Reginald Thomas, Roosevelt Daniels, Michael Vanison Interview, September 14, 2019

INDEXED CLIP TIME: 00:00:06.210 --> 00:03:53.410 SEGMENT SYNOPSIS: Dan Kerr interviews Reginald Thomas, Roosevelt Daniels, and Michael Vanison on September 14, 2019 during the Celebrate Petworth Festival. In this clip, the men introduce themselves and Reginald Thomas explains the purpose of the Petworth Reunion Committee. SUBJECTS: 2019 Celebrate Petworth Festival; Petworth (Washington, D.C.); Petworth Reunion Committee; Shepherd Street (Washington, D.C.)

It's September 14, 2019. We are at the Celebrate Petworth Festival. Would you mind telling me your names?

My name is Reggie Thomas.

My name is Roosevelt.

My name is Michael Vanison.

We're here to talk about the history of this neighborhood. And I know you guys have a lot to say. So, you want to tell me a little bit about your connection to the neighborhood?

Okay, first of all, my name is Reggie Thomas. I am the President of the Petworth Reunion Committee. And we are a committee of residents who have come back together to Petworth every year to celebrate the [inaudible] of the area where we grew up at. Our purpose is to continue to bond and hold this community together, as we knew it as children. I have here with me, member, Roosevelt, Daniels... member, Michael Vanison. And a little bit about where we come from. We grew up here as children. My family migrated here in the 40s. My aunt lived at 516 Shepherd Street. My family moved here in the 60s. I grew up at 725 Shepherd Street. I went to the original Petworth Elementary School. I played on a recreation center around a corner when it wasn't a recreation, it was just a dirt field. And so as we come back to the neighborhood, and we see the transformation and the changes, you know, we just try we're just trying to hold on to what we remember and let people know that there was a Petworth before it became this Petworth. I want to let my friends share a little bit about their history in the neighborhood.

Yes, Roosevelt Daniels, I grew up at 729 Shepherd Street. Also my family came here in the 40s. We went to Petworth Elementary School. And with Petworth when the recreation center was there first, wasn't nothing there but houses there. Four families lived on that block where the recreation center is now. After that, they tore the houses down and became a big old place where we will play at and actually was like a dump for old cars. And we used to play there. So I'm gonna pass it over to "Truck" right now, and we'll give you some more stuff. We got more.

If you caught that or not, my name is Michael "Truck" Vanison and I'm known around the neighborhood as the "Truck," I'm one of the original Petworth-atonians. I'm a graduate of Petworth Elementary School class of 1971. Proudly. Great neighborhood. I have so many stories. I usually stay here all day long telling you about the stories about Petworth. Rock Creek Park was out our backyard. That was our playground. Rock Creek Park. Petworth has a lot of history... a lot of the working class neighborhoods. Petworth, McFarland, and Roosevelt. Those were the neighborhood schools. We didn't ride the bus school, we walked to school. I mean, at one point, I could walk through the Rec Center to get home. I grew up in New Hampshire Avenue 4000 block. My family we still own the home, still reside there... our family members. There was a time I could walk up the street and I knew everybody in this entire square. You know, you couldn't get away with anything in Petworth, You know, your mom would know about about it before you got home. So you know those one of the memories I have about Petworth. I mean, beautiful neighborhood. I have known the transition that's been going through, you know, not only in Petworth, but the citywide. But still, you know, that's why we're here to let people know, you know, what Petworth was before it came about? This is where we're at now.

INDEXED CLIP TIME: 00:03:54.020 --> 00:06:40.860 SEGMENT SYNOPSIS: Dan Kerr interviews Reginald Thomas, Roosevelt Daniels, and Michael Vanison on September 14, 2019 during the Celebrate Petworth Festival. In this clip, the men discuss their memories of Petworth. SUBJECTS: Petworth (Washington, D.C.); Local businesses; Georgia Avenue (Washington, D.C.); Petworth Reunion Committee

So we're right here on Upshur between 9th and 8th Street. Tell us what this block was like as you remember this town.

