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Ari Hallmark’s Story: To Heaven After The Storm
By Carson Clark
WHNT
May 7, 2012
Ari Hallmark could be one of the most remarkable 7-year-olds you will ever meet. Somewhere between gymnastics and finishing up the first grade, she’s managed to become an author.
“I like to read a lot,” Ari tells us. “I just do it for the prizes, I don’t really like to read that much.”
What adds to Ari’s remarkable story is the subject of her book, titled “To Heaven, After the Storm.” On April 27th of last year, Ari, along with her mom and dad, Shane and Jennifer Hallmark, her grandparents, Phillip and Ann Hallmark and her two cousins, Jayden and Julie, sought shelter in a bathroom to ride out an EF-4 tornado that came through the Ruth community of Marshall County.
Her book talks about it all. “When we were in the bathroom,” she says. “And when we were in the hospital. And when we got out of the hospital.”
Only she and her cousin Julie survived. However, Ari says for a while, she joined her family members in Heaven. She describes in vivid detail seeing her father Shane, who had been bald all of her life, with hair.
She writes that, “my daddy did not have his glasses. And he did not have the marks where they were.”
She says an angel came to her and told her it was time to go back. She says she then remembers waking up in a field near the house.
The proceeds from Ari’s book will help a ministry for other children dealing with death. Her therapist suggested the idea.
“She’s was like, ‘Hey, let’s make a book. And do it to help other kids’,” Ari says.
The book will be published in July. You can pre-order a copy at Merchants Bank in Arab. The phone number is (256) 931-2705.
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The Girl Who Saw Heaven: A Fateful Tornado And A Journey Of Faith
By Lisa Reburn
Amazon Description:
A remarkable true story of one child’s journey into the afterlife after surviving a super tornado.
When Ari Hallmark was in kindergarten, her family was caught in a powerful tornado in their hometown of Arab, Alabama. On April 27, 2011, Ari and her parents, Shane and Jennifer Hallmark, were putting the finishing touches on their new home, which Shane had built from scratch. Shane’s last-second decision to drive to his parents’ house put the Hallmarks directly in the path of a devastating EF4 tornado.
Moments after the Hallmarks arrived at the home, the mile-wide tornado ripped the house off its foundation and flung it in the air. When Ari regained consciousness, she began sharing the extraordinary story of what happened to her during the tornado: she met her guardian angel and followed her family to heaven. The full story of what Ari went through—the six months of reoccurring dreams that foretold the tragedy, and the unexpected challenges she faced from the legal system after the storm—delivers a powerful message to the world: you will see your late loved ones again.
Ari Hallmark is now a high school senior determined to share her hopeful message with the world. The Girl Who Saw Heaven is a uniquely poignant addition to near-death experience and heavenly encounter classics. Ari’s story will leave with a different perspective of death and more hopeful of what lies beyond.
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Ari Hallmark’s Book
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The Precognitive Dreams & Remarkable Near-Death Experience Of Ari Hallmark
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Ari Went To Heaven, Too
First Grader Writes Book On Memory Of Her Family In The Tornado
By Charles Whisenant
The Arab Tribune
Monday, May 7, 2012
Ari Hallmark was 6 years old last year when an EF-4 tornado hit Ruth killing five members of her family, but she vividly remembers the horror and destruction. She remembers cows flying through the air, trucks hitting the house, glass breaking all around her.
And she remembers taking a quick trip to Heaven.
Ari tells her story in a new book she co-authored. “To Heaven: After the Storm,” became a work in progress once Ari started sharing her experiences surrounding the day of, and immediately following, the April 27 tornadoes with Dr. Lisa Moses, a life-time educator with a PhD in early childhood cirriculum and instruction.
Moses also worked with Julia Fleming, Ari’s blind friend and fellow Arab Primary School first grader on her book about Seymour the Snake, who is able to see better after crawling into a soda bottle, which magnifies things the way eyeglasses do. Ari decided that she would like to write a book one day, too.
Although not what Moses ever imagined, Ari began talking with her in the fall of 2011 and eventually participated in about seven interviews with her. Moses recorded her words using a lapel microphone as Ari drew and talked over the next several months. Moses took Ari’s detailed descriptions of her experiences and, using Ari’s own words, organized the book. (By the time the book is published, Moses will have gotten married and her byline on the book will read Dr. Lisa Reburn.)
Its proceeds will benefit Treasure Boxes, a guide that teaches people how to talk to children about the death of a loved one.
Ari’s book is about April 27, 2011. Her family members who were killed were Phillip and Ann Hallmark (in the book they are Paw Paw and Maw Maw); Shane and Jennifer Hallmark (Ari’s parents) and Jayden Hallmark, Ari’s 17-month-old cousin. Ari now lives with her maternal grandmother, Susan Garmany.
“It really is Ari’s story, just like she told it to me,” Moses says. “I think her story will touch many people. I used Ari’s words, and I used grammar and punctuation in a manner that I hope will allow the reader to hear a young child telling her story.”
