Naval Hospital

The recent news has again taken me back 84 years to our home in Bethesda . It was in north Bethesda just off the Rockville Pike. North of us was a copse of woods and then a vast rising slope of a wheat field about a mile away. As a 9 and 10 year old my buddy and I would take "long " journeys up there....big hikes that required a sack lunch, etc. The crest of that hill is where the Bethesda Naval Hospital was built that is now called Walter Reed Hospital. When we lived in NW Washington D.C. the original Walter Reed was north east of us off of 14th St. Our residence in Bethesda, 4707 Chestnut St. , is still there and in better shape than it was when we lived in it in 1935-36.

 

I forgot to mention that my first airplane ride in 1935 was at the Rockville Airport just north of where the hospital is now . I think that it was eventually called the Congressional Airport. I gave a flight to my girl friend there in Dec. 1948 when I visited my mother while on Xmas break at Duke. First time that I flew a Cub on skis and from the same strip on which I got my first ride thirteen years before. A lot of snow in 1948.