Oral Histories of Early Fairlingtonians

On the occasion of Fairlington’s 40th anniversary, a number of oral histories were taken on October 13, 1983 by Moreau Chambers – an early Fairlingtonian himself – to record the history of Fairlington in the 1940s. These oral interviews were conducted in what was the Fairlington School – now the Fairlington Community Center on South Stafford Street. The interviews were sponsored by the Zonta Club of Arlington, and the original manuscripts are housed in the Arlington County Center for Local History.

Those interviewed on the 40th Anniversary were: Richard Gabel, Harold Sanbank, Viette Sandbank, Hyman Cohen, Donald Murtha, Miriam Murtha, Martha Strain, Elizabeth Reynolds, Carol Johnson, and Peggy Wertime.

While largely modest about their own, individual achievements – each of the interviewees in notable in who they were – and what they accomplished in their lifetimes.

Richard Gabel #

(Read Mr. Gabel’s obituary here.)

INTERVIEWER: Dick, it’s good to see you here after so many years that we have known one another. You have been here for 37 years in Fairlington. I was in Fairlington from ‘46 but you beat me by a few months. Now let’s hear from you.

RICHARD GABEL: I have many recollections of early years after settling in Fairlington following some four years in the Army - during World War II. The community was essentially one of many families who had either worked in Washington during World War II or, like our own, consisted of families of veterans returning from the War and settling in the area.

INTERVIEWER: That was my position.

RICHARD GABEL: The community was one of many many children and it seemed more [children were] coming all the time. It was somewhat appropriate that we’re sitting here in Fairlington School because it was only a short while after we moved here and my youngest entered Fairlington Elementary School; it seemed bursting with children. There were double sessions all over the county and enormous fracas ensued over the need and insisted upon by local residents that we needed another school in North Fairlington. Reason prevailed and ultimately Abingdon Elementary was constructed. That ten-room schoolhouse opened in North Fairlington at that time only with grades 1 through 3.

Recalling other things about the community, I well remember a walk to Shirlington through north Fairlington. That was a beautiful walk through woods and of course which has been supplanted by highrise and apartment units. On snowy days Utah Hill and 29th St. became roads for sledding only.

Many friendships were made. Many residents were separated from their own families during the War years but under the organized community relations which evolved in Fairlington, neighbors became close friends. Friendships that went on to endure for, well, up to the present time. It was an active community. Its focus was schools, for maintaining reasonable rents, for libraries and for securing general government services.

Shirley Highway did not extend beyond Route 7. I well remember a victory garden I had on the hill behind the administration building. The same hill was used for sledding for many years. Social obligations differed substantially from those contemporary. There were very few televisions in those days. The person who purchased one; he could expect his neighbors to be visiting with snacks for important programs.

The first residents had two stores. Grocery stores were soon followed by a multi flourishing Shirlington Shopping Area. Jellefs, Lansburghs, and Filenes were department stores that came to the area and unfortunately closed. There were no metro but there were two private bus companies, Arnold Lines and of course AB&W Lines, both of which have since subsided and they gave service to Washington and to other parts of Northern Virginia.

INTERVIEWER: Which was the one that brought people up from the Cannon?

RICHARD GABEL: That was the Arnold Line.

INTERVIEWER: That was a time when, what was your recollection of Fairlington when you first moved in? Was there any grass?

RICHARD GABEL: Oh yes, indeed. The trees today seem larger.

INTERVIEWER: Indeed they are.

RICHARD GABEL: So much is destroyed through insects, but we always had very nice grassy lawns.

INTERVIEWER: At the beginning, I’m told, which would not be your recollection, nor mine, would not go back that far, at the beginning, that was a sea of mud and there was a bus line that would bring people from Russell Road up to Fairlington which was about the only way they would get there.

RICHARD GABEL: That was the Arnold Line.

…. Just one more observation, in those days there were far fewer working mothers with the youngster population and a lack of air conditioning meant that people spent their evenings during summer months outdoors, communicating and socializing with their neighbors. It was a place where strong friendships could be built and many have survived in the present day.

Harold Sandbank #

INTERVIEWER: This is an interview with Harold Sandbank, long a Fairlingtonian. Very active in civic affairs from the beginning. Mr. Sandbank, it’s good to have you here and I look forward to hearing your comments and recollections.

HAROLD SANDBANK: I’m glad to be here. One of the things that impressed me about Fairlington was that it was so big and at the same time so attractive. The first thing was the bigness. Fairlington consists of some close to 3,400 individual dwelling units. Some 10,000 people lived here at the time that I was concerned with it. That’s the size of many good-sized cities in this country.

INTERVIEWER: You came in what? 1942?

HAROLD SANDBANK: 1945.

INTERVIEWER: When in the year?

HAROLD SANDBANK: October.

INTERVIEWER: October of ‘45. I came practically a year later. And Mr. Gabel was about in between us … [at the time of] his time of arrival.

HAROLD SANDBANK: Yes. We recognized each other. We, you and I haven’t met as often as Richard Gabel and I have, but those are circumstances that dictated not a personal preference. But one of the other things that impressed me about Fairlington was that it is not only attractive and big but that people were interested in many things. I brought with me today a copy of the 10th anniversary program which was put on by the Fairlington Civic Association.

INTERVIEWER: I remember it well.

HAROLD SANDBANK: And I also have several of the publications issued by the Association.

INTERVIEWER: Will you identify them as you look at them?

HAROLD SANDBANK: All right. I’ll do that. A report to the membership of April 1948. And I also have several of the public …

INTERVIEWER: By the?

HAROLD SANDBANK: Fairlington Civic Association. I have another report here, Fairlington Association, and this was earlier, 1947.

INTERVIEWER: What’s the title of it? The same?

HAROLD SANDBANK: “Your Fairlington Association” is the title of it. It quotes a section from the bylaws of the organization which might be appropriate for this purpose. It says "A non-partisan, nonsectarian organization existing for the purpose of making Fairlington a better place in which to live", and it goes on by saying "by promoting civic recreation and cultural projects". The organization certainly did this. And since we’re talking about the 40th anniversary of the community, we might as well talk about the Association, too, and what it did for the community.

INTERVIEWER: Let’s do it.

HAROLD SANDBANK: Some of the things that are mentioned in here are things like this, and I’ll just list some of the headings.

INTERVIEWER: All right, it’ll be instructive.

HAROLD SANDBANK: …because they tell something about the way in which people who are interested in their community and their neighbors in the surrounding region of Northern Virginia. They had paper drives which provided money for various projects. They had membership dues, over 1,000 of the families here were members at one time, at any single time over 1,000 members which means. . .

INTERVIEWER: That’s a sizable number.

HAROLD SANDBANK: … that would mean anywhere from 3,000 to 4,000 or maybe even 5,000 family members would be part of the organization. As a result of this the organization was one of the most… influential organizations in Arlington County and in Northern Virginia which accounted for the fact that it is able to accomplish such things as obtaining Abingdon School and the Shirlington Library. It was a very active and influential factor there. It conducted a survey, for instance, of the population of North Fairlington in order to provide the school board with the information they sorely needed in order to plan for and build the Abingdon School.

INTERVIEWER: The first home of the Shirlington Library was down in the Shirlington Shopping Center, wasn’t it?

HAROLD SANDBANK: Yes.

INTERVIEWER: That’s where I remember it, upstairs.

HAROLD SANDBANK: Right, it was upstairs in one of the store office areas.

INTERVIEWER: Next to the building now known as the Best Building, isn’t that it?

HAROLD SANDBANK: That’s right. Yes, and that was one of the things that the Fairlington people were able to accomplish is to conduct a survey, conduct a drive to collect books, to indicate the interest of the citizens of the community so that the County Board authorized the funds finally for the construction of the Library. It has since become one of the most used and best of the Arlington branches of the public library.

INTERVIEWER: You are probably right.

HAROLD SANDBANK: Among the other things that are listed here in this brochure that I have, children’s play equipment. The people used the funds from their dues and from the paper drives and other means of fund-raising to buy recreational equipment which was installed all over North and South Fairlington for children. These were swings, and all kinds of parallel bars and things of that kind. The organization also put on movies, outdoor movies and indoor movies during the time when recreational activities were scarce in the county. They ran a mimeograph machine which made [it] possible to put out bulletins of information sorely needed by the community. They sponsored the Little Theater and the Fairlington Players were started by direct sponsorship of the Fairlington Civic Association.

INTERVIEWER: An organization still continuing to now.

HAROLD SANDBANK: Yes, it’s now one of the recognized and outstanding cultural activities in the County. The organization also put on a bunch of informal type activities like the annual boat cruise down the Potomac, Halloween parties, Memorial Day celebrations which for years were great features of the spring activities in the community. They had a bowling league, they used [the] tennis court facilities for tennis matches and things of that kind. Many softball leagues were in action. One of the important things that was done was to provide a really live-wire group of people who were members who were delegates to the Arlington Civic Federation. This is an activity that is still going on but the membership there was very important because the size of the organization and number of delegates that we had, it really contributed greatly to the county activities, the county programs, to the schools, to the libraries, to the health facilities; and it was influential also in for this reason in determining what kinds of delegates there would be in the Assembly in Richmond, and what kind of County Board members. Not by direct political action but by the making people aware of who was running and what they stood for.

INTERVIEWER: Did it have anything to do with helping to foster the Boy Scouts?

