Milton Anderson was a curious sort of person. I remember, when I was a child, watching my grandfather at a family gathering pull out a sheaf of newspaper clippings from his pants pocket. He had painstakingly cut out the sunrise and sunset tables from the Los Angeles Times over a period of several days and then paper clipped them together. He took them around the party, asking others to explain to him the deep mystery he had found in the small agate type from the pages of the daily paper.
He was puzzled by the sunrise and sunset times near the equinoxes and solstices. He noticed that the year's earliest sunrise, for example, didn't correspond with the summer solstice, or longest day of the year. And he wondered why it was that near the vernal equinox, March 20 or 21, when the day and night were supposed to be exactly the same twelve hours long, the sun didn't rise and set at exactly the same time of the morning and evening. Each year, he hoped someone would explain it to him.
By the time I grew older and finally learned the explanation - the earth's orbit is not a perfect circle but an ellipse, causing the planet to travel at slightly different speeds during the year and accounting for those small time differences - my grandfather had lost his curiosity about such things.
In his later years, although his memory betrayed him, Milton Anderson never stopped being the gentle man that so many people cherished. But it is the funny fellow with his pocket full of newspaper clippings whom I treasure. A working class man who had labored so many years as a union carpenter to provide for his family. A man who crafted wine tanks and built military barracks and labored on hospitals and even the Los Angeles Convention Center, but who at night listened to classical music that made him cry, who read passionately about the splitting of the atom, the nature of gravity and the evolution of life on earth. A farmer's son who made a living with his hands, but who wondered about the planets in their orbits, and the stars in his night sky.
Milton Richard Anderson was born on May 24, 1912 in Sherbrooke, North Dakota, the son of Ralph Erle Anderson and Grace Emmeline Still. In the summer of 1921 his father, Erle, suffered a tragic death and just four years later, two days before Christmas of 1925, his mother died of Bright's disease. Milton was just 13 years old, but he and his two brothers and four sisters found themselves orphans.
For several years Milton lived an itinerant existence, staying with various relatives. He worked hard on family farms, running tractors and teams of horses, feeding pigs and milking cows. But he cared little for it and dreamed of finding something better. Something that would involve his mind, but his choices were very limited. Despite his ambitions, Milton Anderson did not finish college or find a career in an intellectual field. It probably would have been some kind of minor miracle for an orphaned North Dakota farm boy to succeed in one of the professions just as the Great Depression was really settling in, but my grandfather didn't see it that way. With characteristic self-deprecation, he would say he hadn't been cut out for anything more than the simplest labor. I'm sure I wasn't the only one who believed such talk was nonsense. Milton Anderson was one of the most inquisitive and intellectually inspiring, people I have ever known.
Milton eventually made his way to California where it was said jobs could be had, joining his older brother, Willis, who had made the trip and encouraged him to come. When Milton arrived in 1935, he searched for any kind of work he could find, and found it in a very unlikely place - Death Valley - In August - Working outdoors - Doing hard manual labor. But he was thrilled, especially he told me, when he found out that he'd be paid for three whole days without lifting a finger. The new men helping to build the Furnace Creek Inn weren't allowed to work in the desert heat until they'd acclimated to it. Soon he was able to rejoin his brothers and sisters in Los Angeles where steady work building wine tanks helped him get into the coopers union, a small hedge against joblessness that constantly threatened workers at the time.
Milton Anderson met my grandmother, Lois Edith Barrett, who was also a North Dakota "refugee" at a gathering of family, including some distant cousins. Lois did not think much of Milton at the time, but since the families lived five blocks away from each other and there really wasn't a whole lot to do in those days but visit, they had many more opportunities to see each other. On one of those occasions, Milton happened to complain about a sock that needed mending. Lois darned it for him, and she says it was when he really noticed her for the first time. She liked what she saw. He was good looking, and she liked his curly eyelashes and brown eyes. They may not have had money, but they had each other. They were married on June 19, 1938.
In 1941, Milton and Lois gave birth to their first child, Linda, my mother. She was followed by Mary Jane, called Janie, who came along in 1947, a special child who passed away just twelve years later.
Milton continued to work hard on projects large and small, and was proud to have worked on the Los Angeles Convention Center, which turned out to be one of the last jobs of his career before he retired in 1975. He had a great fascination and respect for such large engineering projects. And he would go out of his way to read about or visit them. I don't think anything impressed him as much as a colossal dam or a stately bridge. He had a deep appreciation for those sorts of monuments to human initiative. Naturally, he also became fascinated by he space program.
