The search for justice in a 1941 killing A philosophy contest poses big questions

JUNE 6, 2021

Art
Lessons
By creating
portraits
of front-line
workers,
a painter tried
to capture
what bravery
looks like
STORY AND PAINTINGS
BY TIM OKAMURA
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○ Art With a Point
Title: “Vax Populi”
Artist: Jon Krause, Jenkintown, Pa.
From the artist: We have the tools to
finally end this pandemic, but there’s a
reluctance by some to just stomp it out.
Everyone has the right to their personal
medical decisions, but not taking the
vaccine purely to prove a political point
holds back the entire country.
For more art from the magazine, go to
wapo.st/art-with-a-point.
On the cover: Painting of Tamika
Dennis, a nurse at Phoebe Putney
Memorial Hospital in Albany, Ga.,
by Tim Okamura
6.6.21
Painting Bravery Editor: Richard Just Deputy editor: David
Rowell Articles editors: Whitney Joiner,
A portrait artist tries to capture the remarkable spirit Richard Leiby, Alexa McMahon Dining
of nurses on the front lines of the pandemic. 8 editor: Joe Yonan Art directors: Christian
Font, Clare Ramirez Photo editor: Dudley
Albert King Is Not Forgotten M. Brooks Copy editors: Jennifer Abella,
Angie Wu Columnist: Gene Weingarten
In 1941, the U.S. military papered over the killing of a Food critic: Tom Sietsema Staff writer:
young Black soldier by a White officer. Can there be David Montgomery Editorial aide: Daniele
justice 80 years later? 16 Seiss Production coordinator: Mark Giaimo
Account manager: Trish Ward Marketing
Opening Lines manager: Travis T. Meyer Production
manager: LaShanda Swancy Production
A philosophy competition prompts entrants to ponder coordinator: Tyesha Greenwood Graphic
life’s big questions. 2 designer: Jill Madsen
Tom Sietsema Web: wapo.st/magazine
A review of Mattie & Eddie’s in Arlington. 24 Twitter: @wpmagazine
Instagram: @washingtonpostmag
Facebook: The Washington Post Magazine
Inside
Email: wpmagazine@washpost.com
Date Lab 6 Second Glance 27 Crossword 28 Editorial: 202-334-7585
Gene Weingarten 29 Advertising: 202-334-5224
Opening Lines
On Your Mark.
Get Set. Think.
A philosophy competition prompts
entrants to ponder life’s big questions
BY LIA KVATUM
W
hich is more important: to win, or
to play by the rules? Arguments
either way will be put to the test at
the Great American Think-Off,
an unusual contest hosted by a
cultural center in the small town of New York Mills,
Minn. The competition — which annually poses a
philosophical question, then invites essay
submissions from anywhere in the world —
culminates this year on June 12 with a debate in the
town’s school auditorium featuring four finalists,
none of whom is a professional philosopher.
Except for last summer, when it was canceled
because of the pandemic, the contest has been held in
the west-central Minnesota town since 1993. During
that first contest, then known as the Great
2 JUNE 6, 2021
Midwestern Think-Off, the question was whether the
inherent nature of humankind is good or evil. No one
won the debate that night, and the question — at
least in the eyes of those attending the event —
remained unanswered. It was asked again in 2012,
when Adam Bright, a writer from Syracuse, N.Y.,
argued that we’re all inherently evil and won the
debate.
The think-off is billed as a philosophy contest for
non-philosophers. Finalists have included a home
builder, a commercial fisherman, teachers and
lawyers. It was the idea of an artist named John
Davis, who moved to New York Mills from
Minneapolis in the late 1980s. He told me he came
with some preconceived notions about rural life and
rural people — notions that dissolved as he
acclimated to his new community. “I learned that
there was a thirst for poetry, for visual arts, for
opera,” Davis, 59, told me.
Eventually, a combination of luck and tenacity
birthed the New York Mills Regional Cultural Center.
Davis then envisioned a showcase event and settled
on an Everyman philosophy competition. He wanted
to show that, as with art, something as ivory tower as
philosophical debate could be enjoyed and
appreciated by anyone. He also knew, he told me,
that it was an unusual enough concept to pique
people’s interest far beyond the town’s borders.
The competition remains the marquee event of the
center and kicks off each January with the
announcement of the year’s question. It can be timely
ILLUSTRATION: JOSIE NORTON
THE WASHINGTON POST MAGAZINE 3
The 2018 Great American Think-Off, featuring,
from left, finalist Tonya Abari, moderator Ashley
Hanson and finalist Anthony Berryhill, who won
the debate. Photograph by the New York Mills
Regional Cultural Center
— like 2017’s question about whether the 2016 election changed
our perception of truth — or it can be timeless: In 2011, the
question was “Does poetry matter?” “The idea is that these are
profound questions, asked in a very simple way,” says Betsy
Roder, the center’s executive director. Entrants pick a side, and
then defend their position in 750 words or fewer. Drawing from
real life, particularly personal experience, is encouraged. Four
finalists — two from each side — receive $500 and a trip to New
York Mills to read their essays and defend their positions before
an audience.
Roder explains that the event has always been centered on civil
discourse, which in today’s polarized environment may be more
relevant than ever. Ultimately, it’s the audience members who
decide the winner by ballot: “Not who they believe in necessarily,
but who makes the best argument,” Roder told me. “We’re really
4 JUNE 6, 2021
asking the audience to truly consider what is being said.”
In 2004, Robert Lerose, a writer from Long Island, N.Y., sat
down to answer that year’s question: “Should same-sex marriage
be prohibited?” Lerose, who is neither gay nor married, drew
instead on his childhood: “As an argument against gay marriage,
I remember hearing that you needed the unique traits of a father
and the unique traits of a mother to raise children,” he says,
explaining that his own father died when he was young but he
still felt loved and supported. “And so the idea the traditional
family is the best way for a child to grow up just did not make any
sense to me at all.”
Lerose says that he began writing his essay with definite
opinions, “but I also made a promise to myself that I was going to
keep an open mind and weigh both sides, because I thought the
integrity of the contest and the integrity of having an honest
intellectual debate required that.” In the end, his arguments —
which also drew on the valuable contributions that gay
Americans have made to society, and the inherent unfairness of
same-sex marriage prohibition — earned the most votes from the
audience.
Roder estimates a couple of hundred people from the United
States and overseas submitted essays on this year’s question. The
committee, made up of community members, asks for
demographic information but redacts it from the essays so those
Spectators decide the winner by ballot: “We’re really asking the
audience to truly consider what is being said,” says Betsy Roder,
executive director of the New York Mills Regional Cultural Center.
making the selections don’t know who is writing, or where they’re
from. This year, three of the four finalists are from Minnesota.
Dan Tschida, 55, is one of them. He teaches government,
economics and sociology at a suburban Minneapolis high school,
but was previously a lawyer. He has loosely followed the Think-
Off for several years, but this was the first time he submitted an
essay.
At this year’s debate he’ll argue that playing by the rules is
more important. “It has a lot to do with the fact that I’m a lawyer
and I teach government,” he told me. “I think my argument is
basically that winning is temporary ... and rules are enduring.
They are more likely to protect all interests and reflect
fundamental human values.”
AJ Gil of Atlanta is taking the opposite stance. He found out
about the contest on a writers’ email group and thought it
sounded interesting. A debater in high school, he currently is a
sales rep for a cable company, and writes and performs comedy
on the side. He’s also a lawyer who previously worked on
immigration.
Gil decided that if he has to choose, he thinks winning is
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ultimately more important. “If you don’t win, you don’t get to
make the rules,” he says. “Having my experience in law, I can tell
you certainly, especially in immigration law, a number of the
rules aren’t just. So I thought of it from that perspective and said,
well, if the rules are unjust, you have to break them and you have
to win to change them.”
On the night of the contest, Tschida, Gil and the two other
finalists will gather before an audience of 200 to 300. (Roder says
the expected audience size will allow for physical distancing.) The
winner will be declared “America’s Greatest Thinker.”
For Robert Lerose, his 2004 visit to the Think-Off was
electrifying — and one of the best experiences of his life. There
was value, he explains, in being in a space that was thoughtful
and engaging, with people who could have an honest
disagreement. “I may not agree with what you’re saying,” he says,
“but you’ve given me something to think about. Even if minds
were not changed, if you learned something that you did not
know prior to going in there, that’s a victory also.”
Lia Kvatum is a writer and producer in the D.C. area.
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Date Lab WITH JESSICA M. GOLDSTEIN
He was glad to move
past the small talk
or longtime Washington Post subscriber Dan Harker, a
F setup by Date Lab was a “bucket list item” for his time in
the city. The 25-year-old Brigham Young University grad
came to town in January for an internship at a foreign policy
think tank. He submitted his application to the column right
after moving here. He also applied to a year-long Arabic-
language program at the American University in Cairo that
starts in June. He got selected for both. When did he find out
he’d be moving halfway around the world? One week before his
date.
As it happens, Arianne Minks, a 26-year-old Texas native
who works in financial consulting, had her own dating deadline:
She’s heading to law school in the fall, likely outside D.C. And
the thing is, she didn’t even apply for Date Lab; her roommate
nominated her. “I would say that I am really independent and
have been happy single, but am definitely open to dating,” she
told me. Though the pandemic had affected her social life, as a
general rule Arianne has “a pretty robust personal life” on top of
working a lot. Her calendar, she says, is “literally so full all the
time.”
6 JUNE 6, 2021
Dan Harker
is 25 and, until
recently, interned at
a foreign policy think
tank. He is looking
for “someone who
enjoys having
thoughtful,
intellectual
conversations.”
Arianne
Minks
is 26 and works in
financial consulting.
She is seeking
someone who is
“Christian,
ambitious,
intellectual, funny.”
Sign up for Date
Lab at washington
post.com/datelab.
If Arianne were actively looking for a partner, faith is
important to her, plus somebody who has a sense of humor and a
positive outlook, since “work in D.C. tends to be pretty negative.”
She also finds herself dating guys who are “kind of quirky or
nerdy.” Turnoffs: “Their ego takes up so much space that nobody
else can sit at the table.”
Dan is drawn to “people that have an intrinsic curiosity about
the world ... who are good listeners, who are good at asking
questions and maintaining a conversation in a way that’s
dynamic for both people.” He added, “I have a hard time with
small talk.” His big dealbreakers: unconscientious
conversationalists and people who lack passion.
The day of their (virtual) date, Arianne raced home from
work on the Metro to her place in Capitol Hill, changed into
casual clothes — “I had this blue top and high-waisted light-
wash jeans, the ones that everybody has a pair of right now, and I
wore fun earrings” — fixed her hair and makeup, ordered tacos
from Republic Cantina and poured herself a glass of rosé. She
settled in at the dining room table, with all her lamps on
“because you can’t do overhead lighting on Zoom” (yes, thank
you for this correct opinion!). She logged in just a few minutes
late, only because she felt like she ought to plate her food for the
camera.
Dan was in his room in the Woodley Park apartment he
shares with roommates. He put on a navy dress shirt and slacks
(“to preclude a fashion disaster” in the event he had to stand up).
PHOTOS FROM LEFT: COURTESY OF THE DATER; BY CHESLEY MCCARTY
 He then attempted to use natural light but was thwarted by the
angle from a window, admitted defeat and turned on — sigh —
the overhead light. He grabbed the sushi he ordered from Spices
in Cleveland Park and a glass of water and arrived at the Zoom
meetup on time.
Arianne felt “just terrible” about being two minutes behind
but was put at ease by Dan’s demeanor: “He had just a huge
smile on his face and seemed very warm, and didn’t look visibly
upset that I was running late, which was a good sign.” Dan’s
initial nervousness abated when Arianne appeared on camera. “I
thought she was really cute,” he said. “She looked really sweet. I
guess I felt more comfortable when I saw her.”
Once Arianne found out Dan was into Middle Eastern
foreign policy, they were off. “We had a deep dive on heavy topics
at the beginning of the date,” she said. Their conversation about
the Middle East led to chatting about ethics and humanity. Deep
for a Zoom.
“I really appreciated how she was also capable of moving past
small talk pretty quickly,” said Dan. Considering they talked
about “whether people are all born with the same degree of
personal morality, or if morality is a learned trait,” he hoped that
he didn’t go too esoteric. Also discussed: the Iran nuclear deal
and President Biden’s move to pull American troops out of
Afghanistan.
By the end of the date, they covered some lighter topics, too:
fun facts about the world, favorite TV shows (he likes “New Girl”
and “Breaking Bad”; she’s been watching “The West Wing”). “I
felt there was a little bit of chemistry there,” Dan said.
After two hours, Dan sensed — correctly! — that Arianne
probably still had work to get to that night. He asked for her
number and sent her a post-date thank-you text; she wished him
luck on his Date Lab interview. Both were open to the possibility
of speaking again but realistic about their circumstances making
that unlikely.
“I definitely thought he had a great smile and a good sense of
humor,” said Arianne. “But I also think we’re in really different
places in our life.” Not just geographically, she clarified. “I’ve had
my first five years of professional experience and am pretty
independent and established in my community, my friends, in
work. And I think he’s still navigating what’s next for his
professional journey … and I tend to date older. That’s not his
fault that he’s younger than me!”
“I loved getting to know her. It was super fun,” Dan said. “But
those constraints [of us both moving] prevented me” from
seeing this as anything more than one great date.
RATE THE DATE
Arianne: 4.5 [out of 5]. “It was a great experience and the
conversation was incredible, but I don’t see a future.”
Dan: 4.25.
UPDATE
No further contact.
Jessica M. Goldstein is a regular contributor to the magazine and The
Post’s Style section.

