ABCDE METRO sunday, june 20, 2010 LOCAL HOME PAGE 81, 9 a.m. 89, noon 93, 5 p.m. 82, 9 p.m.


Obituaries Manute Bol, 47, twice a Washington Bullet, was one of the NBA’s tallest players and most prodigious shot-blockers. C7


Take me out to the park Get the NatsCast from the Capital Weather Gang and information about the best ways to the ballpark from Dr. Gridlock. Go to PostLocal.com.


RELIGION


A sign of Sikh faith A turban-tying ceremony marks a rite of passage and a lifetime commitment for young men but can pose difficulties for them in American society. C3


C DC MD VA S


JOHN KELLY’S WASHINGTON


Which came first? When you’re identifying the oldest Washington bar or hotel in continuous operation, Answer Man says, you have to take a close look at the history of the contenders. C3


Seeking a sense of place


for Tysons FROM CROSSROADS TO COMMUNITY


Fairfax officials set to pass urban redevelopment plan


by Derek Kravitz


For those who live in Tysons Corner, describing where they call home can be as difficult as getting to and from the jumble of office buildings, auto dealers and malls that make up Northern’s Vir- ginia’s traffic-clogged office park. Tysons has no Zip code of its own, few


MELINA MARA/THE WASHINGTON POST Mihir Shah, with his dog, Naya, is among the many newcomers to the District who are making up their minds about the mayoral race.


“If we don’t become politically engaged, we’re just


talking.” — Donald Isaac Jr., Ward 7 community organizer


THE UNKNOWN VOTERS O


New registrations add another variable to D.C. mayor’s race by Ann E. Marimow


n Fifth Street NW, gym rats and couples walking dogs mix with prostitutes and the home- less. A tired strip club hugs the corner just steps from the


young professionals lined up at lunch- time for gourmet sandwiches and sushi. This transitional downtown neighbor- hood, known as Mount Vernon Triangle, did not have a voting home of its own when Adrian M. Fenty defeated then-D.C. Council Chairman Linda W. Cropp in the Democratic primary on his way to be- coming mayor four years ago. Precinct 143, which includes part of Chinatown, was established in 2008 in response to


the surge of condominium dwellers along Massachusetts Avenue who were flocking to the former parking lot hub-turned- island of urban cool. Some of the precinct’s newcomers are among the more than 47,000 Democrats who have registered to vote in the city since the 2006 mayoral contest, many of them inspired by Barack Obama’s presi- dential campaign. A Washington Post analysis of city figures shows the greatest increase in registered Democrats in tran- sient Ward 1, which includes the gentrify- ing U Street corridor, followed closely by more established and predominantly Af- rican American Ward 7, east of the Ana- costia River. The new voters would be important to a political campaign in any election cycle,


From first to last, that dog made me a better man


y wife called me at the office Wednesday afternoon to say we had to euthanize our dog of 14 years. Cancer in the liver and spleen. Did I want to come to the pet hospital just off Wisconsin Avenue NW to be present for the injections? At first I said no. I was too busy. I’d just sent over my column for Thursday, and my editor hadn’t had a chance to look at it. The dog was just an animal, after all. Then my Jiminy Cricket voice spoke up.


M ROBERT McCARTNEY


You know, “Let your conscience be your guide.” The voice said: I know I’d rather skip this, but I really ought to say goodbye in person. I should stroke her


pumpkin-colored fur (now mixed with white) one last time. Also, though I’m not proud to admit it,


Iwas motivated partly by a twinge of egotistical self-protection. I didn’t want to have to tell anybody in the future that I made my wife witness the sad event on her own.


So I went. It was the right choice, and for some reasons, I hadn’t anticipated. Our pet’s death reminded me of something she’d taught me about how families bond. Her demise also offered a lesson about the value of acquiescing to strong emotions, even painful ones.


Dads by the numbers


A century after Father’s Day was first celebrated, census figures offer a snapshot of fatherhood across the country. C3


If it’s not already clear to my regular readers, let me say explicitly that my topic today differs from what you usually see in this space. I could have written about some regional policy issue or social trend, as I normally do. But the feelings I experienced and tears


I shed at the veterinary clinic were powerful. They led me to break with habit and write a more personal, introspective piece. I didn’t want the dog in the first place. I thought she’d be too much work. That’s a typical response for me.


