My Camelot, by Ed Chasteen

WILLIAM JEWELL COLLEGE My Camelot
by Ed Chasteen
William Jewell College My Camelot
2005 by Ed Chasteen
WILLIAM JEWELL COLLEGE

Office of the President Those of us who are fortunate enough to work at William Jewell College know that it is a magical place. And no one knows that better than Ed Chasteen, professor emeritus of sociology and anthropology. As you will read in the pages that follow, Ed came to Jewell in the summer of 1965. He had planned to stay only a year or two. But the college wove its spell around Ed and his family, and a year or two quickly turned into 30. Ed retired from Jewell in 1995, but he certainly did not slow his pace. Hes a familiar sight on the streets of Liberty, pedaling his trusty 21-speed rain or shine, summer or winter. He is a road warrior on a mission to spread the gospel according to Chasteena message of tolerance, hope and affirmation of the human spirit. Ed has devoted much of his adult life to William Jewell, and we are grateful for the positive impact he has had on our college and its students. He is remembered fondly by many who have joined him in his quest for greater understanding among people of different backgrounds and beliefs. It is a just and noble cause, and one that Ed works tirelessly to pursue. We as individuals and as a college community salute him in his continuing efforts to make the world a better and safer place for all people. David L. Sallee President William Jewell College
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JEWELL C OLLEGE My Camelot
WILLIAM JEWELL COLLEGE

My Camelot
by Ed Chasteen
The Reverend Dr. Gordon Clinard . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 Preface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 Journey to Jewell . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 The College and the Prison. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 Bruce Thomson . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 Going Hungry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
Martin Luther King, Jr. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 The Black Panthers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 The Human Family Reunion Begins . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 Making My Mark . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22 Overcoming Panic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 Harlaxton . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36 A Student I Cant Forget . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83 Bicycle as Medicine . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86 Ride Your Bike Across America . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92 Leaving Orlando . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101 Across Missouri . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102 Celebration on the Quad . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117 Fourth of July Pass . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 122 Mickey Mouse . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124 HateBusters to the Rescue . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 130 Mission to Mexico . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 136 A Cross Burning in Liberty . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 154 Mission to Mali . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158 HateBusters Visit Topeka . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 176
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HateBusters to Hemet. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181 Leaving Jewell . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 184 Thomas Jefferson Asks about Democracy. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 187 HateBusters Mission to Florida . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 198 Invitation from the White House 1997 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 201 If It Doesnt Come . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 203 HateBusters Mission to Washington . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 204 HateBusters Washington Team . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 207 The White House Hate Crimes Conference . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 208 September 11, 2001 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 212
Feeding Station at Ground Zero . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213 The Gary Phelps Human Family Reunion 2000 . . . . . . . . 221 Way to Go, Gary. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 223 A Hole in My Heart . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 234 No More Noble Thing Could We Do . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 225 In Praise of Mel Carnahan 2002 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 227 High Noon Showdown with Midnight Hate. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 229 Dumb Things and a Good Life . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 232 Visiting Area Neighbors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 233 Dr. Ali Answers Our Questions. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 235 Spring Time for the Spirit. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 237 They Come to Union . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 240 Dr. Chasteen Again at Jewell . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 245 A Tribute To Earl Whaley . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 247 Anton Jacobs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 248 The Greater Liberty Bicycle Ride. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 249 Free at Last . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 252 Encore! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 257
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My Bookies Dave Biscari and Sharon Hanson are my bookies. But the only betting is that folks will want to read this book. William Jewell College My Camelot. Thats the title. Its my story of all the wondrous things my students and I did on and off that hilltop campus. For 30 years I was there most every day; for the last 10, now and then. Next to the washing machine in my basement sits the computer. With two fingers over many months, in fits and starts, cut and paste, I put on paper the words to make a book. Several hundred pages. Some months back began my now and then trek by bike to Biscari Brothers Bicycles. With those pages in my panniers. In a big brown envelope with SHARON HANSON scrawled large across the front. I hand the package to Dave, then return home to send Sharon an email telling her to pick it up. When she puts my words in book form, with page numbers and a table of contents, she takes it back to Dave and emails me. After several repetitions of this basic procedure, we have the book. A gift to the college it will be. For a contribution of $100.00 (or more) to William Jewell College, I will send the contributor by email an electronic copy of the book, which can be read on line or downloaded and printed. (Visit www.hatebusters.com to learn how to make contributions to William Jewell and get the book.) For those who want an old fashioned book to hold in your hands and turn pages, you can send your contribution to the college and an additional $50.00 to Amity Books, Box 442, Liberty, MO 64069. Books will be printed on request. Any funds not spent to produce and mail books will be given to William Jewell College. If all of this comes to pass as I picture it in my dreams, I will owe an unpayable debt to my bookies, Dave and Sharon. They do all of this just because I asked them. I do this as a labor of love. So do they. I will not make a single penny. Neither will they. If many people read the book and the college makes lots of money, we all will have been paid in full.
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The Reverend Dr. Gordon Clinard When the Reverend Dr. Gordon Clinard stood to preach there came into the room a glorious ambiance that breathed his quiet words into the very flesh and blood of those biblical persons and events he described and from which he drew life-changing lessons. So powerful was his hold on my boyhood imagination in the 1950s that I could picture everything he said as infinitely more real than the black and white pictures that flickered into my life on the television sets just beginning to infiltrate our town. His Sunday morning and evening sermons were never to be missed and never to be forgotten. On a Sunday morning when I was 16, I walked down the aisle when Brother Clinard had finished his sermon. I took his hand and told him I was surrendering to preach. I want to be just like you. I didnt say these words. But I wish I had. Now hes gone. And I cant. As it turned out, I was to follow Dr. Clinard in his second career rather than his first. I had not been the only one mesmerized by his preaching. Seminaries came calling to lure him away. Come and teach preachers-to-be your method and your message, they said. He felt the call. But when our church burned one Sunday afternoon, he stayed for another year. When we were again physically a church, he went to Southwestern Baptist Seminary as Professor of Preaching. Then to Southern Baptist Seminary as Billy Graham Professor of Preaching. His big heart began to fail, and he returned to teach in Texas in a less stressful place. One day on his way home from campus to his wife, Christine, a drunken driver crashed into his car, and Brother Clinard was called to his eternal home. Since that Sunday morning when I was 14 and heard his sermon calling me to love all people, I have tried in every way I could think of to do exactly that. The glimpses of heaven that came to me as a boy listening to him preach cause me to believe that from his new home beyond this life, Brother Clinard sees me and understands that he lives to this day in my heart, with his voice in my memory directing all that I do. If, when I have gone to join Brother Clinard, my words and deeds should live in the hearts and minds of some of my students as his have in mine, then shall both of us have entered that stream of earthly immortality flowing from the biblical record through all those people and places that inspire and encourage our tendency to love and cherish one another.
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Preface
I hadnt planned to stay so long. A year or two and I would take a teaching job back in Texas. But my first week at William Jewell, Dr. Hester invited me over to his house to play Rook. Dr. Thomson and Dr. Pugh completed the foursome. During a break between games, Dr. Hester took me aside. In the fatherly fashion I came to love, he said, You need to find a place and put down your roots. You dont have to move to make your mark. As a student at a Texas college I had studied Dr. Hesters books on the Bible, and when I discovered he was at William Jewell, I thought I was in heaven. When I got home that night from his house, I said to Bobbie: I met God. And he plays cards. A few years later I was offered a job at the very college in Texas where I had always said I wanted to teach. I thought of what Dr. Hester had said. And I told them no. Now and again over the next few years I would dream I had left Jewell, and I would wake up in a cold sweat. Thirty years I was to spend on that hilltop. I was at home in that place where ideas and ideals are valued, where great teachers and good students in tandem explore the frontiers and plumb the depths of knowledge and excellence, a place where we all dare to be the best and care the most. A heady environment for a young teacher fresh from grad school became as the years went by a stimulating and soul-satisfying commitment to learning and service of the highest order. Together as colleagues, teachers, students and administration created a place where morale soared to the skies as a sense of shared mission boldly undertaken and ably done caught us all up and lifted us beyond our fondest dreams of who we might be and what we might do. I came to love this place and these people. People would ask, What do you do? I would say. I dont work. I just do what I love to do. And they pay me for it. I could never quite believe my good fortune. I left the college in 1995 to take up full-time a mission that my students and I had launched in 1988. Hardly a day passes but what I think of the wondrous and wonderful people who blessed my life on that hilltop campus. If you, dear reader, surmise from my remarks that Jewell was, is and will be a rare and special place, if my words give it an air of Camelot, I am pleased. I can only wish for greater felicity with the written word so that I might show you even more fully what magic of mind, heart and soul routinely takes place at this jewel of infinite worth we are fortunate to find in our midst.
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Journey to Jewell Bobbie and I and our three small children were living from hand to mouth on my small salary. I was in my second year of teaching at an Oklahoma college. From my first day in first grade I had loved school, and from my first day of college teaching, I was again in love. But I would have to get a PhD to stay. So I got on an airplane one day in Oklahoma City and flew to Columbia, Missouri. It was the winter of 1963. I had never in my life flown on an airplane. I had made written application to the University of Missouri. That was all they required of me. I could just wait to see what came in the mail. I had no back up plan, however. If they turned me down, I had no future. So I took money we could not spare and bought a plane ticket. The five men on the committee were friendly. I thought our time together went well. When I was home a week their letter came. Your scores on standardized tests are not indicative of a high level of performance, and the admissions committee has regretfully denied your application for graduate study in our department. The letter said more, but I was too devastated to notice. I was crushed. They didnt want me. I would have written a nasty letter if I could have pulled myself together enough to do anything, but their rejection left me empty for days. I was 27 years old. Bobbie was 25. Our children were one, three and five. I had no future at the job I loved and no way to support my family. Almost two weeks passed before I could think clearly enough to respond. There was really no need to respond. They had made their decision. Nothing I could say would change their minds. I would have to apply elsewhere. And I had better be about it quickly, for the process was long and uncertain. But I couldnt leave their rejection of me as the last word between us. I wanted our closure to be of a positive nature; so finally I found the right words to address them. Gentlemen, in so far as my scores on standardized tests cause you to doubt my ability, I regret them. These scores, however, do not cause me to doubt myself. I know I can do the work. My only regret is that I will have to go elsewhere to study. I will never know what I could have learned from you, and you will never know what together we could have done. I mailed the letter and began to search other college catalogues. A week later came another letter from the University of Missouri. We have decided to reopen your application for admission. For the next 10 days I went to the mailbox in fear and trembling. The third letter said, The committee has decided to admit you on probation. I doubt that any house in America was more festive that night than that little
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white bungalow in Weatherford, Oklahoma, just a few blocks from Southwestern State College. If we were happy when the third letter came, we were ecstatic when the fourth one arrived. When you come to study with us this fall, we would like for you to teach a class as a graduate assistant. At the end of my first semester, Hobby came to me. I had taken Dr. Habensteins class in Social Theory. He was a wonderful teacher. I loved his class. I was in my basement grad student office one afternoon when he walked in. I would like for you to apply for this fellowship from Community Studies in Kansas City. It will support you for a year while you write your dissertation. A few weeks later Hobby took me to Kansas City to meet Warren Peterson, the man who would decide who got the fellowship. Hobby and Warren were friends from their graduate student days at the University of Chicago. Do me a favor and finish, Hobby said when he came a few days later to my office to tell me I had the fellowship. I learned later that several recent recipients were still working on their dissertations after several years. Hobby had been a member of the admissions committee. Less than a year had passed since they turned me down. Now he had gotten for me the biggest and most prestigious fellowship the department had to offer. I would have walked barefoot on broken glass for him. I was supposed to return to my Oklahoma college when I finished, but during my fellowship year in Kansas City I interviewed so many people and became so involved in local issues that I could not leave. My field of teaching was Sociology. I could go anywhere and teach the same books, but nowhere else would I know people and problems as I did in Kansas City. I had to stay. Bruce Thomson became Dean at William Jewell College early in 1965. His position in the Sociology Department was open. I went to see Bruce that spring. We took an immediate liking to one another, and after an hour together, he offered me his old job. Then he took me to meet Earl Whaley, my colleague in the department. That summer, Dr. Chasteen and his family moved to Liberty.
Brother Clinard seldom raised his voice when he preached. He rarely gestured with his hands. He was not flamboyant or dynamic. He had come about a year earlier to be pastor of First Baptist Church in Huntsville, Texas. I had sat in church every Sunday morning and every Sunday evening for months to hear him. I had seen him during the week out and about in our town. Without fail on every occasion he had moved
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me. He was elegant and eloquent and passionate and caring and loving and unassuming and powerful. On that Sunday morning in 1950 when I was 14 and Brother Clinard preached about loving all people I was taken near to heaven. From this day forward everyone in our town would love everybody. We would all be caught up in the heavenly vision of absolute love Brother Clinard had so quietly and beautifully pictured for us. As I walked up the aisle and toward the door to the street, I was seeing in my mind what it would be like on Monday morning when Huntsville went back to work and these several hundred parishioners put into practice what our pastor had just helped us to understand. In the doorway stood Mr. Singletary and Mr. Boetcher, both deacons in our church. Mr. Singletary was big and bald. Mr Boetcher was short and with a full head of jet-black hair. He owned the sawmill where the Mexican men worked. As I passed them, I heard Mr. Singletary say to Mr. Boetcher, If them niggers try to come in this church, Ill beat em back with a baseball bat. Mr. Boetcher said, Me too. In May of 1954 I graduated from high school and in June enrolled in the college across town. Named for the man who won Texas independence from Mexico, Sam Houston State Teachers College stood on a hill overlooking our town. When I saw a course called Race Relations listed in the class schedule, I signed up. That brief conversation I had overheard in the church house door four year earlier had never been far from my mind. Maybe in this class I would learn how even white people who go to church can hate black people. When Hobby told me that I had the fellowship, he asked me what I would study. The fellowship left it entirely up to the recipient to choose a topic for the year-long study. Something to do with race relations, I answered. In April of 1964 Kansas City had gone to the polls. The question to be decided was whether black citizens would continue to be denied access to public accommodations, as had been historically the case. Black people could not eat at department store lunch counters. They could not use public restrooms. They could not try on clothes before they bought them. I knew none of this when Hobby asked me the question, but the moment I heard about the vote, I knew I would spend my year talking to people on both sides of the issue, trying to find out how they justified their position and how they got their side to the polls. The five of us moved to a small house at 10920 Ewing in Hickman Mills, on the southeast side of Kansas City. Except to watch Gunsmoke on Monday nights and the Yankees in the World Series, I worked 18 hour days. I interviewed hundreds of people and took reams of notes. On
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Sundays we attended Blue Ridge Baptist Temple. It was a good place for our children. They asked Bobbie to teach. I heard unofficially that I was not asked because I was studying Sociology. Bobbie and I had met at Sam Houston. I was a sophomore when she came as a freshman. I spotted her the first day she was on campus. I was working the registration line for the Baptist Student Union. The BSU had assigned my primary task: to register new Baptist students. My secondary task was self-designed: to get an early look at all the new girls. A brown sweater and a green pleated skirt she was wearing when I looked up and saw her come through the door. Hi, Im Bobbie from Humble, she announced. I had her fill out some information about herself. Then she was gone. Then she was back. You stole my fountain pen. And she reached for a Parker Pen laying on the table. My dad gave me this and told me not to lose it. The twinkle in her eye and the tilt of her head gave me the clear impression that she was flirting with me. Freshmen were required to go to the first football game and wear their beannie. I called Bobbie and asked her to go with me. She told me later that she was waiting for another boy to call. But she said yes. Neither of us ever dated anyone else. We wanted to get married the next spring. Her dad said no. He had not been able to finish his senior year at Texas A&M when the Great Depression hit. He was afraid that we would not finish school if we got married. It took us another year to wear him down, and we got married on Good Friday, April 19, 1957. Our daughter, Debbie, was born in May 1958. Bobbie got her degree in Elementary Education in December. I got my Masters in Sociology. Brother Clinards reputation as a preacher had spread far. He had gone the year before to Southwestern Baptist Seminary in Fort Worth as Professor of Preaching. In response to his preaching, I had walked down the aisle of the church one Sunday morning when I was a high school senior and surrendered to preach. I wanted to be like Dr. Gordon Clinard. Now he was in Fort Worth and Bobbie agreed to my plan. When we graduated from Sam Houston we would move to Ft. Worth where I would enroll in seminary and get a part time job. If I couldnt find a job, we would move to Austin and I would enroll at the University of Texas and get a PhD. I would become a teacher rather than a preacher. Even with Brother Clinards help I could not find a job. So Bobbie and I drove to a small town near Austin and she signed a teaching contract. Then we discovered she was expecting our second child, and I found a
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position as a high school English teacher in Round Rock, a little country town about 20 miles west of Austin. David was born in January 1960. I was only a little older than the senior boys. I loved English grammar and diagramming sentences, but the boys didnt and made my life miserable. When May came I did not sign up for another year. The Texas Baptist Childrens Home in Round Rock needed a house mother for a cottage of teenage girls. Bobbie took the job and we moved in. The four of us had a place to live, food to eat, a small salary and every other weekend off. I enrolled that summer at the University of Texas. Dr. Warner Gettys was Chair of the Sociology Department. I signed up for his Sociology of Religion class, where he asked me to write a paper on the Theodicy Principle, a notion dealing with how to understand the existence of suffering in the presence of a loving and all powerful god. That fall semester was marvelous. Gideon Sjobergs class on The Pre-Industrial City, Walter Fireys class on Social Theory and Ivan Belknaps class on Social Stratification made lasting impressions. Darrel Royal was coaching the Longhorns to exciting victories. The Yankees and the Pirates met in the World Series. New York would win by a bunch one day; Pittsburg would squeak out a win the next. In all the shops and meeting places around campus, the game was on. With no big league baseball of our own in Texas in the 50s and 60s, the Yankees were our team. They scored many more runs than the Pirates in the 1960 World Series, but they lost the Series, three games to four. Dr. Gettys retired at the end of the fall semester. Leonard Broom came from California as Department chair. The problems of 14 teenage girls and the needs of our two small children prompted Bobbie and me to leave the childrens home. We moved to a tiny house in Austin. I took an evening job at a five and dime. My grades went from As in the fall to Cs in the spring. I had taken a spring class from Dr. Broom. He assigned me to read a book about community life in Ireland. When he asked me what method the authors had used to gather their data, I said, They visited with the people. His eyes widened. They what? he boomed. They visited with the people, I said. We call that participant observation. I could detect the incredulity in his voice. He could tell I had never heard the term, and I knew that my Sam Houston education had been deficient. Ed Mercer was a graduate student in my department. He was pastor of a small Baptist Church in a nearby town. He knew of another small church that was looking for a pastor. Jarrell was a tiny town some 45 miles west of Austin. Ed recommended me to the First Baptist Church, and they called me in April as their pastor. We moved into the parsonage, and I would drive an hour each way to class.
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Some days when I got home Bobbie would tell me that someone in our congregation was sick or dying. I would go to visit. Without fail, I would wind up crying more than the bereaved. I would go home an emotional wreck, feeling that I had not helped, dreading the next time, breathing a prayer of thanksgiving that my learning was leading toward a life in the classroom rather than the pastorate. The people in that little church were good to us. They couldnt pay much, but they brought us eggs and honey and homemade bread and vegetables from their garden. They invited us to come for dinner. They told me about their hurts and fears. I fell in love with them. And my heart broke when I knew that I was not adequate to their needs. Word came in late summer of two job openings; one at a Baptist college in Kentucky, a second at a state college in Oklahoma. Bobbie was expecting our third child and did not relish the thought of long car rides, but she wanted to see the place we might be moving and meet the people we would live among. After church one Sunday morning, the two of us drove from Jarrell, Texas to Weatherford, Oklahoma. We checked into a motel and the man who would be my boss came to see us. When he left, I said to Bobbie, I cant work for that man. He would drive me nuts. Well leave in the morning and drive to Kentucky. No we wont. You came here to meet the people at the college, and you have to go do it. The president and the dean were pleasant. I liked the campus. They made an offer. I told them I would let them know. The Baptist college was wonderful. I loved everything I saw and everyone I met. They made an offer. Ill let you know, I said. All the way home Bobbie and I talked. I wanted to go to Kentucky. It felt right. Bobbie was more practical. The salary is about the same. But in Oklahoma you teach only nine months. In Kentucky you have to teach 12. Oklahoma offers a sabbatical. Kentucky doesnt. If you go to Oklahoma, you can finish your doctorate. If you go to Kentucky, you cant. I didnt like the man who would be my boss, but Bobbie was right. We went to Oklahoma. My chairman and I never got along, but I loved that job. In my second year an office came open on campus in another building. It was tiny and steam pipes ran through it, but I could go for days without seeing him. Brian had been born in January of our first year here. Now Bobbie was teaching and we were saving money so I could return to school. To have a future in higher education I had to have a doctorate. But I couldnt go back to Texas. I had compounded my problems with Dr. Broom when one day in his office he asked me what my career plans
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were. Ive thought about marriage counseling, I said. Then why arent you in Social Work? Thats a good question, I answered. I soon learned that Dr. Broom had a low opinion of social workers and drew a distinct line between Sociology and Social Work. When Vance Packard was invited to campus by some other department, Dr. Broom posted a notice forbidding Sociology majors from going. Packard was writing widely read books of social criticism and was arguably the best known Sociologist in the country. His popularity galled lesser-known practitioners and he was shunned by academics who called him a popularizer, somehow equating their own relativity obscurity with academic integrity. The University of Missouri appealed to me. Noel Gist was on their faculty. He was one of the leading figures in the country in the field of Race Relations. I had taught from his book. And Missouri did not charge graduate students out of state tuition. Perfect! Then they turned me down. When they changed their minds and reluctantly let me in, I knew that I had a small window of opportunity to prove their wisdom in reconsidering. We loaded a U-Haul in the summer of 63 and headed for Missouri. I spent long hours in the university library preparing an extensive syllabus for the course I would teach as a graduate assistant. Only indirectly was that syllabus intended for the students I would have in my class. Its primary purpose was to impress the members of my graduate committee, whose opinion of me would determine my future. Every one of our 48 class meetings was listed in the syllabus, along with the topic for the day and the appropriate readings from the text and corollary sources. The topic listed for that late November Friday was Violence in America. Our class began at noon. When another graduate student assistant poked his head in the door to say the President had been shot, I thought it was a setup in response to our topic. Three times he said it. Ashen faced. Hollow eyed. We all left the room to go downstairs where a radio was blaring the news that President Kennedy had been shot in Dallas. We huddled numb and mute around black and white television screens for the next several days, unable and unwilling to believe what we were seeing, wanting to shatter that screen that assaulted our sense of justice and order. I was to take Bobbie and the kids to visit my mothers parents at Christmas time. My children had never met my grandparents, their great grandparents, and I had thought they should. But now I didnt want to go. Cleburne, Texas, my home town, is near Dallas. I knew that my grandfather would say something about the death of the President
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that I would not want to hear and would not want my children to hear. I had lived among these people until I was 12 and my parents took us away to another town. Mother is one of six daughters; Dad, one of five sons. And they were the only ones to move away. They left, as Mother would say years later, Because we didnt want you kids growing up with these people. By the time I had become a parent I realized that I loved these people, but I did not like them. They had sheltered and nurtured me when I was young, but I could not live in their small world where people of other cultures, colors and creeds were not trusted and were not welcome. Still, I had fond memories of early times in my grandparents house, and I wanted my children to know. I had hardly settled in the rocking chair opposite my grandfather when someone mentioned Dallas. He was told he shouldnt come, said my grandfather. He seemed to be saying that it was the Presidents fault that he was shot. He should not have come. My heart broke to think that my grandfather would think such a thing. But the subject was too painful for me. I could say nothing. The College and the Prison In a red brick house right behind First Baptist Church in Huntsville lived Mr. Ellis, Warden of Texas State Prison. His son, John, was a classmate of mine at Huntsville High. Directly across the street from the wardens house rose the massive red brick walls of the prison. The walls enclosed an area of several blocks. The goings on behind those walls were a constant source of speculation to townspeople. The electric chair was inside those walls. Whenever lights would dim in town, rumor was that another felon had departed this world. The Sociology Department at Sam Houston offered an emphasis in Criminology. Living for years in the presence of the prison without ever once going inside the walls had made me curious. I signed up for classes on prison design, juvenile delinquency, deviant behavior, social problems. The title of my Masters thesis was Weaknesses and Proposed Reforms of the American Jury System. I was convinced I wanted to spend my life working in prisons. During my last year at Sam Houston as I worked on my Masters, I got a part time job at the prison. Three nights a week for two hours each night I would teach illiterate inmates to read and write. I would eat dinner in the prison dining hall. I could get my hair cut in the prison barber shop. I loved the guys. But I didnt know how to teach them to read and write. And no one would teach me. When I would ask, they would
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say, Youre a college graduate. You can figure it out. So to teach my men how to write their names I went to the local bank and got a hand full of the blotters they used to remove excessive ink when customers signed papers. I bore down hard and wrote each mans name on the blotter. Then I had each man put the blotter beneath his paper and trace his name, which they could see through the thin white paper. After a while they could write their name without using the blotter. All the men had my hand writing, but they felt good now that they did not sign an X. And I felt good. I had actually taught them something. Then I began not to like my job. Everyone was innocent. If they had done something wrong, it was not as bad as what they had been convicted of. Justice had not been done to anyone. This is what I would over hear when I listened before class and during breaks. This is what they told me when I asked. I began to say to myself, if these men are telling me the truth, then the system that put them here is corrupt. If they are lying to me about their guilt, I cant trust what they tell me about other things. Whether the system was corrupt or the men were lying didnt really matter. I could not continue to work there in either case. I was also beginning to sympathize more with the inmates than with the guards. I was with the inmates only when their behavior was under surveillance and control. But some of the guards were people I knew from our town. I knew of things they did when they thought no one was watching. I heard what they said they would like to do if they had their way. Theirs was not a world I found attractive. So I quit the prison and abandoned my plans for a career in corrections. I also reassessed my college education. The chairman of my department was also a part time employee and consultant to the prison system. I had taken several Criminology courses from him. I had thought they were good classes and he was a good teacher. But now after I had worked a year in the prison and found it not to my liking, I realized that not once in all my class time with my teacher had he ever once brought us to visit the prison or even suggested that we might go on our own. I might have found a quicker and more direct route to my lifes work if he had. Bruce Thomson It looked like a Hollywood set. Grecian columns supporting red brick buildings that faced each other across a grassy quadrangle. The image in everyones mind of a small liberal arts college. And the first person I met was Bruce Thomson. Bruce had recently become Dean of William Jewell College. His former position as a professor in the Sociology
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Department was open. I was about to finish my PhD at the University of Missouri and was on campus as a candidate for that position. Bruce showed me around campus, introduced me to everyone in sight and paid rapt attention to every word I said. After a couple of hours in Bruces presence, I wanted desperately to work in this place that would have a man like him. He offered me the job. I said yes before he could change his mind. Over the years I came to appreciate Bruces quiet strength. More than most anyone I knew, I trusted him. He seemed to have no personal ambition other than to be of service, and toward that end he worked like a demon. We didnt always agree, but we could talk about our disagreements. And we could still be friends. That first day I met him Bruce had said that he and his wife wanted to have my wife and me over for dinner. But we would have to wait until they finished painting their house. One of the saddest days of my life came years later when I heard that Bruce had cancer. I knew when I heard he was sick that I had to go see him. On a beautiful fall Sunday when George Brett was chasing .400, I drove to the nearby town where Bruce was hospitalized. I had gone before when other friends were sick. We had talked about the weather. Never about illness or death. I couldnt do that with Bruce. It took all the courage I could muster, but after I had exchanged pleasantries with his wife and daughter and son-in-law, I asked if they would leave the room so Bruce and I could talk. I took his hand. Bruce, Im so sorry. I dont know what to say. If I had just been told I had cancer, I would be scared out of my mind. So Im here to listen to anything you want to tell me. Bruce began to cry. He talked for a while about fear and death and hope. I left the hospital knowing that my life had been changed. I had stepped across that moat that separated me from real contact with another human being. Over the next three years, Bruce was in and out of hospitals. I visited him at every opportunity. At first we both thought he was getting well. Then, we knew he was not. Finally he was confined to his bed at home, and at last I was a guest in his house. Each time we talked, we talked of death. Not solely, but we never avoided it. We talked about the college, our families, sports, books we were reading, and dying. It was not a depressing conversation. Ever! Now that Bruce has died, I think of those talks. I miss him terribly, more I think because he was the only one I could talk to like that. But Im finding others.
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Going Hungry As the two-man Sociology Department, Earl and I could not teach the variety of courses that could be offered at a larger school. Earls primary interests were Marriage and Family and Criminology. Mine were Race Relations and Population Problems. Its not enough to read about hunger, I told my Population class that first semester. To have any hope of understanding what hunger feels like and what it does to people, we have to be hungry. So Im going on a three day fast. I will drink only water and eat no food. I will have the college nurse monitor my vital signs. I will record my thoughts and feelings in a journal. If you would like to experience hunger more directly than words in a book can ever convey, I invite you to join me. The entire class signed up. The manager of the college cafeteria said no when we approached him about refunding the money for student meals that would not be eaten. He explained that he counted on some students not eating on any given day. Doing so enabled him to keep prices low. I had told the class that its never enough just to know about a problem. We must be willing to act on what we know. Before being rebuffed by the cafeteria, the class had voted to give the money we would save to the Red Cross and Planned Parenthood. We had invited representatives from both agencies to class to tell them about our fast and the money they could expect. We had gone to visit their offices. Now we had no money. As I would learn the story later, John Pond, a vice-president of the college, was in Boston on college business when he heard a story on the radio saying that students at Jewell were refusing to eat in the cafeteria. Campuses in the mid-sixties were alive with Civil Rights and Vietnam protests. When John called the campus and learned that the fast was a class project and that we wanted to donate money to good causes, he told the cafeteria manager to give us our money. With that precedent in place, we repeated the project for the next several years. Carol Rowlands father was Pastor of First United Methodist Church in North Kansas City. Carol was a senior Sociology major when I came to Jewell. She was a star in my Methods of Research class and in my Population Problems class. After graduation, Carol married Lynn Hogue, an English major at Jewell. Over the next several years, I would visit with them at whatever university they were studying. Then teaching. Carol became a leading figure in the field of epidemiology, an area of study closely allied with Population Problems. Lynn became a lawyer. Lynn is now a law school dean at Georgia Tech and Carol holds an endowed chair at Emory University. They live in Atlanta with their adopted daughter from Brazil.
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Martin Luther King, Jr. My eleventh wedding anniversary was 15 days away, and I was trying to think of something that would please and surprise Bobbie. I didnt like to be gone at night. Debbie was 10, David 8 and Brian 6. Most every night I would gather them all on one of their beds to tell them a story about a superhero of my own design, named Super Goop, AKA Rumplesnaz Gouramooski. The continuing saga went on for years. On this night of April 4, 1968, I had been asked to come to a Fair Housing meeting at a church in Kansas City. For months now in Liberty at the First Presbyterian Church an inter racial group had been sending out teams of prospective home buyers into our town to see if realtors were offering homes to all buyers on an equal basis. I had just passed Pleasant Valley when I heard on my car radio that Martin Luther King, Jr. had been shot on a hotel balcony in Memphis. Twenty more minutes or so it took me to get to the church. Everyone was huddled around a radio. Word came a few minutes later that Dr. King was dead. We cried and sat in silence for the longest time before we could find energy or reason to move. I had not been in Selma on Bloody Sunday in 1965 when Dr. King led marchers from Brown AME Chapel across the Pettis Bridge on their way to the Alabama state capital in Montgomery and a confrontation with Governor George Wallace. I had not joined him in the 1963 March on Washington where he delivered his I Have a Dream speech. I had not been with him in Birmingham when he went to jail. I was not there for the Montgomery Bus Boycott in 1955 when he was Pastor of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church. I was physically present in none of these places. But my heart and soul were in all. Dr. King said, Let no man pull you so low that you hate him. Always avoid violence. If you sow the seeds of violence in your struggle, unborn generations will reap the whirlwind of social disintegration. Knowing that I had been put on the path to believing this by Brother Clinards sermon when I was 14, I always felt a kinship with Dr. King. Knowing that Brother Clinard and Dr. King were both Baptist preachers and that for a short time I also was, brings me comfort and direction for my life. The Black Panthers I didnt realize at the time that it would make such a lasting impression on me. The year was 1968. The Civil Rights Movement was sweeping the country, and I was again teaching my race relations class at William Jewell. Ive always thought that students when possible should hear directly from those who espouse a position, so I had on this partic14 W
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ular day invited several members of the Black Panthers to come from Kansas City to speak in class and have lunch with us in the student cafeteria. Never in my life have I seen student interest so galvanized: those young black men in their para-military dress, their clenched-fist salutes, their precise gestures, their assured and abrasive speech. The way they carried themselves: standing tall, shoulders back, chin out, eyes clear, looking right through you. They were an intimidating lot. But before the 50 minutes of class had passed those Panthers and my students had chewed on each other and almost every issue of substance. It was not always a polite exchange, but it was most certainly informative. After class we adjourned to the student cafeteriacalled The Cage on our campuswhere we settled at the big table in the center of the room and continued our verbal sparring. Everyone in the room was soon paying us more attention than their lunch, and the room quickly filled with students who had seen us walking across campus and came to find out what was going on. It was late in the afternoon before the Panthers left. The students wouldnt let them go until they figured out what made them tick. I dont know just when it happened, somewhere near the middle of our time together, I think, that I detected a change in our young black guests. They seemed suddenly to realize that we really wanted to know who they were and what they thought. They at the end were as reluctant to leave as we were to have them go. I might have forgotten all this had it not been for the events on another campus a week later. A state college not 50 miles from our campus erupted in violence when these same Black Panthers were invited. As I learned later, here is what happened. A black student organization on this other campus invited the Panthers. Everything done on that campus had to be personally approved by the college president. Either because he wasnt asked or because he feared the Panthersor boththe president told the students at the last minute to withdraw the invitation. It was too late. The Panthers were on their way. So the president called the local police, who in turn called the national guard. When the Panthers arrived, they were met by their student hosts, hostile administrators, some sympathetic faculty, armed police and national guard. It wasnt long before rocks were flying, windows were broken, people were hurt, and some were arrested. A few days later, the college president fired several faculty members and expelled the black students who had invited the Panthers.
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Why the difference in what happened on the two campuses? I must have asked myself that a thousand times in the last 35 years. I dont think Ill ever really know the complete answer. But I do think I know the one thing that set in motion these two opposite responses to the same people. On our campus we expected things to go well, for people to part company better friends and more informed. The other campus expected things to go badly. Both campuses realized their expectations. This incident early in my teaching career had a profound effect on me. Ive never been able to stop thinking about it: It didnt take me long to realize that each campus had a different definition of the situation and that the different definitions led to vastly different outcomes. But why the different definitions? To answer that question, I must briefly describe for you the locale, personnel, and student body of the two colleges. Both are located in small towns of roughly equal size. Both draw the bulk of their students from the state of Missouri. From this point on, the two campuses differ rather significantly. Our campus lies within a metropolitan area of one-and-a-half million people, just minutes away from dozens of different ethnic, racial, and religious communities. The other campus sits 50 miles away in the rural interior of the state, having no opportunity for regular interaction with diverse people. Our campus retains strong ties to its religious heritage, prompting its staff and its students to reach out to people in an effort to understand and to help. The other institution is state sponsored, possessed of no sense of mission other than that common to all institutions of higher learning. Our college is related to a church with a world-wide presence and purpose. The other college is tied financially and legally to a more constricted piece of real estate. Much of my teaching has been directed since this day in 1968 toward insuring that our campus would never become like the other. Toward this end, I have devised numerous strategies. Teaching people how to like people not like themselves has become my major ambition. The human family reunion has become both the major way of accomplishing this task and the obvious demonstration that it has occurred. The Human Family Reunion Begins Bear with me for a brief discussion of the events leading up to the morning of May 5, 1976the day of the first Human Family Reunion. The events of this day had three beginnings: one in the 1950s, one in the 1960s, and one in the 1970s. In the early 1950s, I was in high school in
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Huntsville, Texas. Chief among my many beautiful memories from that period of my life is going to school every day and speaking to every single person I met. I was not conscious of cliques. It never occurred to me that I should pick my friends based on what part of town they lived in or how much money their family had. Looking back now on that time many years ago, Im a little embarrassed to admit how eager I was to get to school every morning. (Males are not supposed to feel this way. And if they do, they are supposed to act as if they dont.) The entire day was heavenly. I really did like all those people, so much so that the memory of it even now makes my scalp tingle, creating in me euphoria beyond the power of any drug to induce. I close my eyes and hundreds of youthful faces parade quickly across my mind. But there is a cloud on that memory: There are no black faces in my parade. Our town had hundreds of black citizens, but my school had no black students. How I wish my memories were not all white. But they are, and nothing I can do will change that fact. Maybe I can change somebodys future memory. Thus was planted the seed from which the Human Family Reunion would grow. By the fall of 1965, I had gotten by Ph.D., and I joined the faculty of William Jewell College. The moment I saw the Jewell campus, I knew I was home. The hilly terrain was much like my hometown in Texas. And Jewell, like the college I went to in my hometown, sat atop the highest hill, affording a magnificent view of the town and the surrounding countryside. I didnt even realize until I saw the Jewell campus that I carried in my mind a picture of the ideal campus, an image of what a college should look like. As I gazed across the football-size quadrangle which all the buildings faced, seeing at once the white circular columns fronting all the buildings, the fire-red bricks of which the buildings were made, the dark-green ivy clinging to the north wall of Jewell Hall and shimmering like wet diamonds in the sun, with the skyline of Kansas City faintly visible to the southwestas I took all this in, I knew for the first time that I carried in my head that image of an ideal college campus. Instantly I understood why other campuses I had visited, many of them magnificent, had never seemed entirely right. Such a blending of natural and manufactured beauty, my mind had been telling me, was possible. Until I stood for the first time on the Jewell campus, though, ideal and reality had never merged. When in that instant they did, such a feeling engulfed me that were I Shakespeare, I could not do it justice: a feeling of peace, and contentment, and excitement, and rightness. A feeling I had not before or have not subsequently experienced. A feeling,
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the memory of which is but a ghost of the real thing, but which in its reality was so powerful that the memory is still sufficient to transport me to a dimension of life I wonder if most people ever visit. Looking back, I must have known as I stood on the campus that day that I would spend all of my teaching career in this place. For every time an opportunity later came to leave, I could not do it. Over the years I would dream that I had left Jewell. And I would wake up in a cold sweat. Much of my doctoral work had dealt with problems of racism and prejudice in our society and with programs that had been advocated as solutions. I began at Jewell to teach the things I had been taught. From my teachers, I had learned that prejudice can inflict great damage, causing people to harm each other for irrational reasons. I learned, also, that those theorists who study prejudice have not been able to isolate the precise mechanism by which prejudice spreads. Prejudice seems basically to proceed from ignorance, from the fact that one group of people has little direct and intimate acquaintance with another and, therefore, must simply attribute motives to the other groups behavior, motives which inevitably are more base than their own. This explanation without a doubt explains much of that behavior prompted by prejudice. It doesnt explain everything, though. Psychologists, for example, talk about scapegoating, a need that they say prompts many individuals and all societies to cast their own shortcomings and weaknesses on outsiders, thus relieving whatever pressure they might otherwise feel to modify their behavior. If, indeed, scapegoating does serve a need in society, then it would more than likely occur even if all groups in a society were fully informed about each other. To this extent, then, we do not eliminate prejudice by eliminating ignorance. There is also an economic element to prejudice. Given the fact that there are not enough jobs, housing, dollars, college degrees, and so on to go around, prejudice and its accompanying discrimination tend to rationalize and justify the prevailing unequal distribution. Prejudice makes us all believe that people get what they deserve. We may not, therefore, completely rid our society of prejudice when we rid it of ignorance. Having now tried for years to reduce prejudice through education, I have come at last to the conclusion that changing what we teach will not by itself rid our collective body of its social cancer. Simultaneous efforts on several fronts are called for. Having said all this, though, I come back now to make a basic point: Learning is the one thing each of us can do in order to escape the prejudicial atmosphere in which we live, the thing we must do if we would
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ever attempt other changes. I had arrived at this basic conclusion by the mid-1960s, though it was with me then more a feeling to which I was attracted then the bedrock conviction it has since become. I could not have put into words in 1966 the rationale which prompted me to join with several like-minded people to begin the decade-long series of meetings we would call The Fellowship House Seminars. I could only have tried to describe for you the sensations of delight and purpose which gripped me each time I met with these people to plan a seminar and the even stronger feeling of being exactly right with the world each time a seminar actually came to pass. I moved to Kansas City, Missouri, in the early summer of 1964. My purpose in doing so was to study the civil rights movement as it was developing in Kansas City and, thereby, to complete my doctoral dissertation. In the midst of doing all this, I discovered Fellowship House. Forty years earlier, Paseo had been the most beautiful and fashionable boulevard in all of Kansas City. By the time I first saw it in 1964, the street had lost much of its charm, and the big, old homes could no longer be supported in their accustomed style. One such house sat at 3340 Paseo. An elegant red brick with white shutters and trim, massive concrete steps and porch, this was now Fellowship House. I had first seen the name in the newspaper, in a story about an inter-racial, inter-religious dinner held by the members. I had come to the house to find out more. I visited Fellowship House often over the next several months, intrigued by their open and enthusiastic acceptance of all races and creeds. They were not a flamboyant group. They did not march or demonstrate or do anything purposely to call attention to themselves. At that time in Kansas City there was only one restaurant where an inter-racial group could eat together. So on one morning a week, Fellowship House members would go there to eat. These breakfasts were soon a topic of conversation all across Kansas City. Fellowship House also had a doll program. These dolls were fashioned in the image of such well-known world figures as Gandhi, Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King, Jr. and some two dozen others, all people who tried to bring people together. Fellowship House members would take these dolls to schools, churches, synagogues, clubs and private homes and simply tell the story of the people these dolls represented. While at a Fellowship House dinner one evening, someone mentioned a wish to see area college students more involved. Several of us in following up on that wish devised a format which we basically folW
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lowed for the next 10 years, during which time we brought hundreds of college students into Kansas City and into Fellowship House. Twice a yearfall and springwe would pick a topic, some urgent issue that needed to be addressed and would attract students from area college campuses. Black Power was one of our earliest and most popular topics. Understanding the City, Welfare Rights, Conversations in Black and White, An Urban Plungethese were the kinds of topics we designed our seminars around. To our seminars we invited faculty and students from all the colleges and universities within a 150 mile radius. The larger universities did not respond very energetically. But it was obvious that we had touched a nerve on the more than 20 smaller campuses we contacted. From Iowa, Kansas, and Missouri they regularly came, augmented now and then by someone from Nebraska or Oklahoma or Arkansas who had heard of our program. They would arrive usually on a Friday afternoon, some 40 to 50 of them from a dozen different campuses. They brought their bed rolls and slept for two nights on cots borrowed from the Red Cross. Each of them was assigned to a work detail. They were expected to help prepare meals, set the table, clear the table, take out the garbage, sweep the floor and in general to make themselves useful. Of course the work needed to be done, but the bigger reason we had them do it was so they would get to know the people they worked with. It worked. Beautifully. People learn a lot when they dont know they are supposed to. As speakers for our seminars we invited community people, persons expressing widely divergent views but all wanting to share their way of looking at life and their own unique personality. We also took the students out into the city. We visited the city market, flop-houses, rescue missions, jails, churches, public housing projects, employment offices, alcohol rehabilitation programs, and dozens of other places where we thought we might get to know interesting people. By the mid 1970s, the Fellowship House Seminars were losing some of their sparkle. It was harder to get people to come. And my own interest was waning. The importance of what the seminars were designed to accomplish seemed to me more important than ever. But I could no longer generate the enthusiasm necessary to make the seminars work. The poor response to our 1975 seminar convinced us that it was time to lay that program in its grave. In the following months I tried to figure out why my own interest in the seminars had waned. I finally decided that they had been too restric20 W
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tive. By focusing on getting blacks and whites together, the seminars had helped to bring together the two groups most at odds in our society but had not at all addressed the larger question: How to get people together from all races, all religions, and all ages. Is such a thing possible? The cynic in me said no. Yet I knew that 10 years earlier blacks and whites could not sit together in public in Kansas City, and before 1954 could not eat together in public in most of America. I decided it was possible. We could get unlike people of all kinds together in a situation where they could get to know and learn to like each other. Thus we now come to the morning of May 5, 1976: the first Human Family Reunion. Beneath the trees on a grassy hillside, Chebon White Cloud is speaking in his native Otoe. For those of us who speak only English, he translates. But many of our number speak only German; Rosemarie Goos translates. In what must have been the first time ever, the picturesque Otoe Indian tongue, with its earth images and simple dignity, becomes the language of Luther and Nietzsche. From the small town of Runkel, State of Hessen, Federal Republic of Germany, have come 120 members of our family. From the GermanAmerican community of Kansas City have come another 40. From Haskell Indian Junior College in Lawrence, Kansas, have come a company of Native American dancers drawn from several different tribes. From across the Kansas City Metropolitan area have come scores of ethnic Americans drawn originally from every corner of the globe and every country under the sun. We are standing now in the sun of an early spring day on the campus of William Jewell College. Four hundred of us. Black and white, red and brown and all shades between. National dress and native costume, blue jeans and street clothes. Indian drums and a German brass band. Alpine yodels and western war cries. Fried chicken and Japanese tea crackers. The day is a smorgasbord of sights and sounds and people. We are drawn together this day to mark the opening of the Ethnic Activities Center of Mid-America on the Liberty campus of William Jewell College. From 10 in the morning until 3 in the afternoon, we celebrate our coming together. In Greek, Japanese, Serbo-Croatian, Spanish, Italian, Navajo, Otoe, Polish, German and English, we recognize our differences, discover our likeness and affirm our ties to the human family. Gifts are exchanged at our reunion: Rings and hats and pins. Wolfgang gives his hat to White Cloud. There are tears and laughter.
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Lawrence Yellow Fish dances. Sandra Help sings. Horst Reinhard plays the brass drum. Kurt Hampel leads the band. The day ends as we all join arms in a massive folk dance. We stand shoulder to shoulder with mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters, aunts, uncles and cousins we have never known and might never see again. When the next human-family reunion is held, the place and the participants may be different. Only a part of the family could make it this time. Four hundred were there, but four billion were eligible. The 1977 Human Family Reunion is indeed in another place, the lovely Tokyo Plaza Restaurant on the far southwest side of Kansas City. We have reserved the entire restaurant for the evening. Amid the delicate paintings on the walls, with subtle aromas wafting our way from beautiful, lacquered bowls, chopsticks at our fingers, and graceful, kimonoed waitresses bringing bewildering arrays of exotic dishes, we sit cross-legged at our tables just a few inches from the floor. Some of our less pliable family members are sitting at regular, western tables, and we exchange a few good natured barbs. Some of our less adventurous members do not relish a few of the dishes. Some pretend that they have sampled everything; a few actually do. Most everyone seizes on one dish found particularly pleasing, and compliments to the chef fill the air. Sachi Stroder instructs us in the use of chopsticks, explains to us the importance of beautiful tableware in traditional Japanese dining, shows us how to pour tea and how to wear a kimono. Two hundred of us have come tonight, drawn from 20 of the 30 or more ethnic communities in the Kansas City Metropolitan Area. Poles, Serbians, Mexicans, Russians, Croatians, Irish, Indians, Welsh, Italian, Greek, Turkish, Chinese, Vietnamese, Filipino, German, Slovenian, Japanese, French, Scottish, and Malaysianall eating sushi and soy sauce and tempura all talking to each otherand all American. Making My Mark We were home for the holidays to visit my parents in Sinton, Texas. I went to the supermarket on New Years Day 1970 to search for a copy of Mademoiselle. And there it was. Further proof that rejection need not be final. I had written a piece on population problems. I wanted to publish it in a mass-market magazine where the general public would read it. I sent it to a dozen or so national magazines. They all said no. Several said it was well written. But they would not publish it because no one ever heard of me. The way to get a reputation was to publish, but to publish, you had
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to have a reputation. How to solve this Catch-22? There must be a way. Theres always a way. Maybe I could borrow a reputation. So I wrote a letter to five of the most famous people in the world, people with knowledge of the issues I was addressing. I told them no one would publish me. I asked for their endorsement, which I would forward to publishers. I thought maybe I would get one or two at least lukewarm endorsements. I was wrong. I got five glowing testimonials. I resubmitted my piece and got an acceptance by return mail. Mademoiselle published my essay in their January 1970 issue. A month later a national book publisher called and asked me to write a book on the subject. A year later the book came out, and I was off on a tour of major cities in the U.S. and Canada. Dr. Hester was right. I didnt have to move around to make my mark. Together one day with academics from Stanford, University of California-Santa Barbara and other prestigious places, I was at the State Department in Washington when a staff member walked in carrying a large cardboard box. I have in this box the latest development in contraceptive technology, he announced. Wow! Organ transplants and other medical miracles were much in the news. The latest contraceptive technology? And we were about to see it! Before it made headlines! All eyes locked on that box. Then as he turned the box upside down, out across the table spilled hundreds of colored condoms. We discovered that if we color them more men use them. He said. And no one laughed. Thats when I knew for certain what I had always thought. These people in our nations capital and major universities and other news centers around the country didnt know anymore than we knew back at my small college in our little town. And they didnt care as much. That thought had stuck in my mind from that day in 1966 when our campus hunger fast made headlines and I got a phone call from a New York City radio station. Why is anybody in Liberty, Missouri concerned about population problems? They asked. We can read. Were not concerned just about out little place on the planet. We live in the world. Thats what I said. I didnt say I was hurt that they would think we were so limited in what we knew and what we cared about. I thought they were revealing their own selfish interests. Living in the most crowded city in America, they thought they had a monopoly. No one else was entitled to worry about population problems or offer solutions. Overcoming Panic Its a damnable disease. You wont be able to be active. As my doctor delivered his diagnosis to me, he was standing half-way across the
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room. He spoke in a flat monotone, devoid of any emotion. Before I could think of anything to say, he turned on his heel and strode out of the room. Except for the old man whose larynx had been cut out to arrest his cancer, I was alone. My doctor had been standing nearer the old man than to me as he spoke. The doctor had come into the room just minutes before. Passing the old mans bed, he went to the foot of mine, lifted the clipboard full of notes, and looked briefly at them. He hadnt said a word as he entered the room. He said nothing now. Neither did I. This was my sixth day in the hospital. I had checked in the previous Sunday evening; now it was Friday morning. My doctor had thought the tests would be finished on Wednesday. But on Wednesday, he said all the tests had been negative. He wanted to run one more. I had not been feeling bad when I checked into the hospital and was anxious to leave those starched sheets and bland food. And the inactivity was driving me wild. A couple of times a day I would get out of bed to do calisthenics. My doctor said he wanted to do a spinal tap and a myleogram on Thursday morning. If he said anything about what these were it didnt register. I did hear him say that I would have to remain immobile in bed 24 hours following these procedures. This man had been my family doctor for 15 years, ever since I had moved to Liberty at age 29 with my wife and three small children. He had gotten us through the normal assortment of cuts and bruises and colds. He had given my two sons their physicals for football, and the one required each year by the school where my wife taught. Our shot records in his office were long, and we were always calling to see which one we had taken, and when. He and I developed a reasonably comfortable relationship. I was not often in to see him about any personal illness, coming usually with members of my family, especially the boys who seemed in somewhat regular need of stitches on various parts of their bodies. After several years, the doctor and I would occasionally call each other by first name. We were about the same age, with about the same amount of education. I noticed, though, that he often did not call me by any name; he would simply begin: What seems to be the matter? or What can I do for you today? Now and then he would call me Doc. Other people call me Doc, though I prefer to be called Ed, even by my students. I make it a point to call everyone I know by their first name and I ask that they return
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the favor. I believe in as few distinctions between people as possible. With my own doctor, though, I could never force the issue. I wanted to call him by his first name and wanted him to use mine. But I never told him so. It wasnt entirely that I was in awe of MDs. Not entirely but largely! My own parents initial ambition for me was that I became a doctor. And though I know they are proud of my Ph.D., its not as though Im a real doctor. When they report to their friends what I do, they say I am a professor. I would prefer they call me a teacher, though teacher to my parentsand to most peopleis less prestigious. I understand in my head that my education has been as long and as difficult as that which my doctor has obtained. But deep in myself, I feel inferior: I make less money; I provide less well for the material needs of my family; I am held in less reverence by the community; I make no life and death decisions. So my doctor and I have never really gotten close, and on this Wednesday in the hospital, I dont press him for further information. If he says I need these tests, then I need these tests. He knows all about the human body; he wont let anything bad happen to me. So the only thing I ask is for an overnight pass so I can leave the hospital to attend the end of school steak fry being held by my wifes school. He wont give me an overnight pass, but I can leave for the evening if I promise to return by 10:00 p.m. I promise. Its a beautiful day late in May. As soon as I get home, I pull on a T shirt, a pair of shorts, my running shoes and Im off for a three mile run. I stub my left toe several times. It makes me damn mad that my foot wont do what I tell it. Ive never been well coordinated. Its a long standing joke among my wife and kids that I cant walk down the sidewalk without falling off. That never bothered me. I laughed with them. It didnt bother me at first when I would stub my toe as I jogged. Before jogging even became popular, I was a runner. I loved to come home in mid-afternoon, change my clothes and jog off down some country road where I wouldnt hear a phone and my mind would hone in on ideas it would never have run across at home in my study or in my college office. For years I ran all by myself. Then a friend suggested that we run together. We did that several times. He had started running much more recently than I, and he was excited about several 10 K races he had entered. It took him months to persuade me to join him, but one Saturday morning I went with him and two other friends to Kansas City for a race. I had never run 6.2 miles at one time, and I had never run competW
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itively except for the mile I tried to run in a track meet as a high school senior. I dropped out halfway through. But I loved running this day. It took me 76 minutes to make it, and only a few finished after I did. I was weak after it was over and sore for days. My three friends had to wait a long time on me. But they asked me to go again. And I did. It was about a year later when it first happened. A friend, who doesnt see or run well, was step for step with me near the back of the pack in a Turkey Trot 10 kilometer run sponsored by a local community college. As we finished a long stretch of level road and turned to the right at a traffic light, we passed a big fat man in a Texas Aggie T shirt. By this time, we were all running down a fairly steep hill. About a quarter of the way down the hill, this fat Aggie passed us again. For the last two miles, we had passed and been passed by this guy. This time as he passed, he gave my friend and me some unsolicited advice about how to run downhill. My friend and I could certainly use all the help we could get, but we werent about to take it from someone in his condition, adorned as he was. My friend turned to me, Are we gonna let this fat guy beat us? The answer was obvious. We didnt. Bill Rogers couldnt have felt any better winning the Boston Marathon. I didnt think much about it at the time, but it was about half way through that race that I first stubbed my left toe. Somewhere around this time I began to notice that my left running shoe was wearing out before the right. All the tread would be gone off the bottom, and the rubber over the toe was worn away. As we jogged down a country road one day, I asked the friend who had talked me into racing if he ever stubbed his toe. I think when he said no was when I began to worry. A day or so later, I first went to my doctor to ask about my foot. We talked for awhile about when, why, and how much I ran. He thought I should run less for awhile. I cut back some. I would still stub my toe, and I was accumulating a whole closet full of right shoes in mint condition. But it was more a nuisance than a hardship. I kept running. One Christmas my wife bought me James Fixxs The Complete Book of Running, for me. I devoured the book and decided from my reading that my feet were not properly aligned. Back in my doctors office I told him about my new theory. He recommended that I see a podiatrist and gave me a name. I cant remember if I asked what a podiatrist was. A few days later I called for an appointment. This doctor could not
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see me in his local office for several weeks. But he did have an opening in one of his offices in a nearby city. I went there late one afternoon. He looked at my feet, asked me to walk while he watched. Then he made casts of my feet. A few weeks later I returned to his office to receive the hard plastic orthodics he had made for my running shoes. They helped. The heels of my shoes no longer wore down on the sides. But I still stubbed my toe. For about a year I toughed it out. I still ran in races; in fact, I lowered my time. Occasionally I would stub my toe several times in succession. I never fell, though. And I noticed the toe problem would lessen the longer I ran. When first starting, I would beat a steady tattoo with my toe. By the end of a mile, I would stub it only occasionally. In the third mile, it would not happen at all. When school was out in May of 1981, I went back to my doctor to see about my foot. It was no worse than it had been for the last year or so. But I was scheduled to go to England the following January to teach for a semester. I didnt want to get there and be laid up. I was determined to find out once and for all what was wrong with my foot. And fix it. A pinched nerve, a cracked vertebraethats what I expected they would find. Before he admitted me to the hospital for tests, my doctor wanted me to see another specialist, this time a neurologist. I was with this doctor for about 10 minutes. He had me walk across the room, normally, then on toes, then heels. I described my symptoms. Has it affected your speech? he asked. Any sexual problems or visual problems? Have you noticed any tingling sensation? I said no to each question. I checked into the hospital a few days later. When by Wednesday, after their prodding and poking and blood taking, they could not tell me what was wrong, I figured it was just a part of me that I would have to live with, like my Texas drawl and my weird sense of humor. I have never felt so vulnerable, so dwarfed by machines and so at the mercy of total strangers as on that Thursday, A myleogram? A spinal tap? In my line of work a histogram is a drawing we make to exhibit information. A spinal tap I thought would be like a tap on the knee to test reflexes. I took off all my clothesby popular demandand put on a hospital gown open at the back. I lay down on a hard, cold table. The table on which I was lying would soon move me head first into a big stainless steel cylinder just large enough to accommodate my body. I did not want to seem afraid. At 45, I thought I should be up to it.
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Man enough, as they say. Several people were in the room, all busy at their stations, reading dials, turning handles, counting down, preparing to launch me into that shiny gun barrel and its alien environment. I didnt see anyone whose job I thought it was to hold my hand. I didnt have the nerve to ask. Maybe the certainty and precision which these people showed were meant to allay my fears. And maybe it worked that way. Im sure I would have been even more afraid if they had appeared incompetent. And they did talk to me about what they were doing to me. I teach anthropology. I tell my students with practically every other breath that their mission is to understand the culture they are studying as those people who live it understand it. They must somehow get inside the head of another person and report how that person sees the world. To do that they must spend as much time as humanly possible visiting with that person in that persons native environment. Have any of these CAT Scan operators posed as patients to see what its like from the other side? Have they ever undergone a procedure they didnt understand, conducted by people they didnt know? Have they felt the panic of total dependency, a panic made bearable only by their blind trust in the one who persuaded them to surrender to these procedures and these people? CAT Scanswhatever they aremust not be sensitive enough to detect panic and tension. My doctor would later tell me that the scan showed no problems. The scan was painless. Nothing ever touched my body. Humming, whirring and a few clicks are all that I remember. But having my head tilted downward so they could watch the dye they had given me to drink course through my brain is not something I would choose to do for fun. It was fun, though compared to the spinal tap that came next. Not seeing what they were doing was bad enough. I was in a fetal position; they were at my back. I have no idea how long that needle was, but I never felt such excruciating pain. I screamed. I wished I were dead. Why were they doing this? Didnt they care that they were hurting me? By the next afternoon, I was allowed to sit up in bed. My back and head hurt. Thats when my doctor came into the room. I was in the bed nearest the window. The old man with no larynx was in the bed between mine and the door. My doctor fumbled briefly with my charts, then started toward the door. Pausing briefly as he passed the old mans bed, he turned and spoke to me across the old mans chest. No preamble, no small talk, no Im sorry. He spit it out.
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You have MS. Its a damnable disease. You wont be able to be active. He turned on his heel and was gone before I could make any response or ask any questions. I gazed out the window at the cars on the highway and the cows in the field. I looked at the old man. Had he understood what the doctor said? Did he know what MS is? I didnt feel bad about the diagnosis. What did he mean I couldnt be active? What would stop me? I picked up the phone and called Jeanne Johnson, Chair of the Nursing Department at William Jewell. Jeanne, the doctor just told me I have MS. Whats MS? With care that I could hear, she explained that MS is a disease of the central nervous system. The insulation that surrounds nerves is destroyed, leaving nerves exposed, much like bare wires in a house. Nerve impulses then short out, and the message from the brain to, in my case the foot, cannot get through. We talked for awhile. She was reassuring, but factual. She may have told me more. I no longer remember the specific source of all that I have learned about this disease. As soon as I hung up the phone, I walked out to the nurses station and asked to visit the hospital library. That was a more difficult and unusual request than I had imagined. The library, I learned, was for doctors only. Patients were not allowed to use it. The nurse couldnt tell me why this was the rule, but she had never known of a patient who asked to use the library. She finally agreed to contact my doctor. If he consented, I could go to the library. After a while she got in touch with him, and he gave his permission. I went there and read for awhile about Multiple Sclerosis. It scared me to death. I found that the disease can kill quickly, can paralyze, blind, or in assorted other ways incapacitate the person who has it. That afternoon I went home. Bobbie came to get me at the hospital. Whatd they find? she asked. And I had to tell her. Knowing only the name of the disease and its several horrible prognoses, I had to try to explain to the dearest person in the world to me what might soon happen to meand to her. To my wife I emphasized the one hopeful feature of MS that I had come across. The symptoms can disappear for years at a time, I told her. Bobbie is not one to let a question go unasked. And I could not answer them. It was not long before we each fell silent, that uneasy, disquieting silence that comes from an inability to communicate. It is a difW
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ferent species of quiet from that which follows a query satisfactorily answered. I had not felt bad at all before going to the hospital. But my doctor said I should take a series of ACPT shots. I remembered seeing those initials in something I read about MS. So every morning for the next ten days, I went to his office where a nurse gave me a shot. At the end of the two weeks out of the hospital, I was a basket case. I could no longer do the stretching and bending exercises I had done every day for years. All my joints and muscles hurt. I was fighting a losing battle with depression. I cried every night. I would sit in a little ball in the corner. All I could think about was my illness. For the past several summers at Jewell I had taught a special class of my own design. It had proved to be a popular class; I enjoyed teaching it. The class was so intense and so emotionally draining that I had resisted student pressure to teach it more often. The class was called Death and Dying and was my response to the work done by Elizabeth Kubler-Ross among the terminally ill. Offered as a seminar, the course typically enrolled from 12 to 20 students. We would read the books by Kubler-Ross. Each student would then be in charge of two class sessions. During these sessions, students would lead the class through an examination of such topics as the stages of dying, grief and bereavement, suicide, life after death, widowhood, how to talk to children about death, wills, insurance, religious faith, and other related topics. The examination of these topics would lead us out of the classroom, off campus, to funeral homes, crematoria, cemeteries, hospitals, hospices, to visit the dying. On other occasions we invited terminally ill patients to our classroom for an hour of straight, hard talk. Parents whose children had died of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome poured out their griefand guiltto us. We saw films, listened to tapes, acted out socio-dramas. All intended to help us deal with death. Now the next session of this course was just days away. And here I was locked in a losing struggle to cope with my own imminent death or disability. I had always marveled at the ability of the terminally ill to talk to us about their dying, and I wondered if I could do it. Bobbie pleaded with me not to teach the class that summer. And I honestly didnt believe I could. Just getting myself out of bed every morning was almost more than I could manage. I was physically and psychologically exhausted. I expected every day not to be able to make it. There was a civil war going on in my head. My conscious and rational mind was using every
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argument it could muster to persuade me to take to my bed, to give up the hopeless struggle, which was only hastening my demise. But I could not give up that class. My irrational and unconscious mind kept whispering to me that I could make it, that hope was not lost, that this was all a test, that I must persevere as an example to my children and to authenticate the labor and love that so many people had poured into my life. I did not give up that class. We met every scheduled day. Getting through that class was agony. I had often quoted Kubler-Ross to my students to the effect that an intellectual understanding of death would not blot out the terror of our personal encounter. I had known that was true before. I now knew it with an authority I wished I didnt possess. I made it through that class, but I didnt tell my students about my illness. For that, I felt like a hypocrite and a coward. I had known little sadness in my life before I was 40. My paternal grandmother died when I was 17; the greed I saw in my uncles overwhelmed me even more than her death. All my other loved ones were still living when I turned 40. I had been a patient in a hospital only once, when I had my tonsils removed at age 14. Shortly after I turned 40, my uncles began to die, then my maternal grandfather. Though I missed them, they were old, and I could accept their death. At age 45, my parents, my in-laws, my children, my close friends were alive and reasonably healthy. I was a happy, optimistic, out-going person who looked on whatever came my way as a challenge rather than a problem. Within days after my doctor delivered his diagnosis that was all eroding. Within a few weeks, it was gone. In its place was a person I did not like: whining, helpless, quick-tempered, self-centered. There was absolutely no joy in my life. Nothing could make me smile. Only the thought of my illness could make me cry. I thought of suicide. Often. I wanted to be dead, to be rid of this struggle. But I lacked the courage. I was drowning in destructive emotions I could not control. And nobody could help me. My wife tried: I would not be consoled. Her father suffered a stroke, lingered in a coma for six weeks, then died. She herself fell ill and had to have major surgery. Two months later, she and I and our two sons were to be in England for half a year. Decisions were demanded daily. I could not cope. I was on the verge of a mental breakdown. I needed help. I went to the only person I thought could give it: my doctor. I was seated on his examining table when he came into the room. I
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blurted out my depression and asked him to prescribe something. Nobody ever promised you that you would live to be old or that you wouldnt be crippled, he replied. As he spoke, he wrote: Take this, he said, and left the room. How I got off that table, out of his office, to the druggist, and home I dont remember. I was numb. I didnt want to believe what my doctor had said to me. How could he be so callous? I knew then that I would never be able to face this doctor again. I was certain in the instant he spoke that I made him as uncomfortable as he made me. Because he could not cure what he said I had he thought he could not help me. And because he could not help me, my very presence was a threat, a reminder of how much human and how little God he was. He thought I expected him to be God, able with potions and procedures to make me well. And he was not entirely in error in his assessment of my expectations. We all go to doctors a little like we go to church. What my doctor did not understand, however, is the power of touch and the power of suggestion. Why had he told me I had a damnable disease? I did not find that adjective in my reading about MS. Why did he say I would not be able to be active? I had since read of many MS victims who lead active lives. Did my doctor have a loved one to whom MS had done what he had predicted for me? Didnt my doctor understand the truth of that dictum which I regularly repeat to my beginning Sociology students: A thing defined as real is real in its consequences, or the other truism, We find what we look for. Why had my doctor stood 15 feet from me to tell me his diagnosis? Why didnt he take my hand? Or touch my shoulder? Or sit in the chair beside my bed? Could I have been spared my summers struggle with depression and thoughts of suicide by a caring bedside manner? Suppose my doctor had come to the head of my bed, put his hand on my arm, and said in a voice that the man in the next bed and the people in the hall could not hear. Ed, I want to sit here a minute and tell you what we think weve found. There is a disease call Multiple Sclerosis which some 250,00 Americans have. Its a disease of the nervous system. Not many people die from it. Many people experience some trouble with walking, as you have. Sometimes the symptoms disappear for years. Usually those who have MS do have to make some adjustments in the way they live. But there is a good chance you can lead a fairly normal life. Average life expectancy after diagnosis is 35 years.
