Lyles Carr – Senior Vice President The McCormick Group – Leadership Greater Washington

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Lyles Carr on community service –

“I get much more credit than I’m due. To me, it’s the almost irrationally committed leaders and staff of the community service organizations in this Region and their supporters that really deserve the applause. They’re the ones that do the real work. We just try to support them.”

A Ockershausen: This is Andy Ockershausen and this is Our Town and we have the pleasure, a distinct personal pleasure to me to talk with a very dear friend who’s made a great impact on the city of Washington. A name most of you don’t know but you should is Lyles Carr is with The McCormick Group. Lyles, welcome to Our Town.
Lyles Carr: Andy, I’m pleased to be here although I figure you needed some comic relief at some point so that’s how you got me.

The Early Years

A Ockershausen: Until we talked, I had no idea you were a suburban guy. I always thought of you for whatever reason as Northern Virginia and DC. Then I started talking to you and found out you’re from Palmer Park.
Lyles Carr: Yeah, it’s interesting.
A Ockershausen: It’s incredible.
Lyles Carr: I was born over in Eastern Maryland and …
A Ockershausen: Waterfowl country.
Lyles Carr: Yep. My mother’s family is from down there and my mother’s still there and so I feel like Easton Maryland’s home but my father and our family moved into Palmer Park in 1957 when I was six or seven years old and at the time we were the first family into the second section of Palmer Park.
A Ockershausen: They expanded.
Lyles Carr: That was really the farthest outlying suburb. Well, there became five sections all together. This is pre Bowie and so I grew up in there. I used to take music lessons down on Minnesota Avenue and go to church in Seat Pleasant.
A Ockershausen: You don’t go there now do you?
Lyles Carr: Actually I do go there but it’s for different reasons.
A Ockershausen: It’s a different world.
Lyles Carr: My friend Butch Hopkins down there then ran Anacostia Economic Development Partnership and down and around Marshall Heights with some of the non profit work.
A Ockershausen: Those names are so familiar to me. I’ll give you my little story and then I’ll let you get yours. Charlie Brotman a very dear friend of mine started representing … He said, “I’ve got a kid out here that’s going to be so great in Palmer Park and he’s in the boys club and we’re prepping him for bigger things like the Olympics.” He said, “I’m not getting paid, I’m doing this,” this is a true story, “as a pro bono.” The kid’s name was Sugar Ray Leonard. He was Ray Leonard then. Then they added the Sugar Ray. I knew about Palmer Park and all those kids that grew up there. There’s some terrific athletes. Lyles, how did you get connected then? You went to high school? No, you didn’t go to high school back then.
Lyles Carr: No, I went to elementary school and junior high. In fact, Kent Junior High is now a police substation in Palmer Park and then I went away to Episcopal High School in Alexandria.
A Ockershausen: You crossed the river?
Lyles Carr: Yeah, I was third generation and had an option. You can go to the school or you can not got to school I think. Both my father and grandfather had gone so as a legacy they probably had to take me if I went.
A Ockershausen: Were you a boarder? Of course.
Lyles Carr: Boarder. They’re all boarders. At the time, it was 270 boys and since then, 1991 they brought in girls as well and I think it’s been terrific for the school.
A Ockershausen: We went through the same thing at St. Stephens and they joined with St. Agnes. Now it’s one school. That was a Till Hazel effort. Another Board of Trade guy that I got to meet through the Board. That got you started in a different world. It was a different world than where you grew up.
Lyles Carr: It was. It’s interesting, I was almost the wrong side of the tracks. As you’ll note, I’ve got a little bit different, mine is not a refined southern accent. We’re over on the Eastern Shore. We’re just off the coast of Mississippi I think. It’s a lot of Old English still on their islands are spoken there. I can lapse back into that accent. I hadn’t come up. I ended up being the first of my family since 1668 to graduate from college.
A Ockershausen: Then you graduated from …
Lyles Carr: I hadn’t come up for normal route to get to Episcopal and I was a little bit of an outsider.
A Ockershausen: I can believe that. Absolutely. The people from Maryland will go to Virginia, but the Virginia people don’t like to go into Maryland so I don’t ever understood that but we did go to Baltimore to see Orioles. Lyles, then you decided to go to University of Virginia which was not easy to get into. Smart wise. Lyles Carr: I had intended to go to Princeton. It was the only place I’d applied actually but along the way I got recruited to wrestle at Virginia. Mike Caruso who had been three time national champion at Lee High went down to revitalize the Virginia wrestling program and a fellow that had been in his captain at Lee High, Harley Ferguson had been a captain at Episcopal and used to come back on the weekends and scrimmage with me. Harley said, “There’s this kid up at this prep school in Virginia that you ought to look at,” and they got me down there on one of the football weekends I suppose and that sealed the deal.
A Ockershausen: That’s why you’re here Lyle. There’s so many things I’m learning about you and so many people going to learn it because they’re going to listen, believe me. We’re in radio now. We’re going to be podcasting but it’s radio to find out about your wrestling career. That’s just great.
Lyles Carr: Well, it was shortened. I did okay in my first year and then I’ve got a medical condition that knocked me out in my second year. That was that. We weren’t on scholarship at the time and I was putting myself through school so it was actually time to go to work.
A Ockershausen: Why you went UVA of course.
Lyles Carr: Oh yeah. Well, you’ve got to find a way to pay the bills and although I was fortunate because I ended up counted as an in state resident and UVA is the … It’s still is the best value you can find I think in high quality higher education.
A Ockershausen: Fabulous school. We had the pleasure of last week to spend a whole day over with our friends on the eastern shore in Trappe obviously you where Trappe is. He’s in the waterfowl world. Just had a delightful time. Love it over there and his name was Van Fossan, I don’t know whether you recognize that name. He owned the Beowulf in Washington. Used to be an old watering hole.
Lyles Carr: I don’t know him, I know the name. I certainly know Trappe. That’s where Jim Rawles is from of course.

