Local
Finance director, beloved soccer player Dan White dies at 57
Longtime Washingtonian once worked for Whitman-Walker
Arlington, Va., resident Dan White, an award-winning amateur soccer player and longtime supporter of the Federal Triangles Soccer Club, D.C.’s LGBTQ soccer league, who worked as a finance director for domestic and international nonprofit organizations for more than 30 years, died at his home on Dec. 22 of a heart attack. He was 57.
Friends and associates said White displayed a unique dedication, commitment, and affection for both the multitude of soccer tournaments and LGBTQ amateur participants he played with as well as for the nonprofit organizations for which he worked.
“Dan’s professional work was rooted in nonprofit finance,” said Nick Napolitano, a friend and associate with the Federal Triangles Soccer Club. “He worked at the Whitman-Walker Clinic’s Office of Finance for 15 years, rising from staff accountant to the level of finance director,” Napolitano said. According to White’s LinkedIn page, he worked at Whitman-Walker, now known as Whitman-Walker Health, from 1987 to 2002.
Cornelius Baker, who served as Whitman-Walker’s executive director from January 2000 to December 2004, said White worked closely with Whitman-Walker’s longtime executive director Jim Graham from the time White began working at Whitman-Walker in 1987. Graham left Whitman-Walker at the end of 1998 after winning election to the D.C. Council.
Baker said White’s skills in financial management were especially helpful in 2001, at the time of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, when major fundraising events, including Whitman-Walker’s annual AIDS Walk, were severely curtailed.
Following his 15-year tenure at Whitman-Walker, White served as finance director or finance manager for at least five other nonprofit organizations, including his most recent stint as finance and administration director for the Baltimore-based Johns Hopkins Program for International Education in Gynecology and Obstetrics, known as Jhpiego.
The program, which is affiliated with Johns Hopkins University, provides global health experts who live and work in more than 40 developing countries who help improve the quality of health services for women and families, a write-up on its website says. White, among other things, oversaw the financial planning, management and reporting activities for the organization’s global health projects.
Prior to joining Jhpiego, White served as director of finance and administration for Mothers2Mothers, an international nonprofit group based in Cape Town, South Africa. Its website says it is dedicated to preventing mother-to-child transmission of HIV by providing education and support for pregnant women and new mothers living with HIV.
White’s friend and soccer teammate Leslie Engleking said White worked out of the organization’s Cape Town and London offices from June 2018 to December 2019 to oversee its $28 million budget.
In earlier years, White served from 2004 to 2018 as associate director of finance and later as finance manager for the D.C. office of FHI 360, a human development organization that provides family planning and reproductive health services in 70 countries and all U.S. states.
In 2004, White served for 10 months as finance manager for U.S. Action, a D.C.-based social justice advocacy group, shortly after serving a year and a half as director of finance for the D.C.-based international group Center for Development and Population Activities (CEDPA), which advocates for the rights of women and children.
White was born and raised in Arlington, Va., where he graduated from Bishop O’Connell High School in 1980. He later received a bachelor’s degree in business administration from Columbia Union College in Takoma Park, Md.
“He was proud to be a lifelong Washingtonian,” said Napolitano, who noted that White as an adult had lived in the D.C. neighborhoods of Dupont Circle, Logan Circle, and Columbia Heights before moving back to Arlington’s Crystal City neighborhood about two years ago.
Napolitano and Engleking, both former soccer teammates of White, and his longtime friend Laila Hirschfeld said White’s role as an amateur soccer player and his involvement with the Federal Triangles Soccer Club, for which he was the founding treasurer in 1990, were among the most important aspects of his life.
“Dan was one of the most talented players to ever step on the pitch for Federal Triangles Soccer Club,” Napolitano said. “He won the Golden Boot at the 2001 International Gay and Lesbian Football Association World Championships in London, and more often than not he was the goal leader on the many teams he played on, which included FTSC squads that traveled to Barcelona, Copenhagen, Buenos Aires, Montreal, Toronto, Boston, San Francisco, and Philadelphia,” according to Napolitano. The Golden Boot is an award given to a player who scores the most goals in a game or tournament.
