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September 5, 1947
Dear Mother and Daddy,
I have been trying frantically to write you for the past two days, but there just didn't seem to be time. So I had to get up early this morning to get it to get it off. Needless to say I couldn't be having a more wonderful time, and Mrs. Nyswander and Ruth simply couldn't be more intent on my having a wonderful time and seeing everything. Every morning Mrs. Nyswander comes in and looks at me and says, Oh' Mary, it is so good to see you here, which of course makes me feel just wonderful because it would be terrible if she didn't like me.
I shall have to start and tell you what I have benn doing every day. Last Monday Dick Jones came over as we were having breakfast, it wasn't too early. He was the boy that Ruth was going with when she came down to visit me. He lives in
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Dallas, Texas, and haddn't seen her in a long time - Re was here visiting with his parents for a few days. The three of us went out driving to see all the various places. We didn't go in any of the large places because Ruth and I are going to do them all thoroughly rather on, and Dick had already seen them. But I did get to see all the [??] House grounds, and the front, and back of the Capital and the House and Senate office buildings. After we finished seeing all the important buildings we went driving out in the resedential sections, some that I hadn't seen the night before. Then we went through Rock Creek Park which is a park that runs through the entire city. You would be amazed to see how greca it is here. There are millions of trees around and you can get practically any where in the city by going through some beautiful park. In this particular park [?] have to go through
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"fords" every ance in a while, which is where the stream runs over the highway. They also have the zoo there and we stopped and went through the snake house. She saw some perfectly awful snakes which didn't smell too wonderful, and along with its being hot and the fact that there were quite a few negroes around didn't make the atmosphere too pleasant, so we didn't stay there too long. Of course, there are lots and lots of negroes around particularly in the parks, but they all seem very unpreposessing and live in such nice nego sections than you see at home. During the day some time we went to the rational Cathedral St. is an Episcopal Church and is by far the largest church I have ever been in. They have a huge chapel and altar on the first floor as well as several smaller chapels down below in the basement. In fact, they had so many I think they must
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have named one after every saint. Woodrow Wilson was buried there - we saw his tomb - it was really very unpretentious when compared with some other less famous men that were also buried there. After all these we went to a "Wat [sp?] Shoppe" to eat. That is what they call all the drive-ins here. Then we came home and fooled around here for the rest of the day.
On Tuesday we didn't do too much. We had to go down to the station and get our suitcases and then we had to take Ruth over to the dentist. While she was there Mrs. Wkyswander took me over to the Lincoln Memorial and Washington Monument. You can see the Washington Monument all oever Washington and there isn't any building that can be taller - or nearly as tall so that it won't be seen. After, we picked up Ruth from her dentist appointment we drove clear through Rock Creek Park "from one dad to the other, and also
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through another park on the other side of the city near the Patomac. We then came home and had dinner and Ruth and I went to a movie and saw "Deep Valley". They don't have a single theater here that has more than one movie and they always get you out by eleven. On Wednesday Ruth had a little luncheon of about five at the Shoreham Hotel. It is a very beautiful large hotel with all sorts of fountains and terraces and outside eating places. She had a lovely lunch and the girls were all just as nice as they could be. One of them was the one I took Ruth to see at the hospital when she was visiting me. Another was a girl named Ramona North. Her father is the third postmaster general here - she was very interesting - she had been studying piano and ballet last year in New York, and played semi-professionally
