Sykesville

Fifth District County Commissioner Doug Howard, who represents Sykesville and Eldersburg, will host a town meeting on Monday, Oct. 8, at 7 p.m., at the South Carroll Senior Center, 5928 Mineral Hill Road, Eldersburg. The meeting will be the first in a series of eight monthly sessions for the 5th District. Howard said law enforcement will be the primary focus of the Oct. 8 meeting, with representatives from the Sheriff's Office providing information on policing efforts in the Eldersburg/Sykesville area.

ELDERSBURG - The next community meeting on the proposed Freedom Area Trail Network in Sykesville and Eldersburg will be held Wednesday, Sept. 12, at 7 p.m., in the South Carroll Senior and Community Center, 5928 Mineral Hill Road. Recently, a $55,000 Maryland Bikeways grant, from the Maryland Department of Transportation, was awarded to Carroll County to complete a feasibility study and design work for the trail. The county started the process more than a year ago, with hopes of improving bicycle and pedestrian routes between Eldersburg and Sykesville.

The Town of Sykesville has had a long love affair with trains, but even true love can be strained now and then. A new exhibit opening this month at the Sykesville Gate House Museum of History, "Gone Off the Rails: When Safety Fails," explores the times when the town's relationship with locomotives went a little off track. The museum's curator, Mark Fraser, notes that from their earliest days, railroads have experienced a variety of accidents — from minor to devastating, including steam engine explosions, derailments, collisions with other trains, collisions with cars and trucks, collisions with pedestrians and livestock and employee accidents.

At James Madison University in Harrisonburg, Va., several Carroll County residents recently served as first-year orientation guides — known on campus as "FROGs" — as part of the university's orientation team. Included among them were Ashley Kellner, of Marriottsville, a junior whose major is communication sciences and disorders and psychology; Kara Zawacki, of Westminster, a junior majoring in psychology; and Mackenzie Kappe, of Woodbine, a sophomore majoring in biology. Sarah Rodriguez, of Westminster, is attending Ashland University, in Ohio, and was awarded the school's President's Scholarship of $15,000 annually.

Sue Komaromy has been out of New York since leaving her home on Long Island more than a quarter-century ago to play volleyball at Towson. Yet there is still a lot of New Yorker that remains in the 44-year-old mother of two who lives in Sykesville. The speech pattern, the spunk and now the most significant accomplishment of her sports career: qualifying for the Ironman World Championship next month in Kailua-Kona, Hawaii. It seems only fitting that Komaromy gained entrance into the event by finishing first in her age group in the Ironman U.S. Championship in New York.

Sykesville's Gate House Museum of History has always highlighted the community past, but these days visitors entering the small museum can almost feel a sense of renewal and vitality as well. The atmosphere is almost as if someone came along and — at least figuratively — cleared away the dust, clutter and cobwebs. Visitors are greeted by a new display called "Making Tracks: A Chronological History of Sykesville," which includes pictures and spiffy graphics and takes up an entire wall.

Anna Letaw, a parent volunteer at Linton Springs Elementary School, in Sykesville, was recently named as one of five finalists in the statewide Maryland Parent Involvement Awards program. Letaw volunteers as an advocate for outdoor learning at Linton Springs. She spearheads the school's Green Team after school club, which was established three years ago. Through the club, students work on habitat reclamation, invasive weed eradication, public awareness campaigns, native plantings, Earth Day activities and many other ways to improve the water quality of the school and reduce its carbon footprint.

SYKESVILLE — Ebenezer United Methodist Church, 4901 Woodbine Road, Sykesville, recently began a "Rock of Help" food pantry for the needy in the community. The pantry is open to anyone in need of food from 9 to 11 a.m. on the third Saturday of each month at the church. Upcoming dates are June 16, July 21 and Aug. 18. "We have mainly canned goods that we give out, but each month we also will have a non-food item," said Sue Bergmann, church secretary. Those coming to the food pantry "just fill out a short information sheet and we give them a list of the food items we have and they check off what they want.

Katie Schwarzmann left Century High School in 2009 as the all-time leading goal scorer in Carroll County lacrosse history. Three years later, she has reached the pinnacle of collegiate lacrosse. Last week, the junior midfielder from the University of Maryland won the Tewaaraton Award, presented annually to the top women's collegiate player in the nation. Schwarzmann beat out four other premier college players for the award - Brittany Dashiell of Florida, North Carolina's Becky Lynch, Taylor Thornton of two-time defending national champion Northwestern, and Syracuse's Michelle Tumolo.

Paul P. Snead, a World War II Navy veteran and self-employed electronics repairman, died of kidney failure May 27 at the Dove House hospice in Westminster. The Mount Airy resident was 86. Mr. Snead was born in Pikesville, the son of a homemaker and a Baltimore police officer. He left Randallstown High School to join the Navy, where he served as a radioman aboard a ship at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. After receiving his General Education Development certificate and an honorable discharge from the Navy, Mr. Snead returned to Baltimore, where he married the former Shirley Warfel, who had grown up near his childhood home.