Tulsa Woman Wants To Donate Collection Of Angels

Rick Wells, News On 6

TULSA, Oklahoma -- An Oklahoma woman hopes to find a good home for her collection of angels. Keep in mind there are several hundred of these little cherubs, and the collector would like them all to stay together.

Martha Jones has been collecting them for more than 30 years, but she just can't manage them anymore.

"This is the first one, daughter bought it for me in probably '84," said collector Martha Jones.

That was almost 30 years, and hundreds of angels ago.

"Something inside me said keep collecting - so I did," she said.

At her home, angels are just about everywhere you look: on every shelf, on the walls, even the chain pulls on the ceiling fan are angels. Her grandson collects dragons; it's genetic.

One is unusual because of the angel's position.

"I've never seen an angel with her back turned," Martha said. So she had to have it.

Rick Wells: "I wonder what she's looking at?"

Martha Jones: "I've always wondered that."

She has big ones and small ones, some are praying, some not. One's a bear. They all make her feel better, she says.

"I sit here, and the days I'm not feeling well my eyes will light on certain ones," said angel collector Martha Jones.

"They seem to lift my spirit and give me comfort."

Over the years of all this collecting, she's become sort of an angels guardian angel..

"Sometimes I go to yard sales and estate sales, if I see an angel, then I feel I must buy it. I don't know what they'll do with it if I don't," she said.

She rescued a picture from a dumpster. She just couldn't bear the thought.

The difficulty is, she has too many to manage, but loves them all and would like to donate them to someone - or someplace.

"Somewhere where everybody could enjoy them and where they'd be displayed properly," Martha said of her hopes for the angel collection she's amassed over the last 37 years.

Is there such a thing as an angel museum?

"It's gonna be hard to let 'em go," she said. 

If you think you know of a good home for Martha's angels, e-mail Rick at Rick.Wells@newson6.net.