Lawndale

The 58-year-old Lawndale physician got greedy, said the prosecutor, and he decided to go into business with a known drug addict. "It was greed, pure and simple," Assistant District Attorney Andrew Gibson, of the DA's Dangerous Drug Offender Unit, said of Dr. Lawrence R. Alexander. "He decided he needed extra money, easy money, so he began selling drugs with Edward O'Connor. " The 170 character witnesses who testified for Alexander, Gibson said, "knew him as a swell guy. They didn't know he was selling drugs on the side.

Maria DeLeone paid with her life for not telling a car owner she was going to use his auto last month. The owner's sister, described by defense lawyer Karl D. Schwartz as "a model citizen," allegedly beat DeLeone to death. This week, after a preliminary hearing before Municipal Judge Michael J. Conroy, Patricia Gwalthney, of Cheltenham Avenue near Rising Sun, Lawndale, was ordered to stand trial in the killing of DeLeone, 29, of Marwood Road near Ashdale Street. Bail was set at $50,000.

A Northeast Philadelphia man who has a history of sexual assaults on women has been acquitted of raping a 21-year-old Lawndale woman last year, but convicted of burglarizing her apartment. Sentence was deferred. The Common Pleas jury hearing Christopher Harrison's case was prevented from learning he is a convicted rapist and burglar, said Assistant District Jeanette Synnestvedt. Harrison, 28, of Leon Street near Pearson, is serving five to 25 years in prison for a 1988 rape and burglary.

FOR SOME neighbors in Lawndale, losing Bill Glatz - a jeweler who was shot and killed during a botched robbery in October - meant losing a fundamental piece of the neighborhood's already in-flux identity. Shortly after the shooting, Tom Glennon, a retired firefighter who has lived in Lawndale for more than three decades, called the incident the "death knell" for the neighborhood. "This is it," Glennon, 65, told a Daily News columnist at the time. "I'm afraid of what this means.

A prisoner on weekend leave from a halfway house has confessed to last week's attempted rape of an 83-year-old Lawndale woman and is being questioned by detectives about a spate of recent sexual assaults and burglaries in the area, police said yesterday. Police identified the suspect as John Tartaglia, 29, who gave his address as a state-run halfway house in the 3000 block of North Broad Street. He is a former resident of the Lawndale section of the Northeast. Detectives said Tartaglia, who was serving a prison term for three burglary convictions, confessed Tuesday night to the beating and attempted rape of an woman early Saturday in her house on Levick Street.

For 12 years, Mark Clark has been able to leave his Lawndale home each morning and wheel himself five blocks to his job at the Naval Aviation Supply Office. But having a productive, fulfilling work life will become a lot tougher for the 33-year-old paraplegic if the Pentagon goes through with its plans to close what Lawndale residents call simply "the depot. " There may be jobs available when his Navy office moves to Mechanicsburg, a suburb of Harrisburg, sometime in the next six years, but Clark said his health won't let him move with it. "I can't physically move anywhere," he said.

The Philadelphia Medical Examiner's Office yesterday said more laboratory tests were needed to determine whether the death of 22-month-old Lawndale toddler Dean Michael Heilman was preventable. Detectives said the child cut his right foot Monday while playing in a backyard wading pool. The parents treated the injury themselves and did not contact medical authorities because of their religious beliefs, authorities said. The couple are members of Faith Tabernacle Congregation, investigators said, the same denomination that was the focus of a case involving the death in May of a 2-year-old boy from the Northeast.

Eleanor Grandzol of Lawndale learns how to arrange flowers at a class entitled "Floral Art: A Touch of Elegance," offered by Manor Junior College in Jenkintown. The instructor is Eva Monheim of Eve's Floral Creations in Glenside.

Remember when Lawndale and the rest of the Northeast were farmland? asked Alpheus P. McCloskey, 78. Remember riding the trolley to picnic in fields of daisies? asked Margaret C. Hink, 65. Remember when horse-drawn coal wagons plowed through a mud street in the heart of Lawndale? asked Frank Neumann, 70. Remember when . . . and so the group of longtime Lawndale residents reminisced about their youth. "I can tell you every store and where it went. I've lived on Sanger Street since 1925," Hink said proudly.

Aside from the Lawncrest Civic Association, neighbors said opportunities to interact and organize with others in the Lawndale and Crescentville areas are limited. Tom Dowling was a member of the neighborhood's Town Watch until it lost funding and disbanded this year. He said low participation was a contributing factor, although the neighborhood's population has grown by more than 2,000 in the past decade, according to the Census Bureau. Kevin Dow, chief operating officer of the city's Commerce Department, said officials are working to establish a business association in Lawndale.

IN THE LAWNDALE apartment complex where her 22-year-old son, Lawrence Jackson, was gunned down April 12, Denise Wilson looked to the sky during a vigil for her son Thursday and uttered a plea. "If anybody saw anything that night, please say something," she told residents who peeked out their third-floor windows at the crowd of about 75 who gathered at the complex on Oxford Avenue near Levick Street. "I'm begging y'all. Please. " Jackson, a graduate of George Washington High School who worked for UPS, started a landscaping business with his brother and dreamed of a career as a musician, was shot several times in a courtyard between apartment buildings at 9:45 p.m. April 12. He died early the next morning.

