Blue Bell

A memorial service will be held at 11 a.m. March 10 for Helmut Gude, 75, of Blue Bell, a self-employed cabinetmaker who was involved in a variety of athletics. He died last Saturday of leukemia in the home he had built. The service will be held at St. John Evangelical Lutheran Church, 1802 Skippack Pike (Route 73) in Centre Square, where he was a member. A native of Dueren, Germany, Mr. Gude immigrated to the United States in 1954 and moved to Blue Bell not long after that.

Rows of shiny new mailboxes line the streets in the northwest section of Whitpain Township, signifying a win for community residents. For more than 20 years, neighborhood residents wanted to shed their Norristown postal address and join their neighbors as part of Blue Bell. On Oct. 17, they officially became Blue Bell residents, adding the required curbside mailboxes outside their homes. About 1,400 residents finally penned Blue Bell to their postal script. And, to top off the struggle, they thought they would be served by a new Blue Bell post office on Township Line Road.

On a typical morning, Dr. Tom Meade wakes up sometime around 4:30, leaves his Blue Bell home by 5 and bicycles 20 miles to his job as an orthopedic resident at Jefferson Hospital. If he arrives early enough, he will put in a few quick miles of running. Otherwise, he will try to squeeze in a few miles in the hospital swimming pool, and save the running until after work. And then there is the bicycle trip home - that is, when he gets to go home. Meade's work week averages 100 hours and includes several nights of around- the-clock duty.

Six-year-old Sarah Churchill of Blue Bell met President Clinton last month. But what was really exciting was meeting the first feline, Socks. As the "Better Hearing and Speech Month Child of the Year," Sarah, with her parents, Edie and Chris Churchill, met with Clinton in the Oval Office on May 15. She gave him a card, and he gave her a hug. He signed a book, and she gave him a book - a limited edition by Alexander Graham Bell; the Bell Association...

Frank Dobbs, Blue Bell assistant pro, rolled in a three-foot birdie putt on the first extra hole to defeat Pete Oakley of Garrisons Lake in a playoff of the $21,500 Peoples Bank of Oxford Players Championship of the Philadelphia PGA yesterday at Wyncote Country Club in Oxford, Pa. Dobbs, recent winner of the Philadelphia PGA championship, earned $4,500. He and Oakley had tied at 2-under-par 70 on the 6,870-yard course. On Monday, Dobbs and Oakley tied for 13th at the Club Pro championship in Missouri.

Unisys Corp. said yesterday that it will combine some of its Burroughs and Sperry U.S. sales and marketing activities at the company's Blue Bell, Montgomery County, operations. The activities to be based in Blue Bell would be for the recently merged company's commercial information processing systems. "The merger has given us a unique opportunity to accelerate our commitment to line-of-business marketing," said Joseph Kroger, Unisys vice chairman with responsibility for worldwide commercial marketing.

Under Burroughs Corp.'s announced plans to smooth its merger with Sperry Corp., the new company will have executive offices at both Burroughs' Detroit headquarters and Sperry's main office in Blue Bell, Montgomery County. But that unwieldy arrangement is likely to be a short-term one, according to management consultants, who say the headquarters will almost inevitably be consolidated in one place after a few years. "Over the long term, the split isn't feasible," said John Arnold of John Arnold ExecuTrak Systems, a merger consulting firm in Waltham, Mass.

The first to greet you at the Northern Liberties home of Sayde and David Ladov is Bear, the huge chocolate Lab who believes he's hospitality chairman. Like his owners, Bear has made the transition to this unique townhouse - "vertical space, not horizontal," as the Ladovs like to say - from a traditional Colonial in suburban Blue Bell. "This was definitely more Sayde's plan than mine, but she was right - it was a terrific move for us," says David Ladov, 56, cochair of the family law practice group of the Cozen O'Connor law firm and vice president of the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers' Pennsylvania chapter.

George E. Eckert, 82, a retired engineer, died Wednesday of prostate cancer, 12 hours after the death of his wife, Catherine, 82, who was stricken by an aneurysm while visiting him. The couple, who had been married 11 years, resided at Normandy Farms Estates, a retirement community in Blue Bell. Mr. Eckert was undergoing care in the medical facility on the first floor, and Mrs. Eckert had been back and forth from their third-floor condominium all day Tuesday. She was at his side that evening.

Harold "Hal" Langerman, 67, founder, president and creative director of Hal Langerman Co. of Blue Bell and a flamboyant advertising man friends love to tell stories about, died Sunday at the Ambler Rest Center. One of the stories was how he came to wrestle a bear at the Spectrum during halftime at a 76ers game some years back. Mr. Langerman was not all that eager to wrestle Victor, the big brown bear, said his wife, Doris Lorenz Langerman. But the match was the prize offered by a rock-and-roll radio station for the person who could write the best letter.

