Younger Sister

An Elkridge boy will be honored today for calling Howard County's 911 center to request help for his grandmother as she suffered from chest pains last week.Kevin Eckart, 4, will meet dispatcher Connie Ludvigsen, who answered his telephone call and instructed him.Kevin was consoling his younger sister as he told Ms. Ludvigsen his address and about his grandmother's chest pains. The woman was taken to St. Agnes Hospital in Baltimore for a checkup. She will attend her grandson's ceremony.The boy will be honored at the Communications Center in the George Howard county building in Ellicott City.

Ruth Ellington Boatwright, 88, the younger sister of big band musician Duke Ellington, died March 6 in New York after a long illness. In 1941, when Mr. Ellington formed Tempo Music, a company that owns most of his compositions, he made Mrs. Boatwright president. During the 1950s, Mrs. Boatwright served as host of a radio program on New York station WLIB. She was also founder of the jazz ministry of St. Peter's Lutheran Church in Manhattan. When Mr. Ellington died in 1974, she oversaw his copyrights, contracts and business matters.

FIGURE SKATING Ice Princess 7 P.M. [DISNEY]: A smart high school student tries to become a champion figure skater. Think Winter Olympics lite. Michelle Trachtenberg, formerly Buffy the Vampire Slayer's younger sister, takes on the lead role. Not sure if she did her own figure skating. GOOD VS. EVIL Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace 9 P.M. [SPIKE]: If you need a break from the Olympics, try this out. Director George Lucas follows Anakin Skywalker as a youth before he becomes Darth Vader.

For weeks, Kevin Gates lived with the fear that his wife was trying to have him killed. But he feigned ignorance. "I did my very best to make her think I had no clue, because I wanted to catch her in this," said Gates, 43, of Westminster. "Any fear that I would have had was just [overridden] by anger." The pretense ended Tuesday, when state police arrested Mary L. Gates, 46, saying she offered to pay an undercover trooper $6,000 to kill her husband. She had provided a photograph of Kevin Gates, as well as a handwritten note with the UPS deliveryman's schedule and route to work, according to court documents.

Chanda Rubin and Alexandra Stevenson will replace the injured Monica Seles and Venus Williams on the U.S. Fed Cup team that will face Italy in a quarterfinal July 19-20 in Washington. Seles withdrew because of a foot injury. Williams is recovering from an abdominal strain sustained during Wimbledon, where she lost to her younger sister Serena on Saturday in the women's final. Rubin, ranked eighth in the world, has a 4-2 record in singles and 1-0 in doubles in three Fed Cup appearances since 1995.

Jackie Karr, Liberty Sport basketball GIRLS STATS -- The shooting guard is averaging around eight points a game to lead Liberty, which has experienced growing pains during the early season. One of six sophomores on the team, Karr was one of the few Lions players who saw playing time a year ago. SIDELINES -- After making the varsity squad as a freshman, Karr missed the first half of last season after breaking her wrist in a preseason scrimmage. Now healthy, she is beginning to show her vast potential.

Susan Forsyth of Owings Mills was on the phone congratulating her younger sister, Mary Elliott of Timonium, for winning fourth place in Good Housekeeping magazine's gingerbread-house contest when her husband brought in the mail -- with a notice that Forsyth had won first place in the contest.Winning the contest -- announced in the magazine's December issue -- with her Victorian-style creation brought Forsyth a prize of $2,000 and a lot of media attention, including an appearance this past week on the Oprah Winfrey show.

If Columbia Pictures has its way, Madonna will play Debra Winger's younger sister in Penny Marshall's "A League of Their Own," the story of an all-women's baseball team set in the 1940s. And if talks with Tom Hanks continue to go well, he'll reunite with Marshall with whom he collaborated on "Big" to play the team's coach.Whether Madonna and Columbia can come to terms is a matter of speculation. "The studio is offering $1," quips one person privy to the negotiations. "She's asking $1 billion."