The Washington Post - 20.08.2019

B4 EZ SU THE WASHINGTON POST.TUESDAY, AUGUST 20 , 2019

some Fairfax County firefighters traveled to Florida to assist in the search for the missing men. “We remain optimistic they will be found,” the department said in a statement Monday. Powers said McCluney is married, has two children and is a decorated Navy veteran. Powers said both men were well trained to survive on the water. Futch said the outpouring of support has been heartwarming. “The ocean and the air are satu- rated with average people who want to help,” Futch said. [email protected]

Magda Jean-Louis contributed to this report.

“All search and rescue cases are different, but this one seems to have hit home with a large number of people,” Dickinson said. Futch said Walker is originally from Florida and has been a Fair- fax County firefighter for seven years. He is married and lives in the Dumfries area. Futch said he is a motorcyclist and volunteers with the Strength and Honor Mo- torcycle Club. Walker’s dream was to be a firefighter. “He has an amazing personal- ity,” Futch said. “Always energetic and happy. Always wants to help people.” Fairfax County fire officials said Walker is a master technician sta- tioned in Franconia. They said

of the men. The Coast Guard was diverting search vessels to the area. Dickinson said no distress sig- nal was received from the vessel. McCluney’s wife said in media interviews that the boat had bro- ken down in the past and specu- lated that might have happened this time. The search has generated na- tional attention and drawn an outpouring of support. Volun- teers are plying the seas with their own boats, along with vessels and aircraft from the Coast Guard, Navy and U.S. Border Patrol, among others. Thousands of dol- lars have been donated to help with the search.

She left a message for her son in Los Angeles, posted to Face- book and wished friends a happy birthday. Then she texted her husband that she was fine and she missed him. “It was nothing unusual,” Ar- thur Bushkin recalled. The next morning, he realized his wife had not returned to their Vienna home and reported her missing. Rescuers searched the river for hours and found the SUV and her body about 500 feet from where it entered the river. The Bushkins met nearly 60 years ago. They were high school sweethearts in Chicago, lost touch for decades, married other people, raised children and had careers before re-connecting nine years ago. They spent part of the past seven years writing a book about their love story. In their book — “Lifelong Val- entines: An Inspirational True Story of Love, Perseverance, and Resilience” — they wrote, “We realized what had always been true: the friendship we had, and still have, was and is true love.” A picture of the couple in the book shows them smiling in front of a birthday cake with “Never give up on love” written above the photo. [email protected]

perky self ” for about two months. The couple was involved with and gave financially to the Dis- trict nonprofit Martha’s Table. Barbara Bushkin had gone to a fundraiser there earlier in the evening on the day she went missing. Her friends at the event said nothing appeared unusual. They said she asked questions, chatted and posed for a picture before getting into her SUV and heading home. Arthur Bushkin said police told him that, based on text messages and calls, she left Martha’s Table about 7:50 p.m. and was in the parking lot at Roosevelt Island for about 90 minutes.

Cheryle E. Adams, a special assistant at the D.C. medical examiner’s office, said Barbara Bushkin died as a result of drowning. It is not known how or why the vehicle went into the river, authorities said. D.C. police said Monday that they had no addi- tional details on Bushkin’s case, given that it was deemed accidental in nature by the medical examiner. (The Theodore Roosevelt Is- land parking lot is in Virginia, but the river is the jurisdiction of District authorities.) “This was a tragic accident,” Arthur Bushkin said of the find- ings, which were released earlier this month. “It’s an outcome that I would prefer never occurred.” He said he is working to estab- lish the “Kindness Cloud Founda- tion,” which has a mission of pro- moting kindness. He said the couple had made a lifelong promise to perform daily acts of kindness. Barbara Bushkin’s death prompted an outpouring of support from family and friends and left many wondering what had happened. In a May interview, Arthur Bushkin said he wondered whether his wife had stopped at the parking lot because she was not feeling well. He said she was often tired and had not been “her

bara Bushkin pulled into the parking lot off northbound George Washington Memorial Parkway, then sent text messages to friends and family members while posting to social media. Her husband and his caregiver were waiting for her, but she never returned home. Arthur Bushkin called police to report his wife missing and asked on social media whether anyone had seen her. On May 6, authorities found her body in the river — still strapped in the driver’s seat of her black SUV.

