For This Family, Togetherness Is Purely Academic

The family that studies together stays together. When 20-year-old Sharon Michael enrolled in Marion College in Marion, Ind., mom and dad enrolled, too. Pete Michael, 36, and his wife, Carla, 38, quit their jobs, packed up their belongings and moved their family, including two younger daughters, from Circleville, Ohio, to Marion. Now, Michael studies Christian ministries, Mrs. Michael, nursing, and Sharon Michael, criminal justice. “I think it’s building a bond that a lot of parents and their kids don’t have,” Michael said. “We get along as a family well.” Both Michael and his wife got new jobs and are adjusting to college life. “We aren’t into each other’s space,” Michael said. “No, he doesn’t hang out in the student center,” his daughter added. “Don’t have time,” her father said. “But I’d love to.”

--Once again, circus performer Nikolai Nikolski has crossed the gulf between the Soviet Union and the United States, but this time the effort was a symbolic one. The Soviet defector gingerly stepped 60 feet across a wire connecting two wings of Washington’s 10-story Mayflower Hotel in a “walk to freedom.” Nikolski used a long balancing pole but no safety devices as he walked from the right wing, where a Soviet flag was hung, to the left wing, where an American flag was draped. Nikolski and his wife and high wire partner, Bertalina, both 36, were the star high wire walkers of the Moscow Circus before defecting in August, 1986, while the troupe was in Buenos Aires. They were granted asylum in the United States when they arrived in Miami.

--Cecelia Cichan, the lone surviving passenger of a Northwest Airlines crash that killed 156 people, including her parents and brother, will share the gifts she has received from well-wishers with other hospitalized children, her family said. Cecelia, 4, remained in good condition at the University of Michigan Medical Center in Ann Arbor, Mich., where she has been treated for injuries suffered in the Aug. 16 crash near Detroit. Most of the 1,877 gifts will be distributed to children’s hospitals in Ann Arbor, Detroit, Tempe and Phoenix, Ariz., and Philadelphia, family members said in a statement. The family will keep several dolls, stuffed animals and music boxes and the 18,590 letters and cards sent to Cecelia, a hospital official said. Family members said the $133,227 sent to Cecelia will be placed in a trust fund for her, and they asked that additional gifts or money be sent to children’s hospitals. The family said also that the girl’s first name is Cecelia, not Cecilia, as had been reported.