Merl Schiffman, Memoirs: Part III




Leaving Eden I owed them $125 plus the Masonic loan. I paid the Masons $10 a quarter the first year, 20 the second, 30 the third and 40 a quarter the fourth year. It was tough to pay. Never got Eden paid until 1936. I also owed Mathilda $50 which I have repaid many times over. In fact, everytime she reminds me of the loan, I pay her again.

Had correspondence with Pastor Goebel about my ordination, set for July 9, 1933, Got busy when I got home gathering furniture (aid from everyone's attic). Grandpa Albaugh, now living with us half the year, loaned me $200 and gave me $50 to buy a used Model A Ford. George Fitzer drove me to Boston the first Sunday I was home to look the place over. I called the President of the Congregation but he was not interested in seeing me that day. Met Linus, Martha and Kathryn Wurtz for the first time and they were very helpful.

Mother and Dad arranged a buffet dinner after the Ordination Service. It was nicely done. Domst Bakery (old friends of the family) sent a huge cake. In fact, they sent one a week early and had to take it up to the Orphan's Home. At the Service Rodney Heckman, Pastor Meuhlinghaus, Dr. Carl Locher, Carl Haass and Goebel officiated. (See file). The church was packed. All the Joys were there, Margaret, Jim and Ruth. I received the "plate" offering as a gift (a strange custom common in churches) about $86.

The next day a local furniture store where I had bought some items trucked my goods to Boston. Grandpa Albaugh drove over with me to help me "get settled". The Church president came by the first evening and, for the first time, I learned that I was to receive $75 a month salary with no "extras". ("Extras" usually were utilities). He also told me that they were having a bazaar the next evening (probably to get it in before I could object to "selling chances"). They had it but not before I rescued the "Klingebeutel", an old velvet offering bag on a long pole with a bell in a tassel---they were using it for a pole for the "fish pond".

After a few days I took Grandpa to Dunkirk. I arranged to have one hot meal a day at Dye's---he the local storekeeper, she the postmistress and town gossip. I paid her 50 cents a dinner, five days a week.

I had a hard time finding a membership list and a harder time finding member's houses in this rural community. The congregation numbered 40-50 members, half of them farmers and the depression was hurting. Potatoes were 40 cents a bushel, eggs 12 cents a dozen, and strawberries 5 cents a quart. One farmer picked up our garbage weekly for his pigs and in turn left four or five quarts of strawberries at our door during the season. We got milk from a nearby dairyman who was stopped from delivering because he bottled only raw milk. We bought cheese at the local cheese factory and got whey cream which we mixed with milk for heavy cream---until we lost our taste for whipping cream. Ambitiously started a garden but it failed for lack of water.

The older farmers and townspeople were quite conservative. They had the same church president for years, he having succeeded his father and his grandfather. But there was a nice group of young people and I got along well with them. We met often for rallies in Buffalo, meetings in homes, sleigh rides and maple sugar parties.

I hit it off real well with the Wurtz's. We became close friends and have stayed in touch all these years. As time went on I helped Linus with funerals and even went out with Linus' uncle Louie on New Year's eve of our first year of marriage to "hold" a funeral while he and other help took care of two other funerals that day. We washed and shaved the deceased and stalled until Linus came. (That was the first house funeral where I saw the old world custom of covering the mirror and stopping the clock at the hour of death). Linus called me to help on ambulance calls and several times Martha phoned to have me drive the ambulance into Buffalo hospitals with her (she was a nurse) because Linus wasn't home.

Once I took a woman who was hemorrhaging, the doctor said I have only forty-five minutes to make it or she wouldn't live. He called the Buffalo police who picked me up at the foot of Main Street and with motorcycle and ambulance sirens shrieking we rolled up through Lafayette Square and Delaware Avenue and were met by interns at the Emergency door. Some weeks later I met Pastor Lohans, now a Buffalo churchman and he said he must be mistaken but he thought he saw me driving an ambulance at full speed through the Square one Saturday. I admitted it.

I assembled a First Aid kit in a shoe box and always seemed to be stopping along the road to help out in accidents. Linus gave me a professional kit and my occasions for giving help seemed to diminish though the kit still stays in the car. Linus also gave me my first electric shaver---the first on the market---a Packard.

The parsonage had been two small buildings which were connected, having a "low bridge" in the doorway upstairs where I banged my head often before I got used to it. There was an old fashioned nickel trimmed stove in the dining room, dingy gray wainscoting about chair rail high around the dining room and kitchen. Water came from a shallow well across the street, later found to be polluted. We drilled a well next to the house but no luck. The Council stubbornly refused to run a line up the valley three lots to a flowing well at Dr. Jehle's. We had water problems all the years we were there, often hauling it in the Summer and buying water for the babies when they came.

The first Labor Day weekend that I was there, Mathilda came with her Mother and Grandma Weis to visit, measure windows and check rooms. We spent a few days at Dunkirk and also she and I each took a light plane ride with a congregation friend over Niagara Falls and Boston Valley. He hauled the little plane behind his car, the wings folded against the body of the plane.

I took off two Sundays in January, going to St. Louis. Our plan was that I would go down again in June of '34 for our marriage. But after some discussion when I arrived in January (Mathilda not working, save money by not making another trip, etc.) with Minnie taking part in the discussion, we decided to be married January 8. (I don't recall Phil. having a part in the plans, or why not).

So with a hustle and a hurry on the part of Mathilda and her Mother, her pastor Lohans married us at 2 PM January 8. Gus Weis loaned us his Packard sedan and we drive to Grandma Weis' where she fixed supper and then on to the Forest Park Hotel. (We had gone to Alpha Xi dances there). We saw the movie "Dinner at Eight" that night. The next day was packing with a nice family reception that evening. The following evening we were off on the train to Buffalo where we taxied to Heckman's and begged a ride to Boston.

What a cold reception! No heat and all water lines frozen. (Tho shut off). I took Mathilda over to Wurtz's until I could get the house in shape. We faced the coldest winter in years---one time getting down to 42 below zero. Left the car in gear one night and couldn't get it out until noon the next day.

I kept busy fixing the house, keeping the youth group going and directing a play for the Grange. In June we went to St. Louis, driving the Model A over brick paved, tree-lined roads from Ashtabula to Richmond. We had to struggle to make ends meet on my salary. Lots of vegetables were given to us. Mathilda had wedding money and she bought fine furniture (she always made excellent selections). Linus Wurtz was very generous, giving us all items at cost, plus carrying us on monthly payments for a long time.

An old man named Emmet Davis lived across the street in a hundred year old house his father, a doctor had built. Davis was in his 90s, short, stooped, weathered, wearing slippers only, going to the woods in nice weather to gather ginseng to sell to a salve manufacturer in Buffalo. He lived alone, his wife having died many years earlier. It was said that her cloak laid over a chair and violets were in a vase where she put them before she went upstairs and died. It took me several years to get next to him and sit and talk in his living room. He told me of the days when the road was a toll road, each four mile section of it maintained by some man who collected toll to use it. It was a plank road, logs rolled next to each other and dirt spread on them. Logs were plentiful for Davis told me that the area was once all forest and when he was a boy the sky was lit up all night from burning fires---farmers were felling the trees, clearing the land and burning the trees.

All my visits to Davis were "too late". He had many old books but by the time I could ask to see them, he had burned them. He had bushels of letters, some mailed before postage stamps existed. He burned them. There were many pieces of fine furniture and one day I saw a lady with a station wagon loading everything into it. He was a quiet, shy, yet triggerish old fellow who bridled at some questions I asked. He had a diary and I coaxed a long time before he let me see it. It went back to the mid 1850s. But there wasn't anything in it. Only the weather, references to a cow dying, a horse breaking a leg. He wrote that he went to Salamanca, New York to join the Union forces but the War ended at that time. But he wrote nothing of the turbulent days before or during the Civil War. Davis had a Model T Ford, 1912 on blocks in his barn. He would not let me see it nor listen when I suggested buying it. After we left the Valley, he sold house, land and contents to a local auto dealer.

