I fell in love there. I fell in love with “there” there—with the city and its offerings and purpose and inhabitants. And my little part in it. I’d been warned away. Told that a stint in Washington D.C. would taint my career in the National Park Service (NPS). Would earn me the label of ineffectual bureaucrat and rob me of other coveted placements around the system.
But, from my fine perch at Gettysburg National Miliary Park, I answered Dr. Harry Pfanz’s invitation with an application anyway. And found myself apartment hunting in Arlington, Virginia, before summer 1974 ended. A summer that saw the last of Richard Nixon and the inauguration of Gerald Ford. By September 1, I was walking into Main Interior—as if I belonged. And I did.
I first worked with Barry Mackintosh—the senior and fellow historian. We answered to Dr. Pfanz, the Chief Historian, who worked for Robert Utley, the Assistant Director for Park Historic Preservation, who, in turn, answered to Ernest Alan Connolly, Director of the NPS Office of Archaeology and Historic Preservation. A welter of titles, but men who were committed to historic preservation—within the National Park Service and across the country. Not a one of them an entitled or lazy or bumbling bureaucrat. All, in fact, in their own ways, creative, purposeful, articulate, powerful people. In fact, far more than I could say about the Gettysburg staff, I found no time-wasters, no empty shirts.
The energy in the office was palpable. We were on a relatively new mission—drawn from a 1966 law and new regulations. Contrary to old practices in which NPS superintendents thought themselves too important to involve others in their decisions, we reminded them that they, in fact, had to answer to a broader constituency who valued historic and prehistoric resources. That meant calls and meetings and writing suffused with diplomatically-cast advocacy. We also got to shape agency recommendations regarding potential new historic parks.
In time, I shifted over to the NPS offices that managed the National Register of Historic Places program. The bosses were younger, inventive, deadly serious and still irreverent. Some were female. They, too, were establishing a new program and new standards. Both positions involved conferences and tense meetings, travel and teaching.
Yes, Washington of the mid-seventies was a city of towering egos and big aspirations. Ordinary mortals vied to work for congressmen or senators. We knew the hierarchies of our agencies. Titles mattered. But, at least in all the jobs I held, we wanted to make a difference, to do good, to use the influence we had (limited and often resented by those in the field) to save resources that might otherwise be ignored or lost.
My moment of glory could have arrived the day that the office was empty of bosses. Not Dr. Connolly, nor Bob or Harry or Barry. When the Director of the Park Service called down for someone from Park Historic Preservation to accompany him to the Hill to a committee meeting, I was the one left. We rode together in a limousine, made our way to the hearing. The Director read a prepared statement. I fielded one question. And—as a review of the Congressional Record (a word-for-word account of all public Congressional meetings) illustrated—I fumbled for words and did not offer a single sentence with both a subject and verb. Nonetheless, someone snapped a photograph of that ignominious moment. Director Everhardt signed it for me. I am left with an indelible reminder of the moment that I embarrassed myself and my good colleagues.
I had, of course, learned a bit about Washington D. C. eight years earlier when I was a healthy guinea pig at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland. Then, I had found my way down to the National Mall and the Smithsonian museums. On those small treks, we traveled both through upscale portions of D.C. and Georgetown as well as desperately poor, black neighborhoods. I experienced the city’s geography, it’s incredible grid-and-grand-avenue layout—the product of George Washington’s determination and Pierre Charles L’Enfant’s genius. And around the Mall, courtesy of Frederick Law Olmstead’s planning, the grace, grandeur, and space of the seat of our government. Along with the National Park Service’s skilled landscaping.
Seven years later, I found my day’s walk from bus or subway to Interior and subsequent offices nothing but beautiful and interesting. And the subway—the Metro. It was being constructed throughout my tenure in D.C. By the last couple years of my stay, partially finished enough for me to ride it every day to work and to shop and recreate. Taxis were cheap. But the Metro rendered so much of the city safely and swiftly accessible. And like every other commuter, I learned to devour the Washington Post (itself a daily compendium of the best writing and thinking I’d ever known) in my easy rides across the Potomac.
