Steeple

WILMINGTON, N.C. -- Excuse Pastor Mike Queen and his congregation and a good portion of this city's residents if they seem to spend an unusual amount of time looking skyward. For the past two years, the skies have been a source of hopelessness as well as power.Hurricane Bonnie marked the third time in two years that the eye of such a storm has stared straight back down on them, the third time their Southern beauty of a town has been hit by such severe winds and rain.It also marked the third time the town's most famous landmark would be threatened.

FireWinfield: Firefighters from Sykesville and Lisbon in Howard County assisted Winfield at 7: 59 a.m. Friday, responding to a house fire in the 5700 block of Steeple Chase Road. Units were out 32 minutes.Mount Airy: Firefighters responded at 12: 40 p.m. Friday for fallen electrical wires in the 18000 block of Penn Shop Road in Howard County. Units were out 20 minutes.Pub Date: 12/14/98

Tony Vinson and Matt Steeple had drastically different experiences on the football field last fall. This weekend, they will be nervously anticipating the same phone call.The NFL conducts its annual draft tomorrow and Monday. Vinson and Steeple, the area's outstanding seniors last year, stand solid chances of being picked Monday during the final five rounds of the two-day, seven-round draft."It's been a long week already, and it's going to be a very long two days," said Vinson, a running back at Towson State.

The summer proved interesting but ultimately unkind to four football players from Morgan State and Bowie State, each of whom got a fleeting taste of the professional game.Matt Steeple, the Northern High School product who starred on the defensive line at Morgan State and earned Division I-AA All-America honors last season, saw health problems ruin his chances with two NFL teams. Steeple signed a free-agent contract with the Chicago Bears, but was waived after he failed a team physical. Steeple then worked out for the Cleveland Browns, who considered signing him but waived him after he flunked his physical again, albeit due to a different ailment.

Towson State running back Tony Vinson and Morgan State defensive tackle Matt Steeple were selected to The Associated Press Division I-AA All-America football team yesterday.For Vinson, who led the division in rushing (2,016 yards), all-purpose yards (2,073) and scoring (144 points), the selection adds to his collection of postseason honors. Earlier, he was chosen for the Kodak Division I-AA All-America team and was selected to play in the Senior Bowl.A 6-foot-2, 227-pound senior from Newport News, Va., he leaves Towson with 15 school records and 11 Division I-AA records.

Matt Steeple is sick of the losses on the field and the controversy off it.And unlike Morgan State football coach Ricky Diggs, who says he has been careful not to put too much pressure on the Bears to get off to a fast start, Steeple is approaching Saturday'sseason opener against visiting Charleston Southern like a championship game."

The first time Morgan State coach Ricky Diggs and his assistants spotted Matt Steeple, they saw a young man who obviously enjoyed his mother's cooking.That was 18 months ago, during Diggs' first days on the job. In Steeple, he saw a 6-foot-3, 290-pound defensive tackle. Diggs wants his linemen to blitz, meaning Steeple had to get trimmer and quicker."Watching him in his stance on film from the year before," said assistant head coach L. C. Cole, "Steeple was so heavy he was leaning. That made him vulnerable to getting trapped."

The soaring steeple on a landmark Lutheran church in South Baltimore is being restored, thanks to a man who never sat in its pews.Workmen discovered during an inspection earlier this year that the 1884 slate-clad spire atop SS. Stephen and James Evangelical Lutheran Church, Hanover and Hamburg streets, was in sorry shape. Steeplejacks strung massive ropes to a cross at the top of the 160-foot-high tower, hoisted themselves skyward and videotaped the damage caused by years of punishing wind and rain.

It has been a haunting refrain for Morgan State's football fortunes in recent years: Another opening, another show, another coach, all aglow; another opening, another show, lots more losses, all in a row.For a school that has not had much to cheer about since its 1979 NCAA Division II playoff entry, even glimmers of hope are greeted with optimism. And that's what new head coach Ricky Diggs brings to Morgan State football this fall -- a sense of excitement.The Bears will open their 11-game season today against Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference rival North Carolina A&T. Game time at Hughes Stadium is 1:30 p.m.If there is one word that characterizes this team so far it is discipline.

Matt Steeple thought his freshman season of college football had been a good one. Five months past his 18th birthday and three months removed from Northern High, Steeple moved into the Morgan State lineup as a defensive tackle and was that unit's second-most effective lineman.Twenty-four tackles -- including four sacks -- and 28 assists weren't too shabby for a kid who in normal circumstances would have been easing his way into college. He was doubly effective in last Saturday's season-opening 26-7 loss to North Carolina A&T, getting nine tackles.

