ABCDE METRO thursday, september 16, 2010 POSTLOCAL.COM 68, 9 a.m. 81, noon 87, 5 p.m. 78, 9 p.m.


Obituaries Broadcaster Edwin Newman, 91, brought literacy and depth to NBC newscasts for more than three decades and took on a second role as a guardian of grammar. B9


Chat with ‘Top Chef’ Chat with the winning chef from “Top Chef D.C.” at 12:30 p.m. and then join the Going Out Guide staff for hints on where to find local fun at 1 p.m.


TRANSIT


MetroAccess probe The contractor that runs Metro’s service for the disabled investigates its hiring and training policies after a string of sexual assault allegations against drivers this year. B4


Silver Line cost soars for 2nd phase


Entire project could hit $6.6 billion if Dulles stop is under terminal


by Derek Kravitz The second part of Metrorail’s


extension from Falls Church to Dulles International Airport and Loudoun County could cost as much as $1.3 billion more than original estimates, which may mean higher rates for peo- ple who use the Dulles Toll Road. The new estimate was provid-


ed Wednesday to members of the Metropolitan Washington Air- ports Authority, which is over- seeing construction. The first phase is costing $2.75 billion, the authority said. Early estimates had placed costs of the second phase in the same range. The new price range increases the cost by at least $690 million and potentially twice as much. The biggest question mark is the placement of the Metrorail stop at Dulles — beneath the air- port’s main terminal as planned or aboveground and farther from the main gates. The move would save $640 million, engi-


neers said. Consultants are now evaluating where an outdoor sta- tion could be located. If the underground station, with its two miles of tunneling, is not scrapped, the cost of the 23- mile extension, which is being constructed in two phases, could balloon to nearly $6.6 billion. Al- though the higher cost estimate was anticipated, members of the airports authority’s board took a “deep breath” upon hearing of the higher numbers, said Mame Reiley, chairman of the board’s Dulles Metrorail finance com-


metrorail continued on B5 Racial hostilities, thawed with the ice


Naval honoree recounts how Newfoundland town’s kindness changed him after shipwreck


by Michael E. Ruane


The woman cradled Lanier W. Phillips’s head in her arm as if he were a baby, gently feeding the shipwrecked sailor hot soup she had brewed to help save his life. “Swallow,” she said gently. “Swal- low.”


Phillips could scarcely believe


what was happening: a white woman caring for a black man as if he were her son. Back home in Georgia, he thought, she could have been run out of town, and he could easily have been lynched.


But Phillips wasn’t in Georgia.


He was in the tiny coastal mining community of St. Lawrence, Newfoundland, with its popula- tion of about 1,000. It was Febru- ary 1942. He was an 18-year-old Navy mess attendant, steeped in the segregation of the American South and the U.S. Navy. Yet as he rested in the tender care of a ru- ral Canadian housewife named Violet Pike, the course of his life, he said, was altered forever. Scarred in the crucible of rac- ism, he vowed to live like the peo- ple who saved him. On Wednesday night in the


District, Phillips, 87, a retired oceanographer, civil rights activ- ist and the Navy’s first black so- nar technician, received one of the U.S. Navy Memorial’s Lone Sailor awards for Navy veterans who have had distinguished civil- ian careers.


Other recipients were comedi- an Bill Cosby, who once served as a Navy hospital corpsman, and former Washington Redskins star Eddie LeBaron, who was an officer in the Marines. Past recipients have included presidents, admirals and mem- bers of Congress.


But Phillips, who was the low- est of the low in the segregated Navy of World War II, also has a


on washingtonpost.com


A life changed, in words and images


For photos of shipwreck survivor Lanier Phillips and a video of him discussing how the experience changed him, go to PostLocal.com.


Te second part of the Silver Line could cost more than $1 billion more than original estimates, which could spell higher fare increases for the Dulles Toll Road.


267 Route 772 Ends at 28Sterling 659 50 Airport


Dulles Int’l


Herndon 7100


Chantilly 28 0 MILES 5


FAIRFAX CO.


495 395 THE WASHINGTON POST 7 Reston L Reston 267 First phase will 66 end at Wiehle Avenue


Falls Church


ARL. CO.


Tysons Corner


495 267 D.C.


LOUDOUN CO. Ashburn


MD. VIRGINIA


Silver Line Phase two


Phase one


Open in 2013 Open in 2016


Proposed stations B DC MD VA S


JOHN KELLY’S WASHINGTON


A piece of the pie A Kensington pizza parlor open since 1967 and passed from father to son is bracing for the competition coming with a national burrito chain that’s poised to move into the Maryland neighborhood. B2


Baker


win hints at shift in mood JACKSON YIELDS


IN PR. GEORGE’S


Voters appear ready for end of Johnson era


by Miranda S. Spivack Prince George’s County Demo-


crats appeared to be searching for a new style of leadership Tuesday when they nominated former state delegate Rushern L. Baker III to be the next county executive and turned aside a bid from popu- lar county Sheriff Michael A. Jack- son. Jackson, closely aligned with


the incumbent county executive, Jack B. Johnson (D), had won na- tional acclaim for some of his de- partment’s work but also had been plagued by allegations of employee misconduct. He conced- ed the race to Baker about 7 a.m. Wednesday. A slow vote count by the coun-


Lanier Phillips at age 18, when he joined the U.S. Navy. He later became the Navy’s first black sonar technician.


