ABCDE METRO tuesday, june 15, 2010 LOCAL HOME PAGE 75, 9 a.m. 80, noon 84, 5 p.m. 74, 9 p.m.


Obituaries Jimmy Dean, 81, was a country singer and TV personality who marketed breakfast sausages that bore his name. B6


Fashion fix Janet Bennett Kelly and Holly Thomas will be online at noon to answer your questions about the latest fashions. Go to PostLocal.com.


THE DISTRICT


New leader for CU The man who will step into the president’s office at Catholic University has a long record of scholarship and writings — on some very controversial issues. B4


PETULA DVORAK


Let Autobots transform the Mall


By the White House. That’s all they’re asking. The producers of “Transform- ers 3” want to take over parts of the nation’s capital for two weeks this fall to stage an un- precedented display of action- film kablooey on our hallowed Mall. The National Park Service,


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stewards of this constantly abused green space, is putting up a gigantic shield to block the plans. “We keep having to ask them,


‘What part of “no” don’t you un- derstand? The N? Or the O?’ ” said Bill Line, the National Park Service spokesman, who pro- tects his territory with Autobot ferocity. Our Mall, the nation’s front yard, is not the place to stage an intergalactic battle between alien robots, the Mall defenders contend. So let’s take a look at what we


do have on the Mall. There are monuments to four


great presidents. And war me- morials.


And then we have a long,


somewhat tattered stretch of green that is the platform for our human expression. This is where we come to protest, celebrate and learn. There are book festivals; runs and walks for various cancers, vi- ruses and other maladies; con- certs; political rallies and dem- onstrations. Millions of feet have trampled


that grass. Each year, an entire neighborhood of solar-powered homes is constructed and torn down in the solar decathalon. In the name of the Smithso-


nian Folklife Festival alone — the most ambitious of the warm- and-fuzzy events — the Mall has been home to a horse racetrack stretching from the Washington Monument to the U.S. Capitol, “an Indian village with 40-foot-


dvorak continued on B8 GERALD MARTINEAU FOR THE WASHINGTON POST Stars and stripes and sisters


Flag Day was celebrated with a service at the Air Force Memorial in Arlington on Monday. Ashlyn Dieseng, 3, left, and her sister, Reagan, 8, had a flag for each hand and a little time to spare before the service. The holiday commemorates the day in 1777 that the American flag was adopted.


Those who said they preferred the old black-and-white plate were


unimpressed with the new rendition.


COURTESY OF THE MARYLAND MOTOR VEHICLE ADMINISTRATION


Few bursts of praise for new star-spangled plate


by Ashley Halsey III


If Francis Scott Key was over- whelmed by the majesty of bombs bursting in air while the flag was still there 196 years ago, many people seemed less captivated by a depiction of that moment that debuted Monday as Maryland’s standard-issue license plate. The plate shows Old Glory fly- ing over Fort McHenry as a cou- ple of bombs explode to the right and left of a top title “Maryland,” the words “War of 1812” directly beneath it and a bottom line with the Web site of the 1812 bicenten- nial commission. Never mind that Key penned his poem in 1814. License-plate critics are nei- ther a professional nor an orga- nized group, but they know what they like. An entirely unscientific poll on The Washington Post’s


Web site found that 86 percent of respondents were unimpressed. Eight percent thought the new plate was beautiful. “We looked at the poll,” said Bill


Pencek, director of the Maryland War of 1812 Bicentennial Com- mission. “It’s a great country. Everybody is entitled to their opinion.” Those who said they would


prefer to stay with the old black- and-white plate, the standard since 1986, were unimpressed with the new rendition, which shows the flag waving above two brick structures that might have been factories or school build- ings, as well as Fort McHenry. “The design is directly taken from the way the ramparts looked,” Pencek said. Then he went on to explain


plates continued on B8


pectacular car crashes, blasts, bursts, flames, ka- booms and epic explosions.


