59. Fathers and Daughters
Whit and Connie's special connection.
By David Hilder | October 21, 2023
Whit and Connie's special connection.
By David Hilder | October 21, 2023
As fans we love speculating about Odyssey relationships. Eugene and Katrina. Wooton and Penny. Buck and Jules. Jason and Tasha. Jason and Monica. Jason and Connie. Jason and Jillian. (I guess Jason’s a popular guy.) But Connie’s relationship status is by far the most hotly debated topic among us Adventures in Odyssey fans. And it’s a conversation that will continue until, well, until the writers change their minds.
Why do we love talking about this so much? Maybe it’s because Connie holds a special place in our hearts. Connie Kendall is the most down-to-earth, relatable character on the show. She’s not heading up archaeological digs or conducting world-changing research. She serves ice cream. But more than that, she’s making connections with the good people of Odyssey, and with all of us listeners too. Very often Connie stands in our place, reacting to changes in the town of Odyssey in the way we in the audience would react.
You’ve got to love Connie. And apparently everybody else does too—ie. Jimmy Barclay, Jeff Lewis, Robert Mitchell, Nick Grant, and even Judah from Back to Bethlehem (Album 10). And let’s not forget Bobby from Connie Comes to Town (Album 1). He was willing to go all the way to California for Connie. Pretty romantic.
In all seriousness though, I don’t have strong feelings on Connie’s love life. (Though I love seeing the fans who are passionate about it!) I think Connie’s just waiting for the right guy to come along. When it happens, I’ll be very happy for her.
But romance isn’t the only important relationship in Connie’s life. One of Connie’s most significant relationships, which I think sits at the heart of the entire show, is the father-daughter relationship between Whit and Connie.
Ever since Connie’s first episode, Mr. Whittaker has taken on a fatherly role towards Connie, watching out for her, getting her a job at Whit’s End, and worrying about her travelling alone to California. He’s been there to protect, challenge, and comfort her. He’s encouraged her to grow as a person, and shown her love and understanding like no one else besides her own mother and grandmother.
Whit’s protective instinct towards Connie has to come from somewhere. It’s interesting to think that both Connie and Whit have had bad experiences in their prior father-daughter relationships. They’re both wounded people. We know of course that Connie was deeply hurt by her father’s departure and her parents’ divorce. The occasional communication they do have is strained. Connie never knows what to get her dad for Christmas because she doesn’t know what he likes. She doesn’t know him. And her father Bill can’t be bothered to acknowledge special occasions in Connie’s life until months later. It seems like her dad is just too busy to have his daughter in his life.
Mr. Whittaker himself doesn’t have the best track record with his own daughter, though he’s a thousand times better than Bill. Through a series of misunderstandings, miscommunications, and missed opportunities, Whit and his daughter Jana grew apart in Jana’s growing-up years. They don’t seem to understand each other. Even when they are getting along, there’s still tension under the surface. They’ve taken steps to address these challenges, but they’re still not as close as they could be.
And in addition to Jana, there’s Clara. For us Odyssey fans, that name is filled with emotion. Though she only appears in one episode, Clara stands out as a significant person in Whit’s life. He loved her like a daughter. He was going to adopt her, to give her a father and a home when she had neither. But he couldn’t. And that wounded him deeply. So deeply that he cut his best friend Jack out of his life. It wasn’t until years later that they reconciled. To Whit, losing Clara is like losing a daughter. But just a few years later, by God’s grace, Connie Kendall steps through his shop door.
We know the story. Whit hires Connie on the spot, without her even asking for a job. In contrast, Buck’s multi-step job application process in Album 53 is much more rigorous and includes an aptitude test. Connie gets in easy by comparison. Suspiciously easy. I try not to speculate without evidence too often, but I like to imagine that when Whit first saw Connie, he thought of Clara, the daughter he couldn’t have.
Likewise, Connie has responded to Whit as a daughter would. In Stormy Weather (Album 2) she realizes for perhaps the first time just how much she cares for Mr. Whittaker, and how much she’s concerned for his safety. As Whit is lying there with an injured leg, cut by broken glass, Connie feels herself overwhelmed with emotion. She realizes she doesn’t want to lose Whit. Without Whit in her life, the world would be a much scarier place. And in the midst of that desperate situation, it’s Whit who turns to comfort Connie with his steady, calm presence. Just like a good father would.
Whit’s role as a father for Connie extends to many areas of her life. Her faith, for example. As the person who leads Connie to Christ, Whit is her spiritual father. He’s the one who introduces her to the faith, draws her to it through his Christian witness, and faithfully prays for her every step of the way. When Connie leaves for California in Album 3, she notices there’s a Whit-shaped hole in her life. Whit’s presence and his faith have so affected her that she suddenly feels more at home in Odyssey than California. She chooses faith over lack of faith, Odyssey over California, and Whit over Bill.
