Rodgers Forge

An appeals court weighed in yesterday on the question of which side of a Rodgers Forge home is its front, agreeing with three previous rulings in favor of the homeowners. But the legal victory might not mean much to the couple who provoked the ire of the community association when they tried to put an addition on their home in 2003. They've moved. The Maryland Court of Special Appeals reaffirmed a lower court's ruling that the front of the brick rowhouse lies on a different road than the houses to which it is connected.

Harry Truman was president, trolley cars were running on York Road and hemlines were not what they are today, when Larry and Eileen Taylor first turned the front door key of their Regester Avenue home in Rodgers Forge on a cool November day in 1950. "We paid $11,500 for an end-of-group home and were its first occupants. It was already completed, but the houses across the street were still being built when we moved in," said Eileen Bohli Taylor, 87, who has been married to her husband, Larry, also 87, for 62 years.

Barbara M. Gleason, whose career with the YWCA spanned three decades, died of leukemia Sunday at Johns Hopkins Hospital. She was 55. Ms. Gleason was born in Baltimore and raised in Rodgers Forge. She was a 1969 graduate of Towson Catholic High School and earned a bachelor's degree in English from Washington College in 1973. Since the 1970s, Ms. Gleason had worked for the YWCA of Greater Baltimore, where she held many positions and most recently had been in development. She helped establish and formerly operated the YWCA's Aberdeen Family Support Center.

Thomas David Murphy, a building operations manager and longtime Rodgers Forge resident, died Monday of respiratory failure at St. Joseph Medical Center. He was 59. Born and raised in Baltimore, Mr. Murphy was a 1964 graduate of Archbishop Curley High School. He served as an Army stenographer in Alaska from 1967 to 1970, when he was discharged with the rank of specialist. After earning his bachelor's degree in 1973 from what is now Towson University, Mr. Murphy went to work in real estate sales and management, eventually becoming a certified property manager.

Baltimore County police shot and killed a 40-year-old Rodgers Forge woman in a bedroom of her house yesterday after she threatened officers with a rifle during a 12-hour standoff, police said.The shooting occurred at 4: 30 p.m.Police declined to say what prompted them to shoot the mother of two, identified as Tambra Eddinger. A preliminary investigation indicates that she was shot three times, twice in the chest and once in the shoulder, said Cpl. Douglas Irwin, on duty last night in the department's communications unit.

Baltimore County police shot and killed a 40-year-old Rodgers Forge woman in a bedroom of her home yesterday after she threatened officers with a rifle during a 12-hour standoff, police said.Police refused to discuss the circumstances of the shooting of Tambra W. Eddinger, a mother of two. A preliminary investigation indicates that she was shot twice in the chest and once in the shoulder, said Cpl. Douglas Irwin, on duty in the department's communications unit.Said police spokeswoman Vickie Warehime: "[Eddinger]

As Towson University heads to the General Assembly to request money to expand Minnegan Stadium, angry community residents are asking state lawmakers and the Board of Regents once again to deny funding for the college's plans to build a $28 million regional sports complex.Noting that community concerns about congestion and noise have not been addressed, Rodgers Forge residents sent a letter to Board Chairman Nathan A. Chapman Jr. and Chancellor Donald P. Langenberg of the University System of Maryland, urging them to stop expansion efforts.

Baltimore County police yesterday offered new details of Monday's daylong standoff in Rodgers Forge that ended with an officer fatally shooting a 40-year-old woman armed with a rifle and barricaded in her bedroom.The details emerged as residents of the quiet neighborhood questioned why the shooting had to occur at all, and children at nearby Dumbarton Middle School carried home letters about the death of Tambra W. Eddinger, whose son Jonathan Walters attends the school.Eddinger, who shared the Rodgers Forge rowhouse in the 300 block of Dumbarton Road with her husband and two children from her previous marriage, was shot three times in the chest by tactical team officer Robert O. Jones, county police said yesterday.

ON LABOR DAY, Baltimore County police tried for 12 hours to persuade Tambra W. Eddinger to surrender at her Rodgers Forge home, where she was holed up with a rifle. When she refused, and then turned with her weapon toward police, an officer shot her three times. She died from the wounds.When a police shooting occurs, second-guessing often follows. But county police seem to have acted properly in trying to end this incident less tragically. The shooting remains under investigation and the officer who fired his weapon has been placed on administrative leave, as is routine.

William D. Umphreys, 51, Vietnam veteranWilliam Dallas Umphreys, a former Essex resident and a Vietnam veteran, died Saturday of undetermined causes in Youngstown, Ohio. He was 51.A graduate of Kenwood High School, Mr. Umphreys, who was disabled and did not work, last lived in the Baltimore area during the 1970s, said a sister, Ann Durham of Essex.Mr. Umphreys, who was divorced, was a combat veteran of the Vietnam War.He is survived by a son, Andrew Umphreys of Youngstown; two daughters, Ann Marie Umphreys and Frieda Umphreys, both of Youngstown; his mother, Elizabeth Umphreys of Essex; a brother, Thomas Roger Umphreys of Essex; another sister, Marie Knopp of Essex; three nephews; and a niece.

