Dover

Face it, faithful Candid Closet readers, Dr. George Dover, director of Johns Hopkins Children's Center, has better things to worry about than his clothes. He says even his wife Barbara yawns at the sight of his standard wear.So what's this with the ties? Ever since Hopkins and Jos. A. Banks Clothiers produced the Miracle Collection, a line of men's neckwear featuring designs based on the molecular structure of important pediatric medications, Dover has been very, very big on his ties. The collection was launched for the fourth year yesterday with a fashion show that included the dapper Dr. Dover.

Race car drivers who have to spend two hours or more circling Dover Downs International Speedway's high-banked, one-mile oval seldom wind up telling stories of the heart.But before the MBNA Mid-Atlantic 200 today, at least two Indy Racing League drivers were talking about their hearts, though they were telling two totally different stories.Eddie Cheever, the former Formula One racer who reinvented himself as an Indy car driver in 1990 and won the 1998 Indianapolis 500, talked about his heart rate.

DOVER, Del. -- Mark Martin likes Dover Downs International Speedway. Others might look at it as a Monster Mile, but from the first time Martin came here as a rookie 17 years ago, he has loved it.And yesterday, it soothed his weary body and erased the mask of worry that had clouded his face.When he climbed out of his rapid Ford race car in victory lane, Martin's arms shot into the air and the smile was like the sunlight that bathed the scene in its warmth."I can't tell you how bad I wanted to win this race," he said after winning the Winston Cup MBNA Gold 400 for the third straight time.

MANCHESTER, N.H. -- President Clinton returned yesterday to the state that once made him the "Comeback Kid," bathing in nostalgia and hoping for a resurrection of sorts to rebuild the stature of his tarnished presidency.Seven years ago to the day, a young Arkansas governor revived his presidential campaign by surging to a second-place finish in the crucial New Hampshire primary, surviving allegations of marital infidelity and draft dodging.Yesterday, on his first domestic trip since his impeachment trial to once again right his listing political ship, Clinton returned to the Granite State.

Scott Goodyear is sitting in a seafood restaurant in the Inner Harbor. Surrounded by a tableful of reporters, he is promoting the Indy Racing League's MBNA Mid-Atlantic 200 in Dover, Del., on Sunday.But while the IRL still may be trying to find an audience, Goodyear, 39, already has one.He made his name in open wheel racing when Indy Car racing was whole, before the split that sent Championship Auto Racing Teams and the Indy Racing League in opposite directions.A lot of fans can still picture the two most important and frustrating days in Goodyear's racing life.

Gregory I. Kirkwood used to be one of the biggest targets over Vietnam. He flew the mammoth C-130, transporting men and machinery as ammunition flew around him.Mr. Kirkwood never shied away. He had joined the Air Force at 16, and he wanted to serve his country. When he retired from the military with the rank of major, he continued to serve his community, volunteering for political causes and candidates on the Eastern Shore.Mr. Kirkwood died Saturday of heart failure at Memorial Hospital at Easton.

DOVER, Del. -- The monster mile at Dover International Raceway turned the Indy Racing League's Pep Boys 400K into a survival of the fittest. But that didn't seem to bother the crowd of about 25,000, which stuck around and came roaring to its feet when Scott Sharp beat Buddy Lazier to the finish line by .689 of a second.And it didn't seem to bother track president Denis McGlynn or IRL executive director Leo Mehl either, as both proclaimed the first-time event a success."My concern is not about cars, but drivers," Mehl said.

DOVER, Del. -- Rusty Wallace and "The Snake" chased history yesterday afternoon at Dover Downs International Speedway -- and passed it."The Snake" is Wallace's Miller Lite Ford, and the two of them raced faster around this one-mile concrete oval than anyone before.Faster than other Winston Cup cars and even faster than Bobby Unser drove his Indy car here 29 years ago."Wow, I knew I was fast," Wallace said. "But I didn't know I was that fast."Wallace claimed the pole for tomorrow's MBNA Platinum 400 with a run of 155.898 mph. That performance broke Bobby Labonte's track-qualifying record for stock cars (155.

In Henry Jaglom's "Deja Vu," love is more than a sense of familiarity. It's pure, electric destiny.The film is dreamy and delicious in ways romantic movies rarely are, as it tells the story of a man and a woman, each deeply involved in a relationship, who find themselves inexplicably and mystically drawn to each other.Victoria Hoyt, who was so appealing and mercurial as the Hollywood actress in husband Jaglom's "Last Summer in the Hamptons," plays Dana, who meets a sad, radiant older woman on a business trip to Israel.

Holiday magic and cheer came to call yesterday at the Johns Hopkins Hospital Children's Center when Baltimore Symphony Orchestra members played Christmas carols in the pediatric wards and for a larger audience of youngsters in Turner Auditorium.Children hooked up to IV's from beds or wheelchairs listened raptly to the strains of Tchaikovsky's "The Nutcracker Suite," played by 50 orchestra musicians and conducted by BSO Associate Conductor Daniel Hege.The children's faces lighted up even more when dancers from Baltimore School for the Arts appeared.

