Curtis Bay

Norman Stumpf Jr., a bricklayer who went on to found his own general contracting business, died of cancer Tuesday at his Brooklyn Park home. He was 77. Born in Baltimore's Curtis Bay, he was raised in a section of the neighborhood, Car Shop Homes, where railroad passenger coaches were once built. He was a 1947 graduate of Southern High School. After service in the Army during the Korean War, he became a machinist at General Refractories and later trained as a bricklayer. He worked for Henry Knott Co. and Consolidated Masonry before establishing his own business.

FMC Corp. will shutter its Baltimore plant over the next 10 months, putting 130 workers out of jobs. The Philadelphia-based company, which makes insecticides and other agricultural chemicals, has decided to move its Curtis Bay operations to Asia because it's cheaper and closer to sources of raw materials. The plant makes ingredients for various products and faces growing worldwide competition from generic brands, Frank Siwajek, director of North American operations for FMC Agricultural Products, said yesterday.

The Coast Guard Yard is celebrating the 100th anniversary of its founding this year, starting this weekend with a reunion of the Cutters, a hockey team formed at the Curtis Bay yard during World War II that captured East Coast and national titles in 1943 and 1944.Several former members of the team, including its captain, Clifford MacLean, are expected to be at Curtis Bay and to take part in the Crab Pot Hockey Tournament at the Naval Academy.MacLean and five of his teammates will be on the ice at Dahlgren Hall at 12: 30 p.m. Saturday for pre-game ceremonies, and the Coast Guard Academy team will compete in jerseys that are replicas of the ones the original Cutters wore.

A BALTIMORE boy, the baby in a Wagner's Point family of 14, Ted Sepkowski was wild about the one thing that inspired so many kids throughout the century, especially during the Depression. Growing up by the smoky factories of southeastern Baltimore, he prayed that God would make him a big-leaguer. He shined shoes, polished cars and cleaned rowhouse yards to earn money for his first glove. He wanted more than anything to play baseball in a flannel uniform.Then, in what must have seemed like an instant, Sepkowski found himself in a big park in Cleveland, surrounded by the Indians.

Fred H. Levinsky, 80, retired Martin executiveFred H. Levinsky, a retired aerodynamics industry executive and former Perry Hall Recreation Council official, died yesterday of Parkinson's disease at Mariner Health of Bel Air Nursing and Rehabilitation Inc. He was 80.He retired in 1983 as a projects engineer and deputy director of Martin-Marietta Corp. He began his career in 1939 as a tool and dye engineer at the old Glenn L. Martin Co. in Middle River.He moved to Perry Hall about 1960 and became involved with the Perry Hall Recreation Council as a coach, sports official, chairman and president.

Walter A. Pilachowski, 72, Coast Guard employeeWalter A. "Scotty" Pilachowski, who spent more than three decades with the Coast Guard at Curtis Bay, with tours in two other branches of the military, died of lung cancer Wednesday at Franklin Square Hospital. He was 72.Born in Baltimore and a lifelong resident of the Canton area, he served in the Navy in the latter years of World War II, including a stint in the South Pacific on the destroyer USS Nicholas. He was discharged in 1946 and went to work for the Coast Guard in Baltimore.

An Anne Arundel County police narcotics informant admitted yesterday that in a fit of anger she stabbed another woman to death -- a drug addict and suspected prostitute whose body was dumped in a secluded bend of a Severn road.Emily Marie Fulcher, 35, pleaded guilty to the second-degree murder of Linda Sue Dickey, 43, in a brief hearing before Anne Arundel County Circuit Judge Eugene M. Lerner.Assistant State's Attorney Thomas J. Pryal agreed to seek a prison term of 15 to 25 years -- the time recommended by state guidelines -- when Fulcher is sentenced next month.

When the federal government's vaunted South Baltimore program for community-directed environmental action met recently, 14 people showed up. Chemical industry executives. Federal environmental officials. City health and planning employees. And only one of the 16,000 residents in the program's target area: a warehouse worker from Curtis Bay.Halfway through, he fell asleep.One thing was clear: Very little community is left in the Community Environmental Partnership.The pilot project, set up here by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Washington headquarters in 1996, had promised a new era for American regulation of polluters.

A gasoline tanker rig flipped over as it made a sharp turn in the Wagner's Point industrial area early yesterday, spilling thousands of gallons of fuel onto the street and into a sewer drain that empties into Curtis Bay.The spill did not trigger evacuations, but two major roads feeding the area were closed for much of the day, keeping hundreds of areaworkers from reaching or leaving their jobs and cutting off Wagner's Point residents.The accident occurred when the 40-foot-long gasoline rig driven by Frank Daniel Dixon III took a hard turn from Fairfield Road onto Patapsco Avenue at 1: 45 a.m. The rig went out of control, slammed into a curb and rolled, stopping upside down against a utility pole, said Sgt. Scott Rowe, city police spokesman.

