Yet another meeting was called recently by Fairfax County Supervisors concerning the development of a tiny plot of land next door to the RiteAid drug store, at the edge of the Hollin Hall shopping center. At the rate this development madness is unfolding in the Mount Vernon area, local residents should expect to suffer significantly more of these spectacles in years to come.
The issue under examination, as I understand it, includes the building of a larger structure on the site, with expanded hours of business. Of course, expanded business hours translates into more traffic, noise, and the expected police presence to maintain order and to tame disreputable elements.
Apparently, Supervisor Dan Stork is opposed to both the rezoning and the development of this tiny plot of land. Still, I don’t trust the man. I think Mr. Stork’s opposition to the plan, in fact, is simply a vehicle to try to redeem himself in the eyes of the local electorate from his treachery and his prejudice during the Bock Farm Debacle. Let him try to explain to the satisfaction of this still-reeling local electorate why the development of the farm became nothing less than his personal mission, such that he was inspired to deceive us.
Since I have now brought it up, quite unintentionally, still, not to flog a dead horse here, readers may be interested in a brief history behind an issue that apparently County Supervisors recently laid to rest, an issue I still like to call the Bock Farm Debacle. Not too many years ago, neither the names Collingwood Road nor Parker’s Lane existed. The road was called Snowden Lane. How and when the name of the road got changed I do not know.
What is now known as Bock Farm was owned by a family called Massey, the farm as Briary Farm. The acreage included the land on which today stands Mount Vernon Hospital, the police station, firehouse, the doctors’ offices on Tiswell Road, and perhaps more land beyond. My brother and I as boys launched model rockets from the school field across the road, but aimed toward the Massey pasture, into the prevailing wind.
My daughter took horseback riding lessons at Briary Farm from the current generation of Massey, Linda, I shall call her here since it has been too many years now for me to remember; it’s as good a name as any. Big sister in the saddle, my son busied himself butting heads (quite literally) with his favorite of the Massey goats.
The story as Linda told it, straight from the horse’s mouth, as it were, claims that eight generations of Massey had been born in the farmhouse that sits, apparently for not too much longer, on the farm property. Linda said that at some local function–a picnic, barbecue, community fair–her grandmother found herself chatting at one point with several firemen of the nearby firehouse.
As the story goes, after listening to their tale of woe, Grandma Massey’s heart went out to the firemen then forced to suffer the abysmal conditions of their current poorly-equipped firehouse. So, in her generosity, Grandma Massey unwittingly did the one thing that could not have more effectively sounded the death knell, that ultimately would destroy the family legacy: she donated the tiny portion of her family’s land on the corner of Sherwood Hall Lane, enough land, it turns out, where could be built the current firehouse.
It was not long before the lure of carrion wafted into the crooked nests and crevices of justice, to the lairs of the County Supervisors. These vultures sniffed profit. Without so much as a greedy word, they condemned the remainder of the huge tract of pasture land (let’s not mince words here, stole is a word more suited to the deed) up to what is now Hinson Farm Road.
The Masseys fought the effort in court, feebly, foolishly, but understandably considering that they stood to lose a farm that had been in their family possibly since the late 1700’s. Still, what self-respecting person would refuse to fight when his home and his family are threatened?
The Masseys lost the legal battle, of course, because the Fairfax County Court will always rule in favor of the County. Certainly, the County paid the family market value for the land, but what is market value for unimproved pasture land? More to the point, what is fair for an ancient family heirloom?
For their part, Linda confided to me, the Massey family ended up in debt for legal fees, so they had to sell what was left of the farm. So much for history and so much for Supervisors guided by principle. History has shown us time and time again that the sole purpose of political elections, and the election of a County Supervisor is no different, turns out to be to decide whom from whichever political party is going to deceive us next.
In as much as I loathe politicians as a species, in as much as I subscribe to the axiom, “You vote out one set of crooks, you vote in another,” in all fairness, I realize that Mr. Stork did not occupy his office at the time of the County theft of the Massey farmland and therefore is not entirely responsible for the aftermath. Still, Mr. Stork’s insensitivity to the interests of the community, as well as his cavalier dismissal of the concerns and objections of local residents, all in a transparent determination to install on the site what became nothing less than his pet project, deepens the offense and becomes the final insult to the Massey family.
Doren K. Weston 