Yellow Cab

Maybe this kind of luck happens every Opening Day. Probably does. Just have to be there, at the game, near the game or just listening to the game, maybe, for it to happen.Of course, everybody was already a little luckier this year before the first ball was even pitched at Oriole Park yesterday. The sun was warm, the breeze was just enough. There would be no postponement of this Opening Day, as there had been each of the past two years.It only got better as the day went on.2: 03 p.m.: When they spot each other across the crowded BWI Airport terminal, each knows he has found a soul mate.

Chappie Manning does the math on 47 years of working as a Baltimore cabbie and comes up with nearly 3 million miles, more than 100,000 gallons of gas and countless cabs.Not to mention the naked passenger who wanted to go to York Road (but got there only after putting his pants on), a smash-up with a drunken driver and the two armed men who carjacked the 79-year-old Golden Gloves middleweight boxer.His bosses at Yellow Transportation Inc. -- astonished to discover that Manning had been driving for them nearly a half-century -- insisted on throwing a surprise thank you party yesterday to honor his dependability and character over such a long fare.

They know fatal shootings can happen in their line of work, but the third time in a month was more than some hardened city taxicab drivers could take."

A 70-year-old cab driver remained in critical condition yesterday at Maryland Shock Trauma Center after being shot in the head during an apparent robbery in Southwest Baltimore on Friday.The Yellow Cab driver was identified yesterday as Gorman S. Johnson Sr. of Hanover, in Anne Arundel County.Johnson was shot inside his cab at Leeds Street and Palormo Avenue about 8: 15 a.m Friday. Police said the driver did not notify his dispatcher that he had picked up a passenger.Police were looking for a man wearing a dark baseball cap and blue jeans who was seen running north on Palormo carrying a duffel bag.Johnson was the third taxi driver shot in Baltimore in the past four weeks.

At high noon yesterday, in the middle of downtown traffic, more than 35 Baltimore City taxi drivers conducted a unique horn symphony -- using their cabs for instruments.In a 30-minute "Hail to the Taxis" motorcade that began at Camden Yards and circled around to Harborplace, the taxi drivers blasted in unison the horns of their ticker tape-decorated cabs.Drivers from city cab companies -- including ABC, Arrow, Diamond, Independent, Royal and Yellow -- took part in the first-ever Baltimore City Taxi Appreciation Day declared by Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke.

Elizabeth Buie once drove a yellow cab but now it's painted black and it seldom leaves from the front of her home. After 37 years of hunting fares, the East Baltimore great-grandmother has called it quits.For Ms. Buie, there are no more six-day work-weeks cruising the streets, no more early mornings sitting in a cold car and no more haunting stares from odd passengers."I'm just going to do what I want to do from now on," said the 76-year-old Baltimore native who began driving a city cab in 1956 as a way to help her family financially and just never decided to stop.

Labor unions representing police, blue collar and clerical workers in the city have ratified three-year pacts, Annapolis Mayor Alfred A. Hopkins announced yesterday.The length of the contracts for the three unions is a departure from the traditional one-year agreements and should result in reduced legal costs for the city, Mr. Hopkins said."We feel these agreements represent a new step forward in labor stability on behalf of our true employers, the citizens and taxpayers of the City of Annapolis," the mayor said in a written statement.

George Edward BondDrove for Yellow Cab Co.George Edward Bond, who retired from the Yellow Cab Co. after 50 years of service, died Oct. 14 of heart and respiratory failure as a result of complications of a stroke he suffered on July 29 at the Lorien Nursing Home in Columbia. He moved to the nursing home in 1993.The 87-year-old former East Baltimore resident moved to Columbia in 1989 to live with a daughter. He was a Yellow Cab driver until 1975, when he became a Yellow Cab owner. He retired in 1982.

The country was slipping into the Depression in April 1930, the same month a young graduate of Western High School answered a help-wanted ad."Jobs were hard to come by in 1930," says Frieda Greiver, 84, who spent 44 years as bookkeeper at the Sun Cab Co., a Baltimore institution that is to be taken over by its longtime rival, Yellow Cab ."I went for the job and found there was a room full of women waiting to be interviewed. I walked into an office ahead of all the others and I walked out with the job, at $17.50 a week, a lot of money for a girl who had very little work experience," says Greiver, who possesses total recall of her career in Sun Cab's front office.

This is how bad taxicab service has gotten in this city:Last month, James Gashel of the National Federation of the Blind, was scheduled to meet with members of the Taxicab Owners Association to talk about the problem of poor cab service.So, the president of one of the city's largest cab companies sent one of his taxis to pick Gashel up."The cab was 15 minutes late," said Gashel with a sad chuckle. "In fact, as we were heading out, we got a radio call from the dispatcher because [the president]

Yellow Cab of Baltimore celebrated its 100th anniversary Thursday with a downtown parade of taxis, including vintage cabs and even the most modern addition, hybrid vehicles. W.W. Cloud purchased the Brown and Blue Cab companies in 1909 and renamed them Yellow, making it the oldest registered Yellow Cab in the country, according to company officials. The cars, however, were black. Yellow grew and expanded until 2001, when Yellow Transportation of Baltimore was acquired by a global transportation company now known as Veolia Transportation.