As we grew older, our private club flourished. He would clip articles he found in the newspaper or science magazines and we'd talk about them. In 1983 we built a telescope together and saw Halley's Comet in it a couple of years later. Inn 1989, we rebuilt it, and I cherish my memories of the hard work the both of us put into the carpentry of that large wooden instrument.
I blame my grandfather for most of what has gone right in my life. I did not turn out to be an astronomer or a scientist. But I know that most of the things I care most about - that I read and write for a living, for example - have come about directly because of his influence.
Milton Anderson was so gentle, and so selfless, and so funny, he simply had no enemies on this Earth. He had a vocabulary all his own - I have no doubt he asked us all which direction was swansondicular - and even moved in a unique way. A girl fiend of mine once told me he looked like a marionette on strings. You just couldn't mistake Milton Anderson for any other person you knew.
Like I said, he was a curious sort of peron, and one that we will miss like no other. Even though his health had been failing for several months and we had some time to prepare for his passing, I still find it hard to believe he is gone. Because when he was here, the world made a little more sense. Whenever the mean or petty things your fellow human beings did made you want to lose faith in the entire species, it would only take a brief thought of Milton to remind you that there were people so basically good and decent and honest, there was hope for the rest of us. That's what I'll hold on to.
Written by Milton's grandson
He was puzzled by the sunrise and sunset times near the equinoxes and solstices. He noticed that the year's earliest sunrise, for example, didn't correspond with the summer solstice, or longest day of the year. And he wondered why it was that near the vernal equinox, March 20 or 21, when the day and night were supposed to be exactly the same twelve hours long, the sun didn't rise and set at exactly the same time of the morning and evening. Each year, he hoped someone would explain it to him.
By the time I grew older and finally learned the explanation - the earth's orbit is not a perfect circle but an ellipse, causing the planet to travel at slightly different speeds during the year and accounting for those small time differences - my grandfather had lost his curiosity about such things.
In his later years, although his memory betrayed him, Milton Anderson never stopped being the gentle man that so many people cherished. But it is the funny fellow with his pocket full of newspaper clippings whom I treasure. A working class man who had labored so many years as a union carpenter to provide for his family. A man who crafted wine tanks and built military barracks and labored on hospitals and even the Los Angeles Convention Center, but who at night listened to classical music that made him cry, who read passionately about the splitting of the atom, the nature of gravity and the evolution of life on earth. A farmer's son who made a living with his hands, but who wondered about the planets in their orbits, and the stars in his night sky.
Milton Richard Anderson was born on May 24, 1912 in Sherbrooke, North Dakota, the son of Ralph Erle Anderson and Grace Emmeline Still. In the summer of 1921 his father, Erle, suffered a tragic death and just four years later, two days before Christmas of 1925, his mother died of Bright's disease. Milton was just 13 years old, but he and his two brothers and four sisters found themselves orphans.
For several years Milton lived an itinerant existence, staying with various relatives. He worked hard on family farms, running tractors and teams of horses, feeding pigs and milking cows. But he cared little for it and dreamed of finding something better. Something that would involve his mind, but his choices were very limited. Despite his ambitions, Milton Anderson did not finish college or find a career in an intellectual field. It probably would have been some kind of minor miracle for an orphaned North Dakota farm boy to succeed in one of the professions just as the Great Depression was really settling in, but my grandfather didn't see it that way. With characteristic self-deprecation, he would say he hadn't been cut out for anything more than the simplest labor. I'm sure I wasn't the only one who believed such talk was nonsense. Milton Anderson was one of the most inquisitive and intellectually inspiring, people I have ever known.
Milton eventually made his way to California where it was said jobs could be had, joining his older brother, Willis, who had made the trip and encouraged him to come. When Milton arrived in 1935, he searched for any kind of work he could find, and found it in a very unlikely place - Death Valley - In August - Working outdoors - Doing hard manual labor. But he was thrilled, especially he told me, when he found out that he'd be paid for three whole days without lifting a finger. The new men helping to build the Furnace Creek Inn weren't allowed to work in the desert heat until they'd acclimated to it. Soon he was able to rejoin his brothers and sisters in Los Angeles where steady work building wine tanks helped him get into the coopers union, a small hedge against joblessness that constantly threatened workers at the time.
