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[From the Church Hill Newsletter; June, 2006]
When there is an alley rally coming up, I always think of Ann Casson. She
rarely missed one. Ann was born in Greenwich Village, New York City and grew up
in the Westchester river town of Crotan-on-Hudson. Her father was an early
producer-director of radio theatre and was also associated with the Provincetown
Players in the first quarter of the twentieth century. He worked with well known
theatre people of the era including Eugene O’Neill. Ann’s father died when she
was very young of a bacteriological infection commonly cured today by
antibiotics. Ann and her mother stayed on Crotan living the progressive
community life that characterized its pre-war years.
In the 1970’s, she and her husband, Mort, moved to Richmond from King of
Prussia, Pennsylvania where Mort had built a career in the addiction sciences.
Mort was the first Assistance Commissioner for Substance Abuse in Virginia and
helped build a statewide public sector treatment network working with the STATE
Departments of Mental Health and Health. Ann, who did her undergraduate work at
Smith, finished her training with an MSW from Bryn Mawr. She worked for the
Office on Aging and later the State Department of Social Services. They lived
for years in what’s now the near West End a mile or so from the Village Shopping
Center where they raised their son Gerry. There they experienced the cordial
disconnectedness that characterizes so many of America’s neighborhoods.
After Gerry graduated from the University of Virginia and pursued a career in
atmospheric science in Seattle they began to look around for a neighborhood more
to their liking—one where people know one another and cultivate a sense of
community. They came to see Church Hill as possessing these qualities and began
looking for a house. They found a house on Libby Terrace that was coming on the
market. They had the house inspected and made an offer. A year later the offer
was accepted and they moved to Church Hill overlooking the river.
But, getting back to the Alley Rally, Ann played a quiet and valuable role in
the bi-annual cleanups. While most of us were riding on the garbage truck and
watching the driver crush discarded sleep sofas or snap six inch beams with the
truck’s hydraulic powered blade, Ann followed along behind picking up the little
pieces of trash the rest of us missed--bottles, fast food containers and other
litter.
I remember a particular year when we came across an especially messy area late
in the morning. We had run out tree clippings, old wood, wet bookcases, broken
tables, and overstuffed recliners to smash and compact and many of us were
tired. The suggestion was made that this messy area was not easily seen, that
we’d done enough and it was time to quit. As if not hearing the suggestion, Ann
began picking up the trash and without a word the rest of us joined in and
picked the area clean.
In 1999 Ann suffered a stroke and was eventually confined to a wheelchair. She
stayed at home with Mort where she could enjoy their view of the river and walks
through the neighborhood. Ann died in 2002 and Church Hill lost a friend. This
year, in memory of Ann, an oak leaf hydrangea was planted in the northwest
corner of Reed Square.
Submitted by Tom Sanders