The people we salute here come from diverse backgrounds, disciplines, and vocations, but they all share a common characteristic. Each in some way has made or is making where we live—and how we live—better. Collectively, they have changed or are now changing how we look at art, how we teach, what we eat, where we work, how we preserve what we have, the ways we care for each other and honor our past, and what we can do to make it all, not just good enough, but the best it can be.
JEFF HUNTINGTON
The eye of the beholder has been both a friend and a foe to artist Jeff Huntington. But it’s hard to argue against someone who is transforming otherwise bland and run-down non-historic building façades around the city into large painted murals—and inviting underprivileged children to work side by side with him to make it happen. Huntington, also known as Jahru, drew perhaps the closest scrutiny to his work in 2015. That year, future Annapolis Mayor Gavin Buckley caused an uproar from historic preservationists when he had Huntington paint a mural on the side of his Tsunami restaurant on West Street. For his part, Huntington has said that he’d never paint over a historic structure, “which is in itself a work of art.”
Huntington now lives in Annapolis after studying at the Art Institute of Chicago and the Corcoran School of Art. He taught painting as an adjunct faculty member at the Corcoran School of the Arts & Design/George Washington University from 2012 until 2016, when he and his wife, Julia Gibb, founded the nonprofit arts-outreach program, “Future History Now.” His work appears around the world and is represented by Porter Advisory in New York City, Reyes+Davis in Washington, and the Annapolis Collection Gallery. Huntington’s murals appear in Brazil, Colombia, France, the Philippines, India, Hawaii, and across the continental United States. Over the next year, he plans to complete more projects for Chicago, the Philippines, India, Nigeria, and, of course, Annapolis.
JAMES CHEEVERS
If anyone is the proverbial “institutional memory” of the U.S. Naval Academy—and by extension an authority on the general history of the Navy and Marine Corps—it’s Jim Cheevers. He retired in May 2017 as the senior curator of the Academy Museum after 50 years, a time over which he memorized a vast vault of facts—some trivia, others crucial to our understanding of how naval officers have been groomed to lead.
For more than three decades, Cheevers has been a familiar voice as the color commentator for WNAV’s annual broadcast of the Academy’s commencement. But he takes the greatest pride in having crafted the museum’s exhibits not just as random collections of artifacts, but vehicles to educate midshipmen and to keep them coming back for more. Over the years, he has ensured that all employees at the Naval Academy know its rudimentary history. In doing such a service lies his vision. And for his efforts, he has won several lifetime-achievement awards.
Though he’s stepped down from his role at the Academy, the Pittsfield, Massachusetts native, College of William and Mary graduate, and Army veteran will never retire from his adopted community here. “You could not help but fall in love with Annapolis,” he explains. Cheevers is a fixture on the boards of several civic associations and arts, educational, and wildlife organizations in the city and county and has spoken to “every yacht club, civic club, and garden club for miles around,” he says. Perhaps summing up his bearing in this community, the Annapolis mayor named Cheevers a “Living Legend” in 2012.
DR. ROBERTGRAW, JR.
In the not-too-distant past, anyone who’s needed urgent medical care in the middle of the night had only one choice—the hospital emergency room. Now, more options are available for after-hours care, and we largely have Robert Graw, Jr. to thank for it. He is CEO of Righttime Medical Care, which he founded as Nighttime Pediatrics in 1989. Now, Righttime has 18 locations and five more slated to open in 2019.
In 2012, with greater attention lately being paid to head injuries, Dr. Graw also founded Righttime’s HeadFirst Sports Injury and Concussion Care division, one of the largest and most-respected concussion programs in the country. He is also the founder and managing partner of the Pediatric Group, a well-established primary-care pediatric practice he started more than 40 years ago out of his Davidsonville farmhouse. And he has served as Chief of Pediatrics for Anne Arundel Medical Center.
Righttime is committed to treating every patient and family member with respect, he stresses, delivering focused, personalized care, and offering multiple points of access, from making an appointment by phone or online or simply walking in, to the RighttimeNOW telemedicine service that provides access to care without having to leave the home or office.
