A Generation Stages a Return

Martha Jackson Roache, Ronald Wright and Vernon Ricks Jr. used to boogie in the basement of Beverly Gray Kingsbury's rowhouse on P Street NW, blasting the sounds of Pookie Hudson and the Spaniels.

They were young, black and living in Georgetown.

That was the 1950s, when the music was new, "Ike" was in the White House and some four-story Georgetown mansions, now worth $2 million, were purchased for as little as $8,000.

Those were the memories yesterday at a reunion of 50 old friends at Mount Zion United Methodist Church, which is celebrating its 190th anniversary.

"This is my first time coming together with this many people I personally know from Georgetown in at least 40 years," said Wright, a Department of Defense retiree who lives in District Heights. "We're getting old. Tomorrow's not promised to us, and it's good to see each other and we're not at a funeral."

Wright proposed the reunion after reading an article about the long history of blacks in Georgetown in The Washington Post in July. After that, he appeared at Roache's front door on P Street. Years ago, Wright lived across the street from Roache, a retired D.C. school counselor.

" 'Martha, life is too short,' " she recalled him saying. "We started talking about kids we grew up with in Georgetown. Then he said 'Why don't we get together?' "

Roache embraced the idea. Next thing she knew, she was combing telephone books, calling churches and hunting down some of their childhood friends.

Five months later, the former Georgetown residents, almost all of them Marylanders now, were socializing at Mount Zion. The old friends, sons and daughters of teachers and government workers, honored Mildred Taylor, retired director of the Rose Park Playground, who had coordinated crafts, tennis camps and cooking classes for them. Sitting in a wheelchair, the fragile Taylor wiped a tear and then called out many of them by name.

Mary Wright, Ronald's sister, read the poems "Indian Children" and "My Shadow" from her yellowed composition notebook as the audience recited words from memory.

And at one point, Ricks played a song by James Brown, promising the music "would take you back to the days" in Kinsgbury's basement. The lights flickered out, and the crowd gasped, "Oooooh."

When they were partying at Kingsbury's house in the 1950s, Georgetown was integrated into separate and unequal lives: Blacks and whites, for the most part, attended different schools and different churches. Although some blacks went to all-black schools in other parts of the city, Roache attended the integrated Western High School in Georgetown, now the Duke Ellington School of the Arts, in 1956.