Friends School

Jonathan Huxtable, the new head of Harford Friends School, will hold a series of informational sessions at Harford County branch libraries and one in Cecil County. All of the sessions will be held at 7 p.m. The schedule includes: Aberdeen, June 23. Edgewood, June 30. Fallston-Jarrettsville, July 1. Whiteford, July 13. Bel Air, July 14. Joppa, July 21. Norrisville, July 22. Abingdon, July 27. Rising Sun, July 28. Darlington, Aug. 4. Havre de Grace, Aug. 18. Harford Friends School will open in Harford County in September 2005.

Frank Bond Sr., a retired Maryland Transit Administration bus driver and neighborhood activist who believed in the value of education, died Monday of colon cancer at Gilchrist Hospice Care in Towson. "Frank was a wonderful man who treasured education even though he was not an educated man," said W. Byron Forbush II, who retired in 1998 after 38 years as headmaster of Friends School. "His three children went to Friends as well as two grandchildren," said Mr. Forbush. "He was so devoted and proud that his family was part of that institution.

A teacher at Friends School of Baltimore -- the city's oldest school and one rarely exposed to crime -- was robbed at gunpoint early yesterday as she arrived for work, city police reported.The teacher, Virginia Spry Kerley, 49, was robbed of $100 after a "clean . . . well-spoken" man approached her in the building, pulled a handgun from his coat and said, "It's been a long night, I've got to get out of here," a police report said.Police said Ms. Kerley had arrived at the Quaker school at about 7:15 a.m. and was met in a hallway by the man, who was wearing what appeared to be an expensive gold watch.

Fanya O'Donoghue had just learned she was pregnant when she happened to meet a group of nurses at a social gathering. She was looking for an obstetrician, and asked them whom they would recommend. "All six of them said, 'Dr. [Nikita] Levy,'" she recalled. Even now, after allegations that Levy photographed patients during exams, followed by the doctor's apparent suicide last Monday, O'Donoghue can't bring herself to believe those nurses steered her wrong. For her, Levy is still the kind, dryly funny doctor who drove through the "snowmageddon" of February 2010 when she went into labor with her firstborn - who shepherded her through her next pregnancy with twins and celebrated their happy deliveries.

Friends School of Baltimore, 5114 N. Charles St., has launched a $1.5 million fund-raising campaign, its most ambitious ever, to help pay for four areas of school development.The areas are increased endowment; paying for recent expansion of the school's pre-primary and lower school divisions; construction of a music education wing; and development of an additional athletic field.Founded in 1784, Friends is an independent Quaker school for students from age 4 to grade 12. James L. Zamoiski is chairman of the campaign, and Timothy R. Hearn is vice chairman.

A memorial service for Eleanor Dilworth Mace, retired principal of the upper grades at Friends School, will be held at 11 a.m. Friday at the Stony Run Friends Meeting House, 5116 N. Charles St.Mrs. Mace, who was 88, died Monday at her home in Phoenix after a short illness.She retired from Friends in 1963, where she had been principal of the upper school and assistant to the headmaster since 1954. She had joined the faculty in 1926, when Friends was at Park Avenue and Laurens Street. She was dean of girls from 1935 until 1954.

Graham Bernard Harrison, a Friends School freshman who acted, danced and sang, died of acute lymphocytic leukemia Sunday at Johns Hopkins Hospital. The North Baltimore resident was 15. Born in Baltimore, he was the son of Patricia Ragusa Harrison, an actress, and Michael Harrison, artistic director of the Baltimore Opera Company. He was diagnosed with acute lymphocytic leukemia at the age of 18 months. Family members said he was treated at Hopkins for three years and remained in remission for another decade.

Friends School of Baltimore has named Jon Harris, an administrator, teacher and coach at a suburban Philadelphia Quaker school, as headmaster, replacing W. Byron Forbush III, who is retiring after 38 years in charge of Baltimore's oldest school.Harris' appointment as the 213-year-old school's eighth headmaster -- and the first who is not a Quaker -- ends a yearlong nationwide search, the first conducted by Friends. His selection was approved by the Board of Trustees and announced to students, teachers and administrators this week.

If Hiram Holton II had scripted the last day of his life, the teen-ager would have died after walking off the Friends School basketball floor for the last time."

Friends School has named new heads of its lower and upper schools, to replace one retiring administrator and another who left the Charles Street school last summer.Janice S. Morrison, chairwoman of the science department at Park School in Brooklandville, will become the new lower school head, replacing Diana R. McGraw, who is retiring after 31 years at Friends.Peter Vermilye, lower school head at Westtown School in West Chester, Pa., has been named upper school head. He is replacing Clint Wilkins, who resigned from Friends in June to become head of a new school in California.