Behind us used to be a house. This store here across the street used to be a house. We should come down here get ice cream. Further down the street back in the 60s, there was a store called Mort Allens. It was a five and dime store. We all used to go there and buy clothing. At that particular time that's when they had layaway because most of our parents work two and three jobs, you know, and I don't know what the pay scale was back then. But we had to go there to purchase our clothes at Mort Allens. I'll let them tell you some more history about some stuff.

Let me just say this was a house right next door to it was a TV shop. I never could get my father, when our TV went bad back then we had, not fuses but bulbs, and I could come down with 25 cents and get a bulb when the bulb had blown. You had the TV shop. You had the shoe shop. Mr. Philips. The funeral home has been here since forever. We have Miss Kitty over here. This right here about a beauty salon, the beauty salon and Miss Kitty shop and on and on.

You know the beautiful thing about this neighborhood is that it has such a deep long running history. Just not Upshur Street. There's some iconic things that are in his neighborhood. There was a carry out on the corner Georgia Avenue and 7th called Miss Guan's Carry Out. It was a mainstay not only in this neighborhood, but throughout the city. People will come all around and go to Miss Guan's Carry Out. There with Mr. Pete's store right here, convenience store right here.

You had to have her mambo sauce. There's no more mambo sauce in Washington, DC

So the transformation of neighborhood, it's good. But I'm also important is that we remember where it came from how it started. We have been friends for over 50 years. Not very seldom do you find a community of friends that have stuck together for more than 50 years. So we come back every year to celebrate this. This is the first year we've been down to the Petworth Festival. But our community group is the Petworth Reunion Committee we meet every year to put on some type of event to bring back some of the old people from the neighborhood. So we can still see some of our old friends and we still do see as you see people walking by waving hands because I remember we have a kid. All right, we've gone from this neighborhood and we still love Petworth.

INDEXED CLIP TIME: 00:06:41.370 --> 00:09:58.810 SEGMENT SYNOPSIS: Dan Kerr interviews Reginald Thomas, Roosevelt Daniels, and Michael Vanison on September 14, 2019 during the Celebrate Petworth Festival. In this clip, the men discuss how they met. SUBJECTS: Petworth (Washington, D.C.); Local businesses; Shepherd Street (Washington, D.C.); Georgia Avenue (Washington, D.C.); Public transportation; Upshur Street (Washington, D.C.)

How did you all three meet?

I lived one door from him (points to Reginald Thomas).

And he lived around the corner (points to Michale Vanison)

And I was friends with his younger brother (points to Reginald Thomas). They were friends were my older brother. And we all went to Petworth (elementary). We all walked to school in the morning. [inaudible] We even had a block club on Shepherd Street.

My mother started that block club. Jaqueline Daniels. His mom, his mother (pointing to both of the others) got us all together. And we used to have trips and go to Hershey Park and stuff like that. Now this going to blow your mind. One day, we had like three buses going to Hershey Park. Okay. All the kids from the other neighborhood started coming down to greet us to go off. Miss Kelly and my mom and Mrs. Thomas, his mother, said we need to get more buses. At that time. My mother made a phone call. Called a couple of guys. Back then they were all bootleggers and stuff. We don't know number riders, They came down, went up there. It was Roy Truck DC transit. They went up there, got three more buses, the first black operator for DC transit with Mr. Slate. He drove George Avenue line now back in the 60s. And everybody knew him. That was something remarkable there. And they took out our families, mostly women was involved. They took care of the neighborhood. It wasn't that, you know, you did something bad, like "Truck" was saying ... any parent would whoop you, wasn't nothing said. Nowadays, they gotta take your parent to the police station and do all this stuff. Back then, any parent who saw you doing something wrong, he had the right to tear that butt up. Period, you know, and so a lot is a lot of kids, parents got away from that. But, go ahead Reg...

But the the other thing I wanted to point out that there are still some families that were here from the 50s and the 60s. The Vanisons. The McCones who live on Shepherd Street. There's the Harris family who lives on Upshur Street. The White family. The Tates. The Macs. There's still a few families that are here when we grew up as kids. So there's still some connections to the neighborhood. You know, it's, I love to see what's happening. But I'm just also concerned that we don't forget how we got here. And that's what our committee is all about. Just bringing back the people, you know, and we encourage everybody, we encourage anybody to join our committee. We're not exclusive. We're all inclusive. Now. We've met some new members of this community who have seen us on Facebook and asked us who we are. Okay, they came to our cookout two weeks ago. So we encourage everybody so we want to keep the theme of Petworth alive. You know, we don't want to think that it started yesterday. It started a long time ago.

