A certain amount of skepticism can always be a useful tool, we’re all taught when coming up in the journalism field. “Never lose it,” a journalism teacher once told me. Avoid sentimentality or emotionalism. Don’t allow yourself to get snowballed by nostalgia and maudlin talk or ideas. Keep your antennae up. You know, all that hard-boiled reporter stuff.

But sometimes, something gets you right in the kishkes when you cover an event and the emotion just leaves a large lump in your throat.

That’s how I felt on a recent Friday afternoon when I joined about 20 residents of the Charlestown Retirement Community in Catonsville on a visit to BWI-Thurgood Marshall Airport to greet military troops returning home from Afghanistan, Iraq and other countries.

The Charlestown group goes monthly to BWI as part of Operation Welcome Home Maryland, and they’re led by resident Suzanne Levitt. Dressed appropriately in red, white and blue, Suzanne is like everyone’s mom, aunt or favorite family friend. Thin and blonde, she is friendly, caring, smart, funny and what my own mother would call a “ballabuste,” someone who always gets things done.

A Chizuk Amuno congregant, Suzanne decided to form the Charlestown group after going to an Operation Welcome Home Maryland gathering at the airport about three years ago.

From the outset, I knew that going with the Charlestown folks to see the returning troops would be an emotional experience of sorts. How could it not be? But standing there in the BWI international terminal with several of the residents who are World War II veterans, I had to take off my reporter’s hat for a while and simply listen in awe. I truly felt like I was a flea among giants, listening to their own stories about coming home after the war.

“I remember we came home from the Pacific and wound up sailing into San Francisco’s harbor,” one vet said to me. “We saw Alcatraz, and we joked, `That’s where we’ll be soon.’”

When I told the fellas that my own father was in WW2 and at D-Day, I could tell my stock rose somewhat in their eyes. “Oh, he was a Merchant Marine?” one gentleman said to me. “They were the real heroes of the war, y’know.”

But what really got me, of course, was seeing the troops returning home. Tired, weary and ready to get to their next flights, they looked absolutely stunned when they walked into the terminal and saw hundreds of people – young and old – standing there, cheering them, screaming like they were rock stars, holding up signs thanking them for fighting terrorism and making incredible sacrifices for all of us.

One Operation Welcome Home Maryland volunteer, a Vietnam vet, said to me, “I do this for them because no one ever did anything like this for me when I came home.” Then, a look came across his face. “Well, nobody except people you don’t want greeting you,” he said, “protesters who are calling you names like `baby-killer.’”

There was nothing resembling that at BWI that Friday afternoon. Soldiers beamed as a cordoned-off line of people offered handshakes, backslaps, high-fives and boatloads of praise to them. When passing by my WW2 vets from Charlestown, many of the military personnel simply put down their gear, shook their hands and thanked them for what they did in fighting for freedom more than six decades ago.

Watching these soldiers, the old and the young, with smiles and tears in their eyes as they gazed upon each other was truly an amazing sight, something I’ll never forget, and a great honor.

I guess even journalists are human beings and are capable of emotions from time to time, despite our constant striving for objectivity and rational approaches. But going to see this display of patriotism only a little more than a week before Passover, the Feast of Freedom, was truly a wonderful experience. And I would advise everyone to contact Operation Welcome Home Maryland and see this at least once in your life. You owe it to yourself and the troops.

I also want to thank Suzanne Levitt and the other Charlestown folks for what they do, and for allowing me to share the experience.

I’m going to say something here in this space that will make me sound tragically “un-hip,” overly PC, supremely humorless and highly whiny. But so be it. Wouldn’t be the first time.

I have a lot of friends and acquaintances who absolutely worship Howard Stern. Besides being blisteringly funny and acerbic, they say the mother of all shock-jocks is a brilliant commentator on virtually everything (and everyone) in our society that is false, vain and patently stupid. In other words, he says it “the way it is,” articulating in one way or another what all of us may think or feel but would never have the guts to utter aloud. Honesty for a change, in the tradition of his fellow Jewish humorists Mort Sahl, Philip Roth, Lenny Bruce and even Al Franken.

For some time now, I’ve felt that this poor excuse of DNA is just a joke and a bully, a provocateur of the lowest, crudest order. But his recent attack against Gabourey Sidibe, the star of “Precious” who was up for Best Actress at last Sunday night’s Academy Awards, is simply below the belt, even for ol’ Howie.

On his Monday show, sitting next to Pikesville native Robin “Uncle Tom” Quivers, Stern said, while recapping the endless Oscars telecast, that Sidibe is “the most enormous, fat black chick I’ve ever seen. … You feel bad because everyone pretends that she’s part of show business, and she’s never going to be in another movie. What movie is she going to be in? ‘Blind Side 2’—she could be the football player.”

(Hey Howard, ever hear of Queen Latifah? Oprah Winfrey? People of all shapes and sizes and races are making forays into the entertainment world nowadays. They even let tall, skinny, gawky guys on satellite radio.)

Of his fellow media sacred cow Oprah, he said, “She told an enormous woman [Sidibe] the size of a planet that she’s going to have a career. Oprah should’ve said, ‘You need to get help, we don’t want to lose you.’ You just want to say to her, `Listen, honey, now that you’ve got a little money in the bank, go get yourself thin, because you’re going to die in three years.’”

Boy, that guy is some kind of humanitarian, a true crusader against obesity. (The world could’ve used another doctor from “Lawn Guyland.”) But is he really concerned about Sidibe’s weight and health or is he just – as usual – saying inane, outrageous, offensive things merely to get attention and high ratings? Isn’t that what he’s all about anyway?

