Oral History Transcription

Oral History Interview Interviewee: Jennifer Addington Interviewer: Sharon Bulova Friday May 20, 2005

SHARON BULOVA (SHARON): Today is Friday, May 20th, 2005. This is Sharon Bulova interviewing Jennifer Addington. Welcome, Jennifer.

JENNIFER ADDINGTON (JENNIFER): Thank you.

SHARON: Thank you very much for joining us. I was especially interested in having a chance to talk with you and learn more about your growing up in the Old Burke area. And you live now and own the old Whiteoaks school house. So I thought that perhaps you could tell us a little bit about that Old Burke area and in particular if you could also tell us a little bit about the school house. Now, of course, it's a residence.

JENNIFER: Okay. My parents bought what is now called Whiteoaks in 1950, and it was not yet quite finished with the renovation from the school house to the house. We still had a little bit of finalizing to do on the renovation. I was less than a year old when they bought it, so I don't have a lot of memories of that. But it was a school house. It was built in 1912 as a two-room school house, and some time in the mid-'30s I think, well, it had to be the early to mid-'30s, became a three-room school house and closed in '39 when they built the Burke Elementary School down at the corner of Lee Chapel and Burke Lake Road. It was empty for some time, and then a man named Eldridge bought it and began the renovation process, but was offered, as we understand it, a quite interesting job in South America and decided that was more interesting than Burke, and then moved and sold it to my parents. We were in and out for a number of years because my dad was in the military, but then when we retired in '65, they came back permanently. And so it's always been in the family, but from '65 on, the family resided there.

SHARON: When did your family first purchase?

JENNIFER: 1950.

SHARON: 1950.

JENNIFER: 1950. Mm hm, my dad was in the military and stationed at the Pentagon at the time, and it was a long trek into Washington in those days. The Beltway wasn't built yet, and he would go Braddock Road to Edsall to what was then called Shirley Highway, which I remember as a (indiscernible) road. And even after the Beltway was built, he tended to go that way because that's the way he was used to going, and this going south on the Beltway to 395 north was beyond him. He couldn't deal with that. But Burke in the '50s, which I have vague memories of, I have pictures of Burke Lake Road, which I think was called Marshall Street in the early days, as a gravel road, and pictures of myself playing with a neighbor dog sitting in the middle of the road, which you can't imagine doing now. And, of course, across the street was just fields. No houses. The little community of Burke was there. Of course, Kings Park wasn't even dreamed of. In fact, coming out from Washington, there's a, I think it's called Crestwood at Ravensworth Road and Braddock, and that was the last housing development coming out from Washington, and the rest was just country. And Braddock Road was what we called a featherbed road. It was a very hilly, two-lane road. Rebel Hill I think was the highest hill, and I remember my parents talking about getting stuck in a snowstorm there once and having to, I think, walk home, which was a long walk. But that's all there was. And, of course, Kings Park wasn't dreamed of, the shopping center wasn't there. Beyond Twinbrook, I think it was, Braddock was just gravel. So it was really, really country. My mother used to laugh when the real estate agent brought them out from, they lived in Arlington when I was born, brought them out to look at Whiteoaks. He said that there was this nice little shopping center right across the railroad tracks, and they went over the railroad tracks, and there was a Methodist Church, there was Brown's Gulf station, and there was Carson's trading post, and that's all there was. And she said, what shopping center, where? And it was Carson's trading post. It was a little general store, and that's what he talked about was a little shopping center.

SHARON: Is that where the post office is?

JENNIFER: That's where the new post office is, yeah. And the Methodist church was in what is now the State Farm Insurance Agency. And there's, oh, I can't think of it, a little women's clothing store behind the insurance agency where I used to teach Sunday School, or go to Sunday School and teach Sunday School. But every time I walk in there, I go, this is where I went to Sunday School; this doesn't make sense. And they were then the youngest people in Old Burke, and then, of course, in the '60s and '70s a lot of the older people had moved away, and they became the sort of the resident grandparents. And now I'm probably almost in that same stage that most of the people that have bought houses in Old Burke are younger than I am and have little kids. So I feel like the resident grandparent, and sort of what goes around comes around in the circle. It's kind of neat.

