History Teacher

Sister Rita Marie Helldorfer, a member of the School Sisters of Notre Dame who taught history, died of a stroke May 1 at her order's retirement home in the Woodbrook section of Baltimore County. She was 91. She was born Rita Regina Helldorfer in Baltimore and raised on St. Paul Street in Charles Village. She and her twin sister, Teresa, were the 11th and 12th children of brewer Frank Helldorfer and his wife, the former Anna Rueter. She attended Notre Dame Preparatory School from first through 12th grade, when the school shared grounds with the College of Notre Dame of Maryland.

Ruth Dillon Brock, a retired history teacher, died of congestive heart failure Friday at the Broadmead Retirement Community in Cockeysville. The former Village of Cross Keys resident was 83. Born Ruth Dillon in Atlanta, she earned a bachelor of arts degree at the University of Georgia and wrote a column on life amid the war effort for the Atlanta Constitution in the 1940s. She married Pope Furman Brock in 1948 and moved to Baltimore, where she raised their three children and for 20 years taught European and Russian history at Roland Park Country School.

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.

Marcy Leonard, principal at Atholton High School, vividly recalls being taught by Carroll Wesley Haddaway as an eighth-grader at Clarksville Middle School. "What a passionate history educator," said Leonard, who recalled a three-day lesson that Haddaway presented on the Battle of Gettysburg. "He absolutely made the history come alive in his classroom. He truly knew how to motivate." Leonard said she is convinced that Haddaway played a large role in her decision to become a social studies teacher.

David J. Carey, a retired teacher whose enthusiasm illuminating historical events and the personalities behind them earned him accolades and admiration from students and faculty during his years at Pikesville High School, died of lung cancer Tuesday at Sinai Hospital. The Reisterstown resident was 70. Mr. Carey was born and raised in Marion, Iowa, and after graduating from high school in 1953, he earned a bachelor's degree with honors in journalism from the University of Iowa in Iowa City in 1957.

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.

Harold Greenwald, a former longtime history teacher at City College and avid theater buff, died of coronary artery disease Thursday at his Pikesville home. He was 94. Despite years of debilitating health problems, Mr. Greenwald remained active and fully engaged in the "business of life" until the last couple of months. "Dad really lived Dylan Thomas' advice in his poem `Do not go gentle into that good night,'" said a daughter, Judy Mehlman of Pikesville. "We are convinced that it was Dad's unquenchable passion for life that kept him going these past few years despite many health crises.

Frederick A. Johnson, who shared his penchant for history and world events with students during a 30-year teaching career in Baltimore County public schools, died of cancer Monday at Northwest Hospital Center. He was 72 and lived in Randallstown. Mr. Johnson was born and raised in Greenville, N.C., and earned a bachelor's degree in history in 1954 from what was then Morgan State College. In 1961, he earned a master's degree in secondary education from Pennsylvania State University in State College.

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."