- Aunt Nina was always considered somewhat left of center when it came to religion.
She was Pentecostal, when all her neighbors and relatives had chosen a more sedate route to their heavenly reward.
Nonetheless, she was family, and when she showed us what she said (and absolutely believed) was a photograph of an angel, she was humored and ignored as much as possible when she would burst into the middle of any gathering, holding up the photograph, praising God and singing hymns at the top of her voice.
It happened when I was six, and Aunt Nina came to visit us, bringing along J.B., her youngest son and my cousin, who was twelve. I admired my cousin greatly.
After all, he had a BB gun and an accordion, both of which I coveted mightily, and determined they must be the rewards of being 12, and I could hardly wait.
There was a problem with this visit, however. J.B. was having trouble controlling his right leg, and it was decided that he should be taken to a hospital in Springfield.
I was only six, after all, and my memory fades at that point, but my next memory of this event was seeing my grandfather coming up the sidewalk after having been to Springfield, saying, "Well, J.B's gone."
J.B. had died of a brain tumor, the size of an orange, I was later told, and Aunt Nina was distraught to the point the family was concerned about her sanity.
Again my memory fades, and returns to see Aunt Nina flying up the sidewalk to our house holding aloft a photograph.
She was screaming and crying and praising God.
"Look!" she was saying, "J.B.'s in Heaven! Here's a picture of an Angel."
She showed us the picture, and indeed there did seem to be an angel in the air about twenty feet above J.B.'s grave.
My mother and grandparents, being of a very practical nature, tried to explain to Aunt Nina that it must be a trick of light, or that it was the position of the bare tree limbs, or, more likely, just her imagination.
I remember looking at the photograph, and yes, it did seem to be an angel, but what did I know? I was only six.
Years passed, and somehow the photo found its way into our family album.
As I got older, I took up the hobby of photography, had a darkroom, and developed and printed pictures for many people in Miller.
These were the old days of black and white film, and I would sometimes re-photograph pictures and make duplicates for friends and relatives.
During that short period of my life, I happened across Aunt Nina's angel photo, and examined it carefully.
It had been taken on size 620 or 120 roll film, black and white, the kind you then developed under a red light, and was of very good quality.
Yes, there was an angel hovering about twenty feet in the air above J.B.'s flower covered grave.
With a magnifying glass, I examined it from every possible viewpoint, and it was just what Aunt Nina had always said it was -- an angel.
It was well defined, well focused, and looked just as if someone had cut a picture out of church literature
and pasted it on the print, and then made a copy. That must have been it!
But a very close examination under very high power magnification revealed that it was NOT a copy.
It was the original print straight from the developing company, FoJo Studios in DeSoto, Missouri.
I decided to make a copy negative and enlarge the picture.
I re-photographed the print with my old 4/5 Speed Graphic, developed the negative and stuck it in the enlarger.
When I projected the negative image down on the easel, and focused it, I could tell there was something wrong.
The enlarged negative image was sharp and perfect - the gravestone, the flowers, the trees, even the sandblasted data on the stone, but there was no angel.
I checked to see if I had copied the entire print. I had.
It was a perfect copy, 8 by 10 inches, but where the angel should have been, there was nothing. I removed the negative and examined it on a light box. No Angel.
Obviously, I had done something wrong.
I put the original print back on the copy stand, and photographed it several times through various filters, and on orthochromatic, panchromatic and even infrared film. All the negatives came out perfect - but no angel. I showed my grandparents and Mom the original print and the enlargement.
They were upset with me, and seemed to think I was somehow being flippant about religion, and made me promise to put the print back in the album and never touch it again.
I respected their wishes, and there in the album the print stayed for some 45 years, until Mom died three years ago this month, and I moved her things out of the house in Miller.
The album was no longer there, and I haven't the least idea what happened to it.
Maybe a second or third generation relative has it, or maybe I just missed it and it was thrown away by the new people who bought the house.
I've since thought about what I would do if I had that photograph today.
Would I take it to some university and create a media sensation? Would I take it to the headquarters of a major denomination, and risk being branded a charlatan?
No, I don't think I would do either. Obviously, this was an angel that did not WANT its photograph reproduced and shown about, and who am I to argue with that?
-- You can write Joe at [email protected] and visit him at his website also
Joe Edwards 1521 E. Whiteside Springfield, MO 65804 (417) 889-4257
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