SHARON: We've heard a little bit about the Rebel Hill of Braddock Road during interviews, and some folks have referred to Rebel Hill, which I think was from the current Beltway west.

JENNIFER: I think so.

SHARON: And then Rebel Hill was, where about was that?

JENNIFER: I think where Kings Park Drive comes in, Southampton. You sort of see a vague semblance of it still there, but not a whole lot. I remember when they built Kings Park, the development, it was a beautifully wooded area. In those days when they built housing developments, they just leveled everything. Now they're better about it; they leave some of the old trees. But, of course, now the trees are, I guess they built Kings Park in the '60s.

SHARON: Late '60s.

JENNIFER: And, you know, now, of course, they're old trees, but when they first built it, there wasn't a tree on the lot. It was just empty. And when we came back, moved back here from New Orleans permanently in '65, coming down Braddock Road and taking the left hand turn onto Burke Lake Road, all of a sudden there was a shopping center that had never been there before. And I remember going, where did that come from? Where did that come from sort of thing, because that was really the period of extraordinary growth around here.

SHARON: Can you describe that a little bit more? And the roads at the time were.

JENNIFER: Well, Braddock was a two-lane road. Burke Lake Road, I guess Burke Lake Road by then, was, well, it was a paved road, but, of course, it was at that point went straight through and over the railroad tracks and passed our house. And I remember coming, even in the 70s coming back from where I lived in Falls Church at the time to have dinner with mom and dad, and a train would be going by, and the traffic would be backed way past our house. Sometimes we'd have to wait 10 or 15 minutes at the driveway, right there. And we couldn't get to the driveway because the traffic was so bad. And when they thought about widening Burke Lake Road, of course, it would have taken most of the old houses. The rail bed wasn't, I guess, sturdy enough to widen it, and that was when they rerouted it back through Lake Braddock. And apparently a lot of the people in Braddock were highly annoyed maybe that they were going to do that. But apparently it had been on the books. If they had bothered to check when they bought the houses ever since Lake Braddock development was put in. But I think about having all that traffic in front of my house, and, of course, that's a scary thought.

SHARON: That's sort of where I came in because I started working for my predecessor, Audrey Moore, when the new alignment of Burke Lake Road was created. And what realignment did was then to protect the Old Burke village.

JENNIFER: Oh, sure. Yeah.

SHARON: And maybe you could talk a little bit about, you know, what's that like now as, say, 20 years ago, or even more than that.

JENNIFER: You know, really in some ways it's so much the same. We're a very close knit little community. The family used to have a 4th of July party that was the entire community would come to. My father, being a retired colonel, loved to do things the military way. And we had a four-cannon battery that shot off the national salute every 4th of July to a background of very calibrated American marching music. And at high noon, the cannons would start, and the national salute is 50 cannon fires. You could hear these a mile away at least probably, not awfully loud, but definitely hear them. And we had a huge flag that was pulled up against the pillars at the front of the house that was for people who had military flags, garrison sized flag, I think. It was very big. And our entire community came, and he would provide the beer, the hot dogs, and the soft drinks. And then everybody else in the community would bring something to share. And it was a big community picnic. And after my mother died, he put up a flag pole there, a 35-foot flag pole in the middle of the front yard, which he had always wanted to do. But my mother not being a military person, although she had been a military wife for 35 years, always said, over my dead body you're going to put up a flag pole in my front yard. And so he waited until she died, and he put up the flag pole. And I remember my brother came up from Georgia for the great flag pole raising and said to me, did you hear about the whirling dervish that arose out of the ground at Arlington National Cemetery? But it was a great community picnic, and he told me he'd put up the flag pole in so much concrete I would never, ever get it out. And I didn't say it, but I thought, dad, just watch me. And when I moved back into the house, I took his flag pole out. I fly the flag everyday, but I didn't want a 35-foot flag pole in my front yard. But it was a great community thing, and now we try to do, we kept thinking, what are we going to do because the community wants to do an annual thing. And now we have an end of the summer, last Saturday in September every year party, and the community gathers, still gathers around, and they still talk about that flag pole and the cannons. But growing up there, I mean, everybody knew everybody. We never locked the door, you know. A lot of the people were elderly when I was, well, when I was young, I suppose anybody was. But they were mostly past retirement, many of them past retirement age. There weren't very many children my age. But you could just walk up to a neighbor's house and, you know, almost walk in the door. And it was a lovely community to grow up in.

