Stories of the Soldiers’ Home Oral History Project
The Stories of the Soldiers’ Home Oral History Project
Dr. Olga Fairfax, Interview 1
Date of Interview: 7 November 2007
Langley Park Community Center
Hyattsville, Maryland
Interviewer: Allison Herrmann
- HERRMANN: This is the November 7, 2007 interview of Dr. Olga Fairfax by Allison Herrmann, for the Stories of the Soldiers’ Home Oral History Project, recorded at the Langley Park Community Center in Hyattsville, Maryland. Thank you very much for joining me today. Start with some basic biographical information, what is your full name?
FAIRFAX: It’s Olga Louise Fairfax. My maiden name was Wilson. And I was almost born in the Soldiers’ Home grounds. Today it’s called the Soldiers’ and Airmen’s Home. But I was born, in the first time that the Soldiers’ Home was ever closed for a whole week because of a blizzard. It was March 7, 1941, and my father was racing my mother to the Garfield Hospital on North Capitol Street, literally on the other side of Soldiers’ Home grounds. And he beat the stork [laughter]. But the federal government was closed the whole week because of the snow.
Now I’d like very briefly to describe my childhood. It was, first of all, very, very happy. I chose my parents very well! They had the home at 411 Quincy Street, Northwest, and that was the last house on Quincy Street, our next door neighbor’s row house was on Rock Creek Church Road as you go up the hill. And I felt that my front yard was the Soldiers’ Home grounds. I have the happiest memories of the Anderson Cottage, of course it was closed at that time and vine enclosed so you could hardly see it. But right across the street there was a wonderful field that would be plowed every spring, and I remember the dust clouds coming across the street. And then they would plant corn, and of course that was harvested in the fall. So it was like we lived on this 500 acre estate. Some of it has been sold for North Capitol Street to be cut through, also the new townhouses near Catholic University have taken some of the land. But I had my own pond! There was a big chicken house, and we’d see the chickens and hear the roosters, and there were cows for the milk for the soldiers. And it was a very rural area, there was a beautiful stone bridge that we would drive over. And then in Fourth of July all we had to do is just turn our head on the pillow and see the wonderful fireworks downtown at the Washington Monument.
Also, during the winter time, there was this fabulous long slope down from the hospital that went across a road—about four feet below—so you’re sled would go down like this then jump down four feet and continue onto a field. There were some marvelous gazebos. The tiniest, darlingest one was a dark green and white with lattice work, and I notice that it is now replaced next to the Anderson Cottage, it was further below it when I was a child. I remember playing on the canons during the band concerts that they had every Saturday night. Of course there was a canteen there for ice cream and I could honestly say I never once ever remember getting an ice cream cone. My mother was kind of a dietician, health person, so I don’t ever remember getting an ice cream cone. But there were other children there.
Also our paperboy for the old Evening Star lived in the first little very ginger-bready house, the first entrance going up Rock Creek Church Road on the right, that gate is closed now. I don’t know if that house is lived in. But he used to come with his wooden wagon down from his home, park it right in front of our house, on the sidewalk, and deliver our paper and our neighbor’s paper. And at age nine, I really was serious about being a paper girl. I was very enterprising, my parents didn’t like that idea, so I never got be a paper girl, but that’s where I got the inspiration from.
Also, we know that Lincoln at night of course in kind of brooding over the Civil War would walk over this small field [Soldiers’ Home National Cemetery, Washington, D.C] that already had planted many soldiers and you can just feel his burden at that point among living the cemetery right virtually on one side of his house. Also I remember of course the chapel, which was precious, my family was Catholic….
HERRMANN: This the Rose Chapel?
FAIRFAX: The Rose Chapel. And it was always quiet and the wonderful fragrance of the lit candles and we would virtually have it for ourselves when we would go in there, say a prayer, and of course I was in there recently and it was the same place, hadn’t changed at all.
