The last time I saw Tony Ciaccio Sr., he was standing in the rain dressed like Santa, peeling twenties from a wad of bills and pressing them on stunned Italian Market shoppers.

It was December 2007, and I'd traveled from East Norriton with Santa, his friend Ray the Elf, and about 20 other merry pranksters, drinking homemade red and telling stories about the old neighborhood, which they were about to shower with their largesse.

My most reliable source that day was Tony Ciaccio Jr., the one drinking coffee. His leukemia was in remission, so he was planning to return to grad school at West Chester University, where he'd been studying elementary education. He never did.

I remember Tony Jr. as a big, sweet guy. He died last month at 31 after his leukemia returned. Two bone-marrow transplants couldn't save him.

I saw Tony Sr. outside his hairdressing salon in Lafayette Hills one day last week, tears streaming down his tanned face.

"He was my buddy," Tony said.

Tony Jr. never came out of a nine-week coma. His dad and his mom, Grace, spent every day of that awful time in Jeanes Hospital at his bedside.

Over 300 days of treatments and waiting, and transplants and infections, they had taken turns staying with him, sleeping on cots, never releasing him from their sight.

Tony Sr. was driven to fulfill his son's final wish.

Using proceeds from a beef-and-beer fund-raiser, Tony Sr. just bought flat-screen 32-inch televisions for all 17 rooms on the hospital's bone-marrow ward.

Tony Jr. hated the old 19-inchers, said his former next-door neighbor at Jeanes, John Bucci, owner of John's Roast Pork in South Philadelphia.

"We were both on board when it came to those TVs," said Bucci, who also got a marrow transplant for leukemia. Bucci managed to bring a 42-inch monster from home and programmed it through his computer so he could watch the History Channel and and the Food Channels.

"One night Tony and his dad were watching The Godfather on those little TVs, and I was like, 'Come in my room and watch it on my flat screen.' But Tony was too sick to get up."

The hospital had given Tony Sr. a quote of $1,200 per television to purchase them through its vendor, but he managed to buy them for $400 each at Target - "a terrific bargain," said Rebecca Harmon, a spokesman for Temple University Health Systems, which owns Jeanes. "It's a wonderful way to honor his son, and our patients will certainly benefit."

Lots of readers have wondered how Eva Mauchly Moos is doing. She's the woman I wrote about this month who was served with foreclosure papers on her Ambler home a day after her autistic son, Bob, drowned in the bathtub.

Her daughters created a Facebook group (http://bit.ly/race_to_raise) to raise money and awareness. A friend designed a necklace (http://cute-plush.com/special.htm) to sell for the cause. Inquirer readers were generous as well - sending her a few thousand dollars.

The best news is that Wells Fargo put the brakes on the foreclosure proceeding. Moos doesn't have to make another payment until October. She said that would give her some time to try to renegotiate her loan or sell the house, depending on how much income she can generate from giving music lessons.

"It's kind of a whirlwind having these things come right on top of each other," she said. "I'm not as up to the fight as I should be."

Then there's Jessie Foyle, the 94-year-old diehard Phillies fan who can't watch most of her team's games anymore because her retirement home can't get Comcast SportsNet.

Readers came up with a host of suggestions that won't work because of the hold Comcast exercises over the games in its battle with satellite television. DirectTV, which Foyle has, can't carry the games, Verizon's FiOS isn't in town yet, and MLB.com blacks out the games on the Internet.

But after I spoke about Foyle's plight on WIP-AM (610) Friday morning, a listener called to donate a device called a Slingbox, which might work.

It would allow her to view the games on a laptop, provided her grandson hooks the Slingbox to his television, which would be tuned to Comcast SportsNet. She'd need a laptop, and to know how to use it.

That might be asking a lot for a senior citizen whose son-in-law describes her as technologically challenged. But it's a shot.

Finally, Angels on the Atlantic has announced it won't sponsor any inner-city Camden or Philadelphia kids for a day at the beach this summer. I wrote last month how the program had continually run afoul of municipal rules in Ocean City, N.J., and how in turn the organization alleged it was being discriminated against because it serves poor children.

A Superior Court judge last week refused the program's request to be able to continue busing in children, selling food on the beach, and using portable toilets this summer while the suit is still active.

Jeanie Hubach wrote supporters of the nonprofit she runs with her husband, saying the decision left her "devastated."