Our Leadership
Board of Directors
Sylvia Simmons, President
The mother of Michael Patterson, Sylvia has a strong background in corporate finance and marketing at Black and Decker and as a officer with Chase Manhattan Bank. Sylvia opened up Cinamatheque, a foreign film and art video driven business in the Charles Village and Mt. Vernon neighborhoods of Baltimore in the late 1980’s. She’s earned her BS from Towson University and Graduate studies at Johns Hopkins University in Counseling and in Liberal Arts. She currently resides in Annapolis, MD.
Lloyd Prator, Vice President
Rector of St. John the Divine in New York City, Lloyd has 30 years experience in pastoral counseling and has been featured on the BBC, ABC, CBS, Beliefnet and others regarding the events of 9/11 that happened on his doorsteps in Greenwich Village lower Manhattan. The Reverend Lloyd E. Prator is a native of San Francisco, where he served as rector of All Saints' Church and as chaplain and executive assistant to the Bishop of California following his ordination to the priesthood in 1975. He graduated with honors from the Episcopal Theological School in Cambridge, Massachusetts and from Stanford University with a degree in political science specializing in constitutional law. Father Prator has taught liturgy at the General Theological Seminary, as an adjunct professor specializing in the pastoral dimension of liturgy and public worship. He has supervised seminary students for over 25 years, and is a member of the Association of Anglican Musicians and Associated Parishes for Liturgy and Mission. In the community, Father Prator has served on the Institutional Review Board for experimental medical treatments at the New York Presbyterian Hospital, as a founding board member of the California Counseling Center and board member of the Psychotherapy and Spirituality Institute in Manhattan. He was instrumental in the establishment of the Haight Ashbury Alcoholism Services in San Francisco and served on the board of the People With AIDS coalition in New York.
Walton Schalick, PhD, MD Treasurer
Dr. Schalick's research has three diverse panels. Clinically, he's interested in the application of rehabilitation principles to at-risk newborns, both in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit and in the Newborn Follow-up Clinic. His historical research composes two panels. The first involves the characterization of marketplace and educational forces around one of the first university medical schools in the world, the University of Paris, in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Many of our medical structures have their roots in the Middle Ages. Consequently, understanding how those structures formed and met early challenges can help us understand the challenges medicine faces today. The final panel of the triptych puts the historical and the clinical together in a comparative study of children with disabilities in France, Germany, the United Kingdom and the United States in the nineteenth and twientieth centuries. This ongoing investigation should help us understand the social nature of disabilities.
Lisa Hurka-Covington, Secretary
Lisa is the Founder and President of SPEAK. Her younger sister, Laura was 28 when she shot herself on July 9, 1991. Ms. Hurk- Covington is a public speaker, published writer, and activist fighting for the safety of our young people. She sat on the Public Policy Committee for NAMI Maryland (National Association for Mental Illness) and also on the board of MAHA (Marylanders Against Handgun Abuse), is the community organizer in Maryland for the national organization SPAN (Suicide Prevention Action Network), and is the Maryland spokesperson for suicide prevention. Ms. Hurka Covington has been on radio and television, and has been written up in magazines and newspapers. "Every negative situation has something positive that one day will evolve," she stresses. Her beautiful sister and others who completed suicide will never be forgotten - they were here for a reason!
The Board of Directors meets quarterly. The Articles of Incorporation and Bylaws are filed with the state of Maryland. The IRS has approved The Michael Patterson Foundation for 501c3 status.
"I was so blessed to have a wonderful, loving and devoted son for 41 years."