Connie’s first episode also has Whit exercising a kind of fatherly discipline over Connie, as Whit warns her about the influence she has over little Bobby, and about her desire to leave town without telling her mother. Similarly, Whit is concerned in a fatherly way when he finds out Connie is dating Jeff in First Love (Album 8). I wouldn’t be surprised if Whit, with all his connections in the NSA, ran a full background check on Jeff as soon as he heard about him. In Emotional Baggage (Album 10), Whit calls out Connie’s anger and bitterness, pointing out her mistakes while at the same time showing her love and compassion. There are few people in Connie’s life from whom she would accept such hard truths.
Connie trusts Whit. She trusts his judgment and that he wants what’s best for her. But that trust has been hard-won. Connie breaks Whit’s trust in A Bite of Applesauce (Album 5), and that affects both of them deeply. You can hear the heartbreak in Whit’s voice when he fires Connie and Eugene. And while Whit reconciles with Eugene relatively quickly, with Connie it takes more effort to mend the relationship.
Whit’s conversations with Connie post-firing are rather awkward. Neither of them seems to know what to say to each other. When Tom wonders why Whit doesn’t just offer Connie her job back, Whit says she needs to ask for it.
Besides needing to know that Connie has learned her lesson, it seems Whit wants something more. He needs to know if Connie wants to be back, working with him to repair their damaged relationship. He needs to know if she’s willing to try again.
Of course, Whit doesn’t wait for Connie to ask. He seems so overcome by his feelings, so excited that Connie has learned her lesson, that he just opens up his arms and welcomes her back.
But things are different when The One About Trust (Album 29) comes along. In this episode Whit and Connie’s relationship faces its greatest challenge. This time Connie doesn’t get fired. Connie quits. This time Whit doesn’t lose trust in Connie. She loses trust in him.
A daughter losing trust in a father is an awful thing. It’s what happens between Connie and Bill Kendall. It’s what happens between Whit and Jana. For Connie, I can only imagine how alone she must have felt at that moment. She believes that the man she’s loved for so long, the father who would always be there for her, isn’t the man she thought he was. This is the moment where their relationship could have come to an end.
And this is where the Odyssey writers show their skill. In the darkest time, shines the greatest light. Though this is a time of pain and confusion for Whit and Connie, it also reveals one of the greatest acts of fatherly love that Whit ever did for Connie. As Tom explains, this young Californian teenager from a single-parent home “soon became a favorite” of Whit’s. In fact, Whit had “such affection” for her that he set up a college trust fund in her name, in order to prepare for her future. Whit does what Bill Kendall, who seems to have plenty of wealth, should have done. Whit believes that Connie is going to make it. She has a bright future ahead of her, a life path that Whit himself helped kickstart. As Whit tells her in The One About Trust, “I’ve always believed in you, Connie.”
Connie comes back to work at Whit’s End once again, but this time it’s different. This time, she asks. She admits she wants to be there, to have her job back, to be back by Mr. Whittaker’s side.
Mr. Whittaker has been looking out for Connie ever since her arrival, when he felt that pang of concern about Connie wanting to take a bus to California all by herself. When Whit and Connie finally catch up with each other in Home, Sweet Home (Album 28), Whit says, “Where have you been, little girl?” She really is his little girl, and always will be. Even so, Connie has grown so much over the years. We like to think that Connie has stayed the same for the 35 years the show has been on the air, but that’s not true. Connie is no longer the rebellious teenager she once was. Though captive to her own curiosity in the past, in Home Again (Album 56) Connie proves herself to have matured enough not to invade Jason’s privacy. Under Whit’s positive influence, Connie has come into her own. Mr. Whittaker will always be a father figure to Connie, but I wonder if Connie is ready to move on to the next change in her life. Which leads us back to that most controversial of Odyssian inquiries: Should Connie Kendall get married?
I said I didn’t have a strong opinion on Connie’s love life. What I meant was, I don’t have a specific character in mind who I think should be with Connie. But I do have an opinion. I think, when the right guy comes into Connie’s life, when it’s a man who loves God and loves Connie for who she is (and doesn’t want to move to Budapest), and when they’re both at a place where they’re ready (as ready as they can be) to enter a marriage relationship, then yes, Connie should get married.
It’s true; I am in the pro-marriage camp. Why? A number of reasons actually, one reason being that Connie has grown so much as a person, and I could see her continuing to grow as the wife of a very lucky man. And I’ll mention just one other reason for now, and it’s this: If Connie gets married, then Mr. Whittaker can finally walk her down the aisle. And then, remembering all the good times and the hard times and everything in between, Whit can look at Connie with tear-filled eyes and a warm smile, and give away his little girl.