Easton Waterfowl Festival, Trappe, MD

A Ockershausen: He’s into everything there with the waterfowl we go over there and visit Easton usually during the festival. We’ve been several times. Janice does shopping and we just hang out and wait for the fowl.
Lyles Carr: It’s a plug for that festival by the way. That’s the second weekend in November. It’s been probably 40 years maybe longer but it’s a terrific opportunity to see everything from carving to … It’s a hoot to go to the goose calling championship. It’s a nice weekend. Easton is the county seat of course. It’s fairly cosmopolitan.
A Ockershausen: How did this lead you to be involved with the McCormick Group? This background doesn’t sound like …
Lyles Carr: To be honest I had gone on an entrepreneurial route coming out of school with a group that I was doing part time work for and they were going to develop a Hilton onvention center and redevelop the old Monticello Hotel and they brought me on as controller to help with that and they had a number of privately held companies. An auto leasing company, a small residential development, multi family development operation and I got into from there and basically ran the hotel. We were converting this old hotel to what was the second ever condo conversion project in Virginia.
A Ockershausen: Is that right?
Lyles Carr: This is 1971, 1972 and we’re converting it from the top down so we could run the restaurant. I did that but the town just got too small and I didn’t know that it just made sense for me to take a different course. I ended up in the hospitality business in Richmond. Got some terrific training. Group that opened GD Graffiti’s up by Woodmont Country Club. The Grand Gangbusters for years and years and years I was one of the opening managers. Got some notoriety for that. Ended up going off to be a consultant to hospitality properties, mostly themed restaurants and nightclubs. My current wife who I love and we’ve been together 38 years had we not …
A Ockershausen: You must be doing something right.
Lyles Carr: I don’t know but she does put up with me. She’s a terrific woman and I think long suffering.
A Ockershausen: None of this led you to your … My first recollection of your connection in any way was the Board of Trade, the leadership of the first group. What year would that be? In ’87?

