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From Page One crash from A1
for her daughter’s funeral and for some living expenses for her grandchildren, but she still has not been able to buy a headstone for DuBose’s grave. She shares a room with Ava in the home of a niece and lives on welfare, food stamps and Social Security. Ava’s brother, Raja, went to live with his father in another town. “It’s a struggle, but I am man-
aging,” she said. “I’d like for her to be able to have her own bedroom like her mother provided for her.” Frustration peaked this month when Metro failed to consult families about a remembrance ceremony it was planning for the victims Tuesday. “Metro hasn’t done anything.
All they are doing is pointing the finger,” Jenkins said.
An empty place
Vernard McMillan sometimes stops by the bridge that overlooks the site where his older sister, Metro train operator Jeanice Mc- Millan, 42, of Springfield, per- ished behind the controls in an accident that by all accounts she could not have prevented. “I can speak to her for a minute and place flowers on the gate of the bridge,” he said. McMillan has become a surro-
gate father for his sister’s son, Jordan, 20, who has suffered from depression since her death. In September, Jordan attempted to return to school at Virginia Union University in Richmond but fell into a deepening and wor- risome gloom. “Everything he saw reminded him of his mother. When he ate, it reminded him of the meals his mom cooked. When the other kids talked about going home, it reminded him of her. It started weighing on him,” McMillan said. “He started not really concentrat- ing in class, and he ended up just standing in his dorm room for four days straight.” When Jordan stopped return- ing calls from the family, McMil- lan knew it was time to intervene. He brought the young man home in December to live with him and to attend Prince George’s Com- munity College. Jordan, an Eng- lish major, is “feeling better” with support from family, McMillan said. “We are keeping a close eye on him.” Still, every gathering of the
large McMillan family carries a somber note, McMillan said, re- calling a Memorial Day get-to- gether with about 40 relatives at his home in Upper Marlboro. “At some point in time, it becomes a little difficult, because she would be there talking with everybody
Coming Tuesday
Metro seemed to suffer a collapse after the deadliest accident in its history. Four more workers were killed on the tracks in the ensuing months, and concerns about its performance prompted federal efforts to assume control of safety oversight of the nation’s subways. Much of Metro’s senior leadership has changed, and the system is struggling with historic budget deficits. What’s next for what was once the nation’s pre-eminent subway? For full coverage of the Red Line crash investigation, visit
washingtonpost.com/redlinecrash.
BlackBerry’s popularity faces growing challenge from iPhone
electronics from A1
paign to square the federal gov- ernment with how the rest of the country consumes mobile data and ignores spouses and children at dinner. “There are people in my office who are bucking change,” ac- knowledged Mack, whose wife, Rep. Mary Bono Mack (R-Calif.), is also an iPhone enthusiast. “I think I can be persuasive. I’ll let them decide on their own — or I will force them. We’re slow about adopting a lot of things in this town. But I can feel the change coming.” Evolving from an e-mail-ob- sessed BlackBerry town to a whiz- bang app town would represent a significant shift in how the gov- ernment does business. A program that turns a phone into a document scanner would let government officials manage their work lives on the go. Instead of e-mailing back and forth with several colleagues, a group could conduct a four-way instant mes- sage chat in real time. The shift from centralized to decentralized, from action to interaction would flow to the thousands of compa- nies across the region that do business with the federal govern- ment. “The iPhone introduced a new
paradigm, the apps paradigm, and that paradigm is everything that matters now,” said tech guru Tim O’Reilly, who has been in- troducing apps developers to the people who run federal agencies. “But a lot of people in D.C. really love their BlackBerrys, and they have a strong relationship with them.” “Love” may be too shallow a
word to describe this region’s fixa- tion with the BlackBerry, an ad- dictive e-mail powerhouse that so far lacks the technological in- nards for the rich, data-heavy apps that have become so popular on other smartphones. (No, not just games in which people throw sheep at each other via their Face- book apps.)
“We’re slow about adopting a lot of things in this town. But I can feel the
change coming.” — Rep. Connie Mack
Washington is the country’s eighth-largest metro region but the fourth-biggest user of Black- Berrys according to Localytics, which tracks mobile app usage. Best Buy sells more BlackBerrys in the Washington region than it does elsewhere, said Scott Ander- son, the retailer’s senior director of mobile merchants.
