Calhoun Street

Crime around Calhoun Street and Edmondson Avenue in West Baltimore is so heavy that most store owners buzz customers through electronic doors and do business from behind bulletproof Plexiglas.Alvin Ray was different. A 73-year-old liquor store owner who has been operating in the neighborhood for over two decades, Mr. Ray wore a .357-caliber Magnum in a holster on his hip to deter robberies.Yesterday, the police say, Mr. Ray used that gun about 2:15 p.m., when two men -- one of them armed with a .32-caliber revolver -- went into the store in the 1400 block of Edmondson Avenue with apparent intentions of going up against the proprietor known to neighbors as "Captain Ray."

Reginald Payton Fennell, a retired postal worker who walked the same West Baltimore route for more than three decades, died of pulmonary thrombosis Sept. 7 at Sinai Hospital. The Gwynn Oak resident was 70. Mr. Fennell was born in Baltimore and raised on Calhoun Street. After graduating from Douglass High School, he served in the Army for several years and began his postal career in 1957. "He used to work out of the U.S. Post Office that was located at Druid Hill and North avenues, and his route included Druid Park Drive, Druid Hill Avenue, Mount Royal Avenue, Reservoir Street, Whitelock Street and Hendler Lane," said a niece, Iona Williams.

Man gets 50 years for killing man in robbery A 22-year-old Baltimore man was sentenced yesterday to 50 years in prison for the killing of a city man during a home robbery, according to the city state's attorney's office. Wayne Morris of the 300 block of S. Calhoun Street kicked down the door of a home in the 1400 block of Kuper Place, announced he was going to rob the inhabitants, then shot and killed Robert Atkinson, 47. Another victim was pistol-whipped, and two others, including a pregnant woman, were assaulted in the April 2006 incident.

Bon Secours is key to the area's health At Viva House, we have been proud neighbors of Bon Secours Hospital for 40 years ("Bon Secours seeks a lifeline," April 9). This hospital has always been the rock of the neighborhood. Indeed, at our soup kitchen it is common to hear people say, "You can always go to Bon Secours; they won't turn you away." Over the last four decades, many have fled the neighborhood. The library at Calhoun Street and the one at Payson Street have left. The firehouse on Casey Street is gone.

The MTA has scheduled the following changes in bus routes for this week. For more information, call 539-5000; TTY for the hearing-impaired, 539-3497.New serviceNo. 1 -- Effective tomorrow, selected trips will be extended tthe new Baltimore Sun facility at Port Covington. These trips, which will not serve Fort McHenry, will operate via the regular southbound route to Fort Avenue and Lawrence Street, then via Lawrence Street to Key Highway to McComas Street and the new Sun facility. Return trips northbound will operate via McComas Street, Key Highway and Lawrence Street to Fort Avenue and then continue via regular route.

Bernard A. Friend, a retired city schools mathematics department chairman, died of congestive heart failure Sept. 8 at Keswick Multi-Care Center. The Walbrook Junction resident was 77. Born in Baltimore and raised on Calhoun Street, he was a 1948 graduate of Frederick Douglass High School. He earned a mathematics degree from Morgan State University, a master of education degree from the University of Pennsylvania and did graduate work at the University of Iowa and University of Maryland.

FREDERICK EUGENE SYKES, 68, died Wednesday, August 2, 2006 in the Memorial Medical University, Savannah, Ga. He was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma on May 20, 1938. He was the son of the late Alfred W. Sykes and Dora Franklin Sykes. He was raised in Wichita, Kansas from age 9 until he joined the Air Force following high school graduation. After his first tour of duty he was a policeman in Las Vegas, Nevada for a short period before reenlisting in the Air Force serving first in France and then recalled during the Cuban crisis.

Willie B. "Jocko" Mitchell Jr., a retired security guard and duckpin bowler, died of respiratory failure Dec. 29 at the Baltimore Veterans Affairs Medical Center. He was 60. Mr. Mitchell was born in Laurens, S.C., and moved to Calhoun Street in Southwest Baltimore in 1947. He was a 1962 graduate of Douglass High School, where he was a member of the wrestling team. He enlisted in the Army and served in Germany as a paratrooper and radio operator. He was discharged with the rank of specialist in 1965.

Baltimore City firefighters battled three fires in West Baltimore, requiring more than 100 firefighters — almost a third of the shift's manpower, a department spokesman said Wednesday. Firefighters were called about 5:30 p.m. to the 1300 block of N. Calhoun Street where three row houses caught fire; two were vacant, said Chief Kevin Cartwright, a department spokesman. On the opposite side of the street, Cartwright said five vacant houses had also caught fire. A third fire broke out one block away in the 1300 block of N. Carey Street, where one occupied home and two vacant houses caught fire.

A man was shot and killed Saturday afternoon in the Sandtown-Winchester neighborhood of West Baltimore, according to police. The shooting occurred shortly after 3 p.m. on North Calhoun Street, near Gilmor Street, two blocks from the Metro station on Pennsylvania Avenue and about eight blocks from where two men were shot and wounded Friday afternoon. City police said Jermaine Shuron, 37, suffered a gun shot wound to the head and was taken by ambulance to a nearby hospital trauma center, where he later died from his injuries.