They Treated Us "Like a Million Bucks" On the 1200 Block of E Street NE

I spoke to Bruce Grefrath and Susan Parker in their living room on Wednesday. Mr. Grefrath has been living at 1217 since 1981. Mrs. Parker married Mr. Grefrath and moved into the house in 1982. I started by asking Mr. Grefrath where he was raised and what brought him to D.C.

Bruce: Well, I grew up near Niagara Falls, New York. Went to school at the University of Florida, and came here for health reasons. I lived out in the suburbs and then I got very tired of the commute — it got longer, and longer, and longer, and longer. So when I was divorced, I decided I'd move down here. I moved down here in 1979, on Capitol Hill, and began looking immediately for a house to buy, and I looked very, very carefully, and talked with a lot of people, and got a lot of really good, helpful advice. I was looking for something very specific, and I finally was able to find this house, and I basically made a deal on it very shortly before it was gonna be auctioned off to be repossessed. It had been vacant for at least a year and a half or two, and we heard all kinds of wild stories about it. Druggies were living here. And some of the neighbors told us they were growing pot in the back yard.

Susan: Oh yeah! Somebody came up the alley when we were working out in the backyard. He said, "Oh yeah! They grew the best pot right up against that garage wall. That's what I remember." That was from the 1960s or something like that.

Bruce: Apparently it was renovated in 1977. And for a while some people lived here and apparently they couldn't keep up the double mortgage that they had, so they were kicked out. Then people apparently just came in. When I first came here, the back door was nailed shut, and in addition to the lock, there were all kinds of nails keeping it shut. (laughs.) In fact, the third night after I moved in here, my parents were here and I was here. And somebody began messing with the lock while we were inside — this was about 1 or 2 o'clock in the morning. And the dog began to bark, and Dad grabbed a two-by-four and stood behind the door. I was upstairs — he told me this the next morning, that he had gotten up and stood behind the door with a two-by-four, waiting for the guy to come in. But the dog had apparently scared him off, so he left. So the following morning, the first thing we did was we went over to 8th Street and got all new tumblers for the locks and everything, and took care of that. For a long time, we found stuff in the basement from people living in the basement. The rest of the house they hadn't bothered with — they wanted to stay out of sight.

Drug stuff?

Bruce: Paraphernalia, yeah. And a lot of incense stuck in the bricks. Stubs. About a year later, the dog barked one time and just charged the door. I looked out the window upstairs and couldn't see anything. It didn't make any sense. And the next morning, I came down and I noticed that somebody had stuck a crowbar where the lock is on the door and had bent the crease on the door.

Susan: The locks had been changed. They probably had keys to open it.

Bruce: And so they had tried to crowbar it. And again, the dog sounded off, and charged the door, and so they left. So the next day we made arrangements to have an iron gate put up! (laughs.) And we've had iron bars since.

Susan: And we have never been robbed. Almost every household on the street has been robbed.

With the bars and with the dog, you kept them away.

Bruce: And I was on — I'm on — disability, so the fact that I'm around the house probably also kept them away. Somebody around the corner, just a few years ago, was badly beaten up during the day. But I think generally speaking [this has] been probably the best block in the area as far as robberies. Lincoln Park has had a lot of problems. 12th Street between Maryland and E has had a lot of problems. And then there's this area on 13th Street, between D and F, they were always being robbed.

Susan: But we were also here when the older generations of people were here. And now they're starting to die off. And they were wonderful people. They took really good care of us. We would go to Niagara Falls to Bruce's parents' house. We didn't have air-conditioning in this house for a few years, because we were saving our money for it. So we just went up there and lived there. And Mr. Bush would come over and water the front yard, stuff like that, and then Reverend Rollins next door [at 1215] — shoveled our walk for snow. And they were just so kind and so helpful. And then Mr. Eleam down the street [at 1205], we just loved him. [He'd say,] "I'm gonna come down there, and go fishing in your pond." (laughs.) We have a 2,000-gallon pond in the back. Our backyard has gone through quite a few changes since we moved here. This is our second pond. We built our first pond by hand. We dug it out and put all the dirt and stuff in tin garbage cans and put them in our truck and took it out all over the city. (laughs.)