HAROLD SANDBANK: Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts both. It provided funds for sponsorship for the baseball league which the Boy Scouts conducted. And the same is true of the Girl Scouts, the Girl Scout activities, leadership for these activities were provided. and the Campfire Girls also were active here and they received support from the community.

INTERVIEWER: Yes, I remember the Utah fields was a place where the Cub Scouts would activate and I suppose also the Boy Scouts down there.

HAROLD SANDBANK: That’s right.

INTERVIEWER: There was a new talent, wasn’t his name Hamasaki, who was one of the Scout leaders, the Cub Scout leaders, I remember the name, he was of Japanese background. My little boy was in the Cubs down there.

HAROLD SANDBANK: Well, both of our boys were in the Cub Scouts and they enjoyed that activity a good deal. Our daughter joined the Girl Scout activities. As a matter of fact [she] went to the Girl Scout Camp at one time.

INTERVIEWER: That must have been a lot of fun.

HAROLD SANDBANK: It was a lot of fun for them. A lot of work for the parents.

INTERVIEWER: Certainly.

HAROLD SANDBANK: I had mentioned that the activities of the Association indicated the interest of the membership in the County,... in Northern Virginia. For various elections, as a matter of public information, the [Fairlington Civic] Association provided [the] opportunity to meet the various candidates on a nonpartisan basis.

INTERVIEWER: Right.

HAROLD SANDBANK: But on a very pointed basis. I have here, for instance, a poster that was posted all over Fairlington, "Meet your Northern Virginia state legislators" it’s called. On General Assembly night, Wednesday, December 2, 1953 at Abingdon Elementary School and it was sponsored directly by the Fairlington Civic Association and we had the State Senators, the State Delegates, all present to talk about what they were interested in and what kind of programs and to receive questions on the kinds of programs the people were interested in.

INTERVIEWER: What was the date of that one?

HAROLD SANDBANK: This was December 2, 1953.

INTERVIEWER: That was a key time right after we had had our 10th anniversary.

HAROLD SANDBANK: Yes. One other thing might be mentioned. The Civic Association provided then a haven for various kinds of interests of people. Not only here in Fairlington but throughout the county. People were interested in health, in other activities, and then the [Civic Association saw] to it that questions, proper questions were raised about are we doing decent things for providing decent health programs in the community. [For instance,] are the schools’ programs adequate for all kinds of people according to their needs? This is one of the things that we did try to do at that time. I would suggest that the interesting and valuable history that Fairlington has had indicates that there are not only good old days but there may be some good new days coming along if people could maintain their interest in their — neighborhood, in their community, in their county and in their region; and it would be associations that we have also support the kinds of activities that we have had in the past like the opportunity to meet the Delegates and County board members.

INTERVIEWER: That’s helpful for all concerned.

HAROLD SANDBANK: Right and that it provides some way of ensuring that we continue to have an attractive area in this part of the state where there are people who are interested in attractive programs. I think this is a hope for the future –not just for the good old days.

INTERVIEWER: That’s true. It has been an increasingly attractive spot here. The trees are one of its chief joys, don’t you agree?

HAROLD SANDBANK: I think the trees are, but I think the people make the community.

INTERVIEWER: The people make the community.

HAROLD SANDBANK: The attractiveness certainly is indicated by people outside the community, for instance, a lot of people have been interested in getting a good hold on to Fairlington.

INTERVIEWER: Yes.

HAROLD SANDBANK: At the very beginning the first private organization was a group of oil and real estate people from Texas.

INTERVIEWER: They were the ones.….

NARRATOR: Yea, they succeeded, were succeeded by Hartford Insurance Company, by another conglomerate, by a peculiar Chicago Bridge and Iron company.

HAROLD SANDBANK: Which currently is, continues to hold a substantial interest in it. It’s interesting to see an oil man, a bread man through IT&T, a bridge man and an iron man all connected with and finding this an attractive area. I hope it stays that way and I hope the people really continue to show their interest and concern with the community.

NARRATOR: Well, thank you, Harold Sandbank.

Viette Sandbank #

(Read Mrs. Sandbank’s obituary here.)

INTERVIEWER: This is an interview with Harold Sandbank’s good wife, Viette, who has a few remarks for us. Mrs. Sandbank, we want to hear you.

MRS VIETTE SANDBANK: Well, I don’t have much to add to the history because he’s covered it, but I might add some personal incidents in that connection. For instance, the projects that we had for fundraising for playground equipment and such; I’m sure that you have gone in for these newspaper.….

INTERVIEWER: Collection of newspapers,

MRS VIETTE SANDBANK: Collection, yes.

INTERVIEWER: Salvage, yes.

MRS VIETTE SANDBANK: But did you measure them the way we did? You could measure them the height of the pile of newspapers and say that a certain height, I think it was hip-high on me, was one hundred pounds.

INTERVIEWER: No, I didn’t know that.

MRS VIETTE SANDBANK: And if you tied the newspapers and stacked them and you knew you had one hundred pounds when they had reached a certain height which isn’t a very important little item, but it’s...

INTERVIEWER: It’s a good yardstick.

MRS VIETTE SANDBANK: Interesting to me anyway. The kids helped to gather them. They even went around to the basements of people who were throwing them away and were not cooperating. There were a few people who didn’t cooperate that way.

INTERVIEWER: It’s sad to see them go out in the trash even today.

MRS VIETTE SANDBANK: Yes, yes, they can be recycled. The Civic Association and the PTA at Fairlington School both were live wires and they worked together. They combined in giving variety shows for instance and in those days we had some very famous people living here, Patrick Hayes and Evelyn Swarthout, the pianist, Heidi Pope who was a dancer from Vienna who went on to found a very well known school in Alexandria, a school of dance. They all donated their performances to our shows and attracted large crowds. I felt honored when I was in a show with them and was doing my own little bit in singing. But it was fun and profitable at the same time.

INTERVIEWER: I remember Patrick Hayes and his helpful assistance along this line were much appreciated at the Church of St. Clement at which I was the parishioner in the early days.

MRS VIETTE SANDBANK: Oh, yes, and that is a church that was an innovation in itself in its architecture, wasn’t it?

INTERVIEWER: Indeed it was.

MRS VIETTE SANDBANK: Then there was the cruise down the river that has been mentioned in passing. That was another fund-raising project, but we had a Mrs. Fairlington beauty contest, and Bill Gold with his cigar was the–you know the District Line writer –he was the one that judged the beauty contest. And we had some, I think you have seen a picture of the winners.

INTERVIEWER: Yes, I have.

MRS VIETTE SANDBANK: He picked the right people. Each block in Fairlington had to have someone in that. By the way, the people who handled the business of each block in Fairlington were called Blockheads. That’s another little sideline you might want to have in your history. I was in the Fairlington Players too when they got started. We had community Christmas tree bonfires amongst other things that were connected with the Scouts, and that was another area….

INTERVIEWER: It was a good act.

MRS VIETTE SANDBANK: Where everybody burned their Christmas trees at Epiphany I believe. I don’t have much to add.

INTERVIEWER: Well it’s good to have...

MRS VIETTE SANDBANK: There was one thing I don’t think I’ve mentioned that is sort of political. When we moved here, the School Board was appointed by a circuit judge and the Fairlington Civic Association got very busy and so did the other civic federations and with their delegates in Richmond they got an elected School Board which we had for several years until the very conservative element down in Richmond got all hot and bothered by our having an elected School Board.

INTERVIEWER: Local School Board for Fairlington.

MRS VIETTE SANDBANK: Yes, and Arlington County. Arlington County.

INTERVIEWER: Oh, for the whole County.

MRS VIETTE SANDBANK: Arlington County. And they put a stop to it. They decided it wasn’t compatible with the Virginia Constitution.

INTERVIEWER: Yes, well thank you so much, Mrs. Sandbank for giving us your recollections.

NARRATOR: It’s a pleasure.

Hyman J. Cohen #

INTERVIEWER: Side one, tape one, session one of an interview with Mr. Hy[man] Cohen, whom I’ve known for many a year and this is the fifteenth of October, 1983, in the Fairlington Civic, the Fairlington, what do we call it now, Hy? The Fairlington.

HYMAN COHEN: Is it still Fairlington Civic Association?

INTERVIEWER: The Fairlington .. Community Center, here now that’s it, The Fairlington Community Center, formerly Fairlington School. I am Moreau Chambers and Hy will you please tell us, what do you remember about Fairlington in the early days when you and I both were here. You came in in what year?

HYMAN COHEN: In 1943, I was an original tenant.

INTERVIEWER: 1943? One of the originals. Well, you must tell us what it was like at that time.

HYMAN COHEN: I’ll be happy to, Moreau. In thinking about this since it first came to my attention, I had the overriding feeling that my memories of Fairlington were all pleasant ones, all on the positive side. I’m sure there were some things on the negative side but they’ve gone out of my mind. Fairlington was a haven. I came here in ‘43 because of my employment by one of the important government agencies and Fairlington was the only place available for housing.

INTERVIEWER: Do you care to divulge the name of the activity you were with?

HYMAN COHEN: I ended up with the War Production Board but for a few months before my affiliation with the War. . . . the only housing available, and I emphasize only, was housing here and that was available solely because of my involvement in the War effort being employed by a government agency having something to do with the War effort. We all know how chaotic transportation was at that time. My furniture was being moved down here and it was a nightmare waiting for my furniture because I had arrived here with my family and infant twins, with my wife and infant twins and the furniture was not here. At that very moment,..