INDEXED CLIP TIME: 00:09:59.710 --> 00:11:26.100 SEGMENT SYNOPSIS: Dan Kerr interviews Reginald Thomas, Roosevelt Daniels, and Michael Vanison on September 14, 2019 during the Celebrate Petworth Festival. In this clip, the men discuss the rec center. SUBJECTS: Petworth (Washington, D.C.);

Earlier you were telling me the story about the rec center. Obviously that was one of the first things you said and it's obviously a significant story. Tell us more details about that.

Man the rec center.

The vacant lot.

There were houses there back in... When my grandmother brought me down. It should be a supermarket at the end of the rec center. And there was a Safeway... there were houses there. The houses went away and it became a dirt lot. We used to play on that dirt lot as kids. In the 60s and I want to say in the mid to late 60s, after the riots, is when they built the first recreation center. Okay, there used to be with the flat surfaces... there used to be a hill. We used to play football on the hill. So the recreation center came about as a means of having somewhere for us to go play that would be a uniform place under some type of supervision and that's how the recreation started. That building that you see there. That's like the third building. Okay, cuz at first it was just one little brick building. That was there on the recreation center. It was a place where all of us could go, you know, and hang out and play. Like the store on the corner, that was where we would go get our beverages and stuff like that. You know, there's been so many transformations of this neighborhood to some respect that, its kinda hard when you come by, it's kind of hard to say, wow, I remember playing there as a kid, you know. So that's kind of how the recreation center came about.

We used to go to Mr. Franks around the corner by the alley and get candy two for a penny. And if you didn't had no money, he would give something you know, til you come back. There was a store on 7th Street. It was called the DGN. They took care of the neighborhood. They were Jewish people. They took care of the neighborhood. You didn't have to had no money and would give you something and your parent would pay it back maybe at the end of the month. When the riots came, their store didn't get burned. No one looted none of that. Because it had a guy named Mr. Tommy. He used to deliver the food to everybody's house. Then you would sign a piece of paper and that was your bill. It used to be back in the 60s, I was probably about eight or nine years old, we used to have an ice truck that came through here. Guys would come through on a wagon and brought in blocks of ice.

INDEXED CLIP TIME: 00:09:59.710 --> 00:11:26.100 SEGMENT SYNOPSIS: Dan Kerr interviews Reginald Thomas, Roosevelt Daniels, and Michael Vanison on September 14, 2019 during the Celebrate Petworth Festival. In this clip, the men discuss memories about businesses in Petworth. SUBJECTS: Petworth (Washington, D.C.); Local businesses

The TV used to cost you a quarter. A quarter is like [inaudible] the guy to come around and my grandmother needed to sign a waiver or whatever it was, she needed to sign something. You put a quarter in the TV machine. And it was always black and white. You're running around putting aluminum foil on antennas. And if you want to get color, we would come down here to the hardware store, the hardware store had a film. It was yellow, blue and green. You stick that on the face of the black and white TV. And that's how you got color. And the whole neighborhood around here, had got the TV.

Everybody had insurance company man. There wasn't nothing online. Your insurance man would come to your house once a month and you pay him for your health insurance or whatever type of insurance. And you could tell him cuz he always drove a Cadillac. You know, he had the biggest car but that's the way it was back then.

And like going back to what you were saying. It was a tight knit neighborhood. You know, like the insurance man with the MPD the police officer, the fire station. And we need everybody to detect this in the neighborhood. You know, the officers from the schools, Officer Pitman, we can go on and on. I mean, that's how tight knit this neighborhood was. You couldn't do anything without somebody else knowing.

And back to the establishment, there was a neighborhood funeral home here. It's no longer that it was called Latinese Funeral Home. It was on the corner of Georgia and Randolph. It's no longer there. They're quite a few establishment that are no longer here. So I remember those things as a child right going up to the Safeway when the Safeway was on Georgia and Randolph where it is now. But it was just a one level store. It didn't have the high rise over top of it. But this is a good community to grow up in. I mean, had a lot of fun here. You know, a lot of my friends, you know, grew up here some of us have moved away, but we still try to keep connections to this community, because it's important to us.

