IN ARLINGTON

1976-88

By 1976 we had made several rather abrupt changes in our circumstances and life style. I had gone from merchant seaman to medical student to seaman recruit in the Naval Reserve to research chemist to seminary student and minister. In 1961 Ellie and I had moved 800 miles with two babies to a completely new region, then after five years changed vocations from the church to the court.

In my fifth decade Ellie had enjoyed Winston-Salem, raising her three babies, looking after her four men, doing good works in the community, developing relationships with many fine people. But once again I uprooted her (and everyone) moving off to a congested metropolis (still seeking the holy grail).

On March 7, 1976 I became fifty, and a couple of months later Ellie, Mark and Rob came up and moved into the house in Arlington. Larry Mead went with me down to Winston-Salem and provided most of the heavy work and responsibility of making the move. This was so characteristic of Larry: he would knock himself out for someone, but later become angry because his generosity was not adequately reciprocated. That happened in this case, I'm afraid. I shouldn't have allowed him to do so much for us, but he was definitely the kind of 'take charge' person, very quick to see what needed to be done and to do it. And I let him, as most people do.

In later years I came to see Larry's behavior and attitudes as reflecting the "Martha complex": Martha knocks herself out, but then can't tolerate the idea that others don't do as much. (George Newkirk of Ocala was another notable example of that, and even understood that he was a 'Martha'; he had probably been told by someone with sufficient emphasis for him to remember it. Will Larry wind up as another George?)

Larry became disgruntled with me, with Gateway, and with the whole business some time in 1976. I think it was another instance of his favorite game. Things came to a head in the Mission Group. Shortly before Christmas Larry was moaning emphatically about having to go home for Christmas: he didn't want to go home and always found it a humiliating experience. I began to tell him just as emphatically that he did not have to go home; if he went home it was his decision and he should bear responsibility for it; he shouldn't moan about 'having to do it'. Larry couldn't hear this and must have decided that I was not his friend. He cooled on me personally and became awkward, almost sullen in the Mission Group.

Ellie had remained in Winston-Salem during my second year in Washington because Paul was in his last year in high school. He graduated in May of 1976 and continued to live in Winston-Salem. I suppose he had deeper roots there than other members of the family; in particular he had no inclination or desire at that point to trust his fortune to us and to Northern Virginia.

Left on his own after graduation Paul made his own way, lived several places, sometimes with high school friends, and after a few years on the estate of Mrs. John Whitaker, a very wealthy woman.

Even before the family moved, Bob McGillivray had begun to share the house with us. Bob was another of the 'waifs' I befriended at the C of S. Somehow my ministry usually seemed to focus on the people whom I perceived as needing friends. Bob was definitely such a person.

For several months I had noticed Bob at Potters House, sitting at a table by himself reading a book, for an hour or two each Thursday night. Eventually I had some conversation with him and found he was as open to relationship as anyone I had encountered. He just wasn't very outgoing; in fact I considered him timid in the extreme. But he had a good mind (Phd in Economics) and plenty of creative thoughts to share.

We soon developed a close friendship. One weekend Ellie was there, the three of us sitting at a table at Potters House, and we found ourselves inviting Bob to share the house with us. So Bob and I moved in a week or so before the family came up.

It was a convenient arrangement, and there were no undue pressures--at first. But during the summer Bob had his four children from Seattle for an extended visit; that put a little more stress on the Clayton family than we had anticipated. 5 McGillivrays and 4 Claytons was more than a houseful. Things rocked along, and most of the children went back to their mother; I think one may have stayed a while longer. And eventually Bob moved back to the District.

Once again I had found that 'community is hell'. It's always a trade off. Good things happen, and bad things. I remembered an incident at the Ritz when Jim Cregar and I had sole possession of the apartment, but Byron was spending considerable time with us. Ellie came up for a weekend. That was okay with Jim, but then we had an idea to have Byron bring his children for the weekend, and also stay at the apartment.

Naturally Jim had a right of veto of such a proposal. We asked him, he thought about it and then said, "Okay, I want them to come more than I don't want them to come." Community perhaps always brings ambiguity and ambivalence. It puts a strain on one; at best there are growing pains. We have carried out many experiments and attempts at community of many different sorts; many have failed, but none have been cause for regret.

Our next housemate in Arlington was Perry King, a country boy from some rural town north of Winston-Salem. We were all naturally drawn to Perry when he showed up at the church. He was a radical idealist, had gone through the usual fundamentalist disillusionment, and was seeking spiritual values like so many of the young people who gravitated to the church.

I guess Perry probably spent some time at Gateway, and then Carole Brown, in the Dayspring Mission group at the time, arranged for me to lead a silent retreat. Sally Smelzer, another young friend, and Perry were two of the retreatants. I appreciated Carole's sponsorship and also the fact that my retreat had much less attendance than many. However it was a great experience; at the end of it Sally decided she wanted to be baptized. Perry decided he did, too. He had already been baptized, but felt he had gone past that and wanted to start over. It was a great experience to baptize those two young people in the lake at Dayspring, and as far as I was concerned, made the retreat an outstanding success.

In 1961, when we moved from Louisiana to Millers Creek, I had transferred my official connection with the Methodist Church to the Western North Carolina Conference. After five years at Millers Creek for the next 10 years I received a special appointment as a probation officer and then in 1975 and 76 to the Church of the Saviour (without salary of course).

In 1977 a black bishop assumed leadership of the conference. One morning, out of the blue, the phone rang and my new district superintendent (completely unknown to me) rather summarily informed me that I must take a parish appointment or locate. He seemed to want an immediate answer. I told him I would be in touch with him.

Many people under such circumstances would simply give up their professional relationship (I could name several acquaintances who had been forced or inclined to do that). But as a second generation Methodist minister I had no such intention. I phoned my old pastor, Orion Hutchinson, who was then in Asheville and arranged a meeting with him. He simply took steps to have me transferred to Asheville--to his church in fact.

Then I wrote the Winston-Salem District Superintendent that he need no longer bother about me.

The bishop was putting pressure on the conference to cut down on all these special appointments. In another year I had a total of 20 years and was therefore eligible to retire, which I did. The relationship with the church has been largely meaningless since I left the parish ministry in 1966; however I never had any desire to discontinue it. (Of course after age 62 I was to begin receiving a pension for the eight years of parish ministry.)

Between the fifth and sixth days I spent an aggregate of ten years with a serious commitment to the C of S, but the last eight seemed considerably less meaningful than the first two had been: I now had a house in the suburbs, my family around me, and a 9 to 5 job in town, and these things took most of the energy that for a brief period I had concentrated on the church. Just as Larry Mead had predicted, Ellie adapted readily to the new scene, got a good job, and we became fairly ordinary denizens of the government metropolis. For ten years! At the end of the decade what had been fresh, bright, and beautiful for me had become stale and commonplace, and the congestion, and other down sides of metropolitan living were beginning to wear on me heavily. (But that was near the end of the sixth day!)

The Gateway Mission was, over that period, a primary source of meaning. Ellie and I had a substantial commitment to Mary Anders, the lovely lady from Spartanburg, and to Phil Warner, the old Methodist who had tried to move up spiritually. These were the ones remaining in the group when our time there was up.

Mary had always seemed to me about the most gracious and charming of all the lovely women at the church. Like Louise Baker (although 25 years younger) Mary had come to Washington as a young girl and had spent a long career in government service. In fact I believe she worked for Congress most or all of the time. At the end she was in the Congressional Budget Office.

She had met and married Russ Anders, a young lawyer from Alabama, and they had lived together for 20 years when he died of stomach cancer. Thereafter she remained a widow, although plenty of men were ready to share their lives with her: one from Montevideo, another (very rich man) from California, etc.

With such a vital professional life Mary's time and energy did not allow her as conspicuous a commitment to the church as some of the members afforded. As long as we knew her, Mary's primary assignment had been to prepare and serve coffee in the dining room after the Sunday morning service. This continued after the New Land exodus because Gordon decided to have an "ecumenical service' at Headquarters every Sunday, at which he usually preached. (When it got right down to it, he found he wasn't ready to give up his special role in the church.)

I remembered Mary from earliest times. Unlike most people there she was a southerner and had all the best of southern ways, including an outstanding ability to make a man feel special and affirmed. I'm sure that her special place (she was one of the earlier members) and calling had something to do with Gordon's decision to allow us to remain as an ecumenical mission group. She was our 'prior' a good part of the time, and we wound up meeting at her apartment on Connecticut Ave as often as not.

Mary came into Gateway a few months before Russ died, so we were her spiritual family during the trauma of his death. I didn't think that we gave her much during that time, but she stuck with us and became the soul of our mission group. She was probably the second full member of the group (after Louise), since Sherry Stycker had departed to Dayspring by that time.

Mary was always one of those that Ellie and I both thought most highly of. When we retired to SC, we would have loved for her to come back there, too, but she would have none of the idea. She had left Spartanburg as a young girl and felt little or no attachment to the place. She did have a brother there, who died about 1990, and at that time we went to Spartanburg and spent some time with her.

