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KLMNO OBITUARIES ALOCALLIFE:LEONAGAGE,71
Miss USA for a day had a steep fall from the top
BY T. REES SHAPIRO F PHOTOS BY MICHAEL S. WILLIAMSON/THE WASHINGTON POST The crowd gathered outside the Realco gun shop in DistrictHeights joined in prayer.
Activists call on gun dealer to adopt code of conduct
vigil from C1 Jackson said del Real accepted
a copy of the code of conduct offered to him by the activists and noted that although the gun dealer didn’t look at it, he at least didn’t give it back. Del Real assured themthat he was follow- ing the law, Jackson said. The code of conduct is modeled on similar faith-based groups’ calls for tighter adherence to gun laws in Philadelphia, Baltimore and Richmond. District Heights Mayor James
L.Walls Jr. told the crowd that a friend of his had been gunned down in Oxon Hill with a gun purchased at Realco. City offi- cials tried to take the dealer’s business license away several years ago. The Rev. Jesse Jackson, too,
has held protests in front of the brick Craftsman house on Marl- boro Pike. “We’ve brought this up to local
authorities before. They always tell us, ‘We’re working on it,’ ” Walls said. “Well, I’m tired of ‘We’re working on it.’ This group wants Realco to abide by certain terms. But we’ve had so many problemswith them,my thing is, I would prefer them not to be here at all. It’s time for all this to stop.” John Scales’s widow, Jetaune
or one day in 1957, Leona Gage of Maryland was de- clared the most beautiful
woman in theUnited States. ButMs. Gage, who was named
MissUSAon July 18, 1957, had not worn her tiara for more than 24 hours before pageant officials stripped her of the title. Shewasdisqualified for deceiv-
ing the judges on important ele- ments of her biography. She lied about her age—claiming to be 21 when she was 18 — and hid the fact that she was a housewife in Anne Arundel County and the mother of two sons. ForMs.Gage,whodiedOct.5at
age 71 of a heart ailment at a hospital in Sherman Oaks, Calif., losing her crown was the most publicly devastating moment in a difficult life. She had been a prematurely
gorgeousyoungwoman,amother twice over by 16, and locked in a troubled marriage. She hoped the beauty contestwouldbe her route to fortune, if not fame, but it instead led to national humilia- tion. In a subsequent appearance on
the “Ed Sullivan Show,” she looked like a ghost, expressing in almost inaudible tones that she wanted to be a “dramatic actress.” Her career thereafter took her to Las Vegas and then to Southern California, where she existed on the fringes of the movie world. She said she abused drugs and
attempted suicide. All six of her marriages ended in divorce. She eventually lost custody of her five children. The Baltimore Sun tracked her
Jacqueline Scales, right, is comforted by a friend during the vigil. The gun used to kill her son, John Scales III, was sold by Realco.
Dalton-Scales, held on to her 4-year-old daughter, Kennedy, throughout the protest. As her grandmother released the silver balloon, Kennedy asked her mother, “Is that balloon going up to heaven to be with Daddy?” “She’s always talking about
him, about how when we all get to heaven we’ll be a family again and all the thingswe’ll do togeth- er,” Dalton-Scales said. As local church leaders re-
leased red balloons symbolizing the victims of gun crimes and led prayers for the families touched by such violence, a steady stream of customers climbed the back stairs into the gun shop. Inside, people leaned over the
glass counters,whichwere chock full of handguns. When asked whether he had any response to the prayer vigil, del Real re- sponded, “Nothing.”
