Chestertown

Donald W. Smith, 82, marine chemist Donald W. Smith, a retired Baltimore chemist, died of cancer Friday at the Heron Point retirement community in Chestertown. He was 82. Born in Baltimore, Mr. Smith was a 1938 graduate of City College and a 1942 graduate of Washington College, where he majored in chemistry. He soon moved to Childersburg, Ala., where he worked for DuPont making smokeless powder for the war effort. He also met his wife, the former Evelyn Motes, on a blind date to a USO dance.

Saturday didn't begin well for No. 19 Washington, which absorbed a disheartening 17-5 loss to top-ranked Salisbury. But the day improved when the Shoremen learned that they had a chance to gain the top seed and homefield advantage in the Centennial Conference Tournament. That opportunity came about after McDaniel tagged league-leading Gettysburg with a 12-10 decision. The Bullets fell to 10-4 overall and 6-1 in the conference and tie for first place with Washington (9-4, 6-1). “A bit shocked, to be honest with you,” coach Jeff Shirk said of his staff's reaction when they learned about Gettysburg's setback after returning to Chestertown late Saturday.

CHESTERTOWN'S SECOND annual Jazz Festival featured three days of jazz performed by internationally renowned jazz vocalist Ethel Ennis; Stef Scaggiari, keyboardist; Paul Hildner, drummer; Keter Betts, bass player; Sherry Winston, a Grammy-nominated flutist; vocalist Sue Matthews; pianist Dick Durham; the Hometown Rhythm Section and the Lee Howell Trio.The festival is a dream come true for its founder, Dr. Mel Rapelyea, chairman of diagnostic imaging for Howard County General Hospital.Rapelyea fell in love with the Eastern Shore after working several days a month in the Kent and Queen Anne Hospital.

Shiraz Maher went to the mosque in search of answers. Why, he wanted to know, had 15 young men from Saudi Arabia, the country where he spent most of his childhood, just crashed jetliners into prominent U.S. buildings? The men who gave him clarity wore fashionably tailored suits and spoke as easily of Shakespeare and Hegel as they did of the Quran. The 20-year-old Briton found these Muslims - as urbane as they were devout - completely alluring. By the time U.S. forces invaded Afghanistan three weeks later, Maher was a recruit of Hizb ut-Tahrir, or Party of Liberation, an organization devoted to creating a pan-Islamic state ruled by religious law. "America, in my mind, had gone to war with Islam," says Maher, now 30, from a sunny patio on the campus of Washington College.

Joan Zellers says her granddaughters will forever remember this year's Christmas parade as the one when "Frosty got busted. " They were standing Saturday morning on High Street in Chestertown, watching the annual holiday parade march by, when the big fluffy snowman came their way. Lilly, 9, and Maddie, 11, dutifully posed as Grandma snapped a photo — one of the last taken of Frosty as a free man. Within minutes, two police officers had...

A Chestertown man pleaded guilty this week in a New York federal court to trafficking live snapping turtles that he processed in Queen Anne's County and then sold as turtle meat. Michael V. Johnson, 57, faces a maximum of one year in prison for turning the wildlife into food at his business in Millington called Turtle Deluxe Inc., according to a statement from the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Western District of New York in Buffalo. During 2007 and 2008, the statement said, Johnson purchased common snapping turtles — considered protected wildlife under New York law — from sellers in several states, brought them back to the Turtle Deluxe facility to sort and weigh and then paid the vendors based on weight.

IS Chestertown about to become Everywhere, USA?The Kent County Planning Commission Tuesday gave preliminary approval for a 93,000-square-foot Wal-Mart to be located just outside the limits of the historic town. In March, two of the three county commissioners also approved the store plans preliminarily.With these votes, Kent County took a gigantic step toward the sameness, the bigness and the ugliness that have turned so many other parts of America into suburban wastelands whose highest aesthetic expression is the indoor mall.

Cambridge. -- Towns, like people, occasionally go through crises that change them forever. Two very different communities on the Eastern Shore, Cambridge and Chestertown, are reminders of that. Let's consider this one first.Cambridge isn't what it used to be, and thank heaven for that. Its notoriety has faded. Today it deals with the daily muddle of municipal life much as other towns do, and stays safely out of the news. It isn't perfect, but it's doing all right.Yet we're all prisoners of our experience, and so for those of us who don't live here but still remember the bad times in Cambridge, this place will always be full of ghosts.

Before you consider joining the 24th annual Candlelight Walking Tour of historic properties in Chestertown on Saturday, there's something you should know: The residents of this charming small city on Maryland's Eastern Shore absolutely love the place."

