Tim Temple

Interview with Tim Temple
Interview Date: June 24, 2024
Interviewers: Libby Quaid and Angela Schmidt
Transcribers: Libby Quaid and Angela Schmidt
Editors: Maygene Daniels and Elizabeth Lewis

This interview transcript is the property of the Ruth Ann Overbeck Capitol Hill History Project.
Not to be reproduced without permission.

START OF INTERVIEW

QUAID: This is Angie Schmidt and Libby Quaid, and we’re interviewing Tim Temple for the Overbeck Capitol Hill History Project. It is June 24, 2024, around 9:30 a.m. And we're meeting at Tim's house at 228 9th Street SE. So why don't we start with, Tim, how you arrived on Capitol Hill?

TEMPLE: Well, I lived in Dupont Circle, 1700 block of 20th Street NW, and I was tired of paying rent, and I wanted to leave the area. And I looked around for areas that were upcoming. And Capitol Hill happened to fill all requirements that I was looking for. It was burgeoning, it was close in. And so I went to a real estate broker, and she found me a five-unit apartment house that was pretty run-down on 3rd Street SE, 216 3rd Street, next to what was at that time Morton's drugstore. 

SCHMIDT: What year was this, Tim?

TEMPLE: This was 1963. And I purchased this place, which was empty and really run-down. And then I set out to redo one unit at a time, the first one being the one I was going to live in, and that was the basement apartment. At that time, in 1963, I was 26, I was agile, a lot younger than I am today. And Capitol Hill was a crime scene in those [days]. Murders, rapes, muggings, which I got involved in and then I made personal arrests of 11 people in my first four years there.

SCHMIDT: How do you personally arrest someone? 

TEMPLE: I physically arrested them and held them till the cops arrived. Arm locks, you know. I was 26 then. I couldn't do that today. But I mean literally muggings, I got involved. Well, one guy got mugged right in front of my house, and I took the guy down. But Capitol Hill was, quote, vibrant in a way that I didn't like but it was vibrant and changing. Being by myself, I needed help. And so one day three black kids came by and wised off at me. And I chased the guy with the mouth who'd called me certain words which were not polite. And I chased him around a couple of cars and I realized I couldn't catch him. He realized I couldn't catch him. And so I said, “Okay, smart guy.” [Laughs.] That's not the actual words. “How’d you like to have a job?” And he said, “Doing what?” And I said, “See that building? I'm going to rehab that, and I’m going to need people to help me, and I'll teach you vocational skills, construction skills. And I'm going to need some friends of yours to join me and join you. And I'd be glad to train you guys how to measure, how to paint, how to cut, how to sand with the grain—all the things that you need to know if you're going to do the same thing for yourself or hire yourself out for somebody else. What do you say, smart guy?” And he said, “I'll try you out.”

So it started a multi-year training with black kids on the street, basically keeping them from getting killed, and teaching them some social manners as well as some professional manners and skills. Out of the 24 that I hired, seven I considered “graduated.” One became a senior Capitol Hill policeman. Another was a poet. And I forget—the others were working for construction firms. But that was a two-way street, because I became the leading exponent and expert on Motown music through my association with these young men. One of the things that stood out, turning something really bad into something really good, was the fact that one of them stole my wife's emerald engagement ring. So there are three young men there, and I told them, “I know that you know who stole it, right? But let me introduce to your life the quality that we are judged by other people, and that's called character. Character is actually who you are. Are you a thief or are you an honest guy? Are you a liar or do you tell the truth? This is how people know you and evaluate you and how they hold you in their mind as a level of importance or worth knowing.” So I said, "I'm going to walk out of this house for an hour and a half, and I expect to see that ring back on my desk when I come back, otherwise I close down my school, my “Temple University,”,and there are no more jobs, and I don't want to ever see you again and it'll be good.” I walked out. An hour and a half later, I came back. They were gone, but the ring was on my desk.

SCHMIDT: So did you live in this apartment building? When the job was finished, did you end up living in the building?

TEMPLE: Oh, yes, I lived in the building. And I rented out—and I have great stories about my tenants. 

QUAID: Well, tell us a couple.

TEMPLE: [In an Irish accent] John Francis Mahoney was a lovely lad, was on the second floor. John Francis Mahoney happened to dip his nose very deeply into the malted peat. And he knew I had to paint his floor. While he was sleeping like crazy. I painted the floor, and he woke up, and his feet nailed themselves to the floor, and he fell into his closet. Another time [laughs]—I can’t tell that part …
And then shortly thereafter, after I got the place rented and finished, said goodbye to my boys. But they kept coming by and seeing me which was really great. I went to Chile, and I was working there for two and a half years.

But I have one more story about one of my boys. James Davis, smartest of all the 24. And he helped me over here at 228 as well. James Davis. I kept [him] alive because he had that flash temper young black males have, and he would have been killed. He skipped—he got mad at me once and skipped an axe, a hatchet, on the bricks in the alley at my legs. I told him, “You did that in your hood, you'd be a dead man, don't you agree?” He said, “Yeah.” I said, “Why’d you do it? Count to five, at least five, before you pull the trigger.” James Davis was the smartest of all the kids I had; he was absolutely brilliant. And his mother lived in this house, the house I'm living in now. But I told him I will give him $500 cash if he could find a house with the attributes that this house had. A wide back alley, a side lot, a possible house I could buy on the other side for rental units, three stories, a full basement and high ceilings. And he said, “My mother is living in that house.” I said, “Come on James, I know the Hill.” He says, “No, I'm serious.” And this happened to be a black boarding house owned by a Baptist church in Winston Salem, North Carolina, called the Metaphysical Churches of Faith Inc. of North Carolina.

SCHMIDT: How did they come to own a building on the Hill as a boarding house? 

