American Lives, War and the Quest

A TC Pubs Book
   
 Copyright Ó 2001 by Jan Forbes

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War: A Military Family

Every nation has a birth and a destiny, a mission to fulfill in the evolution of humanity. America, whose collective voice would become a paean to personal freedom, began to define and expand its borders while still a colony of Great Britain. The French and Indian War of 1754 expanded the colony to the Mississippi River. The United States emerged out of the conflict, pain and sacrifice of the Revolutionary War. Further expansion occurred through the Northwest Ordinance of 1803, the acquisition of Florida and New Orleans in the War of 1812, and the acquisition of Texas in 1836. In 1845 John O'Sullivan wrote "It is our manifest destiny to overspread and to possess the whole of the continent which Providence has given us for the development of the great experiment of liberty and federated self‑government entrusted to us." The United States declared war on Mexico in 1846 and the western states were acquired, the last being Arizona through the Gadsden Purchase. When the Civil War ended the United States had again freed itself from shackles of the past. 

Along the rocky road in this great experiment of liberty the population greatly increased and the social order began to refine the definitions and deeds of freedom and service. The citizens must devote a certain portion of their lives to serving the nation and community, to assuming the mantle of a national rather than a personal role. Only in light of continuing service to nation and community can there be any experience of freedom. Freedom can be defined as the time and means for individual expression and contribution. As in so many other areas of life there is the necessity to consciously balance two extremes or poles, in this case service and freedom. Can there be any viable experience of one without the other?

If Providence has allowed for liberty, and not only in the United States but increasingly in other nations, what then would be the next step in human evolvement? What is to emerge from this pole, this sphere of freedom? At the beginning of the twenty‑first century it seems easier to list what ought not to emerge. The next step is certainly the quest for higher forms of individual attainment in the work of the redemption of humanity and Earth from past conditions of darkness, conflict and war. 

Briefly, national, state and community service can be broadly defined as including government and law, defense and the military, agriculture, medicine, support of family and basic education, and all forms of employment that genuinely benefit society. Freedom can be defined as including the arts and sciences, leisure and avocational activities, and religion and spirituality. When activities of freedom become means of financial support they can enter areas of deep shadow in which they are neither beneficial nor truly free. They may even be harmful, as is often the case in the entertainment and publishing industries. Excessive freedom in such service occupations as housing and clothing has led to luxury homes and the fashion industry as well as to inflation, the indicator of imbalance in give and take. 

The family introduced in War: A Military Family is that of the author (Martha, who uses the pen name Jan Forbes), and the book might be described as a kind of objectified account of self and family, but not without personal remembrances. The personal qualities are after all what family life is all about and what the family protects and holds sacred. However, poor, sad, mortal, personal life inevitably has elements of failure and tragedy difficult to confront. The great appeal of genealogy must surely be that it enables the researcher to rise above the subjective immersion in one's self and family and acquire a higher, hence freeing view of self and family as part of humanity. "Rise above" becomes the key phrase as the aim and focus of this book is to reveal how the quintessential quest emerges or is suppressed in the lives that are described. Clearly, the quest cannot come to light in conflict and war. Nevertheless, it gleams unmistakably at all times as a potential. The second section of the book departs from the Myers family and describes individuals known to the author during the 1960's ‑ the offspring of the war generation ‑ and beyond, especially those who failed in the quest, and thus failed their forerunners, the war generation who sacrificed their lives. No blame or criticism is imparted, but rather an attempt to understand why the quest was not only inadequately expressed, but often lost altogether from view or consciousness, and if retained in philosophical or spiritual reflection and awareness, why it could not become an effective force in so‑called ordinary or everyday life. The author in youth seems to bridge a gap between two generations. True to the family lineage, she served in the military between 1961 and 1964 (serving in the "Underground Pentagon" at Fort Ritchie, Maryland during the "Thirteen Days" of the Cuban crisis, and at the Pentagon and Fort Myer, Virginia at the time of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy; witnessing Kennedy's burial at Arlington National Cemetery) and then ‑ not at all a military type ‑ did an about‑face and went on the quest. Only later in life was it realized that the military experience had not been a mistake, but was essential for the work that was to be. 

Lastly, there is no intention to condone war and military excesses. The sad fact remains that war constitutes a very large portion of human history. By the twentieth century it is abysmally outdated, but rages on destructively with the lives of soldiers and citizens at the mercy of dubious causes and purposes. It has become increasingly important for historians to look past the complex surface movements of militarism and war and reveal the hidden motives and manipulators. It is stated in the book Crimes Against Humanity, by Geoffrey Robertson, a British barrister, (New Press NY, 2000) that 160 million people were wasted by war, genocide and torture in the twentieth century. 

A social order is needed that will prevent victimization of those who serve and those who seek to contribute in perfect freedom, freedom from any power or authority. Sustainment of well‑being for the nation and the globe depends upon service, but redemption and salvation,  those critical next steps in human evolution, depend upon deeds of true freedom.

*  *  *

"Set your course by the stars and not 
by the lights of every passing ship."

Omar N. Bradley

Father

The father in this family of six can almost be said to be service personified, as harsh circumstances of childhood and youth drove him to enlist in the United States Army at the age of sixteen. Military service became synonymous with survival, and as this service expanded into a career, natural independence, self‑education and financial security ensued. During World War II he rose in rank to "full‑bird" colonel, and in retirement would often reflect that, had he been more fortunate in youth, with parental support and further education, the West Point Military Academy might have been within his means; he might have advanced as far in rank as general. These reflections confirm that he believed military life to have been his destiny, no matter the early circumstances. 

Raymond Henry Myers was born in Xenia, Greene County, Ohio on July 7, 1894. Social Security records give his birthdate as 1892 because he claimed to be older when he enlisted in the army in 1911, hastily acquiring parents' permissions with the signatures of accommodating strangers. His father was Louis Myers and his mother was Ora Hendrickson.  Very little is known about this family that is not anecdotal. Attempts to uncover the ancestry and biography of Louis Myers have not been successful. He is said to have been a German immigrant who earned a living as a salesman. Louis and Ora had one other son after Raymond named Leroy, who always preferred to be called Roy. At some point when the boys were still young, Louis abandoned the family, left Xenia and was never seen again. Ora eventually re‑married and had several more children. The stepfather's name has not survived anywhere in the family records. Raymond recalled painfully that his mother and stepfather seemed to love and favor Roy, perhaps because he was "cute," whereas it is difficult to imagine from Raymond's earliest photograph, with its somber, mature face, that he had ever been "cute" as a child, and indeed, in later life, that he had ever been a child at all. Even though he himself would have four children and two stepsons, he was never in any way a natural family man, and though dutiful and responsible, he was emotionally austere. Ora died tragically, through either a miscarriage or an attempted abortion, while only in her thirties. It was probably after her death that Raymond had the horrible experience of being hung upside‑down over a well by an "insane aunt." It is not surprising that Raymond left school, sought work and eventually ran away from home. 

One of Raymond's early jobs must have been in a bakery or restaurant as he developed a lifelong love of baking and cooking. In later years he would recall that he had often considered restaurant ownership for a living. He never gave up his joy in creating dishes and menus. According to his military records, another of his pre‑enlistment jobs was as "laborer." He once related a story of working long hours at hard labor in order to be able to afford a warm overcoat ‑ that was soon stolen. 

In addition to an underlying melancholy, Raymond had a relaxed demeanor and a rich sense of humor and the origins of these latter characteristics can only be surmised in view of his unhappy childhood. The best guess may be that he and Roy mingled and identified with friendly, turn‑of‑the‑century gamblers, drifters and hoboes, those admired men of ease and freedom who played billiards and bet on horses at the racetracks. The mythos that emerged around this lifestyle must have taken hold of their souls, even though the results would not be apparent until much later in life. Like neglected children the world over, they looked outside of their family for sustenance and in the morally milder times in which they grew up, they gradually came to learn that they could beat the odds no matter how much was stacked against them. After Ray enlisted he did not see his brother again for some thirty years. They were to be reunited by Roy's wife, Helen Purcell Myers, who had been a concert pianist. Roy was then the owner of a poolroom, while Ray had come to love poker and horse racing. Roy had suffered a serious accident and had a glass eye. 

Early military records of Private Myers reveal the following: Company M, 28th Infantry from 4‑24‑11 to 4‑23‑14; Company B, 27th Infantry 8‑15‑14 to 3‑16‑17  (Philippine Islands). During the second enlistment a significant emergency assignment was with the Punitive Expedition of 1916, led by Brigadier General John J. "Black Jack" Pershing. The aim was to "get Villa," or Pancho Villa (1878‑1923), bandido of the Mexican revolution. The history and details of this expedition were published in the Elks Magazine, in February 1989, by Raymond's son, John, and is reprinted in this section in part on page 20. Raymond would learn he was not a natural fighter or infantryman ("I had a glass jaw," he would say) and by his third enlistment the army proved accommodating and gave him other assignments. He would always consider the army "fair," in addition to providing "three square meals a day."

A story he related about his fellow soldiers in the Punitive Expedition is very interesting, especially in view of his interest in destiny. It seems that the harsh circumstances that drove him to enlist early, at the age of sixteen, may have saved his life. When the Expedition was completed, his second enlistment period was due to end within six months. Therefore, in the midst of the raging World War I, he was not sent to Europe with the 27th Infantry. Later he learned that all of his friends from the Expedition had been killed. 

When he re‑enlisted for the third time late in 1917, he was assigned to the Quartermaster Corps, and was sent to Russia as a guard on the Trans‑Siberian Railway. President Woodrow Wilson sent the expeditionary force to Siberia and the Russian Far East under the command of Major General William S. Graves for the purpose of protecting allied shipments carried by the railway. The great railroad had earlier been repaired by American railway men under Benjamin Oliver Johnson, who had been a superintendent of the Northern Pacific Railway. The American troops guarded only small sections of the railroad "from Mysovsk, on the eastern shore of Lake Baikal, to Verkhneudinsk and the section between Imam and Vladivostok." (See Trans‑Siberian Railway in the World History, by Frederick C. Giffin, on the internet.) 

