John Wesley

Donald E. Cordes, 60, a Baltimore native and chemical engineer, died Sunday of cancer at Roper Hospital in Charleston, S.C.He moved to West Ashley, S.C., a suburb of Charleston, in 1982 when he was appointed director of manufacturing for the Balchem Chemical Co. in Green Pond, S.C.Reared in Hamilton, he studied at the McDonogh School and was a 1952 Polytechnic Institute graduate. He earned a bachelor's degree in chemical engineering from the Johns Hopkins University in 1955.He married the former Dorothy George of Baltimore in 1955.

Hagerstown -- Almost 189 years ago, Methodist Bishop Francis Asbury visited John Wesley United Methodist Church, as it is now known, and was unhappy with what he saw. African-Americans were relegated to one part of the sanctuary, and some say blacks weren't allowed to take Communion. Asbury was instrumental in buying property down the street and helping black members start their own church, since renamed Asbury United Methodist. Though there has been a move and a fire, the two downtown churches have never been situated more than 200 yards apart.

William Booker Sr., 73, pastor, postal supervisor The Rev. William J. Booker Sr., a retired postal supervisor and pastor of United Methodist churches in Harford and Baltimore counties, died of heart failure Monday at Sinai Hospital. The Northwest Baltimore resident was 73. Mr. Booker was born in Anne Arundel County and raised in West Baltimore. He was a 1947 graduate of Carver Vocational-Technical High School. During the Korean War, he served with the Army Corps of Engineers. He went to work for the post office in 1954, becoming supervisor of letter carriers assigned to Baltimore's main post office on East Fayette Street.

RUTH MARIE HEDDEN, 89, 2200 Pleasant Villa, Catonsville, Maryland and formerly of East Wilson Blvd., Hagerstown, Maryland died Sunday, November 16, 2003 at Gilchrist Hospice in Towson, Maryland. Born December 18, 1913 in Shickley, Nebraska, she was the daughter of the late Edgar and Essie Crowley Schelkopf. She was preceded in death by her husband, G.E. "Red" Hedden October 27, 1988. She was a graduate of Shepherd College and attended University of Nebraska. She was retired in 1978 from the Board of Education of Washington County.

"The Road Home," by Jim Harrison. Grove/Atlantic. 416 pages. $25. Pine Ridge and the infamous Wounded Knee hover on the Nebraska landscape of Jim Harrison's deeply moving new novel, "The Road Home," sequel to his 1988 "Dalva." White and mixed blooded Native American characters alike mourn "the cruelty of what happened to our first citizens" in this lush and beautiful book, a tour de force of compassion. Of voices, there are five: the elderly half-Lakota Northridge; his great grandson Nelse; his daughter-in-law Naomi; his surviving son Paul; and his granddaughter Dalva herself in a heart-wrenchingly apocalyptic finale.

MY GREAT-grandfather John Wesley Staples (1865-1940) was vain about writing and scribbled even grocery lists theatrically, gesturing grandly with the pencil and pausing between words to lick its point.A fuss over a shopping list seems ridiculous -- until you consider that he was born in the slaveholding South, where educating black people was illegal until after the Civil War, and where aggressively literate blacks were seen as subversive and even dangerous well into this century.Modern writing on the role of race in academic achievement generally discounts this history.

Barbara Strozykowski, 53, rescue squad volunteer Barbara Strozykowski, a Baltimore native and longtime resident of Western Maryland, died Thursday at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center Presbyterian hospital from complications of heart and lung disease. She was 53. A graduate of Eastern High School, Barbara Cassell attended the University of Maryland, College Park and Strayer Business School. After marrying dentist Joseph G. Strozykowski, she went with him to live on a Navajo Indian reservation in Arizona where he worked for the U.S. Public Health Service.

He approached me softly. A ditto clenched in one hand, a calendar in the other.I froze. I knew. It had been a year. Time had passed and once again we were face to face with . . .The Science Fair Deadline.Procrastinating science fair parents everywhere empathize. Just when we had finally scoured most of last year's project out of the Formica, here it comes again.To my comrades in test tubes I offer the following advice:* Never do plants. There is not a single plant in the entire world that will grow to maturity in 36 hours.

John Wesley Hooks III, 37, died Tuesday at his home from a brain tumor. Born in London, he was the son of John Wesley and Martha Griffin Hooks of Towson. He was the husband of Beth Ann Westbrook Hooks. A surveyor, he had served in the U.S. Army and had worked for Rosenfelt &Woolfolk in Ownings Mills. He was a member of the Baltimore chapter of the National Railroad Historical Society. In addition to his wife and parents, survivors include a daughter, Rebecca L. Hooks of home; stepson, Paul J. Nagle of Columbia; brother, Thomas J. Hooks of Owings Mills; and grandmother, Margaret Damaschke of New York.

A 20-year-old cousin of Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake was one of two men fatally shot in separate incidents Wednesday night in Baltimore, the latest victims of the city's relentless pace of gun violence. Joseph Haskins, 20, was shot inside a house just blocks from his family's home in the Northwest Baltimore neighborhood of Forest Park. Police said the shooting appeared to be the result of home invasion robbery, but detectives still were investigating. They said it was unclear whether Haskins was targeted.