Gina Arlotto

Interview with Gina Arlotto

Interview Date: April 8, 2025
Interviewer: Randy Norton
AI Transcription: Seth Kaufman
Editors: Maygene Daniels and
Elizabeth Lewis

This interview transcript is the property of the Ruth Ann Overbeck Capitol Hill History Project.
Not to be reproduced without permission.

START OF INTERVIEW
NORTON: Good morning. This is Randy Norton. I am interviewing Gina [Regina Anzelone] Arlotto for the Ruth Ann Overbeck Capitol Hill History Project. It is the 8th of April, 2025. We are at 636 East Capitol Street, Elizabeth Lewis's house. ]

ARLOTTO: Good morning.
NORTON: Where are you from originally?
ARLOTTO: Originally, I'm kind of a DMV native. My dad was born and raised most of his life in DC, but then moved to College Park, Maryland, when he was a little kid. Then when my parents got married, we bought a house and lived in College Park right around the corner from my grandparents for a number of years. Then my grandparents moved to Florida and my dad got a job in Reston, Virginia. So in about fifth grade we moved to Northern Virginia. So I can pretty much make my way around anywhere on the Beltway because I feel like a PG [Prince George’s] County girl sometimes, but Virginia was a big part too.
NORTON: So where did you go to school?
ARLOTTO: High school I went to Notre Dame Academy in Middleburg [Virginia], which at the time was an all-girls day and boarding school. I went there as a day student for three years and then I boarded my senior year, which was pretty fun.
NORTON: That must have been a good hoof to get out to Middleburg.
ARLOTTO: When it came time to look, I had been going to a little St. Joseph's school in Herndon [Virginia], which was a K through eight school. And when it came time to pick a high school, it was either St. Mary's in Alexandria or Notre Dame in Middleburg. My dad did the drive and said, "It's way easier to get you to Middleburg actually because it's straight out Route 50."
NORTON: I see a smile on your face, but you didn't mention any public schools in there.
ARLOTTO: You know, I did start out going to public schools in Prince George's County. And I guess it was in third grade that I went to St. Hugh’s [St. Hugh of Grenoble] in Greenbelt. And then when we moved to Virginia, I did go to the public school, Terraset [Terraset Elementary School, Reston, Virginia], which was kind of a semi-famous school. It was all underground with solar panels and all this stuff.
I went there for a year. And then after that, my parents wanted me to go to Catholic school. My dad went to St. Anthony's [St. Anthony Catholic School] in Brookland for high school, which at the time was a high school. It's now just a K-8 school, but it used to be a high school. He was kind of bucking the trend too because almost all of his friends went to DeMatha [DeMatha Catholic High School, Hyattsville, Maryland].
NORTON: So where did he live when he lived in DC?
ARLOTTO: He lived right off Malcolm X Park or Meridian Hill Park in some of the apartments there.
NORTON: When did you graduate from high school?
ARLOTTO: 1985.
NORTON: Okay, and where did you go after that?
ARLOTTO: After that I went to Virginia Tech for a semester. I was really unhappy going from a really small all-girls school to a really huge big public university. So I actually ended up at Randolph-Macon Woman's College in Lynchburg. I loved it. I had a great experience there.
NORTON: Is that where you met George?
ARLOTTO: I did. I was a senior in college. There are not many bars in Lynchburg because it's a Baptist, Jerry Falwell town. But there was one bar and on a Thursday night they always did Motown night. It was right next to our campus. So we, a bunch of the girls, we all went there and George was there with some of his friends. He was teaching at Virginia Episcopal School [in Lynchburg]. He's four years older than me so he'd been out of college for a few years but had stuck around Lynchburg.
NORTON: All right. When you graduated, what did you do next?
ARLOTTO: I graduated, moved back to the [Washington] area. My mom and dad had divorced and so my mom was living in Manassas. I didn't want to live in Manassas so I got a job as soon as I could in DC and I worked for a law firm. George and I were dating long distance. He was still a biology teacher and a lacrosse coach at VES [Virginia Episcopal School].

I was at the law firm for about five years as a legal assistant and I loved that job too. I always thought I wanted to go to law school. I did always want to go to law school actually, but started meeting a lot of very unhappy attorneys. It was a big intellectual property firm. A lot of the attorneys I worked with were engineers and then they got law degrees. So it was a pretty intense environment for them, I think.
NORTON: You liked it.
ARLOTTO: I did. I was a very good legal assistant. I met some friends I'm still very good friends with to this day. I was always dating George and so George kind of then got incorporated into the group up here. He would come up on the weekends. My first apartment was with a friend of mine. We got an apartment on Columbia Pike in Arlington. I took the bus to the Pentagon and then the metro into the city.
NORTON: Metro would have been around then, so yes, you would have come to Metro.
ARLOTTO: I graduated from college in 1989. Then George and I got married in '92 and moved into the old Lansburgh Building apartments downtown. And we just immediately loved the city. George moved up [to Washington]. He had finished his master's degree at UVA in education and he moved up here. That’s when we got married and moved in together. And so we loved the city. That was when I decided I wanted to be an urban planner or in historic preservation. So I went back to school at UVA to get my master's degree.
NORTON: So did you go back to Charlottesville?
ARLOTTO: No, I did the extension school, which at the time was in Falls Church. I did have to take some classes in Charlottesville, but I just drove back and forth for those. After I got my master's degree, I started working as an architectural historian with a woman at Dupont Circle, Judy Robinson and Associates.
NORTON: And what sort of work was that?
ARLOTTO: Judy had been one of two partners in an architectural history firm called Traceries. And they had split the partnership. One partner got all the DC work and the other partner, Judy, got all the federal work. So it was actually pretty profitable to be one of the few architectural historians doing federal properties. Once [a federal building] hit 50 years old, you had to do an architectural survey.
NORTON: And that's any federal building?
ARLOTTO: Any federally owned building. So I actually wrote quite a bit of the survey for the Navy Yard buildings. They were all torpedo factories. That was really interesting.
NORTON: Gun factories, right.
ARLOTTO: I did a bunch of buildings on the NIH [National Institutes of Health] campus.
NORTON: What is involved in an architectural survey? Maybe the next question is why do they want to do one every 50 years or so?
ARLOTTO: They want to record for posterity. You just record really what is in the building and what the building was made of, what its purpose was. In later years, maybe something about that building is going to mean something about what its use was.

