CHAPTER 22

MILLBRAE

THE GATHERING STORM OF VIET NAM

"Why Millbrae?" I asked when Bob said that the District Superintendent had offered us the move in 1967. We had been in Hayward nearly 4 years; I liked the house and the climate; and I wasn't fully aware of how right wing and low‑brow the congregation was. Actually one can never categorize a congregation like that ‑‑ we were experiencing increasing tensions over the politics of Viet Nam and the coming crisis of what the draft would imply for our eligible sons.

"Well we ought to go look at it," Bob said, pointing out that the salary would be higher. So we took off across the San Mateo Bridge. We had been told that the church was slumping because of Walter Gourley's rather unimaginative leadership. His wife had been in a terrible auto accident and had been bedridden a lot of the two years he had been pastor.

When we saw the beautiful view from the Hillcrest Boulevard Parsonage we knew that we would have some advantages. In effect we moved from the Hayward Earthquake Fault to the center of the San Andreas Fault, for immediately to the west of our new home lay the freeway adjacent to the Crystal Springs Reservoir formed by the fault.

Millbrae was an upwardly mobile community. It was lovely living there, but there were drawbacks. Shortly after we moved in we took Paul camping at Yosemite and had occasion to drive two of the young men back. They enjoyed telling us that it wasn't what we would hear that counted in Millbrae, but what we would NOT hear. There was always a lot going on beneath the polished surface of things.

During the first week Bob received several invitations to meals which excluded me ‑‑ we realized that the minister's wife preceding me had been a non‑entity, so the congregation had just come to assume that the wife would not take part in anything. Bob quickly let people know that we liked being included together socially. I remember being invited to the home of Alexander Nepote for a Christian discussion group. I was immediately impressed with his talents as an artist and delighted with the fact that, following a heart attack, Alex had become deeply interested in Tillich and Christian theology. It was through Alex that I was encouraged to pursue getting my M.A. at San Francisco State. I loved the opportunity to study again and to be on a campus.

There were different sorts of demands on Bob's time. With more capable leadership in the church, Bob became more of an enabler than a leader. This was an era when there was a great push for laymen to assert themselves. The whole idea of therapy groups, introspective messing with psyches, sensitivity groups and evaluation were flourishing. One winter Bishop Golden came to a district meeting held in our spacious social hall for a meeting where the ministers were to be excluded, but the laymen were encouraged to come and bring all their criticisms. (This was the pattern for the whole conference).

It was a Sunday afternoon. I felt somewhat threatened at the very idea, and somewhat revolted with some of the spin‑off suggestions. It's hard to remember what wild ideas were circulating due to the drug culture, the Viet Nam revolt, the denigrating of anyone over 30. One young man, who had just been recruited into Rev. Jerry Carter's church in San Francisco, leapt to his feet and shouted that he thought all ministers' pensions should be abolished because of the lousy job the ministers had done in not averting war or curing any social ills. And there were some other equally absurd suggestions.

I was sitting toward the back of the room. Suddenly Betty Russell appeared at my elbow and hissed, "What are YOU doing here? YOU'RE not a layman!" I got a little pink and felt even pinker inside as I got up and left the room. I felt like saying. "If I'm not a layman, what am I?" I knew I wasn't a clergy. Of course I was right and she was wrong. But it was the horrid atmosphere that was difficult to bear. People needed scapegoats; everyone was feeling threatened by their children, or their parents, or the new morality, or the waves of civil disobedience.

One of the things that made me angry was the feeling that ministers were rewarded for getting their churches all upset over issues, losing lots of members and creating turmoil; whereas someone like Bob, who tended to heal the divisions, was looked upon as being wishy‑washy. Actually everyone in the church knew where we stood. Charles' picture was plastered on the front page of the paper with the headline, "PASTOR'S SON RISKS PRISON ‑ `I'M HAPPY TO BE INDICTED'". I personally felt we did more to change people's opinions on the war by allowing them to evolve in their thinking than by the direct confrontation of some of Bob's colleagues.

In some ways the load we carried during these years seems worse in retrospect. I hardly realized at the time how close to depression I came. It was so frustrating to think that these beautiful young men were being warped and made cynical through a political nightmare. Charles had spelled out the issues when we were still in Hayward. He was right on so many things, but because he hadn't yet realized the bankruptcy of Marxism, it had been impossible for us to fully agree with him. Yet more and more we saw that his perspective on Viet Nam was right. And of course, with time, he reversed himself on the leftish issues. At the time I cried easily.

