Baltimore Rowhouse

I RECENTLY heard the word gloomy used to describe a little corner of 1940s Baltimore. The remark was not malicious nor was it intended as a put-down. It was just a remembered impression. So often we think of the past in terms of our own cherished family memories, when the dinners together were delicious and every ride across the Chesapeake Bay was accompanied by sunny skies. And, as I've heard so many times, when women shopped at Howard and Lexington, they always wore gloves. Well, maybe so. I'd like to agree with the gloomy take on old Baltimore.

When crime scene technicians wrapped heavy green plastic around skeletal remains found at the foot of a dirt-covered hillock near the San Diego Zoo, the man's identity hardly seemed a mystery. According to a red wallet tucked into his sock and a registered handgun found nearby, the body found that dry September day in 2000 was that of Baltimore-born Army veteran George Jackson III. But Jackson, who would have turned 40 this year, remains buried as a John Doe in a pauper's grave in California.

Two men were killed and two others wounded as they stood on a West Baltimore porch during a brazen shooting yesterday afternoon, police said. Police released few details about the incident, which drew much of the city Police Department's leaders to the scene. About 1:10 p.m., four men were on the porch of a rowhouse in the 1600 block of N. Smallwood St. when at least one gunman approached and opened fire, police said. Four men were hit. One was found dead at the scene, another died in an ambulance on the way to Maryland Shock Trauma Center, and two others were being treated for multiple gunshot wounds at Shock Trauma last night, police said.

In Baltimore City California surgeon first woman to head Hopkins departments Dr. Julie A. Freischlag, a California vascular surgeon, has been named to head the surgical departments at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and Hospital. Freischlag, who will start work March 1, will be the first woman to serve in either position in the school's 110-year history. She is now professor and chief of surgery at the UCLA School of Medicine. "A `triple threat' surgeon, Julie excels in teaching as well as research and patient care," said Dr. Edward D. Miller, dean and chief executive of Johns Hopkins Medicine.

A fire ripped through a two-story rowhouse in Southwest Baltimore early yesterday, killing a 67-year-old woman and leaving five people homeless in the middle of winter. Mildred Jean Dishman, a Baltimore native who families members say devoted her life to raising five children and helping raise 15 grandchildren, was found dead in her home at 328 S. Calhoun St. Firefighters extinguished the two-alarm blaze about 5:55 a.m., an hour and 40 minutes after they arrived. As fire officials investigated the cause of the fire yesterday, family members and neighbors huddled near a heap of charred rubble in front of Dishman's home, struggling to find answers.

A mother and her five children died yesterday in a raging, early morning fire that destroyed their East Baltimore rowhouse - two weeks after their home was firebombed. Although fire and police officials have not determined a cause for yesterday's blaze, neighbors firmly believe it was set in retaliation for the family's stand against the drug dealing and loitering that went on in their neighborhood. Angela Maria Dawson, 36, and her children, Keith and Kevin Dawson, 9; Carnell Dawson Jr., 10; Juan Ortiz, 12; and LaWanda Ortiz, 14, perished in the blaze.

Elenora McCutcheon has lost two of three sons to murder. The third vanished three months ago. McCutcheon is convinced he is dead. From her early struggles as a high school dropout and teen-age mother to the anguish of losing two sons and possibly a third, McCutcheon, a quiet 53-year-old custodian, is an extreme example of Baltimore's sad litany of street violence. She knows the difficulties of raising boys without a man's help in some of the city's worst neighborhoods. She understands the suffering of parents whose children were killed during Baltimore's murderous 1990s.

A 17-year-old Patterson High School student and standout wrestler who aspired to attend college on an athletic scholarship was found slain yesterday morning in his East Baltimore rowhouse, city police said. Kevan Fletcher Jr. had been dead for several hours when he was discovered by a friend about 8:10 a.m. in the home on the 2500 block of Orleans St., police said. Fletcher had suffered head trauma and might have been shot, police said. Fletcher's friend told police he was going to walk with the teen to catch a bus for school, but got no answer when he knocked.

A 41 year-old East Baltimore woman was found dead yesterday after a fire heavily damaged her rowhouse apartment, officials said. Firefighters found the victim, Cynthia Hines, in her third-floor bedroom in the 1800 block of E. Baltimore St., said fire spokesman Michael M. Maybin. The fire, reported about 4 a.m., apparently started in a second-floor kitchen and caused about $55,000 in damage, Maybin said. It took firefighters about 25 minutes to bring the blaze under control. No one else was hurt, and the cause remained under investigation, Maybin said.

In Baltimore City Patel's sentence stands in killing of her husband Baltimore Circuit Judge John N. Prevas refused yesterday to alter the sentence of a Canadian dentist convicted of killing her husband. Alpna Patel, 29, sat silently beside her lawyer while he argued that her three-year prison sentence should be reduced by 203 days, credit for time she was in home detention awaiting trial. If Prevas had granted her request, Patel would have been free yesterday, since she has accrued other credits.