A week after Maryland Gov. Wes Moore admitted that he inaccurately claimed to be the recipient of a prestigious military award years ago, veterans in the state he runs remain divided on the gravity of the situation.

For some who have served in the Armed Forces, the fact that the state’s 63rd governor incorrectly stated on an internship application 18 years ago that he was awarded a Bronze Star for his service with the U.S. Army’s 82nd Airborne Division represents a nearly unpardonable breach of military ethics. Others say that while the misrepresentation was not ideal, it’s just as important to measure it against the backdrop of the charismatic politician’s otherwise exemplary service record.

Both military tradition and federal law make it clear that claiming military honors one did not earn is a serious violation of protocol. The federal Stolen Valor Act, which was signed into law by President Barack Obama in 2013, even makes it a crime to do so for some military awards (though not specifically for the Bronze Star).

“Veterans generally hold a very dim view of individuals who falsely claim medals or otherwise lie about military service because they lay claim to honors that should be reserved for individuals who actually risked their lives on behalf of the country.” said Mark Moyar, a professor of military history at Hillsdale College in Michigan.

But in the view of many in Moore’s adopted home state, not all mistakes in documenting one’s military service are created equal.

“I agree that it was not appropriate for Governor Moore to claim an award that he had not received based on an indication from a superior officer that he was going to receive it,” said Frank Armiger, a military historian and the national executive director of the 29th Division Association, an advocacy group for one of Maryland’s most storied fighting forces. “From the other perspective, however, the fact that he served in the Army – that he served in an elite paratrooper unit and performed extremely well there — that’s what I look at more than this faux pas around the Bronze Star. I see all that as important context.”

Moore has long made his military service a centerpiece of his personal biography. He has described — in “The Other Wes Moore” (2010) and “The Work” (2015), both bestselling memoirs — how attending military school as a youth and experiencing life in the Army helped endow him with a sense of purpose and spawned in him the understanding of leadership that has driven him to the pinnacle of state politics.

According to his writings and various biographical sketches, he led paratroopers in special operations as a captain in the elite 82nd Airborne Division of the U.S. Army in Afghanistan in 2005 and 2006. And Moore famously stressed his military background as a gubernatorial candidate, echoing a legendary military motto in coining his gubernatorial slogan — “Leave No One Behind.”

But questions about how Moore, Maryland’s first Black governor, has represented that service have dogged him, including during his campaign for the State House. On Aug. 29, the New York Times confirmed a long-swirling rumor that he had claimed on an application for a prestigious White House internship in 2006 that he’d earned a Bronze Star — but no military record showed he’d ever received one.

The Times story also mentioned two instances in which Moore failed to correct television interviewers who mentioned the Bronze Star assertion, once in 2008 and once in 2010.

Moore has since expressed contrition, calling the misrepresentation an “honest mistake.” He is quoted recalling that a superior officer had encouraged him to make the Bronze Star claim because the officer expected Moore to receive one. Moore also apologized for failing to correct interviewers who repeated the Bronze Star claim.

He also came under fire on the campaign trail in 2022 for failing, on earlier occasions, to contradict interviewers who called him a Baltimore native and a member of the Maryland Football Hall of Fame, which doesn’t exist.

Politicians on both sides of the aisle last week expressed support for the Democratic governor, considered a rising star on the national scene. And some Marylanders who have knowledge of the military say the bureaucracy around awards can be notoriously byzantine and confusing.

“Having spent 24 years in the Army, I became well acquainted with the idiosyncrasies of the military administration and awards system, which certainly could be baffling at times,” Kurt A. Surber, a District Commander with the Veterans of Foreign Wars who is based in Anne Arundel County, said in an email to The Baltimore Sun.

“I believe that Gov. Moore did what most soldiers probably would have done in his situation: he included information in his application packet, based on the assurances of his superior officers, whom he trusted. Assurances to the contrary, in the end, it appears the award didn’t make it through the process, but that only became evident after the fact.”

Armiger, meanwhile, said he had encountered far more egregious cases of misrepresentation during his tenure with the 29th Division Association, a nonprofit with a worldwide reach. And he recounted how group officials had allowed one such man to remain after he sent them a letter of contrition.

“You could tell from the letter that it was very heartfelt,” the Towson resident said, adding that Moore acknowledged and apologized for these issues“] almost as soon as the Times article came out. “I think he took the right action. That’s a refreshing thing in this day and age.”

The Maryland branch of another veterans group, the Veterans of Foreign Wars, took a similar position.

“Governor Moore’s willingness to explain the situation, taking accountability and apologizing for his mistake 18 years ago, is all we can ask for,” a spokesperson for the organization said in a statement. “The VFW Department of Maryland believes this matter should be considered closed.”

Several veterans and civilian employees of the military contacted by The Sun declined to comment, citing the sensitivity of the matter given Moore’s continuing role as commander in chief of the Maryland National Guard.

Others were less reserved — and much less forgiving.

Wes Moore served with honor. He doesn’t need a Bronze Star to prove it. | STAFF COMMENTARY

Glenn F. Williams is a retired Army major who for 18 years worked as a senior historian for the U.S. Army Center of Military History in Washington, which decides on the appropriate use of history and records throughout the Army. Williams said any soldier should know the basic rules for seeking and receiving military honors, and he sees no reason why a man as knowledgeable as Moore should be exempt.

“I understand he was recommended for it. But you don’t assume that you’re getting it,” Williams said. “I never got a Bronze Star, and it pisses me off that someone says he got one who didn’t. He knows the difference between being recommended and being awarded. This is not an honest mistake.”

To Williams, Moore’s admitted lapse calls into question the veracity of other elements in his resume.

“I never lied about any of the awards I got, and I can show you that I have orders on my record of service for each one I wear on my uniform,” he said.

Williams said he believes many soldiers and veterans in the state would echo his thoughts if they weren’t wary of repercussions.

Whether the uproar affects Moore politically remains to be seen. A Morning Consult poll taken in late July found him to be America’s third most popular governor, and a speech he gave at the Democratic National Convention last month enhanced his profile as a rising Democratic star.

Moyar said it might seem at first glance that the situation would damage Moore, especially among veterans. But he wonders whether American voters haven’t simply accepted that “politicians in general are known to stretch the truth.”

Armiger, too, said he believes voters might be more concerned about whether Moore aligns with them politically than how carefully he observed an element of military protocol.

“I’m being blunt here, but I believe it can depend on who you are, on your political perspective,” he said.

Though Williams sees Moore’s situation as a “clear case of stolen valor,” he, too, wonders whether it will hurt the governor’s electoral standing in a state that skews reliably to the left even as it boasts a storied military history.

“It’s Maryland,” he said.

The draft permit, which MDE issued Thursday, would allow CSX to continue running the 10-acre site on Benhill Avenue in the South Baltimore community for another five years.

Under its terms, though, the Jacksonville, Florida-based company would have to take three actions aimed at reducing the pollution it creates: build a barrier to prevent coal dust from reaching the surrounding community ,install a mechanical system that would apply water to incoming rail cars laden with coal, and enhance water-application systems at the sheds where coal is unloaded.

Applying water to dusty materials can hold particles in place rather than allowing them to be picked up by winds and dispersed, Chris Hoagland, the director of MDE’s air and radiation administration, said Thursday.