As one of the first urgent-care providers in the country, Dr. Graw sees unlimited growth for Righttime through its continued expansion and development of processes aimed at providing the “Right Care at the Right Time.” He places the highest emphasis on staying connected to every patient and his or her primary-care provider, a relationship that doesn’t end when a patient leaves the building.
PHILIP & ELEANOR MERRILL
The Merrill family cast a wide philanthropic net over this region as owners of Capital-Gazette Communications, the former publisher of the Annapolis Capital and five other newspapers, along with Washingtonian magazine. Before his death in 2006, Phil Merrill had served in the administrations of three presidents as an adviser on national-defense issues and strategic studies. But he is best known locally as a newspaperman who served as president and CEO of his own company and was succeeded by his wife, Eleanor, who later sold it to Landmark Communications. Both are deceased now, but the family legacy lives on.
Among the many beneficiaries of their generosity is the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, which received $7.5 million for the Philip Merrill Center, its headquarters on the Annapolis Neck peninsula, and the University of Maryland, which established the Philip Merrill College of Journalism at College Park with a $10 million gift from the family. Most recently, the Merrill Foundation helped lay the groundwork for establishing a relief fund for the families of the five Capital-Gazette employees who were gunned down in their newsroom in June.
The journalism school at Maryland that bears his name includes a pertinent quote from Phil Merrill: “In a world that’s dominated in large measure by the communications revolution, sound journalistic values and capabilities are more important than ever.”
REV. STEPHENA. TILLETT
Stephen Tillett has a long and impressive resumé to back up the rousing sermons he delivers at the Asbury Broadneck United Methodist Church near Cape St. Claire. His first book, Stop Falling for the Okeydoke: How the Lie of ‘Race’ Continues to Hinder Our Country, was released in May 2017 and has received numerous favorable reviews. In it, he dismisses race as a big lie, “a social construct that has no basis in science.” He is the author of numerous columns and political commentary and is committed to the unification of the human family. His outlook involves not race defined by skin color but the well-being of the only real race—the human race.
A native of Washington, D.C., he graduated from the city’s St. John’s College High School before receiving a B.A. from the American University School of Government and Public Administration and a Master of Divinity degree from the Howard University School of Divinity. Lieutenant Colonel Tillett retired from the U.S. Air Force Reserve in January 2017 after beginning his military career as a chaplain in the Air National Guard in December 1996.
Before answering the call to Asbury Broadneck in 2004, Tillett served as pastor of churches in both Washington and Baltimore. He has served as the president of the Annapolis Interdenominational Ministerial Alliance, and is the current president of the Anne Arundel County Branch of the NAACP, and recently received the “Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Peace Maker Award.” Tillett adheres especially to one message from Dr. King that “We must learn to live together as brothers [and sisters] or perish together as fools.”
CRAIG SEWELL
Anyone who thinks all food is created equal hasn’t met Craig Sewell, much less ever sampled his wares. He’s the former owner of the aptly named A Cook’s Café, an Annapolis storefront eatery, cooking classroom, and distribution point for Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) that was situated in an otherwise nondescript industrial complex until it closed after 15½ years in June 2017. Now, Sewell is the marketing and livestock specialist for the Southern Maryland Agricultural Development Commission (SMADC), which assists farmers in the five Southern Maryland counties transition from their traditional crop of tobacco to raising livestock for meat. Establishing a supply chain for such ventures is where Sewell comes in.
It might seem like an unlikely pursuit for someone with an honors degree in economics from Harvard, but in a sort of metaphysical way, Sewell’s rewards go beyond what he could have amassed in the corporate world. “Probably in our grandparent’s day, and certainly in our great grandparent’s day, eating food grown naturally on local farms…by people you knew,” Sewell points out, “was the norm.” And in his vision, that is precisely what he strives for today. “Food was fresher and tastier, prepared in harmony with the seasons, and grown without intervention of chemicals and hormones,” Sewell says, “and in a larger economic sense, the money that was spent on food and related services was circulated in the local economy, not sent to corporate offices far away.”
