Washington DC JAN 25 |
Dear Bill,
I write actually on mainstream, LGBTQ, and other news bits but as a political journalist not writing on technology, science, as those subjects are not my bailiwick.
I did minor in history when I matriculated at San Francisco City College, and later at UCSF nearly 33 years ago, but honestly, as my principal academic discipline and chosen career field was/is journalism I cannot lay claim to even being an 'amateur' historian.
What started this research was a conversation with a dear friend who grew up in the NOVA area and attended school there. Apparently, the urban legend that was 'the crypts' fascinated folk including him, who is acquainted with someone who apparently participated in several 'gatherings' there during its heyday in the mid 1970's.
What struck me, was once he showed me this thread and its accompanying stories, was the fact that there were so many questions, but no hard answers. Bill? There is no greater challenge to a journalist than that scenario.
For example, Charles Mason Remey was, to say the least, an egotistical eccentric who traveled in the rarefied air that was Washington's high society. His friends were often derisively referred to by the 32nd President of the United States, Franklin D. Roosevelt, as "cave dwellers." A note here, his home on Massachusetts Avenue that he designed and built is now the Chancery Annex to the Embassy of Mexico.
When he was a young architectural student, he lived as a very welcome guest in the Parisian apartment of Phoebe Apperson Hearst, mother of newspaper magnate and publisher William Randolph Hearst and patron of the University Of California. In fact, it was there he first encountered the Baha'i faith that later became the central critical component to his adult life until his passage in Florence, Italy.
I could go on but that would overwhelm this thread, so instead I set-up a blog to document the facts as I went along.
It is a fascinating story Bill. There are so many aspects to it aside from the Remeum itself. Which of course begs an answer to this central question: Why would Mason Remey invest over a million dollars in the construction of this magnificent and massive structure, and then walk away from it?
Bottom-line? At the end of a long day of reporting on other current news and issues Bill, this is a fun story to research and work on. So many questions, and not enough answers. By the way, I sent my assistant to review the wealth of materials in the Virginia Room at the Fairfax County Library, Fairfax City Branch, which though informative, raised even more questions and speculations. Although the question as to why the Truro Parish's Pohick brought the project to a rather abrupt halt was answered. The size of the "addition" to be constructed directly over the buried complex beneath it, would have been rather noticeable and absolutely would have overshadowed the church.
Principally, that was the reason the church sought to stop construction although, the vestrymen weren't happy at all with the continual intrusions by the local adolescents which created a headache for them and a nuisance for the Groveton later Mount Vernon substations of the Fairfax County Police Department.
Now, in chasing this story, I have run across even more fascinating bits of lost history related to things such as the airfield that once stood atop Beacon Hill along with its sister airfield in Hybla Valley along U. S. Route One in my quest for aerial photos and other documentation. I have spoken to one man, in his late 80's who flew out of Hybla Valley who remembers flying over the area of the Remeum while it was being built in the 1940's right after the second world war ended. His description verified what the plans we found in the several linear feet at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore revealed as to the size of this structure.
On top of that, we are unearthing a part of Fairfax County's history as a place of dairy farms and a pace of life that is virtually unrecognizable today. Its fascinating to beat that poor descriptive adjective to death. My interviews so far range from a former supervisor to a former Deacon of the Church to Baha'i historians and chroniclers.
One last thing Bill, the Admiral and his wife were never removed from their burial sites in Arlington National Cemetery and interred in the Remeum as a result of Mason Remey being blocked from doing so by his brothers who wanted nothing to do with his "project" as the family referred to it.
SO, there's a basic overview of why a freelance wire service reporter [ and a Canadian on top of that ] is poking around in an obscure tale around a historic church in the suburban Washington DC area.
Oh, here's the blog I have started for this and I will be adding as time goes on.
[
http://chasinglosthistory.blogspot.com/ ]
Feel free to contact me Bill if you'd like as well at
theroadtraveler@gmail.com
Sincerely,
Brody Levesque
BL Freelance News Service LLC
Washington D. C.