White was also among the first inductees into the FTSC’s Hall of Fame in 2006, said Napolitano, who noted that White continued playing in various local soccer leagues until 2016, when a foot injury ended his playing endeavors.
“Dan managed to pack a tremendous amount of life into a short amount of time, and had traveled to almost every continent,” Hirschfeld said. “He loved good food and savored good wine,” she said, adding, “his favorite place was on the beach, especially the Outer Banks, drink in hand, surrounded by a small group of laughing friends. Which is how we, his chosen family, the family that loved and cherished him just as he was – a kind, loving, smart, funny, flirty, generous, successful, thoughtful, talented soul – will think of him always.”
Hirschfeld and other close friends said White is survived by his soccer fans and former team members and a long list of friends and chosen family members. They said that due to COVID-19 restrictions, a memorial celebration of White’s life will be postponed until later this year.
Per his request, he was to be cremated and his ashes will be scattered later this year in the Outer Banks of North Carolina, Hirschfeld said. She said condolences in White’s name can be expressed with donations to Whitman-Walker Health, the local LGBTQ youth advocacy group SMYAL, and Team D.C., the LGBTQ sports organization of which the Federal Triangles Soccer Club is a part.
Virginia
McPike wins special election for Va. House of Delegates
Gay Alexandria City Council member becomes 8th LGBTQ member of legislature
Gay Alexandria City Council member Kirk McPike emerged as the decisive winner in a Feb. 10 special election for a seat in the Virginia House of Delegates representing Alexandria.
McPike, a Democrat, received 81.5 percent of the vote in his race against Republican Mason Butler, according to the local publication ALX Now.
He first won election to the Alexandria Council in 2021. He will be filling the House of Delegates seat being vacated by Del. Elizabeth Bennett-Parker (D-Alexandria), who won in another Feb. 10 special election for the Virginia State Senate seat being vacated by gay Sen. Adam Ebbin (D-Alexandria).
Ebbin is resigning from his Senate this week to take a position with Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger’s administration.
Upon taking his 5th District seat in the House of Delegate, McPike will become the eighth out LGBTQ member of the Virginia General Assembly. Among those he will be joining is Sen. Danica Roem (D-Manassas), who became the Virginia Legislature’s first transgender member when she won election to the House of Delegates in 2017 before being elected to the Senate in 2023.
“I look forward to continuing to work to address our housing crisis, the challenge of climate change, and the damaging impacts of the Trump administration on the immigrant families, LGBTQ+ Virginians, and federal employees who call Alexandria home,” McPike said in a statement after winning the Democratic nomination for the seat in a special primary held on Jan. 20.
McPike, a longtime LGBTQ rights advocate, has served for the past 13 years as chief of staff for gay U.S. Rep. Mark Takano (D-Calif.) and has remained in that position during his tenure on the Alexandria Council. He said he will resign from that position before taking office in the House of Delegates.
Local
Local LGBTQ groups, activists to commemorate Black History Month
Rayceen Pendarvis to moderate Dupont Underground panel on Sunday
LGBTQ groups in D.C. and elsewhere plan to use Black History Month as an opportunity to commemorate and celebrate Black lives and experiences.
Team Rayceen Productions has no specific events planned, but co-founder Rayceen Pendarvis will attend many functions around D.C. this month.
Pendarvis, a longtime voice in the LGBTQ community in D.C. moderated a panel at Dupont Underground on Feb. 8. The event, “Every (Body) Wants to Be a Showgirl,” will feature art from Black burlesque artists from around the country. Pendarvis on Feb. 23 will attend the showing of multimedia play at the Lincoln Theatre that commemorates the life of James Baldwin.
Equality Virginia plans to prioritize Black voices through a weekly online series, and community-based story telling. The online digital series will center Black LGBTQ voices, specifically trailblazers and activists, and contemporary Black queer and transgender people.
