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Oral History

Oral History: Gertrude “Trudy” Ensign

U.S. Army Intelligence Analyst During World War II

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Oral histories are used to understand historical events, actors, and movements from the point of view of real people’s personal experiences.

1920-2022

The life of long-time Arlington resident Gertrude "Trudy" Ensign was recently memorialized at Clarendon United Methodist Church. Born October 4, 1920 on a farm in southwest Iowa, Ensign left Iowa to take a job with the Army Security Agency (a precursor to the NSA) during World War II, settling in Arlington, where she lived until her death on February 28, 2022.

In November 2017, Ensign recorded an oral history with the Center for Local History. She spoke about her work during the war, as well as life in Arlington.

In this excerpt from the oral history, she talks about her work during the war. While not a code breaker herself, Ensign worked in Army communications.

Link to oral history blog post.

Col. Mosser presents Mrs. Gertrude C. Brown (Ensign) with an Outstanding Performance Rating Award on 30 March, 1971 at Arlington Hall Station (from reverse of photo)

Narrator: Gertrude Ensign
Interviewers: Judith Knudsen
Date: November 6, 2017

INTERVIEWER: Well, when you say there were people there, they were cracking Japanese code. That was not your job.

NARRATOR: Yes. Not my job.

INTERVIEWER: So what codes were you getting? Were you getting the codes that had been cracked, and then you had to encipher with the—

NARRATOR: Okay. This is the part that I think we have to understand, that none of this could happen if we didn’t have field stations.

INTERVIEWER: Okay.

NARRATOR: Because that’s where our intercept came from. Like Vint Hill Farm was an intercept station, and they had a whole field of antennas up out in the field. There were field stations in the Pacific, and there were field stations in Alaska. I think there were some in Europe, too. It made sense. If not field stations, then they had some other options. Maybe they had direction-finding stations, which, you know, you have a unit with direction equipment, maybe 180 degrees, and if you all were pointing at this thing, then you would be able to intercept—find a station, an enemy station you were looking for, and be able to intercept them.

INTERVIEWER: Okay.

NARRATOR: And if you could do that, then you could identify the location, because you were getting the signals from different locations based on where you were. So that was really the part that—our part of what happened at ASA [Army Security Agency]. I mean, we knew that there was a whole building called B Building where they were trying to break the codes. But that was not any of what we were concerned with. When the codes were broken I guess they went wherever they were supposed to go, which would have been, you know, teletyped there someplace else. But anything that we—most that we handled was administrative and keeping the field stations open and things like that. After the war we probably had more like regular communications, because we’d have the commanders of the different field stations come back in. At that point I had moved to a different job, because when—during the war there was no question about you having a job there. But when the war was over, one of the bosses came out to me one day and said, “You know, the war’s over, and the boys are coming back. They said there’s a gentleman here in the area that has the same qualifications you do, because he worked in the field during the war. And he has a promote—he can take your job,” in other words. But they said, There’s a job open down in what we call GAS50, and you can go down and apply for that job. Well, it sort of took me by surprise, of course, but that’s exactly what I did. That job then, the gentleman that interviewed me said, “Well,”—I think I was a GS6, 00:11:00 and he said, “You’ll have to take a break to a GS5.” But then he said, “When you get your promotions, it’ll be a GS5-7-9-11-13,” and so that’s what I did then. So when I retired I was GS13, which was a very nice grade.

INTERVIEWER: Yes, it is a very nice grade.

NARRATOR: It left me a very nice income.

The goal of the Arlington Voices project is to showcase the Center for Local History’s oral history collection in a publicly accessible and shareable way.

The Arlington Public Library began collecting oral histories of long-time residents in the 1970s, and since then the scope of the collection has expanded to capture the diverse voices of Arlington’s community.

To browse our list of narrators indexed by interview subject, check out our community archive. To read a full transcript of an interview, make an appointment to visit the Center for Local History located at Central Library.

Do you have a question about this story, or a personal experience to share? 

Use this form to send a message to the Center for Local History.

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Oral History: Rayfield Barber

A Lifetime at the Center of Arlington's Airport History

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Oral histories are used to understand historical events, actors, and movements from the point of view of real people’s personal experiences.

Rayfield Barber (1914-2011) was one of the few witnesses to the full trajectory of Arlington’s airport history over the course of his life, and was key to the success of the County's regional airfields.

Among one of the first airport employees in the burgeoning field of commercial flying, he had a distinguished career at both Washington-Hoover Airport and the National Airport.

Barber was born in 1914 in North Carolina, and came to live in Alexandria around 1920. Barber attended the Parker-Gray School, which at the time was Alexandria’s only primary school for Black children.

Rayfield Barber at National Airport, circa 1990s.

In 1932, Barber began working for the West Brothers Brick company, an Arlington-based operation that used materials from the clay deposits on the Potomac to create its product. Barber worked as a machine operator at the factory until 1937. 

Panoramic of the West Brothers brickyard, circa 1903.
Read and listen to Rayfield Barber speaking about his time working at the West Brothers Brick Company in our blog post for April 2021.

When Barber was still working at the brick factory, the Hoover Airport was in its nescient stages. The airfield opened in 1926, and merged with the adjacent Washington Airport in 1933. It was known as one of the most dangerous airfields in the country at this point, in part due to Military Road – a large thoroughfare that brought car traffic between the two airfields.
Barber began working at the airfield in the summer of 1939. In this excerpt from his oral history interview, he describes the early scenes of the airport.

Narrator: Rayfield Barber
Interviewers: Edmund Campbell and Cas Cocklin
Date: July 17, 1991

Edmund Campbell: Tell us something about the Hoover Airport, what it looked like and what were the conditions? 

