Hero

ALEJANDRO GIRONAS is a handsome, brown-eyed teen-ager with an engaging smile. And Giro -- pronounced "hero" -- as his friends call him, has reason to smile.He is an exchange student from Los Andes, Chile, who was welcomed into the homes of two local families this year as part of the American Field Service intercultural program.AFS, an international nonprofit organization founded in 1915, provides opportunities for people to gain knowledge, practice skills and acquire the attitudes needed to live and work harmoniously in a global society.

With deaths from AIDS dropping by more than 40 percent in Maryland and across the nation, Baltimore's AIDSWALK attracted only one-fifth the number of last year's participants and saw pledges fall significantly, according to organizers, who fear the public may be becoming complacent about the disease.The 11th annual walk, which returned to its roots at the Johns Hopkins University's Homewood campus, drew only about 2,000 people yesterday."I anticipated looking out from the stage and seeing a swarm of people in [Garland]

"Standing at the Scratch Line," by Guy Johnson. Random House. 545 pages. $24.95.At the midpoint of this bloody epic, I realized that I had loscount of the dead. They had been pierced by arrows, lanced by flying knives, dumped down mine shafts, picked off by sniper fire, hacked to pieces and blasted into oblivion by grenades - all at the hands of one charismatic and lethal man.LeRoi "King" Tremain strides into the world of fiction armed and dangerous. The anti-hero is the avenger of all wrongs committed against his extended family, his friends and African-American communities throughout history.

WASHINGTON -- The Army and the little-known hero of the My Lai massacre, embroiled in a dispute about a fitting location for a long-awaited medal ceremony, appear close to agreement.Army officials said yesterday that they plan to award the Soldier's Medal to former helicopter pilot Hugh C. Thompson Jr. in the spring and that they are amenable to pinning it on at his preferred location: the Vietnam Veterans Memorial."Both the Army and Mr. Thompson thought the most opportune time to make the presentation is in the spring," said Maj. Gen. John G. Meyer Jr., the Army's spokesman.

HERCULES" is the latest hit Disney movie. Rated G, it's packing in the kids. It's full of family values but not of fidelity. It falsifies the myth almost beyond recognition.The name Hercules is a Roman version of the Greek hero's Greek name, Heracles. "Heracles" reveals better the word's link with the chief Greek goddess, Hera. He was the glory (kleos) of Hera. "Hera" itself comes from the Greek word for protector, and so originally did the word "hero," which would provide us with a Hero/cles.

That familiar face in the crowd. Try to remember where you saw him before. He's a man living a sports odyssey. By way of introduction, meet M. Delmar Ritchie Jr., an effervescent individual who has a magnet for a personality and the perseverance and charm to find available tickets even after the "sold out" sign is posted be it Wimbledon, the Super Bowl, World Series, Masters or East Coast Horseshoe Pitching Championship.Ritchie, a resident of Sherwood Forest, travels a large part of the English-speaking world in quest of sports entertainment.

A long time ago, Gil Dunn discovered a truth about his hero's hometown -- the people in Sudlersville who remembered Jimmie Foxx didn't want to talk about him. He might have been one of the greatest right-handed sluggers ever, but his life after baseball seemed like one long stumble down a dark staircase. Years after his best clippings had turned yellow, his name would appear in sad newspaper updates that described him as broke or suggested a drinking problem. During one of the last trips Jimmie Foxx made to Sudlersville, on Maryland's Eastern Shore, he couldn't get a personal check cashed.

Having made it into "Steel," which critics weren't supposed to see before its release, I almost wish I hadn't. This mind-numbingly amateurish action flick -- Shaquille O'Neal's movie based on the metal-clad DC Comics hero -- is one of the worst motion pictures I've seen since when did Shaq's "Kazaam" come out anyway?In his secret identity, our hero is former military metallurgist John Henry Irons. But when evil threatens Los Angeles, he dons his protective armor and takes hold of his high-tech hammer.

BOB DOLE, who is scheduled to meet with a veterans group in the Baltimore area Sunday, is well known as a war hero. Less well known is the fact that he was, like Bill Clinton, a draft dodger.Dole was an 18-year-old freshman at the University of Kansas on December 7, 1941, when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. He had no desire to go into the service, much less to go to war. That was probably typical. Despite those old World War II movies where the recruiting offices were mobbed every day, many if not most men of the era preferred the civilian life.

Fair tradeDon a mop cap or trades cap and apron for an apprenticeship with an 18th-century artisan -- blacksmith, seamstress, spinner, brick-maker to name a few -- and learn a Colonial craft or trade at the 18th Century Trades Fair this weekend at the Charles Carroll House of Annapolis, 109 Duke of Gloucester St.You can also take a chance and try life in a Colonial militia unit with musket-handling and drilling featuring the Maryland Militia and the 6th...

