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Consult repository for information.
Alvaine T. Hamilton Collection, MSS 06-35, Virginia Room, Fairfax County Public Library
Donated by Alvaine T. Hamilton, 1991
Chris Barbuschak, January 2017
EAD generated by Ross Landis, 2024
Alvaine Trimmer was born in New York City on August 29, 1915 to Grace Madeline and Alva Trimmer. After the family moved to White Plains, New York, she attended White Plains High School. Alvaine went on to study at Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio and married Albert W. Hamilton.
During the 1930s, Alvaine T. Hamilton served as a national officer of the Student League for Industrial Democracy and co-founded the American Student Union. As World War II started to unfold, she also co-founded the Youth Committee Against the War.
In 1941, the Hamiltons moved to Washington D.C. and Alvaine worked for the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom and subsequently for the National CIO War Relief Committee. Shortly thereafter, the couple moved to Fairfax County, Virginia and in 1946 they bought a house in the Beverley Manor neighborhood in McLean.
Alvaine spent most of her career as a journalist. She served as a news editor for the Fairfax County Sun Echo and other Free Press weekly newspapers for 16 years. In 1945, she co-founded the independent Labor Press Associates, a trade union newspaper service. On June 16, 1950, President Harry S. Truman invited Alvaine and her fellow Labor Editors for a visit in the Oval Office.
In 1967, Fairfax County Public Schools selected her as their publications specialist which required writing and photographic work for all school publications. For 16 years she edited publications, acted as a liaison with the Fairfax County Council of PTAs, and served on task forces.
Alvaine later moved to Fairfax City. She was a founding member of the Fairfax Unitarian Church, a member of the Woman’s Democratic Club of Virginia’s Tenth District, and a member of the McLean Citizens Association.
She retired from FCPS in 1983 and moved to Madison County, Virginia where she maintained an active life volunteering with community organizations and writing columns for the Madison County Eagle. Alvaine T. Hamilton died on September 30, 2007 in Charlottesville, Virginia.
The Alvaine T. Hamilton Collection consists of .5 linear feet and spans the years 1950-1968 and consists of photographs, negatives, newspaper clippings, correspondence, meeting minutes, budgets, brochures, flyers, press releases, and notes. Subjects include the Fairfax County Sun Echo, Wiehle, Va., McLean, Va., and the Annexation of Falls Church and Alexandria, Va.
The McLean Citizens Association file contains meeting minutes, budgets, brochures, press releases, and correspondence. The Wiehle, Va and Annexation files contain press releases, newspaper articles and brochures as well as correspondence with Roosevelt Der Tatevasion, publisher of the Fairfax County Sun Echo. Correspondence includes letters from Lee M. Rhoads, John Morris Gray, Frederick A. Babson Jr., Julius H. Parmelee, Louise Wiehle Winter, Robert C. Cotton Jr., Eugene J. Olmi Jr., John P. Parrish, A. Smith Bowman Jr., E. DeLong Bowman, Charles M. Neviaser, W.J. Baker, and Edwin Lynch.
Photographs from McLean Central Park (from Churchill Road south to Dolly Madison Boulevard) include images of the Franklin Sherman School, Langley Fork, Churchill Road Elementary School, Fairfax County National Bank (designed by Francis Koenig), Fairfax County Police Information Office, St. John’s Episcopal Church, Laughlin Realtors, Hick’s Realty, McLean Service Center, Mount Vernon National Bank, Super Giant, A&P, Dart Drug, Salona Village Shopping Center, Sharon Lodge 327, Old Dominion Shopping Center, and other unidentified locations.
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