powerful story he has made it his mission to tell. Mess attendants were essentially officers’ waiters, said Phillips, a resident of Wash- ington’s Armed Forces Retire- ment Home. They were trained to polish silverware and shoes and to serve meals. They were forced to wear bow ties, he said, and were not permitted to wear brass buttons on their coats. Their buttons could only be black. Many attendants were African Americans, and as such were rel- egated to bunking in segregated portions of their ships. “The Navy was as racist as the state of Mississippi,” he said. But even the most junior mess attendant had a battle station. His was on a


navy continued on B12


Arlington exhumation confirms Marine’s ID


by Christian Davenport The remains of Marine Corps


Pvt. Heath Warner, who was 19 when he was killed in Iraq four years ago, were positively identi- fied Wednesday after his coffin was exhumed from the grounds of Arlington National Cemetery. After finding inaccurate infor-


mation in burial records, Scott Warner of Canton, Ohio, had grown concerned that his son might be interred in the wrong place and asked that his body be exhumed. The exhumation, held under a brilliant blue sky shortly after 8 a.m., came after the cemetery discovered last month that two sets of remains had been buried in the wrong place. On Wednes- day morning, Army spokesman


Gary Tallman said three sets of remains had been involved in that mix-up but revised his state- ment later, saying he had been provided incomplete informa- tion by Army officials. Warner said he lost faith in the


cemetery’s leadership after the Army’s inspector general re- leased a report in June that found widespread record-keep- ing problems at the nation’s most important military burial site, including 211 mislabeled or un- marked grave sites and at least four burial urns that had been dug up and dumped in a pile of excess dirt. That report has also shaken the confidence of veterans or- ganizations, which have called for supervision of the cemetery


arlington continued on B12 JAHI CHIKWENDIU/THE WASHINGTON POST ASTRID RIECKEN FOR THE WASHINGTON POST


Scarred by the hostility of the segregated South, “I had hatred for white men,” says Lanier W. Phillips, 87. Now the former Navy mess attendant, who was honored Wednesday with the U.S. Navy Memorial’s Lone Sailor award, says he lives to tell the story of how his outlook changed after he was shipwrecked in 1942. At left, Phillips poses with his fellow award winners, former Redskins star Eddie LeBaron and comedian Bill Cosby.


ty’s Board of Elections stretched well into the early morning, pre- venting unofficial results from be- ing tallied until 5 a.m. “Baker’s victory should spell some change for Prince George’s County,” said Paul Herrnson, di- rector of the Center for American Politics and Citizenship at the University of Maryland and a county resident. Herrnson said the 51-year-old lawyer is likely to avoid the sort of patronage system and machine politics that many in the county have said were John- son’s hallmarks. “The voters spoke and spoke in


favor of decisive and mature lead- ership,” said former county exec- utive Wayne K. Curry, one of three former county executives who


baker continued on B6 Moderates ousted


The next Maryland Senate could be a more polarized, less compromising place in the wake Tuesday’s primaries. B7


Union power


Police and firefighters are happy to claim responsibility for Duchy Trachtenberg’s defeat in the Montgomery council primary. B7


For the status quo


Incumbents on the school boards in Montgomery and Prince George’s counties win their primaries handily. B6


Tuesday toppled the city’s ruling troika: Mayor Adrian Fenty, Attorney General Peter Nickles and Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee. All busted up. The trio’s contempt for everyday people was handed back to them in spades at the polls. Payback is a . . . well, you know what they say.


I


And people who need more time to gloat and wave their fists, take it. I know that the presumptive mayor-elect, Vincent Gray, is calling for healing, as he promised on the campaign trial. And that’s all good.


But Fenty was a cruel mayor.


He inflicted deep hurts, not little boo-boos that you kiss and blow to heaven and make feel okay overnight.


n a stunning repudiation of divisive, autocratic leadership, District residents


Ding-dong, Fenty’s gone. The wicked mayor is gone. COURTLAND MILLOY


Air out those wounds. Having taken office promising to cradle the most vulnerable residents, Fenty set out almost immediately shooting the wounded. Closing homeless shelters. Forgetting about job-training programs. Firing city workers with the wave of a callous hand — black female heads of households more often than not. Fenty boasted of being a hard-charging, can-do mayor. But he couldn’t find time to meet with 98-year-old Dorothy Height and 82-year-old Maya Angelou. Respect for elders —


that’s too old school for Fenty. Dis the sistas — his supporters will understand. Watch them at the chic new


eateries, Fenty’s hip newly arrived “creative class” firing up their “social media” networks whenever he’s under attack: Why should the mayor have to stop his work just to meet with some old biddies, they tweet. Who cares if the mayor is arrogant as long as he gets the job done? Myopic little twits. And lordy don’t complain about Rhee. She’s creating a “world-class


school system,” they text. As for you blacks: Don’t you, like, even know what’s good for you? So what if Fenty reneged on his promise to strengthen the city from the inside by helping the working poor move into the middle class. Nobody cares that he has opted to import a middle class, mostly young whites who can afford to pay high rent for condos that replaced affordable apartments. Don’t ask Fenty or Rhee whom this world-class school system will serve if low-income black residents are being evicted from his world-class city in droves. You blacks, always playing


the race card. A word of advice to Gray: Do not overlook the bile on the ballot. The disappointment, anger, feelings of betrayal that


milloy continued on B5


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