TEMPLE: They wanted to make this their northernmost chapter. That was their idea. But James Davis’s mother changed all of that. She found out that if a house is condemned, she would go to the top of the public housing list. So she drove out all these wonderful boarders. I met the boarders, I came over here when it was functioning, I met them. And she was taken in out of Christian charity and put on the top floor with her two other kids. James would not live with her. He said she was the meanest woman he'd ever met. And she wrecked the house, drove everybody out and had it condemned, called the city and had them condemn it so she could get to the top of the public housing list. So I bought a house that was—I had a ’58 Chevy up to the floorboards in the backyard. I mean, this place had dolls’ eyes in the ground, had dolls’ heads in the ground. It was the worst thing I’d ever seen in my life. But James Davis just caught on to every single thing about construction and made his own decisions which was successful. He built on what I taught him and went beyond that. So if you ever see a maroon Cadillac with a vanity plate, Big Jim, on it, that's my James Davis. And I've included him in my will because he was so energetic in finding the truth and trying to better himself. And while I owned the carwash, he used to come to my carwash to suck up a free carwash, but to introduce [me] to his wife and his kids and it was a great relationship.

SCHMIDT: He's still around?

TEMPLE: He's still around.
 
SCHMIDT: Excellent. I'm gonna be looking for that Cadillac. 

QUAID: So walk us through how you came to acquire the condemned house that we’re in today.

TEMPLE: Well I drove BMW motorcycles for 19 years, until a blue haired lady ran a stop sign and took me out of that business. I had a compound fracture of my right femur, both forearm bones on my right side broken and my left wrist broken and a lot of little bumps around my face right here.

SCHMIDT: Were you wearing a helmet?

TEMPLE:  I was wearing a full dress helmet, but it was open here, but it was not down to here. And it was a Magnum helmet that it took care of my—it killed my precious bike. Which is a great picture by the way I have. But anyway, I went down to Winston Salem to their annual meeting, and I called the bishop and told him what I wanted to do. And he said, “Well, why don't you come on down?” And I said, “Okay.” It was just awesome.

When I was six years old, I came back to the United States from Brazil [where] my father, a Naval Air gentleman, was stationed and I spoke very, very little English. My mother, who was brilliant, realized that the only person I could talk to at school was my brother who was in kindergarten and I was in first grade. She knew I had pitch so she had me audition for the boys choir in the National Cathedral. Which I passed. And I stammered because I was so embarrassed about my English but there I could sing in English because I'm not talking to somebody, I'm not looking for a response. And I could sing in German, I could sing in Hebrew, but it got me over the stammer. So the pastor or the bishop of this metaphysical church of the faith said, “Well, why don’t you come down to Winston-Salem and make a bid?” And I said, “Okay.” He says, “We're having our annual meeting on X date, and you can come down and let everybody know what you want to do.” So I made that date. And I drove down to Winston-Salem on my BMW motorcycle, which is an easy, easy trick.

SCHMIDT: How long did that take?

TEMPLE: Whatever it took. I had friends in Richmond. I think I went to them first just to spend the night but I'm used to driving for like ... I’ve driven 10 hours. I went to Alaska and back and had done long distance. BMWs are incredible. They don’t vibrate like bikes. So they were singing, I was in the service, and here I had been singing since I was six years old. And I had sung some gospel songs and they started singing the song “The Great Speckled Bird” which I had sung before and so I was singing from memory. And I had tears my eyes because I really just loved this, I remembered this song from way back. And all of a sudden the bishop made some motion and everybody started singing at half voice and he bellowed down at me, “Okay, Mr. Temple. You've driven down from here from DC to make a bid on to 228 9th Street, what's your bid?” I choked with emotion. And I'm not going to mention the figure, but I made a bid. And he came back with a counter. And I was laughing at my frailty because I was still crying. And I said, “I accept the bid.” And all the voices went back up again. And later on at the dinner after the service, I told him that was really unfair, and I told him why, and he laughed. He said, “Well if we know that we could have come up with something a little harder then.” This house was condemned and on the razing list, as was 226 next door. 

This house actually used to be one house owned by the Vogt family, I believe, originally, it was V-O-G-T. And as I understand from my investigations at that time, Mr. Vogt’s son got married and he wanted them to live next door. So they put a mirror wall in and split the building into two and created two residences instead of one. It was three rooms deep. three stories high, and they had a half basement next door at 226 and this is a full basement. And it basically this the tallest house between here and the Capitol building, because I can see over from the top floor, I can see over every other house and see the top of the Capitol when the leaves are off the trees. 

SCHMIDT: How did you get it off the raze list? How does one go about that? 

TEMPLE: That was a good story. And I’m going to use a three-letter word indicating a person's nether parts, and you're going to keep it in. I bought this place—and again—I had kids like James Davis and some other kids helping me. And I had a crew also that went to Nova Scotia ... I just ran into—I forget how I hired them. I was doing this, and it was the recession. I bought this in 1972. I started construction in 1973. There was a recession in 1973, the banks wouldn't lend their mothers money. So basically I had to do this with savings and with my income as a stockbroker. I happened to be at that time, and I'm being modest, a pretty damn good stockbroker. Because I got a large portion of the Organization of American States’ pension fund, which made me the No. 2 broker in the entire corporation of 800 brokers. But I couldn't do that much because of the financial demands of this place. So it was slow, but I was getting it done. Well, the head of the condemnation board, Joseph Cacciatore, you know, like the Italian dish, sent his crew down here, and they said that I was not redoing this fast enough. So he sent me a letter dated a Friday, which arrived on a Saturday, and said because I was not doing this fast enough, they put it back on the razing list and it was going to be scheduled for a tear-down. 

TEMPLE: So, the letter arrived on a Saturday. The next four days were hell because I was very depressed, you know, giving it my all and here I've failed. But one of my two practices that I've had in all of my young adult life and currently adult life is I read The Washington Post and The Economist, it used to be called The London Economist. And I read them completely. So the following Tuesday, on the inside, the page two, of the Metro section, the headline read something like “Condemnation Chief Attacked by Citizens.” Actually, that WAS the headline. And the sub headline was “Too eager to knock down buildings and work with owners.” I said, “that's the God's truth.” So I read the article and in the second column, he defended himself by saying, “Oh no, I'm working with a young man at 226 and 228 9th Street Southeast.” 

SCHMIDT: What?!? 

TEMPLE: And so I immediately got on the phone and called the Board of Condemnation and asked for Joseph Cacciatore. And somebody picked up the phone again and said “Cacciatore speaking.” I said, “Joe, I own your ass.” [Laughter.]