And then another memory that I have is of the kind of what I call the cut-through from the road that comes from the Shrine, the Basilica [Basilica of the National Shrine of Immaculate Conception], that’s Harewood Road, when we would be Michigan Avenue, to get home quickly, we would come in to that first gate where the little house is on the left, that gate is now closed. Right opposite the Basilica, that is closed. And also the house and the gate on the far side, on 5th street, that was open, so you could literally crisscross the Soldiers’ Home grounds from the entrance on Michigan Avenue, the one on 5th Street, the one where the paper boy lived [one block south of Eagle Gate Entrance on Rock Creek Church Road], and then the big gate with the eagle, the main gate, and then the other one on Harewood Road. The other four of course have been closed. But those were like the superintendents of the Soldiers’ Home grounds and the caretakers of the property so they got I guess first preference living in those homes.
HERRMANN: Did it have the fencing at that point?
FAIRFAX: Yes, it did.
HERRMANN: It did, but you could go right in?
FAIRFAX: Yes, everything was open, you could just drive right in. And I remember Scott Circle, that when you come down from Anderson Cottage, come past the generals’ big, big homes, and every one of them had on the second step the full general’s name spelled out, so when you would drive or walk past these big general homes, you knew who exactly who was living there. I notice now that they do not any longer have the person’s home, I guess that’s for security reasons. But we used to drive around Scott Circle and the glorious forsythia that was on that whole embankment down that kind of like a ramp road from Scott Circle in the early spring that’s just a bank of yellow forsythia, that is most gorgeous…
HERRMANN: Beautiful…
FAIRFAX: It was. And of course I’d take my little sailboat to the rectangular pond it was only about a foot deep, and sail my you know little book boat on the little pond.
HERRMANN: Where was that roughly?
FAIRFAX: That was further down it was right in front of, what I used to think of as a newer hospital building it wasn’t that old white Civil War era [Sherman Building] up on the hill where the Anderson Cottage is right across from, it was not that. It was about a quarter of a mile down and it was a newer building, I imagine in fact probably–well I was born in ’41–it was there when I was little so it probably was built there after World War I so I’d say in the early ‘20s that building was there and of course it was newer in the ‘40s.
I remember a couple of funny incidents—kind of tragi-funny I should say. One night I remember in this terrific snow storm, the men I felt sorry for because they had lost so many limbs, you hardly ever today see someone with crutches or prosthetic legs or arms blown off or literal bandages around their head or ears bandaged and so forth. I saw those almost every day. One night we had this terrific snow, I was looking out and I saw a man and probably their only kind of entertainment about four blocks down on Georgia Avenue there was a liquor store. Unfortunately some of them were alcoholics, probably. Well this man coming all the way home and you could see the bottle in the wrapped brown bag under his arm and he was so drunk he could not get his foot up on the curb. I saw him for the entire block going past our house and all he did was just put his foot up like this and then it he’d put his foot down, and then he’d stumble a little bit, he could not get up on the curb. Of course everything was snow, I don’ t know that I could’ve gotten up there either. But I just felt sorry, we knew where he had been and he was intoxicated.
I remember one of the most wonderful photographs that we still have in our family is of my grandmother—my grandmother died when I was five—and she lived literally around the corner, two blocks, on 5th Street. We would run around there and take our little picnic baskets and so forth, but I remember this precious—probably one of the last photographs ever taken of her because I was about five at that point—and it was right in front of the chapel [Rose Chapel]. The women—older women—like that wore very long skirts. It wasn’t to their ankle but it was way below the knee and my mother and my grandmother both always wore gloves and always wore hats. So there was a lot of formality still in the 1940s.
Another little story is and I don’t think this is true but you know how kids are, there was this huge tree right in the middle of the field right across the street from our house where they would plow, in fact they had to plow around this tree, well you know this rumor started that that was called the “Hanging Tree.” [Laughter]
HERRMANN: Oh my goodness.
FAIRFAX: As I said, I just can’t imagine anybody every hanging there, and I never saw a rope! But among kids this was kind of a spooky thing especially to scare you on Halloween. This was the Hanging Tree.
HERRMANN: That tree is no longer there?
FAIRFAX: I doubt it. If it is it’s 66 years old. Another thing we know that Abraham Lincoln had two assassination attempts on his life before the one with John Wilkes Booth in the Ford [Fords] Theater. And they have apparently knew or found either the bullet or when Lincoln came up—it was three miles—and it took I think almost an hour [half an hour] for him by horseback or carriage from the White House, everything almost was woods, and one time just more or less as he was entering the grounds his hat was shot off, you know that. And then whether these bullets were ever found or not I don’t know. But I thought that was a very interesting thing.