Rayfield Barber: It had a hangar that was right on No. 1 Highway. You know, just right off Number 1 Highway. The terminal was setting, say, a little to the northwest of the hangar.    

Cas Cocklin: Sort of where that marina is now?  

RB: Yes, that's where it was.  Right back of the hangar was where the airplanes coming in would come down on the runway.    

EC: Only one runway, wasn't it?  

RB: That's all.  

Aerial photograph of Washington Airport, Hoover Field, and the Arlington Beach and Amusement Park on the Potomac River, circa 1920s.

EC: And where did that runway go from?  

RB: It ran right on down close to the experimental farm. You see the roadway would come up by the restaurant and food.   

EC: The roadway ran right through the runway, right across the runway, didn't it?

A passenger plane flying low over several cars at Hoover Field, circa 1930s.

RB: That road would run right across the runway and they had those lights set up.   

CC: Stoplights.  

RB: Stoplights.

CC: To stop the traffic if a plane was landing or taking off.  

RB: That's right. See, because that road was coming right along from, coming away from Arlington Cemetery . . .  

CC: Going toward Route One. 

Listen to this audio from Barber's interview:

Several cars and a bus driving on Military Road with a sign that says "Road Very Dangerous, Travel at your own risk," circa 1930s.

Several cars driving down a road with a sign that says "Military road, very poor conditions, drive at your own risk," circa 1930s.

Porters at the airfield were initially called “Redcaps” due to the red hats they were required to wear as part of their uniforms. Later they were known more generally as “skycaps," most notably at the National Airport. Initially, Barber was initially paid only in tips, ranging from 10 cents to a dollar, depending on the customer.

“ ’Skycaps’ at the entrance to the administration building. Municipal airport, Washington, D.C,” circa 1941. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress.

Simultaneously, Barber also worked as a taxi driver. He was one of the first Black operators of a taxicab service in Northern Virginia, which he ran through the early 1940s before the start of WWII. When the United States entered the war, it became too difficult to obtain equipment such as tires due to the war production effort.

During this time, Black people in Arlington had to travel to Washington, D.C., to receive medical care, as Virginia hospitals were segregated and had limited resources for Black patients, and expectant mothers were often barred from the maternity ward in full. The Friendly Cab Company was another local service that addressed this issue, providing ride services to Black customers beginning in 1947.

At the Washington-Hoover Airport, Barber met notable figures such as Horace Dodge, Clark Gable, Wallace Berry, the Roosevelts, and the Kennedy family. At the time, Washington Hoover was the only major airport in the area, so it was a thoroughfare for notable individuals.

Flying was also still a new form of transportation and was no exception to the Jim Crow laws that affected every level of life for Black Americans. This made commercial flying largely exclusive to wealthy, white customers.

Reproduction image of a National Archives print that reads: "A full view of the four-motored Douglas C-54 skymaster dubbed the 'Flying White House', an ATC transport specially built for President Roosevelt." From RG 13.

In the 1930s and 1940s, airports across the South began to segregate their facilities, either by sanctioned law or racist informal practices. In 1944, during World War II, members of the Tuskegee Airmen integrated the National Airport’s cafeteria after initially being denied service. However, after the war ended, segregation soon re-installed itself in airport facilities. After pressure from President Truman, the airport desegregated its restaurants in 1948, but only the next year, a D.C. resident brought a suit against the Air Terminal Services arguing that she had been denied service on account of her race.

In June 1941, when Hoover closed, Barber moved to the National Airport. On its opening day, Barber was the first on the runway, unloading one of three planes that inaugurated the debut (and American Airlines DC-3). As one of three skycaps working at the time, he earned $1.25 for 10 hours of work each day.

The main building of the Washington Airport, in the early 1930s.

Freshly completed Terminal A of the Washington National Airport, circa late 1930s.

Barber worked at National Airport until the early 1990s, accruing more than 50 years of airport experience. Barber’s interview describes many fascinating aspects of his life, such as fortuitously being home from work the day of the 14th Street Bridge crash, to meeting every first lady since Eleanor Roosevelt over the course of his career. In this selection, Barber sums up his work at the airport: 

EC: As soon as Hoover Airport was closed, you moved over to National, did you?  

RB: That's right.  

EC: And acted as a porter there? 

RB: That's right.  

EC: And you still are a porter at National? 

RB: I'm still there.  I'm considering retiring. 

EC: But you haven't retired yet? 

RB: I haven't retired yet. 

EC: So, you have been a porter either at Hoover Airport or at National Airport or both for how long? 

RB: About fifty‑two years.  Fifty‑two years.  I had been at National fifty years.  I went to National June 16th, 1941.   

EC: They had a special ceremony, didn't they, last month for you?   

RB: Yeah, they had a special ceremony at Crystal City Marriott Hotel and a real special one was over at Crystal City building they sometime call No. 3, that's when Mr. Robb was there, and former governor Holton of Virginia. 

Listen to this audio from Barber's interview:

Additional photos of Rayfield Barber at Washington National Airport, circa 1990s. Photos by former County photographer Deborah Ernst.

The goal of the Arlington Voices project is to showcase the Center for Local History’s oral history collection in a publicly accessible and shareable way.

The Arlington Public Library began collecting oral histories of long-time residents in the 1970s, and since then the scope of the collection has expanded to capture the diverse voices of Arlington’s community. In 2016, staff members and volunteers recorded many additional hours of interviews, building the collection to 575 catalogued oral histories.

To browse our list of narrators indexed by interview subject, check out our community archive. To read a full transcript of an interview, make an appointment to visit the Center for Local History located at Central Library.

Do you have a question about this story, or a personal experience to share? 

Use this form to send a message to the Center for Local History.