TEMPLE: “Who is this talking to me like that?” “Just Tim Temple.” And you could see him rocking back on his heels. “Oooh, you saw the article in the Post this morning!” I said, “I'm on my way down to your office to get the letter rescinding the letter that you wrote last Friday. Would you have it ready for me?” “Yeah, Tim, I'll have it ready for you. Sorry about that.”

SCHMIDT: Oh!! 

TEMPLE: And that's how I saved my house from getting knocked down. It’s a wonderful house. It has 11 foot, 10 foot, and nine foot ceilings above a full basement. And it's the tallest house between here and the U.S. Capitol building. Since on the top floor I can see over every other house and see the Capitol, top of the Capitol dome, when the leaves are off the trees. It's a wonderful balloon-framed house, which meant that there wasn't anything on either side because we have to raise the beams up Amish-style to form the building's skeleton.

SCHMIDT: What did you do with the building that you had, the apartment building that you had had?

TEMPLE: The apartment building which I bought for $23,500 I sold for exactly 10 times that. Not that I wanted to but my wife who didn't know jack about real estate or finance wanted me to because quote “it was taking too much my time.” It wasn't really. That was a mistake. I should have kept that asset. It was three blocks to the House office buildings and people could retire on the money that thing would be making right?

SCHMIDT: When did you sell it? 

TEMPLE: I forget.

SCHMIDT: Yeah.

TEMPLE: But there's a great building and great memories of a lot of tenants and horrible memories of one particular tenant which I won't go into but I drove him out.

SCHMIDT: So she grew up on the Hill. Your wife did?

TEMPLE: She was from Philadelphia, but he [her father] was down here and she had come down here. She knew the Hill because she lived over here with her father. But basically she's [a] Philadelphia girl, went to prep school there. Went to the University of Pennsylvania I believe, yes, I forget, it was many years ago. And that …

QUAID: So you moved in …

TEMPLE: …it was unfortunate marriage, it wound up badly.

QUAID: So you moved in here. But not here in this house. You renovated the carriage house first?

TEMPLE: Yeah, I renovated. This property is unique. You have a carriage house. A side lot. This height that we have, the ceilings are incredible. People walked in here to the [2024 Capitol Hill Restoration Society] House and Garden Tour and looked up and said “My God, this place is wonderful,” and “I feel like I’m out in the open.” So the carriage house, which I call the best crib in the city, I did for myself.

But before I did all this, I went to Chile and worked with the Agency for International Development. The best job I ever have in my life. I was a loan officer. Well, first of all, I was a management intern. Federal management intern which is fabulous program in which you get to work for three different agencies as free meat because you're providing your salary provided by OMB, at that time called the Office of the Budget, and basically you were paid for by the federal government umbrella, and everybody wants to have you but you get to choose the agencies that you want to work for. It's a great symbiosis. And I worked for the Office of Contracts at AID to see how the money was spent. The second one I worked for [was] OMB to see how it [the money] was distributed. And then the last one which was my target was the office, the lending office, the Office of Loans in AID. And my target was to be in South America or Latin America. And I was sent on temporary duty to Chile to work on a project regarding triple ammonium phosphate fertilizer. They liked me enough, they put in an order to have me come down there. And that's the initiation of my love affair with Chile. I was there for two and a half years. I had very many important projects, one of which was the new airport that exists there today in Santiago. The main runway and the independent landing system attached to it were financed by AID. And it was one of my projects.

But I also learned to fly at the same time. My father was a naval aviator, my closest brother was a naval aviator and I decided to get into the family game and became a pilot, a very good pilot. I was the first to solo naturally. And I was second in a course in a test given in Spanish. I was second in the class of 23, thrilling my instructor who said, “You know you’re making me look really really good.” And I can't tell you how much I love Chile. It’s my second country, I’m “soy Chileño en corazón,” Chilean at heart. And it's the most beautiful country in this hemisphere. Bar none. That my love affair with Chile and my love affair for flying came together when I knew from construction reports that the center two planches [two sections of the runway] were dry so I took off in a Cessna 150 from my flight club in Tobalaba, a northern part of Santiago, and I landed on the runway, being the first person ever to land on the international runway there. And the first plane to land was not a Boeing 707 or something but it was a Cessna 150!

SCHMIDT: Did you ever fly in the US?

TEMPLE: Very little - I didn't like it. 

SCHMIDT: What's the difference?

TEMPLE: People drink. 

SCHMIDT: Oh!

TEMPLE: And they're irresponsible. Chilean pilots are the best I've ever seen. They’re fantastic. They follow the rules and so you know what to expect. Here? People don't follow the rules and it can be dangerous. It was dangerous to me … [Garbled - speaking to dog]

QUAID: We started back up. We'll have to have you tell us when you came back to Capitol Hill. 

TEMPLE: Start with my coming back to Capitol Hill? So I came back to Capitol Hill by buying a Mooney Mark 20—M20—and flying from Santiago to National Airport in Washington, DC.

SCHMIDT: Wow! 

TEMPLE: Taking seven weeks to visit friends, to look at archaeological sites and whatnot, and timing the time to switch tanks when my wife had to empty hers. [Laughter.] It was just a fantastic experience. I mean, I got assistance from navigators from major airlines and it was just a great brotherhood up there and just a neat experience. And I was the seventh person, or no seventh American, I guess, to do that. They kept, somebody kept a log, in Chile [of] who left and came here.

And then I became a stockbroker. I left AID and wanted to get experience in domestic finance. So I became a stockbroker with Legg Mason and became the number two broker. When I became disenfranchised with them I joined Blyth, Eastman & Dillon, which was at that time the Rolls Royce of brokerage firms in this country.

QUAID: So how did you have time to fully rehab your properties while you were working as a stockbroker?

