RESTORING LIVES

Along The Anacostia, Hope For Rebirth; For River, Caretakers, Full Flower
Still Goal

* In Southeast Washington, a nonprofit organization called the Earth
Conservation Corps offers inner-city youths an exchange: If the young people
work hard on the ailing Anacostia River, the corps will supply them with 11
months of training, a college scholarship and a stipend. Along the way, the
bald eagle might be saved. So might a few troubled young people.

The ladies giggle and blush. The gentlemen walk clumsily. The ladies sit
anxiously at candlelit tables, whispering and waiting. The gentlemen serve
up curried chicken and greens, macaroni and cheese, good manners and chivalry.

It's almost noon. For a while now, the young men enrolled in the Earth
Conservation Corps have been trying to make sure everything is just right in
their makeshift restaurant, catering to their dates' every whim: Another
dinner roll from the buffet. A paper plate of salad. White meat in exchange
for dark.

"Got me a sugar daddy," one young lady says of her personal escort, chuckling.

Ronnie Rice walks toward the buffet table on another errand, shaking his
head and half-smiling. "Flun-ky," he mutters about himself.

The ladies laugh, relishing the royal treatment.

The occasion is a pre-Mother's Day luncheon at Building 176 of the
Washington Navy Yard, in a multipurpose room converted into a dining hall
with floral tablecloths and soft candlelight. The luncheon is as much for
the young men as for the women. It was supervisor Reginald Adams's idea. The
men would learn how to treat a lady. And the women would see how a lady
should be treated.

Four months after the class of 40 started, only a quarter have endured. Some
of those who were kicked out for one reason or another--or who simply
stopped coming--have been replaced with new recruits.

Donnell Whiteside, 23, a former crack dealer, had been one of the
replacements. A tall, beefy young man who bears a scar on his neck from the
night two years ago when he was stabbed with a broken bottle, Donnell joined
the corps in April and has been at ECC for nearly a month now. He is still
here in the flesh but is beginning to show signs of being absent in spirit.

Roshawn Thompson, a slender young woman with black satin extensions, has
hung on since the beginning, despite the difficulties of rising each morning
before daybreak to get her 16-month-old son DeQuan to the babysitter, then
heading over to the river to do dirty, strenuous labor. Roshawn's chocolate
eyes reflect the growing strain.

With every new year comes a new season for planting. And pruning.

This morning, Donnell and the other young men arrived hours before the
"females," as they call them. The men set up the chairs and decorated the
tables. The food was catered.

The plan was for each young man to select one of the young women and
hand-deliver a single, red rose, then escort her to a table, maybe pull out
the aluminum folding chair. They were to wait on the ladies, hand and foot.
Serve them first. Put their desires before yours, Adams had instructed them.
Be kind, especially kind today.

But the thought of being so nice to the females made many of the men
squeamish. They thought: Why should we be a "flunky" to the females? How
come we have to wait on the females? I'm not giving a rose to a female.

Then, when the females finally arrived, dressed in skirts, dresses or slacks
rather than their usual boots and khakis, the macho turned to mush. The
young men lined up sheepishly and handed their roses to the ladies. Ronnie
Rice chose Lameke White, a short, brown-skinned girl with braids. Donnell
chose Monica Davis, a smiling young woman.

That Donnell is even here today is a minor miracle. Yesterday afternoon, he
had cursed out a female supervisor. She was disrespecting him, yelling,
talking down, the way Donnell saw it. She was giving orders. So Donnell
cursed her out.

ECC rules are clear and firm: Donnell was terminated. But by the end of the
day, his supervisors had softened up. Maybe they had acted too hastily.
Maybe Donnell deserved another chance.

Early this morning, they called Donnell into the office and handed him a
contract--a 60-day promissory note: He couldn't miss work, couldn't get
written up anymore, had to be on time, no more disrespect. One last chance.

"I know I'm going to make it. Having the dream is what keeps me going.
That's all I got," he said. Now it came down to this. Donnell signed on the
dotted line.

The luncheon ends, the lights switch on. The men clear tables, bundle up
trash. They laugh and joke now that their duty to the females is finally
done. Besides, it's payday.

