Anna Elizabeth Fehl, a retired teacher and librarian who specialized in radio and television in Baltimore's public school system from the 1950s until 1977, died of congestive heart failure Nov. 29 at St. Joseph Medical Center. She was 76.
Ms. Fehl, who lived on Everall Avenue in Northeast Baltimore for most of her life before moving to Oak Crest Village in Parkville seven years ago, was known among friends for her theatrical flair. As an early communicator in the media of radio and television for Baltimore schoolchildren, she nurtured an actress' love for performance by telling stories over the airwaves -- live stories which were piped into city classrooms.
Ms. Fehl was schooled in Catholic classrooms, at Cathedral School, Seton High School and Mount St. Joseph's College in Emmitsburg, where she graduated with a bachelor's degree in education. In 1950, she went on to earn her first of three master's degrees, in library science, from Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh.
Eager to explore a new media, Ms. Fehl then earned a master's in radio-television from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, which helped determine her career course as a radio-television specialist in the city schools. She later received a master of arts from the Johns Hopkins University School of Professional Studies.
"Whatever she did, she put her heart and soul into it," said Margaret Sellmayer, a fellow Oak Crest resident who first met Ms. Fehl in the 1960s at the city's Catholic Alumni Club. It was a popular venue for single Catholics to meet and socialize, she said.
Ms. Fehl also acted as a consultant-producer for the radio-television office of the Archdiocese of Baltimore.
Before her long career in the city school system, Ms. Fehl worked for public libraries in Milwaukee and in Harford County, each for a year.
A close friend, Dorothy Glackin, said the books tumbling off the shelves of her Harford bookmobile in the 1950s on a remote county road was a sign to Ms. Fehl that she was too far from home. "All the books were mixed together like vegetable soup," Mrs. Glackin said. "And she thought it was time to give up county living."
Ms. Fehl went back to live at her Baltimore family home, where she was raised as an only child by William A. and Anna Eberhart Fehl. Her father had owned a confectionery, the Sugar Bowl, in the 700 block of N. Howard St.
Friends described her as a lively presence and a dynamic force at Oak Crest, where she reviewed movies and wrote a well-read monthly column for the retirement community newspaper titled, "Waltzing through the Village with Anna Fehl."
Along with volunteer work for the National Aquarium in Baltimore and the Baltimore Museum of Art, she was passionately engaged in politics, especially peace causes and women's rights.
At her funeral Mass Tuesday, at the Oak Crest Village Chapel, it was noted by the priest that she was born on July 4th -- prompting Mrs. Glackin to describe her friend as "a firecracker at the age of 76."
Ms. Fehl's apartment was full of art she had acquired all over the world, friends said. One jaunt she took together with Mrs. Glackin was a Smithsonian-sponsored tour of the Mississippi River from St. Paul, Minn. to St. Louis.
At her home after her death, the last book she was reading, Robert Penn Warren's All the King's Men, was found with the notes she was taking, near a window showing a view that she cherished -- the lights of the Key Bridge at night.
She had no immediate survivors.