Pendergrass

When Barack Obama is inaugurated this month, his transition team will present him with suggestions on reforming health care from thousands of people across the country, including more than 200 who convened recently in Columbia. The campaign organization the president-elect built is still at work, using vast e-mail lists to mobilize people who want to take part in transforming vital programs like health care by braving a cold holiday weeknight to put their thoughts down on paper. "How refreshing is it that a campaign that is successful wants to listen to its supporters' ideas?"

Not everyone will be watching the last episode of "Seinfeld" tonight.If you live in Howard's Legislative District 13A, you have the choice of seeing Republican state Sen. Martin G. Madden and Democratic Dels. Shane Pendergrass and Frank S. Turner instead of Jerry, Elaine and George.The legislators will be holding a wrap-up meeting about this year's General Assembly session at 7: 30 p.m. in Conference Room 6 of the Howard County Office Building, 7121 Columbia Gateway Drive in Columbia. The legislators will give a brief overview of issues and take questions from the audience.

Though Democrats outnumber them 5 to 3 in House of Delegates District 13A, Republicans think they might have a chance in the district, which takes in east Columbia and much of southern Howard County.Hans K. Meeder is hoping voters there will cross party lines. He announced his candidacy for a House seat last night, characterizing himself as a tax-cutting, reform-minded conservative who wants to serve constituents the way businesses serve customers."Today, we're going to start reaching out," said Meeder, speaking at a baseball-themed "Opening Day" fund-raiser at the Apple Ford dealership on Snowden River Parkway.

Democratic Del. Shane Pendergrass returns tomorrow to Savage, the place she says made her a politician more than a decade ago, to announce her bid for a second term in Annapolis.Pendergrass lives in Kings Contrivance, but she made her name in 1984 as an activist in Savage, where she says school crowding and fast residential development spurred her into politics."I started working then to slow growth and to build schools," said Pendergrass, 48.As a private citizen, she lost a battle to stop developers from building 1,200 homes off Gorman Road in a subdivision called Bowling Brook Farms.

In the House of Delegates door-knocking war of District 13A, Frank S. Turner must have the most calloused knuckles of any candidate.The first-term Democratic incumbent in the southern Howard County district says he has spent every day since May -- save four -- knocking on doors and talking up voters. Which, by his count, means he's rapped on more than 12,000 to date."He's Iron Man," boasted his Democratic running mate, former County Council Chairwoman Shane Pendergrass.Sometimes, though, the number of doors upon which a candidate knocks is directly proportional to the strength of the political opposition.

In his successful campaign for the Laurel-area legislative seat held by Republican Del. John S. Morgan, Democrat John A. Giannetti Jr. sharply criticized Morgan for missing 41 votes in Annapolis and skipping community meetings.But at a Howard County state legislative delegation meeting Wednesday evening, where votes were cast, some Republicans noted that Giannetti wasn't present."I wasn't notified about the meeting," Giannetti said, when first asked by a reporter. "No one informed me."But Del. Shane Pendergrass, a Democrat and chairwoman of the Howard County delegation, said she was certain that Giannetti was informed.

A bill to rid the Howard County Council of its burdensome Liquor Board duties may be unraveling over a seemingly minor point -- the office assignment of a longtime county bureaucrat.For the past year, the council has worked with Howard's state legislators to draft a bill creating an appointed Liquor Board. If approved by the full General Assembly, it would relieve the council of responsibility for all but the most contentious licensing cases.But council Chairman Charles C. Feaga, a West Friendship Republican who once backed the effort, has recently begun working to kill it. Among the reasons is a provision -- pushed by old Feaga nemesis Del. Shane Pendergrass -- to reassign a Feaga family friend to a new office.

A COUPLE OF familiar names are on the ballot seeking the Republican nomination for the two House seats in Legislative District 13A. Michael Grasso tried four years ago to unseat one of the two Democrat incumbents, Shane Pendergrass and Frank S. Turner. He finished just 730 votes short of his goal.Mrs. Pendergrass and Mr. Turner are unopposed in the Democratic primary. Each is seeking a second four-year term to represent East Columbia and North Laurel.With Mr. Grasso on the Sept. 15 Republican ballot are Hans K. Meeder and Charles H. Fiege.

A 10-year-old homeless shelter in Lansdowne, which doubles as a classroom for poor families seeking basic life skills, is struggling to raise funding to remain open this spring -- even though local politicians have offered last-minute help.Brenda Pendergrass, executive director of Hearth House on Laverne Avenue, said she needs to raise at least $5,000 in private donations or the shelter may close until the next fiscal year begins July 1 and it receives new funding.Some relief came recently from First District County Councilman Stephen G. Sam Moxley, a Catonsville Democrat, who pledged to help obtain a $10,000 federal Community Development Block Grant for the shelter for homeless women and children.

Guy Guzzone, executive director of the Maryland chapter of the Sierra Club, has created a campaign committee, the first formal step toward running for the Howard County Council seat now occupied by Republican Dennis R. Schrader.Guzzone, a Democrat who opposes the rezoning of 522 acres of Rouse Co. land for a mixed-use project in North Laurel, plans to make growth control a centerpiece of his campaign."Residential growth does not pay for itself," said Guzzone, 33. "We need to make sure we have the correct balance on economic development."

