Patchouli: July 4 Grand Marshal on His Life in Fairfax

Meet Donald Lederer, co-grand marshal of this year's Independence Day Parade. He represents the city's "golden past" theme. Lederer will ride alongside his "brighter future" counterpart, Fairfax High School rising senior Robbie Ashton. Read on to learn about Lederer's life in Fairfax. Then head downtown Monday morning to wave to him in person.

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“I want you to develop parks.”  

That’s what the gentleman who hired me said. I’d seen an ad for a job with the Park Authority for $7,200. The headquarters were on Hummer Road, so I started to look around for a place to live. I thought it would be better if I settled in Fairfax because we went before the Board of Supervisors in the City every once in a while and Annandale wasn’t that far – no traffic lights. 

I picked out a house to rent on Colony Road, just catty-corner to where we live now. I called my wife Jean and said it looked pretty good, and she said okay, so we did that. It had a fenced yard and a fireplace, which we loved and had never had.  Two years later, we bought this house with the GI Bill. We’ve been in the City this whole time.

Back in junior high school, we had to interview two people of occupations we thought we’d like. I chose a civil engineer and the other was in horticulture. One of the electives I took at Penn State was in landscape architecture. I thought, geez, this is great! It was a good combination of those. Uncle Sam got me for Korea in 1950, but I came back to Penn State with the idea of being a landscape architect. 

It's funny, I had senior status for two years because of my credits. So for two years, Jean and I were able to watch football games on the 50-yard line about a third of the way up at the old Beaver Stadium. Now, even the seniors sit on the side. I love my football.   

The Mayor is my first cousin once removed. His Dad and I were first cousins. We grew up not quite together, but we all went to the same high school in Pennsylvania. My parents used to go over there and play cards and they would come play cards at our house. The kids would play games. After my dad died, my mother didn't keep up with the family that much. When we moved to Fairfax, we found out that my cousin was here, too. I kidded Rob the first time he ran for election: I’m going around learning to spell my name! 

When I joined the Park Authority, from then on, I was always behind in my work. I started the design division. Part of designing is you walk the land. For the first couple of master plans I did, I had no contours. I did them all from memory, remembering where the low spots were and the high spots. If we knew we were getting four acres from the developer, I’d walk them to see if they were good and try to find the boundaries. Sometimes the land buyer was there, but mostly I walked by myself to make a photograph in my mind. 

I took my daughter with me to walk Van Dyck. It was mostly honeysuckle and vines, and we came back covered with ticks. The round part that I designed, it’s called a 4:1 seating slope. Every four feet, you go up one. It's comfortable seating and I did that because I remembered the fireworks at the high school. I thought they could put in seats and a platform down at the bottom. They didn’t follow the master plans exactly. It’s a guide.

This spring, we took in some stuff for the yard sale they had to raise money for the parade. Stuff from trying to clean out the basement – a lamp or two and an old portable typewriter. The typewriter was one of the first things that went.

I got a lot of people saying they’ll wave to me. I feel it’s such an honor, a real honor. I just want to wave to everybody, people who I know and don’t know.

I go over to Oak Marr to exercise and I have a special card that gets me in. One guy was trying to scan it, but another man behind him said, “You don’t need to do that, he’s the Grand Marshal of the Parade!”