Baltimore Country Club

For the first time in its long history, the Baltimore Country Club is opening its membership to blacks.Dr. Conrad Inman, a member of the club's board of governors, said yesterday that the board had voted unanimously Wednesday night to invite William Jews, president and chief executive officer of Blue Cross and Blue Shield, and his wife, Marsha, to join the club.Mr. Jews, who is the chairman of the Greater Baltimore Committee, seemed unlikely to offer himself publicly as a symbol of interracial progress.

William Baynes MacLea, a retired industrial salesman whose career spanned three decades, died of heart failure Monday at his Towson home. He was 81. The son of a lumberyard owner and a homemaker, Mr. MacLea was born in Baltimore and raised in Roland Park. He attended the McDonogh School and graduated in 1949 from the Severn School. In his youth, he worked for the family business, MacLea Lumber Co., in Baltimore. After graduating from high school, he enlisted in the Marine Corps and was stationed in Japan during the Korean War. After leaving the service, he attended the University of Virginia, where he studied history and played lacrosse.

A joint bid by two private schools to acquire a prime piece of Roland Park real estate has been turned down by the Baltimore Country Club, which owns the land and has been approached several times by interested buyers, school officials said. Friends School of Baltimore and the Roland Park Country School expressed interest this year in buying the 18-acre parcel from the club. But school officials say that they have been unable to reach an agreement with the club on a purchase price and other details.

Elsie F. O'Malley, a homemaker and world traveler, died Nov. 14 from complications of a stroke at the Blakehurst retirement community in Towson. The former Homeland resident was 95. The daughter of a banker-lumber company owner and a homemaker, the former Elsie Farinholt was born and raised in Cash, Va. She was a descendant of Revolutionary War patriot Patrick Henry. She was a 1934 graduate of the old Mount St. Agnes High School in Mount Washington, and attended the Maryland Institute College of Art . In 1938, she married Paul T. O'Malley, who owned P.T. O'Malley Lumber Co., and settled in Armagh Village, where they lived until later moving to Homeland.

The Constellation Energy Senior Players Championship, scheduled to be played in late September at Baltimore Country Club, announced today that the event will move to Westchester Country Club in Harrison, N.Y., for 2011 because it was given an earlier date on the Champions Tour schedule. The final major championship of the Champions Tour season is now scheduled for Aug. 15-21, 2011, and it will be the first time Westchester Country Club has hosted a major tournament. For 41 years it had hosted a PGA Tour event from 1967 until 2007.

More than 100 years after hosting its first major golf championship and 19 years after its last, Baltimore Country Club will become the site of the 2007 Senior Players Championship, with Baltimore-based Constellation Energy taking over from the Ford Motor Co. as the tournament's title sponsor. The tournament will begin a five-year run in the Baltimore area next year, taking over from Dearborn, Mich., which had hosted the Senior Players for the past 16 years, with Ford the sponsor for most of that time.

The Friends School and Roland Park Country School have confidentially approached the Baltimore Country Club, proposing to buy some of its Roland Park land to construct four playing fields, said community leaders familiar with the discussions. Neither the country club nor the schools would comment yesterday on the joint letter of interest, which the schools sent last week after months of exploratory talks. No precise sum was disclosed for the proposed purchase of about a dozen acres on the lower grounds of the club facing Falls Road at Hillside Road.

Let's not mince words: Des Smyth does not have a pretty golf swing. He picks the club straight up, gets it completely off plane, pauses, then goes after the ball like a hockey player looking to rip a slap shot top shelf. It is - when you compare it to the fluid tempo and graceful turn that many players have on the Champions Tour - downright ugly. But don't take someone else's word for it. Just ask Smyth. "It looks far worse than it feels," Smyth joked yesterday, chuckling in his native Irish brogue.

Thousands of golf fans watched as more than 70 players, including Tom Watson, Fuzzy Zoeller, Tom Kite and Curtis Strange competed in the Constellation Energy Senior Players Championship at the Baltimore Country Club. It was the first major professional event to be held at the Timonium course since the 1988 U.S. Women's Open. As part of an agreement with the PGA Tour, it will be an annual event through 2011.

Professional golf in the Baltimore area has a long and rich, if not quite deep, history. Back in '99 - 1899 that is - Willie Smith won the U.S. Open at Baltimore Country Club. It was the fifth Open ever played and the last major professional golf championship contested in the city until 1988, when Liselotte Neumann won the U.S. Women's Open at the same club in a different location. LPGA Championship Bulle Rock, Havre de Grace, Thursday-Sunday TV: The Golf Channel, 4-7 p.m. each day

It takes a Big Band sound to battle the disco, punk, thrash rock, heavy metal and country-pop now dominating national soundtracks. But that's exactly what the Zim Zemarel Band has done in the greater Baltimore area for the better part of 50 years. And even though Zemarel himself died in 1999, at age 82, his former band mates Gene Bonner, 77, of Perry Hall, and Wayne Hudson, 68, of Pasadena, are still carrying the torch for the band, and for Tommy Dorsey- and Benny Goodman-style 1940s Big Band music itself.

Marshall Hyder Wentz, who owned and operated a vehicle leasing company for more than 40 years, died Nov. 4 of pneumonia at Greater Baltimore Medical Center. The longtime Towson resident was 95. Born and raised in Baltimore, Mr. Wentz graduated in 1933 from the old Charlotte Hall Military Academy in Leonardtown. In 1935, he established City Express, a Baltimore trucking company. Several years later, he founded Tri-State Vehicle Leasing and operated the business for the next four decades.

Thomas W. Brundige III, a retired lawyer and decorated World War II veteran, died Aug. 31 of respiratory failure at Keswick Multi-Care Center in Baltimore. The former longtime Stevenson resident was 90. The son of a lawyer and a homemaker, Thomas Worthington Brundige III was born in Baltimore and raised on Winston Avenue in Govans. After graduating from City College in 1938, he enrolled at the Johns Hopkins University, where he earned a bachelor's degree in 1942. While at Hopkins, he completed reserve officers training, was commissioned a second lieutenant and entered the Army.

Jane P. Baker, a homemaker and Our Daily Bread volunteer, died of a heart attack Aug. 24 at the Edenwald retirement community. She was 90 and had lived in Guilford and the Orchards for many years. Born Jane Burton Parr in Portsmouth, Va., she moved to Baltimore as a child and lived in Mount Washington. She was a Cathedral School graduate and met her future husband, attorney George W. Baker, at the Catholic Action Guild, a volunteer club that met at the school. Mrs. Baker was a 1939 Western High School graduate.

Marshall Hyder Wentz, who owned and operated a vehicle leasing company for more than 40 years, died Nov. 4 of pneumonia at Greater Baltimore Medical Center. The longtime Towson resident was 95. Born and raised in Baltimore, Mr. Wentz graduated in 1933 from the old Charlotte Hall Military Academy in Leonardtown. In 1935, he established City Express, a Baltimore trucking company. Several years later, he founded Tri-State Vehicle Leasing and operated the business for the next four decades.