Melanie Kay-Wyatt, the Superintendent of the Alexandria City Public Schools, has a lot on her mind.

Kay-Wyatt, a parent of two adult children, joined ACPS in 2021. She became ACPS’ Superintendent in July 2023.

Kay-Wyatt described the path that took her from the position of ACPS’ Chief of Human Resources to Superintendent. “We’re seeing it [Human Resources experience as a precursor to becoming a superintendent] more now than probably in previous years when the role of the Superintendent was different,” she said. “I think every experience you have in life prepares you for what’s coming next.”

“I have had many roles,” Kay-Wyatt said. She said her experience in Human Resources prepared her for managing personnel and staffing, but, “Probably what I use the most is being a school-level administrator because I always wanted to stay really connected to the schools. That lens helps you to operate and make sure that students are managed and receive the services that they need.”

Kay-Wyatt has worked in the Alexandria, Spotsylvania County, and Fredericksburg City school systems, but she resists comparing them. “They are very different communities, they [the schools] are serving very different populations,” she said. For example, according to Kay-Wyatt, ACPS has the third highest percentage of English language learners of any school division in Virginia.

There is no comparison, and no one should ever compare their district or division to another, because they are not the same…the people in the community have different experiences, and that’s what you have to make sure you lean in to.

“We all serve the same purpose of wanting the best for our children,” Kay-Wyatt said. “We see a lot of our population as transient, so the experience is changing, the perspective is changing. I think what we need to do is to learn the community at the time that we are making a decision, or being asked a question.”

Referring to the effects of the federal government shutdown, “We are always willing to help, but what do those services look like, because they are very different now than they were last year.”

Kay-Wyatt joined ACPS in 2021 as students were returning to the schools, so she was not part of ACPS’ pandemic-driven implementation of online learning which she describes as “not for everyone.”

On the use of artificial intelligence in the schools, she said, “It’s just another resource; it doesn’t replace quality education. It doesn’t replace sitting down over an essay.”

She said, “Nothing can replace a high quality teacher…someone has to provide you that experience and connect you to the school itself, and what better person than a teacher?”

Kay-Wyatt described her decision-making style as expansive, describing the decision to close schools in inclement weather as an example. “I think about the student driver who has less experience in driving” in bad weather, she said. “I have to think about every road and every street and I work closely with the City Manager—we have a great relationship—in trying to make good decisions about the safety of our staff, and many of our staff live outside the city.”

“I have to think holistically about every school, and the impact my one decision is going to have,” she said. “Every time I make a decision I think about our staff and our students.”

The last two executive principals at Alexandria City High School resigned to become high school principals at Wakefield High School and Washington-Liberty High School in Arlington County. Kay-Wyatt admired them.

“I would ask anyone in this city to walk in their shoes for a day—that is a very large high school. It is like managing a school division in itself…and it is hard to turn off when you care about the work. It can be exhausting,” she said.

Kay-Wyatt has announced that an external consultant had been retained to assess the ACHS executive principal position and leadership structure with the goal of, as she said at the meeting, “aligning the leadership model with our strategic priorities.”

Kay-Wyatt said, “Turnover and change is a normal process, especially for people who select [ACPS] for work.”

“In an area like this, we do see teachers who go between divisions,” she said. “It’s just the nature of the work. Turnover and change is okay. Families leave for personal reasons, [especially] military families, so some of that is just a natural way of life.”

As to superintendent turnover, Kay-Wyatt said, “Traditionally, if you think back, it used to be that superintendents were community members that went through the system, they lived there, their kids were there—you don’t see that [now.] You do see movement, across the nation.” She said that Millennials and recent generations “are about change” in employment.

Kay-Wyatt described the challenges of finding space to build new schools in Alexandria. For example, the design of Minnie Howard involved a very different concept than the design of the King Street campus. She said that the new ACHS Minnie Howard Campus is, “very open, very airy. The design lends itself to having collaborative spaces.”

Kay-Wyatt’s priorities are school capacity, improved instruction, making sense of the Virginia Department of Education’s initiatives, and trying to build instructional leaders to support the ACPS staff.

Kay-Wyatt has told the School Board that, “We need to get out of operational mode,” meaning that the pandemic and other factors demanded attention to how the schools operate. Kay-Wyatt said that the emphasis needs to shift to instruction.

Kay-Wyatt said that the way the Department of Education has rolled out programs has caused concerns. Kay-Wyatt believes that the delayed release of a new accountability system has placed a heavy weight on classroom teachers. “We’re building the plane as we’re flying it,” she said. “That doesn’t work for educators.”

“I’m all for accountability, just like every other superintendent,” she said.

“If everyone doesn’t own the data of the school, then that’s a challenge. As a science teacher, you have to own the reading, you have got to own it all.”

Kay-Wyatt said, “There are students who don’t test well. It is one snapshot at a moment in time. And, then, if you look at the seniors and how competitive and successful they are, those previous year SOL [scores] do not show the growth, the achievement of the school division.”

Kay-Wyatt’s message to Alexandrians is, “We continue to build culture, and I need them to help me build culture. Putting a positive [outlook] out there also helps build culture. We know we have challenges, we are not saying we are 100% perfect—we are always about continuous improvement,” she said.

Kay-Wyatt sees “the citizens of Alexandria, the parents, the alumni, in helping us build this culture” as recruiters for ACPS. She pointed to improved employee retention and a decline to “a handful of vacancies” as evidence of a better ACPS culture.

“I’m okay with the hard questions, I’m okay if we don’t agree,” Kay-Wyatt said. “But, respect that we are making the best decisions based on the information that we have and that we are going to care for your student and for the division as a whole.”

Justin Wilson acquired some new perspectives in 2025.

Wilson was elected to the Alexandria City Council in 2007. He served on the Council until 2018 (with a break from 2009-2012) when he was elected Mayor. He was re-elected in 2021. Wilson announced in December 2023 that he would not run for re-election. He concluded his service as Mayor on December 31, 2024.

Wilson was an executive with Amtrak for 19 years. On August 15, 2025 the NOVA Parks Board of Directors announced that Wilson had been selected as the organization’s Executive Director. NOVA Parks is a multi-jurisdiction organization that owns and operates parkland and recreational facilities in Northern Virginia.

Wilson had thought about a career change for some time. “I always toyed with the idea of figuring out a way to combine what I did in my day career and learned in my night career,” Wilson said. “I never quite had it in my head what that would look like—I figured I would see it when it showed up.”

Wilson said that making the decision not to run two and a half years ago made his decision to change careers easier. “Making the decision not to run again was a really hard decision, and one I grappled with for quite a while,” he said. “Having made that hard decision and having it work out so well, for me, personally, actually made making a big career change decision so much easier.”

Wilson was on the NOVA Parks board for three years before he was elected to the City Council so he knew the organization.

When the job description for a new NOVA Parks Executive Director came out in the spring of 2025, Wilson said that the job seemed to, “…combine dealmaking and working with policy makers to craft solutions that I always enjoyed about my night gig, but it also included leading a large organization and administration role that I performed in my day gig, and it was definitely a huge change of pace.”

Wilson’s adjustments to his new position are not complete. “It is still not quite setting in that this is my real job now,” he said.

“It [NOVA Parks] is a fascinating organization, 37 regional parks, 12,000 acres,” Wilson said. “What makes it unique as a public agency is 89% of revenue [is generated] from operations,” through boat rentals, wave pools, light shows, wedding venues, etc.

The other 11% of NOVA Parks’ revenue comes from its six member jurisdictions. “lt’s a very entrepreneurial organization—you have to make money,” he said.

“I’m able to leverage the relationships that I had—it’s funny because now the relationships are different,” Wilson said. “I’m wearing a different hat…once you are out of office, those relationships go away quickly.”

“I’m seeing government from a different perspective now,” Wilson said. “When you are in elective office, you see, generally, see the best. You don’t see the warts as often—when you see them, they are jarring.”

“I’m trying hard to be the Executive Director, not the Executive Director who used to be the Mayor and whatever else, because that’s not going to help me,” Wilson said.

On the future of Cameron Run Regional Park, Wilson said that the criticism when the city’s lease to the authority was extended when he was Mayor was that the park was lucrative for NOVA Parks, but the city did not make that much money. That circumstance has changed.

“Now we don’t make that much off the site. We basically broke even last year. That’s a big change for us,” Wilson said. “Some of that is management, weather, things like that, but some of it is also that we have not invested in the site. We have not invested in the site because we do not have a long-term lease.”

Wilson said, “It is true that the city says, and they said it when I was there, ‘We want year-round uses on that site.’ It is true that [Cameron Run Regional Park] is intensively used for 10 weeks a year and then it is not intensively used, and that stinks.”

Wilson said that he speaks to Council members, and others, about city issues regularly, but that he is happy to let others bear the primary responsibility to resolve them.

Wilson was not surprised by the Virginia election results. “We have 50 to 60 years of tradition in Virginia,” of electing governors from the party opposite the party that holds the White House.

“Don Scott [expected to be the Speaker of the House of Delegates] will be the most powerful person in Virginia. He will single-handedly decide what goes on Abigail [Spanberger’s] desk,” he said.

“This is the biggest house Democratic majority since 1988,” Wilson said. “For the first time, there is not a single Republican in either house from Northern Virginia.”

“I do think you will probably see [Governor Spanberger] take on school construction early on, and if she does, that would be smart because school construction is primarily an issue for growing jurisdictions, Northern Virginia for the most part, and then for the Southwest or rural jurisdictions that have crumbling schools,” he said.

Wilson looks back on his time in elected office with satisfaction, “The infrastructure things, school buildings, Minnie [Howard] and MacArthur, the sewer work. Some of the economic development [projects]—Landmark was a big one.”

“There is still probably controversy about whether I should be proud of it or not, [but] think I helped, at least in part, to change the conversation on housing and housing affordability and how we actually make progress on that issue,” he said.

“The thing that I enjoyed the most, and gives me gratification, is that I tried to make government a little more accessible and understandable to people,” he said. “And that’s what people still stop me on the street on, as recently as a couple days ago, [to say] ‘Hey, I really miss your newsletter.’”

Wilson regrets the deferral of capital projects due to the Great Recession during his first term on Council.

“It’s easy to see that in the last 11 months there have been some things that have blown up that I probably bear some responsibility for. I think ARHA is a great example. I think I should probably have been more assertive in dealing with some of that,” he said.

As to the now defunct Wizards/Capitals arena project in Potomac Yard, “While I certainly do not regret what we did, there are definitely ways that we did things that I would have done differently,” he said. “I think everyone on the team agrees that the big mistake we made was getting the big tent, going to Potomac Yard, and announcing it as a done deal.”

“Part of the challenge was that everything was so confidential and we were competing against D.C., essentially. For example, we could not call up WMATA and say, ‘Hey, WMATA, let’s figure out a transportation plan.’” Wilson notes that WMATA has announced that the proposal for a new Commanders stadium will require a $75 million upgrade of the Stadium-Armory Metro station.

Wilson thinks that perceptions of the scale of Alexandria’s city government can be inaccurate for people who are used to working with the federal government. Wilson said that people ask to meet the city’s “stormwater team,” when it is actually “one guy who does 18 other things.”

“I think that one of the things that has changed during my time is the coarseness of local politics. In my very first race, against Bill Cleveland in 2007, he and I agreed that we would revive what had been a recently extinguished tradition. If I won, he would go to my party; if he won, I would go to his party,” said Wilson. “I was pulling a wagon with my kids [on Mt. Vernon Avenue] and we walked up to Los Tios and he’s standing there waiting. He gave me a handshake and said congratulations.”

As to seeking future elective office, Wilson said, “Probably not. Local government has always been where it’s at for me. I did my time…I don’t have that burning desire to do it again.”

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Libby Garvey held elective office in Arlington County for 28 years. Now retired from public service, Garvey was a School Board member for 15 years and three months and a member of the County Board for 12 years and nine months. She chaired the School Board five times and the County Board three times.

Garvey, who has lived near the Arlington-Alexandria border for decades, has perspectives on local government in Northern Virginia informed by her years of experience and her extensive network of friends and former colleagues.

Garvey said, “The County Board ended up being the most interesting and most fun because you have a whole breadth of topics and you have all kinds of support. The work is similar, but it’s more varied.” While on the County Board, Garvey said, “I got to be ‘in the room where it happened’ for a number of important issues, such as when Amazon chose Arlington for its HQ2.”

“On the School Board, I had a hand in building or renovating, pretty much almost every school in the county—elementary schools, middle schools, Wakefield, Washington-Liberty, all the high schools— because boards before me for many years had deferred maintenance and had closed school buildings,” Garvey said, “Then, we had this population explosion.”

Garvey chaired the Arlington County Board during the pandemic. “I felt that I was meant to be there at that time,” Garvey said, “It was not an easy time, and I had many years of experience that helped me. That’s a satisfying feeling, to pull together everything you’ve been doing in your life to help more people.”

Garvey provides institutional/corporate memory for Arlington’s elected officials, though, she said, “Some are more interested in talking to me than others.”

“We are entering a very different era and the way we’ve been doing things is often not going to work anymore. During the pandemic there was a period when we were kind of on our own—the federal government provided little support for getting important supplies like personal protective equipment, or providing help to set up public health systems to distribute vaccines and supplies,” Garvey said, “In fact, with the PPE, there was an order that arrived at Dulles and the federal government intercepted it and took it away.”

Looking at the current destruction of the federal government Garvey sees cooperation among local governments as critical. She said, “local government is the only functioning government we are going to have,” so it will be essential for local jurisdictions to work together. She described the federal government as “absent or actively malign and threatening to us” and the state government as “not doing great, so we’re on our own.”

Garvey raised the possibility of a widespread outbreak of bird flu in humans: “Is the federal government going to do vaccines? Probably not. If we want vaccines for our people, we may need to go as a region to the people who make vaccines and order them ourselves, as if we were another country or state. The region is well-resourced enough, and big enough, and smart enough that we probably could do that if we were to work together.”

Garvey spoke of the potential impacts on the region of the Trump Administration’s workforce reductions. She said that Arlington County “has a good sense” of how many people depend on the federal government for employment. “That’s been a worry since November,” Garvey said.

Some years ago, Garvey ran unsuccessfully for the Virginia State Senate. Her life had been complicated by breast cancer and her husband’s untimely death.

“I’m actually happy I lost that election. I said to people then that I know I’m meant to run for this seat, but I’m not sure if I’m meant to win or not,” Garvey said, “One of my favorite sayings is, ‘God writes straight, but with crooked lines.’ ”

Garvey believes there is still an “Arlington Way,” the extended discussion of civic issues in generally respectful terms. “It’s a sense of good government and wanting everybody to be involved—but it used to be much more limited in who was ‘everybody’ and involved,” Garvey said, “People today get upset if you’re not being transparent and clear and including everybody.”