TEMPLE: Well a stockbroker is sort of ... you make your own time. Which is fortunate because that's the only way I could have done it. And I worked with these kids to redo this house. And I had my crew. I had a four-man, three-man crew that worked on this house, but I worked with them also. And including catching a DC inspector looking for a bribe, quote his “holiday money.” And he didn't expect to find a guy that had overalls working here that would have a tape recorder in his bib overalls. When he asked for the holiday money, and I said—I forget the guy's name, it began with an M—and when he did that, I pulled the recorder out. I said, “Now I want you to understand something. Every time I apply for a permit, you will not give me any guff, you will take care of it. And your career rests on a cassette in this machine. And I don't want to see your face again, unless it's official and it's constructive.” And he gagged and left and nothing ever happened adversely. Everything happened and I got approved on everything that I applied for.

And later on when I bought the land for my carwash, he being a nosy guy in the area, [he] drove down into this deep property, 600 yards. And I was in a suit then and I happened to be at the property and I called him by name. And he stopped his car, and rolled down the window. I said, “I'm the guy with the cassette. I'll see you!” He turned around and left and [I] never saw him again. But I got notice from somebody that he was retiring so I had a little box and put the cassette in a box and gift wrapped it and had it sent by messenger to his farewell party. [Laughter.]

QUAID: Tell us about the carwash.

SCHMIDT: Did you have that concurrently with being a stockbroker or did you stop and then decide to go that direction, being a business owner?

TEMPLE: Oh, I've always had an entrepreneurial bent. I was the number one black market guy in my Army unit. I was in the Counterintelligence Corps, which is a great outfit. I mean smartest guys in the Army. It's just amazing. We have lawyers in there and I mean it was [an] amazing group of people who are stationed in Stuttgart [Germany], the headquarters [of] Counterintelligence Corps, Europe. And I made some solid friends that I still have today, 60 years later. Where are we going with [this]? 

SCHMIDT: Entrepreneurial 

TEMPLE: Okay

QUAID: The carwash.

TEMPLE: So yeah, so, yeah, I bought people’s cigarettes coupons that didn't smoke, and so I bought cigarettes and sold them in Italy. And it was my way of trying to get a VW because I made $110 a month and you couldn't do anything on that. And it almost got me there and then somebody finked on me. [Laughter.] I had to change sales. I had to stop. But so. . .

QUAID: Carwash

SCHMIDT: Splash, how did you get into the business?

TEMPLE: So while I was a broker and I got this building finished I visited 85 carwashes nationally. What I did is I asked my wife, second wife, “What do we drive off the Hill for?” She said, “That's easy—carwash.” Giving her credit, folks! Okay?

SCHMIDT: We're having to do that again now [leave the Hill for a carwash]. Thanks a lot, Tim! [Laughter.]

TEMPLE: But I dragged her and myself through 85 car washes nationally. Looking at how everything was done, and especially the layout and what worked. And then I designed my carwash and I needed to buy land so I went looking for the only place Capitol Hill can expand to, south, so I looked on the other side of the freeway, for something that would work. There was a piece of land on South Capitol and Eye Street [SE] that was owned by the Pennsylvania Railroad, which had gone into bankruptcy. And Kitty Kaupp was trying to market this. And she had a client named Earl Kassis, I still remember that one, and she wouldn't show me the property because Earl Kassis was interested in it. So I went directly to the Pennsylvania Railroad and I got a contract for the whole corner of Eye Street and South Capitol Street where there's a building now. It's a tall apartment house called Novel N-O-V-E-L. But the land behind it was the worst land perhaps in all of D.C. It was a swamp—there were Redwing blackbirds back there. [I persuaded a developer] to take the part that I didn't want and I would take the rotten piece of land which was butting up to the freeway. It was swampish and it fell way down below Eye Street.

My original partners decided they didn't want to put up extra money for the contract and that cost them each millions of dollars. And so I got a developer to take that part [that I didn’t want] and I took my land for $5 a foot [laughter] and cut it out to my design. I designed it for a carwash and it was absolutely perfect. It was 82 feet wide and 330 feet long and actually with a driveway that was 280 feet long. And it was perfect, just perfect, for a carwash. And so my favorite architect is a Mexican architect, name of [Luis] Barragan. I own a book of his architecture. And I took the book to my architect and said, “This is what I want you to do. Make something that has negative spaces and copy the style of Barragan and [these are the] angles I want …”

[Showing a page from the book to Schmidt and Quaid.]

TEMPLE: That’s for horses.

SCHMIDT: Yes, yes.

TEMPLE: And he came up with something that was really, you know, outstanding. And met my requirements. So it was built. We started building in the summer of 1995 and finished in ’96. In June, I was working at that time for the greatest collection of street smart people I've ever run into—the financial, capital markets of the Resolution Trust Corporation RTC. This office, led by a woman named Gerry Rigby—a fantastic collector of strange people she was, I include myself in  that group.  The FDIC guarantees deposits. We were the people that got the money back for the guarantees. We got 96 cents on the dollar. It was [an] absolutely incredible effort. And being smart, I mean, we're talking street smart, I mean, we could outgun anybody! These people were just amazing. And I personally sold, for a million dollars, the controlling interest in the Eva Gabor wig factory in Queens [laughter]. Hats and hair. In a story that is so verbally violent that I can’t tell it. [Laughter.] My vocabulary will be greatly reduced or cut in half in telling the exact story. [Laughter.]

SCHMIDT: For another time maybe?

TEMPLE: But I mean, basically I put the million dollar check on my head with a big rubber band and went out in a trading area and people are asking, “You sold that piece of (you fill in the word)?” I said, “Yeah.” “It's a million bucks? Holy sh–!”

SCHMIDT: So you were working for them while you're simultaneously building out Splash?

TEMPLE: Yes, but the key thing here again, this was a wild office. I think I could go and visit [Splash] because it’s close by and I always kept my car close to the exit. I had special plates because my wife was pregnant. And so I got a special parking space where I can go and attend to her. She had preeclampsia, so I had to run her to the hospital with a 200 blood pressure. But I can check on my construction crew very easily. I absolutely loved this office because nobody could outgun us. I mean no one would expect what we would do. I loved the crew there and it was just the most creative people in the financial world. We were kings. I mean people from Wall Street would come down. We’d go out drinking with them. One of the guys that we drank with became CEO of Chase. He's a buddy.

QUAID: So do you have any stories about your owning Splash that are good Capitol Hill stories?

TEMPLE: Yeah. Okay, so RTC was a sunset organization. [An organization with a set closing date.] So it expired in March of 1996. Splash opened up July 1, 1996. 

