Bea Gaddy

In Baltimore CityMan's death 37 years after shooting is ruled homicideThe death Nov. 3 of a Southwest Baltimore man who was shot 37 years ago has been ruled a homicide by the state medical examiner's office because the victim never fully recovered, police said yesterday.Claude Garrison, 52, of the 800 block of Lemmon St. was shot in the torso during a robbery at a grocery store in the 600 block of N. Fremont Ave. on July 7, 1962, police said. The shooting left Garrison unable to care for himself.

Be happy! It's a brand-new year! Twenty-seven reasons to go on living:1. The city's luring tourists with new television ads. The ads show a happy couple stripping seductively for each other. This is called "cutting edge." It's so cutting edge, it reminds everybody: "Oh, yeah, Baltimore and sex. Didn't Jay Leno just do a whole week of jokes on Baltimore and venereal disease?"2. U.S. Sen. Trent Lott. Maybe his plan to put the Clinton impeachment quickly behind us will work. After all, the last time we had a scandal of such Sodom and Gomorrah proportions, wasn't it Lott's wife who got stiffed?

Be happy! It's a brand-new year! Twenty-seven reasons to go on living:1. The city's luring tourists with new television ads. The ads show a happy couple stripping seductively for each other. This is called "cutting edge." It's so cutting edge, it reminds everybody: "Oh, yeah, Baltimore and sex. Didn't Jay Leno just do a whole week of jokes on Baltimore and venereal disease?"2. U.S. Sen. Trent Lott. Maybe his plan to put the Clinton impeachment quickly behind us will work. After all, the last time we had a scandal of such Sodom and Gomorrah proportions, wasn't it Lott's wife who got stiffed?

SOCIAL CALENDERNov. 5: "Ceramica Puertorriquena Hoy/Today," an exhibition of works by 22 Puerto Rican ceramic artists. Opening-night show and reception 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. The Alcazar Gallery of the Baltimore School for the Arts, 712 Cathedral St. Free. Call 410-578-1919.Nov. 5: Gala preview party kicks off the 1998 Maryland Antiques Show. Show runs Nov. 6-8. Maryland Historical Society, 201 W. Monument St. 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. $100. Call 410-685-3750, Ext. 321.Nov. 6: Annual luncheon and card party to benefit the Cockeysville-Timonium Lioness Club.

Canned food, clothing, furniture, blankets and other items to be distributed to the needy were stolen over the weekend from a West Baltimore warehouse operated by activist Bea Gaddy, police said yesterday.A volunteer discovered the break-in about 2 p.m. yesterday when he opened the one-story warehouse in the 2400 block of W. Baltimore St.A spokeswoman for Bea Gaddy's Women and Children Center Inc. in the 100 block of N. Collington Ave. said the stolen items included new shoes and purses.Pub Date: 6/30/98

Sunday night, with a small crowd watching on the sidewalk in front of her dining room for the poor on North Collington Avenue, Bea Gaddy took the heads off with a hacksaw. Then she scaled the three fish -- two 30-pounders and one weighing 20 -- and cleaned the insides. Monday, she put each beast in a pan, draped them in onions, spiced them and slid them under the broiler in her kitchen."We fed 50 people," she says, pleased that everyone seemed to enjoy a late-spring supper of river tuna.Or reservoir tuna.

Sandra Johnson loves Thanksgiving. Just don't ask her to cook.Yesterday, Johnson managed to pull off what many Americans would consider a holiday miracle. She gathered about 70 of her relatives from three states, promising food and family memories. Her culinary contribution? Green beans."I told my mother 'I'll pay for the hall, I'll organize everything, but I am not cooking,' " said Johnson, 32, standing in a Northwest Baltimore fraternity house she rented to hold all her relatives. "I'm a '90s woman, but I am not a cooking woman."

Tall tale about Bea Gaddy written by Mary Volpe's third-grade students at Roye-Williams Elementary School.Bea Gaddy was born in Wake Forest, N. C., on Feb. 20, 1933. On the day she was born, she baked her own birthday cake.Her family moved to Baltimore in 1935. When "Balldemer Bea" was a little girl, she could bake a 2,000-layer cake in four seconds. She was such a good cook, that whenever people smelled her cooking, there were lines, miles long, at her door.One Thanksgiving Day, when she was 6 years old, she saw some homeless people on Charles Street.

Bea Gaddy looked at the 10-year-old Manchester Elementary School girl who was asking for food donations outside a Carroll County grocery store last week and said she had flashbacks of herself many years ago.Ms. Gaddy, 62, recalled pulling a trash can outfitted with makeshift wheels along East Baltimore streets, begging for food to feed herself and her hungry neighbors.From that humble beginning emerged Ms. Gaddy's Patterson Park Emergency Food Center Inc. on North Collington Avenue in Baltimore.

Third-graders at Roye-Williams Elementary School met the heroine of a tall tale last week, and her real life story almost topped the one they concocted about her.Baltimore homeless advocate Bea Gaddy visited Mary Volpe's third-grade class Wednesday to listen to their version of her life, "Balldemer Bea" -- and to set a few facts straight."

