After I graduated from Moravian College in 1949 with a B.A. in History, I attended Moravian Theological Seminary for one year, concentrating on mastering Greek and Hebrew. I was on automatic learning pilot, going through the motions of learning but not enjoying it very much. A side issue that added to my discontent was being assigned a first attempt at teaching. With no prior preparation or warning, a fellow seminarian and I were told we would teach a bible class to fifty junior high students in after-school sessions at a church across town. The expected arrival of our students came to fill me with dread as I anticipated what would happen after they pushed and shoved their way through the narrow door into the room shouting and doing their best to show us they were uncontrollable mischief makers who were tired of teachers talking at them all day. We divided the unruly youthful mob into two groups and spent the next hour attempting to teach our half anything at all. I left each class feeling frustrated and deflated—not recognizing that in this situation we were set up for failure. We continued the charade for a year, and the situation never improved. If that was teaching, I knew it was not my calling. I decided that I needed more intellectual content, so I transferred to Union Theological Seminary in New York City. An incentive for moving to Union was Carolyn’s presence there as she was studying for her master’s degree in Sacred Music at Union’s music school.
I thrived at Union and was especially stimulated by the lectures of Reinhold Niebuhr, Paul Tillich, James Muilenburg, and other leading thinkers. My understanding of the social dimensions of individual actions came into focus as well as the necessity for political and social action to effect meaningful change. Studying issues of social change and having an opportunity to share views with other students was what I needed and relished. My developing outlook played against my background of escaping the horrors of Nazi hatreds as well as reading recent revelations about the inaction of many civilians and religious leaders in the world, including in America, in taking a firm stand and act against the immense injustices of the time. I decided not to return to Moravian College and finished my Bachelor of Divinity degree at Union.
Between my second and final year at Union, Carolyn and I were married and we moved into the married students’ dormitory at the seminary to begin our life together. My new bride and I lived in a small room where we slept on a hide-a-bed, cooked on a two-burner hotplate, and stored our perishables in a small ice chest. This was a new and exciting experience in basic living for both of us and we felt very independent. Every morning I crossed Claremont Avenue to the Seminary refectory to lug a large chunk of ice back for our ice chest. Since I had to carry it on my shoulder, I shivered all through breakfast.
Carolyn had earned a Masters of Sacred Music degree that year and began her career as a church musician at a Presbyterian church in Ridgewood, New Jersey. Her musical talent included a beautiful coloratura voice, and growing up she sang solos in churches. The last of her several voice teachers was my Aunt Julia, an opera star in Prague. When we moved to Yonkers, New York, in 1952, Carolyn and I both joined the Westchester Light Opera Company, an amateur group with high performance standards. I sang in the chorus, and when Mozart’s Magic Flute was proposed, Carolyn, having a trained voice, was chosen to sing the difficult role of Queen of the Night. As it happened, she was nine months pregnant with our son on opening night. Baby Tim remained reluctant to face the world as Carolyn, very much past due at show time, donned her costume and prepared her voice. As I paced, the cast joked that an ambulance should be on call while she sang, but she performed her arias perfectly in a long, very full and flowing blue gown, which hid her quite large figure.
During my senior year at Union I did a great deal of soul searching. I struggled to recognize the life I was rescued for and agonized over defining my choices. I knew the upcoming decisions would guide the rest of my life and probably that of my family. In this period of ongoing confusion and inner turmoil, Union Seminary suggested a psychiatrist who became my counselor, supporter, and eventually friend. I was startled one day when I walked into Dr. Taylor’s office and he told me he had been visited by Mother, but discretion prevented him from going into specific details. I was, of course, quite startled and immediately imagined the confrontation. I saw her starting with something like, “What are you doing with my son? You’re taking him away from me!” I had no direct knowledge of what actually took place in the office, but I knew intuitively, supported by what Dr. Taylor felt he could disclose, that it was not a friendly meeting. I felt Mother was viewing me as the same vulnerable ten-year-old she put on the Kindertransport train to save my life years earlier. She sought to continue a motherly control into my adult life, which, in her view, remained her responsibility. I began to understand that this was a fight for my independence and future well-being, and I needed assistance to win the struggle. When Dr. Taylor and I no longer met for sessions, we corresponded with some regularity, tapering off to briefer holiday greetings once a year that were, nevertheless, meaningful to me and I believe to him. I mourned his passing in 2013 at age ninety-one.
In therapy I struggled to make some decisions. I concluded that in order to serve others I did not necessarily have to become a medical missionary in Africa. I understood that I had been driven earlier by mixed motives, and I gave up my intention to become a doctor even though I had been accepted at Temple University Medical School. I was still confused and floundering as graduation approached without my having any distinct plan for the future. However, I had decided not to enter the Moravian ministry and be responsible for a church as the Moravian Church leaders wanted me to do. But what were the alternatives? I didn’t know. I wanted a course of action where I would be useful and the underlying purpose was meaningful—after all, I kept reminding myself, if I overlooked these objectives, what was the purpose of my life being saved? I concluded, for the time being, I would take a job—any job—and give myself more time to sort things out.