At this time, I developed a pattern of sermon preparation which I followed the rest of my life. My first year I tried to set up two sermon schedules. One for the present time and one for the following year. After getting through that tough period, I had a schedule of Sunday sermons to be preached from September to June and went about gathering material for the following year. I felt some security about this a well as certain of a broad range of subjects. And I found in time that I was at least one year ahead in ideas, and often much more than that.

In weekly preparation I started on Tuesday morning to "rough out" the subject and assemble in some order the ideas I had gathered. Wednesday morning I cut and sorted until I had a general outline. And Thursday I wrote a two page outline of the material and typed it---the typing important to me as it seemed to imprint it on my mind. I filed away the excess material and let the sermon rest until early Sunday morning when I went over it once more---and had it. Gathering material in files, I also assembled over two thousand 3X5 cards with quotes and poems.

In the Fall of '34 I attended a Minister's meeting and met the Director of the County Welfare Department. Having little to do, I asked her if I could ride with the local welfare worker to see what he did and to learn? She called me in a few days to suggest that, if I had that much time, why not take a full time job with the department?

Talking it over with the local Church Council and agreeing to take a salary cut from $900 annually to $700 a year (!) I accepted the appointment. Then I had to wait for several months, going through the political process, being sponsored by the township supervisor, interviews and even a nasty letter from the Buffalo chairman of the Socialist Party. (I learned that the Party had a rule that no member could accept a job with a political entity without permission of the party leaders! My first taste of authority in a democratic group).

Finally I was assigned in February, 1935 to the North Collins office, 15 miles over the hills from Boston at a salary of $1,200 a year plus $30 a month car allowance. North Collins was the southern branch of the County Aid Department. Funding came from local, State and Federal budgets and we had piles of paper work to contend with. When people did not like the decisions we made regarding their aid, they wrote to Mrs. Roosevelt or the Governor and we had to answer every complaint.

I had training classes during the morning of the first week and afternoon trips with one of the staff. We had an office of 19, including clerks, stenos, and field workers under a supervisor. Seven Visitors covered seven townships along the southern tier of the Erie County.

The second week I was given a "caseload" of eighty families in Eden, New York and worked that territory for over two years. Eden was a retirement community surrounded by lush farms---where two and three crops of truck vegetables were grown annually for the Buffalo market. I called on storekeepers, doctors, ministers and town officials and every afternoon visited new applicants plus monthly calls on all recipients. It was fascinating and serious work. I had never been in touch with such a wide variety of people. Oldsters, young married and men out of work who were down to their last dollar. We were supposed to "see" every person receiving aid and on one occasion I threatened to cut off a daughter of an old lady because I didn't believe she existed. And just as I went to the door to leave, the daughter burst from behind a drape over a doorway. She looked frantic, wild-eyed, babbling, a woman about forty. I made further inquiries and found that this daughter had not been out of the house for almost twenty-five years. She was obviously mentally ill but her Mother did not want her taken to a hospital.

Another time the storekeeper told me a Sam Fricano was buying only eggs with his welfare check. Dozens and dozens of eggs. I checked with Sam and he told me he believed eggs were good for him and that's all he ate, morning, noon and night. I suggested he had to share his check allowance with his wife and son with better meals---as we stood talking across a round dining room table. Sam reached behind him and took a shotgun standing in the corner of the room and held it up towards me. I would let him buy eggs or . . . . I told him we would talk about it some more and left. Checking with relatives, they said his wife was fearful of living with him so I had the Deputy Sheriff pick him up and got the doctor to send him to Gowanda State Hospital for an examination. They kept him for about six months.

The work was fascinating and serious. I learned patience, diplomacy, did detective work , and tried to stay objective and not indifferent to persons. Telling one old minister what I did, he said I was packing years of experience into months. When we got our first monthly check of $100, we wondered what we would do with all that money. I went around the village paying every bill we owed.

Boston was a pleasant village nestled in a valley among hills - actually foothills of the Alleghenies which stretched down into Pennsylvania. The area was pleasant in the summer and a battle with snow in the winter. We were eighteen miles south of Buffalo and eighteen miles northeast of Dunkirk. In the course of my four and a half years of welfare work, I think I traveled every highway and road in the southern half of Erie County.

Mathilda was expecting in June and the extra income put us in good shape. I don't know how we would have made it without the extra job. Gordon Merl was born June 20, 1935 in the Millard Fillmore Hospital in Buffalo with Dr. Gettman as obstetrician. Our local Dr. Jehle referred us to him and told me he would charge $35. He did. The first grandchild of the Keller's and the Schiffman's was a beautiful baby from the first moment. The congregation was very generous and the nursery was well equipped when he arrived. Those were the days when babies were raised "by the book". It was an unfortunate professional view because when I look back on it, it was sometimes cruel. Feeding by the clock, not his hunger, letting him cry, little unloving styles which the professionals said was the way to do it---and as new parents we followed the book. Yet Mathilda all the time because she was home, and I when I was there, giving him loving care and I'm sure not much harm was done. The next three boys were raised as infants according to their needs and not by the book. Taking care of the baby was no small chore for we were short of water. We had no washing machine, no refrigerator. Mathilda had to wash diapers with a hand operated container which she swished back and forth. And our ice box was just that---ice was brought to it twice a week---and we often forgot to empty the pan underneath, causing a flood on the floor.

I'd come home from work, have dinner and walk the floor with Gordon, singing Irish songs while Mathilda did the dishes and made the next day's formula. My father had walked us with the same songs and our boys got walking and singing from me. We had added a wood stove in the kitchen plus a better stove in the dining room. (I had become sick from leaking coal gas from the old one the previous Spring). But we had no heat upstairs except in the bathroom. So in Winter, I'd get up first in the morning, start the wood stove, heat water to thaw the water pipes and, while doing that, start the breakfast. I've been up first, making breakfast every since.

My two jobs continued until I resigned from the Boston Church in late '39. In late 1936 I was appointed Supervisor of the North Collins office but only for six months, then some layoffs, and I was back on the road. I covered Gowanda-Collins for a year and then two years in Springville-Concord.

Roosevelt was elected in '36 in a slam-bang campaign which we thought would be close from our Republican-slanted newspapers, but it was a landslide. He never lifted a finger about the Civil War in Spain - Catholic pressure---my first furious dislike of that kind of foreign policy. World War II was obviously down the road, the Spanish War having encourage Hitler and Mussolini.

We liberals used to get up at our annual Church District meeting and give impassioned speeches against capitalism and War and private enterprise. It was always a real row and we looked forward to a rousing battle. Whether it did any good was hard to tell but we had an articulate time and often hit the newspapers. That was also a time when New York State had a law prohibiting giving birth control information or selling contraceptives. We ministers violated the law by encouraging young people to plan their families and we got into conflicts with our legislative representatives who followed the Catholic directives on this. Margaret Sangster, leader of the movement was often in jail. I wrote strong letters to Assemblymen and got strong letters in reply.

With all the experiences occurring from my work, I decided to write a book about them. I chose the title, "Tomorrow Is Not Too Soon" for the outline I put together and began to write the first chapter. That was in early 1937 and that Spring a book was published by a welfare worker in Michigan along the very lines of the story I planned to tell. That was the end of The Book.

The Boston Church, St. Paul's Evangelical, was one hundred years old in 1934. In celebrating that occasion, I learned that the congregation had been founded in 1811 by a Presbyterian circuit rider, John Spencer and had existed as a Community Church until 1834 when the German settlers predominated and the Presbyterians diminished. The Germans took over in 1834.

I also learned that Harry Emerson Fosdick, the famous preacher at Rockefeller's Riverside Church in New York City had early roots in Boston Valley. I found the log cabin which the original Solomon Fosdick built in 1821. He was a carpenter and my tracing proved he built the Church building in 1837. His son, John Spencer Fosdick (remember, John Spencer the circuit rider above?) taught school at age 15 in the rear basement of the church building.

