Dock of the Bay
Volume VI Number 20
May 21-27, 1998
After Reichardt Tragedy, A Brother Reevaluates
photo by Steve Armstrong
A little over three years ago, a young athlete named Kevin Reichardt was brutally murdered in Chapel Hill, N.C. He was a lacrosse player from Riva.
But life goes on.
As you see in the story of Kevin's older brother, Kurt.
"I came to the conclusion, after my brother's death, that I want to live my life the fullest way possible," says Kurt Reichardt. So a year ago, Reichardt quit his job as an architect to pursue his dreams.
"It was stifling," he explains. "I wasn't allowed to be
creative like I want to be, and I didn't want to be
stuck working inside, chained to a computer."
He bought a kennel. "It was my wife's suggestion," he allows, but he's always loved animals. And now, in a woodsy space off Central Avenue, Reichardt is the owner-operator of Dogwood Acres Pet Retreat, a full-service kennel that offers everything from day care to grooming to exercise - even massage.
"Believe it or not," he says, "dogs love massage. It's an alternative to medication for arthritis, and it's also something for owners to spoil their dogs with."
Reichardt understands what dogs like very well: as the son of Edgewater veterinarian Karl Reichardt, he's spent his life near animals, working with them, helping them, trying to keep them comfortable and happy.
"I know how to read a dog by its mannerisms. I can tell what a dog wants 90 percent of the time just by the way it's acting. And that's something you learn from being around dogs your whole life."
With consultation from his father, Reichardt opened Dogwood Acres in what for the last 18 years had been Arundel Kennels. While these first months have been busy, very busy, Reichardt is enjoying himself.
"It's really rewarding work. It has the same feeling that comes with owning dogs. You're near them and they're animals that have a lot of unconditional love, and taking care of them - I love it."
When the dust and the excitement and the pressure of opening eventually settles, though, Reichardt hopes to resume one of his other passions: sculpture. He hopes to build a studio, above the dogs, where he can weld and shape his ideas into steel statues.
"I never knew I had an interest in art until they encouraged us to take classes for the architecture program at Clemson [Reichardt's alma mater]. It opened up a side of me I never knew I had. I'm very happy that I have this now."
So life goes on, all right.
But not without memories and monuments. Help build a monument June 13, when the Kevin E. Reichardt Foundation hosts "All Lacrosse the Ages," a day-long event aimed at winning a Guinness record for "Most Players in a Lacrosse Game." Proceeds will support the Kevin Reichardt Scholar-Athlete fund, a program that helps students attend college. Co-sponsored by St. Mary's of Annapolis - Reichardt's high school - the tournament will feature clinics, records keeping and food. Players from across the country plan to participate. Join us at Anne Arundel Community College, invites Shelley Collinsworth, executive director of the Foundation: 410/741-0381.
-Steve Armstrong
Bay Spurned Movie Makes Way to Maine
Early this spring, Tangier Islanders in the Chesapeake Bay sent a message to Hollywood by rejecting a Warner Bros. request to film a movie there. Concerned that Message in a Bottle would send the wrong signals - the script of the romance included drinking and cursing among other things - the church-going islanders sent the film company packing.
At Martha's Vineyard in Massachusetts, Warner Bros. got the same response.
Even Paul Newman and Kevin Costner couldn't turn these islanders' heads.
Continuing up the coast to Maine, Warner Bros. finally got a thumbs up from the tiny coastal town of New Harbor. NBT came upon the film crew there.
The small lobstering community, a town we often visit, just wasn't itself. On the stern of working boats in the harbor, the ME (for Maine) had been replaced with N.C. for North Carolina, where Message in a Bottle is supposed to take place. The ball field where a handful of visitors usually park while taking a boat trip to rustic Monhegan Island was filled with huge, fancy RVs - temporary dressing rooms for the stars. Tents overflowed with tables of steak and Brie set out for film crew and actors.
Shaw's Wharf - a self-service "lobster in the rough" and cuppa chowda place of the sort that Mainers prefer, where you can smell the fried clams before you ever hit the dock - had been renamed "Chet's Grill" and had become a set. Worse, baskets of plastic blue crabs lined the dock (this in the mecca of lobsters), and everyone, like, sounded as if they were from L.A.
