Yahoo Lifestyle This photo on the National Mall captivated the country decades ago. The real story behind it remained a mystery — until now.
Correction: An earlier version of this article incorrectly described Hilton Foster as marching for civil rights across the Edmund Pettus Bridge on Bloody Sunday. He did not cross the bridge that day. The article has been corrected.
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The table was set. The pastries arranged. A white tablecloth dangled placidly in the early morning mist, surrounded by 12 golden-hued high-backed chairs.
Five decades ago, a dozen friends gathered here, on the National Mall, for breakfast. They wore morning coats and floor-length dresses, dined on oysters, drank champagne and danced together as a string quartet played in the shadow of the Lincoln Memorial.
The extravagant scene on July 19, 1974, drew in a Washington Post photographer, who captured the moment in an image that would ricochet around the country in newspaper reprints.
But the people and circumstances at the center of that famous picture remained a mystery to those who admired it, bought it, hung it on their office walls. They didn’t know who those young people were or why they had gathered for such an ornate affair near the Reflecting Pool. They didn’t know that the specter of death had loomed over the rousing celebration or that the people at its center would go on to have a hand in many pivotal facets of American life - the civil rights movement, gender equity in schools, advocacy for blind and disabled people.
That is until Joyce Naltchayan Boghosian - the daughter of late Post photographer Harry Naltchayan, who captured the original image - met one of the participants a year ago and began to put the pieces together.
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The Group
In the late 1960s, the government was hiring.
A generation of young people flocked to the nation’s capital to find jobs they hoped to turn into careers. That is how Janet Harley and Carolyn Buser, who were in their 20s, made their way from Carleton College in Northfield, Minn., to Washington.
When they arrived, the women went to the apartment of Rodger Poore, a college classmate and friend who lived in Southwest Washington and was looking to start up a regular bridge game.
Poore connected the pair to a neighbor, Dorothy “Dottie” Whalen, who offered them a place to stay until they could find their own home. Soon, acquaintances became friends and friends became almost family.
They bonded over shared circumstances - nearly all of them worked for government agencies - and common interests: playing games, exploring the outdoors and holding boisterous, sometimes-outlandish, gatherings.
For birthdays, they threw elaborate celebrations: a “road rally” that involved driving around town from one place to another on a predetermined course; a scavenger hunt through Rock Creek Park; a costume party in which everyone dressed up as vegetables.
They reveled in one another’s successes and milestones. And they were there for one another’s hardships.
When Harley was just 27 years old, she was diagnosed with terminal breast cancer.
The news rocked the group. They could hardly understand it - how could their young friend be dying? She was so full of life and laughter, always down for another party or an adventure. She was an avid hiker and canoer.
“How do you live with that news?” recalled Hilton Foster, a veteran and Howard University Law School graduate who became a core member of the group. “How do you just go on? What do you do?”
About a month before Harley’s 28th birthday, several of her friends came up with an idea: They would celebrate Harley’s life with the most over-the-top gathering their group had ever concocted.
Just a few weeks earlier, President Nixon’s personal secretary, Rosemary Woods, was photographed on the Mall drinking champagne during a picnic.
If she can do it, Buser and Foster thought, why can’t we?
Days later, Buser walked into the National Park Service’s headquarters to request a permit. Her ask was so unusual it got kicked all the way up to the head of the department, Manus J. Fish.
“You can’t have champagne on the Mall,” Buser, now 78, recalled being told. “I think they were afraid we would be raucous, left-wing radicals. And, of course, we were. But not on that day.”
Buser referenced the picture of the president’s secretary imbibing on the Mall. Eventually, the Park Service relented. The group got their permit, signed by Fish.
With Buser and Foster leading the charge, the plans for the day continued to get more elaborate. A string quartet. A catered meal. Limousines to pick everyone up in the morning.
Each time Buser paused to ask if it was getting too out of hand, she said, Foster would egg her on.
All the while, they kept their plans a secret from Harley.
Just after 5 a.m. on a Friday morning, Buser woke Harley up with a command: “Put this on,” she said, holding out Harley’s old prom dress - an item Harley’s mother had shipped from Ohio, without her daughter knowing.
Confused but intrigued, Harley complied.
Nearby, her boyfriend, Wesley William Collins, waited in a horse-drawn carriage.
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The Breakfast
Around 7 a.m. the carriage and two limousines pulled up to the east edge of the Reflecting Pool.
