Flashback Monday: In Mauve Blood

The DeLong Bowman House, the fancy white mansion in the office townhouse complex off Reston Parkway that was one home to liquor tycoons, then Bob Simon, and now a bunch of offices, isn't the oldest house in Reston. Instead, as readers of the most recent issue of Reston: The Magazine know, it was used by Bob and Anne Simon as a part-time home and a place to entertain prospective investors in Reston, before bundling them into a bus to see the muddy sinews and whatnot that would soon become our favorite earth-toned community. But there was something we didn't know about one of the darker chapters in the 1940s-era home's storied history.

When Gulf Oil staged its bloodless coup informed Mr. Simon that a new management team was coming in to run Reston's development in 1967, the Simons vacated the house, leaving only one personal belonging behind -- a copy of Truman Capote's In Cold Blood. The symbolism's admittedly a bit more muddled than this, but it's exactly why we love Bob Simon.