I went to one retreat where a young woman informed me bluntly that she wished Viet Nam was paved over with concrete, burying the bodies of my sons. I was less upset by her, because I knew her husband was a pilot and that she was young and ignorant, than I was with many of those who should have known better.

One of the ironies of our 5 years at Millbrae was that it was closer to Bob's and my tastes than any place we ever lived, and yet, partly because of the difficult war years, partly because of the politics of the church, it was the only church from which we had a somewhat unhappy departure.

Something that helped me was that I never felt personally denigrated. It has always seemed that the most cantankerous people give you some giggles if you have someone at home to rush back to share it with. Betty Russell was an example of the upwardly mobile at its most insensitive. Her husband was a junior executive and her family had some winery connections. Betty was notorious for her untactfulness. For example, at the end of the Maundy Thursday communion, I was gathering the grape juice glasses while the choir was assembling to practice for Easter. Betty rushed up and chewed me out because she said, "It's just stupid and plebeian to serve grape juice instead of wine." With Betty I could always return a "soft answer: while thinking to myself, "Another Betty Russell story to tell Dink..." And I also chuckled inwardly at the thought that other ministers had been kicked out of the church for using wine inappropriately.

Another time I was leading an overnight retreat for our women in Marin County. The subject was the Psalms, and I thought it was a fantastic success. As we prepared for our last lunch we sat around in a circle for a final evaluation. The tributes were glowing, and I was feeling both spiritual and exhilarated. The woman next to me gestured with her right hand to her left breast as she said fervently, "I just felt my heart warmed..." Betty (who was a registered nurse) was sitting next to her on the other side. She pointed scornfully to the woman's chest and said, "That's not where your heart is!"

A neighbor of Betty's told me about how furious her husband was when they had a 4th of July bash, and Betty chose to humiliate him when they were doing some amateur star‑gazing. Yet Betty was one of the most efficient people I've ever known. She could run a bazaar or a luncheon. Everyone who knew her well learned that "that's Betty," when she infuriated someone new.

Elisabeth Cassidy, the artist, was a person who helped me a lot with painting. She was such a dear person and friend and so generous with her teaching. The days at San Francisco State were stimulating and disillusioning too. I was dismayed to see the beautiful campus trashed, and the aimlessness of students who had no idea what they were there for. I was amazed at how many students liked to talk about religion and how often it came up in classes. No professor would dare say anything positive about the church or Christianity, but the hunger to search for meaning and explore ideas was often expressed, and I never felt put down for my end of conversations. In fact I felt I made some pleasant casual friendships. I remember one sad‑faced tall young black man who watched with me as students were chasing down between the buildings heaving rocks through the windows. He said, "I sure hope they don't go too far...I'm for Hayakawa (the beleagered president) because I need to graduate and I can't afford to have the school wrecked."

I became deeply interested in William Blake and in Rembrandt and took great pleasure in the seminar which met with Dr. Ernest Mundt, my advisor. He was a true "Renaissance" man, though I hate the way that word has been misused. He laughed when I first proposed the topic for my thesis, for it was far too broad, but he grew to have respect for me and encouraged me to go on for a doctorate, but I felt that would not fit with my family and church responsibilities.

One special friend from that seminar was Heide Van Doren. We met at Dr. Mundt's home ‑‑ something the administration encouraged, to cool the passions on the campus. Something came up during the course of the discussion about prostitution. I made the casual remark that I thought it was just as much prostitution for a beautiful girl to use her body to sell shoddy products on T.V. as to sell it in a more obvious way. Heide bristled and objected.

"I don't agree with you at all. I'm a model and that's how I earn enough to stay in school. And I'll model anything ‑‑ as long as it's not underwear ‑‑ it's the buyer beware..."

I looked at this beautiful young blonde woman, and I felt stricken at my lack of tact. But, to my surprise, everyone else in the seminar took my side. After the seminar, I again tried to apologize for my remarks. A couple of weeks later, much to my astonishment, Heide came clear across campus to look me up and tell me that she had thought over what I had said, and "I agree with you completely!" That was the beginning of a very special friendship.

Heide lived with her German grandmother in an apartment near San Francisco State. She was recovering from two sad events in her life: the invitations had been printed for her impending wedding to an Arabian prince when the wedding was called off by the strict Muslim family. And her mother had recently died of cancer. In the photographs, Heide's mother was a spectacularly beautiful person, and Heide was properly devastated. The only relatives she had left in the world were one uncle and her grandmother who, although she adored Heide, was a classic bundle of neurotic fears. Heide needed something that we had (Bob and I), and she shared with us a fresh outlook and enthusiasm.