The most interesting building that I did on the NIH campus was an old building. It was just a brick building. I think it only had maybe one window. It was very nondescript. The NIH planners wanted to tear it down to build something else. When I did the survey, I found out it was where they first did nuclear medicine testing. So the whole structure of the building reflected what they thought they needed to protect people. The walls were like two feet thick and had a bunch of places where gloves could go through the walls and stuff. So we were like you probably shouldn't tear this down. This is the most important building on the whole campus practically.
NORTON: Now when you survey, you determine what it's made out of and all the dimensions and that sort of thing. Do you actually talk about what it was used for?
ARLOTTO: Oh yes, absolutely. That's part of it, but it has to be very objective. I found a bunch of articles in Life Magazine where they talked about nuclear medicine as being on the campus. So it was a pretty big deal and they had a lot of photographs of the doctors and nurses inside the building and doing the work and stuff. So that was really interesting.
NORTON: So the building's still there?
ARLOTTO: I don't know. I think it is. I think it must be. I don't think that they would have been able to get a waiver.
NORTON: Well how long did you work there?
ARLOTTO: I worked there for about two or three years and then I had my first child. I had Andrew in '96 and after I'd had him, I did a little work for Judy, but then decided to stay at home with my kids.
NORTON: So how long were you a stay-at-home mom?
ARLOTTO: I was a stay-at-home mom for, oh my gosh, let me think about this. I think I was at home for about 12 years with the kids. George had gone back to school full-time to work on his doctorate at George Washington University. Then he was hired as a principal in Montgomery County, so he was pretty busy. For the first years of the kids' lives we felt like it [was] probably a good idea. He was gone early in the morning and would come home late at night. [
NORTON: And what years are we talking about?

ARLOTTO: From about ‘96 until about 2008 or 2009 something like that.
NORTON: Where were you living at that point? The Lansburgh building? Where was that?
ARLOTTO: That's on 7th Street northwest. It's still there. The Shakespeare Theater was there when we first moved in. [Shakespeare Theatre Company: Klein Theatre, 450 Seventh Street NW.] Now I believe they have a bigger facility kind of across the way.

NORTON: Or around the corner. [Shakespeare Theatre Company: Harman Theatre, 610 F Street NW.]
ARLOTTO: I had one friend, another legal assistant at Finnegan, who had just bought a house here on Capitol Hill. George and I would come to his house for little barbecues and stuff. We loved the neighborhood. We bought the house before we had kids. We bought 138 Kentucky Avenue in 1994. That was just a couple years after we got married and before Andrew was born. It was kind of a wreck of a house, but we loved it. It was coming off the years on the Hill where you couldn't really sell anything very quickly. So apparently this house had been on the market for a long time. It was the last property that the former owner owned with his ex-wife. Apparently he really wanted to get rid of it and give her money and then be done with it.
NORTON: So where do you live now?
ARLOTTO: So now I live at 123 Kentucky Avenue almost right across the street.
NORTON: What made you decide on that block?
ARLOTTO: We loved the wide sidewalks. We loved that it was a very quiet street. Even with Independence and East Capitol on each side it didn't get a lot of traffic. We had looked at and were really close to buying a house in the 1300 block of North Carolina northeast. It had an alley, there was a liquor store at one end, and it got a lot of traffic in the morning. George just had kind of a bad feeling about it. We didn't buy that place but we bought 138.
NORTON: Now 138 wouldn't have had an alley would it?
ARLOTTO: It does have an alley. It's not at all drivable honestly. You can't drive a car down through that alley. It's very narrow. But it does have alley access and you would take the trash out that way.
NORTON: And what was the neighborhood like when you moved in there?
ARLOTTO: It was great. You know George was a public educator. There were a lot of teachers on our street. There were a couple firefighters. There were at least one or two police officers. So it was very blue-collar feeling. Quite a few black families had been there for a very long time. One grandmother would come out and sweep the block every day and she had her old Cadillac out front. She was sweet and everybody was really great. But it was a very blue-collar little street for sure. I don't think there were any lobbyists or doctors or lawyers.
NORTON: Well, was Jeff Stallsmith still there? He lived on that block early on, but then he moved out to the suburbs. He probably wasn't, because I think they moved when my kids were little. So by '94, he would have moved.
ARLOTTO: The Pfeiffers were there.
ARLOTTO: Georgine [Reed] and Marie [Spiro] were on the corner [161 Kentucky Avenue SE].

NORTON: Were they the ones who did a lot of the gardening and everything?

ARLOTTO: Antoinette [Vionnet] also does the gardening. Antoinette's in the corner house [144 Kentucky Avenue SE]. She was just a couple doors down from us. Laurie Siegel was there.
ARLOTTO: Laurie Siegel [long-time art teacher at Watkins School] came very soon after we bought there. She definitely came over when Andrew was born.
NORTON: Laurie was an art teacher in the public schools. And let's see who else? Was Miss Teferra on the block?

ARLOTTO: Yes, of course. Yes, Elizabeth Teferra was there. Hazel Kreinheder and Bob were there. They're still there.
NORTON: Are they teachers?
ARLOTTO: Bob was a government worker and Hazel was kind of our block historian. She spent pretty much every day doing research at the library.
NORTON: Now Bob just recently passed away. Of course Elizabeth Teferra was there.
ARLOTTO: Oh the Raimos were there, Sharon Raimo. I remember they had lived on Eighth Street. They had just, maybe a year before we moved, moved into their house.
NORTON: And that's Bernie and Sharon Raimo. Sharon Raimo was also involved in the public schools [see her interview on this website].