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8
 Painting
Bravery
A portrait artist
tries to capture
the remarkable spirit
of nurses on
the front lines
of the pandemic
STORY AND PAINTINGS
BY TIM OKAMURA

The artist at work on “Grief,” a large

painting featuring nurse Amy O’Sullivan,
right, comforting nurse Tiffany Latz.
O’Sullivan was featured on the cover of
Time magazine last fall.

PHOTO: KERRY THOMPSON

O
ne day in March 2020 I started coughing, and thus “Nurse Tracey,”
began my months-long battle with covid-19. It was featuring
the same day my beloved cousin Bob succumbed to Tracey-Ann Knight,
the disease in an intensive care unit in Tokyo. He had a nurse at NYU
been on the Diamond Princess cruise ship with his Langone Hospital
wife, daughter and son-in-law for an anniversary celebration, and in Brooklyn.
that journey quickly transformed into a nightmare.
I live in Bushwick, Brooklyn, across the street from Wyckoff
Heights Medical Center, where the first patient to die of covid in
New York had been treated. By the end of March there was a
constant hum on my block caused by the generators of three large,
white refrigerator trucks, all serving as temporary storage for
covid victims. The hospital morgue had reached capacity, and
from my kitchen window it became a regular occurrence to see
men in masks, gloves and plastic gowns exit a side door of the
hospital with rolling stretchers carrying shrouded bodies that the
men then pushed up a ramp to the back of a particular truck.
After a few weeks I started to get some strength back. Every day
I would watch nurses and doctors and support staff trudge by on
their way to and from long shifts at the hospital. They looked
anxious and exhausted. It was hard to imagine the full scope of the
horror they were dealing with daily.
At 7 each night, what seemed like most people in the neighbor-
hood would clap, whistle, bang pots and pans, and honk car horns
to show respect for the workers’ efforts. Around this time, my
upstairs neighbor made a large banner that read “Thank You
Wyckoff Hospital Staff!” and hung it on the side of our apartment
building facing the hospital. That gesture left me deeply inspired.
I’ve been an artist for more than 30 years, and I primarily paint
people in a manner best described as “realism.” Most of my work
has employed traditional materials, using oil paint on canvas in an
attempt to create the most lifelike rendition possible of my
subjects. My struggle with covid was taxing — a combination of
extreme fatigue and feeling listless and unfocused — but when I
saw that banner, I realized I should do something more than just
make noise each night. I became motivated to get back in the
studio. I decided that if I painted portraits of front-line workers, I
would at least be doing my own small part to pay tribute to them.
Then I happened to see a story on the “Today” show about
nurses coming to New York. One nurse explained her decision to
leave her family and travel across the country to our city, which at
that time was the worst covid hot spot in the country. I took a
screenshot of her to use as reference — and, fighting through the
fatigue and headaches, I got back in front of my easel. About 10
days later, I had created a portrait I called “Traveling Nurse,”
which was the beginning of what would become a larger project I
now refer to as my “Healthcare Heroes” series.
With this first painting I was doing something I almost never do:
portraying a person I hadn’t met. Yet I felt a connection because of
her honesty and humility in her interview. It was also my first time
painting someone wearing a mask; one of the biggest challenges was
trying to capture her sensitivity while being able to see only her eyes.
Finishing this painting made me want to meet the subjects of my
next paintings in person. To better represent these nurses, I had to
know more about their stories and hear directly from them.