“The regulatory standard is that [CSX] has to take reasonable precautions to reduce dust,” Hoagland said. “We’re proposing those as reasonable precautions.”

CSX’s Curtis Bay Coal Piers is one of two terminals in Baltimore that bring in coal mined largely in the Appalachian mountains and load it aboard ships and barges for export to users, mostly overseas. The other is in the Canton Industrial Area, close to the harbor tunnels’ northern entrances. Baltimore is second in the U.S. to the port in Norfolk, Virginia, in the volume of coal it handles. Last year, Baltimore shipped 23 million tons of coal, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

MDE officials won’t issue a final, formal proposal until after Oct. 10, the date they plan to field comments from the public at an open hearing at the Curtis Bay Recreation Center.

The agency hadn’t shared the draft permit directly with CSX as of Thursday afternoon, but company spokeswoman Sheriee Bowman said the firm was studying it already.

“CSX is currently reviewing the draft permit issued today by the Maryland Department of the Environment (MDE) to renew our air permit to operate at the Curtis Bay Piers in Baltimore,” Bowman said in an emailed statement to The Baltimore Sun. “As we have previously stated, CSX is committed to environmental compliance and strives to protect the environment and the safety and health of the public, our customers, and employees in all aspects of our operations.”

The document’s release is the latest development in a saga that has sparked protests, triggered an exhaustive scientific investigation and led to a class-action lawsuit.

It was on Dec. 30, 2021, that an explosion rocked the coal plant and the surrounding neighborhood. Investigators found it had resulted from a buildup of methane inside a tunnel at the facility.

The blast released harmful pollutants such as nitrogen oxides, carbon monoxide and sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere, violating Maryland’s Environment Article, and MDE found that CSX had not taken “reasonable precautions” to prevent the explosion.

No one was injured in the incident, but the blast spread more coal dust through the heavily industrialized residential community and left many of its inhabitants outraged.

“We cannot live safely with a massive coal pile less than 1,000 feet from our homes and rec center,” Curtis Bay resident Terriq Thompson said in a news release at the time.

MDE reached a settlement with CSX nearly a year later: The company with a $66 billion market valuation was assessed a $15,000 penalty and ordered to pay $100,000 to the South Baltimore Community Land Trust, a local nonprofit, for an environmental project. And the Occupational Health and Safety Administration hit the company with a $121,000 fine for worker safety violations it said led up to the explosion.

But resident groups pushed back, many arguing that the penalties paled in comparison to the damage caused by the blast. Two Curtis Bay residents filed a class-action lawsuit against CSX. The company agreed to a $1.75 million settlement with those who lived or owned land in the community at the time and were able to join the class by July 18. The case awaits approval by a U.S. District Court judge.

Meanwhile, MDE joined an array of local organizations — including the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, the University of Maryland and the Community of Curtis Bay Association — over a course of months last year in conducting a scientific study of pollution in the surrounding area.

The study found, among other things, that coal dust is present throughout the community, that it “finds its way into the community on a day-to-day basis and is correlated with both activity at the coal terminal and wind direction,” and that “the Curtis Bay community is overburdened by air pollution, with the community sensor network measuring average particle pollution levels that are higher than at nearby MDE regulatory monitors.”

The study led to protests by Curtis Bay residents and environmental advocates calling for MDE to deny CSX’s application for a renewal of its five-year air quality permit.

CSX hired analysts to evaluate the study, and they found it “flawed,” arguing in part that it tested for indicators of coal dust, rather than coal dust itself. The analysts’ report for CSX “indicates the community is in attainment with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency National Ambient Air Quality Standards” for particulate matter, Bowman wrote after the 112-page report was published.

Still, MDE’s Hoagland said its findings influenced the conditions the state agency laid out in the draft permit.

And MDE Secretary Serena McIlwain said the agency is focused on making sure any permit benefits the community.

“We have been listening to the residents and will continue to seek their input before making a final decision,” she said in a statement. “We are committed to environmental justice for Curtis Bay and communities across Maryland. As with any permit application, our priorities are to protect the environment and public health.”

David Jones, a board member of the Curtis Bay community group, said Thursday that many members were discussing the details of the proposed permit, and that some of those who took part in the protests sounded happy the state was requiring CSX to make some changes.

“They’re saying we’re at least part of the conversation now, and that it’s better than not getting anything,” Jones said.

But Jones, 44, who grew up in Curtis Bay and has lived there for 35 years, wasn’t buying that argument. He believes the MDE should have denied CSX the permit outright and said experience has taught him to question whether the company would even comply with the new terms even if it signed on to them.

Entities found in noncompliance with legal agreements made with MDE face a fine of $25,000 per day per violation, said Hoagland, adding the agency can sue for the money in civil court.

But Jones said such penalties would be a “drop in the bucket” to a juggernaut like CSX that has been reaping profits from Curtis Bay for generations.

He’ll be making his voice heard at the Oct. 10 meeting, he said, but he fears the company has so much clout it won’t make a great deal of difference.

“I hope I’m wrong, but I think they’re going to continue to play their dirty game at the expense of this community,” he said. “At the end of the day, they know they can.”

The Nuclear Ship (N.S.) Savannah — the first nuclear-powered ship ever built explicitly for peacetime purposes — has been moored in a quiet corner of the Canton Marine Terminal in Baltimore since 2008.

Constructed at the height of the Cold War as part of a government program aimed at demonstrating the nondestructive uses of nuclear power, the sleek 21,800-ton vessel achieved just that for nearly a decade, logging nearly half a million nautical miles and visiting 45 countries.

But the Savannah’s life in Baltimore could soon be coming to an end. The agency that owns and operates it — the U.S. Maritime Administration, or MARAD, a division of the federal transportation department — is nearing the end of the lengthy and complicated process of nuclear decommissioning, or removing enough vestiges of its nuclear capabilities to satisfy the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

That means that at some point in the fairly near future it will be open for “conveyance,” in federal parlance — transfer of ownership to another entity — to be used in whatever fashion and for whatever purpose that entity decides, so long as it entails preservation of the ship.

Erhard W. Koehler, senior technical advisor for the Savannah, says that doesn’t mean some otherwise bored billionaire can write a check and have it towed home for his or her own amusement.

But it does mean MARAD has made it known that it’s willing to donate the formerly nuclear-driven merchant ship to a science or history museum as a potential educational enterprise, to a state or municipality as a historic attraction, or to another entity for commercial or other use.

MARAD could also lease the Savannah for similar use or even convey ownership to an organization that mainly wants to keep its signature elements intact, Koehler said, whether it be the tall, narrow chamber that housed its 74-megawatt nuclear reactor, its open bar and 75-seat dining room with their space-age, “Jetsons”-like decor, or its kitchen that contains an early, water-cooled incarnation of a microwave oven.

Those who have spoken with MARAD on the subject so far include officials from Hudson County, New Jersey, and from the seaport cities of Savannah, Georgia, and Wilmington, North Carolina.

“I feel good about the prospects,” said Koehler, who has directed operations on the Savannah since 1993 and has been touting the ship’s virtues at meetings around the country for months. “I feel that there’s enough interest out there, enough of a recognition that the ship is really in a turnkey condition — including interest in one of its most attractive features, the preserved components of the nuclear power plant — that I have confidence that someone out there will take it.”

