Centreville

Brique has closed in Centreville. The Eastern Shore restaurant lasted just over a year. I liked chef Will Dolan's food very much here. Of course I wondered about the Centreville location, which is a little off the beaten path. Make that very. Brique was still doing good business on weekends, Fairbanks told me, but it was slow on weeknights. "I thought I had a hidden gem," the restaurant's co-owner Billy Fairbanks said. "I didn't. " Fairbanks told me kept Brique open as long as he could, but closed it the very first time he couldn't make payroll, which was this past weekend.

Albert Wilbur Woodfield Jr., former owner of a Rock Hall wholesale seafood company, died Wednesday at his daughter's Centreville home of complications from Alzheimer's disease. He was 81. The son of a wholesale seafood merchant and a homemaker, Mr. Woodfield was born and raised in Galesville and was a 1948 graduate of Southern High School in Lothian. Mr. Woodfield was a partner in Woodfield Fish & Oyster Co. of Galesville, which had been established by his father. In 1965, he left the business when he purchased Hubbard's Pier and Seafood Inc. in Rock Hall, which he owned and operated until selling the business in 1988.

With its pleasant tree-lined streets and historic architecture, Centreville has genuine curb appeal. A classic example of "Small Town America," this community of 2,900 in Queen Anne's County has never enjoyed the cachet of trendier spots on the Eastern Shore -- but that could be changing. Between 2000 and 2004, according to state figures, Centreville's population grew by 28.6 percent, outpacing the county, at 11.1 percent. The prevailing reason: Centreville is just 15 miles from the Bay Bridge, making it attractive to people who work in Annapolis, Baltimore and Washington.

Cautious optimism mixed with intrigue might be the best way to describe Dale Becraft 's first impression of Damonte Dodd . Becraft, a former Chesapeake College coach and Washington College assistant, had taken the boys basketball job at Queen Anne's County High in Centreville in 2007. The following fall he was introduced to Dodd, then a raw, gangly freshman with undeniable college potential.   “He was about 6-4, all elbows, knees and feet,” Becraft recalled.

Preparing for a tour of Japan, the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra has scheduled a trip a little closer to home for a preview concert next month -- in Centreville.The "BSO in Centreville" concert, at 8 p.m. Sept. 9 at Queen Anne's County High School, will feature works the orchestra will perform for audiences in such cities as Tokyo, Osaka and Nagoya. David Zinman, beginning his 13th and final season as BSO music director, will conduct.Tickets are $18 but students older than 6 will be admitted free.

Dr. John Richard Smith Jr., whose care for several generations of many Queen Anne's County families made him a local institution, died of a heart attack Thursday after being stricken in his Centreville office. He was 71.For many of his nearly 35 years of practice, Dr. Smith was the county's only physician. He was remembered yesterday as a man who saw patients without appointments and made occasional house calls. He also served many years as the county's medical examiner, a job he gave up a year ago.County Administrator Robert Sallitt said that seeing 15 people waiting outside Dr. Smith's office in the morning -- most of them without appointments -- was not unusual.

CENTREVILLE -- A Queen Anne's County grand jury has concluded that an aging sewage treatment plant here was grossly mismanaged for years but found no evidence of criminal wrong- doing. In its report, the jury criticized the Maryland Department of the Environment for relying too heavily on self-reporting by town employees of sewage discharges. The panel outlined a half-dozen recommendations for increasing scrutiny on small municipal plants, including hiring more inspectors and stepping up random and unannounced inspections.

SALISBURY - Embellished with vivid descriptions of the visions he saw and the voices he heard after killing two police officers last year, the testimony of an Eastern Shore man who has pleaded an insanity defense contradicted the sole eyewitness in the case - a Maryland state trooper who survived the confrontation. In a surprise move yesterday, defense attorneys called Francis Mario Zito to the stand in a two-hour appearance in a Wicomico County courtroom, where the trial was moved because of extensive publicity.

CENTREVILLE -- Officials of this Eastern Shore town, besieged for the past year with a series of highly publicized wastewater treatment problems, were rocked yesterday with more bad news -- the discovery of an abandoned dump full of deteriorating containers that once held a pesticide that was banned for most uses in 1982. Community activist Sveinn C. Storm yesterday led a tour of officials, including Rep. Wayne T. Gilchrest, to the dump site on a wooded ridge that is part of Centreville's 300-acre spray irrigation farm where the town deposits treated waste water.

CENTREVILLE - Pretty much everybody in this 210-year-old Eastern Shore town has heard the jokes about changing its name to "Sewerville." But it has been four months since environmental problems at an aging sewage plant brought a state-imposed development moratorium on the fast-growing Queen Anne's County seat, and many here just don't see the humor anymore. "We are trying to move ahead, dealing with some of our problems, but you wonder how many times Centreville has to wind up in the news," says Town Councilwoman Mary McCarthy.

