FOOD FOR ALL ERA 3: The Preparation

You may not believe this. It took us almost a full year from incorporating FOOD FOR ALL, Inc. on July 1, 1985 until May 7, 1986 to get the very first test of our idea in an actual supermarket. Linda was still working full-time at the University of Redlands. I was working part-time as an adjunct faculty member at the same institution. We had a volunteer board of five committed individuals. We had no money. We had no displays. We had no printed promotional materials. We had no clue how we were going to sell this idea to the grocers. We had no organization beyond this. But we had "an idea whose time had come." And we had friends. I still do not understand what had captivated the imagination of Paul Gerrard, an independent grocery store owner, who was our champion from the very beginning. I discovered that Paul sat in his upstairs office at his store and I could go in the store, ask to see him at any time, go up the stairs to his office and pick his brain on what our next steps should be. In November of 1985 he invited me to go with him to a board meeting of the Southern California Grocers Association to make a presentation of our idea. I was a little at a loss as to what I would say, but Paul encouraged me with "just tell them your idea. Don't worry. You'll do fine."

The meeting was a dinner meeting, so everyone had dined and wined sufficiently that they were apparently in a receptive mood. Steve Koff, the paid executive of the Association, ran through a list of issues confronting them as small businessmen (most were, like Paul, independent grocers with one to five stores--the largest member at the time was Hughes Markets, an LA chain with about 50 supermarkets). Following the business session Steve introduced Paul to introduce me. I wasn't sure how to break the ice with this mostly male, almost all conservative group. So I decided to lighten the atmosphere and at the same time let them know a little of my orientation.

"My dad was in the Civilian Conservation Corps during the depression and was a lifelong Roosevelt New Deal Democrat. I've never really spent much time with or got to know any Republicans. Now I am getting a little worried. I'm actually beginning to like some of them."

That did it! I spent just a few minutes telling them the idea for placing a display at every one of the checkout stands in their stores, the most expensive, coveted piece of supermarket real estate they had. And to have them donate their employees' time to managing and accounting for donations their customers would be making. Of course there was not an immediate line asking to sign up to be the first. But I did receive their endorsement, in the form of a letter from their President, encouraging their members to consider participating in the FOOD FOR ALL program when it came to their area.

Fortunately, present at the meeting were a few receptive grocers who heard something that would later on assist us greatly. Bob Inadomi, President of JonSons Markets, based in East LA, a small group of six markets, mostly serving the Hispanic market, was a friend of Milo Lacy and Paul Gerrard. Bob had just taken over as head of his family company following his father's untimely death. What won Bob over was when he discovered that I was a graduate of Drake University. His father was a graduate and a Trustee of Drake. Bill Christy, then CEO of Certified Grocers of California, a large wholesaler serving the independent grocers, will play a major role in our future development of FOOD FOR ALL. Both of them are to become members of our Board of Directors, as well as good friends.

But we still had some major hurdles in front of us. We knew that customer support would be the key to sustaining the program, once we convinced the grocers to take on the issue of hunger with a year-round program like FOOD FOR ALL. You would think this would be a no-brainer, since the food industry's business is "feeding" people. But most grocers' charitable giving was very short-sighted and limited to brief promotions. So, we had a vision that had to be sold, and created strategies that would help us sell it. We enlisted a group of about ten people with some experience with anti-hunger efforts and international development projects: Food banking, religious agencies, food policy expertise, foundation executives, our ICA colleagues, and grassroots activists. We asked this group to meet with us in all-day sessions about 6 times during our first year. Their primary task was to design the formula for giving grants to local and international efforts to end hunger as an intractable issue.

At the same time we used our ICA experience with methods of participation to conduct about seven "Hunger Forums" in the counties of Southern California. These served as formal ways to bring together those concerned about hunger and both get their input on how to apply money grants to the issues in their area and to begin a grassroots volunteer structure of support. Out of these forums will come the volunteer Local Grants Advisory Boards (LGAB) that would review applications, conduct site visits, and make recommendations for FOOD FOR ALL local grants. So before we had our first display in a supermarket, our Board had enough input to determine that 75 per cent of FOOD FOR ALL donations would go to support local anti-hunger efforts and 25 percent to long-term international development projects run by non-governmental agencies. And, more importantly, we had the structures and mechanisms designed to make it work.

