Assistant Director

John Stokes was a 29-year-old U.S. Department of the Interior fellow when, in 1979, at the behest of then-Gov. Brendan T. Byrne, he helped write a plan to safeguard the newly established Pinelands National Reserve. He has been at the center of the Pinelands preservation fight ever since. The plan he helped draft protects 1.1 million acres of sandy-soil forests and wetlands full of rare and endangered wildlife and plants, covering nearly a quarter of New Jersey. And, as the executive director of the Pinelands Commission since 2003, Stokes has been overseeing the independent state agency governing the area that includes parts of seven counties, including Burlington, Gloucester, and Camden.

Susan M. Rademacher, former president of the Louisville Olmsted Parks Conservancy in Kentucky, has been named the new director of the Fairmount Park Conservancy, according to John K. Binswanger, president and chairman of the private Fairmount Park fund-raising vehicle. Since 1991, Rademacher led efforts to restore Louisville's historic park system, originally designed by Frederick Law Olmsted, the landscape architect who created Manhattan's Central Park. In addition to serving as president of the Louisville-based conservancy, she also worked as assistant director of Louisville/Jefferson County Metro Parks.

Pssst! Hey, if you are ever accused of ripping off a grocery store or snatching a few watches from a jeweler's shop, just reimburse the business within, say, three years, and everything will be all right. Don't believe it? Well, consider the case of John McDaniel, assistant managing director for Philadelphia. The Pennsylvania Black Conference for Higher Education accused McDaniel of stealing $13,000 after the money turned up missing from its bank account in 2000 and 2001. McDaniel had access to the bank account because he was chairing the group's 2001 convention.

A Street administration aide who had been accused of stealing $13,000 from a nonprofit agency was suspended without pay yesterday pending a review of whether he violated the City Charter on an unrelated matter. City Managing Director Philip R. Goldsmith said he took the action as he investigates whether John McDaniel, an assistant managing director, broke a rule that prohibits city employees from engaging in political activity. "I've asked the inspector general to look into it further," Goldsmith said.

Borough officials said yesterday they ended a nationwide search when Shelagh Purnell, the assistant director of the West Chester Recreation Department since 1995, said she was interested in the top spot. Borough manager Ernie McNeeley made the decision and the council approved her promotion Wednesday night. "I was pleased to discontinue the recruitment process when Shelagh elected to become a candidate for the position," McNeeley said yesterday in a news release. "She has been an excellent, hardworking assistant director and we are always happy to be able to promote from within when there are qualified candidates.

A longtime top aide at the Pinelands Commission has been suspended from his post, apparently after clashing with a superior. Assistant director William F. Harrison was suspended last week after a confrontation with executive director Annette M. Barbaccia, according to sources familiar with the incident. The exchange, during which Barbaccia accused Harrison of insubordination, was apparently sparked by Harrison's giving information on regional growth areas in Atlantic County to Bradley Campbell, commissioner of the state Department of Environmental Protection.

John Demby has been named the interim athletic director at Rancocas Valley for the remainder of the school year. Demby has replaced Carmen Cella, the longtime athletic director at Rancocas Valley, who returned to become the interim AD in late December after athletic director Len Grzywacz left for personal reasons. Cella, who retired after the 1998 school year, said that this was his final week in the interim roll and that Demby only wants the job on an interim basis. "John doesn't want the position past this school year," Cella said yesterday.

Continuing to fill out his management team, Police Commissioner John F. Timoney has hired a 26-year-old New York management consultant to head the department's planning arm. Using a loophole in city personnel rules to bypass the City Charter, Timoney brought in Kim M. Clinton as a $50,000-a-year aide, effective Monday. Technically, Clinton is an assistant managing director, working for city Managing Director Joseph Certaine, who signed her hiring papers. But she is working in Timoney's office.

Charles Baltimore, who for the last three seasons has been the girls' basketball and softball coach at Abington Friends School, announced Tuesday that he has resigned both coaching positions and has accepted the job of assistant athletic director at Friends Select. "This was just a good opportunity that came up, and I felt I had to take it," Baltimore said. There are no open coaching positions at Friends Select, which is significantly closer to Baltimore's home in South Philadelphia than is Abington Friends, but he did not rule out a return to coaching if the opportunity presents itself.

Maxine Elkin, 48, a public relations executive, died Thursday at her home in Abington, after suffering a pulmonary embolism. Mrs. Elkin was the public relations manager for Robert Morris Associates, a 3,000-member, Philadelphia-based national trade group of commercial bank loan and credit officers. She had held the job since 1981. From 1978 to 1981, she was Robert Morris' assistant director of communications. During her tenure, she helped generate national publicity for the association that resulted in articles appearing in major newspapers, as well as in appearances by Robert Morris officials on television and radio.