While driving around Reston at lunch time today I marveled again at the physical beauty of Reston, the place my family has called home now for 51 years.  I tell people constantly I could live anywhere, but I choose to live here.   When we moved here in the summer of 1965 there were maybe 200 people living in Lake Anne.   Amongst the early pioneers were gay couples (my mother explained to me years later, that no, Jon, Pete and Bill were not ‘cousins’, divorced people and interracial couples.

It never struck me that there was anything odd about this.   I learned later that divorced women with or without kids were not welcome in many areas of the DC, MD and VA burbs.   Nor were the interracial married or the gays.   I am in awe to this day the vision that Bob Simon had to welcome people with out regard to race, religion (or lack thereof), orientation and also financial success (or lack thereof)…and have them living next door to each other.

Everyone deserves to live in a nice home.  Whether it be a one bedroom rental, townhouse, house or a spectacular waterfront residence we all want the same thing…a nice, safe place to call home.  As a Realtor, I can sell you a home anywhere – Herndon, Vienna, Oakton, Great Falls, Springfield, etc but I know this – it won’t ever be Reston.   You can buy a nice home in a nice neighborhood; when you buy a home in Reston you get so much more – you get a nice home in an entire ‘town’ of nice with every amenity you could ask for.

Whether rich or poor, or in between, renter or owner, regardless you get access to community swimming pools, tennis courts, golf courses, lakes and miles of pathways and acres of parkland in one of the most beautiful regions of the world.

I am thankful my father packed us up and brought us here.  It was a gamble in 1965 but I have never had one regret or moment I wished I lived somewhere else.