During the year of preparation for giving away money we did not yet have, largely due to Linda, who organized the facilitated events and met with countless community leaders, and Georgianna McBurney, who headed up the Funds Distribution Advisory Board (FDAB), we also implemented a couple of other support strategies and structures. We knew we had to have some influential food industry folk on our side, so we formed the Food Industry Advisory Board. Asking these busy owners and executives to give us "advice" proved to be the way to find out who would stand up and say "count me in" when we asked. It also amazed us just how much respect and influence was carried by one individual. Paul Gerrard was on the boards of the Southern California Grocers Association, the California Grocers Association, and Certified Grocers, and was known and respected by virtually everyone we needed to reach.

The other support structure came about as we shared our idea and vision for a "hunger-free society." This will evolve into our Public Relations Advisory Board, made up of marketing, advertising, public relations, and media persons, many of them connected to the food industry. Initially it took the form of the Redlands Steering Committee and the plan for a "pilot project" to test the FOOD FOR ALL idea. Doug Moore, University of Redlands President, Jan Englebretson, Editor of the Redlands Daily Facts, Carol Beswick, then Mayor of Redlands, our own Board member Rich Blakley, pastor of Redlands United Church of Christ, were key to gaining the support of community leaders and forming this group, which included politicians and service club leaders.

Sometime during early 1986 I was assigned the task of designing the display rack and cards that would carry the FOOD FOR ALL message at supermarket check stands, and to work out the logistics of how donations would get into the cash register and from there to the store's accounting department and from there to the FOOD FOR ALL account. Again, we relied on friends and their friends for help. Albert Landeros, a local artist, donated the design for the first header cards to adorn the rack which I had come up with after many visits to supermarkets, camera and ruler in hand. Finally our first version, a clunky, heavy, metal frame that was adjustable up and down and had removable hooks, was approved by our board for the initial test.

The critical pieces were the FOOD FOR ALL donation cards. Many sessions with mock designs took many hours of deliberation, until finally, a simple 4 x 6 card with FOOD FOR ALL on the front in red, blue, and green colors, in fifty-cent, one-dollar, and five-dollar amounts, the story of FOOD FOR ALL and "where your donation goes" on the back.

We were now ready -- sort of. We had a sample display to show grocers, we had an organization -- sort of. We had a story. We had support -- sort of. We had a local Steering Committee with numerous endorsements for the idea. We did not have the UPC bar codes to print on the FOOD FOR ALL donation cards. We had written a letter to the Universal Product Code Council and received a letter back that had never had such a request and were not sure they could grant us permission for the codes we needed. That was a little setback but we knew that only about 35 per cent of supermarkets even had the technology for scanning at the time, and we were certain that the cash system they did have could handle the donations. We just didn't know how yet.

With all of this uncertainty we decided to charge ahead anyway toward testing our idea. We just needed a supermarket to test it in. Where could we find one. Milo Lacy was on the verge of reminding me that "I told you so" until one day he and I were having breakfast at Bob's Big Boy (now Coco's) and I decided to make a phone call.

FOOD FOR ALL ERA 2: An Idea That Won’t Let Go

My wife is very determined, in her own quietly persuasive way, not so much on getting her way as on digging deeper to find something that makes things work better. Hence the year between the spring of 1984 and the summer of 1985 was spent investigating and researching and learning about all the anti-hunger efforts of non-profit organizations, governmental agencies, and corporations. It wasn't that nothing was being done. There were many local groups responding to what appeared to be growing numbers of homeless people, and of children going to bed hungry: Food pantries, homeless shelters, free hot meal programs run by churches and often by compassionate individuals. There were also the large multi-service organizations, regional food banks, the Salvation Army, Family Service, all attempting to do something about ensuring that people were not going hungry. On the world stage there were the many non-governmental agencies, small and large, devoting themselves to the task of addressing the symptoms as well as the underlying causes of hunger, usually related to one of our life-long concerns, persistent poverty. The famine in Ethiopia was capturing the imagination of the folk during this time and "We Are the World" was the song of the moment. Appeals for money were in front of us daily, on TV, radio, newspapers, and of course, our mailboxes.