Center For Local History - Blog Post Message Form

Do you have a question about this story, or a personal experience to share? Use this form to send a message to the Center for Local History.

  • Share Your Story

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Oral History: Mary Cook Hackman

Politics, Parks and the Law

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Oral histories are used to understand historical events, actors, and movements from the point of view of real people’s personal experiences.

Mary Cook Hackman (1911-2005) was a prolific leader in Arlington, with a decades-long career that took on multiple paths.

Hackman moved to Arlington in 1949, and quickly became involved in local civic affairs such as the desegregation of Arlington Public Schools. Over the years she also held positions including president of the Rock Springs Civic Association and later served as president of the Arlington Civic Association. She also took part in politics as a committee member for Arlingtonians for a Better County (ABC), and as a member of the 10th District Women’s Democratic Club.

Hackman

Mary Cook Hackman, circa 1958.

Hackman later entered the newspaper industry, creating a rival publication to what was then Arlington’s main newspaper, the Daily Sun. This new publication was founded in 1956 by Hackman and Anne Crutcher, and early investors included County Board member David Krupsaw and local lawyer and activist Edmund Campbell (also one of the interviewers of the subsequent oral history interview). The resulting weekly newspaper was called the Arlington Citizen and was distributed via mail to subscribers. After the Arlington Citizen eventually shut down publication, Hackman wrote a weekly political column in the Northern Virginia Sun.

Narrator: Mary Cook Hackman
Interviewers: Edmund Campbell and Cas Cocklin
Date: September 28, 1992
Note: The audio for this interview is currently unavailable.

Edmund Campbell/Cas Cocklin: Mary Cook, you had no printing office, you had no printing facilities, you had no clerks, how did you get out a newspaper?

Mary Cook Hackman: We found that there was somebody over in Georgetown, a printing company, and we hired them to do the printing. I don't remember what it cost but it was quite a lot. Anne and I would go over there every Wednesday morning with all of the typewritten pages that we wanted them to fit into this newspaper and then they would work on it a while and then we would say no, we want this story over to the left or up or down or something.

EC/CC: All your copy though, that you provided them was all written on the typewriter.

MCH: Yes, it was written by Anne or me.

EC/CC: On the typewriter.

MCH: Yes.

Screen Shot 2021-12-12 at 9.15.18 PM

Article from the May 2, 1957, edition of the Evening Star. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress.

Hackman was later one of the two original members from Arlington on the Northern Virginia Regional Park Authority – a group that was authorized by the Virginia Assembly in order to oversee land purchases by local governments that would eventually become public land for regional parks. Hackman served on the Park Authority for 11 years and assisted with milestones including the purchase of the first regional park in Viriginia, in Fairfax in 1959, and early work to develop Four Mile Run as a park.

EC/CC: Any experiences that you had on the Park Authority?

MCH: One of the things that taught me a great deal was the chairman, Ira Gabrielson, who was internationally known as a conservationist. He and I, we didn't have any staff, we didn't have anybody. He and I would go to the various governing bodies and ask for money and so we were in Fairfax and he got up and went up to, the case was called and went up and stood at the podium and he was so dull and didn't seem to understand the questions. And I thought should I go stand with him and explain all of this but something told me, “No, don't do that.” So I sat and the Board voted four to three to give us what we've been asking for and I thought, “Well, I'd better drive Gabe home because he obviously isn't well.” So we got out in the parking lot and Gabe's eyes were twinkling like always and I said, "What was the matter with you in there?" and he said, "I learned long ago when you have a majority of the votes in your pocket, don't say anything interesting."

link to read Mary Cook Hackman story.

From left to right: Peggy Fisher, Dr. Kenneth Haggerty, and Northern Virginia Regional Park Board members Mary Cook Hackman and Dorothy Grotos in 1968.

However, Hackman’s career didn’t end here. Though she hadn’t attended college, she was accepted probationally to the American University School of Law to take classes. And while she wasn’t initially permitted to earn a law degree, the university offered her the certification to complete the Virginia Bar following her passage of the coursework. She later passed the courses and the bar, and was eventually awarded a law degree. After that, she opened her own law practice and practiced law for over 30 years, into her eighties.

EC/CC: You did take your Virginia Bar and passed.

MCH: Yes.

EC/CC: And then opened a law office.

MCH: Yes, because nobody hired women then. So I opened my own law office.

EC/CC: You've been practicing ever since?

MCH: Yes.

EC/CC: That was approximately when, when you opened that?

MCH: 1962.

The goal of the Arlington Voices project is to showcase the Center for Local History’s oral history collection in a publicly accessible and shareable way.

The Arlington Public Library began collecting oral histories of long-time residents in the 1970s, and since then the scope of the collection has expanded to capture the diverse voices of Arlington’s community. In 2016, staff members and volunteers recorded many additional hours of interviews, building the collection to 575 catalogued oral histories.

To browse our list of narrators indexed by interview subject, check out our community archive. To read a full transcript of an interview, make an appointment to visit the Center for Local History located at Central Library.

Oral History: Don Tenoso

Arlington-based Native American artist and educator

Arlington Voices the Oral History Collection

Oral histories are used to understand historical events, actors, and movements from the point of view of real people’s personal experiences.

Artist Don Tenoso is a prolific creator, known for his Lakota-style dollmaking that depicts Sioux culture. Tenoso came to the Washington, D.C., area in 1991 as the first artist-in-residence at the Smithsonian’s Natural History Museum, where he created new pieces and led demonstrations for the public.

 

Don Tenoso, Sioux Doll-maker and Puppeteer.

Don Tenoso, circa 1990 at the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History. Image courtesy of the Smithsonian Institution Archives.

