Orlinsky

In 1954, when the Israeli Consulate in New York needed to verify the authenticity of some ancient documents that had been discovered by a Bedouin shepherd in a cave near Jericho on the shores of the Dead Sea seven years earlier, it called in Harry M. Orlinsky. Dr. Orlinsky examined the writings, which had been put up for sale by a Syrian Orthodox prelate, and pronounced them authentic: Today, the Dead Sea Scrolls are recognized as the world's oldest surviving biblical writings.For most scholars, that would have been enough to ensure their place in history.

THE FUNERAL last week of former City Council President Walter S. Orlinsky got me thinking about the office -- and the differing approaches taken by some of its recent occupants. As the outpouring of stories and columns after his death Feb. 9 made clear, Orlinsky, who headed the council from 1971 to 1982, put his stamp on the No. 2 job in a government designed to give the mayor almost all the significant power. It was, first and foremost, a forum for his ideas, be they farfetched or forward-thinking.

Friends, Baltimoreans, countrymen, lend me your ears; I come to praise Wally Orlinsky, not to bury him. The good that men do lives after them; the evil is oft interred with their bones. So let it be with Wally. WITH APOLOGIES for taking great liberty with Shakespeare, that's the way we ought to remember Walter S. Orlinsky. Much has been made of his colorful quirks; his loud, brash personality; his creative, restless intellect. Much, too - too much, really - has been made of his federal conviction and imprisonment on bribery charges.

Friends, Baltimoreans, countrymen, lend me your ears; I come to praise Wally Orlinsky, not to bury him. The good that men do lives after them; the evil is oft interred with their bones. So let it be with Wally. WITH APOLOGIES for taking great liberty with Shakespeare, that's the way we ought to remember Walter S. Orlinsky. Much has been made of his colorful quirks; his loud, brash personality; his creative, restless intellect. Much, too - too much, really - has been made of his federal conviction and imprisonment on bribery charges.

THE CLOCK said 25 past noon when Marc Steiner trudged out of Wally Orlinsky's farewell service at the Sol Levinson & Bros. funeral home. At such an hour, Steiner is supposed to be talking into a microphone at the radio station he officially rebirthed just two weeks ago. "Aren't you supposed to be doing a talk show right now?" somebody asked. In Tuesday's chilly sunlight on Reisterstown Road, Steiner shrugged his shoulders and muttered something about wanting to say goodbye. He didn't want to make a speech about it, and he didn't have to. He and Orlinsky were spiritual extended family, fueled by the same impulses carried by so many of those emerging now from the packed funeral service: William Donald Schaefer and Kweisi Mfume, Mary Pat and Joe Clarke, Carl Stokes and Joe Curran, Lou Panos and Sandy Rosenberg, Julian Lapides and Catherine Pugh, the Revs.

LIFE WAS simpler when William Donald Schaefer was mayor of Baltimore and Wally Orlinsky president of the City Council. Schaefer took care of all potholes in every alley in town, while Wally built castles in the air. Orlinsky was the great imaginer of his time, a classic Kennedy liberal who thought government really could work things out, and that people from different backgrounds had more that bound them than divided them. He was the brilliant son of a Talmudic scholar, a graduate of the Johns Hopkins University and the University of Maryland law school with a head bursting with large and sometimes fanciful ideas - but he became passionate defending the importance of a linguistic blur such as Highlandtown's Mimi DiPietro or the street smarts of the old Silent Sixth council members out of South Baltimore, who hid behind a wall of self-consciousness.

Former Baltimore City Council President Walter S. Orlinsky has received a presidential pardon for the federal extortion conviction that brought an abrupt end to his quixotic political career nearly two decades ago. President Clinton granted the pardon Tuesday. Orlinsky got the news in a phone call that evening from his son, Eric G. Orlinsky, a Baltimore attorney who helped his father gain official forgiveness for the 1982 crime. "You can't ever quite walk away," Orlinsky, 62, said yesterday.

It was a fitting send-off for Walter S. Orlinsky: a chapel packed with people, a funeral service filled with warm remembrances and spiced with humor. Orlinksy - the former state delegate and City Council president noted for his forward-thinking, if often off-the-wall, ideas and sardonic wit - was eulogized yesterday as a man whose enormous zest for life was quelled neither by the corruption conviction that ended his political career two decades ago nor by the cancer that took his life Saturday at age 63. Surveying the main chapel at Sol Levinson & Bros.

William Donald Schaefer, Walter S. Orlinsky and Mary Pat Clarke finally can take revenge on the press that pilloried them for years.They've bought their own.Next week they will become columnists and investors in a new weekly newspaper. The Baltimore News' inaugural issue is scheduled for Wednesday and will be distributed each Wednesday in 20 Baltimore neighborhoods and on the Internet's World Wide Web, its backers say.Schaefer said this week, adding, "That was always my ambition, to have a newspaper that would have upbeat stories."

WALTER S. ORLINSKY started in politics as a 1960s boy-wonder state delegate. He was energetic, imaginative and idealistic, fighting for reforms in the Democratic Party and in the larger society. Mr. Orlinsky, who died this week at 63, was an important member of a progressive alliance that built bridges across racial divides, calmed tensions after the 1968 riots and later helped infuse the city with a sense of urban renaissance. With such rising activists as Parren Mitchell, Barbara Mikulski and Norman Reeves, he was involved in a movement to stop an expressway from destroying Fells Point, Federal Hill and sections of West Baltimore.

