Johns Hopkins Hospital

THE EASTERN edge of Baltimore's downtown is about to change beyond recognition.Already, a $184 million cancer complex is rising at Broadway and Orleans streets, next to Johns Hopkins Hospital. Neither of its two structures is a skyscraper; nevertheless, their combined square footage equals the 30-story Alex. Brown Building plus the 30-story Blaustein Building.The two buildings are several months from completion. Even so, they have made city officials realize the magnitude of the potential change as one of Baltimore's biggest employers grows even bigger.

Police on Thursday identified the man found fatally shot in Northeast Baltimore two days ago. Travis Jennings, 29, who lived in the 1600 block of N. Warwick Avenue, was pronounced dead at 8:30 a.m. on Tuesday at Johns Hopkins Hospital. He had been found by police in the Lauraville neighborhood, hours after police received an emergency call reporting gunshots near the 4900 block of Morello Road at 2:30 a.m. They found Jennings about three blocks away in the 2600 block of Southern Avenue.

The title of "Genius on the Edge: The Bizarre Double Life of Dr. William Stewart Halsted" suggests that Johns Hopkins' renowned first chief of surgery lived a hidden and unsavory existence in roughly the Jekyll-and-Hyde time frame. (Halsted was born in 1852, and died in 1922; Robert Louis Stevenson published his novel in 1886.) Actually, Dr. Gerald Imber's unpredictable and unflappable biography, an intrigue-filled life story that's also a sweeping pop medical history, depicts an individual who was two different kinds of good - make that, great - doctor.

A Woodlawn man and his girlfriend have pleaded guilty to fraud and identity theft charges in a federal case that compromised the personal information of more than 250 people - including doctors who applied for fellowships at Johns Hopkins Hospital, where the girlfriend worked. Derrick Hill, 52, was the "ringleader" of a group of four people - including his girlfriend, Renee Cabell, 51, and co-defendants John Coffey and Tawney King, who have also pleaded guilty - that stole more than $188,000 in cash, merchandise and services through their scheme between August and October 2009, according to a statement from the Maryland U.S. State's Attorney's Office.

When Jean Akehurst patrolled the floors at Johns Hopkins Hospital on the evening shift, insecure young interns felt safe. They knew that every nursing position would be staffed, every difficult patient calmed, every hard-to-find medicine located.She was the classic head nurse, and for more than 30 years she dressed and acted the part. No one remembers a wrinkle on her starched, white uniform, or any time that she stepped outside her businesslike demeanor.But after Akehurst died last fall at age 79, she surprised former colleagues with a bigheartedness many never knew she had. Hospital officials learned in May that she had left the institution $1.2 million.

On February 3, 2005 DR. ROBERT AUMAN ABRAHAM. Those wishing to honor him may do so by contributing to: The Robert A. Abraham Endowed Lectureship, c/o Dr. Andrew Harris, Meyer 297, The Johns Hopkins Hospital, 600 N. Wolfe St. Balto., MD 21287.

An article in yesterday's Business section contained incorrect information about organ transplant programs. University of Maryland Medical Center was recently designated as the only Medicare lung transplant site in the region. Both University and the Johns Hopkins Hospital are Medicare liver transplant sites.The Sun regrets the error.Pub Date: 1/30/98

EDWIN ALLEN ZURA, retired National Security Agency Electrical Engineer, US Army Lieutenant and recipient of the United States Air Force Meritorious Civilian Service Award, died after a long illness at the Johns Hopkins Hospital. He was 70 years old and lived in Ellicott City, MD. He was the beloved husband, of 41 years, of Judith (nee Price), loving father of David and Susan (nee Dennis) and Robert and Marianne (nee Gerard) and devoted grandfather of Zachary, Caitlin, Conor Edwin, Gavin and Tegan Zura and Paul Simkovich.

A 10-year-old boy who was injured by a car Wednesday after running into the street near his Pasadena home was released from Johns Hopkins Hospital yesterday. Police said Kevin Williams ran between two parked cars in the 3500 block of Old Crown Drive and into an eastbound 1999 Toyota. No charges have been filed against the driver, a 35-year-old Pasadena woman, police said.

The manager of a Waverly furniture and appliance rental store was in serious condition last night at Johns Hopkins Hospital after being shot in the abdomen during a robbery attempt, police said.The man, a 41-year-old Baltimore resident whose identity was not released, was shot during a struggle with a gunman who tried to rob Aaron's Rental, in the 400 block of E. 33rd St., about 6: 30 p.m., police said.Pub Date: 9/20/97

A 15-year-old boy was shot in the leg about 7:12 p.m. Monday in or near a housing courtyard not far from Johns Hopkins Hospital in East Baltimore, extending a string of violence that saw eight people shot in the city over the weekend. Many recent shootings in the city have involved teenagers. The boy is expected to recover from his injuries, police said. They had no motives in the shooting late Monday. At the scene in the 700 block of Wharton Court, which is lined by two-story homes, two separate areas were blocked off with police tape.

