Laura

LOUISVILLE, Ky. -- Shortly after 4 in the morning, D. Wayne Lukas was back to work at Pimlico.He had just won the Preakness the day before with Charismatic, achieving two-thirds of the Triple Crown. Yet he and his wife, Laura, a couple immersed in horses, had returned to the Pimlico stakes barn in the deep black of night.After the Preakness, they had collapsed into their room at the Cross Keys Inn and called room service. They ordered cheeseburgers and milkshakes.They drank no champagne. They did not celebrate with friends.

When she entered the race to replace John R. Leopold as county executive, Laura Neuman had a far higher profile in business than she did in politics. Many of the other 15 candidates were better known. But the County Council pulled a surprise, granting her the seat in a 4-3 vote. It wasn't the first time Neuman, a 48-year-old Annapolitan, came to the table with a seemingly weak hand and raked in all the chips. Born to a family of modest means in East Baltimore, she never finished high school or college, but during her 20s talked her way into the MBA program at Loyola University Maryland.

WHAT are we to think, now, of Breckinridge Long?"America and the Holocaust: Deceit and Indifference," the recent PBS show inquiring into this country's slow, small concern for European Jewry as Nazi Germany set about extinguishing it, examined the sources of that national attitude, that governmental policy. And, through the historians David McCullough and David S. Wyman, this 90-minute documentary pinned the most immediate blame on Long, who was the Assistant Secretary of State overseeing the quota and nonquota admission of refugees from Germany and German-occupied Europe.

Laura Neuman comes to the job of Anne Arundel County executive as an almost complete outsider to county (and Maryland) politics. She spent a career in the private sector, then less than two years working for a Democratic administration in another county before being named last week to a post that makes her the second-highest-ranking Republican in public office in Maryland. She has not worked on campaigns, much less run one of her own, and she is being greeted with no small amount of skepticism by the GOP. She could be in for a steep learning curve in both the policies and the politics of her new job. But Ms. Neuman, who met today with The Sun's editorial board, may also be the kind of leader Anne Arundel County needs right now. She comes to office in the wake of the trial, conviction and resignation of John Leopold, whose political and personal misdeeds brought dishonor to the county and sapped the morale of the government he led. Ms. Neuman has no association with him or with his opponents, and that may help her be seen as an honest broker in the process of rooting out those who were complicit in the Leopold scandal - an effort she has already begun.

On March 1, 2003, LAURA Friends may call at the FAMILY OWNED MARCH FUNERAL HOME EAST, 1101 E. North Avenue on Tuesday after 8:30 A.M., where the family will receive friends on Wednesday at 11:30 A.M. Funeral Services to follow at 12 noon. See www.marchfh.com

On December 31, 2004, LAURA LATTA (nee Webb), 94; beloved wife of the late Walter T. Latta; devoted mother of Walter K. Latta, James Latta, John E. Latta, William G. Latta and the late Carol Latta and Richard Latta. Survived by many grandchildren. Services are private.

On February 27, 2003, LAURA YOUNGER, sister of Margaret B. Younger and Patricia A. Sherman. Friends may call at the FAMILY OWNED MARCH FUNERAL HOME EAST, 1101 E. North Avenue on Wednesday after 8:30 A. M where the family will receive friends on Thursday at 11:30 A.M. Funeral services will follow at 12 noon. See www.marchfh.com

On January 30, 2007. LAURA VIRGINIA WILSON. On Today, friends may call at the Vaughn C. Greene Funeral Services (EAST) 4905 York Road where the family will receive friends from 3:00-8:00 P.M. On Monday services will be held at New Shiloh Baptist Church, 2100 N. Monroe Street where the family will receive friends from 10:30 to 11:00 A.M. with services to follow. Inquiries to 410-433-7500

On August 17, 2004 LAURA (nee Boykin); beloved wife of the late Robert Sproesser, Sr.; devoted mother of Robert Sproesser, Jr. and his wife Sunny, Laura Lea Levy and her husband Alan; cherised grandmother of Esther and Robert Sproesser III, Allyson, Andrew and Daniel Levy; loving sister of Bessie Barker, Marie Jenkins, Erma Ehrhardt, Anna Catherine Myers and the late Joseph Russell, Bernie and William Boykin. Friends may call at the family owned HARTLEY MILLER-STELLA FUNERAL HOME, CHTD, 7527 Harford Road, on Friday 3 to 5 and 7 to 9 P.M., where services will be held on Saturday 10:30 A.M. Interment Dulaney Valley Memorial Gardens.