DOVER, Del. - - After routing the field to win NASCAR's spring race at Dover International Speedway, Jimmie Johnson returned for Sunday's 400-mile event on the one-mile, concrete oval in a different Chevrolet that his crew chief believed was even stronger. Chad Knaus miscalculated a bit, it turns out, but the upshot was the same. Johnson trounced all comers Sunday to complete a sweep of NASCAR's two Dover races and pare his deficit to teammate Mark Martin, who finished second, in pursuit of what would be a record fourth consecutive Sprint Cup championship.

Pauline Elizabeth Kreiner, Memorial service is 5:00 P.M. October 2 at Central Mennonite Church, 220 West Denney's Road, Dover, DE. Donations to Delaware Hospice, 911 S. DuPont Highway, Dover, DE 19901.

The photograph on the front page and Web site of The Baltimore Sun could not be more stark. In part, it's the composition: a series of repeated horizontal lines, from the red and white stripes of the American flags draping two caskets, one resting on a loader, the other being carried from the aircraft by a team of camouflage-clad Marines and both perfectly level with the ground. But the true power of the photograph lies beyond the image. The two Marines, on a final journey home to Maryland after being killed in the war in Afghanistan, bear witness to the continuing and ever-mounting casualties there and in Iraq, conflicts that have remained largely out of sight and thus out of mind on the home front.

DOVER, Del. - -The high banks of Dover International Speedway did on Sunday what the free market has been unable to: turn General Motors into a world-beater. Over the waning laps of the Autism Speaks 400, two of NASCAR's best drivers staged a thrilling battle of wits and horsepower in their high-octane Chevrolets, reducing the rest of the field of Fords, Dodges and Toyotas to distant afterthoughts. It was dazzling stuff, with Jimmie Johnson, who clearly had the superior car and engine, frantically making up ground after a botched pit stop dropped him from first to eighth with 35 laps remaining.

Track and field Back in form, Gay runs 3rd-fastest 200 ever Tyson Gay, the reigning world champion, ran the third-fastest time ever in the 200 meters in winning in 19.58 seconds at the Reebok Grand Prix on Saturday in New York. The only faster times are Usain Bolt's world record last year of 19.30 and Michael Johnson's 19.32 in 1996. It was in the 200 at last year's U.S. Olympic trials that Gay hurt his hamstring. He didn't win a medal at the Beijing Games after coming in as the world champion in the 100 and 200. Gay's previous personal best was 19.62 seconds in 2007.

The need for speed 11:30 a.m., 3 p.m., 8:30 p.m. [Speed] Can't get over to Dover (Del.) International Speedway? You can get your NASCAR fix with Sprint Cup practice at 11:30 a.m., qualifying at 3 p.m. and the Truck Series race at 8:30. Plus, we're sure a Days of Thunder repeat is running somewhere.

HBO might have lost its way when it comes to making weekly series, but it still produces exceptional made-for-TV movies. Taking Chance, an elegiac chronicle of the final journey home for a 19-year-old Marine killed in Iraq, is one of the most eloquent and socially conscious films the premium cable channel has ever presented. Kevin Bacon delivers a lights-out, searing performance as Michael Strobl, a tightly wrapped lieutenant colonel who escorts the remains of Lance Cpl. Chance Phelps from the Dover Port Mortuary in Delaware to the home of the dead Marine's parents in Dubois, Wyo. Meanwhile, producer-writer-director Ross Katz steeps the cross-country journey in such a rich brew of distilled emotion and America iconography that at times the film feels almost too intense to bear - and that is a good thing.

Janet M. Krumm, a homemaker who established and edited a newsletter for families who had members with disabilities, died Wednesday of intestinal cancer at her Dover, N.H., home. The former Baltimore resident was 57. Janet M. Oleksik was born in Baltimore and raised on Curley Street. She was a 1968 graduate of Immaculata Academy in Hamburg, N.Y. Mrs. Krumm earned a bachelor's degree in French from the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, in 1972. She also studied for a master's degree at Coppin State College, now Coppin State University.

Charles Robert Johnson, a retired state employment manager, died Sunday of complications from dementia at the Capitol Nursing Center in Dover, Del. The former Bolton Hill resident was 75. Born in Cumberland, he grew up in Denton and Cambridge and was a 1950 graduate of the McDonogh School. He earned an English degree at Columbia University and served in the Navy from 1954 to 1957. Mr. Johnson attended the Johns Hopkins University writers' program in the late 1950s, and in the early 1960s he taught elementary subjects in the Baltimore public schools.

Robert D. Fleischer, a retired television news photographer and former owner of an aerial photography business, died of lung cancer Friday at Kent General Memorial Hospital in Dover, Del. The former Perry Hall resident was 68. Mr. Fleischer was born and raised in Baltimore and graduated from Polytechnic Institute in 1956. He attended the University of Miami in Florida and served in the Navy as a reconnaissance photographer aboard the carrier USS Independence from 1962 to 1965. Mr. Fleischer was a teenager when he began working with his father, an East Coast racetrack photographer.