ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, April 3, 1997 TAG: 9704040080
SECTION: NEIGHBORS PAGE: N-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: EMILY DUNNE/THE ROANOKE TIMES
ELMA BROOKMAN LIKES to do things a little differently.
"If I read a book, I read the last page first," she said. And when she painted a mural on the walls of a Sunday school classroom at Washington Heights Grace Brethren Church of Roanoke, she started at the bottom and worked her way up.
"That little boy's feet were placed first before I painted the top of him," she said, pointing to a kneeling boy in her interpretation of the Nativity.
Brookman, 71, of Roanoke, has been painting for almost 50 years.
And even though she estimated she has completed at least 500 paintings - a low figure, she said - she has kept little of her work, giving most to family and friends.
"I just get sheer joy out of sharing something," she said.
Over the years, Brookman certainly has shared a lot.
There was the time she raffled off a painting to help a friend who had been injured in a tractor accident.
Then there was the time a woman asked Brookman to do a painting of her poodle, which had died. The woman, Brookman said, cried when she saw the painting. ```That's my dog,' she told me," Brookman said.
And then there was the time she painted "Old Faithful" as a souvenir for her grandson after their visit to Yellowstone National Park.
"I've enjoyed it so much," she said. "It gets personal."
And even though Brookman struggles with arthritis and is almost blind in one eye, she continues to paint. "Sometimes it gets real bad," she said of her arthritis. "I just go on and do it anyway."
Brookman's latest project, a painted saw, will help the church group Women Manifest in Christ send Bibles to Russia. The crosscut saw, which Brookman named "The Star City of the South," is a time line celebrating Roanoke's past, from the City Market and Texas Tavern to the Hotel Roanoke and Woodrum Field. A short history of Roanoke, written by Brookman, accompanies the saw.
"That was a pain to do," she said of the saw, which took her about a month and a half to complete. "But I loved every minute of it. My eyes would hurt so bad. It stressed them out a little."
On March 22, the saw was raffled off at Women Manifest in Christ's Blue Ridge Fellowship spring rally at Washington Heights Grace Brethren. It drew donations of $315.
Brookman, who was born and raised in Daleville, became interested in art at a young age.
"I was drawing on the wall and got spanked for it when I was just a little kid," she said. When she was older, she said, she liked to watch her mother, who "used to draw the most beautiful swans and birds."
Brookman has never taken art classes. "I either didn't have time, or money, or both," she said, laughing.
In 1951, when a woman from the Good News Club of Roanoke asked her to paint backgrounds as teaching aides for Sunday school teachers, she didn't even own a paintbrush. Since then, she said, she has made more than 1,000 of the flannel backgrounds.
"It just snowballed," she said. "You have 30 or 40 teachers, and each one needs about 50 backgrounds."
Brookman's next major project came 10 years later, when evangelist Mason Cooper hired her - for $1 an hour - to paint the second coming of Christ as told in the book of Revelations. It took Brookman six to seven weeks to paint the large scroll, which she said Cooper still uses.
In the summer of 1989, Brookman shared her art yet again through a "chalk talk" at Grace Brethren's American Indian mission school in New Mexico.
During a chalk talk, Brookman said, an artist teaches a Bible story while drawing a chalk illustration. "For years, I had a dream of doing a chalk talk for these little Indian children," she said. "That, to me, was a fulfilled dream."
Most of Brookman's work, including about 75 paintings of Mabry Mill and about 25 of Natural Bridge, was done at the request of friends. While some offered to sew a blouse or dress for Brookman in return for her work, she said, others simply gave her enough money to cover the cost of materials.
"This is what I do," she said. "It's me, and I love to share it with others."
Brookman especially wants to share her work with her nine grandchildren and eight great-grandchildren. She has carefully tucked away labeled photographs of many of her paintings in an album inscribed: "For the Brookman Grandchildren."
"They can look back and say, 'Granny's gone, but look what she did,''' she said.
LENGTH: Medium: 91 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: CINDY PINKSTON/THE ROANOKE TIMES. 1. Velma Brookman, 71,by CNBhas painted several murals, including this one (above) in a
children's Sunday School classroom, for Washington Heights Grace
Brethren Church. 2. She included several Roanoke landmarks on the
crosscut saw (left) she painted as part of a fund-raiser. color.
color.