Lee McCardell was the most famous war correspondent of the Baltimore Sun. The first Sunpapers writer to get into the action after the bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941, he reported on the fighting in Italy and covered D-Day. He was believed to be the first American correspondent to reach liberated Paris and was among … Continue reading From the Archive: A war correspondent’s holiday letter to his children
Three memories of Christmas Eve
One Christmas Eve in the early 1990s, while driving along Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard in Baltimore, I looked up at the old high-rise public housing projects that were to be torn down a few years later. I had done some reporting on the poverty and crime in those buildings, and had met a single … Continue reading Three memories of Christmas Eve
Dusting off memories
“Nostalgia is death” always sounded pretty harsh. Bob Dylan made that pronouncement during a newspaper interview in 1991. He meant that he did not wish to be defined by the music of his past, or to dwell on it, no matter how much his fans wanted to hear it. When you stop focusing on the … Continue reading Dusting off memories
How a young journalist and future Nobel laureate exposed the corruption of a dictator: Gabriel García Márquez, 1955
A castaway sailor and the shuttering of a great newspaper Rojas Seventy years ago, the military dictatorship of Gustavo Rojas Pinilla of Colombia shut down one of the nation’s best newspapers, El Espectador, after an expose by a 28-year-old reporter who would go on to become one of the world’s most famous novelists. It’s a … Continue reading How a young journalist and future Nobel laureate exposed the corruption of a dictator: Gabriel García Márquez, 1955
WWYD: What Would You Do?
So you park your car in the shopping center parking lot, a couple of safe spaces from a carriage corral. You get out. You grab a carriage from the carriage corral. As you do this, you notice a double-roll package of paper towels in the lower tray of one of the other carriages. Having watched … Continue reading WWYD: What Would You Do?
A son’s gratitude
I have heard many fine eulogies over the years, struggled to give a few myself. The intention is to render tribute to the deceased and to comfort mourners with memories. At a funeral Mass Saturday morning at St. Leo’s Church in Baltimore's Little Italy, a brother eulogized his younger sister who had died after a … Continue reading A son’s gratitude
A wow-inducing theater we didn’t know was there
Wenger reclining in one of his theaters at Eastpoint Note to readers: Certain stories require an overtime period or two. My latest for the Baltimore Brew is such a story. I found that Paul Wenger, president of Flagship Premium Cinemas, had a good story to tell — about his career in movie theaters and about … Continue reading A wow-inducing theater we didn’t know was there
Strange interlude: What I heard on the ride home
I could tell from the way he decorated the inside of his sedan that the Uber driver was a fan of professional basketball. So, as is my habit, I struck up a conversation. I found the driver congenial, talkative and informative. He got me up to date on the National Basketball Association playoffs. He spoke … Continue reading Strange interlude: What I heard on the ride home
A century-old sycamore: Pardon me while I stare
There are some old photographs, hanging in libraries and published in books, of the final days of giant trees that lived hundreds of years in the East before the pioneers and colonists arrived, before the farmers and lumberjacks, before the railroads and the highways -- way back, in the words of Gordon Lightfoot, "when the … Continue reading A century-old sycamore: Pardon me while I stare
Eternal Coach: Remembering Gene Hackman for his role in ‘Hoosiers’
Like many of his fans across the land, I dialed up “Hoosiers,” the 1985 film about small-town Indiana basketball, to honor the film’s star, Gene Hackman, and to remember him after his passing at 95 in his acting glory. He comes into the story right away, during opening credits, arriving at Hickory High School in … Continue reading Eternal Coach: Remembering Gene Hackman for his role in ‘Hoosiers’
Dan Rodricks 