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Marianne Haney Brennan on the importance of manners today ~
“We need to get back to being kind to each other. . .we’re in a sad state of affairs right now and it breaks my heart. And that’s why I teach etiquette from A to Z. I don’t care. You know what? Time goes on but manners don’t change. Manners are manners. Whether they were the 1800s or they’re the 2019.”
Andy Ockershausen: This is Andy Ockershausen. This is Our Town speaking and I wanted to explain to her, this is not an interview. We are having a conversation. Marianne Brennan, welcome to Our Town.
Marianne Haney Brennan: Andy I am so just excited to be here and honored. I can’t tell you anything else other than that.
Andy Ockershausen: Well I’m afraid to say Haney because nobody will know what that mean.
Marianne Haney Brennan: Oh no, I love it call me Haney.
Andy Ockershausen: But you know, Marianne Haney. Marianne is local, a local girl. As a matter of fact, she’s fifth generation Washingtonian and her daughter is now six generation. I’m only third and I feel like a newcomer. Haney, it’s amazing to see you and you look great.
Marianne Haney Brennan is Fifth Generation Washingtonian
Marianne Haney Brennan: Oh my gosh.
Andy Ockershausen: And I’ve have known you for so long and follow your many different careers. But this one now is made for you, etiquette.
Marianne Haney Brennan: Etiquette. It is.
Andy Ockershausen: And you have a class in Georgetown. Where do you teach?
Etiquette Coach | Custom Classes for Schools and Corporations
Marianne Haney Brennan: No, actually I go all over. I custom make my classes. I’ll do anything that parents want me to do. I’ve actually in the last six months been called in to places like Merrill Lynch and Smith Barney to talk to the young guys.
Andy Ockershausen: To the guys.
Marianne Haney Brennan: About proper dressing, shined shoes, all that good stuff that has seemed to be lost in the shuffle.
Andy Ockershausen: I don’t think so Marianne. Because guys need help too.
Marianne Haney Brennan: Oh totally.
Andy Ockershausen: As you well know, this etiquette is not just important to the young ladies, but I found it’s true that most men are very rude and they need etiquette. And these companies you mentioned are big, big companies.
Marianne Haney Brennan: Big companies, yeah.
Andy Ockershausen: So you don’t travel to school, you travel you.
Epidemic of Undisciplined Children
Marianne Haney Brennan: Well because I’m sort of connected in the Catholic school system, being a Catholic graduate, I know a lot of people in that realm. I was trying to get into some of the public schools, but it’s a little tougher to get in there. There’s so many rules and regulations and they all need it. Listen, we have an epidemic, epidemic of undisciplined children. And I don’t want to sound negative or anything but-
Andy Ockershausen: No it’s not negative. It’s important.
Marianne Haney Brennan: I was sitting and having some yogurt around the corner here before I came over, and I’m watching people who are sitting with each other having lunch and they’ve got headphones on and they’re not even in conversation.
Andy Ockershausen: You’re preaching to the choir with me. They don’t pay attention.
Marianne Haney Brennan: Not at all. No. And part of the problem is we’re all moving too fast. We’re moving too fast. We’ve got too many electronic things going on. Nobody wants to take time out to say hello or smile or be considerate.
Andy Ockershausen: You know, I’ll tell you my story in a minute, but we were just talking to Tom Davis who has been a congressman and did a great job for northern Virginia, talking to the fact that social media is really, the culprit has changed our world, forever.
Marianne Haney Brennan: Absolutely. Absolutely.
Andy Ockershausen: I don’t think we’ll ever go back.
Marianne Haney Brennan: Absolutely. I totally agree with you.
Andy Ockershausen: All the wonderful things that we did growing up, are gone now. People don’t do it. They sit there with their sets and ignore everybody else.
Marianne Haney Brennan: Absolutely, absolutely.
Andy Ockershausen: I don’t know what we’re going to do, but you’re trying to change that.
Marianne Haney Brennan: I am. I am. Even if they learn one thing out of my class, I’m happy.
