Resident Chuck Anziulewicz Memories

From resident Chuck Anziulewicz with his permission.

My parents were “original owners” too. Our family of six lived at 8301 Jeb Stuart Road from 1965 to 1974. My dad tells me that it is, or was, a tradition of Kettler Brothers Construction to install a small brass plaque in each home with the name of the original owners on it.

I attended Beverly Farms Elementary School during my first grade, then went to Ritchie Park after it was finished, and graduated from the sixth grade there in 1971. Then it was Robert Frost Middle School (it was still called a “junior high” back then), and then on to Wootton. In October 1974, shortly after I had started 10th grade, my family relocated to West Virginia.

Playing in or exploring the nearby woods was always an important part of my childhood. Back then it was all woods between Jeb Stuart Road and Devilwood Drive, and there were also large tracts of woods behind Potomac Woods Park with strange trails and abandoned wooden structures to stumble across. Of course, most of that land has since been developed.

For a few years, I was on the swim team at the community pool, and I also sang with the men and boys’ choir at Saint Raphael’s Catholic Church. And there were actually HORSES housed near the big cylindrical water tower, at l east in the late 1960s!

I have fond memories of eating and singing songs at Shakee’s Pizza near Congressional Plaza, going to movies at the Rockville Drive-In, playing Putt-Putt Golf, and even roller skating at the long-vanished Congressional Roller Rink. The neighborhood at the time was FILLED with school-age kids, and on Halloween nights it was no big deal to get together with your friends to go trick-or-treating without supervision. Back then kids could actually ride their bikes along Rockville Pike; what parent would even DREAM of allowing their kids to do that today?

Well, I imagine when the children of Montgomery Square get to be in the 40s, like me, they’ll have their own fond memories of what growing up there was like, and how things have changed. THAT’S something that never changes.

Best wishes,

Chuck Anziulewicz