Looking Forward, Looking Upward: My Life, My Friendship with Sir John, and the Early Years of the John Templeton Foundation - Softcover

Herrmann, Robert L.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1599474530 ISBN 13: 9781599474533

Verlag: TEMPLETON FOUNDATION PR, 2013

Inhaltsangabe

In this autobiography, Robert L. Herrmann tells the story of his life and his work with Sir John Templeton. Through his reflections on his working relationship with Sir John, Herrmann provides valuable insights into the early years of the John Templeton Foundation. Herrmann collaborated with John Templeton on three books published by the Templeton Press. Drawing on stories of this collaboration, Herrmann gives readers a fresh understanding of Sir John’s ideas and how these ideas coalesced to become the mission that still guides the John Templeton Foundation today.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Dr. Herrmann is former adjunct professor and pre-med advisor at Gordon College and taught medical school biochemistry for twenty-two years; first at Boston University and later at Oral Roberts University. At the latter he directed a nation-wide recruitment program for medical and dental school faculty interested in a high level Christian mission-oriented teaching program. In 1981, he left medical education to become executive director of the American Scientific Affiliation, a 2,200-member society of Christians interested in integrating Christian faith and science. There he met member Sir John Templeton, with whom he collaborated in writing several books, including The God Who Would Be Known and Is God the Only Reality? In 1998 he wrote Sir John’s biography and a revised edition in 2004. Dr. Herrmann is a founding member of the John Templeton Foundation.

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Looking Forward, Looking Upward

My Life, My Friendship with Sir John, and the Early Years of the John Templeton Foundation

By Robert L. Herrmann

TEMPLETON PRESS

Copyright © 2013 Robert L. Herrmann
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-59947-453-3

Contents

Preface....................................................................
vii
1: Early Days..............................................................
3
2: Medical Education.......................................................
9
3: N w Challenges..........................................................
27
4: Travels on Behalf of John Templeton.....................................
39
5: The John Templeton Foundation...........................................
51
6: Finding Advisors for the Foundation.....................................
65
7: Religion, Health, and the John Templeton Foundation.....................
77
8: Publications and Sir John Templeton.....................................
81
9: The Science and Religion Course Program.................................
93
10: Expanding the Science and Religion Course Program......................
99
11: Essay Programs for the John Templeton Foundation.......................
109
12: The Later Years, Reminiscences, and Retirements........................
115
13: Current Activities.....................................................
125
14: Further Reflections....................................................
129
Notes......................................................................
135
Select Bibliography........................................................
137
Acknowledgments............................................................
141

CHAPTER 1

Early Days

I was born just before the Great Depression, the son of a strugglingbusinessman who, nevertheless, managed to maintain amodest profit by conscientiously fulfilling customers' needs in theprinting business in downtown New York City. I went to the publicschools in Whitestone and Bayside, Queens, two towns on the edgeof the city, on Long Island. Whitestone was a small town in theearly 1930s. I briefly met a girl there, Betty Ann Cook, but learnedto know her much more seriously in high school.

FINDING ELIZABETH

Our first brief meeting was somewhat novel. Betty belonged tothe local Presbyterian Church where there was a long tradition ofminstrel shows and other productions as part of the church's entertainmentprogram for fund-raising. I was a neighbor to one of theproducers, Vi Townsend, and she recruited me at age six to be thegroom in their production of a Tom Thumb Wedding. You guessed it;Betty was the bride. When we actually got engaged long afterward,the New York Herald Tribune printed a short squib, "Couple married14 years announce engagement."

When we met again in high school, she was a cheerleader anda real romance blossomed. She had plenty of attention from theopposite sex, but I did my best to monopolize her time. My mainadvantage, I reasoned, was to entertain her in "the big city." I wasfamiliar with Manhattan, having been a salesman for a couple ofsummers for my dad. I enabled her to enjoy the best of the city, inmy opinion: the theater district, Greenwich Village, Central Park,and the fantastic museums and restaurants.

PLYMOUTH BRETHREN

I had one more important contact with Manhattan, which hasalso become a major influence in my life. It happened because mygrandfather had come as an immigrant from Germany, the son ofa well-to-do Hamburg family, with knowledge of several languagesand some experience in the German export trade. When he came toAmerica, he got a job near Cooper Square in downtown Manhattan,and walked from his flat to his office every day. He was a typicalNorth German, nominally Lutheran but of no particular persuasion.Every day he passed a Christian bookstore in the Square andwas attracted to a large Bible in the window, whose pages wereturned each day to a new passage. After a time, the proprietor, Mr.L'Oiseaux, came out and invited him in and explained the Christianfaith to him. My grandfather became a staunch believer andeventually joined a group called the Plymouth Brethren, so namedfor its origin as separatists from the Anglican Church in Plymouth,England, in the late 1800s.

I was introduced as a child to a segment of these believers, meetingin simple circumstances in a second-story loft on East Twenty-SeventhStreet between Lexington and Park Avenues in midtownManhattan. To these folks, I am indebted for a thorough study ofthe scriptures.

The focal point of their worship service was the Lord's Supper,the breaking of a loaf of bread and the sharing of a common cup ofwine. This was preceded and followed by hymns and Bible readingsoffered by the men of the congregation somewhat spontaneously.An offering was taken at the conclusion of the service.

Getting to those meetings required a long trip to Manhattanfrom our home in Whitestone on Long Island, and the meetingwas generally boring for me as a youngster, but we enjoyed lunchusually in a nearby cafeteria and often followed this with a visit toa newsreel theatre in Times Square. Sometimes, we also visited ahospital where my father would play hymns on a portable organ,and we would sometimes sing, and then he would give a brief gospelmessage.

Later on, when I was in the navy and home on leave, Betty and Iwould visit the Bible Truth Gospel Hall, as it was named on a largesign hanging outside, and she proved to be a tremendous sport, submittingto being forced to sit outside the circle of believers, thoughwith me at her side, because she had not made a confession of faith.

PURDUE AND THE NAVY

I graduated from high school in January 1946, having just escapedWorld War II, and enrolled at Purdue University as a chemistrymajor, my favorite subject for most of my youth. After a semester,I left Purdue for the service. The draft was still in effect, and I wasable to enlist in the navy's electronics program for a two-year stint,with schooling in Chicago and Washington, DC, followed by eightmonths of repair work in the Mediterranean on a destroyer tender,the USS Shenandoah.

MARRIAGE TO ELIZABETH

Betty finished business school and worked in Manhattan, while Ifinished my second year in the navy and then went back to Purdue,this time gratefully under the G.I. Bill, which paid most of myexpenses. This seemed to me another undeserved windfall.

In 1950, Betty and I were married, and she returned with me toPurdue to finish my last year. After graduation, I was recalled to theNaval Reserve just as the Korean War was heating up. Fortuitously,I was sent to the Amphibious Base at Little Creek, Virginia. Bettyand I were able to rent a small beach house off base and, to somedegree, get on with our lives.

It was sobering to learn, not long after, that the other Amphibiousgroup, Naval Beach Group 1, based in San Diego, had madethe landings at Inchon, Korea, near Seoul. Although the operationwas heralded as a great tactical success, my counterpart, the Beach-masters,had lost 40 percent of their members in the operation. Irecall that in some of...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: TEMPLETON FOUNDATION PR
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2013
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1599474530
• ISBN 13: 9781599474533
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Auflage: 1
• Anzahl der Seiten: 150
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar