I was born on April 2, 1947, in Berkeley, California, and was raised in Seattle, Washington. In 1969 I graduated from Lewis and Clark College in Portland, Oregon, with degrees in Math and Physics.
After graduation I saw my friends settling down, but I thought there had to be more to life than Portland, Oregon. I wasn’t a Hippie, but I wanted to see the country, and a little more of the world, before I settled down. So, one summer weekend in 1969, I left Portland in my 1960 red Volkswagen bug, which was partially converted into a camp car for sleeping, and drove to Los Angeles. I also visited New Mexico for about a month and had an incredible experience with the people there who had taken me in.
While on the way to Los Angeles, I decided to head for Griffith Park and felt unusually happy. I had this premonition thinking,” something good is going to happen tonight.” I was visiting the Planetarium in the Hollywood Hills – very close to the Holy Ground – when I was approached by two ladies, Lisa (Martinez) Take and Barbara Ream. They were telling me something about something … whatever… and invited me to follow them to their “center.” I thought, “Well, all right. These people may be a little weird, but they don’t seem too bad. Let me go and see what they’re doing.”
I followed Lisa and Barbara to their center, located on Virgil Avenue near Wilshire Boulevard. Jon and Sandy Schuhart were in charge of the L.A. Center and the movement was called the Unified Family then. Margie Stahon, Susan Miller (Wayne Miller’s cousin), Gary Jarmin, Ray Barlow (Gary Jarmin’s cousin), Gary Fleisher and Dr. Joseph Sheftick were there, too. There were about ten people in the center at that point. Since I was determined to continue my travels, Jon spent an intense week teaching me the Divine Principle that involved many deep discussions. But after a week, I thought, “Okay, this is good, but I’m planning to travel for a year, and I’ve been out for only a month. I’m out of here guys. Have a nice day.”
Before I left Los Angeles, the members gave me a heartwarming send-off with the addresses of centers in Colorado, Florida, and Washington, D.C. I ended up checking out the center in Colorado Springs, where David Flores was the center director at the time. I spent a couple days with him and left again to continue my travels. I drove to New Orleans and Florida along the southern coast. I couldn’t find the center in Florida but I finally got to the one in Washington, D.C. around mid-summer. Along the way, I found myself explaining to people in both Spanish and English that Jesus didn’t come to die and then realized, “Hmm, I believe in this Divine Principle … I’m explaining it to people.” I still had the address of the center located on Upshur Street in Washington, D.C. and after 7 months of traveling, I arrived in the city in the summer of 1970. I visited the center on Upshur Street. Again, I thought that I’d just spend a week or two there. Well, here I am, 49 years later.