Jeanette Rose Fox, who operated a Chestertown five-and-dime store with her husband for 40 years, died Sunday of heart failure at Stella Maris Hospice. She was 97.The daughter of immigrant parents who came to Baltimore from Latvia in the 1880s, she was reared on Pennsylvania Avenue, where her father was a tailor to the Baltimore Police Department. Leaving school after the sixth grade, she went to work for Polan Katz & Co., manufacturers of umbrellas.While working there, she met and married Baurice Fox in 1913 at age 16. After pursuing various business opportunities in Western Maryland, the couple moved to Chestertown in 1928 and opened their first store on Cross Street and later moved to High Street.

I was stunned by The Sun's description of Keith Olbermann's firing from Current TV as, "A mainstream media figure washes out at Current. " You had me for a minute, then I realized the headline appeared onApril Fool's Day. How else to attribute The Sun referring to Mr. Olbermann as a "mainstream media figure?" Joseph L. Holt, Chestertown

If the life of furniture maker Robert Ortiz was ever made into a movie, it would be full of adventure and plenty of plot twists. The opening scene would unfold in New York City in the 1960s, with a Hispanic kid from humble roots leaving home at age 14 to enter a religious order that trains monks. The camera would pan to a young man strumming a guitar at coffeehouses, renovating houses, teaching schoolchildren and eventually landing in Baltimore. After leaving the order and trying his hand at many careers, Ortiz finally found his professional calling: designing and crafting fine wood furniture.

A Chestertown man pleaded guilty this week in a New York federal court to trafficking live snapping turtles that he processed in Queen Anne's County and then sold as turtle meat. Michael V. Johnson, 57, faces a maximum of one year in prison for turning the wildlife into food at his business in Millington called Turtle Deluxe Inc., according to a statement from the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Western District of New York in Buffalo. During 2007 and 2008, the statement said, Johnson purchased common snapping turtles — considered protected wildlife under New York law — from sellers in several states, brought them back to the Turtle Deluxe facility to sort and weigh and then paid the vendors based on weight.

Joan Zellers says her granddaughters will forever remember this year's Christmas parade as the one when "Frosty got busted. " They were standing Saturday morning on High Street in Chestertown, watching the annual holiday parade march by, when the big fluffy snowman came their way. Lilly, 9, and Maddie, 11, dutifully posed as Grandma snapped a photo — one of the last taken of Frosty as a free man. Within minutes, two police officers had...

Martha Viola Langenfelder, who owned and managed a Perry Hall trailer park, died of unknown causes in her sleep Tuesday at the Heron Point Retirement Community in Chestertown. The former Baltimore County resident was 96. Born in Raspeburg in Baltimore County, she was the daughter of farmers Henry and Anuska Ann Langenfelder. She attended Rosedale Elementary School and began working on the family farm after graduating from the eighth grade. In 1936, she married a distant cousin, Conrad John Langenfelder, whom she met at a church event.

By all accounts, Frank and Wendy Bunch's farm in Kent County would be an appropriate — and historically correct — setting for any film or documentary on America's Colonial past. One would only need to replace the couple's late-model cars with carriages along the private road that enters onto a breathtakingly long driveway lined with 134 cedar trees. The banks of a large pond in the front yard are occupied by metal herons that appear to be alive and waddling ducks that, on closer inspection, are. A brick Colonial, built in 1781, the home sits on 78 acres of flat and verdant pasture and is a National Trust historic property.

CHESTERTOWN -- Mary Emerson gazed across High Street at the charred skeleton of McCrory's yesterday and remembered a loyal customer: herself, a half-century or so ago."On Saturday nights, we country people came to town to do our shopping. We kids would each get a quarter -- 15 cents for a movie, and after the movie I'd bring the 10 cents over here and get some penny candy," said Mrs. Emerson, 64."It's sad to see. Every town needs a five-and-dime."Nearby, a more recent customer, Peter Heller, 8, leaned on his bike and stared into the same sooty ruins, where three cash registers sat melted on the sidewalk.

Dorothy W. Myers, a retired bookkeeper and lifelong Chestertown resident, died of pneumonia Friday at Chester River Hospital Center. She was 100. Born Dorothy Woodall in Chestertown, she was the daughter of Washington Irving Woodall, a well-known Tolchester Line steamboat captain. She was a graduate of Chestertown High School and earned her bachelor's degree in 1924 from Washington College. She was a bookkeeper at Chestertown Bank of Maryland for 40 years before retiring in 1967. Mrs. Myers was a member of Christ United Methodist Church, where she sang with the choir for many years.

Vito "Doc" Tinelli Jr., a longtime Chestertown pharmacist, died May 23 of an acute coronary embolism at the Chester River Hospital Center in Chestertown. He was 77. The son of a Bethlehem Steel Corp. steelworker and a homemaker, Mr. Tinelli was born in Baltimore and raised in Dundalk, where he graduated in 1952 from Dundalk High School. He attended Kansas State University and earned his pharmacy degree in 1960 from the University of Maryland School of Pharmacy. After graduating from Maryland, Mr. Tinelli moved to Chestertown, where he joined his brother-in-law, Alphonse Poklis, also a druggist, at the Chestertown Pharmacy.