Late-life conundrum: Five or six decades out of high school, how many of us care to partake in a classmates reunion? Having just gathered the Yorktown High School Class of 1971 for our 45th-year wing-ding, I can say with certitude that for us baby-boomers the answer is…enough, but not most. […]

No fewer than three currently hot novels contain scenes in our own fair Arlington. And I’m not just talking about the Pentagon, the stuff of much pulp fiction, but quotidian landmarks. These literary passages may prove that New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand was wrong when she called Arlington a “soul-less […]

Progress sometimes means digging up the past. That’s what the earnest folks at Central United Methodist Church in Ballston are confronting as they lay plans to level their own 91-year-old building. In its place on Fairfax Drive they envision a modern sanctuary, renewed preschool space and 128 new parking spaces. […]

If we make it through Metro’s SafeTrack repair binge, what will we loyal subway users have gained? Worst-case scenario: a continually unsafe system underfunded and losing ridership to hipster services like Uber. So said panelists at the Sept. 14 Arlington Committee of 100 dinner, brainstorming on solutions for a Metro […]

If there is a first family of Arlington, it would be the Balls. These landowners going back to the Revolutionary War lent their name to our crossroads neighborhood of Ballston. Last month I got the chance to pose questions to fifth-generation descendant Barbara Ball Savage. She’s the daughter of the […]

Our county’s best-hidden landmark could use some TLC. The original Powhatan Springs, off Wilson Blvd. behind the Dominion Hills swimming pool, was once a vital watering hole for Indians, soldiers and presidents. But when I poked around the site Labor Day weekend, Arlington’s unusual freshwater spring appeared worse for wear. […]

“Soccer is a communist sport.” Hard to believe this comment came from an Arlington high school coach in the early 1960s, when that global game was still being overshadowed here by mainstream football, basketball and baseball. I flashed back to it when the Arlington School Board voted Aug. 18 to […]

The glass-tower village of Rosslyn is known historically for its long-vanished pawnshops and brothels. But back in the first half of the 20th century, it was the scene for a more wholesome activity: bowling. This was among the Arlington heritage tidbits I learned when I sat in on the weekly […]

Dueling flyers are blanketing homes around Westover in these dog days of August. The anonymous one warned sternly against a proposal to designate Westover Village as an historic district. Current and “future owners of your property are at risk of losing certain property rights very soon,” it declared. “Those include […]

One of our county’s most horrific crimes, a half-century ago, was just confirmed as an open case at the Arlington Police Department. The brutal beating of Brenda Sue Pennington, in January 1965, drew coverage for years from the Evening Star (front page), The Washington Post, the Northern Virginia Sun and […]