Wasting no time after Barb completed her Bar Exam in July, we bought a townhouse of our own and moved in August, 1986. The townhouse was at 7593 Chrisland Cove in Falls Church, VA, in a development called The Yacht Club. It was a cluster of townhomes surrounding a small man-made pond dubbed Lake Sequoia by the developer in an attempt at grandeur.
A map of all our Virginia moves 
Our townhouse is on far left, behind sign
Barb had already started at HHS at Security Boulevard in Baltimore, with at least some potential of transferring to DC, and I was working at Atlantic Research in Springfield, VA. Barb’s commute to Baltimore was terrible. She drove herself 90+ minutes each way for a time and was quickly worn out, especially by the traffic on the Beltway. Eventually she found a van pool that ran from Falls Church, dubbed the “Ship of Fools.” Pickup for the van pool was at an ungodly hour of something like 5:30am, at a Park-and-Ride in Falls Church but Barb could sleep on the van. They left work at about 3:30pm, usually getting her home by 5:30 or so. It was a much earlier schedule than she was used to, but she did it for several years. We never considered living in Maryland, which was a foreign territory at that point.
The townhouse was very conveniently located just off the Beltway and Route 50 in Falls Church, very near Falls Church High School and an office complex that was just under development, Fairview Park. It was not far away from the Merrifield Metro stop, just a bit south of Tyson’s Corner and Route 66. We chose it mainly for the convenience of commuting, though the view of the lake was a definite bonus. I don’t recall looking at a lot of other places; this one just popped up and seemed pretty perfect. It had been the model home and office for the development and was the last unit to come on the market; it was relatively small compared to the other townhomes and had a little bit of an odd layout, but it seemed great to us assuming we could afford it.
I think the purchase price for us was around $145K. I was able to cash in some of my Exxon stock from Dad to make a down-payment. I think Dad ended up kicking in a little more to help us make a 20% down-payment and qualify for the loan easier. With both of us now gainfully employed we had just enough income to cover the mortgage payment of around $1,000/month. We sweated the mortgage application a bit, but with the larger down-payment it came through with no questions. Thus, we were homeowners by the age of 28. Thanks, Dad!
Ours was a smaller model townhouse, with three stories and three bedrooms. The master bedroom was on the top floor with a little balcony overlooking the lake, two bedrooms on the middle floor, one of which we made into sort of an office and playroom mostly for me, and the kitchen and living room were on the bottom floor. We had a little back yard (that we pretty quickly decked over, with Joe’s help) that backed onto the lake. The development had a small swimming pool and a nice path went around the lake. It was a pretty sweet little setup for a young, childless couple…or an older childless couple, come to think of it.
Ducks and the pond 
Joe built our deck and cooked up the diagonal design 
We liked it quite a lot
We didn’t have kids, but we did have Walt, who was now a solo kitty. Before we moved from Fairlington, Bert took his long, final trip to Florida. Walt enjoyed ruling her new roost.
Barb paid a visit in October to Frances Marshall to meet her (not so new) twins, Tim and Amy, along with their UVA friend, Jan and her baby, Adam. Babies were starting to be more common among our friends. Pattie and Lee had Jimmy by then, as well.
Tim, Frances, Adam, Jan, Barb, Amy 
One of us doesn’t know how to hold a baby 
A walk with Amy
We celebrated our first Christmas at the townhouse, with Mom and Dad coming up from Florida, and the Fisher clan coming over for the day.
In February, 1987, Barb and I took a weekend jaunt to Baltimore and the National Aquarium.
Barb’s uncle, Tom, Fred’s younger brother from Detroit, visited for a short time in early 1987, and the photos include Fred’s mother, Helen. After the death of Fred’s father several years before, Tom helped take care of Helen at her home in Detroit. Sometime in 1986 or so, Helen moved to the Lewinsville retirement residence in Falls Church. We would visit her from time to time (but not very often, honestly), and she would occasionally make the trip over to the Fishers’ house.
