Gabler

On July 10, 2005 CONSTANCE MAY GABLER (nee Slater) of Columbia, wife of George W. Hilton, beloved mother of Eric Gabler and his wife Martha, Carol Kelley and her husband David, Grant Gabler and his wife Laurie and Amy Stefhon and her husband Ralph, also survived by nine grandchildren. Relatives and friends are invited to call at the GARY L. KAUFMAN FUNERAL HOME AT MEADOWRIDGE MEMORIAL PARK, INC., 7250 Washington Blvd, Elkridge (Exit 6 Off Rt 100) on Tuesday 3 to 5 and 7 to 9 P.M, where funeral services will be held in the Vermillion Chapel on July 13, 2005 at 1 P.M. Interment Meadowridge Memorial Park.

On December 26, 2005 LEROY FRANKLIN BROOKS beloved son of the late Daisy and Sherman Brooks; loving brother of William, Robert and Gene Brooks, Leslie Gabler, Susan Todd and the late Roland Brooks, Charles Brooks, Hazel Seibert and Bernice Kraft. Services will be held privately with the family. Inquiries may be directed to the Burgee-Henss-Seitz Funeral Home, Inc. 410-889-3735.

For more than 60 years, fanciers of the steamed Maryland blue crab trekked every summer to a secluded restaurant on the Bush River near Aberdeen and hammered and picked their way to gastronomical nirvana. They traveled to Gabler's Shore Restaurant from New York, Philadelphia and Washington in kind of a cultural homage to the model crab emporium not available in Queens or South Philly. And they traveled from the local crab capitals along Eastern Avenue and Belair Road. But these are sad days around Harford County.

On July 10, 2005 CONSTANCE MAY GABLER (nee Slater) of Columbia, wife of George W. Hilton, beloved mother of Eric Gabler and his wife Martha, Carol Kelley and her husband David, Grant Gabler and his wife Laurie and Amy Stefhon and her husband Ralph, also survived by nine grandchildren. Relatives and friends are invited to call at the GARY L. KAUFMAN FUNERAL HOME AT MEADOWRIDGE MEMORIAL PARK, INC., 7250 Washington Blvd, Elkridge (Exit 6 Off Rt 100) on Tuesday 3 to 5 and 7 to 9 P.M, where funeral services will be held in the Vermillion Chapel on July 13, 2005 at 1 P.M. Interment Meadowridge Memorial Park.

The frail 68-year-old woman takes a puff on her cigarette, coughs painfully and tries again.She's not well, she says. It's been a difficult year for Irene Gabler.Her husband, Bud, died last May, and the exhausting world of the family's crab house in Aberdeen has taken its toll."It's been a bumpy road," says Ms. Gabler, a former West Virginian who arrived in the Harford County town 46 years ago, wondering, "What am I going to do out here?"The young nurse had come to the secluded spot on the Bush River because, "I married the man."

Imagine the scandal if William Jefferson Clinton's account books were to reveal that he had spent thousands of dollars to stock the White House cellars with more than 20,000 bottles of the world's finest imported wines.But as Baltimore author James M. Gabler notes in his new book, that is precisely what Thomas Jefferson did during his two terms in office. It didn't seem to hurt his performance too much. And, of course, he used his own money.Mr. Gabler's book, "Passions: The Wines and Travels of Thomas Jefferson" (Bacchus Press, 1995, $29.95)

On December 26, 2005 LEROY FRANKLIN BROOKS beloved son of the late Daisy and Sherman Brooks; loving brother of William, Robert and Gene Brooks, Leslie Gabler, Susan Todd and the late Roland Brooks, Charles Brooks, Hazel Seibert and Bernice Kraft. Services will be held privately with the family. Inquiries may be directed to the Burgee-Henss-Seitz Funeral Home, Inc. 410-889-3735.

The answering machine at a Columbia residence had a most welcome message for Grant R. Gabler yesterday. A voice told him he had won a $165,000 house in Carroll County.Mr. Gabler held the winning ticket for the 1994 House With A Heart, a two-story, four-bedroom model donated by Masonry Contractors Inc. to the Have a Heart for the Homeless Foundation.Mr. Gabler, 36, a bachelor, recently returned to college and moved back to his parents' home. He will soon finish his courses, but until the drawing had no way to buy a home.

In the publicity materials for Neal Gabler's masterful biography of once-famous but now forgotten gossip guru Walter Winchell can be found these magic words: "Optioned by Martin Scorsese for a major motion picture."Winchell would be ecstatic. As much a megalomaniac as a journalistic phenomenon, Winchell always feared no one would remember him -- and in the 22 years since his death, obscurity largely has been his fate. Now Winchell once again will be the center of attention, a figure of controversy.

Evelyn Marilyn Gabler, 80, legal secretaryEvelyn Marilyn Gabler, a legal secretary, died in her sleep Sunday at her home in Anneslie. She was 80.Born Evelyn Marilyn Mathewson in Hartford, Conn., she moved to Baltimore at the age of 18 and graduated from Western High School.In 1941, she married Forrest Raymond Gabler, an attorney and certified public accountant.Mrs. Gabler worked as her husband's legal secretary for more than 40 years, until his death in 1989. She continued to work at Gabler, Edwards & Associates -- the law firm her husband founded in Rodgers Forge during the 1950s -- and was working there at the time of her death.