When we looked at what the food industry was doing, there were the regular canned food drives that many of the grocers conducted, usually in connection with a food bank or local food pantry. And the food manufacturers gave excess or near-out-of-date product to the big regional food banks, usually through Second Harvest. It seemed to us that the food industry was a natural part of ensuring food security for everyone in society. So why not a partnership between food manufacturers, grocers, their customers and employees to provide a simple and easy method for raising funds to help end hunger right at the point where almost everyone purchases food for their own family, at the supermarket check stand. A display with a bar-coded card for a small amount to be added to a customer's grocery items each time he or she shopped. Fifty cents, a dollar, five dollars, would appear right on the grocery receipt and the card would provide information about hunger and how the donation would help alleviate it.

We began to ask questions of everyone we knew. For those we knew were anti-hunger activists the question was mainly "What would you do with large amounts of money being raised to address the hunger issue?" To anyone we encountered who had any knowledge of the food industry, especially the grocers, we wanted them to "tell us all the reasons why this idea would not work." This last question was the one we asked of any group we were part of, and of course, that included all of our friends. We were pleasantly surprised at the encouraging responses we received. I was also a little secretly terrified, knowing how much work was ahead from idea to actuality.

We even held some informal "focus groups" with as diverse handfuls of our friends as we could get to spend a few hours going over the implications of an "idea whose time had come" and just how we should go about beginning to test it in actual practice. Out of these sessions came the first mockup of a four by six card with a picture of a hungry child. One of our informal advisors came up with that idea. We later abandoned that type of appeal but we took it with us to a visit with Paul Gerrard, a legendary local grocer in our town, and Jack Brown, who lived in our town but was President of a regional chain of supermarkets. Paul was most encouraging and wished us well and said to come back any time for further advice. Jack also said he thought our idea was a good one and if implemented would raise lots of money for hunger. He also said that his company would probably be one of the last ones to take it on. One other visit we made was with Russ Reid, who was one of the people who put World Vision's direct mail and TV fundraising campaigns on the map. Russ wanted to take our idea to World Vision and run with it. We had a different vision of a more inclusive approach, so even though we had no money, no organization, no clue how we were going to proceed, we took our own and a few friends advice and pushed on.

One of our early advisors was Dean Freudenberger, who was a professor at Claremont School of Theology and an expert on American food policy. We picked his brain on several occasions as he offered to have us hold meetings at his school. One day he mentioned that if we wanted to find out more about how grocers thought and acted, we should talk to Milo Lacy, who happened to live a few blocks from the school. Milo had been a well-liked supermarket manager for an upscale store in Orange County and was now retired and conducting seminars for Japanese visiting grocers at Cal Poly Pomona. We went to see Milo and he and his lovely wife Mary Paul invited us to stay for lunch and a long conversation. The professor was right. Milo, this tall, lanky seventy-something salt-of-the-earth guy, knew more about the grocery business and knew more influential people in it, than we could have expected. Milo, after hearing our story and our ideas, laughed and said: "That is a terrific idea you've come up with -- and I know these grocers and you'll never get them to do it! But if there is anything I can do to help let me know."

So by the end of the spring of 1985, we had five commitments for the founding board of directors of what would soon become FOOD FOR ALL, Inc.: Linda and I, Rich Blakley, who was then pastor of Redlands United Church of Christ, Georgianna McBurney, an old friend and colleague from our Institute of Cultural Affairs days, and Milo Lacy the retired supermarket manager who told us the grocers would never go for our idea.

FOOD FOR ALL, Inc. was incorporated as a nonprofit July 1, 1985, our first Board retreat held in Desert Hot Springs on one of the hottest weeks of the year, and we were still operating out of our living room for an office with a friend's donated Otrona computer with a five by seven inch screen, and getting all of our copies and printing done at the old church house of Redlands UCC. We were all looking forward to a glorious journey.

Linda and the Otrona – FOOD FOR ALL’S first computer

THE FOOD FOR ALL ERA

It was the spring of 1984.  Linda was working in administration for Whitehead Center at the University of Redlands.  I was an adjunct faculty member traveling to various off-campus sites teaching evening classes for working adults trying to complete their college degrees. Things had settled down a bit regarding our family dramas, although son Robb's mental health issues were still a big concern.  Eric was in his junior year at Redlands High School.  Our family had moved "down the hill" and was renting a two-story 2-bedroom apartment in Redlands Town Homes.  Having been forced to downsize after our personal version of the economic downturn of the early eighties, we had done a values re-assessment and were beginning to enjoy participating in the "Simple Living" movement.  "Live simply that others may simply live" was its motto.

