The Washington Post - USA (2021-10-25)

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MONDAY, OCTOBER 25 , 2021. WASHINGTONPOST.COM/LOCAL EZ RE B

JOHN KELLY’S WASHINGTON

An unearthed In and Out

list written in 1973 by a

well-informed 14-year-old

is strangely familiar. B3

EDUCATION

The District shrugged off

college for many students

until DC-CAP got involved,

Jay Mathews writes. B2

OBITUARIES

Soprano Edita Gruberova,

74, dazzled on world

opera stages for more

63 ° 72 ° 74 ° 70 ° than half a century. B6

8 a.m. Noon 4 p.m. 8 p.m.

High today at

approx. 2 p.m.

78

°

Precip: 70%

Wind: S

8-16 mph

BY REBECCA TAN

Every October for seven years,

the Rev. Michelle Thomas, 50,

has led a pr ocession that lays a

wreath for the enslaved people

buried in a cemetery off the side

of Harry Byrd Highway in Lou-

doun County. At the annual

ceremony on Sunday, the group

of about three dozen also laid

down wreaths for the first Black

person born free to be buried at

the cemetery — for Thomas’s

son, Fitz Alexander Campbell

Thomas, who was 16 when he

drowned in the Potomac River

last summer.

“The wreaths were always to

honor the ancestors,” Thomas

said right before the ceremony.

“To think that my child is now

part of the ancestors, it’s almost

unfathomable to me.”

Before the death of her middle

child, before there was a g rave-

stone here with a name she knew

dearly, Thomas had built up the

African American Burial Ground

for the Enslaved as a place for

colle ctive mourning.

A former engineer, she first

came across the cemetery in

2015, amid an obscure set of

county records. She followed an

old map to the site and was

outrage d to find fieldstones and

grave markers overgrown with

weeds, with little else to mark

the lives of the African Ameri-

cans who had been enslaved at

the nearby Belmont Plantation

by cousins of Confederate Gen.

Robert E. Lee. Thomas sought to

preserve the cemetery by form-

ing a g roup called the Loudoun

Freedom Center and soon found

herself embroiled in a protracted

legal battle against property de-

velopers and re al es tate compa-

nies.

“I remember sitting in the

courtroom and thinking we are

never going to win,” Thomas said

to people who had gathered at

SEE CEMETERY ON B5

Collective grief at site for enslaved

Va. pastor leads annual wreath-laying ceremony at historic cemetery a year after 16-year-old son’s tragic death

BY LUZ LAZO

Workers in the Washington

area have gradually returned to

offices since the summer, but a

new survey suggests it could be a

long wait before downtown re-

gains its pre-pandemic vitality

with the majority of the region’s

workers back on a daily basis.

Twenty months since the coro-

navirus pandemic hit the region,

forcing hundreds of thousands of

workers into telework, many em-

ployers remain uncertain about

when and how to fully reopen

offices amid continuing virus

concerns and employee demands

for flexibility, according to a

study released Monday by the

Greater Washington Partnership.

The survey of 164 employers in

the District, Maryland and Vir-

ginia found that less than half of

employees are expected to be

back in the office on a typical

workday this fall. Employers say

they expect that number will

grow to about two-thirds by sum-

SEE WORK ON B3

Flexible

work is

the new

normal

SURVEY FINDS

GRADUAL RETURN

Employers accept hybrid

schedule for the future

BY JUSTIN JOUVENAL

After the Supreme Court al-

lowed one of the nation’s most

restrictive abortion bans to take

effect in Texas in September, Vir-

ginia Attorney General Mark R.

Herring wasted no time jumping

into the political fray on a white-

hot national issue.

Herring joined a coalition of 24

liberal attorneys general who

filed a friend-of-the-court brief

supporting a Justice Department

challenge of the law that banned

abortions after six weeks. He

wrote another brief on a similar

South Carolina law, too.

“As long as I am attorney gen-

eral, I will do everything in my

power to fight back against this

alarming wave of abortion re-

strictions,” Herring said in a

statement at the time.

