History Teacher

The Rev. Virginia H. Leitzel, a retired Baltimore County school teacher who later became an ordained Methodist minister, died Friday from complications of Alzheimer's disease at Gilchrist Hospice Care. She was 84. Virginia Doris Mae Hines was born at the Fort Howard Veterans Administration Hospital in eastern Baltimore County and raised in Sparrows Point. After graduating from Sparrows Point High School in 1942, she enrolled at what was then Western Maryland College, where she earned a bachelor's degree in English and history in 1946.

Edward Standish "Brad" Bradford Jr., a career educator who had been headmaster of Boys' Latin School during the early 1980s, died Thursday from complications after surgery at the Johns Hopkins Hospital. He was 83. The son of a businessman and a homemaker, Mr. Bradford was born and raised in Longmeadow, Mass. After graduating from Admiral Billard Academy in New London, Conn., he served in the Air Force during the Korean War. After being discharged from the service, he earned a bachelor's degree in 1956 from the University of Connecticut.

NAPERVILLE, Ill. - William Hector doesn't just teach high school students about U.S. history. He teaches them about life - and how they can save lives. "If we could just increase organ donations, thousands of lives could be saved every year," Hector says. "It's the most important thing I can teach students." It's a subject the 53-year-old knows a lot about. He was diagnosed with diabetes as a high school sophomore, and his kidneys failed in 1985. After a 13-month wait, he received a kidney transplant - only to have his pancreas shut down, requiring a pancreas transplant a year later.

Larry Benicewicz teaches science, but he lives for the blues.The Lindale-Brooklyn Park Middle School teacher has amassed a collection of more than 100,000 recordings -- all 45s -- of blues artists. He uses his vacations to trace the roots of the blues down the Mississippi River and has brought local blues artists to play for his students.He has immersed himself in the history of the music so deeply that national and international blues publications consider him an authority on the subject.

The voice of William C. Schultheis echoed off stone walls and clapboard Dickeyville homes on July 4th mornings. He spoke through a bullhorn as he led his neighborhood's annual history walk along nearly forgotten mill sites, abandoned streetcar lines and a jail. His audience offered no objections when the history lesson lasted two hours. The retired Baltimore teacher died of lung cancer Wednesday at the Gilchrist Center for Hospice Care. He was 70. Born and raised in Frostburg, he was a Beall High School graduate.

In June 2009, my husband Sam and I slammed down the hatchback of our Honda CRV, the interior bulging with containers of Legos and books, school supplies and board games, and a box of shoes, a tin of Old Bay in the glove compartment. On the roof was a plastic carrier with as much clothing as we could stuff into it: the necessities of five soon-to-be expatriates. Everything else was in the basement of our Lutherville home, with a new family moving in at the end of the month. Our mission: to give our three children a taste of life in a foreign country, where the language, food, and culture would be vastly different from suburban Baltimore.

Princeton, N.J. -- Edward Witten, who may be the smartest man in the world, seems slightly puzzled by the question put to him: How, his interrogator wants to know, would he describe a typical day in the life of a theoretical physicist? The question is followed by a long silence, one that threatens to turn uncomfortable. It fills his large, corner office at the Institute for Advanced Study, a theoretical research center that is home to a small group of the world's finest thinkers.Which is what Dr. Witten is doing right now: thinking before he answers the question.

Six faculty members at Gilman School are participating in Swim Across America's "open swim" Sept. 18 to raise money for cancer research and to honor family members who are fighting or died of cancer. The faculty members are Carl Ahlgren, director of college counseling and a history teacher; his wife, Kristin Ahlgren, a lower school library assistant; Ned Harris, academic dean and a history teacher; Patrick Hastings, an upper school English teacher; Rob Heubeck, an upper school history teacher and technology coordinator; and Jim Morrison, an upper school science teacher, according to Gilman spokeswoman Jodi Pluznik.

Thurl Metzger, 90, a former farmer who went on to lead charity Heifer International for three decades, died of heart failure Wednesday in Little Rock, Ark. Mr. Metzger, who farmed and worked as a high school history teacher in Indiana, began his work with Heifer as an unpaid volunteer in 1946. Five years later, he become the nonprofit's executive director, a post he held until 1981. Little Rock-based Heifer International fights hunger and poverty and has provided livestock and agricultural training to people in 128 countries.