Andy Ockershausen: Well, how did you evolve into that? Because I’ve known you when … It’s hard to believe this gorgeous female was a cop. A street cop, Ken. That means walking the streets of Washington DC.
Ken Hunter: I’m assuming the position.
Marianne Haney Brennan: Yes indeed. Scout 14. 10 to 14 G to K. That was the beat.
Andy Ockershausen: What led you into … I mean your family I know forever your mom had a restaurant under the viaduct I remember that. And your uncle Sully I knew well. And Uncle Ray was a very dear friend from Western High School. He didn’t go to Catholic school. He went to Western.
Family | Uncle Ray Krouse Former Washington Pro Football Player
Marianne Haney Brennan: He went to Western he was an all star football player there.
Andy Ockershausen: University of Maryland.
Marianne Haney Brennan: University of Maryland. I hear he’s in the hall of fame out there. I should go see it.
Andy Ockershausen: New York Giants he played.
Marianne Haney Brennan: New York Giants, Pittsburgh Steelers. Who else? Come on.
Andy Ockershausen: Redskins.
Marianne Haney Brennan: Oh no wait, that’s the end. Because he played for like five teams. Philadelphia Eagles, Philadelphia Eagles.
Andy Ockershausen: In his day he was huge.
Marianne Haney Brennan: He was huge. And-
Andy Ockershausen: He’s small guy now.
Marianne Haney Brennan: His wife told him with four girls that if he didn’t come home, she was going to divorce him. So he came to play for the Redskins, and that’s how they came home. That’s the story I heard.
Andy Ockershausen: Our Town. But he didn’t go to Catholic school as you did.
Marianne Haney Brennan: No Catholic school.
Andy Ockershausen: A good Jesuit school made it easy for you to become a cop, correct?
On Becoming a Member of the Metropolitan Police Department of Washington DC
Marianne Haney Brennan: No, I tell you what happened. I had these secretarial jobs, which I absolutely hated. And there was an ex-policeman who was now the head of security at the Mayflower Hotel, Pat De Ambrosia. Do you remember Pat?
Andy Ockershausen: I remember the name De Ambrosia, absolutely.
Marianne Haney Brennan: And he came in one day when I was like having steam come out of my ears. He said, Marianne why don’t you just go take the police test? And I’m like, oh, Pat, Pat, please. In my little high heels.
Andy Ockershausen: And he worked at the Mayflower.
Marianne Haney Brennan: Yeah. Anyhow, he came in one day, he says, you’ve got two weeks and they’re closing the test. He said, you better go take it now. And that’s what I did. I ended up going down. I was one of the first women to go out on the street.
Andy Ockershausen: You passed the test of course.
Marianne Haney Brennan Totally. Yeah.
Andy Ockershausen: And they sent you to what? Cadet training.
Marianne Haney Brennan: So a couple of friends tried to get me in 2D and that was totally out of the question. I had a choice of seven, three or one.
Andy Ockershausen: These are precincts right?
Marianne Haney Brennan: Districts. No. Districts right. And I was advised to go to one because that’s where all of the big brass came out of, and it would be more educational down there. But I ended up working in some of the, you know.
Andy Ockershausen: You did it.
Marianne Haney Brennan: Yeah I did it.
Andy Ockershausen: One was supposedly the hoi palloi. But it really wasn’t, they were still cops. Right?
Marianne Haney Brennan: Oh my gosh. Yeah. And I was a foot cop. And back then my idea of being a good cop was going in and checking on every business, checking to see if they were having any problems. You knew everybody on your beat and that’s the way it was. And I used to get called up to my lieutenant’s office all the time because I wasn’t writing enough tickets. And because you had a quota that you were supposed to write. And that was not my idea of being a good police woman, my idea was being out there to help people.
Andy Ockershausen: A good citizen.
On Experiencing Changes to Our Town While Working the Beat as a Police Officer
Marianne Haney Brennan: A good citizen. And that’s exactly why I became a cop, is I wanted to help people. And when they put that … You guys probably know this better than I do, but when they built that first convention center that’s now gone, I think they put like 900 little businesses out, gone, forever gone. Central Lock. I know they had to move way up on like 9th. It dispersed everybody and it was a tragedy.
