?WASH­ING­TON � Ben Ali, the founder of Ben's Chili Bowl din­er, a land­mark in Wash­ing­ton's black busi­ness and en­ter­tain­ment dis­trict and a fre­quent stop for politi­cians and celebri­ties, has died. He was 82. Ali died of con­ges­tive heart fail­ure Wednes­day night at his home, his daugh­ter-in-law Sonya Ali said yes­ter­day. Ben Ali was born in 1927 and opened the restau­rant with his wife, Vir­ginia, in an old movie house in 1958, when Dwight D Eisen­how­er was Pres­i­dent and in­te­grat­ing pub­lic schools. It be­came a long­time fix­ture in the black busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty, serv­ing up bowls of chili and its trade­mark chili-cov­ered half-smokes.

The smoth­ered sausages be­came Wash­ing­ton's an­swer to the Philly Cheese Steak when ri­val­ries flared be­tween the Wash­ing­ton Red­skins and Philadel­phia Ea­gles. Ali's fam­i­ly post­ed a state­ment on the restau­rant's Web site thank­ing peo­ple for their out­pour­ing of sup­port. "Fam­i­ly, friends, and count­less fans of Ben's will sore­ly miss the en­er­getic and un­for­get­table per­son­al­i­ty of Ben Ali. He was a true hero of the peo­ple and a great ex­am­ple of some­one who ac­tu­al­ly epit­o­mized the Amer­i­can dream," the fam­i­ly wrote. Ali was an im­mi­grant from Trinidad, earned a bach­e­lor's de­gree at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Ne­bras­ka and moved to Wash­ing­ton to study at Howard Uni­ver­si­ty's med­ical and den­tal schools. (AP)