INDEXED CLIP TIME: 00:09:59.710 --> 00:11:26.100 SEGMENT SYNOPSIS: Dan Kerr interviews Reginald Thomas, Roosevelt Daniels, and Michael Vanison on September 14, 2019 during the Celebrate Petworth Festival. In this clip, the men discuss memories about fun things they used to do in Petworth. SUBJECTS: Petworth (Washington, D.C.); Rock Creek Park (Washington, D.C.)

You know, and we walked everywhere to the skating around Kalorama Road. And like I said, Rock Creek Park that was our playground. We'd go out every weekend, you know, riding bicycles. And actually back then, in the 60s, we had a little swimming hole at Rock Creek Park.

There wasn't no pool.

We didn't have a pool.

We'd go swimming down in Rock Creek Park. Under the waterfall.

INDEXED CLIP TIME: 00:15:30.000 --> 00:17:58.270 SEGMENT SYNOPSIS: Dan Kerr interviews Reginald Thomas, Roosevelt Daniels, and Michael Vanison on September 14, 2019 during the Celebrate Petworth Festival. In this clip, the men discuss the riots after MLK, Jr.'s assasination. SUBJECTS: Petworth (Washington, D.C.); Martin Luther King, Jr., assassination of; 1968 riots

There was one thing you were talking about was the riots and how people didn't focus on some buildings. What do you remember about that? The riots?

Basically the riots were mostly downtown over at 14th Street. Certain stores in the neighborhood where the merchant or the owner took care of that neighborhood, people from the neighborhood wouldn't let let others touch that store. That's what I do remember.

So this neighborhood people were not [inaudible]

Not a lot. Not Not a lot.

No, I remember sending the National Guard down New Hampshire Avenue. And actually, the day of the riot or before, when Dr. King got assassinated, I was in third grade, my teacher, Miss Jean. And she's a white woman, very beautiful Miss Jean. I'll never forget her. And she dismissed class early that day. And we asked her what happened and I remember when she was explaining to me that some people going to do some bad things, and we want to make sure you all are safe. And I remember walking down Shepherd Street towards my house, how somber everything about this. I mean, you hear like, you know, one of those movies with the trees. You heard nothing. I mean, everyone was walking home. I get chills. It always stuck in my mind about that day and the way she explaining to me that some people were going to do some bad things and we want to make sure you all are safe.

You know what I remember about the riot was going to carry out when everybody else was shutting down the establishment. She was open and and what gave people a place to go gather and meet up. And my father walking me down to go on to carry out the night of the assassination when there were police and National Guard going up and down Georgia Avenue. There were a few stores that will looted. There was one called a Top Value Stamps where you could take green stamps, you can go in and trade them for merchandise. Yeah, that's do I do remember getting looted, right. But most of the establishments along Georgia Avenue like Freddie's Barbershop, Guan's Carry Out, all those places, and they didn't get bothered because they were predominantly black owned places. And, and the community kind of looked out for each other like they were saying, in some respect, you know, so we kind of held together.

Our parents sometimes like they would give ... your mom gave that that thing that time when all of them were together at St. John's... you know, ... the cabaret ...

They used to meet and celebrate, you know what they accomplished that year all dressed up in a gowns and I mean a wonderful event and I have a picture of it. It would have been back in when the 70s.

But see if you if you go back to the library, I have pictures. There's a history section over there that chronicles Petworth, and it showed you some of the pictures from the streets in the 1940s. Because in the early 40s, my grandmother came from a little town called Washington, Georgia, and they were some of the first blacks along with his grandparents to move to this neighborhood. Which was predominantly white and a lot of Russians lived here. Because the house that we grew up in, a Russian family lived there. Right. So as time went on, more African Americans started to migrate to this neighborhood. And that's how it kind of came to be, you know. But it just reminds me a lot about a lot of the places that we played at some of the things that we did the stores and the merchants that were here when we were kids, you know. That's what reminds me most about Petworth, you know. Like "Truck" and him was saying, going to the swimming hole. We didn't have a swimming pool. We go to the swimming hole. You know, little stuff like that Miss Mason's carry out up the street. You know, it was so many things that bring back fond memories about this neighborhood.

