Helen Delich

WASHINGTON -- From Helen Delich Bentley's perspective, immortality is not worth dying for.Last week, some of her friends on Capitol Hill hatched a plan to name Baltimore's Beltway for the curmudgeonly former Baltimore County congresswoman.But the proposal collapsed this week after members of the state's congressional delegation opposed the idea and legislative staff members learned that federal highways are named almost exclusively for dead people."I told them I do not intend to commit suicide to have a road named after me," an irritated Bentley said yesterday.

The Baltimore Sun's front page on July 22, 1959, carried the news accompanied by a six-column photo: The world's first nuclear-powered cargo ship had been launched at Camden, N.J. The christening of the $47 million N/S Savannah was bigger than news about legislation to extend the GI Bill of Rights, bigger than a Cape Canaveral rocket launch, bigger, even, than a federal court ruling to allow the steamy novel "Lady Chatterley's Lover" to be...

When Helen Delich Bentley, the former Maryland congresswoman and journalist, cleans out her closets, museums take notice. Curators working for the American Textile History Museum in Massachusetts descended this week on Bentley's Lutherville home, combing for days through the racks and racks of clothes, shoes and hats the political powerhouse had amassed over the years. In the family room, there were racks of heavy wool suits by American designer Pauline TrigM-hre and intricate evening dresses by Oscar de la Renta.

Helen Delich Bentley served five terms in Congress, was chairwoman of the Federal Maritime Commission and has the Port of Baltimore named for her. So you'd think that at the National Maritime Day celebration last Saturday (5/19) in Baltimore everybody would be on board with that chunk of information, right David Matsuda? Not quite. The head of the U.S. Maritime Administration called her, “Helen Detrick Bentley,” before handing off to his boss, Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, who entered Congress in 1995, the year Bentley departed.

It took 50 years, but Rep. Helen Delich Bentley finally got the Christmas card Marine Private William M. Smith wanted to send her Dec. 7, 1941, from Pearl Harbor.Bentley, R-2nd, was then just Helen Delich, a student at the University of Nevada in Reno. Smith, assigned to the USS Phoenix, was the brother of Delich's brother-in-law.Smith's card, postmarked the day of the Japanese attack on the Hawaii base, was held back by the ship's officers for security reasons, according to Bentley's office.

Here is how members of Maryland's delegation on Capitol Hill were recorded on important roll-call votes last week:SENATENo votes were cast in the Senate last week.HOUSE: GLOBAL COMPETITIVENESSBy a vote of 243 for and 167 against, the House sent the Senate a bill (HR 820) using government as a catalyst to make U.S. manufacturing companies more globally competitive.The bill authorizes $1.54 billion over two years on programs such as Commerce Department outreach centers, funding large-scale research and development consortia, and providing research assistance and federal funds to individual companies.

OCEAN CITY -- Feisty, Clinton-bashing Maryland Republicans made Anne Arundel County Executive Robert R. Neall the front-runner for their party's 1994 gubernatorial nomination yesterday.Though proclaiming the virtues of unity and the potential for GOP gains next year, the rank and file watched a rift grow wider between party leaders and Rep. Helen Delich Bentley, a Second District Republican.Meeting here for its spring convention, the party heard its chairman, Calvert countian Joyce Lyons Terhes, call President Clinton "a philandering, lying, draft dodger [who]

Michael C. Hickey Jr., who is waging an underdog campaign && to unseat four-term incumbent U.S. Rep. Helen Delich Bentley, has demanded that she resign as president of Serb-Net Inc., a private Serbian-American public relations and lobbying group.Mrs. Bentley, who helped found the group, said she is merely the honorary president and will not resign. She said she ceased being active president in June.Mr. Hickey, a Harford County attorney and Democratic nominee in the second congressional race, also renewed charges yesterday that Mrs. Bentley is neglecting her local constituents and using her elected office to support Serbia's cause.