I posted to Instagram of my struggle and my intention to get back

to work. A follower in Canada mentioned she was close with a
nurse who headed up the covid unit at NYU Langone Hospital, also
in Brooklyn. She said she had heard heartbreaking stories of her
friend’s experience there. I asked if she could connect me. By the end
of May I was invited to the hospital to meet the team of nurses there.

10 JUNE 6, 2021
THE WASHINGTON POST MAGAZINE 11
12 JUNE 6, 2021
 Left: “PPE,” Above: “Two Front
with nurse Jennie War,” based on a
Vasquez of NYU selfie taken by Laura
Langone Hospital. Mansfield, who was
head of nursing
at NYU Langone,
lower left.

THE WASHINGTON POST MAGAZINE 13

 Several of the nurses related highly emotional stories of trauma “Nurse Patti,”
and loss. In our conversations they described an unprecedented a portrait of traveling
number of patients, a shortage of beds, and stretchers lining the nurse Patricia
hallways — with no end in sight to the suffering. They were drained Lafontant.
emotionally and physically, but they had to stay professional, they
said, and compartmentalize the pain to keep doing their jobs.
After that, we stepped into a room that had been part of the
expanded covid ward so they could pose for reference photo-
graphs, which I would use to paint from. More than anything, I
wanted to simply capture the nurses’ faces. I’ve always felt faces
tell the story of one’s life, but I hoped in this case that their faces
might be able to represent the lived experience of front-line
health-care workers everywhere.
I always try to stay open to unexpected moments, and when
nurse Jennie Vasquez put on her personal protective equipment
and I saw the way light played off her plastic gown and face mask,
I knew I had to create that painting. It showcased the “armor” that
nurses had as their only defense against the coronavirus.
For the final photos of the session, I asked a nurse named
Tracey-Ann Knight if she’d be willing to pose, and as soon as she
did — flexing heroically while wearing her mask — I knew it was
what I needed. She was confident and bright-eyed and exuded
vitality. Quite often I find that the energy someone projects is
more important to the success of a painting than their physical
attributes, and her energy was perfect.
After we wrapped up, I returned to my studio and began to try
to do justice to the full range of experiences they had relayed to
me. Though I now had some captivating imagery to work with
that represented the courage and camaraderie of the nurses, I
also realized that not every painting could be a larger-than-life
hero pose. I needed to depict the sense of sorrow and loss they
felt, too.
Eventually I met two nurses, Tiffany Latz and Amy O’Sullivan,
from Wyckoff hospital, who were willing to come to my studio to
recount their most difficult moments during the height of the
pandemic. Their accounts were devastating. What came out of that
was a first for me: a portrait of someone crying. I called that
painting “Grief.”

A s the work went on, I was able to coordinate more pose

sessions with nurses from New York, Washington and
Georgia, either in my studio or by giving direction via FaceTime.
It’s been an unexpected dividend that seemingly every session has
produced profound conversation, usually starting with anecdotes
about the nurses’ fight against covid but often branching out into
ruminations on life itself. What has struck me while listening to
the stories has been the commonality of the emotional and
psychological toll the experience has had on them. Yet almost all of
them also explained that this was simply what they were trained to
do. One nurse told me, “Thank you for calling us heroes, but really
this is just my job.”
While taking a break from painting to get my second vaccina-
tion dose several weeks ago, I was talking with the nurse
administering the shot and found myself thanking her as she
injected the needle. She laughed and asked what I did for a living,
so I took out my phone and pulled up several portraits of the
nurses. “Wow! These look so real!” she exclaimed and called over a
few other nurses to show them the work. They were doing their job
with such conviction and determination, these nurses, and for
now I was trying my best to do the same.

Tim Okamura is an artist in New York.

14 JUNE 6, 2021
THE WASHINGTON POST MAGAZINE 15
16
 A L B E RT
KING
IS NOT
FORGOTTEN

In 1941, the U.S.

military papered over
the killing of a young
Black soldier by a
White officer. Can
there be justice 80
years later?
STORY BY ALEXA MILLS
ILLUSTRATION BY BRETT AFFRUNTI
P vt. Albert King’s body was still warm when his killer’s trial
began at 3:02 p.m. on March 24, 1941. Sgt. Robert Lummus
faced the charge of manslaughter — of willfully, feloniously and
unlawfully killing King. Outside the court-martial room at Fort
Benning, Ga., under overcast skies, some 50,000 soldiers were
training for the possibility that the United States would enter
World War II.
One day earlier, on Sunday afternoon, King had departed Fort
Benning with a good-conduct card in hand. He was dressed in
uniform — olive-green slacks, shirt, necktie and field cap — and
headed for the nearby city of Columbus, where his grandmother,
who’d recently died after a heart attack, had lived in a small
shotgun house with a full porch.
King went out that night with a friend, Pfc. Lawrence Hoover,
to a beer joint called the Cozy Spot where Black people like them
could dance, drink and relax. They met King’s girlfriend of four
years, and her friend, while they were out. It was 3:30 in the
morning by the time King and Hoover started back for their
barracks. They waved down a bus, paid their 15-cent fares and
headed toward the back where the other Black passengers sat.
The nearly full bus had more White riders than Black.
King, Hoover and the two young women continued the night’s
revelry on the bus, sitting on each other’s laps, “hollering and
laughing and cutting up,” as the bus driver later described it. King
was loud, according to several Black passengers and the driver —
shouting and “cussing” at no one in particular, which his friends
did not mind.
The bus driver minded. He stopped and started the bus, and
sent a second driver — armed with a handheld weapon called a held decision-making power rejected their earnest dissent. Soon,
blackjack, often leather with metal inside one end — to hush King’s death was forgotten to history — a case study in how U.S.
King, who, when threatened with being kicked off, demanded his military officials, even as they were on the brink of fighting a war
fare back. The driver stopped again near the gates of Fort against tyranny abroad, could successfully paper over the killing
Benning. That’s when Sgt. Lummus, a White military police of a Black soldier at home. Now, however, 80 years later, King has
officer on night duty, rode up on his motorcycle and came new advocates — pro bono attorneys who see a path to setting his
onboard. The driver pointed out King. Both men were about 20 record straight and veteran civil rights scholars who have spent
years old. Lummus told King to come to the front. King replied, more than 10 years building an archive that proves: Albert King
“What do you want with me up there?” was one of many.
The confrontation soon escalated. Lummus, who also was
armed with a blackjack, swung it at King but missed, and Hoover
spoke up for his friend: “Don’t hit him with your blackjack. I can
keep him quiet.” When Lummus pulled out his .45-caliber service
O n the day King lost his life, a young Black soldier named
Felix Hall was hanging from a tree in the woods of Fort
Benning, his body decomposing. Pvt. Hall had disappeared from
pistol, King and Hoover agreed to walk forward; White soldiers the base on Feb. 12 and remained missing until four days after
jumped up and closed in on them as they approached the front. King died. A few of the records on Hall and King are merged. On
King bolted out the front door and ran, disappearing into the March 26 a Black soldier named Jack Walker wrote home to his
dark and sprawling base grounds. Hoover jumped off the bus too, mother in Ohio to tell her that his friend King was dead. As for
but Lummus hit him between the eyes with his blackjack in the Hoover, Walker described how White soldiers “beat him up so
melee, and four or five White soldiers came after him. Lummus bad he is in the hospital looking for him to die.” Then on the 29th,
caught Hoover in a ditch and then went off to get police transport. he wrote her a letter about Hall’s body in the woods.
Once Hoover had been carted away, Lummus departed alone I found records on King’s killing while I was researching Hall’s
on his motorcycle. Eventually, he spotted a Black soldier walking lynching through Northeastern University Law School’s Civil
toward the main post. He wasn’t sure if it was King, but he pulled Rights and Restorative Justice Project, which finds undocument-
up behind him, parked his bike and switched off the light. He was ed, racially motivated homicides from the Jim Crow era and
the only person to testify to what happened next. Lummus said he uncovers the details. CRRJ has assembled an archive of more
told King that he was under arrest, and that King replied, “You than 1,000 such cases — each requiring months or years of
can’t arrest me, you son of a bitch.” Lummus emptied five bullets research — and continues to find new cases without pause. In
into King. The first one hit him in the stomach. 2015, the group gave Northeastern’s journalism school, where I
Immediately, the authorities at Fort Benning began to write was then a student, the documents it had on Hall. I spent more
their story of what happened on that morning in March. By than a year researching the case and published his story in The
October, the matter was in Washington, where some of the Washington Post. In the process, I filed requests with the
highest officials in the War Department wrestled over who National Archives and Records Administration for documents on
deserved what kind of justice. King had advocates — influential King, and received the transcript of the court-martial trial
and prepared ones, most of them Black — but White men who against Lummus. It was a shocking document.

