Napoleons
Biographies
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Page 4
Frank Mazzone – CXXI
Frank Mazzone is a native of the Atlantic City, NJ area. In 1954 he began his law enforcement career as police officer in Pleasantville, NJ. Five years later he moved to Baltimore where he entered the police department. The following year he joined the Maryland State Police and worked undercover, rising to the rank of Assistant Commander of the State Police Intelligence Division. In 1979, while working undercover, a defendant in a murder case attempted to arrange the murder of Mazzone. After serving “15 years as an undercover agent in the world of drugs, gambling and organized crime” he was named Commander of the Maryland Port Administration Police and was cited as a “troubleshooter” and “Super-Cop.” He was promoted to Lt. Colonel and named chief of the Special Operations Bureau of the Maryland State Police in 1983. He retired as State Police Commander in 1989 and was named as the assistant commissioner for field services for the Maryland Prison System where he served until 1994. He moved to New Jersey in 1994 to become warden of the Atlantic County Justice Facility and after retiring in 1999, worked as a private security consultant. In 2005 he was named Director of the Gloucester County Corrections Department.
(Julie McKuras)
J. David Weisblatt – CXXII
Joseph David Weisblatt was born November 16, 1923, in Baltimore, MD. He enlisted in the U.S. Army Air Corps in 1942 and after his military service he went to work for various companies in the Baltimore area, including as manager of the lighting design department of the Hampshire Corp. By 1970 he formed J. David Weisblatt Associates Consulting Engineers and took on large projects such as the natorium at Coppin State College campus in West Baltimore and the Uplands Apartments in 1972. He was listed in the directory of “Qualified Fallout Shelter Analysts” by the Department of Defense in 1969. He moved to Florida where he died August 24, 2013.
(Julie McKuras)
Louis J. Sirkin – CXXIII
Louis Jay Sirkin was born June 19, 1917, in West Palm Beach, FL. He attended the University of University of Maryland College Park, Class of 1937 and was active in Tau Epsilon Phi and Alpha Beta Phi. He graduated from National University in 1938. At the time he enlisted in the U.S. Army in April 1942, he as an insurance salesman. He was an intelligence officer with the “Intelligence Assault Forces organized to exploit information concerning Rome and Florence” and in 1945 First Lieutenant, later Major, Sirkin received the Bronze Star for his meritorious service in support of combat operations in Italy. After the war he was stationed in Germany and then in San Francisco. Sirkin died on August 14, 1970, and his obituary stated he was Retired, U. S. Army Reserve.
(Julie McKuras)
Henry A. Perkins – CXXIV
Henry Augustus Perkins was born June 17, 1904 in Hartford, CT. He attended Yale University and spent one of his college years, 1921-22, at Cambridge University. While at Yale he was a member of the Crew Squad and Fencing Squad. After his graduation he was employed by the General Electric Company. He moved to Baltimore in 1953 and was later employed by the New York Telephone Col and Martin Marietta Co. Perkins was a member of the Cincinnati Patriotic Society, the Wine and Food Society of Baltimore, and the Yale Alumni Association along with fellow Napoleon L. Wethered Barroll. Perkins died November 3, 1978 in Baltimore and is buried in Hartford CT.
(Julie McKuras)
Arthur R. Watson – CXXV
Arthur Richard Watson was born June 25, 1915, in Cleveland, OH. Always fascinated by animals, he studied zoology and business at the Cleveland College of Western Reserve University. After graduation he worked at two steel companies in Cleveland before joining the staff as the curator of reptiles at the Cleveland Zoological Park in 1942. He moved to Baltimore in March 1948 and took the position of director at the Baltimore Zoo and was known for taking the zoo from a “neglected, minor menagerie tucked away in the rolling landscape of the 650-acre park into a city attraction.” The year after he moved to Baltimore he began a television program called “This is Your Zoo,” acting as host until 1959 which served to draw attention to the zoo. His “personality and salesmanship” enabled him to build the zoo from “169 to 1,500 specimens” by trading or purchase in his first two years as director, solicit donations from companies and individuals, help citizens see the zoo as theirs, and added a “children’s zoo, giraffe house, hippo house, penguin island and mammal House,” increased parking, initiated an exhibit of Maryland animals, a bird sanctuary, an African plains area, educational programs, and a scientific laboratory as well as making sure the animals had a better diet. His three-month safari in Africa to capture animals for the Baltimore Zoo African Expedition was highly publicized. Watson gave lectures about the zoo at the Enoch Pratt Library, on the radio, and at schools. His talent for marketing included highlighting the artistic talents of a chimp named Betsy and a Mexican burro named Jack. In 1968 The Baltimore Zoological Society of the Maryland Academy of Science honored Watson for his twenty years as director of the zoo. The Arthur R. Watson Library is housed at the Zoo.