UPDATE: The victim was identified Thursday as Li Wi, of Blue Bell A 79-year-old Montgomery County man was killed and his 77-year-old wife was injured by a car that jumped a curb Wednesday afternoon in Spring Garden, police said. The Nissan veered onto the sidewalk at 18th and Spring Garden Streets after being struck by a Toyota in the intersection shortly after 4:30 p.m., said Chief Inspector Scott Small. The man was pinned under the car in front of the Highway Tabernacle Church until he was rescued by medics and transported to Hahnemann University Hospital, where he was pronounced dead at 5:03 p.m. His wife was reported in stable condition at Hahnemann.

UniTek Global Services Inc., of Blue Bell, announced a shake-up in its management ranks after discovering what it called fraudulent activity occurring at a subsidiary. In a statement, the company said an ongoing internal investigation had determined its Pinnacle Wireless subsidiary had "engaged in fraudulent activities that resulted in improper revenue recognition. " After an internal review, UniTek's audit committee recommended the termination of Kevin McClelland, controller and chief accounting officer, and Michael Hayford, president of the company's Pinnacle Wireless division.

Synthetic vaccine developer Inovio Pharmaceuticals Inc., of Blue Bell, said it priced an offering of 27.4 million common shares and warrants for an additional 13.7 million shares that, combined, will net the company $14 million. Inovio said it will use the proceeds for general corporate purposes. The shares and warrants carried a combined price to the public of 55 cents per share, Inovio said. Shares on the New York Stock Exchange were down 25 percent, to 52 cents in afternoon trading.

The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia named Paula Agosto senior vice president and chief nursing officer. Agosto started her career there as a staff nurse in the pediatric intensive care unit in 1985 and had been interim CNO and assistant vice president of critical care, respiratory, and neuro-diagnostic services. Flaster/Greenberg P.C. , Cherry Hill, said lawyers John W. Fried and Lee M. Epstein, formerly name partners of Fried & Epstein L.L.P., joined the firm as shareholders, bringing with them two New York office locations.

A Delaware man who sexually assaulted a young Montgomery County boy dozens of times over six years was sentenced Thursday to 35 years in federal prison. John Angell, 41, of Smyrna, was hired in 2001 to chauffeur the boy on weekends from the child's father's house in Blue Bell to the mother's house in Plainview, N.Y. He gained the trust of the boy, then 7, and began abusing him, prosecutors said. The abuse continued until 2007. A jury convicted Angell in November of traveling to have sex with a minor and aggravated sexual abuse of a child.

Howard Bradley Smith, 95, a Philadelphia-area psychiatrist and the father of Whitpain Police Chief Mark Smith, died Wednesday, Jan. 2, of a heart ailment at Sunrise of Blue Bell, where he had lived for five years. Dr. Smith, a Philadelphia native raised in Glenside, practiced for many years at the Institute of Pennsylvania Hospital and then Pennsylvania Hospital's Hall Mercer Community Behavioral Health Center. He relished the challenge of treating patients in crisis, his son said. He also maintained an office for 30 years at his home in Broad Axe Village, Whitpain Township.

Evelyn B. Raymond Thomas, 73, of Wynnefield, a retired teacher, died of cancer Tuesday, Dec. 18, at Mercy Fitzgerald Hospice in Darby Borough. Mrs. Thomas was a teacher in public schools in Philadelphia for 33 years, including many years at Kenderton Elementary School and Ada H. Lewis Middle School. She retired in 2000. Mrs. Thomas was born in West Grove and raised in West Philadelphia. She graduated from West Philadelphia Catholic Girls' High School in 1957 and earned a bachelor's degree in education from Cheyney University in 1962.

John "Toby" Coates, 94 a reverend for almost 67 years, died Tuesday at the St. Mary Manor, a healthcare facility in Lansdale, Pa. Coates, pastor emeritus at Saint Helena Parish in Blue Bell, Pa., was born Feb. 17, 1918 in Philadelphia. Upon graduating from Northeast Catholic High School, he entered Saint Charles Borromeo Seminary in Wynnewood. The causes of death were chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, dementia and hypertension, said Craig Mann, director of the Mann Funeral Home which is handling the arrangements.

Shawn Alexandra Graham remembers "borrowing" flowers from all over her Blue Bell neighborhood as a little girl, arranging them in water-filled jelly jars, and proudly presenting them to the very people whose gardens she'd just raided. "Some people were not happy," she says. Clearly, they missed the significance of this innocent gesture, because Graham, now 44, grew up to be a floral designer. But it was not a direct path from there to here, which underscores the idea that there are many ways to come to a calling.