So How About a Home on ‘Rolling Hill Way’?

The new Winding Creek development here has street names as pastoral as they come: Starry Night Court, Moonbeam Drive, Geranium Court, Harvest Moon Lane. And then there’s Grassy Knoll Court.

For Billy Isbell, vice chairman of the Prince William County Planning Commission, the name doesn’t conjure visions of rolling hills.

Some conspiracy theorists who have studied the John F. Kennedy assassination believe shots were fired at the president from a “grassy knoll” in Dealey Plaza. The accepted conclusion is that Lee Harvey Oswald, acting alone, fired the fatal shots from the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository.

“Maybe I’m being hypersensitive,” Isbell said.

Nevertheless, he was irked enough at the connotation to call Airston Group, the Centreville, Va., company building homes in the development. He was told that Airston didn’t come up with the name--Pulte Home Corp., another developer, did.

When he called Pulte, “basically, they said, ‘Hey, we’re sorry you’re offended,’ ” Isbell said.

Pulte would not comment.

Prince William Planning Director Rick Lawson also investigated the origin of Grassy Knoll Court. He found that the names of the streets in the development were picked to match natural features in the area.

Winding Creek itself is a reference to nearby Powells Creek. The development is in an area of rolling hills and meadows--or grassy knolls.

“People literally didn’t know what we were talking about” when they were asked about the assassination connection, Lawson said.

Builders usually take great pains to avoid any kind of unpleasant connotation associated with their development, Lawson said.

Isbell was told that all the homeowners in the area would have to agree on a name change before it could be done.

“I’m dithering on whether to go down there and knock on the doors,” Isbell said. “I was 30 when [the assassination] happened. . . . I just remember high feelings at the time. . . . Maybe it’s 35 years later, and nobody remembers anymore.”

An attempt to change the name won’t get far with Jan and Jeff Marsteller. They were the first to buy a house on Grassy Knoll Court.

“I think it’s a lovely name, I really do,” Jan Marsteller said.

And the Marstellers care about what’s in a name. They refused to buy a house on Devils Reach Road, in another Woodbridge development, because of that name.

Maureen Constanzo, another homeowner on Grassy Knoll Court, said she made an “instantaneous connection” when she heard the name.

“But it doesn’t offend me,” Constanzo said. She also vetoed the idea of a change.

“I don’t want them to change the name,” she said. “I already have my checks!”