Is the house still there?

A – Yes it is. My father had gone down to St. Mary’s County when he was a young boy. I would say when he was 10 – 12 years old when his parents used to go to Europe or something they used to board – or I say “farm” these kids out. My father always went down to southern Maryland, and he would stay with some schoolteachers on Summer Seat Farm. You people probably don’t know about that. But I have met several people who went there. It was a farm that was owned at one time by the Costigan sisters who were schoolteachers, and they would accept these kids and board them for a time in the summer. I don’t know if it was for a week or a month. My father used to tell tales. They would have to do farm chores. They would drive the oxen, pulling the ox cart down to the water. He was a young boy. I would like to look that up in the old records, but I don’t know if there are any records available. A couple of my friends worked there to try to revitalize this place along with historic St. Mary’s City and Sotterley and a couple of the main historic places down there.

Q – You said that you get a Lafayette alumni newsletter?

A – No Wilson.

Q – Is there a way to get a copy? I would like to get in touch with that group.

A – One of the guys who is in that group is older than I am. I have talked to him on the phone – Damon Cordom – and he lives off Utah Avenue on Van Hazen Street. I can look it up for you because I get the copies, and I have talked to him personally after Christmas. Wilson is planning a reunion or celebration in the fall – October 15 – 16 some time around there – when they hopefully will be reopening the school after the renovation. Another person to talk to is– Kay Cartright from St. Paul’s [Lutheran Church]. She went to Wilson and Deal but she did not go to Lafayette. She went to Murch probably. She lives in her family home on Reno Road. I don’t know if that is Chevy Chase. I think her parents were away for a while in Florida, but she was back there for high school and still lives there today.

Q – Let’s talk about Dr. Havell. You said he made house calls.

A – Yes.

Q – Refresh our memory, where did he live?

A – Dr. Robert Havell lived on Nebraska Avenue, but the back of his property was at the triangle – where 32nd Street came in there at Morrison, I believe – the white house right there on that triangle. His mother and father lived there. He had two sisters. The oldest sister died of breast cancer. She was around the class of ’57 because she was a little older than I was. Then Tom – we used to call him Cotton – was in the class of ’59 so he grew up there until he went to college.

Q – So he is the one who is a doctor now?

A – Yes. He might be ready to retire. He is about 70. His office is down on Cathedral Avenue. He is Dr. Thomas Havell.

Q – Can you tell me about the father? What was he like?

A – Well he was sort of cold – a New England type person. He was not very warm. He was a good doctor, but he didn’t have a whole lot of bedside manners.

Q – But his office was in his home?

A – Yes on the side of his home.

Q – Were there other people who had professional offices in that neighborhood?

A – Not that I can remember. He was there for a long time in practice, and then he developed I believe Parkinson Disease so he and his wife moved to the Methodist Home. He died and then she died, but she had that house for quite a while after Dr. Havell died.

Q – Do you have photographs?

A – I brought a couple is to show you the woods on Rittenhouse Street.

Q – Was it paved?

A – Rough payment. It wasn’t smooth. It wasn’t gravel.

This picture shows my father, grandfather and me. I brought these because you asked about the neighborhood. I know that we must have some others. It might give a feeling of what the woods was like. You are used to seeing houses on the blocks. The closest house on Rittenhouse was the street that runs from Nebraska to Rittenhouse – 28th Street. Those houses were put in later than the ones on Rittenhouse.

Q – This is you in a car?

A – It is an old Plymouth in 1944 or 1945.

Q – I would like to look to see if there are any others. I know there is one of our front yard, and it shows the cars coming up Nebraska and coming out of the park. If they were coming, they were coming to your house. Now the traffic goes by like crazy — especially in rush hour.

Q – Anything that we didn’t ask you? What was it like during the war?

A – I can remember some things during the war – like the air raid drills and even when we were in school and the drills that we had to get under our desks. I remember that my mother had blankets over the windows so that the light didn’t show during World War II.

Q – Do you remember when the war was over?

A – I remember I was with my mother and one of her sisters in Atlantic City, and they declared that the war was over and everyplace shut down. It was like you couldn’t even get any milk. Everyone was out on the street yelling and screaming and celebrating.

Q – Anything else that you would like to say about Chevy Chase?

A – There are probably many more things that I could say about Chevy Chase as I remember them. Chevy Chase is a great place to live, and I feel very fortunate to have had – and still have – the opportunity and experience of this area. May we always remember the historical background and heritage of Chevy Chase DC.

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Spanish Scholar, ANC Commissioner, Businesswoman and Race Pioneer: Bernice Degler Made a Difference

Interviewee: L. Bernice Degler
Date:  Oct. 30, 2013
Location: Degler residence on Chevy Chase Parkway NW
Interviewed and transcribed (from audio recording) by: Patricia MacDermot Kasdan

L. Bernice Degler died in her home on Dec. 15, 2013, one week after celebrating her 90th birthday

Q – How far back can you trace your family in Washington?

A – My family was from Texas; they moved to DC during the Great Migration. 

Q – Tell me about your early life.

A – I was born in 1923 right here in Washington in a little hospital in Northwest.  I started out at Garrison School, which was a lab school so it was interesting — a lab school is where the practicing teachers have the experienced teachers guiding them; this was about 1927 — then Garnet Patterson and then to Dunbar High School. I graduated in June and the war started that December, 1941.  For many years Franklin Delano Roosevelt was the only President I knew. 

Q – What did you do after you graduated from high school?

A- I went to Miner Teachers College; it was part of the DC system.  At that time there was segregation.  I didn’t realize when I graduated from the Teachers College with a BS in Spanish and English, that only 5 percent of the people in the United States had college degrees.  I felt inferior because I didn’t have a PhD, and never did get one. I actually was an English major expecting to go into journalism in grad school, but I was just so inspired by Dr. Valrez Spratlin of Howard University, that I loved the Spanish language. He was American with degrees in Spanish from the University of Madrid, which I tried to go to, but at that time because of the end of the war, students were not being encouraged to go overseas, so I decided to go to Mexico. When I graduated, I left and went to the National University of Mexico, the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters, to get a Masters degree in Spanish Language and Literature. 

Eddie Brooke drove me to the airport.  When he looked out his back door, he’d be looking across two streets at my front door. He was so neat; he went to Howard University Med. School. He told my father that he would drive me to the airport. Many years later he became a Senator from Massachusetts, as a Republican!  Eddie was a very good friend and a very good champion. 

Q – Tell me about your experience in Mexico City.          

A – I spent a little over two years there in Mexico City, which was so beautiful.  I can’t go back because they have too many people now.  I lived near the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters. I loved Mexico because being at the university was being among people of importance. One of my professors was the Director of Archives for the country.  I had a marvelous professor in Latin who was from Basque territory, and you got to go places and do things with these people.  It was nothing for me to have an appointment at the National Palace, which was downtown, because my advisor was the Director of Archives; it was a different day — it used to be somewhat that way here in Washington. 

Q – What did you do after your left Mexico City?

 A – I always knew that I would teach.  I wasn’t encouraged to do the degree in journalism because it was such a hard route for anybody, but especially women.  So the safe thing was teaching, but you could at least start on the college level.  I very quickly got a job because a person in my neighborhood was appointed president of Morgan College. A cousin of mine who taught Spanish there was leaving to go to New York State University, so I got that job, and I was there for two years.  Dr. Spratlin called me and asked me if I would come to Howard, so I went to Howard to teach Spanish – Spanish Instructor – Instructor is low on the totem pole, but there. 

While I was at Howard, I entered the Georgetown School of Foreign Service.  There were four institutes; I was in the Institute of Language and Linguistics.  I was there for the great international experiment of Dr. Leon Dostert in the aural-oral approach laboratory. 

Then I got married.  A group of us were interracial – I guess I and my friend Pauline were the only – what were we called then?  Negroes, but at any rate, I always tell people no matter what they name me, no matter who does the naming, I’m still me, it doesn’t matter. I got married in 1950 to a friend from New Jersey.

Q – Please tell me about your career.

A – I taught in the public schools and stayed about 10 years then didn’t work for about 14 years.  I had two boys. We lived in Brookland where I mainly grew up, then moved here in 1966. We were Unitarians so we were welcomed to the neighborhood by E. Duncan Howlett, the minister who lived here in Chevy Chase. We went to All Souls Unitarian Church at 16th and Harvard.  The Beaches were members. I was on the Board of Religion at All Souls and also coordinated the pre-school kindergarten and Sunday school.    

Q – Do you know anything about the history of your house?

A – The assistant ministers lived here.  One was Rev. James Reeb; he had moved out and was working on civil rights in Roxbury, Boston, when he went to Selma, Alabama, and was killed. I worked with him because I was on the Board of the Sunday school. I worked closely with him and I remember telling him, “Don’t go, don’t go,” not thinking that he would be killed, but that he had little children and it wasn’t worth taking a chance. 

A Japanese fellow from the embassy came to live with us through IBIS, International Business Information Service.  He was very formal, very correct.  When he left you did not know much more about him than you knew when he came, except that he was a delightful person, although he wore his clogs in the house.  IBIS would call and ask, for example, “We have four Japanese scholars, will you cook them an American dinner?” And they came in bearing gifts.  I had mashed potatoes, oven-fried chicken, string beans with butter beans, and ice cream for dessert.  Those people lapped up that food.  They were all young, and each one taught at a different college or university in Japan.  Other times I would entertain people (for IBIS) for a couple of hours or drive them around sight seeing.

Q – How did you happen to buy your house?  

A – We had bought land to build in Montgomery County and were in between places to live.  Hilda Nichol said, “While you are waiting for your house to be built, why don’t you stay in this house?”  We worked together on a lot of things and her husband ran (Senator Edmund) Muskie’s campaign, but they went back to Maine.  So we moved here, it was part of our involvement, not formal involvement, with Northwest Washington Fair Housing.  Hilda and Doris Ingram who lived on Livingston Street were both involved in that. I was not; I did not volunteer with them or anything like that, though I supported them and did anything I could do. 

So we moved here expecting to stay only a year or year and a half, and finally decided we would just stay so we sold the lot in Montgomery County.  We ended up buying this house. Northwest Washington Fair Housing had an office on Georgia Avenue right at Military Road.   Sometimes they would send out white homebuyers, then black homebuyers, and compare the treatment.

Q – Why did you choose Chevy Chase?  

A – We were influenced by people we were deeply involved with who were also friends.

Q – You must have been one of the first African Americans in the neighborhood — did you encounter any opposition?  

A – I’m sure that there was plenty of opposition, but no body ever approached me in any way or anything like that. As a matter of fact, the opposite happened in some respects.  Now I imagine with the children it was different or harder.  This was a time when in the culture there was reaching out and some soul searching as to, “I never thought about this – will I go to the movies downtown?  And no, I never saw any black people, but it never occurred to me that they weren’t there because they couldn’t go.” 

When Pat Finn across the street moved in, we were very friendly with Pat and her husband. She ran the program for nurses at Georgetown and Dr. Finn was a physics professor at Georgetown.  Bill (Bernice’s husband) was a registered architect, who was for years the head of membership at the American Institute of Architects, so we had a lot in common because we were all people who got involved with issues and organizations.

Mary Ellen Gannon talked about the fact that her mother was of Italian background and her father was a well-known lawyer of Irish background.  She grew up in Chevy Chase over by Lafayette School.  She is still there.

Now as far as color was concerned, I guess I was safe because I was the only one. There was another for a while at the corner of Military and Chevy Chase Parkway in that last house down there, but he was a very private person so I never met him. 

Q – What was the neighborhood like – then compared to now?  

A – For me, within the radius of two blocks there were about 45 children and the children brought us together on many different levels.  With me and with Bill and the boys when we moved here I’m sure people were very curious and were watching.  It was quite obvious that we were well-centered people.  The Walter Beaches came over the first minutes we were here, and eventually Allan (Beach) who lived across the street. 

I imagine there was a great deal of curiosity, so we didn’t get what we might have gotten had we just moved in cold.  Within the first few months we had a big open house for the Unitarians who lived in the neighborhood.  Also, Bill would bring new architects and their wives here who had moved into the neighborhood.  When you are involved in things, you don’t run into the kind of things that other people run into – the negative things are there, but they aren’t necessarily expressed to you. Our closest family friends turned out to be the Hannans, very conservative Catholics. 

Q – What were the occupations of the people living nearby?  

A – Our friends the Finns on the corner, he might have been head of the Department of Physics at Georgetown and she was head of the nursing program there until it ended.  The Hannans directly across the street, with whom we were so close, he had a rug business in Northwest Washington. She was a teacher.  It was his family that gave the land for St. John’s.  The Seegers lived across the street. On the corner was Joe McGrath who was a lawyer; after his wife died and he retired, he became a lay preacher at Blessed Sacrament. Next door was interesting because they were a Quaker couple that worked for the State Department; they would go away and rent their place to Africans from Swaziland.  Then it was sold to a couple that was also at the State Department. 

Q – Where did your children go to school?  

A – They went to St. John’s, Barry and Wilson. There was a time when everybody was switching to St. John’s whether they were Catholic or not.

Q – What age were they when you moved to Chevy Chase?

A – They were like 11 and 12, somewhere in there. 

Q – What was their school experience if they went to Chevy Chase schools?  

A – Kirk also went to Lafayette, which he liked.

Q – What stores and businesses did you frequent on Connecticut Avenue?  

A – I liked it because in those days it was different from now – it was personal.  I’d go to Boukas and say, “I need flowers for the 6:30 class over at Lafayette.  Give me a break.” Then there was a women’s apparel store called On the Avenue; it was owned by Barbara Roca. Her husband was a respected lawyer. 

We loved the Piccadilly Restaurant and we were all so excited when Jeff Gildenhorn opened up The Fishery where you could pick out your fish and look at its eyes and so forth. The Giant had a fish counter with guys cutting the heads off.  If I wanted two of those heads, they’d give them to me. I miss that personal business on the Avenue; to me now the Avenue is indifferent. 

That table there is some 60 years old and I was going to redo the top of it myself.  I called Carol Englert next door and she said, “Well, let’s go up to the hardware store.”  I remember taking a big plastic jug and they gave me some stuff to clean it up. Then I called him up, “This is not working!”  The guy came down here, looked at the table and told me what to do because I had taken off all the patina. 

Then, Magruders was so different!  Carole and I and Mary Ellen would get in the car because we were going to hit three or four places, then divide the stuff up.  This is typical Brookland – this is the way my block was – a peck of this and a bushel of that.  We’d get up there early in the morning with the car because we were going other places and Tony would have gotten up about four or five that morning and gone out to market and gotten all those fresh vegetables and brought them back.  He would see us coming and he’d say, “The specials, nothing but the specials.”  And we would say, “What else is there?” But he was so fussy at Magruders, with fruit baskets in the window.  Now it is completely different. I used to take my turkey from Thanksgiving and freeze it and have them cut it in half and put the other half back in the freezer.  You could do stuff like that.  At the butchers you would say, “Would you grind that pork?”  It was different!  Now to me it is impersonal. 

Carol still lives next door; she is a widow now.  At that time there were more women at home.  I worked for many years but I was at home for 14 years when I was so involved with Polly  [Shackleton – Ward 3 DC Council member].  It would take the mailman a long time to get down the block because every housewife would have something to say. 

Life was different; however, what stands out is that the children you never see outside playing – it used to be that they were outside playing.  There are at least 10 kids on this block and you never see them.  Our children were out there all the time; you came in the house to get a glass of juice and went back outside to play ball or wander around. 

Q – Did you go to the Broad Branch Market?    

A – I didn’t go to Broad Branch very often.  Kirk always wanted some money because the children would stop in there after school. 

Q – What did you do while at home with your children?

A – While I was at home, other than cooking and cleaning and going to schools with three boys, I became a docent and joined the docent board at the National Collection of Fine Arts, which is the National Museum of American Art, both unpaid positions.  We had a program that I also ran for the museum of bringing in speakers broadening the focus of the museum.  I remember I brought in Dr. Davies to talk about the Harlem Renaissance.  You would invite certain organizations to hear the speaker – this I liked the best.  I was there when a controversy went on, when we accepted critics of Sam Gilliam [African American painter associated with the Washington Color School]; we had one of his paintings – exciting years!  I was there when a Vice President’s wife, Joan Mondale, who was a crafts person, legitimized crafts for the traditional, fine arts museums. 

It was also during that time that I met Polly Shackleton (Ward 3 DC Council member) and I used to help run her constituent service office at the Community Center and coordinate the volunteers.  I loved that lady — I walked with her when she was ringing doorbells, and I got an award from her.  I don’t remember for what.  It was exciting working with Polly Shackleton on neighborhood things. 

During those years, I think it was Marion Barry who established the ANC, and Harriet Berger around the corner was elected to the ANC for 3G.  She decided to go to law school; she was walking down the street and I said, “I’m bored.”  She said, “Well, let’s see if you can’t take over the rest of my term.  That will let me out.”  After that, I ran and became an ANC Commissioner from 1978 until 1984.  I was Commissioner for the Advisory Neighborhood Commission as an Independent, I had forgotten that, but you were forced to select a party, so I just put Democrat in order to vote in the primary.  The ANC was important to me because I had grown up in a non-political town, a very political town that was non-political.

Q – What was your main focus when you served as an ANC Commissioner?

A – I ran on reducing real estate tax rates and I ran on giving attention to the elderly.  Isn’t that funny?  If I ran today, I’d run on the same two things!  Unbelievable how much things change but stay the same because we are going through such rapid change at this time.   

Q – Tell me more about your ANC experience.

A – I thought that I was the only woman, but there were other candidates: Eliza Callas and Martha Williams.  I remember Allen Beach [ANC Commissioner] was a part of it – I love Allen!  They were mainly men and mainly lawyers.  I imagine I might have been intimidated in the beginning but not after a while.  I remember Mr. Brown and I used to bump heads because he wanted funds for the National Cathedral. We usually met in the Community Center; we never met in the office.

Q – When did you go back to a paid position?

A – I went back to work in 1979, as bilingual Coordinator at Gordon Adult Center in Georgetown; later it was the Rosario Center after he (Carlos Rosario) died.  I was Woman of the Year for the Business and Professional Woman’s Club, probably in 1980, for establishing a Hispanic Business and Professional Women’s Club.  And then I would go back and forth and teach Spanish at Miner Teachers College.  

I was President of African and American Women’s Association, which was started by a group of women from AID and State Department, and October was our 40th anniversary! It is a humanitarian group to further education, travel and meaningful life experiences for women. I had a meeting here Monday with four ex-Presidents. When I was president, I started a program of why visit Africa when you can do so right here in DC?  I had Ghana, Cote d’Ivoire, Ethiopia, two or three others, and we would take children by the busloads – the school system was easy to deal with then – and take them to the embassies or bring them to the Sumner Museum.    

I spent seven years at the Sumner Museum and Archives, and I retired from there. That was the oldest school built for African Americans and it was Sumner who pushed it through Congress.  It is an historic building; the bells were cast in England and the clock tower is probably one of the few on the East Coast.  I was director of program development and education and coordinator of docents – they had to go through training.  I liked Marianna Blagburn and the way she reacted to the training – she is very hands on and quick to move. 

Q – What did you do after retirement?

A – When I retired, Cathy Smith in Cleveland Park was hell-bent on developing the U Street Project; someone told her about me, and she called me to work on the U Street Project with her.  I called different ones to come down as volunteers and Marianna was right there. 

Then I got involved, because I was involved with Cathy, with Manna Incorporated that built housing for people.  I ended up running an educational program at the Whitelaw Hotel for the people who live there; these were Section 8 folks – and who came to help me?  Marianna!  She wasn’t there every week, but she did help me when I had the quilters come in and teach quilting.  We had a little competition for prizes, and she helped me with that.  I am in the book they published as manager of that part of the U Street Project.  Cathy Smith is still there in Cleveland Park; she’s a white woman from the mid-west, but this was what she wanted to do, get the mainstream, like the Smithsonian Institution, and the busses and so forth, to include the Shaw area as a part of sightseeing in DC. She would have meetings at the Lincoln Theater.  She worked with different organizations in that area.

A lot happened in the 80s because the District of Columbia Federation of Business and Professional Women’s Clubs at one time was the largest organization of working women in the world. When I joined them, as usual, I looked for something to do. There was a woman who was looking for somebody to help her establish a Hispanic club, so we did that. I used to go to Ayuda every Tuesday and translate for the American lawyers who were coming in to help the poor girls who were being exploited.

Q – Tell me about the photo you are holding.

A – I love this inscription from Elsie Austin, who was at the State Department, USAID and a member of Delta sorority.  “To my friend Bernice, admired for her intriguing combination of courage and commitment, kindness and humor, wisdom and achievement, and all with a surprising bit of devilment” — I knew her from the African and American Women’s Association. 

Q – What do you enjoy most at this stage of your life?

A – Now everything is my grandchildren, three more boys, who were here last summer for a month.  The oldest one just turned 16, the youngest is 12 and I have an older granddaughter who is 25.  So the grandchildren are the big deal right now. 

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Pennsylvania Girl Recruited During World War II, Worked as Secretary on Manhattan Project

Interviewee: Barbara Dresner
Date: Sept. 17, 2012
Interviewed and transcribed (from audio recording) by: Joan Solomon Janshego
Location: Dresner residence in Chevy Chase DC

Barbara Dresner passed away on Nov. 9, 2020 at age 95.

Q – Tell me how it came about that you ended up in Washington, DC?

A – I had two years of college. I went to Dickinson Junior College. It is now called Lycoming College in Williamsport, PA. I was recruited with three other girls for jobs in Washington DC. It was during the war, and I didn’t know quite what I was going to do – just get an office job. They came to my home to interview me, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to come. I was scared. But what else was I going to do? I had to have my parents’ signature. I was only 19 years old. We went to Washington by train, and our mothers came with us. They had a place for us to live, which was where the Woodner is now – 16th and Spring Road. It had been a girls’ college during World War I, and then it became a boarding house. We each paid $50 a month for room and board.

Secretary for the Manhattan Project

Our job was located at the Carnegie Institution of Washington at 16th and P Streets. I was in a typing pool with my three friends. Our job was to do the paperwork to get deferments for physicists and scientists. Also, we were looking in Europe for physicists.

It was sort of boring in the typing pool. I was there about three months when I was called upstairs, which was in the rotunda in the Director’s Office. I was told I would work for Dr. Lyman Chalky ,who was a chemist, and he was an assistant to Dr. Vanderver Bush. Dr. Bush was president of the Carnegie Institution, as well as director of the Manhattan Project, although I did not know about the Manhattan Project at the time.

I forget exactly how I was asked to go upstairs. But I do remember that they said, “No nail polish, and you must wear stockings.”

I was an accurate and fast typist. I took shorthand at 120 words a minute. I suppose that is why they choose me. I was in a large typing pool and they choose me. That is where it started. I met Dr. Erinco Fermi, who was a well-known scientist.

Dr. Chalkley, my immediate boss, was working with Dr. Alexander Fleming, who discovered penicillin. At that time, penicillin was used only for servicemen and it was not synthesized. They were working out a way to synthetize it.

