Report to the Members 2001
Good evening. I’m Terry Placek and I’m the Vice President of the Fairlington Historical Society Board of Trustees. As you know, we’re just completing our first year of life as an organization. Although we’re not doing a formal annual report this year, I wanted to offer an informal report to you on what we’ve done, what we plan, and the challenges we see ahead in our second year.
- Vision and Mission
Let me start with one of the basics for any organization. We’ve crafted a vision and mission statement for ourselves. It’s attached to your ballot and agenda. It may seem like a simple thing to do, but this is the statement of our intentions that will guide the Trustees, our committees, and volunteers and it will appear in documents like grant proposals. We want to reflect the sense of the membership and we hope you’ll take a moment to read and think about it… and to get back to us with your feedback. Cindy Kunz, our Secretary, will collect that for us and her contact information is at the bottom of the statement.
- Two Events
As many of you know, we hosted two events this year. I think that most of you remember one of those, our first annual meeting last October that featured a wonderful presentation by our own ‘historian in residence,’ Catherine Fellows. We were very pleased with that meeting and that about 65 people attended.
The second event, held in May, featured a presentation by State Senator Mary Margaret Whipple. For this event, we focused on bringing together the leadership of all of the Fairlington condominium and civic associations, something that doesn’t happen regularly. And, again, we were very pleased to see many of those association leaders and committee chairs come together and meet one another. One thing that Fairlington has is a remarkable leadership and volunteer pool and we continue to believe that the Society can play a unique role in bringing those leaders and volunteers together. We didn’t do as good a job as we wanted to and should have in communicating that this event was open to everyone in Fairlington. We learned from that and we’ll do better next time.
- Website
And, speaking of communication, we’re very proud of our website, www.fairlington.com. If you haven’t visited the site, we hope you will and you’ll see some of what we trying to accomplish. We’re publishing and preserving the newsletters of all the associations, something that had not been done before. You’ll also find a community calendar, news items and reports on matters of historic preservation and community interest, and chat rooms on several topics of interest to residents. As a Society, we are very lucky to have Ron Patterson, both our president and a webmaster. Ron does all of the work on the website and he is owed a major ‘thank you’ for that.
- Communication and Education
Ron also represented us in two other communication and education activities: He hosted a group of visitors to our community and toured a number of Fairlington homes as part of Arlington County’s Neighborhood Day activities. And, he also arranged for and appeared on a Fox News 5 story about Fairlington and our historic designation.
As a Society, we supported and sponsored our firehouse’s 5k run through the neighborhood in May. We were pleased to support our local firefighters and sponsor what may well become an annual event to benefit children with fire-related burn injuries.
- Exhibit Case
As you may have noticed if you came in through the south entrance, we have purchased a permanent Society display case for ongoing exhibits of information about the Society, pictures, and memorabilia from residents and former residents. The display case and its two exhibits were created for us by our ‘archivist in residence,’ Ruth Kerns, and Jeanne Muller, co-chairs of the Historic Preservation Committee.
Our displays have produced some very interesting results, including our first Society member from Iowa. Shirley Freshwaters, who moved with her family to Fairlington in 1942, was visiting Washington last spring and drove out our way, expecting to find that the neighborhood she remembered had been long re-developed. She was, of course, surprised to find not only her home still standing, but the neighborhood intact, and the elementary school she attended as a first grader still in use, now as our community complex. She found our first display about historic designation, picked up a membership application, and has become our first ‘corresponding’ member, already reaching out to others who lived here in those years with whom she has remained in touch. In the coming year, we’ll have a new exhibit in the case and we’re hoping to arrange for a second display case in the North Fairlington community center.
- Fairlington at 50
One project that we still have to call a ‘work in progress’ is making Catherine Fellows’ wonderful history, Fairlington at 50, available once again. The Fairlington Citizens Association published the first edition, now long out of print, and they have graciously invited us to help bring this important Fairlington document back. Although we’re not really equipped, financially or otherwise, to go into the publication business, we are working with FCA and with Catherine to find some way, possibly on the website, to make the book available.
- Oral History
And, there are two other projects of preservation interest that we can call ‘in the works.’ This spring, we started working with the Arlington County Public Library and the staff of the Virginia collection to see if we can design and fund an oral history project. Tonight, we’ll be viewing one of their products… the videotape of memories and recollections about Fairlington and Shirlington produced by Channel 31. This tape should give you a sense of what we think could be a real treasure. With what we know are so many interesting and thoughtful residents spanning nearly 60 years, we believe that there are stories that really should be gathered and preserved.
You should also know that the Public Library’s Virginia Collection already houses about a dozen excellent oral histories of Fairlington, collected as part of the County’s 100 th anniversary activities. We only hope to be able to do as well in building from that foundation… and you can view these at the Main Library on Quincy Street in Ballston.
I suppose that we could inject here just a bit of historic trivia. You may know all of this already, but in case you don’t and always wondered how Ballston got its name… It got its name from John Ball, one of the early property owners in what would become Arlington County, along with George Washington and George Mason and John Alexander, whose name also survives down King Street toward the river.
- Our Boundary Stone
Our second preservation interest lies in the ground, nearly invisible unless you brave the traffic along King Street just west of Wakefield and nose around in the bushes. Just outside of the Fairlington property lies District of Columbia Boundary Stone #4… or, at least, what remains of it. And, what remains of it was carefully fenced and marked by the Daughters of the American Revolution in 1916. We have started discussions with the DAR, which continues to take an interest in the preservation of all of the original Boundary Stones, about reclamation. As you might guess, there are lots of right of way and other issues to be dealt with, but the DAR has been a leader in encouraging Arlington County and the Commonwealth to develop a unified strategy for preserving all the stones and our own reminder that Fairlington once lay inside the District line.
- The Coming Year: Building Committees
I want to conclude now and hope that I’ve given you a sense of what we’ve been up to in our first year. In our second year, we are very anxious to reach out to all of you as members and volunteers. There is much to do and we want to build our committees to include as many of you and your neighbors as want to participate.
We’re looking for people willing to chair or co-chair committees… or just willing to convene them until they can make leadership decisions of their own.
Whether your interests might be in Communication and Education…. Or in Historic Preservation… Or Architectural Integrity… Or Volunteers…we need you. We know that several of you signed up for committees that interested you last year and we just haven’t done as good a job as we want to in taking you up on your offers to go to work. We’re going to get much better at that very soon. We plan to be pretty shameless, actually, in asking for your help and participation in making the committees work, with new projects and accomplishments that will make our mission real.
We need you and your energy and your ideas and your skills. You’ll find signup sheets on your way out and want you to know that nurturing our committee structure is one of the Trustee’s highest priorities in the coming year.
Unless there are any questions…
- Introduction of the Program
I’d like to introduce our program. Shortly after we received our historic district designation, the staff at the Virginia Collection invited residents and former residents of Fairlington and Shirlington to come to the Library and participate in a kind of group oral history. Channel 31 taped the session and we think you’ll enjoy it. We also think it is a tempting look at some of the many oral history possibilities we could pursue as a Society.
We’re going to show about 30 minutes of the program tonight. And, we could use your help. If you know any of the people who appear on the tape, we’d love to have their names and to invite them to join and participate. And, if you’d like to view the entire tape, we can make arrangements to loan you a copy. You’ll find a sign up sheet for that too at the registration table.
Thank you for coming… and enjoy the program.
[If Gail is there, perhaps we could ask her to introduce herself and perhaps answer questions about the session. Ruth will be talking to her on Monday.]