Alma Gaynelle “Gay” Whitlock was born in Mineral in Louisa County. She studied, and later taught, at universities whose dining halls could seat the entire Mineral population of under 500. She was equally at home in either environment, relatives and colleagues say. Dr. Whitlock died Sunday of cancer, 10 days after her 70th birthday. Until recently, she had been hard at work as director of Virginia Commonwealth University’s Center for School-Community Collaboration and as a town historian and preservationist in Mineral.

Stewart H. Brown Jr., the former president of now-defunct furniture retailer This End Up, died Friday. He was 69. Mr. Brown left a successful career as a Richmond stockbroker in 1976 to join his wife, Elizabeth Robertson “Libby” Brown, in a company that pioneered crate-style furniture. Her brother and his friend started making the furniture in 1974 in North Carolina. The brother persuaded Libby Brown to open the first This End Up retail store on Strawberry Street in Richmond’s Fan District in 1975.

The economy is in a downturn. President-elect Barack Obama recently said that the economy is so bad he is not going to be able to do everything he promised he was going to do as soon as he became president. So, maybe it is true that there is a silver lining to every cloud. Even well-intentioned big plans tend to come with big price tags.

Korey Outerbridge was in Iraq when the idea came to him: He needed to write a children’s book. “We had phone tents when we deployed, for soldiers to call back to the states,“ Outerbridge said. Crossword-puzzle and race-car magazines lay scattered about the phone tents. Soldiers would thumb through them while they waited to contact to their families, the 29-year-old Newport News native recalled.

Korey Outerbridge was in Iraq when the idea came to him: He needed to write a children’s book. “We had phone tents when we deployed, for soldiers to call back to the states,“ Outerbridge said. Crossword-puzzle and race-car magazines lay scattered about the phone tents. Soldiers would thumb through them while they waited to contact to their families, the 29-year-old Newport News native recalled.

DARE To Be You—Rappahannock Area, a program of the Rappahannock Area Community Services Board for families with children ages 2 to 5, is forming groups in Fredericksburg and Stafford County. DARE To Be You offers free interactive workshops in which families learn communication, relationship and problem-solving skills. The workshops, led by parent educators, include games and other activities. A family meal is provided at every session to enhance quality family time, and there are incentives for attending and completing the 12-week program.

The photo on the missing-children Web site shows what Jamal Abdul’Faruq looked like at 7 and what he might look like now, 18 years later at age 25. Caramel-colored skin, a wide smile and eyes still bright like they were in April 1990, the year he and his 8-year-old brother, Basil, disappeared in South Richmond.
SLIDESHOW: When children disappear

Nationally, hundreds of thousands of children are missing at any given time. In Virginia, there are more than 230 missing, according to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children’s Web site database.