From War to Peace in Loudoun

From War to Peace in Loudoun

By Joe Motheral

Eeda Dennis

Photo by Joe Motheral

Eeda Dennis can be considered a matriarch of Loudoun County. She’s been an active member of the Leesburg Garden Club, serving at one point as program chairperson. Her respect and admiration for World Warr II hero General George C. Marshall led her into being a member of the Marshall Center Board and she was honored by the Center awarding her a lifetime membership.

Eeda grew up in Norway and as a teenager, she and her family endured the Nazi occupation from 1940 to 1945. Her father, she said, was also a member of the resistance.

“Everyone was,” she said. “Our family had life’s essentials and the Nazis took everything. We no longer had food.”

According to an interview she gave to Cheryl Sadowski, author of a book entitled “Afternoons with Eeda,” she estimated that 80 percent of the Norwegians were opposed to the Nazis. She said she often went around with what appeared to be a copy of Adolph Hitler’s book, “Mein Kampf” under her arm when she went to school.

“I wrapped the cover around an English text book to hide the fact I was studying English,” she said. “The Nazis didn’t allow that.”

General Marshall lived in Leesburg for 12 years in Dodona Manor along Edwards’ Ferry Road. Eeda recalled driving with her mother-in-law one day and, “we saw this man out painting the entrance to his house. My mother-in- law said, ‘That’s General Marshall, let’s stop and say hello.’”

General George C. Marshall’s Dodona Manor.

Photo courtesy

The general had paint on his face, and Eeda was awestruck: “This is the man that saved us?” she said.

Eeda came to America after her marriage to the late Alfred Dennis, who served in the U.S. foreign service in Norway. Owing to Alfred’s job in the State Department, they were in and out of Alfred’s family home in Leesburg on farmland known as Sage Hill, eventually retiring there. Alfred died in 2009.

The home was built in 1938 out of brown stone from a local quarry. Alfred once explained the name Sage Hill. “During the Second World War there was a demand for sage and my mother began raising it on the farm,” he said, adding that sage had some medicinal properties.

Eeda still has a deep interest in preservation and has been active in helping to maintain the rich heritage of Loudoun County.

She still resides comfortably at Sage Hill near her son and daughter-in-law. In keeping with the family’s focus on preservation, the farm also has some attachment to history. There are Civil War trenches on the property along Edwards’ Ferry Road. Alfred once said that they had found Confederate and Union artifacts such as belt buckles and buttons from uniforms.

Edwards’ Ferry Road is where Union troops marched down to the Potomac River to cross on their way to Gettysburg. The Dennis home sits on high ground with a view of the Potomac, Harrison Island, occupied at one time by Native Americans, and Sugarloaf Mountain.