Until then, I had never heard the word “penicillin.” I thought, “how do I write it in shorthand”? I remember picking up Dr. Fleming at Union Station and bringing him back to the Carnegie Institution. He was quite elderly.

We had a chauffeur. His name was Posey. He did not wear a chauffer’s uniform. He just wore regular clothes. The staff was pretty small, and we were all quite friendly. I remember that military people and other important people came and went, and they often asked me to go with Posey to pick them up at Union Station.

Q – Was: Posey a black man?

A – No He was a white man. But there is another very interesting story. There was Dr. Carl T. Thompson and Major General Leslie Groves. Dr. Bush had an assistant whose name was Callaway. I remember that Callaway was a tall and imposing man. When Callaway was on vacation, I would have to take dictation from Dr. Bush.

In that office, I met a lot of very interesting people like Major General Leslie Groves, who was in the military. I don’t know if you know the story of the Manhattan project. Groves was a very tall man, and he had a big belly. I thought “what a buffoon he is.” He was always eating candy. I was the type who never missed anything. I, in a quiet way, noticed everything ,and so I formed these opinions. When he would leave, I would hear that the physicists would talk about him indicating that he was a jerk. These scientists and physicists – one was more brilliant than the next – but they had certain opinions. But I recognize now that Groves did perform an important role in the project.

Q – But you were not that impressed with him at the time?

A – At that age, no. . I learned later that he was very effective when I read the Oppenheimer biography.

Q – Were you the only secretary dealing with these people?

Only person to have combination to office safe

A – Yes. There was a man by the name of Carroll Wilson. He was an administrative type. He had a very small office, and that is where the safe was, although he did not have the combination to the safe. When I got the job, I was the only one that had the combination to the safe. I didn’t know what was in the safe.

Q – But you believed that there were important things in the safe?

A – I guess so.

Q – The Carnegie Institution building was on loan to a temporary agency?

A -. Yes, We were in partitioned office at the Carnegie Institution. The rotunda there is beautiful.

Q – What was the temporary agency called?

A – The Office of Scientific Research and Development – OSRD,

When I wrote letters home, I didn’t say much about my job but I would mention “ Dr, so and so.” I knew about penicillin, because I took dictation about that. The other things I did not know.

Q – So the dictation you took had more to do with penicillin?

A – That was just in the beginning. Then later, I took dictation about more advanced things you might say – more important people, but I didn’t know they were important at the time. I would type some of the dictation on stencil and then run it off on a stencil machine.

Q – These were physicists who were working on the Manhattan Project?

Dr. Robert Oppenheimer

A – Yes. That is when I met Dr. Oppenheimer. He was at Los Alamos, New Mexico, but I didn’t know where he was coming from. Now I know he was head of the Manhattan Project. The bomb was being made at Los Alamos, New Mexico. The physicists would meet in the director’s office.

Q– You were not in the Director’s Office when they met?

A – Sometimes I was called into the Director’s office to take dictation when the physicists were there.

Q – But they had you typing and taking dictation of the things that they were working on?

A – There was nothing that I remember about the atomic bomb.

Q – I assume they were using a lot of scientific terms. How did you know how to write them in shorthand?

A – There were not that many scientific terms. They were mostly about directors, people’s names, and a German physicist. I can’t remember his name. I met him too.

Q – It was more administrative things that they had you working on?

A – Yes. It was nothing about the bomb.

Q – Did they use code words, and you didn’t know what they meant?

A – They used letters and numbers sometimes.

My job after I went upstairs was serving tea to any dignitary or scientist who was in Washington DC at the time. The tray was set up with cookies and fancy cups. I thought I would never get through the first one. I guess I just figured out how to do it right. Someone set up the tea, and I would have to put the lemon on the saucer just so. I probably knew what to do from my mother. That is where I met all these people.

Q – The person, who had most immediate contact with as you were taking dictation and typing, was Dr. Vannevar Bush?

A – Yes. Mostly Dr. Bush, but also some with Dr. Chalkley.

Q – Did you work directly with Dr. Oppenheimer?

A – Later on. Yes. But in the beginning, I worked for Dr. Chalkley, who was probably in his mid 40’s. He was married and had no children. He was kind of a “fuddy duddy.”

A woman at the Cosmos Club

I was in the Cosmos Club many times for lunch. A lot of people who interviewed me said that women were not allowed in the Cosmos Club. But I was in the Cosmos Club quite often with these men, and they treated me as a guest. After we were married, Dr. Bush and Dr. Chalkley took my husband and me to the Cosmos Club to celebrate our marriage.

Q – Were these business meetings at the Cosmos Club?

A – As I recall, whoever was in town, they could get together. They would talk. It was hard to know what they were talking about. Anyway, I was a silent person.

Turned down dinner date with General Eisenhower

I was sometimes asked to take notes. One time, Dr. Chalkley said General Eisenhower was going to be at tea this afternoon.

Q – This was what year?

A – The end of 1944 about. There were a lot of people always there. I can remember Eisenhower clearly. I thought, “He really thinks he is something else.”

Q – The way he carried himself?

A – Well a lot was the uniform and all those stars. I don’t remember what he drank or anything. But within the course of 15 or 20 minutes, he came up to me and said something like “would you like to have dinner with me tonight?” I forget how exactly he said it. People asked me what did I say to him. I think I probably just shrugged my shoulders. I don’t think I said anything, but I indicated “no.”

Q – Why did you indicate no? Do you remember?

A – Yes. It was not the fact that he was married. He was probably in his 50’s then. I have been asked that quite a few times. I just thought, “Why would I like to go out to dinner with him?” I was fussy about who I went out with, because during World War II, my friends and I were very cautious, and we were smart.

Q – You were a small town girl in a big city?

A – That was probably true.

Q – Then what happened?

A – Well he went along his way. I watched him out of the comer of my eye, and I saw that he kept looking at me. This photograph that I showed you that was published in the Lycoming College alumni magazine is the dress that I had on. It was the most decent dress I owned.

Q – How would you describe the dress?

A –Well, mother bought me the dress before I came to Washington, and I had to dress properly for special occasions. It was a black crepe dress with little gold things on it. I made my own clothes mostly like in this photo.

Q – It looks like a flowered dress with a little bit of lace on it

A – Yes. And the girls in the photo are the ones who came to Washington with me. We are standing in front of the Carnegie Institution. One is Thelma Shaibley, who was my roommate. The other is Callie McHaffie, and the other is Alysia Agey. I remember that dress well. I made all of my own clothes. I made all my clothes since I was about 13. They left Washington after a few months. But I was there to stay.

A – Anyway, you had this contact with General Eisenhower.

Q – Well, he asked me a second time later. I never said anything to anybody that General Eisenhower asked me out to dinner, because it was not important to me.

Q – Was this also when the tea was being served?

A – It was the same place. Dr. Bush’s office was as big as the length and width of my house. It was impressive – a beautiful room. There were a lot of people there. There were a lot of people in uniform.

Q – This would have been how long after you came to Washington?

A – Four to five months. Because I started to have to do this tea business right away. The second time, I don’t know what I had on the second time.

Q – How did he ask you the second time?

A – There were no other people there. And when I think about it, I was just a dumb kid. I saw him and Major General Groves. There were a lot of VIP’s. I think he came up to me, and, I don’t remember exactly what he said. I probably shook my head a little more vigorously, I thought “why is he bothering me?” I guess I really wasn’t so dumb.

Q – Again, he was asking you about dinner?

A – Yes.

Q – You never said anything to anyone?

A – No. Not until later on. My sister just said , “Well, he probably just wanted to take you out to dinner.” I said, “I don’t care . I didn’t want to go out with him.” Someone said I should write a book, but I didn’t think it was important.

Q – What do you remember about the end of the war?

A – It was V-E Day. We celebrated – all my friends.

Q – Where were you?

A – Probably at work. We all went downtown. Everybody in the streets was screaming. I got home at about 3 in the morning. We just had a pay phone in the boarding house, and I was supposed to go to work. They came banging on my door at 4:00 Am., and so I had to get myself together. I got on the bus and went to work. I took dictation. I had little sleep. I was the only one called in.

Q – Do you remember what you did when you got there?

A – I remember more about V-J day. I remember I was called again. The part of the Oppenheimer biography was wrong. All of the scientists were there. As I sat there and looked at them, I think everyone was in shock that this happened.

Q – When the first atomic bomb was dropped?

A – Yes. Dr. Oppenheimer I remember was sitting on some low stool. He was dictating to me. I have some of my dictation up in the attic. I am beginning to clean out my attic, and I found some things. I know that other things are still up there. I remember there was a word that he used over and over. The word that he used was “share” – share the atomic secrets with everybody to prevent it from being used again. This is just my thinking. If it were shared, no one would try to make more mass destruction bombs. I think I vaguely understood that. But I was in shock too.

Q- What was the feeling in the room that you observed with them?

A – My feeling was that it was a horrible thing to happen, but it saved our American lives.

Q – What was Dr. Oppenheimer’s demeanor in that room?

A – Quiet. He had very piercing blue eyes.

Q – This thing that he was dictating – who got the document that you were working on?

A – I think he was dictating something over the top of his head. It was his thoughts. I don’t know what happened to it. I had carbons, and I thought it was interesting in my young mind.

Then, after that, and this is not documented in the biography, for two straight weeks – 6 days a week – he dictated to me in an empty building across from where Foundry Methodist Church is. It is across from the Carnegie Institution. It was like an old house – empty. It was on 16th Street across from Foundry. It was just the two of us. He was dictating.

Q – What was he dictating?

A – The nitty gritty of it I don’t remember.

Q – You would type it, and would he edit it?

A – No. I never saw it again. There was a small elevator in the building holding not more than two people. We would always leave together. He would want to take me home in a cab.

Q – So is that is what happened?

A – No. I took the bus.

Q – He would say, ”Let me get you a cab.”

A – I would say, “No. I’ll take the bus.”

Q – Why did you do that?

A – Well, I was used to taking the bus. I don’t know. Thinking back on it now, I think I thought , “Why bother him. I don’t need a cab. I’ll just take the bus.”

Q – You did this for two weeks?

A – It was 10 days. We were leaving this one day, and he had the medal that Truman had given him. And I can see him now. He was like a little kid. He was so thrilled with this medal.

Q – Do you know what the medal was?

A – I can’t remember the name of it. Truman had given it to him. Apparently, Truman did not care much for Oppenheimer. He thought he was a crazy scientist and called him a SOB, but the opposite was the truth.

I remember some of the higher-ups saying that Truman said, “I don’t want that idiot back in my office any more.”

Q – This was before the bomb?

A – Yes. Remember Roosevelt died, and Truman ordered the dropping of the bomb.
So Truman and Oppenheimer met probably a number of times, as I have read, and he thought this guy was crazy. He used some sort of a cuss word. He didn’t want him in his office. I remember laughing when I heard that.

Q – This was before the bomb was dropped?

A – Yes .

Q – You could hear people talk?

A – I would listen to everything. One would be louder than the other.

Q – Were you in an open office or were there cubicles? Where did you sit?

A [- There was a huge open area, and I was with Dr. Chalkley. It was a makeshift office. It is a huge beautiful building. I didn’t realize what a beautiful building was at that point.

Q – You could hear conversations in other parts of the office?

A – No. There was not much there. There was Dr. Bush’s huge office. And Carroll Wilson – I never did figure out what he did. That is where the safe was.

Q – But you had the combination of the safe, and that is where you think all of the secrets were?

A – Yes. On VJ Day I had to get there to open the safe.

Q – Other people must have had the combination.

A – No. They said that I was he only one.

In my understanding, from people who interviewed me, that we probably had top-secret clearances before we were even approached about coming to Washington.

Q – But you didn’t know any of that?

A – Right I didn’t know. The word top secret you never heard those words.

Q – What do you think was in the safe?

A – I can’t really say. I know some things that I surmised that were in the safe, because there were pictures of the concentration camps that we knew were going on. I am positive that they were in the safe.

Q – Why do you say that you are positive?

A – I remember being in Dr. Bush’s office and thinking “what is that – all those skeletons?” I didn’t know what it was.

Q –These photographs were visible on his desk?

A – Yes. I would have no reason to question what it was. In my mind I was thinking. “what kind of pictures were they?” In retrospect, I feel almost sure that these pictures were in that safe.

Q – What else do you think was in the safe?

A – I would say anything that had to do with the war, the Japanese – everything.

Q – How about things about the bomb?

A – Yes.

Q – So you had that extensive session with Dr. Oppenheimer. Did you work with him other times?

A – Remember he was developing the bomb, and he would appear sometimes. It would be in Dr. Bush’s office.

Q – Were you doing secretarial work for him during his appearances?

A – It was mostly Dr. Bush that I did secretarial work for, and then after the bomb, that day after that, that is when I did the extensive work with Oppenheimer. It would be 8 or 10 o’clock at night that we worked,.

Q – So you worked over 8 hours.

A – When we started in the morning, sometimes it was as late as 10 o’clock at night that we finished.

Q – Did you take a break for dinner or lunch ?

A – I guess we had food brought in. We never went out to a restaurant. The food came from the Greasy Spoon we called it. It was on P Street. That is where we had lunch.

Q – After VJ Days, what happened after that?

A – The agency was dissolved, and I was asked to stay on and work for the Carnegie Institution. I think Dr. Chalkley and Dr. Bush said “don’t stay in the government.” They wanted me to stay, and so I did. I worked and answered phones. I did some proofreading of books and stuff. I don’t know where I learned how to do that.

In spring of 1946, I was still working., when this navy lieutenant who had just gotten out of the Navy after the war moved in the boarding house, and he was the man that I married. . He was in the active reserve. He was still flying. He was in the Pacific area. He asked someone how old I was. I said, “Ask him how old is he.” He was 28 and I was 20. Then he came knocking on my door and asked if I wanted to go to dinner. We went out. He had an old car – no money. He had flight pay that he had saved. He was born in the Bronx. As a small child, they moved to Yonkers. He had a brother and sister – all three had been in the service. I am getting ahead of my story. He knew that I sang in the Foundry Methodist Church choir. Ten days after we arrived in Washington, Thelma and I joined the Foundry Methodist Church, and we immediately joined the choir .

Q – Did you sing in the choir back home?

A – Mulberry Methodist Church back home – I sang in the choir. When I went to college, I sang in the vocal ensemble – Thelma and I. Thelma had a lovey voice and mine wasn’t so lovely. So he knew I went to choir practice. We were talking and I could see where we were. I thought he was nice. He said , “I am Jewish.” I thought, “so.” He is telling me that he is Jewish, knowing that I was an active member of the Methodist choir.

Q – In that era, it was more unusual for a Jewish and Christian person to marry.

A – Absolutely. You don’t know the half of it. Well anyway, I came home, and I woke my roommate up. I said “This guy I have been out with, I like him a lot. “ She was just as fussy as I was. I said he didn’t even kiss me goodnight or even touch me, and that was a plus. And I said, “he is Jewish.” And she said up in bed and said, “What would you mother say.?

Q – So you decided that you liked this young navy lieutenant?

A – Yes. So we started to date. He was very concerned about religion. He knew that mine was a stronger religion. His mother was way ahead of her time. She was a social worker and graduated from Columbia University. She was a brilliant woman. As a mother-in-law, she could be a pain. But I respected her, and we got along beautifully. My father-in-law, I just loved him. I didn’t meet them until after we were married. Anyway, we dated from May, and in December we talked about getting married. He was concerned that my family would disapprove. You get the picture as to what he was like.

So he said, “We will be married in your church – in Williamsport, Pa. “ So we agreed. I went home, and my mother pitched a complete fit. She said, “It was bad enough when you almost married that Catholic fellow.” That was someone that I thought I was I in love with when I was in college. It was a big to-do. I got myself together , and I was coming back straight to Washington . On my way out the door, my father called me into the front bedroom. It was Christmas and he said , “Barbara, if you picked him out, he must be all right. You go back and marry him.” We were married January 25 in the Methodist Church in Kensington.

Q – So it was a small wedding.

A – Four of us. One was Dr. Marcien Wyczkowski. He was from Warsaw, Poland. He was best man. He lived in the boardinghouse. He was Catholic. He spoke 7 – 8 languages. He was with the International Monetary Fund. The other person in the wedding party was my roommate.

Q – Then you brought your husband back to Williamsport?

A – That took a while.

Q –How long was it before you brought him home?

A – Allen and I decided to go home. When my mother found out, she decided to visit someone in New Jersey. So when we got there, my 90-year old grandmother met him. My grandmother said, “I like him.” She knew I was expecting. I stayed with my sister. My father was there.

Dave was 3 months old when I flew up with him. My great aunt and my mother met us at the airport, and I was sick the whole time at the airport, because I was pregnant. I was holding the baby. My mother would not reach out her arms to take the baby. My great aunt did. It was pretty bad, and then slowly it evolved. She went on and on about having the baby baptized. We went to the Mulberry Street Methodist Church, and she was not very friendly there. The congregation was not very friendly either became I married a Jew. “Why would Barbara do a thing like that,” is what they thought. I kept my chin up. Then it evolved slowly. In later years, my mother said many times, if Allen was her son, she could not love him any more.

Q – How many children did you have?

A – Four sons. My oldest will be 65 on Sunday.

Q – Were did you live after you married?

A – We stayed in the boarding house just a few weeks, and then we found the Georgia Avenue row houses . Are you familiar with them.? I think it was 3923 Georgia Avenue – probably it is commercial now. I think we paid $50 a month for rent. It had a bedroom, and we lived there for about 3 or 4 months, and then we found an apartment in Arlington, Virginia. Remember this was after the war. We didn’t even have a phone. We had the old beat-up car that Allen had before we married.

It was a lovely apartment. Dave was born there. Dave was 18 months old , and Tom was a baby when we bought a house in Cheverly, Maryland. It was a lovely two-story brick house with two full baths , 4 bedrooms – $16,000 is what we paid for that.

We lived there 7 years. I wanted to stay there, because I had so many friends there. But we came to look at the houses behind us in Chevy Chase. My husband said they were not well built. They were asking $25,000 for those houses. So he said there was one that went on the market. We came around for this house. They were asking $38,500. There was no way. But we liked it. It had a nice big kitchen. We thought we could push $30,000. We talked outside, and said maybe we can manage, and so we offered $35,000. They accepted. We have been here 56 years. It was 1956 when we bought it.

Q – It was a new house?

A – Yes.

Q – Your husband was in the active reserves?

A – He was in the active reserve through Korea. He flew and did 2-week active duty each year after that.

Q – What was he doing when he was not in the active reserves?

A – He was in the wholesale kitchen business in Northeast. It was high-end kitchens.

Q – You became a stay-at home mother?

A – After my first child was born, I did not work outside the home. When my youngest, Keith, was11 years old, I thought it would be nice to have a part-time job. I could see the writing on the wall that the kids were getting older. The main reason was that my oldest was getting ready to go to college – Bradley University in Peoria, Illinois. I decided not to apply at Woodies at Chevy Chase. I went instead to Lord and Taylor, because it was only a few years old in Chevy Chase . They wanted me right away – part time. I started working part-time 4 days a week. I loved it. I did retail when I was in college.

Q – Did you work in various departments?

A – I worked in the dress department. But then a sales person helped the customer. You helped all over the store. You helped with jewelry and furs. We were taught to do a good job.

Q – Did you get paid on commission?

A – No. We didn’t get paid much money, but I loved it. I stayed there 7 years. Someone said you should go to Garfinckel’s. So I went to the Garfinckel’s store at Spring Valley. I was there for 25 years. I worked on the second floor – sportswear. We had a designer department.

Q – Did you start working more than part-time?

A – At first I did, and then I had to cut back when my third son became ill. He was a NIH for 3-1/2 months.

I won two awards when I was at Garfinckel’s. Have you ever heard of shoppers who came in to see how well you are doing.? Once a year they would have this at the downtown and Spring Valley stores, and I won twice. You got 35 percent off everything in a Garfinckel’s store for a year when you win. Plus there was an elegant luncheon served downtown in the dining room. Things were done beautifully. I met famous people there. I met Mamie Eisenhower at Lord and Taylors. She used to shop there.

Q – Was this when she was first lady?

A– Yes. She was first lady. She was a friend with a woman who worked in another department and was a sergeant with Ike. Mamie was a small woman – very outgoing. I remember one time she was walking out, and someone said “See you in church.” She turned around and said “That will be the day. The roof will fall “ That was what she was like. She was delightful.

Q –Whom else do you remember?

A – Barbara Bush at Garfinckel’s. She would get her hair done there a lot. We would say “We are going to sell a lot of old lady clothes today.” She always picked up the old lady clothes – the Channel suits.

Q – When was this?

A – When her husband was vice president.

Q – Did you meet Nancy Reagan?

A – No. That came later in my career.

Q – Tell me about that.

A – Well Garfinckel’s closed. I said “I am not going to sit around the house.” A friend of mine said that someone is looking for part-time help at Chevy Chase Center. This was at Walpole’s at Chevy Case Center. It was a beautiful store that sold Italian linens. So I went there, and I got hired and they paid me $6 an hour.

Q – What year would that be?

A – I was there 14 years. I worked until I was 79.

Q – That was a high-end linen place?

A – We sold towels, sheets, monogramming from France, Italy and Portugal – up to 1,000 thread count. When Laura Bush’s housekeeper shopped there, the housekeeper chose 1,000-thread count sheets for the White House.

Q – You never worked in this type of area before?

A – No. I had only worked in fashion clothing..

Q – Tell me about the people that you worked with.

A – The owner lived in Alexandria. He didn’t come to the store often. The manager, whose name was Gil, was gifted as to what to buy for the area. He was 25 years old from the Philippines. I was the only American for most of the time I worked there. Gil and Tess were from the Philippines. Azeb and Martha were from Ethiopia. Cecilia was from Chile. Gil – the manager – started about the same time as I did.

Someone would call and say, “Is that Korean there. I want to talk to that foreigner.” It was nasty. I would say, “We have nobody here from Korea. “ I was a tough cookie. They wanted me to answer the phone, because they knew I could answer it very well. Gil was upset. He would say that these people were wealthy, and I told him that he was very smart, and they were stupid. So little by little, it got better. Then it got so that he would be on of these calls. I would say, “Gil, they want to talk to the Korean.” We would laugh like crazy the rest of the day.

There was one customer who used to buy from the store years ago, but she did not like it if someone with a foreign accent answered the phone. Because she knew that I was an American, she would call me at home to order things, because she didn’t want to talk to people who had accents. I was infuriated. But she spent a lot of money and so that is how we did business with her. We laughed about her too. One day this happened to Tess, who was a very bright girl from the Philippines. I heard some one say, “You don’t know what you are talking about. You don’t know the stock,” Tess could not speak out for herself. I shot myself over there, and I said “Don’t you talk to her like that.” It was first lady Barbara Bush and she looked at me like this – I am her age exactly – she knew I was right. Then I walked away. We called her the bullfrog.

Q – Why was that?

A – Because she was nasty. When we saw her coming, we would go back of the store and hide in the bathroom.

Q – Who dealt with her then?

A – If we saw her and saw the Secret Service,, we would yell down to Gil – the “bull frog. Is here.”

Q – He could deal with her?

