Living History Honors

To persons whose lives exemplify the civic value of community involvement and enhancement

The 2023 Honorees are:

Judge Robert Bell moved to Baltimore with his mom and a child from Rocky Mount, NC. and would graduate from Dunbar Senior High in 1960. That year, Bell volunteered with a few others to participate in a sit-in at Hooper’s Restaurant, protesting segregation. He was arrested and convicted and became the lead defendant for a landmark appeals case. Bell v. Maryland was argued before the U.S. Supreme Court and eventually ended racial segregation in Maryland. He graduated from Morgan State in 1963 as Salutatorian with degrees in history and political science. He was active in student government, a member of the honor society and of the Alpha Phi Omega Fraternity. In 1966, he became the first student from Morgan to attend Harvard Law, receiving a JD in 1969. That year, Bell passed the Maryland State Bar and became the first African American associate hired by Piper & Marbury. In 1975, he received his first appointment on the District Court of Maryland for Baltimore City where he served until 1984. He was appointed to the Court of Special Appeals in Maryland, until 1991. In 1996, Bell was appointed Chief Judge of the Court of Appeals by Maryland Governor Parris Glendening, the first African American to be named the state’s chief jurist. He retired from the Maryland Court of Appeals in July 2013.

Frank Burd

Frank Burd is a graduate of West Point serving his first commission as an intelligence officer from 1956-60 with the Thirteenth Air Force, focusing on Southeast Asia. After the military, he earned both a master’s and a Ph.D. in political science at the University of Chicago and was a founding faculty member when the University of Maryland, Baltimore County was established in 1966. He served as chair of its Department of Political Science, and director of the International Studies Center there until his retirement after 34 years. In 1980, Dr. Burd was a founding member of the Baltimore Council on Foreign Affairs, a non-profit aimed at providing to the greater Baltimore region “a forum to learn directly from diplomats, generals and academics - even the occasional spy - how deeply intertwined the political, economic and military affairs of the roughly 195 countries around the world really are.” The Council is a purely local organization in programming, governance and support, and is a private, not-for-profit, nonpartisan, non-position-taking, open membership, public service association.

Burt Kummerow

Burt Kummerow graduated from the University of Maryland, College Park and has been studying Maryland and American history ever since. From 1977 to 1994 he was the Director of Interpretation, and then Executive Director of Historic St. Mary’s City. In 1994, he became the founding director of the Museum of Civil War Medicine in Frederick; he was the CEO and President of the Maryland Historical Society (now the Maryland Center for History and Culture) from 2009 to 2014. Through the local company he founded over twenty-five years ago, Historyworks, Inc., Kummerow has been a multifaceted public historian, producing books, TV shows and museum exhibits to bring history to the general public. Through his work, Kummerow helped to found the living history movement in the United States, which incorporates historical tools, activities and dress into an interactive presentation that gives observers and participants a sense of stepping back in time. In 2017, he became the founding director of Maryland’s Four Centuries Project, organized to lay the groundwork for a commemoration of Maryland’s Quadricentennial in 2034.

William Wells

Starting with an entry-level position at the Madison Rec Center in 1969, climbing the ladder to senior director in 1974 and serving until 2002 — 32 years in all — Wells most notably coached basketball and organized leagues with some of Baltimore’s greatest players on the courts at 1401 E. Biddle St. In addition, he directed other sports, art and music festivals, modern dance recitals and plenty more for the boys and girls who called the rec center a second home. “I always believed that most of the guys that came through grew up like myself,” Wells said. “I was from a broken home. There was 10 of us. So, I knew what they were going through and had a shared experience. And when I would see a kid struggling or something was going wrong, I would reach out and try to pull them in and get them on the right track.” On July 30, 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. the City of Baltimore will honor Coach Wells with a street naming ceremony at the corner of Biddle and Eden Streets.

Past Honorees, in alphabetical order:

Rafael Alvarez (2021)

Raymond Bahr (2022)

Clinton Bamberger (2011)

Willa Bickham and Brendan Walsh (2010)

Hon. Clarence W. Blount (2002)

Maria Broom (2014)

Eddie C. and C. Sylvia Brown (2011)

Agnes Callum (2007)

Nathan Carter (2003)

John Ciekot (2018)

Mary Pat Clarke (2017)