09-25-2022 Capital Style - Flipbook - Page 36
The kitchen in the century-plus home at 45 Rodgers Road.
these colors work just fine.”
Room for everyone
The six-bedroom house at 48 Rodgers Road
appeared to beckon Jana and David Vavasseur and
their brood when they arrived nearly five years ago.
Fill me up, it seemed to say. The family of seven
obliged.
“Even with five children, we had plenty of elbow
room,” David Vavasseur said. The couple, both Navy
grads, had earned the right to live there. He was a
Marine veteran and a stay-at-home dad; she, the
Academy’s Honor Education and Remediation officer and a former surface warfare commander. Their
arrival brought the pitter-patter of little feet to the
same hardwood floors where, for more than 100
years, military might has trod. Not that the home’s
five-star past cowed the kids.
“They loved throwing rubber balls from the top
of the staircase and watching them bounce,” their
father said. “Or attaching parachutes to their toys
and floating them down.”
On the first floor, the cathedral ceilings offered
another chance to play.
“They threw ‘sticky toys’ in the air to see which
ones would stay up there. Those that stuck, we
couldn’t get down,” David Vavasseur said. “Some toys
stayed on the ceiling for months.”
The walls bore lots of art — not portraits from
America’s naval past, but the proud scribbles and
scrawls of children’s’ hands. And at Christmas, when
the family went to get a tree, the size of the pine was
irrelevant.
“One year, we had a 12-footer,” he said. “Never had
to trim the top.”
When his wife retired in May, the Vavasseurs
moved to a smaller home on Turkey Point Island in
Edgewater. But they miss the old place.
“We adored it,” he said, right down to “the 19th
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| CAPITAL STYLE | Fall 2022
century craftsmanship of all the nuances of the house
that can’t be duplicated today. It was solid and sturdy;
you felt safe there.”
And if those walls could talk?
“They’d say that all Navy families are the same,”
he said. “They live here, love here and serve their
country here. After 100 years, it’s more of the same.”
The spiral staircase
at 45 Rodgers Road
reaches three
levels, with family
images adorning the
walls.