Other stories of angels

Angel heart

Mary Alice Blaylock's third child, born on Jan. 20, 1961, was almost her undoing.

"We moved around and back in those days. We didn't know I needed a C-section," she said. She also didn't know she'd contracted malaria during her pregnancy. Labor lasted more than 24 hours, further distressing Blylock's body. Her suddenly heart stopped beating.

She remembers seeing doctors working on her lifeless body before being surrounded by darkness, seeing a distant light and moving toward it, floating into a place she described as a "beautiful world of flowers and music."

"It was just one of those things," she tells people when relating the story. "It was like I knew a son had been born. I was in this beautiful floating experience."

ELIZABETH DODD ~ edodd@semissourian.comSharron Werner of Fruitland gets a high five from her dog Harley, a Welsh terrier and corgi mix. Werner said her last dog, Lucky, a Welsh terrier, would also give her a high five from his back. Werner has also found many other similarities between Harley and Lucky.

She knew she had to go back to her husband, two daughters and newborn son, Wesley, named for theologian John Wesley.

"It was an experience that I have never, ever forgotten," she said. "It took away the fear of death forever. I have never been afraid to die since."

Angel child

Jody Kramer has never personally seen an angel, when her son Brennan, then 3, said something about pretty girls coming into his room at night, angels were the last thing on her mind.

She and her husband questioned the boy.

"We asked him many questions, to which he always had an answer that sounded to be relevant to the presence of angels," said Kramer, a registered nurse who often works on Sundays. "He did not have the knowledge of angels from church."

Not long after his fourth birthday, Brennan asked his mother why the angels had stopped coming to his room.

"I did not have an answer for him," she said. But he continues to be fascinated with the notion, often asking to buy angels as gifts or for his room. At one point, his room was full of angel figurines. When the family moved from Florida to Jackson, Kramer had to cull the collection to adapt to her son's new, smaller bedroom.

Brennen, now 5, remains fond of angels, which he say have yellow hair "and Cinderella dresses."

"Only little people can see them and not big people," he said.

Why does he like angels?

"Because they're pretty and because they protect people," he said.

Angel dog

Sharron Werner's heart nearly broke when she had to bring her dog Lucky, an 11-year-old male Welsh terrier mix, in to be euthanized in 2006. Lucky suffered from congestive heart failure. He was a stray dog she'd rescued from a roadside. Lucky followed Werner from room to room, insisting on sitting so close he touched his owner whenever she sat down. Lucky had a quirky way of offering a "high five," rolling over on his back before offering a paw.

Werner decided to bring a puppy home a few months later, but returned from the Ruma, Ill., kennel with two puppies, a female, Moxie, and a male, Harley.

One night, playing with Harley, "he rolled over and slapped my hand with his paw," said Werner, who lives in Fruitland. He still performs the trick. "It's funny, but he even acts like Lucky did. Seems I cannot go anywhere without him following. When he's scared, he crawls into my lap."

Werner said she believes Lucky returned to her in the form of Harley.

Angel soldier

Five women on their way to a girls weekend at the beach were running late. Unable to find a cart to roll their luggage through the Memphis airport, Sande Meyer of Cape Girardeau offered to carry two of her friends' bags along with her own.

As they prepared to check the bags, Meyer was horrified to realize that her briefcase and purse were missing. The briefcase held her airline ticket, money, car keys, credit cards and phone.

"Get on the plane if I'm not back in time," Meyer told her pals before sprinting back toward her van in the parking lot. She was almost to the van when a young man, dressed in a white U.S. Navy uniform and white cap "literally just appeared, holding my briefcase," she said. "As I was running up to him, he said something like, 'I'll bet this belongs to you. I found it and figured whoever lost it would be right back.'"

A grateful Meyer looked into the case to grab a $20 reward. When she looked up a moment later, he was gone. She got goose bumps.

"There was not a single other person anywhere," she said. "As I hurried back to the terminal, I continued to look. There wasn't even one military person of any kind at all anywhere. I have no doubt this young man, dressed all in white with the sun streaming through from behind him, was indeed an angel."

pmcnichol@semissourian.com

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