Charles Free

Interview with Charles Free
Interview Date: December 18, 2024
Interview: Randy Norton
Transcriber: Betsy Barnett
Editor: Ellen Hirzy

This interview transcript is the property of the Ruth Ann Overbeck Capitol Hill History Project.
Not to be reproduced without permission.

START OF INTERVIEW
NORTON: This is Randy Norton interviewing Charles Free. We are at Christ Church, 620 G Street SE, and it is December 18, 2024, at approximately ten minutes after 11:00. Good morning.
FREE: Good morning.
NORTON: All right. Before we start —and I know I have looked at this—but you have written a book about your time and your years on Capitol Hill and in Washington, DC, called Bygone Days: My Family’s Six Generations in the Nation’s Capital, published by Mascot Books. And if anyone reads this [interview] and we’ve left something out, then that’s the place they could go look at. All right. Let me ask you this. Have you lived on Capitol Hill your whole life?
FREE: I have indeed.
NORTON: Same block?
FREE: Same block.
NORTON: Same house?
FREE: Same house.
NORTON: Okay. And what block are we talking about?
FREE: Well, it’s one block over from the Marine Barracks [Marine Barracks Washington, Eighth Street SE].
NORTON: Okay.
FREE: With the alley in between.
NORTON: Okay. And that would be on Tenth Street then.
FREE:  Right, uh-huh.
NORTON: And probably the 700 block is what we’re talking about.
FREE: 700 block.
NORTON: And, just, when we get started, your parents were married, I think you said in the book, in the 1930s.
FREE: 1932.
NORTON: Okay. And you were born sometime after that?
FREE: Born on January the first.
NORTON: And, in terms of that block, it’s not the same now, of course, as it was then, is it?
FREE: Not at all.
NORTON: Okay. What are your first memories of Capitol Hill?
FREE: Well, let me say this. The first memory is of World War II, when the air raids sounded, and my father placed blankets or sheets over the windows, and we would go to the rear of the house and have one candle burning until the all-clear sounded. And, of course, my imagination prompted me that the Japs, as the Americans called them in those days, were right outside my back door. And all the neighborhood kids would collect old pots and pans for the military to melt down and use in the construction of tanks and planes.
NORTON: Okay. So, you collected all kinds of metal, then.
FINE: Yes, right. But then when the war ended, my parents took me on the avenue—that’s Pennsylvania Avenue, to all nonnative Washingtonians—to celebrate America’s victory over the Japanese, Germans, and Italians.
NORTON: Do you remember where this celebration was?
FREE: Well, it was all along Pennsylvania Avenue, probably from the 700 block on up to First Street.
NORTON: This would be on Northwest, then, at that point?
FREE: Southeast. It was all over the city, of course.
NORTON: I see. But your celebration was on Pennsylvania Avenue, the First through 700 block.
FREE: Exactly. And where CVS Pharmacy is right now on the corner [7th Street and Pennsylvania Avenue SE], that used to be called Peoples Drug.
NORTON: Right. I even remember it being called Peoples. [Interviewee laughs]
FREE: Well, church bells were ringing all over the city, and people were yelling and dancing in the streets and celebrating the return of peace to our country. We heard that Hitler had shot himself in his bunker. Mussolini had been hanged upside down in the streets, done by his own people. And the emperor of Japan was spared. But people like [Prime Minister] Tojo and other military leaders in Japan were put on trial and were killed as a result…. Then came the Nuremberg trials in Germany to pass judgment on other leaders of the Third Reich.
NORTON: Right. And you were following this even though you were fairly young at the time.
FREE: Oh, yes.
NORTON: Okay, okay.
FREE: Well, you can imagine incidents like that would put a deep memory on children’s lives.
NORTON: Let me ask you a question about something you raised earlier. As you say, your first memory was air-raid drills and that sort of thing. How many times did you actually have the air-raid sirens go off so that you’d have to put blankets up on the windows and that sort of thing?
FREE: Well, I would say at least every week or every other week or once a month.
NORTON: And you went through the same drill each time? You …
FREE: Oh, yes.
NORTON: … put up the blankets and went to the back or …
FREE: Oh, yes.
NORTON: … the center part of the house and that’s where …
FREE: And we would, of course, always take some food and drinks with us because we never knew how long that would last. More or less, it might be 20 or 30 minutes.
NORTON: Okay.
FREE: Something like that. And they had people called captains who would come around and search the neighborhoods if you had left too many lights on in the house. That was a big no-no.
NORTON: It’s interesting that here in DC, which was far away from the active war, either in Europe or Asia, that they would do that on such a regular basis.
FREE: Well, there were German U-boats who came up the east coast and were captured in Florida and elsewhere.
NORTON: Okay.
FREE: And, then, the next thing was when President [Franklin Delano] Roosevelt died in 1945. My mother sent me to Eighth and G Street SE to watch the president’s body transported from the Navy Yard to lie in state at the White House.
[Interviewer and interviewee discuss the location and route of FDR’s funeral procession after it arrived at Union Station.]
NORTON: Okay. And so you saw that. Were there other people lined up? I’m sure.
FREE: Oh, three and four rows of people, hundreds of people.
NORTON: This is on Eighth Street SE.
FREE: Right on the corner of the Marine Barracks.
NORTON: Okay.
FREE: And they came from the Navy Yard all the way up to Pennsylvania Avenue and then turned up to Northwest [Washington, toward the White House]. So I was fortunate to witness that phase of history.
NORTON:  Sure.
FREE: And I also remember hearing over the radio that President [Harry S.] Truman had ordered the atomic bomb to be dropped on Hiroshima, Japan. That was on August the sixth [1945]. And he did it again on Nagasaki on August the ninth because the emperor refused to surrender.
NORTON: Right, right.
FREE: And then my parents took me to Union Station, where we welcomed our relatives and other sailors and soldiers back home from the war.
NORTON: So you had family who were in the service.
FREE: Oh, yes. Some were in Europe and some were in Guam in the Pacific Ocean, for example.
NORTON: Okay. Now, you had brothers and sisters, did you not?
FREE: I only had one sibling, one sister.
NORTON: And, all right. And were you older or was she older?
FREE: I was older.
NORTON: Okay.
FREE: Almost eight years older. And she passed away January of 2022.
NORTON: All right. So let’s go back to the neighborhood a little bit since we are—or do you have any other memories that you’re thinking about? I know you’ve made some notes, and so I just want to make sure, you know, when we’re talking about early days, and I think we’ve covered it pretty well. But …
FREE: Well, after life returned to normal and things started to settle down, we didn’t have a television at that time …
NORTON: Right.
FREE: … but one of my aunts and uncles had a 12-inch-screen TV. [Both laugh] And we would watch Howdy Doody and other shows at that time. And of course, I also listened to all the 78-rpm records.
NORTON: That’s what they had back then.
FREE: Oh, yes. By such stars as Bing Crosby, the Ink Spots, Sarah Vaughan, Rosemary Clooney, Perry Como, and Nat King Cole. And then my parents bought me many American Indian items because I always had a special interest in the American Indians. So, one of my aunts’ cousins worked at a reservation in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and that’s where my mother and father would send for the things. So, I had two headdresses or war bonnets, a tom-tom drum, a tomahawk, and a thunderbird necklace.
NORTON: Do you remember when or why you had this interest in American Indians?
FREE: I don’t know, but I remember my mother having given me a book and she inscribed it “To my little Injun.” {Both laugh]
NORTON: I-N-J-U-N, right?
FREE: Exactly.
NORTON: Okay.
FREE: And, of course, that had different chapters on the different tribes throughout the United States.
NORTON: Okay, okay.
FREE: And in the summer my grandparents were in the coal and ice business right behind all of our properties.
NORTON: Okay.
FREE: So we would go into the icehouse to keep cool in the summer.
NORTON: Where was their coal and ice business?
FREE: Well, over the years from 1910, 1918, and 1923, my grandparents had purchased 719, 723, and 727.
NORTON: Tenth Street.
FREE: Yes, right on Tenth Street. Because they first lived in 719, which was rather small, and when they started to have more children, they moved into 727.
NORTON: Okay. It was bigger, I assume.
FREE: A little bit bigger. And, then, she bought 723 in 1923, but they never lived there. She kept that rented out. So, only five families had lived there from 1864 until the current time.
NORTON: But where was the ice and coal business?
FREE: Well, they started out with just the icehouse, and that was behind 719.
NORTON: So it would have been essentially in the alley.
FREE: In the alley.
NORTON: Okay.
FREE: And then they expanded into coal and sold some wood as well. And they had big coal sheds in the back, which we all played in, and we learned the different kinds of coal that they sold. And they had horse and buggies and carriages in those days to deliver the coal to different …
NORTON: Now, do you remember the horses and buggies or …
FREE: No, I don’t, because the last horse they had was in 1928.
NORTON: Okay.
FREE: And she got sick.
NORTON: The horse got sick.
FREE: The horse got sick and my grandfather went out back, from my understanding, and shot the horse.
NORTON: Okay. So what do you remember about how they got the coal and ice transported when you came along?
FREE: Well, by 1928, they started having trucks.
NORTON: Okay.
FREE: And they would weigh the trucks on a scale out there empty. And then, when they put the coal in it, they would weigh it again to find out how much the total weight was. So then they would deliver the coal. Sometimes people only wanted one bucket of coal. Sometimes they wanted a whole ton of coal. So my grandmother had an office out there where people would come in and order the coal. And, also, she was very closemouthed with peoples’ secrets. Because they would always come and share their stories with her and ask her advice on their family problems. So she took to her grave many secrets of neighborhood people.
NORTON: This would be your mother.
FREE: My grandmother. She was born in Georgetown, and her father was a butcher, and they lived on Canal Road NW. And that’s where she learned all of her weights and measures and that sort of thing, from her father. And after he retired, he had built ten houses on Canal Road and they lived in the end double house. Then they started to run a country store from that.
NORTON: This is up in Georgetown.
FREE: Up in Georgetown.
NORTON: All right. So …
FREE: And she was engaged to someone on her same economic and social level, which is what was done in those days.
NORTON: Sure.
FREE: And my grandfather was born in an old house across from the Washington Navy Yard. And his father had been killed somehow. Because he and a teenager had started a cabinetmaking business in Baltimore and, right after the Civil War, Washington was the place to come and start a business.
NORTON: Sure.
FREE: So by that time, he had married a girl in Baltimore, and they had had one daughter. And so he brought them to Washington to get them settled, and he went back to get his part of the funds from the business to bring back and take care of his family. Well, his wife never heard from him again. And she put out feelers …
NORTON: All right, let me just, because I have to keep this somewhat straight …
FREE: Sure.
NORTON: This was your grandfather?
FREE: My grandfather. My mother’s father and mother.
NORTON: Okay. All right. And, so, your grandmother was originally from Baltimore.
FREE: No. She was originally from Georgetown.
NORTON: I see.
FREE: And her people and my grandfather’s people were all from Germany and they either landed in Baltimore or sometimes in New York.
NORTON: Okay, okay. So, all right, shifting gears back to the business and the neighborhood, how was the ice transported? Or how was it made and transported? Was it collected somewhere else?
FREE: Well, they bought all their ice from Carey’s Icehouse, which was out on 13th Street SE. And they also sold ice cream and that sort of thing.