Milton Anderson met my grandmother, Lois Edith Barrett, who was also a North Dakota "refugee" at a gathering of family, including some distant cousins. Lois did not think much of Milton at the time, but since the families lived five blocks away from each other and there really wasn't a whole lot to do in those days but visit, they had many more opportunities to see each other. On one of those occasions, Milton happened to complain about a sock that needed mending. Lois darned it for him, and she says it was when he really noticed her for the first time. She liked what she saw. He was good looking, and she liked his curly eyelashes and brown eyes. They may not have had money, but they had each other. They were married on June 19, 1938.
In 1941, Milton and Lois gave birth to their first child, Linda, my mother. She was followed by Mary Jane, called Janie, who came along in 1947, a special child who passed away just twelve years later.
Milton continued to work hard on projects large and small, and was proud to have worked on the Los Angeles Convention Center, which turned out to be one of the last jobs of his career before he retired in 1975. He had a great fascination and respect for such large engineering projects. And he would go out of his way to read about or visit them. I don't think anything impressed him as much as a colossal dam or a stately bridge. He had a deep appreciation for those sorts of monuments to human initiative. Naturally, he also became fascinated by he space program.
As we grew older, our private club flourished. He would clip articles he found in the newspaper or science magazines and we'd talk about them. In 1983 we built a telescope together and saw Halley's Comet in it a couple of years later. Inn 1989, we rebuilt it, and I cherish my memories of the hard work the both of us put into the carpentry of that large wooden instrument.
I blame my grandfather for most of what has gone right in my life. I did not turn out to be an astronomer or a scientist. But I know that most of the things I care most about - that I read and write for a living, for example - have come about directly because of his influence.
Milton Anderson was so gentle, and so selfless, and so funny, he simply had no enemies on this Earth. He had a vocabulary all his own - I have no doubt he asked us all which direction was swansondicular - and even moved in a unique way. A girl fiend of mine once told me he looked like a marionette on strings. You just couldn't mistake Milton Anderson for any other person you knew.
Like I said, he was a curious sort of peron, and one that we will miss like no other. Even though his health had been failing for several months and we had some time to prepare for his passing, I still find it hard to believe he is gone. Because when he was here, the world made a little more sense. Whenever the mean or petty things your fellow human beings did made you want to lose faith in the entire species, it would only take a brief thought of Milton to remind you that there were people so basically good and decent and honest, there was hope for the rest of us. That's what I'll hold on to.
Written by Milton's grandson
Milton Anderson was a curious sort of person. I remember, when I was a child, watching my grandfather at a family gathering pull out a sheaf of newspaper clippings from his pants pocket. He had painstakingly cut out the sunrise and sunset tables from the Los Angeles Times over a period of several days and then paper clipped them together. He took them around the party, asking others to explain to him the deep mystery he had found in the small agate type from the pages of the daily paper.
He was puzzled by the sunrise and sunset times near the equinoxes and solstices. He noticed that the year's earliest sunrise, for example, didn't correspond with the summer solstice, or longest day of the year. And he wondered why it was that near the vernal equinox, March 20 or 21, when the day and night were supposed to be exactly the same twelve hours long, the sun didn't rise and set at exactly the same time of the morning and evening. Each year, he hoped someone would explain it to him.
By the time I grew older and finally learned the explanation - the earth's orbit is not a perfect circle but an ellipse, causing the planet to travel at slightly different speeds during the year and accounting for those small time differences - my grandfather had lost his curiosity about such things.
In his later years, although his memory betrayed him, Milton Anderson never stopped being the gentle man that so many people cherished. But it is the funny fellow with his pocket full of newspaper clippings whom I treasure. A working class man who had labored so many years as a union carpenter to provide for his family. A man who crafted wine tanks and built military barracks and labored on hospitals and even the Los Angeles Convention Center, but who at night listened to classical music that made him cry, who read passionately about the splitting of the atom, the nature of gravity and the evolution of life on earth. A farmer's son who made a living with his hands, but who wondered about the planets in their orbits, and the stars in his night sky.
Milton Richard Anderson was born on May 24, 1912 in Sherbrooke, North Dakota, the son of Ralph Erle Anderson and Grace Emmeline Still. In the summer of 1921 his father, Erle, suffered a tragic death and just four years later, two days before Christmas of 1925, his mother died of Bright's disease. Milton was just 13 years old, but he and his two brothers and four sisters found themselves orphans.