Andy Ockershausen: Well that’s what happens with progress. It changes everything. And that’s what happened to our downtown with the convention center. Now the next convention center was even bigger. Put even more people out of business. And I remember living through that. In fact, we went to the, Janice remembers, we went to the dedication of the convention center. Must’ve been like in 1982, it was long time ago.
Janice Iacona Ockershausen: Well Mayor Barry was the host.
Andy Ockershausen: Who was?
Janice Iacona Ockershausen: Mayor Barry.
Andy Ockershausen: He was? Mayor Barry. He was one word, he was Mayor Barry to us Washingtonians. He was a pal of ours and of WMAL. But Marianne, so you’re a native, you know what it is to grow up here.
Marianne Haney Brennan: I do.
Andy Ockershausen: And then you left the police force and that you would have had a great opportunity to go up because women were-
Marianne Haney Brennan | Biggest Regret
Marianne Haney Brennan: There’s no question about that. I should have … My biggest regret was that I didn’t take the detectives test and stay because I love all that stuff. I used to, when I be transporting prisoners down at 300 Indiana, I’d go upstairs to homicide and look through all their portfolios. I just loved it all. I still, that’s all I watch on TV is murder mysteries 40 years later. Right? I just love it all. And it was just such an education Andy for me.
Andy Ockershausen: To be on the street?
Marianne Haney Brennan: For all of it, for all of it. I remember it was from a very wealthy family here in town and the mother got ahold of me and she says, I want you to talk to my son. He wants to become a DC policeman. And I said, I can’t do that. And she said, why? I said, I think he should take one year out of his life and do it. I think he should see how other people live, conditions that people live in, so you can be compassionate for these people instead of always trying to beat them down. And that was the last time I was invited to dinner over there.
Andy Ockershausen: Well Marianne, being a local girl growing up in Georgetown, I’m local from Northeast Washington. Eastern High School, Lincoln Park. But Georgetown always had its number of people not in the top level of financially. Georgetown always had poor people.
Georgetown | Past and Present Personal Observations
Marianne Haney Brennan: Absolutely.
Andy Ockershausen: You couldn’t remember that. But I remember it now. Ain’t nobody poorer than poor in Georgetown.
Marianne Haney Brennan: Oh no. You know what changed Georgetown? I’ll tell you what changed Georgetown.
Andy Ockershausen: Not Metro.
Marianne Haney Brennan: No, obviously not.
Andy Ockershausen: They shot themselves in the foot on that one.
Marianne Haney Brennan: They totally shot themselves on the foot on that one. JFK. So when I was growing up as a little girl, I was at 3307 O, he was at 3307 N.
Andy Ockershausen: The next block.
Marianne Haney Brennan: N as in Nora. When he came into Georgetown that it was like a shift of ground. Then sort of all the rich, the sort of, you know hoity toity. I mean, look, don’t get me wrong, there’s always been money in Georgetown, but it was very unassuming. They drove little Chevy’s, they didn’t have Mercedes-Benz parked outside the house. If you drive into Georgetown to this day at like 5:00 in the morning, it’s somewhat still like that. You know, the rich, the real rich don’t do that.
Andy Ockershausen: Tell me about it. They don’t drive their own cars, of course not.
Marianne Haney Brennan: So anyhow, that was really what shifted Georgetown. But it was just such an incredible place to grow up in. It was just-
Andy Ockershausen: Oh absolutely.
Marianne Haney Brennan: And if you were one of the best stores you were on Wisconsin Avenue, if you were one of the bumped down stores, you were on O or P or any of the side streets. And now you go down there and half the stores are empty and it’s really sad.
Andy Ockershausen: It’s fabulous. Well the old Georgetown was great, it was a colonial city actually way back, way before your time Marianne. But it’s great to hear your stories about Georgetown. We’re going to take a break and come back and find out where Marianne Haney Brennan, how does she get in her other business? The etiquette business.
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Announcer: You’re listening to Our Town with Andy Ockershausen brought to you by Best Bark Communications.