Garvey described the demographic that ran Arlington County for years as, “Mostly older and white, owning their own homes, largely in North Arlington,” but said this is changing as the number of renters has increased in the county.

Garvey does not excuse the progressive left. She said, “Part of the reason Trump got elected was liberals from coast to coast deciding that, ‘Not in my back yard’ and ‘We all value this, but not here; when it comes to providing housing for people. Progressivism has good points, but it has also gummed up the works, especially on building housing. So, nationally we in a big hole on the amount of housing we need and we’ve done little to address it”

Garvey cited her former colleague, Mary Hynes, on the differences between Arlington and Alexandria. “It’s like they are siblings and it’s like Alexandria is the older, more established sister and we’re kind of the young start-up teenager still.” She described Alexandria as, “a little more loathe to change, hence you’ve got that Braddock Metro station with no high rises near it, which is nuts.”

“And, you’ve got your City Council being paid an absolute pittance and that I think harms you a lot. It’s ridiculous how little it is,” Garvey said. Serving on the County Board is, “a full-time job if you do it properly, and so is the City Council.”

Garvey said, “The point is, people expect to hear from you. If they send an email they expect to hear from you in an hour or two. If it’s two days, they are furious. And, they expect you to come to their events. They expect you to ‘go toe to toe’ with big companies like Monumental Sports or Amazon. And, they somehow think a community can pay a pittance for that amount of work and quality. There are excellent public servants willing to do this work for almost nothing, but I believe fewer and fewer are willing to make those sacrifices and over time it is not healthy.…sometimes you get what you pay for.”

Garvey is not a fan of Delegate Patrick Hope’s bill in the General Assembly to expand the Arlington County Board, implement a ward system, and have the Board Chair selected by the voters. “We told Patrick we don’t want it, at least not now when there is so much going on, but he goes ahead and does it anyway,” she said.

“It’s like you are on the Titanic, you hit an iceberg and you’re taking on water, and somebody decides it’s time to paint the life boats, not even rearranging the deck chairs…I’m ok with considering changing the number of people on the Board,” said Garvey, “but I don’t think it would get you much. And, I wouldn’t go to districts [for elections] at all in such a very small jurisdiction .”

Garvey added, “And, at this time, to distract everyone from what we need to do to survive the Trump administration is, IMHO, irresponsible.”

Garvey attributes Alexandria’s uncontested 2024 School Board election to the fact that, “You don’t pay enough and the jobs are miserable. Many people treat their elected officials really badly these days. But, right now again, local government is all we’ve got. I think it’s crucial that we all support local government better than we have.”

On or about March 1, Garvey plans to launch Libby’s Local List, a website that will provide information to support good local governance and contain tips for thriving as a community in turbulent times.

“I just like to learn stuff—on the County Board I learned something every day and I was able to make our community a better place for its residents,” Garvey said, “It doesn’t get better than that. It really has been an honor and a privilege to serve my community as I have.”

“lt [elected office] is a public service to me, a calling,” Garvey said, “So, while I didn’t earn a whole lot of money, I earned as much as I’ve needed and I could contribute my abilities and make my part of the world a better place. I’ve just had a marvelous life.”

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A Californian Moves East

Rabbi David Spinrad, the leader of Alexandria’s historic Beth El Hebrew Congregation, drives a powder blue Ford Mustang. 

Spinrad grew up in Marin County, California, and counts the San Francisco Giants and 49ers among his devotions.  In 2018, he came to Beth El, which was founded i in 1859, from The Temple, a large synagogue in Atlanta with an influential and accomplished congregation and a commitment to social justice.

Spinrad graduated from the University of California, Davis where he majored in political science. “I always wanted to do something meaningful, significant and contributive,” he said. “I was better at knowing what I didn’t want to do then what I did want to do.”

Spinrad said that he “grew up with a strong Jewish cultural identity” but was not involved in Jewish youth groups or Jewish studies.  He describes himself growing up as “culturally Jewish” and observant of the major Jewish holidays, but he “never really regarded myself as someone who was going to become a spiritual leader.”

In the 1990’s, he moved to New York City and tended bar for several years.  He later combined an avocation with a vocation by starting a personal training business in San Francisco.  He said, “Wellness was always a vehicle for deeper question: What does it mean to live life well? How do I shine my gifts on the world?” 

In 1999, Spinrad met his wife at Burning Man, an annual desert festival which describes itself as, “A temporary metropolis dedicated to community, art, self-expression, and self-reliance.”  He took an extended sabbatical from his fitness business for foreign travel and reflection. In Israel, he “discovered an actual language for the feelings I had in my heart.” Ultimately, he started rabbinical school in 2007.

Israel’s Crises, Beth El, and American Jews

 Describing America and Beth El today, Spinrad said, “People are hurting. It’s been a hard stretch for our country,” he said. “Everything is up to volume 11—reactivity, anger, and fear. It’s been so loud, and then we went through Covid.”

“I’m trying to learn how to be the rabbi for this congregation now… I’m trying to be a little more gentle, a little bit more pastoral, and recognize that people are weary and be a little more of an uplifter and less of an instigator,” he said.

Spinrad stresses that the conflict in Israel extends beyond Gaza, but that opinions within the Beth El community vary markedly.  “It’s no cliché when they say, ‘Two Jews, three opinions’—It’s actually woven into the fabric of the [Jewish] tradition. The Talmud is our recording of rabbinic debates.””

Beth El has been overwhelmingly supportive of Israel which Spinrad describes as, “a sovereign entity that was attacked by a terrorist organization that did many horrible things, and abducted, at the time, 250-plus civilians and brought them back to a terrain that was designed to maximize civilian casualties.”  Spinrad has been to Israel twice since the October 7, 2023 attacks and other Beth El leaders have also been there.

“Simultaneously, we have seen a story told where Israel is the oppressor, Israel is the aggressor.  Antisemitism is unfortunately a pillar of Western Civilization—it contends that Jews are the locus of evil in the world and that whatever is most detestable is Jewish,” he said.  “It [antisemitism] shape shifts over time. It probably predates Christianity, but it gets traction with early Christianity.”

Spinrad says that Nazi race theory—that Jews were another race—is a platform for hatred. “We’re not a race; we’re only called a race when people want to hate us and hurt us…we are an ethnicity.”

Spinrad does not minimize or rationalize the tragedy of the Palestinian population in Gaza. He said, “Have civilian children died? Yes, and one is too many—please make me on the record for that.  The civilian casualties have been horrible. But, to call it a genocide, which is a version of the Holocaust?  It [genocide] is a word to describe the Holocaust. There is no systematic attempt to annihilate an entire people.  It is a horrible war against an adversary that embeds itself beneath civilians to maximize casualties.”

“People want peace. People want a two-state solution. People want everyone to live in peace and harmony and prosperity. People understand that freedom for the Palestinian people has to mean security for Israel,” Spinrad said. “This is a regional war.  The struggle between Israel and Palestine is not a struggle over borders.  One side wants there to be a state and the other side does not want there to be a state and is funded by Iran which sees not just infidels, but sees historically in Europe and in their own land, the weakest of the weak, the Jews on Muslim land.”

The Shifting Understandings of Zionism

Zionism, according to Spinrad, originally described the return of an indigenous people, the Jews, to an ancestral homeland to pursue self-determination and self-defense, a desire that dates to the first century AD. Now, he said, Zionism has evolved into an epithet, depending on who is using the term. Among other negatives, Zionism has been used to condemn Israel for what is called “white settler colonialism.”

“I hope the Jews in North America and the United States appreciate how incredible this country has been, and is, for the Jewish community and don’t ever take it for granted—if they do, they don’t know our history,” he said.

One of Beth El’s six core values is “we devote ourselves to wrestling with our dreams for Israel.” Since the October 7, 2023 Hamas attacks, Beth El’s Israel Committee has held several open forums that have stressed respectful and constructive discussion of what Spinrad called “the cacophony” of voices and opinions about events in Israel. 

“We want people to be engaged, be informed, have an opinion, participate. We don’t all have to agree. We want people to be educated and engaged when it comes to Israel. I would rather that you and I disagree if you are a member of the congregation. I would much rather we disagree about it and [find that] we’re never going to find common ground, but we’re going to shake hands and recognize that we are all part of one people,” he said.

Israel’s Prime Minister and Its Future

Spinrad saw Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s recent address to the U.S. Congress as “sending a message back home.”  Spinrad viewed the address as political theater and describes Netanyahu as “speaking to his base.”  While Spinrad agrees with much of what Netanyahu said in his speech, he said, “I think he [Netanyahu] is very much an impediment not only in the current war with Hamas, but an impediment to peace.” 

Spinrad draws a parallel between today’s situation in Israel and the destruction of the Second Jewish commonwealth and the Second Temple because of a corrupt priesthood and religious zealotry. “This is what is going on in Israel now. A year ago Israelis were in the streets protesting against judicial reform and protesting against Netanyahu and his far-right cabinet. He [Netanyahu] made a deal with the devil and ultra-nationalist, ultra-religious, xenophobic” interests to stay in power, he said.

“I think the settlements are a huge impediment to peace—that’s not controversial--and the fact that Netanyahu, for over a decade, has let it [the settlements] go on unabated,” he said. “There has been settler violence since October 7 and the predominant opinion is that Netanyahu has been playing politics to prolong his position.”

Anti-Israel and Pro-Palestinian Protests in America

Spinrad said that “There have been some unfortunate incidences,” in the schools in Northern Virginia.  He said, “Jewish safety and security as Americans rests on a wide, liberal, accepting and tolerant society which includes freedom of speech.”

Speaking of some of the protests in America, Spinrad said, “It’s hurtful when you’re saying what’s happening is a genocide—I don’t take that word lightly. You are accusing Israel of genocide…Do they recognize how hurtful that is?  Is there any context as to why this war is happening?”

He responds similarly to those who refer to Israel as an apartheid state. “Do we have a problem in the West Bank? Yes, because there are civil and military governments there.  Look who serves in the government: there are Arab Israelis and Palestinian Israelis” in the government, he said. Spinrad says that Israel is, “imperfect, but it’s not an apartheid state.”

Spinrad says that the other institutions in Alexandria’s faith community have reacted in varying ways to the October 7 attacks and the rise of antisemitism. He said that Fairlington United Methodist Church, Commonwealth Baptist Church, and a small group of others have reached out to the Beth El community.  From other congregations, he said, “The silence is deafening. It’s been a lonely time to be a Jew.”

Spinrad thinks, “the way the story has been told in the media has made Israel villainous.”  Spinrad cites a July 29, 2024 front page story in The Washington Post headlined “Israel Hits Targets in Lebanon” with a picture of family members mourning a dead child. The headline and picture imply that the tragically portrayed death was caused by Israeli troops.

Neither the headline or its subheadline said that the picture was taken after a Hezbollah strike killed 12 children on a soccer field and playground in the Druze town of Majdal Shams.  The Post said, in a later editor’s note, “the headline and subheadline that accompanied a July 29 Page One photo and article about Israeli strikes on Hezbollah targets in Lebanon did not provide adequate context.”  The note added, “[t]he headlines should have noted that the Israeli strikes were a response to a rocket strike from Lebanon that killed 12 teenagers and children in the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights. The photo depicted mourning for one of those victims, as the caption noted.”

Understanding the Nature of Antisemitism

Spinrad sees antisemitism not as a prejudice against a religion, Judaism, but rather as a persistent and ingrained antipathy toward Jews as a people.

“If I could explain one thing to the wider world, it would be to understand that we [the Jews] are an ethnoreligious people.  It’s very easy for this country to identify hatred when it is directed at a religion…Nobody is coming after the Jewish people for how we pray. Religious antisemitism—that’s the Middle Ages, quite honestly. Nobody is coming after me because I do not accept Jesus as my savior—they are coming after me because I am a Jew.”

Spinrad asks and answers a rabbi’s teaching question: “What do you call a Jew who does not believe in God and who does nothing at all Jewish?  A Jew.”

“When someone, God forbid, paints a swastika on a synagogue, it’s really easy for the broader community to say ‘Whoa, that’s wrong,’ but it is not religious prejudice,” he said.  “It just happens to be where Jews hang out. That’s an attack on us as a people.”

“It’s unique. There is not really another people like us, so there is not really an analogy,” Spinrad said.

“There came a point where everybody was looking at their artists bios and they all looked so dry—full of information that didn’t make any sense. Who cares who you collaborated with, what halls you’ve been in, or even what jobs you had?” Ross said. “I know that’s a lot of descriptors, but some part of me believes in every single one of those.”

Ross acknowledges the distinction between symphonic music—works performed by an orchestra—and classical music, a term that identifies a musical period, as with romantic or baroque music.

“One of the problems we have is that name, classical music, which people assume means what they see happening with most symphony orchestras on a stage and what kind of concerts—the delivery mechanism is thought of by a lot of people as classical music,” Ross said. “Nowadays, if you say something is ‘classical’ that usually means it’s not popular and it was probably written by a dead white guy at least a hundred years ago. So, that’s the assumption--it’s not a good name for us.”

Ross also questions the tradition of orchestras in formal dress or uniforms.  He said, “Why should everyone have to wear the same thing on stage when you are trying to get the individuality of voices and the human power of music?”

Ross rejects the notion of the ASO as a greatest hits machine that performs a limited symphonic repertoire by well-known composers for a mostly elderly subscriber base.  “My main job is to take pieces that I believe in, even if they are written by dead white guys from Europe, or something that was written yesterday that I believe in, and try to make an event that can actually be relatable for somebody who doesn’t come to the concert already knowing they love classical music,” he said. “I’m trying to earn enough trust so that people know that they can show up at a concert of ours, no matter what is being played, familiar or unfamiliar, and make them feel like they are part of a story or an event that means something to them.”

Ross’s commitment to “de-ritualizing the event” was apparent in the ASO’s sold-out February 2024 program which featured Mozart’s Requiem, Aaron Copland’s Appalachian Spring, Sound and Fury, a 2017 work by Anna Clyne, and the world premiere of Aurora by Afghan composer Milad Yousufi that included the tabla, an Afghan drum.  “You can’t change anything for anybody if you can’t lure them in,” he said.

“My job is not really to grow subscribers,” Ross said. “I just want every concert we do to be, in a way that is a challenge, an unrepeatable event—something that is unique and doesn’t fall into a format where everybody knows what is going to happen.”

 The ASO’s season performs a concert every five or six weeks which gives Ross time to think individually about every performance.

Sympatico, a highly successful participatory music education program, is the way the ASO reaches students in Alexandria’s elementary schools. “We used to have support for educational concerts of the Alexandria Symphony at [the then] T.C. Williams High School,” Ross said. “But the funding disappeared—this was before my time.” 

While the result was that the ASO changed its focus to the elementary schools, Ross said, “I would love the opportunity to be able to talk to the secondary schools as long as it was funded successfully through our organization.”  The ASO offers student tickets and recently performed a family concert titled “Sherlock Holmes and the Case of the Missing Maestro” at the Masonic Memorial.