R. Gayle Layfield, a retired Friends School official who worked in fundraising, died of cancer Feb. 1 at her North Baltimore home. She was 64. Born Ruth Gayle Layfield in Richmond, Va., she was a 1966 graduate of the Collegiate School, where she was class president and played sports. She earned a bachelor of arts degree at Hollins College, where she was active on the trustee and alumnae boards. She also received a master's degree from the Johns Hopkins University. After moving to Baltimore in the mid-1970s, she was an English teacher at Roland Park Country School, where she was also director of admissions and worked in development.

Baltimore native Jason Winer knows something about family comedy. He's been an executive producer on ABC's "Modern Family" and won a Directors Guild Award for his direction of the hit series' Emmy Award-winning pilot. This week, "1600 Penn," a family sitcom about a fictional first family that he co-created, joins NBC's Thursday night lineup. (A sneak preview of the pilot aired in December.) On Wednesday, Winer and the cast will be guests at the real White House where the series will be screened for President Obama.

The Maryland State Department of Education is conducting a search for the next set of environmentally friendly schools to compete for the title of 2013 National Green Ribbon Schools, a program sponsored by the U.S. Department of Education that recognizes schools' efforts to have students become environmentally literate and conscious. The state began participating in the federal program last year, and was one of only six states to have all four nominees receive a Green Ribbon, according to the department, who also noted that in 2011 Maryland led the nation in becoming the first state to include environmental literacy as a graduation requirement.

Former headmistress Lila B. Lohr, will return to the St. Paul's School for Girls in Baltimore County next year as an interim head of the school, the school announced Thursday. Lohr will succeed Monica Gillespie, who will leave in June. Lohr, the current interim head at Katherine Delmar Burke School in San Francisco, was the headmistress at St. Paul's from 1986 to 1995. Lohr has also held positions at the Friends School and the Bryn Mawr School in Baltimore. Text NEWS to 70701 to get Baltimore Sun local news text alerts

Emily T. Taliaferro, an artist and former Friends School tennis coach, died of stroke complications April 2 at Roland Park Place. She was 82. Born in Baltimore, she was the daughter of Raymond S. Tompkins, a Sun reporter and later an official of Baltimore's streetcar utility, United Railways, and Marie Lanning, whom he met in Alabama while awaiting a departure to France to cover World War I. She lived as a child at the Lombardy Apartments and...

Joseph Klein Jr., a Baltimore insurance executive and philanthropist who believed in leading by example, died Sunday of pulmonary fibrosis at his Pikesville home. He was 80. The son of a co-founder of Levinson & Klein Inc., an East Baltimore furniture store, and a homemaker, Mr. Klein was born in Baltimore and raised in the Dumbarton neighborhood of Northwest Baltimore. Mr. Klein graduated in 1949 from Friends School, and in 1953 from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

Charlotte Feast Hoffman, a conservationist and former Friends School music teacher whose method of teaching required students to construct the instruments they subsequently learned to play, died Monday of kidney failure at Northwest Hospital Center. She was 98. Mrs. Hoffman, who joined the Friends School faculty in 1938, established the music shop course in which students made flutes, recorders, marimbas, cymbals, drums, banjos and ukuleles, then learned how to make music with them. She retired in 1950.

Some Friends School parents want to know why the school's popular headmaster is leaving, and worry about how his departure will affect the school and its students. Angered by a letter dated Jan. 18 from the board of trustees announcing that Jon M. Harris would leave June 30, the parents say the board should explain why it dismissed Harris. Board chairman J. Kevin Carnell said that he and other trustees are not at liberty to discuss the details, but they have told parents that Harris' departure is a personnel matter and confidential.

G.I. Jobs has announced Harford Community College has made its list of 2012 Military Friendly Schools again. The list honors the top 20 percent of colleges, universities and trade schools deemed to be doing the most to embrace U.S. military veterans as students. For the first time, G.I. Jobs incorporated a survey of student veterans that provides prospective military students with insight into the student veteran experience at a particular institution based on peer reviews from current students.

Part of a longtime bronze statue at Friends School has been stolen, Nothern District police said. The statue sits on the upper school plaza on the campus at 5114 N. Charles St. Made by the noted local sculptor Bart Walter, 53, a Friends graduate whose studio is located in Westminster, the statue is called "Friends. " It shows a boy reading to a girl - both sitting on stacks of books - and includes a lacrosse stick among other sports items. Someone stole the lacrosse stick between 10:30 p.m. July 14 and 6:30 a.m. July 15, police said.