A – Yes Then sometimes the housekeeper would come in or order by phone, Now the housekeeper quit when Nancy Reagan came into the White House, and then she came back after she left. She could not take Nancy Reagan. Laura Bush was lovely. She came in two days afar the inauguration and wanted to see the beautiful things that she saw at the White House before she became first lady.

Q – When did the store close?

A –They tore the whole center down. The only store left was Clyde’s.

Q – Did you quit working then?

A – Yes. It was 10 years ago.

Q – Do you think you would have worked longer?

A – Absolutely. We had a lot of fun, and I loved the young people. There was a saying that my mother would say if a certain person would come in the door, I would say to Zee, “Her face would stop an 8-day clock.” She understood right away. We are still friends.

Q – Other well-known people that you dealt with there?

A – Oh yeah. Chris Wallace, Andrea Mitchell, also, the woman who is on 60 Minutes – the blond – I can’t remember her name. Eunice Kennedy was wonderful. I knew Eunice Shriver from Garfinckel’s. Eunice would come in with the sister who was retarded. I never thought she looked retarded to me. Her daughter, Maria , was a little girl when I was at Garfinckel’s. I met Joan Kennedy at Lord and Taylor. Ethel Kennedy was the world’s worst.

Q – In what way?

A – The same thing as Barbara Bush. Of course, this was when I was in Garfinckel’s. We would try to hide in a dressing room. She was demanding. She would take something and throw it at you. She would throw something at you, and throw a piece a paper at you and say to send it to them. She was awful.

Q – What year did your husband die?

A – Ten years ago in June. He flew planes his entire life. He was in the reserves until after Korea. The squadron before him was the first to be called to Korea otherwise he would have gone to Korea. He was still in the reserves at that time. Then as a civilian, he flew gliders, and power planes. He owned a power plane for a couple years. He owned two gliders. He flew his last glider plane when he was 82.

Q – Did you go up with him?

A – A few times. But I was not wild about that.

If the weekend was nice, he flew his glider plane. He had a very active life . He liked to play golf also. He retired when he was 63 or 64, and then he did some consulting. That is a painting of his last glider, and this is he as a fighter pilot.

Q – Tell me about your children?

A – Dave is the oldest and has a MBA from Indiana University at Bloomington. He went to Wilson, Deal and Lafayette here.

Q – What did he do after college?

A – His first job was with Price Waterhouse. He became a senior partner when he was in his early 30’s, and his wife developed cancer. He knew that he was going to be transferred to New York and he couldn’t go. He was with them 20 years. So he went with a gas firm. He was CEO. It is in Virginia. He is working with Tom Ridge of Pennsylvania in the shale industry. I don’t know the details, but it has to do with finance.

Q – All four kids went to Lafayette. What was it like?

A – The schools were excellent.

Q – David was born in 1947?

A – Yes. And Tom was born in 1948 . Don is 61 and Keith is 58.

Q – So what did you think of the schools?

A – Excellent. Dave was in 4th grade when I got a call from the teacher. She said, “Dave cannot read at grade level. He will have to go back a grade or be tutored” We immediately had him tutored. He graduated magna cum lade and got a scholarship at Bloomington Indiana for his masters..

But my son, Tom, drove me up the wall.

Q – Why did he drive you up the wall?

A – He ran away from Kindergarten and first grade. I was at the school often because they said, “Tom did this and Tom did that.” This was before we moved here. They called in the school psychologist who said that he was very smart. But he was bored. One time the police brought him home. So he was in honors classes at Deale.

Tom, went to Steven’s’ Institute of Technology in Hoboken New Jersey. From there he got a job in Pennsylvania with Westinghouse, and he got his masters through that. Then was accepted at MIT and Stanford. He choose Stanford and get his PhD there as a mechanical engineer.

Q – And then you have the third son.

A – Don, my third son, is the son who had a serious medical problem. I think he missed the last 4 or 5 months of his senior year. You have heard of Dr. Anthony Fauci.? Well Don was 24 and Dr. Fauci was about 30 or 31. Without Dr. Fauci I don’t think Don would be around today

Q – Tell me about the youngest son.

A – Keith is in the funeral business. He lives with me. He is not married.

Where he was living ,they sold the house. This was after my husband died. I said “Come live with me.” It is nice having him here, although I think I could get along by myself. But it is comforting having him with me.

Q – Tell me about your neighborhood.

A – This area at one time there were restrictive covenants – no Jews or blacks but not by the time when we moved here. There was an older Jewish couple next door. ‘They were wonderful. I learned more about Judaism from them than I did from my husband.

Q– Tell me a little more about what you remember about attitudes towards Jews or African Americans.

A – I remember once before we were married, Allen and I went to the Kenwood Country Club for one of his business functions. As we drove up, I saw a sign that said “Gentiles Only.” I pitched a fit and told Allen I would not go up there. He calmed me down, and we went in. He took these things better than I did. I guess he was used to it.

A – But by the time, we moved to our neighborhood, restrictive covenants no long meant anything. There was a Vietnamese couple and there was a black couple that lived here for many years.

Q – Do you know when the first black couple moved in?

A – No. I did not hear anything negative about that. My black neighbor, Bud Ward came up the hard way. He became a CEO at Marriott. There were only 3 blacks that were CEO’s of big companies at that time. He still lives here today. The Wards are both my age. She was in the DC school system. I think she may have been a principal.

Q – If you were here in 1956, they moved in when?

A – I would say in the 60’s.

Q – Do you have block parties?

A – Yes. We have had them for the last 10 years. We also have neighborhood watch. We used to have Christmas parties, and someone would host it and everyone would bring something. This hasn’t been done for a couple years. It was in the big house across the street from me. There are both lawyers, very nice.

Q – Did you ever consider leaving Chevy Chase?

A – Never.

Q – Tell me about Williamsport. When you grew up

A – It is along the Susquehanna River – about 90 miles north of Harrisburg. I used to walk across the Susquehanna River Bridge to catch the trolley to save the fare. Besides we had a lot of fun walking across the bridge that was condemned in 1936, because it moved.

Q – Tell me about your family background.

A – My mother’s father was from Boston. He was in the Civil War. He died when my mother was quite young. My dad was born in London. Dad I think only went to the 8th grade. He was a machinist, self-taught. He worked at Bethlehem Steel in Williamsport. Before he worked at Bethlehem, he had a job working for a man. My mother said “Now you go get a job at Bethlehem Steel.” My mother was bossy. I can hear it. Mother said. “It is time for you to get a better job. “ He worked until he was in his 70’s during the war. He lived to be 94. My mother was 98-1/2 when she died, and her mind was first class at that age. She was in her own home when she died. My sister wanted her to sell the house and move. Allen and I said she is OK where she is. Slowly her eyes went, and she had some help.

Q– Where does your sister live?

A– She lives in Montoursville, which is local to Williamsport. She was a teacher. She helped with my mother more than I did, because I wasn’t there.

Q – What was growing up there like?

A – Great. In October we are having our 70th high school, reunion. There will be 8 or 10 of us attending. There were about 81 or 82 in our class. We are friends. I don’t mean just meeting once a year.

Q – Do you drive there?

A – No. My son or one of my grandsons will take me.

Q – Do you drive around here?

A – I haven’t driven for 3 years.

Q – When you learned shorthand or typing – was it in high school?

A – No. I took an academic course in high school.

Q – So you decided you wanted to go to college?

A – No. My mother decided. I didn’t want to go to college, because I had a job making $12 a week. It was at a five and ten cent store. My sister was a senior in college. My mother walked across the Susquehanna River and registered me at college. She registered me for a one-year course. I loved it so much, I went to the dean and changed it to 2 years. It was called secretarial science . But I never typed before. There was a girl ahead of me in high school who was so smart. They kept our typing and shorthand scores posted. . I must have decided that I would beat her – Mary Jane Marley – in shorthand in typing. I think I did 77 or 78 words in typing. I know that I topped at 120 in shorthand. We still laugh about that.

Q – During those years, it must have difficult financially to go to college.

A – My parents were thrifty. My mother used to make our long dresses . But everybody’s parents did those things. My sister went to Lock haven State Teacher College her last 2 years. Another interesting part of college was at the end of the first semester of college, there were no guys around. Everyone was in the service. The president of the college was a Methodist minister. We were all scared of him. It was Dickinson Junior College. Now it is Lycoming College.

The president went to Mulberry Street Methodist church. No smoking – it was very strict at the college – just the way I was brought up. The boys would eat bananas to gain weight to get into the service.

Q – What happened when you had dances?

A – At the end of the first semester, they moved 250 aviation cadets to the campus. There were all kinds of dances. The churches would have dances. This was wartime. Everyone doted on the cadets. Of course. we got first pick. That is why my mother said , “You almost married that Catholic guy.” I was dating a Catholic cadet when I was at Dickinson. I still have his picture in a locket in my bedroom. He was from Provo, Utah.

Q – Did he leave before you left for Washington?

A – Well he was there for 3 months, and then another group came in.

So this improved our social life. I remember George, he was there, and we had to be home at a certain time on a Sunday night. When I got home, my mother said she got a call from someone who said “Do you know that I saw Barbara at the bus stop kissing a boy?” Mother told that lady to mind her own business. Isn’t that funny?

Q – Your mother sounded like she was a feisty lady. Yu seem to have gotten your independence from her.

A – My mother would say, “You are just like me..”

My sister and I laugh now. We say we never got away with anything.

Q – Is there anything that I didn’t ask you that we did not talk about.

A – Yes. I did volunteer work during World War II at Walter Reed Medical Center where the worst injured men were sent. A couple days a week Thelma and I – or on Sunday – we would go there and visit. I dated someone who had his leg shot off in Germany. He had not gotten his leg yet. He was on crutches then. We would go places. I remember going downtown to the movies. He would fall. He was in uniform. People would pick him up. He could somehow get up. Then he was transferred to Forest Glen where the rehab was. That is where they were fitted with limbs. Any artificial limb is painful.

Q – Yu went there to cheer up the men?

A – Yes we had music, and we just talked. The Jewish Community Center on 16h Street had bond rallies . I met Andy Rooney there when there was a memorial service for Ernie Pyle. Pyle was a photographer and journalist during the war, and he was killed. Andy Rooney was a European journalist. He was good looking 

Q – How did the bond rally work?

A – The military would be there. There was no one selling that I recall. It was mostly social. There was a military band there. There was no dancing. It was our duty to go – Thelma and me. Then we did volunteer work at Walter Reed.

I remember going to the Pentagon quite a few times in an old car with Posey. Posey drove me there. He would say, “We are going to the Pentagon, Barb.” I remember the first time I went, there were a lot of uniforms. I guess I went up to someone, and they knew I was coming and handed the document over. All of these things were just a matter of course back then.

Q – What was Posey like?

A – He was an older man – no uniform.

Q – What kind of a car?

A – It was probably an old car. Cars were scarce during the war. I couldn’t afford a cab. I took the bus.

Q – Do you remember what you got paid?

A – $1,440 a year, and then I got a raise to $1680 when I went upstairs.

Q – Was that a lot of money compared to what you would get in Williamsport?

A – I never thought about money. The first thing we did was pay our rent. We got room and board. We got breakfast and dinner at night. On Sunday, we got brunch. And then we watched every penny that we spent. We ate lunch at the greasy spoon across on P Street . We paid $50 for room and board. Four people used the bathroom, and it was down the hall. We had two people to each room. It was a beautiful place. There were flowers. It had been a girls’ school during World War I. It was called the Martha Washington Seminary. So it was like a big dormitory.. In front was the manor house.

You know the bridge that has the lions on it? Well I had my first kiss from my husband sitting on top of one of the lions. It was in the afternoon.

Q – You called it a manor house. Why?

A – It was a beautiful, old house like a mini- mansion with beautiful gardens and flowers. Then behind it was this big dormitory – where we lived. The address was 16th and Spring Road. The Woodner is there now.

Q – The building got knocked down?

A – Yes Long time ago. I heard that it was used as girls’ finishing school in World War I. Then the government found us a place to live there . It was safe. Our parents came along with us to see where we would live. I think I was the youngest of the three of us. I was 19.

Q – Did you sit at big tables at dinner?

A – Thee were nice individual tables. It was nicely serviced,. The food was good.

Q – Did you do social things there?

A – They had a piano. Thelma played the piano, and we sang. There were a lot of Chinese military people living there at the time.

Q – How many lived in the dormitory?

A – There weren’t many – maybe 40. We were the only government girls. There were not many men.

Q – Did you still continue making dresses when you were in Washington?

A – I would come home from work and sew. On Sunday I would sew. 

Q – Anything else you can remember about life in Washington in Washington DC.

A – I think it was great But we did think we could lose the war. So I worked 6 days a week. Shoe and stockings were rationed.. The stockings were awful looking. They were not nylon. There was no ration book for them, because the stockings were not nylon. They were probably cotton. I think we had one pair of shoes.

We also had a social life at Foundry Methodist Church. The church had a lot of social events. We mingled a lot with black churches. Our choirs would sing together.

Q – Anything else you would like to tell me?

A – Well I could tell you that my husband’s mother was a Salk before she married. She was an aunt to Jonas Salk, the scientist who developed the polio vaccine in the 1950’s. My husband’s mother’s parents were Jewish and came to the United States from Russia at about the same time as Jonas Salk’s mother did. The Salk’s were a poor, immigrant family, but education was very important to them. I told you that my mother-in-law was a social worker and knew Eleanor Roosevelt.

Q – How did you learn about NNV [Northwest Neighbors Village]?

A – My friend, who lives in Chevy Chase Village, told me about it. So I got the phone number of Marianna at NNV and called her.

Q – Did your parents or other older members of your family age at home?

A – Yes – my grandmother, whom I loved dearly, was in her own home for many years. Then after I was married, she came to live with my parents. She was the one that said she liked my husband, the first time that she met him.

My parents lived in their own home until the end of their lives. My father was 95 when he died and my mother was 98 and a half.

Q – Who helped them as they grew older?

A – Toward the end of her life, my mother had caregivers who came to the house. But living in a small town, she also had neighbors who helped. And my sister lived in Williamsport also, and so she helped too. At one point, my sister wanted my mother to move to an Assisted Living facility. When I told my husband this, he said, “absolutely not. She would not be happy there.” And so she stayed in her own house until the end of her life.

Q – What do you like about NNV?

A- I like all the interesting people I have met. I also like the social things that we do. I loved going to Glenstone, the art museum a few weeks ago

Q – What would you like they future of NNV to look like?

A- I think it is perfect the way that it is.

The post Barbara Dresner appeared first on Historic Chevy Chase DC.

Interviewee: Sarah (Sally) Gamble Epstein
Date: April 20, 2013
Location: Epstein residence in Chevy Chase DC
Interviewers: Carl Lankowski and Joan Solomon Janshego 
Transcribed (from audio recording) by: Carl Lankowski

Sally Epstein passed away at age 99 on Aug. 17, 2025 at her home after a sudden decline in her health.

Q: Tell us how old you are, where you were born and grew up, and when you came to Washington DC.

SE: I’m 87 and I came to Washington in 1951 because my former husband, Lionel Epstein, was already a lawyer at the Department of the Navy. We had picked out an apartment on Wisconsin Avenue at the Carillon House and moved there when we were married. After building a home designed by the architect Thomas Wright, we moved in 1954 to McLean, Virginia, and eventually we moved to this house in Chevy Chase.

Q: When did you move into this house?

SE: It was over 50 years ago, in 1961.

Q: Where were you coming from?

SE: The town I grew up in was Milton, Massachusetts. South of Boston.

Q: What was it like growing up there? Tell us about your early years.

SE: I was born in Philadelphia. My family moved to Milton when I was twelve years old. That was a very hard move, leaving all my friends at Germantown Friends School behind, to go to a place where I didn’t know anybody in my seventh-grade class at Milton Academy. However, I had a lot of cousins there. My mother was really going back to her childhood home—her father Richards Bradley lived in Milton.

Q: So, there was a Boston background in the family.

SE: Very much so.

Q: What part of Philadelphia did you move from?

SE: Germantown. I had been attending Germantown Friends School. A few years ago I visited Germantown with a friend and we went to 537 Allen’s Lane, my former home. I knocked on the door. When someone answered I said I used to live here. They were very gracious and let us take a tour around the house.

Q: Germantown is when the first German immigrants to America arrived in 1683. In any event, you left Germantown for Milton. What was growing up, going to school in Milton like?

SE: We moved into an old house that had a stream running through the bottom of the property. We children (I had three younger brothers and a sister) used to love that. I can still remember the ducks my father raised. We used to tie a string around their legs and let them swim out. There was also a garage with a turning platform for cars. We used to turn it as fast as possible, hopping on and off of it.

Q: How big was your family? Did you have siblings?

SE: I was the eldest of five children. We were known as “the redheads,” as we all had red hair.

Q: I see some intergenerational symmetry there. You, in turn had five children, right?

SE: That’s right.

Q: Tell us about your school years in Milton.

SE: I attended Milton Academy. It was a girls’ school, in contrast to Germantown Friends, which was co-ed. At first I wasn’t particularly happy with the move, but I made friends eventually.

Q: I am looking for the beginnings of the thread of your infatuation with art and art history. Did something incline you in that way either in Philadelphia or in Milton?

SE: Well, my mother was an amateur artist. She did drawing and watercolor, so we grew up doing the same thing. My parents were not art collectors, but they had art on the walls and we often went to museums. My mother’s mother had been an artist; she was a sculptress. She lived in Boston and Chicago.

Q: Did you know her?

SE: No. She died in the great influenza pandemic of 1918. At the time, my mother was enrolled in a program on social work in Boston, but then dropped out to look after her father, who was devastated by the loss of his wife.

Q: Your lineage is beginning to sound interesting. Tell us something about it.

SE: Well, my mother was descended from a family who were British sympathizers in the American revolution. So, they moved to Canada but after the revolution moved back into Vermont in the generation before my mother was born. I always remember my mother telling me that in her mother’s family the three eldest daughters had died of tuberculosis in Vermont. Her mother overheard her own mother tell a neighbor “oh, we’re so worried that Amy will be next.” So my grandmother grew up thinking that she would be next victim. TB was a real scourge in those days, but when the Civil War was over, my grandmother’s father was sent to Marseilles as a consul, so the family went south and there were no more episodes of TB. My grandmother’s life was spared.

Q: A French connection instead…

SE: Yes. There was a story of my grandmother the sculptress. She went to Paris and wrote back to her parents that she would like to apprentice with a sculpture called Rodin. Her family wrote and said that would be very improper. He was not married and it wouldn’t be right for her to be alone in the studio with him. So, she didn’t.

Q: Missed Rodin, sigh. What about your father’s side of the family?

SE: My father’s family came from Cincinnati. It was my great grandfather who founded the firm Proctor & Gamble. My father’s father worked for Proctor & Gamble for a short time and then left. Do you know the Gamble House in Pasadena? My grandparents, Mary and David Gamble, hired Greene & Greene to build that house. It is now a National Historic Landmark. Fortunately, they took a trip to the Orient with my father Clarence and uncle Sidney Gamble, and left the Greene brothers to build the house uninterrupted. The Greenes built it as they desired.

Q: Did they live there a long time?

SE: Yes, they did. The oldest son, Cecil, inherited it. His widow, my aunt, had planned to sell it, but she overheard the couple proposing to make the purchase saying how they would paint over the woodwork in white. That drove Cecil’s family to change plans and they gave it instead to the University of California.

Q: It is a gorgeous house.

SE: I remember that one time my father had a streptococcus infection and went out there to recover. All of us went. I was about seven years old. To me, the fish pond was the most interesting thing. I didn’t pay much attention to the house itself.

Q: So how did your parents meet?

SE: My father went to the Harvard Medical School and then interned at Massachusetts General Hospital. They met at some party. They were married in 1924 in Brattleboro, Vermont. They were married there because my mother’s father had a family home in Brattleboro.

So after graduating from medical school, he took a trip with a friend who owned an airplane. The plan was to hop and skip across the country, ending up in Pasadena to visit his parents. Shortly after taking off, the plane crashed. My father was unconscious for something like six weeks. He eventually came around, but after that he needed a great deal of sleep. He decided he couldn’t be a doctor with patients under those circumstances. So he went into research. When Margaret Sanger came to Philadelphia to open a clinic, she also wanted someone to could study the shelf life of spermicidal jellies. Somebody recommended my father as someone with a laboratory and maybe he could do it for her. He got thoroughly involved and spent the rest of his life in the birth control world.

Q: Interesting. So that’s how you got involved in Planned Parenthood.

SE: That’s right. I met Margaret Sanger as a result of him being one of her advisors. Growing up, I thought every baby was planned and wanted.

Q: I was amazed at all the activities that came together in your volunteer work—from Planned Parenthood to Experiment in International Living, to the Peace Corps and civil rights. Now I am still looking for those threads. Let me put the question directly: what in your earlier life led you to become interested in art?

SE: I don’t think I was fully interested until I was going to Simmons School of Social Work. I had a boyfriend who was at MIT. He was very keen on modern art and jazz; I had very little of either in my background. One day he said to me “I am taking you to an exhibition of a Norwegian artist by the name of Edvard Munch.” “OK, I’d love to go.” I walked into the exhibition of Munch’s oil paintings and graphics…and he became my artist for life. Everything he did seemed to come directly from him—personal experience and emotions he had felt. Then when I bought the catalogue, I learned all about his life and was just fascinated. That was it.

Q: Love at first sight?

SE: Yes, it was. And then when I met my former husband, Lionel, I found out that he had also seen the exhibit and had been very taken with it. I had met Lionel as we were both in a program with the Experiment for International Living.

Q: So, you were at the Simmons School of Social Work?

SE: Yes.

Q: What made you go there?

SE: Well, my father really wanted me to be a doctor, but he made the mistake of taking me to Mass. General Hospital. They had an operating room with an observation window where students could look down and watch the operation. The one I witnessed was on a fellow’s knee that appeared to be particularly bloody. I was very upset. I had wanted to be a doctor, but my mother had started in the school of social work and I came to view that as being a much more satisfactory way to go. Besides, I knew my father’s work was birth control and if I should get into that field, social work would be a good background.

Q: How did you connect with the Experiment for International Living?

SE: My parents knew Donald Watt, or had friends who introduced them to Watt, the founder of the Experiment. So they knew about it. Now, the first Experiment groups in the 1930s went to Germany in the early days of Hitler. I think there was a feeling that Hitler was giving the German youth a reason for being, getting them in uniform, getting them proud of themselves. They didn’t really think of Hitler as a tyrant. Of course, they didn’t know anything about death camps.

Q: Yes, the death camps came later.

SE: Then, during World War II, they couldn’t send Experiment groups overseas, so they sent them to the Kentucky hills, or Mexico, or other places. I didn’t go immediately, but I had studied German at Milton Academy and again at Wellesley College. There was a mountain-climbing group preparing to go to Austria. I really enjoyed the outdoors, climbing and hiking, so I thought how wonderful—I could use my German and go hiking and climbing. That was 1949.

Q: Where in Austria did you go?

SE: We had homestays in Vienna.

Q: And then you hiked up into the mountains?