We very rarely saw Tom, in fact I think this was the only time; Fred considered him something of a ne’er-do-well. Tom had bounced from job to job over his lifetime, never married, and struggled with addictions, I think. After Helen moved to Lewinsville, Tom stayed in the family home in Detroit and rattled around for another few years. Sadly, he decided one day to end it all with a gun to the head. Fred had to make the awful trip to Detroit to deal with the aftermath, clean up and sell the home. As best I recall, he did these tasks on his own and never talked too much about them.
I’m sorry I don’t have much more to say about Barb’s grandparents or family on either side. I met Fred’s father, whom Barb called Poppy, just once when they visited Oakton in the late 1970’s or early 1980’s. He was a gentle old man whom Barb and Fred doted on. I remember he enjoyed woodworking and hand-carved this intricate crossbow that we still have. Helen was a chillier woman who did not endear herself greatly to Barb, or Louise, for that matter. The happiest we ever saw Helen was one day at Lewinsville when we brought our cat Hugo over for a visit. Helen perked up and was very friendly to us and Hugo. But that was a one-time event. Other than that, I have to defer to Barb or Betsy for more stories. It wasn’t until 2020 that I came upon the Delameter family album that Helen put together.
This seems as good a spot as any to include a couple of older photos we have of Fred and Louise in their shining youth and try to relate some of their stories. I’ll probably get things wrong, but here’s a crack at it, subject to corrections down the road.
Fred grew up in Detroit, was featured as a child radio actor and always had a great speaking voice. He was drafted into World War II and was briefly an infantryman in Patton’s army toward the end of the war. He was injured with shrapnel in the foot during the early stages of the Battle of the Bulge and was sent back to the states to recuperate. While in a hospital (in Chicago?) he met a nurse named Louise Bogdanski Sosh who was recently divorced from her first husband, Max(?).
Louise and her sister Leona grew up in a small Pennsylvania town near Pittsburgh where their Dad (called Poppy) worked (in a steel mill?) and Mom (later grandmother Nana) kept house. Louise eventually became a nurse in Chicago and married Max (I think actually she married Max first and became a nurse later). They had a son, Douglas, but divorced near the end of the war. Douglas stayed with Max after the divorce (I think while Lousie went to nursing school) and was later killed in a motorcycle accident as a teenager.
Fred and Louise had a short courtship, married and moved to Detroit. Fred enrolled in Wayne State University on the GI Bill, where he flirted briefly with the Socialist Party of America and volunteered on a presidential campaign for Norman Thomas (1948?). I’m not sure where he worked in the years before joining the State Department in the early 1950’s. They had early postings in Singapore and Penang, Malaya before heading to Taichung, Taiwan, for several years of intensive Chinese language study. In Taichung, they met the crew that would become lifelong friends, including the Babcocks, O’Neills, Deans, and Irelands.
Returning to our timeline, in May, 1987, Barb convinced me to go to Jamaica Jamaica, where she had gone with her law school friend, Kate, the year before. This was my first trip to an all-inclusive resort and first time in Jamaica. I must say, I enjoyed the resort, especially the unlimited alcohol. Jamaica itself was a little sketchier. We had one excursion off-resort to Dunn River Falls; the Falls themselves were fun, but we had to get through a gauntlet of touts foisting all manner of ganja, massages, hair braiding and other questionable delights to the tourists. The same sort of touts would appear daily on the beach as well.
In June, my Mom and Dad came back for a visit and we spent a day in DC.
We all gathered for a meal with the Fishers, too.
I’m pretty sure it was on this trip that Dad tried to fly one of Fred’s model planes. The backstory is that Fred’s main hobby was whiling away many hours in his basement working on large, radio-controlled model airplanes. He built them out of balsa wood, endless amounts of epoxy and heat shrink fabric for the skins. These were large, impressive craft and I can’t believe I don’t have any photos of them. It would take Fred many months to build one, getting all the controls and decorations just so. Fred didn’t go out and fly them very often, but it was impressive to see them hanging from his rafters or occasionally out in the wild actually flying.
Fred also made a radio-controlled glider which had an even longer wingspan than his planes, at least six feet across. He had a long, 50-foot rubber band to launch the thing, after which it was controlled through a remote joystick in Fred’s hands. Under the right conditions, he could steer the glider into a thermal and keep it in the air for an hour or more.
