The Washington Post - USA (2022-05-25)

B6 EZ RE THE WASHINGTON POST.WEDNESDAY, MAY 25 , 2022

BY LUZ LAZO

AND LAURA VOZZELLA

A Washington Commanders
move to Prince William County
could intensify transportation
hurdles in an area of Northern
Virginia that suffers from chronic
traffic congestion and is largely
underserved by public transit.
The news that the Command-
ers recently acquired the right to
purchase land in Woodbridge as a
possible site for a new stadium
prompted concern among fans,
residents and local officials, who
worry about traffic that would
exacerbate gridlock along the In-
terstate 95 corridor, which carries
about 232,000 vehicles daily.
The location, near the Potomac
Mills shopping center, is 23 miles
south of the nation’s capital and
accessible only by car. While the
Commanders’ current home, Fed-
Ex Field in Landover, is not tran-
sit-oriented, its inside-the-Belt-
way location is about a mile from
two Metro stations and accessible
by bus and bike, and is a quick car
ride from more densely populated
parts of the Washington region.
“I can’t think of a place that
would be worse than that area of
Northern Virginia. You get to Lor-
ton going southbound on 95 and
everything tends to bottleneck re-
ally quickly,” said Nick John, a D.C.

resident and football fan. “You can

be in standstill traffic for hours.”

Without significant investment

in roads and transit, a stadium in

Woodbridge probably would add

to traffic nightmares despite im-

provements in the works. Wood-

bridge is served daily by Amtrak’s

Northeast Regional line, while the

Virginia Railway Express and

OmniRide, the county’s bus serv-

ice, operate only on weekdays to

bring commuters into the city in

the morning and back in the eve-

ning. A one-way Uber ride from

D.C. is generally more than $50. A

bike ride would take nearly three

hours.

The Commanders’ agreement

for the option to buy about

200 acres for about $100 million

signals the franchise is serious

about Woodbridge. The team has

narrowed its stadium search to

also include four other locations:

near Potomac Shores Golf Club in

Dumfries, a site near Dulles Inter-

national Airport in Sterling, RFK

Stadium in Washington and a site

near FedEx Field.

In addition to the stadium, the

team wants to build a vast com-

mercial and residential complex

that supporters call a “mini-city,”

including a convention center,

concert venue, hotels, restaurants

and housing.

Virginia state Sen. Scott A.

Surovell (D-Fairfax), whose dis-

trict includes both of the potential

sites in Prince William County,

said the stadium and surrounding

development could benefit the

area and spur the state to make

much-needed transportation in-

vestments, including in mass

transit.

“I’m sure the No. 1 concern on

this for everybody is traffic. That’s

the biggest question mark on this

project,” said Surovell, noting that

he and Del. Luke E. Torian (D-

Prince William) have been push-

ing to extend Metro to the county

for 13 years. “I think this project

will jump-start the conversation

about getting transit to Prince

William.”

Del. Danica A. Roem (D), who

represents western Prince Wil-

liam County, said investments

would not come quickly enough to

the transportation infrastructure

to support a stadium. The Com-

manders’ lease expires in

Landover in 2027.

“How could anyone look at the

disaster that happened on Inter-

state 95 during the winter and say,

‘You know what Interstate 95

needs in Woodbridge? A sta-

dium!’ ” said Roem, referring to

the Jan. 3 snowstorm that left

vehicles stranded along 48 miles

of the interstate for more than

24 hours.

Frank Principi, a Woodbridge-

area resident who served on the

county’s Board of Supervisors for

more than a decade, said state

investments to improve traffic

and increase transit in the corri-

dor prepared the ground for a

potential home to the Command-

ers. Principi said a Potomac River

ferry is also an option that should

be explored.

I-95’s capacity was expanded in

recent years to include high-occu-

pancy toll lanes. The state is also

building an auxiliary lane south-

bound from the Route 123 inter-

change — which will see its own

improvements to improve traffic

flow — to the Prince William Park-

way. State transportation officials

said those projects, along with

widening a road south of Prince

William County, will bring relief

to one of the most congested high-

way segments on the East Coast.

Transit options are slated to

improve in the next decade, par-

ticularly with intercity and com-

muter train service expected to

grow as part of a $3.7 billion state

rail program. Plans call for a VRE

expansion that would introduce

weekend, bidirectional and non-

peak hour service before the end

of the decade. The shared VRE

and Amtrak station is about 21 / 2

miles from the potential site of the

stadium, close enough for a possi-

ble shuttle service, officials said.

