It brought about friendships that never would’ve formed otherwise, leadership roles I never would’ve accepted. Adventures in Odyssey helped me keep my head above water in times of deep depression. I might not have changed my major to media communication or worked in radio or spent three months in China or done a whole host of other things. I wouldn’t go by “Lizzie” now if it weren’t for the show, and I might not be living in Colorado. Life seems a simpler place when you know what you love and you have ways of expressing that love. I was never on fire for Jesus, not really, but I was on fire for Adventures in Odyssey. This was the zenith of my love for the show, and my nostalgia for that time of my life is matched only by my nostalgia for the show itself. We made video reenactments and went on a road trip to Colorado and even brought one of the main actors to our Indiana campus to speak in chapel. In 2009, I spent my summer interning for Odyssey and administrating the above-mentioned message board, and then returned to college and promptly started a club for fellow fans. I met the actors, the writers, and fellow fans, many of whom I’m still in touch with.

In 2008, my first visit to Colorado for the 20th anniversary live show became one of the best weekends of my life. I have met many of the actors as an adult, but I was too late for some of them. These actors and many others have or had extensive careers, spanning decades, and it still chokes me up how many of these people have passed away since I first “visited” Odyssey. The show’s main actors include (or have included) Hal Smith from the Andy Griffith Show, who also lent his voice to Beauty and the Beast and An American Tale Alan Young, best known as Wilbur in Mister Ed and as Disney’s Scrooge McDuck Will Ryan, featured on The Adventures of Teddy Ruxpin Katie Leigh of Totally Spies Chris Anthony, the former voice of Barbie and Jess Harnell with his hundreds of film credits, including Wakko Warner in Animaniacs. But I’m getting ahead of myself.įrom its earliest days, Adventures in Odyssey has employed some of the best and most versatile voice actors in the business. But once upon a time, it was just Odyssey tapes, Odyssey at 4:30 on the radio, Odyssey before bed and on car rides, and, later, Odyssey on message boards and at events. Lately, it’s gotten harder to separate the AIO from the FOTF. A college roommate was vocal about her dislike for Focus on the Family, but made an exception for AIO.Įven when I was jumping at the chance to be an intern for my beloved radio drama, back in the day when I believed what everyone I knew growing up believed, I was still taken aback by the interview question asking “what my opinions were on the five major issues most important to Focus on the Family.” I bumbled through the answers I knew they expected of me, without much thought as to whether they were really my answers. I do know that I’m not the only one who has been able to partition the two, approving the one and rejecting or ignoring the other. But that’s another topic for another time. Jesus, however, wasn’t always entangled in Christianity, especially not Christianity as we know it today. Odyssey was birthed from Focus on the Family and, like it or not, is a product of its parent organization. “Whit’s Flop,” that very first episode, aired one year and four days before I was born, and all my life the show and I have been moving in tandem toward our own milestones.Ĭan I say I like Odyssey but not Focus on the Family, as I would say I like Jesus but not Christianity? The story, set in the small, Midwestern town of Odyssey, is bookended by a skit with the show’s host, Chris, who tells a story about Abraham Lincoln to reinforce the theme. On this day in 1987, a 25-minute episode aired about a boy named Davey who feels like a failure until kindly shop owner John Avery Whittaker (“Whit”) helps him realize his worth as they invent something that goes wrong before it goes right. Adventures in Odyssey ( AIO or Odyssey for short), Focus on the Family’s seminal children’s radio drama, turns 30 this year – today, in fact.

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