My 70's:  My old friends, Where I grew up, My first love, Odds and Ends

I'm a Washingtonian
A Washingtonian is someone who grew up in the suburbs of Washington, DC, aka the "Metro area", with DC, the nucleus, being called "The District". As teens, the Night Clubs and Discos of DC and College Park (University of MD) were just ten minutes from where we lived.

A true Washingtonian, I was born in Washington, DC, about a block from the Eisenhower/Nixon White House at George Washington Memorial Hospital, the day after taxes were due in 1959. I touched the last nine months of the fab 50's but alas, I was a baby and don't remember.

Here's your geography and history lesson for the day... Washington, DC was created from donated land, 100% of it from Maryland. (Read Wash DC creation History here.)  

Most people in this country have no idea where Maryland is located on a US map --but everyone knows where Washington DC is. Ironic, isn't it?

When you hear the term "Inside the Beltway" from talking heads on TV they mean within the red circle below.  The Capital Beltway is a loop which, if you drive around it --within one hour, you're back where you started from.

The red star is the White House and DC is defined by pale blue straight lines, bounded by the Potomac River on its western side.
map of washington dc
I grew up in the Bethesda, Silver Spring, Takoma Park area.

The majority of Senators, Congressman and Ambassadors live in the area between Bethesda and Potomac, with some of them jumping the Potomac to the Virginia side.  

In the mid 60's, an Ambassador from Caracas, Venezuela rented the house right next door to ours and I was friends with his daughters, Gayla and Beela.  

Additionally, I became good friends with a girl named Margarita Gonzales, whose father worked at the Mexican Embassy (can't remember his title). She took me to a huge, fancy party at the Mexican Embassy in DC when I was eleven years old.  

We were such good friends that she invited me to go to Vera Cruz, Mexico in the summer of 1971, when I was 12. I campaigned really hard to go, but, since there were dozens of airplane hi-jackings, during the preceding three year period, there was no way my mother would let me go.



Famous people who live or lived in my neck of the woods.

  • Linda Carter (Wonder Woman) - Potomac

  • Chris Carmack (The OC) - Rockville

  • Nancy Reagan - Grew up in Bethesda

  • Mike Tyson - Potomac

  • Mark Bryan (Hootie & the Blowfish) -  Silver Spring

  • Sugar Ray Leonard -  Lives in Potomac

  • Edward Norton - Columbia

  • Sylvester Stallone - Lived in Silver Spring, was rumored that he went to Blair HS.

  • Ted Koppel - Lives in Potomac

  • Dominique Dawes - Silver Spring

  • Bernard Shaw (CNN) - Takoma Park

  • John Glenn - Astronaut, Senator - Lives in Potomac

  • Marc Silverstein, (The Best of) on FoodTV - lives in Montgomery County

  • Hubert Humphrey, VP - Lived in Chevy Chase

  • Dean Felber (Hootie & the Blowfish) - Bethesda

  • Clara Barton, founder of the American Red Cross - Lived in Montgomery County

Famous Montgomery Blair High School Alumni, Silver Spring, Maryland:

  • Goldie Hawn, 1963 - Actress, we went to the same pediatrician.

  • Matt Drudge, 1984 - Internet Reporter --"Drudge Report"

  • Daniel Stern, actor, -"Home Alone"

  • Connie Chung, 1964 - Newscaster

  • Ben Stein, 1962  - "Win Ben Stein's Money!"

  • Carl Bernstein, 1961  -"All the Presidents Men".
    Reporter for the Washington Post, broke the Watergate Story
    with Bob Woodward.

See more Famous Marylanders here