Leadership Greater Washington

Lyles Carr: Well, Board of Trade was first 1983.
A Ockershausen: I’m talking about your leadership.
Lyles Carr: The leadership class in 1987. I was in that initial class.
A Ockershausen: How big was it? Very small.
Lyles Carr: 42. I joke that they try for a class of 55 or so each year so what’s that tell you? There were only 42 in my class. I could’ve never gotten in if they weren’t scraping the bottom of the barrel.
A Ockershausen: We had to recruit for that first class because so many people didn’t know about it and had no idea how important it would become.
Lyles Carr: Well, we didn’t know what it was and it sounded like a gigantic commitment. It is interesting, Jeb Turner who ran Sigal Construction back then was … I met him in the class and I recall we got close. You get close with everybody in the class and I recall him the day we graduated and it was a graduation luncheon and we all came out and we happened to be parked next to each other. Jeb looked over the top of his car at me and said, “You know, from the front side looking forward I couldn’t imagine I could commit the time. Now from this end looking back I can’t imagine ever considering not.”
A Ockershausen: It’s an amazing statement because there’s so many people I tried to recruit and they were all very, very skeptical that they could give the time to it. We would tell them off the bat, “You’re not going to do this halfway. This is Leadership Washington. It’s too important. You come in to class, you’re committing to the whole nine yards. You can’t come in and take days off.”
Lyles Carr: It’s important for them but it’s important for the Region. For those that don’t know what Leadership is, now Leadership Greater Washington to reflect that it encompasses the region …
A Ockershausen: Our Town.
Lyles Carr: That’s right. Our town is not just the core town, it is the entire Region.
A Ockershausen: You got it. It’s Palmer Park, it’s Alexandria, it’s Vienna
Lyles Carr: It’s Tyson’s Corner, it’s everywhere. The idea to take people who are in policy making positions, cross sector, blended ethnicity, blended geography and people that need to know each other to move the Region forward. Who probably don’t know each other. Under the guise of teaching them something about the issues and resources of the Region, really you’re raising their consciousness and most importantly you’re connecting them. It’s how I know Wayne Curry or I knew Wayne Curry. Wayne was in our initial class. This is way before people knew who Wayne Curry really was although he was active out there and it’s interesting …
A Ockershausen: That’s how I got to know Wayne was through Leadership, the first group.
Lyles Carr: Well that’s exactly right and so if I needed to know more about Prince George’s County even though I was there I could call Wayne or in subsequent classes I could call Howard Stone or Artis Hampshire-Cowan, or Major Riddick or any number of people. It’s interesting, people look at this what turns out to be a very modest investment of their time in that initial year but the tremendous return they get is just incalculable. It really is enormous. On behalf of the community I liken it to a modest down payment that they’ll then continue to pay off as a mortgage to the community or mortgage from civic engagement over the course of the out years. The organization of course Doug Duncan now is the CEO. It’s got 1,500 members. We converted it early on from what was seen as a one year experience into that one year experience really got you to become part of the membership. It’s a very connected membership.
A Ockershausen: Lyles, I know the history and I know what you brought to the table and all the names you mentioned. I got to know a lot of them through the Leadership even though I wasn’t a member, I wasn’t around the peripherall. We’re going to take a break here. This is Our Town. As Lyle just said, it’s Our Town as much bigger than the city of Washington and delighted to have Lyles Carr from McCormick Group with us and we’ll be right back.
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Speaker 1: You’re listening to Our Town with Andy Ockershausen. Brought to you by Best Bark Communications.
A Ockershausen: We’re having a delightful conversation that I’ve learned so much about Lyles Carr that I didn’t know and most of you didn’t know and it’s all been positive. Then I wanted to start talking to him about the McCormick Group which is where he is now and what he does for the McCormick Group and how well that affects this community.
Lyles Carr: Well, I’m very fortunate. As you know, we’re an executive search consulting firm.