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There is more Ill want to tell you later. Ive brought some reading material for you, and Ill plan to be here when your wife comes to get you so I can explain things to her. Do you have any questions you would like to ask me now? I can never know for sure, but Ill always believe that I suffered that summerand even now more from my doctor than from my illness. My doctors diagnosis of MS was based on an abnormal evoked potential in the right hemisphere of my brain. This was determined by my visual response to the little dots and checkerboards on a television screen. The protein level in the fluid they drew from my spinal column was also high, another possible indication of MS. The actual damage to the nerve insulation cannot be detected, and the only way diagnosis can be certain is by autopsy. We all thought it better to wait awhile for that. I cannot remember if my doctor suggested a second opinion. My best recollection is that I suggested it. And he concurred, without much obvious enthusiasm. I considered The Mayo Clinic but decided on the University of Kansas Medical Center. I concluded that the two were comparable and KU Med is only 25 miles away. They re-did most of the tests, including the spinal tap. This one was much less painful, but it still hurt. KU is a teaching hospital: I was seen by and talked to by a large number of people. One day I was taken downstairs to the neurology department. I was placed on a table in the second of two rooms, in a suite of offices filled with esoteric machines. I had never seen this doctor before, and when he came into the other room, he began a conversation with me through the open door. I explained to him that I was here because I had trouble walking. We talked for about a minute, when he asked, Do you have twaba with you speech? As we talked, Dr. Wong walked into the room. He is Chinese and cannot pronounce his Rs and ls. But for the long needle in his hand which he would shortly apply to my leg, I would have asked him if he had twaba with his speech. That was the second time I had been asked that question by a neurologist. The first time was by a fast talking doctor from New England who mispronounced carkaaand OklahomaOklahomer. In my high school, they had said if the part of the tortoise were cast, Id be a natural. I walk slow and move slow, legacy of my east Texas upbringing. Doctors who had known me for more than 10 minutes might be expected to know this. Had we all stayed put in our native environments, these questions likely would never have arisen. Medicine as culW
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tural imperialism, diagnosis as put-down might yet be foreign to the practice of the healing arts, might not act as barriers to the therapeutic process. One Friday night in July, following the diagnosis in May, I was lying in bed. All over my arms and legs I felt a tingling sensation. I scratched; it continued. I had complained already so much to my wife. I said nothing about this attack of nerves. The neurologist had asked me about tingling: it was beginning. No need to tell Bobbie. Nothing sheor Icould do. I was in bed late the next morning, not asleep, just without reason to get up. About 11 a.m. my wife asked, Did those gnats bother you last night? I took the screens off yesterday to clean the windows, and thousands of them mustve gotten in. If the doctor hadnt asked me about tingling, I would have asked my wife about the gnats. For the first and only time all summer, I laughed out loud. School had started in the fall when one day the four of us teaching a research course had a meeting in a room where we never had met before. We were seated at a round table. As I listened to first one and then another of my colleagues, I would turn my head in their direction. Each time I looked to my right, my eye would twitch and the light would dim. Oh, my God. Its affecting my vision, just like they said. Panic engulfed me. Incipient screams tore at my throat. My ears grew deaf to all that was being said around me. Except that my legs were rubber and my colleagues would have thought me crazy (I was not so far gone that I did not consider the assessment of my behavior by others), I would have bolted from the room. I could not escape the room, and I had at least to appear to be part of the deliberations. Slowly the panic subsided, and I began to think. This is too big a coincidence, I said to myself. The doctor just asked about vision problems, and now its happening? I dont believe it. Theres got to be a common sense explanation. I looked to my left: No twitching; no light dimming. I looked to my right. There it was again. I looked to my left and up to the ceiling. Nothing. Then I looked over my right shoulder and up at the ceiling. This big fluorescent light was pulsating like something out of Star Wars. My colleagues paid it no heed. They hadnt been programmed to think they were going to go blind. And my eye wasnt twitching, either. It was that on-again, off-again light, tricking my mind into telling my body that it was doing what in fact it was not doing at all.
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If I had to get sick, why couldnt it have been a more popular disease? One about which more was known, one on which more research was being done? Why not something a surgeon could cut out? Those were my thoughts on my good days when I could at least begin to accept that I was sick. But on most days, my thoughts were more morbid: Why am I sick at all? What have I done to deserve this? When will I wake up from this bad dream? From that first phone call I had made to my nurse friend, word of my illness soon spread around our campus and among my friends. I began to get phone calls from other MS victims. One woman invited me to go with her to the meeting of a support group. I told her I would, but when the time came, I found a reason to back out. I had gone once to the MS clinic for a checkup. I had sat among the wheelchairs, had seen the devastation the disease had wrought. I couldnt stand it. I didnt mind other people knowing of my illness. But I could not witness the incapacity of others without thinking that the same thing was going to happen to me. One day, soon after I was told of my damnable disease, a good friend arranged for me to visit with a friend of his in a nearby town who had had MS for 17 years. I met him at a restaurant and then went to his home. He wore leather knee braces and lurched on flopping feet the way children might for a laugh. He could not hold things steady with his hands. He told me that he could not button his shirt or pick things up with his fingers. His wife took their children on vacation while he stayed at home. He dared not get too far from a bathroom because he could not control his bladder. Since that day, I have not sought out others with MS. From reading all I could find on the illness, I have come to appreciate how variable a course it runs. I had come equally to appreciate from other reading the absolute necessity of imagery if the mind were to lead the body into the healing process. I found it impossible to practice the necessary mind control in the presence of negative examples. The evidence seems to me compelling that the body will believe and do what the mind tells it. The power of positive thinking is as awesome in the health arena as in any other. Positive thinking is at least equal in strength to the most potent drug any doctor can prescribe. I told myself this by the hour. But the only image I kept seeing was that of a cripple. Right after Christmas Bobbie and I were at the airport together with 60 of my colleagues from the college. We were all going to Oxford for two weeks, courtesy of a grant from the Hallmark Foundation, to learn about the British system of tutorial teaching which we planned to implement for a select group of our students.
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Bobbie and I would stay in England when the others returned. I was to teach for the spring semester at our Harlaxton campus some 120 miles north of London. We were both emotionally and physically exhausted, and would not have gone if the process had not begun a year earlier. To back out now would mean that our two sons would not get to study there. Bobbie had already arranged a leave from her job; and someone had been hired to teach for me on our campus. Our sense of duty demanded that we go. When we first applied, I had been ecstatic at the prospect of jogging through the English countryside. Now that walking was a chore and my energy level was not high enough for routine tasks, I didnt care where I was. Sitting in a chair is not something I choose to do in any country. My next six months were the best days of my life. They were also the worst days of my life. Spending those months in England, living and working in a manor house as big and fine as a castle, with three-day weekends for travelthis was the best part. The suffocating fear that I would fall apart; the frustration of sitting on the bus while others got off to see castles and cathedrals; the constant psyching of myself to do my job; the lack of energy and enthusiasmthis was the worst part. Harlaxton Dec. 26 *Leaving tomorrow for London. Im so tired. No matter how much I sleep, Im always tired. I went to the MS clinic on the 17th. They prescribed some pills to reduce muscle spasticity and to control the spasms. Im so afraid I wont be able to walk after we get to England. Ive got to get over this fear. Its sapping my energy. But how? Im praying, reading, talking about it. I guess its helping, but Im still having big problems. I dont even feel excited about going tomorrow. Im scared. I need to go get some film and some luggage straps. But just thinking about going somewhere exhausts me. Once we all get to England I wont have to worry about getting sick and not being able to go. If I couldnt go, Bobbie and the boys wouldnt get to go. So much depends on me right now, and Im not sure I can come through. Help me, God! Im desperate. Im scared. And Im unhappy. This is worse that the physical problem. Dec. 27 Still tired, but getting excited. Im getting excited. Im gonna make it. I wasnt much help getting ready. Bobbie had to do more than she should.
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Debbie and Dave are taking us to the airport. We leave at 12:45. Get to Chicago at 1:40. Depart for Boston at 3:15; arrive 7:22 (lost an hour). Leave for London at 8 p.m. Arrive at 7 a.m., having lost six hours in flight. Read on the plane about Dr. Jerrold Petrofsky at the St. Louis University School of Medicine who has developed a computer that can help replace nerve instructions, thus restoring movement to paralyzed limbs. Petrofsky hopes to develop a cigarette-pack implant for human legs. Dec. 28 My watch says 12:50, but its 6:50 British time. We are about to land in London. Bobbie and I were lucky. We each had two seats and could sleep. Went through customs with no problem. Sitting now on the green bus waiting to go to Oxford. Big red double bus in front of us has yellow doors and a large white sign that says AIRBUS. This one is going to Paddington station. We got to our hotel in Oxford a little after nine. About a hundred English tourists spent Christmas at the hotel and were just leaving when we arrived. Our room wasnt ready. So we struck up a conversation in the lobby with an English couple named Davis. He is 81; she is 80. They have no children and spent their Christmas at the hotel rather than at home watching TV. They had visited the U.S. when you had your Worlds Fair in New York. We got into our room about 10 a.m. and fell into bed. Exhausted. Woke about 4:30. Supper at 7. Back to bed at 11. Dec. 29 Poached egg and kippers (smoked fish) for breakfast. From nine to noon we had a session with several faculty from Oxford describing their teaching methods and objectives which we plan to adapt for our most outstanding students at Jewell. Rested in bed from 12 to 1. Session from two to three. Then took a bus into Oxford. Went to Blackwells Book Store. Bought four books for my Race Relations project. Walked up and down the streets of Oxford; had fish and chips and trifle pudding at the Nags Head. Dec. 31 So tired! So scared. Couldnt sleep last night. Both arms went to sleep. I think Im getting worse. I dont know what to do. The muscle under my left eye is jumping this morning. I dont have the energy for ordinary conversation. Talked to Bobbie about how I feel.
*My mind is on MS when print is in italics.
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She suggested I stop taking the medicine. I do whatever she says. Im so dependent on Bobbie and so afraid Ill become a burden on her. Its now noon. Weve had our morning meetings. Our room hasnt been cleaned yet. All I want to do is crawl into bed. I didnt take my pill this morning. My legs dont hurt but walking is hard. Im sitting in the lobby now, as close to the fire as I can get. But its not close enough to get warm. The hotel staff is getting the buffet ready for lunch. Looks good, but Im not hungry. I wish I had the strength to do something. Bobbie went on a tour of the Cotswolds this afternoon. I sat and read. Bobbie is back at 5:30 and we talk about going with the Johnsons to high Eucharist at Christs Church. Were both too tired. Jan. 2 Drove through the countryside to Avebury to see the giant stone circles. Stopped at the church and the museum. The delightful attendant knew some America history and had drawn some interesting conclusions: Truman represented Mid-America and didnt spot the record as Nixon and LBJ did. Had a Plowmans Lunch and two bowls of soup at the Red Lion, welcome fortification against the bone-chilling dampness. Drove to Gastonbury to see the Abbey ruins, site of the oldest Christian church in England and where King Arthur was first buried. We drove through Wells to see the Cathedral and through Bath just after darkabout 5 p.m. Stopped in Chippenham at 5:30 for dinner. Back to Oxford at 8 p.m. The countryside we saw today is beautiful: thatched roofs everywhere; little villages of stone and different from the next village only a short distance away. None of the roads run at right angles, and all the roads, other than the motorways, are so narrow. The hedgerows and stonewalls butt right up against the road. No verges (shoulders) anywhere. I felt good today. Walked around quite a bit. Im a little tired, but Im going to stay up till 10 or so; and maybe I wont wake up at midnight and lie awake for hours. On a program called Just a Little Sugar I heard about an MS program in Ireland. They called the MS victim handicapped. That got to me. No pills today. I brought enough for five months if I take four a day. Jan. 3 I prayed hard last night to be cured. I would give all the money I have. But I know that wont do it. I even tried to bargain with God. If God would free me for our five months here, I would accept it later. But I
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know acceptance would not be so easy. How I wish this illness had not come up to cloud this trip. I would be deliriously happy otherwise. Ive always welcomed problems to see if I could solve them. This time I dont know how. Got to Harlaxton about 11:15. This manor house that looks like a castle will be our home for the semester. Were to live in the interior flat, third floor, beside the clock tower, but only single beds. The students will be here tomorrow. God give me the strength to do a good job. I dont want to be a disappointment. Im afraid to get excited about being here because Im afraid I cant do anything. I cant exercise. Ill overeat, get fat, and feel and look worse. I would like so much to feel safe, to be home in bed, rested, with my friends. Ive always told my students to put themselves in uncomfortable situations so they can learn something about themselves. What Im learning now from my uncomfortable situation is that Im becoming a cripple and a weak person. Im feeling sorry for myself. If only I could jog into Grantham. But I cant. Ive got to get a hold of myself. God loves me. Bobbie loves me. I have many beautiful friends. Jan. 4 Not overly tired. But scared. I feel inadequate, the way I felt in the 6th grade when I ran away from school and hid in the closet at home. Where can I hide now? Bobbie and I go into Grantham at one oclock to open a bank account and to shop. I sit in the square and watch the people while she shops. Grantham is not picturesque or quaint as so many towns we have seen. The town was chartered in 1464, but it doesnt seem to have proceeded from any plan. I can understand why the town voted itself the most boring in England. The rum balls in Catlins are heavenly. Jan. 5 Muscle in right arm is twitching. At 10:15 Im sitting in the alcove window of the library watching a jogger come up the path. Its torture watching him, like somebodys rubbing my face in it. Had a reception before lunch; met all the faculty. Registered students from 1-4 p.m. Faculty meeting from 4-6. God help me make it. So many people are counting on me. To be sick among friends and family and familiar surroundings is bad enough. But to be sick in a new place, among potential friendsbut still strangers is terrifying.
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Jan. 7 Beautiful morning; frost, blue sky, and sun. I can see for miles from my bedroom window. I can hardly hold back the tears to think that I cant run through the countryside. I havent been out of the manor in two days. Jan. 8 Arrived in London about noon for the weekend. Got a room at the St. Athams Hotel, a bed and breakfast (B & B) that had been recommended. Harrods for tea at 4; stayed till 5:30. Walked around for a while in the snow. Caught the tube for Liecester Square. Rush hour. We were crushed so tight we could hardly move. Went to see Beastly Beatitudes at the Duke of York Theatre. Bawdy, but comic and touching. Did all the tourists things in the next two days. Fell in love with London and with B&Bs. Jan. 11 Im sitting here in our room at the manor. Bobbie has gone into Grantham to get a zipper for Brians coat or to have it sewed if she can. Its still cold and rainy. I want to jog into Harlaxton Village, but my left leg is so hard to get around on. I can see two pheasants about 200 yards down the drive. This is a beautiful scene. And so quiet! I made it around London this weekend pretty well, though I could walk much better on the street than up and down stairs. Im thinking that everything would be fine if only I could walk without problems. But I wonder. Maybe I dont just adjust easily to new places. If I were home now, I would be facing several hundred students during the spring semester. Here I have a chance to relax and to sort out plans for teaching that takes less energy. I may have to close the Ethnic Center, limit my class size, and go back to more traditional teaching. I cannot maintain the pace of the last several years. My energy level has been adequate for the last week. And I am grateful. I havent taken any of the pills since leaving Oxford. Id like to start again with a small dose at the end of this week to see if I can regain some control over my left leg. The little finger on my left hand has gone to sleep two or three times on recent nights. Each time I was lying with that arm bent and my weight on it. When I turned over, the feeling returned. Ive also had a slight twitch near my right eye. No problem with vision, but it does concern me.
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As I sit here looking out of my window at the snow for miles in all directions, it is not exactly depression I feel. Its more like hunger. Ive been in the elements. Ive run in the snow. Ive trudged across fields in my boots. And I can picture myselffeel myselfout there right now. Ive run down unfamiliar roads and upon new things. In my mind, Im doing it now. I was glad the bus we took to London last week drove through Harlaxton Village. Now its easier to visualize myself jogging on those streets. I havent given up completely the idea that I will actually do it. Went for a walk at dusk. Down to the first gate. A pink haze is in the sky, and with the lights on in the manor, its a breathtaking sight. The silhouette of the manor house, with its turrets and towers and gargoyles, the bulging library window casting its broad beacon of lightI expect King Arthur to appear out of the shadows. Jan. 14 A member of the nursing faculty let me read a journal kept by an MS patient that one of her students visited yesterday. The patient described the progression of his disease and his declining morale. He has had problems with walking, bowels, bladder, and sexual functioning. His first symptoms appeared in 1967; he was diagnosed in 1975. He had to change jobs, but he is still working. His major point in his journal was the difficulty of keeping up morale but the necessity of doing so. Not to maintain faith in the ability to get better, he said, would lead to a worsening of the physical condition. Jan. 17 After lunch Bobbie and I walked into Harlaxton Village where a local resident showed us around. He kept talking about the powerful people in the towns history as big noises and he made several references to sexual indiscretions on the part of Harlaxton citizens. When showing us the manor house and its moat, he said, If a man had a woman friend, he could carry on as he pleased behind this moat. Jan. 20 Im hearing a new excuse for missing class: I have to go to London to visit my embassy. We have 149 students at the college from 26 countries. Jan. 22 Ate lunch at Ye Old Trip to Jerusalem Pub in Nottingham, the oldest pub in England; frequented by the crusaders. Its hewn out of rock and built into the hillside that backs on Nottingham Castle. The roaring fire and good conversation inside the pub serve as pleasing counterpoint to the cold, pelting rain thats falling as we enter.
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Jan. 23 My left leg drags and both legs have burning sensation in the hips and thighs. The night watchman took us up to the clockworks inside the clock tower, and to a secret door in the Gold Room. Jan. 24 Im sitting at the desk in our flat, looking out the window. There is a 10,000 meter race in progress along the main drive and the perimeter roads. Most of the people running are over 35. I have a strange feeling as I watch. I ran a 10,000 back in Kansas City last April. I didnt run at all during the summer. I ran some this fall, but not at all since Christmas. Im not terribly unhappy that Im not out there running. I havent given up the idea that I can run again. Right now, however, I can just manage walking. God seems to be answering my prayer for relief from the depression and despair I felt last summer. Im deeply grateful. I watch the runners without envy, without self-pity. I sweat and ache with them. And I wonder if they ever think about the day they can no longer run. I realize that a chapter in my life has closed. Im sad, but glad to have done it. And for the first time Im anxious to get on with the rest of my life. The preacher at church this morning mentioned Joni Erickson who was paralyzed at 17 in a diving accident. She went through terrible depression. But now at the age of 32, she has written two books, learned to paint with her teeth, inspired thousands, and finds joy in living. She gives me hope. Jan. 25 Its early afternoon. Im sitting (I do a lot of sitting these days) on a bench in the Grantham town square, right beside a statue of Sir Isaac Newton, who was born in Woolsthorpe, just out of Grantham. Margaret Thatcher was also born in Grantham. Jan. 26 Yesterday I had more muscle twitches than in a long time. I wonder how that is related to the fact I took half a pill the night before. I took another one-half last night. Well see what happens today. Got a letter from Debbie (my daughter) today. She said my grandmother died. Im glad she is free of suffering, but Im sorry shes gone. I havent seen her since Paw Paws funeral four years ago, but it was comforting to know she was there. I have no living grandparents now. And the kids have no great42 W
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grandparents. Bobbie has only her mother left. Though we seldom see these older members of our family and our values are different, their lives give ours context. When they are gone, we are alone. I am sitting now in the bell tower of St. Wulframs Church, 76 winding stairs above the church floor. The room is a 20 foot square. Ten ropes hang from the ceiling where the bells are. We put on ear muffs and climb another stairway to watch the bells as theyre pealing. The biggest bell is huge; weighs 3,200 pounds, someone says. Ten bells in all, a combined weight of seven tons. The tower sways slightly when all the bells ring. But they dont ring; they peal, playing off and to one another in an intricate musical version of cat and mouse. I pick up a book of diagrams showing the various patterns for pealing the bells; page after page containing, not music, but columns of numbers with red and blue lines drawn from one number to another in the next row. I can make no sense of it. Sitting in the tub of cold water tonight, my left thigh quivering constantly. Its still doing it when I go to bed. I just took another half a pill. That makes three nights in a row. Walking has been hard for the last five days or so. Jan. 27 My thigh quivered off and on all night. This afternoon I went with Brian Simmons, the archeology teacher and his students to see some old Roman roads. We visited several villages which my archeologist colleague described as they looked in medieval times. Jan. 28 Bought a car today, a 10 year old Renault, for 330 pounds (a pound is worth about $1.85 at the moment). We hadnt planned to buy a car, but the trains have been on strike since we got here. My right leg started hurting as I walked down the stairs to dinner. Feels like a pulled tendon. My muscles are randomly and occasionally twitching; Im having trouble walking. Jan. 29 Bobbie and I went for a drive in our car up to Denton, Belvoir Castle, Red Eye, and other villages; then back through Grantham. I stayed on the left okay, but when I got back I had a headache from the concentration required. Jan. 30 Im sitting in my car right now in front of Woolworth in Stratford Upon Avon. We have tickets for tonights performance of Alls Well That Ends Well at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre. This is the last performance of the season. New season begins in April.
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We stopped earlier today at Warwick Castle. Wow!! This is what I always thought a castle should look like. We walked up 125 narrow circular steps to the top of a tower. The view was superb! In one direction we saw a church steeple and hundreds of red tile roofs, in another we saw rows of half-timbered houses: white stucco, with timbers about 18 inches apart running parallel to the ground. Jan. 31 We are driving past Holy Trinity Church as the 10:30 a.m. Parish Communion service is beginning. The bells are pealing: a more heavenly sound Ive never heard. We stop and attend the service. Shakespeare is buried in this church. I wonder if he ever sat where I sit. The choir is singing now. They are out of sight, somewhere up front. The music echoes in the old stone church, giving the music a stereophonic quality. The verger is standing about eight feet in front of me, silver cross raised high. The vicar is reading the marriage bans for local bachelors and spinsters. A visiting minister preaches from an elevated pulpit to the right of the congregation. After an eight to ten minute sermon, the congregation recites the Nicene Creed. During communion an usher invites us to partake and explains what to do. We participate and find it moving. By 5:15 we have left Stratford and are in Coventry, about an hours drive on our way back to Harlaxton. We get to Coventry Cathedral just in time for evensong. The original cathedral was bombed by the Germans in 1941, only the outer walls and the spire were left standing. A new and modern cathedral was built adjoining the ruins, and is as impressive as the old. To see those bombed out windows and those walls silhouetted against the evening sky brings a tear to my eye. Its ironic that the new cathedral should have arisen from war. I can understand why some people find the new Coventry objectionable. Its modernity is out of place among the antiquities of this land. But they were once as new. Newness gives a sense of future, of life, of hope. Without newness, the old has only a museum life. The music is breathtaking in its beauty. As the booklet says, The music of a cathedral choir is the counterpoint of the architecture and the stained glass window of the building; it is finely wrought music in which the musicians offer on behalf of the people what the people cannot do for themselves. We leave Coventry after popping in at Holy Trinity Church, just across the street from Coventry Cathedral. Holy Trinity is the parish church for the City of Coventry. It doesnt seem possible that it wasnt destroyed in the war.
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Feb. 1 My legs burn; Im tired. I did too much this weekend. Ill have to grade papers, write letters and rest today. Talking to a friend tonight in the hall I suddenly felt faint and had to go lie down. Took another half a pill. Im going to start taking half a pill twice a day tomorrow. For the past week Ive been having a lot of trouble walking. It seems to be getting steadily worse. Feb. 4 Flying out of London tonight for a four-day weekend in Greece. Athens is not a beautiful city. Box-like buildings and graffiti are everywhere; the ruins in ruin. Some of the surrounding mountain villages are delightful places to visit. Feb. 7 Leaving on tour of Corinth and Mycenia. My leg doesnt bother me. I did some stretching this morning. Late yesterday it got hard to walk. We were gone all day and walked everywhere. I could take long strides, but I couldnt walk fast. Im encouraged by developments. Standing in Agora, the market and meeting place of ancient Corinth, I try to imagine what it was like when the people were here. I cant. Tour buses and wildflowers provide the only signs of life in Corinth now. The Gideon Bible in our Athens hotel room is in English. Seems odd. It was in Greek before English, and were in Greece. The sign about the energy crisis is in English, French, Germanand Greek. Feb. 13 My very first thought when I learned we were coming to England was that I could run through the countryside. I ached so to do it today that I hurt. But I cant run. Its not easy even to walk. To think that only a few months ago I took running for granted. Now my mental energies are siphoned by having to concentrate so hard on walking. Feb. 16 The weather is overcast and my leg is giving me trouble. Altogether, its a pretty depressing situation. Im now taking half a pill three times a day. Walking is no easier and Im having random muscles twitches. My energy level is tolerable, but Im sleeping to 8, 9, and 10 oclock every morning. And Im doing almost nothing physical aside from a few exercises once or twice a day. Im walking as little as possible. And Im eating too much. Last night I ate four desserts, and they werent even very good. I seem to have pain in several joints when I move. Im sure that not
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running is causing me to stiffen up. I try not to think about how it will be when we get back home. I can do my job now. But so little is required. I cant afford to think beyond today. I must believe that I can get better. I must practice imagery: see myself walking, running, laughing, relaxing. I must exercise, eat sensibly and maintain a positive attitude. Tonights weekly Tuesday night lecture was The Essence of Jazz by Dr. Richard Palmer. This Englishman has never been in the States, but I learned more things about jazz. I live just a few miles from 12th and Vine in Kansas City where Charlie Parker, Count Basie, and Ella Fitzgerald once performed. Last fall I visited Preservation Hall in New Orleans and heard Kid Thomas play his trumpet. Thomas was a kid when Methuselah was a boy. But when I asked him his age, he said: None of your business. I bought one of his records and discovered he is 85. March 21 Left Warwick for Coventry a little after three. Raining still. Somehow the rain enhanced the effect of the bombed out ruin, making it more appropriate. Bright sun and blue sky are too pleasant a setting for such a grim reminder of the darker side of human nature. I was more taken by the new Cathedral this time. When we were here before they were getting ready for evensong and we couldnt see much. This time we could explore more. After seeing so many churches and cathedrals so old and so similar, Coventry seems to make a statement: The church is not just a museum of medieval architecture; its a living hope, a constant faith that finds expression no less now than in the past. To see the vestry, rebuilt by young Germans in 1961, to read the prayer that rests beside the cross standing therea prayer for forgiveness of the German people, is to sense the power of faith and the meaning of forgiveness. The windows in the new cathedral are so different from the old. And so beautiful. The acoustics are superb. The organ was playing as we walked around. The choir was practicing as we left. It was in Coventry that Lady Godiva bared her all and rode on horseback through the streets. She did this on a wager with her husband and with his promise that if she did, he would grant tax relief to the people. According to the story, the citizens of Coventry were so grateful for Lady Godivas benefaction to them that they averted their eyes when she rode by: except for one solitary ingrate whose curiosity bested his
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gratitude. He is known to this day as Peeping Tom. The good lady sits in bronze upon her horse some hundred yards or so from Coventry Cathedral, her long hair protecting her modesty. Walked around a lot this trip. At least it seems a lot to me now. It would have been nothing a year ago. Bobbie said she cant tell any difference in the way I walk. March 22 Today is not a good day for me. Im not tired, but its as if there is a screen between me and everything else, filtering out any closeness, or feeling of any kind. Ive become a disinterested spectator. Tonight a bunch of staff from the college went to a Spanish restaurant in Nottingham. We werent invited. I was hurt, but I cant blame them. I wouldnt invite me either. Im so tired. I know they think Im just distant and uncaring. I hope my students arent feeling this. I want to do my job. But its so hard. I wish I were home. But what then? March 25 Went down to breakfast and got one of the biggest shocks of my life. Six of our students were killed in a car wreck during the night. Their car hit a brick wall near the garden cottage. Classes were canceled. I took three students into Grantham to buy flowers. A memorial service was held at 5 p.m. in the Long Gallery; led by a Catholic priest, two Church of England ministers and a Moslem Imam. The faculty met after the service to decide if we should continue the semester. Consensus was that we should. After dinner I led a grief session in the Gold Room. We all cried. For days thats about all we did. March 26 Bobbie and I were going to London, but I didnt feel like it. I went back to bed and Bobbie went to London alone. Im glad she went. Shes going to have to do many things alone that I used to do with her. Thats sad to realizefor both of us. But Im afraid its true. Im hardly able to walk on some days. The last two have been very hard. After lunch, I sat out on the lawn with the students. Many came by to talk. They are beginning to come out of their shock. Some are playing frisbee; theyre laughing and arguing. Last Wednesday when Bobbie and I walked into Harlaxton Village, I saw Benga out running. How lucky he is, I thought, to be young and healthy. I had wanted to be him. Eight hours later he was dead. Six young men in the prime of lifeall athletes. And I thought of Housemans poem, To An Athlete Dying Young. I am sick that they died.
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But my depression is tempered by my knowledge that they will never grow old and incapacitated, never get sick, never yearn to do what they once did but no longer can. They will never be betrayed by a body grown old and ill. Will never be forced to sit when they like to run. Will never cry at their desperate yearning to sweat and get hot. Will never feel a burden on wife or children or friends. Im sorry that they will never marry, never have children, never teach their young their ways, never celebrate an anniversary. But as I sit here now on this incredibly beautiful day, my wife gone to London alone because I was not well enough to accompany her, and unable to run because Multiple Sclerosis is ravaging my legs, it is not unmitigated sorrow I feel for my six young friends. I will remember them in their prime. And they died on such a beautiful day. The sun was brilliant. They were out and about for the first time in weeks, free of rain gear and with a firm footing. My last sight of them was as they ran and played in front of the manor. And I think of them now as the lucky ones. They will never know the depression I have felt for the last ten months since I learned of my illness. I can no longer run. And walking is hard. Bobbie is drawing away from me in self defense. I think she is scared. She fears I wont be around; she is protecting herself against the hurt. Id rather live a few days like I was than years the way I am. I got next years contract in the mail today. I hope I can keep my job. I dont want to be disabled. More than that, I dont want to live without joy. When I cried last night at our grief sharing session, I was not crying simply for the dead students. I was crying for myself, for the changes taking place in my body, for the fear I feel. And Bobbie feels. March 28 Bobbie has gone to lunch, and Im in bed. Again! I have no energy. Im afraid to die, but I dont want to live like this. What can I do? Im sick about what this is doing to Bobbie. Shes so scared. Its frightening to talk about what might happen, but I know we are both thinking about it. Either I will live for years, getting slowly worse, unable to contribute to the family; or I will die. Is there nothing else to look forward to? I find it so hard to imagine how carefree and happy we were just a year ago. Will I ever feel peace and joy again? There has to be a way. Other people have been crippled and found joy. How? God help me. I asked Bobbie to go for a ride after lunch. She suggested bicycles. I didnt feel up to it, but inactivity was driving me crazy. I was relieved that none of the bikes had air and I didnt have to tell Bobbie I couldnt
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ride. So we sat outside and watched the students play. Bobbie played a little Frisbee. I sat. I feel myself being cut off from people by my tired legs. I want to see the boys and hear about their trip to Wales. But Im so tired. Tonight at dinner, Bobbie and I sat alone. Im feeling cut off from the other faculty by my lack of energy. Its Hell. Im sitting in bed now, writing postcards. Bobbie is in the living room. Reading. We havent said anything to each other in an hour. She will probably sleep in the other room. God, please help me. Im so scared and hopeless. Help me not to alienate my loved ones. I dread the time Mother and Dad learn what is happening to me. They would be heartbroken. I fear what it will do to Dad. But Im afraid to tell them. I seem to have some insane hope that they can make everything okay, the way they did when I was a child. March 29 Im so tired today. All I can do comfortably is sit. Im registering students for back in the States next fall. Its not fair to them that I have such a hard time concentrating on what they say to me. Im beginning to think about having to live on disability pay. Maybe I could sell some of my writing. But this is all so negative. No wonder Im sick. Bobbie went to town about two. Shes checking on bus tours. We have Eurorail passes we bought back in the States. I dont think I can manage the train, though. While Bobbie was gone, I found a letter she is writing to Debbie. She told Debbie how much trouble I have walking some days. She told her that I go out to watch the students play ball and Frisbee but never try to join in. Its terribly sad because you know how much Dad likes to play. Im glad I saw that letter. I wish I didnt have a condition that makes everyone sadincluding me. Im glad they care, though. I just have to live one day at a time. Ive got to hope. I have to laugh. I have to picture myself well. With Gods help, my mind can heal my body. Lately, Ive been letting my body control my mind. Its so easy. But so destructive. I will walk with pleasure again. I will run again. I must make my mind get that message through to my body. The telegraph wires are down in spots. My mind can direct repair crews to those places, make the connections and get the message through. I must look for every positive sign that Im getting better. March 31 We went to Eric and Dennas in Sudbrook for lunch and for the afternoon. Got there about 1:15. Had lunch. Sat by the fire and talked. Walked through the village where their farm is located.
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I try now to find ways to avoid walking. I wanted to see the village, but I was self-conscious about my gait and knew my leg would hurt. My calf muscles cramp a lot and my balance seems to be deteriorating. Eric introduced us to a woman in the village who offered to let us use her cabin in Scotland. She mentioned it several times. A year ago I would have snapped up the offer. But now everything seems more trouble than its worth. April 1 The first day of our last month at Harlaxton. Visiting the Brears yesterday made me homesick for our normal house and routine events. Im tired this morning. I didnt sleep well, waking up first at 2 a.m., then sleeping in snatches the rest of the night: That makes several nights recently. Im at a loss to explain the reason. Yesterday I walked leisurely through the village with Eric as he pointed out people and places. We stopped to talk with Pat, who offered her cabin. We climbed through a fence and walked through Erics fields to his barn to see his cows. And I walked back and forth from the barn to the house several times. I went to the woodshed for firewood three or four times. Not strenuous at all, but it exhausted me. I knew it would. The walk into Harlaxton Village on the previous Wednesday also did. But I cant surrender. I must do what I can. I know it will require rest later. I tried to sleep this afternoon. Stayed in bed from three to five, but I cant sleep. Sat outside a few minutes before dinner. Ive had muscle twitches all over today. My left hand is cold, and I have tingling here and there, now and then. Im feeling terribly sorry for myself. Even sorrier for Bobbie. I can tell shes worried about me. We both wish I could go out and run. How Id love to hear her gripe at me for being smelly and sweaty. We are just about to have six weeks free to do whatever we want. And I can hardly walk. And have little energy. Ive done so little to take advantage of being here. Ive slept so much. And just sat . I cant do anything physical; havent even exercised in days. I dont want to be sitting here in this room now. But for some reason, Im afraid of people. I dont laugh and joke, and I fear they think its because I dont like them. Its not. Im tired and scared. Im scared I wont be able to work. Even if I can, I dont see how I can have much enthusiasm for it. I need that job. For the money, for the feeling of self-worth. But I dont want to do it badly. We talked in class today about the importance of self-love. Right now, I dont love myself and I cant see why anyone else would. Ive always said that the value of a person is in who that person is rather than what that
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person does. Im discovering, though, that without doing, its hard to know the being. Who am I if I cant do what Ive done for so long? Can I find something else to do? Am I going to wind up paralyzed and helpless? I need someone to help me. Where do I look? There has been enough sadness around here. I dont want to cause more. Its not fair to unload on Bobbie. She doesnt have anyone to talk to. Shes worried about her job, my health, and whats going to happen to us. I had no idea this semester would go this way. Im glad we came for the boys sake. But I feel myself becoming a mean and sullen person. Im afraid thats the way Ill be remembered. Writing this makes me feel worse. If I could go run, everything would be perfect. I guess Ill turn on the TV and try to drown out my mind. I wish I drank. Or took drugs. Anything to blot out this helplessness I feel. April 2 Caught the 1:45 train for London. Got to Kings Cross about 3:15; to the Tower of London by 3:40, just in time for the last tour. Saw the Crown Jewels, torture devices; tried to see Mr. Cronin, the beefeater we met last time. He was out. Got a room for the third time at St. Anthams Hotel B&B. Walked around the corner and up the block and found the Yialousa Greek Tavern. Had a delicious dinner for two. News report on the TV. tonight that Argentina invaded the Falkland Islands, a British possession of 1,800 people lying, 7,000 miles from Britain. Parliament meets tomorrow for its first Saturday debate since the Suez crisis in 1959. Mrs. Thatcher is in big trouble defending her governments actions. I feel so much better tonight than last night. Even when I got up this morning at 11:30 after 13 hours in bed, I felt bad. I think the manor depresses me now. Im glad its almost time to leave. So many unhappy things have happened here this semester. On the whole, I would say it hasnt been fun living with the students. Maybe it was my health. Riding the train was pleasant and London is always fascinating. I walked a reasonable amount today. And Bobbie was so helpful. She carried the bag almost all day; and had me rest often. If we had stayed at the manor, I would be watching TV again and would be bored and depressed. April 3 Had a hard time going to sleep last night. Mind racing so with plans because I feel good. Im sitting now just in front of Hampton Court and beside the River Thames. Its a gorgeous day, quite a few bight interW
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vals. (Rather than referring to a day of sun and clouds as partly cloudy, as Americans do, the British emphasize the sun, with their bright intervals.) Hampton Court has magnificent gardens, with sculptured trees, lakes, birds, deer, beautiful flowers, and a maze of sculptured shrubbery. The state apartments are filled with paintings, and the tudor kitchens imply much about the quality of life a century ago and number of servants required to feed the nobility. I think I may have reached a breakthrough in my attitude toward not being able to run. A jogger just passed; I admired his stride and didnt feel envy. April 4 Muscles twitched very little last night; fingers and toes did not go to sleep. My legs feel pretty good this morning. Thank you, God. I wore those support hose yesterday. Rested at every opportunity. Bobbie walked a lot to save me from more. She is very tired this morning. We take the tube to Kew Gardens, but walk quite a distance after we get off the train. Im so tired by the time we get to the Gardens that I literally cant walk. As soon as we get in the gate, Bobbie goes to rent a wheel chair for me. How I dread to sit in a chair and have her push me. Ive always said I dont care what people say. But thats a lie. I dont want anyone to think I cant walk. How do crippled people handle their perception of being on exhibit? Do they get over it? Do they withdraw? And stay at home? God, give me strength. I dont want to withdraw. If Bobbie or one of the kids were in my place, my advice to them would be to get a wheel chair, to go and not give up. That would be so easy to say. Lets see if I can do it. That will be a far more powerful lesson. Am I that good a teacher? Bobbie had to stand in line to check our bag and then to get me a wheel chair, reducing the time we have to see things and increasing the physical demands on her. Help me not to add to her burden by being sullen or withdrawn or uncooperative. Here I am. Sitting in my wheel chair in front of Palm House in Kew Gardens. I make it a point to look at the people, not avoid eye contact. They dont seem to notice me. Its 1:30 now. Bobbie has been pushing me for about an hour. She had to lie on the grass and rest after half an hour. She has gone to look at the Japanese pagoda. Im sitting here, waiting. I can see the pagoda about 300 yards to my right across the grass. No way I could walk there just now. But I can sit and write.
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A thought occurs: My college has dozens of joggers and physical fitness buffs among the faculty. Most could always outdo me. But Ill be the only cripple. Can I use that to everyones advantage? I can almost believe that Ill feel better when everyone knows whats happening to me. Ive tried so hard to look and act normal at the manor. I dont feel self-conscious as I sit here. Rather, I feel a deep satisfaction at not having to walk. In this chair, no one expects it. I wonder what they think when Bobbie comes to a hill and I get out. We caught the 5:05 for Harlaxton. We got to the manor about 6:30. Met the Deputy High Commissioner for Education from Nigeria who is here for tonights memorial service honoring the six students who were killed. Discovered that he has been a student at the University of Kansas. We know some of the same people. The service was held at St. Wulframs at 8 p.m. As I sat there listening to the beautiful music, I realized that I knew many of the people there. Three months ago I didnt know any of them. Now they are friends Ill soon be leaving. I also thought of all the inscriptions we have seen in so many churches commemorating the life of some well respected local person, a person unknown anywhere else. And I realized that I belong in Liberty. Only there am I somebody. Only there, if anywhere, will someone one day see my name memorialized and perhaps stop to wonder, as I often have in the past few months, what kind of person lies buried here. I have grown close to several people here. We have force-fed our relationship, knowing that its temporary. Ive learned something. Each meeting with friends here might well be our last. Time will not permit a return visit. So I try to squeeze each moment for all its worth. I think thats not a bad practice to continue at home. April 5 Feel terrible. Tired. Legs hurt. Left hand cold. I was ready to go back to bed at 2:30. But I heard the guys playing volleyball; so I went out to watch. Stayed until 4:30. It never seems to fail. I come back from every weekend trip so tired I can hardly stand it. I want to plan something special for our anniversary, but Im not sure I can get it done. Ive got to try, though. I cannot believe that God made me sick. A loving God does not do that kind of thing. Nor can I believe that God will make me well. A knowing God would not do that. Its like when I was a child and would ask my parents for candy. Sometimes they gave it. More often than not, they didnt. I believe they knew that the candy was irrelevant to my happiness. So God must know
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that my health is unrelated to my spiritual condition. Until a year ago, I never had reason to concern myself with the relationship of health to happiness, much less the definition of happiness. Now for the past year, Ive thought of little else. When I could run and play and work, I was happy. As I said often to my friendsand at least once in printif the time ever comes that I cannot do these things, then I do not want to live. Now I cant run and play, and if my disease follows its normal course, I may not be able to work much longer. And many times in the last few months I have wished to close my eyes in sleep and not wake up. I have even thought of suicide. Disguised as an accident, to provide larger insurance for my family. It suddenly came to me tonight, however, that health and happiness are two entirely different things that can be related in four different ways. 1. Good HealthGreat Happiness 2. Good HealthLittle Happiness 3. Poor HealthGreat Happiness 4. Poor HealthLittle Happiness Looking back, I cannot believe the completely unmerited good health and great happiness I enjoyed for 45 years. Except for bouts with childhood illness, which passed without incidence, I enjoyed picture-book health. I am deeply grateful for such long tenure in stage one. For despite good health, some never rise above stage two. Eleven months ago I plummeted to stage four. When my family doctor said, You have Multiple Sclerosis, and its a damnable disease, the bottom fell out of my world. I probably will never again rise to stage one. But I know that with Gods help I can find happiness at three. God must have always known that I didnt have to be healthy to be happy. But now I know it. I most certainly would choose to live forever in stage one. At some point in life, though, the time comes for each of us to move to another stage. And it is happiness, that spiritual peace Jesus described, which is the more prized. Were they not separable, I now would be most miserable. And without hope. But God has made my body, mind and soul. It is meant to work as a whole. I believe that in my mind, God has given me the tool to repair my body and the power to lift myself out of depression. Praise God! April 7 Last night and the night before, my head jerked on the pillow. That had not happened before. Little finger on the left hand went to sleep.
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When the six students died in the car wreck, everything here went to pieces. This is a sad place now. I hear laughter again; the students play games on the lawn. We try not to mention the accident. But there is a pall over everything. Its hard for me to judge the accuracy of my assessment. My deteriorating health so absorbs all my attention that I cant be sure about much else. Maybe better health would enable me to throw off all the negative things that have happened. As it is, my health worries only compound the other problems. We left about 12:30 with some of the faculty to visit Chatsworth, home of the Duke of Devonshire, just out of Chesterfield, site of the church with the corkscrew tower. Its 4:30. We just finished our tour of the house. Bobbie and the others are walking on the grounds. My foot wont work. So Im sitting here. Waiting. I notice Cris Reed sitting a lot, too. I wonder whats wrong with her. Id like to talk to her about it if the opportunity arises. Ive noticed that I feel better at night than in the morning. I wore support socks today. I think they helped. April 14 I have reluctantly decided that I cant handle traveling in Europe by train. So Bobbie this morning signed us up for three back-to-back bus tours lasting 30 days. I hate being on somebody elses schedule, but they will take care of all problems. I feel safe. But not excited. Picked up some more food from the cafeteria at lunch. Going to take it with us on our trip to Scotland. Were leaving Thursday afternoon or Friday morning. Well be back here to sell the car on April 26; then to London where we pick up our first tour, this one to Holland. The muscle on the right side of my chest started jumping while I was giving my anthropology final. Im sitting in bed writing, and it has stopped. Now its going again. And I seem to be cold most of the time. But I made it. My classes and tests are all over. I have to finish grading the anthropology tests, turn in the grades, and Im finished. Ive had to live with this damn thing every day. I havent missed a class. And I think Ive done a good job. Its been 11 months now since I found out I have MS. I have to grit my teeth every morning and make myself get up. And Ive done it. Not without complaining and crying and cussing and self-pity. But I made it. April 15 Turned in all my grades today. Everything is packed and ready to go. Well say good-bye to whoever is at dinner, then go to bed and leave in the morning. If I had the energy, we would have gone today.
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My legs burn now as I sit in bed at 8:15. The big muscle on the right side of my chest is twitching again. Ive said good-bye to everyone. In the morning our Harlaxton adventure will be over. I dont know how to feel about that. It was a remarkable sight to see students from all over the world eating together day after day. This is an intense environment, demanding much emotional energy. From my bedroom just now I can hear people coming and going through the door below. Car doors slamming, laughter, radios, footsteps. And in the hall I hear people; overhead I hear people. I learned another lesson in not feeling sorry for myself yesterday. The business teacher was giving his final exam at the same time I was, and in the same room. While we were watching the students, he stopped briefly to tell me about his love of fishing. He ended by saying that was his only sport, now that he was too old for squash. He is about my age. Then at dinner, another faculty member mentioned that the business teacher had a horrible operation coming up. He has a detached retina and has to have it operated on. He will have to lie perfectly still in a hospital bed for two weeks. Later he has to have the same thing done to the other eye. And he can never do anything that jars his body. Our English teacher said his father had the same operation; and it went badly, leaving him blind in one eye. I met his father several weeks ago. He looked the picture of health and had just taken early retirement. When will I realize that everybody has their own private hell, which they never mention. And live in spite of. April 16 Both hands went to sleep last night. Chest muscle twitched for a long time. Left the manor at 11. Dave and Brian had just said good-bye to Trudy and Kay and were outside to bid us farewell. It was painful to leave them. We wont see them again for six weeks, when the four of us are back home in Liberty. They are overcome with emotion at everyone leaving. But theyre trying to act tough. Brian watched the car Kay left in until it left the drive and turned onto the main road. Then he ambled slowly over toward the volleyball court, his head down. They both watched us leave, waving until we were out of sight. They and three other guys are leaving today for the continent. Bobbie and I drove till about 3:30. We stopped at Holy Island. We spread out the food we brought from the manor and had a picnic in the warm sun. I lay on the blanket for about an hour; Bobbie lay with her head on my stomach and read about Scotland.
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Lindensfarne Castle is on Holy Island and sits atop a giant rock that rises abruptly above the sea. We walked up to the castle, past the sheep grazing at the base of the rock, hearing the gulls call to one another above the rocky beach that stretches in front of the castle. Across the water, another castle is visible on a far peninsula. Behind us as we walk toward the Castle lies the little village with the priory ruins and the lighthouse. To my left and out of sight is the causeway back to the mainland. To my right and down the grassy hill lies the beach; and beyond that the waters of the North Sea. Hardly a ripple today. The sun is high and there is only a faint breeze. A picture postcard day! After leaving the castle, we drove into the little village and walked through the ruins of the priory. The most striking thing about the ruins is the delicate arch still intact just opposite the entrance and visible as you look toward the castle. The causeway that connects Holy Island to the mainland is under water during high tide. We consider staying at the Manor House B&B on the Island. But it costs too much, and we couldnt leave until 11 the next morning when the tide goes out. According to the tide table posted on the mainland end of the causeway, high tide today is at 7:58 p.m. So we decided to find the mainland B&B nearest the causeway and watch the tide come in. Up a little rocky road to the right of the causeway we found a delightful farmhouse B&B. We took a room and went back to watch the tide. While waiting, we fell into conversation with the only other people about, a pleasant couple, their three children and a small dog. They are on holiday and staying at a nearby caravan park in their tent trailer. Their home is in Newcastle-Upon-Tyne, a good-sized city we came through on the A-1 earlier today. An hour after its posted arrival, the tide still has not covered the bridge. Its getting cold, and we leave. Back at our B&B we join our hostess in the sitting room where she serves us tea and scones, her own thin ones cooked on a griddle rather than baked. We are joined briefly by a young woman of about 20 who is a shepherdess, come to the farm for two months to help with the lambing. She leaves a few minutes later to go with the owner of the farm to a nearby pub for refreshments after a hard day. She will soon be back to stand vigil tonight over the sheep who have not yet given birth. This is a working sheep farm. The owner raises sheep for meat; The wool is a by-product, by itself unprofitable. This farmhouse is solid stone, hewn from surrounding hills. There
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are three guest rooms; we are the only guests. We use the same bathroom and tub as the owners. Our bedroom is so homey; family pictures sit all around, on the mantle, the bureau, on the walls. The furniture is solid wood, old and polished, and lovingly cared for. The owners of our Shangri-la are in their seventies. Both have been widowed and together for 14 years. They treat us like family. I excuse myself a little before 10; fill that big old bathtub with gallons of near scalding water, and soak away the cold and stiffness. My legs didnt work very well today. After standing on the bridge waiting for the tide, I was chilled and stiff. Walking back to the car was awkward and hard. April 19 Sun is out. Our B&B is on a hill that overlooks the town. Our room has a big bay window that affords a magnificent view of the town and surrounding hills. When we checked in last night, Mr. Richards, our host, gave each of us a hot water bottle to put at our feet. In the Siberia of that room, that hot water bottle was a little piece of the tropics. At breakfast, Mr. Richards asked why we were in England. Youre not typical tourists, he said. In the first place, American tourists dont drink tea. They want coffee. And they dont eat porridge. In the second place, your car is too old; and in the third place, you sleep too late. Tourists are up at the crack o dawn, wanting their breakfast. Mr. Richards bought this place about a year ago. He doesnt like it; too boring in the winter. Hes trying to sell. He used to be a publican as pub owners are called. Said he sold out because alcohol is now taxed so high that people cant afford to go to pubs. More and more theyre buying their beer in stores and taking it home. On our way out of town we stop at the salmon run just out of Pitlochry. According to the sensor that counts them, not a single salmon has passed this way this season. A little early, some of the natives tell us. By early afternoon, Bobbie and I are sitting at Queens (Victoria) view, still not far from Pitlochry. The sun is high in the sky, fleecy white clouds float gently overhead. Maybe 100 to 150 feet below and in front of us another loch stretches as far to the right as I can see. To my left, a large rock obstructs my view as the loch bends out of sight beyond it. The surface of the loch is almost black from this height, and billions of diamonds dance on the surface as the sun reflects off the gently moving water. Bird calls sound around us. We sit level with the tops of trees growing from a lower level. A bird drifts on the current just above us. This
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loch must be miles long but only a few hundred yards wide. Across the loch the land rises slowly to the mountain crest. Higher and more distant mountains are visible. The sun is so bright and so directly overhead that its hard to see any color in the trees on the mountains across the loch. They appear varying shades of brown. Im wearing a flannel shirt and wool sweateras I have for months; The sun is so warm; my stomach is full: just had a feast of cheese, chips and an orange, orange drink from little cardboard boxes, and a big shortbread cookie Bobbie bought yesterday. I feel so good. The feel, the view, the sounds: What a setting for a 25th wedding anniversary. Several waves of tourists have appeared at the viewing stand just above and to my left in the hour weve been here. They appear, snap a picture, make a few remarks. Theyre gone. They miss a lot. Soon Ill be tucked away in a far corner of the world and all this will go on here as it was when Burns and Scott and Queen Victoria were here. But my little corner is beautiful, too. Ill see it with new eyes now. Got to Inverness about 5:30. Tourist Information had just closed. Found a B&B on Ness Bank, named for the River Ness that flows in front of the place. Today is actually our 25th anniversary, though we celebrated earlier with our English friends. So we put on our best clothes and walk up the street about three doors to the Glen Mhor Hotel for dinner. The walk to and from the hotel is right along the river bank. Its a beautiful evening. We are seated at a table for two in the convex window that bulges onto the sidewalk, affording a spectacular view. We are sitting opposite a church on the far bank of the river. The sun is setting behind the church; the rays passing through the stained glass windows give them a heavenly light. The street lights come on as we sit here, and the lamp on our table takes on a deeper glow. The now black diamond river rushes to keep its perpetual appointment. After dinner we think about going to the playhouse across the river. But the same folk singing group we heard in Pitlochry is performing. April 21 Its depressing to see all these fit people with backpacks on. But I just saw a man with one arm limp by. With him as my reference, Im well off. Drove out of Inverness toward Ft. William and along the shore of Loch Ness. Stopped in Drumnadrochit to visit the Loch Ness Monster Center. Learned all about the sightings of the monster and the expedition in search of it. Stopped again in a valley surrounded by mountains. Could see Ben Nevis, the highest mountain in Great Britain at 4400 and some odd feet.
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We stopped because our curiosity was aroused by the statue. Turned out to be a memorial for the commandos who trained in this area and died in W.W.II. This is beautiful country. But there is an oddness to the trees; strips of pale greens among darker stands of trees, in places surrounded by vast expanses of denuded mountainside. Looks as if all the virgin timber has been cut and fairly recent attempts made at reforestation. Stopped at the Creag Dhn Hotel, out of Ft. William in Onich, and overlooking Loch Linnhe. We are sitting now in the lobby in front of a giant picture window overlooking the loch. Mountains rise on the far side and dark clouds hang over the tallest. The hotel is out of scones; so we have lemon meringue pie and several cups of hot tea as we feast our eyes and talk briefly to three elderly Scots who have relatives in California but have never been to the States. The country we passed through today between Ft. William and Loch Lomond is the most rugged and desolate Ive seen in Britain. Sheer rock cliffs, deep gorges, snow-clad mountains shrouded in clouds; boulder strewn valleys covered with brown heather; waterfalls. Always sheep. Wind. Quiet. Narrow roads. Little traffic. No signs anywhere. In several places I see the scooped out shape left by glaciers. This country seems more like the desolate areas of the American west than the manicured civility Ive seen heretofore in the English countryside. No dry-stone walls or hedge rows here. No church steeples or village pubs luring bikers and hikers in orderly queues. I didnt see a single cyclist today. And no wonder. Steep grades and great distances make cycling less attractive. Sharp curves and roads with no verges (shoulders), that often drop away to lochs or rocks below, make it downright dangerous. In the English countryside and villages, I have seen a carefully engineered and lovingly maintained symmetry. Hundreds of years of the same use of land. Equal time invested in the building of home, church, and pub. Aesthetically, England is a human masterpiece, a monument to the possibilities which the human mind can attain when given a good land and allowed to make a garden. But Scotland is no less a monument, though different in character. Not a human but a natural masterpiece is this land. Sculptured by the elements were these mountains and lochs. They excite a part of me that England does not; that part of me that yearns for freedom, for space, for infinity. This is the part of me that come alive in Scotland. There is room for it here. This is the Church of the Infinite, the Cathedral of the Ages.
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Space and time as natural and unchanged as possible in a place where tourists go. The road is here. Beside it at frequent intervals, litter boxes. But such litter boxes! The words LITTER BOX are carved into their fronts; the boxes are of uniform shape and an unobtrusive grayish color having the appearance of stone, blending at a distance with the terrain. No billboards. No powerlines paralleling the road. I know the lines exist. But the are not in sight And I am grateful. I am glad to live in a world where there is an England and a Scotland. Each does for my soul a thing entirely different but so desperately needed. Seeing them so close together makes their meaning all the more obvious. They make me whole. April 22 Drove through Glasgow and down into the Lake District. Highway was four lane almost all the way, but often under repair. Not at all scenic. The mountainsides clearly show the pattern of tree plantings: long treeless strips running down the mountain and separating stands of young trees. Arrived at Pooley Bridge in the Lake District about 1:30. Came across the Old Church Hotel nestled on the shore of Ullswater (lake). Magnificent setting; but at the northern end of the District, far from the nearest village. We drove the A592 from Ullswater to Bowness on Lake Windemere, right in the heart of the Lake District. En route, we encountered steep grades requiring second gear both ascending and descending, and once first gear for a long and steep ascent. On either side of the road, immaculate gray stone walls run parallel with the narrow, twisting road. And running up and over the mountains (high hill by Americanor some Scottishstandards) were other stone walls. Visible in the valleys and on distant hillsides were still more stone walls in a variety of patterns, giving the landscape the appearance of a jigsaw puzzle. And in those places where water met mountain, a haze hung in the air, defying the bright sun that occasionally broke through, giving an ethereal quality to everything. How anyone could see this and not be a poet is what needs to be explained. We got to Bowness about 3:15 and, for one of the few times on our trip, we found the Tourist Information Center still open. (The one in Edinburgh closed at 1 p.m. last Saturday, before we got there at 1:30, and was the major reason we did not stay longer). The man tells us that there is only one B&B with a view of the lake; so for the first time, we
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book a B&B sight unseen. The Field Guest House is a few blocks from the lake. The two rooms on the top floor offer an excellent view of the lake. And you can walk to the lake from the back door through a lovely garden and across the street. Im not tired tonight. I wore support socks yesterday and today. And I didnt walk much. I have to think about it now, and its not fun. I notice the slightest imperfections in everyones walk. When I walk down the street, I watch my legs in shop windows and wonder if anyone notices that my legs dont work exactly right. Do they see me when I stub my toe? Is someone noticing me for the same reason Im noticing other people? Is someone thinking of me, I wish I walked as well as he? I keep thinking of the man I read about in the paper who was able to square dance again after MS had him in crutches for 10 years. April 23 Caught the 10:30 boat from Bowness to Ambleside. Got off there and walked into town. While walking, I learned again the stupidity of feeling sorry for myself. I noticed a woman about 40 coming toward us. She was walking fast and carrying a cane. She moved about a foot to one side and then the other as she walked, and it was apparent that she had a problem with balance. Even at that, though, she walks better than I do, I thought to myself. And Ill bet her legs dont hurt. She was about 15 feet from us when I said something to Bobbie. At the sound of my voice, the woman veered sharply to the side. As she passed, I saw a long white cane in sections under her arm. She was blind. Back at the B&B we watched a TV show about the RAF and W.W.II. Talked to an Australian couple afterward. The husband was about 30 and wearing a jogging suit. He said he had come to England about a year ago for an eye operation after the first one at home was unsuccessful. But the one in England had not turned out well either. He is an accountant. He looks so healthy. He has had two cornea transplants in 18 months, has exhausted his saving, still may soon be blind, and can no longer work his profession. My second lesson today in not envying others their apparent health. April 24 The trip up to Hardknott Pass is spectacular, with S curves one after another and the road rising at a 20 degree grade. (Its not hard to see why they call this the Goat Tour). At the top is Hardknott Fort, built by the Romans. Its all in ruins. But the panoramic view is unsurpassed:
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mountains, (highest mountain in England is visible), valleys, farms, rock walls, sheep, bare brown mountainside, patches of trees. Standing at the summit of the mountain, in the ruins of Hardknott Fort, I can look back to the left at the road we have just climbed. The pass through the mountains is wide; I can see the scooping action of the glacier that created it. The road we have just traveled can be seen winding like a long snake back down the mountain. To my right the road is lost to sight as it rounds a bend and disappears. Behind me, this mountain plunges sharply to the valley floor. The end of the valley that we will pass through when we leave here is from this height a maze of green fields separated into a dazzling array of geometric shapes by dry stone walls. The stone walls protect the sheep from severe weather and the land from wind erosion. Hundredsperhaps thousandsof sheep lie on the fields, giving it all the appearance of a giant golf course with balls strewn randomly and profusely about. April 25 Hands and feet did not go to sleep. A strange and encouraging thing has been happening during this trip. I have walked a reasonable amount. Yesterday, for example, I got out of the bus and walked up to see the fort. But Ive not been so tired that I could not get out of bed like back at the manor. Ive noticed a passing numbness in both little fingers at different times as I drive. At night, though, my hands and feet have not lost feeling. And I have slept better. Why? The physical demands of travel and meeting new people Ive managed. And I felt well. Back at the manor, with less to do, I felt worse. Maybe I didnt have enough to do to keep my mind occupied. Maybe being cooped up with all those young, active people made my condition seem worse. Maybe traveling frees me of the pressures I feel to do my job. Whatever the reason, I am encouraged and hope that I can isolate the lesson in this for application when I get back home and resume my duties as teacher, parent, husband, neighbor, friend. April 27 We are staying the next four days at the Spaander Hotel in Voldendam, Holland. The hotel is attractive from the outside; the dining area is picturesque; and the setting on the shore of the Zider Zeenow called the Issle Meris beautiful. The rooms, though, are small; the bed is narrow and short; and the toilet facilities are not equal to the B&Bs we found in England. Voldendam is a lovely village of small shops and homes. Almost no one closes their curtains at night. And the windows are spotless. You can
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see in the front window and out the back, all the way through the house. And the people arent offended if you stop to peer inside as they go about their business. Saw Lou Grant with Dutch subtitles through the window of one house. Windows in the homes are big picture windows bordered with lovely white silk curtains. By American standards, the houses are unbelievably small. The houses of the fishermen are smaller than most, but few are half the size of the average home in an American suburb. I would estimate their width at 25 to 30 feet and their length about the same. Most are two story. Almost all are in excellent repair and very clean. The fishermen of Voldendam bring in eel and herring; both may be purchased in the shops. Smoked eel tastes a little like salmon. Herring is usually eaten raw. Clerks in the shops wear native Dutch dress. April 28 Im sitting on a bench at Kerkenhof Gardens. Bobbie is walking around with two other women on our tour. Im glad they are on the tour. Im not able to walk around much, and Bobbie would be by herself otherwise. Im trying hard to feel sorry for myself. But I just looked up and saw a man younger than I am in a wheelchair. Another man I judge to be in his late twenties is sitting behind me. He must suffer from cerebral palsy or muscular dystrophy; he walks with great difficulty. And I see any number of people with canes. Im sitting in bed now. Bobbie went for a walk. Im so tired I can hardly move. I doubt that my doctor realized how right he was. MS is a damnable disease. I still want to do all the things I was doing a year ago. But I cant. I had never thought about the courage it takes for a handicapped person to do simple things, like going to see the tulips. I saw dozens of people in wheelchairs today. There must be thousands more who cant bear the humiliation, the pity they know others feel. So they stay at home. Ive complained to our tour director about the small bed we have. Bobbie and I are practically on top of each other. A year ago I would have paid extra for such a bed. Now I worry about not getting enough rest and not being able to go in the morning. I complained tonight that we werent eating until 7:30. A year ago I didnt complain about anything. I worry now. Before, I didnt. I had this blind confidence in myself: I could handle anything. But I never expected this. I didnt drink or smoke. I exercised, and ran and ate sensibly. I wouldnt get sick. But I did. Am still. And its getting worse. I cant handle it. My whole personality is changing. I dont like the
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person Im becoming. I didnt realize how much I enjoyed life until I no longer did. For the first time ever, I am considering suicide. I dont want to be a burden. But I cant do that. Too many people look to me for strength. Ive got to show it. I have to battle this thing that has a hold of me. Every time I see a crippled person I draw strength from their refusal to give in. They will never know they helped me. There must be others watching me. Ill never know. But I cant let them down. April 29 It was about a half-mile walk to the windmill. My pride would not let me stay on the bus. Now my legs hurt and Im bone tired. I must find a way to overcome my frustration at not being able to do much. I dont want to live like this, but I dont want to die. What do I do? Im sitting on the bus now while everybody else has gone to see the silversmith. Pride or not, I dont have the strength to get off the bus. God, I hate to go home and have everybody find out about me. They will be heartbroken. But there is nothing they can do. Im ambivalent about telling Mother and Dad. On the one hand, I dont want to tell them; They will be devastated. On the other, I feel like I did when I was a child; They will make me well. Mother sat up with me when I had chicken pox. But that was 40 years ago. There is nothing she can do this time. Nothing anyone can do. Ive been telling myself that I can do something myself. But its obvious that Im getting worse. How can I maintain my faith while Im getting worse? Doesnt the Bible say that faith is the evidence of things not seen? I cannot lose heart. I must believe that I will get better even as Im getting worse. Can I do it? This is the biggest problem Ive ever faced, but my only choice is to face it or give up. So I really have no choice. After three days on the bus, we are enjoying one anothers company. There are only 26 of us on this 50 passenger bus, and we change seats often to talk to one another. And we eat all our meals together. While we got ready for bed, Bobbie told me I have to quit feeling frustrated. That only makes you feel worse. You have to accept your limitations. I know shes right. I also realize now how easily I gave her advice when she had a problem over the years, with no conception whatever of the difficulty of following that advice. May 2 How I wish we were riding the train and were free to come and go as we please. I could learn so much about myself and other people if we were
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completely on our own. Nothing thrills me like independence. But I have no right to complain. Bobbie is as inconvenienced by my problems as I am. Its even worse for her. She feels well. Shes able to do things. But she doesnt complain. In fact, she works at cheering me up. Im lucky to have her. Its 9:15 in the morning now and still light. I would love to be out on the street, seeing people and places. On the other hand, Id rather be feeling sorry for myself here than at home. Id feel even sorrier there. Im determined to gut it out and finish this trip on June 1st, just as planned. If I can, I can more easily convince myself that I can continue my teaching when I get home. But Im facing the possibility that I cant continue at my present job. If not, Ill find another way to teach. Maybe through a book about my first year with MS. Ill make lemonade out of this lemon Ive been given. I know now that I will survive if I have to give up my job. Ive been gone four months. And even with the limitations, Ive made many new friends, seen new places, done new things. And Ive mentioned only once, to that B&B owner in Stratford, that I have MS. Im not interested in going home right now. Im enjoying Bobbies undivided attention. We dont know where the boys are but assume they are okay. Once we get back to the daily routine of littlebut important problems, Bobbie will worry. And I will have to take care of so many things: car, house, job, church, friends, and so on. May 3 After lunch in Brussels, we drove into West Germany. Got to Koln (Cologne) about 5:30. Visited the cathedral. Arrived in Bonn about seven. After dinner we told Tony we wanted to take the Rhine boat trip and the half-day Vienna tour. Told him I was not well and would like to book the others later. Said O.K. Had a hard day today. More depressed than in days. I dont really like traveling by bus and being told when to eat, where to sit, what to do. Had a hard time just being with all these people. I want to know them all, but I get so nervous. Will I ever be able to let go and enjoy myself again? Back in the bus, we drive farther through the valley, past immaculate homes, beautiful hotels, more vineyards with their arrow-straight rows and geometric designs. Some vineyards come almost to the river; others run up out of sight over the curve of the mountain. Rock terraces divide the fields. Ground cover keeps the soil from eroding. Saw a few farmers working in fields so steep it looked like they would fall off. Passed more castles as we drove. Trains run on both sides of the river.
