Funeral

CHICAGO -- A horse-drawn funeral carriage followed by hundreds of fans and dozens of musicians carried the body of Willie Dixon through the South Side streets of Chicago yesterday to the sounds of music the blues great made famous.Bands stood on corners along a route down Muddy Waters Drive and past the Checker Board Lounge where Dixon was a fixture for years.In a bluesy, jazzy send-off, the bands began playing "Wang Dang Doodle" and other Dixon standards as the cortege approached on its way from a funeral home to a church.

A federal jury in Baltimore is expected to hear closing arguments this morning in the first-in-the-nation lawsuit against a Kansas church accused of invading the privacy of a family mourning the death of their son killed in Iraq. The civil trial, now a week old, has pitted a grieving father of a 20-year-old Marine against members of the Westboro Baptist Church, who Albert Snyder says exacerbated his pain and suffering by protesting at his son's March 2006 funeral with anti-gay slogans.

NEW YORK -- Pitcher Rick Sutcliffe rejoined the team in time for last night's game after traveling to Springfield, Ill., to attend the funeral of Samuel Hulett.Hulett, the 6-year-old son of Orioles infielder Tim Hulett, died of injuries sustained when he was struck by a car last week. The funeral was Tuesday afternoon."I got to talk to Tim and let him know that everybody would have liked to be there," said Sutcliffe, who was asked by manager Johnny Oates to represent the team at the funeral.

WASHINGTON -- At the National Archives the other day the 1972 Democratic presidential nominee, George McGovern, sat in a front row for nearly seven hours as a series of academics and political figures reviewed his long public career.''It's like advancing your own funeral service,'' he said with a wry grin during daylong symposium commemorating his 75th birthday in July.But unlike a real funeral service, full of excessive praise and exaggeration of virtues, this retrospective of a man still going strong painted a George McGovern of shortcomings as well as achievements.

IT WAS JOHN Unitas' funeral Tuesday, but it felt like the farewell to a whole generation's youth. A way of life passed in front of everybody's eyes. It was all those late Sunday afternoons with the daylight fading and the temperature plunging and the clock running out, and a hunched, bowlegged guy looking to pull one more desperate miracle out of his repertoire. John Unitas slips away, and so does an era. Outside the Cathedral of Mary Our Queen on Tuesday, there was Jim DeWald. When Unitas was breaking in, DeWald went to Montebello Elementary and had Miss Cohn in the second grade.

Maj. Gen. Edwin "Ted" Warfield III was born into one of Howard County's wealthiest families, whose members include a former Maryland governor and the founders of a publication that helped shape Baltimore's financial community.But the story he often told about his past -- which his friends and relatives retold yesterday at his funeral -- concerned a day in July 1945. It would change his character and his life, he said, laying a foundation for a career that included becoming commander of the Maryland National Guard, a member of the House of Delegates between 1963 and 1970 and chairman and chief executive of the Daily Record until 1994, when his family sold the publication.

A funeral for a teen-ager killed by a police officer last week resembled a political rally, drawing 200 mourners and politicians who grieved over the young man's death and condemned officers who patrol city streets."

Crystal D. Sheffield, who became the city's first female officer to die in the line of duty Thursday, will be buried Wednesday at Dulaney Valley Memorial Gardens in Timonium. Sheffield, 35, a three-year veteran who is married to a city firefighter and comes from a family of police officers, died after her cruiser was struck by an unmarked police car in West Baltimore late Wednesday. Sheffield and the officers in the other car were responding to a call to help an officer trying to break up a fight nearby.

MADRID, Spain - Spain buried its dead yesterday in a mourning ritual that played itself out across the country. At one of Madrid's largest funeral parlors, every room was in use. In the suburb of Alcala de Henares, all 40 of its slain residents were eulogized in a mass funeral service. The death toll in Thursday's train bombings rose to 200 when Francisco Moreno, a 56-year-old accountant and sole supporter of his 82-year-old mother, succumbed to his wounds. Still unable to absorb the news, Moreno's relatives staggered into a chapel at one of Alcala's two cemeteries for a brief service.

As family members of a slain North Laurel woman prepared for her funeral, a Howard County District Court judge yesterday postponed the bail review for the man charged with killing her until he gets a psychiatric evaluation.Three buses containing most of Maryland's 47 senators are expected to go to the funeral today of Barbara Susan Dorman -- the 36-year-old daughter of their colleague, state Sen. Arthur Dorman, a 21st District Democrat from Prince George's County.Services are scheduled for 11 a.m. at Beth Torah Synagogue in the 6700 block of Adelphi Road in Hyattsville.