Catonsville’s Ebersole had a big impact on education

Reading about the recent passing of Dr. Benjamin P. Ebersole, a well respected and progressive educator, brought back memories of one of the few advocates that African-American Baltimore County Public school students and parents had in the 1960s.

Growing up in Catonsville, I attended an all-Black elementary school, The Banneker School. In 7th grade, I attended Catonsville Junior High School, where one of my earliest white friends was Dr. Ebersole’s son, Bradley. Brad and I were close friends all throughout junior high, high school and college.

Brad went on to have a distinguished career in higher education, culminating as president of Washington State Community College.

Through this friendship, not only did I get to know Dr. Ebersole, his wife Shirley and Brad’s younger brothers, but my parents found an advocate who would not hesitate to correct the Baltimore County school system’s tendency to track African-American students away from advanced programs and classes.

His efforts, for which I and members of my family are grateful, have borne generational fruit. Discovering now that Dr. Ebersole was a roommate with the first African-American student at Elizabethtown College in 1947 (and that they remained friends for many years thereafter), says much about the man and his views on social justice and racial equality. Dr. Benjamin Ebersole’s legacy, in part, was to a “a more equitable trajectory” for the educational future for many.

Martin P. Welch, Baltimore The writer is a 1971 graduate of Catonsville High School.

Peale Center restoration deserves public’s support

A block from City Hall, on Holliday Street, one of Baltimore’s most historic buildings has stood decaying and all but doomed for decades. The good news, however, is that this 207-yearold landmark, profiled recently in The Baltimore Sun by Jacques Kelly, is a cutting-edge gift to Baltimore’s history and culture (“The Peale Center, Baltimore’s oldest museum, has new electricity, plumbing, and gaslights,” March 13).

Rembrandt Peale opened his “Museum and Gallery of Fine Arts” in 1814. The museum only lasted a few years, but the history of this handsome brick building, the first of its kind in the new nation, had just begun.

Over 175 years, it became Baltimore’s first city hall, an innovative but shortlived public school for black students and, finally, the first city museum. In the 1990s, the Baltimore City Life Museum grew nearby. The Peale handed over its collections.

When the City Life Museum closed up shop, the collections went to the Maryland Historical Society.

After 2010, a group of enterprising souls led by Jim Dilts sought to save the all but deserted building. As the then-president of the Maryland Historical Society, I received visits looking for support. Like so many of my colleagues, I was skeptical. Who needed another rundown museum in a hard to get to downtown neighborhood?

Then, in 2017, new leadership arrived with a brand new paradigm. Within months, the old, dusty building was sputtering back to life.

A mermaid in a tank checked my reservation for an event. With magician David London as a guide, I chased the ghost of PT Barnum at a séance and went through a time portal to explore Rembrandt Peale’s 1818 room of curiosities. In the revived back garden, David was accompanied by his pet lizard as he discussed surrealism.

The new leadership was out to save the city’s intangible cultural heritage — those voices and stories that have been too often overlooked.

Over the past few years, I have watched in amazement as the Peale has burst to life. Concerts, lectures, pop-up exhibits, virtual tours, all of Baltimore has been invited to bring its stories. The Peale is now the proud steward of the largest collection of Baltimore digital stories in the world.

The Peale Center for Baltimore History and Architecture is a new kind of civic museum. So far, millions have been raised to make the center available to all. It needs only $400,000 to finish the job. Check it out and be inspired to support it at www.thepealecenter.org.

Burt Kummerow, Towson