Bell Atlantic

Joseph Robert "Bob"Aumiller, a retired Bell Atlantic accounting supervisor and manager and big-band musician, died of congestive heart failure Nov. 16 at Oak Crest Village retirement community. He was 86. Born in Baltimore and raised in Hamilton, Mr. Aumiller was a 1941 graduate of City College. He joined the Navy shortly after the attack on Pearl Harbor and served aboard the battleship USS South Dakota in the Pacific as a boatswain's mate, ship observer and musician. After the war, Mr. Aumiller earned a degree in business administration on the GI Bill of Rights at the Johns Hopkins University.

Joseph Robert "Bob"Aumiller, a retired Bell Atlantic accounting supervisor and manager and big-band musician, died of congestive heart failure Nov. 16 at Oak Crest Village retirement community. He was 86. Born in Baltimore and raised in Hamilton, Mr. Aumiller was a 1941 graduate of City College. He joined the Navy shortly after the attack on Pearl Harbor and served aboard the battleship USS South Dakota in the Pacific as a boatswain's mate, ship observer and musician. After the war, Mr. Aumiller earned a degree in business administration on the GI Bill of Rights at the Johns Hopkins University.

Earnings for Bell Atlantic Corp., the parent of the Chesapeake and Potomac Telephone Co. of Maryland, rose 22.3 percent in the first quarter as the result of cost-cutting, interest savings, and increased revenues in its telephone and cellular business.Bell AtlanticCorp... ... ... ... ...Ticker... ... ... ... ... Yesterday's... ... ... ... ... ...Symbol... ... ... ... ... Cls. ..Chg.... ... ... ... ... ...BEL... ... ... ... ... ...54 7/8 .. + 1/4Period endedMarch 31... ... ... . 1st qtr...

Walter Louis Witten, a retired phone company manager and slow-pitch softball fan, died Saturday of brain cancer at Harmony Hall, a Columbia assisted-living facility. He was 72. Mr. Witten was born in Louisville, Ky., and raised in Hyattsville. He was a 1953 graduate of Northwestern High School in Hyattsville and earned a bachelor's degree in business administration from Southeastern University in Lakeland, Fla., in 1962. He began his career in 1953 with Chesapeake & Potomac Telephone Co. as a messenger and pay phone coin collector.

Frederick d'Alessio, Bell Atlantic's main man in Maryland, said it took a few days to recover from the disappointment when the company's gamble on buying the nation's largest cable TV company came up snake eyes.But in a recent interview, the president of Bell Atlantic-Maryland sounded anything but despondent about the demise of the Tele-Communications Inc. deal last month. He seemed to be coping rather well, in fact."We're working right now on other possibilities," he said. "You can be sure other things are in the works."

This Philadelphia-based regional Bell telephone company reported earnings higher than analysts' expectations for the third quarter.The company said its earnings rose 16.6 percent as a result of an increase in basic telephone volume, growth in its cellular business and strong demand for new products and services.Bell Atlantic said results for the latest period include a gain of 8 cents a share from the sale of an investment acquired in the company's Metro Mobile CTS Inc. merger in April.During the same period last year, the company had a gain of cents a share from the sale of most of the company's investment in Telecom Corp.

PHILADELPHIA -- How soon will it be before Bell Atlantic Corp. and its stockholders begin to see the results of last week's landmark ruling that will let the company offer "information services?"Give it two or three years, say managers and analysts. Don't hold your breath, say critics of the ruling."I don't think we can overestimate the impact of this ruling on our future," Bell Atlantic chairman Raymond W. Smith told employees on Friday, and he sketched for them a few of the "reasonably well-laid plans" the company has made to deal with its new-found freedom.

Keiko Takeuchi Harvey's new job represents a career breakthrough of sorts: She no longer has to keep a hard hat in her car.Through her career as a telephone company engineer, she says, there were many days and nights when she found herself slogging through the New Jersey mud at the site of a cable break, offering advice, coffee and words of encouragement to repair crews.As the newly appointed vice president of Bell Atlantic Corp.'s Network Planning and Engineering department, she won't be expected to do that anymore.