The father-daughter relationship that Whit and Connie have is unparalleled on Adventures in Odyssey. It is the longest-running relationship on the show and is central to Odyssey. That’s not to say there aren’t other important relationships. But this one is the constant that unifies the show together, from Album 1 to Album 75. Connie needed a father, and Whit needed to be a father. Though Whit and Connie are imperfect people, each with an imperfect past, I think we can all agree that they’re perfect together.
Why do we love talking about this so much? Maybe it’s because Connie holds a special place in our hearts. Connie Kendall is the most down-to-earth, relatable character on the show. She’s not heading up archaeological digs or conducting world-changing research. She serves ice cream. But more than that, she’s making connections with the good people of Odyssey, and with all of us listeners too. Very often Connie stands in our place, reacting to changes in the town of Odyssey in the way we in the audience would react.
You’ve got to love Connie. And apparently everybody else does too—ie. Jimmy Barclay, Jeff Lewis, Robert Mitchell, Nick Grant, and even Judah from Back to Bethlehem (Album 10). And let’s not forget Bobby from Connie Comes to Town (Album 1). He was willing to go all the way to California for Connie. Pretty romantic.
In all seriousness though, I don’t have strong feelings on Connie’s love life. (Though I love seeing the fans who are passionate about it!) I think Connie’s just waiting for the right guy to come along. When it happens, I’ll be very happy for her.
But romance isn’t the only important relationship in Connie’s life. One of Connie’s most significant relationships, which I think sits at the heart of the entire show, is the father-daughter relationship between Whit and Connie.
Ever since Connie’s first episode, Mr. Whittaker has taken on a fatherly role towards Connie, watching out for her, getting her a job at Whit’s End, and worrying about her travelling alone to California. He’s been there to protect, challenge, and comfort her. He’s encouraged her to grow as a person, and shown her love and understanding like no one else besides her own mother and grandmother.
Whit’s protective instinct towards Connie has to come from somewhere. It’s interesting to think that both Connie and Whit have had bad experiences in their prior father-daughter relationships. They’re both wounded people. We know of course that Connie was deeply hurt by her father’s departure and her parents’ divorce. The occasional communication they do have is strained. Connie never knows what to get her dad for Christmas because she doesn’t know what he likes. She doesn’t know him. And her father Bill can’t be bothered to acknowledge special occasions in Connie’s life until months later. It seems like her dad is just too busy to have his daughter in his life.
Mr. Whittaker himself doesn’t have the best track record with his own daughter, though he’s a thousand times better than Bill. Through a series of misunderstandings, miscommunications, and missed opportunities, Whit and his daughter Jana grew apart in Jana’s growing-up years. They don’t seem to understand each other. Even when they are getting along, there’s still tension under the surface. They’ve taken steps to address these challenges, but they’re still not as close as they could be.
And in addition to Jana, there’s Clara. For us Odyssey fans, that name is filled with emotion. Though she only appears in one episode, Clara stands out as a significant person in Whit’s life. He loved her like a daughter. He was going to adopt her, to give her a father and a home when she had neither. But he couldn’t. And that wounded him deeply. So deeply that he cut his best friend Jack out of his life. It wasn’t until years later that they reconciled. To Whit, losing Clara is like losing a daughter. But just a few years later, by God’s grace, Connie Kendall steps through his shop door.
We know the story. Whit hires Connie on the spot, without her even asking for a job. In contrast, Buck’s multi-step job application process in Album 53 is much more rigorous and includes an aptitude test. Connie gets in easy by comparison. Suspiciously easy. I try not to speculate without evidence too often, but I like to imagine that when Whit first saw Connie, he thought of Clara, the daughter he couldn’t have.
Likewise, Connie has responded to Whit as a daughter would. In Stormy Weather (Album 2) she realizes for perhaps the first time just how much she cares for Mr. Whittaker, and how much she’s concerned for his safety. As Whit is lying there with an injured leg, cut by broken glass, Connie feels herself overwhelmed with emotion. She realizes she doesn’t want to lose Whit. Without Whit in her life, the world would be a much scarier place. And in the midst of that desperate situation, it’s Whit who turns to comfort Connie with his steady, calm presence. Just like a good father would.
Whit’s role as a father for Connie extends to many areas of her life. Her faith, for example. As the person who leads Connie to Christ, Whit is her spiritual father. He’s the one who introduces her to the faith, draws her to it through his Christian witness, and faithfully prays for her every step of the way. When Connie leaves for California in Album 3, she notices there’s a Whit-shaped hole in her life. Whit’s presence and his faith have so affected her that she suddenly feels more at home in Odyssey than California. She chooses faith over lack of faith, Odyssey over California, and Whit over Bill.