Memories of 9/11 Introduced in 1999, the Black-
Berry was the first mobile device that could send secure e-mail out- side the office, and law firms (there are a few around here, al- ways hunting for more billable hours) quickly adopted the tech- nology. The government joined in, making the BlackBerry an essen- tial tool for communication. “It’s like the mouse,” said Nao-
mi Baron, an American University linguist who studies mobile de- vice communication. “It becomes a native language in how you do things, how you communicate.” BlackBerrys were one of the
few ways government officials could communicate during the hours after the terrorist attacks Sept. 11, 2001. The federal govern- ment apparently has a long mem- ory. To do business with the feds, BlackBerrys are not preferred; they are often required. “To my knowledge, I don’t have contracts that require I get an iPhone for an employee,” said Frank Smith, chief information officer for Mc- Lean consulting giant Booz Allen Hamilton. “I do have contracts that stipulate BlackBerrys.” A spokeswoman for the manu-
facturer of BlackBerrys declined to comment on the device’s mar- ket share in the region. The com- pany, which touts its robust e- mail system for government and businesses, is scheduled to release a new operating system this sum- mer that it hopes will attract more app developers. But people like the Macks — as well as app developers, telecom- munications companies and even the chief technology officer of the United States — think change is coming, due in part to President Obama’s 2009 Open Government mandate, requiring government agencies to open the floodgates of data for greater “transparency, participation and collaboration.” “Washington is beginning to re- alize the power of mobility, not just for traditional communica- tions but in engaging in new ways of doing business,” said Aneesh Chopra, the nation’s first chief
S
KLMNO
SUNDAY, JUNE 20, 2010 Crash victims’ families still struggling with loss, anger
parents cannot fulfill their great- est wish: to be the doting grand- parents of her nearly 2-year-old daughter. Tawanda Brown, the mother of
victim LaVonda Nicole “Nikki” King, 23, said she is angry that Metro officials have not em- braced the families. For her part, Jenkins is ready
to take her complaints — mainly that Metro is more interested in shifting blame than in support- ing victims — to Metro head- quarters. “If we have to go stand in front of the Metro building, we will. That was my next plan,” she said. Metro Chairman Peter Benja-
LINDA DAVIDSON/THE WASHINGTON POST
Crash victim Veronica DuBose’s mother Carolyn Jenkins, left, and sister Monica Cochran mourn her death a year after the Red Line crash. Jenkins is caring for DuBose’s 2-year-old daughter, Ava, bottom left. Ava’s brother, Raja, center, is now living with his father in another town. Cochran, holding her 2-year-old son, Aaron, helps as much as she can.
Victims of the Red Line crash Pictured left to right on the front page:
Mary “Mandy” Doolittle, 59, employee of the American Nurses Association. Veronica DuBose, 29, nursing student and mother of two. Ana Fernandez, 40, office cleaner and mother of six. Dennis Hawkins, 64, school aide and caretaker for elderly father. LaVonda Nicole “Nikki” King, 23, aspiring beautician and mother of two. Jeanice McMillan, 42, Metro train operator. Retired Maj. Gen. David F. Wherley Jr., 62, former commanding general of the D.C. National Guard. Ann Wherley, 62, mortgage banker. Cameron Taihi “Tai” Williams, 37 , contract laborer and avid musician.
and having everybody laugh,” he said. McMillan no longer rides Met- ro, seeking to avoid bad memo- ries. Other relatives, concerned about safety, only ride the rail cars in the middle of the trains. McMillan has been touched by the compassion shown by his sis- ter’s co-workers. Close col-
leagues, including a train opera- tor who graduated from her training class and lives down the street, have frequently checked in with the family. As for Metro’s leadership, Mc-
Millan said he and the families of other victims agree that the tran- sit officials “could have been more supportive.” But he added:
on
postlocal.com For crash victim’s family, a year of grief, hardships
The mother and sister of Veronica DuBose, who died in the Red Line crash, talk of missing DuBose; taking care of her two children, Raja, 8, and Ava, 2; and their disappointment in Metro.
“It wouldn’t bring my sister back if they did try to do more. My sis- ter is gone. . . . It’s still just not making sense. She didn’t have to go like that.”
Private pain
Although many relatives speak willingly of the pain that endures a year after the loss of their loved ones, others have preferred to mourn privately or have felt con- strained about making public statements because of ongoing litigation.
