Bipeds of Brookland: Introducing the people who make Brookland their home, one step at a time.

Mary Pat Rowan is a landscape architect and president of the Greater Brookland Garden Club. She admits, “My garden isn’t so spectacular because I work in other people’s gardens.”

After studying under a professor in Wisconsin famous for prairie restoration, Mary Pat came to DC and began a business in 1980 designing residential landscapes with native plants. “I attempt to create a habitat, rather than a landscape: a place for plants and animals, butterflies and bees.”  She works mostly in the city and points out that “small gardens are more difficult than large gardens because you can’t make any mistakes.”

Mary Pat moved to Brookland in the late 80s after

Bipeds of Brookland: Introducing the people who make Brookland their home one step at a time.

Florence Preston

When Florence Preston came to an open house in Brookland in 1969 she was a working mom with two kids. “I walked up with the real estate agent and said, ‘This is my house.’ And I’ve been there ever since.”

Florence likes living in Brookland near John Burroughs Elementary. “It is a real quiet area. I’m right across the street from the school. My kids went to that school so it was convenient, and there is the big playground”

After working over 25 years in the offices of several businesses in DC, she retired and began a new career. With both her kids grown, she and her second husband became ‘relief parents’ for foster children.

Charlotte has lived in Brookland since she was born. She is an active member of the community helping with the Garden Club’s Christmas Gala and Annual Home and Garden Tour. “I like a lot of the people that are here. I like that it’s a good place to be a kid. You know, I would go out in the street with my brother and we would just play ball.”

Charlotte wrote her college essay about her job selling bread at the Brookland farmers’ markets.  “It’s really nice because you see these people passing by, even today someone came by and they were really excited to see me and …I was excited to see them.”

She will attend Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota next year. “It’s just this really beautiful campus in a beautiful neighborhood. It’s actually kind

Bipeds of Brookland: introducing the people who make Brookland their home, one step at a time.

James Ellzy

James Ellzy had wanted to be a doctor since middle school. He joined Navy ROTC to pay for college.  He was already deployed in East Timor on Sept 11th. “Then we were the first ships to take the Marines into Afghanistan. We got redeployed when we went to Iraq.”

James is now a Chief Medical Informatics Officer (CMIO) in the Defense Health Agency. “I am the bridge between the doctors and IT. The IT people ask the doctors something and the doctors will say ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’  I really have enjoyed being a physician, I’ve enjoyed the IT side of things because you need somebody who understands what we do behind the closed door

Bipeds of Brookland: Introducing the people who make Brookland their home, one step at a time. 
This week: Tom Rooney

Tom Rooney  was a professor of art at Catholic University for over 30 years. Tom came to DC to study art at CUA after serving in WWII. He met his wife Angela when she was studying at Catholic in the Drama Department. “The first time I saw her she had the lead in Antigone.”

They bought a house on 14th Street in the early 60s for $15,000. “My salary for the year, I had just started teaching at Catholic University, was $4,800 a year.” Tom created the sculptures that can be seen in front of his house. His art studio is in the carriage house behind his wooden home, built around 1900. “In 1900 you had horses. Cars were just coming in.

Bipeds of Brookland:

Introducing the people who make Brookland their home, one step at a time.

Audrey Aiken

Audrey Aiken retired after 41 years as an analyst at the Department of Labor. She entered the Peace Corps and went to St. Lucia in the Caribbean, where she worked in a senior center.  

After having volunteered many years with the AARP in Washington, her main job in St. Lucia was “working with the elderly, to bring programs similar to the AARP’s, because many seniors stayed home alone all day. This island had more centenarians than any other Caribbean island.” Audrey enjoyed her time there and, “At the end, they announced that I had more visitors than anyone else. I had 18 visitors.”

Audrey was born in DC, northeast of Capitol Hill. She

Bipeds of Brookland:

Introducing the people who make Brookland their home, one step at a time.

Susan Gushue

Susan Gushue started graduate school in Philosophy at CUA in 1981, but later became a math teacher. “I wanted to be a college professor but I didn’t want to write research papers.”

She and her husband had a son and bought a house in Brookland.  She liked meeting the “funky do-it-yourself people” who lived in Brookland because it was affordable.  They later had four daughters and Susan began tutoring math so she could work part time.

“Before all these little libraries you see now, I did book swaps here probably 20 years ago. On a Saturday we’d have lemonade and some friends would bring books and older kids to help us. You

Bipeds of Brookland:

Introducing the people who make Brookland their home, one step at a time.

E. Franklin Johnson

E. Franklin Johnson served in the South Pacific in WWII, and was fortunate never to see combat. The war ended just after he arrived in the Philippines. He moved to DC from Richmond, VA in 1960 and bought his house in Brookland in 1963 with his wife. “It was an affordable neighborhood,” he says. Their third daughter was born after they moved in.

Mr. Johnson worked for the Naval Hydrographic Office, which later became part of NOAA. He remembers storing data electronically on an IBM 360 mainframe computer. “We had keypunch people who put data on paper cards that could be fed into the computers.”  

He retired as an oceanographer in

 Bipeds Of Brookland:

Introducing the people who make Brookland their home, one step at a time.

Tony Senerchia

Tony Senerchia was born in Brookland. His maternal grandmother came to the neighborhood in 1933 to attend Catholic University. His father later attended Catholic to study music, and met his mother here. They raised seven kids in a house they bought and fixed up on Otis Street.

“My dad was a music teacher. Everyone always asked me what instrument I played, and always seemed a little disappointed when I said, 'I don’t play anything.' I love music but I didn’t take to playing it at all."

"I could always do things with my hands. I’m passionate about education and manual skills and

Bipeds Of Brookland:

Introducing the people who make Brookland their home, one step at a time.

Alex King

Alex King lives in the house where he grew up in Brookland. He remembers building fortresses with friends in Ft. Bunker Hill Park. He’s now raising his children there.

He took his first Tai Chi class for an exercise credit at GWU. He liked it so much he enrolled several times. “When I graduated I sought out a Tai Chi and Kung Fu school, and jumped in head first.” Alex has competed in and judged tournaments all over the US and abroad. He has been to China several times to study and to visit temples in the Wu Dong Mountains where his Kung Fu line originated.

Today he runs a traditional Kung Fu and Tai Chi studio from his house