00:00:04.920 - 00:00:17.160

Interview with Sylvia Pechman. I'll just ask you a few questions about your life before you came to Bannockburg. Where did you grow up and when did you come to Washington?

00:00:17.220 - 00:00:26.540

I grew up in New York City. I came to Washington in 1945 after the war. When my husband returned home.

00:00:27.020 - 00:00:40.440

What kind of work were you doing? I was on... Me before I came. Yeah, tell me about that. Oh, I had a child.

00:00:42.040 - 00:00:55.080

Had you worked before you were married? I worked before I was married. I did some publicity work for a very large fabric house. I did some minor social work.

00:00:55.080 - 00:01:06.820

I was waiting to get into social work school. And actually what happened is the New York School of Social Work suggested that I needed to be more

00:01:06.820 - 00:01:12.740

sophisticated. So I should go out and do some volunteer work. I did volunteer work in college.

00:01:12.740 - 00:01:28.140

It was part of our coursework. And then a friend of mine and his parents came to New York from Los Angeles. And he said to me, you know, you really are, for somebody from New

00:01:28.140 - 00:01:38.140

York, very unsophisticated. And I suggested you take time off and you come to California and just see what the world is like. Which I did.

00:01:42.340 - 00:01:58.540

And I stayed there for about six months and decided I really wanted to go to graduate school. So did you get married then? I got married in September of 43. And then after you moved here, you had the kids.

00:01:58.700 - 00:02:07.440

Had Ellen. And where was Joe working then? Was he a treasurer? What job did he have? Was he a stock economist? Or was he...

00:02:08.480 - 00:02:21.100

Fiscal policy. And so then how did you hear about the Bannockburn project? I can't really tell you. We moved into a tiny little apartment in Alexandria.

00:02:24.340 - 00:02:37.240

Knew that we could purchase a house for $10,000 because we had a GI loan. And every house I sold was simple. Now, I had never lived in a house.

00:02:37.240 - 00:02:51.480

I always lived in a practice. But I didn't see any place I liked. And Joe was willing to abide by what I thought. The thing that bothered me most, that walking into houses at that

00:02:51.480 - 00:03:05.440

time, you walked right into a living room. And for some reason, I remember my mother always said, you never should live where you walk into a living room. And in essence, she was lousy.

00:03:06.140 - 00:03:14.380

And so we kind of mucked around and kept cleaning houses where we thought. And then Jane was born. And we were still in this lousy

00:03:14.380 - 00:03:21.340

two-bedroom apartment. And one bedroom was us. The kids slept in the bedroom. We slept in the living room.

00:03:21.340 - 00:03:31.580

And one day we moved right next door and we had a 6 by 7 bedroom for us. And someone told us about that and I had no idea who it was.

00:03:31.720 - 00:03:38.260

Were you actually at the auction? Yes. Had you been to meetings before that to find out about it? Yes.

00:03:38.320 - 00:03:46.060

I was the one who went. You know that picture of the auction? That's my movie. I went with my movie.

00:03:50.380 - 00:04:00.480

I don't think I was in a meeting before the auction. We heard about the auction, and we heard we could get houses for $10,000 that would probably be

00:04:00.480 - 00:04:08.040

designer homes. Was that your motivation, or did you know about the group, the kind of people that were here? They knew I was here.

00:04:08.100 - 00:04:14.940

So it was the house that attracted you. Oh, it was Maryland. I wanted the kids to go to the democratic schools.

00:04:15.440 - 00:04:33.040

That was really the deciding factor. And then after you got here, what did you think of the kind of community it was becoming? Did you find a lot of like-minded people living around you? Well, I knew a few of them because

00:04:33.040 - 00:04:42.900

of the endless meetings. I was on the kitchen committee and a whole bunch of stuff. The building process wasn't very

00:04:42.900 - 00:04:48.480

fun. You probably have heard that. It sounds pretty raw. Like it was hardship.

00:04:49.280 - 00:04:58.360

Pioneer housing when we moved in. Oh, no. Really? No roads or no sidewalks. We still don't have a sidewalk.

00:04:59.540 - 00:05:09.540

When We were the second family to move in. This was in '49. And it was late September, early October, in '49.

00:05:10.760 - 00:05:18.980

There wasn't any grass. It was mud. But That really never bothered us. We knew eventually we would have grass.

00:05:19.700 - 00:05:32.980

And we were city people, you know, grass. But it was a house, and we loved the design of the house. That was the main issue. Turned out our neighbor next door

00:05:32.980 - 00:05:50.260

was Stewart's, and Chuck had been the executive director of Bureau of Life Statistics until we'd known him. I don't think there was anybody else on the street that we knew. We met them, but we didn't know them.

00:05:50.660 - 00:06:07.480

How soon did you decide that a nursery school would be a good idea? There you go. I was the, you probably know, a female child who died. And he and Vanier, we lived across the street.

