Opus 2023-312: Seeds of Character

Have you ever been around people talking about who was most influential in their life?  It has always amazed me how someone can pull up the name of one person who radically altered their world.  I don’t question it but I usually just draw a blank.  It is like my wife asking me what my Zoom group talked about and I can’t think of a thing at the moment.  As I get on with my day things come back to me.  

I have had a lot of people influence me.

Working chronologically I would need to start with my family.  My father stands out.  He wasn’t one for giving big lectures but he was a man who lived the values he did talk about.  Then there was my grandmother.  If you met her you would have thought of her as a straight laced legalist but I can remember the excitement of going to spend the night at her house.  The thing I dreaded the most was the nightly prayer where she prayed around the world, a couple of times.  The best was how she made cornmeal mush in the morning.  She had her quirks.  She did buy a TV but would not let us watch “them shooting programs” and would come and stand in front of the screen when commercials came on pushing things like cigarettes.  As a child she got me to join the LTL.  Never heard of them?  It was the Loyal Temperance Legion.  It was a children’s program of the WCTU.  At the heart of all that she was someone I loved to be with.

Sunday School over the years made a contribution.  The Bells kept us singing joyfully in the basement children’s department and one of my teachers, Al Bjur, really made the lessons come alive.  Then in Junior high there were the Frankhousers and Dwight Matthews.

In high school there were a couple of men who sharpened my skills.  The parents were not too excited about either one of them but they helped me grow up.  Dale Bailey was borderline crazy but he developed my leadership skills.  He let me actually be in charge of things.  I remember negotiating a concert for our teen choir with another church.  Then there was Phil Reed.  Phil took over the high school class when I was about ready go give up on Sunday School.  He challenged me to think.  He is still around fifty years later keeping me on my toes.

Probably Julian Loewe was most instrumental in my intellectual development.  In high school we used to walk to school.  It was one of those up-hill both ways routes.  It did not matter what position I took, Julian would take the other side and argue me into the ground.  I am not sure I ever won but it didn’t matter.  I was learning not to be so cocky and to get my ducks in a row.

I hope I have planted seeds in the same way.  I hope the same for you.  I am guessing that usually we will not know whom we have touched, but they are out there.

homo unius libri