Banker

The Ellicott City office of Coldwell Banker Grempler Realty Inc. was named the 1998 No. 1 office in closed gross commission income in Maryland for Coldwell Banker Real Estate Corp.'s 55 Maryland offices.According to office manager Joan Pittroff, the office had its best year on record with a "production record 60 percent above 1997."Elaine Northrup of the Ellicott City office was honored by Coldwell Banker as its No. 3 sales associate internationally, No. 1 sales associate Northeast Region and No. 1 sales associate in Maryland.

John Howard Edwards, who formerly headed Provident Bank's mortgage department, died May 21 at St. Joseph Medical Center in Towson of injuries he suffered that day in a two-car collision near Glen Arm. He was 69 and lived in Hydes.Known as Hank, Mr. Edwards had a lengthy career as a mortgage banker in Baltimore. He retired in 1990 from Provident Bank of Maryland, where he worked 42 years, ending as senior vice president.He had recently begun working as manager for new business at Baltimore County Savings Bank.

In 1977, Judith Banker-Barrett answered a small newspaper ad for the headmistress position at the Blue Bird School. With only five years' teaching experience, she got the job running the tiny, 40-pupil school in a rambling house on Berwick Road in Ruxton."

Paul A. Banker, who began his 40-year newspaper career as a police reporter and retired as managing editor of The Sun and Sunday Sun, died last night of cancer at Union Memorial Hospital. He was 77.A laconic man whose shyness was often misread as aloofness, Mr. Banker was a formidable figure in the Calvert Street newsroom, presiding over the content of the newspaper as it came together each day, the final authority on what met The Sun's standards for publication and what did not.His devotion to the integrity of the paper was so complete that after he became city editor in 1954, he decided it would inappropriate for him even to cast a vote in an election.

Puppy loveA figure called "Love Dog" is Annapolis sculptor D. H. Banker's tribute to Rumi, inspired by a poem by the 13th-century Persian poet. The sculpture is cast in bronze; the original was cast of food, with a hot pepper for the nose, cherries for eyes, Hershey's Kisses for ears and a pencil for the tail. "Love Dog" is 7 inches long from nose to tail and costs $500.Banker also makes clocks with small bas-relief images, such as crabs or geese, to mark the hours. Her work can be found at League of Maryland Craftsmen shops in Annapolis and Savage Mill, and at the Menagerie, 316 Wyndhurst Ave. in Roland Park.

PAUL A. BANKER, who died Thursday at 77, was the adopted son of The Baltimore Sun. This newspaper put him through college after his father, an assistant managing editor, drowned in a boating accident. The Sun became his journalistic home for four decades, including 16 years as managing editor.To most readers, Paul Banker was just a name on the masthead. But during his stewardship, the paper reflected his journalistic convictions, his sense of institutional history and his belief that The Sun had earned a place in the first rank of U.S. newspapers.

WASHINGTON - In the real estate development business, the hottest buying and trading isn't on Wall Street, it's in wetlands.In many regions, an emerging industry has private and public businesses buying and selling credits, with the ultimate goal being a vibrant ecosystem and a nice profit.Known as mitigation banking, the concept is spreading in several states, and a bill to expand it nationwide is gaining momentum in Congress.This is how it works: A "banker" - who may be a government agency, nonprofit entity or entrepreneur - will create, restore or enhance a wetland and sell "credits" to public and private developers as mitigation for filling wetlands somewhere else.

* Builder's 1st Choice of Columbia has been selected to handle sales and marketing for Church Hill Manor, a community of 80 town homes in Woodlawn that is being converted from rental units. The company has also been chosen to handle marketing for Legend Homes, a Prince George's County homebuilder.* Coldwell Banker Grempler Realty Inc. of Baltimore said Fred Archer was named one of the top 10 Maryland sales associates for the fourth quarter of 1993 for Coldwell Banker Residential Affiliates Inc.* The Landscape Contractors Association of Md., D.C. and Va., 9053 Shady Grove Court, Gaithersburg, Md. 20877, is offering consumers a free "Landscape Service Guide."

Visitors who come to Quiet Waters Park just south of Annapolis expect to see the lush wetlands, colorful wild birds and shady woods.But in the coming year, they will see some unexpected sights as well -- a whimsical cat's cradle dangling from the trees, logs that resemble a Stonehenge-like table, wooden pieces that look like upside-down boats.The structures will be placed in the park during the next several weeks as part of a year-long modern sculpture exhibition sponsored by Maryland Hall for the Creative Arts and the Friends of Quiet Waters Park.

IN June 1936, The Evening Sun published a "Who's Who Among Negroes in Baltimore." One of the prominent names in the section was Harry O'Neill Wilson Sr., who was said to employ 78 people. "The only Negro banker in Maryland," the paper said, "he is regarded as a very wealthy man."Wilson had to scramble to make it in Baltimore. Born in 1873, the son of the first black principal in the city school system, he worked as a shoemaker until 1903, when he founded the Mutual Benefit Society, an insurance company with an office at Fayette and Pearl streets.

