Just out of Calhoun on the Sugar Valley Road sits a very impressive 20-foot circular red brick memorial. Standing inside is a statue of a beautiful lady holding a baby in her arms; on its pedestal is inscribed “Suffer the Little Children.”

The children this lady loved and cared for say if one will observe closely they can feel this ladies’ love. Everyone who knew the lady has no doubt when looking at her likeness that she is about to speak.

All that knew and loved her believe that God has chosen this very special Christian lady as one of His angels, because of such love and affection she had for children.

Angels, according to many religions, are spiritual beings created by God. According to religious traditions, angels live in heaven and act as God’s servants and as messengers between God and human beings. They also serve as guardians of individuals.

And those who knew her believe she still has knowledge of her loved ones, sitting beside God always being His servant, and helping Him to guard and take care of the children.

To those unfamiliar with this lady, it would perhaps appear to be the statue of a very prosperous, famous lady, a lucrative, highly successful one at the least.

Who would guess that this is a memorial that a caring community dedicated to a lady, who would dream of children succeeding, dreams that would eventually come true.

Dreams planted like a seed in the heart and mind of Inez Balliew and her family. Dreams that envisioned mentally retarded, emotionally disturbed, and handicapped little children doing things that no one else believed they could ever do; dreams that once begun, grew in their minds, changing, flourishing and growing until becoming embedded in theirs and then their children’s minds.

And the dreams are not yet over; they will never be over because of the beliefs she and her family were able to instill in the lives of their troubled children. Believing and teaching their children that they had control of their own minds and could with love and absolute desire see their own dreams come true.

Those beliefs are seeing lives changing every day now because of Inez Balliew.

The angel lady’s belief, which today has become a trademark of the Balliews, “with God’s help and work we can break the molds that of which children were formed.”

Inez Balliew always believed and loved her children with that very thought always in mind, a belief that sill lives on in the minds of her children and their children.

She stated many times, “God made all of us, and God does not make mistakes. We adults are the ones who make them. We must never forget that every child was created perfect because we know he was created in God’s image.”

More than 600 children over the years with all sorts of problems suddenly found a true friend, one that continually showed them absolute love.

When the children felt her love and encouragement they seemed to always want to succeed. They suddenly found that a pathway leading to self-confidence and self-esteem had opened up, and on that path Mrs. Inez Balliew and family always walked with them.

She had a gift that very few people could ever hope to have. She could make children feel loved the first time they saw her.

In the past 37 years, she saw, and several people believes she still sees many things happen that could perhaps be considered miracles that her love created and now initiates.

She once encouraged a shy little mentally challenged girl who liked to sing, and was repaid when we watched the girl sing Amazing Grace for the president of the United States, Jimmy Carter.

She shed tears of joy when one of the girls graduated from college and became a teacher of small children. She saw a girl that was headed straight for serious trouble that is today a college graduate and a very successful businesswoman.

She saw a young man who was considered for a special class for the mentally limited receive a football scholarship to a major college and make the dean’s list, and was over elated when he received his master’s degree.

She haw a very small mentally challenged 8-year-old boy who could not talk, still in a diaper without any knowledge of personal hygiene and knew nothing about clothing himself who had to be tied in a chair in kindergarten to keep from hurting himself or others come to live with her after she had raised two sons of her own. She was thrilled when he received a special education degree and finished his senior year without an absence and received the award for 13 years of perfect attendance.

She watched with pride as several of the ones she tutored be the first of their families to graduate from high school and watched eight of them graduate from college.

And when any of her former children came back to visit with their children, she would always say, “I love them like they are our grandchildren.” Their children are far different children than their parents were, because children whose parents have them in church and who parent them with compassion, true unselfish caring, and love, can always with God’s love and help expect successful children.

Starting with her two sons the name “Mama” was the name she has been lovingly called by the hundreds of children she loved and helped raise.

How she was able to create the desires to succeed in so many young children was unbelievable and lots of people thought and now firmly believe it was miracles they were seeing.

To watch her in action was like watching love in its truest form. You would witness such tenderness as she worked with the children, scolding them for not doing their very best, yet in her scolding she would be bolstering their pride because it was done with such love and gentleness.

Someone once said you can’t fool a child about love; they recognize the real thing and respond accordingly. Every time the children returned home from a visit with Mrs. Balliew they were determined to do better since it was expected, and they loved her and did not want to disappoint her.

Inez Balliew did so many things with her kids, it is difficult to list them all. She loved to sing with the children and in the process sang with them on six recordings. She and the girls grew gardens, canned vegetables, won many blue ribbons for their efforts at the county fair, learned how to manage honeybees, took field trips, raised plants in their greenhouse, cooked and baked, planted flower gardens.

