East Baltimore Community

The wide-avenued East Baltimore community of Highlandtown is a cheap eater's paradise, offering something for nearly every culinary craving. Options range from the renowned Matthew's Pizza for Italian to yummy Chicken Rico for Peruvian-style roasted birds to Eastern House for Greek and Eichenkranz for German. Poor:]

The Sun's Luke Broadwater reports this morning on an initiative that has war veterans giving back in one of Baltimore's most troubled neighborhoods : "Earl Johnson's boots crunch broken glass from liquor bottles as he walks down an alley in East Baltimore's Oliver neighborhood. He is just blocks from the site of the firebombing of a family who called the police on area drug dealers and were killed for it and just yards from some of the most memorable scenes of urban decay in "The Wire.

BECAUSE THE GOAL of a job training program for East Baltimore youths is noble, the public apparently is supposed to ignore the oily smell of greased palms that surrounds it.People should take notice. They need to see the political entanglements and the organizations that use the curtain of "non-profit" status to obscure who's making money. Specifically, they need to look at the East Baltimore Community Corp.City Council President Lawrence A. Bell III, who hasn't been winning a lot of friends in East Baltimore of late, did the right thing when he tried to block a $31,400 payment to a program called The Chance, for socially deprived children in that community.

Irona Pope, a street-savvy community activist who defended East Baltimore schoolchildren, died of a blood infection Tuesday at Gilchrist Hospice Care. The Lakeside resident was 69. Born Irona Elizabeth Lee in Baltimore, she was raised in the old Fort Holabird and Lafayette Court public housing developments and was a 1958 Dunbar High School graduate. She earned an associate's degree from Baltimore City Community College and a bachelor's degree from Sojourner-Douglass College. When her children were attending public school in the 1960s, she volunteered as a cafeteria aide.

City Council President Lawrence A. Bell III hopes to block a $31,400 city payment to an East Baltimore organization that he says is involved in an ethically questionable real estate deal with two other closely connected groups.Bell said that today he will ask the Board of Estimates to at least delay payment to a program for socially deprived children called The Chance, run by Fair Chance Inc. An aim of the program is to teach job skills to the youths.Bell said he is troubled because Fair Chance appears to be paying the money it receives from the city indirectly to a company that Fair Chance owns.

A judge ordered an East Baltimore motel yesterday to close for one month after declaring it was a nuisance, giving city officials a victory in their attempts to empower community groups in the fight against drugs. City officials said they believe the ruling against Super 8 Motel in the 3600 block of Pulaski Highway is the first time the state's nuisance abatement law has been used to hold a motel owner responsible for the actions of guests. The law, passed in 1992, gives Maryland communities and neighborhood groups the right to sue people whose property is used to distribute drugs.

SOME $2.6 million in taxpayers' money could be spent renovating a building bought for $198,000 to house a jobs program in East Baltimore. The investment may be worth it ultimately, if unemployment is dramatically reduced. But the political back-scratching that has moved the project makes it difficult to assess its true value.It's doubtful that Marie Washington could have received such large commitments for government grants and low-interest loans were she not an operative in the Eastside Democratic Organization.

Community activists Bernard Young and Edward K. Hargadon are the front-runners for the vacant 2nd District City Council seat, City Hall sources said last night.At a City Hall forum last night, the two men and 10 other candidates said why they should be chosen fill the vacancy created by the resignation of Anthony J. Ambridge, now the city's real estate officer.Second District council members Paula Johnson Branch and Robert L. Douglass are expected to announce their choice Oct. 21. If both agree on a candidate, council approval is likely.

Services for Evelyn Louise Campbell, director of community affairs for Baltimore's Health Department, will be held at 11:30 a.m. today at Enon Baptist Church, Edmondson Avenue and Schroeder Street.Ms. Campbell, who was 62 and lived on Winston Avenue, died Tuesday at Mercy Medical Center after a heart attack.For nearly 10 years before joining the staff of the city's Health Department in 1983, she was director of public relations for the East Baltimore Community Corp.Born in Baltimore, the former Evelyn Louise Lee was reared here and in Richmond, Va. She was a graduate of Virginia State College.

A stalwalk in the East Baltimore Community dies THEOPHILAS Mc WILLIAMS better known as "Tip came to Baltimore from Littleton, NC in 1946 as a barber May, 1957, he and his wife Dorothy purchased the business at 1601 E. Lanvale Street known as Mc Williams Barber Shop, from 1957 to 1996 he gave first hair cuts to many in the community as we as pastors, teachers, politicians, steel workers, morticians including Mr. William C. March. The shop was known as where to get a meal as well as a haircut.