Do you remember, when you came to look, your impressions of the neighborhood?

Bruce: I checked to make sure — one of the criteria that I was given by people who lived here [on the Hill] for years is "find a block where the majority of the people who are living there own their own homes." So that was a major criterion that I was looking for. I also wanted a decent yard so that I could put in — ultimately — an Oriental-style garden. And at the time I was doing a lot of white-water canoeing, so I wanted a place where I could hang my canoe.

Susan: And drive underneath it and drop the canoe.

Bruce: Because of my leg problems. I need to be able to drop it down. And so, as backyards go on the Hill, this is a big backyard. And I was told by people to get a house in the middle of a block, because it's less apt to be vandalized than one at the end. Because they've only got one escape route, and the cops can close off both ends and trap them in the alley. So that was the other criterion. Then it had to be cheap. And I wanted something that was turn-of-the century or earlier. And when I moved in, everything on the other side of 13th was considered the DMZ [demilitarized zone]. And so I didn't want to live east.

Susan: Basically, we felt like we lived on the Slope, not really on the Hill. (laughs.)

Bruce: One of the first things I was told by the guy across the street — he took me around and introduced me to everybody. He pointed out immediately where Marion Barry had lived, across the street. They were all pretty proud of that. He said [they had] liked it because there were always a couple of cop cars in front of the house. And the street was always plowed and taken care of very well. But since I moved in here, I think the street's only been plowed about three or four times.

One of the stories you had told me about the neighborhood changing — when you first moved in, you put something out on the street.

Bruce: Oh, yeah. When we were first working on the kitchen, the stove was still in pretty good condition — an electric stove, and I wasn't interested in it, so we put it out on the street, and within 15, 20 minutes it was gone. This past year, we put in a new stove, and I put the other one out back, and nobody would take it. I mean, it was a little rusty, and everything, but it was in good working condition, and a much better stove, too, but nobody would take that. Things have changed quite a bit. But Mr. Bush and Mr. Rollins were all really helpful. A lot of times we had troubles with teenagers doing something. One time, the side of the house on the alley got all graffitied up, and I happened to see who had done it, so I told Fred Tolson [at 1221]. It was straightened out real quick.

Straightened out how?

Bruce: Well, these guys knew who the kids were, and knew their parents.

And they got in trouble?

Bruce: Yeah. I can remember Mr. Rollins saying, "This is E Street. And we don't behave like that on E Street." He was Reverend Rollins. He was a preacher. And they just cracked the whip. First year I was here, Mr. Bush comes up to me with a chain, and he says, "Just slip this through your gate, and when the kids see it in the summertime when they're off from school, they'll think the gate is locked, and they won't come in or cause any trouble." He says, "You don't have to put a lock in it — just put the chain in!" (laughs.)

Susan: And the house behind us was called the love house. Our neighbor Johnny Holstein [at 1224 Duncan Place] saw the front of the house and bought it before he saw what the back of the house looked like.

Bruce: It had a great big graffiti sign [on the back] that just had "LOVE" written right against it. And the porch was all fallen through.

Susan: He redid that house and it's just gorgeous. It's so beautiful. In fact, it was on the walking tour. He has a pond in the back yard, like we do. We shared a frog.

You mentioned 13th Street, and you said that it wasn't so good from D all the way to F?

Bruce: Well, from 13th, 14th, 15th and up, was not terribly good.

Susan: But the real DMZ was down around Hechinger Mall.

Bruce: F Street, between 13th and 14th was pretty good. It had developed early. Apparently, this area was really hit hard during the `68 riots. Because the two houses that were built there [at the northeast corner of 13th and E] — apparently, there was a store there, and that store was burned. Then at that corner, there has always been heavy drug problems. When Valerie [Facchine] lived on 13th Street, three houses towards us on E Street [at 1241], she was robbed several times, and people used to come from the stores and use it as a latrine, in the back. And when she'd catch them, she'd turn the hose on them. And that didn't go over too well. Then that garden area [at 13th and E], that was always a problem with drugs, and I think there was some stabbings that took place.