The book is being self-published and will be a 10×10-inch hardback, with glossy color pages. Moses thinks of the book as a coffee-table book. The cover is colorful and full of hope.
Preorders taken for the book at Merchants Bank in Arab before Wednesday will cost $15 (basically the cost of the book). After that they will be $20.
When the book is opened, left side pages will feature drawings by Ari and additional artwork by APS teacher Kim Hunt. Right side pages will feature the text of the story.
Moses hopes the book will be in stores around the Fourth of July.
“To Heaven” opens with Ari and her parents, Shane and Jennifer, getting the bathroom of their new house in Ruth set up for the predicted storms.
We had pillows and blankets and my sleeping bag just in case I wanted to take a nap in there, Ari says in the book.
Her father was outside getting the chicken houses ready for the storm. He saw the wind blowing “really bad” over the house of his parents, Phillip and Ann.
Shane decided they should go get his parents and Ari’s cousin, who was there, and bring them back to their house to wait out the storm.
But when they got to Phillip and Anne’s it was too late to go anywhere else. The storm was basically there. The family gathered in a bathroom that Ari says was “teeny tiny.”
My Dad got into the bathroom right before Maw Maw locked it. Then the door of the bathroom started creaking — you could hear it. It was trying to break off.
Ari says she did what she was taught at school and wrapped her arms around her legs with her head tucked in.
Before the tornado hit, windows started breaking and the front door just fell off, she says.
My Dad was hanging onto me in the bathroom when everything started hitting the door. He was hugging me real tight. We could hear trucks hitting the house…
You could actually feel the house going sideways,” she continued. The house turned over and the sink fell out. It was that fast… Then something knocked me out…
After she was knocked out, Ari remembers going to Heaven for a minute.
“It isn’t like it was a dream to her,” Garmany says. “It is real to her.”
Maw Maw said, “Oh, look at that!” It was a staircase. They just started walking up. Then the angel turned his head and saw them and thought, “Let me go help them cause they don’t know where they are.”
Ari says it looked like the angel was standing up, but he was flying at the same time.
The angel, my angel and me were watching. No one talked. We just all pretty much understood and started walking… Maw Maw, Paw Paw, my Mom with Jayden in her arms and then my Daddy. We went really fast up the stairs.
When they got to Heaven, Shane, who had been bald and wore glasses, now had hair and no glasses — and no marks on his nose from the glasses, Ari writes.
I actually thought I’d never see my Dad with hair.
Ari describes Heaven as having big doors with diamond handles and angels who opened them.
These angels would face out by the doors and they would guard this door so the devil or nothing couldn’t get in… Going up the stairs my family just all had their normal clothes on. When they got to the doors, it just changed and they had on creamy white clothes.
She says her family members got in a line. Her other Paw Paw, Mike Garmany who died when she was a baby, greeted them, but she knew him. Ari heard her dad ask Jesus if there was anything he needed to do, and Jesus told him that he could build houses in Heaven.
Then my angel told me it was time to go back down. I saw the streets were gold… I saw some deer and I remember seeing a robin. I saw some fruit trees. Then my angel said, “Let’s go Ari, we’re going back down…” I don’t know how she knew my name cause I didn’t tell her or anything…
It was more fun going up watching my family. Going down with my angel was just normal.
The trip down took a while, but Ari wasn’t scared. She wasn’t scared or excited or worried about her family.
I knew what they (her family) were doing… I knew.
Ari then tells of being found by a man and that she remembers a little of him carrying her. She says she remembers the ambulance being loud — and cold, but she couldn’t open her eyes. She says she doesn’t remember going to the hospital at all.
She talks about her days in Huntsville Hospital and the visitation for her family members. She remembers there being so many people there. A woman from Tennessee who drove to the funeral brought Ari a photograph of her with her parents the woman found in her yard.
In the end, Ari says she wants to be a nurse, just like her mother. She plans to go to Snead State Community College, just like her mother did.
I’ll be cheating on the tests, though, cause I already know all the answers! she writes. My mom taught me.
Ari holds nothing back. She tells it like it is.
“She is not horrified by what happened,” Garmany says. “She is doing great now. She obsesses about the weather some. If there are weather alerts out, she pays attention to them and she gets a little antsy if the weather gets bad.
“She doesn’t spend the night with people yet,” she added. “She has issues about going into rooms by herself, and she has to know where I am all the time. And she visits with her (father’s family) Uncle Ricky and Aunt Regina and cousin Julie weekly.”
Moses says Ari is progressing wonderfully, both physically and emotionally. In fact, physically, she is as healthy as a 7-year-old can be. A year ago was a different story.
She had many injuries — broken bones, staples in her head and 70 stitches in her back — but she survived. She had bruised ribs from where her father held her so tightly, most likely saving her life.
“This community felt the loss of this family, too,” Moses says. “If this were Chicago or other larger city, I don’t know that she would be doing as well as she is. But she is in a loving community.
“It was a community loss, and they have all wrapped their arms around this family. She’s an amazing little girl. She’s very unique — she’s very fortunate to be a part of the Arab community.”
