School Of Pharmacy

The Rev. James E. Hodges Sr. found one of his callings in the late 1940s, when he worked part-time for a Baltimore druggist while still a student at Douglass High School.Seven years later, he became the first African-American graduate of the School of Pharmacy at the University of Maryland at Baltimore, according to a school official.Mr. Hodges died of a heart attack Tuesday at his longtime home in the 1900 block of E. Belvedere Ave. He was 65.Mr. Hodges also earned a master's degree in urban planning from Morgan State University in 1975 and a doctorate in behavioral pharmacology from Union Institute in Cincinnati in 1991.

For more than 40 years, Bernard C. "Doc" McDougall dispensed prescriptions, fountain sodas, fried egg sandwiches and good feelings from behind the counter of his family's drugstore in Sykesville.Mr. McDougall, who had served as mayor of Sykesville in the 1960s, died Monday of a heart attack at Northwest Hospital Center. He was 73.He opened McDougall's Pharmacy on Main Street in 1957. In 1988, he relocated to Gillis Corner Shopping Center on Route 32. He retired three years ago. A son, Mark McDougall of Sykesville, now operates the business.

Joseph John Sokol Jr. was an avid runner. Even after starting a family and becoming pharmacy director at Columbia Medical Plan, he found time to compete in races and was a member of the Howard County Striders and Baltimore Road Runners Club.On Sunday morning, Mr. Sokol, 47, a resident of the Dorsey Hall neighborhood of Columbia, collapsed three-quarters of the way through the Annapolis Ten Mile Run. He was pronounced dead a short time later, apparently of a heart attack.Phil Miller, administrative director of the Columbia Medical Plan and close friend of Mr. Sokol, described him as caring and outgoing.

TWENTY-FIVE YEARS ago, when the University of Maryland School of Pharmacy opened a poison center in the basement of one of its buildings, the program was intended primarily as a training opportunity for students. Within five years it had become the Maryland Poison Center, the designated information source for citizens around the state who needed quick, reliable information about potentially dangerous substances.The calls have been pouring in ever since -- more than 54,000 in 1995 alone. That year, the center managed more than 35,000 poisoning cases.

James Miller featured in Business JournalJames A. Miller, lifelong resident of Carroll County, was recently featured in the Baltimore Business Journal's tribute to Greater Baltimore's up and coming business leaders, "Forty under 40."As executive director and board member of EPIC Pharmacies/Maryland Professional Pharmacies Inc., and vice president of EPIC Pharmacy Network, Mr. Miller was recognized for his foresight about the future of the independent pharmacies in the age of health care reform.

Dr. Peter P. Lamy, an internationally recognized authority on geriatrics and gerontology, died Tuesday of cancer at the Washington Hospital Center. The Catonsville resident was 68.In 1978, he established the Center for the Study of Pharmacy and Therapeutics for the Elderly at the University of Maryland School of Pharmacy.His 1980 book, "Prescribing for the Elderly," has been widely accepted as the standard text on prescribing medication for the elderly. He also wrote more than 400 articles on the subject.

It's a civil war in which the front-line soldiers wear white lab coats.Pharmacy, a quiet profession that faces a turbulent future, is in the midst of a national struggle that has divided its practitioners and pitted many of the nation's pharmacy schools against the chain drugstores that employ many of their graduates.For several years, retail executives and educators have clashed at university after university over the question of how to train the pharmacists of the 21st century, who will face a world in which thousands of new drugs will be created by high-technology processes.

In 1840, Baltimore had 77 pharmacies, many of them run by physicians employing apprentices. To educate these young men, the pharmacists founded the Maryland College of Pharmacy, fourth in the nation, which was chartered by the legislature in January 1841 and began class in a single room with one instructor and six students, three of whom went on to graduate in June 1842. The first American professorship in the theory and practice of pharmacy was established there in 1844.After the 1846-7 school year, the school went dormant, only to be reborn in 1856 with 20 students, three professors and a scholarly journal.

HAVANA TO CRABTOWN?: Production crews have been scouting about town for a new movie starring none other than Robert Redford as the nation's chief exec in "The President Elopes."Fred "The Russia House" Schepisi will direct, and it's being produced by Michael Houseman, who recently did David Mamet's "Homicide" here.NAME DROPPING: Muscleman-turned-actor Arnold Schwarzenegger was in town over the weekend to visit his mother-in law, Eunice Shriver, who's a patient at Johns Hopkins Hospital . . . The Los Angeles Times reports that Sylvester Stallone has purchased a 400-plus-acre horse form in suburban Maryland . . .Robert Duvall will star in a TV miniseries called "Killer Angels" about the Civil War, part of which will be shot in the near future in Western Maryland . . .Eye Spies report Walter Matthau is coming to the Big Crab in May to shoot a movie by Robert Halmi Jr., one of the producers of "Lonesome Dove" . . .And, finally, local director Arthur Egeli, whose suspense thriller, "Maxim Xul," starred Adam "Batman" West, has reportedly finished the script for his new film project, "Prodigy," which we hear will be Annapolis-based.

