Sister Helen

Notre Dame Preparatory School in Towson has received its first $1 million gift, a pledge that will enable the 124-year-old girls' school to build a classroom wing, as well as enrich its scholarship and faculty development funds.The family of the late Leroy E. and Irene B. Kirby initially pledged $600,000. Their daughter, Pat Kirby of Ruxton, pledged an additional $400,000 if the school could raise $2.1 million for the classroom wing by April 30."It's a tremendous expression of confidence in our school," said headmistress Sister Christine Mulcahy, who announced the gift after the challenge was met this week.

Sister Mary Thecla Lancaster, R.S.M., who was a compassionate and ubiquitous presence in the hallways and patient rooms of Mercy Medical Center for more than 40 years, died there Saturday of leukemia. She was 77.Assigned to the hospital's pastoral care department since 1976, she visited the sick and their families until several weeks ago when she was hospitalized, complaining that she was "being grounded."It was not uncommon to see Sister Thecla visiting patients in the wee hours."She brought an extraordinary gift of being able to connect with the sick who so often feel vulnerable and alone," said Sister Helen Amos, R.S.M.

Edward C. Opet, senior vice president of human resources at Mercy Medical Center, died there Monday of colon cancer. He was 46 and lived in Fulton, Howard County. Mr. Opet, who was born and raised in Wilkes-Barre, Pa., earned his bachelor's degree in 1979 from Florida International University's School of Hospitality Management. He later did graduate work at Harvard University, Cornell University and Wake Forest University. He began his professional career in 1980 with the Marriott Corp.

To kill or not to kill, that is the question, and "Dead Man Walking," to its credit, doesn't have an answer. It seems to suggest the moral complexities of capital punishment are too dense for glib solutions.A meditation disguised (effectively) as a drama, it chronicles a naive but good-hearted nun's engagement in the life and ultimate execution of a Louisiana death row inmate. But unlike so many obligatory liberal screeds on capital punishment, Tim Robbins' brilliant and lacerating movie plays fair.

Two sopranos dying of consumption, another prone to sleepwalking, and a baritone facing capital punishment by lethal injection - all part of the action planned for the Baltimore Opera Company's 2005-2006 season. Particularly noteworthy is the local premiere of Jake Heggie's Dead Man Walking, which has enjoyed remarkable success with the public and the press since it was introduced by the San Francisco Opera in 2000. Baltimore Opera joined six other companies to fund the compact, visually potent co-production that will be seen at the Lyric Opera House in March 2006.

Suzanne L. Carson, who headed The Villa nursing home after working as a University of Maryland Shock Trauma lab chief, died of stroke and diabetic complications Sunday at her Parkville home. She was 57. Born and raised in Toledo, Ohio, she earned a Bachelor of Science degree in biology at Niagara University in Lewiston, N.Y., and a medical technology degree from a U.S. Public Service Hospital, also in upstate New York, the next year. She then received a master's degree in microbiology from Wagner College on Staten Island, N.Y. After moving to Maryland in 1980, she worked at the University of Maryland R Adams Cowley Shock Trauma Center and was a laboratory manager in the 1990s.

Just before Sister Helen Amos began as chief executive officer of Mercy Medical Center in Baltimore 12 years ago, several of its doctors visited her at the Sisters of Mercy headquarters in Silver Spring. "Our location could kill us," the doctors warned, she recalled. Her reply: The downtown hospital isn't moving, so "we're going to have to figure out how to make the location work." Indeed, they did. During a decade in which Baltimore saw two hospitals close and several others open suburban satellites to chase a shift in population, Mercy didn't merely persevere.

TOWSON -- Sister Christine Mulcahy, a former head of the Baltimore Province of the School Sisters of Notre Dame, will take over as headmistress of Notre Dame Preparatory School in July, replacing Sister Helen Marie Duffy, who is retiring.Sister Christine, now on sabbatical, also has taught in Catholic secondary schools, including Bishop Walsh in Cumberland, and was principal of St. Mary's High School in Annapolis.Sister Helen Marie is retiring after 18 years as headmistress of the 124-year-old girls school.

BDC ignored conventions in hotel choiceBy voting unanimously to locate the new Baltimore Convention Center headquarters hotel more than a mile from the center, the Baltimore Development Corporation and the mayor have shown precisely what is wrong with the current form of government for the city.Their institutional arrogance and inflexibility, in light of advice to the contrary by hundreds of experts who plan and conduct large national conferences and exhibits, is inexcusable.Even the mayor, smelling the disgust of the public in the wind, has tried to mitigate the decision by backing off and searching for a compromise.

NOBODY'S likely to see Gary Graham as a choir boy, not after he admitted a violent armed robbery spree that included shootings and pistol whippings when he was only 17.But nobody saw Gary Graham kill Bobby Lambert outside the Safeway in Houston in May 1981, either, except for a lone witness sitting almost 40 feet away in her car. She couldn't pick Graham's picture out of a photo lineup, but she picked him out of a police lineup the next day, perhaps because...