The Evening Sun from Baltimore, Maryland • 9

.11 Police Blotter B2 Obituaries B5 Newswatch B6 THE EVENING SUN, MONDAY, AUGUST 7, 1989 1 j.f i 1 i i I I iT i I 1 0-day party slated for bay Preservation championed By Leslie Walker Evening Sun Staff Declaring that many people are "either stupid or too tired or don't know how" to avoid polluting Chesapeake Bay, Gov. William Donald Schaefer today announced a 10-day "Party on the Bay" to promote the bay and the state's efforts to preserve it. "Why a party?" asked Schaefer. "If you can't get people to seriously consider maybe you can by having a party It's a party to learn. It's a party to understand what we're trying to do." During the last 10 days of August, Maryland will host more than two dozen community events, from a classic yacht rendezvous in Chestertown to a jousting tournament in Port Republic and a catamaran regatta in Ocean City.

The party opens with the Governor's Cup Yacht Race on Aug. 18. More than 300 sailboats are expected to race from the Annapolis channel to St. Mary's College in Southern Maryland. The festival ends with the Maryland State Fair, which runs from Aug.

26 through Sept. 4 at the state fairgrounds in Timonium. Events include the Governor's Cup Fishing Tournament on Aug. 26. For $25, fishers can sign up at the state Department of Natural Resources.

The grand prize will be a Co-bia "Spirit" powerboat with a 50-horsepower motor. "At each party," said Schaefer, "volunteers are taking time out from the fun to sign people up in the 'One Million Maryland-ers for the Bay' program, and help them learn what they can do every day at home to clean up the Chesapeake Bay." Schaefer announced the event this morning at a news conference featuring an obstacle course in Annapolis. Relay runners, including William McHugh from the Original Sports Bar in Baltimore, dashed around the courthouse mall in front of the State House, hopping through tires, stuffing newspapers inside old paint cans and sweeping up spills with cat litter. Foreign Affairs eyes cable pact By Claire Furia Evening Sun Staff Farmers in the Midwest and surfers in Hawaii may soon be able to tune in to speeches in Baltimore by prominent U.S. and world leaders when the city's Council on Foreign Affairs gains national cable television exposure for its programs.

Ambassadors, journalists, Cabinet members and President Bush, when he was vice president, have been brought to Baltimore by the council in the past several years to further residents' understanding of world events. The 9-year-old non-partisan council, based in the World Trade Center, brings in about 30 speakers a year. September's schedule includes talks by Sir Antony Acland, U.S. ambassador of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and Lawrence S. Eag-leburger, U.S.

Deputy Secretary of State. See FOREIGN, B5, Col. 1 Civil War collectors battle to a standoff By Lan Nguyen Evening Sun Staff Dale Pickett is looking for letters, pictures and any other items that can serve as a link to his great-great-great-grandfather, Gen. George Pickett, the Confederate officer who led "Pickett's Charge" during the battle of Gettysburg. "It's real hard," said Dale Pickett.

"The collectors are dealing in so much money. Nowadays, the prices are going up so high. People like me who are relatives and who don't have the money can't get their foot inside the door." The 21-year-old Perry Hall resident was poking around the 6th Annual Greater Baltimore Civil War Show and Sale yesterday, hunting for bargains and looking for items associated with his legendary relative who led the unsuccessful charge at Gettysburg. "Nothing was handed down to the family," he said. "After the war, many things were sold or given to museums." About 150 exhibitors and 2,000 other gawkers, war buffs and relatives of dead soldiers came to the weekend Civil War emporium at Marriott's Hunt Valley Inn.

"You have your collectors who want to find something to add to their collections, the professional dealers who sell and buy, and the casual visitors who are overwhelmed by the whole idea," said Dan Toomey, author of "The Civil War in Maryland." "It's a multifaceted thing." Items for sale ranged from a $125 Civil War shaving kit to a $390 brass belt buckle to a $15,000 mint-condition rifle. "The stuff is getting more scarce and the prices are going up," said John Graham, who has been collecting Civil War memorabilia for 27 years. "There's only a finite amount of it around. Over the years, the good stuff has already been picked up." But there were still sought-after items to be sold at the show. A picture of an unidentified soldier sold for $75 and an original photograph of Gen.

George Armstrong Custer went for $450. "Civil War memorabilia has become a major force in the antique world," said Bill Turner, a dealer and collector. "The Americana is a major economic force today." Turner said collecting Civil War pieces has gone from a blue-collar hobby in the 1970s to a white-collar profession in the 1980s. Collections can range from a couple of artillery shells valued in the thousands of dollars to hundreds of rifles, swords and documents worth more than $1 million. "People who collect stamps and coins are collecting forms of art," said Turner, whose distant uncles fought for the Confederacy.