Tenoso was born in Riverside, California, and is a member of the Hunkpapa, one of the seven bands of the Teton Lakota Nation and part of the Sioux-speaking indigenous population. Tenoso’s mother was born on the Standing Rock reservation in South Dakota, and he is a descendant of One Bull and Sitting Bull. His father was in the U.S. military during Tenoso’s early life and the family often moved around the country and abroad.

The following interview excerpts are from a 2008 oral history with Tenoso. At the time of this interview, he had lived in Arlington for about 14 years. In the full interview, which can be accessed in print at the Center for Local History, Tenoso also discusses his family and lineage, as well as tribal traditions and the Lakota language.

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Don Tenoso, circa 2005. Image courtesy of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, where Tenoso was the university’s first artist-in-residence at the Native American House. 

Narrator: Don Tenoso
Interviewer: Tom Dickinson
Date: January 23, 2008
Note: The audio for this interview is currently unavailable.

Don Tenoso: I was the first artist-in-residence in the Natural History Museum. Prior to that they had brought me in for a three-day doll demonstration where they had taken one of the glass cases out of one of the Native halls there in Natural History at Smithsonian and by different artists coming in. Me, a Sioux doll maker, was invited to come up and do that. I guess they had spent like nine months trying to find me. I started dollmaking back in the seventies.

Anyway, in the eighties, ‘86 or so, ‘87, there was an article in American Indian Art magazine that was published about dolls. In ‘86 I believe it was, I had a one-man show down in Andrew Park, Oklahoma and they collected the International Crafts Board for four of my dolls.

So one of them got in that article and then the director over at education in the outreach program saw the doll and they said they wanted to find that guy.

Don Tenoso SIA-SIA2010-0383

Don Tenoso circa 1991 outside of the National Museum of Natural History with some of his works of art. The doll beside Tenoso is called “Iktorni,” or “trickster doll.” Image courtesy of the Smithsonian Institution Archives.

Tenoso beadwork

Leather holster created by Tenoso in 2006, covered in a beadwork design. Image courtesy of the British Museum, where the piece is held. 

Tom Dickinson: How did you get started doing this [art practice]?

DT: Actually I started when I was in New York. I went out there because I heard that C. W. Post [campus of Long Island University] had a scholarship for Natives who wanted it to be teachers. It turns out they didn’t so I went to the American Indian Community House there in New York.

Actually, backpedal a little bit. I was born in Riverside, California in 1960. In ‘63 we were in France. We were there when de Gaulle kicked us out. So my earliest memories are there when the French high school kids were throwing rocks at us on the playground. They would stone our bus. I remember flying out of there and the U.S. piling up all these brand new, big boxes and stuff and just setting them on fire. Big old wrecking balls smashing holes into runways as you flew out. I also got to see some whales as we flew, that’s how low they went across the ocean. You can see the spouts and little tails going across.

So from there we go to Oklahoma City, so I got to meet all these Natives. They used to call it Indian Territory which is sort of a penal colony for Native Americans starting back through Trail of Tears, Andrew Jackson and all of that stuff.

From there we went and lived in Rapid [City] back where my grandma lived, lot of relatives in Rapid City, South Dakota, in the Black Hills which is our sacred area, which actually by federal courts is still our property. But they offered us $10 million or $100 million or something but we still don’t take it. Because our sacred Wind Cave is there and that’s one of our origin stories. We came from there. The thing about Wind Cave you stand there one hour of the day and it blows your hair back.

So geologists say, “Yeah, there’s probably an underground stream - they haven’t found it yet - flowing and air displacement and that’s causing your hair to go that way.” The only thing is you come back some hours later, same day, and now it’s sucking your hair into the cave. “I guess there’s a tilting rock or something under there that messes with it.” We say that’s Mother Earth breathing, that’s where she breathes from.

Learn more: View a program from the 1992 exhibit Contemporary Plains Indian Dolls, which took place at the Southern Plains Indian Museum and Crafts Center in Anadarko, Oklahoma. The exhibit featured a piece by Don Tenoso (“Gourd Clain Dancer,” figure 10). 
 
This interview was conducted as part of The Many Faces of Arlington oral history project, which sought to document the County’s diverse population as a reflection on the 400th anniversary of the settlement of Jamestown by English colonizers. 

The goal of the Arlington Voices project is to showcase the Center for Local History’s oral history collection in a publicly accessible and shareable way.

The Arlington Public Library began collecting oral histories of long-time residents in the 1970s, and since then the scope of the collection has expanded to capture the diverse voices of Arlington’s community. In 2016, staff members and volunteers recorded many additional hours of interviews, building the collection to 575 catalogued oral histories.

To browse our list of narrators indexed by interview subject, check out our community archive. To read a full transcript of an interview, visit the Center for Local History located at Central Library.

Oral History: J. Walter Tejada

Community Activist; Arlington County Board Member from 2003 - 2015

Arlington Voices the Oral History Collection

Oral histories are used to understand historical events, actors, and movements from the point of view of real people’s personal experiences.

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Walter Tejada’s County Board portrait, circa 2007.

In 2003, J. Walter Tejada became the first person of Latin American heritage to be elected to the Arlington County Board, or to any governing body in Northern Virginia.

Tejada served as County Board Chair in 2008 and 2013.

Tejada was born in El Salvador and immigrated to the United States at age 13, first settling with his family in Brooklyn, New York, and later moving to Trenton, New Jersey. After attending college and playing soccer at Keystone Junior College and Mercer College, he eventually moved to Arlington in 1987.

Tejada got his start as an activist and organizer after witnessing inequities faced by members of the Latinx community. He initially worked in groups addressing fair housing, job opportunities, and the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC). He also helped to establish a Salvadoran festival in Arlington, starting in 1995, focusing on Salvadoran culture.

