Friends Through the Years : Lonely Octogenarian and Grieving 8-Year-Old Have Grand Relationship

Leah Witherspoon is 8 years old, a believer in heaven, who used to ask God every night to give her daddy and her grandpa a hug and a kiss for her. Then she’d pray for a substitute grandpa.

Arthur Weller is 86, a widower who still keeps his wife’s brushes laid out on the dresser. Despite his popularity with the widows at the retirement home, he still has a little trouble filling the hours in between meals.

As of last month, a Placentia school program has been bringing the two together an hour a week just to be friends.

Leah’s mother, Susan Caldwell, calls their new relationship the “answer to everybody’s prayer.”

In 1987, Leah’s grandfather died. The following year, her father was killed in a plane crash. Her mother has since remarried a man with children and has given birth to twins, leaving her little time to try to compensate for the missing pieces in Leah’s life.

“It was a hard time,” Caldwell said. “She was very close with her father. And close to her grandfather. I think she was afraid of developing relationships with people.”

But then Leah began praying for a grandfather, even asking strangers if she could call them “Grandpa.” Her mother’s search for a “rent-a-grandpa” program led back to Leah’s school, Brookhaven Elementary, and the PTA’s Time For Kids Team, a year-old tutorial program that usually pairs volunteer tutors with academically needy youngsters.

Leah was doing well academically and didn’t need tutoring, only the emotional support of an “older gentleman,” Caldwell said.

Lois Monroe, the program’s tutorial chair, immediately thought of Arthur Weller.

Weller, a twinkly-eyed Englishman with a dry sense of humor, had been the first and only one to sign up when Monroe had recruited at his retirement home, Bradford Square in Placentia.

Though his memory fails occasionally and he sometimes forgets directions, Weller had won teachers’ hearts over the past year during his visits to the school. “He’s very honest, very straightforward--he’s just becoming a part of our school community,” Monroe said.

“I like to be helpful to people,” explained Weller, who is a retired accountant and a former Mason.

Since his wife’s death three years ago, he often visits former residents of the retirement home who have moved on to convalescent hospitals. And on Wednesdays, he volunteers at the school.

At 11 a.m. Wednesday, Arthur drove over as usual from Bradford Square to Leah’s school.

Using his walker, he made his way to her classroom. She skipped out to meet him and, with Arthur’s arm draped over her shoulders, they walked to Room 404, the tutors room, where they pulled out a jigsaw puzzle.

Sometimes they read, or play Scrabble. This day, he brought pictures of his family, including a butterscotch-colored 1908 photograph of himself and his brothers. With their small voices, fine hair and translucent complexions, the two looked curiously alike bending over the pictures.

They talk about their families sometimes. If the facts get garbled, what’s important does not. (“He had a granddaughter,” Leah explains, “but she was over 80 and she died. I like him a lot.”)

They don’t discuss death--even though Leah says her biggest worry is that something will happen to Arthur. (Arthur himself is not a believer in the afterlife. “When we die, we die, and that’s it,” he says.)

To Leah, Arthur seems so old, he might have lived in pirate days. One of these days she plans to ask him about it.

Meanwhile, she just calls him “Grandpa” and he doesn’t mind.

Psychologists say grandparents and grandparent figures are particularly valuable in making children feel special, although the nature of modern society has made grandparent relationships increasingly rare.

“Grandparents can give unconditional love--they don’t have to punish the kids. They have a lot of experience and are often very good at telling stories,” said Orange County psychologist Daun H. Martin. Without daily responsibilities, they share with children the same sorts of freedom.

Perhaps the greatest benefit of regular meetings to a child like Leah is simply the consistency, Martin said. “A lot of therapy is based on seeing someone once a week, someone you can count on.”

And who’s to say it can’t work the other way around? Arthur’s daughter-in-law, Carolyn Weller, said that his school visits are the first thing he talks about when they get together.

Already, Caldwell says, Leah’s confidence has risen--especially on Wednesdays. “When I ask her what they did, her face lights up. She loves to talk about him.”

When their hour is up, Leah brings Arthur his walker, gives him a hug and walks off. But within minutes she is back. “My mother wants to know if you can come for dinner some night this week,” she tells him.

“Why, yes, I’d like that,” he says. “Any night would be fine.”