JOSEPH OLMO
His business card is red, with a thick white arrow pointing to an oversize white “Hello” across the middle third of it. That is the first evidence anyone sees that young Mr. Olmo has no problem with self-confidence. And it turns out he also knows exactly what he wants to do for a living with two years at Anne Arundel Community College under his belt. A 2015 graduate of Archbishop Spalding High School, he has now transferred to his dream school, Catholic University, dual majoring in media communications and political science. Olmo wants to be a journalist.
“In my senior year of high school, we were required to bring laptops every day. Not long after, I became more attracted to what was on the screen than what the teacher had to say,” he says. “I became addicted to watching the news, and I used to fake reports in front of my friends. I tried to act just like [NBC anchors] Brian Williams and Lester Holt.”
At Catholic University, he has his own program broadcast once a week titled “Diálogo en America,” a weekly politics/news talk show with politicians and government officials. For the program, he says, “I’ve interviewed Oregon Senator Jeff Merkley, New Jersey Senator Cory Booker, various congressmen and congresswomen, and the attorney general of El Salvador and nearly all of the presidential candidates from that country.”
In the future, we’ll certainly be keeping an eye on Mr. Olmo at What’s Up? Media (and looking over our shoulders).
KINDER FAMILY
Visitors to Kinder Farm Park near Severna Park/Millersville can be forgiven if they think the “Kinder” part of the name has something to do with young people. Not that children don’t enjoy the open spaces and exhibits offered by the park, but the Kinder name comes from the insightful German immigrant family who ensured that their land would be put to good use by Anne Arundel County.
The Kinder Farm “complex” started in 1898, when Gustave bought 41 acres in Millersville, and between 1902 and 1907, when brother Henry Sr. bought adjacent land. In the next 50 years, Henry and his sons acquired 600 more acres. Other siblings purchased land along what was later named Kinder Road. The home Henry built in 1926 later became the park office. Henry’s sons, Edward (Eddie), Henry Jr., August, and Albert grew the estate in the 1940s to one of the largest cattle operations in the state. In 1979, the four brothers sold 288 acres to Anne Arundel County, land that became Kinder Farm Park.
Today, the Friends of Kinder Farm Park raises funds and oversees volunteer activities. The Visitors Center opened in 2010, and the Kinder Park Sawmill produces the wood used for cabinets, furniture, and displays in the Exhibit Hall. Under the direction of the Friends group, volunteers restored the Henry Kinder Farmhouse, which opened in 2014, and the Friends also sponsors livestock demonstrations through its 4H club and other popular events throughout the year. Farm history comes alive as well for visitors to the Tobacco Farm and Farmhouse museums.
All in all, the Kinder boys had the vision to ensure that their land survived essentially undisturbed in the midst of surrounding development. We think they would be proud.
PAUL SPADARO
“Enthusiastic, passionate, dedicated, energetic, and tireless.” This is how Paul Spadaro describes his work as an advocate for the environment—most notably as president of the Magothy River Association. One of his first jobs, as a surveyor in Yorktown, New York, led him to assist in saving a wetland where a local developer sought to build a housing development. Through his expert testimony, the inappropriate use of the wetlands was denied. After Spadaro moved south to Maryland, he taught solar energy classes at Anne Arundel Community College and proceeded to look for volunteer opportunities to improve the environment.
Spadaro remembers the promise and enthusiasm of the first Earth Day in 1972. He believed then that people could make a difference to improve the environment through grassroots efforts, and his optimism has not changed. The environmentalist’s uncanny knack for bringing together local and federal government agencies, volunteers, and community organizations has even drawn the attention of the World Bank.
Spadaro is a “forward thinker,” he says, “always looking to and working for the future.” When he needs to make a decision regarding which projects to pursue, such as his recent efforts with volunteers to deploy “reef balls” in the Magothy River, he asks, “Will this help the river?” It already has.
JOSIE URREA
Pinning down Josie Urrea is hard. A senior at Severna Park High School, she is the 45th student member, with full voting rights, of the Anne Arundel County Board of Education, where she is focusing on school safety and mental health. All the while she’s looking ahead in her pursuit of a commission from the U.S. Naval Academy, where she’s aiming to major in computer engineering and minor in Mandarin Chinese.