Lyles Carr at The McCormick Group

A Ockershausen: Oh, a headhunter.
Lyles Carr: That’s exactly right. Arguably we’re the largest independent firm that’s based here although we work nationally and do some international work.
A Ockershausen: Great reputation.
Lyles Carr: Thank you. It’s interesting we’re integrated into the town. We tend to focus on professions or industries that are prevalent here. We watch the real estate community. We do a lot of work on the non profit world. We do a lot of work with government affairs and government contractors and law. We tend to follow the trends in this Region. We got heavily into bio technology for instance in the mid 90s just as we saw the emergence of that.
A Ockershausen: Dot com.
Lyles Carr: Well and dotcom in northern Virginia. Sure, heavily into things like cyber security and the sophisticated technologies. We’re a little unusual in that we work a vertical. It goes from middle management on up through the CEO. We think it’s as important to find the strategic hire that enables the C suite as it is to find the person in the C suite. That’s pretty much us. It’s an organization that believes that there’s more to business than the financial bottom line. My partners have been very good about both encouraging me to stay involved in the community and encouraging our consultants to stay involved in the community.
We as much as we can try to empower and enable the non profits with either as much as we can pro bono referrals or offering preferred rates even though it’s a significant practice and the senior consultants that are in it are themselves very committed and I’ll give them a plug. I think they’re best there are. That and volunteerism. We give people six paid days of leave to volunteer. I just think it’s important to get out there.
A Ockershausen: Lyles, your reputation precedes you by a long shot as far as I’m concerned. What you have done I think is unparalleled in your generation that to get involved in this community and be such an important part. All the things you do for so called charity work is not really charity, it’s helpful. I think it’s unparalleled. I know that because I live with it. We try to run our life like this at WMAL. We did it for years and did it very successfully and then things change. The new generation is taking over. You’re in a new generation of people that I grew up with in the Board of Trade and out of the Board of Trade. I’m so pleased that I want you to talk about it because you do so much and I don’t want to call it charity work but you give so much.
Lyles Carr: Well, frankly I get too much credit.
A Ockershausen: Take it.
Lyles Carr: No, really. I get much more credit than I’m due. To me, it’s the almost irrationally committed leaders and staff of the community service organizations in this Region and their supporters that really deserve the applause. They’re the ones that do the real work. We just try to support them.
A Ockershausen: Lyles, we have eyeballs. I see you at so many events and so many events and you could say maybe I do the same thing but I’m there as an observer on a lot of occasions and what we see, the collective we, is Lyles Carr involved in this community probably up to your neck.
Lyles Carr: Well, that’s just because I’m not worth a darn at work so they’re better off if I’m outside the building than in.
A Ockershausen: McCormick supports that.
Lyles Carr: Well, the company does and it has come back to … It’s provided us a return although that wasn’t the intention. Betty Whaley, once said service to others is the price we pay for the rent we pay for the space we take up on the earth. We’ve taken that to heart. We do think that business is just more than the financial bottom line. While we’ve had our marketing methodology, we’ve got a cold calling methodology that’s made us successful over the years, it hasn’t really played on making connections in the community. In the process of making those connections, now as our industry has changed from being transactions driven, somewhere in the 90s it went from being deal driven and I think we saw this with most professions and it became relationship focused. People want to know that you are out there with them …
A Ockershausen: Boy, you are right on.
Lyles Carr: In the community foxhole with them. We joke about seeing 800 of our nearest and dearest yet again at the next fundraiser or dinner or gala or something but it’s because they’re all involved and you want to know that they are involved and you want to do business with people who you see as partners of yours corporately but also partners in civic engagement. For us, we think that’s important and I’ve just been the fortunate one again because I’m not worth a darn in the office to be shoved out of the office, to be more involved in organizations like the Board of Trade or Leadership Greater Washington or Greater DC Cares or …
A Ockershausen: Everything else you do.
Lyles Carr: Various other non profit organizations.
A Ockershausen: That’s why I say, you’re in a generation level below mine and there’s another generation level below you that’s going to come along I hope. Brendan Martin has been with us today understands that it’s going to be his opportunity in the future is to take up some of these things and do it. Give back to the community and you’ll get rewarded.
Lyles Carr: They do although gosh I hate to say it’s a whole generation but Alex Orfinger. You look at people like Alex Orfinger who is now the executive vice president for American Business Journals but was the long time publisher of the business journal here and the amount of work that he did in pulling the corporate community together around civic engagement and that’s being continued by his successor and by the rest of the staff there. James McGregor and the rest of the staff there …
A Ockershausen: Yeah, Janice’s done a lot of work with them.
Lyles Carr: At the Business Journal but you see people like him, people like Craig Strent, like Josh Carin, just a whole number of people out there that have rolled up their sleeves and said, “We’re going to be involved. It’s important to the …” Tom Raffa, I think has created a bunch of these kinds of things. You could run off just a list of names and I’m …
A Ockershausen: Lyles, you can name Catherine Meloy. That’s my find. I hired Catherine and she came to WMAL so many years ago. She probably wouldn’t want to talk about it but well over 35 years ago and her generation has achieved success but there’s going to be another group under Catherine that’s coming along.
Lyles Carr: I’m pleased to say by the way we placed Catherine at Goodwill thank you.
A Ockershausen: Oh did you? Oh my. You connected. You’re a connector.
Lyles Carr: You’ve got her there and we recognize that talent.
A Ockershausen: I told her and she will tell you that when she first came here I said, “Here’s what you do. Get in the member of the Board of Trade. You don’t have to be on the Board just show up at everything. Don’t have to stay all the time but show up and do your cameos and meet some people and viola.” I’m sure that emboldened her life. She’ll tell you that. The Board of Trade and meeting people. She worked with us on Leadership, she wasn’t one of the founders but she followed us to help the Leadership Group.
Lyles Carr: I’m still on her about going through it herself by the way so Catherine if you’re listening, this is the year. It’s interesting, the thing that got me involved in Leadership Greater Washington was the feeling that I was floating on the surface of things. I’d gotten involved in the Board of Trade in 1983. A friend of mine who was on the membership committee at the time I think he needed a scalp and there I was. I felt that we ought to get involved and so did and they lured me on to the membership committee and I didn’t realize that back then whoever happened to sell the most memberships in that year was automatically the chair the next year. Natural salesman so there I was and …
A Ockershausen: I started as a bird dog. I can relate to that.
Lyles Carr: We did well enough that Till Hazel said, “You’re going to do this again the next year.” Turned it into a sales organization and from there I started to meet people. The Board of Trade is really the central place to be, certainly was then and I think still is now if you’re going to be involved in business in this Region, you need to be involved in the Board of Trade even though you’re involved in many other things whether it’s the NBTC, or the Maryland Tech Council or the DCBAA or the local chamber. That gave me an opportunity to connect to people. I ended up serving on this committee and that committee and but I felt like I wasn’t making a sufficient difference. Leadership Washington came along and I said this looked like an opportunity to get more deeply involved, to really understand what the community is.
I then looked at the application, filled it out and then didn’t turn it in because I said, “There’s just no way on earth that the’re going to pick me.” I honestly don’t handle embarrassment very well and so I …
A Ockershausen: Little did you know we couldn’t fill the class.
Lyles Carr: That’s exactly right. Bob Gray called me the afternoon before the deadline and said, “Where’s your application?” Bob, I’m just embarrassed to send this thing in. Low and behold I got selected. It was an intent to how do you get more understanding of the Region, better connected, more deeply …
A Ockershausen: You were a trailblazer with that first group.
Lyles Carr: Well, not me so much. I tagged along with the rest of that group. Like I say, people like Myra Gossens, Ann Stock, Paul Rothenberg, Art Shultz who … 14th Street and McPherson Square is what it is today because of Art Shultz. Pedro Alfonzo and Butch Hopkins and just …
A Ockershausen: Ed Norton?
Lyles Carr: Ed Norton, lots of people who were in there. Wayne Curry that were in that class.
A Ockershausen: I want to finish all your work outside of the Board of Trade and we’re going to take another break here and this is Andy Ockershausen. This is Our Town and we’re talking to Lyles Carr, a big member of this community.
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Speaker 1: You’re listening to Our Town with Andy Ockershausen.
A Ockershausen: I was about to ask Lyles in addition to his work in the non profit world, the eleemosynary, whatever that is, is …
Lyles Carr: Eleemosynary, thank you.