NORTON: Who? Carey’s or …
FREE: Carey’s. And one of the alleys out there is named after the Carey family.
[Discussion to clarify location of Carey’s]
FREE: So they would get their huge blocks of ice from there and the icehouse was all lined with canvas to keep it frozen.
NORTON: This is your …
FREE: My grandmother. Right.
NORTON: Your grandmother’s icehouse. Okay. All right.
FREE: And so, my grandfather knew, of course, how to split and break the ice into different sizes and different prices. And I’ve still got his ice tongs and a couple of his ice picks in my kitchen.
NORTON: Okay.
FREE: So, that’s how the ice was handled.
NORTON: Did people come by to buy it, or did your grandparents deliver it?
FREE: Most of the time they came by to buy it.
NORTON: Okay.
FREE: But the coal, of course, unless they only purchased a bushel of it, was delivered to their homes.
NORTON: And I guess back then most of the homes around here used coal, right?
FREE: Oh, definitely.
NORTON: Yeah.
FREE: Definitely. And in 1940 coal was going out to heat peoples’ homes, and oil was coming in.
NORTON: I see.
FREE: But in 1941, of course, the US went to war, the Second World War. And so the government took all the oil.
NORTON: They needed the oil, right.
FREE: To run the tanks and the planes.
NORTON: And the ships.
FREE: And the ships. So, that revived the coal business. My grandfather had died in the late 1930s, so my grandmother continued the business with her employees all through the Second World War up until about 1949 or 1950, when she retired.
NORTON: And, as you said, you actually remembered going back out there and playing around the coal bins and the coal …
FREE: Oh, yes, because my parents used coal in our house, of course. And we had a coal furnace.
NORTON: And this is your same house that you have now, right?
FREE: Exactly.
NORTON: So, when did that change over to either oil or gas? Or did it?
FREE: Well, it wasn’t until about 1973 that my grandmother’s brother had died, and he left my mother and a couple of aunts some money. And they put in a gas furnace.
NORTON: Okay. But before that it was coal?
FREE: Before that it was coal.
NORTON: Okay, okay.
FREE: And then, later on in the late ‘80s is when my mother and I had the house renovated.
NORTON: Okay. Your block now has, across the street, it’s got the new Tyler School [renamed Shirley Chisholm Elementary School] and the big ball field for Tyler. What was there when you first remember, in that block? In other words, your house and the houses that you describe were on the far side across from, obviously, where the Tyler field is now.
FREE: Right. Well, I first attended the old Tyler School on 11th and I Streets SE, down the block.
NORTON: So, it was further—all right. I am just trying to get a sense. When you say I Street, was it all the way across where the freeway is now? Of course, the freeway wasn’t there then.
FREE: No. It was on 11th Street beyond I Street SE.
NORTON: Okay. So, it wasn’t in the same block that Tyler School is now.
FREE: No.
NORTON: Okay. All right. So, what was there in that block?
FREE: Well, people’s residences.
NORTON: Okay.
FREE: All on Tenth Street, on G Street, on I Street, and on 11th Street there were commercial buildings.
NORTON: Okay.
FREE: So, I went to kindergarten, first, and second grades in the old Tyler School. And each child was sent out into the large hallway to read the clock on the wall. Schoolrooms didn’t have their own clocks at that time. [Interviewer laughs] So, that’s the way we learned how to tell time.
NORTON: Okay.
FREE: And I skipped the second half of the second grade because there were no full-grade jumps that year. Otherwise …
NORTON: What does that mean, full-grade jumps?
FREE: Well, if you were smart enough and passed certain tests and all, you didn’t have to continue going in that particular grade.
NORTON: In that grade. I see.
FREE: But they didn’t have full-grade skips at that time. They only had the half a grade in that year.
NORTON: I see, I see.
FREE: So, I would have been 16 to get out of high school instead of 17, if that had happened.
NORTON: But it didn’t.
FREE: It didn’t.
NORTON: Okay, all right.
FREE: [Laughs] Well, the government wanted to do away with the old Tyler and two other small elementary schools, and build a larger school, which became John Tyler Elementary School.
NORTON: Do you remember what the other two schools were?
FREE: I don’t, but they were all built maybe in the 1880s and 1890s.
NORTON: Now, were they—because I know when you were coming up, DC was still segregated, right?
FREE: Oh, yes. The court passed that law in 1954, but it didn’t take effect until ’55.
NORTON: Okay. But before that, well, when you started school, was it still segregated?
FREE: Oh, yes.
NORTON: Okay. And so were the other schools in that block schools for Black people, or do you remember?
FREE: Well, they had their own elementary schools elsewhere in the city.
NORTON: I see.
FREE: And the first Black child that we had was in the ninth grade.
NORTON: And that would be which—it would have been [Lemon G.] Hine [Junior High School]?
FREE: That would have been in the old Hine Junior High School, which was torn down. And, then, another Hine was built, and that’s even been torn down.
NORTON: Correct, correct. Okay. Well, I’ll ask you about Hine in just a second. All right. So, the whole side where the ball field is now for Tyler was houses, right? That block, of the 700 block.
FREE: Right. So, as I said earlier, in 1941, the occupants of all those houses on the opposite side of Tenth Street and all the commercial establishments remained there because the war came along, and they didn’t take their properties. So they waited until 1947, when World War II was well over, and finally they gave their notice to vacate the properties.
NORTON: So, did they give notice as to why they were taking the properties?
FREE: Oh, yes.
NORTON: What was that?
FREE: To build the new school.
NORTON: Okay. So the new school would have been built in the late 1940s?
FREE: It was started in ’48 and it was finished in 1950.
NORTON: Okay. And they knocked down all those houses there on the other side from you on Tenth Street, right? All right. Let me ask you this, because you talked about businesses, and I know your grandparents had the coal and ice business. Any other commercial businesses you remember on Tenth Street in your neighborhood?
FREE: Well, there was only—Let me see here. Let me think a second.
NORTON: Okay.
FREE: There was a large grocery store at the corner of Tenth and G, and the entrance to that store was in the same spot that the main entrance of the new Tyler School is.
NORTON: Okay. So, it was on that side of Tenth Street.
FREE: Right. And all the other houses from there down to I Street were strictly residences.
NORTON: Do you remember the name of the grocery store?
FREE: Well, let me think here. [Pause while sound of paper being moved is heard.] If I could just regress a little bit, because the last house that was standing before it was demolished on Tenth Street was occupied by a family called the McLeans.
NORTON: M-C-capital  …
FREE: L-E-A-N. And they had lived in that house for 75 years.
NORTON: Wow.
FREE: There was a brother and two sisters who remained. And the brother had worked for a congressman. So he left. And I guess when he retired, he went to Nanjemoy, Maryland, very southern Maryland. And he had a lot of apple trees on his property.
NORTON: This is the property here on Tenth Street.
FREE: Well, that was the house that he also lived in, but he left when he retired.
NORTON: But the apple trees were in DC or in Maryland?
FREE: In Maryland.
NORTON: Okay, okay.
FREE: And, lucky for him, he got the contract to sell all the apples to the Safeway stores. And years later there was an argument between the two remaining sisters, after all those years, and the one sister left and moved across the bridge somewhere.
NORTON: These are the McLean sisters.
FREE: The McLeans. And so, Miss Lily, as we all called people in those days by their first names, called and asked my mother if she could come over and stay with her for a while. And my mother said, “Of course.” But my mother said, “Don’t look out the curtains.” Well, of course, Miss Lily had to part the curtains at the very same second that the big iron ball knocked down her house.
NORTON: Aw, geez.
FREE: A beautiful house built in 1844.
NORTON: Okay. And that’s the one that ended up being the one closest to the corner there?
FREE: Well, it was the last house …
NORTON: Before the store.
FREE: … right at the driveway now that goes into the parking lot for the teachers and so on. And at the very end of I Street, on the corner, were two houses that had had slave quarters.
NORTON: Really.
FREE: Built in 1794. So, they even knocked those down. You see this was before there were any historic districts. So they could do whatever they chose to.
NORTON: Late ’40s they weren’t as concerned about preservation as they are now.
FREE: Oh, no. Definitely not. So, the new Tyler School was then built.
NORTON: Now let me ask you this. Do you remember actually you yourself seeing the demolition across the street?
FREE: Absolutely.
NORTON: What do you remember about it?
FREE: Well, it didn’t take too long. In several days, it was all down. And I think they left the commercial properties until the end. I know there was a big place that sold boats and there were some smaller …
NORTON: Boats?
FREE: Yeah.
NORTON: What kind of boats?
FREE: Smaller boats that people could just use for enjoying themselves on the river.
NORTON: But they were real boats. I mean, you could—yeah.
FREE: Oh, yes.
NORTON: And that business was on 11th Street on the same block, or on Tenth?
FREE: On 11th Street, on 11th Street.
NORTON: Were there any other businesses on your block of Tenth Street other than your coal and ice company?
FREE: Not that I recall.
NORTON: All right. What other businesses do you remember in that block?
FREE: Well, I know that one of the first principals of the new Tyler School lived on the corner of 11th and G. And her father had been a doctor, so that’s where he lived. And then, after she left, they had one other principal of the school as long as I was there.
NORTON: Okay.
FREE: And that was the first school in the District that had a home economics class, a hard of hearing class, and a sight class.
NORTON: What kind of class—sight?
FREE: Hard of, you know, difficult in …
NORTON: Oh, vision. Yes.
FREE: Yes, a vision class. And, of course, after 75 years of being named after an American president for three-quarters of a century, it has recently been renamed for the Honorable Shirley Chisholm, a former Black female member of the Congress.
NORTON: Okay. Well, let me shift gears here. Let’s go back to you. You went to the old Tyler School. How far did you go with old Tyler?
FREE: Through the sixth grade.
NORTON: Okay. And, then, you went to where?
FREE: The old Hine.
NORTON: Now, I think in your book you sort of called it “horrible Hine”. Was it known as that back then?
FREE: Yes, indeed, it was.
NORTON: And why was that?
FREE: Well, all kinds of pranks and a little law breaking and so on used to occur there. I know I was very small and young for my age and I was picked on, as I say in my book, by a much older crowd. And I considered them rather backward because some of them, when I was 11 years old in the seventh grade, they were 13 and 14 and 15 years old. [Laughs]
NORTON: There’s always a big age gap in junior high school.
FREE: That’s right. So, of course, I never told my family about it, you know. They threatened me with certain incidences.
NORTON: The bullies are the older kids.
FREE: Yeah, the bullies.
NORTON: Yes.
FREE: And I just kept quiet about it. I didn’t even report it to the principal because I knew that things could get worse if I had done that.
NORTON: Okay. So, after that, you went where?
FREE: After that I went to Eastern High School. And talk about integration. The tenth grade probably had 70 percent White students and 30 percent Black.
NORTON: Okay. And that would have been what? The first time …
FREE: In the tenth grade.
NORTON: … there was any integration.
FREE: Yes.
NORTON: Yeah, okay.
FREE: And, then, in the 11th grade, it split to about 50/50 percent. And the last year, out of 1,500 students, there were 50 White students remaining.
NORTON: So what happened to the other White students during that time? Do you remember?
