Orphanage

Scott Blackketter walks through his dilapidated house without delicacy. Here, floors slope toward the center; there, the ceiling sloughs in chunks and, over there, the Sheetrock walls show cracks from basement to roof.It's in bad shape, he says, but he figures that if the brown shingle house hasn't fallen down in more than 120 years, it's not going to now."It takes decades for wood to wear like this," he says, sticking his foot into a smooth ditch on a stair. "I can just imagine all those kids running up and down these stairs."

For Towson University student Alec Bersch, what began as a short trip to help his sister run a Haitian orphanage has become an open-ended mission to aid some of the island's neediest children. "This whole thing has personally given me a clearer view of my own purpose down here," the 21-year-old Bersch said from Wings of Hope, an orphanage for disabled children about 30 miles outside Port-au-Prince. "Before the quake, I loved Haiti and I enjoyed the environment, but that first night, when we were all frantic trying to move kids, that was the first time I had been in a position where I truly feared for the lives of other people."

Last year, when tests showed that her 26-year-old daughter, Katia Reiser, had an ovarian tumor with cancerous cells, Vera Hasler Port of Arnold prayed hard.She vowed that if Reiser were spared, she would do everything she could to help the Santo Antonio Orphanage and Educational Center in her native Salvador, Bahia, in northeastern Brazil.Surgery was successful, and Port, 62, is working hard to fulfill her promise in a way she knows best -- by cooking. Bahian specialties will highlight a Brazilian Food Festival this weekend at her small Severna Park restaurant, Vera's Bakery and Cafe, to benefit Santo Antonio.

Cora Barnes has a deep respect for the upbringing she received at the Baltimore orphanage she knew throughout her youth. She learned her algebra and Roman Catholic Latin hymns. She sang at midnight Masses and said her prayers. She also never forgot the love and friendships formed at the little-known institution. And now, nearly eight decades after she arrived at the orphanage, she returns weekly to its brick buildings set between Maryland Avenue and Howard Street. For the past 17 years, she has been a volunteer at what is now the Franciscan Center, where she sorts women's clothes and works actively with the poor and homeless.

The Victorian mansion's white marble steps sparkle outside a front door that has welcomed guests to a prosperous cabinetmaker's residence, then a convent, orphanage and special-needs school. This Charles Village-area landmark has been reinvented - this time as a residence for 22 homeless women. Called the Margaret Jenkins House, it is the work of the Women's Housing Coalition and Homes For America, two nonprofit organizations whose officials restored and renovated the property during the past 11 months.

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.

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.

FREDERICK -- You could say that Diana and Mike Bartel became instant parents. They didn't do it the nine-month way. Nor did they go through a long, drawn-out adoption process. Six weeks after the Bartels saw pictures of Russian sisters, Masha, 4 1/2 , and Sasha, 3 1/2 , the girls came to Frederick to live.Adoption had always intrigued Mrs. Bartel, 35, and Mr. Bartel, 34, who might someday have a biological child of their own. In late October, the couple went to a public meeting on adoption in Rockville, Montgomery County.

IN AMERICA, THE stock market slips a few points, and everybody gets chest pains. In Russia, 44 million people live below the poverty line, which is now $37 a month. In America, the kids feel cheated if they turn 16 and have to settle for a secondhand car. In Russia, thousands give up their babies because they can't feed them. More than two years ago, at an orphanage in Perm, at the base of the Ural Mountains about a thousand miles east of Moscow, Amy and Paul Sponseller of Cockeysville found Nina, a 6-year-old pixie given up at birth by her destitute Russian mother.