Western Maryland College

Philip B. Schaeffer, former vice president for business affairs and treasurer of what is now McDaniel College, died of emphysema Wednesday at Hanover Hospital in Hanover, Pa. The former longtime Westminster resident was 82. Mr. Schaeffer was born on the Westminster campus of what was then Western Maryland College, where his father, Carl L. Schaeffer, had been chief business officer for 40 years. After graduating from Westminster High School in 1942, he entered Western Maryland College, but interrupted his college career when he enlisted in the Army a year later.

Dr. Jones was born and raised in South Bend, Ind., and earned his bachelor's degree in chemistry from Manchester College in North Manchester, Ind., in 1957. He earned both his master's and Ph.D. in analytical chemistry in 1963 from Purdue University. He joined the faculty of what was then Western Maryland College in 1963, and was chairman of its chemistry department from 1976 to 1982. In 1967, he founded and served as first president of the Middle Atlantic Association of Liberal Arts Chemistry Teachers and also held various offices with the National Science Foundation.

Robert Hill Hartman, an ordained Methodist minister and former chairman of the department of philosophy and religious studies at Western Maryland College, now McDaniel College, died Sunday of pneumonia at Carroll Hospital Center. The Westminster resident was 76. Dr. Hartman was born in Berwick, Pa., the son and grandson of Methodist ministers. He grew up in Pennsylvania and Ohio. In 1953, he earned a bachelor's degree from Oberlin College, and in 1956, a bachelor's degree in theology from Boston University School of Theology.

Fern Rudolph Hitchcock Jr. a longtime athletic coach, trainer and faculty member at what is now McDaniel College who was known for his motivational stories, called "Fernisms," died Thursday of complications from Parkinson's and heart disease at a hospital in Hanover, Pa. He was 82. Mr. Hitchcock was born in York, Pa., and raised in Taneytown. He earned a bachelor's degree in 1947 from what was then Western Maryland College, where he played third base and outfield for several championship baseball teams.

Joan Develin Coley In the news She announced last week that McDaniel College in Westminster plans to use a $150,000 grant to establish a Center for the Study of Aging that school officials say will help develop geriatric expertise for Carroll and neighboring counties, where the elderly population is projected to see huge increases by 2020. Occupation President of McDaniel College since 2000. She served as interim president for about a year before that. In 2002, she oversaw the renaming of the institution from Western Maryland College.

Private funeral services will be held tomorrow for Elizabeth J. Marshall, a gardener and landscape architect who was an honorary trustee of McDaniel College. Mrs. Marshall, who was 93, died of dementia Dec. 20 at Copper Ridge in Sykesville. Born Elizabeth Johnson in Philadelphia, she was a graduate of the Pennsylvania School of Horticulture and the Cambridge School of Architecture. She was the wife of former Western Maryland College, now McDaniel College, English professor Thomas E. Marshall.

1951: `Sleepy' Westminster takes offense, wakes up The city of Westminster is incensed with the Ladies Home Journal label of "sleepy" in November 1951. The magazine published an article about a Westminster couple in which it described the couple's hometown as "a sleepy little town of about 6,000." The use of "sleepy" prompted a Westminster Times front-page editorial, which protested against the use of the word, saying it interferes with the town's plans for economic growth. The editorial offered Westminster's incorporation, four-engine Fire Department and the fact that it is home to Western Maryland College and Westminster Theological Seminary as proof of its non-sleepiness.

The group of young prospects were treated to the typical tour of McDaniel College's amenities: a glimpse of a few classrooms, the dorms and, of course, the dining hall. Less typical were the prospects themselves - the youngest of whom was 5-year-old John-John Fields. Fields joined about two dozen elementary and middle school pupils from the Westminster Boys and Girls Club who visited the "campus on the hill," which many of them said they could see from their neighboring backyards along the school's borders on Pennsylvania Avenue and Union Street.

IN MARCH 2002, I filled a page of The Sun with memories of the newspaper's Reading By 9 campaign, which was then drawing to a close after 4 1/2 years. "I don't look at it as the end of a journey," I wrote, "but only as a stop along the way." Now the journey, too, is complete. Friday was my last day at The Sun after nearly 34 years. That's a long time for anyone to work for one employer. I changed jobs several times, working for The Sun three times and The Evening Sun twice. For nearly half of those three-plus decades, I wrote editorials and edited The Evening Sun's opposite-editorial page.