SCHMIDT: Perfect. [Laughter.]

TEMPLE: It opened up for business. I had one bad thing [happen]. I was beaten up by four black cops. There was a guy that was dating this guy’s sister and this was early on. That whole area down there was so rough and everybody around it was rough. There were shootings. This is South Capitol and Eye Streets SE. And it was, it was a brawl. But I opened up. The carwash business is one where people's personalities bubbled to the surface, the bad and the good parts. I really enjoyed the good parts, but I also reveled in the bad parts. [Laughter.] I went after him.

We had an old lady with a wig, like a silver wig, named Naomi and I loved her. She used to come in and she'd get a carwash every single week, top of the line. Every single weekend. She'd come in, I mean I made sure that everything worked for her. Used to greet her by name and help her back to her car. People like that.

Limo drivers said it would be the best carwash in DC. They said, “We know, we live by you.” I did a huge level of business. One great story was in the inauguration with George Bush, I got a call from Reggie. Reggie was coming from Philadelphia, bringing his client down here for the inauguration. And he wouldn't get here [in time]. He was very persuasive. Very, very direct with me. That's what sold. He was lucky. He said, “I don't know if you can help me.” I said, “Reggie, you've been straight with me. You come down here give me a call and I’ll open up the carwash and wash your goddamn car.” Reggie comes down. He's got a lovely lovely maroon Town Car Lincoln and a matching lovely same color maroon lambskin coat down to his ankles. The both of them were goddamn gorgeous. And so I prepped the car and ran it through and I told them I'm going to charge you 100 bucks. You know I could charge you more and you’d pay it but I'm not here to scalp you.” And he really appreciated it. The car looked really great. He took a picture of it. He asked me to take a picture of him next to the car at the carwash and it was just really wonderful. And then he called me after he left and he said, “I just want to thank you Mr. Temple.” I said, “What did you call me? You called me Tim before.” And he said, “Okay, Tim. But you know, you really did, you know you really helped me out, I appreciated it.” People like that, you know, you remember and you value.

Another time, two young women were doing a shoot down here and they had a, I don't know what you call it, a big whiteboard? So they used a light green paint to paint the boards for some backing for some shots. They had a rental car and they put the gallon of light green paint in the VW trunk in front and the top was not secure. 

SCHMIDT: Oh no.

TEMPLE: They hit a bump and the paint went all over in this rental car. And they came to me and I said, “Boy, do you have a problem!” She said, “Yeah, but we heard that you were the guy that could fix it.” I said, “If I can't, your friends were not lying. You know we're gonna give it our shot.” We had [the] thing looking immaculate. My detailers were experts, they were, and it was a big deal. I said, “You know, this is a huge effort and I'm giving them 75 bucks each as a tip.” The car was immaculate. No one would have ever known a disaster had happened. But they worked like hell.

But then we got the people … you know it looks like somebody had driven into a bowling ball. And the right front headlight was somewhere back above the wheel. And this woman's running around with a camera looking for something around so that she could accuse us, [so] that her boyfriend could accuse us of having damaged his car. I said, “Lady, everything here is straight up and down. There are no bowling balls hanging around so you and your boyfriend can get the hell out of here. You're not gonna get any solace from me or from my employees.”

You get things like that and the scams were something.

SCHMIDT: I remember. You have one in the kitchen here - your cranky signs on the walls there [from Splash]. [Laughter.]

TEMPLE: I had guys accuse my employees of stealing, was it $1,400?— I think it was $1,400—and [claiming] that his girlfriend kept it under the passenger floor mat. And I said, “So that's a safe place in your world?” And he said, “Well, one of your guys stole it.” I said, “I just counted. All of my employees are here. The guy that has stolen would not be here.” [Laughter]

TEMPLE: My guys are smart. He’d be “Hasta luego.” I had 18 Hispanic employees. I speak Spanish because I was in Chile and I taught myself Spanish. The State Department wouldn't let me go to language school because they wanted me down there as a loan officer. I mean the loan mission down there demanded, “No, he's got to come down. Forget the language.”

SCHMIDT: So I have a question because I watched all of the development that went on around Splash and in fact, friends of ours lived in the apartment building next door.

TEMPLE: Crane city! It became incredible.

SCHMIDT: And you held out for a very long time. Were people trying to buy that property from you?

TEMPLE: I went to the altar twice before and they dropped their interest. You know, again, finance is my background. Interest swings are a huge determinant of a person's efficacy as a developer and they're always competing areas that they look at. They lose interest in yours. You must be very difficult being a developer, but anyway, I got to the altar twice. And a third time I was determined because again, I'm an interest rate freak. I refi[nance] all my houses when the interest rates drop. I've got this current, I've got an $800,000 mortgage on this house at 2.87%. I mean, that's free money to me, anybody in finance that's free money. It's now 7% or 6.95%. 

SCHMIDT: Yeah 

TEMPLE: Yeah, but when it was 2.875, that's when the last group of people that were interested came in. And I said, “It's not going to stay, because they're looking at some very rosy figures and they're gonna get disenfranchised very, very quickly.” And so I dropped my price and they signed on and put up the earnest money which is critical and non-refundable. And so I had them. And what happened was what I predicted—interest rates came back up, and none of their figures worked. They have not developed two, here we are, two years later, two and a half years later. They have not developed the land. And I could open up the carwash. I made them that offer—I open up again but they have to pay the real estate taxes and don't charge me rent. Just to keep them from getting fined for having vacant land. But they went another way. They put up a trapeze school to get rid of the vacant land tax.

SCHMIDT: We’re still missing the carwash. 

TEMPLE: I miss the carwash. [Laughter.] Some of my guys went up to Sixth Street and Florida Avenue [NE]. There's a carwash on Florida Avenue, between Sixth and Fifth.
SCHMIDT: I know but it doesn't have that big long driveway. It doesn't feel like an experience in the same way.

TEMPLE: You don't get the sh- sh- sh- sh- done by hand.

QUAID: I want to make sure we asked you to talk about Soccer on the Hill.