ARLOTTO: Another educator, yes, right, right.
NORTON: So okay, and what about the Pfeiffers [Cathy and John Pfeiffer, children Lucy, Ellen Jack, and Polly ? I always ask people about the Pfeiffers because I never got to interview Cathy of course. [Cathy Pfeiffer, a beloved librarian at Watkins School and known for her dedication to the community and children’s literature, died in 2002.] So what do you remember about them?
ARLOTTO: Well what I remember about them was just that it was a big fun loud happy family. She was very good friends with Mary [Rush]. I felt very alone at first on the block. I was the only one that had a baby. I want to say Jack and Polly were probably up into the elementary grades. So I was the only one with a new baby. So I felt kind of alone, but Kathleen Brown, who was another educator, another Cluster parent and teacher, was in the 200 block and she saw me a bunch of times. She was a stay-at-home mom also. Her daughter Maddie [Frieberg] was her third kid but Andrew's age. So she kind of adopted me. But I will say the whole philosophy of the Pfeiffers was let your kids out on the sidewalk and [let them] run around. And you don't have to hover and you don't have to really watch them and pay attention to them that much. And that really truly influenced me as a parent.
NORTON: And you say the Cluster. That's the Capitol Hill Cluster Schools, which you can describe a little bit.
ARLOTTO: Right. So the Capitol Hill Cluster was a group of three different schools at three different places that were their own feeder program. George had been at Wilson when we first got married. He was a biology teacher at Wilson and then later an assistant principal at Woodrow Wilson [High School] in northwest [Washington]. One of the reasons we bought on the Hill was he said, “Oh, we can send our kids to the Cluster.” All the kids that come to Wilson out of the Cluster are great kids, which you know.
We were so close to Watkins [Elementary School, 420 Twelfth Street SE] that we thought we were in boundary. It turns out that we were not. We were actually in boundary for Payne [Payne Elementary School, 1445 C Street SE]. Peabody [Peabody Elementary School, 425 C Street NE] was a pre-K and K campus. And then Watkins was their first grade through fourth. Stuart-Hobson [Stuart-Hobson Middle School, 410 E Street NE] was their fifth through eighth grade campus.
Kathleen [Brown] told me, "Oh, you've got a little kid. You've got to do the Lutheran Church play school at age two." That was a co-op.
NORTON: It was the Capitol Hill co-op, and the play school or whatever. [Capitol Hill Cooperative Play School.]
ARLOTTO: The parents all did the work. We cycled through and watched the kids. Then [Kathleen Brown] said, "Okay, after the two-year-old program, you've got to do Miss Frances’s  three-year-old nursery school," which was at that time at Watkins. [Run by Frances Slaughter, see her interview on this website.] I know it had been at another place [Peabody], but by the time Andrew got there, it was at Watkins.
NORTON: But it was not part of the public school.
ARLOTTO: Correct. So Kathleen and Mary Rush and Cathy Pfeiffer were my models. [Laughs.]
NORTON: Now Mary Rush, how did you know Mary?
ARLOTTO: I knew Mary through Kathleen. Kathleen would invite us over to her house. I got to know the Rush kids. Kathleen really guided me through everything. She said, "You have to join Cheverly." And then of course the Rushes and the Pfeiffers, everybody, was at Cheverly pool [Cheverly Swim and Racquet Club, 5600 Euclid Street, Cheverly, Maryland]. Mary Rush was the first grade teacher at the time.
NORTON: At Watkins.
ARLOTTO: At Watkins. Yes, yes. I don't think any of my kids ever had her. She died on the playground when Maisie, my youngest, was pretty much a newborn. It was very traumatic and awful for everyone.
NORTON: You're a stay-at-home mom at that point. You start with the Lutheran co-op and then you go to Miss Frances Slaughter. And then what?
ARLOTTO: And then Kathleen said, "We can wait in line to get into Peabody." The Reggio [Reggio Emilia] program was there. It was only a few years old. That was one of the years where there was a hypothermia alert. We all went and got in line at like 4 a.m. The mayor might have sent the hypothermia vans for the parents waiting in line at different programs. We were not in boundary. And so I will say that it wasn't as popular of a program at that time so I don't even think there was a waitlist. I think everybody who had applied and was on the waitlist got in.
NORTON: So what was the Reggio program?
ARLOTTO: So the Reggio program was a program where they were taking more of an arts-focused approach to learning. It was kind of like “Montessori light” I want to say. It wasn't as self-directed as Montessori, but they were incorporating a lot of art and studio art elements into the day.
NORTON: Was there a particular faculty member or members that were sort of ramrodding the program?
ARLOTTO: I believe John Burst and Sarah [Burke]—oh gosh, I can't believe I'm not going to remember her name—were the lead teachers. Then Ms. Ricks was another. And then Louise Chapman. I think it was those four teachers. They had been at Peabody but wanted to try a new program. And so it was called the School Within a School chartered program. They had negotiated with the public schools to be allowed to do something that was going to veer from the regular curriculum is how I understood it.
NORTON: Was it in Peabody?
ARLOTTO: It was. It was on the top floor.
NORTON: Now the School Within a School has got its whole school [building]?
ARLOTTO: It's got its own school. I know it doesn't really make sense that they still have that name.
NORTON: Okay, well then, what grades did the Reggio program have?
ARLOTTO: That was pre-K, so age four.
NORTON: So you went from Miss Frances to pre-K. So that would have been Andrew right?
ARLOTTO: That was Andrew.
NORTON: Okay, and your other kids are how far apart?
ARLOTTO: They're all three years apart. So Andrew is the oldest. [He] kind of pulled his siblings into the school. So we didn't have to wait in line again. Thank goodness. They try to keep the families together.
NORTON: Why the public schools?
ARLOTTO: Well, it's kind of funny. I'd been in Catholic schools longer than George had. George went to Good Counsel in Wheaton for high school, but he had gone to public schools his whole life.  We just wanted our kids to have a full neighborhood experience.  We wanted them to be able to hang out with the neighborhood kids and we wanted them to be able to walk to the school. I guess we could have done that at St. Peter's [St. Peter School. 422 Third Street SE]. All of our kids religiously did CCD [Confraternity of Christian Doctrine educational program] through St. Peter's [St. Peter’s Church on Capitol Hill]. All three of them every Sunday. But we believed in the public schools and the neighborhood schools.
NORTON: I know the Pfeiffers were pretty much the same.
ARLOTTO: Yes. Totally. And I think it was also having these other great parents with these great kids [that] made me feel like I want my kids to be like their kids because they're all such great kids and they're so smart and funny and they just roll with everything. And so whatever formula they had used I was going to try to use.
NORTON: Did your other kids go to the Reggio program too?
ARLOTTO: They did.
NORTON: And after pre-k then what?
ARLOTTO: After pre-k and kindergarten they were back at Watkins and they all continued through Watkins to Stuart-Hobson. At some point they made Watkins first grade through fifth grade, and they made the sixth, seventh, and eighth grades at Stuart. I was kind of sad about that because I felt like it was kind of nice to have the fifth graders over there, even though fifth grade looks very different from an eighth grader. But we definitely had some years where, because my husband by then was moving through Montgomery County as a high school principal and then assistant superintendent and all of these things, we definitely had times when we were like, you know, “We could move to Montgomery County or we could move to Anne Arundel County and go to any of these other public schools” that he was in. But we really liked the city and we loved the experience that our kids were getting. Riding their bikes to Stuart, taking the bus. At the time Watkins and Peabody had a little mid-afternoon bus that went back and forth between the campuses.
