Alexandria was literally in
flames when Mel and Donna Bergheim stepped onto the
public stage in 1970. A series of race riots were
sweeping through the city that spring, and violence
became so commonplace that the front page of the June 5
Alexandria Gazette reported "No Firebombing Last
Night." Meanwhile, the Bergheims were part of a
progressive new generation of city leaders who hoped to
advance the cause of civil rights and edge out the old
conservative Byrd machine leaders who had dominated city
politics for generations.
In the midst of the
race riots, Mel Bergheim won election to the City
Council and launched a career of civic life promoting
civil rights and neighborhood protection. Donna Bergheim
made a name for herself promoting the arts and played a
critical role in the development of MetroStage. As a
team, the Bergheims have become part of the political
gauntlet that potential candidates must navigate through
in order to gain office in Alexandria.
"I’ve
never been grilled like I was by the Bergheims,"
admitted Sheriff Dana Lawhorne, recalling his visit to
their living room during his 2005 campaign. "They really
made me work to get their
endorsement."
Individually, Mel and Donna
Bergheim have each achieved a series of accomplishments
far too numerous to list here. Yet as a team their union
is a force stronger than the sum of its parts. Together,
they are known in Alexandria as royalty of sorts — a
distinction informed by a lifetime of service to the
community and commitment to their ideals. Their
reputation has been carefully crafted over the decades
as a force for change when needed and preservation when
required.
"Mel and Donna Bergheim were at the
forefront of the movement to make Alexandria what it is
today," said former School Board Chairman Ferdinand Day,
one of the city’s premiere civil rights leaders. "They
formed a team that was instrumental in breaking the grip
that the Byrd machine had here in
Alexandria."
THEY MET IN 1957 at a
cocktail party in Northwest Washington. He was a former
journalist from Massachusetts who had recently taken a
position as project director for a nonprofit
organization known as the Governmental Affairs
Institute. She was an academic from Arizona with a
doctorate in English who became one of the first three
women selected to train for the Foreign Service
Information Corps. They had a mutual friend in common,
the editor of a newspaper in Rangoon.
"I kept
waiting for him to ask me out," she said, recalling the
cocktail party where they first met. "But he
didn’t."
A few months later, she saw him again at
the Voice of America building, where she was special
assistant for congressional relations. He was escorting
an Indian journalist to the building, and the two struck
up a friendship. She waited 45 minutes in the lobby to
make sure he saw her on the way out of the building. It
worked; he asked her out. They began a two-year
courtship, marrying each other in Mexico City in 1959.
The next year they moved to the Dowden Terrace
neighborhood in Alexandria.
She joined the garden
club. He became president of the civic association and
eventually founded the Alexandria Federation of Civic
Associations in 1964. She took charge of raising four
children as he increasingly became active in the city’s
political circles, launching an unsuccessful campaign
for City Council in 1967. When Donna became pregnant
with their fourth child, the Bergheims realized they
needed more space than their Downden Terrace home would
allow. So they moved to Maury Lane in Seminary Hill —
right next door to Mayor Charles Beatley.
"Everybody thought I was pulling a Nixon
by moving next door to the mayor to advance my political
career," he said. "Even the mayor thought
that."
BY 1970, BERGHEIM was ready to
launch a second attempt for City Council. But a May 29
shooting at the 7-Eleven in Arlandria initiated a solid
week of firebombings and riots. Mel Bergheim responded
to the events by updating the newspaper advertisement
that appeared in the pages of the Alexandria Gazette.
Days after the violence began, Bergheim had a new ad
that proclaimed he was "an expert on the prevention and
control of civil disorders."
He won the election
and began a six-year stint on the City Council, where he
quickly made a name for himself as a champion of
protecting existing neighborhoods against developers and
encouraging integration of official city functions such
as the annual George Washington parade. He fought
against air pollution; worked to provide health care for
the poor; initiated soil management controls and
established an adolescent health clinic that continues
to this day. He worked for noise abatement and the
acquisition of Dora Kelly Nature Park. When Wiley
Mitchell was elected to the Virginia Senate, he was
voted vice mayor.
By 1976, Bergheim was ready to
run for mayor. Beatley announced his retirement from
public life, and Bergheim seized the Democratic
nomination. There was only one man standing in the way:
Housing and Urban Development lawyer Melvin Miller, who
was running an independent campaign. Because Miller was
an African-American candidate, those who supported civil
rights split their votes between the two, allowing
former Mayor Frank Mann to return to City Hall as an
independent.
"Melvin Miller’s candidacy certainly
split a good bit of black support," said Marian Van
Landingham, who was then the founding director of the
Torpedo Factory art center. "I think Mel Bergheim would
have been an enlightened mayor, certainly a better mayor
than Frank Mann."
THE LOSS WAS a mixed
blessing, allowing Mel Bergheim to spend more time with
daughters who had taken to calling their father "that
man." After returning to private life, the Bergheim
partnership flourished into its modern incarnation at
the head of the city’s civic life as emeritus leaders
with established credentials and long memories. He
became a columnist for the Alexandria Gazette
Packet and she took a position on the Virginia
Commission for the Arts. When the MetroStage was looking
for a new home, the Bergheims used their 40th
anniversary party to solicit donations for a new home.
After an old lumber warehouse was transformed into a
playhouse in 2001, MetroStage named the theater after
Donna Bergheim.
"We are honored to have her name
above the door," said Carolyn Griffin, artistic director
at MetroStage. "Both of the Bergheims have been very
good friends of the arts — and of the
city."
Their teamwork over the years has achieved
a wide range of accomplishments, everything from
establishing non-smoking areas in city restaurants to
preventing the Old Town Theatre from becoming a
restaurant. When asked for their secret of their
long-term romance and partnership, each deflected
attention toward their spouse as if to underscore the
yin-yang nature of their relationship.
"I
couldn’t have done what I’ve done without Donna," he
said.
"It’s very simple," she said.
"I’m in love
with him."