Features: Talk of Takoma  •  Howard Kohn

June, 2006

Gentle man callously slain; $5,000 reward for killers

Victor Dao, dying from a point-blank shot in the back, lived long enough to tell a Takoma Park police officer the few awful facts of his killing.

On his way home from a store about 10 o’clock on the evening of May 15, Mr. Dao, a 66-year-old immigrant from Vietnam, had been in his element. As he passed through the street life at the Flower-Piney Branch intersection, he was recognized and greeted. The apartment he shared with one of his sisters was just ahead.

She had sponsored his entry to the U. S. in the early 1990’s, and he had made a studious, unselfish, working-class life for himself – University of Maryland student, university library clerk, poet, master of languages (Mandarin Chinese, German, Russian, French, Japanese and Spanish), tutor for Vietnamese kids new to American schools and school bus driver.

At the driveway to Mr. Dao’s building two ski-masked muggers surprised him. Doing as he was told, he lowered himself to the ground and permitted the rifling of his pockets. With no known provocation one thief then fired a bullet into Mr. Dao as he lay pressed against pavement. From about a hundred feet away some of his neighbors ran toward the shot but were held back by more shots fired wildly in their direction as Mr. Dao’s assailants made their getaway.

A few days later people who had been touched by Mr. Dao’s graciousness assembled at his funeral:

Thomas Tran, who knew Mr. Dao through his tutoring with the Maryland Vietnamese Mutual Association; Larry T. La, who served him many dinners at the Meiwah Restaurant Mr. La owns; Mrs. Chopra, who had been his supervisor when he worked in the library stacks; several other librarians; fellow bus drivers (a yellow bus was draped in black); families of his students; and another former student, Nhan Vo, who learned Russian from Mr. Dao in Saigon in the late1970’s and now produces Vietnamese programs for local Cable TV.

Surveillance video of unauthorized users of murder victim’s bank card can be seen at www.takomaparkmd.gov

A $5,000 reward has been posted. The best clues may be in footage from a surveillance camera at a Landover ATM where three men tried to use Mr. Dao’s bank card the day after his murder. The video and still shots of the three men can be viewed at www.takomaparkmd.gov. The Takoma Park police can be contacted at 301-270-1100, or helpful tips can be phoned anonymously to 1-866-411-8477.

A journey from Death Row to local sports & politics

The kids who played on Shujaa Graham’s baseball and soccer teams here in the 1990’s had no reason to know their coach with the low Louisiana drawl had been sentenced to die as a black militant in California two decades earlier.

Shujaa did not expressly keep his past a secret, but after years of attention from federal agents intent on returning him to prison he craved a normal life in Takoma Park with Phyllis Prentice and their three children. “We weren’t underground exactly, but we didn’t really want people to know who we were,” Phyllis says.

On May 5th, however, Shujaa told his story to a house full of Takoma Park people.

From a share-cropper’s farm in the South he had moved with his family to South Central Los Angeles, looking for his main chance, but at 18, for a $36 robbery, he was imprisoned in Soledad. There he studied history and world affairs and the teachings of Black Panthers who were fellow prisoners. He became a crusader for reform. In 1973 a guard was murdered, and despite little compelling evidence Shujaa and another inmate were charged with the crime. After a first trial that ended with a hung jury Shujaa was convicted and incarcerated on San Quentin’s death row. In 1979 the California Supreme Court, ruling that black jurors had been deliberately excluded from hearing his case, ordered a new trial. He endured the suspense of another hung jury, and finally in 1981, at his fourth and final trial, he was exonerated.

During that period he met Phyllis at the San Francisco County jail, where she was a nurse. Soon after he was released they moved to Takoma Park. “He was too well known in California. There was a bull’s eye on him,” Phyllis says. “Here we didn’t know anyone, except for a friend on Hodges Lane.”

As their children grew up Shujaa began to help others awaiting execution, but this political work was away from Takoma Park, as far away as Italy. At home he was content to be a coach and a landscaper-for-hire.

Going public in May was something Shujaa decided to do on behalf of Jamie Raskin, the Takoma Park constitutional scholar and State Senate candidate who wants to repeal the death penalty in Maryland. Marlana Valdez, Shujaa’s friend and Jamie’s campaign chair, introduced the two. Shujaa took an instant liking to Jamie and agreed to speak for him. His talk was soul-baring, none of it abstract. “It’s the only campaign event I’ve had where people openly wept,” Jamie says.

Ervin the favorite in District 5;
Elrich will run At-Large

Even though Valerie Ervin is now likely to win a rapid succession of endorsements to be the next representative on the Montgomery County Council from Takoma Park and Silver Spring (District 5) her decision to seek election was not quick and easy.

