David Rubenstein Interview at the Arlington Historical Society banquet

The nation’s foremost philanthropist working the vineyards of U.S. history shared some well-earned insights Sept. 27 at the Arlington Historical Society banquet.

     David Rubenstein, the Carter administration attorney and Carlyle Group financier who of late has become a familiar PBS TV interview host, spoke with passion on links between past and future of our democracy. I had the pleasure of being his interlocutor at the Washington Golf and Country Club on the strength of my writings on our county’s namesake Arlington House.

     You can see Rubenstein’s donations reflected at Mount Vernon, Monticello, Montpelier, the White House Historical Society, the National Archives, the Library of Congress, the National Museum of African American History and Culture, the New York Historical Society, and the Duke University special collections library. Locally, he also gives for upkeep of the Kennedy Center, the Smithsonian, the Jefferson Memorial, the Iwo Jima memorial and the National Zoo.

       Rubenstein’s $12.35 million gift to Arlington House via the National Park Foundation in 2014 allowed modernization of the exhibits at the Greek Revival home originated by “child of Mount Vernon” George Washington Parke Custis (and associated later with his son-in-law Robert E. Lee). It now offers visitors vivid new detail on the lives of African Americans enslaved on the plantation.

      Rubenstein got the history bug as a child from modest means in Baltimore, he told us, when his father took him to free museums, the Lincoln Memorial and the Washington Monument (later damage to which from the 2011 earthquake would prompt him to contact underfunded federal authorities to offer money).

      As a parent himself, Rubenstein took his children to Arlington National Cemetery and up the hill to Arlington House. Once his fortune was made, he made his name in the history world by purchasing, at a 2007 Sotheby’s auction, one of the few copies of the Magna Carta, now at the National Archives.

     Donors to federal agencies, Rubenstein explained, can express wishes for how their money is spent. (Before giving $18.5 million to the National Park Foundation to restore the chiseled quotations at the Lincoln Memorial, he advocated a future education center to provide context.) But in the end, the decisions are made by the government.

      Arlington House, he confessed, by the 21^st century was looking “shabby.” Under his grant, the National Park Service retrieved original furnishings and decorations that had been removed and now displays many new pieces chronologically and aesthetically accurate.

        Rubenstein is on board with legislative proposals to remove Lee’s name from what since 1972 has been officially called “Arlington House—The Robert E. Lee Memorial.” Though Lee was a man with many outstanding personal virtues, he said, he also took up arms against the American government, and being a major slaveholder, “his conduct must be condemned,” Rubenstein said.

       History must include “both the good and the bad,” the philanthropist added, and the new exhibits on the lives of the enslaved gives a “rounded understanding of what happened.”

      Rubenstein says philanthropy need not be confined to rich people writing checks; people can also give of their time. “My hope for all these investments,” he said, “is that they will permit future generations of Americans to visit and understand the importance of learning about our history so they can be informed contributors shaping the future of this wonderful nation.”

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     Proclaiming Sept. 30 as “Westover Day,” officials and community activists of all ages assembled on grass near a playground to cut the ribbon on the Cardinal Elementary School Stormwater Vaults.

   County board chair Christian Dorsey recalled that “dark day” July 8, 2019, when rainfall flooding inflicted massive property damage on Westover merchants and residents. “We’re standing on something that could hold 4 million gallons of stormwater,” he told the crowd of some 100, praising the “creative, community-driven solution” that culminated in an $18 million underground drainage network with high-tech sensors to monitor water flow.

    He thanked the Tara Leeway Heights Civic Association, the school PTA and contractor W.B. Hopke Co.