Grace Notes: My
Family
I SYMPATHIZE WITH children of people in public life, because everyone greets my children with the question, "Do you play the piano like your father?"
This would be a good time to write about the things in which our children are interested.
Our daughter and older child, Elisabeth Robin, went into nurse's training after graduating from high school, but decided to pursue her interest in the business world instead. She began earning money when she was a very young lady, in the field of merchandising, at which she proved to be quite adept. After her schooling was completed, she went into merchandising full time, and has held three managerial positions in various categories at a local chain of department stores.
Robin had doubts, however, about progressing in the trade as a buyer, and she decided to digress. She answered an advertisement for the University of Southern California School of Medicine, with the thought of putting
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to use some of her medical knowledge. Upon request, she spent some thirty minutes typing a page. Both she and her interviewer knew by the time she finished the page that she was not the person for the job. She was standing, laughing and talking as is her way, with the personnel manager, saying, "If you need someone who can type, forget it!" when a very fine doctor walked by. "Is this young lady looking for a job?" he asked. Robin's eager yes led him to offer her work under a federal grant for cardiology research.
We have known for a good many years that the hand of the Lord's guidance rests upon our daughter's life, as He promised us when we gave her to Him before her birth. Sometimes it seems to us that she has already lived two or three complete lives, and that God is always there to see her through.
Presently, Robin is doing legal research for a well-known law firm. Her work takes her traveling about the country, and keeps us all abreast of the times. Robin is at once an interesting and vibrant personality.
Some of you may remember our son Mark's "turn" on the Art Linkletter "House Party" in 1957. Mr. Linkletter considered it one of his best shows, and offered to help if we were interested in a TV career for Mark. On the show he interviewed our son, then in kindergarten, about the wonders of outer space. It brought tears of pride to our eyes to hear the nervous little fellow saying about the moon, "Well you know, it has a dark side and a light side." Now more than ten years older, Mark has taken some excellent pictures of the moon through his telescope, and labeled its craters. During the lunar landing, we had our 300 power telescope trained to the
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Sea of Tranquility, a part of the first moon conquest. It is not at all unusual for him to sit up most of the night watching eclipses come and go.
Ever since he learned to read, Mark has exhibited an interest in the study of the ancient world, before man. He has lived, sketched, eaten and slept with dinosaurs in all of their species. One book proved to be a turning point in his hobby. It contained a map to a nearby area called Calabasas, which was supposed to contain sea flora and fauna millions of years old. Every Saturday began with the plea, "Today, can we go to Calabasas?" After a few months of this, one weakens. With a somewhat flimsy map in a public library book, we proceeded toward our holiday.
Mark didn't miss a turn. We drove to the second U-turn on Old Topanga Road. I stopped the car, pulled the brake, and said, "Well, Mark, there is your hill." We sat still. This was the Santa Monica mountains. No one expected to find sea shells here! Undaunted, Mark opened the door, took out a shovel and pick, boxes, tissue paper (for holding the delicate million-year-old-specimens) and proceeded happily toward the hill. No identifying signs had been erected, and certainly no other persons were present. Excited shouts were coming from our young son! He was digging clam shells in petrified condition, as well as oyster and many species of preserved sea life. All of us began to dig. We, too, dreamed that night of the world of millions of years ago, and we had an ecstatic little boy to quiet down at bedtime.
His interest never lags. It is possible that he has the best collection of petrified ancient life outside of a museum.
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It takes us most of a day to transfer his collection on moving day! While other fathers spend their Saturdays on pleasant beaches, or winning laurels on the golf course, I spend mine easing over hilltops up unpaved pathways, looking for petrified bones!
A very lucrative source was found in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountains outside Bakersfield. After several tries, we finally located another unidentified mountaintop called Sharkstooth Hill. This time, it was past the second Edison power line. It seemed for awhile that everyone knew where that hill was, but no one could tell us how to get there. A picnic lunch in Hart Park directly across from the mountain fortified us to drive up the dirt path four miles away, and in the very first ten minutes our lucky son found seven shark's teeth—beautiful, ivory, perfect specimens! I am beginning to count his "luck" as an intelligent approach to a highly honored and scientific profession: paleontology, a word with which I was not familiar until Mark became so interested in it. No one knows how much study lies behind Mark's expeditions. He wants very much to head towards East Africa, the location of the Zinjanthropis boisei discoveries, someday, and we have no doubt he will get there.