As a would-be governor of Maryland, Rep. Helen Delich Bentley should give a close reading to what a real governor -- William Donald Schaefer -- has to say about the North American Free Trade Agreement. On the page opposite, Mr. Schaefer says NAFTA is not just a good idea but an "absolute necessity." He poses two rhetorical questions:"Will this agreement create jobs in Maryland? The answer is yes."Will this agreement be good for Maryland economically? Again, the answer is yes."Yet Maryland's Second District congresswoman has become the anti-NAFTA movement's favorite Republican, the one protectionist voice that can be relied upon to bash Mexico as she has bashed Japan for years.

Irvin F. Kemp Jr., a retired WMAR-TV film editor whose career spanned more than 30 years, died Jan. 9 of lung cancer at his Parkville home. He was 84. Mr. Kemp, the son of a plumber and a homemaker, was born in Baltimore and raised in Hamilton. After graduating from Polytechnic Institute, Mr. Kemp was drafted into the Army in 1942. He served as a military policeman, as part of an engineering unit and as a truck driver in Europe. He was discharged in 1946. After the war, Mr. Kemp went to work as a machinist in the experimental laboratory at the old Glenn L. Martin Co. plant in Middle River.

Fifty years ago, the infamous "Baltimore bottleneck" was unplugged. On the day after Thanksgiving in 1957, Gov. Theodore R. McKeldin opened the Baltimore Harbor Tunnel. No more would motorists traveling between Washington and New York or Boston have to inch their way stoplight by stoplight - 51 by one account - through the streets of Baltimore. At the time there were no Beltway and no Interstate 95. The main routes through the city were U.S. 1 and U.S. 40. On a good day, a lucky driver might make the slog through town in 45 minutes.

The port of Baltimore was renamed last night for Helen Delich Bentley, whose work on its behalf over a half-century as a journalist, legislator and consultant was born of a devotion to the city's waterfront instilled by her mother, who'd arrived by steamship. Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. officially named the state's public marine terminals the "Helen Delich Bentley Port of Baltimore" yesterday evening, creating a permanent legacy for the former congresswoman. The governor made the announcement at the South Locust Point cruise ship terminal during the port of Baltimore's 300th anniversary fundraising gala, the centerpiece of a campaign to raise the profile of the industrial facility that employs thousands and contributes millions of dollars to the economy.

When Helen Delich Bentley, the former Maryland congresswoman and journalist, cleans out her closets, museums take notice. Curators working for the American Textile History Museum in Massachusetts descended this week on Bentley's Lutherville home, combing for days through the racks and racks of clothes, shoes and hats the political powerhouse had amassed over the years. In the family room, there were racks of heavy wool suits by American designer Pauline TrigM-hre and intricate evening dresses by Oscar de la Renta.

WASHINGTON -- From Helen Delich Bentley's perspective, immortality is not worth dying for.Last week, some of her friends on Capitol Hill hatched a plan to name Baltimore's Beltway for the curmudgeonly former Baltimore County congresswoman.But the proposal collapsed this week after members of the state's congressional delegation opposed the idea and legislative staff members learned that federal highways are named almost exclusively for dead people."I told them I do not intend to commit suicide to have a road named after me," an irritated Bentley said yesterday.

"If you hear my knees knocking, they are," Helen Delich Bentley said yesterday morning as she took the podium for the waterfront news conference that began her gubernatorial campaign.It was an uncharacteristic admission for a woman who has had many adjectives applied to her over nearly a half-century as a reporter, editor, Federal Maritime Commission chairwoman, politician and member of Congress. Words like indefatigable, intimidating, demanding. Words like compassionate and trailblazing.

As a would-be governor of Maryland, Rep. Helen Delich Bentley should give a close reading to what a real governor -- William Donald Schaefer -- has to say about the North American Free Trade Agreement. On the page opposite, Mr. Schaefer says NAFTA is not just a good idea but an "absolute necessity." He poses two rhetorical questions:"Will this agreement create jobs in Maryland? The answer is yes."Will this agreement be good for Maryland economically? Again, the answer is yes."Yet Maryland's Second District congresswoman has become the anti-NAFTA movement's favorite Republican, the one protectionist voice that can be relied upon to bash Mexico as she has bashed Japan for years.