THE CLOCK said 25 past noon when Marc Steiner trudged out of Wally Orlinsky's farewell service at the Sol Levinson & Bros. funeral home. At such an hour, Steiner is supposed to be talking into a microphone at the radio station he officially rebirthed just two weeks ago. "Aren't you supposed to be doing a talk show right now?" somebody asked. In Tuesday's chilly sunlight on Reisterstown Road, Steiner shrugged his shoulders and muttered something about wanting to say goodbye. He didn't want to make a speech about it, and he didn't have to. He and Orlinsky were spiritual extended family, fueled by the same impulses carried by so many of those emerging now from the packed funeral service: William Donald Schaefer and Kweisi Mfume, Mary Pat and Joe Clarke, Carl Stokes and Joe Curran, Lou Panos and Sandy Rosenberg, Julian Lapides and Catherine Pugh, the Revs.

It was a fitting send-off for Walter S. Orlinsky: a chapel packed with people, a funeral service filled with warm remembrances and spiced with humor. Orlinksy - the former state delegate and City Council president noted for his forward-thinking, if often off-the-wall, ideas and sardonic wit - was eulogized yesterday as a man whose enormous zest for life was quelled neither by the corruption conviction that ended his political career two decades ago nor by the cancer that took his life Saturday at age 63. Surveying the main chapel at Sol Levinson & Bros.

LIFE WAS simpler when William Donald Schaefer was mayor of Baltimore and Wally Orlinsky president of the City Council. Schaefer took care of all potholes in every alley in town, while Wally built castles in the air. Orlinsky was the great imaginer of his time, a classic Kennedy liberal who thought government really could work things out, and that people from different backgrounds had more that bound them than divided them. He was the brilliant son of a Talmudic scholar, a graduate of the Johns Hopkins University and the University of Maryland law school with a head bursting with large and sometimes fanciful ideas - but he became passionate defending the importance of a linguistic blur such as Highlandtown's Mimi DiPietro or the street smarts of the old Silent Sixth council members out of South Baltimore, who hid behind a wall of self-consciousness.

WALTER S. ORLINSKY started in politics as a 1960s boy-wonder state delegate. He was energetic, imaginative and idealistic, fighting for reforms in the Democratic Party and in the larger society. Mr. Orlinsky, who died this week at 63, was an important member of a progressive alliance that built bridges across racial divides, calmed tensions after the 1968 riots and later helped infuse the city with a sense of urban renaissance. With such rising activists as Parren Mitchell, Barbara Mikulski and Norman Reeves, he was involved in a movement to stop an expressway from destroying Fells Point, Federal Hill and sections of West Baltimore.

I ALWAYS asked Wally Orlinsky for a piece of his mind. It was the best thing he had to offer -- smart, informed, outside-the-box thoughts on anything from heroin addiction in Baltimore to the crisis in the Middle East. He was sole inhabitant of a think tank called Wally World. Even as a defrocked public official, he had a keen and fresh grasp of local and national politics and fascinating opinions about everything -- mass transit, municipal water supplies, the news media, police corruption, trees, the Internet, rap music, Japanese art, the Orioles, the Palestinians.

Walter S. Orlinsky, the maverick Democrat, former delegate and Baltimore City Council president whose colorful political career came to an end in 1982 after he pleaded guilty to accepting a bribe from a sludge-hauling firm, died yesterday of colon cancer at the Gilchrist Center for Hospice Care in Towson. He was 63. "He was one of the most brilliant politicians in the history of Baltimore," said former state Sen. Julian "Jack" Lapides. "He was an incredible mind and was totally consumed by politics.

I ALWAYS asked Wally Orlinsky for a piece of his mind. It was the best thing he had to offer -- smart, informed, outside-the-box thoughts on anything from heroin addiction in Baltimore to the crisis in the Middle East. He was sole inhabitant of a think tank called Wally World. Even as a defrocked public official, he had a keen and fresh grasp of local and national politics and fascinating opinions about everything -- mass transit, municipal water supplies, the news media, police corruption, trees, the Internet, rap music, Japanese art, the Orioles, the Palestinians.

Former Baltimore City Council President Walter S. Orlinsky has received a presidential pardon for the federal extortion conviction that brought an abrupt end to his quixotic political career nearly two decades ago. President Clinton granted the pardon Tuesday. Orlinsky got the news in a phone call that evening from his son, Eric G. Orlinsky, a Baltimore attorney who helped his father gain official forgiveness for the 1982 crime. "You can't ever quite walk away," Orlinsky, 62, said yesterday.

Former City Council President Walter S. Orlinsky is working for the city government again, this time as a $50,000-a-year employee with the Housing Authority of Baltimore City. Orlinsky, who resigned from the city's second highest elected office 18 years ago after being convicted on federal extortion charges, is helping to coordinate an effort by Mayor Martin O'Malley to aid poor families who face having power cut off. Over the last two decades, Orlinsky has held jobs ranging from running a state tree-planting program to making lemonade in Oriole Park at Camden Yards.