Rescue Mission

THE BALTIMORE Rescue Mission started with the death of a black man on the streets of Baltimore in February, 1956. He died of the cold. At the time, the Christian community was sending missionaries to Africa and reserving overnight shelter in Baltimore for whites. It was the era of segregation.John Ehlers, a Christian businessman, saw something wrong with this picture. He got together with two others and opened a one-room storefront on Pennsylvania Avenue.They collected food and clothing. In that one room they cooked, fed, gave the Gospel, then folded up the chairs and slept onnewspapers.

Sculptor Toby Mendez, the man whose bronze statues immortalized Brooks Robinson, Cal Ripken Jr. and four other Orioles greats in Camden Yards ceremonies spread over the past six months, has certainly enjoyed his time in the spotlight. But now it's his dad's turn. The exploits of the elder Mendez, Tony, are at the center of the movie “Argo,” about a daring CIA-Canada rescue mission that got six Americans out of Iran during the 1979-1981 hostage crisis by convincing authorities they were part of a Canadian film crew.

The Board of License Commissioners of Carroll County has approved a request by the Westminster Rescue Mission on Lucabaugh Mill Road for an addition to its building.The multipurpose building would house an additional 25 dormitory beds.Although the Rescue Mission is a nonconforming use on the land, the board found that the mission's programs have benefited the community.Nearby properties would not be adversely affected by the addition, the board concluded.PoliceWestminster: A resident of East Green Street told city police at 8: 41 p.m. Monday that someone broke a window on his vehicle while it was parked at Cranberry Mall and removed personal property.

BOGOTA, Colombia - Although the U.S. government was supposed to have final authority on any plan to rescue three U.S. contractors held by guerrillas, it was kept in the dark by the Colombian military until a week before the July 2 operation to lessen the chances the Bush administration would veto the effort, said a top official close to the operation. "They wanted to wait long enough to make it difficult to say no," said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was forbidden to speak on the topic for attribution.

John F. Ehlers, a businessman who founded an open-to-all gospel mission in the era of racial segregation, died Monday of heart failure at Ginger Cove Health Center in Annapolis, where he had lived for 12 years. He was 98 and had lived previously in Baltimore's Windsor Hills neighborhood. When he learned in the mid-1950s that Baltimore had no shelter for homeless black people, Mr. Ehlers established the Baltimore Rescue Mission, which today houses more than 200 people a night and is one of the largest gospel missions on the East Coast.

The Westminster Common Council saved the Westminster Rescue Mission last night.The board voted to extend water and sewer lines outside city limits to the mission property on Lucabaugh Mill Road. Without public utilities, the mission cannot build the 65-bed shelter it has planned for substance abusers and alcoholics.Although the measure passed unanimously, councilmen Kevin E. Dayoff and Gregory Pecoraro agreed that the water and sewer expansion should be done "carefully" -- especially during the statewide water shortage.

Italian Giovanni Soldini won Leg 3 of the Around Alone sailing race yesterday, slipping across the finish line to a hero's welcome along the docks in Punta del Este, Uruguay. As Soldini came to the docks, signage on the hull of the Italian's 60-foot racer, Fila, read "No more problems." The problems, of course, already had been encountered and overcome. Two weeks ago, Soldini mounted a 22-hour rescue mission during the height of a Southern Ocean storm. Soldini, using satellite positioning equipment, found Autissier's boat, PRB, capsized more than a thousand miles from land and beyond the range of airborne assistance.

Two years after razing its East Main Street thrift shop because of structural damage, the Westminster Rescue Mission is looking to move out of leased space and into a permanent store on the other side of Railroad Avenue. The Rev. Clifford Elkins, the mission's executive director, said he is confident that the nonprofit organization will complete the purchase of a building at 28 and 30 W. Main St. The building houses Time-ly Gifts, which is closing, and was the home of Leister Gallery. The space, Elkins said, will require only minor renovations and the addition of a loading dock to open by late fall.

Margery "Midge" Sleeper knits woolen slippers.A man they call Jack the plumber fixes toilets.Dr. James Greeley takes aim with his dentist's drill.They and scores of other volunteers form a web of support that sustains one of the largest Gospel missions on the East Coast -- the Baltimore Rescue Mission for as many as 200 homeless men and its next-door Karis Home for as many as 36 homeless women and children.Sleeper, 72, is the kind of person on whom some shelters and nonprofit agencies rely, no matter what governments decide about social service funding.