Phil Warner was as different from Mary as one could be. When we first went to Washington, he was married to Eleanor Warner, a lady I never got acquainted with, but their marriage broke up soon afterward. I believe she was a church member, but she soon left the church and made a commitment to Scientology--a disaster most of us thought! Phil went through bereavement with some outstanding support from Dorothy Cresswell, who had been a mission group member. It was after these events that he came into our life.

I had been around the church for a year or so when I became aware of him as a potential member of Gateway. We needed members; it was a matter of survival. The church people were rapidly dispersing to the six faith communities. I surmised that Phil had nowhere to go, and I invited him to join our group. That he seemed happy to do. Phil had (and still has) a financial problem. I think he has probably always had a hard time living within his income and a tendency to incur debt, which of course makes things worse. This unfortunate tendency had a significant bearing on his relationship to the church--and likely on the outcome of his two marriages as well.

Phil had been on the edge of the church for 15 years at that time. To be an intern member at the C of S one was expected to contribute at least 5% of one's income, and this Phil found hard or impossible to do. And to become a member it was 10%, which probably seemed to him far beyond the bounds of possibility.

Nevertheless he achieved this goal a few years after joining our group. And made the statement that it was easier to live tithing than before tithing!

A number of people were involved in Gateway in the beginning; Jedd and Sydney Johnson were special friends of Gordon--and unusual people. Jedd had been elected to Congress, from Oklahoma, at the age of 24. He served only one term, and sort of hung around Washington thereafter. He started an association of ex-Congressmen and did some creative things with it.

Sydney, Jedd's wife, was a seminary graduate and the daughter of a Congressman. I never expected to be close to these people, having less in common with them than with many at the church, but at the critical time they threw in their lot with Gateway. We had several meetings at their house, planning how we might become and continue as a group in the New Land. At one of these Gordon came. He told us he would not favor our becoming an ecumenical faith community, and he suggested we become a mission group.

So that's what happened. (I think there may have been two ecumenical mission groups, both swimming against the stream of the New Land.) Some in the councils of the church felt that we should not be allowed to add new members, but Gordon once again came to our rescue at that point.

Jedd and Sydney took an active part in the Mission group for a couple of years. Jedd got a vision of starting a 'Potters House-like place on Capitol Hill, and we all supported it and made financial contributions to it. He looked for a place on Pa. Ave, but finally cooled on the idea, and the project fell through.

Soon thereafter they left the mission group, and it wasn't long before they moved to a Lutheran church in their neighborhood; they felt that the needs of their two daughters required that they seek a more family oriented church. That was probably a wise decision: one thing you could not say about the Church of the Saviour is that it was a family oriented church. Everyone's energies were so fully committed to adult type missions that little was left to minister to the church's children. There were very, very few second generation members at the church. I'm sorry to say that even though I deplored that situation, I was caught up in it.(Jedd Johnson died in 1993. We were long away and just heard about it via the grapevine.)

Larry Mead was present at some of the earlier meetings of the "New Land" Gateway, but he did not hang around very long. Betsy Groomes was the key member of Gateway during the transition. Betsey was young to middle aged; she had had a couple of abortive romances but never married. We all thought it was a shame; she would certainly make some man a fine wife. Betsy was six feet tall and very bright, both of which militated against her finding a husband. But a bright and secure man named Jim came along--about 5 ft 6. They hit it off well and were married. We lost Betsy soon afterward because Jim took her out to Palo Alto; he did some sort of very important technical work. We were happy for Betsey but felt a great loss for the mission group.

During this period Ellie and I got a chance to teach two classes in the School of Christian Living. (I don't remember what school it was, whether the "Old Land" school or one of the faith communities. At one of these Betsy served as the shepherd--an additional church member who kind of makes herself generally helpful. Betsy was one of the few people at the church who had a good understanding of our particular gifts and affirmed them. She referred to us as "community builders".

She was right! That has always been our main gift. Looking back as far as Millers Creek where I established the "groups of Twelve". That was probably not good church politics, because some members not in the groups probably resented them, but we achieved a level of reality in those groups which was missing from most of the church activities. In Winston Salem it was the Cutting Edge; then in Washington Gateway--and the Second Step.

At Langley Friends it was the Twelfth Step; then at Greenville the meeting, which we largely convened. I've come to believe that encouraging people to relate to one another at a deep (confessional) level is one of the most important things anyone can do.

At one of those classes Ellie and I taught at the C of S. two homosexuals appeared. This was a tricky business for me. We affirmed them as we did all the students. They were disposed to "come out of the closet" and there were some discussions about their homosexuality. One of them--the one who confessed he was a homosexual, proved to be the son of a Methodist District Superintendent. I gathered that his sexual choice may have been related to deep animosity toward his father. In that situation we tried to affirm those boys as human beings and as friends, without endorsing their homosexuality.

That has remained my basic stance. In the Society of Friends there are many--perhaps the marjority in some meetings, who believe that homosexuality is a perfectly acceptable and praiseworthy way to live. I don't think I will ever believe that, but I want to affirm them as human beings, and by no means consider them any more sinful than I am myself--in different ways!

During the years of our association with the church we belonged to the Gateway Mission group , but the real action, our mission and ministry for several years was focused on the Second Step. This grew out of Gateway, as explained in the Fifth Day. After we moved to Arlington the Second Step started meeting at our house one night a week.

Repeating a paragraph from the last chapter Russ Woodgate, Janet Mallone, Bob McGillivray, Kathy Franklin, Alice Benson were the primary members of the Second Step besides Ellie and me. Larry Mead was tempted to become a part of this effort, but he somehow never quite brought himself to it. This group began some time in 1975.

The Second Step was a sharing group, made up largely of younger people who had come to the church recently and were not ready for a more strenuous commitment. After a couple of years it began to seem like a dead end to me, and I let it lapse, but at least three of the group became members of the C of S--three girls who married 3 young men at the church: Janet married Dan Baker, and unfortunately some years later Dan decided to be a Catholic. I don't know what effect that had on the marriage. Andrea married a very nice young man with considerable spiritual experience. Alice became manager of Potters House and married one of the Fitch boys.

I was especially proud of her, remembering that she probably began her service career at Potters House with the Second Step. That was ironic: in my first months at Potters House I had begun recruiting young people for service there, but Gordon turned up his nose at those efforts; the rules required it to be manned by members and interns. I could foresee that the older members were ready to move on to new things. It did fall upon bad times and a couple of years later they were willing to let the Second Step man Potters House on Thursday nights: that's where Alice got her initial experience.

We spent most or all of the sixth day living in the house in Arlington. I was working at NHTSA in 1976, but a couple of years later I moved over to EPA where I remained until retirement. Ellie soon saw that we needed money so she set out to supplement our income. She got a job in the Kindergarden at Mt. Olivet, the large Methodist church where Rob's scout troop was based. She stayed there one year and then got a part time job with the census bureau.

One of the first things she did with her new money was to buy a new baby blue Datsun 210 station wagon. She knew that she must have reliable transportation for that job. This was the first new car we had ever owned. I never felt financially able to drive a new car, and probably still wouldn't. But eventually I more or less turned over such practical decisions to her. She encouraged me to buy the little Colt, which I used for several years and gave to Paul when we retired. At that point we bought the luxurious Nissan van, cost-$12,500. And we understood that we would probably never make such a purchase again.

After a few years with the Census Bureau Ellie began a distinguished career at the Defense Mapping Agency. Defense always had the cream of the taxpayers' dollar, and Ellie was on a fast track. Grade-wise she soon passed me. They gave her considerable and valuable training in computer skills. She managed a mainframe for them. During those years I had a home computer and spent a good bit of time with it, but she would barely touch it; she had enough of computers on the job. After we retired she began using one of our home computers to write letters, and later to work on her genealogy.

The C of S was (and is) a beautiful place (it's chief attraction to me, now as then, is the beautiful people!), but I simply couldn't make it my spiritual home as some of our dear friends seem to have done. After ten years there I had enough and over of the authoritarian spirit, to which many seemed oblivious. Ellie became disenchanted at what she thought a disreputable decision of the leadership, and we prepared to depart. That was made easy by the fact that one had to renew membership every October or drop out. In 1983 we decided not to renew membership . I don't think it led to much or any trauma; in fact it's a quite common occurrence (people generally say that they can't meet the commitment. I don't think I ever heard anyone except me express dissatisfaction with the church.)

 

QUAKERS

Having failed to recommit at the C of S, we set out looking for another "church home". The first Sunday we tried was the Unitarian Church in Arlington. We didn't know it at the time, but the Arlington church happens to be one of the largest in the denomination. We did know that they had lovely music programs, several of which we had attended through the years.

Of course for the past ten years we had dressed casually for church. So I dressed casually that Sunday. Every other man had a coat and tie. In fact The Arlington Unitarian Church proved one of the highest churches in which I have worshiped: robed choir and pastor, preacher speaking from a high pulpit which dominated the sanctuary, well scrubbed and shiny parishoners dutifully carrying out their role.

In spite of my sartorial gaffe I was comfortable there--lots of bright people, but Ellie did not find it to be what she wanted, so the following Sunday we tried the Quakers. This time I dressed to the hilt, with my suit and tie.

Langley Hill Quaker Meetinghouse

Another blunder, but I was soon laughing about it with the Quakers and others.

