FIVE THINGS TO KNOW ABOUT THE TAKOMA PARK FOLK FESTIVAL 

One. The first Takoma Park Folk Festival was held on September 10, 1978. That summer Sammie Abbott sought out local musicians who enjoyed playing for the fun of it. He proposed they organize a concert to help the struggling community-run Takoma Theatre. They jumped at the chance. Six weeks later, the first Festival kicked off and raised $1000 for the theatre. Everyone agreed to do it again. 

Two. Finding the right venue was easy. Lee Jordan suggested using the field at Takoma Park (then) Junior High where he was custodian. The school has served as the Festival venue ever since, except for 1999 through 2001. Those three years it moved to Piney Branch Elementary until Takoma Park Middle School was rebuilt. Before that, in 1982, the Festival helped fund the battle to rescue the school itself from a county-mandated closure. 

Three. The music and camaraderie were always intertwined with raising money. Musicians and staff volunteer their time so admission is free. A wide range of sponsors and supporters offset costs. The crowd is encouraged to buy a shirt or donate money. Vendors pay a site rental to offer a tempting array of international food. The second year of the Festival, Lee Jordan’s Boys and Girls Club received part of the proceeds. Every year since, the profits are divvied up among a dozen or so mostly youth-oriented groups, fulfilling the Festival’s founding principle. 

Four. Make music and people will come. One stage soon became seven. What counts as “folk music” has expanded to encompass all genres, eras and continents. Pete Seeger and Root Boy Slim both played the Field Stage. Families gather at the Grassy Nook. The Dance stage invites all to join in. Enjoy a favorite musician or discover a new talent. Add community tables and a premier craft show, and everyone has a reason to come spend the day.  

Five. Engaging new volunteers is vital. Forty years is a long time to sustain an event, especially one this complicated. The first changing of the guard came in 1989, with a second wave in the mid-1990s. The sudden death of key organizer Lenore Robinson in 2004 threatened to end the tradition. Dedicated volunteers rallied and the show went on. The Festival recently recovered from its 2016 hiatus only to be disrupted by Covid. Going forward its legacy rests in the hands of willing volunteers. 

(call it WHACK-O, he said, not WAY-co), and the Takoma Artists Guild. He spent two decades working with at-risk youth at the Bethesda YMCA, introducing them to Tai Chi among other life lessons. In 2011 Normon retired to open his own studio in Brentwood. There he combined his art and teaching Tai Chi. 

On September 27, 2020, family and friends gathered for a virtual memorial service, available on YouTube. 

Images of Normon’s art: National Harbor, We Come in Every Shade, Protest and working with fourth graders at Sandy Spring Museum.  Read the Roscoe-Normon story from the April 2000 Voice HERE. 

The same day Gilbert made his first land purchase, Amanda Thomas bought several lots along Tulip and Maple Avenues in her own name. Deeds show that several other local women did the same. Amanda’s husband Isaac opened the first general store, while she joined in planning Takoma’s first social events. A group photo in Historic Takoma’s archives shows Ida as part of the cast for a theatrical event.

Alcena Lamond and her husband were already living in the area when Gilbert arrived, operating the terra cotta quarry in the District near Van Buren and Underwood Street NW. As matriarch of the extended Lamond family, Alcena played a key role in building the Takoma DC library and organizing the Order of the Eastern Star (Masons). She was an early member of the Citizens Association of Takoma Park and its first female president. In fact, records indicate she was the first female president of any citizens’ association in the area. Her daughter, Mary Lamond White, later took up her role.

One of the first arrivals was Elizabeth “Betsey” Cora Wentworth Dudley. While her husband oversaw construction of many Takoma homes, she raised their four children at 204 Carroll Street NW, currently the CVS parking lot. Her son William Wentworth was the first child born in the new suburb. Two other sons opened long-lived local pharmacies, one in Takoma Park and the other in Silver Spring. For 60 years she witnessed Takoma’s expansion and was much honored by her neighbors as a keeper of early Takoma history.

Maggie Gilbert, the wife of Takoma founder B.F. Gilbert, welcomed newcomers into what was becoming a close-knit community. In an era when entertainment was do-it-yourself, her daughter Margaret and Helen Calhoun, who lived across the street, organized and performed in many recitals and musicales for the pleasure of all.

