Law on Md. Mortuaries Has Guardian Angel at State House

In 1957, March's father opened his first funeral home in the depressed East Baltimore neighborhood where Harrison has lived her entire life.

"I've known her since I was a kid," March said in an interview.

March's father, a pillar of the community, bought two of the 59 corporate licenses to expand and to enable him to pass the business on to his children.

When efforts to eliminate Maryland's cap first surfaced, March said, he told Harrison the push to lift the cap was not coming from small, family-owned homes. Those were just a Trojan horse, he said, with the real catalyst for change being large corporations intent on capturing the Maryland market.

By eliminating the cap, he said, large companies could flood in and undercut the locals.

Harrison was persuaded.

"He explained the whole thing to me," Harrison said. "He said they needed to keep things as they were in order to keep the big folk out."

There was a time when Brown thought he had devised a way around the brick wall. He figured he would enlist a higher-caliber legislative gun than Harrison. He set his sights on Casper R. Taylor, the House speaker from neighboring Allegany County, who was facing a tough reelection bid in 2002.

"That guy's going to know me by my first name by the time this thing is over," he told himself.

Brown offered the frontage of his large cemetery property for campaign signs and worked his precinct hard. "Cas knew me by my first name by the time that campaign was over with," he said of Taylor.

Only problem: Taylor lost the election by 76 votes.

When the legislature convenes next Wednesday, it will be the first time in 10 years that Brown may not make the long morning drives to Annapolis.

He hasn't given up. To the contrary. He and others are considering another route. If the prospects in Annapolis still look bad, Brown said, they will challenge the law in court.

Last year, Chisholm applied to the Board of Morticians for a license and was denied. He now has standing to sue.

"After so many years in the legislature," Benson said, "it pains me that a courthouse is the only place left where we can expect to get any justice or any fairness."