Madison Avenue Presbyterian

Col. Arthur Francis Hudgins, a retired career Army officer and Baltimore hospital official, died of pneumonia Saturday at his Annapolis home. He was 82. Born in Baltimore and raised on Dolphin Street, near the Fifth Regiment Armory, Colonel Hudgins graduated in 1940 from Frederick Douglass High School and earned a bachelor's degree from the University of Maryland. Enlisting in the Army in 1943, he rose from company clerk to colonel during nearly three decades in the military. During World War II, he served in Normandy as a truck driver with the famed Red Ball Express, which kept troops supplied with gasoline, food and ammunition, and earned four battle stars.

On May 17, 2006 GOODRICH D. BRAME, JR.; beloved husband of the late Lois S. Brame; devoted father of Goodrich H. Brame and loving brother of Marion Washington, Annie B. Harris. He is also survived by several cousins, nieces, nephews as well as extended family and friends. He was born May 28, 1918 in Townsville, NC. He moved to Henderson, NC in 1926. He graduated High School from Henderson Institute in Henderson, NC and continued his education at St. Paul's College in Lawrenceville, VA. He then graduated from Tuskegee Institute in Tuskegee, AL, where he obtained a Bachelor's degree in Agriculture.

Norma W. Bracy, a retired city schools librarian, died of congestive heart failure May 12 at Northwest Hospital Center. The Windsor Hills resident was 82. Born Norma Helen Worthy in Baton Rouge, La., she earned a bachelor's degree in health and physical education from Southern University and a master's degree in library science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She was a member of Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority. After working as a librarian in Milwaukee and Baton Rouge, she moved to Baltimore in 1957 and became an assistant librarian and cataloger at what is now Morgan State University.

Charles Randolph Owens Jr., a retired public relations specialist for the federal Health Care Finance Administration, died of complications from Alzheimer's disease June 11 at Ruxton Health and Rehabilitation Center in Pikesville. He was 84 and had lived in Baltimore. A Baltimore native and a graduate of Frederick Douglass High School, he served in the Army Air Forces during World War II. After leaving the service, he enrolled in Morgan State College, where he received a Bachelor of Arts degree in social studies.

Dr. Benjamin J. Kimbers Jr., a retired Baltimore dentist and gardener, died of heart failure Tuesday at Sinai Hospital. The longtime Ashburton resident was 83. Born and raised in Georgia, where he was a 1941 graduate of Athens High School, Dr. Kimbers interrupted his studies at Wilberforce College in Ohio after his sophomore year to enlist in the Army. Commissioned as an officer, he served in Europe. After the war, he returned to Wilberforce, where he earned a bachelor's degree in chemistry in 1948.

Martha E. Rhodes, a former department store sales associate who earlier had been a beautician, died of heart failure Saturday at St. Elizabeth Nursing Home in Southwest Baltimore. She was 100. Martha E. Hall, the daughter of a chauffeur and a homemaker, was born and raised in Catonsville. She was a 1926 graduate of Douglass High School and the Apex Beauty Academy. In 1926, she married Alfred Jordan and moved to Washington. After his death in the early 1930s, she returned to Baltimore, where she worked through the 1940s as a beautician.

Hermione Briggs Weaver, 85, Baltimore educator Hermione Briggs Weaver, a retired Baltimore educator, died of cancer Thursday at Sinai Hospital. The Ashburton resident was 85. At her 1978 retirement, Mrs. Weaver was a job placement coordinator at Western High School. She began her career in 1947 at the junior high level, and later taught at Edmondson High School. Born Hermione Briggs in Brandywine, Prince George's County, she was raised in Washington and attended public schools. She earned her bachelor's degree in education in 1937 from Fiske University in Nashville, Tenn.

Gov. Parris N. Glendening took his campaign to raise public support for his budgetary agenda to an East Baltimore church last night, asking community leaders and residents to press for state funding of mass transit and Smart Growth programs. "You must make these `must have' items," Glendening told members of BUILD, Baltimoreans United in Leadership Development. About 400 members of the citywide organization filled the pews of Knox Presbyterian Church. They gave Glendening a standing ovation and broke into repeated applause during his speech.

Marjean Kae Davis Funn, a Baltimore County educator who devoted her career to children and young adults with special needs, died of cancer Tuesday at the Gilchrist Center for Hospice Care in Towson. The North Baltimore resident was 53. A native of Baltimore, Mrs. Funn's interest in special education was sparked when, at 16, she worked with special-needs children at a summer camp at the old Rosewood State Hospital, family members said. She graduated from Northwestern High School in the late 1960s and earned bachelor's and master's degrees from Loyola College in the mid-1970s.

Looking to launch an organization that assists prisoners who feel they've been wrongly convicted, Baltimore Circuit Court Clerk Frank M. Conaway and the Rev. Gregory Perkins took their proposal yesterday before the Interdenominational Ministerial Alliance. But Conaway and Perkins, president of the ministers' group, have yet to line up financing for their Ministerial Alliance for Justice, modeled after Centurion Ministries, a New Jersey group that works to secure new trials for convicts who claim they are innocent.