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And often. Ate lunch on a park bench in a little town beside the river. We had an hour to look around in the town where we had lunch. We walked into town from a nearby parking lot. I had a very hard time walking. Kept thinking that we should head back. Knowing I couldnt walk fast, I was afraid to go far and couldnt enjoy seeing anything that took me further from the bus. Damn! After three days on the bus, were getting to know one another. Like a little community. Bobbie talked to a couple at dinner from Colorado who are celebrating their 25th anniversary. Later she went for a walk with Dave and Miriam and told them I have MS. They had asked us both to go for a walk. I said I was tired and they said, A young man like you? I told them I had a leg problem. I think Bobbie told them so they wouldnt think I didnt want to walk with them. And she needs someone to talk to. Thats the biggest reason that I thought we should take this bus tour. I was ashamed of myself as our tour bus pulled into the hotel tonight. Tony announced that we would have breakfast at 6:30. We would leave at seven. I exploded. I was tired. I knew I would be tired in the morning. But thats no excuse for the way Im treating people. May 5 It just happened again. Im feeling sorry for myself because I cant walk around. And I see a good-looking muscular guy of about 30 standing across the street leaning on metal leg braces. Hes probably envying me. He stands talking to his wife (matching shirts). He doesnt move. I can read his mind. The abbey in Melk is beautiful in the bright sun, with its black onion dome, long yellow stripes encircling the near end of the immense building which dominates the town resting at the base of the hill. The hill is so steep and abrupt that from where Im sitting, the abbey seems to sprout from the roof of the hotel. The black dome of the abbey is trimmed in gold with a gold ornament on top. It glitters and shines in the bright sun. Across the square to my right, opposite the hotel and the abbey, the steeple of a church rises high and sharp from behind an office building. Bobbie has gone to the abbey, but my legs are not up to the climb. Its pleasant sitting here watching the villagers go about their business. May 6 Emperor Frans Joseph of Austria was my kind of Emperor. He lived simply. All members of the royal family learned how to make a living with their hands. Frans Joseph was a carpenter. Walking around. Legs hurt, but manageable. Rode electric train #1
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out to the Prater (Amusement Park). Stopped at City Hall for a quick look. Big military event in progress; Defense Minister of Czechoslovakia is in the city. I dont speak German. I couldnt find anyone who spoke English. So I didnt learn much about what was going on. The Russians withdrew from Austria in 1955, and Austria became an independent nation. By treaty, the Austrians were required to build a monument to the Russians who liberated them in W.W.II. According to our guide, its the only monument in Vienna for which no souvenir postcards are available. And the Austrians have planted trees which go untrimmed and hide the monument from view. A large fountain in front serves the same purpose. May 7 Ive been tired, depressed and frustrated all day. Im so damn unhappy at the way I have to live. I cant do anything physical. I have to be so careful not to get tired. I know Im getting worse. But I have to make myself believe I will recover. Its such a fight. And I get so tired. Sometimes I just want to give up and let go. Why should I fight it? Bobbie is so good about it. Never complains. Tries to cheer me up. And there are some hopeful signs. Not much twitching. Hands and feet havent gone to sleep lately. The scary thing is what I think is happening to my speech and the weakness I feel in my arms. May 8 Visited St. Marks Church. Byzantine in design, the church has five domes and is built in the shape of a cross. Ceilings and walls are covered with mosaics. One of the most interesting features of the church is an unplanned one: the wavy floor. Venice is a series of 120 islands connected by bridges. The land St. Marks is built on moves continually from the action of waves. And the floor illustrates that fact. Walking through the church is like walking across a plowed field. Its raining today. Buckets! Cant take the gondola ride wed planned for this afternoon. Im sitting in the back of St. Marks Church now. Bobbie has gone up to the gallery to look. My legs wont do it. Im very tired after walking this morning and standing on the boat. I have run into Lord Byron on this trip almost as often as the Romans. In Nottingham where the museum guide pointed us to his house in a nearby village. At the Temple of Posidon at Sounion in Greece where he scratched his name on a column. In Vienna where the guide pointed out he once lived. At Westminster Abbey in London where the
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guide told us he wanted to be buriedbut was not allowed because of the way he lived. In Venice where he named the Bridge of Sighsin Child Harolds Pilgrimage. And at least a couple of other places I cant recall. Oh, yes. At the funeral service for the six Harlaxton students. Byron was quoted: To its favorites, Heaven grants an early death. Left St. Marks Square at 4 p.m. by water taxi, a much bigger and less romantic conveyance than a gondola. Instead of going back through the canals, we went around by the docks. A cold rain pelts us. Nothing looks pretty. May 9 Slept well. Very little twitching. Right arm went to sleep three times from the elbow down. Tired this morning; but not burning. Ate breakfast with Ted and his wife, a retired couple from Australia. They emigrated from Britain in 1960. Ted retired this past February. They came back to England for the first time since leaving, just to take this tour. How do you like retirement? I asked. Not too well, if its like this. They are not enjoying this trip. The seating problems on the bus seem to have disturbed them more than anyone. They were stuck on the back of the bus two days running when the couple in front did not move. Tony could not get the story straight and did not rectify the situation. Ted and his wife usually sit alone at meals. They dont smile often and have little to sayeven to each other. Are they fighting some private torment? Left for Florence at 8 a.m.; crossed the Po River at nine. Crossing the Venetian Plain, I see where the river has flooded. Passed by Bologna about 9:30. Is having a population of 127,000 inhabitants. University of Bologna founded in fourth century. Peoples come from all over worlds to study medicines. Tony speaks five languages and is a Vescuvis of tourist trivia, entertainingly delivered. Got to Florence shortly after noon. Ate lunch just down the street from Hotel Ambasciatori where we were staying. Bobbie went on the tour at 1:45. I went to bed. Slept until 5:30. It may have been a mistake to stay here and sleep. Im as tired now as I was before. And Im feeling depressed that I wont see anymore of the city than I can see from this balcony. I cant possibly walk anywhere. Im getting so little exercise. And I eat so much. I think Im afraid not to eat lest I get sick. And I get so weak at times through the day that I have to eat something. I think some of my eating is just to have something to do. Frustration is hard to live with. This damn disease is separating me from Bobbie. She has spent this afternoon in this marvelous city withW
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out me. She will tell me about it. But we didnt get to share it. Rome is next. What will I be able to do? I find myself expecting less and less of myself. Its bad enough that this thing is changing me. It saddens me more that it will change Bobbies life. Shes doing beautifully, though. Theres a tenderness and concern for me that is obvious and constant. She asked several times before she left today how I felt and if I would be all right. Then she made a joke about spending all my money. Im so sensitive now to little things. When she said that, I thought about not being able to work. And the day when she has to watch what she saysthe way we do around people we dont know well. The boys flew home today. Im anxious to hear about their experiences. Im also anxious to be home. Im feeling so overwhelmed by the noise, the novelty, the constant activity. I want to hide where its quiet and safe and familiar. I will always wonder what this time abroad would have been like if I werent sick. But as I say to Bobbie when she complains about the weather, Otherwise you wouldnt know what its like this way. Bobbie got back a little after seven. We ate dinner at the same place we had lunch. Went for a short walk over to the cathedral and the gold door. Legs really hurt. Takes all the joy out of walking. I was glad to see some of the city just the same. We signed up for the Rome-by-night tour, first night activity we will have done. How different this would all be if I could look forward to being with the group for the night activities. I would like to know them better. And I want to go to all these places. This environment is a constant reminder of my limitations. But its also evidence of my opportunity. May 10 Im so tired. But Im going to try to forget it while were in Rome. We are signed up for the tour tonight. My legs hurt, my left hand burns, and I have a headache. I wish we were in a car, by ourselves, and somewhere tourists dont go. Went first to Coliseum, then Circus Maximus. Drove by Palentine Hill, home of the Ceasars. Then to City Hall and overlook of Roman Forum. Past monument to King Victor Emanuel. Saw the balcony where Mussolini used to speak. Its in front and to my left as I stand before the monument and look back at the long row of steps I have just climbed. Last we went to the pantheon, the best preserved of the ancient buildings. It was converted from a pagan to a Christian church by the first pope.
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Then to Trivi Fountain, where I stood with my back to it to throw a coin over my shoulder and make a wish. I had no trouble thinking of a wish. Next to the Spanish Steps, Navona Square, and other places. All beautiful. May 11 Marvelous ceilings and walls in long corridors we walked through on our way to the Sistene Chapel; ceilings of the Chapel covered with Michelangelos painting of The Creation. Twenty-five years later, he painted the wall behind the altar: The Judgment, it is called. Michelangelo painted himself into the picture as the old man held dangling in the balance. The Pope holds public audiences in St. Peters Square. The folding chairs were set up for his regular Wednesday meeting which comes tomorrow. We also saw the balcony where the Pope stands to speak to the crowd. Our guide pointed out the fountain to the left and about 100 yards into the square where the Pope was shot on May 13, 1981. After lunch, Bobbie and I got off the bus at the Victor Emanuel Monument and walked around all afternoon. To the Coliseum. The Forum. It was locked up; we walked up a long hill to the side only to discover a dead end street. We sat for a while and watched other peoples expressions as they rounded the corner at the top of the hill and saw they had nowhere to go but back. May 12 Left Rome about 8 a.m., headed for Pisa. Im encouraged by Rome. I walked and climbed stairs and stood a lot. By my previous standards, it wasnt much. But by the standards of the last few months, it was exceptional. And I dont feel overly tired this morning. I take Rome to be a demonstration of mind over body. I cant say that I was unaware of my problems with walking. But I told myself that I had to see Rome. And my body cooperated. I couldnt walk at the pace of a year ago. And my symptoms did not disappear. But I was able to joke and have good time. I had to sit and read more; I didnt see some of the things I wanted to see. But sitting and looking, I see little things I didnt used to notice. We stayed a whole hour in Pisa. We grabbed a pizza across from the leaning tower. Bobbie climbed to the top. I watched. And back on the bus. Destination Milan. Responding to a question about why the women werent out by the road selling their fruit, Tony responded: Theyre still having the siesta after eating the pasta. Shortly after his comment we passed a cluster of stone houses
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tucked into a little crevice in the mountains just to the right of the highway; and just after that, several groups of women hawking cheese and fruit from their farms. To draw attention they waved inflated plastic bags of various colors on sticks above their heads. Just made a coffee stop. Its good to get off the bus. But my legs are so weak I can hardly stand. I dont have the energy to talk. I walk around like a zombie. I want to talk to all these people from all over the world, but it takes more energy than I can muster. I hate feeling like this. Bobbie is busy talking to everybody. Im glad theyre here so she doesnt have to talk to me. And she seems to be having a good time. Were signing up for all the optional tours in Switzerland and Paris. Im going to forget how I feel and do it all. Three weeks from today well be home. I will have finished what I started. I wont have done all Id planned. But no one knows except me. Bobbie knows some of the things I couldnt do. But not all. In December I wouldnt have given much for my chances of finishing this. But almost there. So long as I dont have to visibly change my life, I have the upper hand. Can I continue to psyche myself up? As soon as I get home I have to get myself ready for summer school. I dont want to say anything to anyone about my condition until Ive told them all about our trip and things have settled back into a routine. To do otherwise would be to cheat them of their right to share vicariously in our experiences. We got to the Hotel Excelesor in Milan at 7:45; dinner at 8:30. Sat with Al, his wife, daughter, and son-in-law. Theyre from Connecticut. Talked about Gypsy moths. Ted and wife from Australia sat across from us and talked to us about pests in their country. Carlo, our bus driver, is leaving us tonight. Tony suggests that we all give him a tip when he leaves. Well have a different bus and a new driver tomorrow. Probably have seating arguments again. Havent had any in several days. Had to bring in our luggage tonight. I wish that didnt bother me, but it does. May 13 Amazing! No seating arguments. New driver is Guilano. Doesnt speak English. The tall girl from Australia left the tour in Milan. Talk is that she went with Carlos, the bus driver (who is married, and considerably shorter). Took a cable car ride up 10,000 foot Titlis Mountain. Awesome. Walked in tunnel cut in glacier. Could see the Matterhornwhichever
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one it was. Mountain meadows, yellow with flowers, sleek, grayishbrown dairy cows with bells around their neck and a melody when they moved. More waterfalls. May 14 Very tired this morning. Left for Paris at 7 a.m. It will take all day 500 miles. Yesterday was a hard day. Watching all those skiers, especially those older than I am, depressed and angered me. I lost my temper with Tony when I had to stand in the tram that took us up the mountain. I felt bad about it later and apologized. Entered France at Basel. Drove across France from about 10 a.m. Land is flat, pastoral and prosperous. Lunch at two; back on the bus at three. This is hell. Im cooped up all day on this hot busthe ventilation system isnt working. But I can hardly walk when we stop. So I sit. I eat too much. Im getting fat. I dont like myself. I sit on the bus not talking to anyone. And I get mad at all of them for their chattering to each other. I look at these men older than I am. Some are overweight. They smoke and drink, laugh and talk. And they can walk. I hate them. Lifes not fair. All I ask is to walk. Why not? I want to be off this damn bus. Im tired of doing what Im told. Im tired of hard rolls. Im tired of being caged all day with a bunch of strangers without the interest or energy to get to know them. Im not looking forward to Paris. I dont like the tourist routine. But I cant handle the problems of doing what I want to do. And when I go home, Ill still be sick. Am I ever going to be happy again? We passed field after field after field of mustard plants with beautiful bright yellow flowers on the way to Paris. Got to Hotel Ibis about 8:15. Bobbie fell getting off the bus. Shook her up pretty bad. Were both dead tired. She did wash and we ate from our sack of stuff we got at the supermarket. We got mad at each other and she said when I offered to help her: Go to bed. Youre always tired. Shes right. May 15 Morning tour of Paris: Notre Dame, Napoleons tomb, Eiffel Tower, Arc dTriumph. Lunch at a cafeteria next to the Moulin Rouge. Rode the Metro (subway) over to the Eiffel Tower. Went to the top. Could see for 42 miles (according to the sign). Beautiful view of the Siene which wraps around the Tower. River flows on both sides of Notre Dame. Bought a three-dip ice cream for five francs (about 1.00). Sat on the grass in the park by the Tower. Kissed Bobbie. I see a lot of kissing in Paris. Walked to Concord Square, site of the executions during the French Revolution. The Square lies between the National Assembly and
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the Presidential Palace. It has a beautiful fountain and an Egyptian obelisk 23 meters tall where a statue of Louis XIV (I think) used to stand. As I stand between the fountain and the obelisk, facing in the direction of the National Assembly, several hundred yards directly in front of me down a long concourse, I can see the Eiffel Tower just off center to my left. It rises above the trees, just now acquiring this seasons figure. Paris by night is beautiful. Drove down the Champs-Elysees. Along the Siene. Dozens of tour buses had brought tourists for night cruises. The river did a jaundiced dance in the reflected yellow lights from the flotilla that plied its waters. Drove past the Arc d Triumph. Its even more impressive by night. The cabaret was entertaining; girls, magicians, knife balancing, girls, comedian, orchestra, girlsall beautiful, all well-endowed, and dressed to maximize their assets. After the show we walked to the bus past all the ladies of the evening in their work clothes. Back to the hotel a little after one. Not overly tired. No twitching. Pills must be working. Very little twitching in a long time. Neither hands nor feet have gone to sleep in several days. Today is the running of the Paris Marathon. A bus to take runners there is in front of me at our hotel just now. Taking a boat trip on the Siene this morning. Toured Palace of Versailles in the afternoon. Saw few of the 2,000 rooms. Impressed by the room of war and the room of peace at either end of the Hall of Mirrors where the treaty ending W.W.I was signed. Hall of Mirrors is a long, narrow room. Interior wall is lined with mirrors. Outer wall is nearly all windows looking out over the gardens. Twenty-seven crystal chandeliers hang from the ceiling, exact copies of those that hung there before the French Revolution and were taken down by opponents of the monarchy. From their reflections in the mirrors, the 27 appear to be hundreds. The palace gardens are filled with people on this warm day. I can understand why the people revolted against this opulence. But Im glad the people can enjoy it today. Three million of them a year, the guide says. May 19 Got a funny feeling this morning on the drive to Nuremburg when our bus for a short distance followed a convoy of German military vehicles. Couldnt help but think back to the early 1940s when I sat beside Gran Grans radio and heard the news of W.W.II.
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Drove past Munich about 3:45; Germanys third largest city with 1.2 million people and capital of Bavaria. One-half of all the people in Munich lost their homes during the war. Driving now through the Bavarian Alps.(5:30 p.m.). Just passed the biggest lake in Germany. Saw a big American military resort. Had seen a large barracks earlier in Nuremberg. We pass the Kaiserberg Mountains off to the right, still snow-covered at the summit. Little villages, fields of yellow flowers, pine trees, cherry trees in bloom, farm houses and fields, a rider on horseback, a cyclist, bright sunshine, churches with tall, thin steeples; onion-domed churches, cows, streams, roads. Everything immaculate and precise. Scenery looks painted, too story-book-perfect to be real. It is not a rugged landscape. The mountains serve as backdrops for the most carefully cultivated, aesthetically pleasing use of land imaginable. The simplicity of nature is enhanced by the geometry of a plowed field, a fence row, a road that undulates with the curve of the hill and shines white or brown in the sun. The pines along the ridges of the lower mountains are dwarfed by the barren rock mountain behind. Got to the Hotel City St. Julienstrase in Salzburg about seven. Dinner at 7:30. Talked to Allen and Edna, husband and wife from Kennard in the Lake District of England. They are about our age and have never owned a car. Allen walks the mile and half to work. Wish I could. Everyday. For the rest of my life. After dinner, most everyone went out for a walk. This is one of the most beautiful cities in Europe, and there are only two good hours of daylight left. Time to see a lot and get some much needed exercise. But I couldnt. My left leg is burning and my muscles are jumping. Im tired. So tired that I cant go with her but glad she will tell me what she sees. As people 25 to 30 years older than I came by our table to tell us they were going for a walk, I was surprised at my reaction. It was more, Im glad I dont have to do that. All I want is to take a bath and go to bed. Ive made it another day. Im going to do my best to forget about this damn disease for this week in Austria. I refuse to feel sorry for myself and miss all that I can do and see. I was deeply disappointed in myself during our first two tours. I got angry at our guides and was unkind to them. I made a scene a couple of times on the bus and was embarrassed. I had a marvelous opportunity to get to know people on the bus from all over the world. I blew it. I blamed my behavior on my disease. But that lets me off the hook too easily. Now Im wondering if Im not using my disease to manipulate peoW
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ple. Well or ill, Im responsible for my own actions. I have no right to make demands because Im sick. If I cant manage to do what our tour is doing, what everyone else is doing without complaining, then I should quietly withdraw. This is what I would expect of someone else. May 20 Beautiful day. Cool. Sunshine. Im sitting on the grass in the shade of a tree. Bobbie and the rest of the tour have gone to see Hellbrun Gardens just across the street behind the yellow wall. Gardens were never a major interest of mine. This little patch of ground where Im sitting is its own garden. Looks like our yard at home: dandelions everywhere, clover, little wild daisies, broad-leaf grasses. Just had lunch in an open air beer garden in the heart of Salzburg. Wonder if Baron Von Trapp ever sat here. Visited the house where Sound of Music was filmed. Owned now by American interests and used for short seminars. Visited St. Peters Church and monastery where some of the movie scenes were shot. Baron Von Trapp actually lived in Salzburg, though not in house used for the movie. He lived across town. His first wife was the daughter of a wealthy Englishman who helped develop the submarine. The Barons second wife was not actually a nun but a teacher planning to become a novice. Their escape was not so dramatic. They applied for permission to go to Italy for holiday. They never came back. The center of Salzburg is a maze of little streets with even more narrow passages running at right angles, shops everywhere. In the very center, the streets open onto a broad plaza reminiscent of Rome. And not by chance. The bishop here was from Italy and designated it that way. The church is even called St. Peters. Left Salzburg at 3 p.m. Got to St. Wolfgang about four. Bobbie and I were assigned to a room at Hotel Wolfgangerhof with a wall and a steep hill rising just outside the window. No view at all. Bobbie cried. I got the room changed. Best one in the hotelfor a little more money. Has a balcony and a view of Wolfgang Sea (lake) and its surrounding mountains. May 21 This little town is tucked into a small area between the lake shore and the mountain which rises almost immediately behind the town. Many of the houses and hotels and restaurants are built into and up the mountainside. Last night I had frequent muscle twitching in my arms and legs. I walked quite a bit yesterday, but I think the twitching results from the fact I forgot to take a pill last night, and Ive cut back the dosage over the last few days because Im going to run out. Ive been taking more than I
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planned to. In a way Im glad for the twitching. I now have pretty solid proof the pills are working. After lunch Bobbie and I walked into town to trade some French francs for Austrian shillings. Bobbie is not feeling well, and we had a fight. She said nothing is any fun. I cant do anything. And everytime she starts to have a good time, I ruin it by complaining about how I feel. Shes right. Im now sitting by the lake. Alone! Bobbie is off somewhere doing something by herself. I guess there will be more and more of this in the future. Its not fair that this damn disease should ruin her life, too. She cant be carefree and enjoy herself anymore either. After dinner Bobbie and I went to the local cinema to see the film version of The White Horse Inn operetta. It was in German, but the typical fifties era romantic comedy was obvious even though we didnt understand a word. And the scenery was breathtaking. May 22 After lunch Bobbie and I took the 1:25 rack railway up the Schafberg (berg is German for mountain). The ascent is slow, accompanied by the wheezing of the engine and the hissing of great clouds of steam as the engine labors to push its two cars filled with peopleabout 100 a car I would guess. Marvelous views of mountain meadows and farm homes at the lower elevations. As we climbed we could see Lake Wolfgang and the town. The depth of the lake could be judged by the different colors of water visible from the two heights. The steeple of the church in St. Wolfgang can be seen from the highest point on the Schafberg. Everyone on the train has a seat. Having just a few days before riden the water taxis in Venice where more stood than sat, I was surprised that the train wasnt also packed. I soon understood. The grades are so steep that no one could stand. The engine labors mightily, always at a severe angle, to shove its people up that mountain. Once at the top, the view is spectacular and varied. For variety and majesty, this view is incomparable. As we sit on the veranda of the hotel or restaurant or stroll about down below, the view is of ridge after ridge of snow-capped mountains rising higher in the distance, getting lost in the haze until finally you can no longer distinguish mountain from sky or snow from cloud. As we allow our eye to be drawn down the mountain, we are greeted by millions of arrow straight, skyscraper tall pine trees which, at this distance seem to be only a velvety green cloak drawn about the shoulders of the mountain. And lower still, our eyes come to the valley floor
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and the waters of Wolfgang See. Miles of ribbon-like, undulating roads are visible from this height, lacing their way around lake and mountain. A tour bus looks from here like you could pick it up and play cars with it. We pry ourselves from this view and walk the short distance to the wooden cross which stands on a rocky promontory. Here the vista which we could not see before opens to us several other lakes, a broad valley and its villages. And now we can look straight down, a drop of several hundred feet to the top of those giant trees. If I scamper out the rocky finger to sit by the cross, I can look back at where I have just come from; to my right those majestic mountains; to my left, those lovely lakes and towns and trees as far as I can see. And just behind me, should I tumble backwards? Nothing! My appreciation of the view could not overcome fear of standing so close to eternity. And I chose a safer seat on a grassy slope some distance short of the cross. May 23 At one point during the evening, Lisa, our guide, came to our table to report the news of the Falklands which she had just gotten by phone from her father in England. The British had landed on the island in several places. A ship and some helicopters had been lost, fighting was heavy and the Union Jack was flying somewhere on the island, though not at Port Stanley. The Britons at our table murmured approval. Shouldnt be hard. Wont take long. About time we showed them. Never a mention that young men were dying. We have talked about W.W.II at mealtimes. With two or tree exceptions, all are old enough to have lived through the war. Some were in the military. Tonys wife, Pat, was six in 1939 when war was declared. She asked her father what war meant. It means you get no more banana. She was puzzled over that. She enjoyed the war. It was exciting. She saw houses destroyed and sometimes children disappeared from school. But she didnt understand. On her way to get potatoes by bicycle one day, she and her aunt heard a plane approaching. Quick, into the ditch, her aunt ordered. A moment later Pat saw little puffs of dust in the road kicked up by a line of bullets. Pats family would go to the air raid shelter when needed. Pat was sick with the measles and couldnt go for weeks. Everyday, the doctor came. One day he said she was well enough to go to the cellar. That night a bomb hit her bed. Tony was in the military just after the war. Eight years ago, at age 46 he had surgery on his ear to remove deteriorating bone which threat78 W
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ened his life. Long months were required to regain his sense of balance; and he is almost deaf, but hes the most cheerful person in our group. May 24 Discovered a Gideon Bible in English by my bed. Bobbie has one in German. Opened mine by chance to Job 7:11 Therefore, I will not refrain my mouth; I will speak in the anguish of my spirit; I will complain in the bitterness of my soul. Was it accidental that I stumbled across the verse that describes what I have been doing? Or was it providential? Is there some larger meaning to my struggle with this damnable disease? After lunch I went for a walk. Bobbie was reading. I walked up on the mountain to the first road above the town and sat for a short time at different spots along the road and looked out over the lake. Then I walked into town and sat for a while in the church listening to the organ. Back to the hotel after five. I wish walking didnt tire me so. Spent several hours today writing out my plans for my classes back at Jewell this fall. Worked on it for a while after dinner before going to bed early. May 25 As we were going to our table on the porch of this little cafe, I accidentally kicked something as we passed an adjoining table. I turned to apologize and saw that I kicked a pair of crutches belonging to a young man in his early twenties sitting at the table with a girl. Later, as they left, I saw that his leg had been amputated well above the knee. I wonder how he feels about himself. Seeing him, I was ashamed of myself for feeling bad about my illness. Its nothing compared to his handicap. And hes so young. He will never have the chance to do all that Ive already done. As we approached the place to catch the ferry back, we saw several small shops and stopped to look. I found an alpine hat like the men of St. Wolfgang wear and Bobbie persuaded me to buy it. She also convinced me to throw my old hat away. It was battered and dirty. It had never fully recovered from that mud puddle it fell into in Ireland. But it was like parting with an old friend. I took the feather off it, tucked it under the band of my new hat; and when I passed a trash can a few steps later, I reluctantly let go of an old friend. The Folk Evening was fabulous: big groups of dancers, singers and instrumentalists. Real folk. Not tourist entertainers. Danced with saws and axes, scythes and hay forks, miners lamps. Did a mock fight dance.
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Chopped wood. Chips flew everywhere as they danced. The most impressive was their hand clapping: loud and soft, one group slightly out of sync with the other. May 26 I would love to spend this gorgeous day walking some of the miles and miles of beautiful trails around the lake and up in the mountains. But I dont intend to waste the day because I cant. I just realized this morning that Ive been right all along. My mind can heal my body. Its not enough, though, to tell my mind to picture my body well. Ive got to research and study when I get home to find every shred of information about various therapies and treatments. Ive got to find a doctor or support person of some sort to encourage me to fight. I have complained about riding the bus so much on these tours. But we have always gotten up at the time demanded. This week in St. Wolfgang, with no bus to catch, we sleep til noon. To me this says that we need demands made of us. Without them, its hard to get going. Im glad I have those classes to teach in July. They will force me to work. Another week and Ill be home. I will have fulfilled my obligations. Back in December I didnt think I could make it. Weve been to 11 countries, seen more than we can remember, met a lot of people. I learned much about myself. It will take me time to sort is all out. Above all, though, I learned that it is possible to do something despite not being able to do all that I would like or just the way I would like. I often felt while I was teaching at Harlaxton that I wasnt doing enough, that I wasnt giving sufficient attention to it. But looking back after five weeks, I think everyone learned a great deal. Given all the circumstances, I feel good about my performance. May 27 Driving through the Inn Valley. Fields of yellow flowers. Wooden houses with balconies and flower boxes, murals painted and carved on homes. Beautiful mountains. Sawmills, Zimmer frei (room to rent). Bell steeples and bells on horses. Churches. Water of the River In is a gray color. Seems out of place among all this beauty. After lunch, we have a free hour in Innsbruk. Saw the house with the golden roof; the gingerbread house. Climbed to the top of the clock tower in the middle of town. Marvelous view. Visited a church. Converted 400 shillings to German marks, and $80.00 in travelers checks to British pounds. Well soon be in both countries. Through the Fern Pass about three oclock, we entered Germany about 4:30 at Fussen in the state of Bavaria. Arrived at our hotel in Karlerurhe about 8:30. Went for a short walk with Bobbie after dinner.
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She went for a longer walk after I had to stop and come back. My left leg is dead weight. We got into the elevator with Margaret, Olive and Phyl. Phyl had a suitcase she couldnt manage. So I helped her. She said to Bobbie: You dont know how lucky you are to have a man. And the other two widows agreed. May 28 Rudesheim turned out to be a nice little town, its main attraction a street that resembled Bourbon St.minus the girlsin New Orleans. Live music up and down the street on both sides: Heard Spanish Eyes and San Antonio Rose snug in English. Food vendors. A rubberwheeled sight-seeing train offered tours of the area. The bus took us some three miles above Rudesheim where we caught a Rhine River cruise ship about 1:15. During the hour and a half it took our ship to reach St. Goar, we saw about 10 castles, including one shaped as a boat in the middle of the river. Saw the Lorili Rock. I was surprised that it wasnt in the river, but on a tree-covered hill standing better than 400 feet above the river. This is the first anniversary of learning that I have MS. May 29 Weve been on the continent now for a month. The environment was frightening at first. Comfortable now. It was good to do it by bus the first time. Next time, Id like to do it by car. I know the basic mechanics: money, signs, lodging, eating. Today is the last day of our last tour. Im ambivalent: so much more to see; anxious to get home to figure out what all this meant and to see my friends. What will it be like to live again in a little house in a little town? Go to work at a little college. How will I relate to little issues that I havent even known about for the past five months? Right now, Im listening to news from Argentina in French while riding on a bus with Britishers across Germany. (Things are going the British way in the Falklands). That pretty well sums up the headlines of this whole experience. Its been a natural high. I doubt that I can ever explain to myself what all this has meant. It goes without saying that I can never describe it to anyone else. Ill show my slides and tell about some of the places we saw. Ill tell some funny stories. Ill encourage my students to come. That is not enough. The obvious gets too much attention. Can I get beyond that? It will take many hours of quiet time and hard thought if I do. Crossed into Belgium at 9:15. Stopped for about 20 minutes near Liege. Were in the last three hours of our trip. This is the fourth time now
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through Belgium The attraction grows. Nothing spectacular as in Austria and Switzerland. But beautiful farms, excellent roads, red brick homes with spotless windows and red tile roofs. Homes are not decorated with paintings or balconies as in Bavaria, Austria, Switzerland. But their red roofs and red facades are pleasing against the green of the land, the blue sky. Caught the five oclock ferry to take us across the channel to Dover. Took the 8:45 train for London. Arrived at 10:05. Rushed to a cab that got us to Kings Cross in time for the 10:30 train for Grantham. The Pope is in London today. Big crowd at Battersea Park as we passed. Taxi ride through the heart of London and past all the lighted buildings was enchanting. Got to Grantham about 12:20. Took a taxi to the manor. Jeff, the night watchmen, showed us to a flat on the third floor that had been prepared for us. Feel good despite 20 hour day from Bad Salzig to Ostend to Dover to London to Grantham to Harlaxton by bus, boat, train and taxi. May 31 Said good-bye to everybody we could find. Caught the 11:15 train to London. Checked five of our bags at Kings Cross. Carried a shoulder bag and my briefcasecontaining all my journalswith us. Staying at St. Athans B&B one last time. Took the tube to Westminster where we got a boat down the Thames to the Royal Observatory. Saw the Greenwich Meridian and walked through the museum and the Queens Palace. Today is a bank holiday, and the last boat back left at 5:45. The queue was long. The people from Arkansas we sat with on the way to the observatory invited us to join them near the front of the line. Got on in short order. Took the tube to Soho. Got a ticket only three rows from the stage for Summit Conference at the Lyric Theatre, about a fictional meeting between the mistresses of Hitler and Mussolini. Good if you know history and interested in W.W.II. Having recently been to some of the places mentioned made it fascinating. June 1 Taxi to airport from Kings Cross. Plane took off at 12:50 for the eight hour flight to Chicago. A few more hours and the butterfly will be back in its cocoon. Got to Chicago about 3 p.m. Breezed through customs. Four hour lay over. Got to Kansas City about 8:30.
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A Student I Cant Forget Three weeks on the back roads in my VW Rabbit, wending my way from North Missouri to Orlando, Florida, across the gulf coast to Texas and back to Liberty; sleeping in parks, in the car; stopping to visit with grocers, barbers, passersbys; never seeing a chain store or a fast food franchise; dining on grits and biscuits and gravy; unstrappping my bicycle now and then for a rideI had rediscovered a history book, a picturebook America. Four thousand miles I had driven when I pulled into my driveway late on a hot mid-August day. Having taken rolls of slides and reams of notes, I was aflame with enthusiasm to share my discovery with others. But that would have to wait. On my desk when I walked into the house was a letter that would galvanize my attention. During my back roads sojourn, I had been more nearly able to forget my illness than at any time since I learned of it. That letter, though, ushered MS back to center stage in my life. The letter was about Carl Wiberg, written by his father. Carl was a student at Jewell for only a year. Such a marvelous mind in so winsome a person is a rare combination, and I hated to see him leave after so short a stay. Carls parents had graduated from Jewell. Carl came for a year with us. But Carls father was then a pastor near North Park College in Chicago, from whence Carl had come to Jewell and to which he returned. Irresistible urgings called Carl back to North Park, prelude to his life as a minister in the Covenant Church. Carl was first in my Death and Dying Class, then in my Cultural Anthropology course. Good students are a joy beyond words. But Carl was beyond good, beyond excellent, beyond any of the words I know to apply. He was gentle, possessed of a quiet strength soon obvious to anyone who knew him. His mind was agile, wide-ranging, focused. Carl had a plan for his life; about it he was not boastful, but he was eager to share with those he sensed really wanted to know. After Carl left Jewell, he kept in touch. He brought his fiance by to see me. Such a good visit we had. Though we talked of intervening years, the comfort we felt in one anothers presence was as though we had been together only yesterday. On my shelf is an anthropology report Carl wrote on ethnic Chicago. He loved those picturesque places of distinctive aromas and atmospheres, especially the Scandinavian communities along Clark street: He could sense his roots. This letter from Carls father numbed me. I couldnt believe what he said. Then I cried. For Carland for me.
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Dear Dr. Chasteen, My reason for writing to you is to inform you that Carl died on June 21st of this year, a few minutes away from his 27th birthday. In going through his belongings, we found a book you had written and given to Carl with a beautiful inscription of appreciation for him. Likewise, this past April I came across whether by accident or providencea paper planning his own funeral service which he had written for your course. In finding the paper, I recall him giving it to me to read, but because of the subject matter and the human tendency toward denial, especially when it comes from one of your own, I put it away and forgot it. I cant begin to tell you what a gift our discovery of that paper was during a time when Carls health was quickly deteriorating. The bulletin for his memorial service contains quotations from that paper, and his wishes were carried out in the music and hymns; even in his request to have on his casket flowers from his parents garden. After Carls junior year at Jewell, he returned to North Park College where he graduated with honors the following year. Because he felt the call to the ministry, he entered North Park Seminary. However, in the spring of 1981, he dropped out of seminary because of headaches. At first, it was surmised that he was under too much pressure; that his studies and work load were making it difficult for him to function. He went to a couple of doctors for headaches, and at one point, to a psychiatrist, trying to get relief. However, in June of 1981, he entered Swedish Covenant Hospital in Chicago, where his illness was diagnosed as Multiple Sclerosis. While he and the rest of the family were deeply shaken by this diagnosis, hope was given to him that he could function in a near-normal way for who knows how long? In many cases, there is remission, often for years. One neurologist, however seemed more pessimistic. And his premonitions were correct. Carls fiance was firmly committed to proceeding with plans for their coming marriage. Carl and Krista had one good year. By the beginning of the second one, there were noticeable signs of deteriorating health. A year ago last May, they moved to Minnesota to be near us in my new pastorate. This permitted Krista to work and allowed us to provide noon meals and other things for Carl, which he was unable to do for himself. What was so devastating was
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that the disease affected Carls mind. He could not remember things, make decisions of any kind. Only 2% of MS victims suffer from what is called Frontal Lobe Syndrome, indicating that the disease affected his brain as well as other bodily functions. After two trips to the hospital this past spring, the painful decision was made to seek admittance for him in a convalescent home where he received excellent care. But on June 12th, he suffered a convulsion which made it necessary for him to be returned to the hospital. His temperature went as high as 109 degrees, which over a period of 45 minutes, left him without any brain function. He was in intensive care, unconscious, for several days. Then on June 21st, after a decision on Kristas part, she took him home to their apartment where she could care for him, he died only hours after being moved. After the memorial service, Krista and her folks, took his ashes to be interred in a cemetery near where Carl was born and the church where he was baptized as an infant and where I served my first parishRock Landing Cemetery in Haddam Neck, Connecticut. Jane and I plan to make a trip to the east, perhaps this fall, to visit the place of his burial, and in so doing to complete the cycle from birth to death. This closure will help us, I think, in our full acceptance of his death. Its something we need to do. Needless to say, we have been overwhelmed with sorrow over Carls death and the waste we feel it to be. Nevertheless through a loving congregation and a host of friendsnot to mention Gods presencewe have had the experience that what we believe and preach is not only consoling but true. In this we rejoice and take courage to resume our life againand to press on in the grief journey. Again, we are grateful for Carls relationship to you and your teaching as well as for your friendship and affirmation of him. I hope this story will affirm you in your call to be a teacher. That letter broke my heart. Of the thousands of students I have known, the faces and personalities of a half a dozen are emblazoned on my mind. Carl was one of that magnificent sextet, students who, like comets, blazed all too quickly through my life. Their enthusiasm for learning and for living has been sufficient to sustain me in the company of their less stimulating kindred. More than that! The memory of
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their presence continually transforms me, producing for my students sluggards and scholars alikea teacher better designed for their needs than they otherwise could ever have hoped for. And now Carl was dead, struck down before he could deliver on his promise. What great things he might have done we can only imagine. What words of comfort could I offer to his father, a man I had never met? Should I tell him that I, too, had been told I had MS, and at almost exactly the same time that Carl was diagnosed? I decided against it. My grief for Carl was not lessened because I had the same disease. I did not want to intrude on the fathers rightful grieving with even the suggestion that he grieve for me. Within a year of diagnosis, Carl was an invalid. Two more years and he was dead. As I read his fathers letter, I was three years into my own MS diagnosis. If ever I was inclined to doubt the coldly clinical prognoses for MS victims, Carl would not allow it. As often was the case when he sat in my classroom, I was learning from him. Carls death had been easierfor Carl and his familybecause Carl had been in my class. The fact was driven home to me by the fathers letter. I had helped another human being to think aboutand plan for his death. And by helping Carl, I had helped his family. And friends. And church. And a whole constellation of people I had never even met. As I thought about all of this, as I prepared to write something of comfort to Carls family, and something about the interface of Carls life with mine for our alumni bulletin, I experienced temporary sweeps of gratitude for my illness. Because Carl and I had shared a diagnosis, I am better able to imagine what it was like for him during those last months of his life. Im glad for that. Even though I didnt know he was sick until after he died, I find myself now in imaginary conversation with him about our mutual affliction. That helps me. I only wish I could tell him so. Bicycle as Medicine Now that I could not run, I knew what I needed: It was not more rest, but more exercise. My muscles were atrophying; my mind and spirit were not far behind. I dragged myself to the garage and onto my sons old bicycle. I began to pedal. And as I did I would recite the Lords Prayer. Over and over. Now and then aloud. I was pedaling to bring my muscles to life. I was praying to restore my soul. I did not go far that day, and I wasnt sure it had helped when I got home. But the next day I was back on the bicycle and back to the Lords Prayer.
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For the next several weeks I would take sporadically to the bicycle, never going far, afraid still that I would over-exert myself and produce a sudden worsening of my condition. One of the worst parts of being sick is the fear of becoming even sicker. After several months of occasional riding, I returned home one day feeling so good that I spontaneously began to do the exercises I had done after running. My joints all popped, tendons refused to stretch, muscles knotted. But it felt good. And I began to do it once or twice a week. Months passed. I felt very little better. My energy level was still maddeningly erratic. One MS victim I had talked to on the phone said she could no longer plan to do anything with her family, so unpredictable was her energy level. My only ray of hope after months of intermittent bike riding and exercise was that I didnt think I felt any worse. That faint hope was enough to drive me to our local bicycle shop one day in March. As I stood on my rubbery legs to talk to the shop owner about what bicycle I should buy, I really thought it was a waste of money. I could never ride a bicycle enough to warrant the expense or make me feel better. But I was there. And I bought the bicycle: a 12 speed with toe clips, gear levers on the lower bar, racing handlebars and narrow tires. Was I mad? This was a cycle for a teenager. Or an Olympic hopeful. It certainly was not made for a 47 year old man with Multiple Sclerosis. The salesman told me I would love the toe clips after I got used to them. I didnt believe him. But that was the bicycle that caught my eye, so I figured I was stuck with that particular feature. Once home I was angry that I had let myself be talked into those clips. I fought like mad to get my toes into them while keeping the cycle upright. I could never do that. And I put the bicycle in the garage. It took me a couple of days to face that machine again. This time I managed to get both feet in the clips and rode up and down the block several times. The November before I bought my bicycle, the friend with whom I used to run invited me to accompany a group he was getting together to bike to a nearby town for breakfast. I really didnt think I would make it, but my pride would not let me tell him; so I said yes. I went. I made it. Twice I lost control of the bike and fell. I wasnt hurt, but I think my friend was scared: We have not ridden together since. The memory of that trip is what gave me the notion to buy a bicycle and the determination to master its new fangled devices. After a few days riding around the neighborhood, I began to venture further: into my old running routesand beyond. It didnt take me long to discover two big advantages of cycling over running: I could go much
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further; and I could go a lot faster. Freewheeling down northwest Missouris omnipresent hills was a new and utterly pleasurable sensation. I returned to the cycle shop for a helmet, a water bottle and a touring bag. From the county highway department I purchased a local map showing all the hard surfaced back roads, many of which I soon came to know. When winter came, I was back at the cycle shop for a pair of cold weather biking gloves and a set of little blue wind breakers that fit with Velcro straps over the toe clips. Before winter came, though, I had experienced a major breakthrough in my effort to return to an active life. It was early July. My wife had gone to visit her mother; my children were away at work and school. No one would be at home with me for days. So on a Monday morning near noon, I set off on my bicycle for my first overnight ride. With me in my bag behind the seat I had everything essential to fix a flat. In the bag in front, resting from the handlebars, were my maps, my writing materials for recording what I would see, plenty of high energy trail mix and some fresh fruit. Beneath my seat was a bottle of water. I felt like Columbus. I rode until 4 p.m. in the direction of a town some 25 miles away. I hadnt expected to get there so early and would have gone farther except that my bike and my shoes and socks were covered with road tar from a construction site I had passed through. It took me an hour at a friendly gas station to do the necessary cleaning. I ate supper at one of the two cafes in town. I met the mayor at his job with the local car dealer. The mayor said I was welcome to spend the night in their city park. Sleeping on a picnic table is not bad, though without cover and wearing shorts, I got a little cold toward morning, so much that I was up and on the road by 5 a.m. Over roller coaster roads, I had snaked my way by a little after 8 a.m. to another town even smaller than the first. I ate a huge country breakfast amid the gathering of farmers come to share their news and conduct their business. After breakfast I looked at my maps, wondering if I should turn toward home or continue my odyssey. I had already come some 50 miles. I was tired and sore. I had come to love riding as much for the decisions it demands as the physical elixir it is. When coming to intersections and having to choose which road to takeafter stopping for a while to visit in the little towns those roads connectmy mind is filled with nothing more than where next to go. As I first began to ride, I would agonize over which way I should go,
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choosing usually that route which showed the lesser number of miles to the next destination. Before long, though, I was not comfortable doing that. Something in the back of my mind was gnawing at me about these decisions I was making. So clear I almost expect anyone near me to look up, such is the voice I now hear in my mind each time Im riding and come to a juncture. And that voice is never hesitant; it knows which way it wants to go. And when I now and then ride a distance in another direction, that voice is usually sufficient to draw me back. How the voice knows which way to go I havent a clue. How the voice intrudes on my consciousness is equally a mystery to me. What I do understand with absolute clarity is that I no longer decide the way to go. Some invisible map-maker in my head has filled out my itinerary and directs my coming and going from an unseen signal house. I ride now in some measure to commune with that inner voice. That morning as I left the farmers in that little cafe, my mind and body urged that I head toward home. The voice said no. Thus I turned to go further north, into the hills on little country roads that ran past dairy farms, fields of ripened grain, and abandoned farm houses. By noon I had come to a town of 3,000 people, county seat of a rural Missouri county. After riding once around the square, I leaned my bicycle against a giant tree on the courthouse lawn, took my trail mix from its bag and sat down on a wooden bench to watch the town. Four restaurants were visible from where I sat. For half an hour or so, I watched to see if one had more customers than the others. It turned out that practically everyone entered the one directly across the street in front of me. As I sat there, I was joined on my bench by a man about my age who worked in the courthouse; County Clerk he would tell me momentarily. He was a friendly man, easy to talk with, pleasant to listen to. Before he joined me on the bench, I had seen him coming. Down the courthouse steps he came, a cane in each hand, throwing his legs in slow, jerky motions out in front of him. His upper body bobbed and weaved from the effort; he appeared about to fall at every step. He sat down, grinning not only at the mouth but also in the eyes. I liked him instantly. Here was a man whose body had been treated cruelly by life but whose body language asked for no sympathy. In the course of our half-hour conversation we told one another about our lives and families. He had been a farmer 20 years earlier when a tractor turned over on him, crushing his legs and requiring amputation above the knees. He still lived on the farm, now run by his
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son, and he had served as County Clerk for the past ten years. Then came the inspiration. The year before he and his wife had gone to Europe, traveling by train with several suitcases and two wooden legs. The human spirit is indomitable. Is that all you can do to me, it keeps asking? Why, thats nothing, it keeps replying. Ill see you and raise you one. I think youre bluffing. The 20 miles from that town to the next were the steepest and hottest Ive ever encountered, but the image of that man gleefully hobbling through Europe was constantly in my mind. By 4 oclock, I was exhausted, but I had made the next town and had thrown myself down at a restaurant table to absorb like a sponge the two giant drinks I had ordered. I was so tired that I went looking for a motel where I could shower, shave, and luxuriate in air-conditioning. By the time I found one I had almost decided I would live. And when the clerk demanded $20.00, I decided to ride on. It was another hilly 15 miles to a state park I found on the map. I stopped once at a gas station en route to ask directions and to buy another large drink. Arriving at the park near 7 p.m., I soon found the shower room. I had no idea when I left home that I would be gone so long. I had neither soap nor towel with me. I had been washing in service stations and cafes. I did, however, think to bring shampoo. So now I jumped into the shower and shampooed my entire body. I stayed in that shower for ages, water as hot as I could bear, until I figured I was a prune. Then I ran my hands all over my body and through my hair, stripping away the excess water and massaging sore muscles. After a while I was drip dry, and I put on the change of underwear and socks I had brought with me. If ever a human being felt more purged I cant imagine whenor how. I took up temporary residence on a nearby bench while I stuffed nuts and dried fruit into my mouth. Then I wandered over to the swing where I played for a while with the kids who were thereand thought long about my own three with whom I used to do things like this. I planned to sleep on this bench. Its slat bottom didnt look as inviting as the slab table I had slept on the previous night, but I figured I would manage. I hadnt figured on the mosquitoes, drawn I guess by the nearby lake. When they attacked, I moved inside the laundry room. Away from the mosquitoes, I was also warmer. But where to sleep? Other than the concrete floor, there was only a small table for folding clothes. By draw90 W
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ing myself into a fetal position and sleeping on my side, I made it through the night on that table. Again at 5 a.m. I was on the road. Since leaving the courthouse yesterday, I had been going in the general direction of home, though by no means as the crow flies. Now for the first time I thought seriously about getting back. My first priority was a big country breakfast in a small town cafe. I found a likely looking town on the map. It would require a significant departure from the most direct route home. But that voice told me to take it. By 8:30 I was sitting in Ralphs Cafe in Lathrop, Missouri, dining on rural ambrosia. A light rain was falling as I left Ralphs. My glasses and the rearview mirror protruding from my helmet were soon spotted with water droplets. Rather than a hazard or a distraction, the mist-like rain enveloping me heightened my appreciation of this fine summer morning, the magnificent landscape I was traversing, the elegantly simple meal I had just devoured, and the intricacies of this efficient, aesthetic machine known as the human body. The ambiance of it all is a state of mind I have returned to time and again since that glorious day. It was raining harder as I came to Liberty, my home town; and also, as a result of this trip, once again a major quality of my life: Sweat, solitude, and aching muscles had liberated me from paralyzing fear. I still had trouble walking when I would alight from my bicycle. But having ridden 150 miles, fighting traffic, dogs, insects, and heat; having eaten like a horse and worked like a dog; having had no bed in two days and no one around for miles who knew I was sick, I knew I had established a beach head: LIBERATION was at hand. How dare that doctor say I couldnt be active. Id show him. Before I was told I was sick, I thought there was nothing I could not do. That attitude was gradually returning. To sustain and nurture it, however, I find I must put it to the test. I could tell myself I could sing at the Met, but I know in my heart I couldnt. Self confidence is hollow until the basis for it has been demonstrated. A friend of mine is an occasional bicycle rider. He casually mentioned one day that a certain hill in town was so steep he could never pull it. The very next day I was on that hill. I didnt make it either. The first day. But on the second I did. Then I began to search for the steepest grades in the surrounding country-side. And I kept going back until I could routinely make them all. All else being equal, I now deliberately choose the high road. As I gasp for breath, my lungs heaving like bellows, my legs pumpW
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ing like pistons, my entire being is transported to another dimension of pure mechanics and pure mind. Here more than in my study, ideas, and inspiration come to me. So regular is their visitation that I carry pen and paper always, and I seldom return home without having stopped to write. I know little of physics or physiology, yet I know my brain is stimulated by physical exertion. When blood and oxygen are rushing throughout my body, its rush hour at Times Square. All the traffic cops are on their toes, signaling with precision and certainty. The taxis, subways, cars, buses, bicycles and teeming pedestrians are moving with dispatch toward their appointed destination. Everything is happening with maximum efficiency. For almost three years that diagnosis of MS kept me from Times Square. But now on a bicycle I was back. And I dared anybody to try to stop me. Ride Your Bike across America About 3 oclock on an overcast October Sunday afternoon, I have wheeled my bike into a gas station. I am standing near the bike, drinking water from a bottle when a pickup pulls in. A man gets out and starts pumping gas. He looks in my direction. Where ya goin? he asks. Before I can answer, events of the past several days flash through my mind. William Jewell is on fall break, four days free. I can ride my bike as much as I want. Anywhere. But it rains. Im house-bound. The fourth day dawns little different. Rain is imminent, but it isnt falling. I jump on my bike and take off, intending for the first time in my life to attempt a century, a hundred mile ride in a single day. I get to Plattsburg by mid-morning, 25 miles away. Head then to Stewartsville, another hilly 15. Lunch at Sissys Cafe. Still not ready to turn toward home. Further north to highway 36, then east toward Cameron, where I turn south on 69 and head home. I have traveled about 80 miles when I stop at that station. Its about 3 oclock; the sky is ominous. About noon, just before getting to Sissys, I heard someone say, Ride across America this summer. I whirled around. Nobody in sight. Road ahead and behind, empty. No one in the fields to either side. You didnt hear a voice, you idiot. Theres nobody about. And theres no way you could ride across the country. Forget that noise. Maybe I didnt hear a voice, but now Im talking to myself.
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So I forgot it. . . . Almost! By the time Marvin Wright pulls into that gas station, a full-scale civil war is raging in my mind. When Marvin asks, Where you goin? an answer pops out. Im gonna ride across the country to tell people about the Human Family Reunion. Im as surprised as Marvin must have been at that last part. To tell people about the Human Family Reunion? Where had that notion come from. Certainly not from me. But it was my voice. I watch Marvin for signs of indifference or amused condescension. I wait for some lukewarm endorsement before a hasty departure. Instead, I get electricity. A neon smiley face jolts to life. Dancing eyes. Marvins transparent enthusiasm shakes me to my toes. Beautiful! he booms. Ill help you. Instead of leaving, Marvin pulls his pickup off the drive; we stand and talk about my ride until approaching darkness pulls me away. All the way home, thoughts of that ride dance in my head. The unexpected response of a stranger has me in an euphoric state. The next morning I am in my office at the college when Jerry Cain, our campus chaplain walks by. Got a minute, Jerry? He has hardly settled in the chair before I spring it on him. I want to bike across the country this summer. Not one question does he ask. Not one second does he hesitate. Do it. But not like everybody else. Dont go L.A. to New York. Go east to west, and not straight across. Go south to north. In that instant, the route is born: Orlando to Seattle. Jerry has the same look about him as Marvin had. I had never seen a person light up like that. And now on back-to-back days I have seen it twice, each time in response to my announcement of a bicycle ride across the country. This dumb little notion had invaded my mind 24 hours earlier. Like a video tape on fast forward, such notions have raced through my mind all my life. Much ado about nothing. Instantly forgotten. A cross-country bike ride? A grown man with a childs mission? The whole thing seems ridiculous when I am alone to think about it. But when I mention it to someone, it leaps to life. It sounds noble and bold and inspiring. When Jerry responds as he does, I know I cannot abandon this idea as I have countless others. I also know the person I have to talk to next. Bobbie and I must be the textbook illustration of the complimentary needs theory of mate selection. In our 30 years of marriage, we have often had different opinions about major decisions. We want different things. Our method of operation is not the same.
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Yet our marriage endures. Neither of us wants out. Together, we survive. Our children turn out well. We travel. Meet people. We are not always happy by any of the standard definitions. But it is obvious that each of us has taken to heart our marriage vows: for better or worse, in sickness and in health, till death do us part. Now I have to go home and tell Bobbie that I want to ride my bike across America this coming summer, that I will be gone for three-and-ahalf months, that she will be alone. From Marvin and Jerry I had not expected a strong reaction. From Bobbie I do. I can think of no reason Bobbie should like my idea. Why should she want to sit at home and worry about me? Why should she think that this new notion is more substantial than the others she has persuaded me against? Youll spend all our money. What will I do if youre killed? Ive responded in defensive ways before, so Im not surprised when I say I wont spend any money and that Ill get a million dollar insurance policy. How will you do it without money? Bobbie asks. I dont know. But if I cant, I wont go. We cant afford a million dollar insurance policy. she says. Ill get it for nothing How? I dont have the slightest idea. But if I cant, I wont go. No way, Im thinking to myself. Now I have three impossible things to do. I dont think I could ride across the country anyway, but now I have to do it with no money. And I have to get a million dollar insurance policy. For Free! Ill just teach summer school. And ride around here. Maybe I can make it to the Ammana Colonies this time. Last time I dehydrated, fell off my bike and into a ditch. How long I lay there unconscious I dont know. Two farmers found me and called an ambulance. I came to in the hospital as I was being sewed up. So I forgot about it. Almost! But the very next morning Ken Cardwell walks by my office. Ken operates a printing business in Kansas City and does much of the colleges printing. I hail Ken and usher him to the same seat Jerry had occupied. Ken, I want to ride across America to tell people about the Human Family Reunion and to raise money for Multiple Sclerosis. What? Raise money for Multiple Sclerosis? Where had that come from? First Id heard of that. Every time I opened my mouth this ride was taking on another dimension. I wasnt even thinking before I spoke. Words just popped out of my mouth. Along with my guest of the moment,
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I was hearing them for the first time. I had to be more surprised than they were. I need some flyers printed, Ken, to announce my ride and tell people where to send money. A penny a mile for M.S. and a penny a mile for the Human Family Reunion. I need a name for my ride. I know, says Ken, lets call it Spirit TrailTrek across America: The Two Penny Odyssey. But I have to do this without spending any money, Ken. Could you print the flyers without charge? The Marvin-Jerry look comes over Ken. Consider it done. A reporter for the student newspaper comes by my office a few days later. She has heard rumors about my bike plans and wants details. Enter Jewell Schoolfield. Ive got a bicycle I want to give you, he says when he calls on the phone. The paper said you need one for your ride across America. That afternoon I drive the 15 miles to Jewells home in Excelsior Springs. The bike is too small. Take it anyway. Trade it for something you need. The next day my phone rings. Its the bike shop in Excelsior Springs. Someone just came in and told me to buy you a bicycle, and he will pay for it. Can you tell me who? I ask. Jewell Schoolfield. He just gave me a bike yesterday. He says its too small. Told me to get you the right one. I dont think Jewell knows how much the right one costs. Ive checked. Its a thousand dollars. How much do you think Jewell had in mind spending? Oh, about two hundred fifty dollars, I guess. Think hed spend that much to buy a share of the bike I need? Well, I dunno. Probly would. I can check. Jewell says yes. And three other people volunteer shortly to buy equal shares. One of the three is an anonymous student who makes a contribution through another faculty member. Bob Watts is the next major shaper of my ride. He calls one day. Ive read about your ride, he says. Youll need the right bike. Ill build it for you. Bob lives here in Liberty. He loves bicycles. He used to have a shop here in town. He and his wife, Jean, ride a tandem. And fly all over the world to do it. Bob builds bicycles for Race across America and consults with major bike manufacturers.
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This thing is getting out of hand, developing faster than I can comprehend and taking on a character I dont understand. Whoa! Wait just a minute. Am I up to this? Can I do what these well meaning people are pushing me into? Maybe they dont know that six years ago a doctor told me I have Multiple Sclerosis, that he said, Its a damnable disease. You wont be able to be active. These people dont know that for three years after the diagnosis I was a basket case. I sat in the corner and cried. I drew myself into a little ball. I withdrew from all activity save for going through the motions of teaching my classes. I thought of suicide. Often. So I call my doctor. Meet me at the pancake house, Dick. I need to talk to you. Thursday morning at 6:30, Dick Bowles joins me for breakfast. I need you to put me through every test youve got. Find some reason I cant do this ride. I dont think youll find one. But try. Try hard to disqualify me. I may be getting in over my head, and Ive got to know before too many people get their hearts set on this ride. But Dick, before you say youll do this, Ive got to tell you, I cant pay for any of this. Youll have to do it for free. Call my office and set up an appointment. One more thing, Dick, I cant pay for this breakfast. My doctor paid for my breakfast. Following a battery of tests and a complete physical several days later, Dick came into the examining room to say, Im afraid Ive got some bad news. There is no reason you cant do the ride. Several more early morning breakfasts follow. My pastor. A close friend. A friend crippled by Multiple Sclerosis, unable to work, refusing to give in. From each breakfast, I come away with spirits soaring, without having spent a penny. One morning Harles Cone joins me for breakfast. Harles used to be the counselor at William Jewell. He now travels around the country helping businesses and governments do a better job and treat people better. Harles and I belong both belong to Second Baptist Church. Were both from Texas. Harles, I need your honest opinion. Do you think this thing will work? The Marvin-Jerry-Ken look jolts Harles to life. It cant miss. Youre giving people a chance to do something good. To feel proud. They wont be able to resist. Then Harles, I have to ask your help. I need a million dollar insurance policy. But I cant pay for it. Can you get it for me?
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Consider it done, Harles said. As people are responding to my ride in such supportive ways, it is taking on a life of its own. Now my bicycle needs a name. When Bobbie and I were married in Humble, Texas in 1957, we spent our first afternoon as a couple at the movies watching Jimmy Stewart as Charles Lindberg in The Spirit of St. Louis. Thirty years later we are living in Liberty, Missouri, just a few minutes out of Kansas City. Thus the bike is christened, The Spirit of Kansas City. With such a name, the bike has to be American made. Much searching leads me to the perfect bike. TREK is made in Wisconsin. The name is perfect. Trek across America on a Trek, a perfect marriage of symbol and purpose. Color! The aesthetic dimension. For a trek across America, what colors other than red, white, and blue? Red frame. Red panniers. Handle bars wrapped in blue. White water bottles. Such a bike will draw a crowd wherever I go, making it easier for me to get an audience for the message of reunion I carry. Bob Watts recommends that I ask John Wahrer to paint and letter my bike. I leave a message on Johns voice mail. A few days later he calls. I hear you need a bike painted, he says. Yes, I do. But I dont have any money. I cant pay you. I heard. When can you bring it over? Now I think of Disney. Walt went to Central High School in Kansas City. And Im planning to start in Orlando. So I write to Disney World to ask if they can give me a send-off. They say no. Too many such requests. My first negative response. I think maybe the magic has run out. My ride wont be the chain reaction, spine tingling extravaganza it seemed to be building toward. The next Saturday morning I have ridden my bike up to Clems Cafe in Kearney, 13 miles north of my home in Liberty, for breakfast. Mark Denny comes over to my table. Mark is a former student, one of our majors. We begin to talk about my ride. I tell him about wanting a Disney connection. A few days later Mark calls. I have a number for you. Milt Albright grew up here in Kearney. I think he went to Jewell. He worked for Disney when he was getting started. Mark gives me Milts California number. I call the college registrar. Milt Albright had indeed attended William Jewell. In 1934-35. I figure he must be retired. Or deceased. But I call anyway. Milt Albright is not retired. Milt Albright is manager of special projects for Disneyland. My request of Milt is not overly audacious. I ask to meet Mickey and to be part of the parade of Disney characters they have
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every afternoon. Milt says to write it up and send it to him. He will discuss it with his staff. A month goes by. One morning Milt calls to say Disneyland will let me be in the parade when my ride is over. Now call Orlando back. They operate separately. Tell them what were doing, and ask them to give you a send-off. I write. And call. Several times. Just a few days before my trip is to begin, Disney World says yes. Now that Disneyland is letting me join their parade, I cant stop in Seattle. I have to get to Anaheim. So an additional 1,500 miles down the Washington, Oregon, California coast is added. This crazy ride keeps changing and growing almost by the hour. Several of my friends are urging me to get a van to follow me. They are worried about my safety. I am grateful for their concern. And I try to work up enthusiasm for a van. I cant. Ive always said I believe there is a spark of goodness and genius inside every person on the planet. Ive said I believe that newspaper headlines scream about murder and rape and robbery and other evils because they are rare. If they were the norm, they would not be news. Now, having said this, I wanted to find out if it were true. Could I count on igniting that spark in hundreds of people across the country by coming briefly into their lives on a bicycle and asking their help. To have any hope of doing so, I had to be alone, totally dependent. But how could I respond to my wife and my friends who were worried about my safety? I could not ignore their concerns; neither could I let those concerns warp the purpose this ride was quickly acquiring. I couldnt decide what to do. At times I could almost persuade myself to give in, to accept a van accompanying me as the compromise I must make to win support for simply doing the ride. Such a thought depressed me. Then one day Jerry Cain could not go to fill a speaking engagement. He asked me to go in his place. It was a meeting of high school boys at the headquarters of The Fellowship of Christian Athletes just across Interstate 70 from Royals Stadium. Bill Covington was in charge. When he told me he worked for AT&T, a light went off in my head. If AT&T would give me a calling card, I could call home every day to tell them where I was and how I was doing. I could get messages. I could call ahead to tell them I was coming.. So I briefly explained my ride to Bill. Could AT&T give me a calling card? No way, he said. Were a business. We have to make money. No problem, Bill. Ill be okay. Thanks.
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Our conversation had taken place as we first met. After I talk for an hour with his boys about my trip, Bill walks me to the door. As we part, he says, Write me a letter. Ill see what I can do. On Thursday morning next Im eating breakfast in my kitchen when the phone rings. Its Bill. In my 27 years here, weve had requests from every good cause and person you can imagine. If we approved one, we would have to approve them all. And we cant do that. We had to turn them all down. I dont know how to tell you this or why we did it, but we just approved your request. I didnt know either. I had the feeling I had somehow tapped into a power I did not understand and could not control. And it wouldnt let me alone. And all I had to do was to keep talking to people about my dream and asking them to help. I sat down and cried. I was in to something over my head. My life was taking on a Camelot, Man of La Mancha dimension. I hadnt planned this. I wasnt sure I wanted it. Why couldnt I keep my mouth shut and let this thing die? But now people were asking me questions about the ride. And every time I opened my mouth, out came something else I had not thought about saying, something that committed me to something else I couldnt do. What have I gotten myself into? How will it all end? I want it all to be over. To know the outcome. On the other hand, I want this moment to last forever. I am at the center of an upwardly spiraling, constantly enlarging circle of good. More people are being drawn into the orbit by the hour. I want it never to stop. The local Rotary Club invites me to come talk about my ride. Sam Chapman, my eye doctor, is in the audience. Afterward, he comes up to me. You cant ride across the country in those glasses. You need some sports glasses, a dark pair and a regular pair, each with bifocals so you can read maps. That would be nice. But you know the rules. He smiles. Come on down. Well fix you up. Building a bike that would stand up to everything but a Mack Truck and climb a tree becomes an obsession with Bob: 48 spoke wheels, stainless steel Swiss spokes, the strongest rims, tires meant for a tandem, 18 speeds, a biopace chain ring, Phil Wood sealed bearing hubs, center pull cantilever brakes, brakepads of the latest synthetic materialthe most wear resistant available, the lightest metal fenders, wide pedals for greatest foot comfort, racks for three water bottles, front and rear panniers, the strongest and most secure rack to attach them to, a gel-filled saddle, the highest quality brake and
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derailleur cables, and a top of the line helmet with a rear view mirror attached. Bob insists that I have it all. When he sticks Bob Watts Custom on the head tube, he wants no one to doubt the quality of materials or workmanship. If I am not to make it across the country, it will not be because the bicycle failed. The night before I am scheduled to fly to Orlando finds me at Bobs, packing the bike for the trip. Bob has sheets of inch thick Styrofoam to line the box with. By loosening the handlebars and turning them parallel with the tube, the bike fits snugly inside the box. Nothing about this ride has been worked long in advance. And I decide up front that I will never say no to anything anyone suggests. The ride will take on the character my friends want it to take. A second thing is obvious to me at the beginning: I dont have time to plan the ride. People keep asking me for details: route, departure and termination date, how I will pay for the trip, and other things I dont know. So I say the first thing that pops into my head. Then I ask my student assistants to work out the details. Or I ask a company, a friend, anyone, to help. And I never check on them after they say yes. It isnt only that I dont have time; its that I trust them. Implicitly. Completely. Knowing that Im counting on them, that I believe they are able to deliver on their promise, these good people cannot do otherwise. A situation defined as real, is real in its consequences. A web of benign promises and purposes has woven us into a grand scheme. We are co conspirators in a plot to expose and celebrate our common goodness and genius. Never in my wildest flights of fancy could I have drawn up a plan for the kind of bike ride that is upon me. I had wanted to inspire people. People with M.S. People with any problem. But that was only half my agenda. I wanted to teach the country about the Human Family Reunion, a program that regularly brings together people of all races and religions and teaches them to like one another, a program we have been operating at William Jewell for years. I want everyone across the country to know how easy it is to do, how necessary to our survival as a society, to our full development as human beings. As much as I want this to be the focus of my ride, as easy to do as I really think it is, I am overwhelmed when every person of every faith says yes when I ask them to endorse the ride and work to make it a success. Jews and Muslims sign up to work. ChristiansCatholic, Orthodox and Protestantsay yes. Many of them meet to work together; others exchange ideas by phone.
