Aberdeen Proving Ground

Stanley Plummer Earp, a retired Aberdeen Proving Ground ammunition expert, died of pneumonia Jan. 11 at Greater Baltimore Medical Center. The longtime Towson resident was 84. Mr. Earp was born in Baltimore and raised on Dixie Drive in Towson. He was a 1941 graduate of Towson High School and joined the Navy in 1943. He served in the Pacific theater as a gunner on a PBY Catalina flying boat. After the war, he briefly attended the College of Wooster in Ohio, then went to sea after joining the U.S. merchant marine.

Thuvan N. Piehler usually spends her days working with explosives at Aberdeen Proving Ground. Yesterday, she helped young students in southeastern Baltimore County understand chemistry -- using balloons, crackers and glue. Piehler was among five chemists from the U.S. Army Research Laboratory at Aberdeen Proving Ground who designed hands-on experiments for Colgate Elementary School's fourth-graders to get them excited about chemistry. Sandra Young, a materials engineer, told the children that chemicals are in everything that they can see, smell and touch.

BOWIE -- The economic promise for Maryland of military base realignment could falter if lawmakers fail to approve tax increases the O'Malley administration is seeking to upgrade highways and transit systems, Lt. Gov. Anthony G. Brown warned yesterday. Speaking at a meeting of Cabinet secretaries, Brown added an inability to cope with base-related growth to the litany of dire consequences that state officials say could befall Maryland if Gov. Martin O'Malley's package of tax increases and revisions is not adopted.

A team lead by Battelle Memorial Institute has won a five-year, $333 million Defense Department contract to provide biological and chemical detection support at Aberdeen Proving Ground and 11 other hubs around the world. Battelle will administer the program from Aberdeen. The Columbus, Ohio, institute manages or co-manages seven national laboratories for the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Energy. Battelle has been expanding in Harford County, where it has had offices for 20 years.

The prolonged dry spell and lower stream levels have forced suppliers of water to Bel Air and Edgewood Arsenal to switch from their systems to the county's in the past few weeks, while the supplier for Aberdeen Proving Ground plans to make the change as soon as tomorrow. More customers means the county must provide an additional 4.5 million gallons of water a day from its treatment plants. Customers will probably not notice any difference in taste or pressure, nor will they see spikes on their water bills, officials said.

Though the influx into Maryland of thousands of jobs from military base realignment is still years away, the first trickle of the expected torrent has already begun. Mitre Corp., a nonprofit technology firm that operates federally funded labs, plans to open an office Monday about five miles south of Aberdeen Proving Ground. There will be just eight employees in the new Belcamp office to start, said Danny DeMarinis, director of strategic initiatives for Mitre's Army programs directorate.

The cost of the Pentagon's sweeping nationwide shake-up of military bases, including Aberdeen Proving Ground and Fort Meade, has soared nearly 50 percent overall in the past two years, while savings from consolidating defense operations might have been overestimated, says a new report to Congress. The Government Accountability Office, an investigative arm of Congress, says the Defense Department's cost estimates for its largest base shuffle ever have climbed from $21 billion to $31 billion since the plan was unveiled in 2005.

WILLIAM "Bill" FRANCIS RISCH, Jr., 42, of Aberdeen, MD, deceased April 14, 2007. Born May 17, 1964, at Leonardtown, St. Mary's County, MD. Living son of Bernice Shimizu and stepson of the late George T. Shimizu, his interest were cooking, wildlife, art and especially music, his education was Good Shepherd Church School, Perryville, MD, and St. John of Arc School, Aberdeen, John Carroll of Bel Air, MD, Aberdeen High School, graduated June 1982, Harford Community...

Gov. Parris N. Glendening joined Harford County and Battelle Memorial Institute officials yesterday in formally announcing construction of the company's eastern operations facility at the Higher Education and Applied Technology (HEAT) Center near Aberdeen.The $40 million Battelle center is expected to bring as many as 300 scientific and technical jobs to Harford by 2003. It will strengthen the institute's ties to Aberdeen Proving Ground, where Battelle is a subcontractor on a planned chemical weapons-disposal facility.

One recent chilly morning, Kenny Sayers strapped on a helmet and climbed behind the wheel of a murky-brown truck at Aberdeen Proving Ground. Within seconds, a ton of military metal careened down a puddle-filled roadway at 40 mph, splashing salt water all over itself before coming to a soggy halt."

