‘To commemorate a child’s life in art is outstanding’: Ornament benefiting Isabel Pridgen Charities on sale Thursday (with VIDEO)

Published 3:48 pm Wednesday, October 31, 2018

“Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes” by Eleanor Coerr is a historical novel about Sadako Sasaki, a young girl who lived near Hiroshima, Japan, when the atomic bomb was dropped during World War II. She was diagnosed with leukemia years later and died. During her stay in the hospital, a friend brought her a paper crane, believing the Japanese legend that a person who folds 1,000 paper cranes will be granted a wish.

It was a story of great significance to Will and Marla Pridgen’s late daughter Isabel, who the couple adopted from China in 2009.

Isabel Pridgen was a sophomore at Dalton High School when she was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia, an aggressive form of cancer, in the fall of 2014. Marla Pridgen, assistant principal at Westwood School, said Isabel was in the hospital for 24 days before passing away on Oct. 30, 2014, at the age of 16.

Thursday marks the second year the Pridgens will honor their daughter with a custom Christmas ornament available for purchase during the Downtown Dalton Holiday Open House.

The ornament is $15 at The Pine Needle, 1319 Dug Gap Road, and Raspberry Row, 205 W. Cuyler St.-A. All proceeds will benefit the Isabel Pridgen Charities, which provides a $1,000 college scholarship to a Dalton High School band student and also assists children who are in the hospital.

Marla Pridgen said they work closely with the Children’s Hospital at Erlanger in Chattanooga, where Isabel was hospitalized, providing gift cards to patients and their parents and other services.

“The night we went to the hospital with Isabel I had my purse and Will had his wallet,” Marla Pridgen said. “I don’t think I had $10 in my purse, and then you’re afraid to leave fearing something may happen.”

She said her daughter showed no symptoms of being sick until a sinus infection one night.

“She started taking medicine and said it felt like her heart was racing,” said Pridgen.

Pridgen and her husband took Isabel to Hamilton Medical Center to have tests run. She said once the results came back, doctors “knew quickly Isabel was very sick.”

The Pridgens were told to take her to Children’s Hospital at Erlanger where she was admitted.

While Isabel was at Erlanger, Ric Murry, who taught her in seventh grade at Dalton Middle School, had students make more than a thousand paper cranes for her. “Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes” was on the students’ reading list.

“Sometimes life is strange,” Murry said. “A true story of a Japanese girl who suffered through atomic warfare and leukemia touched the life of Isabel, a little girl from China (who) touched so many lives while she was here.”

David and Pauline Aft, owners of Dave & Pauli’s Art Emporium, designed the ornament that features red and green paper cranes in the shape of a wreath on a porcelain circle. David Aft said he was “beyond honored” to be a part of creating the ornament.

“At the Community Foundation of Northwest Georgia we get a chance to be a part of so many magical things,” he said.

Aft is president of the foundation and worked with the Pridgen family to create the charity for their daughter.

“We work with a lot of families who are commemorating the lives of their children,” he said. “It’s wonderful, but sometimes they are hard things to deal with.”

Aft said being a part of projects such as the ornament is a “sobering reminder” of how important that work is.

After researching paper cranes and their traditions, Aft and his wife decided on the wreath design.

“One of the things people have done for a long time is make wreaths out of paper cranes,” he said. “We adapted an existing century-old use of cranes into a Christmas theme.”

Aft said a paper crane is “beautiful” and trying to figure out how to make it “more beautiful” is almost missing the point.

“Pauli and I were excited to do something traditional with paper cranes and adapt it to the purpose of this ornament,” he said.

Marla Pridgen said each year she will use a different artist to design the ornament.

“Our goal is to have an ornament design that has a crane incorporated in some way,” she said. “We hope to one day turn it into a contest.”

Aft said designing the ornament was a “huge responsibility” he and his wife didn’t take lightly.

“Pauli and I are artists and we love what we do,” he said. “To commemorate a child’s life in art is outstanding.”