Retired from the directorship of the Baltimore Zoo in 1980 and became co-owner of the stuffed animal shop The Embraceable Zoo, which closed in 1997. Watson died December 6, 1999.
(Julie McKuras)
Louis Cocchiarella – CXXVI
Louis Frank Cocchiarella was born May 20, 1913, in Newark NJ. He served in the U.S. Army Signal Corps while stationed in Britain and France during World War II and was discharged as a staff sergeant. A graduate of Rutgers University and its law school, he practiced law in Rutherford NJ before joining the Social Security Administration in Passaic NJ in 1957. Two years later he relocated to Baltimore to take the position as a disability counselor for the SSA. While employed there he was the founder of Local 1923 of the American Federal Government Employees Union at the Social Security headquarters. He retired in 1979.
He was a member of Patapsco Council No. 1960, Knights of Columbus, a former commander of the Social Security Post of the Veterans of Foreign War and belonged to the “St. Elizabeth Ann Seton Grand Assembly of the fourth degree of that order and to the Cadiz Caravan of the Order of the Alhambra.” He was also a member of the Order of the Sons of Italy. Cocchiarella died March 6, 1980 in Baltimore.
(Julie McKuras)
Frank D. Alessi – CXXVII
Francis “Frank” Duane Alessi was born October 9, 1932 in Maryland and served in the U.S. Air Force during the Korean War. In 1958 he founded the Alert Detective Agency in Glen Burnie. A 1978 article in the Baltimore Sun referred to him as “one of Baltimore’s most successful private eyes.” His practice investigated domestic affairs, insurance issues, and provided protection and security guards. His firm also provided security for the Inner Harbor Boat Show. Alessi died June 5, 2012 in Baltimore.
(Julie McKuras)
Bill S. Byrd – CXXVIII
Bill Scott Byrd was born January 31, 1925 in Milwaukee, WI. He served in U.S. Army from March 1943 through December 1945. After his graduation from the University of Wisconsin he went to work for the Social Security Administration and moved to Baltimore in 1955 where he was “employed by the Social Security Administration’s Division of Disability.” During his 30 years with the Administration, he frequently appeared at conferences and in newspapers to answer questions about Medicare. Byrd retired in 1980 as “director of the professional relations staff for Medicare.” He died in Baltimore on October 24, 1980.
(Julie McKuras)
Joseph Daniloski – CXXIX
Charles B. Humphrey – CXXX
Peter E. Blau – CXXXI
Peter E. Blau, BSI (“Black Peter”) received his honorable discharge from the U.S. Navy in 1957, his Investiture from the BSI in 1959, and his M.S. degree in petroleum geology from Oklahoma University in 1961, and now is a consulting geologist and free-lance journalist, and the secretary of the BSI. He first contributed to The Baker Street Journal in 1968, revived the Red Circle of Washington in 1970, won the Morley-Montgomery Award for the best article in the BSJ in 1974, and for fifty years has edited and published a Sherlockian and Doylean newsletter (Scuttlebutt from the Spermaceti Press). For more information about Blau, we recommend Peter E. Blau – A Festschrift, from the BSI Press.
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March E. Hanf – CXXXII
Hanf was born on April 28, 1931, and passed away on March 14, 2021.
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Stephen R. Krause – CXXXIII
Stephen R. Krause was born in Baltimore on March 15, 1937, and attended the University of Maryland, College Park where he studied business administration. He went to work in his father’s clothing factory in 1957 and eight years later, drawing on his interest in electronics, he invented a “machine [that] is a combination of electronic and electro-mechanical control and read-out” that allowed for daily inventories, patenting the machine in 1969. He formed K & M Electronics with a friend and manufactured the machine would and could “count anything that can be tagged or otherwise visibly marked.” During the late 1950s he invented “the Comp-U-Bar, a computerized bartender that could mix an alcoholic beverage – one of 1,000 programmed into the machine – in four seconds.” With his mechanical bartender he appeared on the television show “What’s My Line.” He sold the shares in K & M and formed Custom Applications Software which installed and maintained the first lottery vending machine equipment. Krause was named director of information systems marketing for Emery Advertising In 1990.