Since we had limited resources but also an abiding desire to alleviate human suffering, we identified three big issues we wanted to devote energy to:  World peace, the environment, and the gap between the haves and have-nots.  A fourth we saw as underlying and permeating the others has become more and more important to us through the years.  We've not found an adequate name for this dimension.  Spirituality is almost a cliche encompassing a multiplicity of practices.  We might just say it has to do with nurture of the human spirit.

We joined the Redlands Peace Group at about the same time Beyond War came to Redlands so we got involved.  We tried to pay attention to how we were personally using the planet's resources and walked or rode bikes.  We recycled.  We attempted to shop wisely and frequented thrift shops.  At the grocery store we would purchase a few extra items to take to Redlands Family Service.  It was sometimes difficult to make the extra effort but we kept at it.  I had mentioned to Linda after one of these trips that the Director, while thanking me for the supplies, said that they could really use more help in the form of money donations.

One day Linda came home from the supermarket and shared a thought she often had while standing in the checkout line.  She said that as she was buying groceries and thinking about the Ethiopian famine and also of the growing reports of hunger in America, the thought came up:  "Wouldn't it be great if there was a simple way to give a donation while buying food for your own family."  That was the germ of the multi-million dollar idea that became FOOD FOR ALL. 

The grocery industry was rapidly joining the technological revolution.  The bar-code and laser scanners had already spread into about half of the nation's supermarkets.  "What if there was a display at each check stand with a bar-coded card hanging on it.  A customer could take the card and add it to his/her purchases as a way to help address the hunger issue while buying food for the family."  Simple, easy, elegant.  A way to respond to the impulse to help alleviate someone else's suffering with a swipe of a card.  Linda wanted to know if I thought it made any practical sense or if I thought it could work.

I said "That is a great idea sweetheart!  Why don't you pursue it and let me know how it turns out?"

The rest of this tale takes up the next fourteen years of my/our life and will be told in readable bytes.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                   

Journey of Awakening 57: A Spiritual Wilderness

The years from 1982 to 1985 are a bit of a blur—mental, physical, and spiritual.

Mental, because the images that come up all seem to morph into one another and, since time is a mental construct at any rate, the entire phase is like a whirlwind on an inland sea. Physical, because of the many activities I involved myself in just to help keep the family together and food on the table. Spiritual, because these were years when the yearnings that led me to ask the big questions about life were being re-awakened.

I parted company with Northwestern Mutual Life, after which I tried to hang on to a few group health insurance clients and got into the Medicare supplement sales field. I delivered LA Times and USA Today newspapers in Redlands and Oak Glen. I drove a Dial-a-lift Van in San Bernardino and helped open a Dial-a-ride office in Yucaipa. I took a job as sales manager for Niles Fletcher’s carpet cleaning company. Niles had been an insurance client of mine. I even went back into the local church ministry, part-time, when Mentone Congregational Church was in need of a pastor.

One venture I enjoyed for a few years was with the hot new Cambridge Diet company. This was the result of my longstanding desire to get control of a weight issue I had struggled with most of my life. I not only trimmed down by about 50 pounds while trying to live a healthier lifestyle, but became a “Cambridge Counselor” to help others by selling the Cambridge product and program.

Many of these employment activities were going on at the same time. The one at the Mentone Church, which happened to be of the same denomination I had served back in the sixties, was a lesson in “you really can’t go back again.” I made some good friends and saw the congregation through a transition from an all-white dwindling group of seniors to a mostly black but more alive church family that still struggles to remain viable. The experience convinced me that my original decision that I was not cut out for the local church pastorate was the right one. I guess the legacy I am most pleased with is that I helped found the Mentone Seniors, which met in our church building for several years. This group went on to be responsible for the establishment of the Mentone Senior Center and, along with some assistance from the County, the public library in which our writing class now meets.

It was also during these few years that I managed, with Linda’s introduction and her boss’s willingness to give me a shot, to get an adjunct faculty position at Whitehead Center of the University of Redlands, in the Business Management degree program. My job was to conduct six-week, 4-hour classes at various centers in southern California, teaching working students essentially how to study, how to write, how to put their life and work experience into a portfolio that, hopefully, would qualify for college credit on their way to getting their college degrees. I actually enjoyed getting back into the academic setting in front of students again, after so many years away.

