On Green Spring Farm: The Life and Times of One Family in Fairfax County Virginia 1942-1966

About this book

One family but not just any family: one of Americas first families whose lives were intimately and indelibly intertwined with the basic fabric of this country. Powerful but altruisic artistic yet activist a family whose story is the history of mid-twentieth-century America. "On Green Spring Farm" is a memoir a series of short anecdotal vignettes based on journal entries chronicling two decades of our American history. Unifying the tales is the ever-present backdrop of what is now known as Green Spring Gardens Park a public garden and Manor House in Virginia. The stories range from the back-room politics of Democratic campaigns for Harry Truman and Adlai Stevenson and the founding of the American Veterans Committee to Jackie Kennedys "appropriation" of a family portrait of James Monroe to beautify her White House all interspersed with colloquial family tales of pets vacations illnesses theatricals and hair-raising misadventures in small aircraft. "On Green Spring Farm" provides a window onto another time and place through which we witness history as experienced by one unusual family. Evocative charming funny rousing and thought-provoking: a Samuel Pepys for our time.