For several years Milton lived an itinerant existence, staying with various relatives. He worked hard on family farms, running tractors and teams of horses, feeding pigs and milking cows. But he cared little for it and dreamed of finding something better. Something that would involve his mind, but his choices were very limited. Despite his ambitions, Milton Anderson did not finish college or find a career in an intellectual field. It probably would have been some kind of minor miracle for an orphaned North Dakota farm boy to succeed in one of the professions just as the Great Depression was really settling in, but my grandfather didn't see it that way. With characteristic self-deprecation, he would say he hadn't been cut out for anything more than the simplest labor. I'm sure I wasn't the only one who believed such talk was nonsense. Milton Anderson was one of the most inquisitive and intellectually inspiring, people I have ever known.
Milton eventually made his way to California where it was said jobs could be had, joining his older brother, Willis, who had made the trip and encouraged him to come. When Milton arrived in 1935, he searched for any kind of work he could find, and found it in a very unlikely place - Death Valley - In August - Working outdoors - Doing hard manual labor. But he was thrilled, especially he told me, when he found out that he'd be paid for three whole days without lifting a finger. The new men helping to build the Furnace Creek Inn weren't allowed to work in the desert heat until they'd acclimated to it. Soon he was able to rejoin his brothers and sisters in Los Angeles where steady work building wine tanks helped him get into the coopers union, a small hedge against joblessness that constantly threatened workers at the time.
Milton Anderson met my grandmother, Lois Edith Barrett, who was also a North Dakota "refugee" at a gathering of family, including some distant cousins. Lois did not think much of Milton at the time, but since the families lived five blocks away from each other and there really wasn't a whole lot to do in those days but visit, they had many more opportunities to see each other. On one of those occasions, Milton happened to complain about a sock that needed mending. Lois darned it for him, and she says it was when he really noticed her for the first time. She liked what she saw. He was good looking, and she liked his curly eyelashes and brown eyes. They may not have had money, but they had each other. They were married on June 19, 1938.
In 1941, Milton and Lois gave birth to their first child, Linda, my mother. She was followed by Mary Jane, called Janie, who came along in 1947, a special child who passed away just twelve years later.
Milton continued to work hard on projects large and small, and was proud to have worked on the Los Angeles Convention Center, which turned out to be one of the last jobs of his career before he retired in 1975. He had a great fascination and respect for such large engineering projects. And he would go out of his way to read about or visit them. I don't think anything impressed him as much as a colossal dam or a stately bridge. He had a deep appreciation for those sorts of monuments to human initiative. Naturally, he also became fascinated by he space program.
As we grew older, our private club flourished. He would clip articles he found in the newspaper or science magazines and we'd talk about them. In 1983 we built a telescope together and saw Halley's Comet in it a couple of years later. Inn 1989, we rebuilt it, and I cherish my memories of the hard work the both of us put into the carpentry of that large wooden instrument.
I blame my grandfather for most of what has gone right in my life. I did not turn out to be an astronomer or a scientist. But I know that most of the things I care most about - that I read and write for a living, for example - have come about directly because of his influence.
Milton Anderson was so gentle, and so selfless, and so funny, he simply had no enemies on this Earth. He had a vocabulary all his own - I have no doubt he asked us all which direction was swansondicular - and even moved in a unique way. A girl fiend of mine once told me he looked like a marionette on strings. You just couldn't mistake Milton Anderson for any other person you knew.
Like I said, he was a curious sort of peron, and one that we will miss like no other. Even though his health had been failing for several months and we had some time to prepare for his passing, I still find it hard to believe he is gone. Because when he was here, the world made a little more sense. Whenever the mean or petty things your fellow human beings did made you want to lose faith in the entire species, it would only take a brief thought of Milton to remind you that there were people so basically good and decent and honest, there was hope for the rest of us. That's what I'll hold on to.
Written by Milton's grandson
He was puzzled by the sunrise and sunset times near the equinoxes and solstices. He noticed that the year's earliest sunrise, for example, didn't correspond with the summer solstice, or longest day of the year. And he wondered why it was that near the vernal equinox, March 20 or 21, when the day and night were supposed to be exactly the same twelve hours long, the sun didn't rise and set at exactly the same time of the morning and evening. Each year, he hoped someone would explain it to him.
By the time I grew older and finally learned the explanation - the earth's orbit is not a perfect circle but an ellipse, causing the planet to travel at slightly different speeds during the year and accounting for those small time differences - my grandfather had lost his curiosity about such things.
In his later years, although his memory betrayed him, Milton Anderson never stopped being the gentle man that so many people cherished. But it is the funny fellow with his pocket full of newspaper clippings whom I treasure. A working class man who had labored so many years as a union carpenter to provide for his family. A man who crafted wine tanks and built military barracks and labored on hospitals and even the Los Angeles Convention Center, but who at night listened to classical music that made him cry, who read passionately about the splitting of the atom, the nature of gravity and the evolution of life on earth. A farmer's son who made a living with his hands, but who wondered about the planets in their orbits, and the stars in his night sky.