FREE: Well, I think many of their families left the neighborhoods because they didn’t want them to go to school with Black children or other so-called non-White groups.
NORTON: Okay, okay.
FREE: But in the very end before the graduating class occurred, there was a Black student and myself running for president of the class. And a lot of the Black students didn’t like the Black fellow. So I was voted in to be president of the class.
NORTON: Okay. All right. And this would have been, all right, sometime later 1950s, right? That we’re talking about.
FREE: Right.
NORTON: Okay. Let me ask you one other thing that just occurred to me. Were you born at home, or where were you born?
FREE: I was born in the old Sibley Hospital on North Capitol Street [North Capitol and Pierce Streets NW]. And 20 years later I went back there for a little nasal operation, and one week later they tore the building down.
NORTON: Wow. So, you were among their last patients.
FREE: The last patients.
NORTON: Yeah, okay. What else do you remember about the segregation in the city, while we’re talking about that, when you were growing up?
FREE: Well, of course, the neighborhoods that had many Black students living in them had the majority of students in those particular schools. Whereas, perhaps, in some of the so-called wealthier neighborhoods in upper Northwest and so on didn’t have quite as many.
NORTON: What about in this part of town? What about on Capitol Hill? Was it segregated here, too? I mean, were there, you know, certain areas that were mostly White and certain areas or blocks that were mostly Black?
FREE: More or less. More or less. Now, in the alley behind Tenth Street, between Ninth and Tenth, there were five alley houses, brick houses. That whole alley was called Abner’s Court. Mr. Abner had built several houses. He lived in one of them on Ninth Street. And all those five brick houses had outdoor privies.
NORTON: Wow.
FREE: And I played with all the Black kids who lived in there. We played in the alley and so on. And then in 1956 they were torn down.
NORTON: The alley houses.
FREE: Right.
NORTON: Now, Mr. Abner, was he White or Black?
FREE: He was White. He was a fairly well-to-do gentleman.
NORTON: Okay. But he built the alley houses.
FREE: Right.
NORTON: Do you remember—and I’m going to get to Christ Church in a minute—but do you remember there were alley houses behind Christ Church?
FREE: Oh, yes.
NORTON: And what do you remember about them?
FREE: Well, first of all, the very large house on the corner of the alley, right across from the church, was occupied by the Thompson milk people [Thompson’s Dairy]. And, as time went on, that house used to be extended at least another third in length behind the current house. And they had their offices and milk company down on Seventh Street somewhere.
NORTON: Seventh Street Northwest, as I recall.
FREE[EH1]: No. That was in Southeast, too.
NORTON: Southeast, okay. All right. Okay. And this was the Thompson folks.
FREE: Thompsons. Mm-hmm. Thompson’s milk people.
NORTON: I remember Thompson’s milk.
FREE: Yeah, yeah.
NORTON: All right. When we’re talking about the house that they lived in, was it the one across—was it on G Street or was it on, you know, what is it, E Street? Which is the other end of the block.
FREE: No, it was on G Street itself.
NORTON: So, it’s just right across the alley there.  
FREE: Yeah. And now the house is under renovation.
NORTON: I see that. Yes. Okay, okay. All right. But in terms of the alley houses behind Christ Church, going back to that, what do you remember about them?
FREE: There weren’t as many from what I remember.
NORTON: There weren’t as many as there were behind your block.
FREE: No. That’s right.
NORTON: Do you remember how many there were and where they were located?
FREE: Not too far from the Thompson house, I think. And they were fairly small. That’s about all I remember.
NORTON: Okay. Were they knocked down, too, or are they still there?
FREE: I think a couple of them further down the alley are still there. But the ones behind that big house were knocked down.
NORTON: How about directly behind Christ Church? Were there alley houses back there, too? I mean, I sometimes have heard that they may have been sort of where the parking lot is now, but I don’t know if that’s true or not.
FREE: You may be right, but of course, you know, when I went to Christ Church and most of the young people, we didn’t go out that far outside. You know, our time was in the parish hall and in the church and in the front of G Street.
NORTON: Okay, okay. All right. Well, let me just shift gears to—Let’s talk about Christ Church here. You were baptized here?
FREE: Let me see. I want to look at a couple of my notes here.
NORTON: Sure.
FREE: I was baptized at Christ Church and I was three months and 12 days old.
NORTON: Okay.
FREE: Which is stated on my baptismal certificate.
NORTON: Okay. And that was fairly standard amongst Episcopalians back then.
FREE: Yeah. In those days it was traditional to baptize a group of infants on Easter Saturday. And also, of course, a male child would be required to have two adult males and one female as their sponsors.
NORTON: Their godparents …
FREE: Their godparents, who stood for them.
NORTON: Okay.
FREE: And each female, of course, would have two adult females and one adult male. And after being baptized, I then stayed home, of course, until my parents enrolled me at age four in the church’s Sunday School. And that lasted until I was seven years old. And when we and our members had a graduation ceremony in the parish hall, we were dressed in full-length white robes.
NORTON: Now, when you say a graduation ceremony, was there a particular reason why you graduated after age seven or is that …?
FREE: Well, that was the usual time that you spent.
NORTON: Just three years? Or …
FREE: Yeah, mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
NORTON: Okay, okay. And, then, you know, was there any kind of education or activities for kids in the church after that?
FREE: Well, first of all, in the Sunday School room, it had its own small altar in there.
NORTON: I see.
FREE: So, we used to sort of worship in there and we’d sing religious songs.
NORTON: And you wouldn’t go into the main church at that point. You’d have your services up at the Sunday School room.
FREE: Only if our parents or other relatives were attending a service, and then we’d go with them.
NORTON: Okay, okay. Where was the Sunday School room?
FREE: Well, it was at the end of the parish hall on the left side of the stage. The stage used to be at the very end of the parish hall.
NORTON: At the—I guess we’d call it the north end of the parish hall.
FREE: Right, mm-hmm.
NORTON: Okay.
FREE: And, of course, performances were given there, and there was a little room at the end of the stage in which the collection plates were taken and several employees there would count the money that was given from the service.
NORTON: Were they employees or volunteers?
FREE: Well, they were volunteers. They were members of the church.
NORTON: Yeah. Sure, sure. And the Sunday School room then—I mean, you know where the current nursery is, don’t you?
FREE: Right.
NORTON: Was it roughly in that area? Or …
FREE: Pretty much in that area. I thought it was fairly large when I think back on it.
NORTON: Was it as big as the current nursery, as far as you can tell?
FREE: Oh, yes.
NORTON: Okay. So, it was pretty much that whole area there.
FREE: Right. It had its own bathroom for the kids. And there was a wooden wall around that. And, of course, the parish hall in those days had the bare wooden floor. And that was used for basketball games.
NORTON: Did they have basketball nets up and everything?
FREE: They had basketball nets. They had all the proper paintings on the floor.
NORTON: Lines? Yeah.
FREE: So, later on, from age seven until 12, they had Bible classes back there.
NORTON: I see. And, when you say back there, was it, I mean …
FREE: It was on the right side of the parish hall coming into the entrance now. And they were all cordoned off, depending on which grade you were going in.
NORTON: I see. So, this is the Bible study, you know. You picked up with the Bible study after you graduated from what you called the Sunday School. Right.
FREE: Right. Mm-hmm.
NORTON: Okay, okay. Now, while we’re talking about the physical layout of Christ Church, do you remember when essentially this part was added on? There was the big renovation in the 1950s.
FREE: Oh, yes. Very much so.
NORTON: What do you remember about that?
FREE: [Laughs] A whole lot of destruction and building and so on. We didn’t pay too much attention to that technical kind of stuff.
NORTON: But you were kids at that point.
FREE: Yeah, yeah.
NORTON: Right. Okay.
FREE: But, at age 12, I was then confirmed here at Christ Church by Bishop Angus Dun[EH2].
NORTON: Okay.
FREE: And in those days, the bishop would come down from the Washington [National] Cathedral [3101 Wisconsin Avenue NW] to confirm parishioners. Now they go to the cathedral and get confirmed.
NORTON: Right. But back in that day, the bishop would go around to the different churches one Sunday a year or something like that.
FREE: Exactly, yes.
NORTON: Okay. And that was when you were 12?
FREE: When I was 12. Actually, I was still 11 because they always did it in December and my birthday was January the 1st. And they didn’t want me to wait another whole year to be confirmed.
NORTON: Did you actually have a separate confirmation class? Or was it just part of the Bible studies?
FREE: We had a separate class, and before we were confirmed we had to make a formal confession to another rector who came along with the bishop, in one of the side pews.
NORTON: So what sort of confession and what sort of things did 12-year-olds confess to? Or 11 1/2 -year-olds?
FREE: Well, when I think back on it, I think some of the questions were rather sensitive. [Interviewer laughs] But I won’t go into that.
NORTON: Well, that’s fine. I’m just curious. [Both laugh] And, I mean, if you didn’t give the answer that this other rector liked, you know, would they say “Mmm—we’re not going to confirm you”? Or did you ever have that happen? Or did you …
FREE: No, not to my knowledge. I think they felt we were being pretty honest about everything.
NORTON: Okay. But you had to do that. Was it the same day that you had the confirmation?
FREE: Oh, yes. Just an hour before the confirmation.
NORTON: I see, I see.
FREE: And then, I served as an acolyte or altar boy from the time I was 12 until I was 18.
NORTON: Now, did they call them acolytes or did they call them altar boys back then?
FREE: Either one. And I ended up serving many times at the 7:30 a.m. service. They had a 7:30 service.
NORTON: All right, yeah. While we’re talking about that, when were the services back when you were young?
FREE: Well, the 7:30, and then, there was a 9:00 and then an 11:00.
NORTON: Okay, okay. Were they all pretty well attended at that point?
FREE: Well, the 7:30 wasn’t as well attended as the later services.
NORTON: Was there music at both the 9:00 and the 11:00 or was …?
FREE: Oh, yes.
NORTON: How about at the 7:30?
FREE: Not that I recall. But they did have Holy Communion at 7:30. But, at the later services, they always seemed to emphasize morning prayer rather than Communion. That came later.
NORTON: And they would have Communion maybe once a month or something like that as I recall?
FREE: Something like that.
NORTON: At the later services. Okay. Okay. Well, what do you remember about being an acolyte or altar boy?
FREE: Well, of course, we had to change in the same room that’s used now.
NORTON: The sacristy there.
FREE: The sacristy.
NORTON: On the essentially left-hand side as you …
FREE: The left-hand side.
NORTON: … face the altar. Right.
FREE: And of course, the choir, and the small organ was also upfront there.
NORTON: So, the choir was there in the front?
FREE: The choir was on both sides.
NORTON: Okay. And you say there was a small organ. What was that like? What do you remember about that?
FREE: That was in the hallway right here.
NORTON: In what has been called the safe room in recent years, but it’s the one that leads now into the sanctuary from the parish hall.
FREE: And they had a large window cut through the wall there so the organist could see the members of the choir.
NORTON: Okay. Do you remember anything about that organ? I mean, other than …
FREE: Well, it was very small, of course. And as renovations continued, you know, now the choir is at the rear end of the church with a much, much larger organ. So, I was the only child in that choir at that time. All the others were adults.
