 |
| Newsboys' remembrance gathering includes bench-sitters Fred Rasmussen (left) and Ernie Imhoff. (Photo by Jim Burger) |
Newsboys killed in 1924
honored at gravesite
on disaster anniversary
Toasts, tears are offered for them
... and for those killed at the Annapolis Capital
Time has a way of defeating memory, but a small group of
diehard newspaper folks have kept alive an annual remembrance for five teenage
boys lost in a tragedy nearly a century ago when the Chesapeake Bay steamboat Three
Rivers caught fire off Cove Point in southern Maryland.
The victims were among the 59 members of The Evening Sun
Newsboys Band,returning from a performance on the bay steamer on the Fourth of
July in 1924. Five adults also perished in the disaster.
The boys rest under a semicircle of gravestones flanked by
stone benches, all facing a seven-foot-high granite memorial and copper
sculpture in Baltimore's huge Loudon Park Cemetery -- also the gravesite, in
another section, of the famed Evening
Sun writer H.L. Mencken.
For many years, the evening newspaper held a memorial
service there for the boys, and the tradition was revived about 1994 by a group
of staffers including its last managing editor, Ernest F. Imhoff. The Evening
Sun itself formally died -- some say it was murdered -- in 1995, four years
after its staff, operation and content were merged with the surviving morning
Sun, leading to a rapid decline in circulation.
Ernie worked for decades at the evening paper, and was its
city editor on a snowy winter night in 1969 when I, as a cub reporter for the
then-competing morning paper, was
covering a massive church fire across the street from his home in Baltimore's
Bolton Hill neighborhood. He invited me in from the cold, and offered a
drink... brandy, as I recall.
I like to think of myself as an Evening Sun alum, despite
having worked 40 years for the morning paper. I was acting night metro editor
when, at the stroke of midnight one night in 1991, their staffs were
officially wed. And I managed to get a few bylines on its front page during the
final years of publication.
Now in his early 80s, his gait slowed enough to need a cane,
Ernie is still presiding over the ceremony at Loudon Park, and was among 16
people who turned out at 9 a.m. today at the newsboys' burial site. It was also
a family reunion, of sorts, because newspaper veterans have that kind of a bond
-- dedication to their profession, and to each other.
 |
| Dave Cohn calls out names of the newsboys, one headstone at a time. (Jim Burger photo) |
It included the names of the dead, recited as Dave walked from
headstone to headstone: Walter Clark Millikin and Thomas Ashby Pilker Jr., both
age 13; Lester Alfred Seligman and Vernon Edward Jefferson, both 15; and the
oldest of them, Nelson Appleton Miles, 17.
They were among the army of kids in that far-gone era who
delivered the news.
 |
| Rasmussen and Joan Jacobson offer comfort as Ernie Imhoff speaks of the Annapolis Capital victims. (Jim Burger photo) |
Ernie, tears welling up in his eyes, said their names should
never be forgotten -- nor should those of the five others who were killed last
week when a crazy man with a grudge opened fire with a shotgun at the Annapolis
Capital, which is owned by the Baltimore Sun.
They were Rob Hiaasen, 59, assistant managing editor and
former Sun reporter; Wendi Winters, 65, community reporter and special
publications editor; Gerald Fischman, 61, editorial page editor; John McNamara,
56, staff writer and longtime sports reporter; and Rebecca Smith, 34, a sales
assistant hired just eight months ago.
They, too, delivered the news.
Perhaps someday there will be a memorial place for all of
them as well, in addition to the one in our hearts.
Posts