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We are in Judy Hellmans office at the Jewish Community Relations Bureau in Kansas City. What she is about to say thrills my soul and touches the core of my being: People have a hard time saying no to you. I hope thats true. If it is, then people all across America will say yes to the Human Family Reunion. My life will have a purpose beyond anything I ever dared hope. Leaving Orlando I climb on my bike. With a Disney car before and behind, I am escorted away from Disney World and out onto highway 192. By one oclock Ive reached the Citrus Tower. Rising 500 feet, the Tower advertises itself as the highest spot in Florida. Bernie and David had each separately slipped me some money when I hugged them back at Epcot. As I have lunch high above the Florida countryside, a nearby sign tells me that I can view 2,000 square miles and more than 17,000,000 citrus trees. I also catch a long view of highway 27, by which I have arrived at the Tower and will soon depart. Mary asks about my ride as she takes my order. As I tell her, Barbara and several other waitresses gather around the table. They give me several stamped post cards and ask if I will mail them back from out west. I had told them on camera this morning at Disney World that I would be happiest with my ride if people all across America would wave to me and yell, Hello, Ed. And now as I pedal north on highway 27, people in towns, from cars and trucks, and along the highway wave, honk, and yell encouragement. Every now and then an 18 wheeler sounds its horn in that gentle manner I have quickly learned to distinguish from the threatening and warning blasts I had expectedand sometimes hear. As often as not, that gentle tap of the horn is accompanied by a thumbs-up from the driver. Its nearing six oclock when I pull into Ocala. I head for the newspaper office to ask them to help spread word of the Human Family Reunion. Reporters are gone for the evening. A young man gives me directions to the nearest church. Im there in under five minutes. I walk into the church, the only white person among a dozen black men and women my age and older. Their pastor is not there, and they have no food available and no place to spend the night. They recommend the Episcopal Church and give directions. Mary Ritter is sitting just inside the door, keeping track of those scheduled to have their pictures made. Following a one minute version of my story, Mary gives me a note to take to her daughter, Susan, at home, telling her to take me in and feed me.
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Across Missouri At last Im across the bridge. Earth! Solid earth under me. And all around me. A service station off to the left. Half a dozen young guys in and about it. None know how far to St. Louis. Or the name of the nearest town. Who Cares? Im in Missouri again. The station does have a phone. I grab it and call the college: Im home, Linda, I yell into the phone. Linda Bendure is a long-time friend and the switchboard operator at Jewell. Ive talked to her just about everyday since I left Orlando, and though Im still right at 400 miles from Liberty, just knowing Im in Missouri lifts my spirits. This river bottom land is table top flat. Cropped fields stretch to the horizon in all directions. Traffic is light. The weather is warmer than it has been all day. The pain is bearable, my cadence reasonably smooth. Another two hours of riding brings me to Perryville, a town of 7,500. Passing the Pizza Hut, the aroma surrounds me, and Im overcome by a pizza attack. Im a little past the place when the urge strikes; I wheel the bike around. I have this rule about never going back. With thousands of miles to go, the rule seems reasonable. And I have never asked for a restaurant meal as expensive as a pizza. What will they say? Only one way to find out. I doubt I would have the nerve except that smell was filling me down to my toes, leaving nothing but appeitite the size of Royal Gorge. I go in. I explain what Im doing. That I have no money. And ask for a pizza. The manager will be back in 15 or 20 minutes. Please wait, Im sure she will want to help. Im going to the police station to see about a room. But Ill be back. The policewoman sends me to the sheriff s office, where she says the kind of help I need is available. The young woman there asks for my I.D., the first person to do so. After a few minutes she writes me a voucher for a motel. She would have written one for a meal except I tell her Pizza Hut is taking care of me. As the attractive young officer rises from her chair across the room at the radio where she has been seated as we talk, she limps over to the counter where I wait. One leg is much shorter that the other. And I want to know her story. But I dont ask. Shes too busy to take the time. She doesnt know me. I would offend her. Embarrass her. So I excuse my failure to talk to another person about something that matters to both of us. When I walk back into the Pizza Hut, the manager meets me at the door, shows me to a booth and says I can order any small pizza. I had asked for a small when I was in earlier, believing that I owe it to those I ask to be specific in my request.
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The waitress who takes my order also writes for the local paper and asks if she may write a story about my ride. I give her a brochure, a card, a poster. The waitress and her manager make repeated stops at my table while Im eating to see that I have everything I need. And to talk. About their town. Their job. Their dreams. As I leave, I stop to thank them. Others of the staff gather round and we all talk at once. Everyone is excited, and as I leave, they call out: Way to go, Ed. Youll make it. Were proud of you. Thanks for stopping. We love you. They begin to cheer. And I feel like Rocky. The Indian clerk welcomes me to the motel and accepts the voucher from the sherriff s office. You can take your bike in your room, he says. During the night, the pain comes back. Maybe Advil helps; but the pain is excruciating. Finding a position to sleep in is impossible. After a year, morning comes. Im not really hungry when I struggle out of bed, but I dont dare get on the road without eating. I ride back toward town to a little cafe. The manager isnt here, and the young waitress doesnt have the authority to give me the oatmeal I ask for. I thank her, and as I leave, I see a restaurant across the street. I get my oatmeal and am on the road by seven. My back isnt hurting, but my left thigh, from hip to knee, is numb and tight. All my muscles are caught in a vice; pedaling is torture. Every turn of the pedals shoots searing thunderbolts of white-hot pain. You wont make California. Give up! But you can turn those pedals one more time. Thus does the morning pass. By lunch time, Im if Festus. And starving. I spot a Fish and Fritters. Fish and Fritters in Festus. If only the owner is Fred Friendly. Owner Gary Linderer gives me a fish dinner and all the tea I want. He writes a $10.00 check as a donation to the Human Family Reunion and asks me if Ive had enough to eat. I have a second dinner. Around 4:30, after an 80 mile day, I make it to the restaurant at Lee May Ferry Road and Lindberg on the southeastern outskirts of St. Louis where Matt is waiting. Ive known Matt since he took my Race Relations class at Jewell; and when he did a follow-up internship at the Black Economic Union in Kansas City, he and I had become friends. Matt invited me to come see him when I came through St. Louis on my bike, but its not him Im expecting today. When I talked to Bill Little on the phone this morning, we had worked out this pick up point on the outskirts of St. Louis where Lee May Ferry Road and Lindberg intersect. Bill himself would be busy, but he had asked Bill Barham, a member of his church, to pick me up.
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I had met Bill Little only once, when he had come to Chandler Baptist Church just out of Liberty to speak back in March. A mutual friend told me I should meet with him when he came to town. And when I told Bill what I wanted to do, he volunteered to help. I had called Bill several times since leaving Orlando. And when I had called him this morning with my approximate time of arrival and the route I was riding, we made the final arrangements. I had also mentioned Matts name to Bill and told him I would like to spend some time with Matt. When Bill Barham had to work late, Matt had offered to meet me here. We take the front wheel and the panniers off my bike and load it in the trunk of Matts car for the drive to his house. When we arrive, I put the bike in the garage and ease down on the sofa in the family room. My back is killing me. I dont know where to find the doctor Im supposed to see, how Im going to pick up Bobbie at the airport in the morning or where we will stay and what we will do while she is here. When I talked to Bill Little on the phone today, he told me that Walt Franz had called from the Mayo Clinic with the name of the doctor I was to see. Walt had explained to this doctor that I was traveling without money and had asked that he treat me at no charge. He had agreed. This trip is turning on relationships: this person knows that person who knows someone who can help. Walt Franz, for example, is a Jewell alum. He graduated from Jewell several years after I came there, but I didnt know him. Then this spring Walt was invited to Jewell by the Chemistry Department to lecture on medicine. Marvin Dixon graduated from Jewell. He joined the faculty the same year I did. Marvin told me Walt was coming and suggested that I might want him to speak to sociology students about his work with the cultural aspect of good medical practice. I did. Now Walt has arranged for me to see Tom Stees here in S. Louis. Walt had called Phil Poepsel, another Jewell alum with whom Walt also went to medical school at the University of Missouri. Phil is in Europe on vacation with his family, so Tom Stees, Phils medical partner, agreed to see me. Matt drives me to the hospital where Tom Stees is waiting. Its a heavy burden I bring to Tom. Im planning to be in St. Louis for the next four days so I can attend the reception that Jerry Cain has arranged as part of William Jewells presence at the Southern Baptist Convention. In that four days, I am expecting the doctors Walt has contacted to heal my body and get me back on the road. My first impression upon seeing Tom is that I have come to the right
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person. Toms touch and manner ease my mind and raise my sprits. He prescribes an anti-inflammatory drug and sends me upstairs for a heat and ultra-sound treatment. Tom makes me promise to come in for a second treatment on Monday. But back at Matts for the night, my leg keeps me awake and in pain. No position gives me relief. A deep and throbbing pain has me crying and praying through the night. This is not the way I want to meet Bobbie; she will be devastated to see me like this. And knowing this only adds to my misery. Bobbie will think she cant go to Europe, and if she does go, she will worry about me. Not exactly the meeting Bobbie and I had in mind. Matt drives me to the airport about 10 a.m. to pick her up. I have to wait in the car while Matt goes to find her. She wont think Im very anxious to see her, but if she sees me trying to walk and in such pain, she will think Im dying. This way I can hide it from her. Better she think Im not anxious than that Im dying. Neither is true but how to make that point is something I dont have the energy to think about just now. So Matt brings Bobbie to the car and I climb in the back seat with her, trying not to wince from the pain every time I move. We spend the rest of the day at Matts. His mother fixes lunch for us, and we sit for awhile in the back yard. My condition has us both depressed, and we find conversation difficult. While were sitting in the yard, Matt brings his cordless phone to me so I can talk to Mike Schmidt, a reporter for KMOX radio. Matt has told him about my trip, and Mike tapes an interview, and several people tell me at church the next day that they heard it. This evening Bobbie and I are alone. Matt has gone to spend the night at Busch Stadium, waiting in line to buy tickets for Sundays game between the Cards and the Cubs. He was talking about this three game series with Chicago and his dream of a sweep when he picked me up yesterday. When the Cards won last night and again this afternoon, Matt is drooling over the prospect of being in the stands for game three. Matts mother and younger brother have gone to take care of last minute details before the brother leaves tomorrow for a week at the Montana dude ranch owned by Matts father. Danny will spend the week learning to ride and care for horses. Walt Cegelka picks us up at nine oclock Sunday morning to take us to Christ Memorial Baptist Church where Walt is a member and Bill Little is pastor. The first thing I notice at Christ Memorial is the presence of black members, something I have not seen in any other Baptist Church I have visited. During the worship service, Bill mentions that
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Christ Memorial is not a member of the Missouri Baptist Convention. I wonder immediately if the black members are the reason. When I ask Bill, he tells me that Christ Memorial was formed about 15 years ago when two churches merged. Because one of the churches was black, Christ Memorial applied for membership in the National Baptist Convention so black members of the new church could maintain relationships with that national body. The director of the Missouri Baptist Convention at the time objected to Christs dual membership in the Southern and the National Baptist Convention and withdrew fellowship, meaning, in plain language, that the church was expelled from the Missouri Baptist Convenntion. After church, Bill and Carol Barham take us to lunch and then invite us home with them for as long as we want to stay. I know this is not what Bobbie has in mind, and I would love to do the town while she is here. Early in preparing for the trip, when I was learning to ask people for the help I needed, I had formulated an operating principle that I tried not to violate. That principle, plus the fact I am in pain and can hardly walk, make Bill and Carols invitation impossible to refuse. The principle is this: Never say no to an offer of help. Asking help of even one person obligates one to accept help from anyone who offers, even if the help is not exactly what was requested. In that case, the one asking is obligated to amend the plans to incorporate the offer. So we go home with the Barhams. We go back to church with Carol and Bill for the evening service. And Bill turns the service over to me to tell my story. Ministers have so little time to preach to their people, and Bill didnt know I was coming tonight. I didnt even know myself. So when Bill gives me time to tell his congregation about the Human Family Reunion and about the potential in all of us to overcome, he has given me a gift more precious than gold or diamonds. Speaking to an audience of blacks and whites about the Human Family Reunion is a shot of spiritual adrenaline. Only at Habitat for Humanity in Americus and in West End Synagogue in Nashville had I seen blacks and whites worhipping together. To see it again, to be part of it again, is to draw nearer to heaven than I usually get. When I call Tom Stees on Monday morning, he asks if his treatment helped. I tell him yes, but the pain is still almost more than I can stand and walking is agony. I tell him how scared I am that I wont be in shape by Thursday morning to get back on my bike to continue my ride. Tom says he will call back in a few minutes. His secretary calls shortly to say that I will be seeing Dr. Hunter
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instead of Dr. Stees, and not in the hospital emergency room where Tom and I had met on Friday, but at the St. Louis Orthopedic Sports Medicine clinic at one oclock. Bobbie and I dont find our way there in our rental car by the most direct route, but we arrive right on time. So does Harlen Hunter. After a precise examination, the results spoken into a pocket-size tape recorder, Harlen directs Ron Nelson, the physical therapist, to take charge. Eds biking cross country. Were treating him free, and we have until Thursday to get him in shape to get back on his bike. Ron takes me into another room, sits me down on the edge of a table and begins to explain what has happened to my back. I quickly understand my problem. In the excitement of meeting people at the end of each day, I had quit warming down! I didnt do my customary stretching. Now all my muscles are caught in a tension that will not let me relax, a tension that has me unable to stand straight or to stretch out full-length on the floor. And a tension that tears at my left leg with spasms of unbearable pain. Ron then has me lie face down on the table. Across my back he places a rounded, blanket-like device that he plugs into a console of buttons and switches at bedside. He adjusts the setting until the tingling bore into my back is at the maximum bearable and I tell him to stop. And for 10 minutes I lie there while a whining, boring action penetrates first to one side of my spine, then the other. While in progress, the treatment erases all pain, and when Ron comes back to end the treatment, I am asleep. The pain and stiffness return as I hobble to the car. But not as bad as before, I tell myself. Carol and Bill have a comfortable home, and they make Bobbie and me feel at home. I lie in the family room floor as we all talk about their church, my trip, Bobbies imminent departure for Brussels and her tour of Europe, the Cardinals and the Royals and the seventh game of the 85 World Series. I was at the game, and my perspective of Herzog and Andujar and the lopsided Royals victory doesnt quite jibe with Bills. But he doesnt make me leave. In fact, this evening Bill volunteers to drive me to the class that Walt Cegelka is teaching. Its a class for school teachers, and Walt asked me at church on Sunday if I could come Monday evening to tell them about my ride. The class is two hours long, and the drive from Bills house is under 15 minutes, but Bill sits and listens to what by now he has heard several times. And on the way home, Bill wants to talk more. Bobbie has to fly back to Kansas City this evening. I drive her to the
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airport in the car we rented yesterday. We get to the airport earlier than I had imagined we would, and we sit without talking in the car. I cant get out and walk her to the terminal. I wont see her again for two and a half months, wont even know where she is for the next three weeks. I will be in Montana by the time she is back home. What is she thinking, I wonder as we sit. That I wont make it, Im sure. After all, last year she had to come get me out of the hospital after I dehydrated and fell off my bicycle. That was the first, and only other, long bicycle trip Id planned. To the Amana Colonies and back, under 700 miles. And I had lasted less than 200. Why should she believe Im going to make this cross country trip? Right now, Im having doubts. But I cant tell Bobbie. I dont know how, or what, she could do. And I dont want to ruin her trip. I feel awkward and terribly inadequate as we sit. Saying nothing. Lost in thought. Confused and hurt, with no idea how to rescue ourselves. Finally the time comes. Bobbie opens the back door and takes her suitcase out. She walks slowly into the terminal, and I ache to run after her, to hold her, to tell her I love her. But I sit and say nothing. Its after 10 oclock the next morning when John and I get on the road. Our objective is Hermann, a delightful little German community in the hill country about 50 miles away. John isnt sure how far or fast he can go. The weather is hot; the terrain is hilly, the traffic heavier than John is comfortable with, and John is riding his sons old bicycle. The bike has been put in good condition, but it is not a touring machine. It has 10 gears where mine has eighteen, and its several pounds heavier. John Philpot graduated from Jewell. John joined the Physics faculty a year or two before I came to Jewell. John had not ridden a bicycle since high school when he came to my office in March, just after he heard about my plans to bike America. John said he would ride across Missouri with me. I was delighted, but perplexed. Why? I wanted to ask. But already, this early in preparing for my trip, I had learned not to ask. Thats not quite the way to put it. More a feeling that came over me, an intuitive assessment of the situation. I had the sense that people didnt really know why they responded as they did, and to ask would only cause them to wonder, and perhaps to doubt what they were doing. Accept everything at face value. If I need to know why, I will. When the time is right. After Johns offer to ride Missouri with me, we took his sons bike over to Bob Bellands bike shop in Excelsior Springs to get it road worthy. A few days later we picked it up, and John told me to give him a cou108 W
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ple of days and he would ride up to Clems with me for breakfast on Saturday morning. John begged off when that time came because he had found out riding a bike after 20 bike-less years took more patience and stamina than he thought. But two weeks later we did make the 25 mile round trip to Clems Cafe in Kearney. That was to be the only time we rode together, but when I would see John around campus over the next two months, he would assure me that he would meet me in St. Louis, though he was not finding much time to train. Nearly every time I would see John he would ask who else was planning to ride across Missouri with me. When I would say he was the only one, he would shake his head and walk away. After many weeks asking this question and receiving the same answer, John said to me: You know, when I volunteered to ride with you, I thought it would encourage others to offer. I figured there would be at least a dozen of us. As we roll west out of Grays Summit, John does well. We stop often for a quick swig of water from our bottles and a bite to eat from our panniers. The hills are hard on John, and he walks up the steepest. John is fair skinned and sweat buckets. The heat takes the starch out of him; he needs frequent rest and lots of water. About four in the afternoon, the sun radiating off the black surfaced road is fierce. The water in our bottles is nearly gone, and what is left is too hot to quench our thirst. We are not near a town, but we do spot a farmer on his tractor out in a field. We pull off the road and lie down under a tree in his yard. We havent been there long when the farmer appears. John asks for water and walks to the house to get it. Both of them come back with a pitcher of ice water. John has told Victor Wehmeyer what were doing, and when they return, Victor wants to hear the whole story. I guess Victor to be about my fathers age. He has lived on this farm a long time. Things are hard right now, but Victor loves his wife, his farm, and his neighbors in the little nearby community of Marthasville where he goes to get his mail. John and I roll into Hermann between six and seven and go immediately to the police station. The officer I find suggests we go to the Methodist Church. Through town, past the store front with German names and signs, we make our way to the church. At the parsonage next door to the church we find Peggy Stevens, as of a month earlier, pastor of the church. We havent talked long when I discover that Peggy just came from Kansas City, where she was a student at St. Pauls Seminary and student pastor of a little country church I often ride by on my bicycle and where Ed and Betty Bauman are memW
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bers. Ed is Presiding Commissioner of Clay County and Betty is secretary in the Education Department at Jewell. It was at a Christmas party at the Baumans farm home that I first publicly discussed my bike plans for the summer. Ed had volunteered to contact county officials across the country and had gotten the Clay County Commission to issue a proclamation endorsing my ride. Peggy is a widow. Her children are grown and gone, and she is pouring her life into her ministry. She is sensitive to our need for a place to sleep, but she also is sensitive to how it might appear to the community if a new woman minister took in two men for the night. We take a shower in her upstairs bathroom, but agree with her that it would be better if we slept in the church, and she okays these arrangements with the lay leader of the church. John and I leave Hermann at 6:30 the next morning. The first 12 to 15 miles run through the Missouri River Valley floor, road as smooth and flat as a table top. John and I ride side by side for miles; few cars pass in either direction; we indulge ourselves in long and deep conversation about life and love and purpose. While were stopped at a mailbox to stretch and drink, a pickup comes from the farmhouse off the road about 100 yards and stops as it reaches us. My names Carl, says the driver, stretching his arm through the window on the passengers side to shake my hand. Carl farms 3,000 acres of this rich river bottom. The farmers problem is the same one hes had for thousands of years. Weather. Then Carl describes the flood they had last year. This pickup would have been underwater. And the water was up to that barn back behind the house. When Carl learns that John and I teach at William Jewelland that I teach Sociologyhe tells me he hopes to complete his education. In Sociology. Carl had three years at the University of Missouri when the Korean War broke out. After four years in the Army, Carl was tired of taking orders and came back to the farm. Carl tells me about a race relations course he took at M.U. and the life-long effect it has had on him. And he talks of other issues of concern to him. You fellows are bikers. You may think farmers object to making a biking trail out of this abandoned Katy Railroad because we dont like bikers, because we think youd tear up our property. Thats not it. We object to the government telling us what we can do with our property. And we consider it ours because we reason it reverts to the heirs of the original owners when the railroad pulls out. If the government can take it for a biking trail, they can decide to take the utility easement for these
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power lines and use it. We dont think its right. Not long after we leave Carl, highway 94 begins a rugged climb out of the valley. My 18 gears get me over the hills; Johns ten put him on foot up the steepest. John has developed a strategy to attack these hills. As he sees one coming, he accelerates to maximum speed, pulling far ahead of me. He counts on momentum to carry him up the hill. Once or twice, it works. Usually, though, I grind past him as he pushes his bike toward the summit. We have figured on making it to Jefferson City by noon, but its after one as we approach the Missouri River bridge, the state capital off to our left. Hold up, Ed, John shouts. I pull to the shoulder and stop. Weve only got one lane and lots of traffic. The bridge ahead is showing by overhead lights that only one lane is open to traffic entering town. Whatll we do? I can feel the concern in Johns voice. No choice. We cross the bridge. Theyre as much our problem as we are theirs. Lets go. Past the capital and down Main Street, we are shortly at the Baptist Building. I had been told to show up here and someone would take us home for the night. John Dowdy, Director of Missions for the Missouri Baptist Convention, volunteers. He draws us a map to his house. Two more miles of hills bring us to Johns home, where Joycelyn, his wife, welcomes us. While my John and Joycelyn are gone to the store to get supper, John Dowdy and I sit at the kitchen counter and talk. I have known John for several years, since he invited me to come to Windemere, our state Baptist assembly, to speak to associational missionaries from around the state about the six metropolitan areas in Missouri. We have talked only a few minutes when John turns the conversation to their daughter who committed suicide two years ago. We knew she was having trouble. She thought nobody liked her. We loved her, and she had lots of friends. But somehow, she couldnt believe that. She told Joycelyn she didnt feel well that morning and asked to stay home. Joycelyn came home at noon to check on her and found her in the car in the garage with the motor running. Lots of people came to the funeral. No one could understand why she killed herself. It nearly killed us. But were putting our lives back together. We have accepted the fact that if she wanted to kill herself there was nothing we could do to stop her. Were learning not to blame ourselves. I tell John that the one thing I dont think I could survive is the death of one of my children. He didnt think he could either. But you
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have no choice, he tells me. Life has to go on. Other people need you. As we ride out of Jeff City this morning, Im thinking about the hundreds of people with me in my head. Anyone seeing me pass by would see only me on the bike, but really there are hundreds. All those who have wished me well, said they would pray for me, given me food, lodging and everything I need: All are with me constantly. Without their help, Im helpless. Without the memory of their goodness in my head, my will to do this thing would waver, making the next problem enough to persuade me to stop. The good thing about their being in my head instead of with me on the road is that I never need wonder about their comfort or safety. The paradox is that one person with me on the road drives the hundreds out of my head. When riding, we are usually separated by enough distance to make conversation impossible. But Im constantly looking for that person in my rear view mirror. Always wondering if he needs to stop. To rest. To eat. To drink. What is John getting from being with me and involved in this thing? Thats what I can not know. It must be something good to get him out in the traffic, the heat, and the uncertainty of depending on those we meet. John figures the A.H.P.M. declines as we move west from St. Louis. John is a physicist and is always measuring things. Several times since leaving St. Louis we have encountered drivers who yell at us or make obscene gestures. Most of them appear the first day or two and now are fewer in number. Today we encounter just one, a male driver in his twenties. As he draws abreast of me he slows his car, leans across the young woman in the passengers seat, and begins to yell at me through the open window. Do you know you could get run over? I cant make out what else he says as he passes. But his body language and his volume make his anger obvious. In slowing to pass us and to deliver his message, he ignores the traffic behind him. Three cars are on his bumper when he gets his mind back to his driving and speeds away. Thats one today, John says when the noise abates. And weve been nearly 20 miles. Coming out of St. Louis, we had one A.H. every two miles. Dont those people bother you? John wants to know. No, I choose to ignore them. I wont let them ruin my day. I choose instead to remember the people who encourage me, the ones who tell me I inspire them and give them courage. I literally forget the others. Ten miles up the road we stop in California, Missouri. At a gas station Sandy Taylor bounces in to ask, Are you the one I saw last night
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on T.V.? When I say yes, she presses on John a wad of bills from her billfold as a contribution to M.S. and the Human Family Reunion. Then Sandy takes a flyer and makes sure she knows where to send other money. Sandy works at a turkey factory in town. You inspire me, she says as she hugs me. Then she runs to her car and drives away. Thats what keeps me going, John. I choose to ignore the ones I annoy and think about the ones I inspire. And Ive noticed something about the few people who yell at us. They are never alone. And they are always male. They are showing off for their friends, being a big man for that short moment. If they need that to be somebody, I dont want to take it away from them. Im beginning to understand, John says. Ralph and Sherri Sawyer moved to Syracuse from Dallas with their three small children just four months ago. Ralph has a degree in psychology from Oklahoma State and will soon graduate from Criswell Bible Institute, and this is his first full-time church. John and I get to Syracuse about 12:30. We pedal quickly through the town of 200, past the boarded up businesses and the cafe where several people sit and are visible through the window. We wheel into a service station when it seems we are leaving town. I lose control of my bike in the loose gravel and fall. Im more concerned with what the people watching must think than with the few scratches I get. A driver who is gassing up tells me we have passed the church. Its back past the cafe and about 100 yards up a gravel road to the right. The Sawyers live next to the church. When we get there, Sherri has lunch about ready. Ralph comes from the church, and the seven of us sit at the dining table to eat. Six year old Angela, four year old Teresa, and two year old Andrew dont quite know what to make of John and me. Before long, though, the two older ones have warmed up to us and are offering their toys for us to see. After lunch, we sit in the living room floor and tell the children about Disney World and our bicycles. Ralph and Sherri plan to home teach Angela. They are concerned about the influence of peers on children and about the spritual perspective of public school teachers. Ralph and Sherri were members of former Southern Baptist Convention President Jimmy Drapers church in Eulis, Texas, and about 300-400 families in the church are home teaching their children. Everybody in Texas knows about home teaching. Up here in Missouri nobody knows. But Missouri law is good about it. You have to register and keep a journal. The kids have to be tested to see what they have learned.
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As we get ready for Sunday School the next morning, Ralph is prepared for a smaller than usual attendance. One family has told him they are going to Worlds of Fun in Kansas City. And in a small church, lots of people are related. So when one family goes somewhere, several others usually go. The adults all gather for Sunday School in the sanctuary, and Im pleasantly surprised at the number. After I have finished my talk, Anne Zumsteg comes to me. Anne is a trim woman about my age. Thirty-two years ago in a car wreck she lost her left leg below the knee. Anne skis, and she tells me that her ambition is to play shortstop for the St. Louis Cardinals. Or to play the organ at the stadium. The twinkle in her eye and the way she holds her head make me think she could do either one. Annes great-grandfather homesteaded a section near Syracuse, and Anne has lived all her life on the home place. She is a teacher in the local high school. She is upbeat, optimistic, eager to talk about her leg and all she can do on her artificial leg. She spends lots of time cheering people up. Highway 50 is crowded with Sunday afternoon lake traffic and impatient drivers as we ride from Syracuse to Knob Noster. When we arrive about five oclock in Knob Noster, John says this has been his least pleasant day. The traffic congestion and noise took away the fun. Tom and Barbara Bray are standing in front of the church as we pull into Knob Noster. Quick as a flash, were at the parsonage downing iced tea and cokes, followed by a hot shower. All the Brays bedrooms are spoken for tonight and probably for many nights to come. Tom and Barbara run Grand Central Station; people are coming and going, reveling in one anothers company for the two hours we are here before we all go to the evening service. To church at seven, Tom tells his people what Im doing, then turns the service over to me to tell my story. From the moment I stand, I can sense the congregation with me. Knowing that causes my story to dance out of my mouth and into their hearts: I see it in their eyes and in the rapt expression on their faces. When I ask them at the end to help me figure out what is happening, they are quick to respond. You are being used by God, says a man near the back. Others murmur agreement. Do you know how uncomfortable I am with that notion? I ask. Who am I that God would want to use me? I could never say about myself the thing you just said. The very thought of it scares me to death. Im deeply grateful that some see such meaning in what Im doing. But I cant give it a name. Something deep inside resists. What I
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can tell you, what I must tell you, is that I have to ride this bicycle across the country. I have to visit with people and share with them my dream of a world where people like each other, and everyone expects good from everone else. And because I expect good, I can trust people to draw their own conclusions about the meaning of what I do and why I do it. Im trusting people to meet my needs for food and shelter. I must trust them, too, to make up their own minds about my motivation. Even as I ride, newspapers in every town I pass through carry stories about one television preacher laid low by a sex scandal, while another is up in a tower saying God will kill him if people dont send him eight million dollars. The ease with these two and their legions of counterparts invoke God prompts in me a reluctance I cant overcome. Not from action do I shrink, but from explaining it, from describing it in the stained glass voice so loud in our land. After church, many people come to say kind and encouraging things to me. And it is this brief one-on-one conversation that most energizes me. To take their hand and stand close and speak quietly of things that matter deeply to us, things we cant often bring ourselves to mention, is to stand with one foot in heaven. And it is in moments like this that I find my voice for the things I cannot say to an audience. Or in a book. Then back to the Brays for dinner. A big group is present, and as we eat and talk I feel good all over. I can feel the love. See it in faces, hear its voices. This is not a feeling Ive had often in my life. But occasionally at church it happens. And the hope of it happening again is enough to keep me coming back. Marian and Ann Morgan had arrived at the Brays shortly after we did. They had been members of the Brays church in Madisonville, Kentucky. Wherever you find the Brays, you find people who love them and each other. Marian says to us all several times during the evening. Tom graduated from William Jewell following his military service in World War II. After seminary he returned to Jewell as BSU Director. He since has pastored several churches before coming to Knob Noster. Two of the Brays daughters were students of mine at Jewell. A thunderstorm laid siege to Kansas City and environs last night. Downed tree limbs give evidence of the storm this morning as we pedal into downtown Kansas City, but we had all been tired enough that we slept through it. John and I spent last night with Martha and Dave Hitchcock. Martha is the Brays daughter, and a former student of mine at William Jewell. It is only a short ride from Marthas and Daves in Independence to
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John Pritchards office at Habitat for Humanitys Kansas City office. We are there by noon as I promised John we would be when I talked to him on the phone from Syracuse. But I didnt know John would have lunch for us. If I had known, I might not have stopped by Rubys on the way in. On the other hand, I might have stopped anyway. I hadnt seen Ruby since about a month before I left. Rubys Soul Food Cafe, 1506 Brooklyn. A dump! A bit of heaven! Ruby. Earth mother. As fine a cook as ever lived. As beautiful a soul as ever visited among us. We could not ride past. We hug and kiss. She has to know about the trip. She has kept up with me in the papers and on TV, the same way I, and all of Kansas city, regularly keep up with her. Partly to excuse leaving without eating and without spending enough time, I say to Ruby that we will be back at two oclock. And though I dont ask, I know she will serve us family style, with wave after wave of mouth watering foods; salads of every conceivable kind, fried chicken, chicken and dressing, chicken and dumplings, smothered steak, baked ham, catfish, meatloaf, neckbones, miced greens, homemade rolls and cornbread. And when we have been made miserable by gluttony, Ruby will insist that we visit the desert table: peach and cherry cobler, sweet potato pie, apple pie, banana pudding, pecan pie, several cakes, and homemade ice cream. Of course, everything at Rubys is homemade. She would give me a good cussing if she thought you thought otherwise. Though there are only two of us, and to eat family style requires 12, I was never more certain of anything in my life than that we will not be given a menu to order from. Of one more thing I am equally certain: it will all be on the house. Ruby wouldnt take our money if we put a gun to her head. So when we get to Habitat and see that they have lunch for us, I know we have to eat twice. John and Mary Pritchard are remarkable people. They live in Liberty, and I have known them for the 22 years Ive been there. Every time I see John, my first thought is of the remark I first made to him years ago and have repeated often to him. John, I said, I cant go anywhere in the Kansas City area where good and noble things are done without seeing your name on the board of directors, or a plaque or a cornerstone or without hearing your name mentioned in conversation. I would never turn down anything John and Mary offered. They have made a sizable financial contribution to my ride and had been at the airport to see me off. They had also given one of their daughters
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names on the west coast for me to contact when I get there. We would have eaten more if we had not known what was waiting at Rubys. But we did eat. After lunch, John takes us to the building site where volunteers from a college in Illinios are working, and he calls them together so I can talk to them. Were back at Rubys at two and everything transpires just as I knew it would. After an hour and a half of eating, resting, and visiting, the two of us stagger onto our bikes for the short ride back to Habitat where we are scheduled to spend the night before riding to Liberty tomorrow for the giant welcome on campus. We detour slightly to ride up Prospect and through the heart of the black community as we make our way back. When someone calls to me, I stop. He wants to know all about the trip. When we get back to Habitat, John is sick. All that food, the heat, and that last little ride have him ready to go home. He has already arranged with John Pritchard to go back to Liberty when he comes up to our fourth floor rooms where we are to sleep. John asks if I want to go. We can leave our bikes here. Sharon, his wife, will bring us back in the morning so we can bike the 20 miles to Liberty. At first I say no, I will stay at Habitat. But the thought of sleeping in my own bed and sitting in the Jacuzzi to ease my aching back proves irresistible. Bobbie is in Europe, but Dave is home. And when I get there, he is glad to see me. We talk for a long time, longer at one time than we have in years. I feel good to know my grown son is proud of his father and anxious to hear of his experiences. Celebration on the Quad By eight-thirty the next morning, John and I are back at Habitat, ready for our ride to Liberty. The William Jewell campus is small. All the buildings face each other around a central quadrangle. The quad today is filled with folding chairs, and a podium has been set up in front of the library. People are everywhere. Im given a seat beside the podium. And the celebration begins. A stage has been set up in front of the Library. From where I sit, I can see the giant billboard that stands on the quad, just at the north end of Jewell Hall. Jerry Cain had it built by the Maintenance Department. It shows a giant map of the United States with my route traced on it. At every town they have drilled a hole. Everyday when I call the campus, someone puts a golf tee in the appropriate hole. Everyone on campus then knows where I am. The sun is fierce, hotter than Ive run into so far all summer. Sweat
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pours from every pore. And from every person as far as I can see. But I wouldnt miss this for the world. All the people who made this possible are here. To be here with them in this place that means the world to me is heaven on earth. Dick Brown steps to the mike. In turn, Dick introduces those who are to say good things about me and my ride. But Dick himself is the star of the show. Dick graduated from Jewell shortly after I joined the faculty. In the years since he had acquired a reputation as a fine actor and was regularly seen in local productions and read about in those more distant. Handsome and articulate, Dick was in demand as a model and spokesman. Now after three strokes, Dicks stage career is over. His left arm will not work, and he walks with a limp, dragging his left leg. His voice is as magnificent as ever, but it is his spirit that makes him glow and draws people to him. This coming fall Dick will join the Jewell faculty to teach theater. He is here today at high noon in the glaring sun to MC. this beautiful gathering of my dear friends. The children have brought big signs on butcher paper lettered with crayons to give me. They beam and glow as they step up in small groups to hand me their treasures. And nothing given to me by any dignitary could ever touch me as these crude signs framed with innocence and tied with trust. The formal ceremony is mercifully brief. Today this quad is a natural sauna. The buildings on all four sides have stilled the air. Theres not a cloud in the sky, and the sun directly overhead is sucking moisture at a rapid rate from every living thing. When Dick welcomes me to the mike to address the several hundred who have come, I come dripping. And anxious. Alls right with my world. Ive come 1700 miles by bicycle to see you. Im glad youre here. Whether I make it all the way to California is not important to me just now. All that matters is that when Im out there on the road, I know you love me. And I love you. Each of you is on the bicycle with me. You are ever gentle on my mind. When I am tired and cannot go on, you take over. Anyone watching, would see only me on the bike, but appearances can be deceiving, just as the earth to the unaided eye seems flat. The fact is that for long stretches, for hours at a time, I am not on that bicycle. Im back here at home. And you are riding for me. Its your muscles that ache and hurt. Its you that sweats, that gets hungry and thirsty. You are my home court advantage, because no matter where I am, there you are also. After the ceremonies have ended, Im surrounded by children want118 W
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ing to give me something they have made and wanting me to write my name on scraps of paper they have scrounged. I could have stayed all day with these precious children, but its time for their lunch, and they must be back soon to their accustomed summer place. The big red college bus is taking my big red bike and me into Kansas City this morning. The Caldonian Pipe Band is also going, along with a contingent of Liberty people. At noon, we will all gather in the lobby of the new AT&T Town Pavillion for a welcoming ceremony given by AT&T and the M.S. Society. The Town Pavilion is Kansas Citys newest and currently tallest downtown building. Standing here just inside the Main Street entrance, looking up into the glass and chrome atrium stretching upward for eight floors, it does seem that everythings up to date in Kansas City. The sound of bagpipes carries into far-flung cavities, reverberating off hard surfaces and echoing back on itself, sounding as if kilt-clad pipers are marching down every hallway and on every floor. At two oclock, I meet Yahya at the Gregg Community Center for a ride through the black community to the Freedom Fountain a few miles east. Al Brooks is here. And Larry Schumake. And Lucile Bluford. And Shah Waliallah. All long time friends; all prominent community builders in the Kansas City area. Al is Director of the Human Relations Department for Kansas City, Larry is Director of the Black Economic Union, Lucile is Editor of the Kansas City Call, and Shah is Imam at Masjid (Mosque) Ahmed. All this has been arranged by Yahya Furqan, Imam at Masjid Omar, a dear friend and Chariman of the Faith Committee that planned my ride. None of those asked to serve on this committee refused, and membership included major religious communities and races: Father Milan Bajich, Pastor of St. George Serbian Orthodox Church; Rev. Vern Barnett, Director of the Center for Religious Experience and Study; Rev. Bob Brumet, Pastor of Overland Park Unity; Dennis Jenkins, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints; Rabbi Mark Levin, Temple Bnai Jehudah; Jim McKinney, Heart of America Indian Center; Rev. George Steincross, Pastor, Second Baptist Church, Liberty; Rev. Webster West, Pastor, King Solomon Baptist Church, Kansas City, Kansas. In the world as I would have it, these religious communities and races would regularly work together on projects to benefit them all. To my knowledge, though, BikeAmerica is the only project being worked on jointly this summer. Yesterday at Jewell, this morning at AT&T, now at the Gregg Community Center and in a while at the Freedom Fountain, The
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Human Family Reunion has come alive. From the hearts and minds and souls of The Faith Committee has sprung this gathering of young and old, black and white, Christian, Jew, and Muslim. As we stand in the shade of the mobile stage brought to the lawn of the Gregg Center for this occasion, we feel warm and safe and secure. To know that we are here to celebrate our family ties, that it has taken us all of our lives to come to this place for this purpose, that after today we may never again come together: all of this gives to each second of our sharing today an eternal significance that we all intuitively recognize. And as each of those who address the assemblage steps to the mike, we embrace. And without embarrassment or reservation or planning, each of us says almost in unison, I love you, my friend. Bob and Jean are with me again. And on their tandem, they ride across the city like the pied piper, an entourage of children in their wake. Before we leave the Gregg Center and again when we get to the Freedom Fountain, Bob breaks out his tools for emergency repairs to a childs bike; his payment, a smile and an energetic pedaling away. Shah is near my age, and he pedals to the Fountain and back to the Center on his young sons bike with its banana seat, handlebars above his head and frame so small that he cannot extend his legs to pedal. Yahyas bicycle is borrowed from a friend who must be a giant; its the biggest bike Ive ever seen, a frame so large that mounting and dismounting is the trickiest part of the ride. Biking the tree-lined streets through the Black community as integrated riders, calling and waving to everyone I see, being responded to in kind, kindles in me a feeling I havent felt since high school when I strode the halls of Huntsville High yelling out greetings to students, teachers, administrators, and anybody else who chanced to be about. I need to get away fast this morning. Especially after Dave and I go to breakfast, and we talk to each other from the heart. I dont want to go, but I have to. Everybody is so proud of what Im doing. They all hate to see me leave. At a level they could never voice, they dont think I can do this thing; but at an even deeper level, a level beyond the conscious, an inarticulate level except perhaps to Shakespeare, they would die if I did not get back on my bicycle and go. They ride with me. They need my adventure to think about. Their life would be less this summer without this adventure of ours. I love these dear people. And because I do, I must leave them. In my leaving, we share a bold mission that enriches each of us. Despondency and defeat would wash over all of us if I were to quit. When I first started thinking about this ride and the route I would take, I thought I would stay south, across Louisiana into Texas, New
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Mexico, Arizona and into California. But when I thought of this, it raised in me the same feeling I get thinking about going to the dentist. I had no initial notion of coming through Liberty on my way west. I might be tempted not to go on. Parting again from loved ones would be painful. On the other hand, to be briefly at home midway in my journey could be an oasis, reviving my enthusiasm and renewing my energy. When those people I first talked to about my ride asked when I would be back through Kansas City and described the celebration they would like to have, I knew they had made the decision for me: Kansas City, here I come. A little more than 1,700 miles I have come when I roll into Kansas City on June 23rd. Where to from here? Since Milt Albright had said yes to my request to be in a parade and to meet Mickey, my destination is now Disneyland. But not as the crow flies. Before Milts offer, Jerry Cain had recommended going from Orlando to Seattle. I loved the idea instantly. East to west and south to north had a symmetry to the sound that caught me in its spell. As chaplain at our college, Jerry is accustomed to painting word pictures to help people catch visions. And he had done it again. Years earlier on one of our long summer sojourns in our little tent camper with our three kids and the dog, I had first caught sight of the Grand Teton. Such majesty I had only imagined before. Why the ancients had their gods living in the mountains had made no sense to me B.T.Before Teton. So I knew I had to bike through Grand Teton National Park. And its a package deal: if Teton, then also Yellowstone. The only road into Coulter Bay and Grand Teton National Park runs north and west to Grant village in Yellowstone National Park. And though I was a bicycle teacher rather than a bicycle tourist, I was anxious to pedal in and through these cathedrals of the infinite and eternal. I was grateful for the outpouring of support during the campus ceremony on Wednesday, the AT&T festivities on Thursday, and the Gregg Community Center gathering that afternoon. And the ride from Gregg Community Center to Freedom Fountain with black youngsters was a highlight. To ride through the Black community, Blacks and Whites together, calling to everyone we met along the way was further demonstration of the power and possibility of the Human Family Reunion. Then to sit and eat last night with Carol and Charlie Rogers, Loretta, Charlie, Sarah and Aaron Hughes, to relax with these Ive been close to for years, to have them ask about my travels and listen as good friends do; then offer words of support, occasionally irreverent observaW
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tions, and lots of laughter, heart-felt questions. Then, when time to part: hugs and tears. Fourth of July Pass Rain starts to fall as I leave Kellogg for the 37 mile ride to Couer dAlene. As I ride, the rain comes down harder. And colder. Fourth of July Pass lies between Kellogg and Couer dAlene,Idaho and the ascent is so deceptively simple that I am shocked when I am at the top and about to go down. Sitting at the summit and looking down the mountain through the drizzling rain, my heart is in my throat and a knot in my stomach. I dont want any part of what I see, but I have no choice. How will Jean and Bob survive? I wish they were here to talk about this. I wish I could wait. But I cant stay here in this rain. Nothing to do but go. Just over the summit, the highway is torn to pieces. Under Construction: thats what the sign says. Obstacle Course: thats how I read it. Traffic is narrowed to two lanes rather than four. No shoulder. Hard rain. Slick pavement. Logging trucks, semis, motor homes and countless cars lurching by as I fight to hold my bike to the foot-wide strip of road available to me while braking hard to keep from plummeting out of control down the mountain. To my right, just inches from me: debris, rocks, sand, a guard rail, all of it ready to spill my bike and me onto the road if I make a single mistake. To my left, inches away, that caravan of 18 wheelers and vacationers rumbles by. Should I veer a few inches off course to the left, Im a dead man. Down that mountain for half-a-mile or so I follow that ribbon-wide path, disaster to either side. Then comes the four mile obstacle course. Marker cones, long concrete barriers set up to channel traffic away from the construction and into two narrow lanes, and all the while the road is twisting to follow the natural contours of the land. Where I can, I ride to the right, as far from the traffic as possible, through the construction, where cars and trucks cannot get at me. But the road is rough and strewn with tire hazards. Often the way is blocked by a concrete barricade, and I am forced back into the line of traffic. Nothing to do but go. Stopping, even hesitating, is out of the question. My bicycle has as much right on this road as big trucks and cars, and they will respect that right. Only I can exercise it, though. And I realize Im teaching as I ride, teaching motorists how to treat bikers. Talking is not teaching, listening is not learning, a saying I ran across somewhere years ago comes to mind as I compete for space on the road. When I come to the only shelter I have passed since leaving Kellogg,
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more than 25 miles back, I pull my bike up under that overpass. Standing straight after hours hunched over in a cold rain feels good. Arms over my head and touching my toes releases taut muscles, but Im not able to move fast enough to generate the heat I long for. My rain jacket on over a tee shirt, is glued to my arms from the rain. With an hour to go before I get to Couer dAlene, I have to get warm. So I pull out my flannel shirt and put it on under my jacket. I had told Jack to expect me about three oclock, but its 5:15 by the time I get to the church. No sooner have I pulled in than Jack appears. He shows me where to change my wet clothes. Then I call the police to tell them about Bob and Jean coming behind me. I also call the highway patrol to ask that they watch for them and bring them to the church. As people are arriving for the evening prayer service, Jack introduces me to each. When the service begins at 6:30, Im given the bulk of the service to tell about my ride and about the Human Family Reunion. When the service is drawing to a close and Bob and Jean havent come, I ask prayers for them out there on that mountain in the rain. After services, I call the police again. No word. So George House, Jack, and I get in Georges car to go look for them. As we round a curve on the edge of town just before starting up the mountain, I spot two heads barely visible behind a motor home sitting in a service station driveway. I cant tell who it is, but I have the feeling its Bob and Jean, and I yell at George to pull in. They are cold and wet and miserable and look like death warmed over. But we are all so happy to see one another, so giddy from our sense of accomplishment at getting down the mountain and of conquering our fear that nothing else matters. Georges pickup wont hold the two of them and their tandem, so Bob and Jean have to ride another four wet miles to the church. George then takes them where they are to stay and Jack takes me to his house out in the country, stopping at Taco Bell for an order to go. According to the paper there was a flood yesterday in Smelterville, a little place I saw a sign for on the ride down the mountain. A small plane is missing and feared down in the area. Hayden Lake is only a few miles from Coeur dAlene. Thats where the Aryan Nations nuts are. Learning this, I want to stress the Human Family Reunion part of my ride. I get to the newspaper office as deadline approaches and wait an hour to see what I can help to happen. When he is free, Gail Wood and I sit and talk for half an hour or so while he takes notes. Gail seems supportive and sympathetic, though he cant quite grasp how people of various faiths can get together without trying to convert one another.
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I mention my friendship with Yahya. Gail asks if I think it is important to share Jesus Christ with him. I say no. Thats such a crucial part of this whole Human Family Reunion. It cannot ever, even for a moment, be seen as a platform for converting people of other faiths. Who is right is the wrong question to ask in this setting. Better that no effort ever be made to get people together than that it ultimately turn into an effort to blend all into a homogeneous mass. And God forbid that anyone ever attempt this program with a hidden agenda. The Bible condemns hypocrites, those who pretend to be what they are not. Know thyself is a Christian injunction. Also Jewish. And Muslim. The person who does not know her/his motives dare not attend the Human Family Reunion. And the only adequate motive has to be to learn to like people who are not like you. Like them. Not change them. To Gail I stress that I am a teacher, out on my bike to teach the country how to like people. To show them that we have done it at William Jewell; to encourage them to do it in their community; to show them how easy it is, and how doing it makes them into a better person, a more committed believer, a noble human being. Mistrust is the province of small minds and withered souls, and is never at home when the Human Family Reunion is in progress. Mickey Mouse Rob says it would be suicidal for me to get on my bike and try to negotiate the 50 miles of freeway between here and Pasadena. So after lunch back at his house, we load my bike in his pickup for the ninety minute drive. En route we are treated to a vehicular symphony of percusion instruments at a decibel level that drowns out conversation. Apparently, also, this maze of road and grating noise in this arid environment is hard on ethics. Since Montana, people have been warning me against L.A. freeways because motorists are shooting each other, and snipers are randomly cutting down passers-by. A gray cloud hangs in the air off in the direction where Rob points to L.A. The San Gabriel Mountains disappear into the haze, and I can only imagine that the Wilson Observatory is up there where Rob says it is. Having heard all my life about the farms of California, I am unprepared for the lack of greenery and water. Up through the South and across Missouri, I had seen lakes and farm ponds everywhere, making the land lush and giving it sparkle. Across Nebraska, Wyoming, Montana, and the high plains desert of Washington, I saw and heard hundreds of pumps bringing water from deep underground and carrying
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it to otherwise impossible crops. Seldom did I actually see water. But after Rob has driven for most an hour, off to the left, cascading down a concrete mountainside and into giant pipes that carry it beneath our freeway and into a huge holding tank below and to the right, I see a Niagara of water, brought, Rob says, up and over the mountains by acquaduct from the Colorado River many miles away. Knight and Tina Hoover are on leave from their faculty positions at Augustana College in Sioux Falls, South Dakota so that Tina can do further study at Fuller Seminary. We have been friends since I met Knight several years ago at a professional meeting and we discovered our shared point of view on how college teaching should be done. Now they are to take care of me while Im in Pasadena, and they have planned a Human Family Reunion at the seminary. Rob gets me to the Hoovers small second floor apartment about 2:30, and Knight shows me where I can put my bike in a locked utility room out back next to the car port. Rob has spent much of his time with me since he picked me up in Carpenteria four days ago. Now he doesnt seem anxious to leave, and I hate to see him go. We hug each other, and I stand watching as he pulls away. As he rounds the corner, he waves his hand across the back glass. Then I cant see him. And I stand there for a long while before I go in. When Milt said more than four months ago that Disneyland would let me be in a parade and meet Mickey Mouse when I got here, I thought immediately of Knight and the possibility of having a Human Family Reunion here in California. Knight had said an immediate yes and has been working all summer to make the day that dawns on Tuesday the day when the Human Family Reunion takes a giant step beyond dream and into the consciousness of this city and perhaps this country. Bobbie comes today! Cynthia Killian will pick her up at L.A. International and bring her to me. I have never met Cynthia, and she lives in Aptos, a town just out of San Francisco. I was supposed to call her when I passed through nine days ago, but when I decided to take101 rather than Highway 1, I would not be close enough to spend the night, and I had not called. I had gotten Cynthias name when I called the college one day in early July and received a message from Larry Schumake saying that I should get in touch with Cynthia. Larry is Executive Director of the Black Economic Union in Kansas City, and we have worked on several projects together to improve our little place on the planet. And I knew that anyone Larry recommended was someone I should know. But I was south of Cynthia before I realized where I was. I was deeply sorry but
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thought there was nothing to be done I had called Larry from Robs house, and Larry said that Cynthia had called him wanting to know where I was and if I was alright. I told Larry that I had not passed through Aptos. I promised to call Cynthia and thank her for her offer to help. When I had Cynthia on the phone, she wanted to drive the several hundred miles to Santa Paula so she could then take me on to Pasadena. When she learned that was taken care of, she wanted to know what else she could do. How is your wife getting from the airport? she asked. When I didnt know, Cynthia said she would take care of it. But youre in San Francisco! No problem, she said. I have friends I can call. Give me her flight number and where she needs to come. Ill make sure she gets there. A shiney new car pulls up to the Hoovers about 6:30 Monday evening. Out steps Bobbie and another woman I dont recognize. Hello Ed, Im Cynthia Killian. This Human Family Reunion has been billed as the Peace and Justice Festival here at Fuller. And Im overjoyed to find that the very first event of the day has me showing my bike and talking about my ride to a group of children ranging in age from five to twelve and coming from seven countries. As I take my panniers and bottles and pump and front wheel off the bike to show the children, they are firing rapid questions. After 90 minutes the children are still asking questions. We have talked about mountains and deserts and what I ate and who took care of me and if my mother worried. Lunch time has come, and they must go. But first they come to thank me and give me hugs. How can the day get better? The Catalyst is just a few steps from where the children and I have been talking, and we go there for lunch. The Catalyst has a Tradition of the Best in Theological Sandwiches. I choose the Martin Luther King, Jr. dream of a sandwich, and as we eat, a young man comes to sing. All across the country, under my breath and off-key, I have been singing Amazing Grace, a habit I got into a couple of years ago when my car radio quit. Its still not fixed, and now its almost automatic that I break into song as I slide behind the wheel of my little Rabbit diesel that no one but me will ride in because of the noise and vibration. I think of this as the young man begins his rendition of Amazing Grace. Its not the version I sing. But of all the songs, why this one? Is it simply coincidence? Dorothy wouldnt think so. If not, though, what am I to make of it. Back in Nashville when I had asked for help in under126 W
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standing why I was making this ride, Lloyd had sung his answer: Cheer up my brother, walk in the sunshine, farther along well understand why. Were all these coincidences part of the answer? Am I so dense that Im destined never to know? John and Barbara Lim arrive about seven in the evening. Bobbie and I havent seen them in years, only once or twice since John graduated from Jewell. They have been in California since John came here to minister to the spiritual needs of Malasian people. He had been a pastor back in Malasia for years before he came to the States to finish his college at William Jewell and then to study at the seminary. Barbara, Grace, and Paul had stayed behind, intending to see John at the end of his studies when he came home. John had been in Liberty better than a year when people in the church brought his family over. They had endeared themselves by their gracious manner and their unsurpassed skills in the kitchen. To be invited to the Lims for dinner came to be the most coveted invitation in town among those who knew them, a number that was increasing rapidly. The outdoor service begins as the sun is setting. Its conducted entirely by women and tells the story of Moses mother, sister and Pharohs daughter, helping us all to glimpse the character of God apart from the usual male imagery. John and Barbara sit with us for the service. Early the next morning John is back with one of his parishoners to drive us to Anaheim for our day at Disneyland. A bus has wrecked on the freeway and we are just a few minutes late when we get to Milts office a little after eleven. I like Milt immediately. In his 70s, with a full head of shining silver hair, ruddy complexion, booming voice, ready smile,pearly teeth, eyes that twinkle, and a firm handshake, I know in an instant that he loves his job and has fun doing it. If cast by Hollywood, the Disney persona could not be better captured. Milt has been with Disney since the beginning and knew Walt personally. Milt walks me from his office to the parking lot and locks my bike in the van where it will stay until tomorrow. As we walk, Milt maintains a running commentary on this place he knows so well. Main Street is modeled after Marceline, Missouri, he tells me, where Walts parents moved when he was five years old, but it had to be scaled down to accommodate the space available. Disneyland covers only 40 acres, a Magic Kingdom surrounded by freeways. Main Street is designed so that to arriving guests it looks longer than it really is, giving the illusion of more space than actually exists. To the guest walking out Main Street at the end of an exhausting day, the street appears shorter, less an obstacle back to their waiting car.
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I get the feeling that more is afoot for tomorrow than I expect. To be in the parade Disneyland has each afternoon and to meet Mickey: thats what I asked Milt if I could do. When he said yes, I was in Heaven. Milt had said it would be good if I could be here in September for the State Fair Day they are planning, but I had to be back at Jewell to start a new school year on September 1. Milt expected 80,000 people in the park on August 27 and my arrival would not be as big an event as it would later. But you come ahead. Well make it nice, he said. As I called Milt every week or so from the road, I could feel his excitement growing. Milt had called the college about a week ago to say that he would need for Bobbie and me to stay in the Disneyland Hotel so we would be close enough to coordinate the activities Disney had planned. I didnt know about this development until yesterday when Bobbie told me. Since Seattle I had been planning to spend our nights in Anaheim at the Lutheran Seminary. Jack Eichorst had called his fellow president here and arranged our lodging. And last night on the phone to Bobbie, Milt had told her he needed a private meeting with her when we got to Disneyland. After Milt takes me to lock up my bike, he and Bobbie and several Disney people disappear up the stairs for about an hour. Bobbie then floats down the stairs, glowing as if what she has seen and heard has transformed her. You wont believe what they have planned for you, she says. Then she falls silent. I see in her eyes what I saw when she was seventeen and stole my heart. Milt is bubbling as he tells me about it, though he gives me none of the details. But if he aims to get me excited, he could do no better than one thing he does say; Ill pick you up in the morning at 5:45. We have rehearsal at six. Rehearsal! Rehearsal? Me? Robert Redford, eat your heart out. When I was a boy a Saturday morning radio program called Lets Pretend would transport me to a land of castles and kings and beautiful ladies and noble deeds. Now in real life as an adult I have been transported here at Disneyland for an adventure bigger than I ever imagined. The woman at the hotel desk makes me feel like King Arthur as she asks about my ride and says she is proud of me. She hopes the Human Family Reunion fires the imagination of all the worlds people.Then she sends us up to the twelfth floor suite. A living room bigger than than our apartment when we got married. And more furniture. A two-room bathroom. Closets big enough to sleep in. From the bedroom we can see a waterfall, a swimming pool and a paddle boat lagoon, some shops, another hotel, and Disneyland.
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While we sat in the hotel lobby waiting for our room, Milt showed me the script for tomorrows TV filming. They are having a parade just for me, and all the Disney characters will be there to welcome me. Milt said Disney is spending a lot of money and time on this. We want to do it for you, he said, but of course theres something in it for us. If that films as good as we hope, itll be seen all over this country. When I meet Milt outside the hotel a little before six the next morning, the sun is coming up into a cloudless sky; the air is cool and clear. Just inside the front gate, half-a-dozen people are busily arranging the stage. Following introductions all around, Milt drives me back into the parking lot, explaining as we go the route and the speed I am to ride at ten oclock when the ceremony in front of the train station is to take place. And now they tell me that I am the only one in the parade. Its all for me! I will ride my bike in the main gate. Chip and Dale and Goofy will entertain the crowd as I ride through the parking lot, commenting on how long it will take me to arrive. As I approach the train station, I will ride onto a red carpet, lined to either side by cheering spectators waving American flags. And when I make it the length of the carpet, I am to dismount. Someone will take my bike and I will grab Bobbie and give her a big kiss. Mickey will shake my hand and usher me onto the stage where I will be officially welcomed and presented a trophy from the Orange County M.S. Society and one from Disneyland, a statue of Mickey Mouse, appropriately inscribed and handed to me by Mickey himself. Then Ill make a short speech and be interviewed by the media. Everything will be filmed and put on TV for all the country to see. Then well go to lunch in Walts private club, followed by an escorted tour of the park with the Disneyland Ambassador. For two hours we rehearse, and as I hear the Disney characters talk about me in their irrevrent way, I am one of them as they have all of my life been one of me. And when Milt drives me out to the marquee in front of Disneyland and shows me my name up there for all to see, when he tells me that this is something they just never do, that the last time they did it was for Richard Nixon more than 20 years ago; then, at that moment, I am in a dimension of life I have never known and cannot describe. Ten oclock comes. Everything proceeds as planned. This cant be real. All these peole cheering for me, with their eyes embracing the day and each other and me. People of different colors and cultures and creeds standing to welcome and to listen to me. Gazing into that sea of salt, pepper and ginger faces as I talk, seeing the smiles and the endorsW
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ing body language, feeling the energy and the good will that has us caught in its spell, believing for one brief shining moment that the whole world is the mirror image of this place: The Magic Kingdom come alive. And now I do understand, Lloyd. Farther along, I have found the answer. Peace, power, purpose and joy are meant to be our constant companions. Life is supposed to be a glorious adventure. To become a World Class Person, able to go anywhere at anytime and talk to anyone about anything and feel safe: This is our destiny. Each of us intuitively knows all of this. If we can find the courage to talk to people about our our mutual dreams of becoming World Class, then we shall together be swept upward in a benevolent commingling of beautiful thoughts and noble deeds, elevating us and all of life to the heroic dimension we long for. HateBusters to the Rescue Newspaper in hand, I walked into my Race Relations class that fall morning in 1988. I held up the paper with the big headline: KLANSMAN ELECTED TO LOUISIANA LEGISLATURE. I said to my class. Im sad. For weeks now we have been reading about race relations in our country and around the world. Now this unspeakable, unthinkable thing has happened. The good people of Louisiana have been insulted. All Black Americans have to feel threatened. I feel like we ought to do something. We have read that all it takes for evil to triumph is for good people to do nothing. I dont think we could live with ourselves if we just sat here and read the paper. But I must tell you that I have no idea what we should do or what we could do. The least we can do, though, is talk about it and see if we can think of something. No one spoke for several minutes. Then from the back of the room someone asked, Could we go there? A murmur ran through the room. Whether prompted by anticipation or dismay I couldnt tell. But the idea was not unthinkable. Our semester was only a few weeks old. Already, though, I had divided the class of 35 into seven five-person teams and assigned each team to a minority community in our metro area of one and a half million people. Each team was assigned a contact person from the community; all seven contacts had been in class during our second meeting, and each team would visit their community three times during the semester to talk with people there about the issues and concepts we were learning in our reading. With this experience of going off campus in pursuit of greater understanding and perhaps some role in addressing problems, a trip to Louisiana was at least an idea we could entertain. So for a while we just
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thought out loud, assuming, I think, that we would raise all the questions we could and the idea would die for lack of reasonable answers. How would we get there. Where would we stay? What would we do? How many of us would go? Which ones of us would it be? How long would we stay? What right do we have to go? What business is it of ours? We got nothing else done that morning except to raise these questions and to realize we didnt have any answers. But the questions wouldnt die. For the next few weeks, various students kept reviving the questions and suggesting possible answers. Ghostbusters was a hit movie and song well known to students at the time, so one day in class a student suggested that our class rewrite the title song and call it HateBusters. He even had a first attempt at a rewrite with him. His spirited rendition drew a few laughs and some moans. A day or two later another student said maybe two members of the class could be elected by the class as their representatives to go to Louisiana. Lets go ahead and elect them, then we can try to find a way to go, a student said. We decided that our team should be integrated. We will be teaching as much by what people see as by what we say, offered another student. We proceeded to elect one black student and one white student. I realized by now that my students were not going to let this idea die. I had to find a way for us to go, else my teaching them that simply knowing is never enough, that ways must be found to act on what we know, would seem hollow and of no effect. So I went to the phone to call one of our community contact persons, pastor of a Black congregation. From previous conversation with him I knew that his church was part of a larger association of churches stretching across several states and including Louisiana. I asked my friend if he had a friend in Baton Rouge. He did, and the friend was pastor of a large church. I explained that my students and I wanted to go to Louisiana to help the state redeem itself in its own eyes and in the eyes of the nation and asked if he thought his friend would invite us to come. Ill call and ask, he said. A short time later my phone rang. It was the pastor from Baton Rouge. Please come, he said. Now that we had an invitation from a black church to come I could see no way out. My students were expecting something to happen; they were expecting me to keep at it until it did or at least until I had exhausted every possible resource and idea I possibly could. Now that the religious community had invited us, I thought it fitting that we have an invitation from the political establishment. Why not the governor? So I called All Brooks, my friend since my first week in
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Kansas City. I was confident Al knew someone who could get to the governor. He did, but he didnt have time to compose a letter. If you will write the letter and send it to me, then I will have my secretary send it out on city stationary over my signature. I wrote the letter. A couple of weeks later we got an invitation from the governor of Louisiana to visit his state. We now had the endorsement of the religious community and state government. Now for the business community. I remembered that brother-in-law Dick Bowles lived in Baton Rouge; he was on the board at William Jewell and an executive with one of the largest employers in Baton Rouge. I asked my doctor to intercede on our behalf; shortly, we had an invitation from the business community. Now the question of how to get there was paramount. We had no money in our departmental or institutional budget for such an undertaking. I suppose we could have tried bake sales and car washes, but this would have taken my time and my students time away from our academic pursuits. I often criticize time taken from studies by sports and fraternities and sororities, so I could not in good conscience undertake a similar infringement on the real job of students. I looked in the phone book to see what airlines flew to Baton Rouge; then I called American Airlines. What did we have to lose if they said no? I asked to speak to the person in charge. Quickly I explained that my students were learning about race relations, that we had read about the Klansman being elected to the state legislature, that two of my students and I had been invited by the governor, a church, and the business community to come help; then, I explained that we had no money, and I asked for three free tickets. We would be delighted to help, said the voice at the other end of the line. Three free tickets it is. Then I knew that this idea, this wild and crazy dream coming from the minds and hearts of college students, this Quixote mission had struck a responsive cord with people of the church, with political leaders at the highest level, and with leaders of big business. They were the ones who down through the years and across generations had made it possible for students and teachers to cloister themselves in libraries and classrooms and to devote themselves to reading and thinking. The return on their investment is not ordinarily expected by people of the church and government and business until some years after students have completed their studies. But to witness an early and highly visible return on their investment turned out to be a heady and irresistible prospect. Now that we had been invited and had a way to get there, we turned our attention to what we would do once we arrived. We had been think132 W
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ing a little bit about this all along, but in the back of our minds we had really expected this whole thing to abort; it was, after all, only one of many ideas floated in a class discussion, ideas as tantalizing as butterflies and with about the same life span. To be in the presence now of an idea that would not die, that seemingly could not be killed no matter how audacious we became in its pursuit was to elevate our teacher and student status to a dimension heretofore known to us only in the words and lives of poets and saints and scholars. I had come of age in the piney woods of East Texas, among Blacks and Whites and Mexicans; Baptists, Catholics, and Jews. The hatred I sensed as a child had become palpable and enervating by the time I was in high school. Ten days after graduating, I enrolled across town in our local college. Among the first classes I took was a course in race relations; our text was Arnold Roses condensation of Gunnar Myrdals An American Dilemma. Here for the first time I found someone asking in a systematic and informed way the questions that had troubled me all my life. Now as a teacher to be engaged with young minds in the daily quest for racial understanding was a lifestyle unimaginable to me back then. I had taught now at William Jewell for many years, far from my East Texas boyhood. I came to Kansas City with a fellowship to study the Civil Rights Movement as it developed locally. Having invested a year in getting to know the players and the politics, I thought I should stay. I could go elsewhere and know the same books and be of some help, but here where I knew the people I would be of maximum value. Back in 1976 my students and I had begun what we called The Human Family Reunion. First on our campus and for the past dozen years at a central location in the heart of our city, we would give a big party for all the people we had come to know during our semester. People of all races and religions, of all colors, creeds, and cultures were invited to bring a dish from their ethnic roots if possible, from McDonalds if necessary, and come join us for a giant smorgasbord. We would hear prayers and music from different faiths, our purpose being to get to know one another, to learn not simply to endure our differences but to endorse them. We would hold a Human Family Reunion at the end of each semester, one in December and May. Students would carry full page, multi-colored invitations with them as they visited during the semester in the various communities. Several hundred people would usually come. Local businesses would give us needed supplies. Having held Human Family Reunions locally, we naturally thought of doing so in Baton Rouge. The white business man who invited us
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asked his church to join with the black church that invited us, and together they sponsored a Human Family Reunion. Also since the late seventies I have used a little book I wrote in my efforts to help people escape their ethnocentrism. Called How To Like People Who Are Not Like You, this book is based on the premise that self hatred is the root cause of all problems between people. Given that premise, it made sense to me that I should attempt a one-on-one meeting with the elected Klansman. Months were passing while all of this was happening. This was, after all, only one of the many things my students and I had on our minds and on our agendas. That fall semester ended. My Race Relations class held its December Human Family Reunion and then disbanded. A few weeks before, though, we had decided that we needed a uniform. Other school teams had them, and the task we were posing for ourselves, we felt, demanded that we be as visible as possible. So several students got together and designed a T-shirt; the front showing a frowning face with an international stop sign over it. Above the face was the word HateBusters; below, the name of our college. On the back were the words Human Family Reunion. We picked a motto: Red and Yellow, Black, Brown and White; All are precious in our sight and five official colors for our shirts. A local athletic shop printed our shirts at cost and students paid the modest price. Our colleges public relations department contacted the media, and a local television station came to campus to film our first wearing of our shirts and to interview members of the class. Our class ended before we could work out a time with the people in Baton Rouge to make our visit. December was upon us before things began to come together, and our semester was over on the 15th, with the last week being taken up by final exams. Our second semester began during the last week of January, and I would be teaching all new classes. Weeks would pass before I could give attention to this carry-over project from the fall semester. Now it was March and nearing our weeklong spring break. Then in April we had to work around Easter. And all of this was only our side of the logistical problem; the church and the city of Baton Rouge had their own. Finally in April everything was ready, and on a Thursday evening, John Vickers and Andre Simmons, my two students and I boarded a plane. We were met in Baton Rouge by the white businessman and a member of the black church, who also was a member of the Sociology faculty at Louisiana State University. I went home for the night with the sociologist; my two students, with the businessman.