The torched rowhouse of the Dawson family became a stark reminder of the deadly toll that crime, drugs and neglect can have on a Baltimore neighborhood. Angela Dawson's fight to drive out drug dealers in 2002 symbolized the struggle of Oliver residents and community organizers to protect and revive the East Baltimore community. And now their efforts are finally paying off in a strategy of shared investment that could help rebuild more than one impoverished neighborhood. What's significant about the Oliver redevelopment is that the venture is community-driven (local churches and the BUILD organization have raised nearly $10 million in the past five years)

The wide-avenued East Baltimore community of Highlandtown is a cheap eater's paradise, offering something for nearly every culinary craving. Options range from the renowned Matthew's Pizza for Italian to yummy Chicken Rico for Peruvian-style roasted birds to Eastern House for Greek and Eichenkranz for German. Poor:]

Eric Booker was asleep in his grandparents' house in East Baltimore when his grandfather, Frederick Booker, came to him in a dream. "I need you to take care of Granny," the dying old man told him. The next day, Eric visited Fred at Johns Hopkins Hospital. "I touched him on the forehead, grabbed his right wrist with my right hand and said, `You don't have to worry about Granny.'" Twenty-four hours later, his grandfather was dead. That was in 1993. Three years later, Booker left Northern Virginia to move into 1705 N. Washington St., where his grandmother, Leola, still lived and where he had grown up, just around the corner from the neighborhood's most prodigious structure, the vacant, city-owned American Brewery.

Parents at the Clay Courts housing complex used to hesitate sending their children outside to play, fearing for safety. But things are different now in this East Baltimore community. "It's changed a whole lot, you can send you kids out and they don't have to watch their backs," said Tiffany Smith, 28, who has lived there since 2000. "I can invite people over now." Clay Courts - and its companion three blocks away, the Lester Morton Court housing complex - had fallen into disrepair over the years, becoming a haven for criminals, according to residents and city officials.

A stalwalk in the East Baltimore Community dies THEOPHILAS Mc WILLIAMS better known as "Tip came to Baltimore from Littleton, NC in 1946 as a barber May, 1957, he and his wife Dorothy purchased the business at 1601 E. Lanvale Street known as Mc Williams Barber Shop, from 1957 to 1996 he gave first hair cuts to many in the community as we as pastors, teachers, politicians, steel workers, morticians including Mr. William C. March. The shop was known as where to get a meal as well as a haircut.

A year after an arson claimed the lives of seven Dawson family members in the Oliver community of East Baltimore, about 400 people gathered in a church a block from the charred rowhouse yesterday to remember them and pray for help in an ambitious $100 million-plus proposal to rebuild the neighborhood. During the meeting at Memorial Baptist Church in the 1300 block of N. Caroline St., a gospel choir sang, preachers raised their voices in prayer for the cause, and community organizers showed slides sketching out their vision of new houses, playgrounds and tree-lined streets.

The torched rowhouse of the Dawson family became a stark reminder of the deadly toll that crime, drugs and neglect can have on a Baltimore neighborhood. Angela Dawson's fight to drive out drug dealers in 2002 symbolized the struggle of Oliver residents and community organizers to protect and revive the East Baltimore community. And now their efforts are finally paying off in a strategy of shared investment that could help rebuild more than one impoverished neighborhood. What's significant about the Oliver redevelopment is that the venture is community-driven (local churches and the BUILD organization have raised nearly $10 million in the past five years)

TOWSON -- County police are seeking a man charged with robbery and grand theft at three Sally Beauty Supply stores in Baltimore County. All three stores were robbed of hair clippers.Derrick Christopher Lanham, 31, of the 2300 block of Fire House Road in Landover, is one of two men linked to several robberies of Sally stores in Baltimore, Anne Arundel and Prince George's County in August and September, police said.The other man, James Louis Adams, 33, of the 40000 block of New Market Turner Road in Mechanicsville, turned himself into police last week.

Community leaders urged East Baltimore residents to ask their elected officials to preserve funding for family services programs yesterday. Meeting at Casey Family Services on North Caroline Street, they said they worried that funding to the programs will be cut to help reduce the state's projected $1.8 billion budget deficit. "We recognize the importance and difficulty of this task. But don't balance the budget on the backs of our children," Traci McLemore, director of the East Baltimore Collaborative, told the crowd of nearly three dozen adults, many with small children.

In Baltimore County Bay group needs volunteers to count underwater grasses CHASE - The Chesapeake Bay Foundation is seeking volunteers to help survey underwater grasses in the bay and its tributaries. The group will teach how to identify grasses at a workshop from 9 a.m. to noon July 29 along Dundee Creek in Chase, southeastern Baltimore County. All materials will be provided. Volunteers should have access to a canoe, kayak or small boat to continue surveying during the growing season.