In the Company of Angels
Posted By Arthur von Boennighausen on September 26, 2019
In the Company of Angels
In 1996 we bought a 1640 acre property called the Sierra Mojada Ranch and moved to Westcliffe, Colorado.
My Friend Stanton Wesley Todd II told me about when he was living in the same community as future President of the United States – Gerald R. Ford along with Dr. Ralph Baldwin - Inventor of the proximity fuze for the first Atomic Bomb and L. Frank Baum - Author of the Wizard of Oz. According to Stan everyone wanted to know when Frank Baum was going to pick a real career like the rest of them instead of always talking about the unusual story he was working on.
After all, Gerald Ford was moving toward a career in politics. Ralph Baldwin Loved Astrophysics and Stanton Wesley Todd would someday own extensive deposits of coal and control his own mining and distribution operations.
Stanton told me that after Frank Baum’s story about Oz became wildly successful in 1939 he and Gerald Ford never discounted an idea that seemed unusual and had developed an approach to approving a project that was hard for most people to Understand. Here is the approach that Stanton Todd and Gerald Ford used to filter out the Good ideas from the Bad ideas: After the person championing the new idea finished with whatever presentation they came up with they were asked to give Stanton and Gerald a piece of music that represented their idea. If Stan and Gerald liked both the idea and the music they would give approval to the proposal.
In 1994 I was helping the US West Advanced Technologies group make the first Internet access available to a Colorado community. It was one of the first times the general public would have Internet access. We had chosen Estes Park and Telluride, Colorado for the first installations as they were smaller communities where we could work out the bugs in the new system. We needed support from both the Federal Government and US West ( now called Qwest ) for this project so I sent Stanton Todd a copy of the proposal printed on paper along with Robin Miller’s music CD of piano music called “ In The Company Of Angels ”. Stanton and President Ford read the report and listened to the Robin Miller music CD a few days after receiving my package and in about a month we had approval to install the first fiber optic networks in Estes Park and Telluride.
During dinner one evening I asked Dr. Baldwin why he helped develop the first Atomic Bomb. Ralph told me that near the end of World War II so many women in his residential subdivision in Grand Rapids, Michigan were coming over with letters telling them their husbands had died in battle that he started to think of a way to end the war quickly. Ralph just couldn’t handle one more widow asking him what their family was going to do without a father. As a result, Dr. Baldwin helped to design and develop operating specifications for the radio proximity fuze for the Atomic Bomb which has been credited with shortening World War II by at least one year. After the war Ralph went back to his Love of Astrophysics and funded his own astronomical observatory. In 1963 he also published a book called “The Measure of the Moon”.
At age 89 Stanton Wesley Todd sent me a letter via the US Mail that expressed his thoughts on Mankind’s place in the Universe as he knew I was interested in the Evolution of Consciousness. Here is what Stan had to say:
“ Whither bound, Mankind? I, of course, can’t say – except that eventually into the Cosmic landfill, whether in a million years or a billion or five billion, really doesn’t matter ( to you and me, anyhow ). Life, consciousness, and intelligence are astonishing phenomena, but I don’t suppose they count for much to the Cosmic Eye or have any permanent effect on the systole and diastole of the Universe.
The fact is that Mankind still hugs the delusion that the Universe exists ( or was created ) so that we could have a solar system and the solar system exists so that we could have Earth, and the Earth exists so that Man could have a place for the sole of his foot and strut his stuff. All the world is a stage in a way that Jacques (or whoever it was) was perhaps not aware of.
The game of life is like the game of Bridge: We assign values and make up rules, and then we may have Fun, create things of interest. Bridge is better, more valuable, than building card houses or tossing cards into a hat ( though not to the Cosmic Eye ).
All values are Man made – esthetic, moral, whatever. ( Well, I suppose buzzards, sow bugs, and moray eels may be aware of values of a sort, too ).”
Arthur Gerard Michael von Boennighausen
Saint Arthur