18 JUNE 6, 2021 PHOTOS AT TOP FROM LEFT: LYNSEY WEATHERSPOON; NICK HAGEN; BOTTOM: NATIONAL ARCHIVES CATALOG
 Maj. Eugene M. Caffey, a military
lawyer who had graduated with honors
from the University of Virginia’s law
school and would three years later become
a war hero when he led his troops onto the
beaches in Normandy, conducted the
pretrial investigation into the death of
King. It took him a matter of hours, and he
typed out his results in four short para-
graphs. Caffey determined that Lummus
had told “a straightforward story of justifi-
able homicide” and was “to be commend-
ed for his conduct.” He also recommended
that Lummus be tried by general court-
martial “for his own protection.” He saw
no need to call a medical witness.
When the court met that afternoon, the
language of the trial was ugly: The bus
driver called King and Hoover not by their
names, but by their respective skin tones.
Racial slurs went into the transcript un-
checked. At one point a court manager
misidentified Hoover. Lummus called Al-
bert “Edward.” And throughout, men
pointed to “Exhibit No. 1”: a photo of
King’s body that was the opposite of how a
person would care to be remembered.
King was stripped of his olive green
uniform; there was a blood stain under his
head; and even though he was not shot
below the abdomen, the photographer
included his genitals in the frame.
The trial focused on the possibility that
King had a knife. At the court-martial
Above from left: The Capt. Marvin Coyle said that he and his staff turned up a knife 13
approximate location paces from King’s body as they searched the scene. He identified
of the house of Pvt. this knife during the trial and told the court that “it is not unusual
Albert King’s for a knife to be flipped out of a man’s hand through nervous
grandmother in reaction when he is shot. Moreover, his head was so placed in that
Columbus, Ga. King’s direction.”
closest known living Hoover said King did not have a knife. “I looked in his pockets
relative, his first down at the Cozy Spot and he didn’t have any knife,” he testified.
cousin Helen Russell, “He took the cigarettes and hid them, and I looked through his
of Michigan. Below: pockets for them. I didn’t see any knife then.” Lummus did not
Maj. Eugene M. say he saw a knife, but said he was scared of the possibility that
Caffey, a military King had a weapon. “He reached with his hand in his pocket and
lawyer who lunged at me, and I shot him,” Lummus testified. He also said
conducted the initial that it was dark and he could hardly see.
investigation of King’s The court adjourned at 5:37 p.m., about 13 hours after King
death in 1941. had died. Lummus was found not guilty and shipped off to his
new post at Fort Knox, Ky., the next day.
I sent lawyer Fred Borch, the regimental historian and
archivist for the U.S. Army’s Judge Advocate General’s Corps,
the 1941 files on Lummus and King to get perspective on how
they read to someone with deep knowledge of the history of
Army court-martials. “I think that the facts as they’re presented
are such that the chain of command recognized that Lummus
had used deadly force when there was no basis for it,” he told me.
“It’s a cover-your-tail court-martial so ... these men who are in
charge at Fort Benning can say, ‘No, we took this seriously when
a soldier is killed, and we had a court-martial and we looked at
all the facts and circumstances, and Lummus was found not
guilty.’ ”
Borch pointed out problems in Lummus’s testimony. “If no
weapon was visible to Lummus, then it was unreasonable for
Lummus to fear for his life, much less use deadly force,” he says.
And he took issue with the prosecutor, whose brief closing
THE WASHINGTON POST MAGAZINE 19
statement included: “I submit to the court for its own consider-
ation whether or not the killing was willful, felonious and
unlawful.” “The prosecutor didn’t believe in the case,” Borch says.
“He never argued for a conviction, because the whole idea here
was to provide cover for an unlawful use of force.”
Margaret Burnham, who was the first African American
woman to serve as a judge in Massachusetts and is the founder of
CRRJ at Northeastern, has read all of the more than 1,000 cases
in the group’s files, including King’s. “We have hundreds of cases
where African Americans killed in incidents of racial violence are
alleged to have had a knife, wielded a knife, had a knife hidden on
some part of their person. So that picks up a very well-worn trope
that slanders the individual and slanders the race as well by
accusing the individual of an act of aggression which is not
supported by any of the other facts,” she says. “To see this trope
travel into the Army’s file — its fact-finding file on the King case
— really also makes it 100 percent clear that the decision in this
case was based on racial animus.”
John Morrow Jr., the Franklin Chair of History at the
University of Georgia, comes from a family of Black veterans. His
uncle served in World War II and was at Fort Benning in 1940 for
his basic and officer’s training. “The only thing he said about the
Benning experience was, ‘It was atrocious. It was horrible,’ ”
Morrow told me. His great-uncle was awarded the Distinguished
Service Cross for his heroism in World War I. “If you serve in
combat, and you’re willing to shed your blood and die for your
country, then you deserve equal rights,” says Morrow, who has
been writing on military history for 50 years and has worked with
the National WWII Museum in New Orleans for more than a
decade. “And that’s what the men who fought in World War I and
World War II understood.”
But instead, Morrow says, Black soldiers were widely de-
meaned, faced limited opportunities to engage in combat and
were denied the Medal of Honor when they became war heroes.
20 JUNE 6, 2021
Above from left: Black officers were not allowed to com-
African American mand White troops. In protest of this
radio men at Fort treatment, the Black community rallied
Benning, Ga., in June around the Double V campaign, a hall-
1941. Black recruits mark of the World War II era. “The first V
at the fort. Below: for victory over our enemies from without,
William Hastie, a top the second V for victory over our enemies
Black official in the from within,” James Thompson wrote in a
War Department as a letter to the Pittsburgh Courier, a promi-
civilian aide to the nent Black newspaper, after the Pearl
secretary of war, Harbor bombing.
called King’s killing a With respect to those who lost their
“callous and wanton lives stateside, as King did, “justice isn’t on
shooting of an the docket,” Morrow says. “It’s, ‘Let’s make
unarmed soldier.” certain nobody ever knows about this.
Let’s make certain we cover it up — keep it
under wraps in the military.’ ”
T he day after the trial, a different
group at Fort Benning — a board of
three officers, all of them White and one a
doctor — began an investigation into
whether King died in the line of duty. A
decision in King’s favor would partially
restore his name and honor, and could
make his family eligible to collect financial
benefits.
King was an orphan; his father died of
pneumonia when he was a toddler, and
his mother died of influenza when he was
about 10. But King had a younger half
brother, George James. And he had an
uncle, Ocie Newsom, his mother’s broth-
er, who had just buried King’s grand-

