Chestertown

Morton Gibbons-Neff Jr., a world-class sailor who oversaw a successful cattle-feeding operation and grain farm on the Eastern Shore, died Dec. 17 of complications from old age at Chester River Hospital Center. The Chestertown resident was 94. Born in Philadelphia, he attended Montgomery School and grew up sailing sneak boxes and E-Scows along New Jersey's Barnegat Bay. He attended the University of Pennsylvania before entering the Navy at the beginning of World War II, commanding submarine chasers along the East Coast and the Hawaiian islands.

CHESTERTOWN -- John Barth is grinning like an amiable geezer who, after years of tribulation and yearning, has just found his childhood sweetheart. Well, maybe not. But clearly, he radiates, if not happiness, deep intellectual satisfaction, as he pulls up a chair in the local library of this Eastern Shore town, ready to talk.He has just finished the first draft of his new novel. This is the "millennium novel," his creative gesture of welcome to the next span of a thousand years. It is titled "Coming Soon!

CHESTERTOWN -- Middlebury attackman Adam Pascal knew the day was going to be special when a pass he attempted at the top of the crease trickled under the stick of the goalie for one of his five first-half goals."

CHESTERTOWN -- The moms and the dads and the aunts and the uncles came to Washington College yesterday with all manner of photographic equipment, ready to capture their loved ones in cap and gown.But many of the women had their sights set on one of the guests. John F. Kennedy Jr., magazine editor and sex symbol, visited the Eastern Shore yesterday to receive a citation for humanitarian works, and the women could hardly contain themselves."I'm focusing on one person," said Judi Seip, and she wasn't talking about her daughter, who was about to receive her degree.

Jan. 23, 1849 -- HEALTH OF CHESTERTOWN -- The News says that there is not a more salubrious location on the Eastern Shore of Maryland than Chestertown, and gives the mortality for 1848, showing the total deaths to have been 35 -- of which 17 were children, but not by bilious fever. The population, white and colored, is about 1,350, and thus the deaths are a fraction over 2 1/2 per cent.Jan. 24, 1899 -- NEW YORK, Jan. 23 (Special Dispatch to the Baltimore Sun) -- Stock market trading this morning had scarcely a parallel in the history of the exchange.

CHESTERTOWN -- Germaine Porcea Clarkston surely would have loved it all -- the choir soaring in the opening hymn, then moving on to her favorite, "Power in the Blood," and ending with the "Sweet By and By."She'd have loved the familiar dignity of the country church where she played piano for so many years, where her son plays the organ. She'd have loved the pageantry of about 300 mourners, decked out in their best clothes to pay their last respects.But most of all, Mrs. Clarkston would have loved the crowd of relatives: her son, daughter-in-law and grandson, her brother, her sisters, nieces, nephews, great-nieces and great-nephews and cousins who came yesterday to lay her to rest in the little cemetery down the street from the "home place" that has rooted generations of her family to the rolling Kent County countryside.

CHESTERTOWN -- More than 100 residents of the small rural community of Georgetown packed Asbury United Methodist Church here last night to seek answers in the shooting death of 73-year-old Germaine P. Clarkston on Dec. 4.Police say they are still looking into the possibility that the shooting was a case of road rage. The FBI has opened a civil rights investigation to determine whether race was a factor.State, local and national officials from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People attended the meeting to reassure the shaken community that the investigation will be thorough.

CHESTERTOWN -- Two Kent County brothers, accused of killing a 73-year-old grandmother as she returned from a Christmas shopping trip last weekend, were arrested in the small town of Millington yesterday, near the spot where police say the pair began a 21-mile chase that ended with the shotgun killing of Germaine P. Clarkston.Charged with first-degree murder, attempted murder, assault and reckless endangerment were David Wayne Starkey, 24, a carpenter and painter, and Daniel Robert Starkey, 19, a truck driver.

Donald Edwin Heck, 67, a retired Bell Atlantic official, and Jeanne W. "Bee" Heck, 64, a former educator who with her husband was active in numerous Kent County charitable organizations, were killed Sunday in the crash of EgyptAir Flight 990 off Nantucket, Mass.The couple, who married in 1957, met when she was teaching and he was substitute teaching at a West Baltimore junior high school.The former 20-year residents of Montgomery Village in Montgomery County, had lived in Chestertown since 1995, where they were active in St. Martin's Ministry, Sacred Heart Roman Catholic Church, Washington College Academy of Lifelong Learning, Kent County Historical Society, the Lions Club and the Chestertown Quilters Guild.

Barbara S. Devereux, 75, homemakerBarbara Shriver Devereux, a homemaker, died Friday of cancer at home in Columbia's Harper's Choice village. She was 75.Born Barbara Lawson Shriver, she was a native of Baltimore. She grew up in Roland Park and attended the Convent of the Sacred Heart in Torresdale, Pa., and the College of Notre Dame of Maryland.A descendant of David Shriver, one of the founders of Union Mills in Carroll County, she made her debut at the Bachelors Cotillon in 1943 and three years later married John Ryan Devereux III, who survives her. The couple lived in Howard County.

