SUNDAY, AUGUST 8, 2010
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JOHN KELLY’S WASHINGTON
District’s love affair with trees is branching out
n 1971, Congress cut Washington’s appropriation for tree planting from $60,000 to $5,000. A year later, one observer estimated that the city was suffering a net loss of 1,700 trees a year. Another put the figure closer to 3,500. The arboreal neglect continued into the ’80s and ’90s. The City of Trees — the leafy nickname the District had earned in the 19th century — was in danger of becoming the City of Stumps. But Washington’s trees have
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weathered many ups and downs, surviving alternating cycles of
PHOTOS BY RICKY CARIOTI/THE WASHINGTON POST George Tefora, 4, is next up to hit the ball in a drill during a practice session of the Pancho Gonzalez Youth Tennis Academy.
Latino youths court success at tennis academy Program at Columbia Heights youth center aims to keep kids on the right path
“It is more than tennis,” he said. by Hamil R. Harris
Tania Perez was poised as if she was holding serve at Wimbledon. Her dark hair pulled tight in a ponytail, she tossed the tennis ball into the air and struck it, sending it soaring across the net. The 13-year-old then pointed to
the sky and smiled. Tania is one of 35 enrolled in
the Pancho Gonzalez Youth Ten- nis Academy, a program spon- sored by the Latin American Youth Center in Columbia Heights to provide an outlet for children and teens by teaching them the game of tennis. “Tennis means everything to me. If I didn’t play tennis, I would just be bored and sitting at home,” said Tania, who last week got to trade shots and meet tennis pro- fessionals in town for the Legg Mason Tennis Classic. Tourna- ment sponsors have donated $30,000 to renovate the 16th Street NW courts where Tania and her fellow academy members play. Tennis courts in Los Angeles and New York are also being reno- vated. For Tania and the other kids who play on these courts, tennis is much more than three days of after-school recreation. Just out- side the fence, several men sit idle on a park bench. Her neighbor- hood has a high rate of unem- ployed or low-waged workers. Hispanic youths have the highest dropout rate of all students. So Academy officials and Tania’s mother, Blanca Diaz, see the ten- nis program as a way of keeping her and other youth on the right path.
Metro fight witness describes ‘hysteria’
fight from C1
bad things.” A Metro representative said
Angelo Nicholas, 18, of the Dis- trict was charged with disorderly conduct. Two 16-year-old males were also charged, one with sim- ple assault and the other with dis- orderly conduct. Transit police were investigat- ing what sparked the incident and reviewing videotape. No weapons were recovered at the scene, said Metro spokeswoman Cathy Asato. Of the four people who were taken to the hospital Friday, three remained under ob- servation Saturday, Asato said. On Friday, Fettweis said he and his dinner companion were rid- ing on the train about 11 p.m. when they heard yelling and taunts and saw what looked like a schoolyard brawl involving teen- agers at the other end of the car. As the train approached L’Enfant Plaza, Fettweis said, “people started running past us, away from the fight.” Teenagers were yelling and pushing as they got off the train, Fettweis said. As he and his friend walked toward the plat- form for the Blue and Orange
White House
“This is going to help them with opportunities. Tennis is just a ve- hicle.”
Diaz, Tania’s mother, works as a
housekeeper. The two live in a one-bedroom apartment in Co- lumbia Heights. Tania has no con- tact with her father, so Diaz wants her to have many positive oppor- tunities. “I have much faith in the pro-
gram and that Tania will do well,” Diaz said in Spanish through an interpreter. And Tania said she will do well.
Every time she doubts herself, she said, she can count on her coach, Vivian Coto, to be in her face. “If I say I can’t do it,” Tania said,
“she will say, ‘Yes you can!’ ” So Tania has set her sights high.
“Tennis means everything to me,” said academy member Tania Perez. “If I didn’t play tennis, I would just be bored and sitting at home.”
Sal De Leva, the center’s tennis coordinator, said the students wear T-shirts with a picture of the academy’s namesake as a remind- er — and motivation. Gonzalez was a 12-year-old with a 51-cent racket in East Los Angeles who grew up to join the center court of
professional tennis. He was ranked the No. 1 professional ten- nis player for eight years in the 1950s and 1960s. While Tania hopes to excel at tennis, De Leva said having posi- tive outlets are even more impor- tant.