VRE spokeswoman Karen Fi-

nucan Clarkson said it is prema-

ture to discuss future service as it

relates to the Commanders and

said many improvements must

happen for VRE to expand service.

Among those is construction of a

second rail bridge over the Poto-

mac River to create a four-track

crossing, a project that is expected

to be built by 2030.

Surovell said the long-term an-

swer lies in extending Metro serv-

ice to Woodbridge, adding that

“it’s definitely doable in 10 to 15

[years] if our region wanted to get

serious about it.”

State Sen. Jeremy S. McPike

(D-Prince William) said transpor-

tation issues surrounding the

project present “huge hurdles.”

“With a project of this size, you

have to look at all options, both

road improvements and transit

improvements,” he said.

Stewart Schwartz, executive di-

rector of the Coalition for Smarter

Growth, an organization that calls

for pedestrian-friendly communi-

ties built around mass transit,

said a stadium would create sig-

nificant problems for Prince Wil-

liam County on game days.

“We’ve already seen what hap-

pened at the very auto-dependent

location in Prince George’s that,

immediately upon opening day,

ended up with massive traffic

jams on game days,” he said, refer-

ring to FedEx Field. “We are likely

to be repeating those mistakes in

this proposed location.”

Tavon “RevT” Fennell, a Dale

City resident and lifelong fan of

the Commanders, said a stadium

10 minutes from his home would

be convenient for him, but would

create traffic nightmares, adding

that he’s afraid fans in Maryland

and D.C. would stop going to the

games.

“Can you imagine a Monday

night game? Who wants to sit in

traffic for 2^1 / 2 hours to go the

stadium?” said Fennell, a D.C. na-

tive.

Chris Butler, a lifelong fan of

the football team, said he

wouldn’t renew his season pass

and probably would attend fewer

games if the team moves to Prince

William County. Still, Butler said

he loves the team and would find a

way to get wherever they settle.

“I want to be able to have the

option not to drive,” said Butler,

30, of Northeast Washington.

“They aren’t the DMV Command-

ers or Virginia Commanders; they

are the Washington Command-

ers, and I feel they should play as

close to the city of Washington,

D.C., as possible. I don’t think

Dumfries or Woodbridge suffices

that.”

VIRGINIA

Tra∞c concerns emerge in a potential Commanders move to Woodbridge

obituaries

BY HARRISON SMITH

Coming home from the park in
the mid-1960s, Hazel Henderson
would draw a bath to wash the
soot off her young daughter. Ash
would fall from the New York
City sky as incinerators burned
through garbage, and the hori-
zon would disappear behind a
yellowish haze. Some days the air
was so filthy it was difficult to
breathe, and for a time the soot
and smog were all Ms. Hender-
son could talk about.
“You know, dear, you’re getting
to be a nut about this pollution,”
she later recalled her husband
saying. “Now why don’t you go
and talk to the mayor and leave
me alone.”
Ms. Henderson, a British-born
homemaker who had grown up
hearing stories about the toxic
“London fog,” took his advice,
writing letters to Mayor Robert
F. Wagner Jr. — as well as to local
TV and radio stations — while
launching a successful campaign
to get air-pollution readings pub-
lished on the evening news.
Backed by other mothers
whom she met while handing out
leaflets during her walks
through the park, she won new
restrictions on air pollution, no-
tably after smog blanketed the
city over Thanksgiving weekend
in 1966.
“We got what we wanted,” she
later told the Australian Finan-
cial Review, “but not before the
New York business community
branded us as communists. That
was my first lesson in how hard
entrenched powers resist
change.”
Ms. Henderson went on to
spend decades campaigning for
social change, turning from air
pollution to broader issues of
environmental justice, gender
equality and economic develop-
ment. A self-described “inde-
pendent, self-employed futurist,”
she wrote nine books, published
a syndicated newspaper column
and lectured around the world,
influencing political activists
such as Ralph Nader, who cited
her work while running for presi-
dent in 2000 as the Green Party
nominee.
She was 89 when she died — or

“went virtual,” as she termed it —

on May 22 at her home in St.

Augustine, Fla. The cause was

complications from cancer, said

Linda C. Crompton, the chief

executive of Ethical Markets, a

media company that Ms. Hen-

derson founded to promote “the

evolution of capitalism.”

