Coffee Pot

William Lewis Butler, 47, Horn & Horn managerWilliam Lewis Butler, the former general manager for the Horn & Horn Smorgasbord in Towson, died of cancer Wednesday at Gilchrist Center for Hospice Care at Greater Baltimore Medical Center. The Edgewood resident was 47.Mr. Butler became general manager of the Horn & Horn on Cromwell Bridge Road in 1986 and retired last year because of health problems.A native of Waldorf, he came to Baltimore in 1967 to attend Morgan State College.While at Morgan, he worked as general manager at the old White Coffee Pot restaurant in the Northwood Shopping Center until 1973, when he was named to the same position at the White Coffee Pot on Howard Street downtown.

Arthur H. Katz, a Hagerstown civic activist and owner of several Western Maryland and Pennsylvania restaurants, died Friday of a heart attack at a hospital in Lebanon, Pa. He was 83. A Baltimore native, Mr. Katz grew up in Reservoir Hill and Park Heights. He opened his first restaurant, the White Coffee Pot, in 1958 in Hagerstown, where he and his wife became active in the Boy Scouts, Big Brothers and Sisters, and other charitable organizations. "He was always leading the parade to raise funds," said Jack Costa, a longtime friend.

...TC A 91-year-old Street woman was killed in a fire early yesterday that destroyed the trailer where she lived, fire and police officials said.State police from the Bel Air barracks said that Lola Maude Kitts died in the fire, which destroyed her 10-by-40-foot mobile home in the 3200 block of Scarboro Road. The state fire marshal's office said the blaze was discovered by one of Mrs. Kitts' sons, who lives nearby.Fire officials from the Dublin fire station of the Darlington Volunteer Fire Company said the trailer was engulfed in flames when the first units arrived about 3:50 a.m. About 40 firefighters had the fire under control in about 15 minutes.

Ronald James Wilson, a former shipping and restaurant supervisor, died of cancer Saturday at St. Joseph Medical Center. The West Baltimore resident was 50. Mr. Wilson, who was born in Baltimore and raised on Stricker Street, was a 1966 graduate of Douglass High School. He had been employed from 1968 to 1993 as a supervisor in the shipping and receiving department of Valspar Corp., which manufactures corrosion protection for metals. He had also held a part-time job as a supervisor at the now-closed White Coffee Pot Jr. on Howard Street.

Anthony J. Jacob, a retired planner for the Westinghouse Electric Corp. and a member of the Oldtimers Softball Association of Maryland Hall of Fame, died Tuesday of cancer at St. Agnes Hospital.He was 62 and lived in Southwest Baltimore.Mr. Jacob retired in 1991 from the Hunt Valley offices of Westinghouse after 31 years with the company. He earlier had worked for the Baltimore Towel Supply Co.Known as Tony or Jake, he was inducted into the softball Hall of Fame in 1980. He was an infielder and outfielder for 25 years from the 1940s to the 1970s.

Spatterware and gaudy Dutch, the country folks' Sunday-best tableware in the first half of the 19th century, have been fetching prices generally paid for porcelain from palaces. Made in England especially for the American market, it was sold at the better country stores.Spatterware is glazed white earthenware spattered with color and often decorated with additional designs. Gaudy Dutch, also white pottery, is decorated primarily in red and blue patterns, inspired by porcelains imported from China and Japan and copied by the English factories, particularly Derby and Worcester.

A new culinary expo hits Baltimore this week. The "Great Tastes" show begins tomorrow night with a "Dine Around Baltimore" event. Several local restaurants - including Taste, Birches, Pazo, Da Mimmo, Vin, Oceanaire and Phillips Seafood - will offer an $85 dinner with wine pairings to participants. Then dessert and champagne will be offered at the Tremont Grand Hotel, the home base for the four-day eating extravaganza. Each of the next three days, one local restaurant will join forces with a Food Network chef to prepare a chef's meal.

Leonard Bowman, a restaurateur whose no-nonsense menus appealed to the palates of pre-urban renewal Baltimoreans, died Tuesday of complications related to a circulatory ailment at his home in Northeast Baltimore. He was 82. His Ambassador House, at Eutaw and Pratt streets, flourished as a city institution from the 1950s through the 1980s, when it was open 24 hours a day and fed the city's shift workers, University of Maryland physicians, off-duty police officers, and patrons sobering up after a night on the town.

You easily can make a weekend of "peak bagging" by adding the highpoints in Pennsylvania and West Virginia. Before you groan, remember that both mountains have driveable roads to the top. And back at work on Monday, you get bragging rights at the coffee pot. Start the weekend with 3,213-foot Mount Davis, just outside Salisbury, Pa. From Interstate 68, take Route 219 north. In Salisbury, pick up Route 669 east. Go just over 7 miles and turn right onto Christner Road (it's gravel). It's just 2.3 miles to the parking area at the base of the observation tower.

A 37-year-old Port Deposit man who had a pot of hot coffee poured on his head while he was trying to rob a Havre de Grace gas-and-shop store in June faces a possible life-without-parole sentence.Lewis Sallies of the first block of Old School House Road was convicted late Thursday by a Harford Circuit jury and was being held at the Harford Detention Center pending a pre-sentence investigation.Evidence in the four-day trial before Judge Stephen M. Waldron showed the clerk at the gas-and-shop store wrote down the license number of an old green car before the driver, whom she later identified as Sallies, entered the store on June 7 about 3 a.m. He ordered $5 worth of gasoline, then began crawling through the sales booth window.