Armory

The Medford National Guard Armory in Annapolis was transformed into a gallery last weekend as the Historic Annapolis Foundation held an antiques show there.

Every piece of furniture that antique dealer Aileen Minor displays shows amazing craftsmanship -- deep, ornate hand carving and polished veneers.All of it is as perfect as anything on a showroom floor, and each piece has lasted a lifetime."

"America the Beautiful" will be the theme for this year's observance of Veterans Day in Carroll County.The program includes flag posting, poetry readings by middle school pupils, a vocal solo and guest speaker, Ken Wayman, a retired Army captain. The Rev. Fred Eckhardt will offer a prayer. "This is a day set aside for all people across the United States to honor veterans, living and deceased, who served in all the wars," said Bob Edwards, a Navy veteran of the Korean War, who is organizing the event.

100 years ago Extensive improvements are being planned at the U.S. Naval Academy. Contracts will soon be awarded for the construction of a sea wall, power house, armory and boathouse, at the cost of $1 million. -- The Sun, Jan. 19, 1899.In Eastport, a two-story house belonging to Ellis Yarrington was destroyed by fire today, emphasizing the importance of supplying Eastport with its own fire engine. -- The Sun, Jan. 20, 1899.Pub Date: 2/07/99

The North Carroll girls team didn't figure to wring many points out of the relay events at the Central Region 3A-2A qualifying meet for next week's state championships yesterday at the 5th Regiment Armory.It didn't, scoring just 12 points out of a possible 93. So the pressure was on the competitors in the individual events and they responded well as North Carroll took the measure of Woodlawn, 75-68, and three other Baltimore County contenders: Parkville (65), Catonsville and Franklin (45 apiece.

In Baltimore CountyJob-seekers can meet with 50 employers at Dundalk ArmoryDUNDALK -- Area job-seekers will have the chance to talk with representatives from more than 50 employers at a job fair from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Wednesday at Dundalk Armory, 2101 North Point Blvd.Businesses planning to participate include Creditrust Corp., Primerica Financial Services, MCI World Com, Baltimore Window Factory, Renaissance Harborplace Hotel, Baltimore Police Department, the FBI, Bruning Paint Co., the Navy, Bradshaw Construction Corp.

Well, at least this time it wasn't a walkover for Mervo.A week ago, the city high schools got together for an indoor track meet at the 5th Regiment Armory and Mervo's boys racked up 168 points. It equaled the combined total of the next nine teams in the competition.Mervo, with its usual point-scorers Colby Smith, Cory Clark, Kelly Jackson and Kevin Merrick taking care of business in the individual events and dominating the relays, was "held" to 110 points last night. This bested only the combined total of the next four teams in the scoring.

It becomes relatively easy to win a multi-team track meet when you have the likes of Joel Brown and Clevon Johnson on your squad as Woodlawn High does.In the Central Region 3A-2A qualifying meet for next week's state championships yesterday at the 5th Regiment Armory, Brown and Johnson piled up five victories (50 points), which was nearly enough to win the meet.Brown tripled in the hurdles (7.5 seconds), the 55 dash (6.5) and the 300 (38-flat) while Johnson ruled the mile (4: 45.5) and half mile (2: 06.6)

Mike Tyson, who appears headed back to prison after receiving a two-year sentence in Montgomery County Circuit Court yesterday for second-degree assault on two motorists involved in an Aug. 31 fender bender with his wife, Monica, drew little sympathy from professional boxing figures across the country.The consensus was that the former heavyweight champion, whose tumultuous ring career has been interrupted in the past by serving three years for a rape conviction and, more recently, an 18-month suspension for chomping Evander Holyfield's ears, got what he deserved.

The weekend warriors were already making their New Year's Eve plans yesterday, but that didn't mean stocking up on bubbly and brewski. It meant cranking up a bunch of telescoping antennae throughout Baltimore and beyond.The warriors are members of Company B, 129th Signal Battalion, of the Maryland National Guard. They occupied sites like the soccer field at Sudbrook Magnet Middle School in Baltimore County and the badly eroded baseball diamond next to Lake Ashburton in West Baltimore.Those skinny antennae poking up in the sky will be a crucial part of the communications system employed as 1999 turns into 2000.

David Roszel was on an evening walk along Lafayette Avenue in Bolton when he spotted me last Saturday night. In a subsequent conversation, he presented a version of the events that led to the Howard Street Bridge's construction in the late 1930s, a topic discussed in this column a few weeks ago. As a boy, he remembered his father awakening him and then watching the smoke and fire in the early morning of Jan. 13, 1933, as the 5th Regiment Armory burned....

