A Father's Legacies
William Cameron Townsend
The dry desert wind whirled a curtain of choking dust around the vegetable cart. The little man with a long beard spurred his horse on. Beside him trotted his eight-year-old son, Cameron.
They turned onto cobblestoned Telegraph Avenue, a main street of Los Angeles in the year 1902. A block ahead, the farmer reined in his horse beside a grocery and went inside. "What do you have today, Will?" the burly Italian asked. The farmer listed his products for sale and added a description of their size and condition. The groceryman added up the totals of what he wanted and handed the farmer his money.
While Will Townsend unloaded the order, young Cameron stood eyeing the groceryman. "You don't check what my pa tells you. He could sell you anything."
The Italian grinned. "He could, little man. But he wouldn't. Along the avenue here we call your pa the honest deaf man. His word is as good as gold."
Late that afternoon, father and son arrived home. Molly Townsend had supper ready. It was not much, just vegetables and water, but they bowed their heads while deaf Will prayed. Cam noticed that he always
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ended, "May the knowledge of the Lord cover the earth as the waters cover the sea."
The Townsends were poor — dirt poor. Will tried to scrape a living from tenant farming, but there was hardly ever enough to feed his growing family of four daughters and two sons. When Cameron's little brother Paul was born, there was only thirty-five cents in the house. One year times were so bad that two of the girls had to be cared for by relatives.
But they were not complainers. "The Lord gives and the Lord takes away," Will would say. "Maybe we'll do better next year."
Good times or bad, Cam noticed that his deaf father read three chapters of the Bible each day of the week and five every Sunday. After breakfast came family Bible reading, a hymn, and prayers. His deafness, caused by a blow from a tipped plank back in Kansas, didn't keep Will from singing. When his voice rose higher than the ceiling and cracked, the children were under strict orders from Molly not to laugh.
While Will still had a little hearing, the children recited the books of the Bible, the Ten Commandments, and other selected passages into his left ear. When he became completely deaf, they wrote out their memory work for his approval.
Molly and the children always attended Presbyterian services. Will went until he could no longer hear. Then he usually stayed home, read sermons from the Christian Herald, and cooked dinner. If there was a visiting preacher, Molly often brought him home.
Cameron could not remember a time when he did not believe. After his pet rabbit died, he prayed for it to be raised from the dead. He decided that if the Lord
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should answer his prayer, the rabbit would be uncomfortable in its grave. So in the darkness of night he tiptoed out of the house and dug up the rabbit.
At twelve Cameron asked for membership in the church. Will took him into the barn and questioned his beliefs. Satisfied, he recommended that the boy be accepted.
Professions of faith by the other children were just as nondramatic. But their faith was strong, and they adopted the Christian virtues of their parents.
When Cameron was ready for Occidental College, Will found a farm near the campus and an older daughter postponed her marriage a year to work and help pay his tuition. When Cameron volunteered to go to Guatemala as a Bible salesman at only twenty-one, the family gave him their blessing and sent money from time to time. When he finished translating the New Testament for the Cakchiquel Indians of Guatemala — a ten-year task, Will and Molly wrote the last two words into the manuscript. By this time their youngest son was a missionary too. Molly died a few months later, but Will lived on and helped Cameron operate the first school for Bible translaters in America. He was the school cook.
During the next five years, deaf Will prayed and helped his son enlist Bible translators for Mexico's Indians. On Christmas Eve, 1939, Cameron received word that his father had died. At the time he did not have the funds to travel to the funeral.
In writing his sisters and brothers, he listed some legacies from his father. He put at the top:
His faithfulness in pointing me to God and His Word
His habit of telling the truth at all costs
Cameron Townsend went on to establish the Wycliffe Bible Translators, now over twenty-five hundred strong, and translating Scripture into over five hundred languages in twenty-three countries. At seventy-six, his memory of his father remains clear.
"He and mother never had much in this world," he recalls. "But they led each of their children to trust in Christ and to love the Bible."