My dream of being a householder was now gone. The economic recession and some poor career choices resulted in us giving up at 540 South Center with the fixer-upper project incomplete. We moved to a rental at 917 West State Street in the Redlands Town Homes and began to rebuild our life in Redlands. It was actually a great time for us in many ways. We re-learned the importance of living the simple life. We took walks. We read together. We remembered how to “make lemonade.”

540 Center Today – Someone Cared for it

The spiritual pole of this three-legged stool meant that Linda and I now had time to reflect on not just where we had been but where our lives were headed. Linda had always been an avid reader. She was also a spiritual seeker, a pursuit I had left behind in the flurry of activism my life had been for the last decade or so. So we began reading together from some of the spiritual classics of the world’s religions, including the Christian mystics, Meister Eckhart, St. John of the Cross, Teresa of Avila, and Thomas Merton. We discovered the eastern traditions as well, the Baghavad Gita, a Hindu devotional classic, some Buddhist writings of Thich Nhat Hanh, the Vietnamese monk who co-founded the Fellowship of Reconciliation during the Vietnam conflict.

And of course we discovered Zen. Friends in Redlands who had been family counselors for us when we were attempting to figure out how to help son Rob invited us to their home to meet this young monk just back from studying for years in Japan. It was our first up-close-and-personal encounter with a Zen Buddhist monk in robes. We were duly impressed. This was also our first exposure to a disciplined approach to meditation. Meditation in our experience had been mostly a mental activity related to staying right with God. Shinzen Young began sharing about the practice of meditation and then stopped suddenly and said: “Would you like to try?”

“Why not?” and that “Why not?” led to taking instruction from this Zen teacher for several weeks and an excruciating weekend retreat at his center in Los Angeles keeping a schedule I had forgotten was possible for the human body: alternating periods of sitting cross legged on mats with horizontal time attempting to sleep; chanting weird phrases in the Pali language; and trying to learn how to “just sit.” In Zen nothing is taken for granted and nothing is easy. These beginning baby steps in the area of meditation practice evolved into further exploration with other Buddhist teachers that lasted for more than two decades, among them Jack Kornfield, co-founder of Insight Meditation Society in Barre, Massachusetts and Spirit Rock in Marin County. Linda and I have hosted a weekly meditation and study group in our home for 30 years and have benefitted from this ongoing spiritual support group. But that is part of another chapter and will surely enter into future episodes of this journey.

Journey of Awakening 56: My Cup Runneth Over

Homeowner. Life insurance salesman. Family man. What more could I ask for?. Life was full. Except that nothing was going exactly as I had envisioned. In fact, life was just getting too damn full.

We joined First Baptist Church and became active in a young couples group. Bob Wallace was pastor then and Lance and Nancy Ternasky were key members of the group. Bob and his then wife Donna were quite familiar with the ICA, Bob having taken a couple of our training courses which were an important influence on his preaching and teaching. Donna, who was blind by the time we met, was an enthusiastic ICA supporter and volunteer. The Ternasky family had just returned from spending part of a year at one of our ICA village projects in India, until their very young son, Chad became so ill they had to return to the States. Our families became close for the next several years.

My job at Northwestern Mutual Life led to a couple of other friendships. Tom Fort and Vance Johnson were beginning their agent training along with me. Our families socialized on occasion. Vance was a young black man who had considered entering the ministry but ended up in the insurance business where he still is today. He and I were both struggling agents and formed a partnership for a year or so before I left the business. Or should I say before the business left me.

Linda’s job at Whitehead provided a few acquaintances and family dinner invitations but no close or lasting friendships. When her boss, Wayne Martindale, left and Robin Pratt took over his position, Linda was offered a job with the School of Theology at Arrowhead Springs, then headquarters of Campus Crusade for Christ, where she stayed for a year or so, after which she returned to the U of R as assistant to Al Thompson, Admissions Director for Whitehead Center. This turned out to be good fortune for me, as it led to my getting hired as an adjunct faculty instructor when my insurance career was in its last gasp.

Our family time was filled mostly with work projects involving our fixer-upper three bedroom home on Center Street.

The Summer Gardening Project: Prolific Pumpkins and not-so corn

Actually it was a two bedroom that had a sun porch added on to the back which became our bedroom, mainly because it had a tiny bathroom, which meant we did not have to walk through the second bedroom to get to the main bath. Eric and his pet rabbit Emily occupied that room until we discovered how difficult it was to potty-train a bunny. Robb had the front bedroom until he left us, and then Troy who had been going to school in Iowa and living with his grandparents, came to live with us.