Beatrice K. Tracey, a retired registered nurse who enjoyed attending yard sales, died of pancreatic cancer Thursday at her Rodgers Forge home. She was 77. Beatrice Mary Kijewski, the daughter of a milkman and a homemaker, was born in Philadelphia and raised near Fairmount Park. She was a 1949 graduate of Hallahan Catholic Girls High School and earned her nursing degree in 1952 from St. Joseph's Hospital School of Nursing in Philadelphia. Mrs. Tracey worked as a nurse at the Philadelphia Children's Youth Study Center, which cared for troubled, abused and abandoned children.

William Hunter Waring, a retired field audit supervisor who earlier had worked for Texaco Oil Co., died Friday of pneumonia at Oak Crest Village. The longtime former Rodgers Forge resident was 88. Mr. Waring was born and raised at his home in the 2900 block of Walbrook Ave. He was a 1939 graduate of Forest Park High School. He attended the University of Baltimore Law School and dropped out to go to work at the old Glenn L. Martin Co. plant in Middle River as a mail supervisor. In 1942, he enlisted in the Army and served with an anti-aircraft artillery unit in France and Germany.

Firefighters and police officers walked through the Rodgers Forge community in Baltimore County on Wednesday night, offering to check homes for safety issues and providing information on emergency preparedness. They will return Friday, Monday and Sept. 21 as part of a new Safe Neighborhoods program. "Our goal is face-to-face meetings to provide information and match the needs of this community," said Lt. Lynn Mullahey, the county Fire Department's public education officer. Prompted by two recent electrical fires, the Rodgers Forge Community Association, which represents about 1,200 homeowners, volunteered to serve as a pilot area for the safety initiative.

Nancy M. Wagner, who had been alumni director at several Maryland colleges, died of cancer July 19 at her Rodgers Forge home. She was 80. Nancy McNaughton, the daughter of an advertising executive and homemaker, was born in Detroit and raised in Bronxville, N.Y. After graduating from Dobbs Ferry (N.Y.) High School, she attended Goucher College, where she earned a bachelor's degree in 1951 in Spanish. The former longtime Towson resident, who moved to Rodgers Forge two years ago, was alumnae director at Oldfields School in Glencoe from 1966 to 1973.

Contracts for a new Towson elementary school are to come before the Baltimore County Board of Education on Tuesday, including bids for site improvements and excavation. "This is just the next big step," said Michael Sines, the school system's executive director of physical facilities. "We are exactly where we want to be." The three contracts - for testing site materials, excavation and concrete work, among other things - are "simply the first group" of more than a dozen contracts that will be brought to the board as the project progresses, Sines said.

The parents of a boy who died of starvation, his shrunken body racked by blunt-force injuries, were sentenced Friday in Baltimore County Circuit Court to 25 years in prison for their roles in his death. John J. Griffin, a 40-year-old computer engineer and a graduate of Loyola High School and Loyola College, and his wife, Susan Griffin, 39, who was a stay-at-home mother of five, will serve at least 12 1/2 years before being eligible to request parole. Their surviving children are in foster care.

There was little reason to suspect that something terrible - the withering abuse and neglect of a child - was happening behind the walls of the Griffin family's rented brick townhouse in Rodgers Forge. John Griffin, a graduate of private schools in Baltimore, had a job as a computer engineer that paid well. He and his wife, Susan, and their five children were all covered by health insurance. She had worked in a medical office before becoming a full-time mother. He jogged with friends. But the family was unraveling, distracted and consumed with internal warfare.

The heavy black piece of iron has spent the past few decades at Rodgers Forge Elementary School, first on display in the school library, then migrating into storage and even serving as a doorstop before the principal spirited it away to a closet for safekeeping. Now the Rodgers Forge school is offering the piece to the Maryland Historical Society, in hopes that it will once again serve as a reminder of the Towson-area neighborhood's roots. The ironwork, as it is called, is part of the forge that gave the area its name, said Deirdre Barone, a school volunteer and parent.

The Facebook page of Towson University President Robert Caret lists a line from Pat Conroy as his favorite quotation: "Why do they not teach you that time is a finger snap and an eye blink, and that you should not allow a moment to pass you by without taking joyous, ecstatic note of it, not wasting a moment of its swift, breakneck circuit?" In six years at Towson, Caret has not wasted a second. The university's recent skirmish with neighbors in Rodgers Forge, over the location of a new 5,000-seat arena, is an example of both Caret's urgency and his diplomacy.

Andrew Griffin looked a little skinny, but was otherwise normal. Or maybe he wasn't. His mother couldn't be sure. In a videotaped conversation at Baltimore County police headquarters hours after her young son was declared dead in 2007, Susan J. Griffin veered from certainty to indecision when describing Andrew's condition in the weeks before his death. Her comments were aired yesterday in Baltimore County Circuit Court on the third day of a trial in which Griffin and her husband, John, both 39, of Rodgers Forge, are accused of first-degree murder and child abuse.