Mandarin Chinese? How did she arrive at that? “I’ve already studied it for four years in school but want to continue it because of my fascination with the culture,” she says. “The language also opens up service learning, traveling, and job opportunities in my future that tie into the Navy. In school, I enjoy taking rigorous math, science, and STEM classes as well as being an active member and current president of my school’s Model UN [United Nations].”
Urrea has wanted to attend the Naval Academy since middle school stating that “it’s a place that challenges you to be the best teammate and leader you can while providing you with opportunities to see the world.” She would also be the first in her Hispanic family to start a legacy at the Academy.
“Implicit bias,” she told us, is one problem she hopes to confront for the rest of her life. How does she intend to do it? “Having the tough conversations around diversity and culture are necessary to learn about different people. Once these conversations become normalized, we build open-mindedness and empathy toward others that lead to understanding where people’s perspectives originate. In this way, I hope we one day grow toward a more inclusive environment.”
KAREN-ANN LICHTENSTEIN
People with disabilities, from a simple sprained ankle to completely debilitating diseases, can have a hard time navigating the challenging world. And they often encounter others who have no concept of what it’s like to cope with such hardship.
Enter, Karen-Ann Lichtenstein. Over the past 45 years, she has been committed to educating Marylanders—the business sector and the community at large—concerning the inclusion of people with disabilities. She is the embodiment of the mission statement of The Coordinating Center: “To partner with people of all ages and abilities and those who support them in the community to achieve their aspirations for independence, health, and meaningful community life.”
An unrelenting and strong advocate and champion for those who are disabled and have complex needs, she served for more than 25 years as president/ CEO of the center. Lichtenstein has overseen dramatic growth of the organization, headquartered on Veterans Highway in Millersville, from its comparatively humble beginnings serving 50 children with the most complex medical needs and moving them from hospitals to home, to numbers that have grown currently to more than 10,000 people of all ages, disabilities, medically complex needs, and social determinants of health.
“My vision for the center’s future,” she says, “is to continue its incredible work to ensure that people of all ages and abilities have equitable access to achieve optimal quality health, affordable housing, and meaningful community life.” Now Lichtenstein is handing over the reins of the center and looks forward to seeing her vision continue and thrive.
DAVIDS. CORDISH
Some people see more in sleepy vacant lots than meets the eye. And arguably no one has executed that vision more successfully and passionately than David Cordish. “We’ve been at this for over 100 years,” he says. “It goes back to my grandfather, Louis Cordish, who insisted on treating people fairly and doing everything you do with integrity. For him, the best deal was a win-win deal.”
Cordish, a lawyer by trade, earned various degrees in the Baltimore area from Baltimore City College (at age 16), the University of Maryland Law School, and Johns Hopkins University. He has parleyed that education into developing regional, community, and neighborhood shopping centers and office buildings. During that time, he also worked as chair of the Baltimore Housing Authority and as director of the Urban Development Action Grant program at the Department of Housing and Urban Development during the administrations of Presidents Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan. And he has chaired Baltimore’s Harbor Endowment Foundation and served as a pro bono consultant and mediator for Johns Hopkins, Loyola College, and Stevenson University.
Currently, however, he is most proud of bringing the “Live!” brand to Anne Arundel County, for which he sees “tremendous opportunities.” The new hotel seems to excite Cordish the most: “We are so proud to have recently opened the flagship Live! Hotel at Live! Casino…the first hotel in the country to carry the Live! brand. It was especially exciting and a tremendous honor to be introducing this concept in our family’s hometown.”
ADDIE CLASH TRAVERS
If only we could have interviewed Addie Clash Travers and talked to her about her ancestor, Harriet Tubman. Called “the Moses of her people,” Tubman was a “conductor” of the Underground Railroad in the mid-19th century. In the dark of night, she secretly helped slaves escape—estimated to total some 300—from the south across marshland on Maryland’s Eastern Shore to the Mason-Dixon Line and freedom. Some sources have quoted abolitionist Quaker Thomas Garrett as having said, “If she had been a white woman, she would have been heralded as the greatest woman of her age.” In fact, the prospects seemed in favor of replacing Andrew Jackson with Tubman on the $20 bill, that is, until the 2016 presidential election.
