Martha williamson age

Twenty-six years ago this month, Martha Williamson smashed a hole in the stained-glass ceiling of prime-time television when she debuted a God-infused drama series starring a white angel who spoke with an Irish lilt and her Black supervisor, who spoke with equal measure sass and reverence, sang like a heavenly host and drove a red Cadillac convertible.

Over its nine-year run, "Touched by an Angel" would reach upward of 25 million viewers a week, becoming one of the top shows in the CBS stable.

As its head writer and executive producer, Williamson asked the tough questions, like where was God when your baby died, when skinheads tore up a synagogue, when racial injustice turned deadly.

And why, why, why?

"We had to ask that question right off the bat or else no one was going to trust us," Williamson told me in a telephone interview from her Pasadena, California, home.

Williamson says the message of "Touched by an Angel" wasn'