"This is really trying to collect history. We're still a young nation." Jack Freeze, 53, of Annapolis, combs Civil War shows for a painting showing some of his ancestors who served as soldiers. He said prices for Civil War relics and memorabilia have doubled in two years. "The demand for these things has gone up astronomically," he said. "It's the romanticism of the period, the values.

It's a bygone era. There's certainly nothing like this today." Curiosity with the Civil War period heightened in the 1960s, the war's centennial years. With the recent popularity of television miniseries, such as "North and South," and the 50th anniversary of the movie classic "Gone with the Wind," interest continues to grow. "There's always been an interest in the Civil War," said Bill Wilson, who wore wire-framed glasses, wool pants and a light blue By George Holsey Special to The Evening Sun Stanley Randall handles the skillets during fish fry in Galesville. West River family cooks up a storm with pride and skill, and all for charity Dan jjr Times of wonder, time to reflect Pieces of column too short to use "Come on, Dick.

Come on, Dick. Come on, Dick. Come on, Dick! Dick! Dick! Dick! Dick!" yelled the driver to his horse. This was Saturday night, Harford County Farm Fair, a teamster beckoning to one of two Belgians pulling nearly 6,000 pounds. It was a dramatic moment in a fair that was blissfully low key, a modest, back-to-nature sort of fair.

No honky-tonk midway. No bearded ladies. Nothing too terribly tacky to detract from your down-home sensibilities. A real family farm fair. The horse-pulling contest should have satisfied all thrill-seekers: More than a dozen Belgians, some more than 4,000 pounds a pair, elegant brutes standing noble and serene, then answering the snap of the reins with a frantic burst of power, hooves grappling for ground the way they did in vanished days when work horses were indispensable to farmer and timber-man.

Just when the Belgians had gone off quietly to their trailers, and folks were feeling contentedly folksy, the Virginia Giant cracked the night. The VG is one of those souped-up monster trucks that sit atop tires the size of bungalows. This burping, snarling, heavy-metal mastodon burst into the arena where the wonderful Belgians had just performed, squashed old automobiles and growled like a hundred Harleys. It was grotesque Iron Maiden crashing a dulcimer concert. Somebody gong that thing.

One day last month, I wrote a column praising the Orioles. The same day, the Orioles lost to the Mariners, then went on the road and lost, lost, lost. A reader named Peggy O'Neill thinks there is some connection. "Obviously," she wrote, "you have jinxed the Orioles, and Baltimore will never be able to forgive you. You should be relegated to write obits and classified ads, making room for a more responsible columnist.

May the curse of writer's block be forever on you." Nice, Peg, real nice. Here's a novel idea for businessmen struggling to stay afloat. A guy from Arnold has asked for contributions from fellow graduates of one of those Pursuit of Excellence training courses. "Nine years ago I started a graphic design firm," says a signed ad published in a recent alumni newsletter. "In a recently hard and competitive market the firm has become saddled with debt The help I am asking for is cash donations of any amount ($1, $5, up) from anyone who reads this ad.

Your contribution will go towards payment of the debt Please! Put yourself out and pass the favor on." It's certainly an innovative method for raising capital but, yo, for' $5, the guy could maybe give a chance on a basket of cheer. This past spring, we met Doris Gilbert, who lived with her dog, Chippy, in a row house on South Caroline Street. Doris was gravely ill and, knowing her time was limited, she wanted to find a new home for Chippy, a scrawny little pooch who had been Doris' friend for many years. Chippy went to the Animal Rescue farm in Pennsylvania shortly after the column appeared. Doris spent her final days in Deaton Hospital Si Medical Center.

She died last Thursday. "Although hers was a lonely life in recent years," a social worker said, "many people helped make these last days better her mother's minister, the volunteer sent by Joseph House, Visiting Nurse Association staff. And, of course, the people who granted Doris her last wish, a new home for Chippy- After 4-year-old David Shore drowned at Fort Armistead Park in South Baltimore, people wondered why it took five minutes after police called to dispatch a paramedic unit to the scene, and then from a distant location in West Baltimore. We also might wonder why the Coast Guard, with a 24-hour medic unit, wasn't called in from nearby Curtis Bay, or why someone didn't ask Anne Arundel County for help. Virginia F.

Simmons, a Charles Village reader, says I was wrong to put the recidivism rate for Patuxent Institution inmates at 18 percent. The real figure should have been 37 percent. "You could look it up," Ms. Simmons says. So I looked it up.