John S. McCollum, a mathematician and technical supervisor who worked at Aberdeen Proving Ground, died Saturday of complications from pneumonia at Stella Maris Hospice in Timonium. He was 86. Mr. McCollum was born in Baltimore and raised on Longwood Street. He was a 1941 graduate of Mount St. Joseph High School in Irvington. His studies at Loyola College were interrupted when he enlisted in the Navy in 1943. Trained as a gunnery officer, he served aboard an amphibious landing ship tank in the Pacific.

Anna Custer played tour guide as the bus she was in wended through Baltimore. Look, the Ritz-Carlton Residences. There, Camden Yards. Now coming through Fells Point, the last place where Edgar Allan Poe had a drink before his demise. And most importantly: "When you are leaving here to go to Aberdeen, you're looking at a 30-minute drive," she said. Her bus and one in front of it were filled with people preparing for a move from Fort Monmouth in New Jersey to Aberdeen Proving Ground in Harford County, part of the national relocation of military jobs known as "base realignment and closure," or BRAC.

Emerson V. Clarke Jr., a retired Aberdeen Proving Ground physicist and a decorated World War II infantryman, died Thursday of pneumonia at Upper Chesapeake Medical Center. The longtime Bel Air resident was 85. Born in Baltimore, Mr. Clarke spent his early years in Overlea before moving with his family to a home on Mayfield Avenue. After graduating from Polytechnic Institute in 1941, he went to work at the old Glenn L. Martin Co. plant in Middle River, building Martin B-26 Marauder bombers, and was a supervisor at the time when he was inducted into the Army in 1944.

The emptiest neighborhood in the Baltimore region is not an area hit by foreclosures or years of decline. It's a U.S. Army base, and the nearly 39 percent vacancy rate at Aberdeen Proving Ground is part of a trend of fewer soldiers living there. But the rest of the top five vacant areas in the region, measured in an Associated Press study by census tract, all are in East Baltimore neighborhoods that have weathered declines for decades. "It's a continuation of what has been a long, sad story," said John McIlwain, a senior resident fellow for housing at the Washington-based Urban Land Institute.

Aberdeen Proving Ground signs first BRAC tenant A business park under construction outside the north entrance of Aberdeen Proving Ground has signed its first tenant related to federal base restructuring, the park's developer said yesterday. Columbia-based Corporate Office Properties Trust said it has a long-term lease with the MITRE Corp. for 54,000 square feet in the first building under way in North Gate Business Park. The three-story building is scheduled for completion in the second quarter of next year.

Harford County is on pace with its preparations for BRAC, the nationwide military base expansion set for a 2011 completion at Aberdeen Proving Ground, officials have said. "The planning has been excellent. It comes down to implementation," Harford County Executive David R. Craig said at a community briefing Thursday night at Havre de Grace High School. The military project will bring about 20,000 new jobs to Harford by 2011. The influx - as many as 40,000 people - Craig estimated, will require new schools, roads, housing and infrastructure.

William A. Michael, a retired Aberdeen Proving Ground engineer and World War II veteran, died of respiratory failure Oct. 6 at Gilchrist Hospice Care. The Parkville resident was 87. Mr. Michael was born in Toronto and moved with his family to Covington, Va., in 1934. He graduated from Covington High School in 1938. He entered Syracuse University in 1941, and the next year he was called to active duty in the Army. Mr. Michael served in the Pacific as a radar team platoon leader, attaining the rank of captain.

Reba Biemiller, who received a distinguished service award from Aberdeen Proving Ground and also operated a day care center for 15 years, died of pneumonia Aug. 23 at the Carroll Hospice Dove House in Westminster. She was 89 and had lived in Westminster. Reba Fern Alexander was born in Baltimore. She graduated from Western High School in 1937 and attended night school to get a secretarial degree in 1944. Her first job was as a secretary at Stieff Silver, where she worked for three years in the mid-1940s, said her daughter, Carole B. Samios of Westminster.

Wars have given us the Jeep, the computer and even the microwave. Will the war in Iraq give us the Tiger? Military scientists at Edgewood Chemical Biological Center at Aberdeen Proving Ground hope so. The machine - its full name is the Tactical Garbage to Energy Refinery - combines a chute, an engine, chemical tanks and other components, giving it the appearance of a lunar rover. It's designed to turn food and waste into fuel. If it works, it could save scores of American and Iraqi lives.

Deer Creek will be increasingly stressed by population growth in the next two decades, much of it caused by expansion at Aberdeen Proving Ground because of BRAC, according to a new regional study. The communities that rely on Deer Creek should develop additional water sources, the study by the Susquehanna River Basin Commission said. The Deer Creek watershed, a 171-square-mile area that begins in York County, Pa., and continues through Harford County to the Susquehanna River, includes a 73-mile stream that supplies about 50,000 people with water.