INTERVIEWER: That was awkward.

HYMAN COHEN: Yes, that was not unusual in 1943. At that very moment we had found Fairlington hospitality, [with] people whose names we had been given, but whom we had not known before took us in and made a place for us … for the several nights until our furniture arrived. From then on, we found the same hospitality and the same friendliness.

I might say that I have grown up in Boston and lived …there….[was] an insular life. Fairlington to me was like a melting-pot – [I’m now] sitting here this afternoon with the Murthas from North Dakota. I had not known people from North Dakota or other parts of the country.

I remarked while I was sitting here that when I grew up in Boston and even in my adult age in Boston if I encountered an Army man with the rank of major or a Navy man with the rank of senior-lieutenant I would be tremendously impressed. In Fairlington the most appropriate phrase would be a dime a dozen. Yes, you rubbed shoulders with generals and admirals and nobody put on airs. People got together for rides back and forth to work because transportation was limited. Everybody was helpful. I have a very graphic picture in my mind of how that changed when the war was over and people resumed their normal lives of more or less looking out for themselves and not being community-minded. As I’ve said a million memories crowd my mind, my first two were twins. I would put them into the twin carriage and go riding around.

Very few would remember that there was an antiaircraft position, there was an antiaircraft position at the top of the hill, that would be, I guess, at the end of section of Quaker Lane and Route 7.

INTERVIEWER: I believe it was over there in the shrubbery when we moved in in ‘46.

HYMAN COHEN: Yes.

INTERVIEWER: Was it still operative?

HYMAN COHEN: Well, it was very operative in ‘43. The men in charge of that gun position lived there. There were temporary barracks around in there and I would drive my children up there. . .

INTERVIEWER: This is right back of the Bradlee shopping center now.

HYMAN COHEN: That is correct. The present Bradlee Shopping Center. Mention has been made of the trees here. To begin with Fairlington was bare. I remember hearing that it was used by people for toy airplanes, but it was a vast expanse that was relatively bare and a tree program was desperately needed. The management saw to it that a tree program did get started; that was probably after the war. I’ve always been interested in trees … I’m jumping ahead a little bit, I was president of the Civic Association and I organized a tree walk.

INTERVIEWER: What years were you President of the Civic Association?

HYMAN COHEN: Relying on my memory, it was in ‘53 at the time we had our 10th anniversary. That was a project of mine and I remember we got some financial help from the management and I have a vivid memory and this is a negative memory with the financing that we had, we arranged for a caterer to come out and have some elaborate refreshments and the caterer got lost and the refreshments never materialized. But nevertheless we had an extremely successful 10th anniversary.

INTERVIEWER: Yes. Have you [any] further recollections that you would like to share with the program which is of the Arlington County Library; Zonta Club fostering the program?.

HYMAN COHEN: I recall that people were extremely friendly, that was one aspect of the community in Fairlington, another aspect was that people didn’t put down roots. My own situation was probably very typical. I always assumed I’d go back to my home city of Boston and I didn’t cross the Rubicon so to speak until ‘48; that would have been the Presidential contest between Dewey and Truman and probably by that time I had registered as a voter in Arlington County and voted in that election.

INTERVIEWER: And you’ve been here ever since.

HYMAN COHEN: And I’ve been here ever since. And put down roots in the County; the Historical Society and of course our Historical Society didn’t exist at that time, that came many years later. People were friendly and people were helpful. There was an obvious need for nursery schools. My friend’s daughters were coming along. My third child was born not in Fairlington, because birth deliveries took place in hospitals, but my youngest daughter, Kate, my youngest child was born in Alexandria Hospital while we were residents of Fairlington. Early on a nursery school was formed.

INTERVIEWER: Are you thinking of the Rothery Nursery School?

HYMAN COHEN: That may well have been.

INTERVIEWER: Just below the circle.

HYMAN COHEN: That may well have been. Another overriding impression of mine, a very significant one, was that I recall no instances of bigotry. People were tolerant. People were decent and wholesome. It was that kind of community.

INTERVIEWER: That’s my recollection too.

HYMAN COHEN: The Civic Association was a factor. We had meetings, I participated and eventually agreed to assume the Presidency.

INTERVIEWER: Well, have you further recollections, Hy, for us?

HYMAN COHEN: I can’t think of anything significant that I should add. There was a large military element here and when the War was over, preference was given as it should have been to veterans and many veterans moved in.

INTERVIEWER: Yes. Yes. Well, I think that you have summed up rather well recollections covering quite a number of years, more than three decades and we’re glad to have you come out today to help with the 40th anniversary of Fairlington. I was present at the 10th anniversary of Fairlington in ‘53 and I’m glad to be back here where I can take part in such things now. Hy, it’s a pleasure to see you always.

HYMAN COHEN: My pleasure Moreau. You and I have been colleagues for a long, long time.

INTERVIEWER: That we have.

Donald M. Murtha #

(Read Mr. Murtha’s obituary here.)

INTERVIEWER: This is an interview with Mr. Donald Murtha. I am the interviewer, Moreau Chambers. We’re here on the fifteenth of October 1983, celebrating the 40th anniversary of Fairlington.

Mr. Murtha, we want to hear from you because you’ve been around here longer than I have and we want some of your recollections that relate to you’re being in Fairlington and your participation in life here.

NARRATOR: Okay. We moved here in October 1945. Now my wife’s going to, I hope, have an opportunity to give you her memories which are much better than mine.

INTERVIEWER: Well, I hope that she will be in readiness to talk, either to support what you’re saying or to talk right after you’ve talked.

NARRATOR: I was impressed by, I think Hy Cohen’s, that in his memories, he had a very positive feeling about Fairlington. No negative feelings. I told my son, who spent about sixteen years here; elementary school, starting high school, what he remembered about it. He said the same thing. He said, "I remember Fairlington very plainly. I enjoyed it", and those are my own feelings.

INTERVIEWER: That’s what I’ve heard other people say. Even those who were born here and remembered it as a childhood home. They spoke very highly of it and with pleasure.

NARRATOR: I haven’t analyzed it in great detail, but I think it had to do with a number of things. First of all, a rather inexpensive living, even in those days. I know somehow or another by some miracle we got a three bedroom apartment and I had three children and then we later had another one about 1947, so most of the time we had four little boys to contend with. I remember out the back door there was a huge lawn rolling down to trees. They sheltered between Fairlington and the highway.

INTERVIEWER: You were on what address here in Fairlington at that time?

NARRATOR: On 34th Street. I think it was 4619 to the best of my recollection. It’s just about a block and a half from the elementary school.

INTERVIEWER: Well, we won’t be able to pin you down as to what of the real estate you lived in, so you will accommodate us with this thirst for local knowledge and recollections.

NARRATOR: I’ll do my best.

INTERVIEWER: And you may well to say something about the park situation which was one thing that you may know a whole lot about.

NARRATOR: You brought back some recollections when you mentioned Reynolds Fort.

INTERVIEWER: Fort Reynolds. Yes.

NARRATOR: Which is just across the road here and...

INTERVIEWER: We tried valiantly [to save it] but things didn’t work.

NARRATOR: Well, we had quite an active civic association as Mr. ..., while a number of the other people have pointed out to, Mr. Sandbank.

INTERVIEWER: And Mr. Cohen was here too.

NARRATOR: And that’s another thing that made my stay here quite pleasant. I think many of us came from states or areas that were very school-minded and.…

INTERVIEWER: You were from what state?

NARRATOR: North Dakota.

INTERVIEWER: And here you came to Virginia and you remained a Virginian ever since.

NARRATOR: Yes, but in those days I didn’t like the idea that the schools weren’t top-rate. And the other people didn’t either. Well, the practical problem was establishing churches. I belonged to the Blessed Sacrament parish and I remember we used to have mass in a theater for the first year or so. So Northern Virginia, it isn’t exactly the north of Virginia, was a sort of a —frontier area even in the state of Virginia. This wasn’t a great agricultural area right here.

INTERVIEWER: This wasn’t much settled up at that time.

NARRATOR: No. Covered with small trees and brush, you know.

INTERVIEWER: And you planted shade trees on the streets.

NARRATOR: Yes. That’s why the Civic Association was so active. He told you how many people belonged. It’s the only civic association I was ever involved in that had cash in the bank. We had a lot of activists. There were a lot of young people. And of course most of the young people had some children and everyone was kind of in the same boat. It was a very, there must be some kinds of words for it but I can’t think of it. I was president of the Civic Association for a while. I know I was during ‘52-‘53 when they had this 10th anniversary. But I’m not active before then. One of the things I did with a number of other people including the League of Women Voters was to arrange so people could vote, could register and vote. We went over and got …

INTERVIEWER: How did you do that?

NARRATOR: We went over and got the County officials to agree to come over to Fairlington one night and we publicized it very oddly. You had to have somebody from the Treasurer’s office to accept the poll tax and then the Board of Registration official. We had line ups over there, as many as a hundred people just queued around in the auditorium over at the school house in North Fairlington.

INTERVIEWER: Oh, over at the Abingdon School.

NARRATOR: Um-hum. I felt very good about that, but the point I’m making is that people wanted to do this. They wanted to vote, participate and they also wanted to be active in the Civic Association, these Memorial Day parade, collecting this paper, they used to load it out in back of my apartment which happened to have a big cement apron in front of the powerhouse.