The Savannah is probably less well known to the general public than many of its sister ships in and around Baltimore, whether it be the USS Constellation and the LV 116 Chesapeake, which are moored in the Inner Harbor and host regular visitors’ hours, or the S.S. John Brown, the Liberty ship berthed beside the Savannah that can be chartered for excursions.

But those who have have taken any of the monthly Saturday tours of the Savannah, or even one of the occasional joint tours of the Savannah and the John Brown sponsored by the American Nuclear Society, can attest to its special appeal to nuclear-power aficionados and maritime history buffs as well as civilians with a taste for the sleek, simple lines of midcentury interior design.

Approach it from the docks and you’ll see its yacht-like white hull, one side marked with an image of electrons zipping around a nucleus. Head up a set of steel steps, go across a walkway, and enter the reception area, and you’ll spot a flag of the old Atomic Energy Commission, an orange Naugahyde sofa that might have looked at home in the flying saucer on “Lost in Space,” and a placard announcing that the ship “demonstrates the intent of the United States to use Atomic Energy for Peaceful Purposes.”

The notice is signed by Lyndon Johnson, though that’s only because Johnson was president when the sign was made. It was President Dwight D. Eisenhower who in 1955 developed and promoted the idea as part of Atoms for Peace, the initiative he spearheaded in part to quell public fears about nuclear armament in the wake of the horrors of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan and the nuclear tests of the early 1950s. The ship, which took four years to build and test, went into service in 1962. (The total cost — about $47 million, or more than $473 million in today’s dollars — included $2.3 million for the reactor alone.)

With cabins for 60 travelers and seven water-tight cargo holds, the Savannah — named for a historic steamship of the same name and the port city they shared — “offered unparalleled speed and endurance” with a “nuclear propulsion system [that] allowed it to cover extensive distances without refueling,” thus “showcasing the potential use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes,” according a website for the NS Savannah Association, a nonprofit that  “promotes, protect and preserve the world’s first nuclear powered merchant ship.”

The ship spent the next three years as a passenger-cargo liner, ferrying its charges up and down the American East Coast, throughout the Gulf states, and to Germany, Holland and the British Isles. It sometimes docked for days, serving as an exhibition space for informational programs. (Carson’s show featured it as part of a “Nuclear Week in New York” extravaganza in 1969.) It operated as a cargo-only carrier through the late 1960s and was removed from service to save money in 1971.

Those who know the Savannah say that legacy gives it a one-of-a-kind profile.

“The Savannah represents a unique moment and artifact relating to the Cold War, in which the concept of atomic power for peace directly conflicted with atoms for war,” Paul F. Johnston, the curator of maritime history at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of History in Washington, said in an email to The Baltimore Sun. “It was a symbol of our nation’s wealth, power and peaceful global aspirations during times of conflict.”

The ship was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1982 and named a National Historic Landmark in 1991. It was granted the latter honor even though it was less than the normally required age of 50 thanks to its “exceptional national significance,” according to a National Park Service study.

Since its days of active use, the Savannah has been owned by and berthed in the city of Savannah, acquired by the federal government, and been moored in places ranging from Galveston, Texas, to Newport News, Virginia. MARAD moved it to Baltimore, where it has been anchored in Canton under a long-term contract with the Vane Bros. maritime services company since 2008.

Seeing the vessel through to a new era is a slow and complicated undertaking, one that requires “safely taking the facility out of service, removing the fuel, and then ultimately, in a very careful and controlled process, dismantling and remediating the [nuclear] structures and components, disposing of the resultant waste in licensed facilities, and restoring the site to a condition where its [nuclear] license can be terminated and the residual radioactivity does not pose any threat to the environment or to the public or future residents” Koehler says.

MARAD officials have already achieved most of that. The reactor was removed and taken to a nuclear disposal site in Utah in 2022, leaving enough of its “signature components” in place to keep it compliant with National Historic Preservation Act, the document that covers its standing as a federal historic landmark.

Once Nuclear Regulatory Commission surveyors formally approve its condition, MARAD will be able to apply for termination of the ship’s nuclear license, a ruling that would free the agency to “button the ship up and get it ready to go wherever it’s going to go,” in Koehler’s words.

If the bureaucratic dominoes fall into place, Koehler says termination should happen in October of next year, freeing the Savannah for conveyance by March 2026.

Whoever acquires it will have a unique facility. Even now, guests can view its massive engine room, peek into the cylinder that once held the nuclear reactor, step into the carpeted multi-purpose room that houses speeches and seminars. and visit a dining room that boasts such treasures as a floor-to-ceiling curved wall sculpture, “Fission,” created by the French artist Pierre Bourdelle. And Johnston, who visits often, says the multi-colored electroluminescent wall sculpture behind the bar and the mosaic swimming pool just outside the window have a special draw.

Such details will make it hard for some to let go of the ship, should it end up somewhere else. Dundalk native Robert Adams  first discovered it in 2009, became a tour guide in 2017, and spent so much time aboard learning its its history and technological profile that he eventually became president of the association, a role he still holds.

It will be heartbreaking, he said, should the vessel be moved elsewhere, but all he really wants is the best for the facility his wife jokingly refers to as “the other woman.”

“If someone takes her and is doing a good job with her, we may be able to mark our job as finished,” he said. “I’ll do everything I can for her.”

Disappointing as the outcome was, the 26-year-old left-hander seemed at peace an hour after the final out as he took a microphone on a makeshift stage in front of thousands of people in the lower bowl at Camden Yards and spoke of what matters to him — and many of his new teammates — even more than the outcome of a game in the battle for first place in the American League East.

When he was swapped from the Miami Marlins to the Orioles at the trade deadline two weeks ago, Rogers said at the Orioles’ first Faith Night promotion, it brought an upsetting level of uncertainty, but trusting in his Christian faith calmed the waters and left him feeling he was exactly where he was meant to be.

“The timing — the first Faith Night, my first start in Baltimore, that’s God [working] right there,” Rogers said with an amazed shake of the head, to the cheers of the roughly 6,000 people who stayed after the game for the event. “To be around such a good group of guys, such good Christian guys … this is really fun, and I’m so happy to be here in Baltimore.”

Rogers was one of six Orioles players who took part in the festivities, a celebration of faith that featured a live set of songs by Reach Worship, the house band for Reach Church, a nondenominational house of worship in Newark, Delaware.

With several O’s remaining in the home dugout to listen, the five-member group unfurled numerous harmonious, high-energy praise songs for a mostly orange and black-clad crowd that sang along, many with their arms upraised, with such popular Christian tunes as “Mighty to Save” and “Till I Met You.”

Longtime Orioles broadcaster Rob Long said he could have had the day off, but when he was told about the event he jumped at the invitation to take part.

“Let’s give the Orioles organization a hand for having the courage to put this on tonight,” Long said, sparking a standing ovation that lasted nearly a minute. And when Long said he was sure fans would learn something new and different about some of the ballplayers they cheer for, his words proved accurate.

Infielder Jordan Westburg, his right hand in a cast with the injury that will likely have him sidelined until late in the season, said that as a player in his first full year with the team, he has “never been in a clubhouse with so many players who love Jesus Christ and follow him every single day.” Westburg added that playing “for the glory of God” gives him the sense of clarity and freedom he needs to stay focused in a sport in which failure is a part of daily life.