The Metro, in turn, gave me more opportunities to enjoy Washington’s music and art and history and drama and fairs. The Smithsonian and the National Gallery of Art and the Hirschhorn and the Library of Congress were all free. I could turn lunch hours into quick visits to new exhibits. Military bands played concerts on the Mall during summer months. Bob and I attended symphony concerts and operas at the Kennedy Center; musicals and operas—blankets and picnics in hand—at Wolf Trap, a huge outdoor musical venue in suburban Virginia; and fireworks above the Mall from vantage points in the cozy dark of Arlington National Cemetery.
I ultimately lived in three different apartment/condos in Northern Virginia: Arlington first and then two in in the same complex on the edge of Alexandria closest to the Pentagon. All brick construction with parquet floors and glorious varnished wood kitchen counters, big windows, ample closet space. The last two were garden apartments—with space to sit outside. They were gracious, comfortable spaces built for the influx of workers during World War Two. Some of my neighbors had, in fact, arrived to work in government offices then and had lived there ever since.
My colleagues from that first D.C. posting remained my closest friends throughout. Bob became my weekend love—our time replete with elegant cocktail hours, conversations about our shared work, experiments with dinner recipes, reading, and city outings. And having lugged my upright piano from Gettysburg to Washington, Bob and I enjoyed rollicking sing-along evenings. I even secured a second-hand trumpet for him to deepen the frivolity. At Christmas, we invited Park Historic Preservation colleagues to join us for a holiday song fest.
Of course, Washington was also a city of gossip and misbehavior. But—compared to these days—at a now laughingly limited scale. In early October, after I arrived, Arkansas Representative Wilbur Mills, Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, and striptease dancer Annabel Battistella—known as Fanne Foxe or the “Argentine Firecracker” were stopped by D.C. police. Foxe jumped into the Washington Tidal Basin to evade police and reporters. The episode led to Mills’ political downfall and he later signed on for rehabilitation from severe alcoholism and lectured on the evils of addiction. Foxe went on to earn college and masters degrees. What would be hardly noticed now, consumed much print and TV coverage, tongue-wagging and judgment at the time.
Element by element, I now despair of D.C. ‘s transformation. The Washington Post tainted by Jeff Bezos’ selfish, brazen support of Trump. The Smithsonian threatened by Trump’s racist and mysogyngistic revision of history. The Kennedy Center under Trump’s aegis shunned by great performers and the National Orchestra–now closed. National Guard members marching uselessly around L’Enfant’s city design. The grand architecture of government buildings hidden behind Trump banners. The White House and its grounds utterly desecrated by demolition, cage-fighting, concreted gardens, and a heli-pad. The Reflecting Pool (think about the name—not just a nice body of water—put a pool to reflect on the contributions of Washington and Lincoln) empty again and vandalized by Trump’s own stupidity and cronyism. Never mind the threatened, unoriginal arch. And wherever Trump can meddle with interiors, the gaudiest slap-dash application of fake gold.
And in an ever deeper, more devastating way, the heart Washington D.C.’s purpose eroded. Thousands of hard-working civil servants whose skill and dedication helped to keep us healthy, informed, educated, supported—now terminated at the whim of a trillionaire. Many more employees left in uncertainty. And the very energy and purpose of government blown apart by the vapid inaction of Congress—by the toadying of senators and representatives who know better. And by a Cabinet chosen only for loyalty not skill, not good intent, not higher ideals, unwilling to seek expertise. A city defiled in spirit and substance.
*****
I’ve been gone from D.C. now for 46 years. Contrary to all the NPS naysayers, I would not trade my time there for anything. I was one of many honored civil servants. I learned from men and women who lived and worked with abiding integrity. Who were investing their careers in skilled, creative dedication to the Nation’s history. And who were committed to the understanding that government could be and must be a force for good. Who understood that words—carefully chosen and deployed—held incredible power. I hope that I brought what I learned to Montana . . . .
The last desk I occupied in Washington was in the 1887 Pension Building—now the National Building Museum. Built to honor Civil War veterans and house the government workers who orchestrated their pensions, the building is a masterpiece of engineering and architecture. I’ve written about it before. But I will say again that every arrival into the five-story interior atrium left me breathless. It was a sacred space, an homage to the work of a government’s thoughtfulness and purpose.
Now the place and all it represented to me falls desecrated and mocked and tarted up and impugned. It has become the symbol of what our American democracy should NOT be. Still I won’t say “ruined” yet. I can only trust in its resilience. And hang on to memories. ©d