I wrote Fosdick and he referred my inquiry to his brother Raymond, President of the Rockefeller Foundation. We carried on a lively correspondence until finally I asked them if they would pick a date in 1937 convenient to their schedules and we would commemorate 100 years of the building. They chose May 27,1937 and I went to New York City to make the arrangements. Met with Harry Fosdick in his apartment and completed the details and went to the Rockefiller Center and was ushered through myriad secretaries until I met Raymond Fosdick. We had a good visit because I was filling him in on Boston Fosdick lore and he was thrilled. Also had lunch with Reinhold Niebuhr at Union Seminary who said getting the Fosdicks for that occasion was the "damndest thing he ever heard of". Mathilda and I went to New York City a few weeks later as guests of the Harry Fosdick's at their apartment for the weekend.

It was a glorious event---May 27, not believed by my pastor-friends until they saw the publicity (see file). Mathilda had dinner for Dr. and Mrs. Harry Fosdick, Dr. and Mrs. Raymond Fosdick, Mrs. Fosdick Sr., and daughter. Hundreds of people attended the Service, admission was by ticket only, newspaper reporters, State Troopers, photographers and 20 firemen extras under Linus Wurtz directing traffic.

Raymond Fosdick and I continued correspondence for about six years. He and Mrs. Fosdick came to Boston about a year later to check on some findings and I kept working on the Boston Fosdicks until the early 40s. In his book, "Annals of the Fosdick Family" (Harold has it), he credits me in the preface for assistance with the Boston chapter.

Harold was born February 19, 1938 at the Millard Fillmore Hospital in Buffalo. Dr. Gettman's former assistant, now in private practice attended. Harold was a bright one from the start. We named him after Dr. Harold Jehle and Harry Fosdick. (Had I known the spoilage of the name Fosdick later by that sick cartoonist Al Capp, I would not have pressed Mathilda to accept Fosdick). But, at that time, we were proud of the acquaintance. Not long after the commemoration Service, the State put an historical marker in front of the church.

Had a chance to go to a Seminar sponsored by Sherwood Eddy in New York City and Washington. It was a terrific experience meeting national leaders Thomas Dewey, Mayor LaGuardia, Earl Browder, Communist leader, tea at the Chinese Embassy, snacks at the Russian Embassy, visiting Mrs. Roosevelt in the Blue room of the White House, John L. Lewis, Harry Hopkins, Justices Hugo Black and Charles Evans Hughes, Senators Norris, Borah, and many others. (I repeated this trip two years later from Taylor to Washington only but it was less exciting). We also, at this time, attended a meeting in Buffalo and met the famous Japanese Christian leader Toyohiko Kagawa.

The merger of the Evangelical Synod and the Reformed Church in 1934 had broadened my contacts and I continued searching for a full time parish. I was getting tired of two jobs and we were not comfortable in the parsonage with poor water facilities and washing problems. In mid '39 I met Louis Miller, president of the Atlantic District and he asked me to come down and look at Taylor, PA. In October we did, were invited and before I left Taylor , I accepted.

That was a mistake for several reasons. A candidate should always return home, ponder the offer (or pretend to) and send his word. Secondly, when we got home a committee from Grace Church, a fine congregation in Buffalo called to ask to talk with me. I had to say no because I had given my word to Taylor. I have often wondered---if I had taken Grace Church instead of Taylor, not gone to Gowanda, not done mission work at the Hospital, not been offered Bethel, Elmhurst, where would we have ended? Maybe Taylor was the price to pay for many pleasant years in Gowanda and the best of ministries in Elmhurst.


Taylor was the "first anthracite coal mine" outside of Scranton, Pennsylvania. We enjoyed the friendliness of the people. Made some lasting friendships with the George Leber's (Glenn's godfather), with Dr. Helen Houser, and the Merwyn Howell's. There was a lovely Colonial parsonage with 8 rooms, central heat, full basement and modern facilities which we lacked in Boston.

But it was not easy. I had agreed to preach German twice a month which I did, poorly (you can see how desperate I was to move!). They had a Council of 17 members who fine-tooth combed every detail of my monthly report, the finances to a penny and were reluctant to change.

The community depended on one coal mine run by an operator Bob Moffat who bossed the town and the miners' lives. The congregation still had many members who had come over from Switzerland to work on farms to provide feed for the mules in the mine. When the mine work was electrified, they became miners. The members were mostly Swiss of a religious orientation of about 1906 but strongly influenced by the dominant community life style which was Welsh. In fact, some even spoke with a Welsh accent.

My brother Jack was now with Hygrade Seed Company in Fredonia, New York. Jim was with ALCO, later to go in the Navy, then to return as Inspector at ALCO. Helen was at Fredonia State Teacher's College and Frank was with ALCO.

I remember Pearl Harbor on a Sunday afternoon, December 7. We were sitting in a room at the Church waiting for the finance canvassers to return from calling and we had a radio on. Everyone agreed that a war would not last very long and that our forces would be on the scene and settle everything quickly. Little did we know how involved and how deeply it would affect all of us. The war affected the miners who now earned better than the $1,300 annually which they had been receiving. But young people had no work and I was encouraging them to leave town - permanently. Contrary to other U.S. communities, by 1944 Taylor had one third of its houses empty and for rent.

I tried to register as a Conscientious Objector but couldn't because the registrar said my Clergy status took priority as an exemption. I believe he did not want the CO status to show on his records. Early in 1941 I had gone to New York City one day to a meeting at Fosdick's Church with him, John Haynes Holmes, Paul Schiere, Al Muste, Kirby Page, Sherwood Eddy, and a few others to discuss our role as pacifists in that time. We saw some ominous days ahead.

The war affected us with some shortages though I had no gas rationing problems as a clergyman. In fact, once the ration board gave me a "B" book, much more generous in coupons than a "C" book. And when they recalled it as a mistake, they told me to tear out all the coupons and return the empty book. Taylor had less rationing pressure and I even got retreaded tires for my Dad and shipped them to him. We saw the Black Market surge with coffee, butter, and sugar being hoarded with whisperings of its availability "under the counter". Our family had plenty of sugar with five ration books and we shared with relatives where we could.

The Leber's allowed us to rent a second cottage on their land at nearby Lake Winola. Our Summers were a delight to all of us. We had good friends in the Herb Rieder's and Howard Stump's (who got us the last Lionel train in Scranton, (Joel has it) and Zaffiro's who loaned us a movie camera when we couldn't buy one.

I became good friends with Harold Case, a Methodist minister in Scranton because we both were loners in the Valley; he later became President of Boston University. Also kept in touch with Raymond Fosdick. We visited the World's Fair in 1940, its second year in New York City. Also went to Union Seminary in New York several summers for one week lectures and trips around the city. At a summer camp near Allentown where I did some leadership training for youth leaders and church school teachers, on a one week basis, I met a Black minister, James (Jim) Robinson, who had a church in Harlem. We became good friends, and Jim came to Taylor once a year to preach and I went to Harlem once a year to preach in his church.

About 1942, Jack, who was manager of Hygrade Seed Co. of Fredonia, New York asked me to work for them in north-eastern Pennsylvania. He was short of salesmen because of the War, and wanted to keep some accounts alive. After taking me on a teaching field trip for two days, I went out to old customers (schools) and opened a new 19 school account the first day. The job continued several years, my working one or two days a week in the Fall, and a few trips in the Spring. I covered six or seven counties and earned good money. We could use the money because Taylor was not in good shape financially, and had a near crisis when I asked for the only raise in five years. ( I note here that I had a "moonlighting" job in each of my four parishes).

Frank Schiffman was killed (electrocuted in an auto accident) on February 28, 1942, a tragic thing, (see file), especially as he was Stella's only son and a good home boy to her. Glenn Joy Schiffman was born on Monday, February 15, 1943 with Dr. Helen Houser attending at St. Mary's Hospital, Scranton. We went there on Thursday but he wasn't born until Monday, on a very stormy night. He was a handsome baby as the pictures Mathilda saves indicate. Gordon, our first and so proud we were, Harold so sharp and bright and later Joel after a difficult pregnancy and so good to have him with us long after the other boys had finished school and left home.

My attempts to leave Boston were nothing compared with my desperation to get out of Taylor. Within six months of arriving there I began to think of how I could leave.