SE: Yes. That was a very special summer. I met Lionel, my former husband, as a result of that summer. He had previously been an Experimenter to Holland. That summer he was the leader of the group to Holland. He was attending Harvard Law School. There were a couple of other Experimenters around Cambridge and we used to get together every Tuesday night for dinner. The members of the Experiment dinner group came from different backgrounds and different disciplines. It was fascinating.

Q: You travelled in 1949 and the meetings were subsequent to that.

SE: That’s right—in 1950-1951.

Q: You met Lionel at one of these meetings and discovered that you shared an interest in Munch. Is that what brought you together?

SE: Partly. It had more to do with the Experiment. Actually, he had another girlfriend named Jane Coffey whom he had met on the Experiment. I think she lived in New York City. She came up and I took her in for weekends on a number of occasions. After a while, she was no longer coming and I was the girlfriend.

Q: Was Planned Parenthood already a going concern then?

SE: Oh yes, Planned Parenthood had already been established when Margaret Sanger [1879-1966] was still alive. It must have been in the late 1930s.

Q: Were you also already involved in Planned Parenthood in the early 1950s?

SE: No, that came later.

Q: You mentioned Wellesley College.

SE: I went to Wellesley for two years. First, I graduated from Milton Academy in 1943. It was during the war, so I thought I should be patriotic and therefore volunteered as a nurse’s aide. So I worked at the Boston City Hospital for a year. That was an ordeal. Many of the nurses had volunteered to serve in the US Army. That meant we nurse’s aides got a lot more real nursing that we would otherwise not have gotten, had the real nurses been there. It was on-the-job training. So, I had that year and the next year I started Wellesley.

Q: You had two years at Wellesley and then went to Simmons?

SE: Actually, after two years at Wellesley I then had two years at Oberlin College. So I had Boston City Hospital, followed by two years at Wellesley and then two years at Oberlin.

Q: You were a peripatetic student. What were you studying at Oberlin?

SE: Psychology.

Q: And Simmons School of Social Work came after that.

SE: Yes. I graduated with a degree in social work.

Q: What year was that?

SE: Let’s see—I was in the class of 1948 at Oberlin—so it must have been 1950. It was a two-year program.

Q: When were you married to Lionel?

SE: It would have been 1950, immediately following my second year at Simmons.

Q: When did the children come along?

SE: David was born in 1953, Jim in 1954, Richard in 1957 and Miles in 1960. Well, by then I was already concerned about global population. We very much wanted a daughter, so we adopted our youngest child. Sally Anne was born in 1963.

Q: A way to get a girl.

SE: Yes, she had to be a girl. One of my father’s friends had a daughter who had an adoption agency here in Washington. We went to her and explained our situation. We specified that with four older brothers, she would have to be healthy.

Q: How old was Sally Anne when you got her?

SE: About two or three months old.

Q: Did you know of her origins?

SE: Yes, indeed. That was quite interesting, because I had come from a Protestant background and my husband from a Jewish background. It turned out that Sally Anne’s mother was Jewish and her father was a Presbyterian from Scotland and Wales. The mother came from eastern Europe, which matched Lionel. Taken together, the match was very accurate, just a reverse of the sexes.

Q: I think I remember from your essay in the catalogue for the National Gallery of Art exhibition, Edvard Munch: Master Prints from the Epstein Family Collection (1990), that you had already had begun collecting Munch’s work during the 1950s. You were already in Washington.

SE: We started collecting when we lived in a very modern house in McLean, Virginia. It was built by the architect, Tom Wright. He liked to say that it was very good to have the name Wright in his profession. But we had absolutely outgrown the house. For the last three years we were there, our niece Arlene Krebs, Lionel’s sister’s daughter, was with us, attending Madeira School in McLean. We had four children at that point, plus our niece. Sally Anne was born after we moved to the District. On Tuesday next week Arlene is visiting, because I am giving her a party for the 50th anniversary of her graduation from Madeira. We expect around 30 of her classmates.

Q: Tell us how your collecting began in the 1950s.

SE: We already knew that we liked Munch very much. At this time we had had two Norwegian au pairs. That summer Sargent Shriver asked us to sail on a student ship and talk to the young people to see if they liked the idea of joining the Peace Corps. So while awaiting the return sailing, we went to Norway to visit the families of our au pairs. We saw Munch paintings and prints, in friends’homes and in museums. When we returned my husband had to go to New York on business. The architect, Mies van der Rohe, was selling his collection of Munch prints. His pupil, Eugene Summers—who was the sculptor of this very table—had some Munch prints as well and decided he would put his in with the sale. So Lionel went to see it. The next weekend both of us went back to New York to see it. Li didn’t tell me, but he had meantime reserved three of Summers’s prints that he later gave to me for my birthday, Mother’s Day, or whatever. That was really the beginning of our collection.

Q: That must have been around 1961—the Peace Corps was launched in that year, I think. Lionel bought Summers’s Munch prints then?

SE: That’s right. Mies Van der Rohe’s collection was reserved by the Chicago Art Institute. Summers had four, five or six prints for sale.

Q: Had you had any connection with Norway prior to your visit?

SE: My brother had gone on the Experiment in International Living to Norway. One of the daughters of my brother’s host family expressed a desire to come to the United States as an au pair to learn English. So we had Gudrun Røvig come to us as an au pair for a year and then she found a friend of hers who wanted to come the next year. That was our initial connection to Norway.

Q: I have a good friend who lives in Kongsberg, just below Oslo, who will be very interested in this story.

SE: I guess you know that this summer the 150th anniversary of Munch’s birth will be marked. Of course, there are all sorts of Munch activities going on in Norway. My husband, Don and I are going the end of May for a week in and around Oslo.

Q: Has it been a while since you had been there?

SE: I have been there quite a number of times. Actually, I have done about 60 interviews on tape myself of Norwegians—people whose portraits Munch had painted or who knew him, were neighbors, or other Norwegian artists, or just old people who could talk about the old days. This was back in the 1970s when there were still people alive that could tell me about Munch, or life in his time.

Q: What did you do with the interviews?

SE: They are transcribed. Our entire Munch collection plus all the catalogues, interviews, etc. are going to the National Gallery of Art.

Q: Will they be posted on the web?

SE: I don’t think so. They will be part of a research collection of interest to art historians who could go through them and pick out the salient elements.

Q: So the collecting began in the 1960s. What were some of the major benchmarks in the growth of your collection?

SE: When we first started collecting, we were very fortunate to have known Alan Fern at the Library of Congress. He used to get all the auction catalogues across his desk. He would let us know when some Munchs were up for sale. He would also offer advice on what we might want to bid for them. They weren’t very expensive in those days. They usually came in batches of three or five or eight all at once. That wouldn’t happen today. At any rate, we collected quite rapidly in the 1960s and 1970s. Now we still occasionally do, but not very often. What we usually do now is get a little portrait or etching, something that has meaning for us, or a portrait of someone I know from my studies.

Q: Your description in your 1990 essay of Munch literally surrounded by piles of prints and drawings is evocative of a way of life. The idea that he would treat something that would become so valuable for future generations in the way that he did is amusing and from another angle horrifying.

SE: One of our prints of a beach scene is called Melancholy. If you took it out of the frame and flipped it over, you would see a footprint (laughter) on it. He had obviously stepped in mud or ink or something and then stepped on the back of the print. Well, you know, he could always have printed more for himself, if he wanted more. He printed some on his own and gave others to printers to do.

Q: How difficult was it for you to find people to talk to about Munch who knew him?

SE: Not very hard, because Norway had only about three million people at that time. It seemed everybody knew everybody. One person would say “Oh, I know the son of Munch’s doctor. You could talk to him.” So, I would get an introduction and work it out. It really wasn’t very difficult. I was fortunate to be able to interview his last three models.

Q: Was there a language issue?

SE: Sometimes. For example, the person who had been Munch’s gardener didn’t speak English. So then I took someone from the Munch Museum as my translator.

Q: Did you spend a concentrated period of time there?

SE: I went back and forth about four times to conduct the interviews for periods of ten days to two weeks.

Q: Who would transcribe the interviews?

SE: I have a secretary.

Q: We wish we had one! (laughter) Your catalogue essay was written in 1990 and referred to a collection that was to be bequeathed to the National Gallery of Art.

SE: We created a foundation and the prints now belong to the foundation. Every year I have to decide which three or four works go permanently to the National Gallery. That’s always hard to decide which of your children you are going to send off permanently into the wider world.

Q: Do you designate the works, or do they physically depart?

SE: They physically leave our collection for the National Gallery.

Q: That must be a difficult choice. It sounds like an iterative process—you must revisit it every year.

SE: Yes. Luckily, my secretary used to work at the Corcoran Gallery. She is very knowledgeable about art and how art is handled. And then we loan prints very often to shows. She is the person who works with the curator at the other end. If they are going overseas, then you have to send a courier, so she gets a chance to go to Japan, Germany or England, or wherever they are going to be shown.

Q: Let me ask you about Germany. A lot of Munch’s work ended up there—because it was the biggest market, I guess. I know from your essay that much of the subsequent turnover was generated through German collectors and houses. And we have learned today that you studied German. So this is a German connection. And you spent your first period abroad in a German-speaking country.

SE: Also I had a friend, Carla Lathe, a British art historian who studied Munch. She spoke German much better than I did. So, Carla and I went together to Germany to look for the places were Munch had lived and worked, as well as interviewing people who had known him. That was a lot of fun.

Q: When did you do that and where did you go?

SE: We went to Berlin and environs and some of the other cities that had Munch collections, Lübeck for example and Hamburg. Munch had lived in Lübeck with the Max Linde family. I was too late to interview any of the four children in that family, but I did interview cousins and learned a lot about the family through them.

Q: There is an element of Buddenbrooks in that. It must have been interesting to have been in Germany in the 1960s not so long after the war. What was the atmosphere like at that time?

SE: I got a lot of the story of Munch there. I interviewed the daughter of Munch’s cataloguer, Gustav Schieffler. There were the stories of how inflation and war ruined many collectors financially, who then had to sell off their Munchs. Stories of hardship. The second son of the Linde family was gassed in the first world war and had very weak lungs as a result.

Q: You expressed great concern about the dispersion of collections in your essay. You stated a commitment to keeping your collection intact. The Schieffler story sounds like it affected you in this way.

SE: Yes, very sad for the family. However, we saw one collection in Germany that was even bigger than ours, but it is kept in boxes, not on display.

Q: I take it that much of Munch’s work has been sold off piecemeal.

SE: We were so lucky in this respect, because when we first started collecting, Munch’s generation—the people who bought directly from him—were dying and the children were inheriting the works. The children often sold entire collections or parts of them. That is how we had a relatively easy time in finding and collecting them. And we had the assistance of Alan Fern who saw the German catalogues.

Q: A major feature of your contribution to art is the keeping intact of the collection that you have.

SE: Yes. We started out buying prints for our children, so some of them were in the children’s names. But we talked to the children and they agreed that they would go into the foundation. The whole collection from the foundation goes to the National Gallery. We did have three oil paintings—very minor ones—but eventually we sold those just because we decided our collection was really a print collection and it gave us more money to continue to buy prints.

Q: Give us some metrics. Broadly speaking, how many prints have come to you?

SE: We have over 300 in the collection.

Q: And the collection grew incrementally from the 1960s?

SE: When we were actively collecting, if we saw one that was in better condition and maybe was hand-colored and we had one that was in less good condition and not hand-colored, we would sometimes sell the one we had to help us buy the better one. We were trying to upgrade at the same time as we were expanding the collection.

Q: Now let’s turn our attention to your experience in Chevy Chase DC. Characterize, if you please, the value-added of living in Chevy Chase. Are there others interested in collecting art in Chevy Chase?

SE: We knew our neighbors better when the children were here, because the children sort of flowed back and forth. We really don’t at present have any close friends right in the neighborhood. Our friends are through family planning, The Experiment, and through what we call The Art Group. It’s a group of women. We meet every two weeks, either to go to an art show, or to somebody’s home to hear somebody talk about art.

Q: How large a group is it?

SE: There are about 20 of us.

Q: From the DC metropolitan area.

SE: Yes, that’s right.

Q: How did you come to choose Chevy Chase as your home?

SE: We absolutely outgrew our “Wright house” in McLean. Tommy Wright was going to build a wing with three bedrooms, with a corridor that went out through the yard to the new rooms. I thought, well, I don’t really want my children split off in that way. Then we decided we had to look for a house. Someone in Lionel’s office said there was a fine big house up on Oregon Avenue. We came to have a look. You can’t imagine what this house was like in those days: heavy velvet curtains, squiggles going up the walls, the dining table had a glass top with gold Cupids holding it up. In the basement there was a big bar and there were flames coming up, painted in the stairwell and a sign beckoning “come on down, it’s hot down here.” There was a half-swimming pool in back of the house that looked very dangerous. The room in which we are sitting was only half the size it is now. The other half was an outside covered porch with three archways. We put three children’s bedrooms directly over this, now expanded room. I was initially aghast at the décor of the house. It was really Lionel who imagined it differently. He said to think of painting the interior white. So we bid on the house and got it.

Q: And the grounds are so beautiful. That must have been an attraction.

SE: It was.

Q: How much land do you have here?

SE: It’s about two acres.

Q: Do you know when the house was built?

SE: 1927. I give Munch tours and slide lectures every so often. At one point there was a group coming through that I knew from the museum world. A woman visiting from Boston said “I think my nephew grew up in this house.” I told her that was fascinating and would love to meet him. She wrote to her nephew, who stopped on his way back north from Florida to his summer home in Vermont He brought me photographs of the house as it had been and talked about it. He lived with his grandmother, who had made a fortune during World War I. She owned boarding houses downtown. With the proceeds from those ventures she had this house built.

Q: Did he provide any written documentation?

SE: No, I think he just related it conversationally.

Q: Was there a particular architect associated with it?

SE: I don’t have that information. The person who established the Barrie School possessed it after this fellow’s grandmother. It was the Barrie School lady who did all the gold cupids and hell-fire flames.

Q: What was the built environment in the immediate vicinity?

SE: There was a couple called Schumacher down the hill. They had children who used to play with ours. Chuck Bernstein lived on the other side. Pat Buchanan lived a stone’s throw from here, across the back fence from our tennis court. Originally, there were three lots of similar dimensions to ours. By the time we moved in, they had already been subdivided and populated with smaller houses.

Q: So the kids went to school from this house. Where did they go?

SE: When we were living in McLean, they had started at the Potomac School in McLean. So we just had them continue. There was a bus that gathered the students from the District. One year it actually came down Oregon Avenue. All the other years we had to drive them over to Connecticut Avenue. In those days the Potomac School went through the ninth grade. They had to make a choice after that. They went to five different boarding schools after that.

Q: Where did they end up going?

SE: David went to Wilbraham; Jim went to Millbrook; Richard went to Storm King; Sally Anne went to Mercersburg; and Miles attended St. Marks.

Q: That would have been towards the end of the 1960s, right. A difficult time in the District, after the assassination of Martin Luther King in April, 1968.

SE: Yes, and all the Robert Kennedy children of course went to Potomac School. Richard was very good at acting. I remember sitting next to Ethel Kennedy at a school play in which Richard was the lawyer and Bobby Kennedy, Jr., was playing the murderer. Ethel was so upset. She obviously didn’t know what was going on as Bobby Jr. prepared his part. She was seeing it absolutely for the first time and objected to having Bobby play a murderer. Having rehearsed Richard, I could practically give all the lines myself.

Q: What did they end up doing after they graduated from school?

SE: You’re taking me back. I don’t think about this every day. I think David went to American University, Jim to Princeton, Richard to Sarah Lawrence, Sally Anne to Southern Methodist, and Miles to Oberlin.

Q: What did they become?

SE: David is a master potter; he works and teaches in Glen Echo and he has his own studio. These pottery pieces are his. Jim has taken over our family business office. Lionel is still the retired top CEO. Richard is an actor and lives in Brattleboro, Vermont. Miles started out as an EMT, but left that in favor of art school for four years and now makes art furniture out of recycled materials in San Francisco. And Sally Anne has two children who are 13 and 11, so she is an at-home mother. She and her husband lived in Montana for a long time and moved to Bethesda about three years ago. They had about 100 acres and there were no children in the immediate neighborhood. She had to drive about 30 miles to Bozeman for their school. I think she was very glad to move back home. Pottery is my art form. When they were small, I took them on Saturdays to a workshop with a children’s class run by Vally Possony.

Q: Where did you find the pottery class?

SE: It was when we were still living in McLean. Our next door neighbor was taking classes from Vally Possony, an Austrian Jewish woman who fortunately escaped to the USA before the Germans invaded Austria. She invited me to come with her out to the studio in Falls Church. I still go to the studio, which is now run by one of her top students.

Q: International travel appears to be a motif in your life.

SE: We do a lot of it. My husband, Don, loves to travel. International family planning has had a lot to do with it. Half the time we were going to developing countries, the other half on vacation or on art excursions. We went to London last October because the Tate Gallery was doing a wonderful show about the second half of Munch’s life. His main masterpieces came early, but all the rest of his life he kept up with what was going on in the art world. He took up photography and movie-making. In the Tate exhibition I saw a lot of things I had never seen before.

Q: When did you remarry?

SE: 19 years ago. After fifteen years of being single, I didn’t expect to get married again.

Q: What is your husband’s name?

SE: Donald Collins. He was involved in working with a charitable foundation in Pittsburgh. They put him in charge of the family planning work they were doing. First he was sent to Chile, where he was horrified to see women who had died from septic abortions. He has been in the family planning field a long time.

Q: Is he a physician?

SE: No. Economics. He was a venture capitalist for awhile.

Q: Where did he train?

SE: He grew up outside of Pittsburgh and went to Yale and then New York University for a Masters in business. Then on to banking, then venture capital, and then to this charitable work. Subsequently, he became an independent, setting up his own foundation IASF (International Services Assistance Fund). And we work together now in family planning.

Q: Are you still working with Lionel?

SE: Yes, we remain partners in our avocation and business of collecting Munchs.

Q: What haven’t we asked you that we should have asked you?

SE: Well, I am still on quite a number of boards. We can start with Pathfinder International, which was founded by my father Dr Clarence Gamble. It currently has birth control clinics in about twenty developing countries. Over the years I have very often gone out to look at those. And then I’m on the board of Population Services International. I think they do an exceptional job of doing birth control, plus they distribute malaria nets and other things out into remoter areas, working through subsidies to local village stores. It allows the owner to sell birth control at a profit, which makes him eager to promote contraception. I am also on the board of the Federation for American Immigration Reform. One of my concerns is what is going to happen in this country. We are using all our natural resources; we are opening up our borders; we are taking in a million new people every year from outside the country. And then of course they have children and the population is just expanding tremendously. Not a good idea.

Q: How long have you been involved in that organization?

SE: About 30 years. The present amnesty bill in Congess is about 800 pages. They are planning to give it only one day of reading. Can you imagine Congress reading 800 pages in one day? There is nothing more in the current bill than they have ever done in the past to close the borders. It’s really shocking.

Q: It sounds like you have a very busy life.

SE: Very. I am not on the board of Planned Parenthood anymore, but I am close to Laura Meyers, the head of it, and keep track of what’s going on. And I am still involved with the Experiment in International Living. We raise enough scholarship money to send 18-20 young people from the DC metropolitan area on their program every year.

Q: Is it mostly young people?

SE: High school age. It’s simply amazing. We give them an orientation. I am on the selection committee, so I meet them early on. They come to a briefing meeting with their parents or grandmother or whomever before they go abroad. Many of them have never been in an airplane. They are kind of tense. And then at the end of the year, sometimes in October or November, we have a debriefing meeting and they are so changed, so excited. They’ve got a family in Italy or Ethiopia or Brazil. It really opens their eyes to the world.

Q: Typically, what year do they go?

SE: Usually they are juniors in high school. The thinking is they will go back to the high school and share their experience and encourage other people to go.

Q: Of the developing countries covered by the several organizations in which you are involved, are many in Africa?

SE: A great many are in Africa, yes, but in Asia as well as Central and South America. In Africa three years ago we visited Pathfinder in Ethiopia. What shocked me was that China was coming into Ethiopia, renting out land so they can grow food to ship back to China. Ethiopia is still primitive, people still using manual plows. I have also gotten involved in Senegal. Molly Melching went there first as a junior in college—she was a French-African major—then signed up with the Peace Corps and in 1993 or 1994 started to teach village women literacy. She began her three-year program by first discussing human rights. Later came a hygiene and health program. Female genital cutting was not criticized—they simple discussed the health consequences. The village women in one class decided it was against human rights, and eventually decided to abandon the custom. Because of this program, over 5,000 villages in Senegal have abandoned this custom. Now the word is spreading to other countries in West Africa and even to countries in East Africa. My husband and I have been to Senegal three times to observe this program.

Q: Your travels to Asia and the Western Hemisphere?

SE: Cambodia, Thailand, India, Tibet, to China several times, Japan. I have never been to Pakistan. In Latin America, though not very recently, we have been to Costa Rica, Jamaica, Brazil and Chile. More recently we have been to Patagonia, in both Argentina and Chile.

Q: Returning to Chevy Chase, what was it like living in the neighborhood when you were a young mother or more recently?

SE: It was wonderful to have Rock Creek Park as our back yard. A big issue right now is that they want to make Oregon Avenue a three-lane highway. We love the park; we used to spend a lot of time down in the park in the playgrounds, skipping stones, feeding the ducks. But with all my other interests, I never did get very involved in local Chevy Chase activities. We used to go with the children to that public swimming pool off of Connecticut Avenue. In the summertime, the children usually went to camp. After camp the whole family would decamp to Maine. We went to Georgetown Island, beyond Bath and the Kennebec River. We are right where the Kennebec River flows into the ocean.

Would you like to take a walk around to see some of the Munchs we have on display?

Q: We would love to! I do have one more question. You have lived a life of art; you have lived a life filled with global travel. How do these two things connect for you?

SE: Well, I always like to see what the art is wherever we go.

Q: I remember from your essay that what many people find disturbing in Munch’s art you don’t. He connects to you viscerally in some way. I can’t help but think that because of the kinds of work you do globally there is a connection. You also see many things that people would find disturbing. I guess I am looking for the common thread in your reaction to these two spheres.

SE: You talk about disturbing sights. I think of the terrible slums outside cities like Nairobi or New Delhi, where people live in worse huts than I would keep a dog in.

Q: Did you do social work after you got your degree?

SE: I got married just days after graduation. When we came to Washington I did volunteer work for Planned Parenthood.

Q: Do you see art as a relief from the work you do in developing countries? Are these two different spheres for you? I am struggling with how they connect.

SE: I will give you a little pamphlet I have done where I combine the art and the planning. They are not separate. They go together very much. Especially with Munch, because Munch is always about how people feel. I find a lot of empathy and emotion in Munch—as I do in my work. Munch said that he wanted people to understand that all people feel emotions. One time when I was doing a tour at the National Gallery in 1990 at the exhibition of our prints. Halfway through the tour an elderly man joined the group. He was elegantly dressed and had some sort of velvet outlining his lapel. When the rest of the group went to see something else, he came up to me and said “thank you!” and he burst into tears.

Q: What do you say when people tell you that Munch is too sad and depressing?

