War Veterans

Nearly 100 people commemorated Veterans Day at the Longwell Armory in Westminster yesterday, many of them wearing reminders of their sacrifice.They saluted the flag in respectful silence as a Marine honor guard moved up the aisle. Two young soldiers followed the guard. One carried a red, white and blue wreath; the other held the black flag symbol of America's POWs and MIAs.Aging men and women recited the Pledge of Allegiance in loud voices and joined hands to sing "God Bless America."Russell Shaffer, 79, had pinned a "Pray for America" button on his white and purple cap -- a hat printed with "Commander of the Military Order of the Purple Heart."

John Y. Crow, a retired salesman of dairy products and a decorated World War II veteran, died of complications from pneumonia April 8 at Charlotte Hall Veterans Home in Southern Maryland. He was 89 and had lived in North Baltimore. Born in Uniontown, Pa., and raised in Towson, he was a 1941 graduate of Towson High School. He earned an animal husbandry degree at the University of Maryland, College Park, where he also attended a Reserve Officers' Training Corps program. He went into military service in the Army.

WASHINGTON -- The Pentagon has acknowledged in a new report that chemical weapons were detected as many as seven times in the first week of the 1991 Persian Gulf war near staging areas in northern Saudi Arabia, where tens of thousands of U.S. troops were housed.While insisting that it had no conclusive evidence that U.S. soldiers were ever exposed to Iraqi chemical weapons, the Defense Department said in the report that it was "further exploring the plausibility" that small amounts of chemical agents passed over troops after U.S. bombers destroyed Iraqi arms depots and factories north of staging areas near the Saudi city of Hafr al-Batin.

Anthony S. D'Anna, a retired Mars Super Markets Inc. executive and World War II veteran, died Wednesday of complications from a stroke at Symphony Manor assisted-living facility in Roland Park. The longtime Timonium resident was 85. The son of an Italian immigrant and a homemaker, Anthony Settimo D'Anna was born in Baltimore and raised on Mulberry Street. After graduating from Calvert Hall College High School in 1944, Mr. D'Anna enlisted in the Army and served in Europe with the 63rd Infantry Division.

Baltimore has memorials to presidents, to poets, to the woman who sewed the Star-Spangled Banner. Now a city known for its monuments and statuary is about to build something new, and a bit off-the-wall: A memorial to a memorial. The Maryland Stadium Authority has approved a contract for construction of a $775,547 structure in the Camden Yards area to honor war veterans. But besides honoring veterans, this design also commemorates the city's last memorial erected in their memory: the recently demolished 33rd Street facade of Memorial Stadium.

WASHINGTON -- The Senate approved a $500 million package of veterans benefits yesterday, virtually guaranteeing that Persian Gulf war veterans will get retroactive pay raises for their time in the region.But the five-year plan -- negotiated with a cost-conscious Bush administration -- is less than half of what the House has voted to provide, and less than many senators had hoped to do.The package was part of legislation authorizing emergency funding for Operation Desert Storm, which passed 97-1.

WASHINGTON -- After years of Pentagon denials, a group of veterans of the Persian Gulf war is offering the first compelling evidence that U.S. troops were exposed to Iraqi chemical weapons. The veterans say that nerve gas and other chemical agents have begun to ravage their bodies.The soldiers and former soldiers were members of the Army's 37th Engineer Battalion. Unlike thousands of other Americans who have complained that they suffer from the ailments collectively described as gulf war syndrome, the men of the 37th can pinpoint the time and place that they believe they were exposed to chemical weapons: 2: 05 p.m. March 4, 1991, when the battalion blew up 33 Iraqi bunkers in the southern Iraqi desert.

The records U.S. federal agencies relied upon to conclude that Persian Gulf war veterans are no sicker than the general population excluded thousands of veterans treated for illnesses by doctors at federal clinics and by private doctors paid by the government.The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs' statistics also do not include other veterans who chose to go to private hospitals or doctors and pay for their own medical care.In an interview last week, Dr. Frances M. Murphy, who is responsible for the Veterans Affairs Department's program to treat gulf war veterans, said the diagnoses of veterans who were treated by clinics and private doctors, rather than at VA hospitals, were left out of the department's computer databases.

Abraham "Al" Morrison, a World War II artilleryman who participated in the D-day invasion of France, helped liberate the Buchenwald concentration camp and was active with the Jewish War Veterans, died of cancer Monday at Gilchrist Center for Hospice Care. The longtime Lochearn resident was 83. Born in Baltimore and raised on Collington Avenue, Mr. Morrison cut short his public school education to help support his family. After enlisting in the Army in 1940, he trained as a paratrooper.

