Keep Kathleen Kotarba

A meeting has been called to dismiss the head of the CHAP preservation agency.

A response from Baltimore Heritage, including emails addresses to write to CHAP in support of Kathleen Kotarba.

My letter to CHAP in response to this news follows. I hope others will write CHAP, too, to urge that Kathleen Katarba remain in her job.

Dear Commission on Historical and Architectural Preservation,

Since I have known Kathleen Katarba she has been one of the most fair, hard-working, helpful, polite, professional city employees that I have ever had the pleasure to know. Humble and quiet, she has also always been accessable, resourceful, smart and well-organized.

I believe I last saw her at the Waverly Main Street War of 1812 bicentennial commemoration event on Palm Sunday in April where she joined about sixty people to spend a couple hours walking the area and revisting our rich history, preserved at places like St. Johns in the Village on the National Register of Historic Places, Waverly Fire House which has served the community for more than 100 years, the new historic markers on the Olmsted Green, old Waverly Town Hall and Merryman Lane and the old rennovated Post Office on Homestead, now a thriving commercial Ace Hardware store.

Kathleen Katarba has been a tremendous resource to our community in helping us to honor the past through celebration today in ways that will be preserved in the future.

Recently I had a chance to visit the cases inside Johns Hopkins at Eastern where the curator of old Eastern High School talked about how happy graduates were to have The Good Shepherd statue brought back to its original home.

Nancy Connor described Kathleen Katarba as the person most responsibile for seeing that this got accomplsihed. Nancy also described how an elderly alum with cancer called her and asked to be brought back to Eastern to visit The Good Shepherd before she died.

This is a statue I go to meditate at as well and to remind myself of what a proud past we had and how grateful I am that our heritage is preserved in ways that keep us connected to each other regardless of our many differences, such as in age, education, income, race or sex.

We can all share the past and that can help us be proud today and care about what our neighborhood looks like tomorrow.

Please keep Kathleen Katarba in the job she does so well. I know that there are citizens throughout the city who have stories like the one I have just shared.

Please don't disappoint us.

Joe Stewart, a Waverly Villager