SE: I tell them that my mother felt the same way. She said she couldn’t understand how I could collect this art.

At this time in my life I spend much more time trying, with my husband, to get our quinacrine permanent contraceptive approved by the FDA than I do with art.

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A  Marriage of Environmentalism and Technology: Saving Lafayette’s Trees and Relishing Their Community

Interviewees: Brock Evans and Linda Garcia
Date: Nov. 18, 2012
Interviewed and transcribed (from audio recording) by: Joan Solomon Janshego
Location: Janshego residence in Chevy Chase DC

Q – I know that you are an environmentalist. You are a lawyer and a lobbyist in the environmental movement. Can you tell me how your interest started?

BE – Back in the early 60s I was trying to decide what I wanted to do for a living. I knew that I did not want to go into medicine and business, and so I went to law school. I went to the University of Michigan law school. Actually, I was born and raised in Columbus, Ohio. I didn’t like my first year in law school very much, so I got a summer job in Glacier National Park, which I thought was in Alaska. Anything not to be a lawyer anymore.

From the moment that I got off the train in Glacier, Montana, I was stunned at the magnificent beauty. I am a midwestern boy and had never seen this before. It was like a lost chord was plucked inside of me. It said “now you are home.” I spent 2 magic summers hiking there. I worked there at a hotel, because I was always on scholarship. Then I moved to Seattle with my first wife, Rachel. It was cheaper to take the bar in Seattle than it was in California. I got a job there as a lawyer and I practiced law for about 4 – 5 years.

Q – What kind of law did you practice?

BE – It was general practice. In those days, a medium-sized law firm was 15 people. It was wonderful for a young lawyer starting out. I did admiralty, constitutional law, traffic cases and everything under the sun. So it was a general practice, and I liked it, but I didn’t love it. I was there for the country. I was there to hike and climb in the mountains on either side of the sound. If you have been there, you know how beautiful it is. That was fine for a number of years. I was making my living as a lawyer and exploring this wonderful part of the country.

Then I got very upset. They were cutting down all the trees in the forest. It was about 1964 – 1965, and I was very unhappy because, of course, there were no environmental laws then, and I didn’t know what to do. Someone said you ought to join this group called the Sierra Club down in San Francisco. They are passionate about these things. I joined some local groups who were fighting to stop these things, but there were no laws. To make a long story short, I became such a passionate, active volunteer – and most environmentalists are volunteers; they are not lucky enough to get paid to do these things – that I spent all of my weekends and nights , as well as half of the time in my law office doing what we called conservation work. Then we were struggling to stop the logging and save national parks and wilderness areas out there, and that is how I got my start.

In about 1967, I caught the notice of the Sierra Club. They were a small group then. They had 40,000 members. Now I think they have a half a million. I got offered a job. They said, “How would you like to be our Northwest representative?” I thought it was Washington, Oregon, Idaho and Montana. You got paid. It was a small pittance, but the psychic rewards were huge. I got to wander around those four states and try to save rivers and wilderness – my passion, my love – and get paid for it, too.

After I got hired, I found out that my territory also included Alaska and British Columbia and California – Northwest North America. So I had six glorious years doing this. We were making a life for ourselves in Seattle. We had our two little boys. But I had to come back to Washington to lobby a lot. I didn’t know what lobbying was, and neither did anyone else in the environmental community at that time.

I remember coming here in 1967 or 1968 to meet with the four or five people who did these kind of things, here. My boss was a famous guy named David Broward. We were trying to stop dams in the Grand Canyon. That was the big deal in the 1960s, and so I testified at the hearings. I knew a little bit about that, being a lawyer.

He said, “ Go out and lobby.” I said, “How do I know how to do that?” He said, “I don’t know, just go out and do it. “ So I didn’t know, but no one else knew either. So I just went out and started talking to people in offices. I started this career because of my passion, and it has been a life long kind of thing.

I was asked in 1972 to leave Seattle and go to Washington. I had been pretty successful in my job in the Northwest. I said, “No – Who would like to leave a place like this for a place like that?” I had been back in DC, but all I could think of was the heat and humidity, which I don’t like. But we finally did agree to come back and head up the office of the Sierra Club. So I became the head of the office, and my job was to save all the good things and stop all the bad things. We came out in early 1973. Our youngest son was just 10 days old and the oldest was 2-1/2 at the time. We bought a house on 31st Street, just on the other side of Nebraska. My former wife is still there, and we are all good friends. The boys are all grown up.

Nineteen-seventy-three was the first so-called energy crisis, and I got a real introduction to national environmental politics. That was the year we passed the Endangered Species Act. For about eight years there were victories and defeats, and triumphs and setbacks. I traveled all over the country public speaking and going to meetings. I helped to build a whole environmental movement around the country – not just the Sierra Club but also Audubon and others like that.

In 1981, I left the Sierra Club and took a similar position with the National Audubon Society. I did that for the next 15 years or so, and then Audubon had an internal upheaval – a coup d’état – the way I put it in medieval terms. Audubon got a new prince, and I was minister to the old prince. So the new prince has a right to his ministers. I was one of the last people to be let go.

In the meantime, I took a sabbatical in 1984 to run for Congress out in Seattle. How could someone like me who is clearly a carpetbagger do that? Well, I became well known in Seattle. I was asked by the chairperson of the State Democratic Party to run for an open seat. So I gave up everything and went out there and took the plunge. It was quite an incredible experience. I was separated from Rachel at the time. Rachel is a great lady. She came out and campaigned for me. I didn’t win. It was a district that had been Republican for 40 years, and I got 46 percent of the vote. And the best thing was that my campaign manager was a young woman named Maria Cantwell, who is now a U. S. Senator from Washington State. I taught her all about the environment. So that has been a nice contact over the years.

I came back and stayed at Audubon until 1995. That was when the coup d’ etat came about.

LG – It happened at the same time that I was with the Office of Assessment Technology and Congress shut it down in 1995.

BE – So it was Christmas time, and we were both unemployed. Life was over. I was living in Linda’s house down the street. And then I was offered a job with the Endangered Species Coalition. I also worked as a consultant for a couple years. I made more money that I had ever before, but I didn’t like it very much.

I became Executive Director of the Endangered Species Coalition, which is a small national group. It represents about 450 scientific societies and religious groups and others who care about endangered species. We built it up and made it a national political force, which is what I try to do. That was a struggle, because there have been many political attacks on environmental laws since Ronald Reagan got elected. It was not all of the time but most of the time. But there was a lot of stress and strain. Then Linda got another really interesting job. She will tell you about it.

We took another sabbatical in 1998. I had a lot of Jewish friends in the environmental community. I took a couple trips to Israel to see the thriving environmental movement over there.

LG – We were both fired, and so we didn’t have that many commitments.

BE – I was working for the Endangered Species Coalition then, but I told Linda, “I just got a call from Alon Tal, head of the Israeli environmental movement.” She never heard of him. He founded a new institute over there, which brings Arabs and Jews together. Arabs from Syria, the West Bank and Jordan and Orthodox Jews from Israel and North America and secular Jews too. It is all in English.

It is at a kibbutz in the desert. It is called the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies, and I was a visiting professor. We did not talk about “politics” as it was called over there. We talked instead about the common language, which was the environment – rainwater, and black water, and clean water and wildlife and wilderness and open space. Everybody loves that. So I was talking about the politics of saving things even if under different cultures. We did that for a semester in 1998.

LG – I had lost my job. I was a adjunct professor at John Hopkins and Georgetown, and so I was able to go.

BE – So I said that I wanted to go to Israel for six months. But I had a wonderful staff on board here in DC and everything went fine after I left.

In 2002, all was going along and things were going fine. Again, the income for any paid environmental work is a pittance, but the psyche benefit is enormous. Anyway, I got this pain in my shoulder and it would not go away. For two months, it got worse and worse, and I finally got it diagnosed the end of July – bone marrow cancer – a death sentence. It is still incurable. My doctor said you can stay here and die, because no one knows how to treat this cancer in DC. Or you can go to Little Rock, Arkansas, which is the only place that treats it. I said, “I’ll go to Arkansas.” I was given three weeks to live when I got down there, and Linda was my caregiver. She had started her work at Georgetown. It was a rough year. I had three or four rounds of chemotherapy. I lost my hair, but I survived. I am in complete remission. But it took two to three years to do that.

Then I realized that I could no longer go on with the strain of being executive director with 10 young people depending on me to raise the money and keep it going. It was too much stress. So I got myself kicked upstairs to be the president of Endangered Species in 2006 because I had recruited our whole board of directors anyhow. The president is an unpaid position. You have to have a title around here. I still love the earth and the environment and everything about it. So I am the president, and we have an executive director, and she is terrific. I help her to raise money and do lobbying, but I am free now to do lots of different things. I am working on all kinds of environmental crusades – things I care about here, and elsewhere.

In Washington State, the east side irrigators want water to irrigate their hay for Japanese racehorses and water for hops, apples and cherries. They want to build a couple dams with $5 billion of taxpayers’ money to flood some ancient forests – the big trees that I fought for all my life. So we are fighting quite a political battle out there, since I know that place well. So I go back to the Northwest a lot.

This year, there is another bill in Congress where the Obama administration is attempting to overturn a victory that we won 20 years ago which basically saved all he remaining ancient forest in the Northwest, and I am working on that one too. Here, I an involved in the DC Chapter of the Sierra Club. I am on their local Board. They are working on things like making sure that recycling laws are followed. We are trying to change the energy patterns of use. Mayor Gray says that he wants DC to be the number one environmental city in the country and already we are in the top 10. And they are trying to get better energy use – like a garden on every roof and reflecting things. So there are all sorts of individual things that I do. I am busy and active.

I just finished writing my second book. It is my first book in a long time. It is a book for young adults, and it is called “How to Save the Earth.” That is the working title. It is just basic stuff for young adults and teenagers. I used as an example Lafayette Park.

Lafayette Park is everyone’s beloved place around here. We still walk our dogs there. I was jogging a lot around there, when unbeknownst to me, someone said, “Do you know what some people want to do?” I said, “No.” Well a self-appointed citizens committee on Lafayette Park – not appointed by the mayor – said, “No one is using that park. It is a wilderness out there. We are going to cut down all of the mulberry trees, because they are dirty and we are going to cut down the black beeches on the other side , because they might fall over on a car some day. We are going to put up tennis bang boards and put up a big gazebo in the middle of the place. We are going to make it so the people can use that place.

And I thought , “This is an idyllic little, green gem. It is the last thing from a wilderness.” I found some neighbors – in fact one of them is living in one of these houses, I can’t remember her name right now – she and I became co-chairs, and we called some emergency meetings. We had only about a month before the City Council was going to hold a hearing on it. We didn’t even know it was going to come up.

We formed a coalition of Friends of Lafayette Park and Playground 
So we got all of the kids to leaflet the neighborhood. I think it was about May 1977. We ran about a two-month campaign and had several hundred people turn out for the hearing. So every time I walk by – I can’t jog any more – I hug that old mulberry tree. It is dirty and sloppy I know, but I pat it. They were going to cut down at least half of the trees there. They were going to put up tennis courts and bang boards up there – that is in addition to those they already had. 

So I tell this story in my book. The publisher has it now. It is being edited now.

So that is me now. I have not been paid for these things for some time. I get an honorarium some time.

LG – [laughs]. I call him my charity.

Q – So you said this is your second book. What was your first book?

BC – My first book was about an area we were trying to save near Seattle in the 1970’s called The Alpine Lakes. It is one of these big picture coffee table type books that you see. The Seattle Mountaineers published it, and it sold about 7,000 copies. I was the author. Of course, everyone looks at the pictures. But I wrote the words.

LG – He also has kept prolific diaries throughout his life. My favorite is a set of diaries he wrote when he took a tramp steamer and went to the Middle East. He did this when he was in college. He has it totally documented. It is a beautiful thing. I don’t know why he doesn’t send it to a publisher. He also has diaries when he was in Glacier Park and his trip west with his wife and just throughout his life.

Q – Are the diaries focused on environmental issues – or things that you see?

BE – We were not even called environmentalist in the 1960s. No. It is just how beautiful everything was. It is about thoughts and emotions and who am I and who am I going to be, as well as like, it is now 120 degrees out in the Red Sea and there is no air conditioning. I am sitting in the boiler room at 140 degrees. Linda calls it the young Werther stories. (“Young Werther” – the title of a book by the 18th century German poet, Goethe, about a wandering young man).

LG – He has volumes. He is quite well known and famous and so there would be a readership for it. He lost some of it, and so it ended up that I had to retype it one fall. I could not get over it. And the diary on the ship – you see a young man who is trying to figure out who he is. He is on a ship. He doesn’t speak Norwegian. There were no Americans on the ship. It is fantastic – the cities that he visits .

Q – So are you considering Linda’s suggestion?

BE – Yes. I am an inveterate diarist. It is not exactly a strong chronicle. It is much more a diary of feeling and thinking.

LG – He also has the cancer diary.

BE – A nurse’s journal published part of that. Cancer nurses and medical people want to know what cancer patients think. I went to a long struggle within myself after getting this diagnosis – am I going to die or not? Not much I can do about it – or can I? I was searching within myself. I learned to talk to my body. So it is a story of a struggle. I kept saying to myself, if I am going to die, I am going to die the way that I think I lived – with all the flags flying.

LG – I also said that he was going to die publicly.

BE – That’s right. Linda said that you are going to die publicly, because you are well known.

It was about the caregiving and my journey. I found a new kind of semi-profession, which is consoling, and comforting people who get stricken. Everyone goes through the “why me and it is not fair. My life is over.”

And this is a digression but it is on point, after I lived for the first few months, it looked like I was responding to the treatment. I had two stem-cell transplants. But I had a long way to go. So I was really gloomy. The mental part is a big part of this. Linda got tired of me being glum around the house. She found a cancer psychiatrist for me named Judy Siegel over in Friendship Heights. I remember going over there to see her. It was about October, because I had already lived beyond my allotted time. But I had to go back for another chemo. All those wonderful cells that fought for my life back in the worst time, in August, had regrown – the transplant. I had to kill them again. I got tearful: I am killing all you guys again. I am sorry. So I went to see the shrink about it. She said of course you feel like crying all the time – a catastrophe has happened to you. That is why you feel that way. That was license and freedom to cry.

LG – She also taught him to visualize and go inside of his body, which I think helped to save his life because he set up a whole kingdom in his body.

BE – Yes. I learned to talk to my body, and that is what I talk to people about.

When I got my draft notice in the cold war, I enlisted in the Marine Corps. I thought if I am going to be a soldier, I might as well be the best soldier that I could be. I didn’t do anything heroic, but I was there and I learned about hardships – mental and physical hardships.

That’s what I finally thought to myself, when I had the cancer; most chemotherapy is clear like vodka. But one was pink and the nurses would hook me up to my IV in my port and say in her Arkansas accent, “We are going to fry you good, Mr. Evans. This one is called Red Devil.” So I was watching it, hissing and spitting into me. Linda was sleeping in a cot beside me in Arkansas, and I thought that there goes Red Devil killing all of my cells. Then I remember: Red Devil was the name of the most famous British paratrooper unit in World War II. So that fit with me. I knew my cancer cells were my own cells. They were the traitors. I knew the white cells were the fighter cells. So it was easy for me to make the transition that my cells were fighting regiments. So in my own mind, I conjured up the most famous fighting regiments in history – the Iron Brigade in the Civil War and so on. That metamorphosed over time. I would not say that it saved me, but it sure gave me something to do than just wait for more medication and hope for luck. I felt that I was taking part in my own salvation. I would go down and talk to my cells every night, and we would have a counter attack the next morning. I have talked myself out of migraine headaches and being sick, since then. It doesn’t always work, but it seemed to save me then. That’s what I tell people.

Q – Are you working in some organization for cancer patients?

BE – No. People just call me up and ask me to talk to so and so. You know what it is like – half of the people don’t want to talk about it. The other half does.

Q – So Linda – Why don’t you tell us a little about yourself?

LG – I was born in Paterson, New Jersey. I am a New Jersey girl. I went to Syracuse University. When I came back, I wanted to get out of Jersey. I was in a pretty middle-class neighborhood. And I wanted to cross the bridge to New York. That was my goal, and I did that as soon as I graduated from Syracuse. I started at Columbia University when I studied International Relations and Comparative Government, Comparative Economics, and I started my PhD there, except I got married to my first husband. I was all but dissertation when we moved to Washington.

Then I was lucky to work for the Office of Technology Assessment just two years after it was established. It was established in 1974 and we came to Washington in 1976. I ended up working there for 19 years and six months. Fortunately, I was over 50 when it closed down, but the House Science and Technology Committee put me on the committee staff for six months so that I could have a full 20-year career. That was wonderful.

BE – It wasn’t just shut down easily. It was part of Congressman Gingrich’s Contract with America. We say Contract “on” America – because that is what it was. Anyway, it was the only thing that they shut down. It was $25 million in savings. It was an impartial organization. I guess they didn’t want impartial advice.

LG – The Office of Technology Assessment was set up to help Congress, which had very little background in science and technology to help them understand things like double-hulled ships. My studies were on radioactive waste disposal and acid rain. Then I moved into the area of communication and did studies on rural development in telecommunication. I did a big study on communications and intellectual property rights.

BE – She is famous for a lot of things in her field – especially for standards. She is on this board in Austria (a review board of the National Academy of Science in Austria).

LG – I am well known in standards, and I just recently got a grant from the National Institute of Standards and Technology to design prototypes for on-line courses in standards, which I am very happy about. So when OTA closed down, I was able to teach as an adjunct at John Hopkins and also at Georgetown in a program called Science, Technology and International Affairs, at which point I did that for a year ad a half.

Then we had the offer to go to Israel. At that time, I was negotiating with people at the University of Pennsylvania for a job there. But this was a long negotiation. At first, I was not happy to go to Israel. What was I going to do there? But it turned out to be a very transforming experience, because I had worked on science and technology issues – especially telecommunications policy. But the idea of doing this any longer after we had been to Israel, and we were dealing with Arabs and Jews and Christians and issues that had to do with identity, culture, peace and war, I just could not come back and say I was going to do telecom policy again. So we came back, and Georgetown was setting up a new graduate department called Communication, Culture and Technology, and I was hired there.

Q – What year was that?

LG – That was 1999. What is interesting is that the year that OTA shut down, my former colleague – someone I had worked with as a contractor at OTA – Abbe Noskowitz – had a joint appointment at both City University and the University of Amsterdam. He called me up and said, “You need to finish your PhD.” I was 30 years from my PhD. He said, “The Dutch will accept all your credits from Columbia University and I can help you.” I had done a study at OTA on electronic commerce, and he said, “We can turn that into a thesis for you. You can come over here and get your PhD,” which I did. It was a gift from heaven.

Q – How long did that take? How long did you have to be there?

LG – I didn’t have to be there more than two weeks. I had to have the first session translated into Dutch, and a very nice person from the Dutch Embassy volunteered to do that for me. And then I had to go to Amsterdam to defend. I knew in advance that my thesis would pass, because otherwise they would not have accepted it.

But the defense was very scary. It was in the oldest Methodist Church in Amsterdam, and everyone was dressed in velvet. It was very elegant. I thought to myself, “If it is going to take you 30 years to get your PhD, you might as well do it in style.” When you get your diploma, it is wrapped in this big red box, and you walk down the street, and everyone knows that you just got your PhD. It was very special. And so I would not have been able to get the job at CCT as a full-time person without that. I was hired as the associate director there, which was a good thing. It was a stable job but not tenured, because I was in a half-administrator role. But I helped to design the program, and I became director – a position I held for 11 years. 

I watched the program grow. It is a fantastic program – totally interdisciplinary. It covers everything that you could think of in the area of communications, culture and technology. We have students from everywhere. When I stopped being director, my former dean became director and he put me on a tenure track, which means that when I am 73, I am going up for tenure, which will be very exciting.

BE – She is writing all the time. Her nose is always buried in some book.

LG – Brock has two sons and I have one son. We have four grandchildren together. We have a summerhouse in New Jersey. I am 5th generation and we go there every summer. My son married the girl next door who also has a house there. We have this wonderful time each summer when we are in the woods of New Jersey.

Q – Is this near Paterson?

LG – No – about 40 or 50 miles west. The people who founded it were from Paterson and Hawthorne. But they called it a camping club, and they bought it for a dollar an acre after it had been timbered.

BE – It is in the highlands – in the northwestern corner where the three states come together – New Jersey, New York and Pennsylvania. She talked about the mountains in New Jersey when we were courting. I sneered. The highest point in New Jersey is called High Point, at 1800 feet. There is a series of long, gorgeous granite ridges with the Appalachian Trail running through it and hundreds of little lakes and magnificent recovering trees – big trees now. It is like a semi-wilderness. This is an enclave of about a square mile of magnificent recovering forest around a 50-acre lake with about 30 families with homes there, too.

LG – We spend our summers sitting on two wicker chairs on a screened-in porch watching things going on around us. It is just reading and writing. My son has a good Internet system, and so I stick my computer in the window facing his house. We get a signal if there is good wind.

Q – This is his summerhouse also?

LG – He married the girl next door. He will inherit my house. But he married Haley, who has her own house next door.

BE – “Next-door” means from your house – across the street to the Lafayette Park hillside. It is deep forest and a ravine, where the bears come to drink.

LG – There are quite a few bears. And down the road – maybe three houses away– is my sister and my niece is up the road a little way. Second and third cousins are all around.

Q – You said five generations in New Jersey. Is that in Paterson or at this place?

LG – Both.

Q- So your family members have been going there for many generations?

LG – Yes.

Q – What a story!

LG – It is quite a place.

BE – I wrote an article called the Battle of Sparta Mountain and described the community and the interaction of the 30 families, because they are not allowed to sell to developers. The community owns it. Anyway, the interaction of all the lives – every one knows each other.

LG – Intermarriages.

BE – Plus nature coming back. It is a unique American thing I think. I don’t know anything else quite like it.

Q – And New Jersey – you don’t think this would be in New Jersey.

LG – That is why I like Governor Christie. He was on Saturday Night Live. He was really obnoxious, because New Jersey people are supposed to be obnoxious. I am not even a Republican, but I still think that he is charming. I just think there is something about New Jersey tomatoes and New Jersey corn. When I grew up, there were some positive things about New Jersey.

BE – I agree. I went to Princeton University for my undergrad. There are a lot of beautiful places if you know where to look.

LG – I didn’t like the suburbs, because everybody was too similar and I wanted to get into the city. I am very much an urban person. I wasn’t in Paterson for more than 2-1/2 years of my life when I moved to the suburbs.

I was trying to describe this morning who are the people who originated the lake, because it gets difficult. My great grandfather’s brother was mayor of Paterson, and my great grandfather owned a lumber company there. And then his three daughters were high school teachers. My great grandfather was a Rosicrucian. But his daughters were raised as Quakers. So somehow there were a lot of Quakers up there, and a lot of them were schoolteachers. The children play together like nothing you would believe. My son and his cousin put on a treasure hunt for the kids every year. They write poems about the lake, and they have the kids find the clues and then find the treasure. It is unbelievably community. We are very lucky.

Q – Is your house very old?

