In recounting the festivities at the annual luncheon for Washington, D.C., area classmates that he hosts at the Cosmos Club each November—and which was attended last Veteran’s Day by stalwarts Doug Corderman, Ted Fellowes, Jim Fowler, Dr. Gordy Kay, Dr. Frank Mate, Bill Sweet and Dick Hull—class president Dorn McGrath offhandedly mentioned Dick’s longstanding interest in Coe’s Mill, a defunct grist mill dating from the late 18th century in rural Loudoun County, Virginia, about an hour’s drive northwest of Washington.


In follow-up conversations Dick told me that he had acquired the mill’s site and the house built from its stones as a weekend retreat in 1963, but it was only upon his retirement in 1997 from a multi-faceted career as a lawyer specializing in international matters for several U.S. government departments that he was inspired to inquire into the mill’s history and the genealogies of the several families who had preceded him as owners of the property. 


He summarized his research into old land and court records in a privately printed monograph, which he prefaces with extracts from a 1940 letter in which a former owner reminisced about watching as a boy General Lee’s army march by the mill on its retreat from the Battle of Antietam. His research uncovered several failed attempts at economic development of the area around the mill, so that when the commercial viability of small water-powered milling operations faded in the late 19th century, Coe’s Mill gradually succumbed to the elements, and through time its 100-plus surrounding acres gradually reverted to the pristine sylvan wilderness that Dick acquired. 


Through the years Dick has strived to protect, thus far successfully, the unspoiled qualities of his property from the suburbanization overwhelming other parts of Loudoun County (Dulles Airport is but a few miles away). He has placed a commemorative bronze plaque on a surviving mill foundation wall and displays some of the machinery that has been excavated from the mill creek. He extended to me, and to other ’52ers I’m sure, an invitation to visit if in the neighborhood.


—Dave Drexler, 100 Waters Edge Drive, Jupiter, FL 33477; (561) 747-3874; dave@drexler.com