Long ago, at a small house known as Toad Hall, a professor named Ward Elliott asked a question that cuts to the marrow of the human experience:

"Who is your hero, and what is your cause?"

Ward, a beloved professor at Claremont McKenna College, was a master of simplicity wrapped around depth. His life was a quiet adventure in civic virtue — an open house, a bottomless kettle of conversation, and a stubborn belief that individuals could matter. He was no dry academic: he had a profound impact on Southern California, helping pioneer congestion pricing. More than that though he was a craftsman of souls, nudging young minds to look inward, to name their heroes, and in so doing, to name themselves.

The great secret, of course, is that naming your hero is naming the blueprint for your own life.

For me, the lodestone of that blueprint is written in the life of my father: Richard William Atwater, Jr.

He grew from deep, stubborn roots. The son of Dick and Dora Atwater — a Marine-turned-police officer and a farm girl who left behind the dust-choked hopes of Nebraska at the tender age of twelve for the uncertain promise of California — my dad was the middle child, framed by sisters Becky and Marsha.

From an early age, he showed a fierce concentration, studying football on television as though decoding a secret language. On the field, he made up for size with precision — a "radar tackler" they called him in the local papers, darting sideline to sideline with uncanny instinct. When Claremont McKenna College offered him a running back spot, he turned it down. Instead, he picked up a hammer and earned his way through Long Beach Community College, repairing bombs bound for Vietnam — a grim task he never wanted his sons to repeat.

A scholarship brought him to Stanford, where he began in football but stayed for something even harder: geology, the ancient study of time and endurance written in stone.

He has lived that geology ever since. Quiet strength. Patience worn smooth by pressure. A river of resolve cutting through the canyon walls of circumstance.

Before I ever knew him as Richard or the football legend or a titan of the water industry — I called him something older, something closer.

I called him Dad.

Stone and Stream: A lineage in motion

Chapter One: Before I Can Say I Am, I Was

Before I can say I am, I was.

Long before my first breath stirred the air,
Before I walked the dust of this wide land,
There stood a man called Dick — tough as the Marines' creed,
Eyes sharp as sirens on the Long Beach shore.

He had been a force in his own right — a football man,
Forged in the rough games of the Corps,
Carrying the ball and crashing the line for the Marines,
Even striding for a time onto the fields of the National Football League,
Where the stakes were high, but the bonds of brotherhood were higher still.

He found Dora, bright with dusted dreams,
Her hands still stained with Nebraska’s vanishing fields,
Her heart packed with hope in the back of a farm truck,
Rolling westward to a California promised but not yet built.

Together, they stitched a home from hard mornings and long shifts,
From apple pies that could make winter yield to summer,
From duty, and quiet, and the old belief that you stay —
Even when the storm rattles the windows, you stay.

Into that steady house came Richard, their middle flame,
A boy with quick feet and a quicker mind,
Who watched football like a soldier studies battle maps,
Who ran not for glory, but for perfection —
Every angle calculated, every tackle earned.

He wore the jersey at Millikan High with pride,
A linebacker too small by measurement,
But too swift, too smart, too sure to be denied.
He led his team to the state championship,
The kind of player the papers called a “radar tackler,”
Sideline to sideline, heart to heart, never missing his mark.

Claremont McKenna saw him and made their offer —
Come, they said, play running back and linebacker,
Two positions for one man, if he had the will.
But Richard, true to his blood and bone,
Chose the harder road.

He stayed. He worked.
He picked up a hammer and earned his way through Long Beach Community College,
Mending the bombs that others would drop in a faraway jungle,
A grim trade he endured so that his own sons might never have to.

And when the time was right, the gates of Stanford opened.
He wore their red and white, battling on the field once more,
Before, once again, walking away —
Turning from the clamor of crowds to the quieter discipline of geology,
Where stone whispers secrets to those patient enough to listen.

Before I ever knew him,
Before he carried me on his shoulders across the sands of Catalina,
Before he taught me how to catch a football or a falling hope —
He was already a story,
Written in the calloused palms of his ancestors,
In the laughter of his sisters,
In the apple-sweet air of a thousand homemade Saturdays,
In the bones of old games won and walked away from,
In the quiet choice to build a life stone by stone.

Before I can say I am,
I was his son.

And he —
He was already everything.

(More to come...)