Andy Ockershausen: This is Andy Ockershausen. This is Our Town and a conversation with a very dear friend, Marianne Haney Brennan about her previous career and the things she’s done as a growing up young girl in Georgetown, our Georgetown DC. What she did at being a police woman, one of the first in our city. I wish she’d of stayed with it, but she didn’t. She got into professional life and started her own business of teaching etiquette, which has been 35 years Marianne, I can’t believe that.
On the Impetus for Teaching Etiquette
Marianne Haney Brennan: Yeah, a little bit over maybe. So how it all started was halfway through being a police woman, I decided to lose like 70 pounds and start modeling.
Andy Ockershausen: 70 pounds?
Marianne Haney Brennan: And so one of my big, one of the department stores that I really did a lot of work for was Garfinckel’s at 14th. I know you guys remember that, 14th and F. And so I would work on Tuesdays and Wednesdays my day off, and I would literally make more money in those two days than I made in two weeks of being a police woman.
Andy Ockershausen: At teaching?
Marianne Haney Brennan: No, I was modeling.
Andy Ockershausen: Oh I see a runway model.
Marianne Haney Brennan: Yes. But what Garfinckel’s had us do, which was brilliant, is they chose like seven of the top models and they strategically placed us all in their shops and their stores. And I was sent down to Annapolis. They had just opened up their new store in Annapolis. And we would take young girls and we would break them down into age categories. And so the little ones would come in, the middle ones, and then the teenagers. And so for a month we taught them every Saturday morning. And at the end of the month we would allow them to go pick a little outfit out and we put a little fashion show on for the mothers. And it was fabulous. And we taught them everything. We taught them how to eat properly, how to dress properly for your age, all that stuff. And so that’s where I really started teaching etiquette.
And then when I got married and had my daughter, I really had to put everything on the back burner. And when I came back into teaching, I had never taught little boys before, but I had a friend who was working at the Washington Jesuit Academy over in Northeast. And this is for young boys who would pretty much fall between the cracks, if they didn’t have sponsors sponsoring them. And it’s from fourth to eighth grade. And so I’ve been over there for almost 10 years teaching the young men. Oh my gosh. You would walk in that door and you’ll fall in love with them. Everything about them.
And so at the end of each semester, Ris at 23rd and L, whose just a delightful woman who does a lot of grand, wonderful things for charities in town. She would have us down pro bono, for etiquette luncheon. And we’d have our luncheon, we’d have our little menu. The boys could not attend if they didn’t put their tie on, they’d all show up in their suits. And at the end of the lunch I gave them a white handkerchief because I told them every gentleman should carry a white handkerchief. And so that’s how it sort of evolved. And now I’m just branching out everywhere.
Andy Ockershausen: You can go anywhere with that class.
Marianne Haney Brennan: I can, anything. I had two men whose college boys came back to work for the summer and intern at Merrill Lynch. And they asked me to do a one on one and we went over to the Jefferson Hotel and had lunch and I went through every aspect of proper etiquette at the dinner table.
Andy Ockershausen: Teaching just one.
Marianne Haney Brennan: One on one. That’s how he wanted it and I did what he wanted. So I can do anything anywhere that you want.
Andy Ockershausen: That’s great Marianne, because these young men need it.
Marianne Haney Brennan: We all need it. We all need it.
Andy Ockershausen: Oh yeah. Well, I could tell one thing that you’ve had a terrific impact on the juniors that you’ve taught in your etiquette class, but you had a bigger impact on the seniors of Georgetown with what you’ve done with the senior citizen’s center.
On Working with Seniors and Help of Our Town Citizens
Marianne Haney Brennan: Oh, I love them.
Andy Ockershausen: That’s your love of your life, right?
Marianne Haney Brennan: I know it is. I hate to say I don’t do as much as I did prior to because when I first started working with them, I’ll never forget it. I was reading the Georgetown newspaper and they were asking for volunteers to come and work at the Georgetown Senior Center. And I was like, well, I’m not working Margi’s like one or two I need to give back. So I went over to this little Baptist Church at like 29th and N, I might be wrong on that address. And here is the founder, Virginia Allen who has since passed and she’s serving these seniors like Bologna sandwiches on white bread and but it’s a meal. It’s a meal, okay.