In a darkened White Marsh movie theater last month, a mother and son quietly watched John Dahl's The Great Raid, a feature-length film about one of World War II's most daring and nearly forgotten rescue missions. What brought them there was the memory of August T. Stern Jr. -- husband and father -- who as a member of the Army's elite 6th Ranger Battalion was one of 121 volunteers who embarked on a secret mission in 1945 to liberate American and a handful of British, Dutch and Norwegian POWs held by the Japanese in the notorious Cabanatuan prison camp on the island of Luzon in the Philippines.

Navy Lt. Melvin Spence Dry dropped out of a helicopter into choppy waters off the coast of North Vietnam in June 1972. On a highly classified mission to rescue two escaped American prisoners of war, he died the moment he hit the water. But because the mission was top-secret, Dry's valor went officially unrecognized. No medals, no commendations and no place of honor among the fallen at the U.S. Naval Academy, where he graduated in 1968. Even his parents were told that he died in a training exercise.

I FEEL LIKE DR. PHIL UP HERE," MICHAEL Kaiser says, looking out at rows of arts administrators gathered at a Capitol Hill hotel to soak up the wisdom of the "Turnaround King."

Life isn't easy for America's vintage movie houses. Competition from gigantic multiplexes, booking practices that give the big, money-making movies to the chain theaters and tend to pass over the struggling independents, aging structures and bureaucratic red tape all seem stacked against them. In the case of the Senator Theatre, the last of Baltimore's classic single-screen movie palaces still operating as such, overdue payments on a $1.2 million bank loan threaten its future.

HAGERSTOWN -- Inside the Hagerstown Rescue Mission, up the stairs, into the dormitory, next to a bed with a thin tan coverlet, atop a dark locker -- this is where Donnie Green keeps his memorabilia. He has three tiny plastic helmets, one for each of the National Football League teams he played on: the Buffalo Bills, the Philadelphia Eagles, the Detroit Lions. Behind those -- he has to groan and stretch to reach it -- is a blue, loose-leaf binder filled with photographs and articles. He turns the pages matter of factly, betraying little.

In a darkened White Marsh movie theater last month, a mother and son quietly watched John Dahl's The Great Raid, a feature-length film about one of World War II's most daring and nearly forgotten rescue missions. What brought them there was the memory of August T. Stern Jr. -- husband and father -- who as a member of the Army's elite 6th Ranger Battalion was one of 121 volunteers who embarked on a secret mission in 1945 to liberate American and a handful of British, Dutch and Norwegian POWs held by the Japanese in the notorious Cabanatuan prison camp on the island of Luzon in the Philippines.

THIS IS about the time we were expecting a rescue mission to be announced that would save two popular space programs. A space shuttle team would be dispatched to repair and update aging equipment on the Hubble Space Telescope, thus extending the life of an invaluable scientific tool. And the shuttle mission would mark the resumption of manned space flight, which has been halted for two years, since Columbia's explosion over Texas. Experts have cleared the safety risk; Congress has voted its approval.

Chris Warner is not the same man he was before he left in March for Mount Everest. For one thing, he's a member of an elite club of 1,000 climbers who have made it to the top of the 29,035-foot mountain. For another, he's 30 pounds lighter for the effort. And, after a near-disaster just below the summit that almost took the lives of two climbing friends, he says, "I'm not the optimist I was when I left home." But he still has his sense of humor, answering the satellite phone yesterday at his tent at 17,200 feet: "Everest Base Camp Pizzeria."

Sculptor Toby Mendez, the man whose bronze statues immortalized Brooks Robinson, Cal Ripken Jr. and four other Orioles greats in Camden Yards ceremonies spread over the past six months, has certainly enjoyed his time in the spotlight. But now it's his dad's turn. The exploits of the elder Mendez, Tony, are at the center of the movie “Argo,” about a daring CIA-Canada rescue mission that got six Americans out of Iran during the 1979-1981 hostage crisis by convincing authorities they were part of a Canadian film crew.

Clarification An article in Sunday's editions of The Sun that reported that the Westminster Rescue Mission has converted its homeless shelter into an alcohol-rehabilitation facility should have stated that the mission keeps a reduced number of beds for emergency shelter. The mission provides three days of shelter to homeless men who have the option to stay longer if they are willing to join the rehab program. A longtime homeless shelter in Carroll County that was co-founded by a priest who pleaded guilty last year to child abuse is closing, a development that is likely to worsen a shortage of emergency housing in the county.

Clarification An article in Sunday's editions of The Sun that reported that the Westminster Rescue Mission has converted its homeless shelter into an alcohol-rehabilitation facility should have stated that the mission keeps a reduced number of beds for emergency shelter. The mission provides three days of shelter to homeless men who have the option to stay longer if they are willing to join the rehab program. A homeless shelter in Carroll County that was co-founded by a priest who pleaded guilty last year to child abuse is closing, a development that is likely to worsen a shortage of emergency housing in the county.