NORTON: All right, let me just back up just a second. So, you were both an altar boy and a member of the choir. [Interviewee laughs] You were there a lot.
FREE: That’s for sure.
NORTON: So, you would sometimes come to the 7:30 service and be the acolyte, and then, come and be choir later on.
FREE: Right.
NORTON: Do you remember which service you sang at?
FREE: I think it was more like the 9:00 service in those years.
NORTON: Okay. How about at the 11:00? What sort of music was there at 11:00? Do you remember?
FREE: Well, pretty much the same. Lots of different hymns. And, of course, we had the old prayer book at that time, using “thou”s and “thee”s and so on.
NORTON: Right. 1928 prayer book. Yes, yes.
FREE: And many, many years later I went to Canterbury Cathedral in England and their service was exactly word-for-word as the Episcopal Church except, of course, we prayed for the president and they prayed for the monarch.
NORTON: [Laughs] Right. Well, okay. So was there a choir at 11:00?
FREE: Oh, yes. Oh, definitely.
NORTON: So, you had two different choirs then?
FREE: Right. Well, I think some of the same members could be in both choirs,
NORTON: I see. Did you sing at both the 9:00 and the 11:00.
FREE: No, no, I didn’t.
NORTON: Okay. But you say to the best of your recollection you were the only youth in that choir. In the 9:00 choir.
FREE: I had a boy’s soprano voice in those days. [Laughs] And the earliest rector that I ever remember at Christ Church was the Rev. [Edward] Gabler.
NORTON: Okay. And he’d been there for quite a while, right?
FREE: From [1928] until 1946. And he was a bachelor who lived with his mother in the rectory.
NORTON: Okay.
FREE: And I remember that it was purported in those days that half the female parishioners were in love with Mr. Gabler. [Both laugh]
NORTON: All right. And then, of course, in ’46 you got a new rector, right? Do you remember who that was?
FREE: Oh, gosh. There was Rev. [John H.] Stipe, there was Rev.[Carter] Gillis in those days.
NORTON: Well, according to the notes that I’ve been given by people in the know, it says Gillis—Carter Stellwagen Gillis was directly after Gabler [1946–1951].
FREE: That’s correct.
NORTON: Okay. And then, Stipe [1951–1953].
[Interviewer and interviewee clarify rectors’ dates of service.]
NORTON: How long did you continue to go to Christ Church? I mean, I know you’re still going, but was there a break in the action?
FREE: There was only a break in the early ’60s when I didn’t come for a year or two, and, to be truthful, I can’t even remember the reason.
NORTON: Why you didn’t come?
FREE: That must have been my rebellious period. [Both laugh]
NORTON: Okay, okay.
FREE: But I do remember in 1954, of course, Horace Peaslee, the noted architect, was in charge of restoring the church back to its original interior appearance.
NORTON: Do you remember what it looked like before that, before he did his renovation?
FREE: It was all Victorianized. All the walls and decorations and so on were just very heavily attached to the current walls and very, very Victorianized at that time.
NORTON: Was it darker than it is now?
FREE: Oh, yes. Mm-hmm.
NORTON: Okay, okay.
FREE: Very much. And of course, the altar that’s now against the back wall was the one that was used in those days. And of course, the brass Communion rail went all the way across the front of that and people knelt, in those days, to take Communion.
NORTON: Right. So, it was essentially— Yes. There’s the steps now that lead to the old altar and it was in front of that, then, essentially, the Communion rail.
FREE: Right. And the current altar, the altar table, was from the original church.
NORTON: Do you know where it had been stored or what …?
FREE: It was in the narthex where that other table is now.
NORTON: I see. So directly inside the main doors coming into the church was where that … And how did everybody know it was from the original church?
FREE: Well, because they did research when they were doing the renovation. And of course, the records.
NORTON: Sure.
FREE: You know, many of the records.
NORTON: Do you remember roughly when the renovation was?
FREE: It was in 1954 because …
NORTON: Okay. Did it take the whole year? Or did it last longer than … ?
FREE: Pretty much the whole year. And I remember when they even took up all the flooring inside the church and you could see down below.
NORTON: What did you see?
FREE: Well, just dirt and old boards and that sort of thing. That wasn’t kept that way too long.
NORTON: I see. Okay.
FREE: Another change was they used to have the beautiful eagle lectern up front on the left.
NORTON: And that stayed until the ’90s I think or something.
FREE: Yeah. And, of course, all the lessons and the prayers of the people were delivered from that. And only the sermon was delivered from the pulpit.
NORTON: Which is pretty much the same pulpit that we have now.
FREE: Oh, yes. Mm-hmm. And I understand that the lectern is in storage.
NORTON: Okay, okay. What else do you remember? Did you all still have services? Or how did that work while all this renovation was going on?
FREE: Well, they had it in the parish hall.
NORTON: Okay. Now, how long, do you remember, like, the basketball nets and the basketball court being down in the parish hall?
FREE: I don’t remember the exact number of years but quite a long time. Quite a long time.
NORTON: Was it still up, for example, when the renovation started in ’54?
FREE: Oh, yes. As far as I remember, yes.
NORTON: So, when you were having the services in the parish hall, it was there essentially on the basketball court.
FREE: Yes. Mm-hmm.
NORTON: Okay, okay, okay.
FREE: And my mother’s mother, whose name was Mary Bertha Rackey, at that time was married to my grandfather, William Godfrey Darmstead. And he had been baptized by his mother as Wilhelm Gottfried Darmstadt, which is where they were from in Germany originally. And when they came to this country, they landed in Baltimore. And they were German Lutherans on my grandmother’s side.
NORTON: I see.
FREE: And there were no Lutheran churches in their neighborhood. So they started to attend the Episcopal church.
NORTON: So, that’s how you ended up being Episcopalian.
FREE: Well, of course, not I per se, you know. Because all of my grandmother’s children had been either baptized here at Christ Church, or a few of them were at Grace Church in Georgetown, because that’s where she used to attend when she was much younger.
NORTON: I see, I see. Okay, well, how about we’re sitting now in the sort of the library and office area, office wing. Was that built during this renovation in the ’50s? Was this part?
FREE: I believe so.
NORTON: Okay. Do you remember how you essentially went from the sanctuary to the parish hall before this part was built?
FREE: You had to go outside.
NORTON: Really?
FREE: Mm-hmm.
NORTON: Okay, okay. And, then, they also built the room up above this, too. But this was all done in the 1954 renovation.
FREE: As far as I remember.
NORTON: Okay, okay. I also understand that the [Rowan] LeCompte windows, the ones essentially in the bell tower towards the back of the church, you know, right over the main entrance to the church, they were put in during that renovation. Does that sound right?
FREE: I believe so.
[Nan Robertson’s Christ Church Washington Parish: A Brief History (1994) says that the LeCompte windows were installed in 1969.]
NORTON: Do you remember what was involved in getting those there? Mr. LeCompte apparently did a lot of the stained glass windows up at the [National] Cathedral.
FREE: Right. That’s correct.
NORTON: But you don’t remember anything about …
FREE: I don’t, I don’t.
NORTON: … about how they came to hire Mr. LeCompte or any of that stuff.
FREE: No.
NORTON: Okay. Or who might have, you know, given the money to do it or anything like that?
FREE: No.
NORTON: Okay. That’s all right. I’m just picking your brain here as you can see. [Interviewee laughs]
FREE: And of course, one of the most famous parishioners of Christ Church was the “March King,” John Philip Sousa. And my great-grandaunt Maud Bradley on my father’s side was married to the son of Catherine Margaret Sousa, John Philip’s eldest and favorite sister. So I and my family were in-laws to the Sousa family.
NORTON: Do you remember the Sousa family?
FREE: Well, he died in 1932, so …
NORTON: Right. I see that. That’s one of the things we have on the window here. [Laughs] Yes.
FREE: Right. [Laughs]
NORTON: So, that would have been essentially before you were born, so.
FREE: Oh, yes.
NORTON: Yeah. Okay, okay.
FREE: And of course, he was confirmed here, he was married here, and buried from here. But he was not baptized at Christ Church because his mother was German and his father was Portuguese. So his mother took him to the [Concordia] German Evangelical Church at 20th and G Streets NW and had him baptized there. And also, I do remember that General [Leonard F.] Chapman [Jr.], former commandant of the United States Marine Corps, attended Christ Church.
NORTON: This is while you were going here. Yeah. Okay.
FREE: Yes. Because I went to class with his two daughters.
NORTON: Was that Sunday School class or was that …
FREE: No.
NORTON: … the school class?
FREE: Yeah.
NORTON: So, that would have been at Tyler School or Hine or …
FREE: Well, no. After the service, …
NORTON: Oh, I see.
FREE: … we also met at the back of the church and had different kind of discussions.
NORTON: Oh, okay.
FREE: Mm-hmm.
NORTON: And what age group did they still have the post-service discussions at the rear of the church?
FREE: Probably 11 to 15, in that area.
NORTON: Okay. Do you remember how many kids there were in the youth group or the kids’ group at that point?
FREE: I’d say a couple of dozen from my memory.
NORTON: Really?
FREE: Mm-hmm.
NORTON: Were most of them the kids of parish members or …?
FREE: Oh, yes.
NORTON: Okay. Did you also have other neighborhood kids who came to school and Sunday School and that sort of thing?
FREE: As far as I remember, yes. In the immediate area.
NORTON: And what do you remember about that?
FREE: Well, they participated in the services and in the other functions the same as all of us did.
NORTON: I have heard that sometimes the kids from the Ellen Wilson [Dwellings] units, which were just a block or so away from here [6th and G Streets NE, demolished 1996], would come to Christ Church. Do you remember anything about that?
FREE: Not specifically. No, I don’t.
NORTON: Okay. All right, all right. Other than Mr. Sousa and General Chapman, any other memorable folks that you recall going to Christ Church over the years.
FREE: Well, I’m sure there were but, you know, we didn’t take note too much of that kind of thing. [Laughs]
NORTON: You didn’t care about that sort of stuff. Right. Okay. And then, how about social activities back in the day. Were there …?
FREE: Well, sometimes they had dances, and they had lots of bazaars in the parish hall. People would donate different objects, and then you could purchase those if you wanted to, to help the church.
NORTON: Okay. In terms of the dances, were they put on by the church?
FREE: Oh, yes. And we also had bingos in the parish hall. That was a big thing.
NORTON: And did you actually win money at bingo or was it …?
FREE: I believe so, yes. Not too much. [Laughs]
NORTON: Yeah. Of course not. Okay. And, you know, was that once a week, once a month, something like that?
FREE: Mmm— I’d say every other month or so.
NORTON: You’d have bingo.
FREE: Yeah.
NORTON: And you talked about having shows, productions on the stage. What do you remember about that?
FREE: I think sometimes they had outsider people and sometimes, if anyone in the parish wanted to perform in any way, that was also allowed. Singing, dancing, acting.
NORTON: Did the church itself put on any shows as far as you remember?
FREE: I think so, but I couldn’t tell you the names of them at this point.
NORTON: How about outside groups? Do you remember any outside folks that would have put on shows here at the Christ Church stage?
FREE: Not really. But one thing is that my sister and I used to belong to what was called the Hexagon Club. And I think it’s still in existence.
