Ruxton

Your editorial regarding Sheppard Pratt's planned rehab facility in Ruxton is off-base in many ways but two points especially should be made clear ("Discrimination in Ruxton," April 25): First, the main issue surrounding the proposed facility is money, not discrimination against the mentally ill by "wealthy" individuals. If you drive down the block of the proposed site, the neighbors do not appear as affluent as The Sun would have you believe. No one wants any sort of facility next to their house that will significantly decrease their home's value.

Roseanna V. Perkins, a retired Ruxton Country School teacher, died of cancer March 27 at Gilchrist Center for Hospice Care. The Glen Arm resident was 62. Roseanna Villa was born in Baltimore and raised in Overlea on Springwood Avenue. She attended St. Michael's School and was a 1968 Mercy High School graduate. She earned an education degree at what is now Towson University. She taught at St. Leo's School in Little Italy and the Grey Manor Elementary School in Dundalk before she joined the education staff of the Walters Art Museum , where she worked with lecturer Theodore S. Lowe and led school tours.

To live in Ruxton you're certified sane It's one of the neighborhoods' perks. Behaviors that elsewhere would put you away, Well, here, they're just little quirks. 'Cause the streets are clean and the air is as pure As the minds of all of the neighbors. If you act sort of weird, it's called normal here Even though you're convinced you're Jim Nabors. Peg McAllen, Towson

A Towson attorney has filed suit to prevent Sheppard Pratt Health System from opening a residential group home in his Ruxton neighborhood, and is demanding that the state rescind a license recently issued for the facility. Thomas C. Costello claims the home is a "for-profit, commercial enterprise," a use forbidden by state law in an established neighborhood and one that violates Baltimore County's zoning code. He has asked the court to void a state license granted in January for the home at 1506 LaBelle Ave., which would house up to six people transitioning from hospital treatment programs for depression and anxiety.

It will be interesting to watch how the issue of a group home for wealthy mental health patients in Ruxton gets handled ("Ruxton residents oppose rehabilitation house in area," April 21). The issue of group homes has been a Gordian Knot for over 25 years. It pits the legislatively and constitutionally supported right to fair and equal housing against a neighborhood's concern over the makeup of its residents. Neighborhoods in Randallstown and Woodlawn have considerable experience with this, but it will now be intriguing to see how a place like Ruxton, it's elected officials and the media confront this dilemma.

Sheppard Pratt's recent surprise announcement to put what the hospital calls an "opulent" treatment center for "affluent" individuals with substance abuse and mental health concerns in a dense lane of modest homes in Ruxton has been a disaster. Sheppard Pratt's "outreach" has failed completely to match the sense of community that the giant hospital has received from its neighbors over the last several decades. It is impossible to greet the news of the hospital's "Retreat Center" expansion into our residential neighborhood as anything but shocking.

I am responding to the uproar caused by the proposed Sheppard Pratt group home in Ruxton. Do the people who are outraged really know what being mentally ill entails? Do they assume that all people with these disorders are dangerous? Shame on them. And let's not forget that this is high-end. My husband, who desperately needs a facility like this and who wouldn't harm a fly, would never be able to get in because he is on disability. How is that fair? That is my outrage. Suzanne Lawson

The situation in Ruxton is full of complexities ("Discrimination in Ruxton," April 25). If representatives of Sheppard Pratt Health System are to be believed, Ruxton residents are a bunch of elitist snobs with no moral standing. In reality, the personal issues surrounding this are just the beginning. Put aside the obvious name-calling and look at the more important legal issues. The heart of this issue lies around the misguided actions of Sheppard Pratt. Without question, Sheppard Pratt is a first-rate institution with exceptional staff and services.

After reading yet one more letter accusing the residents of Ruxton of prejudice, bigotry and outright snobbery, I am compelled to inject a little reality into the "soup" of emotion-based rhetoric. The proposed "retreat" on Labelle Avenue in Ruxton by Sheppard Pratt Health Systems is a commercial enterprise, and a very lucrative one at that. Nothing more. Furthermore, the CEO of Sheppard Pratt Health Systems, Dr. Steven S. Sharfstein, couldn't possibly have anticipated anything but "approval" of this venture, since the decision lies in the hands of the secretary of the Maryland Department of Health and Mental Hygiene who happens to be Dr. Joshua M. Sharfstein, his son. Let the readers draw their own conclusions.

Back in 1967, Dick Watts, a widower with two young sons, was renting the carriage house on the large estate of Philip Poe, a descendant cousin of Edgar Allan Poe. He was comfortable living down the hill from the manor house, which backs up to Roland Run in Ruxton. "He used to walk along the property, and one day he said to me, 'This is where you want to raise your boys,'" remembers Dick Watts, 82, who at the time was a coach and director of the athletic department at UMBC. "He said it would be $30,000 to buy it and he took $150 down and financed the rest at 5 percent!"