INTERVIEWER: Yes. Yes. I remember those powerhouses.

NARRATOR: Allen Dean and [inaudible] were very active doing that and then we’d raise money to buy equipment for the children, swings and things like that. The attitude after the government sold it [Fairlington], you know, it was a great buy for the people that bought it.

INTERVIEWER: I remember it … they did sell it for less than cost, in I believe about ‘53 or ‘54. It was sold to the Texas investors and we had a feeling that the government had been badly used at that time.

NARRATOR: Well, it was a nice deal. They signed up in spring with an agreement that all the rents that accumulated until the sale was finalized, whatever that meant, but anyway they had six months rents to put down on their down payment. That constituted about all the cash they had to put up. That was a few hundred thousand dollars. Anyway once the government was out of it, the management began to get very [inaudible] in the absentee landlord atmosphere you see.

INTERVIEWER: Yes, that prevailed. There was a Mr. Howell, I believe, was a resident manager, wasn’t there, at the time you recollect? I remember when we were here that was the name of the resident manager.

NARRATOR: Um-hum. That’s right. In any event, they discouraged, well I guess they issued it that, well you couldn’t have flowers or tomato bushes.…

INTERVIEWER: It interfered a little bit with our idea of proper procedure on the grounds. We felt a little indignant about that and we were indignant too because we had to give away our beloved little dog that we gotten from the pound. We have a friend though who took it and befriended the little dog for quite a number of years. But that, it rankled.

NARRATOR: That’s what I don’t like over the things the other people have gone over, maybe Il...

INTERVIEWER: It may be that Mrs. Murtha would like to rally round and support your recollections.

Miriam Murtha #

INTERVIEWER: This is cassette one, side two, this is the fifteenth of October 1983, we’re in the Fairlington School and Mrs. Murtha is about to give us some of her recollections of life in Fairlington as it was 40 years ago and since. So Mrs. Murtha you have the microphone.

MIRIAM MURTHA: Thank you. I was always glad that we weren’t the first to move into our apartment in November 1945 because everyone around me told me how awful it was living in a sea of mud.

INTERVIEWER: That’s what I’ve heard said about it; that there was mud and only one conveyance to get you back and forth to civilization as represented by Russell Road down at the cannon, named the cannon because that’s one of the Braddock cannon that was on its way to the frontier.

MIRIAM MURTHA: Right. Well, in that period very few people had automobiles which meant that I went, did my marketing up at Fairlington Shopping Center along with my three children. Five, three, and one years old.

INTERVIEWER: And they had to help you carry things.

MIRIAM MURTHA: Right. We filled the baby buggy full of groceries. The baby had to sit on top of it, it was all right. What I remember about that first spring was that someone, perhaps the Civic Association, I don’t know, had, everybody seems to have planted morning glory, heavenly blue, and going up to the Fairlington Shopping Center, going through on all the pathways you could see those brilliant blue flowers everywhere you turned. It was a lovely atmosphere and I think it was typical of Fairlington, of people who cared about their home and their community and each other that was almost unique for an apartment community.

INTERVIEWER: It was a lovely place to be.

MIRIAM MURTHA: It was, and I remember of course the struggles over getting better schools. Our fourth son was born while we were living here and it was a question about the School Board I think you had been told about and I remember going down to Richmond and testifying before the legislature.

INTERVIEWER: Oh, you did.

MIRIAM MURTHA: Yes, and how exciting it was when a man who had not been much of a supporter, we thought, of the Better School movement; he was a banker, Ed Holland, his son I think is now a representative...

INTERVIEWER: Senator Holland, yes.

MIRIAM MURTHA: His father, we thought, was aligned on the other side. We were non-partisans in those days.

INTERVIEWER: Yes. And you found out he was your friend.

MIRIAM MURTHA: But he spoke about the best -- good schools are a signal importance to any community, and Arlington County cared about their schools and he, I think, helped sway the legislature so that we got an elected School Board. We didn’t have them long because the battles after the Supreme Court decision and you know Virginia’s decision to go along, what did they call it?

INTERVIEWER: I don’t remember. I don’t remember what it was called.

MIRIAM MURTHA: There was something that the Byrd machine called Interposition.

INTERVIEWER: I remember hearing the term.

MIRIAM MURTHA: But it meant that the state was going to interpose itself between the Federal Supreme Court ruling and the local School Boards, something like that. Do you remember that, Martha? (Some background conversation) That’s the general idea.

MR. MURTHA: But they didn’t get away with it.

MIRIAM MURTHA: Yes, they did. Well, they did for a while.

INTERVIEWER: They did for two years.

MR. MURTHA: Not on that ?

MIRIAM MURTHA: No, they didn’t do that. But there were schools that were closed in the state of Virginia for a year or two and Arlington lost its elected school board. We did win the battle when it was a battle to have the School Board appointed by the County Board, so it had that much reflection on the voters. So that people were appointed to the School Board by whoever was controlling the County Board which was much like that in an elected School Board.

MR. MURTHA: Miriam, maybe it isn’t clear. So much it’s said what a non-partisan is and what you mean and why was it necessary to have a non-partisan movement.

MIRIAM MURTHA: Well, Northern Virginia and particularly I think in Fairlington, I have no idea the percentage but a very high percentage of residents in this area were government employees banned from active participation in politics.

INTERVIEWER: Very true. That was the Hatch Act.

MIRIAM MURTHA: So, the Hatch Act. So that before we got here, I think in the early forties probably, there had been a movement to organize a non-partisan coalition of people who wanted to work for better government, better schools and that sort of thing, work actively and persuaded the Civil Service Commission to give us special permission and every year that had to be renewed.

INTERVIEWER: Was that the organization that we hear of as Arlingtonians for Better Government?

MIRIAM MURTHA: Correct. What happened was that in 1954, are you thinking of the Better School Movement? The Better School Movement had an organization, yes, and they joined with the non-partisan. And it really was an independent. It didn’t matter what your party label was. State elections or national elections, it was what you cared about the local elections. And that’s the only thing we concerned ourselves with.

INTERVIEWER: True. I remember that the Hatch Act was something to reckon with. I was in Federal Service at that time. I am once more in Federal Service. But I was aware of the Hatch Act and the fact that we would get in hot water if we were to meddle to an alarming degree in political life. So I didn’t.

MIRIAM MURTHA: Well, through this non-partisan movement they did get currents from the Civil Service Commission.

MR. MURTHA: You couldn’t be active politically as a...

MIRIAM MURTHA: Political party.

MR. MURTHA: Democrat or Republican. Political party. But it was all right.

INTERVIEWER: Well, have you some more recollections of Fairlington particularly?

MIRIAM MURTHA: I think the thing that I, must have been mentioned many times, was that the community caring for children and that there were so many children here. What I remember as a mother of four boys was their active participation in things like the annual Halloween parade and costume. . .

INTERVIEWER: Right. And Boy and Girl Scouts and Cub Scouts. .

MIRIAM MURTHA: Right. And also the Memorial Day thing that the Civic Association sponsored. And our local Fourth of July, do you recollect that, that was a very strong highlight, plus the fact that since I cared very much about the local politics that Fairlington was made up of so many people willing to work and work hard so the votes that came out of our precinct often made the difference because they were lopsided. And people voted here. It was a great place to vote. And live.

INTERVIEWER: Well, thank you, thank you so much, Mrs. Miriam Murtha. It’s good to have you here and have your recollections of earlier days in Fairlington.

Martha Strain #

INTERVIEWER: Side one, Tape two of session one of an interview with Mrs. Martha V. Strain. Mrs. Strain, do you now live in Fairlington or elsewhere?

MARTHA STRAIN: No, we moved just a few blocks down the road, to Claremont Homes right across from Wakefield High School.

INTERVIEWER: Well, you’re still nearby.

MARTHA STRAIN: Very close. In fact from my North Fairlington apartment I can see the houses where I now live.

INTERVIEWER: … I have been around here off and on for quite some years, let’s say more than 35 because I showed up here in 1946. You came in in what year?

MARTHA STRAIN: We came in in August of 1943.

INTERVIEWER: ‘43. You were a beginner here.

MARTHA STRAIN: We’re an FFF. First Family of Fairlington and my husband Charles had to go to Clarendon to get a little card saying that he was definitely connected to the War Effort otherwise we would not have been allowed into Fairlington.

INTERVIEWER: Yes. That’s right.

MARTHA STRAIN: And when we got here to apply they said, "oh you’re too many for a two bedroom apartment, and that’s all we have." We had a two-year-old daughter, my mother, and within three weeks we had another daughter. So they said we needed three bedrooms.

INTERVIEWER: And what did they do about it?

MARTHA STRAIN: We said "Please Sir, we are in one bedroom now."

INTERVIEWER: This would be an improvement.

MARTHA STRAIN: So anything more than one bedroom would be a help to us. So we moved, they let us move in but put us on a waiting list and six months later we moved from South Fairlington with a two bedroom to a three bedroom apartment on the first floor in North Fairlington.

INTERVIEWER: Things were decidedly less crowded then.

MARTHA STRAIN: Oh, yes. And that was wonderful because we had a back door out the kitchen and I could turn the children loose in a huge gully enclosed by the whole block and I could see every place where they might be playing. And then we didn’t have to worry about pre-schools or pre-kindergartens in those days...

INTERVIEWER: You had your eye on them.

