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