Our Best War Stories: Prize-winning Poetry & Prose from the Col. Darron L. Wright Memorial Awards – October 12, 2020
Every day for the past year, I walked past the same man sitting on a park bench in Farragut Square rattling the meager change inside a Big Gulp cup. His pitch altered with the seasons:
“’Help a man stay hy-drate-ed! Ain’t no summer like those in the District!”
“It’s cold again, folks! Freezing out here. Spare whatcha got before heading into those heated of-fi-ces!”
His bellowed appeals and resonant tenor echoed off both the historic, wrought iron and weathered stone buildings and the modern, glass and chrome edifices standing as sentinels around the Square. Most passers-by directed their eyes to some point far off in the distance. A few tossed dollar bills from their leather wallets before scurrying with their briefcases and totes into K Street offices. Even the statue of Admiral Farragut, the green, weathered bronze sculpture looming nearly thirty feet above the eponymous Square, seemed to divert his gaze at the squalor surrounding him.
Jillian Danback-McGhan | Writer 