I wrote to everyone, I even considered War relief work (UNNRA) but was turned down. Finally in late '44 Carl Haass suggested that Trinity, Gowanda, New York was open and I heard, also, that Grace, Buffalo (again) was open. I went to be interviewed by both committees though only one at a time could vote on me.

Gowanda was not in my eager consideration for I had worked there earlier as a welfare worker. It was a two factory, State Hospital town, very conservative, I thought.

Gowanda voted and invited me the night I was there. Then I went to Buffalo the next night to talk with the Grace Church committee. They were looking at several candidates. Back in Taylor, Mathilda and I talked it over and decided on Gowanda---we could be sure of it. Along with that church I was to preach at Cattaraugus, New York on alternate Sundays $1,800 + $300. In the future was a part time chaplaincy at the State Hospital.


Taylor saw us go with mixed feelings for while we had some support, there were many who wanted a more conservative, non-pacifist minister. A blizzard had struck Western New York so I sent Mathilda, and the boys to Dunkirk by train and waited for the moving van---a shortage problem but they would do the job because they had moved us to Taylor. After a week he showed up, hired local help, with a crippled arm bet me he could load the grand piano on the dolly himself and did it---winning a pound of butter. Drove to Dunkirk in one of the worst blizzards in Southern New York I have ever encountered---and I saw many storms while in Boston Valley, and later in Gowanda.

Bill Thoen (Joel's godfather) was President of the Congregation, and as a contractor he had remodeled the parsonage amidst great material shortages. It was reasonably livable compared to when I had seen it months earlier. Lots of rooms---and a big verandah---bigger than my boyhood home at 733 Lion Street.

Gowanda turned out to be a wonderful ten years. It was a small village (3,000), 26 miles south of Buffalo and 18 miles from Dunkirk. Surrounded by dairy and fruit county and the Seneca Indian reservation nearby, it was set in the midst of a pleasant area and an easy place to get acquainted.

The parish, about 150 members, started at once to have a post-war boom. Fred Weyand, an attorney friend and parishioner, wanted me to be in Kiwanis. Before long I was program chairman (getting some labor leaders and civil liberty advocates out from Buffalo to the distress of some conservative Kiwanians). Fred paid my dues as I went through the Masons, Royal Arch, and 32nd degree Consistory. Later as a reward for a job I did as a special fund raiser for the new local hospital, Mayor Elmer Gayvert paid me through the Shrine. I took a demit (release) from all the Masonic orders later.

Mathilda did some substitute teaching on occasion at the local high school and once the principal was so desperate he even had me come in and teach in Algebra and Spanish.

I remember Hiroshima with a sense of horror and shame, and the almost abrupt casualness in the way President Truman treated it and continued to justify it through the years. The end of World War II came in April with little celebration. On a committee to consider what would happen when the Day came, I drove to the business district and saw one lonely Indian leaning against a lamp post waiting for excitement which never got started. At the time of the Armistice in Japan in August, we had scheduled an overnight boat trip on Lake Erie to Detroit---a short vacation, leaving the children in Gowanda. We found everything in Detroit closed except Hudson's Department store and we toured it all day from top to bottom.

There were many postwar shortages. We wanted to do some remodeling at the church and add some delayed fixtures at the parsonage. But nothing was available in hardware or appliances. Still, J.N. Adam built a huge new store in Buffalo and got supplies. And Ford, GM, and Chrysler prevented production of appliances (we had a used $15 refrigerator) until they got steel for new autos.

We became friends with the Ernest Rose's through the Cattaraugus Church. Visited them often and had huge strawberry shortcake suppers and giant dinners at haying and silo filling time. The boys and I helped gather maple sap from a sugar bush and haul it to a big, outdoor vat where it was boiled off. Then more boiling in a large kettle on the kitchen woodstove. We got tree seedlings from the County Agent and the boys planted an acre plot next to the cemetery on Rose's land, which planting should now be a woods of 30 years growth. Once I stayed overnight and Ernie called me at 2 AM to help deliver a calf, my first and only experience in that interesting procedure of pulling with all my strength on a rope around the calf's feet and finally dropping it out on the straw on the barn floor.

In 1946 Ernie Rose told us that the school house adjacent to his property was to be auctioned due to the consolidation of schools. He encouraged us to bid and when it went over our top of $500, Ernie bid it in at $705. He loaned us $500 at no interest and gave $205 to us "for the boys". He said he wanted to be sure who his neighbor was.

That was the beginning of a pleasant and exciting family time. First we remodeled the sound, strong building in a Spring and Summer of hard work and moved in old furniture (everyone's attic). The boys and Mathilda were a great help. The we built an eight foot high stone fireplace across the corner of the room which took two Summers to complete. Another Summer we built an outdoor fireplace. We planted trees, kept a garden and helped Rose's. Mathilda and the boys lived there every Summer and I drove the seven miles several times a week and Sundays after Services. We even kept a goat for two Summers.

Gowanda was a fine place for the boys to grow and learn. Gordon and Harold had paper routes. Gordon, 16, worked at Witt's garage and the Summer of his senior high school year worked at the Tannery. We gathered around the radio nights with Jack Benny, Edgar Bergen, Fred Allen, and Fibber McGee. Got our first small, black and white television set in 1949. There were good playmates for the boys, including some Indian schoolmates. Woods and ponds were nearby and a small school where we knew everybody. I was active in Kiwanis, helped establish a Community Fund, managed a Sewer Improvement campaign with Dr. Lahvis and, with him, directed Phase II of a drive for funds for a new Hospital.

Thought Gordon might like a time at Camp so took him to a Y camp at age 10 which was a mistake. It was a time of manpower shortage and the counselors were untrained high school kids, the Leader was a Biblebanger who had revivals to convert the campers. I should have checked it more closely.

Within six months of arriving in Gowanda, I was appointed one of four part time Protestant chaplains at the Gowada State Homeopathic Hospital for Mental Hygiene, an institution of 3,600 beds. I conducted an afternoon Service every fourth Sunday and received $36.30 for it---and that's about all any of the four of us did. Mathilda went along to play piano for the hymns and once Gordon played for the Service.

Our friend Rev. H. H. Lohans, now in Buffalo, was chairman of the Synod Mission committee and had some discussions before I arrived about a clinically trained man at the hospital. Lohans had me look into it. With Clinical Director Dr. Bohn's encouragement, I went to Rochester, New York State Hospital for Clinical Training one Summer, by train each Sunday night and returning Friday night. At the Hospital I worked on the wards each morning, ten different ones in ten weeks, classes every afternoon and research every evening. It was a strenuous schedule with Gowanda, Cattaraugus and hospital Services.

The Mission Board paid my expenses, and, when I returned from Summer study and began work at the hospital, I was paid $50 a month by the Board. Dr. Bohn welcomed me back, invited me to sit in on the diagnostic staff semi-weekly meetings and gave me a master key to the wards. I did part time visiting on the wards, some counseling, accepting calls from patient's pastors and was elected President of the New York State Protestant Chaplain's Association at a meeting at Central Islip, Long Island. We worked to get Governor Dewey and the legislature to approve full time clinically trained persons in all hospitals and prisons. (I was the only trained man in upstate New York). In 1953 Governor Dewey suddenly announced a plan to carry out this proposal but he offered only $4,200 salary with no extras. (I had thought of applying but not at that low salary. I was soon to be out of my "moonlighting" job).

Joel Keller Schiffman was born September 15, 1951 after a difficult pregnancy. In fact, we were not sure he would make it, but everything turned out fine. Dr. Lahvis attended at the Memorial Hospital in Gowanda and Mathilda stayed the full nine days. The boys were pleased with their new brother who entertained them in style. Though he was a restless fellow, especially nights, and Mathilda spent many midnight hours quieting his fretting.

Having voted for Norman Thomas through 1948, it was a pleasure in '52 to support Adlai Stevenson, an intelligent and wise man. I was already anti-Nixon for his vicious campaign against Voorhis in California in 1948. And Eisenhower was one who stood for nothing with a flourish, plus a miserable fumbling with words. We all went to Dunkirk to see Adlai when he made a whistle stop and we took pictures. His defeat was a great disappointment. The antics and witch-hunting of Senator McCarthy was threatening and Nixon's "tricky" character and "Checkers-Cloth Coat" speech were disgusting. He later told a group of TV Execs how he had staged the whole show. It was a time of fear and accusations.