On July 16, 2005 LAURA CLEMMER (nee Asplen), formerly of Baltimore, MD, wife of the late Mowbray Dayton and the late Merrill Clemmer. Mother of F. Jane May of Scituate. Sister of the late Samuel Herbert Asplen. Also survived by six grandchildren and ten great-grandchildren. Memorial Funeral Service Monday at6 P.M. in the Hatherly United Methodist Church, 801 Union Street, Rockland. Interment will be in Baltimore, MD. For a complete obituary, online guest book and directions, visit www.sullivanfuneralhome.

Park School librarian Laura Amy Schlitz on Monday joined a select group of authors to be twice honored with one of the nation's top prizes for children's literature. Her 2012 Victorian gothic, "Splendors and Glooms," was named one of three Newbery Honor Books by the American Library Association during a morning news conference in Seattle. An honor book essentially is a runner-up; the winner of the 2013 award was Katherine Applegate's "The One and Only Ivan," about an easygoing gorilla who rescues a baby elephant from a rundown mall and a life of neglect.

When Laura Abel was approached to join a Polar Bear Plunge team, she said what most people would say: no. After all, you're diving into water in the middle of winter. "My gut reaction was, 'That's insane. Can I just give you some money!?'" said the 25-year-old Patterson Park resident. Her friend/co-worker Matthew Mayer said that a money donation would be fine, but Abel decided to join his five person team, the awesomely named Bear Naked Bohs, anyway. "[It's] far more rewarding to jump in and get a little dirty yourself," she said.

A buzz spread among the North Carroll field hockey players as they gathered just inside the gate to their playing field and looked toward the parking lot. "Is she here? Is she coming?" They're all dressed in black shirts with the words "Team Heinle" printed across their backs. Each letter in "Heinle" has a word descending from it - Hope. Enthusiastic. Inspiring. Noble. Love. Extraordinary. All words that apply to Laura Heinle, the North Carroll varsity assistant coach who has coached most of them since they reached the school's junior varsity squad and who is now recovering from bone cancer.

When 18-year-old Laura Ryan entered the 31st Annual Congressional Art Competition, she wanted to make a statement with her artwork. “Each section represents a different person,” says Ryan of her oil painting, “Unity,” which was selected to represent the 7th Congressional District. “The point was to show that even though we're different people from different places, we still unify into one face.” Every spring since 1982, the Congressional Institute has sponsored a nationwide art competition for high school students.

The witch had been weeping in the boxwoods for more than half a century before Laura Amy Schlitz picked up her pen and set her free. The 57-year-old Schlitz is the librarian at Park School and a Newbery Medal-winning author whose newest novel, "Splendors and Glooms," will be published Tuesday by Candlewick Press. But in 1959, she was a small child in the throes of a nightmare. "This book is a deeply personal story, and it goes back a very long way," she says. "When I was 4 years old, I woke up in the middle of the night and told my parents there was a witch crying outside in the boxwood bushes.

Laura Neuman remembers exactly what she was wearing the night she was raped -- down to the pinstripes on her pajamas. She remembers the night so vividly that when she talks about it there is a visceral quality to the story. It happened when she was 18. She had come home late from waitressing to an empty apartment; she remembers falling asleep, only to be awakened with a pillow over her head, and a gun aimed at her right temple. On that night, Neuman was raped by a stranger, a man who took away her innocence and instilled in her a lifelong fear of the night.

Thanks to Tyra Banks, we now know what the original Olympic games would have looked like if they had couture dresses and expensive jewelry. Hint: Jumping hurdles in high heels looks hard. The models got to explore Greece some more, drink with some cute Grecian men and have a good yelling match over some constructive criticsm. If your friends can't tell you that you lack confidence, who can? In the end, someone still went home, and it wasn't the obvious choice. Read on. SPOILERS AHEAD!

Laura Elizabeth McGrath, a Columbia-based affordable housing advocate, died of colon cancer Sept. 22 at her Hyattsville home. The former Northeast Baltimore resident was 46. Born in Baltimore and raised in Gardenville on LaSalle Avenue, she was a 1982 Western High School graduate and earned a bachelor's degree in anthropology from the University of Maryland, College Park. She also had a master's degree in applied anthropology with a concentration in urban planning and community development.