Graduate School

Three weeks into a new school year, I still smile at the cartoon-themed book bags that have rejoined my morning commute. Optimism's sneaker-clad army has returned. It is a welcome sight. But as I think about the future of education in Baltimore, my greatest hopes lie not necessarily with these bright-eyed youngsters but with the rowdy bunch, the nonconformists - the pupils who don't always do as they're told. These are the kids who can keep us honest and may be best equipped to push for change.

I'm from the part of Baltimore that was knocked down. I grew up with a clear line of sight to the giant white letters spelling "Johns Hopkins" on the hospital's Monument Street campus. It was like my neighborhood's version of the Hollywood sign: tall, prestigious and distant, despite being just blocks away. This was the '80s, years before large sections of Baltimore's Middle East were seized under eminent domain and leveled after being scouted as the setting for a biotechnology park.

Sister Mary Magdala Thompson, a Sister of Mercy who was a noted educator, psychotherapist and author, died July 14 of heart failure at Providence Hospital in Mobile, Ala. The former Baltimore resident was 89. "There was a common thread in all of the various ministries that she took up during her lifetime, and that was a genuine interest in people and the love and value of each person as an individual," said Sister Helen Amos, former president and...

I had a lonely feeling as I walked along the empty, isolated blocks just north of the Johns Hopkins Hospital in East Baltimore. In the distance, a bulldozer was eating away at a block of Patterson Park Avenue rowhouses. The emptied lots reminded me of 1950s urban renewal clearance. It's been a full decade since redevelopment was announced for this big chunk of Baltimore: 88 acres bounded by Broadway, Patterson Park Avenue, Madison Street and the Amtrak railway embankment. It's the neighborhood that I often viewed from a train window, a spot that seemed to embody 1940s working-class East Baltimore, when there were abundant jobs at the tin mills, paint factories and garment-making shops.

Kathryn Manion was "at a loss for words" Tuesday night — shortly after being honored for her way with them. At a private club in New York, Manion, 22, was named the 2012 winner of Washington College's Sophie Kerr Prize, which at more than $58,000 this year is considered the most lucrative undergraduate literary award in the country. The senior English major, a Clarksville native and graduate of Notre Dame Prep in Towson, said late Tuesday that her win was still sinking in, but that she was honored.

Columbia Pro Cantare is marking the 150th anniversary of the birth of two composers who were born in 1862, Debussy and Delius, as well as the 100th anniversary of the death of Massenet in 1912, at its concert Sunday, March 18 at 3 p.m. at First Evangelical Lutheran Church, in Ellicott City. Those long-dead European composers are worth commemorating, of course, but Howard County concert-goers can't be blamed for also showing interest in the local classical debut of a home-grown talent.

Marvin T. Haw III, who had held administrative positions with several heavy equipment and trucking companies, died Jan. 26 of a heart attack at his Timonium home. He was 75. Mr. Haw was born in St. Louis and raised in Bonne Terre, Mo., and West Lafayette, Ind., where he graduated in 1955 from West Lafayette High School. He earned a bachelor's degree in business administration in 1959 from the University of Missouri and later attended graduate school at the university.

Eugenia A. "Genie" Kennedy, a former Peace Corps volunteer and teacher, died Jan. 7 of multiple organ failure at her Bel Air home. She was 82. A daughter of a businessman and a homemaker, Sarah Eugenia Asbury, who did not use her first name, was born and raised in Delta, Pa. After graduating from Delta High School in 1947, she earned a bachelor's degree in business education in 1951 from Russell Sage College in upstate New York....