00:06:07.700 - 00:06:19.060

The three of us got together and got that nursery school going. I came out of the Beverly Hills Nursery School in Virginia, which was a very far end nursery school. So we put that in.

00:06:20.720 - 00:06:33.440

And I was the spearhead on it. It doesn't sound very modest, does it? And the old programs, and I formally became a member of the school because I'd been a member.

00:06:34.300 - 00:06:40.460

In Bethesda or in Montgomery County? In Bannockburn. In Bannockburn, oh. It had its own chapter? Yeah.

00:06:40.520 - 00:06:48.760

Mm-hmm. It was a community of pretty highly educated and pretty motivated women, I presume. It was a...

00:06:50.740 - 00:07:05.040

The league that we founded in this house was just for these 24 houses, and people who lived in Bannockburn Heights and across the street. And I think out of that we got about 20 members.

00:07:06.140 - 00:07:21.660

I think Selma Janis is still a member. Let's see, Lois Vassinas was a member. Theo was not. Ruth Yaffe was a member.

00:07:21.880 - 00:07:31.300

I think Sylvia Small was a member. Annie Soslin was not. She was going to school. What did the group do as a league,

00:07:31.300 - 00:07:38.740

as a group? Whatever the issues at the league were. Went to the county council? You don't know about the league.

00:07:38.740 - 00:07:48.360

Yeah, but I mean, did you, what kind of, what were your issues at that time? Schools were an issue. Mainly.

00:07:50.140 - 00:08:00.480

And that was 40 some odd years, 45 years ago. But schools were an issue. Learning about county government was an issue.

00:08:01.340 - 00:08:18.160

Putting an elected school board in, we had appointed school co-chairs until that time. Concordia, we certainly remember some of the issues. What other community activities did you get involved with or

00:08:18.160 - 00:08:34.760

start? Well, first was the league, second was the music school, and then I learned that there was a class in dance, dramatics, music, wrestling and tumbling, and art, in Silver Spring.

00:08:34.760 - 00:08:39.300

Wrestling and cuddling [tumbling?] and all right, in Silver Spring. And I'm wanting my kids to go to that.

00:08:40.440 - 00:08:51.060

And I phoned them and I just didn't want to drive five o'clock in the afternoon then to Silver Spring. And the gal that I talked with

00:08:51.060 - 00:09:07.740

said to me, why don't you think about forming one in your neighborhood? Well, the clubhouse was there. So I formed, it was called the Community Arts Co-op. The purpose of that co-op was to highlight for the community, the

00:09:07.740 - 00:09:19.400

large community, the importance of cultural activities for kids and those that I mentioned. And eventually we would hope that the county would take it over.

00:09:19.400 - 00:09:29.620

And they did. But the classes were all in the clubhouse. Where did it go after the clubhouse? It went to recreation centers in the county.

00:09:29.680 - 00:09:36.240

Really? So it was a pioneering effort for Western... Yeah, and the other part of that was Adventure Theatre, which we started.

00:09:36.260 - 00:09:45.820

Did you start that? Oh my gosh. Many other people. No, I was not alone. The spearhead was a gal named Judy Frosch, and you probably know that

00:09:45.820 - 00:09:52.280

Brian Frosch is... Yeah, I know Brian. Yeah. Judy started it.

00:09:52.280 - 00:10:05.300

Oh, that's wonderful. And Gallant and Annabee Havens, and me, and Helen Avery, a whole host of women. That's how things started.

00:10:05.500 - 00:10:17.720

Our main objective was to have theater for young children performed by adults. And we used to meet at Leland Junior High. And it was jammed to the past.

00:10:17.720 - 00:10:24.640

First thing we did was check into the store. I remember those. Did you live there? I remember those days, yeah.

00:10:24.860 - 00:10:32.360

As a child? Yeah. Oh, where did you live? On the other side of the county, Silver Spring. Did your mother take you to those

00:10:32.360 - 00:10:36.020

activities? Yeah. No kidding? Yeah. Oh, that's wonderful. I didn't know you were going to go

00:10:36.020 - 00:10:42.480

there. What else did you do at Camden? A UW. An election.

00:10:44.540 - 00:10:58.940

Were you heavily involved in democratic politics? We were fighting for an elected school board, and that was my main operation. And Lucy Keckler and Lucy Ma were

00:10:58.940 - 00:11:07.600

my ticket. And I got them, the other people. We went to see them. We said, hey, you've got to run

00:11:07.600 - 00:11:13.480

for school. I knew Lucy Tickler because she was chairman of the education committee in the League of Women Voters.

00:11:14.180 - 00:11:25.220

So I knew her then. I knew Lucy Mara from Alexandria in the League of Women Learners. And I thought the two Lucys would be beautiful. And two of my friends agreed.

