Seamstress

Bertha Spiess, a German immigrant who worked as a cook, seamstress, cattle farmer and dog breeder, died Friday of complications from an infection at Fairfield Nursing Home in Crownsville. She was 95.The former Bertha Baum was born in Wachenheim, Germany, and grew up in the town of Beiteigheim near the Alps. She attended secretarial college in Stuttgart and immigrated to the United States with her husband, Otto Spiess, in 1930.After living in Philadelphia for a few years, the couple moved to Maryland and lived in Anne Arundel County.

Chauncey E. Lokey, 93, repairman, outdoorsmanChauncey Ellwood Lokey, a retired Eastern Shore engine repairman and hunter and fisherman, died Wednesday of heart failure at Carroll County General Hospital in Westminster. The Pocomoke City native was 93.He was an employee of Pepsi-Cola Bottling Co. in Salisbury for more than 20 years and later was a self-employed repairman specializing in outboard engines.His first love was the outdoors, relatives said. "That was his life -- hunting and fishing, fishing and hunting," said Susan Lokey of Woodbine, the wife of his nephew, Richard Lokey.

Jamie Gill, 19, is one of those Maryland State Fair legends: she grew up in 4-H, is an accomplished seamstress, raises beef steers and heifers, and is a keen baker. She is also a sophomore and resident at Towson University where she is a double major in engineering and computer science. Gill's skill with a needle and thread have twice made her a finalist in the national "Make it with Wool" competition.For her local victory in the contest sponsored by the Maryland Sheep Breeders Association, Gill was awarded a beautiful bolt of wool, from which she made this year's entry in the 4-H tailored wear category, a pants suit with navy blue slacks, and a Black Watch plaid jacket with navy blue collar, buttons and cuffs.

Nellie H. Carter, a skilled seamstress who made clothes for numerous Baltimore-area charities and was a secretary for former Maryland Gov. Albert C. Ritchie, died Tuesday of heart failure at her North Baltimore home. She was 90.From 1950 to 1959, she was an avid charity worker and president of the Baltimore branch of the Needlework Guild of America, a well-known charity. As part of their work for the guild, she and other women sewed clothes for charities."She enjoyed helping other people and being charitable," said her daughter, Anne Hilleary Carter of North Baltimore.

For the last 30 years, Alice Caroline Fleming ate a simple dinner that may have contributed to her longevity: a boiled chicken breast, rice, string beans, corn bread and a bowl of ice cream.That diet -- along with lots of fresh air and a positive outlook toward life -- enabled Mrs. Fleming to reach the age of 102. She died April 5 of natural causes at the St. Agnes Nursing and Rehabilitation Center in Ellicott City.Her bland dinner fare began as a remedy for high blood pressure the mid 1960s, but was not required for the last 30 or so years.

Charlotte Young Ross, who operated a day care center in her West Baltimore home for 15 years, had a simple philosophy for raising her own children and those entrusted to her care.That philosophy was to treat every child "the same loving way," said her daughter Martha Ross Crawley of Baltimore."She treated them all like they were her own, which meant she could be strict when they got out of line," Mrs. Crawley said. "But the kids were just a part of her, each and every one of them."Mrs. Ross died Thursday of gall bladder and renal infections at the University of Maryland Medical Center.

Martina Olandrous Drummond Tyler, a former schoolteacher and seamstress and keeper of her family's history, died Monday in her sleep at Inns of Evergreen Northwest Nursing Home in Baltimore. She was 103."She was the oral historian of our family and focus of our family reunions, which she attended up until several years ago," said a great-nephew, William H. Britt of Baltimore, a retired city school principal.Her forebears "were slaves that came from Africa to the Eastern Shore of Virginia before the Revolutionary War and worked on the Finney Plantation near Onancock, where she grew up," Mr. Britt said.

Genevieve E. Birrane McCurdy, a homemaker and former seamstress, died Thursday of heart failure at the Charlestown retirement community. She was 92.She grew up on Hanover Street in South Baltimore, one of eight children of a barber and his wife. After attending parochial school at Holy Cross, she went to work as a seamstress in Baltimore's garment district when she was in her early teens.She worked until 1938 when she and Joseph P. McCurdy Sr., who had been a garment cutter since he was 12 in the city's sweatshops, were married.

SINCE MY thoughts often turn to foreign adventure when I shop at Banana Republic, during my last visit there I decided to take an imaginary voyage by reading the "Made in" labels stitched on the garments.It was quite a trip -- China, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Taiwan, the Philippines, India, Honduras, Thailand, Korea, Macau and someplace called "Northern Mariana Island" (the Northern Marina Islands, perhaps?).Soon I fell into a pleasant daydream: I was lying the arms of a bewitching maiden of the Orient as we feasted on shrimp with their heads still on and other exotic things.

A Mass of Christian burial for Concetta Maggio Culotta, a native of Baltimore who moved from Govans to Richboro, Pa., in 1971, was offered yesterday at St. Bede the Venerable Roman Catholic Church in Holland, Pa.Mrs. Culotta, who was 82, died Tuesday of cancer at a hospice in Newtown, Pa.The former Concetta Maggio was reared in Cefalu, Sicily and returned to Baltimore in 1949.She was a seamstress in a men's clothing factory as a young woman and also had lived in Little Italy. Her husband, Dominic Culotta, a barber, died in 1977.