BY DANA HEDGPETH

A medical examiner has ruled
the death of a woman found in the
Potomac River behind the wheel
of her SUV to be accidental.
Barbara Bushkin, 72, of Fairfax
County was found dead in early
May after her vehicle left the
Theodore Roosevelt Island park-
ing lot and entered the river, au-
thorities said.
Her husband, Arthur Bushkin,
has said she went to a fundraiser
May 5 in the District and began
driving home after the event. Bar-

the pair were reported missing, said Coast Guard Petty Officer Ryan Dickinson, but it remained unclear what happened to the boat. Powers said Monday evening that a volunteer vessel dis- covered a gear bag about 50 nauti- cal miles off the coast that family members believe belonged to one

shortly before he and McCluney left for the trip from Port Canaver- al, near the Kennedy Space Center and midway down Florida’s At- lantic coast. Futch said the pair launched in McCluney’s father’s 24-foot boat around 11 a.m., head- ed for a fishing spot about 15 miles off the coast known as the “8A” reef. The pair were supposed to re- turn at 6 p.m. Friday, but when they did not show up by 8 p.m., family members alerted authorities, Futch said. Neither man has responded to calls. Futch said a tracking app last recorded Walk- er’s location near the 8A reef around 1 p.m. Friday. Searches have carried on since

craft were scouring a section of
the Atlantic stretching from
Brunswick, Ga., to St. Augustine,
Fla., Jacksonville Fire Chief Keith
Powers said at a Monday evening
news conference. The U.S. Coast
Guard estimated searchers had
combed more than 24,000 square
miles of ocean in recent days.
“We’re just all very hopeful,”
said Kari Futch, a relative of Walk-
er who is in Florida with other
family members. “They are both
survivors. They are good on the
water. We want them home and
out of the elements.”
Futch said the last time family
members heard from Walker was

FIREFIGHTER FROM B1

Volunteers join authorities in search for 2 missing firefighters o≠ Florida coast

BY HANNAH NATANSON

Dwayne Lawson-Brown
couldn’t find a home in his home-
town.
He spent over a year searching
the District in 2016, but every-
thing was too pricey. Frustrated
and mourning the Washington he
knew as a child, Lawson-Brown,
35, decided to list all the places
he’d “lost.” The list became a poem
— centered on the Columbia Hos-
pital for Women.
Lil youngin’ born in Columbia
Hospital for Women, it begins.
Grief follows, threaded through
the verse:
Black boy’s birthplace shut
down ...
Black boy’s birthplace turned
into Trader Joes...
Wonders what the hell Joe been
trading
To be able to afford his past
Many people share Lawson-
Brown’s nostalgia for the hospital,
which served the D.C. area for 136
years before shuttering in 2002
because of a lack of funds.
From its opening in 1866 until
the Northwest Washington build-
ing was converted to a condomin-
ium complex — with a Trader Joe’s
on the bottom floor — Columbia
Women’s was the primary mater-
nity hospital in the District. It
served as the birthplace of rough-
ly 275,000 people, including Al
Gore, Julie Eisenhower Nixon and
this reporter.
“For women in Washington, the
hospital symbolized excellence,”
said Jacqueline D. Bowens, the
president and CEO of the District
of Columbia Hospital Association.
“There was no doubt if you told
someone that you were delivering

... at Columbia, the expectation
was that you were in the best
hands.”
It was unique in several ways.
Columbia Women’s was an inno-
vator in neonatal care responsible
for several milestones, including
being the first to use babies’ foot-
prints as a form of identification.
Its architectural setup in its last
few years — boasting a well-venti-
lated central structure with radi-
ating wings — was also pathbreak-
ing, historians said. And it was
unusual in receiving government
funding over the decades as hospi-
tals across the country privatized.
“It’s clearly a place of historical
significance,” said Miriam Rich,
who lectures on the history of
medicine at Yale University.

But the most powerful legacy of Columbia Women’s may be its long-standing commitment to serving women — and the fact that, from its founding, it served individuals of all races, though it remained segregated until the 1960s. That’s one reason Lawson- Brown, who is African American, appreciated the hospital. Grow- ing up, he often visited Columbia Women’s with his mother, who continued as a patient there after his birth in 1983. There were always “folks that look like me” walking around, he said. The all-female nature of the space also left a mark. “Throughout my childhood, my mom always told me I was ‘special’ because I was a little boy, but I was born at a hospital for women,” Lawson-Brown said. “I always kind of carried that with me. Even that small a thing, it meant a lot.”