We always lament the fact that our children could not have known their Grandpa Atwood. My dad, the grandest man I have ever known, was a spiritual giant who stood all by himself in the world. He died when Robin was nine months old. How very much both of the children needed him! During my early career, he often embarrassed everyone by going around, practically knocking on doors, and saying, "Have you heard
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my son play on the radio?" His love was so vital and so genuine, that it could not help but be a fortifying source in my life.
The Atwoods came by their name, fittingly enough, as dwellers "at the wood." My mother's people were Hamlets. Both of these are old English names.
The Illinois Atwoods have been traced back to William AtteWode, in the year 1203. To have a surname that early is the indication of a very old family, as surnames came into being during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Next to the Norman and the Roman shape shield, the Atwood shield is one of the earliest designs. The Atwood colors of silver, for purity, and red for courage, are crested by a figure of justice with scales. The shield itself bears the royal rampant lion and sixteen acorns of gold on the gules background.
There were Atwood soldiers (one listed as a casualty) in the Battle of Crecy in the first year of the Hundred Years War, in 1346. There were a series of Atwoods serving in Parliament. Many Atwoods were churchmen, the most common names being John, William and Moses. There is an Atwood church in the County of Surrey, built by the Rev. King Atwood.
The Illinois Atwoods have an existing Manor House in England which was built in 1400, and was used as a barracks during World War II.
To me, my father, Arthur Atwood, was the embodiment of the honor and strength and justice exemplified in the Atwood shield and name.
My mom, now in her eighties, is still with us. She lives with my brother and his wife in Pasadena, California. A gentle lady, her faith was yet the force which bent my
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life into its direction. While I was a senior in high school, the music world looked pretty lucrative and inviting. When the opportunity came, I was torn between what appeared to my young eyes to be a great chance for nation-wide recognition, and Mom's faith in her son's future. When I told my parents about my chance, Mom said in perfect confidence, "Son, it is up to you. You pray about it, and do whatever the Lord tells you to do." The subject never came up again.
Because of her faith, my life has never known any direction but service for the Lord. Because of her faith, the Lord has given me nation-wide recognition far beyond my expectations. He promises everyone who will choose to serve Him: ". . . seek ye the kingdom of God; and all these things shall be added unto you" (Luke 12:31).
My brother Harley, and I were born six years apart. With this difference in age, emotions toward each other were mixed. Radio was coming in as the big interest, and Harley spent all of his spare time "getting distance," much to the distress of my musically sensitized ears. I just couldn't stand all that screeching, and Harley couldn't understand anyone who wasn't excited about radio. I was enough the younger brother to be somewhat of a nuisance in his romantic interest, as well, but now that all of those arguments have leveled, we have many happy times together.
When our daughter was born, she was the only baby on both sides of the family for a number of years. How we all looked forward to visiting Uncle Harley's to play checkers, or caroms, and have ice cream.
One day things had not been going right for our little
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girl, and she began tugging at my coat and saying, "Daddy, let's go to Harley-Bess's so we can laugh!" If everyone doesn't have a laughing place, I heartily recommend it. Ours remains Harley-Bess's to this day.
Both Harley and I married girls from Missouri. That has something to say for the beauty and quality of girls from that state! My wife, Grace, has typed and edited manuscripts, and made life generally interesting with literature for as long as I can remember. I often tell her, if she had all the manuscripts she has typed lined up from floor to ceiling, they would fill a room. With her, it is like putting in a bill, pressing a button, and out comes one hundred pages. She also reads as many as three biographies a week, sometimes all of them about the same person.
This gives you some idea of the kind of lives we lead. We are busy, most always content, all going in different directions.
