Wednesday, November 24, 1999
Dressing in sheets becoming fashionable
downtown
By Bill Whitaker
If enterprising photographer and one-time Abilene Christian
University footballer John Bunton didn’t know better, he’d
guess there were angels watching over his career.
There probably are.
As I indicated in a column last summer, John’s latest
project is a bona fide “Unseen Wings” calendar dedicated
to the concept that angels truly walk among us. Now his calendar
is at last in local bookstores, religious novelty shops and offbeat
businesses such as Relics and The Gilded Lily.
Among those who already have just-off-the-press copies: nationally
syndicated TV hostess Oprah Winfrey.
Thanks to the tight friendship Hardin-Simmons University basketball
coach Dennis Harp has with former HSU basketball standout Stedman
Graham — Oprah’s “significant other” —
John’s calendar is now at Oprah’s home. John, 27, has
high hopes she will consider linking it to her own remarkable
Angel Network, which helps a wide variety of charitable causes
nationwide.
If the two angelic causes are linked via the Internet, John
will devote one-half of the proceeds from calendars sold through
Oprah’s web-site to her Angel Network.
“The idea’s pretty exciting,” John told me this
week, “but, really, I’m just excited Oprah even has
my calendars in her house!”
Stedman Graham has reportedly vowed to get Oprah to sit still
long enough to peruse one of the calendars.
John’s calendar has garnered lots of attention wherever
it’s been put out. During the past year, the mild-mannered
photographer convinced friends and acquaintances to dress up like
angels and pose with seemingly everyday, ordinary folks in everyday,
ordinary settings. Local graphic artist Deborah Warr then took
the photos and added a luminiously seraphic glow to the angels.
Result: Some oddly striking pictures, photographed in venues
ranging from dusty West Texas farm roads to local school crossings
to the front of the Abilene Bookstore downtown (where, incidentally,
John will be autographing copies of his calendar during next Tuesday’s
big City Sidewalks celebration).
“I’ve had just about every reaction you can imagine,”
John said. “I mean, I’ve had a half-dozen people cry
while they were looking at the images in my calendar. I had one
individual — a pretty tough fellow, actually — look
at it and just hand it back to me because he’d lost a good
friend of his the week before and he couldn’t handle it.
“Really, it’s amazing how it impacts people.”
Besides Oprah’s Angel Network, the calendar may also serve
as a fund-raiser for the Houston-based KLOL morning radio team
of Stevens & Pruett and their favorite cause, the Humane Ranch
for Abused Children and Animals. Radio personality Jim Pruett
grew up in Brownwood and served as a radio announcer in Merkel
at the start of his career.
For the record, when John autographs his $11.95 calendars at
the Abilene Bookstore Tuesday night, he’ll have a couple
of friends dressed up as angels strolling about outside, handing
out postcards of his locally photographed angelic images.
And should the weather turn frightful that night?
“Well, that’s the nice thing about the way angels
dress,” John said. “Mine can always wear long johns
under their sheets!”
Toga and all
Dressing up in sheets may be something of a trend for bookstore
signings.
Just in case anyone had doubts about Rose Williams, the former
Cooper High School Latin teacher really did come to her book-signing
party at Abilene Bookstore this month adorned in nothing more
than a Roman toga.
Of course, it was a somewhat updated version of a toga.
On hand to sign the American edition of her droll Latin tourist
guide, Which Way to the Vomitorium, Rose insisted the toga she
wore was far more than the sort of mere bed sheet college students
wore during the late 1970s, when toga parties became popular on
college campuses nationwide.
“Actually, this is a Halston,” Rose assured me. “My
friend Bill Overton found it at a garage sale and gave it to me.
It was actually sold as a sort of evening dress. And it’s
just wonderful. You can slip it on and away you go!”
Bill Whitaker, who wouldn’t know a Halston from a toga,
can be reached at 676-6732 or e-mail him at whitakerb@abinews.com.
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