Under different circumstances, Bernard A. Schwartz has no doubt that he could have been a friend to his neighbor, Michael R. Harrison.
They both enjoy adventure, Schwartz says. He's an avid scuba diver; Harrison is a longtime pilot. They are both active in the 4-H Club. And for 25 years, they have lived just 500 yards apart.
But that distance might as well have been 500 miles.
For more than two decades, the men have been on opposite sides of a zoning dispute that has dragged on through six presidencies, countless attorneys and well into their middle-age years. The Great Pyramid of Khufu is believed to have been built in a shorter period of time.
At its core, the dispute over an airstrip on Harrison's farm northeast of Mount Airy is quite simple:
Schwartz leads a group of neighbors fighting to keep the airfield closed, citing numerous fatalities and accidents involving sky-diving, gliders and aircraft.
Harrison is dug in just as deep, defending his right to continue operating the airfield his father started in 1972.
Without its extra income, said Harrison, a fifth-generation farmer, his 172-acre farm may not survive.
No state records are kept on the length of zoning disputes. But George Beisser, past president of the Maryland Association of Zoning Officials and Carroll County's zoning administrator, said the case of Harrison's airfield is easily the longest battle in the county and one of the longest in the state.
On Tuesday, the latest, and perhaps final, chapter is expected to end when the Board of Zoning Appeals decides whether Harrison can reopen for business.
"I want this thing settled. I want to work it out," Harrison, 45, said hopefully.
Harrison was a teen-ager when airplanes started landing on his family's open fields. But it was not until 1972 that the county gave his father permission to operate a grassy 100-by-1,650-foot runway as a private airstrip and drop zone for sky-diving.
Soon after, problems with neighbors began. Parachutists sometimes missed the drop zone, landing in nearby crops, back yards and horse pastures, said Schwartz, who moved to his 22-acre farm off Woodbine Road in 1973.
In September 1978, a Rockville police sergeant was killed in a parachute jump when he landed in a tree.
From chutes to gliders
By 1980, glider pilots, drawn by the winds spilling down from the Appalachian foothills and warm updrafts rising off nearby wheat fields, replaced sky-divers. Some gliders used these favorable conditions to climb more than 10,000 feet at times, Harrison said.
But the gliders created new problems for the area's growing population. One nearby resident complained to county zoning officials in 1982 that the airfield had spawned 90 flights a day.
On holidays and weekends, neighbors cringed listening all day to aircraft circling the field, their engines straining with gliders in tow.
Other neighbors reported that tow-lines -- dangling behind planes once the gliders were released -- pulled shingles off a roof, tore down fences and sent farm workers scurrying for cover.
In 1982, a tow pilot and his passenger were killed.
That year, residents pressured the Board of Zoning Appeals into reopening the case, and the board ruled that the glider operation was a "far cry" from what had been approved in 1972. If Harrison wanted a glider port, he would have to reapply, the board said.
Harrison and the operator of the glider port sued.
The case dragged on for 12 years, going to the U.S. Supreme Court, which refused to hear it, and through Maryland's courts, which eventually ruled in Schwartz's favor.
"It took me a week to see all the pieces of the puzzle," said Isaac Menasche, attorney for the Board of Zoning Appeals.
To explain, Menasche took a pen and began diagraming the path of the dispute. He sketched a rectangle marked 1972, the year the Harrisons won approval for the parachute drop and private airport. Below it, he drew a straight line leading to a box marked 1982, the year neighbors appealed the 1972 decision.
He continued with a third box and a fourth box, followed by branches leading to two more boxes with dates and decisions, with more branches, boxes and dates. Lines crossed or led to dead ends. Others swerved or reversed themselves. He scribbled for five minutes, until he held up an illustration that resembled computer chip circuitry.
Displaying his work, he said: "You asked, why did it take so long?"
All through the legal battles, the glider port and airfield continued to operate. In 1986, a glider crash killed a pilot and passenger.
When the Maryland Court of Special Appeals ruled in his favor in August 1996, Schwartz thought he had succeeded.
But the county did not close the field until March 1997, after a glider crash injured a pilot and passenger.
For Harrison, it was only a temporary setback. He immediately began working his way up the levels of government bureaucracy to open his airfield again.
During a Board of Zoning Appeals' meeting Sept. 16, members favored allowing an airport, but with restrictions that might ban gliders. The board deferred a vote to do more research on what limits it can impose.
Hoping for total ban
Schwartz and other neighbors, however, are pushing to ban all air operations from Harrison's field.
Schwartz, 56, a retired firefighter, appears remarkably fresh after more than 20 years awaiting a final decision on the matter.
Like a marathon runner, Schwartz has been able to conserve his energy for the duration.
"I'm a task-oriented person," he said. "I have to ask, is today a little better than yesterday?"
The dispute has been a life's work of sorts for Schwartz. He has so many research materials and legal documents that he must store them in a laundry basket. He and his neighbors have spent $10,000 to $20,000 on legal fees.
Pulling out a dusty green ledger, Schwartz opened to a page of names from the first day he organized, Sunday, June 27, 1982. Some have died. Others have gone through divorces. What they have in common is the airport.
Robert and Winnie Harrison, no relation to Michael Harrison, own 100 acres near the airfield, 23 of them at the end of the runway.
"It's not safe to farm there," said Harrison. "They can't take off without getting on our property. The tow rope gets tangled in the fence and sometimes knocks the fence down."
"It's a shame," she said. "You want to be friends with your neighbors, but you feel like they're taking your rights."
But Michael Harrison said he must defend his.
"I live here so I want it to be safe," he said. "I don't want there to be accidents."
Under the bill of his green John Deere cap, Harrison's blue eyes wandered across his grassy runway on a recent afternoon.
"Flying is in my blood," he said, noting that he is often distracted by passing aircraft. "The airplanes bother me too, because I want to be flying."
Harrison said that when the airfield was opened there was not much development in his neighborhood. Many newcomers, he said, were not aware that they had moved next door to an airfield.
"They pay $150,000 to $200,000 for a home. They really don't research to know that there is an airport here," he said. "If I was to put in chicken houses or a hog farm, neighbors would shout over that too."
But Harrison said he doesn't want to encourage any more friction with his neighborhood.
"I want to work with our community and get along," he said. "When I pass people on the road every day, I like to wave at them. A couple of people turn away from me."
Maybe when this dispute is resolved, he said, they will choose to wave back.
Pub Date: 9/26/98