Mother And Son

A mother and son were killed yesterday afternoon when a car driven by the woman's husband was struck by a vehicle at a Frederick intersection, the Frederick County sheriff's office reported. David Mervin Meck, 49, was trying to cross Route 15 at Willow Road and failed to yield to oncoming traffic when his 1999 Chevrolet Malibu was struck by a southbound 1998 Jeep Cherokee driven by Charles Douglas Flammia, 61, of Charlottesville, Va., the sheriff's office said. Flammia was released after hospital treatment, while Meck was in critical condition at Maryland Shock Trauma Center.

Boston College stuffed the football prospect with lobster and steak and took him on a tour of Fenway Park. Notre Dame painted his name on a varsity locker, then flashed it in bright lights on its scoreboard. This weekend, it's Maryland's turn to try to turn Ambrose Wooden's head - as well as his arms and legs - toward College Park for the next four years. One highlight: a catered dinner held last night at the home of coach Ralph Friedgen. It's the height of recruiting season for Wooden, Gilman School's prized quarterback, and hundreds of other Division I college wannabes.

One hundred twenty-three years ago this month, my grandfather, Pasquale Serafini, was born in the Italian hill town of Atessa, an ancient village set on a crag above the Adriatic, in Abruzzo. He left Atessa for America at the age of 18, became a tailor and shop owner in New Hampshire, and died there in 1960. In all his 81 years of life he never went back to his birthplace. Neither did his American-born son or daughter -- my Uncle Enzo (for Fiorenzo), and my mother, the former (let this roll off your tongue)

Dear Mr. Azrael, I have a friend who is a senior citizen and she has her son on the deed of her home as a joint tenant. She lives in the house, pays the mortgage, the taxes, the insurance, the repairs, etc., and he contributes absolutely nothing toward the property. He denies her access to buildings on the property, and he has destroyed and vandalized the property. He wanted his mother to sell the house, but she refused; he has filed in court to force a sale of the house. She put $67,000 down on the property and has made all the payments.

Fleeing America to save a child A fable: Once upon a time an Iraqi Shiite Muslim woman came to the University of Maryland as a graduate student. To the surprise and honor of her family in Baghdad, she fell in love with and married an American Christian man. They had a son and lived together for three years just outside College Park, but all was not sweetness and harmony. The couple divorced. Although the mother had custody of their son, the father had significant visitation rights, which he exercised often and lovingly.

Long before it was owned by the "King of Baltimore" -- before the rats moved in and the junkies bled all over the bathroom and the baby got poisoned in the parlor -- the Formstone rowhouse at 1120 N. Milton Ave. was already well on its way to rack and ruin.It had sheltered a succession of blue-collar immigrant families through most of the century, providing them a thin slice of the American dream, until a decade ago when it fell into the hands of Pick'n Chick'n Inc.James M. Stein, proprietor.

A mother and son were rescued early yesterday from the second floor of a burning rowhouse in East Baltimore.Firefighters arrived in the 100 block of N. Port St. at 7: 50 a.m after receiving a call from a neighbor, said Battalion Chief Hector Torres.Torres said the single-alarm fire was quickly contained.Mary Anne Geiser, 34, was taken to Johns Hopkins Hospital, and her son, David Green, 10, was transported to Johns Hopkins Bayview. Both were listed in stable condition and were being treated for smoke inhalation.

You know you have entered uncharted territory with your teen-ager when you are arguing about his vocabulary - and he isn't swearing.It is SAT season, and my son, the high school freshman, is convinced he doesn't know enough vocabulary words to score more than pocket change on the verbal half of that test.Joe has tanked so many vocabulary quizzes in his literature class that I am convinced English is a foreign language for him. Though he won't take the SATs for a year or more, he has picked up on the psychic vibrations of upperclassmen, and he's worried.

Eight years after losing a bitter custody battle in Circuit Court and fleeing the state with her 5-year-old son, a former Finksburg mother was back in Carroll County last night to face kidnap charges.Sharon Elaine Wimperis, 50, was arrested Aug. 5 on a federal warrant at her apartment near Detroit by FBI agents. She was charged with unlawful flight to avoid prosecution for parental kidnapping.Federal marshals escorted her yesterday to Maryland, where she was turned over to state police and taken to Westminster to appear before District Court Commissioner Emmett V. Jones last night.

I am a Spanish teacher interested in studying in Spain with my 9-year-old son. Do you know of programs that can accommodate both parent and child?Spanish-language programs for travelers are easy to find in most of Spain's large cities; finding classes for both adults and young children, however, is a difficult proposition. (The tourist office on Madrid's Plaza Mayor could not readily name one such school in Madrid, which, with its high prices and traffic jams, you might want to avoid anyway)