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