Decades

TEN YEARS ago, on the 50th anniversary of D-Day, Augustino "Bud" Paolino finally talked about his bloody war. He was dropped into Normandy aboard a flying coffin the night before the big invasion. He saw brutal action in France. He was wounded in Holland. He was wounded and lay bleeding in the snow at the Battle of the Bulge, with nothing but a bottle of cognac to drink. He was one of the first Americans to claw their way into Germany. But the story that choked him up was his homecoming.

The hulking metal barns are treasured by the area's tennis community. Thousands of people have volleyed with friends on the indoor courts, including Pam Shriver, who practiced here nearly every day during the peak of her career. Now, more than three decades after it was built, the Green Spring Racquet Club has been sold to developers who are considering razing the barns and building offices. Neighbors, complaining of crowded roads, are gearing up for a fight over the site's fate. Although the new owners say play will continue for more than a year, players are scrambling to find new courts.

This week Decades makes its debut. Inside this section you will find stories focusing on senior lifestyles -- consumer news, trends and events that affect adults age 50 and over. Look for Decades every other week in Home & Family.Pub Date: 5/23/99

Within hours of Baltimore firefighter Allan M. Roberts' death yesterday, leaders of the city's firefighter unions were flooded with sympathy calls from fellow firefighters around the country. They knew that Roberts is among the relatively few firefighters who lose their lives while fighting blazes and as a result of a fire. Nationwide, of the roughly 100 firefighters who die on duty each year, a quarter lose their lives in fires, according to the U.S. Fire Administration. Nearly half the deaths are the result of heart attacks or other health-related problems, and an additional quarter are attributed to vehicle accidents.

Robert Shayne, 92, who acted in movies, television and on Broadway, died Sunday of lung cancer at the Motion Picture Hospital in Woodland Hills, Calif. Mr. Shayne's career spanned six decades.

FORT CARROLL, four miles downstream from Fort McHenry, is one of Baltimore's best-kept secrets. The 150-year-old privately owned hexagonal stronghold is still in relatively good shape -- even though it has been abandoned for decades. Most Baltimoreans have never seen the 3.45-acre artificial island, which lies underneath the Francis Scott Key Memorial Bridge. Nor is any interest encouraged. "We would prefer no publicity," says Alan Eisenberg, one of the Patapsco River fort's owners. His father, the late Benjamin N. Eisenberg, bought the fort for $10,000 in 1958.

The retro loop as presented by designers and stylists this spring is enough to scare a modern women from going along for the ride. Fashion time-travel can be fun; it can also induce queasiness.If women try to copy what they see on the runways and in the fashion magazines this season, they'll end up looking like Bonnie Parker on the lam, Bette Davis in tight control, Rita Hayworth in tropical heat, the Andrews Sisters in harmony, Laura Petrie in a tizzy or one of the Brady Bunch. Talk about mixed messages.

WashingtonPeter Max, where have you been?Where have you been since the Summer of Love, since we plastered our rooms with your psychedelic posters, covered our loose-leafs with your flower-power petals, slept on your sheets, sported your clothes, told time by your clocks?Peter Max, where have you been since we've all grown up?"I joined the human race," says the legendary pop artist of the '60s who virtually defined the decade with his vivid, new-age style and ubiquitous mod Max products. "I went into retreat."

Judith Campbell Exner, allegedly had JFK affairJudith Campbell Exner, the Los Angeles socialite whose affair with President Kennedy embroiled her in decades of vilification as the first to shatter the Camelot myth, has died.She was 65 when she died Friday at a Duarte, Calif., hospital and had spent the last decades of her life battling the cancer that killed her and the speculations that sprang up since she disclosed her relationship with Kennedy to a Senate committee after his assassination.

Across the country, decades-old jeans from older, classic American brands such as Levi's, Lee and Wrangler are worth holding on to, according to Dennis Little in his new softcover book "Vintage Denim," (Gibbs Smith, $21.95).Signs that read "Will buy Levi's" above shops are testimony to the growing interest in American vintage denim, Little writes.He devotes the first half to the history of denim jeans, a subject briefly explored in 1990 in "Denim: An American Legend" by Iain Finlayson (Fireside, $17.95)