After the war Raymond became a Disciplinary Barracks Guard, Pacific Branch, with a promotion to Corporal in June 1919, and was assigned to Alcatraz Prison. In 1853 the army had constructed a military fortress on Alcatraz Island and soldiers of the Civil War and Spanish‑American War were confined there. Following the destruction of the San Francisco earthquake in 1906, Alcatraz received hundreds of civilian prisoners. The prison was at near‑capacity by the 1920's. According to JoAnn, Raymond's oldest daughter, he was very popular with the prisoners at Alcatraz because he was kind and would save cigarettes and sandwiches for them, especially those in solitary confinement who were normally given nothing but bread and water. Because of his natural kindness and friendliness, he proved to be the only guard who could walk into the midst of an unruly group of prisoners, break them up and send them back to their cells. As noted earlier, Raymond had a side to his nature that was easy‑going and humorous and it is difficult to surmise how these traits could have been acquired in his youth. They became over time an extremely important part of his self‑image, as though he had made up his mind not to be embittered or negatively affected by the hardships of his early life in Xenia.

In February, 1923 Raymond re‑enlisted after discharge and was assigned to the Finance Department. By this time he and the army had definitely refined his aptitudes. Apparently however, he was required to sacrifice his corporal rank upon leaving the Guard Corps. He soon made up for this loss in rank, serving in the Finance Department from 1923 to 1929, where he slowly advanced his career. 

There was a first, unsuccessful marriage to an older woman (her name has not survived) during the mid‑1920's and it soon ended in divorce. Raymond, however, did not tell his second wife about this first marriage until many years after they had been married. 

Raymond certainly crisscrossed the United States several times on various military orders. Travel and constant change were by this time becoming a stimulus he could not live without. "Wherever I hang my hat, that's my home," he would say. He met his second wife on one of his northeastern assignments and he and Grace Frederick Tate were married on August 2, 1928 at Fort Niagara, New York. Private First Class Myers had been promoted to Technical Sergeant, Finance Department, on August 7, 1925. On April 30, 1926 he had received a diploma at Washington DC stating he had "Satisfactorily completed the Regular Course at the Finance School." 

A son, Raymond John, was born on October 10, 1929 in San Francisco, California. 

In the little spare time Raymond could find from army and family responsibilities, he liked to play poker with army buddies and later discovered horse racing. These leisure time activities must have recalled that mythos, that memory of those independent, gambling men who always got the better of chance. He would continue to balance this very marginal mythos of freedom against a very weighty life of service. 

As to his religious and spiritual beliefs, like many military officers (for example, George S. Patton) he was a firm believer in reincarnation. So firm was this belief that he was convinced he had retained a memory of his death by execution in a prior life. From a moral point of view, belief in reincarnation was beneficial, and the purpose of each life was to leave the world a better place to return to, with perhaps greater opportunity or advantage in the future life.

At some point during the two world wars he became a mason and this probably contributed to his belief in reincarnation and his profound musings on destiny. Unfortunately, with the advent of World War II he was not able to continue active masonry and did not pursue it again upon retirement. His love of travel, his compulsion for travel, his exhaustion, broke many potentially positive bonds and commitments. 

In the early 1930's Technical Sergeant Myers, together with his wife and son, was again stationed in the Philippines. The United States had gained possession of the islands following the Spanish‑ American War of 1898 and the Philippine‑American War, from 1899 to 1901. William Howard Taft (1857‑1930) had been the Philippines' first civilian governor. It was while in the Philippines that Raymond would later recall "burning the midnight oil," or undertaking self‑education to improve his mathematics and accounting skills.

By early 1933 the family had returned to the United States and a daughter,  JoAnn Elizabeth, was born on February 23, 1933, in Watertown, New York. Now Raymond and the family were frequently crisscrossing the United States. JoAnn said that at the age of 18 months she went with her family through the Panama Canal to get from the east to the west coast of the United States. After two or three years on one assignment, Raymond and Grace would pack or ship the family's possessions and they would all travel by car (or boat) to yet another military base. In 1937, after passing an examination, Raymond was promoted to Warrant Officer Junior Grade. Warrant Officer is defined as an intermediate rank between a noncommissioned and commissioned officer. His assignments during this period included Madison Barracks, New York and Fort Huachuca, Arizona.

With the advent of World War II, travel, promotion and responsibility escalated. During the early months of the war, on May 12, 1942, he was promoted from Chief Warrant Officer to "Temporary Major." This was while he was assigned to the Holabird Quartermaster Motor Base at Baltimore, Maryland (and where he and his friends must have come to appreciate the proximity of Pimlico racetrack). A second daughter, Mary Frederick, had been born on January 5, 1941 in Washington DC. A third daughter and last child, Martha Jean, was born on November 7, 1942 in Muskogee, Oklahoma. Major Myers had been reassigned to Fort Sill, Oklahoma.  Found in his papers from this time period is a card stating that Major R.H. Myers had been made a Deputy Sheriff of Sequoyah County, Oklahoma, signed by Charley Hutchens, Sheriff, January 20, 1943. Raymond no doubt made friends with the Oklahoma sheriff. 

Grace eventually developed a preference for the Roman Catholic faith. This began when JoAnn and Mary were sent to a Catholic boarding school purely on account of its convenience. The three younger children ‑ because of frequent traveling and the temporary separation and subsequent marital troubles of their parents due to Raymond's wartime army assignments ‑ were several times boarded or "farmed out," always an extraordinarily difficult emotional experience for a child, the three daughters no exception. One of the separations caused Raymond to become briefly and not seriously involved with another woman, but Grace was devastated to learn of his infidelity, indeed, she was never to recover from it. She had lived for her marriage, she had lived for Raymond. According to JoAnn, at the time Grace learned of Raymond's infidelity she had taken some wine for extreme pain that resulted when a dentist accidentally broke the root of her tooth. From this point on, she was never able to stop drinking and suffered for the remainder of her brief life from episodic alcoholic blackouts. However, though not of any particular religious persuasion, Grace had given her four children biblical names: John, JoAnn, Mary and Martha. At some point in the midst of her troubles she had decided to convert to the Roman Catholic religion, only to learn during this difficult time of Raymond's first wife and his divorce, to learn that she could not become Catholic for this reason. 

It is not clear from the records precisely when Raymond was promoted to Lieutenant Colonel, but he is addressed by this rank in August, 1943. Meanwhile the records indicate assignment to Camp Claiborne, Louisiana, Camp Chaffee, Arkansas, Miami Beach, Florida and Durham, North Carolina, the last a temporary assignment to attend Duke University for an "Advanced Fiscal Officer's Course." Later, Raymond would always be justifiably proud of the fact that he, who had barely received an elementary education, had attended Duke University. 

Daughter Martha later surprised her father with a clear memory of arriving in Florida in 1944, where the family stayed for a night in a bungalow with a porch, bunk beds that had sand in them and that were placed in a room with a bare bulb hanging from the ceiling, grey, humid weather and a neighbor's friendly collie dog. "Why, you were two years old!" he remarked, eyes widening as he was refreshed about the details of the arrival. 

Lieutenant Colonel Myers was promoted to what he called "full-bird" Colonel sometime in 1948, when he was sent to Chicago as Chief of the Audit Division for the Office of the Fiscal Director.

After the Second World War ended with the horrendous dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945, Colonel Myers continued serving for several more years. Son Raymond John, age 17, enlisted in the Army‑Air Force in 1946. Three of Raymond's four children would enter the military service at a very young age with mixed success. Father honestly and understandably considered military service a valuable schooling in life that would also yield practical and financial rewards, especially during peacetime. Furthermore, it was an ideal way to get the kids out from under his feet as soon as they came of age. Raymond patiently counted the years ‑ and provided insurance - until each child was 17-18 and had graduated from high school. His method was then to push the fledglings out of the nest, certain they would learn to fly before hitting the ground. John learned to type in the service and was a clerk. He re-enlisted once and was discharged in 1951, missing the Korean War. Upon his arrival home, he brought two little bright-orange toy tanks for sisters Mary and Martha. These were not unusual gifts considering the girls had seen newsreels at the movies of a war-torn Berlin and Europe. Later there would be movies dramatizing the white flashes and unparalleled horror of atomic bomb explosions - from the beginning of the potential Armageddon, Hollywood did not fail to capitalize on the dramatic possibilities of nuclear holocausts. Just another extended kindergarten fight in keeping with the usual level of social and artistic maturity.

Colonel Myers considered retiring from the army early in 1946, but faced the possibility of losing his rank with the customary peacetime rank reversion, in his case back to the Warrant Officer grade. He had already been through this experience when he lost his corporal rank upon leaving the Guard Corps at the end of World War I. From a letter to Colonel Myers by Major General William E. Shedd dated March 12, 1946: "The rapid mobilization of a vast Army during the most critical period in our national history called many men from their civilian pursuits to service with the Armed Forces. In many cases families were disrupted, businesses interrupted or closed, and the lives of individuals subjected to difficult adjustments. It is a matter of record and a source of pride to the War Department that these personal obstacles were overcome with a minimum effect on the overall pattern of our American way of life. The knowledge gained by you during your long career in the Regular Army enabled you to direct with distinction the audit activities of the Seattle district, and was invaluable in solving the diverse audit problems presented when you became Chief of the Audit Division in the Office of the Fiscal Director in this command. I regret that you find it necessary at this time to revert to your grade of Warrant Officer. The standards reflected in your contributions have been well within the ideals portrayed in Army policy, and will be a goal for similar accomplishment for those who remain in this field of Army endeavor. Again let me say that I sincerely appreciate your service and the efforts you put forth while on active duty with Headquarters Ninth Service Command."

However, in December 1946 Lieutenant Colonel Myers was discharged only from Warrant Officer status and became a Reserve Corps officer. Also through this means he was later only to lose the "full-bird" rank upon retirement. He continued service at Fort Douglas, Utah, in Geneva, New York, and as noted, at the Chicago Regional Office Army Audit Agency; also in Seattle, Washington at Fort Lawton, and lastly with U.S. Army Alaska. He retired on June 15, 1949 and received on the same date the following letter from General Omar Bradley, Army Chief of Staff:

"Dear Colonel Myers:

This letter carries with it my best wishes as you retire from the Army after more than 36 years of loyal and devoted service to the nation. The Army has leaned heavily upon your abilities and judgment during your long enlisted, warrant, and commissioned service. When it called upon you in the late war to assume positions of greater responsibility, it found your wide background and experience to be of inestimable value. Your outstanding service in the important fiscal positions you have filled so capably was characteristic of the zeal and devotion to duty you have always given our country. You may be extremely proud of the fine record you leave behind. May success, happiness and prosperity be yours in the future.

