Final Days

John Edwards was the first - addressing a noontime rally in Center City. He will be far from the last. The political superstars began to descend on the region yesterday, each bringing a distinct appeal in hopes of rallying their party's faithful in the final days before the election. "It's a great pleasure for me to be in a place that's going to be in the middle of the wave on Election Day," proclaimed Edwards, the Democrats' 2004 vice presidential nominee. For the Republicans, former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani appeared in Wilkes-Barre last night alongside Sen. Rick Santorum (R., Pa.)

As more becomes publicly known of the final days and hours of John P. Wheeler 3d, an image is emerging of a man coming unglued. Less than 48 hours before the respected former Pentagon aide turned up dead last week in a Delaware landfill, Wheeler limped into a Wilmington parking garage. Coatless and confused, one of his shoes in hand, he bizarrely inquired about the location of his car, then declined offers of help, witnesses said. A day later, police said Wednesday, surveillance video captured Wheeler in downtown Wilmington again - this time looking "confused" inside the Nemours Building at 10th and Orange Streets about 8:30 p.m. Dec. 30. That was less than 14 hours before Wheeler's body tumbled into a Wilmington landfill from a garbage truck.

CHICAGO - Peyton "Pete" Dralle wasted little time after he learned doctors could do no more to treat his throat cancer. He took spur-of-the-moment trips, got his affairs in order and, when he finally agreed to care at San Diego Hospice, he documented his life story. Using a technique called dignity therapy, psychologist Lori Montross interviewed Dralle five months before his death about meaningful life moments, lessons he'd learned and those he wished to pass on to loved ones.

RE Christine Flowers' op-ed "Touched by an Angel" on the death of Farrah Fawcett: I couldn't agree more. The final days of June brought much tragedy. I feel not only a loss but a subtle betrayal that the death of Michael Jackson overshadowed everything else, especially Farrah's passing. I don't dismiss Jackson's musical ingenuity or his iconic stature, but I agree with Christine that Farrah "had a humanity that, for all his genius and epochal accomplishment, he didn't. " Despite that fact that, at 31, I was just a child at the height of Farrah's stardom, she had a quality that seemed to cross over generations in a much different way than Jackson did. As a young girl in the '70s, I remember my mother (like most women back then)

Hospice worker's deeds offer hope for us all Thank you for your story about prison hospice worker Larry Christian ("At prison hospice, walls fall," July 7). It was very moving to read such an uplifting story in the same paper with stories about murders, rapes and shootings. Eighteen years ago, when I was a young mother, I had the honor of caring for my mother-in-law, Rhoda. This special woman was more my mother than my own mom ever was. Her loss was a devastation to me and to my children.

When last seen in an NBA uniform, he was sinking a jump shot to win his team its fifth league championship. Then ESPN named him the greatest athlete of the 20th century. Suffice it to say that Michael Jordan has nothing left to prove, no need to burnish his image for posterity. So why is he dragging his 38-year-old frame out on the practice floor with a new team, the Washington Wizards? Why risk a comeback with a team that has been as much a byword for athletic incompetence as his Chicago Bulls were the emblem of excellence?

Spotlight on: Clearview senior George Skibinski George Skibinski has moved into new territory. So has his team. Skibinski, a senior 152-pounder for Clearview, was one of South Jersey's few remaining undefeated wrestlers, at 23-0, through Thursday. That was something new for a wrestler who was 22-10 as a junior. Meanwhile, Clearview was in the South Jersey finals on Friday night for the first time in the history of the program. The Pioneers traveled to face state power Southern Regional, the No. 1 seed in South Jersey Group 4. "We thought we would have a good team, but to make the South Jersey finals, that's big," Skibinski said.

Joe Paterno, Pennsylvania's most recognizable citizen and a Hall of Fame football coach whose golden resumé was tarnished by a child sex-abuse scandal that beclouded his final days, has died at 85. His death, 2 1/2 months after he was diagnosed with lung cancer, came as an eerie fulfillment to a prophecy he had made often in the final decades of nearly a half-century as Pennsylvania State University's head coach. When Alabama's Bear Bryant succumbed to a heart attack in 1983, just 28 days after his 1982 retirement, a shaken Mr. Paterno absorbed the lesson.

The Baltimore Waltz is an AIDS play in which AIDS is never mentioned. Paula Vogel makes this possible in her 1992 work - which she wrote as a memorial to her brother Carl, who had died several years earlier - by setting her tragicomedy in the landscape of a dream. It is a place where the real and the surreal, the ridiculous and the serious, coexist in a context that is cracked yet weirdly logical. Anna, the sister in the play Vagabond Acting Troupe is presenting, is the one who is ill with a fatal disease.