00:11:26.000 - 00:11:34.340

And to this day, those two women are still very close friends. They were very good choices. They're solid.

00:11:35.280 - 00:11:49.440

So it was that. And then it got to be, then I went, it used to all be nonpartisan, then I got partisan. And worked for the election of

00:11:49.440 - 00:11:57.800

Governor Agnew. Somebody had to do it. And then we realized how to. Well, he was running against a man

00:11:57.800 - 00:12:01.760

named Mahoney. Yeah. Your home is your castle. That's right.

00:12:03.620 - 00:12:09.000

We had to vote for him. And so we would not vote for you if I was your counselor. So Mitch Cooper, who's the only

00:12:09.000 - 00:12:21.140

prominent lawyer in the county, I was sending letters to the New York Times, America, we apologized, but we didn't have the money for an ad. So I was in college for a while.

00:12:22.640 - 00:12:43.760

I guess in 1960, when the Kennedys came in, Dorothy Goldberg and Jane Watts, Jane Works, formed a group with Dr. Hendon, who'd been superintendent of schools in the district, in a program for young children.

00:12:46.860 - 00:12:56.040

There had been a precursor of that, a Head Start, with Ford Foundation money to the district of Columbia. And so I used to work in one of

00:12:56.040 - 00:13:05.100

those programs. Doing what? As a Head Start aide, volunteer, assistant teacher. Was that in the district? In the district.

00:13:06.680 - 00:13:19.960

And one day somebody said to me, listen, why don't you get a job at Head Start? Know all this stuff. So I went for an interview and I got a job in, you know. In 65? In 65.

00:13:20.500 - 00:13:30.180

Was that out in Rockville or? National office. Oh, the headquarters. What were you doing? I was an education consultant.

00:13:30.740 - 00:13:46.220

But I was not a consultant. I was on the education staff for curriculum in Pennsylvania, in funding programs throughout the United States. And I got the proposal from Montgomery County And I had a

00:13:46.220 - 00:13:59.780

terrible time. I knew everybody in the county. I didn't think poverty money should go to me down in county. So Dr. Whittier said to me, Sylvia, I want to remind you what

00:13:59.780 - 00:14:13.220

we have in uptown. Esther Delaplaine was telling me about her drives out to the far reaches of the community. She worked in the county as a social worker.

00:14:13.860 - 00:14:26.460

Someone else in the community did, so I forgot who it was. But Esther was on the staff. And I was on the national level, which was fascinating.

00:14:30.040 - 00:14:39.840

How long did you stay there? Forever. Until I retired eight years ago. In '82? Yeah.

00:14:41.920 - 00:15:01.660

What were you when you retired? Deputy director of three programs, child development associate, which is credentialed for teachers, which we worked on, parent-child service, which was program for children zero to three, Children's Zero to Three.

00:15:05.740 - 00:15:28.600

Daycare. Oh, yes, it was daycare in federal buildings and it was White House initiative, the public and private daycare.

00:15:29.340 - 00:15:44.980

And trying to get the private industry to have daycare in large factories, as they had up in Boston, KLH had one, and Strive Drive had one, and we used that pattern.

00:15:45.600 - 00:15:52.400

Were you responsible for getting daycare at the labor department? No. Sorry. But I can tell you who was.

00:15:53.720 - 00:16:09.060

Ruth Nadel worked on that. Did that take you out of community activities? Absolutely. It did, after you got your job? Well, the kids were growing up.

00:16:11.140 - 00:16:22.660

And Ellen had already gone to college, and Jane was speaking as well. And my husband had a very important job, which required a lot of entertaining on my part.

00:16:22.660 - 00:16:26.260

He was at the Fed at that point? Never. Oh, I'm sorry. Where was he? Brookings.

00:16:26.280 - 00:16:40.440

Brookings, that's right. Never at the Fed. And so being a wife, the wife of a director, and having a full-time job, I just, it was impossible for

00:16:40.440 - 00:16:49.020

me to do all of this. And I wasn't interested anymore. I was only interested when my kids were little. I wanted an environment for them.

00:16:49.200 - 00:16:56.340

And that's what we had. I thought. Did Benny Brim shape you in any way? Or did you help shape Benny Brim?

00:16:56.340 - 00:17:08.800

[Bannockburn?] Oh, I don't think I helped shape him. Well, it certainly did. The early cooperative of the nursery set a pattern, didn't it? I just don't know.

00:17:08.800 - 00:17:19.960

I don't know what happened to the nursery school after Jane left. And nobody's ever, I know they're having an anniversary dinner or something. Nobody knows who's involved.

00:17:20.140 - 00:17:26.920

So they have a pool. I don't think they have pool anywhere near the street. But did the kind of neighborhood

00:17:26.940 - 00:17:36.520

it was have an influence on you as a person, do you think? Probably. I can't imagine living in a neighborhood where everybody was your friend.

