If he had fewer distinctions of his own, the policeman probably would be known more generally by his family name, which is McKeldin. He is the Governor's brother.

There are two reasons why the names of Patrolman “Podge” McKeldin and Gov. Theodore Roosevelt McKeldin aren’t linked more frequently. One is that “Podge” has always been a great one for making his own way, without any outside help. The other is that Podge achieved his aim, was already enjoying a certain success and renown, and had settled quietly into his way of life long before his now famous brother made the grade.

The life histories of the two brothers are similar in many ways, with Podge's no less heartening than Teddy's.

Teddy, at an early age, displayed a flair for public speaking, and he parlayed it into governorship. At about the same age Podge showed a flair for handling people, the way his brother handled language, and he has parlayed that into a career fully as satisfying.

Podge was born 56 years ago at the southernmost end of Eutaw street, a neighborhood called Fishbottom. He calls himself the eight-ball of the McKeldin family, because he was the eighth of eleven children. Teddy was tenth.

Through the toddler stage William Frederick McKeldin was known as Bill or Willie. When he, first began playing with the other kids one of them dubbed him Podge.

Nobody ever knew why, but the name stuck.

One of the McKeldins' first distinctions was their family baseball team, one of the very few in the country.

"All of us were what you might call natural baseball players," Podge recalls. "Jimmy pitched, John was the catcher, Charles on second" and George on third.

They're all dead now; Dad. too.

Ted was on first base, Ray was the shortstop, with Dad and me and Louis in the outfield."

But there wasn't a great deal of time for baseball while the McKeldin children were growing up. Podge was 11 when he weighed the advantages of an education against those of a regular weekly paycheck. He decided upon the paycheck.

His first job was in a South Baltimore bottle factory. There, from 7 A.M. to 5 P.M., six days a week, he worked as a carryingin boy. It was comparatively easy work, consisting of carrying newly blown glass bottles, one tray after another, from the glass blowers to an oven in which the bottles would cool gradually.

The only annoyance was that he had to make up the time he spent hiding when the truant

officer came snooping around the neighborhood. .

After two years of it, at $2.50 a week, he got out of the glass business.

Podge’s next job was in a piano factory at Eutaw and West streets. For eighteen years, with rottenstone, powdered pumice, bare hands and elbow grease, he rubbed the heavily varnished surfaces of pianos into the satiny gleam that lasts many of them a lifetime.

Piano finishing brought a good worker from $35 to $40 a week, an excellent salary in those days.

In the latter stages of that career, however, Podge McKeldin decided that he would rather be a mounted policeman than anything else. Why he wanted the job at the time he's never been able to understand. He'd never even been on a horse.

He became a member of the police force in 1927, as a patrolman in the Southwestern district.

In 1934 he transferred to the Northern district. In 1936 he got the transfer he wanted, to the Traffic Division as a mounted patrolman.

He heard of the transfer on a Saturday, with Monday as the reporting date. On Sunday he went to the stables, told the stableman who he was, and asked for a little instruction. All he needed to know was how to bridle a horse, how to saddle up, how to mount and how to ride. .

His first official duty next day was to saddle up No.1 horse, the sergeant's.

After inspecting his work, the sergeant said: "It's good to see they've sent us a guy who at least has been around horses before."

Oh, I've been on a horse before," McKeldin admitted modestly.

"I didn't tell him I'd only been on a horse once before," he recalls. "I figured that what he didn't see wouldn't hurt him."

Podge's first beat was Baltimore Street, from Greene to the Fallsway.

"I knew the police business," he recalls, "but for the first week or so of it the horse knew that particular part of it better than I did. However, we got along." First day out, near Light and Baltimore streets he reined up to talk to Teddy, who was practicing law at the time. "Man,” Teddv said "what are you doing up on that horse?" "Man," Podge replied, "I've just joined the cavalry.

Podge took to the job the way a veteran horseman takes to the cavalry. His work in the Police Department has since been at and around the Pratt-Light intersection.

Bearing the heaviest vehicular traffic flow in town, the location would drive many a policeman mad within a week. But Podge McKeldin has enjoyed every day of it. He works the post as enthusiastically today as he did when he first got the hang of it.

He is known most widely, perhaps, for his whistling. He carries a regulation whistle but never uses it. He can do better by whistling through his teeth---shrill, sharp blasts that can be heard three blocks away.

A man's success, he believes boils down to doing his job well and being happy at it. And it doesn't make one iota of difference whether the man is the governor of a state or the patrolman of a street intersection.

September 29, 1964

Authorities are considering escape charges against a Patuxent Institute inmate who broke from custody and threw the courthouse into an uproar yesterday. Bullets ricocheted in the marble halls as a guard fired three warning shots into the ceiling, when the prisoner broke away from him on the fourth floor and ran down the stairs toward the building's exit.

Osborne Eberhart Hedges, 22, of Glen Burnie, was captured by guards and city police after he tripped and fell at the northwest corner of St. Paul and Fayette Sts.HEDGES had just heard himself pronounced a defective delinquent by Judge Michael J. Manley and was committed to Patuxent, where he had previously been for examination.

As the gunfire reverberated through the building, judges locked themselves in their chambers; an assistant state's attorney grabbed a gun exhibit and ducked under a trial table; a stenographer fell down a flight of wooden stairs; people in corridors ran for the nearest cover, and women screamed.

Hedges was taken to Mercy Hospital for treatment of injuries received when he was overpowered by his guard, Thomas S. Henderson, and Patrolman Melvin Howell.

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December, 1952

It was just a "run-of-the-mine strip-tease act," according to Defense Attorney Joseph F. DiDomenico.

But to a policewoman and four policemen it was something more than that--enough, in fact, to justify a charge of presenting an indecent show against Mrs. Carmen Benton, thirty-three, Mrs. Benton, who lives in the 700 block Reservoir street, was arraigned Wednesday before Magistrate William F. Laukaitis in Central Police Court. She let Attorney DiDomenico do the talking for her.THE VARIOUS policemen did some talking too. Patrolman George Fink of the police vice squad testified that Policewoman Miss Betty Riha and Patrolman Kenneth Runge dropped in at a cabaret In the 600 block East Baltimore street Tuesday night and were much intrigued by a dance presented by Mrs. Benton.

They were so interested, in fact, that after seeing only part of the show they phoned for Patrolmen Fink, John Livesey and Melvin Howell to join them. The three vice squad men lost no time in hurrying over from headquarters.AFTER THE dance, Mrs. Benton was arrested, and Mrs. Catherine Darrell, forty-six, one of the proprietors of the club, also was charged with permitting an indecent show to be presented.

There was some testimony about a brassiere Mrs. Benton wore or didn't wear, but Defense Attorney DiDomenico denied it had been removed. Magistrate Laukaitis postponed the case until Saturday morning to permit the defendants to produce witnesses who would say Mrs. Benton's dance wasn't indecent----that it was just of run-of- the-mine strip act, as Mr. DiDomenico.