Service Station

John T. Brown, former owner of a Rodgers Forge service station and vehicle emissions inspector, died of a stroke March 7 at St. Joseph Medical Center. The Towson resident was 75. Mr. Brown was born and raised in Baltimore and graduated from Loyola High School in 1948. After serving in the Army for two years, he worked as a stevedore until 1963, when he purchased an Esso station at York Road and Stevenson Lane. The business, which later became the Dumbarton Exxon Service Station, occupied the site of the 19th-century blacksmith shop that had been owned and operated by George and William Rodgers.

Wilton Andrews Elburn Sr., a former manager of a Falls Road service station and a volunteer, died Sunday of complications from pneumonia at Northwest Hospital Center. The longtime Reisterstown resident was 63. Mr. Elburn was born in Baltimore and grew up in the Medfield neighborhood. After graduating from Polytechnic Institute in 1961, he served in the Coast Guard for several years. In the 1960s, he went to work for Elburn's Garage in the 4400 block of Falls Road, which had been established by his father and grandfather in 1932.

For 35 years, Al Slagle's service station pumped the gas, tuned the engines and presided over the life and final cough of generations of Overlea automobiles.Generations of customers in turn invited Slagle to their birthday parties, weddings and funerals. It was a mutual exchange of trust and affection.Often, when regular customers came to pick up their vehicles, Slagle would tell them to "drive it for a day and make sure we got it right. Then come back and pay me.""You won't find 'em like Al Slagle anymore," said Bob Hurley, who was a customer for all of Slagle's 35 years at the corner of Belair Road and East Northern Parkway.

City, state and federal police were still searching late Friday for suspects in a bank robbery and, in a separate incident, the attemptedarmed robbery of a county service station Thursday.Margaret Rumbold, the 84-year-old owner of Margaret's Service Station, told state police the would-be robber ran off after she refused to comply with his demand for money.State police said the suspect walked into the station in the 1500block of Old New Windsor Pike around 2:45 p.m. Thursday.The teen-age suspect showed Rumbold -- who has owned the store for 51 years -- a dark-colored handgun and told her to put money into a plastic grocery bag.Rumbold, undaunted by the gun, confronted the suspect and refused his demand.

Charles Fox nearly died in April when he was shot during a holdup at the Linthicum service station where he worked. Now that he's healed, he can't get his job back.Mr. Fox, who was in Anne Arundel County Circuit Court yesterday to watch two of his assailants admit to the shooting, said he's been looking for work since July 20, the day his doctors said he was fit.But the owner of Frank's Exxon, just outside the Beltway in the 700 block of Nursery Road, has repeatedly turned down his requests for his old job, he said.

An Anne Arundel circuit judge has postponed ruling on the insanity plea of a Bowie man charged in the 1995 shooting death of a Gambrills service station manager.Blake Allen Ohman, 38, who lived with his mother in the 3000 block of Tanbark Lane, is charged with first-degree murder in the slaying of Patrick William Clements Dec. 21, 1995.Clements, of the 1600 block of Midland Road, Edgewater, was shot to death at the Exxon station at Route 3 and Waugh Chapel Road.Ohman entered an insanity plea yesterday before Judge Clayton Greene Jr. after psychiatrists at Clifton T. Perkins Hospital Center determined that he lacked the mental capacity to intentionally commit murder.

A gas station proposed for Waverly Woods is the lesser of two evils in a contest with a possible fast-food restaurant, some residents and business operators believe. Others welcome the service station proposed for Waverly Woods Village Center shopping center by Convenience Retailing LLC as a way to draw new customers and to eliminate a roughly five-mile drive to get gas. "It is definitely better than a fast-food restaurant," said H.J. Pflueger, who lives in Waverly Woods, about six blocks from the service station proposed for the intersection of Warwick Way and Birmingham Way. "Then people come, they eat and they throw it around.

Linda Segal of Baltimore Rent-a-Tour has been guiding bus rides through the city for 15 years. The other day, she provided play-by-play for a class of fifth-graders. The tour stopped at Camden Yards. Everyone scrambled out of the bus. Linda led the kids to a spot near the Eutaw Street entrance, where those large stainless steel numbers of Orioles Hall of Famers are anchored."Number 22," Linda said. "This was Jim Palmer's number.""Oh, my God!" said one of the boys, his eyes big as pies. "Jim Palmer from the Money Store?

Jerry N. Thompson said he and other service station owners would go bankrupt under proposed state environmental regulations to prevent leakage of a gasoline additive, but some people said the rules are not tough enough. Those opposing views were presented yesterday in testimony before a legislative committee studying an emergency plan to prevent leakage of MTBE, the additive methyl tertiary butyl ether, which is used to make gasoline burn more cleanly but has also contaminated wells in Maryland.

At the city's request, BP has suspended plans to construct a service station on the site of a closed supermarket in the 4600 block of Liberty Heights Ave., a spokesman for the oil company confirmed yesterday. Residents, who rallied at the site in the fall to highlight the need for a grocery store and to rebuff the BP agenda, welcomed the delay. Elton Jacquette, president of the Howard Park Civic Association, said yesterday that he intends to meet next week with representatives from a locally owned grocery chain to discuss opening a store at that location.