Woodbourne

More than 600 troubled children, aged 8 to 16, are helped each year at Woodbourne Center Inc. This non-profit, private agency is the fifth oldest child-care institution in the United States."

You may have noticed the quiet in Wordville over the past couple of days. Two things happened on Friday night: the addition of derecho  to the working vocabulary, and the loss of electrical power to Casa McIntyre.  So Sunday and Monday, my regular days off, were devoted not to regaling you with posts but with emptying the refrigerator and freezer, and related tasks. Among the related tasks, following the old Southern method of opening the house at night to allow the cool air in, then closing it up against the heat in the morning, with limited success.

Two centuries ago, some wealthy Baltimore women took pity on families impoverished by the American Revolution, giving them food, shelter and clothing.But Baltimore's poor and troubled children didn't disappear. The service survived uninterrupted as an orphanage under at least seven names, some of them as sorrowful as "The Home of the Friendless."It survives today as Woodbourne Center Inc."If there's any older agency in Maryland, we don't know about it," said John Hodge-Williams, president and chief executive officer of the center and two related agencies, collectively called the Woodbourne Group, which is observing its bicentennial.

The Baltimore school system is contracting with an outside company to run a school for special-education students, a move that will combine two special-education schools currently operating alongside each other in the same building. Pennsylvania-based Specialized Education Services Inc. received a three-year contract, worth $4.2 million for the first year, to run the Woodbourne Day School and Central Career Academy at Briscoe. The amount the company receives in future years will depend on a funding formula for special-education services set by the Maryland State Department of Education.

THE WOODBOURNE Center, one of the nation's oldest organizations for troubled adolescents, has completed construction of residential treatment facilities for 36 youths on its main campus at 1301 Woodbourne Ave., the former summer home of philanthropist Enoch Pratt.The $3 million addition consists of three one-story buildings, each designed to house up to 12 emotionally disturbed youths receiving care at Woodbourne. The buildings frame a courtyard south of the oldest Woodbourne building, an 1850s-era stone mansion that has been transformed to offices, meeting rooms, a kitchen and dining areas for the nonprofit organization.

SOUL SHADOWS: Urban Warrior Myths" and "The Woodbourne Workshops," an exhibition sponsored by the Museum for Contemporary Arts, will run through Feb. 23 in the University of Baltimore's Biddle Street Garage at 1111 Cathedral St."Soul Shadows" is an installation by New Orleans artist Dawn Dedeaux which was inspired by her art workshops for juvenile offenders in the Orleans Parish Prison. "The Woodbourne Workshops" displays art produced at recent workshops run by Maryland artists at the Woodbourne Center, a local multi-service treatment facility for severely troubled children.

The Baltimore school system will "stretch" the criteria used to place disruptive students at its alternative middle school, which should increase its enrollment and remove more troubled children from regular schools, Superintendent Walter G. Amprey said yesterday.Responding to criticisms voiced by City Council members during a public hearing last month, he revised his previous position that Woodbourne Academy would be limited to those students whose behavior problems were most serious or anti-social.

Baltimore school officials want to hire a private, nonprofit company to educate some of the city's most violent youths.Woodbourne Center Inc., which treats emotionally disturbed children and operates a city public school for special education students, has been tapped to run the Alternative Middle School in West Baltimore. The city's Board of Estimates is scheduled to consider the proposal tomorrow.Under the proposed $95,000 contract, Baltimore-based Woodbourne initially would operate the alternative school at its existing site, an aging building behind William H. Lemmel Middle School on North Dukeland Street.

Two boys were injured yesterday afternoon - one of them critically - when they were struck by a car while crossing a street in the Mid-Govans neighborhood in North Baltimore, police said. Police said the boys - age 5 and 6 - were running across the 800 block of Woodbourne Ave. at Lothian Road about 5:30 p.m. when they were struck by a Toyota Tercel that was being driven east on Woodbourne Avenue. Police said the victims - whose names were not available - were not in the pedestrian crosswalk when they were hit. They said the driver, whose name also was not available, stopped and remained at the scene.

JUNE 23 Woodbourne Center Inc., 1301 Woodbourne Ave., Baltimore, filed for protection under Chapter 11. Principal: Stanley Weinstein, acting CEO. Assets: $11,500,000; Liabilities: $10,000,000 Woodbourne Foundation Inc., 6212 York Road, Baltimore, filed for Chapter 11 protection. Principal: Linda Smeyne, executive director & vice president. Assets: $4,500,000; Liabilities: $100,000 Aikido of Maryland Inc., 9632 Belair Road, Perry Hall, martial arts instruction & accessory sales, filed for protection under Chapter 11. Principal: John Clarence Goss Jr., president.

On April 19, 2004, MURIEL N. (nee Grill); beloved wife of Donald J. Hoch; devoted mother of Deborah A. Zeller and Michael J. Hoch; grandmother of Nicole Williams, and Michael Zeller; great-grandmother of Roseanna Williams. Friends may call at the family owed Mitchell-Wiedefeld Funeral Home, Inc., (at Overbrook), on Friday 3 to 5 and 7 to 9 P.M. A Memorial Service will be held Saturday 2 P.M. at St. Matthew Church, Loch Raven Blvd at Woodbourne Ave.