Baltimore's 5th Regiment Armory could become a soundstage for film production in Maryland under a proposal to revitalize the 28-acre State Center renewal area. Planners have recommended that the state-owned building near Howard and Preston streets, now home for a division of the Maryland National Guard, be preserved and converted for new uses as part of a transit-oriented development that would also contain new housing, commercial space and offices for state agencies and others. The National Guard division has indicated that it may want to move to a different location in central Maryland, and that would free up the armory for new uses.

Seriously nerdy The lowdown -- If you enjoy Magic: the Gathering, Atari or science, then check out Nerdfest 2008. Load of Fun Studios encourages basement-dwellers to get out and get social Saturday for an evening of nerd culture. Attending geeks can look forward to video games, Dungeons & Dragons, science and math experiments, and bands inspired by Star Wars and Harry Potter. If you go -- The festival is 4 p.m.-10 p.m. Saturday. Admission is $5. The studio is at 120 W. North Ave. Call 412-901-1216 or go to loadoffun.

When Ross Hempel walked into the Pikesville Armory in Baltimore County yesterday, he expected to take the professional engineering exam that he had studied three months for. But just 10 minutes before the exam was to begin, the 23-year- old Marriottsville man - along with some 325 other aspiring engineers - was ushered out of the building because of a sewage backup. Now the prospective test-takers might have to wait until October to take the eight-hour Fundamentals of Engineering exam, which is the first step to getting a license to practice engineering in the United States, said Dan Parr, executive director of the state Professional Licensing Boards.

CHESTERTOWN -- For decades, the men of the Army National Guard's 29th Infantry Division prepared for war inside the powder-blue corridors of this faded fortress, perfecting drills in the cavernous gym. Weekends when the soldiers weren't there, Chestertown's armory hosted basketball games, concerts - even the town's Christmas bazaar. But the building has been quiet for more than two years, ever since the state's Military Department announced plans to sell it. Now, seemingly everyone in this close-knit town has an opinion on what should happen to the armory - which sits on waterfront property.

WASHINGTON -- As the insurgency in Iraq escalated in the spring of 2004, U.S. officials entrusted an Iraqi businessman with issuing weapons to Iraqi police cadets training to help quell the violence. By all accounts, the businessman, Kassim al-Saffar, a veteran of the Iran-Iraq war, did well at distributing the Pentagon-supplied weapons from the Baghdad Police Academy armory he managed for a military contractor. But, co-workers say, he also turned the armory into his own private arms bazaar with the seeming approval of some U.S. officials and executives, selling AK-47s, Glock pistols and heavy machine guns to anyone with cash in hand - Iraqi militias, South African security guards and even American contractors.

Snow fell in Baltimore on Oct. 19 and 20, 1940. It clung to trees still burdened with leaves, mostly north and west of the city. Limbs sagged and snapped off electric service to thousands. Wet flakes fell on visitors to the Baltimore Automobile Show at the 5th Regiment Armory, where manufacturers hoped to "woo the whims of the ladies" with cars in colors other than black. In New York, under gray skies, 141 officers and men of the Maryland Naval Reserves sailed for Panama under "indefinite" activation.

Guard troops to leave for Iraq training, deployment About 130 military police officers of the Maryland Army National Guard are set to leave Thursday for combat training and subsequent deployment to Iraq, officials confirmed yesterday. The 290th Military Police Company, based at the Parkville Armory, expects to be in Iraq for about nine months after 90 days of pre-deployment training at Fort Bliss, Texas. The call-up has been long planned and is not part of the Pentagon's plans, reported this week, to alert up to eight National Guard units that they should be ready to go to Iraq or Afghanistan beginning next summer.

Starting the 1972 hurricane season with a rough blow, Tropical Storm Agnes swept the Eastern seaboard in June, causing $3.2 billion in damage and claiming 122 lives, 21 of them in Maryland. Agnes was the worst tropical system to hit the United States until Hurricane Andrew smashed into the East Coast in 1992. Flooding from Agnes forced hundreds of people in Anne Arundel County to leave their homes and find refuge in schools, fire stations and the National Guard Armory in Annapolis. Most of the evacuees lived in trailer parks along the Patuxent River.

The 140th annual Westminster Memorial Day parade and observance kicks off from Monroe Avenue at 10 a.m. tomorrow, followed by a memorial service at the Westminster Cemetery. This year's speaker at the memorial service is Maj. Edwin F. "Ed" Singer III, who will leave for a 14- to 15-month tour of duty in Iraq on Wednesday with the 450th Civil Affairs Battalion. Singer said his speech will focus on veterans from previous wars. "I guess my thing is, I have an appreciation for the things people did that came before us, like in World War I and II, Korea, Vietnam," Singer said.