For one thing she had to wait for Takoma Park’s Tom Perez, her good friend and current District 5 rep, to decide if he would run again. For another, under ethical rules, she had to resign as confidential aide to Takoma Park’s George Leventhal, who is an at-large rep on the County Council.

Tom’s decision was held up by State Attorney General Joe Curran, who had trouble figuring out whether to retire. On May 8th Curran finally said he was willing to pass the torch. On May 23rd, to a mixed crowd of suits and ball caps at the fountain in downtown Silver Spring, Tom declared for Curran’s position. On May 26th Val quit her job for George and told friends she will file papers for Tom’s position.

The news left City Council members Marc Elrich and Joy Austin-Lane, who had also been planning to run in District 5, with their own dilemmas.

Over the Memorial Day weekend Marc made up his mind to go after one of the four at-large seats, for which he is likely to get many of the same endorsements as Val. He then talked to Val, who was elected to the school board from District 5 in 2004, and they agreed to endorse each other’s campaigns and a mutual “clean-politics, balanced-growth” message.

As the Voice went to press Joy was still unsure of her decision, but in a note to supporters she wrote, “I may not stay in the race.”

Vendors may be evicted from Langley Park

Are the fruit and vegetable peddlers on the Prince George’s side of the Langley Park Crossroads an eyesore and a nuisance?

The 40 or so vendors who routinely park their trucks for curbside business caused enough complaints that Prince George’s County Council member Will Campos introduced new regulations in May to limit them to eight trucks on residential streets and seven in the shopping mall.

The vendors are blamed for litter, the hazards of propane fuel, obstructing traffic, endangering pedestrians and for adding to a milieu where contraband changes hands.

A law already keeps them off the streets in Takoma Park on the Montgomery side, but the mall merchants on both sides view the vendors with worry. “What is the thinking of drivers as they traverse the Crossroads? Will they come here to shop if there is ‘chaos?’ We think not,” says Erwin Mack, who speaks for the Takoma Park store owners.

Under the new regulations a lottery would be held among the vendors for the lucky eight and the lucky seven. The others would be able to sell their trucks to the County, though not necessarily for the value commensurate with street capitalism.

Behind softball champs
a woman with a plan

Top-flight sports teams are made, not born, and this season’s success of the Blair High’s varsity softball team can be traced to Sue Immerman’s decision in 1997 to start a local league only for girls.

	“Most girls were afterthoughts on their baseball teams,” remembers Sue, mother of ball-playing daughters Sarah and Eve. “Boys dominated the play, and most girls were intimidated by being in a tiny minority. It was clear we needed to create a new culture for the girls so they could think of themselves as athletes.”
Sue Immerman, kneeling in front row, right, with one of her many girls softball teams.

With the help of Stan Barouh, father of ball-playing daughter Morgan, Sue found enough girls to create three teams. She and Louie Hoelman, then a Piney Branch Elmentary teacher and now the Blair coach, also set up week-long summer camp for girl softballers.

“It was a struggle to convince parents and girls that softball could be exciting. It was even harder to convince coaches to raise their expectations and stop babying the girls,” Sue says. But in 2003 three coaches, Ray Denenberg, Ray Scannell and Benita Griffis assembled an all-star team of local girls, known as Takoma Fire, to play hotshot opponents in a regional league.

This spring the Blair team, made up mainly of girls who came through Sue’s league and then played on the Fire, won the regular-season championship.

City loses Police Chief & Children’s Librarian

Photo: Terry Seamens

Police chief Cindy Creamer enjoys interacting with kids

Two women who have been part of the City’s public face for the past generation – Police Chief Cindy Creamer and Children’s Librarian Jillian Hershberger — announced in May they will be leaving at the end of July.

In 1976, fresh out of high school, Cindy made a good impression in a dispatcher’s job with the Takoma Park police. Six years later the friendly live-wire Jillian joined the library staff as a dramatic presence at the front desk.

Cindy rose to the top of the ranks, the first woman to make chief (2002) and the first chief not brought in from outside the department in many years. Jillian was promoted to children’s librarian (1987) and became a sort of storybook character (Queen of the Children’s Room), beloved for her gleeful animations and her skill at making literature fun.

PHOTO: JULIE WIATT

Cindy, already eligible for a near-maximum city pension, is moving on to the second job of her career — assistant chief of patrols for WSSC. The new Takoma Park chief, to be selected by City Manager Barb Matthews, will likely be asked to find a better way to get more officers out of the station and onto beats, the so-called “community policing” program that’s lost momentum in recent years. Jillian will start over in Santa Fe on a quest for adventure. “I can no longer gainsay the lure of the West; that is why I am moving,” she says.

