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William M. Offutt, who died on Dec. 31 at age 91, actually wrote the e book on Bethesda. He printed it, too, and used to promote it from a desk on the Montgomery County Farm Ladies’s Cooperative Market, subsequent to the pies and jams. It’s referred to as “Bethesda: A Social Historical past” and on Monday a replica of it was among the many photographs and different ephemera of Offutt’s life displayed at Our Woman of Lourdes Church.
“We referred to as it the phone listing,” his widow, Eda, advised me.
It’s as thick as a cellphone e book: 783 pages, down from the thousand or so in Offutt’s first draft. Whenever you actually love the historical past of a spot, you have a tendency to not wish to skimp. Offutt interviewed greater than 200 individuals for his e book and pored by numerous newspaper articles.
“I simply wished I had began sooner,” Offutt advised a Submit reporter in 1995, when the primary version got here out. “Many individuals I'd have needed to interview had died, or their reminiscences had been defective. It’s a superb factor I used to be in a position to hear most of their tales and report them for future generations.”
In fact, Offutt had skilled a variety of Bethesda’s historical past himself. Offutt’s household house was cater-cornered from Our Woman of Lourdes, the place he went to elementary college. He went to St. John’s for highschool, earlier than heading to school on the College of Maryland, graduating in 1954.
He taught historical past and English in Montgomery County Public Colleges, retiring in 1989 from Bethesda-Chevy Chase Excessive, which is a block from the place his childhood house as soon as stood.
Offutt is an previous Maryland household title. The index to the e book lists 19 Offutts, from “Offutt, Anna Lyles” to “Offutt, Winsor.” Offutt might hint his household again to the Revolution. One ancestor was Robert Peter, the primary mayor of Georgetown.
His spouse — nee Eda Barthel Schrader — advised me her household arrived in “solely” 1848.
“He used to check with me because the immigrant,” she stated on Monday.
They met when Invoice was 17 and she or he was 15. He’d stayed round after a New Yr’s Eve celebration to assist clear up. That made him “a keeper,” she stated. They had been married for 69 years and raised three kids — William Jr., Katherine and Caroline — within the Bethesda home they purchased in 1957.
I spoke to Invoice Offutt a number of occasions, most memorably in 2021 after I wrote a column a couple of 1945 aircraft crash in Bethesda. Two Navy pilots had been pulling stunts when one plane collided with the opposite. One pilot was in a position to land, the opposite aircraft got here down in a vacant lot after the pilot bailed out.
Invoice was 14 on the time and managed to seize his Brownie digicam and snap a photograph of the burning wreckage earlier than navy personnel chased him off.
The crash made such an impression that when Offutt was engaged on his e book, he managed to trace down each pilots and interview them.
“They had been enjoying,” Offutt advised me. “They had been younger pilots with nice, large, quick airplanes, they usually had been having a beautiful time.”
For Offutt, a beautiful time included speaking about Montgomery County. Matt Logan, head of Montgomery Historical past, advised me the historic society’s audio system’ bureau was principally created for Offutt, who gave greater than 200 lectures — with slides. (No PowerPoint for him.)
Offutt’s magnum opus was devoted, partially, to the primary graduate of Bethesda-Chevy Chase Excessive, a person named John Adair who died in 1941, struck by a automobile whereas preventing a fireplace on the college.
“I needed to dedicate the e book to him as a result of he was simply an atypical Bethesda citizen who died doing one thing heroic,” Offutt stated.
In his personal method, Invoice Offutt lived doing one thing heroic: capturing the large historical past of a small place.
Montgomery Historical past, the group Offutt devoted a lot time to, will current its annual historical past convention Jan. 21 by 28. It’s on-line this 12 months, with shows that embrace a keynote on the story of immigration within the county. In 1850, fewer than two % of Montgomery residents had been foreign-born. Right this moment, the determine is about one-third.
Different classes contact on historic preservation, racial housing covenants and the county’s agricultural historical past.
For extra data, go to montgomeryhistory.org.
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