Manna House

SARA died in a motel bathtub in Baltimore during the early morning hours of a cold March day in 1988. As her two daughters slept in the one bed they all shared, Sara suffered an epileptic seizure, slipped under the bubbles and drowned.It was Michelle, the 15-year-old, who discovered her mother motionless in the soapy water. And so a homeless family dissolved one step further into a pair of motherless children in a new city where a motel room with one bed had been their address for almost nine weeks.

Esther Reaves thinks about it when she opens Manna House on weekday mornings, stepping over the homeless men sleeping outside the soup kitchen's doors. It's on social worker Jeff Singer's mind every time he meets with Harold Haddix, an alcoholic finally off the streets who may end up living in abandoned cars again."It's like a disaster or a hurricane is coming," says Peter Rolph of the Maryland Food Committee.The storm they see brewing is called welfare reform. Unpredictable and difficult to track, it sits just south of Baltimore, stalled over Capitol Hill.

SURE YOU'RE Right -- condensed by some into Surely Right, formalized by others into Shirley Wright -- lived for the longest time near Greenmount Avenue and, for part of it, in what her friends sardonically called an abandominium, one of the many vacant Baltimore rowhouses occupied by junkies and the homeless, and homeless junkies.Her real name was Sheila Henson, and she was born in this city on a February day 43 years ago. She grew up on North Carey Street in West Baltimore, the baby in a family of nine brothers and sisters.

Unless someone slips $100,000 under the tree for the Midtown Churches Community Association, the nonprofit agency may be forced to lay off workers and shut down two shelters that account for more than one-tenth of Baltimore's emergency shelter beds.Because donations have fallen off sharply, the association plans to close on Jan. 1 the year-round shelter at Brown's Memorial Baptist Church in Northwest Baltimore, which provides up to 75 beds for men, women and children, and the winter-only facility at St. Ann's Roman Catholic Church in East Baltimore, with 100 beds for men.Citywide, there are 1,562 emergency and long-term shelter beds available during the winter months.

On March 10, 2004, MILDRED IDA TAYLOR, of Bel Air, MD; loving sister of Thelma T. Peacher; nieces, Nancy A. Potis and husband the late Michael Potis, Jane Dorer and husband Douglas Dorer; nephew, Robert G. Peacher and wife Pamela G. Peacher; grand-nieces, Caitlin J. Dorer, Sarah E. Peacher, Taylor M. Potis, Holly C. Potis and Hannah P. Potis; grand-nephews, Joshua R. Peacher and the late Benjamin D. Dorer. Also survived by several dear god children. Services will be held in Bel Air United Methodist Church, Bel Air, MD, on Friday, March 12, 2004, at 11 A.M. Interment will be in Gardens of Faith Cemetery, Baltimore, MD. Friends may call the family owned Mc Comas Funeral Home, P.A., Abingdon, MD, on Thursday, from 3 to 5 and 7 to 9 P.M. Those who desire may contribute to the Manna House c/o Bel Air United Methodist Church, 21 Linwood Avenue, Bel Air, MD 21014.

Two years ago, Lou wouldn't have thought twice about taking his family to a nice restaurant. But since he lost his job, even fast-food places are out of the question.Without The Sharing Table, an Edgewood soup kitchen that looks more like a friendly cafe, his family might have gone hungry yesterday.The cupboards at home are bare, there's no money to buy any food and food stamps won't arrive for another week, said his wife, Jan, who asked that the family's last name not be used.Not quite sure what to expect, Lou and his family went to The Sharing Table reluctantly yesterday, but quickly felt at ease after being greeted by smiling volunteers and seated in the dining room.

Thousands of Maryland children who rely on free and reduced-price lunches during the school year cannot get the same meals in the summer because onerous federal requirements keep communities from setting up programs, a national group has charged.Less than 20 percent of the 144,000 children in Maryland who are eligible for the subsidized meals received them in July 1991, the Food Research and Action Center (FRAC) announced yesterday.While that percentage compares favorably with the national average of 15.1 percent, the state figure is skewed by the Baltimore program, which is considered one of the better ones in the country.

Services for Arthur R. Harvey, a supervisory engineer for the Westinghouse Electric Corp. at Baltimore-Washington International Airport, will be held at 11 a.m. tomorrow at St. Paul's Evangelical Lutheran Church, 7902 Liberty Road.Mr. Harvey, who was 52, died Saturday of a heart attack in an ambulance en route from his home on Ethland Avenue to the Liberty Medical Center.He entered a Westinghouse graduate student program in 1960 and worked on computer modeling and programming for aerospace projects, including the simulated flight of an air-to-air missile.

DESPITE international media reports that the American cardinals meeting in Rome last week had stopped short of adopting a zero-tolerance policy for clergy who sexually abuse children, Cardinal William Keeler called to tell me his colleagues support the remedy. "I wish we had said this more clearly in Rome," the cardinal said during the weekend. Keeler and other cardinals have spent the past few days attempting to set the record straight. In Philadelphia, Cardinal Anthony Bevilacqua said, "All of the cardinals are agreed on zero tolerance.

THE WOMAN and her 18-month-old baby and her near grown son came to our emergency shelter for the homeless at Brown's Memorial Baptist Church, in the Pimlico area, at Christmastime last year. A sudden economic reversal had left them without a home.After a brief stay at Brown's and later a transitional shelter, the family got back on its feet and moved to Baltimore County.I consider that family one of thousands of success stories I've witnessed as executive director of the Midtown Churches Community Association, which has housed thousands of homeless people over the past seven years.