Highlandtown

Joseph Michael Regan, a longtime Highlandtown tavern owner and World War II veteran, died of heart failure Jan. 23 in his home above his Grundy Street establishment. He was 84. Mr. Regan, the son of an Irish-born East Baltimore saloonkeeper, was born in Baltimore and raised in a rowhouse at Grundy Street and Foster Avenue. He attended city public schools and enlisted in the Navy in 1941. He served aboard the USS Pheasant, a minesweeper, as a fireman in the ship's engine room. During 1943, the minesweeper helped protect convoys steaming along the Eastern Seaboard and Gulf Coast before being assigned to Europe, where it swept mines before the Normandy invasion on June 6, 1944.

Margaret G. Majors, 85, active in community affairsMargaret G. Majors, a lifelong Highlandtown resident who was active in community affairs, died Aug. 21 of pneumonia at a nursing home in Acton, Mass. She was 85.Mrs. Majors, who moved to the nursing home last year, had helped to establish and served on the advisory board of the Albert Witzke Medical Center on Bank Street. She also had been president of the Southeast Senior Citizens Coalition, which was affiliated with the Southeast Community Organization.

Erwin `Curly' Hartung, 85, manager at WestinghouseErwin "Curly" Hartung, retired human resources manager for Westinghouse Electric Corp. and a volunteer, died Tuesday from complications of Alzheimer's disease at St. Elizabeth's Rehabilitation and Nursing Center in Baltimore. He was 85.A resident of Southwest Baltimore for 47 years, Mr. Hartung was human resources manager for Westinghouse's Linthicum facility from 1952 until he retired in 1977. He joined Westinghouse in Pittsburgh in 1936.

Stuart L. Frye, 38, wind and solar engineerStuart L. Frye, an engineer of solar and wind power, died at his Annapolis home Dec. 8 after a long battle with cancer. He was 38.Born in Baltimore, he moved to the Boston area as a boy and received his bachelor of science and mechanical engineering degrees from the University of Massachusetts at Lowell.After discovering that he had Native American ancestors, he lived on a Native American reservation for a time during the 1980s."He had a deep love and respect for the Native American people and their culture," said his brother, Mark Frye of Lowell, Mass.

A man accused of killing a Baltimore City teacher was charged Wednesday in the fatal shooting of a pregnant woman who implicated him in the teacher's slaying, police said.Detective Al Marcus said Kenyatta Charles Ross, 22, of the 2500 block of Edgecombe Circle North was taken Wednesday from the Baltimore City Detention Center to police headquarters, where he was charged with first-degree murder in the death of Candice Sharp, 18, of the 3300 block of Guilford Ave.Sharp, who was the mother of two young children, was shot to death Jan. 9 in the 5600 block of Haddon Ave., police said.

Save East Timor while it's still there.Don't look now, but the independent counsel investigation of Alexis Herman is the first into an allegation of a genuinely impeachable offense.The end of Haussner's does not mean that Baltimore is dying, only that Highlandtown needs revitalization.Next, they will put a roof over the Inner Harbor and call it Marriott Creek.Pub Date: 9/13/99

The Fells Point Creative Alliance will inaugurate its new performance and screening space on Oct. 7 with a screening of Lydia Douglas' "Nappy." The documentary, an examination of African-American women's relationship with their hair, will be shown at Ground Floor (the former Daily Grind building), 1726 Thames St.Alliance director Megan Hamilton is confident that the move from the group's former space, the Lodge in Highlandtown, will be good for the weekly performance series, which will now take place Thursdays instead of Fridays.

Cell phone in hand, Dominic Wani cruises in his satellite office -- a black Toyota Corolla packed with paperwork -- for up to 10 hours a day.The Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service's Baltimore representative drives from one city or state office to another to get new refugees the services they need.When he's out of the car, his Randallstown home serves as a makeshift office.His work should get a little less convoluted with next month's opening of the Baltimore Resettlement Center in Highlandtown.

THE RECENT closing of Haussner's robbed the Highlandtown neighborhood of its 73-year-old landmark restaurant. That's why a wave of development on Eastern Avenue is so encouraging.The Enoch Pratt Free Library has announced plans to construct its first regional "super library" at Eastern Avenue and Eaton Street. The $8 million library should open in 2003.The multimillion-dollar conversion of the old Patterson Theater into a cultural arts center has started. When completed in 2001, the complex will include a 150-seat theater, an art gallery and caf plus 11 studios for artists.

A stubborn four-alarm fire in a vacant Highlandtown warehouse kept firefighters busy for hours yesterday as billowing black smoke from Southeast Baltimore fanned out across the city.There were no injuries, although one of the 100 or so firefighters who fought the blaze was treated for muscle spasms.The fire began shortly before 10 a.m. in the 100 block of S. Oldham St. Michael Maybin, a spokesman for the Baltimore City Fire Department, said about 50 pieces of equipment battled the fire for nearly 3 1/2 hours before it was brought under control.

