When George Washington acquired Mount Zephyr Farm in 1752 (according to a history compiled by Sharon Bertschi) the land was divided into timber forests, an orchard, fields of wheat and corn and meadows for pasturing livestock. Most of the area remained farmland for two centuries until it was purchased by a group of civic-minded developers who began building homes after World War II.
Even after some houses went up, the transition into a modern suburb was slow. Dan Burrier, the president of the Mount Zephyr Citizens Association, said that when he lived in the neighborhood 55 years ago, “There were no houses. There was no bridge across the stream.”
In 1962, when Ingeborg Catlett, an émigré from Germany, moved to the neighborhood , the streets were still unpaved. Catlett spent the next 44 years working to improve Mount Zephyr’s infrastructure. But she also helped preserve a snippet of its past: a small meadow that had been pastureland since the days when George Washington’s livestock grazed it. On July 8, the Mount Zephyr Park was dedicated to Catlett, “in appreciation of outstanding service to the Mount Zephyr Community.”
“I’m a person of doing,” said Catlett, when asked why she committed herself to community projects. After successfully lobbying to have Mount Zephyr’s roads paved, Catlett revived the neighborhood’s moribund Citizens Association. She was president for 12 years and has been active in it for 40.
In the 1990’s Catlett lobbied to improve the streets again, this time by helping the neighborhood secure millions of dollars through the Neighborhood Improvement Project to install sidewalks, storm gutters and asphalt.
“She is Mount Zephyr’s number one volunteer,” said the Rev. William Teng of Heritage Presbyterian Church, who presided over the dedication ceremony.
IN THE 1970’s, as houses nibbled steadily away at Mount Zephyr’s undeveloped land until it became the suburb it is today, one small patch of open meadow was left standing beside Little Dogue Creek. It was maintained as public land, but had no formal designation. In the mid-1970’s Catlett set out to influence the Fairfax Parks Authority to accept the land into its system. In 1982, the land that had been a meadow since George Washington’s time, land upon which Merino sheep used to graze, became Mount Zephyr Park.
Twenty four years later, State Sen. Toddy Puller (D-36th), Del. Kristen Amundson (D-44th), Mount Vernon District Supervisor Gerald Hyland (D) and Harry Glasgow of the Park Authority Board of Directors all spoke at the ceremony that dedicated the park to the woman most responsible for its existence. Boy Scout Troop 993 helped usher the event, and the Vernonberg German Band performed.
The elected officials focused on Catlett’s tenacity in the cause of helping her community. “She epitomizes what an individual can do in this country,” said Puller. “She is tireless and ferocious … It may take her a while to succeed, but it would just be easier for everyone to agree with everything in the beginning.”
“The message we should take from this day is insistence really does pay off,” said Amundson. “As a result, the Mount Zephyr community has this really beautiful little jewel of a park.”
Burrier reminisced about a childhood spent catching tadpoles in the stream that runs beside the park and playing in the woods that surround it. “This is where we learned to be the keepers of this land,” he said. He read a poem for the occasion titled “An Eternal Chain.” It ended with a reflection on “this special place that God has picked for you and clothed in loving grace.”
“THERE IS no person whom I’ve had the pleasure of dealing with who has done more for his or her community than Ingeborg,” Hyland said to the audience. “This lovely lady I can only describe as bulldoggish.”
“You have truly shown by your life the love a person can show for her community and the difference that love can make,” Hyland told Catlett, who sat in the front row with her husband, Doyle.
At a potluck lunch and cookout after the ceremony, Catlett credited her civic success to being from good stock. She said her father was a police chief in Germany. He told her, “If you want something, you ask for it. If the answer is no, you accept it. If yes, it is beautiful.” She admitted that she rarely settled for any answers that were less than beautiful.
“I’m really humbled,” Catlett said. “Everything I did, I did because I felt like I needed to do it … For some strange reason I was 99 percent successful in all my endeavors.”
Catlett said the accomplishment she is most proud of is “raising a wonderful family.” She has one daughter, five grandchildren, seven great-grandchildren and one great-great-grandchild.