The Baltimore Sun from Baltimore, Maryland • Page B2

Maryland Page 2b Sunday, July 24, 2005 The Sun Stockdale, a buried at Naval Academy Drugs overtake a life then bring it to an end Admiral was running mate for Ross Perot in 1992 race Victim, from Page 1b an example, a legend and a model" for young officers, said retired Adm. William J. Crowe a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and a friend of Stockdale's. "His captors soon learned they were dealing with a rather unusual man." The 12 honorary pallbearers included Sen. John McCain of Arizona, also a Naval Academy graduate and POW during the Vietnam War, and Texas billionaire Ross Perot, a third-party presidential candidate who chose Stockdale as his running mate during his campaign for the White House in 1992.

The burial service included a 21-gun salute, the playing of taps and a fly-over by four F-18s in the "missing man" formation. Stockdale studied philosophy at Stanford University after graduating from the Naval Academy in 1947, and he often said thinking about the writings of the Stoic philosopher Epicte-tus helped him endure captivity. After retiring from the Navy, Stockdale served as president of the Military College of South Carolina, also known as The ASSOCIATED PRESS Retired Navy Vice Adm. James B. Stockdale, one of the country's most decorated Vietnam War veterans and a onetime vice presidential candidate, was buried yesterday at the Naval Academy.

About 500 people, including several Medal of Honor recipients and former prisoners of war, attended the funeral for Stockdale, who died July 5 at his home in Coronado, Calif. Stock-dale, who suffered from Alzheimer's disease, was 81. For 7 years, Stockdale was a prisoner of war at the infamous "Hanoi Hilton." Four of those years were spent in solitary confinement. On several occasions, he was singled out for torture. He received the Medal of Honor in 1976 for his resistance, which included beating himself in the face with a wooden stool so he would be too disfigured for the North Vietnamese to display on television.

"His resistance has become MATTHEW S. GUNBY ASSOCIATED PRESS Stanford Stockdale places a rose on the casket of his father, Vice Adm. James B. Stockdale, as his mother and brothers look on. Frosh accused of withholding information on Web rumors Counsel says senator knows who baited ex-aide By David Nitkin SUN STAFF drug possession to armed robbery to a string of sometimes violent thefts from grocery and drug stores.

In April 2001 he was charged with first- and second-degree assault, accused of beating his ex-girlfriend's brother with a wooden club. The charges were dismissed. "He's laying on the ground and I think I killed him," Hunt is quoted in the police report as saying to the victim's sister. Most of the other charges also were dismissed, but Hunt did spend time in jail, sometimes for as long as a year. And each time he was charged with a theft or assault, he would pen a letter to the judge overseeing his case in the same bubbly, cursive handwriting, always pleading for another chance.

On Sept. 16, 1999, Hunt wrote the first of three letters from jail where he was serving a one-year sentence for theft, requesting a speedy trial on other charges that he stole $1,382 worth of medicine and other items from a Safeway store. "Your Honor the sentence I have received on my prior charge I feel will help me turn my life around and guide me in the right direction when I do return home," he wrote. "While I'm incarcerated I will be getting my GED and attending a drug program for my drug addiction which has took me in the wrong direction since I was a teenager. I'm pleading for a second chance from you to turn my life around for my four year old son and my child on the way." Other chances would come.

Each time Hunt said he learned his lesson. Each time, he asked for another chance. He pleaded with a judge to reduce his 15-month sentence for stealing from a Giant supermarket in 2003. "Sir god forgives me please can you," he wrote. Failed recovery Late last year, Hunt finally seemed serious about getting clean.

He entered a methadone program for about two months but dropped out the day after Christmas to detox himself. A week later, Hunt crashed. He got in a fight with Beckette and stormed off Jan. 3. Four days later, he went to O'Donnell Heights to get drugs.

Hunt wanted to trade his DVD player for a bag of cocaine, according to court documents filed against the suspects. But the three men he encountered wanted more. The dispute led to gunfire, and his death. Hunt's mother still whispers to the ashes of her cremated son. Beckette returns to the murder scene every few weeks to nurse her grief.

She found a leaf with blood on it and his earring, both of which she has preserved in the scrapbook. She figures his struggle has at last ended. Hers is only beginning. Now she must answer to a young son who asks her whether heaven has a telephone and whether they can fly there to bring Daddy home, and whose occasional bursts of bad behavior are excused with the fact that he no longer has a daddy around to watch over him. Beckette said that Hunt "didn't like living" from high to high.