The front page of El Pregonero, the official Spanish-language newspaper of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Washington, D.C., on March 13, 2003, following Tejada’s election to the County Board.

In 2003, Tejada was elected to the Arlington County Board in a special election following the death of Board member Charles P. Monroe. Tejada defeated longtime GOP activist Mike W. Clancy in the contest.

During his time on the board, Tejada continued to advocate for immigrant and Spanish-speaking communities, and served on numerous task forces and groups, including as chair on the governor’s Latino Advisory Commission.

Tejada

J. Walter Tejada speaking at the National Rally for Citizenship on the West Lawn of the Capitol on April 10, 2013. Image courtesy of C-SPAN.

Arlington_County_Board_2014

From left to right: County Board members J. Walter Tejada, John Vihstadt, Jay Fisette, Mary Hynes and Libby Garvey in 2014.

Since his time in County government, he was appointed to the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority Board of Directors and is president of the Virginia Latino Leaders Council.

In the following oral history interview, conducted prior to his election to the County Board, Tejada discusses his childhood, coming to Arlington, and his early work in activism. In these excerpts from the interview, he discusses first impressions of the County and his work with LULAC’S Council 4609, which encompasses Arlington. 

This interview is available in full at the Center for Local History. Note: The audio for this interview is currently not available.  

Narrator: J. Walter Tejada 

Interviewer: Ingrid Kauffman

Date: October 27, 2000 

J. Walter Tejada: One of the things I saw when I lived in DC - actually, one of the first things I recognized was that - actually since I started visiting Robin [Liten-Tejada] when she went to school here -- is that DC had a much larger Latino population than New Jersey, and I liked that. Remember, I mentioned that when we lived in New York there weren't that many Salvadorans at all, even when we lived in New Jersey, there was one person that was Salvadoran, and he lived like 10 miles away. It was odd that I came here and suddenly there was a Salvadoran population. 

Ingrid Kauffman: What year was that? 

WT: 1987. I thought, “this is great.” There were some restaurants; I hadn't eaten pupusas for years, which is one of my favorite Salvadoran dishes, just like almost every day. I saw this and it really piqued my interest. In fact, it was a determining point why I ended up moving here, when we were talking about what we were going to do with our lives. I'd come to visit and see all this and I liked that. The climate here, so many people from different backgrounds, different perspectives and accents, cultural activities - to me, it was like a paradise for these activities. When I was working in D.C. I also saw that the Latino community was really - first of all, there was no political power. Then - the community - not all but certainly a good portion of the community finds itself in a very tough socio-economic situation.

WT: Three things [LULAC Council 4609] did were voter registration, citizenship, and leadership development. That part I liked because it made it so broad for different things. I decided I was going to be involved in that aspect, because we would promote meetings, forums, community forums, where elected officials or public officials would meet with the community to address issues of concern with the community, sort of like putting a little bridge into what needed - the issues of importance. I started, and I would go to places and grab chairs, move them around, set up the coffee machine, make sure donuts were there.  

We did forums on gang prevention activities, the educational system in Arlington, how it was being responsive to Latinos or not. We've done forums in the business community - what opportunities there could be to incorporate Latinos into the business world. We did citizenship workshops where we published that on a certain day people could come in with all their material that we would specify, like passport, proof of where they lived, proof where they worked, birth certificates for their kids, and helped them fill out these applications in order to apply to become citizens. We would have lawyer friends who would come and volunteer in these workshops so that we can help people.

The goal of the Arlington Voices project is to showcase the Center for Local History’s oral history collection in a publicly accessible and shareable way.

The Arlington Public Library began collecting oral histories of long-time residents in the 1970s, and since then the scope of the collection has expanded to capture the diverse voices of Arlington’s community. In 2016, staff members and volunteers recorded many additional hours of interviews, building the collection to 575 catalogued oral histories.

To browse our list of narrators indexed by interview subject, check out our community archive. To read a full transcript of an interview, visit the Center for Local History located at Central Library.

Oral History: Buckingham Florist

Interview with Neil Bassin

Arlington Voices the Oral History Collection

Oral histories are used to understand historical events, actors, and movements from the point of view of real people’s personal experiences.

Arlington has a lengthy history of legacy floral shops, and among those was Buckingham Florist, a mainstay of the Buckingham neighborhood for almost 80 years.

Buckingham Florist was founded by Myer and Jean Bassin in Arlington in 1942, and the couple later opened a second location in Coral Hills, Maryland. The business did floral arrangements for a variety of events and venues, with the nearby Arlington National Cemetery among their primary sites of business.

At one point, Buckingham Florist was the primary supplier of flowers for the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. The shop’s federal connections didn’t stop there, however: one of the shop’s floral designers, Elmer “Rusty” Young, went on to serve as a florist in the White House in the Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon administrations. Young was appointed the first White House Chief Floral Designer by Jacqueline Kennedy, and continued in that position throughout the rest of his career.

Buckingham Florist, right, in 1996.

The shop moved to its long-term location at 301 North Glebe Road in the bustling Buckingham Shopping Center in the mid-1950s, having previously been located on the south side of Glebe. Myer and Jean Bassin’s son Neil Bassin ran Buckingham Florist throughout the latter half of the 20th century. He sold the shop in the mid-2000s, and the Buckingham storefront closed permanently in 2017.

In this oral history interview, Neil Bassin (1932-2019) discusses the legacy of the business and how the shop supplied its flowers. The interview in full goes on to discuss other topics, such as changes in the floral industry and the business environment of Buckingham throughout the 20th century.

Narrator: Neil Bassin
Interviewer: Virginia Smith
Date: May 14, 2012

Photos of the Bassin family from the February 8, 1965, issue of the Northern Virginia Sun. Image courtesy of Virginia Chronicle.