MARTHA STRAIN: Because there were so many children that the problem was to give them a chance to be alone now and then.

INTERVIEWER: Yes. Well, I’m glad that you told us this much. Tell us more.

MARTHA STRAIN: Well, we were among the first ones there and you’ve heard about the mud.

INTERVIEWER: And about the bus that carried you up...

MARTHA STRAIN: And have you heard about the tomatoes?

INTERVIEWER: No. What about the tomatoes? Did you grow them?

MARTHA STRAIN: The trees and the new grass [planted in Fairlington] was fertilized with sludge. And it had tomato seeds in it and there were some of the most beautiful tomatoes. [They] grew, climbed the trees and climbed up back porches so we had lots of tomatoes around that first year. But the grass didn’t grow. We had two very, very hot summers. They put sod in the front yards and seeded the back yards. The sod died and the seeds didn’t come up.

INTERVIEWER: Was there any sprinkling of the lawns done?

MARTHA STRAIN: Very little. Very little.

INTERVIEWER: Couldn’t spare the water I suppose.

MARTHA STRAIN: As I said that was in the middle of the war, our detergents were not; had not yet been widely distributed. The soap had no phosphate in it, and it was very difficult to keep training pants clean.

INTERVIEWER: Certainly.

MARTHA STRAIN: But one funny thing, after the war ended we went on a trip back to Indiana and on the way home we passed a place where there was a cut, a bank along the road where the clay bank showed and my daughter Judy said to her sister "Oh, Linda, look, there’s our nice red mud, we must be almost home." I wasn’t so glad to get back to the red mud as she was. But it was really a most interesting place to be and since all of us were involved in the war effort, we all had one common denominator and we had come from all over the country; from one end of the country to the other and brought with us the culture of our home states. . .

INTERVIEWER: Certainly. Your state was Nebraska?

MARTHA STRAIN: Indiana. And we found when our children grew old enough to go to schools that Virginia had a different idea about public schools. Public schools were for the people who couldn’t afford to send their children to private schools. Anybody who was anybody sent their children to private schools. And we didn’t believe in that, so that was the beginning of the movement in Northern Virginia which resulted in some very excellent schools in Arlington over the years. I think Mrs. Murtha who talked ahead of me told you a lot about that. But we were all involved. We were all involved.

INTERVIEWER: Were you involved much with the Civic Association?

MARTHA STRAIN: Some but more I think with the PTA and things of that kind and Red Cross and Brownies...

INTERVIEWER: Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, Cub Scouts. .

MARTHA STRAIN: Girl Scouts. Because mine were girls. Two.

INTERVIEWER: Were you in the military?

MARTHA STRAIN: No.

INTERVIEWER: I had been in the Navy but the time I moved out here I was newly in the Department of State. I was delighted to have a place to come out here and have a home here in Fairlington.

MARTHA STRAIN: Well, he wasn’t in the Navy, but all his professional life here was work for the Navy. Yes, this involves Fairlington School. Before they had cafeterias in the school, they used to sell ice cream to the children and the plans were on the way to have cafeterias, so they decided to have one day a week when the children would eat a real meal. So we had hot dog day and I was hot dog chairman and we cooked hot dogs; took the orders one day for the next week. They brought in their money and then I had to order the hot dogs and buns and then we cooked them and took them around to the different rooms and they ate them in the rooms.

And they had big jars of mustard in each room and one day one little boy asked for mustard on his ice cream. I don’t think the teacher gave it to him.

INTERVIEWER: Probably not.

MARTHA STRAIN: Probably not.

INTERVIEWER: Well, it’s been awfully nice of you to present yourself for a record after years for the Zonta Program and the Arlington Central Library and their abiding interest in Virginiana and of course what we are saying is a part of Virginiana. We’re going back forty years from the present.

MARTHA STRAIN: Forty years, that’s right.

INTERVIEWER: Have you any more comments that you like to make? Maybe Mr. Strain would have some comments. You would, wouldn’t you?

MR. STRAIN: Well, I’m afraid I spent more time trying to do the things necessary to help the Navy out and left my wife to take care of the home things. It was a very nice place to be. And the terrific interest of the people here where they started the first AAUW for the area at least, also the League of Women Voters was a new activity. And those were things that were not at all common in Virginia at that time.

MRS. STRAIN: No, AAUW members at that time had to go into the District. They belonged to the District branch and then when we didn’t have any gasoline, we decided it was too difficult to get in there and we started our own branch. A group from Fairlington and a group from Buckingham got together and the Arlington branch was formed from those people. It was still goes on.

INTERVIEWER: Well, I thank you very much for your comments. And you continue filling that out. Thank you, Mrs. Strain.

Elizabeth Reynolds #

INTERVIEWER: This is an interview with Mrs. Elizabeth F. Reynolds conducted on the fifteenth of October, 1983 at the Fairlington Community Center. The interviewer is Moreau B. Chambers. Mrs. Reynolds, it’s a pleasure to have you here and we want to hear from you.

MRS E REYNOLDS: Okay, I’m just afraid I’ll say too much.

INTERVIEWER: Well, you just get started now. You have been here since the beginning of things, haven’t you?

MRS E REYNOLDS: Since the beginning of North Fairlington which was two years later than South Fairlington.

INTERVIEWER: What year then did you move in?

MRS E REYNOLDS: ‘45. ‘44. That’s right. Some of those pictures are ‘44. That would be one year later than, wouldn’t it be, yes. I have some pictures there with the dates and they do say ‘44, don’t they, yes.

INTERVIEWER: Really? Well, you just continue.

MRS E REYNOLDS: Okay. I’m just afraid that everybody’s been saying these same things.

INTERVIEWER: Well, what you say reinforces what other people say.

MRS E REYNOLDS: Well one of the generalized things I think is important and interesting my husband used to say that you could staff a university with the talent that lived here. People were coming from all over the country who for the war effort and it wasn’t too much trouble to get an apartment here if you did come from away and you didn’t have too big a family: but we didn’t come from away and we had too big a family and we had a hard time getting in.

INTERVIEWER: How many children did you have?

MRS E REYNOLDS: We had three but they didn’t have any three bedroom apartments that they could rent at the time. It took a court order to get out of the house where we were living before they would let us in. My daughter also says that my husband had to prove that he’d have to leave the area and the war effort if he didn’t get to stay. Now that I never heard of.

INTERVIEWER: And this is your daughter right here with you who is a Fairlington resident from way back.

MRS E REYNOLDS: Yes, she was eleven when we moved in. And the other two. Well she’s the one we had to send away; we sent her to Madison, Wisconsin with my parents so that...

INTERVIEWER: Well, that’s strange. And how long were you banished?

DAUGHTER: One year.

MRS E REYNOLDS: She went [to Wisconsin for] the school year and I don’t know how you got in again, maybe we just didn’t ask.

DAUGHTER: You just didn’t ask and you were on the waiting list for a three bedroom apartment I remember, but.…

MRS E REYNOLDS: Eventually after two years we got three bedrooms

DAUGHTER: That one year anyway in between, they just kind of didn’t know I was there.

MRS E REYNOLDS: I guess, the two girls had the small room and we put Jeremy, the son, the baby, only not such a small baby, into the crib in our room so we managed all right.

INTERVIEWER: Well you had to crowd a little bit but you managed. Now you have some important recollections for us. Why don’t you let us have them?

MRS E REYNOLDS: Lots of them. I heard people just before me, the Murthas say about the ABC [Arlingtonians for a Better Community] and so forth; it wasn’t ABC at the start but there was a non-partisan movement at the time.

INTERVIEWER: That’s right, it didn’t have that name when we were here.

MRS E REYNOLDS: No. My husband was one of the fifteen that started in that and I think the Murthas were, at least one of them was in the same group. They put together five Republicans, five Democrats and five Independents and my husband always predicted that it would become the liberal branch of the Democratic party and that’s about what it did; but anyway that was true as you mentioned before that in the Hatch Act meant that you couldn’t be active. And we used to have a slogan "There are no Republican sewers and no Democratic sidewalks". And I kind of wish it was the same now; I would like, in fact, I call myself hard-core ABC because I don’t really belong in either of the national parties and I’m interested in the local. Well after we came we were on 30th Road, 4611 30th Road and we lived there [for] two years.

INTERVIEWER: That’s over across the Shirley Highway.

MRS E REYNOLDS: And then we moved to Woodrow, 3050 S. Woodrow.

INTERVIEWER: Still on the other side of the road.

MRS E REYNOLDS: You are now?

INTERVIEWER: You were.

DAUGHTER: Yeah, we were. North Fairlington.

MRS E REYNOLDS: We just moved by foot from one to the other. We had to hire some men, janitors.

INTERVIEWER: You managed to get your gear over to the new address.

MRS E REYNOLDS: We managed. They stole [a] watch in the meantime, but anyway we got the three bedroom apartment which we needed. So we were there till 1949.

DAUGHTER: I hope so ‘cause that’s what I just told her too.

MRS E REYNOLDS: ‘49. We moved over into Arlington all this time and this is true of so many families here that started out in Fairlington and a lot of them went back home [from] where they had come from; but many of them stayed here. And the pattern was generally that then you build a house or bought a house somewhere in Arlington and stayed.

INTERVIEWER: Well, we noticed that some of our neighbors who were here when we moved back here, now are living in Alexandria and round and about.

