Hey Jim,
You asked if I knew Bob Mattson. Yes. Bob had been at Bethel in the 1950s, in the Pressroom, left to have a family, then returned. He was my assistant during the last few months I was the Pressroom Overseer, and he took over my job as Pressroom Overseer after I left on July 15, 1980. I more or less trained Bob to run the Pressroom, but Bob had been a professional printer, so the only thing I needed to do was acquaint him with the guys and with the procedures I had put in place after Rich Wheelock went to the Factory Committee. I got along very well with Bob. He was easygoing and as you say, a genuine nice guy. But Bob was my dad's age, a different generation. So he and I did not share the same kind of camaraderie I did with the guys that had been through the big changes in the Pressroom and the organization, guys like Randy, Jim Petrie, Dana Primiano and other foremen, most of whom were of my generation. I also know both Bob's boys, as they had both been in the Pressroom. I knew Mark better than Paul.
Tom
Tom Cabeen
JoinedPosts by Tom Cabeen
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Warren Schroeder from Bethel on Freddy, Kline and the apostate books!
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Tom Cabeen
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Warren Schroeder from Bethel on Freddy, Kline and the apostate books!
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Tom Cabeen
Hi sKally,
I probably don't know you. But you may not know me and what many of us went through. You may have gone through some much worse things than I did. If that is the case, I am sorry you did. But the fact that we had some good times while at Bethel was not because we did not care about badness or because we did evil things.
I was not responsible for the teachings of the WTS. Even though I ran their pressroom and participated in perpetuating their teachings in many other ways, my conscience is perfectly clear. I was taught these things by my parents, and I accepted them as true. When I came to see that they were not, I left them behind. I never taught anyone something I did not believe to be true. (I know plenty of people who did, though.)
It was not fun for me to grow up as a JW in the 1950s. I got beat up and made fun of many times because I was not allowed to salute the flag, stand for the national anthem, etc. etc. Even teachers made fun of me. That is one reason I loved Bethel. For the first time in my life, I was not an outcast. I met some wonderful men and women there. I loved them then and I still do, even the ones who are still JWs. I assume that they are not evil people, just misled like I was.
After over a decade of service at Bethel, my wife and I decided to leave Bethel. We doubted the WT chronology. We wanted a family and we just didn't trust WT chronology enough to stay "until the end". We had absolutely no money, nor any of the things we needed to set up housekeeping. I had to borrow $300 from my father in law just to move from New York. When we left Bethel, we had no friends who were not JWs. Yet after we left, we received almost no help, financial or otherwise, from either family or our JW friends. We were later both disfellowshipped for no good reason at all and as a result have been shunned by those same friends and families for nearly three decades. I had to start from scratch at age 30, get a real job and learn to support my wife and kids, without a college education. We had some tough times. But we had good times as well, and we made good friends.
I have changed my attitude about many things since I was at Bethel, and more still since I left the WT organization. But when I left, I decided I would not allow that little group of people to continue to control me by molding my life around what I was then due to their influence. I learned from the experience and moved on. I am not an "ex Witness" any more than I am an "ex high school student". I do not spend time thinking of what my life would have been like, if, for example, I had accepted the full scholarship I received and gone to college instead of Bethel. I cannot change the past.
But I am not ashamed of the time I spent at the WT headquarters, nor for having had a good time with good people. I have thoroughly enjoyed this walk down memory lane. The good times I had were not good because of the badness of WT doctrine, they were good in spite of it.
May God bless you,
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Warren Schroeder from Bethel on Freddy, Kline and the apostate books!
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1914,
OK, I stand corrected. I;ll give you the guy with serious flatulence, but there ain't no way God is going to pelt the world with the ends of giant Q-tips! :-)
Seriously funny, i'll admit, but don't quit your day job!
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Georgygirl,
Yes, he was. His mother was German, and his father Salvadorenan. He married a wonderful sister named Heidi.
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Fisherman,
While I was single, I lived in the 124 bldg, mostly the seventh floor (739 and 735) My last roommate as a single guy was Baltazar Perla. Some of you may remember him as the guy who used to play "Malaguena" on the piano in the 124 lobby. He was on track to be a concert pianist when he decided to dedicate the few short remaining years of this system to something much more worthwhile: he was the coordinator of the Spanish congregations (Spanish Desk in the Service Department). I liked Balta very much, and told him many things before we left. He never turned us in. But I haven't spoken to him since we left Bethel in 1980.
After Gloria and I got married on May 25, 1974, we moved into her room, 458 in the 107 bldg. Later, when the Towers opened up, we bid on and got a room on the 13th floor, T1316. We had a nice view of the lower Manhattan skyline and a little balcony. A few GB and other heavies lived on the floor below us, including the Franz' and the Schroeders, and I think Ulysses and Ann Glass.
Ulysses and I were pretty good friends, as I was the lead voice for WT dramas in the 1970s, and Ulys and I spent a lot of hours together in the recording studio every spring, getting the dramas ready. Usually, the summer dramas were first preformed by the Gilead classes for the preceding year, at the graduations. So they had to be made long in advance of the conventions.