SHARON: Your father's name and your maiden name is?

JENNIFER: Cornelson .

SHARON: Cornelson.

JENNIFER: Mm hm. SHARON: And I understand that your father participated a little bit in the early comprehensive planning process.

JENNIFER: I think he did, and I really don't know a lot about it. But I know he and, let's see, Doug Adams was later on part of that and others. Oh, shoot, Kielsgard. I can't think of his name right now. But there were a lot of people, the early Burke Historical Society, for example. And he was very interested in history and the history of the area. So he was very much a part of that, mm hm.

SHARON: Okay. Are you familiar with early plans to turn the Burke area into --

JENNIFER: Into Dulles Airport?

SHARON: -- Dulles Airport?

JENNIFER: Oh, yeah. I don't remember much about it, just that it was in sort of, you know, discussions. And I think it was maybe where Burke Lake is now. I'm not sure exactly where they were doing it, but I do remember the story that one person was so upset by the whole idea that they put an airport in his backyard, that he picked up, and sold his house, and moved to Chantilly.

SHARON: And then it never happened. He was on the edge of the airport anyway. JENNIFER: Where Dulles Airport finally went, yeah. I don't remember much about that part of the history, just that that was certainly one of the things that was being discussed. I don't think it impacted, well, if it was out where lake is, it certainly would have impacted us to some degree, mm hm.

SHARON: Interesting characters, and in particular, I know you have a photo in your album of Will Harlow, which is a famous person.

JENNIFER: Character in Burke, yeah. Will Harlow was a character. He was a character when I was young. He was a character later on, who was a jack of all trades. He had been a teacher, taught elementary school in the early days. And at one point when the kids were moving from, say, sixth grade to another school to go to seventh grade, this was probably in the 40s maybe, maybe the 30s, they all arrived, and they all had to walk to school, and they were dusty, dirty streets. And they came in barefoot, as I remember the story, and were tested to find out where they belonged and how far along they'd come. And they were all told essentially they didn't belong there, to go home. They didn't belong there. And what had happened was he taught them so well they were a grade ahead of themselves. And so, I guess they moved up a grade, but then the county, in its great wisdom, realized he didn't have a teaching degree or he may not have even had a college degree and essentially tossed him out of the school system. And he became a jack of all trades. He was probably largely responsible for the renovation of Burke Elementary School. It wasn't called Whiteoaks until my parents bought it. Burke Elementary School to Whiteoaks, and he was responsible for much of the renovation. I remember one time he was, this was when we'd come back, and something was wrong with the heater, or the furnace, or the hot water heater or something. And he spent the better part of the day in our basement fiddling with things, and finding, I guess, it was towards the end of the day, and it was time for him to leave. And my dad said, well, how much do I owe you? He said, I haven't fixed it yet. He said, you can pay me tomorrow when I fix it. And I don't think he charged them for that day because he hadn't done what he was there to do, and that's something you don't --

SHARON: Wouldn't that be great?