I was finishing my thesis on "The Prodigal Son as Exemplifying the Father‑Son Theme in Rembrandt's Biblical Drawings". She was doing hers on Salvador Dali's Symbolism. I had some advice for her and ended up typing her thesis (for which she paid me). We enjoyed talking about art and all sorts of things. One day she called me in great excitement to ask me to meet her for lunch. She had attended a most wonderful conference in Monterey and she wanted to tell me about it. This was a weekend set up by a Douglas Edwards to train executives, and she had been hired as a model at $35 an hour simply to attend. She claimed that she had learned so much about management that it was a great education. But it was hard to know why she had been paid to be there. At the end of the conference, Mr. Edwards told the whole assembly that, "it has been proven that any group of men will work better and accomplish more if there is a beautiful woman present." I felt she had been used and I told her so. At first she didn't agree with me, but Heide would always listen.

When she married Joe Betz (the owner of Hoffman's Grill), a famous San Francisco restaurant founded in 1892 on Market Street), we were invited to the reception there. The restaurant was closed for the occasion and for the first time I realized that Heide and Joe moved in a circle of celebrities.

One thing that made Heide enjoy me was that I contradicted a lot of her grandmother's ideas. I encouraged her to believe that sex was not what her grandmother had told her: something you had to endure as the price of marriage. I told her it could be as great for a woman as a man. And later when she was horrified to find herself pregnant, I was again able to give her some healthy encouragement to counteract the horror stories of her fear‑ridden grandmother. I was astonished to learn that a young woman who was as beautiful and brilliant as Heide was could also be so very sheltered and naive.

Heide and Joe were generous about inviting us to the restaurant, and I felt as if I saw a little vignette of another side of San Francisco life. Later she opened the Van Doren Gallery. And I realized that she travelled in circles that would never really intersect with our life. But it was never Heide who cut us off. She always seemed grateful for our friendship. And I think she appreciated my steadfast values. I will always be grateful for the way she shared her home and her world. Her uncle, who managed several Hilton Hotels in Europe, entertained us at the Hilton in Brussels where he and her grandmother were living.

Every so often I still see Heide's name in Herb Caen's column, and The Chronicle has done several stories on her and on Joe Betz, for example, the time he bought all the rest of the '49er football tickets so the game could be broadcast. Heide not only opened the Van Doren Gallery but later purchased the 24‑room Koshland Mansion known as "Le Petit Trianon".

Somehow, I had echoes of my friendship with Maxine Cooke. The glittering world of art and money, cafe society and theatre was fun to observe, but I loved the safety and objectivity of being an onlooker instead of a participant. So often I would think that I had enjoyed our friendhip, but there was no reason for Heide to continue it. Yet she was always ready to renew it, even after we moved away from Millbrae.

It was fun to be in an atmosphere that stimulated us instead of being the other way round (though I have never felt I ever lived anywhere that I didn't have a lot to learn). Alexander Nepote exemplified both brilliant talent and quiet wisdom. Our neighbors, Dan and Barbara Norris became good friends. Dan was a sanitary engineer, and Barbara, with her lovely singing voice, was the epitome of a loving mother of five children. They were very good to Paul who needed more children around. Their older sons were beginning to cope with the pressures of a wealthy suburban high school. And I was secretly glad that our sons had escaped some of that.

Something I recall rather painfully was the emphasis by our Conference during these years on creating a "team". This went along with the proliferation of small groups and with an imitation of big business methods. It seemed to me that the idea was to have endless retreats for sensitivity training, consciousness raising, and enforced intimacy which would bind the ministers together and weld them into a force that could manipulate the social patterns of the time.

I remember one retreat that was organized by Willard Rand and that met at our church. It lasted over two nights and all meals were to be strictly for team members. Betty Watters and I were corraled into helping with meal preparation. She was as angry as I was when we realized that we not only had to act as cooks and waitresses, but we were not supposed to associate with our husbands, who were part of the "team", in any way including meal time. When I proposed to join the table for lunch, Byron Roberts, our half‑time associate, informed me coldly that I didn't belong. Betty's husband was an executive at Bechtel and she was extremely active in the church life, so she didn't feel that she deserved to be treated like this and neither did I.

