The Curse Of The Control Freak

The Curse of the Control Freak

He was as famous for his craziness as for his paintings that sold for as much as $10,000 in the 1940s. He saw himself as the last of the bohemians: an avant-garde artist in a world of bongos, beards, and beatniks. Hollywood celebrities were drawn to his hillside ranch for wild parties that he hosted in a toga worn over red long underwear. As they wandered his forty-eight-acre junkyard, they marveled at a mishmash of sculptures created out of salvaged wood, rusted bedsprings, and other recycled junk. When the artist stripped naked to show off his body covered with tattoo art, it was the signal for a night of free love, drugs, and alcohol to begin. J. H. Zorthian was a hippie years before the Age of Aquarius.

Most of his Hollywood celebrity guests could not have guessed that there was a time when this crazy Armenian was a conventional mural artist. Back then he lived in a Pasadena neighborhood with an heiress wife and three children. One morning he read a newspaper account about a child who had been run over by a car. Fearing that his own children might suffer a similar fate, he began plotting how he could guarantee his kids’ safety in an accident-prone world.

Zorthian’s paranoia drove him to sell his home on the streets of Pasadena and purchase a twelve-acre plot in the Altadena Hills at the end of a winding, deserted road. At each turn, the artist posted a sign: “Children at Play.” He constructed a fenced-in play area that no automobile could approach. Then he built a house with every safety design possible. Finally, he added a garage. Only one car was allowed to drive up to it, and that was Zorthian’s.

After the ranch house was finished, he walked the property in deep thought, considering what other dangers might threaten his children. His last project to tackle was the garage. What if he backed out and accidentally ran over one of the children? Zorthian quickly sketched plans for a protected turnaround, but before the concrete could be poured, heavy rains came. It would have been finished by that weekend if it hadn’t rained. Instead, when Zorthian had to back out of the garage on Sunday, his toddler son, Tiran, ran into the path of the car and was killed.

Friends said that J. H. Zorthian never recovered from that tragedy. It caused him to plunge into a free-flowing bohemian lifestyle. Could it be that there’s a happy medium between the two extremes of control freak and irresponsible? The more you reflect on Zorthian’s story, the more this makes sense:

Do the best you can. Then relax and leave the results to God.

We can make our own plans, but the LORD gives the right answer. People may be pure in their own eyes, but the LORD examines their motives. Commit your actions to the LORD, and your plans will succeed.

Proverbs 16:1-3