At first I was more than puzzled that Dr. Stephan Pearson was calling on me to spend his last days with him, but I soon realized that under the circumstances I was the only person to whom he could turn. He needed someone who could understand and represent fairly his relationship with my cousin, Cecilia Endsrud, and who could interconnect with some accuracy the events of the subsequent course of his life. I see all this now, but when I received from him the following telegram, I was thoroughly baffled as to what the chairman of the Department of Physics at my alma mater, Christiania College, wanted with me at a time like this:
APRIL 27, 1960
DEAR PAUL
PLEASE COME TO MY HOME IN ST MARK AS SOON AS POSSIBLE STOP I NEED YOU VERY MUCH STOP I BELIEVE I AM RIGHT IN ASKING YOU TO DROP EVERYTHING AND COME STOP I SHALL PROBABLY HAVE DIED BY THIS TIME NEXT WEEK STOP BY COMING YOU WILL PREVENT THE ONLY TRUE GOOD IN ME FROM DYING WITH ME STOP
STEVE
Needless to say, I was at his side the following morning.
Over the next few days he used his very last reserves of strength to pour out to me the story he felt so compelled to tell. I hung on every word he uttered and took copious notes. It helped that I was already acquainted with its broad outline and in certain places also with many of its details. Verbatim accounts, of course, have had to be reconstructed, but many of them I jotted down while still in the fever of the spirit in which Steve related them. Thanks to his phenomenal memory, I am sure that many conversations appear here substantially as they occurred.
I am not a professional author, yet I do not present this work with apologies. For I am certain that its own inherent strengths will more than compensate for the literary shortcomings of the one who recorded it.
Stephan Pearson’s pilgrimage through life, though unique in so many ways, can be seen in other ways as a template for the still unfolding pilgrimage of modern Western society. In that sense it touches almost every one of us. The big question mark is whether our society, before it is too late, is capable of coming to terms with what it took him a lifetime to learn. Only God knows.