Destination Stops

Forty-eight years later, still--or, should I say, back?--on the yellow brick road...(took me a few days to digest my Halloween candy this year):














I posted the following for a while; then I took it off. I don't know why...But here it is, back, today, because Halloween has been an important part of my life during the forty-six years that I've lived in this country. It was my first holiday here, which I celebrated within forty-eight hours of our arrival. And then I saw The Wizard of Oz; that first time, on someone's black and white TV in someone's apartment or house in El Exilio, or at the Sevilla Hotel--who knows? All I know is that, on this day full of magic, mystery--and illusion--all that you're about to read is...true. Happy Halloween! Coral Gables, Florida

DESTINATION STOPS: FROM OZ TO THE FIVE POINTS, AND BEYOND

BY GEORGINA MARRERO

Halloween has been my favorite holiday for the past forty-four years. On the second day of my arrival in the United States, my mother put a mask on my six-year-old face, handed me a paper sack, and sent me out trick or treating with the children of other recently arrived Cuban exiles. Returning back to the Sevilla Hotel in Coral Gables that evening, I’m sure I gorged myself silly, totally oblivious to the true meaning behind the witches and ghosts my companions and I had just impersonated.
Without realizing it, I had just participated in one of the typical American child’s rites of passage. In 1960, another event also served to mark the holiday: the viewing of The Wizard of Oz. So it came to be that I entered the Land of Oz for the very first time, in its black-and-white splendor.
Year after year, I returned. I may not have understood a word of the movie that first time, but Judy Garland’s mellifluous voice, the roar of the tornado, the Munchkins’ falsettos, Glinda’s soothing tones, and The Wicked Witch of the West’s cackle were not lost on me. For years I was terrified at the mere thought of her.
By the mid-sixties, I watched Oz for the first time in living color. My command of English was finally good enough to grasp the meaning behind The Scarecrow’s innate intelligence, The Tin Man’s heartfelt wishes, The Cowardly Lion’s brusque—yet gentle—valor, and The Wizard’s good intentions masked behind his ingenuous deceit. Appearances can, indeed, be deceiving.
Dorothy Gale remained my heroine. Brave, intrepid, fiercely optimistic in the face of opposition and insurmountable obstacles, there were times, however, that she almost succumbed. And that was when her friends stepped in. And she, in turn, helped them. I knew my geography by then: Kansas must be an interesting place.
The late sixties found our family in central Georgia. For the first time since our arrival in the States, I had what I would term true American neighbors. A family with four children lived in a big rambling house next door. It was a noisy household, full of fun and laughter. I was always visiting them, being invited to participate in some game or the other. A quiet, but caring, music teacher lived on the other side of our duplex. As a sizeable Cuban community surrounded us, I still remember that I regarded my American friends as “exotic.”
My father had made a very good American friend during our initial years in Miami. This man had lent us money so that we could have a better standard of living during some very lean times. They became colleagues, and then remained friends, for the rest of my father’s life.
My mother kept telling me how we used to visit this man’s home, how we all used to clasp hands around the table and say grace before a meal, and how everyone both admired and feared his formidable mother. Even I remember his mother. Of sturdy Tennessee stock, she had done a good job with her pipe smoking, bowtie clad, vintage Rolls-Royce loving son.
Summers in the sixties found me at a camp for girls in the North Georgia Mountains. To my knowledge, I was the only Cuban there. I learned all about crafts, camping, and camaraderie around a campfire. I even learned to square dance. Sneaking out to meet young men from the nearby boys’ camp may not have been part of my game plan, but I understood that it was a long-standing tradition.
Back in Florida, I finished my high school education at a school established in the 1930’s for the children of winter residents in South Florida: a school built from the ground up. Its founder’s prairie upbringing had borne a good fruit.
College. Even if circumstances had not brought us to the States, chances are I would have found my way to New York. And—as fate would have it—I met someone with a profound interest in American history who was in the midst of turning his avocation into his vocation.
Even his college dormitory room was painted in the colors of the American flag. A nineteenth-century specialist, he had a consuming interest in New York City, including its architecture. I began to learn all I could ever possibly hope to learn about the different types of cast iron buildings, about dumbbell tenements, about the spread of diseases in lower Manhattan during the middle of the nineteenth century, and about Tammany politics.
This bold, enterprising New Yorker had even begun to organize bus tours of New York alongside his professor. He etched and engraved facades of buildings for his Studio class. Not uncommonly, he used to give me private tours of the Five Points and beyond after dim sum lunches with his family.
We hung out for a number of years. His undergraduate research eventually led to his doctoral dissertation. Returning to the City a number of years later, we explored the bowels of the Bowery Savings Bank, and perused the 1855 Census. It was a special treat for this Cuban to not have to worry about getting lost, because an American knew his way around.
Eventually, though, I was on my own. Working—and living—in between two languages and two cultures at different points in my life, I found myself back in Florida. Traveling abroad alone for the first time since my teenaged years, my interests led me to explore the concentric circles of friends and colleagues that surrounded one of the most famous students of American character. Margaret Mead.
Brave, intrepid, fiercely optimistic in the face of opposition and insurmountable obstacles. Wait. I said these words about someone else. Dorothy Gale. Not usurped, but, perhaps, supplanted, now, by Margaret Mead.
Her boldness, her enterprising nature, her strength of spirit was—is—shared by so many, I found out. From Auntie Em, to Dorothy, to D-Day veterans, to the families of 9/11 victims.
Her optimism. Brought home, so recently, by President Reagan’s passing.
Her courage. Brought home, back in 1960, by the uprooting of a family, in a father's and mother’s desire for freedom for their child.
The Wicked Witch’s cackle may still send shudders up and down my spine, but Glinda draws me toward the light.