00:17:36.960 - 00:17:51.820

Where your kids knew that if you weren't home, they could go to any house on the street. Any house on the street. Where the back street was always loaded with kids running up and

00:17:51.820 - 00:18:07.460

down, in and out of everybody's house. And I don't know how much talking we've done with Ellen as to what the neighborhood meant to her, but she seems to think more about it now than I think she did at the time.

00:18:07.740 - 00:18:26.340

She had a lot of friends out of the neighborhood. One of the advantages to working in school board in the week when you noticed is you went beyond the 24 hours. We had a very good, because I had my husband's job and my job.

00:18:29.280 - 00:18:43.840

Could a Bannockburn kind of community be started in this day and age when most women have to work outside of the home? It's a very good question, Claudia. The two women who worked at the nursery school, Giselle Janis, who

00:18:43.840 - 00:18:59.020

always participated, she took time off, And Ruth Bowen, who used to make cookies, had occasionally take time off from her job. And Sarah Goldstein, I don't know if you ever knew her. She died in the early years.

00:18:59.720 - 00:19:16.660

Was a psychologist. And the people in the nursery school, the only people who were working was Zoe Janis when we first moved here. Nobody else.

00:19:16.700 - 00:19:26.020

Oh, and Dorothy Brechtow. Dorothy got me. We taught at Wood Acres. No, not Wood Acres, San Antonio School.

00:19:27.900 - 00:19:43.510

Well, it was a local kindergarten, a local grade school. I can't remember the name of the school. It's off now south of here. Well, Sylvia, what do you think of

00:19:43.510 - 00:19:43.780

the school? Willowville, a great school. Like they had another great school. So I'll pass that. Well, Sylvia, it was a great

00:19:43.780 - 00:19:53.540

school. But Anyway, you think the neighborhood was basically fueled by the women who were able to? I'm trying to think.

00:19:53.800 - 00:20:00.740

Pearl Stewart went back to college to get her degree. Rose for Sinners was in the New Year and the Lovers.

00:20:01.020 - 00:20:10.160

Rosalind Teller was next door. They were there for about two years and he joined the Foreign Service. Getterweiss was teaching.

00:20:11.260 - 00:20:24.340

I'm going down the street now. After that, There was a family that had no children. The Singletary's had four kids,

00:20:24.340 - 00:20:38.800

but not nursery school. The Elder Johnson's kids were in nursery school, and the McLeight kids were in nursery school. The McIntyre family, kids who had grown up, I'm really going through

00:20:38.800 - 00:20:47.180

all the houses. Salzman's kids went to Greenacres because Annie was finishing College, finishing graduate school.

00:20:47.780 - 00:20:55.060

Connie Mormon's kids went to the Niobrara Nursery School. Teddy Bradley's kids did not. The Olsens didn't have kids.

00:20:55.600 - 00:21:06.580

The Wuerd kids were too old. Silly Small's son went to the nursery school. Yaffe went to the nursery school. And McGowan went to the nursery

00:21:06.680 - 00:21:12.560

school. Who's you? See, I can't remember the name of the school, but I remember. That's fun.

00:21:14.480 - 00:21:23.480

So You don't think you would have been a different person in any way if you'd lived someplace else? You think your kids would have been different? I think wherever I lived I would have made a memory of mine, so

00:21:23.480 - 00:21:38.640

there's no question in my mind. It's a very hard question, because I had never thought of it. I think I came with a sense of

00:21:38.640 - 00:21:45.340

what I thought as a child. And I wanted my kids to do the same thing. And everybody here felt the same

00:21:45.340 - 00:21:51.780

way. In a sense, we were very homogeneous. Most of the women had finished

00:21:51.780 - 00:21:58.700

college. Nobody worked. Half the husbands worked for the federal government. They were in a carpool.

00:21:59.480 - 00:22:09.840

There were two carpools, rather. Not too many people were in need. I think one of the men was an attorney in a private law firm.

00:22:09.840 - 00:22:29.800

Leo Sosin was a psychiatrist. I have a feeling that everybody else was more federal authorities. Was Joe involved in the community in any extent? He was involved in the nursery school, and he helped Joe get

00:22:29.800 - 00:22:39.280

before that. Mm-hmm. He was involved when the road was going through our house. And he did a major memo on what should happen.

00:22:39.400 - 00:22:49.440

Mass Avenue extended? No, no, it wasn't Mass Avenue. It was the Cabin John Park thing. Oh, that extension. It was supposed to come.

00:22:49.680 - 00:22:56.040

It either came through our house or next to our house. This happened the second year we were here.

00:22:56.040 - 00:23:06.680

Oh gosh. I mean, oh joy. We, so he was not really, he went to everything.