mother in December.
This board of officers conducted the most exhaustive investi-
gation of the killing available. The officers reviewed King’s
clothing — riddled with bullet holes — and they went to Sconiers
Funeral Home to examine his body. They found that one bullet
entered King through his abdomen, and one through his back
near his left kidney. The three others went through the left side of
his head and neck. They interviewed 10 witnesses, most of whom
had not spoken at the trial. Several of those were Black people
who had been on the bus. When they’d finished, the board
members found that “the wounds of Private King causing his
death occurred in the line of duty and not as a result of his own
misconduct.” They accepted Lummus’s impression that King was
attacking him but found that King “was not armed with either a
knife or gun.”
That decision lasted only a few weeks. In a note from the
Office of the Commanding General at Fort Benning, Maj. Gen.
Lloyd Fredendall, who would go on to perform so disastrously
leading his troops in World War II that he was sent back to the
States, asked the board to reconvene and consider that “the
deceased was in the status of having escaped from the custody of
the Military Police, and was in process of being recaptured,” and
that the “deceased came to his death while resisting recapture
and while attacking a Military Policeman.”
One board member did not participate in this reconvening.
The remaining two met and rewrote their findings, this time
stating that King died as a result of his own misconduct — not in
the line of duty. The War Department approved those findings in
May.
I n July, Thomas Brewer, a physician and a founder of the
NAACP chapter in Columbus, sent a letter to the War
Department in Washington. He was frustrated with the military’s
story that Lummus shot King in self-defense — which was the
PHOTOS AT TOP: U.S. ARMY CENTER OF MILITARY HISTORY; BOTTOM: NATIONAL ARCHIVES CATALOG
version that had made the papers. Brewer said that “eyewitness-
es” were telling a different story. He asked for a better
investigation.
Brewer addressed his letter to William Hastie, a top Black
official in the War Department whose mandate, as the civilian
aide to the secretary of war, was to improve race relations in the
military. Hastie was in his mid-30s, the nation’s first Black
federal judge, a dean of Howard University School of Law and a
graduate of Harvard Law School. Hastie read the internal files on
King and wrote a detailed memo in October. He called the case a
“callous and wanton shooting of an unarmed soldier.” “It is
particularly difficult to understand why a board, whose original
findings seem wholly consistent with the evidence, should be
instructed to reconsider its action and to enter findings
inconsistent with the evidence,” wrote Hastie.
He argued that King could not have escaped custody because
there was no evidence that Lummus tried to arrest him on the
bus. He used the medical report describing the course of the
bullets through King’s body to try to reconstruct the scene, and
questioned Lummus’s claim that King “reached with his hand in
his pocket and lunged at me and I shot him. He threw his hands
up in the air and grabbed his middle and fell on his face.” Hastie
wrote: “I believe it is verifiable that a person shot in the pit of the
stomach with a bullet of heavy caliber does not raise his hands
after being shot, but immediately and involuntarily crumples or
clutches at his stomach.” He theorized it was possible that King
threw up his hands before he was shot rather than after. Hastie
noted that the court-martial “prevents further prosecution of Sgt.
Lummus,” but asked the War Department to reinstate the board’s
original ruling that King died in the line of duty.
Col. Edwin McNeil, who was serving as assistant to the judge
advocate general, sent his response memo in November. McNeil
was 59, a graduate of both the U.S. Military Academy and
Columbia University Law School, and a veteran of World War I.
He conceded that Fredendall’s letter “may have been inaptly
worded,” but said “it was not an order to reach any particular
findings.” He argued that King did resist arrest, that “such
misconduct on King’s part was the proximate cause of his death,”
and he therefore did not die in the line of duty. With his words
and signature, McNeil closed the case.
The following year, Hastie compiled a report titled “Violence
Against Negro Soldiers,” outlining some 20 cases of Black
soldiers, including King and Hall, killed or injured on or near
domestic military operations. The perpetrators of these crimes
were, for the most part, excused or exonerated — if they were
even tried. One case took place inside the Pentagon when a
group of Black government employees approached the Whites-
only cafeteria for admittance. After a confrontation, a White
officer clubbed a Black government employee (“a small
unarmed man, wearing glasses”) over his head, releasing a gush
of blood.
Hastie soon resigned from the War Department in protest. He
had advocated for integrated training in the Army Air Forces, but
he lost that bid and said he was shut out of conversations about
pilot training and facility development. “I had accomplished as
much as I could from inside the department,” he said in a 1972
interview.
He continued his work in other venues: He and Thurgood
Marshall, his former student, argued against all-White primary
elections in Texas before the Supreme Court, and they won in
1944. Hastie eventually became a federal appellate judge and
served on the bench until his death at 71.
THE WASHINGTON POST MAGAZINE 21
M argaret Burnham’s archive at
Northeastern expands on Hastie’s
report. She has source documents on 27
active-duty Black military members who
were killed because of their race on or near
U.S. bases during the World War II era,
and that count is growing as CRRJ contin-
ues its work.
“We are unearthing these cases in order
to prod the military to engage in a thor-
oughgoing examination, accounting and
program of redress for soldiers like Albert
King,” Burnham says. “These were men
who were killed not just because they were
Black, but because they were Black sol-
diers. Rather than being in a position to
take advantage of their status as full
citizens, as reflected in their uniforms, in
some circumstances those uniforms ex-
posed them to greater danger than African
Americans who were not in uniform. So it’s
really quite a significant number.” (When
asked to comment on King’s case, a spokes-
person at Fort Benning responded with a
summary of its work to honor the base’s
African American history and to recognize
Black veterans who served there.)
CRRJ took King’s files to Christopher
Melendez, a Marine Corps veteran and a
lawyer at Morgan Lewis in Boston. He and
two other lawyers, Matthew Hawes and
Micah Jones, both veterans, are working
on the case pro bono through the firm’s
Veterans Lawyer Network (and CRRJ
associate director Rose Zoltek-Jick is ad-
vising them). Their plan is to file a petition
to the Army Board for Correction of
Military Records requesting to reinstate
the board of officers’ initial decision, just
as Hastie had asked. “A successful petition
here, we think, will reclaim some honor
that was lost at the time,” Melendez says.
Jones, an Army veteran, recognizes the
street names and landmarks as he reads
the old files. “That was my home for a year
and a half,” he says of Fort Benning. “And
so this case, I think, has that visceral
connection for me.”
They will be filing the petition on
behalf of Albert’s closest known living
relative, his first cousin Helen Russell of
Michigan, who is 60 and preparing to
retire from her career in nursing. (CRRJ
learned about Russell through my report-
ing on this case.) “I will do this fight for my
family,” Russell says. “My main concern is
to correct his paperwork — to show that he
was an honorable soldier and that he was
wrongfully killed.”
Their focus is on changing King’s line
of duty status, but the lawyers are also
open to pursuing related benefits. “To the
22 JUNE 6, 2021
Right: Porterdale
Cemetery in
Columbus. King is
extent that any death benefits are owed as a result of the
correction of Private King’s military record,” Melendez said, “we
intend to ask that the benefits are awarded to Ms. Russell.” In
buried in an response to questions about whether a surviving family member
unmarked grave today can file a claim, a spokesperson from the U.S. Department
somewhere in the of Veterans Affairs pointed to the death gratuity, or six months’
cemetery. Below: Col. worth of the deceased veteran’s pay. (In Hall’s case, a board of
Edwin McNeil, who officers ruled that he died in the line of duty, and his father and
was an assistant to grandmother received several thousand dollars in insurance and
the judge advocate death benefits paid out over many years.)
general. He said King For Burnham, King’s case fits into the recent national
did not die in the line discussions on reparations, usually understood as financial
of duty and closed his restitution to descendants of enslaved people in the United States.
case. “This case has everything to do with the broad call for reparations,”
she says. “In my view, equally salient with a call for reparations for
slavery is the claim for reparations for victims of Jim Crow: those
who lost their lives, their houses, material wealth.”
T he people closest to Albert King’s case are dead now. Robert
Lummus died in 1997. He was recently married when he
killed King, and the couple later had a baby daughter, but he
became estranged from them. Lummus went home to Newton
County, Ga., started a new family and was a police officer. Then in
1963, he robbed a local bank for $9,692, according to a news
report. When the FBI caught Lummus in a storage building, the
article said, “he held a loaded .38 pistol pointed at his stomach.”
(It’s unclear if Lummus faced prosecution, because related
documents were most likely destroyed, according to a U.S.
District Court clerk in Georgia.)
When he died in his 70s, his obituary noted that he had retired
from a manufacturing company, and that he left behind his wife,
a son and daughter-in-law, and several grandchildren and
great-grandchildren. I sent his closest living family the docu-
ments on this case, and they confirmed that they received them,
but did not respond to my requests for comment.
Investigating officer Eugene Caffey, who wrote in the
court-martial that Lummus was “to be commended for his
conduct,” received the Distinguished Service Cross, Silver Star,
Bronze Star and Purple Heart for his World War II service. He
also made use of his law degree, rising to judge advocate general
of the Army by 1954. His career took a turn two years later. While
speaking before the Georgia legislature, he endorsed a Georgia
congressman’s speech supporting segregated schools. Harlem
Democrat Adam Clayton Powell Jr., who was the first African
American elected to Congress from New York, asked that Caffey
be dismissed from his post. Caffey retired under pressure within
the year, and died in 1961 at 65.
Thomas Brewer — who had asked William Hastie for a better
investigation and whose work for equal rights included support-
ing a legal battle that ended all-White primary elections in
Georgia — suffered a fate not unlike King’s. In 1956, he had an
argument with a White man over police beating a Black man in
Columbus, an incident they’d both witnessed. The White man
fatally shot Brewer, who was 61, and walked free after a jury
declined to indict him.
Lawrence Hoover, King’s friend who tried to defend him, lived
to be 70. His nephew, the Rev. Melvin Hoover, a retired
Unitarian Universalist minister who grew up in Columbus, Ohio,
calls his uncle “a soldier’s soldier.” Lawrence served in World War
II and stayed on to experience the military as it desegregated,
starting in 1948. He then served in Korea and Vietnam, but
retired in 1967, disenchanted by the conflict in Southeast Asia.
“He said, ‘I never thought I would say this. But ... that’s not my
U.S. Army,’ ” Melvin recalls.
Melvin describes his family, then and now, as “a mini United
Nations,” with members who trace their heritage to many races
and cultures around the world. As a young man, he planned to
become a “flying chaplain” with the Air Force. “The service was
one of the few places at that time where you supposedly had a
chance to be judged on your merit,” Melvin says. But Lawrence’s
decision to leave helped him question his own intentions. Melvin
went to seminary instead, met his beloved wife, and dedicated his
life and career to creating a world that is “truly for everyone.”
A lbert King’s family — his uncle, Ocie Newsom; and his
brother, George James — left the South for Detroit. James
completed three years of high school. He filled out his draft
registration card in January 1945, two days after his 18th
birthday, enlisted and received an honorable discharge in the fall
of 1948. When he died of heart disease at 48, he was single and
unemployed. His uncle filled out his personal information on his
death certificate. Ocie Newsom lived to be 96. He worked as a
security guard in the Detroit area and kept a picture of himself
with his twin brother when they were boys. He had a good sense
of humor and a way with words, dressed well, called himself a
PHOTOS FROM LEFT: NATIONAL ARCHIVES CATALOG; LYNSEY WEATHERSPOON
ladies’ man and was an exceptional pool player.
His daughter, Helen Russell, is first cousin to Albert King. She
studied at Howard University as a young woman, and after she
graduated with a degree in nursing, she returned to Michigan,
married and raised her two daughters. They all took care of
Newsom in his final years. He didn’t say much about the life he
left behind in the South, and never mentioned Albert.
I sent Russell the 80-year-old documents on the case, too.
When she read through them she found herself focused on a
blank spot in the records: the last 30 minutes or so of Albert’s life,
after he’d escaped the bus but before Lummus found him. “I tried
to put myself in that time,” she says, “to think about what that
must have been like for him, to have to hide for such a long time
and have fear, and know that, if he came out of hiding, that he had
to think he may have not lived. ... And what he must have been
thinking at that time: ‘What do I do? Do I get to my superior? Do
I stay here?’ And he’s thinking: ‘Okay, they’re looking for me.’
They knew at that time they were lynching. So he had to sit in a
dark place for a long time, and think about life and death, and
what his choices could possibly be.”
Alexa Mills is a writer in New York. Washington Post researcher Alice
Crites contributed to this report.
THE WASHINGTON POST MAGAZINE 23
Dining WITH TOM SIETSEMA Unrated during the pandemic