                       Sincerely, Omar N. Bradley"

Would Raymond, now 54 years old, be able at last to pursue happiness, to pursue his emerging dream of creating a mathematical system that would beat the odds at the racetracks and provide additional money for his family now that he was retired? Would he have the time to again involve himself with masonry? Not likely, for his fragile wife Grace was to become seriously ill. 

While Raymond was stationed in Alaska, he was again separated from his wife Grace and three daughters, who were then residing in Seattle, Washington. During this time, Grace, periodically  free from her alcoholic episodes, discovered a lump in her breast. The first doctor who examined her told her she had nothing to worry about and sent her home. A year or so later, this early negligence would prove fatal.

What is remembered of Seattle? Beautiful summers, with natural beaches and woods full of paths and small isolated pools of crab and fish, bitter cold winters; a walk, led by JoAnn, through an eerie, deserted army post that had been abandoned overnight when the men were sent to the Pacific war; starting and stopping school (Martha had to start the first grade over the following year) and the 1949 earthquake.

Martha, now six, had a memorable dream from this time: she was struggling to get out from under an overturned canoe and to her great relief, finally succeeded. Where was she? On an island in the center of which, some distance away, was a bungalow with a porch. Her family was standing on the porch, and were applauding her success in escaping the canoe, but with complete indifference. Surrounding the island was a small stream full of sinister red crabs. 

Not long after Raymond returned home, the family took a vacation and visited Redondo Beach, California, and then there was a long car trip across the country to "settle" in Baltimore, Maryland. There was an opportunity for the reunited family to begin anew and for Grace to overcome her alcoholism.

*  *  *

Get Villa!

By Ray Myers, published in the Elks Magazine of February 1989, and reprinted in part with permission of Elaine Myers.

Columbus, New Mexico, is an out-of-the-way place in an out-of-the-way part of the American southwest. Thirty-five miles south of Deming on a dead-end strip of narrow asphalt highway, it's decaying and all but empty, its weathered buildings mute testament to the harsh sun and sandstorms of the northern Chihuahuan Desert. One of the few signs of life, a combination gas station and general store, shares the dusty main street with a scattering of abandoned houses and a boarded-up row of storefronts.

It's an unlikely setting to have triggered a shooting war that lasted almost a year and involved nearly 10,000 American soldiers. It was the largest gathering of horse cavalry since the Civil War, and one of the last anywhere in the world. An anachronism in an era that marked the army's first combat use of airplanes, wireless telegraphy and motorized vehicles. It was called the Punitive Expedition of 1916, and like Columbus, it's largely been forgotten.

Pancho Villa State Park is a few hundred yards south of town. Weeds and the rusted implements of a motor pool occupy the site of Camp Furlong, headquarters of the 13th Cavalry Regiment.
                               
Palomas, Mexico, is another three miles down the road. On March 9, 1916, several hundred of Villa's regulars skirted it on a pitch-dark night, spurring their horses across the international  border into the United States. The revolution, raging in Mexico since 1910, had been going badly for Villa's followers, and they sorely needed guns and ammunition to carry on their fight with the Caranza regime.

By dawn, ten American civilians and eight cavalry troopers were dead, and much of Columbus' business district had been burned to the ground. Nearly a hundred Villistas had paid the price; cut down by small-arms and withering machine-gun fire. As raids went, it was a dismal failure, netting a few boxes of rifles and fifty or sixty head of horses.

Villa had to have known that the odds were stacked against him. He had been angered by Woodrow Wilson's de facto recognition of the Caranza government several months earlier, and it's likely that retaliation at any cost figured prominently in his thinking. He may even have tried to ignite an all-out war between the U.S. and Mexico in an effort to topple his former ally from power.

Within hours, newspapers across the country had broken out banner font that hadn't seen ink since the sinking of the battleship Maine in Havana Harbor two decades earlier. Americans still had a firm grip on Teddy Roosevelt's big stick in those days, and they were fed up with the shenanigans of bandidos like Villa and Zapata.

George M. Cohan echoed their sentiments when he wrote:

     Let's quit talking of Kaisers and Kings,
     Get Villa!
     Let's quit talking of all foreign things,
     Get Villa!
     Let's quit talking political views,
     Let's quit wasting our words to abuse,
     Come Americans - Christians and Jews,
     Get Villa!

Villa's real name was Doroteo Arango. He had worked as a butcher and milkman before settling down to rustling cattle and harassing the vast Chihuahuan haciendas owned by influential friends of El Presidente Porfirio Diaz. He was in his late thirties, just under six feet tall, barrel chested, with a sweeping handlebar mustache and a reputation as a ladies' man. Charismatic but moody, his emotions ran the gamut from maudlin sentimentality to blind rage.

At the height of his power, in 1914, his army, The Division of the North, had liberated half of Mexico from the dictatorial grip of Diaz. His retinue included newspaper correspondents such as  John Reed, author of Ten Days That Shook The World, and motion picture cameramen from the Mutual Film Corporation. For $25,000, Villa had granted them exclusive newsreel rights to his  campaigns, some of which he re-staged during lulls in the actual fighting.

Six days after the Columbus raid, Wilson reluctantly ordered the army into Mexico  "...with the sole object of capturing Francisco Villa and preventing any further raids by his band, and with scrupulous regard to the sovereignty of Mexico...."

The army picked Brigadier General John J. "Black Jack" Pershing to head the expedition. A wiry six footer in his mid-fifties with piercing blue eyes and a thrusting, determined jaw, he had  distinguished himself in Cuba and the Philippines. Teddy Roosevelt, no easy man to impress, had promoted him from captain to general over 862 senior officers.

On March 15, three regiments of cavalry, the 7th, 10th and 13th, crossed into Chihuahua. They were trailed by field artillery and signal corps units, two infantry regiments, and a mobile field  hospital. Their destination was Colonia Dublan, a Mormon community 125 miles to the south that would serve as the expedition's Mexican supply base. Pershing crossed the border on horseback for the benefit of photographers, but once out of camera range, transferred to a black Dodge touring car.

One of the aides accompanying him was a young second lieutenant named George S. Patton, Jr. Even then the quintessential opportunist, Patton had wrangled the assignment by appealing directly to Pershing rather than going through the chain of command....

Parral was the turning point in the expedition. Some 400 miles south of Columbus, it marked the deepest penetration by U.S. forces, and raised anxious concern in Washington and Mexico City  over the possibility of all-out war. 

Except for an isolated skirmish or two, the active pursuit of Pancho Villa was over. The balance of the expedition, nine months, would be spent playing a wary game of cat-and-mouse with Carranza's forces.

Pershing was ordered to pull back to San Antonio, 200 miles to the north. He would have had to retreat in any event because of the difficulty in extending the expedition's supply lines. A hastily purchased fleet of nearly 250 trucks hauled supplies around-the-clock from Columbus to Colonia Dublan, but no further.

A month later Washington ordered yet another withdrawal, this time to Colonia Dublan. The expedition settled down to routine perimeter patrol, limited to an area extending from the border to a line 25 miles south of Colonia Dublan. Except for an incident at Carrizal, 60 miles to the east, the war might have fizzled out then and there.

Captain Charles Boyd and 84 troopers of the 10th Cavalry had ridden to Carrizal to check on rumors that a large force of Carrancistas were massing for an attack on Colonia Dublan. The  garrison commander, General Felix Gomez, denied Boyd's request to enter Carrizal. Brashly choosing to ignore the denial, Boyd dismounted his troops and attempted to lead them into the village on foot, into what a war correspondent later called a miniature Balaclava. Gomez, Boyd and 14 troopers were killed and another 23 were taken prisoner.

Once again balancing on the brink of war, Wilson demanded the soldiers' immediate release, and backed it up by mobilizing 65,000 National Guardsmen and stationing them at border crossings along the Rio Grande. Carranza wisely conceded, and the captured troopers were set free at  Ciudad Juarez on June 28.

The press, instrumental in drumming up early support for the expedition, now labeled it an embarrassment. "Through no fault of his own," the New York Herald editorialized, "Pershing's Punitive Expedition has become as much a farce from the American standpoint as it is an eyesore to the Mexican people... Each day adds to the burden of its cost... and to the ignominy of its  position. General Pershing and his command should be recalled without further delay."

In his memoirs, Major Frank Tompkins blamed Woodrow Wilson. The expedition's problems were "...consistent with Mr. Wilson's Mexican policy, which was a hodgepodge of interference and nonintervention, of patience and petulance, of futile conferences and abortive armed invasion..."

Wilson finally signed withdrawal orders in late January, 1917. By February 5, the last American soldier had recrossed the border at Columbus, and the Punitive Expedition went into the history books as little more than a dress rehearsal for U.S. participation in the First World War.

*  *  * 

In the above article, John is objective and historically accurate, but only thinly veils his studied opinion as to the inanity, futility, arrogance and decadence of the "exhibition," in which his father, then a young soldier, could have become yet another American casualty in a largely forgotten "dress rehearsal... for the First World War." 

The George M. Cohan song is a curious, tasteless mixture of popular entertainment and war fervor that is not excusable even in 1916. This same fervor continued through World War I until the reality of violent death in the trenches of Europe finally set in.

And yet, how much progress can be seen in 2001 at an Atomic Museum in New Mexico, where the history of the development and wartime use of the atomic bomb is graphically and proudly displayed (including the castings of Fat Man and Little Boy) along with popular culture icons such as James Bond, Marilyn Monroe and Elvis Presley. The museum even has a shop where T-shirts picturing the atomic bomb explosion can be purchased, as well as various toys such as an Atom Ball. 

Mother

Perhaps it is not entirely fair to describe Grace Myers as "fragile," but her two younger daughters especially have few memories of her not affected by her illness, the cancer that would end her life in March of 1953, when she was only 47 years old. Certainly in her youth she was vibrant and beautiful, a genuine, fun-loving "flapper girl" of the 1920's. She bobbed her hair, wore the hats and baggy dresses that were fashionable, smoked, and whenever possible during prohibition, sipped alcoholic beverages. In her family photograph reproduced in this book, she clearly stands out, the only one wearing a stylish hat and a bright smile.

