Wheeler, Joe L. 1936-

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WHEELER, Joe L. 1936-

PERSONAL:

Born 1936; son of Lawrence Anthony (an educator, administrator, musician, family counselor, pastor, and missionary) and Barbara (an educator, elocutionist, fund-raiser, writer, and missionary; maiden name, Leininger) Wheeler; married Connie Palmer; children: Greg, Michelle. Ethnicity: "Caucasian." Education: Pacific Union College, B.A., 1959, M.A. (history), 1963; University of California, M.A. (English), 1968; Vanderbilt University, Ph.D., 1975. Politics: Republican. Religion: Adventist. Hobbies and other interests: Book collecting, story collecting, philately, music, travel, people, writing, anthologizing, the world of Zane and Dolly Grey, and utopian and dystopian literature.

ADDRESSES:

Office—P.O. Box 1246, Conifer, CO 80433; fax: (303) 838-2999. Agent—Greg Johnson, Alive Communications, Inc., 7680 Goddard St., Suite 200, Colorado Springs, CO 80920.

CAREER:

Writer, anthologist, scholar, administrator, speaker, and educator. Columbia Union College, emeritus professor of English, 1966—. Chaired departments of English and Communications at Oakwood College, in Huntsville, AL, Southwestern Adventist University in Keene, TX, and Columbia Union College in Takoma Park, MD. Southwestern Adventist College Adult Degree Program, director. Zane Grey's West magazine, publisher and editor, 1977-91. Zane Grey's West Society, founder, 1983, executive director, 1983—. Center for the New West, Denver, CO, senior fellow, 1996-2001. Focus on the Family, general editor.

MEMBER:

Zane Grey's West Society, Kiwanis Club of Conifer, Co.

AWARDS, HONORS:

The Christmas in My Heart series (1-4) was a Gold Medallion Finalist, 1959; Great Stories Remembered I was awarded the Seal of Quality, by Family Television, 1996.

WRITINGS:

COMPILER AND EDITOR, "CHRISTMAS IN MY HEART" SERIES

Christmas in My Heart: A Treasury of Holiday Classics, Doubleday (New York, NY), 1996.

Christmas in My Heart: A Second Treasury: More Heartwarming Tales of Holiday Joy, Doubleday (New York, NY), 1997.

Christmas in My Heart: A Third Treasury: Further Tales of Holiday Joy, Doubleday (New York, NY), 1998.

Christmas in My Heart: A Fourth Treasury: Stories to Share the Spirit of the Season, Doubleday (New York, NY), 1999.

Author of further volumes of Christmas in My Heart.

COMPILER AND EDITOR, "CHRISTMAS IN MY SOUL" SERIES

Christmas in My Soul, Doubleday (New York, NY), 2000.

Christmas in My Soul: A Second Collection, Doubleday (New York, NY), 2001.

Christmas in My Soul: A Third Collection, Doubleday (New York, NY), 2002.

COMPILER AND EDITOR, "GREAT STORIES REMEMBERED" SERIES

Focus on the Family Presents Great Stories Remembered, Focus on the Family (Colorado Springs, CO), 1996.

Focus on the Family Presents Great Stories Remembered II, Focus on the Family (Colorado Springs, CO), 1998.

Focus on the Family Presents Great Stories Remembered III, Tyndale House Publishers (Wheaton, IL), 2000.

COMPILER AND EDITOR, "HEART TO HEART STORIES" SERIES

Heart to Heart Stories of Friendship, Tyndale House Publishers (Wheaton, IL), 1999.

Heart to Heart Stories of Love, Tyndale House Publishers (Wheaton, IL), 2000.

Heart to Heart Stories for Dads, Tyndale House Publishers (Wheaton, IL), 2000.

Heart to Heart Stories for Moms, Tyndale House Publishers (Wheaton, IL), 2000.

Heart to Heart Stories for Sisters, Tyndale House Publishers (Wheaton, IL), 2002.

Heart to Heart Stories for Grandparents, Tyndale House Publishers (Wheaton, IL), 2002.

Heart to Heart Stories for Teachers, Tyndale House Publishers (Wheaton, IL), 2003.

INTRODUCTION AND AFTERWORD

Lew Wallace, Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ, Focus on the Family (Colorado Springs, CO), 1997.

Louisa May Alcott, Little Men: Life at Plumfield with Jo's Boys, Tyndale House Publishers (Wheaton, IL), 1999.

Abbie Farwell Brown, The Christmas Angel, Tyndale House Publishers (Wheaton, IL), 1999.

L. M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables, Tyndale House Publishers (Wheaton, IL), 1999.

Henryk Sienkiewicz, Quo Vadis?: A Story of Faith in the Last Days of the Roman Empire, Tyndale House Publishers (Wheaton, IL), 2000.

COMPILER AND EDITOR

Dad in My Heart, Tyndale House Publishers (Wheaton, IL), 1997.

Mom in My Heart, Tyndale House Publishers (Wheaton, IL), 1997.