Ross started with the ASO in 2018-2019 season. As he began conducting the ASO he was advised to concentrate on traditional mainstream symphonic works, but Ross has been impressed with the way Alexandria audiences have supported what he calls “little quirky adventures” in music.

“People said, ‘He’s making it user-friendly, but it’s not quite what I expect from a concert,’” Ross said. “They thought that I was somehow not quite respecting the history.”

Ross points out that music opportunities are extensive in the Washington area. “Frankly, we live in a community where there is the National Symphony, there is the National Philharmonic, there is the Fairfax Symphony, there is Annapolis, there is everything happening at the University of Maryland, the Clarice [Smith Performing Arts Center]—we wouldn’t be the only people playing Beethoven’s Third Symphony if we chose to do that,” Ross said. “It seems to me that our programming needs to be and has had added value by being a little bit more unique and unexpected with a little bit more storytelling and not just worshipping the iconic masterpieces.”

Ross described the ASO’s musicians as a “wonderful core of freelance players from all over the DC community who chose to play this concert with us as the Alexandria Symphony.”

The ASO is composed of freelance players so the time available for rehearsals is relatively short.  Rehearsals generally begin on the Tuesday before performances at the end of the week.

Ross met Leonard Bernstein in 1985 when Bernstein was dealing with the death of his wife. “He was tortured seemingly by the idea that he had killed his wife or that he was responsible for this, despite the cancer. He was emotionally so big…he needed to reach everybody around him,” said Ross. “He needed you in order to invest in you.” 

Ross described himself at the time as reserved, but he felt encouraged by Bernstein. “I had to really take myself seriously,” Ross said. “If there were 800 or 1,000 other young conductors that he made feel that way, what’s the matter with being encouraged like that?”

“About a year after [Bernstein] died, I was living over in Spain and I was thinking, ‘Who are my models?” said Ross. “I’m nothing like him [Bernstein] in personality but his values—how much he believed in music and making it count for other people—those are my values, I want to be more like that.”

“In retrospect, I completely admire who Bernstein was and what he did,” Ross said. “I think about him more often than any of the other famous conductors of his era or slightly after.”

Ross enjoyed the movie Maestro.  “Hats off to Bradley Cooper for walking the walk and trying to get the feeling of what that guy was like,” Ross said. “I think it’s important for classical music that the movie appeared now and that it’s being taken so seriously.  There is such a great story about how much Bradley really loved conducting and really loved classical music and devoted so many years of his life to making that film.”

Ross attended and teaches at the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia with Yannick Nezet-Seguin, a colleague he admires and the conductor who coached Cooper in Maestro.

Ross does not aspire to bring famous and expensive artists to play with the ASO.  He said, “I like underdogs,” he said. “It’s not worth it for an orchestra like ours—we should put that money in something else.”  The performances for the ASO’s next season will be announced in a few weeks.

Ross’ message to people who have not attended an ASO performance, or any symphony, is, “I don’t think it’s my job to try and convince somebody that they should come and like what we do, but [is rather] actually just getting them in the door so they can make a decision—our concerts are about more than the names of the composers on the program.”

“I really love the city,” said native Alexandrian Philomena Fitzgerald about her home town.

Fitzgerald assists the city’s start-up and existing small businesses as the Small Business Program Manager for the Alexandria Economic Development Partnership (AEDP), a public-private partnership that promotes the city as a location for businesses, entrepreneurs and nonprofits.

An accomplished athlete at the then T.C. Williams High School and at the College of the Holy Cross, Fitzgerald keeps her passion for field hockey alive as a coach and co-founder of AVA Magic, the city’s first, and rapidly growing, field hockey club.

“I loved TC and I loved how diverse it is and how [there are] unique people from all walks of life. It really prepares you for the outside world. I really liked the sports world that TC had,” she said, “I definitely felt prepared [for college.] I feel like the AP classes that I took in high school…gave me a good foundation.”

Fitzgerald said, “When I look at the high school now, compared to when I went there, there are so many more options for types of classes. In my time there it would have been nice to know more about CTE (Career and Technical Education) classes.”

In high school Fitzgerald, the team captain, lead the Titans to a 2015 Patriot District field hockey championship as a senior.  She was named Patriot District Player of the year and was first team all-conference, all-region, all-state and was named to The Washington Post All-Met first team.  She was a member of the indoor track team and a captain of the soccer team during her senior year.

Fitzgerald graduated from the College of the Holy Cross in 2020 with a Bachelor’s degree in Economics, a minor in Dance, and a concentration in Africana Studies.  She captained the Holy Cross field hockey team her senior year and was named to the Patriot League All-Tournament team.

She returned to Alexandria because, “My family’s here. And at the time I graduated [from college] it was 2020 so it was the pandemic. I came back and lived at home and I really wanted to find a job here to use my Economics degree.”  She heard about a position at AEDP from a friend.

Fitzgerald confirms that the cost of housing is a challenge for young people in Alexandria. “I got really lucky there, too,” she said. She shares a condominium with a long-time friend.

Fitzgerald is a co-founder of AVA Magic, the city’s first field hockey club, where she is known as Coach Phil.

I love field hockey, my family loves field hockey—it gave me a lot of opportunities and it gave me a lot of confidence growing up. So, I wanted to provide the same space for my younger girls.  It really started with my sisters.

When Fitzgerald was growing up she had to travel more than 45 minutes to play club field hockey.  She found that 10 years later the same thing was true for her younger sisters.

We found a niche” where players could progress from an introductory level. “There wasn’t really a set-up where there were games constantly and practices constantly to build up field hockey as a sport in Alexandria. I saw a gap and my family and I came together [to create] a family business.

AVA Magic went from 20 players and two teams last fall to its current roster of 70 girls on six teams.  AVA Magic plays in the Northern Virginia Alliance League which includes teams from Herndon, Great Falls, McLean and Chantilly. Fitzgerald coaches two teams with four other coaches who played field hockey in high school and college.

More information about AVA Magic, including sponsorship opportunities, is available

here.

Fitzgerald is also one of the varsity coaches at Alexandria High School. “Fall is my busy season,” she said, “My weekdays are spent with the high school team.”

 Fitzgerald said her role as AEDP’s Small Business Program Manager is to, “meet one-on-one with either start-up or existing small businesses in the city to help them get connected with our free resources.  We have consultants in marketing, nonprofit start-up, HR [human resources].”  AEDP’s services are free.  More information about AEDP is available

here.

Fitzgerald helps new business founders, many of whom seek to organize consulting businesses, select an appropriate legal entity or structure for their business.  AEDP is funded by the City of Alexandria and issues quarterly reports in the Council Priorities newsletter.

AEDP reports quarterly reports about its activities, including the number of consultations with start-up or existing businesses and the programs it sponsors, in the City Council Priorities newsletter.  The newsletter can be viewed

here.

AEDP also analyzes real estate development and commercial leasing trends in its Market Report.

In May, Fitzgerald was named one of the Alexandria Chamber of Commerce’s 2023 40 Under 40 honorees who are recognized for their “professional accomplishments, scholastic achievement, community impact and personal story.”

“It was really an honor,” she said, “It kind of gave me a push to do what I’m doing.”

“As we get older, you need these things—you need to constantly challenge your mind, keep things sharp, and learn something new,” said Mango Mike Anderson, almost certainly Alexandria’s only newly-qualified 68-year-old pilot, “Flying is one of those things that you’ve got to dive into.  You can kill yourself if you don’t know what you’re doing so the impetus to really learn it well is pretty strong.”

One of Alexandria’s leading restaurant operators, Anderson has piloted 15 restaurants in the city since 1979.   He is the Chief Executive Officer of Home Grown Restaurant Group which operates Holy Cow, Pork Barrel BBQ, Sweet Fire Donna’s, Whiskey & Oyster and Tequila & Taco. More information on all of these is available

here.

Another restaurant, formerly The Sushi Bar in Del Ray, has been converted into a series of pop-up restaurants that change about every three months. It is currently Bartanical. “That’s going to run until mid-May, or the end of May, when it will become an 80’s bar with a Miami Vice theme,” he said.

Anderson became known as Mango Mike at the insistence of Ralph Capobianco who operated King Street Blues.  His reputation grew when, in the early 2000’s, Mango Mike’s was a highly successful operation in a 9,000 square foot building in front of 4600 Duke street. The location was formerly occupied by the Bombay Bicycle Club. Anderson went all out with truckloads of sand and palm trees and a huge aquarium to emphasize the restaurant’s tropical theme.  An Aldie’s grocery store currently occupies the site.  

According to Anderson, the difference between a hit restaurant and an unsuccessful one is, “You know, magic dust—you can do everything right and still not be successful.”  He pointed to the failure of Tres Hermanos, “a complete bomb” he said, in the space formerly occupied by Mango Mike’s.  “If I knew [the secret], I would be Bill Marriott,” he said.

“With the competition nowadays, you’ve got to get all the basics right. You need the right pricing, the right menu, the right staff, the right location, the right look, and then you hope the magic dust kicks in,” said Anderson, “The magic dust is starting to kick in here at Whiskey & Oyster, but it struggled for the first three years.  Of course, Covid didn’t help.”

Anderson’s 2021 announcement of a $15 per hour starting wage made news and reduced employee turnover.  He said that in the late stages of Covid, “Our guys were working really hard—during Covid was really a tough time for our staff.”  The $15 per hour wage, and the generous tipping for takeout food during the height of the pandemic, provided relief for dishwashers and other entry-level restaurant workers and reduced employee turnover.  He said that now $15 per hour is “pretty much the norm.”

Anderson thinks that most people do not appreciate how hard restaurant staffers work and how often customers are unreasonably demanding.  “These guys work really hard and a lot of time it’s not their fault if something happens with the customer’s meal experience,” he said, “I wish people would just sit back and relax and appreciate how hard these people work.”

In Anderson’s decades-long view, Alexandria’s leadership and business climate has changed for the better.  “I’ve probably applied for more special use permits than anyone besides [lawyers] Cathy Puskar and Duncan Blair,” he said, “Back in the 80’s, if you wanted to do a restaurant in town it was a hard, uphill battle. You had a lot of push back from citizens’ associations and neighborhood groups. It was just really hard.”

“I don’t mind the process, because I think the process works” he said, referring to the city’s requirements on new businesses or business expansion, he said, “We’re really lucky to live in Alexandria.”

Anderson said, “I think now that, especially [after] Covid, Alexandria residents have a better appreciation for their restaurants.  I think they now see them as a real amenity in their neighborhood.  The parklets have been a huge deal.  I give a ton of credit to the City Council and Mayor Wilson for enacting that—they made that happen on the turn of a dime. That was huge for the city.”

Anderson believes that the Carlyle development, where Whiskey & Oyster and Tequila & Taco are located, is misperceived as a commercial development. “Half of it [Carlyle] is apartments and condos and these parklets have brought a whole new dimension,” to the area, he said.

Anderson credits Charlotte Hall of the Old Town Business Association, the Chamber of Commerce, and Stephanie Landrum of the Alexandria Economic Development Partnership as advocates for restaurant operators. He sees the city’s building and zoning regulators as stepping up enforcement in the post-Covid environment and said that parklets in front of two of his restaurants will be rebuilt to meet the city’s requirements.

Anderson firmly believes that the 11 percent food tax (six percent goes to the state, five percent to the city) should be repealed. “We get people commenting, ‘How come we’re paying 11 percent tax?’ as well as a tip.  We get a lot of push back about that. Restaurants almost went crazy a couple of years ago when the tax was raised from four to five cents. They [customers] do notice.”

He points out that in the mile on King Street between the Potomac River and the King Street Metro station there are 90 restaurants, although the identities of many of them have changed. “You’ve got to be a good operator,” he said.

Anderson, a Living Legend, has been a mainstay for numerous charitable causes. He also developed the innovative charitable designation system at Holy Cow. 

He has been approached about running for City Council but says, “I’m a restaurant guy—in your DNA you want everybody to love you.   When you’re a City Council guy, you always have 25% of your voting base pissed off about something—I can’t have that.”

Some of the Home Grown Restaurant Group’s employees have worked in its restaurants for decades. “It’s really nice when you enjoy going to work, not that every day is easy. The restaurant business is great because you get immediate feedback,” he said, “Everybody knows the shift went great, the food came out great, customers are happy, staff made a lot of money, the IRS didn’t shut us down—it was a great day.”

“My partner Bill [Blackburn] always says that it’s like running a pirate ship because [the staff] is in it because it’s not a 9-to-5 kind of thing,” he said, “If they are working on the floor or as bartenders, they’re kind of independent contractors—if they are on top of their game they are going to do better than if they are mediocre.”

Anderson’s wife, who is the actual Sweet Fire Donna, has stepped back from active participation in that restaurant.  His daughter, Danielle, who started at age 12 in Mango Mike’s prep kitchen and gained extensive restaurant experience in Michigan, is now Director of Operations for the Home Grown Restaurant Group.

Of Danielle and her husband, Dave, Anderson said, “They are doing a great job.  I think she may be a better restaurateur than I am. She’s had more training—I was pretty much self-taught— and she’s brought some new systems into our places and she’s got the passion for it.”

As advice to young people, Anderson said, “This is used so much, but I would talk about follow your passion.  Don’t follow the money, follow your passion.  I think I’ve always tried to do that in the restaurant business.”

            -

Dr. Elizabeth Hoover, the Chief Technology Officer of the Alexandria City Public Schools, has a bookcase in her office with a sample of each device distributed by the Instructional Technology Services department to students and teachers since ACPS began using computers to enhance instruction in the mid-1990’s.  Hoover’s self-curated display reflects her 28-year ACPS career. 

Hoover, a parent of two George Washington Middle School students, has been a steadying presence in a central office administration that has seen its share of turnover.

“All I ever wanted to do was be a classroom teacher,” said Hoover.  When she was at the University of Virginia pursuing a Master’s in Education, “technology and education was just coming on.”  One of her professors, “told us about this thing called the Internet.” Intrigued, she wrote a thesis on the use of multi-media software in an elementary school classroom.

Hoover joined ACPS as a fourth grade teacher at Cora Kelly School for Math, Science and Technology.  In 1995, ACPS rolled out a technology plan in which select schools, including Cora Kelly, would be Internet-enabled.  Every school was to get a server and every teacher was to get one desktop and one laptop computer—“cutting edge stuff,” said Hoover.

As a new teacher, she began leading technology professional development sessions. When the computer lab teacher left, Hoover applied for the position which she held for three years.  When Samuel Tucker Elementary School opened, Hoover applied to be a Network Resource Teacher at the new school.  In the summer of 2000 Hoover set up all of the computers and peripherals at Samuel Tucker. 

