Born in. Mother studied when I was 8 mos old. Became very zealous. No more xmas, bdays, holidays. Very shocking to my father and older brothers. My dad tried to do the holidays but without her help or encouragement he gave up and would just give us kids money. We lost contact with our close family (all catholic) relationships. To this day when effort is made to contact them they don't respond. My dad had been a very athletic guy with bowling and baseball but soon she hounded him to give that up. I had to go to every meeting with her but "the boys" didn't always go. Mother is SHOCKED whenever she brings it up and they say they HATED the meetings. (Especially the one in prison). Dad eventually studied and even went in service but it really wasn't his comfort zone. (My mom describes it as a 'fear of man" although he was a lightweight boxer and capible of kicking ass) His big break was when I was raped by an apt mgr and the brothers came to hound me about it. I was crying. They were verbally pounding me. then my dad (about 73 yrs old) told them it was enough and they had to leave. The Overseer said, Mr. xxxxxx do you think a little old man like you could kick us two big young men out of this house? My father said let's just give it a try and if this is the kind of people you are I don't want to be associated with you. In return the CO said , 'if this is the kind of man you are we don't want you at our meetings!!!!"
They stormed out of the house and my father never went to another meeting of which I felt tremendous guilt that I was responsible for my father's upcoming death at Armegeddon.
I was baptized at an assembly I went to with a married couple who were pioneers. The night before baptism they asked me. "Who is going to survive Armegeddon and God's wrath" Answer, "the Great crowd.' "And how is one identified as being part of the great crowd?" 'By being baptized'. "If you are not baptized at the time of judgement then you are the same as those that reject god and therefore deserve to be destroyed". That scared me enough to get baptized without telling my mother and she was really pissed that she didn't even see it. I was 16 and knew that whatever much I did was not enough and "perhaps' getting dunked under the water MIGHT assure avoidence of a fiery end where my eyes would not melt out of their sockets and skin melt off my bones.