The moves were vintage Her-

ring, who over his two terms as

Virginia’s top lawyer has called

himself the “people’s attorney,”

willing to take on political battles

with conservatives and powerful

interests on a range of high-pro-

file issues from same-sex mar-

riage to gun control in Virginia

and beyond.

In the process, Herring has

carved out a national reputation

and likes to say he has trans-

formed the attorney general’s of-

fice into a “progressive power-

house.” That stalwart liberal

stance has thrilled Democrats

and led Republicans to accuse

him of politicizing the office.

A win in November against

Republican challenger Del. Jason

S. Miyares would make Herring

one of Virginia’s longest-serving

attorneys general and probably

cement his reputation as one of

its most left-leaning. It could also

be a launchpad for a run at an

office he’s eyed before — gover-

nor.

Herring frames the upcoming

election as a high-stakes contest,

one that will determine whether

the progress he says he’s made on

bringing justice, equality and op-

portunity to all Virginians con-

tinues or is rolled back by an

opponent he casts as a GOP

throwback in a state trending

bluer.

“When... you look ahead at

the next four years, some of the

most important issues of our day

SEE HERRING ON B4

H erring says he has more left to do

Attorney general seeks a

third term as self-styled

‘people’s attorney’ in Va.

BY JUSTIN JOUVENAL

Del. Jason S. Miyares is run-

ning for attorney general in Vir-

ginia, but he told a crowd in a

Loudoun County ballroom re-

cently his story really begins in

Havana, when a “scared” 19-year-

old girl boarded a flight to the

United States “penniless and

homeless.”

“My mother fled Cuba in Octo-

ber of 1965,” Miyares said. “And

almost 50 years to the day she left

she was able to go in the voting

booth and get a ballot and vote

for me to represent her in the

oldest democracy in the Western

hemisphere.... That’s what I call

the American miracle.”

Miyares was referring to his

mother voting during his suc-

cessful run for the Virginia

House of Delegates in 2015, but

the story has become a corner-

stone of his pitch to voters in

2021. He’s told it in an advertise-
      ment, interviews and campaign
      stops.
      It’s also a succinct introduc-
      tion for Miyares, a 45-year-old
      Republican from Virginia Beach,
      who has never run for statewide
      office before and could make
      history if he wins in November as
      SEE MIYARES ON B4

GOP’s Miyares seeks to

make history in Virginia

In bid to be state’s first

Latino attorney general,

anti-crime pitch is key

PHOTOS BY CRAIG HUDSON FOR THE WASHINGTON POST

A procession heads to the African American Burial Ground for the Enslaved,

above, f or a wreath-laying ceremony Sunday in Ashburn. T he Rev. Michelle

Thomas first came across the burial ground for people who had been enslaved

at nearby Belmont Plantation in an obscure set of county records in 2015.

BY LAUREN LUMPKIN

After a pandemic-disrupted

year of safety measures and

Zoom lectures, the promise of

coronavirus vaccines offered

U.S. universities a shot at nor-

malcy this fall. The virus has not

been wiped completely from

campuses, but major outbreaks

have so far been rare.

The arrival of flu season,

however, poses an added chal-

lenge.

Colleges are ideal breeding

grounds for viruses, and some

public health experts are pre-

dicting that this year’s flu season

will be more severe than the last.

To guard against outbreaks, a

number of major universities

are going beyond their usual

autumn flu vaccine pushes —

and enacting mandates.

At Johns Hopkins University,

which will enforce flu vaccine

mandates for students, faculty

and staff alike, one prime con-

cern was that if a flu outbreak

were to hit campus, students

with flu symptoms could mis-

take it for covid-19 and over-

whelm coronavirus testing sites.

“Making the influenza vac-

cine mandatory was, I would

say, a s traightforward decision

based on all of those consider-

ations,” said Stephen Gange, the

university’s executive vice pro-

SEE FLU ON B2

The District and Virg inia do not

report coronavirus cases and

deaths on Saturday and Sunday.

Therefore, virus case totals for the

region are printed Tuesday through

Saturday.

Some wary

universities

mandate

flu vaccine

Health experts have

warned of a more severe

threat than last season