NORTON: I think it is, too, or at least it was not too long ago.
FREE: And we did three shows with them. I think from 1965, ’70, and ’71. And of course, the purpose of that show was to make fun of the president who was in office at that time.
NORTON: Make fun of the government, essentially. Yes, yes.
FREE: Yes. And of course, opening night always had a member of the First Family. [Both laugh] And I remember one year Tricia Nixon [daughter of President Richard M. Nixon] was the guest in the audience.
NORTON: Okay.
FREE: And I started to work at the White House in 1968. And so, she came backstage on her own during the intermission, and she spotted me. And because we made fun of the president at that time, she approached me and said, “Charles, what are you doing in this show?” [Interviewer laughs] And I said, “Tricia, it’s all for charity.” Which it was. We picked a different charity every year.
NORTON: Now, the Hexagon shows, where were they generally put on?
FREE: Well, they were given in the high school in Georgetown at that time, Western High School.
NORTON: Which is now Duke Ellington [School of the Arts], right?
FREE: Yes. Mm-hmm. But I think that’s been changed over the years.
NORTON: As to where they have the shows.
FREE: Yes. They perform elsewhere.
NORTON: Okay. You had certain other talents when you were growing up. [Interviewee laughs] You were a musician, as I understand it, and also a magician of sorts. So …
FREE: Well, when I was six years old, there was a music teacher who came around to the various schools, because each school didn’t have their own music department at that time. And we were taken into this very small room that had an upright piano, one at a time. And she would play scales and so on and we were told to repeat those notes, which we did, and then sing certain verses of songs and so on. And so, she told me that I had excellent pitch and that I should take up the piano or the violin. So my father took me to a music teacher out on 15th Street and Pennsylvania Avenue SE. And I was very small for my age, and my arm wouldn’t even reach the strings. [Interviewer laughs] So the teacher said, come back in two years, when you’re eight years old, and we’ll think about it. So, I went back. And he had been a violist in the National Symphony Orchestra.
NORTON: This is the teacher.
FREE: The teacher. Under Hans Kindler, who was the conductor of that organization at the time.
NORTON: Do you remember the name of the teacher? [Long pause] It’s okay. I’m just … [Both laugh]
FREE: I do, but I’d have to think about it.
NORTON: Okay, all right.
FREE: And then, he and his wife moved and went down to the country somewhere. And then, I took lessons from a member of the Air Force Strings. So I took lessons from 1949 to 1958.
NORTON: Okay.
FREE: And I joined a classical orchestra, which met and rehearsed and performed at Foundry Methodist Church on 16th Street ...
NORTON: Northwest.
FREE: … because it was such a large congregation and a large area for the audiences to attend. So, that went on for about three years. And for some reason, here again I was the only child in that orchestra. And they had professional and amateur players at the time.
NORTON: In the orchestra?
FREE: In the orchestra. And somebody—I don’t remember whether it was a member of that congregation or who it was—they reported the fact that there were professionals and amateurs playing in the same orchestra, which was kind of a no-no at that time. But nobody cared [Interviewer laughs] because everybody could play very well. And so that ended that time. And then, I went to play with a chamber group. And here again, I ended up being the only child in that chamber group. [Laughs]
NORTON: So, how old were you when you played in the chamber group?
FREE: Let’s see. In both the orchestra and the chamber group I was from 11 years old until about 15.
NORTON: Okay, okay. So, you were in both the orchestra and the chamber group when you were still just a kid. I mean, essentially.
FREE: Yeah.
NORTON: Okay. And what do you remember about the chamber group? Where did they play?
FREE: All over. Just everywhere. We rehearsed in a certain place, and, of course, most all those people are deceased by now. But they were wonderful experiences. My father always drove me up to 16th Street where the church was, because I was too young to drive. And he’d wait and watch the rehearsal and so on.
NORTON: All right. I’m going to take a break, if you don’t mind.
FREE: Sure, absolutely.
[Break in recording]
NORTON: All right. We’re back from the break.
FREE: If I could just pick up on a couple of points …
NORTON: Sure.
FREE: … which I didn’t mention.
NORTON: Sure.
FREE: When I took voice lessons in the mid ’60s, I studied under Donald Boothman, who gave lessons in Bethesda. And I was there for three years. And finally, he and his wife got a divorce, and she took the children, and he had to move to Glen Echo, which was a little bit too far for me to continue to go. But his teacher had been Todd Duncan, the original Porgy in George Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess.
NORTON: Is that right?
FREE: Yeah. And of course, Donald Boothman and I remained friends over the years, and I continued to hear his performances in the area, and he finally moved to Massachusetts and continued to give lessons and to perform both in this country and in Europe.
NORTON: When did he give you lessons?
FREE: In the mid ’60s.
NORTON: So you would have been—I mean, well, you’re now an adult, right? Or are we …?
FREE: Right. I was in my mid-20s.
NORTON: Okay, okay. All right.
FREE: And, then, of course, in addition to that, I started to purchase some magic tricks and created my own little program. And my sister and I used to belong to the USO [United Service Organizations] camp show units. So, we’d go around. We’d meet at the Washington Hotel, and in a bus we’d be taken to all the various military installations around town and perform for the soldiers and sailors there.
NORTON: How did you get hooked up with the USO?
FREE: I think somebody referred me there, mentioned me.
NORTON: And what did you perform and what did your sister perform?
FREE: Well, my sister took dance lessons from age 5, and she was still dancing at age 66. And she, in all honesty, was a fabulous dancer at an early age. She did all kinds of dancing—jazz, ballet, modern jazz, and so on. So she and I would go around and perform at the various places in town. And the one place that sticks in my mind was St. Elizabeths [psychiatric] Hospital [in Southeast Washington].
NORTON: Across the Anacostia?
FREE: Yes, yes.
NORTON: Okay.
FREE: So, we were taken over there, and there was this large female warden, so to say, who had a huge batch of keys hanging on her side, and we went through three locked doors before we got to the room where we were performing.
NORTON: In other words, the doors had to be unlocked to go through. Yes.
FREE: Oh, yes. Now, whether we were performing for a group of men and women who were hedging toward being normal, or they had been given some medication to keep their personalities down to earth, I don’t know. But we would perform for them, and they kept all the women on one side and the men on the other side of the rooms.
NORTON: Of the auditorium. Was it an auditorium?
FREE: No, it was just a very large room itself.
NORTON: I see.
FREE: So, after the performance, some of these people would come up to us and say “Oh, by the way, I used to give magic. I used to perform the violin.” And who knows whether that was true or not?
NORTON: Yeah, yeah.
FREE: It could have been.
NORTON: So was it just your sister and you who went to St. Elizabeths?
FREE: Oh, no, there were other performers.
NORTON: But was this all still part of the USO group? Or …?
FREE: Oh, yes.
NORTON: What was your sister’s name?
FREE: Jane Ellen Free. And then, she was married twice and both of her husbands died at their early 60s. And so she, you know, was left alone. And they owned a condo in Ocean City. And when the husband died, she moved to Ocean Pines, which is a close-by area, and bought a house on her own. She had spent 39 years in the federal government. And I only spent 27. So as time went on—she had had Crohn’s disease her whole life, but they came up with many new medications which helped her a great deal. And, then, at age 67 or 8 she contracted what was called PSP, progressive supranuclear palsy. Similar to another disease. And it starts in the brain, and it can affect every part of your body. So, she held with that for about five years. And she stayed with me for several weeks.
NORTON: This would be in DC, then?
FREE: Oh, yes. In the same house where we grew up. And, of course, you know, some of those people mentally thought they were still very independent even though they were ill.
NORTON: And this would include your sister?
FREE: Including my sister. So I begged her to just remain seated or don’t get out of bed at night. And I gave her a little brass bell to ring, and I would come up and help her. Well, she never did that, of course. She started to fall quite a bit, and then, we looked into putting her in an assisted living home. And we chose one on Connecticut Avenue extended, which I wanted to make sure happened to be Metro accessible.
NORTON: Right.
FREE: So she stayed there for six months. Very expensive, but she had enough income to cover that. And one day the phone rang and it was the head of the home. And she said, “Charles, your sister and her cousin”—and we had told everybody in the family about my sister’s illness—“your sister and her cousin are standing outside with her luggage.” And I said, “What do you mean?” And she said, “They intend to move. They intend to have her move with this cousin.” And I said, “Well, it’s news to me. I didn’t know a thing about it.” So she moved, and for the last two to three years she remained with this cousin, who had taken care of similar cases in her home. And we used to visit her. But the problem was that it was 150 miles from Capitol Hill.
NORTON: Where was it?
FREE: It was in the town that Woodrow Wilson was born in.
NORTON: Staunton.
FREE: Staunton, exactly. In Staunton. Or “Stonton” as some people say.
NORTON: No. Not the locals. It’s “Stanton”.
FREE: Oh, no, no. It’s “Stanton.” [Interviewer laughs] So maybe every couple of months, we’d go and visit her with some other relatives. And she finally passed away.
NORTON: All right. Shifting gears, once again, back to your performances, over what period did you and your sister continue doing these performances?
FREE: I’d say at least ten years.
NORTON: Okay. And how did you get involved in magic?
FREE: [Laughs] Well, I had always liked it on television and in person, and one of my aunts used to take me down to a magic store in Washington, and when I accumulated a little bit of money, I’d always buy a new trick.
NORTON: And that was Al’s Magic Shop, the iconic …
FREE: It was. Al’s Magic Shop.
NORTON: Yes.
FREE: So, that’s how I got interested in it and kept everything. Most of my items are gone, either worn out or given away.
NORTON: Was that part of your show, both the magic and the violin and …?
FREE: Oh, no. They were all done separately.
NORTON: Okay. So when your sister and you did your USO performances, what was your part?
FREE: I mainly played the violin.
NORTON: Okay, okay.
FREE: Mm-hmm.
NORTON: And did you do magic shows around the neighborhood here?
FREE: Oh, yes.
NORTON: Capitol Hill?
FREE: Mm-hmm.
NORTON: Okay, good. All right, going back to your youth, what do you remember in terms of businesses you patronized? You know, movies and restaurants and that sort of thing that you and your family would patronize.
[Sounds of paper being moved]
FREE: If you can hold on just a second.
NORTON: Sure, no rush.
FREE: Well, of course, we always attended many of the movie houses in the neighborhoods. The Penn, the Avenue Grand, and the Academy.
NORTON: All right. The Penn—the marquee is still out in front [650 Pennsylvania Avenue SE].
FREE: Oh, yes.
NORTON: Where was the Academy?
FREE: The Academy is where the Miracle Theatre is now on Eighth Street [535 Eighth Street SE].
NORTON: Okay.
FREE: The same building.
NORTON: Okay.
FREE: And the Avenue Grand was on Pennsylvania Avenue [645 Pennsylvania Avenue SE] above the [current] CVS store. Now that was completely demolished.
NORTON: Well, there’s a whole bunch of new buildings right there, just behind the…
FREE: Oh, yes. Right.
NORTON: … the CVS. That’s probably where it was then.
FREE: Right. In that whole area. Mm-hmm.
NORTON: Okay, okay. And what do you remember about those theaters?
FREE: Well, now, the Penn also had live performances.
NORTON: Really?
