Hi Cathy,
You may be thinking of Wynne Warren, rather than Wendy. The description you gave of her sounds right. She was then engaged to, and later married, a Bethelite named Warren Pake. She was pretty good friends with my wife and I (Gloria worked in the Computer Department for the last couple of years we were there. Wynne was from the midwest, St Louis if I remember right. Later, they left Bethel and moved out West, maybe Arizona, not sure about that. She was a pistol.
As for the cute guy in typesetting, I have no idea. I don't remember any cute guys at all up there. :-) But did you notice any of the cute guys in the Pressroom?
Smiling as I write this,
Tom
Tom Cabeen
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Warren Schroeder from Bethel on Freddy, Kline and the apostate books!
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Thanks BS,
But you should know that I don't own any WT literature except a NWT. I don't know what the live forever book is. Better plan on scanning in a page or portion of a page for me.
Thanks,
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sKally,
In that case, thanks so much for sharing! I did enjoy seeing the pictures, but what I found most interesting was looking over Stan Milosevic's library of books written by JWs, including some I knew when I was at Bethel, on the link at the bottom of his home page.
The fact that JWs are publishing their own books tells me that the days of WT exclusivity when it comes to defending their faith are over. The time of "one exclusive channel" is (de facto) giving way to JWs thinking about their own faith and publishing on their own. (I guess the Society has been calling them "publishers" all along, so maybe it was inevitable.) This can only lead to more people thinking about what they believe. Once that happens, it is only a matter of time before they see the logical, historical and scriptural contradictions of the WT belief system. (I know at least three of the authors on Stan's list who are no longer JWs.) I'm betting that Stan hasn't read all the books in his library. If he ever does, we might even see a post from him here on JWD before too long...if we can figure out who he is. Come to think of it, he might even be reading this right now! (Hi Stan! Keep reading! Love to July!)
Thanks again,
Tom -
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sKally,
You have made two posts recently. One is about the amount of money spent to make the Toronto Bethel a nice place; the other is about a JW couple who made a tour of JW facilities, and posted pictures of their trip, presumably for other JWs to enjoy.
The fact that the WTS has plenty of money to spend on buildings and equipment is nothing but a reflection of the result of any profitable manufacturing and distribution operation. The WTS is a publishing company. That is what they are all about. The vast majority of their resources are directed toward that end, both at headquarters and among the congregations. And when one is manufacturing any item in the millions, every penny of profit on a million of anything means $10,000 in the door. The WTS manufactures many millions of magazines and books every month, and their profits are much, much more than one cent per item. Thanks to unpaid labor at both the manufacturing and distribution end, their total costs per piece are quite low, and their profits quite high. I saw a Dunn & Bradstreet report several years ago that reported over a billion US dollars in annual revenue for the WTS. I don't have any idea where the numbers came from, but I can believe that they are quite high.
I will comment on what I think that means after I comment on your second post. Stan and July Milosevic made a big "theocratic" trip and posted their pictures for everyone to see. You may think I am crazy, but I see in their actions a love story. They are in love with a concept. They believe what the WTS teaches, that soon God will wipe this world clean and replace it with a new order, and Stan and July want to live there with all their friends. To me, this does not reflect badly on Stan and July at all. They believe, and they are living in harmony with their beliefs. They love the WTS, and they want everyone to know it. I admire them for that. I was much the same way when I was a loyal JW. The goodness, deservedness, appropriateness (or the lack of those things) in the object of their love in no way detracts from the beauty of their love.
Therein lies the great thing about love. An old man may have abused himself most of his life. He may be an alcoholic, lacking in moral strength, a drug user. And yet his children may still love him in spite of all that. The purest and highest form of love does not depend upon the loveableness of its object. Therein lies its strength and beauty. This is one of the fundamental teachings of Christianity.
One day, Stan and July may come to see the WTS differently. They may discover something that convinces them without a shadow of a doubt that the rosy pictures painted in the WT pubs are not as true as they once thought. Then they will have some self-examination to do. They will be faced with a choice about how to handle that truth. They may choose to delude themselves, and go on in the organization, just pretending that they believe, but with bitterness and hurt inside for the rest of their lives. Or they may choose to redirect the love they now have for the WTS to something or someone more deserving of their love and loyalty. They will most likely have to deal with embarrassment, shame, anger, the sense of being betrayed, the sense of lost time, wasted lives. But for now, the love with which they love is, I believe, still genuine and beautiful. It is, in fact, the presence of such love in the world that which reassures me of the presence of a source of such a noble quality, a loving God.
In the last book of CS Lewis' Chronicles of Narnia series, The Last Battle, a false god, Tash, wars against the true god, the Emperor. Near the end of the story, one of Tash's loyal servants meets Aslan, the good lion (the Christ figure). The soldier served Tash faithfully and loyally all his life. Only after he "dies" does he learn that his god was evil. He meets Aslan and thanks him for the privilege of meeting him, but understands that he was on the wrong side. Aslan must view him as an enemy and thus kill him. "No", says Aslan, "I accept all the service you rendered to Tash all your life as if it were done to me, for you did it with a pure heart." (I am paraphrasing from memory, as it has been over a decade since I read this book to my now-grown boys as a bedtime story.) This is how I view Stan and July. I am not the judge, of course, but I would like to think this is how God will judge all who love others with a pure heart. Whoever loves is God's child, for He is both the source and example of such pure, unselfish love. It shines through despite our tendency to be selfish and to hurt ourselves and others.
