THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, May 6, 1996 TAG: 9605060072
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B5 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY LINDA McNATT, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: WINDSOR LENGTH: Medium: 83 lines
Yellow forsythia and fuchsia azaleas bloomed in the front yard. Swinging pots of ferns on the porch joined in a wind dance with a colorful butterfly flag anchored to an old oak tree.
From the outside, the cottage on the side of the rural road was perfection. The grass was freshly cut. The yard swept clean.
Inside, the house was no different. Flowers, color - everywhere.
And the petite woman who lives there, wearing a rose-colored dress with a floral pendant hanging around her neck, seemed to dance as well, from one small room to another.
``How do you like my curtains, honey?'' Blanche Braswell asked as she conducted a tour. ``I didn't think I'd ever see it like this again. I really didn't. I just thank the Lord so much.''
Mrs. Braswell, 88, feared she'd save little of her home after it was vandalized in early December. Cherished possessions were broken and ruined.
``The house was totally wrecked,'' said C.B. Nurney, an Isle of Wight County Sheriff's investigator who showed up at Mrs. Braswell's on Sunday, one of dozens of people she invited to an open house. ``I can't imagine how they repaired it.''
Furniture and dishes were broken; walls had been bashed in; windows kicked out. A small black and white television Mrs. Braswell had clung to because her late husband enjoyed it so much had been thrown through a wall.
For Mrs. Braswell, whose sole income is a monthly Social Security check for less than $500, the results were devastating. Four pickup truck loads of broken furniture and glass were hauled from the house.
But when stories of her misfortune ran in local newspapers, people reached out to help, said her daughter, Virginia O'Berry.
Donations to rebuild the house and restore Mrs. Braswell's possessions came from throughout Virginia and North Carolina. Her landlord, a local farmer who owns the cottage, made some improvement he'd planned but had never gotten around to: vinyl siding and new windows.
At Farmers' Bank of Windsor, donations arrived almost daily for more than a month, said Judy Brown, a bank employee who was at Sunday's party.
A Virginia Beach man donated furniture he had intended for his own mother's use until she went into a nursing home. A Newport News doctor sent boxes filled with Christmas decorations and stuffed animals - not unlike those Mrs. Braswell had cherished because they had been gifts from her grandchildren.
``Look at my cat. Ain't she pretty?'' Mrs. Braswell said Sunday, smiling and pointing to a stuffed animal sitting in the center of a neatly made bed.
``They ripped the heads right off my stuffed animals,'' she had said after the incident. ``How could somebody do something like that to a woman my age?''
Her mother wanted to show off her house once it was finished, O'Berry said, and to be able to thank the many people who helped her fix it, so she held the open house. Relatives, friends and neighbors supplied homemade cookies and lemonade for the party. O'Berry made peanut butter fudge.
Robert Holland, a grandson, was able to repair some of his grandmother's antiques and family heirlooms. O'Berry said they wanted to save everything that they could that was her mother's.
The rest of the five-room house was redecorated with gifts and donations.
Two youths were arrested and charged with breaking and entering and destroying property on the same day the vandalism was discovered. The pair are scheduled to be tried later this month, Nurney said.
The sheriff's deputy who made the arrests was also among the guests at Sunday's party.
For the first time in her life, Mrs. Braswell has a color television, a gift from somebody who read the newspaper story. She has new furniture, new curtains, new dishes.
The flowers she has planted in her yard over the 30 years she's lived there are blooming, and in the springtime after the dark winter in her life, things are once again right with the world.
``I sure thank everybody who helped me,'' she said, smiling. ``I sure do. I just can't thank them enough.'' ILLUSTRATION: Photo by VICKI CRONIS/The Virginian-Pilot
``I didn't think I'd ever see it like this again,'' Blanche
Braswell, 88, said of her home in Windsor. ``I just thank the Lord
so much.'' The house was vandalized in December. Mrs. Braswell held
an open house Sunday to thank those whose donations helped restore
the house and its contents.
by CNB