from: http://www.freeminds.org/blogs/musings-of-a-watchtower-insider/memories-of-max-larson.html
Barb Anderson's MEMORIES OF MAX LARSON
There’s much to be remembered about Max Larson, but for me, there were two things that I remember the most—the wonderful timbre of his speaking voice and his strange-looking, very long eyebrow hairs that grew every which way. Although I enjoyed listening to him, I found it difficult to look him in the eyes when we were talking because of those contrary, almost self-willed eyebrows. It was almost embarrassing. I wasn’t alone thinking it odd that a man (or his wife) would let his eyebrows get so scruffy and bedraggled. One Bethel housekeeper actually mentioned to Max that she found his eyebrows disturbing. He replied to that by saying, “I don’t understand why” and hurried off. In the case of Max and his eyebrows, it must be true that “beauty is the eyes of the beholder.”
Old-time Bethelite, Arthur Worsley, told me that Max and his wife, Helen, and Nathan Knorr and his wife, Audrey, frequently went ballroom dancing on weekends at the famous Rainbow Room in NYC all dressed up in their finest suits and gowns. In Max Larson’s life story in the September 1, 1989 Watchtower (see left picture), it states that Max’s wife, Helen, a Bethelite he married in 1956 when he was 40 and she was 25, was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis early in their marriage, and years later when the disease became more advanced, she got around in a battery-powered cart and that’s the way I remember her as she zipped around Bethel.
Sometime in the late 1980s, I was told by Writing staff member Ciro Aulicino, someone who knew just about everything that went on at any given time at Bethel, that Max was partaking. When he started to partake, I don’t know, but I know it was while I lived at Bethel. I suppose that information didn’t make it into his life story is because it was written and submitted long before it was published. The scuttlebutt around Writing was that Max was hopeful that one day he would be appointed to the Governing Body.
If there is a forth-coming memorial article about Max Larson, perhaps it will state whether he was one of the anointed or not. Like Hayden Covington, who began to partake when he was almost at the end of his life, the “heavenly calling” must have been “loud” and persuasive to convince Max when he was in his 70s to take another road to eternal life.
From what I heard, after Knorr died in 1977, Max held resentment against some of the then GB for the part they played in toppling Knorr, Franz, and Suiter from their top positions in the Witness organization, but overall he remained loyal. However, these men in the old guard knew how Max felt about them and were wary. This probably was the reason he never became a GB member, although there could be another reason: He was Brooklyn’s Watchtower Factory Overseer, a tremendously important job, and probably the GB thought he was irreplaceable; but that’s just opinion, not fact, but is based on the case of another important Bethelite who was not appointed to a coveted position because his then vital job, he was told, just couldn’t be filled by anyone else at that time.
In the mid-to-late1950s, because Knorr had dismissed top Writing (back then, it was Editorial) Department staff member Colin Quackenbush from Bethel for insubordination because he refused to give talks when he was on a ski holiday in Switzerland (my husband, Joe, was at Bethel during this time), out of loyalty to long-deceased Knorr, Max Larson refused to accept Colin’s frequent applications to return to Bethel in the 1970s. Colin told me that Max’s refusal to have him back was finally overruled by GB member Karl Klein's lobbying activities (among the GB) to get Colin back into the Writing Department. This was because there were few good writers on nature and family topics and he was sorely needed. Colin returned to Bethel with his wife, Barbara, in the late 1970s. Colin died in 2007.
I found Max Larson a down-to-earth man who was always affable except when an individual caused disturbance to his peace. My husband Joe worked in the Factory Press Room in the 1950s and remembers him as cordial, but distant. Throughout Joe’s second go-around at Bethel he had more dealings with Max than the first time he was there. When attending construction meetings, Joe said Max remained silent and hardly ever offered an opinion. A few times when Joe was talking with one or another old-time Bethelite about construction-related things, Max would walk by and say hello but never stopped to converse. Each time this happened, the reaction was the same, Joe said. The individual he was talking to would remark that Max was always that way, friendly, but restrained, and mostly kept to himself.
Max worked closely with the Engineering Dept when I worked there. He was the one that arranged for Ron Maxwell, a young man working in the factory, who was doing some drafting for small factory projects, to go to university (paid by the Society) to become an engineer. Ron then ended up as overseer of what grew to be a very large Engineering department in the 1980s.
It was Max Larson who had full say over the beginning of the Patterson, NY, construction project and he frequently came to Engineering to meet with Ron. I remember one time when Max was angry at Ron over some decision that he made about the Patterson project and they had words. I heard Max say to Ron in front of some other staff, “You are to do what you are told!” It was a chastened and red-faced Ron Maxwell who tried to act normally after Max left.
And it was Max Larson who, years later, along with the GB, was informed of Ron’s loss of control of some of the Engineering staff. They were engaged in money-making projects while they were supposed to be working on Bethel projects and supposedly Ron knew about it. In addition, Max was informed of how much the staff disliked Ron for his high-handed ways. Subsequently, in 1989, Ron lost his position as overseer and was removed from the department. From then on, Ron was not made an overseer again but worked as an engineer alongside Don Underwood, overseer of the world-wide construction program. It was a great job for someone like Ron because, as he told me, he didn’t like being an overseer. He said he would have rather been in the Writing Department writing articles.