Poker

A Ockershausen: He also spends a lot of time in the poker world as one of his reliefs from the tedium of giving so much he spends in the poker game tries to take. He’s a world class poker player. He’s a tournament player. I think that’s wonderful. I really do.
Lyles Carr: I don’t know that world class is the appropriate …
A Ockershausen: You go to Las Vegas, to me that’s world class.
Lyles Carr: Well, anybody that will pay their way into the tournament, they’ll let you in. I do have fun playing and I play with a couple of groups. One that you know quite well that’s been around gosh, probably 30 years.
A Ockershausen: 25 I think.
Lyles Carr: They get together for dinner weekly and at some point a poker game breaks out. Interestingly David Abramson got me into that game.
A Ockershausen: There were two Abramson’s right? One was a doctor.
Lyles Carr: No, I only know David who was the advertising executive. They’re a terrific groups of guys.
A Ockershausen: The amazing thing to me, they do it every week. How do they get out once a week?
Lyles Carr: Well, there’s a good question. They manage to do it. It’s a fun group. There are a couple of others that I play with that …
A Ockershausen: I think it’s great that you do that Lyles. There’s a lot more to you and a lot more to your working with the charities and other groups that is anything really active now going on in the city that we would talk about that … I’m not as aware as I used to be because they bumped me off the board. They aged me out of the board.