Mist cast a hazy glow over the fantastical scene: A long table dotted with 12 place settings of fine china. Candelabras aglow with flames. Violins, a viola and a cello played off to the side.
As Whalen stepped out of the limo and onto the National Mall, she felt like she was walking into a dream.
“It was kind of surreal,” she said.
Formal attire was required. Foster rented a long-tailed coat, vest and tie just for the occasion. Other men sported top hats and gloves. Some carried canes. The women wore gowns and wide-brimmed hats.
Whalen’s then-boyfriend, Warrington “Red” Cobb, a naval officer, attended the breakfast in his dress uniform. When it was time to cut the pastries, Cobb unsheathed his sword and used it to halve danishes.
As the friends gathered at the table, their reflections danced in the water at their feet.
Two waiters - Palmer “Mac” McNaughton and Benjamin “Smitty” Smith - bounded back and forth, filling champagne flutes and clearing plates.
Harley, who Buser said looked “radiant” in her old prom dress, sat at the head of the table agog.
Her friends had outdone themselves.
“I don’t think she believed we could come up with anything quite like this,” Buser said. “We just wanted to give her something really outlandish to counter the most horrible diagnosis that a young woman might ever receive.”
The menu consisted of fresh strawberries, Nova Scotia salmon slices, crepes and oysters on the half shell.
“I barely ate,” Whalen, now 78, said. “I was so excited and overwhelmed.”
Several partygoers got up and danced.
Commuters driving past on their way to work pulled over to gawk at the unusual scene. Several people recalled at least one car nearly got into a collision rubbernecking.
Memories vary on how much that morning cost to put on. Everyone pitched in to help cover what some said was a price tag of at least $2,000. (In today’s currency, accounting for inflation, that would amount to roughly $12,700.)
“It was a way of us saying we knew she wasn’t going to live forever, so you might as well do something spectacular now so she could enjoy it,” Whalen said. “And she did. And we all did. It was our way of celebrating being alive - and together.”
By 9:30 a.m., the party was over. The table was broken down and the group hurried home to change for work. When they got to their respective offices, several said, they were surprised to learn that their breakfast had been covered by the local news.
While driving home after work, Whalen heard a radio story that proclaimed a group of “Georgetown friends” had gathered on the mall for an elegant affair (none of the members of the group, in fact, lived in Georgetown). At Buser’s office, a television spot stopped everyone in their tracks and prompted a colleague to ask: “Isn’t that you?”
But no one had noticed The Post photographer.
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The Daughter
Boghosian always thought her father had the coolest job. He photographed presidents, heads of state, concerts, parades and film screenings. He got to meet celebrities like Mickey Rooney, Harrison Ford, Larry King, Sonny and Cher.
When Boghosian was a child, her father, Harry Naltchayan, a staff photographer for The Post for 35 years, would drive home in his Lincoln Continental smelling of developer and newspaper ink. Often, he would bring prints home for her and her siblings, Anie, Neshan and Haik, and regale them with stories from his days. Each one was different, no assignment quite like the last.
The thought of pursuing that kind of life captivated the Naltchayan children. Neshan - who has also taken photos for The Post in his career as a professional photographer - and Boghosian soon began taking photos.
By the time Boghosian was 20, she had landed an internship at the White House, helping to file negatives and occasionally photograph events for Vice President George H.W. Bush. She went on to work for an international wire service, where she recalls spending days outside the federal courthouse in D.C. shoulder to shoulder with her dad.
Boghosian was 26 years old when her father died of a heart attack. He was 69.
After the funeral, as the family began to go through her father’s things and assemble thank-you notes to those who offered condolences and support, Boghosian came across one of Naltchayan’s photographs: it featured the group she would later find herself calling “the breakfast club.”
It was a masterpiece, she said.
Her family ordered prints and sent out the photo to friends and family with handwritten notes inside. The picture - dubbed at the time of its 1974 publishing in The Post “On the Mall: Breakfast for 12, At Dawn” - had for years been sold by The Post alongside other striking and historic images, including the moon landing, portraits of presidents and Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. delivering an impassioned speech before a crowd.
Naltchayan had shot countless photos for The Washington Post over his decades-long career. He won awards from the White House Press Photographers Association and World Press Photo. But this image, Boghosian said, had always seemed to her to be especially Washingtonian.
It’s why, as her own career took off and Boghosian received requests to give lectures and presentations, she always displayed that photo as a sample of her father’s work.
