Birmingham

On November 4, 2005, in Birmingham, AL, CHARLES W. ROTHENHOEFER, 93. He was preceded in death by his wife, Elizabeth Blair Rothenhoefer. Mr. Rothenhoefer is survived by his daughter, Ann Heitz and her husband James R. Heitz; three grandchildren, Elizabeth Heitz, Catherine Marks and Michael Heitz; one great-grandson, Randolph Caldwell Marks, III. A Funeral Mass will be held Monday, November 7, 2005, at 3 P.M. at St. Mark the Evangelist Catholic Church in...

DONNA MICHELLE MORTON, age 52, of Birmingham, AL, and a native of Baltimore, Maryland, passed on January 20, 2010. She was preceded in death by her parents, Benjamin P. and Willie Mae Morton. She is survived by two sisters, Patricia Hayes (Gene), Yvette Morton (Daniel); two brothers, Benjamin and Leslie Morton; four nephews, two nieces, and a host of other relatives and friends. Visitation will be Tuesday, January 26, 2010 from 6:00 until 8:00 P.M. at Davenport & Harris Funeral Home, Birmingham, AL. Funeral services will be held in the Davenport & Harris Chapel on Wednesday, January 27, 2010 at 1:00 P.M. with burial at Zion Memorial Gardens.

On April 25, 2005, VELMA M. MELOF passed away at home after a long illness. She was preceded in death by her husband Easton Melof, her sister Mary Katherine De Bartolo of Chicago, IL, brothers Thomas Fortner of Oak Ridge, TN, and Harry Fortner of Dresden, TN. She is survived by her son, Don Melof (Mary) of Birmingham, her daughters Sandra Melof of Birmingham, and Cheryl Dyer (Mike) of Laurel, MD; four grandchildren Theresa Renee Melof of Hillsboro, Oregon, Bruce Allen Melof of Birmingham, Michael Patrick Dyer (Sadie)

SAM C. POINTER JR., 73 Judge who forced integration Sam C. Pointer Jr., a retired U.S. District Court judge who had received death threats after his rulings forced school integration in Birmingham, Ala., in the 1970s, died Saturday after suffering from an unspecified illness. He had retired from the court about eight years ago after nearly 30 years on the bench and joined the Birmingham law firm of Lightfoot, Franklin & White. Mr. Pointer issued controversial decisions as Birmingham struggled to desegregate its school systems.

A Westminster woman who has been reported missing bought a train ticket for Birmingham, Ala., and stayed at a hotel there with her 3-year-old son, police said yesterday. Rhonda Kay Stevenson, 39, of the 2000 block of Old Washington Road and her son, Thomas Jackson Stevenson, stayed at the hotel in Birmingham on Jan. 26 and took a cab to a shopping mall in Hoover, Ala., the next morning, state police in Westminster said. The woman and the boy had left home Jan. 25 purportedly to visit relatives in northeast Pennsylvania, police said.

Robert Alan Bicks, 75, the government's leading trustbuster in the Eisenhower administration, died Wednesday of respiratory failure in New York. Mr. Bicks became executive secretary of a new committee to review the antitrust concept in 1953, under Attorney General Herbert Brownell. One year later, Mr. Bicks took a position as a legal assistant to the leader of the Justice Department's antitrust division. He became the division's acting leader in 1959 at the age of 31. In 1960, President Dwight D. Eisenhower appointed Mr. Bicks the antitrust chief.

The Canadian Football League postponed this week's Board of Governors meetings until Oct. 16, a decision commissioner Larry Smith said was made to allow owners to concentrate on football instead of business."

BOSTON -- We have fallen into the custom of treating this period as blacks' history month: four weeks set apart -- segregated, one might say -- for African-Americans to celebrate black heroes and recall black achievements. The result is a pervasive tokenism, a kind of calendrical quota -- 11 months of ''regular'' history, one month of black history.But as Martin Luther King's 1963 masterpiece, ''Letter from Birmingham Jail,'' reminds us, the history of blacks in America is not some detachable appendix to American history.

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. -- The Baltimore Stallions are one of many football visitors here this weekend. The team arrived Friday morning, just as Southeast Conference media day was beginning. Among the many SEC personalties seen at the Stallions' hotel was local hero Gene Stallings, coach of the Alabama Crimson Tide.Soon after arriving, the Stallions were off to practice at Legion Field, the site of last night's game against the Birmingham Barracudas. The team got to practice a little quicker than it expected, thanks to a police escort.

THE FEDERAL government's fraud and money-laundering case against Richard M. Scrushy, founder and former CEO of the HealthSouth Corp., appeared solid, if not airtight. His trial was preceded by guilty pleas from 15 other former executives of the nation's largest chain of rehabilitation hospitals and clinics in connection with $2.7 billion worth of accounting fraud. Five of the firm's former finance officers testified against Mr. Scrushy, saying he told them to cook HealthSouth's books to meet Wall Street's expectations.