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Posted by Emily Wax on March 1, 2013 at 1:53 pm
ON THIS HUSHED HILLSIDE IN Northwest Washington, on an overgrown patch of meadow, Korean War veteran Jessie James, 82, kneels down and plunges his cold hands into the warm spring soil.
James is bone bald after three months of cancer treatment, his normally bright brown skin drained of color, his legs still ``aching and shaking.`` But under this gentle sun, with a breeze on his chapped skin, he starts to feel some energy.
Wearing his shredded-up garden gloves, he tears thick, prickly weeds from his vegetable patch. His only company is a scratchy transistor radio tuned in to a talk show about the Washington Nationals; he misses his wife, Mary, who passed away back in 1994.
``You have them carrots and sweet potatoes yet, so I can fix some supper?`` he remembers her teasing.
Behind James are 272 acres of rolling green pasture, with some of the highest ground in the city. There are park benches that look onto the Capitol, forested pathways of spruce and pin oaks, honking geese wobbling out of fishing ponds, and a members-only nine-hole golf course and driving range.
In front of James, on this day last year, is an iron fence topped with three rows of barbed wire crowned with concertina coils, typically used to lock down prisons.
But this is the U.S. Armed Forces Retirement Home, where, for more than 45 years, barbed wire has enforced the separation between hundreds of military retirees such as James and the Petworth and Park View neighborhoods that surround them.
James, like a good number of the veterans living in the retirement community, doesn`t go outside the home`s boundaries very often. But in just a few weeks, he will have unexpected company inside the fence: neighbors from the other side of the divide.
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But the streets have seen a dramatic drop in the audacious homicides that once defined them, and renovated rowhouses now sell for more than $600,000. It`s the type of place where aging African American neighbors sit on their porches and call out ``how ya doin`, baby`` to young hipsters, who wave hello and grow vegetables in the front yards of group houses, their rickety bikes locked up on the porch.
Many of those younger folk and new homeowners think it`s past time that the home opened its gates to a once-again vibrant neighborhood. And since the home sits on one of the largest pieces of Washington`s undeveloped land, it`s not surprising that it has become the focus of new attention that has raised hackles inside and out.
From 2004 to 2008, a bruising battle occurred over the home`s desire to develop more than 100 acres to generate income. Nearby residents objected: They wanted at least some of the acreage used for park space.
The development plans were put on hold when financing dried up because of the recession, and neighbors decided to let things quiet down.
Then, in September 2011, a new leader, Steve McManus, was named as the home`s chief operating officer. He had been involved in removing some barbed wire along Rock Creek Church Road, and was open to removing more.
When a small group of neighbors met with him shortly after he assumed the job, they found he also was receptive to developing volunteer projects. That made the neighbors think it could be time to reach out to the home again.
John Hughes, 49, whose family lives in a rowhouse with a view of the grounds, formed the Friends of the Soldiers Home with 10 volunteers who planned to engage in activities such as gardening or jingo, a form of bingo.
``We would ask for nothing but friendship, and we would have no agenda other than wanting to help veterans,`` Hughes said.
The neighbors weren`t expecting to get a park, or even consideration of a park, Hughes added. ``But maybe we got something we ourselves were surprised by.``
This image is from this Washington Post Magazine article.
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