Brique has closed in Centreville. The Eastern Shore restaurant lasted just over a year. I liked chef Will Dolan's food very much here. Of course I wondered about the Centreville location, which is a little off the beaten path. Make that very. Brique was still doing good business on weekends, Fairbanks told me, but it was slow on weeknights. "I thought I had a hidden gem," the restaurant's co-owner Billy Fairbanks said. "I didn't. " Fairbanks told me kept Brique open as long as he could, but closed it the very first time he couldn't make payroll, which was this past weekend.

Arthur Dwight Hooper, a retired telephone technician and vintage automobile enthusiast, died June 7 of bladder cancer at his Centreville home. The former Hamilton and Arnold resident was 70. The son of a Railway Express Co. worker and a homemaker, Mr. Hooper was born in Baltimore and raised in Edmondson Village. After graduating from Mergenthaler Vocational-Technical High School, he served in the Coast Guard, where he was a firefighter. Mr. Hooper began his telephone company career in 1960 when he took a job in the mailroom of the old Chesapeake & Potomac Telephone Co. He rose through the ranks until he became a systems technician.

Seventeen people were taken to the hospital after a bus full of kindergartners and parents on a field trip crashed in Centreville, Maryland State Police said Thursday. The bus had been taking the Kent County students to the National Zoo in Washington before the morning crash. Just before 9 a.m., a Stevensville man driving a sport utility vehicle attempted to make a left turn onto southbound Route 213 and turned into the path of a charter bus carrying 17 children and 16 adults from Worton Elementary School, said Elena Russo, a state police spokeswoman.

Along a main route in Centreville, just a few miles from Chestertown in Queen Anne's County, large and gracious homes sit back from the two-lane road. Many are framed by winter-bare branches. But 11 American boxwood bushes, trimmed into spheres, line each side of the brick walk leading to the columned front porch of the Scaggiari home. This beautiful and symmetrical home, with its shuttered windows, gently sloping hip roof and front door crowned with a Palladian-style window, catches the eye at once.

The new restaurant Brique is easy to find. Once you're over the Bay Bridge, it's just one left turn onto Route 213, and a slight left onto North Commerce Street, the main drag of Centreville. Brique is up ahead on the right. It's just across from the pretty county courthouse, the state's oldest in continuous use. Its shady grounds look like the set for the kind of movie where Julia Roberts returns home and discovers what really matters. In that kind of movie, though, there is never a restaurant as sophisticated or as stimulating as Brique, which is capable of producing moments of ravishing pleasure over the course of an evening.

George Haase Manning Sr., a retired warehouseman and active Elks Club member, died Saturday of leukemia at his home in Centreville, Queen Anne's County. He was 81. Born in Baltimore, Mr. Manning, the son of a shipyard worker and homemaker, spent his early years growing up near Ednor Gardens before moving to Annapolis in 1936. He was a 1949 graduate of Annapolis High School and enlisted in the Army, where he served in the infantry from 1951 to 1953. Mr. Manning worked for 30 years at the International Harvester Co. warehouse and distribution center on Washington Boulevard until retiring in 1981.

CENTREVILLE - State environmental officials are investigating allegations that a company hired to run an ailing sewage treatment plant in this Eastern Shore town falsified records, allegedly backdating reports to cover the fact that no one was working weekends. The investigation began two weeks ago when the Maryland Department of the Environment received a complaint about Miller Environmental Inc. The company was brought in last spring to run the plant after revelations that the previous operators had routinely dumped untreated sewage in the Corsica River.

CENTREVILLE - In the first death penalty case in Queen Anne's County in nearly 40 years, a Centreville man with a history of mental illness was indicted yesterday by a county grand jury in the Feb. 13 shooting deaths of two police officers. Francis M. Zito, 41, is accused of killing Queen Anne's County Sheriff's Deputy Jason C. Schwenz, 28, and Centreville Police Officer Michael S. Nickerson, 24. He was indicted on 17 counts, including two of first-degree murder that could bring a death sentence.

Anna C. Cotterino, a retired registered nurse and former longtime Cockeysville resident, died Sunday of complications from Alzheimer's disease at Corsica Hills Center in Centreville. She was 87. Anna Catherine Eberly, the daughter of a coal miner and an elevator operator, was born and raised in Frostburg. After graduating in 1940 from Beall High School in Frostburg, she earned her nursing degree. She began her nursing career in the 1940s at Sacred Heart Hospital in Cumberland, and then moved to upstate New York, where she continued nursing.