Time for a Story: Focus on the Family, Harvest House Publishers (Eugene, OR), 1999.

Easter in My Heart: Uplifting Stories of Redemption & Hope, WaterBrook Press (Colorado Springs, CO), 2000.

The Wings of God: Miraculous Stories of Our Lord and His Angels at Work, WaterBrook Press (Colorado Springs, CO), 2000.

What's So Good about Tough Times?: Stories of People Refined by Difficulty, WaterBrook Press (Colorado Springs, CO), 2001.

Everyday Heroes: Inspiring Stories of Ordinary People Who Made a Difference, WaterBrook Press (Colorado Springs, CO), 2002.

Remote Controlled: How TV Affects You and Your Family, Review and Herald (Hagerstown, MD), 1993.

View at Your Own Risk, Review and Herald (Hagerstown, MD), 1993.

The Twelve Stories of Christmas, River Oak Publishing (Tulsa, OK), 2001.

Also the author of books on topics such as book collecting for investment, stamp collecting for investment, time management, TV and the American home, and Zane Grey and the old west.

WORK IN PROGRESS:

From St. Nicholas to Santa Claus, a Historical Retrospective; Look To This Day (a book of Wisdom); Christmas in My Heart 13; an anthology of Abraham Lincoln Stories.

SIDELIGHTS:

Joe L. Wheeler is a writer and anthologist perhaps best known for his multi-volume Christmas in my Heart and Christmas in my Soul series of story anthologies. Born in 1936, Wheeler was home-schooled for fourteen of the first sixteen years of his life. He went on to earn a number of advanced academic degrees, including a Ph.D. in English from Vanderbilt University.

Wheeler has dedicated his adult lifetime to searching out stories from what he calls, "The Golden Age of Judeo-Christian stories" (1880s-1950s). It was during this period, he told CA, that print exploded in America. "The greatest, most imaginative, most innovative, most family-oriented, most inspirational magazines our nation has ever known were born and flourished during these seven decades. Magazines such as St. Nicholas, Harper's, Ladies' Home Journal, Reader's Digest, McCalls, Farmer's Journal, and so many more. These magazines carried the Golden Age on their capable shoulders. The magazines geared to children were windows to their world, and children devoured them. The greatest authors of the age wrote for these magazines, and were well paid to do so."

But then came movies, and after World War II, television. The celluloid elbowed the print aside, "and that decline of reading skills continues to our day. Every day that passes, more of these precious old magazines disappear, are hauled out to dumps, or disintegrate to the touch." Wheeler likes to be seen as one of their archeologists, obsessed as he is with trying to salvage as many of these Golden Age stories as he can before it's too late. Wheeler feels that each time one of them appears in one of his story anthologies, a voice has been kept alive. It is this bringing back authors from "the very brink of extinction" that brings Wheeler the most joy.

Wheeler told CA: "In this age of relativism we are living in, where there no longer appears to be good or evil, right or wrong, never have these voices from the Golden Age been needed more. Voices that portray values worth living by, the values that made America what it once was."

Wheeler feels that what makes him unique among contemporary story anthologizers is that he gives no author, no matter how famous, an edge over little known or even unknown writers. He feels that the power of the story alone is the determining factor in terms of inclusion or exclusion in a given collection.

In The Wings of God: Miraculous Stories of Our Lord and His Angels at Work, Wheeler collects several inspirational true stories of the presence of angels in the lives of ordinary people who faced, and survived, imminent danger. Stories include accounts of angels who protect a child while lost in a frozen forest and shadowed by wolves; angels who loosen the chains of captured missionaries; miraculous applications of medical assistance; and other accounts of divine intervention. "While some of the text's contributors may not be known to the average reader," a Publishers Weekly reviewer noted, "their powerful words of courage and faith are unforgettable."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Booklist, November 15, 1996, Patricia Hassler, review of Christmas in My Heart, p. 569; November 1, 1997, Jennifer Henderson, review of Christmas in My Heart: A Second Treasury, p. 453; October 15, 1998, Toni Hyde, review of Christmas in My Heart: A Third Treasury, p. 374.

Kirkus Reviews, September 15, 2001, review of Christmas in My Soul: A Second Collection, p. 1332; August 15, 2002, review of Christmas in My Soul: A Third Collection, p. 1172.

Publishers Weekly, February 21, 2000, Jana Reiss, review of Easter in My Heart: Uplifting Stories of Redemption and Hope, p. 52; September 11, 2000, review of The Wings of God: Miraculous Stories of Our Lord and His Angels at Work, p. 85; September 25, 2000, Jana Reiss, review of Christmas in My Soul, p. 61; September 24, 2001, Jana Reiss, review of Christmas in My Heart: A Treasury of Timeless Christmas Stories, p. 59; September 24, 2001, Jana Reiss, review of Christmas in My Soul: A Second Collection, p. 59; September 24, 2002, Jana Reiss, review of The Twelve Stories of Christmas, p. 59.