Elizabeth Cady and her husband spearheaded the formation of Trinity Episcopal Church, hosting the first meetings in their living room at 7064 Eastern Avenue NW, now known as the Cady Lee Mansion, and served as president of the church’s Ladies Guild for 17 years. Her children remained in the house until 1973. The renovated house, now owned by the Forum for Youth Investment, stands as a reminder of the grandeur of early Takoma.

Records show that a young woman named Miss Prentiss, no first name recorded, taught the first elementary school classes in a house on Maple Avenue in 1887. She and the students moved to a four-room wooden schoolhouse on Tulip Avenue (the current site of the Presbyterian Church community center) in 1889.

The arrival of the Seventh-day Adventists in 1904 brought two important women to Takoma Park. The first, Ellen White, the spiritual leader of the church, single-handedly orchestrated the Adventists’ move to Takoma. Over the next five years, she occasionally took up residence in General Carroll’s Manor House while overseeing construction of the Adventist hospital and the college.

The second Adventist was Dr. Lauretta Kress, who was called in to ready the San for its 1906 opening. She oversaw staff and trained nurses while running her own practice for expectant mothers and newborns. In 1915 she became the first woman licensed as a doctor in Montgomery County. Along with her daughter, she opened the Kress Maternity Ward adjacent to the hospital. Meanwhile she found time to be President of Takoma’s Women’s Temperance Union. When Lauretta retired in 1939, the Washington Post calculated she had delivered 4,371 babies since arriving here.

The names of Black women from Takoma’s early years mostly elude us. These women raised their own families while taking jobs as nannies, housekeepers, laundresses and cooks in white households. The evidence of their lives remains in only scattered references from employers praising their assistance and a few photographs captured by Morris Bien’s camera. 

By 1915, more Black women began to arrive as part of the Great Migration. One of the first was Olive Mae Warren, whose daughter Helen would marry Lee Jordan in 1935. Another was Alberta Dawes, whose son Roland currently presides over five generations of the Dawes family. Thanks to Roland we know the name of the teacher who appears in a fuzzy photo taken at the Blacks-only school on Geneva Avenue. Thelma Wheeler left an indelible impression on him that remains vivid nearly 80 years later. Historic Takoma’s African-American Oral History Project is working to recover more of these names.

Coming Next: Part 2 – Librarian Ruth Pratt, author Katherine Paterson, organizers like Belle Ziegler and Opal Daniels, Roland’s gymnast granddaughter Dominique, along with activists and politicians.

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In 1940, Cynthia Warner and her husband moved her recently-opened nursery school into the three-story Victorian, now at 8114 Carroll Avenue. Each year she added a grade so students could attend the school through 12th grade. The Cynthia Warner School followed a classical studies curriculum mixed with May Day festivities and Christmas pageants.

Unlike other private schools, the student body was racially mixed and came from middle- and lower-income households. Financial problems developed when Warner retired in 1981, and despite efforts by teachers and parents, the school was forced to close. In 1991 the original house was moved one lot south to make way for a Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. First a bed-and-breakfast and then a religious mission, the house is now a private residence. 

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Emily Monitor broke Takoma Park’s political ceiling with her election to the Takoma Park Council in 1956. She prevailed over John Roth by seven votes to claim one of two seats for Prince George’s residents. Previous to her election, she had been active in local PTAs and a member of the greater Takoma Park Recreation Council. That interest in children’s activities led to her chairing the Council’s Recreation Committee. Several years after Monitor gave up her seat in 1960, the City created a formal Recreation Department, led by another notable woman, Belle Ziegler. 

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In 1956, Belle Ziegler arrived in Takoma Park as a single mom with two kids. She took a job with the City which included overseeing city playgrounds. Her role expanded until, in 1967, she was named the first director of the newly created City Recreation Department. She joined with Lee Jordan and others to expand athletics, while also organizing Halloween and Easter celebrations, and opening the Fire Station gym for roller skating and teen dances. Her biggest efforts, however, were on behalf of the City’s long-standing Independence Day celebrations.

