Talk:Pimmit Hills, Virginia

The entry for Pimmit Hills, Virginia is inaccurate in one respect. The trees were NOT removed when the houses were constructed. They were left there when the first section of houses were built in 1950 (no houses were built in the 1940s). The neighborhood was built in two phases: (1) first phase (1950) included Pimmit Drive, beginning at its intersection with Leesburg Pike (State Rt. 7) and was first occupied in 1950. The streets perpendicular to Pimmit that were in the first phase included Paxton Drive, Griffith Road, Storm Drive, Hileman Road, Hillside Drive. These roads ended at a wooded tract of land that was developed in 1955 with the construction of Friden Road (parallel to Pimmit Drive). The houses on Friden and west of Friden were constructed with sidewalks, curbs and gutters, while the first section did not receive this upgrade until the late 1960 and early 1970s. In 1950, initially, there was no telephone service in Pimmit Hills. There was one phone mounted on a temporary post at the intersection of Pimmit Drive and Griffith Road. Soon, telephone service was added to the utility poles, but at least four houses shared a "party line." The Fairfax County Library Board began providing library service to the neighborhood by using "bookmobiles," which were commercial buses with the interior lined with shelves and books, with a child-sized table and chairs. Residents knew the schedule of when the "bookmobile" would be at certain locations. (For example, the bookmobile had one stop at Griffith Road and Cherry Street, where it would be parked for 2 or 3 hours. Residents could check out books and then return them when the bookmobile would return on its regularly scheduled days.) Initially, school-aged children in Pimmit Hills attended the Dunn Loring Elementary School, which was a fairly long bus ride that departed the Pimmit Hills neighborhood by turning left (east) onto St. Rt. 7 and then turning right (south) onto Idlywood Road. In 1954, Pimmit Hills School was built on Lisle Avenue, followed in 1957 by Lemon Road School, opened to serve the eastern half of the Pimmit Hills community. An easement from the back of the Lemon Road school property between two houses on Pimmit Drive at the intersection with Paxton Road was the primary way most children reached the school. Fairfax County Public Schools built a wooden walkway across the small Pimmit Creek - the walkway linked the school property to the newly built sidewalk on Pimmit Drive, where most children walked to and from school. The first principal at Lemon Road was Mrs. Magarity - she was related to the Magarity family that owned property along Magarity Road, which formed the western boundary of Pimmit Hills. The first church to serve Pimmit Hills was St. Luke's Methodist Church, located on Leesburg Pike, next to the peach orchard owned by the Hemsley family. St. Luke's Methodist was founded in 1955 and initially met in the Freedom Hill School until the church building was completed in 1957. The first minister to serve St. Luke's Methodist Church was the Rev. William Jeryl Fink, a graduate of Randolph-Macon College in Virginia and the Candler School of Theology at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. In 1957, Pimmit Hills received its first shopping center built on Leesburg Pike, just up the hill, west of its intersection with Pimmit Drive. The grocery store was named Food Town, and the shopping center also had a small bank, a High's ice cream store, a People's Drug Store (complete with a soda fountain), and the Pimmit Grill, the only bar in the area. The first night the shopping center opened, live musical entertainment was offerred to draw people from the neighborhood to come. A local singer named Jimmy Dean played his guitar, along with his band, on the back of a flat-bed truck in the parking lot. Of course, Jimmy Dean later became nationally known, both musically and for his brand of sausage. During the 1950s and 1960s, the Hemsley family maintained their peach orchard located between Leesburg Pike and the houses of Pimmit Hills. The Hemsley house was a log cabin that had been relocated to the orchard from West Virginia. (This orchard was mentioned in the opening pages of the popular novel, "Seven Days in May," published in the early 1960s.) The first significant turnover of homeowners in Pimmit Hills occurred between 1957-62, when many original owners sold and relocated to other areas of Northern Virginia, primarily in the Vienna community.

David L. Meyer meyerfamilyinva@verizon.net —Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.66.211.226 (talk) 03:07, 20 April 2011 (UTC)