She earned a Ph.D. from George Mason University in 2003 and became ACPS’s Director of Instructional Technology in 2005 and its Chief Technology Officer in 2008.  “I was a little naïve,” she said, “I did not know I would be taking on the laptop initiative at the high school,” a large and complicated task.

The 2003 laptop implementation, which originated as a School Board initiative, was most difficult at its first implementation point—the high school—because teachers were not fully onboard.  At the middle schools, “the implementation was seamless” because there was more time for teachers to adjust to the changes on the horizon.  It was even easier to bring laptops to the elementary schools.

Hoover thinks that ACPS’ size offers advantages for integrating technology with instruction.  “We [Technology Services] have the ability to be more connected to our schools and students,” she said, “I think we play a larger role in the day-to-day support of our schools’ use of technology than larger divisions.”

Hoover describes ChatGPT, the viral and much discussed artificial intelligence tool that instantaneously generates well-written responses to complex questions, as “big news.”  She is evaluating ACPS’ possible responses.

Hoover is aware that some school systems, for example, Montgomery County and Fairfax County, have banned ChatGPT.  Hoover and her staff are consulting with ACPS teachers in different content areas and grade levels. “We talked to some teachers last week about it,” Hoover said, “We have some teachers who are very interested in how it could work for them.” She added:

My experience here is that we make the best decisions when we include our teachers, so that’s where we are right now. I think what we need to do is to explore how they see it.  I do think a lot of it is about instruction and good assignments and good process. If students are turning in their drafts you don’t need to worry about it [artificial intelligence] being a “gotcha” for the teacher.

Hoover believes that the pandemic reinforced the need for students to be resilient and to be self-advocates. Her staff met the pandemic’s challenges head on: “I was super proud of my team—people were up all night trying to figure out what would work, how to make things easier for teachers, professional development, Zoom and all of that,” she said.

The pandemic also revealed that a substantial number of students did not have reliable Internet access outside school. “We provided over 2,000 families Internet access. We are still continuing that effort,” she said, “That is something that kept me up at night because all of our work didn’t matter [if students could not get online.]”  Another pandemic-related challenge was that some students were not regularly receiving mail. Hoover’s department had to develop other ways to reach and equip them.

The 59 Technology Services employees operate in three interdependent teams: infrastructure and support services, application and business support, and instructional technology which includes the 19 technology integration specialists (TIS) based in the schools.  Many of ACPS’ most accomplished teachers have joined the TIS cadre.

A strength of ours is that our instructional technology team is part of the department. They are our boots on the ground, along with our computer and network techs.

Hoover believes that technology deniers (teachers who assert “I don’t do technology”) are diminishing, in part because students are accustomed to seeing assignments and instructional materials online.

One of Hoover’s biggest challenges is cybersecurity. “You can put a lot of money into fancy systems but if people are putting their password on a sticky note on their computer, then it doesn’t matter what we’re doing,” she said, “It’s a combination of training and systems.”  Hoover regularly consults about cybersecurity with her network of school technology officers in other school systems and with ACPS’ technology vendors.

ACPS continues with Canvas as its learning management system.  She believes that teachers have gradually increased in adopting Canvas.  “We have a few teachers who don’t keep everything updated but we also learned how to make it easier for teachers to adopt,” she said and that students “get so used to going on Canvas to get assignments that [their] expectation was that it would be available.”

Hoover is significantly focused on several infrastructure projects that are funded and implementation-ready.  These include new wireless access points in all schools that provide faster Internet access for students, new public address systems in each school, and new phone systems in the schools including a distributed antenna system at the high school’s King Street Campus to improve cellular service.

Hoover would tell prospective ACPS parents that her children attended elementary schools with “great teachers, great caring and nurturing teachers, and I see that in all buildings.”

She thinks there are “phenomenal opportunities for kids” in the secondary schools, one of which is her department’s student intern program. She said, “That program does a lot for us. We get to know our kids and we’ve hired our kids.”

Hoover believes that ChromeBooks, which are easier to maintain than laptops, will be the student and teacher device for the foreseeable future.  “They’re workhorses and so much easier to manage [than laptops],” she said.

“It’s really important to me when I leave ACPS to leave my department and our technology in good shape,” she said, “I love this place and I’m very fortunate that my whole career has been here.”

My wife passed two years ago.

A good friend of mine looked up a young lady I dated briefly in college. We had not seen each other for 55 years. She also lost her husband.

We met for breakfast in March 2023. The rest will be history. We are getting married this Thanksgiving.

To underscore this delightful turn of events, the Durant Center was packed to overflowing last Saturday, September 23 for a wedding shower for Campbell and his bride-to-be, Leona T. Weiner. The crowd enjoyed dinner, toasts, a casino night and a red-and black theme:

The wedding couple was suitably attired and looking forward to their November 28 wedding date:

Congratulations, Lynnwood and Leona!

Lynnwood Campbell, a native Alexandrian, has been a quiet and effective advocate in various community roles.  He grew up on the 400 block of North Alfred Street in what he describes as an economically and racially diverse neighborhood.

The Campbell family children attended Catholic schools for generations.  Campbell was the only African-American student at St. Mary’s School.  He recalls other children approaching him in school and saying to their friends, “He is the one.”

Campbell said that in his youth African Americans came to Alexandria from all over Northern Virginia to see movies at the Carver Theater (on the site of what is now Antioch Church of Christ) and to swim at the Johnson Memorial Pool (formerly at the intersection of First and Payne Streets.)

Like many Alexandrians, he is concerned about the rising cost of housing in the city, although he said, “I would never live anywhere else.” 

Campbell graduated from Western High School in Georgetown. He graduated from Howard University in February 1970.  He earned money for his college tuition by becoming the first African American cashier at a major grocery store in Alexandria.  He worked at the A&P in the 1600 block of Duke Street where he was determined to be the fastest cashier in the store.  In the summer, he trained cashiers in several A&P stores.

In December 1969, Campbell was hired by Price Waterhouse. Four months later, he went on active duty in the Army.  He spent four months in training as a finance officer and then was assigned as a Second Lieutenant to a major’s position as the Deputy Finance and Accounting Officer for the Military District of Washington.  At that time Campbell was one of five African American finance officers in the Army.

Campbell returned to Price Waterhouse after serving 21 months on active duty and served as a Captain in the Army Reserves.  He became the first African American certified public accountant supervisor in Price Waterhouse’s Washington office.

He left Price Waterhouse to become Vice President and Controller of Capital City Liquors, a wholesaler and importer.  At the time, Capital City was the 14th largest African American-owned corporation according to Black Enterprise magazine.

In 1980, Campbell joined the Federal Home Loan Bank Board as an accountant.  He was promoted to Director of Accounting and was a frequent speaker at the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants Banking and Savings Loans Conference and at state conferences.  He was later promoted to Director of Internal Review and Analysis for the Treasury’s Office of Thrift Supervision.

Campbell was the Office of Thrift Supervision’s Director of Employee and Workplace Principles for three years with responsibility for equal opportunity employment compliance.  He trained all of the agency’s equal opportunity counselors.

Campbell became involved with Alexandria’s public schools when an Urban League representative who lived next to Campbell’s mother asked him to review and comment on the ACPS capital budget.  He saw that the budget contained money for the future renovations of every school, except Parker-Gray High School.  He concluded, based on the allocations of funds in the budget, that the School Board intended to close Parker-Gray.  When he said this publicly, a firestorm erupted and he was advised by School Board members and other civic leaders not to “create problems” by suggesting that the school would be closed.

At a Board meeting, Reverend John Peterson, then Pastor of the Alfred Street Baptist Church and a Board member, asked Campbell to explain his reasoning about the potential closing of Parker-Gray, which he did. Peterson later called Campbell to tell him that members of the Board were talking behind his back about closing Parker-Gray.

Campbell was strongly encouraged to apply for the School Board by former City Manager Vola Lawson, former Congressman and Mayor Jim Moran, and then City Councilor Nelson Greene, Sr.  At that time, some City Council members insisted that School Board members send their children to the public schools and Moran told Campbell that he would have to remove his daughter from St. Mary’s School.  In a late evening City Council meeting, City Councilor Connie Ring, the swing vote, took the time to inquire why Catholic school attendance had been a Campbell family tradition.  Campbell explained his family’s tradition of Catholic education. He was confirmed and served on the School Board from 1981 to 1992.

On the School Board, Campbell and Board member Nelson Greene, Jr. were successful in getting the Army to fund the Junior ROTC program at what was then T.C. Williams High School. He was also well ahead of his time in advocating for improved early childhood education.  His frank conversations with school and city leaders contributed to ACPS establishing all-day kindergarten and reforming the application criteria for talented and gifted programs and the processes by which teachers were selected to teach those classes.

During his service on the Board, Campbell discovered that there were still Alexandria elementary schools in which classes were segregated by race.  His quiet and persistent advocacy helped end this practice.

Campbell continued his public service in the nonprofit sector.  Until recently, he was a member of the board of directors of Senior Services of Alexandria where he advocated for program expansion and appropriate benefits for SSA staff.

Campbell said, “I’m no damn activist; I’m an accountant” but he has repeatedly applied his accounting skills and capacity for attention to detail to promote community reforms.

Krystyn Moon, a Professor of History and American Studies at the University of Mary Washington, lives in Alexandria and has researched and written extensively about the city’s neighborhoods and how they developed.

Moon said that most Alexandrians do not understand “…how heterogeneous and diverse our housing history is and that it [history] depends on what neighborhood we are talking about and what historical moment.” Moon observed that the city’s housing patterns have changed in as little as 10 years.  

Local factors matter, but in Alexandria the federal government has always had a major influence. “The big picture is how local and federal policy—since the founding of the nation when we were the District of Columbia—were constantly at play. In the 20th century, the federal government had a presence here in some really interesting ways” through its housing policies and the large numbers of civil servants who lived in the city.

In many ways, Alexandria and Arlington were unintended “laboratories” for federal housing policies. For example, the Civil War saw the development of what Moon calls “refugee housing” in Northern Virginia for an influx of self-emancipated African Americans and Union sympathizers. “It [was] emergency housing. It’s a FEMA [Federal Emergency Management Agency] meets public housing meets a military necessity situation,” she said. The Union military constructed barracks to house refugees throughout Alexandria and Northern Virginia.

For example, Freedman’s Village was an emergency housing project built for previously enslaved people who had fled to Washington, D.C. The site subsequently became the location of what is now Arlington National Cemetery. Moon calls these projects, “one of the first instances of emergency public housing” in U.S. history.

Early Free African American Communities

Moon has researched the emergence of free African American communities that settled in what is now Fort Ward Park and the Chinquapin Park/Alexandria City High School area.

The Virginia Theological Seminary was a major employer in the late 19th century of African Americans. By the 1870’s and 1880’s, African Americans acquired tracts of land, some of them sizable, near the seminary grounds. Moon said, “We don’t know what they’re calling that land in the 19th century—I’ve heard Chinquapin Hollow, we’ve also seen Macedonia.  Definitely, by the 1960’s, African American residents were choosing Seminary” as the name for their neighborhood.

Moon said, “One of the reasons why the Seminary neighborhood, and what they faced, and Fort Ward, and what happened there, is so important is because there weren’t that many places where African Americans could live in that part of what was then Fairfax County, and then became [Alexandria]. Because of restrictive covenants and the financial policies of banks that were doing redlining [discriminatory lending],” there were few housing options for African American residents.

The 1930’s and the Coming of Urban Renewal

Radical changes in local housing patterns began with federal intervention in the 1930’s. Moon points to what was known as “slum clearance” which was implemented to improve living conditions and quality of life, but which also had unanticipated effects. “The problem with that [urban renewal], of course, is that they didn’t deal with the other social, cultural, and economic forces that meant that people didn’t have access to certain types of resources—education, jobs, money,” said Moon, “So, in many ways it [slum clearance] is addressing the problem, but only half-heartedly.”

The Importance of Municipal Infrastructure Connections

Fairfax County, which controlled the Seminary neighborhood until 1930, and later the City of Alexandria, did not allow residents to connect to municipal infrastructure—water, sewer lines, etc.  The Seminary neighborhood was also known by the derogatory name “Mudtown,” which arose because the streets were not paved, a problem caused by the era’s prevailing policies, not African American residents. Moon said, “This is not unique to that neighborhood. We see this throughout areas that were rural that became suburban” throughout the United States. 

In 1939, the City created the Alexandria Housing Authority (now the Alexandria Redevelopment and Housing Authority or ARHA) to, in the words of then City Manager, Carl Budwesky, “…eliminate insofar as may be possible unhealthful and unsanitary conditions in many sections of the city due to the fact that many homes in certain sections are not connected with the city sewer system.”

Many African American neighborhoods and businesses were torn down and replaced with public housing. Many homeowners, because of race-based restrictive covenants and other forms of housing discrimination, were forced to either leave Alexandria or move into public housing. They lost the small bit of “wealth” that they had though homeownership.

Post World War II Redevelopment Efforts

After World War II, Alexandria began to apply for urban renewal funds from the federal government. The first project was to build a commercial district near where the King Street Metro station is now. The residents, particularly business owners in Old Town, objected and the project never went forward.

In the late 1960’s, Alexandria applied unsuccessfully for federal Model Cities funds from the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) to demolish what was then known as Uptown (known as New Town during the Civil War) and is now known as the Parker-Gray neighborhood.  

Urban renewal funds were obtained for the construction of Fort Ward Park and Museum and T. C. Williams High School (now Alexandria City High School), which displaced the Fort and Seminary neighborhoods. The city also received federal funds to renovate the area along South Alfred Street known as the Dip or the Bottoms, another African American neighborhood. This was Alexandria’s last urban renewal project.

How Restrictive Covenants Arose in Alexandria

Race-based restrictive covenants, which were inserted into property deeds, barred certain populations from occupying or owning property and was “very widespread” outside the city’s older and denser neighborhoods. This practice began in Alexandria in the early 1900’s in the Mt. Ida neighborhood. Moon said, “A real estate developer [named Grove] built houses and sold houses with race-based restrictions until his death in 1916.” 

The practice was continued by a trustee who succeeded Grove, real estate lawyer Howard W. Smith, who was later elected to the House of Representatives.  Moon said, Smith “brought a new idea—to make the covenants Caucasian only, which meant that it [created] not a black/white divide but… a white/nonwhite divide.” Although these covenants primarily affected African Americans, others such as Asian Americans and Native Americans were potentially affected.

Moon said that restrictive covenants spread to Rosemont and other “streetcar suburbs” that began to be built in the 1890’s. “As a subdivision was being developed, that’s when the restriction happened.” Her research has shown that restrictive covenants were evident in over 5,000 properties developed in the city from 1907 until 1962. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled such covenants to be unenforceable in Shelley v. Kraemer (1948), but Alexandria developers continued to insert race-based restrictions in their deeds until the early 1960’s.