In June, 1953 I was a WNY delegate to the General Synod at Heidelberg College, Tiffin, Ohio. On the second day there, Herbert Bloesch, then President of the No. Illinois Synod and Robert Stanger, Chairman of its Mission committee stopped and asked me if I would like to come to Elmhurst, Illinois and start a new congregation. I got some details and went home over the weekend to Gordon's high school graduation and to talk with Mathilda. Went back to Tiffin and talked with Bill Halfter, an ex-schoolmate, now a professor at Elmhurst College and a member of the group starting the new church. I was scared of the idea of preaching to those who were my former professors, former school mates, to college students and the educational level of the membership. Bill said that I would "grow" on the job.

We started correspondence with the Pulpit committee and agreed to visit when we took Gordon to enroll at Elmhurst College in September. Henry Damm, National Missions Secretary urged me to consider Elmhurst or an opening in Omaha, Nebraska. (Omaha turned out to be a dud in five years).

Got along well in Elmhurst at several meetings and agreed to return November 7, to resign Gowanda after that date and move February 1, 1954. They had 43 members, met in an auditorium at Field Elementary School for Services, had put a $500 option on a site which they later gave up to the Presbyterians. They were a highly enthusiastic group and attracted denomination-wide attention especially among ministers who had attended Elmhurst College. It was to be controversial for a long time and I know many wondered why I took it and how I could possibly handle it.

Leaving Gordon at College, we went home to keep our secret, to begin closing the cottage and Gowanda work. Gowanda had an 80th anniversary that Fall and the following Sunday I went to Elmhurst, preached to satisfy the procedures of "trial sermon and Call", was elected and negotiated - $4,800 plus utilities and parsonage or housing. Returned to Gowanda to resign and pack. Closed the cottage and put it in the hands of a real estate dealer who did nothing for six months.


Moving was hardest on Harold who was a Junior at Gowanda High and certain to be valedictorian at graduation. We had explored the possibility of his entering the University of Chicago as an exceptional student because he was completing his credits for graduation in three years. He was accepted at Chicago but we decided against it. Getting to York High, Elmhurst was most competitive, but he made high grades, National Honor Society and earned scholarships.

Mathilda went ahead with Glenn and Joel while Harold and I drove to Elmhurst. On my first day there I met with a Chicago Church Federation committee to discuss Bethel's and a Presbyterian group's application for site approval. Our St. Peter's Church leaders did not want us and Congregationalists did not want the Presbyterians. After much wrangling and political trickery by those opposed, we withdrew our site option on condition that we could secure a site in a new development next to the Junior High School. There was much bitterness by some lay people and ministers which lasted for years.

Bethel rented a house in a lovely area at 376 Arlington Avenue for two years. It was an old but comfortable place and we knew we had to move when the owner returned in two years. I went right to work calling on prospects and having many meetings with church leaders. We were "blessed" with many Chiefs and few Indians!

We went back to the Gowanda cottage the first Summer to sell it. Had no luck with real estate dealers so we did our own advertising. Had no luck with that either. Grandpa and Grandma Keller came to visit, he wrote a very descriptive ad: "gateway to Zoar Valley, deer crossing, panoramic view, etc." and we had forty-two callers the next Sunday. We sold it to the first couple on a "deed of contract", and sold the mortgage two years later to the Gowanda Loan. We later used part of the income to go to Europe in 1959 as a twenty-fifth wedding anniversary trip.

McCarthyism was rampant until he accused the Army of being "soft on communism" and even Eisenhower who had been very quiet about McCarthy, joined in criticizing him. There were Senate hearings which we watched daily on TV and it was satisfying to see McCarthy demolished publicly by Attorney Welch. But Nixon was hinting that President Truman and his Secretary of State Dean Acheson had "coddled communists". It was a suspicious and devisive time.

Gordon had a job at the post office. He worked hard, I even cautioned him once when he was on a 4AM to 6 AM shift and trying to keep up his studies. I was out every afternoon calling on prospects and drinking too much coffee in each new house that had a "move-in". Joined the Kiwanis which was a fortunate occurrence for I made friends with a number of local men who later were of help to us in a number of ways - lawyers, the Mayor, suppliers, contractors, school-men. Through our church member on the City Council we concluded a deal for five lots next to the Junior High School as the subdivision opened nearby. And through my good friendship with Superintendent Maurice Turner, we were able to shift our Sunday Services to the auditorium of the Junior High School.

We erected a huge billboard on the site, sent out 60 doorbell ringers on Sunday afternoon, made two area mailings and gained members steadily. Grandpa and Grandma Keller came up, arriving late one night in a rain storm. In fact, very late in the evening, Mathilda sent Harold up to the corner to watch for them, a move I thought was futile. Lo, Grandpa drives by and calls out to Harold for directions!

Grandpa looked at lots and finally proposed building a house at cost for the church. The Council dragged its feet for a long time and finally turned him down---without a word of thanks for the offer. They thought a house debt would slow the financing of a church building. In January of 1956, we had a notice to move from 376 Arlington by June 30. The Buik Foundation offered us $5,000 if we would match it as a $10,000 down payment on a house. We chose the house, 449 Webster Avenue and then hustled to raise the money. I wrote to everyone I knew, begging for gifts. We made it. But it was with deep personal regret that we could not take Grandpa Keller's offer and later have 15 years equity in a house. We moved to Webster Avenue late in June, 1956.

The building committee for the church had a slow time of it---chiefs and prima donnas again---trying to make their own plans, exploring useless avenues and unhappy with my pressure. Along with that was a flood of new people who wanted a piece of the action. And the founders who did not want to give up their leadership. It all turned over in January of 1957, when a new group was elected, formed new committees and moved ahead. But not before the old group had tried to get me to resign.

Harold had been accepted in 1955 at Washington University, University of Chicago, Harvard, and Antioch College. He chose Antioch and we drove to Yellow Springs, Ohio with him, then went on to Berea, west to Memphis and to Dixie Lodge to pick up Glenn and Joel. In the Winter of '56 we made the first of a number of trips to Florida to Carl Witt's. Pris. Molnar stayed at our house with Harold and Glenn, and Joel was at Irma's in St. Louis.

Construction started on the Church in the Fall of '57 and dedication was the following November, 1958. Financing was tough. We had been promised a loan by a local banker who then learned he had bank board members from a rival church who did not want us to have the money. We quietly followed every lead without result until spring when a Hungarian Insurance company in Washington, DC agreed to the loan. One of our members, Gus Molnar had sought it out. Construction was going on and finally ended after a long struggle with plans, money and some founders.

On an earlier page I mention the Elmhurst-Eden plan of my college days when I ended up with no degree. I enrolled at Elmhurst College in '55, took 8 AM classes and in two years completed the requirements. I was graduated in Gordon's class in '57 but did not take part in the ceremonies so as not to diminish his honors. Gordon had lived at home in his last year at college, made good money at the post office and paid all his bills plus buying a new car. He and Lois Bruggeman were married in our Oak Park Church on June 8, 1957 and he went to work at Wilson Sporting Goods Company.

I was President of Kiwanis in 1957 and Mathilda and I got a trip to the Convention at Atlantic City in June. Harold had a summer job at Roscoe (Buik) Laundry, we took Glenn and Joel to Dunkirk and while at Atlantic City, they flew to Boston where we drove to pick them up. That Fall Harold went to University of Freiburg, Germany for a year and Mathilda went to New York City to see him depart. He was on the high seas when "Sputnik" was launched and when he got to Europe he did not know what they were talking about.

While Harold was in Germany, he wrote some articles for the Elmhurst PRESS. He also spent a Summer in Russia in 1963. We went with Glenn to his graduation in Antioch in '61. Harold then went to Paris for two years with the American Friends Service Committee for his alternate military service as a C. O., then back to the University of Chicago. While at Chicago, he lived at the nearby Quaker House. Glenn stayed there also one Summer while working at a Southside steel mill. Harold got a year's study grant in India and then a year teaching at the University of California, Davis Campus. In 1967, he moved to Seattle to teach at the University of Washington. One day he called to say his thesis had been accepted at the University of Chicago. (They really gave him a rough, almost mean time of it). We threw a party to celebrate. He received his Ph.D. at Chicago in June, '69.