I have sometimes wondered if Bob might have been a bigger wheel in the Conference if he had gone along with this developing pattern. It was not something either he or I desired. But it would have been the political thing to do. Actually, it seemed to me that one must choose between the close harmony Bob and I shared in working as a team ourselves, or settle for running around to as many meetings as possible. When I see how many clergy marriages have been strained, as well as how many divorces have occurred, I can't help wondering. I also got to feeling that the people who organized these endless retreat opportunities were often the singles who viewed them as their form of family life. Increasingly, one became aware that one could not buck the current organizational fad within the church without running into trouble.

There is much I could write about the many crises of these years. The letters in Chapter 20 touch on a little of this. Each one had to work out his destiny. It was a painful year for Charles when he was home in 1969‑70 fighting the indictment through the San Francisco Court for draft evasion. He had returned from his two year stint in Korea with the Peace Corps by way of Laos, India, and Europe. We were in Paris when he was visiting David in Hamburg, and Bob had the hunch to phone and see if we could get together. Bob and I were travelling on a Eurailpass, and we arranged to meet them in Brussels. It was almost a comedy of errors getting together, but we finally made it and had a most wondrous reunion. We dined on mussels (a specialty of Brussels) and shared a bottle of wine ‑‑ the first time we had ever been 4 adults togehter. We little dreamed of the painful year that lay ahead.

When the F.B.I. came to see us, looking for Charles, I was appalled to greet such a fine‑looking, courteous representative of our government and realize that we could be on the "wrong side". We stood under the framed Citation for Service honoring Charles DeWolf, and signed by President Nixon, as we talked to the agent. At his request we called Charles who came home immediately, and had an apparently pleasant and courteous conversation with the agent in our living room. The court appearances were both confusing and painful, mostly one postponement after another until finally, at the end of the summer of 1970, Charles was acquitted! The punitive Hanford Draft Board had done so much damage in their overzealousness that the judge scolded the prosecuting attorney for bringing the case and wasting the court's time. I had had a headache and almost didn't go that day, but suddenly my headace was gone, the sky was bright blue, and we celebrated with hugs and cheers all round. The sad thing about those days was that Charles and the other boys were so idealistic and so frustrated. While the draft board kept up its pressure, the State Department kept calling and asking Charles if he was free to accept an assignment in Laos!

A few days after he was acquitted, Charles accepted a loan from a friend to go to Japan. It was with much anguish that we bade him farewell. Looking back, it seems very brave to go to a new country armed only with a Japanese dictionary. As the 747 flew into the west I prayed for the future.

Tim as usual soft‑pedalled his struggles. But it was far from easy. He had to appeal his case as a conscientious objector and was finally granted temporary deferment based on his being a husband and father. He and Judi had been married after his return from Utah, and the birth of Emily was one of the really bright spots in these difficult years. They were plunged into parenthood and the struggle for economic survival with little preparation. But after extremely strenuous physical work, Tim was hired by the Cal Library, and together they were building a life of their own.

Bill was turned down by the Hayward Draft Board when he asked for C.O. status. But working as an orderly at Highland Hospital, his supervisor went to bat for him, and he was allowed to continue, counting his work as alternate service.

David wanted to turn in his draft card because "others less fortunate than he did not have the exemption of a Stanford student". I begged him to wait ‑ at least until Charles's problems were behind us. He was persuaded to finish Stanford, and if the draft had not come to a fairly abrupt end, he would have had even more trouble.

One unforgettable crisis for David came when he announced rather casually at Easter dinner during his Senior year at Stanford that he had decided not to graduate because of a controversy within the Religious Studies Department, and his belief that the Senior Dissertation required of him was at issue. He had been ecouraged by his advisor, Robert McAfee Brown, to take up the battle. We counseled against it. In fact we pleaded and argued all day that he would be sacrificing his future, that we would have no possible way of helping him when he wanted to re‑enter, etc., etc. To no avail.

Finally, as he left next morning, I gave him a tender hug and told him that, though we didn't agree with him, we still loved him and would stand by him. A few moments later he was back at the front door looking white, and in shock. Behind him came the owner of the station wagon with which David had collided on his bicycle. Cycling down Millbrae Avenue, he had failed to stop at the Stop sign. We rushed him to the doctor who treated and x‑rayed him. As the doctor put a sling on his arm, he told us that the worst injury seemed to be a broken collar bone. Turning to David, he said, " You won't be able to use your arm for the next six weeks, but you can use your fingers." David looked up ruefully and said, "Well, I guess God meant me to write that paper..."

However, the next day, when I came in from a meeting, I could see he was too bruised all over to feel like a human being, and he confessed that he just couldn't do it. I asked him if he'd read the book of Jonah in the Bible. He said, "Remember me, I'm the kid who had the Bible for Breakfast..."