The congregation of Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church on Druid Hill Avenue will hold Sunday services at Pier Six Pavilion at the Inner Harbor this weekend after a two-alarm fire damaged the church's steeple Wednesday night. The fire, which officials are blaming on a lightning strike, didn't spread beyond the steeple and bell tower, Fire Department spokesman Chief Kevin Cartwright said, but the church's interior was damaged by water. The church was vacant at the time, and no one was injured.

The firefighters aboard the first engines to arrive on West Saratoga Street saw flames shooting from the church's steeple. Five lugged hoses through the front door and climbed up the tower. But the fire was getting too big, the commander recalled yesterday. Worried that the steeple would collapse, fellow commanders quickly decided the men had to get out. Calls went out over the radio. One man left, but four others remained inside. "They weren't coming out," recalled firefighter Richard A. Altieri II, who had helped set up the hose line.

Lightning struck the steeple of a 140-year-old West Baltimore church during an unexpectedly violent thunderstorm yesterday, igniting a five-alarm fire that left the sanctuary in ruins. The bolt struck the steeple of the First Mount Olive Free Will Baptist Church about 3 p.m., officials said. The spire soon toppled onto the adjoining roof, setting fire to the building and devastating its 3,000-member congregation. "The building will be a total loss," said fire Chief William J. Goodwin, as 150 firefighters with 42 pieces of equipment battled the blaze in the 800 block of W. Saratoga St. Elsewhere, the sudden storm toppled trees, started other fires and cut power to tens of thousands of utility customers as it slashed across the Baltimore region.

On September 11, 2004, EDWARD "Steeple" SAMPSON. Friends may call at the FAMILY OWNED MARCH FUNERAL HOME WEST, 4300 Wabash Avenue on Wednesday after 8:30 A.M. where the family will receive friends on Thursday at 9 A.M., followed by Funeral Services at 9:30 A.M. See www.marchfh.com

The steeple of a Harford County church was struck by lightning and caught fire during a thunderstorm yesterday. The fire, reported about 6 p.m. at St. Mary's of the Assumption on Mountain Road in Joppa, was contained to the steeple and small portion of the roof, said a spokesman for the Joppa-Magnolia Volunteer Fire Company. The church was occupied, but no one was injured. Damage estimates were not available.

A church that was home to several congregations in the Arlington section of Northwest Baltimore during its nearly 105-year history was destroyed last night in a four-alarm blaze. No injuries were reported in the fire at St. Timothy's Christian Baptist Church in the 4000 block of Groveland Ave. The blaze threatened an adjacent education facility that was under construction. The fire was reported at 5:29 p.m. and brought under control at 6:45 p.m. The Rev. Carl R. Washington Sr., spiritual leader of St. Timothy's, said he left the church about 2 p.m. and that it was empty when he departed.

From downtown, you can see the grand old steeple of St. Michael's Roman Catholic Church jut above Lombard and Wolfe streets in East Baltimore. More than a century ago, its copper shone in the sun. Then, oxidation and time took their toll. Now, efforts are under way to return the steeple to its former glory. A crew of steeplejacks is at work, tearing out old wood and faded copper and putting on 5,000 square feet of new copper that by January will have the steeple gleaming as it did in the 1850s.

Laura Ginski wanted to document the vision she believes she saw last month on the brightly lit steeple of St. Stanislaus Kostka Roman Catholic Church in Fells Point. The result is this grainy, ghostly close-up of a round-faced young woman with closed eyes and a trace of hair across her forehead. "Bangs," Ginski says incredulously. "I can't believe the Blessed Mother has bangs." Ginski, a longtime St. Stan's parishioner who was part of last year's unsuccessful effort to keep the Archdiocese of Baltimore from closing the 120-year-old church, says she saw an apparition of the Virgin Mary on three nights in February.

A YOUNG URBAN professional hustling home with groceries stopped Melvin DeMartin on Ash Wednesday night in Fells Point and asked why he and other parishioners of old Saint Stan's were all looking up at the steeple. Melvin told him, and the yuppie kept right on moving down Ann Street, with only a quick half-glance at the deserted church. Yes, it's one of those stories - women claim to have seen the Blessed Virgin Mary on the steeple of a Roman Catholic church - and most of the rational world will keep right on moving.

FireWinfield: Firefighters from Sykesville and Lisbon in Howard County assisted Winfield at 7: 59 a.m. Friday, responding to a house fire in the 5700 block of Steeple Chase Road. Units were out 32 minutes.Mount Airy: Firefighters responded at 12: 40 p.m. Friday for fallen electrical wires in the 18000 block of Penn Shop Road in Howard County. Units were out 20 minutes.Pub Date: 12/14/98