ANIMAL WATCH A D.C. oasis for 9 desert dogs
OGLETHORPE ST. NW, 1-99 block, July 27. The Washington Animal Rescue League received nine dogs from an animal protec- tion group in Kuwait. Most were desert dogs, a breed indigenous to the Arabian Peninsula. The Ku-
Friday night’s brawl on Metro began at the Gallery Place Station about 11 p.m. and ended at the L’Enfant Plaza Station.
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waiti group brought the dogs to Washington because the group’s shelter was being rebuilt after a fire in March. The dogs had been staying temporarily in a green- house on the group’s property, but with only sporadic electricity
LOTTERIES August 7
DISTRICT Mid-Day Lucky Numbers:
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lines, they got caught up in a stampede heading out of the sta- tion.
A group of about a dozen teen-
agers stayed behind, he said, pounding on one male teenager with what Fettweis said looked like a belt. Within two or three minutes,
Fettweis said, a Metro officer ar- rived and started waving people out of the station. “We didn’t know what was hap-
pening,” he said. “There was hys- teria.”
marimowa@washpost.com weilm@washpost.com
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and very high daytime tempera- tures. League employees met the dogs at Dulles International Air- port, and they were being evalu- ated for adoption.
Among cases handled by the Washington Animal Rescue League.
Last week, she collected auto- graphs from some of the Legg Ma- son tennis stars, including John Isner, who holds the record along with Nicolas Mahut for the long- est match in professional tennis history.
When asked about the future,
Tania said: “I am going to college, and I will play tennis.”
harrish@washpost.com
In Northeast, volunteers with the nonprofit group Casey Trees dig in.
affection and neglect. Answer Man is happy to say we seem to be at a high point in our tree love. Future generations will decide whether we kept it up. Last week, Answer Man traced the roots of Washington’s urban forest. This week, he looks at the green buds of future growth. Here’s the math: About 35 percent of the District is covered with forest canopy. The goal is to increase it to 40 percent by 2035, a feat that will require planting 8,600 trees a year. The goal is both aesthetic and environmental: Trees help keep pollutants from reaching our streams, rivers and bays. Among those on the front
lines is John Thomas, associate director of the city’s Urban Forestry Administration, who oversees a staff of 47 and a budget of $7.5 million. His agency is responsible for the city’s 146,000 street trees. Life is not easy for a city tree, whose average life span can be as short as seven years. Washington typically gets 15 to 25 years out of its street trees, John said. (Why are street trees bigger than you might expect? As punishing as an urban environment is, all that carbon dioxide and heat actually promote rapid growth.) The city won’t get to 8,600 trees a year simply with street trees from John’s office, which plants about 3,400 annually. Here’s where residents and nonprofit and community groups come in. In 2001, discouraged by aerial photos that showed the effects of deforestation in Washington,
COURTESY OF CASEY TREES
philanthropist Betty Brown Casey donated $50 million to start Casey Trees, a nonprofit that focuses on planting trees on private property, training citizen foresters and acting as a tree-info clearinghouse. It works with groups including Restore Mass Ave, founded in 2006 by Deborah Shapley. “I was just so steamed up at watching the city plant these little saplings then watching them die and new ones get planted,” Deborah said. It was a wasteful cycle. Restore Mass Ave now monitors street trees from Dupont Circle to the Naval Observatory. The city is not responsible for watering new trees, so Deborah entreats homeowners and businesses to take stewardship of the ones outside their doors. That includes embassies, whose employees dutifully stretch hoses out to water trees. You might also see volunteers pulling bucket-laden red wagons along the street to bring sustenance to parched trees. “It’s not hard to care about a
tree,” Deborah said. “They’re like babies or kittens.” Deborah’s group has been instrumental in planting a second row of lindens along Massachusetts Avenue on the other side of the sidewalk, a step toward restoring the grand, tree-lined look for which the thoroughfare was once known. John of the Urban Forestry Administration says these public-private partnerships are essential. The city has 900 tree
stewards, each keeping tabs on at least one tree and making sure the green bag at its base is full of water. A tree needs 25 gallons of water a week during the summer. If a sapling can survive its first three years, it usually has a chance at a long life of providing shade. Said John: “The difference
between a tree and almost anything else a city does in the form of public space is there’s an emotional charge to it. It’s this living thing that’s trying to make its way.”
And what of the city’s nickname? Said John: “It’s definitely the
City of Trees and will be for a long time.”
If you’re a D.C. resident interested in adopting a tree, call 202-671-5133. For information on tours of Washington trees with expert and author Melanie Choukas-Bradley, visit
melaniechoukas-bradley.com. And if you have a question about the area, write to
answerman@washpost.com.
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