Deanna Edwards' songs may not be topping the charts, but few singer-songwriters have had the depth of effect Edwards has had.

Her success must be measured in terms of the lives she has changed, not the money she has made.

Songs such as "Two Little Shoes", "Teach Me To Die", "Wanted One Family" and "My Mothers Hands" have reconciled the terminally ill, comforted the grieving, and saved the lives of unborn babies whose mothers were contemplating abortion.

After recording a few country singles in the 1960's, Edwards had pretty much put her singing career behind her and settled down as a full-time housewife and mother in Bloomington, Ill., when - in 1972 - a friend coaxed her into doing some volunteer work at a local hospital.

Put to work in the hospital's long-term care unit, she met "an ancient tree-like man" who told her of the loneliness of many elderly patients.

"He told me there were many people who never received a visit, and I resolved that I would be the one who would visit the patients nobody else visited," Edwards recounted in a telephone interview from her Provo, Utah, home.

She started singing for the patients, and writing down their responses to the music -- not only familiar songs, but ones of her own composition that sought to better address the patients' needs and feelings.

While most commercial-market songs deal with romantic love -- falling in love, falling out of love, falling back in love -- Edwards began to realize there was a need for songs that might not make commercial hits, but which would deal with "all the other aspects of our lives."

When her songs were chosen for inclusion in a 1974 NBC-TV special about dying, Edwards came to the attention of Joan Paul, who worked with the U.S. Catholic Conference and Christophers Communications. Paul played a couple of Edwards' songs - "I Have a Right to Live" and "Folks Don't Kiss Old People Anymore" - at a conference in Detroit, and said someone should produce an album of them.

A representative of Franciscan Communications was in the audience, and they produced and marketed her first two albums. She has come out with another one about every two years since.

Much of Edwards' work now involves holding workshops for nurses and other healthcare workers. "I use the music as a springboard for teaching," she said.

And sometimes the results of her efforts are almost amazing. Edwards told how, when she returned after two years to do a session with some nurses in Wisconsin, "one of the nurses came up to me and showed me this happy, healthy boy, and told me she had been planning to have an abortion, but after she heard 'Two Little Shoes,' she called her doctor and canceled the appointment. To know there are some kids walking around because of my songs, it's wonderful!"

Some of the stories of Edwards' effect on patients border on the miraculous.

Taken into the brain-injury unit of a hospital in eastern Canada, Edwards was shown to one patient who "appeared to be crying and praying, but there was no audible sound from her. I knelt down and started singing 'Amazing Grace,' and pretty soon she began singing along with me."

The patient had been critically injured in an auto accident, and had been in and out of comas. The next day, the woman joined Edwards in singing "Amazing Grace" before an audience of 300.

"Somehow, the music by-passed the frontal lobe and found another center in the brain capable of controlling speech," Edwards said.

In another instance, having been told that a comatose patient had always loved the hymn, "In The Garden," Edwards began singing it and the woman opened her eyes and asked, "How did you know that was my favorite song?"

Edwards has been very much involved with the hospice movement, and promotes the use of music with the terminally ill as well as with those capable of recovery.

And she believes music can have other therapeutic uses in comforting patients. Recounting her experience of coming upon the scene of a terrible auto accident, and seeing an elderly man crawl back into his wrecked car "because he was afraid somebody would steal his music", Edwards suggested that "every ambulance should have recordings of pan-flutist Zamfir and of Pachelbel's 'Canon'" to soothe trauma victims on their ride to the hospital.

Edwards' art has been shaped by losses in her own life and - in recent years - by her own struggle with serious illness. These experiences have only honed her ability to bring solace, comfort and inspiration to others.