MRS E REYNOLDS: Some of the people here that were here today aren’t; but many of them formed a new class, I guess you’d say, in Arlington; people that were like from the Middle West and so forth where schools, public schools were important. They formed this nucleus and got better schools. It took a long time, we were considered squatters. A long time, nobody thought that we ought to have anything to say about them. Arlington County, it was supposed to be the people from the Courthouse, the Courthouse gang they called them; so it had to become from a little rural place to a city while in the meantime and what a city. Well, let’s see. One thing, did they mention about the Rent Rebellion? My husband was very active.

INTERVIEWER: I think something was said about that. That was around 1950, wasn’t it?

MRS E REYNOLDS: It was before we moved.

DAUGHTER: We moved in ‘49.

INTERVIEWER: Had to be earlier.

MRS E REYNOLDS: I think it was about ‘49.

INTERVIEWER: No, I don’t have any very clear recollections of it.

MRS E REYNOLDS: They were going to raise the rent. They gave these notices and everybody decided that they shouldn’t and they formed a, they had a big convocation here. It was overflowing and my husband was one of the ones, I guess he was the chief one, at least the most conspicuous one. We said "they can’t do anything to us because they would know right away that it was revenge for his being this way so we’re really safer that way than otherwise," but we were going to move anyway. My father was coming to live with us and we acquired a dog on a radio program. You couldn’t have dogs here anymore.

INTERVIEWER: I remember that. I know that we had a little dog but we couldn’t keep it.

MRS E REYNOLDS: You know they did at first. Until Fairmac took over from the government.

INTERVIEWER: Well, Fairmac had taken over when we moved in ‘46.

HYMAN COHEN: Yes. Well they already had said, "No, you couldn’t have dogs" and you couldn’t have gardens like my tomatoes that grew ten, twelve feet there. You couldn’t do anything, quite a lot of things that were not as nice as at first. But we happened to live in a place that was right back up against the woods, and I don’t know who owned the woods but they didn’t come around and nobody cared, so we had all that space between the trees and us where we could have playground equipment for the youngsters.

INTERVIEWER: Were you over there near the Fort Reynolds site?

MRS E REYNOLDS: That was one of the places, the fortifications there.

INTERVIEWER: It was just to the north of North Fairlington.

MRS E REYNOLDS: And one of my daughters got a lot of poison ivy right there.

INTERVIEWER: I wouldn’t doubt it.

MRS E REYNOLDS: That was the other one. We used to walk through the woods to Fairlington.

INTERVIEWER: And Shirlington too, wouldn’t you walk through down to Shirlington?

MRS E REYNOLDS: Shirlington’s what I meant. And nobody worried. We weren’t worried about any crimes or anything like that. We felt so safe.

INTERVIEWER: The street hadn’t been put through down to Shirlington, or had it?

MRS E REYNOLDS: I’m not sure, but they were talking about that today, that there hadn’t been any streets.

INTERVIEWER: Shirley Highway was there.

MRS E REYNOLDS: They had, by the time we got here they had paved streets anyway and maybe that’s because it was a year later, but we had paved streets, didn’t we? Yes.

INTERVIEWER: So, you consult your notes there, Mrs. Reynolds, and don’t miss anything that we ought to put down as a part of the record.

MRS E REYNOLDS: People used to say (this is another general thing) in Arlington, people that we would know with children, they would say, "well we’re going to live in Arlington until our children are big enough for school and then we’re go into the District where the schools are better."

INTERVIEWER: That’s how you thought of it then.

MRS E REYNOLDS: That’s how they rated schools in Arlington. So that’s why we needed something better but you know what they got to be, be nationally known.

INTERVIEWER: Got to be much better than what you would have found across the river.

MRS E REYNOLDS: We had good schools.

DAUGHTER: What were the paper drives for?

MRS E REYNOLDS: The paper drives were for the Civic Association, but I don’t remember what the Civic Association did with them.

DAUGHTER: Did they buy Little leagues or erasers and stuff for the school?

MRS E REYNOLDS: Maybe so. I don’t know.

INTERVIEWER: I know that there is still a paper drive and my wife is one who honchos that operation for ecological reasons to get money with which to help out worthy ecological causes.

MRS E REYNOLDS: Good. I’m an ecologist-environmentalist myself.

INTERVIEWER: Well, you call up Ruth Chambers and talk to her and she’d like to talk to you. Maybe you talked with her today..

MRS E REYNOLDS: I did briefly. She brought us here.

INTERVIEWER: Now you knew the Murthas.

MRS E REYNOLDS: Yes. We knew them, but they were on the other side and we got to know them through the political side of it.

INTERVIEWER: And you knew

MRS E REYNOLDS: The Deans.

INTERVIEWER: Mr. Cohen.

MRS E REYNOLDS: Yes.

INTERVIEWER: Well, we’ve had and Dick Gabel and Louise. Dick Gabel was here with us this afternoon. Hy Cohen.

MRS E REYNOLDS: I don’t remember. I know Hy Cohen well but I don’t remember the Gabels.

INTERVIEWER: They’ve lived here all the time and they’re still here. Mr. and Mrs. Sandbank who were here and have moved out.

MRS E REYNOLDS: Sandbank. Very well. I know them very well. Their son and my son were at "prims"? and that’s how we got to know them. They were on our side of Shirlington. Well, let’s see the Rawls, I wonder if they were called, Udall and Doris Rawls.

INTERVIEWER: I’m not familiar with the name and I haven’t met them to date.

MRS E REYNOLDS: And the Philips lived in our area and they, I think, the Rawls and Philips moved to Maryland but I thought they might be here today, and the Barbies and the Baslers also moved to the same place.

INTERVIEWER: I don’t think I have encountered them today.

MRS E REYNOLDS: None of them. And Keene, Mansfield, Zwordling, Franz, Waite, Frank and Franz, the Franks lived over in that and there

INTERVIEWER: Dick Franz is here.

MRS E REYNOLDS: We saw them the day they, either the day they moved in or the day they were looking at the place with their little boy, so little down there that they were holding his hands so he could walk. Then Dell Webb’s brother lived at the end of our apartment in Fairlington. You know these little children that would come from New York to visit. They were visiting, there was one visiting next door to us, and she told her mother "They don’t lock their door, you can go out and you don’t lock your door, in and out without a locked door."

INTERVIEWER: Well, one is well advised to lock the doors in present times.

MRS E REYNOLDS: And Hal Webb’s wife, no, Dell Webb’s wife was very suspicious too because she was from New York and she wouldn’t let my daughter come in and get a textbook she left there when she was baby-sitting. This little girl came, Cynthia, my daughter.

INTERVIEWER: This tiny tot on your right?

MRS E REYNOLDS: Little lightweight. She came and she had always been a headache. She was too active. She had always been a real problem. She got here and suddenly they grabbed her off for babysitting. I didn’t think she was old enough but it was a godsend because...

INTERVIEWER: She made big money.

DAUGHTER: She wanted to pay them [the families that she babysat for].

MRS E REYNOLDS: I thought, I ought to pay them, I felt, because it got her off my hands, but also she was a good babysitter.

DAUGHTER: I made bundles, at 15 cents an hour.

MRS E REYNOLDS: She had a whole lot of ....… but she had a short range of attention too and so she never, they never got bored. They loved her, the little kids did and she was so happy with them. She was a professional babysitter.

INTERVIEWER: I know my granddaughter is doing this sort of thing out in Reston.

MRS E REYNOLDS: Yes, they usually start with that sort of thing.

DAUGHTER: Same kind of clientele, too.

MRS E REYNOLDS: In Reston.

INTERVIEWER: Well, do you have some more recollections, Mrs. Reynolds?

MRS E REYNOLDS: Yes, oh and the birds that were here in those woods.

INTERVIEWER: Bluebirds, possibly?

MRS E REYNOLDS: Blue birds, Indigo buntings, Orioles, Scarlet Tanager, Purple Finches, and we could hear the loquacious whippoorwills and Bobwhites and there were was that one that Thrush in the woods that we could hear mornings but never saw him. All of those birds anyway that were here and poison ivy and things I just mentioned before that.

INTERVIEWER: We have trouble now finding any bluebirds. Some people foster them with bluebird boxes that they put up. But I seem to remember the last time I saw any bluebirds on the loose was when we had just moved from Fairlington over to the corner of Yale and Vassar in Alexandria. I saw one there near the MacArthur School but I don’t think I’ve seen one since in quite a while. There are other people who have fostered bluebirds about the area.

MRS E REYNOLDS: … [and there was also the issue of ] Alexandria and Arlington going together on the League of Women Voters.

INTERVIEWER: Yes.

MRS E REYNOLDS: I was there before they separated and afterwards when Arlington...

INTERVIEWER: Do you want to put down more succinctly some of your recollections about that?

MRS E REYNOLDS: About the League?

INTERVIEWER: Yes. About the going together with Alexandria.

MRS E REYNOLDS: I just went, I guess, maybe two or three meetings with Doris Rawls to the Alexandria one and Catherine Stool and people that you knew about afterwards there but right soon after that we separated and I think we met at the firehouse.

INTERVIEWER: Now this was about what year?

MRS E REYNOLDS: That would be ‘46, I remember. I was a member of the League for 25 years from ‘46 until whatever that was.

INTERVIEWER: And I think we would do well to stress again the fact that you are a member of the staff of the Arlington County Library, and the Central Library.