I said, "Well read it again."

And dear David. That's what he did. He saw the point, sat down and typed a magnificent paper 150 pages long. When he submitted it to Dr. Brown, he discovered that his advisor wouldn't have time to read it because he was going to jail. That was indicative of the times. Anyway David did graduate and did get Phi Beta Kappa. I often wondered what Paul was thinking of all the talk that swirled over his head.

In the spring of 1972 I had been asked to speak on "Oriental Christian Art" at Temple Methodist Church in San Francisco. I sat at the speakers' table next to the president, Ethel Elizabeth Crummey. After my talk and a most pleasant visit with Ethel Elizabeth, I left for home, arriving about 3 p.m., just as Bob was answering the phone. His District Superintendent, Bob Hill, asked him if he would like to move to Grace Church, Stockton, and would he please phone back within an hour to an hour and a half.

Bob looked up the salary and other statistics in the Journal, and phoned our friend Arch Brown in Stockton, who reported that the church had been under a cloud with a very indifferent pastor. We concluded after exploring the idea that it was certainly not a good move for us. The salary was considerably lower, and no other compensations seemed to be offered. We were very happy at Millbrae, had been voted back unanimously, etc., so Bob phoned the superintendent to say, "Thanks, but no thanks..."

However, the superintendent responded by saying, "Well, the Bishop wants to talk to you." At Bob's suggestion, I was listening on the other phone, and I heard the Bishop say something like, "Now, Bob, you know it's good for everyone to have a change of pace now and then. You've been in Millbrae 5 years, and it will be stimulating for you...we in the Cabinet study these things out very carefully, and we know what's good for your development...etc., etc." Bob could hardly get a word in edgewise.

I listened in astonishment. We had always been led to believe that, if the minister wanted to stay and the church wanted him to stay, he was absolutely secure. Finally Bob said, "Bishop, is this an order?"

"Well," Bishop Golden stuttered with some hostility in his voice, "All I can say is, that if you don't accept this appointment, I can't guarantee you anything except some place out in the boondocks..."

Bob could do nothing but say, "All right."

The phones were hung up. Bob and I embraced each other in a long tight hug. We were both devastated. Dr. Hill had revealed that Dick Hart would be coming to Millbrae and Dr. Crummey (an ex district superintendent and husband of Ethel Elizabeth) were involved in the move. I could not believe that I had sat next to Ethel Elizabeth in such a friendly exchange if she knew what was happening. I knew that she and her husband had a lot of clout in the Conference. Both Bishop Golden and Dr. Hill were black men. We wouldn't want to fight them. We wouldn't want to create dissension in the congregation. (Later we found out the Crummeys were almost as unhappy as we were. And she knew nothing of it when I had seen her.)

I remember saying to Bob, "If you want to quit the Methodist Church, I'll go anywhere you want to go." How could they do such a thing to a man who had an unblemished reputation, who had brought Millbrae through very tough times and had made every church he served grow substantially! The prospect of financial reverses was bad enough, but the decision seemed to fly in the face of everything we were led to believe about the church. At the very same time, men like Dick Whitmore, who rocked their churches with scandal and infidelity, were coddled. Art Schuck, our friend who was on the Cabinet, had told us how he went to Dick's church (one of the best in the Conference) and asked them to support Dick through his messy divorce, to be understanding, and Christian... The same thing was happening to men who lost half their church membership for their political views. Bishop Golden himself had spoken as if the church needed to be purged.

Later we found out that Bishop Golden was leaving that night for the General Conference where he was to be elected as President of the Council of Bishops. The whole move had been initiated because Dick Hart HAD to leave Berkeley, and refused to go to the church he was offered because the parsonage was too small for his family (and he could not go to the opening at Grace because he'd already served that church!). I had the very strong feeling that the saying "Nice guys finish last," applied to us. We were told by one of the other superintendents on the Cabinet that Bob was the victim of an "autocratic bishop" and a "weak superintendent". There were a lot of reverberations from this arbitrary move, and many people came up to us at Conference asking, "What happened?" They had the feeling that if it could happen to Bob it could happen to anyone.

I never respected Bishop Golden after that. Bob wrote him a very nice letter after we had been at Grace some time, and he never answered. He almost cut us dead at a reception we went to, and I felt he had a guilty conscience about using Bob to solve his problem. I was also glad that he was reappointed to the L.A. area so we didn't have him as a bishop any longer. Bob Hill apologized every time he saw us. He was well‑intentioned, but it was water over the dam.

Return to Table of Contents