<bt>Greenbriar's Emerson Cale, 70, is this year's Lord Fairfax representing the Springfield District.
"I told my wife she didn't need to call me 'Lord' — she could just call me 'Sir Em,'" he joked. "And I told the children they could call me 'Sir Dad.'"
A Greenbriar resident since 1968, Cale has served six years as Greenbriar Civic Association (GCA) president and is running in June for his seventh term. He was also the first chairman of the newly formed Springfield-Fairfax Center Area Land-Use Committee.
"Emerson was great to serve as [its] head, and he did a superb job," said Supervisor Elaine McConnell (R-Springfield), who named him Lord Fairfax. "That's an important thing for our district, where we're experiencing growth."
Cale and his wife of 50 years, Barbara, a former secretary, have four grown children — Diane, a college professor; Suzanne, a March of Dimes executive; Bradley, a DEA special agent; and Yvonne, who runs a preschool. They also have five grandchildren, including a girl adopted from China. A sixth grandchild, a boy from Kazakhstan, arrives this summer.
Cale served in the Army in Korea as a staff sergeant, from 1953-55. He obtained a degree in business management in 1959 from Elizabethtown College in Lancaster, Pa., and then spent 35 years as a civilian employee of the Air Force (12 years) and the Navy (23 years).
Cale worked his way up the rungs, rising from a management intern for the Air Force to a senior executive with the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations at the Pentagon. He retired from that post in 1988 and then became vice president of EIT Corp. in Sterling. Along the way, though, he had some pretty interesting assignments.
He was the logistics liaison to the Turkish Air Force, from 1965-67, living in Ankara, Turkey, where his youngest daughter was born. Then in 1968, he accepted a position with the Naval Electronics Command in Washington, D.C., as a logistician and then director of logistics.
"We rented a house in Greenbriar because I promised my oldest daughter we'd stay [put] so she could finish high school in one place," said Cale. "We bought our own house here in 1970, and here we are, 35 years later."
CALE WAS president of Battlefield Little League when Greenbriar's Hal Strickland headed Panther Football. Together, they created the Chantilly Youth Association (CYA), bringing several sports together in one organization. Strickland was president, and Cale was vice president. And until 1982, Cale served as a coach, umpire and referee for baseball, softball and basketball.
Cale also created CYA's girls softball program and obtained the first charter for Little League softball in Virginia. "I went to the Little League girls softball World Series in 1980 in Kalamazoo, Mich.," he said. "I was privileged to be selected as chief umpire for the championship game."
Cale first joined the GCA as a block captain and served, the past 12 years, on its board as vice president, treasurer and president. He also occupied the same positions, over eight years, on the Greenbriar Community Center Board, which operates the neighborhood's community center and handles its rental and maintenance.
"I get bored when I'm not doing anything," Cale explained. "I found that, the more active I was, the better it was for me." The toughest part about being on the GCA, he said, is "dealing with complaints from residents about other residents." But he finds satisfaction in "the chance to do things for the community."
Cale was instrumental in obtaining a couple of million dollars' worth of street lights for Greenbriar. The 2,000 houses there now have nearly 500 lights. He's also responsible for the renovation and rebuilding of the community's entrance signs. And in 1997, he was honored as the GCA Citizen of the Year.
"I'm also proud of starting the Concert-in-the-Park series, five years ago," he said. "The first year, we had two concerts; now, we run three to four concerts per summer."
Cale has represented Greenbriar on the Sully District Council of Citizens Associations and the Fairfax Federation of Citizens Associations. He also volunteered as a genealogy aide at the National Archives and was a longtime staff writer for the community's newspaper, the Greenbriar Flyer.
Cale said the Lord Fairfax title is "so lofty," but he was pleased to be honored for his civic achievements. "I was surprised, and it pepped me up because it came a few days after I'd had a heart attack — I'm fine now. It's a nice thing and I appreciate it."