MATTIE & EDDIE’S 1301 S. Joyce St., Arlington. 571-312-2665. mattieandeddies.com. Open for indoor and outdoor
dining, delivery and takeout 11:30 a.m. to midnight daily. Prices: Dinner appetizers $3 to $15, sandwiches and main
courses $16 to $32. Delivery via DoorDash. Accessibility: Broad front doors, passageways and ADA-compliant restrooms
welcome wheelchair users.

Irish classics, just like his grandparents

F
riends laughed when Cathal Armstrong told them he would
be making his own french fries at Mattie & Eddie’s, the
successor to the sprawling Siné in Arlington.
Every other Irish pub uses frozen potatoes, they told the
veteran Washington chef, a Dublin native.
“It’s not very Irish,” says Armstrong. Besides, “the potato is such
an important part of Irish tradition not to be treated with respect.”
Two weeks before Mattie & Eddie’s opened in March, the
restaurateur bought 20 cases of potatoes. They needed to “age
properly,” at least a week or so, to convert sugar to starch and slow
browning, says the chef. Potatoes destined to become fries are
peeled, cut, washed, soaked overnight at room temperature and
drained and rinsed again before they get cooked first at a low
temperature and placed in a cooler. Just before serving, the
potatoes are cooked again at a higher temperature.
The labor of love makes for the finest fish and chips around.
Above: A spread of dishes at Mattie & Eddie’s,
including house-cured corned beef and
vegetarian Irish stew. Opposite page from top:
A generous breakfast platter; chef Cathal
Armstrong; patrons in the bar.
Fans of Armstrong’s shuttered Eamonn’s, A Dublin Chipper in
Alexandria will cheer the return of haddock sheathed in a golden
batter that makes itself heard at neighboring tables, and seven
“secret” sauces for dipping. Part of the fun is dunking and
declaring favorites. All have their merits and make short work of
the catch. The mildest sauce is ketchup mixed with mayonnaise;
the wildest dip slaps the tongue around with cayenne and serrano.

24 JUNE 6, 2021 PHOTOS: SCOTT SUCHMAN

The zesty curry sauce is my punctuation of choice for the fried fare,
the restaurant’s top-selling dish.
Mattie & Eddie’s is a love letter to Armstrong’s paternal
grandparents, drape makers whose wee home was the place for
family to gather for Sunday meals. I suspect it’s the cooking rather
than the setting that best channels his personal long-ago and
faraway, because the restaurant seats 200 people inside and an
additional 100 outside, in a courtyard at Westpost (formerly
Pentagon Row). The physical transformation from Siné to Mattie
& Eddie’s mostly involved cleaning, new lightbulbs and the
removal of hockey paraphernalia from a corner of the space. (No
offense to the sport, he says, but hockey doesn’t exactly register
Ireland.) If I’m not sitting outside the green behemoth, on the
patio, I’m in the bar, on a capacious raised banquette facing the
scene outside.
An appetizer of sardines is nothing like what you might expect:
whole fish. Instead, diners receive a jar of braised sardines mashed
with tomatoes and onions, spiked with cayenne and lemon juice
and served alongside fingers of toasted bread. One of six children,
Armstrong calls the spread “a vivid memory of the rare times I was
with my father,” just the two of them watching rugby at home
when the chef-to-be was a teenager. His father would make snacks
from tinned sardines, which he spritzed with lemon juice and hot
sauce and dispatched with nips of sherry. Knowing that little story
makes me appreciate what I already like even more.
“Make your own” has been Armstrong’s motto at every
restaurant he’s run, including the late Restaurant Eve in Old
Town. He continues the trend here, where the signature brown
bread, as synonymous with Irish fare as potatoes, is baked on-site,
along with the fragrant batch loaf, so named because multiple
loaves are baked together in one pan.
What the restaurant doesn’t make, it buys with quality in mind.
The butter is Kerrygold, from the milk of grass-fed cows in
Ireland, the vegetables from Path Valley Farms in Pennsylvania,
an Amish co-op tapped by some of Washington’s top restaurants.
Cue the meatless Irish stew, an enlightened bowl gathering
whatever vegetables look good in the market in a broth lush with
marjoram, rosemary and thyme. A side of piccalilli — turmeric-
yellow cauliflower, onions and radishes, stinging with vinegar — is
a relish to remember, similar to Indian pickles.
See, too, the lobster pot pie with its dome of puff pastry and a
filling of root vegetables and sweet seafood bound with lobster
stock thickened with roux. The mystery flavor is African blue basil,
which imparts a minty freshness to the bowl. Shepherd’s pie is
every bit as good; ripples of mashed potatoes enriched with egg
yolks hide a hearty filling of braised lamb.
Armstrong hired Casey Bauer, 26, as head chef. She comes
from a stint at the Brixton on U Street, where she ran a pop-up
featuring the flavors of her mother’s native Lebanon. Bauer’s
earlier credits include ABC Pony and Kaliwa, Armstrong’s pan-
Asian restaurant at the Wharf. Consistency is one of her
trademarks; your first bowl of dilly smoked haddock soup will
taste like the next, as will the fish and chips — signs of a sure
kitchen.
One of Armstrong’s after-school snacks was cheese on toast, a
memory he shares on the menu. The combination of toasted
pullman bread and melted Irish cheddar is simple and satisfying,
if not an exact copy of what his mother whipped up. (Her son
sprinkles the molten surface with chili powder. Bauer says sliced
tomatoes will be added come summer.) I’d order the pork belly
just for the chance at colcannon, some of the dreamiest mashed
potatoes of any country’s repertoire. The dollop here is green with

