Hanover
Evening Sun
Sunday, June 16, 2002
He had never written a song before. But since September, Larry LeBeau cannot keep up with the compositions that continue to flow from his fingers. Are they a gift from his muse? Or from Monica? You decide.
Gifts of Joy
By Ann
Diviney
Evening Sun Style Editor
This is a story about something that, as far as anyone knows, cannot be proven. It is a story that involves the unknown.
If you are the sort of person who believes only in those things that you can see or hear or touch, skip this story and turn now to the sports section, where a strike is a strike and a foul is a foul and baseballs lobbed into the sun never make to outer space but instead back to earth, according to the laws of science.
Larry LeBeau used to be that kind of person.
An engineer who helps make satellite-guided search-and-rescue systems for the government, LeBeau had always considered himself a skeptic.
"I wouldn't say I always require an absolute set of proofs," he says, "but that's my nature."
And then, he met Monica. Now, he shakes his head in wonder, and declares: "Ever since September, I kind of believe in everything."
It began a few years ago, when Larry's wife, Jackie, became interested in animal communication, a method by which some people claim to carry on conversations with their pets using words, telepathic messages - even long-distance phone calls.
At first, Larry resisted the idea. "To me, this sounded impossible," he says. "I'm an engineer. It doesn't sound very likely that you could have someone sitting - somewhere else - talking to your dog on the phone."
He and Jackie both love dogs. They share their Spring Grove area home with two Great Pyrenees dogs named Madison and Bear, and a golden retriever named Bunny. (Kacey, another golden retriever, died last December.)
The LeBeaus had rescued Bear from an abusive situation. Despite his size (Great Pyrenees dogs can weigh more than 100 pounds), Bear seemed haunted by his fears, Jackie says.
Maybe if they learned to communicate better, Jackie though, they could help him.
She and Larry talked to one animal communicator by phone, who told them she "saw" their dogs on a hill covered with lots of tress. The LeBeaus live at such a place.
Larry then asked a series of questions to test the so-called animal communicator.
"Where to the dogs like to get a drink?" he asked, figuring the caller would say something obvious - from their water dish, out of the creek, or maybe even out of the toilet bowl.
Instead, the woman on the other end of the line said: "I see concrete and stones and water flowing down a hill."
The LeBeaus couldn't believe their ears.
This woman, sitting in Nevada, whom neither of them had ever met, had just described their dogs' favorite watering hole - a stone waterfall in their backyard.
Early last September, Larry and Jackie LeBeau traveled to upstate New York for their second visit to Spring Farm CARES, a sanctuary for abused animals.
At Spring Farm, they had met Dawn E. Hayman, an animal communicator who helped found the center for the teaching of interspecies communication.
Hayman talks to the animals. And the animals, she says, talk back.
It is an idea that sounds a bit loony, but plenty of pet owners have reported things that cannot be explained, say the LeBeaus.
Maybe you have witnessed such an event yourself.
"You're sitting in your easy chair, and the thought crosses your mind, "I ought to take Fido for a walk." The dog starts jumping in circles before you've picked up a leash, put on your shoes or even gotten up from your chair.
Or maybe you have noticed that your dog always seems to be watching for you when you return from work each day. Coincidence?
"What about when you're on vacation?" asked Jackie LeBeau. "And the dog sitter says for two weeks it just lay around, but then on the day you are coming home, the dog acts like it knows."
The LeBeaus joined others at Spring Farm for a series of workshops. They practiced improving their listening skills when talking with people and participated in exercise that seamed to suggest humans are telepathic.
Then they were told to go off by themselves and talk to the animals - and to listen to them.
When the group reassembled, each one told the rest, "I don't think I got anything." Then Dawn said, "Well, tell me anyway what you think you didn't get," recalls Larry. "And then you open up a bit and you realize you did get something."
Little by little, the skeptic in Larry started to yield. But that was only the beginning.
One day, Larry felt compelled to go and talk to Monica, an afghan hound on the farm with a reputation for being uncommunicative.
He felt as if she wanted to say something. So he asked, "Why are you talking to me?"
"Why not you?" he felt as if she answered.
(The LeBeaus say they have heard of some animal communicators who think they actually hear a voice, but they call what they receive "more of a sensation." Says Jackie: "It's more like a knowing.")
Larry says that he had a clear impression that Monica wanted him to know two things: Love is important and Spring Farm is important.
When Monica seemed as if she had had enough, Larry walked away. Back in the workshop center, he happened to pass a grand piano.
He sat down and began to tap out a series of chords. He couldn't help himself.
Before he knew it, he had played an entire melody - its source a mystery until an image of Monica flashed through his mind.
"That was you, wasn't it?" he thought.
Hayman walked past. Larry continued playing. "That's kind of pretty," she said.
"You don't know the half of it," he answered. "You could feel the power in the room," says Larry LeBeau. "Something special was happening."
Larry had never written a song before. He does play the piano, but boogie-woogie is more his style. Or rock-'n-roll. Not this - some kind of cross between New Age and classical.
"It wasn't me," he insists. "I know what I sound like when I play the piano."
That was more than nine months ago. The songs keep coming.
To date, Larry has composed 34 melodies. He's even recorded 16 of them on a CD called "Gifts of Joy." A portion of the proceeds from the sale of his music goes to help Spring Farm CARES in its work with abused, abandoned and elderly animals.
He and Jackie know that many people will find their tale incredible.
"If someone ever told me this, I would not have believed it," says Jackie. "I still do my day job and I still am an engineer," says Larry. "I'm still the same guy I was in September in a lot of ways."
Except, perhaps, three.
One, he's no longer the skeptic he once was.
Two, he has a deeper respect than ever for animals, which he believes "can have an even more poignant point of view than people."
And three, he now spends a good portion of each day at the piano, composing melodies that flow from his fingers like birds on the wing and come from a place he cannot explain.
A gift from his muse? Or a gift from Monica? You decide.
"You may say it's a little out there," says Larry. "But who knows?"
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