Krause’s interests were railroads, history, his neighborhood association, gardening, and science fiction. In his later years he served as president of the Civitan Club of Baltimore. He died March 15, 2013, in Baltimore.
(Julie McKuras)
William N. Earle – CXXXIV
William Nelson Earle was born April 3, 1924, in Baltimore, MD. His 1942 World War II draft card indicates he was working at Bethlehem Steel at Sparrows Point. Later directories show he remained with the company as an accountant. Earle died December 6, 1996, in Dundalk, Maryland 1959.
(Julie McKuras)
Marvin H. Chambers – CXXXV
Herbert Silverman – CXXXVI
Richard Haefner – CXXXVII
Richard Edward Haefner was born August 14, 1929 in Newark. He “graduated from Rutgers University in 1952 and later attended law school there.” He went to work in the Safeway Supermarket advertising department and another advertising agency before opening Richard Haefner Advertising in 1982. One of his noted accounts was McGarvey’s Saloon and Oyster Bar in Annapolis. He was also a wine consultant for several restaurants in the Annapolis area and taught “wine appreciation at Anne Arundel Community College.” Haefner utilized his wine knowledge with the Annapolis Wine and Food Celebration. He founded the Annapolis Food & Wine Society and was a founder of the Annapolis chapter of Les Amis Du Vin as well as reviewing restaurants and writing newspaper columns about wine. He also enjoyed gourmet cooking. His other memberships included the Annapolis Rotary Club and the Red Beans & Rice Society. He was the author of How to Judge Your Personality By the Dog You Own in 1979. After being diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease he became involved with a Johns Hopkins Medical Institution research project. He retired from his ad agency in 2002 and died May 16, 2006 in Baltimore.
(Julie McKuras)
John Burrowes Sevier – CXXXVIII
John Burrowes Sevier was born November 23, 1925, in Greensboro, NC. He received in B.A. in American History in 1948 from North Carolina University where he was active in the Carolina Political Union, the Aquinas Club, and a contributor to the school newspaper The Daily Tar Heel. Sevier died July 9, 2004, in Maryland.
(Julie McKuras)
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Stephen F. Rosenberg – CXXXIX
Rosenberg became a Sherlock Holmes fan in the late 1960s – watching the Rathbone/Bruce movies in college and reading the "based on a story by ACD" on the title page. He immediately bought the Doubleday edition, read it through and was hooked. After graduation, he read an article in the Sun about Phil Sherman and the Six Napoleons, called Phil and joined. Stephen has been a collector of books, movies and knick-knacks ever since, lending Phil his VHS collection of movies to occupy him after his heart attack. Stephen even had a Holmes lapel pin made back in the 70s and was selling by mail before there was an eBay. He doesn't get to meetings much anymore, but is still a devoted fan, and has been buying children's Sherlock Holmes books for his 10-year-old granddaughter for several years now and they plan on watching Enola Holmes together on Netflix.
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Michael Bershad – CXL
Richard L. Paye – CXLI
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Lin Loeffler – CXLII
Rev. Aubrey Linfield Loeffler was born February 3, 1926, in Mason TX. He enlisted in the U.S. Navy in 1944; his freshman photo for the University of Texas Austin shows him wearing a U.S. Navy uniform. After his discharge he attended Southern Methodist University where he was a member of Lambda Chi Alpha and received a degree in Theology in 1953. He accepted a post in Buffalo OK, and after attending the Perkins School of Theology in Dallas, moved to the First Methodist Church in Abilene TX. His next church was the Trinity Methodist in Corpus Christi before he relocated to Baltimore. As The Evening Sun of May 21, 1973, reported, a committee of three was “appointed to interrogate the Rev. Lin Loeffler, a new candidate for membership” and after an evaluation, “Mr. [Joe] Sills approved Mr. Loeffler’s membership and the clergyman was invested with the ‘blue carbuncle’.” His next post was the Central United Methodist Church in Cumberland before moving back to his home state of Texas and the Telferner Methodist Church in Victoria TX. Loeffler died December 15, 2000, in San Antonio.
