Harleigh Cemetery

A funeral for former Camden Mayor Melvin R. "Randy" Primas Jr. will be at 11 a.m. Friday, March 9, at St. John Baptist Church, 400 N. 30th St., Camden. Mr. Primas, 62, who was mayor from 1981 to 1990, died Thursday, March 1. Friends may call from 9 a.m. Friday. Burial will be in Harleigh Cemetery, Camden. Donations may be made to the Boys & Girls Club of Camden, 1725 Park Blvd., Camden, N.J. 08103.  

Andrew H. Moore, 84, of Camden, who was active for decades in St. Augustine's Episcopal Church, died Thursday at West Jersey Hospital-Camden. A lifelong resident of Camden, Mr. Moore was a retired inspector for the health departments in Camden and Camden County for more than 30 years. He was also a former Democratic ward leader in Camden. Mr. Moore was a member of St. Augustine's Episcopal Church for 60 years. He was active in the church as a member of the Men's Club, and served as senior warden, junior warden and vestryman.

Funeral services will be held today for Markquise A. Hill, a 16-year-old honor student who was gunned down Nov. 25 on a street in his East Camden neighborhood. Investigators have said they are pursuing several leads, but no arrests have been made. Markquise Hill was a popular junior at Woodrow Wilson High School, where he played football during his freshman year. He also enjoyed playing basketball. He wanted to become a physician. He was a member of Calvary Bible Tabernacle Church in Camden.

Garrison O. Hallman 3d, 24, a member of the New Jersey State Police for six months, died Wednesday at Cooper Hospital-University Medical Center, Camden, from injuries sustained in an automobile accident in Bridgeton on Tuesday. He lived in Camden. According to his squad commander, Sgt. Steven Brook, at the New Jersey State Police station in Bridgeton, Mr. Hallman was off duty at the time of the 3:30 p.m. accident on South Avenue. Brook said several witnesses, among them two other off-duty troopers, said that Mr. Hallman, who was alone in his car, struck a utility pole after swerving to avoid several dogs that had run into the street.

Terrell Johnson, 12, a seventh grader at Hatch Middle School in Camden who wanted to grow up to be a city councilman, died Monday at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia of complications from a sinus infection. Born in Camden, he was raised in the Whitman Park section. Relatives said Terrell had been an active youth in Camden's Second Ward and could often be seen handing out leaflets and helping out with block parties with Councilman Ali Sloan El. They said Terrell had aspired to serve on Council himself and also wanted to be a youth counselor.

Fannie Williams, 108, who credited her long and healthy life to "knowing the Lord," died Sunday at Cooper River Convalescent Center in Pennsauken. Born April 4, 1886, in King George County, Va., Mrs. Williams resided in Atlantic City for many years before moving to Pennsauken nine years ago to be closer to several of her grandchildren. In her mid-90s, Mrs. Williams injured her hip and finally had to stop working. She, for many years, cooked and did domestic work for an Atlantic City doctor, working several days each week.

Dorothy Irene Hann Chapman, the modest Miss America of 1932, died Sunday at West Jersey Hospital-Camden. She lived in Collingswood. The 5-foot-2, blue-eyed brunette from Camden was crowned during the Depression in the only Miss America Pageant held in Wildwood. Her talent was singing, although, according to friends she never considered herself very good at it. Mrs. Chapman "didn't like to brag," said her friend, Jennie Haines Steinruck. "She said that it was over and done with.

Elizabeth Penn, 71, a retired Camden schoolteacher, died Friday at home. A former resident of Camden, she lived in Lindenwold. Mrs. Penn taught special education at Hatch Junior High and at the Bonsall, Cramer and Wiggins Elementary Schools in Camden. She also taught homebound students before retiring in 1982. She taught previously in Elkton, Md., and Plymouth, N.C., and also taught piano. A native of Pittsburgh, Mrs. Penn studied English and music at Hampton University in Hampton, Va., and later taught piano in South Jersey.

Joseph R. McCarthy, 79, a former reporter for the Courier-Post, died Friday of respiratory failure at Greenbrier Nursing Home in Deptford. He was a lifelong resident of Camden and lived in the city's Fairview section. Mr. McCarthy was educated at Camden Catholic High School and St. Joseph's College. After graduating from college, he served in the Navy aboard the battleship New Jersey. After a job in the toll division of the Delaware River Port Authority, Mr. McCarthy began working nights as a police reporter for the Courier-Post.

Flora Jamieson, 79, a seventh-grade geography teacher at Gloucester City High School for 35 years, died Thursday at her home in Gloucester City. The three R's seemed to come naturally to Miss Jamieson, who received her diploma in 1928 from Gloucester City High School at the age of 15. "She graduated from high school early because she was so smart," said a nephew, Archibald L. Jamieson Hall. Hall said Miss Jamieson's father thought she was too young to enter college, so he sent her to Friends Select School in Philadelphia for a brief period before she entered Wilson College in Chambersburg, Pa. In 1932 Miss Jamieson received a bachelor of arts degree in education from Wilson College.

