In commenting about Elvera Wik Anderson’s memoir My Memories, Carl Smarling wrote that
“the other striking thing that hasn’t been explored in any of
what I have read of the Wiks are the reasons
they became what they became. What were
the influences outside of the church?
Something very strong and quite sophisticated, secularly, was going on
in the family. I’m recalling the
“voluntary” singing of Gilbert and Sullivan in other writings,
and in Elvera’s writing we have her quoting the poet
Lowell as well as “playing golf” in 1917 on the plains of
The answer, I think, lies largely in
the Wik’s commitment to public education that diluted the otherwise nativistic and fundamentalist strains of their prairie
world. The radio and the car also expanded
their horizons. The parents praised and
prized scholarship, and inculcated in their children a love for learning and a
lively curiosity for the world beyond the railroad tracks. Emma not only raised eleven children but saw
them all off to college. In any era,
this would be an achievement. What makes
her achievement even more remarkable is that the children attained higher
education during the Great Depression.
Some, like Reyn and Elsie, got additional
degrees. Most colleges today welcome
women students, but that wasn’t always true.
(“You don’t need this,” Viola was counseled in high school about some of
her courses she wanted to take.) That all the girls in the family were educated
after high school says much for Emma’s commitment to high education. “Having an alert and inquiring mind, she
wanted her children to have the best possible education, and cheerfully assumed
the extra labor and responsibility involved,” Emma’s obituary states. “In spite of the cruel depression, it was
important to stay in school.” Reyn writes. “Mother
had taught school and had great faith in education. She said that she would probably not leave
very much in her estate but if one received a good education this could never
be taken away by anybody.” In fact, when
she died, her net worth was $3,920.01, of which $3,000 was part payment from
Isaac Asimov’s dad once looked
through one of his information-crammed books.
“How did you learn all this,
Isaac?” his father asked.
“From you, Papa.”
“From me? I don’t know any of this?”
“You didn’t have to, Papa,” Isaac
said. “You valued learning and you
taught me to value it. All the rest came
without trouble.”
“A mind once stretched by a new idea
can never go back to its original shape,” Said Oliver Wendell Holmes, the
jurist and scholar. What you want is not
just to fill your mind with new ideas but with truth. And you don’t just want to fill your mind
with truth, but open your mind to a lifetime of more and deeper truth—“further
up and further in,” as C.S. Lewis writes in the Narnia Chronicles. Our education
doesn’t end with a degree and shame on us if it does. “The important thing is not to stop
questioning,” Albert Einstein writes.
“Curiosity has its own reason for existing. One cannot help but be in awe when he
contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structures of
reality. It is enough if one tries to
comprehend a little of this mystery every day.
Never lose a holy curiosity.”