Bipeds of Brookland: Chris Matthews

Bipeds of Brookland: Chris Matthews

Chris Matthews studied undergraduate dietetics because “I liked to eat. I went into grad school in libraries because I like to read.” She and her husband, Ken, constructed a little free library, her love, in front of their house, in the shape of his love, a train car. “People leave books and I go to yard sales and used book sales.”  Chris recently retired as a librarian from Bread for the World, which does advocacy on food security and poverty issues, both internationally and in the United States. Part of her job was to help with research for their annual hunger report.

Chris and Ken moved to Brookland because it was affordable, near a Metro and a diverse neighborhood. “Back then, in ‘88, a lot of the neighborhoods seemed to be one color or another.”  She soon discovered that here “a lot of the kids go to different schools even if they live next to each other.  We don’t have kids, so I thought it would be fun to get the kids together.  I started little cookie parties and they grew until all the kids on the block came, and we’ve been doing it for 20 years. It’s fun.” Chris also helps coordinate a block party on her street every year.

Chris and Ken are only the second owners of their house, which is over 80 years old. “This house was owned by Sterling Brown, who is the first Poet Laureate of Washington, DC. His house was the one next door and he built this one for his sister.” Sterling Brown was a professor at Howard University.

Chris says they have opened their house to various people referred to them by the international and domestic organizations they support. We have enjoyed “sharing our house with volunteers who work with social justice programs.” Remembering past years in Brookland, she talks about the food co-op on 12th Street NE where they volunteered in the 90s, and reminisces, “there was a used book store on 12th Street which all of us miss.”