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KLMNO POSTLOCAL Talk to us. Talk to newsmakers. Talk to each other. Join the conversation at postlocal.com Focusing on your community


Each week, our photographers bring you scenes from your community. Today, take a look through Sarah Voisin’s lens at the Oxford-Bellevue Ferry in Oxford, Md.


JOHN KELLY’S WASHINGTON


A car goes airborne, and Samaritans appear


A


s she flew through the air in her Volkswagen Jetta, an odd feeling came over Mary Ellen Alberts of Vienna. She


knew she was going to die — after all, her car had left I-95 near Richmond at a high rate of speed, gone airborne, rotated 180 degrees and, having reached that point at which gravity starts reclaiming what it temporarily lost, was plummeting back to earth — and that was okay with her. “It didn’t scare me,” said Mary Ellen, 69, of those few moments frozen between sky and earth. “I just felt, ‘Oh well, it’s been a nice ride. I’ve had a nice life.’ “It kind of shocked me that I didn’t die. But it


also gave me hope for the future, that dying is not that scary.” Dying may not be, but it sounds like crashing


is. Mary Ellen’s car smashed into the ground, landing on its roof amid what


SARAH L. VOISIN/THE WASHINGTON POST M COURTESY MARY ELLEN ALBERTS


aryland is home to what is thought to be the nation’s oldest privately operated ferry service. Husband-and-wife captains Tom and Judy Bixler bought it in 2002. The 3


⁄4 The trip takes about 10 minutes each way, which cuts about 25 minutes


off the 20-mile drive between the two towns. The ferry holds up to nine ve- hicles. It is quite popular, especially with bicyclists in the summer.


-mile passage across the Tred Avon River between the quaint towns of Oxford and Bellevue, Md., has been oper-


ated continuously since 1836. It was originally established in 1683 as a fer- ry service for “horses and men.”


The Oxford-Bellevue Ferry. See more of Sarah’s photos of this historic piece of maritime Maryland at washingtonpost.com/photos.


Mary Ellen Alberts’s Volkswagen Jetta landed on its roof.


appeared to be a primordial forest. And there Mary Ellen hung for a second time, suspended upside down from her seat belt amid the tenting of her airbag. She wondered if anyone knew where she was. “It seemed like forever,” she said.


When I was briefly an editor on The Post’s They fixed it!


At our online Daily Gripe feature, Post readers are suggesting fixes they want made in their communities — and getting results.


Alexandria pothole lives up to its billing


Potholes are like fish — their size is often


exaggerated. So when a reader recently told us that there was a pothole in Alexandria that was four feet long and eight feet wide, we were naturally skeptical. Then we saw a photograph. “It is impossible to drive over,” griper Dee Young wrote. “Most people go into the opposite lane instead of driving over it. It is a hazard for those who drive around it and causing alignment problems to those who drive over it.” Evidently the legend had already spread to the people whose job it was to fix it. Less than 20 minutes after Virginia Department of Transportation spokeswoman Jennifer McCord had e-mailed us to say that she was looking into the issue, she reported that crews were on the scene.


See something you want fixed? Let us know at washingtonpost.com/dailygripe.


“ Conversations


Hundreds of readers turned to PostLocal.com to register shock, anger and concern after Friday night’s brawl on the Metro that involved at least 70 youths at the Gallery Place and L’Enfant Plaza stations.


An underground brawl


blankspace: “Why not treat this as the true risk that it may be and deploy National Guard troops to stations? Move them around for both unpredictability and to avoid claims of profiling. Having just a few dozen troops patrolling along with dogs could make the system much safer.”


llirpa1: “Lawbreakers should go to jail. I think there should be civil penalties for people who can’t control their minor children. ’Cause if I have to be responsible for them, it would be a whole ’nuther kind of party.”


dottydo: “If everyone is armed, no one gets out of line.”


Sirius2: “Put in place a 9 p.m. curfew for 15-to-18-year-olds. If the parents let their children run wild, enforce an early curfew. Lock them up and charge their parents for being irresponsible!”


DomusPublica: “Seriously? The capital city of the most powerful nations on Earth, the literal ‘shining city on a hill’ — and a late-night brawl on a public transit [system] of this magnitude? This is just a case of the poor state of the house, hidden so well with cosmetic repairs, being revealed when part of the ceiling caves in.”


Back talk


“I am trying to raise my 13-year-old to have social skills, to carry on a verbal conversation and [to] interact with humans. But I wonder if those skills will not be so useful in his future — what if there is no one left to talk


to?” — reader eagle2roost, commenting on Ian Shapira’s story Sunday about the rapid drop in the amount of time that teens and young adults spend talking on the phone.


Ian is a contributor to the Post’s Story Lab blog, where you can help direct and improve


our storytelling. Learn more at washingtonpost.com/ storylab.


THE DAILY QUIZ


According to today’s Health and Science section, which animals is facing extinction, due to disease, in the Northeast?


EARN 5 POINTS: Find the answer, then go to washingtonpost.com/postpoints and click on “Quizzes” to enter the correct response.


Robert McCartney’s column Sunday examined the aftermath of the death of Sister Denise Mosier, who was killed by a suspected drunk driver — an illegal immigrant with two DUI convictions — in Prince William County on Aug. 1. McCartney marveled at the forgiveness displayed by Mosier’s sisters. Several readers e-mailed him in response.