FREE: Mm-hmm. And when my mother was a child and teenager, so did the Avenue Grand. And they had, from what she told me, an act involving a bear.
NORTON: Really? At the Avenue Grand.
FREE: [Laughs] Now, when I think about it, I don’t think it was a live bear. But everybody in the audience certainly thought so.
NORTON: Okay.
FREE: And it would come down the aisle and do tricks on the stage and so on.
NORTON: But this was your mother recounting this to you.
FREE: Oh, yes. Exactly.
NORTON: What do you remember about the live performances in either of these theaters?
FREE: Well, they weren’t as elaborate, of course, as the ones they had at the Capitol Theatre downtown on [1328] F Street NW.
NORTON: Okay.
FREE: And, of course, there was the Palace Theatre [1306 F Street NW], the Metropolitan Theater [934 F Street NW, and so on, as movie palaces downtown.
NORTON: And they were downtown in Northwest.
FREE: Right. But the Capitol was the only one that had movies as well as live performances. And the orchestra would come up from the pit up to the stage level.
NORTON: So, it would be moved up. I mean, it would …
FREE: Yes, it was an absolutely gorgeous theater.
NORTON: And where was the Capitol?
FREE: It was on F Street right behind 14th Street. The building is still there but it [the theater] is completely gone.
NORTON: Right, right.
FREE: And one of my aunts who had no children, she and her husband, she would take me downtown to the Capitol. And then we’d see the show and go out and have lunch or dinner at the old Hot Shoppes, which was also on 14th Street. And then we’d eat at other restaurants and places that are no longer there also.
NORTON: All this was down in the downtown area of Northwest.
FREE: Oh, yes. Yes, mm-hmm.
NORTON: So do you remember them still having live shows at the Penn Theater when you came along or was that …?
FREE: Yes, but they were very brief. And, unfortunately, I think about the early ’80s, when people weren’t attending the theaters as much, they had rather risqué films being shown in there.
NORTON: As they call them, “adult films.”
FREE: That’s right. [Laughs]
NORTON: Yes, I remember that.
FREE: So, that’s when the Penn ended.
NORTON: All right. How about other businesses that you as a youth would have …
FREE: Well, we always frequented the Sampan Restaurant.
NORTON: Which is right next to the Penn.
FREE: Which was in the 600 block of Pennsylvania Avenue. And they were there from 1942 until 1999. Their great uncle started that business. And they were Chinese people. And we also loved shopping at Kresge’s dime store, which was on the corner there.
NORTON: The corner of Seventh and Penn, yes.
FREE: Right.
NORTON: And it’s now a restaurant. What is it? Le Pain Quotidien …
FREE: And then there was a Safeway store on Seventh Street, and that was formerly called the Sanitary before it became the Safeway.
NORTON: Really? Do you remember when it became the Safeway?
FREE: Well, it was still the Sanitary when I was a child. So, sometime a little bit later, I guess.
NORTON: Okay.
FREE: I don’t remember. And we also had a Piggly Wiggly grocery store.
NORTON: Where was that?
FREE: Which was, you know, mostly further south. But it was there at the corner of Eighth and E Streets SE.
NORTON: Okay.
FREE: And my mother attended the old B. B. French School at the corner of Seventh and G SE.
NORTON: Which is where the [Capitol Hill] Arts Workshop is now.
FREE: Right. And she took domestic science classes there—sewing and cooking and so on.
NORTON: Okay.
FREE: In fact, one of the members of the Christ Church choir used to be a teacher there.
NORTON: At French?
FREE: At French. And I can’t remember her exact name. And then, of course, we always went to the amusement parks—Glen Echo [in Montgomery County, Maryland] and Marshall Hall [in Charles County, Maryland].
NORTON: Okay. Did you sometimes catch the boat down to Marshall Hall?
FREE: Oh, yes. Oh, yes. That was a lot of fun, but we always went on the streetcar to Glen Echo. And, you know, that would start to wobble on the tracks when you got …
NORTON: They had sort of a long bridge, trestle bridge there.
FREE: Yes, that’s right. [Laughs] And, of course, we just loved the streetcars, which were in Washington from 1862 until 1962. And I remember taking the last ride on that car in ’62.
NORTON: When they did away with them and put in nothing but buses.
FREE: Yeah. Very sad day, and I always thought, because the cars remained on their own tracks, it was a better deal than having buses swerving in and out, you know, all over the streets. But they didn’t ask me. [Both laugh]
NORTON: Okay.
FREE: And my uncle, Robert Simons, married one of my mother’s sisters, and he was a coppersmith at the Washington Navy Yard. And he started there in 1917 and died in 1950. So from about ’45 to ’50, before he passed away, his wife, my aunt, would take me down to Navy Day.
NORTON: At the Navy Yard.
FREE: At the Navy Yard.
NORTON: And what was involved in Navy Day?
FREE: Well, you could, of course, walk right through the Navy main gate without any question in those days. And we would board different ships, visit all the different factories …
NORTON: They had ships in for Navy Day?
FREE: Oh, yes. And we’d visit the different factories and see the skills that were being done and … I never will forget that, let’s see, on Tenth Street and a few other locations on Capitol Hill, we always enjoyed a special relationship with the Marine Barracks. The Marines and the Marine band. And I remember when the barracks had its own bakery in the basement of the corner at Ninth and I Streets SE. And you could smell that wonderful bread being baked all over the neighborhood.
NORTON: Was that part of the actual barracks complex or was it …?
FREE: Oh, yes.
NORTON: Yeah. Okay.
FREE: Oh, yes. And, of course, they used the bread to feed the Marines. And they also had their own bowling alley down there, and you could hear the pins being knocked down from outside. But they were long gone.
NORTON: When you say they were long gone, when were they long gone?
FREE: Oh, probably in the late ’50s, maybe.
NORTON: But you remember them when you were a kid.
FREE: Oh, yes.
NORTON: Okay. And then, also there was, you know, the bells and the bugles and all that stuff that sort of kept you advised of what time it was and everything.
FREE: Eight bells was my alarm clock from the time I was an early child and through my teenage years. [Laughs]
NORTON: And where were the bells? I mean, they just would ring or …?
FREE: They would ring at 8:00 in the morning every day, and I would get up and go down and stand in my backyard and salute the colors that were being raised on the mast.
NORTON: Did they play The Star-Spangled Banner back then?
FREE: Oh, yes.
NORTON: Yes Because they still do that. You can hear it in the morning. Yeah.
FREE: Oh, definitely. You know the Marines always adhere to their old customs.
NORTON: Right, right.
FREE: And so, because of our long connection there, I’m always invited to what’s called the Family and Friends of the Marines event that takes place the last Friday in April. This year it was early May for some reason. And then I always go to the exchange ceremonies of the COs, the commanding officers.
NORTON: The change of command?
FREE: The change of command. And I’m always invited to the commandant’s house on my birthday. Not because it’s my birthday, but they always have it on January the first.
NORTON: It’s New Year’s Day.
FREE: Yes. But for the last three years they haven’t had it. Because the first year there was a tragic incident between the two Marines, if you remember reading about this. Inside the yard, they were horsing around with their loaded rifles. And one shot the other and that fellow died. So, there was an investigation, of course, involving all kinds of people—the police department, the government, the Marines itself, and so on. The second year, COVID came on very strong. So, that knocked that out. The third year, they had the new commandant, General [David] Berger, who only wanted to have his immediate family and a few personal friends attend. So I’ve been trying to find out whether they’re going to have the fourth year open house this January 1 or not. And, you know, they’ve been renovating all the barracks on Ninth Street for the last three and a half years.
NORTON: Okay.
FREE: Last September [2023] it was supposed to be finished. Then it was going to be December, then March, and so on. And now we’re almost at the end of this year [2024], and they’re still working on some parts of it.
NORTON: What are they renovating? Is it the actual barracks part?
FREE: Oh, the whole interior of the barracks. They didn’t have much to do on the outside, just clean up the brickwork a little bit and some lights and so on. But we’re waiting to hear, hopefully in the beginning of 2025, because they’re going to have a special tour of that building for some of the neighbors on the four opposing blocks. Those neighbors always attended special meetings that the barracks had. So hopefully, that will come about.
NORTON: How long did that go back, that, you know, the neighbors sort of had a special relationship with the barracks?
FREE: As far back as I can remember. I mean, long, long, long ago. And because we were in-laws to the Sousas, you know, that also was another reason why we were invited to some of these special ceremonies. And my mother’s eldest brother I remember telling me that he remembers when the commandant used to ride a horse. And the buildings at the corner of Ninth and G were stables in those days to house the horses.
NORTON: So, that was actually part of the barracks were the stables. Or was there …?
FREE: Oh, yes.
NORTON: Okay.
FREE: Oh, very much so.
NORTON: Okay. Okay.
FREE: And, of course, my mother remembers when the Spanish flu struck the area. Even people on Tenth Street died.
NORTON: What did your mother tell you about that?
FREE: Well, she said that crepes were put on the doorways of houses in which people died. And purple crepes were for adults and white crepes were for children. And luckily all the members of her family escaped that. But I think there was a neighbor right next door who died in there, and so, you know, it was a very tragic time.
NORTON: Okay. You talked about going to see, what was it, Navy Day and, then, you’d see the factory. Back then it was the Naval Gun Factory.
FREE: Oh, yes.
NORTON: And so, there was a lot of industrial work going on.
FREE: I even have one of the round metal plaques that used to be on one of the Navy buildings in my backyard.
NORTON: How did you end up with that?
FREE: Well, because of my uncle working there for so long. And they were on every single building down there.
NORTON: Okay.
FREE: And one other thing. At the south end of Tenth Street stood the Herrmann’s Bottling Works. H-E-double R-M-A-double N. They produced many flavors of soft drinks in bottles, not in cans. And I remember when, in 1949, they produced what was called the Joe Lewis punch [Interviewer laughs] to honor the world’s heavyweight boxing champion, who held that title from 1937 to ’49. For 12 years. And my grandfather, W. G. Darmstead—his name was Americanized, of course, because they had been Americans for so long, and August Herrmann, who was also German, and they were both in business. So, they arranged to have electricity installed on Tenth Street, in the houses, in 1924.
NORTON: So, that’s when electricity got in those houses. Okay.
FREE: That’s right.
NORTON: Okay.
FREE: And I played in Freda Herrmann Murray’s house all through my childhood because she had two baby grand pianos, and she would accompany me when I would either play the violin or try to practice singing. [Laughs]
NORTON: Where did she live? I’m sorry. I just …
FREE: She lived at 761 Tenth at the other end of the block. And her daughter and husband and their children lived with her for many years until one day the daughter and her husband decided to try to go out and find their own house. So that’s when they all left. But their oldest son stayed with her. John Novak. So he and I were childhood friends.
NORTON: I see.
FREE: And he was very good with electrical things. And so my father helped me build a clubhouse out in my backyard. And one year we decided, with his help, to make what was called a joy josher.
NORTON: What’s a joy josher?
