“Beachwood Park Memoirs” by Lee Gardner (Sizzlin’ Summer, May 18) is a fantastic read. The article took me back to a wonderful place in time. I spent many summer days and nights of my teenage years enjoying the Smith family’s hospitality at their summer home on the Magothy, adjacent to Beachwood Park. Rev. Hiram and Ms. Lula Smith were absolutely wonderful people. The late Lionel Smith, their son, my good buddy was next in age to the youngest (Bobby).

Beachwood Park offered all types of amusement rides and activities for families, which would be equivalent to today’s Disney World adventures. Church picnics were common, as was Rev. Smith offering to take groups out on his boat, navigating the Magothy River. Lionel and I would often swim starting from the beachfront across the width of the Magothy River to the other side, only to be greeted with stern looks from the beachfront white homeowners when approaching their properties. Of course, after crossing the Magothy, we would not stop for rest, but simply turn around and continue swimming to the friendly shores of Beachwood Park.

As a kid, I enjoyed listening to Rev. Smith when he was engaged in conversation. He was so knowledgeable, spoke so well, and was a visionary and charismatic member of the clergy. I enjoyed spending time with the Carroll and Owens families, and other summer homeowners on the Magothy River at that time.

In concluding, I would like to thank Gerald Smith, Yvonne Leacock, and Deborah and Alphus Jones for sharing a wonderful a part of African-American history, which allowed for many wonderful nostalgic memories for me.

Reginald Thomas
Baltimore

Race Card Driver

When President Obama was elected in 2008, Larnell Custis Butler (who was and still is a frequent caller to the Tom Marr and Les Kinsolving radio shows) had nothing but positive things to say about the 43 percent of white people who voted for Obama. To find a Democrat presidential nominee who last got that large a percentage of the white vote, one would have to go back to 1976. But now that Obama’s poll numbers are dropping, “racism” is to blame, correct? (“It’s Called Negotiating,” The Mail, May 18) The people who were enlightened in 2008 and no longer racist suddenly reverted back to form?

Obama is at or near the 50 percent approval mark, depending on what polls you read, which is the historical trend for any president at this point in his first term; this is also roughly consistent with the 52 percent of Americans who voted for him. I would ask why you’re referencing a 150-year-old court case that has since been overturned, but since you see everything through the myopia of race, I won’t bother. The bottom line is this: There are people who disagree with the president on policy issues and they aren’t all racist. Debate over policy is the hallmark of a healthy republic. It’s time to stop playing the race card and deal with it.

Brian Patrick
Owings Mills

Taint or Spinner?

In his review of William Donald Schaefer’s legacy (“Saint or Sinner?” Feature, May 11), Edward Ericson Jr. is rightly critical of the limited public benefit from billions invested in Baltimore’s Inner Harbor and downtown tourist district. While sold to the public as spearheading an economic revitalization to compensate for lost manufacturing jobs, in fact most of the service jobs at the Inner Harbor are about as terrible as a job can get: extremely low-wage, seasonal, in degrading and humiliating working environments. A report released this month, “Hidden in Plain Sight: Workers at Baltimore’s Inner Harbor and the Struggle for Fair Development” (Google it!) from the United Workers, a Baltimore human rights organization led by low-wage workers, reveals that many workers at the Inner Harbor are treated with routine disrespect by their employers and are paid rock-bottom wages not sufficient to support a family above the poverty line, without even being able to rely on steady year-round work.

This kind of poverty-zone development benefiting only private developers and not Baltimore’s workers is not what Baltimore residents over the past decades were told they’d be getting for their public investment. It’s past time we refuse to stand for it, and instead demand that jobs in our Inner Harbor be dignified and dependable ones that don’t leave workers requiring public assistance to eat and pay their rent. The United Workers are demanding that the Inner Harbor developers—General Growth Properties and the Cordish Companies, recipients of so much public development largesse—guarantee that Inner Harbor jobs come with a living wage and health and education benefits, and that Inner Harbor employers treat workers with respect and dignity. Ericson notes that Schaefer’s harbor tourist development inspired cities across the country to subsidize development of demeaning low-wage service jobs to replace lost dependable manufacturing jobs; it’s time for Baltimore to set a different example and demonstrate a fair development model instead.

Jonathan Rochkind
Baltimore

If you think your skepticism about the bona fides of Marshall “Eddie” Conway made some aging leftists mad (“Panther Division,” The Mail, May 11), now you’ll reap the whirlwind for displaying William Donald Schaefer in the nude. All I can say is, right on, brother!

Arriving in Baltimore in 1975, I endured Mr. Schaefer in his heyday. Your recap of his career this week is amply documented in the best Baltimore journalism over the years, roughly from 1955 to 2006, when Mr. Schaefer so graciously accepted defeat in his last campaign.