When Wendell Hansen and his wife of 43 years Pat moved to Ashburn in 1960, he could easily say there was no traffic and everybody knew their neighbors.
"Now, you know very few people, and if you go some place, it takes you a long time," said Hansen, who serves on the Planning Commission and is a 10-year member of the Ashburn Ruritan Club and a 40-year member of the Ashburn Masonic Lodge. He retired from landscape contracting in the early 1990s, about 10 years after retiring as chief engineer of geological survey for the National Kinney Company, a heating and air-conditioning contractor out of New York. "We liked Ashburn. For so many years, you knew everybody in Ashburn. If someone needed something, there was always somebody to help."
At the time, Ashburn did not have a community club, so the Partlow Brothers Store, which remains in Old Ashburn, became the community meeting place, Hansen said. The late Calvin Partlow owned the store, which he sold in the 1980s. He was the type of grocer who would let customers sign a ticket to pay for their goods when they did not have the money. Around closing time, the neighbors came to his store to stand around and talk.
"You met the people. You knew what was going on in town. You knew whether people were in need or not," Hansen said. "If somebody was in need, ... we would decide in the store what we would do for them. ... Our supervisor was Emory Kirkpatrick. If our district needed something, we would meet in the store."
Hansen, who is 72, remembers being able to drive along Partlow Road and knowing who lived where and seeing his neighbors out on their porches.
Eight of Hansen's Old Ashburn neighbors still remain in Ashburn. "Because of our age, we probably don't see each other as much as we would like to," he said, adding that the people who make up Old Ashburn, some he did not give last names for, include "Ernestine, Bill and Peggy, Garnette and Rick, Betty and Helen Ann Cooke, Ruth Judd, the Hardings, the Wellers, Mrs. Kehr, Marie Cunningham and the Lawlors."
And then there is Stewart Weller, owner of Weller Tile & Mosaics Inc. on Ashburn Road. "I don't think you could count the people he's helped," Hansen said. "If anybody needed something, he's always been able to come around and get it."
And in return for these favors? "It was cup of coffee or a thank-you."
"The people who move in the community today, a lot of them I don't think know their neighbors," Hansen said.
STERLING RESIDENT Edwin "Ed" Linek, a Loudoun resident for the past 26 years, does not want to live anywhere else than Loudoun. He and his late wife Alice moved to a "little place called Sterling Park" in 1967. "It was a small community at the time," he said. "Then the growth started. ... I've seen it change with the population increase. ... It's really grown up to be a metropolitan area. Some of it's good. Some of it's bad. That's progress. That's what life is about. It's about change."
Linek likes driving on the dirt roads and through western Loudoun to see the county's beauty. "The beauty is in sections people don't know much about," he said. "It's all out there, all you have to do is find it."
For 40 years, Linek worked for Western Union Telegraph Company, which changed names several times to become GTE by the time he retired in 1993. He served in the Navy for 40 years in the Korean War and as a reserve, retiring as a chief warrant officer in 1987.
Today, Linek volunteers at about a dozen organizations, including the Veterans of Foreign Wars, The American Legion, the Sterling Foundation, the Lanesville Heritage Preservation Society, the Knights of Columbus and the Sterling Ruritan Club. "I have all of my commitments here. ... The organizations I'm mixed up with, they are all positive in their outlook and in improving the community. They're good people. It's good to see hard-working people," he said.
Linek has been asked several times if he has thought about moving to Florida. "What's down there? I'm still young," said Linek, who is 74. "Right now, I'm happy in the area. ... I enjoy the people here. ... A lot of us are transplants, people who have a variety of outlooks on life."