Sandra Richter Sparks

In 2004, I returned to publication design as the Designer/Editor for my Baltimore neighborhood newsletter, The Charles Villager with five large format issues a year. See Villager issues at charlesvillage.net. In 2007, I designed and edited the 4-color Charles Village Cooks: A Taste of the Village with professional photos of the area's disctinctive architecture. Adjoining the Johns Hopkins University Homewood campus, the Charles Village community continually involves me in board, land-use planning and special events.

Since the 1980s, I have been deeply committed to parks and watershed advocacy. Starting with nearby Wyman Park Dell. Baltimore boasts a comprehensive, but underappreciated park system designed by the Olmsted Brothers in 1904. As a founder of the Friends of Maryland's Olmsted Parks & Landscapes, I am proud the more relevant than ever group celebrated 25 years in 2011. I design their occassional newsletters and promotional pieces. See www.olmstedmaryland.org.

Originally called the Monumental City, Baltimore's public parks, schools and open spaces are accented with an incredible range of historic bronzes and contemporary sculptures--two of the grandest are in Wyman Park Dell. The City has a 30-year old annual maintenace program for the bronzes, but many of the 250 public sculptures suffered neglect and absue. In 2007, my friend Cindy Kelly, a public art expert and I became co-advisors for the Adopt-A-Monument City-Wide Partnership Fund to seek major to leverage
the meager public fuds available. We've had fun leading walking tours and linking people to their favorite monument by adoption.

Three years ago, the Jones Falls Watershed Association, which I co-founded back in my days at the Greater Homewood Community Corporation, merged with the four other watershed groups in Baltimore to become Blue Water Baltimore-- now with a staff of 18.
This past year, I advised the formation of the Friends of Stony Run, a tributary of the Jones Falls, which flows through north Baltimore.
In 2012, construction of a gentle walking path along the stream on the remanants of the shortline Ma & Pa Railroad will begin with two foot bridges to connect the path through seven neighborhoods.

My enthusiasm for parks and recreation grows as the need to fight American obesity looms. Walking in Wyman Park Dell weekday mornings proved a critical strategy to loose 50 pounds since 2004. My other strategy is recording my weight each morning and of course, eating less every day. Grazing at special events is always my weak point.

In September 2010, I celebrated 40 years in my Guilford Avenue three-story rowhouse with a big party for friends and neighbors. Over the last nine years I renovated and upgraded the house inside and out, creating two guest rooms and a new bath on the third floor. My tenants are Hopkins graduate students and doctors coming from Europe, China and India--even Myanmar and occassionally the US. The tenants and I share use of a well-equiped kitchen, designed around my 1920s Chambers stove, and laundry area. We have enjoyed celebrating holiday dinners together, especially Christmas, and appreciating our cultural differences and similarities.

NOTE--WOULD GREATLY APPRECIATE HAVING THIS 40TH REUNION COPY INCLUDED AS I MISSED INCLUSION IN THAT BOOKLET. THANKS, SANDY
2002 proved to be a great year of transition, completing 13 years as an Executive Director of two community umbrella organizations and separating from my husband of 36 years.

In April, I was honored a second time as one of Maryland’s Top 100 Women, based largely on my extensive volunteer involvement in Baltimore.

I am most proud of the Village Learning Place, an original Enoch Pratt Free Library branch (1896) in the Charles Village neighborhood that reopened in June 2000 as a beautifully restored library and learning center with a cafe run by teen entrepreneurs. Seeing is believing—check out www.villagelearningplace.org for this amazing non-profit model.

I also chair the Baltimore Alliance for Great Urban Parks, which is working to create sustainable funding for our great but neglected park system. I was delighted that metropolitan St. Louis, including St. Clair County, established a dedicated fund for parks and water quality in 2000—a campaign model for Baltimore.

Over the last three years, I plunged into renovating my three-story Charles Village row house, where I have lived since 1970. Actually, I started with rebuilding the garage for my VW silver beetle and re-landscaping the backyard.

Whenever possible, I love traveling and most recently enjoyed 12 days touring Southwest France.

Sophomore Guidance Counselor, Robert Eller, unwittingly influenced my desire to be an architect. I received a note in Miss Steele's Latin class, saying that I would not be allowed to take drafting because of the bad language used in the class. I remember chuckling. He had no idea the calls my cousins and I yelled to bring the cows back to the barn for milking during my summer visits to their Mascoutah dairy farm.

That same spring, Mr. Eller strongly encouraged my competitive application to the summer Mark Twain Instutute in Clayton for metro area high school students. For six weeks that summer, I took long, hot Metro bus rides from West 74th Street to Clayton to enjoy art classes that set me on track to study fine art.

At the Univeristy of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, I graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Painting in the Fine & Applied Arts Department. Ironically, the architecture school was right there, but only enrolled three female students at the time. Today, more than half of architecture students are female!