J. EDGAR HOOVER ALWAYS GOT HIS MAN, or so they said, but apparently he never got his hat. Sometime during World War II the fearsome director of the FBI went into Harvey’s, which was then next to the Mayflower Hotel on Connecticut Avenue, and laid his fedora on the counter of the restaurant’s checkroom. Hoover didn’t bother to get
At 45 minutes past midnight on July 1, 1955, a haggard Walter J. Bierwagen, president of the D.C. Transit Workers Union, left the negotiation room that recently had become his home away from home. For months, the 2,400 or so members of his union had been seeking a quarter-an-hour raise and a few other contract sweeteners from the Capital Transit Company, which operated most of the buses and all of the streetcars within the metropolitan Washington area.