00:23:06.680 - 00:23:14.040

Oh, and we had a Brown[ies] unit, a Girl Scout unit. I guess I was Girl Scout unit, with Teddy Bradley.

00:23:16.500 - 00:23:27.540

I suspect this would have happened any place. How was it to... How did it function as a cohesive community?

00:23:27.880 - 00:23:36.880

Was there a lot of arguing, or did people seem to know what they wanted? Once we got in here, there was a lot of arguing with those meetings they had. They were endless.

00:23:37.860 - 00:23:48.540

And everybody had a point of view. And it got a little tiring. But we did get a very good designer and architect.

00:23:49.940 - 00:23:58.040

Demers? Brennan. And Mary Herling was really instrumental in getting this going.

00:23:58.140 - 00:24:07.120

Mary Herling and Murray Weiss. And her, she was absolutely focused. She knew what she wanted.

00:24:08.000 - 00:24:15.840

And she wanted these houses. And the co-op fell apart after the first 24 houses. Maybe the next block was co-op.

00:24:16.560 - 00:24:27.160

But after that. Fell apart In what sense? In that we didn't build cooperatively, I don't think. Individual builders, rather than? I believe so.

00:24:27.320 - 00:24:39.880

I think the third project on Wilson Lane, and I'm not sure how many of you know this, that Mary Mack came in and somebody else and they built the rest of it. And I don't think there was any

00:24:39.880 - 00:24:48.060

real relationship between the people in this block and the rest of the community. Oh, is that right? I didn't know that.

00:24:53.200 - 00:25:00.780

And maybe I'm wrong about this. It would be interesting to hear if anybody else thinks. We had the best houses. We really did.

00:25:01.620 - 00:25:13.900

The co-op lost. Everybody who was a member of the co-op contributed to our house. And so our house cost $2,000 more

00:25:13.900 - 00:25:25.820

than what we had agreed to pay for it, and that came out of community funds. Oh, did it? Oh. Was it hard to do? I mean, with these contentious

00:25:25.940 - 00:25:39.020

meetings that you found tiring, was it worth the effort, or was it almost too exhausting? From my point of view, to get a house like this, it was worth the effort. And to get the kind of neighbors that I might have had anyplace

00:25:39.020 - 00:25:47.460

else that I knew. If we moved to Guy Farkin, we would have had similar kind of neighbors. If we moved to parts of Chevy Chase, I think.

00:25:47.780 - 00:26:10.520

Any young new community at that time, it was right after the war. And it was the beginning of the end of the Truman administration. And maybe I'm being contradictory when I say I'm not sure that they have had a real effect on my life.

00:26:10.560 - 00:26:19.700

Everything you do has an effect on your life. The important thing is that there isn't anybody on this block that I'm not friendly with.

00:26:20.460 - 00:26:34.320

And if anything happens to anybody, I know, and everybody knows, that you count on people who live here. Had you done anything in a cooperative setting before? Other than the nursery school and the classroom?

00:26:35.220 - 00:26:43.220

No, I lived in New York. And I don't even know if they had any such things. What were your family's politics?

00:26:43.320 - 00:26:52.160

Were they? Democrats. Yeah. Was there a tradition of belonging to organizations there that you brought with you?

00:26:52.280 - 00:27:03.040

What did you want for your kids when you moved in here? Well, I wanted my kids to, because it's funny, that's what we wanted them to learn. I wanted them to really be

00:27:03.040 - 00:27:13.920

educated as I was. I wanted them to adjust to the rhythms that they would need to learn. And I don't know what I did about it, because you asked me that

00:27:13.920 - 00:27:22.380

question. I wanted to make sure that they had a good education. And had a background in music and

00:27:22.380 - 00:27:31.320

reading and so forth. Because that was what was important to me. And Ellen got a PhD. And Jamie

00:27:32.720 - 00:27:45.340

decided not to get a PhD, she got a Master's. So both girls were educated, and I think both girls married great guys. Unfortunately, the only guy that

00:27:45.340 - 00:27:59.160

drew us from Dick was Jack, a Latino Cherokee's father, who some of you know. I could fit into the family, and he's a professor, containing medicine, and I'm a nurse.

00:28:03.620 - 00:28:19.740

I think I wanted them to be as well adjusted as they could within the rigors of what was presented to them. We didn't ever do their homework. We never insisted on checking

00:28:19.740 - 00:28:33.580

homework, unless we were asked. We had a hands-off policy, vis-a-vis homework, but not on other things. I sure didn't have a hands-off policy on the boys who come to

00:28:33.580 - 00:28:44.380

these tests. And I'm sure that if you ever ask Ellen that question, she would say, she's true. What were the kids like in this neighborhood?

