18 -- A task force aims to make sure a 300-acre Columbia farm that has been preserved as open space by the Smith family since 1837 will not fall prey to development.
21 -- The county branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People says the group is trying to work out an agreement with Turf Valley Hotel and Country Club and to improve minority relations.
25 -- School bus drivers appear for their first public discussion with the school board after 13 months of fighting for benefits. Board members promise to remember the drivers in the future but decline to offer additional benefits this year. . . . A six-month undercover probe brings drug charges against 35 people, including 18 high school students. A 21-year-old police cadet posing as a student at Howard and Wilde Lake high schools targeted 19 of those arrested.
April
1 -- New Horizons Diagnostics Corp. in the Oakland Ridge Industrial Center seeks to market a five-minute home strep throat test. . . . Highly decorated state police Cpl. Theodore D. Wolf is shot once in the head during a traffic stop on Interstate 95 near the Route 175 overpass. There are no suspects.
4 -- President George Bush and an estimated 3,000 to 4,000 police attend the funeral of Cpl. Theodore D. Wolf.
8 -- Ruth Edwards, executive director of the Citizens Against Spousal Assault (CASA) shelter for battered women since 1985, is fired by the board of directors. Edwards oversaw the development and opening of the organization's transitional shelter. . . . The Maryland Bays professional soccer team receives a county permit to play at Cedar Lane Park, despite fears in Harper's Choice that the games will produce heavy traffic and clog roads.
15 -- Jay Francis of Columbia unveils a bronze sculpture of his late wife, Winfield, in the backyard of his Oakland Mills home. The sculpture is modeled after the "Little Mermaid" sculpture that overlooks the harbor of Copenhagen, Denmark. . . . Concerns about student privacy prompt county school officials to remove student identification from a test on self-esteem.
18 -- The county Office of Human Rights agrees to hear the case of a former resident who claims that the county Medical Society refused to refer him to a physician because he is infected with the human immunodeficiency virus, which causes AIDS. . . . The County Council agrees to help school bus drivers in their effort to be allowed to continue their new group medical insurance coverage after retirement. Council members promise to discuss the issue with the school board, which rejected the drivers' request.
22 -- The Circuit Court orders Eustace and Portia Hallowell of Woodbine to return 18 months of rent payments, totaling almost $18,000, on their Columbia town house to tenants Tammy and Michael Citaramanis because they failed to obtain a $40 rental permit. The Hallowells vow to appeal.
25 -- A consultant study says that it would be cheaper for the county school system to begin buying and operating school buses rather than expand service through the existing system of private contractors.
29 -- Fifth-graders at Whiskey Bottom Road Elementary urge the school board to rename their school. It becomes Laurel Woods. . . . The county receives a deluge of applications for rental permits in response to the court judgment earlier this month.
May
2 -- Council member Charles C. Feaga, R-5th, says he will seek to change county laws in the wake of last month's court decision on the rental payments. . . . Gov. William Donald Schaefer halts a proposed truck stop on Interstate 95 at Gorman Road that area residents had complained about. A school was planned near the site. . . . Columbia psychologist Dennis Mr.
Harrison drops the civil suit he filed against Elizabeth Morgan for $27,000 in unpaid fees. Harrison says he wants to avoid negative publicity for the Washingtonian and himself. Morgan, who accused her ex-husband Eric Foretich of sexually abusing their daughter, Hilary, was jailed for two years for refusing to reveal Hilary's whereabouts.
6 -- Howard F. Duncan of Laurel opens a hot dog stand in his son's memory. Before he died four months ago, Kevin coaxed his father to start a chain of hot dog stands in Howard and Anne Arundel counties. . . . Carl J.
Bowie, a 20-year-old Columbia resident and graduate of Oakland Mills High who charged county police with brutality in a liquor raid at a Jessup motel in January, is found hanged at the school athletic field. Police say it was a suicide. . . . Authorities hope to return two New Yorkers suspected of killing state police Cpl. Theodore D. Wolf to Maryland for trial.
9 -- The Wilde Lake Village Association gets a green light for a pedestrian crosswalk near the Mall. . . . Police try to quell rumors that hanging victim Carl J. Bowie was murdered.
