Stories
The story of
the Stevenson family
I have two images of my father. The first when I was growing up and he was a wonderful role model. The following photo of my father taken by my mother around the time I was born captures the first image. He was handsome, athletic and interesting.
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Growing up I recall Sunday afternoons with special pleasure when he would get out his easel and his oil paints or his charcoals and paint or sketch. We used to complain because he asked us to pose for long hours while he sketched our portraits He was quite good but we were too young to fully appreciate it. I still remember the wonderful smells of turpentine and fixative spray.
My father came from a wealthy but non-functional family. His father died when he was very young and his mother send him to boarding schools, and eventually to a summer camp where he met Dwight Rogers who was like an older brother or father figure to him (and to me, many years later). He told us of going once to try to meet his second cousin who was extremely wealthy (the McCormick family that owned much of Chicago), only to be told by the receptionist to go away, "Mr McCormick doesn't have any cousins." Perhaps in revolt against this, my father championed the "little man" or the "average person" and considered Abraham Lincoln to be his hero.
My interest in science came from my father. He had wonderful books about American Indians and about geology which dated from the years he had been an archeoologist employed by the WPA. During the war he joined the Red Cross and was stationed at army camps in Texas and eventually Camp Crowder near Neosho, Missouri. He retired from anthropology after the War in order to stay near home with the family in Neosho. When I started collecting fossils I found pictures like them in his books and he explained them to me, beginning my fascination with science. At the time I did not fully appreciate what he had done as an archeologist excavating American Indian sites such as the great mounds of Cahokia near St. Louis but I still have many press clippings from the time.
As one can imagine from the photo my father was a good athlete. He had been a runner when young, which inspired both me and my brother to a life of running. And he was a good swimmer, able to swim the length of any pool underwater. In this respect, I still imitate him to this day. When I was beat up by kids after school, he taught me how to wrestle and gave me the confidence to fight back.
Having given up anthropology and become a vocational rehabilitation counselor, my father turned to amateur astronomy to engage his scientific interests. He worked with the American Association of Variable Star Observers, making and recording and exchanging observations on stars that change in their brightness over time. He ground his own mirrors and constructed his own telescopes, building an observatory on the roof of an addition to our house. With my mother, he would go sometime to the AAVSO conventions and meet and develop friendships with other astronomers.
I have a second image of him after my adolesence when he seemed to withdraw into himself in a kind of depression or premature senility (my brother says it was not Alzheimer's Disease although it seems similar in retrospect). He lived until the age of 90 but over the last few decades he spoke little. He and my mother continued to play cards (bridge) with friends and to take vacations with their canoe, sometimes with other couples.
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Stages
1986-1992
Fall of Soviet Empire
1992-1997
UNESCO Culture of Peace Programme