Attack

For more than 20 years, my family and I have lived in the Smithsburg area, just a few miles from the presidential retreat at Camp David. On Sundays we'd sometimes drive past it to look at the deer in the state park that surrounds the compound. It was not until the attacks of this past Sept. 11 that I began to think about the possibility that Camp David - and possibly the entire area - might be a terrorist target. In the days soon after the attack, we could hear the roar of the fighters circling, and in the early mornings as my wife and I walked on the Smithsburg High School track, I imagined that a jetliner might swoop over South Mountain to drop a bomb or a load of nasty bacteria.

"I've seen a few ads in the paper about the reunion of old Girls' Club members on May 21, to be held from 3 to 5 at the Girls' Inc. building. I would like to add that any members of the Morning Glories, who met at the Girls' Club more than 30 years ago, are urged to attend. Some of the group were alumni, but we also expanded the group to include friends of alumni also. We made homemade Easter candy each year for all the kids in the club, and did other services for Girls' Club. Several were regular volunteer workers, and there were some who were not members, whose girls attended the club.

The death of a Maryland man who participated in Tough Mudder in Berkeley County joins a growing number of fatalities linked to similar obstacle course challenge events held across the nation. Avishek Sengupta, 28, was pronounced dead at Inova Fairfax Hospital in Falls Church, Va., on Sunday after participating in Tough Mudder's Mid-Atlantic Spring event on Saturday at Peacemaker National Training Center. Police have said Sengupta, of Ellicott City, Md., was submerged in a pool at one of the event's obstacles for too long.

An Ellicott City, Md., man died Sunday at a Virginia hospital after participating in the Tough Mudder endurance series in Berkeley County on Saturday, police said. Avishek Sengupta, 28, was pronounced dead at Inova Fairfax Hospital in Falls Church, Va., Berkeley County Sheriff's Deputy Sgt. Ted Snyder said Monday. Sengupta's death was ruled accidental by the Virginia medical examiner's office in Manassas, Va., which said Monday afternoon that drowning was the cause of death. Sengupta had to be removed from a fairly deep pool at the “Walk the Plank” aquatic obstacle where it appears he was submerged for too long, according to Snyder.

With the number of World War II veterans dying at the rate of more than 600 per day, it was a rare occasion to have two veterans of the conflict together in Chambersburg on Thursday. World War II veteran and best-selling author of “Hell's Guest,” Col. Glenn Frazier, 89, was the guest speaker at the Rotary Club meeting at The Orchards Restaurant. He shared his experiences of fighting a losing effort to save the Philippine Island of Luzon from the Japanese to the infamous six-day Bataan Death March and three years of torture in Japanese prisoner of war camps.

CHAMBERSBURG, Pa. - Almost five years after the Christmas night stun gun attack on his estranged wife that sent him to state prison, a York, Pa., man was back in Franklin County Court this week seeking a new trial. Robert Earl Benchoff, 46, is serving a four-to-20-year state prison sentence for burglary, criminal trespass and simple assault for the Dec. 25, 1994, incident at the Hamilton Township home of Robin Benchoff. A jury convicted him in an August 1995 trial. Benchoff is serving an additional two to 12 years for unrelated charges of interfering with the custody of children, to which he had pleaded guilty, according to court records.

A Washington County Circuit jury on Thursday acquitted Charles Ransom Greenwalt III of charges stemming from a March 15, 1998, knife fight in which four people were injured. After a daylong trial, the jury deliberated for 90 minutes before acquitting the former Cascade resident of two counts of first-degree assault, four counts of second-degree assault, two counts of reckless endangerment, and four counts of possession of a deadly weapon with intent to injure. Greenwalt testified that he acted in self-defense.

Fifty or 60 years ago, the government wasn't as good at record keeping as it is today, Clyde Stair told me. Many babies were born at home, he said. Doctors and not the hospitals issued birth certificates, so it was easier to claim you were older than you were. But Stair and the men I interviewed recently didn't lie about their ages to buy beer, but to put their lives on the line in the U.S. military. And the five I spoke to last month at the Greencastle, Pa., VFW post were not unique.

One of two men convicted in the 2011 stabbing death of a 21-year-old man and wounding of another was sentenced Monday in Berkeley County Circuit Court to life in prison plus another 40 years. James Glenn Cross Jr., 34, along with co-defendant Thomas Anthony Grantham, 36, were convicted in June of second-degree murder, attempted murder and malicious assault in the slaying of Andre Jackson and the wounding of Jacques Taylor. On Monday, Cross was ordered by 23rd Judicial Circuit Judge Christopher C. Wilkes to serve 40 years in prison for the second-degree murder charge and life in prison for having been convicted of a third felony offense at his trial in June.

A Berkeley County jury on Monday found James G. Cross Jr. and Thomas A. Grantham guilty of second-degree murder, attempted murder and malicious assault in the stabbing death of one man and the serious wounding of another. Cross, 33, and Grantham, 36, both of Martinsburg, were indicted on first-degree murder in the slaying of Andre Jackson, 21, of Hedgesville, W.Va., and the wounding of Jacques Taylor of Kearneysville, W.Va. The jury deliberated 2 1/2 hours Friday afternoon and three hours Monday morning.