Postmaster

John R. Cochran Jr., former Washington postmaster and a World War II veteran, died Wednesday of pneumonia at Stonegates Retirement Community in Greenville, Del. He was 87. The son of a dairyman and a teacher, John R. Cochran Jr. was born in Monkton and raised in Taylor, Harford County. After graduating in 1941 from Bel Air High School, he moved to Baltimore and went to work for the Baltimore Gas and Electric Co. Drafted into the Army Air Forces in 1943, Mr. Cochran served as a radio operator and turret gunner aboard B-24 bombers in Europe as a member of the 376th Bomb Group of the 514th Squadron.

John R. Cochran Jr., former Washington postmaster and a World War II veteran, died Wednesday of pneumonia at Stonegates Retirement Community in Greenville, Del. He was 87. The son of a dairyman and a teacher, John R. Cochran Jr. was born in Monkton and raised in Taylor, Harford County. After graduating in 1941 from Bel Air High School, he moved to Baltimore and went to work for the Baltimore Gas and Electric Co. Drafted into the Army Air Forces in 1943, Mr. Cochran served as a radio operator and turret gunner aboard B-24 bombers in Europe as a member of the 376th Bomb Group of the 514th Squadron.

Rita J. Fowler has been appointed postmaster of Crownsville. She will manage mail operations for 12,000 postal customers.Fowler beganher career in 1975 as a clerk-postmaster relief in Barley, W.Va., and later became a distribution-window clerk in Grundy, Va.In 1977 she was selected as Equal Employment Opportunity counselor at the Charleston, W.Va., post office and then was promoted to EEO investigator at the Eastern Regional Office in Philadelphia.In 1986, she became EEO counselor-investigator at the main post office in Baltimore.

Over the years, Jim Shriver has amassed his own personal archive of his family's illustrious history. Even so, the Union Mills resident, like many long-time Carroll residents, has always been intrigued by one particular historic marker in front of the former U.S. Post OfficeBuilding on Westminster's Main Street. That marker commemorates the creation in April 1899 of the nation's first Rural Free Delivery Route - often called the first "post office on wheels" - and Edwin Shriver, the man who created it, who happens to be Jim Shriver's distant cousin.

A Mass of Christian burial for William F. Laukaitis, a former magistrate who served as Baltimore's postmaster for nine years, will be offered at 9 a.m. tomorrow at St. Philip Neri Roman Catholic Church, 6405 Orchard Road, Linthicum Heights.Mr. Laukaitis, who was 90 and lived in Homeland, died Wednesday at the Meridian Nursing Center-Homewood of complications from a broken hip.He returned to the practice of law for several years after his retirement from the post office in 1966. He had become postmaster in 1957, two years after resigning as Baltimore's chief police magistrate.

The postmaster at the Havre de Grace post office has been placed on administrative leave as a result of a financial review that found irregularities in the handling of funds, a source in the federal postal inspector's office said yesterday.The employee in the postal inspector's office, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that Postmaster John J. Vitak, 52, is on leave based on a review last week.Reached at his Havre de Grace home yesterday, Vitak declined to comment. "I'm not allowed to say anything," he said repeatedly.

Frederick Milton Maguire, a retired postmaster of a Prince George's County mail processing center and American Legion official, died Tuesday of a respiratory ailment at Oak Crest Village in Parkville. He was 87 and had lived in the Glendale section of Baltimore County. Mr. Maguire joined the U.S. Postal Service in 1939 and held management positions in the Washington regional office. He retired in 1984 as manager-postmaster of the Prince George's Sectional Center. Born in Baltimore and raised on 41st Street, he was a 1933 City College graduate.

Mary Elizabeth McKelvey, retired assistant postmaster for Long Green, died of coronary artery disease April 2 at Lancaster Regional Medical Center in Lancaster, Pa. She was 90. Born Mary Elizabeth Gary in Kennedyville, where she attended public schools, she moved to Towson in 1939 and later relocated to Long Green. During World War II, she worked at the Black & Decker tool manufacturing plant. She then took the assistant postmaster's job and retired about 20 years ago. She moved to the Mennonite Home nursing facility in Lancaster in 2001.

Thomas B. Cumiskey Jr., a former Maryland House of Delegates member and retired assistant Cumberland postmaster, died Sunday at Memorial Hospital of Cumberland from a head injury suffered in a fall. He was 85. A lifelong resident of Cumberland, where he attended parochial school, Mr. Cumiskey served in the Army Reserves from 1949 to 1969, earning the rank of major. He left his job with the U.S. Postal Service in 1972 after 35 years, disgusted, he said, at Nixon administration efforts to reorganize the agency.

STANDING IN line at a large suburban post office recently, western Howard county's small, friendly, uncrowded post offices came to mind.They are one of our neighborhood's best kept secrets. The Glenelg post office is an example.Perhaps you've seen a new face at this rural post office on Ten Oaks Road.The face belongs to Mary Lou Jestes, the new postmaster who assumed her duties Dec. 20 in the midst of the holiday mail rush.Jestes, her husband, Gary, and their daughter, Desiree -- a student at Carroll Community College -- are residents of Manchester in northern Carroll County.

Andrew L. "Shad" Crockett, a retired postmaster and a highly decorated World War II infantryman who landed at Normandy on D-Day with the 29th Division, died Wednesday of heart failure at the Edward W. McGready Memorial Hospital in Crisfield. He was 85. Mr. Crockett was born on Tangier Island, the son of a waterman and a homemaker. After graduating from Crisfield High School, he moved to Baltimore and went to work in the Bethlehem Steel Corp.'s Fairfield yard building Liberty ships. In 1943, he enlisted in the Army and was sent to England aboard the RMS Queen Mary, where he joined the 115th Regiment of the Army's 29th Division.

When William L. Ridenour was sworn in yesterday as Baltimore's postmaster, it was the high point of a 27-year career that began when he became a letter carrier and steadily rose through the ranks of the U.S. Postal Service. Ridenour, who was born and raised in Baltimore, is the first Baltimorean to serve as the city's postmaster since 1966. It's a huge leap from the days when he endured rain, snow and barking dogs to deliver the mail in city neighborhoods. "This was really the job I strived for since I was a letter carrier in Baltimore," said Ridenour, who lives in Essex with his wife of 23 years, Anna.

William L. Ridenour is scheduled to be sworn in as Baltimore's 39th postmaster at 1:30 p.m. today at a ceremony in the War Memorial Building. John E. Potter, the U.S. postmaster general, is to attend. Ridenour will oversee the postal operations at the main downtown post office and 30 stations and branches, with a total of 2,200 employees. He most recently was postmaster of Alexandria, Va. He began his postal career in 1980 as a mail carrier in Baltimore.

Glen Burnie was seeing an explosion of growth about 60 years ago, The Sun reported Aug, 13 1947. With 23,000 housing units under construction, the population was preparing to quadruple. The largest development, Harundale, was 300 acres with 1,200 two- and three-bedroom houses. The influx of residents led to construction of a $1 million high school and more applications for water meters and sewer connections than the sanitary commission could keep up with. Now a thriving suburb, Glen Burnie was once a small mining town founded by Elias Glenn, a district attorney, in 1812.

A 10-year-old West Baltimore girl died yesterday at Johns Hopkins Hospital of wounds she suffered a day earlier in a hit-and-run accident. About 2:50 p.m. Thursday, Kianna Johnson of the 1500 block of W. Fairmount Ave. was struck by a green station wagon, possibly a Mercury Sable, as she crossed West Baltimore Street a block from her home, police said. The driver did not stop, and Johnson was taken to Johns Hopkins Hospital, where she died. Baltimore police are asking anyone with information about a green station wagon driving in that area to call 410-396-2606.

Margaret K. Anders, the former postmaster of Oella and a longtime soup kitchen volunteer, died of pneumonia Feb. 5 at Charlestown Retirement Community in Catonsville. She was 88. Born Margaret Kilduff, she was the eldest of 10 children of an Abingdon blacksmith. After graduating from St. Stephens High School in Bradshaw and Mount St. Agnes College in Baltimore, she married Cecil Trinkhaus, the Oella postmaster in 1941. Mrs. Anders became the assistant postmaster and, when her husband died, she took over as postmaster in Oella.

Marlin Johnson was sworn in yesterday as the new postmaster of the Linthicum Post Office by John Davis, director of field operations.Davis was assisted by Richard Muller, former postmaster of Linthicum, who read him the citation from the postmaster general empowering Johnson with the duties of the office.Johnson began his career with the U.S. Postal Service as distribution clerk in Washington in 1967. He moved to Baltimore in 1969 to work as a part-time flex letter carrier and in 1983 was promoted to superintendent of postal operation and was assigned to the Druid Post Office.

It began with a wobbly flower vase. David A. Brignac received the small ceramic as a gift from a co-worker. But the vase, emblazoned with a detailed painting of a Victorian-era Baltimore post office, proved too tippy to use as a penholder. "I stuck it in my desk drawer for while," recalls Brignac, 51, a 30-year employee of the U.S. Postal Service. "I didn't realize it was from the late 1880s." Eventually, though, his curiosity led him to discover its age. The rest, as they say, is history.