Wilmington

A memorial service for John B. Moll Jr., a marine painter and lithographer, will be held at 11 a.m. tomorrow at the Episcopal Church of the Holy Trinity in Oxford.Mr. Moll, who was 81, died Saturday at the Meridian Nursing Center-The Pines in Easton after a long illness.Before he retired about five years ago, Mr. Moll did oils and watercolors of Chesapeake Bay scenes, often including carefully detailed skipjacks and log canoes.He also made lithographs, doing the work himself on the printing stone.

Et cetera Fisher lifts Towson past UNC Wilmington in CAAs Third baseman Zach Fisher homered twice and drove in a career-high six runs to lead fourth-seeded Towson to a 13-11 victory over top-seeded UNC Wilmington on Thursday in the CAA baseball tournament in Harrisonburg, Va. The Tigers (27-28) will face either William & Mary or James Madison in the winners' bracket at noon today, while the Seahawks (37-20) will play an elimination game at 3:30 p.m. today. Fisher hit a grand slam in the sixth that put Towson ahead to stay and then added a two-run shot in the eighth that proved to be the difference in the game.

An attorney for a group trying to bring professional baseball back to Wilmington, Del., after a 40-year hiatus says the odds are good the effort will succeed."

Congratulations to Tim Marcin, winner of Washington College 's Sophie Kerr Prize, worth $61,192 this year. The 22-year-old  from Wilmington, Del., who is headed to Northwestern University, plans to pursue a sports writing career. That's a worthy goal -- to follow in the footsteps of luminaries such as Ring Lardner and Roger Angell. (I'd even toss John McPhee into the crowd.) According to the college, he submitted "poems whose subjects included teen romance, the music of Bob Dylan, and up-close perceptions of his father's well-worn coat, and the red stitches on a baseball.

After 41 races in Maryland, Mary's Buckaroo competed outside the state for the first time yesterday, rallied from last and won the $100,000, six-furlong Wilmington Handicap at Delaware Park in Stanton.Trained by Mary JoAnne Hughes, the son of Roo Art and Mary Bo Peep prevailed by 1 1/4 lengths under Maryland-based Mario Verge and paid $6.40 to win.It was the 6-year-old's 14th triumph and increased his earnings to $598,433.Pub Date: 6/15/97

The Old-Fashioned Ice Cream Festival, 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. Saturday and next Sunday at Rockwood Museum in Wilmington, Del., will offer high-wheeled bicycles, an organ grinder, Victorian crafts and fashions, old-time music, hot-air balloons, an antique show and an old-fashioned baby parade. For children there will be clowns, puppets, a mime circus artist, a storyteller and a traveling zoo. The manor house will be open for free tours. Homemade ice cream and other food will be on sale. Admission is $4 for adults, $3 for seniors, $1 for ages 5 to 16. Shuttle service is free from Merchants Square.

WILMINGTON, Del. - MBNA Corp.'s imprint touches so much of this riverside city, some locals joke that the credit-card giant "owns" it. So, when the world's largest independent credit-card lender announced Thursday that it was being bought by Charlotte, N.C.-based Bank of America Corp. for $35 billion in cash and stock, just about everyone in town was talking about what would become of the company, Wilmington and the "First State," as tourism signs proudly proclaim. "Delaware is a small place.

Tonight's game What: NCAA tournament South Regional first round Site: Gaylord Entertainment Center, Nashville, Tenn. Time: 9:55 approximately TV/Radio: Chs. 13, 9 or ESPN2/WIYY (97.9 FM) Line: Maryland by 8 The teams Maryland: No. 6 seed, 19-9; finished tied for second in Atlantic Coast Conference regular-season standings; 20th NCAA tournament appearance, including 10th straight. UNC-Wilmington: No. 11 seed, 24-6; won second straight Colonial Athletic Association title; fourth NCAA tournament appearance.

A series of new stadium agreements will bring minor-league baseball to fans in Bowie and Wilmington, Del., next year.Peter Kirk, chairman of the Maryland Baseball Limited Partnership, owner of the Hagerstown Suns and Frederick Keys, said he has reached an agreement in principle to move the Suns into a $9 million stadium to be built near Bowie.The stadium will be built to Triple-A standards in hopes that the Orioles will bring their team's farm club from Rochester, N.Y., in three years, the next opportunity for baseball to realign its farm system.