Helen O. Kolodziejski, 87, homemakerHelen O. Kolodziejski, a former Curtis Bay homemaker and founder of Al-Anon groups, died Feb. 17 of heart failure at home in Palm Coast, Fla. She was 87.Known as "Honey," Mrs. Kolodziejski had lived in Palm Coast since 1983. Before then, she had established Al-Anon groups -- support groups for family members of alcoholics -- in Brooklyn and Linthicum in the early 1950s.The former Helen Owsik was a Baltimore native and was educated in parochial school. In 1928, she married Jesse T. Kolodziejski, who died in 1979.

Robert Franklin Crouse, a retired Baltimore firefighter and World War II veteran, died of heart disease Oct. 12 at Harbor Hospital. The Brooklyn resident was 83. Born in Baltimore and raised in Northwest Baltimore, he was a student at Polytechnic Institute when he enlisted in the Navy the day after the attack at Pearl Harbor. He operated a landing craft, a Higgins boat, at Utah Beach at the Allied invasion at Normandy, France, on June 6, 1944. He was then assigned to the Pacific and served in Japan after its surrender.

On June 7, 2009 RONALD devoted brother of Dolores Bilenki and the late Shelby Burns; uncle of Debra Kramer, Diana Simms, Lisa Merkey and Michael Bilenki. Also survived by 10 grandnieces and nephews as well as three great-grand-nieces. Services will be held Friday at St. Paul's Lutheran Church, Curtis Bay at 7:30 p.m.

Coast Guard centralizes maintenance at Curtis Bay Coast Guard leaders opened the Surface Forces Logistical Center at the U.S. Coast Guard Yard in Curtis Bay yesterday, centralizing maintenance of the guard's 200 cutters and 1,800 boats nationwide. "This centralizes operations so they're not spread all over the country," said Rep. Elijah E. Cummings, chairman of the House subcommittee on the Coast Guard. In the past, staff on different coasts would maintain the boats to their own specifications, said Adm. Thad Allen, the Coast Guard commandant.

Even before she puts her own turkey on the table today, Loretta Warfield will have served 50 Thanksgiving dinners. For more than two decades, through donations and fundraisers at the W.R. Grace & Co. chemical plant where she works as a janitor, Warfield has collected fresh turkeys, white potatoes, bread, pies and countless canned goods for Curtis Bay-area families who might not otherwise be able to celebrate the holiday. She has fed well over 1,000 families this way. "I've been doing this for so long, it's just a part of me," Warfield said.

Donna A. Waters, an administrative assistant and avid fisher, died of cancer Wednesday at her Pasadena home. She was 48. Donna A. Yirka was born in Baltimore and raised in Curtis Bay. She was a 1978 graduate of Southern High School. For the past decade, she had been an administrative assistant with the Baltimore New Homes Guide. Since 1999, Mrs. Waters had lived in Pasadena. She enjoyed boating, fishing, attending Ravens games and playing Bunco. Mrs. Waters also liked traveling and was particularly fond of visiting Magen's Bay at St. Thomas in the U.S. Virgin Islands, family members said.

Salary:: $25,000 Years on the job: : 16 How he got started: Originally from Philadelphia, Park joined the Coast Guard after completing high school. "What I found out about the organization was impressive. I knew there were a lot of opportunities there." Typical day: : Park works a rotating shift of two days on and two days off. For his two days on, he's on call at Curtis Bay for 48 hours. "Some rotations you might not have much of anything happening, other rotations you can be busy the entire time.

Suddenly, on June 4, 2008, JOSEPH H. KOPPLEMAN, JR., beloved husband of Cindy (nee Long); devoted father of Joseph Koppleman, III and Christopher Koppleman; loving father-in-law of Jamie Koppleman and Stephanie Koppleman; cherished son of Mary M. Koppleman and the late Joseph Sr., devoted son-in-law of Robert Long and Jeanette Freeburger, grandfather of Joseph Koppleman IV and Alexis Koppleman; loving brother of JoAnn Holmes and Mary Jo Sturgill....

A three-alarm fire raced through a concrete plant in Curtis Bay yesterday morning, causing one building to collapse and severely damaging another building, along with a conveyor and a concrete hopper, fire officials said. No one was injured in the fire, which caused about $2 million in damage to the plant owned by Universal Engineering and Construction Inc. of Curtis Bay. Machado Construction Co. has run the plant for about a year. The blaze was reported at 5:45 a.m. in the first block of Stahls Point Road.

W.R. Grace & Co. has agreed to pay 40 percent of the cost - a share estimated to be about $41 million - to clean up contamination at Baltimore's Curtis Bay, where the company extracted radioactive thorium from ore in the 1950s, according to a settlement agreement. The federal government, which employed Grace as a contractor at the time, will cover 60 percent of the bill. The work will be performed during the next five years if it's approved by the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Delaware, which is overseeing Grace's reorganization.

Too much clutter tarnishes harbor Once again, we get another great idea for the Inner Harbor. This time it's gondolas in the air ("On cutting edge of urban transit," March 12). Of course we all know that gondolas belong in the water. But once we ran out of open land around our harbor, we built piers for our townhouses and marinas for our yachts. So we are left only with air space at the harbor. When is enough enough for our Inner Harbor? I remember in the 1970s when we spent millions in taxpayers' money to clear up the land near the harbor and create a park.