As I continued to mull over my future I found I kept coming back to my escape from the Holocaust horrors that had befallen family, friends, and millions of people I didn’t even know—but not me. I lived while so many of my own relatives whom I loved, parents and their children of my age, perished. Why? What should be my response to the central event of my young life—being spared a terrifying death? I contemplated how to integrate the meaning behind being saved into a purposeful life. The lingering question demanded an answer. At this time my study of social ethics at Union started to become a dominant influence in my thinking. Joining the quest and struggle for social justice gradually evolved as my response to that question that haunted me, and I became committed to activism in different professional guises.
Chapter Nine: Being a Businessman and an Activist, 1952–1963
ON THE FIRST day of my job search I expected to launch into a series of inquiries over a number of days, or a week or so, before I started working and drawing a salary. As it turned out, I was offered a position right away as assistant to the owners of a small company that manufactured lighting fixtures in New York City on East 22nd Street—Neo-Ray Products. I took the job at fifty dollars per week. Inside of two years I doubled my salary, which, of course, gave me a solid sense of accomplishment—so much so that I began to consider the possibility that business was the best fit for me as a vocational choice. However, the Moravian Church ecclesiastical authorities did not share my enthusiasm for a life committed to such pursuits. The church, I was reminded, had invested in my education and it was payback time—either be ordained and go into the ministry or start returning the college and seminary loans. I chose the latter option and remained in business for the next eleven years.
Three years later I moved to a larger manufacturer in the same field, Litecraft Corporation, to take a more lucrative position. The job interview was unsettling to me. The interviewing vice president walked me to a window overlooking the street, pointed to a shiny new bright-red Cadillac convertible parked below and told me it belonged to the company president. “Wouldn’t y
ou love to have a car like that?” he sighed longingly. He appeared almost to drool with envy and desire. The implication of the incident as I saw it was that he was dangling before me the possibility I too might secure such an over-priced toy—if I came to work for the company headed by the Cadillac owner. I mumbled an assenting phrase to answer the vice president’s question while thinking that cars, even new shiny ones like the big boss’s Cadillac, were not what I lusted after.
When I joined Litecraft its administrative offices were on East 36th Street. The location just off Fifth Avenue was an exciting one as it was within walking distance of many places that interested me, so I was disappointed when the company moved its offices to a new expanded manufacturing facility in Passaic, New Jersey. My responsibilities at Litecraft increased rapidly and I was promoted to assistant sales manager and corporate secretary. I began to travel to trade shows but quickly tired of being away from home. I worked every Saturday morning, which did not leave much time to pursue interests outside of the family. And something kept nagging at me. My discontent grew—not only with the hectic schedule required of my job; more importantly, I started feeling a betrayal of my personal pledge to pursue a life, which I was fortunate to have, striving for greater justice.
The growing civil rights movement, the Montgomery Alabama bus boycott, and the rising leadership of Dr. Martin Luther King made me realize I was contributing nothing to the values I supported and held most dear. I reminded myself that I needed to more actively pursue the ideals that defined me. I looked for opportunities, and in 1958, with several like-minded individuals, three of whom became close friends, we formed a Passaic County Chapter of Americans for Democratic Action. ADA was very involved with civil rights and related issues of social justice at both the state and federal levels, and Reinhold Niebuhr, whom I had greatly respected for years, was one of its founders and guiding lights. Within the organization I was elected cochair of our Passaic County Chapter as well as a member of the New Jersey state ADA Board. In 1962 I became state chairman. I was stimulated anew by events that included attending national ADA conventions in Washington, DC, coming into contact with Joe Rauh, Arthur Schlesinger, Hubert Humphrey, and others, and hosting Norman Thomas, the socialist candidate in many past presidential elections, when ADA invited him to be the featured speaker at the annual banquet. The following year I played the same role when Jimmy Roosevelt, the oldest son of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, was the ADA speaker. Yet something was still missing, and it was hard to identify what that was.
Carolyn and I bought a house in 1957 in New Jersey for our expanded family, which by then included two children. We decided upon a Christian upbringing for them, choosing St. John’s Episcopal Church in Passaic, NJ. For me it was like coming home. Early memories of the village church I attended in England while living with Mother at Battle House during wartime flooded back. I felt I belonged there. Richard N. Bolles (later to author the successful book What Color Is Your Parachute?) was the rector of St. John’s and integrated the parish by merging it with a black congregation, the only other Episcopal Church in town. But despite my leadership roles in ADA and participation in the life of St. John’s, the quandary within me persisted—was this what my life was spared for? I couldn’t yet answer in the affirmative. Would continuing to work in the lighting industry, which I recognized took more time as my responsibilities increased, distract me from ever carrying out purposeful goals to ultimately answer my nagging question? Was there more I should do beyond ADA and church activities? I decided I was not doing enough. Approaching my mid-thirties meant that in a few years I would be stuck professionally. Finally, I concluded I must devote myself full time to what I had decided mattered most to me—world peace efforts, working for social justice, and racial harmony.
