HOW MEMORIES OF A CHILDHOOD SANCTUARY LED TO A GROWN-UP BUSINESS
HOUSE OF THE SPIRITED
STORY BY Martha Thomas PHOTOGRAPHY BY André Chung
Cynthia Lynn started her first business when she was in third grade. The family lived in Germany at the time, and Lynn operated a lending library from her vast book collection – which she had catalogued herself using the Dewey Decimal system. She charged 
a one-mark deposit for each book borrowed. Many of the books weren’t returned, but Lynn didn’t mind; her father kept a steady supply coming from his trips out of the country, books that Lynn devoured at the rate of about three per day, she says. The 7-year-old also taught classmates to read at the American school she attended, as well as coaching German speakers in English – for 1 German mark per hour (at the time about 25 cents).
The family lived in Frankfurt during the week and moved to a house outside of town for weekends. The country house, recalls Lynn, now 60, was the stuff of childhood fantasy. “It had all the mysteries of the universe,” she recalls. “Three secret staircases… you could hide in so many places.”
It’s this house, or at least her memory of it, that Lynn has recreated on Route 108 in Clarksville – although, she admits, “this is really only half of the original.” Even so, the Columbia Inn at Peralynna looks plenty grand from the outside. The sprawling four-story white building, designed in the style of a German country manor house, adorned with porches and balconies, stretches across the yard, approached by a circular drive.
Though Lynn’s family moved to Taiwan for her father’s work when Cynthia was in middle school (where she continued her self-employment by selling earrings purchased from street vendors to her friends at school for a steep markup), she remained enamored with the German house. She had been prohibited from taking any photographs of it – or even knowing its exact location. Her father worked for the CIA, and the rambling white house with the nooks and crannies was used as a “safe house” by the U.S. government, used, she recalls, for such clandestine activities as prisoner exchanges. “All my nannies from that time carried guns,” she says. “They were all agents.”
So Lynn obsessively drew pictures of the house from memory. More than thirty years later, she was able to get the place built, and she eventually turned it into a bed and breakfast, where she and her husband, David Lynn, currently reside.
The Columbia Inn at Peralynna has 19 rooms and an auxiliary apartment that can be used for long-term stays. The rooms are luxuriously appointed, with electric fireplaces, balconies and Jacuzzi tubs in most of the private baths. For some guests, it’s a place to stay for a night or a month during trips for business or research in the area. For others, it’s a romantic getaway.
Lynn, a trained accountant who has also worked in real estate and business mergers, bought the land and the old house that once sat on it in 1989, as a single mother. “My mother came by and said, ‘why did you buy this old property?’ and I said, ‘Mom, all property is old,'” Lynn recalls. For the next seven years, she and her four children cleaned the place up while Lynn continued to work as an accountant.
In the meantime, she had her myriad sketches of the German house turned into engineered plans, bringing her vision that much closer to reality. During that period she met David Lynn, then a counselor with Baltimore County Schools with deep roots in the region. “His ancestor, Judge David Lynn, was one of the judges that repudiated the Stamp Act,” Cynthia reports. “His name is on a
plaque in the Frederick Courthouse.” David was enthusiastic about Cynthia’s dream house, and encouraged her to build it. With the help of her son Brandon, she did. Cynthia and David were married when the house was complete. In the interim, the couple learned that David’s family had once owned the property upon which the house sat.
Indeed, the Peralynna seems charmed, a state that is especially apparent on weekend evenings once a month when the inn hosts dinner dances. Cynthia came up with the idea a few years ago after reconnecting with an old friend. Lynn returned with her family to Maryland when she was 13, and she met Bob Reilly, who played in a popular rock band at high school in Prince George’s County. “They played soul music and Motown stuff. Hundreds of kids would show up for the dances.” Two years ago, she met him again. Now a retail director for a local logistics company, Bob still plays music – at the time, he was entertaining the residents of a local retirement community where Lynn’s parents reside.
The two began talking about old times, and Cynthia invited Reilly and his musical partners Joe Goulait, a retired photographer for the Smithsonian, and Steve Rosch, founder of Roar Productions, a Columbia-based music production company, to play at the inn. The dances, on Friday and Saturday evenings one weekend a month, include a buffet dinner and wine, with an option to bring your own. The dining area and sitting room of the inn, with high windows that open to the patio outside, are cleared out and set with tables surrounding a dance floor. The quirky layout of the place allows for tables in cozy nooks and on landings.
Lynn encourages the musical trio (which often plays as a duo, with just Joe and Bob), to play songs from the past: Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, the Beach Boys, the Rolling Stones and the occasional R&B hit. Cynthia’s favorites are from the 60s. “When they play ‘Be My Baby’ (by the Ronettes) or ‘When a Man Loves a Woman’ (Percy Sledge), I’m amazed because everyone gets up to dance, bar none,” she says.
I was able to experience the romantic potential of the Peralynna at one of the monthly dinner dances last summer. Cynthia had whispered to me that one of the guests intended to propose to his girlfriend that night. Sure enough, at one point the band stopped and a recording came on. The two remained on the dance floor, dancing slowly until sometime in the middle of the song, the man dropped to one knee and presented her with a ring.
It was indeed a magical moment, and I’d guess that the couple will remember the Columbia Inn at Peralynna with an affection akin to Cynthia Lynn’s fondness for the German country house of her childhood. *