NEW YORK - Wisconsin's Nick Toon, the son of former New York Jets standout Al Toon, was selected in the fourth round of Saturday's NFL draft by New Orleans. "My dad was a great football player," Nick Toon said. "I don't think anyone would debate that. To go to the same school and play the same position, I think is a challenge. " Wide receivers and more trades were trendy on the final day of the draft, which ended when Indianapolis selected North Illinois quarterback Chandler Harnisch as Mr. Irrelevant - 252 picks after taking Andrew Luck to open the proceedings.

One day after Bernard Pierce was the Baltimore Ravens' third-round pick, two of his Temple teammates were selected in Saturday's portion of the NFL draft. The Chicago Bears selected tight end Evan Rodriguez with the 111th overall pick in the fourth round, while the Detroit Lions took outside linebacker Tahir Whitehead with the 138th pick in the fifth round. Saturday was the final day of the three-day draft. The trio ties the school record for the most players drafted in a single year.

CHICAGO - Prison-bound former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich said Wednesday that he had faith in his appeal and that his legal saga "is not over. " Blagojevich spoke to crowds of reporters and well-wishers outside his Chicago home less than 24 hours before he was due to report to a Colorado prison to start serving a 14-year sentence for corruption. With his wife by his side, Blagojevich said preparing to leave for prison was "the hardest thing I've ever done" and insisted that he did what he thought was right for Illinois, both as governor and as a congressman.

Spotlight on: Clearview senior George Skibinski George Skibinski has moved into new territory. So has his team. Skibinski, a senior 152-pounder for Clearview, was one of South Jersey's few remaining undefeated wrestlers, at 23-0, through Thursday. That was something new for a wrestler who was 22-10 as a junior. Meanwhile, Clearview was in the South Jersey finals on Friday night for the first time in the history of the program. The Pioneers traveled to face state power Southern Regional, the No. 1 seed in South Jersey Group 4. "We thought we would have a good team, but to make the South Jersey finals, that's big," Skibinski said.

DUNEDIN, Fla. - The loop of rev-up-the-crowd Country Western music had already taken a second turn, repeating Toby Keith's hit "Made in America," when Mitt Romney's blue-and-white campaign bus pulled up to the town green Monday in this postcard-picturesque Tampa suburb. "This is the epicenter of the political universe," Adam Putnam, the state's commissioner of agriculture, told the crowd as Romney and his entourage wended their way toward the stage. Hundreds of patient, forgiving supporters who had waited more than an hour for the candidate's midafternoon arrival whooped and cheered when he appeared.

Joe Paterno, Pennsylvania's most recognizable citizen and a Hall of Fame football coach whose golden resumé was tarnished by a child sex-abuse scandal that beclouded his final days, has died at 85. His death, 2 1/2 months after he was diagnosed with lung cancer, came as an eerie fulfillment to a prophecy he had made often in the final decades of nearly a half-century as Pennsylvania State University's head coach. When Alabama's Bear Bryant succumbed to a heart attack in 1983, just 28 days after his 1982 retirement, a shaken Mr. Paterno absorbed the lesson.

CHICAGO - Peyton "Pete" Dralle wasted little time after he learned doctors could do no more to treat his throat cancer. He took spur-of-the-moment trips, got his affairs in order and, when he finally agreed to care at San Diego Hospice, he documented his life story. Using a technique called dignity therapy, psychologist Lori Montross interviewed Dralle five months before his death about meaningful life moments, lessons he'd learned and those he wished to pass on to loved ones.

AMASS 10 WINS, and be a shoo-in for the postseason. This is what the Union technical staff believed and subsequently expressed to its young corps prior to the 2011 season. It was also a realistic assumption, considering MLS' Eastern Conference always has played Junior Miss to the mighty West. So much so that the league - while brass never would formally admit it - altered its playoff format this year in all appearances to give Eastern teams a fairer shake. This year, the top three teams in each conference qualify for the playoffs, along with four wild cards based on point totals.

Every so often, "Only in the Pub" moments feature delicious irony. Take Wednesday, for instance, when the first Public League baseball final slated to feature only Hispanic players was postponed due to excessive heat/humidity concerns. "Tell me about it," said Frankford coach Juan Namnun, who is of Dominican descent. "All our kids are joking about that. They're all saying, 'Coach, it's not that hot.' We would have been ready. " Frankford and Thomas Edison will meet today, 12:30, at Ashburn Field in South Philly's FDR Park.

I was watching my 12-year-old son play soccer on a beautiful late September morning when my husband called with the kind of news that divides a life into before and after. A neurosurgeon had seen his MRI. He thought Jeff had glioblastoma, a malignant brain tumor. We would need a biopsy to be sure, but there was little doubt. My husband, who was in the hospital on powerful pain pills, didn't fully understand. I did. I knew he would almost certainly die, and soon. I would be a widow.