An Epic of Noble Beauty
Loving Grandparents
Our maternal grandparents Leon and Mary Grayson lived one city block from our childhood home in Washington, D.C. They were welcoming, affectionate, generous, and witty. They loved us, and we loved them. Because they preserved many letters, documents, clippings, photos and other mementos of their lives before we knew them, we have come to love and appreciate them all the more.
A Building Boom
Leon moved from his native Savannah, Georgia to the federal capital when he accepted a position in Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Justice Department. His bride Mary joined him a few months afterward. Washington, D.C was in the midst of a post-World War building boom. The Lincoln Memorial and Arlington Memorial Bridge were dedicated in the 1920s, and B Street was widened and renamed Constitution Avenue in 1931. The massive Federal Triangle government complex, slowed by the Great Depression, was going up between Constitution and Pennsylvania Avenues from 15th to 6th Street N.W. Among other agencies, it would include a Beaux-Arts Department of Justice headquarters and an ornate stand-alone neoclassical National Archives. These were nearing completion when Leon and Mary arrived in 1935.
The Photo Album
Our grandparents preserved a photo album that commemorated these early years in their adopted hometown. The album measures 11 1/2 x 14 inches and is made of cardboard covered with a thin layer of black faux-leather and embossed with decorative flourishes. The front and back covers were connected by black string to allow for expansion, with 20 or so crisp black paper sheets to which photos were mounted. The spine, string, and paper have become brittle with age, while the 200 or so black and white photos have all faded considerably.
“An Epic of Beauty”
On the inside cover, Leon wrote “The Past is Prologue – And History is Transformed from a Weltering Chaos into an Epic of Noble and Rhythmic Beauty.” What a profound and poetic thought!
The album contains numerous pictures of Washington’s monuments, memorials, and federal buildings, including one of Mary posed on Constitution Ave. next to the National Archives. Another is of Leon standing at the Pennsylvania Ave. entrance to the same building.
Behind them are three of four imposing and recently-placed 25-foot tall sculptures. The base of one reads, “STUDY THE PAST”; Another, “THE HERITAGE OF THE PAST IS THE SEED THAT BRINGS FORTH THE HARVEST OF THE FUTURE,” a quote from abolitionist Wendell Phillips; a third is engraved, “WHAT IS PAST IS PROLOGUE,” from Shakespeare’s The Tempest, certainly the influence of Leon’s photo album dedication. The “Weltering Chaos, Epic Beauty” portion of the verse is unknown, and may be Leon’s original composition.
A third photo shows 6’ tall Leon dwarfed by two 20-foot high ornate metal night doors at the new Department of Justice building. His caption: “My Future Office – Wheels of Justice = Grind for Me.”
The Past is Prologue
Leon and Mary shared nearly 50 years in their adopted hometown, more than 30 of those with their grandchildren. They were welcoming, affectionate, generous, and witty. They loved us, and we loved them.
Their preserved photo album is embossed with decorative flourishes, with 20 or so crisp black paper sheets on which to mount the photos. The spine, string, and paper have become brittle with age and the photos have faded considerably.
Still, if we think back to the day Leon wrote the dedication and attached the initial photos to its pristine pages, the Grayson photo album is a kind of metaphor for the arc of each of our lives. Every story has to begin and end somewhere; However, as with any epic, no matter how far back it goes, it is but a prologue that ultimately leads to the beauty of the here and now.
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