Inez Tarbell, a trained Director of Christian Education took over the whole Church School program for me as a Bethel member, a tremendous help (and relief). She was followed by the Saldanas, Polaks, and Veatchs, all able people. Polaks also had youth meetings in their basement rec. room and Glenn was part of that beginning group. We moved along until '61 when we had to go to three church school sessions as well as two Services of Worship.

About this time, I heard of a Women's Club Speaker's Bureau at the Chicago Art Institute. I asked for a hearing, spoke before 600 State program chairwomen and by the end of the week had 42 engagements for the next year ("moonlighting" again). The same speech, "If I had Three Wishes" was eventually given abut 150 times in Northern Illinois, Wisconsin, and Indiana.

In early '59, we decided to take part of the money we gained from the cottage sale and go to Europe as a wedding anniversary trip. In applying for a birth certificate at Albany, New York, I learned for the first time that, though my baptism certificate at St. Mary's read "George Merl Schiffman", I was not George at all. But to this day some of my relatives write to me as G. Merl.

In late July, we went to Killorglin, County Kerry, Ireland to visit David Sullivan, my mother's cousin. Spent an interesting day with him visiting the Moroney homestead, looking in the old cemetery for gravestones with no luck and learning of David's brother Timothy who I did not know about until then. Timothy's wife Mary of Reen and her son and daughter are still there.

To London, Amsterdam, Brussels, Paris and Geneva each two days of sightseeing. In the latter four we were guided by Church World Service people. On Lake Geneva by boat to Montreaux where Harold had spent a Summer as a Junior abroad. Then to Zermatt, Grindlewald, Murren, Interlaken and Berne. Then to Frieburg, Germany to visit Harold's friends. Rented a car and drove through the Schwarzwald to Heidelberg, visited Hassloch (Keller's birthplace) and to Trier where we found Mathilda's relatives (the Denzers) on the Weis side. Arrived in Trier when the pilgrimage to the "Holy Robe" was the year's event. Sailed up the Rhine to fly from Frankfurt to Berlin, (then isolated) to visit Dr. Lahvis' sister-in-law and on to Bremerhaven where we taxied a few miles to Bramel. There we stayed overnight with Schroeder's, she being my grandmother Schiffmann's first cousin. Home by ship Berlin, an old boat that took ten days for the trip. It was an exciting journey in sightseeing, visiting people, moving at a pre-planned pace that was exhausting but memorable.

Glenn was a great baseball fan. At the cottage he batted stones until he wore out the bat. At Elmhurst, watching a TV game, he would dash out and pitch to the side wall of the house to a lineup for hours. His early favorite was Al Rosen. Glenn went all out for John F. Kennedy as a high school student, as we did.

Elizabeth Anne was born July 2, 1960. Before that Gordon had been drafted into the Army after a vigorous medical protest about his asthma. He was sent to Fort Riley, Kansas and was medically discharged in about three months. The medic there said he should never have been passed by the Chicago examiners as every inductee cost about $10,000 to process into the Service.

I landed in the hospital in September, 1960 with a "coronary insufficiency" under Dr. Martin Stoker's care. It gave me a pause for a while but it turned out O.K.

Glenn was admitted to Knox College in the Fall of '61 with a partial scholarship. He worked at Elmhurst College on Summer maintenance and two Summers at a South Side steel mill where he had an arm injury and at another time a sprained ankle. We drove to Galesburg, Illinois regularly to transport him, and to attend Parent's day. Glenn did very well in school and was graduated in '65. He took off for California at once - and we were very sad at his immediate departure. He did his CO work at San Francisco State, got in his class work and was graduated Master of Fine Arts in '68.

In 1961 we began surveys for church expansion. The boom was still on, so we did not see the impact of Vietnam, the declining birth rate, the increasing high cost of living in Elmhurst (for young couples), the sit-ins, Selma, and a Christian Athlete, "positive thinking" guy at St. Peter's across town. We peaked at about 550 members and 280 in the Church School in 1962 and then it was downhill to about 375 and 120 in 1967. I thought about leaving because a change might be indicated but was reassured by those in charge not to. And we had a stronger response from those remaining---and better programs.

While purchasing items for the new building, I remember the Friday afternoon in November when we were in the lobby of the Furniture Mart in Chicago and the word was passed around that President Kennedy had been shot. In fact, the stories were that Vice-President Johnson had also been shot. It was a grim and stunning experience affecting almost everyone, especially young people. The church was filled on Sunday morning with people obviously looking for something to be said. Whatever one said was not enough.

President Johnson was not high on my favorite list. He was arrogant, pompous, sometimes simpering, had brassy daughters, yet he put through some of the boldest civil rights legislation ever written. Caught up in the Vietnam war, however, he lost his perspective and ended up isolated in the White House and withdrawing when he knew he could not win in '68. But he still ran the '68 convention in Chicago and brought disaster to Hubert Humphrey who was afraid to oppose him.

I was elected first Moderator of the new Chicago Association (370 Ministers and 200 Churches) and for seven years was on the Committee on Church and Ministry---being chairman twice. I attended the General Synod at the Palmer House in Chicago in '65, Mathilda going along and staying a few days. I taped five three and a half minute meditations for CBS-TV to be used as early morning openers or late night closers for affiliated stations and got letters and cards from around the country for the next two years. I also did the same for local WGN-TV and they used them over and over again as well as the voice on WGN radio.

We went to Chautauqua one Summer vacation. Met Karl Menninger, the famous psychiatrist and Nel Ferre' a well known theologian. Marched with Martin Luther King, Andrew Young, Dick Gregory up State Street in Chicago in '66 to post civil rights demands on the City Hall door. Also marched several times in Elmhurst with College students and faculty at the time of Selma, Vietnam and the Cambodian invasion. On one of the marches Mathilda and Lois, Jon and Elizabeth walked, though I carried Jonnie most of the way. Raised money to help college students get to Selma and when I couldn't get money for the bus fare, I persuaded people to give me funds for food for the marchers. Jon Gordon Schiffman was born July 12, 1964.

I had a feeling I was suspect as many protesters were and believe we had an agent in one Sunday morning Service. If I ever checked right-wing Edgar Bundy's Wheaton list (he of the claim that Girl Scouts were communist directed) or the Christian Conservatives in Cincinnati, I am sure I was on their list. Feelings were strong, I had a sermon-discussion one Sunday on the Moral Issues of Vietnam and made a few families mad enough to leave the church.

Protesters were sitting in buildings, holding faculty members or administrators hostage, marching in Washington ( and scaring Nixon into hiding). It was a restless and revolutionary time and the church had a hard time being relevant. But I believe it was more relevant in the '60s than it had been before---or even now.

I heard from Marge Veatch about a program for retarded children and teenagers at nearby George Williams College. It included painful kicking, slapping and whacking with a stick when the blindfolded youths missed a word or failed to immediately respond to instructions. I went out to see the instruction and told Mathilda about it. One morning she was listening to a Studs Terkel radio interview and afterward called him and told him of the school program. He cussed and referred her to special feature writer Lois Wille of the Chicago Daily News. Mathilda called her and Wille wrote a series of articles on the techniques which shut down the program and brought the State's Attorney in to examine it.

Fred Beyerman and his wife Lelia were our very good friends from the first days at Bethel. Fred was with the Daily News and eventually assistant managing editor. I always thought his high churchmanship was reflected in the handling of the news---especially the first five pages which were his daily responsibility. Lelia was a local reporter and gave us full publicity. They had a charming family but as the years passed Lelia's drinking became increasingly a problem and when Fred retired he found the isolation and her condition intolerable. He shot her and killed himself one morning, ending two lives that were among the finest we had known.

Glenn was married to Betsy Stuelke on June 21, 1967. With Joel we flew out to California and made it our vacation trip with a tour of Northern California including the Mr. Lassen area and the Northern coast. Mathilda had a family party for Glenn and Betsy, her parents and our relatives at 449 Webster the previous Labor Day.

