Washington City Paper: Contents for May. 6

Deaths in the Family
Milton Reddick and Frances Sanders made the fatal decision of inviting a needy Sharon Williams into their homes.

Cover Story

Sharon Williams never got along with her father, Milton Reddick. Not that he was around all that much when she was a child. Reddick always seemed to have something more important to do than tend to Sharon or her half-siblings.

His absence may have been for the best. According to his daughter and grandson, Reddick enjoyed gambling more than he enjoyed working. He was never much for paternal guidance, either; the nieces and nephews who saw Reddick at family gatherings remember a quiet bachelor who rarely invited anyone into his thoughts. His greatest attempt at familial bonding was to give the children some change for candy on the holidays and send them off to the corner store.

His daughter has a hard time recalling even those occasional moments of kindness. To Sharon, her father was a street hustler and a short-tempered thug. When she played hooky one day during junior high, he caught wind of it and beat her with a clothes hanger until she could hardly sit down. For other indiscretions he would sometimes whip her with an electrical cord, she once told a psychiatrist. According to Sharon’s son, Theodore Williams, Reddick ran poker games out of his house with an unusual authority, demanding that everyone deposit all their money with the host up front. In case a dispute arose at the table, he kept a gun nearby to defuse it.

“The man wasn’t nothing but 5-foot-5, 130 pounds soaking wet,” says Theodore, “but everybody was scared of him.”... Continued

Issue of May. 6 - 12, 2005

News and Features

Deaths in the Family
Milton Reddick and Frances Sanders made the fatal decision of inviting a needy Sharon Williams into their homes.
Cover Story By Dave Jamieson
Journeys With Gheorghe
The tallest player in NBA history teaches me how to be short.
Feature By Josh Levin
Working for Peanuts
Some of the jobs D.C. baseball brought to town didn’t come with legal wages.
The City By Jeff Horwitz
Hall Monitor
Selected readings from D.C. Public Schools incident reports
Hall Monitor By Mike Kanin
Pipe Dreams
Nimby Tribunal By Josh Levin
Price Pick of the Week
Celebrating the District’s Real-Estate Boom
Seller's Market By Constantine Caloudas
Blame and Shame
The Mail By Raymond Langley
Block and Tackle
The Mail By Nicholas J. Boyle
All-Access Pass
The Mail By Mike Jacks

Columns

Pickup Games
Cheap Seats By Dave McKenna
Of Lattes and Liturgy
City Desk By Ryan Velasco
Poetic License
City Desk By Sarah Godfrey
¡Hot Tamales!
Dept. of Media By Erik Wemple
SMOKE GETS IN HER EYES
Loose Lips By James Jones

Eats

Original Recipe, Extra Crispy
Young & Hungry By Todd Kliman

Movies

Culture Crash
Film Review By Mark Jenkins
One for the Ageists
Film Review By Tricia Olszewski
Jiminy Glick in La La Wood
Film Reviews By Tricia Olszewski
House of Wax
Film Reviews By Mario Correa
Lost Embrace
Film Reviews By Mark Jenkins
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
Film Reviews By Matthew Borlik

Music

Open Season
Music Reviews By Michael Crowley
Let It Die
Music Reviews By Andrew Beaujon
’Con Men
Music Review By Mike Kanin

Theater

Arts and Events

Little People, Big Picture
Artifacts By Michael Little
Steal This Machine-Translation Design
Artifacts By Trey Graham
Culture Vultures
What does it take to get an arts grant from the D.C. government?
Culture Vultures By Mike Kanin
Doomed From the Start
A history of Washington’s other native sound—and why you’ve probably never heard it.
Arts By Brent BurtonDavid Dunlap Jr.Mike Kanin, Leonard Roberge and Chris Shott
Renaissance Fare
Books By Ulrich Boser
LIVING THE DREAM
Show & Tell By Chris Shott