Data Processing

Due to a Bell Atlantic Corp. error, 12,000 area Sprint Corp. customers had no long-distance charges on their January bills.The missing charges will be applied to customers' February bills.Bell Atlantic spokesman Harry Mitchell said a data-processing mistake caused the problem. He said the problem was unrelated to another data error that caused 350,000 AT&T Corp. customers to get tardy bills for December and January calls."We pride ourselves on providing the service our customers deserve. We didn't do so in this case.

Patapsco Valley Bancshares buys data processing firmPatapsco Valley Bancshares Inc. of Ellicott City, the parent company of Commercial and Farmers Bank, has bought Central Maryland Service Corp., a data processing company.Patapsco Valley Bancshares was formed as a holding company in September 1996 for Commercial and Farmers Bank to expand its range of services.The purchase of Central Maryland Service Corp. will allow the company to provide financial information and accounting systems, electronic delivery systems (including online branch automation)

Lockheed Martin Corp. has been awarded a $244 million contract to take over the data processing, information management and telecommunication operations of retailing giant Melville Corp.The contract represents Bethesda-based Lockheed Martin's first major foray into the commercial market for providing such services.As part of the agreement, Lockheed Martin will acquire some of the assets of Melville's data processing centers. The purchase price is included in the value of the contract award and was not disclosed.

James Vincent Guthrie Jr., a senior manager for a Baltimore accounting firm, died of cancer Friday at his home in Bel Air. He was 40.A Mass of Christian burial for Mr. Guthrie will be offered at 10 a.m. tomorrow at St. Ignatius Roman Catholic Church, 1709 Conowingo Road in Hickory.He had worked in the Baltimore office of Ernst & Young, an international accounting and consulting firm, since 1986, specializing in information systems consulting. His clients included the Ryland Group, Simon and Schuster, and Provident Bank.

Arthur F. Bristow, a retired Social Security Administration supervisor and World War II veteran, died of cancer Saturday at his Westminster home. He was 88. Mr. Bristow was born and raised in Wilmington, Del., where he attended public schools. He enlisted in the Army in 1941 and led a tank unit that arrived at Normandy six days after the June 6, 1944, landing to lend support to ground forces. Mr. Bristow was discharged in 1945. His decorations included a Bronze Star. He joined Social Security in 1945 and was a supervisor in the data processing department when he retired in 1975.

Arthur E. Hicks Jr. of Columbia has been named supervisor of the air conditioning, refrigeration and heating department at Lincoln Technical Institute in Landover.Hicks is a graduate of Atholton High School and studied data processing at Howard Community College.Prior to joining LTI, he worked for 19 years at General Electric in Columbia.VANOOSTEN PROMOTED AT MARYLAND NATIONALSandra M. VanOosten of Columbia has been promoted to assistant vice president at First National Bank of Maryland.VanOosten will specialize in commercial and personal banking services for medical professionals, including financing, cash management, retirement funds, investments and mortgages.

Clara Pauline Wable, a homemaker, died Thursday of an aneurysm at her Annapolis home, where she had lived since 1986. She was 84. Mrs. Wable, who formerly lived in Gaithersburg and Washington, was born Clara P. Spory in Boswell, Pa. After graduating from high school there, she married Lucius Wable, a stevedore and later a lumberyard foreman, in 1939. He died in 1970. Mrs. Wable worked in data processing before retiring a number of years ago. A deeply religious woman, she enjoyed reading the Bible and had been a parishioner of Edgewater Baptist Church.

25 Years Ago (Week of July 5-11, 1970)* Howard Community College received approval from the Maryland State Board of Community Colleges to offer associate degree programs. The two-year degrees would be offered in data processing, executive secretarial science, accounting, electronics technology, arts and sciences, general studies, business administration and teacher education.* A midnight blaze started by a lightning strike destroyed the stables at Turf Valley Country Club. Firefighters responded from Ellicott City, West Friendship, Lisbon, Sykesville and Clarksville.

General Sciences Corp.Graduating from the federal government's set-aside programs for small and minority-owned companies can be bad for business, General Sciences Corp. has learned.The Laurel-based government contractor reported sharply lower sales and earnings in its first fiscal quarter, which ended Oct. 31, because it had become too big to receive special treatment from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, said Lily Chen, vice president.The company, which specializes in providing weather and environmental research, said its graduation from the Small Business Administration's 8(a)

William Norris, 95, who founded Control Data Corp., died Monday in Bloomington, Minn. Mr. Norris and others founded Engineering Research Associates in St. Paul in 1946. ERA was sold a few years later and ended up as part of Sperry Rand's UNIVAC division, which Mr. Norris ran in the mid-1950s, building UNIVAC "electronic brains." He left in 1957 and co-founded Control Data. Within three years, it was building the most powerful computer in the world, the 1604. Control Data grew rapidly in the 1960s, propelled by supercomputers.