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The next morning my students and I went to a Baton Rouge radio station where it had been arranged for us to do a talk show on race relations. While talking on the air we discovered that Andre was the first black person ever to spend the night in the home of the white businessman, and I was the first white person ever to spend the night in the home of the Black sociologist. Following the program, a reporter for the Baton Rouge paper interviewed us; the next day the paper ran a full page story complete with pictures and a glowing commentary. We went then to LSU where we spoke in several classes, followed by an appearance in Free Speech Alley, where all those with a message go to proclaim it. While we were here a representative from the governors office came to officially welcome us to Louisiana and to Baton Rouge. That afternoon and evening we were guests of honor at a backyard crawfish boil where we met people from the church, the university, the business community, and the neighborhood. Saturday morning early found us at the state capital where we were joined by about 80 other people for a 100 mile bicycle ride the church had planned. In age from 10 to 75, both sexes, and Black and White, we assembled on the capital steps. Press and television reporters were there to learn why we were doing this ride. To show that people of all ages, both sexes, and different races can come together for fun, fellowship and purpose, we told them. All that day we rode along the banks of the Mississippi River, through small towns and open country, past ante-bellum homes and tarpaper shacks, stopping every 10 miles or so to eat a bite and stretch and talk with those people drawn to see what this bicycling armadathis moveable feastwas about. By five oclock most of us had made it back to the capital and had scattered to various parts of the city to shower and to rest. At seven oclock we gathered at the church for our Human Family Reunion. We spent the next three hours stuffing ourselves with delicious foods brought in by folks from across the city and from several churches. We told stories of our day on a bicycle and promised to do it again. A few tears were shed. So good did it feel to have spent the day together together in mind and spirit, as well as bodythat even though we were physically exhausted, we were loathe to leave. Someone conjured up the image of Camelot to describe our day: Let it never be forgot, that once there was a spot, for one brief shining moment, known as Camelot. Sunday morning found me in the worship service with our host Black church; my two students were guests of the White church. We all came together for lunch at the place of business run by our host businessman. By mid-afternoon they had all gone with us to the airport and
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we were on our way home. The three of us prepared our reports to our campus over the next few days, and by weeks end we had distributed our written descriptions to all we thought would want to know. It was not long before HateBusters began to get invitations to travel to other places. Years passed. We visited a dozen states, some more than once. We were invited by elementary schools, middle schools, high schools, colleges and universities, police department, prisons, inner cities, Indian reservations, governors, preachers, Muslim imams, rabbis, civic clubs, and just plain citizens. We went to China and to Africa. Somehow we had tapped a need. People everywhere were finding in us a sense of hope and a sense of direction. While we were still learning, we were simultaneously paying them back for making our learning possible And the added beauty of it is that their response to us was becoming part of our learning. Together we were locked into a feedback loop where first we and then they initiate; once begun, however, we all simply react. Then after we have left them and returned to campus and to our classroom, we can reflect on what we did out there and what we can learn from it that might redirect what we do when next we go. Mission to Mexico We make it to Ixmiquilpan (esh-me-keel-pan) a little before seven, after a two-and-a-half hour bus ride from Mexico City. Our hotel faces the plaza; its teeming with people as we arrive. Today is Monday, market day, and the Otomi (O-ta-me) Indian and other farmers (campesinos) have come from the 60 villages here in the Mesquital Valley to sell their goods and buy supplies. They usually walk down out of the mountains; they have little time to sell their vegetables or animals before they have to leave in mid-afternoon to get home by dark. The merchants (coyotes, they are called by the campesinos) take advantage of the campesinos, offering them little for their goods, and the campesinos have no choice but to sell. An organizational effort has been afoot now for several years to improve the life of the campesinos. In this high mountain desert valley where rainfall averages only 12 inches a year, campesinos work hard to get this grudging rock and sand to yield. Now they are trying to get the coyotes to yield by building storage facilities for their goods in Ixmilquilpan and arranging overnight lodging for the campassinos so they can stay in town and haggle over the prices theyre being offered. Artisans are also organizing. In the past, they could get only a pittance for their handicrafts and art work. Since this work was done mostly by women, and women did as they were told by their husbands and
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fathers, their time was little valued and their work poorly rewarded. Now women are trying to improve their lives. One of their ways of doing it is by asking more for the time it takes them to produce their beautiful blankets and jewelry and paintings. As intriguing a place as Ixmiquilpan is, it is not our destination. San Pedro is where were bound, a little mountain village six miles west of Ixmiquilpan and a mile or so off the paved road that ends abruptly three miles past where we turn. To the left we turn, on to a recently cut road strewn with rocks of every imaginable size and its share of sand. The rocky, bone-jarring road snakes around the hill that rises between San Pedro and the paved road from Ixmiquilpan. On the San Pedro side of the hill is the Habitat for Humanity project that will eventually result in 50 cinder block and cement houses. As we bump and rattle our way down the hill, the red village school is visible about a mile ahead out on the valley floor. A row of nine new houses in various states of completion cling to the hilllside to our left; another recent road further to our left is lined with more in-progress houses and building sites. Jerry Fenton, Habitat volunteer now nearing the end of his second year in San Pedro, met our plane in Mexico City and got us on the bus to Ixmiquilpan; now he chauffeurs us in a borrowed Ford pickup to our hillside homes above the little village of San Pedro, home at last count to 640 people. Before leaving Ixmiquilpan early Tuesday morning, we go shopping for food and water. The plan had been to have a woman from the village to cook for us. But Jerry tells us that hasnt worked out. Eight of the nine students who have come on this ten day mission from William Jewell College are women; the three college staff members along as leaders are men. So Bobbie, my wife, in addition to her anticipated role as surrogate mother, now finds herself also as cook. Bread, rice, beans, and bottled water we have stuffed in with the luggage and people as Jerry makes two trips in the old yellow truck to get the 13 of us to our temporary homes. The rest of Tuesday afternoon is consumed by housekeeping chores getting our two houses ready to live in. We had been told to expect dirt floors, no window, no indoor or outdoor toilets, no bathing facilities. But several of the houses are completed now: cinder block walls, concrete floors and roofs and glass covered windows. We choose the house higher on the hill as our main house where we will cook and eat, have our morning devotions and evening fun and games. The house next door and down the hill is being used to store tools and as sleeping quarters for the cement masons who have been hired from another village. Our women
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students take the house next to the masons as their sleeping quarters. A small cinder block and concrete outhouse has been built directly across the road from this house. John Adams is the college locksmith, a fireman for the City of Liberty, a carpenter, mechanic, mason and a genial giant of a man. The college has sent him with us to San Pedro to help us minister more competently to the physical needs of the community and to our group of 14. Only 13 of us actually make it to San Pedro. Phil Pietroburgo got a call from home just minutes before we were to leave for the airport on Monday morning: His father had suffered a heart attack and Phil was needed. Phil pulled the two shovels he had packed in his suitcase and handed them to me. We hugged each other. Phil said he would try to come in a few days; I promised we would call to check on him and his dad and would pray for the family. By the time we get the houses swept, the cots set up and all our baggage arranged, its time for supper and almost dark. John has brought two kerosene lanterns; all of us have flashlights and many have candles. The big room of our three room house has become the kitchen. As we file by the plank table and get our food, we congregate in what is now the front bedroom to sit on cots, suitcases and the floor. What will sunrise bring? No one asks in just those words, but I dare say no one is thinking much of anything else, unless its why we are here and whats happening at home. Breakfast at 8:00, devotions at 9:00 on Wednesday morning, the routine we started yesterday at the hotel in Ixmiquilpan and will follow while we are here in San Pedro. Then we wait. Wait on Eric Duell, the other of the two Habitat volunteers, to walk up from the village to tell us which houses are being worked on today and to explain how we can help. Around 10:30 Eric comes and most of us are soon at work, following the lead as best we can of the work crew from the village. It is January now. These students who have come to work among the Otomi here in San Pedro are enrolled in a winterim, a 10-day class offered every January at William Jewell. Full time Jewell students are required to take a winterim each year they are enrolled. This year three mission teams have come to Latin America: ours to Mexico, one to Guatemala, a third to Jamaica. Other students have gone other places, though most stay on campus to study unusual and innovative things. We divide into three work teams; some, shoveling gravel; some carrying water up the hill from the irrigation canal to big barrels at the work site, water to be used later for mixing concrete; some moving cinder blocks.
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John takes me with him to find something to build a door for the outhouse. A piece of heavy jagged tin lays on the ground in front of the outhouse; its just about the right size for a door. But how to hang it? We need a board to nail to one side of the tin, then something to hinge the door to the building. Here in the desert, wood is precious and scarce. We find several boards behind one of the recently completed houses. But every piece of wood is someones private and prized possession: we can use it but we cant alter it. And we have no nails. What good is the wood or the tin with no way to attach them? John asks Jerry and Eric about nails. They know of none. After wandering for awhile in search of nails, we find ourselves standing in front of the outhouse. John steps up on the cinderblocks piled in front of the outhouse as steps. He rests his arm on the concrete roof to look out over the valley; his hand touches the roof: something jingles. And moves. He clasps and lifts his hand. Its full of nails. Something told me to step up and look over the roof, John says as we nail the wood to the tin. Then we bore three holes with a chisel John brought through the door and affix it with pieces of steel rods from a construction site to metal arches that protrude from the entrance to the outhouse. And we have a door! We prop it shut with a cinder block so the wind wont catch it and so we can tell at a glance from up the hill if the facility is being used. Now to rig a shower. We have brought two camping showers: heavy plastic black bags that hold five gallons of water. Filled and hung, they release water through a hose into a shower head controlled by sliding a switch. John has a long piece of copper tubing he bends into a circle. With long wires this circle is attached to the back of the womens house, shower hooks are slipped over the tubing, and a curtain is draped around the shower, pinned shut against the wind with a clothes pin. Corn is the major crop here in the Mesquital Valley. The cobs are put in the sun to dry; then the corn is taken off the cobs and stored. Every household has piles and sacks of corn everywhere about. Early each morning, the woman of the house takes a pail of corn to the mill, pays a few pesos to the operator, and her corn is ground into masa, the dietary staple of much of Mexico. Then dusting a cooking implement the size and shape of a Chinese wok with powdered lime, the woman scoops up a golf ball sized lump of masa into her hands moistened with water. Holding her hands a few inches apart, she tosses the masa from hand to hand, now and then bringing her hands together in patty-cake fashion, rounding and flattening the masa in a matter of 30 seconds or so into a tortilla which she places on the limed wok.
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Usually done over an open fire, the heat is intense. But the woman works quickly and without apparent discomfort as she lifts cooked tortillas with her bare hand from the hot surface and puts uncooked ones in their place. The corn mill in San Pedro has not run in months. The electric motor has been without power and the whole village has been without electricity since a dispute between the privately owned mill and the village owned co-op. Seems theres a law prohibiting mills from operating with 500 meters of each other. When this law was invoked, the local electric authority cut the power to the community owned mill. When the whole village protested, electric power to the village was cut. Then the village bought a gasoline motor for their mill. But no one in San Pedro knows how to maintain or repair the motor. So it hasnt worked in over two months, and the women have to walk to another village to grind their corn, adding yet more work to a daily schedule that contains little Americans call leisure. By noon on Wednesday word has reached the village that one of the visiting Americans might be able to get the mill to run. With only a penknife and a pair of pliers, and never having seen that particular motor, John has it running and grinding within two hours. Eric tells John to step outside so they can measure him for the village statue they will erect in his honor: St. John the Baptist, is recommended as an inscription. When John has finished, he and I walk back home just at sunset. The sun disappearing behind the mountains off to our right casts a surreal aura and has me thinking of Steinbecks Tortilla Flat, a book I read back in Texas in 1958 in Miss Turners literature class. We pass several women and children along the road. Buenos tardes, is all we can say. Women and children in their yards off to our left turn from us and do not speak as we call to them. The irrigation canal runs along the road to our right, a concrete trough about three feet wide and two feet deep carrying sewage water originating in Mexico City. Mexico City is higher than this valley, and since 1978 this system of concrete canals has solved the citys need for sewage disposal and the need of this desert for water. An earlier irrigation system in the 1930s brought some relief to this parched valley, but only since 78 has the prison door of desert life been pried ajar and the daily struggle of the Otomi given hope. Banging at the door Thursday morning before six! Eric yells, John, the mill wont run. Come quick. Turns out that after John left last night several of the men who had
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watched John bring the mill to life took to it with wrenches and assorted other tools. By morning when the women came with their corn, the mill had reverted to its pre-John condition. We have just finished our morning devotions: Bobbie and Lou and Jerry are getting ready to go into Ixmiquilpan for groceries when John appears to tell us about the mill. He has it going again. Then at 10:00, Eric comes with todays work assignments: mixing concrete, hauling water, and pouring floors. Tomorrow a roof will be poured, and to celebrate the completion of another house there will be a barbeque that evening in the village. Were invited. The Otomi are small, but the way they handle those buckets of concrete intimidates us all. The soupy concrete is shoveled into the buckets. When filled they must weight between 70 and 80 pounds. The Otomi man grabs one side of the rectangular bucket with both hands and swings it between his legs: once, twice, and the third time the bucket comes even with his shoulder. One hand releases its hold on the bucket and catches the bucket from beneath, bringing it to rest on his shoulder. Off he strides in his sandled feet to dump the concrete. And back again pronto. To see them work with such ease makes our clumsy efforts all too obvious. And the energy they expend awes us. We are dragging; resting at every chance. Their work pace is relaxed; the have too much to do to hurry. And when they work, they are poetry, a beautiful blend with the rock, the cactus, the mountains, and the cool, dry air. The Otomi women and children all wear beautiful clothes, deep reds predominant. The men dress more in earth-tones. All are clean, skin beautiful, eye sparkling, trim bodies; not heavily muscled but lithe, strong and durable. At the work sites, the Otomi have bottles of Coke, Sprite and some local pop in large bottles. They are generous in offering it to us and quickly say no when we offer to pay. The Coke truck has been through the village at least twice since weve been here. The People of San Pedro have little money. But they buy pop. They have no choice; they have to buy whats available. To get to town, Bobbie, Lou and Jerry hike up over the hill and out to the main road. No ride available here, so they walk about a mile to the next village where they catch a ride in the back of a pickup truck at a cost of 400 pesos. In Ixmiquilpan they pick up a car at SEDAC, acronymn for the organization working to improve conditions for campesinos. SEDAC was begun and is directed by Salvador Garcia. Salvador was
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a Catholic priest whose notions of justice did not set well with the church. Now he is a former priest, and with his wife, Oralia Carenas, Salvador works to improve the life of his people. After getting all the food, several hundred feet of hard rubber hose to run water down to us from the reservoir at the top of the hill, and some big plastic pots for the kitchen, Jerry, Lou and Bobbie drive back to San Pedro over the same road we came in on last Tuesday. The car bottoms out several times. A campesino named Isidro Hernandez visits the work site today. Several of us have a chance to sit and talk with him as Stephanie translates. Stephanie helps us to learn that Isidro lives eight hours by foot across the valley at the base of the distant mountains. He has been hired to work here for a day or two. He says he has worked in Texas, Oklahoma and other parts of the U.S. He plans soon to visit other South American countries to talk with campasinos. We eat supper at six tonight so we can be ready by seven to walk to church services at a nearby house. Its about 20 minutes away on a road we havent traveled yet. Several rows of backless benches in the back yard of a man named Jesus (Ha-sues), a man known throughout the village for drinking, violence and abuse of his wife until several years ago he was saved. Now his house is one of the twenty missions in the valley of the Bethel Independent Penecostal Christian Church in Ixmiquilpan, and Jesus is song leader for their weekly meetings. Anastocio Ortiz is pastor of the mission. Tacho, as he is called by everyone, makes his living by delivering milk from his cows twice a day to people in San Pedro and other nearby villages. Tacho and his wife had their first child this summer, at about the same time that Dan and Ann Hickey, co-ministers to the William Jewell community, had their first. When Dan visited San Pedro this fall, he and Tacho compared notes on their status as new fathers, and Tacho asks about Dan tonight. As we arrive for services, dark has descended; a quarter moon hangs in the sky, a mesmerizing backdrop to the pulpit and the glaring light bulb that sits atop a propane bottle just to the left of the pulpit, casting long and fascinating shadows. A mustachioed man about 35 is leading the congregation that numbers about a dozen when we arrive and grows to 35 to 40 in a series of hand clapping, accapella songs, punctuated now and then by raised hands and shouts of Gloria a Dios. Women glide about in the darkness, tending a fire just out of sight around the corner of the house, and getting water at a silhouetted dome off on the right.
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Our group is called up in front of the congregation to sing. Jerry had told us we might be; so on the walk over we had practiced: Father We Adore You, and Amazing Grace. Later in the evening, we are called back for an encore: Jesus Loves Me, and Peace Like a River. Then an attractive woman in her 30s steps to the pulpit for an eloquent and passionate appeal which the congregation endorses with shouts of Hallelujah, Amen, and Gloria a Dios. As the woman speaks, a pickup truck pulls up the drive. The sound of crunching gravel and a motor not in tune seems a natural counterpoint for her melodious speech. None of it is familiar to our American ears, yet we all feel the nearness of God. A young man steps into sight from the direction of the just-arrived truck and makes his way to the front. As the woman finishes, he steps to the pulpit. Tacho has finished his milk run and is here to preach to his people. Tacho leads us in another series of robust hand-clapping songs as then in Otomi, and back to Spanish. Tacho often concludes his statements with Amin? To which a scattering of people respond, Amin! Tacho explains that the offering about to be taken goes to buy gas for the light, more benches, and hopefully a second light, because reading scripture is hard with only one. After the service ends, women move among us carrying coffee and big rolls filled with scrambled eggs. The coffee is already sugared and very good. Its warmth is welcome assault on the chill that has come over us as the night deepens. Bobbie, John Clegg (Little John, as he is now called to distinguish him from Big John Adams), Jill and Susan play a patty-cake variation with some of the children after the service. Motioning with their hands and smiling a lot, they are able to show the children how to move their hands. Getting them to do it is the hard part. The children are so quiet and shy. The children have come around us on the work site. They never make a sound. They respond to Como se llama? in such a soft voice that we always ask several time. Sergio was the first. John and I were standing near the outhouse trying to decide how to hang a door on it when he walked up. John offered him a stick of gum and asked his name. Sergio pointed off toward the village when John asked where he lived in his remembered Spanish. Another youngster had come up to us while John and I were putting up the shower. He took the stick of gum but put only a piece of it in his
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mouth. We watched as he disappeared into a house up the hill, and we imagined that he took the gum to brothers and sisters. Friday morning dozens of villagers and all of us converge on the house where the roof is to be poured. There is gravel to haul up the hill; in tandem our women students take turns grabbing either end of a stick attached by a six foot wire to the front end of a wheel barrow. With the wheel barrow in tow, the young women race up the hill and dump the gravel inside the circle of dry concrete spread on the ground. When water has been added, and sand and gravel and concrete have become soup, the mixture is shoveled into buckets, hoisted on shoulders, and at a trot carried up the ladder to be spread on the roof. Sara and the widow are at the roofing today. Dressed in an attractive green skirt and white blouse, Sara trots back and forth, lifting empty barrels over her head to get them where needed, running up and down the ladder to the roof, laughing and talking. The widow shovels concrete. Tracy, Little John, and Stephanie spend part of the morning helping pour the floor at the house where they worked yesterday. By one oclock were all hungry and tired. Were out of gas and Bobbie cant cook, but we have rolls, peanut butter, strawberry jelly, cereal from home, dried milk and bananas. None of it ever tasted so good. After a long lunch, we scatter: some back to the roofing and flooring; some to do laundry up the hill at the water reservoir. Little John borrows my bike to visit the little store over the hill. When he is back, I ride into Capula, a village three miles east of San Pedro. The paved road stops abruptly at the entrance to the village. After a short ride over the dusty streets, a Buenos tardes, to a woman doing her wash in her yard and to three young men sitting atop a truck load of bright green leafy plant I cant identify, I turn back toward San Pedro and Ixmiquilpan; the sign says nine miles to Ixmiquilpan. Through two villages with schools in session and speed bumps to slow traffic, I pass a dozen or so bicyclists on my way into Ixmiquilpan. The paved road ends in cobblestone at the edge of town, and I bounce my way past the open market we visited last Tuesday. A Sprite and a roll at the hotel restaurant where we ate last Monday, and Im back in San Pedro by four oclock, just in time to join Big John for a walk to the mill. After a brief stop to make sure the mill is still operating, we walk over to Saras house where the barbeque is to be. As John, Eric and I enter the yard, several older men are sitting in a row along a bench; each smiles and shakes our hand. The oldest is Saras father-in-law, and he ushers John and me to a table that has been set up
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in the yard just a few feet from the door to the house. He places a chair at either end of the table and motions for John and me to be seated. The place of honor for the patriarchs, Eric explains. And the old man smiles and places a bottle of pop in front of us. From where I sit I see smoke rising: Its the pit theyve dug to barbeque the goat. The pit is about three feet wide and about as deep. Coals have been heated and covered with rocks; a pot of vegetables in water is set on the rocks. All this is covered with goat meat; the meat is covered with giant cactus leaves resembling the blades of oversized canoe paddles. The cactus leaves hold the heat. All day the meat slowly cooks and drips into the pot of vegetables. By early evening when we eat, magic has been worked, and as the cactus is stripped away, a delightful aroma wafts over us, whetting our appetites for the meal that soon follows. With the meat and the soup, we have freshly made tortillas, rice, a pepper sauce that would cause any taste bud to flower and endless bottles of pop. Lou and Bobbie have stayed late up on the hill to do their and others laundry. Its a little after five when they arrive, having been driven down in the back of a pickup by Saras husband. Shortly after they arrive, the goat is uncovered and the meal is served. New foods and new friends and much laughter is the perfect prescription to melt away the fatigue of a hard day at the cement factory. When the meal is finished, the music begins. Soon a back-breaking day is chased by a high-kicking night. The people of San Pedro and the visitors from William Jewell cant talk to each other, but the invitation to dance transcends the language barrier. Big John coaxes the widow from the house; soon others follow, and the yard is filled with flying feet. Everybody talks and laughs at once. Small children chase each other. The yard fills with dancers and spectators. Several Otomi men put their shoulders to the metal water trough that sits in the line of dance. A few heaves and the trough falls backward, spilling its water into the darkness and doubling the size of the dance floor. I Could Have Danced All Night, might have been written for just this occasion. But my job is to be the kill-joy, and at 8:30, I command an end to our part of the festivities. Im glad our group is close enough to protest my decision. And when they ask why, I say: Because Im in charge and I say so. We need our rest so we can work. For our last dance all join hands and move in a circle to the music. Then lots of hugs and adioses and a gracias to Sara. Then the walk back carrying our flash light and lanterns. Thats our plan.
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But not Saras. She has arranged for the truck to take us back. The truck is waiting for us past the mill, and as we pass, a dozen or more villagers are waiting for us with bottles of coke. They want us to drink it there. As we do, they invite us inside for a look at the mill and a round of pictures. Then the 13 of us pile into the pickup along with nine villagers. Jingle Bells, Silent Night, Peace is flowing like a river, flowing out from you and me, flowing out into the desert, setting all the captives free. In this high mountain desert of sand and cactus were water is precious, it is not hard to picture a river flowing nor hard to imagine how welcome it would be. And somehow we all sense that we are setting the captive free. The captive in us that chains us to TV and fast foods and cheap ideas. And the captive in our hosts that chains them to grinding poverty, exhausting work and unimaginable diseases. So as we stand in a night blacker than we have known and gaze at stars brighter than we have seen, we spontaneously begin to sing Peace Like a River. Like a body without bones, a group without structure would sag to the earth and die. So despite our exhausting day of mixing and hauling concrete and our night of dancing, we do not change our routine. Up at 7 oclock, breakfast at 8:00, devotions at 9:00; to work at 10. We have varied our midday meal time somewhat. And the evening, too. A precise time for everything is foreign to this place. With few machines and much work, careful planning makes no sense. Even so, structure is necessary. So we begin the day on schedule. We must, else we become 13 individuals, or three or four cliques rather than a group with a mission, a mission to become and to do. So for the 10 days we are here, we will arise at the same time, breakfast at the same time, pray and sing and think of God at the same time. Then we go about our assigned tasks of the day, coming together without fail at the end of the day to eat our supper and for fun and fellowship. God ordained a structure to the universe, to our world and to our daily lives. We serve him well; we show our love for Him, for ourselves, and for each other when we fight against the chaos that would overwhelm us and struggle for structure in our lives. So we are up this morning at 7:00, to breakfast at 8:00 and devotions at 9:00. We have gas again today and Bobbie makes pancakes for breakfast. Its the black teams turn to help with dish washing and devotions today. The yellow, red and brown teams also have a day. Then we begin again. Layers of dust descend on everything all the time. And Bobbie is
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sweeping up as we arrive for devotions. The cook from the village we had been promised did not materialize, nor the tortillas and beans. So Bobbie is the cook and housekeeper. And the diet is more American, though not like home. Bobbie works from morning till after dark simply to keep us fed and watered. Until the gas ran out on Friday, she had not been out of the house except to go down the hill to the outhouse. Now without gas she is free to visit the work sites and to join the digging and hauling, a mixed blessing she decides. Lou is our nurse. His job is to make sure that we stay healthy. So we boil even the bottled water we buy in Ixmiquilpan. Lou also stresses the need to drink lots of water. So Bobbie spends much of her time getting water ready for us to drink. And Lou wants us to wash our hands just about every time we come inside the house. Microbes, spores, and germs lurk everywhere in the dust, the water, the air. And we have to constantly wash lest they get the upper hand. Saturday is our day off, and Jerry has planned an outing for us. The museum at Tula is about two hours away and through several small towns. Eleven of us stuff into the back of the SEDAC pickup that Jerry has borrowed to get us to Tula today and church tororrow. We spend about two hours at the museum and then into town to eat, to walk around town, and to visit the cathedral built in 1560. Back in Ixmiquilpan about seven, we stop by the SEDAC offices to retrieve the bottled water and groceries we had bought when we passed through town this morning. Were all exhausted Sunday morning. Last night when we got to Ixmiquilpan and stopped at SEDAC to get groceries, Jerry placed a call home for Susanne and several others. Those waiting had nothing to do and began to wander around the area. When the last call had been made about an hour later, John and Tracy were no where about. After a fruitless search for them up town, we went back to SEDAC to wait. A while later they came running up saying they had gotten lost. Back at the house in San Pedro, we had a meeting to deal with our problems: were becoming individuals, losing our identity as a group. From here on, no more phone calls, no doing things that pull us in different direction. We all went to bed tired, mad at one another and disappointed in ourselves. Breakfast this morning is tense and very quiet. Father Jose (Ho-zaa) is one of the two priests responsible for the 60 communities in the valley. The parish church is in San Nicolas and we
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are there for noon mass today. When we arrive about 11:30, no one else is there and we take seats on the back rows. Shortly after 12:00 the church is filled. Mostly with women, young children and old men. And people are standing behind us several rows deep. A dog wanders up and down the aisle. Father Jose tells his congregation about us. That we are doing Gods work. That most of us are not Catholic. That all work done in Jesus name is of God. He names each of us and leads his people in praying for us. All of us recognize our names, but nothing else Father Jose says do we understand until after the service Jerry and Lou translate for us. Midway through the service the guitar to which the congregation has been singing begins to play Blowin in the Wind and I sing what I can remember; though we arent singing the same language, I feel a sudden closeness. That feeling suffers a little when Jerry tells me after the service that they werent singing those words. Susan is Catholic: at devotions this morning she explained Catholic liturgy to all of us. When communion time comes, Susan joins the end of the line going forward. She is a little tardy in stepping into the aisle, and Father Jose has turned his back and is walking back to the pulpit as Susan makes her way up the aisle. She arrives at the communion table and stands quietly and alone before Father Jose sees her and returns to give her communion. How fitting. Beautiful Susan. Blonde and fair. Standing among the Otomi, with their beautiful brown skin and shining black hair. And as she stands there, Susan is the symbol of our mission to pull together worlds of color and economics and to merge them in the life of the spirit. After church we wait outside in the brilliant sun for Father Jose to finish his greetings to the children; then we all gather round him as he greets us in English and gives his blessing to our work. He invites us to come again for a year or two and go into the mountains just a few miles away where the people live in another culture, another world. Then we present Father Jose with 150,000 pesos (about $70.00) to buy Bibles for use with the mountain people and a Bible for the parish church which will carry the names of the 14 of us on this mission as a permanent memorial to Gods work and Catholic-Protestant cooperation. Were back at our house on the hill, having a light lunch of botellos (bread) and the cheese we bought yesterday in Tula, when Sara appears. She was to have been here about 10 AM to show us how to make tortillas. She didnt come, she says, because the mill broke down and she could not grind her corn to make masa. We give Sara some bread and cheese before Jerry takes John and Sara to the mill to see what the problem is. Some
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of the students ride down with them to see the heifer project that SEDAC runs and that Jerry has been telling us about. This project is designed to improve the quality of the livestock here in the village. Sara appears about 3 oclock with a small bucket of masa for tortillas. She scrounges twigs and small pieces of wood for a fire, and from about 4:00 to 5:30 she shows us all how to make tortillas. By then all the masa has been used, and each of us has eaten all the tortillas we can hold, along with a bowl of Bobbies tomato, rice, lentil and onion soup. Its time to crawl back in the truck for the ride into Ixmiquilpan to attend the Pentecostal church Jerry goes to every Sunday night. Pastor Cleophas Rangel welcomes us and invites us up to sing. With practice every morning at devotions and singing now in two chuches, weve developed a standard repertoire. And singing in a language the people dont understand , were not half bad. Father, I Adore You, Amazing Grace, and Peace Like a River were never sung with more enthusiasm or deeper feeling. After church we stand and talk as best we can with all who linger. An old woman learns from Jerry that I am the professor and asks how many languages I speak. Having to say I speak only English doesnt do much for my self-confidence that has already suffered body blows from living among the Otomi. I cant do anything as fast or as well as they do. But our group is well received everywhere we go. And the people at church tell us before we leave that we are not stuck up like most Americans. You talk with us. You try to know us. And we are grateful Venga otra vez mis amigos. On the way back to our hillside house we stop for junk food. We all need a fix: candy bars, chips, fruit pies and Twinkies. Monday, January 16: Amys birthday and Denise and Michelle come down early to decorate the room where big John, Little John and Lou sleep, and where we also eat and have devotions. Bobbie makes pancakes and we break out the two silver candles as we sing Happy Birthday. Today is also Martin Luther Kings birthday. Jerry has brought his tape player so we can hear the tape I brought: the story of Martins life told to a child. We catch the bus about 10:15 into Ixmiquilpan for market day. People, sheep, goats, dogs, turkeys, baby chicks, pottery, blankets, shoes, toolsa combination Wal-Mart, K-Mart, county fair and circus side-show. By 2:30 we have bought our treasures and we are exhausted from the crush of people everywhere, the dust always in the air and underfoot, and our reluctance to eat or drink despite the enticing aroW
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mas and eye appealing foods at every turn. The 2:30 bus is nearly packed when we get to the bus stop. Some of us crowd our way on; the rest decide to wait when someone says there will be another bus in 10 minutes. An hour later were wishing we had been ruder and shoved our way on. When the bus finally comes, we dont make the same mistake again. The bus is crowded. People standing in the aisle. But compared to this morning, the bus is deserted. Three and four people to a two-person seat, giant stacks of peppers and other goods for market. Every woman on the bus with one or more small children, some nursing, some in a hammock carrier secured around the mothers head and carried down her back. The aisles jammed with people and things so close that no one can fall and departing the bus takes time and ingenuity. The plan was to get back to the village in time to put in at least two hours work. But the best laid plans are done in by hour-long waits in the bank to exchange money, crowds so thick that movement is difficult and keeping one another in sight is nearly impossible, and by another unexpected hour waiting for the bus. Add to all this the fact that when we get back to the work site, all the workers have apparently gone to market and there is little for us to do. So we abandon our plans to get something done. Some of us trek up the hill where a water hose has been rigged up for our use. Clean hair and a clean face revive us again. The food needs of 13 hard-working people have kept Bobbie chained to the kitchen. So today Lou and I take over. Bobbie and Lou worked out the menu last night: oatmeal and fresh pineapple, rolls and peanut butter, juice and milk (the milk is super-pasteurized liquid that comes in a carton and needs no refrigeration) for breakfast; soup for lunch with lentils, corn, rice, tomato puree and chunks of Saras tortillas. And the always present peanut butter. Some of the workers go into Ixmiquilpan today to pressure the electric authority to turn the power back on at the mill. Again this morning a villager came early asking for Juan Grande. The gas motor wont run. So for the 5th or 6th time in the past week, John treks to the mill. We cant manage much confidence that the villagers can keep the motor going when John has gone. And its not likely that they can persuade the local government to override the law that prohibits two mills within 500 meters. So in this village where nothing comes easy, everything proceeds as normal. And the dignity the people of San Pedro exhibit in the face of what seems to us unbearable inconvenience and frustration awes us. Dawn over the mountains is gorgeous. First a faint pink silhouetting
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the peaks that rim this valley as far to either side as we can see. The red streaks of light and the dark mountains fade to the earth tone of desert sand and rock and infrequent green. At dawn the air is chilled; it carries the sounds of roosters crowing, dogs barking and an occasional fox. Lights can be seen from distant mountain villages and others across the valley. They are so few and so distinct as to be almost individually countable. Who are the people whose lives those lights betray? What do they think? What could they teach us? How could their lives and ours reach new heights in unison? Will we ever know? Such questions waft gently in the early morning mountain mist. At devotions this morning we are all asked to mention the names of those most responsible for our coming on this mission to the Otomi. Parents are named often. And churches. Bobbie and I had been blessed by the generous prayer and financial support of several people very special to us. To commemorate their lives and their contribution to this project, I inscribed a New Testament with their names and left that good book with the open air church that meets at Jesuss house. These are the dear souls named: Dot and Gene Allen, Bob Guinee, Grover Hartman, John and Mary Pritchard, Alan and Katie White, and the people of Second Baptist Church, Liberty, Missouri. Without the prayers and generous financial support of these dear ones, these dear ones from William Jewell College could not have come among these dear ones in San Pedro to work and worship. In the words of Tiny Tim in Dickens Christmas Carol, God bless us everyone. We conclude our devotion by joining hands to sing Blest Be the Tie; then we hug one another. Un abrazo entra hermanos, says Lou. An embrace between brothers. After devotions John makes a last visit to the mill. Everything works at the moment. When the men learn that John is leaving tomorrow, they make John an offer. They will build him a house and find him a wife if he will stay. Lou is in the kitchen getting ready to cut the cantaloupe for breakfast on our last day in San Pedro. On her way through the kitchen to the outhouse, Bobbie asks if he plans to cut off the rind. He says no. It wont be as drippy. People can eat it easier, Bobbie says. Lou says nothing. When she comes back into the house, Bobbie asks, Are you gonna cut the rind off? I hadnt planned to, but I can, says Lou. But he doesnt. A little later as we are getting our food, Bobbie says to me, You want to cut the rind off your canteloupe? Such a big deal about rind! Ill manage, thank you.
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As the students trickle in, we watch to see who cuts the rind off and who doesnt; who gets cantaloupe and cereal at the same time; or if sequentially, which first. Susan comes in after the boxed and liquid milk is gone. Bobbie is mixing the powered milk, Susan. Itll be ready in a minute. Susan eats her cereal dry. Can she go ahead? No! We cant have free thinkers here. We all have to eat our breakfast alike. Dont you people have any standards? Suddenly, serendipitously, we have discovered how denominations are born. Today we leave. But first we work until 1:30 mixing concrete. Our women are now hoisting loaded buckets on their shoulders. Susan said she told herself for the first several days that she couldnt do it. But now on her last day, she tells herself she can. And she does. So does Tracy. Tiny Tracy. Our translator and goodwill ambassador: 51 and 99 pound bundle of take-on-anything-without-waiting-for-anybody. Always smiling. Jingle Bells. Ive Been Workin on the Railroad. Yellow Submarine. Its a Small World. Strummin on the Old Banjo. All ring out this morning as Susanne, Amy, Susan, Jill, Michele, Denise, Stephanie, Adrian, Margarito, Juan and Crisbin shovel concrete and on the count of three hoist buckets of concrete to their shoulders and carry it up a hill and then a ramp into a house, where they dump it on the floor and hurry back for more. Susanne comes to report only a fourth of the floor to go. Gloria a Dios! The spontaneous exclamation from several of the working women. All of us plan to leave many of the clothes and all of the tools we brought. How to do it is the problem. We are the first work crew to come to San Pedro. Eric says that in Haiti the people have grown so accustomed to being given things they now go up to arriving Americans and ask for their shoes or their cameras or clothes or anything else when they leave. So Jerry has arranged for the things we leave to be given to SEDAC for distribution in other villages. This way the people of San Pedro wont be expecting gifts each time a work group comes. By two oclock we have eaten. Bobbie threw out the soup from yesterday. Thought it smelled funny. So she fired up the stove we thought was about out of gas and made spaghetti. But before we can eat, Susanne, Susan and Jill call us all together so they can sing for us the song they have just composed. Its an irreverent and loving commentary on our food, our work habits and our personalities.
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By three oclock the women have brought their cots up the hill to the main house, have cleaned their house and repacked their suitcases for pickup when Jerry gets back with the truck. The mens house is now also clean, suitcases in the front bedroom; items to leave in the back. Above each stack, Bobbie has put a sign to identify the contents: sleeping bags, bedding and towels, school supplies, Saras food, clothes. Lou, Bobbie and I stay behind for the last minute details and to keep an eye on all our things. Jerry leads everybody else on foot up over the hill toward the highway so they can catch the collectivo into Ixmilquilpan for a final shopping spree. They are to meet us at the hotel at 6:30. We will have seven rooms again, same as when we came. But rooms dont matter. Showers! Seven of them. To wash our hair. Water all over our bodies, washing away the sand. Thats what has us all salivating. And then a sit down meal in the hotel restaurant. With chairs enough for all. Beefsteak, fried potatoes, soup and lots of hard rolls, all of the pop we can drink. Some stranger to clean the table, and another out of sight in the kitchen to wash the dishes. And all we have to do is plunk down a few thousand pesos. We then walk out of the restaurant and across the courtyard to our rooms. Rooms with beds. And a toilet. Wow! Which of the two worlds we have lived in so far this year is better? We cant say. We hate to leave the Otomi. But we dont want to stay. Its not home. And life here is hard. Early up. Work hard all day. One of our group said a couple of days before we left, If I had to live this way, Id kill myself. Another said, Id like to stay. Each of us has found something in these quiet, hard working people, something we admire, something we dont find at home. But there is much at home we wish for these people. Less hard work. More rest. Opportunity to learn and to travel. Our job is to live not entirely at home in either world. To interpret each to the other. To have friends in each. And to spend our lives in the eternal struggle to help each become its best. To let each be itself. Family is important in San Pedro. Several generations often live in the same house. Families are large so jobs can be shared. Much of this these students find attractive. But people here live with little. Their diet is not balanced. The amount of food is minimally adequate. Milk and vegetables are rare. Coke and other pop, plentiful. Two hours by bus, half-an-hour by taxi, three-and-a-half hours by air, half-an-hour by college vanand we will have gone from the Otomi in San Pedro back to our friends at William Jewell. What will we say to our college friends about our new friends in Mexico? Will they really want to hear what we have to say? How can we distill all we have seen
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and heard to its essence, one quickly communicated, yet doing justice? God help us all. That was our motivation in going to San Pedro. Now its our motivation for coming home. A Cross Burning in Liberty I walked into my race class with a newspaper in the fall of 1991. This time the paper told of someone burning a cross in a black mans yard just a few blocks from our campus. Here we are with another decision to make, I said to the class. We have traveled to distant places to oppose organized hate and to teach people how to like people who are not like them. Now right here in our neighborhood hate has sprung up. What are we to do? If we do nothing, what right will we ever again have to address this issue in another place. If we do act, though, what should we do? Again there was silence. Then a student suggested we write a letter of apology to the man in whose yard the cross was burned. Another student said we should write a letter to the newspaper condemning the cross burning. We should go visit the man and take him a HateBusters shirt. The class agreed that we should do all of these things. But I sensed we hadnt reached closure; our response was not yet equal to the insult done to our community. Then from the back of the room came a voice that galvanized us to action: Lets march! This was on a Tuesday. We decided that a week from the coming Thursday we would march. This would give us time to publicize the march and to enlist a wide cross section of the metropolitan community. Our college is located in a small town within this metro area, and our college is only a few blocks from the town square of our county seat. We would march from our campus to the town square where we would have a rally. We thought we should alert the merchants around the square that we planned to march, explain why, and try to enlist their support. We prepared publicity releases for the media. A march has no affect unless people know it is happening and what its purpose is. So for a week our Liberty paper and the Kansas City Star carried stories about the up coming march. In class we discussed the Civil Rights Movement and Dr. Kings doctrines of passive resistance and civil disobedience. We read about the march from Selma to Montgomery and the school children in Birmingham being jailed and pummeled with high pressure water hoses when they attempted to march. Merchants were not enthused about our march. Some of them thought it better to act as if it never happened. It soon would no longer be newsworthy; better not to keep the story alive. When a juvenile was arrested, many in our town dismissed the cross burning as a prank. The
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night before our planned march I received a phone call from a faculty colleague who advised against the march. Knowing that others would think as he did, I went to my campus office early the next morning to type out a one page rationale I called, Why We Must March. Just an hour before the march was to begin I put a copy in my colleagues mailbox; other copies I carried with me to distribute at the march. Here is what I said. Now that a white juvenile has been arrested for burning a cross in a black mans yard, why do we march? Some people now say that what looked like a hate crime turns out to be only the thoughtless and insensitive act of a young person. To make such a judgment overlooks the long and painful history that we Americans have endured. To burn a cross on the property of a black American revives memories of the Klan and sets everyone in the community on edge. No community dare ever take lightly this sinister symbolic assault on its character and insult to its good name. So we march today to balance the scale. We want all citizens of our town to know that a burning cross, whatever its source, cannot and will not be tolerated, that it will never be the last word. We march also to thank our mayor and city council for their strong and forceful action in condemning this action. We are grateful for the resolution passed by the council. We are grateful for our police department for their apprehension of the person responsible. We are grateful to the police for their help in arranging our march. We march, also, because America is the Land of the free and the home of the brave. All our lives we have heard this. We sing this on the Fourth of July and at ball games. But if these fine words are to be more than beautiful sentiments, we must act on them. That is a final reason for our march today. We are exercising our rightsnay, our dutyas Americans. All it ever takes for evil to triumph is for good people to do nothing. There is no such thing as the innocent burning of a cross on the property of a black person. We cannot afford ever to entertain such a thought. We owe it to each other always to take seriously such a breach of the social contract we strike with each other when we seek to live together. Unless each of us does our best to insure that every citizen is free of fear and intimidation, none of us is truly free. Thank God for America. Thank God for Americans. Thank God for a people who stand up for one another and support each other and love each other. This is why we march. This is why we live. To celebrate communiW
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ty. To celebrate freedom. To exercise and secure our Liberty. P.S. We do not know the name of the young man responsible for the cross burning. But we want him to know that we love him. He made a mistake. We all have made mistakes. The love and guidance of our friends helped us correct them and find our way again. We offer ourselves to him in this capacity. On the morning of the march, the Kansas City Star carried an editorial endorsing the march. Someone tried to burn a cross on the lawn of a black man. . . It was ethnic intimidation, regardless of who was responsible. Our state has a law against that sort of thing. Too often these things are dismissed as youthful pranks. They are much more serious. A strong message must be sent that this state will not tolerate hate crimes. This morning, some local residents, led by a college professor and his students, will march and rally in the town square. Theirs is not a message of how the local economy will be hurt if the town gets a bad reputation. Their message is one of moral outrage and the need to better understand and embrace people who are different. This puts a positive spin on a negative situation. Other communities have either ignored these acts or defended them. But this time there is an excellent chance that good will triumph over evil. At 9:45 that Thursday morning we gathered on campus after chapel. Joining the class were other students they had enlisted and many townspeople, Native-American and African-American among them. Following a prayer and the singing of We Shall Overcome, we began our three block march to our town square. As we left campus we were joined by a police escort. Chanting Up with people. Down with Hate, and wearing our HateBusters shirts, we made our way to the center of town to gather on the steps of the courthouse for a rally. One after another speaker after speaker came to the microphone to exhort the crowd never to let hatred go unchallenged and always to stand up to those who would bring us down. Newspaper and television reporters were there to record all that we said and did and to broadcast it far and wide. Their presence energized the marchers and gave us graphic evidence that what we did was indeed worth doing. That night on the evening news they said positive and supportive things about the march. In the Kansas City Star the next morning was a laudatory news story, followed the next day by a half page, three column editorial endorsing the march and holding our actions up to others as a model. There have been eight crosses burned since July in Dubuque, in
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northeastern Iowa. . . Folks in Dubuque are scratching their heads about these incidents which have attracted national attention. Perhaps the people of Dubuque and the media should look to Liberty. Maybe crosses keep burning in Dubuque because people there arent making it loud and clear that they wont tolerate that kind of behavior in their town. But in Liberty on Thursday, the anti-hate message was loud and clear. It took only one cross on a black mans lawn to get some folks stirred up. More than 100 persons, many of them white students and faculty from the college, marched in a display of outrage at persons who commit hate crimes. Singing, chanting, and carrying signs, the HateBusters wanted to ensure that their town not become a place where hate groups or people who engage in hate crimes can feel welcome. Once on the courthouse steps, participants took turns speaking out against hate and calling for respect for cultural diversity. This attitude gave the march a healing effect and an almost spiritual quality. It was reminiscent of marches in the 1960s when ministers led the way and preached nonviolence and forgiveness, not retribution. At our next class meeting following the march we talked long about what we had done and the impact we had on our community. We felt more a part now of the struggles we had been reading about, more able to help fashion solutions. We also felt a profound sadness, for somehow now we sensed, at an intuitive level not able to be clearly voiced, a pervasive helplessness. As exciting as our march and the preparation for it had been, as well received as it was, still there would be other times when we would be called on to put our learning and our convictions on the line. Having now done it once, we would know that it was possible, that unless we did it no one else would. But also having done it once, might not we be entitled to think that someone else should step forward and risk it all the next time? Was it now our place to answer every call to moral and intellectual involvement simply because we had done it once? My students and I struggled almost daily with these questions. Once begun, where do you stop? How do you stop? Conscience once aroused cannot easily be quieted. When people would ask how they could join HateBusters, we would say they already had: by being born. Since no one is born hating, every person on the planet is a natural born hate buster. We had no plans to create any kind of organization. We didnt have the time and we didnt know how. But our thinking changed radically in the spring of 1993
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when the latest issue of Klanwatch arrived. Published by the Southern Poverty Law Center in Montgomery, Alabama, this issue contained a map of the United States showing that organized hate groups had cropped up like dandelions in almost every state. It was clear what we had to do. We could not allow people with an inferior idea to out wit and out work us. The most effective time to oppose hate is when it is weak, having neither convincing arguments nor enough guns. To wait is to encourage it and embolden the haters. So we decided that we had to go national, that we had to travel the country, visiting every state, holding Human Family Reunions, teaching people how they could oppose hate and why they should, encouraging them to form themselves into a rapid deployment team, ready instantly to respond with moral and social force when hate appears among them. I knew also what I must do. As much as I loved this place and these people, I no longer had the time for or interest in those many other duties which a full-time faculty appointment required. I had come to William Jewell to teach straight from graduate school. Over the years I had sometimes dreamed that I had left to teach elsewhere, and I would wake in a cold sweat. A long-time faculty member had told me before I had been here a month that I should put down roots and make my mark here. Each time I would think of leaving, I would see his face and hear his voice: I could not go. But now I must. I had promises to keep and miles to go before I sleep. I left the college in 1995 to devote all my time to HateBusters. It has been a long time since as a college freshman I wandered into that Race Relations class and discovered my reason for living. Now by our society I am called a senior citizen. So also is Don Quixote in Man of LaMancha an old man whose brains have dried up from reading too much about mans inhumanity to man. Rather than resignation, though, Quixote mounts a frontal assault. Sancho, my sword. The battle awaits! Mission To Mali Ten little people wanted to go Their spirit was high, their money was low. From a little college town in a Mid-American state, They wanted to spread love and learn not to hate. To a little church mission in a big African nation, They wanted to share their faith with all of creation. To build a church and teach the people, To put up shelves and align the steeple,
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Have faith in God and believe in others, Ask all the fathers and brothers and sisters and mothers. From Jewell to the world Our message we will send. Our help we will offer And then, the hurt and suffering will end. A start to end the needless pain, A start to begin useful gain. The vision we have clear in our minds, To help the people of all humankind. My name is Charlie. You have just come here to help Mali people? You like Black people? My name is Ed. We got here last night. Were on our way up country to a mission. As we walk back from the bank to the mission compound where we spent last night Charlie tells me he is a first time father. His son Mustafa is a week old today. Charlie hands me a small shell mounted on a black, diamond-shaped wood block. This is a good luck charm. I want to give it to you. If you will pray for my son he will grow strong. Charlie asks if I have children and about my wife. Then he takes an envelope from his pocket. And please, take this, he says. Remember me and my family when you see it. Never sell it. It was a gold necklace and earrings. I am touched. I hug Charlie. I promise never to sell it. Do you have something you could give me? Something from your country? Charlie asks. I am sorry. I should have brought something. I didnt. Look in your pockets. Perhaps you have something. I dont. Would you like this back? I ask, extending the good luck charm. No. Thats for you, so you will remember me and can pray for my son. Perhaps you have a watch or something you can give me to remember you by. Im sorry, I dont. If youll walk with me back to where Im staying Ill look to see if I have something. No, that would not be good. I want to buy a goat for my son. He is a week old today. But it is very expensive. I have a dollar I could give you. We just changed the other money
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and our leader has it back at the mission. A dollar is not enough. Twenty dollars would help. I dont have 20. Im sorry. Would you like this back? No, it is a gift. So you can pray for my son. We walk a little farther. Look in your billfold, Charlie says. Perhaps you have something. Its a new billfold. I just got it for Christmas. I know there is nothing in it. You have nothing I could remember you by? Im sorry. I dont. Would you like this back? No, it is a gift. Perhaps you could look in your wallet? There is nothing. If you will walk with me to the mission, I will see what I can find. That would make it seem like a trade. I dont like to deal with my customers in such a fashion. Customer? He had used the word earlier. I had ignored it, thought maybe he had not actually said it. Something wrong with you Ed? Charlie asks. Yes, I have trouble walking but I can run. Run with me. Ill see what I can find. Is not good to run. You should go slow. I cant. Run with me. I will look for something to give you to remember me. Now we are standing face to face near the mission. Gently Charlie reaches for my hand. Maybe I take this so you can run, he says. He takes all he had given me. This capital city of Mali is roughly the size of Kansas City. We had left Kansas City just after noon on Saturday. To Detroit, Boston and Paris we go, arriving in Bamako about midnight Sunday. In Bambara, the most common language of Mali, bama means crocodile and ko means creek. Its the dry season now, and how the city ever got this name is hard to figure. Maybe if we came in the wet season. We had planned to leave Bamako by 10 oclock Monday morning. But by the time we have all three vehicles loaded with our gear and the things we have brought for the mission, it is time for lunch. So we unload the picnic basket we had planned to eat along the way. By 1 pm we have eaten and are underway. Until 4 oclock we drive a paved road passing through several small towns. After stopping for fresh eggs at a chicken farm we leave the highway for a bush road. For almost two hours we drive through deep sand, a billowing stream of
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sandy powder rises behind us. Occasionally we pass a bike rider, a walker, or a donkey cart. They are quickly enveloped in a cloud of dust. A little after six oclock we arrive at the Hoovers, the missionaries we have come to help with a construction project. Husband Bob had met us at the airport and shepherded us through reclaiming our luggage, dinner waiting for us when we arrive. Bats and lizards, both are in my room. The six males members of our team are sleeping in the still-under-construction youth center. The doors are yet to come. Before leaving home, I had gone to see Bram Stokers Dracula, but I am too excited about being in Africa to worry. I clap my hands a couple of time; the bat disappears. The lizards are tiny and harmless. Im wide awake and ready to get up. Its only 3:30 AM. I take a walk to the Turkish toilet about 100 yards away. The night is black, the sky is ebony, the stars brilliant, dogs barking, donkeys braying. Our hosts impressed on us the need to watch our step at night. Snakes! They recounted several snake bite patients they had treated. Cobras, vipers, and others. Bob showed us two scorpions he had caught. We all gather at 7:30 for breakfast together, then a devotion around the table. We begin what will be our custom: Each person in turn tells one thing they are glad about or thankful for. I tell my students I am thankful for them. You light up my life. To be associated with you is the great joy of my life. To be here with you, to realize last Saturday that all ten of us had gotten together and made it to the plane, to anticipate getting to know you and share African adventure with you: all this gives me great joy and an abiding sense of purpose. Thank you for coming. The men among us spend the morning cutting lumber and steel, the lumber for a workbench for Bob, the steel to reinforce the door to the room where Im staying. The door itself had been lashed to the top of one of the vehicles that brought us here. For now my door is a piece of cardboard. This afternoon Stan and I put locks on the two doors, one metal, one wood. We finish about 5:30. Jamie and Pete welded and finished the work bench. The women cataloged books and alphabetized medicines in the dispensary the Hoovers maintain. Bob has to run a critically ill man to the hospital about the time we finish. Sandy and Jamie, two of our students, climb into the truck in case Bob needs them. Death here is something that happens frequently. Health care is not close by. It is not affordable and not adequate. A 13 year-old girl recently died of malaria in their church family. Bob is often called on to transport sick and dying people to a hospital in the back of his 4 wheel drive pickup. Several have died en route.