Restrictive covenants and other forms of housing discrimination impacted the ethnic and racial composition of the public schools. Moon said, “In 1965, because of the Civil Rights Act, [the federal government said] if you do not desegregate your schools (and that is different than integrate) we will withhold federal funding. But, because the neighborhoods were hyper-segregated, we had nominal integration.”  The impact of these housing practices on education can still be seen, especially in the city’s elementary schools.

The Federal Government: Housing Change Agent and Racial Status Quo Guardian

Moon points out that well-intended policies adopted as part of President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal were implemented by, for example, the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) or the Homeowner’s Loan Corporation, in ways that advantaged some communities over others. An example was the federal government’s creation of maps that identified communities by levels of lending risk, which encouraged banks to avoid lending to prospective minority borrowers.  She said, “For example, Braddock Heights got an FHA-backed loan for its development.  FHA then told them [in the approval documents] that they need a race-based restriction.”

Yet, the federal government, under the leadership of Robert Weaver, the first Secretary of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) from 1966-1968, and others, made a dedicated effort to ensure that minorities, especially men, had access to jobs in federally-funded construction projects in the 1940’s.  This is the contradiction that the federal government produced in people’s lives—it promoted discriminatory policies and practices and simultaneously promoted racial equality.

The Paradox of Historic Districts

Alexandria began identifying historic districts in the late 1920’s.  Moon explains that one of the questions the historic preservationists faced was, “How do you make historic value equivalent to economic value?”  She said that designating properties as “historic” is “another way in which you artificially manipulate the market—you put different boundaries on it, different pressures and that becomes an inflated market.” By the 1960’s, Moon said that the extensive gentrification of Old Town drove out lower income white residents and a small number of African Americans. They sold their homes to wealthier white residents, many of whom had moved to the area to work for the federal government.

These dynamics explain the strong objections in what today is known as the Parker-Gray neighborhood to its incorporation into the Old and Historic District starting in the 1970’s.  In the 1980’s, a community group called the 16th Census Tract Committee filed a complaint with HUD asserting that the historic district designation had a discriminatory effect. HUD dismissed the case and then, after data emerged describing the impact of gentrification, the agency agreed with the committee and a mediation process ensued.

 The Continuing Struggle for Affordable Housing

Housing and development decisions from many years ago affect where people live today. Moon said, “How do we deal with the fact that in the past we targeted African-American neighborhoods and pushed [residents] into public housing or out of the city completely?”

“We need to make sure that everyone has a safe place to live and that people can afford it.  It’s crazy that people work 40 plus hours and they can’t find a place to live here in Alexandria. That’s just frustrating,” Moon said, “But, the second part of this is housing is the way in which most people create wealth for themselves and their children and grandchildren. That is not accessible to certain populations in the city. Is that part of the conversation, yes or no?”

Emma Beall, the Coordinator of the Substance Abuse Prevention Coalition of Alexandria (SAPCA), was a student at the then T.C. Williams High School when she first became interested in public health.

Beall, then a 10th grader, saw a flyer from the Alexandria Campaign on Adolescent Pregnancy (ACAP) seeking young volunteers interested in writing, public speaking, event planning and graphic design for a summer project.  Beall, a talented writer who became a mainstay on Theogony, the school newspaper, signed up.  Her summer experience with ACAP led her away from a career in journalism and to a career in public health. 

Beall graduated from high school in 2013. She earned an undergraduate degree and a Master’s degree in Public Health from Tulane University in New Orleans. After five years at Tulane, Beall loved New Orleans. She was conducting an extensive job search shortly before graduation when she heard from Noraine Buttar, her current supervisor whom she met when she volunteered with ACAP.  

She said, “I had no plans to move back to Alexandria,” when she was offered a temporary federal grant-funded position with SAPCA that was to end on September 30 of that year.  She saw this position as a tryout, and she took it even though she had not previously focused on substance abuse prevention. 

She said, of the life-changing ACAP flyer she saw in high school, “That’s part of the work.  You need caring adults who suggest that people apply for something they might not have known about because they are not as connected.” She said, “I really like sharing information with people so that they can make informed choices about their health and future.”

Beall, who lives in Shirlington, said, “It’s different living here as an adult.”  She said finding housing in the Alexandria area is daunting.  She compared finding housing in Northern Virginia to what she calls the “iron triangle” of health care—cost containment, access and quality—only two are available at any one time.

SAPCA is neither a traditional city agency nor a community service nonprofit organization.  Instead, it is a community coalition that is housed in the city’s Department of Community and Human Services.  SAPCA was founded in 2008 and in 2009 received funding through the Drug-Free Communities Support Program, a grant through the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. SAPCA also receives funding from the state to prevent opioid abuse and was awarded a federal grant focused on preventing underage drinking in April 2020.

ACAP is also organized as a community coalition with members from many parts of the city. Beall’s former mentor, ACAP Coordinator Lisette Torres, is now her valued colleague.

Beall works with SAPCA’s board of directors, a group chosen by its membership in an election every two years. SAPCA’s 100+ members vote for the directors.       

SAPCA’s initiatives include Drug Take-Back Day, which recently led to the collection of over 300 pounds of obsolete prescription and over-the-counter medications, the first ever National Fentanyl Awareness Day, and Project Sticker Shock which involves teams of youth and adults working with businesses to place stickers on multi-packs of alcohol as a reminder that it is illegal to purchase alcohol for underage consumers. 

SAPCA’s focus areas are sharing information to prevent young people from using alcohol, marijuana, tobacco (principally e-cigarettes/vaping devices) and prescription and over-the-counter medication. She said, “The good thing is that most Alexandria youth are not using any of those substances.”

She said, “Our focus is on providing information and skills, for example, what to do if someone offers you something [and] giving people the skills to suggest an alternative and supporting youth to have positive opportunities, like a mentor.”

Beall said that substance use disorders can derive from a family history. She also pointed to perception of peer or parental approval of substance use and perception of risk as key factors related to youth substance use.

Beall fully supports ACPS’ effort to make Narcan available in the schools to counter the effect of opioid overdoses. She said “You need a tiered approach of prevention, intervention and treatment. My wheelhouse is the prevention area. I’m not involved in the treatment area” but, she said, prevention and treatment go hand-in-hand.

Beall said the opioid problem is present in Alexandria.  The city’s Opioid Work Group, formed in 2015, is a multi-agency partnership comprised of representatives from a range of city services and community partners, including SAPCA, law enforcement and social services agencies. SAPCA’s role in addressing the opioid epidemic prioritizes prevention and education efforts, specifically among young people. She said, “My focus is on youth.”

Beall is skeptical of prescriptive or “just say no”—style prevention programs.  She said, “That’s not effective—people don’t like being told what to do. Whenever I go into classrooms, I say, ‘I’m here to share information with you from scientists and researchers. I encourage you to check the sources if you hear something.” 

Beall believes parents are critically important in setting boundaries but that the presence of caring adults, other than family members, in the lives of young people is essential.  SAPCA provides information that helps parents and guardians talk to and support young people about substance abuse issues, including getting them involved in activities.

SAPCA and ACAP host trainings, for example, the Search Institute’s Intentional Relationships Workshop, for parents, youth service providers, and others to learn how to build developmentally appropriate relationships and how to support, and communicate with, young people.

Beall said, “Sometimes people hear the word “drugs” and the reaction is ‘Not my kid—I don’t need this information because my kid isn’t using drugs.’  The positive approach [asks] how can we support young people, as a parent, as a teacher, as another caring adult.  Who doesn’t want to be a caring adult?”  

Beall said:

The more that people are vulnerable and talk about what they’re dealing with, the more they will realize that they’re not alone and that there are resources. You’re not the only one. I think that if the work was just sharing information about substances it wouldn’t be as effective because you’re not providing alternatives. I don’t think you can make everything positive, but I do think that [we should] focus on the positives, focus on the opportunities and how to support young people.

Beall takes satisfaction in seeing young people find their interests and build their skills in, for example, facilitating conversations. She recently worked with Alexandra City High School students to plan and host a virtual event that involved young people discussing how to move forward from the pandemic.

SAPCA offers practical help. The coalition gives out locking medication boxes to help families secure prescription drugs.

Beall’s work with ACPS is primarily, she said, “at a systems level” that involves preparing lesson plans and information for teachers to share with students during advisory periods and working with the school system’s Family Life Education Workgroup, a subcommittee of the School Health Advisory Board.  ACPS has two employees who oversee all of its substance abuse prevention and intervention activities.

Beall’s biggest frustration is capacity.  She said, “There is never enough time to do it all.  There is just so much that one person can do which is why we have a focus on volunteer recruitment and training to try to get the message out.”

Beall said her message to Alexandria is:

Prevention makes such a difference. Starting early, having conversations early, but also just the importance of having caring adults.  Being a teenager, your body’s changing, your hormones are raging, you’re kind of independent, but not really. It’s a hard time—the brain is still developing.  Having caring adults makes such a big difference. Being really intentional with those relationships is so important.

Ericka Miller, a successful business executive, is a member of an Alexandria family with a tradition of extensive activism and community service.   Miller was born in the District of Columbia because her mother’s African-American obstetrician was not allowed to deliver babies in an Alexandria hospital.  She has always lived in Alexandria, except for a 7-year period when she obtained a doctorate in English Literature at Stanford University and was on the faculty of Mills College in Oakland.

Miller’s work experience includes eight years with The Education Trust, a research and advocacy organization for high achievement for all students with a focus on those of color or living in poverty.  During the Obama Administration she served as Senior Advisor to the U.S. Secretary of Education and was nominated for Assistant Secretary of Postsecondary Education.

Today, Miller is the President and Chief Executive Officer of Isaacson, Miller, an executive recruiting firm that places leaders in higher education institutions and nonprofit organizations. She said, “I do love leading the firm. We help organizations find leaders who can advance powerful missions.  I truly feel that I’m doing what I’m supposed to be doing.”

“Alexandria still feels to me in some ways like a small town, but then in five minutes I’m in the District of Columbia downtown,” Miller said, “But, for me, there is a lot of history here, a lot of personal history, because my parents were so involved in the city.”

Miller’s mother, Eula, was head of early childhood development at Northern Virginia Community College for nearly 30 years and was a consultant to the Campagna Center.

Her father, Melvin, a lawyer in the Department of Housing and Urban Development, was a member of the School Board from 1986 to 1993 and Chairman from 1990-1992.  He also chaired the Alexandria Redevelopment Housing Authority from 1970 to 1977 and from 2001-2012. He ran a strong race for Mayor in 1976.

She said, “It wasn’t until my father died that I realized I would never want to live anywhere else.  Part of it was the overwhelming familiarity I experienced when my father died.  The outpouring of grief from so many people was truly astounding. Then, what I noticed was for the next year, and still to this day, is that I’m constantly bumping into someone who says, ‘Aren’t you Melvin Miller’s [or Eula Miller’s] daughter?’” Invariably, a story followed about how her father or mother had helped that person.

“He loved the minutiae of policy—he could watch a School Board meeting for hours,” she said, “He loved people and connecting to people socially.”  Miller said that her father loved the city and, “always believed it could do more to fulfill its potential.”

Miller said that because housing and development are such central issues now, “A lot of people reach out to me and say ‘We really miss your Dad’ because he would be fighting for affordable housing.” 

‘He was always the eternal optimist” she said, “He started by seeing the best in people and you had to prove him wrong.”

Miller worked on Capitol Hill and a number of people have tried to get her to run for the School Board. She said, “I’m not saying never; I’m saying not right now because of the kind of job I have” she said, “I don’t know if I have the natural inclination to do it and I’m not dying to do it but my love for the city makes me think about it.”

Miller attributes the presence of new members on the City Council to Alexandria’s reputation as a city with an active and engaged population.  She believes that the four million square foot development at the Landmark mall site will make the West End a more attractive place to live.  She hopes that there will continue to be affordable housing options there.

“People ask me what it was like growing up and I say it felt like a small town, almost like Mayberry” she said, “As a kid, I remember my Dad was constantly meeting with people of all different backgrounds, races, and political affiliations to advance policies that would help people who didn’t have a lot of financial or political capital. He was meeting with people like Ferdinand Day, who was my godfather, Kerry Donley, Vola Lawson, David Speck, and Lynwood Campbell.”

Miller learned how truly segregated Alexandria was through her father’s accounts of the activities of the Secret Seven, the group of African-American leaders who advocated for better treatment and increased opportunities for Black residents at a time when school segregation and substandard housing were pervasive.  She concluded that, “Mayberry was more complicated than I realized.”

Miller graduated from Alexandria City High School (then T.C. Williams High School) in 1982.

After finishing 8th grade, she asked her parents to let her leave the private school where she had been the only African-American student for eight years and attend public school.  She said, “By the time I got to 9th grade I thought there was a whole part of Alexandria that I was missing.”  She went from a class of 40 girls to a class of 700 with “all different races from different countries.”

She said the decision, which she called “almost whimsical,” was one of the most important decisions of her life because, “I had to figure out who I was in this tapestry. It was not easy to figure that out but the struggle to figure it out instilled in me a sense of self that has guided my life to this day.”

Miller found out who T.C. Williams was, and what he stood for, from her father.  She said that when she understood who T.C. Williams as a segregationist, “I looked at the school and I said, ‘There is such a disconnect here.” 

She said of her high school experience, “I’m so glad that my lens has been complicated because it forces me to get beyond appearance and try to understand either ‘Is this person right for the job?’ or ‘What kind of support might this person need to be better at the job?’”

Miller said that “As we see memorials being taken down, not just in Alexandria, but also in other parts of the country, the motivation for doing that is coming from the right place because I think that what is behind that is that we want to signal that we are inclusive.” She said, “The thing that potentially gets lost is the opportunity to have a conversation about the past. If we’re not having a conversation about the struggles of the past there is always the chance we will commit the same errors.” Miller said, “As we take down memorials, I hope we will replace them with something that will spark that conversation.”

“If you give something a name, you have the opportunity to spark a conversation and create learning.  It doesn’t have to be a segregationist or nothing” she said, “We can replace it with the name of someone who fought for equality and opportunity. I do hope that we do not try to make everything nameless.”

Miller said that it was through her father’s stories that she really came to understand the complexity of the city. She recalls her father, who could not swim, teaching her to swim at the old YMCA.  She said that for many African-Americans, “learning to swim was a political act.”

Miller said that her parents “would get a kick out of knowing” that she is a CEO of a national firm.  She said, “I feel my parents every day and I’m glad I’m back where I started. This place is home for me.”

Rose Dawson, the enthusiastic Executive Director of the Alexandria Library, has advice for those who dread paying fines for overdue library materials: the library became fine-free shortly before the pandemic. 