(Julie McKuras)
Lester Moskowitz – CXLIII
Les Moskowitz started life in Brooklyn, New York in 1936. He attended Stuyvesant High School and then Brooklyn College graduating in 1957, majoring in mathematics. From there, he became an actuary, becoming a Fellow of the Society of Actuaries in 1962. In 1968, he moved to Baltimore, where he remained for 30 years until relocating in Boynton Beach, Florida in 1998.
His Sherlockian life began in high school but didn't become serious until his move to Baltimore, when he joined the Six Napoleons as his primary Sherlockian scion society, and others (Red Circle, Oxbridge Scholars, Naval Treaty, Watson's Tin Box, and Carlton Club). In 1994 he joined the Hounds of the Internet mailing list, ultimately becoming list owner in 1996, during its heyday with a membership of over 500 during the late '90s. His Sherlockian activities slowed down with his move to Florida, but he still managed to make occasional meetings in the Baltimore area, attending the 50th, 60th and 70th anniversaries of The Six Napoleons.
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James Reuter – CXLIV
Thomas J. Lippincott – CXLV
Peter Parker – CXLVI
Peter Parker was born March 31, 1931, in Baltimore, MD. He graduated from Friends School then attended “Yale University where he played varsity goalie on both the soccer & lacrosse teams. Between college and Harvard Law School, he served in the U.S. Navy as a Lt. Commander in the Korean War” as a chief gunnery officer. He remained in the U.S. Naval Reserves for some years. After graduating from Harvard, in 1959, he returned to Baltimore and joined an established law firm before forming his own firm in 1967. “Among his many clients were a number of the old Baltimore Colts including John Unitas.” Governor Spiro T. Agnew appointed him as Supervisor of Elections in Baltimore in 1967 and as “Peoples’ Counsel for the State of Maryland” in 1968. He unsuccessfully ran for Congress in 1970. Parker died on January 16, 2016, in Baltimore.
(Julie McKuras)
Wayne B. Swift – CXLVII
Wayne Bradley Swift was born May 9, 1927, in Crete, Nebraska. A National Honor Society member in high school, Swift graduated from the University of Nebraska where he was the business manager for the school yearbook and active in Sigma Tau. He received a doctorate in electrical engineering from the University of Wisconsin in 1955 and became an assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. In 1958 he was awarded the Kiekhofer Memorial Teaching Award, giving for excellence in teaching. The following year he was part of “Wisconsin’s satellite scientists, men chiefly responsible for design and assembly of meteorological instruments included in the Army Ballistic Missile Agency’s ‘June Satellite.’” Swift remained at the University for ten years and in 1965 moved to Washington DC. As Peter Blau wrote in Vol. 1, 2009 issue of the Friends of the Sherlock Holmes Collection, Wayne was “an early convert to the world of computers” and over his career worked in several computer related businesses including as manager for the New York operation of Computer Sciences Corp. and beginning in 1996, Advanced Communications Systems.
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While living in Washington Wayne took an adult-education class about Sherlock Holmes. He joined The Red Circle and attended “his first Sherlockian function, a running of The Silver Blaze…at Pimlico Racetrack.” He wrote scripts for “Upstairs, Downstairs, All Around the Holmes” for the Red Circle Players and performed at numerous functions. In addition to the friendships and his scholarship, on October 15, 1977, he married Francine Morris, a fellow member of the group. In 1978 he was awarded the investiture of “The Giant Rat of Sumatra” from the Baker Street Irregulars; he attended the Red Circle’s 1980 costume party as the giant rat. Along with Francine, they attended numerous conferences and contributed articles to The Baker Street Journal recounting their travels to London with the Sherlock Holmes Society of London. Their essay “Winchester Races” was included in the London Society’s 1991 book The Tri-Metallic Question. Wayne’s scholarly interest in Silver Blaze races was noted as early as 1991 and it culminated in The Baker Street Journal Christmas Annual for 2000 which gave the history of those races.
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Wayne Swift died on January 15, 2001, in the Washington DC area. In the “Stand with me here upon the terrace” his friend Peter Blau wrote “Wayne was quietly kind, and considerate, and generous and gracious” and a man with many interests including “music, literature [especially P.D. James and P.G. Wodehouse] and railroad trains” and their corgi dogs. He was a member of The Master’s Class of Philadelphia, St. Alban’s Episcopal Church in Washington and volunteered with the National Symphony Orchestra and Washington’s Choral Arts Society. After his wife Francine’s death in 2007, their collection of Sherlockiana, including a large stuffed pillow in the form of a giant rat, were bequeathed to the Sherlock Holmes Collections at the University of Minnesota.