"He's in a better place now. I guess it was his time to go home." Sun staff writer Matthew Dolan contributed to this men in Hunt's killing, all of them high school dropouts, all of them with criminal records and one whose mother is a recovering drug addict and whose father is serving 50 years in a federal prison for selling heroin. Month of violence Hunt's killing was in the midst of a spate of shootings that ushered in the New Year 26 dead in the first 20 days of 2005. Police Commissioner Leonard D. Hamm rushed to assure the public that it was safe, that the murders were isolated to a particular group of people and to certain neighborhoods, nothing most residents should worry about.

"This is tragic violence to specific individuals," Hamm said at a hastily called news conference on a Saturday afternoon. "There is a measure of safety for the general public." But some advocates worry that the killings of Hunt and the many others who share his lifestyle are too often dismissed by city leaders seeking to promote drops in crime even as they fail to reduce homicides. "How can you say the city is safe when a little less than 300 people are killed every year?" asked Hathaway Ferebee of the Baltimore Safe and Sound Campaign, a nonprofit group formed as part of the Urban Health Initiative. "Unless we're essentially saying those people don't count. And I think that's just wrong." Troubled history As with every victim, Hunt had his own personal story there were people who loved him and used him, stole from him and tried to get him back into normal society, those who killed him and now those who mourn him.

Hunt grew up on the rough-and-tumble streets of East Baltimore, where at the age of 5 he saw his father shot in the leg. He was raised by his mother, Linda Kraemer, 54, who said she could barely make ends meet. They moved to Essex when Hunt was 14, already a high school dropout working at a grocery store. About that time he met Beck-ette. "He was a very good kid," Kraemer said, "but it seemed like trouble was always following him." The forklift operator appeared to live a vagabond existence, listing several addresses as home on his arrest records.

Beckette said that for the past few years he usually lived with her and their son, Geronimo in her Harford County home. But when they quarreled, usually over his drug addiction, he would stay with his mother or with friends. He didn't dream big. The man with the mischievous grin and tattoos of Beckette and his mother's name emblazoned on his body just wanted to live a normal life, his family said. There are glimpses of that in the scrapbook Beckette compiled after his death.

Pictures at Chuck E. Cheese's and of painting Easter eggs. Fishing on camping trips. Coaching his son's baseball team. Many pictures include his other son, 9-year-old Brandon, and Beckette's 14-year-old daughter, who lives with her.

But between such moments, Hunt suffered from a drug habit that led him to rob stores and even family members. Hunt was arrested at least 20 times on charges ranging from the harshest critics of the Ehrlich administration since the activities of former Ehrlich aide Joseph F. Steffen Jr. have come to light, denied the charges in an interview yesterday. Steffen, called the "Prince of Darkness" by the governor and others, was fired after he acknowledged posting Internet rumors about Baltimore Mayor Martin O'Malley, who is expected to seek the Democratic nomination for governor.

Steffen and several other aides from Ehrlich's congressional office had been assigned to a variety of state agencies, and documents and interviews show that they were seeking information on workers who appeared disloyal to the administration and who could be fired. A judge has ruled that employees at the state Public Service Commission were terminated improperly. Baltimore County Councilman Vincent J. Gardina, a Democrat, received a $100,000 payment from the government after he filed a lawsuit claiming he was illegally fired from Maryland Environmental Service because of his party affiliation. Frosh said he and his legislative colleagues are compelled to investigate those firings and others.

But the Ehrlich administration is pushing back. Finney wants the investigation to focus on MD4BUSH, a participant in online conversations on an Internet message board with Steffen and who got the aide to write that he knew there had been an orchestrated effort to give the O'Malley rumors "float." "Because it does not serve your political interest, you are apparently withholding information that would shed light on this entire matter, the false username MD4BUSH and the truth generally," Finney wrote to Frosh. "In fact based on information apparently provided by an elected official from Baltimore, you well know the identity of the 'Watergate style' dirty trickster who operated under the evasive pseud onym MD4BUSH." Frosh denied yesterday that he knows who MD4BUSH is, and says the identity of the message-board poster doesn't matter much. He said the Ehrlich administration is "trying to change the topic, and it wants the investigation to go away." Speaking about Finney's letter on WBAL radio yesterday, Ehrlich said that he thinks Democrats know the identity of MD4BUSH. "We have a strong suspicion that is indeed the case," he said.

Ehrlich said that "no protected employee in state government has lost their job," and he said Democrats cannot back up the charges they have made about the staffing changes. "They have questioned my integrity. They are stuck, believe me, and we are going to take them down on this." A 12-member panel of senators and delegates will begin reviewing the administration's personnel practices in the fall. The top legal counsel to Gov. Robert L.

