Orphanage

Adult horror returns to the screen with the crisp and frightening The Orphanage, a haunted-house tale about the dueling forces of childhood friendship and maternal love. The heroine, Laura (Belen Rueda) may not realize until the end how strongly she embodies both. All she and her doctor-husband Carlos (Fernando Cayo) hope to do is run a home for children with special needs in the abandoned orphanage where she grew up. But when they're about to open, their adopted son, Simon (Roger Princep)

Nearly three years ago, I stood with neighborhood residents and preservationists before what looked like an abandoned and very sad West Baltimore brick castle. Below its remarkable towers and stout walls on Rayner Avenue, I thought that this venerable old orphanage would not make it another year. Clearly at the end of its days, it seemed ready to fall from its embankment and hit the street. It was vacant, lacking a good roof and was lightly boarded. It is owned by Coppin State University.

The souvenirs of Bethany Schultz's trip include callouses on her palms and a soft spot in her heart for a girl named Jetmira.Nine-year-old Jetmira (the J is pronounced like a Y) is one of the children at the orphanage in Tirana, Albania, where Bethany and a few dozen American youths spent 11 days earlier this month building a playground and a bike path."I'm going to start writing to her," said the 14-year-old Greenmount girl, who is undaunted by the language difference. Bethany has an Albanian dictionary, and she'll just guess at the conjugation of verbs, using what she knows from her Spanish class.

Betty B. Hill, a homemaker and orphanage volunteer, died of a pulmonary embolism Oct. 23 at St. Joseph Medical Center. The former Roland Park resident was 84. Born Betty Jane Bearry in Dundalk, she was the daughter of an electrician and a homemaker. She was a 1944 graduate of Sparrows Point High School. She attended the University of Maryland, College Park and what is now Towson University. While working at a summer job at Ocean City , she met her future husband, Samuel Dennis Hill, a lifeguard who was later an attorney practicing in Towson.

San Francisco.--Young writers offer their reflections on proposals to deny welfare benefits to single teen mothers and provide state-run orphanages for children who fall through the cracks. These stories appeared in YO! (Youth Outlook), a bi-monthly newspaper by and about teen-agers published by Pacific News Service.Time for Us to Grow UpHow do I feel about the Republican proposals for ending welfare? I thank them for making a wonderful choice. It's time for my generation of young and poor black women to grow up and be independent.

The civil war in Liberia has left thousands of children without parents, and a Baltimore group with ties to that violence-torn nation hopes to raise enough money to build an orphanage for youngsters there. The effort begins today with several events at the Gaimei N.N. Woah-Tee Neighborhood Center on York Road, said J. Mamadee Woah-Tee, a Baltimore resident who last visited his native Liberia in 1995. Woah-Tee, an organizer of today's fund-raising activities, said as many as 3,000 children could benefit from an orphanage in Bong County, Liberia.

Ruth Mary Elizabeth Brown Wallenstein, superintendent of a Northeast Baltimore orphanage, died April 14 of heart disease at the Bert Fish Medical Center in New Smyrna Beach, Fla. She was 94.Known as "Mom Wallenstein," she raised 36 children during her 16 years as house mother of the John F. Wiessner Home for Children in Hamilton. She retired in 1970."My mother was 53 when she saw an advertisement in the paper looking for a superintendent of the home, and since she had cared for Sheppard Pratt's first mental outpatient, she felt qualified and they hired her," said a daughter, Lee Hoover of New Smyrna.

Mia Helene Sutphin, a former pediatric intensive care nurse at University of Maryland Medical Center whose work as a volunteer with the Catholic Medical Mission Board took her to hospitals and orphanages in India and Kenya, died Sunday of a drug reaction while being treated for malaria at a hospital in Nairobi. She was 27. Miss Sutphin was born in Cleveland and raised in Ellicott City. She was a 1992 graduate of Notre Dame Preparatory School in Towson, where she began to seriously consider a career in nursing.

CHESTER -- Two years after her nightmarish visit to a Romanian orphanage, Patricia Bourbon continues to crusade for that country's neglected children, all the while waiting for her chance to return to bring back a little boy who won her heart."

