Church Members

Yolanda R. Carr, a Baltimore County cosmetologist and owner of Le Salon De Beaute, was killed March 2 in an automobile accident in Pikesville. She was 38. Mrs. Carr was in a parking lot in the 100 block of Old Court Road when she apparently put her vehicle in reverse, backed up a hill, and struck several property signs and vehicles. Her car door was open, and Mrs. Carr was thrown from the vehicle. She was pronounced dead at the scene. Baltimore County police said the accident remains under investigation.

While members of Westboro Baptist Church waved a sign outside the U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday thanking God for dead soldiers, the nine justices inside tried to define the line at which such public protests become personal attacks during arguments in an emotionally charged case prompted by the picketing of a Maryland Marine's funeral. Lance Cpl. Matthew Snyder was 20 years old when he was killed in a Humvee accident in Iraq on March 3, 2006. A week later, publicity-seeking members of the fire-and-brimstone Kansas congregation — all strangers to the Snyders — appeared at his family's Catholic funeral service in Westminster with posters proclaiming sentiments like "God Hates America" and "Semper Fi Fags.

William J. Huller has been attending Mass with his wife for more than a half-century. The Catonsville man drove their six children to catechism classes and celebrated as they advanced through the sacraments of the church. On Saturday, at the age of 83, Huller became a Catholic. "It'll be a change," he said before the Easter Vigil Mass at St. Gabriel in Woodlawn, where he finally was confirmed into the church into which he had married and raised his family. "It's kind of a new experience for me."

Miriam H. Coffin, a homemaker and former federal worker, died Friday of a stroke at the Fairhaven retirement community in Sykesville. She was 92. Miriam Hilton, the daughter of farmers, was born and raised in Mercer, Maine. She was a 1934 graduate of Skowhegan High School in Skowhegan, Maine, and earned a bachelor's degree in home economics in 1938 from the University of Maine at Orono. She moved to Washington in 1939 and worked during World War II for the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

In 1972, Lewis Foust and a group of men built a new sanctuary at one of Baltimore County's oldest churches, more than doubling its size. The task took months and had its share of setbacks, but when it was complete, Foust had a sense of accomplishment that never waned - until Friday, when he saw his work destroyed by fire. "That's really the hurtful part - to see what you have done just gone," Foust said in the parking lot of the Sharp Street United Methodist Church in Chase. A two-alarm fire early Friday caused the roof of the sanctuary to collapse.

On a typical summer Sunday, the doors of Temple Oheb Shalom are locked tight. With observances of the Jewish Sabbath taking place on Friday night and Saturday and religious school out until fall, the Park Heights Avenue building sits empty. Not yesterday. Hundreds of congregants of a different faith poured into the sanctuary, bringing along their love of God, their upbeat music and their fervent prayer to the otherwise quiet house of worship. A fire July 1 damaged the historic Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Upton and left its flock with no place to come together.

Jim Stephens attended a matchmaking ceremony held by what was then the Unification Church 30 years ago, convinced that he could not find a bride on his own. Upon being paired with Hiromi Ishida of Japan, who had recently arrived in the United States and spoke little English, he said that he was ready to get married right away. "Me too," she replied, "but .. what's your name?" The couple, who live in Columbia, were wedded by church founder the Rev. Sun Myung Moon three years later, joining 2,075 couples in a mass marriage blessing ceremony at New York's Madison Square Garden.

Mitzi McCain's huge hopes for Inauguration Day included a grand gospel brunch at a Washington hotel in the heart of Pennsylvania Avenue's pomp and pageantry. Jumbo television screens on three spacious levels would broadcast President Barack Obama's history-making oath. And the hotel balcony's giant floor-to-ceiling windows would make the perfect place to gaze at the first couple striding down the inaugural parade route. Instead, McCain found herself in a meeting room in the bowels of the JW Marriott, about to bear witness to a defining moment in American history as she might in her Pikesville home - on a small, run-of-the-mill TV. "It's disappointing," she said, flatly.

On Wednesday afternoon, Michael Foy decided to change a tire on his trailer while his wife, Catherine, prepared a Christmas Eve lunch and baked cookies. Foy assumed his youngest daughter, Jacqulynn, had followed her stepmother inside their Pasadena home. Moments later, as he looked through the window while backing up his truck, he saw 9-year-old Jackie pinned beneath a wheel of the trailer. Foy has been replaying the next few minutes in his mind ever since: screaming to his wife to call an ambulance, scooping the girl into his arms, hearing her complain of a leg injury before her eyes rolled back and she lost consciousness.