Copyright, 2004 by Georgina Marrero All Rights Reserved (Now from Washington, D.C.)

Dinner at Arnaud's

We're not out of the woods yet, but it appears as if Gustav will not have been as damaging--at least to New Orleans--as Katrina was. Thank heavens so many people evacuated!

Here's a little something from my La Loquita del Zig-Zag blog that qualifies as "retro":

Sunday, September 04, 2005

Dinner At Arnaud's

A week ago tonight, I found myself in the midst of a power outage due to Hurricane Katrina. I'd lost my power on Thursday, August 25, just as Maria (Julie Andrews) was getting ready to sing "My Favorite Things" to the Von Trapp children. They were trickling into her bedroom, a few at a time, due to a fearsome storm outside. It's an interesting coincidence that I chose to while away my time with "The Sound of Music," isn't it? It's what had struck me I should do when I'd lost my cable several hours earlier, but not my power. Not quite yet, anyway.
I lived through my first hurricane that night. The eye went over my neighborhood. I wasn't quite sure what was happening. Something told me to look outside; I beheld a huge palm frond gracefully draped over my car. Rushing outside, I was relieved the windshield hadn't broken.
I looked some more. Behind my car, black olive branches--some of them huge--had been snapped off the trees, and were lying, helter-skelter, all over the place. The street was flooded. My across the street neighbors saw me; they called out to me. They invited me to come over, offered me dry clothes, food, and, most importantly, companionship. I shall be forever grateful to them. The next morning, I saw what Katrina had wrought: not only were branches down, but whole trees. What is a hurricane, after all, if not a huge, water-filled tornado?
My neighbors banded together like a family. My golf-course designer one house over pulled that palm frond off my car, as well as the black olive branch off my driveway, as if they were mere sticks. I didn't even have to ask.
Friday was assessment day. Shock, I called it. Then came the cleaning; the realization--the resignation--that we might have to be without power for awhile. We didn't know when FPL would get to us, as we were in one of the most devastated areas of the storm.
I learned to tolerate cold showers. I spent my days at my friend's store, where I kept recharging my computer's battery. Friday became Saturday; Saturday, Sunday. By then we knew Katrina was headed toward New Orleans.
I didn't really get to witness what happened on Monday until Tuesday night, when, miracle of miracles, we got our power back on my side of the street (though it had to be turned off for awhile on Wednesday so both sides could be accommodated - THANKS AGAIN to the wonderful crew from South Carolina!). However, I read the paper, saw the pictures...and cringed, and wept--both inside and out--for the beautiful city of New Orleans, for the total devastation that Katrina has wreaked, is wreaking, and will continue to wreak, on the Gulf Coast.
When I was a child, my father and I took a road trip to Galveston. I was nine years old at the time. What follows is the story that came out of me. What would I do without my mother's old pictures? I don't know. I honestly don't know.
I grieve for you, Arnaud's. For your Glass Bottom Everything.

