WEDNESDAY, MARCH 2 , 2022. THE WASHINGTON POST EZ M2 B3
It’s about 20
minutes into my
video call with
Carl Bernstein
when I feel
compelled to tell
him something he
probably already
knows.
“You have a
Washington
accent,” I say.
“Yes, I do have it still,” says the
famed reporter. “And actually —
consciously or subconsciously —
I try to keep it.”
It’s the accent of a 78-year-old
native of Washington, or
“Warshington,” as so many
pronounce it.
Bernstein’s R in
“Warshington” isn’t as hard as,
say, my father’s, but when he
explains why the accent is
important to him, the twang
comes through: “Awney air I've
tried not to sound like
everybody else,” he says.
“Awney air”? Oh: On the air, a
reference to when Bernstein
jumped to TV news after leaving
The W ashington Post in 1976. He
didn’t want to sound like
everybody else.
Though he’s now lived in New
York longer than he lived here,
it’s Washington that Bernstein
celebrates in his new book,
“Chasing History: A Kid in the
Newsroom.” The memoir is
about how a 16-year-old copy
boy from Harvey Road in Silver
Spring learned to become a
reporter at the Washington
Evening Star.
It ends long before he came to
The Post. In this book, “Water
Gate” isn’t shorthand for
scandal. It’s the stone staircase
behind the Lincoln Memorial
where Bernstein would listen to
music played on a barge in the
Potomac.
This is a very Washington —
real Washington — book, I say to
Bernstein. He pushes back a
little.
“What you’re calling local has
a universality to it,” he says.
“Neighborhoods and street
names are not the important
thing. It’s the depiction, and
how the person writing the
memoir lives in these places and
works in these places.”
Yeah, of course. You don’t
have to have grown up in
Washington to enjoy “ChasingHistory,” but if you did, you will
be delighted at the places, things
and people Bernstein mentions,
from the “submarine races” off
Hains Point to Eddie, the
legless, monkey-wrangling
pencil vendor of F Street NW.
“I took guitar from Mr. Papas,”
Bernstein says. That was
Sophocles Papas, who ran a
guitar studio on Connecticut
Avenue NW and had studied
with Andrés Segovia.
“Every time Segovia came to
Lisner Auditorium, Mr. Papas
would give a reception at his
house afterward,” Bernstein
says. “His students had to play
for Segovia.”
How’d that go?
“It was horrible. I was not
good, let me tell you.”
Bernstein was always a better
dancer.
“There’s a video of me on ‘The
Milt Grant Show,’ ” he says. “I
put it up on Instagram. It’s really
wild. You gotta see it.”
I did. It is. Milt Grant was
Washington’s Dick Clark,
hosting a daily dance show on
WTTG from the Hotel
Harrington. In the clip, a nattily
dressed Bernstein throws offsparks as he dances with a girl a
head taller than he.
“The girl I danced with more
often was Bobbi Parzow,” he
says. He pulls out a Blair High
School yearbook — he was Class
of 1961, barely — to show me her
photo.
“We danced what was called
Queenstown,” Bernstein says.
“The way kids danced was not
from the city. It was from
Queenstown in Prince George's
County.”
In the small-world
department, Bobbi went on to
marry Walter Gold. Gold — son
of The Post’s Bill Gold, who in
1947 started the column I now
write — was the Star’s cops
reporter. He became a mentor,
taking Bernstein on nocturnal
jaunts across the city.
“What I am as a reporter is
grounded in my childhood and
my years at the Star, more than
the years at The Post,” Bernstein
says.
Back then, it was the better
paper.
“One of the differences
between The Post and the Star:
We had all these natives of the
city,” he says.These were people like
Bernstein — and like Mary Lou
Werner. She grew up in
Alexandria, attending Whites-
only schools. In 1959, she won
the Pulitzer Prize for her
coverage of integration.
Bernstein says he doesn’t
really know today’s Washington,
which he calls a “money town.”
“It was never a money town
when we grew up,” he says.
The people with money back
then were locals: Hechingers
(hardware), Lerners and
Benders (real estate), Cohens
(groceries).
Eventually, Bernstein had
some money, too. (You’ve seen
the movie.) He bought an
apartment in the Beaux-Arts
Ontario building. As a boy, he’d
delivered clothes there to
customers of his tailor
grandfather.
“I didn’t want to leave the
neighborhood or move to
Georgetown,” Bernstein says. “I
could hear the lions at night,
because it’s high up and the
lions are right down below
there, in the zoo.”
The lions’ roar — just another
Washington accent.How (a pre-Post) Bernstein learned the D.C. beat
John
Kelly's
Washington
THE DISTRICTMan gets 20 years
in boy’s fatal shootingA D.C. man who admitted
taking part in the deadly botched
robbery of a 14-year-old boy in
Southeast Washington was
sentenced to 20 years in prison
Tuesday for second-degree
murder and attempted armed
robbery.
Anthony D. Allen, now 25, was
initially charged with first-degree
murder in the fatal shooting of
Steve Slaughter, a high school
freshman gunned down about
7 p.m. on Jan. 14, 2018, as he and
two friends were walking along
Minnesota Avenue SE with
snacks and sodas they had just
bought at a 7-Eleven. The other
boys, also 14 at the time, escaped
unharmed.
Allen pleaded guilty to the
reduced charges in December
2018 as part of a plea agreement
with the U.S. attorney’s office in
the District.
