Paper roses

Day after day, Frank Ditman sits at a table in the Broadkiln Veterans of Foreign Wars hall in Milton, rolling, twisting, folding and cutting narrow strips of coloured paper into impossibly intricate leaves, blossoms and stems.
 
When he has enough, he takes them home and meticulously glues the miniature botanical elements on to heavy paper, creating three-dimensional greeting cards, place cards, gift tags and wall decor.

They suggest the kind of hand-crafted romantic missive that might have been sent to a cosseted, corseted Victorian lady.

But Ditman, 56, is no 19th-century swain wooing his Valentine with dainty floral offerings.

He is, improbably, a long-haired and bearded, heavily tattooed, Harley-driving Vietnam vet who nearly died in a horrific Memorial Day encounter with a tractor-trailer in 1999.

That wreck forced the amputation of most of his left leg and permanently damaged his left hand.

Treasures in the trash can

He spent six months recovering at Baltimore's Kernan Hospital, and 30 more months as an outpatient there.

To preserve both his sanity and the remaining mobility in his fingers, Ditman starting fishing envelopes out of trash cans and wrapping torn scraps tightly around a toothpick, twisting them into tiny curled shapes.

When he slipped the first one off, he said, "it looked like a tree branch, so I began experimenting".

Eventually he found more suitable supplies - pre-cut coloured strips and long needles - in craft stores.

Two types of glue hold the flowers together and affix them to paper; speciality scissors, now numbering about 50 pairs, produce jagged edges that give his work a more artisanal look.

"My hand still doesn't close. If I don't do this every day for six hours, it stiffens up,'' he says. "And it has to be tiny work.''

Today, nearly seven years after the accident, his creations - including matted and framed or shadow-boxed baskets of flowers - are sold in several area museums and shops, including Pulp in Washington.

He lives on Social Security and disability benefits and what remains of his savings. And he has given about $1,000 (Dh3,670) in card-sale profits to his VFW post - he calls it "Studio B''- to help fund cancer research and pay for a new $20,000 (Dh73,400) heating and air-conditioning system.

"When people look at my work, I want them to see the frustration that I have, the things that I can't do anymore,'' says Ditman, a six-footer with a prosthesis who once worked as a carpenter and roared around with a biker club of fellow Vietnam vets.

Beauty beyond

"He calls it 'wheelchair art' and 'cripple art,' instead of what it is,'' says Laura Hudson, a good friend and the secretary of the VFW post's ladies' auxiliary, as she watches him work.

"Nobody sees the frustration. They see the beauty.''

"People say it's art. That's amazing,'' Ditman retorts. "It's pieces of paper and glue. Hello!''

He has never taken an art class. "The nuns flunked me three times in school and I failed out of college. I was a carpenter banging nails all of my life before the accident.''

Married and divorced twice, he has one daughter in Colorado and another who shares his home with her husband and two children.

An avid gardener since junior high, Ditman certainly knows his flora.

At first, his work featured only stylised roses, mums and daisies; delicately feathered leaves and long, twisted stems.

For larger flower arrangements, he began adding rolled-paper squares and ovals to mimic basketry.

He also makes cards using richly coloured pictures of saints that his mother's priest brings back from Italy.

"For some reason, the icons talk to me,'' Ditman explains. "They say, 'Decorate me up.' There are 150 different ones, and the Blessed Mother is the best.''

Author cards

Daughter Karla Pahel - a writer hoping to open a tea room in this town named for poet John Milton-encouraged her father to add a line of flower-strewn author cards. Subjects include William Shakespeare, Jane Austen and Edgar Allan Poe.

Most Ditman cards bear his initials and come with a brief note explaining that they germinated from a life-threatening motorcycle wreck and requisite hand therapy.

Ditman, who drives a specially adapted red pickup truck and rides a Harley-Davidson modified into a three-wheeler, was recently hired by the Milton public library to teach flower-making to local senior citizens.

Shy, self-effacing and bespectacled, he rarely socialises. Nor does he own a television or a computer.

Great stuff

Although he had sold his work at local festivals in Virginia and Maryland, Pahel helped him extend his reach to the Baltimore Museum of Art and the American Visionary Art Museum, also in Baltimore.

"When you talk to him, he is this incredible person who survived, and his stuff is great, so he deserves to be here,'' says Ted Frankel, who stocks the religious cards in AVAM's shop, Sideshow.

Susan Lihn, owner of a gift boutique, heard about Ditman from her hairdresser.

"I loved them on sight, and for Valentine's Day I've got white cards with pink and red roses. It's just such an amazing story.''

- Los Angeles Times-Washington Post