In this interview, Michael Stanley discusses growing up in Fort Totten in the 1950s. He talks about the close-knit nature of the Fort Totten community and the long-lasting friendships that formed among neighborhood children. He then reflects on his life as a teenager and favorite clothing styles, and participating in the Cadet Core in high school. He reflects on the uniqueness of living in Fort Totten and how it has evolved., Michael Stanley is a native Washingtonian born at Georgetown Hospital where his mother worked. He lived with his family on Savannah Terrace in Southeast Washington until they moved to the Fort Totten neighborhood in approximately 1955 when he was six years old. He attended Keene Elementary School until the sixth grade, then MacFarland for seventh grade and part of eighth grade. Halfway through his eighth-grade year Bertie Backus was opened and he attended there the remainder of eighth grade and ninth grade. He was in the first graduating class of Bertie Backus. He attended high school at Roosevelt. After graduating from high school, he got a job and was later drafted into the Army where he served for two years and nine months. After that he attended college at UDC where he majored in business management.