Neil Bassin: In most aspects of the florist business, we were very successful because of the location we were in. People knew us. And that’s, I would say, the major factor in why our business was so successful, until the people met me or my mother, or you know. And just personal business, where the people knew us. I mean, we had people when they were born. We had them when they were married, and we had them when they died because the business is over sixty years.

Virginia Smith: That’s a nice legacy, isn’t it? Sixty years of business.

NB: Yeah, it’s a long time.

VS: Tell me who your suppliers were of flowers.

NB: Well, lots. Mostly, downtown florists, wholesalers. And when I first got in, it was downtown wholesalers. They were all—

VS: Is that the name of it? Downtown—?

NB: No.

VS: Oh, multiple—?

NB: They were mostly around one block downtown.

VS: Where was that block?

NB: It was between Fourteenth and Thirteenth on the street before K Street. K Street was a park in those days.

VS: Yes.

NB: Like a little park. And then down Fourteenth Street, on the right was Schaffer’s Retail Florist.

VS: Okay, but Shaffer was a wholesaler also—

NB: Then, Shaffer was a wholesaler. McCallum Sauber was a wholesaler, and they were really instrumental in helping us get in business because my uncle sort of knew the owners. And they did help us. My uncle was very artistic, and he was a big help in getting us into the business. But, there were Paul’s Wholesale Florist and Goody Brothers.

VS: Oh, I know that name.

NB: And around the corner was District Wholesale, and Flowers Incorporated, which was also a wholesale florist. And so they were all in one area until they sold that block and razed that block, where they all moved out and spread out.

Advertisement for Buckingham Florist in the Washington, D.C., Yellow Pages in 1960. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress.

Elmer “Rusty” Young, Chief Floral Designer at the White House, prepares an arrangement in the Floral Room, August 28, 1963. Young was previously a floral designer at Buckingham Florist. Image courtesy of the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library of Museum.

The goal of the Arlington Voices project is to showcase the Center for Local History’s oral history collection in a publicly accessible and shareable way.

The Arlington Public Library began collecting oral histories of long-time residents in the 1970s, and since then the scope of the collection has expanded to capture the diverse voices of Arlington’s community. In 2016, staff members and volunteers recorded many additional hours of interviews, building the collection to 575 catalogued oral histories.

To browse our list of narrators indexed by interview subject, check out our community archive. To read a full transcript of an interview, visit the Center for Local History located at Central Library.

Oral History: Public Shoe Store

Interview with Dr. Sholom “Doc” Friedman and Karen Widmayer

Public Shoe Store, 1983.

Arlington Voices the Oral History Collection

Oral histories are used to understand historical events, actors, and movements from the point of view of real people’s personal experiences.

Public Shoe Store in Clarendon was one of the neighborhood’s longest-running and most recognizable businesses, operating from 1938 to 2016. The business was operated by brothers Dr. Sholom H. “Doc” Friedman and Joel Friedman for much of that time, after being founded by the Friedmans’ father Samuel Friedman in the 1930s. Dr. Friedman was a trained podiatrist, and the business was known for specializing in comfort shoes and custom fitting. Dr. Friedman passed away in 2019.

The original location of the store was where the Clarendon Metro station currently stands, but when construction came through the neighborhood the business moved to its longstanding storefront at 3137 Wilson Boulevard. The shoe store was also a meeting place for members of the Arlington-Fairfax Jewish Congregation (now Etz Hayim), who would gather on the second floor of the shop.

Advertisement in the Northern Virginia Sun for Public Shoe Store, October 31, 1968. Image courtesy of Virginia Chronicle.

In this oral history, Dr. Sholom “Doc” Friedman and two of his children, Karen Widmayer and Mark Friedman, discuss the history of the shop and the impact it had on the Arlington community. Other details in the interview include how the children often ran the cash registers, and how the shop worked with President Carter's family in the 1970s. Here is a brief excerpt from the interview:

Narrator 1: Dr. Sholom “Doc” Friedman
Narrator 2: Karen Widmayer
Interviewer: Virginia Smith
Date: March 8, 2015

Public Shoe Store exterior in 1990.

Entrance to Public Shoe Store, 1990.

Virginia Smith: Okay. So how does the building work? What do you do? You set up the retail place in the main floor?

Sholom Friedman: Right.

VS: What’s downstairs?

SF: It used to be stored shoes, but I’ve been decreasing the stock now.

VS: Towards the end of this—the life of the business.

SF: Right.

VS: But that was full downstairs—was inventory.

SF: Right.

VS: And upstairs was—?

SF: Upstairs we had a little balcony.

Karen Widmayer: Yeah, the main floor is all selling floor and stock. And the basement had all stock and some storage. And then there’s a mezzanine level that’s about a quarter of a floor-size up in the back, and that was just some storage space.

SF: Storage, right.

View of Wilson Boulevard from east to west, including the large Public Shoe Store sign, 1991.

VS: So it was all your dad [Samuel Friedman] needed? Large enough?

SF: Oh, yeah. It was a pretty big operation back then.

VS: Sounds like it. What decade would you call your heyday, the best years, or the best decades?

SF: Probably after the war.

VS: So the ‘40s and ‘50s when families were moving and growing and all that sort of stuff.

SF: Right.

KW: Even when I worked there, I mean, there’d be ten or fifteen numbers pulled, people sitting and waiting. I mean, it was crazy on Saturdays.

VS: That’s good business—that was a Saturday.

KW: Yeah, that was still ’60—well, I was—started working there when I was about seven, so that’s late ‘60s and into the early ‘70s. I think at that point, that’s when things started changing a little bit with Arlington and the retail. But the businesses stayed.

Photos from Public Shoe Store around the time of its closing in 2016.

