Chestertown

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...

Shirley H. "Mickey" Hutton, a homemaker and artist, died May 12 from complications of dementia at Heron Point retirement community in Chestertown. The former Ruxton resident was 92. Shirley Herring was born in Baltimore and raised on Aigburth Road in Towson. After graduating from Towson High School in 1939, she earned a bachelor's degree in art from what is now Notre Dame of Maryland University. During World War II, Mrs. Hutton worked at the Bendix Corp. and volunteered as a driver for the American Red Cross, which she continued doing until the 1950s.

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.

Targeting tea party groups is an ironic act on the part of the Internal Revenue Service ("Taxing the tea party," May 14). Examples of bullying tactics, corruption and neglect keeps cropping up all over the map of America. In the midst of this, why pour gasoline on emotions by labeling tea party members views as, "extremist, anti-civil rights, anti-immigration?" Snarky remarks in an editorial, however tempting, are not constructive. We need hard core unemotional and nonpartisan journalism now more than ever.

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.

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.

George Washington slept there. And, his diary reveals, he ate there, too.But once upon a time, none of this seemed to matter. Fifty years ago the stately home now known as the Hynson-Ringgold House, one of the oldest and loveliest of Chestertown's 18th century buildings, was overgrown, deteriorating rapidly and, quite frankly, spooky."

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.

Police are investigating the suspicious death of a 44-year-old Eastern Shore man whose body was found in his car outside a Jessup motel Tuesday night. Howard County police said yesterday that there was no obvious cause of death for Eugene Paul McAllister of Chestertown, who was found about 7:30 p.m. in his Toyota Corolla parked at the Greenway Motel in the 7700 block of Washington Blvd. McAllister's family reported him missing to authorities on the Eastern Shore on Dec. 19, one day after he reportedly dropped off a relative at Baltimore-Washington International Airport, police said.

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.

Colin P. Hollingsworth, a retired bag company executive and World War II naval veteran, died Friday of respiratory failure at the Edenwald retirement community in Towson. He was 99. Mr. Hollingsworth was born and raised on a Church Hill farm that had been in his family since 1668. After graduating from Church Hill High School in 1928, he entered Washington College, where he earned a bachelor's degree in 1933. He moved to Baltimore and began his business career as an $18-a-week shipping clerk at the Grafflin Bag Co. on Philpott Street that manufactured and sold feed and flour bags made of burlap, jute and cotton.

The Maryland Democratic Party this week said it will back a write-in candidate challenging Republican U.S. Rep. Andy Harris in Maryland's 1st Congressional District - which includes much of Carroll County - after voter fraud allegations ended the previous Democratic candidate's bid. The party had scrambled for a replacement since its primary winner Wendy Rosen had to drop out of the race on Sept. 10, after confirming reports that she had voted in two different states in more than one election.

The Maryland Democratic Party has endorsed the write-in candidacy of Eastern Shore physician John LaFerla to challenge freshman Republican Rep. Andy Harris in the 1 st Congressional District. “Dr. LaFerla has resounding grassroots support and the full confidence of the Party's Executive Committee and Democratic leaders,” Democratic State Chairwoman Yvette Lewis said in a statement Monday. LaFerla replaces Wendy Rosen, who won a party primary in April but withdrew from the race last week amid allegations that she was registered and had voted in two states in 2006 and 2008.

George T. Myrick, a retired hospital director of personnel and model railroad fan, died Wednesday of pneumonia at Chester River Hospital Center in Chestertown. He was 85. The son of a Bendix Radio Corp. worker and a homemaker, George Thompson Myrick was born in Philadelphia and moved to Homeland when his father went to work at Bendix. He attended St. Paul's School for two years and graduated in 1945 from Friends School. After leaving Friends, he enlisted in the Navy and served until 1946.

In a recent column, I wrote about Gen. George Washington's aide-de-camp, Tench Tilghman, Maryland's version of Paul Revere, whose historic ride in October 1781 from Virginia to Philadelphia brought news to the Continental Congress of the British surrender at Yorktown and the end of the Revolutionary War. An email arrived several days later from an old friend and colleague, Mary Corddry, who had been The Baltimore Sun's Eastern Shore correspondent, recalling...

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 -- 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.

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."

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.

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