In the garden?

Bruce: Or near it. One hundred yards in this city is an entirely new area. And you can know a great deal about one part of it, but then 100 yards away, you don't know nothin'. And for one reason or another, the people that I got to know were between 12th and my house. There were a few down at the other end. But for the most part, I knew this half of the block. Mrs. Brooks — Doris Brooks [at 1223] — she was an ANC [Advisory Neighborhood Commissioner]. Parking has always been a marginal problem here, and she used to come out and if she would see somebody parking and they were more than about three or four feet from the car, I think she said, "Come on! Squoosh up! Squoosh up! Squoosh up! Squoosh up!" And she'd make them park really close.

Susan: She raised about seven kids. And dug out the basement.

Bruce: The back half — the last room in the house was just crawl space. That's the way it is all up and down here. Most people have dug it out. And they dug that entire back section out by hand and made it a basement.

Susan: And then her husband divorced her. And she had all those seven kids.

Bruce: She comes back around here every now and then.

Susan: She was a character.

Bruce: I used to tease Mr. Eleam about the fact that I was gonna fix him up with all the single women on the street. He had a buddy that would come over and sit on the stairs with him. He had diabetes. And once a day, he'd walk up and down the street. And I used to tease him about the fact that if he ever got up off those steps, the steps would leave too.

When you moved in, were you one of the first white people here?

Bruce: Next door, they were white, and then there was one across the street — it was a rental, and that was by and large white. Then when Mrs. Brooks moved out, she sold to a white guy who lived there for a while, and then Eric and Deta moved in.

So you weren't the only ones.

Bruce: And it really didn't make a whole lot of difference, because, like I said, the people that were here treated me like a million bucks — told me who to stay away from, and who in the block was not to be associated with, and who was, and who were good people and who weren't, and that sort of thing. And I guess because of my legs and everything, they really looked out for me.

So your legs have been a problem since you moved here.

Bruce: Oh yeah. They're a lot worse now than they were then, but they still looked out for me. I walked with a cane, and they always teased me about canoeing in white water. They just could not comprehend that. They believed that if you fish, you should fish from the shore, and if you went in a boat —

Susan: Especially Mr. Eleam! (laughs.)

Bruce: Yeah. He didn't want to have anything to do with a boat. He says, "You fish from the shore." He was in Patton's army. He didn't talk a whole lot about it.

Bruce: We had that drive-by shooting one night. It was back in the early `90s. The guy probably had a 9 millimeter, and he emptied the clip before he finally killed the guy. And he shot up a whole bunch of cars on the street.

Susan: Somehow, ours got missed. I don't know how that happened.

Bruce: One of the first things that I did when I moved in here was I killed all the grass in the front yard. And the guys down the street — they couldn't understand that — because they worked real hard to have grass, and here comes this upstart and he kills all the grass —

Susan: We don't believe in cutting grass. (laughs.)

Bruce: I cut too much of that stuff when I was a kid. And so then I started planting shrubbery.

Weed killer?

Bruce: Yeah. I used Roundup. It's been hard to keep stuff out there, because the kids would tear stuff up. So it's always been a problem — the shrubbery.

Bruce: [We heard for years there was about to] be the next big growth area on the hill. And we've been waiting for 20 years, and finally in the last say four, five years it's really taken off. And I rather enjoyed the neighborhood. And it's changing.

Susan: I like it both ways.

Bruce: The people who are moving in are mostly professionals and the like. I miss Mr. Eleam, and Bush and Rollins. I remember one of the last big freezes we had — Mr. Rollins was talking to us — the pipes all froze in his church. 84 years old. He re-plumbs the whole church. I looked at him, and I said, "Well, Reverend Rollins, wasn't the church insured?" And he says, "Well, yeah." And I said, "The insurance probably would have covered that!" And he said, "Oh yeah! I never thought of that!" He was just a go-getter, you know? And the thought of having somebody else do it never entered his mind. Just get the job done and get on with it. He had a cherry tree out here. And it hung over our fence, where they were tart cherries. And so every year we'd get enough for a couple of cherry pies. And he also had a fig tree, and he'd give me some of the figs now and then.

