DATE: Saturday, September 13, 1997          TAG: 9709120078

SECTION: DAILY BREAK             PAGE: E1   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY JOHN-HENRY DOUCETTE, CORRESPONDENT 

                                            LENGTH:  138 lines

STARTING OVER CHESAPEAKE WOMAN IS CLEANING OUT HER HOME IN EFFORT TO REBUILD HER LIFE

HER CHILDHOOD DOLLS. The maple dresser snared on an antique hunt some years ago. Her clothes, art and collectibles. Even the colorful magnets that held photocopied words of inspiration to the refrigerator door.

Bring your wallet.

Buy what you will until her walls go bare and her floors uncovered.

Laura J. Coffey's worldly possessions can be yours today at an estate sale in the Chesapeake home where she collected antiques and raised her 12-year-old daughter.

Coffey is not dead, just starting over. Last year was tough. She endured her 40th birthday and her second divorce. She found herself in a set-in-stone life, with a house full of stuff stockpiled over the years.

It used to look cluttered yet homey. Now it just looks cluttered. Her goods are propped up in display positions, and most have small price stickers on them.

As she waited for Joe and Deloris Burke, who usually arrange estate sales for the dead, to help her through another day of pricing and arranging, she drank iced tea from a Styrofoam cup and listened to a five-disk CD player toss out random selections.

``I think people feel they're owned by their belongings and not the other way around,'' Coffey said. ``I want to be very flexible.''

In a deep radio-friendly voice - she works as voice talent at a sound studio - Coffey gave the dime tour.

Stop One was a table strewn with stuff. She touched a bowl filled with eggs.

``Some people collect these hand-painted eggs. It's bizarre. Like the old lunch boxes from the '50s - it's from their youth.''

Stop Two.

``This dresser and mirror from the old Monticello Hotel in Norfolk. It still has the sticker on the mirror.''

Check out time 3 p.m.

You can get both for $795.

Stop Three.

``This is the piece I hate to let go.''

But she will for $1,995. It's an oak armoire with a tassel hanging from the door.

She shows off the green bedroom, which she designed. That is what she hopes to do when the sale is over, when she starts rebuilding. She wants to decorate people's homes.

She enjoyed painting this room.

``I guess I thought it gave me some control over my life.''

Deloris and Joe arrived and the house became a workplace. They shifted furniture around, and Deloris sat in a back room and appraised a few things.

The Burkes could never do what Coffey is doing.

``Once I have something I don't like getting rid of it unless I'm upgrading,'' Deloris said. ``That's why I'm awed by Laura.''

They got to work.

Coffey drilled a hook into a wall. She was hanging the mirror from the Monticello over the dresser.

``Sounds like a drill,'' Joe said, peeking his head in.

``It is a drill.''

He took over for her and screwed the hook into the wall.

``Got it?'' Coffey asked.

He nodded.

Coffey had thought of packing up with her daughter and heading to Las Vegas, where she could continue doing voice work. She even went out there for a look around at the schools and places to live.

``I figured I would just sell everything,'' she said while Joe tinkered.

``Just go to Vegas,'' she continued, ``with some of my clothes . . . and my family photos on my lap.''

Joe got the hook in. Together they lifted the mirror and rested it on the hook.

``Okay,'' she said.

Joe patted the dresser.

``They don't make furniture like these,'' he said.

Coffey decided to keep her home in Chesapeake, at least through the spring. It has a big yard and her daughter likes it. Coffey will see how things go.

Deloris sorted items and priced them in the next room, and Coffey brought a box to her.

``I found some old dolls in the attic,'' she said.

``You did?''

``I didn't know what I'd done with them.''

Coffey put the box down in front of Deloris.

``Look at all that lace,'' Deloris said.

``Look at this old Salvation Army doll,'' Coffey said, picking it up.

The doll had a dark-blue dress.

``If you bring any more stuff out,'' Deloris said, ``we won't have any room to put it.''

``Just a few more dolls,'' Coffey said, still holding the doll. ``I remember the woman who gave it to me. She was in the Salvation Army. She wore a little uniform just like this.''

She put the doll down.

Deloris priced it.

When she was younger Coffey thought marriage was part of the American dream. But by the second divorce, she thought differently.

``I'm going to get lean and mean,'' she said. ``Ready to move. You know. I'm going to the next phase, whatever that is.''

Her mom already has, she explained. After her father died, her mother bought an Air Stream van ``with a little bubble'' on the top.

``She went all over. Back and forth at least three times.''

Across America, until health problems set in. Then her mother settled near San Diego.

Coffey sat in a chair dangling a price tag.

``It's funny to me. These are only things. I'm not any happier because I have this chair.''

She laughed.

``I have a place to sit, though.''

She thought for a moment.

``But I can get more.''

Maybe in Vegas. Closer to Mom.

But she is here for now, with a fresh start after the sale. She is looking forward to bare walls, empty rooms, a fresh start.

``We may feel we're secure because we have a steady-paying job or furniture, but that's all an illusion. The illusion of security isn't something I have to have.''

She got up, went to the kitchen and pulled a photocopied message from under a refrigerator magnet.

``It's Helen Keller,'' she explained.

``Security,'' the paper read. ``It is mostly an illusion. Security does not exist in nature. Nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger in the long run is no safer than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure or nothing.''

She does not remember how she got the photocopied words, but they still speak to her.

``This world will downsize you,'' Coffey said. ``Your possessions will break.''

Laura Coffey does not want the 20-year retirement party. She does not want the gold watch. She tucked her photocopy wisdom back under the refrigerator magnet.

Everything goes. MEMO: For more information on the estate sale, which began Friday

morning and continues today and Sunday, contact Laura Coffey at

436-0551. ILLUSTRATION: [Color Photo]

MARTIN SMITH-RODDEN

The Virginian-Pilot

Laura J. Coffey...

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