She is remembered, in the early 1950's, singing and dancing around the house; watching Arthur Godfrey, Milton Berle and I Remember Mama on television; reading a book titled The Prince of  Foxes; giving the neighborhood boys a piece of her mind after they frightened JoAnn on the street one evening; crocheting Mary and Martha little squirrels to wear on the shoulders of their pea  coats; throwing out items from the kitchen cupboards in preparation for yet another move; sitting in bed in a pretty bed-jacket working on her nails; looking depressed on her last Christmas morning with her family; requesting her youngest daughter, Martha, pray for her on bended knees against the side of her bed (Our Fathers and Hail Marys); finally, in agony during the final stages of her illness, barely conscious while receiving the sacrament of extreme unction from a Catholic priest. Also at this time she was finally baptized into the Catholic religion as no relations with her husband had been possible for two years. She was removed from her home, the last rented apartment on Sulgrave Avenue, Mount Washington, Baltimore, shortly before she died at Walter Reed Army Medical Hospital in Silver Spring, Maryland. "Don't bury me in Baltimore," she told Raymond, "or I'll come back and haunt you!" She was buried, after a Protestant funeral, in Sayre,  Pennsylvania, where she had been born.

Grace Frederick Tate was born on October 7, 1906 and was the ninth child born to her mother, Myrtle M. Blend Tate. Another child born after Grace, named Madeline, had only lived for six  months. Grace had seven sisters and one brother, John. Her father was Samuel Robert Tate, born in Belfast, Ireland on March 1, 1866. He supported his large family as a fireman. Myrtle was born on September 25, 1870. Her father, Henry Blend, born on February 22, 1843, was a Civil War, Union Army survivor. It was through Myrtle's lineage that Mary, Grace's middle daughter, traced the family genealogy back to Elkanah Tingley, who served in the Revolutionary War, according to Mary's researches "...in Captain Daniel Brown's Company and Colonel Benjamin Simond's Regiment, on alarm at Berkshire October 20, 1780."

Strangely, the delicate, freedom-loving Grace, who was quite the contrast of Raymond, descended from a solid, military family that could be traced all the way back to the Revolutionary War and beyond, as Mary also traced the family history to England, with a coat of arms (of course) and a castle in ruins.

While it might be supposed that son-in-law Raymond would benefit from his contact with this large, fairly close-knit family, that it might somehow provide the kind of experience he did not have as a child, this was not to be: his military career denied him any chance of developing close rapport with Grace's family, as it also eventually caused Grace's separation, a tragedy of loneliness and isolation for her. Though an avowed homemaker, a permanent home for Grace could only be a dream, and she came to realize there would be no change even after the war, after Raymond retired. Even if he remained in the same vicinity, as he did in Baltimore for many years, he was compelled to move from house to house each year. Grace would agree with Major General Shedd in his letter that "...families were disrupted... and the lives of individuals subjected to difficult adjustments," but would not agree that "...these personal obstacles were overcome with a minimum effect on the overall pattern of our American way of life." However, it must be said that American families during World War II were far better-off than their counterparts in, for example, Europe, China and Russia. It is estimated that 50 million people were killed in World War II, and as earlier noted, that 160 million people were wasted in wars and genocidal massacres in the twentieth century.  Might those like Grace be an unknown factor in these estimates, those who were less obvious victims, but victims nonetheless? And what about the children of those victims? In what endless, unspeakable ways have their lives been likewise negatively affected? 

In the photograph of Grace as a small child, her brother John stands to her right. He has a deformed leg and supports himself with a crutch. The deformity was the result of an accident when John was four years old. He fell from a porch railing and severely injured his knee, and as a result his leg never grew properly. This would be remedied nowadays with modern orthopedics, but in John's day and circumstances he was to remain crippled. John is seen again, wearing a vest and standing at upper left in the family photograph. He was said to walk faster with his crutch than most people with perfect legs. He eventually married, worked as an accountant and raised a family. In the same family photograph, Grace's mother, Myrtle, at center and standing behind her husband Sam, is obviously proud of her large family of children, grandchildren and in-laws. Grace's sister Lena is standing in the back row on the right, next to her daughter Wilma. Wilma is seen again in the picture with Mary and Martha during the time of Grace's funeral in Sayre, Pennsylvania. The boy on the left is her son Russell. Russell was to experience tragedy as an adult. He and his wife, who had two children, had signed a lease for a new apartment. While they were out driving, his wife insisted that they stop by the apartment briefly so that she could check the colors for drapes she wanted to purchase. Russell and the children remained waiting in the car while his wife ran quickly into the apartment. But it so happened there was a robbery in progress inside the apartment, and Russell's wife was stabbed to death. He did not recover for years, and Wilma raised the two children. Eventually, however, Russell re-married.

In 1955 the Colonel married Helen Seery of Baltimore. She had been a widow for ten years and had two grown sons, Richard and Paul, then ages nineteen and seventeen. For a brief time the two sons remained in Helen's home, together with Mary and Martha, but not surprisingly in view of their ages, were soon out of the nest, as the house on Frederick Avenue, Irvington, was rented and then sold, and Raymond and Helen, with Mary and Martha and joined by son John, traveled across the country by car to reside in Los Angeles and Pasadena, California. Eventually Richard became a merchant and Paul an engineer for NASA.

Approximately a year and a half later, the girls were pulled from school during autumn for another cross-country trip to Miami, Florida, while John chose to remain in California.  From that point  on, Raymond rented various houses in Miami and made long summer visits to Baltimore and New York City.

It was during these golden years in his sixties that Raymond, secure and with ample opportunity to explore and experience that pole of freedom, might have undertaken at last the quest, might have attempted to extract higher purpose and meaning from mundane existence, might have taken a single, modest step in a new, evolutionary direction. For Grace, it had not been possible at all to develop her talents and her interest in religion and spirituality. There were evenings when the Colonel and Helen gathered with friends and engaged in conversations about physics and Einstein's theories, about time and space, stars, planets and creation. Raymond might have explored higher mathematics and discovered God's existence in geometry; the geometric patterns of all life. But the critical question is: could his exhausted generation - those who had borne the horrible burdens of World War I and II - undertake the quest? Or was this to be the urgent mission of the next generation, especially those who would come of age in the 1960's?

Raymond died suddenly of heart failure on September 7, 1968, in Baltimore while packing for another car trip. He was buried at Arlington National Cemetery (near the grave of William Howard Taft) after an elaborate military funeral that likely used the same horses and caisson that carried the assassinated President Kennedy to his grave in 1963. His tombstone reads: Raymond H Myers, Ohio, Col, US Army, World War I & II, July 7, 1894, September 7, 1968.

*  *  *

JoAnn would later recall how Grace leaned heavily on her at times, pouring out her troubles, even when JoAnn was only a child of twelve. Naturally JoAnn frequently had the responsibility of looking after her two younger sisters, and they always looked up to her, a popular all-American teenager who often took them to movies and to a soda fountain afterwards for cherry cokes and  french fries. Some of the movies were highly artistic, such as Hamlet, The Red Shoes, Tales of Hoffman, and Wuthering Heights. These films, especially Hamlet, had a profound affect on Martha, who later became a playwright. Then there were the operatic Mario Lanza films. At Eastern High School in Baltimore, JoAnn took a part in the play Our Hearts Were Young and Gay, by Cornelia Otis Skinner, and Grace took the girls to see it one pleasant evening, when all troubles were forgotten for a few hours. Certainly the childhood of Mary and Martha would have been far more deprived without JoAnn. JoAnn was always very good with animals and had a wonderful pet during this time, a large black-and-white tomcat named Peter. Peter was a family favorite for years, although JoAnn unfortunately developed a serious allergy to cat fur.

Raymond boarded the girls out once again not long after the death of their mother, but the experience this time was enriching. For almost two years they lived in the home of Mrs. Clara Ewart and her husband on Old Harford Road in Baltimore, which was then in the country. Mrs. Ewart loved children and was a good teacher. Her youngest son, Michael, had been blinded by oxygen as a premature infant, and Mrs. Ewart eventually took in two other blind children, Maggie, who was no more than three, and "Tweety Bird," age five, also profoundly deaf. There were several children from broken or abusive homes as well.

JoAnn, who had some doubts about Mr. Ewart, an ex-navy man who worked as a security guard (his bear hugs were well-intentioned, however), urged her father to bring the girls back home, and they returned to live with the retired Colonel on Newington Avenue, in Baltimore City, who was hard-pressed to be both mother and father before he married Helen Seery. He did love to cook, however, and cooked many meals of hamburger and corn on the cob, Boston baked beans with bacon and fresh-baked cornbread or biscuits, and his specialty, a delicious, unique fried chicken that had been marinated overnight in milk and garlic. "The secret of cooking chicken is to get rid of the taste of the chicken," he would say.

*  *  *

Raymond's son, John, died in October 1994, of complications from a surgery to remove a cancerous kidney. In the months before he died, he was happily retired with his wife Elaine in Royal, Arkansas and found the time to design two books of plays written by Martha: A Maya Trilogy and The Wise Gardener. Only days before he died he phoned Martha and sounded well, but said he was having "plumbing problems." Some of his last words to her were: "A poet was born in Muskogee, Oklahoma in 1942." This was a high compliment coming from a member of the pragmatic, service-burdened Myers family.

JoAnn lives with her husband Lyle C. Hartman (who was an air force pilot, a civilian air traffic controller and airport operations manager) in Waterford, Virginia, and has three grown children: David, Diane and Christine. Diane is married to a navy officer, Michael Adams. JoAnn earned a Master's Degree in Special Education, was a remedial reading specialist and is presently an educational consultant. 

Mary has four daughters: Sue Ellen, Maurya, Colleen and Grace. Maurya and Colleen both served in the armed forces. Mary worked in physician's offices while raising her children, is married to Joseph Kleiss, and is presently writing a column for a Port Charlotte, Florida newspaper. She is also developing - with Maurya's help - a website on Florida gardening.

Martha is divorced from David L. Keltz, an actor, also a Vietnam veteran who became a participant in the "Vietnam Veterans Against the War" protest in the 1970's.

*  *  *

And so to the quest....