schulteb@washpost.com
Schools in disadvantaged areas come up short on top teachers
d.c. teachers from C1
er, you should be in a better school,’ ” Davis said. Others say the scarcity of top teachers reflects a broader ineq- uity in the distribution of resourc- es in the school system. “We are catering to folks who
don’t live this side of the river,” said Absalom Jordan, chairman of theWard 8 Education Council. “We still have an education sys- tem in the District of Columbia that is separate and unequal.” The 636 teachers, who repre-
sent about 15 percent of the city’s teacher corps, won their highly effective designations during the 2009-10 school year under IM- PACT, which was introduced by Rhee. Teachers are assessed through
five classroom observations and detailed criteria that include the ability to explain content clearly, to respond effectively to student misunderstandings and to pro- vide multipleways to learn course material. For math and reading teachers in grades 4 through 8, 50 percent of the evaluation is based onstudent growthontheDC-CAS standardized tests. The collective bargaining agreement approved by teachers last summer provides for perfor- mance bonuses for teachers who achieve highly effective status. The highest annual bonuses—as much as $25,000 — are available for highly effective teachers in schools where 60 percent or more of the children are from families that meet federal income guide- lines for free or reduced-price lunch. All 21 schools inWard8fall into that category, commonly used by schools as a measure of household poverty. “All the big financial incentives
go to the teachers in the low-in- come schools,” said Jason Kam- ras, the D.C. schools official who is the principal architect of IM- PACT. “We’re placing a clear pri- ority on serving our children in low-income schools.” It is hoped that other provi-
Wealthier wards, more effective teachers Of the 636* schoolteachers judged by the District to be “highly effective,” only 34 teach in Ward 8 schools and 51 in Ward 7, the least prosperous areas. Te heaviest concentration of outstanding teachers is in Ward 3, the city’s most prosperous area.
Ratio of highly- Enrollment
Ward 1 5,103 Ward 2 2,964 Ward 3 5,067 Ward 4 5,798 Ward 5 5,999 Ward 6 4,983 Ward 7 5,885 Ward 8 8,502
“Highly-effective” teachers
75 52
148 72 66
110 51 34
effective teachers to students
1-to-68 1-to-57 1-to-34 1-to-80 1-to-91 1-to-45
1-to-115 1-to-250
* Twenty-eight of the highly effective teachers are not based in single schools and work in programs such as New Heights, Visiting Instruction Services, Office of Bilingual Education, Office of Special Education and Office of Professional Development.
SOURCE: Staff reports
sions in the new contract will make a difference, Kamras said, including one that gives princi- pals more discretion over hiring from the annual pool of teachers who lost jobs because of enroll- ment declines or program chang- es.
But the bonus system has at-
tracted criticism from some teachers because the contract re- quires that they waive certain job protections in exchange for the money. It is not knownhowmany have declined the payments. And critics say IMPACT disad-
Topic: Education FPO
vantages teachers in schools where challenging conditions make learning difficult. They say that the system does not assess the value or effectiveness of teachers who must contend with large numbers of children from broken or dysfunctional homes and dangerous neighborhoods. “I think the teachers in a lot of
Run Date: 11/ 14/ 2010 Size: 278 x 252 Artist: Name
instances are doing a lot more than teaching,” said D.C. Council member Yvette Alexander of Ward 7, where just 51 teachers
THE WASHINGTON POST
dcschools14-g.AAA PROOF1
designated highly effective are assigned. “They are counselors and social workers. And until you can address all of these issues, I don’t think it’s fair to evaluate them as effective or ineffective based on student outcomes.” Kamras said predicted rates of
test-score growth in classes where teachers are judged for their “value added” are adjusted for factors such as special educa- tion and free lunch. But teachers said the evalua-
tion system will probably never account for the intangibleways in which they support their stu- dents. Bill Rope, a teacher at Hearst Elementary in Ward 3, recalled a colleague at another school who spent his own money and held fundraisers to take his sixth-graders on an annual post-“graduation” trip to Canada so they could experience another country. “Of course, he couldn’t get any
credit under IMPACT for that,” Rope said.
turqueb@washpost.com MARYLAND
BB shooters target cars in Pr. George’s PrinceGeorge’spolice are look-
ing for two people believed re- sponsible for one of the largest cases of randomvandalismin the county. Police think the two are driving around the eastern part of the county in a black Honda Del Sol convertible, shooting up windshields with a BB gun. So far, the suspects have been
tied to nearly 100 cases. “This is the first case of this
magnitude that we’ve experi- enced,” said Evan Baxter, spokes- person for the county police. “There doesn’t seem to be much of a pattern, which has been one of the complications in tracking these guys down. It seems like they’re crimes of opportunity.” The two suspects have been
shooting up windshields all over Lanham, Lake Arbor, Springdale and Bowie since mid-September, Baxter said. “A BB will put a hole through
the windshield,” Baxter said. “It’s not like it makes a crack you can patch. You have to replace the
down in 2005, when she was living alone in an apartment be- yond Hollywood. Having devel- oped chronic obstructive pulmo- nary disease, Ms. Gage was teth- ered to the nose tubes of an oxy- gen tank. “There’s really no way that this
could have a happy ending, is there?” Ms. Gage told the Sun.
