Kernan Hospital

Gladys M. Brown, an artist, author and composer who wrote the official Calvert County song, died in her sleep Sunday at Calvert County Nursing Center in Prince Frederick, where she had lived since 2001. The former Huntingtown resident was 91. Gladys Mogck was born and raised on 41st Street in Baltimore. She developed an interest in music early in her life and studied violin from 1922 to 1930 at Peabody Preparatory. After graduating in 1932 from Eastern High School, she attended Strayer Business College and worked during the late 1930s as a nurse's aide at Kernan Hospital.

A car accident that crushed Karen Muranaka's spine two years ago and left her a paraplegic threatened to take away one of her favorite pastimes: gardening. But in Kernan Hospital's rehabilitation garden, she learned how to plant forsythia and hyacinths from her wheelchair. And in the process, she found new hope: "I look for it harder now -- the birds, colors, greenness of grass every spring," says the 46-year-old Eldersburg resident who visits Kernan every three months for therapy. "That re-growth ... gives my body new strength and renews my inner spirit."

In Baltimore City Detectives investigate killings of two men in separate incidents City homicide detectives were investigating two fatal shootings that occurred Saturday night - one near Green Mount Cemetery, the other in West Baltimore. In the first incident, Taji Hawkins, 26, of the 2500 block of Eutaw Place was shot in the chest about 8:45 p.m. in the 1000 block of N. Carey St., in the city's Sandtown-Winchester neighborhood, police said. The other victim, identified as John Esrael, 22, of the Bronx, N.Y., was shot in the head about 11 p.m. in the 1500 block of Latrobe St., about two blocks west of the cemetery.

A Baltimore Circuit Court jury deliberated just over an hour yesterday before awarding a Woodlawn man more than $6.2 million for injuries suffered in a 1999 accident that caused him to go blind. Kojo Oseitutu, 58, won the judgment against Grimes Tire Service. The incident happened May 18, 1999, as Oseitutu was putting a truck wheel on a chassis, said one of his attorneys, Bernard J. Sevel. "The truck wheel exploded, throwing the wheel into him, causing severe head fractures, brain damage, rendering him totally blind and also depriving him of his sense of smell and taste," he said.

Despite a difficult year in which federal regulators forced an overhaul of research safety procedures, Johns Hopkins Hospital has topped the list of the nation's best hospitals for the 12th straight year in a magazine's annual rankings. The rankings, to be published in next week's issue of U.S. News & World Report, brought expressions of pride and relief yesterday at Hopkins, where leaders greeted employees reporting for work and a jazz ensemble played at the main entrance. "This is a reaffirmation that we're doing well among our peers," said hospital President Ronald R. Peterson, noting that a hospital's reputation weighs heavily in the ratings.

Loyola High lacrosse midfielder Daniel O'Hara, who was flown to Maryland Shock Trauma Center after suffering head and facial injuries in an April 13 car accident, is scheduled to be released from Kernan Hospital in Woodlawn today, his mother, Pat O'Hara, said last night. O'Hara was on a respirator for 12 hours after the accident. "Dan's gentle personality and good humor are intact," Pat O'Hara said of her son, who has suffered short-term memory loss. He will receive outpatient therapy from the Kennedy Krieger Institute.

Gladys Ketterman wrote her first check to Kernan Hospital in the 1970s. Then very soon after that, she wrote another. Her family knew she needed the money herself, but they didn't object, not even when she sent yet another. For more than 20 years, 82-year-old Gladys sent checks for whatever amount she had: $6.50, $15, $45, $78.50, $115, $167.50, $200, $225.25, $359.50. She won't say exactly how much she has given. Neither will the University of Maryland Medical System Foundation, which honored Gladys earlier this year for all her gifts.

In Baltimore City Two local doctors recognized for their medical research Two Baltimore physicians have won major prizes in their fields. Dr. Kenneth P. Johnson, professor and chairman of neurology at the University of Maryland Medical Center, was awarded the John Dystel Prize for Multiple Sclerosis Research. The prize honors his 30 years of leadership in designing and testing breakthrough treatments for MS and his pioneering work to identify an infectious trigger of the disease. Dr. Bert Vogelstein, the Clayton professor of oncology at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, won the Charles S. Mott Prize, which honors the most recent outstanding contribution in cancer research.

Mount Hebron's Brian Drnec, partially paralyzed in an automobile crash Dec. 9 after basketball practice, expects to return home today from Kernan Hospital, where he has been receiving therapy four times a day. A guard who also played soccer and baseball for the Vikings, Drnec has use of his arms, but not his legs. At Kernan, he learned to shower, dress and transfer himself to an automobile, and he expects to be able to drive a car. "It was scary at first, but then you realize you will be independent," Drnec said.

The state Department of Health and Mental Hygiene must continue to pay for care for uninsured rehabilitation patients who are now served at Kernan Hospital, Attorney General J. Joseph Curran said in an opinion.The ruling was requested after a series of changes in the way rehabilitation patients were served.The health department used to operate its own rehabilitation facility, Montebello Center. The legislature in 1992 turned Montebello over to University of Maryland Medical System (UMMS).