A Professor and Her Family On an Adventure to Australia

By Robert Fresco | STAFF WRITER

September 13, 2001

Leslie Whittington, 45, her husband, Charles Falkenberg, and their two daughters, Zoe, 8, and Dana, 3, all died in the crash. (AP Photo)

Georgetown University professor Colin Campbell thought he was helping a bright and well-liked colleague get a great opportunity to do scholarly research in an exotic setting. But when a Los Angeles- bound plane crashed into the Pentagon Tuesday morning, Campbell realized his efforts helped put Leslie Whittington in harm's way.

Whittington, 45, her husband, Charles Falkenberg, and their two daughters, Zoe, 8, and Dana, 3, all died in the crash. The Hyattsville, Md., family had been passengers on the Washington, D.C.-to-Los Angeles flight that was to have been the first leg on a 2 1/2-month trip to Australia.

An economist and associate professor at Georgetown's Public Policy Institute, Whittington was a specialist on the impact of taxation on families, particularly poor families. Campbell said he hired Whittington six years ago when he was head of the institute. He also was instrumental in getting her a fellowship to do research at the Australian National University in Canberra, where she and her family were headed at the time.

"This is terrible," Campbell said. "This is the first time in my life that I was complicit in a tragedy - that I actually played a role in someone being in the wrong place at the wrong time."

He described Whittington as one of the best teachers he had ever met. "She was loved by the students...she could never give them enough time.

"If you rated our faculty on a scale of 1 to 10, she would probably be the only one that was up there at 10."

He said that many faculty members burst into tears when they heard of Whittington's death. If she were alive, he said, "she'd be chiding us for being a bunch of babies."

But Whittington was deeply involved with her own children, Campbell said. "The last six months she would [often] tell us what Zoe had said about going to Australia, and kangaroos and koala bears."

Falkenberg, 45, who worked for the ECOlogic Corp. in Lanham, Md., worked on data-delivery systems involving oceanography, ecology and space science. He also had worked in Alaska, studying the long-term aspects of the Exxon Valdez oil spill.

Ray Simanowith, president of the firm, described Falkenberg as "the conscience of our company. Most of his work dealt with things that would make a difference."