THE WASHINGTON POST MAGAZINE 25

KEY TO THE PREVIOUS SECOND GLANCE SOLUTION TO PUZZLE
MAY 30 “ALTERED BEAST,” MAY 30

1. Missing mat 7 5 2 7 6 2 5 ( 2 6 - 2 6 + - ( 7
+ ( 5 2 , & ) ( / / $ $ 1 7 ( 2 ' (
2. Shortened sign 5 $ , 1 % 2 : ) / $ * 6 < 2 8 $ * $ , 1
3. Another dowel 2 ' 2 6 3 $ , 3 $ 6 6 3 5 8 1 ( '
1 ( / / 3 , 1 ( 6 < ( 6 9 2 7 (
4. Lowered plate * 5 ( ( 1 2 / , 9 ( / $ , 5 6 & 8 0
6 ( / ( 1 ( % ( , 1 * $ 6 2 1 (
5. New route % 8
% : $ ' ( / 2 1 * ' , 9 , 6 , 2 1
6. Reversed $ %
5 $ 0 , & $ 1 7 / ( ' 2 1
% (
$ 7 ( 1 7 5 $ & . 5 2 $ 5 6 6 1 /
7. Filled in corner ( 5
, ( $ 5 2 6 ( ) $ 8 1 6 ) / 2 (
6 6
1 6 3 ( 1 7 : 5 , 7 7 ( 1 : 2 5 '
8. Missing bracket * 2 7 ( 0 6 ( ( ' 6 , ' 7 $ *
9. Red can 7 5 $ 9 , 6 % , & . / ( + $ 7 ( 6 + (
+ 2 0 ( 5 / / 2 < ' 3 2 / , & (
10. Shortened “E” ( : ( 5 + ( / 0 ) 2 2 / 0 ( 2 1 & (
/ 2 ( 6 6 ( 5 / $ 7 7 ( 1 2 2 1
11. No logo $ 5 & $ 1 $ 7 2 3 , & ( & 2 7 5 ,
12. Taller spool 7 ( $ 3 $ 5 7 < % $ & + ( / 2 5 3 $ ' 6
$ / ) , 6 ( ( 2 1 . ( < 3 $ 7 5 2 /
' < ( 5 ( 1 7 7 ( 5 6 ( / $ < 1 (

The circled words are scrambled animals (WOLF,

IGUANA, LION, DINGO, ANTEATER, NEWT, IBIS,
MOLE, APE and LEOPARD). The first letters,
when unscrambled, spell WILD ANIMAL.

A lot of work goes chopped kale and rich with heavy cream. Come Halloween, per
into the fries on the Irish custom, the restaurant will slip wrapped coins into its
fish-and-chips colcannon.
platter at Mattie & Mattie & Eddie’s serves breakfast all day, in the form of eggs
Eddie’s in Arlington, any which way, fried potatoes, sweet baked beans, a few slices of
and there are also country ham, two sweetly spiced pork sausages, blood sausage,
seven dipping mushrooms and more — believe it or not — arranged on a single
sauces to sample platter. The eye-opener appears to be designed with a
along the way. longshoreman or heavy drinker in mind. Did I mention it shows
up with two thick slices of house-baked brown bread? Two could
feast on the spread, although they might not care to share.
Corned beef gets lavished with the same attention as fries. “It
takes 17 days of prep,” says Bauer, who describes a 10-day soak in
pickling spices followed by a spice rub that occupies the brisket for
six days. The meat is then braised with spices and served with
parsley-freckled potatoes, and cabbage that tastes as much of
sweet butter, onions and fresh thyme as cabbage.
Speaking of attention, service improves with every visit.
Whereas an earlier server had to re-ask an entire party what it
wanted, my most recent attendant watched over us like an Irish
Maria Von Trapp. I haven’t heard “sweetheart” bandied about as
much since I went card shopping on Valentine’s Day.
Specials signal the season. Steamed mussels swell with the
flavor of warm asparagus cream and random bites of sauteed
ramps. And my favorite dessert was a slice of orange-brightened
poundcake carpeted with sliced rhubarb and served with a cool
custard sauce, the definition of goodness and light.
Sunday afternoons are sweetened with the esteemed fiddler
Brendan Mulvihill, who is sometimes accompanied by flute, guitar
or other instruments.
German-American Bit by bit, Armstrong is personalizing the expansive dining
Restaurant room, newly dressed with his family’s coat of arms and a map of
Bierstube-Biergarten what he proudly refers to as “a tiny island surrounded by seafood.”
Some of Mattie and Eddie’s handiwork — ruby velvet curtains —
Cruise only 20 miles from
have yet to be hung. Already, though, the guiding lights are being
DC’s own Autobahn – honored in the best way possible, by warm welcomes at the door
The Beltway and memorable Irish food on the table.
1143 Central Ave. (Rt. 214), Edgewater, MD
410-798-6807 • www.oldstein-inn.com PHOTO: SCOTT SUCHMAN; ORIGINAL SECOND GLANCE PHOTO: WASHINGTON POST READER BILL NIEDER
 Second Glance

A gathering
of animals
BY RANDY MAYS

Find the 12
differences in the
photo of animal
figures at the Kite
Loft in Ocean City in
March.

PUZZLE ANSWERS
See them online now
at washingtonpost.
com/secondglance or
in next week’s issue
of the magazine.

SEE YOUR PHOTO

To submit a photo of
the Washington area
for use in Second
Glance, email a high-
resolution jpeg
attachment of 8
megapixels or larger
to secondglance@
washpost.com. For
information about
our guidelines for
user content, see
washingtonpost.com/
secondglance.

PHOTO: WASHINGTON POST READER DAVID C. KENNEDY THE WASHINGTON POST MAGAZINE 27
Crossword “CRAM SESSION” BY EVAN BIRNHOLZ

ACROSS 71 Large, hairy beast                

1 Use flawed reasoning, 74 Burglar in the Quest of
    
say Erebor of high fantasy
4 Terra ___ 75 Did some interrogating    

9 Scrub 76 Vocal    
14 Temporary plunge 80 Express scorn visually
17 Demand 81 Most alert      

19 Debate presentations 83 Duds at the Oscars       

20 Bust figure, informally 84 With euphoria
21 Round rim surrounder 86 *Moon, e.g.     

22 *Got somewhere 89 Political mover?      

during a task 92 March Madness locale
24 *Native American 93 Buildup from pressure     

talismans suspended 97 Circled by         

over cradles and beds
26 Tennis pro Vesnina
27 Focus of a newspaper’s
culture beat
29 Verification of a
businessman’s
statements?
30 Patronizes, as a hotel
33 ___ Yuanzi, activist
during China’s Cultural
Revolution
34 Delivery from a herald
36 Magical D&D foe
37 *Semis
42 Band whose name is a
potential answer to its
song title “Why Can’t
We Be Friends?”
43 ___ Emhoff, member
of the second family
beginning in 2021
45 Disney Junior’s royal
detective
46 Its flooding was the
work of the god Hapi,
in ancient myth
47 Fill to capacity
48 Distort, as polling data
49 *Messes with
53 Watched
54 “The Tempest” spirit
56 Letters on some
Duracell packs
57 “The ___ Holmes
Mysteries” (series of
detective novels by
Nancy Springer)
59 Export from Bordeaux
62 ___ forces
64 Marsupial hunted by a
Tasmanian devil
68 Civic’s test developer?
69 Org. with a STEM +
Families program
98 Lily pad visitor
100 Z as in Zografou 
102 Some distillery 
products

