Pikesville

On Saturday, to celebrate National Bagel Day, Feb. 9, Brooklyn Water Bagels , and its national spokesman, Larry King, are inviting folks in for a Free Bagel and a Shmear. The promotion is valid in participating Brooklyn Water Bagels stores in Florida, Georgia, California and Maryland. There's no purchase necessary and the offer is valid for one per customer. There's a Brooklyn Water Bagels on Hooks Lane in Pikesville. Brooklyn Water Bagels was founded in 2009 in Delray Beach, Fla. as the Original Brooklyn Water Bagel Co. Follow Baltimore Diner on Twitter @gorelickingood  

Lonnie Harris, a retired Continental Can Co. worker and an active church member, died Jan. 3 of respiratory failure at Northwest Hospital. He was 88. Mr. Harris was born in Littleton, N.C., and after the death of his parents moved to East Baltimore, where he was raised by an aunt. He attended city public schools. For more than 40 years until retiring in 1986, Mr. Harris worked at Continental Can Co., first as a factory worker, and later as a full-time shop steward. He also coached the company basketball team.

Prince George's County police found a missing 20-year-old University of Maryland, College Park student dead Friday night. David Jonathan Scherr had not been seen since Dec. 19 near the College Park campus, thought to be driving a black 2013 Ford Escape. Police found Scherr unresponsive in the vehicle in a parking lot off of Route 50 in Bowie about 10 p.m. Friday. Police said they are investigating the death as a suicide. According to the university's student directory, Scherr lived in the 4700 block of Norwich Road in College Park and on Fencepost Court in Pikesville.

Loyola's Mitch Cross, with a game-high 26 points, helped thwart a Pikesville comeback by making two steals and two free throws in the closing 25 seconds as the host Dons beat the Panthers, 60-57, in boys basketball Monday. Loyola (2-3) extended its 30-24 halftime lead by outscoring Pikesville 16-7 in the third quarter. But the Panthers (1-2) battled back from a 15-point deficit to tie the game at 50 with 2:43 left. With less than a minute left and the score tied at 52, Cross made his first steal and fed Bennett Bradley to give Loyola the lead.

Ruth's Chris Steak House is usually open only for dinner, but now through Christmas Eve, the restaurant is serving a holiday lunch menu on weekdays. It's a bit of a splurge, but what the heck, there's prosperity in the land. The menu includes a $15 steak sandwich, the $14 Ruth's prime burger, a $42.95 filet au poivre entree and, if it's been a really good year for the firm, a $44.95 New York strip. The lunch menu is being served Monday through Friday, 11:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. at all locations of Ruth's Chris Steak House including the ones on Water Street , Eastern Avenue and Pikesville . There's more information about the holiday lunch on the Ruth's Chris website . Follow Baltimore Diner on Twitter @gorelickingood  

A former Baltimore County teacher filed a complaint with a state board Monday, alleging that the University System of Maryland Board of Regents violated the state open meetings law when it voted in closed session on the University of Maryland's move to the Big Ten athletic conference. "I think it's a disgrace that no one has complained about this," said Ralph Jaffe, who taught political science in the county public schools and has run for U.S. Senate and governor in recent years. Jaffe, who lives in Pikesville, sent a letter to the Maryland Open Meetings Compliance Board on Monday saying that the Board of Regents illegally met last week to approve the university's move, which ended six decades of membership in the Atlantic Coast Conference.

If Vietnam was the nation's first televised war, then the Civil War was the country's first photographed war, dramatically and vividly bringing into American homes the horrors and carnage their husbands, brothers and sons faced on the battlefield. In his recently published book, "Maryland's Civil War Photographs The Sesquicentennial Collection," Ross J. Kelbaugh, a Pikesville collector of vintage Maryland images, has assembled more than 400 photographs of a conflict that killed more than 600,000 Americans between 1861 and 1865.

- Pikesville resident Gerald Cohen was an active 71-year-old retiree, filling his free time with gardening, volunteering and enjoying the company of his grandchildren despite persistent back pain - until he sought relief for it. Treated with steroids in the past, he received spinal injections of the medication again in August and September at a Baltimore-area clinic. But this time, side effects came quickly and severely - nausea, neck stiffness, fever and eventually a stroke. Aside from the physical ailments, he grew irritable and started seeing a psychologist over nightly worries that he wouldn't wake up the next morning.

A Pikesville man charged in his grandparents' death last month has been extradited and is being held in the Baltimore County Detention Center, police said. Matthew Charles Long, 31, was transported from Oklahoma Wednesday and is now being held without bail. He faces two counts of first degree murder in the deaths of his grandparents, Vaughn and Marjorie Pepper, on Sept. 10. Long was found unresponsive in a motel room on Sept. 11, near Route 40 in Weatherford, Okla., after he did not check out of the room, authorities there said.

Clarence Edward Beard, a retired Baltimore County public schools vocal music teacher, died of kidney failure Sept. 28 at his Pikesville home. He was 97. Born in Westminster, he was raised on his parents' dairy farm. He was a 1932 graduate of Westminster High School, where he played soccer. During the Depression of the 1930s, his father traded land, now used as a golf course, to the old Western Maryland College for tuition for his children, family members said. Mr. Beard earned a bachelor's degree in music and mathematics at the school, now called McDaniel College.