THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, November 29, 1995 TAG: 9511290030
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY ELIZABETH SIMPSON, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 140 lines
ONE ANGEL wears pink, high-heeled shoes; another has brown leather boots. Here's an angel with striped wings, and one with red hearts sprouting from her head.
Female angels and male angels, bird angels, even cat angels.
The children's drawings fill a book and send a simple message to grownups: Get in touch with your angels. They are there to help you.
The book ``Drawing Angels Near'' was put together by former Virginia Beach teacher Garland Waller and her partner, Mimi Doe.
The two women, who both live in the Boston area, have spent the past few years collecting drawings from children ages 3 to 10, along with prose about angels that ranges from the funny to the poignant to the inspirational:
``My angel helps my sister and she needs it,'' wrote a 5-year-old.
``When angels wave their arms, it makes music,'' said an 8-year-old.
And from a 7-year-old: ``Angels are silent. They just are there for you. It is like an inside thing.''
The book won't be the only angel-inspired gift for sale this season. From postage stamps to tree ornaments to lapel pins, angels seem to be everywhere. They are to the '90s what flowers were to the '60s. With one poll showing three out of four people believing in angels, the market has naturally responded with a flood of winged merchandise.
But Waller hopes ``Drawing Angels Near'' will have a deeper meaning to people than just another angel trinket.
The book, which is being released across the nation Friday, includes a drawing by one of Waller's nieces, Alexis Waller, who lives in Virginia Beach.
When Garland Waller asked Alexis to draw a picture of an angel a couple of years ago, Alexis drew a picture of herself and her sister, Jesse, who's now 11. In the drawing Alexis has her arms around her sister. Their blond hair is blowing upward against a bright blue sky. And sprouting from Alexis' shoulders are great, hawk-like wings, spread majestically across the sky.
``I do believe in angels,'' Alexis said last week. ``Not really angels with wings that fly around and everything, but I think people can be angels, with invisible wings. Sometimes I think of myself as Jesse's angel. I kind of help her out. She may be my angel, too, you never know.''
Their mother, Karen Waller, agrees.
Jesse was born with brain damage, and Alexis has always been a big part of her life. Alexis was the first member of the family to make Jesse laugh. She helped Jesse say her first phrase, ``bye-bye.'' And she gives Jesse a part in games.
Jesse, in turn, has given her sister sensitivity for people with differences, and a greater capacity for compassion, according to the girls' mother. ``Different situations can give us great gifts; they stretch us,'' Karen Waller said. ``That's been Jesse's gift to her sister.''
It is just that sense of compassion that Garland Waller would like the grown-up part of the world to become more aware of through ``Drawing Angels Near,'' which she dedicates, in part, to Alexis.
Garland Waller believes children are much more in touch with the idea of angels than adults are. ``I think grownups experience them, but as you get older and get a job and get busy and hurry here and there, you lose touch with that magical, spiritual light of yourself, unless you work really hard to keep it,'' Garland Waller says. ``That's hard to do in this frantic world. But children have not lost that yet. The children know the angels are there.''
The artwork shows that some children, like Alexis, find their angels within themselves. Others find them elsewhere.``My angel sounds just like me,'' one child wrote, while another said: ``My angel has wings and lives up in the sky. They talk to children in their heart.''
Children also connect angels to people they know, as one 7-year-old's story proves: ``Before my uncle died of AIDS, he told me that he would always be with me. That he would be an angel watching over me. He said that I would know he was around because I would find a feather from his wings. I've been looking and looking for feathers in the snow. Last night I found one right on my pillow.''
Even though the book is by children and about children's angels, it's meant for adults who are trying to recapture that sense of possibility.
``I think the reason why people are getting into angels so much now is they're tapping into something on a much deeper level in their lives,'' Garland Waller said. ``They may buy an angel trinket or a book, but there's also a deeper feeling. A feeling that they need something more to help them cope on a day-to-day basis.''
Garland Waller grew up in Virginia Beach and attended Friends School, where she will sign books Friday at the school's annual Christmas Book & Gift Fair.
She taught English at Virginia Beach Junior High School for four years before moving to Boston to get her master's in broadcasting. Since then, she's become an Emmy-award-winning TV producer, known for shows geared to youngsters. Some of the more weighty topics she's tackled have been poverty, nuclear war and abuse, all in relation to children.
The loftier topic of angels came to her after her daughter, Samantha, was born four years ago.
Waller had quit her job as a producer for WBZ television in Boston to spend more time with her daughter. And Doe, who is an educational television specialist, also was taking time off to be with her children.
The two mothers were lamenting the poor quality of children's TV programs one day. They loathed the violence, the lack of multicultural images, the lackluster lessons. Then they dreamed about a show that would be better, that would teach children as well as lift their spirits.
``We decided we would just do it,'' Waller said.
Together they put together a children's video that focused on a topic that seemed to enthrall their own children: Angels.
Called ``Concert in Angel-Land,'' the video teaches children how to handle their problems by recognizing the power of an ``inner light.''
Showings of the video prompted Waller and Doe to ask children about their own angels, and to urge them to draw them. Soon, the artwork began piling up. ``It was fabulous,'' Garland Waller remembers. ``We found that angels are not just imaginary friends to children. The children were experiencing some kind of power within them.''
The next thing they knew, Waller and Doe were sitting in a Simon & Schuster conference room in New York City last October with 200 drawings of angels and a proposal for a book on the table before them.
``It was very exciting,'' Waller remembers. ``They spread these pictures out and everyone was poking their heads in the door saying, `What's this?' We knew it was going to be wonderful.''
The duo next hopes to turn the video, and the angel idea, into a regular television series. They've researched the topic of angels, written TV proposals and are now awaiting word from cable networks and other entertainment companies.
Their desire for the show is based, in part, on giving their own children something worthy to watch. Waller remembers the day her daughter asked why she wasn't allowed to watch ``The Mighty Morphin Power Rangers,'' a popular children's show in which karate kicks and fighting are dominant themes.
``I don't want you to grow up thinking you can solve problems by kicking and punching,'' Waller told her daughter. ``You have everything you need inside of you to solve problems. That's what angels are there for, to help you.''
While the TV series proposal simmers, Waller and Doe hope the book will get people in touch with their own angels. In the words of the 4-year-old whose description of angels concludes the book: ``They would make everybody happy if only people would listen.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color photo by Bill Tiernan\The Virginian Pilot
Alexis Waller, 13, of Virginia Beach drew the picture below of her
and her sister, Jesse, who was born with brain damage.
Color drawing
Alexis and Jesse Waller from "Drawing Angels Near"
by CNB