GLASS BOTTOM EVERYTHING
BY GEORGINA MARRERO
In December of 1963, my father and I went on a road trip to visit some friends of his in Galveston, Texas.
For reasons I don’t know, my mother didn’t go with us. Perhaps she wanted a break from her increasingly difficult pre-teen daughter?
No. I don’t think that was it. It probably had more to do with the fact that we still didn’t have much money. Papi was about to finish his residency at the Jackson, and was trying to decide where he’d go, next. For whatever reasons, Miami seemed to be a dead end, at least for the time being.
He had old friends in Galveston. We were probably on our way to scout out the place.
As it was Christmas vacation, Papi and Mami decided I’d go with him. That’s it!
Although we’d been in the United States for only a little over three years at the time, I knew everything about The American Way. There was only one acceptable motel where we could stay: the Holiday Inn.
I drove my poor Papi nuts about staying at Holiday Inns that trip. He obliged me whenever he could.
We headed toward Central Florida first. Then we cut across the state, hit The Gulf of Mexico, and followed the coastline all the way to Galveston.
I was already a voracious reader, and had begun to collect those hard cardboard, glossy-covered Whitman “young lady” adventure storybooks: Annette Funicello on a ranch; and Donna Parker everywhere. Donna Parker in Hollywood had a pink cover, with Donna wearing a sarong and lei at a luau. Later on I’d discover Trixie Belden.
However, I never bought the Nancy Drew books. They were too expensive.
So I probably didn’t drive Papi nuts every second.
The Ocala area was our first stop. As it was my Christmas vacation, we had to have some fun, right?
Papi took me to Silver Springs, to ride on one of their famous glass-bottom boats. We had our souvenir picture taken, along with the other passengers on our boat.
My packrat of a mother kept the picture. Here’s what I see on Boat 27:
Front and left, you find…me. Already on the chubby side, I’m wearing a light colored sweater, a white shirt underneath, and diamond-checked green and who knows what pants. They were probably corduroy. I’m bottomed out with white socks and the Mary Janes that have continued to follow me throughout my life.
It’s the glasses that get me: I’m sporting a dark frame. They’re more rectangular than the pair I know I’d worn just a few months earlier. Definitely less pointy, they’re almost…modern.
I have my hands plastered, one on top of the other, to the side of my right thigh.
Next to me, Papi’s smiling behind his signature green-tinted half-moons. I think his corduroy shirt was blue.
A couple next to him looks almost Eastern European. The woman’s wearing a head scarf. She’s holding a cigarette in her right hand.
On the right hand side, an extremely attractive couple: a blond with a chignon; and a dead ringer for Kirk Douglas, are both smiling, a little enigmatically, at the camera.
Across from Papi and me is an older couple. The kindly-looking woman is looking at…me!
In between us is the glass bottom of a boat.
I may not remember what I saw, but I do remember wondering what it would be like if the glass bottom broke, and we fell through into the water and who knows what.
We made it to The Gulf Coast next: the West Coast of Florida; Alabama; Mississippi; Louisiana.
We spent at least one night in New Orleans, for I remember we went to Arnaud’s.
Antoine’s vs. Arnaud’s: what a dilemma. It had to be a fancy French meal, and it probably stretched our budget, but Papi made sure I ate in a grand French Quarter restaurant. After all, he’d spent many years in France, and probably wanted me to experience a little piece of his—of Mami’s and his—past.
Antoine’s was a little better known. Alas, they were full, so it was Arnaud’s.
I don’t remember what I ate. Maybe escargots, steak au poivre, and some wonderfully delicious dessert? “Sinfully rich” was not part of my vocabulary, not quite yet.
We continued on to Texas. I remember liking Galveston. Papi was glad to see his friends.
Then we drove back. I continued to eat, to read, and to insist on Holiday Inns.
Did I write a “What I Did Over Christmas Vacation” theme for Mrs. Echevarria? I don’t remember. The country was still reeling from the Kennedy assassination. The Beatles were on their way. We were living in the apartment on 14th Terrace by then.
Eight months later we moved to Georgia. The three of us made the trek down from Milledgeville to Miami at least twice a year over the next four years or so. We usually stopped in Ocala.
Not at Holiday Inns, though. Not all the time, anyway.
We never returned to Silver Springs. And I never traveled alone with my Papi, ever again.
Perhaps now I’d become his increasingly difficult pre-teen daughter?
Maybe.
No. Not really.