JENNIFER: Wouldn't that be great? Wouldn't that be great? But he mowed our lawn, and did whatever gardening, some of the gardening that needed doing, but certainly mowed the lawn and trimmed the trees. Did interior, probably electrical work. I remember his doing some drywall work up in the attic, carpentry. Could probably do anything. He had a shack up Jackson Street, the other side of Burke Lake Road from Whiteoaks. He was probably a mystic. He would see angels or characters in stains in his wall and would talk to them. He spoke Latin and Greek, I think. Incredibly intelligent man, but definitely a hermit, definitely an oddball. I remember one time our church choir went up Christmas caroling in that area, and I said, let's go up to Will's house. And some of the kids were, he's scary. I said, he's all right because, I mean, I had known all my life, and we went up. And I remember we sang Silent Night, and he came out on his little porch and sang it in German with us, with tears just streaming down his face. Yeah.

SHARON: Wow. JENNIFER: One of the old, old town characters. And would walk down to Carson's trading post when that was still open, or would walk up to the Giant up here when the Giant opened. And every now and then my dad would pick him up and give him a ride if he needed more than he could carry. But was a vegetarian. Yes, he was mostly a vegetarian. I remember one time he had been working at the house all day, and my mother was out of town, and I was fixing meatballs and something for my dad. And he actually stayed and had dinner with us. But a gentle man. To me, not scary at all, but long gray hair, long gray beard. Always wore overalls and a sweater, summer or winter. But just a true town character.

SHARON: Was he from Old Burke, or had he come to Old Burke, do you know, from somewhere else?

JENNIFER: I think he'd come from somewhere else, but probably not real far. It wasn't right in this area, but certainly maybe western, the western part of Virginia, not West Virginia. Now I'm trying to think there was some connection with the railroad. Maybe his father worked for the railroad. I don't know.

SHARON: Speaking of the railroad, what was it like to --

JENNIFER: Living on the railroad?

SHARON: -- live on the railroad, you know, back in those days before overpasses? JENNIFER: Before overpasses and when it was still a crossing, and they blew their horns. And my mother was convinced that in the middle of the night the engineers would say, well, I have to be up, so everybody else in the world has to be up, too, and would lean on their horns more loudly and longer than ever before. If you grow up with it, you don't hear it. Now, of course, they very seldom whistle now, but I don't hear the train go by. And some people who spend the night say, how do you sleep with all that racket? What racket? It was just part of growing up. It was part of the background that was always there, and there, I think, a lot more trains then than there are now, maybe just because they whistled more and you heard them more. But I remember doing kids things like flattening pennies on the tracks before the train would come and then scrambling over to see if you could find your penny. Of course, now without the gates that come down, I crossed the tracks the other day, and there wasn't a train. As I crossed the tracks, I could see that there was a train coming. But, of course, we never used to think about it because the gates did go down. But that was how we got down to church and how we got to the post office. In those days we didn't have -- in those days, doesn't that sound funny -- up until I moved into Whiteoaks, we never had mail delivery. We'd go down to the post office and get our mail. And the old post office, it was post office box 106, and there were a few of the old boxes when they built the new post office, and dad kept post office box 106, which was probably a good thing because after my mother died, it got him out of the house everyday. He had to go down and get his mail. But we'd walk down to get the mail. I'd walk to church. And, of course, the shopping center wasn't there. All those little ticky tacky town houses and all those other little stores, you know, weren't there. And it was just country. And the area, as you go down to where the post office is and turn right on Burke Road and all those town houses are there now, there was an old house up at the top of that hill, and I don't remember who owned it or what it was. We all thought it was a haunted house, but it was just a beautiful hill to climb. In the spring it was full of wildflowers, and Queen Anne's lace, and we just used to scramble all over the place. It was just country, mm hm.

SHARON: It sounds beautiful.

JENNIFER: It was. It was really beautiful. And going down Burke Road toward Rolling Road, there was, I think the old building may still be there that back in the 1800s was a hotel, and there was a race track behind it and a couple of other old buildings, one or two of which may still be there. But then they, of course, they picked up the old Marshall house, which was next to what's now the, the church. There was an old house there that somebody bought, and they picked up, and they moved down Burke Road past where the nursery is now. It's a lovely old colonial Victorian white house. In fact, when the people first moved it before they had finished renovating it, somebody was actually was just living there, camping out there, and it had massive fire damage, and they redid it. And then the same family bought the house that was the Johnson house that was next to the Carson's trading post, and moved it up across the street down at the railroad tracks. And so two houses were actually picked up and moved rather than destroyed, which is a real nice way of doing things. And now there are several new houses in Old Burke, with one exception, kind of built in the Victorian style and, you know, look like they belong there, mm hm.

