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The Tampa Tribune

Published: January 18, 2009

Director Of Helen Keller Center Retires

PORT WASHINGTON, N.Y. - His memories of Helen Keller are vivid, if not entirely favorable: She had big hands, a forceful personality and not much of a sense of humor.

But none of that kept Bob Smithdas from working with Keller, icon of the deaf and blind, to persuade Congress to create and fund the Helen Keller National Center in the 1960s. At the Sands Point facility, people who are deaf and blind - as is Smithdas - are taught a range of life skills from communicating to cooking so they can live wherever they want to.

Smithdas, 83, retired Friday as the center's director of community education, a post that capped a 65-year career as an inspiration and an instigator for improvements in the way deaf and blind people lead their lives.

"There have been two giant role models for the deaf-blind person over the last century: Helen Keller and Bob Smithdas," said Carl Augusto, president and CEO of the American Foundation for the Blind.

Gaza Voice Loses Daughters In Attack

TEL HASHOMER, Israel - For days, Izzeldin Abuelaish, a physician from the Gaza Strip, was a voice from the war zone, telling Israeli radio and television stations in fluent Hebrew about life under fire as Israeli troops pursued a ground offensive against Hamas.

On Friday, the unspeakable happened. An Israeli shell hit a room where the doctor's daughters were gathered, killing three of them and a cousin. His broken voice brought the tragedy into Israeli living rooms.

"They killed my daughters," he sobbed over a cell phone after the strike, his agony broadcast live on Channel Ten television.

Pope Getting His Own Google Channel
VATICAN CITY - The Vatican says Pope Benedict XVI is getting his own channel on Google.

The Vatican's press office said Saturday that texts and video of the pope's speeches, as well as news about the pontiff, would be posted directly onto the channel. The Vatican began using its Web site widely to publish teachings and pronouncements under the late Pope John Paul II.

Grave Memorializes Former Madam

FORT WORTH, Texas - The unmarked grave of a woman who was a well-known madam now memorializes her profession, more than a century after she made a name for herself.

A group of Fort Worth historians placed a granite stone with the inscription "Call Me Madam" on Friday at the resting place of Mary Porter, who operated a brothel - or what was then euphemized as a "female boardinghouse."

A wire report

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