The Arlington Historical Society has launched a new initiative designed to capture present-day voices for future study and understanding.
In preparation for pilot projects — including discussions with those involved in development in the Shirlington area as well as the Crystal City Underground — co-chairs Sean Denniston and Marty Suydam recently completed a five-week training session on oral histories courtesy of the Office of Historic Alexandria.
“The training and the instructor Francesco De Salvatore were excellent,” Denniston, the society’s vice president, told ARLnow. “We hope to arrange future training for interested volunteers either by us or a local university or historical society.”
Among the lessons from the course, he said:
“You need patience, as an oral-history project can take months to develop and complete. As interviewees are often elderly you want to speak with them soonest, but not at the expense of proper preparation. Oral history is different than an interview, as you’re not just learning about an event but the narrator’s role in the event, his or her personal history, and capturing the moment in time. We also learned the importance of an end product: What are you planning to do with the narration, where will it be archived, and how will it be made permanently available?”
As part of the initiative, Suydam recently conversed with Joseph Pelton, a former Arlington County Civic Federation president, on how Shirlington and its surroundings were impacted by flooding from Hurricane Agnes in 1972 — and how changes made in the aftermath paved the way for what followed.
The 15-page transcript covers an hour of discussion ranging from the impact of floods in the Four Mile Run stream valley and the resulting infrastructure improvements in the corridor, to how planning for new development proceeded.
“Shirlington became really a model for how you could put all of these factors together into an integrated way of not only office buildings and living facilities and retail, but also cultural facilities, as well,” Pelton said in the conversation with Suydam.
Denniston, who is working on the Crystal City oral-history project, said he is hopeful the results from that effort will be something to be shared with the broader community.
“Ideally, I would love to see a permanent exhibit somewhere in Crystal City telling the story of this truly unique part of Arlington history,” he said.
The society’s new effort will complement the collection of oral history interviews conducted over the past 60 years for the Charlie Clark Center for Local History at Arlington Central Library.
Latest edition of Historical Magazine issued: In other news, the Arlington Historical Society recently celebrated publication of the 2025 edition of the Arlington Historical Magazine.
The magazine features the Ball-Sellers House on the cover, marking the 50th anniversary of the donation of that Glencarlyn property to the society.
Featured in the 2025 edition are:
- Zachary Newkirk’s article “Julia Robert’s Freedom Suit: One Enslaved Woman’s Path to the Supreme Court and Emancipation”
- Janine DeWitt and Kristin Neun’s article “The Color Lines of Racially Restrictive Covenant: Segregation Walls on Record”
- Bill Fogarty’s article “1946 Arlington: The First Crack in the Byrd Machine”
- Ciro Taddeo’s article “The Tea House Tower of Arlington”
- Malia Humphries-Do’s 2024 student award-winning article “Remembering Little Saigon: The Story of Arlington’s Vietnamese Community”
Articles from past editions of the magazine, dating back to its creation in 1957, can be found online.