(Julie McKuras)
Joseph F. Carney – CXLVIII
Joseph Francis Carney was born February 18, 1932, in Washington DC. He attended Holy Ghost Missionary College until 1952, the graduated from Georgetown University in 1956. He taught English, Latin, and Literature at Bullis Prep in Silver Spring MD and later at DeMatha Catholic High School in Hyattsville. In 1960 he left teaching and went to Baltimore Life Insurance Company where he remained until his retirement. “He loved fishing, especially surf fishing and his trips to the Outer Banks of North Carolina where he didn’t necessarily catch much fish, but gained a lot of weight eating and drinking at the local pubs.” Carney died August 30, 2012, in Front Royal, VA.
(Julie McKuras)
William Barker – CXLIX
Bruce Barker – CL
William J. Smith, Jr. – CLI
George J. White – CLII
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Arthur S. Cheslock – CLIII
Arthur S. Cheslock received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Johns Hopkins University, and his LL.B. from the University of Baltimore. As early as 1970 he was the Assistant State’s Attorney for Baltimore. He is a member of the Baltimore Bibliophiles and has served as the treasurer and later president and has been an officer for The Fellowship of American Bibliophilic Societies.
(Julie McKuras)
Marvin J. Garbis – CLIV
Marvin J. Garbis was born in 1936 in Baltimore and obtained a B.E.S. from Johns Hopkins University in 1958 and attended Harvard Law School before earning an LL.M. degree from Georgetown Law School. Garbis was admitted to the D.C. Bar in 1961 and the Maryland Bar in 1962. Beginning his legal career as a public defender in Washington, D.C., Garbis joined the Tax Division of the U. S. Department of Justice as a trial attorney. Entering private practice in 1967, Garbis was appointed by President Bush United States District Court for the District of Maryland in 1989. Authoring seven books and an adjunct faculty member at the University of Baltimore, University of Maryland and the Georgetown Law Schools, Garbis retired from the bench in 2018.
(Greg Ruby)
Stephen M. Epple – CLV
Blaine Taylor – CLVI
Blaine Bruce Taylor was born December 8, 1946 in Washington D.C. Taylor served in the U.S. Army as a military police officer in Vietnam in 1966-67, earning “12 medals, decorations and badges, including the Combat Infantry Badge.” He received a B.A. in History with a Minor in political Science from Towson University in 1972. After his graduation he worked as a “public relation director and consultant; coordinator of media relations, Dundalk Community; senior editor, Peterson, Howell and Heather, Inc.; managing editor, Maryland State Medical Journal; associate editor, Maryland’s Health; assistant editor, Baltimore magazine, Maryland Singles magazine; freelance writer, [and] campaign manager.” He was also a copy editor and special reporter for Afro-American newspapers and contributed articles to the Baltimore Sun which often focused on political subjects such as Richard Nixon’s impeachment and resignation as well as local politics. He served on the “Baltimore County Commission on Aging and Animal Welfare Hearing Board.” Taylor was an unsuccessful Democratic candidate for Congress numerous times; his obituary described him as a “perennial political candidate.”
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Taylor wrote 23 books, mostly about historical subjects with many of them about World War II. Among his books, which often featured Nazi figures such as Hermann Goering, was Guarding the Fuhrer: Sepp Dietrich, Johann Rattenhuber and the Protection of Adolf Hitler in 1994 and he also wrote reviews about books written about the war. He wrote numerous articles about the war such as “Hitler, a Mercedes fan who died in gasoline” in the Evening Sun of November 28, 1980 and “50 Years Ago, a Marauder Took to the Skies.” He was described as publishing “a number [of] articles on the history of Nazi Germany and its aftermath.” He was a member of the Napoleonic Society of America and acted as managing editor and director of research for Age of Napoleon magazine and contributed book reviews on that subject. Taylor died April 5, 2021, in Baltimore.
(Julie McKuras)
Arthur C. Holmes, Sr – CLVII
Arthur C. Holmes Sr., a native of Wealdstone, England, came to Baltimore as a child. He graduated from the University of Maryland Law School in 1926 and from the Johns Hopkins University in 1931. He retired from USF&G in 1968 as a vice president and director of education and management development. He had started working for the insurer in 1927 as a clerk in the legal department.