NORTON: Oh right. It was a city bus wasn't it?
ARLOTTO: It was. Somehow it was a WMATA [public transit agency] bus that had the agreement to link the campuses. So that was really great. My kids would say, "Do we have any tokens? I need a token!" They were the old bus tokens.
NORTON: Speaking of tokens, let me ask, were you ever in the babysitting co-op?
ARLOTTO: You know, I was only in it very, very briefly. I don't know why it just didn't work out.
NORTON: Do you remember any particular teachers at Watkins?
ARLOTTO: I'm not going to remember names. All of my kids really did have great teachers. Miss Lauren Tate was a great teacher. I think she was first grade for Andrew. There was another teacher who Mary Grace had I think for third or fourth grade who she loved. Maisie at one point had Mr. O'Neill who was great. We never had Tina Deanna or Fran Ewart. These are some other Capitol Hill mom/ teachers. I don't think we ever had any of them.
NORTON: How about extracurricular stuff like music and art? Were they involved in that?
ARLOTTO: You know, we did some piano with Dale Shiffler—a teacher over at St. Joe's [St. Joseph’s Roman Catholic Church. 313 Second Street NE]. My kids didn’t really like it but we forced them to do it for a while. And then soccer, of course. Andrew and Maisie did Soccer on the Hill. Maisie did basketball.
NORTON: So where did you play basketball? I think basketball was sort of organized after my kids came out.
ARLOTTO: We did it at Gallaudet. Under the Sports on the Hill umbrella they started a little basketball league. Andrew even did wrestling at one point at the old Hine [Hine Junior High] under Sports on the Hill. George had coached wrestling at one point at VES, and I think George had even wrestled at Good Counsel too. But George's passion, his big love for sports, is lacrosse. So all of our kids had to go outside of DC to do lacrosse and field hockey. The girls did field hockey in the fall in McLean [Virginia]. We took them out there. And then they did lacrosse in the spring out in Bethesda [Maryland].
NORTON: So was it a club sport?
ARLOTTO: Andrew did soccer here on the Hill for a long time. and then he did a club team for soccer in the fall. But then he also always played lacrosse in the spring too.
NORTON: Where’d they go to high school?
ARLOTTO: So they all ended up at Wilson.
NORTON: Did they have lacrosse by then?
ARLOTTO: They did.
NORTON: Well it's interesting. I think they put in lacrosse sort of the tail end when my kids were there.
ARLOTTO: Yes, yes, they did, because George coached then. So at the time Andrew was looking at high school, Eastern was closed. And a bunch of us parents met with Michelle Rhee [DC Public Schools Chancellor]. She was very insulting and basically said, Have you looked at your school's test scores?” And kind of made us all feel like we were idiots for keeping our kids in the Capitol Hill public school system. We asked her, "What are our options? What can we have as an option for high school? Where can we go if we want to stay in the public school system?" I believe at that time she kind of said, "Well, Dunbar will be your in-boundary school.” This isn't the beautiful new Dunbar that we have now. It was the Dunbar that was really falling apart.
NORTON: And it's not the Dunbar of the great civil rights leaders.
ARLOTTO: No, exactly. I think she did say that if we wanted to apply to other schools we would get a preference because Eastern at the time was not open. So Andrew looked at Walls [School Without Walls] and wasn't really blown away by it. It might have been because my husband—being a high school teacher and a high school principal for many years in a bunch of different places— really believed in a big comprehensive high school. And he had worked at Wilson. So my kids, when they were little, had known a bunch of teachers and coaches at Wilson and some of them were still there.
Andrew applied to Wilson through one of the academies, through the international academy. That was the way that all the Capitol Hill kids got in. You had to say yes, you're very interested in internationals, which Andrew did.
And being at Wilson, he pulled in the girls [his sisters], because he was a rising senior when Mary Grace was a rising freshman. So we got the kids in that way. And then we were just so happy with Wilson and the kids were doing so well that we didn't consider any other option.
NORTON: Let me back up a little bit, because let's sketch in George's career. He was at Wilson as a biology teacher. Did he go straight from there to being an assistant principal at Wilson or did he go someplace else?
ARLOTTO: He was assistant principal at Wilson under Dr. Bonner for a few years and she was his mentor.
NORTON: That would be Wilma Bonner, right?
ARLOTTO: Wilma Bonner, yes, yes. Phenomenal educator and just a really great person. We got married in October of '92. George had finished his master's degree at UVA in May [1992] and he didn't have a job for quite a while. The school year was getting ready to start and he actually answered an ad in the newspaper for a biology teacher that Dr. Bonner had placed personally. And so George went with his resume and she saw him. He had very solid credentials obviously. She said, "DC Public Schools needs a person like you and Wilson needs a person like you." And so she pushed to get him hired. I think he started work in October, right before we got married on the 17th. We couldn't take a honeymoon because he couldn't take any time.
NORTON: I'm sorry.
ARLOTTO: That's okay. We went to the Homestead [resort in Virginia] for the weekend.
So George started out there. Then when Dr. Bonner left, there was a big push to hire George as the principal. But they couldn't get it through and we waited. It was like, "Well, if I don't get made the principal, then I'm going to go work on my doctorate full time." We literally had signed the loans when [a DC City Council member]––I don't know who the superintendent at that time was––said, “We've gotten it through the Council.  Do you want to be the principal? We can hire you.” He was like, “I just signed on loans to go to school full-time.” So he couldn't do it. He still really regrets not having that opportunity.
So then he went to George Washington [University]. When he finished his course work, he went back trying to get a job. He could not get a job in DCPS. They would not hire him. So Montgomery County hired him at that point. He became principal of Wheaton High School, which was also funny because that was right where he grew up in the Silver Spring, Wheaton area. He was there for a number of years.
One of the other guys that he knew from Montgomery County [Kevin Maxwell] now became the superintendent for Anne Arundel County. And he took George and two other people from Montgomery County. So George became, I think, the director of high schools in Anne Arundel County, and then he became the assistant superintendent, and then he became the chief of staff to the superintendent, and then he became the superintendent of Anne Arundel County. Then Kevin Maxwell left to become the superintendent for Prince George's County Public Schools. They did a whole search [for Anne Arundel County school superintendent.] They had several other people, but then George got the job. So it was kind of funny.  Your dad's a superintendent in Anne Arundel County and you’re going to DC Public Schools.
NORTON: It's kind of the ultimate reverse commute.
ARLOTTO: He had a great commute. It was 30 minutes door to door.
NORTON: So let me just ask you how did you manage to get an interview to see Michelle Rhee?
ARLOTTO: Gosh, you know, I don't know who had orchestrated that. It was a big meeting at Cathy Townsend and Brad Pine's house over by the Day School [Capitol Hill Day School.  210 South Carolina Avenue SE]. It was a whole bunch of us, all the PTA members.  Everybody was there.
NORTON: Were Cathy and Brad involved with the Cluster too?
ARLOTTO:  Yes, all four of their kids went all the way through the Cluster the same as our kids.