Stephen Mauk, a driver for Yellow Cab of Frederick, was dispatched to pick up passengers in his minivan early yesterday - and that was the last his co-workers heard from him, a company official said. Four hours later, Mauk, 47, was found shot to death in his cab at a public housing complex in East Baltimore, according to city police. Police said the man was shot once in the head while sitting in the driver's seat in the 200 block of N. Bond St. An autopsy is pending. Police officials did not release a possible motive in the killing, which led homicide detectives to travel to Frederick yesterday as part of their investigation.

Elizabeth Buie, a pioneering African-American cab driver and taxi owner, died of heart disease Saturday at the Alice Manor Nursing Home. The East Baltimore resident was 89. Born Elizabeth Webb on a Sanford, N.C., farm, she completed the seventh grade and did agricultural work in neighboring Broadway. When she heard there was work available here, she moved to Baltimore in the 1940s and took a job packing hand grenades at the Edgewood Arsenal. She rode a bus from her Gay Street home to Harford County.

Revelers who toast the Declaration of Independence a few too many times in Baltimore bars this Fourth of July have a way home that doesn't involve staggering back to their vehicles. The State Highway Administration, AAA Mid-Atlantic and Yellow Cab are offering free - up to a $50 value - taxi rides home to patrons of city drinking spots in an effort to curb drunken driving. In some recent years, the Fourth has been the deadliest holiday of the year on the nation's roads, and alcohol has been a big contributor to the carnage.

A 12-year-old girl who told authorities she had been raped Monday in a taxi, prompting police to stop cabs in some city neighborhoods, lied to create a cover for having sex with a teenage boy, a city police spokesman said last night. Officer Troy Harris, the spokesman, said "charges were unlikely to be filed against the girl" and that the investigation is closed. The new information came from police interviews with the girl. The girl had told police she was attacked in a yellow-colored taxi near Clifton Park in Northeast Baltimore, near Harford Road and East 32nd Street.

George Jay Joseph, who owned and rebuilt Baltimore's Yellow Cab Co. into the region's largest passenger ground transportation business, died of cancer Monday at Suburban Hospital in Bethesda. The Chevy Chase resident was 87. Born in Bethlehem, Pa., he was the son of a Lithuanian immigrant peddler who went on to found a department store in Reading, Pa. He earned a bachelor's degree at Pennsylvania State University and a law degree from the University of Virginia after Army service during World War II. Mr. Joseph went into the legal publishing business in downtown Washington in the 1950s and named his first two companies, Jefferson Law Book and Thomas Jefferson Publishing, in honor of the president who established the University of Virginia.

RICHARD C. WOLFE, of Baltimore, died April 27, 2006 of heart failure at age 63. He was a graduate of Franklin and Marshall College and received an MA in English Literature from Kent State University. Early in his career he was an instructor of English at Towson State University. At the time of his death, he was employed by the Yellow Cab Company. He leaves a daughter, Pamela Goodrum, in California, a son, Erik Wolfe, in Georgia, and a brother, Paul Wolfe, in New Hampshire. No funeral service is planned.

RICHARD C. WOLFE, of Baltimore, died April 27, 2006 of heart failure at age 63. He was a graduate of Franklin and Marshall College and received an MA in English Literature from Kent State University. Early in his career he was an instructor of English at Towson State University. At the time of his death, he was employed by the Yellow Cab Company. He leaves a daughter, Pamela Goodrum, in California, a son, Erik Wolfe, in Georgia, and a brother, Paul Wolfe, in New Hampshire. No funeral service is planned.

In Baltimore City Two teens fatally shot; homicide toll for year climbs to 271 Two teen-age males were fatally shot last night on a Northeast Baltimore street during what may have been an attempted robbery, police said. Shortly before 11 p.m., three boys between ages 16 and 18 were standing and talking in the 3100 block of Mareco Ave. in the Belair-Edison community when a gunman approached and reportedly demanded their money and valuables, police said. When one of the victims turned and fled down the street, the gunman shot the two remaining boys in the head at point-blank range, killing both, police said.

In her new book, Got My Mind Set on Freedom: Maryland's Story of Black-White Activism 1663-2000, Barbara Mills writes that employment opportunities for African-Americans were greatly expanded in 1951 when the Yellow Cab Co. of Baltimore began integrating its taxi drivers. With other local cab companies following suit, an estimated 260 jobs were created for blacks who took their place behind the wheel with their white counterparts. "I could see no sound reason why the people in Baltimore should be deprived of the services of many taxicabs when qualified men and women of color were available and seeking honorable and gainful employment," said Robert Freedman, president of Yellow Cab, when he was presented an award from the Hollander Foundation that year.