LIVING NEXT DOOR TO THE GERMAN EMBASSY
My parents, James C. Braswell and Wilda Josephine Guy Braswell, moved to Washington District of Columbia after WWII for work. My aunt, Octavia Mariette Guy, had moved there when she married and had obtained work with the Government. She had written to my parents about work being available there. It was a hard time in the United States and many, many people were without work. So, my parents made the move with their small daughter, Mary Jo. They found employment also with the government and lived in several different apartments there. A few years later my brother, James Carl Braswell, Jr., was born and then I came along.
Before our births my parents lived in an apartment next to the German Embassy with German guards standing outside the huge structure that housed many German Officials. These Guards had to stand outside for many hours a day in Winter and Summer. Washington is very cold in the winter with much snow and ice. My mother felt sorry for the Guards standing out in the cold. In the evening after she arrived home from work and was preparing supper for my father and sister and then my brother she would take coffee down the back stairs of the apartment and give it to the Guards. Her relatives and some neighbors were not happy with her but, she told me later she felt these men were in a bad situation not of their choosing. I have always admired my mother for her decision to help in a small way people who were less fortunate than she.
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