The Pennsylvania SPCA removed 12 live and six dead cats Tuesday from a rowhouse in Lawndale, and officials expect to arrest two people on animal-cruelty charges, a PSPCA spokeswoman said. Acting on a tip from neighbors, PSPCA officers raided the home on Lawndale Avenue near Levick Street and found two people in their late 50s to early 60s living in squalid conditions along with the cats, said spokeswoman Wendy Marano. She did not identify the couple. In the house, officers found cat feces and trash, which left an odor that neighbors said they could smell inside their homes, Marano said.

FRANK McDANIELS, a hardworking family man who spent 45 years with the Daily News and Inquirer, thought nothing of hopping on a plane and winging off to Hawaii a couple of times a year. He probably visited the island paradise at least 20 times to see his sister, Faith, his family said. He made the most of those trips, taking helicopter rides to islands and beaches, and enjoying the NFL Pro Bowl every January. A World War II buff, Frank especially liked spending time at Pearl Harbor, reliving the Japanese sneak attack that destroyed so many Navy ships on Dec. 7, 1941, and launched America into World War II. He also was a fan of Charo, the flamboyant singer and flamenco entertainer who lived in Hawaii.

Aside from the Lawncrest Civic Association, neighbors said opportunities to interact and organize with others in the Lawndale and Crescentville areas are limited. Tom Dowling was a member of the neighborhood's Town Watch until it lost funding and disbanded this year. He said low participation was a contributing factor, although the neighborhood's population has grown by more than 2,000 in the past decade, according to the Census Bureau. Kevin Dow, chief operating officer of the city's Commerce Department, said officials are working to establish a business association in Lawndale.

FOR SOME neighbors in Lawndale, losing Bill Glatz - a jeweler who was shot and killed during a botched robbery in October - meant losing a fundamental piece of the neighborhood's already in-flux identity. Shortly after the shooting, Tom Glennon, a retired firefighter who has lived in Lawndale for more than three decades, called the incident the "death knell" for the neighborhood. "This is it," Glennon, 65, told a Daily News columnist at the time. "I'm afraid of what this means.

Shirley Ortega was just about to hit the hay early yesterday morning when her Lawndale neighbor knocked feverishly on her door, begging to borrow a cell phone. " 'The building is on fire' is all she kept saying," said Ortega, 32, who lives in the Austin Manor Apartments on Rising Sun Avenue near Tyson. " 'Everybody's jumping out windows!' " the neighbor added with urgency. Ortega rushed outside to see the other building in the complex engulfed in flames. The 4:30 a.m., five-alarm fire left 21 people injured, including two firefighters, said Fire Commissioner Lloyd Ayers.

John Wesley Dean III, 80, the fourth-generation owner of a Philadelphia funeral home, a lawyer, and a nationally prominent Shriner, died of Parkinson's disease Feb. 12 at his home in Largo, Fla. His daughter, Katharine Mervine, said the original firm, John W. Dean Funeral Director, was founded in 1883 in Fox Chase. Dean's son, Warren, was followed by John W. Dean Jr. and then Mrs. Mervine's father. In the mid-1980s, she said, the firm, still in Fox Chase, was sold and now operates as Dean Geitner Givnish Funeral Homes.

A troubling portrayal of Indonesian Muslims As Indonesians of diverse ethnicities and faiths residing in Philadelphia, we wish to express support for the Sugianto family ("Schoolmates' plea: Don't deport Tasha to Indonesia," May 6). Upon reading reporter Martha Woodall's article, we gladly learned that Tasha's school community has united to advocate on their behalf. While the Sugiantos may face genuine danger if they are deported to Indonesia, the indirect negative portrayal of Indonesian Muslims as a whole, and of Indonesia itself, within the context of Woodall's piece troubles us. We are furthermore concerned that Tasha's Independence Charter School classmates (and Woodall's readers)

William C. Mellor, 79, the last John Wanamaker cadet - a group of young people who were schooled in the company creed at a summer retreat called Camp Wanamaker - died Tuesday of emphysema at Jeanes Hospital. Mr. Mellor was a longtime resident of Burholme. Under the Wanamaker family, the chain sought employees - plucked from joblessness during the Depression - who would stay for life. From 1900 to the start of World War II, the company owned a 13-acre camp on Barnegat Bay, N.J., where professionals trained young cadets in the genteel art of sales.

After Fabio Martinez opened his satellite-television shop in the 6500 block of Rising Sun Avenue in April, one of the shops nearby was robbed at knifepoint, an incident that scared the store's owner so much that he didn't reopen for days. Last week, the owner of the restaurant across the street and one of her employees were killed in what police believe was a robbery. Now Martinez, who signed a one-year lease, is wondering about his safety and his livelihood. "I'm not a scaredy-cat, but it's getting bad and I'm a little worried," Martinez said.