It had been for me an ecstatic experience to walk into the C of S for the first time in 1972. Now in 1983 a similar thing happened at my first meeting of the unprogrammed Friends. I found myself in a room with about 50 people sitting there in silence facing one another. Nothing verbal was happening. I sat there simply amazed, and the thought ran through my mind, "Is it possible that these people are sitting here really and truly waiting on the Holy Spirit?" I soon came to feel strongly that yes, that's exactly what they were doing.

By this time preaching had become more and more onerous to me. I found no single preacher at the Friends' meetings. People gave messages, rarely over three minutes long--exactly the right length for a sermon. After a few years with the Friends, listening to a sermon became an utterly frustrating thing to do. Generally speaking professional religion had become for me an impossible vocation.

The Friends at Langley Hill, perhaps not quite so beautiful, person for person as the folks at C of S, nevertheless showed themselves very much our kind of people: non-materialistic values, willing to take spiritual responsibility for themselves, interested in ideas, forming personal relationships on the basis of spiritual rather than material values. From the very beginning of our sojourn with the Langley Friends I was as comfortable as I had ever been anywhere. For the five years we attended the meeting I felt less frustration than in any other religious association of my experience.

Since that time the Friends we have met have most often proven to be refugees from a more conventional religious experience. By and large they went through the same disillusionment with traditional forms which we had suffered. Quakers make the most minimal demands, and many who have reached the point of rebellion against pressures to conform, find the Friends a very good place. There are extremely diverse theological viewpoints: from strictly Christian, to Buddhist, to atheist--you name it. Actually most Friends show very little interest in theological matters.

The Friends we have met generally speaking exhibit a highly developed faculty for friendship and intimacy. It has been quite an inspiration in the years since 1983 to go into a great many communities, visit the Friends' Meeting and immediately form pleasant relationships with people there. In contrast the Methodist church too often has come through like a desert.

It needs to be pointed out that the Friends I've been writing about, generally known as unprogrammed Friends, are a very small splinter group of the total religious community known as the Society of Friends worldwide. The largest single group of Quakers may be in Kenya. The 'FUM' Friends of the U.S. greatly outnumber the 'FGC' Friends, who are largely unprogrammed. 'FUM' Friends are by and large 'evangelical' Christians with professional pastors and probably pulpit centered sanctuaries. The unprogrammed Friends may be closer to the ecclesiastical spirit of George Fox, who denounced 'steeple-houses', but the majority group may be closer to Fox in their general theological perspective.

We had found the C of S highly structured and (for me at least) rather authoritarian. (When I asked my friend Terry Colvin if he felt C of S was authoritarian he said, "oh yes, totalitarian!" We all had our own subjective experiences at the place!) The Langley Hill Friends were the least authoritarian religious group I had encountered, and probably the least organized. Both of these qualities recommended it to me highly.

At Langley they make a point of asking everyone to serve on a committee of some kind. Within a year of our going to the meeting I was named to the Committee on Social Concerns . Within another year they asked me to be clerk of the meeting. I accepted and enjoyed this small responsibility for several months. Then something happened that caused me to resign from the committee:

The Sanctuary Movement was in full swing during that time, and Langley had a Sanctuary Committee that had been quite active. In particular they were giving special aid and comfort to an illegal alien. At a monthly meeting for business which I unfortunately missed they made the sanctuary committee a part of the Committee on Social Concerns. I did not feel good about chairing a committee that was deliberately involved in illegal activities, and hence I resigned.

A civil servant of course has taken an oath to uphold the laws of the land. I actually approved of what they were doing in the sanctuary movement, but did not feel that I could take an official part in it while acting as a civil servant. It represented a conflict of interest that I simply declined to live with.

The most interesting thing about this story is that it led to a great deal of good and warm feelings between me and the other members of the committee. I talked to each member and explained in detail my position and my need to resign. Without exception these good people expressed full sympathy and support for what I was doing, and this in spite of the fact that some of them were very avid activists. (Some of the members at Langley made a regular practice of getting arrested for civil disobedience at least once a year.) Those conversations led to a number of close and enduring friendships and a great deal of mutual respect.

This was only one of several conflicts that occurred while we were at Langley meeting, although the only one I was directly involved in. We considered Langley a community with great spiritual power--and frequent conflicts. The little thing I was involved in was quite minor compared to some. One of the most acute had largely run its course when we got there:

Pardee Lowe worked for the CIA (the CIA headquarters was probably less than a mile from our meeting house.) . His wife was a member of the meeting, and at a certain point he made application for membership. This of course precipitated a spiritual crisis. Most of the members were quite willing to accept him as a member, but a few had reservations. They had dealt with the problem for some time and had just about resolved it (and admitted him) about the time we began going. One or two people could not consent, but chose to 'stand aside', which might be comparable to not voting--if Quakers voted!

In connection with that decision they decided to spend a year studying and working for consensus on the meaning of membership. Ellie and I were privileged to take part in that study--especially during the sessions of our Friendly Eights.

The initial CIA conflict had largely run its course before we came to Langley, but one interesting scene occurred during our first year there. Auntie was present at the meeting I now describe:

A man named Chuck Fager, a former Catholic with a fairly rigid personality played the principal (more or less the sole) part. It seems that at the meeting where they had admitted Pardee Lowe Chuck had been absent. Furthermore he had taken his wife on a vacation, he had informed the meeting that he would not be there, and asked them to postpone the decision on that account. The various leaders involved did not feel able to do this.

Now, after the event, Chuck more or less called a 'second hour' to express his feelings to the meeting. He was very eloquent, very judgmental and in fact blessed the meeting out at great length. Finally it ended. I felt that he had made a complete ass of himself, but there were no doubt different opinions. Jim Hersey, a young man whom I thought a lot of, seemed to be completely bewildered by what had happened. I said to him, "Jim, Chuck is a very gifted man, but he was not operating from gift this morning.".

My good aunt expressed great admiration for Chuck's statement. He certainly knew how to assume an imposing and authoritative demeanour, and he has a deep and commanding voice. That scene showed me once again how little critical faculty Auntie had.

(As I sit here in Jan of 1994 meditating on that scene and what it showed about Churck Fager, I see a close parallel with the painful scenes we have just gone through with George Newkirk, our host at the Ocala meeting who has now 'disinvited' us. George, too, was reared a Catholic and has what seems to me the most rigid psyche one might ever hope to encounter. It is amazing how a person can swing from one theological extreme to the other with so little real change in the underlying personality traits. I remember what the Jesuits said about the children in their care and can't help feeling that Chuck and George are prime examples of the truth of such a statement. They are both rigid, authoritarian non-authoritarians. It seems that the deeper levels of their minds have not been affected by the Quaker commitments to peace and tolerance; they are continually involved in some sort of unpleasantness with someone.)

(Writing in 2002 I can report that our relations with George took a happy turn more recently. George's wife died and a few months later he found another one--very different from the first one. She "made a Christian" out of him with amazing speed--and for an 80 year old! In somewhat different terminology George has mellowed a lot. We are now the best of friends. He means for us to take charge of the meeting as time goes on. (I don't know about that!)

Another interesting facet of the life of the [Langley] meeting concerned the habitual attendance of the elder Lyndon Larouche, father of the extremist who has caused so much commotion in national politics. Mr. Larouche not only came to the meeting, but he spoke extensively every Sunday. I do not remember any of his messages or his person, but Ellie did. Anyway he died shortly after we came to the meeting.

One message I do remember concerned him after his death. It seemed that the man was all alone, and during his last days some of the good Quakers were present to him and made his passing easier. Thereafter they only had good things to say about him and about his relationship to the meeting. His messages had undoubtedly been a grand nuisance; they stretched the patience of many of his hearers. But his presence as a whole developed spiritual gifts among the members, a good example of the great truth of Paul's assertion that "All things work together for good....." Who knows? Perhaps the old coot had a lot to do with the Langley meeting becoming such a powerhouse. Hurrah!

Friends at Langley

There were two people at Langley who were largely responsible for integrating us into the community. Ralph Lugbill is actually one of the most conventional of Friends, and I might never have been closely drawn to him. However on our first Sunday he provided such an extravagant level of hospitality that he insured our coming again. Why don't people understand that a stranger in church should not be left alone? Any more than a stranger in your home? Ralph seemed to see that in my case. He stuck with me through that first awkward time when you know yourself as an outsider, and as a consequence I wasn't an outsider very long. Ralph introduced me to about a dozen people and devoted himself the entire time to making me feel welcome and comfortable. He made a friend for life. Last year (1993) on one of our periodic visits to the Washington area we stayed in Ralph's home, although he and his wife, Viva, were in Colorado at the time. That's the kind of friends they are to us. (Ironically Ralph and Viva had been at the C of S a few years before we got there.)

The other person who made sure that we became Quakers was Judith Larsen. Several years before I had worked at EPA with Judith; at that time I was impressed with her gracious and pleasant personality, but we never had any religious conversations. After Reagan became president, EPA was thoroughly emasculated, and most of the idealistic professionals, including Judith, found something else to do. I lost track of her. Imagine my surprise that first Sunday at Langley to see her sitting in the meeting with what seemed to me an elderly man (He proved to be her husband, Paul--now a dear friend.)

