Journalist @baltimoresun writer artist runner #amwriting Chaplain PIO #partylikeajournalist

Journalist @baltimoresun writer artist runner #amwriting Chaplain PIO #partylikeajournalist
Journalist @baltimoresun writer artist runner #amwriting Md Troopers Assoc #20 & Westminster Md Fire Dept Chaplain PIO #partylikeajournalist
Showing posts with label Dayhoff Carroll County Times Time Flies. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Dayhoff Carroll County Times Time Flies. Show all posts

Sunday, July 21, 2019

Dayhoff Time Flies: Ocean City - Down the ocean, hon.


Dayhoff Time Flies: Ocean City - Down the ocean, hon.

Sunday, June 30, 2019 by Kevin E. Dayhoff

This year I enjoyed the summer solstice, Friday, June 21, by doing a 2.25-mile run on the boardwalk in Ocean City. According to the Washington Post, “The summer solstice is … our longest day and shortest night of the year, and the first day of astronomical summer in Earth’s Northern Hemisphere… In Washington, the sun (was) up for 14 hours and 54 minutes on June 21, rising in the northeastern sky (at) 5:43 a.m. and setting in the northwest at 8:37 p.m. (For perspective, that’s about 5½ hours more daylight than seen on the winter solstice in December.)”

I could not think of a better way to spend the longest day of the year than to spend it in Ocean City “down the ocean, hon.”

Some of my fondest childhood memories include leisurely vacations on the Chesapeake Bay, explorations throughout the Eastern Shore and walking on the boardwalk in Ocean City. For some reason French fries, pizza and ice cream, always taste better when it is mixed with an ocean salt breeze, walking the boardwalk, while fighting off the seagulls.




Monday, January 14, 2019

Time Flies Dayhoff: America's oldest banker when he died, John Cunningham enjoyed walking, cycling and poker


Time Flies Dayhoff: America's oldest banker when he died, John Cunningham enjoyed walking, cycling and poker

January 11, 2019 by Kevin Dayhoff

As we put away another year and look forward to a new one, it is only fitting that we remember one of the many great Carroll Countians that have gone before us: John H. Cunningham.

On Dec. 31, 1965, John Cunningham passed away within a few hours of his 99th birthday. Local historian Jay Graybeal wrote of “his rich life, including his interests in bicycling, walking and poker,” in a March 16, 1997 column in the Carroll County Times.

[…]

Cunningham was born on New Year’s Day in 1867. According to his obit, “On January 1, 1885, while a senior at Western Maryland College, Mr. Cunningham began his banking career as a clerk with the Farmers and Mechanics National Bank, [at 105 E. Main St. in Westminster] following the footsteps of his father William, who was a clerk there.”

He worked in the same office, with the same employer for his entire life — from 1885 until when he passed away in 1965. “Many days he walked the mile to work from his home at 95 West Green Street.”





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Monday, July 09, 2018

Gerald Fischman remembered by former Carroll County Times writers


Gerald Fischman remembered by former Carroll County Times writers

Many folks who worked at the Carroll County Times in the 1980s with Gerald Fischman attended his funeral service on Sunday, July 8, 2018.

Writers such as Doug Tallman, Peter Khoury, Debbie Funk, Dennis McCafferty, and Lloyd Batzler.

Tallman wrote for the paper from 1985-87. Tallman now writes for Montgomery Community Media. Khoury was a cops, courts, and crime reporter from 1986-88. He now writes with the New York Times. Funk wrote for the paper from 1985-87. McCafferty was with the paper from 1986-88. McCafferty was with the Carroll County Times from 1986-88. He later moved on the Atlanta Journal Constitution and is presently vice president of content at Welz & Weisel Communications.