Late in the Fall of '67 Jacquie Peters asked me why I was not considered for an honorary degree at Elmhurst College. I told her how it worked and after New Year's Day, she organized a campaign of letters and recommendations to the President and Faculty. Mathilda and I knew all the details as they progressed but had to keep very quiet. By April via leaks, the day arrived when the Board considered the recommendations of the faculty. Somehow I had forgotten all about the event that afternoon. When I arrived home Mathilda said the President wanted me to call. He told me I was nominated for the degree of Doctor of Divinity. Along with Senator Adlai Stevenson III, Congressman John Erlenborn and two others, the event took place on June 1, 1968. My friend Dr. John Jump nominated me. Mathilda did a grand job of bringing in the family to celebrate. Glenn and Harold drove the VW from Seattle. There was lunch at the President's home, a lawn party afterward at 449 Webster arranged by the church folk and special altar flowers in the morning Service. (See red book). She also arranged to give Biblical plaques and a Jerusalem Bible to the Elmhurst College Library in my honor. Three weeks later the congregation had an after-church social to honor me on my 35th ordination anniversary and gave us the Sony TV set.

The Democratic Convention that Summer was literally a riot and we listened to the continuous news coverage of Grant Park and Michigan Avenue police violence against the demonstrators. Joel and I went in the night after the Conrad Hilton Battle and saw the barricades, wall to wall police and the shambles in Eugene McCarthy headquarters. When the score was added up in the 60's, Mayor Daley was a major factor in precipitating protest and brutal attacks. I toured the West Side after Martin Luther King was shot and saw the acres of burning buildings and remembered Daly's "shoot-to-kill" order.

In the Fall of '68, hurrying to conduct a College communion Service one Sunday evening, I had another coronary attack. Light and home from the hospital in eight days. But Mathilda began to press for early retirement.

In the Fall Joel went to Illinois College, Jacksonville. He said he wanted to go to a small school after the huge size of York High. Joel had been the lad of the house since Glenn left in '65. He had worked at Mel Crum's Printing Shop (as Glenn and Harold did), had been a custodian at the Church and worked on the summer cleaning staff of the Elmhurst schools. In June of '69 we went to Boston, Mass. for I was an Illinois Conference delegate to the General Synod. Mathilda stayed at the Hall's in Hamilton while I was at the Statler. At that time I asked Harold Wilke if I might be considered for the pastor's delegation to Germany some year. He said yes.

In April, '70 we took a trip to Seattle to Harold's and to L.A. to Jim Schiffman's. On the day we got home Gordon called, came and asked if he could stay with us awhile. Soon it was obvious that his stay was more permanent. Both children came each weekend and our role was tip-toe. They were confused and hurting. Fortunately Gordon traveled a lot so his mind was on that also. But he had troubled days and we were glad we were able to have a place for him during a trying time. He was divorced in 1971.

In mid-'70 I applied to the National Committee on Ministry for one of ten places on the Pastor's tour of Germany in '71. In alternate years ten pastors went to Germany and ten came to USA, as guests of the National Church. On December 24, 1970 two great things happened---I got word that I was accepted for the Pastor's Tour. And I read an advertisement in our National Church paper asking for retired ministers to supply small churches in Arizona.

In February of '71, our member Kent Smith of WKBW-TV, Chicago called to say they wanted a news story on what was happening to the Churches - decline of members, criticism of their social action, etc. I referred him to several sources but the next week John Drury, the newscaster called and said they wanted an interview in a Church with a Minister. Would I? He and his staff came out and we taped for three hours in the Sanctuary and the Study. He used two minutes of it on the five o'clock news! (See file for original tape and overset).

We drove to Michigan for a Keller family gathering at Kreichelt's farm as farewell to Mathilda and me. And two weeks later we left for Ireland (late August), visited Killorglin (both Timothy and David have since died), drove the Ring of Kerry, had a jaunty cart ride and back to Shannon for a medieval meal at Bunratty Castle next to the Shannon Motel. In London we had a foul-up in our travel arrangements so that our luggage went to Frankfurt though we didn't make the plane. I was sent ahead on a first class flight to capture the luggage and Mathilda followed three hours later. But then we could not get to Koblenz that night so stayed in a hotel near the Bahnhof. The next morning on our way to the train we heard someone shout "Hey, Merl" from across the Platz. It was Bob Moss, President of the United Church of Christ on his way to a World Council committee meeting.

We spent several days with Mathilda's cousins, the Burgomeister Heinrich Denzer, whom we had met in Trier in '59. We took a one day trip to Koln from there. Mathilda spent a month there, visiting Hassloch and touring Rotenburg and keeping house while the Denzer parents visited Paris.

I left Mathilda, returned to Frankfurt to meet 10 UCC pastors and 5 Canadian pastors who were to be the group of National Church guests for 30 days. We all made a boat trip down the Rhine to Bonn and had dinner at the Bundeshaus. We split in 3's, Olsen of Iowa, Forsythe of Canada and I went to Westphalia Provinz. The church office of the provinz had not previously had a program of pastor's visits. They treated us royally and exhaustively. We made five or six visits in four or five different towns each of the twenty days, being turned over to another host the next day. We ate prune-kuchen morning, noon, and night. Once, in a rush between towns, our chauffeur driving a big Mercedes drove 200 kilometers an hour (130 miles an hour), turned to ask if he was going too fast for me! I got a chance to make a quick trip to Diepholz, Westphalia and get a copy of my father's and Aunt Jennie's birth certificates and a picture of St. Nicolai Kirche where they were baptized (see file).

On the 20th day in Westphalia we were driven from Munster to Bielefeld with the vice-president of the Deutsches Bundesrag, Frau Lisalotte Funke. From there we drove to Hamburg, flew to Berlin, got our instructions, repacked and crossed the border into East Germany. There our hotel accommodations were not available; we walked to the Police Station, spent six hours with one officer making out papers, found a meal at midnight in the Bahnhof and back to the hotel where our rooms were open. We were up at five AM to eat and catch a train for Halle an der Saale, then to Merceburg, Dessau and Wittenberg. In Merceburg the discharge from 5 smoke stacks at a butane plant got to my throat and head and I coughed for three days plus a headache. I noticed the local people were pale and listless. In Dessau where they had not talked with an English speaking person in nine years, we had a police guard outside our hotel each night, "To keep us from being disturbed". And the man who started following us in Halle was still with us and did so until we got back to East Berlin. (See full story "A Fabulous Journey" in file).

Mathilda meanwhile had been busy at Denzers and her side trips. After ten days in East Germany, I came back through the "Wall", bought a Herald Tribune and an orange at the Freidrichstrasse Bahnhof, checked into a hotel, repacked, called Mathilda and was fog-bound the next morning at Templehof Airport. Got to Frankfurt on time, repacked again with Mathilda's things and Denzer's wine and flew home on September 30. Our flight was North over the English channel, England, Scotland and over beautiful Greenland and the Hudson Bay. Our view was most unusual as the area is often cloud-covered.

Before leaving for Europe we had been corresponding with the Arizona Conference Minister. In May of 1971 the Senior Minister of our big church in Sun City, AZ called and invited me to come down and look around. He had two vacancies on a staff of five. Mathilda and I had checked our pension, Social Security and other income so the time had come to decide. We flew to Phoenix in June, stayed at K. K. LIlien's, checked in at Sun City and after a visit with the Conference Minister, also checked other openings. Chino Valley looked more like the place where we wanted to permanently live. Chino was a part time supply, good climate and had a parsonage. We gave them a list of terms on which we would come, went home and told the family and congregation what we had been up to---and we would let them know. Attendance went up every Sunday at Bethel until I resigned in July, effective November 15, having had an O.K. on all terms from Chino Valley.


October 1 we started packing, being entertained and closing down Elmhurst life. Joel was home, having lost his job at the TV station in Jacksonville after dropping out of school for a semester. He went to work for the Elmhurst Street Department. Gordon was also with us, though traveling most of the time. Dates stacked up fast for lunches and dinners. Even the Chicago Association had me to a luncheon and gave me a plaque---never having done that before. We had a big garage sale and sold a lot of things we later needed. On every move, I've made some dumb mistakes!.