A feisty author and environ-

mental activist, Ms. Henderson

never graduated from college

and largely worked outside es-

tablished institutions. “I always

knew I was unemployable,” she

once told the St. Petersburg

Times. “I would have been fired

off any job for insubordination.”

But she built a long career as a

gadfly thinker, known for argu-

ing that economic growth had to

be balanced with environmental

protections and for championing

the maxim “think globally, act

locally.” The Christian Science

Monitor once described her as “a

terrific synthesizer of new modes

of thought, one who would not

be offended by critics who call

her a crank.”

Through Citizens for Clean

Air, the environmental group she

helped organize in New York in

1964, she lobbied for new local,

state and federal pollution legis-

lation, targeting pollution

caused by automobiles — “The

internal combustion engine

should be in a museum,” she

declared — as well as power

plants and trash incinerators.

The group grew to more than

20,000 members, some 75 per-

cent of whom were women, ac-

cording to historian Adam

Rome’s book “The Genius of

Earth Day.”

“The politicians had said there

would be no interest!” Ms. Hen-

derson told the Sydney Morning

Herald, recalling one of her early

campaigns for new pollution reg-

ulations. “Mothers and baby car-

riages went down to City Hall,

and not one councilor dared vote

against it. It was very gentle, and

very politically persuasive.”

As part of her crusade against

air pollution, Ms. Henderson

taught herself economics, the

better to spar with business

executives and academics who

insisted that dirty air was simply

a cost of doing business. She

became a fierce critic of eco-

nomic orthodoxies, likening the

field to a form of “brain damage,”

and condemned the use of met-

rics such as gross national prod-

uct (GNP) as a yardstick for

national success.

In place of GNP she suggested

her own report card for the

country’s economy, factoring in

literacy rates, life expectancy,

child development and other

metrics.

Ms. Henderson shared her

views with Sen. Robert F. Ken-

nedy (D-N.Y.) in 1967, after ar-

ranging for a helicopter ride

around New York “to show him,”

she later said, “all the sources of

air pollution and why our group

proposed correcting our national

GNP.” The journey apparently

made an impression: While run-

ning for president the next year,

Kennedy gave a speech lament-

ing that the nation “seemed to

have surrendered personal excel-

lence and community values in

the mere accumulation of ma-

terial things.”

The GNP, Kennedy added,

“measures neither our wit nor

our courage, neither our wisdom

nor our learning, neither our

compassion nor our devotion to

our country. It measures every-

thing, in short, except that which

makes life worthwhile. And it

can tell us everything about

America except why we are

proud that we are Americans.”

Ms. Henderson later pub-

lished books including “The Poli-

tics of the Solar Age” (1981), in

which she set about “defrocking

the economics priesthood,” argu-

ing that “three hundred years of

snake oil” had resulted in high

inflation and unemployment, as

well as depleted natural resourc-

es and a planet on the brink of

ecological disaster.

“One might even say that the

beneficent ‘invisible hand’ envi-

sioned by Adam Smith has be-

come for increasing numbers of

Americans a clumsy, heedless

‘invisible foot,’ which tramples

on social, human, and environ-

mental values,” she wrote, while

advocating a new economic sys-

tem fueled by renewable energy

sources.

“Henderson writes in a lively,

well-informed, deliberately out-

rageous style about matters im-

portant to us all,” wrote New

York Times reviewer Langdon

Winner. “In her best moments

she seems a capable successor to

the late E.F. Schumacher,” the

German-British economist who

believed that “small is beautiful.”

“Those weary of threadbare lib-

eral economics and repelled by

present-day conservative nos-

trums will find here a great deal

to ponder,” Winner added.

Some academics were more

critical of her work, not that Ms.

Henderson cared.

“My analysis was vilified by

economists as wrong-headed

and absurd,” she wrote in a

follow-up book, “Building a Win-

Win World” (1996). “I learned to

interpret this as evidence that I

was hitting home.”