Acknowledging Harriet Tubman’s roots in Dorchester County, about 12 miles southeast of Cambridge in the Bucktown area, had mostly eluded historians. But we can all thank “Miss Addie,” as she was known, for leading the way to correct that slight. A strong-willed “retired businesswoman and civic leader” born in Bucktown in 1913 and descended from the Ross family (the name of Tubman’s parents), she established “Harriet Tubman Day” in 1970 and served as vice president of the Harriet Tubman Association; a predecessor and inspiration to the establishment of Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad Visitor Center, the Harriet Tubman Museum, and the Harriet Tubman Scenic Byway. She was “the lady to contact” about anything on the subject. “I didn’t have no black history in school,” she once said, so she relied on accounts from the “older folks,” promising then and there to keep Harriet Tubman’s legacy alive.
MARY MARGARET REVELL GOODWIN
In 1988, she was the first woman and first American to run the full length of the great Himalayan massive, all 14 major peaks for 3,000 miles at altitude. Two years earlier, she ran the full length of Japan and swam records in many world bodies of water before that. Even after those monumental conquests, Mary Margaret Revell Goodwin insists that her latest project—to establish the first Maryland Museum of Women’s History and open it on the 100th anniversary of women getting the vote—is “more daunting and more important and beyond the difficulty of those efforts that went before it.”
Revell Goodwin has been a historian for Queen Anne’s County for 30 years and says she has loved every minute. As the county historian, she has seen many major event efforts come to fruition, “but none compared to this undertaking,” she contends. “Women’s stories have been the least told,” she points out, and she wants “a place where the stories of women can inspire, open discussion, deal with women’s issues through history, and just as important, offer upcoming young women the chance to make their own history.”
The monetary goal to open the museum is $4 million. “We have our historic building, and it needs repair,” Revell Goodwin admits. The first exhibits from the museum will travel the state in advance of the opening in 2020.
JOHN WRANG
This innovator started raising chickens with his wife Judy in 2004. “We came late to farming compared to most,” he admits, but “when the opportunity came to buy a small farm on the Eastern Shore, we jumped at it.” Jumped into it is more like it. What appealed to John and Judy Wrang was something they studied thoroughly, pastured poultry, deciding there had to be a better way of producing chickens for meat (soon after purchasing their first flock of laying hens) than what the large poultry houses were offering.
To accomplish that, they followed plans for a “chicken tractor” which is a movable shelter that John shifts at regulated times to fresh patches of pasture.
What they started processing for themselves and their family quickly surpassed the quality of anything they bought in the grocery store. So they expanded the operation and today sell their fresh chicken and eggs from their pastured laying hens. “I believe pastured poultry is here to stay in the United States,” John Wrang says. His products, farmed in “small batches,” don’t require the use of antibiotics and other medications “due to the cleaner environment they are raised in.” It’s a model that could positively shift the industry and how we think of food sourcing.
His loyal customer base at the county farmers’ markets can testify to the difference. “Our customers have become like extended family,” John says. When you reach the front of the line at the Wrangs’ market set up on Sunday morning and ask how he’s doing, John always replies, “I’m better now that I see you here.”
KRISTA PETTIT
People in crisis or simply down on their luck don’t have to go it alone. They just need to know which way to turn. About 16 years ago, Krista Pettit founded Haven Ministries, Inc., that began as a homeless shelter serving individuals for a couple of months until they could get back on their feet. She is now executive director of the nonprofit organization, where its programs now include a longer-term homeless shelter with transportation services, a thrift store, street outreach program, a resource center with financial assistance, a warehouse with job training, and two food pantries. “My direction comes through prayer as I seek guidance in living out my calling by serving others,” she says.
Pettit lives in Centreville with her husband Chris, a United Methodist pastor, and two children, and she is very active in her church and community. She characterizes her vision (and that of Haven Ministries) as “grandiose: where everyone is treated with respect and dignity and provided with all of life’s necessities.”
Haven Ministries has been on track to tackle this monumental task by expanding programs throughout the years and aiming toward purchasing a building for a longer-term housing assistance program, advancing the job-training program to include food service, and employing asset-based community development in an economically depressed neighborhood. To keep the vision moving forward, Haven Ministries also closely aligns with area organizations and businesses and surrounds itself with wise counsel.
