Editorial: The CBC & DeLong Eras Celebrated

Last weekend was “Blasts from the Past” weekend in the City of Falls Church. It began with a reception hosted by the City’s venerable civic organization, the Citizens for a Better City (CBC) that was attended by over 50 local civic activists with histories of intense involvement in local politics in some cases dating allo the way back to the 1970s. There is a page of photos and a transcript of the remarks by CBC President Hal Lippman printed elsewhere in this edition. Then there was a well-attended memorial service held at the Falls Church Presbyterian Church last Saturday for former Falls Church Mayor Carol DeLong, who served eight years as mayor here in the 1980s.

The CBC was in its heyday in the 1980s as well, holding nominating conventions at the outset of every two-year City Council election cycle when anyone looking to run for the Council would come and make their pitch at what was often held in an auditorium full of more than a hundred local citizen activists. In those days, it was very important for a candidate to score the most prominent person available to nominate them on stage prior to their own remarks. The CBC was founded in the context of the federal Hatch Act, which forbade anyone working for the federal government to seek partisan political office. So the CBC was judiciously non-partisan and, yes, a lot of members of each of the two major national political parties wound up with CBC endorsements, which were handed out at the conclusion of the nominating conventions after secret ballots were cast by all the citizens attending the events.

Mayor DeLong was a product, so to speak, of that process, getting elected to the City Council at the outset of the 1980s and repeatedly being elected mayor by her Council colleagues because of her clear talents for detail and fair play. Former 1980s CBC-endorsed Council member John Gannon delivered the main remarks at DeLong’s memorial last Saturday and attested to her enormous skills in that regard. She remained an active advocate for the CBC system well into this century, often attending Council meetings and speaking out during the public petitioning period from time to time. It was always a special treat for active citizens when either she or Lou Olom, another late legend of Falls Church credited with introducing the International Baccalaureate (IB) curriculum in the City’s public schools (now expanded to encompass pre-K through 12th grade here), would step to the podium with well-crafted and intelligent commentaries.

Sometimes there was a strident opposition that rose up and toppled key CBC nominated candidates. In the early 1970s, Chamber of Commerce-backed candidates won seats on the Council in opposition to the CBC, and in the late 1980s, a group calling itself the Falls Church Citizens Organization was created that won three seats on the seven-member Council. The CBC abandoned the nominating convention about 15 years ago, but has remained active, nonetheless.