Buried

The most ambitious federal mortgage program to date aimed at millions of underwater homeowners is poised to take off in the coming two weeks, yet some key issues could hinder borrower participation. One of them involves something most owners know nothing about: Who was your mortgage insurer on your underwater loan? Though it was announced by the Obama administration late last year, "HARP 2.0" — the second version of the Home Affordable Refinance Program — will finally hit full stride around the middle of this month, when Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac finish tweaking their automated underwriting systems to accept applications, and lenders and mortgage insurance companies start handling large volumes of requests.

Frank Edward Ray, the school bus driver hailed as a hero for helping to lead 26 children to safety after a bizarre kidnapping in the San Joaquin Valley town of Chowchilla 36 years ago, has died. He was 91. Ray died Thursday in Chowchilla of complications of cirrhosis of the liver, said his granddaughter, Susan Ray. On the next-to-last day of summer school in July 1976, Ray was driving a busload of children home when he slowed down on tree-lined Avenue 21 for a white van blocking the road.

They come at first light with shovels and sacks, hunched shadows praying for glimmers across a stingy land. These men with torn clothes and sandaled feet don't ask for much, just enough gold to head home feeling blessed beneath the blazing sky of northern Sudan. A stiff wind blows across the desert fringes and they camp at a desolate web of ditches crawling with scorpions. The heat keeps rising and they remember what the bus driver said when he dropped them off far, far from the glow of big city Khartoum: "Let's go home.

Mercedes Adilia Rodriguez's wishes were precise and meaningful: Her casket would be closed during her funeral, and she refused to be buried in the chilly earth of a Southern California cemetery. Instead, following tradition, she would be interred above ground in her hometown in Nicaragua. But in the days after her death, family members say they were summoned to Rose Hills Memorial Park and Mortuaries in Whittier and told the funeral home had made a mistake. She had been confused with someone else.

An 11-year-old boy burrowing in a deep sand hole in Manhattan Beach ended up buried for five minutes before he could be rescued, authorities said Tuesday. The boy, visiting the beach at 8th Street with family members Sunday afternoon, was on his hands and knees about six feet down in a hole he was digging diagonally toward another hole his cousin was digging, said Battalion Chief Dave Shenbaum of the Manhattan Beach Fire Department. The boy was trying to connect the two holes into a tunnel when he was buried by an avalanche of sand.

With his love of old-time Hollywood glamour, showy art and showmanship, Michael Jackson would probably have welcomed his family's announcement Tuesday that his remains will be interred in the star-laden, sculpture-speckled confines of Forest Lawn Memorial-Park in Glendale. Jackson will be interred Aug. 29, which would have been his 51st birthday, in an intimate morning service for family and friends in the expansive cemetery's Great Mausoleum, according to a statement from the family publicist.

I enjoyed your article on cemeteries ("Not Just a Plot, but a Passion to Find Art, History and Beauty in Cemeteries," Her World, April 14). I'm a former Chicagoan living near Cincinnati. If you ever travel here, check out Spring Grove (Ohio) Cemetery right off Interstate 75 north of town. As payment for fighting in the war, several Revolutionary soldiers were awarded land rights in this area, and some of them are buried in Spring Grove. There are also several Civil War generals, as well as pillars of our corporate culture.

I believe your editorial on the "buried issues" of the campaign was right on target and should be required reading for every member of Congress, the Federal Reserve Board, the secretary of treasury and every university professor of economics. I fear that Americans are like ostriches with their heads in the sand because our leaders are not debating the serious fiscal and social issues facing our nation. Perhaps after reading your editorial, people will begin to stand up and look realistically around them and demand of their leaders in Congress and the White House the kind of tough action that is needed--before it is too late.

A half a dozen mourners gathered at Forest Lawn cemetery in Cypress on Friday to bid farewell to a woman they never knew. Jean Comstock died Sept. 24, a 79-year-old divorced woman without heirs. Comstock, a retired Long Beach city minute clerk, had wanted to be buried at Forest Lawn but couldn't afford it. Los Angeles County cremated her and stored the ashes at Evergreen Cemetery in Boyle Heights. Eventually the ashes would have been buried in a pauper's grave with the rest of the county's unclaimed dead.

U.S. Rep. Claude Pepper, the beloved champion of the nation's elderly, was buried Monday in this city where he began his political career 60 years ago. "Claude Pepper never forgot his duty as an elected official to fight for the common welfare," Senate Majority Leader George J. Mitchell (D-Me.) told about 1,000 mourners at First Baptist Church in the state capital. "His energy and his vision will be sorely missed as the Congress now moves to take up Claude Pepper's last testament--legislation to provide long-term care for America's elderly," Mitchell said.