Children’s librarian Jillian Hershberger

Local economist challenges
basis of radical reforms

The headline-making controversy erupting from Larry Mishel’s 100-page analysis of U. S. Department of Education data can hardly be guessed at from the title, “Rethinking High School Graduation Rates and Trends.” But Larry, president of the prestigious think tank, Economic Policy Institute, is impiously shaking up the conventional notion that teenagers are dropping out of school at a dire rate.

The rate has actually improved over the past 40 years, despite a leveling off since the mid-1990’s, if the federal numbers are to be believed.

Doubters, who include experts hired by the association of state governors, say the data relies too much on the truthfulness of people who participate in surveys. Larry, working with fellow economist Joydeep Roy, says they tracked two types of surveys, each of which yielded the same finding.

For Larry, a 20-year Takoma Park resident, hardcore softball player and former commissioner of our youth baseball league, the point is not to win a scholarly dispute but to raise a question about the recent radical changes imposed on teachers by politicians. “Perhaps the politicians have over-reacted,” he suggests.

Local writer could use Robert E. Lee threads

Takoma Park author Hank Cox has written about an episode of vengeance begetting vengeance on the Minnesota frontier, but because it took place during Lincoln’s presidency Hank gets lumped in with Civil War historians. At a Western Kentucky University book fair early this spring he was seated next to a writer of three books about the Southern cause. Seated on the other side was a historian in full Southern dress.

Hank Cox

“Honest to God, he was wearing a Confederate army uniform,” Hank says. “I tell you, if I had written about Jefferson Davis, I would’ve fared much better.”

Hank’s book, “Lincoln and the Sioux Uprising,” tells the story of embezzlers at the Office of Indian Affairs who stole food and clothing from the Sioux, triggering a six-week massacre of more than 800 white settlers in 1862 and, in turn, the death sentences of 303 native warriors. It was a defining moment for Lincoln, who reviewed each case and, disregarding his advisers, reduced the number of the condemned to 39.

Hank did get treated enthusiastically at his alma mater, Marshall University, from where his daughter Sarah also graduated last year. He was invited to give the John B. Stewart annual lecture, was feted at a dinner and sat next to Professor Jean Smith, premier historian and New York Times op-ed writer. They discussed the Grant Administration.

Fundraising a big success, museum seems real deal

Historic Takoma has more than $500,000 to spend on a museum after receiving a $260,000 grant from Montgomery County in May.

Lorraine Pearsall and Sabrina Baron, the group’s primary fundraisers who earlier succeeded with two state grants totaling $260,000, next will try to buy a building. They have their sights on the old nut factory in Takoma Junction, a 4600-square-foot space with 14-foot-high walls and a tin ceiling. “It’s an empty shell that needs a lot of work but has great potential,” says real estate agent Hank Prensky, who is donating his time to the negotiations.

If all goes well, the museum will become a repository for the town’s original seal, the first ballot box used in elections, photographs from the dirt-lane era, copies of newspapers from the Roaring Twenties and perhaps recently castoff records of the City, for which there has been no good storage place.

High-speed chase ends safely next to house

For about 15 minutes on the evening of May 20th two 18-year-olds from the District drove a stolen Ford Expedition at speeds up to 60 miles an hour through Takoma Park, with several police cruisers in pursuit. Trying to turn left onto Tulip Avenue from Maple Avenue, the teenagers crashed through a section of short wrought-iron fence and came to a stop alongside a Victorian house. They ran off but were caught and arrested for auto theft and possession of marijuana.

“It’s a miracle no one was hurt,” says Catherine Tunis, who happened by a few minutes later. By then there were 18 police cars and a helicopter on the scene.

The house, belonging to Caroline Alderson and her husband Tom, is a Halloween institution. Every year Caroline and friends act out dramas from “Great Expectations” and “The Raven” in the living rooms and on the front porch.

Other comings & goings

Ater three-plus years writing local news for the Gazette, Sean Sands is taking a downtown PR job at a firm started by a friend. In a good-bye e-mail the remarkably likable Sean paid compliments to Takoma Park: “I’ve seen people pull together to achieve a common cause in a way that simply doesn’t happen in many American cities. And there have been countless times I’ve said to myself, ‘Gosh, this is a really great place.’”

A new store for sports lovers, Fair Day’s Play, has opened in Old Takoma at 7050 Carroll Avenue. The two owners, Pat Greenfield and Robert Pleasure, are taking pains to stock sports gear, games and clothing from manufacturers who pay decent wages and do not use child labor.

The Big Bad Woof is joining with the Washington Animal Rescue League to build a “free range”shelter for up-for-adoption pets and a “mini-woof” of pet supplies at 71 Oglethorpe St., NW.

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