Animal abuse task force to meet 3 Baltimore's new Anti-Animal Abuse Task Force will hold its first public meeting tonight. Residents are invited to share their concerns about animal abuse. The meeting will be from 6 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. at Polytechnic Institute's auditorium, 1400 Cold Spring Lane. Mayor Sheila Dixon announced the creation of the task force in July after a spate of highly publicized cases of animal cruelty, including that of Phoenix, a puppy doused with gasoline and set afire.

Government is often said to move slowly, but it does move, as many of those involved in planning a new 51-acre park and a 63,000-square-foot community center in North Laurel can attest. Bulldozers should be appearing within the next few weeks in what are now woods and grass between the rear of Laurel Woods Elementary School and Whiskey Bottom Road, and the $25.2 million combined facility is to open in October 2010 - after a mere two decades of effort for what most acknowledge is an old, settled area without enough public amenities.

A man who was suffocated and found floating in the Patapsco River this week had been abducted and held for ransom and is believed to be connected to a violent drug gang whose feuding with rivals may have been responsible for at least five homicides last summer, according to law enforcement sources and court records. Authorities are monitoring the situation and exploring leads as it remains unclear whether the killing of Eric Pendergrass, 26, is an isolated incident or related to the spate of retaliatory violence associated with the April kidnapping of the teenage brothers Stephon and Sterling Blackwell.

When Barack Obama is inaugurated this month, his transition team will present him with suggestions on reforming health care from thousands of people across the country, including more than 200 who convened recently in Columbia. The campaign organization the president-elect built is still at work, using vast e-mail lists to mobilize people who want to take part in transforming vital programs like health care by braving a cold holiday weeknight to put their thoughts down on paper. "How refreshing is it that a campaign that is successful wants to listen to its supporters' ideas?"

The late Robert H. Kittleman, a Howard County Republican who served for more than two decades in the Maryland General Assembly, always said the surest way to elective success is to knock on 10,000 doors and impress voters within the first 30 seconds that you are intelligent enough to do the job and affable enough to be approachable. Democrat Shane Pendergrass has spent 22 years in elective office, the past 14 as a member of the House of Delegates, yet she doesn't like knocking on doors, and doesn't do much of it, though she doesn't dispute the Kittleman credo.

On April 16, 2008, NATHANIEL C. PENDERGRASS. Viewing at THE JOSEPH L. RUSS FUNERAL HOME, P.A., 2222-26 W. North Avenue, from 4 to 6 P.M. on Monday, Wake on Tuesday, at Mt. Nebo Holiness Church, 240 N. Franklintown Road, from 6:30 to 7 P.M., when funeral service will begin. Interment in Kingstree, SC.

When three-term Del. Frank S. Turner knocked on their door, retirees Irene and Jim MacDonald agreed to put a Guzzone-Pendergrass-Turner campaign sign on the lawn of their 33-year home in Columbia. They did the same thing when Del. Neil F. Quinter showed up with his sign. The MacDonalds, who live on the high-traffic corner of Tamar Drive and Old Montgomery Road, are one of a handful of families with lawn signs advertising four candidates for the three available Democratic nominations to the Maryland House of Delegates from Howard County's District 13. The popularity of the four elected officials is creating a problem for about 11,000 Democrats likely to vote in the Sept.

THREE-TERM Howard County Del. Shane E. Pendergrass said she found a quick cure for her chronic stomach ache - deciding not to run for the Democratic nomination for a seat in the U.S. Congress. "I figured I would know in my gut what to do, and after having a stomach ache for two weeks, it went away instantly. I kept not listening," Pendergrass said about her decision-making process. Pendergrass, along with fellow District 13 Democrat Del. Neil F. Quinter, had been considering a run for the 3rd District congressional seat now held by U.S. Rep. Benjamin L. Cardin, who has announced a bid for U.S. Senate.

Changing the rules in Columbia is not impossible; it just seems that way. Every property owner in town has to agree in order to change the covenant, the document that governs the Columbia Association. Most local officials want to change the way things are done, but they cannot agree on how to go about it. State Del. Shane E. Pendergrass has written legislation to change that requirement, but the Columbia Association board voted, 5-3, Thursday to oppose it. "It's still my plan to introduce it," she said, noting that the state legislature had passed another bill without the support of Columbia Association.

On September 20, 2004 J. FRANK beloved husband of Doris Rebecca (nee Akehurst) Tarleton; devoted father of Doris Tarleton Pendergrass and Jay Frank Tarleton; loving father-in-law of Nathan Pendergrass and Christina Tarleton. Also survived by his brother J. Theodore Tarleton III and many other loving family members. The family will receive friends at the E.F. Lassahn Funeral Home, P.A., 11750 Belair Road (Kingsville) Tuesday and Wednesday 2 to 4 and 7 to 9 p.m. A funeral service will be held at Camp Chapel United Methodist Church on Thursday at 11 a.m. Interment Camp Chapel United Methodist Church Cemetery.