Sister Stella Marko, a member of the School Sisters of Notre Dame who taught in parochial schools and worked in an orphanage, died of congestive heart failure June 18 at her order's motherhouse in the Woodbrook section of Baltimore County. She was 87. She was born Patricia Stella Marko in Philadelphia. In an autobiographical sketch, she wrote that she was enamored of the nuns whose convent was next door to her family's home. After attending public schools, she became a secretary and stenographer.

Maryland-born author Carol Peacock describes living conditions in the poorest Chinese orphanages with a dispassionate eye. Her new novel, "Red Thread Sisters," describes playgrounds strewn with old tires and a caste system that divides children perceived to be adoptable from those judged by orphanage officials as less appealing. The novel depicts children so eager for their own clothes that they wear multiple gift outfits at once. In the book, young children routinely perform such adult chores as feeding babies and scrubbing kitchen floors.

Sister Mary Clarita Gibson, a Sister of Mercy who worked in orphanages and schools, died June 9 at her order's retirement home, the Villa, in the Pinehurst section of Baltimore County. She was 84. Sister Irene Callahan, a member of the religious order, said no cause of death has been determined. Born Clara Dobbin Gibson in Baltimore, she was the daughter of Howard Dobbin Gibson and Doris Hoppersett. The family resided on Loch Raven Boulevard. She attended the old St. Bernard School in Waverly and was a graduate of the Mount de Sales Academy of the Visitation in Catonsville.

Motown was in the spotlight on last night's show, with "thrilling comebacks" and "disappointing setbacks. " Tom says "Our stars know there's 'nowhere to hide.'" We start with a Motown Medley from Harold Wheeler, the DWTS singers and the pro troupe. The most interesting part is the end when Tom tells us that was choreographed by Louis Van Amstel. Go Louis! Footage from last night: William says something before going on stage that requires bleeping and blurring. After their judging, he has to ask what Len meant by "raunchy.

As a resident of Strawbridge Home for Boys in 1950, Jim Mathis, at age 13, found himself working on a full-fledged farm with cows, hogs, chickens and horses. He soon learned a few lessons. "Cows don't care what day it is. At the same time every day, when it is time to milk, they come to the barn," Mathis, now 74, chuckled. "Farming is a 24-hour, seven days a week job. (Today), there's not a farmer amongst us. " That "us" is Mathis' fellow alumni from Strawbridge, a Methodist-run home in Eldersburg where boys between ages 6 and 18 were sent to live, from 1924 to the late 1950s, either because they were orphans, or their families couldn't care for them.

At Sykesville's Merry Main Street holiday celebration early in December, Burke Holbrook and his buddy Benjamin Skalka seemed like just two of the many kids that night enjoying the sights and sounds of the holiday season. The two 5-year-olds attended the festivities with their parents, walked along the decorated Main Street, enjoyed the town's Christmas tree and visited Santa Claus as part of their preparations for Christmas. But Christmas 2011 has a special meaning for these two, who started their lives a world away, literally, in an orphanage in Nepal.

Sister Stella Marko, a member of the School Sisters of Notre Dame who taught in parochial schools and worked in an orphanage, died of congestive heart failure June 18 at her order's motherhouse in the Woodbrook section of Baltimore County. She was 87. She was born Patricia Stella Marko in Philadelphia. In an autobiographical sketch, she wrote that she was enamored of the nuns whose convent was next door to her family's home. After attending public schools, she became a secretary and stenographer.

At Sykesville's Merry Main Street holiday celebration early in December, Burke Holbrook and his buddy Benjamin Skalka seemed like just two of the many kids that night enjoying the sights and sounds of the holiday season. The two 5-year-olds attended the festivities with their parents, walked along the decorated Main Street, enjoyed the town's Christmas tree and visited Santa Claus as part of their preparations for Christmas. But Christmas 2011 has a special meaning for these two, who started their lives a world away, literally, in an orphanage in Nepal.

Hundreds of youngsters once lived in the castle-like West Baltimore institution known as the Hebrew Orphan Asylum that advocates say is the oldest remaining Jewish orphanage building in the country. Now a coalition of preservationists, community leaders and officials of the Jewish Museum of Maryland have launched an attention-raising campaign to preserve the vacant, boarded-up building. The building, which was acquired by Coppin State University in 2003, lacks a roof and costs about $8,000 a month to keep standing.