And also, Petworth's been expanding. Since we were coming up from Brock Ridge Church Road to what, 13th Street to down through Spring Road up to [inaudible] that was Petworth [inaudible]

As kids we used to take out bottles now we collect bottles. [inaudible] What did we get, a nickle for them? Then we used to go up to the Safeway with wagons and carry people's groceries home. And some of those people live along way. This is only one grocery store, you know, had to go all the way to [inaudible]. You know, all the way up that hill. [inaudible]

Yeah, and that's the other thing since you brought up the churches. There's only one or two churches that were here when we were kids. That's the First Day of Baptist Church on New Hampshire and Randolph and the Seventh Day Adventist Church on 7th and Shepherd. [inaudible] So there's still some iconic places here in this in this community.

How did you guys keep your relationship up over all these years?

In my family, there's six of us. In your family...

There's eight of us.

There was four of us.

The rec center. The schools. And our parents. We saw each other every day. [inaudible] .

And that's the importance of our committee, our reunion committee because it keeps us connected. Because the even over 50 years of saying, some of us, we don't see each other every day. But when we put out the call and say, you know, we're going to do something or we find out that somebody's sick, or ill, we show up. We show up, you know. It's like a movie I saw, and what these people would come together once a year, for 50 years. So we kind of pattern ourselves after that, and we have a mission. And our mission is to keep Petworth's memories alive. You know, because a lot of our friends have gone on, you know, even though some of us have progressed and grown and got our own private lives and businesses, we still try to stay humble enough to stay in touch with one another. And that's how we stay connected.

INDEXED CLIP TIME: 00:23:01.450 --> 00:25:19.420 SEGMENT SYNOPSIS: Dan Kerr interviews Reginald Thomas, Roosevelt Daniels, and Michael Vanison on September 14, 2019 during the Celebrate Petworth Festival. In this clip, the men discuss their hopes for Petworth. SUBJECTS: Petworth (Washington, D.C.); Racial diversity

Where would you like to see Petworth, let's say 5-10 years from now?

Don't be calling on your parents when you get disciplined. {inaudible] You know, the structure like the streets are better, you know. When we came, the street car tracks, the train ... I remember when they pulled them up out the ground. Yeah. You know, it was a long time before [inaudible]

I think that Petworth is on the right path. Yeah. You have a multicultural, all different cultures in here now. And like when we first moved here actually, [inauble] I think it's coming back to form. You know, it's so I mean, it's just so friendly. And so everybody smiles. And it's always been like this in Petworth. It was a hidden gem all these years. I mentioned that to somebody else [inaudible]

Here's the deal, the thing I would like to see most happen is for the incoming residents to remember who was here, you know, everything transformed, every life is about transformation and change. You know, but I'm a strong believer in this, that you can't talk about the present unless you understand the past. You know, and that's all that I'm like to convince you about this continuum of where we came from, continue for the communities and grow ... and like my friend "Truck" says, to continue to be diverse because, you know, we have joined one another to make the whole area better. Yeah.

And just to piggyback on that... keep it progressive. Like the rec center. Our families had to fight to get that rec center. That was in the 60s. And, like the early 70s, who the mayor was? Mayor Washington to get a rec center for us, so we were the only neighborhood that didn't have a rec center. Yeah.

Y'all keep the fight, we love to come back here and see the neighborhood has really changed.

But I like to say we had that hill there and when we played football, we had to throw the ball over here. [inaudible] But it was a joy, man. I really enjoyed my childhood.

I'm just glad we had this opportunity to share our experiences because we came here not knowing what this would be like. And the young lady asked us if we would share our history about Petworth because she saw our t shirts. And I'm just glad we were able to do this so that more people will know that who we are. So when they see us, and want to do events in the community and know that we just not some upstart organization, we are nonprofit, we give everything back to the community, everything.

And we would like to get in touch with the folks who is giving this show. We just hope you know that they can see how not how we do it, but they can get to meet others that grew up with us. You know, bring it all together. come up with something good.

Thank you very much for your time. I really appreciate it.