Dedication

Mary T. McMullen, a Millersville special education teacher and athletics booster, died Friday at University of Maryland Medical Center of scleroderma after a lengthy illness. She was 64. Mary Wissel was born March 14, 1948, in Baltimore and raised in Catonsville. She attended Seton High School in Baltimore, where she played on the girls basketball team - including a few games at the Baltimore Civic Center, where she was thrilled to play on the same court as her favorite professional team, the Baltimore Bullets.

An elegant marble statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary graces the entrance to St. Augustine School in Elkridge, moved there by alumni of the shuttered Cardinal Gibbons School. The sculpted image of a veiled young woman stands beneath a large white cross and above a memorial plaque. When Charlotte "Sis" Slavotinek learned that the archdiocese was closing the all-boys Catholic high school two years ago, she insisted that the statue, dedicated to her son Michael, his two classmates and their teacher who died in a 1968 plane crash, be relocated.

When it comes to WWE pay-per-views, four events on a crowded calendar stand out as special each year: Royal Rumble, WrestleMania, SummerSlam and Survivor Series. Collectively known as the "Big Four," these are usually supercards for WWE standard and turning points in the major ongoing stories in the company. This year, the event is also representing a change from recent trends, as more than just a handful of matches are being announced before the show. Recently, it hasn't been surprising to see three or even four bouts added to PPVs without advance notice.

Sexual promiscuity fueled by alcohol and drug use led one 47-year-old Towson man to contract HIV. But when he heard about government approval of the drug Truvada to lower people's risk of getting the disease, he wasn't completely sold on it as a lifesaver. The man, who didn't want to be identified because he hasn't told some family members he is HIV-positive, worries that such a pill could end up encouraging risk-taking. "If you're going to make something readily available to people that already engage in high-risk behavior, are you not saying then that we condone this high-risk behavior, which will then add fuel to the fire?"

Tidy rows of more than 900 small gravestones, each with a number but no name, line a steep hillside at Springfield Hospital Center in Sykesville, a state facility for the mentally ill. For decades the hospital buried patients who died indigent, without family or friends, in Sunny Side Cemetery. Expediency made the grassy knoll surrounded by trees the patients' graveyard. In 1899, it was the closest ground to the complex that housed the most aged or critically ill. For patients whose bodies went unclaimed, there were no last prayers, no gathering of mourners and no chiseled names and dates noting their years on earth.

Ruchlewicz remembered as kind man and dedicated public servant The sudden death on June 5 of Stanley Ruchlewicz, the longtime Main Street manager and economic development director for Westminster, has caused me to pause and reflect on his wonderful service to me and the efforts put forth by him and all of the other wonderful "public servants" that I dealt with in the planning, organizing, and carrying out of the recent 145th Memorial Day...

BETHESDA - A mother arrives at the Red Cross office at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center on a mission for her son, a 23-year-old soldier and double amputee. He needs a back scratcher. With her bright eyes and wide smile, volunteer Janice Chance gives her that and more - a reassuring rub on the arm and an offer to do anything else she can for the soldier, who is visiting the hospital for tests. In a sense, Chance is here for her own son, too. Marine Capt. Jesse Melton III, the oldest of Chance's three children, was killed by a roadside bomb in Afghanistan in 2008.

It was amusing to read Paul Marx's complaint ("Towson U.: football factory?" April 17) about the hardest working football team in America - the CAA Champion Towson Tigers - the morning after I attended Towson's 10th annual Scholar Athletic Dinner. I sat with the football coach and several of his student athletes - each of whom had over a 3.5 GPA. Well over 100 students attended, approximately 40 percent of whom were male athletes. I have been privileged to serve as an adjunct faculty member at Towson University for 12 years.

The Towson University Student Government Association and TU's Veterans Services group will host the first Military Appreciation Day on Monday, April 23, beginning at 1:30 p.m., at the school's Burdick Field. The event will include family-friendly attractions including a rock wall, Humvee, Bungee trampoline and an inflatable obstacle course, sponsored by the Loyola University/Towson University ROTC. The official dedication ceremony that recognizes and honors Towson University military students, past and present, will begin at 3:30 p.m. adjacent to Burdick Hall.

Michael Bloomberg's first donation to Johns Hopkins was $5, which he gave the year after he graduated in 1964 from the university with an engineering degree. The New York mayor now ranks as Hopkins' largest contributor, and possibly the largest donor to any American university, and his ties and interests in Baltimore have spread throughout the city. On Thursday, the philanthropist and politician attended the dedication for a new Johns Hopkins hospital he helped build. Bloomberg gave $120 million to help build the $1.1 billion state-of-the-art hospital, bringing his lifetime donations to Hopkins institutions to $800 million for buildings, professorships, research and art. In the years since Bloomberg graduated, he made a fortune, became mayor of New York City and established himself as a champion of public health.