Connie’s first episode also has Whit exercising a kind of fatherly discipline over Connie, as Whit warns her about the influence she has over little Bobby, and about her desire to leave town without telling her mother. Similarly, Whit is concerned in a fatherly way when he finds out Connie is dating Jeff in First Love (Album 8). I wouldn’t be surprised if Whit, with all his connections in the NSA, ran a full background check on Jeff as soon as he heard about him. In Emotional Baggage (Album 10), Whit calls out Connie’s anger and bitterness, pointing out her mistakes while at the same time showing her love and compassion. There are few people in Connie’s life from whom she would accept such hard truths.
Connie trusts Whit. She trusts his judgment and that he wants what’s best for her. But that trust has been hard-won. Connie breaks Whit’s trust in A Bite of Applesauce (Album 5), and that affects both of them deeply. You can hear the heartbreak in Whit’s voice when he fires Connie and Eugene. And while Whit reconciles with Eugene relatively quickly, with Connie it takes more effort to mend the relationship.
Whit’s conversations with Connie post-firing are rather awkward. Neither of them seems to know what to say to each other. When Tom wonders why Whit doesn’t just offer Connie her job back, Whit says she needs to ask for it.
Besides needing to know that Connie has learned her lesson, it seems Whit wants something more. He needs to know if Connie wants to be back, working with him to repair their damaged relationship. He needs to know if she’s willing to try again.
Of course, Whit doesn’t wait for Connie to ask. He seems so overcome by his feelings, so excited that Connie has learned her lesson, that he just opens up his arms and welcomes her back.
But things are different when The One About Trust (Album 29) comes along. In this episode Whit and Connie’s relationship faces its greatest challenge. This time Connie doesn’t get fired. Connie quits. This time Whit doesn’t lose trust in Connie. She loses trust in him.
A daughter losing trust in a father is an awful thing. It’s what happens between Connie and Bill Kendall. It’s what happens between Whit and Jana. For Connie, I can only imagine how alone she must have felt at that moment. She believes that the man she’s loved for so long, the father who would always be there for her, isn’t the man she thought he was. This is the moment where their relationship could have come to an end.
And this is where the Odyssey writers show their skill. In the darkest time, shines the greatest light. Though this is a time of pain and confusion for Whit and Connie, it also reveals one of the greatest acts of fatherly love that Whit ever did for Connie. As Tom explains, this young Californian teenager from a single-parent home “soon became a favorite” of Whit’s. In fact, Whit had “such affection” for her that he set up a college trust fund in her name, in order to prepare for her future. Whit does what Bill Kendall, who seems to have plenty of wealth, should have done. Whit believes that Connie is going to make it. She has a bright future ahead of her, a life path that Whit himself helped kickstart. As Whit tells her in The One About Trust, “I’ve always believed in you, Connie.”
Connie comes back to work at Whit’s End once again, but this time it’s different. This time, she asks. She admits she wants to be there, to have her job back, to be back by Mr. Whittaker’s side.
Mr. Whittaker has been looking out for Connie ever since her arrival, when he felt that pang of concern about Connie wanting to take a bus to California all by herself. When Whit and Connie finally catch up with each other in Home, Sweet Home (Album 28), Whit says, “Where have you been, little girl?” She really is his little girl, and always will be. Even so, Connie has grown so much over the years. We like to think that Connie has stayed the same for the 35 years the show has been on the air, but that’s not true. Connie is no longer the rebellious teenager she once was. Though captive to her own curiosity in the past, in Home Again (Album 56) Connie proves herself to have matured enough not to invade Jason’s privacy. Under Whit’s positive influence, Connie has come into her own. Mr. Whittaker will always be a father figure to Connie, but I wonder if Connie is ready to move on to the next change in her life. Which leads us back to that most controversial of Odyssian inquiries: Should Connie Kendall get married?
I said I didn’t have a strong opinion on Connie’s love life. What I meant was, I don’t have a specific character in mind who I think should be with Connie. But I do have an opinion. I think, when the right guy comes into Connie’s life, when it’s a man who loves God and loves Connie for who she is (and doesn’t want to move to Budapest), and when they’re both at a place where they’re ready (as ready as they can be) to enter a marriage relationship, then yes, Connie should get married.
It’s true; I am in the pro-marriage camp. Why? A number of reasons actually, one reason being that Connie has grown so much as a person, and I could see her continuing to grow as the wife of a very lucky man. And I’ll mention just one other reason for now, and it’s this: If Connie gets married, then Mr. Whittaker can finally walk her down the aisle. And then, remembering all the good times and the hard times and everything in between, Whit can look at Connie with tear-filled eyes and a warm smile, and give away his little girl.
The father-daughter relationship that Whit and Connie have is unparalleled on Adventures in Odyssey. It is the longest-running relationship on the show and is central to Odyssey. That’s not to say there aren’t other important relationships. But this one is the constant that unifies the show together, from Album 1 to Album 75. Connie needed a father, and Whit needed to be a father. Though Whit and Connie are imperfect people, each with an imperfect past, I think we can all agree that they’re perfect together.
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