IRVINE, Calif. -- A number of medical professionals, who say they have become ill while treating Persian Gulf war veterans, claim the mysterious disease afflicting tens of thousands of soldiers is contagious and could pose a public health threat.Doctors, nurses and laboratory researchers, as well as others who come in casual contact with gulf war veterans, say they have contracted the same symptoms -- fatigue, fever, aches, rashes and respiratory problems -- that are generally associated with "gulf war syndrome."

Robert F. Fanto, a retired longtime Baltimore County public schools guidance counselor, died of cancer Wednesday at his Timonium home. He was 80. The son of a Baltimore & Ohio Railroad machinist and a homemaker, Mr. Fanto was born in Cumberland and raised in Piedmont, W.Va., and Keyser, W.Va. After graduation in 1949 from Keyser High School, he enlisted in the Navy. He served as a radioman to the commander of the 2nd Fleet in the Atlantic until being discharged in 1953.

Dr. Edwin H. T. Besson, a retired pediatrician who was the former chairman of the St. Agnes Hospital pediatric department, died of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or Lou Gehrig's disease, Dec. 4 at his Ellicott City home. He was 85. In a memoir, he recalled that after his birth in Carbondale, Pa., he often moved with his family and wound up living in the small town of Stockton in Worcester County. His family had suffered economic hardship in the Depression and they lost their home.

WEATHER Today's forecast calls for sunny skies around the Baltimore area. The high temperature is expected to be around 46 degrees. Expect mostly clear skies and a low temperature around 35 degrees tonight. TRAFFIC Here are today's morning traffic issues . FROM LAST NIGHT... Man fatally stabbed in Central Park Heights : A man was killed in Northwest Baltimore around 8:30 p.m. yesterday, according to police. Here is an update on the situation , which includes more details about the victim and incident.

Millard Franklin Kirk, a retired civil engineer and World War II veteran, died of respiratory failure Friday at the Fairhaven Continuing Care Retirement Community. The Sykesville resident was 91. A native of Philadelphia, he used his surname Kirk as a first name. He earned a bachelor of science in civil engineering at the University of Maryland, College Park. Beginning in 1943, he attended Midshipman's School at Notre Dame University and was commissioned as an ensign in the Navy's Civil Engineer Corps, known as the Seabees.

Wherever Alvin T. Jones has lived throughout his adult life, he has reserved wall space for his Navy memorabilia. He displays his three Air Medals and his Distinguished Flying Cross, his honorable discharge, dated 1945, and a wedding photo of a young uniformed sailor and his bride. Another photo shows Jones in the center of the 10-member crew of a B-24 bomber. At 89, he recalls the name and assignment of each man posing in 1944 in front of that plane. Most notably, he recalls his pilot, Joseph P. Kennedy Jr., the smiling young man holding a puppy in the picture.

Joseph George Otterbein, the retired baker who created and marketed a popular thin sugar cookie, died Saturday of complications from congestive heart failure at his Lake Montebello home. He was 88. Mr. Otterbein was born above the family bakery at Fort Avenue and Jackson Street in South Baltimore. He attended the Holy Cross School and was a 1941 Loyola High School graduate. During World War II, he served in the Army and was trained as a paratrooper. He was assigned to England and France.

WASHINGTON -- The chairwoman of a federal panel investigating the illnesses of veterans of the 1991 Persian Gulf war said yesterday that she believed that the veterans were clearly experiencing more health problems than other veterans, and that Iraqi chemical weapons and other chemical agents might be to blame for many of their ailments.The chairwoman, Dr. Eula Bingham, a toxicologist who is the former head of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, said it was too early to rule out Iraqi chemical or biological weapons as the cause of many of the illnesses of the veterans, given how little was known about the weapons' long-term health effects.

LEBANON, Pa. -- Two new government studies show for the first time that veterans of the 1991 Persian Gulf war are far more likely to suffer from a variety of serious health problems than troops who did not serve in the war, a finding that appears to vindicate ailing veterans who have said that their service in the gulf has cost them their health.The studies -- one conducted by the national Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the other by the Navy -- do not resolve the mystery of what is making most of the veterans ill.But they clearly show that gulf war veterans are having health problems in unusual numbers and that their illnesses can be disabling, even though they do not necessarily result in hospital admissions or death.