00:28:44.380 - 00:28:58.520

Do you think they were affected by having grown up in this kind of community in a way that you can quantify? I really don't know. I'm trying to think.

00:29:02.140 - 00:29:08.740

The Brett Howard Kid is at the University of Wisconsin, and he teaches. I'm not sure what the business girls do.

00:29:08.740 - 00:29:14.840

I think my mom's teaching grad school. The Stewart kids, I think Denise and Gaffer's.

00:29:15.480 - 00:29:28.980

I'm not sure what Don's doing. How about in their world view though, in their attitudes toward their own communities? Do you hear from their parents about how they've gone? No. The other parents, I mean, the

00:29:28.980 - 00:29:36.080

Smalls are very good friends. I know about them. The Weisses are very good friends. Have you interviewed Murray or

00:29:36.080 - 00:29:40.580

someone? No, no, I've left a message at their house. They just got back. They did, okay.

00:29:42.720 - 00:29:53.600

Their kids and our kids occasionally see each other if they're insane. The Mormon kids were friendly, the Sultan kids were friendly, Sultan and the women were.

00:29:54.240 - 00:30:05.060

Janie was quite, I mean, Eric Janice was a very good friend of hers when she was growing up, as was Jeffrey Small. And the first family that lived

00:30:05.060 - 00:30:13.940

there were the Moores. Certainly, mine and Jane's closest friends, and still are. And Ellen and Jane see their kids

00:30:13.940 - 00:30:20.240

whenever there's an occasion. But their kids live in very different communities. So I just don't know.

00:30:20.240 - 00:30:30.460

I'd be interested in what, did you interview anybody in what we used to call the pilot project? Not yet. Oh, my first one. I'd be very interested in what

00:30:30.460 - 00:30:39.000

other people said. Where did Joe grow up? Was he from New York, too? Yeah, he grew up in Brooklyn. What was his attitude toward the cooperative kind of a

00:30:39.000 - 00:30:53.440

neighborhood? Was he here because the house was here, or did he? I regret to tell you, We were here because it was a house that we couldn't find a $10,000 house. And we told him that everything here was going to be $10,000.

00:30:54.780 - 00:31:10.340

And it truly wasn't. How did he feel about anything? Well, his closest friends here were Oscar Willey, Sam Norman, Murray Weiss, and a carpool with Chuck Stewart and Toby.

00:31:10.600 - 00:31:21.240

And all these guys were very friendly. He used to have lots of Christmas parties. The Olsens across the street were the mainstay. He was an organist in the old church.

00:31:21.740 - 00:31:33.900

And she would have been the first woman astronaut. And her husband was a pro back then. At the fair, it was a party environment. I mean, it used to entertain me.

00:31:34.000 - 00:31:44.480

Really. Did you go out, did you use the valley at all? Did you have, was that part of the, what went on? How important was the clubhouse? The clubhouse was very important.

00:31:44.760 - 00:32:06.720

The ministry school, the Girl Scouts, the community arts co-op. How about for adults socializing? We were not part of that. We had enough, I mean, we had a big social life. And we saw all the people on this street that we wanted to.

00:32:08.920 - 00:32:26.880

But I don't think, I think by the time the rest of the community was filled, We were, our kids were growing up. Oh. Were you at all involved in any of the civil rights stuff? Tell me about that.

00:32:27.360 - 00:32:34.780

There was a big civil rights movement boycotting René College [Glenn Echo Park]. And we were involved in that. What did you do?

00:32:35.500 - 00:32:47.180

Worked around with practice. Mainly. Did you do anything else that was community based? That involved civil rights? Anything involving that?

00:32:47.180 - 00:33:01.760

Well, actually, when the schools were integrated, I was on one of the committees that was working on integration, worked in Clara Barton, which is where the kids were, all the maids that we had came from Clara Barton area.

00:33:02.660 - 00:33:11.000

So we knew them. It was no big deal. And they knew us. And their kids went to this white school with all the people they

00:33:11.000 - 00:33:17.780

knew. Now, one of the interesting things is the first day of school, the black children were really dressed.

00:33:18.480 - 00:33:32.680

And the Bannockburn kids were not. They looked great, you know. And our maid at the time was a gal named Margaret McKay who had six kids and a lot of the school, and

00:33:32.680 - 00:33:40.680

all the kids knew each other. But they never brought black children home. The other thing is, the kids never

00:33:40.680 - 00:33:56.040

got friendly with the kids in Grand Island County either. It was a different group, and that bothered me. We had a choice when we moved here to send our kids to Somerset or Clara Barton.

00:33:56.040 - 00:34:05.580

Oh, I can do that. Oh, really? And we thought about it. And while Somerset was probably had more people like us intellectually.