Milton Richard Anderson was born on May 24, 1912 in Sherbrooke, North Dakota, the son of Ralph Erle Anderson and Grace Emmeline Still. In the summer of 1921 his father, Erle, suffered a tragic death and just four years later, two days before Christmas of 1925, his mother died of Bright's disease. Milton was just 13 years old, but he and his two brothers and four sisters found themselves orphans.
For several years Milton lived an itinerant existence, staying with various relatives. He worked hard on family farms, running tractors and teams of horses, feeding pigs and milking cows. But he cared little for it and dreamed of finding something better. Something that would involve his mind, but his choices were very limited. Despite his ambitions, Milton Anderson did not finish college or find a career in an intellectual field. It probably would have been some kind of minor miracle for an orphaned North Dakota farm boy to succeed in one of the professions just as the Great Depression was really settling in, but my grandfather didn't see it that way. With characteristic self-deprecation, he would say he hadn't been cut out for anything more than the simplest labor. I'm sure I wasn't the only one who believed such talk was nonsense. Milton Anderson was one of the most inquisitive and intellectually inspiring, people I have ever known.
Milton eventually made his way to California where it was said jobs could be had, joining his older brother, Willis, who had made the trip and encouraged him to come. When Milton arrived in 1935, he searched for any kind of work he could find, and found it in a very unlikely place - Death Valley - In August - Working outdoors - Doing hard manual labor. But he was thrilled, especially he told me, when he found out that he'd be paid for three whole days without lifting a finger. The new men helping to build the Furnace Creek Inn weren't allowed to work in the desert heat until they'd acclimated to it. Soon he was able to rejoin his brothers and sisters in Los Angeles where steady work building wine tanks helped him get into the coopers union, a small hedge against joblessness that constantly threatened workers at the time.
Milton Anderson met my grandmother, Lois Edith Barrett, who was also a North Dakota "refugee" at a gathering of family, including some distant cousins. Lois did not think much of Milton at the time, but since the families lived five blocks away from each other and there really wasn't a whole lot to do in those days but visit, they had many more opportunities to see each other. On one of those occasions, Milton happened to complain about a sock that needed mending. Lois darned it for him, and she says it was when he really noticed her for the first time. She liked what she saw. He was good looking, and she liked his curly eyelashes and brown eyes. They may not have had money, but they had each other. They were married on June 19, 1938.
In 1941, Milton and Lois gave birth to their first child, Linda, my mother. She was followed by Mary Jane, called Janie, who came along in 1947, a special child who passed away just twelve years later.
Milton continued to work hard on projects large and small, and was proud to have worked on the Los Angeles Convention Center, which turned out to be one of the last jobs of his career before he retired in 1975. He had a great fascination and respect for such large engineering projects. And he would go out of his way to read about or visit them. I don't think anything impressed him as much as a colossal dam or a stately bridge. He had a deep appreciation for those sorts of monuments to human initiative. Naturally, he also became fascinated by he space program.
As we grew older, our private club flourished. He would clip articles he found in the newspaper or science magazines and we'd talk about them. In 1983 we built a telescope together and saw Halley's Comet in it a couple of years later. Inn 1989, we rebuilt it, and I cherish my memories of the hard work the both of us put into the carpentry of that large wooden instrument.
I blame my grandfather for most of what has gone right in my life. I did not turn out to be an astronomer or a scientist. But I know that most of the things I care most about - that I read and write for a living, for example - have come about directly because of his influence.
Milton Anderson was so gentle, and so selfless, and so funny, he simply had no enemies on this Earth. He had a vocabulary all his own - I have no doubt he asked us all which direction was swansondicular - and even moved in a unique way. A girl fiend of mine once told me he looked like a marionette on strings. You just couldn't mistake Milton Anderson for any other person you knew.
Like I said, he was a curious sort of peron, and one that we will miss like no other. Even though his health had been failing for several months and we had some time to prepare for his passing, I still find it hard to believe he is gone. Because when he was here, the world made a little more sense. Whenever the mean or petty things your fellow human beings did made you want to lose faith in the entire species, it would only take a brief thought of Milton to remind you that there were people so basically good and decent and honest, there was hope for the rest of us. That's what I'll hold on to.
Written by Milton's grandson
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