Before joining USF&G, Holmes had worked as an underwriter for the Maryland Casualty Co. and Riggs, Rossman and Hunter. He was the author of a series of pamphlets that explained legal subjects, such as negligence, to workers in the insurance industry. Holmes was a member of the Maryland and Anne Arundel County Beekeepers associations and judged honey at Anne Arundel County fairs. As financial adviser, he helped keep the Eastern Apicultural Society of beekeepers from bankruptcy in the 1970s. Holmes often teased about his name since he was the only Holmes on our membership rolls, he passed away on his 90th birthday of heart failure, on November 27, 1993.
(Greg Ruby)
Wilbert B. Doran – CLVIII
Wilbert Charles Doran was born April 30, 1933, in Maryland. A 1951 graduate of Calvert Hall College, Doran passed away on November 5, 2012, in Baltimore.
(Julie McKuras)
Andrew L. Solberg – CLIX
Andrew Lee Solberg moved from Boston to Baltimore in 1975 to attend graduate school. He is a member of the Baker Street Irregulars (BSI), the Adventuresses of Sherlock Holmes (ASH), and several other Sherlockian groups. He attended his first Six Napoleons dinner in 1976 and was invested in 1977. He has published over forty articles in The Baker Street Journal (BSJ) and other Sherlockian magazines and books and has co-edited five books for BSI Press with Napoleon Dr. Robert Katz. He is the recipient of the BSI’s Morley-Montgomery Award for the best article in the BSJ of 2003, which he co-authored with Napoleon Dr. Donald Pollock. He served as Chair of the BSI’s archive (The BSI Trust) (2013-2018) and was on the Board of the Beacon Society (2003-2010). Mr. Solberg states that his studying philosophy at Brandeis University as an undergraduate prepared him for a career in writing articles about Sherlock Holmes and philosophy. He also has a graduate degree from the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, to which he later returned to teach the course on community health care planning (1981-1989). He was the director of a Maryland state health care planning regulatory program (1980-1985) and has operated his own consulting practice on strategic planning for hospitals and other health care providers (1985-present).
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Claude T. Brooks – CLX
Claude T. Brooks was described in a 1978 Evening Sun article described him as an “illustrator” who had given up cigarette smoking but liked smoking a pipe because “he can look like Sherlock Holmes, whom he admires.” He moved on to a post with the Maryland Film Commission and in 1987-88 was listed as the acting director of the Maryland Picture and Television Development Office. He also worked at the Maryland Office of Tourism Development.
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Wilmer L. Jones – CLXI
Wilmer Lee Jones, Jr. was born January 3, 1931 in Maryland. A 1953 graduate of Maryland State Teachers College at Towson, he later earned a Ph.D. In 1972 he was a mathematics supervisor for Baltimore Public Schools. “Jones, a math teacher by profession” was described as a “historian and member of Baltimore’s Civil War Roundtable” who authored twenty-five academic and scholarly books about the Civil War and other publications about math. Jones died April 2, 2013 in Towson, MD.
(Julie McKuras)
Robert J. Sepich – CLXII
Daniel F. Thomas – CLXIII
Daniel F. Thomas, Napoleon CLXIII, was the author of the three-volume set, The Whole Art of Sherlockian Study: A Practical Handbook of Sherlockian Data with a Few Observations on the Segregation of the Facts.
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Dan’s introduction to Sherlock Holmes probably occurred in late grammar school (7th or 8th grade) or early high school in English class with the reading of The Adventure of the Speckled Band (and forgotten about promptly thereafter). Much later, Phil Sherman (Napoleon XLI) shepherded Dan and his wife to a Carlton Club affair in the mid-1970s and this sparked an interest in Sherlock. After that event, he recalls reading a review of Baring-Gould's Annotated Sherlock Holmes in some magazine (probably Playboy), and in conjunction with a gift suggestion made to his faithful bride, a copy appeared and was read cover to cover. He was hooked from that point.
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Thomas served as Gasogene XX of our scion and received his investiture of “Robert Ferguson” in 1984 from the Baker Street Irregulars. He is a fixture at the annual Sherlockian Saturdays at the Pratt programs each November.
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Dan considers himself fortunate to have met and interacted with the giants of the Napoleons in their later years. Additionally, in those days, the dinners were at venues which were themselves a treat to attend – the Hopkins Club, the Towson University Club, Haussner’s.
