MY 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