Even after Ziegler retired from her city job in 1890, she remained the heart and soul of Takoma’s Fourth of July parade until her death in 2008.

Belle Ziegler and Jequie Park. For ten years, beginning in 1963, Ziegler was also the driving force behind Takoma’s Sister City cultural exchange program with Jequie, Brazil. She spearheaded the fundraising and became “second mom” to the Brazilian exchange students. Her daughter spent a year in Jequie. In 1966 she motivated the City to name the park at Takoma and Albany Avenues as Jequie Park. Forty- four years later in 2010 the park was renamed Belle Ziegler Park.

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Opal Daniels and her family moved to Sherman Avenue in 1946. As a young mom she organized outdoor activities for her two children, first with PTA, then as Girl Scout leader for her daughter Kay.

Her work with the Girls Scouts continued for 40 years. When the Boy Scout organization refused to accept her son’s integrated Cub Scout troop, she seceded and set up her own Explorers Club for neighborhood kids. Meanwhile, Daniels expanded her focus to the county with her appointment to the Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission, where she spent 25 years lobbying for more and better parks.

When she died in 1983, neighbors rounded up 400 signatures to rename their neighborhood park off Carroll Avenue in her honor.  

When Belle Ziegler arrived in 1956, Daniels paired up with her new neighbor to recruit, cajole, corral, and entice every resident in the city to volunteer for or donate money to community activities. They greeted every new family on Sherman Avenue with a welcome call asking how they wanted to volunteer. 

Daniel’s daughter Kay Daniels Cohen took up her mom’s role as community organizer with infectious enthusiasm. She revived her neighborhood association, celebrated 4th of July dressed head-to-toe in red, white and blue, and promoted Play Days for kids. Upon her election as Ward 3 City Councilmember, she began awarding Gold Stars to residents who helped others, a practice she continued until her untimely death in 2014.

Women with Connections to Takoma Park

Rachel Carson, the mother of environmentalism, first discovered Sligo Creek in 1943, while briefly renting a house in Takoma Park where Maple Avenue met the creek.

The years of The Sea Around Us (1951) and Silent Spring (1962) lay ahead, but they were inspired by her continuing connection to Sligo Creek. Note: Carson’s grand-nephew attended Cynthia Warner School, and Carson shared her work with the students. 

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Author Katherine Paterson wrote several award-winning children’s books during the years from 1968 to 1981 when her husband John served as pastor of Takoma Park Presbyterian Church. The most personal was the young-adult novel Bridge to Terabithia. Although set in West Virginia, the events took place in Takoma Park. Her son’s best friend in second grade at Takoma Elementary was Lisa Hall, who died in a freak accident in the summer of 1974. He was devastated. Paterson wrote the novel in an effort to grapple with the aftermath of that tragic loss. The book was awarded the Newbery Medal for 1978.

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Goldie Hawn grew up on Cleveland Avenue in North Takoma, as reflected in her autobiography, A Lotus Grows in the Mud. She took her first dance lessons as a child in Takoma Park on her way to TV and movie stardom, and many classmates at Montgomery Blair High School (Class of 1963) remember her stealing the show in several musicals. Hawn was inducted into Blair’s Alumni Hall of Fame in 2009. 

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In 1996, Takoma Park pulled out all the stops to welcome home Dominique Dawes, the 19-year old Olympic champion gymnast. As one of the “Magnificent Seven,” she was part of the drama that earned America its first Olympic gold medal in team gymnastics. Dawes also made history herself that day as the first black woman gymnast of any nationality to earn Olympic gold. Together with previous landmark wins, she created a path for the rise of Gabby Douglas and Simone Biles. Discovering gymnastics at age six, Dawes split her childhood between school in Takoma Park and training mostly in Gaithersburg, before taking the world stage.

She retired in 2000 (after a third Olympics and bronze team medal) to advocate for the value of fitness and self-esteem for all children. From 2010 to 2016 she co-chaired Obama’s President’s Council for Fitness, Sports & Nutrition. Dawes recently opened her own Gymnastics Academy in Clarksburg dedicated to making fitness fun for all kids.