First baseman-designated hitter Ryan O’Hearn, who introduced himself by saying, “My name is Ryan,” acknowledged having a case of nerves, as he said it was the first time he had ever spoken of his faith in a public forum. He quickly rose to the occasion, though, as he related the anxiety he has felt as he saw himself “growing older” by baseball standards and wondering where his career might be headed.

The 31-year-old quoted a favorite passage from the First Epistle of Peter in the New Testament that calls for remaining humble and “casting all your anxieties” on God — a verse he said had helped him to fret less about worldly timelines. “The stress and pressure I felt gave me a new sense of peace,” said O’Hearn, a hitter who has earned a reputation for driving in runs in the clutch.

All-Star shortstop Gunnar Henderson thanked the crowd for staying after the game and spoke of how “living in the Word” by reading the Bible daily reminds him that God comes before everything, even baseball, and injured relief pitcher Danny Coulombe said that even though he was raised in a Christian home, it took a pastor who challenged him to deepen his faith during his college years to help him develop a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.

“This — baseball — is important, but souls are the most important thing,” said Coulombe, who agreed that this version of the Orioles is blessed with an abundance of faithful Christians.

“This is the most faithful team I’ve ever been around,” he said.

In interviews before the game, Henderson said he has long read daily devotionals and used a Bible app on his phone, and he has devoted himself since two weeks before the All-Star break to reading at least a chapter of the New Testament daily.

And veteran catcher James McCann agreed the team has a strong Christian presence — as many as 15 players attend its Sunday chapel services, he said — but rather than practicing a “Bible-thumping” variety of faith, the group focuses more on “treating other people well” in a way that he says has the natural outgrowth of promoting togetherness and good feeling. “We’re truly 26 guys who love each other as brothers,” he said.

McCann’s testimony might have been the most dramatic. He asked crowd members to close their eyes as he told the story of a young couple who had decided to start a family, only to deliver a child who was stillborn. Taking the risk of trying again, they faced another tragedy when the mother suffered such extreme complications six weeks into her pregnancy that doctors told her their child had only a 1 in 4 chance of surviving — and that if he did survive he would be severely mentally or physically disabled.

When others suggested it might be the best idea to terminate the pregnancy, both parents declined, saying they were instead “putting their faith in God.”

“Open your eyes,” McCann said. “I was that child. From day one, God has been protecting me” — quite possibly including, perhaps, on July 29 when he suffered a broken nose when hit in the face with a 95-mph fastball in a game against the Toronto Blue Jays.

To the amazement of teammates and fans, he famously finished the game — and is back on the field after undergoing nasal realignment surgery.

“My goal,” McCann said, “is to share what God has done for me.”

Though the night was the first of its kind for the major league Orioles — the International League team that played in Baltimore under the same name between 1916 and 1953 hosted a number of interfaith events in the 1940s — it’s not new to big league baseball. Eighteen of the major leagues’ 30 teams sponsored versions of Faith Night events last season, according to Religion Unplugged, a Texas-based nonprofit news site. Most celebrated evangelical Christian themes.

Major league stars such as Los Angeles Dodgers pitching legend Clayton Kershaw, former St. Louis Cardinals slugger Albert Pujols and perennial Houston Astros All-Star Jose Altuve have taken part in such events.

Orioles officials said it was not intentional that their event, too, felt strongly Christian, as the club’s “group sales team reached out to groups of all faiths. That outreach will continue for any future faith nights our organization hosts.”

Nearly 3,000 tickets were sold for Faith Night “via group sales opportunities,” a team official said, though all fans were invited to come down near the field and watch. The lower two sections were filled between first and third bases, with others crowding in.

Members of faith groups in the stands said they paid $20 for seats that would otherwise have cost between $50 and $70, depending on the opponent.

To Brandon Still, a worship pastor from Newark, the price was just right. He and his wife, Tabitha, brought their three children with them for the game and the event, and though they were disappointed the O’s lost their 50th game against 70 wins, they said they were seeing the evening through more than a baseball lens.

“The night didn’t end in a victory, but as many of the players said tonight, the fact that you can conclude the evening to give God glory — and to have this amount of people here to see it all — that’s the win,” Still said.

Henderson, first baseman-outfielder Ryan O’Hearn, catcher James McCann and infielder Jordan Westburg are among the players expected to take part in Faith Night, a promotion the team is offering for anyone attending its home game against the Washington Nationals that evening.

After the final out is recorded, fans will be invited to stay and move down to the lower seating bowl at Camden Yards, an Orioles spokesperson said, where they’ll hear live music by Reach Worship, a Delaware-based church band that plays covers of well-known faith songs. The roster of players could change, the spokesperson said, but those present are expected to share thoughts about their faith lives with fans in the stands. Orioles broadcaster Rob Long will serve as emcee.

The evening is a local iteration of a trend that has taken hold in Major League Baseball in recent years. Eighteen of its 30 teams sponsored versions of Faith Night events last season, according to Religion Unplugged, a Texas-based nonprofit news site. They included the Atlanta Braves, St. Louis Cardinals, Colorado Rockies, Los Angeles Dodgers and Seattle Mariners. Most centered on the Christian faith.

Tuesday night’s event will be the first Faith Night at Camden Yards.

An array of big league stars have shared their testimonies at similar festivities, including Dodgers pitching legend Clayton Kershaw, former Cardinals slugger Albert Pujols and perennial Houston Astros All-Star Jose Altuve. Current Phillies catcher J.T. Realmuto and his wife, Lexi, are scheduled to host a “Faith and Baseball” night at Citizens Bank Park in Philadelphia before an Aug. 30 game.

Though it represents outreach to the area’s faith community, the Orioles said the event is aimed at any and all who attend the 6:35 p.m. game.

“Baseball is for everyone, and all are welcome at Faith Night,” a team spokesman, Jackie Harig, said in an email to The Baltimore Sun. “It is not a night focused on what you do or do not believe in. It is a night built on the idea of community and bringing people of all backgrounds together.”

Tickets were still available as of Sunday evening.

Anthony C. Scire Jr., an appeals judge with the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, ruled July 25 that Samuel A. Neale, a Hagerstown man whose name can be found on the muster rolls of a regiment that fought in two major battles in the War of 1812, was an American soldier in good standing and thus had the right to be granted a free tombstone for his grave.

The VA grants free headstones to any veteran of a war fought before 1990 who is buried in an unmarked grave. Neale has been buried in just such a grave at St. John’s Cemetery in Frederick since his death in June 1872.

VA officials had ruled, however, that Neale lacked the standing for recognition as a U.S. military veteran because the rank listed for him on those muster rolls – “servant” – was nonmilitary in nature, and because, as a member of a state unit, he was not in the employ of the federal government when his unit, the Washington County-based Tilghman’s Cavalry Regiment, took part in the Battle of Bladensburg and the Battle of North Point in 1814.

But Louis Giles, a retired NSA official and amateur student of the war, began taking up Neale’s case with VA officials in 2022. As Giles showed, under the rules of the Maryland militia at the time, Black men could be given no military titles no matter what duties they performed.

To Giles and others, that meant the VA was applying rules conceived and written during the slavery era that somehow had never been revised — and doing so amounted to a form of entrenched racism.

“Is a person in the VA discriminating against Blacks? I can’t say that. But whether they recognize it or not, if their policies are what they’ve told us, that’s certainly effective discrimination,” he said in an interview with The Baltimore Sun last month.

