THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, September 22, 1994 TAG: 9409220041
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
SERIES: DAYDREAM BELIEVERS
This is another in an occasional series about Hampton Roads residents
who act on their dreams. If you know someone who might make a good
subject for a future article, please write:
Patrick K. Lackey, 150 W. Brambleton Ave., Norfolk, Va. 23510 or
call him at 446-2251.
SOURCE: By PATRICK K. LACKEY, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 130 lines
EARLY THIS CENTURY out in Wisconsin, Lavina Rahmlow's father invented and patented a garden hoe with two holes in the blade so less dirt would stick to it.
He also invented and patented a mousetrap, though not a better one; safety wings for flying machines so when disabled they'd float to the ground; and a highly practical device for sizing tobacco leaves.
You could say, then, that Lavina Rahmlow came by her rampant inventiveness honestly.
From her long brick ranch house in the comfortable Lake Trant section of Virginia Beach, she is, at age 82, a creative empire waiting to happen.
Since reading a 1984 magazine article titled, ``Fair Game: The Royal Hunt - Who Will Succeed King Cabbage?,'' she has dreamed of the next HOT! doll being her creation: the Granny Glee Doll.
She has written and illustrated four children's books about the doll. She has planned a theme park called Gee Gee World and a Granny Glee card game and more.
``You know what does it?'' she asked. ``Advertising.''
Though she can't prove it, she suspects the first news photograph of lines of shoppers clamoring to get Cabbage Patch Dolls was staged to launch the nationwide hysteria.
She talks the talk, telling how she'll spin this off of that and that off of this. What she needs, she figures, is a manufacturer for her dolls, followed by tons of advertising, followed by hysteria.
Over the years, she said, she has spent more than $10,000 to push her dolls. She paid to publish two of her books with Granny Glee Dolls as characters and to hire invention marketing companies to plug the dolls.
She has nothing good to say about invention marketing companies, and the books - ``Granny Glee and Whoppity Sock'' and ``Granny Glee and Sockabye Land'' - are out of print.
It is essential, she said, that the dolls sell big.
``Everything,'' she said, ``circles around that.''
If the dolls sell, the books will sell, and if the books sell, more dolls will sell and Gee Gee World will get built and the card game will take off, leading to even more dolls sold.
Rahmlow's maiden name is Dahl, prounced doll.
Her father emigrated from Norway as a young man, and both her mother's parents are from Norway. She is as Norwegian as Norway.
She grew up on a prosperous farm, the seventh of 10 children. At her rural school, she was the only eighth-grader.
By age 13, she was writing poems and short stories.
As a young woman, a poem of hers was published in a memorial book to Edgar Allan Poe. The book contained numerous big-name poets like Gertrude Stein and Stephen Spender
One stanza of her poem goes:
The cry of the loon
Is a concentration
Of the liquid murmurs of northern lakes,
The sighs of great pines,
The wild sounds and silences
Of awful and fascinating loneliness.
And she has written countless children's rhymes, like ``Larry Tarry Larry Cary.'' It goes:
Nary Tarry Larry Cary,
Why must you go so soon?
``Mountains from molehills I must build
So that I can climb to the moon.''
Nary Wary Larry Cary
Why must you go so high?
``My stomach is empty, my heart is bold,
And the moon is a pumpkin pie.''
After high school, Rahmlow completed with honors a two-year course for teachers at LaCrosse Teachers College, now a branch of the University of Wisconsin.
She graduated in 1932 into a Great Depression-ravaged land, with jobs as rare as diamonds.
She met Herbert Rahmlow, at whose suggestion she studied journalism for a year at the University of Wisconsin. They initially planned to run a weekly newspaper together.
Instead he was hired by the Weather Bureau Service, and they married and moved to Washington, D.C. When he retired, 39 years later, a government magazine called him the dean of the National Weather Service engineers.
Herbert and Lavina had two children, Bruce and Bonnie.
And here the plot thickens.
When Bonnie was only 2, she had one request before having her tonsils and adenoids removed. She told her mom she wanted ``a sockadoll'' to take along to the hospital.
So Rahmlow made one, from one of Herbert's socks.
Thus were born the Granny Glee Dolls, back in 1944. Each doll has the same face but comes with its own rhyme.
Over the years, Rahmlow sold a few dozen of the dolls, all handmade. She easily sold as many as she made, but there was no financial future in turning them out by hand.
After her children were grown, Rahmlow worked from 1958 to 1968 in personnel at the Pentagon. She was responsible for the records of 1,000 Air Force employees.
When her husband retired in 1972, they moved to Florida, near St. Petersburg. He died in 1980, and she moved to Northern Virginia, where she met and married Neal Walter, who remains amazed by her today. ``She plays the organ,'' he said, ``cooks, does needle work, paints, writes. . . . '' He listed several more accomplishments.
The couple moved to Virginia Beach just three months ago to be closer to daughter Bonnie, who lives about 3 miles from their house.
And the dream continues.
Rahmlow has created Granny Glee's Fun Book, including pages to color. She has so many plans, she has a book of plans. Her dreams have dreams.
One of the four bedrooms in her house is dedicated to her doll dream. Under a sewing machine against one wall are two Cabbage Patch Dolls in boxes. They were mailed to her from Germany when it was virtually impossible to find one in the United States. They are her inspiration.
``If anyone would help me get this started,'' she said, ``they would share in the millions that rolled in. I know it could take off, somehow.''
She and her husband are not in need of money, but she said she is in need of fun, and having her dolls sell big would be fun.
``When you are retired,'' she said, ``you have got to have a hobby. You have got to have something to keep your mind active.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color photo
JOHN KOTLOWSKI/Staff
by CNB