Little more than a week after an electrical fire destroyed the women's shelter at the Bea Gaddy Family Center, Executive Director Cynthia Brooks was flush with reasons to be thankful. She and siblings John Fowler and Sandra E. Briggs were counting their blessings yesterday as they prepared to start the annual Thanksgiving dinner at Patterson Park Recreation Center that is part of their mother's legacy. They were thankful for the friends who took over paying for the center's gas and electricity bill after it had climbed to $6,000 and the power was about to be shut off. And for the various contractors who walked into the building, ravaged by fire earlier this month, and restored it so that 48 hours later the damage was largely a memory.

An electrical fire destroyed the women's shelter at the Bea Gaddy Family Center late Tuesday, a setback for a charity that is scrambling to fulfill its tradition of feeding Thanksgiving dinner to thousands of needy people. Though fire damaged the homeless shelter at 424 Duncan St., the adjacent family center at 425 N. Chester St. will continue to collect turkeys and canned good donations. "The shelter is gone as we know it," said executive director Cynthia Brooks, who grew emotional yesterday as she described the damage and the increased need.

Bernard Potts, a retired attorney and philanthropist who served as mentor to a young Bea Gaddy before she became one of Baltimore's best-known humanitarians, died of complications from pneumonia Nov. 16 at Gilchrist Center for Hospice Care in Towson. The longtime Pikesville resident was 92. Born in Baltimore, Mr. Potts spent part of his childhood in an orphanage because his parents were too sick and poor to raise him, said a son, Phillip L. Potts. His maternal grandmother eventually took custody of the boy and raised him in an apartment on North Broadway in East Baltimore.

Flush with two vans of food and $1,200 raised at a benefit concert Friday, Baltimore's Bea Gaddy Family Center is ready for its annual Thanksgiving dinner, organizers said. Michael Austin, a jazz musician who spent 27 years behind bars for a city murder conviction that was overturned in early 2002, said he used to watch Bea Gaddy on television in prison and was moved by her generosity. This year, he put together a benefit concert and said he plans to do another one next fall. "It was the first time that I've ever experienced something so great that I had something to do with," Austin said.

To Michael Austin, she was the angel who appeared on his prison television each Thanksgiving, heaping mashed potatoes and turkey onto the plates of the thousands of homeless and needy people who had come to her for a hot meal. Bea Gaddy, perhaps Baltimore's best-known ambassador to the poor, died in October 2001, less than three months before Austin was freed from his Jessup prison cell and returned to his home city. He had served 27 years of a life sentence before a judge reversed his murder conviction, saying there was no evidence he had committed the crime.

Propped up on her aunt's lap, 1--year-old Kayla Boblett was in heaven when she dipped her tiny fingers into a pool of mashed potatoes, retrieved a sufficient glob and stuck it into her mouth. She then used her fork to spear a chuck of gravy-soaked turkey. She was in her own world and wasn't paying attention to the hundreds of people around her eating, serving up meals and giving thanks yesterday at the annual Bea Gaddy Thanksgiving dinner at the Patterson Park Recreation Center. "Mashed potatoes, that's her favorite," said her aunt Donna White of Dundalk.

The Wedding King finally has a palace of his own. Abe McCauley had only a few chafing dishes to his name when he got his start as a caterer and events planner 11 years ago. After working for years in rented kitchen space, he has just moved into his own building, behind a pizza place on Sherwood Road in Cockeysville. Before going into business for himself, McCauley worked many years as a manager for Baltimore mega-caterer Martin Resnick. Politically active - McCauley ran for House of Delegates from northeast Baltimore in 1994, and was campaign manager for the late Bea Gaddy - he helped the city councilwoman put on Thanksgiving dinner for more than 23,000 in 1992.

Connie Bass Occupation Director of the Bea Gaddy Family Centers, a Baltimore-based, volunteer-run charity that works to combat hunger and solve other social problems. In the news Bass helped lead the 24th annual Bea Gaddy Thanksgiving dinner, which brought in more donations than any dinner in past years. Earlier in the week, with donations running low, Bass helped launch a public relations effort to ensure that enough food was on hand that no one who wanted dinner would be turned away.

In the basement of St. Elizabeth's Catholic Church, about two dozen volunteers wearing name tags, gloves and hairnets did what no one else at the annual Bea Gaddy Thanksgiving dinner wanted to do. Leg by leg, wing by wing, they tore the dark meat off of several hundred turkeys - enough birds to fill two, 26-foot U-Hauls. The cold meat numbed their hands, and after three hours of dividing, ripping and twisting the slippery meat, their fingers had become sore. "This is the heartbeat of the operation," said Dereck Bowden, 47, as he thrust his hands into a 10-gallon pot of stuffing in the adjacent kitchen.

For decades Baltimore's best-loved good Samaritan made it her business to assure the city's poor that on Thanksgiving, savory hot turkey, hearty stuffing and homey slices of pie weren't just for the privileged. Through Bea Gaddy's tireless efforts, thousands enjoyed holiday dinners every year. And when she died in 2001, her friends, relatives and admirers vowed to continue the "Thanksgaddy Day" tradition in her name. But four years later, Bea Gaddy Family Centers are anticipating a dry season.