Naomi Ulmer has a warning for her new home. “I feel sorry for the retirement home,” Ulmer said. “I’m a troublemaker.”
Ulmer, who has lived in Potomac since 1967, will be moving to Evanston, Ill., to be closer to her family.
Ulmer and her husband, Melville John Ulmer moved to Potomac from Arlington, Va. The couple had a horse which they boarded in Burke, Va., and they wanted to be able to have horses on their own property.
“Potomac was very horse-friendly at the time,” Ulmer said.
Ulmer and her husband, a former professor of economics at the University of Maryland who died in 2002, used to ride their bikes to Potomac and take drives out in what was then “the country.”
“I’m essentially a county girl. I guess I’m just wired that way,” said Ulmer. This might seem counterintuitive for a woman born in Manhattan and raised in Brooklyn, N.Y. “I couldn’t wait to get out.”
Her children had attended the schools in Arlington before they moved. Her daughter Stephanie is an artist who lives in Pittsburgh, Pa. and attended the University of Maryland.
Ulmer’s son, Melville Paul, went to Johns Hopkins and is a professor of astrophysics at Northwestern University. Ulmer’s move to Evanston will put her closer to her son.
Ulmer’s troublemaking has left a mark on Potomac, on Montgomery County and on the region. Were it not for her efforts, the Clara Barton Parkway would likely have a different name (see sidebar).
When county residents check out a video from the library, they can thank Ulmer for its increased availability. Videos had been treated the same as books, and could be checked out for three weeks, said Rita Isenberg, former head of the Potomac Library.
Ulmer, a member of the Friends of the Potomac Library and of the Montgomery County Library Advisory Committee, felt they should only be available for one week. “It was a philosophical difference,” Ulmer said.
The change took time, Isenberg explained. “She went through two library directors. She kept at everybody,” she said.
“I’m persistent,” Ulmer said.
Ulmer testified during the rewriting of the Potomac Master Plan two years ago, urging the preservation of Potomac’s rural heritage and environmental resources.
Her property, Point of View, next to the Potomac Elementary school, was once surrounded by open fields, not the shopping centers which are now just down the road.
She watched the development of the large homes, she calls the “starter castles,” and another name not fit for print, a play on “chateau.”
“The area became from exurbia to suburbia,” Ulmer said.
Ulmer and some friends enjoyed a good-bye luncheon at the Irish Inn at Glen Echo one day last week, laughing and joking before she leaves. “My friends from the library have been joyous to me. They have changed my whole life,” Ulmer said.
Ulmer had been a teacher for the Washington, D.C. public schools. For 24 years, she taught biology, anthropology and general science classes to the pages at the U.S. Capitol. Students in the Washington public schools are allowed to become pages, but still are required to attend classes. Ulmer has a masters degree in endocrinology, but took some education classes to get certified to teach.
Ulmer, a former Potomac’s Citizen of the Year and member of the Potomac Village Garden Club, the West Montgomery County Citizen’s Association, has seen dramatic changes to the town.
Visiting museums and the Library of Congress are some of the things she’ll miss most about the area. But Ulmer, a member of the Maryland Ornithological Society, will miss bird watching along the C&O Canal and other sites like Bombay Hook, Del. even more.
One of Ulmer’s favorite memories was a time when she and a friend Fay Barnes were walking along the canal and the two unexpectedly saw a flock of 50 swans flying along the river. “It was a sight,” Ulmer said.
The new birds she expects to see in the midwest are one of the things she looks forward to in her new home. “I look forward to getting my birds,” she said.
But more than the birds, more than anything else, Ulmer will miss the many friends she has made over the years.
Those who came to see her off, were as touched by Ulmer as she was by them. “She’d give me a hug, and that would make it all better,” said Isenberg
“She’s been a bulwark of the community,” said her friend Meredith Williams.
“Naomi has always been my role model,” said Potomac resident Judy Schattenfield.
“Oh Judy,” Ulmer replied obviously choked up by the sentiment. “You should pick a better one than that.”