We packed and ate until November 6 when a huge crowd came to a farewell dinner. I wish I had taped the remarks of the various presidents. The following Sunday was another farewell after the Service. They gave us the Oldsmobile, "Minister Emeritus" status and a framed picture to be hung in "Schiffman Hall". IV



We drove to St. Louis and on to Chino to confront a stopped up kitchen sink and drain line in the parsonage for over a month. I was homesick for Joel and Elmhurst plus some retirement trauma. Joel had lost his job with the city so, with his consent, we enrolled him at Arizona State University for February 1, 1972. After much communication he started out, got the flu, and finally arrived on Friday, January 29. We were glad to see him! On Monday we drove down to ASU in Tempe. He got settled, coming up every Friday night and returning Sunday afternoon. He went to Summer School and also stayed with us part of the Summer. Heidi arrived in the Fall of '72 at ASU.

In the Spring of '72 we looked around a bit, liked Prescott's Antelope Hills and the golf course area and bought a lot at 16 Perkins Drive for $4,250. One year later we were offered $10,000 for it. We checked our finances, had the benefit of Mathilda's inheritance from her Uncle Gus Weis and her Father's estates, checked some contractors and finally started plans. Mathilda laid it out, and though it was my first experience with a scale ruler, we drew plan after plan until we had what she wanted. We said we could afford it if it did not exceed $23,000. Our builder said he could do it for $19,000. With price controls off and costs skyrocketing, we finished at $37,000 (not including the lot and my labor).

In June we drove to Chicago and St. Louis. I flew to Gowanda for the Church's 80th anniversary and in St. Louis we attended the 80th birthday party of Mathilda's godmother, Aunt Emma Keller. Late in June of '72, we drove to Arcadia, California for Gordon and Dorinne Johnson Garside's marriage.

It was interesting to us that we were living much more simply, and putting half our income into savings. This enabled us to get what we wanted in the house without using too much capital. Our three year savings above living costs made quite a difference in paying for construction. We risked building with a builder who was somewhat unreliable, drank weekends---but was capable in layout, cement, masonry, carpentry, plumbing, rough electric and roofing, all for $7 an hour. We debated---and decided that if we did not have him, we could not afford to build on these plans.

First we ran into design problems with the City Engineer. He obviously did not like to deal with an owner-builder. Then we stirred up the neighbors with our story-and-a-half structure. It was perfectly legal in the area covenant but several neighbors couldn't read. Then the builder stalled. Finally in June we trenched, poured concrete and then stalled again. Meanwhile Joel and I cleaned up the yard, bough 1,400 used brick from Prescott's old Junior High School and cleaned them for later use as sidewalks. And we got the septic tank and drain field in.

We started framing lumber August 13, 1973 and moved along, the only problem was getting laborers until September 15 when the economy slumped and we had laborers at the job looking for work every day. We made steady progress in a certain routine. I worked everyday, returning on Saturday and Sunday afternoon with Mathilda. I looked down the road every morning to see if the builder was coming to work. He usually did but when he didn't come, he never told me. And I could be sure he would leave every Tuesday noon for lunch, tell me what he would do after lunch, leave all his tools out and never come back in the afternoon. Yet, having started with him, we had to go with him. We did, taking off in October to go to Bethel, Elmhurst , driving to Phoenix, leaving the car with Joel and airlining to Chicago.

We moved right along through Winter and Spring, concluding our builder's work in March. Mathilda and I then worked everyday painting the interior, laying floors, finishing trim. We took off for Joel and Heidi's wedding on June 1, 1974 in Jacksonville, Illinois.

Since Spring, I had been moving items every day in the car. Mathilda would pack boxes and I hauled them to the upper floor. We also got another good carpenter who moonlighted from his cabinet-installing job. Finally we moved in on July 21, 1974. After that it took a year of finishing and trimming until about July, 1975 when we could say that the construction items on our work list were about completed, twenty-five months after we started. It would be several more years before we would get many little things done.

While working on the house, the major event of the time was "Watergate". Having strong feelings about Nixon for over 25 years, we felt he was in the action up to his neck. We watched and read as the story unfolded and the explanations unraveled. The House Committee considering his impeachment acted with surprising dignity and seriousness. Prosecutors were of a first rate caliber. It was frightening to see a crisis develop, satisfying to see some of the most arrogant persons ever in White House positions crumble as their lies came apart. Nixon, Mitchell, Haldeman and Ehrlichman were the major ones, though some like Kleindienst and Mardain escaped with a slap on the wrist. One particular rascal Colson even got himself converted and now goes about telling about being "born again".

It was a shabby time. Vice-President Agnew had resigned in disgrace. Gerald Ford was appointed Vice-President and defended Nixon though he later admitted being aware of Nixon's guilt. Then, after Nixon resigned, Ford as President pardoned Nixon! Nelson Rockefeller was named Vice-President, a wealthy show-off, a glib "ham" from New York State Governorship days.

It has recently been a time of general deterioration of character, truth is at premium and citizen apathy results from not knowing who to trust. I call it the legacy of 25 years of Tricky Dicky.

Since settling in the house we have made two more trips East, one in early April of '76 for Mathilda's Confirmation class 50th reunion. And in the Fall I went to Dunkirk church's 120th anniversary, while Mathilda stopped in St. Louis for the Ed. Hall visit including Barbara and her new husband Horst from Germany.

Glenn wrote early in '76 that he and Betsy were separated (divorced in August). Such things are of sad moments to us. Joel and Heidi are living in their own home in Tempe. Harold returned from a sabbatical in India in early '76 and spent a month in St. Louis on a research project. And Gordon and Dorinne bought their apartment in Indian Head Park, Illinois.

As I read over these many lines, I notice a great emphasis on "work". Perhaps I have mentioned it too much. Yet work was what enabled my brothers and me to help our folks when we were boys. Work put me through school which I could not otherwise have done. And work kept me running fast to provide for our family when the boys were young. They helped me immensely when they were old enough and had jobs. I have always lived with the fear that I would not have enough to provide for family needs. And sometimes in early days, I didn't. I remember in about mid-'65 that I began to feel secure, that my work provided sufficient family income and something to save.

If at times it seemed to the family that I was always off to work, it was true. I felt that if I did not do my job, a good living was not to be ours. So I worked and Mathilda was a wise manager and we had some things and accomplished some things I didn't have or do as a boy.

I wondered sometimes how it would have come out if I had made it through medical school. Then I remind myself that I most likely would not have met Mathilda and had four such fine sons. And that, it seems to me, is far superior to being a doctor.

Retirement has been good. Planning and building the house together has kept us busy and happy. We enjoy each others company---with chances to do what we couldn't do in the parsonages.

I have been so fortunate to have found Mathilda. Beautiful, wise, a splendid mother, with excellent taste and manners which I lacked and needed. My ministry would have been common without her presence and such improvement in my skills came from her encouragement and strong urgings. If I was able, she made me. When I disappointed her, I look back now with regret.

Plus the bounty of four sons---and two daughters-in-law---who were a pride and joy from the beginning. Each added a particular dimension to our family life, creating and enriching it. We were socially sensitive, peace-loving, respected, humane and enjoyed each other because we had a good home life, with Mathilda at the center of it.

Life has been so varied. I have arrived where murder was committed, where suicides had occurred, have seen birth and death, cheating and lying, painful sacrifices, arrogance, frauds, repulsive snobbery and beautiful lives that moved me deeply.

I have known the Fosdicks, the Niebuhrs, Church Presidents Moss, Herbster, Wagner and Goebel, Norman Thomas, Paul Scherer, Sherwood Eddy, Harold Case, John Haynes Holmes, Jim Robinson and that finest of old lovable radicals Herman Hahn.

Now in these quieter years I find it still true, "Sometimes one must wait until evening to see how splendid the day has been".

July 15, 1977
16 Perkins Drive
Prescott, Arizona
86301

Go to Supplement to Memoirs.



haroldfs@gmail.com, last modified 6/6/02