LG – 1908.

Q – Is that the age of most of the houses?

LG – People – like my great grandfather – settled on the far side of the lake from us, and then they moved around. So this would have been my grandfather’s house. My great grandfather built his house in 1895.

Q – So the houses are all quite old?

BE – There are a couple newer houses.

LG – My mother rebuilt the house that my sister has.

BE – It is interesting. Me being an environmentalist, I saw the picture of the schoolteachers from Paterson and Newark who bought this for a dollar an acre in 1895 and as a vacation place. It looked like a barren, clear-cut scrubland without any bushes – what kind of vacation is that? The houses were built about 13 years later when the trees started coming back. It is now magnificent mid-Atlantic forest. The trees are 100 feet high. Our puppy treed a momma bear and three cubs a few years ago. Coyotes yelping – nature has come back.

LG – I saw a bobcat there a couple years ago

BE – I still like to go west with my backpack in the wilderness. When we were getting together to see if we could live together, Linda had to go on some long eight-day backpack trips.

Q – Is that the first time that you did something like that?

LG – Yes. Well, growing up at the lake, I was active. But it was nothing like this.

BE – She was terrific. I had to get the approval of my friends. We describe one hike that we went on, and my friend said, “You are taking her there?” Then I knew I had a high status woman.

LG – It made my name out there.

BE – All my friends love her.

Q – Are you still going on long hikes?

BE – Not so much anymore. I am 75 and I had this cancer. I did eight miles just a few months ago.

I take Sierra Club people to see the wilderness in Rock Creek Park at Nebraska Avenue. There are some lovely places there. We do what we can. In New Jersey until the ticks came , we used to take a hike every week. There are some beautiful places to hike. We would go on a hike and explore the New York state wine country on the way back.

Coming back to this place, it is an amazing place. It has stayed so stable. We have foreign visitors, they all comment that we are not tearing up the open space like happened in Columbus, Ohio, where I came from.

The place where I used to walk my dog is now 20 miles of strip malls and freeways outside of Columbus. Not that there are not nice places there. There is still a lot more green around this neighborhood in DC. There are some in-fills, but it is wonderful.

LG – We lost a beautiful loved tree in the last storm. It wrecked our garage and some of the neighbor’s property.

A – So you moved here in what year?

LG – 1976. My husband came to work at the Library of Congress. He was a researcher there.

Q – You are in the same house as you are now?

LG – No. We moved to McLean Gardens first. We moved to the house where I live now in 1977.

Q- Why did you decide Chevy Chase?

LG – My friend lived on Macomb Street. She was here first. In fact, her husband helped my husband get a job at the Library of Congress. The year that we graduated, there were no teaching jobs. So we came down with them. She was going to marry him, and she said that “I am not going to come to Washington unless Linda comes too. “ So he found my husband a job. Later, some people I knew from Columbia came down. We went to McLean Gardens, because Mike had lived there before. So when he married Anna, and they moved to Macomb Street, we moved into his apartment. Then we started looking for a house. I also had my mother-in-law with me then, because she was sick with cancer.

My son, Steve, went to Lafayette, and then he went to Edmund Burke.

Q – What was it like in 1977?

LG – I told you I was a city girl, when I first moved here. I was shocked that the Washington Post was considered a city newspaper. I was disappointed in some of those things. DC seemed parochial compared to Manhattan. I went around Manhattan and cried when I said goodbye to everybody. What I loved about Manhattan was that if the grocer saw the police coming, he put a dime in your meter. There was lady in my apartment building who had 18 cats, and she fell and broke her hip. She would not go to the hospital because she was afraid of what would happen to her cats. So everybody in that apartment building found a home for her cats so that she could go to the hospital.

When we came here, people were polite, but not that friendly. In New York or New Jersey, they are not polite but very friendly. I thought this was a very southern city – polite and reserved. Anna’s husband helped me get my job at OTA. When I started working, I felt much better. You could not have asked for a better job. I rose from research assistant to senior associate. I was involved in so many exciting studies, which is what I love to do. We often say, “We have had a very good life. We have been very lucky.”

Q – Were you too busy to be very involved in neighborhood activities?

LG – I am terribly shy. I always worry that if I retire, what would I do? You were talking about going to the Cinema Club. I was thinking, “Would I ever go there?” I am shy about going to places that I have never been before.

Q – You are not shy about being in front of a classroom – right?

LG – No – because I have an established role. I know what I want to say. They say many actors are shy, as well. I am a performer once I get up on the stage. I do talk to people on the street when I walk my dog. I know every dog’s name in my neighborhood. But to go someplace – like the Northwest Village events – I don’t want to go. There is just an incredible shyness that I suffer from.

Q – When were you two married?

BE – We married in 1996. We started living together when I came back from the election campaign, and I started living life over again. Rachel and I agreed to separate. We were already living in separate floors. But we loved the kids, and we wanted to parent together. So Linda and I were together from about 1985 to 1996 when we married. I moved into Linda’s house in 1985 after Rachel and I separated. We had a lot of issues to work out. The divorce didn’t happen until 1994 or something like that.

LG – I didn’t get a divorce until my husband and I were separated for eight years.

BE – If you love your kids, you want your kids to be as OK as they can be.

LG – The thing about Rachel is she made a place in the boys’ life for me. She is a very unique kind of person.

Q – Tell me more about the neighbors in Chevy Chase.

BE – We had different first years, because she was with her first husband, and I was with Rachel, who is now a successful lawyer. She works in Bethesda. We got involved in PTA. Both of my kids went to Lafayette and went to Deal. We participated in lots of neighborhood parties and things like that. I had a different experience than Linda. I felt that people were friendly. But coming from Seattle where people were super friendly was different. Getting used to the traffic was different. I remember when I was agonizing on whether to move here or not – to leave my beloved Northwest or not – one of the things that persuaded me the most was I asked a friend – an older man – older than me – maybe 40. He said, “Well, Brock, Washington is not a lot of glitter and jet sets and things like that. But what you have in Washington is a lot of good talk. Interesting people are coming from other places.”

And I found that out in spades. Wherever you go, any dinner party, somebody is doing something interesting. There is a lot to talk about. So we do that a lot. Around here, your neighbors are doing interesting things. We don’t know their last names, but we know their first names and their dogs. I find it quite friendly. Maybe not as friendly as Seattle or New York City, as Linda describes it. But it is a compact unity where there is community spirit and I love that. I am a poll worker at Election Time – at AU. People come out, and they are in good spirits. It is the Americanism of it. It is the community center. Even if we don’t go to the Avalon that much, I am glad that it is there – and I am proud of it.

LG – I love how Connecticut Avenue is becoming “The Avenue” – like in New York. I also love St. Columba Church. It is a nice church with nice people.

Q – Speaking of “The Avenue,” we spoke to a long-time resident who said that in her childhood, they always called Connecticut Avenue “The Avenue.”

LG – It feels to me like that. I feel that this has happened in the past few years with people sitting outside at the restaurants. I am a sociologist. I love watching people.

BE – Just to give you another example. I was going through some old photographs today because the insurance adjustor is looking for a picture of the garage – what it used to look like. I came across these great pictures of the Lafayette Fair. It is a wonderful thing. Then the Broad Branch Market. It is such a stable community.

LG – I have seven routes when I walk the dog, and she even knows every single pathway. I love that. In the spring, you see everyone’s flower gardens.

Q – Did you use the Broad Branch Market very much when you were a young mother?

LG – No. But now, yes we do. It looks like it is filling out without getting big.

BE – Maybe I had the sense of community when I was here a few years, and they wanted to cut down the trees. It was like a spark. That’s when I got to know a lot of other people around here.

LG – But Brock is the kind of person who makes friends easily.

Q – Did you play tennis?

BE – A couple of times – but I was not one of the regulars.

Q – Go to our website – Historicchevychasedc.org – just Google it. Look at the Needleman interview. There are some great stories about the tennis pro – a man called Chico who lived in the basement of Lafayette.

BE – I am glad those stories are there. I wouldn’t want to live anywhere else in DC.

LG – Nor I. In fact, when we talk to people we say we live in a great neighborhood.

BE – When I came here in 1972, I could have lived on Capitol Hill because that is where my job was going to be. It was $80,000 to buy a house – that seemed outrageous. Our Seattle house cost $20,000 and it was five times as nice. So by luck – we missed a turn east of Rock Creek Park, and we ended up on Military Road. We drove around. There were kids playing with no one supervising them. I didn’t know this place existed. So there was a for-sale sign on the house on 31st Street – where Rachel still lives. They wanted $45,000 for that place. That seemed a huge price at the time. It has been a great experience. We have been fortunate.

Q – Did you investigate the schools first?

BE – No. We figured if kids were out there playing, and there was no supervision, the school system was probably alright too. My oldest was only 2-1/2 then.

Q – One of the things that Northwest Neighbors Village wants me to ask is how did you sign up for northwest Neighbors Village.

LG – I think somebody told me about it. Brock is the one who took the initiative. We went to a meeting early on. We thought it was great.

Q – Did you talk about retiring someplace else?

BE – We talked about going back to Seattle and seeing old friends.

LG – But not as a retirement place.

BE – Our networks and friends are here now. I don’t want to retire anymore than I am right now. There are beautiful places in eastern Oregon and Seattle. I would say that with all the love and affection we have for our friends in Seattle, most people in my experience there talk about where they went skiing or hiking last weekend. It is OK – but you don’t have very much of the good passionate talk about issues as we have here. We like that.

LG – One of favorite things to do is to go out to dinner with our friends and just have glorious talk. And it is not about politics most of the time. It is about life in general – about mortality – and Brock and one of his friends – who was also an old friend of mine – they talk history and whatever. You never come home without thinking “wasn’t that wonderful.”

Q – You are not going to necessarily get it somewhere else?

LG – At our age to get it somewhere else – no. We have made the connections here. There is a guy that I worked with on the Hill. I hired him as an adjunct professor at Georgetown, so there is a long history. We lived through each other’s divorces and re-marriages and things like that. It takes time to establish those kinds of relationships.

BE – I think we would be lonely. We have out networks and friends here. So this may be a metaphor, but I don’t want to play shuffleboard. I love to do what I do. It is stressful and wearing, but it not a job. But you do get paid decently – “psychic income,” I call it.

LG – I just think we are very lucky. I love what I do. I retired with what I call the last vestige of socialism – the government retirement package. I have it and then was able to take another job. So Brock doesn’t have to have a job. This is not a cheap neighborhood to live in. We raised three kids and helped them in time of trouble and helped them put their kids through school.

BE – I just joined and became a partner in an LLC – which is a bunch of consultants – we are well off enough, and I’ll make some money there. But making money is not the thing – it is doing the things that we love.

LG – We belong to the Sport and Health Club by Tenley. We go there two times a week. These are things that are important to us.

BE – The only negative thing that I would say is the climate. From September to May, I love it. The rest of the year is not so great being outside. I hate the humidity.

I remember once we were driving down Rock Creek Park, and Linda said, “Look at those pretty daffodils.” I said, “I know what is coming next.”

LG – When I first met him, I thought, “What kind of grouch is this because of his complaints of the summer?” I have trouble in the fall, because of the leaves.

BE – The way I describe it to my Seattle friends when they ask me what living in Washington is like. I say, “Out there in Seattle, it is grey all the time and you expect it to be grey when you get up. And sometimes the sun comes out. They call it ‘liquid sunshine’ when it rains. Here, you expect the sun to be up, and it usually is. There from say 11 p.m. on, you drive around and there is hardly any traffic. Here, there is tons of traffic no matter what time of the day it is. It is just different. In Seattle, you want to be outside in the summer. In DC, you stay inside in the summer.

Q – Of course, you spend summers in New Jersey.

LG – We spent six weeks last year. It has no air conditioning, and so it can get warm. But you can take a dip in the lake. We are 15 feet from the water. There are big trees and a breeze. I can leave my dog off her leash. She is on her own.

Q – You don’t come back at all during those six weeks?

BE – We have someone stay in the house with a dog

BE – I would say that this is a beautiful, graceful capital city, and that Chevy Chase is a special part of the city. I love it.

Q – One of the other questions that they want me to ask if did you have other family members and how they aged and how it was dealt with.

LG – I had my mother-in-law from my first marriage. She came here. She had Hodgkin’s Lymphoma. She was here about three years before she died. We took care of her in our home before she died. It was a difficult time, because she was very angry about being sick. My ex-husband had no means of communicating with her about her death, and so it was awkward. It is funny because I dealt with Brock and what could have been his death, but it was very different.

There was no way to communicate and so the whole thing got to be very awkward – not to mention the language difference although at that time I was very fluent in Spanish. So that wasn’t the issue, but culturally our styles were very different. I would expect that if someone is dying you talk to them, you share things with him. But her son, my husband, was very good at fixing the air conditioner or the radiator. He was good at fixing things, but he could not talk about it. He couldn’t talk about the fact that she was dying, where did she want to be buried, did she want to be sent back to Spain. What did she want. He couldn’t do that.

I am the kind of person who gets very intimate, and so it was a difficult period for me. I had a couple from OTA who were 15 years my senior, they were advising me. I needed help and I couldn’t get that much help. But when Brock was sick, we made a deal that we would cry with each other, we could talk about it. We got extremely close. So instead of getting further and further apart, we got closer and closer. So that was very different.

BE – To add one more thing. My mother died about six months ago at the age of 98 and going on 99. She lived with my stepfather in Columbus, Ohio, and until about four or five years ago, when my stepfather died, she was alone. Her mind was fine. But he did all the shopping and things like that. So my mother had to live somewhere, and she ended up living with my sister in Long Island. So we would go up to see her and we talked to her on the phone a lot.

My mother dreaded the idea of going to a home. That would have been the end. I have been in enough hospitals where you share the room and there are visitors. So I have a sense as to what that would be like. It may happen or it may not. You get up every day and it is institutional. If I have a choice, I would rather be in my own home any time. I hope I am never so frail that I can’t walk up the steps. I think this is a great idea, and we talk a lot about it with our friends. We are not wealthy and never will be. So we can’t afford boutique private rooms and things like that. During the hurricane, someone from Northwest Neighbors Village called to ask if we were OK. So even if you don’t need them right now, it is good to know they are there.

BE – We have a buddy. And if I want to get some things fixed around the house, I call Marianna, and she gives me the names of some people whom to call. You know how people come around trying to steal things, and we have been taken a few times.

LG – There was a man who wanted to fix our gutters and part of the roof, and I paid them. He came back the next day and said, “I lost your check.” I wrote him another check, and before I could tell Brock to cancel the other check, he had cashed it.

BE- Both of them.

LG – So you only get burned once.

BE – I don’t know what the others say, but it sounds like a self-help community people look out for each other. I told Marianna that I love the newsletter – and the calendar. I tell Linda we should go to more of the things. First, we are overwhelmed by what we are already doing. But second, we are shy. We could go together and be all right. They have sitting in place yoga. I did that before I started to go to the gym. But I like the idea of aging in place.

Q – Anything else I haven’t asked you.

BE – No nothing. It has been great.

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PhD in Agriculture led to 12-year career in India with Rockefeller organization

Interviewee: Allie Felder
Date: April 2014
Interviewed and transcribed (from audio recording) by: Joan Solomon Janshego
Location: Felder home in Chevy Chase DC

Allie Felder passed away Jan. 9, 2017 at age 95

Q – When were you born?

A – I was born August 10, 1921, in Durham, North Carolina. 

Q – Tell me about your family.

A – I had two sisters.  They were both older than me.    My mother was from Durham.  She died when I was 7 years old.

My father was born in Orangeburg, South Carolina.  His grandfather was a slave. 

The person who owned my great grandfather was a Swedish plantation owner.   He lived in Florida.  He asked my great grandfather – Harry Felder – who was a “favored” slave, to go to South Carolina and let him know what would be good agricultural land to buy.   My great grandfather went to Orangeburg and recommended farmland there, which the slave owner bought.   

Then emancipation came through, and all the slaves were free.  So the slave owner’s rule was he would give his best slaves the land that they found.  That is how my great grandfather got to Orangeburg, SC and became a landowner.  

When he was freed, he married a full-blooded Seminole Indian named Louisa.  He was well off because of the land, and they had 21 children.   Louisa died at the age of 103.  

Q – What was your father’s occupation?

A – My father had a BA in Industrial Arts from a college in Orangeburg, South Carolina that is now South Carolina State College. 

He was a teacher of Industrial Arts (with a specialty in stone and bricklaying) at a rural high school near Orangeburg, South Carolina where he met my mother – Margaret  – who was teaching English there 

Most of my father’s bricklaying work was further north – his employer built all of Duke University.  He laid all the fancy brickwork there.  In the church at Duke there is a plaque recognizing my father’s contribution.   His name was Allie – like my name. 

Q – So you have the same first name as your father.  Do you know where the name “Allie” comes from?

A – No I don’t.

Q – Tell me about your mother?

A- Her name was Margaret Goodloe.  She had a Teaching Diploma from Shaw University, Raleigh, North Carolina.  As I said, she was an English teacher at a rural High School near Orangeburg, South Carolina.  After marriage, she was the Executive Secretary to the President of the North Carolina Mutual Insurance Company, in Durham, North Carolina.   She married my father in 1914 in Durham.   She taught piano and voice and sang in the White Rock Baptist Church Choir in Durham.  

Q – Do you know anything about your maternal grandmother?

A –Her name was Lulu Goodloe.   She was the Secretary to the President – Mechanics and Farmer’s Bank – which was the first Negro bank in the south.   She died in 1930.   

My maternal grandmother and my aunt Robbie Goodloe Wright raised me.   My mother died when I was 7 years old, and so I lived with my father at my maternal grandparent’s home.  

This grandmother was an American Indian from North Carolina.  

My grandmother was very religious.  Mr. Fisher, who was President Of UDC  – his father, Mark Fisher – was pastor of the church that my grandmother and I attended after my mother died.

I remember all of these old ladies shouting and waiving their hands when I went to church with them 

Q- What do you know about your maternal grandfather?

A – My maternal grandfather worked for the American Tobacco Company in Durham, North Carolina.  He was a foreman of the place where the tobacco was stuffed.   It was called Durham Bull.  

My grandfather’s brother lived next door to my grandfather’s house.
I remember walking seven blocks to take my grandfather his lunch at lunchtime at the factory.   

I liked doing that, because I would eat what he did not eat.   He was my buddy.  My grandfather had three sons.   One was in management with the Negro Baseball League.   The other son was in the military, and the other son was in jail half of the time.

 None of his sons were home.    So I was more his son than his grandson.  

My maternal grandfather had a big house next door to Mr. Allen Goodloe, who was head of Mechanics and Farmers Bank.    I lived there with my parents and was born in that house.  

My grandfather’s sister, Lily, also lived nearby.  Her daughter, Geneva, is 100 years and lives in New York City.  I sometimes talk to her on the phone.   

When my mother died, my father and I continued to live with my grandfather.  After a while, my father remarried and wanted me to move with him to a house he bought near the college.   I pitched a fit.  I refused to go.  I didn’t want to leave my grandfather and Warren Strudwick– my friend.  Warren died recently.  He was one of the best surgeons in Washington DC.

Many people in our part of town were rich black people.  They were the ministers, the officials in Mechanics and Farmers Bank, and the Mutual Insurance Company.  So we had the best schools, paved streets, and churches.

A – When did you learn to drive?

Q – I learned to drive at the age of 14.  I was taught to drive by my aunt, uncles and father.  I learned to drive on a stick shift Flint car manufactured by Ford.  I obtained my driver’s permit at 18 after 4 years of illegal driving.   

Q – Where did you go to college?

A – I went to Hampton Institute, now Hampton University.  Hampton and Tuskegee were considered to he the best colleges for African Americans.   My aunt went to Hampton.  My father sent my sister to a college in Charlotte, NC. 

I majored in Agricultural Economics and Rural Sociology.     The first year, we didn’t go home.  We stayed during the summer, and we worked on the college farm.    I eventually went back to Hampton and taught after I graduated.

Q – What were your interests outside of academics at Hampton?

A – I was manager of the freshman football team at Hampton and was President of the Social Club.  Fraternities were not allowed at Hampton.  I was also a member of the student council and student advisor to the faculty committee.  

I graduated from Hampton with a BS in Agriculture and Rural Sociology in 1943.  

As soon as I received my diploma, I was drafted.  I remember, I went to lunch, and my aunt handed me my draft orders.  I went to basic training, and then I went to Officers’ Candidate School at Aberdeen Proving Grounds.   I was commissioned as a second lieutenant in 1945.  

In those days, blacks could be in only three areas:  engineering, ordnance or quartermaster (cooks).   From 1943 to 1947, I was a US Army Ordnance Officer, and the highest rank I received was Captain. 

Q – What did you do after the military?   

A – I went to gradate school at the University of Illinois.   I got a MS in Agriculture and Rural Sociology in 1948. Then I got a scholarship to Ohio State where I got a Doctorate of Philosophy (Agriculture and Rural Sociology) in 1954.  

I taught at Hampton University from 1948 to 1956, where I was an Associate Professor.     One year, I was also Dean of Students.  

Q  – Tell me about your wife.

A – My wife was Miriam Reid.  She was born in 1924 in Roanoke, Virginia.   I met my wife at Hampton.  She was a sophomore when I was a junior.  She went to Bennett College before transferring to Hampton.    She remained at Hampton when I graduated in 1943 and went into the service.  

She earned a Bachelor’s degree in mathematics from Hampton in 1949 and a Master’s degree in Social Work at Atlanta University.  We got married in 1948.   She worked as a social worker in Richmond, Virginia.  

When we lived in India, she served on the board of the American International School and was active in social organizations.   When we returned home from my service in India, she joined Homemaker Health Aide Service as Coordinator of Recruitment and Training, and became the Executive director in August 1977.  In 1989, she retired after almost 20 years of service.  

In 1990, the President of Homemaker Health Aide Service presented her with citations praising her work with that organization, and she received testimonials from the Governor of Maryland, the Mayor of the District of Columbia and many service organizations.    

My wife’s father, Jacob Reid, was an outstanding lawyer – and one of the few black lawyers in Roanoke.  All three of her brothers were also lawyers.  

My wife and I had a friendly separation in 1980 and remained good friends until her death.  

Q – I understand that you worked in India.  Tell me how that came about.   

A – Nelson Rockerfellow was in close communication with the board of the Cooperative League of the USA.  I was at a party where Nelson Rockefeller was talking about the good work that they were doing in South America and other developing countries.  Someone suggested that they should send someone to India, which had recently become independent.  

I was teaching at Hampton at the time.   They knew about my agricultural background.  They sent me ostensibly to India for 6 months – just to do research to study 14 villages where refugees came from Pakistan to northern Indian.  

Hampton gave me leave for the first year.    But my 6-month stay extended to 12 years.  I resigned from Hampton after I was in India for a year.  

Q – What were your responsibilities?

A –I was a consultant in India beginning in 1961 for the Joint India Fund (Nelson Rockefeller and Cooperative League of USA).  My activities were mainly organizing and supervising operational research and economic development activities.  I assisted in the growth of fertilizer and dairy cooperatives

One of the things I am proudest of is when I was able to help farmers get credit.  When I first came to Mehrauli in India, only the richest farmers got credit at reasonable rates.  The rest could borrow only from usurers, each year slipping a little deeper into debt.  Because they had no credit, they could not buy good seed or efficient tools or adopt better farming practices.  So their harvest was poor.  And because their harvest was poor, they could not get credit.  

