I was in the German Evangelical Reformed Church. It was an offshoot of the Lutheran church. But when I was a kid in Sierra Madre, I had attended the Congregational Church, and their youth group there. It was all nominal. Nothing of it really spoke to me

But the long and the short of it was I think I had some kind of crisis, and I started reading some religious material. Especially I read a book called “Understanding the Old Testament” by Bernhart Anderson. It was my first exposure to Biblical scholarship. Up until then I felt in order to be religious, you had to leave your brain with your hat when you checked in and went into the sanctuary. It just wasn’t rational. I discovered much to my amazement that I had misunderstood what Judeo-Christianity was all about., I began to understand metaphor, I began to understand allegory and to see that you don’t take something literally to get its meaning. To take it literally is to lose it. So that led to I what I would call a religious conversion. It wasn’t, at a tent meeting or something like that. It was just by myself in my living room and  my life was turned around.

At that point—now we have two children  I decided to go to seminary.  I looked around, looking at Claremont and Pomona, and  Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley. Pacific School of Religion was started by essentially the same group of people who started the University of California about two years after they started the seminary. It was closely affiliated with the University of California. In fact, when I went there, Gordon Sproul was the head of the University of California system,  and was on the board of PSR

On to another adventure. I went up there with my young family.  I had  the GI bill, fortunately, with  three years remaining. And that’s what seminary is, it’s three years. So I went there and, you know, did pretty well. I graduated cum laude.  Sarah, our youngest, was born there.  I suppose some of the highlights of that time in my life was my area of interest in pastoral counseling...it was what you might call my major—and part of that was  nine months of clinical training at San Quentin where we started off with the first week as  as "bulls" in khaki. Then I was assigned to what they called the Adjustment Center, which was the prison within the prison. Met some interesting people there.
I suppose the high point or low point—however you want to look at it—was to witness the double execution of  Moya and Baldonado. They had been hired by a gal named  Ma Duncan who had been executed earlier that morning and then they were executed in the gas chamber that afternoon. You could look up the Ma Duncan case and you’ll find all the information. Anyhow I was standing probably four feet from them except there was glass between us.  His brother was standing off my left shoulder. That was a powerful    experience. I’d seen plenty of dead  and dying people before, but this was just cold blooded retribution.   I didn’t feel any safer, I don’t think society was any safer and no one could bring back the mother and baby. 

Well,  I graduated from PSR in ’63. We go to my first church in South Sacramento. And now it so happened that the denomination with which I was affiliated at that time was called the United Church of Christ. They had been a result of the merger of the two churches of my youth, namely the Evangelical Reformed and the Congregational Christian Church. This is not to be confused with The Church of Christ, it’s the United Church of Christ, and for the lack of any better definition it’s the far left  of the theological spectrum. Meaning that we don’t have a high Christology or creed. We’re not evangelicals. We’re very" liberal". We were the first major denomination to ordain gay folks. Perhaps the term progressive would be more accurate, but others would say not.

So we were in south Sacramento for four and a half years. And during that time, I had two men in my church who were full time National Guard employees. One gentleman was a Colonel; the other  a lieutenant colonel. The colonel’s wife committed suicide and I was involved with that for a while.That led to my joining the National Guard as a Chaplain. They gave me my rank as captain back. So I remained with them for fourteen years until I got my good twenty. But the price I paid was that I was always uncomfortable. The Vietnam War was going on. I objected to the war. In fact, we started a draft counseling service at the church up here in Auburn. It was a schizy kind of thing. I was relieved when that service ended.

So I came up to Auburn forty years ago. For  ten and a half years I served as a minister for the local congregational church. 

Well, the pastoral part of it I liked. Just living with people through the good times and the bad. The administrative part of it, dealing with the neurotics in the church and all that stuff, power politics, you know, I didn’t like it at all. After ten and a half years I decided to leave. About that time Joyce and I divorced. It was my decision. Our twins were twenty one and Sarah was seventeen...it was a very painful time. But we  got through it. 

I later married my present wife, Jenny, who I had known for about six years. The word went out in the community that she and I had been having an affair and all that rubbish. It just wasn’t true at all, but you know how that goes.  In October of 1965 I had  obtained my license as a marriage, family and child counselor, and so I went into private practice. I was in fulltime private practice from 1978  to 1995. I and a colleague shared an office. He’s a licensed clinical social worker. For a few years we did the knife and fork circuit, presenting programs, networking and so forth. We built a pretty successful practice. During this time I got back into flying. I started treating a lady whose husband  had his own flight training school here in Auburn. We bought a small airplane and flew it for about ten years, and I got my instrument rating again. You know, it was a pretty full life. Our blended family has worked quite well. 

Joyce a year ago at the end of this month died. She had remarried and that turned into a tragedy. We became sociable again. We could talk to each other warmly. And so I was there at her death with my kids. So that chapter came to a close. So here I am. Ginny and I—she has more children from a prior marriage—her former spouse is deceased. She has four; I have three, thus we have seventeen grandchildren and two great granddaughters. And—oh, I forgot… when I was a pastor here in Auburn I felt I needed some intellectual stimulation again and so I applied to the doctor of ministry program at San Francisco Theological Seminary, which essentially is a Presbyterian seminary in San Anselmo. So I got my doctorate from them after another  two and half years. So, that’s about it. Also for the past twenty-something years, as part of my work I have also worked for the county on a contract basis doing child custody mediation. Who gets the children kind of thing.  I continue to do that part-time these days.
Now I am about three-fourths retired. I’m coming up on my seventy-seventh birthday in relatively good health. And, you know, we’re living a good life. The Gold Country’s a beautiful place to be. We raised our kids here and we have no regrets about that. It’s a great place to fly, too. The Auburn Airport’s a very active little airport. It doesn’t have a published approach or anything like that, but there are a lot of recreational flyers who use it.