The Quest

The author attended a government-funded junior college from 1964 to1966 and the education largely involved rote memorization for the purpose of shading-in the correct square on multiple-choice examinations, or an additional square that read "all of the above" or "none of the above." The students were not from privileged families or circumstances or they probably would have been attending a "name" college. Still, they could at least earn their two-year degrees provided their capacity to learn by rote was adequate. Would they be required to use more than a fraction of their intellects for employment? The educators probably thought not. At that time the students tended to be conformists and they dressed conservatively. Three years later the author returned to visit the junior college, and something had happened to the students. They were now "hippies" and "flower children," with long skirts, tasseled vests, sandals, headbands and beads. Later, these students and many others aggressively protested the Vietnam War with such anti-draft chants as "Hell no, we won't go!" and "One, two, three, four, we don't want your f-----g war!" while barely concealing the use of "hash" or marijuana and LSD (Lysergic acid diethylamide). These young people were a highly visible and significant part of what became known in America as the "sixties generation." Of course it would be a classic error to suppose that all of this generation were hippies. The greater number were probably watching from the wings in bewilderment and had the common sense to refuse drugs, drink alcohol in moderation, nourish the body, shun wanton promiscuity and avoid excessive vulgarity in speech. 

But looking again at the positive side, it was not only in America that the offspring of the war generation, the sixties generation, came into life with new spiritual powers. No less spiritual power emerged from the young of every nation. However, the author's experience has been entirely American and hence the focus, with no bias intended.

The sixties generation especially - and many who came before - had the strength of purpose and morality to protest and stop the war with Vietnam, initiate and support the civil rights movement, establish conscious communities, demonstrate against nuclear weapons and energy, oppose vivisection, work for the relief of the urban poor, and support many international human rights  movements. They had the opportunity to take significant steps for personal enlightenment; to achieve through inner work (that is, without the authority of priest or guru) new heights in spiritual experience, understanding and transformation. It is entirely credible to anyone with an ounce of spiritual wisdom that twentieth-century war (and other) sacrifices and deaths have heightened moral and spiritual consciousness and subsequent achievement, but the failures far outweigh the accomplishments. It is the purpose of this section to understand the many reasons for these failures through the sympathetic remembrance and portrayal of certain individuals known to the author. The past tense seems appropriate because these individuals are lost in the experience of the present, although not lost in the eternal now. It does not really matter whether they were well-known or known all too briefly. What matters is how one individual can affect or influence another, whether in ten seconds or ten years. Every deed, every good, every omission or wrong begins with an individual, and the following American lives are revealed so as to cast light on the dark areas left by the failure to undertake the quest. The quest has been partly defined as "deeds of true freedom" and "higher forms of individual attainment in the work of the redemption of humanity and Earth from past conditions of darkness, conflict and war." Along the way this definition will be clarified through the American lives remembered. 

Unlike the first section, some names have been changed. However, in all other respects the personalities and circumstances - as with the Myers family - are as real and true to life as careful narration will allow. 

The opening paragraphs of this section reveal three common problems still prevalent today: wrong education, the belief that some are more important or of more value than others, and the corruption of the quest.

There was a charming youth at the junior college who was studying to be a teacher, but he was intellectually insecure and tried to compensate by constantly repeating the phrase "so to speak." He probably would not have qualified for Harvard or Yale, but if he discovered at some point in his life that intellectual superiority was not as important as the presence of caring, spiritual being, and so imparted this with conscious awareness to his students, then he attained the quest, for he would have evolved from mere intellectual facileness to higher consciousness. After all, intellects are frequently at war with other intellects with the goal of appearing cleverer than the other. How many professors at the junior college never extended themselves beyond their Intelligence quotient and so are lost to memory, whereas the youth is remembered for his great potential.

A friend from this time was, by contrast, a brilliant intellectual, though unable, or more likely unwilling, to communicate clearly. He may have dropped out of one of the name colleges, with the junior college his second chance, but of course was never clear about this, so it cannot be stated without a doubt. He had a habit of mumbling incoherently and frequently ridiculed, in an oddly affable way, any so-called notion of sudden intuitive knowing (which he referred to sarcastically as "the great white light") as opposed to logical, analytical thinking. This friend's name was Stephen and he eventually became the subject of the drama The Wise Gardener, originally an early study in contrast and conflict (Studio Editions). Stephen was gifted in at least three areas: music, mathematics and foreign languages. He saw music as purely mathematical and opposed and denied any emotional or feeling experience in musical composition. He took up an independent study of the ancient Greek language and mastered this to the extent of expressing the language almost in song. He was so opposed to any belief in God or a higher life beyond intellectual understanding, it is difficult to imagine that he could ever have stepped onto the path of the quest or had any enlightening encounter with a great white light. Had his intellect succeeded in leading him to the only possible open door, he may never have stepped through it; he may have continued to deny it even in the mature years of his life. 

For almost two years all contact with Stephen was lost, but he had heard from friends about the success of the drama then titled The Genius - about himself - and came by to visit the author one evening, somehow managing to express the fact that he was quite touched by it. He was then either married or about to marry and, tragically, planned to leave the country for Canada to escape being drafted into the Vietnam War. He was dressed in his usual ill-fitting dark jacket over a white shirt, but was wearing heavy, dull, laced boots, symbolic of both his grounding and his escape plan.

When the above frustrating relationship was in its full odd blossoming in 1966, Raymond (Father) was consulted for advice. Not without sincerity, the military man summed is up thus: "Stay away from him, he'll drive you crazy."

Especially for the young, who seek meaningful activity aside from the need to earn a living, drama and the theater offer refuge, a way to fully express and experience that essential pole of freedom that counterbalances service.  Drama as an expression of freedom however, like other arts, is a step along the way to something higher and freer than itself, so that at its best, it but points the way, ultimately freeing the participant from that temporal place, the stage, and from the illusions of life.  Therefore it may be said to be a tragedy, with few exceptions, when theater and drama  - especially film - become a profession and yield financial rewards or a living. Since recognition with ensuing financial success and security are the goals of so many artists, these aspiring individuals will not find the following paragraphs agreeable. The simple fact is that the pole of genuine service must never be lost in order for the expression of freedom to be healthy and beneficial, and as noted, service should be consciously developed and sustained. The question arises: what about opera and ballet, that require full forces in order to develop the voice or physical strength? For every opera star there must be a hundred or more with the same potential who are completely unknown. The stars become millionaires while the voices of the unknown are rarely or never heard. The abnormal demands of ballet destroy the joints - every orthopaedic surgeon knows this. It is similar in the increasingly competitive athletic arena. For example, young figure skaters in their teens or twenties suffer stress fractures, potentially weakening bones for life. Worse, they are permitted to perform with stress fractures. 

It would take volumes to fully depict the horrors that have been inflicted upon self and society, by professional film artists especially, in the name of "freedom of expression" - the violence, vulgarity, explicit sexuality and utter depravity; the devastated personal lives of both the aspiring and successful; surging epidemics, such as AIDS, caused by promiscuity; the drug culture; the proliferation and use of weapons and guns, and the eruption of violence among children. 

Those who believe the theater is not dead may want to reconsider after a study of the weekend's offerings: glitzy, inane musicals, endlessly repeated comedies, shallow dramas and at best Shakespeare, who, it must be remembered, dates to the 1600's. The genuine theater experience will most likely be gained from the non-professional efforts of the young, whose aspirations have not been corrupted, especially if the dramas are original. Sadly however, non-professionals all too often imitate the sensational or violent successes of professionals, seeing no other way than the dark, shattered, debris-strewn path they have been misled to believe is drama. 

In regard to young painters and illustrators, the following observation cannot be atypical: the author was walking through a museum and happened upon a room featuring a "modern" artist. The exhibit involved large framed drawings, black on white paper - rather, black smears on white paper - one of which featured only the thumbprint of the "artist" in a lower corner. The name of the "artist" has mercifully been forgotten. Far worse than the exhibit however was the presence of several young girls who were students. They had probably been sent on an assignment by their teacher and were diligently studying the smears and taking notes. Perhaps they were psychiatry or criminology students....

Of perhaps a hundred individuals known to the author who were active in theater, not one succeeded, through an original contribution, in elevating drama to more than a vehicle for emotional disclosure and catharsis. This was valid in the past but is no longer enough. Today and increasingly in the future there must be an epiphany revealed through the interaction of the characters with divine or spiritual beings, an epiphany that elevates the self beyond all conflict and onto the path of the quest for spiritual development and revelation. If theater does not evolve to this it can only endlessly repeat what has been achieved in the past, and worse, degenerate. Endless repetition and degeneration characterize much contemporary artistic expression.

A playwriting workshop briefly attended as late as 1998 allowed the participants to read portions of their writing for comments from the others. A middle-aged woman wrote of the loss of love  using the image of lips fading away on the waves of the ocean; a young man wrote of a mother who was full of hatred and emotionally crippled her children; an older man with a contemptuous attitude slapped his listeners with depictions of violence, ugliness and emptiness using coarse, staccato phrases. The director of the workshop seemed to encourage such expression. According to him, this was drama. 

A great spiritual forerunner of today and far into the future was Rudolf Steiner (1861-1925, see Anthroposophy on the internet). One of his accomplishments was to point to the new direction for drama (see his four Mystery Dramas) by bringing spiritual beings onto the stage to interact with the characters, guiding and helping them towards their epiphanies. While the dramas, translated from German for English-speaking participants, are appropriate in anthroposophical communities and for knowledgeable audiences, they do not succeed on the contemporary American stage. Some years ago, a young group traveled to various cities in the United States with a beautiful Mystery Drama production, but they made the mistake of an extremely long, perhaps nine-hour, running-time and received bad reviews largely, but not entirely, on this account. They too were in the past, with a quite literal and inappropriate duplication instead of a modified version - or new mystery drama - suitable for information-saturated, over-stimulated American audiences. More will be said later about anthroposophical failures. 

One actor very well-known to the author is David Keltz, who married Martha Myers in December of 1968. The two worked together in theater for ten years, David as the principal actor in a series of original plays by his wife, including The Fountain (Emmenberger); Count Cagliostro (Cagliostro); The White Stone (Seer of the Highlands); Eclipse; The Journey, A Play About George Gurdjieff; and The Grotto, A Play About Francis of Assisi. David fully supported Martha's work - while still performing in many other productions - which was gradually becoming more intensely esoteric, until about 1979-1981, when over a difficult two-year period the two separated and David stepped onto his own path. His great goal was to earn a living as an actor and he was not prepared to endure the sacrifices necessary for an increasingly spiritual or esoteric theater, for a life and a drama centered in Christ. David went on to achieve success, especially in various one-man performances, including portrayals of D.H. Lawrence, and most notably, Edgar Allan Poe. It was David's influence, however, that prevented Martha from being too strongly affected by Rudolf Steiner, whose powerful spiritual teaching can be devastating for an artist. After directing performances of The Grotto and The Eve of Freedom, greatly influenced by anthroposophy and within anthroposophical community, Martha pulled away from this positive but overbearing experience and for many years focused on re-writing most of the earlier works in which David had performed (with the exception of The Journey, in which David portrayed Peter Ouspensky - this was not re-written). David and Martha remained friends and did not divorce until August of 1988. David balanced the freedom of his artistic life with a life of service in security, sometimes going out of balance by working full-time at night and cutting his sleep down to two or three hours per day.