Robert M. Cheston Sr., a retired banker and longtime Roland Park resident, died of respiratory failure Jan. 27 at Greater Baltimore Medical Center. He was 87. Mr. Cheston was born and raised in Philadelphia. He attended William Penn Charter School and graduated in 1939 from Episcopal High School in Alexandria, Va. He attended the University of Virginia until the outbreak of World War II, when he enlisted in the Navy. Specializing in naval radio intelligence, Mr. Cheston held posts in Washington and the Aleutian Islands, where he read Japanese and German codes.

SAN FRANCISCO -- Five years after walking away from his successful investment banking career to defend himself against criminal charges stemming from the collapse of Internet stocks, Frank P. Quattrone is returning to the role he most relishes: as a counselor to high-tech companies. The news came about seven months after a federal judge approved a request by prosecutors to dismiss all remaining charges against Quattrone, formally clearing the way for his return to Wall Street. "The opera is over," he said at the time, referring to the travails of his conviction - later reversed - on charges of hindering a government investigation into initial public offerings at Credit Suisse.

Margaret Y. Wilson, a retired banker and volunteer, died of cancer Sunday at her Street home. She was 65. She was born and raised Margaret Young in Rose Hill, Va., and began her banking career in Richmond, Va. After moving to Lutherville in 1974, she went to work for the old First National Bank, She managed its Roland Park branch and later worked at the regional headquarters in Towson. In 1980, she joined her husband as a director and officer of R.J. Wilson & Associates Ltd. and Affiliates, an Abingdon insurance firm.

SAN JOSE, Calif. -- Silicon Valley's storied financier, Frank P. Quattrone, won a deal from prosecutors in a New York courtroom yesterday that means an end to his legal troubles, clearing the way for him to return to the investment banking career that had made him one of Wall Street's most powerful technology bankers. The deal represents vindication for a man who once faced an 18-month prison term for his conviction, later set aside, for obstruction of justice, as well as a "lifetime ban" from working in the securities industry.

NEW YORK --Frank P. Quattrone, the Silicon Valley banker who helped drive the 1990s boom in technology, has reached a deal with federal prosecutors that will allow him to avoid a third criminal trial on obstruction charges and resume a career in finance, people briefed on the negotiations said yesterday. Quattrone will enter into a deferred prosecution agreement that will impose no penalty if he does not violate any laws in the next several years, said these people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because a court has not yet formally approved the settlement.

A regional housing market that inflated to record levels in 2005 ended the year leaking a little air. The frenzy of homebuyers willing to outbid each other to get into a new home became a rarer phenomenon, yielding to more stable sales prices, more leisurely shopping and nearly twice as many homes on the market as there were a year earlier. The experts say the journey from overheated to a more normal market probably began around September, although it wasn't clear at the time. So while Realtors generally predict another year of healthy sales in the Baltimore region, most agree there is an unmistakable hiss in the market.

William Seippel Volz Sr., a longtime banker and a church treasurer, died of respiratory failure Saturday at Gilchrist Center for Hospice Care in Towson. The Timonium resident was 84. Born in Baltimore and raised on Rutland Avenue, he was a 1939 graduate of Polytechnic Institute. He worked building B-25 bombers at the Glenn L. Martin Co. Middle River plant, then served in the 46th Armored Infantry Battalion and 5th Armored Division in Italy, Belgium and Germany from 1944 to 1946. After the war, he joined Provident Savings Bank and retired in 1984 as a senior vice president at its Eutaw Street office.

Andrew Maurice Eastwick Jr., an investment banker and former Butler resident, died of complications from pneumonia Tuesday at Palms of Pasadena Hospital in St. Petersburg, Fla. The Treasure Island, Fla., resident was 90. Mr. Eastwick was raised in Baltimore's Mount Washington neighborhood and graduated from the McDonogh School in the 1930s. He attended Washington and Lee University in Virginia and, in 1939, married Margaret Rawlings. In 1943, he joined the Army to fight in World War II and was stationed in the Philippines.

BEING the editor of the Perspective section of The Sun was the best job I ever had on the paper. Why? Maybe because during the three years I put out the section, I learned something about the truly venerable newspaper I devoted 32 years of my life to, and something about myself. When I returned in 1975 after three years as The Sun's correspondent in Brazil, I wanted to go back to my job on The Evening Sun's editorial page. The managing editor of The Sun, Paul Banker, wanted me in the Washington bureau.

James Watkins Brown Jr., a semi-retired Baltimore banker and Realtor, died of kidney failure Monday at his home in the Carrollton Condominium in Guilford. He was 89. Mr. Brown was born in Baltimore and raised near Clifton Park. He was a City College graduate and began his real estate career before World War II. During the war, he served with an Army infantry unit in Europe. After the war, he returned to Baltimore and worked with Hamilton Realty Co. He also served with an Army Reserve unit that was called up during the Korean War. From 1951 to 1952, he served in Japan as chief of an Army real estate appraisal unit.