‘A woman’s space’ Women who were poor and pregnant had it rough in Civil War-era Washington. John Harry Thompson, an ex- Army physician, wrote in 1873 that impoverished women in the District delivered in public parks, in police stations and, once, on the steps of the State Department. There were a few hospitals but massive demand. Concerned, Thompson decided he would open a hospital for women “open to all, without reference to color.” In 1866, after securing sufficient private and federal funding, Thompson — today cred- ited as the hospital’s founder — achieved his goal. Columbia Women’s opened for business inside a former mansion as a “hospital and dispensary for the treatment of diseases peculiar to women, and a lying-in asylum,” according to its congressional charter. Located for the first few years at Thomas Circle, the hospital in 1870 moved to 25th Street and Pennsylvania Avenue, where it remained for the rest of its days. Largely because of its government support, which continued until 1953, the 60-bed hospital was able to accept all comers re- gardless of ability to pay. Those who could cough up cash — between $6 and $10 a week — earned slightly better quarters. Barbra M. Wall, a University of Virginia professor who studies the history of nursing and medi-

cine, called the long-standing federal funding “fascinating.” “The government taking care of poor women and children? Wow,” she said. “By 1920, the vast majori- ty of hospitals in America are private.” Another factor that decided ac- commodations at Columbia Women’s: race. For much of its history, the hospital was segregated. Al- though it’s unclear how things worked in the mansion, a redesign in 1916 led to a system where penniless black patients received care on the first floor, penniless white patients on the second and paying customers on the third. (The hospital desegregated after protests in 1964.) Still, Columbia Women’s was less racist than many places, according to Rich. Often 19th-century hospitals “outright turned away black patients” at the door, she said. “It’s important not to oversell the progressiveness,” Rich said. “But I do think it’s right to empha- size the significance of a hospital that historically served a large percentage of African Americans.” It wasn’t the only American hospital catering exclusively to women when it opened, Wall said, though it was one of a few. Around the time of the hospital’s founding, Thompson wrote he hoped Columbia Women’s would em- brace “the accidents and maladies peculiar to the female sex.” Its adherence to that mission over the next century led the hospital to become a leader in infant care in the United States. In 1919, it established a formal prenatal care program. Two years later, it launched a prenatal clinic, one of the first in the country — and in 1925, it became the first hospital to identify babies by their footprints. Columbia Women’s was also one of the first maternity hospitals to build a nursery for premature infants, and the first to offer classes for expectant fathers. The hospital’s focus on women’s health had an unexpected side benefit: It probably allowed women to become doctors at a time when that was nearly impos- sible to do, Wall said. “Anytime you have a women’s space, that’s important — because women could say, ‘Look, we’re women, so we’re the best ones to take care of other women,’ ” she said. “So that’s how some women

got their foot into the door of the medical world.”

‘We lost something special’ Jerry Price, the former vice president of Columbia Women’s, said he knows the hospital was cutting-edge — but it’s not medical innovations he remembers best. It’s Miss Lucy. Miss Lucy was a kitchen em- ployee who worked at Columbia Women’s for more than six decades. Administrators, doctors and nurses recalled her early-morning singing — always gospel tunes — and her willingness to prepare custom snacks and meals. “She would get you whatever you wanted, she was there at the crack of dawn, and she was like your mom away from home,” said Vivian Fraga, a Maryland-based gynecologist who did her residen- cy at Columbia Women’s in the 1980s. The entire staff was like that, Price said. Robert Sloan, another top administrator at the hospital, described the atmosphere as “very much a big family, where people took care of each other.” Fraga said the physicians ate their meals with the residents, which is “almost unheard of.” No hospital Fraga has worked at since has equaled Columbia Women’s for a welcoming atmosphere, she said. “That mold has been lost with the way hospitals are being run now,” Fraga said. “Hospitals are being run like corporations. It’s a lot of what I call clipboards: face- less policies.” In part, it was the corporatiza- tion of American hospitals that spelled doom for Columbia Wom-