Ehrlich Jr. has accused a prominent Democratic state senator who will soon participate in a legislative probe of the Ehrlich administration's firing practices of "apparently withholding information" for partisan political purposes that could provide ammunition to the governor's supporters. Jervis S. Finney, Ehrlich's counsel, wrote to state Sen. Brian E.

Frosh of Montgomery County last week, charging Frosh with engaging in "a concerted, yet totally unsubstantiated, attack on the personnel policy and integrity of the Ehrlich administration" and failing to disclose the identity of a participant on an online message board. Frosh, who has been one of State Digest In Cecil County Del. man killed, Md. man injured in head-on crash MONICA LOPOSSAY SUN STAFF A slide show on the life of Colts player Jim Parker is shown during the Hall of Famer's funeral at New Antioch Baptist Church in Randallstown. Friends say goodbye to Jim Parker ELKTON A Delaware man was killed and a Cecil County man was injured during rush hour Friday when their vehicles collided head-on on Route 213, state police said yesterday.

The crash occurred at 4:30 p.m., when a 2000 Toyota Camry heading north crossed the center line of the two-lane highway. It struck a southbound 1987 Chevrolet pickup, which had swerved to the shoulder to avoid a crash, police said. The driver of the Camry, Pervaiz Ehsan, 51, of Bear, Del, was pronounced dead at a local hospital. The driver of the pickup, Delbert Cline, 39, of Chesapeake City was flown by helicopter to Maryland Shock Trauma Center with injuries that did not appear to be life-threatening, police said. In Washington County SHA finding could mean slowdown for 1-81 plans HAGERSTOWN A State Highway Administration plan to widen Interstate 81 between Pennsylvania and Virginia might be put on a slow track after an agency panel recommended against a proposal to pay for the improvements by charging tolls.

The panel urged the agency last week to scrap the proposal because of strong opposition in Washington County. The county commissioners and local business leaders said that tolls would have pushed traffic from 1-81 over to U.S. 11, which runs through Hagerstown. Highway planners have said that without tolls, the proposed widening of the four-lane interstate to six lanes over its 12 -mile Maryland section could take 20 to 30 years. Staff and wire reports 0 in your BMimore oi DP1 45033802 IHjrillrlgldM! MJffl.IP Funeral, from Page 1b out to see him, it was fun and games with him; we would just laugh and talk." Another former Colt, Tom Matte, attributed his success as a running back to Parker's blocking.

"Parker was a special guy to all the guys. There was never an assignment that he did not do a good job," said Matte. Baltimore Mayor Martin O'Malley and C. Jack Ellis, mayor of Parker's birthplace of Macon, also praised him. Ellis said Parker "will live forever" in the city of Macon.

Ellis said he will ask his city council to name a building or street in the player's honor. Parker played football at Ohio State University and was one of the most sought-after players when he graduated. In 1957, he was drafted by the Colts and earned All-Pro honors in eight consecutive seasons of his eleven total years playing professional football. He was inducted into the NFL's Hall of Fame in his first year of "He would pull a person to the side and whatever they asked for, he would give it to them," Harold said. Parker worked a 14-hour workday for many of the 33 years that he ran the business.

After the decline of the neighborhood and of his health, Parker closed the business in 1999. Parker fathered 14 children and had 23 grandchildren. During the funeral, one of Parker's grandchildren, a 7-year-old, read a letter she wrote after learning that he died. It said: "I am really going to miss you. You were the greatest.

It was fun when you pinched my cheeks, gave me a hug and made me laugh." Fans at the funeral said they looked forward to Sunday afternoons, watching Parker on television, battling rivals such as the Los Angeles Rams' David "Deacon" Jones, another Hall of Famer. "I just came here to pay my respects," said Merrill Houston, 69, of Baltimore. "He's really inspirational as I used to watch him on TV." "It took a lot of courage for Parker to do the things he did. He loved people. George Harold, Colts teammate Parker said he never made more than $35,000 a year during his professional football career.

When he retired, he briefly worked for a liquor distributor, and in 1964, he opened a liquor and package goods store at the corner of Liberty Heights Avenue and Garrison Boulevard. Former Colt George Harold said Parker would always show kindness and that there was no exception at his store. "It took a lot of courage for Parker to do the things that he did, and he loved people," Harold said. On many occasions, Harold said, he would spend time with Parker at the liquor store, witnessing his friend's compassion. a EST.

1867 802 Kenilworth Dr. Towson, MD 21204 410-823-6600 Hours: 9am -9pm Sunday 10am 5pm ne14501 8602.