Note: This item went for $750 at auction on June 17, 2021.
Among the items that will be on the auction block later this month is an honorary fire chief’s helmet given to the late Carol Channing in 1978 when the Tony Award-winning actress was in Baltimore (and I was but a cub reporter for The Evening Sun) and a fire broke out in her hotel. The helmet, presumably given to Channing by the chief at the time, Tom Burke, and the mayor at the time, William Donald Schaefer, is part of an online estate sale June 17 being handeld by Abell Auction Co.
When Channing died at age 97 in January 2019, I wrote a remembrance of meeting her on the sidewalk outside the Lord Baltimore Hotel while firefighters dealt with a five-alarm fire inside. Channing was in town to star in “Hello Dolly.” She was truly larger in life and charmed the reporters and photographers, and Schaefer, on the sidewalk that frigid December morning 43 years ago. That wasn’t the only time Channing made offstage news in Baltimore, either.
Here’s my column: Broadway legend Carol Channing always made a splash when she came to Baltimore
Here’s a link to the Channing estate sale
Dan Rodricks 