History Teacher

L. Brooks Lakin, a high school history teacher whose relentlessly high standards and intellectualism challenged and inspired generations of students, died Thursday of complications from a brain tumor at his Reisterstown home. He was 70. Mr. Lakin was a revered teacher at the Park School in Brooklandville for 40 years -- longer than any other teacher in the institution's history, said John Roemer, a fellow history teacher. "Here is a teacher who gives the most ferocious tests in the world, requires extraordinarily difficult research papers and asks tough questions in class -- and kids are knocking down the door trying to get in the classroom," Mr. Roemer said.

Baltimore: State honor Whitehead named top history teacher K. Wise Whitehead, a social studies teacher at West Baltimore Middle School, has been named Maryland History Teacher of the Year. Whitehead, a Baltimore resident, will receive $1,000 and becomes a candidate for the National History Teacher of the Year award, to be selected this fall. West Baltimore Middle School's library will receive history books and materials. The award is co-sponsored by the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History and Preserve America, a White House initiative encouraging local participation in preserving the nation's heritage.

Robert J. Hewes, 64, teacher, guidance counselor Robert J. Hewes, who worked for 30 years in Anne Arundel County schools as a high school history teacher, then a guidance counselor, died of pancreatic cancer Friday at his Pasadena home. He was 64. Born in Baltimore and raised in Linthicum Heights, Mr. Hewes was a 1955 Brooklyn Park High School graduate. He earned a bachelor's degree from what is now Towson University and a master's degree in counseling from the Johns Hopkins University.

The Double, by Jose Saramago. Harcourt. 336 pages. $25. Most English classes teach us that parables and morality tales are antiquated forms of literature, replaced, in the way of natural evolution, by that creation of hardy Anglo-Saxon realism, the novel. But in truth, what new agers call "wisdom literature" has never left us, and the Portugese writer, Jose Sara-mago, has imbued it with enough highbrow knowingness to win him the 1998 Nobel Prize. In his new novel, The Double, Saramago turns to one of the archetypal themes of world literature, as old as folktale and yet deftly pitched to an age of "identity politics."

On Wednesday night, after 18 months of construction and three years of planning, the $500 million Maryland Live Casino in Hanover was ready for prime time. Just after 10 p.m., Roxine Noone of Jessup burst through the doors of the just-opened casino at Arundel Mills mall and whooped her excitement — holding a crisp $100 bill out in front of her. "I have been waiting nine years for this," she said. Judy Sorrell of Annapolis threw her hands into the air as she came through the doors after having waited in line for more than five hours.

John A. McCrudenStation owner, baritoneJohn A. McCruden, a retired service station owner and singer, died Sunday of respiratory failure at the Anne Arundel Medical Center in Annapolis. The Arnold resident was 74.He retired about 10 years ago after owning Jack's Texaco on U.S. 50 in the St. Margarets area for 16 years.The Baltimore native was reared in the Pimlico area and was a graduate of Loyola High School. He also studied voice at the Peabody Conservatory of Music and, as a young man, appeared as a baritone in productions of "HMS Pinafore," "Iolanthe" and other operas at the Lyric Theater.

Zillah Ingram taught her ninth-grade class at Wilde Lake High School in suburban Columbia about the global economy. She showed students how much it costs to make a pair of sneakers overseas and the huge markup that consumers in industrial nations are willing to pay. The students, some of whom would readily pay $100 for a basketball jersey, weren't immediately impressed. "They're just so caught up in the materialism that they're spending whatever they have to be in style," the history teacher said, the same motive that has led adults to act wrongly or criminally in the cases that toppled Enron Corp.

THIS department was much distressed by an Associated Press story shortly after Presidents Day that described what students and an assistant principal at James Monroe High School in Los Angeles thought (or didn't bother to think) about the president for which their school was named.Teacher Caryn Cornell reported that when she asked 15 kids in her detention class who Monroe was, nobody knew. "Their mouths dropped open, like, 'Duh,' " she said, adding it was not funny.No, it wasn't, but we were more aghast by the assertion of assistant principal Alice Parrish, who said Monroe "wasn't exactly among our most distinguished presidents," adding that all she could mention about him was the Monroe Doctrine.

Melinda Abbott kindergarten teacher Last month, Melinda Abbott found herself surrounded by the best of the best among Maryland public school teachers as one of seven finalists in the Maryland Teacher of the Year competition. She ended up losing to Kimberly Oliver, who teaches kindergarten at Broad Acres Elementary School in Montgomery County. But Abbott's fellow teachers and students at Northfield Elementary School in Howard County are very proud of her nonetheless. Abbott displays the mixture of intelligence, education and experience that the best of this region's teachers have to offer.

I was feeling pretty smug Monday after the Maryland Senate passed Sen. Perry Sfikas' bill to mandate study of the Irish potato famine in the public schools -- until I realized I didn't actually know anything about said famine. Couldn't name the decade, although I knew the century. Wasn't sure if the potato was in short supply, or if it was the only thing available when everything else was scarce.(I could spell potato, which put me one up on a former vice president.)So I decided to make a list of every bit of history I remember studying in Maryland's public schools.