Borrowing from the model that made the IBM PC the leading standard in the computer industry, Bell Atlantic Corp. opened its telephone network to outside software writers yesterday to encourage the development of new programs to take advantage of its technology.Speaking at a trade show in Dallas, Bell Atlantic officials announced that it was launching a Third Party Developers Program to work with companies that want to produce customized software that would make use of the Philadelphia-based phone company's Advanced Intelligent Network (AIN)

MFS Communications Inc., an upstart telephone company that is poised to offer competition to Bell Atlantic Corp. in Maryland, accused the regional giant yesterday of filing a "meritless" lawsuit in an effort to intimidate rivals who criticize Bell Atlantic before regulators and legislators.One week after Bell Atlantic sued the Omaha-based communications company in U.S. District Court in Wilmington, Del., MFS struck back.In a letter to legislators and regulators, Royce J. Holland, MFS' president and chief operating officer, charged that Bell Atlantic's suit may be "an improper use of ratepayer funds" to silence smaller competitors.

What in the world happened to corporate America to make somebody like Bill Jones, a registered Republican and former senior manager for what's now Verizon Communications, turn on the system that gave him a career and a life? The answer is complicated. But if you guessed it has something to do with the $20 million that Verizon CEO Ivan Seidenberg pocketed last year for driving Verizon profits down 16 percent, you're onto something. At this month's Verizon shareholders meeting, Jones introduced and won one of the most radical proposals yet to make corporate boards answerable for runaway executive pay. By a narrow majority, Verizon owners urged directors to give shareholders a nonbinding, annual vote - thumbs up or thumbs down - on pay for the top five bosses.

Ralph J. Schrader, a retired Bell Atlantic-Maryland supervisor and World War II veteran, died of Parkinson's disease Monday at his Parkton home. He was 79. Born in Beaumont, Pa., and raised there and in Dallas, Pa., he moved to Baltimore with his family in 1942 and enlisted the next year in the Army. He served as a paratrooper in the Pacific. In 1950, Mr. Schrader went to work as a lineman for the old Chesapeake & Potomac Telephone Co., and was later promoted to supervisor. He retired in 1988 from successor company Bell Atlantic-Maryland.

Daniel J. Lyons III, a retired Bell Atlantic employee, died Tuesday of Lewy body disease, a degenerative neurological ailment, at St. Elizabeth Rehabilitation and Nursing Center in Southwest Baltimore. The Cambridge resident was 60. He retired in 1999 from Bell Atlantic after 39 years as a pay phone coin collector in Baltimore, and later on the Eastern Shore, where he moved in 1982. Born in Baltimore and raised in Edmondson Village and Gwynn Oak, he was a 1960 graduate of Milford Mill High School.

Unionized workers protested outside offices of Verizon Communications Inc. yesterday in five cities, including Baltimore, alleging violations of the labor agreement that settled an 18-day strike against the telecommunications company last summer. Stirred by John J. Sweeney, president of the AFL-CIO, about 150 Verizon employees, wearing red T-shirts and carrying purple signs, chanted and marched in front of the company's offices on East Pratt Street at noon. The Communications Workers of America contend that the company - the nation's largest local and wireless telephone company - has thwarted organizing by workers in two divisions that handle wireless communications and yellow-page directory listings.

Verizon Communications Inc. and unions representing 87,000 workers reported progress in contract negotiations yesterday as a strike against the telecommunications giant headed into its third week. Union negotiators reported that "substantial progress" had been made on a new contract and that marathon bargaining sessions were under way. "We're still working to resolve several key issues. We very much want a settlement to the strike," said Candice Johnson, a spokeswoman for the Communications Workers of America.

As the strike against Verizon Communications pushed into its 10th day, both company and union officials turned up the rhetoric yesterday even as they reported progress. Verizon spokesman Eric Rabe said the company's latest proposal, issued late Monday, addresses the unions' concerns about diverting call center work and alleviating job stress. "It could come together in a matter of hours ... ," he said. "We think we're there." But Rabe, who has been cautiously optimistic through much of the strike, seemed to tire of his own refrain that an end was near.

A Bell Atlantic Corp. employee who has AIDS has sued the company, charging that it has violated federal pension law and the Americans with Disabilities Act by refusing to cash out her disability pension.Lawyers for Tema S. Gerhardt, 42, of Hillendale, filed the five-count lawsuit Wednesday in Baltimore's U.S. District Court. She was joined in the suit by her husband, Charles R. Gerhardt, executive vice president of Local 2100 of the Communications Workers of America, which represents Bell Atlantic employees.

NEW YORK -- Bell Atlantic Corp., the No. 1 U.S. local phone company, is in talks to acquire AirTouch Communications Inc., the nation's second-largest wireless phone company, for $45 billion in stock, CNBC reported yesterday, citing people close to the negotiations.The acquisition, which may be announced as early as next week, would be the eighth-largest acquisition of all time. The price would represent a premium of 10 percent to 15 percent above AirTouch's stock price, which touched a record $75 a share yesterday, CNBC said.