Marveling at nuns’ forgiveness Wrote Denise Garvin: “You mention that the


marvel of the situation was the response from the Benedictine community and that you are in awe of the sisters’ attitude of grace. You shouldn’t be in awe of this, as if it’s not commonplace. Yes, a situa- tion as serious as this isn’t seen very often (thank goodness). But the grace, love, compassion and tolerance of Catholic sisters and priests is wit- nessed every day by so many people.” “It’s not that surprising that the Sisters forgave the man,” McCartney responded. “That’s what nuns do. But I was in awe that they did it so quick- ly. They told the driver’s parents, face-to-face, that


Today on


POSTLOCAL.com POINTS EVENTS


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they didn’t hold a grudge, just one day after the ac- cident. Before the funeral!” Garvin responded: “I doubt that I could sum- mon that same strength myself if I ever found my- self in such an awful situation (despite the won- derful teachings I received). But wouldn’t it be wonderful if we all had just a smidgen of their compassion.”


Robert McCartney’s next column runs Thursday. You can e-mail him at


mccartneyr@washpost.com and read more of his work at washingtonpost.com/mccartney.


»


How hot is it? The Capital Weather Gang has forecasts, photographs, tools and more at washingtonpost.com/capitalweathergang.


POINTS & REWARDS Landmark Theatres


FROM DR. GRIDLOCK Post commuter columnist Robert “Dr. Gridlock” Thomson weighed in on Metro safety during an online chat with readers.


Dr. Gridlock: “Metro Transit Police do patrol the trains and the stations. Trouble is, they have a bigger jurisdiction than any of our other local forces, and it includes the trains, buses, rail stations, bus stops, parking lots and garages, rail yards and bus garages. There aren’t enough of them for that. Also, the more officers you put on the trains during one shift, the slower their response time is going to be to an incident, like a fight, that breaks out suddenly on another line a few stations away.”


Log in to D.C. Rider!


The Post has a new offering for plugged-in Metro commuters. You can learn more about D.C. Rider, which you can use to chat with other riders, get news and train information and more, at expressnightout.com/dcrider. Available online or on mobile devices.


Join more discussions about this and other local issues every day at PostLocal.com.


Metro desk 11 years ago, one of the first stories I edited was about a couple whose car went off I-270 near Bethesda late one night. The trees swallowed them as completely as the Amazon rain forest. With the vehicle on its side, the two occupants’ legs broken, the car hidden from view, the hours ticking by, the driver decided to start a fire to alert passing motorists. By the time authorities arrived, the blaze was out of control and had engulfed the car. The female motorist had managed to climb out. The driver hadn’t. My blood runs cold just thinking about it. Who would ever think that in a metropolis of millions such tragedies could play out unwitnessed? Mary Ellen was sure that someone must have seen her car go off the road, probably even the person whose actions set the crash in motion. It was 10:30 a.m. on the Fourth of July. Mary Ellen was driving south in the middle lane on the way to her son Stephen’s house in Williamsburg. A car came up quickly from behind, and Mary Ellen decided to get out of its way by moving to the right-hand lane. Just as she did, the other car whipped to the right, too, its driver impatiently sounding his horn. “I think I have a high startle reflex,” Mary Ellen said. “When this guy leaned on his horn, it startled me so much I did lose control of my car. . . . He must have seen me in his rearview mirror flying.” He wasn’t the one who stopped, though. After she had been hanging upside down for what was probably 10 or 15 minutes, two men managed to climb down the ravine and free Mary Ellen. “They had to hunt to see where I was,” she said. “One of them said he didn’t know how I got through those trees. . . . They were absolutely terrific getting me out of my harness and getting me out upside down and catching me as I undid the seat belt. They were afraid the car was going to explode. I have a diesel. It’s not going to explode.” And then, after Mary Ellen was delivered into the arms of paramedics, her two rescuers were gone. She never got their names. Both were soldiers, she said, and one of them said he worked at the Pentagon. They were traveling with their wives, one of whom she thinks is named Juanita. “I know they were all going down to Newport


News for a Fourth of July celebration with their families,” Mary Ellen said. I set a pretty high bar when it comes to using


my column to thank readers’ unknown Samaritans, the cabdrivers who return lost wallets, the stranger who lets you use his phone to call AAA when you have a flat. My viewpoint has always been: Shouldn’t you have thanked them yourself? But I’m making an exception for Mary Ellen, who was lucky to escape with only a vertebra that was “burst, compressed and cracked” and will spend three months in a plastic contraption embracing her from armpits to hips.


If you were one of those two soldiers, thank you. E-mail me at the address below. And a reminder to the rest of us: Drive as if your life — and the lives of others — depends on it. kellyj@washpost.com


Read more of Kelly’s columns at washingtonpost.com/johnkelly


A complete list of PostPoints Spots can be found at washingtonpost.com/postpoints.


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Escape the heat and see a new movie—read the latest reviews and order your tickets at landmarktheatres.com.


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Washington Performing Arts Society When you join the e-mail club, you get special notices and discount prices on theatre tickets all over town. See wpas.org.


washingtonpost.com/postpoints


Not a PostPoints member yet? Log onto washingtonpost.com/postpoints for more information about this exciting free program.


TUESDAY, AUGUST 10, 2010


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