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Once Bob was asked to take a dead man from the hospital back to his village. The deceaseds two wives accompanied the body. When they got to the village, the mans father ran to meet them. The wives threw themselves on the ground. The whole village began to wail. Bob and Myrtle cried, though they didnt know the dead man. Its just after lunch on a Sunday. We all attended church this morning, and now the students have gone with a guide for a eight mile walk (each way) to the Niger River. They will not swim; they have been warned of a water borne disease carried through snails that could make them deathly ill and against which the many shots and pills we took (and take) offer no immunity. I chose not to go. I have brought my anthropology text with me. A week after we return to campus I will begin to teach from this book. The book is just out. I first glimpsed it at the worlds biggest book store last August in Portland, Oregon. It was love at first sight. Suddenly now I am conscious of a thing not so obvious to me from prior readings of other such books. The emphasis on Africa. One whole chapter is about the Dogon of Mali. Page 135 now open before me tells about the Wodaabe of Niger. Page 134 mentions the Maasai of East Africa. Somehow after only a week I have grown protective of the people I am among. I am sensing an overuse of African examples, an undue emphasis on the exotic, a point of view different only in degree from that of those who visit a carnival side show. Being among a people and reading a book about those people are two distinctly different ways of knowing. I guess I always knew that, but, now, being in a foreign place among a different people while at the same time reading a book about them, a book meant to be read by readers distant from heresuddenly the full distinction between reading and visiting begins to make itself known to me. Night has overtaken us. The bush road had been hard enough to find in the daytime. Deep ruts from last years rainy season were often the only sign. A maze of foot and goat paths crossed, paralleled and ran in all directions from what Bob kept calling the main road. A couple of times, Bob was fooled, but we had made it to the river. The long canoe was waiting. Our two African guides took us down river to visit their village. Their people are fishermen, and during the rainy season, they live in their canoes and follow the fish. Now in the dry season, they tend their cattle. We had stayed longer in the village than planned. By the time we were back to our trucks, the sun was setting. Thorn bushes clawed at the truck where the road was narrow. Stubs of downed trees could man162 W
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gle tires where the road was wider. Now we have ridden more than an hour. Twice Bob loses the main road but recovers. The distance from Katiena, our village, to the river is only 12 miles. Getting there in the day light had taken us about an hour and a half. In the dark, it takes us longer. Still a few miles from home, Bob announces, I think we have a flat. No problem, he says, as he always does. When I had drilled a hole in the wrong place and cut a leg too short, no problem. When we ran short of varnish, when I asked to visit the Muslim imam, when the welding machine broke down, no problem. The right rear tire is flat. Probably a thorn, Bob says. In a flash, Bob is under the truck with a jack. The tire is off momentarily. One of our group opens the back of the truck to put in the damaged tire. The truck begins to roll. Everyone yells. The wheel hits the ground. No problem, Bob says. He grabs a bigger jack from the truck. In a flash, he has the wheel up and the tire on. Even in a hurry, Bob is painstakingly thorough. He blows sand off the lugs, wipes sand off the wheel. Ordinarily, I grease everything when I break down, he says. In the rainy season, I grease everything after every trip. After a wrong turn takes us through someones yard in the village, Bob does some careful backing and hard turning; we make it back to the Hoovers. Thirty-four years now Bob and Myrtle have been Protestant missionaries here in the bush, this remote desert outpost a six hours drive from Bamako. I can stand it here for three weeks. Then back to Missouri and snow and ice and cold and a life I love as much as Bob and Myrtle love theirs here. If others judge me anywhere near as good at mine as I judge them at theirs, I will count myself an unqualified success. Up at 7 when Bob comes down to wake us. Stan and I spend the morning putting a lock in a second wooden door. At lunch, four shepherds from another tribe come to the house to greet us. They laugh with us as we attempt to communicate in Bombara, which they can speak, but it is not their native language. Bob tells us how to say thank you and how to part with our hosts after we take a meal with them. We are to call the name of each person and say thank you. The shepherds knew we are here because they had seen Lyra taking pictures in the village. Bob said they probably thought she was from the government and came to find out. After lunch we go to Yahyas home to visit and eat watermelon. Yahya loans me his bicycle. I go for a ride through the village. I couldnt
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remember even a word of Bombara, but I speak to everyone I see. They all smile and wave. The village overwhelms me. This desert is a barren place to live. The people carry dust like a second skin. Dusk is settling in as I find my way back. In the midst of what appears to me as grinding poverty, I meet happy, well fed people. I hear a young child laugh, that delightful, delighted cascade of high pitched sound that only contented children make. Having individual and private conferences with each student was a stroke of genius. Each mentions in our first conference a concern with the fact that the Hoovers employ a black man to wait on them and refer to him as boy and fella. I am concerned about finding a way to bring this up with Bob and Myrtle without it becoming a confrontation that would damage or destroy our relationship. I know I have to mention it in our group session, else my students will never know that I did not simply ignore a thing that bothers them. As we sit on the porch tonight to eat watermelon, Bob talks about coming to this part of Africa in 1979 as the only Christian presence for hundreds of miles. He describes his first meeting with some village elders. Bob told them he was not like earlier white men to come here. They came to take things and hurt the people. Bob came to help them and to show them a way of peace and joy. The elders had brought out a chair of honor and insisted that Bob sit in it. He didnt want to but felt he might insult them if he refused. He took the seat but soon slipped off it to sit on a mat to converse with the men. Just as I gave up the place of honor to join you, so I come to live as you live and teach you to have joy. Bob told them. This is the opening I had hoped for. Bob, when you dropped everything the other day to drive that dying man to the hospital I wanted to hug you. I know you love these people and would do anything for them. Some of us are having problems with things we see. For example, you and Myrtle are waited on by a black man. You call him boy. And your house is much better than the Africans have. In a way, arent you still sitting in that chair of honor? The gates were opened. For over two hours we talkreally talk about our deepest and most difficult to describe fears and tensions. Myrtle explains that boy is the official term used by the Africans themselves to refer to domestic help. Yahya is our friend and fellow believer. When the ten of you arent here, Bob and I wait on ourselves. But this is his job, to help when we need it. By African standards his
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salary is a good one. Stan suggests that various ones of us take turns helping with the meals. This would make the students feel better. We understand how you feel, Myrtle says. We appreciate your sensitivity. But to do that would make Yahya feel bad. You are a guest in his country and his house. To be a guest is to be honored. To let you do his work would shame him. He wouldnt say anything to you, but when you leave, he would apologize for not doing his duty. Every member of our team contributes something meaningful. The relationship of Islam to Christianity occupies a good deal of our time. What right did Western Christians have to come here and force their ways on these people? What right did they have to say that Islam was wrong? Bob responds lovingly and directly. Anything that is part of my culture, I have no right to bring to Africa. And none of us ever attacks or denounces Islam. Mali has religious freedom and we are grateful for that. Myrtle and I and other missionaries have been compelled by our faith in Jesus Christ to come here to share our faith. We never force anyone to believe. But they have the right to hear what we believe is the truth and it is this truth that will not let us alone. We must preach it to the people. Then we trust Gods holy spirit to work in the hearts of those who hear. At this point I need to give my students a broader context for our discussion. Some had mentioned to me in our private conferences that they didnt feel it was right to bring Christianity to an Islamic people. Islam also was brought here by people from outside, I tell them. Hundreds of years ago, Muslim missionaries and soldiers came. The Africans were forced and persuaded to accept Islam. Much the same thing happened in the Americas to the natives when Christians from Europe came. Both Islam and Christianity have much in our past to live down and apologize for. And there is no way the people of Mali can remain the same. In my bike ride through the village this morning I saw packs of Marlboro cigarettes and Honda motorcycles. We all live in one world. Commercial, political, and religious tensions and pressures will forever be a part of Mali, indeed of all societies. To reason that the missionaries should not come is simply to leave the playing field to those who are not so nobly motivated. Neither Muslims nor Christians can do that. Both are commanded by their scripture to go and teach. Not to do so is to abandon a central teaching of the faith. This is not an option. We as students, able to travel, to read, to talk to people, to think deeply and write carefully, wepuny and mortal though we beassume the awesome responsibility of leading our people and all the worlds peoW
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ple along this treacherous path into the promised land of peace, peace within ourselves and peace among us all. The 12 of us go about 8 p.m. to the home of Yahya and Ane Tongada for a traditional African meal. Rather than the national dish called toe and made of millet, however, they have prepared a large iron pot of beautiful white rice, a food served to guests but seldom eaten by a family Sitting in the yard the men pull themselves into a circle. The women form their own circle. A family member in each circle dips their bare right hand into the rice and removes a portion onto a plate. This is to be held in reserve. That remaining in the pot then has a thick red sauce ladled over it. The tomato base has peppers and cabbage and chunks of goat meat. A bucket of water and a towel are passed. Each of us wash and dry our hands. We then reach our bare right hand into the pot to get a handful of rice and meat and sauce. Eating from the hand and licking the fingers clean, then returning the hand into the pot for another handful. This is the routine until all have eaten their full. When finished each guest sits back and announces to the host: Baraca, Yahya. Baraca Bob. And so on until each guests name has been called. I am full. Thank you is the meaning, Bob explains to us. At 9 p.m. we each pick up our chair and walk a hundred yards or so over to the open area between the Hoovers house and the emerging youth recreation building we are simultaneously building and living in. A group of dancers is gathering. Until just last midnight they perform: some Christian songs celebrating their new faith, some traditional African. Promptly at midnight all the Americans shout, Happy New Year. Bob prays in Bombara for a good year and the Africans do a last dance. We all walk home in the moonlight. The worth of an African is not determined by comparison to an American, as the taste of an apple does not depend on a banana. This is what I thought as I watched the Africans dance and sing in their village on New Years Eve. Up at 7 a.m. I bike into the village with my video camera to film the village itself before many people are about. Sunday is a day of rest. Back home this notion is largely forgotten. But Im bone tired. I dont think I could work today if I had to. Thank God I dont. Church is at 10 oclock, lasts about an hour and a half Myrtle said yesterday. I left it to the students whether they go. Itll be interesting to see who goes. Sandy makes a point back home of being an atheist. She
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hasnt said this to the group and Bob has asked her a couple of times to lead in prayer. She did. Sandys parents belong to Antioch Community Church, Sandy said the church would help her with her trip. Ive come early to church. Two boys are sitting next to me on the bench, both watching intently as I write. Three men sit up front. The first bell for church rang an hour ago. The second just sounded. The people are gathering. The men sit on the left, women on the right. Wa jew lee nyna. This is what I heard Myrtle say to me when I asked her how to tell Yahya Good sermon. I said it to him, and he smiled. The music is accompanied on drum by a young boy. The language is Bombara, but the first song is unmistakable; Bringing in the Sheaves, and I think about the child I saw yesterday carrying a large bundle of straw on his head. We sing several songs. The drum and the kettle castanet(shaped like a bowel, small shells tied on leather strings to it) accompany us. The bowel is held chest high and bounced and turned in rhythm to the music. The clapping of hands is the mesmerizing part. The children and the women change cadence at given points in the song. They add clapsclaps between clapsthen they drop back to the cadence the men have maintained all along. I hope to get it on video for those back home to hear. The people here in the village seem happy and healthy, though chronic fatigue must be a problem. There are no labor saving devices here. Only constant labor. To get food, to stay clean, to maintain shelter, to stay healthy: all require enormous expenditures of energy. Bending, walking, digging, carrying, working. Always doing. The distinction between doing and being here makes little sense. To be is to do. To do is to be. Life is a constant struggle, so constant, so always present that it is not ever seen as a struggle, simply as life. Thus is it possible constantly to struggle without seeing it as a struggle: thus, optimism and good humor in the face of what to an outsider appears to be endless drudgery; thus, song and dance and festivity born of dealing with life on an elemental level. Females must suffer chronic fatigue more than the men. Women and girls are up early to get water and prepare breakfast. Girls of six and seven walk around with a baby sister or brother tied to their back. Little boys run around the village playing games. The commander in Katiena has two wives and five children. Relatives have sent their children to live with him, and his household has some 20 people. Bob and Myrtle told of a family in which the husband and wife had not been able to have children. So the husbands brother gave them one
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of his children. This is not uncommon they said. The other night, a Friday and New Years Day (whether these facts have relevance I dont know) we heard music in the village. Some of the boys who are always around us lead us to its source. The weaver was sitting at his spinning wheel, a battery powered radio at his feet. But there is other music. We join people passing in its direction. We come to a place in the village where a narrow street opens onto a plaza. People standing closely packed. A drummer and a singer could be heard but not seen. After a short while a large figure of a dancing bird could be made out in the dark. Bob tells us we cannot use our flashlights, else the dancers in the oversize costumes could be identified. We make our way home. Seven sleepless hours have passed since the film ended last night. Inside a tiny Protestant church in the village of Kalan in the barren desert of Mali, Republic of West Africa we had gathered about eight oclock to see the film. We had spent the previous two hours walking around the village greeting the people. Their physical poverty to our western eyes was mind-numbing, but their panache and dignity in the face of it all was positively inspiring: the elan of a riverboat gambler forced to play a miserable hand. My students and I were ending our second week in Mali, a week to go before we would fly home to begin our second semester. We were here to assist with construction projects: benches, doors, communion trays, windows, a ping-pong table, basketball goal, library cabinet, cement work. On our first Sunday we had attended the church in Katiena. An African pastor had preached. This Sunday we had driven for an hour across the desert to Famorila where we would go to church, visit the mission clinic, eat lunch, and walk around to meet the people. We are one in the Lord, was the initial greeting in Bambara extended to our team by the young African man in charge of the service. And the sense of indeed being one carried through the service as African and American, black and white sought words and gestures to offer that blessed assurance of brotherhood in the family of God. But the message of the evening would be different. Our missionary host had brought a gasoline generator to power the projector, and he had set up a small screen beside the pulpit. Between each of the four reels, a few of the villagers would come to the front to sing; after the second, a young man preached. Long before the three and a half hour showing had ended, the message, though unintended, was crystal clear: We are white in the Lord. When Jerry Cain had first asked if I would bring a student team to
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Africa, I had said, Only if the team includes black students. I will not take an all white team to Africa. He concurred. Our team could be no larger than 10. Ground transportation over the African bush roads made a larger number impossible. Each of us would have to pay our full way, including the cost to the mission of our food and lodging and a contribution from each of us toward the cost of materials for construction. To get passports, shots, and plane tickets on time and for minimum cost we had to secure firm commitments from students as soon as possible. Our college had never sponsored an African trip, so I expected considerable interest. Only two dozen of our 1,400 students are black, so unless I actively recruited black students, we could easily fill our ten slots before one of them applied. I made a list and started calling. I told them not to worry about the cost, I would help them raise the money. The first two I called signed on. I wrote a cover letter to accompany their personal letters, and we mailed them to dozens of black churches, asking them to help pay the cost of the students trip. A third black student joined the team when a white student had to back out. So here we are in this African desert thousands of miles from home to see the Jesus film. As it starts few people are in the bare concrete church about the size of a bed room in an American home. Through the two doors and four windows the room quickly fills, until there is no room even to stand. Bambara has been dubbed onto the film. And the setting in Palestine is much like what surrounds this church. So the language and the setting should be familiar to the Africans. Something, though, is not right. I feel it from the first, but it doesnt come into focus until Stan asks, Where are the black people? Stan was the first black student I asked to join our team. I had given him an award as the top student in my Introduction to Sociology class when he was a freshman. Now a senior, Stan had written several plays dealing with racial issues and had won a campus reputation for careful thinking and a passion for justice. He is sitting beside me as we watch the Jesus film. He whispers his anger in my ear as the film grinds on. Then he pops a tape in his walkman and asks me to wake him if I spot a black person in the film. To look long for something and not find it makes its omission even more obvious. When finally in the fourth reel a black face appears among the bystanders watching Jesus struggle under his cross to the crucifixion, I am angry and perplexed. Why now? why a solitary black
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man in a mini-series movie? The word token jumps to mind. Five seconds perhaps the face is visible. Not enough time to punch Stan and have him see. On my campus I teach Race Relations. I have from long years of practice cultivated the habit of seeing things from the powerless perspective. Both my training as a sociologist and my faith as a Christian leave me no choice but to be critical of those who are insensitive to the concerns and world views of non-white people. Everyone in the Jesus film has European features: eyes, nose, hair, color. Though in English words across the screen as the film begins the claim is made that Christians number 1,000,000,000, all of Christendom in the film is white. The most magnificent story ever told delivers a gratuitious insult, all because those who told the story suffer spiritual myopia. They do not understand that what people see speaks as loud as what they say. And when black people see only white people representing God, how are they to believe that God loves them. Maybe if they become white! We have been told that only one percent of Mali is Christian; 90 percent is Muslim; nine percent adhere to their indigenous faith. A film on the life of Mohammed would not feature all white people. Why are Christians so willingly inept? These were the thoughts I had to share with my students and with the missionaries with whom we are living. They are marvelous people, living under difficult conditions, doing much good for people they deeply love. It is tempting to say nothing. I cannot believe, though, that those black churches, Christians, and parents who helped us come to Africa could countenance my silence. I could not with a clear conscience report back to them as I promised I would do upon our return. As we leave the village for the hours drive back to the missionarys home, I am trying to decide what I should say and when. Its midnight when we arrive; we are groggy from the long day and its many conflicting emotions. Better talk in the morning, I decide. The missionary and I arrive simultaneously in his kitchen for a drink of water. Before I can think, the words come: I didnt like the film. Its racist to show a white Jesus to a black audience. He says, Thats the first criticism we have heard. All this is on my mind as I go to bed. I toss and turn as I struggle with what I should do. Who am I that I should judge? But if I say nothing, what will be the source of the needed correction? Who will speak for the black Americans here with us in spirit? Not to voice the message that lays heavy on my heart would be to to shirk my duty to my students. I would expose myself as an intellectual, moral, and spiritual
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coward. The refrain from the 1950s Western, High Noon, comes to mind: I do not know what fate awaits me, I only know I must be brave, or lie a coward, a craven coward, in my grave. So to my students and to our missionary hosts I decide to say what I will say to our friends when we get home. The coming of that day when we are indeed one in the Lord will not be hastened by pretending that it is already upon us. So long as a Jesus film is laced with spiritually leathal doses of latent racism, we must continue to make the hard calls that remind us how far into the spiritual wilderness we have wandered and how hard it is to fight our way out. We are standing amid the flies and the dirt and the garbage of an African market. All around us women are cutting fish and beef and vegetables and cooking over small open fires. Babies are tied to the backs of most women and scores of small children scurry about. Even if the sickening smell and the deadly ugliness had permitted, to have eaten even a bite would have endangered our health. Stan is feeling guilty to be thinking as he is. An Afro-American visiting Africa for the first time, he is deeply disappointed to find his people living in such mind-numbing poverty and gut wrenching squalor. To think that if history had been different, he might be living here causes him great anguish. Simply to think is painful. To think that but for slavery he might have lived out his life here. To think that anything good might have come from the kidnapping and enslaving of his progenitors. To think of the unspeakable horrors endured by his ancestors. This trip is causing Stan pain. Without great effort to the contrary, any white person coming here with nascent bigot leanings could return home a full blown racist. Every justification for non-white inferiority ever voiced is played out in a daily parody that mocks and ridicules whatever noble and universal sentiments one might wish to maintain. To stay home and read the Bible would reassure us in the easy commitments long familiar to us. But to come here is to have every notion we have entertained about love and brotherhood and the love of God torn to shreds, the way a junkyard dog would leave an intruder in the night. When we return to our American campus can we breathe life back into our rag doll faith? Can we go through the motions of our pre-Africa lives until we rediscover our intellectual and spiritual compass? Or will we just mark time until we uncritically reabsorb, leaving our African hiatus no more lasting than a night fever? I must re-read Albert Schweitzers biography. He was one of the
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worlds great intellects, a classical musician and a cutting edge theologian. But he left it all to spend 40 years as an African missionary doctor. He saw something here that made it worthwhile. What was it? I have to try to find out. Except on Fridays, Katiena is a sleepy little village of 800 or so. Everyone is scattered to the fields with the goats and cattle or doing chores at home. Few people are in the streets. A hush hangs over the village. But Friday is market day. From nearby villages, by donkey cart, ox cart, bicycle, on the backs of donkeys and cows, aboard motorcycles, and stacked deep in the backs of big trucks, people and goods pour into town, swelling the population to four or five times its daily size. About 2 oclock all of us walk into the village. We plan to buy cloth to make typical African clothing. The market is packed: people of all ages, food, tires, bicycle pedals, red peppers, animals, clothing, shoes, music tapes, Marloboro cigarettes. The 10 of us are the only white people in the market. Children and teenagers flock around us, all eyes watching. Is this what its like to be black in America? We stand for hours in the cloth shop. The selection is amazingly large and varied. The colors and designs are eye catching. When we have made up our minds, Bob and Yahya negotiate the price. The next day we take our cloth to the tailor to have our clothes made. We have now spent our last night here at the mission. We leave in about an hour for our next stop, another dismal desert destination drowning in dust, dreary and desolate, devoid of color. Everything strictly functional, and often that is broken down. To have lived all of ones life here, never to have been elsewhere to have learned of other ways is a cultural claustrophobia deadly to the aesthetic need latent in all human beings for novelty and beauty. Color is what I miss most here. Aside from the cloth in the market and on the women, I dont see any. Day after day the same. Whether it is Sunday or Tuesday or Friday, morning, afternoon or evening, has mattered hardly at all while we have been here. Excitement is not a thing I have found. Peace seems to miss the mark. More lack of energy for planning mischief. Students have mentioned several times how safe they feel here and how in danger at home. I, too, have had such thoughts. Yet the Malians had a coup less than two years ago and a military government took over. Next week in America we inaugurate a new president. He got a few more votes, and even those who hate him never thought of overturning the government with a gun. Only a couple of hours before we have to get in the truck for one last
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bumpy ride to the airport. Our flight is leaving at midnight, we have to be at the airport by 10, leaving here at 9:30. We are just finishing the pizza our missionary host has made for us. We are sitting in the gloaming, the not-quite-light that is romantic for a while, but then a nuisance. Myrtle speaks up We have a doll. Sent from the States. The children love him. We call him Sambo. Now we need to find a wife for him. The children are excited to see Sambos wife. Three weeks ago Myrtles mentioning the name of their doll would have scuttled our relationship before it got off the ground. Coming as it now does, just minutes before we depart, nothing is said. I notice shortly that our three black students are not in the room. A little later as we get ready for bed, Rick asks: Did you pick up on it? Yes, I did. Bob and Myrtle have been so long in Africa they have no understanding of race relations in the States. They are ignorant; they are not malicious. We have no time now to talk it out. I couldnt believe she calls her doll Sambo, says Rick. The girls picked up on it. We didnt want to say anything. We had to leave the room. We couldnt let it go if we were to be here longer. It is our last night in Africa. We have spent the last two days bouncing over bush roads and a solitary blacktop tying where we had been to where we are now back in Bamako where we first set down in Africa three weeks ago. Myrtle and Mary had, as they had done back at the Mission in Katiena and at the mission guest houses enroute here, prepared a good meal for us. As we finish eating we began to reminisce. Lyra and Sandy relived finding the scorpion and the lizard in their bed that last night in Katiena. Sandy had started it all when she short sheeted the guys beds the day before. Then Lyra stole my clothes when I took a shower in the little out-house. And I dumped a bucket of water on her bed as she sat on the patio a little later. Then we stole the stuffed bunny she has had since she was a kid and carries with her on all her trips. We held it for a ransom over night. Lyra and Sandy squealed and laughed and danced around recreating the scene for all the guys. Sleeping as we did in the youth center and coming back to the house for breakfast, we had only heard about it. But we had taken pleasure at the great success of our revenge. Neither of them had been able to return to their bed, and they had spent the remainder of the night on the couch in the living room. Now this final re-telling had us all in the mood for our final happy thought session. I had asked them all never to bring up anything negative in our group
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session without having mentioned it to me in private earlier. I sought them out on a regular basis so I had a sense of how it was going with them. Then we started each day with time for each of us to share a happy thought. Now they wanted one last go at it. So, for better than an hour we talk to each other about our having become a team and how much it means to each of us. Eyes grow moist and lumps come to our throats as we described our first impressions of one another and the things that subsequently happened to flush out these stick-figure images. Bob and Myrtle are the last to speak. When we board the plane for home in a few hours, they will return to their bush home amid the dust and the lizards and the people they love. Myrtle said, When I knew you were coming, I didnt worry about you becoming a team. I thought of all the work we needed done, and I wondered how much you could do. Now that Ive gotten to know you, I have the same concern for you I have for our Africans. I dont now what your various spiritual conditions are. I dont even know all of your last names. But we are here because we want the Africans to know the love and joy we have found in Jesus. I want you to know that joy too. And you will be in our prayers after you leave. Then it is Bobs turn. Im pretty quiet as you know. But youve heard me say, no problem many times. Out here you cant get frustrated. This is a people oriented culture. Its not important to anyone that things happen on time or even that they happen at all. I know some of you have been frustrated by all this. But I always expect things to work out. Myrtle says shes the realist. I call her a pessimist. Im the optimist. We love these people. And youve seen that we have to work hard and we have to make do. But the reason were here is to help free these people from the fear and superstition theyve always lived with. Now that we know you, well be interested to know about your lives. When you get married, if you do. What your relationship is to the Lord. Maybe one of you will be led back here to do this work. We would feel good if that happened. And we hope to see you when we come to the States again. I ask for a final word. Its not your grade point average that will be the most important thing you get from your college career. It will be your reputation with one or two faculty members and what they say to others about you. Im grateful to you for the trust you had in me that allowed you to sign up for this trip. I knew a little bit about each of you before this trip. But now I really know you, and I want you to know that for the rest of my life I will be on your side. I will take on any person or problem in
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your behalf. Whether you like it or not, we have become part of one another. All you have to do is ask, and I will do anything I can to help. I never expect to lose when a problem arises. I have been helped by many people. Now I want to help you. Then one day when you are able, you can pass it on to your children, your students, your communities, your world. In this way we all are one, and the world becomes a better place because we were here and did our part. I want you to know I love you. As has become our custom we end by joining hands in a circle to sing Blest Be the Tie. Then we hug one another. Then to bed for our last African night. We are staying this last night in Bamako in the guest house owned by the Free Evangelical Baptists. Bob and Myrtle are missionaries sent by another denomination. And while weve been here, we have met missionaries from several other denominations. Denominational distinctions quickly lose meaning out here and they all work together. Renee, our local host, is the business manager for the Evangelical Baptists. He just returned from Timbuktu a day or so ago. Its a twohour flight from here. I ask him why the place has such allure for adventure seekers. He is at a loss. Its the edge of nowhere. Nothing there but sand. Even the nomads have had to settle down. The droughts have killed their herds. Now they just squat on the land and build a hut. Theyre fed by food people send from around the world. These nomads have been the bandits of the desert for hundreds of years. They are lighter skinned than the settled Africans. They call themselves Kings of the Desert. The other Africans call them white. These dark skinned Africans used to be the slaves of the light skinned nomads. They were the ones who sold their black slaves to Europeans to begin the slave trade. Even today these tribes dont intermarry. The blackest ones are still considered slaves by the light ones. To avoid despotism at home we tolerate a level of local violence the rest of the world finds unbelievable. Every American is constitutionally entitled to a private arsenal and often uses these weapons on friends and family. Countries like Mali are magnets for despots, changing leaders with irregular predictability while allowing its locals little opportunity for doing each other in. Bob and Myrtle, our missionary hosts, also have mentioned how humane and pleasant they find life here compared to the States, even though their staying here was threatened by the coup. It may be, though, that missionaries are estranged from their home countrywithout such
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a sense of social distance they likely would never become missionaries and therefore unreliable commentators upon the comparative workings of the two countries, neither of which they are fully part of. As always when I return from a distant place on the planet to the little town I call home, I do so with novel insight and questions cascading through my mind. Who am I? Where am I going? What does knowing these people tell me about myself? Does our sharing the planet impose mutual obligations upon us? What? How? When? Where? Why? HateBusters Visit Topeka It would be our biggest team and most ambitious project. Our rule, though, as HateBusters is that we never say no when asked to visit any place on the planet if some who live there think we could be helpful. Our mission is to teach people how to like people who are not like them and how to oppose hate, both organized and ad hoc. So when Father Bob Layne of St. Davids Episcopal Church extended an invitation and enlisted other religious, educational, and business leaders in support of our coming, we were obligated to accept. Ordinarily we travel in teams of five, making sure that our team is composed of both male and female, and as many races and religions as possible. Bob said, though, that ten public schools wanted us to come, so we would need at least ten members of the team. I thought each team should have at least two members; thus, 20 members of our HateBusters Team Topeka. Stephan Frank is from Heidelberg, Germany, a student at William Jewell College and had been in my Race Relations class in the fall semester of 1994. He had shown keen sensitivity to the issues and problems we had addressed and had voluntarily done much more work than I had required. So when I passed Stephan walking across campus on that cold January morning that began our spring semester, I quickly told him that we had been invited to Topeka in late February and asked him to captain our team. Without a moments hesitation, he said he would. Within a few days, word of our upcoming mission had filtered across campus and I began to be visited in my office by students eager to join our team. Our need to have black and white and Hispanic members could be satisfied on campus. To secure Muslim and Jewish members, I called two people who have been invaluable over the years in contributing to HateBusters mission. Yahya Furqan is a Muslim Imam, founder of an Islamic school in Kansas City and spiritual leader of a musjid. He has gone with other teams to prisons and schools across the country. He and his son, Bilial, would make excellent Islamic members of our team.
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Judy Hellman, at the Jewish Community Relations Bureau in Kansas City, has put me in touch with rabbis and other Jewish leaders in whatever places we have visited. So in response to my request for help in Topeka, Judy gave me the phone number for Rabbi Larry Karol at Temple Beth Sholom in Topeka and told me to call him. Even before I called him, Judy did, and Rabbi Karol was eager to help. Within a weeks time, he had recruited four members of his congregation to join our team: Regan and Laura Murray are father and daughter, Scott Gutovitz and Javan Roy-Bachman are high school students. While I was trying to put the team together, I went one night to Blue Ridge Presbyterian Church in Raytown to participate in a Martin Luther King celebration. A 15 year old African-American high school girl delivered a stirring speech she had written. On the spot, I asked her mother if the two of them could join our team. She said yes, and her younger daughter would also like to come; thus, Ruby Morgan and her daughters, Derricka and Catherine, became HateBusters. Delcie Trester had never until now been a student in one of my classes, but she had become one of my student assistants during her first year at Jewell and for the last two years, had been office manager for me. She had come to know all the people who call and come to my office. Delcie had helped with publicity and logistics for other HateBusters projects, and when she learned of Topeka, she wanted to go. Charryse Berry is a freshman at William Jewell. I had not met her before she came to my office wanting to join our team. As a young African-American woman, Charryse has a passion for justice and fairness that soon was obvious to me, and I welcomed her to the team. Deandra Christian had been in my Cultural Anthropology class a year earlier; she asked to join our team. Adam Reck had done well in my Introductory Sociology class and is from Topeka; I asked him to join us. Jeff Ramsey and Bridget Scott had shown insight and sensitivity in my Race Relations class, and they quickly said yes when told they could contribute to our team. Julie Giger had wanted to go on our HateBusters mission to Hemet, California when she was a freshman. That team was limited to five members, and upper class students had filled all the places. Now as a senior and a Sociology major, Julie was eager to go. Allison Cooper was unknown to me when she appeared at my office door soon after the campus became aware of our Topeka project. A few seconds after she had introduced herself, I knew that Allison had the heart, the mind, and the commanding presence that could well serve our team. Dineyli Diaz was recruited for our team by some of those who
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signed on early. Dineyli is from the east coast and brought some different perspectives to our team. Mom McFarlane has for years been an integral part of all that we do as HateBusters. The song (Pass It On) she sings to conclude each of our Human Family Reunions has long since become our trademark. And every February for the last several years, Mom has organized a Human Family Reunion of her own design at her church, Barker Temple, where my students and I often have gone to worship and to meet people. When I asked Mom to go to Topeka with us, she jumped at the chance. Mom also recommended a high school boy who lived down the street from her. So she sent Nosa Ohanmu a copy of our book, How To Like People Who Are not Like You. Nosa agreed to read the book and be prepared to teach it when we got to Topeka. Al Plummer is Executive Director of the Missouri Commission on Human Rights. He has often been in my classroom and always at our Human Family Reunions. He had planned one in Jefferson City several years ago, and he and his son, Alex, had driven to Baton Rouge, Louisiana in June 1994 to join us for the fifth annual Human Family Reunion held there, the first one coming after a klansman won election to the state legislature and embarrassed Louisiana in the eyes of the nation. What a team! The youngest member of our team is 10 years old, next is 15, then 16. Most are teenagers. The oldest member is 68. We have Christian, Jewish, and Muslim members, female and male, AfricanAmerican, Anglo and Hispanic. One of the deep joys of my life is the opportunity I seem always to come by to join with exciting and committed people in pursuit of some noble dream we all share. When most of us had gathered at my house for a pizza party and planning session, we were all so excited it was hard to imagine how we could wait the two weeks until our scheduled departure. My excitement is temporarily dampened when just a few days before we are to leave, several of us have problems. Dineyli gets sick; Charryse and Deandra have unexpected assignments in their classes; Nosa is told about a school function that requires his presence. The month of Ramadan will be coming to a close soon, and Yahya and Bilial have pressing obligations they must meet during this time of fasting for members of the Islamic faith, so they have reluctantly decided that they cannot come with the team. But at 5 PM on Thursday, February 23, eleven HateBusters leave William Jewell for the 75 mile drive to Topeka. By 7:30 that evening, all our host families have brought food and come to St. Davids to meet us and take us to their homes. Our black members are staying with white
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families; our white members, with black families. While we meet and eat, we are also pairing up with our Topeka HateBusters, making assignments to the eight public schools where we will spend all day Friday, and deciding what parts of our book each team member would teach. By eight oclock Friday morning, our host families have gotten us to our assignments: Topeka West High School, Highland Park High, Capital City, Pauline South Perry, Jardine, Eisenhower, Washburn Rural; the last five all middle schools. In some schools we speak to individual classes; in most, we address combined classes of 40 to over 100. In all we speak to more than 1500 students in grades four through twelve. By the time we all gather at Temple Beth Sholom for services that evening, we are physically exhausted but mentally and spiritually exhilarated. To have spent such a day! To have met so many new people. People who wanted to listen. People who wanted to believe. And now to end the day in the company of our Jewish team members, Rabbi Karol and his congregation: Could life ever be better? Would we ever again feel such peace, power, purpose and joy? Why cant all of life in every place be like this? Saturday morning at 10 we gather at St. Davids for a short worship service. Pastor Ron King leads us in singing and Father Layne speaks. Al and Alex Plummer have just arrived. Alex plays and sings; then Al comes to tell us how the law works to ensure that all people are treated equally and what remedies are available when discrimination has occurred. The only disappointment of the morning is the phone call about nine oclock from Mom McFarlane. Because her husband is not well, Mom was planning to drive to Topeka early Saturday morning. Several of her 12 children would come with her, and they would join us for the day. But their car has broken down en route; Mom calls with pain in her voice to say that she will not be able to come. For more than an hour then we discuss step one in our book, How To Like People Who Are Not Like You. As noontime nears, Rabbi Karol comes with his guitar to lead us in worship. One of the songs we had also sung at the Temple last evening. It is beautiful and perfectly captures the spirit of what we as HateBusters are all about. It is called Circle Chant Circle Chant (Linda Hirschorn) Circle round for freedomCircle round for peace For all of us imprisoned, circle for release Circle for the planetCircle for each soul For the children of our childrenKeep the circle whole
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After lunch and a time of worship, we first discuss step two in How To Like People Who Are not Like You. Step Two is called How To Like People Who Are Like You, and describes in precise detail what a person needs to believe, think about, and do in order to develop better relations with family and friends. Then from 3 PM until four oclock, we talk about what we need to believe, think about, and do so that we can learn to like people who are of another race and religion. Stephanie Kopsch, Associate Pastor of First Lutheran Church had been active in preparing for HateBusters to come to Topeka and had asked me early on if I would preach at her church. So by five oclock I am at First Lutheran for the evening service. I am there also for the 8:30 and 11 AM Sunday services. I also teach an adult Sunday School class on Sunday, in all cases explaining our religious and personal motivations for what we do. Stephan and Jeff teach a class for young people at First Lutheran. Al preaches three times at St. Davids: once on Saturday evening and twice on Sunday morning. Other HateBusters attend other Topeka churches. By a little after one oclock on Sunday afternoon, we have all gathered back at St. Davids, where members of the congregation have prepared lunch. Following lunch, Bob Layne makes presentations to all the HateBusters. And as we had done for every gathering at St. Davids, we all join hands in a giant circle. Everyone in turn will say Thank you, God, and if they wish, offer further words of gratitude for all that had transpired in our time together. Then when the circle is complete and all have spoken, Father Layne prays for all that we have done together and all that we each hope for: a world without hate. A light rain is falling by a little after two when we say good-bye and make our way from the church. Even without the rain, there would have been wet cheeks and misty eyes. Strangers on Thursday night had become dear friends by Sunday afternoon. When moved by high ideals and in the company of the committed, friendship and compassion just naturally flow, like the waters of everlasting life. HateBusters have now come to Topeka and gone. Whatever else may result from those four days, lives separate before our coming have now been joined. Hopes and dreams separately, and perhaps even secretly, entertained have been given a public presence. Those lines from Camelot seem remarkably appropriate here: Let it never be forgot, that once there was a spot, for one brief shining moment, known as Camelot. Maybe thats enough. Enough in memory to sustain us as we all return to the ordinary pursuits of our individual lives. But after these four days in Topeka, our dreams can never again seem so impossible.
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HateBusters to Hemet, California Yahya couldnt go, but Melissa meets the other six HateBusters at the Ontario airport. An hour later we rendezvous with our hosts at Unity Valley Community Church. As we wait, a dozen or so homeless people bed down around us for the night. At 7:30 the next morning we gather in the gym at Hemet High for the first of four hour-long assemblies of 500 students each: first freshman, then sophomores, juniors and seniors. The noise in a wooden cavern, the other agendas of young minds, the entertaining adornment of young bodiesall present stiff competition for a college professor and his travelling band of student HateBusters bent on elevating the high school self concept and challenging them to learn to like people not like them, to become world class persons, able to go anywhere at any time and talk to anyone about anything and feel safe. Ray speaks first. He tells them that all we do is based on the premise that self hatred is the root cause of all problems between people. He explains how they derive their self-concept from what they think other people think of them. He encourages them to appreciate their strengths and value their persons. Mayra comes next, telling the story of her two brothers, their struggles with gang membership and drugs and attempted suicide and her own struggle to work through her hatred of their behavior. Mayra left a good job and extended family in Los Angeles to come to William Jewell College just two months ago. She loves her brothers. She wants to make something of her life. And help them with theirs. Diane then speaks in her small voice about leaving China alone just nine months ago, knowing no one, bound for William Jewell on the recommendation of an American teacher who had befriended her in China. Now I have lots of friends, and Im at home everywhere. Look at me for just a moment, she says. What do I see in your eyes? she asks. I see goodness. I see genius. I see a need to be loved. Then Lyra tells the students about our book, How to Like People Who Are Not Like You. People of other colors and religions. Older people. The handicapped (physically challenged, differently abled). People of different sexual orientation. Lyra ends her presentation by singing to the tune of Jesus Loves the Little Children lyrics of her own. We all love the different people, All the people of the world, Red and yellow, black, brown, and white They are precious in our sight. We all love the different people of the world.
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Tammy speaks last. Imagine you have two cakes. One has white icing, one chocolate. But you cant tell what flavor is inside. Or suppose you have two big packages, one wrapped in red, one in green. You dont like red. Do you not receive the gift because you dont like the wrapping? At 4 PM. on our first full day in Hemet we hold a two-hour HateBusters workshop for Hemet teachers, followed by a Human Family Reunion, a pot luck dinner open to everyone in town, attended by an assortment of fascinating people. By 7:30 the next morning the six of us have come from the homes of our separate hosts to gather in the office of West Valley High. Principal Carol Dolittle greets us and takes us to the library; we speak in succession to three student groups of 50 to 60 each. Melissa treats us all to lunch at Carls Jr. enroute from West Valley to Monte Vista Junior High in the nearby town of San Jacinto. Student leaders have been assembled. They rivet their attention on us; they make penetrating observations; they ask astute questions. At 6 oclock in the evening we are back to San Jacinto where we are scheduled to give a 20 minute briefing to the police department. With their questions and their enthusiasm for what we do, they keep us for 45 minutes. Our third morning in Hemet finds us at Acacia Middle School. Another gymnasium. Three assemblies of eighth graders, 200 at a time. This time, though, the students arent tiered and towering above us but sitting on benches all at floor level. With a mike and a long cord we can move among them, call them up, talk to them by name. Lunch in the van again on the way to Alessandro Alternative High School for two sessions. Life has not been easy or kind to these young people. Some have babies. Some are addicted. Dysfunctional families, learning disabilities, negative self images. One teacher here has taken the HateBusters program to heart. When we arrive on campus we find HateBusters posters and art work. At a table in the courtyard, students are signing up for buttons with the word hate overlaid with the international stop sign. Students keep us long after our departure time. They ask us to return soon. Another 6 PM briefing, this time for the Hemet PD. Friday night is not a time for talking. The ten or so officers and the German Shepherd present at 5:55 are reduced by emergency callsa robbery in progress, a man with a gun, and a couple of generic callsto three officers and no dog by 6 PM when our time comes to speak. We have a lot in common, I say. You will never rid the world of crime. Well never rid it of racism and hatred. Why do we do it? We do it
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because somebody must. Because otherwise were all dead and there is no hope. Each of us talks fast, presenting the essence of our program for eradicating hate. When we quit, they are out of there faster than we are. Saturday, our fourth day in Hemet, we gather at Gibble Park at 9 AM for our bike ride to the Soboba Indian Reservation. We range in age from 9 year old Nik Urzedowski to several senior citizens. Chris joins us unexpectedly. In his early 20s, Chris came to California from Tennessee. He wanted to make it on his own. Now hes homeless and out of work. With several friends, he is cooking his breakfast in the park when we arrive. We have an extra bike and persuade Chris to join us. At the reservation, three Indian men describe the significance of music to their people and perform for over an hour. No feathers. No drums. Accompanied by rattles, the music is mesmerizing and uplifting. When the music ends, Phillip Smith, a Creek Indian from Tennessee who has arranged the program and purified us with smoke as we enter the grounds, has a presentation. We have heard of the HateBusters. We have heard they travel without money, relying on the people they meet to hear their message and care for them. We Indians do the same. We believe in the goodness of others. Recently, Indians from Alaska and from Patagonia began a run to spread their message. They depended on people they met along the way. They met in Mexico City and then ran across America. They carried batons with them. Every tribe along the way supplied two batons that were returned to the tribe. Our two are the Eagle baton and the Hawk baton. We will keep the Eagle baton for the tribe. We have been searching for a worthy person and cause to receive the Hawk baton. In council, we decided that HateBusters should receive the Hawk baton as our symbol of oneness. We are proud to present this baton to Hate Busters. May you go in peace. May you never stop. I carry HateBusters shirts so that we can always reciprocate the honors and kindnesses that people show us. I present one to Phillip and to each of the singers. When we are back at Melissas following the bike ride, Ron, Ray, and I decide to bike to Rons. An hour into the ride and about three miles from his house, my foot slips off the pedal. I go down. Hard. I bounce on my left hip and my head along the asphalt shoulder. My helmet saves my head. I wind up under the bike, curled in a ball, writhing and screaming in pain. Be still, says a womans voice I do not know. Im a nurse. Heres
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a first aid kit. Dont move. This is a mans voice. Gently they remove the bike. Slowly, I sit up. I stand. They hold me. The man leads me to his pickup. Ray and Ron put the bike in the back. The nurse tells me her name. Then she is gone. When the man has driven me to Rons, the man writes his name on a paper sack. I can never pass a downed biker, he says. Three years ago my 12 year old son was killed on a bicycle. Then I tell Piper Hawkins that I dont think I could survive the death of one of my children. You have no choice, he says. You have other children. Its hard. I think about it everyday. But life goes on. Our fifth and final day in Hemet. A sunny Sunday. The fog and smog have lifted this morning; the barren mountains encircling this arid valley seem bolder and closer as we drive across town to Unity Valley Community Church. Tears come as each of us stands briefly at the pulpit to bare our souls. Last nights dinner here at the church brought us close to these good people who gather today as a congregation to hear us and endorse us and praise us. For the five days we have been here, this place has been our spirtual home, these people our moral support. They have housed us, fed us, transported us, cared for us when we were hurt. We have grown so close so quickly. Now we must leave them, and we cannot hold back the tears. When the service has ended and the people have gone, we gather in the library. Mayra spreads the Mexican dinner her mother has prepared. We eat well and much. Then into the van for the hours ride to Ontario. At the airport Melissa hugs each of us. And we are gone. Five hours later the six of us go our separate ways as we land at KCI. On Tuesday we are back with our classmates and fellow HateBusters at William Jewell. We tell them about Hemet and our five day experiment in being World Class Persons, those who can go any place at anytime and talk to anyone about anything and feel safe. Together we pledge never to stop and never to doubt. Our world needs who we are and what we do. And we need the world. It gives us purpose and direction and vision. We see the hurt and the hate in the world and we are heart-broken. We see compassion and love in the world and our heart sings. Leaving Jewell I knew what I must do. As much as I loved this place and these people, I no longer had the time for or interest in those many other duties that a full-time faculty appointment required. I had come to Jewell to teach straight from graduate school. Over the years I had sometimes
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dreamed that I had left to teach elsewhere, and I would wake in a cold sweat. A long-time faculty member had told me before I had been here a month that I should put down roots and make my mark there. Each time I would think of leaving, I would see his face and hear his voice: I could not go. I resigned. I left college teaching after 30 years on one faculty. I had promises to keep and miles to go before I sleep. How do I want to spend the rest of my life? As HateBuster. Teaching people how to like people who are not like them. As the Pedalin Pilgrim. Riding thousands of miles every year. Pushing and punishing my body beyond humanly bearable limits. Squeezing through that Crack In The Cosmic Egg that physicist Joseph Chealton Pearce describes in such detail. Experiencing that new birth, that life more abundant that Jesus pictured. Fusing mind, body and soul. Tempering all in the white heat of total exhaustion that I may learn what lies beyond the pall of ordinariness. Like George Sheehan, the running doctor, I trust no thought arrived at sitting down. I havent since that doctor years ago told me I have a damnable disease and couldnt be active. Multiple Sclerosis is damnable all right. But my M.S. means I must be active. No doctor ever told me this. I spent three post-diagnosis years in hell finding out, sustained by a wife who would not leave me; a church that would not let me surrender; and students who gave me purpose. Since my teenage years I have been a teacher. In Sunday School. In prison. In junior high. In high school. In college and university. In America. In Canada. In Mexico. In England. In China. In Africa. Now on a bicycle I am teacher to the world. Going anywhere I am asked to come. Asking everyone for help. Teaching everyone to be world class persons, able to go anywhere at anytime and talk to anyone about anything and feel safe. Calling people of every color, culture and creed to the Human Family Reunion. Red and yellow, black, brown and white. All are precious in my sight. I am HateBuster, opposing hate wherever I find it, in whatever form it takes. The Bible declares it more blessed to give than to receive, clearly endorsing both ends of this reciprocal relationship. The usual rendering of this verse is to lionize the giving side while denigrating the receiving end and denying dignity to the recipient. I have found an upside down perspective instructive and powerfully energizing. By asking people for help and being totally dependent on their gift, I have come to see that I am doing the one I ask a spiritual favor of the first magnitude. I am giving the opportunity to give, to receive the greater blessing. Jesus assured both the giver and the receiver a blessW
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ing. That one blessing is greater than the other should not blind us to the fact that we receive a blessing either way. By practicing what I have learned to call audacious asking, I have chosen always to take the lesser blessing so that the one I ask may have the greater. Should I not ask, though, neither of us would be blessed. From Sheehan I learned that each of us is an experiment of one. I am my own doctor, minister, counselor and teacher. I must read. I must talk to people. Then I must decide what to do with the often conflicting advice. I must customize generic suggestions to my unique conditions and circumstances. Out of all of this, I have learned that to keep M.S. at bay I must submit my body a living sacrifice to this heavenly quest. To Dick Bowles, my personal physician, and Walt Franz, my medical advisor at the Mayo Clinic, I offer myself as a medical experiment. To Bob Watts and Frank Biscari and Gus Baanders, who build and maintain by bike; to Avocet and Specialized and Hinds and Cannondale who supply my biking equipment, I offer myself as a biking experiment. To Dub Steincross, my pastor, I offer myself as a spiritual experiment. To my fellow HateBusters, who with their good minds and big hearts inspire and encourage me, I offer myself as a learning experiment. To all the people my life has touched or will touch, I offer myself a fellow pilgrim. The journey is our destination, as together we exceed all the limits urged on us by the timid and the tired. I cannot walk. But if I ride, I can run. Thirty miles a day I must ride. On average. Some days, 10; other days, a hundred. Ten thousand miles every year. If I abandon my mission to face down hate and teach people to like people, I am afraid that M.S. will do to me what that doctor said it would do. I can never surrender to M.S. Or to racism. I am dead if I do. The fact that I must ride so that I can run is not enough to keep me at it. My riding must have a larger purpose than my own welfare. Opposing hate and teaching people to like people is that purpose. Building it all around a bicycle is the insane notion that fuels it all. A raging inferno of anger eats at me deep in my gut. Anger at our national ancestors for the legacy of racial madness they bequeathed us. Anger at my own body for betraying me. I fight daily to build furnace walls around that inferno so that it will warm and soften me. Six years into my diagnosis I heard a voice telling me to bike across America. Alone and without money. Telling people about the Human Family Reunion and encouraging them to hold Reunions in their towns. Seven hundred miles into this 5,126 odyssey, a newspaper reporter asked me how I could do this when people with M.S. are not supposed to be active. When I told her I didnt know, she asked for the name of my
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doctor. He told her, Ed has a mission, and because he does, he can override his physical problems. That trek across America convinced me that so long as I ride that bicycle M.S. cannot have its way with me. But motivation to get on that bicycle has to come from a vision bigger than my health. Fifty Centuries in America for the Human Family Reunion. Thats the name this vision has taken. Visit every state capital. Organize hundred mile (century) bike rides that include both sexes, all races, different faiths. Have a Human Family Reunion when the ride is over. In my world a persons age, race, religion, sex or handicap is not noticed. There are no boundaries on my soul. Every person on the planet is his or her own standard. Each is tailor made in an off the rack world. Not meant to be compared. Only admired. And marveled at. Facts are the enemy of truth, declares Don Quixote. Too much sanity may be madness. And when Don Quixote is dying and his friends are telling him that all is lost, that he has been a fool, and should now renounce his naive idealism, Quixote lifts himself with effort from his sick bed to reply: And for that wouldst thou have me surrender? Nay, let a man be overthrown ten thousand times, still must he rise and again do battle. The Enchanter may confuse the outcome, but the effort remains sublime. King Arthurs round table has been destroyed. Guinevere and Lancelot have betrayed him. Arthur stands to sing; Let it never be forgot, that once there was a spot, for one brief shining moment, known as Camelot. Maybe thats enough. Its enough for me. M. S. has taught me that. God didnt make me sick. I got sick because thats what living things do. My illness has no meaning until I give it meaning. But if I can invent a meaning and invest my M.S. with that meaning, then I can simultaneously and miraculously infuse my life with peace, power, purpose and joy. A light will have been lit in my life. Seeing that light, others will be drawn to it. That spark of goodness and genius that glows inside each of them will be kindled. A bigger fire will burst fourth, warming and enlightening the world. Thomas Jefferson Asks about Democracy We 10 American teachers have been warned that we should not initiate any conversations about politics or religion. If one of our students brings up the subject, we can answer their questions. So I give my 20 students names of American presidents and Biblical characters. They might ask about their names, then I can talk about forbidden topics
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with a clear conscience. And the party member in my class cant say I started it. We had left for China on July fourth, a date which was to become the symbol of the entire trip. At the Small Wild Goose Pagoda the question first is asked. We have not yet arrived in Lanzhou where we are to teach. From Beijing we have traveled two days by train. Another day yet to go; we have stopped to rest in another city of several million people. A young man comes up to me. What position did your government take on the Tiananmen Square uprising? President Bush is very conservative, I say. He took no official position. But many in our congress were angry and denounced the Chinese government. Just today I read in China Daily that Congress has tied Most Favored Nation status for China to improvement in its human rights. I personally had a hard time deciding to come to China right now. My heart was with the students on Tiananmen Square. I feel I have betrayed them by coming here. But I want to teach, to help the people. Many times my government does things I dont approve of. I hope you know that. I dont approve of what your government did, but I like the Chinese people. Two days later we are in Lanzhou where we are to spend the next month at Northwest Normal University. On our first day of class, I pass out names to my students. The young man who chooses Thomas Jefferson also becomes my biking companion. For thirty dollars, I buy an old bicycle and join the sea of bicycles that flows night and day across the face of China. Thomas offers to be my guide and interpreter. He has a hidden agenda, which I discover a few days later. He wants to learn about democracy. Thomas meets me at the main gate at 9 a.m. on our first Saturday, and we are off on our bicycles, bound for Five Springs Park in a distant part of Lanzhou. The Saturday morning traffic is fierce. Donkey and horse drawn carts carrying loads of vegetables. Three wheel bicycles carrying furniture and lumber and pipe and an eclectic assortment of other goods. Beautiful women in flowing skirts and briming hats, serene and lady-like, seeming more to float than to pedal. Old men and women, faces covered with surgical masks as they make wide swipes with their witches brooms. Bicycles merging and meeting and dodging; slowing, accelerating. Cars and trucks and buses, horns blaring; turning in front of bikers. This weekend traffic is awesome. I say. From Monday to Sunday in China the same, responds Thomas. I am awed at Thomass careless ease and nonchalant disdain of dan188 W
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ger. Between buses, around cars, in and out of clusters of slower moving bikes, around man hole covers and rough pavement, in front of turning trucks, he is whistling all the way, never perturbed. He glances around often; he smiles in his eyes when he sees me. Never have I had a compliment mean more than when he says, You are a good rider. Your wife told me to take care of you. She said you do not look after yourself. She said it would be a hard job. Now, I see you ride, I do not think it is so hard. I cannot believe my eyes. We park our bikes in front of a small shop on a side street some distance from Five Springs Park and walk up a gentle hill paved with stones. We were told not to talk to our American teachers about the Beijing incident, Thomas Jefferson says it to me with no warning. Do you know about it? By this time we are in a secluded part of the park, standing close. Yes, I know. American TV was there. We saw it all. Until your government forced western reporters out. Hundreds of students were killed, maybe even thousands. I must tell you, Thomas, I love Chinese people. I dont like Chinese government. I like American people, Thomas says, I dont like American government. A few hours later we sit drinking three section tea (tea, rock sugar, piece of fruit; served in a saucer, cup and lid) at an open air restaurant high up the mountains overlooking pollution shrouded Lanzhou. Im worried about China, Thomas says. Young people dont trust the government. They think the government drugged soldiers at Tiananmen Square so they would shoot their own people. The government lies to them. Now they dont care about the country. They only care for money. We have so little. A professor makes only $20.00 a month, a middle school teacher only $15.00, and a primary teacher, $11.00. People think only about their little family and how they can make more money. I want to come to the United States. I want to study education. We must educate our people. I want to help. Thomas has me back at the university at 3:30 so Nancy Reagan can take me to the hospital to see what Chinese doctors can do for my leg. Enroute we stop to admire the granite statue, Mother of the Yellow River, and to get an ice cream bar. A little four year old boy eyes my bikers helmet. I put it on his head; Thomas takes our picture with my bike. I give the boy an ice cream. Sigh gean, I call as we pedal away. He beams.
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You show me what you teach me, Thomas says as we leave the little boy. You gave all of us American names. We have given you a Chinese name. We call you Ai-hua. It means loves China. By 4 oclock Nancy has introduced me to Professor Li, head of the neurology department at the hospital. He performs the same preliminary tests my doctors at home had done. He suggests I visit a distant hospital for more tests. Western medicine has done all it can for me. I want to try traditional Chinese medicine. In a matter of minutes, arrangements are made. My first treatment will take place immediately. The Chinese government will care for you, Nancy says. I will contact the university. They will arrange payment. I can pay. I dont want to be a burden, I protest. You are our guest. You work very hard, and it is very hot. It is our privilege to care for you. I try again to pay my own way. They will not hear of it. When we arrive fifteen minutes later at the last room on the right on the fourth floor of the main building, I am greeted by four women doctors. Nee how, Ai-hua, they smile. Momentarily, I am face down on a hard bed, a long needle in my left hip and ankle. About each a pleasant warmth soon radiates. Before she leaves, Nancy tells me that the doctor treating me would like an American name. Ask her if she would like my daughters name. She would. Tell her I will call her Dr. Debbie. Everyone laughs as she repeats the name. Beginning Monday I am to go at 8 oclock in the morning for a 15 minute treatment before class. Nancy will then come for me so I will not be late for my class. Then at 2:30, I am to come back for an hours treatment. Then again in the evening. We will do this for the two weeks we have remaining. On Monday I will get medicine for you, Nancy says. Traditional Chinese medicine is slow, you must be patient. And you must relax for the needles. We will not hurt you. Were sitting in the evening dusk about a week later. The white Russian-made car with the 50s look stands off to our right, between us and the lighted entryway to the Foreign Experts Building. Beethovens Ode to Joy plays on the cars radio, masking our talk of Tiananmen Square and American Democracy. I was there, Thomas Jefferson says, at Tiananmen Square. Workers, peasants, soldiers, and students were there together, the first
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democracy movement in China since the Peoples Revolution in 1949. The government didnt like us. It is cruel. We have no rights. Peasants have no guarantee of anything. They are 80 percent of our people. In the cities, we have a right to work and a small place to live. That is all. I want to come to America to see democracy. I want to bring democracy to China. But we have no experience. Can you tell me what is the concept of democracy? Another surprise. Thomas had not told me until now that he had been at Tiananmen Square. Another week will pass before I learn that it was at Tiananmen Square that Thomas suffered a heart attack, that for six months afterward he had been ill. Now he has asked me to explain democracy to him. With no preparation, in the dark of a Chinese university, I explain Thomas Jefferson to Thomas Jefferson. To my surprise I can quote the preamble to the Declaration of Independence almost verbatim and list the Bill of Rights. Even as I talk, I utter a silent prayer of gratitude to my teachers who taught me these things so many years ago. And I remember that verse from the Bible that says, Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it. For better than two hours, I tell Thomas Jefferson about the worlds bold experiment with democracy, about Americas effort to perfect a government of the people, by the people, and for the people. Though I did not know it, these few precious minutes must have been my reason for coming to China. Like a surreal painting, this scene will be always gentle on my mind. When its time to go, Thomas asks me to join him on Saturday for a bicycle trip to the countryside where we can visit with peasants active in the movement. The next evening he appears. A young Chinese man who had been at Tianamen Square in June 1989. With a camera. Now he has a roll of 30 black and white negatives, but no prints. His father is a communist official. If he finds the pictures, he will either have to turn his son in or remain silent and risk their both being found out. The son doesnt want to present his father with such a dilemma. We meet in the soccer stadium. Word has come to me from Thomas that I should be here. That someone will meet me. Better in China to hide in plain sight, the young man explains. He pulls a large stack of photos from his brief case, beautiful black and white glossies of ethnic Chinese. Many curious Chinese come past where we are sitting to see what we are doing. That done, they ignore us. Then my young friend pulls the cannister of negatives out. He
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explains that in China, it is possible for a photographer to develop his own black and white pictures. For color he must send the development out. If I sent the pictures out, the developer would show the government. I would be arrested. Perhaps go to prison. Or be shot. I have been told that you love China people, the young man says to me. If you will promise me that you will use these pictures to help the people, I want to give them to you. But you cannot use my name. If they find you with these pictures, you must say that you bought them in the street. I want to help my people. This is dangerous for me. It is dangerous for you. Can you help me? This young man is being sent the next day by his job to a distant part of China. I will not see him again. I have only his word for what is on the film or that he is who he says he is. I have to decide on the spot what to do. I shove the roll of negatives in my pocket. I want to try, I tell him. My young friend explains that he had taken pictures not just in Beijing. Lanzhou also had demonstrations. Students at Northwest Normal and Lanzhou Universities had taken to the streets. Peasants and workers had joined them. For 10 days the government did nothing. His pictures were taken during this time. When the soldiers came, he fled. Two days later, I am deep into the city, alone on my bike except for the several million Chinese also on wheels. I am stopped at a red light one of the few in the city. Suddenly a bicycle whizzes by, a rare occurence in a country where everyone seems to ride the same speed. The rider is a young woman in a billowing white skirt and long glossy black hair. As she passes without slowing, running the red light and being narrowly missed by a turning truck, a letter flutters into my basket. I snatch it up, intending to ride after the young woman with her letter. But the name on the letter stops me short. The letter is addressed to Ai-Hua. Waiting to read that letter until I got back to my room is one of the hardest things I ever did. My Dear Friend Ai-Hua, I hate this society. My father is leader. I know how those with power get money and government jobs. They protect each other. They live in a relative net. We students wanted to change this. I got a one month leave from my job so I could go to Beijing. A doctor gave me a note for money. The soldiers came. They shot us. They laughed. Blood was everywhere. One of my friends was killed. Another is in prison. Another disappeared. Two years and we dont know.