The congregation was quiet — teary-eyed but smiling — as Bill Coburn, in a eulogy to his wife of 62 years, spoke of the passions of his beloved Marian. Travel. Walt Disney's Dopey. Elephants, both real and miniature. Reruns of "The Golden Girls. " Her church. And roses. Marian Stanton Coburn loved roses so much she planted 65 rosebushes in the North Hollywood home where she had lived since 1930. On a chilly, sunny Saturday last month, Bill Coburn managed a small smile as, true to her wishes, his wife's ashes were buried beneath roses in a memorial garden outside St. David's Anglican Church.

His last letter home to his father is written in tight script on paper that has yellowed. It's dated Feb. 20, 1944. "Just a line Dad to say goodbye and don't worry too much," wrote Marine 1st Lt. Laverne A. Lallathin, 22. "I'm going over to end this thing as soon as possible. Buy as many bonds as you can and pray that I will be all-right. " A month later, Lallathin vanished along with six crew members of the B-25 bomber he was piloting from Espiritu Santo, the largest island in the South Pacific nation of Vanuatu.

HALIFAX, Canada - Simple, says the gravedigger. It's about the movie. No, says the academic. It's about the money. Absolutely not, says the model-ship builder. It's about people. This is what happens when you ask why the sinking of the Titanic continues to fascinate us. The question has a special resonance in Halifax, a rainy, foggy port and capital of Nova Scotia that inherited perhaps the nastiest of all Titanic tasks. It was the seamen of Halifax, nearest major port to the sinking, who were sent out to collect corpses and wreckage in the days after the Titanic went down on April 15, 1912.

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — They serve on a remote Himalayan glacier known as the world's highest combat zone, in a fiercely disputed region that has sparked two wars between archrivals Pakistan and India. But instead of dying in battle, 117 Pakistani soldiers were feared lost Saturday in a massive avalanche that entombed their lonely headquarters. Most of the soldiers were believed to have been in the battalion's main building when the avalanche struck about 6 a.m., burying the men under 70 feet of snow, Pakistani military officials said.

"I'm going to tell you something I probably shouldn't talk about," Leo Fernandez said, glancing nervously at the ranger at Pio Pico State Historic Park. "I saw a ghost here. " The park, the final homestead of Alta California's last Mexican governor, is on the state's hit list of public land closures because of our budget follies - which is why I dropped by one afternoon and ended up chatting with Fernandez. Fernandez says he spotted a woman in gingham at the top of the stairs after the park was renovated in 2003.

Angel Babcock, called Indiana's "miracle toddler,"  was buried Monday, ending one story of hope as Midwestern crews trying to clean up after last week's tornadoes battled worsening weather. The toddler's grieving grandmother told RTV.com on Sunday she had thought of the girl as her "guardian Angel. " With her granddaughter's death, Kathy Babcock said, she no longer had one guardian angel: "I have five. " Angel's mother, Moriah Babcok, her father, Joseph Babcock, an infant sister and a 3-year-old brother were killed Friday when a tornado destroyed their mobile home in New Pekin, Ind. Angel's survival had been called miraculous after she was found in a field near the home and was able to open her eyes.  But her condition deteriorated and she died Sunday of extensive head and neck injuries, Reuters reported.

Reporting from Padang, Indonesia, and New Delhi, India -- Indonesian authorities said today at least three villages at some distance from the city of Padang, the port city hardest hit by Wednesday's massive earthquake, were wiped out by landslides, suggesting the disaster will claim significantly more lives than the 715 to date. At least 640 people died in Paranan Bananak, Pulau Air and Lubuk Lawe, a cluster of villages some 35 miles from Padang, said Jufnedi, a local police commissioner who only uses one name.

A 10-year-old boy was buried waist-high in more than 2,000 pounds of bricks when a chimney collapsed, but police said he was not seriously injured and was in stable condition Sunday. The chimney, all that was left of a house formerly on a lot where the boy was playing, collapsed Saturday, apparently because the boy and a friend were beating on it with sticks, police said. It took rescuers about 20 minutes to free the boy, who suffered a fractured thighbone.

Rebecca's cancer was born in her bone marrow. Her abnormal blood cells soon broke free of their nest, sailing down the rivers of her arteries and veins to seed her liver, lungs and brain with malignancy. Chemotherapy for her metastatic acute myeloid leukemia had sapped Rebecca of her brunet curls and her youthful energy, but not her exuberant spirit. Every morning, as we approached her for morning rounds, she'd greet us with a broad smile, eager to show us the latest cards and notes she'd received from her fourth-grade classmates.

From Philadelphia — The last guy I'm going to write about is Chris Paul , because he's already had his story. So I go to the arena here early Friday to renew acquaintances with Elton Brand , someone who knew what it was like to be cheered as a Clipper before these new guys arrived in L.A. He's had it tough here. And it's not good when you have it tough in Philadelphia because these people are mad they have to live in Philadelphia and ugly when you don't help them escape by playing well.