Items borrowed from the library can be returned without fear and at no cost.  Dawson said, “we told people, ‘bring the stuff back, it doesn’t matter, we no longer charge fines and it’s going to be erased off your card.’ ”  During the pandemic the library also implemented automatic renewals.  The libraries are now open on an hourly schedule close to what was in place prior to the pandemic.

Dawson became Executive Director in 2008 after coming to Alexandria as Deputy Director in 2005.  She said, “Alexandrians love libraries, hands down. They have always been supportive of the public libraries. As you know, [there was] a subscription library as early as 1794.  Alexandria gets it when it comes to a public library.” 

Dawson said that patrons include traditional users who know the staff and enjoy checking out hardcover books in person. She said, “we will see them in 21 days [when they return the books].”  In contrast, nontraditional users, “get a library card and we never see them again because they use all of our services online.” 

Dawson said that when the Internet arrived, “people thought we were going to go away. Actually, it was the shot in the arm that we needed.”  For the libraries, the coming of electronic media meant additional challenges and opportunities to offer more services.

When the Internet age began, library staff played a critical role in introducing technology, for example, how to use email, to people who did not know where to turn.  Dawson said, “That was a real turning point for public libraries.  No one knew who [would be the] trusted individual who would take responsibility for showing people how to use technology.”  In the early days, the library staff helped users open email accounts and navigate the Internet.

Dawson said that in the pandemic libraries had to create curbside service for traditional users and virtual programming to serve online users and their children. During the pandemic, “folks were forced to learn how to use electronic materials.” The libraries also had to work quickly to come up with online programming for children during the pandemic.  Now, library users are returning in person and Dawson said “our e-book usage is starting to drop off…and our hard copy material is starting to circulate again.”  

Alexandria’s reading tastes run to fiction, particularly mysteries and romance novels.  Dawson noted that Alexandria topped Amazon’s list of most well-read United States cities for several years before the pandemic but this ranking was based on book purchases.  She said, “As we looked at our statistics, romances…still tend to be a top circulator for us.”  Fantasy and sci-fi works, particularly those that form the basis for television programs, are also popular with certain groups.

When Dawson became Deputy Director, the libraries were not stocking urban fiction because of perceptions about the lack of an audience at some library branches.  Dawson said that data on electronic book checkouts revealed that urban fiction, if purchased, would attract in-person library users.  She said, “We had several staff members who were readers of that type of literature but they were not the [library’s] book purchasers.  We took suggestions from that audience and we tracked the circulation.  We were showing holds and then we knew that we needed to purchase that type of material.”

Dawson does not believe that there is such a thing as “guilty pleasure” reading—there is only reading. She said, “Anything that meets the information and recreation needs of a person, then, we want to help them.”

Dawson said that to take advantage of the full range of programs and services the library offers users need reliable internet access.  She recalled cars in library parking lots during the pandemic with people using the library system’s Wi-Fi service.  She said, “That was one of the reasons we started circulating Chromebooks and hot spots.”  Dawson said that the library system “piggybacked” on Alexandria City Public Schools’ distribution of hot spot devices during the pandemic.

Dawson wants the libraries to be involved in the early stages of city planning. She said, “I have been trying to help the city understand that libraries are not just buildings.  Whenever you look to improve things in communities, [the library] should be at the table.”  In particular, Dawson pointed to the absence of library resources in the Eisenhower corridor. 

 Dawson said:

When I became Director in 2008, by 2009 [I realized] that we needed a library presence every time the city invests in housing—those are families.  We think about whether we need to put a school there, or a recreation center there, but we never think about libraries.  Since that time, I have told all city managers, ‘These are our sister agencies—the library should come to mind.  This is a quality of life issue.”

She noted that a library presence, not necessarily a branch, is needed in areas of the City with significant new development.  Dawson would rely on a facilities assessment to determine exactly what is necessary, and where.

She said, “There needs to be a library presence whenever you think of building up these neighborhoods with families.”  Dawson observed that there should be a library presence, which could be a kiosk, near the King Street Metro station.

The city’s current capital projects budget includes a facilities assessment for libraries in two years.  Alexandria’s last major library project involved the renovation of the Duncan Branch Library in 2005.  The Beatley Central Library opened in 2000.

Dawson acknowledged the movement in parts of Virginia, and nationally, to remove books from school libraries.  She said, “There was a famous librarian who said, ‘a good public library has something to offend everyone.’ I use that as my mantra.  We have processes in place so that a person is free to challenge something we have in the collection.”  A book objection or challenge goes to a committee of staff that makes a recommendation to the Executive Director which is appealable to the Library Board.

Dawson noted that the publisher of the Dr. Seuss series of children’s books initiated a withdrawal of certain books and asked libraries to take those works off their shelves.  She said that libraries reacted to this in different ways.  Alexandria’s solution was to withdraw the books from general circulation but to keep reference sets of the books in two libraries.

Dawson said that one of the library’s strongest partners is the City’s Department of Community and Human Services (DCHS).  She said, “We have a lot of patrons with housing challenges, food challenges, mental health challenges.  DCHS helps us in a lot of ways to try to make sure that those individuals get services that we don’t provide.”

The libraries work with the school system on the ConnectEd program which enables every student to have a library card to pursue research but restricts the number of items to be checked out. The program is available even if a student has a block on his or her regular library card.  The city’s Department of Recreation, Parks, and Cultural Activities works with the libraries to expand its summer reading programs.

Dawson cited the library’s Freegal Music system as an overlooked resource.  Freegal Music allows library users to download and stream music from a wide catalog of sources without cost or legal responsibility.

With respect to new initiatives, Dawson said, “I would like to do more with ALIVE!  We like to consider ourselves as a community hub and a great distribution center… We need to partner with them more so that their patron base is aware of the really wonderful things they can get from us.”

Dawson is a member of the Children, Youth and Family Collaborative Commission and is the city’s representative on the ACT Board.  She wants the library to be more involved with Alexandria’s nonprofit organizations.

The libraries are supported primarily by the City of Alexandria with the Alexandria Library Foundation providing periodic grants. The foundation, a Spring2ACTion approved organization, is seeking to expand and hire a staff person and has approximately $400,000 in assets.

Dawson said:

As communities change, we really have got to care about looking at ourselves through an equity lens…We need to make sure that hiring opportunities are advertised in as many places as possible to bring in a diverse pool because our library staff needs to look like its user base.  Of course, we want to make sure our collections reflect folks who live in the community…We can’t be stagnant—we’ve got to be a bit nimble.

She said that library job application advertisements had been changed to emphasize the city’s diversity. Dawson said that her staff carefully follows the school system’s reporting of students’ most prominent native languages.

When the library was first asked whether it had books in Farsi it took time to figure out how to acquire them.  She said, “In order to be a good public library, we need to care to make sure that a person is comfortable coming in or even just by word-of-mouth heard that it’s OK to go to that building when you [arrive in] a country that you don’t know or [you have moved] from a different state.”

Dawson described the challenges in creating and maintaining a diverse collection.  Cataloging makes works searchable and replaceable; the original cataloging of books without English translations is detailed and time-consuming work.  The library has two full-time employees who do original cataloging.

The library’s future challenges include what to do at the expiration of the city’s long-term lease of the land under the Kate Waller Barrett Branch Library on Queen Street.  The land is leased from the Society of Friends and the lease expires in 2036.

Dawson’s conviction is that the Alexandria Library’s addressable market includes every resident of the city.

Judge Nolan Dawkins is a life-long Alexandrian, a rare distinction.  Even rarer, he has lived in the same house since he was 9 years old.  

Dawkins, a father of three daughters, has four grandchildren. He was an Alexandria judge for 27 years.  His perspective on the city was formed by growing up in a segregated city, college at Central State University in Ohio and law school at Seton Hall University in New Jersey, service in the Army in Vietnam, and returning to make a lifelong commitment to the Alexandria community.

He said, “This was a small town, and I would say a small southern town, and we have evolved into something more than that.  I think this is a place where people want to come and want to live.  This is a place that I made a choice to come back to. I’ve set my roots—my daughters grew up here and we have fond memories.”

 “The city is now inclusive.  This is truly not the South as people think of it in terms of people’s relationships,” Dawkins said.  “We’re still in the South, but I think we’re reminded of it less here, perhaps than in other parts of the state.”

Dawkins’ recollections go a long way back. He has clear and fond memories of his third grade teacher, Ms. Evelyn Johnson, who he said “would not let this third grader get away with things he shouldn’t.  I’ve always attributed Ms. Johnson to where I ultimately wound up.”

After his 10th grade year, Dawkins approached the School Board for permission to transfer from the segregated Parker-Gray High School to George Washington High School.  He said “It was something I wanted to do.”

His 1965 graduating class at George Washington included four other African-Americans.  He described the marked contrast between the two high schools: “There was such a difference in terms of services, in terms of physical facilities—I saw a major difference. On the other hand, Parker-Gray, which was two blocks from here, offered a great experience in terms of family and caring and education. Teachers were as much a part of your family as they were of theirs.”

Dawkins left Parker-Gray, but not his Parker-Gray friends, whom he sees regularly for lunch. He said, “I think they would all say that growing up here was an experience that was not harmful to them.   It’s been a good run for all of us. We get together perhaps once a month. I love those guys—that group of students from Parker-Gray all had great [success] in their careers.”

At George Washington his friends included John Porter, later the Principal of what is now Alexandria City High School.

Basketball did not play a role in his decision to transfer from Parker-Gray to the marginally integrated George Washington.  He said, “I was the most average ballplayer you’ve ever met in your life, but I was playing alongside Skeeter Swift.” Swift, a local basketball legend who Dawkins compared to Pete Maravich as a flashy player, went on to a storied college career at East Tennessee State University.  Swift was drafted in 1969 by the Milwaukee Bucks with the 30th selection.  He played for several American Basketball Association teams. 

“Skeeter and I became lifelong friends,” he said. “Every time Skeeter came to town, I got a knock on the door.”  He said that Parker-Gray basketball players such as Sam Butler and others, “would have been just as successful as Skeeter, but he had a different avenue.” The circumstances of that era make the accomplishments of Parker-Gray graduate Earl Lloyd, the first African-American to play in the NBA and later an NBA coach, even more impressive.

George Washington, a basketball power during Dawkins’ time went to the state tournament in Richmond twice.  He said, “We had to stay in a hotel [in Richmond] that would allow me and there weren’t very many [hotels] that would allow me to stay.”

Dawkins returned to Alexandria after serving in the Army in Vietnam as a convoy commander.  He said, “I came back as a professional with experiences of many different kinds. When I came back the city had changed. I’ve always had some appreciation for how the city has evolved.” 

He described the extensive construction in his neighborhood as a “new world” and recalls that walking north on Fayette Street there was a swamp he had to walk through to get to what was then the Johnson Memorial Pool, which  opened in 1952 after two brothers, ages 9 and 11,  drowned while swimming in the Potomac River. Prior to the opening of Johnson Memorial Pool, the river and Hunting Creek were the only places to swim for Alexandria’s people of color.

Dawkins, in thinking about past leaders of Alexandria’s communities of color, identified Melvin Miller, Helen Day and Ferdinand Day whom he said was exceptional, “in his approach to making people of color a part of the community.”  Dawkins also cited the Departmental Progressive Club which was organized in 1927 to, in the words of the club’s website, “provide wholesome recreation for its membership and to support other community groups concerned with improving the general welfare of Alexandria.”  He said, “That group of men was very unique in terms of the kind of things they were doing at that time. They said, ‘OK, if you don’t want me in your club, we’ll create our own and we’ll socialize with people who think we are equal to them.”

Of his legal career as a lawyer in private practice, a lawyer in the public sector and a judge he said, “Each was interesting and each was challenging. I met some great people during the course of my time.”  Since his retirement two years ago which featured a 100-car parade past the Alexandria Court House he has maintained a warm relationship with other Alexandria judges and he stays in close touch with them.

Dawkins’ message to Alexandria’s young people is, “Hope.  In a single word: hope.  We have to hope that there will be a better world that people can live with each other and understand that there are going to be differences but know that those differences shouldn’t define you.  Those differences should be something you can build on.  You have the ability to create your own dynamic as to who you are and what you want to be.”

Kitty Porterfield and Gene Steuerle were prime movers in the founding and early years of, respectively, the Scholarship Fund of Alexandria and ACT for Alexandria.

Each immediately cites the involvement of other Alexandrians in starting these important nonprofits.[1]   Steuerle said, “I always feel, yes, I know served as a catalyst at some level, but there were a heck of a lot of people who were part of the founding and I always feel badly that they are not usually given enough credit.”  Porterfield added, “You can’t begin to name all of the people who had a hand in [the founding of the Scholarship Fund.]”

Porterfield and Steuerle offer important and similar insights on how ideas can evolve into institutions that, everyone hopes, will benefit the community for generations. They also provided a perspective on the future.

The Scholarship Fund provides scholarships and assistance to Alexandria City High School (ACHS) seniors navigating the college application process. In 1986, the Scholarship Fund made its first awards, totaling $7,000 to students. Last year (2021), the Scholarship Fund awarded over $525,000 to ACHS seniors and another $550,000 in renewal grants to former ACHS students in college.

ACT, a community foundation, makes direct grants to Alexandria nonprofit organizations and facilitates additional funding for nonprofits by hosting donor-advised funds.  ACT has raised over $15 million for Alexandria nonprofits through Spring2ACTion, an annual giving day, worked with the city and local charities to distribute over $5 million in grants during the pandemic, and invested over $1 million in building the capacity of local nonprofits.  It promotes individual philanthropy through donor-advised funds, convenes nonprofits on ways to work together, and has formed a close relationship with the city government to address community needs.

Porterfield described the Scholarship Fund’s origins. “There were two parents, Tim Elliott, who was on the School Board and me, and Jim McClure, the much beloved Director of Guidance [at the then T.C. Williams High School]” she said, “I was in Jim McClure’s office forever in those years (1981-1984) because we were trying to figure out college applications and scholarships.  I had three kids so I spent a lot of time with Jim trying to sort this out.  Tim was going through much the same thing for his kids—we kept encouraging each other and sharing information.”

Porterfield said that there was less information available then to help parents and students navigate the college admissions process than there is now.  She said, “We kept saying to each other, ‘If we’re having trouble, how are the other kids managing?’ That was the question that got it all started.”

Porterfield and others identified just four independent community-based scholarship funds in the United States.  Cleveland, Ohio had one of them and Elliott, and later Porterfield, traveled there to see how that scholarship fund worked.  Porterfield, who was then working in the Arlington schools, said, “When I came back, I said, ‘I’d like to do that.’”

Porterfield was hired by ACPS in 1985 as the Director of the newly established Scholarship Fund of Alexandria which had been set up independently, but cooperatively, with the School Board. The Scholarship Fund had its own board of directors.  The School Board, under the leadership of then Chair Lou Cook and board member Tim Elliott, agreed to fund the Director’s salary and to provide office space. Seven years later, in 1992, Porterfield was recruited by then Superintendent Paul Masem to head the school system’s Communications Department.