SCHMIDT: Yes

TEMPLE: My greatest victory and my greatest failing. I played soccer in prep school and in school. I played soccer at Trinity College in Hartford. That was the beginning of my cramming four years of college into six years. I won the bridge championship with my roommate but I was also asked to leave Trinity … [Laughter.]

SCHMIDT: Wow being an athlete at Trinity, I mean that's …

TEMPLE: … at the end of my junior year. I'm a horrible student. Really I am. I’m ADD [attention deficit disorder], I'm pretty sure. I know I am. I lose focus. You can hear in my conversation—I bounce like a billiard ball all over the place—but I know how to play soccer. Also followed soccer. I’m a fan of Franz Beckenbauer, who's the great soccer player for the German Team, Olympic team. He was what is known as a “libero,” l-i-b-e-r-o.

I was single, I didn't have any kids and the head of Soccer on the Hill had seen me kicking a soccer ball around just to mess around up on Lincoln Park. And he came to me and found out who I was. He worked it down and would try to get me to coach. I said, “I’m not interested.” He tried a second time. And it was a third time he said, “Look, Tim, just do it for two to three weeks. That coach quit because his son wasn't chosen on Select. And we've got these kids that are nine and 10 year olds. Just do it for a couple of weeks while we get another person to coach.”

SCHMIDT: What year was this?

TEMPLE: I’ll have to figure that out. But I was 40 years old. So that was 1936 plus 40.

SCHMIDT: 1976?
SCHMIDT: Soccer on the Hill was existent in 1976? Wow.

TEMPLE: And so … I owned a Datsun, a little orange Datsun pickup truck. And so he came to me a third time, said, “Look, just do it for two or three weeks, no more.” Well, I said okay. Boy, was that … He's either a great salesman or I'm a sloppy Irish kickoff, spin off, or both. Because I had those kids there and I fell in love with them. I didn't know anything about coaching. That's very important. You know all these parents that sign up for coaching—people have to realize that parents don't know jack about coaching. I knew a lot about soccer, but, again coaching is completely different. And so I was not a good coach. And I was struggling, and my players were basically winning half their games and losing half their games.

But anyway, the parent came back with a semi-pro player, two weeks into my gig, and he said, “I'll take the team back over again.” I said, “Take your slave and get off the field. And don't come back. I'll see you on the sideline.” I said, “They're my boys now.” There were all boys at that time on my team and the coach had chosen no girls—this was a coed league. I cured that very quickly.

So what happened was we were playing and Soccer on the Hill had been permitted by Alexandria to play in their league because we were so small. Well, they made a fatal error, but it was a great thing for me and for a guy named Ed Sauer. Both of us had played soccer before, both of us realized we didn't know how to coach. They had a seminar and we went over to the seminar in this big hall in Alexandria. The irony is that none of the coaches that we played against were there, which is really amazing. But that is what happens when you have parents as coaches. They defend what they don't know, it is really a unique quality that I never understood until I got involved in this. They defend their lack of knowledge. And it's deadly, absolutely deadly. And I took advantage of it. So this kid gets up on the stage and he's got a shiny jacket and olive skin. He looks like a youngster, right? He snaps that jacket and is Four A Eastern champ on his shirt. And both of us go, “Wow - he knows what he's talking about.” And we sat down with our clipboards and shut up [laughter]. We put our soccer balls down and quit kicking them around. And we paid attention to this young man and he inverted our idea of how to coach completely, 180 degrees.

After that, I coached for 13 seasons. That was my third season. After that none of my teams—and sometimes I coached two teams at the same time, 9-10 and 11-12 [year olds]— lost a game because that young man taught us how to coach. And my greatest failing, perhaps in life, is the fact that I can't get Soccer on the Hill interested in my coaching the coaches. I worked out that Franz Beckenbauer’s formation is better for youth soccer than it is for adults because they have surpassed what he did. It’s deadly efficient, because it puts in an extra set of defenders. And what I did is I took my two weakest players and put them all forward. So they were never suffering—they'd be the wings. Where they could develop and they would not be responsible for goals being scored against them.

I had a girl goalie, Elena Sylovia, who has the best record that Soccer in the Hill will ever have in goals against because she got everything. Because by the time it got to her, it was dying ball. So I have been unable to preach how to coach a team. Even the fact that I never lost, my teams never lost a game for 10 seasons to people on Soccer on the Hill, and it's been my biggest failure. 

SCHMIDT: Where did you practice? Because fields are always an issue around here. So I'm just curious where you practiced back then.

TEMPLE: Well, there's was one field that nobody went to because of the dangerous area. It's a glorious soccer field in a horrible area in Anacostia. You come across the 11th Street Bridge and you take your first possible hard right, and [the street] runs right to the water.

SCHMIDT: Oh yeah, Anacostia Park!

TEMPLE: Yeah. There on the left hand side is a soccer field. Well, the goalposts were [there]. The paint was all stripped off them. And where the crossbar was sagging. I fixed the crossbar. I painted the thing. I rented a liner and lined the field. So I had my kids, the only kids in the whole league, playing on a real field to practice. So when they went to a game, there was no adjustment. We scored goals usually in the first three minutes because they're all used to this dynamically-sized [field]. You know, the angles are the key. And the greatest compliment I ever got as a coach was from a parent of an opposition team [who] said, “You know this team looks completely different from all the other teams in the league.” And I turned to them and I said, “Thank you.” [Laughter.]

SCHMIDT: So this was the suburb, the Suburban Friendship League, out of Alexandria?

TEMPLE: Alexandria. And then because of Ed [Sauer] and myself, they asked us to leave because we won. He [Ed] had 13-14s. I had 9-10s [year olds].

SCHMIDT: So then who would you play against?

TEMPLE: Well then Soccer on the Hill came here, was on the Hill. And I played my games down there and what was really fantastic is some parents would say, “I don’t want my kid playing down there in Anacostia,” and the kids would revolt against their parents. “Come on!” Oh, yeah. And another thing is with that young group, my first group, I said, “Guys, we need to come up with a name. What's the ugliest animal you can think of? Let’s really scare them.” And these kids are getting excited. I said, “How about a Vulture?’ [Laughter.]