Some, however, are increasing-
ly outraged as they feel ignored, particularly by Metro. Family members say that Met-
ro officials have rarely contacted them, if at all, and that the rela-
tives were not invited to Tues- day’s memorial until June 9. Elizabeth W. Regan, the daugh- ter of retired Maj. Gen. David F. Wherley Jr., 62, of Washington and his wife, Ann, 62, who were both killed in the crash, issued a written statement through a law- yer.
“I was orphaned by a prevent- able tragedy,” said Regan, of Charlotte. “My parents’ lives and those of several other people who died in the crash were cut drasti- cally short by Metro’s negligence.” Regan said she is angry and disappointed at Metro’s “last- minute” memorial service. “I have no interest in attending a publicity stunt,” she said. She said her “greatest sorrow” is that her
min, said board members have extended their condolences over the crash, which he called “a ter- rible and awful situation that we all wish had never happened.” Benjamin added that “the proc- ess of informing the families [about the memorial] should have happened” much earlier as part of regular outreach to them. Asked to respond to families’ concerns that Metro has ignored them for much of the past 11 months, Metro spokeswoman Li- sa Farbstein reiterated that the transit authority offered financial assistance as well as medical and mental health care in the days and weeks after the accident and noted that then-General Manager John B. Catoe Jr. had set aside time to talk with family members who attended the NTSB hearing on the accident in February. She also said that in the past week, Metro’s interim general manager, Richard Sarles, “began reaching out to the families of those who passed.” Kenneth Hawkins, whose older
brother, D.C. public school em- ployee Dennis Hawkins, 64, died in the crash, has written to public officials asking them why the Red Line victims are not receiving the same attention as, for example, those killed in the Gulf of Mexico oil rig explosion. “What Obama has offered to the citizens of Louisiana, we should have had that as well,” he said. He called Metro a “black hole” for its lack of outreach ef- forts. Hawkins predicted that after a
flurry of memorials Tuesday, in- terest in the plight of the families will only fade further. “It will get worse, because after Tuesday, everyone will be there and put on this face, and that will go away,” he said. “And it will be, ‘Oh, it’s two years, three years.’ It will just be another historical moment.”
tysona@washpost.com
Staff researcher Meg Smith contributed to this report.
MELINA MARA/THE WASHINGTON POST
Rep. Mary Bono Mack (R-Calif.) holds a BlackBerry, still the choice of official Washington. Her husband, Rep. Connie Mack (R-Fla.), with his iPhone, can hardly wait for Washington to get with it.
technology officer. The Department of Health and
Human Services recently released health data that developers are building apps around, including a program that would alert patients through their iPhones if a drug they are taking is recalled. The Defense Advanced Re- search Projects Agency, or DAR- PA, which develops technology for the Defense Department, re- cently announced a program to develop apps for the battlefield. The Army, which has never ex-
actly embraced change easily, is conducting an apps development contest with iStrategyLabs, a Du- pont Circle firm run by Peter Cor- bett, who is all of 29. “The Open Government initia- tive is giving apps developers a new relationship with a different business partner, the govern- ment,” Corbett said. “Instead of
throwing sheep at each other on Facebook, we are building tools that keep us safe.” Some of the 53 new Army apps
submitted for the contest include programs for iPhones that would prompt the devices to take pic- tures and gather location data if large vibrations from explosions were felt. Other applications do language translations, provide mess hall options and inventory property. Of the 53 apps sub- mitted, 33 were built for iPhones or Androids, another smartphone brand. For BlackBerrys: two.
Changing fast
Corbett is one of the co-pro- ducers of Digital Capital Week, an event wrapping up this weekend that brought Washington’s tech community together with the gov- ernment. About 39 percent of the more than 4,000 attendees have
iPhones, according to Corbett’s data, outnumbering BlackBerrys by more than 400 devices. That says something to him: Washing- ton is changing, and fast. Told that there were only 86 iPhones in the House of Repre- sentatives, Corbett laughed and said: “It will be 5,000 in two years. I guarantee it.” Although few arms of the bu-
reaucracy have access to iPhones yet, the General Services Admin- istration, which oversees procure- ment for federal agencies, has an iPhone pilot program underway. But old habits in this town are tough to break — even with shiny devices. Connie Mack still has to overcome his staff’s tepid recep- tion to the iPhone. “I told them,” he said, “ ‘You need to change, be- cause eventually you’re gonna be on the outside looking in.’ ”
rosenwaldm@washpost.com
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