The penalty of apathy…
Ed and Mary Williford had everything they ever wanted in a neighborhood when they moved with their two small children into the two-bedroom, one-bath house on Judson Road in Wheaton in 1974.
They knew everyone up and down the block. Their kids played touch football and baseball with friends in the grassy median strip. And they spent long, easy afternoons sitting out on their front porch, chatting with neighbors who had become as close as family.
From the time the tidy Cape Cods, ranchers and split-levels were hastily built in the 1950s to house the exploding ranks of federal workers and World War II veterans, the people who lived in their Glenmont Forest neighborhood typified Montgomery County – everyone was white and middle class.
Now, more than five decades later, the matchbox homes look largely the same. But the neighborhood has changed greatly.
Up and down Judson Road, mail is delivered to residents with names like Garcia, Arroyo and Flores. Glenmont Forest is now 61 percent Hispanic and 20 percent non-Hispanic white. Soccer is what the children play nowadays in the median.