Offit

University of Florida President John V. Lombardi withdrew yesterday from consideration for the presidency of the Johns Hopkins University, saying he still wanted to finish the job he had started in Gainesville nearly six years ago.The position had been essentially Dr. Lombardi's to take, Hopkins and Florida higher education officials said. The decision clearly dismayed Hopkins administrators and faculty members, many of whom offered positive reviews after meetings with Dr. Lombardi last week.

Sidney Offit hadn't been to Pimlico since 1952, when his old man had money on Blue . . . Blue . . . Blue Man, the Preakness winner that year.Mr. Offit came back to Baltimore on a muddy, drippy Tuesday. He bought a $1.50 racing program that was Greek to him. "You know I don't know how to read this. I can't believe it. I really can't believe it."The bookie's son doesn't bet on horses. He writes books for a living. He says that's enough of a gamble."Owner . . . Meyerhoff . . . it's probably a Baltimore horse, right?

Johns Hopkins University trustees have decided on an intense search to name a replacement for President William C. Richardson by the time he leaves Aug. 1.Trustee Chairman Morris W. Offit said that the executive committee had named a 19-member search committee, consisting of 14 Hopkins trustees, three students, one faculty member and one administrator.Although trustees initially weighed whether to name an interim president to allow for a longer search, Mr. Offit charged the committee with proposing a new president to the trustees within five or six months.

Johns Hopkins University President William C. Richardson is departing, and all the university needs is a successor capable of administering a $1.5 billion budget, supervising 18,000 employees and raising $900 million by the millennium.The new president also should prevent warfare between the Homewood campus faculty and the medical faculty in East Baltimore, keep federal research dollars flowing and assure undergraduates, whose tuition is $18,900, that the university really does care about them.

Howard Offit, 68, a commercial real estate developer for R.S. Properties who gained national fame when he hired a social worker to assist tenants of houses he owned, died Tuesday night in a two-car crash at of Greenspring Valley and Stevenson roads in Baltimore County.Mr. Offit, of the 3700 block of N. Charles Street, was pronounced dead from multiple injuries at 9:21 p.m. at the Maryland Shock Trauma Center.Police said the car that Mr. Offit was driving was struck on the driver's side as it passed through the intersection.

A Baltimore commercial real estate developer was killed and his wife seriously injured last evening when their car collided with another at a Greenspring Valley intersection, Baltimore County police said.Howard Offit, 68, president of RS Properties, was pronounced dead about 9:20 p.m. at the Maryland Shock Trauma Center from multiple injuries.His wife, Joan, 66, is listed in serious condition in the intensive care unit at Sinai Hospital with internal injuries, police said.Their residence was given as the St. James Condominiums in the 3700 block of N. Charles St.The driver of the other car, a 17-year-old girl from the Mount Washington area, was treated for injuries at Sinai Hospital and released.

Charles S. Ezrine, a Baltimore entrepreneur who was thwarted in his effort to bring After Six Inc. to Maryland, has joined in a suit against the Philadelphia tuxedo maker charging that it is interfering in his efforts to set up a firm to distribute formal wear.The suit, filed yesterday in U.S. District Court in Baltimore, comes three weeks after Mr. Ezrine pulled out of a deal to buy After Six and move it to the recently closed Gleneagles rainwear plant in Bel Air.He said the persistent and aggressive opposition by the union representing the company's workers in Philadelphia was primarily to blame for the deal's failure.

Laura Paul, two days past her due date with her first child, was standing in a freezing drizzle outside Ben's Furniture City near Golden Ring Mall Thursday. But the only thing cold about her was her anger."It makes you furious when you have a child on the way and you are ready to birth a baby and you have no crib and the room is empty," the 28-year-old Overlea woman fumed. "You feel swindled."Ms. Paul, who put down a $450 cash deposit on a crib and other nursery furniture last November, was one of at least 50 Ben's customers who were left with no merchandise, no refunds and no information after owner Morris Lancer abruptly shut the business March 6, leaving no explanation except a sign in the window.

Consider it among the rarest specimens in the increasingly harsh world of finance: a new bank that is solvent, growing and stable.It is called OFFITBANK, after its chief executive, Morris Offit, a Baltimore native who, among numerous other professional and philanthropic activities, is chairman of the board of the Johns Hopkins University.Though a financier's name adorns the stationery, this isn't a bank in the style of J. P. Morgan & Co. or Mellon. Rather, Mr. Offit said using his name (rather than the more staid original idea, Investment Management International)