Mrs. Balliew taught the girls how to sew and had many sessions concerning girl’s ethics, values, and morals. She and the children attended church together, and she always encouraged each of the children and their parents to attend church as a family – and many times was successful.

For several summers, handicapped children from Northern Ireland visited the Balliews for six weeks under the auspices of the Children’s Friendship Project for Northern Ireland, an opportunity customarily reserved for “normal kids.”

Inez Balliew requested handicapped girls be sent and in turn, was invited to visit Northern Ireland by the Lord Mayor of Belfast and school officials to show their gratitude for her volunteering to share many of her summers with their Catholic and Protestant handicapped children in the mountains of North Georgia.

Inez Balliew always tried to teach all her children that there are no limitations in life, only missed opportunities. And her job was simply to help cut down on the number of opportunities that her kids most times missed out on.

She was very difficult to thank or praise, because she simply did what she loved to do - to be with her children she loved so much and expecting them to be successful. And to Inez Balliew that was nothing special.

All of these achievements were accomplished by a caring community that supported her in her attempts to help troubled children.

Inez said, “The Lord gave us the opportunity to see many of His miracles happen. There was no other way to explain how these people accomplished so many seemingly impossible things.”

When God decided he needed Mrs. Inez “Mama” Balliew in heaven several of her girls agreed that he needed an angel to sit by Him, be His attendant and help Him with His children’s miracles.

Today there are visitors from different parts of the country who come to see for themselves the lady with the angel look that was formed by a master sculptor in Rome, Italy, using marble from the same quarries that have supplied the stone for centuries used to build magnificent buildings, memorialize God’s Saints, and Roman noblemen.

The visitors carry away with them a feeling of love and better understanding of a Saint when they remember the messages they saw and read etched in a tablet of marble inside the memorial.

A message her family and the hundreds of children she loved wanted all to remember and many were responsible for helping Mr. Balliew write which when read states, I often thought as night draws nigh, of the Winners Club on the hill with its yard so wide and blossom filled where the children played at will. And when the night at last came down hushing the merry din, Mama would always look around and ask “Daddy, are all the children in?” Oh, it’s only been a short time since then, and the clubhouse on the hill still echoes to children’s feet and the yard is never still. But I see it as shadows creep, and though it’s only be a while since then, I can still hear Mama ask, “Daddy are all the children in?” I wonder if when the shadows fall on my last short earth day, when I prepare to say goodbye to the world outside and I’m tired of earthly play and when I finally reach the promised land where Mama so long has been, I know I will hear Mama asking as of old, “Are all the children in?”

Be this lady an angel or a saint the babies she held when they were scared, abused, when they were sick, when they were about to be removed from their parents because of their being neglected, or had parents in conflict and had been taken to jail.

To the hundreds of babies she held it didn’t matter; she was both saint and angel, all they cared to know, someone loved them and they knew it stopping their crying and they fell asleep in her arms. The baby our angel holds in her arms represents her love for little children.

Mrs. Inez “Mama” Balliew deserves an important place in our community’s history. There are many successful families in our community today because of her love and her God-given knowledge of how to bring an end to many generations of neglect.

God loved Inez “Mama” Balliew enough to teach her how to break molds.

Our guardian angel firmly believed and taught all her children and their families that they were to take care of their own families’ needs and if they did they would not have time to judge others and their family’s actions or deeds; only God is to place judgments on others and their deeds.

She stated many times, “Ask God for the answer to your troubles and He will help you take care of them.”

Webster, in his dictionary, defines angel as an immortal being attending upon God; a very kind and loveable person; a helping or guiding spirit. “Angels” are also known as guardians of people and nations.

How many people or children know for sure they have a guardian angel sent by God to protect them and who it is? Many of the lives Inez Balliew touched know personally and love their guardian angel. And it’s been thought that God has designated Inez “Mama” Balliew as our own troubled children’s guardian angel.

This guardian angel should never be forgotten and our community should consider itself blessed because she took the time to serve and touch so many lives. Our community is certainly a much better place because Mrs. Inez Balliew did.

Inez Balliew went to heaven fulfilling her duty as God’s angel on Jan. 10, 1999 and in these five years hundreds of people have stopped and looked at the memorial to an angel that a community loved and cared enough to establish.

People will be stopping for many years to see the statue of our community’s angel.

Copyright: 2004 Deacon Balliew

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Read the Words Inscribed On the Memorial for Mama Balliew.

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Background music "Amazing Grace" midi sequenced by Don Carroll