According to an affidavit filed
in D.C. Superior Court, Allen told
police after his arrest in March
2018 that he and two companions
were riding in a stolen Mercedes
on the night of the robbery, with
Allen driving, when they saw the
three young people leaving a 7-
Eleven.
Allen said one of his
companions got out of the
Mercedes to rob the boys and
then opened fire with a .45-
caliber pistol after Steve and his
friends started to run.
The robbers drove off in the
Mercedes with nothing. Steve was
shot three times and died in a
hospital that night.
D.C. police said no additional
arrests have been made.
— Paul DugganMARYLANDDeaths investigated
as murder-suicideA 51-year-old man fatally shot a
woman — with whom he’d
previously had a relationship —
and then killed himself in a
Germantown parking lot,
authorities said Tuesday.
Just after 9 a.m. Monday,
officers were called for a report of
gunshots in a townhouse
community in the 18900 block of
Highstream Drive. There they
found Michelle Carter, 50, and
Richard Maurice Harris, 51, with
gunshot wounds in a parking lot,
police said.
Both were pronounced dead at
the scene. A handgun was found
nearby.
Police are investigating the
case as a murder-suicide, officials
said in a statement, adding that
“Carter and Harris had previously
been in a relationship.” No further
details were released.
— Dan MorseLOCAL DIGESTResults from March 1
DISTRICT
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DC-5: 5-7-0-3-2
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DC-3 (Tue.): 8-3-4
DC-4 (Mon.): 8-6-7-0
DC-4 (Tue.): 9-6-8-4
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washingtonpost.com/local/lotteryLOTTERIESNerissa Ford, a parent to a
prekindergarten student at Excel
Academy Public School, said that
dropping the masking require-
ment outdoors wasn’t a good
idea. Her daughter is too young
to be eligible for the coronavirus
vaccine. Ford said her family
would continue to mask.
“We’re still in the middle of the
pandemic,” Ford said. “For them
to want to lift the mandate is
completely absurd.”
Washington Teachers’ Union
President Jacqueline Pogue Ly-ons said there was no concern
about lifting the outdoor mask-
ing requirement, but there
would be if the indoor mandate
was lifted, especially since chil-
dren under 5 don’t have access to
the vaccine.
“We’re just still very cautious,”
Lyons said Tuesday. “I think
we’re just wrestling with, ‘When
is it going to be time when we can
take them off in the classroom?’”Nicole Asbury and Laura Meckler
contributed to this report.BY PERRY STEINThe District will no longer
require public school students
and staff to wear masks while
outside on school grounds, the
school system’s chancellor in-
formed families in a letter Tues-
day.
The new rule goes into effect
immediately.
Charter schools, which edu-
cate nearly 50 percent of the
city’s public school students, will
be allowed to choose whether to
keep the outdoor mask mandate.
KIPP, the city’s largest charter
network, did not have plans to
drop its outdoor mandate, a
spokesman said Tuesday.
The announcement marks the
first time the city has rolled back
mask requirements in schools
since partially reopening build-
ings last academic year.
Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D)
announced that much of the
citywide indoor mask mandate
would be lifted March 1, but
students and school staff would
still be required to wear face
coverings in school buildings.
The mayor has not indicated
when the indoor school mask
mandate would be lifted.
The rollback of the outdoor
mask requirement comes days
after neighboring Prince
George’s County lifted its out-
door mask mandate at schools.
New York City did the same last
week and this weekend an-
nounced that students and staff
may not have to wear face cover-
ings indoors beyond March 7.
Last week, a Maryland legisla-
tive committee approved a state
education board decision to give
local school districts the authori-
ty to decide whether masks
should be optional inside
schools. Howard, Frederick and
Anne Arundel school districts
were among the first counties to
lift their mandates. Others are
likely to follow suit.
In Virginia, following fierce
and politically charged battles
over masks in schools, Gov.
Glenn Youngkin (R) signed a bill
last month making masks op-
tional in school buildings by
March 1. Fairfax County — the
state’s largest school system,
which had pushed back against
the governor’s previous attempts
to make face coverings optional
in schools — said it would com-
ply with the latest law. Still,
students at Alexandria City High
School were planning a lunch-
time walkout Wednesday in op-
position to lifting the mask man-
date.
Nationwide, about 71 percent
of all students can go to schoolwithout masks under new guid-
ance from the Centers for Dis-
ease Control and Prevention that
loosens mask recommendations,
based on health metrics at the
end of last week, according to
preliminary data from the Amer-
ican Enterprise Institute’s Re-
turn to Learn Tracker. That fig-
ure includes districts that cur-
rently require masks as well as
those that do not.
Lifting the indoor mask man-
date in schools may be a hard
sell in the District right now.
The city has not received wide-
spread parent complaints about
the indoor mandate, and most
children in the city are still
unvaccinated.
J ust 25 percent of D.C. chil-
dren between the ages of 5 and 11
are fully vaccinated, according to
city data. There are wide dispari-
ties in vaccination rates between
wards, so in many schools the
youth vaccination rate is likely
far lower than that.
Chancellor Lewis D. Ferebee
said the school system would
also loosen rules around school
events. Currently, every student
is allowed just two visitors at
sporting events, theater plays
and other activities. The city has
dropped restrictions on how
many spectators can attend
these school-hosted events.THE DISTRICT
Masks not a must outside at schools
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