A bit of Dermot Mulroney's upbringing for ya. Note - the Mulroney parents
eventually moved to tonier Old Town (where they kept a separate house on
the property just for "the boys."). Michael and Ellen no longer reside in
Alexandria. The best part is near the end. Woof!
------------------------------------------
"A Genteel Oasis Fights 'Progress.' "
[Snippets from an article by Woody West, Washington Post, 2/21/74. The
article was part of a series about Washington areas neighborhoods.]
The high-rise thicket of Arlington's Crystal City, clumped on the horizon
like a random monument, and the jig-saw jumble of commuter highways, give
an oasis-like quality to the genteel neighborhood of Rosemont.
Yet the spacious, sedate houses that give the south central Alexandria
community much of its atmosphere are shadowed by the potential of such
clashing modernity. Many of its 4,000 residents are worried, concerned
that rambunctious density of development may begin to encroach.
[snip]
The houses in Rosemont are an architectural notebook - from the huge
Victorian frames, the stucco, the stone and the mottled Flemish brick, to
the smaller bungalows and rowhouses... [snip]
Like the housing, the economics of Rosemont families also are diverse,
though dominantly in the comfortable... upper-middle range of lawyers and
government executives and professionals generally.
[Then the article segueways into Rosemont activism to preserve the
neighborhood]
There was scuttlebutt some years back that Maury School - the
neighborhood elementary - [Dermot's elementary school] was to be closed.
"We lobbied like the dickens on that," [young attorney resident Don] Casey
says, and Maury still is open.
[Then comes talk of the Metro possibly jacking up land values beyond the
range of residential use and threatening development. Then the article
gets into what kinds of families live in these big houses.]
The pattern of many Rosemont families was movement from Old Town and its
smaller, more expensive houses, to Rosemont with its solid, roomy houses
and the space for larger families, which abound there.
That was the itinerary of the Mulroneys [okay, so, the author wasn't
psychic], whose three-story green stucco [green? How...Irish!] on West
Linden was "interesting - and it gave us a house built on a lot with
headroom and elbow room," says Ellen Mulroney. Given the Mulroney tribe
of Sean, Conor, Dermot, Kieran, and Moira, the Rosemont house was a fit
ark.
"I don't sense a feeling of inevitability about Rosemont being overwhelmed
by development," Mrs. Mulroney says. "But part of the reason is that we
have an active citizens' association and it's been effective." Husband
Michael, an attorney, is a past president. "The only consideration that
might lead us to move would be space. Oddly enough, as the children get
older, they seem to require more - they have their friends in and so
forth."
Suddenly, with an alacrity common to cops and mothers, Ellen Mulroney
orbits out of the chair and to the front door in a single bound. "That
dog!" she shrieks. "He jumped the fence," wails a young Mulroney in
explanation as his mother hurtles out the door. She is back in a moment,
towing a bloodhound of sufficient bulk to earn a good living pulling
tractor-trailers out of ditches. Jacob, she notes, is less than a year
old. The monster puppy is dragged back to its place of confinement.
She shrugs when she returns. "A person's energies only stretch so
far," she says. "So the kind of things that worry a lot of people in
Rosemont, like the prospect of development, aren't always a major concern
for me. I worry about what to put in the lunch boxes every day."
[The article goes on to discuss busing of the older elementary school kids
as a result of desegregation legislation. There was concern, but one
mother insists Rosemont is a liberal area and the concern wasn't about
race.]
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