In addition to acting, David is keenly interested in hypnosis, hynotherapy, psychometry, crime and crime detection through psychometry, and the occult arts. 

A friend who had been a thorough-going hippie in the 1960's was Peggy Werner. By 1990 Peggy had long ago and reluctantly given up her free life as a flower-child and was working as a research associate in a large university hospital. Originally she was a research assistant, but succeeded in having her title changed to associate, with credit on various published articles for her contributions. She worked for a renowned orthopaedic surgeon whom she greatly admired. Clearly, she also emulated him; she wanted to be a surgeon, but could not realistically undertake the education, and instead was working on her Ph.D with a thesis that hostility was bad for the heart. However, her completed thesis had been rejected over and over by a certain professor whom she regarded as an irresponsible alcoholic who should never have been in a position of authority. The consequence was that the Ph.D ever eluded her, though she continued to constantly re-write as recommended, repeatedly re-submitting the thesis. This became yet another of her losing preoccupations over a period of many years. There may have been something to her assessment of the professor because she was a competent writer with a keen intellect and a strong will to succeed. She was a survivor, with a history of cancer, benign recurring tumors and congenital bone disease resulting in a knee prosthesis and aggravated by osteoporosis. Strangely, her appearance by the age of 41 was still youthful and she still wore her hair long, tied in the back, sometimes with a bow. In diet she was careless and she was a heavy smoker. Working in the clinic with the surgeon's patients, she radiated almost angelically, seemed to grow taller and younger and clearly was in her element. She literally thrived on the clinic work.  

She and her ex-husband, Bill, like many hippies, had taken drugs for years, and there were periods of Peggy's past that she could not describe in other than a dream-like way, shrouded in illusion, darkness and probable hallucination influenced by drugs. At some point Peggy and Bill purchased an apartment in a condominium, but then made the mistake of bringing in two small dogs when pets were not allowed, possibly a clause in their contract. The extended battles began. Peggy said that the management began attempts to oust the couple and their dogs, but far more sinister than a mere legal battle, according to Peggy the condominium was in reality a witch's coven. On certain nights, residents would form strange circles on the grounds below the couple's apartment and perform rituals, part of which were black magic ceremonies to oust them. Bill either began collecting guns or added to his existing collection, and at one point, opened the large window, stood on the sill and pointed a gun at the circle below, shouting that he would shoot if it did not break up. 

Eventually Peggy and Bill moved, separated, and filed a lawsuit against the condominium owners that dragged on in court for years, causing her to periodically lose time at work. Bill kept the two dogs.

Though Peggy has been raised Catholic and had attended a Catholic college, she was an agnostic, perhaps an atheist. Conversations about God would only elicit a sympathetic smile and a change of subject. However, Peggy had an odd relationship to Death. She tended to laugh at death and delighted in the kind of research work that took her into the anatomy lab where she would, for example, remove femurs or spines from cadavers. She became a proponent of the Hemlock Society philosophy, believing that death should be completely under the control of the individual who was to die. 

It seemed that all at once everything in Peggy's life slid rapidly downhill. Yet another version of the Ph.D thesis was rejected; she and Bill lost the lawsuit against the condominium owners; she was in a minor car accident that nevertheless broke her spine in three places (she somehow  continued to come to work in a back brace); the surgeon she had been devoted to became involved with his secretary, a beautiful blonde with a little girl's voice who took over the office and removed Peggy from the clinical work on which she had thrived. Eventually, the bossy little secretary convinced the surgeon to give troublesome Peggy two week's notice. He may have  considered this justified because Peggy's file system was a complete mystery to everyone but herself. With no other God to turn to during these crises, Peggy turned to the one she knew well - Death.

For a brief period of time after she left the university, nothing was heard of Peggy. Generally, her last words in response to concerns were, "You'll find out about me" and she distanced herself from her friends. When news was heard, it was tragic. According to newspaper accounts as well as information known to department staff, Peggy had been the victim of a murder/suicide committed by Bill. While visiting his apartment and while eating a Chinese take-out meal, Peggy was shot by Bill through the top of the head. He had apparently come quickly up behind her. After seeing that the two dogs were provided sufficient food and water for several days, Bill turned the gun on himself. The bodies were discovered within three days. Investigators and authorities concluded that Peggy's death had been a homicide and family members received life insurance payments.

Was Peggy's death a homicide? She and Bill clearly knew just how to make the double suicide appear otherwise. This opinion must be offered without knowing all the facts that were available to the authorities, but they may not have known all the facts about Peggy's last days, such as her interest in the Hemlock Society. Oddly, she had borrowed the author's medical library card shortly before she left the department, and some weeks after her death an overdue notice was received for the book, the title eerily remembered as being The Criminal Mind, or something similar. 

Owing to Peggy's popularity there was a large attendance at the Catholic memorial service her mother had arranged. There the author had the opportunity to meet a member of the university  department that had repeatedly denied Peggy her Ph.D, and at some point in the conversation was able to express with grievous feeling the belief that "hostility was bad for the heart." The colleague responded with an expression that revealed shame and remorse. Whereas the potential suicide will often want to elicit such responses in others, the suicide after death and on "the other side" will be full of regret for causing pain yet is unable to reach and comfort those left behind. Such was the case with Peggy after her death. She could not go back to her life so as to rectify her deed, nor could she advance upwards into higher spiritual realms, for she had been unprepared for Death's (and Resurrection's) most important lesson: survival. 

It has been possible to send Peggy prayers and thoughts over the years, and even at times achieve a direct communication for which she has expressed gratitude.

How much potential, how many other opportunities or entire lives of those of the sixties' generation have been wasted or lost? A young actor who suffered permanent brain damage in a motorcycle accident while under the influence of drugs; a gifted theater producer and director who ran from "the mob" to whom he owed money for a failed production; a young homosexual actor who died of AIDS; a professional clown who attempted to kill his wife and then committed suicide; an idealistic hippie of limited abilities who manipulated her way into a position of power and authority in a spiritual organization; several individuals who used the black arts to acquire money or achieve an ambition; a mother and her baby killed instantly in an automobile accident; a "new age" bookshop and grocery store given over entirely to commercialism; a spiritual teacher who began requesting large sums of money for his visits and lectures; young adventurers killed in a homemade airplane. The list could go on and on....

However, the focus will now be on the quest that is attempted, sustained, and despite everything, never lost.

The Holy Grail

Thus far the quest has been defined as new awareness and extraordinary striving emerging out of the expression of the pole of freedom, and this freedom has in addition been simply defined as free time in counterbalance to service or work-life. Unparalleled opportunities to pursue the quest emerged from the losses and sacrifices of the earlier war generations. As a result, letting these opportunities slip by unfulfilled could mean a crucial loss from which ultimate recovery in the future will be very difficult. There is an urgency about the times in which we live that cannot be  repressed through a fast-paced over-stimulated outer life or through immersion in television and computers. What is the quest by higher definition? Unlike medieval or pre-twentieth-century days, there are no longer any secrets about the ultimate aim of the quest. At the risk of seeming superficial the higher meaning of the quest can be found on the internet (but spend only limited time there!) by entering Holy Grail as a search term. Skip the numerous Parzival sites at first, this is medieval and labyrinthian - and surely many are weary of hearing about the opera performances and their stars, not to mention the pompous Richard Wagner - although the answers are hidden in the many Parzival stories.

The simplest query will reveal that the Holy Grail is the Blood of Christ, the Blood of the Messiah. The most cunningly secret of secret societies could not reveal more. The author does not claim any special knowledge or ability - the answer is out there, everywhere, available from sources too numerous to list. 

This cannot be the known human blood, but a new kind of blood. This new blood was created through the Deed of the Death and Resurrection. The quest for the Holy Grail involves the transfiguration of the old into the new blood for the sake of both the individual's and humanity's further earthly and spiritual evolution. How to acquire this new kind of blood? All of the genuine spiritual teachers have repeatedly revealed this, orally and in publications: begin by developing a relationship with the Christ, the Messiah. And it will be essential to repeatedly ask Parzival's question in regard to those who are suffering on account of the bad blood of old, the warring blood: "Uncle [brother, sister] what is it that troubles you?" Christ spoke of the new blood of His Resurrection Body at the Last Supper. Stories for example of the chalice, the vessel, Joseph of Arimathea and King Arthur and his Knights (initiates) all relate to the care and preservation of the grail knowledge, and of the actual physical, sacred, new blood.

While the definition of the Holy Grail is evident, great mysteries surround the peculiarities of the process of the acquisition of the new blood and body, and here answers can only be speculative. It may be that such processes have begun in individuals who are completely unaware of any change in themselves, although they will readily profess their love of God. Perhaps stigmata indicate an accelerated process, something that would be appropriate or possible for very few. Diseases of the blood, such as AIDS, may indicate a purifying process. The process may be advanced in individuals of great spiritual stature who consciously live in both physical and spiritual realms; who have memories of former lives, knowledge of the nature and purpose of their karmic relationships and cosmic awareness.

So the mystery is plainly not what but how, and how could be different for each individual. It is entirely up to the individual, acting out of free will, to begin the process, to be part of the wheat and not the chaff; to be living, fertile seed potential and not seed that falls destroyed by the wayside. 

Having started at the top by defining, however imperfectly, the ultimate aim of the quest, it is now fitting to describe some Americans known to be questers. It is not important to be fully in agreement with their pursuits or the work they are accomplishing in freedom, but it is important to recognize that they have undertaken the quest and are progressing towards higher achievement, a higher existence, although they may not as yet have developed a conscious relationship with the Source of Being, the God within, the Christ, the Messiah. 