SHARON: While you were growing up in the Old Burke area, the fire department was the center of community life and was really completely volunteer.

JENNIFER: Oh, it was. It was. And I remember my mother talking about it probably more than I really remember it. But in the middle of the night when the fire alarm would go off, Bill Berg, who lived up behind me up Jackson Street and Caudle, I can't think of his first name, on the other end of Jackson Street. They'd both come tearing down the road. And, let's see, Ben Boyce lived directly behind us. All these volunteer firemen would come tearing down Jackson Street to go roaring down Burke Lake Road to the fire house. We were always afraid they'd have this massive crash while they're trying to get to the fire. And there weren't fire engines and ambulances up here; I don't remember there ever was one. But I think the funniest memory probably, the post office moved, well, moved from a little tiny outhouse type building, which I don't remember, to the corner of Brown's Gulf station, to when they built the then new fire house to the old fire house. And on Saturday mornings, the, it probably wasn't Triple A, whoever picked up the garbage in those days. But their garbage truck would be parked back there behind the post office, and we'd all throw our garbage in the back of the car and take the garbage down to the garbage people. And, you know, it was the great Saturday morning social hour in Burke was taking our garbage down to the --

SHARON: It happens in Falls Church, the social event of the week is bringing their trash.

JENNIFER: Well, mm hm. And then we'd go into the post office, and that was a great meeting place. But taking the trash down to the trash people on Saturday mornings was what you did on Saturday mornings. Once you did that, your Saturday was pretty free, but you had to take the trash down first.

SHARON: What other buildings were in there? Were there any restaurants or any other inns or restaurants?

JENNIFER: Probably nothing until, if we went somewhere, we'd go into generally Annandale. And I'm trying to think of, I remember there was an Italian restaurant. But Annandale was just the crossroads of almost, it was a little bit bigger than Burke, but not a whole lot, but a few restaurants there. But there was nothing in Burke. There just wasn't anything.

SHARON: Wow.

JENNIFER: I can't think of a restaurant. When we went out to dinner, we'd go into Annandale, yeah.

SHARON: And did you have much to do with like the city of Fairfax, which is also not too far away?

JENNIFER: We must have, you know, but I don't remember. The early days I don't remember. Going into town. I remember we used to go into town, into Washington into town to things like the National Geographic lecture series, and we'd go with friends. And we'd usually stop in Annandale to go out to dinner on our way home. That was sort of the big thing because if we really wanted to go someplace, we'd probably go into Washington. But there wasn't anything. Certainly in the '50s there wasn't anything. It was probably little in the '60s. It wasn't until the '70s that it began to really grow and develop. I don't remember when Burke Center was started. Late '70s?

SHARON: Late '70s, early 8'0s.

JENNIFER: Yeah, mm hm.

SHARON: Was there very much anti-growth sentiment when, during the, say, 60s, 70s, and then early 80s?

JENNIFER: I don't know. I don't remember.

SHARON: Not that you're aware.

JENNIFER: Not that I was aware of, no. I was either too young or I was away. I wouldn't have remembered. I think down in what I call Burke, proper Burke, you know, there wasn't a lot of room for more houses. There had been a few built, but most of us were still on septic systems, and so there was that limitation on growth or on wells. And when new houses were built, there probably was a little bit of disappointment when people would sell an extra acre or whatever. There was one house that just, up there on Gaines Street, that just doesn't fit in the community at all. I feel really sorry for the people who live there. It just doesn't fit. I was, especially after '67, I was gone to college and then living in Falls Church. So I was more away than really aware of what was going on there.

