Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, December 28, 1993 TAG: 9312280085
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: GREG SCHNEIDER STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: RICHMOND LENGTH: Long
Ann Marie Hancock used to be your average society hostess with a 10,000-square-foot home, a Jaguar convertible, an indoor pool and a cottage at the lake.
But something changed. She'll still answer the door with a "Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous" smile and sweep you inside for coffee or tea.
She'll showcase the Christmas decorations - some are from France, some from Peru, some she made. The angel figurine is the last of its kind; its maker inscribed it and broke the mold, right there on the morning show of which Ann Marie was host on Richmond TV.
But at some point - and this never seems to fail - Ann Marie will suddenly break off and gaze into the distance.
"I smell the roses now," she'll say. "I smell the roses. Yeah."
It's almost spooky. There is a strong floral scent - there just aren't any flowers around.
This is what has changed about Ann Marie Hancock. She has become a society hostess with a 10,000-square-foot home, a Jaguar convertible, an indoor pool, a cottage at the lake and a personal relationship with Jesus' mother, Mary, for whom roses are an age-old symbol.
"I smell the roses really strong now," Ann Marie says. "She must be here with us."
It's tempting to put off Ann Marie as a wealthy eccentric, except that this is exceedingly serious business.
Believers worldwide have been phoning and writing Ann Marie for guidance and, of late, healing. Every day, she gets pictures of crippled children or hears from cancer patients who believe she can help.
"I didn't ask for this. I didn't want it," Ann Marie says. "I said, `Please, Lord . . . please don't do it.' "
But it probably was unavoidable once Ann Marie, 47, started getting involved in Christian mysticism. Here is a woman who tells her children that if they want to have a party for classmates, they have to invite the entire school - even if, as in the case of her two daughters, the school is the University of Richmond.
"Nothing halfway" should be the Hancock family motto. Tom Hancock, Ann Marie's husband, is a big-game hunter and old-money lawyer who coaches every athletic squad in which their children participate. "And every one of them," Ann Marie says, "has won the championship."
The walls of their family room are covered with ribbons and good-citizenship awards won by the couple's three children. Another child died shortly after birth. Both daughters and a young son help their mother take food to several "adopted" elderly Richmonders. Last month, when oldest daughter Cori's car broke down in Staunton, she wound up going on a field trip with residents of a retirement home where she stopped for help.
So Ann Marie's family life already was blessed when it began shifting to the miraculous in 1987. That year, Ann Marie visited the village of Medjugorje, in what is now Bosnia, where Mary is said to reveal secrets to a group of young people.
Ann Marie says she had a mystical experience there - saw the sun spin and silver rosary beads turn gold - then came back home and mentioned it to a man at a cocktail party. The man was an editor at a Hampton Roads publishing company. He said she should write a book, so she wrote "Be a Light: Miracles at Medjugorje."
There is a whole culture surrounding Medjugorje, a network of believers who say making the pilgrimage changed their lives. The 117-page book - a combination testimonial and guidebook - made Ann Marie a minor luminary in this realm.
Readers began pestering her to check out another spiritual destination, closer to home. And that's when Ann Marie really broke into the light.
Pilgrimage to Georgia
On the 13th of every month, thousands of pilgrims converge on a farm in the Atlanta suburb of Conyers to hear the words of Mary as relayed by a woman named Nancy Fowler.
Last month, at least 80,000 people made the trek.
Ann Marie was no ordinary pilgrim when she went for the first time in November 1992. Her Medjugorje book qualified her for a personal interview with Fowler.
In telling about it, Ann Marie stresses repeatedly that she is "a former hard-nosed reporter and a nationally ranked debater." She was captain of the debate teams in high school and at the University of Richmond. She reported for Norfolk's WAVY-TV in the late 1960s and was host of a popular morning talk show in Richmond until the early 1980s.
By referring to her background, Ann Marie means to say that she pulled up to Fowler's house with something approaching objectivity.
Fowler was standing in the carport, talking to a throng of pilgrims. The crowd parted promptly at 3 p.m. - the time of Ann Marie's appointment - and the visionary welcomed Ann Marie and her husband and son into the house.
Ann Marie says she went into the kitchen and noticed, through a doorway, the "Apparition Room," where Fowler gets her monthly messages from Mary. Ann Marie walked in, looked at the statue of Jesus and turned back to the kitchen. Fowler had a shocked expression. Horrified, Ann Marie thought she must have knocked over the statue. But Fowler said, "Ann Marie, there is a gold light pouring from your heart."
When Ann Marie returned to Richmond, she had a vision in which Mary instructed her to write a book about Conyers and call it "Wake Up, America! Take My Heart, Take My Hand."
The book was published in August by Hampton Roads Publishing Co. A Spanish translation came out last month. Proceeds from the book - with around 8,000 copies sold so far - are going to the Make-A-Wish Foundation.
Ann Marie has abandoned a meticulous daily calendar of activities to handle round-the-clock calls from readers. Her kitchen counters are piled with mail. Last month, she spoke at the University of Notre Dame.
Gold light, so to speak, is pouring from every aspect of Ann Marie's life.
She and Fowler believe Jesus and Mary take a minute interest in daily events. Fowler was test-driving a second-hand van once, Ann Marie says, and Jesus whispered that this was the car for her. Another time, Fowler put on some blue face-cleanser in a department store bathroom, and Jesus appeared to her and joked, "You look funny."
