State
senators, delegates, Fairfax County supervisors,
police and fire department officers rose to their
feet like everyone else to deliver the standing
ovation. The winner of the 2006 Les Dorson
Citizenship Award was amazed at the plaque she had
received, but almost overwhelmed by the sustained
applause. The holiday season was off to a great
start.
"I
have never been honored like this before for
anything," smiled 83-year old Jacqueline "Jac"
Walker gently as she remembered the modest
beginnings of her oral history project for the
Franconia Museum. "Oh, thank you very
much."
Jac
Walker turns out to have lived in the same house in
the Franconia section of southern Fairfax County
since 1929. Her father at one time was a fire chief.
And for all the booming development that has now
engulfed what used to be a sleepy Franconia road
section used by Virginia tobacco farmers seeking the
port at Alexandria, Ms. Walker knew there was more
than a little history, more than a few pictures and
more than a few stories that could show that the
area had been important for a long time. That's why
she had helped found the Franconia Museum, a museum
that functions without a permanent home, but places
exhibits in the Franconia Governmental Center and
other community meeting places.
As
the Museum's spare website notes, Franconia turns
out to have been the birthplace of the first
Virginia governor from Northern Virginia (Fitzhugh
Lee served from 1886 to 1890), the target of a Mosby
raid and the location of an early African-American
commnity called Carrolltown. But there was so much
more. The banquet program notes on awards night
credited Ms. Walker with working "tirelessly to
record, preserve and share Franconia history through
family stories."
"Some
of us long-time residents started getting together
to tell stories and someone finally suggested that
we write the stories down," Ms. Walker
explained to her audience, as though writing and
preserving history were a simple, everyday activity
open to anyone. "Many really didn't want to
take the time to do that, thinking that their own
family stories all seemed so unimportant and
insignificant."
But
the members of the all-volunteer Franconia Museum
have a saying, "that you must know where you
came from to know where you are going." So Ms.
Walker plowed ahead not only to write down her own
stories and to share her photographs with her
neighbors and friends, but to encourage others to do
so. Three volumes of "Franconia Remembers"
already have been published and a fourth volume is
due from the Museum in 2007.
This
success in appreciating the histories that are lived
by all of us is mirrored across the region in dozens
of other ways. Fairfax County Board Chairman Gerald
Connolly, for example, pushed the county History
Commission to form a committee dedicated to
recording and presenting oral history. The History
Commission has several awards programs of its own to
honor individuals, corporations and groups. And
Fairfax County has has its own historical marker
program since 1998. Seventeen Fairfax County markers
in the buff and blue colors that marked George
Washington's Fairfax Militia uniform have been
erected since then.
For
the record, Franconia in Virginia took its name from
a region in southern Germany noted for the House of
Hohenzollern, which was championing the Reformation
and pushing modernization of the economy at the same
time colonial America was growing. But three goals
of the Franconia Museum here and now capture
compellingly a common goal for each of us at holiday
time when families gather and stories abound:
Protect our history, promote our heritage and
provide educational opportunities. The fourth museum
goal turns out to be even more important. It
suggests a shining example of good citizenship that
should keep the applause spreading anywhere in
Virgnia there is a Jacqueline Walker: Highlight and
enhance the Spirit of Franconia.
Expand
that to the spirit of where you live and mix in the
spirit of the season. Happy Holidays.
--
December 18, 2006
|