Picture this: The last child of a 9/11 victim from Maryland has graduated from college

Newspaper photographers hate check-passing photographs – every newspaper I worked for had an official aversion to them – but sometimes that’s all you’ve got and you gotta go with it because there’s a good story to tell. In this case, I post the photo sent to me Thursday by Kate Loveless, executive director of the Maryland State Firemen’s Association. In the photo above, Kate and officials of the MSFA receive a check for $50,000, the last money remaining in the Maryland Survivors Scholarship Fund, the subject of my Friday column in The Baltimore Sun. The last two children of Marylanders killed on 9/11 – sisters who, along with 10 others, received financial aid from Maryland Survivor’s Scholarship Fund – have graduated from college. Established in the wake of the 2001 terrorist attacks to raise money for the grief-stricken families of victims, the fund officially closed shop, 22 years after its establishment. The administrators of the fund turned the remaining dollars over to the MSFA for its scholarship fund last week. In the photo, from left: Charles Simpson of the MSFA; Ellen Frishberg and Doug Schmidt of the survivors fund; Eric Smothers, the MSFA president; Lynn Hawkins, MSFA scholarship chair; Kate Loveless, and Skip Carey of the MSFA.

Published by Dan Rodricks

Dan Rodricks is a long-time columnist for The Baltimore Sun, winner of numerous national and regional journalism awards, a radio and TV personality, podcaster and fly angler. His narrative memoir, “Father’s Day Creek,” was published in May 2019 by Apprentice House at Loyola University Maryland.
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