Memorial Service

Orioles Hall of Fame manager Earl Weaver will be memorialized Saturday in Davie, Fla., after a private, family-only ceremony tonight in South Florida. Weaver, 82, collapsed and died Friday night on a cruise ship. Weaver and his wife, Marianna, had attended the cruise -- which was not affiliated with the organization but featured former players -- for years. On Saturday afternoon, the family will receive visitors beginning at 3 p.m. at Fred Hunter's University Drive (Funeral) Home in Davie, Fla. A memorial service will begin at 4 p.m. A number of Weaver's former players are expected to attend, including Hall of Famers Jim Palmer, Brooks Robinson, Frank Robinson and Eddie Murray.

Rebecca F. Parker, who had worked as an administrator for Maryland Legal Services Inc., died Jan. 17 from breast cancer at her Charles Center apartment. She was 62. A daughter of a minister and a homemaker, the former Rebecca Fletcher was born and raised in Camden, S.C., where she graduated from high school. She moved to Paterson, N.J., in the 1970s, and first worked at a Woolworth's department store before becoming a cost accountant for General Electric Corp. She also had been a GE product model.

A memorial service for Richard Ben Cramer, 62, a former Baltimore Sun reporter, Pulitzer Prize-winning foreign correspondent and acclaimed biographer who died Jan. 7, will be held at 2 p.m. Sunday at Washington College's Gibson Center for the Arts in Chestertown. Gov. Martin O'Malley said Sunday he planned to attend the service, and had also ordered the State House flag in Annapolis to be flown at half mast. The governor called Mr. Cramer "a great American, great Marylander and a dear friend," and said in a statement that, “Richard's work as a gifted writer and deeply principled journalist made our republic a better place; made us a stronger, more compassionate, and more understanding people.

Gretchen Crews, a retired librarian, teacher and club manager, died Dec. 27 at the Maryland Shock Trauma Center of injuries sustained in a fall at her Towson home. She was 83. Born Gretchen Matthews in Baltimore and raised in Wyman Park, she was the daughter of Howard Matthews, a state auditor, and his wife Gretchen, a home economics teacher and homemaker. She attended Margaret Brent School in Charles Village and was a 1947 Eastern High School graduate. She earned an English degree at Goucher College and later received a library science degree at Towson University She taught English in the city public school system and later was a librarian, both in the school system and at the old Bay College at Howard and Centre streets.

A memorial service was held late Friday - the longest night of the year - at the Inner Harbor to honor the more than 100 homeless men and women who died this year in Baltimore. The ceremony, in its 22nd year, was also intended to raise awareness for the struggles of the homeless, said Adam Schneider, spokesman for Healthcare for the Homeless. He said men and women who are homeless are three to four times more likely to die prematurely than those with a home. The average age of a homeless individual at death is 47. The names of those who died were read aloud for the roughly 150 people in attendance, and a candle was lit in honor of each of the deceased.

Local firefighter and former Sykesville Volunteer Fire Department Chief William “Mr. Bill” Frank Luebberman, 66, of Sykesville, died, Nov. 18, at the Carroll Dove House in Westminster. News of the death of the popular life member of Sykesville Freedom District Fire Department spread quickly through the Carroll County emergency response community. According to his obituary on the Haight Funeral Home website, he was born July 6, 1946, in Annapolis. He was the son of William E. and Betty Metzger Luebberman of Westminster.

William E. "Bill" Hathaway, an emergency medical services expert who taught the subject at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County and earlier had served in the Army Intelligence Corps, died Nov. 1 of cancer at his home in Amherst, Va. The former Annapolis resident was 75. Mr. Hathaway was born in Chicago and moved in 1945 with his family to McLean, Va., where he graduated in 1955 from Fairfax High School. After graduating from West Point in 1961, he served in an artillery unit before joining the Intelligence Corps, where he worked in Washington for the Defense Intelligence Agency.

Margaret N. Metz, a retired Harford County educator and world traveler, died Nov. 2 of complications from a stroke at her Bel Air home. She was 80. The daughter of an educator and a homemaker, Margaret Nancy Jackson was born in Abingdon, Pa., and raised in Jenkintown, Pa. After graduating from Jenkintown High School in 1950, she earned a bachelor's degree in 1954 from what was then Beaver College, now Arcadia University. She married Howard Metz in 1956. Mrs. Metz taught business courses for three years at Upper Dublin High School in Fort Washington, Pa., before moving to Bel Air in 1963.

Milton B. Sachse, a former trailer company executive who later was chairman of the board of the Association of Maryland Pilots, died Friday of pneumonia at Greater Baltimore Medical Center. The Lutherville resident was 92. Milton Boyd Sachse was born and raised in a home on Willow Avenue in Towson. He was a 1938 graduate of Towson High School. Mr. Sachse was working in the engineering department of the old Glenn L. Martin Co. plant in Middle River at the time of his enlistment in the Navy in 1943.

Frank Martin Jr., a retired Baltimore Gas and Electric Co. supervisor and World War II veteran, died of an infection Nov. 1 at the Blakehurst Retirement Community in Towson. He was 94 and had lived in Canton. Born in Baltimore and raised in Mount Vernon, he attended the Calvert School and was captain of the cavalry at McDonogh School, where he graduated in 1936. After earning a degree in photography at the Rochester Institute of Technology, he joined the Navy and became a lieutenant in the air corps.