“Why? Becausemy dream is dead — having all my children around the table at one time, and me serving them turkey and all the trimmings.” Mary Leona Gage was born
April 8, 1939, in Longview, Tex. A tall, voluptuous brunette be-
fore she was in her teens, Ms. Gage possessed a silhouette capa- ble of stopping men on the side- walk mid-stride. At 13, while working as a drug-
store waitress, she met Gene En- nis, an airman almost a decade her senior. They started dating, and Ms.
Gage learned she was pregnant after he had left for a deployment. She became desperate and wed- ded another airman, Edward Thacker. The vows were annulled days later. She married Ennis when he
returned from his assignment. They moved to Maryland, where he was stationed at an Air Force post at Baltimore’s Friendship In- ternational Airport. At 16, Ms. Gage had a second
child. She said she developed such a frustration with domestic life that she got a job at a dress shop in Glen Burnie. There, Ms. Gage met Barbara
Mewshaw, a sometime model and veteran of the local beauty pag- eant circuit. StunnedbyMs.Gage’sbewitch-
ing, willowy looks, Mewshaw en- tered hernewfriend inanupcom- ing Miss Maryland contest and helped her purchase a discounted gown. “She wanted something out of
life, and her husband was a real jerk,” Mewshaw told the Sun in 2005. “It wasn’t meant to do any harm, just to get her some jobs. We were really just two dumb country girls.” Mewshaw and Ms. Gage con-
spired that they would keep her marriage and family secret throughouttheMissUSApageant in Long Beach, Calif. Not long after Ms. Gage was crowned, however, rumors began to circulate that she had a hus-
band back inMaryland. “Absolutely not.Whowouldsay
such a thing?” she told inquiring reporters. Newspapers also quot- edher saying, “Iwantto wait until I’m 26 before I become seriously interested in the opposite sex.” But when her own mother con-
firmed to the press that her daughter was married, Ms. Gage reluctantly admitted that she made false statements. The run- ner-up, Charlotte Sheffield of Utah, took Ms. Gage’s place as MissUSA. “I needed the money badly,”
Ms. Gage told reporters at the time. “I thought this would be a changeformetoget recognition. I did not expect to win. After I did, I was frightened. I didn’t know what to do.ButI’mmost grateful I wasMissUSA for a day.” In efforts to salvage her show- business career, Ms. Gage moved to Las Vegas, where she lived in a trailer and was a featured act at the TropicanaHotel. Later, she toured strip joints
aroundthe countrywithasinging and dancing act. In November 1965,Ms. Gage was found uncon- scious on the floor of a motel room after overdosing on barbi- turates. A year later, she attempt- ed suicide by trying to drown herself in the ocean. She was once institutionalized for seven weeks at a California state hospital. Two of her children died. She is survived by three sons,
Robert Kaminer of Scottsdale, Ariz., David Ennis of Tyrone, Ga., and Nicholas Covacevich of Los Angeles, and three grandchil- dren. Life under the glare of the
Hollywood spotlight burned her senseofchildhoodinnocence,Ms. Gage said in the 2005 interview. Sheshunnedher given firstname. “Leona means lioness,” Ms.
Gage told the Sun. “Leona is a survivor.She’s taking care ofMary because Mary was a wimp. Mary was a sweet little girl who was taken advantage of by every man she evermet.”
shapirot@washpost.com
SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 14, 2010
CHARLES GORRY/ASSOCIATED PRESS
In this July 20, 1957, photo, taken just days after being namedMissUSA, Leona Gage Ennis poses at an airport en route toMaryland.
LOCAL DIGEST
whole windshield.” Police are asking anyone with
any information to call the De- partment’s District II Investiga- tive Section at 301-390-2160, or Crime Solvers, at 866-411-8477. Text “PGPD”plus yourmessage to
CRIMES (274367) on a cellphone or to go to
www.pgpolice.org to submit a tip online. Police are offering a cash reward for infor- mation that leads to the arrest and indictment of the suspects. —Brigid Schulte
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For late drawings and out-of-area results, check
washingtonpost.com/lottery
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