FREE: Well, they had them at the amusement parks. You’d go in and the lights would go on and off and scare you. And you’d step on boards and they’d flop up and down and there’d be all kinds of spooky noises, and that sort of thing. So, members of the family and the kids in the neighborhood would come over and we’d charge them two cents apiece to go through our joy josher. [Laughs] And, as a matter of fact, John Novak just passed away. He was born on Flag Day, June the 14th, and I was born the first of January, so that’s how I remember his birthday. And he just passed away this past year. And some of us were invited to, what did they call it, the streetcar museum out in Maryland [National Capital Trolley Museum, Colesville, Maryland].
NORTON: Right, right.
FREE: And his sister picked me up, and we rode out together, and her brother was out there as well. So, they had a very nice ceremony because John always had a special interest in streetcars.
NORTON: Well, over the time that you lived in your house, you know, the neighborhood has changed at various times. Right? So, I gather in the, what, ’60s or so, it started to get a little bit hairier, to put it …
FREE: Well, of course, you know, in those days they had many grocery stores and other places right in the residential areas.
NORTON: Right. You described a lot of them.
FREE: Yeah. And I remember there was one called Dement’s Variety Store. Jetmore’s Bakery was on Eighth Street SE. Roach’s Drug Store was at the corner of Eighth and G Streets SE, where you could go in and enjoy a delicious sundae. And Gritz’s Clothing Store, Meinberg’s Bakery was on 11th Street SE. Edelson’s Grocery Store was the one at Tenth and G Streets SE, the large store where the school’s main door now stands.
NORTON: Oh, right, right.
FREE: And it later became Siegel’s Grocery Store. They were both Jewish gentlemen. And Miss Raley’s store was at 739 Tenth Street SE, and we always shopped in there because she sold milk and bread and lunch meats and candy.
NORTON: So, she was just not too many doors down from the other grocery store.
FREE: No, no. She was not on the corner of the alley, but the second house in the middle.
NORTON: So, you had two stores that would sell, you know, groceries and things to eat and stuff.
FREE: Yeah. And those three frame houses were not built there. They were built somewhere, maybe in the area of Fourth or Fifth and D NE. And my grandmother remembered when they were brought to their current location on logs pulled by oxen. And they were built in 1850 but not at that point.
NORTON: I see. So, and were they among the ones that were knocked down or are they on the …
FREE: Oh, no. They’re still there.
NORTON: Still there. Okay.
FREE: They’ve all been renovated. And Miss McLean, who lived on the other side, who saw her own house being taken down, owned two other houses on our side of Tenth Street, one of which was one of those three old houses. So, she rented one and moved into the other house.
NORTON: When do you remember that, you know, you stopped having so many individual stores and businesses like that that they do now?
FREE: Well, the Raleys were there from 1930 until 1965. So, I’d say it was in the mid-’60s when things started to change.
NORTON: Okay. And what do you remember about how things changed?
FREE: Well, of course, most people moved, for one reason or another. As I said, the ones on the other side were compelled to move. And some of the ones on the Tenth Street side where I live did it of their own volition or they died or they whatever. Of course, the biggest change is the tremendous increase in real estate prices. I just can’t believe it. It’s just unbelievable.
NORTON: Well, let me ask you this, because one thing that was a big change I’m sure that you would remember is when they put the freeway in [Southeast Freeway, or Interstate 395].
FREE: Oh, yes.
NORTON: So, when did that happen?
FREE: Well, in the ’60s. Next door to my house in 719, where my grandmother first bought when she came to Capitol Hill—old, old Southeast in those days—houses were put up for auction. In that house, the adult couple had died together somehow. And the two children were underage, so it went to Orphan’s Court. And then they set up chairs on the sidewalks. And I even remember when they did this as a child. And anyone interested in bidding on a particular property would come and take a chair.
NORTON: Okay.
FREE: So, with 719—and my grandmother, of course, had inherited two of her father’s houses in Georgetown—it got to the point where it was between her and the Jewish man who owned the store at the corner.
NORTON: Okay. In other words, they were the last two bidders.
FREE: They were the last two bidders. And my grandmother said, “I can’t go any higher.” And the Jewish owner of the store said, “Mrs. Darmstead, you take the house. You have more children than I do, and you need it more than I do.” Can you imagine anyone doing that today?
NORTON: No.
FREE: I cannot.
NORTON: Do you remember when that was? That particular auction.
FREE: Yeah. That was in 1910.
NORTON: Okay.
FREE: Her father had died in 1908. And, of course, her mother didn’t die until 1914. But she inherited her houses in 1910. And that’s when she bought 719.
NORTON: But you remember seeing auctions out on the street, you know, even in …
FREE: In the ’40s and ’50s.
NORTON: Okay. Well, what do you remember about how the freeway disrupted the neighborhood, if it did?
FREE: Well, in 719, which my grandmother still owned and used to rent out—she rented it out for quite a long time to the Warners. And Mr. Warner died at age 94 and his wife at 85. And they had two daughters who lived in houses where the freeway now stands.
NORTON: I see.
FREE: And so they would come up on occasion and visit their parents. But my mother would go in there every day to look in on them to see that they were okay. And when they both died and the daughters came up and they said to my mother, “Eva, you can go in and take anything you want for what you’ve done for our parents.”
NORTON: Oh, that was nice.
FREE: And she said, “There’s only one thing I want. That’s the little antique chair” that by that time had a cardboard seat that he [Mr. Warner] used to sit in and look out the front window and watch life go by.
NORTON: The father would sit in it and watch this.
FREE: Yes.
NORTON: And that house that we’re talking about was where the freeway is now or …?
FREE: No, that house is right next to where I live.
NORTON: Okay.
FREE: But eventually it was torn down because my grandmother was getting old, and she didn’t have the money to renovate it. And so before the historic district, here again, you could tear it down.
NORTON: Do you remember that happening?
FREE: Oh, definitely.
NORTON: When was that roughly?
FREE: We used to go in there when the house was empty. Yeah.
NORTON: All right. Well, going back to my earlier question, what about the freeway? What do you remember about that?
FREE: Well, of course, these two sisters lost their home when that happened.
NORTON: Yeah.
FREE: And they did give my mother that little chair, and we had it restored.
NORTON: Right.
FREE: And they had so many other beautiful things in there. They had a beautiful, large, framed “Home Sweet Home” handmade picture. All kinds of silverware that my mother could have had, which she didn’t want or need.
NORTON: Right.
FREE: But she would have kept it as mementoes of the old couple. And there was also a grocery store down there at the corner of Tenth and I. And he lost his business because of the freeway.
NORTON: Tenth used to go straight through, right? It doesn’t any more.
FREE: Oh, yes.
NORTON: Yeah. But it went all the way down to the Navy Yard.
FREE: Absolutely.
NORTON: Okay.
FREE: Mm-hmm.
NORTON: All right. And what else do you remember, if anything, about the freeway? Did it take a long time to build?
FREE: Well, you know they were going to make it come up Tenth Street.
NORTON: Ahh.
FREE: Oh, yes.
NORTON: I didn’t know that. No.
FREE: One of the legs was coming up Tenth Street and that would have been the end of everybody.
NORTON: So, what happened to keep that from happening?
FREE: Well, Miss Lily McLean and Freda Herrmann Murray, both of whom were fairly well off, went to court about it. And they not only got more money for their homes—because Freda Murray owned dozens of houses in the neighborhood as well as in Northwest. Her mother had been one of the Stohlmans of the Stohlman Automotive Company. And, so, anyway, they put a damper on the freeway. Somehow, they convinced the government to make it run down I Street instead of coming up Tenth Street. Which I think makes more sense anyway.
NORTON: Right.
FREE: Because it goes directly into the Southeast-Southwest Freeway.
NORTON: Right, right, right.
FREE: So, that’s the story on that.
NORTON: Okay, okay. Do you remember when it was that they built the freeway?
FREE: Uh. I think they started planning it in the early ’60s, but it took quite a long time to get it started.
NORTON: Okay. You remember the [1968] riots, right? What do you remember about that?
FREE: I remember the riots. Most of it occurred in upper Northwest.
NORTON: Okay.
FREE: But of course, the Marines were on the roofs of the Barracks with their guns, their rifles, and that’s what sort of saved our bacon.
NORTON: Okay. Well, there were some problems on Eighth Street, were there not?
FREE: Oh, yes. Yes.
NORTON: Okay. And that was, just so we’re clear, the riots after Martin Luther King Jr. was killed [on April 4, 1968].
FREE: Right. Mm-hmm.
NORTON: Yes. Okay. Well, you’ve indicated an awful lot of the neighbors either died out or moved where? To the suburbs or …?
FREE: Right. Mm-hmm.
NORTON: Okay. So, who moved in after those folks moved?
FREE: Well, of course, the real estate values dropped tremendously, and people with money started buying up the houses at low prices and started to renovate them.
NORTON: Okay. Let me just ask you a couple of—to shift back to Christ Church a little bit. I understand that—let’s see, this would have been Mr. Merrick, I think. And, then, also, there was Greene and Seaton.
FREE: Right.
NORTON: Do you remember those?
FREE: Oh, yes.
NORTON: You were still going to church then with all those folks. Okay. And, at some point, I am told that Christ Church bought a separate rectory out in Camp Springs, Maryland, for the …
FREE: That was the Merricks.
NORTON: Okay. Do you remember what was involved in that? Or why that happened?
FREE: I don’t really. I mean I could guess at some of the possible reasons, but I wouldn’t want to say that because I don’t know for sure.
NORTON: Okay. You weren’t involved in any of the discussions in the church about why this was happening?
FREE: Oh, no. No.
NORTON: But you knew it was happening, right?
FREE: Oh, yes.
NORTON: What happened to the rectory when the rector moved out to Camp Springs?
FREE: I think it just remained empty for a while. I don’t know whether it had anything to do with Mr. Merrick’s daughter going to school elsewhere or what the real problem was. You know, one of the rectors who was in the rectory started letting so-called beatniks live in there.
NORTON: Okay.
FREE: And using dope and so on.
NORTON: What do you remember about that?
FREE: [Laughs] Well, that was quite an event.
NORTON: Was that sort of discussed amongst the members of the congregation?
FREE: Oh, yes. Oh, yes.
NORTON: Okay.
FREE: Particular members on the vestry and so on. And when it reached the crisis point, they saw that he was put out.
NORTON: This is some of the members of the vestry. And would that have been Mr. Seaton or …?
FREE: Yes. Mmm.
NORTON: Well, then, after that was Dave Dunning. And I don’t think …
FREE: No, it wasn’t Mr. Dunning.
NORTON: It would have been Seaton, I think.
FREE: Yeah.
NORTON: Okay, okay. Do you remember any details about that? About him having the beatniks? Or I always thought it was the hippies, but [Interviewee laughs]—being there. Do you remember how church, you know, the services were different, anything like that?
FREE: I don’t. It seems to me that when it came time to have the services, the rector conducted them, you know, in a proper manner, as far as I remember.
NORTON: Okay, okay.
FREE: But it was only in the rectory that this other business was carrying on.
NORTON: I see, I see. Were you on the vestry at any point?
FREE: No.
NORTON: Okay. Or any other church committees or anything like that that you can remember?
FREE: No.
NORTON: Okay, okay. Okay. We’ve been at this for just about two hours now, but I always give everybody a chance, if there’s something else they want to say. We haven’t gone into your work, other than to touch on the fact that you worked for a while at the White House. Why don’t I ask you that. What did you do at the White House?