Like the folks on Tangier, we didn't see Paul Newman. But a friend knew a woman who had. At a carry-out to buy ice cream cones for herself and her husband, this local lady found herself looking directly into Paul Newman's startlingly blue eyes. At the car, she returned a handful of change to her husband, who wondered where the ice cream cones were.
Back she went to the ice-cream stand saying she must have forgotten the cones. No, said the server, who advised her to look in her purse.
Tangier Island, one of the oldest communities in Chesapeake Country, has preserved its peace and pride. Warner Bros. would have piled plastic crabs on the docks and changed Virginia to North Carolina as well as filming a movie with cussing and drinking and sex.
What's more, a Tangier Islander would have gotten a purseful of ice cream, and you know what a mess that is.
-MLF
In Southern Anne Arundel, Artists Beckoned
The Shady Side Rural Heritage Society and the Galesville Heritage Society invite artists to submit pen and ink drawings for the 1999 Southern Anne Arundel County calendar.
"The calendar showcases South County, preserving the history of the area by focusing on older houses and structures," says Mavis Daly of the Shady Side Rural Heritage Society. Funds raised support both The Captain Salem Avery House Museum in Shady Side and special projects such as the Fourth of July fireworks display in Galesville.
The 12 sites selected for the 1999 calendar are: Granny Annie's Shop and Richard's Corner Grill in Shady Side; Little Red House, Abell Home in West River; Deale Public Library and St. Mark's Chapel in Deale; Galesville Jail (Harvey's), the Carrie Weedon House and the Galesville United Methodist Church in Galesville; Dick and Jane's Farm and Produce Stand and Larkin's Hill in Harwood; Tenant House on Rt. 2, Lothian; and Smith's Purchase in Owensville.
With the 1999 calendar, the number of places of interest documented in the popular calendar reaches 60. But will they run out?
"That's not a problem," Shady Side's Daly assures us. "We have a lot of history in South County."
Deadline for submitting original pen and ink artwork (measuring 22" x 17") is July 1; winning drawings will be presented at public reception in October. Get more information and directions to sites from Mrs. Newell Cannon: 410/867-4763 .
-MLF
At SPCA Dog Walk, Wagging Tongues and Tails of a Turnout
photo by M.L. Faunce
At Anne Arundel County SPCA's Seventh Annual Walk for Animals on May 17, there were hot dogs and tall drinks of water. The canine kind, of course.
Low, squat dachshunds; stately, sleek greyhounds; dogs of countless breeds; a few felines and an assortment of other pets furry and feathery - all spent the morning walking for their favorite charity at Quiet Waters Park.
Seven hundred creatures of the two-legged variety walked their pets on one-, two-and-a-half- or five-mile courses, with dollars pledged for each mile, to help care for other pets less fortunate than theirs.
Mostly the SPCA event was a walk in the woods, supported by over 90 volunteers
at re
gistration tables, check points and
watering stops. First-time volunteer Jennifer Austin of Crofton, hose in
hand, told a contingent of NBT walkers why she was there.
"I'd have a farm if I could, but I only have a cat. I just wanted to be around these animals and to help."
Dogs from four to 150 pounds had come her way, Austin said.
Austin's last customer for a nice cool shower hit the upper end of the weight scale. Winston Churchill, a great dane, enjoyed the special treatment. Winston was a champion for another reason, too. His pledges, raised by a group of seventh graders at Old Mill Middle North School in Millersville, totaled $675.
Owner Cynthia Hrdie of Severna Park was proud of Winston and her students, even though the day was bittersweet. She wore a black ribbon in memory of Abbey, first name Westminster, her two-year-old great dane hit and killed by a car two weeks earlier.
But Hardie, like all the day's walkers, couldn't help being cheered as dogs of every size and shape pranced along cool, wooded park paths. Kids sang like birds. Mountain laurel and blackberries blossomed, adding to the sweet smell of success on a day made for animals.
Back at the animal shelter the next day, event coordinator Sue Beatty counted the day's pledges. At $60,000 and rising, this year's total exceeds the SPCA's goal by over $10,000.