Thirty-seven percent refers to the reported "rearrest rate" for Patuxent inmates. The state does not regard rearrest as recidivism, but only the first step in that direction. For most state officials, on both sides of the Patuxent "debate," 18 percent remains the operative number for Patuxent recidivism, and it is comparable to rate at other institutions. Not that it matters anymore. By Jacques Kelly Evening Sun Staff It takes three generations of family, a drowsy Sunday afternoon, a sky full of gnats and the good will of a community to put on a decent south county fish fry.

"I was up Jessup early this morning buying the whiting some people call it lake trout, but it's whiting," said Robert Randall, as he tended a bubbling camp skillet filled with frying fish. Alongside were his brother Stanley and friends Robert Tongue and Al Edwards. The two Randalls are the youngest of the family who worked this big event in Galesville, a West River community in Anne Arundel County. "We start early so the people coming home from church can get something to eat," he said. Inside an old two-room schoolhouse, now the Galesville Community Center, Al-verta Randall, his mother, was fixing platters of fish, crab cakes and chicken, sliced tomatoes, beans and potato salad.

"If the green beans are good, it's because I throw an old ham bone in from the freezer. There's a little bit of bacon fat too. The menu never changes. Neither does the price. I can't change it.

They won't pay for it," she said. The rest of the meal was prepared by her family. "My mother-in-law, Naomi Pumphrey, made the crab cakes. And my aunt Hariette Gant did the pies and rolls. And Dorothy Galloway made the potato salad," she said.

All it takes is a little sign with the two magic words "Fish Fry" for the grounds of the old Galesville school to fill up with friends and family. It doesn't hurt that the Galesville Hot Sox are playing the nine from Edgewater in an old-fashioned country ball diamond just down the way, on the road that leads to Owensville. "By the time that game is over, we'll be selling everything," Alverta Randall predicted. She described the town where she was born she now lives in Annapolis as a "fishing place." When she was a child, some "30 or 40" black families lived here and many of them worked at the Woodfield Fish and Oyster which is still there in a group of cinder block, whitewashed buildings. "The people shucked oysters, cleaned fish or picked over shrimp to separate the sizes," she said.

The schoolhouse, once the racially segregated version of local education, had two big rooms. "The first through seventh grades were in here. I guess we had maybe 100 children," she said. Today the old school, which shows signs of age but isn't run down, functions as a trim and well-used center for the kind of social activities that beckon two and three generations. There's a well-maintained playground with actively used equipment and plenty of room for the gas-powered fish-frying pots.

As a kind of gesture to older days and county ways, there's an outhouse out back. It has a reassuring sign that reads, "This is clean." Just through a See FRY, B4, Col. 4 Building: Facelift turns dowager into dazzler 1 See SHOW, B4, Col. 1 The Wilkens The building at Pratt and Howard streets is a tall, white birthday cake, all decorated with leaves, columns, brackets and whatnot. Its structural icing, however, is cast iron.

Over this summer, the 1871 iron-fronted building has come into its own, reborn with missing parts replaced and bathed in brilliant alabaster paint. On a hot August day, the old Wilkens Building dazzles. By late fall, a new tenant, the Marsh McLellan insurance firm, will move into its upper floors. It also will lend its name to this palace of commerce, which over the past century has offered everything from pig bristles to gilt picture frames to ruled paper. The odyssey of 308 W.

Pratt St. has taken many twists and turns, even if the building has never left the site. When constructed in 1871, the Wilkens Building was one of many with cast iron front structures. The buildings had iron faces, that, when painted, would fool anybody. They looked like marble, or stone, or carved wood.

In fact, 308 W. Pratt has a smaller sibling, built of the same cast-iron members, in the 300 block of W. Baltimore St. It's known fes the Trading Post. The Wilkens Building was cast by the Jacaues Kelly famed Bartlett Hayward firm on Scott Street in southwest Baltimore.

Bartlett Hayward's foundry made everything from locomotives to radiators, Latrobe stoves to the interior balconies of the Peabody Library. Iron facades were the original bolt-'em-up buildings. Architects and builders selected stock patterns from catalogs. The faces could be shipped all over the country. Baltimore's City Hall dome is cast iron.

Typically, while the facades of the buildings were iron, the sides and back walls were of common brick construction. The Wilkens Co. was a major employer 800 employees in the 19th century, though most of them worked at the hair works a smelly, tannery-like complex See KELLY, B4, Col. 4 7 r- 7 9 'm The gleaming face of the old Wilkens i By Irving H. Phillips Jr.

Evening Sun Staff Eililding peers down on Pratt Street..