Donnell collects his check--$397, minus taxes. He walks out the door. No one
could say whether he'd be back.

Roshawn sits on a worn sofa inside her mother's brown brick town house in
Northeast Washington. She looks tired. Her son DeQuan, carrying a bowl of
spaghetti as he walks toward her, spills it on the floor. She walks over and
picks it up. She lifts one of DeQuan's chubby legs. "You got some on your shoe."

The mother cleans up her son's mess. Moments later, DeQuan lies on his
mother's lap. Roshawn rocks him to sleep. It has been five months of rising
at 5 a.m. to get to the babysitter's house so she can make it to work on time.

Roshawn has made it almost every day. Her work has been steady, reliable,
her supervisors say.

But Roshawn knows she still has a long way to go. And it doesn't seem to be
getting any easier. For about two weeks recently, the water at her mother's
house was shut off for nonpayment. Her supervisors never knew. Roshawn kept
coming to work. The water is back on now and Roshawn is looking for a place
of her own. Her mother, who owns the house but lives in North Carolina, says
her daughter must be out by July.

On this cool, still night, classified ads clipped from the newspaper lie on
Roshawn's burgundy quilt, prospective apartments highlighted in yellow or
circled in blue. A one-bedroom in Southwest for $320 a month. A two-bedroom
for $495. On the bed, DeQuan's freshly laundered clothes are folded in a
neat pile. The digital clock on the dresser is set for two hours before sunrise.

"Sometimes I get tired, but I'm trying to hang in there," Roshawn says, her
words heavy. "I want my GED and I want that scholarship, so I'm trying to hang.

"I'm trying to hang." She manages a smile.

On a wall near the dresser, a calendar counts the days she's worked, each
one celebrated in ink with a big blue star.

It has been two weeks since the Friday luncheon. Donnell's supervisors
haven't a clue where he is.

The game at Alabama Avenue and Naylor Road SE this afternoon is basketball.
A handful of guys, every man for himself.

Sirens wail. The sun beams down on Donnell. He is the biggest man on the
court. He is bearded now, his hair unkempt. He pounds the ball on the
pavement, goes in for another score. This is where he spends his afternoons
since dropping out of the corps, on an elementary school court with a lone
basket, shooting hoops with his homeys. Donnell says he's living with a
friend now, hunting for another job. No luck so far.

"I'll just keep on looking," he says. His words are soft and slow, heavy.
"They say put it in God's hands. I guess that's what I do when I don't know
where I'm going."

He stopped going to the corps because "I felt like I was getting a raw deal.
Even though I could have used the money for an education, I felt like I was
being treated a little different from everybody else."

Even though the corps gave him one more chance after he cursed out a supervisor?

"She couldn't just soften her voice a little bit," he says, sounding hurt.
"Everything was a snap. She never said 'please' or anything."

Asked whether he has gone back to drug dealing, Donnell pauses. Finally, he
answers. "Not at the present time, but I got to eat. You know? Now it's
Friday and the weather's nice and my sneakers aren't."

Sirens wail. Donnell's breath is aflame with liquor, his eyes still red from
the cup of Hennessy cognac and Sunny Delight orange drink he had for breakfast.

"I'm stressed out a lot," he explains. "I worry a lot. Even in my dreams."

Donnell snatches another rebound. Shoots another basket. Then he walks to
the free throw line. As he aims for the basket, his ECC T-shirt looks a
little faded.

Epilogue

Outside ECC headquarters, at the lot that lay bald a month earlier, grass
has begun to sprout. Wildflowers of purple and yellow bask in the sun. There
are apple trees, maple trees and five dogwoods planted alongside a path, in
memory of five slain corps members. One for L.B. One for Bennie. One for
Darrell. One for Tink and one for Monique.

There are signs that the river is changing, too. The other day, a few corps
members spotted two fat bass swimming near these banks, near where the
bloated body of a bluebird floated on the surface. A school of minnows swam
by; several ducks paddled not far from shore. In years past, corps members
have spotted what they believe was one of the bald eagles they nurtured and
released, soaring above the earth, somewhere along the Anacostia.

That hasn't happened yet this year. But there's always hope.