Local
Wendy Rieger to retire from NBC4
Long-time anchor champions LGBTQ rights
Long-time NBC4 anchor Wendy Rieger on Dec. 10 announced she will retire after 33 years with the television station.
Rieger in an email to colleagues said her last day will be on Dec. 21, which coincides with the Winter Solstice.
“There is an elegance to the universe if you let it reveal itself,” she wrote. “As a Celtic Pagan, the 21st of December is a high holiday. The Solstice. When I saw two years ago that my contract would be ending on 12/21/2021, there was a perfection to those numbers. It felt like a good time to pull a fresh page from the stack and start writing a new story. Then COVID, and COVID and COVID and the whirl of events that have kept everything swirling around the room these past years.”
She talked about her pending retirement with co-anchor Jim Handly later that day.
“At a certain point, as I used to say to some of my dates, how can I miss you if you won’t leave,” said Rieger as Handly began to laugh. “There’s a certain point where we need new chapters in our lives and we can’t get too attached to something that we’ve done, that we know, that’s become second nature, no matter how much we love it.”
Rieger, who is originally from Norfolk, Va., joined NBC4 in 1988 as a general assignment reporter. She began to anchor the station’s weekend evening newscasts in 1996 and the 5 p.m. broadcasts in 2001.
“When I was here 33 years ago, this was the Land of the Giants in that Jim Vance was here. George Michael was here. Bob Ryan,” Rieger told the Washington Blade on Monday during a telephone interview from NBC4’s Northwest D.C. studios. “You sat on the set with those three and it was like working in a redwood forest, and that was the Era of the Giants.”
Rieger throughout her career has championed the LGBTQ community.
She participated in a number of D.C. AIDS Rides and emceed several SMYAL Fall Brunches.
Rieger in 2017 made a cameo in the Gay Men’s Chorus of Washington’s adaptation of the musical “How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying.” The Blade in 2015 named Rieger “Best Local TV Personality” for that year’s “Best of Gay D.C.” issue, which featured a cover photo of Rieger straddling a drag queen as she applied lipstick.
Rieger joked that “people at work said we would have liked to have had a heads up that you were going to be straddling the guy.”
“I said, well that was my idea,” she told the Blade. “And when they said they weren’t going to care and I said, you know, in this business, especially dealing with TV news and an organization, they said, you always ask for forgiveness, not permission. They’re never going to give it to you. I said, let’s just do it if we like it.”
Rieger credited Patrick Bruyere, a long-time volunteer for LGBTQ and HIV/AIDS service organizations who passed away from cancer in 2017, with introducing her to the LGBTQ community in D.C.
She said that Bruyere in 1999 asked her to host a fundraiser for One in Ten, a group that once ran the Reel Affirmations LGBTQ film festival, at the Lincoln Theater.
“I said, ‘I’d be glad to do that,'” told Rieger, recalling the conversation she had with Bruyere. “But you know, I’m just Wendy Rieger, I just anchor the news, you know. Don’t you have someone bigger? And he said, he actually said this, ‘I need a straight person because no one’s going to listen to us.’ And I said, ‘Are you kidding me?'”
“I saw so many people in the gay community moving into neighborhoods and using this vast creative spirit to renovate. And this renaissance that was happening all throughout our city, it was because of gay creativity,” Rieger told the Blade, referring back to her reaction to the lack of support that the One in Ten fundraiser had received.
“I was stunned that this was still going on. This bullshit was still going on. This crap is still going on,” she said.
Rieger said discrimination cannot “occur anywhere.”
“Enough with this shit,” she said. “I’m so tired of bigotry and ignorance. It is exhausting. It is just exhausting. I’m just sick of it.”
Rieger also expressed her gratitude to her LGBTQ viewers who “let me into your family.”
“That meant so much to me because now I had a tribe,” she said. “My ancestors, when they came over from various parts of Europe, we just didn’t do anything, but become sort of, you know, WASPs in suburbia, What the fuck is that? I’m sorry. What the fuck is that? It’s just like something my mother would say; we were just colorless, odorless and sexless.”
“You guys really gave me something to attach to and a kind of family to belong to,” added Rieger. “I still feel like I have a community simply because my gay friends are just so warm. And I’m sorry, y’all are still the most fun people around ever, ever, ever.”
Rieger diagnosed with brain cancer in June
Rieger had open heart surgery in October 2020. She announced her retirement less than six months after doctors diagnosed her with glioblastoma, an aggressive form of brain cancer.
“I knew there was something in my head,” Rieger told the Blade. “So, I was an advocate for myself in the bitchiest way, and I got into an MRI really fast.”
A friend referred Rieger to the Hillman Cancer Center at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. Her doctor, Pascal Zinn, removed the tumor within 10 days of having the MRI that found it. Rieger underwent radiation for six weeks and is now participating in a cancer vaccine trial at Duke University.
“It says on my file, life expectancy 14 months,” she said. “Odds are meant to be defied and she said the people who survive this the most are the ones that say fuck you to this cancer and they go live their lives and there’s nothing wrong with them.”
Rieger last month married Dan Buckley, a retired NBC4 cameraman who worked at the station for 37 years, at their home in Rappahannock County, Va.
Rieger during the Dec. 10 broadcast joked her husband is “having coffee and toast and taking walks while I’m coming to work” and she wants to “go hang out with him and do other things.” Rieger also hinted that she would like to learn how to play the cello or even the tuba.
She said she and her husband have yet to decide whether they will live full-time at their home in Rappahannock County or at their apartment in Chevy Chase. Rieger told the Blade that her husband’s parents are originally from Ireland, and he would like to travel there on the Queen Mary 2.
“Sometimes you have to get off the trail to see the trail, and so that’s what we’re going to let ourselves do,” said Rieger.
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. will be moderating a panel at Dupont Underground on Sunday. 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.
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