Chestertown Historic House Tour Where: : Tour begins in Fountain Park, corner of High and Cross streets, in Chestertown When: : 1 p.m. to 6 p.m. Saturday What: : Chestertown, named one of the National Trust's 2007 Dozen Distinctive Destinations, hosts the 39th annual heritage house tour, when this 18th-century Colonial river port opens its doors to visitors. Enjoy a self-guided walking tour, dropping in on 13 homes, including Colonial merchants' mansions, restored craftsmen's cottages, and graceful Victorians.

On September 6, 2009, MARTHA SPEICHER OGDEN, 91, of Siesta Key, Sarasota and formerly of Gibson Island, MD died. Mrs. Ogden was born in Chestertown, MD on May 15, 1918. She attended Bucknell University and because of an illness, had to move back to Chestertown where she graduated from Washington college. She was married to Harry Ford Ogden, a prominent Baltimore attorney and President of the Fidelity and Guarantee Insurance Corporation. Mrs. Ogden was a member of the Field Club and Junior League of Sarasota.

CHESTERTOWN - - A 21-year-old from the Philadelphia suburbs who'd already decided he wants to pursue a life of writing walked away Sunday from Washington College's commencement with a check for nearly $69,000 - the largest literary award in the country for undergraduates. William Bruce, a soft-spoken English major from Rydal, Pa., won the small liberal arts college's Sophie Kerr Prize with a portfolio of poems, essays and an excerpt from the memoir of a Rwandan genocide survivor. "When I came here, I thought I wanted to be a high school English teacher," Bruce said.

Evelyn Motes Smith, a former home economics teacher in Baltimore schools and employee of Stewart's department store, died in her sleep Feb. 14 at Heron Point retirement community in Chestertown. She was 88. Mrs. Smith was born in Alabama and graduated from the University of Montevallo in Montevallo, Ala. She met her husband, Donald Willard Smith, at a USO party in Alabama. The couple settled in Baltimore, where Mr. Smith was raised. Mrs. Smith taught home economics at Woodburn Junior High School and later worked in the china department at Stewart's in Timonium.

Bob and Susan Lathroum had always dreamed of owning and operating a bed-and-breakfast. So 11 years ago, when Bob lost his third management job in 15 years, the couple decided the time was right to pursue that dream. The quest led them from Linthicum to Chestertown on the Eastern Shore. "The second time I crossed the bridge over the Chester River, I said, 'This is home,' " Susan Lathroum recalled of the historic little town. The Lathroums purchased the Widow's Walk Inn in 1997. Covered in yellow clapboard siding and trimmed with deep red shutters, the stately Victorian was built in 1877 and is listed in Chestertown's historic registry.

Joseph B. Stevens Jr., former president and chairman of Harry M. Stevens Inc., the oldest concessions business in America, died Nov. 13 of bone cancer at Heron Point retirement community in Chestertown. He was 92. Mr. Stevens was born in Cleveland and raised there and in New Rochelle, N.Y. He was a 1934 graduate of Phillips Academy in Andover, Mass., and earned a bachelor's degree from Yale University in 1938. He enlisted in the Navy in 1942 and served in aviation during World War II. He was discharged with the rank of lieutenant in 1946.

Julia M. "Julie" Conquest, a former Roland Park resident who owned and operated a Chestertown boutique, died Wednesday of pneumonia at Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center in Lebanon, N.H. She was 87. Julia Muse Henry was born in Cambridge and, after the death of her parents when she was 6, moved to Philadelphia, where she was raised by relatives. She attended Goucher College and was married in the late 1940s to Pleasonton L. Conquest III, a Baltimore stockbroker, who died in 1979. During the 1960s, she worked as a secretary in the physics department at the Johns Hopkins University.

Charles A. "Bud" Langenfelder Sr., a retired animal disease control director and former Clarksville resident, died Monday of heart failure at Washington Hospital Center in the District of Columbia. He was 81 and a Worton resident. He was born in Baltimore County and was raised on his family's Hamilton Avenue farm near Rosedale. He was a graduate of Baltimore County public schools and worked on his family's farm until 1951, when he went to work for the U.S. Department of Agriculture. He was an animal disease control director for the USDA at the time of his retirement in 1985.

Allen Rayfield "Ray" Kirby Sr., a retired insurance sales representative and former college athlete, died July 23 of complications from a fractured hip at the Gilchrist Center for Hospice Care. The longtime Towson resident was 89. Born and raised in Chestertown, he was a 1937 graduate of Chestertown High School. He also attended the Perkiomen School in Pennsburg, Pa. Mr. Kirby was a graduate of Washington College, where he earned a bachelor's degree in education in 1942. While at Washington, he played football, basketball and baseball, and in 1941 was selected by The Sun as an All-Maryland football guard.

David Whittier Roese, a retired Westinghouse Electric Corp. project manager and World War II veteran, died Sunday of complications from Parkinson's disease at Hospice House in Centreville. The former longtime Catonsville resident was 82. Mr. Roese was born in Wilkinsburg, Pa., and raised in Erie, Pa., and Pittsburgh. After graduating from Avon High School in Erie in 1943, he briefly attended Allegheny College in Meadville, Pa., before enlisting in the Navy in 1944. As a radar technician, he served in the Pacific before being discharged in 1946.