She was born Hazel Mustard

in Bristol, England, on March 27,

1933. Her father was a business-
      man, and she described her
      mother as a proto-environmen-
      talist who grew her own fruit and
      vegetables, raised her own chick-
      ens and bought fish from the
      local pier.
      After graduating from high
      school, Ms. Henderson worked
      as a switchboard operator, sales-
      woman and hotel clerk. She
      married Carter Henderson, a for-
      mer London correspondent for
      the Wall Street Journal, in 1957,
      around the time she moved to
      New York. Their marriage ended
      in divorce.
      Ms. Henderson wrote for pub-
      lications ranging from Harvard
      Business Review to the Nation,
      and was a fellow or board mem-
      ber at think tanks including the
      World Business Academy, World-
      watch Institute and Council on
      Economic Priorities. In the late
      1970s, she was an adviser to the
      U.S. Office of Technology Assess-
      ment and served on panels of the
      National Science Foundation
      and the National Academy of
      Engineering.
      As support for green energy
      diminished during the Reagan
      administration, Ms. Henderson
      became involved in what she
      called “the socially responsible
      investment movement,” serving
      on the advisory council of the
      Calvert Social Investment Fund.
      “That was like crossing the Rubi-
      con for me, deciding to be part of
      capitalism,” she said.
      Backed by her second hus-
      band, Alan Kay, she founded
      Ethical Markets Media in 2004.
      Her husband, the founder of an
      electronic Wall Street trading
      platform called AutEx, died in


1934. Survivors include a daugh-
      ter from her first marriage, Alex-
      andra Leslie Camille Henderson;
      and a grandson.
      “Never doubt for a moment
      that a small group of dedicated
      citizens can change the world,”
      Ms. Henderson liked to say, para-
      phrasing her friend Margaret
      Mead, the anthropologist. “In-
      deed, it’s the only thing that ever
      has.”

HAZEL HENDERSON, 89

Influential environmental activist and futurist writer

SEAN GALLUP/HULTON ARCHIVE/GETTY IMAGES

Hazel Henderson campaigned for cleaner air, then focused on

environmental justice, gender equality and economic development.

OF NOTE

Obituaries of residents from the
District, Maryland and Northern
Virginia.

Edward Rowell,
ambassador

Edward Rowell, 90, who spent
38 years in the Foreign Service,
served as ambassador to Bolivia,
Portugal and Luxembourg before
retiring in 1994 and later was
president of the Association for
Diplomatic Studies and Training
as well as DACOR, an organiza-
tion of retired diplomatic and
consular officers, died April 14 at
his home in Bethesda, Md. The

cause was bullous pemphigoid, a

rare skin condition, said his wife,

Le Rowell.

Mr. Rowell was born in Oak-

land, Calif., and spent part of his

childhood in Rio de Janeiro,

where his father was posted as a

diplomat. He entered the Foreign

Service in 1956 and served as a

political officer in Argentina and

Honduras in the mid- and late

1960s. After Washington-based

assignments, he worked as depu-

ty chief of mission in Lisbon from

1978 to 1983, spent two years as

deputy assistant secretary of state

for consular affairs and then be-

gan his ambassadorships. He re-

ceived the Superior Honor

Award, among other commenda-

tions.

Connie McAdam,

parks official

Connie McAdam, 92, who re-

tired in 1988 after nearly three

decades with the Arlington Coun-

ty Parks and Recreation Depart-

ment, died April 16 at her home in

Arlington, Va. The cause was Al-

zheimer’s disease, said her niece,

Penny DeFilippi.

Mrs. McAdam was born Con-

stance Rollison in Alleghany

County, Va., and settled in the

Washington area in the late

1950s. She worked for several

parks and recreation depart-

ments, including one in Sweden,

before joining the Arlington de-

partment, where she rose to lead

the recreation division.

During the civil rights move-

ment, she helped integrate de-

partment events, including youth

dances. She was credited with

cultivating visual and performing

arts in the county and with ex-

panding nutritional and other

services for senior citizens. She

volunteered with organizations

including the vestry at St.

George’s Episcopal Church in Ar-

lington and the American Associ-

ation of University Women.

Laura Paugh,

Marriott executive

Laura Paugh, 67, who spent 40

years with Marriott International

as a financial analyst and retired

as a senior vice president, died

April 8 at a hospital in Fairfax

County, Va. She died of injuries

suffered in a car accident three

days earlier near the Plains, Va.,

said her daughter, Sara Martin.

Ms. Paugh was born in Chatta-

nooga, Tenn., and grew up in New

Carrollton, Md. Early in her ca-

reer, she worked for the Ford

Motor Co. and Hazleton Labora-

tories before joining Marriott in

1980. She was instrumental in
      developing the company’s inves-
      tor relations program and helped
      guide it through various acquisi-
      tions and mergers. She often
      spoke at gatherings of the Nation-
      al Investor Relations Institute.
      After retiring from Marriott in
      2020, Ms. Paugh and her husband
      moved to Upperville, Va., from
      North Bethesda, Md.
      — From staff reports