On August 25, 2005, Hurricane Katrina went over my house as a Category 1 storm. I didn’t even realize it was the eye. My Good Samaritan neighbors, Heather and Tom Jacobsen, and I kept joking to each over, “Boy, if this is a band from a 1, what must the real 1 be like?”
The morning of August 29, 2005, Category 4-5 Katrina swept in, all but destroying New Orleans.
The glass bottom broke for them. Their Glass Bottom Everything.
I sure wish it had been Katrina’s Glass Bottom Everything, instead.
Copyright, 2005 by Georgina Marrero 952 words First-time worldwide serial rights

And I Love Them

July 16, summer of 1963: where was I? Oh, yes...

And I Love Them (originally posted on La Loquita del Zig-Zag blog, Wednesday, August 30, 2006):

Light rain is peppering the windowpanes: we collectively managed to dodge Ernesto's bullet. Imagine--just imagine--how things would have turned out if someone else had managed to dodge an assassin's bullets on November 22, 1963.

In a nostalgic mood--and nursing a bad cold--I present you with

AND I LOVE THEM

BY GEORGINA MARRERO

Certain things of note in my life sandwiched themselves between the summers of 1963 and 1964. Two of them affected the entire nation… if not the world. Even I – as an eight to nine year old – realized that nothing was ever going to be the same, again.
In July of 1963, we, as Cuban refugiados (or exilados, as we like to refer to life in the U.S. as living in El Exilio) began to aspire to The American Dream. Papi was a third year resident in neurosurgery at Jackson Memorial Hospital. To paraphrase my mother: “His salary – at $219 per month, as well as his age – at 53, were record-setting. He was the oldest resident in JMH’s history.” Given his knowledgeable background, extensive training, and years of experience, he had been appointed Chief Resident.
My sweet natured, shy – yet gregarious, at times – father had befriended many of the staff at the Jackson. A tall, lanky, bow tie clad, pipe-smoking Tennessean had become his special friend. He called my father, “Fred.”
Basil Yates, who figured in our lives for many years to come, came to our financial rescue. Estábamos muy apretados: we didn’t have much money. As my mother used to tell the story: one day, Basil asked Papi how much money he made per month. Papi replied, “two hundred nineteen dollars.” Was it enough to support a family, Basil then asked him. My father, in all honesty, replied, no. Whereupon, Basil reached into his wallet, pulled out two hundred dollars, and handed the money to my – I’m sure –astonished father. He told Fred he’d continue to do this until his friend finished his residency… to which Papi responded, “I’ll pay you back.” Both men kept their ends of the bargain.
So we were able to move from the kindly, shabby tenement, El Vanta Koor (Vanta Court; now Shenandoah Square), to a better apartment building several blocks away. We were still in La Sauguasera, el barrio close to Calle Ocho that was – and continues to be – inhabited by recently arrived immigrants and refugees. Mami and I could still walk to Calle Ocho. Most importantly, I could still walk to Shenandoah Elementary School, where I would begin fourth grade in the fall.



