By the time immigrant Leo Vondas, second row, center, became a sixth grade safety patrol at Brightwood Elementary, he had mastered English.
the 1940s, as modern brick apartment buildings replaced the aged frame houses. But a new wave of African American families arrived in the early 1950s after the Supreme Court effectively outlawed race-restrictive covenants in 1948. The 1954 school desegregation ruling intensified the turnover from white to African American. Some white families, fearing racial change or lured by new suburban housing, moved away. But oth- ers defied block-busting efforts and stayed. The African American families who joined them came for the reasons many people stayed: a well- located, family-friendly neighborhood. Brightwood’s modest commercial strip on Georgia Avenue lost many of its businesses after the civil disturbances following the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s assassination frightened owners away. By the 1970s, residents agreed, Georgia Avenue had clearly seen better days. However, in 2008 this artery is receiving new attention as part of Washington’s Great Streets redevelopment project. The old Stansbury Masonic Temple has been reborn as condominiums, and
new businesses are moving in among the old. Once again, as the toll booth and roadhouse caused 19th century travelers to pause here, 21st century travelers are invited to stop and explore all that Brightwood has to offer.
Mother Teresa, left, received 14 young women into her Missionaries of Charity at Church of the Nativity in 1987.
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