Bipeds of Brookland: Karen Towers

Karen Towers grew up in a small town in Pennsylvania. “Any street I walked down, I had a relative on every block.”  After living at home through college, she decided she needed to move. “I wanted to go to the Peace Corps, and they sent me to Guatemala. I didn’t speak any Spanish. I had never been to Latin America before.” She taught 6th grade,Junior Achievement and business development in 3 schools in Patzun, a Kakchiquel Mayan speaking town. Because so few of the children were enrolling in high school, Karen and two fellow Peace Corps volunteers started a small NG, Amigos de Patzún, which seeks donations for scholarships to students to continue their education beyond primary school. “I have so much respect

Bipeds of Brookland:  Lacey W. Smith Sr.

Lacey W. Smith Sr. was drafted into the army at 19. He remembers leaving England and spending seven days at sea “waiting for D-Day.” He landed at Normandy and spent two years supplying soldiers on the front lines. “You could see kids in the street that lost their mother and father.  They were looking for something to eat… we would just give them our rations and they would sit and eat and say thank you, but they were speaking French, and you really didn't know, but you knew they were hungry.”

He returned to DC in 1946 and married his high school girlfriend. They bought a house in Brookland in which they have lived for over 70 years. Lacey was born in Lynchburg, VA, but first came to DC to visit his

Bipeds of Brookland: Marguerite Duane

Marguerite Duane decided to become a doctor the day her baby sister was born at home. “It was pretty soon after that I decided I wanted to do family medicine. As much I love caring for pregnant women and delivering babies, I love taking care of the babies.”

Marguerite moved to Brookland in 2004, when she and her husband began working for Georgetown School of Medicine, and she could deliver babies and care for patients at nearby Providence Hospital.   She remember getting calls when a patient was in the hospital going into labor and arriving a few minutes later, to the surprise of other staff, because she lived four blocks away.

She was later the Medical Director at Catholic Charities, where their commitment was

Bipeds of Brookland: Jean Little

Jean Little  came to DC from a small town in North Carolina. She was recruited to study at the Cortez Peters Business School. Cortez Peters was an African American man who taught himself to type as a child and became a champion typist. He founded the school to prepare African Americans for business and civil service. “It was a very good business school. From there I started working for the government at the Labor Department. I was a statistical assistant. I started out as a secretary but I moved up. I did well, I think, in that day.”  

She first lived near Eastern High School and married Mr. Little whom she knew in North Carolina. They moved to Brookland in 1965 and raised a son and a daughter in the

Bipeds of Brookland: Tom Kirlin

Tom Kirlin moved to Brookland in 1979 and having grown up in the country “missed the Midwestern open space and wanted light on all four sides.” He found a house, built in 1907 on a half-acre lot with over 20 kinds of trees, being sold by the estate of a Howard University Doctor. He bought it completely furnished, including a harp and a baby grand piano, but on the first night he found the attic was filled with pans collecting water leaking from the roof. He fixed up the house and got to know Brookland playing basketball with the neighborhood kids.

Tom is a writer whose career has included teaching literature at the University in Wisconsin.

“I last taught ‘science fiction and fantasy as mythology’ though

Bipeds of Brookland: John Feeley

John Feeley remembers playing in the woods as a child. “There were a few hobo camps that added a little excitement, that you might run into someone vaguely threatening. There was creek back there, where Providence Hospital’s parking lot is now.”

He moved into the  neighborhood when his parents bought a house in 1960. Later, when John began teaching in Philadelphia, his mother would send him job ads from the newspaper in DC. “When I called my mother to say I was taking a job in DC, she said, ‘Well, you can live in the family house. I took a job in Pittsburgh so your father and I are leaving.’ ” He lives in that same house today.

John taught in DC Public Schools and received training in Montessori

Bipeds of Brookland: Margaret Johnson

Margaret Johnson learned of a tap dance program called  ‘Seniors on the Move’ and thought, “I would like to try it, because I always had two left feet. You had to be 65 or older before you joined, and it was stressless. The teacher is 91 years old.” She started practicing once a week a year ago. “Last Thanksgiving I had enough confidence to perform for my family.” She has performed with the group of seniors four times in Retirement homes and schools in Maryland.

Ms. Johnson was born in DC, but lived for a while in New Orleans with her husband who was a professor. They came back to DC when he took a job with the federal government. They bought a house in Brookland in 1969. She worked as a medical technician

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

Bipeds of Brookland: Bobby Caballero

Bobby Caballero came with his family from Cuba to Los Angeles as a baby. He moved to DC to study at Howard University. Mr. Bobby is the Director of Student Support at  Elsie Whitlow Stokes Public Charter School in Brookland which “prepares 350 culturally diverse elementary school students in the District of Columbia to be leaders, scholars and responsible citizens who are committed to social justice.”

“Washington Post rated us as one of the most diverse schools in DC.”  Stokes has Spanish immersion and French immersion classes for Pre-K through 5th grade. “We have a partner school in Martinique and a partner school in Panama. They start with e-mail pals. They communicate and then get to meet eventually.”

Bipeds of Brookland: Alan Meyers

Alan Meyers met his wife, Allegra, in an improv class in New York City. When she got an internship at the Federal Government, he said, "I’ll move down. So I quit my job in NY and we both moved down here.” That was 11 years ago. They always thought they would move back to New York City where both of their families live in Manhattan. However, after renting apartments in DC and searching for houses for 11 months they bought a home in Brookland.  “We are transplanted New Yorkers that could not be happier and more delighted to be now hopefully permanent DC residents... We were looking every year to move back to NYC and then decided to live in Brookland. We found everything and more [here in DC rather than] moving back to NY