The Amsterdam Palace

Armed with Basil Yates’ generosity, we were able to spend a month at DA BEECH – as Miami Beach’s yearlong residents lovingly refer to their special place in the sun – that July. We rented an apartment in the Amsterdam Palace Hotel (now the Casa Casuarina). We had the middle oceanfront apartment on the second floor.
There was no air-conditioning… but that’s the way Mami wanted it. Las brisas del mar – the ocean breezes – provided plenty of cross-ventilation. Poor Papi was on call thirty-six out of every forty-eight hours, but, at least, he got to sleep in the alcove directly facing the window overlooking the front of the hotel. He rightfully had the best room in the house!
For my part, I played among the statues and fountains on the first floor, ceaselessly rode up and down the elevator, and spent as much time in the ocean as I could. Sometimes I went swimming twice a day. Mami liked to take me in the early mornings, when the sandbanks were built up, and we were able to walk out into the ocean as far as we dared. Also, we were less likely to become sunburned. Oh, really?
My certain thing of note number one was this: I became very tanned that summer. And I remember getting a really bad sunburn: it hurt, and then I peeled for what seemed like forever. However, I kept going back into the water, playing like a porpoise without a care in the world. After all, I was eight going on nine.
DA BEECH held other wonders: The old, decrepit Art Deco hotels; The old folks rocking themselves on the porches of these hotels; The old cafeterias on Washington Avenue, where a little money bought a lot of food; The fifty-cent theaters, often serving up double portions of old – but wonderful – movies. And then there was Wolfie’s.
Already a bit on the chubby side, I could always find room for more. Wolfie’s was a treat: from Tenth Street, we had to trudge up Collins Avenue to Lincoln Road, so I already had an appetite ready and waiting by the time we got there. I remember the pickles, the cole slaw, the rolls, the stuffed cabbage… and the cheesecake. Oh, that cheesecake…
Sunburn. Yes. There’s a picture of me at a party, sitting next to Papi, where I’m muy bronceada y rosada, all at the same time. Very bronzed and rosy, indeed, after all that Nivea, all that peeling: I’m wearing a white shift with big roses on it. For some reason, I’m shyly looking down at my hands. Papi is glancing over at me. And – yes – for some reason, this is the way I remember myself from the summer of 1963.
Late summer found us in the new apartment. For three years, I had all but stumbled out of bed to get to school, as El Vanta Koor is located next to Shenandoah Elementary School. Now I walked to school, either with Mami, or with some of our new neighbors’ children, who had become my new friends.
As my English had improved tremendously, I fully expected to find myself in an English speaking fourth grade classroom. Full of both eagerness and dread, I entered the fully mainstreamed classroom. To my horror, I found myself being directed back to my third grade bilingual classroom! Was I being held back?
It turned out a number of us were in the same predicament. All of us were cubanitos. We had all done well enough in third grade… but, perhaps, not well enough? Our old/new teacher instructed us to sit down at a separate table, and that is where we remained all year. We weren’t being held back: we were being both linguistically and culturally enriched. Shenandoah – along with Coral Way Elementary – had one of the pioneering bilingual, bicultural programs in the nation.
Our teacher was Puerto Rican. She offered us bilingual instruction, but only when – and if – she had to. I had been her third-grade classroom spelling champion the year before, having achieved the honor with the word, “handkerchief.” Slowly, but steadily, my grades had improved over the course of my first three years. No F’s since the six I had received in first grade, when I had spoken absolutely no English. However, I kept receiving my fair share of D’s… in Physical Education.