Narissa Rahaman, Equality Virginia’s executive director, stressed the importance of the Black queer community to the overall Pride movement, and said “Equality Virginia is proud to center those voices in our work this month and beyond.”
The Capital Pride Alliance, which hosts Pride events in D.C., has an alliance with the Center for Black Equity, which brings Black Pride to D.C. over Memorial Day weekend. The National LGBTQ Task Force has no specific Black History Month events planned, but plans to participate in online collaborations.
Cathy Renna, the Task Force’s director of communications, told the Washington Blade the organization remains committed to uplifting Black voices. “Our priority is keeping this at the forefront everyday,” she said.
The D.C. LGBTQ+ Community Center is also hosting a series of Black History Month events.
The D.C. Public Library earlier this year launched “Freedom and Resistance,” an exhibition that celebrates Black History Month and Martin Luther King Jr. It will remain on display until the middle of March at the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library at 901 G St., N.W.
District of Columbia
U.S. Attorney’s Office drops hate crime charge in anti-gay assault
Case remains under investigation and ‘further charges’ could come
D.C. police announced on Feb. 9 that they had arrested two days earlier on Feb. 7 a Germantown, Md., man on a charge of simple assault with a hate crime designation after the man allegedly assaulted a gay man at 14th and Q Streets, N.W., while using “homophobic slurs.”
But D.C. Superior Court records show that prosecutors with the Office of the U.S. Attorney for D.C., which prosecutes D.C. violent crime cases, charged the arrested man only with simple assault without a hate crime designation.
In response to a request by the Washington Blade for the reason why the hate crime designation was dropped, a spokesperson for the U.S. Attorney’s office provided this response: “We continue to investigate this matter and make no mistake: should the evidence call for further charges, we will not hesitate to charge them.”
In a statement announcing the arrest in this case, D.C. police stated, “On Saturday, February 7, 2026, at approximately 7:45 p.m. the victim and suspect were in the 1500 block of 14th Street, Northwest. The suspect requested a ‘high five’ from the victim. The victim declined and continued walking,” the statement says.
“The suspect assaulted the victim and used homophobic slurs,” the police statement continues. “The suspect was apprehended by responding officers.”
It adds that 26-year-old Dean Edmundson of Germantown, Md. “was arrested and charged with Simple Assault (Hate/Bias).” The statement also adds, “A designation as a hate crime by MPD does not mean that prosecutors will prosecute it as a hate crime.”
Under D.C.’s Bias Related Crime Act of 1989, penalties for crimes motivated by prejudice against individuals based on race, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability, and homelessness can be enhanced by a court upon conviction by one and a half times greater than the penalty of the underlying crime.
Prosecutors in the past both in D.C. and other states have said they sometimes decide not to include a hate crime designation in assault cases if they don’t think the evidence is sufficient to obtain a conviction by a jury. In some instances, prosecutors have said they were concerned that a skeptical jury might decide to find a defendant not guilty of the underlying assault charge if they did not believe a motive of hate was involved.
A more detailed arrest affidavit filed by D.C. police in Superior Court appears to support the charge of a hate crime designation.
“The victim stated that they refused to High-Five Defendant Edmondson, which, upon that happening, Defendant Edmondson started walking behind both the victim and witness, calling the victim, “bald, ugly, and gay,” the arrest affidavit states.
“The victim stated that upon being called that, Defendant Edmundson pushed the victim with both hands, shoving them, causing the victim to feel the force of the push,” the affidavit continues. “The victim stated that they felt offended and that they were also gay,” it says.
CMS moves to expand HIV-positive organ transplants
Shooter who killed 7 people inside Canada school was transgender
Russia’s anti-LGBTQ crackdown takes absurd turn
McPike wins special election for Va. House of Delegates
As Oscars approach, it’s time to embrace ‘KPop Demon Hunters’
PHOTOS: Drag in rural Virginia
New book explores homosexuality in ancient cultures
I keep getting rejected on the apps
Gay man details secret struggle with bulimia