Judith did not warm up to us immediately, but it wasn't long before we were at the Larsen home for supper. Judith gives periodic entertainments for Friends and leads her guests into the most interesting and meaningful discussions. On that occasion (late 1983?) I remember very little. What I do remember is that Toby Riley (one of the 'weighty Friends' at Langley) and I got into a minor theological conflict, and Judith gave me valuable support. I felt like she was taking my side in the conflict, which made me feel affirmed and accepted in this group of Quakers. Later I observed her doing the same sort of thing to 'needy' people in a variety of circumstances.

We were invited into the 'Friendly Eights', which most often met at the Larsen house, although they met at our house a time or two and at the homes of other members from time to time. Then Judith came to Ellie and me with a serious spiritual problem, and it seemed that we were able to be of some help to her. We have always considered her a spiritual giant and wondered how it could be that she should respect us so highly, as she seems to do.

Judith has become for me the sister that I never had, who looks up to me and brings out the best in me regardless of what I may do or say. Her husband is my brother, and her children seem like my own-- especially Heidi, the one we have met. We have become virtually an extended family. At least that's how we feel. Judith gives to Ellie and me an intellectual companionship that we have found no where else. We introduced her to Jung, who has become very important to her, and she has put us on the track of lots of books which we found significant. (At one visit there (in 1993) she and Paul introduced me to Anthony Trollope, and for months thereafter I spent large blocks of time reading Trollope. In return I sent to them one of MacDonald's novels.)

After we left northern Virginia, we often went back for visits and stayed at the Larsen home in McLean, sometimes with them and other times while they were traveling. In later years she was able to encourage our relationships with other stellar Quakers, notably John Surr, the Bates, and Pardee Lowe. All of these people had strong spiritual interests and problems which Judith shared, and in a sense she sort of referred these people to us. We had known them during our years at Langley Meeting, but absence makes the heart grow fonder, and they came to a greater level of intimacy with us after we left. The same may be said for the Larsens.

The upshot of all this was to attach us more closely to that area. We have stayed with several other Friends in their homes since we began the practice with Judith and Paul. (What a contrast is their generosity with the 'hospitality' shown to us by George Newkirk in his 'meeting house' in Ocala! See SEVENTH.DAY.)

Judith's Friendly Eights became our spiritual family during our years at Langley, taking the place of our Mission Group at C of S. In contrast to the Gateway Mission Group the Friendly Eights only met once a month, but what they lacked in frequency they fully made up in the depth of the meetings. They were always dinner meetings at someone's home. (Over a period of perhaps three years we visitied a good half dozen homes at these dinner meetings). The meetings were completely informal; the conversations had no particular center and ranged over a broad area of topics, but were almost always meaningful--significant and spiritually oriented. This was especially true whenever Judith was present; she has the gift of being able to induce any member of the group to share him/herself at the deepest level. We spent many worthwhile hours at those meetings.

However the Friendly Eights commitments gradually dwindled. The last two years we were at Langley were dominated by the weekly meetings of the 'Twelfth Step Group' which we attended. I was indirectly responsibly for the convening of this group although that never was very well recognized by the participants. The group came into being in this way:
Barbara Williams, a Friend we knew only slightly, spoke several times in meeting for worship, first about the alcoholism of her sons and then a few weeks later she acknowledged her own alcoholism. My heart went out to her, and I took her aside and suggested that we organize some kind of group at Langley oriented toward such an interest. She seemed to like the idea, but nothing came of it immediately.

Some six months later she informed me that she was starting the Twelfth Step Group, and she invited me; I accepted gladly. This group was made up originally of some six or seven young women (in their forties!) and me. The primary agenda at that point was the abuse they had suffered at the hands of men. They talked about this incessantly, and although I was excepted overtly from the continuous hostility they felt toward men, the thing became more and more onerous as the months went by. (We were meeting every week.)

I might have dropped out of the meeting had not Ellie proposed that she come with me. Her presence eventually led to some movement in the discussion. I think she probably confronted them with the need to go beyond mere complaint about being abused. At any rate they seemed to get off that subject and move to more creative work.

Strangely Barbara was the only (acknowledged) alcoholic in this group. Several of these girls were in OA (Overeaters Anonymous). The others had memories of abuse in their childhood. It was the clear understanding of the group that the primary qualification for membership was a compulsion or obsession of some sort.

Some of our compulsions were rather far fetched. I have no trouble whatsoever understanding that everyone has compulsions, and hence always felt qualified and very comfortable in this group. However there came a moment of confrontation when one of the members of the group suggested that Ellie and I seemed to come primarily to help others rather than to share our own compulsion.

There was certainly truth in that accusation: I believe they were all in their forties and we were older. It was probably good that Hope, the woman in question, brought that out into the open. We continued to come and gradually felt more and more acceptance. On another occasion another girl made a similar, but more pointed accusation against Ellie, who expressed acute pain. Laurie immediately went over to her and comforted her and thereafter was especially close to us.

We generally met at the meeting house, but several times had special meetings in people's homes. The group developed into a very close community, and I believe it was beneficial to everyone. In 1988 we retired and left the area and the group disbanded at that time, I believe.

Everyone benefited, but one person benefited perhaps most significantly. Barbara, the convener, had been a member of AA for a matter of months when we began. She exercised strong leadership in our group all the way through, and the encouragement which she received with that led her to begin a course of training as an alcoholism worker. She completed this and actually became a professional alcoholism counselor. It is wonderful to see someone make such a creative change in their life.

Both the Friendly Eights (once a month) and the Twelfth Step (once a week) had their primary significance for us in the levels of intimacy which they afforded. Small groups have been our main source of social and spiritual activity now for many years. I have never felt drawn to casual relationships as such. I want to know the person I associate with (and be known by them) at a deeper level than seems appropriate for many people. For many years that has been the primary interest, outside of the family, for me. Ellie has pretty consistently joined with me in that interest and objective.

I went to C of S primarily because I saw opportunities for intimacy of that sort--and certainly found it. I felt very fortunate that there proved to be similar opportunities at the Langley Hill Meeting, and indeed at most of the Quaker meetings I have attended.

Mark had moved to the Arlington school in the 11th grade, a very awkward time for a child to change schools. He was not very happy at Yorktown High, at least until tennis season. He gained the #5 slot on the team, won more matches than anyone else, and was selected as the Most Valuable Player. They went to the state finals at Richmond, where they lost to a local team.

Mark's coach, Bill White, was highly impressed with Mark's game. At the awards ceremony he said that when he watched Mark play it almost gave him a lump in his throat. I had a chance to send a letter of recommendation for Bill to a school out on the west coast where he wanted to continue his education.

Although Mark enjoyed the tennis season, as did we all, he really had little appetite for another year at Yorktown. He heard about the Freshman Honors Program at the University of Delaware, made application and was granted a scholarship. This program consisted largely of other bright kids who were passing up their senior year in high school.

Although part of the University of Delaware the group were housed at Wesley College in Dover and had relatively little to do with the Newark campus. Of course we made several trips over to Dover. I remember driving across the Eastern Shore in the dead of winter and seeing thousands of Canadian geese roosting in the fields over there.

Ellie always resented the fact that Arlington County refused to give Mark a high school diploma because he had not taken a course in Virginia history. I suppose when he gets his PhD, the fact that he never graduated from high school won't matter very much.

Years later Dover became a key genealogical site when I discovered that my Clayton ancestors had lived there in the 17th century. Joshua Clayton, Washington's physician and the first governor of the state of Delaware, proved to be my second cousin 8 times removed.

Rob was in the 5th grade when we moved, and it was much easier for him to make the adjustment. Rob in fact always seemed to be the most adaptable of the Claytons. He soon made friends at his elementary school.

Rob was eagerly awaiting his 11th birthday so he could become a Boy Scout; his two brothers had enjoyed a distinguished and happy career as Scouts, and he looked forward to his turn. We looked around hoping to find a good troop for him, and we really lucked up on that. The Mount Olivet troop was about the best I have ever seen.

They were immediately happy with Rob because he had such an enthusiastic spirit. He suffered the usual hazing of the younger children, I'm sure, but came through that in good order. What made the troop so great was two older men who really poured their lives out on it; together they made a perfect team. Mr. Hermann, the younger, was really gung ho. He gave the boys great experiences hiking (such as climbing Mt. Rainier) and canoeing (such as on the Chatuga and New River). Mr. Everhart was a laid back grandfather type who would wipe the boy's noses for them and give them emotional support.

Rob was very happy with the troop, and like his two brothers in due time became Senior Patrol Leader. Mr. Hermann expected him to go on to Eagle Scout, but Rob had no such intention: he perceived Eagle Scouts in general as the type of boy he did not want to be. He was a fairly competent SPL as far as I know. They recruited me in a fairly minor role with the Courts of Review.

The Scouts contributed a great deal to the lives of all three of our boys, and I have always recommended the program highly to any parent who might seem interested. The age at which a boy becomes a Scout is one of the most critical times in his life. The Scouts give him new experiences, a close knit peer group with enough adult supervision to protect children from some of the worst effects of that sudden change. They all developed social skills, self reliance, and other important attributes as a consequence of their years with the Scouts.

