Raising Children

William T. Roberson, a former Westinghouse employee who enjoyed gardening, died of kidney failure Feb. 26 at Stella Maris Hospice in Timonium. He was 89. Born and raised in East Baltimore, Mr. Roberson dropped out of City College at 16 to help support his family, working with the Canton Railroad Co. and clothing manufacturers. He attended night classes to earn his high school diploma. During World War II, Mr. Roberson joined the merchant marine, ferrying oil between New York and the Caribbean.

In the more than three years that Howard County day care provider Kathleen A. Butcher has been in prison after being convicted of killing a 15-month-old girl in her care, her husband and five children have struggled to lead a normal family life without her. Duke Butcher, 46, attempts to juggle his job along with responsibilities that his wife used to manage in their North Laurel home. He has little time to relax after getting the kids off to school in the morning, helping them with their homework, making dinner and then doing household chores on the weekend.

Erin Brady thought it was no big deal to carry her then-13-month-old son Kyle across a parking lot so she could show him off to a friend. But the next morning, her back hurt so much that the 37-year-old stay-at-home mother made an emergency visit to a chiropractor. Her husband, a computer programmer, ended up taking two days off from work to care for Kyle while his wife lay immobilized. "I know now not to push myself," said Brady, of Owings Mills, who is pregnant with the couple's second child.

"`No one's young forever.' Well, I just laughed I turned to leave around the corner And the years went past."- "You Can't Go Back," Patti Scialfa It works like this: When you're young, you dream big dreams. Wild dreams. Outrageous dreams. Then you grow up, get married, make a family. Along the way, you wad up the dream like a tie-dyed T-shirt - the kind of bold, crazy thing you'd never wear outside the house anymore - and you stash it in the attic. But Patti Scialfa, Patti Smith and Annie Lennox didn't get the memo.

Jane Elizabeth "Bessie" Preis, a homemaker who was able to raise her 13 children despite a disabling stroke, died of cerebral vascular complications Saturday at Oak Crest Village. She was 94 and had lived since 1998 at the Parkville retirement community. Born Jane Elizabeth Reid in Baltimore, she attended the Institute of Notre Dame. She was married in 1929 to Dr. Kyrle W. Preis, a Baltimore orthodontist and researcher. Her husband died in 1999. Mrs. Preis and her husband lived for 54 years at Heathcote Cottage, their Kingsville farm, where she raised her 13 children.

The grown-ups at Friends School were given their own reading assignment this summer, and this week is the big test. Head of school Lila Lohr asked faculty, staff and parents to read Too Much of a Good Thing: Raising Children of Character in an Indulgent Age, by Harvard psychologist Dan Kindlon, and the author will be at the school auditorium Thursday at 7:30 p.m. Lohr hopes the grown-ups learned something. "I think what he is talking about is the most serious issue schools like ours are facing," she says.

WASHINGTON - After leading Notre Dame to the 2000-2001 NCAA women's basketball championship, Niele Ivey had a decent rookie season as backup point guard for the WNBA's Indiana Fever. Ivey's average of 3.6 points and 2.2 assists, while playing in all 32 games, was a nice start. But Indiana coach Nell Fortner noticed Ivey lacked some of the quickness she had shown in college. It wasn't until an exit interview at the end of the season that the coach discovered why. Niele (pronounced knee-ELL)

When Karen Blue was a teen-ager growing up in Columbia, she used to call the place "Plastic City." "I kept thinking that it wasn't the real world," she said. "It was a bunch of mannequins with two kids and a dog and a goldfish in the living room." But after she grew out of her adolescent rebellion phase and decided she wanted to start a family, she was struck with the realization that she wanted that supposed perfect lifestyle she used to mock. So she moved back to the idealized suburb with her husband to raise their daughter.

When Karen Blue was a teen-ager growing up in Columbia, she used to call the place "plastic city." "I kept thinking that it wasn't the real world," she said. "It was a bunch of mannequins with two kids and a dog and a goldfish in the living room." But after she grew out of her adolescent rebellion phase and decided she wanted to start a family, she was struck with the realization that she wanted that supposed perfect lifestyle she used to mock. So she moved back to the idealized suburb with her husband to raise their daughter.

In 1967, John and Mary Miller were a married couple in their 20s looking to move from their Baltimore home to a place in the county. At the time, they had one child and planned to have more. After looking around, they decided on Coachford, a small, quiet, semi-rural community of about 11 homes off Padonia Road adjacent to the neighborhood of Springlake. "It seemed like a wonderful place to raise children," John Miller said. "It was a new community and a chance to buy a decent home that was affordable."