She says a cryptic urging from Mary saved Ann Marie from paying double for plane tickets to Venezuela, where she went earlier this month to visit yet another Christian visionary. And when Ann Marie reaches for a charity cookbook way up on a shelf, she grunts, "Oh, Lord, please help me out," grabs the book and then mutters, as if he were standing right there, "Thank you."
But the little things are only part of the story. What really is changing Ann Marie's life is the news from Conyers that Jesus has granted her the power of healing.
A "golden door"
The healing Ann Marie offers isn't always physical. Richmond homemaker Patty Derby, for instance, was grieving over her 10-year-old son's death from cancer. She went to Conyers last summer and, like many other pilgrims, pointed her Polaroid camera at the sun and wound up with a picture of what looked like a golden door in the sky. She felt better thinking that's what her son saw when he died.
On another trip to Conyers, Derby met Ann Marie. She felt an instant kinship when she discovered that Ann Marie, too, had lost a child. Now Derby makes pilgrimages to Ann Marie's house - not for mystical reasons, really, but for comfort.
"She's a real grounding for me, something solid. I need that sometimes," Derby says.
Another who seems helped by Ann Marie's company is Benedict McDermott, abbot of the Mary Mother of the Church Abbey in Richmond.
Tall and gray-haired, McDermott is so shy he can barely speak to a stranger. When he went to Conyers with Ann Marie, Fowler saw a halo around his head. Later that day, McDermott and Ann Marie walked into a Christian bookstore that was playing a videotape of the morning's session at Fowler's farm. Patrons were staring at a priest on the video who seemed bathed in light. "Here he is! This is the priest!" Ann Marie cried, pointing out the stupefied McDermott. He was mobbed by people asking for blessings.
As McDermott tells of the events that day, he weeps.
But no one has been more deeply affected by Ann Marie than Robin Hickey, a 35-year-old single mother who has multiple sclerosis and cerebral palsy. She works as a psychologist at the Southside Training Center outside Petersburg, in a sparse office with a beat-up metal desk and nothing on the walls but two inspirational posters and a "Cathy" comic strip. Her building is a residence hall for the mentally retarded. Hickey's job is to help the residents overcome anti-social behavior so they can adapt to outside life.
This summer, Hickey's mother showed her a newspaper article about Ann Marie. Hickey's sister also has multiple sclerosis, and their mother wanted them to pray with Ann Marie.
"I didn't want to go," Hickey says. "I didn't think I was worthy. Why would God want to do this for me? I'm not that good a person."
Eventually, the sisters went to Ann Marie's house and asked her to pray over them. "I felt this tremendous spirit descend into me," Hickey says. "It was just incredible. Then I began to smell roses. Up until about a month ago, I smelled them on a daily basis. Now, I smell them when I'm in need, or when I'm scared."
The day after the prayer session, Hickey says, she realized that her right hand - stunted by cerebral palsy - had grown half an inch. Over the next few weeks and after two more prayers from Ann Marie, she says, the bones in her right foot shifted and allowed her heel to touch the floor for the first time in her life. Even better, the fatigue brought on by multiple sclerosis went away. She believes she is cured.
Hickey is on track to receive a much-awaited new treatment for multiple sclerosis. But based on her faith in Ann Marie's gift, she says, she will not take the drugs. She is telling her doctor to take her name off the waiting list.
Her only sorrow is that her sister hasn't also been healed.
Skeptics abound
How do you judge claims like Hickey's? Multiple sclerosis is known to wax and wane. Hickey admits that her doctors are not convinced of her cure, but says her physical therapist will vouch for the changes in her body. The physical therapist, though, does not want to be interviewed.
Ann Marie says she has proof that something extraordinary is going on. Last June, several scientists from different countries converged on Conyers and ran tests on Fowler as she had her monthly vision.
Dr. Ramon Sanchez, an Atlanta neurologist, said brain wave monitors showed activity usually associated with seizures. Ricardo Castanon, a neuropsychologist from Bolivia, said his devices showed that Fowler was technically dead.
But that's not enough to satisfy a chorus of doubters.
Conyers' health department found that Fowler's well water - supposedly blessed by Jesus and thought by pilgrims to have healing power - is contaminated with coliform bacteria.
The Archdiocese of Atlanta has kept distant from Fowler, declining to investigate her claims and prohibiting priests from leading or initiating pilgrimages to see her.
A group called the Georgia Skeptics tested Polaroid cameras and found they will produce a "golden door" effect even when pointed at a 50-watt halogen light bulb. The phenomenon, they concluded, is just a reflection of the camera's door-shaped iris.
Three people who used to work for Fowler told the Atlanta Journal and Constitution that the seer sometimes locks herself in the basement with fits of anger or depression, that she occasionally transcribes Mary's monthly messages several days in advance and that she has moved out of her husband's bedroom.
Ann Marie says the claims about Fowler are untrue, and the skepticism of it all angers her.
"People are coming from all over the world. Their hearts are being changed. They're being healed of cancer and neurological diseases," she says sternly. "Why would you want to take people's hope, people's faith? What is the purpose of writing something that hurts and destroys?"
There is, of course, one undeniable sign that something is going on, at least at Ann Marie's house: the smell of roses. During a visit, the scent comes and goes, sometimes wafting in when Ann Marie enters a room.
Ann Marie says she doesn't wear floral perfume or use a rose-scented air freshener. But something is causing the smell. And she has decided to leave it at that.
"I don't think that our job, whether as reporters or human beings, is to destroy or tear down," she says. "Our job is to make people feel better."
by CNB