en’s, Sloan said. The hospital had struggled with funding over the years, filing for bankruptcy in 1998. By the early 2000s, Columbia Women’s — with just 86 beds when it closed and still offering only obstetrics and gynecology services — could not compete with other area hospitals, all of them larger and offering more comprehensive care. On May 7, 2002, it accepted its last patient. In 2006, Columbia Women’s was converted to a high- end condominium complex. Bowens said the hospital, if open today, would help Washing- ton combat its “myriad maternal health challenges.” According to government data, 36 women died for every 100,000 live births in Washington as of 2018. That’s high for a major metropolitan city — New York’s rate was 23 per 100,000 between 2013 and 2015, and the rate in Los Angeles was about 17 as of 2014. “There is no question we lost something special,” Bowens said. Kelley Baione Carpenter, who gave birth to her daughter at Co- lumbia Women’s on July 14, 1997, cannot believe the hospital closed. Although her delivery stretched about 16 hours, she remembers it as a positive experience: Her room was large and bright, and the nurses fed her a constant diet of jello and ice chips (all she was allowed to eat while she was un- dergoing inducement). “Even in the ’90s, it was still a time when women were, I don’t know, second-class citizens; we weren’t equals,” Carpenter said. “So I felt proud to be a woman with a female doctor in a women’s hospital, having a girl.” [email protected]

RETROPOLIS

Remembering the women’s hospital that became a Trader Joe’s

D.C. HISTORY CENTER Nurses in 1953 at Columbia Hospital for Women, which was known for its long-standing commitment to female care.

THE DISTRICT

Death in SUV submerged in Potomac ruled accidental drowning

FAMILY PHOTO Barbara Bushkin, 72, of Fairfax County died in early May.

BY PAUL DUGGAN

The city of Norfolk, which wants to remove a Confederate monument from its downtown business district, filed a federal lawsuit Monday challenging a Virginia law that city officials say is blocking their plan to relocate the statue to a cemetery. The law, enacted in 1904 and amended several times in the past century, bars the removal or alteration of public war memorials in the state. In Charlottesville, Confederate-heritage enthusi- asts have relied on the preservation law in litigation that has stopped officials there from taking down two Confederate statues. The efforts in Norfolk, Char- lottesville and elsewhere are part of a broad push in recent years throughout the South to banish Confederate imagery from public spaces. Critics argue that rebel statues and other iconography honoring Old Dixie are symbolic of institutionalized white su-

premacism. In 2017, the Norfolk City Coun- cil passed a resolution saying it intended to move a towering, city-owned Confederate monument from a downtown intersec- tion to Elmwood Cemetery. But the resolution said no action would be taken while the state preservation law remained in effect because violating it could expose the city to financial penal- ties. The lawsuit filed Monday in U.S. District Court in Norfolk alleges that the preservation law unconstitutionally hinders Nor- folk’s right to free expression. “The purpose of this suit is to unbuckle the straitjacket that the Commonwealth has placed the City and the City Council in,” the complaint said. “Because the Monument is the City’s speech, the City has a constitutional right to alter that speech” by moving the statue to a less conspicuous location. It is “a right that the Common- wealth cannot take away,” the lawsuit said. After the Charlottesville City Council voted to remove a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee, statue defenders sued the city in March 2017, citing the preservation law. Five months later, on Aug. 11 and 12, hundreds of white su- premacists descended on Char- lottesville for the Unite the Right rally. Stunned by the deadly street violence and outpouring of racist and anti-Semitic hate that weekend, the Charlottesville council voted to also remove a public statue of rebel Gen. Thom- as J. “Stonewall” Jackson. In rulings this year, a judge in Charlottesville Circuit Court decided that the preservation law applies to the Charlottesville statues. The next step for the city is an appeal to the Virginia Su- preme Court. The Norfolk City Council react- ed to the 2017 Charlottesville violence by passing the resolution to remove the 112-year-old statue from a downtown inter- section. Two activists then sued the city in state court, trying to force it to act on the resolution, even with the preservation law in effect. That state lawsuit was dismissed last month. [email protected]

VIRGINIA

Norfolk

sues state

over law on

memorials

Lawsuit alleges the law

hinders Norfolk’s right

to free expression.

“This one seems to have

hit home with a large

number of people.” Ryan Dickinson, Coast Guard

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