And I called Mr. D, dear friend of both of ours, and I explained to him everything that was going on and I said, we’re meeting again on Wednesday, I’d like to invite you over. And he’s like, oh I don’t know if I got time, you know how that goes. I don’t know if I can squeeze it into my schedule. Anyhow, 11:00 prompt, him and-
Andy Ockershausen: He’s there. Nick is with him?
Marianne Haney Brennan: No, not Nick. NS&T, Joe Riley, God love him. They come walking in and of course you know what I’ve got, I’ve got a little bottle. I have a pint of Cutty Sark I’ve smuggled in to this senior center luncheon, and I have a twist of lemon and Perrier. And I make them a little drinky poo. Virginia Allen called me the next day. She goes, Marianne, you’re not going to believe this. I’m still getting goosebumps. Both of them sent Virginia a check for $1,000 and that for-
Andy Ockershausen: For lunch.
Marianne Haney Brennan: For whatever. And that-
Andy Ockershausen: That was the beginning.
Marianne Haney Brennan: That was the beginning. And they would never acknowledge that, they would never take credit for that. And so I did everything for them. I drove the van, I washed dishes. I don’t want to say I-
Andy Ockershausen: You were an attendant.
Marianne Haney Brennan: Yes. Yes. And I tell you another person that was very instrumental in helping us was Dave Rothman that used to own the Georgetowner newspaper-
Andy Ockershausen: The paper guy.
Marianne Haney Brennan: The paper Guy who’s now gone down to like Alabama or somewhere.
Andy Ockershausen: David Rothman was a big help to us with our parade that we put on at Georgetown. Remember David Janice?
Janice Iacona Ockershausen: Yup.
Marianne Haney Brennan: He’s a good soul.
Andy Ockershausen: He’s a good citizen, right?
Marianne Haney Brennan: Good, good, good.
Andy Ockershausen: He gave back to Our Town.
Marianne Haney Brennan: Anything that we wanted, anything that we need, he would put it in the newspaper. No questions asked. We were never charged. And that’s just the way it all worked back then. I mean we just all helped each other.
Georgetown’s Senior Center Needs Help
Andy Ockershausen: How is the citizen’s group now with the seniors?
Marianne Haney Brennan: We need help.
Andy Ockershausen: Still need help.
Marianne Haney Brennan: We do. And thank God for Billy Martin because he is just-
Andy Ockershausen: This is the third Billy Martin.
Marianne Haney Brennan: Third Billy. Every time I call Billy he says, what do you need? He never says no to me. What we need is we need a few more restaurants to step up and make some donations. We actually could use a few new seniors up there.
Andy Ockershausen: Well it’s changed, the population changed hasn’t it?
Marianne Haney Brennan: Totally.
Andy Ockershausen: A lot of millennials, young people in Georgetown. Janney, you’ve seen it.
Marianne Haney Brennan: And so what we used to do is Monday, Wednesday and Friday now all we do is Monday and Friday. And from my knowledge I didn’t make the fundraiser because I was out of town. Somebody donated us a new van, because I think the van was about ready to kerplunk on us.
Andy Ockershausen: And you can drive the new one now.
Marianne Haney Brennan: I don’t know. I don’t know. I had fun doing that though. I’d be going up Connecticut Avenue, picking all these old gals up at their apartment, and it took a lot of patience. Okay. Take your time. Take your time.
Andy Ockershausen: What a great thing for Georgetown. So you’ve surrounded the age gap, you’ve got the young people with your training and now you’ve got the senior citizens, that gotta be taken care of. And left you right in the middle. So what do you do to occupy yourself, Marianne? I remember the time when you were the number one shoe shiner in Our Town. This gorgeous woman was shining shoes and I mean shining shoes. Because it was a living. And you made a lot of dough didn’t you?
Shining Shoes – More Lucrative Than You’d Think
Marianne Haney Brennan: Yes. And so, let me just say this, I have one daughter and I was able to put her through 13 years of Catholic school here in town, which is no small feat. And you know what these tuitions are like. And I was able to send her to four years of college by shining shoes.
