Guidance Counselor

Wearing just their T-shirts and underwear, Christina Means and her family escaped from a house fire that struck in the middle of the night. They watched the Rosedale house burn in the cold December air and waited for the firetrucks, wrapped in the one blanket Means had grabbed when the smoke detectors had sounded and her boyfriend had shouted that he saw flames out the window. "We were so scared, we just ran out," Means said. "No shoes, no socks. " In the next 48 hours one thing became clear: All their possessions were burned or water-damaged, and a lapsed renters' insurance policy meant they were going to have to start over.

I am not one of Maryland's public high school guidance counselors, and yet at this time of year, I feel their pain. So I shall speak up for them, because they have no voice - or at least I can't hear their desperate, muffled cries from beneath the smothering heap of paperwork they are processing for hundreds of anxious high school students facing the looming college application deadline of Dec. 1. High school guidance counselors have to write...

  Katherine Howard and Andrew Hood   Sam and Melissa Howard, of Chesapeake, Va., announce the engagement of their daughter, Katherine Elizabeth Howard, to Andrew Symmes Hood, son of Carl and Cynthia Hood, of Dayton. The bride-to-be is a 2002 graduate of Robinson Secondary School; a 2006 graduate of Longwood University, in Farmville, Va., where she earned a Bachelor of Science in psychology and a Bachelor of Arts in communications; and a graudate of the College of William and Mary, in Williamsburg, Va., where she earned a master's degree.

A 15-year-old middle school student was arrested on Wednesday after police said he took a loaded handgun to his school in Hampstead and told an assistant principal that he was "struggling with thoughts of suicide. " The eighth grade student at North Carroll Middle School was charged as a juvenile with gun possession. Maryland State Police said he voluntarily surrendered the semi-automatic .40 caliber handgun, which was in a lunch bag and had three bullets in the magazine. "There is no indication at this time that the student had any desire to harm anyone other than himself," police said in a statement.

A North Carroll Middle School eighth-grader is being charged as a juvenile after he voluntarily surrendered a handgun he brought to the Hampstead school Wednesday, Oct. 26, to a school staff member he went to for help. Maryland State Police identified the student is a 15-year-old male. He is not being identified because he is being charged as a juvenile. According to police accounts, shortly before 11 a.m. Wednesday, the student was in the school lunchroom for his lunch period when he approached an assistant principal in the room and said he was troubled with thoughts of harming himself.

Nora Lee Scanlan, a retired Howard County public school guidance counselor and newspaper columnist, died Sept. 22 of breast cancer at Gilchrist Hospice Care in Columbia. She was 71. Born in Seattle and raised in St. Paul, Minn., Ms. Scanlan was a 1958 graduate of Our Lady of Peace High School. She entered the Sisters of Charity that year in Belrose, N.Y., and remained in the order for a decade before leaving in 1968. She earned a bachelor's degree in 1963 from Mundelein College in Chicago, and a master's degree in 1967 from Queens College in Flushing, N.Y. Ms. Scanlan taught at schools in Minnesota and New Jersey before joining Howard County public schools.

Elkridge Elementary School will end this school year with a few final goodbyes to some fine folks that have been touching little lives for many years. Here are snapshots of three people that have made wonderful contributions to the education system and are now retiring, or rather evolving, into another phase of life. Sandy Lee Byerly, para educator. After a few gentle prods, Sandy shares a little bit of herself as she embarks on her new journey. "Elkridge is my real, honest-to-goodness 'hometown.' I grew up here and attended the old Elkridge Elementary School, Waterloo Junior High and Howard High.

In a Canton basement lit by fluorescent lights, a dozen glass jugs of fermenting grape juice share space with a washer, dryer and furnace. Standing before them, Erik Bandzak surveys his wines: two deep reds made from a Rougeon grape and an Isabella blackberry blend, which every few minutes emit tiny bubbles of carbon dioxide through their glass air locks. A glass hydrometer, an instrument that gauges a wine's sugar content, measures his Rougeon at about 0.99. "That's what I want it at," Bandzak says.

Charles Sussman, a retired Baltimore County public schools administrator who was a decorated World War II veteran, died of congestive heart failure Wednesday at Sinai Hospital. He was 85 and lived in Pikesville. Born in Baltimore and raised on Bryant Avenue near Druid Hill Park, he worked as a cashier at the popular delicatessen Sussman and Lev, at 923 E. Baltimore St., which was operated by his father, Jacob. While attending City College, where he graduated in 1942, Mr. Sussman befriended Russell Baker, who went on to become a Baltimore Sun reporter, New York Times columnist and author.