TEMPLE: And they go “Uuugh!” “Yeah, uuugh, that's what I want! You guys are now the Vultures.” And so the Vultures became synonymous with victory. And Gillian Black, the son of Barbara and Matthew Black, who live[d] on the 600 block of East Capitol Street. Gillian Black …

Oh, I forced Soccer on the Hill to have a draft because what's happening is these parent-oriented coaches were always trying to keep the same kids together. I said, “No it's gotta be a mix. And since I'm winning, I choose last. So you draft from my teams.” They never did! And that's why I won every year …

… But Gillian Black called me up before the draft and said, “Mr. Temple, this is Gillian Black.” He was age 9. “I've always wanted to be a Vulture.” [Laughter.]

TEMPLE: It ripped my heart out. So I said, “Well, Gillian, we'll see what happens but you know, everybody else is up there bidding but somehow I'll let you know. Okay?” So all the players were ranked like A plus, A minus, and minuses and pluses every level down. Gillian Black was – let's say he was like a cinderblock with sneakers. He had, he had very limited moves. He was sort of a blocky four by four, you know, or three by three. But a great kid. I loved the kid. Well, when the Bs were being chosen, I chose Gillian Black.

And I was also the treasurer of Soccer on the Hill, so I kept all the uniforms, which I purchased, and kept them here in my house. So I got a green shirt and green socks, which was the color of the Vultures and then put them in a manila envelope and I went over to the Black’s house and shoved it through the door and let him know that he was a Vulture.

SCHMIDT: It must have made his day.

TEMPLE: His mother called me the next day and said he put on the uniform and slept in it! I just loved that and that's how rewarding this job was. Also, you know, my great goalie, Elena, I’d also sometimes pour out and put her into the left wing and give her some experience shooting the ball in. But she didn't know how to harass a goalie because she had been a goalie and she harasses one goalie to the point where the goalie dropped the ball and she kicked it into the goal. And so I yelled out on field, “Hey, Elena. What's the best kind of goal?” She roared back, “A garbage goal, Coach, a garbage goal!” I went like this, with my thumbs up in the air [gestures]. And her mother who was next to me just burst out, “You got my kid trained like a parrot.” That’s what she’s like!

SCHMIDT: You don't see her at practice.

TEMPLE: But one of the things really nice was I can really coach and I wanted to pass this on. I mean, at one point we were invited to compete in the Braddock Road All Star Tournament. They have 10,000 kids in their league. So I asked every coach [in the Capitol Hill League] to give me the names of three of their top players. Well, the Bears were coached by, I forget who the guy was, but I saw [the names of] his players that he recommended and one was his son. But he didn't recommend the person that I knew should be there, a girl named Sandy.

And so I called Sandy and said, “I want you to come to practice, we're going to have three weeks of practice before the All Star Tournament.” She said, “But my coach didn't pick me.” I said, “And your coach is not coaching this team for that reason.”

And so when we were competing, I said, “Sandy, stand over here. Guys, come on over here. What happens if somebody picks on Sandy?” [The players responded] “They're [in] big trouble.” I said, “Good, that's what I wanted to hear. Okay, Sandy, come on over.” And she was very fast. Left wing.

Soccer on the Hill was in the finals both times they invited us. We were in the last game. And they asked me, “Who are you guys?” “We are Soccer on the Hill.” “How big are you?” “Well, I'm the treasurer. We’ve got 832 kids.” “God you guys are good.” I said, “Thank you very much.”

But I can coach, I can, I really know to coach. I wanted to pass it on, not only the formation, but how you do it. Again, it's being run by parents. It’s what you’ve got.

SCHMIDT: A volunteer is a volunteer. You take what you get. [Laughter.]

TEMPLE: I like that. [Laughter.]

SCHMIDT: I've been involved in volunteer organizations myself, so I understand.

TEMPLE: How delightfully negative. [Laughter.]

SCHMIDT: So there was one other thing I wanted to make sure I got to hear about your experience involving a squirrel and the Safeway. This should be kept for posterity.

TEMPLE: [Laughs.] I’ve had two great pets. My first Irish setter was a bitch named Katie. Irish setters have great noses. Katie was a wonderful dog. I had her at Lincoln Park, and she found a nestling, a mockingbird nestling. It was going to die. It was on the ground, fallen out of the tree. So I brought it home. And, to make a long story short, basically I raised this bird. I took him to work. I had a cage at work and I brought mealy worms along. I was an expert financial witness at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. And I raised this bird there. I’d bring him home on the weekend. I was riding a bike, so I'd have this cage on the back of the bike. And this mockingbird, and then I trained with a little whistle [whistles to demonstrate]. That was my whistle for him. And I did not want to keep the bird beyond when he's able to fly and take care of himself. Assuming he was male. 

SCHMIDT: It's hard to tell.

TEMPLE: No, he was a male, you know, the flashing on the wings. I put him outside. And he would fly on top of my shoulder. His name was Ralph. And I used to pick weeds and lay them out on the bricks and what happens is the weeds create heat but a lot of moisture also. And crickets love that. And so I'd go out in the morning with a walking stick or something and roll back the weeds, and a cricket would pop out, and bam! He would nail it. And [gulps exaggeratedly] three gulps, and all these legs sticking out of his mouth. [Then he] jumped back up on my shoulder! He’d eat about three crickets and that would be it. 

So one day, I came home on my bike. There was a guy walking up the sidewalk, and I gave my whistle, and all of a sudden, right in front of my house ... I'm on my feet, holding on to my bike. The guy is about 15 feet away from me. And all of a sudden, the mockingbird lands on my shoulder. The guy stops and goes, “Mark Trails.” [All laugh.] I said, “Wait, you haven't seen anything yet.” So I go through my gate—I have a big gate, big wall in front of my house. The bird hops off my shoulder. I left the gate open and the bird alights on my shoulder again on the inside. The guy started applauding.