00:34:07.120 - 00:34:16.560

We decided we didn't want the kids to travel 45 minutes out of us. But more than that, I thought, and so did Joan, and I think everybody else here, that this was a

00:34:16.560 - 00:34:26.260

wonderful opportunity to live in the neighborhood with low-income people in the Cabin John houses. That our kids would get a sense of what the world was like.

00:34:26.260 - 00:34:48.640

Do you think they did? No. I knew the parents there, but we were different. And if there is a disappointment, that's it. I mean, I had really hoped that my kids would know people from

00:34:48.640 - 00:35:02.880

another income group and people who had different values. That did not happen. Did the Bannockburn parents dominate the Clara Barton PTA? Well, they were just the 24

00:35:02.960 - 00:35:07.980

halves. Oh, that's right. And then the next group. And then that next group.

00:35:08.400 - 00:35:22.320

Well, they had things I never heard of. Suppers, like church suppers, which was foreign to me. The people I met were very different than anybody I'd ever known in my life.

00:35:23.800 - 00:35:31.520

Southern? Southern. They were less educated. High school education, I think.

00:35:33.900 - 00:35:43.300

But you know, when it came to things to do for the school, those people were baking pies all the time. I never baked a pie at school.

00:35:45.020 - 00:35:59.420

I would like to say because I was probably the last baker. But they were very tuned in to the church supper thing. And that was really new for us, although we participated in everything early on.

00:36:00.240 - 00:36:13.320

When the black kids came in, a few of us, including me, were at the school to help read the kids, because their mothers knew us. That's interesting what you said

00:36:13.320 - 00:36:22.060

about Glen Echo not really being a very poor, poor neighborhood. It isn't now. It could hardly afford a house there.

00:36:22.060 - 00:36:30.920

No, it's very upscale. But I remember at the time it was a working class neighborhood. Very working class. The only rich person that lived

00:36:30.920 - 00:36:37.700

there was Roger Tory Peterson, the great guy. Oh, did he live there? Yeah, he was in the nursery school. Oh, my gosh.

00:36:38.360 - 00:36:49.640

He lived in Glen Echo. And what was the kid's name? And his mother was participating. His father never participated.

00:36:49.640 - 00:36:59.720

Wow. That's amazing. Why is that amazing? Well, because when you think of the canal being such a bird sanctuary, it's a real birders

00:36:59.800 - 00:37:10.240

area. And I'm wondering to what extent his living along the canal influenced him in his life as a... He's Mr. Bird in America.

00:37:10.240 - 00:37:17.040

He is Mr. Bird. And his books are simply gorgeous. I don't know where they are, and I can't remember his wife's name.

00:37:17.040 - 00:37:24.860

She was on the board of the nursery school. And I don't think he came up much. He was very busy.

00:37:26.300 - 00:37:32.220

He was either away or he was writing. I haven't thought about them in years, thank you.

00:37:32.320 - 00:37:46.520

But they were the only people in Glen Echo who were in the nursery school. You know, when the nursery school was restricted at first to Bannockburn and some people that lived down the street, it was a

00:37:46.520 - 00:37:59.240

family named, which was Ice family, and Phil was still there. He was the father that washed all the windows when we tried to open the school. And I guess we had some kids from

00:37:59.240 - 00:38:07.240

Dinecran Heights. We had a Peterson from Glen Echo, and we might have had somebody else. Somebody from Calentone.

00:38:08.040 - 00:38:20.460

I see her Facebook [this was recorded in 1990...], but I don't remember her name. But the first year of the nursery school was fraught with every conceivable problem, and it had to close.

00:38:21.060 - 00:38:30.230

We didn't have a road. We couldn't get up there. What else plagued it? When you couldn't get up to the school.

00:38:30.230 - 00:38:38.720

That was it, huh? That was it. The kids walked. And I was just refused to have Janie walking in the mud and slosh

00:38:38.720 - 00:38:46.020

in the wintertime. How did she get there? How did you get there? Did you go down to MacArthur, or did you go across the woods? Well, if we walked, we'd go across

00:38:46.020 - 00:38:50.100

the woods. But these were three-year-olds, and it was wintertime. We had a carpool.

00:38:52.540 - 00:39:02.580

If anything stands in my head, it was the carpool. We had a carpool for everything. And in our carpool of five guys, There was always guys.

00:39:04.600 - 00:39:16.180

Everybody in that carpool, if your car went on Monday, every mother, because there weren't anybody else, had an obligation if you were in trouble or couldn't get anything.

00:39:17.220 - 00:39:26.460

Then there became the Tom Moody question. What happens if your car is to go on Monday and nobody is free to drive it?

00:39:29.600 - 00:39:43.380

And Murray Weinstraut wrote a very nice piece many, many years ago. It was Marshall Robinson, who lived in the next section, had a 60th birthday. And Murray wrote a piece for him

00:39:43.380 - 00:39:48.460

on the carpool. And it was absolutely marvelous. I feel really good. This figure is largely in the

00:39:48.460 - 00:39:56.500

spring show over us. I think in the old days, there were lots of songs about carpooling. It was a big thing.