A local minister vowed Saturday to investigate the death of a man who police said ingested narcotics during an arrest attempt in Baltimore and later died at a nearby hospital. "There are some sharp differences between the accounts of the eyewitnesses and what we're hearing from the police," said the Rev. C.D. Witherspoon, local leader of the Southern Leadership Christian Conference. At about 7:20 p.m. Friday, officers were attempting to arrest a 46-year-old man for a narcotics offense near the intersection of East Biddle Street and North Montford Avenue, when the man consumed drugs, said Detective Donny Moses, a spokesman for the Baltimore Police Department.

Arline Kaye Howdon, who was chief cytologist at Johns Hopkins Hospital and was known nationally and internationally for her work in the field of cytopathology and education, died July 20 of lung cancer at her Harper House condominium in Cross Keys. She was 91. The former Arline Kaye was born in Manhattan and in her childhood moved with her family to Miami, where she graduated from high school. She was a student at Duke University when she left in 1941 to marry Dr. William M. Howdon, a gynecologist who served in the Army Medical Corps.

In the latest example of Baltimore's aging infrastructure's causing damage to city streets, a large sinkhole opened on East Monument Street near Johns Hopkins Hospital on Wednesday afternoon - causing a stretch of the road to be closed and nearby businesses to be evacuated. The hole, estimated to be about 2 feet wide, 6 feet long and 20 feet deep, closed East Monument about 1 p.m. between North Patterson Park Avenue and North Montford Avenue, while a strong smell of gas forced businesses to close and brought Baltimore Gas and Electric Co. repair crews to the scene.

I did not think I'd ever see a better medical documentary series than the Emmy-Award-winning “Hopkins 24/7” that aired in 2000 or its sequel, “Hopkins,” which won a Peabody Award in 2008. The backstage access, immediacy and range of gripping real-life drama that ABCNews Executive Producer Terence Wrong and his team captured at Baltimore's world-renowned medical institution were landmark. But with “NY Med,” which premieres at 10 p.m. Tuesday, Wrong surpasses his earlier work in terms of prime-time storytelling without sacrificing any of the cultural seriousness or grand reach of the Hopkins series.

For generations, patients entering Johns Hopkins Hospital walked past an oil painting of the founder and a marble statue of Jesus Christ. In the building that Hopkins opened this spring, they see blue and green rhinos, a flying ostrich and a purple cow jumping over 28 moons. The playful sculptures help differentiate the new building from its 19th-century predecessor, which seems hopelessly stuffy by comparison. But there's much more to the new Hopkins Hospital — Baltimore's first $1 billion building — than its sculptural menagerie.

THE COUNT Homicides since Jan. 1: 273 THE VICTIMS A man was shot Friday inside his home in the 2900 block of Chelsea Terrace and died at Sinai Hospital. A 20-year-old man was shot in the head and chest after an argument in the 1800 block of Charles St. early yesterday. He died shortly afterward at Johns Hopkins Hospital. LAST YEAR: Baltimore had recorded 262 homicides as of Dec. 16, 2006. ONLINE: Details and locations of this year's city homicides are at baltimoresun.com/homicidemap

John W. Schiminger, 60, retired executive vice president of an insurance firm, died Saturday at his home in the Dulaney Towers Condominium of a degenerative neurological disease.Funeral services were being held today at the Ruck Towson funeral establishment, 1050 York Road.Mr. Schiminger retired a year and a half ago from Riggs, Counselman, Michaels and Downes, where he had started working as an insurance salesman 37 years earlier.Survivors include his wife, the former Phyllis E. Orr; a son, Paul J. Schiminger of Sykesville; and a grandson.

John Stewart Croucher, a retired hospital assistant engineer and World War II naval veteran, died of a stroke Tuesday at Gilchrist Hospice Care. The Bel Air resident was 90. Born in Baltimore and raised on Eastern Avenue in Highlandtown, he was a graduate of the old Thomas A. Edison Vocational School on Howard Street. Many years later, he completed adult night school at City College. He also studied physics at what was then Essex Community College. Family members said Mr. Croucher was an accomplished machinist and worked at the Flynn & Emrich foundry on Holliday Street in downtown Baltimore in the early 1940s.

A North Carolina nonprofit group launched an ambitious affordable housing program Friday to rehabilitate 500 vacant or foreclosed homes in Baltimore near Johns Hopkins Hospital — an area with desolate stretches in the shadow of the world-renowned institution that the city has long sought to redevelop. Builders of Hope and its partners announced plans to invest up to $50 million in Baltimore and Atlanta in a pilot program to repopulate blighted neighborhoods. The group expects to acquire and begin renovating 500 properties in each city into affordable and energy-efficient homes over the next year and a half.