FREE: Well, I had worked for a couple other agencies beforehand, and I was getting bored, and one of my mother’s cousins had been chief of mails from 1940 until 1965.
NORTON: And that’s M-A-I-L-S?
FREE: Right.
NORTON: The post office.
FREE: That’s right.
NORTON: Okay.
FREE: And I never wanted to take advantage of family connections. So he died in ’65, and about two years later, unbeknownst to me, my mother took it upon herself to call her cousin’s wife. And his wife called her people at the White House, whom she knew, and set up an appointment for me. An interview. So, I went for the interview, passed that, had to take all kinds of tests. I do remember that in those days I was typing 99 words per minute …
NORTON: Wow.
FREE: … which I couldn’t even attempt today.
NORTON: No.
FREE: And I was first started in Correspondence, where we would type the president’s speeches and answering the president’s mail. And then I was transferred to answering children’s mail, which was the best fun of all. And then there came an opening in 1969 in the president’s Gift Unit. And I was there for the rest of my time under six different administrations. We handled gifts sent to the First Family. Or they were either presented personally in the Oval Office or, if the president made domestic or foreign trips, in all kinds of manners. And we would have to not only describe them— And, of course, in those days we were still using typewriters, but eventually we got computers. So, we had to describe each gift fully, had them appraised, designate the disposition of them. There were all kinds of laws and rules involved.
NORTON: Right. The president and his family couldn’t necessarily take very many of these, right?
FREE: Well, they could take anything domestically.
NORTON: I see.
FREE: Or from a nonforeign official overseas, as long as it was declared on their financial disclosure reports, which we also had to handle in March and May. Domestic and foreign. We had four huge rooms, because we received so many items, probably between 10,000 and 20,000 items a year.
NORTON: Good grief.
FREE: And a little room across the hall is where we would put large objects, like grandfather clocks and that sort of thing, which were easier to store over there. But one second interesting point is that on one end of our office was the briefing room, which as far as I know is still there, where the president would give speeches and answer questions from the press.
NORTON: Okay.
FREE: And on the other end was this little room where famous people would come and make films or recorded speeches. And you know, when you’re first hired there, you’re told you don’t do this, you don’t do that, and so on. And I was such a stickler for rules, and, when I look back, I could kick myself for not doing certain things.
NORTON: Like what?
FREE: Well, [Laughs] one day I left the office and went to the men’s room right across the hallway and, when I was coming back, up the gorgeous, huge, circular staircase was this very handsome, tall gentleman. And he was headed toward the recording room. And I should have gone right over and introduced myself and asked him for his autograph, but, of course, I restrained myself. And …
NORTON: Who was it?
FREE: It was— Charlton Heston.
NORTON: Oh, lord.
FREE: Well, wouldn’t you know, the cleaning lady . . .  in our room, came out and went right over to him and got her autograph. [Both laugh] So, I should have been a little bit more forward.
NORTON: Yeah, yeah.
FREE: Another time was when, on the ground floor—and we always had to go back and forth, you know, to the Oval Office and to other offices in the West Wing. We were in the Old Executive Office Building on the fourth floor to either take gifts or retrieve gifts. So, for example, if the president was going to have a foreign visitor come into the Oval Office, he would like a gift, if we had one, that had been given from somebody from that visitor’s country, to have a talking point.
NORTON: Oh, I see. Okay.
FREE: And sometimes the gift would stay in the office for a couple of months, a few weeks, whatever the situation called for. Then we had to go over and retrieve it, change the disposition on the records, and so on. And this, you know, went on the full time I was there. [Slight pause] Let me think what I was going to say. Oh, I got on the elevator one day, coming back from one of those jaunts.
NORTON: Over to the …?
FREE: The Oval Office.
NORTON: Okay.
FREE: And I got on the elevator in our building and, lo and behold, it was [FBI director] J. Edgar Hoover. And, of course, I wasn’t allowed to say anything.
NORTON: No.
FREE: He was dressed to the nines. And Mrs. Murray, Freda Herrmann Murray, and he went to the same Sunday School class at the Lutheran Church on East Capitol Street. [Lutheran Church of the Reformation, 212 East Capitol Street ]. So you see, I had a talking point right then and there.
NORTON: Mrs. Murray was your neighbor.
FREE: Yes. And my grandmother and grandfather also delivered coal and ice to J. Edgar Hoover when he lived with his mother on Seward Square SE.
NORTON: Do you remember him living on Seward Square?
FREE: No, I don’t, because he was always in his office or somewhere else, you know. And, of course, here again, with no historic district, they tore his house down.
NORTON: Right. And now it’s the Methodist church [Capitol Hill United Methodist Church, 421 Seward Square SE].
FREE: Well, the big Methodist church is on the corner and his house was right next door. And that lot is still empty.
NORTON: Okay.
FREE: I don’t know whether they use it for a parking lot or what.
NORTON: I think they do, yeah.
FREE: Yeah, yeah. And, then, of course, when his mother died, he moved to Bethesda.
NORTON: Right. But he stayed on Capitol Hill until his mother died.
FREE: Oh, yes. Oh, yes.
NORTON: Okay, okay.
FREE: So, you know, these were experiences that you kind of missed once and a while. [Interviewer laughs] And also, the entertainers at the state dinners would have either open or closed rehearsals in the East Room, for example. And we were always invited over to the open rehearsals, because the people in the Gift Unit were the only ones on the staff to deal directly with the First Family and the president’s secretary. So, we’d always go over. If we had a break, we’d go over and listen to Pearl Bailey and Frank Sinatra.
NORTON: Wow.
FREE: All kinds of famous entertainers, and they were really great. And of course, there were some who insisted on having a private rehearsal, you know.
NORTON: Without you all watching.
FREE: Oh, yes.
NORTON: Okay.
FREE: And there was one time that they were going to invite the whole staff to a so-called state dinner in the residence.
NORTON: Oh, wow.
FREE: That fell through. And never happened.
NORTON: Oh, I’m sorry. How long did you continue to work at the White House in the gift office?
FREE: Well, I was there from September 1969 until January of ’93. And they had a rule or a law there that said that, if you intended to retire, you had to do so within six months of the next administration, whether it was the same administration, the same party, or the next party. It didn’t matter. If you didn’t retire then, you had to continue to work for the end of that next administration. So I decided it was time to go. I had worked for six presidents [Lyndon B. Johnson, Richard M. Nixon, Gerald R. Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, and George H.W. Bush]. My mother was 80 years old. I wanted to spend some time with her. And I didn’t want any party. I didn’t want any gift. Because, by that time, you know—previously they were all career people who worked in most of the offices, along with political people.
NORTON: Right.
FREE: But, eventually, during the last administration, all political people were assigned to the Gift Unit. And so, when that president ended, they were gone and I was sitting there by myself. So I just went downstairs, turned in my pass, and walked out.
NORTON: Okay. All righty. There’s probably a few other items that I could cover, you know, that I know are in your book. So I would refer anybody to see that if there’re some other things— But, anyway, anything else you want to say?
FREE: I would like to say this. It would take probably another hour or more to tell just about my experiences at the White House.
NORTON: Right.
FREE: But if anyone listening could locate a copy of my book called Bygone Days: My Family’s Six Generations in the Nation’s Capital that I had published in 2016, you can then read all about it. And after I retired from the federal government, I worked part time at an answering service close to my home for three years. Then I went to an art gallery uptown for two years. Because of having been born and lived in Washington so long, when I first went to the [White House] Gift Unit, I worked up a list of about 250 appraisers, some of whom would come to our office. Some we would have to take the gifts to them in a limousine or walk if they were in the neighborhood and so on to get it appraised.
NORTON: And these are the art appraisers among other things. Yes.
FREE: All kinds of appraisers. Even if there was one appraiser who could do everything, the law said no. You cannot do that because they would be prejudiced.
NORTON: Sure. Okay.
FREE: So, we had 250 appraisers. Some we only used once. Some we used every single week. Some we used ten times a year. And we had a gift of a certain nature to present to each one of those appraisers according to how much time they devoted to the president’s gifts.
NORTON: So you didn’t pay them? You would give them a gift?
FREE: Oh, no. They couldn’t be paid. And before we took them on as an appraiser, all of this was explained to them. There was only one person who complained about going along with this. And everybody else was thrilled to death to be able to do it as a courtesy. And one of the appraisers ran this art gallery that I went to work for for two years.
NORTON: Okay.
FREE: And also, I had already traveled a lot. I went to England, Germany, Quebec, the Bahamas, most of the US coast, except for the state of Maine, which I’ve never been to, most of the western states, and also Paris. So in 2005, my mother passed away at nearly 93 years old. My only sibling and sister, Jane, passed away in January of 2022. And so that makes me the last member of all sides of my family to reside in Washington and in the same house. Now I can lay claim as the longest continuously living permanent resident in Washington and on Capitol Hill. I hope to live out my life in the capital city where my family began 227 years ago. My father’s people were born here in 1797, and my mother’s side came a little bit later in 1858. So I hope that you all who are listening have enjoyed sharing in my life story. Thank you very much, and I wish you all best wishes for the future.
NORTON: Okay. And thank you for allowing me to do this. I am tickled to death.
FREE: It’s been my pleasure. It really has been.
NORTON: Okay. Thank you. All right, I am going to be turning off the recorder here shortly.

END OF INTERVIEW

After this interview, Mr. Free provided the following “list of the shops and businesses that I remember on Capitol Hill when I was a child.”
Bailey’s Upholstery, 11th Street SE
Darling’s Dress Shop, 709 Eighth Street SE
Dement’s Variety Store on Eighth Street SE near I Street
District Lock and Hardware, Eighth Street SE
Edelson’s Grocery Store, corner of Tenth and G Streets SE (later Siegel's store)
Fealy’s Pharmacy, corner of 11th Street and Pennsylvania Avenue SE
Gritz’s Clothing Store, Eighth Street SE next to the City Bank Building (Mr. Gritz's house was near the corner of Eighth Street, so he could pass through his house and enter his store without going outside)
High's Ice Cream Company, 723 1/2 Eighth Street SE
Jetmore's Bakery, lower 8th Street SE
Johnnie's Bar and Restaurant, Eighth and E Streets SE
Kopy Kat Women's Shop, Eighth Street SE
Lemler's Shoe Store, Eighth Street near G Street SE
Meinberg's Bakery, middle of 11th Street
Miss Raley's Store, 739 Tenth Street SE
Nessen's 5 & 10 Store, 413 Eighth Street (Ron Nessen, son of the owners, became a White House Press Secretary)
Penn Auto, Eighth Street SE
Pittman's TV and Radio, Eighth Street SE
Roach's Drugtore, corner of Eighth and G Streets SE
Stanley's 5 & 10 Store
Wm. E. Miller's Furniture Store, corner of Eighth and E Streets from 1930 to 1982 (Mr. Miller also owned Rosecroft Raceway in Maryland and at times would drive in the sulky races)

[EH1]Something is a little off about the Thompson’s locations
https://ggwash.org/view/6326/lost-washington-thompsons-dairy

[EH2]One “n” (per his obituary)
Ruth Ann Overbeck Capitol Hill History Project
Charles Free Interview, December 18, 2024

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