Listener,
Dan and I got to be friends when I first moved into 739 in the 124 bldg. He lived next door, in 740, and somehow we just clicked as friends. We did social things together outside of Bethel. Dan was single at the time, and worked in Writing. He was interested in a British sister, and Marina came to Bethel about the same time as my wife-to-be, Gloria. Marina did not make friends as easily as some, but she and I got along well from the very start.
When Dan had a falling out with Karl Adams, he was sent to the factory to work in Composition. (Dan told me that he had interviewed a young brother who had used drugs, for an article he was preparing. The brother talked to Dan on condition of anonymity. Karl Adams (overseer of Writing) demanded to know who the brother was, and Dan refused to tell him. Karl sent him to the factory because of that. That kind of thing happened quite a lot at Bethel. There were a lot of similar cases in the Pressroom files, which I had access to when I was Pressroom Overseer, but I didn't spend too much time going through the archives. I was too busy. Later, after I left, I wished I had made copies of some of them.)
By chance, I was closer than most were to the discussions that led to the formation of the GB committees. Fred Maes, John Bechtel and I were once called into a meeting with the entire Governing Body, in 1974, while discussions were underway as a follow up to "Black Thursday" (that's another story).
After Dan was put on the GB, and their Personnel Committee, he had an office on the ninth floor of Bldg three. I used to visit him nearly every day after I was the Pressroom Overseer. We talked about everything, including a lot of confidential stuff about things going on in the GB and personnel matters. I told him things about how the guys were reacting to things that the GB was doing, and made suggestions as to things that could make Bethel life better for people.
Dan shared lots of stories with me. After I left, I could have gotten many people at Bethel in trouble with what I knew, had I revealed it, but that is not part of my agenda. I simply wanted to know and live by what is true, an accurate picture of reality. I never wanted to get revenge or hurt anyone, least of all Dan. Next to my wife Gloria, he was probably the closest friend I ever had in my life. Losing him as a friend (when we left) hurt me very deeply. I tried unsuccessfully to contact him a couple of times.
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Warren Schroeder from Bethel on Freddy, Kline and the apostate books!
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Tom Cabeen
Great posts, Greg, both this one and the one you provided the link for.
You obviously thought the whole thing out more thoroughly than I did. I just sort of shot from the hip because in my experience it is hard enough to get things to work out even when you have everyone helping you and you are wide open about everything.
I agree with you completely, and I can confirm that you have described the situation there just about perfectly.
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Thanks for the kudos, 1914, but I had lots of help to do what we did. I did learn a lot along the way, but we all did. Randy was a great foreman. So was Jim Petrie, Darryl Block, Dana Primiano, Harry Johnson, and many others. And just about all the press operators were good guys, hard working, honest and sincere. I think one reason I was as successful as I was at Bethel is that I never forgot that these guys were volunteers, that they (at some point at least) wanted to be there, and that if I could just smooth the way for them, they would work hard and have a good time in the process. And just about all the time, it worked.
Regarding your questions about subliminal artwork, I am not much of a conspiracy theorist. I have a book or two that show WT artwork with things like goats and other stuff in it. Some of it is pretty convincing, as far as the shapes themselves. Of course, when I was there, most of the artwork was pretty simple. It has gotten much more complicated since the switchover to offset printing that happened when I was there.
It is of course possible for some artist to put some little hidden drawing in his work, for any number of reasons (the late caricaturist Al Hirschfield used to always hide his niece Ninas's name in his drawings just for fun), but since it will be printed and distributed to millions, he or she had better have a good reason for it if someone catches it, and with that many copies around, that could happen pretty easily.
Psychological manipulation using subliminal messages is some pretty sophisticated stuff. Things like that require mental resources that are just not available there at Bethel. I would find it nearly impossible to believe any of the people I knew there capable of doing something like that.
Even assuming that there is some evil genius there that could design and implement subliminal psychological messages, (and there isn't; trust me on this) what would the messages purpose be? Loyal JWs will obey just about anything the WTS wants them to do. If you can tell people in plain English that they may not take a blood transfusion and they obey even if it means their child will die, what more could you possibly expect from them through some subliminal messages? I saw some silly brochure recently that says that women cannot wear denim skirts when they tour Bethel. Believe me, if they have that much control, why waste time on subliminal messages?
Really good cons are hard to pull off and are mostly the stuff of movies (like The Sting, one of my all time favorites). In the real world, they are pretty rare. Remember the debacle about the staged rescue of Pfc. Jessica Lynch from an Iraqi hospital? If the US Government with all their brains and resources couldn't pull one over, what chance does the WTS have to do so? That is my opinion anyway...
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Hey Tom,
Why not tell the story of how you learned all the news each day at Bethel, which you passed on to me?
Randy
Sorry, Randy, but I am not really sure what story you are talking about here. Maybe I have forgotten something; can you clarify for me? Certainly there was not one source for my information.
