Dawn

Cinderella and her prince were falling in love nightly on the stage of a 1996 Ice Capades tour of China as Dawn Latona and Chris Conte began their own love story off the ice. Roles as the Spanish Princess ("There's some casting," says the fair, blue-eyed Dawn) and Buttons, Cinderella's comic sidekick ("I played the village idiot," jokes Chris) reunited the two, who had known each other as children when they were skating competitively in Buffalo, N.Y. Back then, "I thought she was cute," says Chris, but "she would never talk to me."

Dawn C. Noonan, a homemaker and avid tennis player, died Saturday of breast cancer at Gilchrist Hospice Care. The Columbia resident was 78. Dawn C. Eyman was born and raised in Canton, Ohio. After graduation from McKinley High School in 1948, she worked as a switchboard operator for Ohio Bell Telephone Co. and in clothing sales. Mrs. Noonan lived in South Carolina and Atlanta before moving to Columbia in 1969. Her jobs included delivering the Columbia Flier and working as a Casual Corner sales associate.

With most of the East Coast still tucked in bed, Elizabeth Snell snuggled in a purple parka in the pre-dawn chill as she and 300 fellow worshipers flocked to Columbia's lakefront.Roman Catholics, Baptists, Quakers, Methodists, Lutherans, black and white: There were no dividing lines at this interfaith sunrise Easter service marking one of the holiest events of Christianity -- the dawn discovery that Christ had risen from the grave."There's nothing like this in the world," said Snell, 58, who runs an auto transmission business.

LAUREL -- Jockey Gregg McCarron made a triumphant return to the saddle yesterday, winning the Laurel Race Course feature with Until Dawn.McCarron, 43, had been sidelined with an injured back since he was spilled after a Laurel race in early November by Gala Ding a Ling, a filly trained by Bernie Bond.Until Dawn also is trained by Bond. The colt led all the way to capture the $18,500 race by 2 1/2 lengths over Bisher."I'm feeling good," said McCarron. "The neat thing about this game is that you get to hang on to young kids and you don't get to feeling old, being around them so much.

A 3-year-old boy died yesterday in a pre-dawn fire that neighbors said was caused by a candle, just hours before electricity was to be restored to the Cherry Hill apartment where he was living. Baltimore fire officials are investigating the cause of the two-alarm blaze in the 550-unit Middle Branch Manor apartments, but neighbors said a burning candle started the fire about 4: 30 a.m. Saevonne Lessington was found dead in his bed. No one else in the six affected apartments in the 2300 block of Terra Firma Road was seriously injured, fire department spokesman Michael Maybin said.

THE ELECTION of Anthony Williams as mayor of the District of Columbia, along with a predominantly white City Council for the first time ever, truly represents a new day dawning for the nation's capital.The city is in the best position in quite a while to turn itself around, get rid of the constraints of a control board in charge of its most vital decisions and re-establish a kind of most-favored-state status with Congress, given that the House and Senate exercise ultimate control.Yesterday's D.C. election is also a prelude to new alignments, interracial coalitions and the possibility of multiracial cooperation that will be the rule in the 21st century.

RIEGELWOOD, N.C. -- A tornado ripped through this Cape Fear River crossroads at dawn yesterday, killing at least seven residents and crushing more than 30 trailers and brick homes as residents were waking for jobs and school. More than 20 people were hospitalized, officials said, four of them children. A dark brown funnel cloud roared past the white double-wide trailer of Cissy Kennedy as she brushed her teeth at daybreak. She watched as the twister flattened two double-wide trailers and a single-width trailer next door, killing five of her neighbors but leaving her trailer untouched.

NEW YORK - Behind a chain-link fence in the lush green crescent known as Grand Army Plaza in Brooklyn, a four-note cry pierces the softness of dawn. Across the street in the apartments that line Plaza Street West, sleepers toss in their beds and smile to themselves, or curse quietly, or both. Day is here. Many dawns ago - most residents say a month or two; city animal-control officials say a year - a handsome, rust-maned, greenish-black rooster took up residence in the enclosed greensward that crowns the main entrance to Prospect Park.

Responding to complaints about street-corner cocaine sales in Catonsville, Baltimore County police conducted pre-dawn raids yesterday and arrested more than a dozen people on drug charges. Most of the suspects were charged with drug distribution or possession. Community activists said they believe the arrests will put a dent in the local cocaine trade. "I think the community will feel more secure, especially around the holidays," said Charlotte Wood, president of Concerned Citizens of Catonsville.

Enigmatic, inescapable, ferociously gifted yet chronically insecure, musician Dawn C. Culbertson astounded and confounded those who knew her as one of the Baltimore arts scene's most outlandish figures. She was a punk lutenist known as the "Evil Pappy Twin," a singer of Sacred Harp hymns, an avant-garde composer and a caller for English country dances. A member of the American Recorder Society and a founder of Vox Asylum, a group specializing in anti-war music, Culbertson performed as readily in Immanuel Episcopal Church as at Tattoo, the Ottobar and at "I Hate the '80s Night" at Frazier's on the Avenue in Hampden.