Photos from Public Shoe Store around the time of its closing in 2016.

The exterior of Public Shoe Store around the time of its closing in 2016.

The goal of the Arlington Voices project is to showcase the Center for Local History’s oral history collection in a publicly accessible and shareable way.

The Arlington Public Library began collecting oral histories of long-time residents in the 1970s, and since then the scope of the collection has expanded to capture the diverse voices of Arlington’s community. In 2016, staff members and volunteers recorded many additional hours of interviews, building the collection to 575 catalogued oral histories.

To browse our list of narrators indexed by interview subject, check out our community archive. To read a full transcript of an interview, visit the Center for Local History located at Central Library.

Oral History: Arlington’s First Openly LGBTQ Elected Official

In 1997, Jay Fisette became the first openly LGBTQ+ person elected to office in the state of Virginia when he won a seat on the Arlington County Board.

Fisette served for six terms on the Board, from 1998 to 2017, and served as Board Chair five times, including in his final year on the Board.

Arlington Voices the Oral History Collection

Oral histories are used to understand historical events, actors, and movements from the point of view of real people’s personal experiences.

Fisette focused on numerous issues during his tenure, including strong environmental policies, local affordable housing, and urban planning. He also has held leadership positions in organizations such as the Metropolitan Council of Governments, the Virginia Housing Development Authority, and the Arlington Gay and Lesbian Alliance.

In his work with the Alliance, which was founded in 1981 as a local branch of the Virginia Gay Alliance, the group successfully advocated for the inclusion of sexual orientation protections in the County’s human rights ordinance.

Prior to being elected to the Board, Fisette worked as a Government Accountability Office auditor, and as director of the Whitman-Walker Clinic of Northern Virginia, which focuses on helping patients with HIV/AIDS.

Reflecting on his career in Arlington, Fisette said in an announcement stating he would not run for re-election that the County “embraced me as a gay man long before such an endorsement could be presumed, long before it became the norm.”

From left to right: Long Bridge Park Design Advisory Committee vice-chairman Carrie Johnson, County Board Chairman Jay Fisette, and Committee Chairman Tobin Smith at the groundbreaking ceremony for Long Bridge Park, April 10, 2010. From RG 199.

In this oral history interview from the Smart Growth documentary series, Jay Fisette discusses his time on the County Board, as well as development in the County.

Narrator: Jay Fisette
Interviewer: Mary Curtius
Date: April 12, 2008
Note: The audio for this interview is currently unavailable.

Mary Curtius: So Jay, what I want to know is what made you run for the board in the first place?

Jay Fisette: That’s a good question. You know I’d always been interested in studying public policy and always thought about it. When I went to California and came out it was possible there. But as a gay man, it just didn’t seem feasible honestly.

MC: Didn’t seem feasible here in Virginia?

JF: To be elected. You know most places in the country you take it off the list. It’s just not practical. But after living here for five years or so, six years, seven years, and getting to know the community it just sort of crept back into my consciousness as something that in a community like this was really feasible and I had a real connection to what I understood to be the values here and the character of this community and sort of just woke up.

A campaign brochure for Fisette’s first run for County Board in the 1993 special election. Fisette gained 49.4% of the vote but ultimately lost to Republican-endorsed Independent Ben Winslow.

This interview is available at the Center for History, and issues of the Sun and Northern Virginia Sun are available online through the CLH Community Archives and through Virginia Chronicle.

The goal of the Arlington Voices project is to showcase the Center for Local History’s oral history collection in a publicly accessible and shareable way.

The Arlington Public Library began collecting oral histories of long-time residents in the 1970s, and since then the scope of the collection has expanded to capture the diverse voices of Arlington’s community. In 2016, staff members and volunteers recorded many additional hours of interviews, building the collection to 575 catalogued oral histories.

To browse our list of narrators indexed by interview subject, check out our community archive. To read a full transcript of an interview, visit the Center for Local History located at Central Library.

Oral History: West Brothers Brick Company

Interview with Rayfield Barber

Arlington Voices the Oral History Collection

Oral histories are used to understand historical events, actors, and movements from the point of view of real people’s personal experiences.

Arlington was once a hub for brick production – providing the materials that would make up many of the homes and buildings in the area.

The West Brothers Brick Company was founded in 1844 and came to Arlington shortly after the Civil War in 1866. Boosted by clay deposits along the Potomac, the West brothers bought 40 acres and established a powerhouse production site of local brick. Other companies quickly followed suit, and the region supported 10 plants that used local clays by 1905 - mostly producing red brick, though the West Brothers also made clay tile as well.

The company remained in operation in Arlington until 1942, when the land was taken over by the federal government to build the Pentagon. About 250 people were employed by the company at this time, and the West Brothers Brick Company subsequently moved operations to Landover, Maryland.

Bricks made by the company were used in notable buildings around the Capital Region, including the White House, the Pentagon, the Supreme Court building, both Senate office buildings, and the Capitol.

In this oral history interview, Rayfield Barber discusses his time working as a machine operator at the West Brothers Brick Company. Barber began working for the company around the time of the Great Depression in 1932, working 10 hours a day for twelve and a half cents an hour. To get to work, he would take the bus from Columbia Pike in the Barcroft neighborhood, and would later walk from the brickyard to his home in Green Valley.

West Brothers Brick Company offices at 720 15th NW in Washington, D.C., 1902.

Barber worked for West Brothers until 1937, at which point the brick workers went on strike. Later, he worked at the Hoover Airport and the National Airport for over 50 years after the Hoover airfield closed down. As a porter, he waited on celebrities like Clark Gable, Eleanor Roosevelt, and the Kennedys, and in 1991 he was honored for his longtime service.