Gerald Fischman funeral service - Amy Davis / Baltimore Sun: Olney, MD - 07/08/18 -- Mourners, including many current and former Capital Gazette colleagues of slain editor Gerald Fischman, walk to the graveside after the chapel service at Judean Memorial Gardens. Gerald Fischman was one of five staffers killed in a mass shooting at the Capital office in Annapolis on June 28


https://www.facebook.com/kevindayhoff/posts/10214272033808332

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Time Flies Dayhoff: In the aftermath of the Gazette murders, we must do better


Time Flies Dayhoff: In the aftermath of yet another mass murder, we must do better by Kevin Dayhoff July 4, 2018

[…]

The world of journalism is a small world. In one way or another, we all know each other. Of the five, Gerald Fischman had a local connection. He was an editorial page editor for the Carroll County Times in the 1980s. He worked at the paper with several good friends.

One of those friends got in touch as the events unfolded and reminded me that he covered my work in the community in those days. I certainly did not know him well, but knowing him put a face on this tragedy. I worked on several environmental initiatives in the 1980s for county and state government.

In his capacity as a reporter and an editorial writer, he covered my work. He was a good guy who always got it right. Some of the initiatives that I worked on in those days were not really popular. Some of the public hearings and letters to the editor were difficult, but Mr. Fischman was always fair, meticulous, patient, and accessible – if not indeed supportive.




Find it here on the Carroll County Times Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/cctnews/posts/10156744145357018. Many of my critics are amateurs compared to some of these trolls. 
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Thursday, February 02, 2017

Not everyone appreciated my story, “Carroll made great by many who have recently passed away.”


Not everyone appreciated my story, “Carroll made great by many who have recently passed away.” http://kevindayhoff.blogspot.com/2017/02/not-everyone-appreciated-my-story.html
 
February 1, 2017 Kevin Dayhoff

As will happen from time to time, not everyone appreciated my story, “Carroll made great by many who have recently passed away.” http://www.carrollcountytimes.com/columnists/features/history/ph-cc-dayhoff-012917-20170127-column.html


I am not into Facebook arguments – see http://kevindayhoffart.blogspot.com/2016/05/beating-dead-horse.html. I like discussion and encourage folks with other points of view to share their thoughts with me. It is a relatively new “Facebook concept” that folks do not like others with whom they disagree. I like my friends, whether they agree with me or not. I am so easy. I like anybody who is nice to me.

Anyway, at least one reader really objected to when I wrote that, “When an old man dies, a library burns to the ground” is an old African proverb.

Usually I ignore comment trolls. I simply do not have the time to respond. But this one struck a nerve. The column was from the heart. And besides, it brought back memories of Dr. Earl Griswold’s anthropological and sociology research at Western Maryland College – see https://kevindayhoffwestgov-net.blogspot.com/2016/04/april-11-1992-dr-l-earl-griswold.html: all the wonderful things I learned in the Westminster United Methodist Church MYF - Methodist Youth Fellowship and the many-many lectures and programs at Western Maryland College in the 1960s… Folks and places that I recall where and when I was introduced to the concept of “When an old man dies, a library burns to the ground.”

So I wrote on the Carroll County Times’ Facebook page, https://www.facebook.com/cctnews/?fref=nf: I’d like to thank everyone for their feedback. I appreciate this opportunity to shed some addition light on an important topic in a storied Carroll County that is rapidly changing.

From the comments below, it appears that many folks understand the thrust and theme of the story. I felt extremely sad when I wrote the piece and actually it was my editors who insisted that I have the story published. I am indebted to them.

For those I failed to reach, I apologize. Genevieve Frost wrote, “‘old’ African saying. This saying originated in 1960. Stop virtue signaling and rewriting history.” In a subsequent comment, Ms. Frost remarked, “Stating that something is old when it is not, isn't an opinion, it's misinformation.”

Well - - at an l’UNESCO conference in 1960, Amadou Hampâté Bâ, (1901– May 15, 1991,) an eminent Malian intellectual, writer, and ethnologist referred to the old African proverb when he said, “Un vieillard africain qui meurt, c’est une bibliothèque qui brûle.” - “In Africa, when an old man dies, it’s a library burning.”

