Family Members

EgyptAir rented a hotel in Providence, R.I., yesterday and staffed it with grievance counselors and interpreters. It bought plane tickets for family members to gather from around the world near the site where its Boeing 767 crashed into the ocean Sunday, even chartering flights to bring relatives from Cairo. "Our main concern and priority is the welfare of the families," said Jessica O'Keefe, EgyptAir's East Coast sales manager. "We're doing everything we can." But much of what EgyptAir is doing is required by federal law. After a series of poorly handled air disasters, including some in which victims' remains were mishandled and family members were mistreated, the federal government has crafted a series of strict, specific guidelines in recent years that require airlines to make crashes easier for family members to bear.

ARLINGTON, VA. -- One by one, the makeshift charts went up along the wall until they numbered 132.On the long, gray conference table, two dozen phones rang again and again as frantic families called, seeking shreds of information.In the hours after Flight 427 plunged into a hillside outside Pittsburgh, more than two dozen USAir workers assembled behind the double glass doors in an eighth-floor conference area they call "the next-of-kin room."Summoned by phone and beepers from dinner tables and Little League games, they came to begin the almost unfathomable task of telling families their loved ones had perished.

William Saxelby Galvin: An obituary for William Saxelby Galvin published yesterday contained incomplete information about his employment. He was secretary and treasurer of Horstmeier Lumber Co., a business he owned with other family members.

Konstantine J. "Gus" Prevas, an attorney who specialized in immigration issues and set policy to integrate the Baltimore City Fire Department, died of heart disease Sunday at his Towson home. He was 86. Born in Baltimore and raised on Patterson Park Avenue, he worked alongside his parents, who were immigrants from a village near Sparta, Greece. They ran a Broadway Market business — a soda fountain in the summer months, a confectionery store with fruits and nuts in the pre-Christmas months, and chocolates and Easter candies in the spring.

IT IS FITTING that descendants of the 18th century's Ellicott brothers are holding a family reunion tomorrow in the historic Maryland town that their ancestors put on the map. This is an ideal cultural exchange program: Thirty Ellicott family members coming to celebrate Ellicott City's 225th anniversary brings the family's lineage home and enriches them with a sense of their personal history. Both the town -- the Howard County seat -- and the descendants derive some benefit from the encounter.

A Baltimore Circuit Court judge has dismissed a $14 million lawsuit accusing city and state leaders of failing to protect the Dawson family from the 2002 firebombing that killed the couple and their five children. Judge M. Brooke Murdock struck down an argument from survivors that the city created danger by soliciting participation through its "Believe" campaign and by encouraging residents to report criminal activity to police. The judge ruled that the advertisements were directed at all Baltimore residents and not to the Dawsons specifically.

Family members with questions about the status of individual service members may call the following hot lines:Army (703) 614-0739Air Force (800) 253-9276Navy (800) 732-1206Or family only (800) 255-3808Marines (800) 523-2694Coast Guard (800) 283-8724American LegionFamily Supporthot line (800) 786-0901Maryland Army and AirNat'l Guard (800) 492-2526Or from Baltimore 576-6019GENERAL HOT LINES FOR FAMILY SUPPORT U.S. Army Reserve hot line(only for family members ofreservists called to activeduty)

Thomas Fulton, a longtime physics professor at the Johns Hopkins University who swapped notes with the great minds of science, died of heart failure on April 8 at his daughter's home in Ruxton. He was 83. Born Tamas Feuerzeug, in Budapest, Hungary, he immigrated to the United States with his family in 1941 at the age of 14. His immediate family fled Nazis in Hungary and Germany, where many of his other family members died in the Holocaust, and traveled to fascist Spain, where he secured three boat tickets to Cuba by borrowing $100 from a British consular official.

A 79-year-old Perry Hall man who left his daughter's home Thursday night, causing family members to fear that he might take his own life, was found about six miles away, unharmed in his car yesterday, police said.Baltimore County police found Charles Lewis Porter at Harrison and Baker avenues shortly before 3 p.m. A caller had reported seeing Mr. Porter there. Mr. Porter was taken to Franklin Square Hospital Center for medical evaluation, police said.Mr. Porter's family reported him missing Friday.