-MLF
Sound of Roaring Boats, Ringing Cash Registers
It turns out that whoever said a boat is a hole in the water to dump hundred-dollar bills down was right.
A new poll sponsored by BOAT/U.S. found that nearly half of all boat owners spend $50 to $100 a day on the water. People responding online said they spend this money on fuel, food, beverages, boat supplies and transient docking fees.
Which category do you fall in?
-NBT
On Memorial Day, Remembering 'Hell on Earth'
We remember our service men and women this Memorial Day in a nation free from war. Yet our military is the world's most active, for we are the world's police.
Have been for nearly half a century, 78-year-old Boris Spiroff of Severna
Park remin
ds
us, talking over his memoir of the Korean Conflict, Korea: Frozen Hell on
Earth.
"We're beginning to bite off more than we can chew," the retired master sergeant told New Bay Times, as he prepared to introduce his new, and probably his only, book to Chesapeake Country audiences on Memorial Day. "We're not nearly as strong as we were right after World War II," he added.
Spiroff, a professional soldier, ought to know. He served in World War II in the OSS, the forerunner of the CIA, supporting the Yugoslav partisans. He later joined the invasion of Germany, going behind enemy lines and earning a Bronze Star.
But the Korean Conflict, "the forgotten war," is the war Spiroff can't get out of his mind. He earned a second Bronze Star with oak leaf clusters for heroism against the enemy in action on the front lines. But the loss of friends and young recruits as war continued, the cold, irresolution and the lack of preparedness dispelled war's glory.
Killed in Korea were 54,500 American servicemen; 103,000 were wounded and another 8,000 missing.
Nearly half a century later, those memories drove Spiroff to write a book. "I want," he said, "to let people know what the hell war is all about."
He found his raw material in the wartime letters he had mailed to his wife, Catherine. From those and the diary he kept in a small prayer book, he compiled Korea: Frozen Hell on Earth.
"Nobody learns this stuff in school, so it's up to books like this one," the old soldier said. Again, Boris Spiroff has a mission.
Meet the man and hear his story Thursday, May 28, when he joins three other local authors in open discussion on their military experiences. 7-8pm at Barnes & Noble Books, Annapolis Harbour Center: 410/573-1115.
-Mark Burns
In New York, Al Lewis, who played Grandpa on the '60s' sitcom The Munsters, may need Frankenstein and a few vampires in his corner for a new role: He's likely to be the Green Party candidate for governor of New York this year ...
Oregon's Enchanted Valley is where environmental advocates and hunters are fighting. The environmental advocates are pressing for restoring the valley to its natural state as a means to revive salmon. But critics worry about restrictions on elk-hunting that might come about ...
In Trinidad and Tobago, newly crowned Miss Universe Wendy Fitzwilliam displayed more upstairs than some of her colleagues when asked a question recently. What would you tell a woman who had slept for 20 years what she had missed? she was asked. Replied Ms. Universe: That she missed days when the air was cleaner and the planet healthier ...
From the U.K., the Washington Post and other American newspapers are reporting what you read in New Bay Times first: that a company called Fibrowatt has developed a method of converting poultry waste into electricity. Three of the plants would convert 500 million tons annually - half of what is produced in Delmarva farms and ends up polluting the Chesapeake Bay ...
In Japan, government officials aren't too pleased about new methods of DNA testing. Using these tests, researchers from U.S. universities found that about 15 percent of whale meat on Japan's open market comes from whales that are illegal to catch, according to the International Fund for Animal Welfare ...
Our Creature Feature this week comes to us from deep in the forest, where our old friend Smokey the Bear doesn't visit too much anymore. In fact, a plan that recently blew up in Washington had old Smokey spending a fair amount of time selling cars and trucks.
The proposal called for Smokey to appear in 10 auto shows to promote Subaru's new Forester sport utility vehicle. In return, the National Forest Foundation was to receive $25,000 and 35 Foresters for two years.
This deal was even too much for House Resources Committee Chair Don Young (R) of Alaska, who's never too sentimental about the outdoors. Remarked Young, "It took Smokey away from protecting our forests and had him kicking tires."
| Back to Archives |
Volume VI Number 20
May 21-27, 1998
New Bay Times
| Homepage |