As pressroom overseer I met with Writing, Art Department, Factory Committee, Publishing Committee. I also had lots of individual friends with while I was at Bethel, like Colin Quackenbush. I also had a couple of close friends on the GB, Dan Sydlik (whom, apparently, quite a few posters here didn't like) and Ray Franz. I also did lots of recordings for the Gilead Office, and the recording studio was always a good source for the latest rumors.
I was also very active with both the Spanish and French work, and had lots of friends there.
Some of the guys in my congregation were in Writing (Dave Giltinan and Service (John Bechtel), so that was another source of info. Fred Maes always seemed to have the inside scoop on things. Plus the craziness of you pressroom guys kept me in regular touch with the...how shall I phrase it...judicial element there at HQ.
Is there something I have forgotten? Clue me in...
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Warren Schroeder from Bethel on Freddy, Kline and the apostate books!
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Hi Warren,
I also remember Judy Martin quite well. My own wife Gloria came into Bethel as a single girl in 1971. Her last name was Van Aulen. She was assigned to Jim Petrie's table, and Jim was one of my best friends, so he was always telling funny "Cabeen" stories. Possibly that is why she said yes to me when I asked her if she wanted to go out, as many guys had asked her, but she always said no. One of my roommates, Warren Bennett, really liked her, but he never worked up the nerve to ask her. After he left Bethel, I did. I got to know some of the sisters there much better after I got married.
I also remember a funny Dan Sydlik story. One time Dan and I and several other guys were on the elevator. It stopped and a couple of guys got on. The door closed and the elevator continued on. One of the guys said to the other one "Hey I heard this great Polack joke. There was the Polack who had a chicken..." Dan interrupted him at that point. He said "Did you know that I'm Polish?" he said. Without a second's hesitation, the kid responded: "Oh, I'm so sorry." He said, drawing out each word, "Diiid (pause) youu (pause) heeear (pause) the (pause) one (pause) abouuut (pause) the (pause) Poooolllaaak..." Dad just burst out laughing. The door opened and the two guys were gone. I was stunned. I didn't get it at first (I'm Irish). Then I also burst out laughing.
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Poztate™
I am probably in the minority, but I actually think Freddy Franz actually believed his own predictions. In that way, I think he was much like Russell. Both of them bought into the theory that somehow one could actually calculate the time of Christ's return. (Most Christians for the past two millennia just took Jesus at his word when he said it would be unexpected, like a thief in the night. Only a few like Russell and Franz forged ahead, trying to outsmart him.)
Rutherford, on the other hand, was not deceived IMHO. He was nothing but an opportunist who saw a golden opportunity in Russell's disappointed followers. He stepped right into Russell's shoes and published the seventh and final volume in Russell's series. But the tables got quickly turned when his little scheme landed him in jail. So he fabricated the whole story about captivity, and set out to create an "organization" (the word means a group of people used as a tool, it was used during that time in connection with labor unions), his own little army to send out, primarily to take revenge against the Catholic church for the role they played in having him, a "Judge", imprisoned. That, I think, is where he came up with his whole fabricated story about God needing to "vindicate" his name. No orthodox Christian ever thought that God's name needed vindication. God needs nothing from us, least of all vindication. That was just Rutherford talking about his own need for self-justification and vindication as being a really good guy, even though he had been put in the clink. That is my informed opinion, anyway.
Regarding Bethel being an apostate breeding ground, I think you are right. The Society got way off the WT track during the seventies. It started in the late sixties with NHK's idea to have a Bible dictionary. He thought it would be a big money maker. But producing the Aid book had an unexpected byproduct. It made some of the writers actually think more logically about what JWs were doing and why. I doubt that anyone had ever done that before. The result was big changes like the elder arrangement and the GB. Unfortunately, some of the R&F started thinking, too. Before you know it, people were reading the Bible without the publications, and even Bible commentaries and discovering to their surprise that other people besides WT writers read the Bible, too. And that their guesses about what it means were in many cases a heck of a lot better than the ones they were reading in the WT publications (Remember the article "Figs that Give Pleasure Even to God"?) Obviously, that kind of thing (thinking and reading outside publications) had to be stopped. (In the late 1970s, several of the Brooklyn Service Department staff kept a copy of Barnes' Notes right on their desks.)
Prior to 1980, I had never heard of anyone ever being disfellowshipped for apostasy. It was theoretically possible, but extremely rare, like getting df'd for gluttony or for envy. (Look up the word in your WT index and check out its frequency and use prior to 1980.) That is why Cris Sanchez and Nestor Kuilan were so open when questioned. Why shouldn't they be? It said "READ GOD'S WORD THE HOLY BIBLE DAILY" in big green letters right on the side of our factory building. Who knew they didn't really mean it? So thinking was the problem. Until they either got rid of the thinkers or forced them into self-imposed lobotomies, things could not return to a semblance of normalcy.
Bottom line, any stories you hear about Bethel in the 1970s are atypical. The WTS was never like that before, and it will never be like that again. At least not in our lifetimes.
Best,
Tom