Joe helped me remember the time when Fred invited my Dad, Joe and me out to a big open field to fly the glider. We drove there in Dad’s rental car because it was big enough to hold all of us plus the glider. Joe was the point man for the rubber band launcher while Fred, Dad and I clustered by the glider and Fred’s controller. We launched the glider and watched it soar several hundred feet into the air. Fred ran it through its paces for a while, turning this way and that, then offered the controller to my Dad to try it for a while.
Dad took the joystick and within moments the glider started descending as Dad got confused about which way to push or pull the joystick. The more it nosed down, the farther Dad pushed the joystick. “Pull up, Howard!” Fred repeated insistently, louder each time, ending in a shout: “PULL UP!”
“I AM!” Dad cried out as the glider nosed into an ever-steeper dive, Dad’s thumb jamming the joystick as far forward as it could go. In just seconds the glider dive-bombed straight down into the field, smashing into bits. There were no survivors. “Oh Freddy, I’m so sorry,” Dad wailed. It was the only time I ever heard Fred called Freddy and I think it just heaped salt into his wounds.
Joe and I were horrified but also could barely suppress laughing at the absurdity of the whole scene. We cleaned up as much of the glider as we could and laid it to rest in the trunk of the rental car. As we got in the car to drive back, Joe, ever the wise guy, suggested that perhaps my Dad should not be the one to drive.
In July, 1987, we welcomed a new kitten, Hugo, to the family. Walt was not at all sure about the new arrival.
Soon enough, Hugo became a big favorite.
With Dad and Sue…but when or where?
A random photo here, from Mom’s pile of saved shots. Based on hair styles and glasses, I think it more or less fits in this time, but I can’t remember the location or occasion. A mystery, unless Sue can fill in the gap.
Given that it’s a mystery and tangentially involves Sue, this is as good a place as any to include another couple of stories that Joe helped me remember. At some point, Joe and Betsy came with us to Florida to see my folks and spend a little time in the Keys visiting Sue.
Joe remembers going out on Dad’s boat one time, just the two of them…so that must have been out of Riviera Beach. I can imagine I begged off for one reason or another, but I don’t actually remember. In any case, Joe was eager to do some ocean fishing and Dad was happy to have a first mate. Joe vividly remembers trolling around the Gulf Stream with Dad, having a great old time looking for trash in the water, having five lines out, outriggers, ballyhoo, the works. Dad must have been steering the boat when a dolphin hit one of the lines and suddenly Dad went into full scramble, yelling at Joe to set the rod with the fish and at the same time deal with the other four rods. They were able to bring the fish close to the boat but kept it in the water to attract the rest of the school (Joe remembers the fisherman’s phrase for this, but I don’t). Joe and Dad proceeded to catch a dozen or more dolphin, to their delight — Joe and Dad’s, not the dolphins. Joe even remembers coming back in and helping clean the fish, something I never did. Dad must have been thrilled to have a true fishing buddy. I think it was the only time for Joe, though.
I’m guessing it was on this same trip that we ventured down to Marathon to see Sue, Tom and however many kids were there at the time. Again, Joe remembers better than I do, but we all went out snorkeling on Tom’s boat. We both remember jumping into the water and coming face-to-face with a barracuda. Jill (or maybe Keri) was smart enough to hustle back to the boat and get out of the water. Joe and I stayed staring at the barracuda for longer than I liked. I was second out of the water. I think Joe and Tom and Sue were all fine with it and proceeded to catch some lobster for dinner.
Flavia Motel, Grassy Key, Florida
The other memory from our time in the Keys was staying at the Flavia Motel, a truly awful fleabag of a motel that was near Sue’s place on Grassy Key. I have no idea why its picture is in the Library of Congress, but here it is. Perhaps as one of the worst motels in America? Ever since, “Flavia” has been a keyword in our family for the worst possible vacation experience. All that said, I’m not sure why I have no photos of this trip together. I’m glad Joe has a better memory than I for the details.
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