Linda, Troy, Eric and sister Sandra with Mom & Dad Turner visiting at 540 Center

Our other family member, Winston, was a handsome Dalmatian/Australian Shepherd mixture who joined us when Eric and Robb returned with this cute puppy from an errand to Gerard’s Market. Winston entertained the family with his exuberant antics and was Eric’s constant companion, but he had the habit of making a dash out the door to freedom whenever the door was opened. One day he made his escape and saw another dog across the street. We heard the screech of the brakes. By the time we reached him he was lying in shock unable to move his back legs. As we took the long trip to the vet with Troy holding him on his lap sobbing, we all said our goodbyes to Winston, one of those memorable pets who you are privileged to share life with for a time.

 

Journey of Awakening 55: Have I Got Your Attention Yet?

It was 1979 in Redlands and it rained steadily that fall. I thought we must have been in San Francisco or Portland. But our family of four was safe in our little Spanish style home at 540 Center Street, just below the big yellow three-story house on the corner, which to us looked like a mansion. It was owned and occupied at the time by the Carlsons, so we called it the ‘Carlson Mansion.’ Their house towered above our little one-story Spanish bungalow and was separated from our property by a small grove of orange trees. The Carlsons were the owners of Carlson’s Hardware, where you could go at any time during the day holding an item such as a particular size bolt, screw or nail and say to whomever was on duty “I need six of these” and you would immediately be led into the back of the store to watch the “Yeah, I’m pretty sure we’ve got that” expert rummage through 8-foot high shelves of drawers until he had exactly matched your item and come up beaming with “Here you are! Anything else?” Try that at Lowes or Home Depot and even if they have the item you want and can grab someone knowledgeable to help you find it, you have to buy a package of them with a lifetime supply.

Carlson’s Hardware was an important part of our team because we had purchased this cute little Spanish-style house as a live-in-while-we fix-it up project. Never having been a homeowner, though Linda had been one in her former life in suburban Green Bay, I had no idea what owning a ‘fixer-upper’ entailed. But I was in good health and able to follow directions. Linda was a great planner and coordinator of things. Robb was a strong though somewhat unreliable teenager. Eric was a hardworking and willing almost 6^th-grader. My new step-father Harold and my Mom came down some weeks to help. And our friend Lance Ternasky was a general contractor at the time and volunteered his advice and sometimes his tools.

The summer before the “rainy season” we plunged into our work projects with gusto, digging up the back yard for planting grass and a garden, cutting down a diseased orange tree, moving the water heater from the back entryway to the opposite side of the house, wallpapering the bathroom, and installing a new heating/air conditioning system on the roof, after signing up for financing with the itinerant Trane salesman who was “in the neighborhood.”

That summer I also began my training as Special Agent of Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Company and my affiliation with the General Agency located on 2^nd and Arrowhead in San Bernardino. My mentor and trainer was General Agent Keith Guise, a nice man who genuinely wanted his agents to succeed in the business, but who was not the greatest business manager. My first year in the business I made enough sales to go over the “million dollar in sales” mark which qualified me for an all-expense-paid trip to Milwaukee, NML’s home office for the annual meeting banquet and one of the last stand-up performances by Bob Hope, which is all I remember from the trip. From there on things began to go downhill for Special Agent Mellow Milan (the nickname given me by my mentor), although it would take a couple of more years for that reality to sink in.

Meanwhile our home was my refuge and the family had its own challenges. Eric started his 6^th grade year at McKinley Elementary and Robb entered Redlands High. Eric thrived and Robb struggled. We were regularly getting calls from the school that Robb was not showing up for classes. We were later informed by Eric that Robb was smoking pot in the garage. We began family counseling. One day our car turned up missing. We reported it stolen only to find out that Robb had found a set of keys and taken it for a ride with a couple of his friends. So when he returned home we and a police car were waiting. We and the officer decided to let that slide. But before Robb left us the next summer things were spiraling out of control. Family and individual counseling did not seem to be working for us or Robb. He was becoming more unmanageable and belligerent. Finally his mother decided to give him another try and agreed to have him come back to Minneapolis before he ended up in jail. Ironically, the day after we put him on the Greyhound bus for the trip to Minnesota, three police cars showed up at our front door with a warrant to search the house for drugs. Apparently Robb and one or more of his friends had been distributing drugs around town.

