The Widower's Warning

More than 17 million visitors per month are expected to descend on Washington, D.C., between now and the end of the Bicentennial celebration. But one Washington resident, a senior official in the Federal Communications Commission, has undertaken a bitter campaign to keep Americans away from their capital. William B. Ray, 67, has written to 91 of the nation's largest newspapers urging tourists to avoid Washington "this year, next year and every year until the District of Columbia and Federal Government are able to exercise a reasonable degree of control over crime."

Ray's fear is understandable. Nearly two years ago, his wife Sue returned from a noontime shopping trip to find an intruder in their Northwest Washington apartment. The man warned her not to scream or run; she did both. He tackled her in the hallway and, as Ray says, "just beat the hell out of her," breaking her nose, jaw and several ribs. She was in the hospital for eleven days and required plastic surgery. Her attacker was never found. Last May Mrs. Ray died of a heart disorder that was unrelated to the attack.

Like most large American cities, Washington is very far from being, for either visitors or those who live there, the sanctuary of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness that the Revolution envisioned. But last year it ranked below Albuquerque, Detroit, Portland, Atlanta and other cities in the level of its murders, rapes and muggings. The widower's warning notwithstanding, if crime is the criterion, there are plenty of other cities where it would be just as difficult to celebrate the Bicentennial.

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