104 Capital near Paradise
Island
106 Astatine, e.g.
110 Like some writing
devices  
112 Folks in the forces,

briefly
113 Bonus 
115 Have aches and pains
 
116 Particles generated
from heterolytic fission 
118 The Bard’s kerfuffle

119 “The Unremembered
Girl” author Maxwell
121 *Gymnastics surfaces
124 One watching a race
126 Burton whose fans
petitioned for him to
become the host of
“Jeopardy!”
127 Mohawk Island’s lake
128 Sharp-ended fastener
129 Take a closer look in a
book, say
130 Not amateurish
131 Semiaquatic creature
132 1997 Mattel acquisition
133 Cardinal numbers?
DOWN
1 Traps, as in a web
2 “Straight up ...”
3 Avian nickname given
to the Creek warrior
William Weatherford
4 Mountain evergreen
5 Pledge to an officiant
6 Feeling after a series
of unfortunate events,
often
 
  
 
 
   

   
  
 


7 Series with a fourth- 38 ___ hygiene (dental
season premiere titled concern)
“Welcome to Korea” 39 Reflected line in optics
8 Acquiesce (to) 40 Mag discussing CEOs
9 “Birdman” actress 41 What Facebook’s
Riseborough thumbs-up icon means
10 Fourth-grader voiced 44 Like medals and prizes
by Nancy Cartwright 47 Nautical weapon
11 Mineral sources 50 Character in Lilith
12 HDTV brand Saintcrow’s book “To
13 Male that meows Hell and Back”
14 Disappeared gradually 51 Actress Issa, and a
15 Wet one’s thistle? homophone of 39 Down
16 Bedeviled 52 “Who’s next?” reply
18 Disconfirm from whoever is next
21 “It follows that ...” 55 Going through texts
23 “The Legend of Zelda: 58 Ocean snapper?
A Link to the ___” 59 Burn, at a barbecue
(video game prequel) 60 End up behind
25 Mama heard on the 61 Ottawa-born crooner
radio 62 Word before your words
28 Tank’s contents 63 Large, hairy beast
31 Hairy hollow, perhaps 65 Ran, as in a laundromat
32 Perceptible by touch 66 Biblical figure referred
34 Honeydew, e.g. to in the phrase “Am I
35 Earlier, in a sonnet my brother’s keeper?”
  
 
 

 
 
 
 



67 Conservative in the
House of Commons
69 Big picture
70 Bit of company attire?
72 Exfoliating spa offering
73 Join privately?
77 Hot body
78 Throb rhythmically
79 Load-bearing creatures
82 Stern rebuke
85 Reach
87 Melody with the notes
vadi and samvadi
88 Shirk work
89 Like an online 90 Down
90 Written communication
91 Some govt. issuances
94 Big part of a big
personality’s
personality, perhaps
95 Either one of the
duettists on
“Somethin’ Stupid”
96 Superlatively snarky
97 Lansbury of “Bedknobs
and Broomsticks”

 
 


 


99 “Like that’ll ever
happen!”
101 Hard to figure out, like
some puzzles
103 Things revealed after
taking an exam, and
what’s spelled out by
the letters immediately
following six special
squares in this puzzle
105 Split up
107 Company seeking hits
108 Tank’s contents
109 Brief bit of brightness
111 Things one can check
on Eventbrite
114 Indigenous performers
of the Bear Dance
117 European site of a
contemporary music
festival called Ultima
120 Bombard with laser
beams
122 “Borders” singer
123 Roll-call refusal
125 Husked grain

28 JUNE 6, 2021 SOLUTION TO LAST WEEK’S PUZZLE: PAGE 26. ONLINE: CLASSIC MERL REAGLE PUZZLES AT WAPO.ST/CLASSIC-MERL.
 BY GENE WEINGARTEN Below the Beltway

You can’t get

there from here

I
recently stayed in New York City on a skinny island in the
middle of the East River, not far from the old New York City
Lunatic Asylum, which is what that institution was called in
the 1840s back when you could call people lunatics. (A lot of
things were okay then that are not okay now. Places had names
like the Home for Wayward and Debauched Young Ladies and
Hopeless Inebriates.) Today the island is called Roosevelt Island,
and there are no more lunatics, though there is some degree of
lunacy, especially in the waning days of the pandemic.
This is extremely desirable real estate, loomed over by an
enormous, handsome bridge, the 59th Street Bridge, a.k.a. the
Queensboro Bridge, a.k.a. the Ed Koch Bridge, but best known as
the Feelin’ Groovy Bridge, and the only thing wrong with this
whole setup is that you cannot drive onto the island from the
bridge. You can only drive over the island on the bridge. If you are
in Manhattan and want to get to Roosevelt Island, you have to go
miles out of your way to Queens first, then approach the island
from a different bridge. It is this giant tease, as though someone
built Carnegie Hall but forgot to put doors on it.
Rachel and I were dog-sitting for Chris and Andrea, Rachel’s But this visit was really strange. It seemed paranormal. Even
brother and sister-in-law. I will not embarrass them by the wildlife seemed to know something was awry. On Roosevelt
speculating what their rent is, though it is probably about Island is a famed cat sanctuary, erected by cat lovers many years
$275,000 a month plus utilities. It is a very attractive apartment ago. It once housed many strays, but these days they seem to be
except for the rusted old car on cinder blocks in the hallway gone. It is filled with very irate and irritated geese. Where’d the
outside the bathroom. It is actually a washer-dryer, the front panel cats go? Unclear. How’d the geese get there? Who knows? Did the
of which has been removed, exposing the innards. That’s because geese eat the cats? Just my speculation. But the honkers are in
it would be tedious to remove the panel after every use to tinker charge and told us, loudly, to get the hell out of there, and we did.
with the faulty mechanism. In front of it is a large, bulbous rubber The strangest thing happened at a Midtown restaurant, where
“ear syringe.” It is designed to flush wax out of your ear, but in this we were dining in a row of those hastily constructed cute, cozy
case is repurposed to drain excess water out of the dryer so it street sheds with chairs and tables, carpentered early in the
doesn’t just sit there and stink. When the machine is operating, it pandemic to give diners at least the faint illusion of safety. I asked
emits a penetrating whine, like a dentist’s drill. our waiter what his favorite pandemic story is. He said there was a
The tenants only briefly complained about this and then shut lot to choose from, and it took him nearly an hour, sifting the
up because this is New York and — I want to emphasize this — bizarre from the truly bizarre, before he came up with the winner.
they scored a place on Roosevelt Island! With a washer-dryer! There was some sort of explosion in the building across the
Like everyone else here, they are just happy to be alive. street, he said, which the diners took in stride — this is the season
All in all, it was a strange visit. Toward the end of a year-long of the Black Death, after all — until the rats started scrambling for
pandemic, New York seemed ... wrong. I am not naive about these their lives. They emerged from the building and thudded down
things — New York was the city of my birth and early adulthood, the streets, many dozens of them, huge and scared, descending on
and years ago I learned that Thomas Wolfe was right when he said the cute, cozy, safe dining sheds. They swarmed under and into
that you can’t go home again. That’s because reality battles with the sheds. Some people tried to lock the beasts out as they
memory and kicks the crap out of it. When I went to visit the house scrabbled at the door. Other people fled screaming into the
I lived in from birth to 3 years old, I looked forward to streets, where more rats — freaked out and moving fast —
rediscovering the front steps, which I remember with awe as a swarmed at their ankles. Some of the rats stayed for days, seeking
balustraded white staircase like the one Shirley Temple danced shelter in the sheds. “One still lives in the first shed,” the waiter
down with Bojangles Robinson, a curving colossus of Himalayan said. “We leave her alone. Her name is Sally.”
proportions that I had to crawl up. It turned out to be four shallow We think he was kidding about that last thing but weren’t sure.
steps high, a total ascent of 14 inches. Anything seemed possible.

ILLUSTRATION: ALEX FINE THE WASHINGTON POST MAGAZINE 29

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