The Everyman Theatre is bringing an updated version of the classic Henrik Ibsen play Hedda Gabler to Baltimore next week. Written in 1890, Ibsen questioned the role of women in Victorian society through his protagonist Hedda, an affluent woman trapped in a marriage to a struggling scholar. The adaptation, written by acclaimed up-and-comer Jon Robin Baitz, stays true to Ibsen's work but cuts down on much of the original text and replaces it with a more modern vocabulary. "This is a new approach for Hedda -- it's sexy and dangerous and fun," said Deborah Hazlett, a member of the resident acting company at Everyman who plays Hedda.

When Edward Severn stands on the dock of his Bush River home on a winter day, he sometimes catches sight of an eagle, perched at the edge of a hole in the frozen water, waiting. From his perch on the southern tip of the Perryman peninsula, Severn, 65, is waiting, too - for something he never dreamed of when he was swimming and fishing here as a kid, or when he and his wife, Sandra, built their home next to a beloved crab house called Gabler's Shore Restaurant. Severn is getting some new neighbors, not one or two, or even 10 or two dozen, but 54, in single-family homes planned for lots of one-tenth of an acre next door.

Theda Bara, the legendary actress of the silent screen, was the original Vamp, but she pales in contrast to Hedda Gabler, the selfish, immoral and conniving vixen created by Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen some 20 years before Theda started leading men to their cinematic doom. Ibsen's play Hedda Gabler, at the Kittamaqundi Theatre in Oliver's Carriage House in Columbia through Saturday, is the tale of a bored middle-class housewife married to an aspiring pillar of the community, scholar George Tesman.

For more than 60 years, fanciers of the steamed Maryland blue crab trekked every summer to a secluded restaurant on the Bush River near Aberdeen and hammered and picked their way to gastronomical nirvana. They traveled to Gabler's Shore Restaurant from New York, Philadelphia and Washington in kind of a cultural homage to the model crab emporium not available in Queens or South Philly. And they traveled from the local crab capitals along Eastern Avenue and Belair Road. But these are sad days around Harford County.

If she had her way, Hedda Gabler might have been a control freak. That's the distinct sense you get from director Michael Kahn's production of Henrik Ibsen's drama at Washington's Shakespeare Theatre. Kahn begins his production with an added wordless scene in which we see actress Judith Light as an uncharacteristically disheveled Hed- da. Seated in the middle of the stage, still in her nightgown and robe, she looks stunned, distraught. Suddenly she puts her hand to her mouth, rises and breaks into dry heaves as she battles against an onslaught of morning sickness.

It didn't matter that the sun never appeared, that the thermometer never reached 70 degrees or what the calendar said. In Maryland, summer starts on Memorial Day weekend, when the crab-slinging begins. So yesterday, at Gabler's Shore Restaurant, the mallets were raised in mass tribute to the new season and to the harmony of Old Bay and cold beer. At this Harford County crab house on the Bush River, the summer tradition has been preserved by three generations of one family. "That's what we love about it," says Brenda Edmondson, who made a three-hour pilgrimage to the land of Chesapeake blue crabs with family and friends from Pottsville, Pa., yesterday morning.

Gabler's, 2200 Perryman Road, Aberdeen. (410) 272-0626. Open Tuesdays to Sundays, closed Mondays except holidays. No credit cards. No-smoking area: no. Prices vary according to availability. *** When Gabler's (pronounced Gay-bler's) turned up on a rival publication's list of the 40 best restaurants in the area, I was amazed. After 20 years off and on doing this job, I haven't been to all the good restaurants around Baltimore; but I thought I had at least heard of them.With all the crab houses we have -- some of them quite famous -- how did Gabler's make the final cut?

It didn't matter that the sun never appeared, that the thermometer never reached 70 degrees or what the calendar said. In Maryland, summer starts on Memorial Day weekend, when the crab-slinging begins. So yesterday, at Gabler's Shore Restaurant, the mallets were raised in mass tribute to the new season and to the harmony of Old Bay and cold beer. At this Harford County crab house on the Bush River, the summer tradition has been preserved by three generations of one family. "That's what we love about it," says Brenda Edmondson, who made a three-hour pilgrimage to the land of Chesapeake blue crabs with family and friends from Pottsville, Pa., yesterday morning.

We're going to hell in a popcorn bag, clutching a jumbo drink. This wail has gone up periodically throughout the 100-year history of the movies, which every decade or so are observed to be too big, too noisy - and most of all, too powerful.The latest cinematic Cassandra is Neal Gabler. His book "Life the Movie: How Entertainment Conquered Reality" (Alfred A. Knopf, 320 pages, $25) brings erudition and grace to the time-honored tradition of movie-bashing. Gabler contends that the movies - and their kid cousins, TV shows - have not only co-opted the prime time and weekend hours of Americans, they have infiltrated every institution of our shared life.

ONE CHARACTERISTIC of Marylanders, whether they are born here or have moved here, is that they have strong opinions about crab cakes. Another characteristic is that they tend to believe the best crab cakes known to mankind happen to be made by them.This was the case at a recent Saturday night dinner party held at the Ruxton home of Jim and Anita Gabler. There, a dozen Marylanders -- some natives and some immigrants -- held a crab-cake tasting.The idea for the contest stemmed from boasts made at a previous gathering of the group, whose members meet in one another's homes about four times a year to eat good food, drink fine wine and engage in spirited conversations.