Anyway, attesting to my lack of domestic rigor, I thought there was a rat that was at my open window when I was sleeping. You know, I was just waking up. And I threw a London Economist at it, not really bothering. Apparently it was a mother squirrel with a kit wrapped around its neck. She leaped to get out of the window and the kit fell off onto the floor. And so I was going back to sleep again and I heard this rasping—imagine your fingernails going across the floor. [The kit] had one eye open and it just was contracting its claws trying to pull itself along but not knowing where it's going. And I said, “Oh my God, I became a parent.” And so I got an old shoebox and cut up some rags and towelling and made a place for him. And then I called animal service and got some advice on what to do. Then I bought an eyedropper at the drugstore and Esbilac [puppy milk] from a pet store. And I brought this little guy alive. He grew and was in my bedroom. And he loved to play. And they’re diurnal. I mean like the first beams of light [they wake up]. At nighttime, bang, the sun goes down, they're out.

So this guy used to wake me up by jumping on my bed and crawling underneath my covers and getting on his back and playing with my fingers and it would wake me up. It became a ritual.

I had a birch tree in front of my house on the side lot here. It’s not the front of my house, it’s the side of my house. And his best, biggest game was “throw me into the birch tree.” And a birch tree is very supple, the branches are very supple and giving. He’d run up about five branches. Then he’d leap down on my head or onto my shoulder and run down my arm and look back at me like, “OK, throw me, throw me.” And I could do that for hours. I mean he just loved that game.

His name was Wally the lesser Wallenda, as he loved the acrobatics.[The Wallendas were a circus highwire act.]  I used to carry him around in an L.L. Bean-like a duck-hunting coat. It's brown canvas with a corduroy collar and big, flat pockets on the side. I put Wally in the left pocket and put peanuts in the right pocket. To keep him busy, I would feed him a peanut. He'd go down and chew away in the dark and he was very calm. Well, I made the mistake of going to Safeway once with Wally in my pocket.

SCHMIDT: And this is the Safeway that was across from Eastern Market. Correct? 

TEMPLE: Correct.

SCHMIDT: Because there used to be a little one right across 7th Street.

TEMPLE: So I'm checking out and I’m next in line. And just as the person [ahead of me] leaves, I move into position to start taking my stuff out. And this very large woman [was] behind me, two-inch heels. And Wally stuck his nose up looking for another peanut. All of a sudden she screams, “He got a rat! He got a rat!” And she starts fanning herself with these fat fingers and scares the hell out of Wally. Behind her was Liz Bankowski who knew Wally, and Wally knew her as a friend of mine. And so Wally vaulted out of the pocket, pivoted on this woman's shoulder and jumped onto Liz Bankowski, who calmed him down. Meanwhile, this woman is spinning herself around in these two inch heels, a huge woman and fanning herself with these fingers. And literally you're going around in circles. I look at the checker. He's face down on the conveyor belt—I mean, he is useless. He's just dead. And I got Wally back from Liz and gave him a peanut and put him back down in my pocket. I had people in all of the checkout lanes laughing like crazy. It was hilarious. But they got to meet Wally! (All laugh.)

And I put Wally out. I don't keep these wild pets. I don't keep them out of their milieu. But I always carry in my breast pocket of my shirts, I’d always keep like three peanuts. And I’d sit out in my yard. And Wally would come back and visit me. He’d plop down on my head or on my shoulder—hang on with his back feet onto the seam that you have on the top of your shirt—and reach down in my pocket and pull out a peanut and sit on my shoulder and ch- ch- ch- cover me with sawdust [all laugh]. He was just wonderful.

My mockingbird was killed by a cat right outside my house. That's why cats are not thought of fondly in this house. I trap them and then give them back to their owners, and next time, he goes bye-bye.

SCHMIDT: All right, I’m going to pause right now. Is there anything else we needed to get? We don’t mean to keep you here all day.

QUAID: We could keep going for another five hours, it’s a lot of stories. But I wanted to make sure we talked about Soccer on the Hill, and how you got this house. And the apartment building, and Splash Car Wash.

SCHMIDT: And Wally, my favorite story. [All laugh.]

TEMPLE: Yeah Wally. He was a great pet, a fantastic pet. I mean, you know, I could take him and throw him in a tree, and he’d jump back. 

[Break in discussion]

SCHMIDT: Did you raise your daughter on the Hill?

TEMPLE: Absolutely.

SCHMIDT: Do you want to talk about that?

QUAID: That’s a good way to close. 

TEMPLE: My daughter was born in Columbia Hospital in Northwest, which no longer exists. She’s been the charm of my life. She is unique. All kids are unique to their parents, I realize. But it was wonderful bringing her up here in the seat of the nation's capital. You have access to a lot of information here to make yourself aware of what's going on in this country. And she is that.

When she was going to preschool, it was run by a woman named Sharon Negri. And when I got divorced from my current wife, her mother, I called Sharon to tell her about the fact that I asked my wife for a divorce, or split, and I was blubbering and crying. I told Sharon, you know, “I seek your advice. What should I do because you've had this experience before probably.” She said, “Tim, the other teachers and myself have discussed this, there is only one child in the six classes that we have that whenever she sees a parent, she runs and throws herself into his arms. That's you. And we've all talked about it. It's unique among all of the students that we have. That's what you must keep alive.” And I turned into a mucus waterfall at that time and told her that’s the nicest thing that anybody had ever said to me, I’m choking up now. I’ll never forget that as long as I live and I'm trying to live by that.

And I’ve taken her [my daughter] to Chile, my favorite country. Her school was in a group of schools called St. Margaret's which is an Episcopal-associated chain of schools—but nonreligious schools worldwide, and English-speaking schools. And there happened to be one in Chile, which is the Number one girls’ school in the whole country named St. Margaret's in Concón, Chile, which is west of Santiago. And so when I was visiting Chile, I made contact with people down there, and then I came up here and talked to the school and got them to accept an exchange program with the school in Chile, and my daughter was the ambassador. She was the first person to go down there and represent the U.S. and today they have, like, three students a year come up from Chile to attend St. Margaret's. It was a neat thing to do. She revels in traveling. Her passport looks like, you know, Manhattan telephone book, she's been to so many countries. But it's really neat seeing a kid that has absolute confidence in who she is. And that's what a parent’s first job is, to generate and support a kid's self-confidence. Everything else is second. And that's what I built in her.

END OF INTERVIEW
Ruth Ann Overbeck Capitol Hill History Project
Tim Temple Interview, June 24, 2024

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