Alverta E. Anderson, a seamstress and a former grocery store owner, died of cardiac arrest Thursday at Maryland General Hospital. The longtime North Mount Street resident was 91. Alverta Edith Brown, the daughter of a factory worker and housekeeper, was born and raised in Trenton, N.J., where she attended city public schools. Mrs. Anderson moved to Baltimore in the late 1930s, where she worked as a seamstress in the city's former garment district on West Paca Street. In 1969, she opened Alverta's Grocery Store on North Gilmor at Presstman streets, which she owned and operated until selling it about a decade later.

Selma Rubin, an intrepid go-getter who served in the military, ran a grocery store, sewed costumes for stars, volunteered for the Israeli army and hated to be bored, died of pancreatic cancer Friday at her Pikesville home. She was 87 and had spent an evening ballroom dancing just three weeks earlier. Raised in East Baltimore, the former Selma Obeck graduated from Southern High School, and met her future husband, Leonard Rubin, when she was 13. They married at 20, and her husband soon enlisted to fight in World War II. He told her to find something to do while he was away, she told the Baltimore Jewish Times in 2006, so she joined the Army.

Minerva L. Zimmerman, a homemaker and former Baltimore resident, died of an infection Wednesday at Washington County Hospital in Hagerstown. She was 87. The former Minerva Knode was born and raised in Boonsboro. She was a graduate of Boonsboro High School and during World War II worked as a seamstress at Frederick Tailoring Co. and at Koppers Co. Mrs. Zimmerman, who had formerly lived in South Baltimore and Brooklyn, moved to Hagerstown in 1990. She enjoyed crocheting and watching NASCAR races.

Selma Jackson, a former bookkeeper and seamstress, died of a heart attack Friday at Good Samaritan Hospital. She was 92 and lived in Fullerton. Miss Jackson was born and lived her entire life in the Hazel Avenue home that her father had built in the late 1800s. "Her parents thought the education she was receiving at Towson High School was inferior, so she was sent by trolley to Douglass High School, from which she graduated in the 1930s," said Luann R. Moorman, a first cousin who lives in Roland Park.

On September 10, 2006 JOYCE V. ERTEL; wife of the late John N. Ertel, Jr.; sister of Lois Southworth; grandson Nicholas R. Ertel and twin sons Van and Glen Ertel. In spite of a handicap from Polio she did her job as a mother completely she was a manicurist, expertly skilled seamstress and a picture maker in oil. A Christian Service will be held at the Baptist Church in Lansdowne on Saturday, November 11 at 2 P.M.

Cherlein Scharpe, a homemaker who enjoyed baking, sewing and dancing, died Monday at Stella Maris Hospice from complications of a fall she suffered a month ago. She was 86 and lived in Carney. The former Cherlein Augusta Beckmann was born in Baltimore and raised in Arbutus. She was 1937 graduate of Catonsville High School, and worked briefly as a Chesapeake and Potomac Telephone Co. operator in downtown Baltimore before her 1940 marriage to William T. Scharpe, a Glenn L. Martin Co. procurement employee.

ATLANTA -- She is constantly sewing. Hunched over pieces of the quilt, the seamstress stitches fraying edges and little tears that have accumulated over the years. When she is finished mending a piece, she folds the fabric and carries it into a long, quiet gallery. Metal shelves stretch the length of the room. Each shelf holds five 12-foot-square blocks of quilt. Each block is made of eight panels. Each panel, the size of a grave, contains a name. "There are some spots that are really faded, that you can barely see anymore," said the seamstress.

Bernice C. Watson, a retired Baltimore City educator and accomplished seamstress, died of lung cancer April 12 at Sinai Hospital. The Catonsville resident was 84. She was born Bernice Calverta Francis in Philadelphia and spent her early years in East Orange, N.J., until moving with her family to Bolton Hill in 1932. She was a 1940 graduate of Douglass High School and earned a bachelor's degree from Coppin Teachers College in 1944. Mrs. Watson taught elementary pupils until 1958 at School 58 and later the old Beale Elliott Elementary School.

Christine W. Strakna, a homemaker and seamstress, died of a heart attack Wednesday at Howard County General Hospital. The longtime Columbia resident was 80. She was born Christine Wanda Gellert in Wierzbo, Poland, and moved with her family to Brooklyn, N.Y. They later returned to Poland during the 1930s and were trapped there during World War II when the Nazis occupied their country. In 1946, she moved to Chicago, where she worked as a secretary. She married Edwin Raymond Strakna, a federal government translator, in 1952 and the couple moved to Washington.

Great political upheavals usually get the epic treatment in movies, which tends to flatten wholesale human suffering into cast-of-thousands backdrops for heroic stories of "one ordinary man's extraordinary courage." It's rarer that a film focuses on the effects of large-scale social cataclysms on individuals whose bravery consists of remaining resolutely human and true to themselves, and much more poignant. In Dai Sijie's Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress, which he based on his own best-selling semi-autobiographical novel, two well-bred city boys are shipped off for "re-education" to a remote mountain village in the Sichuan province during China's Cultural Revolution.