Giles also found newspaper accounts that show Neale taking the rare step, for a Black man, of appealing to the Maryland legislature for a military pension – and being granted one – in 1870, and others describe in vivid terms his actions during the war. They included his carrying surgical instruments into combat zones, wielding a weapon near active battlefields, and suffering an accidental gunshot wound.

VA officials rebuffed Giles several times over two-plus years. As a last effort, he applied for a hearing with the agency’s court of appeals and was granted a meeting with Scire in June.

“For the first time I got the feeling I was talking to someone who was listening carefully, and objectively, to the arguments,” Giles said at the time.

According to Scire’s ruling, the Maryland militia’s 1st Cavalry Regiment had in effect been federalized during the War of 1812 — summoned out of state duty and into federal service, as National Guard units often are during wartime today — and that made Neale a bona fide U.S. military veteran.

Scire also drew on the newspaper accounts about Neale — materials VA officials had earlier dismissed because they were unofficial documents— in piecing together a portrait of the Marylander’s service and postwar life.

“Mr. Neale was a member of a federalized unit which was being commanded by a lawfully appointed officer; wore a military uniform; carried arms openly; and operated within the laws and customs of war at the time,” he wrote. “Furthermore, extracts from official Maryland state files indicate that the Maryland State Legislature had recognized Mr. Neale as a Veteran for pension purposes based on his military service. Therefore, Mr. Neale is a Veteran, for VA purposes, based on his honorable active-duty wartime service with the United States Army during the War of 1812.”

As such, Scire added, Neale qualified for the free headstone, but at least in a practical sense, that ruling came too late. Giles, the president of the Society of the War of 1812 in Maryland, and supporters in the cause, had “grown tired of waiting” for approval from the VA, Neale said last month, and when a Frederick stone mason offered to supply a headstone this summer, the group accepted.

They installed it at a private ceremony in St. John’s Cemetery on July 26 — one day after Scire wrote his ruling but before a copy of the document could arrive at Giles’ home in Anne Arundel County. About 60 people attended.

The moment the stone was put in place, Giles says, the law no longer required the VA to supply one, and he notified a VA case officer of the news.

“I always believed that if I had the opportunity to appear before an impartial judge, the decision would support my views,” he said.  “To me, this should have been a slam-dunk from the beginning.  Not only did we have the muster roll, but supporting evidence far beyond what I have normally seen in 1812 era cases. I felt that the law clearly supported the judge’s decision.”

Representatives for the VA did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

A committee of members of St. Ann’s Catholic Church, a parish in the East Baltimore-Midway neighborhood, is proposing to purchase the massive Gothic building that has been its home for 152 years.

The archdiocese currently plans to close the church as part of Seek the City to Come, its campaign to reconfigure the footprint of the Catholic church in Baltimore City amid declining numbers in the pews, shrunken revenues and soaring maintenance costs.

The plan calls for 61 parishes in Baltimore and a few nearby suburbs to be merged into 30 worship and ministry sites. Church officials arrived at a final version in May following a two-year process that included in-person meetings with parish leaders and church members, drew on research by independent consultants, and featured numerous public hearings.

Like 30 other parishes, St. Ann’s would fold and its building would likely be put up for sale under the plan. Its assets would be transferred to St. Francis Xavier Church, a historic African American Catholic house of worship that is to become the headquarters of an enlarged parish in East Baltimore.

St. Wenceslaus, a historically Black church in Milton-Montford, would also be absorbed into the parish.

The St. Ann’s proposal calls for the current parish to buy its Gothic home and adjacent rectory from the archdiocese, then maintain the buildings and pay honoraria to retired priests for work that would include celebrating Sunday Masses, according to a copy obtained by The Sun.

The church would pay for the sale and maintenance out of the more than $920,000 it has in a bank account, according to a letter the group said it sent to Archbishop William E. Lori by certified mail Wednesday.

St. Ann’s built the reserve largely by selling the school building that housed the affiliated Mother Seton Academy for $750,000 two decades ago, letting the interest on the proceeds accrue, and sponsoring regular fundraising drives, including a number that took place during the pandemic.

“[In order] not to burden the Archdiocese with facility expenses and the crisis shortage of priests, which led to the Seek the City initiative, we would use our funds to maintain our church buildings and pay retired priests an honorarium (to supplement their less-than-adequate retirement income) to say Sunday and Holy Day Masses,” the letter reads. “We would dedicate our efforts to grow our congregation, utilizing this extended lifetime of St. Ann’s church family.”

A spokesperson for the archdiocese, Yvonne Wenger, said in an email to The Sun that the diocese hadn’t received the letter as of Friday afternoon.

The archdiocese’s communications director, Christian Kendzierski, said it would be premature to comment on such a proposal at this stage because decisions about realignment have yet to be formalized under canon law — and because in any case, the archdiocese will not consider proposals for property usage or sale until early next year.

Still, a group of long-standing parishioners who have adopted the name “Save St. Ann’s” said Thursday they believe the Seek the City process moved too quickly and that its organizers gave short shrift to the church’s unique identity and its place in the community.

The proposed closure of St. Ann’s, along with those of Blessed Sacrament in Pen-Lucy, St. Mary of the Assumption in Govans and St. Pius X in Towson, would mean “no Catholic presence along the entire Greenmount-York Road corridor,” said Erich March, the vice president of March Funeral Homes and a St. Ann’s trustee, a “dramatic departure” for a city that has boasted a strong Catholic presence since the 1690s.

Church member Sharon Johnson-Stewart said she believes Seek the City favors the growth of “megachurches” at the expense of smaller parishes with rich histories and closer ties to their communities.

She and others pointed out that St. Ann’s was the home church of Cardinal Lawrence Shehan, the Archbishop of Baltimore between 1961 and 1974 and the man who in 1974 ordained the Rev. Donald Sterling, the first Black man to be ordained a priest in the Baltimore archdiocese.

Further, Johnson-Stewart continued, the history-making continues. The church’s social justice committee has been “at the forefront” of a campaign to get six pioneers of the faith, including Baltimore’s own Mother Mary Lange, canonized as the first African American saints in the history of the Catholic Church.

Members of the group made the case in face-to-face meetings with Vatican representatives in Rome in 2023.

Another longtime parishioner, Ralph Moore, said St. Ann’s congregation is largely elderly, that many members have long planned to be laid to rest on the premises when the time comes, and that closing the church would require the disinterment of its founders, William and Mary Ann Kennedy, who are buried under its center aisle — an idea to which he said the Kennedys’ descendants strongly object.

Kennedy was a sea captain who plied the waters along Mexico’s east coast in the early 1800s. As the story goes, his ship, The Wanderer, was in the midst of a dangerous storm when he made God a vow that he would start a church one day if he and his crew were spared. One of the anchors from that ship is still on display at St. Ann’s.

The prevailing view was that members of St. Ann’s have been as fiscally responsible over the decades as the archdiocese has asked them to be, but that their success doesn’t seem to matter

“We’ve paid our rent, but we’re being evicted,” March said.

Kendzierski said the archdiocese empathizes with such feelings at St. Ann’s and anywhere else Seek the City is calling for adjustments.

“The Archdiocese understands that this may be a challenging time for our parishioners who will be experiencing change in their parish life,” he wrote. “We are praying that those who are facing these changes will embrace the newly formed parish and work together in their new community to create a vibrant and evangelizing center for worship and service.