I'm trying to think who might have gotten the meeting. I don't know who did. But I want to say Tommy Wells was there. Michelle Rhee [Chancellor of DC public schools from 2007 to 2010] came with her people. We were just making a plea for how great the neighborhood school can be and how great DCPS with all of its flaws can still be. A great option for people. She was really very critical of DC public schools and she was kind of encouraging the charter school movement we felt, even though she was the Chancellor for DC public schools.
I think Ed Lazere was there. He runs, I think, the DC Fiscal Policy Institute. All of his kids went through the Cluster also. Great guy. Very well-known politically. He’s not a politician, but he has done a lot of stuff with policy and analysts and stuff. So [there were] a bunch of really smart, thoughtful parents in a room––black, white, from all over, saying, “We have a great model here. We think this can be replicated, and we're all really happy.” And she kind of was like, "Your test scores are terrible." She actually did say, "Have you looked at your test scores?" Of course, they weren't great, but our kids were fine and we felt like, you know, a rising tide lifts all boats.
That was the other thing George would always say. Kids need a few things out of elementary school. They need to be very good readers, [have] comprehension. They need to master algebra by the end of eighth grade. And they need to understand and be able to handle a lot of different teaching styles and also kids in the classroom. They need different kinds of kids from different kinds of families, from different kinds of backgrounds, different kinds of religions.
He said it's at high school that they need a lot of course options. They need a full buffet of classes to pick from. They need a whole bunch of clubs because this is when a teenager is really finding themselves. They need sports as an outlet. So that's why he said our kids could probably go anywhere. Being in a school with kids that are very different from them, we're all helping each other to be a best student.
NORTON: But Michele was not impressed.
ARLOTTO: No, no, she wasn't. So then we kind of all just felt like we were on our own. The  majority of my kids' friends went to School Without Walls. I think some went to Banneker [Benjamin Banneker Academic High School], a bunch went to privates and one of Andrew’s best friends went to Gonzaga [Gonzaga College High School]. We had some kids that went to Visitation [Georgetown Visitation Preparatory School] or Gonzaga or DeMatha—a lot of kids ended up at DeMatha. But it was all fine. They're all still friends.
[In an unrecorded conversation, Arlotto also noted that she got the permits, planned the route, organized volunteers, and collected donations for the first Capitol Hill 4th of July parade in 2003 and continued to do so for ten years. The parade was initially supported by Cluster school PTA volunteers and, when the Marine Commandant’s wife noticed the parade rehearsals, she encouraged her husband to have “The Commandant’s Own” United States Marine Drum & Bugle Corps lead them each year.]
NORTON: When you went back to work, where did you go?
ARLOTTO: I went to the Washington Area Bicyclists Association [WABA] as their Safe Routes to School policy person. I was told about the job by Peter May, another Cluster dad. He is an architect and has worked for a bunch of big name firms, but at that time I think he was at the National Park Service as an architect and in charge of a lot. The reason he told me to do it was because Safe Routes to School was a federal program that had gotten started, I think, in 2005. It had a little bit of money to do infrastructure improvements around the school to make it safer for kids to walk or ride their bikes. I had applied for the grant for Watkins a couple years before. So I guess it was in 2010, WABA had gotten some grant money to hire a person to work on this program and to encourage more schools to do it, to tap into this money. Peter was like, “You'd be great. You walk your kids to school every day, you actually know what this program is, you applied for one of the grants and got one of the grants at Watkins.” So I applied and got the job.
NORTON: And what did you do for them?
ARLOTTO: I worked on the Safe Routes to School program at WABA. I convened a group of other planners or educators in DC, Maryland and Virginia––mostly Maryland and Virginia––just to teach them about the program and what it entailed and to help them figure out how to get the grant money. The feds would send it to the states and the counties and then you had to apply.
You could maybe get funds to do a walk to school day or you could get money for a planner on staff with the county to look at the area around the school and say, “This crosswalk needs to be repainted” or “If we change some no parking signs, we can better direct where the car traffic is going to go.” So the money was used for infrastructure improvements and also education and encouragement programs.
NORTON: So when did you start doing that?
ARLOTTO: That was in 2010. I did that for a couple of years and then the grant money dried up. But they kept me on as I did development work, grant writing and all kinds of stuff.
And then I left WABA and I went to work for a consultant who had a project at DDOT, the District Department of Transportation. I was detailed to DDOT and went there every day.
After that, I went to another consulting firm. I didn't really like being a consultant very much. I wanted to work on stuff in my own city. Right before the pandemic hit, I got hired by DDOT as the Safe Routes to School planner. Years of doing bike and pedestrian stuff at the Washington Area Bicycle Association bolstered my planning credentials. It's been a good gig there.
NORTON: So, all right, when did your kids graduate from Wilson?
ARLOTTO: Maisie graduated in 2020, Mary Grace graduated in 2017, and so then Andrew would have graduated in 2014. [He went Wilson High School, now Jackson Reed, Bard College for undergraduate and George Mason for graduate work.]
NORTON: All right, let me go back to some neighborhood stories. First, let me just ask, do you remember anything about September 11th [2001]?
ARLOTTO: I do. I remember Andrew had already been dropped off at Peabody, and I was dropping Mary Grace off at the little play school on East Capitol Street. I walked in and one of the parents on duty said, "Did you hear a plane just hit the World Trade Center building?" We were like, "Oh my gosh," thinking pilot error, heart attack or something. So I got in my minivan and I was actually on my way to drop off rolls of film at the Pentagon City Costco to be developed.
NORTON: So you're starting two blocks from the Capitol.
ARLOTTO: Exactly. And I had driven down Third Street. I was literally about to turn right onto the ramp to get onto the freeway there, right by the tennis courts across from Results [Results the Gym. 315 G Street SE]. I was listening to WTOP and they said, "We have reports of a fire at the Pentagon." And I went, "Oh my gosh." And I didn't make the turn. I turned around and came back and I grabbed my daughter at the play school and I grabbed Andrew at Peabody.
On every single floor, all of the kids were in the middle because the teachers were afraid that there would be something happening at the Capitol that would blow out the windows. So all the kids were in the middle and they were reading and singing, but the teachers were crying. A lot of the teachers were crying. And I, being one of the few moms who was not working, I scooped up a bunch of kids. I grabbed Andrew and I think Maddie Frieberg, because I think her mom was a teacher. I grabbed a bunch of kids and I just stuffed them into the van. We all started heading back to my house. By then I'm coming down Massachusetts Avenue, and there's swarms of people walking away from the Capitol Building. Then as I got to about 10th and Mass, I heard the sonic boom overhead.
NORTON: Which everybody thought was a plane hitting the Capitol.
ARLOTTO: I'm kind of getting a little choked up just thinking about it, because it was very, very scary. I'd never seen so many people swarming out, trying to walk down the street.