It was around that table that Mrs. Echevarria’s “transitional” fourth graders experienced certain thing of note number two: on Friday, November 22, 1963, at just after two p.m., our principal, Miss Hatfield, made an announcement over the loudspeaker. President Kennedy had been shot and killed. We were instructed to stand up, observe a moment of silence, and then we sang “God Bless America.”
Were we allowed to go home early? I’m not sure. What I do remember is that I – along with my mother and some neighbors – watched the world, as we knew it, change in front of our eyes over the course of the next four days. I remember watching Walter Cronkite – “Uncle Walter,” as I call him to this day – choke up in front of national TV. I have a fleeting memory of the shot fired by Jack Ruby that killed Lee Harvey Oswald. I remember the grimness on LBJ’s face as he took the Oath of Office, with Lady Bird and Jackie flanking him on either side. I remember Jackie draped in black. I remember the solemn procession of the horses at the funeral. And I remember John-John saluting his father.
What I didn’t know at age nine was that several cubanos were considered to be accomplices in the assassination plot. Playa Girón – The Bay of Pigs invasion – had been mapped out at El Vanta Koor. This I knew, even as a child.
Of course, we know by now that we may never really know. This nine-year-old cubanita really knew only one thing: the President of the country that had welcomed us three years earlier was dead. And we felt very sad.



As fourth grade coursed along, though, the course of actual world history slipped into the background. By the end of 1963, my friends and I had begun to listen to four young men from Liverpool, England, blaring forth, “I wanna hold your hand,” in a way that shocked our elders. The Era of The Beatles had begun: this became our certain thing of note number three.
At least one of us muchachitas had the hit single in her hands by some time in January of 1964. I remember that we played it, over and over… and sang along, of course. Loving – nay, being in love with – The Beatles was quite the “girl” thing.
Whom did we love the most? Paul. And John. And George. And Ringo. In that order, because the “cuteness” factor was as – if not more – important to my prepubescent friends and me than their actual degrees of talent. I think some of our friends who were boys actually became quite jealous.
Everyone watched The Ed Sullivan Show in those days. On Saturday, February 7, 1964, The Beatles landed at Idlewild (now JFK) Airport, to mobs of screaming girls. On Monday, February 9, 1964, they made their first appearance on Ed Sullivan. Even before Ed had finished introducing “these youngsters from Liverpool,” the screams had begun, again. Wails, sobs, hand wringing… and tears. I could barely hear The Fabulous Four. I was probably screaming right along with the loudest of them.
Exactly one week later – on Monday, February 16, 1964, The Ed Sullivan Show was aired live from The Napoleon Room at the Deauville Hotel, on Miami Beach. I don’t remember knowing anyone who had tickets. Oh, if only…
At least we had the singles, and, later on, their first album, “Meet The Beatles.” I wish I remembered my mother’s reaction to “these youngsters.” She probably didn’t like them too much. Another of “mis manías” – my obsessive habits - she probably thought.



She’d already had her fill of my other one: my Barbie dolls. Though they didn’t have much money, my parents sweetly – and patiently – nurtured this other “girl” craze of mine. I lacked nothing: doll carriers; outfits; the orange sports car; the huge red bed (I’d wanted the pink canopied one, instead); the vanity; and the piano that played “I Love You Truly.”
Sometime between 1963 and 1964, they bought me the ultimate Barbie possession.
Barbie’s Dream House was made out of hard cardboard, with room dividers – and furniture – also made out of cardboard. It folded up, neatly, into an oblong “purse,” of sorts, for easy storage, and it had a handy-dandy black plastic handle. Still large and cumbersome, the house took some effort for even a chubby nine-year-old to lug around. Huffing and puffing, I managed. Proudly. Usually, though, it sat on the floor in the alcove where I used to study, right behind my desk.
And that’s where my certain thing of note number four occurred: right behind my desk. Rocking back and forth in my chair one day, I toppled backward. And squashed my Barbie Dream House almost beyond recognition.
I know I cried.
The summer of 1964 we moved to Milledgeville, Georgia. I was mainstreamed for the rest of my schooling. I remained addicted to The Beatles, and to my Barbie dolls, for several more years. My Papi eventually returned to Miami, and so did Mami and me.
But nothing would ever be the same, again.