When Rob got to Yorktown, he became frustrated with the school, much the same as Mark had been. With the exception of the madrigal group, which he enjoyed and where he was respected, he did not feel very happy there. One of the few times I ever heard him complain was in a private conversation with me where he expressed his dissatisfaction with Yorktown.

This problem solved itself in due time when he got himself admitted to Woodlawn, an alternative school which just happened to be about as close to our house as Yorktown. He transferred over there in the 11th grade (and maintained his position in the Madrigals at Yorktown). Rob had a ball at Woodlawn; they were kids like him, he fit in well, and had a smashing good time--socially that is. His academics, unlike his brothers, was relatively mediocre, but that did not bother me in the least. I was delighted to have a son not noted for grades but for social achievement.

We all thought Woodlawn a pretty neat place. For one thing the teachers were all called by their first names. If they had the kids' respect, it was because they had earned it. I suspect they were alternative teachers in the same way that the kids were alternative students. I'm afraid Rob was a source of frustration to one or two of them during the two years he was at Woodlawn.

Paul had met his academic Waterloo with a high school English teacher, and it appeared for a while that history would repeat itself with Rob in the 11th grade. A black teacher named Doris taught a course which he took including a lot of composition. It seemed that Doris did not think children should be admitted to the Woodlawn program unless they started in the 7th grade; Rob came into the program in the 11th grade.

I did not know this at the time, but Rob apparently reached the point where he would not submit the papers he had written due to the expectation of her criticism. It was a bad scene all around; luckily enough positive factors in the total school equation outweighed the negative relationship with this English teacher.

That first year at Woodlawn Rob began a friendship with Maripat, a girl who might have become a member of our family. She was a year ahead of Rob, but they formed an intense and close attachment. She graduated and went off to Carlton College in Minnesota, but she soon returned to our neighborhood. Later she went with Rob to New College and spent four years with him there.

Rob and Maripat seemed to be at the center of a large and live group who did a lot of fun things together. I always assumed that Rob's career at Woodlawn was most notably social and minimally academic, but this elated rather than depressed me because through him I was reliving some of my own (unlived) youth.

At least one other teacher was not too happy with Rob's work. Near the end of his senior year the graduating students were angling for positions in prestigious colleges. A teacher requested that I call him. I did, and he complained a bit about Rob's performance. He mentioned that Rob had applied to McCallister College and intimated that he wasn't too happy about giving an unqualified approval to the application. I suppose he thought I might light a fire under Rob; if so he had to be disappointed. I told him that I felt the same way, and I was not at all sure that Rob deserved to go to a quality college or that I wanted to support him in it. Actually I had no sympathy for their need to push Rob in that direction.

As I recall Rob might have gone to McCallister, certainly a quality college, but he chose New College, in large part because it would be less expensive. However I think the primary reason he chose New College (in Sarasota, Florida) was that it was the nearest thing to Woodlawn that he could find. And two of his Woodlawn girl friends chose it with him, so the three of them had four more happy years together.

New College has a rather interesting history. It has always been an alternative educational institution. It was said to have been patterned after New College at Oxford. The student body was small, as were the classes. Students and teacher had informal relations. The students designed their own program and made contracts with the teachers to achieve such and such a goal. It was very different from the ordinary establishment college. And the most interesting thing to me is that it moved Rob a bit in the direction of an academic, or at least an intellectual type.

Not that he had any less fun than he was used to, but he apparently learned that learning can also be fun. Some of Rob's teachers had very good things to say to us about him. One of the nice things about Rob's career at New College is that he managed to qualify as a Florida citizen
for tuition purposes. In addition he had a small scholarship, so his college expenses turned out to be much more modest than they might easily have been.

Actually we had hoped that he might go to William and Mary in Williamsburg, one of our favorite towns. This was a state school in our state and had a very good name and reputation. But one of Rob's friends had gone down there the year before Rob's graduation. This boy did not give it a good report: it was too 'preppy'. Ironically Rob was eventually to get to William and Mary (after we had left Virginia) as a law student.

Working in Washington

My first job in Washington, as Docket Clerk of the National Highway Traffic Safety Adminstration, proved increasingly unsatisfactory. It was a relatively mature and stablilized bureaucracy in which the good jobs were pretty well taken and well maintained. I worked in an office with about 8 GS 12's, and a couple of lower level people, of whom I was one. It was all Chiefs and no Indians! The GS 12's had all structured their relationship and defined exactly what they would do. Every additional thing that had to be done seemed to descend on the shoulders of us, the small junior staff.

I was willing to live with this for a while, but it soon became evident that I could not expect change any time soon. I had good relations with the industry people who came in to review the docket. One of them, a nice young man who happened to work for GM, told me about a job opportunity at EPA. It seemed that Congress had just directed EPA to organize a docket for the Clean Air Act.

EPA 

 I promptly sent my resume to the Office of General Counsel at EPA and in the course of time I managed to get the job. It meant a promotion, but more important, it meant much better working conditions. At NHTSA my boss, Winnie, was always looking over my shoulder and figuring out how she could get more production out of me. At EPA in contrast my boss was a long way off and had minimal interest in my activities.

EPA

 

 

LIVING IN VIRGINIA

EPA

 

I was an experienced docket clerk; I knew more about the nature of the job and what needed to be done than he did or anyone else. He supported me and left me alone. It was this peculiar staff relationship that led to my staying at EPA for the remainder of my work career. As long as I carried out the assignment, an important one, but not a hard one, no one had much to say about my hours, working conditions or whatever, and that was certainly the way I liked it.

During most of this time I had an assistant, a very able young man named Gordon McLeod. He had been hired as the chauffeur of the big boss and had worked his way into my office. He was bright and he was good; he had married into a family of Jehovah's Witnesses and become a Witness. He used to talk to people about 'our little paradise'; I think he enjoyed the freedom from constraints as much as I did.

I expect he considered me a good boss; I never asked him to do anything that I didn't also do myself. In fact I hardly ever asked him to do anything period because he soon learned all that had to be done and did it without any prompting. We were often in a situation where there was not enough work for two people; under those circumstances he just assumed that he was the one to do what had to be done. Gordon was one of the few people who ever worked for me, and certainly about the best.

There were some other employees who did not work out so well. Elaine, a large, young, black mother of 2, sister of others, was described by Gordon as a 'big mama'. He meant that others in her family would come to her for direction, help, etc. Elaine did not mind working, but she would have considered it a violation of her rights not to take every hour of sick leave to which she was entitled. I doubt that she failed to take sick leave any week while she worked for me.

Elaine also managed to get a temporary appointment (lasting a year) and be out a good part of it for maternity leave. She came back to work with about 3 months on her term and set out to rebuild her reputation. At that time we had thousands of pages of material that were to be microfilmed on a machine in the office. I put her to work on the camera and she did a commendable job for us that last three months. I gave her a good recommendation, somewhat to the dismay of some of my associates who knew about her record.

Kenneth was a middle class black, just out of high school. He had a rather minimal sense of responsibility. He made a practice of working no more than four days a week. I finally got him in the habit of calling the office on the days when he was not going to work; he always had a good excuse. When he did come in, he performed fairly creditably.

At EPA the professional staff was almost entirely white and the lower level workers almost entirely black. The personnel department was predominantly black and actually functioned as a sort of road block for any professional employment. The program offices pretty well decided who was going to work for them, but had to jump through various procedural hoops to clear the personnel office.

Jeffrey Camp, administrative officer for the Office of General Counsel, was the man who hired me, and he had his hands full getting me through the personnel office. I had decided that I would absolutely not stay at NHTSA, and in desperation I made arrangements to return to the WNC Conference as a parish minister. Actually I was scheduled to go to Hot Springs. That was not exactly a glowing prospect, but I would have taken it if necessary.

Meanwhile the job at EPA was pending. I finally told them I would not be available after June 1, (coincidentally the same thing I had told Clodfelter 22 years before), and the job came through. I immediately notified the District Superintendent in Asheville. He wasn't surprised at all; in fact he seemed rather apologetic. This was the year before I moved into the retirement status as a Methodist minister.

EPA hired me to set up the docket for the Clean Air Act. A docket clerk is a sort of combination of librarian and clerk of court. I had the care and maintenance of the public records for rulemaking activities in the promulgation of regulations for the Clean Air Act. These of course are quasi-judicial documents, and most of them eventually became judicial documents when the rule was finally made and immediately challenged in court by industry and/or public interest groups.

In one of the job interviews Jeffrey asked me if I could get the job done in a space of 600 square feet. I thought fast and replied that I could do it if I had microfilming capabilities. (I learned later that there were no budgetary limits on setting up this office. I might have demanded twice as much space and 3 times as much staff, but I had no such intention.) At any rate my reply led to the purchase of a 3M camera for microfilming, duplicators and readers. Over the next 11 years we filmed close to 2 million pages of documents--all in house and all with a minimal staff. By reasonable calculations this saved the government a good million dollars over what it would have cost to contract that work and/or maintain hard copy. To maintain hard copies of everything would have required ten or fifteen thousand square feet of floor space filled with filing cabinets.