When we were visiting our son in Bethel in 1982 we had no intention of applying for Bethel. It was Richard Wheelock, Assistant Factory Overseer (the one that jumped out of the Towers building to his death in 1990) who invited Joe to come back to Bethel. It was after Bethel breakfast on a Saturday morning that Richard talked to Joe about returning to Bethel, and then he called Max Larson in his room and asked him to interview us. We met with Max a few hours later where he spent most of the time talking to me, cracking jokes, etc. because he had the report from the Service Department stating that Joe was a very faithful Witness elder and former pioneer, etc., so he wanted to see if I was good Bethel material. After I told him about my "theocratic" life and laughed at his stories, I passed Max’s scrutiny. I can’t help but wonder why the man was so friendly with us that morning when he was not known to be all that sociable. Maybe it was because we weren’t Bethelites yet, which seemed to make a difference to some, such as GB member, Ted Jaracz, when he was alive.
I remember one story that Max told us then, and it isn’t found in his 1989 life story in the Watchtower. When Watch Tower volunteers were working on a Bethel construction project in the Heights neighborhood in the early 1970s (primarily interior work), Max said he was in his factory office when he received a call from the receptionist at the Factory Lobby Reception Desk informing him that he had visitors. He arranged for the visitors to go to the old Squibb building lobby at 30 Columbia Heights. At that time the front door was just about under the bridge that connected the two Squibb buildings together (25 and 30 Columbia Heights), and it was in the 30 Columbia Heights building lobby where we were actually sitting at that time talking to Max.
The visitor who greeted Max in the Squibb building lobby was a top Brooklyn Mafia Boss, an older man escorted by some pretty tough-looking associates. His huge black limo was parked outside of the lobby door, Max said, something not allowed by the police as it was a no-parking area. The Mafia Boss had gotten wind that Watch Tower was using non-union construction labor to do work on the inside of its buildings. In no uncertain terms, Max was told Watch Tower construction work had to be done by union members only. For instance, I remember Max telling us that the Mafia controlled the Plumber's Union and there was a rotation system in place to determine which plumbing company got the next big job, etc. The Mafia Boss said that under no circumstances could Watch Tower use non-union people, but only a union-approved plumbing company could do the plumbing renovation work inside Watch Tower buildings, or else there would be trouble.
Max told us that he was extremely concerned about the future of Watch Tower’s expansion plans and couldn’t think of anyway to handle the problem except to “witness” to the man. This he did by explaining the non-profit work of Jehovah’s Witnesses. First, he told the Boss that all the workers lived at Watch Tower and were volunteers. He next asked the Mafia guy if he was Catholic, which he was. Then Max talked about the Lord's Prayer and how Catholics prayed for God's Kingdom to come, and said that's what Catholics and Jehovah’s Witnesses have in common. Plus, he explained about the Witnesses announcing the soon-to-come Kingdom where all people would belong to one big brother-hood, everyone working in harmony. That idea really seemed to resonate with the Boss, Max said.
In Max’s opinion, it was “witnessing” that turned the tide for Watch Tower with the Brooklyn Boss backing off from his demand. Subsequently, Max was assured by the Boss that from then on, Watch Tower was the only organization in the NYC area that could use their own workers, volunteers, to do all interior construction work without interference, which Watch Tower continues to do until this day.
Without a doubt, Max was very proud of what he had accomplished; and from what he further told us, he believed that this was another reason to prove that Jehovah was behind the then Watch Tower building-expansion-program in Brooklyn Heights. Of course, Joe and I were very impressed with this positive outcome proving to us as well Jehovah’s blessings.
It could be said though, from current events, that Jehovah has poured out “progressive light” and no longer wants the Watch Tower to expand its presence in Brooklyn Heights but has “enlightened” the Watch Tower to send thousands of Bethel worker-volunteers home, sell all properties in the Heights, and move their headquarters to a remote area outside of the urban New York City area where peace prevails. (No more nasty, “mentally diseased” apostates to put up with accosting Bethelites on the streets and sidewalks!)
Approximately nine years after we sat in the 30 Columbia Heights Lobby talking with Max, a lobby that had been closed and removed shortly after we became Bethelites, Max welcomed me into his factory office where I was to go through old factory files looking for material that would go into the Proclaimer's book. We talked a bit about the old days when the Mafia ruled every New York area construction job and construction company, except jobs run by the Watch Tower [Printing and Construction Company?] in Brooklyn Heights.
In conclusion, for 73 years Max Larson’s life was focused on one thing—his full-time service for the interests of the Watch Tower Society (WTS mentioned 15 times in his life story). It was through the Watch Tower Society’s literature a promise was made to Max that if he was faithful to Jehovah (the name mentioned eight times in his life story), he would very soon survive to see a “New Order,” an earthly Paradise, where old age and death would be no more and where he had, before he changed his mind, hoped that he would live in.
But grow old, Max Larson did. I’m told he suffered from dementia and other ailments old age can bring, and, at the ripe old age of 96, Max died. He was one of hundreds of faithful servants of the Watch Tower that lived most of their lives at Bethel, which my husband and I have known since the 1950s, many of them hoping to live to see that New Order. This was the generation of 1914 who died from old age waiting for the ”end of this system of things” that Watch Tower promised in 1971 would come “shortly within our twentieth century.” (May 15, 1984 Watchtower; The Nations Shall Know That I am Jehovah, pg 216) However, this wishful longing on their part did not make the Watch Tower Society’s promises come true because their assurances failed the test of time.
