John & Beatrice Straubhaar at the White House, Washington D.C.

When Sandy and I lived in Washington, D.C. 1979-1983, Mom and Dad came out to visit at Easter in 1980. We were living in Chevy Chase, Maryland, with a long backyard that ran all the way back to some B&O (the one in the Monopoly game) train tracks. This photo shows Mom and Dad in our backyard, holding baby Julia (then not quite one).

The White House traditionally had an egg roll around Easter so we decided to take Mom and Dad, plus Julia, to the event. This photo shows Dad, Mom, Julia and me in front of the White House.

It was fun to get to walk around the White House lawn with a lot of people. Then, to our surprise, Jimmy Carter, the President came out, walking around and shaking hands. When he got to Dad, he told President Carter that “The last president whose hand I shook was Calvin Coolidge.” That amused President Carter and Dad was very pleased to shake his hand since he liked him.

They enjoyed the trip to D.C. We took them around to some of the main monuments and had some good times to talk. It was fun for them to see us in our first house of our own. (We had lived our first year of marriage in a government apartment in Brasilia, where I worked for the press section of the Embassy.) This photo shows Dad and Mom sitting in our front room by the fireplace, in front a tapestry of parrots we bought near Brasilia.

Dad was always a pretty handy guy and liked to help out with things. This photo shows him in our backyard at Maryland, helping me trim a tree. (The backyard was pretty wild when we bought the house and we were only begining to get it under control at the end of the four years we lived there.)