Hurricane Wedding

“Here comes the story
Of the Hurricane!”
(Hurricane: Bob Dylan – 1975)

There is always a back-story or side dramas to large family weddings, and Margi and Ron’s nuptial and reception on August 27, 2011 was no exception. There was a lot going on that weekend in Washington D.C.: this was the second marriage for both, their respective families were meeting for the first time, an earthquake had rocked the city for the first time in 100 years on August 23, a massive Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Commemoration ceremony was scheduled for that Sunday, and Hurricane Irene was threatening to flood and blow the Eastern seaboard into darkness and paralysis on the day of the wedding. Surprisingly, only two or three guests cancelled their plans to attend for fear of the storm, and the remaining 165 showed up to challenge the media-hyped, climatic event, and celebrate the wedding.

Kathy and I decided to attend Margi’s wedding almost as soon as it was announced earlier this year. Our calendar was clear, and an opportunity to celebrate with family we love, in a city we greatly enjoy, seemed a perfect thing to do on the weekend before the Labor Day holiday. Since we were booking our flight so early, Kathy took the lone precaution of buying travel insurance, just in case some unforeseen calamity did occur. That should have been our first clue that unusual events would occur on this trip – even though we never questioned our decision. The Kirst’s are an entertaining and hospitable family, and Margi is a special person.  She is the eldest child of Mary Ellen and Bill, the first grandchild in the Greaney family, and Kathy’s first niece. I quickly noticed her charm, intelligence, and humor during the days that I was dating Kathleen. Later, I took special note of her serious interest in Spanish and Latin American History and culture, topics that formed the core of my own post-graduate studies.

It proved to be a tempestuous weekend filled with scheduled and impromptu activities, events, and visits. We arrived at Dulles Airport at 3:00 p.m. on Friday, and were met by Kathy’s sister (and the mother of the bride) Mary Ellen and her daughter Katy. They drove us to the Key Bridge Marriott in Arlington, Virginia, where Kevin and his wife, Anastasia, were also staying. As is our custom when traveling, Kathy and I immediately went exploring the top-floor ballroom area with its panoramic view of the Potomac River, Georgetown, and D.C.; and then went searching for the Rosslyn Metro Station, which was about three or four blocks away. There we ran into Kathy’s sister, Meg, and her husband, Lou. Billy, Margi’s brother, was touring them about the city. That Friday evening we all went to a post-rehearsal barbeque in Bethesda, Maryland, and then met up with Brian, the youngest of the Kirst family at the Marriott bar for a nightcap. There, on the overhead, high-definition television, we listened to the dire forecasts of the impending hurricane, which was expected to arrive in D.C. on Saturday afternoon, and peak in the evening.

The weather on the wedding morning started out gray, overcast, and breezy, and continued to deteriorate all day long. Raindrops were just falling as we left Saint Bartholomew’s Church in Bethesda, after the ceremony. The winds increased on the drive to the Officer’s Club at Fort Myer, where the wedding reception was to be held, and the storm slowly closed around us during the meal and festivities, and intensified throughout the day. That development eliminated any possibility of going outdoors to explore the historic army base which includes Arlington Cemetery, and occupies the heights above Washington D.C. This military post stills serves as the home of the Army Chief of Staff, and it once housed the famous generals of World War II: Douglas MacArthur, George C. Marshall, Dwight D. Eisenhower, and Omar Bradley. In fact, the club itself was named after “Old Blood and Guts” himself, George C. Patton, and featured his martial portrait in the lobby.

Along with many out-of-town guests, Lou spent the early moments of the reception on his cell phone re-booking his cancelled Sunday morning flight out of Dulles for one later in the afternoon. When that task was completed, he relaxed to enjoy the dancing, dining, and speeches that followed. The bride’s family produced three show-stopping moments during the celebration: the Father-Daughter dance, in which Margi and Bill bopped to the tunes of “Rock Around the Clock”; Bill’s toast to the bride and groom; and the Kirst Kids present – Margi, Katy, Billy, Kevin, and Mary –  performed an impromptu line-dance to Garth Brooks’ “Friends in Low Places”. Kathy, remembering Bill as the earnest, college swain, courting the affections of her eldest sister in marriage, was most touched at the sight of them dancing wistfully, in quiet solitude, to the last song of the afternoon. Our only serious worries at that point were possible power outages caused by downed trees and road closures due to flooding.


 

After the reception, it seemed like we barely had time to change clothes, snap a picture of the descending storm from a top-floor window of the hotel, before again meeting with Meg, Lou, and Billy at a classy downtown bar called Off The Record. This popular, basement watering hole was located in their hotel, the Hay-Adams, a luxurious place, located across from Lafayette Square and near the White House.  Two martinis later we had stopped worrying about the tempest raging outside and were even ready to forgo a cab ride and walk the 2 or 3 blocks to the Siroc Restaurant. Although dinner was a gastronomic blur, the walk back was unforgettable. During our homeward journey, we were tossed about by blasts of gusting winds, left defenseless with umbrellas turned inside out, and drenched by sheets of slanting rain.


