Meet your neighbors
Whether you've lived in Capitol View Park for decades or only a few months, we want to know you. Meet Your Neighbors nominations are welcome! If you want to see someone featured, or be featured yourself, please email cvpcacommunications@gmail.com.
Pat Kenny
Interviewed in October 2023
Pat Kenny lives with her partner Doug and cat Max in the heart of Capitol View Park. She is a certified master gardener, renowned herb publicist, and an in-demand speaker, county-wide, on topics including food as medicine and growing and using herbs of the world. A retired medical illustrator for NIH, Pat is often outside tending to her garden, propagating plants to share, harvesting herbs to make kitchen mixes, and learning how her plants like to grow so that she can illustrate some of them. She has lived in CVP since 1981.
What do you like most about Capitol View Park?
The greenness. First, we like being in this fine understory of trees. Second, there is a cooperative environmental awareness not experienced in any neighborhood where I’ve lived. The friendly people that surround us are walkers for both their increased health and that of their pets.
What are some of your favorite memories from living here?
I have many wonderful memories involving the Irelands, Carol and Terry, who live across the street. They moved here a long time before we did. They inspire generosity and intellectual curiosity for all of us.
Speaking of neighbors, can you tell us about “The Gathering?”
Absolutely. During Covid, our younger Menlo Avenue residents began gathering for a weekly “happy hour” in the fresh air of the street. As the months went by, my better-half, Doug [Douglas Reingold] weeded a circle around our corner red maple tree, spread sawdust from the local furniture-maker, and put out chairs we inherited from a neighbor who moved away. So the happy hour, which I call The Gathering, has migrated off the street and onto the sawdust circle.
Every Sunday, whoever would like to come to relax and share, or not, what's happened during their week comes by. Everyone is welcome.
We meet between 5 and 6 p.m. at the corner of Menlo and Barker. During the winter, it’s 4 to 5 pm. It’s a casual get-together, BYOB. Or some might say it’s BYOD because several people bring their dogs.
How has CVP changed through the years?
I don't know whether Capitol View Park has changed or whether it is we who have made the most change. Since we retired and are able to become more involved, we do see that younger people with children are generating the renewable energy we adore. Personally, I love the way this neighborhood welcomes all kinds and ages of people. Aging in place is a goal, and we feel a huge necessity to downsize within it.
How would you describe our neighborhood to someone who is unfamiliar with it? Maybe someone who is new here?
The answer is within my prior answers. I wish I could also say "very diverse," yet I know it has become less affordable. We bought our first home for five figures, rented our second home next door to families until we retired, and then renovated and sold the first to live in the second on the corner wherein we presently and futurely intend to dwell.
Bruce Cohen
Lives on Capitol View Ave
Interviewed in 2016
1. How long have you lived in Capitol View Park?
I have lived in CVP since 1949. I was married in the field behind my house, and my two sons were born in the house and raised here. As president of the CVPCA, I lead the successful effort (with the indomitable force of Diane Smith, now in MA) to prevent 37 townhouses from being built on Brunswick Avenue and Mount Pleasant Road.
2. What is your favorite thing about Capitol View Park?
Some of my fondest memories include the stream clean-up a couple of years ago on New Year's Day, the times folks come out in heavy snows to push cars up CVA, and the willingness of neighbors to help one another.
3. Tell us one thing about yourself.
I left CVP for Kenya in 1987, and returned in 2005 to renovate the house and have been hosting house concerts, 35, to date.
