The story of the Eastern Market fire and the extraordinary community response to it is on its way to becoming a legend – a tale we tell over and over again and treasure for the way it affirms all that is best about us and where we live. For those who just arrived on Capitol Hill or who have been asleep for the past six months, here it is. A fire broke out in the historic Eastern Market on the night of April 30. As neighbors and merchants watched in horror from across the street, firefighters fought the blaze but, by morning, the one hundred thirty five year old brick market had lost its roof and everything inside it had been destroyed. Within hours Mayor Fenty was on the spot promising that the market would be repaired and that a temporary structure would replace it and people were asking where they could donate money to help the market’s merchants cope with the disaster.  By noon, the Capitol Hill Community Foundation had set up a fund and decided to call it “Eastern Market – Keep it Going.” Throughout the summer, the Foundation’s red tent, staffed by volunteers, was a Saturday and Sunday fixture at the market, selling t-shirts, accepting donations and giving out information. By mid-August, when long time market merchant Mary Calomiris cut the ribbon to open the gleaming temporary structure the city had built, $420,000 had been donated to the Foundation and $340,000 of it had been distributed to promote the market and to help merchants and their employees make the transition to the temporary space. As summer turned into fall, all the familiar businesses were back at work and neighbors were again greeting them and each other on Saturday mornings at the market.

Capitol Hill Community Foundation President Nicky Cymrot says the effort came together very quickly and naturally. The morning of the fire, as she watched from the sidewalk, she heard people around her asking where they could donate funds to help the merchants. The Foundation, she knew, was respected in the community and would be the right group to accept donations. As she chatted with neighbor Gary Peterson she quickly decided he was “just the right guy” to head a committee to administer the funds. “I don’t think we could have found anyone to take the job as seriously and devote as much time to it as Gary has,” she says.  A long-time Hill resident, Gary is a retired government lawyer and an active volunteer with the Restoration Society. He spent much of the summer meeting with all the merchants to find out what their most pressing needs were. “I already knew most of them,” he says, “from all those years of shopping there.” Nicky and Gary quickly put together committee including Ken Jarboe, Melissa Ashabranner, Buck Waller, Donna Sheeder, Martha Huizenga and Steve Daniels, treasurer of the Foundation.

The first priority was to find out which merchants wanted to get back to work right away outside the market and what they needed in order to do that, the second was to find temporary jobs for some of their employees. “Everyone who wanted a job, we were able to help get placed,” Gary says, noting that Frager’s Hardware, Splash! The Carwash and Yarmouth Realty hired some of the displaced employees. Merchants who were setting up outdoors needed tables, scales and plastic bins to hold their merchandise and several businesses needed refrigerated trucks, which the fund provided. Gary and Nicky developed a simple grant application (similar to that used by the Capitol Hill Community Foundation for its regular fall and spring grants) so merchants could formally request funding.

Meanwhile, money from individual donors and organized fundraisers poured in. “The generosity of this community was stunning,” Nicky says. “It was like a standing ovation. It just went ‘whoosh.’” The foundation sold 3,500 black t-shirts emblazoned with a striking image of the market’s windows and the words “rebuild eastern market” (the artwork was donated by graphic designer Linsey Silver) and accepted donations from hundreds of individuals ranging from the $30,000 from Ellen and Ware Adams to many more contributions large and small, by check and in cash. People kept calling to say they wanted to sponsor fundraisers, and the Foundation encouraged as many of them as it could. CHAMPS hosted an evening reception at Marty’s restaurant that generated $58,000; the Kenneth H. Nash Post #8 of the American Legion here on the Hill held a barbecue and donated the proceeds; Christ Church’s annual spaghetti dinner (using a recipe from John Philip Sousa himself) raised $9,000; Rosetta Brooks donated a collection taken up at a dance recital at St. Mark’s church; the Folger Shakespeare Theater gave the proceeds from its concession stand; and many other concerts and performances were dedicated to the cause. School children on the Hill and even from the River School and Maret school across town took up collections and wrote cards and letters to the vendors. Hill resident Diane Scott organized “Dining Out for Eastern Market” in May that brought generous donations from twelve local restaurants. $50,000 came from the D.C. United soccer team; Home Depot gave $30,000 worth of gift cards for the merchants.

To draw attention to the market and to the fact that it was still operating during the summer, the fund sponsored Eastern Market Music, a series of Sunday performances in front of Port City Java that drew enthusiastic crowds. The program, put together by Hill resident musician Parker Jayne, will resume next spring and continue through the summer.

Now that the temporary market structure has opened, the market merchants are back at work and business is brisk though still not back to the way it was before the fire. While they have some lingering resentment against the city for the way it ignored their concern over the years about the market’s wiring and lack of a sprinkler system, and complaints about the new building (mostly relating to the glass-house like design that makes it hard to air condition), the merchants are uniformly grateful to the community for its generosity. Mary Calomiris, one of the deans of market vendors and the first one to open up outside selling fruits and vegetables after the fire, feels things are now better than ever and says “there’s no other country in the world where this would happen.” Melvin Inman, who has been selling poultry at the market for over thirty years, says it was the palpable bond between the merchants and the community, the loyal customer base he had built up, that brought him back. “If that connection had not been made, we might not have thought about it,” he says. “You folks have been awfully kind.” Jose Canales, who sells meats, sausages and prepared food, is still waiting for some of the refrigerated cases he needs, but is particularly grateful to Gary Peterson, the man he calls “the Godfather,” who, he says, was there every time anything was needed. Jo Ann Jung, at Paik Produce, says her business is still off from what it was before the fire. But she is grateful for the help she received from the community, help that included asking around to find someone to translate back and forth between Korean and English. Through that translator, she told Gary that “this would never happen in Korea.”

The community has shown, through its financial donations, how much it cares about the Eastern Market. And the city is listening. The renovated market is scheduled to open in 2009.