He passed away?

Susan: Yeah. He was like 93.

Susan: And then of course there was the music teacher, Professor Barbour, where the Olsons lived, at 1214.

I've heard about him from Mrs. Evans and her daughter. Did you know him?

Susan: Yeah. In fact, we got invited to his 93rd birthday. He had two children.

Was Lovejoy still a school?

Bruce: Kingsman was active when we moved here. Lovejoy has always been vacant. A few offices, but [vacant] as far as the school was concerned.

Kingsman was a school. So there must have been kids out there?

Bruce: In fact, some of the kids that live on the block actually went there. Mrs. Brooks's kids went there.

Susan: I got to know the crossing guard. I think Ebony, across the street, went there for a while. Ebony lives next to George and Lisa, on the right hand side, [at 1216]. I was good friends with her grandmother, Mrs. Ferrar. I think her grandmother's still there. Ebony has two girls. I gave her piano lessons — to Ebony.

Oh wow! So you're a pianist.

Susan: Well, yes. I'm a music teacher. I teach at Capitol Heights Elementary School in Prince George's County.

So Bruce moved in, and then you moved in a year later. Had you already known each other?

Susan: We met in 1981 and got married in 1982.

Where did you grow up?

Susan: I'm from Parkersburg, West Virginia. And I moved here in 1969, and I worked at an answering service for a while. I had taught music in Jefferson County West Virginia, about three years, and then I decided to try something different, and that lasted for about half a year. And then I started teaching at Charles Houston Elementary School, and then at Holly Park Elementary School in College Park. I taught orthopedic children as well as regular students. Then I went on to another elementary school, Oak Crest, and now I've been at Capitol Heights for 20 years.

Bruce: I worked for the lumber industry lobby. In 1972, I moved to Gaithersburg. It took me half an hour to get downtown. By '79, it took an hour. So I was sitting in a car for two hours. [I moved to] 302 D St., just across from Schneider's. And I got robbed on Halloween, over there. Two guys followed me into the garage, shoved me against the car, and they got 20 bucks in my wallet. But it just infuriated me. And for months after that, I was just paranoid about anybody I saw on the street. I couldn't get out of the car. It was horrible. They hadn't hurt me or anything — I was just so angry.

Is that why you moved from there?

Bruce: No. No. I was renting there, and looking around for someplace to buy.

When you worked on the Hill, were you a lobbyist?

Bruce: Yeah. Mostly I worked with natural resource issues.

By training, what was your area?

Bruce: Forestry.

How did you guys meet?

Susan: A place called Discovery. (laughs.)

Bruce: Every Friday night, there's a singles group that meets out at the Unitarian Church in Rockville, and it's noted all over the area.

Susan: People come up from Richmond.

Bruce: And as far away as Hagerstown and Rockville and Baltimore. I don't know whether it's still going or not. I suspect it is. I can't think of anything else. If you look at the police record, this street has probably got one of the best police records. We didn't talk too much about the drug house.

How did you know it was a drug house?

Bruce: Well, they were selling drugs.

You could just see people going in?

Bruce: Oh yeah, yeah.

Susan: We knew these kids. We saw them grow up. One time I saw them spray something on C.C.'s [Charles Murray's] house [at 1232]. And whenever they would do something, we'd talk to Reverend Rollins. Because he used to tell them what they should do, what they shouldn't do. They got into the drug scene pretty bigtime. They were very rough. We formed a neighborhood group.

Bruce: All we were able to do is get the police to harass them. And the fire marshal.

Susan: Their grandmother lived there. She was like an invalid.

Bruce: Finally, what happened is that the speculative owners finally decided to sell the house a couple of years ago. People on the block were beginning to give them a hard time. The price got to the point where now it's been sold, and somebody is working on it.

Is that the one with the broken window?

Susan: Yeah, and the sign that says call so and so.

Thank you both so much. §