As of old, there are different paths on which questers may begin their journeys. Nowadays at least four roads are recognizable: a long, hard road; a short, rocky, extremely dangerous road; a short, easy road that leads to a dead-end or cul-de-sac; a compelling road that seems to be opened directly by God and His Messengers as in a sudden, dramatic spiritual awakening or in a near-death experience. The fourth road may then lead to the long, hard way, but the chances of going wrong seem remote because of the initial, direct intervention of God. 

The short, rocky dangerous road may be drug-induced or one of the many new-age distortions, such as channeling, that can lead followers to disaster. It is possible to start out on this road and survive by turning onto the long, hard path or by the Grace of God. Many young people impatient for results take this path. When this path inspires art or popular music, too-early worldly success can lead the questers to a cul-de-sac for the remainder of their lives or to tragedy. Forces of darkness and evil are always eagerly waiting by the waysides of this road, though often the trekkers, choice pickings, deny there is any such thing as evil.

The short, easy road that leads to a dead-end is that of Christian fundamentalism or rigid adherence to any religious or spiritual beliefs based on the written word. New Testament fundamentalists, for example, believe that nothing has happened of any significance in the earthly and spiritual worlds since about A.D. 100. If 160 million lives were wasted in WWII, well, if all those people had been reading the Bible none of that would have happened.

The long, hard road is usually taken after an intellectual discovery, perhaps prompted by a book, meeting, movie or television program. The quester begins an intensive study that includes involvement with various groups that can last from decades to a lifetime. Many anthroposophists and theosophists have taken this relatively safe road. However, after a few years study, there is a great danger of becoming hopelessly arrogant. Questers should not be arrogant; they should have genuine humility. Arrogance would indicate that the quester has not been touched by God through the heart, and that knowledge remains in the intellect only. 

The last road, that compelled by the spiritual world, is well-known today in, for example, the near-death experience or NDE, because the Source of Being, with countless helpers on countless levels in countless realms, is very active in contemporary life, and significantly and miraculously in the death process. 

A unique quester on the long, hard road and a good friend of the author was Augusta "Polly" Walker. While many outstanding anthroposophists are likewise remembered and would serve as exemplars of this path, Polly had true humility, open-mindedness and tolerance. It goes without saying that the majority of anthroposophists were known to give little more than lip service to these qualities, and to bow in "service to others" in a gesture as empty and mechanical as most genuflection. The anthroposophical communities were experienced as nightmare mirror reflections of these wooden gestures, places where even the humor was forced and stilted. Moreover, there was no room or time allowed for any personal freedom whatsoever, in direct contradiction to Rudolf Steiner's Threefold Social Order, which emerged partly in response to the inhumanity of turn-of-the-century twelve-hour workdays. These sad peculiarities are the long shadows of otherwise great and essential gifts and achievements. The attitude is generally to expect better circumstances in a future life as a result of all the unavoidable karmic suffering instead of working to improve the present intolerable conditions. This is the down-side of the conviction of karma and reincarnation. 

But back to Polly, considered by one authoritative anthroposophist who could "read auras" to be "not that advanced" and hence dismissible. If so, Polly will delight in remaining behind, thank you - far better than being one of those people. She was born in mid-western America around 1914 and lived enough of her adult life in the area to later write the successful novel, Midwest Story. At some point in her youth, irreconcilable differences in a critical relationship drove her to accept a  faraway teaching post in China. From this experience came another successful book, Around A Rusty God. She was driven out of China at the beginning of the Communist Revolution - having stood-up one day to several belligerent soldiers, forcing them into acquiesence - and traveled extensively through Europe, living on the proceeds of book sales. It was probably while in Europe that she came to reject materialism in all forms and resolved on a life of conscious poverty. In exchange she had precious freedom from the drudgery of work-life. It was also likely in Europe that a dramatic and life-changing event occurred for Polly: she met pupils of the controversial Armenian spiritual teacher, George Gurdjieff, and through intense "work on the self," she entered upon the path of the quest, called among Gurdjieffians "the fourth way." Her connection to the Gurdjieff movement strengthened when she returned to the United States to live in New York City. She never ceased speaking with radiant adulation of the moment she stepped from the path of materialism to the way of spiritual discovery and development. 

So intense and long-lasting was her experience in the pole of freedom however, with so little time given to service, that she recognized the signs of what may have been irreversible imbalances and tried to set matters right by involving herself in good causes. She became somewhat inordinately attached to animals and to animal rights. Despite the imbalances and troubles of her later years, which included enough dire poverty to make anyone regret such a resolution, she lived for spiritual life with a courage and devotion that would seem to be the match of any saint. She also believed that the Christ event was unique in all of world history, and that Christ was the Messiah.

Polly was very taken with many of the Eastern gurus and felt that all had something of great value to offer. She studied their publications and made an effort to meet as many in person as she could.  This was part of her natural tolerance and her desire to learn from all possible sources. She also believed that personal meetings with gurus bestowed material and spiritual benefits on the seeker. The author did not always agree with Polly, however, as to the equal merits of all Eastern gurus. Some were surely dubious. Polly could not agree.

It was in the spring of 2000 that an interesting experience occurred. The author had been out of touch with Polly for over ten years and was living in Arizona. One afternoon a modest book, grocery and restaurant business was discovered that was managed by the followers of a beautiful Asian lady, whose pictures and publications were displayed everywhere in the store. However,  while the followers were obviously poor and hard-working, the guru was dressed like a queen, in elegant make-up and wearing expensive, fashionable clothing and solid-gold jewelry laden with  costly gems. A perusal of the lady's teachings on numerous brochures revealed it to be a sort of watered-down Christianity. As well, the guru was a clothing designer and participated with other jet-setters in international fashion shows. The gist of her message was: you too can have this kind of worldly success if you follow me. Sure enough, posted on a message board was an item from a follower that included a photograph of a red sports car. He had followed the guru, put the car on his wish-list and miraculously been led through a series of coincidences to its ownership. Something seemed askance here. Furthermore, the food was bland, with imitation shrimp and chicken pieces as well as peanuts covering far too much rice. What would Polly have thought of this place? This guru? Suddenly she seemed to be strongly present and there came flashes of memories of the many conversations and disputes about gurus, followed by her clear message, "You were right about some gurus." At that moment there was a vivid experience of intuitive knowing that when Polly crossed the threshold at her death, she would bestow great love and  beneficence on all those she had known, and on humanity and Earth, on account of her quest, on account of the life she had led. In memory of this remarkable person, now lost in life, words come to mind similar to those Gurdjieff might have used, "Peace be to thy soul, Polly, honest and ever-loyal friend."

As for the short, rocky, dangerous path, a paragraph will suffice. In the 1970's, in an old house on the corner of an old but elegant street in Baltimore city there lived a group of hippies. One of the residents, who appeared to be in his thirties, was a large man with long unkempt hair. He was totally blind and had abnormal eye sockets. It did not take long to learn the cause of his blindness from the other hippies: under the influence of the drug called "angel dust" he had torn his eyes out because he needed only the inner light or the inner vision; thus he destroyed his sight for outer life. 

Many Christian fundamentalists essentially stop developing and learning, convinced they have attained salvation and hence need have no concern about any further questing. What need is there to quest and search if all the answers are already known? But a process of life can start and then stop and die if no further nourishment is forthcoming, just as a field of healthy wheat can wither and die without  rain or irrigation. So obviously prevalent is this problem among fundamentalists and other skeptics, that books appear from time to time elaborating on the point that miracles are still possible today, and not just during biblical times. Billy Graham, Corrie ten Boom, Mother Teresa and Adrian Rogers are some of the personalities cited as highly credible sources of modern miracle stories. To persist in Bible thumping in light of all these accounts as well as the numerous new, original Christian esoteric teachings that emerged in the twentieth century, is dangerous and detrimental to both one's self and the community. 

A highly original book has appeared out of Judaism titled Beyond The Ashes, Cases of Reincarnation From The Holocaust, by Rabbi Yonassan Gershom, published by the A.R.E. Press in Virginia Beach, Virginia, 1992.

In short, a thorough knowledge of the Old and New Testaments (and/or the Koran or Islam; Hinduism, etc) needs to be combined with study of twentieth-century history especially, including - like it or not - the "new age" movement that emerged through the spirit of the sixties generation, with all of its dismal (even dreadful) and worthy offshoots. The future is more difficult by far than the past, with the present always full of failures.

Sadly, many fundamentalists will remain in the cul-de-sac, rigidly convinced they have all the answers, and cultivating hatred for anything original or progressive. 

A remarkable personality who will always be associated with the final way mentioned above, whom the author had the good fortune to meet, is Dr. George Ritchie.
                       
George G. Ritchie is the author of two books, Return From Tomorrow and My Life After Dying. Return From Tomorrow was first published in 1978 and was in its twenty-fifth printing in 1995  (Baker Book House Company, Fleming H. Revell; written with Elizabeth Sherrill). It describes George Ritchie's experience of dying of influenza when he was a twenty-year-old soldier in an  army hospital in 1943, and his spiritual experiences while out of the body for nine minutes. After a frantic attempt to fly back to Richmond (where he was scheduled to attend medical school) "without an airplane" and "a hundred times faster than any train on earth could take me," he gradually realized he had left the body and hence just as rapidly returned to Camp Barkeley in Texas to undertake a desperate "search for himself." Not long after finding his body and while pondering how he might again take possession of it, he has a meeting with the Son of God, the  Christ, a Being of "unconditional love" who asks him, "What did you do with your life?" The narration goes on to describe his travels by the side of Christ, the return to the body, and a highly unusual medical procedure that brought him back to life - a ward boy suggests to the O.D. that a shot of adrenalin be made directly into the heart muscle, the O.D. accepts the suggestion, and the procedure brings about the dramatic revival and eventual recovery of the young soldier, with the two medical attendants left completely incredulous.

A very important message in this book that is often overlooked is Dr. Ritchie's continuous resolve never to deny that his meeting was indeed with the Son of God, the Christ. "Deny me before man,  and I will deny you before my Father," were the words and the warning of the Son of God, now the Lord of Karma, in the book. Nevertheless, even as late as 1996, when Dr. Ritchie gave a talk in Towson, Maryland to a group of anthroposophists and others, a member of an anthroposophical community in New York traveled all the way down to Towson to meet with Dr. Ritchie after his talk to convey this communication: it was not the Christ he encountered, but the Angel of Christ. He could not have met the Christ. Of course, to assert that the Son of God could not have befriended  and guided a young soldier of no particular "importance" goes against everything that is known of the Son of God from the New Testament. It also tends to negate the process of the Second Coming of Christ that occurred during the twelve years - 1933 to 1945 -  an event that continues on with increasing intensity today. The event of the Second Coming during these years was prophesied by the founder of anthroposophy, Rudolf Steiner, in his four Mystery Dramas, mentioned earlier in this book.