And then I got back to the house, set the kids up in the playroom downstairs. Then I went upstairs and watched it [on television]. George at the time was at Wheaton High School and he couldn't get back into the city. Of course he waited for the last kid to get picked up and by then they had closed all the roads into the city. You couldn't get back in. So fortunately his parents lived a few miles away, so he went and stayed at his parents' house that night.
I am so glad that I was listening to WTOP because I didn't make the turn [onto the freeway]. Because if I had turned, I would have been stuck. I wouldn't have been able to get back into the city and get my kids. And George wouldn't have been able to get back.
NORTON: So when you listened to WTOP, it became obvious that we're talking about a terrorism attack at that point.
ARLOTTO: Yes. I was still kind of in denial. I'm like, “What is going on?” But I did feel like this is some kind of a coordinated attack. And then George got back the next day and we just walked around the neighborhood, everybody in shock. I think we tried to go to Trover [Trover Shop Books and Office Supplies, 221 Pennsylvania Ave SE] to get a late edition of the paper because they were doing a couple of late editions that day. That was crazy.
NORTON: You're famous for being written up in the paper about the Secretary of the Interior [Ryan Zinke, Secretary of the Interior from 2017-2019], who apparently was a neighbor of yours.
ARLOTTO: Yes, he was two doors down. He came in with Trump the first time in, I guess, 2017. He'd been a congressman right before then. He was elected in 2016 and had moved into the house in January 2017. They were mostly fine as neighbors. They had a lot of very loud parties with a lot of loud people. But that particular incident was more an altercation with one of the sedan drivers that had gotten into an argument with my neighbor across the street.
And the other funny thing––one of our neighbors, a couple of our neighbors, changed their internet names to “Protect Our Public Lans,” L-A-N-S, local area networks. He was on the other side of Zinke. So every time Zinke would have had to go into his internet, he would see it.
NORTON: Right, the one available.
ARLOTTO: It would say “protect our public lands.” I thought that was really clever.
NORTON: What was he arguing about, do you remember?
ARLOTTO I'd have to look at the article, unfortunately. If you have it, let me [see it]. [Break in the recording.]
NORTON: As we lawyers say, has your recollection been refreshed by reviewing this?
ARLOTTO: Yes. It all comes back to me now. The Zinkes had a lot of very loud parties. A lot of times we weren't really sure that they were even at the house. It seemed like other people were using it sometimes. So on this particular evening, a big black Suburban had parked across the street from the house and was parked just very inconsiderately. [Wouldn’t] back up or move up. And they also left the car idling. He would not cut the car off. So I believe that I asked him to at least turn off the engine. And at first he wouldn't. And then my neighbor came out of his house and said, "Just back up and don’t take up all these spots so people, as they're coming home, can park at night.” And that was when they started cursing. And then my neighbor and the driver got into it.
NORTON: Are you willing to identify your neighbor?
ARLOTTO: He’s in the article. It’s Paul Leger[MD1]e. He [and his wife Melissa Kimball] lived across the street from me for as long as I’ve lived on the block. Paul is from Boston, and so Paul does not take anything from anyone. He'll get right in the mix.
The driver kept saying, "Well, I'm just waiting on my boss and he told me to wait here." And then a guy came out of the house and said, "I'm Ryan Zinke." And Paul said, I know what Ryan Zinke looks like, and you’re not Ryan Zinke.” We didn't actually even think that he was there at that time.
NORTON: The secretary was there.
ARLOTTO: I don't think he was at the house. I guess that's when they called the police on us, which was ridiculous. We weren't harassing. We just had asked him to turn his car off and back up. I wasn't cursing or anything. But Paul and the other guy really started yelling.
NORTON: The guy who was the limo driver.
ARLOTTO: The driver. And then I guess the cops showed up and maybe took our statements.
NORTON: And that was the Park Police. They're the ones that patrol Lincoln Park.
ARLOTTO: We were like, "This is crazy! We haven't done anything!" And then I guess they kind of realized that there wasn't anything there. So they went on their way. The police did. Then it wasn't that long after that that the whole crowd of loud, rowdy, very boisterous, very drunk people came out of the Zinke’s house and got in the van.
NORTON: So this is the same evening.
ARLOTTO: The same night. And then they finally drove away to some other event, I guess. That was pretty funny.