This, according to multiple media sources, including, “Cahiers d’études africaines,” 1965, and Cote-d’ivoire by Dominique Desanti, 1962, “Selon la fulgurante formule d’un ethnologue malien, Amadou Hampâté Bâ: ‘Chaque vieillard qui meurt, c’est une bibliothèque qui brûle.’”

Actually what the distinguished ambassadeur du Mali à Abidjan paraphrased is indeed an ancient West African proverb. Much of the history, customs, and traditions of West Africa are in the form of unwritten oral history. And when an elder in the community dies, the community suffers a great loss of institutional knowledge, wisdom, and insight into our treasured customs and traditions.

My story was an appeal to folks to talk with older family members, colleagues, and community leaders before it is too late. It is an ageless universal appeal to interview our elders, learn from them – and record their stories.

The reference in my story, to the proverb “When an old man dies, a library burns to the ground,” was to provide me with a written vehicle to make the point that many of the eminent community leaders who passed away in Carroll County last year were quite elderly and profoundly wise. Although I had an opportunity to interview several of them while they were alive, I just wish that I had taken the time to get them to sit down for a recorded questions and answer interview.

This was the focus of the lament many of us felt when we gathered to pay our respects to Woody Swam and gathered in a circle to tell old Carroll County stories from many years ago, that will sadly be lost without a concerted effort to document them.

You just cannot “Google” this stuff. There is something lost in the translation… Some of the stories about state’s attorney Bryan McIntire are the stuff of legend. Annie Hoff carried forward Carroll County farming traditions from well into the 1800s. Dave Schaeffer was distinguished Carroll County businessman that stood witness to enormous changes in Carroll County.

I use the old African proverb, “When an old man dies, a library burns to the ground,’ often in memorial services, in my capacity as a fire, military and police chaplain.

The saying is also used by American historians. I often remember it in the context of southern gothic literature in relationship to the sadness of a community when an elder passes away. Tennessee Williams described Southern Gothic as a style that captured "an intuition, of an underlying dreadfulness in modern experience."

In Carroll County, the subplot, the dog whistle, if you will, is that with the death of many of these individuals; passes a certain Carroll County way-of-life that is going away forever. This concept is greeted with a certain dread by many in the community.

Although, the Carroll History project coordinated by the Community Media Center and developed by the Carroll County Public Library, Carroll County NAACP, the Human Relations Commission of Carroll County, the Historical Society of Carroll County and the Carroll County Genealogical Society has attempted to address the importance of capturing Carroll County oral history; much more remains to be done.

A big thank you to everyone who read the column and gave me positive feedback. The column was from the heart. God Bless.
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Monday, January 30, 2017

Our community lost a number of distinguished community leaders in 2016


Our community lost a number of distinguished community leaders in 2016  http://kevindayhoff.blogspot.com/2017/01/our-community-lost-number-of.html

Dayhoff: Carroll made great by many who have recently passed away

By Kevin Dayhoff January 27, 2017 Our community lost a number of distinguished community leaders in 2016. http://www.carrollcountytimes.com/columnists/features/history/ph-cc-dayhoff-012917-20170127-column.html

Recently, a number of us gathered to trade stories and pay our respects to Woody Swam at the Eckhardt Funeral Chapel in Manchester.

[…]

“An old African proverb says, "When an old man dies, a library burns to the ground." This winter I have attended more funerals than I care to recall. Many of the folks were in their 80s or 90s. Community leaders, who by their sacrifice, hard work, and endeavor, helped make Carroll County what it is we enjoy today. In their passing, they take volumes of history with them…”

[…]

Our community lost a number of distinguished community leaders in 2016. Folks such as T. Bryan McIntire, who passed away on Dec. 16 at age 86. McIntire served as the Carroll County state's attorney from 1962 to 1970.

Dave Schaeffer, 96, died on Dec. 20. After Schaeffer served in the Army during World War II, he started the Schaeffer Lumber Company in 1946 with his dad, and his brother.

“My Westminster High School class of 1971 classmates Bob Hyer and Doug Menchey died in 2016. Menchey worked for many folks in Carroll County with the Menchey Construction Company. Hyer was a 1975 graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy…”

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