Andy Ockershausen: Where’d she go to college?
Marianne Haney Brennan: She went to ECU. I think she had had enough Catholic and I’m a believer if you don’t have it by their new ain’t got it.
Andy Ockershausen: Wow. But your heritage is so great but I admire you. What you were doing when you were shining shoes because it was very lucrative. I know that and it was necessary. There was a lot of scrummy guys that you were doing your job on Marianne and it worked. They did not-
Marianne Haney Brennan: Yes, it did work.
Andy Ockershausen: You met a lot of people.
Marianne Haney Brennan: Yes.
Andy Ockershausen: And that’s what it’s all about. You connected the dots.
Marianne Haney Brennan: Yeah. And I still do it. I work like 12 hours a week doing it. I still do it.
Andy Ockershausen: Keep your hand in it.
Marianne Haney Brennan: You know what it is. I like to be around young kids, especially if I need my iPhone fixed. And I just want to stay active.
Andy Ockershausen: And that’s it baby. You do.
Retirement Not in Marianne’s Vocabulary
Marianne Haney Brennan: Because I’m telling you I don’t, retirement is not in my vocabulary. I want my mind to work. I want my body to work. And people that retire at like 50 I don’t know what they do with themselves unless you play a lot of golf or something. I don’t know.
Andy Ockershausen: They die. If they retire too early.
Marianne Haney Brennan: Yeah.
Andy Ockershausen: But we’re not retiring, and we’re not going to die.
Marianne Haney Brennan: Not at all.
Andy Ockershausen: And this is Andy Ockershausen, and I’m talking with Marianne Haney Brennan, and when we come back we’re gonna talk about her Jesuit, what do you call it?
Marianne Haney Brennan: Washington Jesuit.
Andy Ockershausen: No. We’re gonna talk about John Carroll. And the fact, because Janice and I are members of the John Carroll Society, but we didn’t do it voluntarily.
Janice Iacona Ockershausen: We went to an event.
Andy Ockershausen: It made me a member. This is Andy Ockershausen. This is Our Town.
Announcer: You’re listening to Our Town with Andy Ockershausen.
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Announcer: You’re listening to Our Town with Andy Ockershausen. Brought to you by Best Bark Communications.
Andy Ockershausen: This is Andy Ockershausen talking with one of the favorite people that ever existed in old town, Marianne Haney Brennan, who is to me the epitome of a Georgetown person. And thank God she’s still with us and has a really wonderful life and doing great work with the etiquette and great work with the senior citizens. But Marianne, the people that you’ve met in all these years, connecting those dots is a fabulous life. And you epitomize a commitment to Our Town.
Marianne Haney Brennan: Absolutely. I love it. I love it. I love it.
Andy Ockershausen: And you do it every day. You’re not going to move out of Georgetown or Glover Park. You’re going to stay in Our Town. And all the people that you’ve known and some of the characters that you mentioned have been really worthwhile and, well, not a character, but one of your relatives was instrumental in establishing Georgetown University in 1789 correct?
Legacy of John Carroll, Georgetown University
Marianne Haney Brennan: Yes.
Andy Ockershausen: ’89. Because we checked it. And we went to the hundredth anniversary 200, in 1989. Remember they were having a big show on campus and we stumbled into it. A great school, a great institution, and John Carroll was your relative.
Marianne Haney Brennan: Right. I met a little girl the other day working and she’s, I said, where are you in college? She says, Georgetown. I said, oh, my cousin is sitting in the circle there, do you know his name? And I always ask them if they know, you know, they should know who founded the universe. She said, John Carroll. I said, yeah, that’s coz.
Andy Ockershausen: Coz John. Well I had a great uncle, his name was Brosnin and I forget what his first name was, but he was something at Georgetown too, and one of the reasons that people, the Brosnins came from Chicago was the Chicago fire burned them out and my grandmother ended up here. And then she as a Brosnin, then she married an Ockershausen who was a local guy, he was a baker but not in Georgetown, he had his bakery at 5th and G, Northwest. That’s a long time ago Marianne.