NORTON: How did COVID affect you and your family?
ARLOTTO: Well, Maisie was a senior in high school, which was just so tough. She'd just been voted captain of the lacrosse team. She was looking forward to prom. And then it was, “You're staying at home and you're not going to class, and you don't get any of those fun things your senior year.” She got into Rhodes College in Memphis, and the first semester of freshman year they did remotely. But then second semester, for the winter, they brought back the seniors and the freshmen. She was recruited to play lacrosse down there so fortunately a couple of times the lacrosse team in the fall got together. [They] rented a house in Rehoboth [Rehoboth Beach, Delaware] that they could all go to and do a workout and some exercises and stuff.
NORTON: Is this the Wilson lacrosse team or the Rhodes?
ARLOTTO: This is Rhodes. This is her freshman year of college.
NORTON: Because her senior year, COVID had just started. So she would have missed out on all the end of senior year stuff.
ARLOTTO: They had a virtual graduation. She got her robe and we took pictures. That was kind of sad. Andrew was already out of college and was working actually at the same law firm where I got my first job.
NORTON: Which firm was that?
ARLOTTO: Finnegan. When I worked there, it was Finnegan Henderson, but now it's just known as Finnegan. His job transitioned pretty easily to be remote. He worked in the conflicts department, so he would do conflicts research and stuff like that.
Then Andrew started working on his master's also fully remote. So he could work during the day and do his classes at [George] Mason at night remotely. So that worked out. Mary Grace, my middle kid, was a junior at Marist College in Poughkeepsie and had to come home for the second semester of her junior year, which also was not great. But then they did have them all come back on campus that fall. And George of course was going into work every day. He only had a very small group of his executive team who still went into the office every day so they were able to isolate around the building quite a bit.
NORTON: Other than that the whole department was remote right?
ARLOTTO: Yes. That must have been rough for him. They gave out Chromebooks to everybody. The cafeteria workers were the heroes of the whole system because they were still getting food to kids. That was not an easy time for sure.
NORTON: Since you're a good Catholic girl, you know it was the Epiphany. The Epiphany riot. January 6th. What do you remember about that?
ARLOTTO: January 6th. Well, what I remember most was the night or even two days before. A big van full of people, Georgia plates, were staying in an Airbnb just a few doors down.
NORTON: So you had an Airbnb on your block? That must have been interesting.
ARLOTTO: The van was full––12, 14 people. It was one of the big vans. A lot of people, very raucous and rowdy, had moved into the Airbnb. I want to say it was the night of the fourth.
The word was going around that there was somebody intimidating people in the park [Lincoln Park]. I didn't see him but other neighbors said he went into the Airbnb. So someone had called the police.
I went outside and listened to the police as they spoke with the woman [in the Airbnb]. It’s so silly because they're like, “Do you have any guns in the house? “And she's like, “No, I don't have any. We don't have any guns in the house.” They [the police] can't go into the house. They can't do anything. So he just said, “Okay, thank you.” And he left.
Then the morning of the 6th, we had these crazy dogs and they're up, and George is always up at the crack of dawn anyway. [We saw that the people in the Airbnb] left very, very early. You could hear them saying as they were loading it, "We wanna get a good spot. We gotta get there early." I wasn't really totally glomming on to the fact that maybe they were going to the rally at the Ellipse or whatever.
So the day wore on. Mary Grace was home and Maisie was home. But Maisie had gone to her boyfriend's house on the other side of town.
NORTON: Which is where?
ARLOTTO: I think he lives in AU Park [American University Park in Northwest Washington]. This was a kid she was dating at the time. His mom actually worked on the Hill. She worked for a congressperson, but she was working from home that day, apparently.
NORTON: Okay, let me interrupt you just a second because as I recall there were some sort of rumblings in the neighborhood to be on the lookout or watch out and that kind of stuff. Do you remember that?
ARLOTTO: I do remember hearing that there were all these people coming, but I felt like, “Oh, it's just going to fizzle. What can they do? This is so crazy.” I dismissed it.
But then, things started to ratchet up. Mary Grace had gone to go get a salad at the Sweetgreen [restaurant] and she had called me.
NORTON: Where's Sweetgreen?
ARLOTTO: Sweetgreen was on Pennsylvania Avenue, kind of close to the Capitol [221 Pennsylvania Avenue SE]. Almost at the same time she called me and she's like, "There's all these people on the street and they're saying stuff to me.” Then at the same time I'm watching this crowd build on TV. I think it was almost at the same time she's talking to me that I saw they were starting to smash the windows.
NORTON: At the Capitol.
ARLOTTO: At the Capitol and I said, “Oh my God, Mary Grace, get home. Don’t wait for the salad, get out of there and get home.” So she raced home and then we just watched in shock. And of course we'd heard about the pipe bombs [that] had been found.
NORTON: Had been left in various places.
ARLOTTO: A couple had been left at the RNC [Republican National Committee, 310 First Street SE], a couple had been left at the DNC [Democratic National Committee, 430 South Capitol Street SE].
I think I still have pictures on my phone––I could probably time stamp it––I believe it was around 2:30 or so, the van full of people from Georgia came back.
NORTON: And this is sometime after you've been watching what's going on?
ARLOTTO: Yes, yes. They all hustled into the van and drove off. They didn't even stay that night. They just got out of town. I want to say it was like around 1:30, 2 o'clock.
NORTON: In the afternoon.
ARLOTTO: In the afternoon.