I’ve got to tell you, I’m pretty sick and tired of people saying that Howard Stern is the Paul Revere of candor and honesty – and the great foe of artifice – in this country, like he should be wrapped up in the American flag and the First Amendment.

Let’s call him for what he is – a mean-spirited, bigoted, ugly, self-loathing, pathetic jerk. Why else would he beat up on this talented young actress? Howard, like his adoring, sycophantic public, is merely a manifestation of our misguided, callous, graceless age.

He may indeed be brilliant and funny. He may upset the applecart, which we desperately need in our culture. But ask yourself, does he do what he does for the sanctity of the truth or does he do it for his own largesse?

Look, I’m sorry he hates himself so much, and that the “cool kids” back in the day roughed him up, physically and emotionally. But not to sound too much like an armchair shrink but why would anyone want to listen to him slam others because of what happened to him decades ago?

Here’s a confession. Back in my college days, I used to listen to Howard a lot when he was on a D.C. station. I liked his edgy stuff and thought he was a bit of a mad genius. But when he started joking around about his wife’s miscarriage and going into gory details about it, that’s when I turned it off.

I just wish everyone else would do the same now. Wake up, the emperor’s buck naked, folks. The plug should’ve been pulled about 15 years ago.

Suburban House … is moving … into Fuddruckers.

When I say that sentence to people indigenous to the Pikesville-Owings Mills corridor, their jaws simply drop and their eyes get as big as manhole covers. It’s almost like how I imagine informing people about the Orioles’ four-game sweep victory in the ’66 World Series, or even the Kennedy assassination, would’ve been. I mentioned it to a co-worker the other day and her 7-year-old son, who was in the office because of snow, started cradling his head in his little hands, moaning, “Fuddruckers?! Oh no!”

I’m sure that losing “The Fudd” in Pikesville will be a big blow to some people in this area who, like me, have wonderful memories of taking their young kids there, watching them devour a large burger or grilled cheese, only to retreat into that den of iniquity – the dreaded arcade area.

But for more of us, Suburban House – known locally as “S&H” because of its original owners’ initials – is the bigger stunner. Some people consider that spot at 911 Reisterstown Road nothing short of holy ground, as if Moses first touched base with the Almighty there while ordering a bowl of matzoh ball soup and “the Fresser Special.”

We “Bawlmer Jewz” tend to get pretty attached to our familiar places, our safe havens. For us, these buildings, complexes, facilities and physical areas are iconic, sacrosanct, even familial. “Major things” happened there – our parents went on their first dates there, we used to go there with buddies after seeing movies, we had our bar mitzvah receptions in that room, we always had breakfast with our zaydies there every Sunday, etc.

It gives us comfort, gravitas, a sense of rootedness and tradition. But of course, it’s deceiving – a complete sham—because everything in life is always in transition and flux, even when it seems otherwise. As a rabbi once said to me years ago, after I remarked on how sad it was that his synagogue had to relocate from its home of 45 years, “Alan, change is life’s only constant.” He may not have said it first, but he was right.

We “Bawlmer Jewz” don’t like change much, maybe even less than the average Joe. (If we were good with change, we wouldn’t still call it “S&H,” right?)

With its narrow entranceway, tiny parking lot (which has seen many a car swerve suddenly to avoid running over a senior citizen with a walker), that deli section, those booths, the photos and art on the walls, the mirrors everywhere, and those silly Yiddish placemats, Suburban House is home for us. Or at least it’s been our home away from home. It’s where we schmoozed or conducted business, enjoyed family meals, got a nosh to go.

But as the owners of S&H told me earlier this week, what they have there can be “transported.” It is a movable feast. After all, it’s the people (the customers, waitresses, kitchen staff, deli workers, owners) – and yes, the food, abundant and quite filling as it is – that made that particular restaurant special and gave it that last-of-the-Mohicans ambience. Really, how many bistros suffer a fire and a day later receive phone calls of condolence and support from the governor, a senator, congressmen and many others? (Maybe Obama was busy with Afghanistan or health care matters that day?)

Nu, a half-century at the same location is plenty long enough. Sure, we all have our memories and anecdotes of that place, some sweet and some not so sweet. I’ll always remember eating there at the tender age of 7 (back in the late ‘60s) and getting a look of sheer hatred and utter disgust from an octogenarian diner after I accidentally scraped my steak knife across my plate, making an awful, nails-on-the-chalkboard sound that reverberated throughout the restaurant.

I’ll also always remember all of the interesting people I’ve had the pleasure of interviewing there over the years, as well as the poignant gatherings with friends and family members. (My Garden State pal “Mickey Jerzey” always insists that we stop by S&H on his trips down here, as do my deli-lovin’ parents-in-law from Florida.)

But we must also remember that we are a wandering, peripatetic people. We can’t stay in one place for too long—we get shpilkes. So I want to wish Suburban House’s owners, Mark Horowitz and Joe Stowe, much good fortune (and plenty of parking availability) at their new location.

These are good guys who truly care about our community. (No, I’m not on their payroll, I’m not related to them and I’m not looking for free food handouts in the future.) They understand that their business is not just about feeding people and making a quick buck, but creating a place for folks of all ages to come together and simply be themselves. (As evidenced by so many sweatsuit-wearing S&H customers who simply get up and fix themselves a cup of coffee, as if they’re in their own kitchen.) That’s what always made S&H different, special.

So yes, Suburban House is moving to Fuddruckers.

Deal, folks.