My American coworker and our Indian colleagues had a few ideas.  One was to combine lending with farm extension, such as the Farm Security Administration did in the USA during the depression.  Another idea we got from credit unions: is that each man’s ability to borrow should be measured by his character and his ability to repay, and not what collateral he had.  We talked over our ideas with the councils of four villages and urged each farmer to draw up an improved farm plan. We offered low interest rate loans to villagers with less than 15 acres, provided each man would borrow enough to buy good seed and better tools.  

After the first harvest, every one of these farmers had enough wheat and grain to feed his family and repay his loan.  Some increased their harvests enough to begin accumulating capital.  We started with 40 families and it grew to 2,000 and almost all of them repaid their loans on schedule.  They then did not need to borrow at all.  

We found a way out of the trap.  Men saw the road to freedom and a better life.  

We transferred the loans to a cooperative the farmers owned.  There they saw that if the co-op could lend money, it could also market grain and handicrafts to get better prices, buy good seed, tools, and fertilizer at lower prices. 

Q – That is an impressive professional accomplishment.    But tell me about your personal life in India.  You were there with your family.  What was it like living in India?   

A – My youngest son, who went to Princeton and Cornell Medical School, was born there.  My oldest son, who is a retired Lt. Colonel, finished high school in India.  

During those 12 years, I came home every 2 years on a sabbatical. One year I taught at the University of Wisconsin when I was on sabbatical.  

Q – How did you communicate with the people?  Did you speak their language?

A – I spoke English, but I also spoke the Northern Indian dialects I learned it because my younger son learned Hindi and Yuridi.  He speaks about 4 languages.  He was born in India.  My children had Indian playmates.   Also, we had 7 servants.  There were cooks, a sweeper, and gardeners.  The servants all had children.    The servants lived in the back of the house, where they cooked.    My youngest child would go back there and eat with them.   So I picked up the language from my youngest son. 

Q – Did you celebrate holidays while you were in India?

A – We celebrated the Indian holidays:  Holi, which is similar to Halloween.  Diwali, which is the Festival of Lights.  Dussera, which is Ramadan and of course the major US holidays such as Christmas, Easter, Thanksgiving, Valentine’s Day April Fool’s Day, Mother and Father’s Day, and Independence Day.    

Q – Because you had housekeepers in India, did your children have to do chores?

A – Yes they did.  They had assigned tasks such as picking up their toys, placing their dirty clothes in the laundry basket and seeing that the dog was fed.  

Q – Did you travel in India while performing your duties?

A – We would go to every state, and we would send a team of people to help people with their particular problem.  We would go to about 16 or 18 states. Ford and Rockefeller stopped their people from going, because they could not understand the northern Indian language.  They took me along because I was at least a minimum interpreter.

Q – Did you do recreational traveling when you were in India?

A  – Every summer, we would travel with the boys throughout Europe.  We saw all of Europe.  

Q – What years were you in India?

A – I was there from 1956 to 1968.  

Q – When did you return to the USA?

A – I came back to Washington in 1968, and I bought the house in Barnaby Woods, where I still live today.    

Q – What work did you pursue after your return from India?

A – From 1968 to 1986, I was Senior Vice President of the Cooperative League, headquartered in Washington, DC.    I was responsible for economic cooperative development projects in 20 developing countries in addition to India.

Then in 1986 – 1990, I was a self-employed consultant on Economic Development Programs overseas.   My major projects were in India, where I continued with Cooperative League contracts and in China with a Ford Foundation and Winthrop Rockefeller contract. 

After retirement, I also had pro bono board memberships, including the cooperative League Fund, Franklin Sellers Foundation, Foreign Service Asia Community and the US Department of Agriculture.  

Q – You must have traveled a lot overseas in the course of doing our work? 

A – Yes. I did.  I traveled to all countries except the Soviet Union, Albania, Libya and a few others prohibited for citizen travel by the State Department during those years.    I also never traveled to Syria and Oman.  I did a lot of traveling particularly in Africa and South America.

Q – I see a lot of certificates and citations on your wall.  Tell me about them.

A – I received the Jubilee Medal from Moraji Desal, who was the Prime Minister of India.  It was in recognition of my contribution to the development of the Cooperative Movement in the world.   

Q – I also see that you were induced into the Cooperative Hall of Fame.   The certification says: “Allie Felder has been a true mission of cooperation.  Through his 30 years with the Cooperative League of the USA, now the National Cooperative Business Association, he contributed to both the human and economic development of countless numbers of people around the word.”  That is pretty impressive.

A – Well I loved what I was doing.

Q  – I also see that it says that it says that you played a critical role in establishing the India Farmers Fertilizer Cooperative, one of the largest producers of fertilizer in Asia.

A – That was probably my biggest project that I worked on.

Q – I see that you were also on the Board of Directors of the Overseas Private Investment Corporation.  How did that come about?

A –  I was also nominated by Presidents Nixon, Ford, Carter and Reagan in succeeding years and confirmed by the Senate to the Board. of Directors of the Oversea Private Investment Corporation.  

Q –  Now let’s talk about your years in Washington.   When you were in Washington in the early years, did you ever experience any racial discrimination.

A – I remember once time I was visiting a friend and her husband, who I knew from my service in India.   This was when I was back home on leave.    Sometimes they would want me to come back to Washington for an orientation.     So I was at my friends’ house for dinner.   They lived in Georgetown.  We got to talking about children.  They had twins.  The time got away from me, because we talked until about 1 in the morning. 

I was walking toward the bus station.  The police stopped me and asked me what I was doing there.  They took me to the police station and they said “who are you?’    I had to prove that I was employed by the Nelson Rockefeller organization and AID.   They were going to arrest me for loitering.  They couldn’t believe that I had friends in Georgetown.  Although they took me to the police station, they did not arrest me after I provided identification 

Q – Did you experience any kind of discrimination once you were living in Chevy Chase?

A – No. I did not.  I had very nice neighbors.

Q – What made you decide to settle in Chevy Chase?  

A – My wife said if we are going to move to DC we have to find out where to send our son to school.  We found out that the only school worth sending our son to was at Lafayette, In order to do that; we would have to be living in this area.  

My friend, Mr. Silverstone, told me that there is a house in this area.  They sent me a cable in India there is a house for a 6-month lease– fully furnished.   So I cabled back and said we will take it. 

Then later – in 1968 – we bought the house that I live in today.  It was a great neighborhood to raise kids.  Kids played football in the street. 

Q – Tell  me a little more about your sons. 

A – As  I said, my eldest son, Allie Felder III,  is a career military man.    He has a BA from Yale University.  He also has an MBA from George Washington University.  He went into the Marine Corps and retired as a Lt. Colonel.  He now works  as a consultant. 

My youngest son, Robert, got a BS from Princeton, and he went to medical school at Cornell University.  He is an internist in  San Diego, California

 I have 5 grandchildren.

Q – What important life experience have you conveyed to your children and grandchildren?

A – Well I conveyed what my parents and grandparents told me.   If a job or task is worth doing, you should do it right or make your best effort.  

I learned the poem “If” by Rudyard Kipling at the age of 8 and used it and taught it to my sons as a guide for life.

My parents and my aunt who raised me reminded me that you only have one body.  You will not be given another, and so it will serve you best and last longer if you treat it carefully – eat the rights foods, keep it clean, get proper amounts of sleep and exercise.  Honesty and kindness keeps your mind and body healthy.  

At Hampton, the motto was “Head, Heart and Hand.”  We learned not only by studying books and class notes.  We were taught to use our hands in a practical way and in a manner that satisfied our hearts and minds.  

At Officer’s Candidate School I learned that you cannot be a good teacher unless you also learn from others.  

On my overseas work and subsequently, I learned that you should attempt to learn the culture and practice of the host country and use your practical experience and academic knowledge to supplement and help improve the institutions and ideas already developed by the local people.  

Q – What have been your interests since retiring?

A – I love to garden.  I used to have 2 big vegetable gardens at a friend’s house on Western Avenue.  And I have always had a little vegetable garden behind my house.   As I have gotten older, I have given up the big gardens, but I still maintain the little garden in my backyard. 

Q – Anything else you would like to tell me?

A – I have had a very happy life.  I am content.    I have lived in my house in Barnaby Woods many years now.  I remain independent.  I have people who clean my house.   I also have the help of Northwest  Neighbors Village.  When I need to go to the doctor, they will take me.  I also have a good friend, Jo, who comes every weekend and buys groceries for me and is a good companion.  So if you want to stay independent when you are older, I suggest that you get the help that you need as I have done.

The post Allie Felder appeared first on Historic Chevy Chase DC.

Interviewees: James Fisher and Tanya Hardy
Date: March 5, 2016
Interviewer and transcriber (from audio recording): Carl Lankowski
Location: Lankowski residence in Chevy Chase DC

Q: In this interview, we are most intensely concerned about the parcels of land along Broad Branch Road that were taken for the purpose of building Lafayette School around 1928. James Fisher is a descendant of one of those African-American families whose property was taken. Therefore, it makes sense to start with James’s life and his forbears. Tell us about yourself and your ancestors, James. What connects you with the Broad Branch family?

JF: There were two black families on the Broad Branch property. One of my ancestors owned about two acres of land on Broad Branch, I guess beginning in 1850. The second family owned a very narrow plot adjacent to the property owned by my family. My relative’s name was Mary Ann Plummer Harris. She was married to Thomas Harris. I think they had eight children and eventually divided the property among the children. Two of her sons, Thomas and Joseph, enlisted in Washington, DC and fought in the Civil War. They enlisted in the First Regiment and are noted in the African-American Civil War Museum downtown.

TH: James, why don’t you go back to George Pointer to establish Mary Ann Plummer Harris’s lineage.

GEORGE POINTER

JF: Right you are. In researching my family tree, I discovered that I am a direct descendent of Captain George Pointer, as was Mary Ann Plummer Harris before me. Born in 1773, George Pointer was a slave. In that status, he was hired out to work for a company that was formed by George Washington. His master, slave-owner, cut a deal with him, that if he amassed a certain amount of money within a certain time, he would be able to buy his freedom. He accomplished this by the age of 17 or so—around 1790. He was also given a cabin by the company not long after he purchased his freedom. He remained there with family members most of his life.

He continued working for the company as a laborer, in close association with the project engineers. Over a period of about 50 years of service to the company he rose to the position of superintendant engineer leading the labor force, something like a company’s “CEO,” reporting directly to the company’s Board. Part of his work for the Potomac Company was transporting stone from a quarry to Great Falls and lead work on the canal locks. There was a break in service when Pointer left the Potomac Company and contracted himself out to transport quartz, sandstone and marble for the construction of the Capitol and other federal buildings. He was later asked to come back to the Company run the operations. Pointer was one of the last employees of the Potomac Company before it was bought by the C&O Company.

Q: Do we know what kind of family he had?

TH: Yes. He married a woman named Elizabeth Townsend. They had five children. He was only 13 when the cabin was given to him, because he was in charge of the gunpowder mill. As a slave child it was his job to do whatever was required to secure the mill—to prevent it from blowing up.

Q: Where was it located?

TH: It was on the Potomac River, right across from Snake Island. In a letter written by George Pointer, he talks about farming on Snake Island. Pointer was a seaman, a sailor, well-versed in plying the Potomac in his boat. He would go up to the Quarry at Seneca and bring quartz back down to the city. He also went on expeditions.

JF: Pointer took exploratory expeditions along the Potomac and Shenandoah Rivers with prominent men. We know of him in large part through the 12-page petition he wrote in 1829 that also functions as an autobiography. His accounts were confirmed. He did know many prominent figures. He wrote of George Washington’s visit to check on the progress of the work. He also reported directly to the board of the Potomac Canal Company.

TH: It later became known as the C&O Company.

JF: Pointer also farmed and fished along the Potomac River. He sold produce and fish down-river in Georgetown. He was mentioned by the architect of the Capitol. I can read what he wrote about him. (History of Slave Laborers in the Construction of the United States Capitol by William C. Allen, Architectural Historian, Office of the Architect of the Capitol, pg. 14)

Q: Please do!

TH: Here is one passage: “He helped build the canal and was a captain of a boat that regularly brought building materials to the Federal City for the Capitol—Seneca sandstone used for flooring and Potomac marble, used for column shafts in the House and Senate chambers. The marble quarry was located near Noland’s Ferry in Montgomery County, Maryland.” He was an owner and captain. He commanded a fleet of boats and he also owned his own boat.

The 1829 letter we referenced is amazing. We visited the National Archives where we were able to see the original. We brought the text and an image of the original to share with you. You can see the image on my laptop computer.

Q: Wow—look at that!

1829 letter written by George Pointer

JF:  His purpose for writing the letter was first to save his cabin and secondly to ask for money because the C&O had destroyed his fishing traps.

TH: It illustrates that he was educated.  In the text, he discusses his job. His aim was to prevent the C&O Company from coming to his property and taking his cabin. That was the C&O’s intention. So, Pointer writes about his history there.

Q: Hmm. Looking forward to the 20th century, dispossession will be a recurrent theme with this family.

TH: Just so. He talks about various people that he worked with. He really provides a chronology of his life and what he has accomplished. We are amazed at how beautifully written it is, literate and thought-provoking, by a man who was born a slave, bought his freedom, and then worked for these people. He was recommended to be the chief engineer by one of the other canal engineers who was moving on. That was remarkable in itself. He worked on the canal and the canal locks that everyone calls Great Falls, Virginia. 

I recently visited the little museum at Great Falls and found a display with wax figures. It features a black man talking. It is George Pointer. But he is not named, just an anonymous figure working on the Great Falls Canal. We are in the process of correcting that. The verbiage used in the auditory message that plays at the display comes straight from George’s letter. So, he was a pretty remarkable man.  

THE HARRIS FAMILY ON BROAD BRANCH ROAD

Mary Ann Plummer Harris, the first person we have identified on the Broad Branch property, was George Pointer’s great-granddaughter. Pointer had three children: Betty, Mary Ann, and William.

Q: Do we know anything about his wife?

TH: No, almost nothing, except that we think that she was Native American. Her name was Townsend, a popular Native American surname. Moreover, James’s great grandmother, who also lived on the Broad Branch property, is remembered by family members sitting on the porch smoking a corncob pipe and claiming that she was Indian. I am thinking that that would have come down from George’s wife, Elizabeth.

Q: Wilson High School students produced two volumes of local history as part of the bicentenary celebrations in 1975-1976 and in the article on Lafayette School, there is a picture of a woman smoking what appears to be a corncob pipe.

TH: What? We would love to see it! We have been searching for a picture of her or at least of the house. We do have a picture of Rosetta, so if it is her, we should be able to tell.

JF: Conversations with family members brought recollections of an Indian connection and of a great-great-grandmother smoking a pipe.

From my recent reading, I learned that when the survey for Lafayette Park was performed a huge tree was mentioned where Indian artifacts were found. They attributed that to the white man who owned most of the land. That’s further encouragement to consider a strong Native American element in the family.

TH: An archaeological survey was done on the Broad Branch property and a report was produced. Jane Freundel Levey of the Historical Society of Washington DC found it and made it available to us. (PHASE IB ARCHAEOLOGICAL INVESTIGATIONS CONDUCTED FOR IMPROVEMENTS AT THE LAFAYETTE RECREATION CENTER IN WASHINGTON, D.C.). There is evidence of extensive Native American presence in Chevy Chase.

Q: Let’s return to the Harris family.

TH: The Pointer descendent was Mary Ann. But there were Mary Anns in every generation. We have counted at least fifteen of that name. He had Elizabeth Pointer, sometimes called Betty; he had Mary Ann Pointer as a daughter; and he had William. Mary Ann, in turn, had Mary Ann Plummer, because Mary Ann Pointer married a Plummer. So, Mary Ann Plummer Harris is the first of George Pointer’s descendants to live on the Broad Branch property.

Q: Do we know about the Harris family?

TH: No. I have done some research, but I have not yet found enough to warrant confidence in any information. I have an idea that he came from Virginia. Harris was a popular name and there were many Thomas Harris’s. That complicates the search.

Q: Do we know when George’s ancestors were brought to America?

TH: No. We are still having difficulty finding out who his owner was. Some possible hints are given in the 1829 letter.

JF: Presently, we only have some assumptions to go on.

Q: Why don’t we jump back to the Broad Branch story. Mary Ann Plummer Harrris married Thomas.

JF: The earliest we can trace Many Ann is 1850, when according to the U.S. census of that year the family already owned the Broad Branch property.

TH: Two other researchers are working on this family and they say that the family had been there since the 1840s.

JF: We had read accounts that mention the family residing on the property in 1840, but owning it in 1850.

Looking back, the U.S. Census of 1800, the year DC became the U.S. capital, shows just six free African-American families, the Pointers included, in Washington County.

Thomas and Mary Ann had eleven children, two of which—John and Joseph—enlisted in the First Regiment USCT and are linked to battles in the Civil War.

Q: Let me ask you a meta-question: how did you get interested in this quest?

TH: I am a genealogist and a historian. I met James five years ago just by chance. I asked if he would like me to research his family and he was agreeable. James provided some dates and those were my starting points.

JF: I didn’t ask you…you just went for it! (general laughter)

TH: I did. I would stay up all night. I love it. That would be my ideal job—to go research in libraries every day. Fortunately, we had good dates. And the name is unique, too. On a lot of the records it is spelled POYNTER.

Q: James, did you already know you were a Pointer descendant when you met Tanya?

JF: No, I had no idea of the connection.

TH: Pointer yielded rich returns. The pattern is expansive geographically. Some of the descendants moved to the Annapolis area and worked at the U.S. Naval Academy. In that sense it was interesting that George Pointer’s life was lived on the water and some of his descendants followed that path to Annapolis. They were the descendants of his son, William, who ended up going to Maryland, living in the Annapolis area and working at the Naval Academy. I kept on making hit after hit. Then I ran into someone working on an article for the Maryland Historical Society who had also read Pointer’s letter. She saw the family tree I had posted to Ancestry.com contacted me and asked if we could meet. We shared information.  It was then that we got the letter, for us a “million dollar” find. From there, the project just continued to grow. We know there are Pointer relatives in Maryland, including some still in Annapolis. We are just having a hard time finding them. There are many—it’s a 274-year legacy we have here. That’s unique in itself for an African-American family.

Let me share with you an 1894 map of the Broad Branch sector, which shows you where the Harris property is. One interesting facet is that Jones, who later sold some of the property for Lafayette School, was at that time living on the other side of Broad Branch Road. I think he also had some property behind the Harris property.

What we would like to do now is overlay this map on one from the present day, so that we can see exactly where the Harris property was with respect to the Lafayette playground and school building. It excited me that the team doing the archaeological dig concluded that the area was valuable enough to put a hold on excavation in some of the areas. They can’t do upgrades to the playground or other spots. One of those spots is where they think the African-American farmhouse was.

Q: It looks like the area in question runs south from Quesada Street along Broad Branch.

TH: I don’t know the area well enough to tell.

Q: The 1894 map antedates the street grid we have today, laid out in a plan just about that time—the mid-1890s—but only executed later, after the turn of the century.

TH: Here is another map from 1925, which shows the property after it had been subdivided. There were three parcels from the original property, one given to each of the Harris children. You can see the parcel that went to Mary Moten, a daughter. And at least two of the adjacent properties, beyond the Harris ones, were owned by black families. Both Jones and Johnson are black families.

Q: Do you know that the Harris properties were taken by eminent domain?

TH: Yes.

Q: How do you know that? Do you have a document? We know that the decision to build Lafayette School was made around 1925-1926 and that properties in this location between Quesada and Northampton Streets on the east side of Broad Branch Road were taken for that purpose.

TH: We know that the property was taken and why. We are now trying to work out where exactly the house stood in relation to the present park and buildings.

Q: Judging from the maps my guess is that the Harris family properties could have been just on the spot designated for the main school building.

TH: We are also searching for maps older than 1894 that might shed some light on the issue.

Q:  Were you able to connect through family members to those days?

JF: I am in the eighth generation from George Pointer. We were blessed to be able to interview my great aunt, whose name was Martha Ann “Kitty” Combs. She was born in 1921 and died November 30th, 2015. She remembered living on the Broad Branch farm, as well as moving to a property on Davenport Street.

Q: Was that in the Reno City section?

TH: She ended up leaving Broad Branch and attending the [segregated] Fort Reno School. She walked to school from her new home. She loved school. But then her brother and his wife died, maybe in an influenza outbreak, perhaps in a fire—the death certificates do not mention a cause, though we know they died at the same time—and left children behind. Aunt Kitty’s mother took the children in and Aunt Kitty dropped out of school to help take care of her orphaned nieces and nephews.

Q: Tell us about Aunt Kitty.

JF: Aunt Kitty was my grandmother’s sister. Until recently, I did not have much interaction with her. For much of her life she was ill and spent many years in a nursing home. But she was feisty. She knew how to make people laugh. And I am sure she dominated that nursing home. She was mentally sharp in her old age. It was a blessing that the whole family came together to honor her just before she passed last November. We almost missed that opportunity.

TH: We did an interview with her. Here are some passages:

”I had a wonderful childhood… I had to help raise the children of my oldest brother, Rand. He died.”

“I went to school but I came out to help my mother to raise 6 children._I had four brothers and one sister, Rosetta._Can’t remember all of their names…I had Bunny, Pete and Rand for brothers.” 

We showed her a picture of the Old Reno School and the renovations and the following was her reply, “Oh my, that’s my school! Everything’s changed so much.” 

JF: There is another figure I also wanted to mention, because he had some dealings in Tenleytown and Fort Reno. He was Aunt Kitty’s uncle and an undertaker by trade. His name was William Theodore Moten.

Q: This is someone that Aunt Kitty knew?

JF: Yes.  He was Wil Moten. A local history of Tenleytown says that Wil Moten was the undertaker serving residents of the Fort Reno neighborhood. He was in business for a very long time.

TH: We can point out where he is on the family tree. Wil Moten’s funeral home was somewhere over near Howard University.

I am looking on my laptop for a simplified version of the family tree that shows the connection between James and the Broad Branch ancestors.

Simplified family tree of the descendants of Captain George Pointer and Elizabeth Townsend

Meanwhile, I am also finding on my laptop files of documents relating to George Pointer’s cabin on the C&O Canal. I have pictures that show it and the powder mill right beside it. Pointer was a child when he was taken there. And that’s the image we used on the family reunion T-shirt. (pointing to image on the laptop.)

Drawing of George Pointer’s cabin on the C&O Canal

Q: Nice! Do you have pictures of the family reunion?

TH: Oh, yes.

Q: That would be fun to have a picture of someone with that T-shirt.

TH: We took a big group picture up on the hill near the Lafayette playground, where there were those big old beautiful trees.  So, two of the kids climbed up in the tree and held the banner that said “Pointer Reunion.”

Q: Grand!

TH: Yes, the picture came out so well. The day itself was better than we ever anticipated.

