Herald and news. (Klamath Falls, Or.) 1942-current, February 10, 1963, Image 28

Herald and news., February 10, 1963, Page 28, Image 28

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Newspaper Page TextMY MOST INSPIRING MOMENT J .1 ' ' 7 I THE DAY I MET A LION By MacKINLAY KANTOR Car Akeley moved leisurely toward the stairs and I was moving with him. "Tell me," he said, "what are you doing here?" Author of "Spirit lake" and the Pulitzer Prize novel, "Andersonville" As a youngster, the author had met Carl Akeley in a Chicago museum, but would, the great explorer remember him three years later at a high-school assembly in a small Iowa town? The great man was coming to our little town. The Great Man's cragged face stared with a kind of defiant serenity from posters, from pages of our two local newspapers. Power and enigma of the African wilderness shone in his eyes as if a pride of lions walked with him. His name was Carl Akeley; and although it is now more than 40 years since last I looked at him, I still remember vividly the moment when his big misshapen fingers touched my life. In those days, I was surrounded by Little Men. My father was divorced and mainly out of the picture. My maternal grandfather hard-working, taciturn, grimly honest was still a Little Man. So was the man who owned the newspaper which my mother edited, and where I worked, helping her. So were the bulk of those who walked the Webster City streets. There were perhaps a dozen statuesque souls in our Iowa community. But I was only a teen ager; rarely can the gulf between maturity and immaturity be bridged with any intimacy. Night after night, on my way home from work, I stopped at a shopwindow where the powerful face of Carl Akeley looked out into space, and I recognized and bowed before his majestyr. I pinched myself I had actually stood beside the man, even exchanged conversation with him! It had happened in Chicago three years before. Surprisingly, my father had volunteered to fur- 4 Family W Ftbrutry 10, IX HIUSIIATIONtTMAC CONNOt