“Once the letter is received it will be reviewed as part of the process. We are committed to thoroughly evaluating each submission to ensure that all deserving proposals receive the attention they deserve.”

“He’d obviously taken some drugs,” the faith leader said. “I told him, ‘You need to get out of here because I don’t want you to O.D. in this hole. I’m not going to be digging you out of this hole when everyone’s coming to church. And he left. He went on down the street.”

Such encounters are not unusual at Adams Chapel. The building stands yards away from a stretch of Garrison Boulevard long known as a haunt for prostitution. Residents say drug dealers and homeless people have flooded the neighborhood in recent years, with many congregating on the AME church grounds and on the litter-strewn property of an abandoned United Methodist church across the street. A man was shot to death Thursday night in the church’s front yard.

Houses of worship across the country face similar problems. The Watchman, an Indiana-based firm that specializes in training church security teams, keeps a database of crimes committed on or near church grounds in the U.S. dating to 2017. The site links to dozens of news accounts of shootings, stabbings, armed robberies and assaults in and around churches.

The Family Research Council, a nonprofit evangelical think tank based in Washington, D.C., released a report this year that documented 915 crimes committed against churches in the U.S. between 2018 and 2023. They included more than 700 acts of vandalism, 135 attempts at arson, 32 bomb threats and 22 gun-related offenses. The 436 hostile incidents it cited in 2023 were more than double the previous year’s total.

Pathological behavior

The trend has made itself felt in Baltimore. In November 2021, an assailant robbed and pistol-whipped the pastor of St. Leo’s Catholic Church blocks away from his Little Italy church. Days later, another attacker killed a beloved member of Southern Baptist Church in Broadway East, in one of the church’s bathrooms. And in May, a pastor shot a 59-year-old man police say was burglarizing a vacant church building on South Mount Street in South Baltimore. The place had been home to the Praise Cathedral Pentecostal Church.

“What happened at Adams Chapel is indicative of what’s going on all around the country and has been going on for quite some time,” said the Rev. Rodney Hudson, the pastor of Ames United Methodist Church in Sandtown-Winchester and Metropolitan UMC in Harlem Park, both West Baltimore communities long plagued by high crime rates. “There’s no respect for human life, for the sanctity of houses of worship or for community. I believe all of this is related to how our society has surrendered all sense of morality in this time we live in.”

Bishop Donte L. Hickman, the senior pastor at Southern Baptist, had to help his community grieve and deal with the senseless killing of his congregant, 69-year-old Evelyn Player, on church property nearly four years ago. He agrees with Hudson, though he also feels the very presence of houses of worship can attract certain bad actors.

Crimes in and around churches show that “illogical and pathological behavior have no regard or reverence for safe spaces and sanctuaries,” Hickman said. And he believes that “in many instances, evil spirits love to mar and make irrelevant places of hope, faith and love [in order] to effectively oppress communities.”

Unstable surroundings

Drive past Adams Chapel just about any time of day and you’re likely to spot people going in or out of the stairwell, where neighbors said non-residents can be seen using drugs, engaging in sex acts and relieving themselves, even on Sunday mornings.

Crosby has empathy, as she said many are trapped in self-destructive cycles and lack the strength to pull themselves out. She often can be seen chatting with the “people on the steps,” as some call them, inviting them in for water or food and politely asking them to clean up after themselves.

But the unstable surroundings leave her on the horns of a dilemma that affects many American faith leaders in neighborhoods afflicted by crime: how to serve the “least and the lost,” as Jesus exhorts Christians to do, while also ensuring the safety and well-being of congregants who want to attend services and take part in church life.

Horatio Rice, a trustee at Adams Chapel who grew up in the neighborhood, said he must walk through the crowds of people when he stops by the church to keep the property clean.

“We’re trying to make this a safe space for the neighbors and for the congregation, but also for the people on the steps who want to come in and get help,” he said. “And our church is conducive to that. But you can’t have that when people are scared to come in here.”

Rice agreed with Crosby that it would be unfair to assume, at this stage, that any of the “regulars” outside the church had anything to do with the shooting, which took place on a triangle of grass behind the large white welcome sign out front, according to police. But their presence doesn’t help.

“When you’ve got people who are using drugs, who are mentally ill, and you have prostitution all around you, you don’t know what might jump off,” he says. “Anything can come along with it. There’s a safety factor involved.”

Reaching out

Some in the church security field tell clients not to worry about any contradiction between the Biblical admonition to love one’s neighbor and the need to keep the worship environment safe. The Watchman, for example, cites the Old Testament’s Book of Nehemiah.

“Don’t be afraid of them,” it reads. “Remember the Lord, who is great and awesome, and fight for your families, your sons and your daughters, your wives and your homes.”

In real life, though, the calls can be more complicated. Crosby said that while some Adams Chapel leaders, including Rice, have reached out to Baltimore police to request a stronger patrol presence in the neighborhood, she has never called police to deal with loiterers. Hudson and Hickman also said they do so only in rare cases. Both said their first responsibility is to work with people beyond the church walls to establish relationships of mutual trust and build from there.

The first thing Hudson noticed upon taking over at Ames UMC, he recalled, was that drug dealers regularly plied their trade up and down the block. Since then he has made it a mission to talk daily with neighbors, including the dealers, learning their stories and sharing his. His churches hold sidewalk prayer sessions, sponsor food and clothing drives, and team with local business leaders and other church congregations to provide housing, financial support, and educational, recreational and workforce-development opportunities for nearby residents.

Drug dealers have moved their business elsewhere, he said, and the Sandtown community recently celebrated an unusual milestone — 200 days without a murder.

The neighborhoods are not without their dangers. Hudson recalled the day a community member was trying to sell shoes at the same time the church was giving shoes to the needy. Hudson politely but firmly asked the man to leave, but he returned with a gun, pointed it at the pastor’s face and threatened to kill him.

Hudson said he called police, officers arrested the assailant, and the man later apologized. But he doesn’t see such incidents as the norm.

“When you make the consistent effort to build relationships, as people gain respect for the faith community, they generally police themselves,” he said.

A need for help

Many in the Adams Chapel community — an area sandwiched between the Dorchester and Ashburton neighborhoods in Northwest Baltimore — say they feel for the men and women who hang around the church and surrounding areas.

“The problems have gotten worse, but we’re not here to point a finger; we’re here to help,” said Pearl Whiting, an Edmondson Village resident who has been a member of the church since its founding in 1982.

Like Whiting, Paulette Simmons attended the service Sunday, an event that drew about 40 of the church’s roughly 70 members.

Simmons, 54, who grew up in a house directly across Egerton Road, said nearly everyone in the neighborhood has lived there for at least 30 years, and she believes dealers and loiterers have settled on the area because the elderly offer less pushback.

Simmons, who is rehabilitating the house after a fire, said people overdosing within view is a common sight and she has suffered multiple thefts and break-ins. One day in January, workers even arrived to find a dead man on her back porch “with his headphones around his neck and his coat on.”

“It was like, ‘What is happening?’ Things have gotten terrible,” she said.

Rice is one who has taken some action. Appearing at a town hall held by Baltimore Police Commissioner Richard Worley last year, he asked for police to make their presence felt in the area, even if only by stationing cruisers in the streets on occasion. But he and others say squad cars rarely come through.

“I don’t know why, with all this stuff going on, they don’t even look at it,” he said.

