Dream City: Love Flows for Columbia on Facebook Page

The best job Dennis Lane ever had in his life--running the grounds crew at --is just one of the hundreds of memories flowing through the new Facebook page celebrating the life people used to live in the Dream City.

The group has more than 4,000 members, and is titled, "You Know You Grew Up in Columbia Md When."

And throughout the posts, many of the group members echoed the same sentiments: that Columbia was a place where they made lifelong friends, experienced diversity and thought it was unlike any place they’d ever been.

“I live here, I work here, I love this place," said Lane, also the author of the Tale of Two Cities blog.

His family moved to Columbia in 1968, the year after it became a city, a vision turned to reality by developer Jim Rouse.

Photographer Scott Kramer, also a member of the group, moved to Columbia the same year.

As a kid he would ride his bike to a local flower shop in to pick up his family’s mail in a cardboard box; they didn’t even have a mailbox yet.

“It was great to be a kid here,” Kramer said. "Everyone was new so everyone had things in common.”

The variety of memories being shared across multiple generations stitches together a multi-layered story of Columbia’s past on the page.

Sekou Walker, a Columbia native who now lives in Catonsville, started the page in early August.

“I created the group to reminisce with my friends that no longer live in Columbia,” Walker said. “My goal was to have some fun, and some laughs. The biggest benefit is that anyone can join, add friends, post pictures and share their thoughts and memories.”

Many of the posts have centered on those looking for classmates through teachers they once had, buildings that used to stand where many of Columbia’s chain restaurants and stores have taken over, popular athletes and old hangouts.

One post that called for group members to post the names of Columbia residents they knew passed away attracted over 147 responses.

While Walker was surprised at the amount of people who joined and requested to join the group, one of its administrators, Jason Gotis, wasn’t shocked at all by the popularity.

“The first day I didn’t take the Facebook notification settings off my phone and I had 2,667 emails on it,” Gotis said.  “I was up til’ 4 a.m. answering them.”

Gotis, who lived in Columbia until he went to college in Philadelphia where he currently lives, said the best thing about the site is that many of the nostalgic moments people shared were similar no matter what their age.

“Seeing how similar memories were across generations, nothing came up I didn’t know,” Gotis said. “Columbia affects everyone in similar ways and made people grow up.”

Lane said the first "you're-not-in-Columbia anymore" moment came to him when he left for college and "discovered that the rest of the country was about a half-decade behind Columbia in race relations.”

“I was profoundly influenced by [Columbia’s founder] Jim Rouse, so much so that I went to work for the company right out of college," he said.

Gotis, whose father is Filipino but whose mother is Jewish, said he wasn’t sure such interracial marriages would be accepted elsewhere.

“It gives you a great idea of diversity, it can make you feel naïve when you go to other places,” Gotis said. 

Mitch Furr, a Columbian now living in Baton Rouge who said he spends about two hours a night on the page, said he was shaped by the diversity of the area.

“If I still lived there, I wouldn’t think about it, but living there made me more tolerable and molded me into being a more diverse citizen, which is something that really isn’t common in a lot of places,” Furr said.

Kramer, who has posted numerous old photos of people and places around Columbia on the page, said he has had the opportunity to travel all around the country, but has never experienced a place like Columbia.

“I’ve done a lot of traveling and come to appreciate [Columbia]; how can you compare it?” Kramer said. “You visit other cities and think ‘you know it really isn’t bad here.’”

The library of memories in the Facebook group isn’t only helping members reminisce about the past, but archivists find anecdotes for Columbia events.

“Personally I’m getting new information that I haven’t decided yet how to capture," said Barbara Kellner manager of the Columbia Archives. "There’s pictures I’ve never seen before and comments to use as anecdotal evidence for things. One person was even doing a documentary."

Kellner said she has refrained from posting responses or disputing any facts.

"This is their page," she said. "I don’t want to say that anything they’re saying is wrong, because it’s valuable that people are even discussing the past."

About this series: Dream City posts discuss how early ideas about Columbia’s past can spur conversations about its future. Do you have a historical aspect of Columbia you think should be explored? E-mail Editor Lisa Rossi at lisa.rossi@patch.com

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