Steve, Maygene, & Leah Daniels · 2014 Honorees

Maygene Daniels grew up in Willmette, Illinois and Steve Daniels is from suburban Los Angeles but for over forty years their home has been on Capitol Hill. Now their daughter, Leah, has become a business owner here and all three are serving our community.

Steve was in law school and Maygene a graduate student in art history when they met at Yale. Summer jobs in Washington, D.C. convinced each of them that this was where they wanted to live and their first jobs – he as legislative assistant to Congressman Robert McClory of Illinois, she at the National Archives – made the Hill the place to live. Like many couples, they first rented, then bought and renovated a house (after hearing from their parents that “Gee, this place needs work.”) Steve learned how to plaster and paint by taking a class at Sears and by spending so much time at the local hardware store that George Frager became a friend. Walking the neighborhood with a colicky baby in 1978 they stopped by an open house on Massachusetts Avenue and fell in love with the big red brick with 55 windows that is still their home.

And like so many couples, their first foray into community engagement was because of their children. When son Eddie started at Capitol East, a daycare center in the old Giddings School (which is now Results gym), Steve became president of the volunteer Board that ran it. When their children moved on to Capitol Hill Day School both Steve and Maygene got involved, first as classroom and fundraising volunteers, then as members of the Board. Since 1999 Steve has been treasurer of the Capitol Hill Community Foundation, filing tax returns and writing hundreds of checks every year for small grants. During the renovation of the Hill Center at the Old Naval Hospital, it was Maygene who did historical research and writing for the signage and naming of rooms there.

Meanwhile, daughter Leah graduated from Capitol Hill Day School, moved on to Georgetown Day and then to her mom’s alma mater, Carleton College in Minnesota. When her parents’ friend Steve Cymrot needed someone to look after his used book store one summer weekend, her parents suggested that the newly graduated Leah do it. That turned into six years managing Riverby Books and the realization that she loved interacting with customers. 

Since 2008 Leah has run a fancy cookware store that also sells inexpensive gift items, offers classes in cooking and kitchen skills and donates regularly to fundraising auctions for neighborhood schools. Leah is quick to credit her parents with helping her by purchasing and renovating the building on Eastern Market Metro plaza (she rents the space from them). They, in turn, attribute to her the vision and energy that have made the store so successful. All three agree that it was Steve who came up with the name Hill’s Kitchen and that they love their new connection to the neighborhood. And it is Steve who serves on the Barracks Row Main Street board of directors as Hill’s Kitchen Representative.

Every year, come Christmas Steve, Chief Judge on the U.S. Civilian Board of Contract Appeals, and Maygene, director of the archives at the National Gallery of Art, can both be found at Hill’s Kitchen, taking time off from their jobs, Steve to run the cash register and Maygene to help customers choose the perfect gift items.

Leah’s brother, Eddie, is a public defender in Brooklyn, New York where he lives with his wife and two sons.