“I always start out with him because he’s part of my story,” Boghosian, now 56, said. “If it hadn’t been for his influence and mentorship and character, I would, well, I don’t know. I don’t know what I would have done.”
Last year, Boghosian was invited to speak to the Northwest Neighbors Village, a nonprofit dedicated to supporting D.C. seniors. As she cued up her presentation, an email from the event organizer pinged her inbox.
A woman in the audience had recognized her name and was familiar with her dad’s work. She was one of the 12 who had attended the breakfast.
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The Recreation
Naltchayan’s photograph hangs in the homes of nearly everyone who attended the breakfast. Over dining room tables, in the hall, as living room centerpieces; the photograph has for decades served as a reminder of one of the biggest bashes they ever threw.
Still, over the years, members of the group said, they didn’t routinely talk much about that day.
Then, in early 2023, they met Boghosian.
She had so many questions about the photo, about them. She leafed through their scrapbooks with photographs and memorabilia from the day. They had saved the menu, the invitation, a letter of appreciation from one of the waiters.
As the group took turns sharing memories, Boghosian marveled at their life stories: Foster had marched for civil rights in Alabama alongside King and went on to work as a lawyer for the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Buser successfully fought for education reform in Maryland’s prison system that guaranteed the right to special education classes for incarcerated adults. Another member of the group became a federal discrimination lawyer and fought for expanded rights for blind people.
At one point, Boghosian half-jokingly suggested they attempt to recreate the photo. Several of them dismissed the idea - initially.
Eventually, the group decided that, at the very least, it would be an opportunity to get together, which, since the start of the pandemic, had been harder to do.
Nearly 50 years to the day since they gathered for that famous breakfast, six members of the group stepped onto the National Mall and found a table set waiting.
As members of the group, now in their 70s and 80s, took their original seats, nostalgia washed over them. So much felt familiar. So much had also changed.
Dorothy Whalen was now Dorothy Foster. She and Hilton Foster had married and had a family. They named one of their children after Janet Harley.
Jane Nighbert kept her dress from the breakfast for 50 years. On the day of the anniversary, she brought it with her to the Reflecting Pool.
The head waiter, Palmer “Mac” McNaughton, hung a print of the famous breakfast photo in a stairway in the family’s home. His two adult children - Dennis and Cheryl - attended the re-creation and helped set up the table, chairs and place settings.
Janet Harley died on April 3, 1982. She was 35.
Before her death, Harley helped write the U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare’s guiding interpretation of Title IX, federal civil rights legislation that bans sex-based discrimination in education. She also married the boyfriend who rode with her in that carriage for her birthday celebration, Wesley William Collins.
Collins worked as a longtime attorney for the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services before his death in 2012.
Charles Stanley Peter Hodge, Foster’s old roommate who worked as a federal discrimination lawyer and fought for expanded rights for blind people, died in 2015.
On the day of the photo re-creation, their chairs sat empty.
There were other differences - no music, no dancing. Instead of oysters and caviar, pastries from a D.C. bakery filled the stacks of trays. A waiter in a black suit sprang back and forth with a glass bottle, topping off glasses with sparkling water.
“Last time we had champagne,” joked Nighbert.
Soon, spouses and children who had accompanied the original group members filled in the empty chairs.
Across the granite stretch of the World War II Memorial (which didn’t exist in 1974), the photographer’s daughter focused her camera on the scene, took a long exhale and pressed the shutter button.
She, too, felt an acute awareness of what she had lost. Her father never got to see her career flourish. He would never know the kind of work she had produced - or how much it mirrored his own. But standing there, on the National Mall, she felt a new sense of connection to him.
The photo re-creation took about an hour. When it was over, no one was ready to go home. So the group, along with Boghosian, headed to a nearby D.C. restaurant and sat at another cloth-lined table.
There, they ordered a bottle of champagne and raised their glasses to toast those who could no longer be with them: “Red,” Charlie, Wesley, and, of course, Janet.
But this time, before they clinked their glasses, they added another name to the list: Harry Naltchayan.
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About this story
In early 2024, Joyce Boghosian contacted The Washington Post to propose a commemoration of the 50th anniversary of her father’s famous “Breakfast on the Mall” photograph. An editor who had worked with Bogoshian’s father, Harry Naltchayan, hired Boghosian to photograph the recreation to create a more direct parallel to her father’s photo. The Post applied for and obtained a permit from the National Park Service. The reunion was photographed on July 21, 2024.
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