Martie Malone

Martie Malone is the patriarch of the Malone clan, a widower who eventually marries Adair, an artist.

The following is taken from the Image Cascade Publishing description of Martie:

A man of strong values, and a faith in the beliefs and integrity of his children. Son Johnny referred to him as our on-again off-again gone-again father. The head of the household was often absent due to his business as the Editor of the Denver Call. Martie Malone led the family in making the Malone home open to any and all who were in need of assistance or encouragement. "It was more usual than not for the telephone to ring . . . and for Martie Malone to say, 'Put another plate on' I'm bringing someone home.' "

"Her father was just an older and more weathered edition of Johnny. He was tall and had the same dark eyes. Only his were bordered by a network of lines. Beany remembered that, as a child, she had thought they resembled the lines for playing ticktacktoe. His hair, like Johnny's, was thick and unruly, and was peppered with gray at the temples."

"Martie Malone had been a court reporter as well as a sports writer before he became city editor of Denver's afternoon paper, where he now wrote the editorials which a hundred and seventy thousand subscribers discussed over dinner tables and in street cars, and which school children gave reports on in their Current Events classes."

Mr. Malone's views on raising children were stated in the following passage of Meet the Malones, "Father looked at them all, then at Ander and at old Emerson Worth, and he smiled with appealing helplessness. 'It's times like these that are tough on parents,' he said. 'I ache to give Mary Fred the money for her horse, and get Johnny out of his mess and say, 'Beany, hop to it and get what you need.' It'd give me the same pleasure it gives a hen to spread her wings over her chicks. But I can't manage it, and my reason tells me it's a blessing I can't. Their mother and I believed that they'd have no chance of growing if they were always protected.'"

" . . . Martie Malone, always met discouragement and disappointment smilingly, almost jovially. And that victory always sobered him. As though the fighter in him was so braced for losing that he found triumph unsettling."