DC By the Book

Excerpt: The Washington Sentinel was as much a monument as the marble tributes to Washington, Jefferson and Lincoln. Babe Ruth, John Wayne, Eleanor Roosevelt, Elvis Presley and the Queen of England were among the famous and powerful who had visited it to pay their respects. Then there was the family—the Bakers, the Hopkinses and so many others, aunts, uncles and cousins, each with a share and a stake. The family was much the same as any, loving and contentious, close and distant, but focused on and held together by what this building produced. The Sentinel’s dividends enabled survival for some of them and the high life for others. Some were proud of the connection of the family to the paper; others were indifferent and cared only about the money it produced. At 42, Cubby Baker was in the prime of life. His great grandfather, Brewster Hopkins, had been a merchant seaman before he became publisher. Brewster Hopkins had set a course for the Sentinel that Cubby was trying to maintain. He already had seen the paper through trying times, but he understood, as perhaps few others did that powerful forces were gathering, forces that were out of the control of any man or family. A storm was waiting out there in the Sentinel’s future. He knew that. He was certain of it. What he didn’t know was when or where it would happen. Nor did he know if the Sentinel or its family would survive it.