MRS E REYNOLDS: I wasn’t eligible really for that, I never had library training and when I first applied I came just, oh I know I was going to do some volunteer work so that I could get some experience so that I could get into some other job with my children all in school. They said what have you got against working for the Arlington Library, and I said nothing. So they sent me right straight over to the Courthouse and then I made out this thing to take an examination and they said what chronic things do you have and I said arthritis . I’ve never had it anywhere but my finger joints, but there was a rule against it. The library couldn’t take anybody that had arthritis so the man said "I think you’d be eminently qualified but the other one that passed you on the physicals would just throw this up automatically so it’s no use." So I just [volunteered] then later they just kept hiring me as a substitute. So all those years as I say I’ve just been a substitute.

INTERVIEWER: I see. Well you’re not still a substitute are you?

MRS E REYNOLDS: Oh yes. I’m still a substitute.

INTERVIEWER: But you’re still in there slugging away at the problems.

MRS E REYNOLDS: I love the libraries.

INTERVIEWER: I went to library school.

MRS E REYNOLDS: It’s like another home, isn’t it?

INTERVIEWER: I went to Catholic University Library School.

MRS E REYNOLDS: Oh, that’s the only place nearby that you can.

INTERVIEWER: In ‘46 and I was there ‘46, ‘46 no, ‘66, from ‘66 to ‘68 and then I was a member of the staff of the library there as the University archivist.

MRS E REYNOLDS: Oh yeah. You know Caroline, Caroline she’s gone back to her maiden name–Bull– no, that’s her married name. She teaches there now in the library school.

INTERVIEWER: I probably don’t [know her]. I’m not there now. I haven’t been there for ten years. Well, we have about come to the end of our interview.

MRS E REYNOLDS: Well, I did want to say one thing.

INTERVIEWER: You have some more to say. Good.

MRS E REYNOLDS: Just a little bit. When Roosevelt died I was washing the kitchen window and it came over the radio while I was doing it and I remember the tears.

INTERVIEWER: Continuing on side two of cassette two. She’s giving us her recollections of the 40th reunion of Fairlington which has been going strong since 1943. All right Mrs. Reynolds, you continue.

MRS E REYNOLDS: Yes, I was going to say how we celebrated peace in Japan, V-J day?

DAUGHTER: Is that in June?

MRS E REYNOLDS: August. We celebrated.

DAUGHTER: I know where I was.

INTERVIEWER: I know where I was too.

MRS E REYNOLDS: You were at a ball game.

DAUGHTER: I was at a baseball game and I was sitting up on the fence behind the back - I mean the home plate, you know. I nearly fell off.

MRS E REYNOLDS: This was a local kids’ [and] local men[’s game], and my husband was one of the players. The two girls were with him at the game and the boy was with me and I gave him two covers of pots and pans so he could bang them around the neighborhood and then we celebrated with lemonade. The reason … it was a celebration was that sugar had been rationed and we hadn’t had enough sugar to make lemonade so we all had lemonade that night. Inaugural parade, nobody had televisions in Fairlington. I don’t think anybody did. Oh, somebody won one, a small, little tiny one but everybody went down to that inaugural parade. We made reservations at a restaurant in Shirlington and up high there was just an ordinary, you know, about this big, television set with the inaugural, but we just thought was wonderful. We were seeing it when it was happening and here we sat at tables having our lunch, the whole restaurant full looking at one little television, way up high there. Imagine now. That was one of the... now let’s see, oh, I substituted in schools too and I remember the buses were some trouble. One day I saw a boy set a girl’s hair on fire.

INTERVIEWER: Well, that wasn’t very neighborly of him.

MRS E REYNOLDS: Cynthia, what do you know? Remember one time you cut school to go swimming and, yeah, a whole bunch of them did.

DAUGHTER: Not to go swimming.

MRS E REYNOLDS: They cut school to go swimming.

INTERVIEWER: Daughter Cynthia’s recollection fails her at this point.

DAUGHTER: No, no, I remember very well. That’s the only time I ever did.

MRS E REYNOLDS: And then all the kid’s mothers except me wrote them excuses and I wouldn’t.

DAUGHTER: But they all got punished and I didn’t.

MRS E REYNOLDS: See. Pays to be honest.

DAUGHTER: This is why I remember it so well.

INTERVIEWER: This is while you were a Fairlingtonian.

DAUGHTER: At Dolley Madison. I think I was in ninth grade maybe. We were down on Hains Point, not swimming, but it was just cool yet to...

NARRATOR: Oh, I thought you were swimming.

DAUGHTER: No, no. And a teacher happened by, that’s how they knew where we were in the first place. In those days we were too honest, we all told you where we were, we all told you we didn’t go to school. The other parents just wrote notes. You wouldn’t. That’s why I remember it.

MRS E REYNOLDS: Cockroaches. At first we didn’t have any for quite a while. I don’t know where they came from but they came in droves. And people...

INTERVIEWER: How did you oppose them?

MRS E REYNOLDS: At first I don’t think people took them too seriously and they didn’t know how too, and then they finally got chlordane, I guess it was, and then you could get rid of them but before that they really had made a time. And I had never seen a cockroach until I was grown up and I guess some of the others hadn’t either. Oh and one thing my daughter remembers, we were out one night and saw a plane crash.

DAUGHTER: Oh yeah, the plane crash.

MRS E REYNOLDS: Yes, we couldn’t see the crash.

DAUGHTER: Or it came down anyway. We saw the lights coming down.

MRS E REYNOLDS: But we could see it from starting all the way down, all the way down. Then we heard about it afterward.

DAUGHTER: Up Shirley Highway.

NARRATOR: West of where we were.

DAUGHTER:... is that way. There’s D.C. That way. The other way. And not all that far from us. Probably no more than three miles. From North Fairlington.

MRS E REYNOLDS: And one time I saw beautiful Northern Lights.

INTERVIEWER: You did?

MRS E REYNOLDS: That I know was in the North.

INTERVIEWER: Well, I saw my first Northern Lights when I was at my home in Mississippi.

MRS E REYNOLDS: That’s where you were from.

INTERVIEWER: Yes. That was back in the early 1930’s. Even that far down it’s possible to see Northern Lights.

MRS E REYNOLDS: Well, I’ve nothing much but little family things, birthdays, and the people that came and I have the pictures and the names and Civic Association. I think I was going to not pay much attention to the first man who came and proposed a Civic Association. Then I started to get active in the League and he decided he didn’t want to be Mr. Beth Reynolds.

INTERVIEWER: He didn’t?

MRS E REYNOLDS: So he got active and he got much more active than I did. He was a citizen’s committee for school improvement and President of that, and he got star cook one year, and was really one of the leading spirits in the thing. Really, the people that (were) from Fairlington, really made waves in the County. Well, I think I’ve said enough.

INTERVIEWER: Thank you so much.

MRS E REYNOLDS: You’re certainly welcome.

Carol Johnson #

INTERVIEWER: This is … session one of an interview with Carol Johnson, native of Fairlington and Fairlington School as it was which is now the Fairlington Citizen’s, Fairlington Community Center is a place of interview. I am Moreau Chambers doing the interviewing. Miss Johnson, the floor is yours.

CAROL JOHNSON: Well, I came to offer some child’s eye views of Fairlington history.

INTERVIEWER: That’s what we need. We haven’t had enough of them.

CAROL JOHNSON: I now live in North Fairlington and have for six years, but I lived in South Fairlington at 3357 South Wakefield Circle from approximately the summer, I believe it was ‘47 until December of ‘49 and my father was recently out of the Army and came to Washington to work with the Atomic Energy Commission.

INTERVIEWER: You were about what age at this time?

CAROL JOHNSON: I was two years old, and while we lived there my first brother was born and when we moved in December ‘49, my mother was pregnant with my second brother. So really the very early times of our family were in Fairlington.

INTERVIEWER: You weren’t in preschool, were you?

CAROL JOHNSON: No. I attended no organized play or school activity. There were lots of children in the neighborhood. There were very few cars and lots of children. Our next-door neighbors were the Eisele’s, Harold and Ada Eisele and their children, Susan and John. They also moved away in ‘49. They had moved in, they were one of the original tenants, and the Eisele family and my family continue to be very close to this day. Their oldest son, John, just died a month ago of cancer in Annandale, at age 41. I just saw the whole family again in connection with that. I just wanted to describe, I guess, some the things, the way things looked then and the way it felt to be a small child in Fairlington.

INTERVIEWER: How was it?

CAROL JOHNSON: It was a lot of fun. We had a lot of fun.

INTERVIEWER: You had a number of playmates.

CAROL JOHNSON: Lots of playmates and we played really, we were small enough that we played right there in our own little neighborhood. My world was our court. And we backed up to a large area that now is fenced off into private patios but at that time, of course, it was all wide open and we children….

INTERVIEWER: There weren’t any private patios then.

CAROL JOHNSON: No.

INTERVIEWER: There were nice sidewalks that went behind all the houses.

CAROL JOHNSON: There were sidewalks that went behind and your little Stoop.

INTERVIEWER: And people would go bicycling along on them. I did.

CAROL JOHNSON: We didn’t have too many cyclists. We had so many little children there and we had this big back area and the children just played and played and played back there.

INTERVIEWER: It’s beautiful there. Course you didn’t have as much traffic as there is now on the Shirley Highway. That’s what you looked out on wasn’t it?