Steuerle said of ACT’s origins, “I think a lot of people know this—my first wife, Norma, died on the plane that went into the Pentagon [on 9/11] and all of a sudden we’re getting all this money which came from the taxpayers. Norma’s will provided that half of the estate went to the spouse and half went to the kids.  It wasn’t just me--my two daughters contributed half the money.”  Steuerle and his daughters, Kristin Steuerle and Lynne Steuerle Schofield, decided to make one charitable commitment to a broader international or national cause and one to a local cause. He said, “I’ve was raised to ask ‘What is your situation and what opportunities does it give you?’”

Steuerle said of the first effort, which focused on using the voices of victim’s families for good purposes, “we never really could get it to take off.”  He and others still raise money for the education of women in Afghanistan.

Steuerle, a widely-published Urban Institute economist, has studied charitable giving although his main work is in budget and tax policy.  His daughters attended what was then T.C. Williams High School.  As a parent, he was on the Principal’s Advisory Committee and became friends with then Principal John Porter.  Along with former ALIVE! President Cathy Thompson and Andrew Blair, “we used to meet in John’s office” and a discussion ensued about what to do with the remaining money to be used locally.

Steuerle learned that there was no community foundation in Alexandria. A colleague at the Urban Institute suggested that Steuerle visit the Community Foundation of the National Capital Region (CFNCR.)  ACT initially became a CFNCR affiliate.  “They were very helpful,” Steuerle said, “Alexandria had an advantage—we are really in some senses a community that works together.  We’re smaller, it helps us.”  

Terry Lee Freeman of CFNCR referred ACT to Alexandrian Lyles Carr, an executive recruiter for nonprofits.  According to Steuerle, Carr said, “We’ve got to get in touch with ‘the girls’”—meaning Lori Morris and Lauren Stack, who became involved and became key contributors.  Soon David Speck and Allison Cryor DeNardo became involved.  Don Beyer agreed to be the first Chair and Jonelle Wallmyer became the first Executive Director.  “So now our little group of four all of a sudden got in touch with these other people who had been having their own discussion about whether there was something more they could do for Alexandria,” Steuerle said, “We [ACT] were really quite small compared to most community foundations.” 

Porterfield described a fortuitous milestone for the Scholarship Fund.  “We were just underway and I was on Metro going into town and there was [City Councilor] Bob Calhoun.”  That casual conversation resulted in Calhoun’s successful advocacy for a $25,000 matching challenge grant from the City Council.  Porterfield said, “The ability to go public with the challenge grant” meant a lot to the Scholarship Fund in those early days.

Steuerle said that the donor-advised funds (DAFs) ACT hosts are a concept that, “takes at least two meetings with people to explain.”  DAFs provide donors with the opportunity to contribute and take tax deductions currently and decide later how they want the donated funds to be allocated.  This gives donors additional time to think about the causes they most want to support and it promotes family philanthropy by facilitating consultation among family members.

Steuerle identified a turning point for ACT when its board of directors determined to separate from CFNCR which resulted in ACT losing a subsidy as a CFNCR affiliate, but gaining the ability to act independently.  Porterfield said that CFNR also originally handled the Scholarship Fund’s money as a donor-advised fund for five to six years.  She pointed to a similar circumstance when the Scholarship Fund, with leadership from board members including City Councilor David Speck, decided to “bring the money home” and manage its assets.

Steuerle noted that ACT for Alexandria’s own operations “ran in the red” for a number of years and was threatened with going under as it spent down the original funds.  A proactive board of directors saw ACT through its early struggles. “We had a really fantastic board,” he said, “People were really engaged.”  He said, “We really tried to engage with the city as a partner,” pointing to former Mayor Bill Euille and Assistant City Manager Debra Collins who became board members.  An early success for ACT was its involvement in helping to create the Center for Alexandria’s Children and not to be, in Steuerle’s words, “just a money organization.”

Porterfield said, “My background, and I never had a name for it until President Obama came into office, is community organizing.  You identify an issue and you sit down with a group of people which is essentially what we did.”

Steuerle said, “I think one of the advantages we [the Scholarship Fund and ACT] had is that both are community-wide efforts.  A lot of small charities did not have the advantages we had.  We decided we really wanted to serve the charities of Alexandria.  Early on, we [ACT] started having these annual get togethers to share resources and engage with charities.”

Steuerle believes the public is underinformed about charitable giving possibilities. He said, “My latest schtick” involves legacy giving—convincing people not to just contribute to charities from annual income, but rather to support the long-term capacity of charities by designating them as beneficiaries of financial and personal assets, for example, a portion of current wealth or later estate or life insurance assets, or working an extra year and devoting the earnings to a charity.  He said the key question for legacy giving is, “How can we make it so that we can really engage everybody? We’re trying to get people to think beyond their wills.”

Porterfield observed that the road to today’s Scholarship Fund was not always smooth.  A key development in the early years was the involvement of Cassandra and Ralph Bradley.  Their daughter, Staci, was a student when she died, and they were seeking a way to memorialize her at the high school.  Principal John Porter introduced them to the fund and they became enthusiastic supporters.  Ultimately, they set up scholarships in Staci’s name, and Cassandra, with the help of a cadre of her friends, created and hosted the Scholarship Fund Gala which remains a chief fund-raising event.

Porterfield said, “It’s not only the process we [the Scholarship Fund and ACT] shared, it’s the community.  What Gene did and what we did wouldn’t happen in many other communities.  This community has a pretty solid core of people who know each other and who are interested in something beyond their own households. I think that’s why both of these groups were so successful.”

[1]  Porterfield and Steuerle were concerned about inadvertently omitting other volunteers deserving of recognition in the founding and early years of the Scholarship Fund and ACT.  Porterfield named, in addition to those described in this account, former ACPS Superintendent Robert Peebles and early Scholarship Fund board members.  Steuerle named, in addition those described in this account, Brandi Yee, who has been with ACT almost from its beginning, and its later and current Presidents, John Porter and Heather Peeler, respectively.

Phil Sunderland recalled an extraordinarily interesting and diverse career.  He was Alexandria’s City Attorney for 14 years, its City Manager for five years and Chief of Staff to former Congressman Jim Moran for two years.  He retired in February 2020 as Senior Vice President and General Counsel after 12 years with the important, but not widely understood, Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority (MWAA).

The common theme to his professional positions was public service, but not in an elected position.  In each job he dealt with very different constituencies and cultures.  He never ran for elective office because of “the human demand and the human cost” and observed that, “if you wanted to get into that arena, it requires one heck of a lot of Teflon®, and I never wanted to test that proposition.”

 MWAA: What It Does and Why It Matters

The airports authority is not an agency or department of the federal government or of a state. According to its governing documents, MWAA is an autonomous “public body politic and corporate” created in 1987 by an interstate compact between the District of Columbia and Virginia and approved by Congress.  As a result, MWAA became responsible for the improvement, operation and maintenance of Reagan National and Dulles International airports.  (The U.S. Department of Transportation operated Reagan National from its opening in 1941 and Dulles from its opening in 1962.)   Congress also authorized a long-term lease to MWAA of the federally-owned land occupied by the two airports. 

The authority’s 17-member Board of Directors is appointed by the Governor of Virginia (7 members), the Governor of Maryland (3 members), the Mayor and City Council of the District of Columbia (3 members) and, subject to Senate confirmation, the President (3 members).  The current board includes former Alexandria City Councilor David Speck.  More information on the MWAA is available

here.

Sunderland said that the public’s relationship with MWAA is “unique … People’s experience with airports is usually a nice one; they’re going to see their grandparents; they’re going to see their grandkids. It’s a trip, it’s fun, and its infrequent, unlike the ongoing day-to-day relationship the public has with most government bodies.”  He also noted that MWAA conducts extensive surveys and social media analyses to determine the level of satisfaction with the public’s airport experience.”  As you can imagine,” he said, “All kinds of comments come in.”

 According to Sunderland, the future of the airports, including any additional expansion, is in the hands of MWAA, a responsibility it assumed under its land lease with the federal government.  With the Washington region now served by three airports, he said, “Starting up an airport in a new location today in this region would be extraordinarily difficult in light of the region’s many established residential neighborhoods and the impact that noise generated by a new airport would have on those neighborhoods.” 

Dulles and Reagan National Airports Compared

Sunderland dealt extensively with the operations at Reagan National and Dulles during his time at MWAA.  There were more than 26,000 workers at the Dulles campus in pre-pandemic 2019, mostly employees of MWAA, the airlines, concession businesses, various government agencies, and companies providing on-airport services to airlines and ground transportation to passengers. In 2019 slightly under 20,000 people worked at the Reagan National campus.

Sunderland said, “Dulles and Reagan National are roughly aligned in their passenger numbers.”  Each served between 23 and 25 million passengers in 2019, but their footprints are vastly different. He said, “Dulles has a campus of over 11,000 acres and has a substantial capacity to expand.”  Reagan National, which recently opened a new north terminal to replace the widely-disliked Gate 35X and its shuttle buses to planes, is on a space-constrained campus of only 860 acres.

The new Reagan National terminal, he noted, will be used entirely by American Airlines and, under an agreement with MWAA, American was responsible for the majority of the costs to build the new facility and will be responsible for future operating costs.

Sunderland believes the next major improvement at Reagan National will be a renovation of the original main terminal.  Any such work, he felt, would likely be years off, and almost certainly would be designed to maintain the building’s historic character.

Sunderland said that major improvements at Dulles will depend significantly upon a decision by United Airlines—presently, Dulles’ dominant carrier—to continue to operate its Dulles hub.  Since Dulles improvements would be primarily used by United, MWAA would look to United to finance most of them. 

MWAA Takes Control of the Dulles Toll Road to Help Bring the Silver Line to Dulles

Sunderland said that MWAA’s responsibilities to operate and maintain Reagan National and Dulles expanded in 2006 when MWAA—to ensure the extension of the Metro rail system to Dulles—took on the construction responsibilities for the Silver Line extension and replaced the Virginia Department of Transportation as operator of the Dulles Toll Road.   Sunderland said that when the federal government acquired real estate for Dulles in the late 1950s, it included a wide swath of land running 13 miles between the location of the then-planned airport and the future location of Interstate 66 in Arlington.   This land was for dedicated roadway to Dulles, now the Dulles Access Road, and a right-of-way for mass transit, now the new Metro Silver Line route to Dulles.

Sunderland observed that the assumption of operational control of the Toll Road required a change in MWAA’s internal workings and culture.  In its role as airport operator MWAA encountered its flying customers infrequently and did not directly charge them taxes or fees.  However, in its new role as Toll Road operator, MWAA served tens of thousands of drivers daily and set the tolls.  Sunderland noted that tolls had to be increased from time to time to finance the Metro rail expansion.   As a result, he said, “MWAA became, candidly, a more open and communicative organization, expanding its communications and customer service operations to address complaints of Toll Road users, and establishing new ways to keep those customers informed of MWAA’s proposals for roadway operational changes, construction activities and toll increases, and to encourage their participation in MWAA’s decision making processes.”

The lawyer in Sunderland noted that MWAA’s takeover of the Toll Road was controversial.  Ten years of litigation followed MWAA’s initial toll increases in 2009.  Multiple lawsuits challenged MWAA’s authority to set the tolls that generated revenue not just to fund Toll Road improvements but also to substantially fund the Metro rail expansion to Dulles.   

MWAA prevailed in all the lawsuits which Sunderland characterized as “presenting a number of fascinating legal issues that lawyers typically don’t have a chance to deal with.”  He observed that these cases establish an important precedent: in certain circumstances, authorities that operate more than one form of transportation may assess user fees to raise revenue for purposes not exclusively related to the revenue source.

Where MWAA Gets Revenues to Run and Improve the Airports

MWAA lacks the power to tax.  Thus, MWAA’s operational costs at the airports are largely paid by revenues raised from airlines, airport concession businesses, rental car companies and ground transportation operators, and parking garages. The large majority of MWAA’s construction costs are supported by revenues from “passenger facility charges” (a fee embedded in the cost of a plane ticket), and federal grants.  Sunderland says that the costs airlines pay to operate at an airport are typically less than five percent of their overall operating costs. 

 In its airport and Toll Road operator roles, MWAA issues tax-exempt bonds to finance its construction programs.  MWAA’s aviation bonds are secured solely by revenues from the two airports, and its rail bonds are secured solely by Toll Road revenue.  MWAA currently has about $4.3 billion in outstanding aviation bonds, and about $3.3 billion in outstanding in rail bonds. Sunderland estimates that a little over 50 percent of the Metro Silver Line extension’s final cost will be financed by bonds.

Career Perspectives

Sunderland derived his most professional satisfaction in working on the complex transactions that enabled MWAA to take over the Toll Road and build the Silver Line extension.   His focus was on, “making sure all transactions fell within MWAA’s powers, ensuring all MWAA procurements were validly performed, participating in the drafting and administration of major construction contracts and the issuance of rail construction bonds, and overseeing 10 years of litigation that challenged MWAA’s authority to use revenues from the Toll Road to finance the Silver Line construction,” activities that helped to make what he called “an extraordinarily important new arm of the Metro system” a reality.

Mark Jinks, formerly an Arlington County official, became Alexandria’s Chief Financial Officer in 1999.  He was named City Manager, or chief executive officer, in 2015.  Jinks announced his retirement effective this month.  He described some of the ways the city has evolved and is evolving during his time as its administrative leader.

How Alexandria Has Changed

Jinks said, “The city has clearly changed as the region has changed—we’ve grown around Metro stations.  Our smart growth policies have been put into place and have been refined and expanded. We’ve also lost jobs at Landmark Mall which at this point is closed and empty. We’ve lost office jobs.” 

 Jinks thinks that converting vacant office space into residences is a good thing but, “We should not basically be returning to a residential community.”  He said, “we need people here during the day” to support restaurants and retail and, “If people work here and live here, as opposed to commuting, that’s better for the environment and a better use of their time.”

 He compared the present King Street retail environment to 1999.  He said, “There are more interesting stores on it. Of course, a lot of those stores are struggling,” because of the trend to retail shopping online.

Jinks observed that the city has adopted a more flexible regulatory approach. He said, “It used to be that every restaurant had to go through a special use process” and that some city staff were “…very good at saying ‘no’.”  He pointed out that the Code Administration department was formerly, and tellingly, known as Code Enforcement.  Most permits are now available online and that the city now accepts plans electronically instead of passing blueprints from office to office.

Jinks highlights Alexandria’s information technology investments. Alexandria was one of the first cities to have a web page and one of the first to have fiber connections for all city and school facilities.

Jinks said that Alexandria’s capital investments have become more substantial.  He said, “One year in the school capital investment now is probably equal to what the schools used to spend over ten years… We are at the point where we have very few trailers compared to a lot of our counterparts in the DC area.  We entirely replaced our high school and have almost paid off that debt and are about ready to do a second one. The City Council is receiving planning documents for the Minnie Howard project this month.”