I became thoroughly convinced that the path to advancement in government most commonly involves larger expenditures of money and more staff. It is very much of a cost plus arrangement, particularly for career mid level management. After our office was about ten years old, some folks from another EPA department inspected our operation and refused to believe that we could do the job with the two people presently employed.

My boss was quite aware that I was saving the government money, and in fact gave me a promotion based on merit after I had been doing it for quite a few years. In general there is no percentage or future for a government manager to economize on his operation. The way to advance his career is to demand more resources and more staff. Thankfully I never had the temptation to go that route, and fortunately Ellie's job provided adequate financial resources for us to live.

At NHTSA I was Chief Docket Clerk with a lot of records and a little help, but very little authority as to how to carry out the job. My boss, Winnie, micromanaged quite a bit and in fact thought nothing of giving me additional work whenever anything came up. In contrast at EPA I had complete responsibility and authority to carry out the assignment, a much more satisfactory arrangement. At the old place I had become conscious of a number of problems that I could do nothing about. At EPA I set up the job so as to avoid some of those problems.

One of the most acute was the simple physical security of the documents. At the old office visitors to the docket were in the habit of helping themselves to the files--and of course a lot of stuff got lost. I finally convinced Winnie we must not allow that and set up a point beyond which the public could not go. We operated with ten copies of everything, and although the docket was much smaller there than it became at EPA, we had a fantastic number of filing cabinets crammed with material.

At EPA I arranged the furniture so the public had no direct access to our documents: they were required to fill out a requisition listing what they wanted. We got it for them and of course they had to check it back in before they left.

On the other hand I designed the copying procedures so that the public did their own copying, then paid us (by check) for what they had done. And finally we filmed everything as soon as possible and stored the hard copy. Thereafter the public had access to microfiche, which they could reproduce on our machine for $.50 per fiche.

Most comparable offices had low level personnel doing these jobs at much greater expense to the government.

I was allowed to design all these procedures and had a free hand in their implementation. Most of the Clean Air Act personnel happened to be stationed at Durham, and I made several trips down there to instruct them in how to conform to our procedures and requirements. I flew down once, drove a government car once as I recall, and on one occasion drove my own car--in order to have use for private purposes in off hours.

All this was kind of fun: setting up an office, getting people to help, developing procedures, etc. etc. The fun lasted about two years, and thereafter the job paled off into a very routine activity. They didn't really need me for that, and I should have looked for another job. But I was getting up closer and closer to retirement age, it was a comfortable (though not very well paid position), and in particular I dreaded the uncertainty of getting in another uncomfortable situation such as I had encountered at the old place. So I sat tight until age 62.

The presence of Gordon McLeod made it easier. As I have already intimated, he did most of the work and relieved me of most of the burdens involved. During this time I got interested in William Blake and eventually did a good bit of the work of writing my book at the office. I began to identify with Walt Whitman, another civil servant, who was in fact fired when his boss found a dirty book in his desk, entitled Leaves of Grass. (Walt got another job soon thereafter.) They never found a dirty book in my desk, but I had one, named Ram Horn'd with Gold. Such are the compensations of the under-achiever.

I looked forward to Gordon taking my place when I retired. Unfortunately Gordon couldn't wait quite long enough. He had two children while he worked for me, and eventually he decided he would have to look for a better job situation. He moved to West Virginia--partly due to his religious interests, but also hoping to better himself economically. I don't know how well he succeeded; I did get a chance to give a good recommendation to one potential employer.

At any rate he sort of left me in the lurch--some two and a half years before I could retire. The job got quite burdensome thereafter It wasn't exactly hard, just tiresome, tedious, lonely, unrewarding. A year or two before I became eligible for retirement Mr. Yamada, my boss, made arrangements to get me a merit promotion; I had been in the same grade level at which I started all those years. Actually there wasn't much reason to have a higher level person at the job. I had finished the higher level job the first year or two when I set up the program.

Thereafter I worked well below my capability. I did this because I liked the working conditions and didn't want to push. Actually I could have done much more for them and would have gladly. In fact I had not been there more than about a year when I volunteered to take charge of the law library as well as my present responsibilities. My boss would have been glad for me to do this, but a young woman, who was leaving the law library objected, and he was not willing to go counter to her wishes. Thereafter I understood that there was little point in my volunteering for additional work.

The best thing about my job of course was that no one bothered me. In the chain of command there was no one between me and the deputy general counsel, a distance of about 7 grade levels. He couldn't care less what I did as long as no trouble arose. I maintained the records, made them available to the public as well as agency personnel, collected money for copying (I refused to take cash, insisted on checks because I had heard of docket clerks having financial problems in the handling of money). We microfilmed all these millions of pages as soon as we could, and then stored the hard copy. That kept the operation in bounds.

Jeffrey Camp, the administrative office, had hired me, but he was not in a position of authority. He provided support regarding physical equipment, supplies, etc. etc. The federal budget runs on a year that ends Oct. 1. Every year around late August Jeffrey would call me and ask me if I needed anything. What he really meant was that he had money that he had to spend---or lose. (One of the worst things a federal bureaucrat can do is to neglect to spend all the money he has been alloted. So I would look around and decide what we could use.

My biggest problem in the 10 years I worked for EPA was to find some way to spend the time. Most of my leisure hours (at the office!) were occupied with doing things with the computer. I had been very much of an anti-computer person for a number of years, but I was converted overnight to a computer nut.

The secretaries had all been given a machine called a Lexitron, which was really a computer dedicated to word processing. One day (it must have been around 1980) Gordon informed me that he thought we might be able to get one. At that time we were using an IBM electric typewriter to keep our records. We did get a Lexitron, and my attitude toward computers went from one extreme to the other instantaneously. How lovely to be able to correct your 'typos' and print out a letter (or whatever) without an error on the page.

The Blake Project

During this period I became interested in William Blake. Northrup Frye's book, Fearful Symmetry, made it possible for me to read Blake's more obscure poetry with some understanding. I read the book a good five times over a period of years. Blake's poetry is quite an intellectual challenge and can occupy one for many hours of creative endeavour.

I studied Blake over a period of about five years, and eventually wrote a book on his poetry, which I entitled Ram Horn'd with Gold (a phrase from one of his poems). The Lexitron was a valuable tool in that occupation. I submitted part of my manuscript to several publishers, but without getting encouragement from any of them; it was not commercial. There is still the option of publishing it online.

Blake always seemed to me like a kindred spirit. A radical rebel against the conventions of society, but a quiet one who knew how to stay out of trouble. His unconventional theological ideas seemed most congruent with my own (and still do!). The ability to 'non-conform' and still survive in society is one of my primary values. I think likely that all three of our sons have acquired that taste and gift to some extent.

A few of my friends have been kind enough to read my book. Our Mission Group at the Church of the Saviour made a valiant effort to study it under my direction, very much a labor of love on their part.

The Computer

Once I discovered the value and beauty of the computer it wasn't long until it became a big part of my life. I found that there was software that made it possible to use the Lexitron for other things than the word processing program for which it was primarily designed. We got this additional software, and I started doing a bit of programming in Basic.

 

Then Ellie found a little TI machine in a toy store for $50, which gave me a chance to do computing at home. It was pretty primitive, no way to print out anything, and the only form of storage was a kind of tape that had sequential access. Anyway I played with it, got more and more interested and eventually bit the bullet and got a $2500 Epson rig.

 

A large Epson Users' Group met in Northern Virginia. Eventually I became the disk librarian of the group. I was responsible for publishing a utility disk each month, which we sold to the membership for $5. This was actually the primary financial support of the group: we sold several hundred of these disks over a period of time.

Being disk librarian was fun. I had to find public domain utility programs to put on my monthly disks. Soon it became two disks a month: a CP/M disk and a DOS disk. To get these utility programs I spent large amounts of time with my modem (at home or at the office), contacting computer bulletin boards: one of their primary functions was to provide and exchange for these public domain computer utility programs.

I came to believe that any commercial software could be more or less duplicated with one or more public domain programs. In fact a great deal of commercial software is simply taken from the public domain programs.

After a year or so I started programming in Forth, and wrote several programs which I put on the bulletin boards. I had no original ideas to speak of, but I was interested in seeing for myself how the primary computer tasks were accomplished. I did a checkbook program that I still like in some ways better than the present commercial one. The advantage of my program was that I entered the data with a full screen editor; that makes a lot more sense to me than the conventional way of doing it. I also did a word processor. Some friends wondered why I should waste my time doing things that had already been done. Why does a teenager tinker with motors, doing all sorts of things that have been done? Computer programming was about as close to mechanics as I have ever gotten.

 

Eventually I worked in Pascal and then in C--briefly in both cases. I always enjoyed programming and would be doing it right now if my time wasn't taken up with other things that at the moment seem more meaningful.

Mark had done his first year of college at University of Delaware. He won a National Merit Scholarship and chose to go to Tulane. He had good relationships down there with Ellie's family. Coincidentally he found an apartment uptown across the street from two old cousins--Helen and Della Mae Jamieson. He shared his apartment with several other architecture students.