Crosby said she remains optimistic, one reason she said the church plans to hold a community social on the grounds at 11 a.m. Saturday. And Sunday’s service was an uplifting affair.

A choir sang “Joys are Flowing Like a River.” An assistant pastor, the Rev. Dr. Linda Payne, led a prayer for a “shield of protection” around the church. And in her sermon, the Rev. Sharon Derricks, a church member, reminded the flock that as hard as the situation can be, “those people out there are somebody’s mother, somebody’s father, somebody’s friend.

“They are — we are — the temple of the Lord,” she said, and the crowd cried “Hallelujah!”

She was among more than 50,000 other Catholics from across the United States in town for a nationwide revival, the 10th National Eucharistic Congress of the U.S. Catholic Church. And as an attendant in the processional handed her a rose, she said she sensed a powerful spiritual presence.

“I knew immediately that that was what Jesus had sent to me,” said Oguezuonu, a longtime parishioner at Our Lady Queen of Peace Catholic Church in her hometown. “He told me, ‘This is the meaning of your name — Mary that is surrounded by roses.’ And roses are symbolic of the love of Jesus.”

Oguezuonu was one of about 175 Catholics from greater Baltimore who made the trip to Indiana’s capital city for the five-day event, the first of its kind since 1941 and the culmination of a three-year campaign of renewal within the American church.

“It was a powerful moment in the history of the Catholic Church in the U.S.,” says Edward Herrera, the executive director of the Institute for Evangelization, an initiative of the Archdiocese of Baltimore, who also made the pilgrimage. “There hasn’t been a Eucharistic Congress since the time of Fulton Sheen and Dorothy Day. Now we’ve enjoyed this beautiful event, an exciting moment for the people of Baltimore and for people around the country.”

Eucharistic congresses — held sporadically and always considered significant — have been a Catholic tradition for more than 140 years. They draw huge numbers of clergy members and lay Catholics from wide geographical areas to bear witness to what the faith sees as the literal presence of Jesus in the Eucharist, the sacramental bread and wine at the core of every Mass.

The first such assembly, an international version, took place in Lille, France, in 1881, and more than 50 International Eucharistic Congresses have taken place since. They’ve been rarer in this country. The first National Eucharistic Congress was held in Washington, D.C., in 1895. The 83-year gap since the last one, held in St. Paul, Minnesota, was the longest in history.

Herrera said the time was ripe.

Even a tradition that has long benefitted the faith — the way knowledge is passed along almost automatically from generation to generation — has helped contribute to what some sense is a loss of spiritual vitality, he says. And only about 31% of Catholics still believe in the Real Presence of Jesus Christ in the Eucharistic sacraments, according to a much-discussed 2019 survey by the Pew Research Center.

Many believe that, in turn, has given rise to a flagging passion for evangelization — the practice of spreading the faith.

That’s why the U.S. Council of Catholic Bishops decided in 2022 to declare a National Eucharistic Revival, a movement designed to respond to “the divine invitation to be united once again around the source and summit of our faith in the celebration of the Eucharist.”

Last week’s convention, which ended Sunday, was the last of dozens of events held across the country as part of the movement. It included five days of open-air Masses, speaking engagements and live music in 70,000-seat Lucas Oil Stadium, faith-related breakout sessions and interactive activities in the Indiana Convention Center, and ongoing adoration of the Eucharist.

About 100 people from central Maryland made the trip on a phalanx of buses provided by the Baltimore archdiocese, with the rest traveling on their own, Herrera said.

Many said they felt a form of rejuvenation that was especially welcome at a time when the church is still suffering fallout amid a sexual abuse scandal involving priests from around the world — and when the Baltimore archdiocese has had to realign its operations in the city due to huge maintenance costs and declining attendance.

Carolyn Wilkinson, a Joppatowne artist, had concerns about making the trip. She suffers from a disability, generally avoids crowds and didn’t know if anyone else from her church, St. Mark in Fallston, was going. But she said the other pilgrims she met on the bus kept such a careful eye out for her she could tell something profound was underway.

Already awed by a sense of unity in the huge crowds, she was at the stadium Friday when Mother Olga of the Sacred Heart, the founder of a women’s apostolate in Boston that provides pastoral care in hospitals, hospices and prisons, told stories of what she called “Eucharistic miracles” of healing she has seen.

Since then, Wilkinson has felt an “amazing” sense of release from a near-addiction to cannabis-related painkillers she said she has battled for years.

“I prayed for addiction healing, and since then I’ve felt no desire whatsoever to continue with the pain pills,” she said. “This feels different. It feels like I’m on the road to healing.”

Many experienced a powerful sense of spiritual unity on the first day of the assembly, Herrera said, when hundreds of pilgrims who had been traveling the country on foot in four separate geographical sectors came together in the stadium amid cheers and prayers. It happened again on Sunday as hundreds of priests, brothers and sisters strode chanting and praying through the streets behind the trailer that bore the Eucharist.

“These experiences of an outpouring of grace from the Lord can be a great source of encouragement, healing and hope, and they’re a great source of renewal for the church for sure,” Herrera said.

Brian Rhude felt much the same way.

“You could see by the look on people’s faces, or the tears rolling down their cheeks, or the look of elation they had when they saw someone they knew at Lucas Oil Stadium, that they were falling deeper in love with Jesus Christ,” said Rhude, who serves as the campus minister at the Newman Center at Towson University.

Most important, participants said, was their sense that many of the pilgrims intended to heed the call from the bishops and others onstage to go home and share the feeling of revival they’d experienced.

Wilkinson said she attended a workshop last week in which a Catholic artist, having created woodblock carvings of the Eucharist, invited visitors to stamp out their own prayer cards. She has already spoken with her priest about offering a similar event at St. Mark’s Octoberfest this year, and she hopes it will serve as a model for parishes to mobilize the talented painters, calligraphers and woodworkers in their pews.

“I want to see an artistic revival at a grass-roots level in each parish, where individual parishioners create the art” to be used in activities. “I’d love to have them inspired to give their talents to the church.”

For his part, Rhude said the week has encouraged him to “be more devoted to the Blessed Sacrament every day,” to spend more time praying, and, as a minister, to overlook more easily the foibles of the college students he interacts with in favor of being “present” and encouraging them to “experience the Lord in a new and profound way.”

Herrera said his evangelization institute will help to advance Walk With One, a churchwide initiative that aims to encourage Catholics to share their faith stories with others, and encourage and help equip parishes in the archdiocese to bring more Eucharistic processions to the streets.

Oguezuonu, meanwhile, said discussions are underway to brainstorm how Our Lady Queen of Peace might incorporate what she learned into its activities moving forward.

That’s in keeping with a sermon she cited as a highlight of the week. During the final Mass Sunday, Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle of the Philippines, an envoy of Pope Francis, urged the tens of thousands in the stadium to carry their message of renewal with them and share it with others as a first step toward revitalizing the faith across the nation.

That, Oguezuonu said, was the whole point of a Congress that even organizers said would prove fruitless if attendees didn’t spread the word.

“We have been empowered by the Holy Spirit to spread the Gospel with boldness,” she said. “We don’t have to be afraid anymore to share our faith.”

Samuel Neale, a native of Hagerstown in Washington County, was one of the roughly 1,500 African Americans who served white officers in the 50,000-strong Maryland Militia during the conflict sometimes referred to as the Second American War for Independence from Britain. Neale has long been denied the free headstone the federal government has granted to countless military veterans whose remains lie in unmarked graves, and the reason stems from his race.

