Minutes before the start of Michael Jackson’s memorial service, CBS-TV’s Katie Couric noted the irony of Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus loading into the Staples Center for its planned run this week. “Michael being an animal lover would have appreciated their appearance,“ she said, as footage of a train of elephants being led toward the venue rolled.

Page Wilson, on his “Out O’ the Blue Radio Revue” tonight from 8 to 10 on WCVE (88.9 FM), will re-air two segments of a solo concert by John Cephas, the legendary Piedmont bluesman who died March 4. The JAMinc concert was recorded May 1, 2008, at Richmond’s In Your Ear Studios. A memorial service and musical tribute to Cephas will take place from 1 to 3 p.m. tomorrow at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History’s Baird Auditorium in Washington. A House Party Jam will follow at Westminster Presbyterian Church, 400 I Street S.W.

Scholarship fund will honor Smith Award named for NFL player will go to Marshall students Corey Domanic Smith was a quiet, gentle man who led by example, friends and family members said. “We all looked at him as the epitome of what we wanted in high school athletes, and not just at John Marshall [High School],“ said Kevin G. Adams, athletic director at John Marshall and one of Smith’s early coaches. “He’d give you 110 percent. He’d just go and go.“

Family mourns death of W&M grad in Benin Family members of a Peace Corps worker from suburban Atlanta who was found dead in the west African nation of Benin said she lived to help people and was optimistic, but not naive. A memorial service is planned for Saturday in Georgia for Catherine “Kate” Puzey, a 24-year-old graduate of the College of William and Mary who was found dead March 12 outside her home in Badjoude. Authorities suspect she was killed.

Wamer J. “Buddy” Callahan Jr., a co-founder and longtime director at Swift Creek Mill Playhouse, died Thursday. He was 85. The Colonial Heights resident—a community and dinner theater veteran who also founded Swift Creek Mill Playhouse School of Drama—will be honored at a memorial service Monday. The service will be held at 1 p.m. at Christ and Grace Episcopal Church, 1545 S. Sycamore St. in Petersburg. A reception will follow in the parish hall.

A memorial service for Dayle Taliaferro Dunn, community affairs director and director of cause-related marketing at WTVR, will be held March 21 at 1 p.m. at First Baptist Church of South Richmond, 1501 Decatur St. Mrs. Dunn, 61, who had struggled with cancer for the past three years, died Sunday at her Richmond home. Peter Maroney, general manager at WTVR, recalled that when he went to the Martin Luther King Jr. Day breakfast with Mrs. Dunn for the first time, “everybody who came through the door rushed over and hugged Dayle.“ He said that, standing next to her, he met thenVirginia Gov. Mark R. Warner, local School Board members, the police chief and “probably half the congressional delegation in about 30 minutes.“