 

Mark got well acquainted with his two young cousins--Julie and Susie Babylon; he probably spent a good bit of time at Uncle Hugh's home especially on weekends. New Orleans was pleasant, but Tulane was not the right place. I think the school was probably too straight laced, too establishment, to Brahminesque and authoritarian. Mark was smart enough to give up on them after a couple of years.

He came back home and lived with us for a few years, working for a construction engineering firm. Then he enrolled at Virginia Tech. VPI met his needs much better than Tulane had done; they were more permissive, allowed him to develop his creativity. He had some good professors who did a lot for him. He finished Summa Cum Laude--the absolute top for any Clayton in memory.

 

Mark went to work for an affluent architect, designed some luxury houses, did other things, soon came to see that the head man was primarily a salesman and promoter, and treated the architects he employed with contempt. Mark decided he wanted to get more education.

UCLA offered Mark a scholarship to work on a Master's. Out he went and spent two years in West L.A. getting it. Most of Mark's fellow students were foreigners. We later learned (from Kim) that he had lived virtually hand to mouth through those years; we should have helped him much more than we did. Rob was in school at that time and taking quite a bit of the family income, and I had the foolish notion that for graduate studies a man should be on his own. (That was to change when Ellie took a more active role in financial decisions!)

It was July of 1986 when Mark went west. His journey coincided with his grandmother's 80th birthday, so Ellie rode with him to New Orleans for a big gala and flew home while he continued west. Mark took a lot of pictures of the party; unfortunately one son-in-law was absent, still in the Washington area.

In 1987 we flew out to see Mark in West L.A., shared his minimal apartment and drove around in his old car. He went with us over to Cedarpines Park to see Margaret and Jimmy. Ellie found the air pollution so bad as we drove east through L.A. that she couldn't keep her eyes open. We wondered how anyone in the world could be so foolish as to be willing to live in such a filthy environment. Ellie had a great belief that Westwood (UCLA) did not have pollution like the rest of the county (I didn't see as much difference here as she did!).
 

That was our first visit to Cedarpines Park although Ellie remembers that Margaret and Jimmy had visited her at Angie, while I was away at school. Margaret proposed that we go camping in the desert, but Ellie vetoed that plan and opted for the beach. We went to San Clemente and had a memorable holiday in that lovely place. I don't remember much about it except for some public tennis courts that looked like part of a country club. And the high sand cliffs leading from the campground down to the beach.

Mark had another good experience at UCLA, especially a teacher that he thought highly of and who seemed to return the favor. I suppose the man probably helped Mark get the job teaching which he found at Cal Poly. He started there as I recall in Jan of 1988, and when he walked into the department office, his fate was sealed--Kim McGrew, the department secretary immediately picked him out as her husband. (That of course was not immediately obvious, but became more so as time went on.!)

Tennis

Tennis has been a big part of our lives for the past 20 years and more (See the FIFTH.DAY.) In the Washington area frustrations may pile up. The continuous congestion on the roads and on the sidewalks, the struggle to get away from obnoxious people, the long lines in grocery stores and every other place imaginable--these and many other problems make it a pressure kind of life. (It is definitely a good place for young people!!!) I had the special frustration of being under-employed, underpaid, and a general under-achiever. And tennis was sometimes my salvation. I can remember making Ellie go out on the court with me in the rain, because I needed it so badly. She was a long suffering wife!

We thoroughly enjoyed Mark's tennis exploits at Yorktown, and later at Delaware. At Dover, although a student of the University, he was allowed to play on the Wesley College team (that's where they were housed). He was #2, and at the end of the season went to a tournment near New York City; I guess it was for junior colleges. He reached the semi-finals, and I drove up there in time to see his last match. His various careers were a special fulfilment to me, his father; they came at a time when I was in great need of fulfilment. The achievements of the other two came along a bit later.

It was interesting to see what a different attitude and demeanor many of the Washington tennis players showed from those in North Carolina. Some of them play like it was life or death. Never a smile, never a casual comment, no indication whatever that they enjoyed the game in any way. The apparently transfer to the courts the fierce competitiveness and dog-eat-dog attitude which they exhibit in their careers. A shame! (We did of course find some people who seemed as able to enjoy the game as did we.)

Auntie may have visited us more than once in Arlington. She came one time on an extended visit. She had just given up her home at Glendale and wasn't fully decided where to spend her last days. We encouraged her to consider staying with us. She came to Washington at the time when Marion Connor had begun failing from Altheimzer's disease. I had met Marion in 1974, my first year in Washington. She was a special friend of Louise Baker's. On one occasion that first year Louise had Marion come and tell us a story. She was a great story teller, although I don't exactly remember what sort of stories she told.
 

When Auntie visited us, Marion's family was looking for someone to be a companion for her and some people encouraged Auntie to take the position. We also encouraged her; I promised her that wherever she might be, I would immediately come and get her in case of need. She took the job.

This was quite an adventure for Auntie. It went on for a number of months. Part of this time she was in a summer home on a lake in Canada with Marion, her daughter and family. The rest of the time they were in an apartment high up over Central Park. Marion's son-in-law, a psychiatrist, conducted group therapy sessions, charging each participant $50 per hour; he must have been bringing home about $1 million a year. His wife also worked as a therapist.

Auntie was fond of all of them and felt that they treated her well. However Marion eventually got to be more than she could handle. Marion was strong as a horse, even as her mind weakened. She was always trying to get away from Auntie. Once she started walking down the stairs, from the 14th floor. There was nothing Auntie could do but follow her. That did it, and Auntie resigned.

She went to Washington State and got into a Lutheran home for the elderly where she spent the rest of her life; she died in 1994. Vernon, Jr's widow and her grandchildren and great grandchildren lived there, apparently gifted people, but not at all like us. Although we went out to see her a number of times, we never saw them, except on one occasion when her grandson came by on some errand while we were in her apartment.

Ellie was always trying to get her mother, a widow in these years to come visit, but the old lady generally refused because she understood that Ellie was at work all day and felt there would be little for her to do. Through the years Auntie had visited us periodically. Before the end of our time in Northern Virginia Auntie had gotten herself well situated at the retirement center in Longview, WA. She became more and more resistant to traveling. But on her last visit, perhaps in 1986 or 87, she had the company of Ellie's mother.

That visit was a very good time for all of us. Auntie always brought out the best in me. Unfortunately I'm afraid that my mother-in-law saw the best in me all too seldom, but she did on this visit encounter a more well disposed and attentive son-in-law than she was accustomed to. We took them both to Annapolis: I remember those two old ladies perched up on bar stools eating an icecream cone at the waterfront. Another time I remember them walking along and Ellie's mother seemed to have a bit more stamina than Auntie; maybe that was in the National Arboretum. Finally we took them to Williamsburg, stayed in a motel on US 60 a little east of town. That's about all I remember of that trip, except there is a dim memory of having both of them once at the C of S. Or was it Langley? or both?

I was especially grateful for that happy time for Mrs. Babylon, because that was her last trip to Virginia, and the last time I ever saw her (I'm not sure about Ellie).

By 1986 I was pretty well demoralized, living with a level of frustration primarily due to underemployment in a job that for my age and skill level seemed rather demeaning. It wasn't enough to reach depression, but may have come close. I needed change badly.



I didn't feel like I could give up a government job at age 60, but we could move--and that's what we did. I rationalized that we should take our 'over 55' one time capital gains exemption by selling the Arlington house, which we did at almost a 200% markup. (Economics was good to homeowners in those days!). We moved to the house at Falls Church, which we had owned for a number of years and rented to some good Christian young men for most of that time.

I'm sorry to say that I left most of the responsibility for the move to Ellie. Perhaps that was a significant beginning in leaving so much to her in the years ahead. I rationalized that laziness on my part by half convincing myself that she would thereby be more self reliant when the final parting was to come. (And in those days I often thought that it was not terribly far away!)

A 'new' house to live in was a refreshing change. The nicest thing about the house at Falls Church was the heat in the floors, delivered by a system of hot water under the floors. Rob's cat, Trumpkin, had a number of favorite places to lie. The bathroom floors were especially warm. The commute was pretty near equal to what it had been, although we were some 3 miles farther out.

Two years was long enough for that house, although after we left, Rob continued to live there with Mark and Tammy Jones. Mark and Tammy were very close to us and eventually came to seem almost like our own. Mark had been one of our Mark's roommates at Virginia Tech, also an architect. Tammy, also, had begun in Architecture, but switched to History before she got her degree. They were married about 1987 at Oak Ridge.

Ellie and I attended the wedding as well as our Mark. It was in a large Methodist Church, a gala event. I left the car lights on (one of innumerable such times!), we got pushed off finally whereupon I lost my glasses. Our Mark eventually found them on the street and mailed them back to me. A disaster for us, but a pleasant experience on the whole.

Mark Jones found a job in architecture in Northern Virginia, and they got an apartment in Arlington. Mark had lived with us for a while in the Arlington house. So it was convenient and natural that when we vacated the Falls Church house to move south, Mark and Tammy should move in to take our place---while Rob continued to live there. They stayed there for a year or so--probably a creative experience for all three young people.