West Brothers brickyard panoramic, 1903.

Narrator: Rayfield Barber
Interviewer: Edmund Campbell and Cas Cocklin
Date: July 17, 1991

Cas Cocklin: Tell us a little bit around the brickyard.  How large was it more or less?  And how many people were employed there?  I know perhaps you don't know the exact number but roughly?

Rayfield Barber: It was a pretty large brickyard because they made bricks and tile at West Brothers Brick Company.

CC: To whom were they selling these?  To the government or to private contractors?

RB: They was selling them to the government and to private contractors.  They had a bunch of Dutch kilns which they start the bricks in.  What would happen, they would bring this through the machine, they had one machine that ran over and over with molds in it and then clay would fall into the molds and when it come around and it had a belt, a conveyor belt . . .

CC: Now was this just one mold at a time or did they have a row of molds?

RB: No, it was a whole lot of molds in this here wheel-like thing and it was big tubs in there and it would fill up, I guess it was just 4 x 8 for the bricks and then the clay would fall in there and then pat down and when it come around it had something like a knife blade, cut it off and when they did that, the plunge would drop down and knock the bricks out and they'd come right out on this conveyor belt and they'd have men standing in line, about five men standing in line off bearing the bricks. Putting them, setting them on these carts.

CC: Were they also inspecting them at the same time, in case one was broken or something?

RB: No, if it was broken, the men would just throw that brick away.

Edmund Campbell: Where did you get clay?

RB: The clay was right now where the Pentagon City is, there's a clay field right down in there and it had a little dinky, a little engine that ran by steam.

The West Brothers brick kilns, right, were eventually razed to build Pentagon. Photo from 1942.

The goal of the Arlington Voices project is to showcase the Center for Local History’s oral history collection in a publicly accessible and shareable way.

The Arlington Public Library began collecting oral histories of long-time residents in the 1970s, and since then the scope of the collection has expanded to capture the diverse voices of Arlington’s community. In 2016, staff members and volunteers recorded many additional hours of interviews, building the collection to 575 catalogued oral histories.

To browse our list of narrators indexed by interview subject, check out our community archive. To read a full transcript of an interview, visit the Center for Local History located at Central Library.

Oral History: Bob & Edith’s Diner

Interview with Gregory Bolton

“Bob & Edith’s Diner with high rise apartment in background,” 2010. Photo by Emma Chaplin as part of the “Capturing Arlington” photo contest.

Arlington Voices the Oral History Collection

Oral histories are used to understand historical events, actors, and movements from the point of view of real people’s personal experiences.

Bob & Edith’s Diner has been an Arlington mainstay for more than 50 years. Established in 1969 by Bob and Edith Bolton, the original Bob & Edith’s got started when the couple took over the location of a “Gary’s Donut Dinette” for $800. The diner started with simple Southern dishes, such as country hams, scrapple, bologna, bacon, and country breakfasts.

The Boltons later added several locations in addition to the flagship diner on Columbia Pike, and in 1982, the diner expanded from a 10-stool counter to 5 stools and 7 booths. The interiors include many photos of the Bolton family, as well as Dallas Cowboys ephemera and a jukebox.

“Color shot of Bob & Edith’s Diner,” 2010. Photo by Muna Abdulkader as part of the “Capturing Arlington” photo contest.

In this oral history interview, Bob and Edith’s son Gregory Bolton describes the history and operations of the diner and its expanding menu. Today, his son and daughter, Christopher and Tamara Bolton run Bob & Edith’s, continuing the family tradition.

Narrator: Gregory Bolton
Interviewer: Virginia Smith
Date: December 19, 2011

Bob & Edith’s Diner featured in the South Arlington section of a 1984 Arlington hotel and restaurant guide.

Bob & Edith’s Diner featured in the South Arlington section of a 1988 Arlington hotel and restaurant guide.

Gregory Bolton: When I was growing up, there was no such thing as really a menu. What there was—above the, in front of the ten stools that were there, and above the grills, there were just signs, such as The Serviceman’s Special. We’d have an artist that would paint these signs up, roughly around sixteen inches, by maybe twenty inches. And it would, for example, would have a serviceman eating a chipped beef breakfast, that we would call it SOS, Serviceman’s Special. And each product was put across the front of the diner, and that’s how you would choose what you would like. There was no hand menu; it was across the board. And we’d replace them like once or twice a year.

Virginia Smith: And then when did you go to a menu, a printed menu?

GB: We probably went to a menu, I would say maybe about twenty-five years ago. The first ten or fifteen years it was pretty much all up in front of you; you picked it out, different ideas and different products. But the menu’s ten, fifteen times larger now than it was back then.

VS: Yeah. Did you get people coming down from the Pentagon?

GB: Yes ma’am. We had Pentagon, and the Navy Annex are very big customers. We had a lot of servicemen. I would say it’s seventy-five, eighty percent is government-related, whether it’s the County, state, Pentagon—

VS: Well, it’s affordable.

GB: —The military. They seem to be very pleased with the operation, and they keep coming back.

“The original Bob & Edith’s Diner,” 2010. Photo by Matthew Welborn as part of the “Capturing Arlington” photo contest.

Sources
https://www.bobandedithsdiner.com/About-Us

The goal of the Arlington Voices project is to showcase the Center for Local History’s oral history collection in a publicly accessible and shareable way.

The Arlington Public Library began collecting oral histories of long-time residents in the 1970s, and since then the scope of the collection has expanded to capture the diverse voices of Arlington’s community. In 2016, staff members and volunteers recorded many additional hours of interviews, building the collection to 575 catalogued oral histories.

To browse our list of narrators indexed by interview subject, check out our community archive. To read a full transcript of an interview, visit the Center for Local History located at Central Library.

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