I looked out my window and I saw a black backpack on the sidewalk. I walked out and another neighbor was walking his dog, and he said, "Go back in your house." He had called the police for it. So I went back inside. I called the police again and I said, "There's an unclaimed backpack. There's this craziness going on.” So they sent someone to look at it. MPD, just the two guys get out of a cruiser. They picked up the backpack and dumped it out on the sidewalk. And I'm thinking, what if there's a bomb in there?
NORTON: Right.
ARLOTTO: In the backpack––I’ll never forget––was a half drunk Gatorade, spilled, a hat and a scarf with MAGA and Trump stuff on it. And then the third thing was a flip phone, which I still find very strange because nobody has a flip phone anymore. Like a burner phone. They kind of prodded it with a stick or something and then they threw everything back into the backpack, threw it in the back of their car and left. And I still think … because now they even said burner phones you can use to remotely detonate things, it could be programmed for different things. The pipe bombers. I did call the FBI tip line after all the months of waiting for someone to investigate and said, We called this report in, the police did show up. I have pictures of the police officers in the car. I have pictures of the van of the people staying on the block.” They never asked for any of that from me.
NORTON: All right, what else do you remember about that day?
ARLOTTO: Well, Maisie couldn't get back home across town.
NORTON: From A.U. Park.
ARLOTTO: Jackson's mom was like, I think she should just stay here. Like, I don't feel—
NORTON: Jackson was the boyfriend.
ARLOTTO: The boyfriend. She’s like, “I don't think she should, it's too crazy.” So I said, "Let her stay there." I don't think she spent the night over there though. I think she must've come home when everything kind of settled down.
George had called me from work. "Are you watching this?" I'm like, "We’re just in shock. Mary Grace was yelled at and accosted by people.” I always wanted to go to law school. I believe in law and I believe in right and wrong. It was just such a desecration of our seat of government and our democracy.
NORTON: I've always felt very possessive about the Capitol because it's part of our neighborhood.
ARLOTTO: It was very jarring and sad.
NORTON: How has Lincoln Park changed over the years? I can remember it being quite different when we first moved in.
ARLOTTO: Well, our realtor was a Wilson parent, he lived over in Northwest somewhere .He kept showing us condos in Northwest, which is what we could afford. We didn't like the condo fees and we liked the Hill. We really felt like this is our place. And so we said, "Well, we really want to look on the Hill." And he says, "Well, you can't go any further than 13th Street, the top of Lincoln Park."
NORTON: Of course, we moved in there in 1975. We're in the 1300 block."
ARLOTTO: And we were like, "I don't know. It seems fine. So he did find this property on Kentucky and he'd found the other places too. There was another one in the 300 block of Tennessee [Avenue NE] that he was going to let us look at. But we loved the Kentucky Avenue house right away.
Lincoln Park was pretty grimy and grungy I guess I would say. There were people hanging out there all night. There was definitely some prostitution, definitely some drug use going on in there. Kathleen and I would laugh that we would walk around the little parks [within Lincoln Park]. There was a tire swing. and it was all this huge wood beam kind of [play equipment]. It was splinter central. We would walk around and pick up used condoms. We found little baggies a couple of times and needles and stuff. So before we would let the kids run around digging the dirt, we would go around and we'd pick up stuff. But I've never felt threatened on the Hill. I've never felt like it wasn't safe. We don't go bar hopping at 1 a.m. and then try to stumble our way back. We've never been those kinds of folks. So you know, so long as we were in the house by ten and got the dogs walked or whatever I never felt weird or unsafe in the neighborhood.
NORTON: But Lincoln Park seems much more gentrified than it was.
ARLOTTO: Well, my kids still can't believe that people throw down blankets and sunbathe out there all day. It's very civilized, you know.
NORTON: And just in general, how's the neighborhood different from when you moved in? You described it as being very blue collar.
ARLOTTO: Every person who bought a house on our block, it was, “Oh, they're a lawyer or, oh, they're a lobbyist.” It was mostly lobbyists, honestly. We didn't hear so much that people were educators anymore or anything like that.
NORTON: And that was funny, because that block was big on educators.
ARLOTTO: We used to joke [that] we could start our own school with everybody who was there. We’ve always had one or two military folks. We have a guy who's in the JAG Corps now and he bought a house on the block.
NORTON: Judge Advocate General.
ARLOTTO: We’ve always had a couple of career military people. One guy bought the house next door to us in the 80s but always rented it out. It had always been like a group rental kind of place. Then he moved back in with his wife and they lived there for a number of years and then he sold it and they moved down to Florida. So there were always a few high ranking military people. But there were not as many educators, not as many police officers or firefighters. Then the black families sold and moved away. There's still one woman who lived next door to the Kreinheiders, Cookie. She was born in the house and lived there for years and years and years and then died. She had pancreatic cancer.
NORTON: Do you remember what her last name was?
ARLOTTO: No, we always knew her as Cookie. Hazel and Bob [Kreinheider] knew her when she was a little kid. That's how long they had lived there. So Cookie died and her family just sold the house. They’re in the process of flipping that. Elizabeth Taffera has been there since the 60s. The Kreinheiders have been there since the 60s I think. But not anybody else.
NORTON: So you're an old-timer now.

END OF INTERVIEW

[MD1]Spelling??

Ruth Ann Overbeck Capitol Hill History Project
Gina Arlotto Interview, April 8, 2025

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