SHARON: When you were a kid, when you were growing up, what did you do for fun?

JENNIFER: We had dogs. All the neighbors had dogs, and so we played with the dogs a lot. Just kind of ran through the fields. Probably played a lot of hide and go seek, a lot of outdoor games. I remember we had a croquet set. Our front yard was perfect for croquet. We used to do a lot of that. Part of our second acre that, we had a vegetable garden on one part of the second acre, and my parents had installed a clay tennis court. And I know they played a lot of tennis. I don't remember whether I did particularly. And then when I sold that second acre, with your help, there are two houses there now, and one family says, well, I live in a vegetable garden, and the other says, well, I live on the tennis court. And they laugh about that. Didn't do a lot of television. I didn't have any idea of what a computer would be. Probably played a lot of boards. I was a reader. I read all the time, but had a lot of friends. Fourth and fifth grades we had just come back from Paris, and I went to the then new Burke Elementary School and took ballet, and I forget what else I did there. So, you know, it was very different than the childhood that people have now, but I think worked very well, mm hm. SHARON: The churches in the area. There was quite a church presence. A number of churches that were very formal chapels and churches, and some that had even been relocated.

JENNIFER: Well, the Burke Methodist Church, which my parents didn't go to church, but as I recall I probably went to Sunday School down there, was at one point the train station. And I don't remember whether they relocated. I don't remember whether they relocated that or actually moved the train tracks. My feeling is they moved the train tracks up, but I don't have a sense of it. But I know at one point they were doing some renovation on the church and took down some of the interior walls to reinsulate, and found it insulated with Civil War newspapers. And I have no idea what happened to them, but that was a good part of my life. And now that I go to the Episcopal Church, I remember Twinbrook, the church when it was on Twinbrook, the original Good Shepherd Church, but didn't go at the time. But church was important to a lot of people, whether it was the Methodist church or some of the other churches that were around.

SHARON: The Episcopal church was located where the shopping center is now.

JENNIFER: Yeah, about where the, my recollection is about where the Safeway is. I don't think it was as far toward Braddock as the bank. I think it was back further. It was just about where the Safeway is now.

SHARON: I personally remember when I first moved into Kings Park West that there was a very, the church was still there, and it was a very hairy intersection.

JENNIFER: Oh, sure.

SHARON: It was a hill, a blind hill, and you couldn't see very easily.

JENNIFER: You mean turning onto Braddock.

SHARON: Turning from Braddock onto Twinbrook.

JENNIFER: Oh, okay.

SHARON: That's one of my recollections, and then the church was moved miraculously.

JENNIFER: It's a private home somewhere.

SHARON: Actually in the Twinbrook.

JENNIFER: Yeah, I've never gone looking for it, but I know it's a private home, yeah.

SHARON: Right. Is there any other recollections or stories?

JENNIFER: Well, I was talking to an old friend who used to live in Old Burke who now lives in New York last night, and we just kind of reconnected. And he was remembering we used to walk down to Carson's trading post, and walking down the road we'd find old, people even then were throwing bottles out of car windows and things. But gathering glass bottles and, of course, turning them in for two cents a bottle or whatever you could turn bottles in for, and usually finding enough to get an ice cream cone. It's kind of a funny thought now, but finding trash along the roads. And I remember Harry Marshall, who lived, Harry and Mary Marshall were a very elderly couple who lived down right at the railroad tracks on Burke Lake Road. And Harry, bless his heart, every Saturday morning, probably even before he took his trash down to the post office, would walk probably all the way up to Braddock. This was before they rerouted it. Up one side and down the other with a trash bag and picking up trash. And that was his Saturday morning chore, and did that probably well into his 80s. He wanted his neighborhood to be clean, and that's what he did.

SHARON: What was Carson's trading post like?

