Word: districters
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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When Ruth Dooley drove through Wilmington for the first time, on an outing with her husband in the summer of 1995, she saw a town out of time: lovely Victorian, Italianate and clapboard houses with wraparound porches and flags fluttering in the breeze; a shopping district of three-story brick buildings anchored by a domed courthouse, a gabled hotel and the Murphy Theater, a brick-and-terra-cotta confection with a delightful Art Deco marquee. Dooley grabbed her husband's arm and cried, "This is it!" Wilmington seemed to be that "protected environment," she says, "where we could raise...
...done. But in 1990 Leslie and her husband Rick, a physician with good business sense, bought an ornate 1869 brick Victorian house on South Street. After six months of painting, wallpapering and antiques shopping, Leslie was greeting guests--and hatching a plan to turn her neighborhood into a historic district...
...guests have stayed there so far--and Leslie blossomed into a confident, effective businesswoman. But while she landscaped her property and planted her gardens, she began wishing that others would do the same. So she launched a successful campaign to have her neighborhood declared a national historic district, a six-month drive that introduced Leslie to her neighbors. Soon they were planting flowers and sprucing up their homes just as she had hoped. "That's what newcomers can do for a town," she says. "Make old-timers see the place with fresh eyes...
...council than there are candidates to run for those seats. At best, a house's political field will be contested so that only one or two candidates do not get the positions for which they vie. By cutting the number of available positions, the council can hope for competitive district elections in upcoming races...
That distrust, which runs in two directions, seems to touch everything in the district. Not long ago, Latino residents decided to rename one of the elementary schools after the late activist Cesar Chavez, as a mark of cultural pride. But on the day of the dedication, supporters of the name change showed up at the school to find a group of blacks there too--protesting. They thought the Latinos wanted to honor Julio Cesar Chavez, the boxer, and they disapproved. Recalls Matias Varela, a Hispanic resident who heads the county's arts council: "It was a total misunderstanding between...