I arrived at Bethel in December of 1968 on a cold night. I had the taxi drop me off at the old Columbia Heights building. The door was locked so I knocked and was reluctantly allowed in by another Bethelite. After waiting in the lobby for more than an hour an assistant from the Home servants office finally showed up to help me find my room. He looked over a list and finally said that I'd be rooming with a black brother from Mississippi who happened to be of the "annointed"
Can you imagine how I felt? Arriving at "God's house", full of awe and I'm rooming with one of the annointed. WOW! I thought I'd be writing Watchtower articles pretty quickly. Now me being white and rooming with a black also gave me an attitude that I was going to be a real diversity champion as well.
When I arrived at my new room, my new roommate was sitting on the edge of his bed reading his bible. He seemed completely uninterested in his new roomie.
Things went pretty well for a couple of days until one night, my room mate woke me up and asked me if I had been smoking cigarettes. I was incredulous. Why would he ask me that? He said that upon entering the room late a couple of nights earlier, he could smell cigarette smoke in the room and was smelling it now. We had common restroom facilities on each hall, so during the night when nature called you had to leave your room. I assured him that I didn't smoke and perhaps he smelled cigarette smoke from the street below. He didn't seem convinced.
A couple of days later after breakfast I returned to my room to pick up my coat for the walk over to the factory and found a written invitation to meet with George Couch, the home servant, at 10AM. I had no idea about what, but I dutifully walked back from the factory for my 10AM meeting. I waited in the outer office for a while and finally was invited into Couch's office where my roommate was already sitting in a chair by his desk. Couch wasted no time in telling me that my roommate was accusing me of smoking cigarettes. (A disfellowshipping offense) I think, at that moment, the whole accusation was so absurd to me that I laughed about it. Couch, as I recall thought the matter was much more serious than I did. In the course of examination and cross examination, Couch asked my roommate if he ever actually saw cigarette smoke in the room, since he had also accused me of smoking while he was sleeping. He responded that he had not. When Couch pressed him as to how that could be, my roomie said that he suspected that I was smoking in the closet and blowing the smoke into my suitcase and trapping the smoke therein. At this, even Couch laughed. He sent us back to work and when I returned that evening, I was assigned to a new room in the Margaret Hotel building.
After a few weeks, I learned that my anointed ex-roommate had been asked to leave Bethel. No explanation was given. Now the area of Brooklyn Heights around Bethel is an area of old brownstones and a residential area where many homosexuals live. Several weeks later, I saw my ex-roommate walking hand in hand with two other men outside the St.George Hotel. I think at that point I could have used a cigarette.