Next year I will have lived in Reston 40 years!
It was late 1971, and I was 13. My family was living in a suburb of
Philadelphia when my dad, who worked for Xerox, announced that we’d be
moving to Washington as he was being transferred to the company’s
federal government sales branch.
Dad soon went down to look for a new house. Since my dad’s sister and
her family lived in suburban Maryland, dad decided for a little
distance and began his home search in Virginia.
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After dad narrowed his search, he took mom down and they settled on a
house on Myrtle Lane in a place called “Reston.”
Immediately, I thought of “rest home.” It’s way way out in the
country, dad said.
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In January 1972, dad took the whole family to see the new split foyer
house, just off Lawyers Road.
Four bedrooms, three bathrooms, two car garage, one-third-acre lot -
$55,000. That was a staggering price considering that dad bought our
Woodbury, New Jersey home – which was considerably bigger – four years
earlier for $29,000.
In February 1972, a snowy day, we moved in.
Reston International Center and Hunters Woods Center were still under
construction. The nearest Giant grocery store and closest movie
theater were in Vienna. It was still two lane Reston Avenue (not
Reston Parkway). Reston kids went to Herndon High. The cable TV
company, which still hadn’t wired our street, had about 12 channels.
There was no Wiehle Avenue bridge (yet) over the Dulles Access Road,
whose local toll lanes were still decades away. Oh, Reston Town Center
was just a big empty field.
But we immediately fell in love with Reston. It was like living in a huge park.
I’ll be spending more time, in the future, recalling some of my four
decades of Reston memories here in my new blog on Reston Patch.