When Randy Primas was elected Camden's mayor in 1981, the history he most wanted to make had little to do with his age (31) or his race (African American). A historical first on both counts, the gentlemanly political leader, business executive, and family man who was laid to rest Friday at Harleigh Cemetery most dearly hoped to rescue his hometown from ruin, and even restore some of its glory. If the task proved too big for Primas - as it did for every other mayor, before or since - his decades of devotion nevertheless loom large.

A funeral for former Camden Mayor Melvin R. "Randy" Primas Jr. will be at 11 a.m. Friday, March 9, at St. John Baptist Church, 400 N. 30th St., Camden. Mr. Primas, 62, who was mayor from 1981 to 1990, died Thursday, March 1. Friends may call from 9 a.m. Friday. Burial will be in Harleigh Cemetery, Camden. Donations may be made to the Boys & Girls Club of Camden, 1725 Park Blvd., Camden, N.J. 08103.  

Benjamin C. Walters Jr., 50, of Center City, a former Camden redevelopment official, died of complications of diabetes on Sunday, Aug. 7, at Lourdes Medical Center in Willingboro. Mr. Walters was the city councilman from Camden's Third District from January 1993 to March 1995. In January 1995, the commissioners of the Camden Housing Authority appointed him program administrator of a $42.2 million, five-year Urban Revitalization Demonstration grant. The federal funds were meant for Peter J. McGuire Gardens in East Camden, which a 1995 Inquirer story described as "a dilapidated, 367-unit city housing project" where 1,100 people lived in 48 buildings on 20 acres.

Today is Walt Whitman's birthday. The scruffy, sensual, stentorian bard, who gave us an ever-evolving masterpiece called Leaves of Grass , came into this world on May 31, 1819. And although Whitman died on March 26, 1892, he's never really left us. "He pops up a lot," says Leo Blake, curator of the Walt Whitman House in downtown Camden. "He's still relevant. " Consider the TV commercial campaign for Levi's jeans two years ago. It used Whitman words and even what some scholars argued was his voice - taken from a copy of a wax-cylinder recording made circa 1888.

Camden's most famous author, Walt Whitman, once said that great poets require great audiences. Yesterday, officials in the impoverished city announced a plan to give those great audiences access to great poets by developing a plan to keep the city's libraries open amid a crushing budget year. Camden Mayor Dana Redd said that the city would seek to join the Camden County library system and that Rutgers University's Camden campus would continue to allow city residents to check out books and use computers at the school's library.

In a small elementary school gym in Camden, a church called New Life Ministries holds its Sunday services with drums and keyboards set up between the basketball hoops and metal folding chairs arranged as pews. Each week, up to 150 Camden residents crowd into the room to worship with pastors Dana and Ronald Green, who founded the nondenominational church eight years ago in their living room. By next year, the Greens hope to be hosting services in their own sanctuary in a sprawling building on Haddon Avenue that will also house a food pantry, a soup kitchen, and a refuge for the city's homeless.

I was at the driving range the other night, slicing golf balls across the Cooper River toward Camden in the distance, when I suddenly realized that between me and the spire I was aiming at - the statue of Our Lady of Lourdes high atop the hospital of its name - was Harleigh Cemetery in Camden, the final resting place of Walt Whitman. A chill went up my spine as I watched the red evening glow dim behind trees that hid his cut-stone mausoleum. Our most famous poet is laid to rest in the heart of what tabloids now call the murder capital of America.

The "good gray poet" would have approved. Walt Whitman, who enjoyed entertaining the great writers and artists of his time, certainly would be happy to know his home and tomb will be part of a tour. The tour, researched and developed by the South Jersey Tourism Corp. with a $24,000 grant from the New Jersey Historic Trust, will take in three sites that tell the story of Whitman's life in Camden: his house at 328 Mickle Blvd.; Pomona Hall, home of the Camden County Historical Society in the Parkside section; and the poet's final resting place at Harleigh Cemetery.

Camden has many small, surprising joys. You can run around a ball field with a giant shark, then pet a real one down the road. Grab a cheesesteak they're imitating in Manhattan, or sip a sublime horchata dusted with cinnamon. Dance with butterflies, or gaze at fireworks behind the Ben Franklin Bridge. Camden is trying to shed its image and transform into a tourist destination. It's not quite there yet, but it is still worth a jaunt - and not just to the waterfront. The renewal began with the New Jersey State Aquarium.

Funeral services will be held today for Markquise A. Hill, a 16-year-old honor student who was gunned down Nov. 25 on a street in his East Camden neighborhood. Investigators have said they are pursuing several leads, but no arrests have been made. Markquise Hill was a popular junior at Woodrow Wilson High School, where he played football during his freshman year. He also enjoyed playing basketball. He wanted to become a physician. He was a member of Calvary Bible Tabernacle Church in Camden.