Rada Wins MDDC Award For His Writing

Catoctin Banner editor James Rada Jr. won an award for his column writing at the the Maryland-Delaware-DC Press (MDDC) Association on May 8.

Rada is also a columnist for the Frederick News-Post, writing a weekly history column called “Frederick County Rewind.” His column “Thurmont Cat Lady lived in a bus” won 2nd place in the Local Column: Critical Thinking category. The article ran a year ago in the News-Post. It is the latest of 28 writing awards and one publishing award Rada has won over his career.

The column told the story of Mae Carbaugh, who made national news in 1970 when The (Baltimore) Sun wrote about how she lived in an old bus because she couldn’t afford the $50 a month rent that homes in Thurmont were going for at the time. She wasn’t a troublemaker, but people considered the bus an eyesore.

Around Thurmont, Carbaugh was known as “The Cat Lady” because she kept two or three cats as pets.

When Carbaugh died on October 23, 1974, The Frederick Post called her trailer a landmark. After all, it had been in the same location for 20 years.

It was a landmark that quickly disappeared, though. “The piles of wood and debris were gone, the worn trailer was empty, locked and lonely, the green wooden doghouse overturned and deserted. On the leaf-covered ground, some spilled navy beans, tired scraps of foil and bits of cloth—materials for next spring’s birds’ nests—were all that told of a once strange and independent existence,” the newspaper reported shortly after her death.

The Sun said of her, “To some she was the last of a hardy breed… an eccentric who lived her own life as she saw fit, who wanted to be alone and to be left alone.”

The column was one of seven best of show awards in news and advertising, 30 first-place awards, and 25 second-place awards the News-Post won in its division. The newspaper was also News Organization of the Year in its division for 2025.

This year’s annual MDDC awards had nearly 1,600 entries in 86 categories across six divisions. The divisions group member publications into categories governed by total audience numbers, combining print and digital readership.