Future of Regional Leadership | Thinking Regionally

Lyles Carr: It’s not just the city but the Region has to come together. We need to be part of our region. You’ve seen some of this written in the business journal probably six, seven months ago. Bob Buchanan’s now working this with the 20 30 group, you see that Ted Leonsis and Russ Ramsey are pulling together a group to do this. That itself though it seems to be a fragmented effort. What used to be the center city and the group in the 70s that would pull things together and try to get something going, as the centripetal force of the suburbs, pulled the city out. With the beltway bandits and then beyond and people that didn’t feel like they were really affixed to the region. There’s no patriarchal approach. I have a client, Eastman Chemical down in Johnson City, Tennessee and they are the town and as goes the town goes …
A Ockershausen: A company town.
Lyles Carr: The company. They’re very serious about their responsibility to that town. We don’t have Eastman Chemical here and so one of the things that Alex Orffinger did years ago with the business philanthropy summit was to try to pull business leaders together to understand the need to convene to push the region forward. We need that. We tend to think parochially. It’s tough because of the way that the governments are set up and the jurisdictions, it tends to be fragmented. Sadly, I think sometimes Virginia thinks that the Potamic River’s a moat. People don’t tend to cross as much. There’s great opportunity out in Prince George’s County. Why don’t we take advantage of it?
To think truly regionally and how do we come together to do that and frankly how do we bring in organizations. The Economic clubs are going to do part of this but how do we bring in organizations that frankly are here only because the federal government’s here. Yet they’re gigantic employers. The government contractors, the law firms, the other organizations that revolve … Yet we’ve got a gigantic commercial community that sometimes gets eclipsed that perhaps isn’t as connected particularly to technology community. How do we? I think that’s the key thing of our Region today.
A Ockershausen: I’ve been listening to that conversation Lyles for 50 years is how do we bring it and never give up and I encourage it every chance I get that it should be and that’s why we have Our Town because we want everybody to know of they’re not downtown they’re still part of us. Our Town is a big geographical area and I want them to feel like they’re part of it and we do our little bit to do it but what you’re doing is monumental because you’re right there. The government is made up of so many divisions but in Our Town is there’s a diplomatic core, there’s a military that live here, there’s the business people that live here and all of them are involved in one way or another in the city but then we thought Metro would bring it together, that it would settle that but it didn’t because people use Metro to get in and out. They don’t use Metro to stay here.
Lyles Carr: But it is something that does help to bind it somewhat. We need a civic infrastructure. It’s just crucial to have the quality of life we want in the community, right? We need to for instance stop poaching companies from each jurisdiction. Somebody needs to stand up and say, “We won’t poach.” How do we band together to pull additional organizations and people here? My little piece of it’s just a little tiny piece.
A Ockershausen: Yeah, but every little piece works, Lyles.
Lyles Carr: Yeah, but how do you empower people to launch and sustain projects that benefit the community? How do you do that and sometimes people who can help to make some of the connections … Again, I applaud people who are the initiators, the Bob Buchanans, he and Cary Hatch for instance and others are working on a branding. How do you rebrand Washington? It’s not just a government town, it’s Our town and Our town is not the federal government.
A Ockershausen: Exactly that. It’s not.
Lyles Carr: Although the federal government is a rich part of it and you simply don’t want to deny it. It’s not an us or a them. It’s all of us together. It’s funny, Shirley Chisholm once talked about the American melting pot. That’s really a misnomer. It’s much more like a tossed salad where you see all the various ingredients but they come together and blend so well in that salad. All those different ingredients, the diplomatic community, the federal government, the technology group, the various …
A Ockershausen: Industrial complex.
Lyles Carr: Well, and the various cultures that are in this rich region that how do we pull them all together.
A Ockershausen: It’s an ongoing process.
Lyles Carr: It is an ongoing process but I think it is become more crucial and more important today because otherwise we continue to start to pull apart.
A Ockershausen: I live with it and you live with it but what you do is incredibly important and all these groups that you work with and I encourage you to continue to do it. Don’t get frustrated if it doesn’t happen. Keep at it because it’s going to eventually have to happen sometime down the road this thing’s going to come together. I don’t know when and neither do you but I know you’ll continue to work at it.
Lyles Carr: Well, you’re nice to say. I think I’m just a little fish with a big mouth but I appreciate the opportunity to shoot it off.
A Ockershausen: Wait a minute Lyles, I felt the same way when I used to do editorials, a little voice but people loved it. The politicians loved it. It was loved so much that they threatened to take away our parking at Capitol Hill. Do an editorial about we called it Congressional Airport. It was there for the convenience of Congress. They shouldn’t have an airport there. It’s right in the middle of the thing. That’s a big asset to our city, Lyles. You are a big asset to our city.
Lyles Carr: Thank you very much and thank you for having me on the show.
Announcer: You’ve been listening to Our Town Season One with your host Andy Ockershausen. New Our Town podcast episodes are released each Tuesday and Thursday. We welcome your comments and suggestions on how you like the show or who you’d like to hear from next. Catch us on Facebook at Our Town DC or visit our website at ourtowndc.com. Our special thanks to WMAL radio in Washington DC for hosting our podcasts.