About Coronavirus 2020
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Do you remember how eerily quiet DC was on Monday, March 16, 2020? The previous Friday, President Trump had declared Covid a national emergency. That weekend, a lot of people in the DC area ignored calls for social distancing and flooded bars and restaurants, but by Monday, Trump called for virtual schooling and social distancing, and DC Mayor Muriel Bowser ordered an end to dine-in service in the District. Things quickly calmed down—for a while.
That afternoon, Lyndsey Medsker took her sons Atley, who was then 10, and Finley, who was then 9, on a bike ride from their Capitol Hill home to the Mall, where the boys took turns leaping over a puddle in the Reflecting Pool, which the National Park Service had drained for yearly maintenance. Washingtonian photographer Evy Mages, who was on the hunt for images of the weird change that had landed on the city, happened by and caught Finley mid-flight. The image spoke to the leap into the unknown lots of us were taking at the time, and it went viral.
I met Lyndsey and Finley by the Reflecting Pool this past Monday afternoon. They were on a spring break visit to DC from Montana, where they moved in 2021. Finley is now 14 and plays baseball. He loves where he lives and enjoys visiting DC, where the family still has lots of friends. He was sporting a black Nationals cap and New Balance sneakers, DC’s unofficial shoes. The Reflecting Pool was full of water—the Park Service completed its maintenance in early March—and since we didn’t have a trebuchet handy, there was no chance Finley could re-create his famous jump, even if he’d wanted to.
Finley doesn’t really remember much about that day—the bike ride, sort of, the moment of viral fame, no. Lyndsey remembers that DC’s public schools moved up their spring break so kids would be home for at least two weeks. “I can’t have them home for two weeks,” she remembers thinking. “How is this going to work?” It ended up being a lot longer than that, and the family eventually returned to Lyndsey’s native Montana, where the kids could be in school full-time.
Atley actually made the jump before Finley and was a little bit put out that his younger brother’s attempt got so much attention, Lyndsey says. (She was worried they’d get their shoes wet; they did not.) Here’s her video from the day of, which offers Atley some belated vindication:
The Medskers visited the Capitol grounds before our rendezvous. The slope outside the Capitol was actually the site of Finley’s first brush with the press corps, when he was interviewed during a sledding protest five years earlier. When they passed the site Monday, she says, Finley told her, “Mom, it’s not even a hill.”
“Did you survive?” Lyndsey asked Finley after he gamely posed for Mages once again. “Are you melting into nothingness?” He smiled and said that he was pretty sure the magazine cover was on a wall in their house somewhere.
Andrew Beaujon joined Washingtonian in late 2014. He was previously with the Poynter Institute, TBD.com, and Washington City Paper. He lives in Del Ray.