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My boyfriend took a picture of me at Tiananmen Square. He gave it to the authorities. The official who got it destroyed it to protect my father. After my father retires I think they may come for me to kill me or put me in prison. I am not afraid of this. I am a baby Christian. I read the Bible. I will not forget the blood of my friends. Three years, five years, ten years. I remember. We all remember. Tell America. That is all. Three days pass. Am I dreaming? I punch the light on my watch: 4:35. In the morning! Then again, a gentle rapping at my door. Whos there? No answer. A short time later, an even softer knock. I pull on my clothes and stumble in the dark to the door. I had never seen her face, and she is not wearing white. But the long raven hair shines against the single bulb that dimly lights the hall. How has she gotten here? Front and back gates have been shut and locked since well before midnight. The doors to our hotel are locked. Ai-Hua, I must take the letter. And she brushes past me into the sitting room. The girl on the bicycle? She smiles. How did you get here? No problem, she says. I must go soon, before it is light. You are being watched. When you fly away, they will find the letter. They will not hurt you. They will come for me. Read the letter one last time. Our government is corrupt. Many people believe as the students. Even party officials and many members. But we can do nothing. Students cannot talk to each other about what happened. No one knows who to trust. When we were in Beijing my friend burst into the room. Laughing and crying hysterically. She was covered with blood. A young boy died on my back. The soldiers shot him, she said. My father has given his permission for me to come to America to study. I will study economics and political science. I will come back to China. This is my mother country. She is poor and backward. I want to help. I must know how. I am 23 years old. After the Beijing uprising, the authorities knew I was there. They arrested me. They tried to make me say the students were criminals. Because I said nothing, I could not teach in my school for three months. Then my father said some more to some people. Now my father is afraid for me. My brother is a member
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of the Central Committee of our province. He thinks like the students, but he says nothing. We had a friend who was a member of the Central Committee in Beijing. After the uprising he was arrested because he spoke for us. We dont know if he is alive. Perhaps in prison. Now we can only dream in secret. Our time will come. We must be ready. You love Chinese people. I have heard this. We will not give up if you cannot help us. But we need you to tell people in America that the uprising had wide support from the people. Many students were killed. No soldiers. We were not violent. We wanted to talk to our government. They answered with bullets. Tell people in America it did not happen the way the government said. The government is lying. I do not ask her name. I dont take her picture. If I can not identify her I can never inadvertently betray her. She has found me twice, she can do it again. Early in her monologue to me, she mentions a person I know. Several other times the name comes up. I am confident that if I need to contact her, this person can arrange it. By 5:30 she is gone. Without a sound she pulls the door shut. The gates and the outer doors are still locked. No problem, Im sure she would say. She has lived in a cage all her life. Now she has asked me to help her look for the keys. What do you think of China? My students keep asking. After a while, I have exhausted all the superficial and complimentary answers. I dare not give an honest answer. My students are so loving, my loyal and obedient subjects. They spend time and money they do not have. Beyond meeting my needs they go. They have nothing; they give everything. I cannot tell them that this individually winsome attribute is the fault line running through their society. Five thousand years of kowtowing, of being peasants, sacrificing for emperors, has selected out of their societal gene pool all potential for boldness and risk taking and straight talk. The organizational skills and frame of mind required of a nation as a ticket to the 21st century have been systematically and totally eliminated from Chinese society. The Communist Party is little more than the emperors new clothes. The Party paints slogans on decaying buildings. The Party is Kafka and Dostoevsky masquerading as Neil Simon and Will Rogers. Back in the 1950s Kitty Kallen made it big with a song called Little Things Mean a Lot. Thats certainly true in China. Our students are
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always saying, It doesnt matter, No problem, Perhaps. When the VCR wont work, and we cant watch the film theyve come to see, It doesnt matter. When it happens again and again, It doesnt matter. When the route to class is laced with ditches as a steam pipe is laid, It doesnt matter. When the only way requires a perilous walk along a six inch wide ribbon of concrete, It doesnt matter. When the bike route of yesterday is today a yawning ditch with no warning or detour signs about, It doesnt matter. When the bus breaks down or doesnt show up; when the teaching schedule is interrupted for pictures or parties, when the heat is unbearable, the room dirty and ill equipped, no problem. When the students are promised something, perhaps it will happen; perhaps not. Either way, no problem. Adaptation to the environment. The Chinese are smart people. Over millinea they have accommodated themselves to a political environment beyond their control. I tell my students back in the states to live where they are. I mean by that to warn them against wanting to be somewhere else. Milk the moment for every ounce of meaning. But for days before we leave China, Ive been announcing at breakfast to my fellow teachers how many days until we leave. As the last week begins, I say to Bill, My mind is already back home. You cant do that, he responds. We have to give our students our best. Why? The system is designed to kill their spirit. Its a macabre commentary that this deadening system is about the only thing in China that works. A political cul-de-sac far off the main road: Thats where the Chinese find themselves after 5,000 years. They are too smart not to know this. Some things are too obvious to be mentioned. Thats not why I dont, however. To say these things to my students would alert the political officer we have been told is one of our students. I might be searched as we leave the country. They might find the negatives, they might read my journal. My students might be punished. After I am given the film, I quit asking for a copy of the official report on Tiananmen Square. Im playing dumb now so as not to draw attention. I have become Chinese, so that once out of the country I can be American. Our last day in China arrives. The ten of us teachers are on the bus. Bound for the airport. And home. I have given our bicycles away. For long minutes before the bus pulls out, I reach through the open window to touch as many hands and faces as possible. Martha Washington had
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sobbed uncontrollably yesterday when she asked me when I would return and I had said I would not. Please tell me you will return, Ai Hua, Give me hope that I will see you again. Martha, I love all of you too much to lie to you. I must go other places. I had quoted Robert Frosts Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening to her: The woods are lovely, dark and deep But I have promises to keep And miles to go before I sleep. Whether the point I was trying to make translated from one language and one culture to another I do not know. But Martha is among those who have come to see me off. Quiet Roslyn Carter is here. She pasted a little round sticker on my shirt yesterday. Im wearing the same shirt today. She points to the sticker and smiles. Ben Franklin is here. He fell last night on his way home from my apartment. In the dark on his bicycle his mind was on our parting; he ran into something and crushed a lens on his glasses, gouging a hole in his cheek. Bess Truman is here. Somber but not crying. She grabs my hand and holds tight as long as she can. Earl Warren is here. Hes smiling. He looks in charge. If talent and ambition in China are ever enough, Earl will be the first elected president. Moses is here. Ai Hua, I will see you tonight. But Im leaving. In my dreams. Susan B. Anthony is here. Beautiful Susan. Her eyes do not sparkle. Her smile is gone. She is crying. Quietly. King David is here. I love you, he says as our hands touch. Abraham Lincoln is here. He swallows hard. He looks hard at me, memorizing every detail. Robert E. Lee is here. He is always here. On the mountain. Volleyball. The White Pagoda. At the party. He hangs back, never says a word. He took my pack on the mountain without a word. Carried it all day. Gave it back to me on the bus without speaking. Now he reaches out to me. Looks with his soft eyes. And doesnt say a word. Thomas Jefferson is here. Hes not whistling. The imp has left him. He stares straight ahead. Not at me. Not at anything. Into space. A solitary tear rolls down his cheek. My eyes sweep the cluster of students again, memorizing every detail. The bus begins to move. I look for Thomas, wanting my last
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glimpse of these dear people to be of him. Hes not there. As the bus pulls through the gate to our hotel on its way to the main gate of the university it moves slowly. A green blur flashes by: Thomas on his new bike, wearing the green shirt he always wears. For a few seconds the bus sounds its horn while the guard comes to open the gate. Thomas Jefferson sits on his bicycle near my window. He wants to smile; hes a happy person. I want to speak one last word. He doesnt smile. I say nothing. Then our bus is through the gate and turning left toward the airport. I look back. If Thomas is in that sea of bikers flowing by I cannot make him out. I am back home in Liberty when Thomass letter comes. Since I have left China, the short-lived coup in The Soviet Union has changed everything, has given new urgency to Thomass urgent plea to know the theory of democracy and to the bicycle girls cry for help. Dear Ai Hua, I think this summer holiday is the best one in all my life. We have very good time, and I am happy and lucky to know you. Not only did I improve my oral English, but also made me know what the real American is. There are many differences between America and China. China has a long history, America only has 200 years around, but I always ask myself why your country develops so fast. I believe your country must have many valuable things for us to learn. Now in China, most of young people, as matter of fact including a lot of old people, dont believe anything except for money. They have understood that Marxism and Mao-Zedong Thought is merely a kind of dream never comes to true, is useless. It is just a story. Somebody even say Marx and Mao-Zedong bring disaster to our nation. Chinese people have not any dependency on spirit. They dont know why they work, what is the meaning of life. They are getting into the dilemma of belief. Marxism and Mao-Zedong Thought make China lost its way. We are thinking where our government leads us to? The collapse of the Communist party in Soviet Union have our government feel panic, the leaders of our government tell us China has come into a period which it saves socialism by itself. Everywhere people are talking about the situation of Soviet Union, what will happen in China, our leaders are like a group of ants on a hot pan. After 1989, Chinese people began to fear our government, fear the Communist party. They dont believe what it says. They thought the Communist party was like their mother before, but they dont expect that their mother could kill them if their sons tell her some suggestions. Now everybody holds that China belongs to Chinese
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people, it doesnt belong to the Communist party. If a government cant bring any benefit to our nation, people have right to change a new one. Mr. Eddie what do you think the thing has happened in Soviet Union? With best regards, Your Chinese Son Thomas Jefferson
Note
The pictures of Tiananmen Square given to me by the Chinese student were mostly of protest signs carried by students. The Chinese characters on the signs were translated by the daughter of a faculty member at William Jewell. This faculty member had herself been a graduate student from China studying in the United States in 1989. She participated in a march in Dallas, Texas in support of the students at Tiananmen Square. Her picture was taken and seen in China. Friends got word to her that it would not be safe for her to return to China. HateBusters Mission to Florida St. Leo, I never knew you. But I like to think you can see us tonight. A hundred and fifty or so of us. Red and yellow, black, brown and white. Catholic and Protestant. All together for the Human Family Reunion: two hours of food and music and dance from around the world. And it all begins with prayers in three languages: German, Spanish and Italian, all given by one beautiful manMonsignor Frank Mouch, President of St. Leo College. Seven of us from William Jewell College arrived in St. Leo less than 24 hours ago. We have spent the day with St. Leo faculty and students doing HateBusters and How to Like People workshops. We will spend tomorrow riding our bicycles together through the wondrous Florida greenery and flowers of early March. But tonight! Tonight we are together. As we choose marinated green bean salad, fish creole, arroz con pollo, oven roasted potatoes, broccoli polonaise, Mexican corn, English triffle, apple pie and German chocolate cake from the International Buffet, we talk to each other. As we sit across from and beside members of the Human Family we have never seen before, we talk to each other. As our eyes roam the room, feasting on the heavenly sight of skin blacker than midnight and fairer than high noon, we talk to each other. And as we talk to each other, we feast on the smorgasbord prepared for us by master chefs Leonard Conley and Dave Gleason. When our hunger has been transformed from a stalking lion into a purring kitten,
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Mayor Dolores Sutton steps to the mike to extend official greetings from the city of St. Leo. Brian Chasteen then stands to announce the first of eight student presentations. Twenty-three countries are represented among the student body of St. Leo, a goodly number of them here tonight and most of them on the program. In music and dance and the spoken word they come to mesmerize and entrance the rest of us. If heaven is better, the shock may kill me. Were I Shakespeare, I could do no better at capturing the mood filling the room tonight than to name the songs the students choose: We Are the World, Redemption Song, Love in Any Language, He Cares for You, and Amazing Grace. Brian, a Jewell alum, is now Director of Student Life at St. Leo. As the final event in their Black History program for 1990, Brian invited us to come from Jewell. So five of the 60 students enrolled in Cultural Anthropology at Jewell were chosen as our HateBusters team to St. Leo. We were holding Human Family Reunions at Jewell when Brian was a student. He loved them and now has used his good office to bring us to Florida. HateBusters have pledged to go anywhere at anytime if in any way we can combat hate and teach people how to like people who are not like them. So even if Brian were not my son, I would have said yes. We are pledged also never to ask about money. We dont have any. And Brian had thought of asking us on impulse, a way of doing things he must have learned from me. So he had no money budgeted for us. No problem! My students and I are on a mission. As HateBusters we are like the guy hired to walk behind the elephants in a parade and clean up the mess. As organizers of the Human Family Reunion, we teach people how to like people who are not like them. We believe in what we do. We think people everywhere want the same thing we want. But the only way we can know they want it is if they make it possible. So I called and wrote to some people and organizations who have been helping us for years with the Kansas City Human Family Reunion. I asked each of them to sponsor a student, meaning they would buy that student a plane ticket. The Spiritual Assembly of Bahais of Kansas City, Second Baptist Church in Liberty, the Black Student Association at William Jewell, King Solomon Baptist Church in Kansas City, Kansas, St. Paul United Church of Christ in Kansas City, Missouri, Sacred Heart Parish in Kansas City, Christian Student Ministries at William Jewellall said yes. Delta Airlines agreed to fly our bikes at no cost to us. Action Athletics, a local sports shop, made HateBusters T-shirts for
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each of us. Free of charge! And as always we had the support of the Jewish Community Relations Bureau and the Islamic Center, both in Kansas City. So here we are: Brians mother, Bobbie, my five student HateBustersBill Kiely, Carla McClendon, Nhan Trinh, Laura Watts, Ricardo Wilkins. And me. Students back at Jewell are wearing red, yellow, black and white ribbons while we are here. The ribbons were given to us by our local Wal-Mart. Whenever anyone asks why they wear the ribbons, they will tell them about HateBusters and our Florida mission. We began this morning at 8 oclock with a HateBusters workshop. Bob Campbell brought his Ethics class. We were joined by other college staff and students who heard of our coming. All were unusually alert and enthused at such an early hour on a Friday morning. At 10 oclock came Maura Snyder and her humanities class to our How To Like People workshop. Abbot Fidelis attends both. And adds much to our discussion. Over lunch, Joe Levin seeks to correct what he saw as my earlier unfair reference to skinheads. Im a member of a non-racist skinhead group. Were just in it for the music, Joe says. Abbot Fidelis describes over lunch his 15 years as head of the Benedictine Monastery here at St. Leo. At one oclock, students from Frances Martins and Alan Mersons social work classes come to HateBusters; at three oclock come another of Maura Snyders classes to How To Like People. Bob Ruday, Vice-president for Student Affairs, Steve Kane, Director of Counseling and Career Development, and Jeanine Jacobs, Director of Communications attended one or more workshops. By their eager and energetic contributions, all these good people helped to make our day a resounding success. Student participation throughout the day was marvelous. Their comments, questions and insights kept us always on target. All day long everyone was anxious to hear and to speak. The last group didnt want to leave. Reluctantly, we called the session to a halt to prepare for the five oclock reception, leading into the Human Family Reunion dinner at 6 PM. When my time on the program comes, Brian rises to introduce me. Im glad youre here tonight for this Human Family Reunion. And Im proud to introduce as our speaker a man Ive known all my life, a man who taught me that we really can like people who are not like us. He was my teacher at William Jewell College. He is also my father. He believes that any of us can go anywhere at anytime and talk to anybody about anything. He believes that a spark of goodness and
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genius flickers inside every person on the planet. He believes that the most awesome power he has is his total dependence on other people to do the right thing. Lets welcome Ed Chasteen. To hear my son so endorse the core of my being moves me in ways nothing else ever could. For a few moments after I step to the mike, words will not come. I finally pull myself together enough to manage a reasonable facsimile of the speech I had planned, the one I call, No Boundaries on My Soul. Invitation from the White House A small story on an inside page of the Kansas City Star jolted me to life one early June morning. President Clinton was planning a White House Hate Crimes Conference to be held in November. Participation by invitation only. HateBusters had to be there! How was I to get an invitation? There always is a way to do a thing that must be done. I remembered that last year our Governor had campaigned for President Clintons reelection. The president had carried our state. Therefore, President Clinton was indebted to Governor Carnahan. Robin and Tom Carnahan, two of the governors children, had graduated from William Jewell. Had been students in my class. I had known Mel and Jean Carnahan as parents, long before Mel became our governor. The governor would get me an invitation from the president. I knew he would. So I wrote the governor, asking him to ask the president to invite me to Washington. A few days later Governor Carnahan sent me a copy of the letter he wrote to President Clinton. The Governor wrote to the President: I want to make you aware of an outstanding individual and a group, both of whom are making outstanding progress in the Kansas City area in their fight against hate. The individual is Dr. Ed Chasteen, and the group is called HateBusters. Ed is the founder and president. I urge you to invite Ed Chasteen and HateBusters to come and be an inspiring part of your Conference on Hate Crimes. They will inspire you and all with whom they come in contact. When that letter came I knew I was invited. I knew, too, that I could not go alone. A team. I had to have a team. Ruby, Bronia, and Mom had to go. And my son, Brian. Students from Jewell. The Excelsior Springs Job Corps. Al Plummer. Within a week I had the names of 25 people I wanted on my team. Before I began their recruitment, I had to have a way to get them there. I went to see John Pritchard. John makes things happen. Back in 1987 he got me invited to see President Carter on my ride across the country. I had been to John and Mary, his wife, on numerous occasions over the years in search of finanW
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cial and moral support and names of other people who could help. I had never been disappointed. Awed and amazed many times. But never disappointed. John, President Clinton has invited me to the White House Hate Crimes Conference. I need to buy plane tickets for 25 HateBusters to go to Washington. I need money for lodging and meals. John wrote a sizable check and gave me names of people to ask for more. I called the airline and bought the tickets. The next morning early I was at Rubys Soul Food. Ruby, President Clinton has invited me to Washington. Before I could say more, Ruby cut me off. I want to go. When do we leave? Mom and Bronia were just as eager. Everybody on my list said yes. I got calls from others. I want to go, they said. I reluctantly cut it off when our number reached 27. Bobbie has always kept me grounded. You can never do anything simple. You always have to make it grandiose. She told me this often. Early on I had protested her description. But she was right. She knew me well. And she wasnt shy in telling me. Now she said, You havent been invited to the White House. Yes, I have, I said. Show me the invitation, she said. I cant right now. Its on its way. Those no way the president will turn down the governor, I said. I can see the invitation right here in my hand. But it will be a while before others can see it. I sent out a press release. This is what it said. President Clinton has invited HateBusters to the White House conference on Hate crimes on November 10. A team of 27 will leave Kansas City on Saturday morning November 8. Before we return late on Wednesday evening, we will visit schools and churches, a Job Corps, the House and Senate and the White House. Our team of 27 includes Bahas, Christians, Jews and Muslims. We are black and white, male and female. In age from 18-82. One of us survived the Holocaust. We all have read our book, How To Like People Who Are Not Like You, and each of us will teach our book when we go to Washington. Ruby is a member of our team. She is closing her restaurant and going with us. On Tuesday night, November 11 in Washington at the Calvary Baptist Church, Ruby will cook a Soul Food dinner and we will have a Human Family Reunion. People of all colors, creeds and cultures will come, bringing food from their ethnic roots to showcase what Ruby has prepared. Whos right will be the wrong question this night. Getting to know one another is our only purpose. Eat first, ask later, will be our rule. Our team has been brought together specifically for this Washington Project. We have not yet all met each other. So on Thursday, October 2
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at 1 PM, we are gathering at Rubys Soul Food Cafe, 1501 Brooklyn. We will be there wearing our HateBusters T-shirts. We will eat together, get to know one another and talk about our mission to Washington. Everyone who would like to meet us and encourage us is welcome to come to Rubys. If It Doesnt come What will you do if the invitation doesnt come? Bobbie would ask me this question every few days as the summer wore on. Thats not an option, I would reply. It will come. The days dwindled down to a precious few. Still no invitation. I had located a church in DC, just a few blocks from the White House. They would put mattresses on the floor. We could sleep there. October came. Halloween was coming. Trick or treat time. Which would it be? That day in the mail! It came! An engraved invitation from the White House one week before we were to leave. At last everyone could see what I had seen all along. And I thought of that memory verse I had learned in Bible School years before. Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. If I had waited until I had the invitation in my hand, I would have had no time to recruit a team. If I had said to those I asked to go that we might be invited, they would not have been energized. They could not have mustered the same enthusiasm for a possibility as for a certainty. People must have certainty if they are to commit. I could have gone to the Hate Crimes Conference alone. The invitation, in fact, was only for me. The others could not attend. But the conference was only for one day. I wanted my team to be there for five days. I wanted us to be seen and heard all around Washington. On October 24, I wrote to Jean Carnahan. Dear Jean, my daughter, Debbie, and your daughter, Robin, were good friends and graduated from Jewell together in 1980. (Tom was a bike riding buddy of mine when he was a student here.) Debbie worked for Hariet Woods, and if she had won would likely have gone to Washington with her. Debbie got her PhD from K.U. and is now on the faculty at Mercer University in Macon, Georgia. I understand that Robin is in Washington. I hope my HateBusters team can meet her when we are there. Jean, William Jewell College and HateBusters would like to invite you and the governor to join us for a special chapel service on Thursday, November 6 at 9:45 AM here at the college. Our entire Hatebusters team of 27 will be in chapel to receive the colleges blessing and the endorsement of our mayor, our congresswoman, Pat Danner, and our
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governor. Without all of the governors splendid assistance, we would not be going to Washington. My team and the whole college would be energized and enthused if you and the governor could be with us. Your presence would give us the certain knowledge that our Mission from Missouri to Washington is welcomed and supported at the highest levels of our state. We would go with pride and a feeling of great responsibility, knowing that the two of you were with us in spirit. Come meet the team and let the team meet you. Let us mutually inspire one another. Come at 9:45 AM on Thursday, November 6 to William Jewell College where the team will assemble and the college give its blessing to this Mission from Missouri to Washington. Wearing our yellow HateBusters T-shirts, the team goes to Washington to teach our book, How To Like People Who Are Not Like You, a book called in a recent review, profoundly simple and simply profound. Come meet the team before we go. A team of 27 HateBusters left for Washington on Saturday, November 8 at 7:50 in the morning aboard USAir. Our team included students from Excelsior Springs Job Corps, William Jewell College and Penn Valley Community College. Bronia survived the Holocaust. Ruby is closing her Kansas City Soul Food Cafe for the five days we will be in Washington. Queen Mother McFarlane will teach us all to sing Pass It On. Al, for 25 years Director of the Missouri Commission on Human Rights, Brian from DeVry, Mark from Southwestern Bell, Melissa from Ad Hoc, Mike and Cynthia, Job Corps staffall HateBusters. All going to Washington. George Biswell from the Baha community. HateBusters Mission To Washington Twenty-seven of us gather late on a Saturday evening in the chapel. From Excelsior Springs, Liberty, Kansas City, Missouri and Ozark, Arkansas we had begun our journey before dawn. By plane, subway and auto we had arrived in shifts at National City Christian Church, our home for five days just six blocks from the White House. Harry Bell waited to open the back door. A blustery bulldog, Harry has for 22 years been sexton of the church, coming long after European service in World War II. This door is never to be opened. No matter what you see through the window. Prostitutes turn tricks in this alley. Dope pushers do their business. Theyll blow your head off if you mess with them. Harrys greeting to us.! Bronia survived the holocaust by jumping naked from the back of a truck on the way to the ovens. Now retired after running the M&M
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Bakery for 30 years in Kansas City, Bronia has come with our team of HateBusters to Washington. Up at five oclock this morning, Bronia by evening is tired. She sits now inside the church as our luggage is lugged up the stairs to our rooms. Giving orders to various ones of us as he roams, Harry passes within earshot of Bronia; she addresses him in German. And Harry responds. In German. Turns out Harry had arrived at the same camp where Bronia was held just after that camp was liberated. By nine the next morning, we arrive at Calvary Baptist Church where we scatter to Sunday School classes to tell them about the shirts we wear and the book we carry. HateBusters our yellow T-shirts proclaim. How To Like People Who Are Not Like You, the book we teach and carry everywhere with us. HateBusters teach people how to like people and how to oppose hate, I say to worshippers in both services. Colette gives a sign language interpretation of a contemporary Christian song. Heather and Maria sing, I Am Special, a song written for HateBusters. Mom ends each service, as she always ends our Human Family Reunions back in Kansas City, with her trademark rendition of Pass It On. A quick lunch at McDonalds and a fast Metro to Montgomery College bring us just a little late to the birthday celebration for Bahaullah, founder of the Bahai faith. Reconciliation of the races and the unity of human kind is the central tenet of this faith that began in Iran during the last century and now enlightens cities, countries and people around the globe. We linger long in this place, so welcomed and affirmed do we feel. Monday! The day our visit to Washington is built around. The day of the White House Conference on Hate Crimes. By 7:15 this Monday morning I am sitting outside the visitors entrance to the White House awaiting the time when those of us invited to breakfast with the president will be ushered in. From every state and all the territories, representing every racial and religious group, the physically challenged and the several sexual orientations, we have come. President Clinton welcomes us. He doesnt talk long just now. He will announce new initiatives he is proposing to strengthen the fight against hate crimes later in the morning when we gather at George Washington University. Vice President Gore, Attorney-General Reno and several members of the cabinet join President Clinton at GWU to discuss with us what the federal response to hate crimes should be. While I am here with my president and the leaders of our country, my HateBusters are visiting Thompson Elementary School. For grades two through six from 9-11 this morning they will by twos and threes
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teach in a dozen classes throughout the school. When President Clinton concludes the discussion just past 1:30, we break for lunch together elsewhere in the building before convening seven breakout sessions on various facets of the hate crimes problem. The Attorney-General then presides over a 4:30-5:30 session where we all come together to hear the reports of the seven sessions. By buses then we go to the Holocaust Museum for dinner. The Hate Crimes Conference at the Holocaust Museum! Could there be a more perfect or powerful symbol: those fighting hate met at a place to memorialize victims of hate. The Attorney-General and the Secretary of Health and Human Services speak to us. The Museum has stayed open past its usual closing time, and special guides are available to show us through the exhibits. Im scheduled to be here tomorrow with my HateBusters team, and after a day dealing with hate, Im exhausted. I skip the tour. This Tuesday morning begins the 11th day of the 11th month and is Veteranss Day in America. Our nations capital is solemn with pageantry and filled with memories of liberty won at the highest price. How fitting that at 11 oclock our team of HateBusters arrives at the Holocaust Museum, a place made holy by the hellish hate it remembers, least it be unleashed again. Bronia isnt here. She has flown to Israel to visit her brother who is ill. But Bronia doesnt need to be here. She was there. Ruby isnt here. Shes gone to Sams Club to buy groceries for tonights Human Family Reunion at Calvary Baptist Church. She will spend the afternoon cooking. Brian isnt here. He went to help Ruby. Stunned and speechless we stagger after three hours of the Holocaust onto the sidewalk and into fresh air. We escape to the Old Post Office Pavilion. With food and shopping beyond need, we seek with little success to forget what we have just witnessed. By 5 oclock we are at the church, ready for reunion. First through the door and half an hour early for the Human Family Reunion come three young children. Eyes light up. Smiles erupt as these three spot the HateBusters who came yesterday to their school. The children rush to their new friends and stand shyly at their sides. Food for a hundred Ruby has prepared as we gather at 6:30 to eat. Everywhere since arriving in Washington four days ago we have invited people to come to our reunion tonight. These three children after a while are joined by a retired couple, members of a Sunday School class here at Calvary where some of us spoke on Sunday. Two homeless men wander in and sit with us to eat. One of our
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younger members wants to go into the street and invite others. No one comes. But we take plate after plate of Rubys soul food up the stairs and out the door to them. No one at our Human Family Reunions is allowed more than three minutes to speak. This gives everyone a chance to talk and increases the likelihood that something we say might be remembered. Nearly everyone in the room comes forward to speak. Or sing. Or both. Some more than once. All testify to the power of the idea that brought us to Washington, the idea that as HateBusters we can teach people how to like people and how to oppose hate. We also testify to the power of this idea, being commonly held among us, to transform us from strangers when we come to intimate friends as we leave. In the course of our ordinary lives, we found ourselves plucked by an invitation from our president and set amidst a place and people of powerful symbolic significance to us. Our national capital and our government have summoned us and charged us with a sacred trust. Being knighted by the king, given a sword and commanded to slay the dragon could have conveyed no greater sense of empowerment and invincibility than this HateBusters Mission to Washington. Having come to our nations capital, we belong now to America, our task to teach people how to like people and how to oppose hate. To make real the stirring words of our first president: The government of the United States gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance. (George Washington, August 17, 1790) HateBusters Washington Team Susan Agbey, student, Excelsior Springs Job Corps John Braxton, student, Cass Job Corps Center Brian Chasteen, DeVry Institute of Technology staff, HateBusters vice president Ed Chasteen, Founder and President of HateBusters Morgan Cole, student, Excelsior Springs Job Corps Allison Cooper, student, William Jewell College Collette Correa, student, William Jewell College Maria Fernandez De Molina, Spanish teaching assistant, William Jewell College Alex Hawkins, student, Excelsior Springs Job Corps Romon Hinson, student, Excelsior Springs Job Corps Abraham Jiregna, student, Excelsior Springs Job Corps Heather Long, student, Excelsior Springs Job Corps
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Mom McFarlane, Founder and President, Social Action Committee Ruby McIntrye, owner Rubys Soul Food Cafe Robert Moore, staff member, Cass Job Corps Center Katherine Nixon, student, Excelsior Springs Job Corps Amanda North, student, Excelsior Springs Job Corps Cynthia Parker-Koudou, staff member, Excelsior Springs Job Corps Center Angela Perrin, student, Excelsior Springs Job Corps Al Plummer, for 25 years Director, Missouri Commission on Human Rights, HateBusters Secretary-Treasurer John Predium, student, Cass Job Corps Center Adam Reck, student, William Jewell College George Biswell, member of Kansas City Bahai Community Bronia Roslowowski, survived the Holocaust Charles Schroeder, student, Excelsior Springs Job Corps Stephen Traylor, student, Excelsior Springs Job Corps Mark Turner, Southwestern Bell Office Manager The White House Hate Crimes Conference From every state and territory we have come. Chiefs of police, generals, directors of state human rights agencies, gay rights spokespersons; Christians, Jews, Muslims; Native-Americans, African-Americans, Anglo, Asian and Hispanic-Americans. Two hundred of us, drawn from and representing the many publics that make America the worlds first universal nation. We are here for the White House Hate Crimes Conference. From 9 oclock this morning over breakfast at the White House until 7 oclock this evening over dinner at the Holocaust Museum, we will give full attention to the problem of hate crimes in America. A hate crime is one in which the perpetrator selects a victim on the basis of that persons race, color, religion or national origin. Since 1989, over 500 defendants in more than half of the 50 states have been convicted on federal criminal civil rights charges for interfering with federally protected rights of minority victims. From the breakfast buffet, we make our choices and seat ourselves at round tables comfortably seating six. At my table is a general and his aid whose jobs are to ferret out racism in the armed services. The publisher of a Muslim newspaper sits to my left. On my right is a young woman who serves as research director for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and another woman who is director of the human rights agency run by her state. As we finish eating, President Clinton enters the room and moves to the microphone. I wont talk long right now, the president says. I will
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announce some major new initiatives for our Hate Crimes legislation later this morning when we re-convene at George Washington University. Let me now simply welcome you and say how glad I am that you are here. You represent America. As I travel around the world, I realize what a good thing we have here. But if we arent careful, if we dont work hard to prevent it, we could go the way of Bosnia or Rwanda. In many parts of the world they talk about things that happened 600 years ago as if they happened yesterday. For the last 50 years the people of Yugoslavia lived in peace. Now they are killing each other because of what they say someones relative did to one of their relatives hundreds of years ago. We cannot let that happen here. All Americans must know that their government respects and protects them. I am at the White House Hate Crimes Conference because Governor Carnahan and Congresswoman Danner urged President Clinton to invite me. I am here because in 1988, at William Jewell, my students and I started HateBusters. A member of the KKK was elected that year to the Louisiana Legislature and the governor of Louisiana invited us to come help the state redeem itself. We went. Then we began to be invited to other states by other governors. When breakfast is over, we leave the White House in buses for the four block ride to GWU. As we pull up, picketers march back and forth on the sidewalk. Their signs in blunt language condemn us. Men in suits wait as we leave the bus. They usher us inside. I have arrived on the first bus, and I take a seat at the front of the auditorium. A giant horseshoe table is set up on the stage, the open part of the horseshoe facing the audience. Places for ten speakers have been arranged at the table. Downstage and inside the open horseshoe sit four straight back, over stuffed chairs, two chairs to either side of a podium that stands center stage. President Clinton comes onto the stage from audience right. He walks across stage and takes the chair nearest the audience left. A man I dont recognize takes the seat beside the president. Vice-President Gore takes the chair nearest the audience right. A young black woman takes the seat beside the vice president. The man sitting beside President Clinton comes to the podium. He is a police chief from an eastern city, a 30-year veteran of police work. He recounts the story of one night 15 years into his career going to the home of an African-American family whose home had been spayed with bullets, terrorizing the young children. Do something, Daddy, they
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screamed. But if their father had stepped out of the house, he would have been murdered. He was helpless to protect his family. That night I realized for the first time how hate robs a man of hope and dignity, said the Chief. I became a different policeman from that night on. Im only sorry it took me 15 years to get there. Then the chief introduces Vice-President Gore. The vice-president tells the story of the young woman seated by him. In high school she was harrassed by skinheads. They would throw rocks and eggs at her bus. They would scream profanity. Instead of getting bitter, she got better, the vice-president said. She started a program in her high school to deal with hate, a program then adopted by all the schools in her city. Now a senior at Duke University, she has been chosen to speak briefly at todays Hate Crimes Conference and then to introduce the President. When he comes to the podium, President Clinton announces the initiative he is proposing as an addition to the hate crimes legislation. He wants any crime directed against a person because of that persons sexual orientation to be considered as a hate crime, thus defining a hate crime as any crime against a person because of that persons race, color, religion, national origin or sexual orientation. After brief remarks by the President, the other three speakers leave the stage, the podium is removed and the President moves to the outer rim of the horseshoe and takes his place at the center. The President is joined by the other panelists: The Attorney General, the Secretary of Education, an elementary school principal from New York, a woman member of the California State Assembly, a black minister from Memphis, Tennessee, an Asian young man who is a high school sophomore from Seattle, Washington, a Jewish woman from Billings, Montana, the Chief of Police from Sacramento, California, and the Attorney General of Arizona. Panelists have three minutes each to make their presentations. As they speak, the President watches intently, a pen in his left hand. He makes frequent notes. The elementary principal tells of problems with hate crimes in his school and how his school has responded. The woman legislator from California tells us she is a Lesbian and speaks in favor of protecting people of all sexual orientations with hate crimes legislation. The black minister was on the balcony with Martin Luther King, Jr. when he was shot. The Asian high school student tells about the problems with hate in his school. The Jewish woman tells about the attack on her house, prompting people all over Billings to put menorahs in their windows so the hater would have many Jewish targets. A movie called Not In Our Town was made about the events in Billings. The
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police chief tells how his department takes hate crimes seriously. The attorney general of Arizona says the same thing about his state. When each panelist has spoken, the President refers to his notes and directs questions to each of them. For more than half an hour, the panelists talk among themselves in response to questions from the President. At 1:30 the President concludes the panel, and we break for lunch downstairs. Box lunches of sandwiches, pasta and fruit and a canned soft drink. Scores of big round tables fill the room, big enough maybe for ten. As we eat, we talk. A black man, a member of the Louisiana Legislature sits on my left, a Muslim newspaper editor to my right, some of his staff sit across the table. After a quick lunch, we go to the fourth floor where there will be seven discussion groups on different facets of the hate crimes problem. Each discussion group is chaired by a member of the Presidents Cabinet. Our name badges indicate which discussion group we have been assigned to. Mine is called, Counteracting Organized Hate, and is chaired by Secretary Slater of the Transportation Department. As I arrive at this session and introduce myself to a man, I notice a tatoo on his neck. His red hair is crew cut. He takes his place at the table as one of our panelists. He is introduced as a former skinhead and is the last to speak. For 15 years he traveled the country as a recruiter for hate groups. One night he and his five year old son were at home watching TV. Suddenly his son ran to the TV and turned it off. Turning to his father, he announced, Daddy, we dont let no niggers in this house. An epiphany is defined as a sudden intuitive realization or perception of reality. This young father in that instant understood what the future held for his son. If the father continued recruiting on high school campuses and shopping malls and street corners for the Ku Klux Klan, the skinheads, and other neo-nazi groups, his son would wind up dead, in prison, paralyzed or in some other way destroyed by hate. This young father went to his mother. My mother was a born again Christian, he told us. She started to pray for me. She made me call a rabbi and confess what I had been doing and ask for forgiveness. Finally I did. The rabbi was suspicious. It took me a long time to convince him and others. Now I spend my time speaking all over the country against those I once worked for. Those of us listening to the panel then have opportunity to direct questions to the panel and to each other. A lively and useful two hours pass as we discuss the extent of organized hate in America and what is being done and needs yet to be done.
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At 4:30 we reconvene in the auditorium where Attorney-General Reno moderates a report by each chairperson of the seven discussion groups. At 5:30 we board buses for a short ride to the Holocaust Museum where the final session takes place. The Attorney-General tells us that we are concluding this hate crimes conference here at the Holocaust Museum as a reminder of what can happen when hate is let loose. She calls our attention to the words of President George Washington, spoken in 1790 and carved onto the wall of this museum. The government of the United States gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance. To demonstrate to the nation the enduring truth of these words has been the fundamental purpose of this White House Conference on Hate Crimes. Hate is real in America. I take great comfort in the fact that our president recognizes this fact and has called us to Washington to make plain to all Americans another fact, the fact that those who hurt others because they hate them will be prosecuted and punished to the full extent of the law. September 11, 2001 The words I want will not come. Its Friday evening now, and Ive been struggling since Tuesday morning to say what I feel. I was in shock for all of Tuesday. All day Wednesday I was angry. I wanted to hit somebody. By Thursday I was numb and so empty inside that my thoughts echoed. This morning I came early to my word processor, but the words would not come. I went for a ride on my bicycle. Ordinarily words flow from me like sweat when I ride. Not today. Nothing! Back home I fixed lunch for Bobbie when she came at noon from our church. I read for a while. Checked my e-mail. Read messages from everywhere about last Tuesday. I went for another ride. I stopped to visit my six-year-old grand daughter. She made me smile. Now I am back at my computer. The words still arent coming, but Ive got to force them out. Some of the e-mail I read today was from people who look to HateBusters for guidance. Christina asked, Could you suggest what might be best in this situation? Mom called to tell me her church had a prayer service. What do HateBusters plan? she asked. Maybe if I just start writing something will come of it. My mind, my heart and my soul are hearing so many warring voices. They are all inside my head. They push and shove and hit each other and call each other unkind names. They tumble over each other in a mad rush to get out. They want me to speak them or write them down. But the moment I think Ive decided to give voice to one of them, another yells in my ear and calls me a fool.
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Yet it is eerily quiet in my house. I have turned off the TV and put aside the paper. I have seen enough pictures. Heard enough talking heads. Read enough headlines. Maybe too many of each. I cant process it all. But one of those internal voices is screaming at me: Enough already! Make some sense of all this. Thats your job. Just do it! These are the times that try mens souls. Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country. These somber sayings have been with us for longer than any of us can remember, testifying to the fact that September 11, 2001 was not the first dark day to descend upon a people. Nor will it be the last. When conditions come that try our souls, panic is our mortal enemy. The anger and fear that naturally and immediately accompany a wound inflicted without warning must be allowed to pass. Any action taken when anger and fear over ride our reason will only cause us more harm. Thousands of innocent people were murdered. How do we respond? Do we kill innocent people without warning? If so, how are we different from those who killed first? We are an open society. Justice and the rule of law govern our behavior. Mercy is taught by all of our faiths. We must not allow those who would kill our people also to kill our commitment to justice and our longing for mercy. On an average day in an average town our attachment to justice and mercy comes easy. But the test of our true commitment comes when our souls are tried. The kind of people we are will be revealed in the days just ahead. Feeding Station at Ground Zero Saturday On a giant outdoor TV screen above 42d Street in New York City we witness Missouris final few futile seconds against a smothering Oklahoma defense. Its our first night in Manhattan, and we are on our way to the subway station nearest our hotel to buy our seven day pass. For $17.00 we can ride any subway or city bus wherever we want to go. Just a few minutes earlier at our hotel, David and Shirley Hall had briefed us on the route we will take to Ground Zero each day. The Halls closed up their house in North Carolina just after 9-11 to come here. For these six months and a few weeks they have coordinated the work of more than 50 teams. Like the Halls, all have come as volunteers. Responding to the call of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship to Baptist churches across the land, these hundreds have come. In round the clock shifts they have joined the Salvation Army teams at Ground Zero and other sites as they feed the rescue workers who dig and cry and dig again.
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Now the 15 of us from Greater Kansas City are here. From First Baptist Church in Lees Summit and Second Baptist Church in Liberty we have flown here together and are housed together in a hotel near Carnegie Hall and Central Park. As a team of three shifts we will make the 45 minute ride at our appointed time each day to our assigned duties. Monday through Friday back and forth by subway to clean tables, stock coolers and serve food we will in our small way try to live out in this place the teachings of our faith. To those who hunger and thirst and hurt we will offer food and drink and a sympathetic ear. Sunday He is from Virginia. Im from Missouri. We meet in a hotel lobby in New York City early on Sunday morning to discuss our coming weeks work at Ground Zero. Jerry works for the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and is here to make sure that city workers are reimbursed by the Federal Government for their work at the site. He meets with our team to orient us to the City before we begin tomorrow. How we discover that we both have a grand child attending first grade in the same Liberty, Missouri school I dont exactly know. Its a small world is so often said that it means almost nothing, leaving us, when a demonstration of that fact occurs, with nothing much to say. But I can say this. Back home in Liberty, Dorothy McClain used to say, Nothing is ever just coincidence. So it does mean something that Jerry and I discover that we have something in common. Maybe it means that we all have something in common with almost everyone we ever meet no matter where or for what purpose we meet. With only a little time off the subject and a few words about our lives we might discover how closely connected we really are. Rather than dismissing it simply as coincidence, I choose to entertain a wider possibility in the discovery of our connection. Calvary Baptist Church, 123 West 57th Street, New York, NY 100192283. Salt, pepper and ginger sprinkled liberally, a congregation drawn randomly from all the world. A joyous, heavenly feeling throughout the room. The pastors prayer for the Burnhams held captive in the Philippines and a staff member stricken with cancer. A sax, bass and guitar and rousing choruses flashed on the screen. An Asian-American minister leading in prayer before an African-American teenager reads scripture. Raised hands and loud amens, encouraged by appeals from the pulpit. Surprised by Joy, C.S. Lewiss autobiographgy, urged by Pastor Epstein upon us all. New York City is the bulls eye for the rifle of Islamic terrorism. They will hit us again. But we are the remarkable church. We live in joy. We are bruised but never beaten.
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James Galway might play to a more attentive audience when Richard Harriman invites him as a headliner for the William Jewell Fine Arts Program, but the pony tailed young man with his flute amidst the hubbub of the Staten Island Ferry Terminal plays to a cross section of humanity. Above the multilingual chorus of competing voices, his music can barely be heard. If his talent is equal to his perseverance, Richard may one day invite him to Kansas City. Monday No cameras. No alcohol or drugs. No proselytizing.No negotiation. We will take your badge and ask you to leave. Its Monday morning. A Salvation Army officer is addressing us. This is a crime scene. You represent the Salvation Army. We have been here since two hours after the planes hit, and we will be here until its over. People love us, and they will love you. With plastic badges on chains about our necks we emerge a few minutes later into the chill morning air. Pauls five-person team works the 3-11 shift for the week, so we set off by foot and subway to see the sights. Our Salvation Army badges carry our picture and in big black letters say: Authorized Access ALL AREAS. The guard at the Empire State Building ushers us past the waiting line , and we are not asked to pay the $9.00 admission fee. The view from the 86th floor is spectacular, but I buy a postcard to see what it was like before. Occupied in 1972 and 73, the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center were built to withstand being struck by a plane. But not a deliberate hit at full speed with a full load of fuel. Who anticipates insanity? What defense can there be? Im seated just inside the door to this massive tent. Big enough to enclose several football fields at odd angles to each other. The tent has the look of a domed stadium. Few punts would reach the ceiling. Mark McGuire might hit one out. This is where for months workers at Ground Zero have come to eat and rest and talk. My first job when I get here at three oclock is to sweep the floor and empty trash. Now by the door I call out greetings as workers leave and watch to see that no unauthorized enter. You be careful now. Come back when you can. A handsome black policeman sits alone two tables in front of me. He has eaten. Arms folded across his chest. Chin on his chest. Eyes closed. For long minutes. Without a word or a look around he at last rises and walks away. Thanks for what youre doing. I say. I think he heard me. But he does not respond. PARTNERING TO REBUILD NYOne Meal at a Time. These words are splashed in black across a giant white banner that hangs
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across the front of the tent, opposite the giant American flag stretched across the back wall. A dozen or more volunteers wearing red Salvation Army aprons scurry about among the fire, police and construction workers. An eclectic menu of good foods purchased from local restaurants whose business died. Long lines near meal times. Tuesday Scores of round tables covered with blue plastic cloths, six and eight white wooden folding chairs around them. The walls ringed with homemade posters and handwritten letters from small children and faith communities all across the country. The centerpiece of each table an assortment of simple, eloquent letters that bring tears. Fire, police and construction workers do not sit together when they eat. Though they work together toward a common goal, their missions and concerns differ. A consciousness of kind takes hold, attracting them to each other for deep discussion of specific needs and problems, talk they would not make with those who do other jobs. Their division of labor carries over naturally to their off duty beliefs and behaviors. The team they make as they work at the site fractures into its constituent parts when the press of duty is past. Snowflakes falling through beams of upturned blue light. The lights a temporary bringing of beauty bordering the place where the towers stood. Where now a yawning pit grows daily deeper. And will for yet an indefinite time, until the last remains are recovered. Rumor is that the light will be extinguished on April 13. Rumor is an easy companion in this place. Ten oclock at night. Heavy rain on the tent sounds like an approaching train. No one in the food line now. Some empty tables. Some 6,000 meals served here today. As everyday. More than 14,000 at all the sites combined. Thats the figure we hear. Comes from counting the plates. Thats what they say. Gourmet meals from fine restaurants. Plates piled high. Seconds on request. No money changes hands. The food line is a great place to work. I can call out greetings to everyone and push whatever food Im serving. How about a salad? A chicken wrap! A provolone sandwich? The chicken curry is good. How about lamb? Yellow hard hats, high top boots, hoes, picks, axes, fire helmets, police hats, handcuffs, sidearms, endemic cell phones and 12 hour shifts of bone weary work: all come together in this massive feeding tent. Roving chaplains. Volunteers who fill napkin dispensers and empty garbage. Joseph lives in an apartment in Queens. I dont care for it, he says. He feeds bagels to the birds at night. His wife is in a mental institution.
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He hasnt spoken to her in 15 years. He pays child support. Doesnt have a bank account. His union sent him here. Today is his first day. Hes making more than $40.00 an hour. I dont do nothin. I back up the chief engineer Hes on a 12 hour shift. Gets time and a half after eight hours. I can eat here for free? I can come back anytime? The guys wont believe this. Christine is from Ireland. Calls London home and was sent to New York by her company. The job is done. She is unemployed, and for four and a half months has volunteered here four days a week. She doesnt know how long she will be here or where she will go. Sharon is a librarian at Taylor University in Indiana, where her husband is in charge of computers. Their children are grown and gone. Son lives in D.C. and works as an environmental engineer. Sharon is one of two sponsors for a student group from Taylor here for their spring break. Elliot is a sophomore physics major. Matthew is a freshman. With broom and dustpan they do their jobs. Labon is from Uganda. He was a grad student in Michigan on 9-11. He has been a volunteer here since January. Lives at the YMCA. This is everybodys problem, he says. He will go home to Uganda in May to help young people find a better way than guns. Wednesday Someone didnt show up today at the Medical Examiner Office feeding site. So Bobbie and I are reassigned there. John and Denise drive us there from Ground Zero. They own an apartment building and six businesses in New York City. They turned everything over to their employees and have been volunteering every day since September 12. Their apartment building is rent controlled. One family has been in the same apartment for three generations. The rent has gone from $10 to $60 per month. John and Denise knew almost nothing about the Salvation Army before 9-11. They will never give money to the Red Cross again. The Red Cross comes in for photo opps. The Salvation Army quietly does miraculous work. Sue is a Salvation Army minister with nine year old twins and a five year old back home in Massachusetts with her husband, who is also a Salvation Army minister. Sue is here for two weeks as a chaplain and goes with us today to the Medical Examiners Office. She calls home every night and will go home in three days. Sue wears a chaplains jacket. She was called into the pit one night just before her shift was due to be relieved at 11. It was cold and muddy and miserable. All work stopped as body parts were brought out. Sue conducted a service. It was 3 AM when she got home. Louie is the food supervisor on the 3-11 shift today at the Medical
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Examiners office feeding site. Louie speaks only Spanish. With smiles and gestures we understand one another. He shows us how to make grilled cheese sandwiches. His radio is set to rap. Michael grew up in the South Bronx in the 1970s. Played basketball for Rice High School, where a classmate is now head coach. Lives now on 29th Street. Michael was in a meeting at the Waldorf-Astoria on 911. When the planes hit, the trains quit running. People had to walk home from Lower Manhattan. They were covered with dirt and ashes. We gave out water and cookies to people as they walked by. September eleventh humbled New York City, says Michael, We thought, heres New York and theres the rest of the world. Bill lives in Reno. His wife was killed by an 18 wheeler in a rear end collision 10 years ago. His son was crippled. Bill is here for two weeks to run the feeding site at the Medical Examiners Office from 3-11. Bill was in a wheel chair for four years as a young man. Was told he would never walk. Bill has lived apart from his second wife for the last six years because their sons dont get along. He calls her every night. The morgue is next door to the Medical Examiners Office. Bill offers to take us over. We dont go. Thursday From a little town in Brazil too small to be on a map. Thats where he came from six years ago to New York. Today his horse drawn carriage sits first in line at 59th Street and 7th Avenue. Bobbie and I climb aboard and pull the blanket over our legs. For $34.00, plus tip, he takes us on a 25-minute ride in Central Park. He points out a building going up. Twenty floors so far. Eighty in another year. Twenty-four seven they work. I love New York. Holy Thursday noon mass at St. Patricks Cathedral. Communal prayers, congregational singing, scripture reading, every seat filled, an engaging sermon from an older priest focused on the Eucharist and our Christian calling to serve others midst this pagan teaching that we are to get others to serve us. Surrounded by breath taking stained glass, towering columns, marble walls and dark wood, ceiling arching high overhead, stretching toward heaven. A solemn celebration of Easter hope that will not die and divine help that is always needed. In canary yellow ball caps and matching T-shirts, Southern Baptist Convention Disaster Relief Teams put foods in the ovens, take foods from the refrigerators and keep the serving lines supplied. A team from Washington State had been here until now. Today they have been replaced by a team from Minnesota/Wisconsin.
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Flower plants appeared as centerpieces on all the tables overnight on Tuesday. By this afternoon they have given birth to purple and yellow and white blooms in the shape of brushes used to clean the inside of baby bottles. Another sign of nurturing life in the midst of unspeakable grief. This tent was put up over a parking lot. Now that the streets are opening for traffic the owner needs this lot for his business. Yesterday and today the papers and TV are reporting that the tent will come down. No official announcement has been made. In the center of every table a handful of drawings and letters from school children, like this one, dated 9-21-01: My name is Emily Gleason. Im writing from Maplewood Elementary School in Lima, Ohio. Im sad that a lot of people died in the World Trade Center. Im proud to live in America. I hope you find a lot of survivors. With many thanks. The specter that hangs over this place: another plane, a truck bomb, a suicide bomber, a suitcase nuclear device in a Grand Central Station locker, deadly gas let loose on the subway. Another tent in another parking lot. These heroes being dug out and mourned over. All of this as dress rehearsal for things to come. When his cell phone rings the man across the table listens for a moment. Then carries on a conversation. In Russian. A language that a few years ago would have stricken fear if spoken here. But now part of the chorus. New York City Restaurant Revitalization Program These signs are prominent in the tent. This is a joint effort of the Salvation Army and Whitsons, a catering company. Together they buy food from local restaurants to feed rescue and recovery workers. Frank is from Jamica. Lived in New York for 22 years. Worked near the World Trade Center. Saw the planes hit. Rushed in and started saving people. Lost his job because he would not quit. Now works part time and volunteers full time. Drives the perimeter of the red zone to bring coffee, water and snacks to the police who control all entrances. Sues just learned that her husband is coming Saturday for two weeks as a volunteer chaplain. He will drive in. They will meet. She will take the car and go home to their children. She will preach the Easter sunrise service. Friday Taj Mahal UpdateAgreement for use of this facility is scheduled to expire on April 14. This notice is posted today outside the door to the mens restroom.
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Behind the back wall of the Taj Mahal stands another chamber as cavernous as the front. In the front chamber, the Salvation Army feeds thousands. In the back chamber, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) cleans and sanitizes all those who work at the recovery site. Their clothes are vacuumed. Respirators are cleaned. Water comes up in spray from the floor to clean their shoes. Brushes remove stubborn dirt. A long line of sinks and soap to wash hands. Showers and restrooms available. Having come through this chamber, recovery workers bring little dirt or debris into the feeding area. Today is Good Friday. Our last day to work. Fitting that from the church on this day we come to this place where thousands died. Where we who are left are being weighed in the balance and where by what we do we reveal the true character of our country. A public ceremony was held this morning to reopen West Street, allowing vehicle traffic past the World Trade Center site for the first time since 9-11. Brian is a singer. I love to sing Broadway tunes the most. He says. Brian moved to New York three years ago to audition. He just finished a contract as a cruise ship singer. Volunteers here when he can. Auditions soon for All My Children. The blue tablecloths have been replaced with green. Tonight Im the pizza man. From 3-8 I hawk pizza. Get your fresh hot pizza here. Going fast. Come quick! I put giant slices on plastic plates as fast as the kitchen can get them to the line. My feet are killing me. I take a long break. Sitting at a table in a distant corner from where I have sat before I reach for one last letter to read. Its from another student in the same Ohio school. I am a student from Shawnee Maplewood School. I live in Lima, Ohio. I am nine years old. I am in 3rd grade. I was very mad when I heard about the attack. Try your hardest to find as many people as you can. I wish I could help but I cant right now because I am at school. But I will pray for you and for all the people. Sincerely, Andrew Stemen. The 39th hour has come. The building is quiet. Many tables are empty. No one is in the food line. Another hour and our week is up. We leave this domed parking lot, surrender our red aprons, walk four blocks to the Chambers Street subway station, swipe our pass through the reader, push through the gate and board # 1,2 or 3. At Times Square we switch to the N, R or W line and get off at the 57th Street stop. Walk half a block south to the Salisbury Hotel (next to and owned by Calvary Baptist Church), ride the elevator to the 15th floor, enter 1505 and fall into bed. Its just before midnight. Our subway passes expire at the stroke of 12.
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Saturday Paul has arranged transportation for all of us to the airport. A van and a car, he tells us on Friday. The car turns out to be a white stretch limousine. Bobbie and I are the last ones down from our rooms and Paul ushers us to the last two seats in the limo. All week Ive wondered about the mysterious passengers in the many limos cruising the streets. Now from the inside Im wondering what those on foot and in less impressive conveyance might think as we pass. They likely would not suspect that we have been servants for a week. We fly home just in time for Easter. Strangely fitting! All this week we have been witness to the resurrection of a city. The Gary Phelps Human Family Reunion The millenium has come. And though I havent taught a class at William Jewell in five years, I have come often by invitation to speak to students in a variety of classes. Chris Henson directs Jewells Service Learning program. She and I have designed what we call Van Visits. VAN is an acronym. It stands for Visiting Area Neighbors. We gave the program this name for a second reason: We go in a college van. Once a month during the academic year we take students and townspeople to visit racial, ethnic and religious communities in Greater Kansas City, the purpose being to create a network of relationships that people might use to defuse a future tense situation. We have been holding Human Family Reunions in other places since 95, but Gary Phelps has invited us to come back to campus for the 2000 reunion. Gary Phelps belongs to William Jewell College in the same way many of us belong to a church or a political party. From that day in the 1960s when he came as a student, Gary was committed to William Jewell as a way of life. Here on this campus, as Gary has told countless prospective students and visiting parents over these intervening years, I learned to think, to write and to care. I remember the day in the early 70s when Gary appeared on campus after being away at graduate school. His face aglow with pure pleasure, like a small boy who has found his most desired treasure beneath the Christmas tree, Gary breathlessly explained to me that he was coming back as a member of the staff. I never recovered from your Race Relations class, Gary would say to me in our early years as colleagues. The Black Student Association on our campus was born from Garys heart and mind. The 1960s had been a tense time in racial terms. Gary cared about justice issues. He resolved that on his watch, our campus would be a place where all stuW
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dents felt safe and valued and at home. Gary has a house in the town, but more likely than not on any day of the week or hour of the day or night you would find him in his office in the Union or about somewhere on the campus dealing with a crisis. When pagers came available, Gary got one and widely distributed his number. He never wanted to be more than a few minutes away from any student or staff who might need him. I rushed one day in late March to Garys office to make final plans with him for our upcoming Human Family Reunion. Gary had been at our first Human Family Reunion held beneath the trees on the presidents lawn in 1976. He worked the crowd, explaining to each and all how glad William Jewell was to host this good event. When in later years we would hold our Human Family Reunions in other parts of Greater Kansas City, Garys duties on campus would often prevent his attendance. Always, though, he would send greetings and tell me that he was with us in spirit. This morning, Garys parting words to me: I would like to host the Human Family Reunion at William Jewell every year. Our students need to be a part. Way to go, Gary. I like the way you think. I didnt know these would be my last words to Gary. I would have said more. How much I loved him. What a good man he was. How valuable he was to William Jewell. I had said, Way to go, to Gary many times for many different reason over many years. I hope he understood my verbal shorthand as the blanket endorsement of his person and his profession. Gary told me that last morning together that President Sallee had to be out of town on the day of our Reunion, so Gary would bring greetings from the college. People of all colors, creeds and colors come. Who is right is the wrong question this night. Once we have become friends, we can handle such a question. Gary loved the ambiance of the evening when all these good folks come to campus. He was making big plans to make everyone welcome. We agreed that I would call Gary the next Monday morning to touch base and make final plans. As I am about to call, my phone rings. Judy Rychlewski says, Ed, it breaks my heart to tell you this, but Gary died this morning. He was in the cafeteria when he collapsed. We called an ambulance, but they couldnt revive him. Hours pass before I can trust myself to speak. My heart is breaking. I can muster no enthusiasm for our Reunion without Gary. I think of calling it off. Then it comes to me that Gary would not want to be the reason we had no Reunion. So, Tuesday, April 17 at 6:30 in the evening, morphs into THE GARY PHELPS MEMORIAL HUMAN FAMILY REUNION.
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We will meet in the very room where Gary died. How I wish Gary had not left us so early. How happy I am that he chose to live and work among us. How fitting that he died early on a Monday morning having breakfast with students and staff and preparing for a new week. How privileged we all were to have Gary Phelps in our lives. He came as a student to learn from us. He stayed to become our teacher and our friend. He left us quickly and suddenly, with good memories and great stories to tell. With Gary gone, how could we do it? Having worked with Gary over many years, I knew that his way of getting things done was much like my own. When he told me that something would happen, I never for a moment doubted that it would happen. But! I also knew that Gary made promises and commitments to many people to do many things. Gary and I both are better at crisis intervention than at long-range planning. By 6:30 on April 17, Gary would have done everything necessary to make the Human Family Reunion a smashing success. When he dies on April 2, I know without asking that no one on his staff will know what he had planned. David Salee had come as William Jewells fourteenth president the previous fall. At our hurried meeting that morning in Garys office, Gary told me he was going immediately after I left to tell David about our plans and to ask him to bring greetings from the college. An e-mail from Gary later that day told me that David was enthused about the Reunion but would be out of town. Gary would bring greetings from the college. Chris Henson came almost three years ago to Jewell to direct the service learning and womens issues program. We had worked together on several projects. I explained in an email to Chris that we had all these people coming to Jewell for the Human Family Reunion, but that, without Gary, all was lost. Not to worry, Chris said. Tell me what needs to be done. I told her. Chris did it. Thus, by 6:30 on the appointed evening everything is in place to receive our guests. Mike and Sharon are working security. Chris has erected HUMAN FAMILY REUNION signs at strategic spots on campus. Trisha, Jesse and Carrie have carried out their assigned duties. Right on time, from churches and temples and synagogues and gurdwaras and mosques come people in turbans and saries and shawls and their Sunday best. In New York City or San Francisco, such a pleasing human panorama might be routine and go largely unseen, but on our campus people take note and mention what they saw to their friends. As we settle in our seats promptly at 6:30, I rise to tell everyone about the hole in my heart.
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A Hole in My Heart Gary is not here. And there is a hole in my heart deeper and wider and more empty than my poor words can describe. Gary invited us here tonight. It was his idea to hold this years Human Family Reunion here at William Jewell. Gary came to campus as a student in the 1960s. He came again in the 1970s as a staff member. Gary belonged to William Jewell the way many of us belong to our faith. He loved us and we loved him. Without reservation and without ceasing. Gary was planning to personally welcome us tonight. But early on a Monday morning just a few days ago while having breakfast in this room, Gary died. He was much too young to leave us. He left a hole in our hearts that we will be a long time filling. But his generosity and his towering spirit have left us a legacy from which we see a bright tomorrow. Gary is not physically present tonight in this room, but for hundreds of hours over parts of five decades he was here. His spirit lingers yet with us. And for those of us who never knew Gary Phelps, please know from those of us who did that but for Gary, none of us would be here tonight. Way to go, Gary! May we when our time comes to go, leave such a monument to our time on this earth and such a joyous ache in the hearts of so many. Sandy Hader comes next to salute Garys staff. Sandy is a vice-president of the college and was a close friend of Garys. She does a masterful job of expressing how dear to us Gary was. I had planned next to address the assembled group with my notion of the importance we should attach to the evening. But the long table laden with food from ethnic roots in countries around the globe wafts its salivating aromas throughout the room. Eating is not first on our agenda tonight, but that enticing kitchenperfume permeating the room is elevating food to first place in many minds. Our printed program at every Reunion is followed in principle but never in fact. Surveying the room of salt, pepper, and ginger faces, I make an executive decision on the spot to delay my address. Short though it is, even the three minutes I plan is more time than we can wait. So moving clockwise around the room, we come in turn to the food table. While we get our food and sit with new friends to eat, those of us who have come with flute and drum and singing voice come to the mike to entertain. Dean and Patrick and Anne and Mom come with NativeAmerican and Bahai and American folk music. The next hour is given to food, fun and fellowship. Tate and Pierre both were students years ago at different times at William Jewell. They cant stay for the evening, but they drop by to greet me and wish us well. We were close when they were here. Those ties grow stronger as the
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years pass. When we seem to have satisfied our appetites for food, we move to the higher purpose that has called us from the far reaches of Greater Kansas City: those issues of the spirit and soul that gnaw continually at us in the hidden recess of our inner being. I stand now to deliver my address No More Noble Thing Could We Do Were we to live ten thousand years, nothing more noble than what we do here in this room on this night will ever be ours. The pages of human history have been forever stained by the Crusades, the Inquisition, the Holocaust and human slavery. Pogroms and genocide and bigotry and prejudice have come like plagues over vast sweeps of time to shrivel our souls, cloud our minds and turn us upon each other. The forces that would pull us apart and make us dislike and mistrust one another are legion. They clothe themselves in patriotic and religious vestments. They whisper to us in the jokes we tell about each other. They shout at us in headlines and legislative halls when national egos are bruised. They justify our mistreatment of others. They soothe our minds when questions of mercy and justice come upon us. In some parts of the world, even as we sit here, people are killing each other because they walk different roads to God. So let us take full note of the significance of our coming tonight to the Human Family Reunion on this little hilltop campus on this little piece of Gods good earth known as Greater Kansas City. If, indeed, Kansas City is to be greater, we in this room, and those whose hearts, minds and souls are kindred with us, will make it so. Red and Yellow, Black, Brown and White, Christian, Buddhist and Jew, Hindu, Bahai and Muslim, too. All are precious in our sight. We come tonight to affirm that we are one. Until we know one another, who is right is the wrong question. Once we know one another, we can discuss our differences without coming to blows or losing our temper. As a flower garden would lose its beauty if it held only roses, as we would all grow weak if we ate a single food, as our favorite person would eventually bore us if we knew no other, so does the vitality of our faith community depend upon the well being of all the others. None of our faith communities would be well served by the disappearance of another. If monopoly in the marketplace leads to higher prices and inferior products, can we not imagine equal disaster in our spiritual lives if any one faith lay sole claim to human longing. When his friends tell him that wickedness wears thick armor, Don Quixote replies, And for that you would have me surrender? Nay, the
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enchanter may confuse the outcome ten thousand times. Still must a man arise and again do battle, for the effort is sublime. Indeed it is. Let us now go back to our individual faith communities with calm assurance that what we do calls us all to higher ground and with the firm knowledge that we have allies in our common struggle to lift the spirit and save the soul. The Human Family Reunion endorses our differences and celebrates our diversity. We come together for an evening to show the Show Me State. To dispel fear. To enlarge friendship. To build community. To inspire and encourage. To lessen the chances of another crusades, another inquisition, another holocaust. To live above and beyond what heretofore has been our standard. Buck ONeil read of our Reunion in The Kansas City Star and called to say he would like to come. I had never met Buck, but I had long admired him and followed him in the papers as he was honored in many places and always inspired everyone with what he said in response. To know that he wanted to come to our Reunion gave me some of the feeling I had when as an adult I finally got to see Mickey Mantle play. The program was printed before I knew Buck would be with us, and I did not want to impose. But as we finished eating, I went to him to say, Mr. ONeil, we would be honored if you would say a few words to us. I would be delighted, he says. He comes to address us: I have been many places to many events, but none have ever made me feel better than to be here and to look out and see black faces and white faces and brown faces. Then Buck leads us in singing a song, the essence of which is nothing makes me feel better than loving you. As each honored faith community is called, their representative comes to speak a few words about their mission and their vision. We are collectively and individually informed and inspired as we listen. Midway through the naming of our honorees, we call Brother John to come. He has many times before performed one of his powerful narratives at a Human Family Reunion. Tonight, for the first time, he has taken our HateBusters Chant, Who You Gonna Call? and set it to the music from Ghostbusters He soon has us all clapping and responding when he shouts, Who you gonna call? We shout, HateBusters. Before Mom McFarlane comes, as she always does, to lead us in a rousing rendition of Pass It On, I announce a project we must do before we go. Fifteen black churches have recently gotten hate mail. Now we want to get ten thousand love letters to those churches. Paper and pens are now coming to your table. We will all write letters right now. Address them to LOVED CHURCHES. Say what you would like some226 W
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one to say to you if you had gotten a hate letter. Drop them in the box at the door as you leave. Then come at 1:30 PM on Saturday, April 28 to All Souls Unitarian Univeralist Church, 4500 Warwick in Kansas City where we will deliver all our letters to the churches. Then Mom has us standing and holding hands and swaying as she parades up and down throughout the room, giving hugs and singing. Then everything is over. We mill about and say our good-byes. Leaving is not easy. We dont want this feeling that has come over us to end. Knowing that we will take some small part of it with us gives us the strength to pull ourselves away. I always come away from the Human Family Reunion feeling invincible. Cloaked in the soul-force unleashed by all that has transpired, how could anyone feel otherwise. I invariably also come away with a regret or two. Tonight, I regret that I forgot to call Mohamed to the microphone. He is from Sierra Leone. We met a few weeks ago. We needed to hear from Mohamed. And I forgot to call him forward. Im sorry, my friend. Please forgive me. I regret too, that several of our regulars could not come tonight because they are not well. Some may not live much longer. And Ben survived the Holocaust. He came to our Reunion for years. Until the abuse he suffered those years ago finally killed him. So Ben Edelbaum is always on my mind when we come to reunion. Lets have the Reunion every year from now on at Jewell. Thats what Gary said when he invited us here this year. Id like that Gary. Thanks for asking. In Praise of Mel Carnahan My daughter, Debbie, and his daughter, Robin, were friends when they both were students at William Jewell College in the late 1970s. Robin was one of my students. When Robins brother, Tom, came to study at Jewell, he and I became biking buddies. Thus I came to know Mel and Jean Carnahan as parents of my students. When in the summer of 1987 I came to Jefferson City, enroute from Orlando to Seattle to Anaheim on my bicycle, I stopped for a pleasant hour to visit with Mel in his Lieutenant Governors office hidden somewhere deep in the bowels of a big building. Mel delighted in his job but longed for more to do. When that Klansman was elected to the Louisiana Legislature in 1988, my Jewell students and I started HateBusters so we could go there and help the state redeem itself. Mel helped us get invitations from governors all over the country to visit their capital cities. When President Clinton announced in the spring of 1997 that he would convene a White
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House Hate Crimes Conference that November, Governor Carnahan repeatedly petitioned the President on our behalf. Through Governor Carnahans good offices, HateBusters took a team of 27 to Washington for a five-day blitz in schools, churches and government offices. HateBusters wrote a statement condemning the cross burnings that took place in Greater Kansas City during the 1990s. We hoped that thousands would sign and we would send a powerful message. In addition to signing, Governor Carnahan sent a warm letter of support. I had gone to bed early Monday evening. My wife woke me. They just said on TV that Mel Carnahans plane crashed. Now its Wednesday morning. The papers and the television keep telling me that Mel is gone. We wont get to see what other noble contributions he might have made to our public life. We cant tell him how much we loved and admired him. His wife, children and grandchildren have had a gaping hole torn in their lives. The sudden and violent death of good people in powerful positions slaps us in the face with the fact that so much of life is beyond our control. Sadness and depression overwhelm us for a time. John, Bobby and Martin were cruelly taken from us. Now Mel is gone. We can never know how our lives together might have gone had they been longer with us. But death is part of life. We all know this. Until our own time comes to live in memory, we can hold hands and whistle as we move through lifes dark and dangerous alleys. Mel would be here to show us the way if he could. To its favorites, heaven grants an early death. Lord Byron might not have considered death at age 66 as early, but if he had known Mel Carnahan I think he might have. Having served for decades in state-wide elective offices, Mel was completing his second four-year term as Missouri governor. Riding a wave of popular approval, Mel was locked in a dead-heat for the U.S. Senate with another two-term governor and incumbent senator of the other party. Mels partisans blanketed Missouri in a full court press, hoping to send our champion to Washington where he might weave his quiet magic on the national stage. Enthusiasm was at a fever pitch. Our state was the focus of national attention. Then came heartbreak. On a dreary and drizzly Monday night, his plane went down. Mel was taken from us. His quest ended three weeks short of election day with a loss more final than any election defeat. Now we will never know if he would have won. Even if he had lost, Mel would have found some place of service useful to us and meaningful to him.
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In a more perfect world, Mel would have lived to receive the accolades that were his due for all the years of faithful service he gave to us. A public person of such quiet courage and rock solid integrity does not often come among us. We would have profited from a longer time with him. But being one of its favorites, heaven granted him an early death. Now he no longer walks through the valley of the shadow with us, but he leaves his spirit and his example to light our way. Heres to you, Mel Carnahan. We are better for having known you. High Noon Showdown with Midnight Hate You hope and pray and work with every ounce of energy you can muster and with laser-like intensity. Then the event you have been planning comes to pass. And the real thing is better by half than what you pictured as the optimum ideal. When it is over and you sit at your word processor to reduce it all to the printed page, you want to laugh and cry and shout and whisper all at the same time. Such a mountaintop experience the day has been that you fight a losing battle to bring yourself down again to those ordinary dimensions back in the box where we spend our days. Just eight days have passed since it all began. A small story on an inside page of The Kansas City Star about a church in Greater Kansas City that was the target of hate. Someone in the dark of night had spray painted racist messages and made hateful phone calls. The police were investigating and their phone number was given. I called that number and asked for the pastors number. The pastor was soon on the line, and the next day I was over to see him. Years ago when a Klansman was elected to the legislature in a neighboring state, my students and I had started HateBusters. The governor asked us to come help the state redeem itself. We went. We were soon invited to other states. We got so busy that I left my college to do HateBusters full time. The job we have taken for ourselves is to respond to acts of racial and religious hate and to get more publicity for the good guys than the bad guys got. So the pastor and I and several of his members made plans. We would respond in three days. The signs and the calls had come at night. We would answer at High Noon. One or two by night had brought the hate. Hundreds of us would come at noon. In the bright light of high noon we would stand in full view of each other and TV news. We would bless the church and let it be known that hate would not be tolerated in this good place where we all live. Hate comes almost always at night. Those who hate live in the moral
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swamps and crawl out in the dark to do their evil deeds when no one can see them. In the light of day, they would seem small and sorry even to themselves. In the dark, their rough edges and crude manners appear less obvious, and they work up a false courage. Courage enough to strike while no one is looking and everyone is more vulnerable. By the bright light of high noon, when no shadow is about, their beliefs and behaviors stand exposed as the worst examples of what human beings are capable. Those who love darkness and whose minds are clouded will lead us to destruction if we let them. HateBusters come at HIGH NOON to say to those who hate that when all can see clearly, their beliefs and behaviors stand exposed as mean and ugly and repudiated by all people of good will. THE HIGH NOON BLESSING CEREMONY FOR A CHURCH UNDER ATTACK. This is the name we gave to our campaign to aid this good church. Every faith community in Greater Kansas City would be enlisted as a supporter. We would rendezvous at a central place in Kansas City and caravan the 50 miles to the church. Cars would join us in towns along the way. Television and radio news and The Kansas City Star would come and carry word of our ceremony to the far reaches of Greater Kansas City. Many people would come. This is the picture I saw in my mind the day the pastor and I met to make our plans. We have three days to make it all happen. I fire off email to all the television news departments. To the Star. To Bahais, Buddhists, Christians, Jews, Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs. To hundreds of people who have joined with HateBusters before when others were objects of hate. The day comes. Rain was forecast. But bright sun appears. A sendoff ceremony at Central Baptist Seminary comes at 10:15. The caravan is to leave at 10:30. On cue, cars and drivers and passengers appear. TV sound trucks and cameras. Interviews. Speeches. Prayers. STOP HATE CRIMES: We tape these signs to our cars, turn on our headlights and proceed to the interstate. At 50 miles per hour, we come to Liberty precisely as scheduled at 11:00 and are joined by Pastor Steve Graham and folks in the Second Baptist Church van as we pass the Blue Light Station on Highway 69. We wind our way through Excelsior Springs on Highway 10 and come to the New Life Family Church in Richmond at 11:45. We had planned for a big crowd, and as cars arrive they are directed to a nearby park. Precisely at high noon I come to the mike. Welcome, my friends. Thank you for coming. We are here because a church in our town was targeted by hate. People of all faiths have come from all parts of Greater Kansas City to offer their blessings to the pastor and people of this church. Many are here in person; others, in spirit. Over the past
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few days I have gotten email blessings for the church from Bahais, other Christians, Buddhists, Hindus, Jews, Muslims and Sikhs. Some are also here today in person and will come to speak their blessing. Though we differ in our approach to God, we stand together when one of us is targeted by hate. When it happens to anyone of us, it happens to all of us. United we stand. Or divided we fall. Our large crowd has small children and those who have lived long. Black, brown and white in color, suits to shorts in dress, sitting at picnic tables, on benches and folding chairs, under the roof and spilling into the grass and the sunwe are in a festive and serious mood. Galvanized to action by hate loosed in our midst, strangers to one another except for our common purpose, we are focused as a laser on those nighttime indignities that have insulted our community. Not in our town! This is the message we have come to deliver. For the next 90 minutes a parade of speakers come to the mike to express their sorrow, their support and their commitment. The mayor of the town. The Police Chief. An official from the Department of Justice. Someone from the Governors office. Another from the Human Relations Department of Kansas City. Ministers from many churches and other towns. People of other faiths. I take special pride when my pastor comes to the mike to offer his support. Steve came not many months ago from Oklahoma and was unanimously elected as our pastor He drove the church van here today to help us put down hate. We sing: We shall overcome. Deep in my heart, I do believe. We shall overcome someday. As we prepare to leave, we all feel, Im sure, that what we have just done and what we will do in the near future because we have been here will cause us to overcome sooner rather than later. Just before we go our way, Mom comes to sing. Maxine McFarlane is her name, but everybody calls her Mom. Or Queen Mother. She has gone with HateBusters into schools and churches to teach people how to like people who are not like them. And to prayer vigils for victims of cross burnings and to Human Family Reunions. Whatever the place or the reason for coming, Mom brings it all to a rousing climax as she has us all standing and swaying and singing. It only takes a spark to get a fire going, and all those around warm up to its glowing. Thats how it is with Gods love, once you experience it, you want to pass it on. As we make our way to the car, the sky is turning dark. Angry thunderclouds roil the sky. The brilliant sun of high noon shone on us. Now the sky reminds us that we go our separate ways back into our scattered communities and different faiths. Conditions have conspired to give us a chance to be heroes. We have seized the day. We have amazed ourselves
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and inspired others. The hundreds of us here today in person and the thousands of others here in spirit have risen to the occasion and saved the day. To the bitter aftertaste of midnight hate, we have delivered the high noon antidote: hope and help have overcome hate and hurt. For years on end when my children were small, my wife and I would camp with them across America. These years later at family gatherings, they all remind me that as I drove, I would sing, under my breath and off key, these words from High Noon, that 1950s black and white western that sticks still in my mind. I do not know what fate awaits me, I only know I must be brave. And I must face a man who hates me. Or lie a coward, a craven coward. Or lie a coward in my grave. Life as a coward is no life at all. Cowards die many times. The brave die but once. It is the morning after our High Noon Showdown with Midnight Hate. News of our event has been shown on all four Greater Kansas City television stations that have news departments. First at noon as our caravan was en route to Richmond. Then at six and ten oclock. And again this morning: 12 times in all. A friend who listens to a station that carries farm news calls to say he heard our ceremony on the radio. Im proud of you, he says. Under the caption, Taking a stand The Kansas City Star this morning carries a full color picture of Mom in the middle of page one of the Metropolitan section, standing in her bright yellow dress, one hand held high, the other cradling a microphone, as she leads us in song. Im proud of all of us. The good guys won this time. The next time hate appears we will have this experience to motivate us, and we will be even faster on the draw. Dumb Things and a Good Life If you can do a dumb thing, so can I. So saying, Bobbie quit her job in May 1987, just days after I set off on my cross-country bike ride. Seventeen years by then she had taught in the public schools of Liberty. I had told her often during that time that her teaching second grade was more important than my teaching college. If they dont learn what you teach, they wont make it in life, I told her. They will be okay if they never know what I teach. Bobbie had stayed home with the kids until they were all in school. By the time they all three graduated from William Jewell in the mid1980s, the five of us had spent good times together in our modest home on the corner of two dead end streets. Our neighbors had become family. Bobbie and I made a deliberate decision not to move from this house
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where our children had grown up. Bobbies family had moved to another town before her senior year in high school. Mine moved just after my senior year. So when we would take our children to visit our families we did not go to the towns where we grew up. We would go at Christmas and in the summer but seldom at other times. If by going to see our parents we also revisited the places and people of our childhood, Bobbie and I thought we would go home more often. So we decided not only to stay in the same town but in the same house. We thought that Debbie and Dave and Brian would come home to visit more often. Dave went away to Drury in Springfield for his freshman year before coming back for his last three years at Jewell. Debbie and Brian spent all four years at Jewell. After graduation Dave took a job with Hallmark and never left the area. Debbie moved to North Dakota and then to Georgia and was away for 14 years before coming to join the Jewell faculty. Brian moved to Florida and was gone for four years before moving back. Some of the friends we worked with and shared community with have packed up and moved away now that their children are grown and gone. Neither they nor their children any longer are tied to this little piece of Gods good earth. And if that is what they intended, then I am happy for them. My secret fear, though, is that in searching for sunny places they may have cut the tie that binds. Other friends tell me they have downsized, meaning that they have moved from the place where their children grew up to a smaller place. Apparently, though, downsizing space involves upsizing cost, since this smaller place almost always costs more money than the larger one. This seems a strange bargain: you pay more money and have less contact with your children and with long time friends. This old house where my children grew up and friends and family have come for parties and weddings and dinners and games is precious beyond price to me. I find it hard even to part with chairs where deceased loved ones have sat. If I am dumb to hold onto a piece of real estate because it has housed my life and those I love, I offer no defense. This is the life I have chosen. And if I could, I would not change a thing. Visiting Area Neighbors Several times each fall and spring I park the college van in front of the red phone booth as the campus begins to stir about for a new day. By eight oclock three or four students have climbed aboard and we are on our way to nearby churches and shopping centers to pick up additional passengers until we have our full compliment of 14. Before the day is
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over, we will visit the Hindu Temple, the Sikh Gudwara and a Muslim Masjid. All of us in the van are Christian. What prompts our journey this day to these other faith communities? We will spend ninety-minutes in each place. Our purpose is to forge friendships across religious lines. Who is right will not be the question we ask. How are we all as people of faith like each other and how can we become neighbors in this big city where we all live? This will be the question to which we seek answers. The 14 of us who visit will meet several believers in each place. The names, addresses, phone numbers and emails for those who visit and those who host will all be gathered into a master list, and the list will then be given to all participants, so that we may become a web of contacts between faith groups, serving in times of tension as sources of first-hand and trusted information and in tranquil times as easy and cordial avenues of news and views and occasional visits. My mother took me to church when I was younger than I ever remember being. But I have never forgotten those feelings that stirred in me each time I entered a church. Something beyond my understanding. Something irresistibly calling to me. Something heroic and bold and bigger than life. Something loving and listening. Peace, power, purpose and joy were here in this place. I came often, never able to satisfy my unspeakable, bottomless need to be bathed in these healing and cleansing ideals and ideas that fed my soul. As I grew older and moved about in the world, I would meet people from other churches and other faiths. Something I felt in their presence caused me to want to go and visit the places where they worship. And when I did, I would feel stirrings like those I remember from when my mother took me to church. Having now achieved senior status, I find I have more in common and feel more at home with people of faithany faiththan with those who have none. Because my own faith has changed my life and is precious to me, I intuitively understand and feel kinship with all people of faith. I entered the household of faith through the Christian door. Now inside the house, however, I find others who have come through other doors. We each speak the language of our native faith. Our hearts and souls are filled with the words and wisdom from our separate sacred writings. Our differences seem as obvious as neon in the night. But so to the unaided eye does the earth seem flat. Early travelers were daring souls who first ventured beyond the horizon, having been warned that they would fall off the edge of the earth. But when they came to that far place, rather than their abrupt demise in some bottom234 W
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less abyss, they found only more of the same. In all directions, as far as they could seemore ocean. Then new lands. And people they had never known. So for us as we travel around Greater Kansas City, zipping between peoples of faith we do not know and perhaps even fear. Short distances apart by super highways, we have in our minds lived on different planets. Now at warp speed this day we have come together. My fondest hope and dearest dream is that having ventured beyond our faith horizon, we find more faith. And new people to love. Dr. Ali answers Our Questions At ease with his audience and in command of his subject, Dr. Abdalla Ali answers every question. Ten of us have come today in our William Jewell College van from across Greater Kansas City to visit The Center for Islamic Education in North America on Grandview Road, not far from I-435 and Bannister Mall. Tanweer Papa directs the Center and has arranged for Dr. Ali to talk with us. Dave and Jo Fulton live in Kearney and attend Arley United Methodist Church. Ken ForoughiGross lives in Kansas City, Kansas and belongs to the Bahai faith. Marilyn Peot is a Catholic Sister and lives in Kansas City, Missouri. Bob and Reta Smith live in Liberty and go to the Liberty Christian Church. Anton Jacobs lives in Kansas City, Missouri and is a United Church of Christ minister. I live in Liberty and belong to Second Baptist Church. Jessica Schultz and LeAnn Kerby are Jewell students. We began our morning at 9 AM at Your Diner, operated by the United Nation of Islam, where Brother Mahmud talks to us over coffee and rolls. He grew up in the church here in Greater Kansas City and found meaning for his life in its teachings. Drawn later to the United Nation of Islam by its transforming work in African American inner city communities, he now volunteers all his time as Assistant National Secretary of UNOI. Pimps, prostitutes and pushers owned the 18th and Quindaro neighborhood of Kansas City, Kansas several years ago. Then the UNOI picked it as the site for their national demonstration project. On that corner now stand a bakery and a restaurant; down the street, a grocery store, a service station and a school. All owned and operated by UNOI. No additives at the bakery, natural foods at the restaurant, groceries are healthful and inexpensive, the service station is full service, and senior citizens are safe in the streets. UNOI members are drawn from across the country to come as full time volunteers to learn the skills needed to make this all work. Brother Mahmud gives daily and loving guidance to this redeeming work.