After the summer of 1980 things settled down for awhile. I was still going to work every day although sales were not keeping up with expenses. Linda had applied for and got a job at the University of Redlands Whitehead Center as administrative assistant to Wayne Martindale, but her salary was not enough to make up the difference. Ronald Reagan was elected President that autumn and the economy was in free-fall. Interest rates were at an all-time high. Inflation was going through the roof. We were going deeper into debt and at risk of losing the house. My spirits were low but my hopes were high. There is something about being in sales that changes your whole perspective on life.

For one thing you begin to see every relationship and every encounter as an opportunity to make a sale. Then there is the carrot of the next big deal that is always just around the corner. By the time you wake up to reality, which usually requires being hit over the head with it, you may be too far gone to recover.

There is the famous story of the farmer who was telling his friend about his mule.

“This mule is one of the best-trained animals you will every see.”

“Really? I’ve never seen a mule you could train. Can you show me?”

The farmer picked up a huge two-by-four and proceeded to swing it and hit the mule right on the side of the head. Whack!

“I thought you said that mule was well-trained,” said the friend, puzzled.

“He is,” responded the farmer, “but first you have to get his attention.”

Some people might call it God, some Providence, some good luck. I just refer to it as Reality trying to get my attention! Waking up is easy, but for some people it takes a whack on the side of the head to notice that you are actually awake.

Journey of Awakening - 54: The Lost Year

"I can't handle him anymore. You are going to have to take him."

That was how the summer of '78 ended. My son Robb had been becoming more and more difficult and Sue, my ex-wife and his mother, finally arranged, with cooperation of a court appointment, to send him to a summer youth camp in northern Minnesota.

Linda and I had just got back from our month-long bus trip and received our assignment to the Los Angeles House of the ICA. We had to arrange to pick up Eric, travel back to Boston, pack our belongings, arrange our transportation to LA routing through Minnesota to pick up a wayward son, and arrive at our new assignment by Labor Day. And we did not even own a car.

Thanks to my generous Green Bay in-laws who floated us a loan to buy a nineteen-sixty-something VW bus, we were able to pack all of our worldly belongings and make the long trip with Eric and Robb sprawled across bedding topping off the back of the van, arriving at 1450 Magnolia in Los Angeles just in time to take charge of a house that had been used to running itself and did not seem to need us.

Readying the VW Bus for the Boston to LA Trip

Robb in front of LA House in Happier Times

Since there was a Town Meeting '76 "mop-up campaign" going on in the San Joaquin Valley, Linda was sent up to help with that project. I was left to try to manage things on the home front. On weekends everyone headed up to our community development project in Richgrove, a small farming town near Delano, the headquarters of Cesar Chavez.

Eric began 5th grade at Hoover Street Elementary and we enrolled Robb in Berendo Junior High as a 9th grader. The community was heavily Hispanic by this time on its way to becoming what is now Korea Town. An added complication was that a contingent of the 18th Street Gang lived in a house on the opposite side of our street. Robb continued getting into trouble and we continued living in denial until an incident involving Robb, some gang members, and a couple of LA detectives made it clear that things were spiraling out of control.

Linda and I made a combined executive decision that it was time to salvage what was left of our family. We began a search for a community in Southern California that we could move to and settled on a town of 35,000 near San Bernardino--Redlands. We were fortunate that we knew two couples who were ICA colleagues, Bob and Donna Wallace and Lance and Nancy Ternasky. Bob was pastor of First Baptist Church in Redlands. We found a ready-made church home and schools that would take our kids to finish Eric's 5th grade and Robb's 9th grade year, along with a couple of caring teachers and school principals.

We made the move to Redlands in May of 1979 and purchased a "fixer-upper" house at 540 Center Street with the help of my mother and her new husband, Harold. Now what to do to support ourselves after 10 years of no gainful employment, no retirement savings, health insurance, or any other visible means of support? The job market was not looking too promising for us. The country was about to enter a recession and inflation was going out of control.

So what would any unemployed ex-clergyman do under these circumstances? I know! I'll go back into the life insurance business! We should be able to make up for the decade of self-imposed impoverishment. How hard can this be for a smart guy like me?

So I took the battery of tests and joined the fine old established Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Company of Milwaukee. I was now "Special Agent" Milan Hamilton for the Quiet Company.

Look out world of the un-and-under-insured--'Special Agent' Milan Hamilton of The Quiet Company was on the job!