This same factor is at work in the WTS (and all other human endeavors). There are doubtless a few evil people associated with that organization, as there are with just about any group of any size one could name. But I am sure that many if not most of them are, like Stan and July, involved because they believe the WT message and they believe they are doing good. I know I did. Whether through money, work, meeting attendance, etc, they supporting and contributing to something they believe in, to some extent at least. If they believe that God is associated with that organization, why should they not spend some of their time and money to make "God's place" as nice as possible? There could be many noble reasons to spend some of their profits on decent facilities for their volunteer labor. Turning the situation around, if they have money but don't spend it to make the facilities nice, would that make them more righteous? In other words, I separate the motivations of the members from the truthfulness of the message of the Society. They are two separate issues to me.
Should they spend more to help the poor? Undoubtedly! The WTS is very bad about giving to the poor. They don't even help their own very well. My mother gave everything she had to the WTS for sixty years, and spent a decade in the circuit work with my dad. She gave all her material possessions to the WTS. But she did not get back a penny of assistance or support. When her limited funds finally ran out, the local congregation dumped her in a nursing home and called me, her disowned and disfellowshipped son, to help her. I did so gladly, because she is my mother, and I love her. She has dementia and doesn't even know me, but I still love her and consider it a privilege to help her.
When I left the WTS, I had to deal with the same things others did, hurt, anger, loss. But I had to separate the beautiful things that I see in people from the badness we are capable of. I had to learn to love others in spite of what they do to themselves and others. Forgiving them released me from the hurt, and I was able to move on, grow and love even more deeply.
Blessings,
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Warren Schroeder from Bethel on Freddy, Kline and the apostate books!
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IT Support,
No, what I was told happened when that sort of stuff was found is that the contraband material would be confiscated, passed around among the Factory Committee and other overseers above my level. (Nothing like that ever crossed my desk, I know that much.) They would thoroughly review it to make sure it was "really" bad, then they would carefully file it away as "evidence", in case it was ever needed in the future for disciplinary purposes. At least that is what I was told by my friends in Service. Really! (I doubt that they would mislead me about so serious a matter!)
In all seriousness, to my knowledge, that never happened in the Pressroom during the years I was there, (1969-1980) nor did I ever hear about it as any kind of practice. Maybe it happened once or twice. Perhaps that kind of thing was more likely to happen in Service, Writing or the GB offices, where competence wasn't as easy to determine prior to promotion as it was in the "blue collar" departments, who knows?
Another story: One night, after 11PM, I was on my way home from a meeting, and Doc Dixon (whom I knew pretty well) was standing at the 124 Columbia Hts elevator. "Will you please come with me, Tom?" he said. "I need some help." We took the elevator to the third floor, where the Infirmary was, and where old guys were moved to live out their last years. He took me into the men's room. Adelle Ledley (mentioned elsewhere in this thread) who was a nurse, joined us there. She had been on duty that night. One of the old guys (who shall remain nameless) had died and was lying on the floor of a bathroom stall. The doc and I picked him up and carried him to a gurney which Adelle had brought into the hallway. Later, when they cleaned out his room, I heard that they found some girly magazines between his mattress and box springs. I imagine they were also confiscated by the Bethel office. What they did with them after that is anybody's guess.
:-)
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Hey Greg,
About the Bob Lang and Percy Harding stories, there were many similar stories at Bethel that I either heard or was involved with. Over time, they shaped my views of the WTS and what people like me could do to change things. For a long time, I was committed to trying to effect that change.
But when I finally became convinced that WT chronology was a complete fabrication (thank you Carl Olof), their whole theology, ecclesiology and interpretational scheme collapsed before me like a house of cards. I felt like someone who had, through extraordinary efforts, arrived late and managed to catch a train at the platform, got a great seat, sat down and was enjoying the ride, then slowly began to notice that the station names were not quite right, then finally became convinced that I was on the wrong train. When I came to that realization, I just wanted to get off. I wanted no revenge, I just wanted off. I didn't want to waste any more of my life there.
One of the stories I remember clearly involved a very nice young man in the Pressroom named Karl. He came from the Midwest, Michigan as I recall, and his family was very poor (they had no electricity in their house). He was a great guy, hard worker, honest as the day is long. I married Karl and his wife (meaning I conducted the ceremony) and I had great respect for them both. At that time, Bethelites earned vacation days one day at a time. Karl wanted to visit home on a particular week so that he could attend a Circuit Assembly and see his friends. He put in for a vacation and got turned down, so he came to me to see if there was something I could do. (The poor guy was going out to Michigan on the bus, and he needed a few days to get home, then to the assembly.) He was turned down because of a technicality. Follow closely here.
The problem was that by the time he wanted to leave, Karl would only have earned five days of vacation time. But we worked five and a half days per week, so he was one half day short for a full week. When he left, he wouldn't have enough vacation time to be on vacation Saturday morning. But he would earn the half day he needed when the week he was on ended.
Technically, however, he wouldn't earn the day until Saturday noon (at the end of the Bethel work week), so the half day he would then earn would not be usable until the next week. It was such a nitpicking technicality that when he told me about it, I just laughed. I thought he was joking. But when I saw that he was dead serious, I was outraged. I went up to Wheelock's office on the 8th floor and explained the situation. Wheelock lit into me for a long time, telling me how everyone wanted an exception, and rules were rules, etc. etc. etc. I told him that in view of Karl's situation, and his hard work and character, and the fact that he wanted to go when he did because of wanting to attend an assembly, I strongly recommended that they make an exception. It was such a nitpicking technicality, I said. Maybe it was the word "nitpicking". Or maybe it was the expression of disgust on my face. But it only made him more angry. I was in his office for quite a while. Needless to say, I didn't convince him to go to bat for Karl.
But I learned something from that situation about the possibilities of effecting any real change among the people who ran that place. With a heavy heart, I had to return and tell Karl that he had better make other plans.
Tom -
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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.
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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,
Tom -
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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.
Tom