American Telephone

An article yesterday gave an incorrect date for the annual meeting of American Telephone and Telegraph Co. The meeting is April 20.The Sun regrets the errors.

Viola E. Woodson, a retired telecommunications supervisor and instructor who was an active member of Sharon Baptist Church, died Sunday of heart and lung failure at Johns Hopkins Hospital. The longtime Northwest Baltimore resident was 68. Viola E. Brown was born in Baltimore and raised in Mount Winans. She was a 1956 graduate of Frederick Douglass High School and Cortez Peters Business School. For more than 30 years, Mrs. Woodson worked for American Telephone & Telegraph and Chesapeake & Potomac Telephone Co., where she provided employee training for clients such as the state of Maryland, Baltimore City Hall, the Johns Hopkins University, The Sun, and other major industries that had installed Bell Systems Communications equipment.

Kenneth Camp Martin, a retired telephone engineer and college lacrosse player, died of a heart attack Friday at his Phoenix home in Baltimore County. He was 77. Born in Baltimore and raised on Lafayette Avenue in Bolton Hill, he was a 1944 graduate of Polytechnic Institute. Serving in the latter part of World War II, he became an Army lieutenant and was stationed in New Guinea. After the war, he earned a degree in electrical engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, N.Y. While in college he played lacrosse and was voted All-American.

Wesley J. Fuller, a retired American Telephone & Telegraph Co. accountant, died of a heart attack Thursday at a hospital in Marietta, Ga. He was 65. Mr. Fuller was born in Baltimore and raised in Hamilton. After graduating from Polytechnic Institute in 1960, he served in the Navy for four years. The former Shrewsbury, Pa., and Stewartstown, Pa., resident worked as an AT&T accountant in Hunt Valley for many years before being transferred to Atlanta in 1984. The Woodstock, Ga., resident, who enjoyed hunting and fishing, retired in 1987.

An article yesterday gave an incorrect date for the annual meeting of American Telephone and Telegraph Co. The meeting is April 20.The Sun regrets the errors.American Telephone & Telegraph Co., a proud name in American business since 1885, was condemned to death by acronym yesterday for the crime of obsolescence.News of the old name's pending doom came in a packet of materials mailed yesterday to about 3 million AT&T shareholders in advance of the annual meeting March 20 in Atlanta. Unless the shareholders grant a surprise reprieve, the sentence will be executed immediately after the meeting.

With the change of its name to AT&T Corp., the position of the former American Telephone & Telegraph Co. in the New York Stock Exchange table has shifted. It is now listed near the top of the A's, where companies with names that are initials are grouped.

See fellow user on computer screenAmerican Telephone & Telegraph Co. unveiled a system yesterday that allows people to see each other in a corner of their computer screen while discussing business, sharing software and revising documents.The company's new Personal Video System Model 70 begins with two users and the Microsoft Windows operating environment. The system allows users to see each other in one window while talking and working together on documents elsewhere on the screen.

AT&T plans to raise ratesAmerican Telephone & Telegraph Co., signaling it believes the long-distance pricing wars are history, said yesterday that it was raising rates on its business and consumer long-distance services.It said rates for most business services would increase an average of 3.9 percent, while rates on direct-dialed consumer calls would increase overall by less than 1 percent.

Probe of AT&T purchase soughtThe head of the Senate antitrust panel -- Ohio Democrat Howard Metzenbaum -- said he will ask the Justice Department to scrutinize "every facet" of American Telephone & Telegraph Co.'s plans to buy the nation's biggest cellular company."

WASHINGTON -- The General Accounting Office said yesterdaythat the federal government's main contract to buy long-distance telephone service will force it to pay $148 million above commerciallyavailable rates over the next two years.But AT&T, one of the two principal contractors, denounced the conclusion by the congressional watchdog agency and said it was based on questionable data.At issue is what is known as the FTS 2000 contract, in which the government buys most of its long-distance services from either the American Telephone & Telegraph Co. or US Sprint Communications Co.L The contract is expected to total $25 billion over 10 years.

Robert Baker Alexander, a retired Chesapeake & Potomac Telephone Co. executive who had worked on construction of the DEW Line radar stations in the 1950s, died of heart failure Monday at the Fairhaven Retirement Community in Sykesville. He was 97. Mr. Alexander was born in Chattanooga, Tenn., and was raised there and in Atlanta. He earned a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering in 1929 from the Georgia Institute of Technology and began his career in the southern states as a lineman in the Long Lines Division of American Telephone & Telegraph Co. After holding positions in Atlanta, New York and Philadelphia, he became a plant manager in Baltimore in 1951.

