A Look Back

As a new year, decade, century, and millennium approach, Phil Lollar enters Whit's End to revisit the people and moments that have shaped life in Odyssey. The bell over the front door reminds him how many customers and friends have crossed the threshold over the years. A parade of familiar greetings reveals just how often an ordinary visit to Whit's End has begun something memorable.

Phil starts with John Avery Whittaker, whose many roles make him the central figure in the community. Whit is a businessman who created a place where children of every age can learn, play, and talk. He is also a writer who turned to storytelling after his wife's death and an inventor responsible for the Bible Room, the Room of Consequence, the Transmuter, and the Imagination Station.

Above all, Whit is a man whose faith guides everything else he does. His remembered lessons emphasize honoring God's name, obeying God because it is right, and recognizing Jesus as God's greatest gift. He also explains that Christian symbols must never replace Christ Himself: a cross cannot save anyone, for salvation comes from what Jesus has done on the cross.

Tom Riley's path through Odyssey receives the next look. His plainspoken country manner has sometimes produced comic misunderstandings, but his steady confidence has carried him into serious responsibility. He has served on the city council, become mayor, and opened the Timothy Center after Timmy's life and faith inspired him to create a place where God could reach other people.

Connie Kendall connects both Whit's End and the Timothy Center. From the day she first wandered into Odyssey looking for Front Street, her boldness, humor, doubts, crushes, loyalty, and growing faith have made her unpredictable. Memories show her stumbling into mysteries, speaking before she thinks, performing Shakespeare, parodying strange radio dramas, and gradually recognizing how deeply she values Whit and the children who gather around him.

Eugene Meltsner arrives as Whit's next regular employee, introducing himself as a science student and recognized genius. His intelligence is matched by a formal vocabulary that few people can follow. Connie's directness immediately clashes with his precision, and their arguments range from computers and transportation to Eugene's unwilling role as the donkey beneath Connie's Mary in a Christmas presentation.

Phil translates several of Eugene's elaborate speeches into ordinary language. A request to use a computer becomes needlessly complicated, an offer to accept a job sounds like a royal proclamation, and a bicycle crash requires a lecture about concrete paths and rhododendrons before Isaac reduces it to a simple sentence. Bernard Walton is often the perfect person to puncture Eugene's seriousness.

Bernard receives a celebration of his own. He proudly gives his janitorial company an impressive title, even though he began with little more than cleaning supplies. Whether he is arguing with Eugene, protecting a freshly cleaned window, telling a tale, or hosting B-TV, he supplies colorful comparisons no one else would imagine. Beneath his grousing humor, his blunt observations frequently reveal good sense and a loyal heart.

Knowing that no short remembrance can give every Odyssey resident equal attention, Phil ends with a challenge built from many familiar voices. Brief moments recall members of the Barclay family, the Jacobs family, the Rathbones, Harlow Doyle, Sam Johnson, Edwin Blackgaard, Lawrence Hodges, Isaac Morton, Lucy Cunningham-Schultz, Jack Allen, Philip Glossman, Richard Maxwell, Regis Blackgaard, Tasha Forbes, Jason Whittaker, and many others. Together, the crowd of voices shows that Odyssey has never belonged to only a few leading figures; its identity comes from the entire community and the lives that have crossed within it.