WILMINGTON, N.C. -- Matt Fish had 16 points and 11 rebounds and Reggie Veney also scored 16 to lead North Carolina-Wilmington to an 87-76 victory over Navy in a Colonial Athletic Association game last night.The game marked the last meeting between the two schools because Navy is leaving the CAA after this season.UNC-Wilmington (9-11, 4-4) scored its last 18 points on free throws. For the game, the Seahawks made 27 of 34 free throws (79 percent).The Midshipmen (6-14, 2-6) held a 34-28 halftime lead, and led until Veney made a three-pointer with 17:29 left to give the Seahawks a 38-37 lead.

Junior forward Jerrelle Benimon scored a game-high 20 points and grabbed 12 rebounds for his NCAA-leading 16th doubledouble of the season as Towson evened its overall record at 12-12 with an 81-68 Colonial Athletic Association victory over UNC Wilmington (8-13, 3-6) at the Towson Center on Monday night. The Tigers' second win in a row enabled them to reach the .500 mark at 12-12 overall, 7-4 in the conference. This is the Tigers' best 24-game record since 1995-96, when they had a 14-10 mark after 24 games.

Backs squarely against the wall as they carried on the NCAA Division I record for consecutive losses, players on the Towson men's basketball team got a badly needed dose of inspiration Thursday when coach Pat Skerry showed them Muhammad Ali's famed "rope-a-dope" boxing match against George Foreman. The message of perseverance seemed to strike a nerve. On Saturday, the Tigers finally delivered a knockout blow of their own. After trailing by as many as seven points, host Towson rode the offense of 6-foot-7 sophomore Marcus Damas and the defense of 6-8 senior Robert Nwankwo to a late eight-point lead, then survived UNC-Wilmington's comeback attempt.

A new Maryland basketball era began Sunday night with a 71-62 victory over UNC-Wilmington. It actually began with Terrell Stoglin on the bench. Though neither first-year coach Mark Turgeon nor Stoglin would say what led to the benching, you get the feeling listening to the sophomore guard that they're not quite yet on the same page. It probably has something to do with the defensive effort Stoglin has put out -- or not put out -- in practice and the fact that he thinks the position is called points guard.

New Maryland coach Mark Turgeon emerged from the Comcast Center tunnel Sunday night to a polite smattering of applause. There was no musical introduction by the band. No fist pump. It was a new era, and it was beginning quietly. But Turgeon, who said he avoids drawing attention to himself, shares an intensity with his more animated predecessor, Gary Williams. So you can bet that Turgeon wanted his team to make an impression -- particularly on defense, which is the coach's specialty -- in his Maryland debut at Comcast Center.

"There is a holiness about the Constitution. The peace and prosperity of this Republic, the world's last best hope, must not be haphazarded, much less destroyed, that certain men may rule. " — Hezekiah Niles,1828. The name of Hezekiah Niles is about as far astern as it gets these days, and if it resonates at all, it is probably with historians, professors and students of early 19th-century American history who closet themselves in libraries while poring through dusty bound volumes of his Niles' Register.

M&T Bank Corp. is expected to close Monday on the purchase of Wilmington Trust Corp. after receiving all regulatory approvals required under the deal, M&T announced Thursday. Delaware-based Wilmington Trust, struggling with bad real estate loans, agreed in November to sell itself to Buffalo, N.Y.-based M&T for $351 million. Wilmington Trust Corp. does not operate retail branches in Maryland. It has wealth management and corporate client offices in Baltimore and Bel Air. M&T Bank officials have said they will retain the 35 employees in those two offices.

Three men charged in the last of a series of violent shotgun robberies in Delaware and Maryland earlier this year have pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court in Wilmington, Del., to multiple bank-robbery charges.Michael Montell Boston, 22, of the 100 block of Conley Drive in Annapolis; Hubert Julian Pope, 27, a Philadelphia resident who once lived in Waldorf; and William Francis, 20, of the Bronx, N.Y., are to be sentenced Sept. 4, Assistant U.S. Attorney Robert J. Prettyman said yesterday.

When I tell people that I'm headed for the beach in North Carolina, the response invariably is something like, "Oh, I just love the Outer Banks -- such a wonderful place." When I explain that no, I'm headed farther south, to the Wilmington area, the reaction is just as predictable: a blank look that suggests at best a vague idea where Wilmington is, and no image of what it is like.That's too bad. For I have found, after more than 25 visits to the Wilmington area, that it's the best-kept secret in North Carolina.

The Federal Reserve Board has approved M&T Bank Corp.'s application to acquire Wilmington Trust Corp. The Delaware-based Wilmington Trust Corp., struggling with bad real estate loans, agreed in November to sell itself to Buffalo, N.Y.-based M&T for $351 million. A Baltimore-based unit of the corporation, Wilmington Trust Federal Savings Bank, entered into an agreement with federal regulators to boost capital levels and reduce bad loans on its books in February. The savings bank provides commercial banking and wealth management.