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The season builds with Free Comic Book Day, box office blockbusters and local guy-turnedterminator J. August Richards as the cyborg Deathlok in “Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.”
The Gazette DAMASCUS | CLARKSBURG
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Wednesday, April 30, 2014
Students sing for soldiers
25 cents
Tom & Ray’s wins beer, wine license
Inmates take wing through art
Sixth-graders welcome military families at airport n
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Damascus landmark plans to start serving in May n
VIRGINIA TERHUNE
BY
STAFF WRITER
Lexi Fankhauser, a-sixth grader at Rocky Hill Middle School in Clarksburg, had watched soldiers come home on TV but it wasn’t the same as welcoming them back to the U.S. in person. “It was even more emotional,” said Fankhauser, one of about 45 students who surprised returning service men and women Thursday by singing patriotic songs as they walked one by one into the BaltimoreWashington International Thurgood Marshall Airport terminal. “I think they were shocked [and pleased] to see all these people singing,” she said. “It was a big surprise.” The students sang “God Bless America,” “The Star-Spangled Banner” and “America the Beautiful” under the direction of school choral director Paul Heinemann. Wearing red, white and blue T-shirts that said, “Rocky Hill, Welcome Home Troops,” they also handed handmade welcome home cards to the military personnel coming off the plane, which had picked up soldiers in Turkey, Italy and Germany. “I’ve been thinking about this for a long time,” Fankhauser said. “Some friends and family haven’t come back.” “It was really a happy experience to see all the families get back together and come home,” she said. Heinemann said he got the idea from his daughter’s Brownie troop, which gave boxes of cookies to returning service people last year at the airport. “I thought it was a cool thing to do, and I thought what we could do is sing,” said Heine-
See SING, Page A-10
VIRGINIA TERHUNE STAFF WRITER
Noyes Children’s Center in Rockville. The goal of the programs is to give inmates a creative outlet to encourage teamwork. Inmates can give something to the community in hopes that they will choose alternatives to returning to jail. “It’s a tool for expressing themselves in constructive ways,”
Tom & Ray’s Restaurant on Main Street is the latest restaurant to win a license to serve beer and wine in Damascus. The eatery won its license on April 17 and plans to begin serving beer and wine in mid May. Jerry’s Subs and Pizza on Ridge Road hope to be next. That restaurant has also applied for a license, with a hearing scheduled for June 5. “It’s new for me, and a little scary … but I’m excited about it, for the customers and me,” said Gary Bellinson , owner of Tom &Ray’s. Bellinson said he’s in the process of training his employees and has tentatively planned a Friday happy hour on May 17 to begin serving. “I’m doing this to compete and to change with the times and to offer more to our customers,” he said. “I thought it was time.” Bellinson said he plans to keep the same hours until he sees a rise in business. Current hours are 6 a.m. to 7:45 p.m. on Mondays through Saturdays and from 8 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. on Sundays. “This place is like a second home,” said regular customer Robert Burdette, Jr., 53, who has lived in Damascus all his life. “I like to come in for coffee, breakfast — there’re good people up here,” he said. “It’s a good place to talk to people and … catch up with things that are going on right now.” “I hope that it works for him and brings in new people,” Burdette said. “I guess we won’t really know until it gets going.” Residents voted in November 2012 to lift restrictions on the sale of alcohol in Damascus, which had prohibited restaurants from serving alcohol for 80 years. The vote enables restaurants to sell beer and wine, to be consumed only on site. In 2013, the Music Cafe, New York J&P Pizza and Ledo’s Pizza in Damascus were granted licenses and began serving beer and wine as a complement with meals. As intended, revenue from alcohol sales has remained low compared to food sales, according to owners. A Damascus institution, Bellinson’s father, Tom Bellinson opened Tom &Ray’s in 1960 with his business partner Ray Luhn. Gary Bellinson started working in the restaurant in 1972 and is now the sole owner. He also runs the Tom & Ray’s catering business. In recent decades, Damascus has grown and changed with the addition of fast food outlets, includ-
See MURAL, Page A-10
See LICENSE, Page A-10
PHOTOS BY DAN GROSS/THE GAZETTE
Above and below, inmates at the Montgomery County Correctional Facility in Boyds work on a large mural they designed. The mural will be hung in a homeless men’s shelter in Rockville.
Mural to be unveiled at Rockville nature center
BY
VIRGINIA TERHUNE
J
STAFF WRITER
ordan Deangela, 21, said she wasn’t much into art and painting when she was younger, but she now appreciates what it can do for people in jail and also in communities. Deangela and other women in the Montgomery County Correctional Facility in Boyds recently finished a mural with colorful owls and eagles for the Raptors Rule Festival at Meadowside Nature Center in Rockville. The 20-foot painted mural, which is 6 feet high, will be installed Sunday on a wall at the nature center. “Our creativity came alive,” said Deangela, one of eight participants in the Class Acts Arts program at the facility in Boyds. Working with other inmates on the five-panel mural relieved the chronic stress of being confined and also “helped make the time go by,” Deangela said. But she also said she wouldn’t have enjoyed it much if it wasn’t
also going to be on display for the enjoyment of the community. “We’re thrilled with the work the women at the Boyds facility have done,” said naturalist Julie Super. “It really adds a wow factor. It’s really what our nature center is all about, the birds of prey.” Based in Silver Spring, Class Acts Arts is a nonprofit that employs professional artists and musicians to work with inmates at the jail in Boyds and at the Alfred D.
Leggett seeks $41 million more for schools School officials: Funding gap still would cause project delays n
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LINDSAY A. POWERS STAFF WRITER
Montgomery County Executive Isiah Leggett is recommending the county direct about $41.3 million more than he originally proposed toward school construction projects. The extra funds would produce a total of
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Gaithersburg woman turns diabetes diagnosis into opportunity to help others.
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more than $1.5 billion for Montgomery County Public Schools’ capital improvement program for fiscal years 2015 through 2020, compared to Leggett’s original proposal in January of about $1.1 billion. Leggett’s recommendation to increase county funding for the school system follows unsuccessful efforts in the General Assembly to give Montgomery $20 million more a year in state funding for school construction projects. School board President Philip Kauffman said Monday the extra money Leggett is recommending would help the school system “some-
what,” but still leaves a significant funding gap. “There still will be significant delays to projects across the county,” he said. Before Leggett released his recommendation, the County Council’s Education Committee approved Monday a plan aimed at addressing the roughly $230 million gap between the school system’s request for capital funds and Leggett’s original proposal. Council President Craig L. Rice (D-Dist. 2) of Germantown said the recommended fund-
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Gary Bellison and staff serve breakfast to patrons at Tom & Ray’s Restaurant on Tuesday morning in Damascus. Bellison talks with customer Roger Watkins of Damascus during a lull between breakfast and lunch.
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