HERRMANN: That’s probably right along [where you grew up]—cause you’re right near Rock Creek Church Road.
FAIRFAX: Well actually he would’ve been coming in on the other side, on the Michigan Avenue side—North Capitol, coming up from the White House [Abraham Lincoln’s commute went up Georgia Avenue and then onto Rock Creek Church Road, where he entered the Soldiers’ Home grounds via Eagle Gate]. Two other interesting things: my mother and father are both buried in Rock Creek Church Cemetery, they wanted that. My mother especially she was a very artistic person, spoke several languages, traveled all over the world, university graduate in the 1920s, if you can imagine…
HERRMANN: Impressive.
FAIRFAX: Yes, a renaissance woman! She chose her site because she said there were about five or six gorgeous stone mausoleums in that old cemetery and that’s one of the earliest cemeteries I think it’s originally with the Episcopal church, the old Rock Creek Church Cemetery. And she said this one mausoleum had some beautiful angel carved and she said that she thought that that would be like her guardian angel so she chose her plot….
HERRMANN: Very nice.
FAIRFAX: Very nice. Then my father is of course buried right next to her. So when my daughter was about five–I’m not one for visiting graveyards very much but I just frankly wanted her to see where her grandparents were buried, so we went in there and found the place where they were buried and I pointed out the guardian angel. Also, there are several famous people buried there, I want to say Francis Scott Key [actually buried in Mount Olivet Cemetery in Frederick, Maryland], I believe is—his statue—or was it Daniel Webster [actually buried in Winslow Cemetery in Marshfield, Massachusetts]? I cannot remember.
HERRMANN: I’ll have to check.
FAIRFAX: Have to check. Anyway that’s only maybe about fifty feet from where my mother and father are buried and it’s a beautiful statue of I think it is Daniel Webster. The other thing is just about six months ago in the spring I read in the Washington Times newspaper that the Buffalo Soldiers were going to have a reenactment. My grandfather was fighting the Indians, unfortunately, in South Dakota with [United States General George Armstrong] Custer, and the black Buffalo Soldiers. My grandfather actually fought with them. In fact in one battle he rode a black horse into the battle and rode a white horse out! It was pretty furious. He fought in the American Army for eight years and he was not even an American citizen! He was still a German citizen if you can imagine! He did become an American citizen. But I went over there I think I was about the only white person there. But it was a marvelous ceremony. The one reason I wanted to go there in the paper it identified a man as the name of Fairfax, and our Fairfax family a very, very small family. I’m married to Carl Fairfax who is a direct descendent of Lord Fairfax, that was the largest land grant ever given by George II and it was 2.3 million acres from New York down to Atlanta from the ocean the Shenandoah Mountains. Everything is gone, no more money, mansions, mammy, mimosas, mint juleps, all gone! Except the name. But I wanted to meet this Mr. Fairfax and I called him up ahead of time I got his number and called him up so I was looking forward to it. And he was a handsome black man, probably six foot two and probably in his sixties. They did a beautiful wreath-laying and they had the bugles and they did a formation with rifles, it was only about a forty-five minute ceremony and it was just wonderful. I was very impressed with it. To my knowledge it was the first annual, so they at the end of it they said ‘Well this is so wonderful’ there were only maybe fifty people.…
HERRMANN: Present?
FAIRFAX: Exactly. So they said that they hoped to do it again. And it was just very wonderful. I was very touched by that. So that was kind of the most recent visit to the Soldiers’ Home grounds.
HERRMANN: And when did that happen?
FAIRFAX: That, I believe, was last—in fact I thought it was last spring, no, I think it was Veterans’ Day—and obviously that’s coming up in five days on November 11th, I think that is what is was for, for Veterans’ Day. If I see something the paper I will definitely go again, because that was just a very beautiful touching….
HERRMANN: Worth the trip.
FAIRFAX: Yes.
HERRMANN: I was actually hoping that you could sort of describe what your neighborhood looked like? Just as if you were walking down the street?
