Gilliam

On Tuesday, May 13, 2008 HAZEL DELORES GILLIAM (nee Banks). Viewing Tuesday May 20, 2008, 3-8 pm at Vaughn C. Greene Funeral Home, 5151 Baltimore National Pike. Wake Wednesday, May 21, at 10:30 a.m. followed by Homegoing Celebration at 11 a.m. at First Baptist Church, 525 N. Caroline St., Baltimore, MD 21205

Simmie Knox, an acclaimed artist known for his portrait of President Bill Clinton and other American leaders, will present his portrait of the late philanthropist James H. Gilliam Jr. to St. John's College President Christopher Nelson. Knox, based in Washington, D.C., was selected by St. John's to paint the portrait. Nelson will receive it in the president's office at 3 p.m. Tuesday. Knox has been commissioned to paint portraits of notable Americans such as Clinton, Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., Muhammad Ali, congressmen and state senators, a New York City mayor, civic leaders, and numerous individuals, many in Maryland.

Scheronda Gilliam took her son to the Harriet Lane Clinic in East Baltimore to make sure he was healthy. But besides medical advice for her baby, Gilliam received tips about GED classes and job training for herself, information that could help her son as well. "I want to make a better person of myself," said Gilliam, a 33-year-old janitor who would rather work with computers. Helping Gilliam to reach her technology goal were Sam Zand and Dan Cataldo, Johns Hopkins University students who are volunteers with Project Health, a program that connects disenfranchised and low-income adults with public benefits such as medical care, housing and education.

The biggest shock about all the spying that has been going on at Hewlett-Packard is that everyone finds it so shocking. After all, the company was only taking its cues from a White House that has decreed that anything goes when it comes to maintaining security. Want to steal phone records? Go ahead. Need to snoop and spy? Please do. No court order required, much less an act of Congress. Only those with something to hide need worry, right? Presumably the next item on HP's agenda would have been torture - excuse me, make that "robust interrogation."

The cool quotient of Fells Point has ratcheted up a couple of notches with the addition of a new hangout, Tea-ology. Think coffeehouse for tea drinkers. That's what owners Sunny Gilliam and Del Powell had in mind when they opened the place on Eastern Avenue a couple of months ago. "I used to be an avid coffee drinker and switched to tea," says Gilliam. "I noticed tons of cool coffeehouses [around Baltimore], but no teahouses. So, we decided to apply a cool, urban feel to a teahouse." Tea-ology has a certain Zen atmosphere in its use of soft "tea colors" in the interior.

Eight-year-old Kevin Wang waited calmly when his young opponent forgot to hit his time clock after moving. He shared his pencil so they could both "annotate" the match, or write down all the moves. But when his outgunned adversary seemed to be doing his best to steer the match to a draw, Kevin had had enough. He finished the boy off, cornering the king with two rooks. Kevin, a third-grader from Potomac, was one of 320 kids who competed at the Maryland State Scholastic Team Chess Championship yesterday in Cockeysville.

Mozart's birthday The lowdown -- Tomorrow is the 250th birthday of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, an anniversary being marked around the world. The National Symphony Orchestra is doing its part by offering a semi-staged presentation of one of his earliest operatic successes, The Abduction from the Seraglio. The comic plot involves a Spanish nobleman planning to free his beloved, who has been enslaved in the Turkish harem of Pasha Selim, and it's all set to brilliantly colored music. Leonard Slatkin conducts these performances, which feature an unlikely choice in the speaking role of the Pasha -- ABC's veteran newsman Sam Donaldson.

Painter Sam Gilliam, the subject of a major career retrospective during the fall at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, shows off his latest prints in Premonitions and Reflections, a delightful exhibition that opens Friday in the new Center for the Arts at Towson State University. Gilliam's work here, created within the past five years, shows that he is every bit as inventive and masterful a craftsman in the print medium as in his better-known paintings and sculptures. The print show is accompanied by a whimsical installation by the artist consisting of five large, brightly painted fabric whisk balls hung from the ceiling in the smaller gallery on the art center's ground floor.

Winnie Gilliam, who founded and was pastor of an East Baltimore church, died of respiratory failure Jan. 5 at Sinai Hospital. The Parkville resident was 76. Born and raised in Greenville, N.C., the former Winnie Moore moved to Baltimore with her family during the 1940s and went to work at Hold Tight Rubber Co. In 1952, she established St. Paul Apostolic Holiness Church at Orleans and Aisquith streets. Later, she turned over her preaching duties to her husband, Ernest Gilliam Sr., who was an elder in the Apostolic church.