Plans to locate a Domino's Pizza here may run afoul of town zoning requirements.Primarily a delivery business, Domino's would like toopen a franchise in the lower-level office area of the Barnes Building in Ridgeside Business Center. Zoning requirements limit retail businesses to the top floor of the Ridge Road building.The building was zoned retail and office to alleviate parking problems. Terry Sparks, owner of the planned Domino's franchise, said a delivery business would not contribute to those problems.

From his job at a drug company in San Diego, Patrick Donohue could see how much the nation needed pharmacists. So the Baltimore native made a practical decision to go back to school and train for a career that seemed recession-proof. What he didn't realize is that he'd also get to be a pioneer. When Donohue and 69 others start courses at the College of Notre Dame of Maryland today, they will become the first class of the first school of pharmacy at an American women's college. Notre Dame will become the second institution in Maryland to train professional pharmacists.

* The College of Notre Dame of Maryland School of Pharmacy has appointed Dr. John Michael O'Brien assistant professor of clinical and administrative sciences. O'Brien is the former president of Responsible Health LLC. He has also worked for the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America as senior director of state policy and a spokesman for Healthy Town USA. He earned his doctor of pharmacy with honors from Nova Southeastern University College of Pharmacy and a master of public health from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

Advertising * MGH announced the appointments of Perri Hochwald as vice president interactive channel strategist, Cheryl Peluso as vice president account director and Ashley Pirro as an account coordinator for the Owings Mills-based marketing communications agency. * gkv, based in Baltimore, named Molly Miller as a traffic coordinator and Joey Antonette Reedy as an account executive for the marketing firm. Banking * Provident Bank appointed Randall James as a vice president within the finance and control division at the regional bank's Baltimore headquarters.

*Mercy Medical Center received the Partner for Change Award last month at the Practice Greenhealth Environmental Excellence Awards in Pittsburgh. Mercy earned the award after developing pollution prevention programs. According to Rachel Demunda, director of environmental health and safety at Mercy, the hospital has instituted a number of "green" initiatives and programs during the past 18 months. They include reducing medical waste; recycling paper, cardboard, batteries, mercury, lead and construction debris; food composting; using green cleaning chemicals; and buying locally grown produce.

*James M. Culhane is the new chair of pharmaceutical sciences at the College of Notre Dame of Maryland's new School of Pharmacy. He began his job Sunday. Culhane was an associate professor in the Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences at Wilkes University's Nesbitt School of Pharmacy for the past 10 years. Culhane, who holds a doctorate in pharmacology and toxicology from West Virginia University's School of Medicine and a bachelor's degree in chemistry from Washington and Jefferson College, has received many honors and awards, including the 2007 Carpenter Award for Excellence in Teaching.

Dr. Michelle A. Fritsch has been appointed chair of pharmacy practice at the College of Notre Dame of Maryland's new School of Pharmacy. Fritsch comes to the college from Alamance Regional Medical Center in Burlington, N.C., where she works as a clinical pharmacy specialist and medication-assistance program director. She will assume her new duties this month. Fritsch, who is an adjunct associate professor in the physical therapy department at Wingate School of Pharmacy, Elon University and Baylor University, has also taught at the University of Missouri, Kansas City and Campbell University.

Alfred Howard Schwartzman, who was raised in his high school years by two neighborhood pharmacists and with their encouragement became one himself, died of esophageal cancer Sunday at his Pikesville home. He was 73. Born in Guilford County, N.C., and raised in Baltimore's Reservoir Hill, he attended night school at City College and worked days stocking shelves at the old Brookfield Pharmacy after his mother died and his father lived out-of-state. Its owners, Godfrey Kroopnick and Irving Freed, gave him the job, helped raise him and encouraged him to go into their profession.

Promotions The University of Maryland School of Pharmacy has named Magaly Rodriguez de Bittner chairwoman of the department of pharmacy practice and science. She has been a member of the faculty since 1984, and associate dean for academic affairs since 2004. Rodriguez de Bittner holds a doctorate in pharmacy from the University of Maryland School of Pharmacy and a bachelor's degree from the University of Puerto Rico. She serves as a consultant to the VA Maryland Health Care System and the Pan American Health Organization.

It's a new year, but Elmer Klavens marks it in the old manner. He gets up each day, and he gets himself to work. You can find him several days a week at the Chestnut Pharmacy, on 36th Street in Hampden. A few years ago, Klavens did the math and figured he had filled about 1 million prescriptions over his lifetime. He has been a pharmacist for three-quarters of a century. As he goes to work this week, he is 94 years old. He has three children who marvel at their father. There is the musician, Clay; the schoolteacher, Bobbie; and the optometrist, Andy.

The ninth-graders packed into Elkton High School's classroom A3 on a recent morning were restless as Nick Tsourounis, a University of Maryland School of Pharmacy doctoral student, stepped up to talk with them about addiction and stimulants, with particular attention to cocaine. But soon, amid the fidgeting, hair-twisting and averted eyes, the students began to listen as Tsourounis, in khakis and a button-down shirt, described the clinical effects drug use has on the human body and on human behavior.