The Walters' big fall exhibit celebrates four larger-than-life heroes from Greek mythology: Achilles, Odysseus, Hercules - and, um, Helen of Troy, an unfaithful wife who caused a war that wreaked havoc on two cities. Under what criteria could Helen even conceivably be considered a "hero"? Might she be more accurately termed a celebrity? Wasn't she merely the 12th century B.C. equivalent of Britney Spears, whose romances and legal scrapes vastly entertained the citizenry? Regine Schulz, curator of ancient art at the Walters Art Museum, begs to differ.

Director Duncan Jones, David Bowie's son, has brought a retro-fresh look to the futuristic story Moo n. With low-key confidence he depicts what happens to a man during a three-year stint spent harvesting helium-3 from the lunar landscape for shipment to an energy-starved Earth. The film harks back to the "serious" sci-fi of 30 or 40 years ago, when directors had to rely on a beautifully calibrated spareness, rather than computer-generated effects, to convey the time and space of out-of-this-world travel.

The Metro train operator who died trying to stop her train from crashing into another was remembered as a hero yesterday during an emotional memorial service at her church in Southeast Washington. Metro General Manager John B. Catoe Jr. brought the Temple of Praise congregation to its feet when he said Jeanice McMillan, 42, "saved lives" in trying to apply the emergency brakes on her Red Line train before it slammed into another during Monday evening's rush hour. She would be honored "as the Metro hero," he said.

The legend goes that when Walt Disney looked for a distributor for his Mickey Mouse cartoons, mogul Louis B. Mayer reacted with horror at the amiable rodent. How could you turn a mouse into a comic hero? Pregnant housewives would stare at the creature on the screen and miscarry right in the theater, Mayer predicted. Of course, Mickey eventually became the mascot and mainstay of Disney's own studio. So it's poetic justice that the art of upsetting conventional wisdom with original ideas has fallen to Disney's heir, John Lasseter, the creative chief of Pixar and the head of Disney animation.

Pitts ignores context of Limbaugh's words In his column "Childish game of ravaging diminishes our nation" (Commentary, Feb. 2), Leonard Pitts Jr. continued his assault on Rush Limbaugh and defended his very misleading earlier claim that Mr. Limbaugh said of Barack Obama's presidency, " I hope he fails" ("What Limbaugh's comment says about Limbaugh," Commentary, Jan. 26). Mr. Pitts several times quoted Mr. Limbaugh as saying, "I hope he fails." But those were four words taken out of context from a monologue that contained hundreds and hundreds of words - most of which put the lie to Mr. Pitts' twisted presentation of what Mr. Limbaugh said.

"Comedy tonight!" That happy message is sung by the cast as the curtain goes up on A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. Comedy is more than welcome in unhappy times, and Stephen Sondheim's 1962 musical, set in ancient Rome, offers plenty of it. A production of the show by the Student Arts Collective at Howard Community College can be seen through Dec. 14. Sondheim first became known for the lyrics he supplied for West Side Story and Gypsy....

A 25-year-old nonprofit AIDS organization in Baltimore that once garnered international acclaim for its innovative packaging of services closed its walk-in center yesterday. Health Education Resource Organization, better known as HERO, is closing because of a lack of money. Private donations dried up in recent years, and early this month, city health officials announced that they were rerouting HERO's federal grants - and its clients - to more stable organizations. HERO and health officials will work through early next month to move clients to new organizations, said Dr. Joshua M. Sharfstein, city health commissioner.

For years, Baltimore's Health Education Resource Organization, known as HERO, was one of the most active, best-funded clinical support groups for people with HIV/AIDS in the country. It provided counseling, medical care, a place to gather and a sympathetic ear to patients who often had nowhere else to turn at a time when AIDS was poorly understood and its victims often stigmatized as unworthy of help. That's why past and present HERO clients are shocked and saddened by news that the group is preparing to end its 25-year mission of mercy in a city with at least 16,000 cases.

After 25 years, a Baltimore organization that once attracted international acclaim for its efforts to help people with AIDS is set to close its doors for good. Even now, as the Health Education Resource Organization prepares to shut down Wednesday, people from all across Baltimore keep making their way to the group's Maryland Avenue building to find assistance, and some local leaders are begging the city to do more to save its oldest and largest HIV and AIDS service provider. In a city with the nation's second highest rate of HIV, more than 16,000 known cases, this organization is where the most vulnerable part of that population finds solace.

One of three resident companies at Bowie Playhouse, 2nd Star chose a winner in A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, a production that director Jane Wingard said "took 7,000 volunteer hours to put together," explaining that "comedy is hard, as the actors endure long rehearsals to learn the music, dances and their lines." A smart choice to open the newly renovated theater, the show is filled with Roman slapstick and catchy tunes set to clever lyrics. Forum debuted on Broadway in 1962, becoming the first show in which Stephen Sondheim served as both composer and lyricist, with book by Burt Shevelove and Larry Gelbart.