Things Are Looking Up in Hospital’s Children’s Ward

--As her newborn son lay fighting a virus in his hospital crib in Boston, Helen Hashim noticed that all the child had to stare at were blank ceilings. So her husband, Robert, began taking ceiling tiles down for her to paint in the many spare hours the couple spent at Massachusetts General Hospital during the baby’s two-month stay. Now, most of the ill children in the ward’s 10 rooms can look up at large colorful drawings of clowns, balloons and popcorn. Hospital workers say the artwork has cheered even the most depressed cases. “It’s even good for me,” said Sandra Cormier of Fitchburg, Mass., as she sat at the bedside of her 4-year-old son, Joshua, who is recovering from a hip operation. As she bundled up her 4-month-old baby for the Christmas Eve trip home, Helen Hashim said the idea for the ceiling paintings came to her while Robert Jr. was struggling for his life. With the hospital’s encouragement, and ladders and poster paints borrowed from the crafts stockroom, Hashim lifted the 3-foot tiles down from the ceiling, and his wife set up her studio in the corridors--and soon the ward was bright and mothers and children seemed happier. “It perks me up a bit,” the painter said.

--Christmas was brighter for children whose families were battered by Hurricane Kate in Florida. About a dozen members of Masonic organizations in the Big Bend area around Carrabelle handed out Christmas presents to children whose parents were destitute. Patricia Sowell said she would spend the next few days just “watching my presents.”

--An unemployed construction worker who lived inside a 1986 Ford Escort for a month was presented with the title and keys to the car on Christmas Eve as more than 100 people looked on. “I don’t know if I could do this again or not,” Stacey Angus said after he emerged from the car into a mob of cameramen, reporters and other onlookers, including his wife, Marcia, 21. Angus, 24, broke into tears moments before noon, when he was presented the keys by Bill Stewart, owner of the Chillicothe, Ohio, Auto Mall. Angus entered the car at 6:30 p.m. Nov. 24, after he spotted an ad in the classified section of the Chillicothe Gazette that said the car would be given “to whomever is seated in the driver’s seat, behind the steering wheel, at 12 noon on Dec. 24, 1985.” And so, Angus took off running for the car lot. Not even badly aimed stink bombs and false telephone alarms could move him from the car. A local restaurant donated his meals, and restroom privileges were granted. Stewart said the car’s sticker price was $6,399 and that he was throwing in tax, title, license plates and dealer costs.