Geoffrey Alexander Tizard Sr., a retired American Telephone & Telegraph Co. financial officer, died of pneumonia Tuesday at Greater Baltimore Medical Center. He was 75 and lived in Riderwood. Mr. Tizard was born in Washington, the son of Sir George F. Tizard, a British diplomat. He was a graduate of Anacostia High School and studied accounting at Benjamin Franklin University in Washington. During the Korean War, he served with an Army ordnance unit at Camp Pickett, Va., and at Aberdeen Proving Ground.

Norman Lee Curry, a retired American Telephone & Telegraph Co. district manager, died of complications from a stroke Feb. 20 at Upper Chesapeake Medical Center in Bel Air. He was 73. Mr. Curry was born and raised in Atlanta and earned a bachelor's degree in industrial engineering from Georgia Institute of Technology in 1952. He attained the rank of lieutenant while serving with an Army infantry unit from 1951 to 1954. He began his career with AT&T in 1956 and was appointed district manager at Cockeysville in 1969.

Kenneth Camp Martin, a retired telephone engineer and college lacrosse player, died of a heart attack Friday at his Phoenix home in Baltimore County. He was 77. Born in Baltimore and raised on Lafayette Avenue in Bolton Hill, he was a 1944 graduate of Polytechnic Institute. Serving in the latter part of World War II, he became an Army lieutenant and was stationed in New Guinea. After the war, he earned a degree in electrical engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, N.Y. While in college he played lacrosse and was voted All-American.

Maybe you've seen the commercial on television, from a group with a grass-roots-sounding name, "Voices for Choices." Four gray-haired businessmen chuckle as they feast on a turkey dinner. The men are labeled to represent the nation's four largest local phone companies - Verizon Communications, SBC Communications Inc., Qwest Communications International Inc. and BellSouth Corp. A narrator warns that they must be stopped "before the phone conglomerates do to our phones what the energy conglomerates did to electricity," as the chandelier in the scene ominously dims.

Mary Wehle High, 85, union activist, social workerMary Wehle High, a union activist, social worker and volunteer, died Dec. 9 of leukemia at her home on Thames Street in Fells Point. She was 85.In 1947 in Baltimore, she helped organize the first nationwide telephone strike, and worked for American Telephone & Telegraph Co. from 1939 until 1965. She was a local officer in the National Federation of Telephone Workers and Communications Workers of America.She was devoted to social justice. Both of her grandfathers escaped death sentences for their participation in independence movements in their homelands: one an Irish Fenian; the other a Hungarian who fled after the Magyar uprising, said a nephew, Gary Miller, of Huntington Beach, Calif.

MEDFORD, Mass. -- Apple Computer Co. and American Telephone & Telegraph Co. are negotiating an alliance, PC Week has reported."Apple is getting closer to finding a partner that will help bankroll its vision," PC Week said in its June 21 issue.The magazine said that the Cupertino, Calif.-based computer company and the New York City-based telecommunications company have been negotiating since March.PC Week said Apple/AT&T joint ventures or a merger of Apple and the AT&T subsidiary NCR could help Apple.

AFTER American Telephone & Telegraph Co. was broken up in 1984, it struggled to redefine itself. The nation's largest long-distance company was challenged by new rivals, stymied by rapid technological change and haunted by its own poor strategic decisions.Now, under Chairman and Chief Executive Officer C. Michael Armstrong, AT&T Corp. is waging a comeback, entering new markets through partnerships with such firms as British Telecommunications PLC and through acquisitions of companies like local telephone provider Teleport Communications Group Inc. (TCG)

Munir Bashir, 67, an Iraqi musician whose use of the oud, a pear-shaped stringed instrument, promoted Arabic music around the world, died of a heart attack Monday in Cairo, Egypt.Hector Julio Paride Bernabo, 86, the Brazilian artist known for colorful paintings of Afro-Brazilian religious cults, died Wednesday. Better known by his nickname, Carybe, Paride Bernabo died in the northeastern city of Salvador, where he had lived for more than 45 years.Virginia A. Dwyer, 76, a former senior vice president at American Telephone & Telegraph Co.. and one of the first women to reach the top ranks of a major U.S. company, died of cancer Monday in New York.