Kornel Korczynski, a retired East Baltimore baker, died of complications from dementia Sept. 8 at Carroll Hospital Center in Westminster. He was 88. Born in Baltimore, the son of Ukrainian immigrants, he was raised in Curtis Bay and Highlandtown. He was educated in city public schools and at St. Mary's Industrial School. During World War II, he served as a military policeman and baker in the Army. "When he was in the Army, the Germans taught him how to bake," said a brother, Emil Korczynski of Felton, Pa. After being discharged, he returned to Baltimore and opened the Dutch Oven Bakery on Mace Avenue in Essex.

Ethel Marie Erdossy, a homemaker active in Highlandtown senior citizen circles, died of congestive heart failure Monday at Stella Maris Hospice. The Southeast Baltimore resident was 89. Born Ethel Harris in Baltimore and raised in Hampden and Perry Hall, she attended Perry Hall Elementary School. "We carried water by the bucketful from a spring," she wrote in a memoir about her childhood spent on a Baltimore County farm. "Weekends were spent with relatives sharing potluck supper, enjoying music and dancing."

Highlandtown is an artists' haven and a city arts and entertainment district bounded by Haven Street on the east, Pratt Street to the north, Patterson Park to the west and Eastern Avenue to the south. The neighborhood has a blue-collar, small-town America feel. But, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, 70 percent of its workforce is white-collar, 65 percent of the households don't have children and the median age is 36. It was traditionally a German-American blue-collar working neighborhood that is now a Polish, Italian, Irish and Latino community of artists.

Southeast Baltimore has stable neighborhoods such as Canton, Highlandtown, Fells Point, Brewer's Hill and Greektown. Now there's an opportunity to create a new neighborhood that could add 3,500 to 4,000 residences to the same part of town over the next 10 years, with a stop on the proposed Red Line as the focal point. The "Highlandtown Loft District" is one suggested name for the neighborhood, which could have some of the character of Baltimore's Clipper Mill precinct, the vitality of the Station North arts and entertainment district, and the amenities of a new area such as Albemarle Square.

Baltimore's former Highlandtown Middle School is targeted for conversion to a $30 million apartment and retail project called The Patterson, under a plan proposed by Focus Development of Baltimore and accepted by the city. Baltimore housing commissioner Paul T. Graziano announced this week that Focus has been selected over two other groups that expressed interest in recycling the 1934 school at 101 S. Ellwood Ave., in the Baltimore-Linwood neighborhood. Focus, headed by Shaffin Jetha and Rick Diehl, proposed to convert the vacant public school by 2012 to 120 to 150 market-rate apartments plus about 1,500 square feet of retail space, 2,000 square feet of "interior meeting space" and 110 to 140 indoor parking spaces.

Joseph Michael Regan, a longtime Highlandtown tavern owner and World War II veteran, died of heart failure Jan. 23 in his home above his Grundy Street establishment. He was 84. Mr. Regan, the son of an Irish-born East Baltimore saloonkeeper, was born in Baltimore and raised in a rowhouse at Grundy Street and Foster Avenue. He attended city public schools and enlisted in the Navy in 1941. He served aboard the USS Pheasant, a minesweeper, as a fireman in the ship's engine room. During 1943, the minesweeper helped protect convoys steaming along the Eastern Seaboard and Gulf Coast before being assigned to Europe, where it swept mines before the Normandy invasion on June 6, 1944.

It has never been worse for Juan Montes. But you won't find his situation reflected in official unemployment figures. As an illegal immigrant from Mexico, he flies below the radar screen in good times and bad. Montes, 26, says he came to Baltimore 10 years ago and has held a string of low-wage jobs in landscaping, cleaning and the like. The past two years have been tough in terms of finding jobs, but the past month has been toughest. His most recent job was as a $9-an-hour school janitor.

Your eyes never quite knew where to gaze at art-filled old Haussner's Restaurant in Highlandtown. But if you looked toward the ceiling, near the lights and the ventilation system, a long row of paintings in heavy gilt frames seemed to be the extra guests at the party. There, above the larger, more eye-catching paintings arrayed at comfortable eye level, were the works of Edouard-Leon Cortes, a French painter who lived from 1882 to 1969. It was a Cortes painting, named the Flower Market, that made national news this week when it turned up, left as a donation at the Goodwill Industries of the Chesapeake at Easton.

Virgilio Guglielmi, a white-haired 77-year-old whose cheeks were a little red after a few glasses of his homemade red wine, claims that he was born in the vineyards and started drinking wine in Italy as soon as his mother stopped breast-feeding him. Don't laugh. "That's not a joke," he said. Wine, he intoned as bocce balls clinked in the background, is the best solution for managing stress. "Sometimes I'm down and I go down to the wine cellar and a few minutes later I'm happy," he said.

The Rev. George Kalpaxis, the longtime leader of St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church in Highlandtown, died Saturday of complications from a recent fall. He was 89 and was visiting one of his sons in Texas. Born in Connecticut to Greek immigrants, Father Kalpaxis became one of the first American-born Greek Orthodox priests. In 1942, he graduated from Holy Cross Theological School in Pomfret, Conn. Soon after, he and his wife, Athena Kostas, were assigned to a church in Keene, N.H. The couple, who had three children, spent the next 30 years moving around the country.