Copyright, 2004 by Georgina Marrero 1942 words All Rights Reserved

Nebraska Avenue--or, Always First

Saturday, June 14, 2008

Nebraska Avenue--or, Always First

Ever since the late 90's--since Monicagate, to be precise--I have kept a close eye on politics. I remember watching the impassioned hearings leading up to President Clinton's impeachment: wide-eyed and wondering with whom to side all the way. Living in D.C. at the time (and attempting to find a niche on The Hill), I got in the habit of perusing both the Washington Post and the New York Times on Sundays, after having spent my mornings with Bob Schieffer; Sam Donaldson, Cokie Roberts (and, needless to say, George Will); and--first; always first--Tim Russert.

After surviving Monica and the impeachment, I found myself back in Florida. Just in time for the 2000 Presidential Election. Tim called it: "Florida. Florida. Florida." Once again, I was glued to the tube on Sunday mornings. (And almost every day at almost every conceivable hour during the "Recount" scenario--always glued to one of NBC's cable competitors, though.)

First--always first--I turned to Tim Russert.

For several years after 9/11, I confess to having gotten off the track. Until the 2004 election: once again, I tuned in. Come Sundays, first--always first--I turned to Tim Russert.

Four years later, I'm back in D.C. There's something about being here that, well, just keeps me on the ball. By the end of 2007, in heavy anticipation of the primary season, I was back to the Post and Times (online, this time); to the cable channels; and to the Sunday talk shows.

First--always first--I turned to Tim Russert. How wonderful: he appeared on MSNBC, too! (And on the nightly news, although by now it was Charlie Gibson with whom I kept company.)

Was it just less than two weeks ago that he for all intents and purposes anointed Barack Obama?

I could not believe what news awaited me when I returned home Friday night.

58 years old. I wonder, indeed, how Walter Cronkite and Mike Wallace must feel...

Eleven years ago, I spent my first few months in D.C. at The Greenbriar, a grande dame of an apartment building down Mass Ave. Northwest, I 'd told the realtor. A good neighborhood. Fine. I very quickly discovered I'd have to take a bus to get me to Dupont Circle; and that this bus had a quirky schedule. Were there any alternatives, I asked. Yes: go up a short ways beyond The Greenbriar, and turn right on Nebraska Avenue, I was informed.

So I learned to trudge up Nebraska toward Tenley Circle, often in blazing heat. On the right-hand side, I used to pass the WRC-TV's sign; and then the National Presbyterian Church. This lasted about two and a half months: by September I'd moved to the Village at McLean Gardens (now known as Vaughn Place). I knew I couldn't sustain that walk in the wintertime (and I didn't want to always have to depend on that fickle bus!).

Eleven years later I'm a little ways down Wisconsin Avenue (and am finally eating my words regarding that bus--well, sort of). I'd just returned from Georgetown when I turned on the computer.

Tim Russert has passed away, at age 58. At WRC-TV headquarters on Nebraska.

I hadn't been on Nebraska on this side of Wisconsin once since I'd moved back. But today--following an eleven-year-old instinct, I got in the right-hand lane at Ward Circle and found it. Admirers had already begun to lay flowers, posters, and mementos around WRC-TV's sign. Turning right on Van Ness, I turned left, and found a spot on Veazey Terrace. Then I walked back to Nebraska in--yes--blazing enough heat--turned left, approached the makeshift growing--yet loving--tribute to a very special human being, and paid my respects.

It's weird what you never think about until you realize you should have been thinking about it.
I never thought about that turn from Mass onto Nebraska Avenue. I just did it then, and didn't give it--or who might possibly work there--much thought. Admittedly, I hadn't politically "turned on," yet. Within months, though, I knew who came first--always first--on Sunday mornings. Tim Russert.

My thoughts and prayers are with his family and his colleagues, not only at WRC-TV, but beyond.

Georgina Marrero
June 14, 2008