cathy ryan, communications support specialist with the office in fairfax public county schools. barbara holtstreater, partnerships officer with the prince george's public county schools, in the office of strategic and external affairs. very long titles and appropriate because you all do a lot of work. thank you so much for being with us this morning. so while all the kids are at the beach or camp and the parents are enjoying summer, you all are very, very busy. in fact, this is one of the busiest times of year for you. cathy? >> yes, our very busiest time working with our business and community partners, the county government and other groups to raise funds for school supplies and collect backpacks for students in need. >> barbara, you and ellen are doing pretty much the same thing but in your own county? >> we are. we're very excited to be here. most importantly, that we can really share what we're doing for the students of prince george's college and county, i should say. so we have our back to school sale on saturday, august the 26 donation forth 10,000 backpacks. we are exci

and except one person who was cathy willard, running for mayor right now along with eight other people in the city of atlanta. kathy championed this idea and so did ryan and they built a grassroots organization in a few years. in 2:00, mayor shirley franklin took it on. it developed into a bureaucracy which is what it is now. she found ray weeks, semiretired and could donate his time, which he did for four years in this project. i've gotten to know all of these people. i interviewed like 400 people for this book in the last six years since i began to work on it in 2011. and so they tried to figure out how could they fund it. oh, in the process i should say ryan's original idea of running streetcars around morphed, very quickly, his friend said, why don't we put a trail by it, people could ride their bikes on it? and why don't we have, you know, people be able to walk you along it? and then guy named jim langford, who was at the time in charge for the trust for public lands, somebody approached him and said they wanted help turning the sort of derelict land south of this big ol' derelict sears building on response -- on ponce deleon avenue, and you cou