I had very few regrets about leaving Northern Virginia, although once again it was something of a hardship for Ellie to be uprooted, a ubiquitous motif through the years: I carried her away from the house in New Orleans that she had lived in all her life. I took her from Louisiana to N.C. When she had become quite comfortable at Winston-Salem, I took her to the Washington area. And now that she had a good job with lots of friends there, I was ready to abandon that locale. She certainly was faithful and good to me through all those moves. She had lived with roots, while I had been (geographically) rootless my whole life. Arlington (ten years) was the longest I had ever lived anywhere.

One of our real regrets at leaving that area was to lose the use of the Arlington County Library--certainly the best public library we ever encountered. They had oodles of books--maybe twice as many books as shelf space, tremendous readership. An exciting place, we frequented that library for 14 years and had many happy hours in connection with it.

Genealogy

A year or two before we retired I received an important letter from Clayton, La., which in effect influenced the way Ellie and I spent much of our time for the next few years. Clayton Gibson, my second cousin, had lived at Clayton all his life. About my age, he had gone to La. Tech briefly, as did his brother Dr. Herman Gibson. One or both of them were in fact there while I was there, although I did not know them.

Clayton, as all the world knows, had been named for our common great grandfather, John McBride Clayton. Locally he was known as 'Captain Clayton'. The place got its name when Capt. Clayton gave land for the right of way of the railroad. That may have been about 1880. And now 100 years later the railroad discontinued, and the property reverted to the heirs of Capt. Clayton.



Capt. John McBride Clayton, my great grandfather, was the family patriarch. He had come to Concordia Parish, across the river from Natchez, as a young man. The Civil War broke out when he was about 30. He organized a company of infantry. He was undoubdtedly a man of exceptional talent. In addition he was the second cousin of the commanding general of the Alabama forces. So he might have expected higher rank, and in fact he was offered promotion to major, which he declined.

He declined because, when recruiting his company, he had promised the mothers of his recruits that he would stay with them through the whole war. Promotion would have taken him away from the close relationship he had with them; hence he declined. One of his men, named Oscar Estell, had been entrusted with a special mission at the end of the war. Rather than surrendering the company flag, Oscar had wrapped it around himself under his shirt, and had smuggled it back to Louisiana. It resides today in the Howard Tilton Library at Tulane, and as late as 1987 staff at the library offered to exhibit it on the wall of the building---for a fee. Family members did not feel like spending money for such a purpose.

Capt. Clayton and his first wife, Lucinda Gahagan, had five sons: Robert, who became a planter, James, who became a doctor, Oren Henry, and John Elliott, my grandfather, a lawyer. A fifth son, named Oscar Estell, lived only briefly. After Lucinda's death Capt. Clayton married again, Eudora Gibson. By her he had uncle Shelley--the only one of these people I ever met.

My grandfather and his brother Oren Henry married sisters, daughters of Capt. Bright, a steamboat man. (Steamboats used to come up the Black River, upon which the Clayton property fronted.) These two girls did not fit in too well with the Clayton culture. I knew my grandmother by reputation as a difficult person. Her husband died long before I was born. In my childhood Grandmother stayed primarily with her daughter, Aunt Ethel and Uncle Maurice, a most saintly, though not particularly religious man. When some problem in that family arose, Grandmother came to live with us (I may have been about 12), but we soon found it necessary to send her back to Aunt Ethel.

Grandmother's sister must have been a more severe person. Her husband, my great uncle Oren Henry, found it necessary to desert her and flee to Texas. This lady apparently followed him because the last we heard of her she was running a boarding house somewhere in Texas. All the family accounts that I heard strongly intimated that Uncle Henry was fully justified in his action. We often have a choice to fight or fly, and, being a man he peace, he chose to fly.

Clayton Gibson had been trying to locate all of his second cousins (on his mother's side). He found my address through the Methodist Church (they knew that I had been a Methodist minister). So out of the blue one day I found a letter from this kinsman informing me of the reversion of the railroad property; I was one of the heirs.

I immediately replied to his kind letter, and we began a correspondence. Unhappily I had known nothing about these Clayton cousins and had no interest whatever in such matters. But Clayton Gibson's letter reawakened that interest: blood is thicker than water. Before much time had elapsed, Ellie and I visited our old family seat. I had a very dim recollection of the place, and it looked much the same.

The first time we went there I went into the Post Office to get directions and told the postmaster who I was looking for. He told me where Clayton lived and also where "Miss Carrie" lived--his mother. Miss Carrie was my first cousin, once removed. She was about Daddy's age and remembered him well. She soon got to be one of my favorite relations.

For some years I have been accustomed to saying a special goodbye to friends who were up in years (Miss Carrie was in her 90's). I would tell the person, "If you get up there before me, prepare a place for me." I would usually get a rather quizzical look, but Miss Carrie had an immediately and lovely reply. She said, "You will be very dear to me." Although she couldn't attend to society for very long at a time, her mind was as sharp as a tack.

Her house was right beside the old tracks--and the property which we now jointly owned. As we were walking back toward our car, I made a rather joking remark: "I think I'll get the heirs to let me have some land right over there and build a house and there I'll be." Like a flash came her reply. "Yes, and your phone will ring, and you'll hear me saying, 'Lawrence, get over here'". She had taken my kidding and trumped it, a characteristic Clayton trait. A lovely old lady! I always enjoyed being in her presence. She is up there now, and hopefully I am very dear to her as she said. We hoped to visit her again in 1995, but she died a few months before our trip.

A couple of years later Margaret had plans to go to Kentwood for her 40th class reunion. So she and Cousin Dorothy Tatum (and Dorothy's husband Maurice Tatum) made plans for a family reunion at Natchez. Quite a few people converged on the place. We organized several carloads of people to visit Miss Carrie. I had the pleasure of introducing a lot of the family to her. Of course she knew who they all were, but it had been many a year since she had seen most of us. The reunion was a great success.

I felt really good about these new relationships. As a person without family roots of much consequence it was good to discover family abiding where their (our) great, great grandfather had lived well over a hundred years ago. My grandfather had been born there, and my father had been reared nearby.

Clayton Gibson's letter also aroused in me an interest in the family history that led to a pretty extensive amount of research over the next several years. I discovered first that those Claytons had come west from Butts County, Ga. A while later I traced the Butts Co Claytons back to Craven, and then Hyde Co., N.C. with 1744 as the earliest date.

Then, after four or five years of study, I determined that the NC Claytons had come from Kent County Delaware, and before that, in 1682, from Cheshire Co. England. Ellie began by going with me and worked on her own family, and we had a lot of fun. We visited every state archive from Pennsylvania to Texas.

I also worked on my mother's family--the Leeches. They appear to have come from Strabane, Ireland early in the 18th Century, and passed through York County, SC, Tenn., Ala, Miss, and finally back to Memphis, where mother was born. One important link came when I researched the Confederate army records. James McGrady Leech had been in Virginia during the war. Near the end he was listed as a deserter, and his birthplace was given as Lawrence Co., Ala. We knew he had later lived and enlisted from Lafayette Co., Miss.

All this stuff may seem trivial, even puerile to most people, but at a certain age it will become important--if your mind works anything like mine. One of my happiest discoveries was to learn that James Clayton, my great, great, great grandfather, had been a Methodist minister. As far as I know my father, although something of a Methodist historian, had been ignorant of that.

Margaret Clayton Russell

Fairly early in that genealogical pursuit a research correspondent gave me the name of Margaret Clayton Russell of Watkinsville, Ga. I wrote to her and soon learned that we were cousins--distant cousins, perhaps 5th or 6th. But it turned out that we had done more or less the same research, and come up with the same conclusions. We were both descendants of the James Clayton, blacksmith, of Hyde and Craven Counties, who had left his will in 1783. He had four sons; she descended from son Thomas, while I descended from son, William.

Margaret had written a book on the family--beginning with the elder James Clayton, carpenter of Hyde County. She had tried and tried to trace him back further, and finally admitted defeat. Her Alabama branch of the family had distinguished themselves; her great grandfather had been Gen. Henry Delamar Clayton, in command of the Alabama forces of the Confederacy. And she had records that gave me further information about my Louisiana branch.

In particular she had, in her book, considerable mention of a man referred to as "Old Cousin James", the Methodist preacher. She wondered who he was. I wrote back and told her who he was: my great, great, great grandfather--the direct ancestor of all the Louisiana branch of the family.

Ellie and I stopped and met Margaret and her husband Russell one year as we passed on our way to New Orleans. They proved to be very nice people, and of course we had much to talk about. Her book was more or less written, but did not get published until several years later. I bought two copies and sent one to Clayton Gibson, who had started me on the family history quest. Her book actually had very little about our family until you went back five generations.

She had more or less convinced herself that James Clayton, Sr. of Hyde County was "no one in particular", but just an anonymous man with no prior history remaining. I spent about four years investigating James Claytons in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, N.C. and S.C. who might have tied up with the man who came to N.C. around 1745. And as stated above, I finally demonstrated to my own satisfaction that he came from the Delaware family. When I shared this with Margaret Russell, she fully agreed with me, but the material did not get in her book---supposedly too late to be included.

The genealogical quest has led to correspondence with quite a number of people and discovery of relations of varying degrees. A good hobby for an old man who has turned his back at last on the struggles of middle life.