FAIRFAX: Sure. Okay. I read a recent biography of Mr. [Morris] Cafritz [Cafritz Builders]—some people pronounce it Cah-fritz or Cay-fritz, and he was the builder of Petworth, that area was called Petworth. From Grant Circle, where St. Gabriel’s Catholic Church was and also the—I can’t think of his name now—Milliken, Milliam? Milliam, yes, Memorial United Methodist Church was on Grant Circle too, gorgeous stained glass windows. That whole area was a farm, in fact the original big square farm house was just one block behind our house. So it’s literally one block behind Quincy Street. To my knowledge it’s still there. I don’t know the people’s name but they sold that whole acreage, and I would say it was a minimum of about 200 acres, and Mr. Cafritz in the 1920s bought the land and developed it. It was all town houses, they were beautifully built in fact some of them were besides Mr. Cafritz, a Mr. [Harry] Wardman, the Wardman Park Hotel [today the Marriot Wardman Park Hotel], he built that. He was a really a craftsman.
And our house was just regular row house now they call them townhouses, but on the first floor dining room, living room, the back porch we enclosed to make a library. Very small kitchen as those were in that day, a nice full basement, recreation room, it was all knotty pine panel that you can’t even buy today, then the second floor—and it had a basement bathroom, in fact we had just a darling maid who worked for us just one day a week, and she was the best cook, my mother was not a good cook at all. Don’t listen Mom, in your grave! But this dear—her name was Elmira—I loved Elmira, because she was a wonderful cook. She made the best whipped potatoes. My mother’s whipped potatoes were very watery, this is a crazy memory. But Elmira’s whipped potatoes were wonderful. We could always tell when her day was over because about 3:30 in the afternoon [sniffs], she would be in the basement smoking her pipe. It was a wonderful aromatic fragrance so I never minded her pipe at all. She would finish her day with a pipe full of tobacco. But anyway on the second floor there were three bedrooms, two baths, and in the attic that was totally unfinished. I as a child I could go on up the steps, they were very steep, and look out and see the Soldiers’ Home grounds across from me. So walking around the neighborhood, all the houses were the same. All of the mothers were stay at home mothers. I don’t remember one mother who was not in the home. We had lots of friends and playmates, everything from hopscotch in the best alley in the world, wide, we’d play SPUD and Mother-May-I, and…
HERRMANN: All good games!
FAIRFAX: All good games in the alley. I was absolutely in love when I was five years of age. My boyfriend—nobody knew this of course—was, he was a teenager, he was probably eleven or twelve or thirteen, and somehow he got a hold of my whole trading cards. There were really big. Now it’s baseball cards, but there were gorgeous, according to animals and birds and cats and dogs and fruit and flowers, all the way through the alphabet. He got my whole box and he threatened over the railing of his porch–we had a big railing on our porch too, he held that box with his fingers really pinched in like this, and he was threatening to drop those—I remember I was pleading, I was only five or six years of age—I said “Paul please! Please don’t drop my trading cards!” Well you know what Paul did, of course he just released his fingers. All of my 200 cards went all over his bushes and grass. Then he ran inside.
Another funny story kind of walking around the neighborhood. There was a man I would imagine we would just kind of declare him insane or maybe just senile today, I don’t think he was very old I think he was maybe only in his 40s or 50s, but he would sit on the porch, on his rocking chair all the time, I don’ t think he was employed. Anytime anybody went up to the house, he would always ask them the same question. I probably heard it hundreds of times. Apparently he was born or he lived or loved Riverdale, in Riverdale, Maryland. Then they moved out to Petworth. And he always said it in the same tone of voice, and the same inflections. He’d always say, “Going to Riverdale? Going to Riverdale?” And even children he would ask, “Going to Riverdale?” And I remember a couple of times he left the porch, I guess he was still living at home with his parents, and they were pretty frantic. That was before the days of medic alerts, bracelets, or anything like that. But that was kind of a fun memory. Also, like on patriotic holidays, Labor Day, Memorial Day, almost every family had an American flag out on the front porch. That was a really big. Curiously enough, I remember the very site where I heard that President Franklin Delano Roosevelt had just died [April 12, 1945].