00:39:57.660 - 00:40:08.880

We had a trial here. Wasn't it nice? It was wonderful. I used to play badminton. And I'll tell you, Claudia, I

00:40:08.880 - 00:40:18.220

wouldn't move for anything. Really? I love my house. Neighborhood has changed.

00:40:18.220 - 00:40:30.290

New people have moved in and they're a lot younger. People next door have no kids anymore. People downstairs have two little kids and the hoops are down there and have one little girl.

00:40:30.290 - 00:40:47.300

Little girl. And then up the street there's another couple who don't have any children. And he's the assistant principal

00:40:49.540 - 00:40:58.920

at one of the private schools. And Alan Richardson's boys are all gone. And Teddy Bradley's kids are all

00:40:58.920 - 00:41:07.280

gone. And occasionally, you see some of the kids you knew. But the kids, the glue of the

00:41:07.280 - 00:41:21.720

neighborhood, is that how parents, how adults knew each other? We knew each other because we built the houses together. And I'm not sure the kids were the girls. The house was a girl's house.

00:41:26.100 - 00:41:32.580

So you had a Brownie troop and you had a Girl Scout troop. And they used to have a school and they had little classes up the clubhouse.

00:41:33.120 - 00:41:48.560

How long did the classes go on? How many years? Well, the classes in art, Ellen left when she went to junior high school, as did her dad's class. She left all of that when she went

00:41:48.560 - 00:41:56.520

to junior high. The classes really were for children 5 to 12. Wrestling and tumbling for the

00:41:56.520 - 00:42:04.900

boys, and it was for boys, not for girls. So they went on all during the '50s then? Mm-hmm. That's interesting.

00:42:05.420 - 00:42:15.680

I think, you know, you're going to have to check me when you talk to other people to see whether my memory is correct and what things are. It would be interesting to read

00:42:15.680 - 00:42:32.780

what other people have said, particularly Dorothy Brechauer and Sylvia Swarrel and Teddy Bradley and Annie Sorkin and Yetta Weiss. And Rosalind Tolman. Rosalind Tolman next door was less

00:42:32.780 - 00:42:44.440

involved because they took on the foreign side. What did you think was surrounding the neighbors thought of the pilot project? I understand that they didn't like it.

00:42:44.440 - 00:42:54.520

They thought there were Jewish people living there in a prominent area. However, I'm very well in place. I was always friendly the family

00:42:54.520 - 00:43:12.160

across the street, everybody who ever lived there. On Brock's day, There were some families who no longer lived there whose kids were in the activities of the clubhouse. Actually, the activities in the clubhouse brought together people

00:43:12.160 - 00:43:22.160

from all sections of the class. Because we needed 45 kids in dance. It was also a mother's dance

00:43:22.160 - 00:43:26.260

class. Which you were in? Oh, yes. Oh, that's wonderful.

00:43:27.060 - 00:43:36.540

Everything that I could. One time I had a tennis court in Bethel blown away. It was too bad.

00:43:37.060 - 00:43:45.560

But the, oh, I was involved in the swimming pool. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Did whatever perceived opposition there was to the private project

00:43:45.660 - 00:44:02.120

from the neighbors, did that sort of dissipate quickly? I'm not sure how real it was, to be very honest. The land had a cobbler in the park. And we went to different schools.

00:44:02.640 - 00:44:15.360

Bobby Plaza, excuse me, lived across the street. So my own case, but what you might, I don't know whether you'll be interested, I would be

00:44:15.360 - 00:44:27.500

interested in knowing what some of the other people, the long-time residents on the street, said that would refresh my own memory, perhaps. We've got a bunch of them there,

00:44:27.500 - 00:44:34.940

so turn your views in. And who are you doing? Who are you doing? The babysitting co-op was your lifeline.

00:44:34.980 - 00:44:46.860

The babysitting co-op was our lifeline. It was absolutely great for all of us because the children knew who the babysitters were and it was

00:44:46.860 - 00:44:54.180

just very very important And I don't know where we would have found kids to babysit. But that was started very early on.

00:44:54.560 - 00:44:58.940

How could I have forgotten that? That was important. Very important. It was really important, yeah.

00:44:58.940 - 00:45:08.540

Because you could escape. You know, it's very funny. Escape is not a word that I thought of when my teachers showed up.

00:45:09.960 - 00:45:26.340

I had a very full other life, although every organization I belonged to had a rule that you couldn't call after 3 o'clock in the afternoon because the children came home from school. And you didn't call at night because husbands were home.

00:45:28.780 - 00:46:01.040

I don't know whether this is going on now. I suspect not. Thank you. Thank you.