 

Everything changed on Sunday with the passing of the storm, and Washington D.C. was suddenly at its summery best! After a breakfast with Brian and his friend Phil at the hotel, Kathy and I purchased metro day passes and travelled to the Smithsonian Station on the National Mall in search of the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial. The new monument was to have been commemorated that day, but the elaborate ceremony had been cancelled due to the hurricane. By noon, the few remaining clouds had turned white and cottony, leaving a deep blue sky and brilliant sun. At first we followed the customary route down the center of the mall, along the gravel path, walking past the Washington Monument, and heading to the Reflecting Pool. I assumed that the MLK Memorial was close to the Lincoln Monument, but thankfully, a doubting Kathy asked a Park Ranger for directions and we veered off toward the sidewalk along Independence Avenue. As we caught sight of the vast Tidal Basin, with a gleaming Thomas Jefferson Memorial on the opposite shore, Kathy mentioned that she remembered the FDR Memorial somewhere near the basin’s walkway. Eager to see it, we walked along the shoreline of the lagoon, through a thick grove of cherry blossom trees. Looking up we both suddenly saw the gleam of a shining boulder top. Getting closer, we realized that we had inadvertently come across the MLK Memorial from the rear, through the tidal basin entrance.

The monument was eye-catching and impressive. In close proximity to the three gleaming, towering, blocks of granite, one immediately grasps the mountain metaphor and its theme of hope for civil and racial harmony. However, the monolithic statue of King was oddly stoic, and a bit forbidding, as it stared across the Tidal Basin, studying the edifice built for Thomas Jefferson, author of the idealistic, Declaration of Independence. I couldn’t help feeling that King’s features betrayed a critical attitude toward the eloquent exponent of The Rights of Man – a look that expressed the concern that his Dreams for equality, justice, integration, and racial acceptance were still unfulfilled in America.





Returning to the Smithsonian Metro after a brisk walk through the mall in rising temperatures and blazing sun, we decided to cool down with lunch at Dupont Circle. There we took stock of the rest of our day, which entailed returning to Arlington, taking a cab for dinner and an overnight stay at Mary Ellen and Bill’s home in the Glover Park area of D.C., and then taking an evening tour of the monuments with their son, Billy. On previous visits to D.C., I had caught glimpses of the larger, well-lit monuments while crossing the mall on cab rides from one part of town to another, but I’d never seen them closely at night. Billy’s offer to guide us, and, along with his friend Jeff, lead a photographing expedition of the mall, was a special treat.

That evening, listening to Billy and Jeff describe the sights of the mall, and pointing out interesting, historical facts, I realized that these two, longtime residents really loved this city. I’d always assumed D.C. was simply a convenient rest stop for the Kirst family, a place their parents could send the children to college, and take a breather from their lifelong travels around the world. Billy had been born in Iran, and lived in Italy, Poland, Russia, and Germany, and attended college and grad school at John Hopkins University in Maryland, and Georgetown University in D.C. All that time I smugly assumed that he would eventually make his way back to Southern California, the place his parents were raised and lived up until 1974, and where most of his aunts, uncles, and cousins resided. Now, as I saw the way Billy lovingly framed and balanced his nighttime photographs of the locations and images we visited, and listened to Jeff’s back-stories about the historical persons they memorialized, I wondered if they would ever leave. That evening we visited the FDR, MLK, and Lincoln Memorials, and walked around the Korean War and Viet Nam War Veteran Memorials, before returning to spend the night with M.E. and Bill.

The mall and its memorials turn strangely haunting and reverent at night. The Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial looked decidedly different against a black sky, its appearance changing from rugged, chunks of pink granite, to smooth, gleaming marble. The Korean War statues looked like a scene from the movie, The Fog, with its tableau of a slowly emerging lost patrol, rising from the misty darkness that enveloped them. But as always, the most powerfully evocative monument for me was the Vietnam War Memorial. Even with its black-on-black appearance at night, the names of my high school friends were still distinguishable on the dark, obsidian wall naming the dead. In the cool darkness of evening, with each location leaving its own special impression on us, we finally made our way back to the home of Mary Ellen and Bill, and an end to another very long day.

Our last morning in D.C. was spent exploring the Cathedral Heights area near the home of M.E. and Bill. We couldn’t enter the National Cathedral, because it was fenced off since the 5.8 earthquake toppled a few of its towering pinnacles, but we did manage to explore the grounds a bit, and entered St. Alban’s Church before heading back to the Glover Park area. Later that afternoon, after packing and chatting with Mary Ellen, we left for the airport, caught the 3:30 p.m. flight, and arrived home at 7:30 p.m. That evening, Kathy and I sat in our slowly, cooling living room and reflected on the events and back-stage dramas of the last four days. Over raised glasses, we congratulated ourselves on enjoying another marvelous trip together – an opportunity to celebrate a marriage during a hurricane, reconnect with distant family members and meet their significant friends, inaugurate a new memorial, and photograph national monuments in a totally new perspective. All in all it was a fabulous and worthwhile venture.

If you are interested in seeing my Flickr albums of the memorials and monuments I photographed on the National Mall, click on the links below:
 
2011-08-28 MLK Jr. Memorial
 
2011-08-28 FDR Memorial
 
2011-08-28 Korean War Veterans Memorial
 
2011-08-28 Lincoln Memorial
 
2011-08-28 Washington & Jefferson Monuments
 
2011-08-28 Vietnam War Memorial