Interview with Linda Zottoli, September 12, 2021

I'm Linda Zottoli.

Awesome, nice to meet you, Linda. So, our question today is what's your relationship to Adams Morgan?

Well, I've lived here now for almost 15 years, but when I was about seven, my sister who was losing her hearing was brought every twice a week, I think, after school to the Washington Hearing Society on, Calvert Street across from Mama Ayeshas. And I was brought along, being not old enough to leave alone, and we actually—we lived out south of Alexandria and, in Alexandria, we picked up two other young people and took them to the Washington Hearing Society where they got lessons in learning how to lip-read.

One of one of the—Leroy—one of the people we picked up in Alexandria actually was totally deaf, and he worked at the bowling alley in Alexandria as the pin boy, putting out the pins before—this would have been in 1953-54. So they—it wasn't automatic. So being deaf was definitely an asset for that job and so it was sort of inappropriate for him to be learning lip-reading. He should have been learning ASL, American Sign Language. And that was one of the problems we had with the Washington Hearing Society, it was very anti-teaching sign language. Trying to keep everybody dependent on using what hearing they have.

But anyway, there I would be in Adams Morgan right across from where the streetcar turned away. So that would be a lot of what I would be doing in the afternoon, and I don't think I was able to wander very much, but where Walter Pierce Park now is, was not an inviting place. It seemed like, you know, not only, you know, there were no paths. And it also was junky and had trash and things like that.

Well that's a good lead-in to our next question, which is, is there a space in Adams Morgan that is particularly meaningful to you? And how has that space changed over time?

Well, that particular space I walk through there all the time, for one thing to get to the subway, or anything over in Woodley Park, but it's it's a beautiful Park and its used so well. You know, the dog park is filled with the people who have dogs and the playground is filled with the people who have children, some overlap, and the basketball court is used in various ways in the morning when I walk through, it's where the little tiny children from daycare centers are brought out on the basketball court. And then in the afternoon, it's used by people playing basketball. It's nice to have the fence open, the gates open sometimes to the soccer field now. So so the children can go on—

Yeah, it sounds like its switched from not as welcoming of an area is a real community asset.

Yes. It really has.

That's awesome. What do—what does that like specific change mean to you? And you've talked about that a little bit already about how it's nice to feel that access. But does it mean anything else to you? Like the change from how that area used to be versus how it is now.

Well, it's a community area now. I understand that all the Walter Pierce was a real instigator of it and it's, it's nice to think of somebody in the community having been the instigator of what has become a real community asset.

Was there anything else you wanted to add?

In the early '60s, my sister lived—the same sister who was, by this time, quite deaf—and her deaf husband lived on Lanier Place in the apartments. Lanier Place has changed a lot. In the '60s, it had a lot of group homes. Group homes are—I don't know of any other place at this point. So, the whole flavor of that—the noise level is gone. And, and the income level has gone way up.