Ruxton

Weeks of community meetings and discussions with Sheppard Pratt Health System officials have done little to ease the minds of neighbors to a mental health outpatient facility slated to open in Ruxton this fall. That much is clear from the red and white "No Retreat" signs dotting nearly every lawn on quiet, tree-lined LaBelle Avenue. But until the hospital applies for a license to run the group home, residents say they are in wait-and-see mode. "It's hard to say what we're going to do until we've seen their application and if they get one. The licensing folks may say they don't qualify," said Tom Costello, director of No Retreat Inc., a group that formed to oppose Sheppard Pratt's plan.

Elizabeth C. "Betty" Michaels, a former registered nurse and homemaker who enjoyed baking and cooking, died Saturday of an embolism at the Broadmead retirement community in Cockeysville. She was 103. She was born Elizabeth Colburn, the daughter of a Baltimore Gas & Electric Co. employee and a homemaker, and raised in Bolton Hill. She was a 1927 graduate of Bryn Mawr School and earned her nursing degree in 1931 from the Union Memorial Hospital School of Nursing. She worked in the hospital's Robert Garrett Dispensary until her 1938 marriage to Albert Hillsman Michaels.

Ruth B. Chapin, a retired educator and volunteer who had been admissions director at Calvert School, died Saturday at Gilchrist Hospice Care. The longtime Ruxton resident was 88. The daughter of a Methodist minister and a homemaker, Ruth M. Keele Brooks was born in Cooperstown, N.Y., and was raised in several towns in upstate New York where her father was pastor for local churches. "They were basically small towns along the upper reaches of the Susquehanna River," said a son, David W. Chapin, who lives in Cockeysville.

Regarding the proposed mental health rehab facility in Ruxton, I am against bringing a halfway house into any established residential neighborhood in Baltimore County. Placing mentally unstable, temporary residents in the Retreat at Ruxton isn't helping anyone except those who stand to profit financially. It is dangerous to assume that these patients, who are recovering addicts or suffering from depression and anxiety, are not a threat to any of the residents and neighbors living in the vicinity.

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.

I am writing in support of the Sheppard Pratt facility that is proposed to extend the retreat treatment offered at that hospital. Many people are given good care in hospitals and in this area are thrust out on their own with inadequate support immediately upon concluding a course of treatment. I knew someone who actually relocated to Boston because the support services for persons with mental illness were so superior to those in this area, Sheppard Pratt notwithstanding. Indeed, it was the lack of strong "step-down" facilities like the one proposed that was a major concern.

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

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.