Norma Hodges Haught, a retired city teacher who headed the mathematics department at Woodbourne Junior High School, died Monday of a blood infection at St. Joseph Medical Center. She was 87 and had moved in 1985 to the Edenwald retirement community in Towson after living for many years in Hamilton. Born Norma Hodges in Baltimore, she graduated in 1937 from Goucher College and joined the Baltimore school system as a mathematics teacher. She retired from Woodbourne, later renamed Chinquapin Middle School, as head of the mathematics department.

The elderly men and women of the St. Ann Adult Day Care sat in a circle, mimicking the arm and leg movements of Dorothy Gaylord, a program assistant, as they performed their daily routine of stretches, flexes and claps. Seated among the regulars at the Southwest Baltimore center were some younger, more limber people who tried to keep pace with their older counterparts, smiling to each other at the surprising strenuousness of the session. Eight students from the Woodbourne Center, a state-funded private school in North Baltimore that temporarily houses and counsels troubled youths, volunteered at St Ann's this week with their social studies teacher, Robert Croyle.

Two boys were injured yesterday afternoon - one of them critically - when they were struck by a car while crossing a street in the Mid-Govans neighborhood in North Baltimore, police said. Police said the boys - age 5 and 6 - were running across the 800 block of Woodbourne Ave. at Lothian Road about 5:30 p.m. when they were struck by a Toyota Tercel that was being driven east on Woodbourne Avenue. Police said the victims - whose names were not available - were not in the pedestrian crosswalk when they were hit. They said the driver, whose name also was not available, stopped and remained at the scene.

A 15-year-old boy who escaped from a mental health facility and is a suspect in the shooting of two young sisters last week in West Baltimore was arrested early yesterday in Atlanta, police said. Irwin "Boots" Johnson was arrested without incident at 1:10 a.m. in the 500 block of Cascade Ave. in Atlanta by police there after Baltimore detectives on the Warrant Apprehension Task Force forwarded information that he was at that location, police said. A 911 caller also provided the same information to Atlanta police.

JUNE 23 Woodbourne Center Inc., 1301 Woodbourne Ave., Baltimore, filed for protection under Chapter 11. Principal: Stanley Weinstein, acting CEO. Assets: $11,500,000; Liabilities: $10,000,000 Woodbourne Foundation Inc., 6212 York Road, Baltimore, filed for Chapter 11 protection. Principal: Linda Smeyne, executive director & vice president. Assets: $4,500,000; Liabilities: $100,000 Aikido of Maryland Inc., 9632 Belair Road, Perry Hall, martial arts instruction & accessory sales, filed for protection under Chapter 11. Principal: John Clarence Goss Jr., president.

The elderly men and women of the St. Ann Adult Day Care sat in a circle, mimicking the arm and leg movements of Dorothy Gaylord, a program assistant, as they performed their daily routine of stretches, flexes and claps. Seated among the regulars at the Southwest Baltimore center were some younger, more limber people who tried to keep pace with their older counterparts, smiling to each other at the surprising strenuousness of the session. Eight students from the Woodbourne Center, a state-funded private school in North Baltimore that temporarily houses and counsels troubled youths, volunteered at St Ann's this week with their social studies teacher, Robert Croyle.

On April 19, 2004, MURIEL N. (nee Grill); beloved wife of Donald J. Hoch; devoted mother of Deborah A. Zeller and Michael J. Hoch; grandmother of Nicole Williams, and Michael Zeller; great-grandmother of Roseanna Williams. Friends may call at the family owed Mitchell-Wiedefeld Funeral Home, Inc., (at Overbrook), on Friday 3 to 5 and 7 to 9 P.M. A Memorial Service will be held Saturday 2 P.M. at St. Matthew Church, Loch Raven Blvd at Woodbourne Ave.

The Woodbourne Center, one of Maryland's oldest nonprofit agencies, has filed for Chapter 11 reorganization, in a continuing attempt to grapple with $2 million in red ink. In April, the center and its supporting foundation laid off 66 employees - about a fifth of the staff - and closed eight programs to deal with the debt. For a time last fall, employees did not receive distributions to their 403(b) retirement plans, which operate like 401(k) plans. The Woodbourne Center Inc. started as an orphanage two centuries ago and is the fifth-oldest child-care agency in the country.

Life for mass transit WHO SAYS public transportation is dying? Not the American Public Transportation Association. APTA reports that mass transit use has reached a 40-year high. More than 9 million Americans rode public buses, trains and trolleys last year. The figure is encouraging, but not surprising. Highways and local roads aren't getting any less crowded. Transit ridership rose 15 percent nationally between 1995 and 1999, according to APTA, but increased only 4.6 percent in Baltimore.