Marianne Haney Brennan: I’m trying to-
Andy Ockershausen: It’s 200 years ago. 150 years ago.
Marianne Haney Brennan: Well I remember 6th and K when they had the big things in the fire going and the homeless getting their hands warm every time it happened. Remember that?
Andy Ockershausen: Oh, I do too. And they had a bowling alley down there on K street too, 5th and 6th and K.
Marianne Haney Brennan: I don’t remember that.
Andy Ockershausen: I go back a long way, Marianne, but not as as John Carroll, but what are you looking in the future now that you’ve done everything that’s left, but you can start all over.
“I want to teach these children.” | Manners | Etiquette
Marianne Haney Brennan: No, I want to teach these children. I want to teach. You know what it is? We have gotten to where we don’t agree to disagree. You know, years ago we could have all these different ideas and we could talk to each other and we would listen to each other, and it was okay that we didn’t agree with you or vice versa. And you can’t do that anymore. You’re scared to death to say anything. And it’s just, we need to get back to being kind to each other. It is, we’re in a sad state of affairs right now and it breaks my heart. And that’s why I teach etiquette from A to Z. I don’t care. You know what? Time goes on but manners don’t change. Manners are manners. Whether they were the 1800s or they’re the 2019.
Andy Ockershausen: Boy, do I agree with you.
Marianne Haney Brennan: You know what I’m saying?
Andy Ockershausen: God, yes.
Marianne Haney Brennan: Yeah. I mean, I had to laugh. I was teaching table manners to my little boys over at Washington Jesuit and we were talking about how you let the ladies order first. And the hand goes up. And I said yes. And he goes, well, what about if they’re taking too long to decide?
Andy Ockershausen: It’s a good question.
Marianne Haney Brennan: And I said, you wait, because that’s what gentlemen do. But see what I’m saying? Everybody’s in a hurry. Everybody’s in a hurry. Me, me, me fast, fast, fast.
Andy Ockershausen: You never see people open car doors anymore. Nobody smokes or you’re not lighting cigarettes anymore. But I see it all the time and it just drives me crazy.
Marianne Haney Brennan: But I tell you what I do, Andy. If somebody holds the door open for me or somebody does something kind, I make a big production out of it. And I’ll tell young guys, I said, your parents raised you properly.
Andy Ockershausen: Yeah, it’s a good sign. Well, you know, I get in trouble and I even having this little building that we’re in one floor, I get on an elevator and I say, good morning. And people think there’s something wrong with me. And they look, they shy away. You know? Or I say isn’t it great or whatever, I don’t know. Do you don’t wear boots because it’s not snowing. I get no reaction. Just like zip, but I still do it.
Marianne Haney Brennan: Yes, indeed. Don’t you stop doing that. Don’t stop doing that. And you know, if every, if you really stop and think about this, we are, I say, a Southern town. We are Southern town.
Andy Ockershausen: We were we or-
Marianne Haney Brennan: And if you go down into North Carolina and South Carolina, those people are as kind and warm and open. And that’s what we used to be. Now we’re global here.
Andy Ockershausen: That is so true. Global.
Marianne Haney Brennan: You know. Why can’t we get back to being Southern?
Andy Ockershausen: We can starting right now. I’m going to say this has been Our Town. This has been a wonderful conversation with Marianne Haney and her etiquette school, and I’m sure she’s in a phone book as Georgetown etiquette.
Janice Iacona Ockershausen: Why don’t you give your phone number or your website?
Andy Ockershausen: You never can tell.
Marianne Haney Brennan: Yes. Mrs. Brennan’s School of Etiquette. Just Google that and all the information is there. Mrs. Brennan’s School of Etiquette.
Andy Ockershausen: What happened to Haney?
Marianne Haney Brennan: Bye Bye.
Andy Ockershausen: She’s gone. Fabulous Marianne Haney. This has been Andy Ockershausen on Our Town and a wonderful conversation with a lifelong friend and best of luck to your school, Marianne Haney.
Marianne Haney Brennan: Thank you so much, Andy.
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