Forest Hills Connection Contributors | Forest Hills Connection || News and Life in Our DC Neighborhood

Frequent Contributors

David Bardin and his wife, Livia, lived on Military Road for 19 years before buying their Connecticut Avenue condo in 1997. He served as ANC 3F Commissioner (1999-2004), as a member of the board of DC Water (2001-2011), and as NJ’s second Commissioner of Environmental Protection (1974-77). He first moved to DC in 1958 and is a retired member of Arent Fox, LLP.

Dzenita Mehic Saracevic, originally from Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina, came to the U.S. for graduate school in 1994 and stayed. She has been a resident of Forest Hills since 2008. Dzenita was enlisted by the Forest Hills Neighborhood Alliance to start up the Forest Hills listserv. Through this she became better connected and more familiar with the neighborhood and its resources.

Mark Moran was born and raised in the DC area, and after two decades away, he returned in 2016 and settled in Forest Hills in July 2018. Mark loves the proximity to Rock Creek Park, the lovely neighborhoods east and west of Connecticut Avenue, Bread Furst, Politics and Prose, and Comet Pizza. He can often be found in The Den at Politics and Prose. He writes professionally for the American Psychiatric Association.

Katherine Saltzman received her B.A. from American University and recently completed her Master’s in Urban and Economic Geography from Utrecht University in the Netherlands. Prior to starting graduate school, she worked at the Water Environment Federation and has previously written for the Northwest Current, The DC Line, and Forest Hills Connection. Saltzman enjoys writing about local businesses, urban infrastructure, land use, transportation, and environmental issues. She lives in Glover Park and spends her free time tending her garden plot and walking DC.

Past Contributors

Lee Armfield Cannon relocated to DC September of 2012 for a little bit of adventure and a lot of free museum trips. She attended the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, and thus bleeds Carolina blue, and earned a Master of Fine Arts degree in creative writing at the University of North Carolina Wilmington.

Barbara B. Cline, CPA, wrote the High-Rise Life articles for many years. She had been a high-riser since 1979 and a housing advocate since 2009. In 2010, Barbara coordinated the first DC workshop on a little-known provision of DC rent-control law that entitles seniors and persons with disabilities to lower annual rent increases.

Marsha Dubrow writes a column on arts and travel for examiner.com. Her articles have run in The Washingtonian and The Washington Post, among others, and she was a Washington correspondent for Life, People, and Reuters. She earned an M.F.A. in Fiction Writing and Literature at Bennington College. She lives in the Forest Hills area with her white dove, Nureyev.

Bill Eck is a certified arborist and tree risk assessor. He serves as the arborist representative for Bartlett Tree Experts.

David Falk has lived on Linnean Avenue with his wife Judith for about 45 years. They raised their three children there. A graduate of Harvard Law School, he has practiced law in the private and public sectors since 1962, mostly in the DC area. He is presently a Senior Fellow at the University of Maryland School of Public Policy in College Park teaching real estate development and public policy courses. One of his proudest achievements is the 1991 planting of eight, now fully mature, zelkova trees along Linnean Avenue.

Brendan Frost was born and raised in DC and grew up in the Chevy Chase neighborhood, right next door to Forest Hills.

Lisa Lavelle Burke lives in the the little triangle of Wakefield next to Forest Hills with her husband and their two boys. A former lawyer, Lisa has traded downtown offices for rich patches of earth, using gardens as fertile ground for education, photography, and writing. She helped develop the Murch Elementary School GreenScene program, which supports the teachers’ use of nature in education.

Brent Lee is a practicing physician who moved with his family to Forest Hills in the Fall of 2011. Trained in anesthesiology and international public health, Brent has lived and worked extensively overseas, including Haiti, Morocco, Ethiopia, South Africa, and Kosovo. When not working or helping to raise his three young children, Brent enjoys his real passion: Food. Having dined all over the DC metro region, Brent enjoys both fine dining and hole-in-the-wall places.

Janean Mann was an early organizer of Northwest Neighbors Village. She is retired from the Foreign Service where she specialized in African and Middle Eastern affairs, living in both regions. Prior to joining the State Department, she was chief of staff for a member of Congress and was on the staff of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. She began her career as a journalist with the Birmingham Post-Herald where she covered political and civil rights issues.

Virginia Adams Marentette, an attorney and non-profit advocate, was a finance director for Friends of the Forest Hills Playground. She moved to Forest Hills from Dallas, Texas in 2006. She lives with her husband and two children on Brandywine Street.

Beverly Ringel is looking to define herself through a long life of varied careers – writer, teacher, business owner, coordinator of medical research. There have been a few constants. One of them has been gardening – in her own front and back yards, a community garden, and now on a very tiny balcony. It has not always been very successful aesthetically, but always rewarding emotionally.

Jane Solomon lives on Albemarle St. with her husband Daniel, two boys and two standard poodles. She has served as an ANC commissioner (2006-2010), is president of the Forest Hills Citizens Association and has been involved in many community initiatives. But she is happiest at home digging in the garden. The Solomons are very active in the fight for DC voting rights and Jane’s black Mini Cooper sports the best license plate in town: DCVOTE.

Ken Terzian enjoys living in Forest Hills, walkable to the Metro and shopping, with easy access to Rock Creek Park and its natural setting, trails, and bike paths. As an architect promoting sustainable design at OPX, he shares a personal love of nature and concern for the environment with his clients and colleagues, seeking solutions to the environmental challenges of our time.

In Memory

Shari Barton was a longtime Forest Hills resident and two-time president of the Forest Hills Citizens Association. She lived on Upton Street and had been a realtor for many years. She also served on the DC Real Estate Commission, first as an appointee of Mayor Fenty, and then as a Gray appointee.

Carolyn Jacobson lived in the neighborhood starting in 1979. She had a long history of working for and with labor and women’s organizations. A founding member of the Coalition of Labor Union Women (CLUW), she was the creator and director of its Contraceptive Equity and Cervical Cancer Prevention Works projects.

Ann Kessler was a retired librarian with a longtime interest in the history of Forest Hills. She wrote histories of Murch (1990) and the Forest Hills Citizens Association (2004), and contributed a chapter to Marge Elfin’s Images of America book on Forest Hills. She enjoyed digging up little-known facts about neighborhood history and volunteering at the Historical Society of Washington and the Washingtoniana Division of the DC Public Library.

Marjorie Rachlin lived in Forest Hills for more than 40 years. She was a labor activist by profession, an urban wildlife enthusiast by passion, and an active member of this community.