(Greg Ruby)
Henry A. Lingenfelder – CLXIV
Henry “Hank” Albert Lingenfelder was born August 23, 1933 in Baltimore. He attended City College, Randolph-Macon Academy and the University of Baltimore. He was employed by the Baltimore Department of Parks and Recreation and became the “district manager of recreation centers in the eastern half of the city.” In 1989 he was appointed director and curator of the Historic Ships in the city, and “oversaw the Constellation, lightship Chesapeake, submarine Torsk and the Seven Foot Knoll Lighthouse.” In 1993 the city honored him for his service.
Lingenfelder, like his father, collected antique weapons and his best-known piece was the “.44-caliber Smith & Wesson revolver used by Robert Ford to kill robber Jesse James in 1882.” The gun was stolen in 1968 from the Jesse James Museum in Sullivan MO and Lingenfelder pursued it when he saw it was up for auction in England in 1993. After his retirement he studied amateur archaeology and studied Mayan culture and maritime trade routes. He died January 19, 2016, in Baltimore.
(Julie McKuras)
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M. Kenneth McQuage – CLXV
McQuage was born January 17, 1943, in Baltimore and spent most of the summers of his younger years in Atlanta. McQuage was an enthusiastic boater his entire life, cruising the Erie Canal as well as cruising in England and northern Europe. An active member of the Sherlock Holmes Society of London and Cercle Holmesien de Paris. Proud of his Scottish heritage, he was a life member of the St. Andrews Society in Baltimore. Ken passed away, after a prolonged illness, on September 4, 2025 in Baltimore.
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Richard H. Wade – CLXVI
Richard H. Wade was born in Washington, DC and grew up in the adjoining counties, graduating from Laurel High School before attending the University of Maryland. Starting as a clerk for the First United States Army Public Information Office at Fort Meade, he would become a reporter for the Annapolis Evening Capital before a 12-year career working for two local county governments. He then transitioned into communication roles with the Maryland Hospital Association and then the American Hospital Association. When not working, he would write poetry and fiction, as well as being active for over 30 years with the Colonial Players of Annapolis (and other theater groups) either acting, writing or directing in productions.
(Greg Ruby)
Graydon Lee Schreiber – CLXVII
Graydon Lee Schreiber was born September 4, 1931, in Baltimore, MD. He attended Polytechnic High School where he was a chess champion then went on to the University of Maryland and the University of Maryland Dental School, graduating in 1955. After graduation he entered the U.S. Army. Schreiber died on November 26, 1985, in Baltimore.
(Julie McKuras)
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John W. Gladding, Jr. – CLXVIII
John Windfelder Gladding, Jr. was born November 8, 1931. He was the Chief of the Office of Real Estate, District 5 and later the Chief of Right of Way for the District 5 Office near Annapolis.
(Julie McKuras)
Dr. Robert S. Katz – CLXIX
Robert Katz grew up in Queens, New York and received his undergraduate education at Haverford College, graduating in 1972. He returned to New York City to attend the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, from which he graduated in 1975. After his internship he returned to Philadelphia for his residency in Pathology at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania. While there, he joined the Master's Class and eventually became a Master Copper Beechsmith in the Sons of the Copper Beeches. In 1980, he moved to Baltimore, to join the faculty at Johns Hopkins University.
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While in Baltimore, he joined the Six Napoleons, eventually serving as Commissionaire and Gasogene. He revisited Philadelphia to co-found the Clients of Sherlock Holmes. In 1983, Katz received the BSI investiture of "Dr. Ainstree." In 1987, Bob (and, by this time, his family) relocated to Morristown, New Jersey, where he was in private practice at Morristown Memorial Hospital until retiring. He has spoken at many Sherlockian events and scions.
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In Morristown, Katz founded the Epilogues of Sherlock Holmes, which remained active for over 30 years. In 1995, he received the Two-Shilling Award from the Irregulars and served as the publisher for the BSI Press for several years and currently serves as Cartwright for the BSI.
(Greg Ruby)
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John W. Ely, Jr. – CLXX
John W. Ely, Jr. contributed “There Was Not a Finer Lad in the Regiment” to the June 1982 Baker Street Journal. The WhoDunit indicated he was “employed by Black & Decker, Inc. as confidant and advisor to its computer.”