In Falls Church, one of Washington's sprawling Virginia suburbs, white-haired Sculptor Carl Milles stood beside his latest work, and told about a notion that came to him in Sweden more than 70 years ago. He was four and his mother had just died. He and his elder sister stood by a window at night looking at the stars. She explained what the stars were. No, he told her, she didn't understand: the lights in the sky were really holes in heaven. The glitter was caused by angels shining through, and out of one of those bright holes, their mother was watching them.
At 77, Sculptor Milles still does not believe in death. He is sure that life goes on, and his belief was never stronger than in the massive work he will unveil next week. It is a huge, $250,000 Fountain of Faith for the National Memorial Park cemetery which he has been shaping for twelve years (TIME, July 19, 1948). Milles has made it his own idea of heaven, has done each of the 38 figures with a loving hand; magnificently supple men & women, joyous children playing games, a family bowed in prayer, an old philosopher, two lovely sisters, a father with his son and daughter. Among the figures are bronze flowers, bugs, dogs and a fat, barnyard goose. The whole group stands in a polished, dark granite pool, each statue set on a slender stalk above water level, so that they seem to drift and float across the calm water. Overlooking the figures, Sculptor Milles has placed a merry-looking angel standing guard with a flute and with head cocked attentively.
Milles made his way around his fountain, stopping before each group. "Each one of these figures," he said, "is someone I have known. The last figure I made is the mother holding her child in the air. They both died at the child's birth. The old man leaning down to touch his dogs lived in a cave in France. He wanted no part of civilization. He killed his dogs before he died. The group of father, daughter and son is a French family killed in an automobile accident. Here is a wife with her husband following her. The wife has died before the husband and she thinks she is still alone. She looks as in a dream."
Carl Milles turned to the angel with the flute, and for a moment put aside his preoccupation with the hereafter. Was the angel listening to the bronze children below? "No," said Sculptor Milles. "He is listening to what the people who come to look at the fountain are saying."