But then I asked myself, what specifically was I qualified to do? Where would I fit in and how should I move beyond merely stating goals? There were two institutions I decided to examine—colleges and universities, and churches. Both I considered were dedicated in large measure to the pursuit of truth. I knew I could not leave my company immediately to tackle more years of expensive education since I was my family’s sole provider. Without committing to years of study for a PhD degree, I was not qualified for a long-term college or university teaching post. As I became more active at St. John’s, I felt more a part of the Episcopal Church and interpreted this as a call to enter the ministry, for which I did have the requisite educational preparation.
Although I did not need additional seminary training, the Bishop of Newark felt I needed exposure to the “Episcopal ethos,” so I enrolled as a special student for a year’s study at General Theological Seminary in New York City. I lived at the seminary from Monday morning through Friday noon. My family managed without me during the week, and Carolyn obtained a position as organist and choir director at a Lutheran Church in Irvington, New Jersey. During this time we budgeted carefully in order to live off her salary and our savings.
At General Theological Seminary that year of 1963–64 I descended to the nadir of my adult life. I missed the family terribly. I made few friends and found the seminary inhospitable, focused on church trivia, and devoid of the social conscience I had expected. The high church atmosphere was unappealing, particularly chanting in the chapel, which was alien to my experiences thus far. I felt like the proverbial fish out of water but continued to push forward. While at General I did take the preliminary exam to be admitted as a graduate student and was able to complete the course work toward a master’s degree although I did not finish my thesis for five years. My adviser would not approve any of the socially oriented subjects I proposed as research topics that reflected my, but not his, focus. I doggedly waited until he took a sabbatical leave, and was then assigned an interim adviser who was not so inflexible, and ultimately my thesis, Taxation of Church Property, was accepted. In it I argued that religious institutions should have their property taxed in order to not to be dependent on the state and thus, hopefully, regain their moral voice. I earned my master’s degree in 1969. When my year of residency at General ended, I was extremely relieved. Now I was able to enter the next phase of my life’s purpose full time—the ministry as a parish priest.
Chapter Ten: Being a Parish Priest and an Activist, 1964–1969
IN JUNE OF 1964 my life took another turn when I began my career as a priest in the Episcopal Church. I felt ready to take on the challenges I knew would come. My first assignment as an Episcopal priest was at two small mission churches in New Jersey—Grace Episcopal Chapel in East Rutherford and St. Stephen’s in the Delawanna section of Clifton. The combined average attendance at these churches was only about fifty people on a typical Sunday, which meant my parish duties were light and I had time to immerse myself in the struggle for racial equality and social justice raging in the country at that time. Because I believed Christian ethics demanded that churches support the civil rights movement, I joined with others to form a Newark Chapter of the Episcopal Society for Racial and Cultural Unity. The focus of ESCRU was primarily to improve race relations within the church, and our activities encompassed and addressed the current national debate. I volunteered to serve as one of the cochairs and was subsequently elected to the National Board of the organization. At that point I was convinced that entering the ministry was the right approach to ultimately determine an answer to the question that pursued and haunted me: for what purpose was I spared?
By mid-1960 the United States was in turmoil. The civil rights struggle, particularly in the South, was reaching a crescendo. In 1963 I participated in the March on Washington and, with others, was inspired by hearing Martin Luther King Jr.’s I Have a Dream speech. Things were moving quickly and the experiences were electrifying. In the nation’s capital I looked across that vast sea of black and white faces and, in my idealism, felt that nothing could stop us now from pronouncing the end of racial bias and the savage actions that it engendered. But before long, more violence erupted with the use of attack dogs in Bi
rmingham, Alabama, the imprisonment of Dr. King, the murder of civil rights activists Medgar Evers and Viola Liuzzo, and the Ku Klux Klan killings of three young men working to register African Americans to vote in Mississippi in 1964—James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner.
The Newark Chapter of ESCRU concentrated on racial issues facing local churches and communities, the State of New Jersey, and the nation as a whole. The Sunday morning worship hour had been called the most segregated hour in America. We were encouraged that dialogue across racial lines, though it was not considered a significant step forward by many, was breaking new ground; and we hoped the communication would develop fresh understanding and trust. New relationships between some black and white people proved essential when racial unrest took off in New Jersey cities in 1967.
By the time the Newark riots began that year, protests were exploding in many American cities and increasingly turned violent. When the manhandling of demonstrators in Newark increased, ESCRU decided to station clergy, wearing our clerical collars, in police stations to try to minimize the brutality we heard was occurring there. I was among those dropped off at a police precinct in Newark where I was immediately confronted by a suspicious officer with, “What do you want here?”
My Train to Freedom Page 9