Elizabeth M. "Betty" Dugan, a volunteer and World War II veteran, died Feb. 29 of heart failure at the Blakehurst retirement community in Towson. The former longtime Ruxton resident was 90. The daughter of a Baltimore businessman and a homemaker, the former Elizabeth Mitchell was born in Baltimore and raised in Guilford. After graduating from Notre Dame High School of Maryland, she graduated from Fairfax Hall Junior College in Waynesboro, Va. In her youth, she was an accomplished equestrian and was skilled in dressage, hunter-jumper equitation and cross-country eventing.

Despite local opposition, Sheppard Pratt's application for a high-end group home in a residential Towson neighborhood has received state approval. Karen Black, director of public relations for the Maryland Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, confirmed Tuesday that approval for the group home in Ruxton was given by the Office of Health Care Quality and sent to Sheppard Pratt on Feb. 2. The home will be a temporary residence for patients who have completed the Retreat program at Sheppard Pratt, a voluntary program for individuals seeking mental health treatment, but are seeking additional support.

Authorities are searching for the driver of a car that struck and injured a Maryland state trooper early Sunday on Interstate 83 as he stood near a car that he had stopped. Trooper First Class Jason M. James, 30, was conducting a traffic stop on the shoulder of northbound I-83, north of Ruxton Road, at 1 a.m., authorities said, when he was struck by the mirror and side of a passing vehicle. He was then pushed into the car he had stopped, authorities said. James, who was in uniform and wearing a reflective jacket, used his radio to report that he had been struck and asked for help, authorities said, adding that pieces of the car that struck James were found at the scene.

  At the ungodly hour of 5:30 this morning, they step off the Walt Disney World Half Marathon in Orlando: the lean, serious speedsters and the dedicated plodders and the fat guys in Mickey Mouse ears just hoping to make it to the first water stop. Among them will be 28-year-old Georgia Cleland, a small woman from Ruxton with a ready smile. And you can bet she'll be smiling today, because hers might be the best story in the entire field, a three-hankie tale of a family's love and a father's crazy idea that raised millions for cancer research and spawned the whole running-for-a-cause movement.

Sally B. Willse, former treasurer of a Riderwood interior decorating firm and a volunteer, died Dec. 24 of complications from dementia at the Symphony Manor assisted-living facility in Roland Park. The longtime Ruxton resident was 89. The daughter of the founder and president of Barton Gillet Co. and a homemaker, Sally Barton was born in Baltimore and raised in Ruxton. She attended Bryn Mawr School and Ashley Hall in Charleston, S.C., and in 1940 graduated from Stuart Hall School in Staunton, Va. She was married in 1943 to R. Gerard Willse Jr. and settled in Ruxton, where she raised her four children.

As of 4 p.m. Thursday, traffic was slow on northbound of Interstate 83 between Ruxton Road and Northern Parkway due to an accident. There were no major delays reported on area transit systems for the Thursday evening commute.

This former resident of Ruxton is not amused at the ugly show of prejudicial stigma against the mentally ill by it current residents. When the light rail was proposed to have a station in Ruxton, the same sort of bigotry was trotted out against the "blacks in the city. " There are plenty of unsound minds and substance abuse in Ruxton; I know I lived there for years. The hue and cry now emanating from Ruxton that a few more folks with unsound minds and a bit of substance abuse issues might be joining the neighborhood is a logical absurdity.

In the midst of the fracas over whether Shepherd Pratt can run a home for psychiatric patients ("Discrimination in Ruxton," April 25), isn't everyone forgetting Ruxton's intransigence when a light rail stop was proposed 20 years ago? Not only does the light rail conveniently bestride the Ruxton commercial district, but trains stopped there for many years when there were few if any black passengers on them. But although the MTA more or less begged Ruxton to acquiesce to a light rail stop, the community refused to have any access via the light rail.

They came for Benjamin Feldman's copper gutters the Tuesday before Thanksgiving, ripping two 10-foot sections from each side of his stone house in Homeland. Last week, someone made off with downspouts from a house around the corner. There was another theft, and several attempted, on nearby Saint Dunstans Road. A month ago on North Charles Street, a Homeland homeowner chased away two would-be gutter thieves in the middle of the afternoon. A home in Ruxton was stripped of its copper on Tuesday.

The Ruxton Players, a community theater troupe that performs at the Church of the Good Shepherd, 1401 Carrollton Ave. in Towson, is hosting a special performance for Veterans Day, Nov. 11, for its fall production, "The Hasty Heart. " General admission tickets are $15, but veterans who bring a memento of their service will receive a discounted admission price of $7.50 for the Nov. 11, 8 p.m. show. For other performances in the show's two-weekend run, veterans' admission will be $12. World War II veterans will be admitted free at all performances.