Q: When was the family reunion?

TH: The 17th of August, as I recall. Mid-August—the family’s very first reunion. They are already actively planning for the next one. We decided that we will do it every year.

Q: Are you calling it a Pointer Reunion?

TH: It is called the George Pointer Reunion.

Q: Against the background of what we have already discussed, perhaps it makes sense to focus on two things in the time remaining to us. One would be the period when the Harris family lived on Broad Branch. And then it would make sense to consider the family today looking back. Maybe the best approach here would be to discuss the family reunion.

TH: It’s important to note that we are still trying to put the pieces together with respect to the question of how the family got to that particular property. Pointer was on the river. But when looking at the census records we were struck by the family occupations: seamstresses, gardeners.

I have a question for you: Do you know of any Civil War battles that took place around Lafayette Park?

Q: The only engagement was at Fort Stevens. The battle in July, 1864 lasted for a couple of days, so no one living around here would have been displaced for more than a short period. Fort Reno’s heavy guns were used sparingly in the engagement.

Let’s finish up with the 1920s, before visiting the most recent family events.

TH: We have not discovered what the family thought about its displacement from Broad Branch to Reno City.

JF: Well, I can tell you how they felt for them. (laughter) Not good. Not good at all.

TH: I can only agree, because the land had been in the family for so long.

JF: It had been in the family for at least 70 years in 1925.It was the family haven. The family was closely knit. Aunt Kitty mentioned during her interview that family members would stay until they had a solid plan for not being there. The husband and wife sub-divided the property for their children. No different from any African-American family in the general area, I’m sure that all of them were extremely upset about having their land taken from them. It went beyond any monetary consideration.

TH: I was looking for information about the death of Aunt Kitty’s brother but have not found anything definitive yet. Aunt Kitty must have been about 10, 11 or 12 when that happened. She quit school to deal with the consequences. She wasn’t forced to quit. We asked her that: “Did your mother say you had to come out of school?” She said, “No, she didn’t say that. I myself didn’t want my momma to be taking care of those kids by herself. So I stopped going to school to go back and help out.”

Q: She was already living on Davenport Street by then…

TH: That’s right. There was also a child who died of burns…a Mary Ann, as I recall. It was a daughter of Mary Ann Plummer Harris. And when that Mary Ann died they had another Mary Ann.

Q: Do you have an idea about the acreage of the Broad Branch property?

TH: The map says about two acres.

JF: Do you know the acreage of the park?

Q: No, but I guess it must be about five acres.

TH: The 1930 map no longer shows land owned by Harris. The government must have taken it by then. I have been wondering why it was given the designation as a “reservation,” What we need to do is to find a way to overlay the 1930 over the earlier map. That would give us a truer picture of precisely where the Harris homes were in relation to the school and park.

Q: Your map does show the park adjacent, south of the public alley behind Quesada Street. One house antedating the land-taking is presently owned by the Higgins family. HCCDC’s latest oral history is with one of the older Higginses who has a memory of African-American families living along Broad Branch.

TH: We did read that and wondered what was going on for her father to share that with Mrs. Higgins. Did he know some of the people? Were they workers?

JF: Mention is made of a corner store in the account. An African-American man worked there known by the name of Curly.

Q: Yes, indeed. Curly is well known to those of us working on neighborhood history here. It is Broad Branch Market, formerly owned by the Bondareff family, at the SW corner of Northampton and Broad Branch, kitty-corner from Lafayette School. There is a picture of him above the checkout counter there to this day. His name was Mr. Percy Edwards.

JF: This has been a meaningful quest for us. You can sense the feeling of connection and pride in the familial associations stretching back to George Pointer. It is what drives me onward. Parts of the extended family are tightly knit. Many members have stayed in the area. It has been exciting to discover further branches of the family.

TH: It is remarkable that most are hereabouts, though some have, of course, scattered. The same is true for the Pointers living around Annapolis. They have remained. One of our aims is to find the Annapolis descendants and invite them to the next reunion.

Q: When you had the reunion, where did you have it?

TH: It was right in Lafayette Park. Once we learned that the family property was there, that was our quest. What better place?! Anyway, it is a park, which also lends itself to something like that. There is a nice playground so that the kids would have something to do. So, we immediately contacted the Parks Department with a request to use it. They were quite sympathetic, especially in the knowledge of our connection to the property. They were very cooperative.

JF: We had been thinking about having a reunion there about once every three years or so.

TH: It would be nice to find out exactly where on those grounds the homes and Harris properties stood. I can imagine a reunion ritual of coming together for a moment of reflection to celebrate this heritage on that precise spot. That’s our dream.

The family was excited, maybe even a little overwhelmed, but also proud in the knowledge that they have an ancestor like George Pointer. The younger generation—25 and under—were super-excited.

JF: It has galvanized me to give history lessons based on what I have seen and encountered. The discoveries rocked my imagination. I was never interested in recent history; I rather had an interest in the ancients. The Egyptians and those coming before fascinated me. This changed everything.

TH: The Harris boys enlisting to fight in the Civil War is another exciting facet of the story.

JF: That certainly motivated me to learn more about the Civil War. Prior to this, the Civil War had been of marginal concern to me.

Q: Before moving on, let’s gather whatever else is remembered about the 1920s.

TH: The lady who is remembered to have smoked a pipe on the porch of one of the Harris homes was Rosetta Morton. She was a daughter of Mary Ann Harris, who, in turn, was the daughter of Mary Ann Plummer Harris. If James here is of the eighth generation from George Pointer, Rosetta was in the sixth generation. Evidently, the family was prosperous. They worked as gardeners, seamstresses; one of the sons was a funeral director. He provided funerals for most of the African-Americans in the community.

Q: This is Rosetta’s son?

TH: Rosetta’s brother, I think. Rosetta was Aunt Kitty’s mother. There is some variability in the surname spelling: sometimes Moten, others Morton. Rosetta’s brother’s name was William Morton. Many members practiced skilled trades.

JF: Then the family split up.

TH: I think what caused that was displacement from the property. Members drifted apart after that. Up to that point, everybody was on the property.

JF: One side of the family was more prosperous than the other side after the separation. The Motens did better. I had never met a Moten during my own childhood. The Moten side developed businesses. My side of the family struggled more and resettled in the inner city. My grandparents had a large family—about nine children. The situation of the prior generations was a revelation to me. Particular family members held the family together.

TH: Mary died—the mother and family matriarch. The father, Tom Harris, died early. Mary lived into her 90s. She kept the family together. When she passed, the property was sold and the family split up and members went their separate ways.

JF: I need to give an honorable mention to Mary Ann’s husband, Thomas. He seemed to be a jack of all trades and very resourceful.

TH: The reference is to Mary Ann Plummer’s husband.

JF: I think you asked where he was from. We think he came from Virginia or the Carolinas. He might have been a slave when he married.

TH: One can speculate that he might have been a slave on the Belt plantation. Or one of the plantations in this area. We’re not sure.

JF: We learned that he was often in Georgetown to sell produce. Perhaps he stayed in Georgetown during the week and returned to the farm regularly.

TH: One thing we do know about him, though, is that somehow he obtained his freedom before emancipation in DC or general emancipation, because he is living on the Broad Branch property in 1850.

Q: Thomas is…

TH: That’s right: the 1850 census is the first one that shows him living at the property on Broad Branch Road. So, I don’t know that he was always a freeman, but at that time, he was.

Q: Anything else to recall about the 1920s?

TH: We know they were farming their land on Broad Branch then. I think they were well known in the community.

Q: You think they were selling produce?

TH: Yes. There are accounts of them going to Georgetown to sell produce. I don’t know if they sold it closer to home.

JF: We surmise that it was more lucrative to sell in Georgetown than around Chevy Chase.

Q: How did he get to Georgetown?

TH: Thomas was called a huckster. That was someone who sold their goods for a living, so I am sure he had a horse and wagon.

Then there was Uncle Bunny Harris.

It’s interesting that Mary Moten was working as a maid on McKinley Street. The house number is 3220.

Q: I may have a record from the 1940 census, which I have been researching. On that block, these would have been newly built houses in the late 1920s.

TH: I am not sure she was still living then. We think she died in 1928 or a little later.

Her husband had died and she was working as a maid. She was working for the Jones family and was in her 60s. The head of household is listed as Colonel Jones, RA.

Q: I wonder if she would have been captured in the 1930 census.

TH: I looked, but did not find her there. But oftentimes, enumerators did not get everyone. She could have been away when the enumerator came around. And sometimes the maids would stay all week and go home on the weekends. There were only two house numbers on McKinley in that block then.

Q: Where we are today, on this block of McKinley, lived a maid in a house whose head of household in 1940 was a widow, along with the widow’s daughter and her husband, and several boarders.

Q: How are you spelling Moten?

TH: Funny you should ask. Sometimes we find it is MOTEN, other times as MOTON, and still others as MORTON. Similarly, although George Pointer signed his name in this way, subsequent records sometimes show it as POYNTER.

JAMES FISHER

Q: If we have exhausted the 1920s, it occurs to me that we can create an elegant package by turning our attention to two matters. The first would be James’s commentary on his own life, including a statement about how he got interested in the genealogical work. James, can we do that?

JF: Sure. I was born and raised in Washington, DC and Maryland. My earliest recollection is of a house near Howard University, adjacent to historic Howard Theater. I can remember a Wonder Bread factory just behind the house. There was a bakery on the corner. There were a few narrow row houses. I attended St. Augustine’s School. That was the family church, too, where I attended Sunday school. We uprooted when I was in grade three and moved to Southeast DC.

Q: Anacostia?

JF: I almost wish it was Anacostia (laughter). No, it was in the deep southeast, bordering Maryland. Near Southern Avenue and Stanton Road, Martin Luther King Avenue now. I graduated from Ballou High School in 1972. I then tried to attend the University of the District of Columbia.

Q: Did you say you had military experience?

JF: I enlisted in 1975. I left the service four years later in 1979. I returned to DC, looked for work, and after about a year got my foot in the door in the government. My first job was with the Smithsonian Institution at the Museum of American History. I moved around in the Smithsonian for about five years. Then I worked for the National Endowment for the Arts. Later I took early retirement from the Federal Housing Finance Board. My career was in logistics management, working my way up from the ground, to support services supervisor and logistics manager.

Q: Was your military experience helpful in your career?

JF: Oh yes. With attitude. What I learned in the Army was about me, that I was a fighter. I was coming out of my mom’s house and I learned that I would fight anyone for fair and just treatment. That did me well when I got into federal government. I have no regrets at all.

Q: Where were you stationed?

JF: Once I finished Basic and AIT, I was stationed in Fort Benning, Georgia.

Q: Infantry?

JF: That’s right—in a mortar company as a gunner. I managed to get a stripe out of Basic. But after about three months at Fort Benning, I discovered that my hearing was going in and out. So, I had to fight the Army to get myself out of the noise. That kept me States-side. I won my battle after three years. Then my tour of duty was up and I returned to Washington, DC.

Q: Where did you go?

JF: This was in the Vietnam era. We trained in Korea, in Panama, some parts of Europe and various places in the U.S. We did so to experience engaging in various terrains.

Q: Where did you do Basic Training?

JF: Fort Jackson and then to Fort Polk for AIT.

Q: I did Basic at Fort Polk.

JF: Did you? That’s a sad story… (laughter)

Q: We used to call it Fort Puke.

JF: Yeah! Right! The drill sergeant was harassing me there because I got a stripe and they didn’t want me to have a stripe out of Basic, because I had a big mouth. The way they tried to teach me a lesson was to make me a squad leader and give me the worst guys. Two of them were from Germany. They were bad. They smoked pot and didn’t care. Somehow, I got them to do drill and ceremony, in fact we were the best squad in that department. Then we went out on bivouac with two drill sergeants. One was my noted enemy. So, I had my guys set up lean-tos, inflate their mattresses and the rest of the company could elect to sleep under the stars. We were on an embankment and it started raining. SO, the others were on their mattresses sliding down the hill. (laughter) Meanwhile, we were dry in our lean-tos. Here comes the drill sergeant. I heard some noise, looked out to behold him trying to roust out one of my guys so that he could get in. And I’m, like, noooo, no. He told me I would be demoted right there. “OK,” I said, “I’m demoted. But you are going to have to fight me to get into this tent.” So, when we returned to base, they took my stripes. But it was close to the time when we were graduating. The drill sergeant came over and told me that I was going to hear my name called, but that I should disregard it. “You’re not getting a stripe. They’re going to hand it to me.” Well, the ceremony went on, they did call my name, and then the drill sergeant approached and said, “Well, you have had the position for too long. I can’t get the stripe from you.” So it went for a while, until I said, “Let me understand…that’s my stripe?” (laughter) So, my military career was much like that, because I had to fight with the administrators—my sergeants, lieutenants, captains. I wound up having a counseling service for guys who got into trouble to help them get out of trouble. So, they always gunned for me, but they never got me. Thank God. It was exciting, but being under that pressure, it taught me who I was. They were wrong in not helping me protect what hearing remained. They wanted to keep me in infantry, keep me in the noise. Then artillery. I fought that. It was cool.

Q: Once you returned to civilian life, you had to find a place to live in DC. Where was that?

JF: At first, I stayed with my sisters as long as they could tolerate me. About a week. (laughter) Then, my older sister, was living in northern Virginia. I also stayed for a while with my middle sister, who lived in Capital Heights, Maryland. Eventually, I got a job and moved to Southeast DC. I had an apartment over there for a while. When I got to the Smithsonian I was making just about $5,000 a year. But I would tell our secretary “I’m going to buy a house.” Once I determined to do that, I decided to call a real estate agent. After telling him of my desire to buy a house, his first question was how much I earned. When I told him four thousand seven hundred and something a year, he said “whoa, wait a minute, hold up.” At that point, he collected everybody in his office and put me on speakerphone. “Mr. Fisher, how much do you make a year?” “Four thousand, seven hundred and something.” Everybody was laughing.  “And you want a house.” “Yeah,” I said. Just after that episode, I saw a little house on a hill in Capital Heights while visiting my sister. I noticed a Veterans Administration sticker on it. I called the realtor back and told him. He said, “Well, you don’t make enough.” “Cool,” I retorted, “But anytime you are in the area and have the time, I’d like to see the inside of it.” We finally did gain access and noticed that it had been vandalized. My response was “Well, since it has been vandalized, you have some negotiating room.” He looked at me and said, “You really want this house?” I said, “Yeah!” He said, “Cool. I’m going to get you in.” And he got me in. I still had my army canteen and the like, so I had to choose the lights or that! (laughter)  I struggled for the first year or so, but my plan was to get a promotion here, a promotion there, a step increase here. All that was figured out and planned. It was fact to me. On occasions when my supervisor presented me with a blue ribbon in recognition of some service, I came back with, “That’s not what I want—give me money!” (laughter)

Q: Right! Show me the money!

JF: I always put pressure on them—pressure, pressure, pressure. It was like, “Oh, you’re an angry black man.” “No,” I said, “I’m a living black man.” (laughter)

TH: You had a plan.

JF: Yeah. I pay the bank; you pay me. It has been a fascinating life.

Q: The other question I have is how you came to your family history?

JF: The thought would occur to me around once a year over the past ten years. I wanted to map the family tree. Tanya had a lot to do with it, too. When we first met, she was always on Ancestry.com. I was impressed with how many people she had helped. When I mentioned that, she got busy. There is nothing like it. It was like George Pointer was holding his hand out, waiting to be discovered. Researchers quickly verified the direct line of descent from George Pointer to me. I was amazed.

Q: Before you met Tanya, did you have any clue that you were related to George Pointer?

JF: None whatsoever. First of all, I had no idea that my family had been in this area for so long. In my lifetime, the family has been divided and disconnected. One could not imagine that there was a time when they forged a very strong bond. This is a great way to go out! (laughter) My only regret is that it didn’t come to light sooner. The knowledge that such people were in your family inspires generations. Being separated from your culture is a real tragedy. As a little child I was fixated on ancient history, because I was looking for something to be proud of. When you say slavery to a young person and see the images, you see nothing to be proud of. Other cultures can find all sorts of heroes. The African-American community needs them. It has to hit strong and early in a child’s life. So, I pretty much skipped over, I didn’t pay much attention to American history. I went instead to Egyptian history. When this came to light, I learned to appreciate American history and our contributions.

Q: It has been about ten years, since you have been interested…

TH: It has been five since I came into the picture.

 JF: Has it been five already?!

TH: Five years this August.

JF: Wow.

Q: Was your birth year 1953?

JF: It was 1952. I have a sister who has lived in Ghana for twenty years or so.

Q: Really?

JF: Yep. And she almost grew a village over there. From nothing. From jungle. She was an entrepreneur. She has her own story—it’s one about carrying her whole village on her back. She married a chieftain. They made the news, because he defrauded her. It turned out that the marriage documents were phony. She funded a house for him. When she discovered the fraud, she took him to court. He was the chieftain of more than one village. He had three in his ancestral line. So, he got kicked out of one of them, but still had two remaining. The case made it to the supreme court and she had pretty much won it. We wanted her to return home. The State Department sent observers to the trial. That’s a book in the making as well.

I went over to visit her. I love to travel and there were just two things I wanted to do. I wanted to visit several countries in Africa. I did that.  And I wanted to work on my family tree.

Q: Where did you go?

JF: I went to South Africa, Ethiopia, and Ghana.

Q: Recently?

JF: Since 2000. My latest trip was to India. That was about three years ago.  I also want to check out the Nile, maybe even further. Maybe Syria.

TH: This is not a good time to go there…

JF: I said, in that neighborhood. (laughter) If they shoot me I can’t hear them.

A FAMILY REUNION, 2015

Q: Shall we move toward concluding this interview by talking about your family reunion? How did it come about? Why did you do it? How did it go? What did people say?

TH: When we found George Pointer’s letter, James immediately concluded that the family needed to know about it. Beyond that, I think James has always wanted to have some kind of family reunion. So, this was going to be what we could wrap it around. So, he shared with his sisters what we had found and advocated bringing the information to the family through a reunion. They, in turn, contacted some of their first cousins in the area and told them about the wonderful discovery about the family taking us back hundreds of years: let’s come together and talk about a reunion. And so it came to pass that we had our first reunion planning meeting in February of 2015. There were eight of us. We went with the map and a copy of the letter and printed out other relevant information to share out with everybody. They were just amazed. We stated our desire to use this to bring the family together. That started the process. We met monthly. The preparations were shared out; different family members took different jobs. Other family members were contacted. James and I were the organizers for the reunion. I had experience doing this with my own family, so it was natural for these family members to look to me for suggestions about how to manage the process. From the beginning, we stated our desire to have the reunion on the Broad Branch Harris property. We thought for a minute about trying to have it down by the Potomac River in direct proximity to the ruins of George Pointer’s cabin. But we quickly deemed that idea impractical. So, we got in touch with Clara Green and Barbara Torrey, two historians who live in this area. They are working on a book about George Pointer and we are collaborating with them. They brought us over here to Lafayette Park and we walked the property. They were the ones who shared Pointer’s 1829 letter with us.

Q: Who are they?

TH: Barbara is Barbara Torrey, a local historian.

Q: And they are writing a book about Pointer.

TH: That’s right. James and I are involved in the book project on the Pointer family, too. An article is set to appear this April on the subject. (“Free Blacks of Washington County, D.C.: The Descendants of George Pointer,” by Barbara Boyle Torrey and Clara Myrick Green, Washington History Magazine published by the Historical Society of Washington, DC)

Q: Tiggy Green?

TH: Yes. Her name is Clara but we know her as “Tiggy.” After our visit to Lafayette Park, we contacted the U.S. Park Service to learn more about the reunion venue. All that was left to do was for the family to come together.  And James is now handing you a copy of the reunion booklet provided to all the participants.

Q: Thank you! That’s terrific. We can scan the cover and include it with the text of this interview.

Booklet from the First Family Reunion Picnic of the descendants of George Pointer and Elizabeth Townsend

TH: Everybody came together that day. It was a beautiful day. Our biggest fear was that it would rain. The sun shined. The kids were in heaven. They had free run of the playground at the top of the hill.

Q: It was in the afternoon?

TH: It was all day; we started at 10:00 or 11:00 o’clock. We stayed until 6:00. We had the food area in front of the recreational center building. Everybody brought something. People came from as far away as New York and New Jersey, even Atlanta, Georgia. We hoped that a nephew might be able to join us from Oklahoma. The whole day long was a time to reconnect.

People were indescribably happy. James connected with people he hadn’t seen for years and years and years. Some of the children met for the first time. Everybody was thrilled to be part of this event. Those between 20-30 years of age were so excited, because they made connections or reconnected with cousins they hadn’t seen for years, because the family had been kind of divided.

The descendants of George Pointer and Elizabeth Townsend

JF: We had a banquet the next day and shared pictures of the park and our event, as well as images relevant to George Pointer’s life and the lives of his descendants.

Q: So, it was a two-day event.

JF: That’s right. That is how we planned it from the beginning.

Q: How many people came to the reunion?

TH: It was over 100; it may have been about 125.

Q: How many families participated?

TH: My guess is between 20 and 30. 

JF: We need to get back to you with a more precise number.

TH: Word of the event traveled and drew more than we had originally anticipated.

TH: We are presently planning the next reunion—the first day a picnic, the second featuring a banquet. You can’t really talk to the whole group at the picnic. At last summer’s event I took over 100 pictures. I loaded them all into a PowerPoint presentation and then made that available for everyone to see. And then we arranged to connect with Aunt Kitty. She wasn’t up to coming, but we visited her and made a video of our conversation with her to share with reunion participants. It was a hit. Some of the kids had never met her.

Q: Where was Aunt Kitty living?

TH: She was in a nursing home in Southeast DC. She had been there for years. So, that worked out beautifully. And on banquet day, we began putting together the committee to run the next reunion. Our hope is that we can make this a yearly event.

Q: What did people say at the reunion?

TH: They were very excited about the discovery of our connection to George Pointer and about the kind of man he was. They were enthralled with the news that they shared a long legacy. For the younger children, the message was more difficult to convey. The significance was still beyond their comprehension. One of my goals for the coming year is to develop some sort of kid-friendly document to reach them with insights about their ancestor.

JF: One of my nephews is a painter and we thought he might contribute illustrations for such a document: George Pointer at work on the river, as an explorer, and the like.

TH: That’s a great idea, James. Because we actually have him giving some accounts of that.

JF: Public buildings could also be included, since some of the marble used in their construction was transported by George Pointer. Instead of or at least alongside bedtime stories about Fat Albert, the children could hear about their ancestors, including the Pointer descendants who fought on the Union side in the Civil War.

TH: Everybody was super-excited and wants more and more information. Much more can be done to recover this legacy. We would like to move the historic preservation authorities to preserve George Pointer’s cabin. The ruins are just sitting there, right by the river. The Park Service should have some interest in trying to save it.

Q: Is it in DC?

TH: It is actually in Maryland. Tiggy and Barbara placed covers over the ruins in an attempt to protect them. I think the next order of business is to arrange an archaeological study of the area. It should be a landmark of some sort.

JF: You can still see parts of the structure, including a cement wall that George Pointer may have helped to build.

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