Man at Applebee’s has string of drug arrests


by Matt Zapotosky and Ruben Castaneda


A parolee with a long history of drug convictions was charged Monday with fatally shooting a Maryland state trooper outside a Forestville Applebee’s simply be- cause the trooper had thrown him out of the restaurant a half- hour earlier, authorities and law enforcement sources said. Cyril Cornelius Williams, 27, of


Seat Pleasant was charged with first-degree murder in Friday’s fatal shooting of Trooper Wesley Brown, 24. Williams was so en- raged after Brown ejected him from the restaurant that he sought out a friend, returned and


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JOHN KELLY’S WASHINGTON


Expression of contrition How far is too far when a writer taps his home life for material? Our columnist appears to have stepped over the line, and, this time at least, he’s not getting away with it. B2


Parolee, pal held


in trooper’s killing RETALIATION ONLY MOTIVE


opened fire on an unsuspecting Brown as he stood outside talk- ing on his cellphone, several law enforcement officials said. The friend, Anthony A. Milton II, 28, also was charged with first-degree murder. The law en- forcement sources said Milton handed Williams the semiauto- matic gun used in the shooting. Their only motive, police said, was the dispute at Applebee’s. “Nothing more, nothing less,”


said Kevin Davis, deputy Prince George’s County police chief. The brazenness of the shoot- ing of a state trooper, youth men- tor and active member of the Seat Pleasant community sparked a massive effort to find the killer. County homicide de- tectives, who led the investiga- tion, teamed with the Maryland State Police, D.C. police, FBI, the U.S. Marshals Service, and even parole and probation officials. Surveillance footage was quickly released to the media, and hun- dreds of tips were followed.


trooper continued on B5 Army officer held


wife, daughter found in Fairfax apartment


by Tom Jackman


A recently retired Army lieu- tenant colonel killed his wife and teenage daughter in their Fairfax County apartment Monday morning, then drove to an Army hospital at Fort Belvoir, told au- thorities what he had done and tried to have himself admitted, police said. Instead, he was taken to the


Fairfax County jail and charged with two counts of murder. Neighbors at the Gunston Cor- ner condominium complex, on Cardinal Forest Lane in the Lor- ton area, said they heard nothing until Fairfax police officers showed up about 8:30 a.m. In the apartment, officers found the bodies of Hyon C. Yi, 47, and her daughter, Joy J. Yi, 15, authorities


in 2 family deaths Retired colonel’s


said. Police declined to say how the Yis were killed pending an au- topsy Tuesday morning. Police said they found out about the slayings from Kenston K. Yi, 49, a West Point graduate who an Army spokesman said had retired from the service in August after 30 years’ active duty. Yi showed up at the DeWitt


Army Community Hospital on Fort Belvoir at 8:24 a.m., police spokeswoman Lucy Caldwell said. Yi told the hospital staff that “he was involved in a tragic event,” Caldwell said, declining to provide specifics of Yi’s state- ments.


Caldwell said that it was not immediately apparent how Hyon and Joy Yi were killed but that police do not think they were shot or stabbed. Investigators also do not think that there was a long period between when they were killed and when Kenston Yi


officer continued on B5


Tossing the grades, jumping into the trades In tight economy, college-educated find fulfillment and good pay in manual labor


by Carol Morello


rmed with a bachelor’s de- gree in theology from Notre Dame, Adam Osielski was pondering a route well traveled: law school. He watched his friends work long hours as paralegals while studying law and weighed the all- encompassing commitment. That was five years ago. Today, Osielski, 29, is a journeyman electrician rather than a law firm associate. Or, as Osielski might say with his minor in French, an électricien. In a region in which 47 percent


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of Washington area residents have a college degree, the highest rate in the nation, Osielski is among a small but apparently growing number of the college- educated who are taking up the trades. They started out studying aerospace engineering, creative writing and urban planning. But somewhere on the path to accu- mulating academic credentials, they decided that working with their hands sounded more pleas- ant — and lucrative — than a lot of white-collar work. So bye-bye to term papers and graduate the-


XIAOMEI CHEN/THE WASHINGTON POST A summer job with a plumber turned into a career for Jarrad Taylor, who left Penn State after two years.


ses, and hello to apprenticeships to become plumbers, electri- cians, auto mechanics and car- penters. For Osielski, the attraction was


natural. After graduating from Notre Dame, he spent two years in Haiti working with a charity building schools, but he wasn’t allowed to do the one task that


seemed most intriguing: wiring the electricity. When he returned from Haiti,


tradesmen continued on B4


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