Neale traveled and served with a cavalry unit led by William Harwood, a Hagerstown physician who became an officer in the war, according to historical records. The regiment saw action at two of the bloodiest and most consequential battles of the conflict, the Battle of Bladensburg and the Battle of North Point, both in 1814.

But because African Americans were barred by state law from serving in the militia in those pre-Emancipation years, the fighting force declined to offer the few who did serve any recognized military rank.

That’s one reason the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs has never classified them as soldiers — and one the VA has repeatedly cited in denying requests to secure a headstone for Neale, a man whose remains have lain unmarked in St. John’s Cemetery since his death on June 15, 1872.

This weekend, a group of concerned private citizens will grant Neale the recognition they believe he merits. Louis Giles, an amateur historian from Millersville, is to preside over the unveiling and dedication of a headstone for Neale at the Frederick cemetery on Saturday morning.

The event will feature brief talks on what we know of Neale’s life, a presentation of colors, a laying of wreaths and a musket salute.

Giles, a retired National Security Agency official and the president of the Society of the War of 1812 in Maryland, a heritage group, has led the crusade to secure the gravestone for Neale.

Giles said his dealings with the government on the issue have taken so long and gone so slowly that when Lough Memorials, a Frederick stone mason, recently offered to supply a headstone for the long-deceased warrior, he decided it was time to act.

“Honestly, I just got tired of waiting,” he said. “Neale will finally get the marker he deserves.”

Giles’ involvement in the case has roots that began hundreds of years ago, around the time of the war itself.

Giles has known since boyhood that his fourth great-grandfather, a Baltimore barrel maker by the name of Joseph Giles, was one of the tens of thousands of white men in Maryland who were called into service for the war, which raged in North America between 1812 and 1814.

Joseph Giles — like Neale himself — was one of the roughly 4,000 members of the Maryland militia who teamed up to surprise and scatter the mighty British Army at the Battle of North Point in what is now Baltimore County in September 1814.

That family legacy sparked Louis Giles’ interest in the war. It also allowed him to become a member of the Maryland chapter of the War of 1812 society, an organization made up of individuals who can prove their blood relation to one of its combatants.

It was as a member of that society, as Giles worked on a project to locate veterans’ graves, that he came across a local historian’s blogpost that mentioned Neale and told a good deal of his story.

Written by the retired local historian Scott Sheads as part of a bicentennial celebration of the Battle of Fort McHenry, the story spotlighted Neale’s rarity as a Black man in an overwhelmingly white fighting force. It also drew on period documents to create a portrait of what his service probably looked like. They suggested duties beyond what would be expected of a “servant,” the designation the militia gave its few Black men.

Neale, Sheads showed, wasn’t just Hammond’s personal assistant. He carried Hammond’s surgical instruments “into the field” during battle and was “armed and equipped as a soldier in order to fight the enemy when hard pressed.”

That alone, Giles said, means Neale served in a role the military would later call a combat medic, a rank universally considered military.

Scholars who have become familiar with the case agree.

“Noncombatants like drummers, fifers, surgeons and quartermasters were all important in winning the War of 1812,” said Joseph Balkoski, a military historian and author who lives in Baltimore. “Are you going to tell me they don’t count as veterans? Neale was called into the field to support his superior officer and did so, very likely at great risk to himself. It’s very, very obvious to me that the VA has a false opinion about Neale.”

Sheads included passages from newspapers published in the 1870s that quote Neale describing his experiences in places very close to battlefields as the combat raged around him.

Several gave accounts of when Neale, decades later, applied for and was granted a state military pension. One quotes him as recalling how, as he waited for the British to arrive at North Point, he “was on the ground fully armed, and ready to defend the ladies and children, who were crying in a heart-rending manner.” An 1872 obituary in the Frederick Examiner said he “served his country with fidelity during the War of 1812.”

When Giles saw in the obituary that Neale’s remains “were interred in the Catholic grave-yard,” he reached out to historic churches in the Frederick area and confirmed through an archivist at St. John the Evangelist Church that his grave site was actually in the cemetery there, among the marked graves of several relatives.

“We had never located the grave of a single Black veteran of the War of 1812, so this seemed like a perfect opportunity to celebrate just such a man,” he told a Baltimore Sun reporter in 2022.

Giles spent much of the next two years digging up more information. During one of several visits to the U.S. National Archives in Washington, he found original muster rolls, yellowed rosters of Hammond’s regiment, that contained the name “Samuel”  along with the full names of other members.

Muster rolls of the time referred to African Americans only by their first names — a remnant of the past that has made it all the harder to trace the stories of men like Neale — but in cross-referencing the documents against other data from the era, Giles believes he’s proven that “Samuel” was Neale.

In multiple exchanges with the VA, though, spokespersons for the federal agency have argued that Giles’ documentation does not prove Neale was a solider in federal service.

They’ve said his status as “servant” suggests he was not a soldier; that as a state militia member, he was probably in state, not federal, service; and that the awarding of a military pension “does not necessarily indicate that military service was performed during the war.”

“The supplementary evidence that Mr. Giles provided to the VA certainly fleshes out Mr. Neale’s narrative, but much of it consisted of newspaper accounts,” a 2022 letter from the agency to Giles read. “This material did not meet the standards VA requires in order to substantiate the claim.”

A VA spokesman said the department’s appeals division has been working on the case this week and rendered a ruling, though it’s not yet at liberty to make it public.

“We have informed Mr. Giles of the VA Board’s decision. Unfortunately, because of federal privacy protections, VA cannot publicly comment on the actual findings and results contained within that decision without an official release or waiver from Mr. Giles,” VA press secretary Terrence Hayes said in an email to The Sun late Friday afternoon.

Balkoski and other historians, meanwhile, say that “servant” was the only rank given Black militiamen no matter what they did; that the militia was essentially acting as a federal force at the time; and that the Maryland legislature would never have granted Neale a pension had witnesses to his wartime service not testified in person.

All of which leads Giles to conclude that if Neale had not been African American, he’d have been given his headstone long ago — just as countless white soldiers who served many of the same functions as Neale have been.

“Is a person in the VA discriminating against Blacks? I can’t say that. But whether they recognize it or not, if their policies are what they’ve told us, that’s certainly effective discrimination,” said Giles, adding that he has filed a complaint with the agency’s inspector general on the matter.

Giles’ last interaction with the VA came June 12, when he met with a judge in its court of appeals division. The judge was cordial and listened carefully, Giles said, but has yet to contact him with a decision.

Meanwhile, Lough Memorials has supplied and inscribed a headstone for Neale, St. John’s Cemetery officials are sharing installation costs with the War of 1812 Society, and Saturday’s commemoration is coming together.

Chuck Foltyn, a member of the cemetery board, said a tent for the event has been set up, the gravestone is in place above the soldier’s remains, and organizers have sent invitations to local and state lawmakers, historical societies and members of the press. About 40 people are expected.

Foltyn said they’re looking forward to an event that should cement once and for all the place of an extraordinary man in American military history, and that it’s happening none too soon.

“It’s amazing the VA has refused to give Neale what he deserves,” he said. “This guy carried all these medical instruments into the field of battle, and they’re not going to offer him an honor that would have cost them about $200? Come on. He’s waited long enough for a tombstone.”