The City Manager’s Role

In recent decades three of Alexandria’s city managers—Vola Lawson, Phil Sunderland and Jinks—worked their way up to the position.  Three others—Jim Hartman, Rashad Young and now James Parajon who will follow Jinks—came to the position from outside the city.

As to advice for the new City Manager, Parajon, Jinks said, “It’s a very involved community.  Be good at listening--spending time listening is important [as is] understanding people’s points of view” and, “Second, is to understand who you are not hearing from because who we typically hear from is not a random sample. As a result, there are going to be people with greater needs that you won’t hear from and this gets to social equity issues.  A concerted effort to meet people where they are in many corners of the community is very important.”  He said that the new City Manager will, “see things with fresh eyes.” 

Jinks said, “One of the things I’ve had on my plate was continuous improvement—do a good job.  We have very good employees. Our systems generally work pretty well but that doesn’t mean that they always have to stay the same.”  Jinks pointed to the general support for the elimination of the city’s regulation of taxis.

 He does not claim that the city’s operations are flawless, for example, he recently concluded that the graffiti removal program needs improvement after there was no response to his call about a graffitied wall.

With the onset of the pandemic, Alexandria became the first jurisdiction in the United States to develop a way to safely process 911 calls from dispatchers’ homes.  The calls were formerly received by dispatchers in a single room which risked a quarantine of everyone in the room.  He said, “We’re still doing that because it means less commuting for people, it means that if we run into a huge storm and our call lines are down for a couple of hours we can ask people to take calls from their homes.”

Jinks said Alexandria used to be the urban and commercial center of Northern Virginia when major portions of neighboring jurisdictions were substantially agricultural.  He thinks that if Alexandria is going maintain a strong identity compared to the larger Arlington and Fairfax counties it must be seen as well-run and innovative to influence people to move to the city and to establish businesses. 

Alexandria’s Role in Northern Virginia

Jinks said, “a lot of decisions in this region get made regionally” and that Alexandria officials must actively participate in regional government organizations.  He said, “For example, our Planning Director and Housing Director have been co-chairs of their respective committees at COG [the Council of Governments.]”

Jinks said that Former Congressman and Mayor Jim Moran used to complain that Arlington County was considered so well-run, “It was like living next door to Heidi.”  He noted that Alexandria recently won, along with Minneapolis, the Urban Land Institute’s national award for innovative housing programs.

He said “I’ve been pushing for regional economic development.  We are the only major metropolitan area in the country without a central economic development organization aimed at promoting and recruiting businesses. Every jurisdiction has their own.”  He said it was not until Alexandria worked with successfully with Arlington on the Amazon and Virginia Tech developments that other Northern Virginia jurisdictions began to see the advantages of better regional cooperation.

Four Projects That Define Alexandria’s Future

As his City Manager tenure concludes, Jinks sees substantial progress in four transformative projects: the waterfront redevelopment, the redevelopment of Potomac Yard and the new Metro station, the new Minnie Howard campus of Alexandria City High School and the relocation of INOVA Hospital as part of the four million square foot redevelopment of the Landmark site.  The last of these now appears to be firmly on the way to reality.

The Landmark project consists of the hospital, cancer center and medical office building (together, about one million square feet) and three million square feet of residential and commercial development. Jinks said “we tried” to include a new school in the plan which would have been an urban, or substantially vertical, school as is planned for Potomac Yard but, “the school administration at the time was not interested so it went by the wayside.”

Looking Back and Looking Forward

Jinks’ biggest frustrations as City Manager involve the pace of change.  He said, “Whether it was  [negotiating with the Old Dominion Boat Club], Potomac Yard or Landmark Mall--it just has taken a long time to get those projects done, “ and “The first memo I got from the owner of Landmark was dated 1999.” He said, “We had five iterations of plans for Landmark for a whole lot of reasons—the owner of two-thirds of the mall did not have it as a high priority. I had been lobbying for five or six years for the hospital to go to Landmark knowing that [the hospital] was landlocked and needed a place to expand. They needed a modern hospital.”  Jinks said that lack of a medical office building adjacent to the current hospital sometimes made it difficult to recruit doctors.

About the building of BRAC (the massive Department of Defense Base Realignment and Closing building at Seminary Road and I-395) Jinks said, “The community interaction could have been different and the city’s decision to support both the Mark Center site and the Eisenhower Avenue site equally—looking back the city should not have done that.  We should have focused on Eisenhower Avenue rather than saying that both developers needed to be treated equally.”

In retirement, Jinks looks forward to catching up on reading history and biography, for example, a biography of Henry VIII.  He said, “I’m fascinated with Thomas Cromwell who was in effect his city manager,” and “I have a stack of books as high as my reading chair.”

The Alfred Street Baptist Church (ASBC), founded in 1803, has been led by Pastor Howard-John Wesley for nearly 12 years.  The church grew during that time from about 2,800 to 10,000 members. The membership growth and the expansion of the scope of its ministry reflect the church’s continuing vibrancy.  Referring to the church’s growth, “We are fortunate,” Wesley said, “We are no longer defined by the four walls at the corner of Duke Street and Alfred Street.” 

Between 40 to 45 percent of the church’s members live in Virginia.  Wesley described ASBC as a national church with members from as far away as Korea and as many as 60,000 people participating remotely.  As the church has grown so have the challenges of managing its resources and of organizing volunteer and other programs for members whom Wesley describes as, “being active in their faith in large numbers.”  Wesley said that a call for volunteers for a Saturday morning project can yield 2,000 people.

Wesley did not know much about Alexandria when he first came to the church. In his time leading the church he believes Alexandria has “stepped out of the shadow of Washington D.C.” and that “we have developed our own identity” as an attractive place to live.  He believes that President Obama did a lot to bring “rising, college educated people of color” to this region and that there was a “buzz that drew people here.”  He also credits the influence of corporations that have moved into, or enhanced their presence in, Alexandria and surrounding areas. 

Wesley views these developments as contributing to “the unavoidable consequences of gentrification” which are specifically observable in the Route 1 corridor.  Wesley views part of ASBC’s mission as, “making sure that income is not the only criterion for enjoying the city.”  He is particularly concerned with protecting those in the community who live in increasingly scarce rental housing.

He is proud of the church’s volunteer activities, for example, its Feed the 5,000 program—a reference to the Bible story of Jesus organizing the feeding of a large crowd from small quantities of loaves of bread and fishes—which replaced the tradition of an annual pastoral gift.  Wesley said, “We were able to honor an anniversary by giving to others.”

Wesley said that one of the church’s challenges is, “How do we make people who want to come [to the church] be good neighbors?”  He said that with four daily servicesk, “we would park anywhere” and that the membership growth compounded congestion in Old Town.  He spoke ruefully of receiving a letter from a nearby resident asserting that the church, “doesn’t belong in Old Town anymore.”  The heart of ASBC’s challenge, Wesley said, is “managing growth without negative effects.”

ASBC has had strong program delivery ties with Christ Church’s food and social assistance programs and with the nonprofits ALIVE! and Carpenter’s Shelter.  Wesley said the church has a positive relationship with the Alexandria Police Department.  He said that he wanted the church’s young people to know that, “You don’t have to be afraid of this officer.”

Wesley said that while churches and public schools should operate as separate institutions, he regrets that “we don’t have very strong ties” with the public schools.

In Wesley’s view, ASBC “used to hang its hat on its founding in 1803” but the church’s future involves “more than worship” and that “we cannot love God without loving our brothers and sisters” which is the essence of “what it really means to serve.”  Wesley believes that the church’s future will run counter to demographic commentaries that correlate church attendance with age.  He said, “The work we do is very attractive to 30-year olds.”

Wesley’s message to those who know little or nothing about ASBC is, “We are an open environment—all are welcome here regardless of race or background. This is a safe space to love and serve and be served. We have a legacy of service to all.”

Wesley is committed to advancing ideas in the political arena and said he “needs to share my positions and passions.” He sees voting as “an absolute necessity” and an extension of Christian identity.  He says that a failure to vote is “disrespectful to all of those who made voting possible.”  In the past, the church’s membership materials included voter registration cards.  He described voting as necessary for anyone “who would be an advocate for justice, especially for black and brown lives.”

He said that the church is proud of its members who have run for public office, notably City Councilor John Taylor Chapman and School Board member Jacinta Greene. 

Wesley attracted attention when he decided to take a sabbatical.  He said, “The clergy are terrible at resting” and noted the biblical teaching that, “On the seventh day God rested.”  He described himself as “burned out and wrestling with depression and anxiety” when he began his sabbatical.  He is grateful that the church provided time off for him, “to simply rest and seek out counseling and physical aid.”

His sabbatical ended prematurely in early 2020 when he came back to participate in discussions shaping the church’s response to the pandemic.  He recommends that anyone with the opportunity for a sabbatical use it.  He now takes about one week off each quarter “to spiritually reset.”  Every August ASBC suspends all of its program activities, except worship.

Wesley, a native of Chicago, “looks back and laments” at the conditions in the city where he was raised.  He points to “deep racial divides and economic divides” and says that Chicago “has never been known for great political leadership.”  He prays for the pastors and churches there but is convinced that progress can only come “one child, one family, one neighborhood at a time.”

Wesley, a parent of two teenaged boys, said his children transitioned successfully to online learning and that an unexpected benefit of the pandemic is that he spends more time with his children.  He attends all of their athletic competitions, something that was not possible before the pandemic.  He said that, prior to the pandemic, “My children had never known me on Saturday or Sunday,” a condition that changed when church services and other activities went online.

Carolyn Griffin, the relentlessly positive Producing Artistic Director of MetroStage, has led Alexandria’s only professional theater since 1984.  Griffin moved to Parkfairfax in 1969 and pursued her first career as a school psychologist.  She became involved with the theater soon after earning her MBA from Georgetown University in 1984.  She reflected on the changes in Alexandria’s theater environment during her involvement with MetroStage and on the future of live theater.

 In 2022 MetroStage will open a new theater in the Venue, an Old Town North Carr Companies condominium. The new theater has been designed by Alexandria architect Skip Maginniss who has designed four MetroStage theaters.  Griffin said, “He does beautiful work and he understands me; he understands MetroStage and he understands what our intention is in terms of creating an environment that will serve the work and the public by being an intimate space…I treasure the two, three, five person shows that can be done on a semi-thrust stage with audiences so close to the actors.”

Griffin said, “We’re the oldest professional theater in Northern Virginia. We’re the only professional theater in Alexandria, so it [MetroStage’s founding] was a significant step at that point in 1984.”

Griffin pointed to the dramatic increase in the number of regional professional theaters in the Washington area since MetroStage’s founding.  She said, “We have been Alexandria’s representative all along…we have people from all over the country who will come see a show because they follow small professional theaters” in their home communities.

Alexandria has a community theater tradition.  Griffin said, “A community that has grown up with a community theater sometimes doesn’t really know the difference” between community theater and professional theater or understand the necessary difference in ticket prices.  She said “My actors are the best of the DC metro artists and are earning real salaries for their work on stage in addition to receiving health and pension benefits from their union. We cast locally and nationally and some have been on Broadway and in Broadway tours…I have fabulous talent on my stage. That was the intention from the beginning and that what was we have committed to doing and have absolutely done.”

 In 1987 MetroStage opened with 65 seats.  The new theater in the 900 block of North Fairfax Street will have 110 seats.  Griffin said, “Some might not call that progress, but I call it sticking with your original mission and doing what you do and what you are committed to because you believe in the intimacy of a small theater and what it offers to an audience.” 

Griffin’s commitment to a diverse repertory goes back to MetroStage’s founding. She said, “What we did from day one is we offered a very diverse group of productions, performances, actors, artists—it was just part of what we did. Now, all of a sudden, there is a wave of diversity in the last couple of years—everybody is doing diverse work. I have a 30-year record of doing diverse work. It’s one of the things that brought in audiences from around the Beltway.”

Griffin said “Everything’s changed. I grew up with Rodgers and Hammerstein, the next generation grew up with Sondheim” but, other than Lin-Manuel Miranda, Griffin is not sure who will shape the future of live theater. She said, “But, those of us doing live theater believe in it and will continue doing it as long as we can and hope that it will continue.”

Griffin notes that subscription patterns have also changed and that the practice of subscribing to multiple theaters has been declining.  MetroStage’s flex passes allow patrons to select productions from what Griffin describes as MetroStage’s typical eclectic season.  She said, “There are so many choices in so many theaters in the metro area—you have to roll with it… People like to pick and choose.”   

Ticket discounting has also increased. She said that “you can almost always find a discounted ticket and that impacts on box office.”  Griffin believes that while the business of live theater has changed, “the kind of work we do and the stories we tell” has stayed consistent with MetroStage’s mission and esthetic.

Griffin thinks Alexandria has been very lucky to have been consistently designated as an arts destination city.  She said, “There are lots of really fine arts organizations—the Art League, the Torpedo Factory, MetroStage, the Alexandria Symphony, and so many choral groups—There is lots of art in the city.  Between the history and the arts and now the waterfront it’s a vibrant city. Certainly, 30 years ago we could never have imagined a waterfront that is alive every night of the week.”

 Griffin is on the boards of several Alexandria arts organizations, including the Alexandria Arts Alliance. She said, “I would say that the commitment of the artists to the city is greater than the commitment of the city to the artists” and that “the level of commitment by the artists is really admirable and significant. The city appreciates its artists, it just doesn’t budget for them the way surrounding jurisdictions do.”  

She believes that MetroStage’s new theater will be evidence of the city’s commitment to art. “I want to see everyplace you turn around a visible expression of art,” she said of the Arts and Cultural District planned for Old Town North. “We’ve been in a parking lot for 20 years and all of a sudden [MetroStage] will be on North Fairfax Street across from a park, next to tennis courts, and visible from the street—[MetroStage] has never been visible from the street before.”

Griffin noted that MetroStage’s corporate and business partners, for example the Carr Companies, have been supportive for decades as MetroStage relocated first to make way for the Carlyle project on Duke Street and moved later to Old Town North to the former Smoot Lumber Company site. She laughed and said, “We go from one condemned building to the next.”

MetroStage’s first theater in 1987 was built for $12,000 with support from Howard Rooks, Roger Machanic and other business leaders.  The new theater will cost significantly more and will offer patrons a choice between traditional theater seating and café tables and seating.  Griffin said, “This is like Blues Alley meets MetroStage…The flexibility is quite exciting. Long before other theaters we allowed you to take your drinks in” to a performance.

Griffin said, “I’ve never wavered from my commitment because I absolutely believe in the work I’m presenting to the public and the work I’m offering to the artists. In both cases, it’s meaningful, it’s important, and, I believe, serves the city well.”

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