Practical. Utilitarian. What’s the cost-benefit ratio? My wife and son, then in second grade, persisted. They outvoted me. My wife chose her at the shelter.


Judging on appearance, we guessed she mccartney continued on C5


67.8 million estimated number of fathers


across the nation. 25.8


million number of


fathers who were part of married- couple families


Percentage raising three or hild


22%


grocery stores, no churches and just a smattering of aging high-rise apart- ments, condos and townhouses with res- idents who range from young white- collar professionals to foreign-born im- migrants to retirees. “When I first moved here, I was


but they are particularly sought-after this year, when Fenty is thought to be in a tight primary contest against D.C. Coun- cil Chairman Vincent C. Gray. To Fenty’s camp, the fact that new- comers have chosen the District over, say, Bethesda or Ballston is directly related to the mayor’s initiatives to improve schools and lower crime, said campaign strat- egist Tom Lindenfeld. “We think we have a chance once they are exposed to the contrast in the race,” he said. “We’re go- ing to do everything necessary to make that case.” Gray’s campaign is trying to capitalize on his background as a community or- ganizer — something he shares with Oba-


newcomers continued on C4 tysons continued on C4


Sylvester Brown escorts his brother’s casket to Lincoln Memorial Cemetery in Suitland. After the benediction, Brown’s family and friends exited the church to find hundreds of law


enforcement officers standing at attention to salute their fallen colleague.


THE WASHINGTON POST LINDA DAVIDSON/


shocked we didn’t have a drugstore or a dry cleaner. Nothing to support any type of residential life,” said Valerie Neal, 59, who has lived for seven years in the 2,800-person Rotonda condo communi- ty on Greensboro Drive. “There’s six lanes of traffic between us and the near- est apartment building. A lot of people don’t know there’s places to live here.” The 1,700 acres spread out over five square miles that make up Tysons Cor- ner is Fairfax’s de facto downtown. But this downtown has 14 hotels with nearly 3,900 rooms; more parking spaces (167,000) than the combined number of people who live and work there (just un- der 125,000); many more workers who drive in (105,000) than residents who sleep there (17,000 or 18,500, depending on who you ask); highways that divide it (Route 7, Route 123, the Dulles Toll Road, the Capital Beltway); and too few ways to get in and out. On Tuesday the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors is expected to approve a


Md. trooper ‘showed us how to serve’ Hundreds attend funeral


to remember the officer with a magnetic smile


by Ashley Halsey III


The montage of photos that flickered across three jumbo screens before the service got underway in the vast church sanctuary captured the life of Wesley Brown with a silent eloquence that ri- valed anything two dozen speakers would say about him in the three hours that followed. From his quizzical look in a childhood studio portrait to happy family gather-


ings with a blinking Christmas tree in the background; from photos of him as a kid among kids to those of a young man surrounded by boys on the verge of man- hood; and finally to others showing a tall, elegant man in the crisp brown uni- form of a Maryland State Police trooper. And from one photo to the next, child- hood to manhood, there always is his magnetic smile. On Saturday, the people who sur- rounded him in those cheerful photos filed solemnly into Jericho City of Praise church in Landover to mourn the man with that smile who had been gunned down at age 24 , allegedly by an angry pa- tron outside an Applebee’s restaurant eight days earlier. His family and the woman he planned


to marry, 28 young men for whom he be- came a father figure, the troopers he trained with and those he worked with, hundreds of other uniformed officers from throughout the region and as far away as Vermont, and row after row of politicians.


Some who spoke knew him, the rest


knew of him, and their commentary fleshed out with words what the photos already had revealed.


A close family and religious values helped guide Brown during an upbring- ing in Seat Pleasant, one of Washington’s most violent suburbs, but could not shield him completely. Ralph Calhoun, deacon of Abyssinia Baptist Church, said


funeral continued on C5


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