Mr. Drummand brings Arnold and Willis to town...

From the Gazette:

In 1960, only 10 of the people living in Kensington's town boundaries weren't white. In the 2000 census that number had jumped by 175.

It may seem still a small total, but for a town of about 1,800 people, the increase represents a great leap in diversity that residents say they see everywhere and which is likely to continue in the upcoming 2010 census. The changes are even more dramatic outside town boundaries in the Kensington ZIP Code, but the nearly 10 percent shift in the town's demographics are an indication that the face of Kensington is changing.

Jose Ayala said he has "absolutely" seen the area diversify since moving to Kensington's Parkwood neighborhood from Ecuador 30 years ago. When he first moved to the area, Ayala was one of few Latinos.

"We have a large community, Latin community, which when I first came it was not that big like it is now," Ayala said.

Kensington's central location near Rockville, Bethesda and Washington, D.C., probably contributes to young families moving there, Ayala said, which is increasing the diversity of the residents. He said he has had to double the amount of candy he buys for trick-or-treaters at Halloween in the past four to five years, and is glad the area is becoming more diverse.

"I think it's good because we learn to live with each other," Ayala said. "We learn about their culture, the different traditions, it's interesting."

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, Kensington's changes are in line with the national trend, which projects that minorities, which now make up about one-third of the country's population, will actually become the majority by 2042. By 2023, more than half of all children will be minorities.

Froilan Orille, who moved to the United States from the Philippines 19 years ago, said like many Filipinos, he chose to move to Kensington four years ago because it reminded him of home.

"I think a lot of Filipinos like the way the houses are set up, it's traditional and I know that's what caught my eye," Orille said.

Orille has since moved to Silver Spring, but still spends much of his time in Kensington at the Filipino specialty store he owns, Kuba sa Kensington, which caters to the large population of his Filipino brethren in the area. The store is a slice of home for Kensington's large Filipino community, selling Patismansi, a fish sauce with lemon, coconut milk, pickled bananas and other hard-to-find items.

Ninety percent of his customers are Filipino, Orille guessed, but his wife Brenda said curiosity seekers also poke around the store.

"Sometimes I see people like the Indians, the Koreans, they live in the neighborhood and have Filipino friends, and come in looking for something their friend had," Brenda said. "Now we see them every week."

Marjorie Stewart, 67, has lived most of her life in the historically black Kensington neighborhood KenGar, which she said has become more diverse along with the rest of Kensington. Her family has been in KenGar so long, Stewart's grandmother Carrie Davis began what would become the neighborhood's Baptist church from her living room. Stewart remembers when the streets were unpaved and her children attended a blacks-only school—the same one she had gone to as a girl.

Now, Stewart said, KenGar has changed so much she describes it not as a black neighborhood, but as "an international neighborhood."

"In our neighborhood there's all kinds of people, I went around just to see how many different kinds of people there are. Everybody's different now," Stewart said.

"I just think now it's just a great improvement, it really is, and most of the neighbors seem to be pretty nice. We're the minority now," she said of long-time KenGar families. "They're the majority."

She said the changes in KenGar are evidenced in the Methodist church there, which has a much more diverse congregation than it once did.

"It was just a black church," she said. "Now it's integrated, which is fine, with Spanish, Africans, Indians. I think it's OK because this is really how God wanted it to be. He wanted us to come together."