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Now we have come at 10:30 by I-670 and the recently opened Bruce Watkins Expressway (Highway 71) to listen as Dr. Ali weaves his spell. Ive had some wonderful teachers, some Dr. Alis equal. None better. I could talk faster if I didnt think in Arabic and have to translate everything into English, he says to us after we have talked for an hour. Dr. Ali takes the questions I have prepared as a guide, and he cannot go until he has answered everyone. So much information illustrated with perfect examples! At the end of two hours when we break so Dr. Ali can go to noon prayers, I say to the group, If he could talk faster. . . . And everyone laughs. Dr. Ali answered all of these questions. What does Islam teach? What are the fundamental beliefs of Islam? How and when do Muslims worship? Do Muslims disagree with one another about how the faith is to be practiced? What does Islam teach about suicide? How does Islam view Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism and other faiths? How do Muslims view the events of 9-11? Since 9-11 how have Muslims in Kansas City been treated by people in other faith communities? Is democracy compatible with Islam? Can all the faiths live together in peace in America? In the world? What is the vision of Islam for America? For the world? Should government be neutral on matters of religion? How should people of different faiths in Greater Kansas City relate to one another? If you kill one person, you kill humanity. If your neighbor fears you, you are not a person of the faith. We can all live together in peace. Events of 9-11 have caused great harm to Muslims. It will take us many years to repair the damage. American Muslims must go to Muslims in other countries and tell them that America is a good country. Here everyone can worship as they choose. Dr. Ali said much more. Everyone should know him. He was born in The Sudan and educated in Canada, where he is now a citizen. He travels the world, doing for people everywhere what he is doing for us today. Dr. Ali takes us across the street to the Islamic School of Greater Kansas City and introduces us to everybody he sees. The school has 240 children in grades one through eight. We arrive in time to witness their noon day prayers. Afterward they have prepared a special lunch and dessert for us in the library. As we eat, Dr. Ali tells us about the school. His wife is the librarian and he knows it well. Dr. Ali has been so generous with his time that we are running late with the schedule he has prepared for us. He thinks the folks at the mosque will be gone, but its only ten minutes away, he says. At least you can see it. Anton goes with him in his car; the rest of us follow in the
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van. We have time to remove our shoes and pop inside the door for a hurried look before jumping on I-470 to Highway 71. By three oclock we are back to the United Nation of Islam. Brother Mahmud has prepared a handout of materials for each of us. Brother Brian climbs into the front seat beside me and leads us on a tour of the housing they have restored and the businesses they have started. Brian grew up in Chicago as a member of the Catholic Church. His family lived just a few blocks from the headquarters of Elijah Muhhamed, the spiritual leader of the Nation of Islam. Brian witnessed the power of the Nation of Islam to feed, house and educate the people. Leaving a good job on the west coast, Brian brought his family to Kansas City three years ago, where they now all serve as full time volunteers for the United Nation of Islam. His children go to the UNOI school. Brother Brian gives tours of the community to visiting groups. He and Brother Mahmud have just returned from Atlanta and their national conference where other UNOI communities came to compare notes and lay plans. Promptly on schedule at 5 pm we are back to William Jewell where we picked up passengers at 7:30 this morning. Strangers when we met just a few hours ago, we are now part of each others lives and the lives of those we met. Spring Time for the Spirit The first day of spring has come as it should. Early morning clouds give way to soft sunlight. The wind gentles during the day to a warm breeze. First buds on flowering trees announce themselves in baby pink. Great expectations dance in all our minds as the 12 of us gather in Gene and Pat Coles living room, just a few blocks from Metro North Shopping Center. Sister Marilyn Peot has brought 10 other members of St. Charles Parish: Diane and Greg Smith, Mike and Joyce Rauth-Fears, Sister Aline Mohrhaus, Norbert and Shirley Duello and Glenna Carrol. I will be their driver. Promptly at 8:30 on this glorious morning we board our William Jewell College van. Fewer than 70 miles we will travel. By 6 PM we will return. But, oh, the wondrous day we will have. First stop, the home of Vern Barnet. Vern is Founder and Director of CRES (Center for Religious Experience and Study), a student and teacher of world religions, a passionate seeker of all that is sacred and all that would enrich our lives together. For half-an-hour in his living room, Vern shares his vision with us. Then Vern comes with us in our Van. All day he will share with us from his vast and compassionate knowledge of every faith as we make our way about Greater Kansas City to four faith communities that are at home here.
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The Hindu Temple at 6301 Lackman Road in Shawnee is our second stop. Kris Krishna is our host. After we remove our shoes, Kris ushers us downstairs where Sudha Bathina has prepared a short lecture and overhead transparences on the basics of Hunduism. She answers questions that we have. Members of the Temple have prepared refreshments for us before we go upstairs for a tour of the Temple sanctuary and an explanation of the statuary on display. Their priest describes for us the process by which one becomes a priest. Anand Bhattacharyya and his wife Dipti are long-time HateBusters supporters and members of the Temple. They have just returned from a three-month visit to India. Anand is a retired engineer. He also is here today to welcome us and share his knowledge. At noon we come to the Sikh Gudwara (Temple) at 6834 Pflumm Road in Shawnee, just a short drive from the Hindu Temple. The parking lot is full when we arrive, and people are entering the building. Women and girls wear flowing dresses in all colors of the rainbow. Men and boys wear suits and turbans on their heads. Charanjit Hundal is our host and meets us at the door. We have arrived just in time for a wedding. We take off our shoes, tie a scarf on our head and enter. Women are seated on the carpeted floor to our left; men to our right. The room is full already, but space is made for us to join the other guests. The ceremony and the songs are all in Punjabi. Those near us do not understand the language, but they know whats happening. They whisper to some of us so we will know. After an hour, we adjourn downstairs for a delicious vegetarian Indian meal. The aromas and the spices give an Eastern ambiance. We get our meals and take our places on the floor with beautiful food before us. Charanjit explains that chairs and tables are not used in the gudwara. Sitting on the floor, we are all equal. No one is elevated above another. The children made it through the mandated quiet of the wedding. Now their exuberant noises and movement make it hard to hear Charanjit as he explains Sikhism to us. Pat is seated next to him. She hears it all and gives us a near literal recitation when we get to the van and before we leave the parking lot. Its one-thirty when we leave. Across Greater Kansas City on Shawnee Mission Parkway, we skirt Country Club Plaza on the south and come to Wornall Road. A left turn brings us three blocks later to 47th Street (AKA Brush Creek and Emanuel Cleaver Blvd.), where we turn right and over to Troost Avenue. Another left and we are quickly at Al-Inshirah Masjid (Mosque), just in time for our two oclock appointment. Imam (minister) Bilial Muhammed is our host.
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We remove our shoes just inside the door and enter the place of worship. Bilial has invited some of his members to join us: Majeeda and Aasim Baheyadeen, Shaeer Akhtab, Robert Rashad, Abdus Sabir Taalib Din Muhammed and Zarrieff Osman. We all seat ourselves in a circle. Others join us as the imam and his members explain Islamic belief and practices to us. As we conclude our discussion and answer period, the men form a line and demonstrate for us the method and meaning of their required daily prayers. In an adjoining room, the women have prepared refreshments for us, giving us all a few minutes for talk of ordinary things that neighbors might discuss. Then Vern arranges us for another of the photographs he has taken at every stop. Photographs that will appear in the next edition of the CRES newsletter. Lama Chuck Stanford has just day before yesterday returned from several weeks study in India. Jetlag is still a problem. I had thought we could not visit the Rime Buddhist Center in his absence. I had instead asked Vern to take us on a quick tour of the Nelson-Atkins religious art, a tour he regularly gives. But Vern and Chuck are good friends. They have arranged for Matt Rice, Chairman of the Board at the Rime Buddhist Center, to meet us there at four oclock for a tour and discussion. Rime Buddhist Center is located just off I-35 near the 20th Street exit in a former church building. There are several schools of Buddhism. The word Rime, pronounced ree-may, indicates that this center does not follow any particular school but is inclusive of them all. Matt leads us through the building, stopping to explain the significance of every object. He invites us to come again at any time to learn more. By six oclock we are parked again in the Coles driveway, back where we started nine and one-half hours ago. Its likely that never in our lives have we spent a day immersed in religious thought so seemingly different yet so fundamentally similar. Asking in various ways a similar questionWhat does God require of me and how should I live? these faiths have arrived at answers that seem so different. I am reminded when I think of these obvious differences that to the unaided eye the earth seems flat. All day I have reminded those who travel with me and those we visit that our purpose is to form friendships with people of other faiths. If we know by name people of other faiths we can serve as bridges when troubled waters flow between us. When rumors fly that demean a faith, we can come to our friends for facts we trust. By being friends across faith lines we can help all our faiths not simply to endure one another but to endorse each other.
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As monopoly is bad for an economy so also is it bad for a religious faith. In economics monopoly leads always to higher prices for inferior products. With no competition there is no incentive to improve the product and no reason not to raise the price. The same is true in the religious arena. Any one of the worlds religions if given unquestioned authority would produce an inferior product at too great a price. Religious diversity is essential if the full range of human spiritual needs is to be fully satisfied. A free spiritual marketplace benefits each individual faith and should, therefore, be endorsed by followers of every faith. My chosen profession is Ambassador to Other Communities of Faith. I am a Christian. A Baptist. I am a faithful member of my local church. Because my faith is precious to me, I want to meet and know people of other faiths. I want to visit with them and become a friend. I do not want to join them or to change them. I want us all to be ourselves and encourage one another in our faiths. I invite others to join me in this effort. They Come to Union How fitting that they come from Union. For they also have come to Union. The Union they come from is their small town. The union they come to is spiritual. From Zion United Church of Christ they have ridden four hours in their church van when the 12 of them pile out to meet me. No sooner are they here than their hosts for the night begin to arrive. Sarah and Scott Sullentrup have shepherded their 10 high school charges from their town of seven thousand to the Kansas City metro of some one and a half million. We gather in the lobby of the Adams Mark Hotel across I-70 from Royals Stadium promptly as planned at 1 PM. The Royals play the Mets at 2:15, and I hand them all their tickets. Animesh Dharr, his wife Minati and their 12-year old son are here to attend the game with us. After the game, the Animesh family will take Jenna Klenke and Megan Weida to the home of Ananda and Dipti Bhattachhyya for the night. Dr. Animesh teaches in the UMKC medical school. Ananda Bhattachyya is a retired civil engineer and active philanthropist. Both families are Hindu. Ron and Julie Altman, and sons Doug and Jordy have come to meet Todd Borgmann and Alex Heeger and go to the game together. When I sent out a request for Jewish hosts, the Altmans responded immediately. Alice Jacks and David Achtenberg and their daughters are going to the game with Coleen Burns, Elizabeth Stafford and Jamie Kuehnle. Alice is the daughter of Bronia Roslawowski, a holocaust survivor. For years I have taken students to sit at her feet and hear her story. Now
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Coleen, Elizabeth and Jamie will hear her story. Rushdy El Ghussein comes after the game to collect John Schunemeyer and Jeff Kuehnle and take them home to meet his wife, Jean. Rushdys column in the Kansas City Star explains how Muslims view spiritual questions. Charanjit Hundal meets us after the game back at the Adams Mark to pick up Preston Burns and Scott Sullentrup and take them home to meet his wife, Satinder, and their four daughters. Before they all rejoin the rest of us tomorrow afternoon at three oclock, they will attend services at the Sikh Gudwara and dine on Indian food. Zulfi Malik and his son, Farhan, have come to attend the game with James Browning and his son, Geoff. Geoff and his brother, Thomas, were to spend the night with Zulfi and his family, but Thomas got sick and Geoff has to work. James is Pastor of Englewood Baptist Church in Gladstone and adjunct professor of World Religions at Central Baptist Seminary. James wanted his sons to have an opportunity to be hosted by a Muslim family, and Zulfi was eager to have them. Day Lane is Youth Director at Englewood Baptist and has come for the game. Day was a student in the first Come let Me Teach You To Love the City class I taught at Central Baptist Seminary. Day graduated a couple of years ago. She is one of best students I ever had, and with her winsome ways and zeal for life, Day has recruited subsequent Central students for my class. The Englewood youth she had lined up for this joint venture with Zion were all unable at the last minute to take part. But Day is here, and except for Skies Monday evening, she is here for everything. She falls in love with the Zion Youth and becomes an integral part of all that we do. Sarah Sullentrup is our guest for the night. Bobbie has dinner ready when we arrive. After dinner the three of us drive to campus and find the rooms the youth will occupy Sunday and Monday nights. Bobbie then gives Sarah a tour of the Jewell campus. Back home we trade stories of various mission trips we all have led. During the night another spring storm rakes the metro. Torrential rains and violent winds plunge scattered communities into darkness, giving us all exciting stories to tell when we reassemble. With a loud boom our transformer blew and Bobbie brought out the candles. At three oclock on Sunday afternoon we all rendezvous at the Jesuit Volunteer house adjacent to the campus of Rockhurst University. We all gather in their living room to hear the personal stories of these six recent college graduates who are living for a year in voluntary poverty and working as volunteers in local agencies addressing basic needs.
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Brian and Jen Starks are spending their first year as a married couple in voluntary poverty, living simply and lending their talents to the neediest among us, Brian at Legal Aid and Jen at Friendship House and Catherines Place. Ken Mortimer works for St. Francis Xavier Parish Social Ministries. Patrick Weber for Associated Youth Services. Bethany Paul for Kansas City Free Health Clinic. And Justin Zuiker for Community Linc. Their personal stories are compelling and inspiring and elicit many questions and comments. Their year together ends on July 31, and they will scatter to grad schools, good works and lives rich beyond monetary measure as, in years to come, they look back on this year as their new birth. The third floor of Browning Hall at William Jewell College is our home Sunday and Monday nights, courtesy of my church and my college. I left William Jewell in 1995 to devote all my time to HateBusters. Andy Pratt was one of my students. Andy is now Dean of the Chapel and Vice-President for Religious Affairs at the college. Andy and Mike Lassiter, Youth Director at Second Baptist, worked it out for us to spend two nights at the college, and the college and church together would pick up the tab. We are up early both mornings. By 7:30 Monday morning we are at Holy Family House on 31st Street for breakfast with the homeless and so Brother Louis can show us his slides and deliver his always passionate description of the work he has been doing here for more than 20 years. So charismatic is Louis in feeding the homeless morning and night that volunteers have to get on a waiting list. City Union Mission has taken in the homeless in Kansas City for more than 70 years. Today CUM has several locations. The Family Center occupies an old school at 13th and Wabash, just off I-70 on the east side of Kansas City. Angie Torres takes us on a 9 AM tour of the building while she tells us about the families they take in. Reverend Wallace Hartsfield was a leader in the effort to integrate public accommodations when I came to Kansas City as a graduate student in 1964. His efforts to make our city a good place for all people have not slowed. He is known, respected and influential across the wide reaches of Greater Kansas City and throughout our nation. My good fortune in becoming his friend early in my time here is a major reason that I could not follow my original plan to stay only a year until I got my PhD and returned to Texas. At 10:30 we are all seated around a table at Metropolitan Missionary Baptist Church to hear Rev. Hartsfield share his vision of how the church impacts our life together here on this little piece of Gods good earth.
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High Noon finds us at Harmony, where Janet Moss and Joel Wakham have pizza waiting. And while we eat, Janet and Joel tell about the work Harmony does to bring people of Greater Kansas City together across racial and religious lines. Janet and Joel recently returned from South Africa, where they were invited to tell about the work Janet does to partner black and white church congregations. The Christian Foundation for Children and Aging occupies a huge warehouse on Kansas Citys west side. The building had been abandoned for several years when the CFCA bought it and began their work. With a current staff of 107 and a budget of more than sixty million dollars a year, CFCA helps to educate thousands of children in poor countries and helps senior citizens in these countries. Michael Calabria is the chief financial officer for CFCA, my bike riding buddy and a major planner of our annual Greater Liberty Bicycle Ride for MS. During our tour of the building under Michaels direction we spend long minutes looking at pictures of the children available for sponsorship. Coleen later gives me $20 for the first month sponsorship of a child and the name of the child she has chosen. I promise to get it to Michael. During the 19 years Jerry Schecter has been director of Westside Housing Organization, this Mexican-American community has become a vibrant and vital mix of little shops and nice homes, attracting visitors and new residents alike. Jerry meets us at 4 PM at their comfortable new office and for an hour describes how this community has been transformed. Skies is a revolving restaurant on the 42nd floor of the Hyatt Hotel. From breakfast with the homeless to dinner atop the city. I doubt anyone has done this before us. Such a stark contrast in places so close together. Each is in sight of the other but worlds apart in every possible way. How to reconcile the two will occupy our minds in unexpected ways for years to come. Streak lightning pierces the sky as we dine. Then comes a brilliant rainbow stretching to the ground and melting into the clouds. Promising punctuation at the end of a day unlike any other in young lives. Were up even earlier Tuesday morning. Ominous clouds roil the skies as everybody lugs their luggage to the van. Breakfast is scheduled for 7 AM at the Corner Restaurant in Westport, some 40 minutes away in rush hour traffic. And when our day ends at 7 PM with our Human Family Reunion at Moms church in Raytown, Scott will head the van east on I-70 toward home. Vern Barnet and Anton Jacobs meet us for breakfast. Anton and I
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taught together at William Jewell and both left in 1995; he to pastor a UCC church and me to head HateBusters. Vern was a Greater Kansas City minister when he founded the Center for Religious Experience and Study (CRES) in 1984. Both Anton and Vern make major contributions to religious understanding through their writing and teaching. Bill Tammeus has been with the Kansas City Star for 30 years. Among his many contributions to the paper is his recently begun column on religion that appears every Saturday. Bill helps his readers to understand how the various faiths found in Greater Kansas City relate to each other and how they might together lead us or separately turn us against one another. Bill is waiting when we arrive to visit with him at 9 AM. Al Brooks has been a policeman, a student activist, a city official, a charismatic crusader for justice and now a member of the City Council and mayor pro tem of Kansas City. We met the week I came to Kansas in 1964. Weve been friends ever since. Al knows everybody and has made many things happen for my students and me. We come to his office at 10:30, and for 90 minutes Al gives us a passionate and informed analysis of life in the central city. Over a Gates BBQ lunch, we sit around the table and chew on tough questions of race relations, public education, poverty, teenage pregnancy and the obligation of people of faith. The Kansas City office of the National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence is just a block from the home of Anton and Jean Jacobs, and on days when Jean has no meetings in other places, she can walk to her job as Executive Director. Anton takes time from his crowded schedule as pastor and teacher and board member of the Jackson County Historical Society and CRES to serve as voluntary librarian for Jeans organization. Jean and Anton are here to greet us when we arrive at the National Council at 2 PM. I have asked them both to tell these young folks just who they are, how they see the world and how they came to be where they are and doing what they are doing. Barker Temple at 17th and Highland was Moms church when I first met her. Downtown development took the church as a historic site, and the membership moved to Raytown into a vacant church. Now called Barker Memorial Cathedral of Praise, the church has more room and a new pastor. And we still have Human Family Reunions here. At 4:30 today we arrive for a special one, just for our Union guests. I call her Mom. Most people call her Queen Mother. Her name is Maxine McFarlane. She is a fixture at all Human Family Reunions, ending every one with her trademark rendition of Pass It On and putting us all in a jubilant frame of mind as we part. After I have explained HateBusters and given out membership cards and Brother John
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Anderson has led us in our theme song and everyone in the place has stood to give testimony, Mom comes. With her scene-stealing presence and her super-sized personality, Mom lights up the room and puts us all in the mood to Pass It On. This mysterious magic that has stretched our souls, enriched our minds and touched our hearts is not a thing we ever would want to keep to ourselves. Let it never be forgot that once there was a spot for one brief shining moment known as Camelot. Our Camelot has been Greater Kansas City. It lasted four days. In memory it goes with us forever. Sarah and Scott Sullentrup were high school sweethearts. They live with their three children amidst parents and grandparents, brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, cousins, nephews and nieces and as active members of their church in a small town. Every summer for years they have taken their church youth on a mission trip. Sarah called me months ago to ask about coming to Kansas City. By email and phone we worked out the four days just ended. Always before with hammers and shovels and sweat they have built physical things they could see and touch. This time we built spiritual and social bridges linking religious and racial communities. Across these bridges in years to come amazing journeys we cannot now even imagine may seem routine. But without the bridges built these four days, none of these future events could ever occur. Bless us everyone. We have been building bridges to that place described in the Shaker hymn, Simple Gifts, as the valley of peace and delight. Dr. Chasteen Again at Jewell Ed Haskell was a missile control officer at Air Base in North Dakota. He lived in the same apartment building where Debbie moved when she went to teach at the University of North Dakota. They were engaged before Bobbie and I ever met him. But we loved him even before we met him. Thats how wonderful Debbie made him sound. And Debbie had a long history of making good choices. The brutal winters in North Dakota reminded Ed of his childhood in New York, so he found an Air Base in Georgia and Debbie found a teaching position. They moved to Macon. Bobbie and I would go there in the summer. They would come home at Christmas. Soon after returning to Macon one January they called to say they were flying to China to adopt a little girl. So came four month old Laura into our lives. Then when Laura was five and they had just returned to Macon from their Christmas visit, Debbie called to say that she was flying back to Liberty to interview for a position on the Communication faculty at
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Jewell. Ed had taken early out a year or so earlier when the Air Force was downsizing and was now self employed as an investment counselor, and they had been talking about moving to this area if Debbie could find a job at an area college. On her secretarys desk one day Debbie chanced to see a copy of the Chronicle of Higher Education. She had looked at other copies many times. Today as she glanced down she saw a position advertised at William Jewell, for exactly the courses she teaches. She called Kim Harris, Chair of the Communication Department. Kim said that interviews had been concluded and applicants were about to be interviewed. He said he would look at her papers if she could fax them overnight. She did. Kim called and asked her to come for an interview. Thats when Debbie called us. She would fly in on Monday. Stay with us that night. Interview all day Tuesday and fly home that night. As Bobbie and I drove home from the airport after dropping Debbie off, we debated Debbies chances of getting the job. We wanted it to happen so much that we tried to think of every reason it would not. We were afraid to hope, lest we be crushed when it didnt happen. We went to bed. Sleep came hard. Too many possibilities to entertain. Too much to hope for. Our phone rang early the next morning. Kim just called, Debbie said. I got the job! I couldnt talk. What had I done to deserve such good fortune? Whatever might happen in my future, I could never feel sorry for myself. All three of my children, my son-in-law and my grand daughter I could see regularly. For no special reason. Little Laura described perfectly what I was feeling when she was with Bobbie one day a few weeks after they had moved to Liberty. She and Bobbie had not finished the project they were working on when Laura had to leave and go to her house just two miles away across town. Bobbie was a little perplexed that they had not finished. Thats okay, Nana, Ill be here forever, Laura said. Another gem had come from Laura two years before when they were home for Christmas, She and I were playing Legos in the living room. The whole family was sitting nearby, looking on. We had been building things for some time when Laura looked up at me and said I love you, Papa. Youre so precious. No honor ever bestowed meant more. I remind everyone often how perceptive Laura is. Other children of Jewell faculty have come to teach at Jewell. Kim Harris himself, for example. His dad, Doug, taught religion at Jewell. I think, though, that Debbie is the only faculty child to grow up in Liberty, graduate from Liberty High School and from Jewell and then join the William Jewell faculty. Doug Harris had come to Jewell after his children were grown, and Kim came to Liberty and to Jewell as an adult.
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A Tribute To Earl Whaley The only humble Texans I ever met. Thats how Earl introduced Bobbies parents the first time they came to see us and we took them to church. In addition to being my colleague in the Sociology Department, Earl was my pastor. We bought a house just one block from South Liberty Baptist Church, where Earl was pastor and we were members. We would all walk to church. Our dog, Casper, would wait by the church door. While Bobbie and I lingered to talk after church, the kids and Casper would run home. Earl was punctual and always ended services promptly at noon. Early on our family had staked out a pew on the right hand side three rows from the front. One Sunday when a visiting preacher went overtime, eight-year old Brian asked in a loud and pleading voice, Doesnt he know we quit at 12? To end the morning service, Earl almost always had us sing Blest Be the Tie and form a giant circle ringing the sanctuary. When another visiting preacher did not do this, Brian shouted out, What happened to the Baptist National Anthem? Of all the good things that came into my life when I took a job at William Jewell College in 1965, one of the most memorable and precious was Earl Whaley. In the ensuing years Earl has been my boss, my pastor, my dear friend. And my bridge partner. Earl is always upbeat, always in a hurry, always thinking of something new and different. His home is the world. Earl loves everybody. Ive never heard him say an unkind word about anyone. Sometimes I have thought he should, but he didnt. I have seen him hurt, but he would never retaliate. Always he would go to the one who wronged him for a one on one, face to face talking out of the problem. Never in writing would he do such a thing. Letters last and take uncertain journeys. Spoken words have no direct life outside themselves. Kind words, firm words, gentle words, encouraging words, funny words: I have heard them all from Earl. Earl loves his family. Joyce and Jennifer and Joanna have been and still are praised and soothed by his words. His sons-in-law, Gary and Jim, have in Earl a friend and supporter for life. Earls grandchildren are lucky in ways they will value always. Because of him their world is bigger and better. Joyce and Earl have been many times to the Holy Land. One summer their years of planning and hoping came to a glorious conclusion when they took their daughters, their sons-in law and all their grandchildren with them to the Holy Land. But in a way that only those of us who know Earl can appreciate, Earl is always in the Holy Land. For though he would never claim it and would be uneasy at the thought,
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Earl makes wherever he is a holy place. Because I know Earl Whaley, it is easier for me to picture God. Through Earl I feel the presence of God. I shudder to think how impoverished my life would have been if Earl had not come into my life. Earl, I love you. Anton Jacobs Nearly a hundred applicants applied for his job when Earl retired. After 23 years I would have a new colleague. Earl had been chairman for all that time. He liked doing it. And he was good at it. He welcomed every idea I ever had. He encouraged and complimented me all the time. I would tell people that I didnt have a job. I just do what I love to do. And they pay me for it. Thats how I felt for all those years Earl and I taught together. Finding his replacement would not be easy. From the mountain of resumes we received, we winnowed the number to five. On paper each of them was stellar. We could not go wrong. We invited each of them to campus for an interview. They would meet with the five person selection committee, a student group, the Dean and the President. They would teach a class. Anton Jacobs was the first. I picked him up at the airport one evening in my Volkswagen Rabbit and drove him to campus along a dark and winding road. A more direct and lighted way I could have chosen, but I wanted the longest possible time to let him talk about himself and to give me a feeling of what it might be like to spend the coming years with him. I dropped him off at the Hester House and showed him to his room. When I got home, I said to Bobbie. Hes our man. The subsequent four were all good people, but with Anton it had been love at first sight. Anton had a PhD in Sociology from Notre Dame. He was a seminary graduate and a minister, ordained by both the Baptist and United Church of Christ. He was experienced in both teaching and pastoring. His credentials were a perfect fit for our Christian college. Way beyond these essentials, however, Anton was easy to be with. His quiet confidence gave others room. Mastery of their discipline gives some people an inflated sense of their own worth. Not so with Anton. A good mind, a gentle soul and a disciplined work ethic make an attractive and often elusive trinity. Weighing the parts of this trinity often is necessary when the applicant is deficient in some area, but when all three are present in obvious abundance, the selection makes itself. Thus came Anton Jacobs to William Jewell College. Within months of his coming, Anton was elected to the Faculty Council and assumed added responsibilities in the honors program. His
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teaching specialties and mine were a perfect compliment. We instituted a departmental program of student papers in his theory class and my methods class, culminating in an end of semester conference where students would read their papers to their assembled peers. Bobbie and Jean Jacobs became friends. When Bobbie took a job at Harvesters, they were co-workers. The four of us thought we would be together far into the future. But the lure of the pastorate drew Anton. I was also being drawn by HateBusters. We both left the college after Antons seventh year. Anton and Jean moved away. He became pastor of a church in south Kansas City. William Jewell was experiencing some financial problems in the mid-nineties. Since Anton and I left the college at the same time, the college decided to economize by not hiring replacements and eliminating the Sociology Department. For several years before he left, the two of us would meet every Wednesday morning at the Fork and Spoon. Over breakfast we would have our departmental meeting and discuss college business. Though neither of us was any longer at the college, we were living only 25 miles apart, and we decided to continue our Wednesday morning departmental meetings. We became mid-week regulars at the Corner Restaurant in Westport. The Greater Liberty Bicycle Ride Im planning long-term. The First Greater Liberty Bicycle Ride for Multiple Sclerosis and HateBusters took place just over a month ago, on the weekend after Memorial Day. I fully expect to be around to ride the 33rd Annual Greater Liberty Bike Ride. Ill be 100 years old that year. My preferred way to depart this world is to be mashed flat by a Mack Truck while out for a century ride on my centennial birthday. Thats my plan. If I dont make it, no big deal. A mans reach should exceed his grasp, or whats a heaven for? The day I hope only for the possible is the day I begin to die. Expecting great things ahead holds all maladies at bay. Why Greater Liberty as the name for this ride? When I tell you that I live in a town called Liberty, you naturally will think that is the reason. And early on you would have been entirely right. That was my reason at first. I may have chosen another name had I lived in another town. On the other hand, I have stayed in this town where I came straight from grad school because its name keeps always in my mind that precious condition of life that makes all other good things possible. I would dream over the years that I had left Liberty to live and work elsewhere. And I would wake up in a cold sweat.
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I live not far from another town called Independence. Motorists approaching my town on a certain road see a sign pointing in opposite directions to either town. I like to come home that way and be reminded of two of the central ideas America is all about. I think I have given liberty and independence more thought over these years because I see those words on road signs all about me. So it is not Liberty the town to which I seek attention with my bicycle ride. Rather, it is liberty I seek for those who suffer from Multiple Sclerosis and from hate. MS is a physical illness that robs its victims of their energy and the use of their limbs and senses. Hate is a spiritual and social illness that makes victims of those whose skin is a different color and those who worship in other ways. To set people at liberty from the limitations imposed by these illnesses is the passion that drives my life. Why these limitations? There are others. Why give what energy and insight I might muster to the fight against MS and racial and religious hate? I must be honest with you. Both fights are entirely personal. Let me begin with the fight I took up more recently. On a Thursday in May of 1981, a doctor walked into my hospital room. Standing in the doorway and yelling at me across the room, he announced. You have MS. Its a damnable disease and you cant be active. Then he turned and walked away. My longer fight began that Sunday morning in 1949. I was 14. My pastor had just preached another of his elegant and eloquent sermons about loving all people. Without ever raising his voice or gesturing with his hands, he made us all know that we could love everybody. And he made us want to do it. Or so I thought. But as I left the church that morning, I overheard two men, deacons of our church, If them niggers try to come in this church, Ill beat em back with a baseball bat. The other said, Me too. The doctor said MS would make me inactive. The deacons showed me that hate lives in the shadow of love. Now when I get up each morning I intend to do something that day to prove my doctor wrong and not let those deacons have the final word. And it has all come to focus around a bicycle. Three years into my MS diagnosis I had quit everything except my job and my church. I was depressed and miserable. I was home alone one day, sitting in the garage, angry and sad and self-pitying. I saw my sons old bicycle in another corner. An almost audible urge came over me: Get on the bike. Three years later I got on a bike at Disney World in Orlando, alone and without money, intending to pedal north and west to Seattle and then south to Anaheim and Disneyland.
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If I made it, I would prove my doctor wrong. My MS would not mean I could not be active. In fact, my MS would mean I must be active. I would also show those deacons that everybody has a spark of goodness and genius in them, and they had no need, or right, to hate. My plan was to stop at the first church I saw in every town and ask for the help I needed at that momenta sandwich, water for my bottles, a bed for the night. Black or white, Catholic or Protestant. Didnt matter. The first one I came to. And ask for help. If I were right about that spark of goodness and genius being in everybody, no one would turn me down. And I would make it across the country. I didnt take a map. I would ask people in one town how to get to the next. I was counting on that spark of genius to come up with the perfect plan for me to get to the next place. I wanted to be totally dependent on other people. I wanted to engage them in my grand adventure by practicing what I came to call Audacious Asking with them. I would ask for exactly what I needed. And somehow they would know that I knew they could not say no. They didnt. I made it. Over 500 people I asked for help. Five could not say yes. They were all young waitresses at early morning diners. We would like to, but our boss isnt here, and we dont have the authority. No problem. Dont feel bad. Ill be okay. I said. Another place around the corner or across the street said yes. With all of this as preamble, I came in my 67th year to announce The Greater Liberty Bicycle Ride for Multiple Sclerosis and HateBusters. I planned to ride 10,000 miles in 2003 to raise $100,000 for MS and $10,000 for HateBusters. Greater Liberty refers to a distance from my home and also a release from the physical and spiritual restrictions put on my life and others. Because I can ride my bicycle 125 miles on my very best days, I drew a map including all places within 125 miles of Liberty. Turns out to include parts of four states and 105 counties. I would do almost all my riding in this area. When they heard of my plan, two of my biking buddies decided to jump-start my effort with a one-day 100 mile ride starting here in Liberty at our local bike shop and going out through several towns before returning to the bike shop. They planned for 100 riders who would each contribute $100, giving us in one day $10,000. We got half the riders and raised a little more than half the money we hoped. But in every other way, the ride was a grand success. I fell in love with the route we laid out. And as always happens when I talk out loud about the ideas and dreams I have, they take on dimensions and directions I could never have thought of myself. When the Greater Liberty notion first came to me, my intention was to make early
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visits to the biggest towns on the outer boundaries. I did send them materials in the mail. I told them who I am and what I dream of doing. Invite me and I will come. Join me and we will win. Thats what I said. But now my mind keeps coming back to the places we rode and the people we met on the Saturday after Memorial Day. I have ridden the entire route several times in the five weeks that have passed since that day. I ride parts of the route almost daily. And make excursions down other roads that present themselves. I am venturing not as far from home as I had planned, but I am developing an intimate acquaintance by coming often. It feels right. So Im thinking that the basic route we laid out for our initial ride will now be the focus for the Greater Liberty Bicycle Ride and that the 10,000 miles I ride this year will launch the annual Greater Liberty Ride for years to come. Variations of the basic plan may occur, but so welcoming and so pleasant were these places this year that we do not have the heart to leave them out in the future. In the order we came to them, these were the good places we visited. Departing from and returning to Liberty, we visited Missouri City, Orrick, Fleming, Camden, Richmond, Rayville, Vibbard, Lawson, Excelsior Springs, Watkins Mill State Park and Kearney. On the weekend after Memorial Day each year we plan to return. More than that, though, we hope to lay out a route and plan rest stops so that on most any day of the year a solitary rider or a group of riders could ride The Greater Liberty Bicycle Ride for Multiple Sclerosis and HateBusters. The GLBRFMSAHB likely never will attract the biking throngs generated by RAGBRI, but these gentle places and people merit a visit and will warmly receive those who come. Free at Last Free at last! I made it. No more counting miles. No more promises to do so. I ride hereafter with no record of distance. Only of people and places. Greater Liberty now is bigger than the distance I can ride in a day on my bike. Bobbie and I are off to see the world. New Orleans, Orlando, Prague, Alaska, Moscow, Budapest, Warsaw. These appear in the road I see ahead. Who knows, though, what detours may come up along the way? Before I give myself to thoughts of the year ahead, I must recount for you the events of this morning, the last five hours of my 1000 hours on my bicycle this year. Im standing in front of Biscari Brothers Bicycles just after seven oclock. Im taping two signs to the window. One about HateBusters that Lara drew for me at our chili
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dinner last Sunday. The other I got from the MS Society. Sarah Cool comes to help. Sarah graduated from William Jewell in 1987. She lives in Liberty and is a constant and dependable supporter. She and her sister, Gretchen, came with their small children and their mother to our chili dinner. They contributed valuable items to our silent auction. Sarah has put up signs today for our ride around the Jewell quad and our town square. She will drive in her car to breakfast with us at Mill Inn. Richard Mark is here with Sean, his son. Sean will ride with his dad on their tandem. At 11 years of age, Sean is our youngest rider. At 68, I am the oldest. Richard is captain of our Together We Ride MS-150 team, 161 members strong we were for this years ride. We raised a ton of money for MS. Charlie Hughes was in the first class I taught at William Jewell in the fall of 1965. Charlie has ridden with me many times over the years. He rode in our Eds Elite 100 on the Saturday after Memorial Day this year. He is here to ride today. Rich Groves and John Anderson are here. Rich graduated from Jewell the year before I joined the faculty. Rich has made all the maps for our Saturday rides. He is my regular biking buddy on Saturday mornings throughout the year. John rode with me from Kansas City to St. Louis two years ago when we joined the Bike-Aid team from San Francisco on their way to Washington DC as they rode through Missouri. John is our HateBusters song leader at all of our Human Family Reunions. Sandy Hamilton rode with us to Catricks on November 8. She is with us again today. She brought her bike, but she drives to and from Excelsior Springs instead. On the way over she transports Tom so he can take pictures of our ride. Tom Strongman is here. He has brought his bike. Also his camera. He loves to ride. He also loves to take pictures. He rides to Mill Inn with Sandy, stopping several times to take our pictures. He rides back. Into the wind, it turns out. Seth McMenemy is here, the only one of us who has come by bike. Seth lives just a few blocks away. Except for one Saturday when he helped his grandmother move, Seth has been here. I have something to give you, he says as we ride. Over breakfast at Mill Inn Seth gives me two checks. Graham Houston is here. Graham is a Jewell alum and an avid bike rider. He rides hundreds of miles every year to raise money for Habitat for Humanity. Hes also a HateBusters supporter. This is the first of our
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November Saturday rides he has been able to make. But he has been a supporter of my year-long ride. Steve Hanson is here. Steve lives out on Plattsburg Road a few miles from Liberty and has joined three of our Saturday rides. Mike Winburn is here. Mike lives in Independence and is with us for the first time today. Kevin Brasfield was not with us for our November 1st ride, but he has been here for the next four. He samples ample portions of the rural ambrosia served up at our breakfast stops. H Highway is a magnificent road to ride. For the first five miles out to Liberty Hills Country Club traffic sometimes is a minor distraction for a biker. With the weather too cold for golf, though, the road is almost deserted. Two or three cars pass us. None come for the last 10 miles to Mill Inn. By the time we all arrive by bike and car there are three tables of us, 17 in all. Kelly McClelland and Jack Miles came together. Kelly was the very first contributor to my ride. He gave $1000.00 and issued the Greater Liberty Challenge, asking other business leaders and communities to match his gift. Jack Miles is Editor of the Liberty Sun. He wrote glowing editorials and front-page news stories about my ride. Stories more complimentary than even my mother would write. Bob and Jean Watts drove here. They would have come on their tandem, as they did to Atlanta and Missoula when I rode across the country. But Bob is not fully back from his bout with cancer. Bob built the bike I rode across America, the bike I still ride. The bike I have as of today ridden 10,000 miles this year. Over 100,000 miles in the 18 years Ive had it. Bob said the bike would stand up to a Mack Truck and climb a tree. Bobbie has come to breakfast. She will drive me back to Liberty so I will be certain to be at the college by 11:30. Chances are I could make it back on time if I rode, but Im so excited right here at the end that Im afraid I cant keep my mind on what Im doing. And if I should have another of the many flats Ive had this year, I could disrupt the plans we have for the final half-mile from the campus back to the bike shop. Don Post is here. Don is one of my heroes. He used to ride a Harley before he was attacked by some degenerative monster that has him now in a wheelchair and makes everything an uphill battle. But Don is a full time volunteer for the MS Society and for a whole directory of other good causes. He jokes about his condition and takes life head on, asking no sympathy or special consideration. Don rides sag for us this morning. He parks out front at the Mill Inn.
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The two side doors of his van open. Don maneuvers himself into his chair and rolls out the door on a platform. It lowers to the ground, and with levers he operates from his chair, Don makes the lift retract and the doors close. Then he rolls inside and to the table where Graham, Charlie, Rich and Bobbie sit. Over breakfast Bobbie signs Don up to ring bells for the Salvation Army at the Liberty Wal-Mart. Our plan is to arrive at Mill Inn at 9:30. Thanks to a tailwind and an adrenaline rush caused by great expectations, the first of us come 45 minutes early. All are here by the appointed time. I introduce all our servers to everybody, and we all say hello in unison. Evelyn Cowsert, the owner of Mill Inn had been planning a trip to California for Thanksgiving. But she stayed here to welcome us and to make a contribution to our causes. More than an hour some of us linger We will rendezvous in front of the Music Building at 11:30, I tell them at breakfast. Rich and Charlie decide to ride back with Bobbie and me. When we get back to the Spring Street exit off H, we decide to park and wait for them to come. If they should pass this exit, they might not find their way to campus on time. This last half-hour has been carefully timed. We assemble in front of the Music Building. We ride up onto the quad and ride once clock-wise around it. WAY TO GO, YOU MADE IT. WERE PROUD OF YOU. And other signs have been put up around the quad, this place I walked for 30 years as a member of the faculty. Then behind the chapel and past the presidents home to Jewell Street. We turn left and over one block to Franklin. A right turn takes us past Second Baptist Church, where last Sunday we had our chili dinner fund-raiser. Then another two blocks to our town square and the traditional lap around it, a ceremonial ending to all my rides going years back. Today in shop windows on all sides of the square we spot bright yellow signs announcing in bold black letter10,000 miles. Then one block past the square on Franklin to Rotary Park, where Kelly McClelland, President of Rotary, is waiting to congratulate us and Jack Miles is waiting to take our picture. We ride past McDonalds and across the parking lot in front of Sutherlands and Price Chopper and arrive back at Biscari Brothers precisely on timeHIGH NOON. Ever since I saw that 1950s black and white western with Grace Kelly and Gary Cooper and Tex Ritters theme song, the dramatic image of HIGH NOON has never been far from my mind. For years on end when they were small and we were on one of our family summer sojourns by car and camper across America,
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my children heard me sing in my off-key monotone: I do not know what fate awaits me. I only know I must be brave, or lie a coward, a craven coward, or lie a coward in my grave. A small crowd waits for us in front of the bike shop. Kay Julian, Executive Director of the MS Society of Mid-America, thanks me for the awareness my ride has brought to MS and for the money Ive raised. Ray Gill accepted the Greater Liberty Challenge on behalf of the city of Richmond by contributing $1000.00. Ray is here. We are too many in number to fit inside the bike shop. The temperature has risen from the mid-twenties when we started to the mid-forties now. We brave the chill for my short speech. I rode the miles. I didnt raise the money. So far $20,000 has come in. I was hoping for $110,000. My dream is that 110,000 people will mail a letter to Box 442, Liberty, MO 64069. Inside each letter will be a onedollar bill. We will be written up in the Guinness Book of World Records as THE GREATEST NUMBER OF ONE-DOLLAR BILLS EVER MAILED TO A SINGLE POST OFFICE BOX. I will have reached my fund-raising goal and thousands of people will have participated in my grand adventure. The money we raise will help those who suffer physically from MS and those who suffer spiritually from hate. And together we will have found part of our purpose in being alive at this time in this place. I promised Bobbie that we would see the world in this coming year. I may not be here when all the letters come. But the MS Society will pick them up. And when mountains of mail come to my little post office box the media will notice. MS and HateBusters will become topics of conversation across the country. Their work will be supported. In Man of LaMancha, Don Quixote says, Too much sanity may be madness, and the greatest madness of all may be to see the world as it is, and not as it should be. The world should be a place where we all know about and care about each other. Thats the world I want to live in. The world I want to lead others to. William Jewell has nurtured my dream of such a world since I arrived on campus in 1965. Jewell made it possible for me to share my dream with my students. I will be forever grateful.
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Encore!
I had helped Chris Henson with the Service learning classes. I had made guest appearances in various classes. I had taken a few students to visit area neighbors. We had held a Human Family Reunion several Aprils on campus. But I had not taught a class on campus in nine years. Then just days before the fall 2004 semester was to begin, I got a phone call from Steve Schwegler. Ed, we need a teacher. U.S. Pluralism meets on Tuesday and Thursday evening from 6-7:40. The assigned teacher is suddenly not available. I know its short notice, but we would love for you to teach it if you could. Bobbie and I were planning a trip to Prague and Budapest for 10 days in September. Tickets were bought. Hotels were reserved. We had to go. But I couldnt say no. My college needed me. When Jim Tanner was dean, he wrote once in my faculty evaluation that I was able to get other people to teach my classes. My classroom had always been open to folks from everywhere, and they regularly appeared in my classes to share their stories with us. So I called three friends: a Buddhist Lama, a Jewish Rabbi and the founder of the Center for Religious Experience and Study. They agreed to teach the three classes I would miss. This would not to be the class students expected. There would be no reading list. No tests. Instead, students were handed an envelope. Inside was the name of a person, a phone number and an email address. Students were to call that number and talk to the person. They were to tell that person that for the next 14 weeks they would be them. By email students would ask their person questions, and their person would answer by email. Each day in class students would be called, not by the names they were given by their parents, but by the names they drew in their envelopes. When a topic came up for discussion in class, students were to respond as the person they were becoming. Once during the semester, their persons would come to class and tell about their lives. Once during the semester, students would go off campus to meet their person. At semesters end, students would write the autobiography of the person they had become. The autobiography would be read and approved by their person. These are the persons the students became. Names of students are in parenthesis, John Anderson, (Matthew Ferguson) Black-American and professional story-teller; Vern Barnet, (Petisha Brown) WhiteAmerican and founder of the Center for Religious Experience and Study; Al Byrd, (Kate Hiller) Black-American, Jewell alum, Christian, employed by Kansas City to insure that people are employed fairly;
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Anand Bhattacharyya, (Rachel Burr) Indian-American, retired engineer and member of the Hindu Temple; Rushdy El Ghussein, (Steve Sigfusson) a Muslim born in Gaza, an American citizen scientist; Judy Hellman, (Emily Ray) White-American and staff member at the Jewish Community Relations Bureau; Mamie Hughes, (Natalie Shore) Black-American and Kansas City civic leader; Charanjit Hundal, (Nicholas LeVine) Indian-American, Kansas City businessman and member of the Sikh Gudwara; Rabbi Mark Levin, ((Tim Skalland) White-American and spiritual leader of Temple Beth Torah; Richard Maraj, (Lindsay Lewick) born in Trinidad, a Canadian citizen, pastor of Christ Church Unity; Maxine McFarlane, (Jordan Barth) Black-American, member of Barker Memorial Cathedral of Praise and director of a Kansas City food pantry; Zarieff Osmann, (Sherry Occhiuzzo) Black-American, owner of insurance business, converted from Christianity to Islam; Marilyn Peot, (Jenny Noel) White-American, Catholic Sister, conducts spiritual retreats; Al Plummer, (Rex Waters) Black-American, former Director of Missouri Commission on Human Rights, Lonnie Powell, (Ben Blanton) BlackAmerican, artist, founder of The Light in the Other Room; Louis Rodman, (Josh Waldron) White-American, Catholic Brother, Director of Holy Family House, feeds the homeless; Lama Chuck Stanford, (Megan Hollis) White American, converted from Christianity to Buddhism, Director, Rime Buddhist Center and Monastery. Here is what students said when the semester ended. I remember walking into our classroom the first day and feeling slightly apprehensive. There was a professor that I was not familiar with as well as a form of teaching I had never experienced. A part of me said this is not what you signed up for, while the other part wanted to accept the challenge with open arms. Obviously something captured my heart that first day of class because the challenge became a reality. This class has been an eye opener for me, and has introduced me to so many people and concepts that I never thought I would have a chance to experience. This class has forced me to consider my feelings about important world issues as well as my feelings about people whom I didnt understand prior to this class. I have really enjoyed getting to know people from different countries, religious backgrounds, and races. I have found that I have developed a much more openminded approach to life as a result of this class, and I have found that putting a face with the otherwise unknown cultures has been the most
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helpful in doing that. The three major things that I have learned as a result of this class are the importance of attempting to understand other peoples views and opinions, the importance of religious, racial and cultural diversity, and the importance of people who are willing to stand up for what is right. Has Pluralism changed the way that I see the world? Has it given me lessons that I will never forget? Yes. I see situations in the world like the conflict between the Israelis and Palestinians and I remember Rabbi Levins words and I see that there have been losses which cannot be paid. I understand why the fighting continues day after day, but I hear Queen Mother and it makes me think that there is a chance for the world, that one day we will all love each other because we are Gods children. Has Pluralism changed the way that I see other people? Yes. Judy Hellman and I have similar ideas, and yet we come from very different backgrounds. We have completely different religions, and yet we like the same foods. Ive come to see first hand that differences in belief are neither a problem, nor do they require you to treat someone in a different manner. We are all humans and we all share human thoughts. Has pluralism changed the way I look at myself and my surroundings? Yes. I see myself as a unique human being with my own ideas and experiences. I have strengthened my relationship with God and with Jesus Christ and I am a Southern Baptist. We all have the experiences that linger with us, crystal clear for all eternity. It is from these that we draw our knowledge and ideas and way of seeing life. God called me to gather His children around me and to love them. And that is what I did. I will probably never forget my first day of United States Pluralism with Dr. Chasteen. I went to class expecting a syllabus full of reading assignments, papers, and tests. I was more than surprised when I found out that we would not be experiencing a standard class. But rather, we would be taking on the identities of other people, all of whom had life stories very different than our own. I was very nervous and scared about what I had to do. I know that there were some who were so anxious about the thought of having to meet someone new and different, that they decided not to continue the course. Although I was anxious about what I was getting myself into, I knew that it would be a good experience. I have found that the times where I grow the most as a person, usually occur when difficult things happen. I knew that it would be difficult for me to reach out to someone who may not have shared the same beliefs as me. That is an experience that I have not
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had many times in my life. Growing up in Liberty, I was very sheltered. I was not able to interact with many who did not share my beliefs and culture. The America I had known was the America that I lived in. It was safe, Christian, and mostly white. The America I have come to know through this class is an America in which there is much diversity and individuality. I have been very fortunate to have been a student in this class. It has been a learning experience like no other. I feel like I have learned more about life in the fourteen weeks of this class than I have in the past 22 years of my life. This class opened my eyes to people and communities I did not even know existed within my own community. I believe that I have become a lot closer to becoming a world class citizen because of this class. This class has helped me go into situations that I would not normally go into. One instance of this is my visits to Louis. At first I wasnt too sure about going there, but after my first visit I realized that the place wasnt that bad and in fact it was very hospitable. The people there may look like people off of the shows that show them being arrested or what not, but these people are all good at heart. You have helped me understand this with your many stories, one of which that stands out in my mind would be your bicycle ride across America. At first I was not terribly excited for such a class as United States Pluralism. Just the thought made me think of hardcore topics in America today and heated class discussions where one can leave class thinking about their own ideas of society or one can leave angry that no one can even possibly manage to see their point of view. While I enjoy class discussion and thinking about others views, this class in my mind would be different. More frustrating in a way because society is filled with so many problems and ideas that no one can ever see eye to eye on. What I have gotten out of this class though, was a whole new look on society and the people that make up plural America. The America I have come to know through this class is filled with strong willed people who have come across many hardships to make them better, more caring people today. It is filled with people that came to this country for a better life and have worked hard to get where they are today. It is also filled with people who reach out and help others on a day-to-day basis, because they believe this is the right thing to do. What all of these people have in common and what I have learned about America through these people is that they care about others and the well being of everyone is society. They know that not everyone is
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the same or equal or even thinks like them, but they work to accept these people. Then I walked into pluralism. From day one I knew this was going to be a class to challenge my beliefs and perspective. I was extremely nervous when we had to draw our semester-long identities because I knew I would pick someone completely unlike myself. I actually remember when Dr. Chasteen explained a few of the identities. He spoke of a man who is a reverend and walks with crutches. I thought to myself, I really hope I do not draw this man because I would never know what to say to him. That mans name is Richard Maraj. Fortunately, he is my semester-long identity. I was so afraid to make initial contact with him, concerned primarily with how I would make conversation. Secondly, I wondered what he would think of me. Luckily, Richard and I exchanged a few e-mails before we made phone contact. I was much more comfortable with the situation at that point because I had in mind some particular questions to ask him to keep the conversation going. I truly find it amazing that people with such dissimilar qualities can have so much in common. Richard and I shared many things in common, including our love of sports and passion for politics. He is an extremely articulate speaker and I am so happy to have had the privilege of getting to know Richard. At the start of the semester, the United States Pluralism class began an adventure and we were given the opportunity to engage in the lives of a number of extraordinary people. The students within this class come from a number of different states, countries, ethnic origins, religions, and maybe even different sexual orientations. At the start of this semester, there was one thing that every single person in this class had in common. They really did not know what to expect from, nor what they had become a part of. Little did we know that we had begun a journey into what was going to an extraordinary semester filled with unbelievable experiences. So when I begin to think about the things that I have learned from this class, I also begin to think about the people I have met through this class. The United States Pluralism class has given a group of about forty individuals, adults and young adults, the opportunity to interact and learn about key issues that directly effect this generation and will effect future generations. I believe so often in class we get caught in the routine of just going to class and taking notes. We get sucked into circular system that seems to almost have no end and we begin to forget the purW
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pose of why we are there in the first place. We are there to learn from the experiences of others, whether that information is about facts that pertain to our majors or just key insight that can directly affect our lives. This class has taught me how the desires of a group of individuals can have an effect on an entire nation. I learned that I am not alone in the world in the fight against hatred and that there is never an issue that I should feel afraid to speak out about. I feel that one of the most important things that I have learned this semester was that regardless of my personal beliefs, it is imperative that we begin to accept each other as individuals or America will never be united. Through this class I have come to admire all people from all over the world. I feel comfortable saying this because our country represents the world. I have learned that every being is a contributor to our societys social wealth, regardless of what life has handed them. The America I have come to know through this class is an America that I am proud to be a part of. I am proud of everyone I met. I have heard how all of the people we met have fought through their negative experiences and endured their positive ones. America is an inspiration. It is full of second chances and people who reach out to one another. I have come to know an America through this class that gives me more hope and faith than I ever had before. The America I have come to know through this class is not a melting pot. It is Gods greatest garden filled with people of different colors, different perspectives, and different stories simultaneously experiencing the greatest mystery of what it means to be alive. They are patriotic because they are what it means to be democratic equipped with the right and the freedom to exercise their diversity and their independence from any tyrant interventions. However, the America I have come to know is strongest when it uses its rights, freedoms, and independence to transcend those diversities and to embrace the world. As Queen Mother, a woman who radiates with love, so artfully put it, They drew a circle and it cut me out. So I drew a bigger circle and brought them back in. I recently realized that I had been going through life looking at the world and the people in the world under a false set of lenses. I have taken my personal experiences along with the experiences of others and created a world that does not even exist. I have learned through this class that before you judge someone or their differences it is a good idea to actually get to know them first. I like most Americans,
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have fallen under a bad tradition of believing everything that I hear. When I would watch the news I would see bits and pieces of what the media wanted me to see. I took what I saw and thought it to be true, without realizing that what I was seeing was only a small part of what is actually occurring. The attacks of September 11, left me angry at so many innocent people. Not only did I watch as fellow Americans jumped to their deaths, but I saw a nation of people cheering and laughing after it happened. I was so beside myself and so upset that I failed to see what was really happening. Our media was able to work its magic once again by convincing the American people that the people in Iraq were happily supporting the attack. I found myself looking at anyone who appeared to be foreign with anger and bitterness in my heart. The overwhelming feeling of fear constantly surrounded my thoughts and I was so consumed with hateful feelings towards foreigners that I failed to realize that I was destroying my own being with all of the hate inside of me. When this class began I questioned the purpose of taking on a special identity and remaining another person all through the semester. We attended a human family reunion one night and I was so shocked to see so many people of different faiths sitting and eating happy together. Even though I felt a little uncomfortable at first, I found myself actually enjoying talking to others about their faiths and their lives. I realized that night that not all people are bad, besides it gave me an opportunity to ask questions about religions and people that I did not understand. This was a great way to begin learning about other peoples lives and faiths. I felt this huge weight was lifted off of my shoulder that night. I began seeing things through a different pair of lenses. The more visitors came to our class the more the hate inside me began to dissipate. I began to realize once again that I was the one who should be hated. I was the one who harbored so much hate that I could not see how much I was hurting others with all my hate. Over the class periods and discussions I was able to take the knowledge I had been gratefully given by those who shared their personal lives with us, and share what I had been learning with the people that I love. I started talking to friends and family about the speakers that came and their amazing life stories. I started to feel compassion in my heart again. I realized that I have had such an easy life compared to the lives of some. I started becoming more thankful for the things I enjoy possessing in life. I no longer look at people and judge them because of their differences, instead I long to
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get to know them, and I appreciate them. I have learned that in this world we all need each other to survive. The hate and bitterness that separates our nations of people is the same hate and bitterness that will and has destroyed us. I am so embarrassed to say that at one point in my life I hated somebody because of their religion, or color of their skin. I am very grateful to have had the opportunity to view this world and the people in it through a much clearer set of lenses Plural America has come to our class over the past semester. In starting this class, I didnt know what to expect. We were given the chance to meet an extraordinary group of people from the Kansas City area. After looking back on the experiences Ive shared in this class, I have found plural America through this class. It has been a blessing to take part in such an extraordinary idea. When I first came to this class, I didnt know what to expect. I was prepared for a lot of reading and debating personal opinions and looking for a correct answer. I was ready for heat, compassion, and a really big debate. What I wasnt prepared for was that the books would be thrown out the window. Not only were the books that I was expecting not included in the new class curriculum, but I came to find out that my personal opinions werent going to be used either. I was shocked, and confused. I couldnt help but worry about what I was getting myself into. The more I learned about my new class, the more intrigued I became. Worried, but intrigued just the same. The new curriculum was based on the opinions and lives of others. What each student in the class would have the opportunity to do is become another person. We would get to know our specific person to the extent that we could portray them in class. Our opinions were no longer personal ones, but opinions that were based on the people that we became. It is a blessing that I was in this class. I am so thankful I am aware of so much more around me. I feel now that I have a voice and Im not afraid to use it. I feel that now I can speak out. I have met some of the most amazing people in the last three months more than I have in my whole life. It has been a pleasure getting to know Anand. I know that I will never forget him or his kindness. And I know that I will never forget this class. It is an inspiration, and I think its a class that everyone should have the privilege to experience. Thank you for the opportunity to find my voice and help form my opinion on Plural America.
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Before taking this class I thought I had a pretty good grip on America. I mean, come on, I live here. I read the newspaper and magazine articles. I watched dateline and CNN. I knew the culture, including its races/religions/orientations. What is there to know about someone that you cant learn by watching the news or reading the newspaper. Apparently a lot. In fact, this class has taught me that the only way to really learn about someone is to go and meet them first hand. That means that if I want to know the American culture, I have to go out and meet, well, Americans. This is the only way to alleviate our preconceived ideas about a group of people, and truly know/understand them. This class gave me a truthful depiction of America, by forcing me to meet and talk with people I wouldnt have otherwise. Each of the people that came to our class helped me to better understand the pluralistic society which I live in, here in America. Never before in my life had I experienced a class like Dr. Chasteens US Pluralism class. Instead of lecturing and reading text books, we had people come and tell their stories to us. This way of learning is something that no text book would ever be able to teach you. We had the opportunity to hear first hand from people who lived through wars and civil rights movements. This class opened my eyes and mind to many different religions, ethnic groups, and ways of thinking that I had never even thought about before. Coming to class everyday knowing something different is going to happen is motivation in itself to come. A new speaker or two would come and share their story to the class. I had the opportunity to listen to many life stories throughout the class. Some stories ended in joy and some ended in tears, but everyones was different and everyone who spoke was trying to do something to make a difference in our world. I had little previous knowledge on other religions besides Christianity before this class. I had never bothered to learn about another religion and felt that many of the religions where wrong. Listening to the people talk about their religions opened my mind up to more than just Christianity. I had never had the opportunity to meet with a gay person before. I had looked down on gays and felt that it was wrong, but after talking to Tami I had changed my opinion. I still feel that marriage should be between a man and a woman but I realize now that people may not choose to be gay, they are just born that way. All of the people that came and talked had something that stuck with me. I think the quote Dr. Chasteen sent to all of us was a great fit for the class. Tell me and Ill forget. Show me and I may not
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remember, Involve me and Ill understand. This saying fits our class perfectly because the involvement we all had in this class will be remembered forever. Many of us sit in classes and listen to lectures and read text books, but we never remember any of the things taught. This class had involved everyone in a unique way that has allowed us to learn and remember. From the first class period, you told us the goal of this class, which was for us to be on our way to becoming World Class Persons. A World Class Person is someone who can go anyplace at any time and talk to anyone about anything and feel safe. Through this class, I feel I have achieved a step in the right direction toward this goal. The America I have come to know through this class is one of differences, but also of common ground. You said that people cannot discuss important matters without being friends first. We must find the common ground between us in order to understand each others differences. To be on the edge of life is to experience alternative lifestyles, not just read about them (Louis Rodman). I believe this quote catches the very essence of this class. We are delving into the personal lives of people different than us in order to come to a better understanding of the world in which we live. We may not always agree with what a person tells us, but we will do our best to understand the way they think. As you stated from your work with HateBusters: who is right is the wrong question. It is the understanding of our differences in race, religion, and sexual preference that will lead us to becoming World Class People. My first experience with someone completely different than myself was in third grade. A girl named Amber was new to our class and could hardly speak English. Many of the boys and even some of the girls in our class were mean to her and would pull her hair or take her dessert at lunch. I, however, didnt see her differences like the other children did right away. Instead, I saw her as a young girl, just like myself; a playmate. I sat by her everyday at lunch and played with her at recess. We tried our best to communicate with each other. I taught her words in English, and she tried to teach me words in Spanish. I didnt do this because I felt I had to, or I felt sorry for her. I did it really without thinking. I didnt see her as different or strange or even a threat. The innocence of childhood made me see her just as she was; a human being. On my last day of school, I was boarding the
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bus to go home. My family was about to move. Amber walked outside with me to my bus and tears streamed down her face. She squeezed me tight in her arms for what seemed like hours. Then, she looked at me, and said, I love you. She gave me a kiss on the cheek and waved me goodbye. I never heard or saw Amber again, but the memory of her and her friendship has always remained dear to my heart. My second experience with cultures different than my own was in high school. I went to an all-girls Catholic high school where we had students from Korea, Mexico, Venezuela, Japan and many other countries. This could have been a wonderful experience for me, an experience I could have taken advantage of and learned from. Instead, I strayed away from the international students, not understanding their culture and language, and not sure they would understand mine. I missed out for four years on the opportunity to learn about why they came to the United States, what they had learned here, what they thought of it. Instead of having relationships with them like I had had with Amber, I simply made acquaintances. I think now as to why this is, and I think it is because as I got older I felt the ability to see people as human beings first, harder. Instead, I saw their differences and thought that it would be too hard to understand one another. The international students would never speak English at school and always had their hand held translators with them, even during tests. I felt like they were given special treatment, instead of having to learn in the same way we did. I remember thinking to myself, why are they here if they are not going to learn the way we do and learn our culture. I hadnt given my high school experience a second thought until entering this class. Hearing some of our guests speak, I began to understand that our culture in America is their culture. Its Ambers culture; its the culture of the international students that I had become bitter towards. I have learned that we, as America, have become strong and have become so diverse because we have all of these cultures. By listening firsthand to some of our guests, especially the ones that have immigrated to this country, I slowly began to see and feel the way I did back in third grade. As more speakers came in, I began to wonder what their story was and what they did, rather than how they looked and acted differently. I began to see through my third grade eyes and the memory of Amber flooded my thoughts. Through this class and through the speakers I have learned what plural means. I have learned that pluralism isnt seeking out our differences, but finding how it is that all of us are alike. Through our difW
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ferent cultures and backgrounds lie a pool of similarities and connections that bind us together as Americans and human beings. I see America not so much as this perfect place where everyone wants to live, but a place where people can be themselves and where we can learn from each other. Everyone has a story of how they came here or how they came to be who they are. It is in these stories that the beauty of America is visible; stories of hope, of racism, segregation, struggle, determination, and stories of successes and failures. It is hard to imagine life in America without these differences of opinions, of cultures, of people. I believe that we are as strong as we are today because of this, not despite it. Through the years, America has come to recognize these differences and build upon them. Even in the world of childrens literature, we have changed our views of how we look at people different than ourselves. In the early 20th century, books illustrated and portrayed black people as caricatures. They were drawn with huge lips and eyes and they were portrayed as stupid and made for our entertainment. But, as people began telling their stories, much like the guests in our class did, the countrys view of them changed. Books began portraying them in better light, and now hundreds of multicultural books are published every year. I believe this is important, because our children will now have a better understanding of pluralism in our country, earlier on, so perhaps prejudice and misunderstandings will not be as prevalent. With this class, I have come to see America in a light that I used to see through Amber. I see it as a place where yes, dreams come true, and people are free. But, also as a place where we can learn. Where we can learn from other people and their experiences. Where we can learn that just because you read about other religions and cultures doesnt mean you understand them. It isnt until you take that extra step of getting to know someone that you fully understand and learn about them. This class has brought me back to seeing people and America as I was able to see it when I was younger. I understand now what it means to live in plural America and what we must do to keep it this way. I feel as though I have learned more from this class than in any other class at Jewell, simply because we were able to experience first hand, what America is, which is something that most people cant say they have ever done.
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My Camelot, by Ed Chasteen

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