Nowadays the path of the NDE is well-known from countless "new testaments" in a proliferation of astonishing publications. And just as the New Testament offered four points of view of the events leading to the Resurrection, each "new testament" today describes a unique facet of God through direct or intuitive experience, and through many more ways and means than the NDE.  Hopefully, endless intellectual debate on the correctness or incorrectness of individual convictions can be consciously quieted. May the long, sad history of "the Church" at least free humanity from similar, labyrinthian arguments today. Human beings are still imperfect and incomplete; their convictions provide a boat across unfamiliar, sometimes dangerous waters.

An extraordinary American who combines direct spiritual experience with long, difficult endeavor is Dale Pond, who founded an organization called Delta Spectrum Research for the purpose of "exploring the fundamental physics and phenomena of Sympathetic Vibratory Physics" and the Vibration Research Institute and Laboratories for the "application of the principles of Sympathetic Vibratory Physics in new processes and products to bring these as services and benefits to humankind." Dale Pond describes himself very accurately as a "renaissance man" with a background in "chemistry, physics, mechanical engineering, computers, mathematics, acoustics, hydrodynamics, geometry, music and [American] common law." (See Dale Pond's thorough internet pages at www.svpvril.com.) 

Dale Pond's direct predecessor was John Ernst Worrell Keely, a powerful and highly significant individuality who lived from 1827-1898, working most of his life in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Briefly, Sympathetic Vibratory Physics is the operation of machinery by means of the individual's higher vibrating bodies, and the functions of these uniquely built machines depend upon the spiritual and moral advancement of the individual who operates them. This is obviously a science of the distant future, but Dale Pond carries the work today, and it is a vital necessity as a counter-force against modern death-bearing machinery, technology, engineering and science.  This is not to say that these machines cannot function today - and they certainly did for John Keely - only that widespread application would be difficult. Nevertheless, Dale Pond and many other unusual scientists in advance of their time are working hard to develop the new energy science of the future based on sympathetic vibration. In response to questions of the author, Dale Pond provided the following biographical information about himself and how he discovered John Keely and his work, as well as information about Atlin:

"I was born in Washington, DC, in 1950, although my parents had made their home in northern Virginia.

"In 1983 I was living in Colorado Springs, running a landscape business with which I was becoming increasingly unhappy. I had never heard of Keely and knew nothing about vibrations, etc, but had a lifelong interest in science and spirituality. One day I found a government bid catalog in my P.O. box. It was addressed to the box above mine and had been erroneously inserted into mine. I had always been interested in how the government contracted, so I borrowed the catalog overnight. Within it were two bid requests for landscape maintenance at two naval air bases in Oceana and Norfolk, Virginia, near Virginia Beach. My brothers and I traveled to Virginia to estimate these large bids. During this trip I visited the Edgar Cayce Foundation and signed on to become a member. Later that year after the bid opening (I lost big time) I began to question what this strange string of events was all about, as they were not about getting those bids. During the next few months it became clear I "needed" to be in Virginia Beach. Later that winter I had a "freak" auto accident which hurt my back, putting me out of the landscape business. I signed the business over to my brothers in the spring of 1984 and gave my house to my mother. I put the dog in the truck, and my few possessions, and left for Virginia Beach. I did not know a soul there, nor even why I had traveled there. Upon arrival I volunteered in the Cayce library, shelving books.

"Sometime before, a world-renowned researcher, Edgerton Sykes, had passed on and left his valuable collection to the Association For Research and Enlightenment (ARE). Two ARE librarians were in England sorting through the Sykes' collection and shipping books and papers back to the ARE, two or three to an envelope. Sykes had done much research on Keely in the 1960's. Within those envelopes were the materials on Keely that I found, and a Light went on within me as I perused the strange story of this man. I "knew" that this was why I had traveled to Virginia Beach, and why I was working in the library at the ARE. 

"I asked Keely through Dawn [Dawn Stranges, a remarkable conscious medium through whom Dale communicates with John Keely] what my connection with him was, and he said "Let's just say we were good  friends." So I do not know, and I'm sure if it were to serve me well I would have been allowed more accurate knowledge. I don't know what our relationship was, is... Clearly, when I placed the stone on his unmarked grave in November of 1998 (the 100th anniversary of his transition), from the circumstances of that complex event there must be something more than friendship. There is a divine purpose being fulfilled....

"People do not know they have a technical and philosophical choice and this choice is literally between life and death. They have been taught to believe in death for so long they have forgotten the part of life...

"This time period is the Great Awakening of humankind; the period of the Second Coming; the awakening of individuals from their eon-long slumber to the arrival of the Cosmic Christ Consciousness within each of us. It is a personal awakening for the world."In discovering consciousness in Atlin, [see this extraordinary "dynasphere" on the internet sites, address above] I was frustrated one day because there were few instructions on how to proceed with constructing certain of its parts. I was talking to Dawn on the phone, and this was one of the few times she drew a blank. In a flash I remembered the Findhorn story and how they got directions from the devas of plants, soil and tools. 'Ask the dynasphere,' I blurted out to Dawn, 'surely there are enough parts already to have some form of spiritual connection.' Dawn paused and then began describing the beautiful spirit who was coming in to be a great teacher. Then the answers to the questions began coming in... The rest, as they say, is now history."

This is pure speculation, but perhaps there is a connection between such American "wizards" as John Keely, Walter Russell and others and L. Frank Baum's great stories from The Wonderful Wizard of OZ series, stories that have touched and remained in the memory of nearly every American child, and now also include the devotion of children of many other nationalities. Perhaps L. Frank Baum, who lived from 1856-1919, had read the many slanderous newspaper articles that appeared about John Keely, especially in the last two decades of the nineteenth century, in which it was untruthfully written over and over that Keely was fraudulent, a charlatan. The wizard of the OZ books turns out to be a Great Humbug, a trickster, a balloonist and a ventriloquist. Even Emerald City was not originally green, the wizard just made it that way. "I have been making believe," he admits, "I'm a common man. Should I be found out?" But the eternal appeal of the OZ stories, with elements of mysterious truths, remain in some part of the consciousness  - or unconsciousness - of every American especially. What if John Keely had not been slanderized in the press, but had been reported as the genuine, extraordinary scientist he actually was, a scientist who was hundreds, perhaps thousands of years ahead of his time? What then might L. Frank Baum have written in regard to the great wizard and what would it have meant for American questers, many of whom came of age in the sixties? Even if L. Frank Baum had never heard of John Keely, artists and writers are very sensitive to spiritual atmospheres and surroundings and, however unconsciously, are influenced by the thoughts, writings and questings of others, including, alas, inky journalism. Every thought, every action, has its effects, and no one was more aware of this - and apparently still is - than John Keely.

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In conclusion, some quotes on war, work, freedom, and the quest…

War loves to seek its victims in the young.

                              Sophocles

Beautiful that war and all its deeds of carnage, must in time be utterly lost,
That the hands of the sisters Death and Night incessantly softly 
wash again and ever again this soiled world.

                              Walt Whitman

My argument is that War makes rattling good history, but Peace is 
poor reading.

                              Thomas Hardy

The words of his mouth were smoother than butter, but war was in 
his heart.

                              Old Testament, Psalm Iv.21

Hobbes clearly proves that every creature 
Lives in a state of war by nature.

                              Jonathan Swift

All things that are
Made for our general uses are at war, -
Even we among ourselves.

                              John Fletcher

The war killed a lot more people than is commonly thought. 
We estimate the total death toll to be near 100 million. 
However, the number of people who were killed or died as a 
consequence of World War II cannot be determined with any 
absolute degree of accuracy. Traditional estimates range from a 
low of 30 million to a high of 55 million, yet with some merely 
cursory research of available information we readily arrived at a 
figure approaching 80 million.

                              James F. Dunnigan and
                              Albert A. Nofi, in Dirty Little
                              Secrets of World War II

Among the unheralded casualties of the Second World War must be 
numbered the approximately forty pedestrians who were struck by 
automobiles nightly in blacked-out London during the Blitz.

                              Ibid.

From a U.S. Civil Service Commission Memorandum, November 13, 
1962 -

...In the event of an emergency brought about by [a nuclear 
attack] on this Country, the Civil Service Commission will 
operate a registration system for Federal employees in affected 
areas. The procedure for this system is as follows:

If you are prevented from going to your regular place of work 
because of an enemy attack - or if you are prevented from 
reporting to any emergency location - keep this instruction in 
mind - go to the nearest Post Office, ask the Postmaster for a 
Federal employee registration card, fill it out and return it to him. 
He will see that it is forwarded to the office of the Civil Service
Commission which will maintain the registration file for your
area. After the card is received, decision will be made as to 
where and when you should report back for work. There is 
another important reason why you should mail in a registration 
card as soon as you can do so - this card will also enable 
us to keep you on the roster of active employees, and 
enable us to forward your pay.

You should obtain and complete the registration card as soon 
after enemy attack as possible but not until you are relatively 
sure where you will be staying for a few days.

Expiration Date: Indefinite

                              Roger Bruns, from
                              Almost History

Dreams grow holy put in action; work grows fair through starry 
dreaming,
But where each flows on unmingling, both are fruitless and in 
vain.

                              Adelaide Anne Procter

Who first invented work, and bound the free
And holiday-rejoicing spirit down
To that dry drudgery at the desk's dead wood?
Sabbathless Satan!

                              Charles Lamb
                              
I follow up the quest,
Despite of Day and Night and Death and Hell.

                              Alfred Tennyson Tennyson

Where wealth and freedom reign contentment fails,
And honour sinks where commerce long prevails. 

                              Oliver Goldsmith

This my quest, to follow that star,
No matter how hopeless, no matter how far...

                              The Impossible Dream,
                              Man of La Mancha

No war nor battle's sound
Was heard the world around.

                              John Milton,
                              Hymn on Christ's Nativity

For what avail the plough and sail,
Or land or life, if freedom fail?

                              Ralph Waldo Emerson

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