Hampden

Every weekday morning, at about the same hour that dozens of young teachers are finishing their coffee and heading off to classrooms, construction workers arrive for the day at the hillside campus where the educators live. The construction workers are putting the finishing touches on the sprawling Union Mill, a 19th-century loft building once occupied by a textile company and then, for many years, by a firm that made miniature toys for Baltimore's beloved Christmas gardens. Located along the banks of the Jones Falls in Hampden, the once-dormant industrial address has been transformed over the last year into a self-contained, $20 million beehive of residences, offices and meeting rooms that also includes a gym and a small restaurant.

The Tony Hawk Foundation has given $25,000 toward the construction of a skateboard park in Roosevelt Park in Hampden. The Skatepark of Baltimore, a nonprofit group dedicated to raising enough money to build a place for area youth to skateboard safely, received one of 12 grants given by the foundation this spring, according to a news release. The group has until the end of May to raise $75,000 in order to get a matching grant from the Baltimore City Department of Recreation and Parks.

McCabe's is back. The homey Hampden institution last winter, rather suddenly. Just as suddenly, or at least without much fanfare, McCabe's reopened on April 23 with a new management and ownership team who are part of the group behind the successful Sonar nightclub. But don't expect velvet ropes. McCabe's old customers, who were always as likely to be Roland Park residents as Hampdenites, will find their old standby has been thoroughly renovated, and much brightened up. But, according to co-owner Patrick Ito, who will be running the kitchen, McCabe's still feel like a neighborhood place, and the menu has been designed for everyday eating.

The father of a student at the Academy for College and Career Exploration in Hampden was arrested in the school about 10 a.m. Wednesday after allegedly bringing a handgun to a disciplinary meeting for his son, according to Baltimore police. Rodney Parker, 39, had taken a "hack" or unlicensed cab to the school after his son was brought into the front office for a disciplinary infraction and a parent meeting was scheduled, said Detective Vernon Davis, a police spokesman. As Parker exited the cab, he allegedly fumbled and then dropped a .22 caliber gun, which was noticed by the cab driver, Davis said.

On a hot September afternoon in 2007, Devon Richardson, 14, a chronic truant with a juvenile rap sheet, was shooting malt liquor bottles and rooftop birds with a stolen shotgun, when his brother said, "I bet you can't shoot that lady. " Without aiming, Richardson fired off a lucky shot 160 feet in the air. On the receiving end was Janice Letmate, a legal secretary and grandmother, who had just gotten off the bus near her east Baltimore row house. When Det. Kelvin Sewell finally got Richardson to confess to the killing of Letmate, the 4-foot, 10-inch-tall teen hung his head and said, "I shot her. Can I go home now?"

A jury acquitted one man and prosecutors dropped charges against another in the 2010 murder of a 73-year-old Hampden cab driver who was beaten to death with a tire iron, the State's Attorney's Office confirmed. Mark Cheshire, a spokesman for city prosecutors, confirmed that a jury had acquitted Gary Latham, 29, on all charges, and based on that prosecutors dropped charges against a second man, Bobby Wisner, 31.  Additional information was not immediately available Tuesday evening.  When police charged Wisner, they wrote in charging documents that 73-year-old John Sandy had identified his attacker as "Bobby,"  who he said was the brother of a man who lived with him. He slipped into a coma, but eventually woke up and identified Wisner from a photo lineup.

Patrick Dolan's parents didn't need a suit to bury their son. "Patrick was not a suit kind of a person," said his father, Bill. "I think he would really like to be buried in his Lardarius Webb jersey," said his mother, Geraldine. And so on the Saturday after Thanksgiving, Patrick Dolan went to his final resting place wearing the No. 21 jersey of the Ravens cornerback — a shirt he had worn during only one game before he was stabbed to death on a Baltimore street in Belair-Edison.

When Japanese aircraft bombed Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, the country prepared to go to war and Ruth Klein prepared to lose the job she had started just six days before.It took a little longer than that, but time and recession have claimed Howard C. Heiss Jewelers, a Hampden institution at the corner of 36th Street and Roland Avenue.With owner Howard Heiss Jr. looking to retire and no buyer available, the store began a liquidation sale Thursday and will be gone before the store's 58th anniversary June 13."

I am neither proud nor ashamed of it, but I am a Hampdenite. My grandfather saw to that when he started schlepping groceries on Ash and 36th back in 1929, and we've been living or toiling here ever since. So I can confidently say, with all the love and authority of a long-time insider, that it's a weird old place. I knew that by the time I was 5 years old. Early one summer morning that year, my father and I were traveling east on 41st Street when we witnessed an elderly man wearing a sleeveless undershirt, short pants and black socks vacuuming his front lawn with a Hoover upright.

Has it really been 10 years, Hampden? Well, according to my records, 2012 marks my 10th year as the Messenger's neighborhood columnist. It seems like just yesterday I was irking residents over my surprisingly controversial views about wall-to-wall carpeting, paneling and drop ceilings. Well, we've all come a long way since then, haven't we? One thing that has remained a constant, however, is the New Year's Eve Ball Drop and the annual running of Baby New Year (Bob Hosier greeting crowds wearing nothing but a diaper and a pacifier)