CAROL JOHNSON: No, no, from where we were, I was on the other side. We backed up to other houses on the back.

INTERVIEWER: Utah?

CAROL JOHNSON: Our backs faced the backs of houses on, is it 36th or?

INTERVIEWER: Might be 34th.

CAROL JOHNSON: 34th. 34^th^ - because 34th goes down and crosses the bridge. So the houses that face 34th backed up to our houses and we had this large grassy area in between.

INTERVIEWER: There was a large grassy area but there wasn’t too much traffic noise from down there when you were there.

CAROL JOHNSON: No, no, we couldn’t hear. Well, the highway stopped at Fairlington.

INTERVIEWER: At Leesburg Turnpike.

CAROL JOHNSON: It didn’t even go up there. When I remember looking across there was a sort of a little park on South Fairlington on the cliff looking across to North and I can remember when I was three years old looking across that chasm and the pavements stopped halfway between Shirlington and what is now the King Street exit. And the last exit you could get off was Shirlington and there was just grass then in the ravine between. So I remember before the pavement got to King Street.

INTERVIEWER: Well, that’s interesting. No one else has brought this up.

CAROL JOHNSON: Oh, I remember that very well. The pavement stopped halfway to the Shirlington, between Shirlington and King St.

INTERVIEWER: And you saw the big boys who were in the Cub Scouts.

CAROL JOHNSON: My next door neighbor, John, who just died, I don’t know if he was a Cub Scout, but he went to school in this building and I thought he was so big…. and I thought the school was just the other end of the world. Of course, I realize now it’s a block and a half. But we used to, kids used to play in that back area and it was seeded with grass, and there was grass but it got so much wear that it was really a lot of bare spots and when it would rain there were some areas that sort of collected some water and so we have some really outstanding mud puddles which we enjoyed particularly. There was a power house pretty directly behind our house.

INTERVIEWER: There was a power house in the center of every court practically.

CAROL JOHNSON: Almost. There were many of them. I remember it was a big treat for my friend Susan and I on a nice day to eat our lunches on a little table out next to the power house.

INTERVIEWER: That is nice. It [also] made soot on the laundry that people would hang out. Everybody hung out laundry, didn’t they?

CAROL JOHNSON: I don’t recall very much laundry hanging out. I remember the laundry room in the basement and the basements interconnected.

INTERVIEWER: Oh, I remember this. Such was the case even over on South Stafford. Well, have you some more recollections?

CAROL JOHNSON: A few more. One was that my aunt lived with us for a while. We lived in a two-bedroom townhouse, and when we lived there, my brother was a little baby. My aunt graduated from college in Pennsylvania and got a job in Washington and she moved in with us and she had her bed in the dining room and so we had five people all together there and that was a big treat for me. I really liked having her there. And after a few months then she got an apartment at McLean Gardens which is also run by Fairmac.

INTERVIEWER: Yes, yes, that was the same firm.

CAROL JOHNSON: I remember the grown-ups … used to in the summertime after the children were put to bed would sit out on blankets on the front grass and maybe have a radio or something playing and they enjoyed that. I remember hearing about a Peeping Tom in the neighborhood.

INTERVIEWER: Oh, they had that.

CAROL JOHNSON: There was a Peeping Tom in our neighborhood, and I think finally some of the men in the neighborhood sort of did a stakeout and caught him and it turned out to be one of the neighbors. My mother said that what the men did was they confronted the man very strongly and they said if you and your family move out and never come back we will not press charges and so that’s what they did.

INTERVIEWER: It suited his convenience to find another place to live.

CAROL JOHNSON: But he was really upsetting quite a number of people. There were a couple of women whose husbands were away someplace else on work assignments or maybe with the service or something and were alone with children and he particularly used to cause them trouble so it was very good to have him gone.

INTERVIEWER: Well, was this the only bad note that you remember being sounded at that time?

CAROL JOHNSON: That plus the time that my mother dropped all the milk bottles on the back stoop.

INTERVIEWER: That must have been quite a crash.

CAROL JOHNSON: Milk was delivered in those days and delivered to your back stoop and there was a day, I was about three and a half, and I insisted on carrying one of the bottles into the kitchen and my mother didn’t want me to because she thought that I’d drop it and I insisted and I went ahead and carried it in and I don’t know whether I dropped my bottle or not but mother was so frustrated she ended up breaking up two other bottles of milk that were on the porch. Mother wasn’t very happy that day. I remember a lot of bees in the back and getting stung regularly with bees.

INTERVIEWER: Yes. Yes. And maybe bumblebees too.

CAROL JOHNSON: Probably, yes. I think there were those. I remember there was children’s playground equipment in the center of … circle down at our end. I remember my mother would put a little harness on me with a leash and take a rolling grocery basket and we will walk to the Co-op on Quaker Lane for grocery shopping.

INTERVIEWER: Yes. Well, we remember the old Co-op. It was right across the street from where we lived at that time.

CAROL JOHNSON: I remember the harness. And we used to walk to St. Clement’s Church.

INTERVIEWER: Yes. I still walk to St. Clemen’’s Church.

CAROL JOHNSON: We moved from Fairlington to Clover Way in Alexandria so we continued at St. Clement’s. I was confirmed there and I was twelve years old and became my cousin’s godmother.

INTERVIEWER: Well, you must go back and reattend services there.

CAROL JOHNSON: Now I attend Emmanuel on the Hill.

INTERVIEWER: Oh do you.

CAROL JOHNSON: I attend there. And that’s about all from my own memories but then in the sixties my aunt and uncle and cousins lived in North Fairlington. They lived on Buchanan Street.

INTERVIEWER: Do you want to identify them by name?

CAROL JOHNSON: Yes. Their names are Harold and Catherine Hubbard and their children were Ann and Janet. My cousin Ann was killed in an automobile accident this past January in Alaska, and Janet who lives in Sacramento, California now. I just this summer heard a story about Janet that you might find entertaining to have in your records. My cousin Janet has always been a very independent little girl and always had a little bit of a wild streak to her and I have never heard this story before and I really laughed until I fell off my chair practically but when they moved into Fairlington, Janet would have been around six or so, no more than that, possibly younger than that, maybe five, and all the small children in her neighborhood, there was a standing rule that they were not to cross Buchanan Street and there was no need for them too because there was a lot of play area on their own side of the street.

INTERVIEWER: Does Buchanan dead-end?

CAROL JOHNSON: Buchanan dead-ends down at the bottom of the hill, but where they were there was just a large area of back yard areas, there was plenty of room for children. They had no need to cross the street. So this was the rule and all the children abided by it. Well, a year or so later, my aunt got a call from a neighbor who said "You know the rule of the children not crossing the street" and my aunt said "Yes" and the neighbor said "Well, you know what they’re doing, they’re going under the street". And these children had figured out a way to, I don’t know if they found a open manhole at one point or they lifted the manhole cover off and climbed down into the storm sewer system and it turned out that they continued to play down there for years and they would go down and they would take flashlights and they would go as far as they would go then kind of, go for a distance and they’d come back and the next time that they go down they’d go a little farther so they could gradually learn where everything went and it got to the point that sometime in the summertime when they were all home from school they would pack a bag lunch and they would go down in the sewers, in the storm sewers now...

INTERVIEWER: This is a good story.

CAROL JOHNSON: There were places where several storm sewers came together, there’d be a large chamber down there and that’s usually where they’d eat lunch was in this large chamber and they would explore, and they knew where everything, you know by the time that they’d done all this they knew where all these different accesses went up and where they went and the farthest they ever got was halfway to Annandale out Columbia Pike. I asked my cousin, I said "Weren’t you afraid of sudden storms?" and she said "Well, we knew there was a little risk, but we figured it would be all right" and I said "well, you’re very lucky".

INTERVIEWER: Well, that’s interesting.

CAROL JOHNSON: But she said there was very little vermin down there, there was an occasional mouse and occasional insects, but really she said there was not much animal life down there.

INTERVIEWER: Well, that’s good. I’m glad you recollected it.

CAROL JOHNSON: Oh, one more thing I can tell you about is Mrs. Beasley, who lived on the other side of the Eiseles from us. Mrs. Beasley was a very active Presbyterian and led Bible study groups in her home which my mother and Mrs. Eisele attended and the Beasleys later moved to the big old house on the corner of Janney’s Lane and Quaker Lane and for a long time they had horses in the field back there, but Mrs. Beasley was always very very active in the Presbyterian church and she was the one who gave the land for the Presbyterian church that’s now on that corner.

CAROL JOHNSON: And she was instrumental in its founding.

INTERVIEWER: So her house then made way for the Presbyterians…

CAROL JOHNSON: I believe the house is still there.

INTERVIEWER: Well, then it must be across the street.

CAROL JOHNSON: No, that old house was set way back and I think it’s still there, but I’m not absolutely sure and then the church is closer to Quaker Lane. But Mrs. Beasley lived in Fairlington before that.

INTERVIEWER: And then Chinquapin Village was off down beyond there.

CAROL JOHNSON: Chinquapin Village was on down … on down King-Street and I went to MacArther Elementary and so the Chinquapin Village children went to my school. I had a lot of friends from Chinquapin Village.

INTERVIEWER: And then we from here moved down to a block away from there, the corner of Yale and Vassar, so you know where that would be.

CAROL JOHNSON: Okay. Oh yes, I certainly know where that is.

Peggy Wertime #

Coming soon.