JENNIFER: It was just a little tiny general store, and it had a porch out in front, and I think we used to get popsicles and sit out on the stoop eating popsicles. My memory, dark interior with the counter as you walk in, and, you know, probably penny candy under the counter. Probably sold just about everything. I wish I could really remember that one. I think Mrs. Carson is still alive, either that or she's died fairly recently. But it was just, probably didn't do a lot of grocery shopping down there, but the basic necessities, milk and eggs. And why it called was the trading post, I don't know because I don't think anybody, I mean, it wasn't a trading post, but that was what they called it. SHARON: I was going to ask that question, did anyone actually trade anything.

JENNIFER: I can't imagine. Roy Carson and then Brown's Gulf station, which was essentially where the Mobile station is now, I think. An old kind of grungy gas station, and I don't remember whether they had, probably didn't do any car repairs, but for a while, the post office was in a little tiny corner of that. I remember as a little child going to get the mail, and Roy Carson always said, hi, little lady. That's what he called me, hi, little lady. As a little kid, it drove me crazy, but I think he probably called every woman in the world that, hi, little lady. It's just the way he was. And his family is still around here some place.

SHARON: Are there any, I guess, there was the village of Burke, the older homes that are there now. And then were there farms in the area?

JENNIFER: Oh yeah. Actually I think almost all of Burke Center, a good part of it, was part of the Lynch farm. And I think their house is where the Burke Conservancy office is. I think that's part of the old farmhouse. But they had well over 400 acres down along Burke Lake Road past the Lee Chapel, Burke Center Parkway intersection, going down that way. All along the right side was their huge farm, and there were certainly smaller farms around, but that was a great big hunk of it. And they're still --

SHARON: I think they're all gone.

JENNIFER: Ed Lynch died, the most recent one. He was out of the area, but I remember there was an obituary in the paper because he had been big into real estate and owned a lot, and did a lot, I think. I know there were lots of other farms around us. That's the only one that I remember distinctly. Mr. Heller, our youth group sleepovers and things do youth group sleepovers and things, sleeping under the stars with great, big roaring fires. Oh, the fires. We used to be able to burn our leaves. Can't do that anymore, and the smell of burning leaves is what fall was all about. We'd pile up all the leaves and get a great, big stack and set them on fire. Yeah.

SHARON: Holiday parties.

JENNIFER: Oh, I'm sure.

SHARON: Thanksgiving.

JENNIFER: Thanksgiving was kind of big at our house, but more family than anything else. And I'm sure there were lots of parties when I little that I was too little to be a part of. But we certainly had them going on when I was in high school and college. My parents loved to entertain, and we did a lot of entertaining. Not so much necessarily within the community. That was more the 4th of July party. And I'm trying to dig for other memories. I'm having a hard time.

SHARON: Let me see if there's anything else that we --

JENNIFER: I think we covered all that. Mm hm.

SHARON: Okay. I think so.

JENNIFER: Oh, one of the things that David reminded me of last night, I don't know whether it was his mother or my mother that came up with it, was the phrase In Burke, we work. Saturday we're doing yard work and house work. It was sort of a catch word was In Burke, we work. It was kind of a funny joke for the families. But it was a good place to grow up. It's a good place to live now.

SHARON: It still is.

JENNIFER: It still is, mm hm. Yeah, it really is. I'm very, very lucky to still be here and have that.

SHARON: And I'm glad that you've taken such beautiful care of Whiteoaks. It's a beautiful, beautiful old building.

JENNIFER: It is, you know. And it just means so much, and it's gone through so many iterations between being the childhood home to all my various lives I've lived there, and continue to.

SHARON: Okay. I think we're about done then.

JENNIFER: Okay.

SHARON: Thank you very, very much.

JENNIFER: Well, thank you.

SHARON: I really appreciate your sharing your memories.

JENNIFER: It's been my pleasure.

SHARON: And we would love to take a look through the --

JENNIFER: All my childhood, all my baby pictures.

SHARON: We'll take real good care of it and make sure we get --

JENNIFER: And any that you want to make copies of, you're welcome to.

SHARON: That would be great.

JENNIFER: Many of them are loose.